10—
Where the Beauty of Truth Lies

The perception of beauty is a moral test.
Henry David Thoreau, Journals^[1]

I

In ancient Greece, truth was not only a property of statements; it could also be attributed to the world of perception. With the beginning of modernity, there was a momentous change in the logic of truth: the site of truth was reduced to the constative sentence or proposition. Truth could lie only in the sentence or proposition. But in this conception, the beauty of truth is absent: it vanishes virtually without a trace. What if this modern turn is reversed? What if we could return to a conception of truth that would make it possible for us to see and think, once again, the beauty of truth? Could truth also lie, once again, in the realm of perception—in the care of those perceptions to which the beauty of things entrusted their revelation? Would not the beauty of truth be made visible thereby? And would not the truth about a thing lay claim to the visible in and as the most beautiful appearance of the thing in question?

I would like to give thought, here, to the relationship between truth and beauty.^[2] In particular, what will concern us is the way that this relationship engages our vision in the interplay between the visible and the invisible. The immediate provocation will be a poem by Wallace Stevens in which the poet gives thought to this relationship.^[3] In question are two irreconcilably opposed theories of the truth, theories that I suggest it might be useful to think of as Platonism and Nietzschean perspectivism; two correspondingly opposed philosophies concerning mind and reality, which we might in all brevity call idealism and realism; and, with the same oppositional symmetry, two conceptions of the site of the beautiful, the one seeing it shining in the supersensuous, the other seeing it in

the marvelous transformations of the sensuous. The poem bears the title "On the Road Home":

It was when I said,
"There is no such thing as the truth,"
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.

You . . . You said,
"There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth."
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,
"Words are not forms of a single word.
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye";

It was when you said,
"The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth";

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.

II

As many philosophers have noted, in the German language, the word Schein bears three distinct meanings:

(i) shining, radiance, luminosity

(ii) manifesting, phenomenal appearing, showing itself, coming to light

(iii) illusion, deception, semblance, "mere" appearance

In the Greek language of Plato's thought, the first two meanings were bound together by their etymology. But Plato's metaphysics, drawing a line of irreconcilable separation between the reality of a higher realm of pure Ideas and the illusoriness of a lower realm consisting of sensuous appearances, exhibits a logic that he saw connecting inextricably all three of these seemingly unconnected meanings.

In The Republic (475), Glaucon asks who the true philosophers are. And Socrates replies that true philosophers are lovers of the vision of truth.^[4] Unlike ordinary people, the philosopher keeps his eye ever directed toward things fixed and immutable^[5] (500). But what is this "eye"? For Plato, it is not the physical eye, but the eye of the soul, the eye of reason and intellect. In order for the soul or intellect to "see" the truth, it must in fact renounce and abandon the use of sight and the other senses^[6] (537). Even so, Plato maintains that the soul is like the eye: "when resting upon that on which truth and beauty shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned toward the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about . . . "^[7] (508). In order to see the truth—or see the essential beauty of truth, the vision of mortals must turn away from objects of earthly beauty; it must become a "science" of ideal forms^[8] (532, 537). It must, as it were, look away from the things here on earth, gazing upwards, ascending an ontological hierarchy to behold the nonsensuous, supersensible truth, the Ideas that, being unchanging and eternal, forever stand above, and are thus "higher" than, the sensuous appearances.

In the Symposium ,^[9] Socrates describes the dialectical moments of this process, calling it love. Love is the vehicle whereby the initial attraction to sensuous beauty, the initial seduction, is transformed into a purely intellectual vision and knowledge of the essence of beauty as such. Although it is a sensuous love that sets this dialectic in motion, the beauty that seduces this love and draws it into its spell awakens a higher love in the "recollection" of the infinitely more truthful beauty of the Idea. In the Phaedrus , a dialogue that is also concerned with love, Socrates explains at length how, through "recollection," this transformation or sublimation takes place: the attraction to sensuous beauty becomes the occasion for an awakening of the soul's longing for a lost vision of beauty; and this awakening brings about a recollection of the "true beauty" it saw and knew, once upon a time, before being entombed in a material body^[10] (249–50).

