No More Learning

54. Any other version of the theory would have to claim that the system con- sisted of marble and bodies, thoughts and communications, paper and printer's ink. And what makes such a system into a system would have to be sought in these mysterious "ands. "
55. The fact that precious materials--such as gold and jewels in the Middle Ages--have lost their artistic role affirms this trend.
56. See Yehuda Elkana, "Die Entstehung des Denkens zweiter Ordnung im klassischen Griechenland," in Elkana, Anthropologic der Erkenntnis: Die Entwick- lung des Wissens als episches Theater einer listigen Vernunft (Frankfurt, 1986), pp. 344-75. See also G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Ori- gin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge, 1979). Lloyd presents a wealth of pertinent material but fails to focus on the--for us--decisive issue.
57. See, programatically, Jonathan Richardson, A Discourse on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure and Advantage of the Science of a Connoisseur (1719), quoted from TheWorks,(London,1773;rpt. Hildesheim,1969),pp. 239-346.
58. See Iain Pears, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England, I68O~IJ68 (New Haven, Conn. , 1988), esp. pp. i8iff.
Notes to Pages 82-87
339
59. For a typical manifestation of the insecurities around the mid-eighteenth century, see Denis Diderot, Traite du beau, quoted from CEuvres, Pl&ade ed. (Paris, 1951), pp. 1105-42. We disregard Diderot's indecisiveness about the ques- tion of the possible benefit of an aesthetic criterion.
60. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Sym- bols (London, 1969), pp. 99ff.
61. In the Middle Ages and early modernity discussions of the "mirror" dis- covered--albeit in different constellations--the possibility of seeing the invisi- ble in the double move of making seeing invisible and of making visible a seeing that cannot see itself. The concern, however, was not ours, i. e. , to see what oth- ers are unable to see.
62. See Niklas Luhmann, "Wie lassen sich latente Strukturen beobachten? " in Paul Watzlawick and Peter Krieg, eds. , DasAuge des Betrachters--Beitrage zum Konstruktivismus: Festschriftfur Heinz von Foerster (Munich, 1991), pp. 61-74.
63. For an overview, see Volker Meja and Nico Stehr, eds. , Der Streit um die Wissenssoziologie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1982).
64. See Gisela M. A. Richter, "Perspective, Ancient, Medieval and Renais- sance," in Scritti in onore di Batholomeo Nogara (Vatican City, 1937), pp. 381-88. According to Richter, this also holds, contrary to a widely held opinion, for the- ory (Vitruvius).
65. The first comprehensive treatment is perhaps Leon Battista Alberti, Delia Pittura (1436; Florence, 1950).
66. On variety and sameness, see William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing the fluctuating Ideas of Taste (London, 1753; Oxford, 1955). PP- 34f-
67. SeeJurgis Baltrusavitis, Anamorphoses ouperspectives curieuses (Paris, 1955).
68. Ibid. , p. 6, or p. 42: "La perspective nest pas un instrument des represen- tations exactes, mais un mensonge. "
69. See esp. Giulio Troili, Paradossi per pratticare la prospettiva senza saperla (1672; Bologna, 1863), e. g. , p. 12: "li riuscira di pratticare la Prospettiva senza saperla, e scoprira con l'occhi del corpo tutta quello che si considera con gl'occhi del intelletto. "
70. See the counternovel by Henry Fielding, An Apologyfor the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (London, 1741).
71. In Jean Paul's Die unsichtbare Loge, ? 1, "Verlobungsschach--graduierter Rekrut--Kopulier-Katze," Ernestine (who by and large is certainly virtuous and innocent) must teach tricks to a cat and turn over a chess game in order to land in the desired marriage.
72. Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferenzierung literarischer Kom- munikation (Opladen, 1992), pp. 68ff. , provides evidence for this trend.
73. See Chapter 1, n. 42, above.
Notes to Pages 88-90
340
74. On skepticism about the preference for striking, extraordinary, sudden, and scandalous subjects, see Werber, Literatur als System, pp. y$ff. A counternovel that refers to this trend by depicting an unexciting, everyday life is Ludwig Tieck's Peter Lebrecht. An appropriate form for this type of literature, along with its own criteria for quality, did not exist until the mystery novel was invented one hundred years later.
