, Differentiation Theory and Social Change:
Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990).
Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990).
Niklas Luhmann - Art of the Social System
See Hogarth, The Analysis ofBeauty, p.
22: "no stress might be laid on the figures to the prejudice of the work itself.
"
40. The degradation of the merely ornamental, whose effects are still felt to- day, can be traced to the introduction of the concept of beauty into the artistic doctrines of the early Renaissance. The preceding rhetorical tradition already dis- tinguished between clear andflawlessspeech, on the one hand, and ornamentum, on the other, while the emphasis of rhetorical schooling and artistry remained focused on ornamentum. See Quintilian, Institutionis Oratoriae libri XII, Book VII, Chap. 3 (Darmstadt, 1975), vol. 2, pp. ijoff. In the Middle Ages, the notion of ornatus mundus elucidated the beauty of the creation--the sky with its stars, the air populated by birds, thefishin the water, and humans on earth. See Guil- laume de Conches, In Timeum, quoted from Rosario Assunto, Die Theorie des Schbnen im Mittelalter (Cologne, 1963), p. 151. The humanism of the early Re- naissance in Italy retained the notion of ornatumlornato in its earlier richness. On the distinction purolornato, see Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience
in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 1972). With the introduction of conceptual concerns about the idea of beauty, all of this changed. One no longer distin- guished the ornament from the simple, raw, ardess production, but from its "composition," which was now the only thing that mattered. No matter how beauty was subsequently defined, the new terminology required a distinction be- tween natural beauty, on the one hand, and ornament, decoration, and support-
ing supplement, on the other. As a starting point, see Leon Battista Alberti, De
re aedificatoria (1450-1452; Milan, 1966); and Michael Jager, Die Theorie des Schonen in der italienischen Renaissance (Cologne, 1990), pp. 44ff. In theories of
Notes to Pages 120-22
347
architecture that follow Alberti, the distinction is firmly established. See, e. g. , Luca Pacioli, De divina proportione (1497), quoted from the Italian edition by Andrea Masimi in Arnoldo Bruschi et al. , eds. , Scritti rinascimentali di architet- turn (Milan, 1978), pp. 23-244 (93) and other statements in the same volume. In- dependently of the fluctuating and repeatedly failing definitions of the beautiful, one continued to insist on the merely subordinate role of ornaments, which was meant to focus attention on the essential but not to distract from it. (Still widely accepted is Karl Philipp Moritz, Schrifien zur Asthetik und Poetik: Kritische Aus- gabe [Tubingen, 1962], pp. 72,1090? . ) Current discussions still oppose the orna- ment as adornment or decoration to the true meaning of art, but are more sen- sitive to the influence of the ornament on the development of artistic styles--an ongoing discussion since the nineteenth century. See Ernst H. Gombrich, Or- nament undKunst: Schmucktrieb und Ordnungssinn in der Psychologie des dekora- tiven Schaffens (Stuttgart, 1982). But the functional difference remains: the art- work deserves more attention than does mere decoration (ibid. , p. 74).
41. Redundancy is a beautiful, almost ornamental word, and it indicates pre- cisely what is meant here--the return of a wave (undo).
42. See, e. g. , Antonio Minturno, Parte poetica (1563; Naples, 1725), pp. 435c 43. Gombrich, Ornament und Kunst, pp. 177, 22of.
44. In the developmental history of a painter from Luneburg, Otto Brix,
landscape first withdrew to the lower edge of the painting, only to become su- perfluous once the painter began to focus on "cosmic" paintings.
45. In the terminology of Moritz, Schrifien zur Asthetik und Poetik, pp. 151-57 (with reference to drama). Similarly, Kant considers drawing the essential ele- ment in all the visual arts (including architecture and garden art) and distin- guishes it from mere adornment. See Kritik der Urteihkraft, ? 14.
46. A more precise analysis would, of course, have to be more complex and take into account that persons are not only characterized by actions and that some actions (trivial ones) merely serve to transport the plot. See Roland Bardies, Paventure semiologique (Paris, 1985), pp. 1896? . , 207ff, with texts from the 1960s.
47. In the terminology of E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927; rpt. Lon- don, 1949).
48. On this shift, see Klaus Hammacher, "Jacobis Romantheorie," in Walter Jaeschke and Helmut Holzhey, eds. , Frtiher Idealismus und Fruhromantik: Der
Streit um die Grundlagen der Asthetik (1795-1805) (Hamburg, 1990), pp. 174-89. 49. Again, following Moritz, Schrifien zur Asthetik und Poetik, p. 99: "Und so miissen nun auch bei der Beschreibung des Schonen durch Linien, diese Linien selbst, zusammengenommen, das Schone seyn, welches nie anders als durch sich selbst bezeichnet werden kann; weil es eben da erst seinen Anfang nimmt, wo die
Sache mit ihrer Bezeichnung sein wird. "
50. On the many variations on this general access to art, see Hans Ulrich
348 Notes to Pages 122-28
Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. , Stil: Geschichten und Funktionen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurselements (Frankfurt, 1986).
JI. WeshallreturntothispointinsectionVIIofthischapterandinChapter 5, section IV, below.
52. This is where Moritz, Scbriften zurAsthetik undPoetik, pp. 99f. , grounds the special status of poetry among the fine arts.
