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Words pictured, pictures read: Imagination, literary language and visuality in Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Sartre

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Words pictured, pictures read: Imagination, literary language and visuality in Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Sartre

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Content WORDS PICTURED, PICTURES READ:
IMAGINATION, LITERARY LANGUAGE AND VISUALITY IN
WITTGENSTEIN, HEIDEGGER AND SARTRE
Copyright 2006
by
Mustafa Ahmet Suner
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)
August 2006
Mustafa Ahmet Suner
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UMI Number: 3236554
Copyright 2006 by
Suner, Mustafa Ahmet
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Dedication
To the Nightingale
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my infinite gratitude to my chair, Peter Starr, for his
feedback, support and advice. I would also like to thank to my committee members
Tania Modleski, Panivong Norindr and Dallas Willard for their wonderful advice
and encouragement. Finally, I would like to thank my dearest friends Abdul,
Christian, Jennifer, Jitender, Michael, Milena, Millay, Monica, Patricia, Sabrina,
Vera and Zul, without whose support this project would have been inconceivable.
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iv
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
List of Figures v
Abstract vi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Bringing back the Picture: 24
A Critical Reassessment of Wittgenstein’s Pictures and
an Interpretation of Alice’s Picture Books
Chapter 2: Heidegger’s Shoes 154
Chapter 3: Words as Images, Images as Words 273
Language and Sign in Sartre’s Theory of the Image
Conclusion: Commentary on Michael Tye’s Imagery Debate and 386
the Theories of the Image from the Cognitive Science
Perspective presented therein
Bibliography 421
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V
List of Figures
Figure 1: Tenniel’s Illustration to “Jabberwocky” 137
Figure 2: The Alien World of the First Stanza of “Jabberwocky” 138
Figure 3: The Gryphon 141
Figure 4: Lobster Looking in the Mirror 141
Figure 5: Oysters in Shoes 146
Figure 6: Oyster-feast 146
Figure 7: Talking Flowers 147
Figure 8: Alice Opens Out like a Telescope 148
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Abstract
This work explores the pictoriality of language by analyzing the works of
three 20th century philosophers: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger and Jean-
Paul Sartre. It also seeks to revive one of the most basic approaches to literature,
which conceptualizes the act of reading as a kind of imaginary “seeing” or
“picturing.” What does it mean to picture a written text? Why does one make
references to visuality, while referring to the act of reading? These questions concern
both literature and the philosophies of language and mind. The three philosophers
whose writings I analyze share a similar skepticism: they all dismiss the pictorial
description in the face of other models of language that they propose or assume to be
true. In my thesis, I show that the pictorial description resists the philosophers’
ambiguous and often self-contradicting dismissals, and that the use of the “picture”
in relation to language cannot simply be set aside as a mere analogy. I argue that the
picture is a most significant analogy, and a model, by way of which one makes sense
of language in general, and literature in particular.
Specifically, I look at the adoption, transformation, and ultimate repudiation
of the picture in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and in Philosophical
Investigations. I discuss how Wittgenstein sets up a dualism between the
“applications” o f the world and the “pictures” o f the imagination, privileging the
former over the latter. By way of a reading of his “Work of Art” essay, I analyze the
role of the picture in Martin Heidegger’s conceptualization of language, critiquing
his distinction between the enframing picture (as the representational use of
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language) and the world-disclosing picture (as its truthful use). I question the
analytic distinctions that Jean-Paul Sartre makes between language and pictoriality,
between sign and image consciousness in his L’lmaeinaire. while underscoring the
continuity between written words and visual pictures. I show that the philosophers’
arguments on language often intersect with literary and cultural texts, including
illustrations, paintings and performances; as such, they provide insights into the
nature of the “literary.”
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INTRODUCTION
I often wondered why, in my readings of contemporary literary theory,
“imagination” never appeared to be a subject of interest in and of itself, while it
seemed to be everywhere that literature touched. Perhaps, I thought, this was because
imagination presented itself as a most unstable and unbounded notion that may be
found in all things and in nothing in particular. So broad seemed the territory of
imagination that I wondered whether “imagination” does not include everything that
could be associated with consciousness, intelligence and interpretation. Tradition
associates this wayward sign with the creative and original work of the genius, and,
less flatteringly, with the meandering fantasies and fancies of everyman. I, on the
other hand, have favored an understanding of imagination that locates it in the ability
of the reader to interpret texts, to make sense of them. It dawned on me that the
faculty of imagination, if ever it could be called a faculty, can never be grasped in its
entirety, and that any search into the nature of imagination, unless it is poetic, must
be carried out in a patient, controlled and incremental manner. In my own dealings
with imagination, I have felt at the mercy of some very complex, even unfathomable
questions that followed from the simplest ones, a predicament which sprang from the
expansive nature of the theme itself, and which pulled me into exhilarating abysses
of thought. Part of the pleasure as a writer was this adventurous and, at times,
frustrating sense of facing, what seemed to be, the unknowable. It is no wonder, I
thought, that so imprecise, so vast a concept would be fiercely attacked or slavishly
idolized. The adoration of imagination by the awe-struck romantic must be seen as a
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counterpart to its forceful repudiation by the disenchanted behaviorist: one willingly
falls into its immensity, while the other, with practicalities in mind, repels it.
Initially, I found it hard to turn my interest in imagination into scholarly
work, at a time when references to imagination are preferably made outside
academic contexts, and are considered to be puerile, leisurely, light evocations.
Granted, in literary criticism, there is much talk about images and imagery, but these
usually seem to be shorthand references to those “things” in a literary text that are
reportedly experienced with striking vividness or life-likeness, and therefore, are
deserving of a mention or a remark. In poetics, the image sometimes appears as an
all-inclusive figure of speech that renders all other figures useless: it supplants, for
instance, the less visual, and hence, as a certain kind of logic goes, the more
intellectual “metaphor.” The all-inclusive use of the “image” seems to level the
differences among all the figures of literature to the chagrin of the rhetorician who
would rather have them enforced. The image lacks the materiality of those figures of
literature whose existence it threatens: the reader, after all, may discern the material
metaphor on the page, amidst inscribed words, may point it out to others in public
display, unlike the image that resides in some immaterial, private, inaccessible recess
in the mind. Most significantly, the image introduces to the written medium of
literature the superfluous and foreign element of “visuality” that criticism has done
and can certainly do without. By and large, the image appears unwanted,
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understudied, unintelligible, unintellectual.1 Far removed from the time of the
romantics, it becomes available to the usual historicization that charts its origin,
variations and impending end as an obscure literary trope, overused and abused to
the extent of ridicule, supported by popularity, not by thought.
My own curiosity about the image did not solely originate from “the image as
a literary trope.” Rather, I was puzzled by the perennial claim that is made while
describing the act of reading literary texts: in reading words, one sees images. The
claim is repeated in other ways: one visualizes, pictures or sees pictures. What does
this claim mean? How does one see when she reads? Why do readers have recourse
to visuality in describing their experiences of inscribed words, even when words are,
very often, devoid of any hint of visuality? If the “seeing” in reading is more than a
mere analogy, then, some similarity must hold between actual seeing and the
“seeing” in reading. But, how can such similarity be articulated? These questions
quickly expand into the territory of the philosophies of language and of the mind: in
order to investigate the pictorial description of reading, one needs to understand not
only the relations between the mind and literary language, but also those between the
mind and language in general. More questions follow: both reading and seeing are
acts in which the seer or the reader apprehends “objects” of sorts. Then, does the
hypothetical similarity between seeing and reading refer to the similarity between a
seen object and the imagined object of reading? But, acts of seeing may involve
1 But, the usual figures of speech do not appear any more promising than the image: their usefulness
has been questioned and academic interest in them has withered. The presumably adverse and
competitive relations between images and figures are of even less interest.
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objects that are real or imaginary, as it happens when we see “physical pictures” of
horses that are painted, drawn, sculpted or photographed, as opposed to “real”
horses, or, as Sartre would say, “horses in flesh and blood.” The images drawn from
the reading of words, therefore, may correspond to the seeing either of the physical
pictures, or of real perceptions of objects. Sartre offers a linguistic cue that points in
the direction of “physical pictures”: we use the same term “image” to describe both
mental acts of consciousness (mental images) and pictorial representations of the
world (physical pictures): drawings, photographs, films, etc. May physical pictures
be thought to be similar to the images drawn in the mind during reading? And again,
how can this similarity be articulated? Here, one is reminded of the familiar domain
in historical literary criticism and poetics that makes abundant use of analogies
between material words and physical pictures: between poems and paintings,
between novels and films. But, what is meant with such analogies? Is there any
validity in these analogies, or are they arbitrary impressions uncritically worked into
self-evident truths?
There are other complications, however, that arise from considerations of the
curious “mental image,” which must have some affinity with the images in reading.
We seem to be congenitally familiar with the inexplicable but forceful sense of
visuality in our mental images, that is, in our memories, fantasies and dreams.
Different kinds of imagination seem to be at work in different mental images:
memory presumably belongs to a reproductive kind of imagination, unlike fantasy,
which exemplifies a creative kind. Must the image in reading be modeled after the
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image in dreaming, remembering or fantasizing? Do we need to understand the
mental image before we attempt to understand the image in reading? The mental
image, unlike in reading and seeing, does not seem to need any material artifact: a
memory or a dream comes into being without the given presence of any written word
or physical picture. Because of this apparent lack of materiality, the mental image
seems as close to the matterless thought and concept, as to the material things of
visual experience. Can we indeed talk about the visuality of the mental image in the
same way as we talk about the visuality of perceivable, material objects?
Furthermore, mental images also seem to be closely related to language: dreams and
memories are often intertwined with the words of our inner, silent “speech.” How
does one articulate the relation between mental image and inner speech? Do we
make mental images of the words uttered in the silence of our minds? Can we think
of our inner speech as tangible or as material in a way similar to the inscribed words
of reading? What are thought and concept, and how to separate them from the
image? The investigation of the pictorial description of reading may easily lead to a
most fundamental question of philosophy: what is thinking? The field of inquiry
becomes inundated with more terms that need to be closely examined: Imagining in
reading (imaging knowledge), seeing an object (perception), seeing a likeness or a
physical picture of the object (imaging consciousness of physical images), imagining
proper without actual seeing (mental image or imaging consciousness), concept and
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thought. It is impossible to exhaust the number of complications that arise from
venturing into so broad a field.
But these issues could only surface when it is assumed that some kind of
similarity holds between reading and seeing. The anti-pictorial stance, in its various
different shapes, simply attacks this assumption, dismissing the modeling of the
image after the physical picture. In fact, the reasons for repudiating the pictorial
conception of the image often seem as good as the reasons for accepting it. In the
context of one’s interactions with literary texts, why would there be any need to
recall visual language, when the words of one’s reading are observably not visual
pictures (unless, of course, they are calligraphies), but meager imprints on the page,
and when the so-called visuality of the image concerns imaginary objects, which are
much deficient in providing the same level of sensual concreteness and intensity as
real objects? Even more simply, the pictorial claim would immediately collapse as
soon as the skeptic, having introspected his own responses to the words on the page,
declares, with empirical authority, that it is devoid of any visual sense. The platitude
“I picture the text” must indeed be cause for embarrassment for the naive reader of
“pictorialist” convictions, who uses it injudiciously: he sweeps through a particular
field of signs—words, sentences, paragraphs, particles of writing, punctuation marks
etc.—a field with no hint of the visual; and yet, he insists on using the imprecise,
arbitrary language of visuality, declaring that he sees, he pictures. This blind
insistence on the kinship between seeing and reading only discloses an unfounded
2 The terms in parentheses are the equivalent terms in Sartre’s analysis of the image in L’lmaginaire
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bias for the ocular. The image needlessly superimposes itself, with its purported
visuality, on the reader’s otherwise direct interactions with the literary text. Being a
mental, and not an empirical phenomenon, the image remains hidden, private,
subjective and unavailable for observation and inspection. Such hiddenness alone
must be sufficient proof to deny the image even the most rudimentary phenomenality
worth investigating. Could the written word, so solidly grounded in the unequivocal
materiality of inscription, be left to the vicissitudes of an arbitrary imaginary seeing?
Wouldn’t it be giving in to baseless superstition to admit the authority of the reader’s
imaginary seeing over the written word’s being? The image, with its imprecisions,
indeterminacies, deceptions, must not be allowed a place in the science of reading.
