For another example, see the text,
discovered
by Jochen Horisch, of the romantic naturalist Johann Wilhelm Rit-
ter: "Die erste und zwar absolute Gleichzeitigkeit (von Wort und Schrift) lag
darin, dafi das Sprachorgan selbst schreibt, um zu sprechen.
ter: "Die erste und zwar absolute Gleichzeitigkeit (von Wort und Schrift) lag
darin, dafi das Sprachorgan selbst schreibt, um zu sprechen.
Niklas Luhmann - Art of the Social System
See Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Reflexions critiques sur lapoesie etsur lapeinture (rpt.
Paris, 1733), vol.
2, pp.
32off.
These distinctions
Notes to Pages 276-78
393
indicate the emphasis on an ultimately irrational expertise in artistic matters that is uncorrupted by interests.
132. See William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing thefluctuating Ideas of Taste (London, 1773; Oxford, 1955).
133. According to Herder's formulation in his Ersten Kritischen Wdldchen, in Herders Samtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1878), p. 7.
134. See, e. g. , Gonthier-Louis Fink, "Das Bild des Nachbarvolkes im Spiegel der deutschen und franzosischen Hochaufklarung (1750-1789)," in Giesen, ed. , Nationale und kulturelle Identitat, pp. 453-92; see further Bernhard Giesen and Kay Junge, "Vom Patriotismus zum Nationalismus: Zur Evolution der 'Deutschen Kulturnation,'" in ibid. , pp. 255-303. Apart from that, let us recall our remarks on the emergence of a new concept of "culture" (Chapter 3, section VII, and Chapter 6, section I, above).
135. Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, pp. 41". , 24.
136. Ibid. , esp. pp. 23ff. We find a similar critique from the perspective of an- other painter in Coypel, Discoursprononcez, pp. 3off.
137. According to Kant, the judgment of taste is "ein Urteil in Beziehung auf die Geselligkeit, sofern sie auf empirischen Regeln beruht" (Kritik der Urteils- kraft, ? 7). See also Kant's "Reflexionen zur Anthropologic" no. 743, from his posthumous writings {Akademie-Ausgabe, vol. 15. 1 [Berlin, 1923], p. 327), where Kant clearly distinguishes between sociability and objectivity.
138. See Peter Leberecht, Pt. 2, Chap. 4, quoted from Ludwig Tieck, Fruhe Erzdhlungen und Romane (Munich, n. d. ).
139. See Karl Wilhelm Solger, Vorlesungen iiber Asthetik, ed. Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (Leipzig, 1829; rpt. Darmstadt, 1973).
140. See Alfred Baeumler's classic monograph Das Irrationalitatsproblem in der Asthetik und Logik des 18. fahrhunderts bis zur Kritik der Urteilskraft (Darm- stadt, 1967).
141. See Baumgarten, Aesthetica. It has frequently been pointed out that the name "aesthetics," while it makes sense in view of this transitional period, is in truth inappropriate for a theory of art; however, once the terminology was in- troduced, it remained. See, e. g. , Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Fragmente, no. 40, quoted from Werke, vol. 1, p. 170, or the beginning of Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik, quoted from Werke, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 13.
142. In his introductory remarks to the Aesthetica, Baumgarten repeatedly in- sists on cognition--"Aesthetica (theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulchre cogitandi, ars analogia rationis) est scientia cognitionis sensitivae" (? 1)--which creates the impression of an exclusion. What is to be excluded is the inquiry into the unity of the distinction that underlies all "aesthetic" obser- vations. What must be excluded is paradox.
143. Hans Freier, "Asthetik und Autonomic: Ein Beitrag zur idealistischen
394
Notes to Pages 2/8-80
Entfremdungskritik," in Bernd Lutz, ed. , Deutsches Biirgertwn und literarische Intelligenz ijp-1800 (Stuttgart, 1974), pp. 32. 9-83 (339).
144. Karl Philipp Moritz, "Uber die bildende Nachahmung des Schonen,"
in Schriften zur Asthetik und Poetik, in Kritische Ausgabe (Tubingen, 1962), pp. 63-93 (78).
145. We take the precaution of pointing out that in this theoretical context, "Idea" no longer corresponds to the Platonic idea. The function of the concept within the current theoretical design is a different one. One seeks to recapture the old eidetic of nature in the medium of subjectivity.
146. See esp. letters no. 15, 26, and 27 in Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetis- che Erziehung des Menscben in einer Reihe von Briefen, quoted from Friedrich Schiller, Sdmtliche Werke, vol. 5, 4th ed. (Munich, 1967), pp. 614XF. , 65jfF.
147. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago, 1987), p. 116.
148. Freier, "Asthetik und Autonomic" p. 330, distinguishes between the au- tonomy of art, of the artwork, and of the aesthetic, which roughly corresponds to the distinction between the art system, operative programs, and system reflec- tion that we employed above.