53. This accounts for the much-discussed closeness of poetic language and irony--but also, and for this very reason, for the inverse possibility of a striking naivete, by which poetry recommends itself and its worldview. We think of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Holderlin. As a consequence, the "subject" apprehends its distanced relation to the relation between language and world as a possibility for self-reflection.
54. On this use of the distinction between denotation and connotation, see Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure ofPoetry (New York, 1947).
55. We cannot interrupt our analysis here to embark on historical analyses, but it is worth noting that the increasing complexity of social communication about the world makes it all the more necessary to renounce referential mimesis completely (or else use it as material) and to focus poetic meaning exclusively on the connotative level.
56. See Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics ofPoetry (Bloomington, Ind. , 1978); he uses die corresponding distinction between "meaning" (for reference) and signification.
57. Riffaterre (ibid. , p. 4), speaks of two levels or stages of reading.
58. The notion of die "symbolic" is justified in this context, since the poem at once operates and observes: "The poem is an instance of the doctrine which it asserts; it is both the assertion and the realization of the assertion" (Brooks, The
Well Wrought Urn, p. 17).
59. As in John Donne's "The Canonization," which contains the lines, ana-
lyzed by Brooks (ibid. , pp. 3fF. ): "We can dye by it, if not live by love/And if un- fit for tombes and hearse /our legend be, it will be fit for verse. "
60. See William Empson, The Structure of Complex Words (1951). See also Empson, Seven Types ofAmbiguity (1930; 2d ed. Edinburgh, 1947), and Brooks,
The Well Wrought Urn.
61. For an overview, see Jonadian Culler, Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its
Institutions (Norman, Okla. , 1988). On Empson, see Culler, Framing, pp. 85ff.
62. Julia Kristeva, Semeiotike: Recherchespour un semanalyse (Paris, 1969), p. 53
(author's emphasis). Or more concisely, "having no law but wit" (Sir Philip Sid- ney, The Defense ofPoetry [1595; Lincoln, Nebr. , 1970], p. 12).
63. Following Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A StructuralApproach to a Lit- erary Genre (Cleveland, 1973).
64. Traditionally, difficulty has been considered a precondition for an artworks
Notes to Pages 129-31
349
pleasing effect. In order to please, the work must exhibit a sufficient amount of controlled variety. See, e. g. , Torquato Tasso, Discorsi dell'artepoetica e in partico- lare sopra ilpoema eroico (1587), quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969), p. 388: "Questa varieta si fatta tanto sara piu lodevole quanto recara secco piu di difficolta. " See also Hogarth's notion, based on his reflections on drawing a line (which concern the ornament), of a sufficient difficulty ("intricacy") of artworks (Hogarth, The Analysis ofBeauty, pp. 4iff. ). Today, the question is whether works of art may have become too difficult to be accessible to die general public. The reason may be that the works no longer communicate why they are die way they are.
65. See Talcott Parsons, Zur Theorie der sozialen Interaktionsmedien (Opladen, 1980), esp. pp. 2iiff. Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Piatt, The American Univer- sity (Cambridge, Mass. , 1973). See further Rainer M. Baum, "On Societal Media Dynamics," in Jan J. Loubser et al. , eds. , Explorations in General Theory in Social Science (New York, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 579-608.
66. Emphasizing the relationship between structuring and praxis, Anthony Giddens describes "structuration" as a "virtual order of differences. " See Gid- dens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in So- cialAnalysis (London, 1979), p. 3; and Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Out- line of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley, Calif. , 1984). By contrast, the older structuralism could integrate the problem of time only through the relativizing concession that even structures may change.
6j. For a more detailed account, see Niklas Luhmann, "Das Kunstwerk und die Selbstreproduktion der Kunst," in Gumbrecht and Pfeiffer, Stil, pp. 620-71. See also Chapter 5, section IV, below.
68. "Non essendo quella altro che accoppiamento di parole," one reads in Torquato Tasso, Discorsi dell'artepoetica, p. 392, which is associated here not with the concept of form but with the concept of the ornament.
69. Tasso (ibid. ) follows the common division: "magnifica o sublime, medio- cre ed umile. "
70. See Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "'Phoenix aus der Asche' oder: Vom Kanon zur Klassik," in Aleida and Jan Assmann, eds. , Kanon undZensur: Archaologie der literarischen Kommunikation II (Munich, 1987), pp. 284-99; Gumbrecht, "Klas- sik ist Klassik, eine bewundernswerte Sicherheit des Nichts? " in F. Nies and K. Stierle, eds. , Die Franzosische Klassik (Munich, 1989), pp. 441-94.
71. "Das Klassische ist durch den bestimmt, fur den es klassisch ist," one reads in Novalis, Bliithenstaub, No. 52, quoted from Werke, Tagebucher und Briefe Frie- drich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hans-Joachim Mahl and Richard Samuel (Darmstadt, ! 978), vol. 2, p. 247.
72. See Louis Gabriel Ambroise (Vicomte de Bonald), Sur lesouvrages clas- siques (1810), quoted from CEuvres completes, vol. n (Paris, 1858; rpt. Geneva, 1982), pp. 227-43.