Any phenomenology of the image, pictorial or otherwise, must be rejected in favor
of versions of behaviorism and materialism that would ask not how the mind,
situated in the world, makes sense of the word, but how the word, as material force,
affects the world with no intermediaries.
Given the indefinite status of the pictorial image, however, the anti-pictorial
stances are frequently marked by their own ambiguities, indeterminacies and
questionable presuppositions. The criticisms of the image often involve the grouping
of the pictorial image with other notions that the anti-pictorial stance finds
objectionable; but such grouping may itself be objectionable. As I discuss in my
second chapter, Heidegger conceptualizes the picture as enframing and representing
thought, which signifies the evasion of the truthful events of language. His critique
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of the image gives rise to some difficult questions concerning the notions that he
configures the image with, such as reality, fiction, representation and framing.
I would now like to have a look at Roland Barthes’ remarks at the very end of
his long analytic essay on literary narrative, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis
of Narratives,” in that these remarks offer a succinct example of an anti-pictorial
stance, which finds, in the use of pictorial terms such as the reader’s vision, the
intimation of objectionable theories about literature. The essay, throughout which
Barthes lays down the complex structural laws of literary narrative, culminates in
this unexpected, and very surprising disavowal of the reader’s vision:
[Literary] [Njarrative does not show, does not imitate; the passion which may
excite us in reading a novel is not that of a “vision” (in actual fact, we do not
“see” anything). Rather it is that of meaning, that of a higher order of relation
which also has its emotions, its hopes, its dangers, its triumphs. (124)3
According to Barthes, literary narrative does not take effect by way of any showing,
envisioning or seeing on reader’s behalf: “vision” is suspect, untenable, and at odds
with the quasi-scientific tenor of his study on the narrative. Barthes, who objects to
the priority of the ocular, pushes for a higher order of “relation” in its stead. This
order, independent of the reader’s vision, has “its” own emotions, hopes, dangers,
triumphs, which, Barthes pronounces, no arbitrary vision on behalf of the reader
could reproduce.
3 All references to the “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives” are from Image. Music,
text. Barthes, Roland. Ed. and Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang. 1977.
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In the next few lines, the point of Barthes’s contention becomes rather
complicated: he objects not only to the poverty of the notion of vision, but also to the
act of referencing involved in vision. “Seeing” is now grouped with “referentiality”:
“What takes place” in a narrative is from the referential (reality) point of
view literally nothing-, “what happens” is language alone, the adventure of
language, the unceasing celebration of its coming (124).
Much needs to be unpacked in these few lines, in which Barthes shifts from vision to
reference and reality. To visualize (or envision) would be to refer (or reference) to
something, and this something, according to Barthes, would be reality. The shift
from vision to reality is very particular and rather curious: it assumes that the
admission of vision immediately and automatically implies a measure of reality. The
terms—vision, reality and reference—all pile up in a theoretical alliance against the
happening of language alone, which constitutes the truth of the literary text. With
their celebratory tone heralding the self-sufficient (be)coming of language, Barthes’
lines might have belonged to Heidegger, according to whose hermeneutics the text is
the site for the happening of truth, or the event of language.
It is not clear, however, why this enthusiastic celebration of language would
necessitate the annihilation of vision. Barthes uses the language of “nothing” to mark
the difference of the narrative “order” from vision: we do not see anything, or
nothing takes place in a narrative from the referential (reality) point of view. Is
Barthes’ objection to seeing and vision a critique of that impossibly gullible reader,
who, mesmerized by sight, mixes reality with fiction, hence taking fiction for
something? Is he demanding that fiction be saved from the trappings of reality, like
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an iconoclast that dismisses reality, instead of the picture? It is not obvious what
Barthes means by reality, but if with reality, he means actuality, presence, existence,
availability, authenticity etc., it would be rather superfluous to remind the reader that
whatever he envisions during the reading of a literary text is not “real,” that the
phenomenological ghosts of his imagination are made-up, that it might be a waste of
effort to search for an actual James Bond (Barthes’ own example), or an existing
unicorn. Sure, there may in fact be instances when reality in this very rudimentary
sense may be demanded from the experience of a written text, as it happens in
science, journalism, and the literary sub-genre of biography. But the reference to
reality, even in such reality-soliciting cases, is conditional and hard to maintain.
Scientific research and journalistic integrity both demand that a definition of “real”
be provided and agreed upon, say, as a sufficient or good-enough correspondence
between what is stated and what is shown. The text, whose “reality” is thus
demanded, is always prone to the disappearance of the real: it is hardly ever
contemporaneous with the real, following the real after the fact. A biography recalls
a life that has passed, and is particularly vulnerable to inconsistencies between that
which has been shown, and that which writing shows. It is not, therefore, an
immediately decidable matter to fix the meaning of the “referential point of view” or
equate such a point of view with the equally indeterminate notion of reality. Barthes
may possibly be adopting a loose conception of reality in which the reader finds
something “real” in the text, something true to his/her own life, in the way the Active
events take place, the Active characters act, etc. Even when we agree with Barthes,
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and claim that the reference of the text, in the loose sense just mentioned, is not real,
this claim cannot simply imply that the reference is a nothing. A literary text may
certainly reference to some thing that is not real, assuming, of course, that we know
and agree on what is meant by real. A reference to Bond is, at the very least, a
reference to a word, to a film, to a fantasy; each of which carry a certain
phenomenality whose equivalence to nothingness cannot be presumed. Contrary to
Barthes, one may still hold that the reader’s vision provides something (images,
pictures) to the written word during an act of reference, and hence, object to Barthes’
arbitrary annihilation of the reader’s vision. A narrative may show, and we might
safely continue to see things.
There is one more claim that Barthes makes in the course of these remarks: “a
narrative does not imitate.” One may take his remark as that most self-obvious,
hence superfluous observation about literary narrative: a written narrative— a
literary narrative is first and foremost a written one—cannot imitate anything, other
than itself. It must be the envisioned, executed, imagined narrative that Barthes must
be referring to, but even in this sense, there is a missing object to be reckoned with:
“a[n] [envisioned] narrative does not imitate,” but what?
Claims concerning the “realism” of narrative are to be discounted.. .In all
narrative imitation remains contingent. The function of narrative is not to
“represent,” it is to constitute a spectacle still enigmatic for us but in any case
not of a mimetic order. The “reality” of a sequence lies not in the “natural”
succession of the actions composing it, but in the logic there exposed, risked
and satisfied. Putting it another way, one could say that the origin of a
sequence is not the observation of reality, but the need to vary and transcend
the first form given man, namely repetition: a sequence is essentially a whole
within which nothing is repeated....It may be that men ceaselessly re-inject
into a narrative what they have known, what they have experienced; but if
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they do, at least it is in a form which has vanquished repetition and instituted
the model of a process of becoming. Narrative does not show, does not
imitate...(123-124)
This longer quote offers a better view of what Barthes understands by imitation: it
concerns not the reality as such, but the observation of reality. A narrative does not
imitate what is observed to be real; and since any particular observation is associated
with the reader’s phenomenological vision, Barthes implies, it does not imitate the
reader’s life. So a higher order of relation, or a different model of “reality” inheres in
the narrative “sequence,” as opposed to a “mimetic” order. The mimetic order is
supported by the reader’s vision, which mediates between the text and the reader’s
own life.
Barthes’ objection to reference shifts freely in between an assertion
concerning the nothingness of reference (a narrative does not show) and another
assertion concerning the nothingness of the relation between reference and life-
reality (a narrative does not imitate). The second assertion is directed against a
hypothetical reader who is convinced that a narrative is an imitation, if not a
repetition of his life. Barthes contrasts mimetic order with the order of an enigmatic
spectacle, insinuating that a mimetic order would hardly have any enigmatic or
spectacular aspect. The reader’s mediating vision, Barthes suspects, would be short
of perceiving the novelty of the text, and would certainly take the surprise out of it;
since, as if by compulsion, it would be tempted to reduce the literary narrative to a
straightforward mechanism, composed of those repetitious sequences and formulas
of life. The reader is simultaneously naive and tyrannical: he projects his view of life
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and reality onto the literary text, while impoverishing it with his proclivity towards
endless repetition.
There is, therefore, a set of notions aligned with and implied in the notion of
vision: reality, reference, mimesis, imitation, repetition, notions that Barthes
contrasts with the other set that he privileges: language, logic, order, variance,
becoming. The former set implicitly connotes the emotional modalities of boredom,
impoverishment, compulsion, stasis, while the latter resonates, explicitly, with the
ideas of novelty, passion, hope, risk, danger, adventure, enigma and emancipation.
Literary narrative must be severed from the representing, imitative interferences of
the human, and must be understood as an independent field of becoming before
being a text fo r the reader.
Despite the impoverishing meddling of the reader’s vision, however, Barthes
still has to make room for the fact that the reader cannot help doing something with
the text, making the following concession: “it may be that men ceaselessly re-inject
into a narrative what they have known, what they have experienced.” (124) This
observation reveals uncertainty as to what role the reader (“men”) must be given in
the process of making sense (and affect) of the literary text. While the reader’s
inclination may be towards the repetition of reality in his phenomenological vision,
there is still the possibility of newness, if and when the reader is thought to re-inject
himself into the text “in a form, which has vanquished repetition and instituted the
model of a process of becoming.” (124)
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The question is whether such a form would necessitate the omission of the
reader’s vision, or whether the reader’s vision is in need of a theory that does not
reduce it to automatic, static and repetitive modes of “re-injection.” Barthes’s
speculations are too biased to pursue an argument toward the latter direction, and too
rushed to constitute a plausible argument that omits vision, without omitting the
reader. They display a profound anxiety that reality, as it lurks behind such vision,
could diminish the pleasures of reading, turning into an ossified and authoritative
point of reference that the reader repetitiously and compulsively forces the text to
comply with. The reader, who claims to see while reading, is also suspect of seeing a
reality devoid of newness. In taking us to an un-happening reality, it seems, vision
takes away from the real powers of literature. To ward off vision, “language itself’
must be privileged over the reader’s intrusive involvements with the text. In fact,
“language itself’ is Barthes’ own metaphorical model of reading, superior to the
seemingly more metaphorical model of “vision.” To assert the superiority of
“language itself,” Barthes groups “vision” with other notions that he finds
objectionable, as a result of which vision immediately assumes a variety of negative
connotations. These other notions themselves, however, are unstable, contested, and
in need of further investigation: reference, reality, imitation, repetition.
Barthes’ lines exemplify the instability, vagueness and malleability of the
image and the visual terms that are used in conjunction with it (such as vision and
seeing). In fact, the image is a very convenient target of criticism: its indefiniteness
allows specific criticisms to mold it according to a particular image of their choice.
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The consequence is this: there is no common language to talk about the image, or
imagination; and there is not one image, but a multiplicity of them.
It is not my intention to study, define and fix what the “one and only” image
(or imagination) is, when the being of the image is so vague and contested. To
repeat, there is not one image, and it is impossible to pin down all of its many
variations within a conclusive theory, or provide a straightforward definition. My
dissertation is a heuristic and circumscribed attempt to investigate the use of the
tVi
image in the works of three 20 -century philosophers: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin
Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. It may also be understood as three related essays on
their conceptualizations of the image in relation to language. The three chapters
involve the evaluation, critique and reformulation of not just their use of the image,
but also of the critical terms with which they associate the image in their arguments.
Throughout my dissertation, I locate the image principally in the reader’s
interactions with the words of his/her reading; therefore my focus is not on the
mental image of memory or dream, but on the image produced in the mind in the acts
of interacting with words, or simply, on the image in reading. The mental image does
become the central aspect of my third chapter; but there, it is discussed in relation to
language and sign consciousness. I would also like to emphasize that I discuss the
image not only in relation to literary language, but also in relation to any kind of
linguistic use. In Wittgenstein, for instance, the image, conceptualized as “Bild,”
belongs to linguistic prepositions, to acts of saying and comprehending language. I
show particular attention to those moments in the three philosophers’ thoughts in
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which the discussion of the image in different uses of language turns into a
discussion of the image in relation to literary language. In Heidegger, for instance,
the image is related to the representative uses of language, including pragmatic,
everyday talk, and not to its artistic and literary uses. In Sartre, the image is
contrasted with the consciousness of words and signs, but is also attributed to the act
of reading literary works.
