Art and Truth, Art as Truth. Werner Herzog between Heidegger and Nietzsche (and Plato)

This paper deals with an Auseinandersetzung between Werner Herzog’s anti-philosophical aesthetics and Martin Heidegger’s ontological anti-aesthetics on the basis of a shared assumption: the authentic goal of art is not beauty, but truth. After an overview on Herzog’s aesthetics as an ecology of image (§ 1), I will compare it with Heidegger’s thought on the topic of truth (§ 2). Although strong, the alethic affinity between Herzog and Heidegger is not an equivalence, as proved by a reference to Nietzsche’s vitalistic/voluntaristic interpretation of truth (§ 3). To explain their distance I will return to one of Western metaphysic’s topoi (Plato’s cave), which shows the persistence of a metaphysical character in Herzog’s work (§ 4).