350
Notes to Pages 151-36
73. Other observers have noticed that here art is no longer displayed as art. "Es ist ein beweinenswerter Anblick," writes Friedrich Schlegel, "einen Schatz der trefflichsten und seltensten Kunstwerke wie eine gemeine Sammlung von Kostbarkeiten zusammen aufgehauft zu sehen. " In "Cber die Grenzen des Scho- nen," quoted from Dichtungen undAufidtze, ed. Wolfdietrich Rasch (Munich, 1984), pp. 268-76 (269). But there is no need to exaggerate. One might as well try not to let one's view of the artwork be spoiled by the museum.
? 4
1. See Georg Simmel, Ober sociale Differenzierung: Soziologische undpsycholo- gische Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1890), and Emile Durkheim, De la division du
travail social (Paris, 1893). On the currency of this assumption, see Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy, eds.
, Differentiation Theory and Social Change:
Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990).
2. See,e. g. ,CharlesTilly,"ClioandMinerva,"inJohnC. McKinneyandEd-
ward A. Tiryakian, eds. , Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York, 1970), pp. 433-36; Edward A. Tiryakian, "On the Significance of De- differentiation," in S. N. Eisenstadt and H. J. Helle, eds. , Macro-Sociological
Theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory, vol. 1 (London, 1985), pp. 118-34. 3. Compare Parsons's fatal answer to this question, which states that subsys- tems specializing in one of four possible functions must fulfill all of these four functions themselves and can be recognized as such only in this way--a require-
ment that resulted in an endless repetition of the schema within the schema.
4. Inhistheoryofageneralactionsystem,TalcottParsonsproposedaconcept of the nonarbitrary nature of the consequences of system differentiation, which re- sembles our own despite differences in detail. We would suggest that this is the heart of Parsons's theory, which yielded a number of fruitful comparative analyses.
5. To clarify the matter we should note that we are talking about operations that separate system and environment. As far as observations are concerned, the reentry of the form into the form generates the internal distinction between self- reference and hetero-reference.
6. This argument clearly shows that the system's dependency on other systems for the fulfillment of certain functions is the condition and mark of the auton- omy of every functional system. Specific independence depends, in other words, on a considerable degree of specific dependency. This must be kept in mind when encountering the repeated objection that the dependency of art on a mon- etary market economy could infringe upon the autonomy of the art system.
7. See, e. g. , Benedetto Varchi, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti. . . (1547X quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinque- cento, vol. 1 (Bari, 1960), pp. 1-58.
Notes to Pages 136-41
3Si
8. One can find a justification for this trend, e. g. , in George Puttenham, The Arte ofEnglish Poesie (1589; Cambridge, 1970), pp. 4zflF.
9. See Torquato Tasso on the styles of "magnifica o sublime, mediocre ed
umile" in Discorsi dell'arte e in particolare sopra ilpoema eroico, quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969), pp. 349-729 (3921! . ).
10. See Henri Testelin, Sentiments deplus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), quoted from the unpaginated Introduction. See also pp. iif. , 17.
11. See Aldo Schiavone, Nascita della giurisprudenza: Cultura aristocratica e pensiero giuridico nella Roma tardo-repubblicana (Bari, 1976), pp. 36ff. Similarly, Samuel Richardson states at the beginning of the eighteenth century that for the
typical gendeman, art is "a fine piece of workmanship, and difficult to be per- formed, but produces only pleasant ornaments, mere superfluidities" (in Dis- course on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure and Advantage of the Science ofa Con- noisseur [1719], quoted from The Works [London, 1773; rpt. Hildesheim, 1969],
pp. 241-346 [244]).
12. See the distinction between an internal (mental) and an external disegno
(one put into practice) in Federico Zuccaro, L'idea dei Pittori, Scultori edAr- chitetti (Turin, 1607), quoted from Scritti d'Arte Federico Zuccaro (Florence, 1961), pp. 149-352 (explicidy, p. 152).
13. On situating this idea within the sociological tradition of "functional equivalents," see Niklas Luhmann, "Funktion und Kausalitat," in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 1 (Opladen, 1970), pp. 9-30.
14. This remark is directed against a tradition that believed it sufficed to de- fine meaning from the perspective of consciousness.
15. For more elaborate analyses, see Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grun- drifieiner allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 91-147; trans, as Social Sys- tems, trans. John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 59-102.
16. See, e. g. , Hans Belting, Bild undKult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990).
17! For such a view, see Dirk Baecker, Die Beobachtung der Kunst in der Gesell- schafi, ms. 1994.
18. See Kant, Kritik der Urteibkrafi, ? 49.
19. See the distinction between narrow and broad coupling in Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frankfurt, 1993). PP- i39ff-
20. See Chapter 3, section III, above.
21. See the well-known passage in Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkldrung (1947), quoted from Adorno, Gesammelte Schrifien, vol. 3 (Frankfurt, 1981), pp. i4iff. See also the initially unpublished chapter "Das Schema der Massenkultur," ibid. , pp. 299! ? .
Notes to Pages 142-46
352
957)> corresponding reflections on the worldly meaning of the calculus of probability.
23. Roman Ingarden, in Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931; 4th ed. Tubingen, 1972), p. 234, notes with astonishment that this "modification of being" is so unique that it can barely be put into words.
24. See the portrayal of habitual communication in everyday life when others are present, or in television dialogues, in politics, and so forth by Rainald Goetz
in such titles as Angst, Festung Kronos (Frankfurt, 1989-1993). I am referring here to a conversation with Rainald Goetz.