For Plato, there is beauty in that which shines: radiance is beautiful; and the beautiful always shines, always scintillates. But what is most beautiful, for him, is the truth. Thus, the beauty of truth lies in its shining: shining in a dazzling radiance is how truth in its beauty appears. But if truth cannot be seen by the physical eye, then neither can the beauty of its shining. The beauty of its shining must be a purely intellectual beauty, a beauty visible, visible as intelligible, only to the soul; it must be absolutely separated from the realm of the sensuous. For Plato, the visible beauty of that which shines in the realm of the sensuous can only be a

deceptive beauty and an illusory truth. There is nothing on earth that can compare with the incomparable beauty, the most radiant appearing,    of the truth of the forms, the eternal and immutable Ideas visible only to the theoretical vision of the rational soul. In Plato's thought, the beauty of truth shines only in the realm of the supersensible. The truth of beauty—its radiant shining—is visible only for a soul which has ascended to this realm.

III

In his "Epistemo-Critical Prologue" to Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels , Benjamin takes up the question of truth and beauty in Plato's Symposium . As he notes, for Plato, truth, the realm of Ideas, is the essential content of beauty: truth is not only thought beautiful; it is the most beautiful, exceeding nothing in its beauty. Benjamin argues, therefore, that, "if truth is described as beautiful, this must be understood in the context of the Symposium with its description of the stages of erotic desire."^[11] And he points out that the beauty of truth in question in that dialogue is not so much beautiful in itself, as it is for Eros. "Likewise," he says, for truth: "it is not so much beautiful in itself, as for whomsoever seeks it" (ibid.). Although this might seem to imply that beauty must be subject to a certain relativism, Benjamin tells a story in order to suggest that beauty can take refuge in truth—in the "representational impulse" in truth—because "the assertion of the beauty of truth can never be devalued" (ibid.). Within the "preserve" of truth (Heidegger would speak here of die Wahr and die Wahrnis ), beauty can be saved—but only as long as it is truthful, faithful to the truth that lies within its shining.^[12] This is the price it must pay. But what is it for beauty to be truthful, faithful to its truth? Benjamin says:

This representational impulse in truth is the refuge of beauty as such, for beauty remains brilliant and palpable as long as it freely admits to being so. (Ibid.)

Eros, he says, will follow beauty in its flight, its innocent withdrawal into the preserve of truth—but "only as its lover, not as its pursuer."^[13] Despite the devoted attentions of Eros, however, beauty will not easily give itself to the lover—favoring the lover only a little more than the intellect, which despite its better judgment is attracted by the brilliance and cannot resist pursuing it: "for the sake of its outward appearance, beauty will always flee: in dread before the intellect, in fear before the lover" (ibid.). It is at this point in his narrative that Benjamin makes his most important argument, inti-

mating that it may be only in the beauty of truth, only in and as the beautiful, that truth is a revelation that does not destroy the secret:

only the latter [the lover] can bear witness to the fact that truth is not a process of exposure [Enthüllung ] which destroys the secret, but a revelation [Offenbarung ] which does justice to it. (Ibid.)

And then he asks the crucial question, "the innermost question of the Symposium ": "But can truth do justice to beauty?"

Plato's answer, he says, is to make beauty the preserve of truth. Truth, accordingly, becomes the import or content of beauty: das Gehalt des Schönen . But how is this import, this content, to be seen? Benjamin's answer is that

[it] does not appear by being exposed; rather it is revealed in a process which might be described metaphorically as the burning up of the husk [Hülle ] as it enters the realm of ideas, that is to say, as a destruction of the work in which its external form achieves its most brilliant degree of illumination [Leuchtkraft ]. (Ibid.)

