No More Learning

103. See Wilhelm Perpeet, Asthetik im Mittelalter (Freiburg, 1977).
104. See M. M. Davy, Essai sur la symbolique romane (Paris, 1955). On further connections, see Albert Zimmermann, ed. , Der Begriffder Repraesentatio im Mit- telalter: Stellvertretung Symbol, Zeichen, Bild (Berlin, 1971).
105. On this issue, and on the gradual transformation of this guiding differ- ence into the code immanent/transcendent, see Niklas Luhmann, "Die Aus- differenzierung der Religion," in Luhmann, Gesellschafisstruktur und Semantik, vol. 3 (Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 259-357.
106. This example, representative of medieval symbolism, is from Eugenio Battisti, "Simbolo e Classicismo," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Archivio di filosofia (1958), pp. 215-33.
107. In the sense of medium introduced in Chapter 3.
Notes to Pages 170-72 36i
108. Kristeva, Semeiotike, p. 116 (authors emphasis).
109. See also Renate Lachmann, Geddchtnis undLiteratur (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 27ff.
no. Onthispoint,seeBelting'sdetailedstudy,BildundKult.
in. Stimulated by print, emblematics became a fashion in sixteenth-century texts and graphics that encroached on the terrain of the symbol. See Pierre Mes- nard, "Symbolisme et Humanisme," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Archivio difilo- sofia (1958), pp. 123-29.
112. On the much-debated emergence of modern "fictional" theater, see Ag- new, Worlds Apart, who emphasizes parallel developments in the realms of ex- change and of supply markets.
113. Kristeva, Semeiotike, p. 117.
114. See, e. g. , the famous Iconologia by Cesare Ripa (Rome, 1603), which has since appeared in many enlarged editions. A modern, abbreviated version was published by Piero Buscaroli (Milan, 1992).
115. A wealth of freshly invented allegories and conceits can be found in Bal-
tasar Gracian, Criticdn oder Uber die allgemeinen Luster des Menschen (1651-1657; Hamburg, 1957). The narrative is only a pretext for a sequence of allegories re-
lated to the world and to morality.
116. See Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ? 59: "Beide sind Hypothesen, d. i. Darstellungen (exhibitiones); nicht blofie Charakterismen, d. i. Bezeichnungen der BegrifFe durch begleitende sinnliche Zeichen, die gar nichts zu der An- schauung des Objekts Gehoriges enthalten. " See also Hans Georg Gadamer, "Symbol und Allegorie," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Archivio difilosofia (1958), pp. 23-28; Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundziige einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 3d ed. (Tubingen, 1972), pp. 68ff. See also Moritz's rejection of al- legory on the grounds that allegory, as a sign, conflicts with the essence of beauty as self-perfection, in Moritz, "Ober die Allegorie," quoted from Schriften zurAsthetik undPoetik, pp. 112-25.
117. Gadamer, Wahrheit undMethode, p. 73.
118. See Solger, Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik, esp. pp. i26ff.
119. The so-called logic of Port-Royal (1662) constitutes a milestone in this
development. Significantly, it rejects all forms of (obscure) symbolism in the in- terest of both religious reform and the new rationalism. See Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, La logique ou Van depenser. . . , critical ed. (Paris, 1965). At the same time, a sensuous theory of cognition emerged in England. Both were dominated by interest in a semantic stability that could circumvent the agenda of religion and die disposition of the nobility; this was therefore retrospectively described as "bourgeois. "
120. On this turn, see Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. ,
362 Notes to Pages 175-74
Materialitdt der Kommunikation (Frankfurt, 1988); trans, in part as Materialities of Communication, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, Calif. , 1994).
121. The use of the theater as a metaphor for this kind of production is a fa- miliar topic of historical investigation. On the deliberate and circular structure of this order, which includes even the political asymmetry of sovereignty, see also Louis Marin, Leportrait du roi (Paris, 1981).
122. Last but not least, religious art profited from this expansion, which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had at its disposal many means of rep- resenting transcendence--e. g. , by depicting its reflection in the faces of those who observed it. On the other hand, this presupposed (and required) the free- dom to turn inward. The representation itself no longer effectuated the presence of transcendence.