25. See Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration ofthe Commonplace: A Philoso- phy ofArt (Cambridge, Mass. , 1981).
26. The notion of admiratio combines astonishment and admiration [Ver- wunderung und itavunderung]. Moreover, it oscillates between the (positive or negative) states ofthe soul and the effectuation of such states via a striking incident that has been rendered plausible. See Baxter Hathaway, Marvels and Common- places: Renaissance Literary Criticism (New York, 1968). In the theory of art, this prevents--as early as Aristotle--a notion of mimesis/imitatio as mere copying. The most compact and concise formulation of this concept can be found in Descartes, Lespassions de I'ame, quoted from CEuvres etLettres, Pl&ade ed. (Paris, 1952), Art. 53, p. 723. L'admiration is the prime passion, an astonishment in the face of deviation. It is not yet knowledge--not yet coded in the binary true/false.
In current terminology, one might speak of an "irritation" or "perturbation. " The function of art apparently is to prepare the ground for something that can subsequently be elaborated under conditions of binary coding (of art as well? ).
27. See Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, "Bandellos Realismus," RomanischesJahr- buch 37 (1986): 107-26.
28. On the necessity of defending poetry in a state of (an allegedly) declining social reputation against the pretentious truth claims of philosophy and histori- ography, see, e. g. , Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense ofPoetry (1595; Lincoln, Nebr. , 1970), pp. i3ff.
29. See Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferenzierung literarischer Kommunikation (Opladen, 1992), esp. pp. 63ff. Werber maintains that the dis- tinction interesting/boring will be used from now on as a code by the system.
See also Gerhard Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, vol. 1, Von Kant bis Hegel (Opladen, 1993), pp. 22fi, I56ff. This view conflicts with a number
of noteworthy remarks, especially by the romantics, on the notion of the inter- esting, and it is at odds with the further development of this notion in the idea of the beautiful. There seems to be a general agreement, however, that the notion that art must be interesting results from its orientation toward the market.
30. Not surprisingly, this holds for other functional systems as well. We find
22. See George Spencer Brown, Probability and Scientific Inference (London, Ion
Notes to Pages 146-48
353
an emphasis on such code values as lawfulness, truth, affluence in the sense of property, and so forth, though there is not yet a sufficiendy formal specification of function to explain why the code displays a positive and a negative value.
31. For important analyses of how the world is presupposed and produced as
a basis for belief that allows consciousness to shift its awareness, see Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (Ham- burg, 1948), esp. ? j-<), pp. 23ff. Husserl's emphasis is on the world as presuppo- sition--on how it typifies connective possibilities and thus serves as a substra-
tum that makes possible the shifting of experiential horizons. Reversing this point, one could argue that recursive operation and the possibility of repetition
it implies are constitutive of the emergence of identity and of typifications that
are understood to be a substratum of reality and that whatever is actualized as in- tention and communication passes lightly over its surface.
32. Hegel, Vorlesungentiberdie Asthetik, Pt. 1, quoted from G. E. W. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Banden, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 199. On p. 125, Hegel
writes about Dutch painting: "Gegen die vorhandene prosaische Realitat ist da- her dieser durch Geist produzierte Schein das Wunder der Identitat, ein Spott, wenn man will, und eine Ironie tiber das aufierliche natiirliche Dasein. "
33. We need to remind ourselves, however, that such a sense of reality requires that there be something else from which it distinguishes itself, whether this might be--possibly misleading--language, or whether it might be religion, sta- tistics, or politics.
34. "In einem wahrhaft schonen Kunstwerk soil der Inhalt nichts, die Form
aber alles tun," one reads, e. g. , in Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, %iA letter, quoted from Friedrich Schiller, Samtliche Werke, vol. 5,4th ed. (Munich, 1967), p. 639. Earlier in the text, Schiller rejects the notion of a "middle ground" between form and matter, maintaining
diat art can "cancel" [aufheben] this distinction--but how? one might ask, if not
in die form of a reentry of the form into die form.
35. See Niklas Luhmann, Soziologie des Risikos (Berlin, 1991), esp. i68ff.
36. Following Alberti, an early version of this problem concerns die relation-
ship between harmonious proportion and variety. See Paolo Pino, Dialogo dipit- tura (1548) quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 (Bari, i960), pp. 93-139 (104). See also the warning against an excess of "deliber-
ate" variety in Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (1557), quoted from the Barocchi edition, ibid. , pp. 141-206 (i79f. ); and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trat- tato dell'arte delta pittura et architettura (Milan, 1585), Chap. 26, pp. 89f. Henri Testelin, Sentiments de plus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), p. 18, distinguishes the variety of contrast from the econ- omy of contours and warns of "incompatible things" (p. 19). In poetics, one finds
the distinction between verisimile (for redundancy) and meraviglioso or mirabile
Notes to Pages 149-52
354
(for variety) alongside the old distinction between the one and the many (unita/moltitudine). See, e. g. , Torquato Tasso Discorsi dell'artepoetica e inpartico- laresopra ilpoema eroico (1587), quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969). On unitalmolti- tudine = varieta, see Tasso, pp. 372f? ; he opts for moltitudine because it is pleas- ing.
