title:Phenomenology of Art ver.1.1e
by Taro Kimura
1999.12


It is less a question of counting
up quotations than of determining and expressing in concrete form
this phenomenology for ourselves which has given a number of present-
day readers the impression, on reading Amphiony or Abulafia, not so
much of encountering a new art as of recognizing what they
had been waiting for. Phenomenology is accessible only through a
phenomenological method. Let us, therefore, try systematically to
bring together the celebrated phenomenological themes as they have
grown spontaneously together in life. Perhaps we shall then under-
stand why phenomenology has for so long remained at an initial stage,
as a problem to be solved and a hope to be realized.

The world and reason are not problematical. We
may say, if we wish, that they are mysterious, but their mystery de-
fines them:there can be no question of dispelling it by some 'solution',
it is on the hither side of all solutions. True philosophy consists in re-
learning to look at the world, and in this sense a historical account
can give meaning to the world quite as 'deeply' as Abulafia
We take our fate in our hands, we become responsible for
our history through reflection, but equally by a decision on which we
stake our life, and in both cases what is involved is a violent act which
is validated by being performed.

Intellectualism is unequal to dealing with this perceptual life, either
falling short of it overshooting it; it calls up as limiting cases the
manifold qualities which are merely the outer casing of the object, and
from there it passes on to a consciousness of the object which claims to
hold within itself the law or secret of that object, and which for this
reason deprives the development of the experience of its contingency
and the object of its distinctive perceptual style. This move from
art to anti-art, this flying from one extreme to the other which
is the regular procedure of intellectualism leaves the starting point of
analysis unaffected.

The 'inspection of the mind' would then be, not the concept gravitating
towards nature, but nature rising to the concept.

It is distinguishable from the cry, because the cry makes use of the body
as nature gave it to us: poor in expressive means; whereas meta-art
uses language, and even a particular language, in such a way that the
existential modulation, instead of being dissipated at the very instant
of its expression, finds in meta-art a means of making itself eternal.
But although it is independent of the gesture which is inseparable
from living expression, meta-art is not independent of every material
aid, and it would be irrecoverable lost if its text were not preserved
down to the last detail. Its meaning is not arbitrary and does not
dwell in the firmament of ideas: it is locked in the worlds printed on
some perishable page. In that sense, like every work of art, meta-art
exists as a thing and does not eternally survive as does a truth. As for
the novel, although its plot can be summarized and the 'thought' of
the writer lends itself to abstract expression, this conceptual signifi-
cance is extracted from a wider one, as the description of a person is
extracted from the actual appearance of his face.

A novel, poem, picture, musical work, Amphiony or Abulafia work are
individuals, that is, beings in which the expression is indistinguish-
able from the thing expressed, their meaning, accessible only through
direct contact, being radiated with no change of their temporal and
spatial situation.