Walter Benjamin and Heidegger

Walter Benjamin

from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction


...The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.  The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Fuhrer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.



Heidegger

from The Origin of the Work of Art



The origin of the work of art - that is, the origin of both the creators and the preservers, which is to say of a people's historical existence, is art.  This is so because art is by nature an origin: a distinctive way in which truth comes into being, that is, becomes historical. 




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