Symbolic Articulation: Image, Word, and Body between Action and Schema 9783110560756, 9783110558128

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Preface
Original Gestures
Early Forms of Articulation
Articulating Gestures
Language and Image as Gesture and Articulation
Articulating Processes
The Writerly Attitude
Habit and the Symbolic Process
Articulating Embodied Reasons
Schemata in Action
Symbolic Articulation in Ancient Greece
Ancient Articulation?
Blotches as Symbolic Articulation
Picture Credits

Citation preview

Symbolic Articulation

4 Image Wo rd Action

Imag0 Sermo Actio

Bild Wort Aktion

Editors Horst Bredekamp, David Freedberg, Marion Lauschke, Sabine Marienberg, and Jürgen Trabant

Symbolic Articulation Image, Word, and the Body Between Action and Schema Edited by Sabine Marienberg

This publication was financed by VolkswagenStiftung, Hannover.

ISBN 978-3-11-055812-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-056075-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055890-6 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. © 2017 Walter De Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Hands, Cave of El Castillo, airbrush, about 40,000 years old. Series Managing Editor: Marion Lauschke Series design: Petra Florath, Berlin Printing and bindung: Hubert & Co. GmbH Co. KG, Göttingen Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents

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Horst Bredekamp, Sabine Marienberg, and Jürgen Trabant Preface

Original Gestures   3 Horst Bredekamp Early Forms of Articulation   31

Sabine Marienberg Articulating Gestures

  47

Jürgen Trabant Language and Image as Gesture and Articulation

Articulating Processes   73 Alva Noë The Writerly Attitude   89

Tullio Viola Habit and the Symbolic Process

109 Matthias Jung Articulating Embodied Reasons

Schemata in Action 131

Maria Luisa Catoni Symbolicic Articulation in Ancient Greece Word, Schema, and Image

153

Anja Pawel Ancient Articulation? Antique Schemata in Modern Art and Dance

173

Yannis Hadjinicolaou Blotches as Symbolic Articulation

205

Picture Credits

Preface

The present publication takes a stand against a particular form of barbarization portrayed by Giambattista Vico in his Scienza Nuova not as the product of a relapse into pre-civilized conditions, but rather as the unworldly overcultivation of concepts that have become empty in highly developed cultures. The tribute to be paid for this form of barbarous sophistication (barbarie della riflessione) is not just banishment of the poetic and lifeful character of language but also detachment from the palpable carriers that convey it: the body, the senses, the gestures, and the world of artefacts, whose repercussive effects on their creators are beyond their control. All these concerns implicitly reverberate in debates on the image act as a specification of the agens inherent to the forms of the man-made world, as well as in the notion of bodily knowledge as a field of embodiment philosophy in its own right. In both realms, the term “articulation” is of central importance and at the same time has a significance of its own. It denotes the manifestation of meaning in a material that is formed and organized according to its own articulatory rules. This designation could be attributed to language alone and, within the realm of language, just to the speech sounds and letters that, as phonetic articulations, constitute the foundation of thinking. But the miraculous rise of meaning (Merleau-Ponty) also takes place beyond the phenomenon of the “double articulation” of language. Articulations are differentiating acts that, despite their schematizing potential, remain subject to the constraints of the material in which they are realized. In this sense, articulation is incompatible with any kind of dualism in which the relation between mind and matter, brain and body, individual and environment must be mediated by a third party. This in no way means harking back to a holism in which everything is related to everything. Rather, it lies in the nature of articulation, as a constant differentiation between the thinker and what is thought (Humboldt), that the components of a practically inseparable coalescence become theoretically recognizable and hence determinable. In this respect, articulation provides a form of specification

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that systematically applies to all fields of speech, writing, gesture, dance, images, artefacts, and their mutual resonances. This redefinition of the concept of articulation seeks to pursue a line of articulatory thinking that, more in the vein of a systematic exploration than of an indepth historical study, stretches from Vico, Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Charles Sanders Peirce, Ernst Cassirer, Aby Warburg and Edgar Wind to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. What unites them is a transitory understanding of symbolic forms that takes into account the energies of the interplay between body and thought, as well as its reciprocal relation to all forms of Gestaltung and reality. For Humboldt, language was the activity of the distanced Eros, thus articulation within a highly energetic framework; for Peirce, it was the sketching hand that enabled him to conceive a form of articulation that links philosophy, geometry, the visual arts, and psychoanalysis to the motricity of the articulating body. Lastly, it was indeed Merleau-Ponty who most comprehensively reflected on the processes that transform an indistinct horizon into an objectively articulated world, desire into love, movements into gestures, and sound gestures into language – and thus anchored the articulatory process of humanization in the origins of its forms. The contributions presented here are the outcome of three years of discussion during which the research group “Symbolic Articulation,” based at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, investigated the differences and similarities between image and language as the two fundamental symbolic means of articulation. Our starting point of the “friendship between language and image,” with all its cooperative and competitive implications, was accepted as a fait accompli, and the concept of paragone, one of the strongest themes in art philosophy, was enlarged to foster the idea of language and image as fellow campaigners. They differ in their specific forms of articulation but both nonetheless embrace an overarching process that encompasses bodily performance, pre-symbolic actions, and the autonomous interplay of forms, as well as symbolic reference and explicit reasoning. On the basis of these assumptions, articulation was explored on both sides of the symbolic threshold that now no longer seems to be conclusively determinable. A pivotal notion that allowed us to grasp its continuous shifting was the one of gesture. Gesture is doubly operative: It surpasses the gap between image and language thanks to their common trait of movement, and it overcomes the dualism of mind and matter thanks to its synthetic nature. Gesturality is also the very hallmark of the earliest forms of symbolic articulations and thus questions the traditional dividing line between nature and culture. The provocative claim that a “writerly attitude” (Noë), understood as an inner image of what we do while speaking, painting, or dancing, continuously shapes the course of these activities proved to be no less illuminating: It reveals the image as being operative within language itself and at the same time mediates between the verbal and the visual. “Writerly” schemata, whose

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formative potential makes them comparable to body schemata, not only ground articulation in implicit orientations, like body schemata do, but also effectively allow for corrective calibrations to be made on the fly. This sketch of the results of our research cannot fully reflect the intensity of the dialogue within the group. It was, of course, fascinating and a great intellectual adventure to deal, as we did, with Vico, Humboldt, Cassirer, Warburg, Wind, Peirce, Merleau-Ponty, and others. But the highlights of our common endeavor were the discussions of our own papers, a somewhat painful exercise, which was however rewarded by the broad-mindedness, intellectual openness and curiosity of the members of the group. Furthermore, it was also very inspiring to be able to present preliminary versions of the present chapters to the public at the Warburg Institute in London, to which we feel particularly close. This opportunity for wider discussion contributed towards the consolidation and clarification of the texts. Indeed, the Warburgian architectural levels of Image, Word, Orientation, and Action are clearly present throughout this book – and they are also clearly challenged: We cannot allocate different places to Image and Word, as in the Warburg Institute Library that houses its collections on Image, Word, Orientation, and Action on different floors. For us, they are unequal twins that occupy the same floor, and philosophical orientation leads us to the very heart of research, into the action – actus, energeia, Tätigkeit – of the human being and the living human body. Our project has been generously supported by the Volkswagen Foundation since 2014. Conducting joint research in a group consisting of members from the diverse fields of archeology and ancient philosophy, art history, language history and theory, and philosophy sometimes means taking the hard path of having to learn from scratch. But at the same time it engenders the joy of partaking in an intellectual movement that individual research does not inspire. We are very grateful for this experience – and we also wish to express our gratitude to Vera Szöllösi-Brenig, who followed and advocated the work of the project in a sympathetically constructive way. As with every book, this one would not have been possible without the help of many people. We express our heartfelt thanks to Mary Copple, Inga Nevermann-Ballandis, Christina Oberstebrink, and Ian Pepper for their invaluable help with translations, corrections of the English texts, and editorial work. And many thanks also go to our student assistants Hanna Fiegenbaum, Amelie Ochs, Frederik Wellmann, and Friederike Wode, whose commitment to the tedious part of editing was a pleasure to share. Horst Bredekamp, Sabine Marienberg, and Jürgen Trabant

Original Gestures

Horst Bredekamp

Early Forms of Articulation

1. The Articulated and the Unarticulated The enigma of articulation is as insoluble as the mystery of language. It is mired in the question of origins. Up to now, no one has pinpointed the emergence of the capacity for speech, the capacity to communicate a coherent message, in a plausible way. The same is true for the capacity to express – to articulate – an utterance of life in a structured statement. In accordance with Emil Heinrich DuBois-Reymond’s ignorabimus, there is little reason to expect one to emerge in the future.1 It is, however, worth considering the possibility that the way in which the question has been posed may itself be responsible for the absence of an explanation. The search for an origin proceeds from the assumption that a situation once obtained to which the question would have applied: language, like articulation in the wider sense, is held to have emerged out of its own nonexistence. This line of thought follows the notion of an act of creation from nothingness, a creatio ex nihilo.2 The basic approach is consequently dualistic. As in the opposition between zero and one, black and white, good and evil, the question of the origins of articulation arises from the notion that it was preceded by a condition from which this element was absent, one in which speechlessness and inarticulacy prevailed. If, however, articulateness did not simply succeed inarticulacy, if instead both are held to have existed together as interdependent entities from the very beginning, then the question of origins is shifted into a zone of development within which the two are perceived as a unity in spite of their disparate characteristics. That such a conjecture is not unjustified is shown by a circumstance that echoes 1 2

Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond: Über die Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis, Leipzig 1872, p. 33. Gerhard May: Schöpfung aus dem Nichts. Die Entstehung der Lehre von der Creatio ex Nihilo, Berlin/New York 1978.

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back onto a starting point of this kind. This circumstance is the following: the more differentiated the forms in which articulation presents itself, the more strongly they strive to return to the elementary power of the inarticulate – that which Jean-Jacques Rousseau strove to grasp as the cri de la nature (cry of nature).3 And the rougher the form of expression, the more determinative the desire to order it constructively, and to shape it artistically. The yearning of the articulate and the inarticulate to interact reciprocally clarifies their incessant, continually renewed, disparate unity.4 Franz Kafka gave this an immortal formulation in the character of Josefine, concerning whom there is uncertainty about whether she is producing articulate song or instead only whistling.5 The same basic tension holds also for the extremes of the origins and terminus of all languages. Regarding the origins of language, Johann Gottfried Herder has provided a captivating watchword. In his discussion of the origins of language, which dates from 1772, Herder invokes the sheep as an animal that – in contradistinction to the wolf or the lion – at least initially provokes no instinctive response from humans. It is simply there, and that is that; it elicits no defense and no skittishness: “Nothing impels him to draw closer to it.”6 In this regard, it is an image: “Let that lamb pass before him as an image.” It is nothing other than itself, its existence has no effect on our instincts: “White, soft, woolly …” Through the sound made by the animal, however, the human being identifies a “characteristic mark”: “The sheep bleats!” Through its sound, more strongly than through sight or touch, the sheep reveals itself, and when it returns, and is seen and touched by a human, it bleats again.7 At this moment, its nature has been recognized. Through the repetition of the sound and the link between the bleating and the animal’s reappearance, the

3

4 5

6

7

Markus Wilczek: Das Artikulierte und das Inartikulierte. Eine Archäologie strukturalistischen Denkens, Berlin/Boston 2012, pp. 207 and 224, with reference to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: L’Anti-Oedipe, Paris 1972, p. 15. Cf. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Essai sur l’origine des langues [1781], ed. by Charles Porset, Paris 1981. Fundamental here is Wilczek: Das Artikulierte und das Inartikulierte (as fn. 3). Franz Kafka: Josefine the Singer, or the Mouse People, in: id.: Metamorphosis and Other Stories, newly translated and with an introduction by Michael Hofmann, London/New York 2007, pp. 264–284. Cf. Martin Roussel: Artikulation und Morphomata. Ein Vorwort, in: id./ Stefan Niklas (eds.): Formen der Artikulation. Philosophische Beiträge zu einem kulturwissenschaftlichen Grundbegriff, Munich 2013, pp. 7–13, pp. 7ff.; cf. Jürgen Trabant: Was ist Sprache?, Munich 2008, pp. 29–31, which refers to the groaning of Kundry in Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, which remains on the level of human expression only through the articulation of a single word: dienen (to serve). Johann Gottfried Herder: Treatise on the Origins of Language, in: id.: Philosophical Writings, ed. by Michael N. Forster, Cambridge, MA 2002, pp. 65–166, p. 88 (trans. modified by Ian Pepper). Ibid.

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sheep shows itself as a sheep, because through its call, it has found a way into the soul of its human counterpart. Emerging through the interplay of perceived image, touched body, and in particular the repeated call is an articulation composed of various elements which speaks to the soul. Through the interplay of image, body, and inarticulate sound, the latter generating a connection between all three elements via repetition, Herder defines the beginnings of language. This genesis avoids every reductive search for an origin, one that leads to nothing but nothingness. Instead, it attests to the beginning as the abundance of interconnectedness. The same is true of the opposite pole, the end of all articulation at the moment of the transition toward death. The return of the inarticulate upon entrance into the intermediate sphere between life and death has been formulated in a textual corpus that has not been drawn upon as yet because it appears opposed to philosophical argumentation: the Gospels of the New Testament. Nonetheless, it offers a decisive point of reference. These passages refer to Christ’s departure from life. His final words alternate between a lament over his abandonment (Mt 27, 46 and Mr 15, 34) and the statement of fulfillment (John 19, 30). In Matthew and Mark, these variants between despair and fulfillment are followed by a “loud cry” as an extreme form of the inarticulate: “clamans voce magna” (Mt 27, 50) and “emissa voce magna” (Mr 15, 37). Both forms are united in Luke’s report: Jesus neither whispers nor speaks his final prayer of faith, but instead calls it out loudly. The fact that here the prayer in its most highly charged form of articulation is accompanied by the expressive form of the inarticulate clarifies the renewed reference to crying out loudly (clamans voce magna) as well as to speaking (dicens) (Lk 23, 46).8 Joined together at the end of life are the inarticulate and the articulate – to endow with the weight of lived experience that which might appear at first glance merely as a linguistic or mediatheoretical problem. Common to Herder’s origins situation and the final appearance of language in the New Testament is that they are incomprehensible without the accompanying image. In association with the body and the repetition of an inarticulate sound that causes the soul to vibrate is the image as an element of acroamatic articulation.9 In Herder’s origins scene, visual image and physical body contribute to allowing an inarticulate sound to become language. On Golgotha, it is the image in the form of the Cross, the body as suffering, and language, through its reconnection

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Herbert Fendrich: Bild und Wort: das Kreuz und die Evangelien, in: ex. cat.: Kreuz und Kruzifix. Zeichen und Bild, Diözesanmuseum Freising, Lindenberg 2005, Freising 2005, pp. 29–36, p. 33. Jürgen Trabant: Herders Schaaf im Vorbeigehen und Entgegenkommen, in: Franz Engel/ Sabine Marienberg (eds.): Das Entgegenkommende Denken. Verstehen zwischen Form und Empfindung (Actus et Imago 15), Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 135–144.

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with the inarticulate, that account in a no less paradigmatic way for the complexity of articulation. Emerging from these elements: language, body, and image, is a triad from which a redefinition of articulation can be undertaken.10 Opening up now are horizons in relation to which conventional boundary delimitations seem like the phantasms of dualistic systems of order.11 In recent decades, and without to begin with envisioning an overarching model that would transcend the limits of the human, early history and prehistory, along with primate research, have generated breathtaking discoveries which suggest the possibility of undertaking such a redefinition.

2. The Question of the Natural Barrier It goes without saying that every organism depends upon exchanges with its environment. The form of this interdependence is structured meaningfully, and is in this sense articulated. For this reason, Wilhelm Dilthey equated articulation in the widest possible sense with the principle of life: “life articulates itself” (das Leben artikuliert sich).12 Dilthey’s general definition of articulation as the structured expression of an organism that is motivated by meaningful action is held to be fully valid for both the animal and human worlds.13 This determination was joined by the conviction that humans can be attributed with second-degree forms of articulation that are detached from the environment. By virtue of their degree of abstraction and their autonomy, these can be referred to as symbolic.14 Ernst Cassirer, who pursued the question of articulation in the context of his comprehensive philosophy of symbols, believed in the existence of an impassable natural barrier between animal and human. It is as though humanity had been “expelled” from the “paradise of organic existence.”15 10 11 12

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Cf. Jürgen Trabant’s reconstruction of language and image as “twins” which are associated with bodily gestures, in the present volume. Horst Bredekamp: Vorwort zur Neufassung, in: id: Der Bildakt. Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2007, Neufassung, Berlin 2015, pp. 9–19. Cf. Wilhelm Dilthey: Grundlegung der Wissenschaft vom Menschen, der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte. Ausarbeitungen zum zweiten Band der Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften [ca. 1870–1895], in: id.: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. XIX, ed. by Helmuth Johach/ Frithjof Rodi, Göttingen 1982, p. 345. Magnus Schlette/Matthias Jung: Einleitende Bemerkungen zu einer Anthropologie der Artikulation, in: id. (eds.): Anthropologie der Artikulation. Begriffliche Grundlagen und transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, Würzburg 2006, pp. 7–28. Cf. Matthias Jung in the present volume. Ernst Cassirer: Das Symbolproblem als Grundproblem der philosophischen Anthropologie [1928], in: id.: Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen (Nachgelassene Manuskripte und

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He was, however, contradicted by his student, the philosopher and art historian Edgar Wind. In the devices through which the human being extended his body, he too recognized the tendency to create a distanced, symbolic world16 but perceived this end point as a product of a series of imperceptible transitions whose origins were found in animal life. The medium of this act of bridging was held to be the muscle: “All expression through movement of muscles is metaphorical.”17 With the term “metaphoric,” Wind chooses an adjective that already attributes a capacity for abstraction to the musculature. This resolves the question of meaningful communication as articulation in a way that reveals the separation between the human and animal worlds – here, he takes up tentative proposals from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Charles Sanders Peirce – as problematical on this generalized level.18 Wind’s advance represents a still relevant contribution to the question of whether it is possible to distinguish between a form of articulation that encompasses the animal and human realms and a symbolic articulation that is ostensibly proper to humanity alone. Evident today in both anthropology and early human history, as well as in biology, is a tendency to conceive of the boundaries between the general articulation of life and symbolic articulation – i. e. the exclusive province of human beings – as

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Texte, vol. 1), ed. by John Michael Krois, Hamburg 1995, pp. 3–109, p. 43. Cf. also id.: The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 1: Language, trans. by Ralph Manheim, New Haven 1955, pp. 3–6, and id.: Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil. Sprache (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11), ed. by Birgit Recki, Hamburg 2004, p. 49. See also: John Michael Krois: Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Biology, in: Sign System Studies 1,2/32 (2004), pp. 277–205, p. 286, fn. 15, and Birgit Recki: Symbolische Form als „Verkörperung“? Ernst Cassirers Versuch einer Überwindung des Leib-Seele-Dualismus, in: Horst Bredekamp/Marion Lauschke/Alex Arteaga (eds.): Bodies in Action and Symbolic Forms. Zwei Seiten der Verkörperungstheorie (Actus et Imago 9), Berlin 2012, pp. 3–13. Edgar Wind: Warburg‘s Concept of Kulturwissenschaft and its Meaning for Aesthetics, in: id.: The Eloquence of Symbols: Studies in Humanist Art, ed. by Jaynie Anderson, Oxford 1993, pp. 21–36, p. 32. Ibid., p. 31. On the transition from the animal state, see p. 30. Cf. John Michael Krois: Universalität der Pathosformel. Der Leib als Symbolmedium, in: Hans Belting/Dietmar Kamper/ Martin Schulz (eds.): Quel Corps? Eine Frage der Repräsentation, Munich 2002, pp. 295–307, p. 296. On Peirce’s role for Wind: Tullio Viola: Peirce and Iconology: Habitus, Embodiment, and the Analogy between Philosophy and Architecture, in: European Journal for Pragmatism and American Philosophy 4/1 (2012), pp. 6–31. Cf. Tullio Viola in the present volume. On Peirce: Frederik Stjernfelt: Natural Propositions. The Actuality of Peirce’s Theory of Dicisigns, Boston 2014.

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being permeable in Wind’s sense.19 To begin with, this calls for a revision of the concept of articulation, one that is capable of accounting for all of the spheres that are involved here.

3. The Addendum as an Impulse Toward Articulation Recent research has drastically shifted backwards the timeframe during which modern humans are assumed to have coexisted with Neanderthals.20 In particular, and this issue will be considered systematically in the following, these findings indicate that Immanuel Kant’s definition of the term articulation, one that has been decisive for its modern understanding, must be transformed.21 For Kant, articulation is the idea of a whole which is determined by its extent and subdivided through its internal elements. No individual member can be added to or subtracted from this ensemble of elements, since their purposes are fully and exhaustively coordinated with and dependent upon one another: the whole is “articulated (articulatio) and not accumulated (coacervatio).” The interdependent ties of this interplay can be strengthened in their reciprocal utilization in such a way that the formation as a whole can grow from within (per intus susceptionem) but not through the accretion of parts from the outside (per appositionem).22 This definition is based on the self-contained character of what is determined as a whole. Kant’s paradigm is 19

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“An anthropology that takes the concept of articulation as a basic term is structurally antiessential and anti-dualistic. The concept […] emphasizes […] the continuity between these forms of communication and expression found in the higher organized mammals and those of human beings.” Schlette/Jung: Einleitende Bemerkungen (as fn. 13), p. 16. Aylwyn Scally/Richard Durbin: Revising the Human Mutation Rate: Implications for Understanding Human Evolution, in: Nature Reviews/Genetics 13 (2012), pp. 745–753. The following incorporates portions of the number of articles: Horst Bredekamp: Der Muschel­ mensch. Vom endlosen Anfang der Bilder, in: Wolfram Hogrebe (ed.): Transzendenzen des Realen. Mit Laudationes zu den Autoren von Wolfram Hogrebe, Günter Abel und Mathias Schmoeckel, Göttingen 2013, pp. 13–74; id.: Höhlenausgänge, in: Hermann Parzinger/Stefan Aue/Günter Stock (eds.): ArteFakte: Wissen ist Kunst – Kunst ist Wissen. Reflexionen und Praktiken wissenschaftlich-künstlerischer Begegnungen, Bielefeld 2014, pp. 37–56; id.: Prekäre Vorbilder: Fossilien, in: Sandra Abend/Hans Körner (eds.): VOR-BILDER. Ikonen der Kunstgeschichte. Vom Faustkeil über Boticellis Venus bis John Wayne, Munich 2015, pp. 11–25; id.: Der Faustkeil und die ikonische Differenz, in: Engel/Marienberg: Das Entgegenkommende Denken (as fn. 9), pp. 105–118; id.: Bildaktive Gestaltungsformen von Tier und Mensch, in: ex. cat.: +ultra. gestaltung schafft wissen, ed. by Nikola Doll/Horst Bredekamp/ Wolfgang Schäffner, Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, Leipzig 2016, pp. 17–25. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, Unified Edition (with all variants from the 1781 and 1787 editions), trans. by Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis 1996, B 861, p. 756.

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Fig. 1  Procession of predators, Chauvet Cave, wall painting, 32,000–35,000 years old.

the animal body, which grows according to the requirements of its internal proportions but without the addition of new members. Hence, articulation and accumulation, internal reciprocity and supplementation constitute oppositions.23 The self-contained whole, defined by Kant as the precondition for the internal articulation to unfold, must now, in the light of recent discoveries, be conceived of as an open dynamic entity, one defined by its capacity to exceed its own limits and to integrate elements from the outside. These new perspectives are particularly fruitful for the question of articulation because they define accumulation, coacervatio, not as an antonym of articulatio but instead as its propellant. In Kant’s juxtaposition of structuration and accumulation, coacervatio emerges as a tensionless addendum, as incapable of inspiring the energy of the elements of the whole. Cave paintings like those at Chauvet, in the Ardèche River Valley, discovered in December of 1994, contradict this definition of terms because again and again, they appear as additions without sacrificing their potential for excitation. Found on the walls of the Chauvet Cave are more than 400 images; executed between 32,000 to 35,000 years ago, they represent the earliest known paintings to display such high quality.24 In this cave, the depicted animals not only appear in a state of movement, i. e. the hunting predators, but also in sequences of superimposed “snapshots” that are reminiscent of Futurism (Fig. 1); latent movement, then, is present 23 24

Ibid. Jean Clottes: Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times, Salt Lake City 2003.

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Fig. 2  Researcher in front of a palimpsest of wild horses, Chauvet Cave, wall painting, 32,000–35,000 years old, still from the documentary film Cave of Forgotton Dreams (2010).

even in the static image. The film director Werner Herzog found this aspect so striking that he devoted a film to the site in which he engages in a kind of historical dialogue with his own intervention.25 The film shows how these paintings were superimposed upon one another and altered as a palimpsest over a period of thousands of years, as though possessing a sempiternal presence and actuality (Fig. 2). After extended periods of time, previously executed paintings become templates for new investments, so that the belly of a bison that is turned toward the right is transmuted into the head of a rhinoceros that twists toward the left, only to be superimposed by a group of four wild horses.26 The paintings added subsequently after extensive periods of time do not have a paratactic character, for example; instead, they react to the pre-existing material, and hence, as addenda, enact that field of tension between interrelated elements that is essential for articulation. No less sensational was the discovery in the Swabian Alps of a trove of small sculptures, some as old as 45,000 years. In their fully sculptural three-dimensionality, they display an astounding mixture of mimesis and abstraction.27 Discovered in the Hohle Fels Cave in the course of excavations was an ivory statuette measuring

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See Cave of Forgotten Dreams (USA et al. 2010, Werner Herzog). On the filmic scenarization of the cave paintings: Marc Azéma: L’Art des cavernes en action, 2 vols., Paris 2009. Clottes: Chauvet Cave (as fn. 24) p. 116f. Ex. cat.: Eiszeit. Kunst und Kultur, Archäologisches Landesmuseum Konstanz, Ostfildern 2009.

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Fig. 3  So-called Venus, Hohle Fels, mammoth ivory, about 35,000 years old.

6  cm in height (Fig. 3), which has been dated to 35,000 years and hence approximately 5,000 years prior to the best-known figure to date, the Venus of Willendorf.28 On its front, the figure from the Swabian Alps displays a pair of enormous, protruding breasts, beneath which the two hands, with their fingers, have been engraved. Visible between the two stubby legs are the private parts, along with the deeply scored vulva. Rising in place of the head is a small eyelet that would have allowed the figure to serve as a hanging charm, so that the head of the sculpture’s wearer would have appeared as its extension.29

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Luc Moreau: Die Zeit der starken Frauen. Das Gravettien, in: ex. cat.: Eiszeit (as fn. 27), pp. 96–99, p. 97. Nicholas J. Conard: Die erste Venus, in: ex. cat.: Eiszeit (as fn. 27), pp. 268–271. Cf. Sibylle Wolf: Schmuckstücke. Die Elfenbeinbearbeitung im Schwäbischen Aurignacien, Tübingen 2015, pp. 284–286.

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In this way, body and image interlock to form a disparate unity that consists of two entities which differ in scale and materiality: the one organic, the other artificial. The two refer to one another as corporeal-artistic articulations. The sculpture that associates with the body is part of a complex determination for which examples have been discovered in considerable numbers in various regions of Europe. Some of these female figures were worn head down, others with the head pointed upward.30 Both elements – the body and the sculpture – consisted of organic materials, but the ivory was transported into the artificiality of the work of art. Both the paintings at Chauvet as well as the roughly contemporary sculptures from the Swabian Alps clarify a mode of Gestaltung that allows each of the traits Kant excluded from the scope of articulation to become its essence. The supplement, as painting on painting, or as sculpture added to the body, functions as a qualitative leap of articulation.

4. Semantic Incisions Most of the figures found in the Swabian Alps represent animals and were carved from ivory. Among these is a mammoth whose three-dimensional modeling emphasizes the bulges on the surface of the massive torso, beneath which the shoulder blades are as visible as the hips (Fig. 4). The back and belly are overlaid with rows of X-shaped incisions that take the form of so-called St. Andrew’s crosses.31 Among these figures is the head of a now-extinct Cave lion found at Vogelherd, which displays a marvelous fluctuation between individual characterization and abstraction (Fig. 5). Similar scored crosses are visible at the base of its neck.32 Such figures are capable of modifying our image of early history in the realm of sculpture in such enduring ways that they are able to trigger a genuine revision in our image of early human development as a whole. Strictly speaking, these figures could also be read as conveying purely visual meanings in summary ways, for example wrinkles or indentations in skin. In this case, however, and in view of the finesse with which the parts of the body are shaped in their contexts, they would still display a conspicuous degree of abstraction. It is, however, more likely that these are independent forms which are suggestive of script, which points toward the circumstance that the development of language need not necessarily emerge solely from sound, as Wilhelm von Humboldt formulated it in one of his most marvelous

30 31 32

Wolf: Schmuckstücke (as fn. 29), p. 286f. Ex. cat.: Eiszeit (as fn. 27), p. 249. Joachim Hahn: Kraft und Aggression. Die Botschaft der Eiszeitkunst im Aurignacien Süddeutschlands?, Tübingen 1986, pp. 106–109.

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Fig. 4  Mammoth, Vogelherd, mammoth ivory, 29,000–36,000 years old.

Fig. 5  Cave lion, Vogelherd, mammoth ivory, 32,000–40,000 years old.

Fig. 6  Engraved ocher stone, Blombos Cave, South Africa, 70,000–90,000 years old.

14

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texts.33 The formation of language would proceed instead in conjunction with the externalized use of graphemes. From the very beginning, then, language is sound and Gestaltung at the same time.34 An echo of this event in prehistory can be found in the Greek double meaning of the verb graphein, which means both writing and drawing/painting.35 A further discovery has shifted this phenomenon backwards yet again, to 80,000 years ago. Excavated approximately 300 km east of Cape Town on the ocean was a cave, containing traces of intelligent design, which invalidated many seemingly well-established facts regarding the timeline of the development of human capacities.36 Unearthed in the Blombos Cave were purposefully painted and incised stones that unquestionably possess a semantic value, although we have yet to understand it (Fig. 6). Emerging here, as earlier with the figures from the Swabian Alps, is a form world which again shifts the date of inception of such figures back by a factor of two.37 Excavated at Bilzingsleben in central Germany was a bone, more than 400,000 years old, that displays similar scratch marks, reaches even further into prehistory, and moreover by a factor of five (Fig. 7).38 Finally, shells and other objects from Java, which are about 500,000 years old, display distinctive incisions. Of particular interest are lines incised using a ruler, presumably by means of a shark’s tooth. In one instance, they form figures that are reminiscent of a letter “N,” and a clearly visible configuration that resembles an “M” – although, needless to add, there can be no question here of Latin characters (Fig. 8).39 33 34 35

36 37

38

39

Cf. Wilhelm von Humboldt: Das bildende Organ der Gedanken, in: Wilhelm von Humboldt. Das große Lesebuch, ed. by Jürgen Trabant, Frankfurt/M. 2010, pp. 193–218, p. 204. Cf. Alva Noë in the present volume. Jacques Jouanna: Graphein “écrire” et “peindre”. Contribution à l’histoire des mots et à l’histoire de l’imaginaire de la mémoire en Grèce ancienne, in: La littérature et les arts figurés de l’Antiquité a nos jours, Paris 2001, pp. 55–70. Cf. Maria Luisa Catoni in the present volume. Christopher Henshilwood: Holocene Prehistory of the Southern Cape, South Africa. Excavations at Blombos Cave and the Blombosfontein Nature Reserve, Oxford 2008. Ibid., p. 47f.; id./Francesco d’Errico/Ian Watts: Engraved Ochres from the Middle Stone Age Levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa, in: Journal of Human Evolution 57 (2009), pp. 27–47, pp. 32ff. Klaus Schößler: Versuch zur Deutung des Strichmusters auf dem Knochenartefakt Bilzingsleben no. 208, 33 – Mondkalender?, in: Praehistorica Thuringica 9 (2003), pp. 29–34. Cf. Hartmut Thieme: Der große Wurf von Schöningen: Das neue Bild zur Kultur des frühen Menschen, in: ex. cat. Die Schöninger Speere. Mensch und Jagd vor 400  000 Jahren, ed. by Hartmut Thieme, Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum/Niedersächisches Landesmuseum Hannover, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 224–228, p. 227f. Josephine C. A. Joordens/Francesco d’Errico/Frank P. Wesselingh et al.: Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving, in: Nature, 518/7538 (2014), pp. 228–231, doi: 10.1038/nature13962.

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Fig. 7  Bone tool with engraved fanned-out sequence of strokes; length of the artifact: 40 cm altogether, detail shown here: ca. 20 cm; Bilzingsleben, about 400,000 years old.

Fig. 8  Incisions on a freshwater shell, Java, Indonesia, about 500,000 years old.

16

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Appearing approximately one half mil­lion years ago at various locations around the world were clearly shaped-related figures that confront us with a semantics that is unquestionably present, if currently un­ interpretable. In all of these instances, it is an externalized form that embodies the idea of articulation – which Kant confined to the internal motor function of a structured whole. This is all the more true for the discovery of a group of around 400,000 year old hunting spears that came to light at Schöningen in Lower Saxony (Fig. 9).40 Their forms are so perfect that they required no further development for hundreds of thousands of years. Up to this point, they are the oldest tools of this kind that have come down to us, and are suggestive of the differentiated technology and sophisticated group behavior that required the members of a hunting group to coordinate spear bearing, throwing, and prey location, all at the greatest possible speed.41 The hunting Fig. 9  Varied views of spears, Schöningen, implement, kinesis in the sense of Aristot­le’s about 400,000 years old. definition42 and governed by entelechy in its internal definition, is part of an ar­ti­culation whose velocity of use allows no time for the incorporation of conceptual loops of reflection. Unfolding here is an externalized interplay of instrument, gesture, and bodily movement which would need to have been continually adjusted, and which was presumably supported by codified sounds. This founded an instrument-related formation of articulation.43

40 41 42 43

Ex. cat.: Die Schöninger Speere (as fn. 38). Thieme: Der große Wurf (as fn. 38). Cf. section 6 of the article by Jürgen Trabant in the present volume. Michael Tomasello’s deictic theory could be extended to include this component, cf. Michael Tomasello: Origins of Human Communication, Cambridge, MA/London 2008.

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5. The Artificial Hand of Articulation At that time, tools were an aspect of the play of articulation. Recent discoveries have reinforced a thesis dating from the early 20th century, according to which tools followed a form-conscious semantics from the very beginning and were hence not dictated solely by function.44 In opposition to Louis Henry Sullivan’s misguided formula “form follows function” (1896),45 it should be emphasized that the reverse is also true: form permits function.46 A particularly striking confirmation of this finding is the hand axe, a tool that was produced by the billions over a period of 1.8 million years.47 Hand axes represent an outstanding ensemble of artifacts that were of course usable as tools but are at the same time captivating by virtue of their forms (Fig. 10).48 In their displaced symmetry, hand axes – misunderstood for so long as purely utilitarian objects – already suggest the need to speak here of the history of their style and meaning alongside that of their function.49 Numerous exemplars were too small to have been functional, and not a few were perfectly usable, yet were never actually deployed as tools. At no stage in their development can use and appearance be regarded as separable. During the Lower Paleolithic, training in shaping and using hand axes was inscribed into the structures of a mode of intelligence based on form and motor skills.50 44

45 46

47

48

49 50

Victor Comment: Contribution à l’étude des silex taillés de Saint-Acheul et de Montières, in: Bulletin de la Société Linée du Nord de la France 36 (1907), pp. 345–369; Jean-Marie Le Tensorer: Faustkeile, in: Harald Floss (ed.): Steinartefakte vom Altpaläolithikum bis in die Neuzeit, Tübingen 2012, pp. 209–218, p. 214. Akos Moravánszky (ed.): Architekturtheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine kritische Anthologie, Vienna/New York 2003, pp. 397–401. Le Tensorer: Faustkeile (as fn. 44). Cf. Lutz Fiedler: Form, Funktion und Tradition. Die symbolische Repräsentanz steinzeitlicher Geräte, in: Germania. Anzeiger der römisch-germanischen Kommission des deutschen archäologischen Instituts 80/2 (2002), pp. 405–420. Michael Brandt: Wie alt ist die Menschheit? Demographie und Steinwerkzeuge mit überraschenden Befunden, Holzgerlingen 22006, p. 122; Paul Natterer: Philosophie der Biologie. Mit einem Abriss zu Kants Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft und einer interdisziplinären Bilanz der Evolutionsbiologie, Norderstedt 2010, p. 134. Sileshi Semaw: The World’s Oldest Stone Artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their Implications for Understanding Stone Technology and Patterns of Human Evolution between 2.6–1.6 Million Years Ago, in: Journal of Archeological Science 27 (2000), pp. 1197–1214; Christopher J. Lepre/Hélène Roche/Denis V. Kent et al.: An Earlier Origin for the Acheulian, in: Nature 477/7362 (2011), pp. 82–85. Le Tensorer: Faustkeile (as fn. 44), p. 215. A model of this explanation was proposed by the biologist Gerhard Neuweiler jointly with the composer György Ligeti: Gerhard Neuweiler/György Ligeti: Motorische Intelligenz: Zwi­ schen Musik und Naturwissenschaft, Berlin 2007. Presumably conditioned by a misleading

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Fig. 10  The oldest known hand axe, edge of Lake Turkana, Kenya, about 1.76 million years old. Fig. 11  Four hand axes, Nadaouiyeh Ain Askar, Syria, Acheulean.

Most ancient hand axes are slightly asymmetrical in form. A number of particularly striking exemplars from Syria display this principle via a slight displacement toward the upper left (Fig. 11).51 The presence of this feature strongly supports the hypothesis that the hand is symbolically externalized in the hand axe (Fig. 12).52

51 52

title, his theory of evolution has remained unappreciated to a degree I regard as downright depressing: Gerhard Neuweiler: Und wir sind es doch – die Krone der Evolution, Berlin 2009. Michel Lorblanchet: La Naissance de l‘Art. Genèse de l’art préhistorique, Paris 1999, p. 141. Klaus Bokelmann: Hand und Handlung: Faustkeile, in: Stefan Burmeister/Heidrum Derks/ Jasper von Richthofen (eds.): Zweiundvierzig. Festschrift für Michael Gebühr zum 65. Ge­­ burtstag (Internationale Archäologie: Studia honoria, vol. 25), Rahden/Westf. 2007, pp. 241– 246, Fig. 3, p. 244. The interpretation of the hand axe as an abstract hand comes from Robert Rudolf Schmidt: Der Geist der Vorzeit, Berlin 1934, p. 100. Cf. in this sense Kenneth P. Oakley: Emergence of higher thought 3.0–0.2 Ma B.P., in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal

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An interpretation of the form of the hand axe – which tapers toward the top, bulges toward the middle, and tapers again below – as an abstract hand has far-reaching implications for the conceptual definition of the world of artifacts. From the beginning, by virtue of their characteristic form, they confronted the individual as a third hand. The hand axe represents a significant contribution to an articulation that allows the hand to merge with its own material abstraction, and hence introduces a supplementation to the whole that was regarded by Kant as an autarkical unity.

Fig. 12  The construction of a hand axe as an abstract hand by Robert Rudolf Schmidt, 1934.

6. The Difference of Inclusion Arguably, no motif clarifies the problematic of Kant’s concept of articulation more clearly than a series of non-utilitarian artifacts that have been collected systematically only very recently.53 One part of this group consists of fossils appearing

53

Society of London, Series B. Biological Sciences 292/1057 (1981), pp. 205–211, p. 207, and Gottfried Boehm: Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen. Die Macht des Zeigens, Berlin 2007, p. 35. An alternative to this interpretation is the conjecture that the form of the hand axe is based on a schematic whole human figure: Le Tensorer: Faustkeile (as fn. 44), p. 214. In light of the comparable asymmetry of the forms and the immediacy of the relationship between hand and hand axe, the hand-to-hand thesis seems more plausible: Bredekamp: Der Muschelmensch (as fn. 21), p. 27. Marie-Hélène Moncel/Lauren Chiotti/Claire Gaillard et al.: Non-utilitarian Lithic Objects from the European Paleolithic, in: Archeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 40/1 (2012), pp. 24–40.

20

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Fig. 13  Hand axe with fossilized sea urchin, Swanscombe, England, about 400,000 years old, Liverpool, World Museum.

Fig. 14  Detail of Fig. 13.

on hand axes and other stone artifacts that were framed in a very particular way, and hence transformed into full-fledged images.54 Exceptional in this regard are two objects from Swanscombe and West Tofts in England. The hand axe from Swanscombe (Fig. 13), approximately 400,000 years old, is relatively wide at its belly, and displays an unusual protuberance on its righthand side. Protruding from the base are two bulges – they are reminiscent of feet – that would tend to interfere with the object’s function as an axe. Recognizable at its center is the fossil of a sea urchin. On the left side, the early craftsman has attempted to process the protruding stone in order to arrive at a homogenous accentuation of the ornamented circle. This is especially clear on the left above the center, where the point of a striking tool was applied where the circle would have extended further (Fig. 14). Here, one part of the sea urchin circle has been chipped away. Presumably, 54

In a pioneering work, this was thematized for the first time by Kenneth P. Oakley as a motive for a differentiated aesthetic, cf. Kenneth P. Oakley: Decorative and Symbolic Uses of Fossils, Avon 1985.

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Fig. 15  Hand axe incorporating a fossilized shell of a Spondylus spinosus, West Tofts, England, about 200,000 years old, Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

Fig. 16  Reverse of hand axe incorporating a fossilized shell of a Spondylus spinosus (as Fig. 15).

this stroke was also responsible for the loss of the circular segment on the left-hand side, but in the entire lower left-hand area, an attempt was made to carve into depth along the outer ring. On the whole, the circumference of the fossilized creature has remained, allowing its centralized position within the rounded area to remain evident. A similar principle is followed by a hand axe from West Tofts (Fig. 15), which is circa 200,000 years old.55 Its silhouette conforms to the style of the symmetrical– asymmetrical formula. At the center of the belly, however, sits a fossil shell of the Spondylus spinosus. Traces of weathering reveal that it originally lay on the surface, where it drew attention to itself like an eye, so that the value of this peculiarity was clearly recognized. With remarkable finesse, it is positioned along the central axis of the structure. 55

Ibid., p. 208f.

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Evidently, the associated stone made it possible not only to position the shell at the center of the belly, but also for the orientations of shell and stone to run reciprocally in relation to one another along the same vertical axis. The rounded edge of the shell points upward toward the apex of the axe, while the pointed end of the shell is oriented toward its broad foot. On the basis of this definition of difference, the craftsman who framed of the fossil achieved something singular. His eye must have appreciated the petrified form of the organism to such a degree that he decided to frame it with sensitivity to proportions.56 By transforming the object into an image by means of this framing, he gave birth to the genre of the “image within an image.”57 On the reverse, the zone of the original surface of the stone forks out (Fig. 16), so that the lower arm covers the entire underside of the axe, while the entire extent of upper arm, which rises toward the right, is framed no less skillfully than the shell on the front. The porous, curving surface is surrounded as though by a halo. The effect of this principle is especially striking along the upper right edge, where the arm runs parallel to the outer contour line of the stone. This treatment is all the more fascinating because, beyond the pale, mother-of-pearl-like collar, the deeper, darker layer of stone forms a second frame for the brown arm. Clearly evident on the front as well is the principle of double framing that is observable on the reverse (Fig. 15). Here, the pale, mother-of-pearl-like collar runs along the original brown surface, framing the shell in the upper zone. Only in the lower zone does it follow the darker tonality of the stone outward toward the sides. A comparison of the front and reverse reveals a consistent principle of design that not only takes into account the three-dimensional formation of the protuberances and depressions but also the materiality and coloration of the stone along the surface. This procedure did not emerge by accident. Fossils were often used as elements of artistic design. The incessant examination of varieties of stone must have resulted in a sensitization to the peculiarities of specific shapes, as shown by the flexible forms of the organisms within the imperturbability of the stone relief. In one instance, the schematic depiction of the various forms of presence involves a triple form of a fern: as a natural form, as a shadow on the stone panel, and as a fossil embedded in the stone (Fig. 17).58 The mobile shadow may have offered the humanoid

56 57 58

John Feliks: The Impact of Fossils on the Development of Visual Representation, in: Rock Art Research 15/2 (1998), pp. 109–124, pp. 114ff. Martin Warnke: Italienische Bildtabernakel bis zum Frühbarock, in: Michael Diers (ed.): Nah und Fern zum Bilde. Beiträge zu Kunst und Kunsttheorie, Cologne 1997, pp. 40–107. Feliks: The Impact of Fossils (as fn. 56) p. 111.

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Fig. 17  Various forms of presence with reference to a fern branch, chart by John Feliks, 1998.

the possibility of a presentation form which he encountered in stone as an immovable form. As a result, however, a comparative and differentiating form of thought and design was present in the world. Going beyond the experience of iconic differentiation, the fossils can be regarded as an impetus toward the formation of a consciousness of distance as such. The capacity to accept the forms as autonomous entities, which led toward the principle of iconic difference, can therefore be regarded as an essential element of the process through which humanoids became fully human.59 They impose the conditions of the artistic Gestaltung on the creator: here, a foreign body – one that is inconsistent with the whole – emerges as a center of energy, hence determining its frame. Found here is a further variant of Kant’s definition of articulation. It is not the ensemble of the parts making up the whole that develops into a harmonized articulation; instead, it is a symbol which introduces a conflict of difference that defines the aggregate of elements. Only when the foreign element is included in a 59

On the concept of iconic difference: Gottfried Boehm: Die Wiederkehr der Bilder, in: id. (ed.): Was ist ein Bild?, Munich 1994, pp. 11–38, p. 30; id.: Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen (as fn. 52), pp. 34–38; cf. Bredekamp: Der Faustkeil und die ikonische Differenz (as fn. 21), pp. 105–118.

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productive way does that harmonized, differentiate articulation emerge which Kant attributes to the self-contained whole. Supervening again as well is the cumulative principle of coacervatio. As a practice of accumulation, it here becomes an integrative moment that emerges from the internal increase in the formation of difference. As stone forms, the now stable images of living nature and their movable representations became archetypes that were assembled in quantities in treasure troves of fossils reaching back as far as 250,000 years.60 This makes them sources of the stimulus toward differentiated sculptural production.

7. The Animation of Stone as Symbolic Articulation Finally, the demarcation of symbolic articulation that has been accepted to date has been problematized by recent research in chimpanzee behavior. Among the discoveries of this research, conducted over a period of many years, is the practice among West African conspecifics of gathering together stones in tree stumps or between forking roots (Fig. 18). Taking part in this activity are male and female chimpanzees, old and young.61 Since this practice is related neither to hunting nor to the smashing of objects such as nut shells, the hypothesis arises that with chimpanzees, the conventional distinction between animal-instinctive and humansymbolic behavior cannot be maintained.62 Here is the collecting, the accumulation, which sets into motion that energy which Kant attributed exclusively to the separation into distinct members. The capacity to recognize, value, and assemble into collections special stone forms can be pursued far back into the span of time that is associated with the Nean60 61

62

Ibid., p. 112f. Hjalmar S. Kühl/Ammie K. Kalan/Mimi Arandjelovic et al.: Chimpanzee Accumulative Stone Throwing, in: Nature. Scientific Reports, 6/22219 (2016), doi: 10.1.038/srep.2221. Cf. the Max Planck Society report from the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig: Hjalmar S. Kühl/Ammie Kalan/Sandra Jacob: Why Do Chimpanzees Throw Stones at Trees?, online: This Could Be The First-Ever Observed Ritual Practice Among Chimpanzees: https://www.mpg.de/10328790/chimpanzee-stone-tree (2017-07-27). Cf. the video to this report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEQOThqq2pk (2017-07-27). A similar research film was screened in the context of an exhibition on ape culture held in summer of 2015 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, cf. ex. cat.: Ape Culture/Kultur der Affen, ed. by. Anselm Franke/Hila Peleg, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin/Leipzig 2015, p. 137, E. “It is likely that it has some cultural elements.” Christophe Boesch, quoted after: Kühl/ Kalan/Jacob: Why do chimpanzees throw stones at trees? (as fn. 61).

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Fig. 18  Heap of stones deposited between forking roots, still from the film Stone-Throwing Chimpanzee (2016).

derthals.63 The practice of singling out objects for their special visual characteristics and carrying them along for considerable distances, which is traceable back as far as 1.5 million years, is a recognizable form of collecting treasures64 that is evident as well in the accumulation of stones by chimpanzees. Objects from the environment are selected and set off from their surroundings, thereby positioning them within the tension between the investment of form and retroactivity. An object becomes an image when a minimum of deliberate design intervention becomes visibly evident. The most elementary form of such action consists in the act of detaching an object from its original environment and transporting it to a new location in order to align it in relation to the actor while eliciting a particular form of contemplation.65 Through the practice of assembling stone forms into trea­ sure troves, natural objects are transferred in the widest sense into the realm of the image. 63 64

65

Lorblanchet: La Naissance de l’Art (as fn. 51), p. 89. Oakley: Decorative and Symbolic Uses (as fn. 54), p. 205f. Fig. in: Lorblanchet: La Naissance de l’Art (as fn. 51), p. 137. Cf. Robert G. Bednarik: A figurine from the African Acheulian, in: Current Anthropology 43/3 (2002), pp. 405–413. Leon Battista Alberti: De Statua. De Pictura. Elementa Picturae/Das Standbild. Die Malkunst. Grundlagen der Malerei, ed. and trans. by: Oskar Bätschmann/Christoph Schäublin, Darmstadt 2000, De Statua, par. 1, p. 142; cf. Horst Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2007, Berlin 2010, p. 34f. and Bredekamp: Der Bildakt (as fn. 11), p. 42f.

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Fig. 19  Male chimpanzee in Guinea-Bissau throwing a stone against a tree trunk, still from the film Stone-Throwing Chimpanzee (2016).

Chimpanzee behavior in Guinea-Bissau strengthens this conclusion.66 On the assumption that a ritual context is present here, the concept of archaeology is now expanded to encompass the stone formations of chimpanzees.67 A wealth of similar chimpanzee activities reinforces an interpretation that uses the terms of symbolism. A more complex form of the collecting of treasures consists of picking up stones of considerable size and heaving them against a mas­ sive tree. Their forceful impact causes them to bounce back so dangerously that the thrower is obliged to avoid them via rapid lateral movements (Fig. 19). This behavior is repeated until the fragments bouncing off the tree form a substantial pile.68

66 67

68

Kühl/Kalan/Arandjelovic et al.: Chimpanzee Accumulative Stone Throwing (as fn. 61), p. 6. Ibid. Cf. the coining of the term “ethoarchaeology”: Fédéric Joulian: Comparing Chimpanzee and Early Hominid Techniques: Some Contributions to Cultural and Cognitive Questions, in: Paul Mellars/Kathleen Gibson (eds.): Modelling the Early Human Mind, Exeter 1996, pp. 173–189. Kühl/Kalan/Arandjelovic et al.: Chimpanzee Accumulative Stone Throwing (as fn. 61), pp. 4ff.

