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In 1966, in a famous interview for Spiegel, Heidegger only invokes a god who can save man from a world determined by technology. His criticism, rather unprecedented among modernists, was based on an ontological concept of the analysis of being, even the being of a thing (let us recall the well-known example of a jug). Airplanes and cars were able to shorten distances, but they did not create any closeness between people (Věc, 1950). Heidegger's ontology is elaborated in relation to the question of the essence of human being by existentialists. And together with them, Karel Kosík also deals with the topic of human authenticity in the modern age, when in 1963 he published Dialectic of the Concrete, based on phenomenological ontology and Marxist anthropology. In his view, art is the factor that can counteract the pseudo-concreteness of the dehumanized, uncreative world, which we, as human beings, seemingly paradoxically, create for ourselves by succumbing to the fetishizing power of pseudo-concrete reality, in which the distinction between essence and phenomenon disappears. According to Kosík, art asks us the question of what is actually real, it not only reveals reality, but also participates in its formation. “The medieval cathedral is not only an expression or image of the feudal world, but is also an element in the construction of this world.” (Dialektika konkretného, 1963). In the essays from Století Markéta Samsová, he returns to the topic against the backdrop of contemporary historical events, using the example of specific literary works such as Metamorphosis or Švejk, in which he illustrates the historical turning point that occurs at the turn between the tragic and the grotesque. By presenting the creative relationship of man to things through the prism of Kosík's philosophy, we will attempt to see art as an anthropological constant, in which, however, the tension oscillates between art understood as art and art as techné. The aim of the paper is then to reiterate Kosík's arguments for art as a defense against the inhuman.
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