40. The degradation of the merely ornamental, whose effects are still felt to- day, can be traced to the introduction of the concept of beauty into the artistic doctrines of the early Renaissance. The preceding rhetorical tradition already dis- tinguished between clear andflawlessspeech, on the one hand, and ornamentum, on the other, while the emphasis of rhetorical schooling and artistry remained focused on ornamentum. See Quintilian, Institutionis Oratoriae libri XII, Book VII, Chap. 3 (Darmstadt, 1975), vol. 2, pp. ijoff. In the Middle Ages, the notion of ornatus mundus elucidated the beauty of the creation--the sky with its stars, the air populated by birds, thefishin the water, and humans on earth. See Guil- laume de Conches, In Timeum, quoted from Rosario Assunto, Die Theorie des Schbnen im Mittelalter (Cologne, 1963), p. 151. The humanism of the early Re- naissance in Italy retained the notion of ornatumlornato in its earlier richness. On the distinction purolornato, see Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience
in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 1972). With the introduction of conceptual concerns about the idea of beauty, all of this changed. One no longer distin- guished the ornament from the simple, raw, ardess production, but from its "composition," which was now the only thing that mattered. No matter how beauty was subsequently defined, the new terminology required a distinction be- tween natural beauty, on the one hand, and ornament, decoration, and support-
ing supplement, on the other. As a starting point, see Leon Battista Alberti, De
re aedificatoria (1450-1452; Milan, 1966); and Michael Jager, Die Theorie des Schonen in der italienischen Renaissance (Cologne, 1990), pp. 44ff. In theories of
Notes to Pages 120-22
347
architecture that follow Alberti, the distinction is firmly established. See, e. g. , Luca Pacioli, De divina proportione (1497), quoted from the Italian edition by Andrea Masimi in Arnoldo Bruschi et al. , eds. , Scritti rinascimentali di architet- turn (Milan, 1978), pp. 23-244 (93) and other statements in the same volume. In- dependently of the fluctuating and repeatedly failing definitions of the beautiful, one continued to insist on the merely subordinate role of ornaments, which was meant to focus attention on the essential but not to distract from it. (Still widely accepted is Karl Philipp Moritz, Schrifien zur Asthetik und Poetik: Kritische Aus- gabe [Tubingen, 1962], pp. 72,1090? . ) Current discussions still oppose the orna- ment as adornment or decoration to the true meaning of art, but are more sen- sitive to the influence of the ornament on the development of artistic styles--an ongoing discussion since the nineteenth century. See Ernst H. Gombrich, Or- nament undKunst: Schmucktrieb und Ordnungssinn in der Psychologie des dekora- tiven Schaffens (Stuttgart, 1982). But the functional difference remains: the art- work deserves more attention than does mere decoration (ibid. , p. 74).
41. Redundancy is a beautiful, almost ornamental word, and it indicates pre- cisely what is meant here--the return of a wave (undo).
42. See, e. g. , Antonio Minturno, Parte poetica (1563; Naples, 1725), pp. 435c 43. Gombrich, Ornament und Kunst, pp. 177, 22of.
44. In the developmental history of a painter from Luneburg, Otto Brix,
landscape first withdrew to the lower edge of the painting, only to become su- perfluous once the painter began to focus on "cosmic" paintings.
45. In the terminology of Moritz, Schrifien zur Asthetik und Poetik, pp. 151-57 (with reference to drama). Similarly, Kant considers drawing the essential ele- ment in all the visual arts (including architecture and garden art) and distin- guishes it from mere adornment. See Kritik der Urteihkraft, ? 14.
46. A more precise analysis would, of course, have to be more complex and take into account that persons are not only characterized by actions and that some actions (trivial ones) merely serve to transport the plot. See Roland Bardies, Paventure semiologique (Paris, 1985), pp. 1896? . , 207ff, with texts from the 1960s.
47. In the terminology of E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927; rpt. Lon- don, 1949).
48. On this shift, see Klaus Hammacher, "Jacobis Romantheorie," in Walter Jaeschke and Helmut Holzhey, eds. , Frtiher Idealismus und Fruhromantik: Der
Streit um die Grundlagen der Asthetik (1795-1805) (Hamburg, 1990), pp. 174-89. 49. Again, following Moritz, Schrifien zur Asthetik und Poetik, p. 99: "Und so miissen nun auch bei der Beschreibung des Schonen durch Linien, diese Linien selbst, zusammengenommen, das Schone seyn, welches nie anders als durch sich selbst bezeichnet werden kann; weil es eben da erst seinen Anfang nimmt, wo die
Sache mit ihrer Bezeichnung sein wird. "
50. On the many variations on this general access to art, see Hans Ulrich
348 Notes to Pages 122-28
Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. , Stil: Geschichten und Funktionen eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurselements (Frankfurt, 1986).
JI. WeshallreturntothispointinsectionVIIofthischapterandinChapter 5, section IV, below.
52. This is where Moritz, Scbriften zurAsthetik undPoetik, pp. 99f. , grounds the special status of poetry among the fine arts.
53. This accounts for the much-discussed closeness of poetic language and irony--but also, and for this very reason, for the inverse possibility of a striking naivete, by which poetry recommends itself and its worldview. We think of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Holderlin. As a consequence, the "subject" apprehends its distanced relation to the relation between language and world as a possibility for self-reflection.