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Inherent in the energy of these bouncing stones are the basic conditions of artistic Gestaltung, with which every actor must contend who engages in such activity. This condition corresponds to the meaning of the Latin term ob-jectum as “counterthrow”.69 The throw brings together form and world, but also its retroactivity, which

Fig. 20  Female chimpanzee in Uganda with stone as simulated infant, still from the film The Young Chimpanzees that Play with Dolls (2016).

reacts against the mover in a counter maneuver. The chimpanzee becomes the object of a rebound movement that acts upon him. In this way, the rock throwing of the chimpanzees is a manifestation of the circumstance that through willful use objects are transformed into images which, by virtue of their energy, react upon their users in stimulating and challenging ways, hence instantiating the fundamental conditions of all creative Gestaltung and all art. The throwing of the stone presupposes a highly complex consideration of the physics of the object and its relationship to its environment and the possibilities of the active body. Under laboratory conditions, it has been revealed that this highly developed form of abstraction activates the same neuronal zones as those employed to generate language.70

69 70

Theo Kobusch: Objekt, in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 6, ed. by Joachim Ritter/Karlfried Gründer, Darmstadt 1984, col. 1026–1052, 1027. “Thus, the results reported here are consistent with the evolutionary hypothesis that throwing may have served as a preadaptation for the neural adaptation of motor programmes

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Recognized, finally, among the chimpanzees of Uganda is a form of behav­ ior71 that carries this reciprocity of investment and retroaction to extremes. For some time now, research has been conducted into the use by great apes of sticks as instruments for probing water and honey, as weapons in battle, and as playthings.72 Joining these modes of use now is the practice of treating particularly stout pieces of wood like sculptures and defining them as dolls. Endowed with life through the imagination, these substitute babies facilitate playful practice in preparation for impending motherhood or fatherhood. The chimpanzees have often been observed engaging in the same activity using stones: “they are treating them like a baby” (Fig. 20).73 Such objects link the body with an alien form in order to train and perfect the user’s modes of social interaction in exemplary-schematic ways. Through an act of interpretation, an organic natural form becomes a living artifact, which in this sense resembles the Venus figure from Hohle Fels (Fig. 3), which also functions as an element in an ensemble consisting of human body and artifact. The symbolization of an object that is detached from its surroundings and hence becomes an artifact corresponds to the training of cultural schemata through the handling of pretend animate sculptures; these belong to the genre of the schematic image act.74 From prehistoric practices to digital simulation techniques, it is in particular dolls that play a special role here.75 In association with the praxis of stone throwing, which reckons with the object’s autonomous, countervailing action, as well as the early collecting of treasures, which is triggered by comparison, it is here that we must recognize one of the roots of the image act, i. e. an energy that emanates from a form. In a broader sense, we perceive here the beginning of symbolic articulation, which now learns to incorporate the image and the body.

71

72

73 74 75

­ ecessary for complex motor actions, including language and speech.” William D. Hopkins/ n Jamie L. Russell/Jennifer A. Schaeffer: The Neuronal and Cognitive Correlates of Aimed Throwing in Chimpanzees: a Magnetic Resonance Image and Behavioural Study on a Unique form of Social Tools, in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B. Biological Sciences 367 (2012), pp. 37–47, p. 44. Sonya M. Kahlenberg/Richard W. Wrangham: Sex Differences in Chimpanzees’ Use of Sticks as Play Objects Resemble those of Children, in: Current Biology 20/24 (2010), pp. R1067– R1068. Christophe Boesch/Hedwige Boesch: Tool Use and Tool Making in Wild Chimpanzees, in: Folia Primatologica 54 (1990), pp. 86–99. Cf. Julia Fischer: Affengesellschaft, Berlin 2012, pp. 122–126. Cf. the BBC film from April 24, 2016, online: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160422-theyoung-chimpanzee-that-play-with-dolls (2017-07-27). Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 65), pp. 101–169 (pp. 77–136 in the forthcoming English edition); Bredekamp: Der Bildakt (as fn. 11), pp. 109–174. Markus Rath: Die Gliederpuppe. Kult – Kunst – Konzept (Actus et Imago 19), Berlin/Boston 2016.

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In this sense, the handling of the stones by the apes implies not a linearimperative but instead a distanced-representational type of mental activity.76 This suggests a definition of the “mind” of the chimpanzee that is based not solely on a reflection of mental states77 but also on the capacity to incorporate externally designated artifacts and gestures at the inception of symbolic articulation. Evidently, a consideration of such charged objects and gestures makes it necessary to abandon a rigid distinction between animal and human. Manifest in all of the examples examined here is an extensive transgression of that self-contained whole which Kant identified with articulatio, and which must instead be defined as an open field. Opening up here is a sphere that integrates the bodily and the figurative as conditioning factors of a dynamic concept of articulation. This paves the way for incorporating into the field of tension of language, the body, and the image acts of symbolic articulation that extend into the animal world. As described by Kant, articulation is the meaningful harmonization of defined elements. They are, however, not enclosed in a pre-existing, sealed-off whole. In their inner coherency, they receive impulses from and are vitalized by supplementation and accumulations, thereby stimulating – through a sensibility for the formation of difference – symbolic externalizations, for example the third hand of the hand axe. This interplay of articulatio and coacervatio corresponds to the linguistic relational structure of articulate and inarticulate, of speech and the cry. Within this expanded frame, sound, body, grapheme, and image resonate together in such a way that they merit the name articulation by virtue of their common origin. Translated from German by Ian Pepper

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Erica A. Cartmill/Sian Bellock/Susan Goldin-Meadow: A Word in the Hand: Action, Gesture and Mental Representation in Humans and Non-human Primates, in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, 367 (2012), pp. 129–143, p. 136. David Premack/John Woodruff: Does the Chimpanzee have a Theory of Mind?, in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1/4 (1978), pp. 515–526; cf. Fischer: Affengesellschaft (as fn. 72), pp. 146–148.

Sabine Marienberg

Articulating Gestures

1. Means and Matter The assumption that the objects we are dealing with and the articulatory means by which we do so spring from the same source had its most prominent point of departure in the 18th century. In the line of thought initiated by writers such as Giambattista Vico and Johann Georg Hamann, signs are no longer seen as external tools for communicating previously devised thoughts or for accessing a world that is already given: In order for something to come into being as an object of thought and experience, it has to be articulated in embodied sign-actions.1 For Vico, symbolization originated in the sentient, passionate body and in a brute and metaphorical thinking on the cusp of awakening.2 What rationalists call “language” is, in his view, just a very late stadium of an evolution that proceeds from these first expres­ sive bodily utterances – and its ostensible arbitrariness is the treacherous fruit of becoming oblivious of its origins. Vico’s notion of language was strikingly wide: “Linguistically articulated” can equally mean voiced, gestured, enacted, or shown with the help of objects. Initially, symptomatic and symbolic traits of articulation are not yet differentiated, and neither are objects and signs. The first language acts are at the same time expressive and referential, and even though things, events, bodily movements, and sounds begin to mean something, they do not cease to be what they are. What is expressed or denoted could not be accomplished by any other means: A thunderstorm is both a thunderstorm and a deity – and mimicking its noise, pointing at it, or obeying its presumed orders are not to be seen as interchangeable,

1 2

Cf. Sabine Marienberg: Zeichenhandeln. Sprachdenken bei Giambattista Vico und Johann Georg Hamann, Tübingen 2006. Giambattista Vico: The New Science of Giambattista Vico [1744], trans. by Thomas Goddard Bergin/Max Harold Fisch, Ithaca 1948. See also Jürgen Trabant: Vico’s New Science of Ancient Signs: A Study of Sematology [1994], trans. by Sean Ward, London/New York 2004.

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let alone optional ways of referring to the same conceptual core, but as a unity of lived significance. And even though Vico did not systematically unfold the characteristics of verbal and visual articulation, his intuition about their simultaneous appearance and their parallel evolution still remains unique.3 Hamann, the deeply religious rhapsodist of the Counter-Enlightenment, went even further by holding that not only is every sign made of flesh but also that every event or object seen or heard, be it even a barely perceptible breath or a letter in a written word that would not be audible when read aloud, carries the potential to become significant.4 While in Vico’s and Hamann’s times the investigation of the inner relation between the world and the symbolic means by which we access it was pursued rather speculatively, in the 20th century it became a methodically reflected enterprise. In the linguistic turn,5 the insight that thought is principally language dependent was for the first time addressed on solid philosophical grounds. Analysis of language is regarded here as the necessary condition for a way of thinking that is neither led astray by pseudo-problems that are grown on linguistic grounds nor loses sight of how language is used in everyday contexts. The elimination of problems that stem from misleading language use creates an obvious advantage for philosophical reasoning; but the price for the clarity thus gained is high: While on the one hand there is no longer such a thing as pure thinking, on the other hand the analysis of symbolic means of cognition is concerned with linguistic ones alone. As Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasizes in the Tractatus: “All philosophy is a ‘critique of language.’”6 The remedy against the pitfalls of representationalism, which mistakes the mind as a mirror of the external world7 and language as a transparently depicting medium, has been expressively devised as a rejection of any kind of figurativeness and visuality both in language and thought. Moreover, linguistic philosophy is exclusively concerned with language in use, be it by anchoring concepts in everyday language games or by purifying it from grammatical errors. In constricted versions of both its branches – the reduction of philosophical language to ordinary language

3 4

5 6 7

For the twin birth of language and image in Vico’s thought see also Trabant in the present volume. See for example Johann Georg Hamann: Neue Apologie des Buchstaben h. Oder: Ausserordentliche Betrachtungen über die Orthographie der Deutschen von H.G., Schullehrer [1773], in: id.: Sämtliche Werke, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Josef Nadler, vol. 3, Vienna 1949–1957, pp. 98–108. Richard Rorty (ed.): The Linguistic Turn, Chicago 1967. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], trans. by David Pears/Brian McGuinness, London/New York, revised ed. 1974, 4.0031. Richard Rorty: Philosophy as a Mirror of Nature, Princeton 1979.

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and the reconstructive clarification of concepts – it leaves aside not only other forms of articulation but also non-propositional experience and, last but not least, questions of language formation, i.e., its extraordinary, po(i)etic dimension. It is precisely those sorts of speech that are not integrated in the everyday commerce of language use, such as metaphorical anomalies and, above all, the miraculous process of naming, towards which the therapeutic endeavor of linguistic philosophy is directed: “For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.”8 Built on the reflective foundation laid down by the linguistic turn and taking up its challenges, the protagonists of the iconic turn hold that the language-centered notion of logos should be broadened and complemented along the lines of a pictorial logic: “The aim of this enterprise does not lie in the longing for speechlessness, in the illiteracy of a supposed visual innocence of the images, but in a new definition of relations which no longer subordinates the image to language, but rather extends the logos beyond the bounds of verbality by including the potency of the iconic and thereby transforms it.”9 The paradigm of iconic difference (Ikonische Differenz), elaborated by Gottfried Boehm, draws attention to an approach to experience that is specific to images, an approach that is rooted in the very first appearance of visual contrast between a background and an emerging shape, as well as between an image as an object and its meaning, i.e., between “seeing” and “seeing as.”10 Images are conceived of as acts of both showing themselves and showing something (instead of just denoting it), offering articulations that language cannot

  8

  9

10

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations [1953], trans. by Elizabeth Anscombe, Oxford 1953, § 38. See also ibid., § 132: “The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work.” Trans. by S. M.; “Das Ziel dieser Unternehmung besteht nicht in einer Sehnsucht nach Sprachlosigkeit, im Analphabetismus einer vermeintlichen visuellen Unschuld der Bilder, sondern in einer neuen Verhältnisbestimmung, die das Bild nicht länger der Sprache unterwirft, vielmehr den Logos über die Schranke der Verbalitat hinaus, um die Potenz des Ikonischen erweitert und ihn dabei transformiert.” Gottfried Boehm: Jenseits der Sprache? Anmerkungen zur Logik der Bilder, in: id.: Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen. Die Macht des Zeigens, Berlin 2007, pp. 34–53, p. 35. See also id.: Iconic Turn. Ein Brief, and William Mitchell: Pictorial Turn. Eine Antwort, in: Hans Belting (ed.): Bilderfragen. Die Bildwissenschaft im Aufbruch, Munich 2007, pp. 27–46. Cf. Gottfried Boehm: Die Wiederkehr der Bilder, in: id. (ed.): Was ist ein Bild?, Munich 1994, pp. 11–38, p. 30: “Was Bilder  in aller  historischen Vielfalt als  Bilder ‘sind’, was sie ‘zeigen’, was sie  ‘sagen’, verdankt sich mithin einem  visuellen Grundkontrast, der zugleich der Geburtsort jedes bildlichen Sinnes genannt werden kann.” (“What pictures, in all their historic diversity, ‘are’ as pictures, what they ‘show,’ what they ‘say,’ relies on a fundamental visual contrast that at the same time can be called the birth place of any pictorial sense.” Trans. by S. M.).

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provide.11 And unlike language, which is deemed to articulate mainly referential contents, images engender an inner pictorial reality. Pictorial sense arises from the internal relations within images, and in addition to a pictorial access to experience one could also speak of an intensification of experience within an image itself in an ongoing discovery of visual contrasts as parts of a whole. Images are thus never merely symbols, but are indissoluble from what they show. This does not imply that the image studies continue the analytical legacy of considering language only in its rational and propositional character. On the contrary, according to Boehm, the study of language should also take the pictorial logos into consideration, namely as a reminder of its metaphorical offspring.12 That a “logic of showing” is to be found in language as well as in pictures and that language is also not simply separable from what is being talked about, however, seem to be concerns that are conceded mostly to the realm of semantics. The fact that syntactical, rhythmical, and phonetic characteristics lead to a consolidation of sense beyond external reference often goes unheeded. To insist on the essential entwinement of substance and form in pictures appears to be a later reverberation of a similar tentative that took place in musical aesthetics more than a hundred years earlier. On this occasion, the iconic uniqueness of absolute music was claimed both in regard to poetry and to the visual arts. In his treatise The Beautiful in Music Eduard Hanslick stated: Now, in music, substance and form, the subject and its working out, the image and the realized conception are mysteriously blended in one indecomposable whole. This complete fusion of substance and form is exclusively characteristic of music, and presents a sharp contrast to poetry, painting and sculpture, inasmuch as these arts are capable of representing the same idea and the same event in different forms.13 What Hanslick had in mind here was the specific form of music understood as a development of musical thoughts that want to be perceived for their own sake – a trait that, since the 19th century, has been traditionally attributed to autonomous aesthetic experience in general and has been developed in mutual debate between 11

12 13

As Max Imdahl formulated it: “The topic of the iconic is the image as a mediation of sense that cannot be replaced by anything else.” (“Thema der Ikonik ist das Bild als eine solche Vermittlung von Sinn, die durch nichts anderes zu ersetzen ist.”) Max Imdahl: Ikonik. Bilder und ihre Anschauung, in: Boehm: Was ist ein Bild? (as fn. 9), pp. 300–324, p. 300. Trans. by S. M.) Boehm: Die Wiederkehr der Bilder (as fn. 10), pp. 26ff. Eduard Hanslick [1854]: The Beautiful in Music. A Contribution to the Revisal of Musical Aesthetics, trans. by Gustav Cohen, London 1891, p. 166.

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different arts. “To focus on the message for its own sake”14 is precisely how Roman Jakobson defined the poetic function of language, which leads to a shift of attention from the semantic contents to the form of organization of a text and pushes the sensible dimension of language into the foreground; and it was the theory of poetry from which the theory of absolute music drew its metaphysical legitimation.15 From a narrow perspective of analytical linguistic philosophy, figurative language and language that conveys its singular force of drawing original distinctions are marginal phenomena in need of clarification. Critique of language is about gaining distance from a more and more objectified world as well as from a more and more objectified language, up to the point of arbitrary reference. The increasing choice between different symbolic means to address one and the same meaning goes hand in hand with increasing freedom, be it from phenomenal experience or from the formal and material underpinnings of natural language itself. In their schematic aspect, objects and signs can be handled regardless of their concrete and palpable appearance.16 In a strictly iconic approach to images, the beholder becomes involved with the contrasts and differences presented therein, up to the point of losing himself in the unfolding of inner relations that cannot be torn apart from their material presence. In its most captivating effect, this being virtually spellbound and drawn into a life-like interplay of visual forms is what in Horst Bredekamp’s theory of the Image Acts is called the “intrinsic image act”: “The intrinsic image act, equally influential in art and nature, draws its […] profound effects from the irresistibility of form as form. By releasing itself from the contextual bonds, form unfolds its potency from the distance of this autonomy. Herein, it is the purest form of the image act.”17 But the enchanting experience can also be fruitfully applied to looking into how we perceive and experience anything. By sparking the practice of discovering contrasts and drawing distinctions all along the way, the formal analysis of images also assures us of our ability to differentiate at all. And this effect is weakest when 14 15

16

17

Roman Jakobson: Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics, in: Thomas Sebeok (ed.): Style in Language, Cambridge, MA 1960, pp. 350–377, p. 356. Cf. Carl Dahlhaus: Die Idee der absoluten Musik [1978], in: id.: Gesammelte Schriften in 10 Bän­­den, ed. by Hermann Danuser, vol. IV: 19. Jahrhundert I: Theorie/Ästhetik/Geschichte: Monographien, Regensburg 2002, pp. 11–126, esp. pp. 116–126. For a dialogical-philosophical account of acting and schematizing see Kuno Lorenz: Pragmatic and Semiotic Prerequisites for Predication. A dialogue model, in: id: Logic, Language and Method – On Polarities in Human Experience, Berlin/New York 2010, pp. 42–55. “Der in Kunst und Natur gleichermaßen wirksame intrinsische Bildakt zieht seine […] tiefgreifenden Effekte aus der Unwiderstehlichkeit der Form als Form. Indem sich diese aus den Bindungszusammenhängen gelöst hat, entfaltet sie aus der Distanz dieser Autonomie ihre Wirkkraft. Hierin ist sie die reinste Form des Bildakts.” Trans. by S. M.; in: Horst Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2007, Frankfurt/M. 2010, p. 328.

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images assume a quasi-linguistic character by conferring a negligible sensual form on a conceptual content without shaping it – and us – in an irreducible way.18 Deprived of its iconic activity, an image would be a symbolic sign that could be replaced by any other one referring to the same thing. But language and images are, of course, open in both directions: to the path of schematic reference as well as to the path of provoking the interplay of substantial forms for its own sake,19 and to being objectified as well as to inducing an open series of articulatory performances. How else could image studies talk of pictorial logic or of thinking in pictures? How else could creativity and the condensation of inner references take place in language? And even if the iconic potential of language and the symbolic aspect of images are often their less illuminated sides, it is worthwhile elaborating on the processes of building up schemata to attain shared worldviews and suspending them for the sake of aesthetic experience in both of them.

2. Gestures The study of particular articulatory processes has been devised by Ernst Cassirer in a more general way by considering the plurality of cultural forms of man, conceived as the animal symbolicum: Distinctions in myth, religion, art, language, and science are not drawn in the same way, and the yardstick for their assessment must be derived from their own constitutional structure: “In defining the distinctive character of any spiritual form, it is essential to measure it by its own standards. […] every new form represents a new ‘building’ of the world, in accordance with

18 19

Cf. Boehm: Jenseits der Sprache (as fn. 9), p. 43. An early notion of an “intrinsic language act” can be found in a fragment of Novalis dating from 1798: “If one could only make people understand that it is the same with language as it is with mathematical formulas – they make a world of their own – they only play with themselves, express nothing but their wonderful nature, and that is why they are so expressive – that is why the curious interplay of things is mirrored in them. It is only through their freedom that they are members of nature, and only in their free movements does the world’s soul manifest itself and make them into a delicate measure and ground plan of things.” Trans. by S. M.; cf. Novalis: Werke, ed. by Gerhard Schulz, Munich 2001, p. 426: “Wenn man den Leuten nur begreiflich machen könnte, daß es mit der Sprache wie mit den mathema­ tischen Formeln sei – sie machen eine Welt für sich aus – Sie spielen nur mit sich selbst, drücken nichts als ihre wunderbare Natur aus, und eben darum sind sie so ausdrucksvoll – eben darum spiegelt sich in ihnen das seltsame Verhältnißspiel der Dinge. Nur durch ihre Freiheit sind sie Glieder der Natur, und nur in ihren freien Bewegungen äußert sich die Weltseele und macht sie zu einem zarten Maßstab und Grundriß der Dinge.”

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specific criteria, valid for it alone.”20 Thus, conceptual distinctions cannot be viewed independently of mythical, religious, artistic, linguistic, or scientific differentiations. Rather, they have to be pursued by delving into the respective forms of life, intuition, and thought, and by reconstructing their particular organization of the world from the inside out. In the chapter on Language in the Phase of Sensuous Expression, Cassirer introduces the linguistic structure of the world by focusing on a relation that is fundamental to all symbolic forms, namely the unmediated entanglement between the external and the internal, between expression and content, i.e., between material sign carriers, like movements and sounds, and their meaning. For Cassirer, it is in gestures and demonstrative or onomatopoetic vocalizations where the indissoluble connection between the external, sensuous world and the inner, spiritual world happens. He understands the transition from purely physical to meaningful movements as a shift away from sensual grasping to pointing or mimicking acts. Likewise, the unarticulated sound of excitement is inhibited, resulting in an articulated and ordered movement of sound – which no longer signals an immediate desire, but refers to the world in an indicating or imitating way. Significant movements of body and voice are a measure of articulation that is specific to language. The bond between bodily or vocal movement and meaning is a reciprocal one, and this is where language as a symbolic form originates. Taking up Cassirer’s idea of “symbolic pregnancy,” it has been the merit of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to reclaim and elaborate the above-mentioned iconic traits of the visual, and notably the original power of showing, for the sphere of language.21 By transferring the notion of gesture from the visual to the verbal dimension, the formation of thought in language is conveyed as being rooted in singular movements of the vocal trait, and distinctions in what is thought must be traced back to the distinctions in the means of articulation employed: “For the speaking subject and for those who listen to him, the phonetic gesture produces a certain structuring of experience, a certain modulation of existence, just as a behavior of my body

20 21

Ernst Cassirer: The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms [1923], vol. 1: Language, trans. by Ralph Manheim, New Haven/London 1955, p. 177. A more detailed account of Merleau-Ponty can be found in the chapter of Trabant in this volume. Cf. also Sabine Marienberg: Die Möglichkeit der Geste. Poietisches Handeln zwischen Bewegung und Zeichen bei Oskar Pastior, in: Franz Engel/Sabine Marienberg (eds.): Das Entgegenkommende Denken. Verstehen zwischen Form und Empfindung (Actus et Imago 15), Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 163–177. For Merleau-Ponty’s reception of Cassirer cf. John Michael Krois: Problematik, Eigenart und Aktualität der Cassirerschen Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, in: Hans-Jürg Braun/Helmut Holzhey/Ernst Wolfgang Orth (eds.): Über Ernst Cas­ sirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Frankfurt/M. 1988, pp. 15–44.

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invests – for me and for others – the objects that surround me with a certain signi­ fication.”22 What Merlau-Ponty calls a “phonetic gesture” – or also the “miracle of expres­ 23 sion” – consists in an original performance of a both physical and conceptual articulation that stems from bodily activity and at the same time transcends it: This ever-recreated opening in the fullness of being is what conditions the first speech of the child and the speech of the writer, the construction of the word and the construction of concepts. Such is the function revealed through language, which reiterates itself, depends upon itself, or that like a wave gathers itself together and steadies itself in order to once again throw itself beyond itself.24 In this perspective, phonetic gestures are anything but assured indexical signs. They are not adopted as elements of an already existing sign system, but rather they open it up and modulate it by constituting meaning in the first place. However, original gestures, also those of the first man who spoke,25 are always performed in an already articulated world. The origin of language takes place as a continuous rise, as an expressive movement that neither starts out from motor processes nor from antecedent thought. Instead of being mediated from the outside, formed material and meaning entail each other, and it is gestures that – much in sense of Wilhelm von Humboldt – allow a glance at the movement of the spirit of language becoming manifest in its form. To understand how a linguistically articulated world is built up “from the inside out,” one would have to investigate, just as is the case of images, the specific differences that make it become real.

3. Mutual Articulations Language and images do not only articulate the world; they also articulate one another. In habitualized and unproblematic contexts, verbal and visual articulations of a joint object can be understood in their representational function. As 22 23 24 25

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception [1945], trans. by Donald A. Landes, London/New York 2012, p. 199. Ibid., p. 203. Ibid. Cf. ibid., p. 530: “[…] what we say here […] applies to originary speech – that of the child who utters his first word, of the lover who discovers his emotion, of the ‘first man who spoke,’ or of the writer and the philosopher who awaken a primordial experience beneath traditions.”

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purely symbolic signs, they impart knowledge (like “this is what a pirouette looks like,” “this is called a pirouette,” or descriptions of how best to perform one) without leaving a trace of how that knowledge was verbally or visually constructed. Their inner distinctions go largely unnoticed because most of them are not crucial for unambiguous reference. When it comes to explorations, though, as in research and artistic poiesis, they can become reciprocally “gestural,” in the sense that intrinsic differences shown in one kind of symbolical ordering sprout articulations in the other. A good example for this is the famous work of the 1906 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine, Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. In 1873, Golgi discovered a procedure using chrome silver to darkly stain a small number of cells within the brain, which made its fine structure visible for the first time, and he construed it as a net-like fabric of interconnected cells. Cajal, when shown a tissue preparation of the cerebral cortex colored using Golgi’s method, saw something that reportedly left him sleepless the following night: Against a clear background stood black threadlets, some slender and smooth, some thick and thorny, in a pattern punctuated by small dense spots, stellate or fusiform. All was sharp as a sketch with Chinese ink on transparent Japanpaper. And to think that that was the same tissue which when stained with carmine or logwood left the eye in a tangled thicket where sight may stare and grope for ever fruitlessly, baffled in its effort to unravel confusion and lost for ever in a twilit doubt. Here, on the contrary, all was clear and plain as a diagram. A look was enough. Dumbfounded, I could not take my eye from the microscope.26 Looking deeper in what he had before him, he finally interpreted the structure as a web of separate units, namely individual neurons connected to several other ones via synapses (a conclusion that was, by the way, adamantly refuted by Golgi). Cajal’s discovery might be partially attributed to the fact that he was a passionate and gifted draftsman and thus equipped with delicately articulated visual schemata that he could individuate in a single glance. But what was decisive for gaining a deeper understanding of brain structure was that the visual characteristics of the tissue drove him to an unparalleled accuracy of description. This allowed him to articulate an object schema, namely “network,” by way of intermediate schemata, namely “neurons,” “dendrites,” and “synapses” (but also “slender and smoothe” or “thick and thorny” – the degree of detail is also compelling in a literary sense) and thereby to 26

As quoted in Charles S. Sherrington: Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in: Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 1/4 (1935), pp. 425–441, p. 430.

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perceive differences in something that from Golgi’s point of view was internally inarticulate.27 Inasmuch as specific differences are discernible both in the visualized structure and in its verbal delineation, the color distribution is an inner, gestural measure of the view on brain structure, as is its linguistic account. And tracing and transforming visual articulations by way of language can, in turn, provoke the creation of drawings in order to test and develop what has been formulated.28 Another kind of mutual articulation takes place when visual and linguistic processes, i.e., ways of articulating, superimpose and permeate each other. As Michael Baxandall has shown, the rediscovery of classical Latin in the Italian Renaissance had impacts that reached far beyond the realm of speech and led to differentiations in visual experience in general as well as in art practice and theory. This was, for example, the case with semantic distinctions, like the one between niger as a glossy and ater as a flat version of black. Or the one between facies to refer to the face as a part of the body and vultus to refer to mien and countenance.29 But it was also effective in compositional questions where sentence structure was applied as a model for body structure in painting and sculpture. What turned out to be even more important for artistic practice, though, was the periodic sentence in classical Latin prose with its balancing of elaborately nested clauses, the building up of wholes in an antithetical or parallelizing train of thought.In one of his early poems, a madrigal dedicated to Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo Buonarroti deliberately exposes Latin elegance and at the same time undermines it with sculptural rawness: Sì come per levar, Donna, si pone In pietra alpestra e dura Una viva figura Che là più cresce, u’ più la pietra scema, Tal alcun’opre buone, Per l’alma che pur trema, Cela il soverchio della propria carne Con inculta sua cruda e dura scorza. Tu pur dalle mie streme Parti puo’ sol levarne Ch’in me non è di me voler né forza. 27 28

29

On the dynamic tension between the articulate and the inarticulate see Bredekamp in this volume. Cajal subsequently also refined his insights into the cortical structure in a plenitude of aesthetically striking pen and ink drawings. See Eric A. Newman/Alfonso Aracque/Janet M. Dubinsky (eds.): The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Ramon y Cajal, New York 2017. Michael Baxandall: Giotto and the Orators. Humanist Observers of Painting and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition 1350–1450, Oxford 1971, pp. 9f.

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Just as, by taking away, lady, one puts into hard and alpine stone a figure that’s alive and that grows larger wherever the stone decreases, so too are any good deeds of the soul that still trembles concealed by the excess mass of its own flesh, which forms a husk that’s coarse and crude and hard. You alone can still take them out from within my other shell, for I haven’t the will or strength within myself.30 The dense interlacing of conceptual, visible, palpable, and linguistic opposites, such as subject/object, interior/exterior, hardness/softness, dead matter/vitality, and growth/diminishment, is nested in a way that leaves their relations in permanent suspense:31 Just as the artist uncovers the concept of the latent living figure that lies hidden in hard stone, the gracious acts of Vittoria unveil the figure of his inner self by relieving it of its physical shell. The sculptor himself is sculpted by her grace, and his living flesh, that is soft and organic compared to stone, is hard dead matter compared to his trembling soul; removing and growing are two sides of one and the same revealing process. The tension between the shell being subtracted and its core being uplifted is condensed in the Italian verb levare, which at the same time means “to take away” and “to raise” and thus carries the seed of both the negative act of subtracting and the positive life-giving one of elevating.32 The interpenetration of forms is intensified on the rhythmical level. While in line seven the metric schema dissolves itself into the fluid movement of lifting the veil, in line eight the (both visible and audible) arduous and fervent act of chipping off the stone brusquely contrasts with this gentle gesture in a hammering chant. This almost stubborn regularity of movement is taken up in the last line where Michelangelo, lacking any force to uncover his soul on his own, surrenders himself to a seemingly ideal and eternal rhythm – that he himself creates as a writer. The proceeding entanglement of distinctions, both symptomatic (like the exemplification of the chopping rhythm, which is even more emphasized by the choice of harsh consonants and the obstinate recurrence of the 30 31

32

James M. Saslow: The Poetry of Michelangelo. An Annotated Translation, New Haven/London 1991, p. 305. On the conceptual framework of Michelangelo’s poetry see also Glauco Cambon: Fury of Form. Michelangelo’s Poetry, Princeton 1985; id.: Sculptural From as Metaphysical Conceit in Michelangelo’s Verse, in: The Sewanee Review 70/1 (1962), pp. 155–163.; David Summers: Michelangelo and the Language of Art, Princeton 1981, esp. pp. 203–233. Cf. Cambon: Sculptural Form as Metaphysical Conceit (as fn. 30), p. 160.

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vowel “u”) and symbolic (like the denotation of growth and diminishment), is accomplished by its manifestation in verbal, visual, and also haptic orderings that are themselves articulated. The antithetical tension in the conception of the work of sculpting, though – as well as the paragonistic friction between poetry and the visual arts – owe both their possibilities and limitations to classical rhetoric.

4. Distance, Immersion, and the Friction of Forms Reciprocal articulation can also occur simultaneously, in cases where doing, showing, and saying shape each other in the making. Such a coincident interaction may, for example, take place when someone comments on something he is currently drawing. Or when someone graphically articulates what he is talking about by sketching it on a chalkboard. In their representational function, i.e., in what they say and illustrate, verbal and visual schemata can be considered mutually substitutable. In what they present, i.e., in what they show and exemplify, they are not. Disregarding the specific distinctions of articulations fosters joint orientation and successful instrumental action; in their latent potency for inducing perceptual and conceptual changes, though, lies the origin of gestural sense. And while in the first case schemata are adopted and stabilized, in the second case they are varied, abolished, or instantiated anew in the course of explorative activity. In order to better grasp the dynamic relationship between acting and schematizing, it may help to make a detour and consider the interplay of the verbal and the visual aspects of language itself, as well as that of speech and action in general, whose interdependent development also seems to play a crucial role in an anthropological perspective on cultural evolution. According to the line of thought of André Leroi-Gourhan,33 speech evolved during the course of a series of liberations that freed parts of the body from former functions: Due to the attainment of upright posture that also allowed for an increase in brain volume, the hands were freed from the task of locomotion and could be used to both manipulate and gesticulate, while the mouth was freed from the task of grasping and carrying – and, moreover, the face was no longer turned to the ground for most of the time. Thus, more and more gestures could be complemented or replaced by facial expressions and, later on, be superseded by phonic gestures that took over the task of referring to objects. Now, the hands, released from gesticulating, could in turn increasingly be used to develop and improve manipulative 33

André Leroi-Gourhan: Gesture and Speech [1964], trans. by Anna Bostock Berger, Cambridge, MA/London 1993.

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skills. This not only facilitated an advantageous division of labor but also opened up the possibility of commenting on one’s actions. As the psychologist and theorist of language origins Michael Corballis remarks: It would clearly be difficult to communicate manually while holding an infant, or driving a car, or carrying the shopping, yet we can and do talk while doing these things. But a more positive consequence of freeing the hands is that it allowed our forebears to speak while they carried out manual opera­ tions, and so explain what they were doing. This may well have led to advances in manufacturing techniques, and the ability to teach techniques to others.34 In the process of becoming diversified, doing and speaking – or gaining schematic access to what is currently being done – appear as a double-sided form of articulation in which the entanglement of practical and cognitive skills boosts the evolution of intentional action, toolmaking, and speech respectively. These three developments are not to be considered separately, but can only be understood with respect to one another.35 Whereas performing actions entails articulating them internally in phases (like picking up a spear, weighing it in the hand, taking aim at a prey animal, and throwing), identifying actions by means of their schematic traits articulates them from the outside:36 “This is hunting with a spear,” “this is fabricating a spear,” or, moreover, “this is explaining how to fabricate a spear.” In singling out actions by schematizing them, not only practical but also linguistic actions assume a tool-like character. Bühler, even though decidedly avoiding the question of the origins of language, comes to the same conclusion: “Language is related to the tool; it, too, is one of the implements used in life, it is an organon like the material implement, the material intermediary extraneous to the body; language is, like the tool, a formed intermediary.”37 In being an organon, however, language is not only a detached means of representation and communication, but also a limb. For Bühler, it is different

34 35

36 37

Michael C. Corballis: From Hand to Mouth. The Gestural Origins of Language, in: Morton H. Christiansen/Simon Kirby (eds.): Language Evolution, Oxford 2003, pp. 201–218, p. 213. Embedded in practical activity, linguistic activity is what Karl Bühler called “empractical”: “[…] let us mention the fact that the integration of speaking into other meaningful behaviour deserves a specific term; we shall become acquainted with empractical utterances, utterances that seem incomplete, as a major group of the so-called ellipses […].” Karl Bühler: Theory of Language. The Representational Function of Language [1934], trans. by Donald Frazer Goodwin, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2011, p. 61. Lorenz: Pragmatic and Semiotic Prerequisites (as fn. 16), pp. 49f. Bühler: Theory of Language (as fn. 34), pp. xicf.

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from a merely technical device because of its use in human exchanges, which makes it a limb, so to speak, of interaction. Leroi-Gourhan goes even further by stating that in prehistoric times tools virtually oozed out from the unity of acting and cognizing: We perceive our intelligence as being a single entity and our tools as the noble fruit of our thought, whereas the Australanthropians, by contrast, seem to have possessed their tools in much the same way as an animal has claws. They appear to have acquired them, not through some flash of genius which, one fine day, led them to pick up a sharp-edged pebble and use it as an extension of their fist (an infantile hypothesis well-beloved of many works of popularization), but as if their brains and their bodies had gradually exuded them.38 Speech that is “integrated into meaningful behavior”39 has to be considered not only in its representational but also in its groping and shaping, articulating traits. Linguistic actions help to refine the activities of toolmaking as much as they are challenged and, in turn, sharpened by them. Carrying out manual operations and speaking can thus be regarded as both the means and the matter of their mutual articulation. Just as an activity can be articulated from the outside by representing it as an action-schema (“this is toolmaking”), presented changes in how tools are made can make a difference to what “toolmaking” means. The linguistic articulation of an action can be called “gestural” in the sense of Merleau-Ponty when its meaning is first instantiated (or changed) – and vice versa. In this, the intrinsic relation between carrying out an activity and schematizing does not essentially differ from the reciprocally articulatory one between language and images; and neither does it differ from their mutual articulation that is not simultaneous but temporally distant. However, neither Bühler nor Leroi-Gourhan considered language in its poetic function; as a matter of fact, Leroi-Gourhan limited even aesthetic objects to their figurative and representational roles. But articulations can, in equal measure, exercise the freedom of disengaging from referential and instrumental bonds as well as offer the possibility of suspending shared goals and communicative ends, and of immersing oneself in a plurality of forms that, in their singular iconic differences, escape any symbolic grasp. These forms constitute, as Hanslick held for music, “a language we speak and understand, but which we are unable to translate.”40 In artic38 39 40

Leroi-Gourhan: Gesture and Speech (as fn. 33), p. 108. Cf. fn. 34. Hanslick: The Beautiful in Music (as fn. 13), p. 41.

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ulations for their own sake, the articulatory means are foregrounded in such a way that they themselves become stabilized as objects against the inarticulate background of what there is beyond them. As in a multistable figure, the iconic difference between “perceiving” and “perceiving as” turns into one between “perceiving” and “perceiving in.” What is at issue here is no longer how verbally or visually formed experience is constituted, but how verbal and visual articulations are themselves built up. The gestural attempt to articulate the untranslatable becomes manifest in the friction of their forms.

Jürgen Trabant

Language and Image as Gesture and Articulation

“das tönende Wort ist gleichsam eine Verkörperung des Gedanken” Humboldt 1824

1. Symbol and Articulation “Symbolic articulation” has two philosophical and terminological sources: One is Cassirer’s well-known theory of the “symbol,” and the other one is Wilhelm von Humboldt’s lesser known theory of “articulation.” Cassirer’s term “symbol” designates the specific form of the human embodiment of thought and hence the fundamental difference between the animal world and the human world. Symbolicity is the basic characteristic of the world that humans create. Vico calls that man-made world the mondo civile (as opposed to the mondo naturale). Humans create their world as symbols. “Hence, instead of defining man as an animal rationale, we should define him as animal symbolicum.”1 Perhaps the beginnings of symbolicity can be traced back to the animal reign, as new findings in ape culture suggest.2 Nonetheless, it still remains true that the symbolic mondo civile is the world of the Human, even if we can generously concede some symbolic behavior to our close biological relatives. “Articulation,” on the other hand, has referred, in the linguistic and philosophical tradition since antiquity, primarily to the sounds of language and to the specific segmentation and combination of sounds in the linguistic chain (in articuli, i. e., “joints”), whose phonematic structure is seized by the ingenious invention of alphabetic writing (grámmata). Aristotle distinguishes the inarticulate sounds of 1 2

Ernst Cassirer: An Essay on Man, New Haven/London 1944, p. 26. Cf. Horst Bredekamp’s chapter in this volume.

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animals as psophos agrammatikos (agrammatical noise)3 from the articulate, “grammatical” vocal sounds (phone grammatike) of human language. Humboldt extends the concept of articulation to meaning, i. e., to language as a whole. Articulation is not only the structural principle of the sounds of language but also of meaning. It is its “logical function”; language creates “Portionen des Denkens” (portions of thought).4 Therefore, “articulation is the very essence of language.”5 Now, “symbolic articulation” seems to reduce the focus of our research of symbols to language or language-like semioses. But it is exactly the other way round: The intention of our project is to extend the concept of “articulation” to the larger realm of symbols, i. e., to add a structural trait – articulation – to investigations of symbols in order to understand symbolicity better and to grasp the very specificity of different symbols by revealing the specificity of their articulation. In this perspective we focus on the old semiotic duality of language and image as the most important forms of the human cognitive appropriation of the world. And we hope to eventually elucidate their common traits and their differences under the label of “symbolic articulation.”

2. Language and Image, Historically We are aware of the fact that this is far from being a new question and that there are whole libraries filled with great thought on the problem. Our feeling is, however, that recent findings – in the philosophy of embodiment, in philosophical anthropology, in pragmatist philosophy, in the art historical theory of the image, in a non-analytical philosophy of language, and in the analysis of liminal artistic phenomena – contribute new insights into the articulation of symbols and hence can lead to a new theory of culture. The duality of language and image is, of course, not a new subject. From the beginning, it has been situated in the very center of the discussion on cognition and communication in our culture. I will start by taking a very short and frivolous look at those beginnings in the hope that this rough historical sketch will contribute to showing what is at stake.6

3 4 5 6

Aristotle: De interpretatione, 16a. Wilhelm von Humboldt: Gesammelte Schriften [GS], vol. 7, ed. by Albert Leitzmann et al., Berlin 1903–1936, p. 581. Trans. by J. T.; “Die Gliederung ist aber gerade das Wesen der Sprache.” GS, vol. 5, p. 122. For the following historical remarks cf. Jürgen Trabant: Mithridates im Paradies. Kleine Geschichte des Sprachdenkens, Munich 2003.

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Image and language have always been treated together, mostly as enemies. But, in line with a deep intuition of Vico’s and Lessing’s, we will not regard them as enemies but as “twins” (gemelle) or “friendly neighbors” (freundschaftliche Nachbarn). This is because they have the same fundamental function or – better – the same double function: cognition and communication. As far as I can see, there is no theory of language without reference to the image and no theory of the image without reference to language.

2.1. However, in our two traditions, the Jewish and the Greek, or the theologicoreligious and the philosophico-scientific traditions, the positions regarding these semioses have differed considerably from the very beginning, and their opposition was (and still is) the reason for fierce cultural fights which have to come to an end in the light of their brotherhood or neighborhood. “Thou shalt not make any image [pesel]” means that you should not try to make an image of God. The Absolute, Truth, Perfection is not representable in an image. The Golden Lamb will be destroyed as well as other idols, eidola – the negative Greek word for image (and foreign gods). The Bible clearly sides with language, against the image. And the New Testament also praises the word, logos: “In the beginning was the Word.” The divine word creates the world, and Adam accomplishes that creation by creating names for God’s creatures. Everything seems to be fine. However, the word also has a problematic side in the Bible, but not due to its cognitive function (the words given by Adam are good); the problem is communication: Eve’s seduction as well as the collective linguistic seduction at Babel are communicative actions (and crimes), and both communicative crimes are punished severely: Adam and Eve have to leave Eden, and, at Babel, the Edenic “one language and one speech” of mankind (“the whole Earth”) disappears in the multiplicity of languages established as an obstacle to communication. The longing behind the Babel myth is monolingualism, Paradise.

2.2. The Greek tradition seems to favor the image and the eye. Saint Augustine rightly denounces the typically Greek “cognitive appetite” as the concupiscentia oculorum (concupiscence of the eyes).7 And, as far as the word is concerned, the problem for Greek philosophers is not communication, since everybody knows Greek. The 7

See, however, the strong position of mousike in old Greek society, cf. Maria Luisa Catoni’s chapter in this volume.

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Greek philosophers seek the truth; their problem is cognition, and the word is the obstacle to true knowledge. In the dialogue Cratylus, Plato criticizes the poor cognitive efficiency of words. The word is not a good image (eikon). Therefore, it would be better to approach the world without language. Speechlessness is the longing of Greek philosophy. Good images are better than words. Ultimately, however, images too are less good than the “real” things (ta onta, pragmata), and even these are only images, images of the ideas that are, in turn, images, things seen: The word idea etymologically means “something seen.” We have a whole series of images: ideas, pragmata, eikones, and words (Plato’s 7th Letter). Let me mention en passant that in Plato words have a double function: They are communicative instruments (organon didaskalikon), and they are cognitive instruments, (organon ousian diakritikon), they “divide the Being,” i. e., they differentiate what is not yet differentiated; they introduce cognitive differentiations into the chaos.8 In other words, they articulate the world. This prefigures Humboldt’s “logical function” of language: Gliederung.

2.3. Aristotle has the solution for Plato’s problematic verdict about the word being a bad icon: The word simply does not have to depict the world; it is not an image (eikon); it is only a sign (semeion). He clearly separates the image and the word by separating cognition and communication. In Aristotle’s famous passage on language in De interpretatione, that will be the linguistic credo of Europe for thousands of years, language and image are related, but they are attributed to two different functions. The cognitive function is fulfilled by images: The mind makes (mental) images of the world (pathemata tes psyches), mental inner representations that are pictures, “likenesses” (homoiomata). Thought is an image, i. e., homologous, similar to the world (ta pragmata). The likeness is based on vision, or touch: The likeness is impressed on the mind, like an impression on wax. It is stamped (typos). Haptic or visual, thought is image (homoioma). The communicative function, on the other hand, is taken care of by words. These are not visual entities; they are composed of sound, voice (ta en te phone), and this sound is not similar to the thought it transports. The word is a sign (semeion) not an image, and as such, it is “conventional” (kata syntheken) and not so very important.9 8 9

Plato: Cratylus, 388b/c. Cf. Aristotle: De interpretatione, 16a. And ta graphomena, writing, are signs of the sounds (ta en te phone).

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2.4. Christianity strikes against the image as well as against the word: The Greek pagan preference for the image and the eye will be thoroughly destroyed by Christian theology, by Saint Augustine’s polemical stance against the body. The body is evil, the flesh is sin (concupiscentia carnis). Worse than anything else is the concupiscence of the eyes (concupiscentia oculorum). Hence images are evil. The only sources of truth are not the eyes, but sacred words (verba divina, eloquia divina). The ear seems to be preferable to the eye. Words are better than images because they are only signs (signa), i. e., their corporality has no importance. But even these sacred sounds are still carnal, flesh (caro); therefore they will be completely immaterialized by the Church Father. Augustine was a master of the word, a famous rhetorician, but when he became a Christian he fiercely fought against his own past, against the word, against rhetoric, against eloquence, which he denounced as loquacitas, and against the bellum forense (war of the forum). Ultimately, we do not even need words because the truth (veritas) is already in the human soul, the heart (cor). Christ, the summus magister, resides in our forum interior. Ultimately, words are superfluous.10 Augustinian language theory is clearly a precursor of modern cognitivism and Chomskyan linguistics: Language as thought is already in the mind, it is innate, and it has no body.

3. Embodied Thought, Twins and Neighbors Eventually, however, the flesh arises from the Christian ashes. The Renaissance is a liberation from the repression of the body, and this means, first of all, of the eye. The concupiscence of the eyes, after one thousand years of repression, comes back. The image is back. And – in the wake of the image – the word too retrieves its body. The word, in Aristotle’s logic, only a secondary device for communication, regains its rhetorical vigor and its cognitive dignity. Saint Augustine’s condemnation of rhetoric and the bodily pleasures of the word will finally be revoked. Hence, the word is also back, the word in all its carnal splendor.11 The Enlightenment continues the celebration of the return of the body (after the temporary Cartesian drawback when Saint Augustine returned to Port-Royal). Its dominant current is empiricist or sensualist. And we have a real explosion of reflections on word and image in the 18th century: Vico, Condillac, Lessing, and Herder, to name only the most important theoreticians, discuss the embodiment of thought in 10 11

On Saint Augustine cf. Trabant: Mithridates (as fn. 6), pp. 45–52. Cf. Peter Mack: A History of Renaissance Rhetoric 1380–1620, Oxford 2011.

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its main symbolic manifestations. The discussion on word and image appears mostly in the form of a history of semiosis or of the production of human thought, or, seen from a current point of view, in the form of a philosophy of embodiment.

3.1. Vico is certainly the philosopher who comes closest to our basic inspirations. Vico’s philosophy is a narration of the genesis of human thought that is a narration of the embodiment of thought. This is not the place to present Vico’s semiogenetic story in all its details;12 just points relevant to our project will be singled out. It starts with the insight that thought is generated in phonetic and visual symbols at the same time: “they are born as twins […] the letters with the languages.”13 Vico calls the visual symbols lettere, letters, but it is clear that lettere are images, drawings. These first symbols are “poetic characters” (caratteri poetici). The Greek words for writing, graphein and charassein (to scratch), are the etymological bases for this broad meaning of lettere.14 Word and image are twins.15 They have the same function and – and this is also incredibly clear-sighted – word and image are also structurally parallel: With a strong deictic function (additando, Tomasello would say “pointing”)16, the first productions of thought, cenni e atti (i. e., gestures, visual as well as phonetic) are clearly mimetic: The iconic gestures “dance” the meaning (Tomasello: “pantomiming”).17 Vico insists on the synthesis of thought and its material bodily manifestations. Thought is embodied. In the course of history the symbols seem to become more “arbitrary,” but they remain essentially iconic. This applies to both language and image. In modern language theory, Roman Jakobson has argued for a “deep” iconicity of words and linguistic structures.18

12

13

14 15 16 17 18

Cf. Jürgen Trabant: Vico’s New Science of Ancient Signs: A Study of Sematology, London/New York 2004; id.: On the Vico Road: the Sematological Lane, in: Monica Riccio/Manuela Sanna/ Yilmaz Levent (eds.): The Vico Road. Nuovi Percorsi Vichiani, Rome 2016, pp. 101–114. Trans. by J. T.; “[N]acquero esse gemelle […] le lettere con le lingue.” Giambattista Vico: Principi di scienza nuova d’intorno alla comune natura delle nazioni [1744], in: Opere, ed. by Andrea Battistini, vol. 1, Milan 1990, pp. 411–971, par. 33. Cf. Maria Luisa Catoni’s chapter in this volume: § 1. For the deep connection between lingue and lettere, language and writing, cf. Alva Noë’s reflections on the “writerly attitude” in this volume. Michael Tomasello: Origins of Human Communication, Cambridge, MA/London 2008. Cf. the passage of Plato’s Cratylus (422e–423e) that Catoni quotes in her chapter in this volume. Cf. Roman Jakobson: Quest for the Essence of Language [1965], in: Roman Jakobson: Selected Writings, vol. 2, The Hague/Paris 1971, pp. 345–359.