In other words, the truth (the essential truth-content) of beauty is revealed when the beauty of truth—its work, its "salvation of phenomena in the realm of ideas"—is revealed.^[14] Benjamin's thought, here, is intricately enigmatic. It may at least be assumed, however, that he does not mean to agree with Plato's metaphysical dualism. Sensuous beauty flees from the intellect because the intellect, caring only for the knowledge, would deny it, would will its destruction. But it also flees from the lover because the lover, caring only for its own immediate satisfaction, would try to possess it, to master it. In the end, the lover, too, would only destroy it. So Benjamin's thinking, here, is an attempt to rescue the radiant appearing of beauty from its degradation in systems of knowledge—but only by showing how its secret essence, beyond the grasp of ordinary knowledge, is revealed precisely at the moment when it is—or appears to be—sacrificed for the sake of a supersensuous and invisible truth. The truth of sensuous beauty appears in all its radiance, and is most visible, at the very moment when sensuous beauty effaces itself, destroys itself, revealing the truth-content that it sheltered and defended from the possessive claims of knowledge within the sensuous realm. In the very moment of its self-destruction, its self-effacement for the sake of what was thought to be the beauty of a supersensible truth—in that very moment, the sensuous "husk" of appearances, which in Platonism is thought to be protecting and preserving this supersensible truth, becomes a dazzling blaze of fire, revealing for a luminous knowledge the marvelous truth of beauty—the beauty of a truth

that is truly nothing other than its most radiant sensuous appearances. If the beauty of radiance is the "evidence" of truth, then the truth of Platonism will have been visibly displaced: no longer will it lie in the supersensuous, but henceforth it will lie without degradation solely in the realm of sensuous appearances.

In "Credences of Summer," Wallace Stevens invokes the fire of sight, a fire that reduces to ashes all but the thing in the truth and beauty of its sensuous presence; invokes the truth of the most demanding beauty in a revelation of fire that spares—for such is its justice—only that which is absolutely essential: the thing to be seen in the uncanny presence of its thingliness.^[15] Stevens says:

Let's see the very thing and nothing else.
Let's see it with the hottest fire of sight.
Burn everything not part of it to ash.

IV

In order to begin his discussion of Nietzsche's attempt, in "The Will to Power as Art," at a final "twisting free" (Herausdrehung ) of Platonism, Heidegger first returns to Plato, whose hierarchy of the sensuous and the supersensuous, subordinating the sensuous to the purely rational, Nietzsche wants to overturn and abolish. Heidegger's reading of Plato, and in particular, Plato's Phaedrus , is, I think, a compelling interpretation, keeping our thinking concentrated on the question of being, which he takes to become visible, for Plato, in the "Ideas." Thus, on Heidegger's reading, the Ideas constitute the being of beings, and are themselves the true beings, the true.^[16] According to Heidegger,

that Plato's question concerning art marks the beginning of "aesthetics" does not have its grounds in the fact that it is generally "theoretical," which is to say, that it springs from the interpretation of being; it results from the fact that the "theoretical," as a grasp of the being of beings, is based on a particular interpretation of being. The idea , the envisioned outward appearance, characterizes being precisely for the kind of vision which recognizes, in the visible as such, pure presence. (NA 167, NK 195)

The question that this leaves me with, and that it provokes me to ask, is: Just what kind of vision is this, which can discern the "pure presence" of being in the visible as such? What can be said, by way of a hermeneu-

tical phenomenology, about the gaze capable of such a vision? Heidegger points to the fact that Plato (Phaedrus 250d) regards the gaze as coming from love:

What is most loved and longed for in eros  . . . is what at the same time appears and radiates most brilliantly. The erasmiotaton [the most loved, the most lovely], which at the same time is ekphanestaton [the most radiant, that which appears most luminous], proves to be the idea tou kalou , the Idea of the beautiful, beauty. (NA 167, NK 195)

What is radiant and in that sense beautiful is what brings to view, in the immediately passing sensuous appearances of things, their relation to the eternally unchanging Idea. But this event of revelation can take place only if there is, to begin with, an initial attraction to the beauty, the loveliness, of the appearances: there must be a certain predisposition to be attracted by and to them, a predisposition to be drawn—and drawn out (of oneself)—by and to them. This predisposition is none other than love (NA 194–95, NK 226–27).

