CASSIRER STUDIES
vol. V/VI 2012/2013
Ausdruck/Ausdruckloses
ABSTRACTS
F. Capeillères, Artistic Intuition within Cassirer’ System of Symbolic Forms. A Brief Reassessment
The Cassirer Renaissance initiated in the 80’ has focused, in the last decade, on art as a symbolic form. It may hence be time to reiterate a fundamental assessment of the principles of Cassirer’s philosophy in order to take good measure of its actual achievements and its present fruitfulness regarding art and aesthetics. The present article tries to examine Cassirer’s doctrine of symbolic forms in order to assesses precise and palpable consequences regarding not so much the field of Cassirer’s studies as a historiographical enterprise, but, rather, regarding what the actual doctrine art produced by philosophy the symbolic forms allow us to conceive of in the world of culture.
Keywords: Cassirer Renaissance – art – aesthetics – symbolic form
A.S. Hoel, Images and Measuremenets across Arts and Sciences
This paper explores the inner connections between images and their traditional “others”, such as concepts, words, and numbers. Instead of inquiring into images as static entities, it focuses on what images do, that is, on their operational functioning. The aim is to develop a notion of images as «differential tools» that play an integral role in exploration, knowledge, and discovery, no matter whether they are used for artistic or scientific purposes. What I argue is that the development of such a bridging notion requires a rethinking and broadening of the notion of image, and perhaps more surprisingly, of the notion of measurement. Further, what I argue is that Cassirer’s notion of symbolic function is a promising candidate for a bridging notion of mediation that brings to the fore the inner connections between the sensible and the intelligible, the presentational and the discursive, the visual and the logical – and, by extension, between images and measurements. As Cassirer conceives it, mediation amounts to a kind of «seeing», and simultaneously, to a kind of «measuring». Drawing on this idea, I argue that media and technologies operate by a «differential logic», and further, that the differential mode of operation is the inner link between imaging methods, usually classified as qualitative and observational, and measurement methods, commonly considered as quantitative and calculative.
Keywords: symbolic function – images – measurement – technological mediation – differential tools
M. Lauschke, Presymbolic Formation. Reflections on Bodily Communication between Humans and Artefacts
This paper tries to show that it can be fruitful to trace aesthetic experience back to its bodily origins, or at least to consider bodily felt processes as a part of aesthetic experience that cannot be ignored. “Presymbolic formation”, that is the thesis advanced here, is a phase that precedes symbolic formation and accompanies it continuously. The focus of the reflections about aesthetic experience, therefore, will lie on a part of the process of symbolic formation hypothetically called “presymbolic” or “subsymbolic”. This part, it will be argued, is determined by the bodily communication between an artefact and a recipient. Therefore, the meaning of the term “bodily communication” will be explained and, in a second step, clarified by analysing the aesthetic perception of space in the concrete example of Mark Rothko’s image-bodies. The reason why it could be helpful to talk about bodily communication and presymbolic formation with reference to Cassirer will be presented in the last step.
Keywords: presymbolic formation – bodily communication – aesthetic experience – resonance – aesthetic perception of space
I. Meland, The Doctrine of Basis Phenomena. A Phenomenological Foundation for the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms?
Even if the doctrine of basis phenomena adds something new to Cassirer’s philosophy, it is not foreign to Cassirer’s philosophy and does not signify a break with Cassirer’s philosophical project as a whole. At the base of this argument lies the view that the originary phenomena of “life”, “language” and “the symbolic function” are crucial for Cassirer’s critique and revision of Cartesian dualism: man is symbolical through and through. If it is the primacy of relation that constitutes the true a priori of Cassirer’s semiotic theory of meaning, then the doctrine of basis phenomena constitutes the phenomenological grounding for this theory of meaning. Thus the doctrine of basis phenomena can be characterized as a “fundamental phenomenology”, i.e. a doctrine about that which allows reality to appear to us at all. The basis phenomena are brought into view through a “return” to the originary phenomena of “life” and “spirit”, which reveals that the process of generating and transforming forms corresponds to the basic phenomenon of the symbolic function. This “adequation” of the processual and the relational means that we cannot really separate “life” and “spirit” and that there is no access to “Being”, except through symbolic forms. In turn, this means that the only type of metaphysics possible is a cultural metaphysics and that Cassirer’s philosophy of culture implies a hermeneutical transformation of philosophy itself. The basis phenomena’s place is at the base of this hermeneutics, which is a cultural hermeneutics of freedom.
Keywords: Ernst Cassirer – philosophy of culture – theory of meaning – symbolic function – basis phenomena – hermeneutics
Carmen Metta, Ausdruck / Ausdruckslos: A Critique of the Work-Phenomenon
The “Work-Phenomenon” as Urphänomen is the object of a metaphysics of experience.Whereas for Kant experience is the knowledge of appearances, in so faras the intellect spells them out, in this paperappearances are regarded as the object of expression, which allows of a tertium non datur between intuitionand intellect. The acknowledgment of the expressive function of experienceallows in turn to conceive the semblance inherent in every work as constitutive of the work’s non-derivable and thus originary character. Given that it is Cassirer metaphysics’ task to give a “reading” of the phenomenon, in that it presupposes a hermeneutical intuitability of the phenomena, metaphysics interprets the work not just as a medium and a symbol, but as an irreducible phenomenon of the duration of life. Such interpretation of a metaphysics of the work seems to point out the possibility for the I not to estrange itself irremediably, but to a reversible extent, whereby to experience a caesura in the phantasmagory of the pure symbolic and to face the expressionless, like it is adumbrated in Benjamin’s critique of the symbolic.
Keywords: Ausdrucksloses – experience – loss of experience – form of thought – form of life
S. Müller, Aby Warburgs “Grundlegende Bruchstücke zu einer pragmatischen Ausdruckskunde”
The paper briefly outlines the complex genesis of “fragments”, a collection of Warburg’s records, which on the one hand anticipates the author’s working process, on the other many issues and ideas of his later texts. A particular attention is paid to the use of the term “expression”, used by the author for linguistic, physical and artistic manifestations.
Keywords: impression – expression – association – awareness – fine arts