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3.2. In the history of human thought, sketched by the French philosopher Condillac, visual and phonetic movements manifest the primitive human thought in a synthetic union which is at the same time a synthesis of subjective expression/ appeal (Bühler: Ausdruck/Appell) and objective representation (Bühler: Darstellung):20 The voice, as a cry (cri des passions), accompanies the deictic gesture (action) towards the object in this first manifestation of “language” (i. e., semiosis). The phonetic part of this synthetic symbolic event refers to the subject, not to the object indicated by the gesture. There is a functional division between (vocal) expression/appeal, on the one hand, and (visual) deictic representation, on the other, or between communication and cognition. Sound and gesture appear together but they do not have the same function. Herder immediately sees the problem in Condillac’s scenario of the genesis of language.21 How does sound become “objective”; how does the voice point to and imitate the world? How does communication become cognition and representation which are the main functions of sound language? The semiogenetic pair that appears at the very beginning of human evolution is not a pair of “twins” as in Vico’s narrative but rather two parts of one symbolic event. Even if the problem of the semantic function of sound is not resolved, Condillac’s semiogenetic story is, however, like Vico’s, also about a parallel evolution of sound (cry) and gesture (action). It focuses on sound, hence on language, and does not elaborate the structural parallelism between phonetic and visual semioses. However, voice and hand, sound and gesture (cri et action) unite again at the end of human evolution: in writing, the gesture represents sound, the hand “points” to the voice. 19

19 20 21

Etienne de Condillac: Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines [1746], ed. by Charles Porset, Auvers-sur-Oise 1973. Karl Bühler: Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, Jena 1934. Johann Gottfried Herder: Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache [1772], ed. by Wolfgang Proß, Munich 1978.

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3.3. Vico’s semiogenetic twins reappear in a certain way as “friendly neighbors” in Lessing’s Laocoon.22 I do not want to delve into the question of whether Lessing preferred “poetry” (Poesie) to “painting” (Mahlerey), or into the art historical lamentation over Lessing’s preference for poetry. I read the Laocoon as a contribution to the question of symbolic articulation, and especially of the relation between language and image.23 And in this respect, three elements of Lessing’s paragone are important: First, his statement that Poesie and Mahlerey are billige freundschaftliche Nachbarn (fair and friendly neighbors), which confirms the Vichian stance of the semiogenetic twins and refers to the identity of their function as symbols. Second, this vicinity manifests itself in a fundamental structural trait: Both, Mahlerey and Poesie (image and language as text), have a “bequemes Verhältnis zum Bezeichneten”24 (comfortable relation to the signified), i. e., they are both iconic. Third, Lessing defines the essential features that differentiate the friendly neighbors. Thus, Les­ sing – with regard to the material – opposes the temporality of language to the spatiality of the image. The elements of the temporal signifier are “articulated sounds”; the elements of the spatial signifier are “figures and colors.” On the temporal and phonetic side, “articulation” is explicitly mentioned. But we may assume that “figures and colors” are the articuli of the spatial and visual symbol. And, with regard to contents, language refers to actions, and the image to bodies. Because both semioses are structurally iconic, the temporal signifier has a temporal content (action), and the spatial signifier a spatial one (body). The Laocoon is a very good methodological example for our research: It shows the identity of function, the identity of basic structure, and the structural differences in the two main symbolic forms. Symbolicity, iconicity, and articulation are the three elements we have to look for in our systematic explorations into the nature of the image and the word.

22 23

24

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie [1766], ed. by Friedrich Vollhardt, Stuttgart 2012. Cf. Jürgen Trabant: From Friendly Semiotic Neighbours to Articulatory Twins, in: Avi Lifschitz/Michael Squire (eds.): Rethinking Lessing’s Laocoon. Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the Limits of Painting and Poetry, Oxford 2017, pp. 345–363. Lessing: Laokoon (as fn. 22), p. 115.

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4. Humboldt: Sign – Word – Image Unlike Vico and Condillac, Humboldt is not a philosophical historian of the Human Mind. As an “anthropological” linguist, i. e., a scientist dealing with empirical facts, he refuses the kind of conjectural history that the philosophers of the 18th century (like the evolutionary biologists of the 21st century) are so fond of. His approach is – as is Lessing’s – rather structural than diachronic. And he focuses on language.

4.1. Against the Sign His exploration of language, however, leads him to a comparison of the image and the word that yields deep insights into the very function and structural properties of both symbolic entities. The image is seen as a very close brother (I am not sure whether it is a twin brother) of the word. The enemy is the sign. The discussion of image and word is integrated in a reflection on the triad of sign, image, and word.25 From his first theoretical reflections onwards, Humboldt refuses the traditional Aristotelian view of the word as a sign. He fights against De interpretatione: Words are not only phonetic means of communicating thought that has been generated independently of language. Words are embodied thought, “das tönende Wort ist gleichsam eine Verkörperung des Gedanken” (the sounding word is quasi an embodiment of thought ).26 Philosophy did not wait for modern cognitive sciences to use the term “embodiment” (Verkörperung) for the generation of cognition. Thought is created as words; thought and sound are synthetically united; they cannot be separated from each other. And it is precisely this inseparable unity of sound and thought, or better, of the material manifestation (action/thing) and thought, that is the common structural trait of image and language. In the sign, on the other hand, form and content are independent of one another and completely separable. The “brotherhood” of image and word is based on the inseparability of form and content. This echoes Lessing’s somehow cryptic “comfortable relation to the signified” in image and language. On the basis of this synthetic unity of form and concept, image and word are, however, different. Humboldt does not see the difference between word and image as lying in different material aspects – as does Lessing: time and space, or Vico: voice and action/gesture (vox and actio) – but in another structural criterion: In the word,

25

26

It should be clear from the outset that Humboldt’s “sign” differs systematically from Peirce’s much larger conception of the sign and that the Humboldtian triad does not coincide with Peirce’s triad of symbol, icon and index, cf. Tullio Viola’s chapter in this volume. Trans. by J. T.; GS, vol. 5, p. 109.

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the material form and the concept can be distinguished (not separated). In the image, form and concept are “amalgamated” (verschmolzen). Why can form and concept be distinguished in the word? In the passage I refer to, Humboldt does not explicitly say that the reason for this distinctiveness is the articulatory structure of the word. He simply presupposes that everybody is aware of the articulateness of language, since he mentions “articulate sound” as the material manifestation of the word.27 Here articulation comes in, and “articulation” does not only mean “vocal”; it does not only mean a material property. The decisive property of articulation is the differentiation of distinctive movements for the formation of phonemes. It is a structural trait, not a material one, that distinguishes the word from the image. The articulatory duplicity of sound and concept is responsible for the very specific structure of the word as opposed to the image. The phonematic organization of the word, the arrangement of phonemes into words, makes the material side of the word different from its content. This difference creates the impression of “arbitrariness” and non-iconicity. But, as Vico said, this is only an appearance. In the word, form and content are indissolubly united – as they are in the image – and, hence, profound iconicity is a shared property of image and word. This iconicity is somehow hidden in language, precisely because of the articulate structure of the word. But Humboldt dedicates many pages to the “concordance of sound with thought”28 and to other aspects of linguistic iconicity. He distinguishes “imitative,” “symbolic,” and “analogical” iconic procedures.29 Longer material forms stand for semantically “longer” contents, e.g., for collectives; reduplication depicts the plurality of the content; material properties of sounds stand for certain semantic traits, thus – a famous example of Leibniz’ – the w in wehen, Wind, Wolke, wirren, and Wunsch depicts the movement that these words contain. And we may add that, coming to higher levels of linguistic organization, complicated sentences depict complicated thoughts – and – generally speaking – the organization of texts corresponds to their semantic organization; texts are not arbitrary at all. In texts, as Lessing had already discovered, the relation of their material form to their meaning is bequem, i. e., iconic. Conceiving of language as a sign is the main error in the philosophy of language; it is an obstacle to the understanding of language. The important aspect of our research in symbolic articulation is Humboldt’s insight into the closeness of the image and the word (as opposed to the sign), on the one hand, and into the

27 28 29

“[D]en articulirten, den mit möglichster Abschneidung alles Geräusches zum bloss hörbaren Verhältniss zurückgeführten [Ton].” GS, vol. 5, p. 429. Trans. by J. T.; “Uebereinstimmung des Lautes mit dem Gedanken”, GS, vol. 7, p. 53. Cf. GS, vol. 7, pp. 76ff.

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structural difference (articulation), on the other. The word sides with the image, not with the sign.

4.2. Embodiment: Verkörperung des Gedanken I will now have a closer look at the embodiment of thought in Humboldt’s conception of language in order to develop further structural parallelisms between the image and the word. The first and most important element of Humboldt’s linguistic philosophy is his radical switch from the traditional communicative theory of language to a cognitive conception: Language is thought formation, “das bildende Organ des Gedan­ ken”30. Language is not something that comes after thinking; it is the production of thought itself, “Arbeit des Geistes” (work of the spirit). It is not just a means to designate post festum what has been thought – this would mean that it is a sign – but it is the discovery itself of that truth: Durch die gegenseitige Abhängigkeit des Gedankens und des Wortes von einander leuchtet es klar ein, daß die Sprachen nicht eigentlich Mittel sind, die schon erkannte Wahrheit darzustellen, sondern weit mehr, die vorher unerkannte [Wahrheit] zu entdecken.31 Humboldt describes this “discovery of the truth,” this “work of the spirit,” in the terms of Kantian philosophy. Sensibility and intellect interact in the formation of thought; they form a “schema,” a rather mysterious entity in Kant’s system. But it is precisely here that Humboldt clarifies it: The schema is the concept embodied in the vocal event, in the synthetic unity of the word: “Die Thätigkeit der Sinne muss sich mit der inneren Handlung des Geistes synthetisch verbinden, und aus dieser Verbindung reißt sich die Vorstellung los, wird, der subjectiven Kraft gegenüber, zum Object.“32 Thought is embodied. But embodiment is not yet the whole complicated process of thought formation. The synthetic sound-thought is not only uttered but also heard by the speaker-thinker; it is immediately self-reflective. And this acoustic 30 31

32

GS, vol. 7, p. 53. GS, vol. 4, p. 27. “It is self-evident from the mutual interdependence of thought and word that languages are not so much the means to represent the already recognized truth but rather to discover the previously unknown truth.” Trans. by J. T. GS, vol. 7, p. 55. “The activity of the senses must combine synthetically with the inner action of the mind, and from this combination the representation is ejected, becomes an object vis-à-vis the subjective power.” Wilhelm von Humboldt: On Language. On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, trans. by Peter Heath, Cambridge 1999, p. 56.

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self-control of the vocal production is the necessary condition of the symbolicity of the word: Denn indem in ihr [der Sprache] das geistige Streben sich Bahn durch die Lippen bricht, kehrt das Erzeugniß desselben zum eignen Ohre zurück. […] und ohne diese, wo Sprache mitwirkt, auch stillschweigend immer vorgehende Versetzung in zum Subject zurückkehrende Objectivität ist die Bildung des Begriffs, mithin alles wahre Denken, unmöglich.33 This necessary proprioception of language, the “return of the object to the subject,” is, by the way, a rather revolutionary discovery of Humboldt’s linguistic theory. After the vocal embodiment of thought and its acoustic reflectivity, Humboldt points out a second essential element of concept-formation. Humans do not think in solitude; they need the Other in order to think. The vocal concept, heard by the speaker, has to be heard and processed by You, and You have to re-produce my word. Only then is the linguistic concept formation completed: In der Erscheinung entwickelt sich jedoch die Sprache nur gesellschaftlich, und der Mensch versteht sich selbst nur, indem er die Verstehbarkeit seiner Worte an Andren versuchend geprüft hat. Denn die Objectivität wird gesteigert, wenn das selbstgebildete Wort aus fremdem Munde wiedertönt.34 The interaction with the thou is not “communication,” i. e., a transfer of “information,” of a content formed by the speaker to the Other. The Other is an essential condition of the possibility of thought itself, of my thought: Schon das Denken ist wesentlich von Neigung zu gesellschaftlichem Daseyn begleitet, und der Mensch sehnt sich, abgesehen von allen körperlichen und Empfindungsbeziehungen, auch zum Behuf seines bloßen Denkens, nach einem dem Ich entsprechenden Du; der Begriff scheint ihm erst seine Bestimmt-

33

34

GS, vol. 7, p. 55. “For in that the mental striving breaks out through the lips in language, the product of that striving returns back to the speaker’s ear. […] and without this transformation, into an objectivity that returns to the subject, the act of concept-formation, and with it all true thinking, is impossible.” Humboldt: On Language (as fn. 32), p. 56. GS, vol. 7, pp. 55f. “In appearance, however, language develops only socially, and man understands himself only once he has tested the intelligibility of his words by trial upon others. For objectivity is heightened if the self-coined word is echoed from a stranger’s mouth.” Humboldt: On Language (as fn. 32), p. 56.

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heit und Gewißheit durch das Zurückstrahlen aus einer fremden Denkkraft zu erreichen.35 The work of the spirit, the formation of thought, is a joint labor. I and thou form the concept together. This conjoint formation of the word takes place in the sphere of individual languages, at least “to a certain extent,” thus involving a third element in the process: “Das Denken ist aber nicht bloß abhängig von der Sprache überhaupt, sondern bis auf einen gewissen Grad, auch von jeder einzelnen bestimmten.”36 Different languages yield different thoughts, or – to use Humboldt’s famous word – different worldviews: “Ihre Verschiedenheit ist nicht eine von Schällen und Zeichen, sondern eine Verschiedenheit der Weltansichten selbst.”37 Hence, not only the structural union of thought and sound differentiates the word from the sign, but also the fact that linguistically embodied thought differs from language to language. And these worldviews are precious creations of the human mind; they are the wealth of the human mind. Finally, we have to highlight the fact that Humboldt conceives of language as an activity, as energeia: Die Sprache, in ihrem wirklichen Wesen aufgefaßt, ist etwas beständig und in jedem Augenblick Vorübergehendes. […] Sie selbst ist kein Werk (Ergon), sondern eine Thätigkeit (Energeia). Ihre wahre Definition kann daher nur eine genetische sein. Sie ist nämlich die sich ewig wiederholende Arbeit des Geistes, den articulirten Laut zum Ausdruck des Gedanken fähig zu machen.38

35

36 37 38

GS, vol. 6, p. 26. “Thought itself is accompanied essentially by the inclination to social existence, and, quite apart from any physical or emotional relationships, man longs for a thou to correspond to his I simply for the purpose of thinking, and a given concept appears to acquire its definiteness and certainty from being reflected in someone else’s intellect.” Wilhelm von Humboldt: Essays on Language, trans. by Theo Harden/Daniel Farelly, Frankfurt/M. 1997, p. 132. GS, vol. 4, p. 21. “Thought, however, is not only dependent on language in general but also to a certain extent on each individual language.” Humboldt: Essays on Language (as fn. 35), p. 15. GS, vol. 4, p. 27. “Their diversity is not one of sounds and signs but a diversity of worldviews.” Trans. by J. T. GS, vol. 7, pp. 45f. “Language regarded in its real nature is permanently and at every moment a transitory thing. […] In itself it is no product (ergon), but an activity (energeia). Its true definition can therefore only be a genetic one. For it is the ever-repeated work of the spirit of making the articulated sound capable of expressing thought.” Humboldt: On Language (as fn. 32), p. 49.

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4.3. Word as Art In his later works, Humboldt does not come back to his earlier systematic comparisons of the word with the image. They are now taken for granted. And Humboldt stresses the iconic nature of language in his final work. Therefore, where Humboldt discusses the union of sound and concept as a “synthesis,” he evokes art: Language “marries” the idea with the material in the same way painters and sculptors do. Language is a “synthetic process” in the very sense of the word “synthesis”: “wo die Synthesis etwas schafft, das in keinem der verbundenen Theile für sich liegt.”39 And he continues: “Überhaupt erinnert die Sprache oft, aber am meisten hier, in dem tiefsten und unerklärbarsten Theile ihres Verfahrens, an die Kunst. Auch der Bildner und Maler vermählt die Idee mit dem Stoff.”40 Humboldt strongly stresses the structural identity of the image and the word, the “marriage” (Vermählung) of idea and matter. In the wake of this happy celebration of the vicinity and brotherhood of image and language, I will now look for further evidence of this structural closeness in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory of language. I will try to argue for a combination of his concept of gesture (union of form and meaning, iconicity, movement, energeia) with Humboldt’s energetic and dialogical “work of the spirit.”

5. La parole est un geste I find a modern, non-dualistic continuation of Humboldt’s philosophy of the linguistic Verkörperung des Gedanken in Merleau-Ponty’s rather uncommon approach to language as gesture. The very term “gesture” opens the way to extending it to the image.

5.1. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception is a philosophy of the embodiment of thought and a theory of the formation of the symbol. Perception and symbolization coincide; the theory of perception is at the same time a theory of language. Perception, for Merleau-Ponty, is not the classical production of mental

39 40

GS, vol. 7, p. 94. “[W]here synthesis creates something that does not lie, per se, in any of the conjoined parts.” Humboldt: On Language (as fn. 32), p. 89. GS, vol. 7, p. 95. “Language in general is often reminiscent of art, but here most of all, in the deepest and least explicable part of its procedure. The sculptor and painter also limn the idea with matter.” Humboldt: On Language (as fn. 32), p. 89.

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“representations” but the activity of a living, moving, creative, symbolizing body. The body is not one half of the classical couple of body and mind but the integral substrate of cognitive activity. Perception is hence a synthetic act of sense-making: “[…] la perception est justement cet acte qui crée d’un seul coup, avec la constellation des données, le sens qui les relie, – qui non seulement découvre le sens qu’elles ont mais encore fait qu’elles aient un sens.”41 Perception is a “semantic” movement and action of the body that originates in the existence of the body, in its coexistence with the world and other humans. Humans move as living bodies in the world and in the relation to others. They act in two dimensions: in the dimension body–other body and in the dimension body– world. Merleau-Ponty first treats the relation to the Other as a sexual relation: “le corps comme être sexué,”42 before he treats the “objective” dimension, body–world. In this respect, he coincides rather astonishingly with Humboldt, who bases human creativity as a whole – also the creation of thought (and hence language) – on sexuality, on the “marriage” (Vermählung) I have just quoted: Der in seiner allgemeinsten und geistigsten Gestaltung aufgefasste Ge­­ schlechtsunterschied führt das Bewusstseyn einer, nur durch die gegenseitige Ergänzung zu heilenden Einseitigkeit durch alle Beziehungen des menschlichen Denkens und Empfindens hindurch. […] Schon das Denken ist wesentlich von Neigung zu gesellschaftlichem Daseyn begleitet, und der Mensch sehnt sich, abgesehen von allen körperlichen und Empfindungsbeziehungen, auch zum Behuf seines bloßen Denkens, nach einem dem Ich entsprechenden Du.43 This is a very modern – pre-Freudian – version of Aristotle’s definition of the human being as a zoon politikon. The political essence of humans leads to the second defini41

42 43

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phénoménologie de la perception [PPf], Paris 1945, p. 46. “[…] perception is precisely this act that creates, all at once, out of the constellation of givens, the sense that ties them together. Perception does not merely discover the sense they have, but rather, sees to it that they have a sense.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception [PPe], trans. by Donald A. Landes, London/New York 2012, p. 38. PPf, p. 180. “[T]he body as a sexed being”, PPe, p. 149. GS, vol. 6, pp. 25f. “The difference between the sexes, seen in its most general and most spiritual form, accompanies the awareness of one-sidedness – which is only to be remedied by a complementary relationship – through all aspects of human thought and feeling. […] Thought itself is accompanied essentially by the inclination to social existence, and, quite apart from any physical or emotional relationships, man longs for a thou to correspond to his I simply for the purpose of thinking.” Humboldt: Essays on Language (as fn. 35), p. 132. On the sexual basis of Humboldt’s thought, cf. Jürgen Trabant: Apeliotes oder der Sinn der Sprache, Munich 1986, pp. 18–24.

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tion of the Human as a “language animal” (zoon logon echon). As in Humboldt, Merleau-Ponty’s chapter on the “être sexué” of the body precedes the chapter on the body–world relation, that is thus always integrated in a sexualized body–body relation. In the chapter on the “body as expression, and speech,” 44 speech and perception are amalgamated. Since perception is the action that creates sense, “l’acte qui crée le sens,”45 it is speech at the same time: The theory of perception – I think we may say, in the light of modern developments: the theory of cognitive activity – becomes a theory of language. If we take a closer look: The body is in movement, and this movement is essentially voice: “Le corps convertit en vocifération une certaine essence motrice.”46 And that vocal movement (vocifération) is gesture, i. e., it contains a meaning. The body that lives in (habite) the world creates thought in the production of the gesture that is speech, parole: “La parole est un véritable geste et elle contient son sens comme le geste contient le sien.”47 “Gesture” is the term I want to come to. “Gesture” contains the movement (kinesis) as well as the synthetic unity of that movement with meaning (sens). And a third semantic element of “gesture” is its muscular and visual nature: Gestures are normally movements we see. The muscular element of “gesture” connects the vocal gesture to the visual movement.48 Now, Merleau-Ponty sharply criticizes the traditional conception of the relation between thought and language, i. e., that thought is generated as a purely “mental representation” which is then communicated by a “sign” – the classical Aristotelian conception of thought and language. MerleauPonty is adamant: “La parole n’est pas le ‘signe’ de la pensée.”49 He polemicizes against Descartes, who holds this old-fashioned Aristotelian conception.50 Again, MerleauPonty, who probably never read a line of Humboldt, comes very close to that author whose entire linguistico-philosophical passion was directed against that conception of language as a sign. Merleau-Ponty quotes an article by Goldstein (1933), who states in a very Humboldtian way: “le langage n’est plus un instrument, n’est plus un moyen, il est une manifestation, une révélation de l’être intime et du lien psychique qui

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

PPe, p. 179. PPf, p. 46. PPf, p. 211. “[T]he body converts a certain motor essence into a vocalization.” PPe, p. 187. PPf, p. 214. “Speech is a genuine gesture and, just like all gestures, speech too contains its own sense.” PPe, p. 189. On gesture, cf. also Sabine Marienberg’s chapter in this volume. PPf, p. 211. “[S]peech is not the ‘sign’ of thought.” PPe, p. 187. Whatever Chomsky writes, there is nothing new in Descartes’ conception of language; it is pure scholastic Aristotle.

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nous unit au monde et à nos semblables.“ 51 Speech produces meaning (sens) in the gesture. The gesture is not double, two-fold: material movement + meaning. The word is entirely movement and entirely mind, synthetically: “Elle est tout entière motricité et tout entière intelligence.” 52 The meaning of the word-gesture is not behind the gesture, as all dualistic language theories suggest, but it is in the gesture. The gesture is one with the structure of the world: “Le sens du geste ainsi ‘compris’ n’est pas derrière lui, il se confond avec la structure du monde que le geste dessine.” 53 And the gesture is a drawing: “que le geste dessine.” The expression “geste” generates the further visual metaphor of sketching. Merleau-Ponty is writing about vocal gestures, but he describes these movements as drawing.54 The movement, which seems to scan the world, generates a picture. The metaphor of drawing as well as the unity of the sens and the structure of the world seize speech (parole) as an essentially mimetic or iconic activity. This, again, is another rather oppositional element in the tradition of the theory of language. Since Aristotle, language has been seen to be kata syntheken, radically “conventional,” not an image (like the pathemata tes psyches) but a sign (whose form has nothing to do with that image). Also, to conceive of language as “speech,” as an activity and not as a structure or something fixed, is a minority position. Only very few language thinkers can free themselves, as Merleau-Ponty does, from the weight of the (Aristotelian) tradition. Vico does so explicitly by insisting on the iconicity of language. We have seen that Humboldt dedicates his entire linguistic philosophy to the fight against the Aristotelian sign. Roman Jakobson’s criticism of Saussure concerns the arbitraire du signe, which he considers to be completely erroneous.55

5.2. Merleau-Ponty does not “explain” this mimetic elaboration of the world through the voice, through this vocal movement (vocifération). He does not tell an evolutionary story that would give “reasons” why this is so. His is a radically phenomenological description. He even explicitly refuses an evolutionary explanation

51

52 53 54 55

PPf, p. 229. “[L]anguage is no longer an instrument, no longer a means. Rather, it is a manifestation, a revelation of inner being and of the psychical link that unites us to the world and to our fellows.” PPe, p. 202. PPf, p. 227. “[I]t is entirely motricity and entirely intelligence.” PPe, p. 200. PPf, pp. 216f. “[T]he sense of the gesture thus ‘understood’ is not behind the gesture, it merges with the structure of the world that the gesture sketches out.” PPe, p. 192. Noë’s “writerly attitude” is also a painterly attitude. Cf. Jakobson: Quest for the Essence of Language (as fn. 18).

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since he calls his gestural vociferation, the semantic endowment of sound, a “miracle”: Le langage à son tour ne pose pas d’autre problème: une contraction de la gorge, une émission d’air sifflante entre la langue et les dents, une certaine manière de jouer de notre corps se laisse soudain investir d’un sens figuré et le signifient hors de nous. Cela n’est ni plus ni moins miraculeux que l’émergence de l’amour dans le désir ou celle du geste dans les mouvements incoordonnés du début de la vie.56 Calling something “miraculeux” is rather astonishing, since nobody today would dare admit his or her ignorance by using the word “miracle.” Contemporary scientists tend to ignore these abysses. Thus, for instance, some “miracles” are elegantly hidden in Tomasello’s evolutionary story.57 There is no marvelling at important transitions: First the hominids – miraculously – develop shared intentionality and cooperation, then they – miraculously – point to the world, then they – miraculously – imitate absent objects, and all this is – miraculously – conventionalized; finally, all this switches – miraculeusement – from visual gesture to vocal manifestation. That we are faced with a couple of unexplained transitions is concealed in the great narrative. And again: Merleau-Ponty’s radical phenomenological attitude reminds us of Humboldt’s refusal to speculate about the evolutionary origin of language. Furthermore, Humboldt’s description of the generation of thought is also radically “phenomenological”: It deals with the “eternal” process of language plus thoughtproduction, whose temporal beginnings and whose evolutionary reasons are unknown. Merleau-Ponty’s synthesis of perception and speech can be summarized in the following way: “La parole est un geste et sa signification un monde.” – “Speech is a gesture, and its signification is a world.”58 The gesture creates a world; it creates the world. It is “the gesture that breaks the silence”;59 the gesture is the origin. The

56

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PPf, p. 226. “Language, in turn, poses no other problem: the contraction of the throat, the sibilant emission of air between the tongue and the teeth, a certain manner of playing with our body suddenly allows itself to be invested with a figurative sense and signifies this externally. This is no more and no less miraculous than the emergence of love from desire, or that of the gesture from the uncoordinated movements at the start of life.“ PPe, p. 200. Cf. Tomasello: Human Communication (as fn. 16); id.: A Natural History of Human Thinking, Cambridge, MA/London 2014. PPe, p. 190. Ibid.; “le geste qui rompt ce silence”, PPf, p. 214.

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movement of the gesture is at the same time the creation of meaning. Embodiment of thought and speech are the same.

5.3. Merleau-Ponty’s pages on the creation of speech as gesture develop the central theorem of Humboldt’s theory of language in a modern, non-dualistic way. For Humboldt, language is the “formative organ of thought”; its activity is the “labor of the spirit,” and this activity is Verkörperung des Gedanken, embodiment of thought. The formation of thought is described within the systematic framework of Kant’s dualism of Sinnlichkeit and Verstand; Humboldt’s generation (Erzeugen) of thought and language is still based on the interaction of body and mind, sensibility and intellect, eventually even on the fundamental dualism of the sexes. Merleau-Ponty overcomes this classical dualistic formation of thought in the unity of the living body and its gestural unity of movement and meaning. Humboldt tries to leave the dualism behind by developing Kant’s schematism as a synthesis of sound and thought, but the dualism still remains the basis of his theory of the “embodiment of thought.” Humboldt, however, through his deeply erotic mind-set, conceives of any duality as erotic interaction (Wechselwirkung), and thereby discovers two additional elements in the production of the word that Merleau-Ponty does not consider: the reflectivity and the reciprocity of that production. The voice has to be heard by me, and it has to be heard by you, and your voice has to give an answer. Humboldt insists on the fact that the return to the ear is a necessary condition for the linguistic production of thought. The speaker (I) himself perceives the significant sound (“kehrt das Erzeugniß desselben zum eignen Ohre zurück”).60 Without this proprioception no symbolic signification is possible. The proprioception controls the vocifération; it makes sure that the vocifération is not just a cry, a symptom, but a symbol. And Humboldt adds reciprocity as a second essential condition for the production of speech. My word must be heard by you, and you have to re-create my word and to answer: My word has to be echoed from the Other’s mouth (“aus fremdem Munde wiedertönt”).61 The reciprocal gesture of the Other is an essential component of my linguistic gesture. The gesture of the word is embedded in a complicated cooperation that is an essential element of that linguistic gesture. Merleau-Ponty’s gesture has to be completed by these two additional elements.

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GS, vol. 7, p. 55. Ibid., p. 56.

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6. The Image as Gesture The question now is whether this complicated concept of gesticulation can – or must – be extended to the image. Bredekamp’s theory of the image act seems to favor such an extension. Instituting the image itself as the main agent, Bredekamp defines the picture act as an interaction (Wechselwirkung) between the image and its counterpart (Gegenüber) who “is looking, touching or even listening.”62 This theory thus integrates the recipient (and active) Gegenüber because otherwise it would be accused – and is accused – of being “animistic.” Showing the parallel symbolic activity in language and image to be gestural might dissipate this ambiguity. La parole est un geste et sa signification un monde. The term geste seems even more applicable to images – to visual artefacts63 – than to words: Gestures are normally visual, not vocal and auditory, activities. On the other hand, the term “gesture” apparently is not a fitting term for images because – contrary to speech – the prototypical image is something static, a work (ergon), and not “movement” (motricité). However, with reference to Aristotle’s reflections on movement, action, and activity, we might say: The work (ergon) is also essentially movement (kinesis) – and hence gesture – because the energeia is in the work. Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of action: one without a product – energeia, and the other with a product – kinesis.64 Merleau-Ponty’s linguistic geste is energeia, of course, and speech is movement without ergon. Certain visual symbolizations, such as dance for instance, are gestures in that very sense. But the production of an ergon is also a movement; Aristotle calls these actions kinesis, “movement.” And their ergon, their product, contains the energeia: ἡ ἐνέργεια ἐν τῷ ποιουμένῳ ἐστίν, “the actuality [energeia] resides in the thing produced; e.g., the act of building in the thing built.”65 Hence the motricité of the gesture can be found in the work. But do we find the reflective and reciprocal elements of the linguistic gestures in the field of non-linguistic symbolizations? A “complete” gestural energeia has these moments: My visual gesture – in dancing for instance – is a sense-laden

62 63

64 65

Horst Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesung 2007, Frankfurt/M. 2010, p. 52. I take for granted an important observation of John Krois who wrote that pictures are not only visual but also “handy” or better: somatic. Cf. John Krois: Für Bilder braucht man keine Augen, in: John M. Krois: Bildkörper und Körperschema. Schriften zur Verkörperungstheorie ikonischer Formen, ed. by Horst Bredekamp/Marion Lauschke (Actus et Imago 2), Berlin 2011, pp. 132–160. The hand and the body as a whole are agents of movements (kinesis) paral­lel to the voice. Aristotle: Metaphysics, IX, 6, 1048b. Ibid., 1050a.

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movement. Movement and meaning are synthetically united in the gesture. I have to perceive that movement myself, otherwise it will not be significant or “symbolic” (it might be symptomatic, which is something else). And the gesture is produced in the dimension of the Other: You perceive my movement, you “understand” it (process it), and you respond with another movement/gesture that re-enacts my gesture. This Wechselwirkung is an essential part of the gesture.66 And the same is true for the production of meaningful “works” through kinesis: My movement, my action, my gesture produces a trace in the world, a trait, an incision, a stain.67 Vico calls such first human symbols “poetical characters.” The Greek word “charakter” comes from charassein which, like graphein, means an act of scratching: Le geste dessine. That trace, that incision, that “character” must be perceived by myself: My eye has to see what my hand is doing, and my hand has to feel the resistance of the world.68 The reflectivity of seeing and feeling controls the movement; it transforms the movement into a significant gesture. And finally, the trace, the “work,” is essentially produced for the Other: You perceive my gesture and therefore you respond to and thereby complete my gesture: Wechselwirkung. If we accept this structural kinetic or energetic parallelism between the word and the image as “gesture,” we must ask what corresponds, in the pictorial action, to the Humboldtian “answer” in linguistic activity. We do not necessarily answer in images; we are not necessarily creators of images in front of the image (and this certainly marks a difference to language, that is so clearly verbal address and verbal response, Wort und Ant-Wort). But, of course, we respond, with responsive gestures. And these gestural responses are necessary elements of the image; they correspond to the activity of the mouth of the Other (fremder Mund) producing the linguistic gesture. The Wechselwirkung between the image and the Gegenüber may also generate a linguistic response. Insofar as it necessarily involves a responding gesture that can be a linguistic one, the Bildakt can encompass the word: La parole est un geste. Approaching the production of the word and the image as gesticulation leads us to discern a structurally parallel activity: the production of the significant action, the gesture, the proprioception of that action, and the gestural response of the Other as an essential trait of the complete and complex energetic or kinetic activity. It is with these Humboldtian additives that we extend Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental affirmation – La parole est un geste et sa signification un monde – to the image: The 66

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The power of the gesture to create an involuntary imitation in the beholder and then a voluntary imitation was, by the way, the reason for a politics of schemata in ancient Greece, cf. Catoni in this volume. Cf. Yannis Hadjinicolaou’s chapter in this volume. Gehlen has pointed out the parallel reflective structure of hearing and seeing/touching, in: Arnold Gehlen: Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, 12th edition, Wiesbaden 1978, p. 135.

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image is a gesture, and its meaning is a world. L’image est un geste et sa signification un monde. Thus, through the combination of Humboldt’s and Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the word, the Vichian twins – the symbolic production of human thought – deploy structural affinities which will certainly enhance the friendship between word and image. The epilogue will shortly evoke their articulatory difference.

7. Articulation These parallel gesticulations, these “sketchings” of the world with the voice and with the “hand,” are “articulatory activities.” As we have shortly suggested, language “articulates” thought (organon ousian diakritikon); its articulation (Gliederung) creates “portions of thought” (Portionen des Denkens). Since “articulation is the essence of language,” the linguistic sciences try to analyze these articulations. And, of course, the articulations of images are the subject of the disciplines of the image. Beyond the gestural parallelism of image and language, images are, however, not “doubly articulated,” they are not phonematically organized. Merleau-Ponty does not deal at length with that essential feature of language but he seizes the “miracle” of the creation of meaning in phonetic articulation where he states: “[…] une contraction de la gorge, une émission d’air sifflante entre la langue et les dents, une certaine manière de jouer de notre corps se laisse soudain investir d’un sens figuré et le signifient hors de nous.”69 The semantic “drawing” of the vocal gesture is linked to its phonetic articulation. Phonetic articulation is a specific structural feature that only language possesses. The vocifération is not only articulated in semantic unities (“a world”) but also in phonetic entities. This special “double” articulation is not only the “miracle” of language but its very structural essence. Humboldt once more: Da die Articulation das Wesen der Sprache ausmacht, die ohne dieselbe nicht einmal möglich seyn würde, und der Begriff der Gliederung sich über ihr ganzes Gebiet, auch wo nicht bloss von Tönen die Rede ist, erstreckt […].70

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PPf, p. 226. “[…] the contraction of the throat, the sibilant emission of air between the tongue and the teeth, a certain manner of playing with our body suddenly allows itself to be invested with a figurative sense and signifies this externally.” PPe, p. 200. GS, vol. 5, p. 116. “[…] articulation is the essence of language, which would be impossible without it, and the concept of articulation does not only concern sounds but must be extended over the whole domain of language.” Trans. by J. T.

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Humans choose, from infinite articulatory possibilities, some specific movements that they then combine in specific ways to form semantic units. This is an ingenious invention of mankind. It opens up the infinity of speech; it makes “infinite use of finite means” (a Humboldtian formula dear to Noam Chomsky).71 It is only through that invention that language becomes language and that humans become modern humans. That invention is the basis of the symbolic explosion of human culture.

71

Cf. GS, vol. 7, p. 99.

Articulating Processes

Alva Noë

The Writerly Attitude

“all the nations began to speak by writing” Giambattista Vico, Third New Science § 429

Sometimes philosophical or conceptual questions dress up in the garb of historical ones. The question What is life?, for example, may disguise itself as a question about life’s origins, about what happened, say, when lightning struck the primordial ooze. My topic is like this. When and why did we as a culture or as a species start using written language? But my concerns, although material, are not really historical. What is at issue is this: what is writing and what is its relation to speech or to language more generally? My broader objective is to take first steps toward framing an enactive approach to language and linguistic experience. Such an approach will be one that views language as something we do, as a style of active involvement with our lives and worlds. But my focus here is on the question of written language. Language is a topic very familiar to philosophers in all traditions. Writing, in contrast, is almost entirely neglected in the analytic tradition.1 Almost, but not entirely. Frege invented a system of writing he called the Begriffsschrift, or conceptscript, whose purpose was to do a better job than conventional means of writing of making explicit the real structure of thoughts and their logical relations.2 Logic and mathematics required this, Frege believed. Wittgenstein, whose preoccupations were 1

2

Not so in other traditions of European philosophy. Derrida takes up the theme directly and anticipates some of the ideas I develop in this essay. See Jacques Derrida: Of Grammatology, corrected edition, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, London 1997. Cf. Gottlob Frege: Begriffsschrift. Eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, Halle 1879; id.: Concept Script. A Formal Language of Pure Thought Modelled upon that of Arithmetic, trans. by Louis Nebert, in: Jean van Heijenoort (ed.): From Frege to Gödel. A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931, Cambridge, MA 1967.

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more overtly philosophical than Frege’s, argued, in his first philosophy, that a proposition (a Fregean thought, let’s say) is the propositional sign in its projective relation to the world.3 Wittgenstein did not pay attention, I think, to distinction between the spoken propositional sign and its written version. But he seems to have been convinced, like Frege, that philosophical clarity can be achieved by, and maybe requires, the deployment of a perspicuous method of representing our language, that is to say, a system of writing. This idea – that philosophy should try to make “übersichtliche Darstellungen,” that is, perspicuous or surveyable representations, models, sketches, pictures, of our “grammar” – is a central tenet of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as well, and I think we can take this to be tantamount to the demand that philosophers turn their attention to writing.4 I wonder if Jerry Fodor’s languageof-thought idea should not better be thought of as the idea of a written language of thought, or of a kind of thought writing, that is, a formal system for representing thought in the mind.5 In so far as there is an official view of the relation between language and writing, in analytic philosophy and in contemporary linguistics, it is that language (thought of now as speech or the capacity for speech) and writing (thought of as a means of representing speech) have no interesting or important connection. Speech is biological, a trait of the species; it is genetically endowed and universal.6 Writing, in contrast, is a cultural innovation, a technology, that is at most a few thousand years old. You don’t need writing to talk; you don’t need writing even to make poetry or song (that is to say, literary art). Most languages of the past were not written and even today many speakers are illiterate. If anything, so the official view would have it, writing gets in the way of a clear understanding of the nature of language. This is because writing, it is supposed, is an imperfect representation of speech. Writing systems may capture some features of our spoken language (such as word order), but they leave others unmarked (such as phrase structure, e.g. the way “the” and “boy” go together and form a unit in “the boy sings”).7 Finally, writing, as a cultural instrument for representing speech, is conventional and prescriptive through and through and this obscures the fact that language, as a natural phenomenon, is neither of these.

3 4 5 6 7

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, in: Wilhelm Ostwald (ed.): Anna­­ len der Naturphilosophie 14 (1921), § 3.12. Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations, trans. by Elizabeth Anscombe, Oxford 1953. Cf. Jerry Fodor: The Language of Thought, Cambridge, MA 1975. This idea is a center piece of Chomsky’s now deeply entrenched approach to language. For a powerful statement, see Steven Pinker: The Language Instinct, New York 1994. Cf. Andrew Radford: Transformational Grammar. A First Course, Cambridge 1994.

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What is the relation between speech and writing on this widespread, simple view? We are language users by nature, writing is a technology for amplifying and extending our natural linguistic capacities. Writing lets us “talk” to people who are beyond the reach of our voices or who are unable to see our signing hands; writing lets us record what we think for posterity; writing lets us keep track of what we say or have said, and so it makes law and, indeed, science, mathematics and philosophy possible.8 Writing is a transformational technology – in the phrase of the biologist Aniruddh D. Patel – comparable to fire and the wheel.9 But it is a technology, that is to say, a culturally transmitted innovation. Language itself, the capacity for speech, in contrast, is a natural expression of innate, universal human nature. The main problem with this simple view is that it is too simple. Consider the statement that writing is a way of capturing, representing and so extending speech. Not exactly. This may be one of its uses. But we are familiar with kinds of writing that are not, in the relevant sense, linguistic at all. Musical notation is a way of writing music; it is not a way of writing sentences. If it is a way of expressing thoughts, then these are distinctively musical thoughts that do not find expression in ordinary language. Mathematical notation is another example. We don’t write in English or Arabic when we prove a theorem. And although you can read a proof out loud, you can read it out loud in any language you choose; what you are reading is not in a language, although your reading of it is. There is some reason to think that the deep origins of writing are to be found in Upper Paleolithic mark-making activities whose purpose was not to encode or represent speech, but rather to keep score, or keep track, or tally, calculate or count up. The first writers may have been accountants or re-counters whose tellings – even if they were not narrators – were confined to flocks and offspring. If this is correct, then writing speech – written language – may be, in an important sense, autonomous of speech. Not in the sense that there were ever writers who were not also speakers. But in the sense that the first writing may not have been put to work for linguistic purposes (i.e., for purposes of talking, or for representing what we do when we talk). That is, the first writing may not have been consequent on speech in the way that the simple view supposes. But there is a second, even more profound sense in which writing is autonomous of speech. As we are now thinking of it, the first writing methods were technologies for directly engaging and directly

8

9

Herbert George Wells: “[Writing] puts agreements, laws, commandments on record. It made the growth of states larger than the old city states possible. It made a continuous historical consciousness possible. The command of the priest of king and his seal could go far beyond his sight and vice and could survive his death.” Cited in: Roy Harris: The Origins of Writing, London 1986, p. 20. Cf. Aniruddh D. Patel: Music, Language, and the Brain, New York 2008.

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cognizing a world or a domain of interest; they did not engage the world or the domain by way of representing our linguistic ways of so doing. In this sense they would have been on all fours with speech itself and may be thought of, in a way, in their own right, as kinds of languages. So the first writing systems may well have been themselves language-like and, in the relevant sense, speech-independent life technologies. It is important to notice, also, that even if it is difficult to conceive of creatures capable of using picturemaking and score-keeping technologies who were not also capable of speech, this is not in itself evidence that speech came first. Indeed, there is no reason, drawing on the archeological record, to hold that speech is more ancient than picture making and other mark-making, scoring, or more generally, graphical activities. As best we can tell, these all show up together in the archaeological record some 40–50 thousand years ago (in the Upper Paleolithic). It may be the case that only a being capable of speech would also be capable of this kind of articulate mark making. But the same point can be made in reverse. Speech and writing – at least in the extended sense of pictoriality and mark making – are as old as the hills. In fact, it could very well be that the graphical is both more ancient and more fundamental.10 Animals make, they do, they act. But acting, making, doing, of their nature, tend always to leave a mark. For example, by the very act of walking from here to there, again and again, our ancient ancestors would have in effect made roads (“lay down paths in walking”). And it is hard even to think of acts of taking, holding, ingesting, excreting or otherwise manipulating, that would not manifestly alter and, typically, ornament and redesign the environment. Now, conscious experience, I believe, – much of my work has been about this11 – is active; it consists in the circular process of doing and undergoing and keeping track – the very expression of intelligence – of the effects of the ways what one does affords opportunities for new doing and new undergoing. So let us take seriously the thought that human being, human consciousness, is, in fact, graphical – in an extended sense – in its origins and in its essence. We are mark makers and making marks, leaving prints, drawing, is bound up with our fundamental character. It is suggestive, if nothing more, to be reminded (as I have been) that the first occurrences in Ancient Greek of the word for line or drawing or writing (graphein)

10 11

Horst Bredekamp (in this volume) assembles striking evidence that pictures and pictoriality, that the graphical, have a much older origin than the Upper Paleolithic. Alva Noë: Action in Perception, Cambridge, MA 2004.; id.: Out of Our Heads. Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, New York 2009; id.: Varieties of Presence, Cambridge, MA 2012; id.: Strange Tools. Art and Human Nature, New York 2015.

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are actually in reference to the cut made on the body by a pointed arrow.12 The first writing, in our literary tradition anyway, was violent scarring. Writing, or drawing, is grounded in something basic and social, namely conflict. But there are other considerations that strongly favor if not exactly the priority of the graphical over the linguistic, then the priority of the cultural over both the linguistic and the graphical. I have in mind the growing consensus that language, pictoriality, mark-making, clothing, and a wide range of sophisticated tools and making activities (including perhaps the effective control of fire13) first show up in the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000 years ago. The crucial fact is that this is more than 150,000 years after the emergence of anatomically, i.e. physically (and so also, neurologically) modern homo sapiens. There can be little serious doubt, then, that the events that bridge that time interval and scaffolded our emergence were of a culture nature. And given that these events had the effect of enabling radically new ways of living, thinking, feeling, expressing, and doing – how else can we characterize the revolutionary significance of language and pictures? – it seems that the modern mind is in a very real sense the product of human cultural achievement (or evolution) some 50,000 years ago. And all of this – this emergence of our experiential peers – seems to have been coeval with the start of writing, at least if we think of writing as autonomous of speech. The upshot of this, then, is that the simple view reveals itself as thoroughly unsatisfactory. Writing is one thing, yes. And speech another. So far so good for the simple view. And yes, without doubt, the use of writing for straightforwardly linguistic ends – the use of writing to perform linguistic acts as well as the use of writing to record language – is a fairly late cultural innovation. But writing itself, in the more extended sense of graphical activities of scratching, scoring, marking, drawing, but also, maybe, spitting, spraying, cutting, stamping, soaking, used for cognitively significant purposes, both antedates and is conceptually independent of its application to language. Moreover, writing, in this extended sense, as I urge, may be no less bound up with human origins and, indeed, the origins of human consciousness, and so with human biology, than is speech itself. The simple view’s assumption that speech falls on one side of the nature culture divide and writing on the other cannot be supported. Not only because speech and writing are thoroughly entangled with each other, but also because, at least on the assumption that speech and writing, like pictoriality, are both achievements very late in our history as a species – taking form only hundreds of millennia after 12 13

See Maria Luisa Catoni’s contribution to this volume. Cf. Dennis M. Sandgathe: Identifying and Describing Pattern and Process in the Evolution of Hominid Use of Fire, in: Current Anthropology 58 (2017), supplement 16.

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our attainment of our current genetically set bodily form – the very opposition of nature and culture needs to be rethought. In this setting, the pseudo-historical question with which I began becomes not why and when did we invent writing for the purposes of speech, but rather, why did we at some point in our cultural history come to apply an already extant graphical toolkit to the case of speech.14 Before trying to frame an answer, I want to direct our attention to an even more radical way in which the simple view may be too simple. Let us grant that written language is modern and that speech is ancient. In this sense, at least, speech is prior to writing. This still leaves open the possibility – one I want us to take seriously – that our concept of language (we who live as we do in a world of writing), and so also our experience of speech, is writing-dependent. A comparison with sex or sexuality may be helpful. We know that sex is old. Could anything be older? But it is also plain that how we experience sex – how we experience pleasure, desire, intimacy, our own bodies, and also reproduction – is organized by culture. There are other instances of this sort of looping or entanglement phenomenon, for example, pictures and seeing.15 This is taken up by me in recent work.16 But a brief remark here may serve. Anne Hollander has argued that when you look at yourself in the mirror, say before going out, you frame or compose a provisional portrait of yourself.17 You see yourself as depicted, as represented, in a picture, and she goes farther and says that you experience yourself, at least in part, as the object of a pictorial depiction. She writes: the picture gives “the standard by which the direct view is assessed.” There is, she suggests, a mode of visual awareness – in this example, of oneself in the mirror, but I think there are other cases – that are shaped by the existence of and the availability of pictures, picture-making, as well as picture-viewing, activities. It is obvious that seeing comes first, and making pictures comes later. Both as an historical matter, but also as a conceptual one. Pictures are a tool for showing, for displaying the visible. But Hollander’s example suggests that the historical and conceptual priority of vision notwithstanding, the existence of pictures may alter, may transform, at least in certain stretches, or in certain situations, what seeing is. Pictures, a cultural invention, loop down (to borrow Ian Hacking’s phrase again) and change what seeing is, or at least make possible a new way or new style of seeing, pictorial seeing.

14 15 16 17

This point has been made by Harris: The Origins of Writing (as fn. 8). Ian Hacking: The Social Construction of What?, Cambridge, MA 1999. Alva Noë: Pictures First (manuscript). Anne Hollander: Seeing Through Clothes, New York 1978, p. 391. See also my discussion of this in: Noë: Strange Tools (as fn. 11).

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I offer these considerations drawn from Hollander in part to offer a correction to my earlier view. In Action in Perception and in other work, I took great pains to attack the “picture picture of seeing.”18 I argued that it is a mistake to think of vision as a process whereby the brain or mind makes pictures in consciousness. Seeing is non-pictorial. And moreover, I argued, we should appreciate the ways seeing is active, task-oriented, situated, engaged, and, precisely, not detached, or contemplative; our relationship with what there is around us that we see is not like our relation to a picture that we regard. We need to give up, I argued, the widely held assumption that seeing is bound up with mental pictures. I still believe all this. The “picture picture” of vision is wrongheaded. But it is not as wrong as I thought.19 In fact, there are modes or styles of visual awareness that are pictorial in precisely the sense indicated by Hollander’s example: pictures, to use her phrase, give the standard by which the direct awareness, in this case of oneself in the mirror, is assessed. Pictures shape our conception of what we are doing when we see; pictures shape our conception also of what we see. There are, in short, picture-dependent ways of seeing and these, no less than pictures themselves, are a cultural achievement, an invention. (These remarks can be made with all the more vigor now in the age of portable digital photography and the “selfie.”) If this sounds outrageous, perhaps it will seem less so when you bring to mind once more a fact we have been considering, namely, that human beings have been making pictures for at the very least 40,000 years, and maybe for much longer than that. Pictures – picture making activities, picture using activities – are possibly as old as we are, as a species. They are a hallmark of our psychologically modern humanity. So maybe we should not balk at the idea that pictures have altered or at least influenced vision. (In this connection, it is striking that the way we test your vision at the eye doctor’s is by showing you projected images, typically, of letters.) It remains the case that the “picture picture” is misguided. Seeing is not a process whereby the brain makes a mental picture. Vision is not a process whose input is a retinal picture; retinal images are not really pictures at all. And finally, the character and quality of seeing, manifestly, is not pictorial; that is, the visible scene before you does not show up in high resolution and uniform detail from the center to the periphery as it might in a picture. And yet I am now inclined to think that it is no accident that for all that I and others have lambasted pictorial ways of thinking about seeing, it remains very difficult to banish pictures entirely from our theorizing about seeing. And this is because, I now appreciate, our concept of seeing, or one family of our concepts of seeing, is a picture-based idea.

