George Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

Houdon’s Washington presents the American founding father not as Caesar, but as citizen-hero—a man who sets aside his sword. Heidegger would note this gesture as presencing of a new mode of Being: authority that chooses withdrawal, freedom grounded in restraint.

Washington stands relaxed, not triumphant. His cloak hangs over the fasces, his left hand leans on a plowshare—symbols not of war, but of return to dwelling. For Heidegger, this is aletheia: truth revealed as dwelling in the historical moment, a founding of a world based not in divine right but civic trust.

The earth—marble—bears the likeness with calm. It does not shine; it rests. The world is nascent: a new republic, still fragile, grounded in the individual as bearer of responsibility. The sculpture becomes a clearing, where man steps out of mythic time and into historical becoming.

Heidegger would say this sculpture lets truth happen as simplicity: Being as commitment to a world that is still in formation. Washington does not ascend—he remains grounded. And in that groundedness, a new mode of historical dwelling is disclosed.