Zagadnienie prawdy w myśli Tadeusza Kantora

Abstract

When Kantor was working on his series of performances of the Theatre of Death he devoted a lot of space in his comments to the notion of truth. He discussed this problem in two articles: On Truth in Art 1980, and Total Truth. Thought Language, written in 1985. In the first article Kantor, like hermeneutic philosophers, Gadamer and Ricoeur, claimed that art is a form of cognition independent of science and everyday experience. A work of art reaches-the truth by means of a metaphore which - contrary to classicist theories of metaphore - possesses a referential dimension. Kantor denied that truth is relative and claimed that the essence of being human means to attempt to get to absolute truth. Everyday experience and scientific research reach onlu partial truth, while art, in Kantors opinion, may grasp crumbs of absolute truth. But a work of art in its cognitive function is limited and conditioned by historical context. An artist may create only with regard to artictic and social conventions typical for a given moment in time - otherwise his message will not be communicative. The question of truth in art is not limited only to the problem of form (to the relation between the work and convention). What is more important for Kantor is what is hidden behind the work - namely, some unspoken truth. It is truth in Heideggers meaning, who distinguished between a hidden, absolute, ontological truth (aletheia) and an overt, aprtial, epistemological truth (adaequatio). In his second essay Kantor accepted the possibility of direct contact with absolute truth which does not depend on logical rules, value systems or discursive thinking. This essay resembles some mystic texts (for example by Eckhart or St. John of the Cross) who persuaded the readers to disregard earthly truths in the name of the Highest Truth.