I would here like to make an important note on my use of terminology in the
first two chapters of my dissertation. I amplify the visual sense of the image by
choosing to use the equivalent “picture.” In an imitation of the German “Bild,” I
capitalize the picture as “Picture” to intimate the ambiguity of the image’s kinship
with actual, physical pictures. Among the physical pictures that are thought to bear
some relationship with the image, I highlight the sketch or drawing (Wittgenstein),
the painting (Heidegger), portrait and imitation (Sartre). In my third chapter, I follow
Sartre’s use of terminology, and revert to the “image.” Sartre also makes a similar
distinction between “Picture” and “physical picture” which in his terminology
becomes that between the “mental image” and “physical images.” Sartre never
denies the visuality of the mental image, therefore, his use of the mental image is not
distinguishable from the “Picture” that I use in my first chapter. In fact, he
emphasizes the kinship between mental image and physical images by grouping
them in the same family of phenomenal occurrences. For simplicity, in the following
description of my dissertation, I refer to the “image” or “Picture” of imaginary
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experiences as the “picture,” while I qualify the pictures of perceptual experience
(paintings, drawings, etc.) as “physical pictures.”
A common thread in all three philosophers that I study is that they argue
against the pictoriality of language: they dismiss the picture as inessential,
misleading, constraining way of approaching language. They replace the picture with
alternative models that theorize the relationship between language and the user(s) of
language. Wittgenstein and Heidegger are the most skeptical about the picture, which
they associate with the role of imagination in making sense of or experiencing
language. So their argument against the picture also becomes an argument against
and even a repudiation of imagination and consciousness. Unlike these two
philosophers, Sartre displays a strong pictorial stance that embraces the visual sense
of the mental image; but such a stance coexists with an ambiguous denial of the
visual sense of the consciousness of language. The three philosophers often discuss
the picture in the context of a more general philosophical question that treats the
mental picture as if it were a physical picture: how do words and pictures differ in
the way they represent or “give” things? They contest the power or usefulness of the
picture with the conviction that the giving of the pictures is incommensurate with
that of words. In my dissertation, I argue against these philosophers’ dismissals of
the picture and the pictoriality of language, and critique the alternative models that
they propose to replace the picture. I show that the picture model resists their
ambiguous and often self-contradicting dismissals, and delineate the significance of
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the picture as a plausible model that may help explain how one makes sense of
language in general, and literature in particular.
In the first chapter of the dissertation, I look at the adoption, transformation,
and ultimate repudiation of the picture in Wittgenstein. Early Wittgenstein has a
positive approach to the picture: the central claim of the Tractatus is that language is
essentially pictorial. This approach, which is usually referred to as Wittgenstein’s
picture theory of language, is also a one-to-one correspondence theory that treats
both language and the picture as transparent, unambiguous media. Interestingly, late
Wittgenstein seems to dismiss the picture model completely, but, as I show in my
close reading of passages from his Philosophical Investigations, he is far from being
unambiguous about his dismissal. In one important passage that I study in detail, he
affiliates language with the world, which he captures in his metaphor of “language
games;” eliminating any need for the picture to mediate between language and
picture. He then sets up a dualism between the applications of the world and the
pictures of imagination, privileging the former over the letter. In my analysis of his
argument, I show that Wittgenstein cannot sustain this dualism, in that he also has to
reckon with the possibility that applications can also be seen as Pictures: his
argument still has to make room for the picture, which it desires to banish. I also
point out some of the assumptions, which Wittgenstein makes in his
conceptualization of the picture and which enable him to assert the priority of
language-games and applications over the picture. Wittgenstein’s picture is an inert,
static and obtrusive thought that cannot reflect the richness of the applications or
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uses that speakers make of language in a world of multiple language-games. I argue
that another conceptualization of the picture, which I call “pictorial narrative,”
resolves the dualism that Wittgenstein believes to exist between pictures and
applications. In his prioritization of applications over pictures, Wittgenstein stresses
that applications, and not pictures, contain rules and standards that make them
correspond to this normal world. To illustrate this normalcy, he uses counter
examples that describe other, fantastic worlds in distinction to which this world
defines itself. In one such example, Wittgenstein’s writing becomes indistinguishable
from a kind of fantastic literature that uses absurd and surrealist pictures in order to
call attention to the “normal” processes of sense-making. His philosophical thinking,
here, appears to need imagination and literature to establish the rules of normalcy.
Towards the end of my first chapter, I show that Wittgenstein’s examples are in a
direct conversation with Carroll’s fictions in Alice in Wonderland, which are
philosophical examples of the negation of a normal world. Lewis Carroll knowingly
confounds the reader’s imagination, making it impossible to rely on usual, “normal”
everyday pictures to make sense of his Alice fictions. I use my discussion of
Wittgenstein in my interpretation of some of the passages in Alice in Wonderland.
pointing out the text’s eccentric and nonsensical uses of language, which invite the
making of extraordinary, unintuitive and self-contradictory pictures, for instance, in
the reading of the “Jabberwocky” poem and Humpty Dumpty’s exhaustive exegesis
thereof. Alice is also a picture book: the drawn pictures of reading frequently interact
with the physical pictures of seeing, which are John Tenniel’s illustrations. I look at
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some of these illustrations to discuss how this interaction takes place and how
illustrations instruct, correspond and contradict the reader’s picturing of Carroll’s
text.
My second chapter discusses both Heidegger’s theory of language and his
forceful repudiation of the picture. Heidegger insists that language must not be traced
to anything else, and that it must not be turned into a field of arbitrary and subjective
interpretations. He cautions that any such tracing may take away from the actual
powers of language, rendering the truthful linguistic events of language (Ereignis)
impossible. Heidegger’s opposition to the act of tracing language to something else
also implies his repudiation of consciousness and imagination, which become most
prominent in his criticisms of the notions of representation (“Vorstellung”) and
picture (“Bild”). By all means, Heidegger’s picture denotes the representational use
of language, which he contrasts with the truthful use of language. In his peculiar
version of materialism, Heidegger treats material words in the same way he treats
material things. He construes language as being closer to things of its saying than
any representation: it is language, which, in its truthful use, gives these things as they
are. The picture, on the other hands, represents and enframes the things of its
representation in predetermined, arbitrary interpretive and pragmatic frameworks.
The commitment to the picture, according to Heidegger, results in the invasive
proliferation and systematization of the usual, untruthful interpretations of the things
of the world, a negative condition which Heidegger captures in the phrase, “world-
pictures.” Interestingly, Heidegger’s repudiation of the enframing picture in his
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essays on technology, on Gestell and Weltbild, is very similar to that of Wittgenstein:
the frame of the picture makes it impossible to experience things in their plural
being.
However, in Heidegger, one may still find another picture that does not
enframe: these are artworks, and, in particular, Van Gogh’s shoe paintings.
Diametrically opposed to the enframing picture, artworks possess world-disclosing
capabilities and, as such, denote the truthful and exemplary use of language. The
world-disclosing picture then performs as a model for language use, in general, and
of literary language in particular. Heidegger’s conceptualization of the artwork is
simultaneously a theory of language that uses the visual experience of physical
pictures to cast light on the event of language. This theory of language may be
characterized by a subtle understanding of affect, which Heidegger emphasizes in his
interpretation of Van Gogh’s depictions of “peasant shoes.” The affects of artworks
and hence of language cannot be reduced to particular, momentary bodily sensations
and must involve a broad, context-endowing vision that Heidegger metaphorizes as
the “world.” This notion of affect, culled from a look at Van Gogh’s shoes painting,
also instructs Heidegger’s own philosophical writing, at times, turning it into a
literary exercise.
In early Sartre, we do not find an explicit attempt to dismiss the picture
(henceforth referred to as the image) or imagination. To the contrary, having written
two books on imagination, Sartre is perhaps the most important 20th century
philosopher who investigates the field of imagination and the phenomenon of the
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picture. However, in Sartre, we also find a very strong tendency to deny the
pictoriality of language. While pictoriality is an essential feature in Sartre’s
examination of mental images and physical pictures, his understanding of language,
word and sign does not admit the notion of pictoriality. Unlike Wittgenstein and
Heidegger, Sartre does not explicitly engage questions of language in his
phenomenology of the image in L’Imaginaire: in fact, Sartre has often been critiqued
for not having attempted to write exclusively on language. In my final chapter, I
argue that an implicit theory of language underlies Sartre’s phenomenology of the
image, and that its reconstruction in explicit terms might lead to important insights
into the relations between pictures and words. His phenomenology of the image
intends to make analytic distinctions among the mind’s comportments towards real
objects, physical pictures and material signs, which he refers to as different forms of
consciousness. Imaging consciousness, according to Sartre, concerns both mental
images and physical pictures such as photographs, paintings, caricatures, drawings,
etc. He compares and contrasts the consciousness of physical pictures, which he
finds to be closely related to mental images, with the consciousness of physical
words, which he calls “sign consciousness.” In making this comparison, Sartre
denies the possibility of any analogy between physical pictures and written words, on
the basis of the essential differences between imaging and sign consciousness that he
observes. Despite his analytical intention to make sharp and often dichotomous
distinctions between picture and word, however, Sartre’s nuanced account of
physical pictures reflects the instability, and even unsustainability of the same
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distinctions. In my reading of Sartre’s examples of physical pictures (the portrait and
Franconay’s imitation), I argue against Sartre’s distinctions, by stressing the
continuity of imaging with sign consciousness, of the picture with the word. In
relation to this critique, I also make several clarifications concerning the notions of
“object” and “representation.” Sartre himself marks the same continuity when he
explicitly refers to the act of reading literary works, particularly novels, in which
words begin to act like pictures, leading to, what Sartre calls, a “curious”
hybridization and contamination of consciousness. Sartre’s phenomenology of
imagination in L’Imaginaire. may then be interpreted as a phenomenology of reading
(and writing) that concerns both the depicted matter of the world, and the inscribed
matter of language and of literature.
My dissertation is an attempt to turn the image, and the imagination into a
field of study in contemporary literary theory. Contemporary literary theory is
known to have forged alliances with philosophy; but none of these alliances seems to
have created an interdisciplinary forum on the questions of image and imagination. I
believe that the image may prove to be, once again, a promising point of
convergence among literary theory, philosophies of the mind and language, and
cognitive science. Admittedly, the image does present enormous challenges both to
thought and to research. My thesis must be thought as a modest contribution to a vast
field of study opening around the elusive image.
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CHAPTER 1
Bringing back the Picture: A Critical Reassessment of
Wittgenstein’s Pictures and an Interpretation of Alice’s Picture
Books
Maybe it is better to start from the ending of Alice in Wonderland, from the
point where Alice’s fantastic adventures of imagination seem to have ended, and we
are at the brink of this dull world. Interestingly, here, the world does not make an
abrupt appearance. The reign of the imagination continues: the world is still
mediated through the strange dream of Alice’s sister, who appears for the second
time in the book. The first was in the very beginning before Alice fell into the
imagination: she was then reading a book to her.
I am now reading the last Picture, the epilogue to Alice’s adventures. Alice
has awakened and finished telling her fantastic dream to her sister. Her sister
comforts her, kisses her and tells her “to run in to her tea.” Alice’s departure is an
excuse for her to dream a little bit, “after a fashion.” This is a dream that doesn’t
know where to begin or where to end.
[Alice’s sister] sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her hand,
watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful
Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion, and this was her
dream: -
First, she dreamed of little Alice herself: once again the tiny hands
were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes were looking up into
hers-she could hear the very tones of her voice, and see that queer little toss
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of her head to keep the wandering hair that would always get into her eyes-
•••(117) 4
Is this a dream or just a closing of the eyes? Is this a replay of the immediate past?
The sister’s imagination seems to have retained Alice’s sight of a minute ago, in
order to carry it into a minute after. In the replay, the sister simply takes in the sight
of Alice, as if through a handheld camera, capturing her little gestures, her bright
eyes, her voice. Far from the grotesqueries of Alice’s dreams, the dream’s “fashion”
is the humble style of family videos. As the imagination reels on, Alice looks up into
the camera’s eyes: the eyes of the sister. Alice is telling her dream to her sister, and
the sister is listening, while seeing, remembering:
[T]he wandering hair that would always get into her eyes-and still as she
listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with
the strange creatures of her little sister’s dream. (117)
There is an abrupt shift in the fashion of the imagining; the whole place transforms
into the Alice’s dreamworld as the sister’s imagination launches onto another scene.
