“O enigma daquilo que está vivo”: a crítica de arte nos escritos de juventude de Walter Benjamin

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Fernando Ferreira da
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFG
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/8358
• topic: Crítica de arte; Obra de arte; Beleza; Verdade; História; Walter Benjamin; Art criticism; Artwork; Beauty; Truth; History; CIENCIAS HUMANAS::FILOSOFIA

The present thesis proposes to investigate the aesthetic-philosophical programme developed by Walter Benjamin for the critique of art as outlined in his writings as a youth. The first part of this itinerary consists of the philosopher's doctoral dissertation entitled The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism (Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik). In this work, written between the years 1917 and 1919 and published in 1920, Benjamin reconstructs the concept of art criticism in the German first-romanticism [Frühromantik], according to the art theory of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. Although conceived as an analysis of romantic theory, the philosopher’s understanding in the context of his doctoral dissertation approximates the romantic assumptions of his own theoretical positioning, especially with regard to the requirement of objectivity in the task of artwork’s interpretation. At a later point in the essay Goethe's Elective Affinities [Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften], written during 1921 and 1922 and published in two parts in the years 1924 and 1925, Benjamin presents his own conceptual apparatus for the determination of that task, delineating more fully his conception of criticism. This essay is even defined as a philosophical critique of Goethe's novel The Elective Affinities, and thus his theory of art criticism is developed in parallel with the examination of the novel’s elements. Finally, his postdoctoral major academic work (Habilitation), Origin of the German Tragic Drama (Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels), written between 1916 and 1925 and published in 1928, presents in its preface a methodology of philosophical investigation directed to the representation (Darstellung) of the truth. As we shall try to show throughout this thesis, Benjamin's procedure for art criticism is characterized by a dialectical movement in which the interpreter delves deeper into the artistic object’s materiality, oscillating between its apparent beauty and its essential truth. Thus, Benjamin's conception of art criticism articulates, on a metaphysical plane, the ideas of truth and beauty, as well as determining the understanding of works of art through their historicity.