origin of the work of art? What kind of access would one have if one could find out where the work of art (das Kunstwerk) springs from (der Ur-sprung)? Such access would not give its essence, no it is objectives, nor its destination, nor its fate. The preoccupation with the origin of the work of art could be characterized as an academic concern. Only academics are interested in where things "come from," where they arise, where they take their initial shape. Surely only academics want to know the lineage, the geneology, the history of things. A geometrician is not likely to care about the origin of geometry; but a philosopher (such as Husserl) might. You do not need to know where geometry comes from in order to do geometry. You do not need to know where an artwork comes from in order to create paintings, poems, or sacred temples. Historians of art sometimes ask about the sources of a particular work. And philosophers ask about the nature of such appeals to source and origin, but in this regard, the philosopher is retracing the steps of the historian of art. When Heidegger, however, asks about the origin of the work of art, he is not, as such, retracing the steps marked off by the historian of art. Heidegger is asking about "that from and by which the work of art is what it is and as it is."¹ Heidegger does not want to find out the influences on, or the ancestors to, any particular work of art. Indeed his concern is not one of historical filiation in any of the historiographical senses of the term. In asking about the origin of the work of art, Heidegger is asking about the structural interconnections among the artwork, the artist, and Art. This form of origination is abstracted from history itself. As Heidegger poses it, the question of origin is a question of relation." /> Textuality and the origin of the work of art - Silverman Hugh J | sdvig press