123. See Norman Knox, The Word "Irony" and Its Context, 1500-1750 (Durham, N. C. , 1961). According to Knox, not until the eighteenth century, in the wake of Defoe and Swift, did the use of irony explode the boundaries of a learned, rhetor-
ical doctrine. This point is affirmed by Georg Lukacs's contention, in Die Theo-
rie des Romans (Berlin, 1920), that irony is the formal principle of the novel. 124. This was a contemporary truism that included language. "II significato del
nome si dica l'essenza della cosa," one reads in Zuccaro, L'idea del Pittori, p. 153. 125. See Warnke, Hofkunstler, pp. 24iff. , 27off.
126. The classical monograph on this topic is Edward Young, Conjectures on
Original Composition (1759), in The Complete Works (London, 1854; rpt. Hildes- heim, 1968), pp. 547-86.
127. This was still the case in the early eighteenth century. In his essay "Goust," Roger de Piles demands from the painter an "attempt to be more than
a copyist," while explicidy excluding the imitation of antique perfection, quoted from Diverses Conversations sur la Peinture (Paris, 1727), pp. 44 and 48. Jonathan Richardson elaborates the distinction between imitating nature and copying an artwork, pointing out that copying an artwork leaves the artist less freedom than creating an original work. See Richardson, An Essay on the Whole Art ofCriticism as It Relates to Painting quoted from The Works, pp. 159-238 (223). See also An- 616 Felibien, L'idie dupeintreparfait (London, 1707), p. 74, as well as the entries on original and copy in Jacques Lacombe, Dictionnaire portatif des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 1752), pp. 177, 461, where the distinction acquires the status of a lexically secured essence.
128. See Kant's effort, already mentioned, to rethink the concept in terms of the distinction schematic/symbolic, which aims to posit the beautiful as a sym- bol of morality (not as a schematic relation), in Kritik der Urteilskrafi, ? 59. What remains of the symbol's rich meaning is only the indirection of the relationship between the faculty that supplies meaning (reason) and the symbol's sensuous presentation.
Notes to Pages 175-78 363
129. Joseph Simon, Philosophic desZeichens (Berlin, 1989), raises this question against the background of a lebensphilosophisch, pragmatic, and existentialist the- oretical tradition.
130. See Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ? 49.
131. "Geist, in asthetischer Bedeutung, heifit das belebende Prinzip im Gemiithe," writes Kant, ibid.
132. See also Paul de Man, "The Rhetoric of Temporality," in de Man, Blind- ness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (1979; 2d ed. Minneapolis, 1983), pp. 187-228); he emphasizes the increasingly problematic nature of temporality and the necessity of "nature" as a factor that stabilizes tem- porality in subjective experience.
133. "Eine hohere Philosophic zeigt uns, daE nie etwas von aufien in ihn hineinkommt, dafi er nichts als reine Tatigkeit ist," writes August Wilhelm Schlegel (Die Kunstlehre, p. 25).
134. Commenting on the literature of the turn of the twentieth century, Kris- teva writes, "II s'agit d'un passage de la duality (du signe) a la productivite (trans- signe)" (Semeiotike, p. 244).
135. We might draw again on Spencer Brown: "Let there be a form distinct from the form. Let the mark of the distinction be copied out of the form into such another form. Call any such copy of the mark a token of the mark" (Laws of Form, p. 4). Without following these injunctions, one cannot go on.
136. See Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Religion I, in Werke, vol. 16 (Frankfurt, 1969), esp. pp. loif.
137. See Paul de Man, The Rhetoric ofRomanticism (New York, 1984). De Man points out that the answer to the deconstruction of the symbol lies in a return to the self-consciously distanced figures of allegory, following early modernism--if not in art, at least in "literary criticism. " See Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven, Conn. , 1979)-
138. August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre, p. 105, locates the original unity of art in dance, since dance uses both space and time. One might also think of the ornament (see Chapter 3, section IV, above).