149. See Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, p. 464.
150. On the shift from "imitation" to "autonomy" in Kant, see also Werber, Literatur aIs System, pp. 391? . Before Kant, the word autonomy had an exclusively political, or, starting in the Middle Ages, a juridical meaning. Kant displaces the concept onto the subject. This is why Schelling and Schiller can apply the con- cept of autonomy to art, not systematically at first, but with reference to the ge- nius who generates his autonomy and his creativity out of his own nature. Our own use of "autonomy" is not in accordance with the semantics of that time.
151. Jean Paul takes every measure to resist philosophy: for example, parody, or even a return to the principle of imitation (see, e. g. , Clavis Fichtiana seu Leibgeberianaand VorschulederAsthetik).
152. See 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- 9-
153. The problem poses itself in all functional systems, and it often remains debatable--e. g. , for the pedagogical value of pedagogical theory or with refer- ence to the status of legal dogma or legal theory as a (self-acknowledged) source of positive law. Controversies of this sort ultimately depend on institutional and organizational conditions, e. g. , on the role of pedagogy in the education of teachers or on the openness of the legal system to a "law of judical precedence" that is justified by current legal opinion because it cannot be justified innova- tively as a kind of legislation. From theology, one expects a positive, committed relationship to belief, even though the effects of theology do not always corre-
Notes to Pages 281-84
395
spond to this assumption. From the theory of science, one expects a more non- scientific (nonhypothetical, dogmatic) self-relation, and so forth.
154. "1st das Reale aulSer uns: so sind wir ewig geschieden davon; ist es in uns: so sind wirs selber" (Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, p. 445).
155. This is how Earl R. Wasserman, The Subtler Language: Critical Readings ofNeoclassic and Romantic Poems (Baltimore, 1959), interprets the changing de- mands that are placed on the language of lyric poetry from Dryden to Shelley.
156. The question of what reality is in itself is still a matter of dispute. See, e. g. , N. Katherine Hayles, "Constrained Constructivism: Locating Scientific In- quiry in the Theater of Representation," in George Levine, ed. , Realism and Rep- resentation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Literature, and
Culture (Madison, Wis. , 1993), pp. 27-43.
157. This notion, which implies a distance from all variants of postmodern
constructivism, can be demonstrated by a somewhat extensive quotation: "Der Idealismus in jeder Form mu8 auf die eine oder die andre Art aus sich herausge- hen, um in sich zuriickkehren zu konnen und zu bleiben, was er ist. Deswegen mufi und wird sich aus seinem SchoS ein neuer, ebenso grenzenloser Realismus erheben" (Friedrich Schlegel, Gesprdch iiber die Poesie, pp. i6iff. ).
158. As we know from Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cam- bridge, Mass. , 1968).
159. In the sense of Spencer Brown's "law of crossing" {Laws of Form [1969; rpt. New York, 1979], p. 2): "The value of the crossing made again [that is, back across the same boundary, N. L. ] is not the value of the crossing. " The move- ment back and forth asserts the distinction only on condition that it remains the same.
160. On the history of this distinction as a frame of narrative, see Davis, Fac- tual Fictions.
161. Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, p. 88.
162. Ibid. , p. 87.
163. A similar strategy underlies E. T. A. Hoffmann's Elixiere des Teufels--
elements of the story do not really come from the Devil, but the narration gains plausibility by making the reader believe they do.
164. Walter Schulz adopts this guiding metaphor to present die historical sit- uation of the philosophy of art in his Metaphysik des Schwebens: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Asthetik (Pfullingen, 1985).
165. This is the point of Peter Fuchs's interpretation of romanticism in Mod- erne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 79fF.
166. See also Ludwig Tieck, William Lovell, quoted from Fruhe Erzdhlungen und Romane (Munich, n. d. ), p. 603: "Es ist ein Fluch der auf der Sprache des Menschen liegt, da6 keiner den anderen verstehen kann. "
396 Notes to Pages 284-85
167. Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde, in Werke, vol. 2, p. 74.
168. The reflection on writing is foregrounded when not only the author writes and the reader reads but the protagonists in the novel write as well, or when the protagonist, as in Tieck's William LovelL, is accessible only through written testimony (letters). The author can then exploit and ironize, at both lev- els, the typical accessories of the horror novel, while withholding from the reader which one of the protagonist's heterogeneous written testimonies constitutes the true "meaning of the story. " In thefinalanalysis, the "miraculous" and the "sub- lime" appear trivial in that they can be explained biographically. Uncertainty ex- plodes every dimension of a possible hermeneutic search for a deeper meaning. As textual content, writing affirms what one is supposed to think of the fact that even the author is only a writer--a typical effect of a reentry that throws the ob- server into an "unresolvable indeterminacy" (Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, p. 57) and makes him realize that nothing else is intended.
169. See, e. g. , Friedrich Schlegel, "Uber die Philosophic" quoted from Werke, n
vol. 2, pp. 101-29 ( 8)-
170. "Die Schrift hat fur mich ich weifi nicht welchen geheimen Zauber,
vielleicht durch die Dammerung von Ewigkeit, welche sie umschwebt," writes Schlegel (ibid. , p. 104). As an author, Schlegel imagines that life is writing--to paraphrase it in somewhat metaphysical terms.