It is as if the sister now decided to cut out Alice from the moment of telling the story,
in order to bring her into another Picture. This new Picture is populated by the
parading figures of Alice’s adventures, their peculiar voices and their strange bits of
narratives: the White Rabbit, the Mouse, the March Hare, the Queen, the Duchess,
the Gryphon, the Lizard, the Mock Turtle.
[T]he whole place around her became alive with the strange creatures of her
little sister’s dream. The long grass rustled at [Alice’s] feet as the White
Rabbit hurried by—the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the
neighboring pool—she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare
4 All my Alice quotes and references to illustrations are from Lewis Carroll, Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. New York: Signet, 2000.
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and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the
Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution—once more the pig-
baby was sneezing on the Duchess’s knee, while plates and dishes crashed
around it—once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the
Lizard’s slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled
the air, mixed up with the distant sob of the miserable Mock Turtle.
The new Picture could not be more different than the previous one, that lyrical,
almost static shot of the memory of a minute ago in which Alice spoke, looking up
into the camera eyes. The imagination suddenly becomes the master of a flashy
editing technique that could compress a whole book made up of hundreds of images,
into a composite shot of cutout narratives. The screen is now divided into numerous
screens, each displaying a different bit of a narrative. The new Picture is similar to a
tune played on Wittgenstein’s keyboard of imagination (“Vorstellungsklavier”) , 5
with the difference being that the same tune is being played on two different
keyboards simultaneously: the keyboard of just seeing is accompanied by the
keyboard of just hearing. It is as if each time one touched a different bit of the
screen, that bit came to life, bringing with it a different sound: rustling as the White
Rabbit hurries past, splashing as the Mouse is about to drown, sobbing as the Mock
Turtle sings and so on.
The style of imagining happens when “the whole place around Alice
[becomes] alive.” But what is “the whole place” around Alice, but the words of her
5 “Das Aussprechen eines Wortes ist gleichsam ein Anschlagen einer Taste auf dem
Vorstellungsklavier.”
Trans: “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of imagination.”
(PI, §6,p.4)
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saying? In the first shot, the sister was simply listening to her words, while taking in
the sight of Alice as she spoke. The sister now shifts from listening, through
“seeming’ to listen, to imagining Alice’s words. The imagination withdraws these
words from mere listening and refracts them into the “sights and sounds” that display
bits of narratives. Alice’s words now become alive or enlivened with the imagining
of the strange creatures of her saying.
The sister does not stop listening; in contrast, she listens very attentively: the
accuracy with which she recaptures Alice’s Adventures in her composite shot is a
proof for her attentiveness. The sister doesn’t merely seem to listen to Alice’s words;
she listens to see (a hurrying rabbit), but she listens also to what she has seen (a
rustle). In such imaginings, Alice’s voice “seems” to be eclipsed by the splashes,
rustles, sobs, rattles of her stories.
And then, as if to accentuate the lack of constancy, another shift happens in
the style of imagining:
So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland,
though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to
dull reality—the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool
rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling teacups would change to
tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd
boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other
queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamor of the farm
yard—while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of
the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs.
There is now another Picture, the Picture of the “dull reality”, in the immediate
vicinity of the composite one, a Picture that could be ushered in if the sister just
opened her eyes. If the first shot were that of the immediate past, this Picture would
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be that of the immediate future. Is this Picture, like a guest on the way to the gates of
the present knowing, out of sight or is it already made? How can the sister ever
know that the previous composite shot would change into the anticipated shot of
“dull reality”? Does the sister already know how the change will take place? If there
is overconfidence in the sister’s (parenthetical knowing), it is because the sister’s
dream is not a simple dream; it is a dream after many different fashions, a self-aware
play of imagination.
The “dull reality” is not in the immediate future: it is already in the sister’s
present. It is the sister’s eyes that are closed and not the ears. The imagination,
which has hitherto edited “the confused clamor” of the background out of its works,
could bring that clamor back in immediately, if only it wanted to produce a
straightforward shot of the “dull reality.” Instead, it wants to do something else. It
invents a style of transformation to dissolve the previous composite shot into the shot
of “dull reality.” In the dissolve, the rattling of teacups turn into the tinkling of
sheep-bells; the shrill cries into the shepherd’s voice. The “dullness” of reality is an
empty affect, or a pretense; there is nothing dull or lusterless in reality, when it is
brought into being by way of such an elaborate dissolve.
But then, “lastly,” another shift takes place and the imagination begins to
expand from the immediate anticipation of the “dull reality” to a more distanced
future:
Lastly she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the
after-time, be herself a grown-up woman: and how she would keep, through
all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she
would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and
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eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland
of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a
pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the
happy summer days.
In “[picturing] to herself,” does the sister Picture herself? Isn’t the grown-up woman
in the after-time the sister herself, mirrored? Hasn’t the sister turned Alice into
herself in this new Picture as she tells stories to make the eyes of other children
bright and eager? Doesn’t the sister’s imagining of Alice as she feels the sorrows and
pleasures of other children reflect her own self as she feels the sorrows and pleasures
of Alice? In the making of this last Picture, the sister is using the mirror: she is using
the fiction of the present to dream up the fiction of the future. The mirror resonates
with the affect of repetition, collapsing Alice and sister into one and the same figure.
I have imagined this passage as a series of different Pictures and different
Pictorial techniques. I have imagined the sister’s imagination as that space in which
she is producing Pictures. I have traced the imagination as it held onto an immediate
past in the closing of the eyes, as it anticipated a scene in their opening, as it
“pictured to [itself]” a more distant future, as it produced a notion of temporality as
well as of narrative. I traced it as it experimented with and made use of various
editing techniques in the making of its Pictures. I pointed out the pretense of “dull
reality”, when that reality is in fact being molded and fitted in an overall course. I
implied that there is, therefore, nothing simple or immediate at all about this work of
imagination or this piece of literature, which is supposed to transition us from the
unsettling chaos of Alice narratives to the dull comforts of everyday life.
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I could have written the previous paragraph with the aura of impersonality,
using the passive voice or some other writer’s trick, in order to give it a sense of a
subject-less assertiveness, since we all know that the “I” is already implied in
anything that I write. But in so far as my remarks concern the interpretation of a
passage from a work of language, the “I” is in at least one sense unavoidable: it reads
and interprets a work of language. The work of imagination belongs to the reader,
before it is handed over to someone else. Something happens in the imagination
when it processes the signs of a work of language; something also happens when the
sister passes from merely seeming to listen to Alice’s words, to imagining those
words; and the “whole place around her [becomes] alive” with the creatures of
Alice’s narratives. This “something” which enables me to move from the plane of
“seeming to read” to the plane of interpreting, I call the Picture. It is that, which I
produce, in my imagination, in the act of reading a work of language. The Picture is
also the analogy that I use in my interpretations, by evoking actual (visual) pictures
captured with the camera and edited in the studio. It is an expansive analogy, which
takes its hint from actual pictures, but covers a much wider spectrum of interactions
between interpreters and works of language.
“I” am not alone in the enterprise of figuring out the Picture. In his earlier
work, the Tractatus. Wittgenstein, the philosopher, also approaches works of
language (linguistic propositions) with the Picture analogy. Something happens in
the reading of a proposition, according to Wittgenstein, that is [analogous to] the
Picture (‘das Bild’) of the word. The Picture I use in my interpretations is the same
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Picture Wittgenstein sees in the enlivening of language. In my capitalization of the
first letter in the “Picture,” in my incoherent adherence to Wittgenstein’s German
while writing in English, I seek a sign that has the double-sense of the Picture’s
being and not-being, a sign that is both visual and analogical.
In this chapter, I first take Wittgenstein’s lead into the Picture analogy,
delineating several relevant notions that relate to his conceptualization of the Picture:
the world(s), propositions, facts, realities, thoughts, translations, applications, words,
objects, games. I then subject these terms to critical scrutiny, drop and delineate
some of them, revise and clarify others while adopting a somewhat different
vocabulary. I also explain the shift in Wittgenstein’s thinking concerning the Picture,
from the central role given to it in his earlier work to its later devaluation as a
somewhat peripheral and confusing idea in his later work. In Wittgenstein’s earlier
work, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. the Picture figures as an intermediary
between the world and language, without which the world cannot be translated into
language or language cannot reflect the world. But the conceptualization of the
Picture in the Tractatus creates the very philosophical problems that result in his
dismissal of the Picture in his later work where he questions the immediate
correspondences that he previously held to exist between language and the world. In
the Tractatus. Wittgenstein opens a window for the imagination and its Pictures,
while, in the Philosophical Investigations, convinced that what it reveals is an
imprecise, fuzzy, useless view of language, he closes it. Despite what seems to be a
forceful repudiation of the Picture, however, Wittgenstein’s approach to the Picture
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in the Philosophical Investigations is ambiguous: he introduces and uses the Picture
analogy to some extent, but throws it out, adopting what he believes to be more
relevant analogies in its stead; at other times, however, he reverts to it unexpectedly,
as if he were reluctant to settle with a complete dismissal of the Picture. In my
critique of Wittgenstein’s later work, I show how the Picture survives even within
Wittgenstein’s repudiation of it. I then end the chapter with interpreting the
beginning of Alice’s adventures, with a set of critical terms that comes out from the
critical refinement and reappreciation of the Picture.
The Picture Analogy in the Tractatus
In the Tractatus. Wittgenstein seeks correspondences between the world and
the works of language, such that language may reproduce the world or the world may
be inscribed in language. Wittgenstein’s interest in such correspondences results in
two questions that concern the movement from the world to language and from
language to the world. Both movements demand work from the imagination, and in
the Tractatus Wittgenstein designates the work of imagination as the Picture. The
imagination will make Pictures of the world or Picture the language.
In the first movement, which concerns the inscription of the world, the world
stretches in front of the Picturing imagination, which will mold it into language. This
is an imagination that wants to produce works of language from the facts of the
world, it writes in view o f the world. Whatever one writes will have to be evaluated
on the basis of whatever is or could be. The second, converse movement, concerns
the drawing of the world from language: here, we have works of language (words,
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sentences, descriptions) which will be made to correspond to the world. The
Picturing imagination facilitates the passage from the written to the factual world: it
reads in view o f the world. It wants to know whatever is read corresponds or could
correspond to the world.
In the Tractatus. the world and the language share the same underlying
structure or logic: they are analogous to each other.6 If the world and language are
analogous, they can also be translatable into one another. But how is it that
translations can be possible? The words on the page do not assume a life on their
own and immediately become a part of the world; the world is not an inscription-
producing machine. For translations to be possible there is a need for a notion that
mediates between the world and language, both in the inscription of the world in
language and in the drawing of the world from language. For Wittgenstein, this
notion is the Picture of the imagination. Before the world is inscribed, it is depicted;
before the language is made of the world, it is Pictured in imagination. Imagination,
as the mediating medium, will enable the correspondences of the world with
language. Pictures will be drawn of the world, and Pictures will be drawn from
6 According to (Hacker, Laying) “the Tractatus presents in the most purified form the ancient
thesis that language, both in its form and content, mirrors the world in its form and content.”
(97) Wittgenstein’s theory is in the same tradition as the ontologico-linguistic isomorphism
and correspondence theories of truth, which means that both the world and the language will
be dissected into their constituents and (isomorphic) correspondences between these
constituents will be established. Hacker displays Wittgenstein’s theory of isomorphism in six
theses and three corollaries, which he calls “[Wittgenstein’s] Doctrine of Isomorphism” (The
Rise, 89-92)
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language, making translations between the world and language possible. The first of
these translations concerns the translation from the world to the language:
World-^Picture -^Language (1s t translation)
while the second describes the corollary to the first:
Language^Picture ->World. (2n d translation)
While Wittgenstein’s account of this second translation is seemingly more relevant
to my interests in reading, Picturing and imagination in this chapter, the intimate
relationship between the first and the second translation demands a recapitulation of
Wittgenstein’s arguments on the first translation. Wittgenstein, himself, makes this
detour necessary with the particular ontological viewpoint he engages in the
Tractatus: the world is first seen and depicted in a Picture, which is then mapped
onto language. Wittgenstein introduces the Picture while describing the translation
from the world into language at the beginning of the Tractatus.7 In his propositions
that describe the first translation, Wittgenstein’s ideas move in two axes: the first
axis concerns the analytic decomposition of both the world and language, while the
second concerns the translations of the world into language.