Like Benjamin's discussion of truth and beauty, Heidegger's commentary focuses on Phaedrus 250d, which he translates as follows:

But to beauty alone has the role been allotted (i.e., in the essential order of being's illumination [die Wesensordnung des Aufleuchtens des Seins ]) to be the most radiant [das Hervorscheinendste ] but also the most enchanting [das Entrückendste ]. (NA 196, NK 227–28. The phrase in parentheses is Heidegger's interpolation.)

Interpretive commentary follows:

The beautiful is what advances most directly upon us and captivates us. While encountering us as a being, however, it at the same time liberates us to the view [Blick ] upon being. The beautiful . . . grants entry into immediate sensuous appearances and yet at the same time soars after being; it is both captivating and liberating. Hence it is the beautiful that snatches us from the oblivion of being and grants the view upon being. (Ibid.)

Thus the beautiful, as that which most brightly shines and glistens, is granted to us by way of the most luminous mode of perception with which we have been endowed and of which we are capable. And Heidegger reminds us that   the Greek word for a goddess, is related in Greek to   the word for extraordinary viewing, a gaze granted the privilege

of a deity's revelation. Making as explicit as possible the ontological significance of this visionary experience, Heidegger says:

The look reaches as far as the highest and farthest remoteness of being; simultaneously, it penetrates the nearest and brightest proximity of fleeting appearances. . . . The more radiantly and brightly fleeting appearances are apprehended as such, the more brightly does that of which they are appearances come to the fore—Being. (NA 196, NK 228)

So the beautiful draws us into what it initially shows us, and if we are appropriately disposed, it draws us through and beyond itself, to grant an unveiling of being as such. According to Heidegger, the truth that beauty shows us, the truth to which it transports us, is the "openedness" (Eröffnung ) of being. The truth of beauty, the beauty of truth, is given, therefore, to what he calls der Seinsblick , the sight of being (NA 198, NK 230). However, for Plato, being is not at all sensuous, not at all sensible. This means, correspondingly, that the radiance which constitutes its singular and extraordinary beauty must not, cannot be sensuous. Plato locates the truth of beauty and the beauty of truth in the absolutely supersensuous (das Übersinnliche ) which the sensuous only temporarily contains and puts at our disposition. There is, then, in the separation (Entzweiung, Zwiespalt ) between truth and beauty, the supersensuous and the sensuous, not an unmitigated strife or conflict (Entsetzen ), but instead what Heidegger calls a "felicitous [beglückender ] discordance" (ibid.).

Giving further articulation to the character of this relationship, Heidegger observes that

both beauty and truth are related to being, indeed by way of unveiling [Enthüllung ] the being of beings. Truth is the immediate way in which being is revealed [Seinsenthüllung ] in the thought of philosophy; it does not enter into the sensuous, but from the outset is averted [abrückende ] from it. Juxtaposed to it is beauty, penetrating [einrückende ] the sensuous and moving beyond it, liberating in the direction of being [berückende Entrückung zum Sein ]. (NA 200, NK 231)

Explaining the character of the love, the desire, the attraction that underlies, and is awakened from, the ontological oblivion of our natural disposition, Heidegger brings out the axiological hierarchy towards which Plato's aesthetics are attempting to guide us:

For Plato, the supersensuous is the true world. It stands over all, as what sets the standard [das Maßgebende ]. The sensuous lies below, as the world of appearances. What stands over all is alone and from the start what sets the standard; it is therefore what is [most] desired. (NA 201, NK 232)