18 19

Noë: Action in Perception (as fn. 11). As I explore in: Noë: Pictures First (as fn. 16).

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The second reason I elaborate this idea that pictures loop down and transform seeing should already be manifest. I aim to convince you here that writing has something like this same kind of reorganizing influence on language, and indeed over something like the same prehistorical times scales. So let us turn back to writing and speech. It is striking that we, we who are in fact residents of the writtenlanguage world, find it so very natural to think of speech as something that we can write down. For us, it is as if a written word on paper, or a computer screen, or on the blackboard, just is the word itself. It is the word’s image, or maybe, it is the word’s face. And we find it natural seeming that words are the kinds of things that have spellings. We can write them down. We cannot write down any old sound. We don’t write down the floor’s creak or the wind’s whistle. Those sounds do not have spellings. But words come, or seem to come, with spellings attached. What comes first? The sounds, or the letters in reference to which we pick them out? This is a hard issue. The possibility I want us to take seriously now is that the sounds show up for us thanks to the ways we have learned to play with them, or conceptualize them, and that writing is an important, maybe the important, instrument of this conceptualization. We do not stand outside speech, as we might if we are transcribing an alien tongue, when we spell. Spelling, and other aspects of writing, is something that we do inside of language. Spelling, as Wittgenstein would have put it, is a language game. And it shouldn’t be surprising that our experience of speech is so bound up with writing. It is hard to think of any other technology the mastery of which is so universally and with such lock-step cultural uniformity imposed on our young, from the earliest age and for the duration of their education. This raises the further question whether it is even possible for us to experience our own language faculty, or our own speaking and hearing, apart from the image of speaking and talking which writing supplies. This would be analogous to the question: is it possible to experience sexuality apart from the ways in which culture and religion and ideology have organized our sexual selves? Or like asking: can we experience the visual world as if we did not live in a culture in which the visual world is an almost endless object of visual depiction? Or for that matter, to relate it to a more traditional philosophical debate, it is like the question: is there perceptual consciousness beyond the reach of our conceptual understanding? These questions are not psychological. They are ontological. Might it be that culture and history have transformed what sex, or vision, or language are? These are now neither biological nor cultural, but bio-cultural, that is to say, cultural by nature. But the questions are also, in a way, existential: Is it for us a live possibility to engage with speech, to speak and hear talk, apart from the entanglement of speech with writing? To do so would be like experiencing the body as if there’d never been historically elaborated gender roles, or experiencing the movement of dance as if there’d never been Fred Astaire, James Brown, or that boy in 10th grade who could do the Robot.

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One of my main aims here is to take seriously the hypothesis of this sort of entanglement. For now, this much is clear: linguists carry on as if a speaker’s or a hearer’s intuitions about grammaticality can be taken as data points and used to reverse engineer the nature of the underlying competence which is the knowledge of the language, a competence that is supposed to be independent of writing and culture. But can we be so sure that our intuitions do not rather reflect the ways we have embodied what Harris calls a scriptoralist conception of language, that is, a conception of language after writing, or according to the model of what speech or language are that writing itself first makes available?20 Take, as an example, the simple observation noticed in passing above that conventional alphabetic writing systems do not exhibit phrase structure the way they exhibit word order. That seems right. But is this a fact to which we have access independently of our knowledge of written language? Is our sense that “the” and “boy” go together to form a single unit a writing-independent fact about how we talk, or is it precisely the deployment of a way of thinking of speech as made up of units that may be combined and recombined, a way of thinking that we only possess thanks to the writing doctrine? Let us now, finally, with preliminaries out of the way, turn to the question how or why did we devise written language? That is, let’s turn to the pseudo-historical question with which I began. We have already considered what the simple view has to say about this. Written language is just so useful. As with the wheel and fire, the benefits of using it are sufficient to explain both how it came into existence and how it was maintained from generation to generation. We have gone far enough into the issue, however, to see why this cannot be satisfactory as an account of why we first started writing, or trying to write, speech down. Here’s why: It is easy to see how we might apply our graphical know-how to the task of inscribing speech if we already thought of speech as made up of structural elements that can be combined and recombined in a rule-governed way. But to think of speech that way is precisely to think of it already as something writable, that is to say, as articulated by writing. Indeed, if I am right, it is to think of speech and our capacity for speech in a way that may only have been first made available to us conceptually thanks to the existence of writing as a technology. But then it seems that we must already know how to write in order to invent writing in the first place. So writing was never invented. If we write now, we’ve always been writing. In this way, we confront, what I’ll call the Writing Paradox; it is comparable to Plato’s paradox of The Meno or Augustine’s paradox of The Teacher. The thing I want us to appreciate is that there are alternative ways of thinking about speech than the way that writing makes seem so obvious and natural. Speech is movement, after all. It is skillful, purposeful, situation-sensitive, social, movement. 20

Harris: The Origins of Writing (as fn. 8).

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Talking is something we do with others, and in doing so, we move our mouths and our throats and we modulate our breathing and our rhythms, our posture and our orientation. Talking in this sense has more in common with free play with a soccer ball, or perhaps dancing, than it does with sentences printed on a page. How do we even get the idea of words and word-order, phrases and phrase structure, out of that fluent exercise of task-oriented movement which is language in the wild, as we might put it? Take another example of movement: dancing. How do you write that down? Choreographers have tried and, so I would argue, have failed.21 Where would you even begin? Now you might be tempted to say that the difference between language and nonlinguistic movement is that language is, intrinsically and manifestly, articulate. It is structure made up out of parts; to be a language user is to be sensitive to this articulation, an articulation that shows up (as Humboldt argued) at two levels (phonological and syntactic, but also semantic). But can’t something similar be said about our bodies in action? Indeed, isn’t the living animal body the very paradigm of something that articulates? This much is clear: language is a moving flow of human activity. To write it down we must conceive it as structured and differentiated but to do this is already to take up an attitude or stance that is tantamount to writing. To understand the place of writing in our linguistic lives, to frame an adequate concept of language, we need to come to grips with this paradox. This is my focus for the remainder of this essay. My strategy will be roughly Augustinian or Platonic. I will try to show that we have in fact always been writing, or more modestly, that we have always been engaged in something that is the moral equivalent of writing. And so, for this reason, we never face off against speech – standing apart and wondering how we might ever write it down – in the way that the paradox requires. But how can this be the case if, as we know, as a matter of fact, the application of graphical technology to speech is a roughly datable and fairly recent event? It will be helpful, I think, to recall the way logicians think about formal language. A formal language, the sort of systems that logicians work with, consists of a finite number of primitive or atomic symbols and a set of rules or procedures for determining, for any string of symbols, whether that string is also a symbol, whether it is, in the terminology of logicians, a well-formed formula. If it is, then good; if it is not, well then, it’s prohibited by the rules. And so for meaning. There are assignments of meanings

21

This is a controversial claim. There have been many different attempts, some more successful than others, to develop dance notations. And no doubt score making – understood very broadly – is a basic part of the work of most choreographers. But this much is uncontroversial: there is no way of writing down human movement that exerts control over our experience of human movement that is comparable with the ways writing shapes speech or musical notation shapes musical experience.

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or “semantic value” to every primitive symbol, and there are rules for determining, given the meaning or semantic value of each symbol, what the meaning or semantic value of each well formed formula is. If a sign lacks a proper assignment, or if the signs are combined illegally, then what you have is not so much meaningless language, as non-language. A fair bit of philosophy of language and linguistics takes roughly this conception of language, originally framed for formal languages, for granted. Language is generated by the rules. And what is not generated by the rules is outside language. Empirical research aims to make explicit the rules and representations, as Chomsky used to call them, that suffice to specify the language and that can therefore also be thought of as telling you what it is you know when you know a language.22 I am interested in the fact that actual languages, of the sort that we are using now, are, in at least one important respect, not like this. They are not rule governed in the way I have just sketched; they are, rather, rule using, that is, users of the language use the rules to guide themselves, criticize the usage of others, adjudicate dispute, and in similar ways negotiate their dealings with others.23 One of the distinctive features of true language is that it is always confronted by the live and immediate possibility of misunderstanding. And as a general rule, misunderstanding does not interrupt language, forcing us outside of it, as on the picture of the logician or the linguist; for us there is no outside and misunderstanding is for us always an opportunity for more language, for the distinctively linguistic activities of explaining, or clarifying, or elucidating, or justifying. Language users do not just carry on blindly, acting in accord with rules that govern them, occasionally misusing words and finding themselves then ejected into the equivalent of linguistic outer space. Rather, language users, from the very start, as it were, use language to make meaning in the face of misunderstanding. We define terms; we challenge another’s usage; we explain what a term or word means. In fact, as Strawson discussed in his book on logical theory, the range of evaluative reflection on language is very wide.24 We find some bits of discourse clear, others murky, some humorous, others dull, and so on. There are many distinct domains of critical reflection on talking that unfold inside language: logic, rhetoric, style, wit, sophistication, etc. Even very young children get this. One of the first uses of language that you see kids playing around with is that of asking after or offering definitions or explanations of meaning. To be a language 22 23

24

For a novel approach to this familiar question, see Jürgen Trabant: Was wissen wir, wenn wir eine Sprache können?, in: Philologie im Netz 17 (2001), pp. 45–61. I draw here on Wittgenstein 1953 and also on Baker and Hacker’s interpretation of Wittgenstein developed in their commentary. See, in particular, Gordon P. Baker/Peter M. S. Hacker: Wittgenstein. Rules, Grammar and Necessity, Volume 2 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Essays and Exegesis, §§ 185–242, Oxford 2009. Peter F. Strawson: Introduction to Logical Theory, London 1952.

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user, then, is perforce to be one who takes a stand on language, who corrects misusage, and copes with difference. This is why I say language is a rule-using (or maybe even sometimes a rule creating) activity as opposed to a rule-governed one. And this is why I say that to be a language user is, whatever else it is, to be someone who thinks about language. To imagine speakers who just carried on, and never needed to reflect on what someone meant, or might have meant, would be to imagine something utterly unlike real human language.25 Tripping, arguing, adjudicating dispute, innovating, explaining, articulating, trying better to express – these are ready-to-hand modalities of ordinary, everyday language use. Criteria of correctness, questions about how to go on, or about what is or is not grammatical, dealing with misunderstanding, these are activities that we carry on, and that we fight about, inside of language, and they do not require us to shift, as the logician might have it, to a language external activity of setting up the grammar. Now Hubert D. Dreyfus and some other existential phenomenologists want to make a sharp contrast between first-order engagements with tasks or activities and the interruption of such activities for purposes of reflection or self-monitoring.26 When we are in the flow, we just act; reflection happens only when there is breakdown. I agree with Dreyfus that we must be vigilant to ward off an intellectualism or a cognitivism that holds that human activity only rises to the level of action when it is accompanied by deliberate psychological acts of detached evaluation and contemplation. (This is perhaps the view of Jason Stanley.)27 But ironically, keeping the language case in mind, it is Dreyfus’s view that conforms most perfectly to the artificiality of the logician’s model. Dreyfus’s opposition of flow and breakdown corresponds to the logician’s conception of what is inside and what is outside the bounds of language. The use of language to adjudicate and regulate and indeed to reflect on language is one of language’s fundamental first-order modes. To worry about language, to reflect on it, to take up the writerly attitude to language, is not to interrupt language, but to enact it. Language contains its own meta-theory; or better, language contains, always, and from the start, the problem of how to go on? as well as that of what’s going on? Reflection on and argument about language, second order though they may be, are already contained within language as a first-order phenomenon. It is helpful, I think, to compare the case of language with that of another style of skillful engagement with the world, namely, perception itself. Wittgenstein,

25 26 27

Perhaps this is what the language of an Artificial Intelligence would be like. Hubert L. Dreyfus: Skillful Coping. Essays on the Phenomenology of Everyday Perception and Action, New York 2014. Jason Stanly: Knowing How, New York 2011.

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in the Tractatus, said the eye is the limit of the visual field.28 This is wrong: the adjustments of the eye, the need to adjust the eye, difficulties in adjusting the eye, are given in the way we see. To see is not, as it were, to be at the receiving end of a projection from the field; it is to be at play; the visual field is a field of play. The perceiver, him or herself, is in the field of visual play. Consider: we occupy cluttered environments. Columns, people, furniture, stuff blocks your view. But we only rarely experience the world as closed off by such impediments; they don’t prevent us from seeing, not any more than a rocky trail stops you from wandering; we move our eyes, we move our head, we move our body, just as we adjust our footing on the trail to maintain our footing, and in this way we keep the world in touch. Which is not to say that we see through or around obstacles. We cannot do this. What we can do is preserve our access even to what is not now in view. We visually experience much more than is, in a projective sense, strictly visible.29 Euclid observed that you cannot perceive a solid opaque object from all sides at once. I am now reminding us that this inability is not a disability; it is in fact bound up with the character of the way an object can show up for us visually. A perceptual encounter that presented you with the object but in a way such that none of its parts would be hidden would not be, could not be a form of visual encounter with it. That particular form of fragility – that one side occludes another from view, that as you move different aspects come in and go out of view – just belongs to the way of perceiving we call visual. It is constitutive of the visual modality. Vision is manifestly fragile in this way. The presence of the unseen parts of the things we see, like the presence of the ground we stand on, is something we negotiate. And so with talking and speech. Speakers no more transmit their thoughts than the environment transmits its image. Talking, like seeing, is an ongoing transaction, a negotiation. Misunderstanding, unclarity, vagueness, these are the very stuff of language, just as opacity and occlusion make for vision. Now, to return to the paradox and to the pseudo-historical question of how and why we ever came up with written language. The upshot of what I have been asking us to consider is this: to be a language user is to be concerned with questions about language, and so language use requires, of speakers and hearers, that they seek to imagine or conceive of what they are doing when they speak. In this way, speech is always, in the normal course of events, concerned to write itself down, to frame a model or image of itself. This is true of all languages, always, for it is, if you like, the 28 29

This is how I read Wittgenstein: Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (as fn. 3), §  5.633, § 5.6331. See Noë: Varieties of Presence (as fn. 11).

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normative motor of language itself. Language demands reflection, and reflection demands that we frame ways of thinking about language. What we call “written language,” consists in the application of graphical methods to this task. Written language is an important innovation, but the innovation is, as it were, only technical. All languages, whether they have alphabets or not, have the resources to take up the reflective attitude, the writerly attitude, to speech itself. Writing, in the modern sense – the use of graphical means to write speech down – is only one way of solving the problem which, in fact, pre-exists that device and stems from the normative, rule-using character, of language itself. Writing serves, finally, to offer a perspicuous representation of what we think we are doing when we use language. And this lets us resolve the paradox: we do not face the problem of inventing writing or discovering structure as if from the outside. We have always been writing language, for to be a speaker is to participate in the work of representing our activity of talking to ourselves and that, finally, is what writing is. We might put the point like this: the writerly attitude is a condition of speech itself; for speech, of its very nature, is concerned with writing (that is to say, modeling language as an activity) itself. This is consistent with the claim that there is no writing without talking. But it also allows for the more intriguing discovery that, for reasons I have given, there is no talking without writing.30 So writing and speech, while notionally different, arrive together and are more closely connected than we appreciate. Now, once we have written language, a whole new generative interaction and mutual influence of writing on speech and speech on writing gets started and amplifies and accelerates. For the existence of ways of representing or modeling how we talk (conventionally: writing) exerts an influence on how we talk, which in turn changes how we represent to ourselves what we are doing when we do that, that is, it changes writing. Which in turn loops down and drives more change. Speech is one thing, writing, or the writerly attitude to speech, the concern to represent speech, is another, but these become, in real historical time and in culture, inextricably entangled. To understand the nature of their entanglement, we must appreciate the notional difference between the entangled strands, speech and writing. But it is an appreciation of the phenomenon of their entanglement that is, in a way, the important discovery. If I am right, then it turns out that the invention of written language was ultimately an act in the service of philosophy rather than in the service of more

30

I am not arguing merely that we experience speech through text, as Derrida argues. I am arguing, as I hope will become clear, that speech presupposes writing because, in a way, speech presupposes something like reflective philosophical engagement with what we are doing when we talk, that is to say, with the normativity of language.

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humdrum kinds of utility such as making it possible to record or send messages and or enable the development of science or bureaucracy. These are side effects. For it was an attempt to exhibit the structure of our language so that, in effect, we can know what we are doing when we talk. Writing has always been about writing ourselves. This has been a project, indeed one of the central projects, of philosophy all along, from Aristotle, through Frege and Wittgenstein, to Austin and Davidson. Actually, this was also Socrates’ project. I will conclude with this thought. It is often said that for Socrates philosophy was conversational and here we think of Plato’s early dialogues with their genuinely dialogic form. But in fact, Socrates was anything but a good conversationalist and he shows no interest in the oral. Socrates was rather an interrogator and the effects of his interrogations is not to explore ideas through talking, but to interrupt conversation. Socrates demanded that his interlocutors stop carrying on, stop acting out of habits of thought and talk, but that they subject these, their habits, to critical evaluation. In effect, if not in so many words, what Socrates demanded was that they shut up, indeed, that they stop acting, and that they start writing, that they start doing philosophy.31

31

I am grateful to Caitlin Dolan, John Drummond, Samantha Matherne, B. Rousse, David Suarez, Evan Thompson, and Joseph Kassman-Todd, as well as to the contributors to the present volume, for invaluable comments and discussion. A special thanks to Horst Bredekamp and Sabine Marienberg, for their thoughtful criticism of earlier drafts, as well as to Jürgen Trabant, to whom I am in addition grateful for the motto as well as for urging Vico on me and also for his important treatment of Vico. See Jürgen Trabant: Vico’s New Science of Ancient Signs. A Study of Sematology, trans. by Sean Ward, London 2004.

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Habit and the Symbolic Process

1. Introduction: Two Conceptions of the Symbol In a passage of his Sprachtheorie (1934), the German psychologist and linguist Karl Bühler gave a vivid description of a fundamental ambiguity that affects the concept of symbol: an ambiguity that, he said, stems from a more fundamental conflict between a “romantic” and a “non-romantic” philosophical attitude. The romantics loved the concept of symbol and lavished a plenitude of meaning upon it that comes quite close to the wealth of meaning contained in the idea of an “image or likeness” of things [dem bedeutungsschwangeren “Bild und Gleichnis” ganz nahe steht], whereas the logicians (one could almost say for professional reasons) advocated emaciation and formalization of the content of the concept so that in the end nothing was left other than the arbitrarily agreed coordination of something or other as a sign to something or other as the signified. […] It would be a pure waste of energy to write an apologia for the one or the other motive of definition. There will always be romantics and non-romantics; they must simply try to understand each other in science. It seems to me that it is not now possible to revoke the concession that there are two concepts of symbol. If it were possible to revoke it, the same difference of mentality would come to the fore somewhere else on some other topic.1

1

Karl Bühler: Theory of Language. The representational function of language [1934], trans. by Donald Fraser Goodwin, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2011. The passage is cited in Oliver R. Scholz: Symbol. 19. und 20. Jh., in: Joachim Ritter/Karlfried Gründer (eds.): Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 10, Basel 1998, p. 735.

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Bühler argues, in other words, that the concept of symbol may be given two fundamentally different interpretations. In the first, logical interpretation, the symbol is a conventional, abstract, and arbitrary sign. (Think of the phrase “symbolic logic.”) In the second interpretation, the symbol is a creative, aesthetically laden, and therefore not completely arbitrary mode of signification; it is a mode of signification that overlaps with the pictorial dimension (Bild und Gleichnis, “image and likeness”), although it also has the capacity to go beyond that dimension. When we talk of the “symbolic value” of images, artworks, or rituals, we are normally using the word “symbol” in this second acceptation. Equally relevant is the second part of Bühler’s passage, in which the German scholar makes a plea for a tolerant attitude towards this ambiguity on account of its virtually irresolvable nature. One could expand on these remarks by saying that both interpretations of the concept of symbol described by Bühler are appraisive – that is, they are interpretations of the concept that are aimed at epitomizing the “highest” and quintessential form of human expression. In other words, both romantics and non-romantics agree that human beings are fundamentally characterized by their ability to use symbols. What they truly disagree about is rather which specific human faculty one should give pride of place to. While non-romantics tend to emphasize the connection between the use of reason and the mastering of logical tools, romantics would rather insist on a more creative and aesthetic understanding of reason itself. The two concepts of symbol are therefore irreconcilable because they give expression to a much broader philosophical controversy over the nature of human reason.2 While acknowledging the philosophical acuity of Bühler’s position, accepting it may come at a price. By postulating an irreducible struggle between two conceptions of the symbol, Bühler ends up casting a skeptical light on the very attempt to articulate a unitary conception of human reason. Moreover, Bühler’s position makes it, if not impossible, at least very difficult to elaborate a conception of the symbol that is wide enough to cover all the different forms of symbolization that make up human culture. In this sense, Ernst Cassirer’s monumental project of a Philo­ sophie der symbolischen Formen, although kindred in spirit to Bühler’s work, is driven by a different intention. For Cassirer’s work aims precisely at articulating a unitary, all-encompassing conception of the symbol, a conception that may prove wide enough to account for both the abstractions of mathematics and the modi of expression of mythology, art, and everyday language.

2

Jung’s chapter in this volume highlights a slightly different ambiguity in the concept of symbol: an ambiguity between a broad and a narrow sense of the term. In the broad sense, it is the “overall structure of human semiosis” that can be called “symbolic.” In the narrow sense, a symbol is just one specific kind of sign.

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Cassirer’s idea is that the key to developing a unitary understanding of the symbol is to avoid any definition that limits the concept of symbol to one particular set of “things.” As opposed to that, one should provide a functional definition; that is, one should define the symbol as a general function of the mind, a function that may manifest itself in different ways, depending on the nature of the specific “symbolic form” to which it belongs. Symbols are not things; they are the functions or processes through which human beings regulate their transactions with the environment and create the world of culture. Both the “creative” symbols of the romantics and the logical symbols of the non-romantics may be conceived as manifestations of this comprehensive process. The present chapter is devoted to investigating a line of thought that was approximately coeval with Cassirer and articulated a similarly synthetic approach to the symbol, although this approach stemmed from a slightly different hypothesis. The hypothesis in question is that symbols gradually emerge out of simpler gestures or expressions and that, in doing so, they never completely detach themselves from the presymbolic ground out of which they evolve.3 In this sense, symbols are neither the product of an arbitrary convention, as in “non-romantic” theories, nor the infinitely creative signs of the romantics, but represent an intermediate stage between the two. The thinkers I will present in the following pages adopted one specific idea in order to articulate this perspective, namely the idea that symbols are the product of habit-taking processes that unfold out of the basic interaction between organisms and their environments. Overall, these processes are analogous to the dynamics through which bodily habits are formed. A regular pattern in the interpretation of a given stimulus starts to emerge every time that stimulus occurs, and each additional repetition of the stimulus strengthens the formation of that pattern until a truly general relation of signification – indeed a symbol – emerges.

2. Peirce: Symbols and Icons The first author I shall introduce is Charles S. Peirce, the American semiotician and pragmatist philosopher. As is well known, Peirce formulated a triadic classification of signs according to the relation they hold with their object. He thus classified all signs into icons, indices, and symbols. This classification is, as such, hardly revolutionary; it takes up some ideas about the relation between symbolic and nonsymbolic forms of signification which have circulated for centuries. Early modern 3

On this point cf. both Trabant’s remarks on Vico and Hadjinicolaou’s remarks on “blotches as symbolic articulation” in this volume.

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psychologists habitually talked about two fundamental laws of association of ideas: the laws of “similarity” and of “contiguity,” which are somewhat analogous to Peirce’s icons and indices.4 And the same distinction may be found in the many authors who have talked about the interplay between “imitating” and “pointing” gestures as the source of symbolic communication.5 However, one of the features that sets Peirce’s classification fundamentally apart from this broader tradition is its functionalist or relational tone, which is similar to Cassirer’s approach. Icons, indices, and symbols are not self-contained collections of signs that differ from one another because of some inherently constitutive trait. Rather, they are three interconnected aspects of all semiotic phenomena. In other words, one and the same sign may have iconic, indexical, and symbolic aspects that coexist with one another. In line with this functionalist outlook, Peirce provides definitions of icon, index, and symbol that try to break free from substantialist notions such as similarity, contiguity, and convention, and are situated on a more abstract or relational level.6 Thus icons are defined as signs that hold a purely qualitative relation to their object; that is, their ability to refer to their object depends on the fact that they share a quality with it and that their possession of this quality is not dependent on any contingent fact such as the actual existence of the object itself.7 Indices, on the contrary, are determined precisely by their existential relation to the object. This amounts to saying that the existence of the object is a necessary condition for the signifying character of the index to exist. Finally, symbols are signs that possess a signifying character only because of the existence of a mediating element. Or as Peirce puts it, “[a] symbol is defined as a sign which becomes such by virtue of the

4 5

6

7

The tradition goes back to Aristotle, who in the De Memoria lists these two laws alongside a third one, namely the law of contrast. A trace of this discussion may also be found in Cassirer, who talks of nachahmen (imitating) and hinweisen (pointing) as the two presymbolic functions of language. See Ernst Cassirer: Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Erster Teil: Die Sprache [1923], ed. by Birgit Recki/ Claus Rosenkranz, Hamburg 2001. See in particular the definitions given in Charles S. Peirce: The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. by Charles Hartshorne/Paul Weiss/Arthur W. Burks, Cambridge, MA 1931– 1958 [CP], 2.304. Peirce, in truth, somewhat oscillates between the concept of quality and that of similarity as the best way to define icons. Nonetheless it may be safely said that, overall, it is the definition in terms of quality that better accords with his theory of signs. See Frederik Stjernfelt: Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics. Dordrecht 2007, chap. 3; Francesco Bellucci/Claudio Paolucci: Peirce e l’iconismo, in: Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici 120 (2015), pp. 3–13.

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fact that it is interpreted as such.”8 This mediating element may certainly be, in some cases, an explicit convention. But it may also be a historically sedimented custom (as in the case of natural language), or a “natural disposition” on the part of the interpreter to accord a definite meaning to a given sign. Finally, it may even be something apparently less palpable, such as the fact that a certain interpretation of a given sign naturally “stands out” from others. The decisive aspect of Peirce’s definition of the symbol is therefore not conventionality, but rather mediation and generality. It is precisely the concept of habit that Peirce often uses to describe the mediating nature of the symbol. This can be explained by the fact that habits represent the general mechanism under which Peirce was able to subsume both acquired and inborn dispositions, both explicit and implicit rules. But more importantly, in Peirce’s pragmatist epistemology, it is the concept of habit that explains the creation of general regularities out of particular elements. In other words, Peirce holds generality to be embodied in habits. And symbols, which are general signs par excellence, can therefore be described as the product of habit-taking.9 In order to better understand this point, let us first briefly consider Peirce’s description of habit-taking processes on a general level before going back to the specific case of symbolic phenomena. Here we encounter Peirce’s “law of mind” – so called because it represents the general machinery through which intelligent and law-like patterns emerge out of simple physiological exchanges of stimuli and responses.10 To begin with, let us imagine an organism that receives a stimulus s, to which it reacts with a response r. At the very outset, it is possible to imagine that nothing had predetermined r to occur. In this sense, r was a completely chance-like phenomenon. However, once r has occurred for the first time, it creates an initial, embryonic tendency on the part of the organism to trigger r a second time if s is repeated. The organism is thus endowed with a propensity to habit-taking which ensures that a single occurrence of r will be sufficient to establish a first approximation of a general

  8   9

10

Peirce: New Elements (c. 1904), in: id.: The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 2, ed. by Nathan Houser/Christian Kloesel, Bloomington, IN 1998, p. 317. Again, Peirce is not always terminologically consistent on this point. Sometimes habits also include natural dispositions (CP 1906, 4.531); sometimes they exclude them and represent only one possible basis of symbolization, alongside dispositions and conventions. Cf. manuscript MS 462, p. 88, as quoted in Mats Bergman/Sami Paavola (eds.): The Commens Dictionary: Peirce’s Terms in His Own Words. New Edition. online: http://www.commens.org/ dictionary/ term/icon> (27.04.2017). The following account is mainly based on Peirce’s article The Law of Mind (1892) and on some preliminary drafts. See Charles S. Peirce: Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, vol. 8, 1890–1892, ed. by the Peirce Edition Project, Bloomington 2010, pp. 126–157.

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rule. This rule dictates that every time s occurs, r is to follow. To be sure, the rule at this stage is still very weak and open to chance-like variation; but the more repetitions of the s-r cycle there occur, the more general and determinate the rule becomes. Thus we are faced here with a process that is never deterministically regulated, but is nonetheless able to create generality out of repetition. Let us now ask how this machinery applies to symbols. In order to answer this question we have to substitute the terminology of stimulus and response with that of signs and interpretations; that is, we no longer speak of stimuli triggering physiological responses, but of signs that are interpreted as meaning certain things. Now the starting point of the habit-forming process – that is, a situation that pre­ sents the greatest degree of chance and indeterminacy – can be identified with the stage of maximum iconicity of a sign. Because of their purely qualitative mode of signification, icons can in fact constantly refer to new meanings, unconstrained by such factors as the existence of an actual connection between the object and the sign. The only condition that has to be met is that icons share a quality with their objects.11 But these purely qualitative links are potentially infinite. Icons are therefore inherently creative: They can be interpreted in novel ways by linking them to whatever object may be shown to share a quality with them. In this sense, icons offer the “breeding ground” for all processes of symbolization.12 Now, if we look at the creative power of icons within the more general context of the physiological tendency to develop habits (a tendency that is common to all organisms), we may easily conclude that once an icon has been interpreted as signifying a particular object, there will be a slight tendency for that specific interpretation to occur a second time, and so on. To be sure, this process may break down or deviate at any point and is therefore anything but deterministic. In other words, signs are de facto always open to unforeseen interpretations. But this habit-taking process nonetheless dictates that even the slightest, purely iconic connection between a sign and an object may have the capacity to go beyond itself and to contribute to the formation of a general, symbolic rule of interpretation. It is precisely in this way that habits of interpretation are formed.13 This dynamics of habituation therefore suggests that it is possible for symbols to gradually develop out of icons, insofar 11

12

13

CP 1902, 2.304: “An icon is a sign which would possess the character which renders it significant, even though its object had no existence; such as a lead-pencil streak as representing a geometrical line.” See Charles S. Peirce: Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, vol. 5, 1884– 1996, ed. by the Peirce Edition Project, Bloomington 1993, p. 380: “No quality or character of any kind can be conveyed or made known, except by the means of an icon.” Indices may have an important role in this process too. By supplying the sign with a way of attaching or directly anchoring it to reality, they may help “steer” the process of interpretation toward a specific object. Imagine an icon that potentially signifies many objects; we

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as the potentially infinite, qualitative features of iconic signs are gradually selected and stabilized into more general forms of signification. However, a very important caveat should be kept in mind here. The fact that symbols may be shown to “develop” out of more iconic signs by means of habit-taking processes is not to say that all symbols “derive” from icons. Indeed, a crucial aspect of both Peirce’s semiotics is the idea that symbols are already present in nature, independently of the habit-taking processes of sign users.14 And yet, this does not prevent us from maintaining that, thanks to the generalization process triggered by the “law of mind,” non-symbolic forms of expression such as icons and, to a certain extent, indices may grow into more habitual and general (that is, more symbolic) signs. Thus Peirce’s law of mind does offer us an opportunity to understand some very important aspects of symbolization as a whole. In particular, it helps us understand what happens when a sign that initially occurs without a stable meaning gradually acquires one (or alternatively, when a sign that is initially exchanged with a stable and specific meaning gradually changes it). And, of course, this dynamics may in principle be applied to very different phenomena. For instance, it may not only be applied to signs exchanged in daily social communication but also to phenomena such as the formation of linguistic elements out of more iconic “vocal gestures”15 and even to the gradual formation of a symbolic layer of signification in figurative art. An additional consequence of Peirce’s theory, as should have become clear by now, is that it prevents us from lapsing into a hasty contraposition of images and language on the basis of the distinction between icons and symbols. In Peirce’s view, images are by no means “pure icons”: They are prominently iconic elements that can however be laden with symbolic elements, namely with elements whose meaning is not immediately accessible, but is mediated. In the same vein, language, although prominently symbolic, is shot through with iconic (i.e., qualitative) layers of signification. And a similar observation could be made with regard to the indexical dimension of both images and language. A photograph, for instance, may be said to be an icon of its object. But it is also an index, in that it is the result of light directly impinging on the film. Or to take another example, the deictic elements of language, such as personal pronouns or demonstratives, may be called “indexical symbols”

14

15

can then further imagine that indices help one of these objects to become salient. In this case, it is precisely that salient object that is most likely to become the object of the symbol. On this point see Frederik Stjernfelt: Natural Propositions. The Actuality of Peirce’s Theory of Dicisign, Boston 2014. Stjernfelt rightly criticizes Terrence Deacon’s interpretation of Peirce, which, although brilliant, misconstrues symbols as the “compositional” result of iconic and indexical signs. See Terrence Deacon: The Symbolic Species. The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, New York/London 1997. See further, par. 3.

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because their meaning depends not only on the rule or conventions of a single language but also on the direct spatio-temporal coordinates of the single utterance in which they occur.16 However, notwithstanding its great explanatory power, Peirce’s account of symbolization remains open to two different lines of criticism. First, it does not sufficiently take into account the intersubjective dimension that presides over the formation of symbols as public forms of communication and expression. Although Peirce relies heavily on the idea that signs are inherently public and that semiotics is necessarily dialogic, he does not delve deeply enough into the concrete, socially embedded, and embodied details of dialogic situations. His account largely prescinds from the concrete aspects of bodily articulation, artifact-making, and social situations. A second limitation is that, precisely because of its functional character, Peirce’s semiotics is not very attentive to the material aspects of symbolic articulation. His substitution of the concepts of image or picture with the concept of icon is, one the one hand, a revolutionary step that allows a very precise separation of the levels of analysis. As I have already said, images do not in fact always need to be iconic, and icons do not need to be pictorial. But on the other hand, precisely this substitution seems to have caused Peirce to somewhat neglect the specific contribution of the material aspect of pictures to the processes of symbolization. This is all the more regretful as Peirce was, in point of fact, anything but insensitive to the specific epistemic function of visual experience, as well as to the mighty role of pictorial artifacts as a cognitive tool.17 The two lines of criticism I have just presented may be used as a foil to introduce the work of the two other thinkers with whom I will be dealing in this chapter. The first thinker, who addresses the question of the social nature of symbols, is George Herbert Mead.

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17

To date, Roman Jakobson is still the linguist who has made the most ambitious attempt to bring Peirce’s semiotics to bear on the study of language. See Roman Jakobson: A Few Remarks on Peirce, Pathfinder in the Science of Language (1975), in: id.: Selected Writings, vol. 7, The Hague/Paris 1977, pp. 248–253. See Franz Engel/Moritz Queisner/Tullio Viola (eds.): Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce (Actus et Imago 5), Berlin 2012.

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3. Intersubjectivity: Mead Among the classical exponents of American pragmatism, Mead was the thinker who did the most to draw all the implications of this school of thought for the disciplines of sociology and social theory. It therefore comes as no surprise that he was also the one who gave the most attention to the intersubjective and social dimensions of symbolic processes. In the posthumously published book Mind, Self, and Society, as well as in a number of shorter essays published during his lifetime, he presented a model of the development of symbols aimed at rejecting the various stripes of internalism or individualism with regards to the genesis of the mind. According to this model, symbolic communication is to be looked at from the standpoint of the social act in which it is always embedded. Similarly to Peirce, and in line with their common pragmatist attitude, Mead begins to articulate this model by anchoring the phenomena of human communication to the more basic exchanges between stimuli and reactions that characterize the interactions of living beings with the environment. To do so, he borrows a pivotal insight from Wilhelm Wundt (with whom he had studied in Leipzig in the late 1880s) and places the concept of “gesture” at the center of communicative phenomena. The gesture, according to his definition, is “that which becomes later a symbol, but which is to be found in its earlier stage as a part of a social act. It is that part of the social act which serves as a stimulus to other forms involved in the same social act.”18 Correspondingly, Mead calls all social interaction that involves the exchange of behavioral stimuli and responses between living organisms a “conversation of gestures.”19 Alongside Wundt, a second source of inspiration for Mead is Charles Darwin’s celebrated book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), which had also played an important role for Wundt. Mead borrows from Darwin the idea that the purport and genesis of human gestures has to be studied as a specific case of the broader phenomenon of animal behavior. Darwin’s famous description of the expression of dogs during a fight (Figs. 1 and 2) was taken up by Mead as a paradigmatic example of a “conversation of gestures.” Yet Mead did not accept Darwin’s model in its entirety. In a way that was, once again, influenced by Wundt, he raised a fundamental objection against the British naturalist by claiming him to be unwarrantedly internalistic. In the Darwinian model, Mead argues, even the simplest animal gestures are meant to express an emotion that is conceived of as already preformed

18

19

George Herbert Mead: Mind, Self, and Society [1934], ed. by Charles W. Morris, annotated edition by Hans Joas/Daniel R. Huebner, Chicago/London 2015, p. 42. On Wundt’s concept of gestures see Wilhelm Wundt: Völkerpsychologie. I. Die Sprache, Leipzig 1900. Mead: Mind, Self, and Society (as fn. 18), pp. 14f., pp. 42–49.

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Fig. 1  Briton Rivière: Dog approaching another dog with hostile intentions, in: Charles Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London 1872.

before its expression. Mead suggests, instead, that a conversation of gestures does not express anything at the outset. Gestures are simply the components of an actionreaction cycle – a social act – in which the action of one participant triggers the response of the other participant, and so on. So, for instance, the facial expressions of a fighting dog cannot be taken to “signify” anger, but simply to elicit a fearful reaction in the other dog. Mead’s model is thus strongly externalist. Meanings do not exist prior to communication; interaction among individuals is the real primum. Expression is born out of interaction, and not the other way around.20 Mead goes on to claim that gestures begin to signify something in the proper sense of the word only when they acquire the ability to be perceived in the same way by both participants in the conversation of gestures, thus laying the basis for repetition. Stated otherwise, symbols are necessarily based on reciprocity. An initially nonsignificant gesture that is increasingly repeated by both utterer and interpreter as a response to similar stimuli gradually acquires the ability to be regarded as a sign of those stimuli.21 Mead believed that this passage from nonsignificant gestures to “significant symbols” may almost exclusively happen in the presence of language. Taking up an insight that can be traced back to Wilhelm von Humboldt, he maintained that verbal communication has the virtually unique property of being perceived in the same way by both utterer and interlocutor. (In more Humboldtian 20 21

Ibid., pp. 42–51. Ibid., pp. 61–68.

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Fig. 2  T. W. Wood: Head of snarling dog, in: Charles Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London 1872.

terms: We can hear what we ourselves say to others.) It is thanks to this property that “vocal gestures” can become, as Mead himself put it, “so to speak, written in, underlined. They [can] become habitual.”22 At the same time, symbols need to be not only reciprocal but also general or universal; “and this universality […] attaches in a certain sense to a habitual response in contrast to the particular stimuli which elicit this response.”23 With regard to both the reciprocity and the universality of symbols, these quotations show that Mead insists on the same concept that figured so prominently in the semiotics of Peirce: the concept of habit. The ability to take up again the gesture of our interlocutor in presence of the same set of stimuli triggers a process of repetition that gradually strengthens the link between the gesture and its meaning. Habit-taking is therefore once again – as in Peirce – the factor that introduces generalization and stability to an otherwise unstable action-reaction cycle. This idea is wholly consistent with the pragmatists’ general understanding of habit-taking as the mechanism through which universal reactions may develop out of particular stimuli.24

22 23

24

Ibid., p. 62. On Humboldt, see Jürgen Trabant: Artikulationen. Historische Anthropologie der Sprache, Frankfurt/M. 1998. Mead: Mind, Self, and Society (as fn. 18), p. 125. On reciprocity and universality as two complementary conditions of Mead’s conception of symbol, see Matteo Santarelli: Individuale e sociale. Tra pragmatismo e sociologia, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Roma Tre 2014, pp. 129–139. Mead: Mind, Self, and Society (as fn. 18), p. 85: “I think we can recognize in any habit that which answers to different stimuli; the response is universal and the stimulus is particular.

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It would be wrong, however, to conclude that Mead’s explanation of the genesis of symbols through habit-taking amounts to a relapse into the old empiricist thesis about imitation or repetition being the sole source of language acquisition. For Mead maintains that imitation is by no means a sufficient condition for the establishment of linguistic symbols: In principle, pure and simple imitation might be directed to an infinite number of gestures and therefore does not explain anything. To explain the genesis of linguistic habits we need a principle of selection that cannot be imitation itself, but lies rather in vocal gestures’ ability to be perceived and reproduced in the same way by all the participants in the conversation.25 Be that as it may, one difficulty of Mead’s account remains his almost exclusive concentration on language as the carrier of symbols. I say “almost” because there is, in point of fact, another communicative medium to which Mead attaches extraordinary importance, for much the same reasons that he highlights the role of language. This communicative medium is the hand. To put it simply, we may look at our gesticulating hands in the same way as other people look at them. And in point of fact, sign languages are the best evidence of the possibility of constructing a fullfledged language that is based not on vocal, but on hand gestures. Mead therefore maintains that “speech and the hand go along together in the development of the social human being.”26 Yet he also seems to hold that, at bottom, hand gestures hold a subordinate position with respect to vocal language.27 In the end, therefore, Mead stops just short of doing full justice to his own insight about the symbolic potential of the hand and, a fortiori, the possibility that symbolic values get attached to fullbody gestures and posture is left almost entirely out of the picture.28 Finally, there seems to be a second and related difficulty in Mead’s account of symbols. Because of his criticism of the Darwinian view of gestures as expressions of emotions, Mead runs the risk of being unable to account for the genuinely expressive function of gestures, along with their communicative or social function. In Mind, Self, and Society we read that gestures are to be conceived of as “part of the organization of the social act, and highly important elements in that organization.” This social function, however, is described as being opposed to their expressive nature:

25 26 27 28

As long as this element serves as a stimulus, calls out this response, one can say the particular comes under this universal.” See also ibid., pp. 125f. Ibid., p. 343: “a habit fixes a certain response, but its habitual character does not explain […] the inception of the reaction.” Ibid., p. 237; cf. also pp. 146f., 184, 248f. Ibid., pp. 67f. It would be interesting to ask if today’s neuroscience (in particular the discovery of mirror neurons) may have an impact on Mead’s argument by showing that the “mirroring” nature of language and hand gestures is in fact a much more general phenomenon.

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[T]hat function of expressing emotion can legitimately become the field of the work of the artist and of the actor. The actor is in the same position as the poet: he is expressing his emotions and arousing that emotion in others. We get in this way a function which is not found in the social act of these animals, or in a great deal of our own conduct, such as that of the boxer and the fencer.29 As is clear from this passage, Mead’s model is hard put to reconcile the expressiveaesthetic and the communicative-organizational poles of gestures, because he starts out by separating them and must therefore end up assuming that a “great deal of [human] conduct” is fully deprived of its expressive dimension. But let us pause for a moment and focus on Mead’s own examples: Can the complex body language of boxers and fencers really be thought of as a repertoire of purely functional movements? Or is Mead’s account perhaps overlooking something fundamental here?

4. Gestures, Body, and Artifacts: Edgar Wind If we wished to confine ourselves to the canonical tradition of American pragmatism we could try to answer these questions by turning to the work of John Dewey. Especially his book Art as Experience, published in the same year as Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society, provides a full-fledged account of the expressive and aesthetic qualities of experience that fits with Dewey’s pragmatist anthropology. Similarly to Mead, Dewey had worked on Darwin’s theory of expression, and his criticisms of Darwin go much in the same direction as Mead’s.30 It is therefore plausible that Dewey’s mature theory of expression might redress some of the limitations of Mead’s account. Moreover, we could try to formulate a more nuanced account of the link between expression and action, an enterprise that began with Mead and Dewey.31 This strategy would help us find the tools to avoid the unsatisfactory alternative of conceptualizing gesture with regard to either its social function or its expressive power, a dilemma into which Mead himself seems to fall at times.

29 30

31

Ibid., p. 44. John Dewey: The Theory of Emotion. (I) Emotional Attitudes, in: Psychological Review 1 (1894), pp. 553–569; id.: The Theory of Emotion. (II) The Significance of Emotions, in: Psychological Review 2 (1895), pp. 13–32. From a contemporary perspective, see Fausto Caruana/Vittorio Gallese: Overcoming the emotion experience/expression dichotomy, in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35/3 (2012).

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However, the present chapter is concerned with a different issue because the focus here is not so much on pragmatism per se as on the link between symbols and habit-taking. I will thus deal with an author who does not belong to the classical pragmatist lineage, although he did play a crucial role in the early European reception of pragmatist ideas. This author is Edgar Wind, a philosopher and art historian who studied in Hamburg with Ernst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky and went on to become an art historian within the kulturwissenschaftliche tradition opened up by Aby Warburg. In the late 1920s Edgar Wind spent a few years in the United States, where he personally met John Dewey and became acquainted with the writings of Peirce. The latter encounter, albeit indirect, exerted an enormous impact on his thought; later in his life he would say that he had only ever had two “masters”: Aby Warburg and Peirce himself.32 The attempt to harmonize these two very different influences can be seen at work in one of Edgar Wind’s theoretically most ambitious essays, and the only one with which I will be dealing here, namely his article Warburg’s concept of Kulturwissenschaft and its Meaning for Aesthetics.33 Although this text is explicitly devoted to a reconstruction of Warburg’s theory of the image, the symbol, and the “expressionaction” (hantierender Ausdruck), some broadly pragmatist elements may be read between the lines. If taken seriously, these elements may help us add a further piece to our reconstruction of the link between symbolization and habit-taking. The final part of Wind’s essay is devoted to a presentation of Warburg’s ideas on the genesis of artistic creation. Warburg’s approach is measured against the “speculative” approach of those philosophers (such as Schleiermacher) who had recourse to the mysterious intervention of a “higher faculty” of human cognition in order to explain the particular nature of aesthetic experience. As opposed to this attitude, Wind maintains that Warburg placed aesthetic and artistic experience on a continuous scale that starts with the most elementary physiological dynamics of organic life and thus showed that “we need not have recourse to […] speculations […]. We need only consider the way the human body functions”34 in order to understand the genesis of both artistic creations and symbolic expression.

32

33

34

John Michael Krois: Kunst und Wissenschaft in Edgar Winds Philosophie der Verkörperung, in: Edgar Wind. Kunsthistoriker und Philosoph, ed. by Horst Bredekamp et al., Berlin 1998, p. 184 (taking up a personal communication from Margaret Wind). Edgar Wind: Warburgs Begriff der Kulturwissenschaft und seine Bedeutung für die Ästhetik, in: Vierter Kongreß für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. Beilagenheft zur Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 25 (1931), pp. 163–179. Trans. by Jaynie Anderson: Warburg’s Concept of Kulturwissenschaft and its Meaning for Aesthetics, in: id.: The Eloquence of Symbols: Studies in Humanist Art, Oxford 1993. Wind: Warburg’s Concept (as fn. 33), pp. 30f. (my emphasis).

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As is easy to imagine, a crucial source behind this idea is again Darwin’s book on human expression, a book that had in point of fact played a crucial role in the intellectual development of Aby Warburg himself.35 But the influence of this book is intertwined with another crucial source of Warburg’s theory, namely a wellknown essay entitled Das Symbol by Friedrich Theodor Vischer. This classic text was a steady point of reference for Warburg, who “read it again and again, thinking through for himself the principles that Vischer had developed in the essay.”36 If we go back for a moment to Bühler’s terminology, we can see Vischer’s text as yet another attempt to bridge the romantic and the non-romantic conceptions of the symbol. As Wind aptly sums it up, in fact, “Vischer defines the symbol as a connection between image [Bild] and meaning [Sinn] through a point of comparison.” But this connection can be more or less intimate. In certain cases it is so intimate that image and meaning are virtually indistinguishable from one another. This phenomenon is characteristic of religious consciousness, in which symbols are conflated with their objects and are therefore endowed with a sacred aura. (Warburg would talk in this respect of “magical-linking” consciousness.) At the other extreme, the link between image and meaning may be purely conventional. In this case “[t]he symbol has turned into allegory, with both sides of the comparison conceived of as clearly distinct entities.” But between these two extremes there is a third, intermediate stage which is proper to artistic images. This is the stage in which the symbol is understood as a sign and yet remains a living image, where the psychological excitation, suspended between two poles, is neither so concentrated by the compelling power of the metaphor that it turns into action, nor so detached by the force of analytical thought that it fades into conceptual thinking. It is here that the “image,” in the sense of the artistic illusion, finds its place.37 Thus, the artistic image in particular and the symbol in general are structurally s­ ubjected to what Wind calls a “polarity,” that is, a dialectical oscillation between

35

36

37

Ibid., p. 31. On Warburg’s relation to Darwin, I shall just recall the famous anecdote told by Gombrich: Warburg saw Darwin’s book on The Expression of Emotion in Animals and Men in the National Library in Florence and noted in his diary: “At last a book which helps me.” See Ernst Gombrich: Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography [1970], London 1986, p. 72. See also Carlo Ginzburg: Le forbici di Warburg, in: Maria Luisa Catoni et al.: Tre figure. Achille Meleagro Cristo, Milan 2013. Wind: Warburg’s Concept (as fn. 33), p. 27. See Friedrich Theodor Vischer: Das Symbol, in: Philosophische Aufsätze. Eduard Zeller zu seinem fünfzigjährigen Doctor-Jubiläum gewidmet, Leipzig 1887. Wind: Warburg’s Concept (as fn. 33), pp. 28f.