7 The technicality of Wittgenstein’s terminology in these propositions may alienate the
“uninitiated” reader. Unlike the style of Philosophical Investigations, which is replete with
many enjoyable examples and analogies, as well as thoughtful hesitations and suggestive
uncertainties, Tractatus is a book of youthful overconfidence; it is restrained, serious,
assertive and self-enclosed. Shanker thinks that the book is “written in the sonorous
measures of the poet,” (16) in an “opaque” style, “containing a robust streak of mysticism
which - if Wittgenstein’s famous letter to von Ficker is anything to go by- constitutes the
essential point of the work.” (17) For an account of Wittgenstein’s style in Philosophical
Investigations, see Cavell, 55-56 and Genova 61-63.
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An interesting aspect of Wittgenstein’s analysis is the way the world is
available to his analytic eye. Wittgenstein’s analysis starts with the sight of the
world, and its immediate decomposition into its constituent parts, such that these
parts could be taken, both in isolation and totality, and translated into language. The
world, here, is like a work of language breakable into smaller units, i.e., sentences
and words.8 In the opening statements of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein sees and
declares the world to be “the totality of facts, not of things.” (§1.1) 9 The analysis
proceeds rapidly: the world could be broken into facts, facts into states of affairs
(object-states), and finally, state of affairs into simple objects. The simple objects are
the coordinates of the world; they combine in configurations that Wittgenstein calls
states of affairs or “object-states,” which, in turn, combine to form the facts of the
world. The following scheme may help illustrate Wittgenstein’s ontology as it
concerns the decomposition of the constituents of the world into simpler ones:
World-> Facts-> States of Affairs (Object-states)-> Objects1 0 [decomposition]
8 The possibility of dissecting the world into simple objects is one of the problematic ideas,
which Wittgenstein derived from Russell’s logical atomism.Hacker points to the
inconsistencies in the decomposition of the world into simple objects: “It is impossible to
find any kind of thing.. .which will satisfy the conditions of objecthood.” (Laying, 97) For a
comparison between Wittgenstein’s “Picture” theory and logical atomism, see Pears and
(Hacker, The Rise, 92-97).
9 “Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge.” (§1.1) Wittgenstein
emphasizes that facts are not to be contused with objects; but there is little to suggest in his
account that an object can not be a fact in isolation. Witgenstein probably wants to say that
facts are configurations of several objects; that in a fact, an object is configured in a certain
way with other objects.
1 0 Several statements of the opening statements display the relationships between facts,
objects-states and objects:
2. Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.
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Wittgenstein’s world is a possible world that unfolds in a logical space, allowing for
a multitude of possible configurations of facts.1 1 But this space is not a fantastic
space in which anything and everything can happen:
In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the
possibility of that state of affairs must already be prejudged in the thing.
(§2.0 1 2 )1 2
In other words, it is a space with implicit rules, in which possibilities
(“Moglichkeit”) are somewhat regulated: the circumstances (the thing-states or
“Sachverhalten”) in which a thing can occur must already be marked on the thing.
The logical space of possibilities must be pre-determined, or prejudged by a prior
knowledge of the world. On the one hand, there is the notion of endless possibility
that would belong to arbitrary (“zufallig”) imagination, and, on the other, there is the
notion of predetermined possibility that characterizes the non-arbitrary logical space
of Wittgenstein. Several following statements reinforce this idea:
2.01 Der Sachverhalt ist eine Verbindung von Gegenstanden (Sachen, Dingen.)
2.011 Es ist dem Ding wesentlich, der Bestandteil eines Sachverhaltes sein zu
konnen.
2.012 In der Logik ist nichts zufallig: Wenn das Ding im Sachverhalt vorkommen
kann, so muss die Moglichkeit des Sachverhaltes im Ding bereits prajudiziert sein.
In these passages, Wittgenstein tells us that an object, while recognizable as the simple
building block of the world, is always in a combination or configuration, in order to
constitute an object-state with other objects. If the object does not occur in a combination in
the present, it always occurs within the possibility of forming a combination. The objects
combine, like the links in a chain (‘wie die Glieder einer Kette’ (§2.03)) to form object-
states, and consequently facts.
1 1 “The facts in logical space are the world” (“[d]ie Tatsachen im logischen Raum sind die
Welt”) (§1.13).
1 2 In der Logik ist nichts zufallig: Wenn das Ding im Sachverhalt vorkommen kann, so muss
die Moglichkeit des Sachverhaltes im Ding bereits prajudiziert sein (§2.012).
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If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its
occurrence in states of affairs. (Every such possibility must lie in the nature
of the object.)
A new possibility cannot subsequently be found. (§2.0123)
Objects contain the possibility of all states of affairs. (§2.014)
Wittgenstein’s world, therefore, is a space with predetermined possibilities,
1 -5
immediately decomposed and readily projectable onto language.
While moving from the world to language, Wittgenstein introduces the notion
of the Picture: the Pictures are the facts of the world as they are drawn in the
imagination: “We make to ourselves Pictures of facts” (§2.1).1 4 In this introduction,
Wittgenstein abandons the impersonal tone of his previous propositions: he brings
“us” into the Picture, he attributes the Picture to us. Unlike the world out there,
Pictures belong to us: they become our work and our own making, and are therefore
1 3 Can such world be a world of imagination, separated from other worlds with the way it
predetermines the possibilities of objects? What if the world is a particular world-Picture?
Here, Wittgenstein turns to an argument about substance, while introducing, for the first
time, the notion of the Picture, as well as, expressing a concern for the truth:
Objects form the substance of the world...
If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would
depend on whether another proposition was true.
It would then be impossible to form a Picture of the world (true or false) (§2.021-
2.0212)
This is a peculiar junction in Wittgenstein’s line of thought: if the world does not have any
substance, then truth would be a function of two propositions, the proposition of the world,
which is taken to be true, and the proposition of language, which may be true or false. The
nihilism and relativism that would result from the lack of substance is only predictable. But
the world cannot be a proposition, since a proposition, as his ensuing discussion will show,
is a Picture of the world. In other words, the world cannot be a Picture of the world, cannot
be true and (true or false) simultaneously. The world must be brought into the plane of
substance, while propositions must be ascribed to the category of Pictures. The world could
then be grounded in substance, in order to constitute that stable point of reference, with
respect to which the truth of pictures could be evaluated. With this grounding act,
Wittgenstein dismisses the suspicion that truth could be nothing but a function of the
difference between two propositions, or two Pictures.
1 4 Wir machen uns Bilder der Tatsachen. (§2.1)
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vulnerable to error. The relationship between the Picture and the world, however,
becomes further complicated by the introduction of another term: reality
(“Wirklichkeit”). The Picture is not simply a model of the world, but a model of
reality (“ein Modell der Wirklichkeit”). In the world-picture of the Tractatus. the
facts of the world are to be broken into states of affairs (“Sachverhalten”), which
might also be seen as atomic facts. On the side of the world, there are the facts and
on the side of the imagination, there are Pictures made of these facts, with a view to
resolving such facts into atomic facts. Reality, Wittgenstein tells us, refers to a fact
structured as a configuration of atomic facts.1 5
The transition from the facts of the world to the atomic facts of reality is a
very delicate one, and not at all obvious. We, the Picture-makers, must somehow
know that a fact of the world could be resolved into these atomic facts and not those
others, unless of course, the course of such resolution is predetermined or dictated
from the outside. Wittgenstein does not discuss how such resolution can take place
“correctly” or “truthfully,” without referring back to the fact from which the Picture
is made. In order to know whether the atomic fact (re)presented (“vorstellen” in
§2.11) by the Picture exists (or is real), one must go to the fact, so to speak, unless,
of course, reality, as a structured fact, is already given. A Picture would then
fictionalize (become a model of) a fact, and hence, would become a reality.
Interestingly, however, in Wittgenstein’s conception, the Picture is not a model of a
fact—and hence, not a model of the world—but a model of the one reality. Pictures
1 5 In Wittgenstein’s definition, reality is “the existence and non-existence of atomic facts”
(“Das Bestehen und Nichtbestehen von Sachverhalten ist die Wirklichkeit” ).
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in the first translation—and linguistic propositions, in the second—do not correspond
to facts, as a surface reading would suggest, but to already structured facts, or
realities. Such realities are already known and could therefore be placed on the side
of the world along with its substantive objects. While positing a difference between
reality and the model of reality, Wittgenstein notes:
2.201. The Picture depicts [abbilden] reality by representing [“darstellen”] a
possibility of the existence and non-existence of states of affairs
(atomic facts).
2.21. The Picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false.
2.223. In order to discover whether the picture is true or false, we must
compare it with reality.
It is not clear, however, how this agreement (“stimm[en]”) or comparison
(“vergleich[en]”) can at all take place, unless another Picture (reality), as a stable
point of reference, is posited outside the Picture (“Bild”), which is then made to
“represent” the first Picture (reality). Remembering that the determination of reality
concerns the existence or non-existence of the atomic facts in a fact, one would then
have to assume that the determination of such existence must have necessitated the
making of reality as a model of the fact, unless, of course the fact is assumed to
speak of itself, prescribing its own reality, without necessitating any determination
from the outside. But if there is a difference between a fact and reality, then such
reality cannot be given before the Picture: one must Picture the fact as reality, but
this would have meant that reality is a Picture (that reality is a model of reality), or,
conversely, that the Picture is a reality. In one of the most suggestive statements in
the Tractatus. however, Wittgenstein places the Picture in a different register than
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40
reality: “[The Picture] is like a measuring rod laid against reality.” (§2.1512)1 6 But
given that reality is already the Picture, this must be a curious measuring act, a kind
of self-measurement with no measure. Wittgenstein’s theory cannot say anything
about the truth about the world, in so far as it involves the comparison between a
Picture and reality, unless the reality is given as a stable reference. What it says is
that we make Pictures of facts, or, we fictionalize the world, without explaining how
and why we do it.
In another figurative moment, the elements of the Picture are likened to the
feelers (‘die Fuhler’) of the objects; with these elements, the Picture touches reality.
While the Picture corresponds to the fact, the elements of the Picture correspond to
the objects of the world. 1 7 In Wittgenstein’s ontology, these are the correspondences
between the imagination and the world:
World Reality (Facts) Objects
Imagination-^ Pictures-^ Pictorial elements
The Picture is the first step in making sense of the world by way of
representation; the second step will be the propositions of language. But before this
second step is taken, Wittgenstein will make space for another concept that is
1 6 “[Das Bild] ist wie ein Masstab an die Wirklichkeit angelegt.” A measuring rod would
imply some kind of use, as in our holding our Picture against the reality to find out whether
it is a truthful representation; but Wittgenstein has not showed us what how one uses this
measurement. Is this similar, for instance, to comparing a landscape drawing with the
landscape it refers to, in order to find out whether the drawing belongs to this landscape?
1 7 “Den Gegenstanden entsprechen im Bilde die Elemente des Bildes.” (§ 2.13)
Translation: “To the objects correspond, in the Picture, the elements of the Picture”.
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analogous to the Picture, but is closer to language: the thought (“der Gedanke”).
Wittgenstein does not tell us what differentiates the thought from the Picture; in fact,
he equates the thought with the Picture straight away: thinking the world is the same
1 S
as Picturing the world.
We are still following the translation from the world to the language; first, a
fact of the world is made into a Picture, and then into a thought, and now it will be
turned into a linguistic proposition1 9 . For the linguistic proposition to represent the
world, the thought should act through the signs of the proposition, or in
Wittgenstein’s language, the thought should express itself in the proposition 2 0. The
thought, as it were, enlivens the propositional sign or “Satzzeichen” so that it takes
effect and becomes a proposition. If Wittgenstein’s thought is equivalent to the
Picture, “the thought’s expressing itself’ becomes equivalent to “letting a Picture
take the place of the propositional sign”:
The essence of the propositional sign becomes very clear when we imagine it
made up of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, books) instead of written
signs. The mutual spatial proposition of these objects then expresses the
sense of the proposition. (§3.1431)2 1
1 8 “Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.” (§3)
Trans: The logical Picture of the facts is the thought.
1 9 The word used for proposition, “Satz,” also corresponds to the sentence in German.
2 0 “Im Satz driickt sich der Gedanke sinnlich wahmehmbar aus.” (§3.1)
Trans: In the proposition the thought is expressed perceptibly through the senses.