75. See Ren6 Girard, Mensonge romantique et virite romanesque (Paris, 1961).
76. See the distinction between "flat characters / round characters" in E. M. Forster, Aspects ofthe Novel (1927; rpt. London, 1941). See also Christine Brooke- Rose, "The Dissolution of Character in the Novel," in Thomas C. Heller et al. ,
eds. , Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individualism, and the Selfin West- ern Thought (Stanford, Calif. , 1968), pp. 184-96. This further development can perhaps be explained by the fact that the theme of latent motives turns into a cultural commonplace that no longer requires literary-fictive treatment. Once again, one can work with characters whose motives no longer matter.
77. The formulation is Jean Paul's, Hesperus, quoted from the edition by Nor- bert Miller, Works, vol. 1 (Munich, i960), p. 712.
78. This comes fatally close to the concept of duty in Kant's ethics.
79. For a representative monograph, see Edmund Burke, A Philosophical En- quiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756; New York, 1958). On the contemporary context, see also Samuel H. Monk, The Sub- lime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIIIth-Century England (192. 5; 2d ed. Ann Arbor, i960).
80. Nicolas Boileau-Despr^aux, Traiti du Sublime, preface, quoted from CEuvres (Paris, 1713), pp. 595-604 (596). See also Boileau's adamant resistance to
applying the old concept of style to this phenomenon (p. 601).
81. Boileau, "Reflexions critique sur quelques passages du Rheteur Longinus,"
in CEuvres, pp. 491-592,590 (erroneous pagination).
82. Since such constipation is no longer imminent, "das Erhabene, das ja blofi
eine Art vornehmer Purganz sein soil [lauft] Gefahr, ebenfalls aus der Mode zu kommen" (August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre [Pt. 1 of the lectures on lit- erature and art], quoted from Kritische Schriften und Briefe, vol. 2 [Stuttgart, 1963], p. 58). Leopardi appears to confirm this assessment via a detour through boredom: "La noia e in qualche modo il piu sublime dei sentimenti umani" (Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri [Leipzig, n. d. ], p. 41). It is difficult to avoid the im- pression that, along with the dangers of constipation, the laxative of the sublime once again becomes fashionable.
83. In Ludwig Tieck's novella Die Klausenburg, quoted from Schriften, vol. 12 (Frankfurt, 1986), pp. I43f.
84. The formulation may be new, but the notion that the world requires an observer for its perfection is an old Christian idea.
Notes to Pages 90-98 341
85. Tieck, Die Kunstlehre, p. 49.
86. See Philip G. Herbst, Alternatives to Hierarchies (Leiden, 1976), p. 88. Herbst mentions further "primary distinctions" that generate logical relation- ships and fight for predominance, such as the ontological distinction between being and nonbeing.
87. Karl Philipp Moritz, Schriften zurAsthetik und Poetik (Tubingen, 1962), esp. pp. 92, H5fT.
88. Kristeva, Semeiotike, p. 11.
89. See, e. g. , Niklas von Kues, De visione Dei, quoted from Philosophisch-The- ologische Schriften, vol. 3 (Vienna, 1967), pp. 93-219, esp. his remarkable formula- tion "Et hoc scio solum quia scio me nescire" (XIII, p. 146; my emphasis, N. L. ).
90. For an elaboration of this point, see Niklas Luhmann, "Kontingenz als Eigenwert der modernen Gesellschaft" ("Contingency as Modern Society's De- fining Attribute").
91. For the special case of art, see the quote from Sidney, n. 30 above.
92. Here we think immediately of Friedrich Schiller. The fixation of the self on the distinction between unity and distinction (or "opposition") is especially impressive--and confusing--in Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, Vorlesungen uberAsthetik, ed. Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (Leipzig, 1829; Darmstadt, 1973). In Solger's belated product, multiplying distinctions while holding on to the no- tion of the idea as the ultimate unity is driven to the point where the reader loses all orientation and control and no longer knows how to retain a unified concept of the idea (the constitutional monarch in the realm of distinctions) in the face of so many distinctions. Raising this question, however, presupposes the capac- ity to question the distinction between unity and distinction as a distinction. This question should have propelled German Idealism to recognize itself as be- ing grounded in a paradox. Although this did not happen, one finds paradoxical formulations throughout Solger's work (e. g. , p. 53, "Im Selbstbewufltsein wird das Allgemeine und Besondere als dasselbe erkannt"). This explains why the concept of the symbol once again refers specifically to the appearance of the general in the particular. See esp. Friedrich Schelling, Philosophic der Kunst (Darmstadt, i960), p. 50: "Darstellung des Absoluten mit absoluter Indifferenz des Allge- meinen und Besonderen im Besonderen ist nur symbolisch moglich. "
93. See Martin Heidegger, Sein undZeit, 6th ed. (Tubingen, 1949), ? 2 and ? 27. 94. Huesca, 1649; Madrid, 1969.
95. Solger, Vorlesungen uber Aesthetik.
96. See Niklas Luhmann, "Deconstruction as Second-Order Observing,"
New Literary History'24 (1993): 763-82.
