DEFINITION OF ART (2008)
(Excerpt)From the very beginning, philosophy has caused anxiety. What caused the anxiety was the lack of anxiety, the courage of philosophy, because philosophy is a movement full of risks. It is a movement of love (philía, philein) which demands courage and resolve. People have tried to make it look ridiculous. People feared the philosopher as the dark one (skoteinós), people mocked the philosopher for only seeing what is most far removed, instead of seeing what lies close at hand, so that he would fall into a well or continually stumble. People accused him of seducing the youth of Athens, put him on trial and occasionally killed him. I define philosophy as the courage not to evade the call of the great concepts: What is freedom, What is truth, What is justice, What is love, What is the human being? — and in what relation do these questions stand toward art and philosophy? I think that art and philosophy are linked by this courage. Art is the assertion of form in the opening toward what is formless; philosophy is the assertion of truth in the unclear situation of instituted realities. The assertion of form by art, the assertion of truth by philosophy demand a confrontation with these realities without bending to them. Art and philosophy exist only as an autonomy and resistance against what is established.
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