2 1 Sehr klar wird das Wesen des Satzzeichens, wenn wir es uns, statt aus Schriftzeichen, aus
raumlichen Gegenstanden (etwa Tischen, Stuhlen, Buchem) zusammengesetzt denken. Die
gegenseitige raumliche Lage dieser Dinge driickt dann den Sinn des Satzes aus. (§3.1431)
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To come closer to the sense of the proposition, one needs to conjure up a Picture
composed of objects, which will take the place of the propositional sign. The
imagination will substitute words with objects, as if the sign were a template on
which the forms of the objects have been laid out (the outline of a chair), forms that
would have to be filled up with the objects themselves. The Picture will not only
depict the names of the propositional sign as objects; it will also show the relations
among these objects as indicated in the grammar of the propositional sign. To put
this succinctly, the conjured Picture will stage the proposition.
But where are these objects? Obviously, Wittgenstein is not talking about real
objects, but the objects of the thought or imagined objects. Referring back to
Wittgenstein’s previous remarks on the Picture, one may conceive of these imagined
objects as the Pictorial elements, elements that correspond to actual objects or
objects in the world:
Imagined Objects/ Pictorial E lem entsO bjects
Wittgenstein then finds a correspondence between the imagined objects and the
simple elements of the propositional sign, i.e., names. Names of the proposition
correspond to imagined objects (Pictorial elements) of the imagination, and through
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them, to actual objects of the world:
Names-> Imagined Objects/ Pictorial Elements-^ Objects
2 2 Im Satze kann der Gedanke so ausgedruckt sein, dass den Gegenstanden des Gedankes
Elemente des Satzzeichens entsprechen.. .Diese Elemente nenne ich “einfache Zeichen.. .Die
im Satze angewandten einfachen Zeichen heissen Namen. (§3.2)
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With this final correspondence between names and imagined objects, Wittgenstein
has now sketched all the existing correspondences between the world and language
that make possible the translation of the world into language, which could be
displayed as in the following scheme:
World Reality (Facts) -> Objects
Pictures -> Pictorial Elements
Imagination
Thoughts Imagined Objects
Language Propositions Names
Now that Wittgenstein has shown us how the world can be translated into the
language, he may now show us how the second translation may be performed, i.e.
how language may be translated into the world. The steps that enable this second
translation are simple; one just needs to climb up the ladder, so to speak, or move
vertically in the above scheme:
Language ■) Imagination -EWorld
Proposition ■) Thought/ Picture ^ Reality (Fact)
Names Imagined Objects/ ■) Objects
Pictorial Elements
While the Picture measures the world (represents it in a way) and reaches out to it
(corresponds to it), the thought/Picture enlivens language; it pulls language into the
world.
But something curious, in the way of words, happens in Wittgenstein’s
account of the second translation that concerns the translation from language to the
world. When we read a proposition, Wittgenstein suggests, we see a Picture of
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reality. “The proposition is a Picture of reality. The proposition is a model of the
reality as we think it is” (§4.01).2 3 While we make Pictures of the world, we do not
make Pictures of language. There is no “we” that marks the beginning of the first
translation, from the world to the Picture. It is as if one received a Picture of reality
immediately from the proposition. If the thought, as the Picture, mediates between
language and the world in the first translation, there is no such mediation in the
second.
Just as Wittgenstein needs “reality” as a concept that may account for the
incorrect, untrue, unfitting translations from the world into language, he also needs it
in the translation from language into the world. A proposition can be true or false, as
opposed to the reality, which is always true. What separates the reality of the world
from the Picture of the proposition is a simple affirmation or denial:
4.023. The proposition determines reality to this extent that one only needs to
say “Yes” or “No” to it to make it agree with reality.
4.05. Reality is compared with the proposition.
4.06. Propositions can be true or false only by being pictures of reality.
There could not be any ambiguity concerning the proposition, since it is tightly
connected with a reality, i.e., the structured fact expressed as a configuration of
atomic facts. The correspondences are enforced at the level of atomic facts: to each
atomic fact of the reality corresponds an atomic proposition (“Elementarsatz”) of the
2 3 Der Satz ist ein Bild der Wirklichkeit. Der Satz ist ein Modell der Wirklichkeit, so wie wir
uns denken.
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proposition.2 4 The truth-conditions (“Wahrheitsbedingungen”) of the proposition are
contingent on the truth-possibilities of the atomic propositions. One can break down
the proposition into atomic propositions in the same unambiguous manner as one
breaks the fact into atomic facts.
But what if there is ambiguity (and in a positive sense, creativity) in the
decomposition of the proposition, such that several atomic propositions in one
instance of decomposition are lacking in another instance? This would then mean
that the proposition could correspond to two realities as opposed to one. But how
does one know that a proposition is a Picture of this reality, and not that one?
Shouldn’t the Picture be constructed on its own right from the proposition, as the
possibility of different realities, before becoming the Picture of one and the same
reality? In other words, what if a proposition suggested not one Picture, but several
Pictures of different realities? There is always the possibility that different users of
language make different Pictures of reality, which, unless there is a given reality,
2 4 Several statements indicate the relation between the proposition and atomic (elementary)
propositions.
4.41 A proposition is the expression of agreement and disagreement with the tmth
possibilities of the elementary propositions.
(Original: Der Satz ist der Ausdruck der Ubereinstimmung und
Nichtubereinstimmung mit den Wahrheitsmoglichkeiten der Elementarsatze.)
4.431 The expression of the agreement and disagreement with the truth-possibilities
of the elementary propositions expresses the tmth conditions of the
proposition... The proposition is the expression of its truth-conditions.
(Original: Der Ausdruck der Ubereinstimmung und Nichtubereinstimmung
mit den Wahrheitsmoglichkeiten der Elementarsatze druckt die
Wahrheitsbedingungen des Satzes aus.. .Der Satz ist der Ausdruck seiner
Wahrheit.)
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would imply the making of different realities from the same proposition. Insofar as
the decomposition of the proposition is not assumed to be an automatic, self-evident,
immediate, one would have to accept the possibility of the proliferation of realities to
which the proposition might correspond.2 5
By forcing one and the same reality out of the proposition, however,
Wittgenstein frames the translation from the language to the world as a very simple,
immediate and automatic translation. To explain this second translation, Wittgenstein
refers to several analogies:
At the first glance the proposition—for instance, as it stands printed on the
paper—does not seem to be a picture of the reality of which it treats. But nor
does the musical score appear at first sight to be a picture of a musical piece;
nor does our phonetic letters seem to be a picture of our spoken language.
And yet these sign languages prove to be pictures—even in the ordinary
sense of the word—of what they represent. (§4.011)
The musical score and the phonetic letters, as analogues of the proposition,
are Pictures of what they represent “even in the ordinary sense of the word,” despite
2 5 While questioning Wittgenstein’s need for simple objects (“if there were no simple
objects, language would be impossible” (57)), Stem brilliantly argues that for Wittgenstein,
such simple objects enable a final level of analysis of the proposition, without which “the
process of analysis can go on indefinitely, without any terminus,” in other words, without
which “the sense of the proposition will never stop expanding.”(57)
Consequently, “the sense of the proposition would be indeterminate, always open to revision
in the light of further analysis.” (57) Stem then points out “Wittgenstein’s suppressed
premise: he maintains that every significant proposition has a determinate sense, for an
indeterminate sense is no sense at all” (58).
2 6 A uf der ersten Blick scheint der Satz-wie er etwa auf dem Papier gedruckt steht-
kein Bild der Wirklichkeit zu sein, von der er handelt. Aber auch die Notenschrift
scheint auf den ersten Blick kein Bild der Musik zu sein, und unsere Lautzeichen-
(Buchstaben-) Schrift kein Bild unserer Lautsprache...Und doch erweisen sich diese
Zeichensprachen auch im gewohnlichen Sinne als Bilder dessen, was sie darstellen.
(§4.011)
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the fact that they don’t seem to be Pictures at all at the first sight. Between the first
sight and the second one, the musical score is already played, the letters spoken, the
proposition made into a Picture of the reality it “represents”. Imagining or thinking
or Picturing the proposition, in this analogy, is merely a simple and straightforward
activity of executing an order, of following a rule, of being able to understand a
code. There is nothing more to “imagining a proposition” than the immediate gesture
of voiding itself, in order to make room for “whatever it represents” to immediately
fill in.
Between the sign and its execution, between language and the world,
Wittgenstein does not allow for imprecision, variance, vagueness, hesitation or flight
of imagination. A whirlpool of translations may indeed take place between language
and the world that it represents; but nothing is lost in so many translations. The
perfection of the translation from the proposition to reality is guaranteed by universal
rules. There may be so many translations: a musician may perform a piece of music
from a score, the gramophone record may play the same music off of the etchings on
a record, the musician may then write down the score based on the music he hears on
the gramophone. What is important is that there is always one score and one instance
of music corresponding to it (§4.0141). In other words, the linguistic signs (the
score) are analogue representations or Pictures of the world (the music). If language
and the world are in need of the medium of imagination, this is only because this is a
technically competent imagination that understands the infallible logic of
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representation, or the code of Picturing, capable of converting the language into the
world and visa versa:
The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound,
all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds
between language and the world. To all of them the logical structure is
common. (Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story.
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They are all in a certain sense one.) (§4.014)
The proposition/Picture and “whatever it represents” is one and the same. Such
oneness can only happen if all ambiguity is removed from the understanding of the
proposition and if the proposition, and hence language, serves no other purpose than
corresponding (or not corresponding) to a reality of the world. Wittgenstein’s
delineation of perfect translations might be the logical outcome of his understanding
of the proposition as the Picture of reality. In the first translation, the facts of the
world are structured as realities, in a somewhat automatic decomposition into atomic
facts. In this sense, realities constitute an already translated world. What could have
been an imaginative act—the decomposition of the facts of the world into the atomic
facts of reality—has already taken place, by way of which any ambiguity of the fact
is removed. But insofar as the proposition, as a Picture of reality, is to be compared
with the reality, it cannot be ambiguous. It is unnecessary to conjure up a fact, or an
event, or a situation, in view of which a proposition might have been written or
uttered. The one fact, and hence the one world, is given immediately and
2 7 Die Grammaphonplatte, der musikalische Gedanke, die Notenschrift, die Schallwellen,
stehen alle in jener abbildenden intemen Beziehung zu einander, die zwischen Sprache und
Welt besteht
Ihnen alien ist der logische Bau gemeinsam.
(Wie in Marchen die zwei Jiinglinge, ihre zwei Pferde und ihre Lilien. Sie sind alle
in gewissen Sinne Eins.)
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unambiguously, in reality, and hence in the proposition. Therefore, the translation
between the world and language is a routine, automatic affair: it concerns the
translation between two unambiguous, nearly identical structures, the difference of
which is to be determined with a “yes” or “no.” Consequently, the role of the
thought/ Picture, which, in the first translation, mediates between the world and
language is rendered useless. It turns out that the Picture has a short life span, given
the short distance between the world and language that are readily translatable into
each other. With such emphasis on the “truth” of the proposition, not only the
Picture, as the projection of language onto the imagination, but also language itself is
rendered useless: one approaches language only to the extent that one intends to
determine the “truth” of the proposition, to respond to it with a simple “yes” or “no.”
In summarizing and exemplifying the argument of the Tractatus, Kripke notes:
The simplest, most basic idea of the Tractatus can hardly be dismissed: a
declarative sentence gets its meaning by virtue of its truth conditions, by
virtue of its correspondence to facts that must obtain if it is true. For example,
“the cat is on the mat” is understood by those speakers who realize that it is
true if and only if a certain cat is on a certain mat; it is false otherwise. The
presence of the cat on the mat is a fact or condition-in-the-world that would
make the sentence true (express
a truth) if it obtained.. .So stated, the Tractatus picture of meaning of
declarative sentences may seem not only natural but even tautological. (73)
Like Russell’s example in the preface “Socrates was a wise Athenian,”
Kripke’s example is a straightforward one: “the cat is on the mat.” Interestingly,
however, Kripke does not explain the tautological aspect of his own example. In
2 8 A recent debate centers around several “nonsensical” readings of the Tractatus which
suggest that the book “engages our temptations to utter nonsense, in particular philosophical
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Kripke’s words, the declarative sentence, or the proposition, “gets its meaning” or
“understood.. .by virtue of its correspondence to facts that must obtain if it is true.”