139. See Davy, Essai sur la symbolique romane, p. 173.
140. "La pittura e proprio poesia, cioe invenzione le qual fa apparere quello, que non e," one reads, e. g. , in Pino, Dialogo dipittura, p. 115. Typically, Horace's dictum is understood as an invitation for imitation--see, e. g. , Pomponius Gau- ricus, Super artepoetica Horatii (ca. 510), quoted from a reprint of a 1541 edition (Munich, 1969), folio D I I : "Poesis imitari debet picturam. " As in Horace, paint- ing is primary. But Gauricus traces the comparison to Simonides, which means it antedates the Platonic/Aristotelian doctrine of mimesis. For a summary, see Rensselaer W. Lee, "Ut pictura poesis: The Humanistic Tradition of Painting,"
364 Notes to Pages 179-82
Art Bulletin 22 (1940): 197-269. Lee traces the popularity of this formula to the humanist tradition, with its interest in human actions. This explains its dis- placement, in the eighteenth century, by other interests, especially in nature. Lessing's Laocobn will treat the limits of the comparison between painting and poetry in systematic fashion by distinguishing between the corresponding media of word and image, and Herder's critique of Lessing will show that Lessing's in- ference from succession (in poetry) to actions was premature. See Herder, Erste Kritische Wdldchen, quoted from Herders Sdmmtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1878), esp. ? 16 and ? 17, pp. i33ff.
141. Zuccaro L'idea dei Pittori, pp. i3iff.
142. A common formula speaks of "the arts and literature. "
143. We take this to be symptomatic of a new formulation that today would
be described as autopoiesis. It is not just a grammatical mistake of the type "a smoked fish-dealer. "
144. On this development, see esp. Paul Oskar Kristeller, "The Modern Sys-
tem of the Arts" (1951), quoted from Kristeller, Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts (New York, 1965), pp. 163-227. See further Gunther Scholtz, "Der Weg zum Kunstsystem des deutschen Idealismus," in Walter Jaeschke and Helmut Holzhey, eds. , Friiher Idealismus und Fruhromantik: Der Streit um die Grundlagen der Asthetik (1795-180$) (Hamburg, 1990), pp. 12-29; Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation, pp. 256? .
145. Perhaps we should add here that the famous "querelle des anciens et modernes" toward the end of the seventeenth century confronted the difficulty of embracing the sciences and technological developments along with what was later distinguished as art.
Under such conditions, comparative historical judg- ments are obviously difficult and controversial.
146. We shall return to this point in Chapter 7, below.
147. See Kristeller, "The Modern System of the Arts. "
148. See Charles Dejob, De I'influence du Concile de Trente sur la litterature et
les beaux-arts chez lespeuples catholiques (Paris, 1884; rpt. Geneva, 1969), who pre- sents these events as a religious success story of Catholicism. One finds a more sophisticated picture in Federico Zeri, Pittura e Controriforma: L' "arte senza tempo"di Scipione da Gaeta (Turin, 1957); Emile Male, L'art religieux apres le Con- cile de Trente: Etude sur Ticonographie delafindu XVIe siecle, du XVIIe siecle, du XWIIe siecle (Paris, 1932), offers detailed, thematically coherent analyses of paint-
ings. On the corresponding Protestant measures, which were not directed against innovative artistic audacity but polemicized in an Old Testament manner against
idol worship and the distractions that kept churchgoers from their pious duties,
see John Phillips, The Reformation ofImages: The Destruction ofArt in England, 1535-1660 (Berkeley, Calif. , 1973). On the reverberations that were felt until the eighteenth century, see Pears, The Discovery ofPainting, pp. 4iff. On the corre-
Notes to Pages 182-86
365
sponding rejection of the theater, see Fraser, The War Against Poetry, esp. pp. 29ff. ; and Agnew, Worlds Apart.
149. In current neurophysiological terminology, one might speak of a re- peated "impregnation" of cells that are no longer occupied. See Heinz von Foer- ster, Das Geddchtnis: Eine quantenmechanische Untersuchung (Vienna, 1948).
150. See Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy.
151. Baxter Hathaway, Marvels and Commonplaces: Renaissance Literary Criti- cism (New York, 1968), provides a detailed account of this dispute.
152. Ibid. , p. 117. See also pp. I33ff.
153. Susie I. Tucker, Enthusiasm: A Study in Semantic Change (Cambridge, 1972), illustrates this bifurcation with detailed evidence from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
154. See Belting, BildundKult, pp. 5ioff.
155. To mention details: one objected to Michelangelo's LastJudgment on the grounds that it depicts devils without horns, angels without wings, Christ with- out his beard, the kisses of the blessed, and generally too much nudity (although theologians could hardly claim that the focus of Christ's resurrection is clothing). Figures that are unknown in traditional clerical history but are included in the picture for aesthetic reasons (to fill a space or serve as an ornament) have to be eliminated. Sacred figures must not be presented too realistically. Mary at the cross, fainting? No way! She is depicted standing upright: stabat.