For another example, see the text, discovered by Jochen Horisch, of the romantic naturalist Johann Wilhelm Rit-
ter: "Die erste und zwar absolute Gleichzeitigkeit (von Wort und Schrift) lag
darin, dafi das Sprachorgan selbst schreibt, um zu sprechen. Nur der Buchstabe spricht, oder besser: Wort und Schrift sind gleich an ihrem Ursprung eines, und keines ohne das andere moglich" (Ritter, Fragmente aw dem Nachlaft eines jun-
gen Physikers--Ein Taschenbuchfur Freunde der Natur, Zweites Bandchen [Hei- delberg, 1810], p. 229, quoted from Jochen Horisch, "Das Sein der Zeichen und
die Zeichen des Seins: Marginalien zu Derrida's Ontosemiologie," in Jacques Derrida, Die Stimme und das Phdnomen: Ein Essay uber das Problem des Zeichens in der Philosophie Husserls [Frankfurt, 1979], p. 14). On romanticism as a culture
of writing, see also Walter J. Ong, Interfaces ofthe Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Ithaca, N. Y. , 1977), pp. 272ff; and Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation, vol. 1, pp. 97ff.
171. E. g. , by August Wilhelm Schlegel.
172. PauldeMan,BlindnessandInsight:EssaysintheRhetoricofContemporary Criticism (1979; 2d ed. Minneapolis, 1983), p. 196. Even before romanticism, however, one occasionally finds the notion that nature is experienced in an ob- servation trained in art. See, e. g. , Denis Diderot's "Essai sur la Peinture," quoted
from CEuvres, Pleiade ed. (Paris, 1951), pp. 1143-1200 (1156): "II semble que nous considerions la nature comme le resultat de l'art. " Decisive here is the shift of the nature/art distinction toward action and experience. This shift avoids the colli- sion between God as creator and the attist as the producer of a single work.
Notes to Pages 285-87
397
173. Especially in early romanticism. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-
Luc Nancy, L'absolu UtteWaire: Theorie de la Littirature du romantisme allemand (Paris, 1978), Introduction.
174. In "Uber Goethes 'Meister,'" Friedrich Schlegel writes of "criticism as a high form of poetry": "dafi sie iiber die Grenzen des sichtbaren Werkes mit Ver- mutungen und Behauptungen hinausgeht. Das mufi alle Kritik, weil jedes vor- treffliche Werk, von welcher Art es auch sei, mehr weifi als es sagt, und mehr will als es weifi," quoted from Schlegel, Werke, vol. 1, p. 154.
175. In contrast to the current discussion in legal theory provoked by Ronald Dworkin. What the romantics called "criticism" becomes now, with the same in- tention, "constructive interpretation," which is supposed to generate the best possible version of the text. See Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge, Mass. , 1986), pp. jif. and throughout; on the same topic, see further David Couzens Hoy, "Dworkin's Constructive Optimism v. Deconstructive Legal Ni- hilism," Law and Philosophy 6 (1987): 321-56. In this way, one arrives despite all scruples at the notion that there must be a single correct decision in current law.
176. "Monotheismus der Vernunft und des Herzens, Polytheismus der Ein- bildungskraft und der Kunst, dies ist's was wir bedurfen," states the "Alteste Sys- temprogramm des deutschen Idealismus" (quoted from Hegel, Werke, vol. 1 [Frankfurt, 1971], pp. 234-36).
177. See August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre, pp. 23ff. (29).
178. This is the topic of Walter Benjamin's dissertation, Der Begriffder Kun- stkritik in der deutschen Romantik (Frankfurt, 1973). However, Benjamin inter- prets the relationship between medium and form (pp. 82f. ) as a continuum, as a transition or intensification rather than as a difference. To be sure, Benjamin cites Friedrich Schlegel s formulation of the "boundaries of the visible work" (pp. 81, 84), beyond which resides the idea of art, but he does not elaborate Schlegel's terminology on his own (p. 52, n. 141).
179. Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, ? 27: "und das Begrenzte ist erhaben, nicht das Begrenzende" (108).
180. E. g. ,inSolger,VorlesungeniiberAsthetik,pp. 125,i99f. SeealsoJeanPaul, Vorschule der Asthetik, ? 48, pp. i48ff, where he argues that one must study the
semblance of seriousness in order to get at the seriousness of appearance. Hence the incompatibility of irony and the comic.
181. See Hans J. Haferkorn, "Zur Enstehung der biirgerlich-literarischen In- telligenz und des Schriftstellers in Deutschland zwischen 1750 und 1800," in
Bernd Lutz, ed. , Literaturwissenscha. fi und Sozialwissenschaften 3: Deutsches Biirg- ertum undLiterarischeIntelligenz 1750-1800 (Stuttgart, 1974), pp. 113-275; Giesen and Junge, "Vom Patriotismus zum Nationalismus. "
182. August Wlhelm Schlegel suggests that and how one can dispense with the Idea: "Das Schone ist eine symbolische Darstellung des Unendlichen" (Die Kunstlehre, p. 81).