Heidegger is quite sympathetic to Nietzsche's attempt to overturn and abolish this hierarchy, sympathetic even to his affirmation of the sensuous, and correctly brings out the fact that this can be accomplished only insofar as the sensuous is no longer treated, no longer seen, as the realm of the "merely" apparent. There is still "semblance" (Schein in the sense of semblance); but it is now understood in terms of perspective, and is accordingly affirmed as proper to the very essence of the real. Of course, reality itself thereby becomes, in a sense, equivocal and indeterminate—a matter entirely of the perspective in question. Thus, for Nietzsche, no appearance can claim to be definitive; no perspectival appearance is a mere appearance in contrast to some higher, fixed reality (NA 213–15, NK 245–47). And therefore, the only error, the only illusion (Schein in this sense), is the vision which claims to see a reality that is constant, fixed, eternal, and definitive. So the radiance that Nietzsche sees is the luminous splendor, the beauty, of a shattered truth, an absolute truth broken, at last, into scintillating splinters of light, perspective appearances beyond number, endlessly transforming, endlessly becoming. The "truth" that Plato (thinks he) sees is, for Nietzsche, an illusion: just a fixation of appearing (Festmachen eines Anscheins ), and one, indeed, which it is tempting to interpret not only as an attitude with ontological, epistemological, and axiological dimensions, but also as an attitude with what might be called a "psychological" dimension. This is an interpretation that is perhaps intimated, or in any case given some measure of support, by Heidegger's observation, in "What Are Poets For?," that

objectification . . . blocks us off against the Open. The more venture-some daring does not produce a defense. But it creates a safety, a secureness for us. . . . We are secure where we neither reckon with the unprotected nor count on a defense erected within willing. A [true] safety exists only outside the objectifying turning away from the Open.^[17]

If Heidegger's reference to a defense should provoke one to think of Freud's psychoanalytic studies, perhaps it is not after all beside the point to remind ourselves, as Heidegger reminds himself, that it was precisely during the time of Nietzsche's attempt to overturn Platonism and twist free of it that madness (Wahn-sinn ) befell him! (But I am afraid that, to avoid some egregious misprisions, I must state unequivocally, here, that in turning to Freud for clarification, we must not tolerate psychoanalytic reductionism. If we avoid this common temptation, we can make use of psycho-analysis to elaborate an ontological interpretation of the "defense.")

Although Heidegger points out the temporal correlation, he does not venture any interpretation. Brevity requires that we forego, here, any lengthy consideration of the defensiveness I would like, under Heidegger's provocation, to put most radically into question. For the time being, perhaps it will suffice to say that it is in the re-presentation (Vor-stellung ) of that which presences (that which is present) that the reification or objectification of presencing-as-such takes place. If on the one hand, the madness can be the divine madness of an ecstatic "rapture" that exposes itself to the openness, or the madness of a love of the beautiful that makes one ecstatically "beside oneself" with joy at the sight of dazzling sensuous radiance, on the other hand, as exposure and vulnerability, madness can also be an experience of terror and dread that necessitates a defense, shielding from the openness, blocking off its illumination, blocking off the radiant splendor of the sensuous. Objectification is visible: according to Heidegger, it is manifest as a dimming-down.^[18]

V

In "Twisting Free—Being to an Extent Sensible," John Sallis returns to Plato's Phaedrus in order to question Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche with regard to the realm of the aesthetic. His attention, in this text, is given over primarily to Plato's hierarchical separation of the sensuous and the supersensensuous, subordinating the sensible to a supposedly more intelligible meaning; Nietzsche's attempt to overturn the hierarchy and ultimately abolish the separation; and Heidegger's critical meditation on the success and significance of Nietzsche's attempt. The thesis for which Sallis wants to argue is, as his title suggests, that being is "to an extent" sensible, but that, in order for this to be seen, it is necessary to "free the sensible from the grid of presence."^[19] Sallis says:

What I've tried to show elsewhere, in a reading of that passage [250d] in the Phaedrus , is that   has the character of a shining-forth of being in the midst of the sensible; that   is, as it were, the name of the shining-forth of being in the midst of the sensible. (TF 19)

Sallis returns to this problematic in order, as he expresses it,

to recover, within the Heideggerian project, such a shining-forth of being within the sensible; a shining, if you will, that pertains to the very being of the sensible. (Ibid.)