156. See the treatises of church officials in vol. 2 of Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'el arte del Cinquecento, which include, among others, Giovanni Andrea Gilio, Dial- ogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori e degli abusi de'pittori circa d'historie (1564), and Gabriele Paletotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre etprofane (1582). The mediocre intellectual quality of these treatises suggests that they defend a lost position.
157. See Werner Weisbach, Der Barock als Kunst der Gegenreformation (Berlin, 1921).
158. "L'extrfeme habilite' des artistes fait douter de leur sincdrite'," observes Male, L'art religieux apres le Concile de Trente, p. ix.
$5
1. On the system of science, see Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaftder Ge- sellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), esp. pp. i94ff. ; on the legal system, Luhmann, "Die Codierung des Rechtssystems," Rechtstheorie 17 (1986): 171-203, and Luhmann, Das Recht der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. ifijff. ; on the educational system, Luhmann, "Codierung und Programmierung: Bildung und Selektion im Erzie- hungssystem," in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 4 (Opladen, 1987), pp. 182-201; on the economic system, Luhmann, Die Wirtschaft der Geselhchaft (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 846? . , i87ff. and passim; on the health care system, Luh-
366 Notes to Pages 186-89
mann, "Der medizinische Code," in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 5 (Opladen, 1990), pp. 183-95.
2. George Spencer Brown, Laws of Form (1969; rpt. New York, 1979), p. 1.
3. See, e. g. , Julia Kristeva, "Poesie et ndgativiteV' in Kristeva, Semeiotike: Recherchespour un sbnanalyse (Paris, 1969), pp. 246-77 (explicitly on p. 265), fur- ther pp. i5off. The function of the "zero" is not a negation of meaning; on the contrary, it is meant to exclude the absence of meaning.
4. Gotthard Gunther calls the processing of such acceptance/rejection dis- tinctions with reference to a primarily positive/negative disjunction a "trans- junctional operation" and argues that treating such a possibility in logical terms requires a structurally rich, multivalent logic capable of dissolving the paradoxes that arise within a bivalent logic. See Gotthard Gunther, "Cybernetic Ontology andTransjunctional Operations," in Gunther, Beitrdgezu einer operationsfdhigen Dialektik, vol. 1 (Hamburg, 1976), pp. 249-328.
5. "If conditionality is an essential component in the concept of organiza- tion," writes W. Ross Ashby, "Principles of the Self-Organizing System," quoted
from Walter Buckley, ed. , Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist: A Sourcebook (Chicago, 1968), pp. 108-28 (109).
6. See George Spencer Brown, "Self-Reference, Distinctions and Time," Teoria _
Sociological! 2. (1993): 47 53-
7. See Niklas Luhmann, "Das Moderne der modernen Gesellschaft," in Luh-
Z
mann, Beobachtungen der Moderne (Opladen, 1992), pp. 11-49 ( 9Q> trans, as
"Modernity in Contemporary Society," in Luhmann, Observations on Modernity, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, Calif. , 1998), pp. 1-21.
8. Sigfried J. Schmidt, Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1989), advances the opposite view concerning the dis-
tinction literary/nonliterary, as does Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. i64ff, concerning the
distinction art/nonart as a system code. We concede that literature or, more gen- erally, art, must distinguish itself in this manner (how else? ) from other things. There is no doubt that the avant-garde programmatically emphasized this refer- ential distinction. However, it does not sufficiently describe the internal struc- ture ofpreferences, which functions as a code. On the basis of this structure, the art system exposes itself to the paradoxical distinctions between inside and out- side or between universalism and specification. In addition, a code would have to generate programs that "operationalize" the system's preferences at the level of its operations. Here the art/nonart distinction is as unsatisfactory as beautiful/ ugly.
9. For an overview, see Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferen- zierung literarischer Kommunikation (Opladen, 1992).