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“commitment” and “incarnation” on the one hand (i.e., the “magical” or religious tendency to see the object as incarnated in the sign) and “detachment” or “enlightenment” on the other (the analytical ability to discriminate between the sign and the object).38 However, Wind grafts Vischer’s conception of the polarity of the symbol onto a different model, a model that links the most elementary forms of embodied expressions to the creation of pictures and figurative artifacts by means of a continuous progression. In the attempt to systematize Warburg’s ideas on this point, Wind distinguishes four major steps in the development of expressive activity: (a) The first stage is that of the immediate connection between stimulus and reaction, which characterizes organic life at its most basic level. At this stage, an organism’s reactions to stimuli are still immediate and undifferentiated. It is therefore impossible for reflectivity or expressivity to arise. (b) The second stage is the “expressively charged muscular movement,” which starts to emerge as soon as the organism is able to introduce some degree of functional differentiation into its movements. (c) The third stage is that in which the boundaries of the body are overcome, and organisms (in particular human beings) begin to make “expressive use of an implement.” (d) Finally, the fourth and last stage amounts to the greatest “dissociation” (Distanzierung) between expression and meaning, “the level at which the stimulation of movement seems to have been almost entirely transformed [aufgehoben] in the act of contemplation.”39 At each stage of this progression, however, Vischer’s “polarity” of the symbol should additionally be taken into account, so that in the end Wind’s model is the outcome of the concerted effects of two different “symbolic ladders.” The first ladder takes the perspective of the sign producer and describes the progression of symbolic formation from embodied movement to implements and artifacts. The second (borrowed from Vischer) focuses instead on the link between the symbol and its object and describes the permanent oscillation between the magico-religious and the logical use of symbols – with the artistic image as an intermediate stage. The result of this complex dynamics is that all symbols, no matter where they can be placed on the first ladder, will in turn permanently oscillate between the different degrees of detachment as described by Vischer.40 38 39 40

Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., pp. 30ff. Ibid., pp. 29–32.

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What is particularly interesting for us in this highly elaborate model is the transition between stages (a) and (b), that is, between a state of pure immediacy and an initial state of expressive discrimination. This transition, Wind argues, can be accounted for by the very fact of muscular “articulation” (Gliederung). For once a muscular movement has been performed, there will be a minimal tendency to repeat it a second time because “the frequent repetition of the same act leaves its traces” (die häufige Wiederholung desselben Aktes hinterläßt ihre Spuren).41 In this way, muscular movements are gradually loaded not only with functional specialization but also with expressive value and therefore reflectivity. To put it in slightly different terms: differentiation of the stimulus-reaction cycle brings about the first sparkles of memory, and this in turn makes it possible for the organism to use a certain movement not only in a functional way but also symbolically, as a reference to something that is not immediately there. Wind’s most explicit source for this argument is an essay on Memory as a general function of organized matter by the German physiologist Karl Ewald Hering.42 But even more important for us is the sentence I just quoted about the “frequent repetition of the same act” (a sentence that, to the best of my knowledge, is not found in Hering). This sentence is significant because it takes up verbatim standard definitions of the concepts of “custom” and “habit” that were very widespread in the psychological literature of that time. According to these definitions, “custom” is indeed the “frequent repetition of the same act,” and “habit” should in turn be conceived of as the product of custom.43 Thus the same link between symbolicity and habit that we have been following throughout this chapter pops up unexpectedly at a particularly important juncture in Wind’s essay. The “traces” (Spuren) that Wind is talking about are nothing other than the product of custom and habit-taking. And the general dynamics he describes turns out to be very similar to the dynamics illustrated above with regard to Peirce and Mead. As soon as a first repetition or stabilization of a potentially signifying element has occurred, there will be a tendency towards an ever-increasing stabilization and generalization of meaning that will end up in the formation of a symbolic entity. “If we pursue this development further, we come to a stage where we can study the process of the formation of images in statu nascendi in the shape of the expressive gestures made by the body.”44

41 42 43 44

Ibid., p. 30; German original: Wind: Warburgs Begriff (as fn. 33), p. 101. Wind: Warburg’s Concept (as fn. 33), p. 31. See Ewald Hering: Memory as a General Function of Organized Matter [1870], Chicago 1895. See, e.g., John Bostock: An Elementary System of Physiology, London 1836, p. 757. Wind: Warburg’s Concept (as fn. 33), p. 30.

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As compared to the theories of Peirce and Mead, the main novelty of Wind’s perspective seems to lie in his assumption that the expressive and aesthetic dimensions of symbolicity are not a by-product of our cognitive and communicative activities, but are inextricably linked to them from the very outset. (Or as he puts it, “even in its most elementary form the phenomenon of expression is associated with a minimum of reflection [Besinnung].”45) This also allows him to provide an account of the development of human symbolicity that does not limit itself to language, but takes seriously the contribution of bodily actions and figurative artifacts.

5. Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Symbolic Articulation The three theories presented above share a common ground: They view the phenomenon of symbolization through the lenses of habit-taking. But this shared perspective has further implications. First, all three theories opt for a gradualist approach to the genesis of symbols. They do not detach symbols from presymbolic phenomena but, on the contrary, see the two levels as profoundly interconnected. Second, they view symbols not so much as the result of conscious processes of coordination on the part of intelligent actors, but rather as the very precondition of intelligence itself. At the same time, they are not willing to relapse into a purely empiricist perspective, which explains the genesis of symbols in terms of blind repetition or imitation. Peirce, Mead, and Wind seem to maintain, although with different degrees of emphasis, that in order for repetition to work intelligently as the engine of habit-taking, it needs to be based on a guiding principle. This is clearly the position of Peirce, who framed his theory of symbol within a complex metaphysics in which the deployment of rational laws goes hand in hand with habit-taking processes. As for Mead, recall his aforementioned criticism of the theories of imitation. Pure imitation is not enough to explain the formation of a symbol: We need the additional condition that the sign be recognized by all participants in the conversation as part of their repertoire. Finally, Wind does not conceive of his complex model of embodied symbol formation as a purely mechanical process, but as accompanied from the very beginning by “reflection” (Besinnung). Thus we are faced here with a line of thought that understands habit-taking as steering a middle course between an intellectualist perspective that considers behavior to be subsumed to rules, and an empiricist perspective that reduces rules to regularity.46 45 46

Ibid. A contemporary version of this idea is found in authors such as Robert Brandom (who thinks in terms of “practice”) and John McDowell (who also speaks of “custom” or “institution”).

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The overall philosophical sense of the link between symbolization and habittaking, if we agree not to look at it from a classically empiricist viewpoint, can be found instead in a notion that may be said, although often implicitly, to lie behind all the three perspectives discussed above. I mean the concept of articulation.47 Habits are not formed through “sedimentation” processes, and they are not the result of mere repetition. Rather, they work by dint of the stabilization and progressive articulation of meaningful elements that exist from the outset. To articulate an intellectual content means to introduce some distinctions that make that content explicit and develop it in ways that may be altogether unforeseeable. This articulatory dynamics starts with the physical articulation (Gliederung) of our muscles (Wind) and goes all the way up to the introduction of conceptual and syntactic distinctions or even to that highly specialized phenomenon of language known as “double articulation.”48 Moreover, articulation does not assume that the presymbolic dimensions of meaning are left behind once and for all. On the contrary, it allows them to persist, either in the form of the “iconic” and “indexical” dimensions of symbols, or in the form of the non-articulated, material “ground” out of which new articulative processes constantly and creatively “unfold.”49 To further explore this argumentative line, a task that requires more attention is the comparison between the pragmatist theories of symbol formation presented in this paper, and another theory of habituation that takes center stage in contemporary philosophy, namely that of Merleau-Ponty. In his Phenomenology of Perception the concept of “habit” (habitude) plays a key role in the definition of the “relation of having” that defines preconceptual, bodily intentionality. Through habituation the body comes to “have” its objects in a preconceptual way.50 And the same machinery applies to symbol formation too, as Merleau-Ponty argues in his chapter on language. Language is neither the expression of preformed ideas (as in intellectualist positions), nor is it the result of pure induction on the basis of stimulus-reaction cycles (as in empiricism). Rather, words have meaning in an immediate

47

48 49 50

See Robert Brandom: Making it Explicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, Cambridge, MA/London 1994, p. 29: “an account is needed of what it is for norms to be implicit in practices. Such practices must be construed both as not having to involve explicit rules and as a distinct from mere regularities.” I thank Matthias Jung for making me aware of this connection. For a treatment of pragmatist philosophy in the framework of a theory of articulation, see Matthias Jung: Der bewusste Ausdruck. Anthropologie der Artikulation, Berlin/New York 2009. See Trabant: Artikulationen (as fn. 22). Cf. Hadjinicolaou in this volume. See in particular Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris 1945, pp. 173–183.

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way, in the same sense in which we have our body. Language is thus conceived of as the extension of our body and therefore as pervaded by the same kind of intentionality.51 It is there that the vital problem of intentionality, which the theories of symbol dealt with in this chapter leave almost entirely in the background, receives a strong and compelling treatment.52

51 52

Ibid., pp. 213–231. See Trabant’s chapter in this volume. Thanks to Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Fausto Caruana, Richard Menary, Matteo Santarelli, and Italo Testa for discussing a preliminary version of this paper.

Matthias Jung

Articulating Embodied Reasons

1. The Articulation of Life and the Articulation of Reasons It is through symbolic articulation – through the telling of stories, the wording of ideas, ideals, and values, the formation of images, through bodily enactment, etc. – that people make sense of their lives. But this very process, constitutive for our human life-form as it is, remains embodied in organic feelings and patterns of action. As organisms, human beings are always already aware of the import that the ongoing interactions with their environment have for their preservation and wellbeing. We feel what it is like to be in this or that situation, and we articulate its meaning by the sequential course of our actions, before we have spoken a single word. Thus, articulation as such, taken as the progressive structuring (Gliederung) of the organism and its interactions with its environment, is not restricted to human beings but is a pervasive feature of life: “Das Leben artikuliert sich”1 (life articulates itself). And the axis around which articulation revolves is always the way in which the organism’s survival and well-being is affected by its interactions with the environment. Meaningfulness is not a human invention but rather the outcome of the most basic feature of life. Where there is life, there is meaning. So far, human beings are no exception: as organisms, they thrive on meaningful interactions. Organic meanings, however, are basically lived through and maintained by the successful articulation of behavior aimed at the preservation of a living body’s home-

1

“Die Entwicklung der Lebewesen zu höheren Formen ist also nach der Innenseite angesehen eine Artikulation. […] Und dieser inneren Artikulation entspricht die äußere des tierischen, organischen Körpers in einer Reihe von Stufen.” Wilhelm Dilthey: Grundlegung der Wissenschaften vom Menschen, der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte. Ausarbeitungen und Entwürfe zum zweiten Band der Einleitung, in: Die Geisteswissenschaften [ca. 1870–1895], in: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, ed. by Helmuth Johach/Frithjof Rodi, Göttingen 1982, p. 345.

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ostasis. They remain implicit and are felt only when the continuous exchange with the environment is either impeded or successfully regained. Desires and needs, their arousal or satisfaction, constitute the rule of the game. But symbolic articulation, a feat of which in all likelihood only humans are capable,2 is a game-changer. It enables us to make explicit what is important to us, to create a public space of shared consciousness, and to put forth propositions about what objectively is the case at issue. Implicit and enacted meanings are still essential – humans are organisms – but the ability to make meanings explicit creates an unprecedented distance between stimulation and reaction. Something entirely new in evolutionary terms emerges: the ability to articulate reasons, that is, intersubjective justifications for actions or beliefs, and to engage in discourse, in the repeated game of giving and taking reasons. At this point, the anthropology of articulation extends into what normally would be called “argumentation theory.” Since the use of arguments – primarily in social discourse but also derivatively in foro interno – is a crucial part of making meanings explicit, reasoning must be seen as articulative in nature. But reasons come in many flavors, and they may be highly abstract or deeply rooted in personal experience. Still, in each and every case, we are responsive to them only insofar as we are able to subdue immediate reactions and to enter the realm of reflection opened up by the distance that symbol usage creates between stimulus and response. The achievement of this symbolic distance is what connects the two basic meanings of the term “articulation,” namely the explication of some felt meaning and the double (phonetic and semantic) sequential structuring of language. By articulating (phonetically or in writing) strings of phonemes/graphemes, we progressively determine meaningful sentences, and in doing so we transform what is implicit in our bodily feelings and (nonlinguistic) actions into explicit, wellordered, and public meanings. The challenge is to conceptualize the distance and relative freedom from organic drives this articulation achieves without falling back into dualistic accounts, which are unable to connect man’s articulative powers with their natural history. The larger context into which the articulation of reasons is embedded is indicated by the term “cognition.” In the last decades, we have seen the rise of this term as a handy concept for both human and nonhuman intelligent behavior and perception, carrying no dualistic baggage. But long before the rise of the comparatively new epistemic project “cognitive science,” classic pragmatism had already developed full-fledged conceptions of embodied – as distinct from bodily – cognition.

2

One should be cautious, since we are dealing with an empirical question here. Evidence is emerging and changing rapidly. It seems true beyond reasonable doubt, though, that no other life-form except for the human one has used the powers of symbolic articulation to create cultural spaces of reasoning and meaning.

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Two proponents are especially pertinent here: Charles S. Peirce, with his concept of fully integrated sign usage, and John Dewey, with his idea that articulation transforms qualitative, indeterminate situations into more determinate ones. Peirce, in his semiotics, has shown that we always need different kinds of signs, some of them attached to bodily experience, some to physical interaction, and some to social conventions, in order to create meanings. This insight helps us to grasp the articulateness of symbolic communication. Dewey conceives of articulation in action-theo­ retical terms: Its logical locus are situations in which the need for a transformation is felt, a transformation that makes explicit those features of the situation which enable us to resume action. As a result, the internal connectedness of cognition, action, and articulation becomes visible. And both Peirce and Dewey combine emphasis on situative embodiment with emphasis on man’s symbolically mediated ability to transcend all concrete situations. Nevertheless, contemporary embodied cognitive science tends to neglect this indissoluble tension. It often focuses only on the dynamics of real-time interaction with the environment. For this mode of cognition, Hubert Dreyfus has introduced the phrase “skillful coping” – the mostly unarticulated, but skilled and deeply embodied practical ability to handle concrete problems. Skillful activities like playing football (the example is taken from Merleau-Ponty), Dreyfus argues, are “purposive without the agent entertaining a purpose.”3 While this is undeniably true, it is also very lopsided, leaving out not only the crucial importance of explicit purposes for learning complex skillful behavior in the first place but also the entire realm of second-order reflection upon values and goals. Overemphasis on coping therefore threatens to obscure the crucial insights of classical pragmatism.4 To give just one example: In his introduction to Hubert Dreyfus’s book on “skillful coping,” Mark Wrathall writes: “The key move in Dreyfus’s analysis of intelligent or purposive comportment is to take skillful bodily activity as the consummate form of human intelligence.”5 I take this attitude to be widespread among adherents of embodied cognitive science, but still deeply misleading. Apart from the fact that it presupposes the normatively charged and questionable idea that there is such a thing as a single

3 4

5

Hubert Dreyfus/Charles Taylor: Retrieving Realism, Cambridge, MA/London 2015, p. 48. In his chapter in this volume, Alva Noë has in a most helpful manner contrasted the skillful coping nature of much of our spoken language to what he calls the “writerly attitude”: a reflective stance towards language and thought enabled by writing. Therefore, we might say that overemphasis on skillful coping is equivalent to the neglecting of writing. It is not by chance that the great cognitive, political, and religious breakthroughs of the Axial Age (cf. Hans Joas/Robert Bellah: The Axial Age and its Importance for Subsequent History and the Present, Cambridge, MA/London 2012) coincide with the invention of writing. Introduction to Hubert Dreyfus/Mark Wrathall (eds.): Skillful Coping. Essays on the Phenomenology of Everyday Perception and Action, Oxford 2014, p. 3 (my emphasis).

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exemplary mode of cognition (instead of one comprehensive, but internally pluralistic and differentiated structure), this bold claim completely neglects our symbolic and reflective competences. Dreyfus himself is more cautious and concedes – in a book he coauthored with Charles Taylor – that “our humanity also consists in our ability to decenter ourselves from this original engaged mode.”6 Thereby, he avoids the pitfall of an overly narrow concept of embodied cognition overlooking the difference between animals and human beings, but – as I see it – he makes another mistake. He identifies skillful coping with the engaged mode and thereby implies that the situation-transcending features of human cognition inevitably belong to the detached, third-person standpoint.7 But, as the pragmatists have always emphasized, the “engaged mode” is not exhausted by piecemeal coping, and “care or concern for human destiny”8 also includes more general attitudes, habits, and ideas about being-in-the-world – stances in which we are engaged in articulating embodied meaning and that nevertheless transcend this or that situation. Furthermore, overemphasis on situative coping matches badly with the basic idea of symbolic articulation, namely the exis­ tence of what Herder called “Besonnenheit”: a reflective attitude in which a certain degree of freedom is achieved. Another way to put this is to emphasize that the ends of human action are underdetermined by situative demands. Situations are not natural kinds, and they do not individuate themselves before the eyes of a neutral spectator. Beyond a certain level of complexity, they have to be articulated in order to elaborate their meaning. The physical and biological properties of any given situation are never sufficient to determine what is at stake. There is always more than one description available. This is especially true of social situations into which the double contingency of at least two different intentions and the corresponding actors enters. In such cases, the very meaning of a situation – the answer to the question: “What kind of a situation is this?” – depends partly on how it is articulated by the participants, as couples, team workers, and therapists can testify. For example, participants in a hot debate, feeling distressed, might ask themselves: “Are we having a fight that is about to escalate, or are we merely engaged in a robust exchange of arguments?” There is no unarticulated answer to this question. In every act of articulation, the visceral urge evoked by something immediately experienced as undetermined meaningfulness is transformed into something which has a determined meaning, and it is only through this transformation that we can know what the unclear situation was about.

6 7 8

Dreyfus/Taylor: Retrieving Realism (as fn. 3), p. 69. Alva Noë makes a similar critical point in his chapter in the present volume. John Dewey: Qualitative Thought, in: Larry A. Hickman/Thomas Alexander (eds.): The Essential Dewey, vol. 1, Pragmatism, Education, Democracy (1998a), p. 201.

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This process is shaped by the usage of different and dynamically interacting kinds of signs – another aspect of embodied human cognition often underestimated in coping theories. Understanding the interpenetration of the different semiotic functions is crucial for grasping both the way in which they are embedded in the organism-environment cycle and the manner in which they help create a space of freedom – freedom from this or that concrete situation, albeit never from the situatedness of human life in general. The three semiotically crucial aspects here are the formation of likenesses (icons), the establishing of physical relations (indices), and the social conventionalizing of meanings (symbols), and their relevance can be detected over the entire range of human embodied cognition, from improvised occasional statements to the large-scale social processes of sense-making and reasongiving. The task of this chapter will be to elucidate the concept of symbolic articulation by focusing on these social processes in their relation to basic semiotic structures.9 It will be important to keep in mind that the term “symbolic” here can and will be used twofold: to signify a special kind of sign, namely symbols, and to characterize the overall structure of human semiosis. In doing so, I follow Charles Sanders Peirce’s usage, who separates icons, indices, and symbols as different kinds of signs only to point out straightaway that the entire sign process may aptly be named “symbolic” because it is shaped by the achievement of symbolicity.10 This fits nicely to the title of our group: symbolic articulation, in which “symbolic” pertains not only to symbolic signs in the technical sense but also to the shape of the mondo civile (Vico) in general.11 It is thus deeply misleading to restrict the impact of situatedness to what happens to a social organism in the here-and-now. The alternative to this reductive view is to realize that being-in-situations is a comprehensive anthropological feature reaching from felt situative qualities, over the formation of reliable habits, to full-fledged, self-reflective symbolic articulations. In terms of social behavior, human sociality transcends the local coordination of action and establishes institutions, norms, and social imaginaries, some of which have been with us for a couple of thousand years. Jan and Aleida Assmann’s famous concept of “cultural memory”12

  9 10

11 12

The focus will be on iconicity and symbolicity. Cf. Viola’s chapter in the present volume for an extensive treatment of habits. “In all reasoning, we have to use a mixture of likenesses, indices and symbols. We cannot dispense with any of them. The complex whole may be called a symbol; for its symbolic, living character is the prevailing one.” Charles S. Peirce: What is a Sign?, in: The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings (1893–1913), vol. 2, ed. by Nathan Houser/Christian Kloesel, Bloomington 1998, pp. 4–11, p. 10. Cf. Jürgen Trabant’s chapter in this volume. Cf. for example Jan Assmann: Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, Munich 2013.

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cautions us against the foolishness of any idea of cognition neglecting the past. Understanding the cultural and social dimension of embedded cognition necessitates a broader concept of what it means to be in situations – a concept which includes concrete situations, the historical contingency of large-scale developments (Braudel’s longue durée), and even those general features of situativity we invoke by referring to the conditio humana. Situations as such come in varying degrees of generality and should not be restricted to instrumental problem-solving. The process of determining situative meanings ranges from solving simple instrumental questions (What should I cook for dinner tonight?), over middle-range decisions (Should I quit this job or stay?), to comprehensive worldviews (to use William James’s famous example: Am I a believer or an agnostic?). Classical pragmatism has always been keenly aware of this fact: The semiotics of Peirce can be conceived of as an attempt to analyze embodied processes of thought on every possible level of generalization, from felt qualities to universals; James’s radical empiricism revolutionizes the empiricist tradition by including both single events and general relations, and Dewey assigns paramount importance to second-order orientations like values and ideals. Here, two questions arise. First: Isn’t this rendering of classical pragmatism opposed to what is generally and rightly regarded as its focus on concrete situations, on action versus contemplation, on specific answers to specific questions instead of empty generalizations? The answer to this first question is “no.” As William James famously wrote, “the trail of the human serpent is […] over everything.”13 Even the most comprehensive general attitudes on the level of worldviews and religions will always be articulations of meaning produced by embedded, embodied symbol users, not to speak of lesser affiliations like those of tradition or ethnicity. But – second question – is emphasis on the importance of articulated, situation-transcending meanings compatible with the evolutionary standpoint embraced by the pragmatists? Now, the answer to this question is “yes.” The emergence of Besonnenheit, of the human being’s ability to create spaces of reason and cultural sense-making unparalleled in the animal kingdom, is a process not yet fully understood in evolutionary terms. But the pragmatists have already developed the key distinctions guiding such a non-dualist inquiry. In order to see that, let’s take a quick look at John Dewey’s treatment of what is commonly termed “adaptation.”

13

William James: Pragmatism [1907], Indianapolis 1981, p. 33.

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2. A Tripartite Concept of Adaptation In his small book A Common faith, Dewey develops a helpful analysis of this key term of evolutionary theory.14 He distinguishes between three different meanings, sub-species, so to speak, of the cover-all term “adaptation.” The first is accommodation, which pertains to particular, but unalterable conditions of our life, like – Dewey’s example – a change in the weather. Such accommodations are for the most part passive; the direction of fit here is organism-environment. Next comes adaptation (not to be confused with the generic term), which also deals with particular, but at least partly alterable conditions, so that the opposite direction of fit, environment-organism, also becomes relevant. Accommodation and even more so adaptation are the domain of situation-specific cognition and action, but Dewey leaves no doubt that adaptation goes beyond mere coping with circumstances. It already involves reflection on purposes and ends that are not pre-given, but have to be articulated socially. To use a distinction crucial in the work of Ronald Dworkin, practical reasoning is a matter of interpretive, not of natural-kind concepts.15 Its focus is not the identification of freestanding objects or causal processes; rather, it aims at making explicit the meaning of felt and enacted situations. In this manner, already on the level of adaptation, means and ends are intertwined – a crucial insight of Dewey’s action theory. As early as in his seminal paper on the reflex arc concept in psychology (1896), Dewey pointed out that the demands of situations are always in some respect passively given and in another respect actively made, that is, relative to the activity of the organism and, in the case of human beings, relative to their socio-cultural articulation of the situation’s meaning. With Dewey’s third category, adjustment, we rise above the level of concrete situations, but not above embodiment and situatedness in general. Adjustment applies to “changes in ourselves in relation to the world in which we live” that “relate not to this and that want in relation to this or that condition of our surroundings, but pertain to our being in its entirety. Because of their scope, this modification of ourselves is enduring. It lasts through any amount of vicissitude of circumstances, internal and external.”16 In the context of Dewey’s argumentation, adjustment is what characterizes the religious attitude, which he takes great care to distinguish from any actual religion entangled with supernatural beliefs. I will put aside this context here and focus on a more general anthropological motive: It comes natural to human beings to articulate the “engaged” first-person mode of being on different levels of generality. We may, for example, try to articulate for ourselves what our authentic 14 15 16

Cf. John Dewey: A Common Faith [1934], New Haven/London 1991, pp. 15ff. Cf. Ronald Dworkin: Justice for Hedgehogs, Cambridge, MA/London 2011, pp. 158f. Dewey: A Common Faith (as fn. 14), p. 16.

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wants and wishes are – not an easy task to accomplish.17 We may aspire to make explicit the constitutive values of the social or political communities we live in. And we may even try to get the big picture right, i.e., to understand our place in the universe and the meaning (or meaninglessness) of human life. Excluded on the first level of accommodation, the aspect of defining goals and values is always involved on the second level of adaptation, and on the third level of adjustment all reference to specific situations is bracketed and a comprehensive attitude is achieved – an attitude that deals with the meaning of being-inthe-world in general, with situatedness as contrasted to specific situations. In all this, the engaged mode is retained, and what changes is only the degree of generality it has to deal with.

3. Articulating Reasons: Sociality and Expressivity Against the backdrop of these distinctions, I now turn to the sociality of human comportment. On all levels of adaptive behavior – accommodation, adaptation, and adjustment – the self is thoroughly social and social norms are operative. But it is only after having left behind a too narrow conception of skillful coping that the full scope of human sociality and of symbolic articulation becomes visible. On the level of accommodation, our social nature shows up mainly in the coordination of reactive attitudes to pre-given problematic situations. This changes with adaptation (in Dewey’s technical sense), where social cognition moves on to the level of more or less conscious negotiations between the participants. It is here where articulation enters. As Susan Stuart has shown again and again, in ordinary interaction what she calls “enkinaesthetic entanglement” is primary: the repeated exchange-loops of movements, bodily posture, gestures, etc. that precede and ground every instance of propositional discourse.18 This primary intersubjectivity, as Shaun Gallagher calls it,19 is articulated by means of the sensory-motor interlocking of gestures. From this starting point, an expressive continuum develops, ranging from spontaneous expressions to full-blown and reflectively performed articulations of values and ideals. In other words, in order to connect embodiment and sociality, we

17 18

19

Cf. Peter Bieri: Das Handwerk der Freiheit. Über die Entdeckung des eigenen Willens, Munich 2001. Cf. Susan Stuart: The Articulation of Enkinaesthetic Entanglement, in: Matthias Jung/ Michaela Bauks/Andreas Ackermann (eds.): Dem Körper eingeschrieben. Verkörperung zwischen Leiberleben und kulturellem Sinn, Heidelberg 2016, pp. 19–36. Cf. Shaun Gallagher: How the Body Shapes the Mind, Oxford 2005.

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need the notion of expressivity. Humans are expressive beings, striving to make explicit the meaning of their enacted being-in-the-world. And expressivity changes the notion of adaptation – in the generic sense – fundamentally. Once we have realized that problematic situations are, to a large degree, not pre-given by nature, but have to be made explicit in a process including the fixation of both means and ends, sociality is cast in a new light: By articulating “shared intentions” (Tomasello) in the social realm, mere accommodation is transformed into adaptation and possibly even into wholesale adjustment. In the course of this process, embodied cognition – in the narrower sense of corporeality – is considerably enlarged, but never substituted with higher-order forms of articulation and reasoning. Biologically pre-given, but alterable desires and drives are embedded into reflectively endorsed20 ideals of the actually desirable, and “techniques” for achieving adjustment, like meditation, contemplation, or what Peirce calls “musement,” are developed. These articulative activities remain within the realm of the engaged mode. All problematic situations human beings encounter, short of the simplest cases of merely instrumental, pre-social coping, are thus shaped by articulations that have evolved out of reflection upon and generalization of concrete problems, but claim independence of every specific situation. Values, norms, ideals, and ideas are all terms signifying a dialectic and structural tension between their embodiment in experience and their higher-order character of generality. The conceptual challenge is to resist the temptation of dissolving this tension in one or the other direction. For a tension it is indeed, as testified by the essential contestedness of social values and ideas which is so evident in modern pluralistic societies. Roberto Frega has argued forcefully for pragmatism’s potential to deal with moral and political – I would add: religious – disagreement, due to its “peculiar understanding of rationality as being articulative and transformative.”21 I entirely agree and would only object that Frega’s occasional rendering of intelligence and inquiry as responding to “given questions”22 or devising “better solutions to existing problems”23 works against his own important insight. In my eyes, doing so places

20

21

22 23

The notion of “reflective endorsement” is taken from Christine Korsgaard, who uses it as a key term for the justification of her approach in moral philosophy. Cf. Christine Korsgaard: The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge 1996, p. 127: “To be motivated ‘by reason’ is normally to be motivated by one’s reflective endorsement of incentives and impulses, including affections, which arise in a natural way.” Roberto Frega: Practice, Judgment, and the Challenge of Moral and Political Disagreement, Plymouth 2012, p. 6. “Transformative” means that the aim of articulation is not to reach a fixed definition of the relevant problems, but rather to re-enable (inter-)action (which presupposes greater integration) and stabilize the respective habits. Cf. ibid., p. 54f. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 49.

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too much emphasis on accommodation, where we react to something which is fixed in advance. But, as Frega himself points out, “the articulative character of reasoning is a necessary phase of thought because the initial situation is not present to thought in the form of a given and determined object available for conceptual apprehension.”24 Rather, it is felt as a unified quality. Consequently, articulation, in responding to felt qualities and established habits, is constitutive for questions and answers, ends and means as well. Frega is definitely right in highlighting the pragmatist insight that problems come to us in the course of life and inquiry, and that doubt is always concrete, as opposed to the universalized methodological doubt of Des­cartes. But problems are not pushed upon us by nature only. Human action problems, in contrast to animal behavioral problems, include the articulation of values and social imaginaries constitutive for the problems we have to deal with. And articulation is not the representation of something that is already implied in the unanalyzed quality. Rather, it constitutes objects of thought and discourse out of a realm of meaningfulness shaped by what is qualitatively but indeterminately given. Consider problems of social justice. They are intuitively felt and ingrained in deep-seated habits, but their exact nature remains open to articulation. Is justice, for example, defined by equality? And if this should be the case, are we talking about equality of merit, of fair starting conditions, or some other condition? Fixing these issues is part of the problem itself. And when it comes to adjustment as the highest form of behav­ ioral integration, social ideals and values become even more important. What exactly is it that we have to adjust to? A religious order, an existentialist view of a barren, meaningless universe, a melioristic pluriverse à la William James? Asking these questions makes it evident that what is given in doubt is not an already clear-cut question, but rather a variety of felt qualities open for multiple ways of articulation.

4. Qualitative Thought and Public Reasoning Based on the considerations developed above, I would now like to focus more closely on the relation between embodied experience and the social process of articulating reasons. The starting point for my reflections will be, as already pointed out, that articulations of meaning are both inevitably situated and potentially universal. On the one hand, intersubjectivity introduces a potentially unlimited community of articulators, all of which are, on the other hand, embodied and locally embedded beings. In traditional, hierarchic societies, this unsolvable tension or unescapable polyphony is suppressed by religious and political orthodoxies backed 24

Ibid., p. 52.

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up with power and authority, but in modern pluralistic societies disagreement about all kinds of social issues is common and the background values operative in such disagreements are often essentially contested. Now, as Dewey has pointed out again and again, the democratic way of life is a matter of mutually enriching communication. It should be clear by now that such communication is essentially articulative too: Its task is not so much to inform others about already existing convictions, but rather to engage in the giving and taking of reasons for social behavior. Thus, public reasoning offers the only viable way to deal with deep-going pluralism and with the democratic demand for exchange in matters of vital importance. The German social philosopher Rainer Forst even goes so far as to talk quite generally about a Recht auf Rechtfertigung,25 “a right to demand justifying reasons” (not for the way of leading one’s personal life, but for every behavior affecting others), and I think that remains true, independent of the deep differences between liberals, discourse theorists, and pragmatists in this regard. In post-traditional, pluralistic societies, citizens owe each other reasons for what they do – a demanding claim incompatible with a rigorous separation of value-spheres. Jürgen Habermas, Forst’s teacher, pushes the point even further in emphasizing that (my translation) “the citizens of a democratic community owe each other reasons reciprocally because only thereby can political power lose its repressive character.”26 Within the realm of discourse ethics, as Habermas and Forst conceive of it, public reasoning has a rather rationalist ring to it. Ideally, reasons are to be given as clear-cut arguments in propositional form; the “space of reason” (Sellars) is accessible only by leaving behind the pre-symbolic impact of felt qualities and habits, and argumentative force is proportional to the degree in which an argument abstracts from embodied reasons. In this regard, the discourse-ethical concept of public reasoning is strictly parallel to Laurence Kohlberg’s (one of Habermas’s sources) wellknown stage model of moral judgment27 where the last and highest, post-conventional stage has succeeded in stripping off all embodied modes of thought, retaining only abstract principles. If we take the insights of classical pragmatism and the latest findings of embodied-cognition research into account, this picture appears to be highly unsatisfying both in descriptive and in normative terms. Thus, we need to retain the emphasis on public reasoning characteristic of the Habermas school, while paying closer attention to the embodied nature of that process. And it is here

25 26 27

Title of Rainer Forst: Das Recht auf Rechtfertigung. Elemente einer konstruktivistischen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit, Frankfurt/M. 2007. Jürgen Habermas: Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Philosophische Aufsätze, Frank­ furt/M. 2005, p. 127. Cf. Lawrence Kohlberg: Die Psychologie der Moralentwicklung, Frankfurt/M. 1997.

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where a Peirce-Deweyan concept of symbolic articulation, in which symbolicity results from the integration of icons, indices, and symbols, develops its full force. The starting point for every articulation is iconicity, and here the important thing to do is to integrate Peirce’s semiotic with Dewey’s experiential account. In his seminal paper on qualitative thought, Dewey shows that the interactional unity “lived body-environment” is essentially qualitative, and that qualities have a gestalt character. Only from the perspective of a disengaged observer do situations appear divided into subjective and objective aspects, whereas from the standpoint of the engaged person it is only through the progressive articulation of relevant differences within the unity that self and object are distinguished: “The only thing that is unqualifiedly given is the total pervasive quality; and the objection to call it ‘given’ is that the word suggests something to which it is given, mind or thought or consciousness or whatever […].”28 The beginning of semiosis is thus to treat the pervasive quality as a sign. That which, in its meaningfulness for the organism, is apprehended by the entire body-in-the-world never comes as some chaotic hodgepodge. On the contrary, it is experienced as a unified pervasive whole with a gestalt giving shape to a concrete situation. This is not meant to deny that conscious experience is also characterized by a Jamesian stream of thought with its “big blooming buzzing confusion.”29 But semiosis starts only when the need to articulate the organismenvironment interaction arises, and this presupposes a.) that some impediment to fluent interaction has come up and is b.) felt in the form of a unifying quality providing meaningfulness capable of being transformed into meaning. Identifying these holistic unities in the first instance and then re-identifying them is the first step of symbolic articulation. And it is here where Peirce enters the picture: As Tullio Viola shows in his chapter, Peirce transformed and dynamized the traditional distinction between pictures (similarity with the signified), indices (physical contiguity with the signified), and symbols (conventional, mediated signification). “[W]e have in thought,” Peirce writes, three elements: first, the representative function, which makes it a representation; second, the pure denotative application, or real connection, which brings one thought into relation with another; and third, the material quality, or how it feels, which gives thought its quality.30

28 29 30

Dewey: Qualitative Thought (as fn. 8), p. 201. William James: Some Problems of Philosophy [1910], in: id.: Writings 1902–1910, ed. by Bruce Kuklick, New York 1987, pp. 979–1107, p. 1008. Charles S. Peirce: Some Consequences of Four Incapacities, in: The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 1 (1867–1893), ed. by Nathan Houser/Christian Kloesel, Bloomington 1992, pp. 28–56, p. 42.

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These functional, not substantive differences account for different kinds of signs, but their difference is an effect of their relatedness. Now, the basic feature of the third dimension Peirce talks about is that some quality is shared. In Peirce’s semiotics, the similarity implied in pictorial relations is thus only one among many possible instantiations of iconicity. Apprehending unified pervasive qualities and re-identifying them under similar circumstances (thus using the second occurrence as a sign for the first) is the iconic starting point of the semiotic process. It already introduces emotional, volitional, and cognitive distance within the situational unity. The human organism has no choice to be, say, confronted with an ambiguous social situation charged with aggressiveness. This is what Dewey has in mind when he talks about the “unqualifiedly given.”31 But in establishing signifying relations between formerly and currently experienced, pervasive qualities, it already exercises a certain distance and achieves a certain degree of freedom – both hallmarks of symbolic articulation. Pervasive qualities always accompany and individualize un(der)determined situations which have to be articulated in order to determine their meaning. I call this the primacy of the qualitative. The unifying qualities through which situations are individuated are bodily felt and result from the totality of meaningful interactions between the organism and its environment – which comprises the entire biography of the organism and the novel and actual impressions present in a situation. Reasoning thus always starts with iconic qualities, without which it would lose itself in irrelevant details and never get off the ground.32 As Dewey shows in Qualitative Thought, the felt quality provides possible directions for articulation and reasoning, but can never, as a pervasive unity, be articulated: A situation is “dominated and characterized throughout by a single quality.” As such, “[…] it cannot be stated or made explicit.”33 “The quality, although dumb, has as a part of its complex quality a movement or transition in some direction. It can, therefore, be intellectually symbolized and converted into an object of thought.”34 But this “object” is not the situative quality itself,35 but “some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.”36 The vagueness of iconic signs stems precisely from the fact that we use them to invoke pervasive unified 31

32 33 34 35 36

His point is not to reinstate the “given” as an epistemic foundation (in which case Sellars’s critique of the “myth of the given” would apply to him). Dewey’s version of the “given” does not provide propositional content (it has no countable parts and/or properties), rather, it opens up a horizon of possibilities for linguistic determination. Cf. John Dewey: Logic. The Theory of Inquiry, Carbondale 1986, chap. 4. Dewey: Qualitative Thought (as fn. 8), p. 197. Ibid., p. 201. Not something “given”: see fn. 31. Dewey: Qualitative Thought (as fn. 8), p. 197.

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qualities, and it is thus a positive and creative, not a restrictive component of articulation.37 Icons connect the semiotic process with bodily enacted meanings and they provide the space for drawing all possible distinctions within an unobjectifiable situation. To put it simply: We always feel more than we can ever say, notwithstanding the fact that only ex post, after articulation has been performed, can we know exactly what was implicit in the situation. This basic feature of all reasoning partly accounts for the stubbornness with which we often cling to habits and/or convictions, even when we are at a loss when it comes to refuting objections.38 The belief often remains stable, and doubt enters only after the “felt sense” (Gendlin) has changed as well. Rationalist philosophers cannot explain this fact well, but pragmatists can because, for them, the meanings of reasoning are embedded into the enacted meanings of having a life and identifying iconic situations. Reasons speak to people whose relationship to the world is primarily lived through and can never be entirely transformed into a line of argument. Notwithstanding that, the felt sense is not immune to rational arguments, as traditionalists wrongly presuppose. It offers us embodied, fallible prima facie reasons that enable further articulation, into which indexical contact with reality and symbolic distance may then enter. The second important consequence of the primacy of quality is a hermeneutic one. Pervasive unifying qualities do not emerge out of the blue; they result from the encounter of the novel and the old, the old being impinged on by social imaginaries, already accomplished individual articulations, ideals, and norms valid in a given culture, etc. The novel character of the felt situation is only the tip of an iceberg immersed in the deep waters of socio-cultural sense-making. The inchoate understanding of an unclear situation implicit in the unified quality and its iconic identification is thus always already permeated with cultural habits; it is partly cognition of what has already been recognized, to quote the famous phrase of August Boeckh.39 And this cognition/recognition is embodied in the strictest sense. To use Peirce’s tripartite distinction between icons, indices, and symbols, actual cognition is grounded in bodily qualities and enacted indexical relations, but these presymbolic sign usages are likewise embedded in the holistic network of symbolicity. There is a

37

38 39

Cf. Viola’s remarks on the creative and productive function of icons in Peirce’s theory of signs, in: Roman Madzia/Matthias Jung (eds.): Pragmatism and Embodied Cognitive Science. From Bodily Intersubjectivity to Symbolic Articulation (Humanprojekt, vol. 14), Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 251–269, p. 259. Of course, there are also plainly irrational factors, like the famous “confirmation bias,” confirmed by countless psychological studies. Cf. August Boeckh: Enzyklopädie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften [1877], Darmstadt 1966, p. 10.

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hermeneutic circle spinning between qualities, enactments, and symbolic reasoning, a constant “looping down”40 and complementary “looping up.”

5. Three Kinds of Reasons: Embodied, Embedded, and “Freestanding” I will now proceed to use these crucial insights to develop a threefold scheme of what it means to give reasons in normative and evaluative matters, using the distinction between embodied, embedded, and “freestanding”41 thinking. The scheme should not be taken to denote separate classes, but rather functional elements of a comprehensive structure. In the same way as icons, indices, and symbols are, according to Peirce, present in every case of thought, because they signify functional differentiations within a unified process, so we can say that every articulation involves embodied, embedded, and “freestanding” components. Still, huge differences in emphasis are possible and deliver different types of reasoning and of justification to be dealt with differently in social discourse. Failure to pay attention to these differences often results in gross misunderstandings. And, conversely, careful attention to them enables one to develop a pragmatist conception of bringing embedded reasons into public discourse. Let us start with “freestanding” reasons (to adopt Habermas’s parlance). Semio­ tically speaking, they focus on symbolic discourse only, that is, they appeal only to reasons that are essentially independent of contextual embodiment. How is this ever possible, given that embodiment reaches all the way “down” and all the way “up” too? In the minimal sense that each instance of sign usage exhibits all three functional aspects, it obviously isn’t. Nevertheless, it is possible to decontextualize meanings and to articulate only what is necessarily implied in every instance of sense-making. This type of reasoning has, since Kant, often been called “transcendental.” As Kant has shown in his practical philosophy, it is only the pure form of reason, that which cannot be abstracted from without losing the conditions of possibility of reasoning, which is then left for conveying force to an argument. 40 41

I borrow this phrase from Alva Noë (cf. his chapter in this volume), who in turn takes it from Ian Hacking. The quotation marks are used to indicate that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “freestanding” reasoning, since every instance of human cognition is embodied and embedded. Notwithstanding that, there are huge differences in the manner and degree in which symbolic processes depend upon concrete interactions between organism and environment. My loose adoption of “freestanding” thus rejects the strong implications of the term and aims at facilitating integration with the ongoing discussions in social and political philosophy.

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Articulating “freestanding” reasons still presupposes the comprehensive structure of icons, indices, and symbols, but brackets all situative content and instead focuses on the form of reasoning only. A good example of this manner of doing social, political, and moral philosophy can be found in Karl-Otto Apel’s project of a transcendental pragmatics and hermeneutics, in which Peirce’s thought plays a prominent role in transforming Kantian reasoning into the cooperative process of a community of communicators.42 If we enrich the transcendental ideal with something like a lean social anthropology, political theories like John Rawls’s theory of justice may also be included. “Freestanding” reason and the abstract ideals developed within its realm are important because they may add support to aspirations of universality in law, morals, and politics; but their argumentative force is quite weak because they necessarily abstract from all deeper-rooted convictions and habits. Symbolic articulation, when focused on the abstract form of symbolization only, inevitably brackets two essential components of reasoning: The “Outward Clash […], this direct consciousness of hitting and of getting hit [which] enters into all cognition and serves to make it mean something real,”43 and the pervasive qualities from which articulation starts. Embedded reasons differ from “freestanding” ones in that they appeal to shared experiences made within the context of a tradition or some novel community of participants, like the temporary publics Dewey envisioned in The Public and its Problems.44 They are heavily loaded with the contingencies of sense-making as it results from living through specific shared situations. To give just one example of an embedded reason: In the context of German history, it makes good sense to regard Holocaust denial as an indictable criminal offence. In other contexts, let’s say in the political system of the U.S., it might be regarded as morally outrageous but not necessarily as justiciable. The bulk of the social ideals and values human beings cherish is of course backed up by embedded reasons, religious convictions included. In the tripartite semiotic framework, these reasons are often enacted indexically in 42

43 44

See Karl-Otto Apel: Transformation der Philosophie. Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft, vol. 2, Frankfurt/M. 1976, pp. 155–219. Interestingly, Apel himself invokes historic experience (Germany’s “national catastrophe”) to underline the importance of what he calls “transzendentale Letztbegründung,” thus reinforcing the inescapability of embeddedness even for “freestanding” reasoning. Karl-Otto Apel: Zurück zur Normalität? Oder könnten wir aus der nationalen Katastrophe etwas Besonderes gelernt haben? Das Problem des (welt-)geschichtlichen Übergangs zur postkonventionellen Moral aus spezifisch deutscher Sicht, in: Karl-Otto Apel: Diskurs und Verantwortung. Das Problem des Übergangs zur postkonventionellen Moral, Frankfurt/M. 1988, pp. 370–474. Charles S. Peirce: An American Plato (as fn. 30), p. 233. John Dewey: The Public and Its Problems [1927], in: John Dewey. The Later Works, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, vol. 2, Essays, Reviews, Miscellany, and the Public and Its Problems, Carbondale 2008, pp. 235–351.

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diverse forms of collective actions: celebrations, rituals of remembrance, religious services, and the like. The formation of habits is crucial here, and it is by habituation that specifically salient images acquire the status of what Charles Taylor, taking the term from Castoriadis, calls “social imaginaries.”45 The most important thing to notice here is that embedded reasons are necessarily particular – they arise from this or that collectively experienced situation – but not necessarily particularistic. Since embedded reasons are not mere unfiltered expressions of shared attention but reflexive second-order evaluations, they start from the specific but may potentially arrive at the universal. Of course, they can go horribly astray, as in the case of nationalism or religious fundamentalism. But when things go well, they may also develop in the direction of greater universality from within a specific shared experience. Whenever that happens, value-generalization occurs, and I will come back to this key term. But now let me turn to the embodied and therefore most concrete type of reasoning. “Freestanding” reasoning argues with the general form or the necessary presuppositions of reason, whereas embedded reasoning appeals to collectively shared instances of experience. Embodied reasoning pertains to the first-person singular and the iconic character of qualities. It is the bodily interaction of an individual organism, inextricably embedded in its environment, in which embodied reasoning resides. An obvious objection to this would be that on the level of the single organism rationality cannot be ascribed, the latter being a thoroughly social activity. My answer is twofold: a) In embodied reasoning the single human organism is the irreplaceable locus of rationality, but the embodied qualities guiding its judgments are always already saturated with social meanings and concepts, and b) reasoning always presupposes iconic identification of some meaningful gestalt, indexical, direct confrontation with reality, and symbolic interpretation. “Icons and indices,” Peirce emphasizes, “assert nothing”46 and therefore need functional integration by means of symbols in order to start the game of giving and taking reasons. Thus, “embodied” reasoning, like “freestanding” and “embedded” reasoning, signifies a difference in emphasis, not a categorical one. The important point here is the heuristic and critical importance of embodied reasoning. In traditional societies, embedded reasoning is prevalent and the two other forms are suppressed. But in pluralistic societies, all three forms may flourish and offer mutual support as well as criticism. As far as practical reasons are concerned, embodied thinking has essentially two options: It may skip embedding and develop into “freestanding” reason. This is what happens in Kant’s moral philosophy when the individual transforms itself into an instance of all mankind. Or it may, especially in matters of values, of religious and 45 46

Cf. Charles Taylor: Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham 2003. Peirce: What is a Sign (as fn. 10), p. 16.

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worldview convictions, assess embedded reasoning according to its expressive appropriateness to first-person experience. It is only in the iconic presence of intense, but unspecified meaningfulness that ingrained habits and social imaginaries meet the unexpected, the genuinely novel. Felt meaning, iconically articulated, may thus be put to use to criticize the outdated aspects of social values and even form a coalition with “freestanding” reason. It is the main driving force behind the dynamics of changing values and operative in those precious processes of value-generalization in which semantic content becomes articulated in a new and more universalistic manner.

6. The Dynamics of Social Reasoning: Value-Generalization Traditions of valuation, offering embedded reasons for their members, may come under pressure from two different sides: Embodied reasons, that is, incorporated personal experience, may challenge them for their inability to articulate or even acknowledge what is important from the perspective of the first person. An obvious example would be conservative religious views on sexuality challenged by dissenting believers. From the other end of reasoning, they may be criticized with “freestanding” arguments appealing to universality, as opposed to the particularities of any concrete tradition. A prominent example is Habermas’s attempt to redefine the meaning of patriotism by revitalizing the concept of “Verfassungspatriotismus” (constitutional patriotism).47 But, as both pragmatists and communitarianists have often emphasized, embedded, contextualized reasoning will always remain at the heart of the social process. Nevertheless, if we pay careful attention to its connectedness with embodied and “freestanding” reason, we are enabled to understand the possibility and importance of value-generalization. This concept, which deessentializes and dynamizes valuation, was coined by Talcot Parsons and recently revitalized by Hans Joas, to whom I owe it.48 Value-generalization means that particular values or social imaginaries, having come under social pressure, are rearticulated in a more inclusive manner which allows for integration of previously separated positions without cutting loose their traditional roots. The possible sources of this pressure are manifold. They include articulations of personal experience

47

48

The term was coined by Dolf Sternberger in 1970 and then adopted by Jürgen Habermas in 1987. For a meticulous reconstruction of the widely ramified debate see Jan-Werner Müller: Verfassungspatriotismus, Berlin 2010. Cf. Hans Joas: Die Sakralität der Person. Eine neue Genealogie der Menschenrechte, Berlin 2011, chap. 6.