54. On this use of the distinction between denotation and connotation, see Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure ofPoetry (New York, 1947).
55. We cannot interrupt our analysis here to embark on historical analyses, but it is worth noting that the increasing complexity of social communication about the world makes it all the more necessary to renounce referential mimesis completely (or else use it as material) and to focus poetic meaning exclusively on the connotative level.
56. See Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics ofPoetry (Bloomington, Ind. , 1978); he uses die corresponding distinction between "meaning" (for reference) and signification.
57. Riffaterre (ibid. , p. 4), speaks of two levels or stages of reading.
58. The notion of die "symbolic" is justified in this context, since the poem at once operates and observes: "The poem is an instance of the doctrine which it asserts; it is both the assertion and the realization of the assertion" (Brooks, The
Well Wrought Urn, p. 17).
59. As in John Donne's "The Canonization," which contains the lines, ana-
lyzed by Brooks (ibid. , pp. 3fF. ): "We can dye by it, if not live by love/And if un- fit for tombes and hearse /our legend be, it will be fit for verse. "
60. See William Empson, The Structure of Complex Words (1951). See also Empson, Seven Types ofAmbiguity (1930; 2d ed. Edinburgh, 1947), and Brooks,
The Well Wrought Urn.
61. For an overview, see Jonadian Culler, Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its
Institutions (Norman, Okla. , 1988). On Empson, see Culler, Framing, pp. 85ff.
62. Julia Kristeva, Semeiotike: Recherchespour un semanalyse (Paris, 1969), p. 53
(author's emphasis). Or more concisely, "having no law but wit" (Sir Philip Sid- ney, The Defense ofPoetry [1595; Lincoln, Nebr. , 1970], p. 12).
63. Following Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A StructuralApproach to a Lit- erary Genre (Cleveland, 1973).
64. Traditionally, difficulty has been considered a precondition for an artworks
Notes to Pages 129-31
349
pleasing effect. In order to please, the work must exhibit a sufficient amount of controlled variety. See, e. g. , Torquato Tasso, Discorsi dell'artepoetica e in partico- lare sopra ilpoema eroico (1587), quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969), p. 388: "Questa varieta si fatta tanto sara piu lodevole quanto recara secco piu di difficolta. " See also Hogarth's notion, based on his reflections on drawing a line (which concern the ornament), of a sufficient difficulty ("intricacy") of artworks (Hogarth, The Analysis ofBeauty, pp. 4iff. ). Today, the question is whether works of art may have become too difficult to be accessible to die general public. The reason may be that the works no longer communicate why they are die way they are.
65. See Talcott Parsons, Zur Theorie der sozialen Interaktionsmedien (Opladen, 1980), esp. pp. 2iiff. Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Piatt, The American Univer- sity (Cambridge, Mass. , 1973). See further Rainer M. Baum, "On Societal Media Dynamics," in Jan J. Loubser et al. , eds. , Explorations in General Theory in Social Science (New York, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 579-608.
66. Emphasizing the relationship between structuring and praxis, Anthony Giddens describes "structuration" as a "virtual order of differences. " See Gid- dens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in So- cialAnalysis (London, 1979), p. 3; and Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Out- line of the Theory of Structuration (Berkeley, Calif. , 1984). By contrast, the older structuralism could integrate the problem of time only through the relativizing concession that even structures may change.
6j. For a more detailed account, see Niklas Luhmann, "Das Kunstwerk und die Selbstreproduktion der Kunst," in Gumbrecht and Pfeiffer, Stil, pp. 620-71. See also Chapter 5, section IV, below.
68. "Non essendo quella altro che accoppiamento di parole," one reads in Torquato Tasso, Discorsi dell'artepoetica, p. 392, which is associated here not with the concept of form but with the concept of the ornament.
69. Tasso (ibid. ) follows the common division: "magnifica o sublime, medio- cre ed umile. "
70. See Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "'Phoenix aus der Asche' oder: Vom Kanon zur Klassik," in Aleida and Jan Assmann, eds. , Kanon undZensur: Archaologie der literarischen Kommunikation II (Munich, 1987), pp. 284-99; Gumbrecht, "Klas- sik ist Klassik, eine bewundernswerte Sicherheit des Nichts? " in F. Nies and K. Stierle, eds. , Die Franzosische Klassik (Munich, 1989), pp. 441-94.
71. "Das Klassische ist durch den bestimmt, fur den es klassisch ist," one reads in Novalis, Bliithenstaub, No. 52, quoted from Werke, Tagebucher und Briefe Frie- drich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hans-Joachim Mahl and Richard Samuel (Darmstadt, ! 978), vol. 2, p. 247.
72. See Louis Gabriel Ambroise (Vicomte de Bonald), Sur lesouvrages clas- siques (1810), quoted from CEuvres completes, vol. n (Paris, 1858; rpt. Geneva, 1982), pp. 227-43.
350
Notes to Pages 151-36
73. Other observers have noticed that here art is no longer displayed as art. "Es ist ein beweinenswerter Anblick," writes Friedrich Schlegel, "einen Schatz der trefflichsten und seltensten Kunstwerke wie eine gemeine Sammlung von Kostbarkeiten zusammen aufgehauft zu sehen. " In "Cber die Grenzen des Scho- nen," quoted from Dichtungen undAufidtze, ed. Wolfdietrich Rasch (Munich, 1984), pp. 268-76 (269). But there is no need to exaggerate. One might as well try not to let one's view of the artwork be spoiled by the museum.