"But," he adds,

I am trying to do so in a way that resists, certainly more than the Phaedrus and, it seems to me, more than Heidegger himself, the tendency to withdraw the shining from the sensible and to make it ultimately the shining of an   the shining of something within the midst of the sensible that is in some sense readily detachable. (Ibid.)

Sallis argues that when Heidegger shifts his analysis from the present-at-hand, a mode of being that he regards as founded and derivative, to the ready-to-hand in its referential context, which he regards as the primary and therefore basic mode in terms of which, in our epoch, being presences, he

draws the focus away from anything that could be regarded as just sensibly present, as simply there to behold, whether as form or content. It is a matter of leaving out of account everything about things that would pertain to them as present-at-hand, everything that could be apprehended by a gaze not involved in the [practical] complex of references. (TF 11)

Thus, if the beholding of sensuous beauty—of the sensuousness of the beautiful and the beauty of the sensuous—involves a certain disengagement from the ready-to-hand modality of the practical world, Heidegger's privileging or prioritizing of the ready-to-hand makes it difficult for him to do justice to the way in which sensuous beauty would be manifest. In other words, the mode of being in and as which the sensuous would appear in all its beauty is not given the phenomenological attention it requires.

Sallis therefore contends that it is necessary to articulate, with absolutely rigorous fidelity to the phenomenon, i.e., in terms of the hermeneutical phenomenology formulated at the beginning of Being and Time ,

how in the shining of the sensible a certain spacing operates so as to draw that shining out into a profiling and a horizonality that is irreducible to presence. (TF 16)

That is, it must also be shown that the shining of the sensible is a phenomenon that can no more be reduced to the present-at-hand of purely theoretical being than it can be reduced to, or eclipsed by, the practical ready-to-hand. In neither of these modes of being, modes of presencing, can the philosopher think the truth of beauty and the beauty of truth with due regard for the sensuous radiance of the phenomenon.

Plato, and to some extent, even Heidegger, subordinate the sensuousness of the sensible to the intelligibility of the essence, so that the sensible is always viewed as a "perpetually incomplete presence" in contrast to the theoretically held   which is totally present in its fixed position before the contemplative gaze of the rational mind.

I support the thesis that Sallis expounds and find his argument to be compelling. Thus, in the next section, I would like to elaborate on his point about what he calls "a certain spacing." Further phenomenological attention to this spacing, bringing out its receptivity to the hermeneutical interplay of concealment and unconcealment, may perhaps make it somewhat easier to behold the radiant splendor of the sensuous in its appearance as such—the beauty of truth, the truth of beauty. The possibility of articulating this spacing depends, I believe, on the distinction that Heidegger draws between truth and   Without this distinction, and all that must come with it, the radiant beauty of truth will remain a mere Idea, a mere conceit, embellishing the philosopher's discourse.

VI

Over the years, Heidegger assigns many words to describe the disclosive visibility of beauty. His words, rendered in English translation, include, for example: shining, shimmering, glimmering, glowing, glistening, gleaming, dazzling, flashing, scintillating, sparkling, splendid, splendorous, radiant, luminous, illuminating. But who can see these revelations? Who can experience things in such transfigurations of the lighting? What is required of our vision? What must the aesthetic character of the gaze become, if it is to be appropriately responsive to such modes of presencing?

