This just dodges the issue by playing games with language and insulting anyone that doesn't agree. One can also argue that separating everything from its natur

This just dodges the issue by playing games with language and insulting anyone that doesn't agree. One can also argue that separating everything from its natural and appropriate context with some crowbar of the intellect is a violence. And while connecting the unconnected might be mental illness, insisting that nothing can ever be contextually related to anything else is also madness. Heidegger and Van Gogh are literally and very directly entangled. Trying to understand one without the other will result in an incomplete or impoverished understanding, and if Heidegger doesn't like disproving himself this way then he shouldn't have written one important work that referenced another while claiming all works can/should stand alone. This is not even really a matter for interpretation.. like, if the painting did stand alone before, it cannot afterwards. This conversation is part of the evidence for that, but don't take my word for it. Googling "heidegger shoes" will immediately drop you on Van Gogh paintings.. the mutual reference / footnotes on both works are written into history already in many ways. Meanwhile, Schapiro on Heidegger points out Heidegger's own fantasy- the idea that the shoes belonged to peasant woman, whereas it's more likely they belonged to the artist. What's the argument for preferring random speculation about the shoe-owner and rejecting more informed speculation about how historical/cultural context shaped the subject matter? One can think of any kind of wild subjective thing while engaging with art and art-appreciation, but if you're ignoring all the wider context as irrelevant, or insisting that context isn't even real, that won't make for a very coherent or well-informed position. It's art, so feeling something is more important than being well-informed.. but OTOH, if your goal is to engage with a work then "ignoring as much context as possible" isn't usually a great strategy.