398 Notes to Pages 287-pi
183. The theme of a change of identity, e. g. , in the sexual relationship between brother and sister, was common before romanticism, and it becomes evident that this is a literary topic that presupposes writing. For evidence from the Italian Re- naissance, see Graziella Pagliano, "Sociologia e letteratura, owero storie di fratelli e sorelle," Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia 35 (1994): 151-62.
184. See, e. g. , Hoffmann, Ritter Gluck, quoted from E. T. A. Hoffmann,
Musikalische Novellen und Schriften, ed. Richard Miinnich (Weimar, 1961), pp.
35-55-
185. Friedrich Schlegel, "Uber Lessing," quoted from Werke, vol. 1, pp. 103-35
(123).
186. Novalis, Fragmente II, no. 2167, quoted from Werke/Briefe Dokurnente,
ed. Ewald Wasmuth, vol. 3 (Heidelberg, 1957) (numbers follow this edition). 187. A formulation pertaining to postmodern architecture can already be ap- plied to romanticism: "Whereas a mythology was given to die artist in the past by tradition and by patron, in the postmodern world it is chosen and invented" (Charles Jencks, "Postmodern vs. Late-Modern," in Ingeborg Hoesterey, ed. ,
Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist Controversy [Bloomington, Ind. , 1991], pp. 4-21 [9]).
188. On the misrecognition of the functional differentiation of the social sys-
tem, which is already widely established, see Klaus Disselbeck, Geschmack und
Kunst: Eine systemtheoretische Untersuchung zu Schillers Briefen "Uber die asthetis- che Erziehung des Menschen" (Opladen, 1987).
189. See, e. g. , Ludwig Tieck's novella Das ZauberschloJ? (ifyo).
190. Foranoverview,seeDavidRoberts,ArtandEnlightenment:AestheticThe- ory after Adorno (Lincoln, Nebr. , 1991). See also Christoph Menke-Eggers, Die Souveranitdt der Kunst: Asthetische Erfahrung nach Adorno und Derrida (Frank- fart, 1988).
191. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkldrung (1947), quoted from Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Frank- furt, 1981).
192. This could be demonstrated by a more detailed analysis of new forms of "fantastic" art. A wealth of materials can be found in Christian W. Thomsen and Jens Make Fischer, eds. , Phantastik in Literatur und Kunst, 2d ed. (Darm- stadt, 1985). See also Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic (Ithaca, N. Y. , 1973). To- dorov's answer is diat the fantastic renders the issue of supernatural influences undecidable (! ).
193. See Stephane Mallarme's famous "Un coup de des jamais n abolira le haz- ard," Preface, quoted from CEuvres completes, Pleiade ed. (Paris, 1945), pp. 453-- 77: "Les 'blancs,' en effet, assument l'importance, frappent d'abord; la versifica- tion en exigea" (453).
194. These are Heidegger's words. See "Der Ursrprung des Kunstwerks," in Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt, 1950), pp. 7-68 (jif. ).
Notes to Pages 292-95
399
195. We might speculate whether negating every tie to the past amounts to negating any decidable future; after all, the future presupposes something from which it distinguishes itself.
196. See Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie, in Adorno, Gesammelte Schrifien, vol. 7 (Frankfurt, 1970).
197. See Chapter 2, section I, above.
198. Umberto Eco, Opera aperta (1962; 6th ed. Milan, 1988), p. 177, maintains that even an open work must be recognizable as a work. But other factors must limit die continuation of a work. A piano piece by Stockhausen can be re- arranged in various ways, but one cannot continue it by singing "Lilli Marleen. "
199. On the notion of an "outside of the calculus of forms," see Elena Espos- ito, "Ein zweiwertiger nicht-selbststandiger Kalkul," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Kalkul derForm (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 96-m.
200. Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, p. 57.
201. For further considerations of this matter, see Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, Mass. ,
1983).
202. This can be accomplished from above or from below, by offering a mas-
sive amount of erudition that has become unintelligible or by speaking the slang of the lower classes (Burroughs, Pasolini), which makes sense only to those who are not addressed as readers.
203. That this case can be subsumed under the concept of autonomy has been disputed, e. g. , by Wolfgang Welsch, "Ubergange," Selbstorganisation 4 (1993): 11- 15. But Welsch seems to restrict autonomy to the resistance against external reg- imentation and infringement, and today this is certainly no longer a problem. However, it is unclear how the search for transitions, for contact with "life" or, finally, the assault on the distinction between art and nonart could be made in- telligible, if not in terms of an autonomous action.
204. See. Werner Hofmann, Die Kunst, die Kunst zu verkrnen (Vienna, 1993). 205. Ibid. , p. 47.
206. Here, the differentiation of the art system is especially blatant if one con-
siders the potential reaction were one to attempt to make such works accessible to people who live in the dumps and are forced to build dwellings from trash.
207. See Karl-Heinrich Bette, Theorie als Herausforderung: Beitrage zur sys- temtheoretischen Reflexion der Sportwissenschaft (Aachen, 1992), pp. 6off.