In the poem by Wallace Stevens, there is a magical transfiguration that takes place when things are released from the objectifying grasp of a gaze unable or unwilling to see them from multiple perspectives and points of view, a gaze unable or unwilling to play with the truth, unable or unwilling to see things in the interplay of concealment and unconcealment. Once the metaphysical separation of appearance and reality is abolished, even the properties of impermanence and mutability, attributed since ancient times to the sensuous appearances, undergo a profound alteration of sense: they are no longer to be thought as terms of degradation; they become, instead, terms of celebration, articulating the material of an aesthetic pleasure. Impermanence and mutability can now be seen as manifesting the metaphorical presencing of things—the beauty of their metaphoricity, their metaphorical truth. The poet says: "The grapes seemed fatter. . . . The tree, at night, began to change." Released from a gaze that is fixated on

grasping only the absolute truth of an essence, as if there could be only one truth, one true perspective, the grapes and the tree undergo wondrous transformations. Even the most ordinary things are suddenly revealing themselves in a most extraordinary light.

For a gaze bound to the theory of truth as adequate correspondence, reflecting or mirroring that fixation, nothing can come to light, shining in the beauty of its truth and the truth of its beauty. Driven by its need for unity, totality, and identity, deeply committed to a hypostatizing essentialism, such a gaze will miss the fleeting shadows and reflections, the sensuous beauty of things as they appear in the light of different perspectives. Turning the world into a sum of objects conforming to predetermined categories of recognition, such a gaze will not see the revelation in and as which things give themselves to us: the subtle iridescence, the prismatic play of light and shadow on the surfaces of things, the delicate shimmering, the faint and quiet glow, the rich vibrancy of the colors: it will be denied an experience of the radiant splendor of appearing, of endless becoming. Resisting the ekstasis that would actually permit a phenomenon to reveal itself, to show itself from out of itself and be what and as it gives itself to be, the gaze is instead given a spectacle that corresponds to its own closure, its own avoidance of exposure: a dull, motionless world without vibrancy, untouched by the presence of inconceivable possibilities for transformation, visibly bereft of grace, of revelation, the uncanny light of redemption that is visibly invisible, but also invisibly visible.

The poem tells us that, with regard to the visible world, the beauty of truth lies—or say dwells and rests—in the sensuousness of appearances. And it tells us that this beauty lies—or, say, is present—in the exploration of different perspectives, in their proliferation: in the openness of an unforeseeable number of perspectives. Thus, it would tell us that, in another sense of "lies," what we take to be the beauty of truth is nothing but a lie, a simulacrum of truth and beauty, deceiving and tricking us, when it is seen only in terms of a single or dominant point of view: when something is made visible in a perspective and a lighting that claim to present its one and only truth, the absolute truth, the true reality, the truth that alone corresponds to the definition of the thing, the claim of truth lies.

VII

Rejecting the modern conception of truth which locates truth in constative sentences or propositions,^[20] Heidegger argues, in "The Origin of the Work of Art" that "beauty is one way in which the truth occurs as disclosedness."^[21] But this beautiful occurrence of truth is a shining that depends on

certain conditions. As Heidegger observes in "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking":

Outward appearance is a manner of presence. No outward appearance without light—Plato already knew this. But there is no light and no brightness without the opening.^[22]

Light "presupposes openness" (BW 386, SD 74). It can "radiate" only if a perceptual field of openness has already been granted. "The beam of light does not first create the opening, openness; it only traverses it" (BW 385, SD 73). Thus, as Heidegger notes in his essay on the work of art, "the Open brings beings to shine and ring out" (PLT 72, H 60). In his essay "On the Essence of Truth," Heidegger gathers these points together, arguing that the appearing of truth can shine in all its beauty only if there is an open region laid out to receive it.^[23] The comportment of the gaze—a question of its character—must therefore be appropriately attuned to the opening, since "in that opening rests possible radiance, that is, the possible presencing of presence itself" (BW 387, SD 75). But, he argues,

philosophy knows nothing of the opening. Philosophy does speak about the light of reason, but it does not heed the opening of being. (BW 386, SD 73)

Returning to the philosophical discourse of ancient Greece, Heidegger finds in the word   a way of articulating this inaugural event of opening in relation to the experience of the beauty of truth:

Opening is named with aletheia , unconcealment, but not [yet] thought as such. (BW 389, SD 77)

As the poetry of Pindar enables us to see, there was a time long ago when the truth could be revealed in all its beauty, brought forth through the struggles of art and craft into the "splendor of radiant appearing [den Glanz des Scheinenden ]."^[24] But in the modern world, truth is no longer granted this beautiful appearance: once, as Heidegger says, certainty becomes "the modern form of truth,"^[25] a closure inimical to openness and radiance is imposed on truth. There is no more interplay between concealment and unconcealment, since this interplay introduces the play of uncertainty and surprise.