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finding a sizeable public, competing orientations on the same level, like traditions of valuing or religions, and even universalistic challenges coming from philosophical or juridical discourse. But rearticulation, though essentially social, is always accomplished by individuals. Religions, worldviews, political ideas, etc. do not articulate themselves. It is only through the – socially mediated and shared – articulative powers of individual human beings that rearticulation may happen – which means that iconic articulation plays a crucial role here. The pull towards universality, towards greater inclusiveness is mediated by the personal apprehension of unifying, iconic qualities, and the same is true of the habits of embedded reasoning within a certain tradition. Of course, this whole process is thoroughly contingent: No Hegelian “List der Vernunft,” no built-in teleology works towards value-generali­ zation. On the contrary, we are currently witnessing an age in which the opposite prevails, namely the dominance of particularistic values, sometimes disguised as universals, which is by far the worst case. But the contingency of value-generali­ zation is precisely the point of pragmatist meliorism. The corresponding process is neither inevitable nor impossible and in no way backed up by metaphysical guarantees. But when it is accomplished, value-generalization achieves a higher-order integration of qualities, habits, and reflective symbolization. Rearticulation renders embedded reasons in a new, more inclusive light, but it retains embeddedness (taking place from within a tradition) and takes personal, embodied experience (qualities of organism–environment interaction) as its starting point. I will now finish my paper by shortly pointing to the eminent process of value-generalization in the 20th century: the rise of human-rights talk. As Hans Joas has shown,49 the case history of the universal declaration of the human rights on December 10th, 1948, exhibits all the essential features of successful value-generalization. Particular traditions were taken up and rearticulated in a less particular manner, thus allowing both for continuity within the traditions and for an inclusive attitude. Embedded reasoning played an important role as some members of the commission were strongly influenced by Christian and Confucian traditions. The “freestanding” arguments of philosophers had their say, especially from the Kantian line of thought. But it was only through the mediation of embodied, qualitative experience, used as a resource for creative rearticulation and personalized in key players like Pen-chun Chang, Charles Malik, or Eleanor Roosevelt, that the declaration was finally drawn up and ratified. Kant’s rational dignity, the Confucian concept of all-encompassing humanity, ren, and the Christian idea of mankind as created in the image of God are obviously important sources for the declaration, but they remain in the background. The driving force for articulation being the logic of value-generalization, emphasis was placed not on cognitive worldviews but rather 49

Cf. ibid.

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on the consequences for social action. The ideals put forward in the universal declaration aspire towards universality, but their meaning still depends on their ability to steer action in specific situations. To use Roberto Frega’s helpful distinction, they are both articulative and transformative. Having articulated values on a level of higher generality, they also transform the traditions they generalize in the direction of a more inclusive view. In the current state of global policy, they reveal both the possibility of deeply integrated symbolic articulation on the highest social level and its highly contingent, deeply endangered nature.

Schemata in Action

Maria Luisa Catoni

Symbolic Articulation in Ancient Greece Word, Schema, and Image* To Vincenzo Diodato

1. In the first half of the fourth century BCE, in a work titled On the Writers of Written Discourses or On the Sophists, Alcidamas, a rhetor and teacher of rhetoric active in Athens, advocated the superiority of the spoken and extemporaneous over the written discourse:1

* 1

I want to thank the Symbolic Articulation group and Carlo Ginzburg for their invaluable observations and suggestions. Alcidamas: On the Writers of Written Discourses, trans. by John V. Muir, in: Alcidamas. The Works & Fragments, London 2001, pp. 27f., here modified by M.L.C. On the debate see LaRue Van Hook: Alcidamas versus Isocrates; The Spoken versus the Written Word, in: The Classical Weekly 12/12 (1919), pp. 89–94; Guido Avezzù (ed.): Alcidamante. Orazioni e frammenti, Roma 1982, pp. IX–XII, XXXIII–XLI and pp. 78f.; Neil O’Sullivan: Alcidamas, Aristophanes and the Beginnings of Greek Stylistic Theory (Hermes Einzelschriften 60), Stuttgart 1992; Michael Gagarin/Paul Woodruff (eds.): Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists, Cambridge, UK 1995, pp. 276–289; Neil O’Sullivan: Written and Spoken in the First Sophistic, in: Ian Worthington (ed.): Voice into Text: Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece, vol. 1, Leiden/New York/Cologne 1996, pp. 115–127; John V. Muir: Alcidamas, London 2001, pp. V–XXXIII; Marina B. McCoy: Alcidamas, Isocrates, and Plato on Speech, Writing, and Philosophical Rhetoric, in: Ancient Philosophy 29/1 (2009), pp. 45–66; Mike Edwards: Alcidamas, in: Ian Worthington (ed.): A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, Oxford 2007, pp. 47–57. Particularly relevant in our context is Marie-Pierre Noël: Painting or Writing Speeches? Plato, Alcidamas, and Isocrates on Logography, in: Laurent Pernot: New Chapters in the History of Rhetoric, Leiden/Boston 2009, pp. 91–108, who convincingly proposes to date Alcidamas’ On the Sophists close to Isocrates’ Evagoras (370–365) and Antidosis (pp. 354–353), as well as to Plato’s Phaedrus (pp. 370–365). On a different historical context and also with regard to language and voice, see Jürgen Trabant: Über die Farbe der Wörter und Sprachen, in: Eva Eßlinger/Heide Volkening/Cornelia Zumbusch (eds.): Die Farben der Prosa, Freiburg 2016, pp. 29–43.

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And I do not think it is right that written speeches should even be called speeches, but should be thought of as simulacra and figures and imitations of speeches (ὥσπερ εἴδωλα καὶ σχήματα καὶ μιμήματα λόγων). And we could reasonably consider them as bronze or marble statues or as depictions of animals. For, just as these are imitations (μιμήματα) of real bodies and give delight to the view but offer no use in real life, in the same way the written speech, having a single attitude and arrangement (ἑνὶ σχήματι καὶ τάξει κεχρημένος), produces certain striking effects when it is conned from the book, but, being motionless in critical moments (ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν καιρῶν ἀκίνητος ὢν), is of no use to those who have got hold of it. Just as real bodies present an appearance far inferior to that of fine statues, yet are many times more useful for getting things done, so too the speech spoken straight from the heart on the spur of the moment has a soul in it (ἔμψυχός ἐστι) and is alive (ζῇ) and follows upon events and is like those real bodies, while the written speech whose nature corresponds to an image of a speech (εἰκόνι λόγου) lacks any kind of living power (ἁπάσης ἐνεργείας ἄμοιρος). The debate on the status of rethoric was intense in Athens in this period and involved such prominent figures as Gorgias, Plato, Isocrates and, a bit later, Aristotle, among others. A specific inflection of this debate focused on the relationship between written and oral disocurse. We do not deal here with the debate per se,2 and focus instead on Alcidamas’ use of the comparison between discourses and images.3 His argument presents three important points, all of which revolve around the premised opposition between spoken words and images, and all of which strive to demonstrate the superiority of the former over the latter: 1)

Written speeches are imitations of speeches (eidola, schemata and mimemata logon), just as statues and paintings are imitations (mimemata) of real bodies. Through the mediation of the techne of writing, the text would thus enter the same broad category to which images belong and writing would become a mimetic techne. A text, then, is an eikon (image).

2 3

Noël: Painting or Writing (as fn. 1), pp. 91–108, with literature. Particularly relevant to the way in which the relationship between images and written words has been articulated, also in contexts other than Classical Antiquity, are the essays by Sabine Marienberg, Alva Noë, Jürgen Trabant and Tullio Viola in the present volume. For a historical perspective on the specific relationship between poetry and painting, see Trabant in the present volume.

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2)

Imitations (statues, paintings, and written speeches) retain a single attitude (schema) and arrangement (taxis). Albeit more perfect in appearance, they lack movement. Contrary to real bodies and extemporaneous speeches, images (of real bodies and speeches) lack energeia, that is the capacity to adapt to different circumstances, to dynamically articulate their relationship with reality and, ultimately, to affect it. An extemporaneous speech, instead, has a soul (empsychos esti), is alive, and is flexible enough to adapt to circumstances, just like real bodies.

3)

It is important to underline that the analogy proposed by Alcidamas concerns the artful use of language as mastered by rhetoricians. Written speech would then be mediated by both technai of rhetoric and writing. Some of Alcidamas’ arguments, albeit with major differences, are also famously put forward by Plato in the Phaedrus:4 Soc.: Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence. And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing (ἕν τι σημαίνει μόνον ταὐτὸν ἀεί). And every word, when once it is written, is ban­ di­ed about, alike among those who understand and those who have no interest in it, and it knows not to whom to speak or not to speak; when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself (πλημμελούμενος δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἐν δίκῃ λοιδορηθεὶς τοῦ πατρὸς ἀεὶ δεῖται βοηθοῦ· αὐτὸς γὰρ οὔτ᾿ ἀμύνασθαι οὔτε βοηθῆσαι δυνατὸς αὑτῷ). Phaed.: You are quite right about that, too. Soc.: Now tell me; is there not another kind of speech, or word, which shows itself to be the legitimate brother of this bastard one, both in the manner of its begetting and in its better and more powerful nature? Phaed.: What is this word and how is it begotten, as you say? Soc.: The word which is written with intelligence in the mind of the learner, which is able to defend itself and knows to whom it should speak, and before whom to be silent.

4

Plato: Phaedrus, 275d–276a, in: Plato. Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Phaedrus, trans. by Harold N. Fowler, Cambridge, MA 1914.

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Phaed.: You mean the word, which is alive and has a soul in it (ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον), of him who knows, of which the written word may justly be called the image (εἴδωλον). Alcidamas’ and Plato’s texts present strong similarities in regard to their handling of the parallel between written words and images, both in terms of argumentation and language (note, for example, the parallel with painting, the immobility of paintings and written words, the incapacity of images and written discourses to articulate meaning and to respond to circumstances, the qualification of the spoken word as being alive and having a soul, and the defintion of the written word as an eidolon and/or eikon of the spoken word).5 A major difference, from our point of view, should be highlighted: while Plato explores the analogy between written words and images uniquely through the example of painting, Alcidamas refers to both sculpture (bronze and marble) and painting. Two necessary general premises frame both Plato’s and – albeit partially – Alcidamas’ arguments. The first premise concerns the recourse to the analogy with painting, one that would have seemed obvious to an ancient Greek, since it was rooted in the Greek language itself: the root grap(h) could refer to either writing or to painting. To cite the most obvious example, the verb graphein meant both writing and drawing or painting.6

5 6

For a detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between the two texts and Isocrates’ Evagoras, see Noël: Painting or Writing (as fn. 1). The root grap(h)- is attested nine times throughout the Homeric poems (seven in the Iliad and two in the Odyssey). All occurrences are related to the action of grazing or scratching a surface. A good example is Iliad, IV, vv. 135–147, in which an arrow grazes Menelaus’ skin after having perforated the corselet. In two cases, it is a surface, such as a bone or a tablet, that is scratched (Iliad, VII, v. 187; Iliad, VI, vv. 168–169). On Homer and writing, see Alfred Heubeck: Schrift. Göttingen 1979 (Archaeologia Homerica), pp. 126–146; Richard Janko: Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction, London/ New York/Melbourne 1982; Walter Burkert: Oriental Myth and Literature in the Iliad, in: Robin Hägg (ed.): The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century: Tradition and Innovation, Stockholm 1983, pp. 51–56; Rufus Bellamy: Bellerophon’s Tablet, in: Classical Journal 84 (1989), pp. 289–307; Barry B. Powell: Why Was the Greek Alphabet Invented? The Epigraphical Evidence, in: Classical Antiquity 8 (1989), pp. 321–350; Barry B. Powell: Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, Cambridge/New York/Melbourne 1991; Martin L. West: The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, Oxford 1997; Walter Burkert: The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Cambridge, MA/London 1984; Richard Janko: The Homeric Poems as Oral-Dictated Texts, in: Classical Quarterly 48 (1998), pp. 1–13; Barry B. Powell: Text, Orality, Literacy, Tradition, Dictation, Education, and Other Paradigms of Explication in Greek Literary Studies, in: Oral Tradition 15 (2000), pp. 96–125; Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo: La transmission de l’alphabet phénicien aux Grecs, in: Des signes pictographiques à l’alphabet. La communication écrite en Méditerranée (Actes du Colloque 14–15 mai 1996), Nice/Paris

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The second premise concerns the relationship between oral and written communication in the Athenian society of the classical and late classical eras, which witnessed the expanding role of written communication (and technical prose) versus the dominance of oral/aural communication that had prevailed earlier. The expansion of writing brought about and/or mirrored a great number of important changes, which affected, for example, the modes of production of literature and its status, the diffusion of literacy, the modes of reading,7 and the role of rhetorical schools as well as the very process of production of images, which in this period may carry significant traces of textual mediation in the compositional choices that organize the figured narration of a story.8 The debate in which Alcidamas and Plato participated and the type of arguments they used must be read against this backdrop.



7

8

2000, pp. 532–538; Richard Janko: From Gabii and Gordion to Eretria and Methone: The Rise of the Greek Alphabet, in: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 58/1 (2015), pp. 1–32. On the earliest uses of the alphabet and the root grap(h)- on clay vases and potsherds, see Jacques Jouanna: Graphein “écrire” et “peindre”. Contribution à l’histoire des mots et à l’histoire de l’imaginaire de la mémoire en Grèce ancienne, in: La littérature et les arts fìgurés de l’Antiquité a nos jours. Actes du XIVe congrès de l’ Association Guillaume Budé (Limoges, 25–28 août 1998), Paris 2001, pp. 55–70; François Villard: L’apparition de la signature des peintres sur les vases grecs, in: Revue des Études Grecques 115 (2002), pp. 778–782; Maria Luisa Catoni: Bere vino puro. Immagini del simposio, Milano 2010, pp. 126–127, esp. fn. 36 and 96. On vase inscriptions in the context of the picture act theory, see Horst Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2007, Berlin 2010, esp. pp. 59–100 and pp. 13–23 for the general context. On reading in Antiquity, see Bernard M. W. Knox: Silent Reading in Antiquity, in: Greek Roman & Byzantine Studies 9 (1968), pp. 421–435; Jesper Svenbro: Phrasikleia. An Anthropology of Reading on Ancient Greece, Ithaca/London 1993; Alexander K. Gavrilov: Reading Techniques in Classical Antiquity, in: Classical Quarterly 47/1 (1997), pp. 56–73; Myles F. Burnyeat: Postscript on Silent Reading, in: Classical Quarterly 47/1 (1997), pp. 74–76; William A. Johnson: Toward a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity, in: American Journal of Philology 121/4 (2000), pp. 593–627. On the function of vase inscriptions, see François Lissarrague: Publicity and Performance: kalos inscription in Attic vase painting, in: Simon Goldhill/Robin Osborne (eds.): Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture, Cambridge 1994, pp. 359–373; Niall W. Slater: The Vase as Ventriloquist: Kalos Inscriptions and the Culture of Fame, in: E. Anne Mackay (ed.): Signs of Orality, Leiden 1999, pp. 143–161; Anthony Snodgrass: The Uses of Writing on Early Greek Painted Pottery, in: N. Keith Rutter/Brian A. Sparkes (eds.): Word and Image in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh 2000, pp. 22–34; John Boardman: Reading Greek Vases, in: Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22 (2003), pp. 109–114; Ann Steiner: Reading Greek Vases, Cambridge 2007, pp. 68–93 and pp. 231–264; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), pp. 154–215. Particularly relevant among the abundant literature on the relationship between narration in images and orality/texts are Antony Snodgrass: Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art, Cambridge 1998, and Luca Giuliani: Image and Myth. A History of Pictorial Narration in Greek Art, Chicago 2013.

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In the passage just mentioned, Alcidamas uses the analogy with – and language related to – images only in order to disqualify written speech. It is worth recalling, however, that the mimetic technai and rhetoric have always shared a significant common ground. It is enough to recall notions such as poikilia, energeia, and enargeia, the latter in particular referring to a common horizon of interest in the effect produced on the listener or viewer; or, we may recall words such as schema (figure in both the figurative and rhetorical meaning),9 eikon (image, but also simile/ metaphor), typos (model in a concrete, workshop-related meaning, but also example), mimesis (imitation) and taxis (disposition of the arguments in a discourse, but also of the different parts of a statue or painting), to name just a few. On a different level, we should also recall the emergence in this period of the initial elements of a critical discourse on the mimetic technai and on “artists” that served and will serve in later times as a model and heuristic tool for analyzing, for example, the very nature, status, and aims of the art of rhetoric as well as the multiplicity of rhetorical styles.10 Apart from the relevant set of notions and technical terms shared by the techne of rhetoric and the mimetic technai, the comparison, cooperation, or competition between the verbal and the figurative language were actually part of a much older debate, both the verbal and the figurative being of course instrumental to many ancient cultural, ritual, figurative, and literary productions and practices. We do not deal here with phenomena such as ekphrasis, ancient theatre, or ritual,11 or   9 10

11

On the notion of schema see Maria Luisa Catoni: La comunicazione non verbale nella Grecia antica, Torino 2008. Salvatore Settis: La trattatistica delle arti figurative, in: Giuseppe Cambiano/Luciano Canfora/ Diego Lanza (eds.): Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica, vol. 2, Roma 1993, pp. 409– 498. We should at least mention Plato: Protagoras, 311b ff.; Isocrates: Antidosis, 2; Cicero: Brutus, 70ff.; Marcus Fabius Quintilianus: Institutio oratoria, XII, 10, 1–9. Simon Goldhill: Placing Theatre in the History of Vision, in: N. Keith Rutter/Brian A. Sparkes (eds.): Word and Image in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh 2000, pp. 161–182; Jas Elsner: Philostratus Visualizes the Tragic: Some Ekphrastic and Pictorial Receptions of Greek Tragedy in the Roman Era, in: Chris S. Kraus et al. (eds.): Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature: Essays in Honour of Froma Zeitlin, Oxford 2007, pp. 309–337; Luca Giuliani/Glenn W. Most: Medea in Eleusis, in Princeton, in: ibid., pp. 197–217; Laura M. Slatkin: Notes on Tragic Visualizing in the Iliad, in: ibid., pp. 19–34; Oliver Taplin: Pots & Plays. Interactions Between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Century B.C., Los Angeles 2007; Robin Osborne: Putting Performance into Focus, in: Martin Revermann/Peter J. Wilson (eds.): Performance, Reception, Iconography, Oxford 2008, pp. 395–418; Colleen Chaston: Tragic Props and Cognitive Function. Aspects of the Cognitive Function of Images, Leiden/Boston 2010; Giorgio Ieranò: ‘Bella come in un dipinto’: la pittura nella tragedia greca, in: Luigi Belloni et al. (eds.): Le immagini nel testo, il testo nelle immagini: rapporti fra parole e visualità nella tradizione greco-latina, Trento 2011, pp. 241–265; Francesco De Martino: Ekphrasis e teatro tragico, in: Milagros Quijada Sagredo/M. Carmen Encinas

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Fig. 1  Rhodian late geometric kotyle, ca. 725 BCE, with Euboic inscription, from the necropolis of San Montano, Lacco Ameno, Villa Arbusto, Museo Archeologico di Pithecusa, 166788.

with the interplay between written words, spoken words, and images on inscribed figured objects (such as statues, funerary stelai, or vases). What matters here is to keep in mind that the problem of the relationship between visual and oral communication as well as between writing and image can be analyzed within a number of different contexts in Classical Antiquity and well before the fifth century BCE. In section 4 of this chapter, we analyze the case of a small number of drinking vessels from the eighth century BCE (e.g., the famous cup of Nestor; Fig. 1), on which verses Reguero (eds.): Retorica y discurso en el teatro griego, Madrid 2013, pp. 193–224. On nonverbal communication and gesture in the classical world and beyond, see Jean Claude Schmitt: La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval, Paris 1990; Jan Bremmer/Herman Roodenburg (eds.): A Cultural History of Gestures: From Antiquity to the Present Day, Ithaca 1992; Sergio Bertelli/Monica Centanni (eds.): Il Gesto. Nel rito e nel cerimoniale dal mondo antico ad oggi, Ponte alle Grazie 1995; Alan L. Boegehold: When a Gesture was Expected: A Selection of Examples from Archaic and Classical Greek Literature, Princeton 1999; Marta Pedrina: I gesti del dolore nella ceramica attica (VI–V secolo B.C.). Per un’analisi della comunicazione non verbale nel mondo greco, Venezia 2001; Monica Baggio: I gesti della seduzione. Tracce di comnicazione non-verbale nella ceramica attica tra VI e V sec. a.C., Roma 2004; Maria Silvana Celentano/Pierre Chiron/Marie Pierre Noël (eds.): Skhèma/Figura. Formes et figures chez les Anciens. Rhétorique, philosophie, littérature, Paris 2004; Catoni: La comunicazione non verbale (as fn. 9).

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are inscribed. This specific case study will allow us to analyze the ways in which, first, oral performance and texts written on objects of use articulate meaning and symbolic values within a specific context, and, secondly, the ways in which the relationship between support/object and written text is articulated.12 In the passage quoted at the beginning, then, Alcidamas in fact relies upon a tradition of reflection on the technai in general and the mimetic arts in particular, one that became particularly intense in the second half of the fifth and during the fourth century BCE and affected many different domains. The idea that “art imitates nature” – icastically expressed by Aristotle13 in the context of methodological reflections – made explicit a highly consequential potentiality (already widely used in the past), especially in its reverse implication: the technai could be regarded as simple domains, in which to observe and analyze the functioning of a rational set of rules and procedures that were applied to achieve an end. The technai, then, could be analyzed in order to infer – through a process of analogy and generalization – the rules according to which nature operates. In the context of this theoretical interest in the technai, the mimetic technai gained a special position both per se and as a source for examples and comparisons that could be used within completely different fields. In his biological treatise The Parts of Animals,14 for example, Aristotle could use a comparison with sculpture and painting to criticize the type of research that had been carried out by earlier physiologists. Democritus’ idea that each animal and each of its parts may be identified on the basis of shape (morphe), i. e., of color and figure (chroma and schema) in Aristotle’s understanding of Democritus’ notion of morphe, is contrasted with examples such as a corpse or a sculptured hand, which – in Aristotle’s words – wouldn’t be a hand “except in name,” just like a painted physician is not an actual physician or a flute carved in stone is not an actual flute. Imitations, albeit having the same form of imitated realities as a hand or a flute, cannot perform “the functions appropriate to the things that bear those names.” The idea that sculpture and painting imitate only the external traits of a visible reality, and that imitations cannot perform “the functions appropriate” to the imitated reality, is actually the same one polemically expressed by Alcidamas and Plato in order to assert the superiority of extemporaneous over written discourse.

12 13

14

See also Viola in the present volume. E. g. Aristotle: Physics, 194a–b; 199a15–b. Mark Schiefsky: Art and Nature in Ancient Mechanics, in: Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent/William R. Neumann (eds.): The Artificial and the Natural. An Evolving Polarity, Cambridge, MA 2007, pp. 67–108; Heinrich Von Staden: Physis and Techne in Greek Medicine, in: ibid., pp. 21–49. Aristotle: Parts of Animals, 640b–641a, trans. by Arthur L. Peck/Edward S. Forster, in: Aristotle. Parts of Animals. Movement of Animals. Progression of Animals, Cambridge, MA 1937.

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Aristotle, nonetheless, makes use of the idea that “art imitates nature” in a great number of contexts. In the Generation of Animals,15 for example, he explains how Nature would proceed to the embryo’s formation of blooded animals: by first drawing in outline the different parts of the body, adding colors, softness, and hardness in a second stage, “simply as if a painter were at work on them, the painter being nature (ἀτεχνῶς ὥσπερ ἂν ὑπὸ ζωγράφου τῆς φύσεως δημιουργούμενα).” These observations on the process by which painters articulate a figure, specifically regarding the different stages of drawing and the addition of color, allows Aristotle to understand and visualize a far more obscure process, the one according to which nature operates. In our context, a particularly relevant example of the heuristic function of the comparison with the mimetic technai is provided by Plato’s Cratylus, a dialogue dealing with the problem of the existence of falsehood in relation to names, which explores analogies and differences between different mimetic technai. Before appro­ aching the specific issue as it relates to language, Socrates investigates the hypothesis that even naming might be a mimetic techne:16 Soc.: Well, then, how can the earliest names, which are not as yet based upon any others, make clear to us the essence of things (τὰ ὄντα) […]? Answer me this question: if we had no voice or tongue, and wished to indicate (δηλοῦν) things to one another, as dumb people actually do, should we not try to make signs (σημαίνειν) with our hands and head and the rest of the body? […] If we wished to designate that which is above and is light, we should raise our hand towards heaven in imitation of the very nature of the thing in question (μιμούμενοι αὐτὴν τὴν φύσιν τοῦ πράγματος). And if the things to be designated were below or heavy, we should extend our hands towards the ground. And if we wished to signify a galloping horse or any other animal, we should, of course, make our bodily figures (σώματα καὶ σχήματα) as much like (ὡς ὁμοιότατ᾿) theirs as possible. […] This would be the only way of expressing anything, I think, by bodily imitation (μιμησαμένου, ὡς ἔοικε, τοῦ σώματος) of that which was to be expressed (δηλῶσαι). […]. Based on this premise, Socrates mentions unambiguous cases of mimesis in order to identify the constitutive elements of a variety of mimetic technai. A preliminary

15 16

Aristotle: Generation of Animals, 743b, trans. by Arthur L. Peck, in: Aristotle. Generation of Animals, Cambridge, MA 1942. Plato: Cratylus, 422e–423a, trans. by Harold N. Fowler, in: Plato. Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Cambridge, MA 1926, slightly modified by M. L. C.; Catoni: La comunicazione non verbale (as fn. 9), pp. 72–78 and pp. 251–257; Trabant: Über die Farbe der Wörter (as fn. 1).

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conclusion states that “the very nature of the thing in question” would constitute the specific object of the bodily imitations that are chosen as comparative cases; along the same lines, the bodily schemata would constitute the specific tools employed to realize that type of imitation. From this point onward, Socrates’ hypothesis can be tested (and immediately refuted): names too would be imitations, and naming would therefore be a mimetic techne. Its specific tools would be the mouth, the tongue, and the voice – just like other vocal imitations and mousike – while its specific object would be the essence of the imitated reality – unlike other vocal imitations and mousike.17 In this part of the dialogue, Socrates establishes a method for analyzing the relationship between imitations and the object imitated, one that allows him to reach the provisional conclusion that – just as painting imitates through schema and chroma (meaning drawing and color) the schema and the chroma (meaning the figure and the color) of the imitated object – the art of naming likewise imitates, through letters and syllables, the very essence (ousia) of things. Even this conclusion, however, is reached by way of analogy with the products of the mimetic technai and, significantly enough, with the genre of portraiture:18 Can I not step up to a man and say to him, “This is your portrait” (γράμμα) and show him perhaps his own image (εἰκόνα) or, perhaps, that of a woman? And by “show” I mean bring before the sense of sight. […] Well, then, can I not step up to the same man again and say, “This is your name”? A name is an imitation (μίμημα), just as a picture (ζωγράφημα) is. Very well; can I not say to him, “This is your name”, and then bring before his sense of hearing perhaps the imitation (μίμημα) of himself, saying that it is a man, or perhaps the imitation of the female of the human species, saying that it is a woman? […]. If, then, we compare the earliest words to portraits (γράμμασιν), it is possible in them, as in pictures (ἐν τοῖς ζωγραφήμασιν), to reproduce all the appropriate colours and figures (τὰ προσήκοντα χρώματά τε καὶ σχήματα ἀποδοῦναι), or not all; some may be wanting, and some may be added, and they may be too many or too large. […] Then he who reproduces all, produces good portraits and pictures (τὰ γράμματά τε καὶ τὰς εἰκόνας), and he who adds or takes away produces also portraits and pictures (γράμματα μὲν καὶ εἰκόνας), but bad ones? […] And how about him who imitates (ἀπομιμούμενος) the essence of things (τὴν οὐσίαν τῶν πραγμάτων) by means of letters and syllables? By the same principle, if he gives all that is appropriate, the image (ἡ εἰκὼν) – that is to say, 17 18

Plato: Cratylus (as fn. 16), 423b–d. Plato: Cratylus (as fn. 16), 430e–431d.

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the name – will be good (καλὴ), and if he sometimes omits or adds a little, it will be an image (εἰκὼν), but not a good one; and therefore some names are well and others badly made. It is worth noting that, outside of the polemics about the relationship between the oral and written word, images are used in this passage as a valid analogy to articulate the relationship between word and essence. A second relevant point concerns Plato’s resort to a comparative approach to the mimetic technai, which is fairly frequent in many ancient sources. Three aspects consistently emerge from these frequent comparisons among different mimetic arts: the first is that not only visible realities but also invisible entities, such as values and characters, can be imitated;19 the second aspect is that mousike is credited with the highest ability to produce exact imitations, especially of invisible entities. The third aspect concerns the relevance of the notion of schema, a term that means figure, general outline, silhouette, posture, or gesture: The schema, when used to describe and classify objects or persons, often in conjunction with chroma, can be one of the traits that identifies perceptible realities. On the other hand, the schema is also a tool that allows both the dynamic and the static mimetic arts to accomplish their imitations, and in these contexts also means drawing, posture, dance figure, etc. Two crucial traits of the term schema are its intrinsically static nature, even when used within a dynamic techne (such as dance,20 recitation, public etiquette, etc.), and its capacity to articulate meanings in different media. The possibility that the very same schemata could migrate from one medium to another was believed to guarantee their functioning as the basic units of a codified and virtually stable visual language, something readily observable as well in visual representations up until the early fourth century BCE.21 In the context of the rising field of political philosophy in particular, such a visual language – upon which many different arts and literary genres would rely heavily in different ways – came to be perceived and analyzed as a powerful and dangerous political tool.

19

20 21

A particularly good and famous analysis of the capacity of painting and sculpture to portray ethe and pathe is offered by Socrates’ conversation with Parrhasios and Kleiton as narrated in Xenophon: Memorabilia, III. 10. 1–8. For an example of how this idea could be questioned, see Demosthenes: De Falsa Legatione, 251–255. See the essay by Anja Pawel in the present volume. Catoni: La comunicazione non verbale (as fn. 9).

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2. Let us return now to Alcidamas’ comparison between written and extemporaneous speech. The lack of movement – i. e., the lack of any dynamic articulation of the relationship with reality – emerges as the ultimate reason for the claimed ineffectiveness of images and written discourses. Contrary to Alcidamas’ view, however, the mimetic technai, through the codified vocabulary of schemata, were believed to be effective in a far more relevant and (potentially) dangerous way, since they could attain mimeseis not only of concrete and visible, but also of abstract entities, including values like loyalty, courage, civic virtue, etc. The schemata, moreover, could be considered not as simple imitations of these values but instead as their concrete embodiments. It was precisely this alleged capacity that drew the attention of political philosophers who came to regard the schemata as powerful political tools capable of determining a citizen’s character. In this perspective, not all mimetic technai were considered equally important and powerful: mousike – as it relied on the three key elements of words, music, and dance – enjoyed the highest status. And through the notion of schema in particular, analyses carried out in the field of mousike and the rules based thereupon could easily be transferred to other mimetic arts, for example etiquette, sculpture, and painting, and to nature itself. A passage from Plato’s Laws, for example, evokes the positive example of Egypt, where law decreed that “the youth of the State should practice in their rehearsals figures (schemata) and tunes (mele) that are good”; once prescribed in detail, such figures and tunes would constitute a closed list of traditional forms into which painters, dancers, musicians and all other imitators would be forbidden to introduce innovations.22 The prohibition of innovation beyond a set of established schemata is the specific Platonic response to the immense power the philosopher attributes to the mimetic arts, particularly the power to generate behaviors and thus to determine a citizen’s character. The need for such strict control over the mimetic arts is based on the idea that a citizen who performs or is exposed to the embodiment (i. e., the schema) of a given value will involuntarily imitate it and as a consequence will introject the corresponding value. In a passage from the Republic,23 Plato makes this point very clear, stating that imitations, when constantly repeated in the same form, become stabilized as the nature and character of the citizens.

22

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Plato: Laws, 656d–657a, trans. by Robert G. Bury, in: Plato. Laws, vol. I, Cambridge, MA 1926. On this passage see Catoni: La comunicazione non verbale (as fn. 9), pp. 262–267, with earlier literature. Plato: Republic, 395d, trans. by Chris Emlyn Jones/William Preddy, in: Plato. Republic, vol. I, Cambridge, MA 2013, slightly modified by M. L. C.

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Even from this specific point of view, mousike was regarded as the most powerful and relevant mimetic art during Classical Antiquity and beyond. Only mousike is able to produce exact representations (homoiomata) of ethe:24 Rhythms and melodies contain exact representations (ὁμοιώματα) of anger and mildness, and also of courage and temperance and all their opposites and the other ethical qualities, that most closely correspond to the true natures of these ethe (μάλιστα παρὰ τὰς ἀληθινὰς φύσεις) […]. And habituation in feeling pain and delight at representations of reality (ἐν τοῖς ὁμοίοις) is close to feeling them towards actual reality (for example, if a man delights in beholding the statue of somebody for no other reason than because of its actual form, the actual sight of the person whose statue he beholds must also of necessity give him pleasure) […]. The objects of sight contain representations of ethe to a small extent […]: the schemata and the colors that are produced are not exact representations (ὁμοιώματα) of ethe but just indications (σημεῖα) of them, indications that concern the body in a state of pathos. Insofar as even the observation of these indications produces different [ethical] results, the young must not look at the paintings of Pauson but at those of Polygnotos and of any other painter or sculptor who is ethikos [i. e., who depicts ethe] […]. In this passage’s closing remark, Aristotle clarifies that – as in Plato’s Laws – figurative works are analyzed from a political perspective, and that for this very reason, the only valid criterion for their evaluation (and even consideration) is their ethical results. It should also be remarked in our context that such a political perspective brought together words, music, and images within the same analytical framework. A famous passage from Plato’s Republic makes the point quite clear:25 Again I imagine that painting and every craft of that kind is full of these qualities: weaving and embroidery, house building and every trade concerned with household artifacts in general, and again the physical nature of animals and plants as well. For in all of these there is elegance or gracelessness (εὐσχημοσύνη ἢ ἀσχημοσύνη). So too ugliness, poor rhythm and disharmony (ἡ μὲν ἀσχημοσύνη καὶ ἀρρυθμία καὶ ἀναρμοστία) are close relatives of poor language and poor ethos (κακολογίας καὶ κακοηθείας ἀδελφά), and the opposites of

24 25

Aristotle: Politics, 1340a 19–40, trans. by Harris Rackham, in: Aristotle. Politics, Cambridge, MA 1932, modified by M. L. C. Plato: Republic (as fn. 23), 401a–b.

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each of these are closely related and imitate (ἀδελφά τε καὶ μιμήματα) the opposite, wise and good ethos (σώφρονός τε καὶ ἀγαθοῦ ἤθους). […] Must we supervise only our poets then and also force them to include images of good ethos in their works (τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ εἰκόνα ἤθους ἐμποιεῖν τοῖς ποιήμασιν), or not work in our community? Or mustn’t we also supervise the rest of our craftsmen and prevent them from including this undisciplined, niggardly, ugly and bad ethos (τὸ κακόηθες τοῦτο καὶ ἀκόλαστον καὶ ἀνελεύθερον καὶ ἄσχημον) either in their images of living creatures (μήτε ἐν εἰκόσι ζῴων), or in their buildings, or in any other work of craftsmanship (μήτε ἐν ἄλλῳ μηδενὶ δημιουργουμένῳ)? In this passage of the Republic (and in the passages of the Cratylus we have analyzed), the power of images is analyzed by Plato in a completely different way from the Phaedrus and from Alcidamas’ On the Sophists. The idea that the mimetic technai can in fact represent invisible entities, ethe in particular, would entail that both the imitators through painting and sculpture and the imitators through (spoken) words deal, in fact, with images (eikones) of values.

3. One of the main points in both Alcidamas’ On the Sophists and Plato’s Phaedrus is that images lack movement and are therefore unable to act. Even Aristo­ phanes, in the comedy Frogs (405 BCE), had ironically used the immobility of the schema in a painting to describe, by opposition, Dionysus’ opportunistic – and continuously “moving” behavior.26 According to Alcidamas’ inflection of this same idea, the written text stands fast in one and the same position, while in Plato’s Phaedrus, immobile and silent written speech is unable to dynamically articulate (and defend) true, living knowledge.27 In a discourse entitled Evagoras, Isocrates – a contemporary of Alcidamas and Plato – too used the opposition between words and images. Interestingly enough, though, Isocrates is speaking about written texts. It has been convincingly proposed, moreover, that it was this particular use of the comparison between images and words in the Evagoras that might have elicited Plato’s and Alcidamas’

26 27

Aristophanes: Frogs, 533–540. Catoni: La comunicazione non verbale (as fn. 9), pp. 109–110. See Noël: Painting or Writing (as fn. 1), pp. 103–107.

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reactions in Phaedrus and On the Sophists respectively.28 In praising Evagoras, then, Isocrates writes:29 For my part, Nicocles, I think that while even images of the body are fine memorials (καλὰ μὲν εἶναι μνημεῖα καὶ τὰς τῶν σωμάτων εἰκόνας), yet images of deeds and of the character (τὰς τῶν πράξεων καὶ τῆς διανοίας) are of far greater value and these are to be observed only in discourses composed according to the rules of art. These I prefer because I know, in the first place, that honorable men pride themselves not so much on bodily beauty as they desire to be honored for their deeds and their wisdom; in the second place, because I know that statues (τοὺς μὲν τύπους) must of necessity remain solely among those in whose cities they were set up, whereas discourses (τοὺς δὲ λόγους) may be published throughout Hellas, and having been spread abroad in the gatherings of enlightened men, are welcomed among those whose approval is more to be desired than that of all others; and finally, while no one can make the bodily nature resemble moulded statues and portraits in painting (τοῖς μὲν πεπλασμένοις καὶ τοῖς γεγραμμένοις οὐδεὶς ἂν τὴν τοῦ σώματος φύσιν ὁμοιώσειε), yet for those who do not choose to be slothful, but desire to be good men, it is easy to imitate the character of their fellow-men and their thoughts and purposes – those, I mean, that are embodied in the spoken words (τὰς ἐν τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐνούσας). The second reason for the superiority of discourses over images enumerated by Isocrates deserves attention. First, it should be mentioned that Isocrates – like Alcidamas – resorts to both sculpture and painting in order to explore the comparison between images and words, so that his arguments do not rely solely on the meanings of the verb graphein (writing and painting). While Isocrates introduces his three arguments by using a general word (“images”), his second argument refers to statues. It states that words spread throughout the world, while statues “must of necessity remain solely among those in whose cities they were set up (σταθῶσι).” As previously noted,30 here Isocrates reworks an argument put forward by Pindar at the beginning of the fifth century BCE: statues stand motionless on their bases, while the song that the poet was commissioned to compose in honor of Pytheas from

28 29

30

Ibid., pp. 100–103. Isocrates: Evagoras, 73–76, trans. by LaRue Van Hook, in: Isocrates. Evagoras. Helen. Busiris. Plataicus. Concerning the Team of Horses. Trapeziticus. Against Callimachus. Aegineticus. Against Lochites. Against Euthynus. Letters, Cambridge, MA 1945, modified slightly by M. L. C. Noël: Painting or Writing (as fn. 1), pp. 98–100.

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Aigina will, through recitation and repetition, be sailing “on board every ship and in every boat” and will spread news of Pytheas’ victory all over the world.31 Pindar probably envisioned the circulation of his song through singers, or its continuous repetition by members of his audiences.32 The implication of Isocrates’ argument, however, is that not only spoken words, but texts as well can – unlike statues – be reproduced and, as reproductions, can travel. Carlo Ginzburg has recently elaborated upon a notion of text whose historical emergence he had analyzed in the 1979 essay Spie:33 In the West, the invention of writing (and later of printing) entailed that it “spread a notion of the text as an invisible entity,” with the consequence that “all the elements tied to orality and gesture […] were thought to be irrelevant.”34 Ginzburg shows how texts and images could be contrasted precisely on the basis of their capacity (or the lack thereof) for dematerialization. Ginzburg’s notion of an invisible text addresses crucial issues such as the asymmetry between texts and images with regard to reproducibility. It also implies that texts and images entertain a profoundly different relationship not only with a specific place (whether or not it is their specific place of origin) but also with the physical support upon which they are articulated. We might nonetheless ask whether such a sharp distinction between text and image entails additional implicit preconditions and whether it is applicable to all images and all written texts, even within cultural traditions considered as belonging to Western culture. It might imply, for example, the existence of the very notion of the work of art as a necessary condition, or at least the idea that schema and ergasia are inseparable and produce a unicum. The uses of the notion of schema up until the fourth century BCE seem, on the contrary, not only to imply – at least at

31

32 33

34

Pindar: Nemean Ode 5, vv. 3–4, in: Pindar. Nemean Odes. Isthmian Odes. Fragments, trans. by William H. Race, Cambridge, MA 1997. See also Pindar: Isthmian Ode 2, v. 46. William H. Race: Pindaric Encomium and Isocrate’s Evagoras, in: TAPhA 117 (1987), pp. 131–155; Maddalena Vallozza: Alcuni motivi del discorso di lode tra Pindaro e Isocrate, in: QUUC n.s. 35 (1990), pp. 49–58; Maddalena Vallozza: Sui topoi della lode nell’ Evagora di Isocrate (1, 11, 72 e 51–52), in: Rhetorica 16 (1998), pp. 121–130; Evangelos Alexiou: Enkomion, Biographie und die ‘unbeweglichen Statuen’: Zu Isokrakes Evagoras 73–76 und Plutarch Perikles 1–2, in: Classica et Mediaevalia 51 (2000), pp. 103–117. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer: Three Aeginetan Odes of Pindar. A Commentary on Nemean V, Nemean III, and Pythian VIII, Leiden/Boston/Cologne 1999, pp. 99–102. Carlo Ginzburg: Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziario, in: Aldo Gargani (ed.): Carlo Ginzburg, Crisi della ragione, Torino 1979, pp. 59–106; republished in Carlo Ginzburg: Miti emblemi spie. Morfologia e storia, Torino 2000, pp. 158–209, esp. pp. 171f. Carlo Ginzburg: Invisible Texts, Visible Images, in: Pasquale Gagliardi/Bruno Latour/Pedro Memelsdorff (eds.): Coping with the Past, Firenze 2010, pp. 133–160, esp. pp. 133f.; Carlo Ginzburg: Text and Voice, Text vs Voice: On Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia II, 8, 3ff., in: Andrea Del Col/Anne Jacobson Schutte (eds.): L’Inquisizione romana, i giudici e gli eretici. Studi in onore di John Tedeschi, Roma/Viella 2017, pp. 39–58.

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the level of theoretical reflections – but to aim at the continuous reproducibility of the same figures in different media. Some special cases related to writing, on the other hand, might show that even the articulation between a written text and its support can be so crucial as to decisively orient, or even reverse, the literal meaning of words.

4. Vase inscriptions are among the earliest testimonies of the existence of the alphabet and the use of Greek writing. Chronologically speaking, they may be dated to the eighth century BCE, possibly even the ninth.35 From a purely functional point of view, the earliest Greek inscriptions known to us are declarations of ownership (made for a variety of reasons), a handful of poems, and dedications to divinities. The most frequent declaration of ownership in Greek vase inscriptions employs the “speaking-object” formula,36 through which the object is given a voice. These inscriptions typically include a personal name in the genitive case, like “Soand-so’s,” which may or may not be followed by the verb “to be” and, rarely, by a reference to the object itself, at times even its name.37 Ownership inscriptions are

35

36

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In addition to the literature cited in fn. 6, see Oswin Murray: Nestor’s Cup and the Origins of the Greek Symposion, in: Bruno D’Agostino/David Ridgway (eds.): Apoikia. I più antichi insediamenti greci in Occidente: funzioni e modi dell’organizzazione politica e sociale, AION ArchStAnt n.s. l (1994), pp. 47–54; Lilian H. Jeffery: The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, revised edition by Alan W. Johnston, Oxford 1990; David R. Ridgway: Greek Letters at Osteria dell’Osa, in: Opuscula Romana 20 (1996), pp. 87–97; Carmine Ampolo: L’interpretazione storica della più antica iscrizione del Lazio, in: Gilda Bartoloni (ed.): Le necropoli arcaiche di Veio, Roma 1997, pp. 211–217; Cornelis J. Ruijgh: La date de la création de l’alphabet grec et celle de l’épopée homérique, in: Bibliotheca Orientalis 54 (1997), pp. 533–603; Cornelis J. Ruijgh: Sur la date de la création de l’alphabet grec, in: Mnemosyne 51 (1998), pp. 658–87; M. Letizia Lazzarini: Questioni relative all’origine dell’alfabeto Greco, in: Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni/Federica Cordano (eds.): Scritture mediterranee tra IX e VIII secolo a.C., Milano 1999, pp. 53–66; Susan Sherratt: Visible writing: Questions of Script and Identity in Early Iron Age Greece and Cyprus, in: Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22/3 (2003), pp. 225–242; Anne Kenzelmann et al.: Graffiti d’époque géométrique provenant du sanctuaire d’Apollon Daphnéphoros à Erétrie, in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 151 (2005), pp. 51–83; Nino Nuraghi: The Local Scripts from Nature to Culture, in: Classical Antiquity 29/1 (2010), pp. 68–91. The implications of the speaking object formula in the context of the theory of the Image Acts are analyzed by Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts (as fn. 6), pp. 59–100; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), pp. 154–215, with earlier literature. Maria Letizia Lazzarini: I nomi dei vasi Greci nelle iscrizioni dei vasi stessi, in: Antichità Classica 25/26 (1973/1974), pp. 340–375.

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found on vases from a great variety of geographical and functional contexts. The type of inscription we will deal with briefly here is most usually found on vases that held sympotic and personal functions (like the aryballoi, which were used to hold oil or perfume). A locally manufactured oinochoe found in a female tomb in Pithekoussai datable to ca. 725–700 BCE carries the incised inscription: “I am Ame’s.”38 A cup from Rhodes, perhaps datable to the eighth century BCE, bears the inscription “I am Korakos’ kylix.”39 Three centuries later, in Kamiros (Rhodes), Philtò expanded on the formula in a metric inscription scratched under her black-figured cup: “I am the decorated cup of beautiful Philtò.”40 The list of terracotta vases that bear ownership inscriptions could be much longer. It is important to remember that from the seventh century BCE, metric ownership inscriptions become relatively frequent, while only a few notable examples can be dated to the eighth century. A very famous vase (Fig. 1) carries a fragmentary poetic inscription that likely includes an ownership formula. The vase is the so-called cup of Nestor, a drinking vessel of Rhodian manufacture that was inscribed in Pithekoussai around 725 BCE. The cup was likely used in the symposion. At a certain point, it came to be used in a funerary context, and was thrown onto the pyre of a young boy who was buried in a tomb in the necropolis. The inscription is among the earliest known testimonies of poetic inscriptions in the Greek alphabet (Euboean form):41

38

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40

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Lacco Ameno, Villa Arbusto, Museo Archeologico di Pithecusa, 281907. Antonin Bartonek/ ˇ Giorgio Buchner: Die ältesten griechischen Inschriften von Pithekoussai (2. Hälfte des VIII. bis 1. Hälfte des VI. Jh.), in: Die Sprache 37 (1995), pp. 129–237, esp. pp. 163f., A 1 b 20; Carlo Odo Pavese: La iscrizione sulla kotyle di Nestor da Pithekoussai, in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 114 (1996), pp. 1–24, esp. p. 6, fn. 6; Salvatore Settis/Maria Cecilia Parra: Magna Grecia. Archeologia di un sapere, Milano 2005, p. 375, fn. 93; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 175, with earlier literature. Copenhagen, National Museet 10151. Emanuele Dettori: Osservazioni sulla coppa di Nestore, in: Museum Criticum 25–28 (1990–1993), pp. 7–20, esp. p. 11, fn. 19; Pavese: La iscrizione sulla kotyle (as fn. 38), p. 6; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 175, with earlier literature. London, British Museum 1885, 1213.30. Dettori: Osservazioni sulla coppa di Nestore (as fn. 39), p. 9; Pavese: La iscrizione sulla kotyle (as fn. 38), p. 7; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 175, with earlier literature. The editio princeps is Giorgio Buchner/Carlo Ferdinando Russo: La Coppa di Nestore e un’iscrizione metrica da Pithecusa del VIII secolo a.C., in: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Rendiconti 10/8 (1955), pp. 215–234. A complete list (up to 1991) of the immense literature on the cup and its inscription is provided by Onofrio Vox: Bibliografia 1955–1991, in: Giorgio Buchner/David Ridgway: Pithekoussai I. La necropoli: tombe 1–723, scavate dal 1952 al 1961, vol. 1 testo, vol. 2 tavole. Monumenti antichi dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, serie monografica vol. IV, Roma 1993, pp. 751–759. In addition to the essays mentioned supra (fn.  6, 34–39), see Albio Cesare Cassio: Keinos, Kallistephanos e la circolazione dell’epica greca in area euboica, in: D’Agostino/Ridgway (eds.): Apoikia (as fn. 35), pp. 55–67; Murray: Nestor’s Cup (as fn. 35); Stephanie West: Nestor’s Bewitching Cup, in: Zeitschrift für Papy-

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[I am] Nestor’s cup, good to drink from. But he who drinks from this cup, him straightaway the desire of beautiful-crowned Aphrodite will seize. In our context, it is particularly relevant that the support on which the inscription is scratched is a cup, i. e., a vase used to drink wine from in the codified and ritualized context of the communal drinking party (symposion). Another very fragmentary kotyle, also of Rhodian manufacture, from Eretria (Euboea), uses a very similar formula. The text following the declaration of ownership seems to speak of the effects that drinking from the cup of Eothymos (or Thymokrates) would have on a woman:42 Of Eothymos (or, alternatively, Thymokrates) [I am the… cup] But she who from this [cup drinks…] very […] Both Nestor and Eothymos (or Thymokrates) declare the cup’s ownership, yet both envisage the possibility of its being used by somebody else. Both inscriptions adopt a kind of curse formula of the type found, for example, on a later, non-sympotic vase (675–650 BCE) owned by Tataie: “I am Tataie’s lekythos. May he who steals me go blind.”43 Despite adopting the curse formula, Nestor’s cup reverses the curse, as it promises erotic desire as a consequence of its use. A late geometric Euboic drinking vessel dated to ca. 720 BCE was recently discovered in Methone (Macedonia). It bears an inscription that seems to be the forerunner of the inscription on Tataie’s vase, thus documenting – together with Nestor’s cup and Eothymos’ (or Thymokrates’)

42

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rologie und Epigraphik 101 (1994) pp. 9–15; Bartonek/Buchner: ˇ Die ältesten griechischen Inschriften (as fn. 37), pp. 146–154, no. 1; Dettori: Osservazioni (as fn. 39); Pavese: La iscrizione sulla kotyle (as fn. 38); Christopher A. Faraone: Taking the ‘Nestor’s Cup Inscription’ Seriously: Erotic Magic and Conditional Curses in the Earliest Inscribed Hexameters, in: Classical Antiquity 15 (1996), pp. 77–112; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), pp. 165ff.; Fiona Hobden: The Symposion in Ancient Greek Society and Thought, Cambridge 2013; Marek Wecowsky: The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet, Oxford 2014, pp. 127–141 and pp. 251–258; Janko: From Gabii and Gordion (as fn. 6). Eretria, Archaeological Museum, 100700 and 10697. Alan W. Johnston/Angeliki K. Andriomenou: A Geometric Graffito from Eretria, in: Annual of the British School of Athens 84 (1989), pp. 217–20; Pavese: La iscrizione sulla kotyle (as fn. 38), pp. 13ff.; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 167 and pp. 179ff., with earlier literature; Janko: From Gabii and Gordion (as fn. 6), p. 3. London, British Museum A 1054. Peter Allan Hansen: Pithecusan Humor: The Interpretation of ‘Nestor’s Cup’ Reconsidered, in: Glotta 54 (1976), pp. 25–43; Francesco De Martino: La sfida di Tataie, Bari 1986; Pavese: La iscrizione sulla kotyle (as fn. 38), pp. 6f. and 14f.; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 179, with earlier literature.