208. See Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison, and Mel Ramsden (with refer- ence to T. J. Clark), "On Conceptual Art and Painting, and Speaking, and See- ing," Art-Language ns. 1 (1994): 30-69 (45).
209. On such "signal systems," see Raymond Williams, The Sociology ofCul- ture (New York, 1982), pp. i3of.
210. One of the formulas for this technique is "a painting which is not to be seen" (Baldwin et al.
Notes to Pages 276-78
393
indicate the emphasis on an ultimately irrational expertise in artistic matters that is uncorrupted by interests.
132. See William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, written with a view of fixing thefluctuating Ideas of Taste (London, 1773; Oxford, 1955).
133. According to Herder's formulation in his Ersten Kritischen Wdldchen, in Herders Samtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1878), p. 7.
134. See, e. g. , Gonthier-Louis Fink, "Das Bild des Nachbarvolkes im Spiegel der deutschen und franzosischen Hochaufklarung (1750-1789)," in Giesen, ed. , Nationale und kulturelle Identitat, pp. 453-92; see further Bernhard Giesen and Kay Junge, "Vom Patriotismus zum Nationalismus: Zur Evolution der 'Deutschen Kulturnation,'" in ibid. , pp. 255-303. Apart from that, let us recall our remarks on the emergence of a new concept of "culture" (Chapter 3, section VII, and Chapter 6, section I, above).
135. Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, pp. 41". , 24.
136. Ibid. , esp. pp. 23ff. We find a similar critique from the perspective of an- other painter in Coypel, Discoursprononcez, pp. 3off.
137. According to Kant, the judgment of taste is "ein Urteil in Beziehung auf die Geselligkeit, sofern sie auf empirischen Regeln beruht" (Kritik der Urteils- kraft, ? 7). See also Kant's "Reflexionen zur Anthropologic" no. 743, from his posthumous writings {Akademie-Ausgabe, vol. 15. 1 [Berlin, 1923], p. 327), where Kant clearly distinguishes between sociability and objectivity.
138. See Peter Leberecht, Pt. 2, Chap. 4, quoted from Ludwig Tieck, Fruhe Erzdhlungen und Romane (Munich, n. d. ).
139. See Karl Wilhelm Solger, Vorlesungen iiber Asthetik, ed. Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (Leipzig, 1829; rpt. Darmstadt, 1973).
140. See Alfred Baeumler's classic monograph Das Irrationalitatsproblem in der Asthetik und Logik des 18. fahrhunderts bis zur Kritik der Urteilskraft (Darm- stadt, 1967).
141. See Baumgarten, Aesthetica. It has frequently been pointed out that the name "aesthetics," while it makes sense in view of this transitional period, is in truth inappropriate for a theory of art; however, once the terminology was in- troduced, it remained. See, e. g. , Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Fragmente, no. 40, quoted from Werke, vol. 1, p. 170, or the beginning of Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik, quoted from Werke, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 13.
142. In his introductory remarks to the Aesthetica, Baumgarten repeatedly in- sists on cognition--"Aesthetica (theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulchre cogitandi, ars analogia rationis) est scientia cognitionis sensitivae" (? 1)--which creates the impression of an exclusion. What is to be excluded is the inquiry into the unity of the distinction that underlies all "aesthetic" obser- vations. What must be excluded is paradox.
143. Hans Freier, "Asthetik und Autonomic: Ein Beitrag zur idealistischen
394
Notes to Pages 2/8-80
Entfremdungskritik," in Bernd Lutz, ed. , Deutsches Biirgertwn und literarische Intelligenz ijp-1800 (Stuttgart, 1974), pp. 32. 9-83 (339).
144. Karl Philipp Moritz, "Uber die bildende Nachahmung des Schonen,"
in Schriften zur Asthetik und Poetik, in Kritische Ausgabe (Tubingen, 1962), pp. 63-93 (78).
145. We take the precaution of pointing out that in this theoretical context, "Idea" no longer corresponds to the Platonic idea. The function of the concept within the current theoretical design is a different one. One seeks to recapture the old eidetic of nature in the medium of subjectivity.
146. See esp. letters no. 15, 26, and 27 in Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetis- che Erziehung des Menscben in einer Reihe von Briefen, quoted from Friedrich Schiller, Sdmtliche Werke, vol. 5, 4th ed. (Munich, 1967), pp. 614XF. , 65jfF.
147. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago, 1987), p. 116.
148. Freier, "Asthetik und Autonomic" p. 330, distinguishes between the au- tonomy of art, of the artwork, and of the aesthetic, which roughly corresponds to the distinction between the art system, operative programs, and system reflec- tion that we employed above.
149. See Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, p. 464.
150. On the shift from "imitation" to "autonomy" in Kant, see also Werber, Literatur aIs System, pp. 391? . Before Kant, the word autonomy had an exclusively political, or, starting in the Middle Ages, a juridical meaning. Kant displaces the concept onto the subject. This is why Schelling and Schiller can apply the con- cept of autonomy to art, not systematically at first, but with reference to the ge- nius who generates his autonomy and his creativity out of his own nature. Our own use of "autonomy" is not in accordance with the semantics of that time.