What defines the modern world, according to Heidegger, is the fact that the being of beings is subject to a powerful "enframing": it is reduced to presencing only in terms of reifying and totalizing representations. This "enframing" affects the way we can see things in their truth:

Enframing blocks the shining-forth and holding sway of truth. [Das Gestell verstellt das Scheinen und Walten der Wahrheit .]^[26]

Heidegger's struggle to retrieve the Greek experience of the beauty of truth is therefore an attempt to resist and overcome this modern enframing of the truth. This struggle against the enframing of truth is already set in motion in Being and Time (especially §§33–34 and §44), wherein he challenges two fundamental assumptions of modern thought: the assumption that the sole locus of truth is the assertion and the correlative assumption that truth is a correspondence between reality and what is being asserted about it: a correspondence which is thought to be possible without any recognition of the moment when the opening-up of a perceptual field takes place, and without any recognition of the interplay of concealment and unconcealment, the founding moment of disclosure which necessarily precedes the determination of a truth—and, in fact, first makes truth possible.

In effect, the correspondence theory of truth rules out the possibility of an aesthetic experience of truth—a vision of its beauty, since it restricts the experience to the dimension of the adequation, where it gets set in a fixed relation. An aesthetic experience with truth is possible only when the realm of the sensuous is not entirely separated from the realm of intelligible meaning—and not degraded in relation to the latter. Moreover, it is only possible when the gaze lets it shine. And that means, when the gaze renounces its willful grasp, its desire to possess the truth, and lets the truth of the thing be disclosed within the openness of the perceptual field. Only then will the gaze be granted the beauty of truth: the thing in its moment of unconcealment, the event in which the thing is revealed in the intricate interplay of concealment and unconcealment. Here we come to the aesthetic significance of  , the implications of this concept for the experience of the beauty of truth and the truth of beauty:   remembers the spacing that is necessary for the radiance of appearing; it preserves the play of the interplay, the intricate hermeneutics of concealment and unconcealment; it reminds the philosopher's gaze to look for the event of unconcealment that precedes the positing of truth. To see the truth only in the moment when it is deposited in a proposition may be quite satisfactory for the purposes of science or the practical interests of everyday life; but it will entirely miss the aesthetic moment.

The aesthetic moment, the hermeneutic moment of  , requires a gaze of divine madness, a gaze that has freed itself from the rituals and conventions of everyday life, a gaze appropriately prepared for the extraordinary revelations of truth, the metaphorical transformations of truth, that can happen only in the unconditional granting of openness in the very midst of the ordinary.

VIII

Can truth, then, do justice to beauty? Perhaps, if truth is no longer held hostage to the prevailing picture of "reality"; if truth becomes exposure to whatever this picture denies. But in his Philosophie der neuen Musik , Adorno asserted that truth can have "all its beauty [only] in denying itself the semblance of beauty."^[27] Must we not concede this? But now, inverting Benjamin's question, I also want to ask: Can beauty alone do justice to truth? How can the truth be purely beautiful when there is still so much suffering in the world? And how can beauty be wholly truthful? Where does the beauty of truth lie?

As I meditate on these questions, the words of a poet who suffered deeply come to mind. There is much to think about in the fact that the poet—Rainer Maria Rilke—who wrote, in the final strophe of "The Turning" ("Die Wende"),^[28]

Work of seeing is done,
now practise heart-work
upon those images captive within you; for you
overpowered them only: but now do not know them.

would also write, in the first of his "Duino Elegies,"^[29]

For the beautiful is nothing
but the beginning of the terrifying. . . .