97. See de Man, Blindness and Insight, especially Wlad Godzich's pertinent
Introduction.
98. Spencer Brown's formal calculus is constructed in such a manner, al-
Notes to Pages 100-103
342.
though he does not include second-order observation in it--the figure of "reen- try" merely opens a perspective on this type of observation. See Elena Esposito, "Ein zweiwertiger nicht-selbststandiger Kalkiil," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Kalkiilder Form (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 96-m.
The incompatibility of forms (observing op- erations) to be avoided corresponds to what linguists mean by performative con- tradiction, or what deconstructivists would call the contradiction in language against itself.
99. This tendency manifests itself in authors as diverse as Herbert A. Simon, "From Substantive to Procedural Rationality," in Spiro J. Lastis, ed. , Method and Appraisal in Economics (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 129-48; or Jiirgen Habermas, Fak- tizitdt und Geltung. Beitrage zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaates (Frankfurt, 1992) (who, not accidentally, refers to the technically pow- erful media of money and law, neither of which requires external justification).
$3
1. See further Niklas Luhmann, "Das Medium der Kunst," Delfin 4 (1986): 6-15; rpt. in Frederick D. Bunsen, ed. , "ohne Titel": Neue Orientierungen in der Kunst (Wiirzburg, 1988), pp. 61-71.
2. See Gabriel Marcel's (forgotten) study Etre et Avoir (Paris, 1935).
3. As a metaphor for memory as a condition of learning, see Plato, Theaetetus, 191 Cff. See also Aristotle's crucial supplement in Peri Psyches, 424 a 18-20, which suggests that the wax receives and preserves the impression but not the material that causes it. (At stake here is precisely not the traditional concept of matter. )
4. We owe this suggestion to Fritz Heider, "Ding und Medium," Symposion 1 (1926): 109-57, who elaborates this distinction with reference to the perceptual media of seeing and hearing. The medium/form difference (medium/object in Heider) is built into the classical subject/object difference as a kind of mediating concept that requires no transfer from the outside to the inside. Here lie notable foundations for an epistemology that would be neither transcendental nor di- alectical. This has been overlooked heretofore, presumably because the theory is presented as a theory of perception rather than a theory of cognitive processes that can be true or false. But this is worth noting, if one searches for concepts ap- plicable not only in epistemology but also in the theory of art, which are capa- ble of clarifying interconnections in the development of both. We have altered Heider's model considerably, especially by giving up the idea that a medium is externally determined whereas a form (Heider's "object") is determined inter- nally. The external/internal distinction already presupposes form.
5. There is no need to decide whether there really "are" such things as natural constants to begin with. If so, it would be of no consequence to our distinction between medium and form.
Notes to Pages 103-6
343
6. See Kay Junge, "Medien als Selbstreferenzunterbrecher," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Kalkiil der Form (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 112-51.
7. See, e. g. , Robert B. Glassman, "Persistence and Loose Coupling in Living Systems," Behavioral Sciences 18 (1973): 83-98; Karl E. Weick, Der Prozess des Or- ganisierens (Frankfurt, 1985), esp. pp. i63ff. , Z64K. , and several essays in Jost Half- mann and Klaus Peter Japp, eds. , Riskante Entscheidungen und Katastrophen-
potentiale: Elemente einer soziologischen Risikoforschung (Opladen, 1990).
8. See, e. g. , Friedrich Schlegels Jena lecture Transzendentalphilosophie, 1800-
1801, quoted from Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, vol. 12 (Munich, 1964), pp. 37f. : "Die Materie ist kein Gegenstand des Bewufitseyns. Namlich es ist das Merkmahl des Chaos, dafi nichts darinnen unterschieden werden kann; und es kann nichts ins Bewufitseyn kommen, was nicht unterschieden ist. Nur die Form kommt ins empirische BewuStseyn. Was wir fur Materie halten, ist Form. "
9. A "reentry" in the sense of George Spencer Brown's formal calculus, Laws of Form (1969; rpt. New York, 1979), pp. 69fT.