151. Jean Paul takes every measure to resist philosophy: for example, parody, or even a return to the principle of imitation (see, e. g. , Clavis Fichtiana seu Leibgeberianaand VorschulederAsthetik).
152. See 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- 9-
153. The problem poses itself in all functional systems, and it often remains debatable--e. g. , for the pedagogical value of pedagogical theory or with refer- ence to the status of legal dogma or legal theory as a (self-acknowledged) source of positive law. Controversies of this sort ultimately depend on institutional and organizational conditions, e. g. , on the role of pedagogy in the education of teachers or on the openness of the legal system to a "law of judical precedence" that is justified by current legal opinion because it cannot be justified innova- tively as a kind of legislation. From theology, one expects a positive, committed relationship to belief, even though the effects of theology do not always corre-
Notes to Pages 281-84
395
spond to this assumption. From the theory of science, one expects a more non- scientific (nonhypothetical, dogmatic) self-relation, and so forth.
154. "1st das Reale aulSer uns: so sind wir ewig geschieden davon; ist es in uns: so sind wirs selber" (Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, p. 445).
155. This is how Earl R. Wasserman, The Subtler Language: Critical Readings ofNeoclassic and Romantic Poems (Baltimore, 1959), interprets the changing de- mands that are placed on the language of lyric poetry from Dryden to Shelley.
156. The question of what reality is in itself is still a matter of dispute. See, e. g. , N. Katherine Hayles, "Constrained Constructivism: Locating Scientific In- quiry in the Theater of Representation," in George Levine, ed. , Realism and Rep- resentation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to Science, Literature, and
Culture (Madison, Wis. , 1993), pp. 27-43.
157. This notion, which implies a distance from all variants of postmodern
constructivism, can be demonstrated by a somewhat extensive quotation: "Der Idealismus in jeder Form mu8 auf die eine oder die andre Art aus sich herausge- hen, um in sich zuriickkehren zu konnen und zu bleiben, was er ist. Deswegen mufi und wird sich aus seinem SchoS ein neuer, ebenso grenzenloser Realismus erheben" (Friedrich Schlegel, Gesprdch iiber die Poesie, pp. i6iff. ).
158. As we know from Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cam- bridge, Mass. , 1968).
159. In the sense of Spencer Brown's "law of crossing" {Laws of Form [1969; rpt. New York, 1979], p. 2): "The value of the crossing made again [that is, back across the same boundary, N. L. ] is not the value of the crossing. " The move- ment back and forth asserts the distinction only on condition that it remains the same.
160. On the history of this distinction as a frame of narrative, see Davis, Fac- tual Fictions.
161. Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, p. 88.
162. Ibid. , p. 87.
163. A similar strategy underlies E. T. A. Hoffmann's Elixiere des Teufels--
elements of the story do not really come from the Devil, but the narration gains plausibility by making the reader believe they do.
164. Walter Schulz adopts this guiding metaphor to present die historical sit- uation of the philosophy of art in his Metaphysik des Schwebens: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Asthetik (Pfullingen, 1985).
165. This is the point of Peter Fuchs's interpretation of romanticism in Mod- erne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 79fF.
166. See also Ludwig Tieck, William Lovell, quoted from Fruhe Erzdhlungen und Romane (Munich, n. d. ), p. 603: "Es ist ein Fluch der auf der Sprache des Menschen liegt, da6 keiner den anderen verstehen kann. "
396 Notes to Pages 284-85
167. Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde, in Werke, vol. 2, p. 74.
168. The reflection on writing is foregrounded when not only the author writes and the reader reads but the protagonists in the novel write as well, or when the protagonist, as in Tieck's William LovelL, is accessible only through written testimony (letters). The author can then exploit and ironize, at both lev- els, the typical accessories of the horror novel, while withholding from the reader which one of the protagonist's heterogeneous written testimonies constitutes the true "meaning of the story. " In thefinalanalysis, the "miraculous" and the "sub- lime" appear trivial in that they can be explained biographically. Uncertainty ex- plodes every dimension of a possible hermeneutic search for a deeper meaning. As textual content, writing affirms what one is supposed to think of the fact that even the author is only a writer--a typical effect of a reentry that throws the ob- server into an "unresolvable indeterminacy" (Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, p. 57) and makes him realize that nothing else is intended.
169. See, e. g. , Friedrich Schlegel, "Uber die Philosophic" quoted from Werke, n
vol. 2, pp. 101-29 ( 8)-
170. "Die Schrift hat fur mich ich weifi nicht welchen geheimen Zauber,
vielleicht durch die Dammerung von Ewigkeit, welche sie umschwebt," writes Schlegel (ibid. , p. 104). As an author, Schlegel imagines that life is writing--to paraphrase it in somewhat metaphysical terms.