The proposition corresponds to the possibility of a “fact,” which is equivalent to
saying that the proposition corresponds to a thought, or a Picture. But this is a
relation that must always occur: it means that one makes a Picture out of the
proposition, or more exactly, out of the propositional signs that make up the
proposition. Following Kripke’s example, the “virtue” to understand the proposition
would then become the ability to imagine it, which would then imply that
understanding a proposition does not need any measure of “truth;” it only needs
imagination. No correspondence to any fact would be required for one to understand
the statement “the cat is flying on the mat”: the correspondence, or the reference to
an imaginary Picture would do, as it does in the reading of fantastic literature.
It is only after the making of the Picture, that the question of the “truth” may
at all be relevant. The relevance of this question cannot be taken for granted, and
would probably be a conditional affair. The search for the “truth” would probably
have to respond to an interest: one cannot immediately see the cat, and wants to
know where it is, and someone else remarks that it is on the mat. Even then, the
nonsense of the kind exhibited in the Tractatus, and it demonstrates that such putatively
philosophical sentences are indeed plain nonsense, different from mere gibberish only in as
much as we are under the illusion that such sentences are deep nonsense—trying to say what
can only be shown” (Hacker, Was He Trying, 357). Diamond claims that “the Tractatus
.. .supposes a kind of imaginative activity, an exercise of the capacity to enter into the taking
of nonsense for sense, of the capacity to share imaginatively the inclination to think that one
is thinking something in it.” (158, Ethics) See Diamond for an exposition of such an
argument.
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correspondence of the Picture (the proposition) to a fact cannot be a simple
affirmation or denial. To remember the Tractatus. the Picture-proposition is
compared with reality, which is not just a fact, but a structured fact. But if reality is
not taken to be automatically given, rather than made, then some structuring, or some
work of imagination must take place in between the fact and its reality. The fact must
be structured in view of a perspective, in view of what one is searching for, resulting
in a relevant declaration by an interested participant, and possibly participants, or, as
Kripke notes, “speakers.” But this means that some intelligence, if not imagination,
must be involved in the drawing of a reality from the fact, even in the dullest act of
stating that “a cat is on the mat,” even when the cat is right there, on the mat, insofar
as one brings out this reality, and not that other one (“the cat is asleep”) in view of a
question of “truth” that has become relevant. The imagination involved in locating
the cat would be much more conspicuous, for instance, if the cat is hidden or
missing, like in a detective novel, or if it is a phantom, like Carroll’s Cheshire cat,
necessitating the drawing of reality from fleeting, elusive, difficult facts. The detour
through the imagination, and through the Picture, would then complicate the idea of
immediate correspondence, which is supposed to enable unproblematic translations
between language and the world.
But even the inherently imprecise nature of translation in some of the
analogies that Wittgenstein uses to illustrate the relation between language and the
world, complicates, and even negates, the ideas of perfect translation,
correspondence and oneness. There is not, for instance, one correct execution of the
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same musical score, but numerous correct ones that may vary from each other
considerably. In other words, several different Pictures correspond to the same
linguistic statement, before becoming the Picture of “what the proposition
represents”. Certain correct performances of a musical score could in fact be thought
to correspond to the score better than the others and hence, to be “more correct.” But
the correctness of a performance is not immediately given; rather it is decided upon
by the preferences of the users of the performances: by, for instance, the audience,
the musicians themselves, or a group of professional critics. There is, therefore, not
one immediate reference, or one ideal performance that corresponds to the score.
There are in fact multiple, divergent performances that are perfectly applicable or
attributable to the same score, before they may be labeled as “ideal,” or “correct.” It
turns out that the acknowledgement of the existence of multiple performances
(Pictures), as well as the conventions that rise out of a particular setting, will be
needed in determining the standards for “correctness” even in a seemingly
mechanical, rule-based procedure such as the performance of a musical score. In
other words, the notions of oneness, correspondence, sameness, correctness, etc. are
not immediate; and if they are relevant at all, they are mediated by the particular
attributes of the representing medium and by its users.
Considering the problems with the musical score analogy, it is another
analogy, the gramophone, which seems to better suit Wittgenstein’s demand for
exact correspondences between the sign and the world. Here, the imagination simply
acts like the needle, unfolding the Picture-sounds—assuming, of course, that the
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53
gramophone never breaks down or gets stuck, the record is never scratched, the
equipment is always well taken care of, etc. This analogy demands an utmost
automatism from the imagination: it will become a sort of Picturing-machine that
translates language into the world without any imprecision, any delay, any
misrepresentation, any hesitation.
Another important analogy, while depicting the translation of the language
into the world, also reveals the deeply ingrained visual thinking in Wittgenstein’s
discussions: the hieroglyph. “In order to understand the essence of a proposition,”
Wittgenstein claims, “we should think of the hieroglyphic script, which depicts the
facts that it describes” (§4.016).2 9 We should, in other words, imagine the signs of
the proposition as if they were figures that showed or depicted the facts of the world.
The essence of language is depiction (die Abbildung), and not description (die
Beschreibung). In another proposition, Wittgenstein claims that nothing is lost in the
pictoriality of language when the alphabetic script replaced the older hieroglyphic
one.3 0 Wittgenstein’s analogy of the hieroglyph is suggestive in the way it illustrates
the implicit claim that imagination converts the written sign into Pictures, or to be
more literal, something analogous to actual visual pictures that are hung on the
2 9 Um das W esen des Satzes zu verstehen, denken wir an die Hieroglyphenschrift, w elche
die Tatsachen die sie beschreibt abbildet.
3 0 “Und aus ihr wurde die Buchstabenschrift, ohne das Wesentliche der Abbildung zu
verlieren”. (§4.016)
Trans: “And from [the hieroglyph] came the alphabet without the essence of the depiction
being lost.”
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•3 1
wall. In another visual moment, language is enlivened and made of this world by
way of an imagining that is much like the drawing of a Picture that comes to life (“a
living Picture/ ein lebendes Bild”) or like the drawing of a tableau vivant:
One name stands for one thing, another for another thing, and they are
combined with one another. In this way, the whole—like a living picture
[tableau vivant3 2 ]—presents a state of affairs.
Ein Name steht fur ein Ding, ein anderer fur ein anderes Ding und
untereinander sind sie verbunden, so stellt das Ganze- wie ein lebendes Bild-
den Sachverhalt vor. (§4.0311)
Here, we see Wittgenstein making a Picture, a tableau vivant out of a proposition. I
would like to comment on this significant moment in the Tractatus ontology, in
which analytical thought comes closest to an aesthetic artifact. The analogy between
the Picture and the proposition is only implied in the transition from language to the
3 1 But the analogy of the hieroglyph is also quite confusing, if taken analytically.
Wittgenstein discussions started out as analytical reflections on the decomposition of the
world and language; a result of such decomposition was to establish correspondences
between the world and language: realities corresponded to propositions; names to objects.
While Wittgenstein previously states that a Picture corresponds to a reality, and not to an
object, it is unclear whether the Picture only corresponds to a proposition, and not to a name.
Coming back to the hieroglyph analogy, it is therefore unclear whether a Picture will be
made to correspond to each name (word) or to the whole proposition. This is a problem that
concerns the levels of Picturing of works of language that Wittgenstein does not address.
Picture-^ Pictorial Elements (Pictures?)
Proposition-^ Names
Does Wittgenstein decompose the Picture in the same way he decomposes the world and
language? Does one Picture the names first, or the whole proposition? In his statements that
follow the hieroglyph analogy, Wittgenstein implies that one first has to Picture names as
objects before Picturing the whole proposition. It is therefore possible to Picture the name in
isolation, as a small name-Picture, without necessarily seeing it within the context of other
words, or within the context of the whole proposition. Here, one can find the beginnings of a
conviction that gets played out in more detail in Philosophical Investigations: a name (word)
corresponds to one Picture, just like a name corresponds to one object.
3 2 The very suggestive translation of “lebendes Bild” as tableau vivant is given by
translators, D.F. Pears and B.F. Me Guinness in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Ludwig
Wittgenstein, London: Routledge, 2001.
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world, in which the proposition figures as the Picture of reality. The position of the
Picture is much more pronounced in the transition from the world to language, where
it becomes the analogy of the mediating thought. But the Picture is a curious
analogy, occupying an indeterminate position between the fact and reality: we make
Pictures of facts (§2.1), but the Picture is compared with reality, as a structured fact
expressed in atomic facts (§2.223). To complicate matters even more, the Picture,
itself, is a fact: (“Das Bild ist eine Tatsache”). (§2.141) The difference between the
fact and reality in this ontology is not explicit, and, in fact, one may as well claim
that reality is a given attribute of the fact, and therefore the correspondence obtains
between a fact and a Picture, and not between a reality and a Picture. Then, the fact
would strictly become a structured fact, and not at all ambiguous or complex, which
would further trivialize the Tractatus ontology. By insisting on the difference
between facts and realities], I have tried to locate the point in which some work of
imagination must have taken place, enabling the passage from an unstructured fact of
a complex world into a structured reality.
Can the Picture then become the analogy of both an unstructured fact
(Tatsache), and a structured fact (Wirklichkeit)? One would then conceptualize the
Picture as a living Picture or as a visual tableau vivant: the Picture, drawn by the
thought, would be structured in a certain sense, and not structured in another sense,
making itself available to other possible structuring acts. But this would lead to the
admission of (degrees of) ambiguity and indeterminacy even in the most obvious
fact, in the most ordinary proposition. However, the possibility of such an admission,
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which would also signal the admission of aesthetics in analytical thought, must be
immediately ruled out according to Bogen:
The aesthetic side of Wittgenstein’s assimilation of propositions to pictures is
not nearly as attractive as its linguistic side. Pictures are not the kind of thing
Wittgenstein held propositions to be, and the analogy between what a
representational picture shows and the sense of a proposition goes lame if
pressed... Even if propositions were facts, representational pictures like road
maps and portraits are not. A representational picture can be moved from
place to place; a fact cannot. A picture can be constructed and taken apart; a
fact cannot. A picture can change; a fact cannot. ‘Picture’ belongs to an
entirely different grammatical category from the gerundive and ‘that...”
phrases which express facts. [In] analyzing or criticizing a painting we may
note, for example, what the obtaining of a certain relation between certain
elements does to the picture and how the picture or its composition would be
different if the fact were otherwise. But this is not to say that a picture
consisting of certain painted figures arranged in a straight line from left to
right is the fact that the painted figures stand in a straight line. Mundane,
representational pictures are not facts; we state facts about them (18).
One must not be thinking of representational Pictures, i.e. roadmaps and portraits,
because they most certainly are not the unambiguous, well-structured, unchangeable
facts that one is always secure about. Several confusions result from this immediate
trust in the facts, which goes together with a quick, uncritical dismissal of the
Picture. Representational Pictures are not facts, because they “can be moved from
place to place,” but “we state facts about them”; and since, such a statement cannot
be a matter of constructing a fact—we are cautioned that a fact cannot be
constructed—one must assume that the facts of the Picture are already in the Picture,
which would mean that such facts would have to be moved around with the Picture.
That we “state” facts does not turn our facts into constructs, into Pictures, because
our statement, or our proposition must be an immediate translation of the fact, which
speaks of its own, with fitting gerundives and relative clauses: it is already a
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proposition. But a fact thus stated would be in the proposition and not independent
from it. “Even if propositions were facts,” Bogen says, without completing his
thought; and it is this ellipsis that hides the fact that whatever he says of the Picture
could have been said of the proposition: that it can be moved around, that it is
constructed, that it can change—if his unclear reference to change implies the
interpretive possibilities in the understanding of the proposition. But if “we state [a]
fact,” if the fact is a proposition, and if the proposition is a Picture, then Bogen’s
metaphysics of the fact, founded on the dichotomy between stable, unambiguous
facts and unstable, ambiguous Pictures, can hardly stand on its legs: it folds onto the
Picture. To dispense with such metaphysics, one would also have to dispense with
the prejudice that considers the “aesthetic sides” of the Picture-analogy to be “lame,”
“unsuitable” and “unsatisfactory,” i.e., unworthy of theoretical consideration,
obliterated by self-spoken facts or truths.
The Picture in the Worldview of Philosophical Investigations
In Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein becomes cognizant of the
shortcomings of the correspondence approach of the Tractatus. in which language is
the Picture of the world. Here, Wittgenstein will drop the ideas of correspondence
and of translation between language and the world for the ideas of use and
application of language in this world. I will argue that the approach to language in
the Philosophical Investigations will further strain the life of the Picture, already a
precarious existence in the Tractatus. making it useless and disposable.
