Art and Homecoming

Author: Yu Hong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-15
Features: On the journey home, we encounter Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault. Heidegger once described the fate of modern man as "homelessness." What does "home" mean here? Does it refer to the usual concepts of "hometown," "native land," "marital community," "bloodline community," or "dwelling"? "Home" is indeed the "dwelling place" of human beings, but it goes far beyond the above meanings of dwelling. Fundamentally, it refers to the "world" in which human beings exist. Heidegger said that humans are a special kind of being, different from all other beings, because they must exist in the world, whereas other beings do not have this "necessity"; they have a natural "environment." Nietzsche also said that human life cannot be naturally self-sufficient; it must create its own conditions of existence, that is, create its own world of existence. This book conducts a comparative study of the post-philosophical thought of three influential thinkers in the 20th century. The author uses the metaphor of "returning home" to summarize the basic ideas and purposes of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault in "escaping" the modern world and "returning" to the authentic world. The author examines the similarities and differences among the three thinkers in their use of ancient Greek imagination and artistic inspiration in "critiquing modernity," "reflecting on the history of thought," and "conceiving of an authentic homeland." The author proposes a "theory of existential relations" centered on power relations and freedom relations and uses this as a framework to analyze the significance, value, and difficulties of the thought of the three thinkers. The author emphasizes the importance of focusing on the "legitimacy of existential relations" in overcoming the crisis of modernity. The scope and methodology of this book break through the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy, aesthetics, and art studies, offering fresh insights.