10. We find the same asymmetry in the relation between system and environ- ment, a form that possesses an inside (system) and an outside (environment). This relation, too, entails the possibility of a reentry of the form into the form, i. e. , of the distinction between self-reference and hetero-reference within the system.
11. "Von asthetischer Erfahrung sprechen wir vielmehr erst, wenn unser Ver- stehen die Ordnung blofien Wiedererkennens verlafit und das Wiedererkannte zum Material macht, an dem es Bestimmungen auswahlt und aufeinander bezieht" (Christoph Menke-Eggers, Die Souveranitat der Kunst: Asthetische Er-
fahrung nach Adorno und Derrida [Frankfurt, 1988], p. 63).
12. The common understanding of memory tends to privilege remembering
over forgetting. This is why this aspect deserves further elaboration. What mat- ters is discrimination, the difference or distinction, the form of remembering/ forgetting. It goes without saying that forgetting requires other facilities of orga- nization and control than remembering does. One needs no reasons to forget something, although forgetfulness can be embarrassing. Besides, the structure of forgetting depends on the respective medium. Money, for example, routinely for- gets all the concrete circumstances that may have motivated a specific payment, and in so doing, it restricts remembering to the level of second-order observation.
13. Regarding the history of theory, it is worth noting that the constant/vari- able distinction owes its present significance, particularly in attribution theory, to Heider's psychology of perception.
14. Gracian bases his (rhetorical) theory of art on this notion. See, e. g. , Bal- tasar Gracian, Agudezay arte de ingenio, 2 vols. (Huesca, 1649; Madrid, 1969), Discurso XX (vol. 1, p. 204): "Son los tropos y figuras retoricas materia y como fundamento para que sobre ellos levante sus primores la agudeza , y lo que la retorica tiene por formalidad, este nuestra arte por materia sobre que echa el es-
344
Notes to Pages 107-11
make de su artificio. " Or, Discurso L (vol. 2, p. 159): "que la agudeza tiene por materia y por fundamento muchas de lasfigurasretoricas, pero dales la forma y realce del concepto. "
15. For an elaboration of this point, see Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme (Frankfurt, 1982), pp. 92-147; trans, as Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker (Stanford, Calif. , 199$), pp. 59-102.
16. At this point it might be useful to point out that the Husserlian metaphor of the world horizon is just a metaphor. Taking it seriously could lead to the er- roneous assumption that the world is something distant, although no one seri- ously believes that objects in close proximity exist outside of the world.
17. In die terminology of Heinz von Foerster, this means that meaning can be realized only by "non-trivial machines" that use their own output as input and thus become mathematically incalculable. Or, to speak with Spencer Brown, reentry gives rise to a condition that presents itself to the system as an "unre- solvable indeterminacy. "
18. So far as we know, only religion can accept this question and answer it with reference to God. Or it can reverse the answer and derive an argument for the existence of God from the indistinguishability of the world as a whole.
19. A lengthy quotation from Henri Focillon, The Life ofForms in Art (New York, 1992) is in order: "Light not only illuminates the internal mass [of a cathe- dral, N. L. ] but collaborates with the architecture to give it its needed form. Light itself is form, since its rays, streaming forth at predetermined points are compressed, attenuated or stretched in order to pick out the variously unified and accented members of the building for the purpose either of tranquillizing it or of giving it vivacity. "
20. See Denis Diderot, Paradoxe sur le Comidien, quoted from CEuvres, Plei- ade ed. (Paris, 1951), pp. 1033-88.
21. On the controversies concerning theater and poetry, see Russell Fraser, The War Against Poetry (Princeton, N. J. , 1970); Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds
Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, i$$o~ij$o (Cam- bridge, 1968). We shall return to the specifically religious critique of art during
the Reformation and Counrer Reformation (Chapter 4, section IX, below).
22. For a phenomenological description of the separation of literary spaces/ times from the space and time of the world in which this separation takes place, see Roman Ingarden, Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931; 4th ed. Tubingen, 1972), pp. 233ff.