? 4
1. See Georg Simmel, Ober sociale Differenzierung: Soziologische undpsycholo- gische Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1890), and Emile Durkheim, De la division du
travail social (Paris, 1893). On the currency of this assumption, see Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy, eds.
, Differentiation Theory and Social Change:
Comparative and Historical Perspectives (New York, 1990).
2. See,e. g. ,CharlesTilly,"ClioandMinerva,"inJohnC. McKinneyandEd-
ward A. Tiryakian, eds. , Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York, 1970), pp. 433-36; Edward A. Tiryakian, "On the Significance of De- differentiation," in S. N. Eisenstadt and H. J. Helle, eds. , Macro-Sociological
Theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory, vol. 1 (London, 1985), pp. 118-34. 3. Compare Parsons's fatal answer to this question, which states that subsys- tems specializing in one of four possible functions must fulfill all of these four functions themselves and can be recognized as such only in this way--a require-
ment that resulted in an endless repetition of the schema within the schema.
4. Inhistheoryofageneralactionsystem,TalcottParsonsproposedaconcept of the nonarbitrary nature of the consequences of system differentiation, which re- sembles our own despite differences in detail. We would suggest that this is the heart of Parsons's theory, which yielded a number of fruitful comparative analyses.
5. To clarify the matter we should note that we are talking about operations that separate system and environment. As far as observations are concerned, the reentry of the form into the form generates the internal distinction between self- reference and hetero-reference.
6. This argument clearly shows that the system's dependency on other systems for the fulfillment of certain functions is the condition and mark of the auton- omy of every functional system. Specific independence depends, in other words, on a considerable degree of specific dependency. This must be kept in mind when encountering the repeated objection that the dependency of art on a mon- etary market economy could infringe upon the autonomy of the art system.
7. See, e. g. , Benedetto Varchi, Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti. . . (1547X quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinque- cento, vol. 1 (Bari, 1960), pp. 1-58.
Notes to Pages 136-41
3Si
8. One can find a justification for this trend, e. g. , in George Puttenham, The Arte ofEnglish Poesie (1589; Cambridge, 1970), pp. 4zflF.
9. See Torquato Tasso on the styles of "magnifica o sublime, mediocre ed
umile" in Discorsi dell'arte e in particolare sopra ilpoema eroico, quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969), pp. 349-729 (3921! . ).
10. See Henri Testelin, Sentiments deplus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), quoted from the unpaginated Introduction. See also pp. iif. , 17.
11. See Aldo Schiavone, Nascita della giurisprudenza: Cultura aristocratica e pensiero giuridico nella Roma tardo-repubblicana (Bari, 1976), pp. 36ff. Similarly, Samuel Richardson states at the beginning of the eighteenth century that for the
typical gendeman, art is "a fine piece of workmanship, and difficult to be per- formed, but produces only pleasant ornaments, mere superfluidities" (in Dis- course on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure and Advantage of the Science ofa Con- noisseur [1719], quoted from The Works [London, 1773; rpt. Hildesheim, 1969],
pp. 241-346 [244]).
12. See the distinction between an internal (mental) and an external disegno
(one put into practice) in Federico Zuccaro, L'idea dei Pittori, Scultori edAr- chitetti (Turin, 1607), quoted from Scritti d'Arte Federico Zuccaro (Florence, 1961), pp. 149-352 (explicidy, p. 152).
13. On situating this idea within the sociological tradition of "functional equivalents," see Niklas Luhmann, "Funktion und Kausalitat," in Luhmann, Soziologische Aufkldrung, vol. 1 (Opladen, 1970), pp. 9-30.
14. This remark is directed against a tradition that believed it sufficed to de- fine meaning from the perspective of consciousness.
15. For more elaborate analyses, see Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grun- drifieiner allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 91-147; trans, as Social Sys- tems, trans. John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 59-102.
16. See, e. g. , Hans Belting, Bild undKult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990).
17! For such a view, see Dirk Baecker, Die Beobachtung der Kunst in der Gesell- schafi, ms. 1994.
18. See Kant, Kritik der Urteibkrafi, ? 49.
19. See the distinction between narrow and broad coupling in Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frankfurt, 1993). PP- i39ff-
20. See Chapter 3, section III, above.
21. See the well-known passage in Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkldrung (1947), quoted from Adorno, Gesammelte Schrifien, vol. 3 (Frankfurt, 1981), pp. i4iff. See also the initially unpublished chapter "Das Schema der Massenkultur," ibid. , pp. 299! ? .
Notes to Pages 142-46
352
957)> corresponding reflections on the worldly meaning of the calculus of probability.
23. Roman Ingarden, in Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931; 4th ed. Tubingen, 1972), p. 234, notes with astonishment that this "modification of being" is so unique that it can barely be put into words.
24. See the portrayal of habitual communication in everyday life when others are present, or in television dialogues, in politics, and so forth by Rainald Goetz
in such titles as Angst, Festung Kronos (Frankfurt, 1989-1993). I am referring here to a conversation with Rainald Goetz.
