The Ontology of Style: Patočka’s Reflections Cover Image

Ontologie stylu: Patočkovy úvahy o stylu ve výtvarném umění
The Ontology of Style: Patočka’s Reflections

Author(s): Miloš Ševčík
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Nakladatelství Karolinum

Summary/Abstract: In this article, the author considers Jan Patočka’s views on the development of style in the plastic arts. He first points out Patočka’s interpretation of the views of earlier thinkers who considered style, particularly Winckelmann and Riegl. He then concentrates on Patočka’s emphasis on the usability of Ingarden’s conception of the work of art for the renewal of investigating style. Patočka demonstrates that Ingarden’s conception of the art work as a stratified construction usefully reveals stylistic changes in the development of the plastic arts. From a certain angle, however, Ingarden’s conception of the work of art seems to Patočka to be wanting, because it is unable to explain what the meaning of stylistic change actually is. In this connection, the author points out the influence of Heidegger’s conception of the truth of a work of art, which occurs in the work as strife between two sides of being – the world and the earth. From the standpoint of this ontological orientation, Patočka criticizes Ingarden’s conception of the work of art, which concentrates on the emergence of aesthetically valuable qualities in the viewer’s aesthetic experience. The author therefore emphasizes that the development of style in the plastic arts eventually appears to Patočka to be the development of the presentation of the truth of being.

  • Issue Year: VI/2013
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 89-100
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Czech