, by the notion of the concept) but also by means of a
developmental
narrative of Spirit.
Niklas Luhmann - Art of the Social System
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. 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.