25. See Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration ofthe Commonplace: A Philoso- phy ofArt (Cambridge, Mass. , 1981).
26. The notion of admiratio combines astonishment and admiration [Ver- wunderung und itavunderung]. Moreover, it oscillates between the (positive or negative) states ofthe soul and the effectuation of such states via a striking incident that has been rendered plausible. See Baxter Hathaway, Marvels and Common- places: Renaissance Literary Criticism (New York, 1968). In the theory of art, this prevents--as early as Aristotle--a notion of mimesis/imitatio as mere copying. The most compact and concise formulation of this concept can be found in Descartes, Lespassions de I'ame, quoted from CEuvres etLettres, Pl&ade ed. (Paris, 1952), Art. 53, p. 723. L'admiration is the prime passion, an astonishment in the face of deviation. It is not yet knowledge--not yet coded in the binary true/false.
In current terminology, one might speak of an "irritation" or "perturbation. " The function of art apparently is to prepare the ground for something that can subsequently be elaborated under conditions of binary coding (of art as well? ).
27. See Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, "Bandellos Realismus," RomanischesJahr- buch 37 (1986): 107-26.
28. On the necessity of defending poetry in a state of (an allegedly) declining social reputation against the pretentious truth claims of philosophy and histori- ography, see, e. g. , Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense ofPoetry (1595; Lincoln, Nebr. , 1970), pp. i3ff.
29. See Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferenzierung literarischer Kommunikation (Opladen, 1992), esp. pp. 63ff. Werber maintains that the dis- tinction interesting/boring will be used from now on as a code by the system.
See also Gerhard Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, vol. 1, Von Kant bis Hegel (Opladen, 1993), pp. 22fi, I56ff. This view conflicts with a number
of noteworthy remarks, especially by the romantics, on the notion of the inter- esting, and it is at odds with the further development of this notion in the idea of the beautiful. There seems to be a general agreement, however, that the notion that art must be interesting results from its orientation toward the market.
30. Not surprisingly, this holds for other functional systems as well. We find
22. See George Spencer Brown, Probability and Scientific Inference (London, Ion
Notes to Pages 146-48
353
an emphasis on such code values as lawfulness, truth, affluence in the sense of property, and so forth, though there is not yet a sufficiendy formal specification of function to explain why the code displays a positive and a negative value.
31. For important analyses of how the world is presupposed and produced as
a basis for belief that allows consciousness to shift its awareness, see Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (Ham- burg, 1948), esp. ? j-<), pp. 23ff. Husserl's emphasis is on the world as presuppo- sition--on how it typifies connective possibilities and thus serves as a substra-
tum that makes possible the shifting of experiential horizons. Reversing this point, one could argue that recursive operation and the possibility of repetition
it implies are constitutive of the emergence of identity and of typifications that
are understood to be a substratum of reality and that whatever is actualized as in- tention and communication passes lightly over its surface.
32. Hegel, Vorlesungentiberdie Asthetik, Pt. 1, quoted from G. E. W. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Banden, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 199. On p. 125, Hegel
writes about Dutch painting: "Gegen die vorhandene prosaische Realitat ist da- her dieser durch Geist produzierte Schein das Wunder der Identitat, ein Spott, wenn man will, und eine Ironie tiber das aufierliche natiirliche Dasein. "
33. We need to remind ourselves, however, that such a sense of reality requires that there be something else from which it distinguishes itself, whether this might be--possibly misleading--language, or whether it might be religion, sta- tistics, or politics.
34. "In einem wahrhaft schonen Kunstwerk soil der Inhalt nichts, die Form
aber alles tun," one reads, e. g. , in Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, %iA letter, quoted from Friedrich Schiller, Samtliche Werke, vol. 5,4th ed. (Munich, 1967), p. 639. Earlier in the text, Schiller rejects the notion of a "middle ground" between form and matter, maintaining
diat art can "cancel" [aufheben] this distinction--but how? one might ask, if not
in die form of a reentry of the form into die form.
35. See Niklas Luhmann, Soziologie des Risikos (Berlin, 1991), esp. i68ff.
36. Following Alberti, an early version of this problem concerns die relation-
ship between harmonious proportion and variety. See Paolo Pino, Dialogo dipit- tura (1548) quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 (Bari, i960), pp. 93-139 (104). See also the warning against an excess of "deliber-
ate" variety in Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (1557), quoted from the Barocchi edition, ibid. , pp. 141-206 (i79f. ); and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trat- tato dell'arte delta pittura et architettura (Milan, 1585), Chap. 26, pp. 89f. Henri Testelin, Sentiments de plus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et la Sculpture (Paris, 1696), p. 18, distinguishes the variety of contrast from the econ- omy of contours and warns of "incompatible things" (p. 19). In poetics, one finds
the distinction between verisimile (for redundancy) and meraviglioso or mirabile
Notes to Pages 149-52
354
(for variety) alongside the old distinction between the one and the many (unita/moltitudine). See, e. g. , Torquato Tasso Discorsi dell'artepoetica e inpartico- laresopra ilpoema eroico (1587), quoted from Prosa (Milan, 1969). On unitalmolti- tudine = varieta, see Tasso, pp. 372f? ; he opts for moltitudine because it is pleas- ing.