For another example, see the text, discovered by Jochen Horisch, of the romantic naturalist Johann Wilhelm Rit-
ter: "Die erste und zwar absolute Gleichzeitigkeit (von Wort und Schrift) lag
darin, dafi das Sprachorgan selbst schreibt, um zu sprechen. Nur der Buchstabe spricht, oder besser: Wort und Schrift sind gleich an ihrem Ursprung eines, und keines ohne das andere moglich" (Ritter, Fragmente aw dem Nachlaft eines jun-
gen Physikers--Ein Taschenbuchfur Freunde der Natur, Zweites Bandchen [Hei- delberg, 1810], p. 229, quoted from Jochen Horisch, "Das Sein der Zeichen und
die Zeichen des Seins: Marginalien zu Derrida's Ontosemiologie," in Jacques Derrida, Die Stimme und das Phdnomen: Ein Essay uber das Problem des Zeichens in der Philosophie Husserls [Frankfurt, 1979], p. 14). On romanticism as a culture
of writing, see also Walter J. Ong, Interfaces ofthe Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Ithaca, N. Y. , 1977), pp. 272ff; and Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation, vol. 1, pp. 97ff.
171. E. g. , by August Wilhelm Schlegel.
172. PauldeMan,BlindnessandInsight:EssaysintheRhetoricofContemporary Criticism (1979; 2d ed. Minneapolis, 1983), p. 196. Even before romanticism, however, one occasionally finds the notion that nature is experienced in an ob- servation trained in art. See, e. g. , Denis Diderot's "Essai sur la Peinture," quoted
from CEuvres, Pleiade ed. (Paris, 1951), pp. 1143-1200 (1156): "II semble que nous considerions la nature comme le resultat de l'art. " Decisive here is the shift of the nature/art distinction toward action and experience. This shift avoids the colli- sion between God as creator and the attist as the producer of a single work.
Notes to Pages 285-87
397
173. Especially in early romanticism. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-
Luc Nancy, L'absolu UtteWaire: Theorie de la Littirature du romantisme allemand (Paris, 1978), Introduction.
174. In "Uber Goethes 'Meister,'" Friedrich Schlegel writes of "criticism as a high form of poetry": "dafi sie iiber die Grenzen des sichtbaren Werkes mit Ver- mutungen und Behauptungen hinausgeht. Das mufi alle Kritik, weil jedes vor- treffliche Werk, von welcher Art es auch sei, mehr weifi als es sagt, und mehr will als es weifi," quoted from Schlegel, Werke, vol. 1, p. 154.
175. In contrast to the current discussion in legal theory provoked by Ronald Dworkin. What the romantics called "criticism" becomes now, with the same in- tention, "constructive interpretation," which is supposed to generate the best possible version of the text. See Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge, Mass. , 1986), pp. jif. and throughout; on the same topic, see further David Couzens Hoy, "Dworkin's Constructive Optimism v. Deconstructive Legal Ni- hilism," Law and Philosophy 6 (1987): 321-56. In this way, one arrives despite all scruples at the notion that there must be a single correct decision in current law.
176. "Monotheismus der Vernunft und des Herzens, Polytheismus der Ein- bildungskraft und der Kunst, dies ist's was wir bedurfen," states the "Alteste Sys- temprogramm des deutschen Idealismus" (quoted from Hegel, Werke, vol. 1 [Frankfurt, 1971], pp. 234-36).
177. See August Wilhelm Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre, pp. 23ff. (29).
178. This is the topic of Walter Benjamin's dissertation, Der Begriffder Kun- stkritik in der deutschen Romantik (Frankfurt, 1973). However, Benjamin inter- prets the relationship between medium and form (pp. 82f. ) as a continuum, as a transition or intensification rather than as a difference. To be sure, Benjamin cites Friedrich Schlegel s formulation of the "boundaries of the visible work" (pp. 81, 84), beyond which resides the idea of art, but he does not elaborate Schlegel's terminology on his own (p. 52, n. 141).
179. Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, ? 27: "und das Begrenzte ist erhaben, nicht das Begrenzende" (108).
180. E. g. ,inSolger,VorlesungeniiberAsthetik,pp. 125,i99f. SeealsoJeanPaul, Vorschule der Asthetik, ? 48, pp. i48ff, where he argues that one must study the
semblance of seriousness in order to get at the seriousness of appearance. Hence the incompatibility of irony and the comic.
181. See Hans J. Haferkorn, "Zur Enstehung der biirgerlich-literarischen In- telligenz und des Schriftstellers in Deutschland zwischen 1750 und 1800," in
Bernd Lutz, ed. , Literaturwissenscha. fi und Sozialwissenschaften 3: Deutsches Biirg- ertum undLiterarischeIntelligenz 1750-1800 (Stuttgart, 1974), pp. 113-275; Giesen and Junge, "Vom Patriotismus zum Nationalismus. "
182. August Wlhelm Schlegel suggests that and how one can dispense with the Idea: "Das Schone ist eine symbolische Darstellung des Unendlichen" (Die Kunstlehre, p. 81).
398 Notes to Pages 287-pi
183. The theme of a change of identity, e. g. , in the sexual relationship between brother and sister, was common before romanticism, and it becomes evident that this is a literary topic that presupposes writing. For evidence from the Italian Re- naissance, see Graziella Pagliano, "Sociologia e letteratura, owero storie di fratelli e sorelle," Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia 35 (1994): 151-62.
