OPENNESS OF BEING AND PERSISTENCE OF ART

Abstract

In this paper, the theoretical and critical reading of Radivoj Korać’s book (Tajna ljudskog bitka) is motivated by the personal interest of the recipient (S. Petrović). Namely, in this account and in the provocative and underexpressed standpoints of contemporary philosophers about the outlook of man and, thus, art, I will focus on the basic questions of creative existence. A special topic of the essay is the critical inquiry of philosophical ideas about man as a historical and dynamic being, an ever-open entity. The analysis will consider several important ideas. One of these suggests a negative attitude towards the principle of continuity of man and, therefore, rules out the presence of a teleological agent in man’s fabrications. Another presupposes a permanent affirmation of man’s stepping-out, his displacement outside the boundaries of „completedness“, thereby bringing the very meaning of history into question? This dilemma has once again become urgent due to the well-known fact of persistence of work of art (and art itself), due to its always-completedness and thereby its enduring in time; finally, due to the artwork’s decisive defiance against being reduced to something contingent.