The work of art in the age of Metaphysical destruction

Abstract

The decision to approach the relations between art, politics and philosophy on the basis of Lacoue-Labarthe’s notion of “national-aestheticism” was inspired by the supposition that the relation between art and politics reached its climax in nazism. Indeed, national-socialism can be taken as following an ancient Greek model and, insofar, as the historical moment of art and politics fusion, moment in which politics was shaped as a work of art; or, in Schiller’s words, in which the State was molded as the greatest of all works of art. As a clear case of semantic shift, Lacoue-Labarthe intended, with the term “national-aestheticism”, to characterize the essence of national-socialism, and this inevitably led to a discussion of the notorious Brecht-Benjaminian formula of the “Aestheticization of Politics vs. Politicization of Art”. One of the most important issues in this discussion was precisely the question about myth which, according to Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, Walter Benjamin let go unnoticed in his famous essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction”. Also according to both, it was Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s cinema, specially his film Hitler: a film fromGermany, that drew their attention to the central role of myth´s perspective in considering the national-socialistic program or its political project.