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cup – the in all likelihood playful use of the curse formula in the sympotic context.44 These early cup inscriptions allow us to analyze the relationship between the text and the support upon which it is articulated. In particular, we will ask whether this relationship can change the literal meaning of the ownership formula, and whether the context in which the support (the cup) was meant to be used plays any role in orienting the meaning of the text. In other words: the ownership formula generally means: “this object belongs to So-and-so.” What happens, however, when the object is a cup? An inscription incised underneath the foot of a cup from the first quarter of the fifth century BCE, proclaims the object’s multiple owners. The text also exhorts the reader not to steal the cup, and provides a reason: “I am Iphidamas’, Aretides’ and Meinon’s communal (cup), no one should steal me, but he who wishes should use (me).” The co-ownership of the cup by three men – no isolated case – points to the bonds of male friendship established in the symposion.45 The inscription, however, also justifies the exhortation not to steal the cup. Its theft – according to the inscription – would hinder the highly symbolic gesture of offering the cup to one’s drinking companions. Whoever accepts the offer of the three owners will also partake, we assume, in the bond of friendship (philia) that unites the cup’s owners. Underneath the foot of a cup from Gela that is datable to the early fifth century BCE, the inscription reads: “I am Panchares’ and the communal (koina) cup of his friends.”46 Panchares too affirms the ownership of the cup and, without mentioning theft, adds that the cup also belongs to his sympotic friends. An offer of both friendship/love and use of the cup is explicitly declared in a poetic graffito that was scratched onto the lip of a large Attic cup from Pontic Olbia that dates from the fifth century BCE: “I am a kylix sweet to drink from, friend (phile) to him who drinks wine.”47

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Matthaios Besios/Yannis Tsifopoulos/Antonis Kotsonas (eds.): Μεθωνη Πιεριας ι: Επιγραφές, χαράγματα και εμπορικά σύμβολα στη γεωμετρική και αρχαϊκή κεραμική από το ‘Υπόγειο’ της Μεθώνης Πιερίας στη Μακεδονία, Thessaloniki 2012, p. 311, cat. no. 2 (Mθ 2248); Wecowsky: The Rise (as fn. 41), p. 129; Janko: From Gabii and Gordion (as fn. 6), pp. 2ff. The name of the owner of the skyphos is Hakesandros. Maria Letizia Lazzarini: Un’iscrizione greca di Pontecagnano, in: Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 112 (1984), pp. 407–412, esp. p. 408; Albio Cesare Cassio: Da Elea a Hipponion e Leontinoi: lingua di Parmenide e testi epigrafici, in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 113 (1996), pp. 14–20, esp. pp. 16ff.; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 180. Lazzarini: Un’iscrizione greca (as fn. 45), p. 408; Renato Arena: Pantares o Panchares?, in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 63 (1986), pp. 181–182; Jeffery: The Local Scripts (as fn. 35), p. 273, no. 50; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 180. Lazzarini: I nomi dei vasi Greci (as fn. 37), p. 349, no. 16; Hansen: Carmina epigraphica graeca (as fn. 39), p. 258, no. 464; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 180, with earlier literature.

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Is it possible that, as a consequence of being written on a cup and therefore of its context of use (i. e., the symposion), an ownership inscription (even of the most common and simple type) could activate additional allusions that substantially modified its literal meaning? If so, as Nestor’s and Eothymos’ (or Thymokrates’) cups seem to indicate, the immediate consequence would be that, at times, ownership inscriptions on drinking vessels do not affirm exclusive ownership and use, but rather the exact opposite. Their purpose would be to declare the name of a potential lover who, through the offering of his cup, offers both friendship and erotic love to his companions, or to one in particular. It is probable that exhortations against stealing actually reflect sympotic jokes or playful threats. If we look a bit more carefully, however, we may discern a practice that was part of sympotic ethics, in which the bond of philia envisioned the communal usage of a single cup. The hypothesis that inscriptions found on drinking vessels that speak of ownership, potential theft, and communal usage must be read as specifically sympotic is supported as well by a number of literary sources that mention the intimate bond between erotic proposal and the offering of the cup, specifically referencing the “loving cup” (philotesion poterion or philotesia kylix). In addition to such literary souces, on a fragmentary tondo of a cup from the Athenian Agora, to be dated to the end of the sixth century BCE, a homoerotic scene is accompanied by the inscription [phil]otesion.48 Thanks to this later tradition of cup inscriptions (and only a few instances have been mentioned here), we can perhaps interpret the inscriptions on Nestor’s and Eothymos’ (or Thymokrates’) cups, which could be correlated with the very beginning of this specifically sympotic tradition and linked to the practice of sharing cups. Both inscriptions begin by mentioning the name of their owner, in the form “I am So-and-so’s.” Immediately thereafter, however, the adversative “but he/ she who drinks from me” introduces an opposition. Such an intimate and cogent link between the formula used in the inscription (ownership plus adversative) and the specific support of the cup (and therefore the sympotic context) should be stressed. In the inscriptions found on Nestor’s cup and that of Eothymos’ (or Thymokrates’), the adversative that follows the ownership formula should be interpreted as an integrative and corrective opposition to the potential literal reading of the ownership declaration, which is followed, then, by the invitation to use the cup (and therefore, we hypothesize, to befriend the owner). Perhaps we could even go so

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John D. Beazley: Some Attic Vases in the Cyprus Museum, in: Proceedings of the British Academy 33 (1948), pp. 7–31; Mabel Lang: Graffiti and Dipinti, The Athenian Agora XXI, Princeton 1976, 12 C6; Mary B. Moore: Attic Red-figured and White-ground Pottery, The Athenian Agora XXX, Princeton 1997, p. 319, no. 1410; Catoni: Bere vino puro (as fn. 6), p. 406, fn. 209.

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far as to hypothesize that the adversative affirms a more radical swerve, a difference between the sympotic world and the normal one. It is almost as if affirmations of ownership and exclusivity in the normal world do not mean the same thing in the sympotic realm. The cup belongs to So-and-so, but in the sympotic context such a statement would mean: “So-and-so offers his friendship: he who accepts it should drink from this cup, in the name of sympotic sharing.” The offer of use of the cup, in other words, was a gesture that allowed the named owner to propose himself as a potential lover. At the same time, however, the literal meaning of the ownership inscription is partially corrected and linked in a substantial way to its support as well as its context of use. The possibility that the schemata are articulated on a multiplicity of media might represent a case of (only potential?) dematerialization of images (or, better, figures); the case of ownership inscriptions on drinking vessels, on the other hand, might show how invisible language, when turned into a visible and articulated eikon through writing, might at times become so tightly linked to the support on which it is reproduced that it resists the possibility of dematerialization.

Anja Pawel

Ancient Articulation? Antique Schemata in Modern Art and Dance

Here, we see closely dance and visual art are connected. From the beginning, […] the dance provided the Greek sculptors with the attractive motifs we admire in many friezes. […] Sculpture and painting hence alternate, inspiring the dance, and vice versa, learning from it.1 A photograph, most likely taken by Hans Arp, shows Sophie Taeuber-Arp with Hugo Ball and his daughter Annemarie during a visit to Pompeii in April 1925 (Fig. 1). The Dada artists are shown standing in the forum in front of the market hall. Ball and Taeuber are wearing tourist’s clothing, with hats, bag, and coat, and Taeuber most likely is bearing a travel guide. Annemarie is the exception to these manifestly well-organized adults. Turning slightly as if caught in mid-movement, she sits on a frag­ment

Fig. 1  Anonymous (Hans Arp?): Hugo Ball, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Annemarie SchüttHennings in Pompeii, 1925, photograph, Clamart, Fondation Arp. 1

Trans. by A. P.; “Hier zeigt sich, wie eng Tanz und bildende Kunst zusammengehören. Von Anfang an. […] Den griechischen Plastikern gab der Tanz reizvolle Motive, die wir in den zahlreichen Friesen bewundern. […] Plastik und Malerei wechseln also ab, dem Tanz Anregung zu geben und, umgekehrt, von ihm zu lernen.” Ernst Schur: Der moderne Tanz, Munich 1910, p. 17.

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Fig. 2  Anonymous: Dancers, fresco cycle from the Villa di Cicerone in Pompei (Jan. 18th 1749) , 1–37 d.C., 30.5 × 161.5 cm, Naples, Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Napoli, Inv. 9297.

of ancient wall, wearing an expression of gratification, as if the scene were her habitual “playroom.” She wears a long white dress that falls in many folds over her legs. Her hair is loose; her left hand supports a tambourine, which she taps with her right hand. The impression she gives hovers between someone who, in childishnaive mode, is simply passing the time, and a dancing figure from the fresco cycle in the Villa di Cicerone in Pompeii (especially the one with the tambourine third from the right; Fig. 2) If seen in a row together with Aby Warburg’s collection of images of the ninfa in the Mnemosyne, the photograph demonstrates the abiding interest, in 1925, in – as Warburg called it – the afterlife of motion in antiquity. This paper explores the reception of antique schemata in early 20th century and the shift of meaning from ancient to modern, or rather from antiquity to avant-garde, concerning its articulation in dance as well as visual art. Both Ball and Taeuber had contact with the choreographer Rudolf Laban and his dancers in Switzerland. Taeuber even danced as his pupil (perhaps in a similar loose-fitting dress) in the outdoor setting of his summer school at Monte Verità.2 After this visit to Pompeii, Taeuber, who (after her dancing practice) decided to concentrate on the visual arts exclusively, produced several compositions with abstract dancing figures, their limbs arranged at right angles to their bodies (Fig. 3). The contrasting colors of the background and the varying heights of the dancers’ limbs all convey a rhythmic dynamic. The paintings were explicitly linked to the journey to

2

Cf. Carol-Lynne Moore: The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance According to Rudolf Laban. An Examination of his Unpublished Writings and Drawings, Lewiston/ Queenston/Lampeter 2009, p. 20.

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Fig. 3  Sophie Taeuber-Arp: 13 Figures, 1926, gouache on paper, 27.5 × 20 cm, Paris, Galerie Denise René.

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Fig. 4  Lawrence Alma-Tadema at Casa di Sallustio in Pompeii, 1862–1863, photograph, private collection.

Pompeii.3 Taeuber’s impressions of ancient Pompeii culminate in abstract compositions of flattish, schematic figures with squared off limbs. Even in Modernism, ancient memorial sites such as Pompeii were veritable pilgrimage destinations for artists. Paul Klee demonstrates this in a note on a visit to Naples in 1902: “In the Museo Nazionale I was fascinated most of all by the collection of paintings from Pompeii. […] The ancient paintings, in part wonderfully well

3

Cf. ex. cat.: Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Zum 100. Geburtstag [100-year anniversary], ed. by Beat Wismer, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 1989, p. 44; ex. cat.: Sophie Taeuber, Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris 1989, p. 128.

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Fig. 5  Pablo Picasso and Leonide Massine in the garden of the house of Marco Lucrezio in Pompeii, 1917, photograph, Paris, Musée Picasso.

preserved. And this art is very close to me at present.”4 And Pablo Picasso once said: “The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.”5 In 4

5

“Im Museo Nazionale fesselte mich die Pompei-Gemäldesammlung vor allem. Als ich eintrat, war ich aufs höchste ergriffen. Malende Antike, z. Tl. wunderschön erhalten. Zudem liegt mir gegenwärtig diese Kunst so nah!” in: Paul Klee: Tagebücher. 1898–1918, ed. by PaulKlee-Stiftung, Kunstmuseum Bern, Stuttgart 1988, p. 124. Engl. trans. in: Paul Klee: The Diaries of Paul Klee: 1898–1918, ed. by Felix Klee, Berkeley/Los Angeles 1964, pp. 98f. Picasso in an interview with Marius de Zayas, in: Charles Harrison/Paul Wood (eds.): Art in Theory: 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Malden 2003, p. 216, originally published in: The Arts, New York, May 1923, pp. 315–326; cf. Markus Müller: Die Antike im Spiegel

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1917, Picasso stayed in Rome for three months while he worked with the Russian ballet. Together with Jean Cocteau, the dancer Leonide Massine, and the company’s impresario Serge Diaghilev, he too visited the ancient ruins of Pompeii. At the Casa di Sallustio in Pompeii, Lawrence Alma-Tadema had the comfort of a stool and drawing board while he quietly executed his drawings (Fig. 4). The Dada artists and Picasso on the other hand managed without such equipment. As we can conclude from (a series of) photographs, they “portray” the ideals of antiquity through more “performative practices.” Although his work is marked by an intense awareness of antiquity,6 Picasso never had himself photographed together with his painting tools, but instead appears with the dancer Massine in various poses (shown here is an example where they are seated against a backdrop of architectural fragments; Fig. 5). The reception of antiquity in the early 20th century appeared at a more “abstract” or “indirect” level of depiction. This is a circumstance that complicates research into the topic, and may even be the reason it has not been well investigated to date. A far more commonly recognized contemporaneous encounter with antiquity was the one that involved certain modern dancers. Dancers sought out locales that would allow them to experience antiquity more passionately, as shown by the numerous photographers of dancers which incorporate stone fragments of the Acropolis. That the reformation in dance around 1900 would not have been possible without images of antiquity has already been well documented.7 In their search for antique Pathosformeln to use in creating their choreographies, dancers turned toward archaeological excavations and museums. The approach to ancient dance through images was also propelled by Maurice Emmanuel’s well-known book La danse grecque antique d'après les monuments figu­ rés.8 Published in 1896 (and translated into English in 1916), it offered a variety of poses, mainly taken from images found on antique vases and reliefs, allowing “Greek dance” to be reconstructed along these lines.9 A somewhat incongruous

6

7 8 9

der Moderne, in: ex. cat.: Die Antike im Spiegel der Moderne, Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso, Münster 2004, p. 5. For Picasso’s adoption of antique schemata, see: Moshe Barasch: Antike und klassische Moderne. Über Pablo Picasso, in: Richard Faber/Bernd Kytzler (eds.): Antike heute, Würzburg 1992, pp. 8–18; Christopher Green/Jens M. Daehner (eds.): Modern Antiquity: Picasso, De Chirico, Léger, Picabia, Los Angeles 2011; Kyriakos Koutsomalles: Picasso and Greece, Turin/ New York 2004. Cf. Gabriele Brandstetter: Tanz-Lektüren. Körperbilder und Raumfiguren der Avantgarde, Frankfurt/M. 1995, p. 60. Ibid., p. 64. We can assume Warburg knew of this book. Cf. Georges Didi-Huberman: Das Nachleben der Bilder. Kunstgeschichte und Phantomzeit nach Aby Warburg, Berlin 2010.

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Fig. 6 Etienne-Jules Marey, Figures taken from several photographic analyses. Reconstruction of steps.

addition to the book is the contemporary series of chronophotographic images by Etienne-Jules Marey. They show female dancers, the first demonstrating the technical basics of classical ballet, the second in a billowing dress, performing movements in a more “antique” style (Fig. 6), intended, no doubt, to emphasize the transitory character of the drawings after the model of antiquity, and suggesting both preceding and subsequent movement in combination with written explanations as if they were just fragments of a fully comprehensive “choreography of the antique.” This anachronism and the treatment of drawings on the classical model as if they were photographs were rightly criticized.10 Emmanuel accords both the drawings and photographs the same capacity to “point toward reality” for the purpose of systematically creating choreography in the style of Ancient Greece. Maria Luisa Catoni has shown that Ancient Greek depictions of bodily attitudes (schemata) were often derived from dance: they were translated, then, from a moving art into a static one, and used to convey social conventions or values.11 She argues that the schemata were designed to suggest preparation for movement as well as its execution, and indeed to represent an entire sequence of movements from a 10

11

Ibid., p. 289; Frederick Naerebout: ‘In Search of a Dead Rat’: The Reception of Ancient Greek Dance in Late Nineteenth-Century Europe and America, in: Fiona Macintosh (ed.): The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance, Oxford 2010, pp. 39–59, p. 45. Maria Luisa Catoni: Mimesis and Motion in Classical Antiquity, in: Sigrid Leyssen/Pirkko Rathgeber (eds.): Bilder animierter Bewegung/Images of Animate Movement, Munich 2013, pp. 198–219, p. 204.

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dance piece, along with its associated meanings.12 But this strategy was successful only when the observer had the necessary knowledge (period eye) to correctly analyze the schemata.13 For recipients in the early 20th century, this was no longer the case. Duncan, however, was correct to say: “There is not one [pose or gesture on the Greek vases or bas reliefs] which in its movement does not presuppose another movement.”14 Neither for the observer in antiquity nor for the modern dancer, therefore, did the image represent only stasis, but instead always evoked a certain amount of kinesis. This was perhaps what Emmanuel had tried to show with the help of the chronophotographs. The schemata were designed to allow movement – which often originated in dance and was then translated into images – to work in the other direction as well: from image to dance move.15 A similar process took place with the reception of “ancient Greek dances” in the early 20th century; here, however, knowledge of the meaning and embeddedness of the schemata was lacking – as the dance critic Oscar Bie explains in 1919: “Ancient dance was mime with a typical sign language, its movement personal and natural, no grammar of steps to govern it and none to pass it down: Scenes of mime that are gone in an instant. They do not grow in posterity’s memory nor in the school of art.”16 Another dance critic, André Levinson, argues against assuming the “liveliness” of images: The basic inability of the plastic arts, sculpture and painting, to reproduce movement in all its consecutive moments has been the fatal obstacle to attempts at restoring ancient dance forms. […] These art forms can only fix a single instant of a movement, chiefly its beginning or end.17 Therefore, Levinson points out that the ancient dance based on antique schemata can only preserve single poses and positions, not “a complete conception of the

12 13 14

15 16

17

Ibid., p. 206. Ibid., p. 207. Isadora Duncan: The Dance of the Future, Talk in Berlin, March 1903, in: Magdalena Tzaneva (ed.): Linie werden: Isadora Duncans Tanz der Zukunft, Berlin 2009, p. 30. Naerebout conceived this quote as evidence that Duncan had read Emmanuel, see Naerebout: ‘In search of a dead rat’ (as fn. 10), p. 50. Catoni: Mimesis and Motion (as fn. 11), p. 210. Trans. by A. P.; “Der antike Tanz war Mimik mit typischer Gebärdensprache, die Bewegung ist persönlich und natürlich, keine Grammatik der Schritte bindet ihn und keine überliefert ihn: Mimische Szenen, die im Augenblick vergehen. Sie wachsen nicht in das Gedächtnis der Nachwelt, nicht in die Schule der Kunst […].” Oscar Bie: Der Tanz, Berlin 1919, pp. 204f. André Levinson: Ballet old and new, trans. by Susan Cook Summer, New York 1982, p. 26.

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dynamics of dance.”18 The appropriation of these ancient poses already indicates the inability of the dancer, as Levinson illustrates with reference to Duncan.19 In general, Levinson was an opponent of Duncan and her reenactment of antiquity in modern dance. In contrast, he passionately defended the classical school of ballet and was also opposed to a collaboration between visual artists with theatre and dance. In his view, an ancient Greek dance must have been as skillful and technically elaborate as a classical ballet.20 Her naked feet, her inadequate ballet training, and her claims to reactivate ancient images made Duncan a highly polarizing figure, who must have been widely discussed in artistic circles. Notwithstanding his interest in the afterlife of antiquity, not even Warburg was terribly impressed with the way in which these discourses were embodied in the dancing figure of Isadora Duncan.21 But Duncan also realized that, around 1900, the reception of antiquity in dance had its limits: “To return to the dances of the Greeks would be as impossible as it is unnecessary. We are not Greeks and cannot therefore dance Greek dances.”22 She was aware, of course, that antique dance could not be revived through images; and it was in her own interest to propose, rather, that a new art form – which she called the “Dance of the Future” – be created from the old. If Duncan claimed this “forward-looking” approach for herself, then Levinson may have been more “backward” with respect to contemporary culture – even if Duncan was more “backward” with her reenactment of antiquity than Levinson was in praising the much “younger” ballet. A realization of a “Dance of the Future” based on Antiquity required an orientation towards different formal elements in order to convert the antique schemata, as Duncan understood them, into dance. Bie and (as we have seen) Levinson criticized Duncan for having no professional dance technique,23 which meant that she had no acquired style of movement (e.g. classical ballet) on which to draw or through which she might have been able to link various poses to each other. Even if the ancient Greeks, but also Emmanuel in the 19th century, tried their best to create schemata with a transitory character, Duncan was no longer a Lady Hamilton, who presented single “attitudes” inspired by ancient art or created simple 18 19 20 21 22 23

Ibid., pp. 26f. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid., p. 71. Cf. Sabine Mainberger: Experiment Linie. Künste und ihre Wissenschaften um 1900, Berlin 2010, p. 240. Duncan: Dance of the Future (as fn. 14), p. 34. Bie: Der Tanz (as fn. 16), pp. 204ff.: “[…] ihr Körper war ein Säulenbau mit schwachem Gebälk. […] Sie versuchte malerische Stellungen durch lebhafte Bewegung zu verbinden, aber ihr Rumpf war gänzlich unausgebildet.”

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“frozen” poses in the manner of tableaux vivants. How did she compensate for the absence of movement within the image in her dancing? How did she “[…] succeed in combining painterly poses through vivacious movement […],” as Bie put it?24 How to articulate those ancient schemata in a modern dance? The solution seemed to lie in the line. In 1903, Duncan wrote of a trip to Greece, “This here is perfection: form, line, rhythm, this is my dance.”25 The bewegtes Beiwerk, the outlines of antique schemata and sculptures may have suggested to Duncan that she take up “line” as an abstract concept for her dance. A dance critic of the time seems to confirm this influence when he explains: “This is why the Greeks covered the limbs with a billowing dress; in beautiful lines it flows, creates a consistent surface, and when this consistency is disturbed, movement is at work.”26 And in turn, Duncan came to the conclusion, as quoted by Hermann Bahr in an essay, that every melody contains a line that can be drawn on paper. Now I have to learn to control myself to the point where my body responds to my impulse and can thus become this line. I have not managed this as yet. I can achieve it with my hands, I can achieve it with my feet, but as yet I do not completely become the line. […] I do not doubt however that it is possible to completely become the line. That is what I am seeking. Only then would dance become an art.27 It seems that the undulating line served Duncan as a way of articulating the transition between individual “attitudes.” Around 1900, modern dance – unlike classical ballet – did not yet enjoy its present-day status of an art form in its own right. It was a type of dance without role models in its own discipline, a dance whose models were taken from the “static” schemata of antiquity, and which sought direction in 24 25 26

27

Ibid., pp. 204ff. Max Niehaus: Isadora Duncan. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, Berlin 1981, p. 29; cf. Brandstetter: Tanz-Lektüren (as fn. 7), p. 111. Trans. by A. P.;“Darum legten die Griechen über die Glieder das flutende Gewand; in schönen Linien fliesst es, gibt Oberflächeneinheit, und indem diese Einheit gestört wird, wirkt die Bewegung.” Schur: Der moderne Tanz (as fn. 1), p. 15. “Also jede Melodie enthält eine Linie, die man aufzeichnen kann. Nun müsste es mir noch gelingen, mich so beherrschen zu lernen, dass mein Körper, auf meinen Impuls hin, vollkommen zu dieser Linie werden könnte. Soweit bin ich auch noch nicht. Ich kann es mit den Händen, ich kann es mit den Füßen, aber ich gehe noch immer nicht völlig in der Linie auf. Es bleibt immer noch etwas von meiner Person da. Ich zweifle aber nicht, dass es möglich wäre, vollkommen zur Linie zu werden. Das ist es, was ich suche. Dann wäre der Tanz erst eine Kunst.” Hermann Bahr: Isadora Duncan, in: Neues Wiener Tagblatt, February 15, 1902, pp. 1f.; Engl. trans. in: Tzaneva: Linie werden (as fn. 14), p. 14.

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Fig. 7 Walter Crane: Tanzende Figur mit den die Bewegung beherrschenden Linien, 1901, drawing.

the associated arts of its own time. The undulating line was a crucial stylistic principle for Art Noveau, and was associated with liveliness. Henri van de Velde, for example, attributed a vital potential to it (also with regard to dance).28 Because of its dual properties of “sensualism and formalism,” it was a frequent topic of discussion in the context of theories of empathy as well.29 A drawing by Walter Crane from his book Line and Form of 1901 seems to illuminate this circumstance: next to a dancer in antique dress, he presents a schema of her posture in swinging, curved lines (Fig. 7). The impression of a “rounded flow of lines” in Duncan’s performances is also confirmed by descriptions by Eva Palmer-Sikelianos, an American archaeologist who was particularly interested in the reenactment of antique theatre (and therefore in bodily practices as well as dance):30

28 29 30

Henry van de Velde: Zum neuen Stil, ed. by Hans Curjel, Munich 1955, pp. 181–186. Cf. Mainberger: Experiment Linie (as fn. 21), p. 39. In collaboration with her husband, the renowned Greek writer Angelos Sikelianos, she organized the two festivals of Delphi in 1927 and 1930.

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Fig. 8  Eva Palmer-Sikelianos imitates a pose, undated, photograph, Athens, Archive Benaki-Museum.

Her arms were beautiful and the soft undulations were infinitely charming to a world which knew only the tiresome stiffness of the ballet; but there is not a single example of any work of Greek art before the fourth century which resembles Isadora’s dancing. […] Even in powerful dances […] the lines of her body went into curves. She always faced her audience frankly, head and chest in the same direction. There was never the powerful accent or a strong angle, and never the isolating effect of keeping the head in profile with the chest “en face” which is characteristic of archaic Greek art.31 31

Upward Panic: The Autobiography of Eva Palmer-Sikelianos, ed. by John P. Anton, Chur 1993, p. 182; cf. Artemis Leontis: Griechische Tragödie und moderner Tanz – eine alternative

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Palmer knew Duncan’s performances, but was herself more interested in the scientific reworking of Greek antiquity; she sought a “revision” of Duncan’s methods.32 While both women shared a turn against ballet and its “stiffness,” as Palmer called it, the latter was more interested in the Archaic period, and her reception of antiquity differed from Duncan’s. Based on the interpretation of these archaic images, as the above-cited passage shows, Palmer arrived at a quite different schema according to which dance movements should be articulated: she claimed that those movements should feature pronounced angles, with the head shown in profile and the chest en

Fig. 9  Maurice-Louis Branger: School of Raymond Duncan in Montfermeil, 1913, photograph, Paris, Parisienne de photographie collections Roger-Viollet.

face.33 This can be seen in a photograph of Palmer in antique dress and posing in exactly this manner (Fig. 8). As shown in the quotation, Palmer’s sense of form contrasts with that of Duncan. But Palmer is far more positive with regard to the way

32 33

Archäologie, in: Eva Kocziskzy: Ruinen in der Moderne. Archäologie und die Künste, Berlin 2011, pp. 199–219, p. 209. Ibid., p. 206. Ibid., p. 210; cf. the essay by Glenn W. Most, where he describes the actual discovery of the Archaic Period in the 19th century and the increasingly positive reception in the 20th century of works Winckelmann had dismissed as precursors of classical antiquity: Die Entdeckung der Archaik. Von Ägina nach Naumburg, in: Bernd Seidensticker/Martin Vöhler (eds.): Urge­ ­­schichten der Moderne. Die Antike im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart/Weimar 2001, pp. 20–39.

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in which ancient images are interpreted by Duncan’s brother Raymond: “But Raymond saw the applicability in the theatre of these ancient Greek poses, which he had himself been copying in the Louvre; and later, when he formed classes of his own, he taught angular movements copied from archaic vases.”34 A photograph of a group of Raymond Duncan’s pupils in the open air, wearing antique style garments, clearly shows these guidelines being implemented, at least in the angular poses they adopt at the moment the photograph is taken (Fig. 9). Palmer also described the style of the American dancer Ted Shawn as “marked by archaism” and “angular,” with “head and feet in profile, whilst the chest or back is presented in full width.”35 Shawn adopts this very pose in photographs that show him wearing a costume designed for the play Gnossienne (first staged in 1917; Fig. 10). The pattern of spirals on the shorts has already been identified as inspired by Minoan art.36 He stands en pointe, the lower body turned to the side, and the upper body turning from the hips to face the front, just as Palmer described. This striving to achieve two-dimensionality by rotating the upper body in relation to the lower involved uncomfortable and painful positions and must have required enormous effort from the dancers.37 As can be deduced from reports and photographs, the reception of antique dance by Palmer, Shawn, and Raymond Duncan led to poses in which the limbs were held at angles, and to a simulated “flatness” that can only be traced to the influence of images:38 here is an interpretation of the “dance of Ancient Greece” that appears almost naive by virtue of the apparent lack of reflection on the fact that the images served simply as archetypes.

34 35 36

37

38

Anton: Upward Panic (as fn. 31), p. 183. Ibid., p. 224; cf. also Leontis: Griechische Tragödie und moderner Tanz (as fn. 31), pp. 211–214. Christine Morris: Lord of the dance: Ted Shawn’s Gnossienne and its Minoan Context, in: Nicoletta Momigliano/Alexandre Farnoux (eds.): Cretomania: Modern Desires for the Minoan Past, London/New York 2016, pp. 111–123. This resembles the approach of the Russian stage director Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, who understood bodily technique in relation to dance. His vision of the modern actor was influenced by the afterlife of antiquity and he considered his work as the creation of plastic shapes in space. In a pictorial manner, he formed the bodies of the actors as flat and frozen, as though they were part of a bas-relief. They had to perform certain exercises in geometric shapes and were even trained in geometric drawing. Cf. Jörg Bochow: Das Theater Meyerholds und die Biomechanik, Berlin 2010, pp. 16–36. Concerning the discourse of “flatness” within the stage design at the Russian ballet, cf. Gabriele Brandstetter: Die Inszenierung der Fläche. Ornament und Relief im Theaterkonzept der Ballets Russes, in: Claudia Jeschke/Ursel Berger/Birgit Zeidler (eds.): Spiegelungen. Die Ballets Russes und die Künste, Berlin 1997, pp. 147–163.

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Fig. 10  Albert Witzel: Ted Shawn in Gnossiene, 1919, photographic print, 21 × 15 cm, Denishawn Collection, New York Public Library.

Another, famous example takes up this principle of flatness: Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography of The Afternoon of a Faun (1912),39 a piece whose costumes were inspired by Minoan art as well40 and which was remote from the conventional 39

40

Thomas Munro already distinguished between Duncan’s style of “danced antiquity” and Nijinsky’s Faun. While the Faun was inspired by vases and reliefs from 6th and early 5th cen­ turies B.C., Duncan was more interested in Hellenistic sculpture, in: “The Afternoon of a Faun” and the Interrelation of the Arts, in: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 10/2 (1951), pp. 95–111, p. 109. Cf. Nicoletta Momigliano: Modern Dance and the Seduction of Minoan Crete, in: Silke Knippschild/Marta García Morcillo (eds.): Seduction and Power. Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts, London/New Delhi/New York 2013, pp. 4–55.

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notions of classical ballet at the time.41 With Faun, Nijinsky – who was in fact classically trained – even approached Ausdruckstanz.42 This ballet has been thoroughly investigated, and has already been reconstructed,43 so only a few details will be mentioned here: During the 11-minute piece, the dancers strive to deny the viewer the impression of a three-dimensional stage. They show their heads and legs in profile only, while their upper bodies appear in frontal position (Fig. 11). This may be explained by the fact that the choreography was also based on antique schemata, namely those found in the department of antique ceramics of the Louvre, which Nijinsky is thought to have visited, and which were used as models for the poses of the faun and the nymphs.44 After attending a performance, Èmile Jaques-Dalcroze – the inventor of rhythmic gymnastics – criticized the fact that “in the play of their limbs, the point of departure was the attitude and not the movement itself.”45 Like Levinson and Bie, he concluded: But if it be neccessary for the plastic arts, deprived of the help of the time element, to produce a synthesis by means of fixed corporal attitudes, it is against truth and nature for the dancer to adapt this synthesis as the starting-point of his dance, and to try and re-create the illusion of movement by juxtaposing series of attitudes, linked, each to its neighbour, by gestures, instead of resorting to the source of plastic expression – which is movement itself.46 Only in Duncan’s dance – which he regarded as the most convincing and lively performance – did Dalcroze recognize (at least occasionally) an attempt to link ancient postures with each other.47

41 42

43 44

45 46 47

Cf. Juliet Bellow: Modernism on Stage. The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-garde, Farnham 2013, p. 14. Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller: Unglückliche Liaison, Unvereinbarkeit der Charaktere oder späte Liebe? Die Ballets Russes und Mitteleuropa, in: Claudia Jeschke/Nicole Haitzinger (eds.): Schwäne und Feuervögel. Die Ballets Russes 1909–1929. Russische Bildwelten in Bewegung, Leizpig 2009, pp. 122–139, p. 130. The ballet was restored by Ann Hutchinson Guest and Claudia Jeschke on the basis of Nijinsky’s dance notation, see id.: Nijinsky’s Faune Restored, Amsterdam 1997. Jean-Michel Nectoux: Nachmittags eines Fauns. Dokumentation einer legendären Choreographie, Munich 1989, p. 20; id.: Isadora et Nijinski: Danser l’antique, in: Imago Musicae. International Yearbook of Musical Iconography 25 (2012), pp. 187–200. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze: Rhythm, Music, and Education, trans. by Harold F. Rubinstein, New York/London 1921, p. 268. Ibid., pp. 269ff. Ibid., p. 268.

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Fig. 11  Adolf de Meyer: Nijinsky and a Female Dancer, from the album Sur le Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, 1914, Collotype, 14.8 × 14 cm, Paris, Musée d’Orsay.

It was the Faun that, although its origin was found in antique schemata, many other recipients perceived as being ahead of its time: With its straight lines, angles, flattish appearance, and – as described by Dalcroze – lack of movement, the critics regarded its style as Cubist.48 Derived from antiquity and interpreted as modern, the

48

“Nijinski va faire dans l’ ‘Après-midi d’un Faune’ des essais de chorégraphie cubiste,” Charles Tenroc, Comœdia 4 (April 18, 1912); cf. Davinia Caddy: The Ballets Russes and Beyond: Music and Dance in Belle-Époque Paris, New York 2012, p. 98.

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performance had become the first “cubist dance.”49 Palmer’s descriptions of an “angular style” of dance, implying a preoccupation with the Archaic period of antiquity, can be compared with Nijinsky’s likewise antique-inspired style of movement in the Faun – except that the first Paris audiences experienced it as modern. The reception of antiquity in dance was interpreted here through a contemporary artistic vocabulary. Regarding the very next piece Nijinsky choreographed, Jeux of 1913, one critic ironically remarked: “Alas! For a long time now, choreography has forgotten its subject and has been primarily preoccupied with demonstrating its pictorial erudition by twisting the fragile limbs of [the dancers] Karsavina and Ludmila Schollar in the name of Matisse, Metzinger, and Picasso.”50 Contemporary painters inspired by antiquity51 were blamed for the flat, edged style of dance perpetuated by Nijinsky and embodied in contemporary dance. Jeux, moreover, was a piece in which “[…] everything is at an angle. […] [It] is conceived in the vein of the Cubists. It is a triumph of angularity […].”52 Another reviewer claims that the Russian ballet “[…] is to choreographic art what cubism is to painting.”53 The stylistic properties of dance – movement and space – were regarded as equivalent to those of the contemporary visual arts. A shift of emphasis occurred from antiquity to avantgarde. And while Nijinsky and his dancers were compared with the most recent movements in art, opposition to Duncan’s dance resulted from the fact that – despite her own attempts to promote it as pointing toward the future – her audience still understood her approach as a revival of antique schemata.54 She struggled to create her “Dance of the Future,” which, due to its “round-lined” style, was always seen as antique. The Faun, though, like modern art, turned against convention and

49

50

51 52 53 54

Hanna Järvinen has already focused briefly on the idea of Cubism concerning the Faun in: Dancing without Space – On Nijinskys L’Après-midi d’un Faune (1912), in: Dance Research 27/1 (2009), pp. 28–64. Trans. by A. P.; “Hélas! Le chorégraphie avait, depuis longtemps, oublié son sujet et se préoccupait surtout de démontrer son érudition picturale en tordant les membres délicats de Karsavina et de Ludmila Schollar au nom de Matisse, de Metzinger et de Picasso.” Émile Vuillermoz: “La Saison Russe au Théâtre des Champs-Elysées,” June 15th, La Mercure Musical 9 (1913), Paris, p. 53; cf. Millicent Hodson: Three Graces and Disgraces of Jeux, in: id. (ed.): Nijinsky’s Bloomsbury Ballet. Reconstruction of Dance and Design for JEUX, Hillsdale 2008, p. 12. Cf. ex. cat.: Shaping the Beginning: Modern Artists and the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Friedrich Teja Bach, Museio Kykladikes ¯ Techn¯es, Athens 2006. Morning Post, June 26, 1913; quoted after Hodson: Jeux (as fn. 50), p. 209. Anonymous, “Nijinsky Shocks Paris with Tennis Dance,” New York Tribune (May 18, 1913), p. 9; cf. Hodson: Jeux (as fn. 50), p. 215. Tim Scholl: From Petipa to Balanchine. Classical revival and the modernization of ballet, London 1994, p. 52.

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hence faced a critical audience.55 As an art genre that was not yet established, the new dance needed a connection with the visual arts in order to be understood, pigeon-holed, and accepted. Geometric shapes, flatness, cubic forms, and angles were central compositional elements of abstract art at the time. The attempt to articulate the afterlife of antiquity was indeed avant-garde.

55

Caddy: Ballets Russes and Beyond (as fn. 48), p. 101.

Yannis Hadjinicolaou

Blotches as Symbolic Articulation

1. Aby Warburg’s Anxiety Thanks to a letter written by Aby Warburg on January 22, 1927, to his friend, Rembrandt specialist Carl Neumann, we know about Warburg’s first encounter with Rembrandt’s The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis.1 He saw the painting as a reproduction in John Kruse’s book Rembrandt’s Colors, which was published in 1913 (Fig. 1).2 A reproduction of Claudius Civilis is a prominent feature in the book, serving as its frontispiece and protected by rice paper in a way that is reminiscent of how paintings were once protected by curtains, and hence elicited an emotional response from the beholder.3 The moment Warburg first turned the page of rice paper he felt stunned: for him it was the epiphany of distilling both subject matter into actions 1



2 3

Ernst Gombrich: Aby Warburg. Eine intellektuelle Biografie, Hamburg 2006, pp. 307–322; Charlotte Schoell-Glass: Aby Warburg und der Antisemitismus. Kulturwissenschaft als Geistespolitik, Frankfurt/M. 1998, pp. 200–205; Claudia Wedepohl: Conspiracy in the Common Room, in: The Warburg Institute Newsletter 15 (2004), pp. 2f.; Andrea Pinotti: La Sfida del batavo monocolo. Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl, Carl Neumann sul Claudius Civilis di Rembrandt, in: Revista di Storia della Filosofia 3 (2005), pp. 493–599; Claudia Cieri Via: Warburg, Rembrandt e Il percorso dei salti del pensiero, in: Schifanoia 42/43 (2013), pp. 35–55. On this topic see also my lecture: Die Neue Sachlichkeit Rembrandts. Aby Warburg’s Claudius Civilis, in: Art History for Artists: Interactions between Scholarly Discourse and Artistic Practice in the 19th Century, International conference, Technische Universität Berlin, 7.–9.7.2016, in: Journal for Art Historiography (forthcoming). This paper is an expanded version of: Yannis Hadjinicolaou: Macchie Acting. Alternative Pictorial Practices in Early Modern Europe, in: 34th World Congress of Art History (CIHA) in Beijing (forthcoming). I would like to thank Nicos Hadjinicolaou and Herman Roodenburg for their valuable comments and critique. John Kruse: Die Farben Rembrandts, Stockholm 1913. For the curtain motive, see ex. cat.: Hinter dem Vorhang. Verhüllung und Enthüllung seit der Renaissance, ed. by Claudia Blümle/Beat Wismer, Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Munich 2016.

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Fig. 1  Frontispiece in: John Kruse: Die Farben Rembrandts, Stockholm 1913.

and the reception of antiquity north of the Alps. The reproduction in the book and the painted copy that Warburg commissioned after he saw the picture in Stockholm profoundly impacted his way of thinking too. Karl Schuberth’s copy of Claudius Civilis (now at the Warburg Institute in London; Fig. 2) inspired him to explore what he called Rembrandt’s “new objectivity” (Neue Sachlichkeit) in his Hamburg lecture Italian Antiquity in the Age of Rembrandt (1926).4 The dynamism of the impasto in Rembrandt’s painting and the active role of the paint layers in the original (Fig. 3) are missing in the copy (Fig. 4). For Warburg, the importance of Claudius Civilis resides less in the palpable quality of its paint – despite the fact that impasto and brushwork were Rembrandt’s primary agents for moving the viewer emotionally – and more in its “new objectivity.” Warburg saw the impact of color characterized in being “you live and don’t harm me” (Du lebst und thust mir nichts), a stance that was reinforced through his “thought space” (Denkraum).5

4 5

Aby Warburg: Italienische Antike im Zeitalter Rembrandts [1926], in: id.: Nachhall der Antike. Zwei Untersuchungen, ed. by Pablo Schneider, Zürich/Berlin 2012, pp. 69–102. Cf. Frank Fehrenbach: „Du lebst und thust mir nichts“. Aby Warburg und die Lebendigkeit der Kunst, in: Hartmut Böhme/Johannes Endres (eds.): Der Code der Leidenschaften. Fetischismus in den Künsten, Munich 2010, pp. 124-145.

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Fig. 2  Karl Schubert: Copy of The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis, 1926, oil on canvas, 196 × 309 cm, London, Warburg Institute.

Fig. 3  Detail of Rembrandt: The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis, around 1661–1662, oil on canvas, 196 × 309 cm, Stockholm, National Museum.

Fig. 4  Detail of Fig. 2.

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2. Dürer’s Blotches It is striking how blotches of color as a painterly paradigm in early modern Europe were connected to Warburg’s anxiety as well as to his enthusiasm. Albrecht Dürer’s Dream Vision (Fig. 5) underscores this standpoint.6 In a bird’s eye view of a panoramic landscape, blue blots emerge in the background and flow down the paper toward the horizon. They are positioned asymmetrically, and on the right-hand side of the composition they consolidate into a kind of inverted blue mushroom. Dated 1525, the narrative in Dürer’s Dream Vision is related in both text and image, each occupying about half of the sheet. The medium of watercolor combines the fluid aspect of the material in the Heraclitian sense of panta rhei (everything flows) with the dream’s description, Dürer’s nightmare of a terrible flood.7 The blue patches seem to flow over the paper, thus suggesting both a formal and a contextual relationship to Dürer’s narration. Playing with “proximity” and “distance,” the blots illuminate his dream in a physical and emotional way, for as soon as the water approaches, Dürer awakens from his nightmare and is severely shaken, trembling all over: “das ich also erschrack, do ich erwacht, das mir al mein leichnam zitret und lang nit recht zu mir selbs kam.”8 He articulates this reaction on paper and at the same time tries to “rationalize” the uncanny (the tsunami is still far away), thus revealing a structural resemblance to Warburg’s complex interaction with Rembrandt’s use of color. The Dutch used the word handeling to refer to also bodily or performative actions, and Dürer’s handling of color relies on the artist’s sensorimotor movements 6 7

8

Jean Michel Massing: Dürer’s Dreams, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986), pp. 238–243. David Freedberg: Dürer’s Limbs, in: ex. cat. The Young Dürer. Drawing the Figure, ed. by Stephanie Buck/Stephanie Porras, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London 2013, pp. 37–56; Thomas Hensel: Albrecht Dürer, Erwin Panofsky und der performative turn der Kunstwissenschaft, in: Thomas Hensel/Ulrich Reck/Siegfried Zielenski (eds.): Goodbye, Dear Pigeons, Cologne 2002, pp. 330–338, pp. 336f. “Jm 1525 jor nach dem Pfinxstag zwischen dem mitwoch und pfintzdag in der nacht im Schlaff hab ich dies Gesicht gesehen, wy viel grosser Wassen vom himmel fillen Und das erst traff das erthrich ungefer 4 meill fan mir mit einer sölchen grausamkeit und mit einem übergrossem räuschen und czersprützen und ertrenckett das gantz lant. In solchem erschrack jch so gar schwerlich, das ich doran erwachett, edan dy andern wasser filln. Und dy wasser, dy da fillen, dy warn fast gros. Und der fill ettliche weit, ettliche neher, und sy kamen so hoch herab, das sy jm gedunken gleich langsam filn. Aber do das erst wasser das ertich traff, schir herbey kam, da fill es mit einer solchen geschwindigkeit, wynt und brausen, das ich also erschrack, do ich erwacht, das mir al mein leichnam zitret und lang nit recht zu mir selbs kam. Aber do ich am mogen auffstund, molet jch hy oben, wy jchs gesehen hett. Gott wende alle ding zum besten. Albrecht Dürer.” Quoted after Kristina Herrmann-Fiore: Dürers neue Kunst der Landschaftsaquarelle, in: ex. cat. Albrecht Dürer, ed. by Klaus Albrecht Schröder/ Maria Luise Sternath, Albertina Wien, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, pp. 26–43, pp. 40f.

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Fig. 5  Albrecht Dürer: Dream Vision, 1525, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 × 42.5 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Kunstkammer.

and his creative struggle with matter in the sense of controlling chance concordant with the principles intrinsic to blotting.9 This controlled lack of control coincides with Dürer’s struggle in coming to terms with his nightmare in word and image. The spontaneous eruption of water finds its counterpart in Dürer’s rapid execution in the handling of the paint. This composition, not unique in his oeuvre, reveals the creative potential of blotting in the tradition of Leonardo as well as of Pliny the Elder and Alberti.10 The emerging form intrinsically involves an act of negation, like   9

10

For the term handeling see: Yannis Hadjinicolaou: Denkende Körper–Formende Hände. “Handeling” in Kunst und Kunsttheorie der Rembrandtisten (Acus et Imago 18), Berlin/ Boston 2016, pp. 15–27. Leon Battista Alberti: Das Standbild. Die Malkunst. Grundlagen der Malerei, ed. by Oskar Bätschmann/Christian Schäublin, Darmstadt 2000, pp. 142f.; Leonardo da Vinci: Treatise on Painting, vol. 1, ed. by Amon Philip McMahon, Princeton 1956, pp. 50f. Alberti mentions how “certain shapes” were perceived by chance. In this sense it remains unclear how these shapes were formed, so that the example of the blot is a possibility, especially in consideration of another example found in Alberti, i. e., his mention of agate.

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Fig. 6  Albrecht Dürer: Self-Portrait of Dürer while sick, around 1512–1513, pen and ink with watercolor, 12 × 10.8 cm, Bremen, Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett.

formerly Protogenes’ sponge and its splatters and smears, where sheer chance created “truth to nature” (fecitque in picture fortuna naturam).11 There is also the passage in the elder Pliny’s Historia Naturalis about the agate in Pyrrhus’s ring and of the nine Muses who emerged from the veins of the stone. Another narration based on

11

Pliny the Elder: On Ancient Greek Painting, 35th Book of Natural History, ed. by Alekos Levidis, Athens 1994, pp. 92ff. Karel van Mander likewise underscores this fact in his Grondt (1604), namely that the horse’s mouth displayed macchie left by a sponge: “Want de spattingh der sponsy is ghebleve aes sijn Peerts mont hangend.” Karel van Mander: Das Lehrgedicht des Karel van Mander, ed. by Rudolf Hoecker, The Hague 1916, p. 226.

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the blotting paradigm is a version of the Veronica Legend, which is a kind of Christian version of Protogenes’ sponge. It involves the substitution of image and body, as the artefact, the Vera Icon, is created out of organic, bodily fluids (dirt, sweat, and blood), which miraculously form the image of Christ.12 A blotch of color paint oscillates between representing something and nothing, and is related to Leonardo’s notion of the geometric point.13 For Dürer the point or dot is a space of pictorial activity. Macchie are simultaneously visible and blind spots.14 Dürer explicitly refers to points and dots by pointing to a yellow spot on his body with his finger and by writing that “I hurt where the yellow spot is and my finger points to” (Fig. 6).15 Within the contours describing an asymmetric circle, his index finger also casts a red shadow in the shape of a macchia. The work comprises three modes of articulation – pictorial, written, and gestural –, not to mention the age-related stains on the paper’s surface. Each of these modes opens up new possibilities of viewing the image in its reciprocal totality, expanding the meaning of articulation into a more universal symbolism. Dürer’s blot can be simultaneously seen, pointed at, and described, even if what generates it remains an enigma. But its creative ambiguity enhances the image’s critical potency.

3. Epistemic Blotches Productive ambiguity is also emphasized in what might be called “epistemic blotches.” One famous example exemplifying this are the dark spots on the sun, which both Christoph Scheiner and Galileo discovered, leading to a debate on the nature thereof. Galileo’s friend, the artist Ludovico Cigoli, was also involved. Schei­­ner found

12

13

14 15

Gerhard Wolf: The Origins of Painting, in: RES 36 (1999), pp. 62f.; Dario Gamboni: Acheiropoiesis, Autopoiesis und potentielle Bilder im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Friedrich Weltzien (ed.): Von selbst. Autopoietische Verfahren in der Ästhetik des 19. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2006, pp. 63ff.; Horst Bredekamp: Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2007, Berlin 2010, pp. 173–178. Cf. Frank Fehrenbach: Leonardo’s Point, in: Alina Payne (ed.): Vision and Its Instruments. Art, Science and Technology in Early Modern Europe, University Park 2015, pp. 69–70. The French scholar and astrologer Jacques Gaffarel defined in 1634 a point as follows: “a medium between being and naught, or the possibility of being.” Robert Felfe: Naturform und bildnerische Prozesse. Elemente einer Wissensgeschichte in der Kunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Actus et Imago 13), Berlin/Boston 2015, pp. 168f. Trans. by Y. H.; “Do der gelb fleck ist und mit dem finger drawff dewt do ist mir we.” Joseph Leo Koerner: The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art, Chicago/London 1993, p. 177. In German Fleck also means “place” (Ort, locus).