10. E. g. , in the abundance of moral ambiguities in the self-commenting au-
Notes to Pages 190-91
367
tonographies of Ludwig Tieck's William Lovell, and, of course, in the work's the- oretical reflections.
11. The first quotation is from Lucinde, the second from the essay "Uber Less- ing. " See Friedrich Schlegel, Werke in zwei B'dnden (Berlin, 1980), vol. 2, p. 35, and vol. 1, p. no.
12. "Moralitat ohne Sinn fur Paradoxic ist gemein," states Friedrich Schlegel, ibid. , vol. 1, p. 272.
13. Moreover, one also finds formulations that do not refer to ideals or values and therefore come closer to current notions of balance. See, e. g. , Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio delta Pittura (Milan, 1590), p. 62: "differenze e quella cosa per la quale si discerne, & awerisce l'amicitia & l'inimicitia delle cose. " And on p. 83: "Belezza non e altro che una certa gratia vivace & spirituale, la qual per il raggio divino prima s'infonde ne gl'Angeli in cui si vedeno le figure di qualuna sfera che si chiamano in loro essemplari, & l'ldee; poi passa ne gli an- imi, ove le figure si chiamano ragioni, & notitie; & finalemente nella materia ove si dicono imagini & forme. "
14. In his Erstes Kritisches Wdldchen with reference to examples from antiquity. See Bernhard Suphan, ed. , Herder Sammtliche Werke, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1878), pp. J2ff. (quotation on p. 59).
15. For a historically extensive treatment, see Hans Robert Jauss, ed. , Die nicht mehr schonen Kiinste: Grenzphdnomene des Asthetischen, Poetik und Hermeneutik, vol. 3 (Munich, 1968).
16. See, e. g. , Henri Testelin, Sentiments desplus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de h Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), pp. 39f.
17. See, e. g. , William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing the fluctuating Ideas of Taste (London, 1753; Oxford, 1955), pp. 326? . , 6iff. Hogarth makes the remarkable assumption that the principles of producing
beautiful works (for Hogarth, forms of drawing a line) are not applicable to ugly objects, so that a representation of such objects (although it is admissible) re- quires a deviation from these principles. The "waving line" of beauty is not suited for this purpose (pp. 67f. ). See also the distinction between the drawing (trait) of persons (noble/grossiere) according to their social "condition" in Tes- telin, Sentiments desplus Habiles Peintres, pp. 12,13,17,40.
18. See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon, oder uber die Grenzen der Ma- lerei undPoesie (1766), quoted from Lessings Werke, vol. 3 (Leipzig-Vienna, n. d. ), pp. 1-194.
19. See Friedrich Schlegel, "Vom asthetischen Wert der griechischen Kom- modie," quoted from Werke in zwei B'dnden (Berlin, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 3-14, esp. p. 8, with emphasis on the differentiation and specialization of the code: "Nichts verdient Tadel in einem Kunstwerk als Vergehungen wider die Schon- heit und wider die Darstellung: das HalSliche und das Fehlerhafte. " Note how
368 Notes to Pages 191-96
Schlegel already distinguishes between the figural and the operative component of representation.
20. See Niklas Luhmann, "1st Kunst codierbar? " in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung vol. 3 (Opladen, 1981), pp. 245-66.
21. Claiming that this is possible because of prior aesthetic experiences with artworks does litde to salvage the terminology. Especially for people, this claim is dubious. (In fact, the opposite might be so: experience with artworks helps recognize the beauty in ugly people. ) Besides, this subterfuge offers no clue as to what exactly enables works of art to serve as a paradigm of beauty.
22. For Kant, this seems to be evident: "Man kann uberhaupt Schonheit (Sie mag Natur- oder Kunstschonheit sein) den Ausdruck asthetischer Ideen nennen; nur dafi in der schonen Kunst diese Idee durch einen Begriff vom Objekt veran- lafit werden muS" (Kritik der Urteilskra. fi, ? 51). Yet soon thereafter, Kant talks about the beauty of die word, of gesture, and of tones (articulation, gesticula- tion, and modulation).
23. See, e. g. , Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Har- mony, Design, Treatise I of his Inquiry into the Original ofOur Ideas ofBeauty and Virtue (1725; 4th ed. , 1738; critical ed. The Hague, 1973), ?