23. Onthenecessaryrecourserothequantitativeoperationofmacromolecular processes, see Heinz Forster (Heinz von Foerster), Das Geddchtnis: Eine quanten- mechanische Untersuchung (Vienna, 1948); see further von Foerster, "Molecular Ethology: An Immodest Proposal for Semantic Clarification," in G. Unger, ed. , Molecular Mechanism in Memory and Learning (New York, 1970), pp. 213-48.
Notes to Pages 112-18
345
24. GemotBohme,"AtmosphereastheFundamentalConceptofaNewAes- thetics," Thesis Eleven 36 (1993): 113-26, develops a different notion of atmos- phere in conjunction with his reflections on an ("ecological") aesthetics of na- ture. The primary difference here is the subject/object schema rather than the space/place difference; but the problem is, as in our case, that the primary dif- ference cannot do justice to the atmospheric, although it is indispensable for the purpose of presentation.
25. Seeesp. Agnew, WorldsApart.
26. Inthiscontext,itisworthnotingthatthetransitionsinHegel'stheoryare guaranteed not only by theoretical means (e. g. , by the notion of the concept) but also by means of a developmental narrative of Spirit.
27. As they do for Lessing, who, in Laocoon, ? XV-XVIII, relegates painting to space and poetry to time; quoted from Lessings Werke (Leipzig-Vienna, n. d. ), vol. 3, pp. iooff. However, Lessing infers the semantic meaning of forms all too quickly from their spatial or temporal anchoring (or their meaning from the medium).
28. Some authors have suggested that "fitness for movement" is the rule for the optimal proportion of bodies in artworks. See William Hogarth, The Analy- sis ofBeauty, written with a view offixingthefluctuating Ideas of Taste (London, 1753; Oxford, 1955), pp. i03f. See also the quote by Lomazzo in Hogarth, The Analysis ofBeauty, p. 5.
29. This is emphasized by Joan Evans, Pattern: A Study of Ornament in West- ern Europefrom1180 to ipoo, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1931; New York, 1975), vol. 1, p. xxxv: "Thefirstessential of decoration is a defined and limited space. " To begin with such a clearing of space or time makes sense only if there is the intent and possibility of integrating varied redundancies in the form of ornaments.
30. See Herder (in search of a general concept of beauty), Viertes Kritisches Wdldchen, II, quoted from Bernhard Suphan, ed. , Herders Sdmmtliche Werke,
vol. 4, (Berlin, 1978), pp. 446? .
31. To clarify this even further: readers know, of course, that the lady does not
know. Siebenkas knows that the one who died is not the Siebenkas buried here but his wife, who is buried elsewhere, so that he (and the reader) but not the lady knows of the impending marriage. Most likely, the reader will await with excite- ment how the text dissolves cognitive discrepancies through communication-in- the-text (and this is precisely what happens). Despite this shared knowledge, the intuition--the imagination of what would have to be perceived in such a case-- remains separate and incommunicable (one can verify this by considering one's disappointment when watching the scene on film).
32. This is already a phenomenological (Husserlian) interpretation of Spencer Browns notion of the unmarked space.
33. This formulation takes into consideration the logic of a "transjunctive" ap- plication of distinctions as developed by Gotthard Giinther. See esp. "Cybernetic
346 Notes to Pages 118-20
Ontology and Transjunctional Operations," in Gunther, Beitrdge zur Grundle- gung einer operationsfdhigen Diakktik (Hamburg, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 249-328. 34. This explains the notion of form in Focillon, which at first appears con-
tradictory. On the one hand, "form signifies only itself"; on the other hand, "it also suggests the existence of other forms" (Focillon, The Life ofForms in Art, p. 34). The meaning of these statements resides in their own form, in what they exclude as their other side, namely, the notion of content or matter and the idea of form as a sign for something else.
35. See Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology ofMind (New York, 1972), p. 453.
36. Let us note in passing that this statement no longer holds for attempts to break the symmetry of the two sides with a minimal effort, in order to stage the invitation to unfold the paradox.
37. SeeHelenPeters,ed. ,JohnDonne,ParadoxesandProblems(Oxford,1980). More mature pieces are scattered throughout Donne's poetic work.
38. See A. E. Malloch, "The Technique and Function of the Renaissance Para- dox," Studies in Philology 53 (1956): 191-203; Michael McCanless, "Paradox in Donne," Studies in the Renaissance 13 (1966): 266-87.
39. 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.