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Fig. 7  Alexander Mair: Scheiner’s sun spots from Oct. 21, 1611, engraving, Christoph Scheiner: Tres Epistolae De Maculis Solaribus Scriptae ad Marcum Velserum, Augsburg 1612, B4.

Fig. 8  Ludovico Cigoli: Drawing series with sun spots, 1612, pen on paper, Gal. 57, F. 62r, Florence, BNCF.

“several quite dark spots like blackish blotches on the sun,”16 which he was unable to identify. But after a while he came to the conclusion that they are “not really spots but bodies that partially conceal the sun from us and are therefore stars.”17 Hence they evolved from blind spots into something more concrete. But what they were exactly could still not be fully grasped, even by studying them through a telescope and documenting them in the medium of drawing, which Scheiner in this case commissioned Alexander Mair to execute for him. The visual impression as seen through the telescope and its concrete shape on paper enhances the “objectivity” of the phenomenon.18 The spots inside a circle, which by all appearances represent the sun, appear to be little more than dots or small meteorites (Fig. 7). In Galileo’s model the blots are much more differentiated than in Scheiner’s dot-like and static shapes. Cigoli executed several drawings for Galileo’s observations (Fig. 8). They make the 16

17

18

Trans. by Y. H.; “einige ziemlich dunkle Flecken wie schwärzliche Klekse in der Sonne.” Quoted after Horst Bredekamp: Galilei der Künstler. Der Mond, die Sonne, die Hand, Berlin 2009, p. 219. Trans. by Y. H.; “Dies bedeutet, daß sie nicht auf der Sonne sind. Vielmehr würde ich folgern, daß sie nicht wirklich Flecke sind, sondern eher Körper, welche teilweise die Sonne vor uns verbergen, und daher Sterne.” Quoted after Horst Bredekamp: Galilei der Künstler (as fn. 16), p. 219. Cf. ibid., pp. 218–234. See also id.: Galileis Denkende Hand. Form und Forschung um 1600, Berlin/Boston 2014, pp. 188ff. See Lorraine J. Daston/Peter Galison: Objectivity, New York 2010.

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similarity of the dots and blots obvious, but also distinguish much more clearly between the two. Galileo called these apparitions macchiete oscure, and the drawings thereof give the viewer a palpable impression of how transgressive and transformative the dynamics of the small, dark blots actually are. He developed a mode of art-theoretical description for his observations of natural phenomena. Cigoli not only produced drawings of this kind but also formed a theory on the origins of painting, which deviated from the elder Pliny’s model, as the early modern artist considered painting to be a chance product of the camera obscura.19 Not the contours alone were of pivotal importance but the central sections too, something that is also visible in his drawing of the sun’s macchie in contradistinction to Scheiner’s picture. Similarly a colored blot of paint does not have the fixed contours that can be achieved by drawings based on a linear mode of depiction. In this way it is clear yet again that the notion of blots as simultaneously suggestive and obscure has a share in the productive ambiguity of artistic creation, in keeping with a certain view of the world and of its origins.

4. Dynamic Blotches Created by Hand Already the words “blotch” and “blot” imply a negative stance toward the academic art theory of the early modern period, which was dominant at the time, facilitated by the fact that it existed in print form in many published treatises and lectures. The term or being characterized as a “blot” calls to mind something spoiled, even in the ethical sense of a shameful act. It was only with the onset of modernity that the blot began to be seen in a positive light, enthusiastically touted by the opponents of academic traditions. A blot is defined by chaos and chance, whereas the line is subordinate to order and reason. This dialectic dichotomy was of key significance in reflections on artistic practice in image and word. Line mostly won the battle, so that the notion of macchie and their materiality as visual and haptic imprints has been largely implicit in art and hardly mentioned in contemporary criticism. This historical divide, as already mentioned, does not however mean that such a dichotomy must be resolved. It makes no sense to comprehend a divide between color or macchie and line, but rather to address the processes and materiality they have in common – not to forget how each of them affects viewers cognitively as well as bodily in their respective ways of symbolically articulating the world.

19

Bredekamp: Galilei der Künstler (as fn. 16), pp. 291ff.

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It is not without reason that particularly the impressionists and expressionists rediscovered the formerly much criticized macchia painters. And the same is also true for the surrealists, such as Max Ernst (hence his frottage). He was a keen admirer of the Dutch artist Hercules Seghers, who in turn was crucial to Rembrandt as a source of inspiration. The technique Seghers resorted to in art can be compared to Alexander Cozens’ blotting.20 The spontaneous quality of the blot fascinated the adherents of automatic painting or even, as in the case of Seghers, “automatic” printmaking.21 The blot is an art form that is in essence dynamic and processual owing to its indefinite nature, offering infinite possibilities in triggering and giving shape to ideas (something that Cozens explicitly referred to at the close of the eighteenth century: “to sketch is to delineate ideas; blotting suggests them”).22 Whereas disegno was mostly understood as invention in the sense of expressing a mental representation, a blot or blotch simultaneously represented inventing and finding through active visual perception and corporeal actions.23 Despite the historical differen­ tiation between disegno and colore with its ideological as well as historiographical repercussions, the present paper argues that disegno is not alone the domain of the idea and that a binary opposition was questioned among forward-looking artists of the time.24 For example, the sketch (macchia) is exemplary for how line and macchie

20

21

22

23

24

Mireille Cornelis: Under the Spell of Hercules Segers, in: ex. cat.: Under the Spell of Hercules Seghers. Rembrandt and the Moderns, ed. by Leonore van Sloten/Eddy de Jongh, Rembrandt­ huis, Zwolle 2016, pp. 67–109. Ibid., p. 84. Heinz Spielmann, was the first to draw a comparison between Seghers and Ernst. He called the former a forerunner of Surrealism, not because of the motives the artist used, as in the case of Bosch, but because of his way he implemented the materials and experimented with his medium. Cf. Heinz Spielmann: Notizen über Max Ernst und Herkules Seghers, in: Das Kunstwerk 8 (1960), pp. 3–19. Quoted after: Johannes Stückelberger: Skying. Wolkenmalerei als Übungsfeld einer autopoietischen Ästhetik nach 1800, in: Weltzien: Von selbst (as fn. 11), p. 117; For Cozens in general see: Werner Busch: Alexander Cozens’ blot-Methode. Landschaftserfindung als Naturwissenschaft, in: Heinke Wunderlich (ed.): Landschaft und Landschaften im achtzehnten Jahrhundert, Heidelberg 1995, pp. 209 –228; ex. cat.: Turner–Hugo–Moreau, Entdeckung der Abstrak­­tion, ed. by Raphael Rosenberg/Max Hollein, Schirn Kunsthalle, Munich 2007, p. 73; Dario Gamboni: Fabrication of Accidents. Factura and Chance in Nineteenth-Century Art, in: RES 36 (1999), pp. 205–225, p. 206. For the term disegno see Wolfgang Kemp: Disegno. Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des Begriffs zwischen 1547 und 1607, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 19 (1974), pp. 219–240; ex. cat.: Disegno. Der Zeichner im Bild der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Munich 2007. For a fertile interaction between hand and mind as not merely a depiction of the mental image by the former, see Ulrich Pfisterer: Die Entstehung des Kunstwerks. Federico Zuccaris L’Idea de’ pittori, scultori et architetti, in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwis­

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are interlinked, as a sketch can involve both line and color. But a line with blurred, fluid contours cannot be regarded as an ideal “line.”25 At the same time, a conception of the origins of art was restricted to Pliny the Elders’ account of tracing the outline of a shadow and hence a continuous line giving the contour of a shadow a fixed form. The perception of space in moving about, moving closer and further away, by both artists and beholders, shows that macchie or blots of colored paint not only rely on visual means but also involve corporeal, multisensory exertion on the part of both the artist and the beholder. The suggestive power of blots and blotches in producing shapes evokes something like a void – and its very indefiniteness imbues it with creative energy. The state of being dead matter of blots demands the ongoing reflection thereof, and, while perceived as such, they nevertheless have the power of agency. It is paradoxically the very objecthood of the picture, the very art materials and content involved, that fills it with life. The use of blotting techniques focuses on the idea of an artwork that is processual by nature in the sense of natura naturans. In other words, such techniques work productively with nature from an artistic, visual point of view, while likewise implicating the notion of shaping and deforming as in forma formans and forma deformans. Potential, transmutation, and latency all rely on the vagueness intrinsic to macchie. Their suggestiveness and fluidity, their indeterminate nature, affect the beholder both physically and emotionally. A blot of colored paint is a Pathosformel. As beholders move in front of a composition featuring the use of macchie, the closeup view (opacity, amorphism) conflates with that from a distance (transparency, form), without eliminating the tension between the two.26 Although a common practice in European art, academic art theory denigrated artistic processes such as those involving blotting techniques because they contradicted the classical rules of proportion and beauty. The act of sketching with a paintbrush or fingers and creating forms by means of dabs and blobs of paint, forms that are more suggested than defined, liberated art from the “rules.” Such a stance went beyond the quest for beauty. According to Leonardo, macchie were in principle

25

26

senschaft 38 (1993), pp. 237–268; Yannis Hadjinicolaou: The Mind and the Eye in the Hand. Arent de Gelder’s Processuality of Paint in the Context of Early Modern Art Theory, in: Franz Engel/Sabine Marienberg (eds.): Das Entgegenkommende Denken (Actus et Imago 15), Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 237–256. Werner Busch: Die Möglichkeiten der nicht-fixierenden Linie. Ein exemplarischer historischer Abriß, in: Werner Busch/Oliver Jehle/Carolin Meister (eds.): Randgänge der Zeichnung, Munich 2007, pp. 121–139; David Maclagan: Line Let Loose. Scribbling, Doodling and Automatic Drawing, London 2014. See Yannis Hadjinicolaou: El Greco von Nah und Fern. Die europäische Dimension eines Topos in der Frühen Neuzeit, in: id./Franz Engel (eds.): Formwerdung und Formentzug (Actus et Imago 16), Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 77–101.

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sketches of the essence of things, beauty and perfection are the consequence.27 Seen from an academic point of view in relation to disegno, the vaguezza (meaning uncommonly beautiful) of blots and blotches is indefinite and seems to seems to defie reason.28 Its painterly quality was dismissed as effeminate irrationality. But precisely therein lay the performative vigour of macchie. In this sense the merely “effeminate” and “passive” blot is active and not static. For Vasari, however, macchie were only initial sketches, rough draughts in preparation for a final finished work of art.29 The notion of a blot as analogous to processual thinking was not in his horizon of thought. The patch of color implies a cognitive process in the making, which also, in its tacit knowledge, involves the artist both physically and mentally. Painting in dabs and blotches is both a cognitive and an enactive process. It depends on the interaction between the artist’s hand (as an integral part of the body), eyes, and mind. A patch of color evokes the prima idea; it is the initial step in the materialization of an idea in visual terms, and it changes constantly. The pentimenti of a painting alla prima are testimonies to peinture of this kind, meaning literally traces of the mind. Their role is an active one, because they are not mere representations of something but changing in interaction between making, intellect, and imagination.30 Central to this tradition is the notion that thought processes coincide with the idea of prima materia, of formless matter gradually acquiring form. Such notions reflect the foundations of symbolic articulation and how it unfolds. Consequently already the initial “blot” on a two-dimensional surface produces meaning, revealing itself as a pictorial gesture at the symbolic threshold.31 In keeping with this idea, the blot builds the “foundation” and is already pregnant with meaning, even if it is still vague and can therefore not be grasped wholly – at least not in the strict hermeneutical sense.32 Accordingly, the “basis” is already part of the “superstructure,” united in the visual traces of the cognitive blot as an “iconic continuum,” in “firstness” uniting with “thirdness” through “secondness”.

27

28 29 30

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32

Sabine Feser: (Farb)fleck, in: Giorgio Vasari: Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie. Eine Einführung in die Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Künstler anhand der Proemien, ed. by Matteo Burioni/Sabine Feser, Berlin 2004, p. 213. Victoria Lorini: leggiadria/vaghezza, in: Vasari: Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie (as fn. 27), p. 236. Feser: (Farb)fleck (as fn. 27), p. 213. It is by no means a coincidence that many of the macchia artists displayed an ample use of pentimenti to correct and further articulate what they wanted to express on canvas without a drawing to guide them. In this volume, Alva Noë approaches this idea from the perspective of a “writerly attitude,” whereas Jürgen Trabant focuses on gestures of the hand in combination with phonetic arti­ culation. The link between writing, speaking, and image making here is manual shaping. Cf. Gottfried Boehm/Matteo Burioni (eds.): Der Grund. Das Feld des Sichtbaren, Munich 2012.

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Georg Simmel’s description at the beginning of his seminal book on Rembrandt may be understood in this way, when he states that “the expressive meaning of the movement in its entirety is incorporated in the very first brushstroke; and therefore this brushstroke is pregnant with the view and sense of emotional and physical movement fusing into one.”33 Expression, movement, and meaning converge in the first brushstroke and constitute an indivisible whole. Systematically speaking, blotting is a practice that is analogous to processual thinking, with structural resemblances to the techne of writing or phonetic articulation. In this sense it expands, as mentioned above, the meaning of articulation – adding the prefix of symbolic – to incorporate a non-verbal dimension. It is the agency of the hand in creating the blot with different kinds of instruments and techniques, as “pictorial gestures,” that produce various forms of symbolic articulation. Blots materialize through the artist’s hand, which in its actions expressively shapes, by means of the intellect, the medium, while also letting it have its own way – “unformed,” so to speak, as merely active matter. It is no coincidence that maniera was discussed in late seventeenth-century Italian art theory as artists were producing blotches and blots with their hands.34 The processual nature of blotches is based on schematization (not in a Kantian, but rather in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s dynamic and sensory notion of articulating the world in dots, perhaps with Seurat in mind): “The gesture I witness sketches out (pointillé) the first signs of an intentional object.”35 The aspect of schematization 33 34 35

Trans. by C. O.; Georg Simmel: Rembrandt. Ein kunstphilosophischer Versuch, Leipzig 1916, p. 4. Cf. Philip Sohm: Maniera and the Absent Hand. Avoiding the Etymology of Style, in: RES 36 (1999), pp. 100–124. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception, New York 2012, p. 191. Umberto Eco in Kant e l’ornitorinco (1997) also breaks with the Kantian sense of “schema” with his dynamic and sensual reading, which corresponds with Merleau-Ponty’s. In the opening chapter of his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty observes (p. 4): “Consider a white patch against a homogeneous background. All points on the patch have a certain common ‘function’ that makes them into a ‘figure.’ The figure’s color is denser and somehow more resistant than the background’s color. The borders of the white patch ‘belong’ to the patch and, despite being contiguous with it, do not join with the background. The patch seems to be placed upon the background and does not interrupt it. Each part announces more than it contains, and thus this elementary perception is already charged with a sense. The objection will be raised that if the figure and the background are not sensed as a whole, then they must surely be sensed in each of their points. This would be to forget that each point in turn can only be perceived as a figure on a background.” And a bit further down (p. 32): “My gaze does not merge into the contour or the patch in the same way it merges into the red taken materially; rather, it glances over them or dominates them.” This tout ensemble of the blotch as figuration and ground at the same time – and the participation of perception in creating sense – touches upon the very nature of the blotch in the artistic process.

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through crude patches of color evokes action of the strongest intensity. In other words, pattern and action make up the two sides of the coin of creativity in such instances. The interstice in which the productive tension between chaos and shape emerges lies in the interplay between form and materials (because the latter should not be understood as just a product of the former but as part of a composite whole that entails a more dynamic notion of form).

5. Artistic Notions of Blotches In his 1604 Principles of Painting, the Dutch painter Karel van Mander refers to a then widespread belief in the maternal imagination.36 A woman’s lively fantasy, during intercourse and pregnancy, was thought to produce blotches on a baby’s skin, such as birthmarks or other epidermal anomalies. Van Mander therefore spoke of the “power of color.”37 He likewise introduced Titian’s macchie to his Dutch colleagues and thus strongly influenced Rembrandt. Van Mander, as a former student of Pieter Vlerick, who had worked in Tintoretto’s workshop, was acquainted with Venetian tradition in painting and, in contrast to Vasari, valued it highly.38 Instead of studying the phenomenon of blotting south or north of the Alps, it is more insightful to view them as a common challenge for all macchiaioli artists. After all, as contemporary critics (from sixteenth-century Venice to seventeenth and eighteenth-century Spain and the Netherlands) objected, nature knew no visible brushstrokes. At the same time they censured painters for “copying” nature too closely, which seems rather contradictory. As a Venetian, Lodovico Dolce riposted that nature knew no contours, implying that dabs and patches of paint were intrinsically both natural and artificial, dialectically oscillating between a concrete and

36

37

38

Karel van Mander: Das Lehrgedicht des Karel van Mander, ed. by Rudolf Hoecker, The Hague 1916, p. 288. See Herman Roodenburg: The Maternal Imagination. The Fears of Pregnant Women in Seventeenth-Century Holland, in: Journal of Social History 21/4 (1988), pp. 701–716. Cf. van Mander: Das Lehrgedicht des Karel van Mander (as fn. 36), p. 288: “Verw in der natuer werct wonderbaer crachten/ Waer van oock Exempelen zijn te speuren/ Van ontfanghende Vrouwen/ wiens gedachten Yet so imaginerend/ oock voort brachten/ Sulcke vrucht/ ’t zy swart/ oft ander coleuren Maer dit weten wy/ en sien het ghebeuren/ Dat de Kinderlijven vlecken ghenieten/ Van ’t ghene / daer de Moeders in verschieten. Ghelijck wanneer sy somtijts onverhoedich/ In bloedstortinghen/ schrickelijck verschrommen/ Brengen haer kinders litteeckenen bloedich/ Oft ander verwe vlecken overvloedich/ […] Dus blijct der verwen cracht/ […].” Ex. cat.: Frans Hals. Eye to Eye with Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian, ed. by Anna Tummers/ Christopher Atkins/Martin Bijl, Frans Hals Museum, Rotterdam 2013, p. 100.

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Fig. 9  Detail of El Greco: The Crucifixion, around 1600, oil on canvas, 312 × 169 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

Fig. 10  Detail of Jacopo Bassano: Lamentation, around 1580–1582, oil on canvas, 154 × 225 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

an abstract state.39 This paradoxical constellation enhanced an image’s ontological status, its implicit suggestiveness. The coarse manner of painting (pittura di macchia) was known in Spain as borrón (in Dutch it was called ruuwe manier). Borrar denotes, on the one hand, “to erase,” implying the negation of form, and, on the other, a haptic quality owing to the etymology of borra meaning “coarse wool.”40 The double meaning of the term is consistent with the state of continuous oscillation between form becoming and the dissolution of form, between presence and absence. In El Greco’s rendering of Mary Magdalene’s hair in his Prado Crucifixion, color seems to have a life of its own owing to the painter’s assertive brushstrokes,

39 40

David Rosand: Painting in Cinquecento Venice. Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Cambridge et al. 1997, p. 24. Gridley McKim-Smith/Greta Andersen-Bergdoll/Richard Newman: Examining Velázquez, New Haven/London 1988, p. 17.

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Fig. 11  Detail of El Greco: The Crucifixion, around 1597–1600, oil on canvas, 312 × 169 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

the drips, and blots suggesting physical movement and being emotive in their impact (Fig. 9). His Magdalene can be compared to Jacopo Bassano’s in the latter’s Lamentation (Fig. 10). The Magdalene’s tears are simply blots. Bassano’s pittura di macchia left a deep and lasting impression on El Greco. The light is reflected in patches and seems to flicker in her hair. Félix Paravicino, a friend of El Greco’s whom he also portrayed, observed that the lighting should be adequate when viewing a painting by Titian, otherwise it would look like a battle of blotches.41 Some of El Greco’s altar paintings reveal patches of color at the edges as the traces he left when wiping his brushes. They emerge like blurred agate and embody his painting practices, which even inspired Jackson Pollock when he saw them in the Prado while they were removed from their altar frames (Fig. 11).42 Vasari described Titian’s late painting practices, in particular his seemingly amorphic patches of color, as only comprehensible from afar.43 In 1649, Francisco Pacheco made a similar observation about El Greco, who had worked in Titian’s workshop. Pacheco speaks of crueles borrones (crude blotches).44 Much later, in 1718, 41 42 43

44

Ibid., p. 22. Javier Barón: El Greco y la pintura moderna, in: ex. cat.: El Greco & La Pintura Moderna, ed. by Javier Barón, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid 2014, pp. 40–45. Giorgio Vasari: Das Leben des Tizian, ed. by Christina Irlenbusch/Victoria Lorini, Berlin 2005, p. 45; cf. Giorgio Vasari: Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, vol. 7, ed. by Paola Della Pergola/Luigi Grassi/Giovanni Previtali, Milan 1965, p. 332: “Ma è ben vero che il modo di fare che tenne in queste ultime è assai differente dal fare suo da giovane. Con ci sia che le prime son condotte con una certa finezza e diligenza incredibile e da essere vedute da presso e da lontano, e queste ultime, condotte di colpi, tirate via di grosso e con macchie di maniera, che da presso non si possono vedere e di lontano appariscono perfette.” “[Otros labran el bosquexo y, al acabado, usan de borrones, queriendo mostrar que obran con más destreza y facilidad que los demas y cosándoles esto mucho trabajo lo disimulan con este artificio,] porque quien creerá que Dominico Greco traxese sus pinturas muchas veces a la mano, y las retocase una y otra vez, para dexar los colores distintos y desunidos y dar aquellos crueles borrones para afectar valentia? A esto llamo yo trabajar para ser pobre.”

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Arnold Houbraken similarly summed up the art of Rembrandt and Arent de Gelder, one of his latest pupils.45 Vasari, like Pacheco and Houbraken, preferred painting in a smooth and even fashion. Therefore they paid no attention to amorphic but nevertheless visible blotches and blots. Seen from a phenomenological point of view, these critics were blind for such phenomena, having no interest in body knowledge, which is always implicit in human perception. Macchie painting had no place in their intellectual world. Pacheco even condemned such artists as the “bastards” of painting (hijos bastardos de la pintura) and called them “throwers of mud” (empastadores) and “smearers” (manchantes), a view shared by Gerard de Lairesse, who denigrated Rembrandt’s paint and impasto by comparing it with excrement running down the canvas.46 In contrast, such brushwork fascinated Marco Boschini, an admirer of Titian, who in his Carta del navegar pitoresco of 1660 challenged Vasari directly: “Don’t you understand that these brushstrokes are everything and that all the rest is nothing?”47 Boschini’s treatise navigates the physical aspects of the painterly; that is why he wrote in regard to a painting by Bassano that “I kneel before this altar in reverence and touch with my hands those colpi (brushstrokes), those macchie, those bote (blows).”48 The theorists of Entartete Kunst partially drew on the argumentation based on the “amorphic,” which art historian Carl Justi put forward in 1902. In this he, to a degree, reverted to Vasari, Pacheco, and Houbraken. Even though Justi admired El Greco, he disparaged his manner of painting “as reflecting artistic degeneracy.” 49

45 46

47

48 49

Francisco Pacheco: Arte de la pintura, ed. by Bonaventura Bassegoda i Hugas, Madrid 1990, p. 483. Arnold Houbraken: De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen [1718–1721], vol. 3, Amsterdam 1759, pp. 207f. Thijs Weststeijn: Karel van Mander and Francisco Pacheco, in: Anton W. A. Boschloo (ed.): Aemulatio. Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandish Art from 1500 to 1800. Essays in Honour of Eric Jan Sluijter, Zwolle 2011, pp. 208–223; Gerard de Lairesse: Groot Schilderboek [1707], vol. 1, Haarlem 1740, p. 320 and p. 324. Marco Boschini: La Carta del navegar pitoresco; ed. critica, con la “Breve istruzione” premessa alle Ricche minere della pittura Veneziana [1660], ed. by Anna Pallucchini, Venice/Rome 1966, p. 302; cf. Philip Sohm: Pittoresco. Marco Boschini, his critics, and their critiques of painterly brushwork in seventeenth and eighteenth century Italy, Cambridge et al. 1991, p. 154. Boschini: La Carta del navegar pitoresco (as fn. 47), pp. 74f.; cf. Sohm: Pittoresco (as fn. 47), p. 141. Carl Justi: Velázquez und sein Jahrhundert [1888], vol. 1, Bonn 1893, p. 51. Cf. Johannes Rößler: Der Hexenmeister von Toledo. Carl Justi und der Beginn der deutschen El-Greco-Forschung, in: Beat Wismer/Michael Scholz-Hänsel (eds.): El Greco und der Streit um die Moderne. Fruchtbare Missverständnisse und Widersprüche in seiner deutschen Rezeption zwischen 1888 und 1939, Berlin/Boston 2015, pp. 52–70, p. 57; Peter K. Klein: El Grecos Burial of the Count of Orgaz and the concept of Mannerism of the Vienna School, in: Nicos Hadjinicolaou (ed.): El Greco of Crete. Proceedings of the International Symposium, Iraklion 1995, pp. 507–532,

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Hans Sedlmayr made an important observation in his Bruegel “macchia” essay of 1934: There is no order in the mass of patches of color, and the composition seems thrown together […] it swims in all directions. This corresponds to the disarray of bodies and things in a totally senseless chaos […] Both are intimately related to the phenomenon of mass.”50 Reversely, what Sedlmayr – having abstraction in mind – condemned, in effect revealed the specific power of the patch of color. He derived this characterization from Benedetto Croce, while likewise reminding us of an observation noted down by the painter Jonathan Richardson in 1715 – that, seen from a distance, Rembrandt’s paintings (which won his critical acclaim) appear as compositions of chiaroscuro shapes.51 This resembled Roger de Piles’ line of reasoning, which underscored the agency of macchie, calling them “puissantes masses.”52

6. Features of Blotting: Chance and non finito El Greco was against drawing from memory, which he called blind. He never used the terms idea or disegno and had an ally in Annibale Carracci, for whom only concrete realization mattered, not theoretical concepts.53 El Greco also called math-

50

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p. 507; Carl Justi: Amorphismus in der Kunst. Ein Vortrag gehalten am 9. Juli 1902, Bonn 1902. Hans Sedlmayr: Bruegel’s Macchia [1934], in: Christopher S. Wood (ed.): The Vienna School Reader. Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s, New York 2000, p. 334. Cf. the German original: “Die Menge der Farbflecken ist ungeordnet, bunt durcheinandergewürfelt […] sie scheinen nach allen Richtungen durcheinanderzuschwimmen. Dem entspricht in der gegenständlichen Sphäre die Unordnung der Dinge und Körper mit ihren Steigerungsformen des Wirrwarrs und Trubels und des völlig sinnlosen Chaos […] Beides hängt eng zusammen mit dem Phänomen der Masse.” Hans Sedlmayr: Die Macchia Bruegels, in: Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 8 (1934), pp. 137–160, in: ibid.: Epochen und Werke. Gesammelte Schriften zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 1, Munich/Vienna 1959, pp. 247-318, p. 282. Raphael Rosenberg: Der Fleck zwischen Komposition und Zufall. Informelle Ansätze in der frühen Neuzeit, in: ex. cat.: Augenkitzel. Barocke Meisterwerke und die Kunst des Informel, ed. by Dirk Luckow, Kunsthalle, Kiel 2004, pp. 41–45, p. 42. De Piles replaced the term macchia with “composition.” Claudia Lehmann: Bernini’s Macchia, in: id./Karen J. Loyd (eds.): A Transitory Star. The Late Bernini and his Reception, Berlin/Boston 2015, pp. 95–116, p. 104. See Claire Robertson: El Greco and Roman Mannerism, in: ex. cat.: El Greco in Italy and Italian Art, ed. by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, IONIKI BANK, Athens 1995, pp. 397–403, p. 399; Henry

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ematicians blind, a belief diametrically opposed to de Lairesse, who held that the rules of art depended on geometry and on academic theories based on disegno. In his Inleyding of 1678, Samuel van Hoogstraten praised the element of chance in making images (second only to Idea), which he had learned from Rembrandt. He even described a landscape painted by Jan van Goyen “as though the mind and the eye were placed in the artist’s hand.”54 Referring to the example of Agate, he concluded: “one saw a complete painting before one could rightly perceive what he had in mind.”55 In picture making, the agate narrative was linked, like in Alberti, to chance, which again was partly based on the pittura di macchia principle. At a much earlier date, similar experiments based on chance as first described by Protogenes in the western world were undertaken in China. Around 840, the artist Wang (known as Ink Wang) worked in an alcoholic trance, painting images of nature with his hands and feet, and was thus a source of inspiration for Jackson Pollock.56 Van Hoogstraten described the Dutch artist Cornelis Ketel as someone who not only used his hands but also his feet and nonetheless achieved truth to nature and even a remarkable likeness when painting a portrait. This is visible on the fron­ tispiece of his chapter on color, in which Ketel uses his left foot as a paintbrush (Fig.  12). Van Mander said of Ketel that he embraced all unusual techniques and instruments, such as painting with fingers or a sponge in an implicit reference to Protogenes. Van Mander tolerated painting with blotches and blots even if he

54

55

56

Keazor: Distruggere la maniera?, Die Carracci-Postille, Freiburg im Breisgau 2001; Fernando Marías: O Greko kai h texnh ths epoxhs tou. Ta sxolia stous Bious tou Bazari, with an Introduction by Nicos Hadjinicolaou, Heraklion 2001. Ernst van de Wetering: Rembrandt. The Painter at Work [2000], Berkeley/Los Angeles/London 2004, pp. 85f.: “[…] of dat het oog in de ruwe schetssen van gevallige voorwerpen eenige vormen uitpikt, gelijk wy aen den haert in het vuer pleegen te doen; of dat de handt, door gewoonte, iets formeert, min noch meer als wanneer wy schrijven; want een goedt schrijver maekt goede letteren, schoon hy ’er niet aen gedenkt, en zijn oog en verstandt schijnen in zijn hand geplaetst te zijn.” Samuel van Hoogstraten: Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst. Anders de zichtbaere werelt, Rotterdam 1678, p. 237; Cf. Hadjinicolaou: The Mind and the Eye in the Hand (as fn. 24) pp. 240–245. Van Hoogstraten: Inleyding (as fn. 54), pp. 237f. For the English translation see: Thijs Weststeijn: The Visible World. Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2008, p. 251: “[…] having roughly splashed all over his panel, here light, there dark, more or less like a multicolored Agate […] and in short his eye, trained to see forms that were concealed in a chaos of paint, directed his hand and understanding so skillfully that one saw a complete painting before one could rightly perceive what he had in mind.” François Cheng: Fülle und Leere. Die Sprache der chinesischen Malerei, Berlin 2004, pp. 46f. Cf.: Charles Lachman: The Image Made by Chance in China and the West. Ink Wank meets Jackson Pollock’s Mother, in: The Art Bulletin 47/3 (1992), pp. 499–510.

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Fig. 12  Frontispiece of chapter 6 in: Samuel van Hoogstraten: Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst. Anders de zichtbaere werelt, Rotterdam 1678.

thought it was an odd practice, comparable to a pregnant woman wanting to eat raw eggs.57 Pacheco opined “that which is done by chance is not art,” a position similar to Vasari’s, who complained that chance guided the colpi of Tintoretto’s brush. In this critique, Vasari countered Aristotle’s idea of art loving chance and vice versa: “[Chance] owes its existence to the lability and variability of matter.”58 Titian, El

57

58

Cf. van Mander: Das Lehrgedicht des Karel van Mander (as fn. 36), p. 228: “hoe een dingen gemaeckt is ´t zy met duymen met sposy oft anders buyten costuymen ´t is al goed wat wel staet.” Samuel Henry Butcher: Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art [1891], New York 1951, p. 181.

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Greco, Rembrandt, and Dürer deliberately integrated the element of chance, which is intrinsically linked to macchie in painting. Patches of color or visible brushstrokes – or both combined – also invoke the ideal of sprezzatura, and thus introduce the wider context of bravura and spontaneity, which are major critical categories in the reception in Europe of Castiglione’s book on the courtier, Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528). Titian and Velázquez both owned copies of the book, as did Rembrandt’s patrons Constantijn Huygens and Jan Six.59 El Greco was also familiar with the Cortegiano, referring to it in his comments in the margins of his copy of Vitruvius.60 This kind of cultivated disposition was adopted by an informal aristocratic milieu and appealed to the Dutch ruling class, suggesting that the finished manner of painting (in the sense of decorum) was more appropriate to royal or court environments. There, painting with patches of color had no place. The agency of macchie, with their openness and suggestiveness, was cast aside to allow the sovereign to unfold his power. To adopt the informal mode would only make the autonomous power of the visual image apparent, because it would represent the king’s image as a vulnerable conglomeration of dabs – or even blotched – and undermine his power and authority by tarnishing his unimpeachable character. Patches of color enhance the fleetingness of the moment and thus stand for a specific kind of painting process. It did not really make sense to dismiss such paintings as “unfinished,” as, for instance, Vasari and Pacheco did.61 According to Houbraken, Rembrandt deemed a painting finished the moment he saw that he had achieved his “goal.”62 This echoed notions that Spinoza expounded in his Ethica (1677), in which he described “finished” and “unfinished” as two sides of the same coin.63 A hand painted by Rembrandt and one painted by El Greco throw light on this problem. In the case of Rembrandt it is a detail from his so-called Woman Bathing in a Stream (London), the thumb of her right hand in particular (Fig. 13). El Greco’s Adoration of the Shepherds (Madrid) demonstratively features a blurred thumb belonging to the male figure in the yellow and blue garment, almost consumed by 59 60 61 62

63

Peter Burke: The Fortunes of the Courtier. The European Reception of Castiglione’s Corte­ giano, University Park, PA 1996. José Riello: La biblioteca del Greco, in: ex. cat.: La biblioteca del Greco, ed. by Javier Docampo/ José Riello, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid 2014, p. 45. McKim-Smith/Andersen-Bergdoll/Newman: Examining Velázquez (as fn. 40), p. 20. Cf. Houbraken: De Groote Schouburgh (as fn. 45), vol. 1, p. 259: “[…] een stuk voldaan is als de meester zyn voornemen daar in bereikt heeft.” See also: Ex. cat.: Unfinished. Thoughts Left Visible, ed. by Kelly Baum/Andrea Bayer/Sheena Wagstaff, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven/London 2016. Baruch de Spinoza: Ethik in geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt, Hamburg 2012, p. 376: “perfectio igitur et imperfection revera modi solummode cogitandi sunt, nempe notions, quas fingere solemus ex eo, quod ejusdem specie aut generis individua ad invicem comparamus.” Cf. Hadjinicolaou: Denkende Körper – Formende Hände (as fn. 9), pp. 196f.

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Fig. 13  Detail of Rembrandt: A Woman Bathing in a Stream, 1654, oil on panel, 61.8 × 47 cm, London, National Gallery.

Fig. 14  Detail of El Greco: The Adoration of the Shepherds from Santo Domingo el Antiguo (from Santo Domingo el Antiguo), around 1612– 1614, oil on canvas, 319 × 180 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

darkness (Fig. 14). Indeed, this detail recalls El Greco’s saying that one can see even in twilight (“even when the light grows very dim one can still see”) – illuminating a close affinity between sfumato and macchie.64 Common to both paintings is the fact that the patches of color or the brushstrokes and the plasticity of the figures in the paintings are one and the same. They determine each other without a divide between form becoming and withdrawing. As Louis Althusser in his late essay The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter stated: “Thinking does not progress with the imperative of accomplished facts, but in the contingency of facts that are still to be accomplished.”65 This idea is the essence of the blot or blotch, recalling the atomist heritage of Lucretius and his theory of clinamen.66

64 65 66

Quoted after Fernando Marías/José Riello: El Greco gestern, El Greco heute, in: El Greco und der Streit um die Moderne (as fn. 49), pp. 132–148, p. 145. Trans. by C. O.; Louis Althusser: Materialismus der Begegnung, ed. by Marcus Coelen/Felix Ensslin, Zürich 2010, p. 27. See Stephen Greenblatt: The Swerve. How the World Became Modern, New York 2011. The corporeal and haptic aspects of blotches function like Lucretius’s atoms, which emerge out of the skin and thus produce blotches and forms, which, like the skin of a snake, are constantly generated anew.

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7. Blotches on the Ground Blots evoke, as already mentioned, a contradictory vibrancy in painting, precisely in areas of the image that are assumed to be “dead.” Boschini wrote of Titian resorting to the practice of using blots and blotches; especially in the way he used red paint as blood to enliven dark areas in his paintings.67 This is, for example, evident in Margaret with the Dragon (Fig. 15) and has been transposed to the ground of El Greco’s Laocoon in violent colpi di pinello (Fig. 16). As can be seen in the Anatomy Lesson of Joan Deyman, Rembrandt too added red dabs to the doodverf (dead color, the “primer”; Fig. 17). El Greco similarly highlighted the head of one of Laocoon’s sons. He touched up the dark ground behind the prostrate son with red macchie (Fig. 18).

Fig. 15  Detail from Titian: Margaret with the dragon, around 1522, oil on canvas, 211 × 182 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. Fig. 16  Detail of El Greco: Laocoön, around 1610, oil on canvas, 137.5 × 172.5 cm, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection.

67

Boschini: La Carta del navegar pitoresco (as fn. 47), pp. 711f. See Valeska von Rosen: Mimesis und Selbstbezüglichkeit in Werken Tizians. Studien zum venezianischen Malereidiskurs, Emsdetten et al. 2001, p. 417.

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Fig. 17  Detail of Rembrandt: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Joan Deyman, 1656, oil on canvas, 100 × 134 cm, Amsterdam Museum.

Fig. 18  Detail of Fig. 16. Fig. 19  Detail of Fig. 16.

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From Titian and El Greco to Rembrandt, the struggle between life and death is manifest in the dynamic discrepancy of the blot. By taking recourse to this technique, El Greco employed color to breathe life into the dead figure, making the power of color the “soul” of painting.68 This again reveals, as already observed in Merleau-Ponty’s definition of the blot, that macchie can simultaneously be the ground and the figures on it, as active traces of the motoric actions of the artist. In this sense a blot can be part of the structure of a picture as well as the creative structuring of its surface. A further look at the ground in El Greco’s painting reveals several anthropomorphic features in the way the painted surface is formed, for example, what might be called the “Picasso head” stone underneath Laocoon’s left foot, as perceived by twenty-first-century beholders – especially art historians. It is an allusion to Leonardo’s macchie-sprinkled wall or Alberti’s narration about formations seen and found in nature and transformed by the artist’s imagination into images (Figs. 19 and 20). Picasso never made a secret of his fascination for El Greco.69

Fig. 20  Detail of Pablo Picasso: Reclining Nude with Figures, 1908, oil on canvas, 36 × 62 cm, Paris, Musée National Picasso. 68 69

Verena Krieger: Die Farbe als Seele der Malerei. Transformationen eines Topos vom 16. Jahrhundert zur Moderne, in: Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 33 (2006), pp. 91–112. Javier Barón: La influencia del Greco en la pintura moderna. Del siglo XIX a la difusión del Cubismo, in: ex. cat.: El Greco & La Pintura Moderna (as fn. 41), pp. 148–175.

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Fig. 21  Edgar Lissel: Documentation from Domus Aurea.

8. Bio Artifacts out of Blotches The quality of the color patch as archetypal form again addresses the introductory remarks on its performativity and processuality, and thus reminds us of Warburg’s astonishment and anxiety, on the one hand, and the question of the image’s origin on the other. One of the most striking recent examples uniting both aspects are bio artifacts by Edgar Lissel, composed of bacteria. They simultaneously reveal their destructive and their creative pictorial potency, as in Domus Aurea of 2005, where in Lissel’s words “the bacteria, which acted, and still act, as agents of decay on the original site, serve a constructive purpose.”70 Lissel takes specimens of the bacteria from 70

Edgar Lissel: The Return of Images. Photographic Inquiries into the Interaction of Light, in: Leonardo 41/5 (2008), p. 444; See also: ex. cat.: Edgar Lissel. Vom Werden und Vergehen der Bilder, Vienna 2008, pp. 63–71.

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Fig. 22  Edgar Lissel: Domus Aurea, 2005, 60 × 50 cm.

the excavation site into a darkroom, where he illuminates them with a projection of the image of a fresco from the Domus Aurea (Fig. 21). The bacteria move towards the light and thus leave traces on the image, creating a new picture shaped by stains (Fig.  22). The Domus Aurea excavation site led to the discovery of the ancient grotesques, which in essence are related to the principle of chance and fantasy, principles that also play a prominent part in Lissel´s mode of working. Surmounting the alternatives of organic and inorganic and substituting cells of the body by swimming bacteria that produce patches of color reveals the essence of active matter in a condensed way.71 Having also anthropological power as an alternative mode of visual thinking, the bacteria create a continuity between past, 71

On the notion of active matter see: Michael Friedman/Karin Krathausen: Active matter als Maschine und Struktur, in: ex. cat.: +ultra. gestaltung schafft wissen, ed. by Nikola Doll/

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Fig. 23  Edgar Lissel: Myself, 2005–2008, 80 × 70 cm.

present, and future through the archetypal gesture of blots (bodily interaction with the world) in the sense used by Merleau-Ponty and as mentioned above. The work Myself (Fig. 23) can be compared with the famous Chauvet hand (Fig. 24), even in the irregularity of the thumb, since it is Lissel’s hand here that has left behind bacterial traces with the agar solution (Fig. 25).72 The hand found in the Chauvet Cave is formed according to the blotting principle, making it again clear

72

Horst Bredekamp/Wolfgang Schäffner, Martin Gropius Bau, Leipzig 2016, pp. 171–176; Peter Fratzl: Bioinspirierte Gestaltung von Materialien, in: ibid.: pp. 177-182. Ex. cat.: Edgar Lissel (as fn. 69), pp. 83–89. See Andre Leroi-Gourhan/Annette Michelson: The Hands of Gargas. Towards a General Study, in: October 37 (1986), pp. 18–34.

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Fig. 24  Hand, Chauvet Cave, 30,000–32,000 BCE.

Fig. 25  Gunter Glücklich: Documentation from Myself.

that the question of the origins of the image is strongly limited if probed from the angle of linearity alone. However, the latter art-theoretical construction shaped the mainstream of visual narration in western European art. In the sense of Lissel’s bacteria, also Edith Dekyndt’s The Biography of Objects 2 creates itself as mold constantly grows on a woven carpet, thereby addressing the issue of the divide between art and nature as well as the role of the blot as a natural entity – in this case: mold –, spawning ad hoc abstraction and transforming the image into a performance in time and space (Fig. 26).73

73

See Nikola Doll/Nina Fabert/Florence Meyssonnier: Edith Dekyndt. The Biography of Objects 2, in: ex. cat.: +ultra (as fn. 70), p. 126.

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Fig. 26  Edith Dekyndt: The Biography of Objects 2, 2015, IKEA SALTBÄL carpet, bacteria, mold, 240 × 170 cm, Brussels, Galerie Greta Meert.

The convergence of biological processes and artificial image-making in the art of Lissel and Dekyndt reveals not only the discrepancies of images created out of active patches of color. It also unfolds their paradoxical unity and simultaneous tension. The principle of the blot is the focus of extended philosophical engagement, such as in the cases of Leibniz and Ernst Cassirer. The latter’s concept of “symbolic pregnancy” (Symbolische Prägnanz) is reminiscent of Van Mander’s concept of blots and the power they have over a woman’s lively imagination.74 In conclusion, the 74

Ernst Cassirer: Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, vol. 3: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis [1929], Darmstadt 1971, pp. 223–237. See also fn. 35.

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closed and open form or the power of extracting intuitive knowledge from diffuse constellations and forms is the very essence of blots in aesthetic practice and theory. Symbolic articulation by means of patches of color and blotches articulates what cannot be expressed in concrete forms.

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Picture Credits Bredekamp  1, 3, 4–6: Ex. cat.: Eiszeit. Kunst und Kultur, Archäologisches Landesmuseum Konstanz, Ostfildern 2009, Fig. 304, Fig. 322, Fig. 294, Fig. 33, Fig. 85. 2: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (USA et al. 2010, Werner Herzog). 7, 9: Ex. cat.: Die Schöninger Speere. Mensch und Jagd vor 400 000 Jahren, ed. by Hartmut Thieme, Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum/Niedersächisches Landesmuseum Hannover, Stuttgart 2007, Fig. 184, Fig. 115 b. 8: Josephine C. A. Joordens/Francesco d’Errico/Frank P. Wesselingh et al.: Homo Erectus at Trinil on Java Used Shells for Tool Production and Engraving, in: Nature 518/7538 (2014), 10: Christopher J. Lepre/Hélène Roche/ pp. 228–231, doi: 10.1038/nature13962, Fig. 2. Denis V. Kent et al.: An Earlier Origin for the Acheulian, in: Nature 477/7362, (2011), pp. 82–85, doi: 10.1038/nature10372, title page. 11: Michel Lorblanchet: La naissance de l’art: genèse de l’art préhistorique, Paris 1999, Fig. 26. 12: Robert Rudolf Schmidt: Der Geist der Vorzeit, Berlin 1934, Fig. 1. 13–16: Horst Bredekamp: Der Faustkeil und die ikonische Differenz, in: Franz Engel/Sabine Marienberg (eds.): Das Entgegenkommende Denken (Actus et Imago 15), Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 105–118, Fig. 11, Fig. 13, Fig. 16, Fig. 18. 17: John Feliks: The Impact of Fossils on the Developement of Visual Representation, in: Rock Art Research 15/2 (1998), pp. 109–124, p. 112. 18–20: Horst Bredekamp: Bildaktive Gestaltungsformen von Tier und Mensch, in: ex. cat.: +ultra. gestaltung schafft wissen, ed. by Nikola Doll/Horst Bredekamp/Wolfgang Schäffner, Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, Leipzig 2016, pp. 17–25, Fig. 1–3. Viola  1: Charles Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London: John Murray, 1872, S. 52. 2: Charles Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London 1872, S. 118. Catoni  1: Archive of the Author. Pawel  1: Ex. Cat.: Sophie Taeuber, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/Musée Cantonal de Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Paris 1989, p. 128. 2: Irene Bragantini/Valeria Sampaolo (eds.): La pittura pompeiana, Milano 2013, p. 130, Nr. 20b. 3: Ex. cat.: Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Zum 100. Geburtstag, Aargauer Kunsthaus/Museo Cantonale d’arte/Ulmer Museum, Baden 1989, p. 114. 4: Ex. cat.: Pompei e l’Europa. 1748–1943, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Milano 2015, p. 105. 5: Ex. cat.: Pompei e l’Europa. 1748–1943, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Milano 2015, p. 393. 6: Maurice Emmanuel: La danse grecque antique d’apres les monuments figurés, Paris 1896, Plate V. 7: Walter Crane: Linie und Form, Leipzig 1901, p. 224. 8: Artemis Leontis: Griechische Tragödie und moderner Tanz – eine alternative Archäologie?, in: Eva Koczisky (ed.): Ruinen in der 9: Ex. cat.: Isadora DunModerne. Archäologie und die Künste, Berlin 2011, p. 208, Fig. 5. can. 1877–1927. Une sculpture vivante, Musée Bourdelle, Paris 2009, p. 261. 10: Archive of the Author. 11: Ex. cat.: Corps en mouvement. La danse au musée, Musée du Louvre, Paris 2016, p. 140, Fig. 63.

Hadjinicolaou  1–4: Photograph by Y. H. 5, 6: Ex. cat.: Albrecht Dürer, ed. by Klaus Albrecht Schröder/Maria Luise Sternath, Albertina Wien, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, p. 41, p. 233. 7: Horst Brede­kamp: Galilei der Künstler. Der Mond. Die Sonne. Die Hand, Berlin 2007,

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p. 221. 8: Galileo Galilei: Le Opere, Edizione Nazionale, ed. by Antonio Favaro, Vol. XI, Florence 1968, p. 288 (Bredekamp: Galilei der Künstler, p. 399). 9, 11: Prometheus Image Archive, http:// prometheus.uni-koeln.de/pandora/image/show/passau_dilps-3f b6d39f5279c04f1bfec5a7cc13783a45d00141 (2017-07-25). 10: Prometheus Image Archive, http://prometheus.uni-koeln.de/ pandora/image/show/ddorf-46940b88bea451c8abbf6c65d072f2ccc440dc48 (2017-07-25). 12: Prometheus Image Archive, http://prometheus.uni-koeln.de/pandora/image/show/dresden-41c0bbb4530c840c52acd410a1ef9eec4f7cda22 (2017-07-25). 13: Prometheus Image Archive, http://prometheus.uni-koeln.de/pandora/image/show/imago-26c33264b6423758c48569b49fbd619310b615e0 (2017-07-25). 14: Prometheus Image Archive, http://prometheus.uni-koeln.de/pandora/image/ 15: Ex. cat.: Late show/passau_dilps-ce43e7bc2d8405386a4a7ff11fd2369d7b27c8e4 (2017-07-25). Titian and the Sensuality of Painting, ed. by Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Kunsthistorisches Museum/Galleria dell´Academia, Venice 2008, p. 251. 16, 18, 19: Prometheus Image Archive, http://prometheus.uni-koeln.de/pandora/image/show/genf-7867757f5ec8941d7da7565686a719286027cbb5 (201707-25). 17: Prometheus Image Archive, http://prometheus.uni-koeln.de/pandora/image/large/ amsterdam_museum-bd32837e72fd86c542e65acd1a6d56bb168b728e (2017-07-25). 20: El Greco & La Pintura Moderna, ed. by Javier Barón, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid 2014, p. 168 (2017-0725). 21–23, 25: Ex. cat.: Edgar Lissel. Vom Werden und Vergehen der Bilder, Vienna 2008, p. 71, p.  69, p. 84, p. 83. 24: Prometheus Image Archive, http://prometheus.uni-koeln.de/pandora/ image/show/imago-e354a43d8aa57f0b1e9e6a0e1c6886388add5ece (2017-07-25). 26: Ex. cat.: +ultra. gestaltung schafft wissen, ed. by Nikola Doll/Horst Bredekamp/Wolfgang Schäffner, Martin Gropius Bau, Leipzig 2016, p. 127.