184. See, e. g. , Hoffmann, Ritter Gluck, quoted from E. T. A. Hoffmann,
Musikalische Novellen und Schriften, ed. Richard Miinnich (Weimar, 1961), pp.
35-55-
185. Friedrich Schlegel, "Uber Lessing," quoted from Werke, vol. 1, pp. 103-35
(123).
186. Novalis, Fragmente II, no. 2167, quoted from Werke/Briefe Dokurnente,
ed. Ewald Wasmuth, vol. 3 (Heidelberg, 1957) (numbers follow this edition). 187. A formulation pertaining to postmodern architecture can already be ap- plied to romanticism: "Whereas a mythology was given to die artist in the past by tradition and by patron, in the postmodern world it is chosen and invented" (Charles Jencks, "Postmodern vs. Late-Modern," in Ingeborg Hoesterey, ed. ,
Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist Controversy [Bloomington, Ind. , 1991], pp. 4-21 [9]).
188. On the misrecognition of the functional differentiation of the social sys-
tem, which is already widely established, see Klaus Disselbeck, Geschmack und
Kunst: Eine systemtheoretische Untersuchung zu Schillers Briefen "Uber die asthetis- che Erziehung des Menschen" (Opladen, 1987).
189. See, e. g. , Ludwig Tieck's novella Das ZauberschloJ? (ifyo).
190. Foranoverview,seeDavidRoberts,ArtandEnlightenment:AestheticThe- ory after Adorno (Lincoln, Nebr. , 1991). See also Christoph Menke-Eggers, Die Souveranitdt der Kunst: Asthetische Erfahrung nach Adorno und Derrida (Frank- fart, 1988).
191. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufkldrung (1947), quoted from Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Frank- furt, 1981).
192. This could be demonstrated by a more detailed analysis of new forms of "fantastic" art. A wealth of materials can be found in Christian W. Thomsen and Jens Make Fischer, eds. , Phantastik in Literatur und Kunst, 2d ed. (Darm- stadt, 1985). See also Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic (Ithaca, N. Y. , 1973). To- dorov's answer is diat the fantastic renders the issue of supernatural influences undecidable (! ).
193. See Stephane Mallarme's famous "Un coup de des jamais n abolira le haz- ard," Preface, quoted from CEuvres completes, Pleiade ed. (Paris, 1945), pp. 453-- 77: "Les 'blancs,' en effet, assument l'importance, frappent d'abord; la versifica- tion en exigea" (453).
194. These are Heidegger's words. See "Der Ursrprung des Kunstwerks," in Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt, 1950), pp. 7-68 (jif. ).
Notes to Pages 292-95
399
195. We might speculate whether negating every tie to the past amounts to negating any decidable future; after all, the future presupposes something from which it distinguishes itself.
196. See Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie, in Adorno, Gesammelte Schrifien, vol. 7 (Frankfurt, 1970).
197. See Chapter 2, section I, above.
198. Umberto Eco, Opera aperta (1962; 6th ed. Milan, 1988), p. 177, maintains that even an open work must be recognizable as a work. But other factors must limit die continuation of a work. A piano piece by Stockhausen can be re- arranged in various ways, but one cannot continue it by singing "Lilli Marleen. "
199. On the notion of an "outside of the calculus of forms," see Elena Espos- ito, "Ein zweiwertiger nicht-selbststandiger Kalkul," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Kalkul derForm (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 96-m.
200. Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, p. 57.
201. For further considerations of this matter, see Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, Mass. ,
1983).
202. This can be accomplished from above or from below, by offering a mas-
sive amount of erudition that has become unintelligible or by speaking the slang of the lower classes (Burroughs, Pasolini), which makes sense only to those who are not addressed as readers.
203. That this case can be subsumed under the concept of autonomy has been disputed, e. g. , by Wolfgang Welsch, "Ubergange," Selbstorganisation 4 (1993): 11- 15. But Welsch seems to restrict autonomy to the resistance against external reg- imentation and infringement, and today this is certainly no longer a problem. However, it is unclear how the search for transitions, for contact with "life" or, finally, the assault on the distinction between art and nonart could be made in- telligible, if not in terms of an autonomous action.
204. See. Werner Hofmann, Die Kunst, die Kunst zu verkrnen (Vienna, 1993). 205. Ibid. , p. 47.
206. Here, the differentiation of the art system is especially blatant if one con-
siders the potential reaction were one to attempt to make such works accessible to people who live in the dumps and are forced to build dwellings from trash.
207. See Karl-Heinrich Bette, Theorie als Herausforderung: Beitrage zur sys- temtheoretischen Reflexion der Sportwissenschaft (Aachen, 1992), pp. 6off.
208. See Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison, and Mel Ramsden (with refer- ence to T. J. Clark), "On Conceptual Art and Painting, and Speaking, and See- ing," Art-Language ns. 1 (1994): 30-69 (45).
209. On such "signal systems," see Raymond Williams, The Sociology ofCul- ture (New York, 1982), pp. i3of.
210. One of the formulas for this technique is "a painting which is not to be seen" (Baldwin et al.