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The basic shift in this later thinking occurs in the worldview: the world is no
longer conceived in the analytical and ontological manner, dissolved into facts,
structured as realities. This early view enabled Wittgenstein to seek correspondences
between propositions and realities, between names and objects: consequently,
propositions became Pictures of realities; names became Pictures of objects. But the
correspondence approach also resulted in a simple view of language, whose purpose
became to assert or negate its own correspondence to the realities of the world. If
Wittgenstein is no longer interested in the correspondence between the language and
the world, it is because the world is now conceived as comprising of situations that
demand adequate responses or actions from its active and linguistically competent
subjects. Wittgenstein designates the situations of the world as language-games.
With this, linguistic responses, including the propositions of the Tractatus. become
actions that subjects perform while participating in language-games. In this later
view, the language is a way of the world, and no longer the Picture of the world.3 3
As if to delineate a complete shift in his worldview, Wittgenstein
continuously criticizes his earlier correspondence theory. To make sense of
language, one does not have to see it as a Picture of the world; one just has to look at
how language is applied to or used within a specific language-game or situation. To
3 3 Or the language is one way o f doing things in the world. I also described language as a
way, and not the way of the world, in order to make room for action, which I take to be
another way of the world. Despite this, it seems like the second description, “language as the
way of the world”, would also fit Wittgenstein’s perspective in Philosophical Investigations.
In this later work, actions display the same logic as language in as much as they may
substitute linguistic responses in a language situation/ game. Wittgenstein most clearly
illustrates the substitution of language with action in his account of the “Slab!” game in
which the worker follows the rule of the game by fetching the slab, which is an action.
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be sure, the new worldview takes away the pointlessness or uselessness of the earlier
conception of language in which language is only relevant to the extent to which it
corresponds to the world. In the latter view, language has become useful in and
applicable to the world. But, the latter view also eliminates the need for the Picture.
In Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein will not deny the existence of the
Picture; rather he denies the role that one is inclined to give to it in explaining how
one applies language in this world. The Picture is no longer an intermediary between
language and the world; it merely accompanies, somewhat like a nuisance, the very
intimate interactions between them. The intermediary role given to the subjective,
hidden and immaterial imagination in the Tractatus. as facilitating the correct
translations from language to the world, may therefore be entirely omitted, as long as
the inter-subjective, observable and concrete linguistic responses and actions of the
subjects within the language-games of this world can vouch for their own adequacy
without the need for intermediaries.
Despite appearances, however, we may also see the shift in the worldview in
the Philosophical Investigations as an extension, radicalization and refraction of the
ideas in the Tractatus. The rule-following of the imagination in translating language
into the world, implied in the analogy of the gramophone in the Tractatus. becomes
one of the most prominent themes in Philosophical Investigations. In the latter work,
the rule-following characterizes the linguistic and action-based responses of the
participants in a language-game. It is even possible to trace the structure of the
correspondence theory in the later worldview: the world is now decomposed into
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language-games, as it was earlier decomposed into structured realities. Language, as
propositions or linguistic inputs, is applied to the world, which is now conceived as
composed of linguistic responses and actions, according to the logic or the rules of a
game. As long as the application of language to the world is automatic or immediate,
however, there is little to suggest that such application may not be conceived as a
kind of correspondence: in this later work, the logic of rule-following replaces the
logic of depiction (“Abbildung”).3 4
Language World [ Logic of Rule-following]
Propositions ->->-> Linguistic response
Linguistic inputs Action/Response
3 4 Kenny also intends to find continuities between Wittgenstein’s later and earlier views. He
claims that one of the central theses in the Tractatus. that is, “the isomorphism between the
world and language survives, though with its poles reversed, in the later philosophy.” (11)
To show such a reversal of the poles, Kenny quotes P.M.S. Hacker:
Dr Hacker has put it neatly in his book Insight and Illusion: ‘In the Investigations.
the structure of language is still isomorphic with the structure of reality, not because
language must mirror the logical form of the universe, but because the apparent
“structure of reality” is merely the shadow of grammar.” (11)
According to Kenny, “In the Tractatus. [Wittgenstein] regarded the thought as a ghostly
intermediary between sentence and fact, where in the ghostly medium of the mind, the
projection lines were drawn between the proposition and what it represented.. He later came
to think that it was language which linked thought to reality, not the other way round.” I
take Kenny’s remarks to suggest that with the elimination of the distance between the world
and language in the later work, and the elimination (or trivialization) of the thought/ Picture
in the latter work, the correspondence between the world and language has been enforced
even more: the world has been collapsed into the linguistic.
Shanker, however, cautions us that “we must be extremely wary of any attempts to
force the evolution into a ‘conservative m ould,’ w hich seeks to interpret the Philosophical
Investigations as a sequel to the Tractatus , rather than a striking departure from
it.. .Wittgenstein came to see the Tractatus as.. .a locus classicus of the conceptual
confusions which are buried deep in the heart of logical atomism.” (4, Approaching).
Gefwert discusses the anti-realist interpretations of Wittgenstein that detect a radical break
between the earlier and the later work, particularly Kripke’s anti-realist reading of the
Philosophical Investigations (230-246).
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The major difference in the later worldview is the disappearance of that little
distance between the language and the world that endowed the Picture with a
precarious existence. If the Picture is absent from the above scheme, this is because
Wittgenstein has ontologically prioritized the world, or this world, with respect to
which the imagination is a befuddling intermediary, if not a downright obstacle.
Imagination stands in the way to the world, or to the pragmatic applications of
language. The Picture is more than an intermediary; it is a rival to the world in that it
may replace the world, without letting the world make itself present, observable,
intersubjective.
It is, in fact, the tension between the imagination and the world that defines
some of the most interesting passages in Philosophical Investigations. One such
passage that displays this tension most dramatically is Wittgenstein’s example of the
“cube,” which I will discuss in detail in the following sections. In this example, this
tension is set up as the tension between the Pictures (of the imagination) and
applications (in this world) as they apply to the same work of language. But such
tensions can be shown to be just set-ups, the destruction of which is already
suggested in Wittgenstein’s own hesitations. The resolution of such tensions could
also signal the survival of the Picture, and the imagination, as notions that are
indispensible in our dealings with both language and the world.
Two Pictures of Philosophical Investigations
Throughout Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein will have an ambiguous
attitude towards the Picture, which recurs many times in his discussions concerning
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the applications of language. At times, he will admit that a Picture, which is
analogous to the drawing of an object, is sketched by the imagination when the name
of the object is mentioned in the absence of that object. Despite this admission, he
will be quick to argue that such admission will not get us close to the “meaning of
the word,” or its particular application: the Picture is rather useless. At other times,
he will directly contrast the Picture, drawn on the suggestions of a work of language,
with the use (“Verwendung”) or application (“Anwendung”) of the same work of
language. In setting up this contrast, Wittgenstein will have to admit that the Picture
may in fact become an application. He will be reluctant to admit, however, that a
Picture can have more than one application: the Picture of the imagination cannot
reveal the richness or the variety of applications of language in this world. In fact,
the Picture has something misleading about it; it exerts a psychological force in
making us choose one application over another. In the first case, the picture is
useless; in the second, too restricting.
In the following, I would like to offer two snapshots of Wittgenstein’s
thinking concerning the Picture in Philosophical Investigations. The first snapshot
concerns the “pointing-to” game in which the Picture is almost useless, while the
second concerns the example of the cube in which the Picture is tricky, misleading
and restricting.
(a) The (almost) useless Picture of the pointing-to game
The dismissal of the Picture in the Philosophical Investigations starts with
Wittgenstein’s rejection of the assumption that is ordinarily taken to constitute the
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premise of all linguistic games: according to this assumption, when we utter a word,
we want to point to something that corresponds to that word, even when that
something is not present. Wittgenstein himself adopts this model in the Tractatus
where he argues that a word corresponded to a thing, or a proposition corresponded
to a sentence. It is interesting that in rejecting the correspondence/ referencing/
pointing-to game as the basis of all language use, Wittgenstein also sees the Picture
as an exclusive feature of this game, as indexed to this game, and hence, having a
very limited use outside it.3 5 In this rejection, however, Wittgenstein paradoxically
holds onto the idea of correspondence: a word does not always correspond to a thing
(object), to be sure; but a Picture always corresponds to a thing (object). The Picture,
in these discussions, is the same as the thing or object, which the word is supposed to
correspond to whenever uttered. Pointing to an object is the same as pointing to the
Picture of that object. Hence, in the many twists and turns of Wittgenstein’s
argument, there is little difference between the actual object, in which the object is at
3 5 Another name for the “pointing to” game is the ostensive definition, or definition with (the
gesture of) ostension. Kenny nicely summarizes these early passages; in them, Wittgenstein
argues that
Ostensive definition cannot have the fundamental role sometimes assigned to it in
the learning of language because (a) the understanding of an ostension presupposes a
certain mastery of language and (b) ostension by itself cannot make clear the role
which the word to be defined is to have in language. (1)
Wittgenstein’s ostension is a game played with words, as opposed to larger works of
language, for instance, sentences. The mastery of language in argument (a) connotes the
mastery of language-games. It is also important that the notion of ostensive definition first
figured in the publications of Vienna Circle as “hinweisende Definition” (Baker & Hacker,
243). In Philosophical Investigations, not only does Wittgenstein repudiate his earlier ideas
and logical atomism, but he also exposes the misconceptions in the account of ostensive
definition given by the logical empiricists (Backer & Hacker, 256)
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hand or in sight, and the Picture of that object, when the object is lacking and has to
be imagined.
Pointing to/ correspondence/ referencing game
Utter a word and
Point to
(either) The actual object = (or) The Picture of the object
Wittgenstein does not deny that the utterance of a word may give rise to the
phenomenon of ‘pointing to’ a corresponding actual object or to a Picture of that
object. Rather, he rightfully objects to the notion that the way we apply or use
language might be reduced to the model of this simple “pointing to” gesture,
regardless of whether such gesture refers to the sight of an actual object or that of the
Picture of the object.
In rejecting the supposed privileging of the “pointing to” game in all our
dealings with language, however, Wittgenstein also rejects the Picture. In this
rejection, Wittgenstein is convinced that the Picture belongs exclusively to the
“pointing to” game: a Picture can only be the Picture of an object, similar to a static
photograph or a drawing of the object, which exists only for the purpose that one can
point to it. The Picture is not only inadequate, Wittgenstein argues, but also inert
and useless, or more precisely, is only useful in the “pointing to” game that does not
always get played. In this game, all that one wants to do with the utterance of a word
is to “point to” the Picture of an object in the absence of the actual object. The
Picture is relevant only as in the statement “there is a Picture of an object in my
imagination upon the mention of a name,” which is equivalent to saying, “I can point
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to an object upon the mention of a name.” “Being a Picture,” therefore, is the same
as “pointing to it.”
The relevance of the Picture is therefore circumscribed to the “pointing to”
game, which Wittgenstein calls “the ostensive teaching of the words” (“Das
hinweisende Lehren der Worter”), a game during which an adult teaches a child how
to call out objects.3 6 When an adult says “slab” and points a slab to a child, he
3 6 In Wittgenstein’s account of the ostensive learning of words, we see the beginnings of the
rejection of “private languages.” Backer and Hacker summarize Wittgenstein’s argument
concerning “private language”: “the employment of language in the expression of the mental
is wholly parasitic upon prior mastery of those parts of language that are concerned with the
public and the physical.” ( Wittgenstein, 32) But is this an argument about the learning or the
everyday use of language? Does what is parasitic always remain that way?
Wittgenstein’s private language argument does not only apply to subjective, mental
experiences, sensations (pain, sorrow) but all the Pictures that I draw in the imagination,
including the Picture of the physical, concrete slab, in the absence of that slab. The
argument seems to sway in between two very different kinds of approach to the “mastery” of
language: the first concerns the historical acquirement and learning of “mastery,” while the
second concerns the everyday use of such mastery. Pitcher discusses the aspect of learning
how to apply the word “pain” to internal sensations: one must be alerted to the conventions
that define, determine and condition our use of the term “pain,” before one can intelligably
refer to pain (138): “It is not the felt quality of a sensation that determines whether or not the
word ‘pain’ is applicable to it.” But even then, it is not clear to what extent such learning
would differ from the learning of any word whatsoever. Pitcher grounds his argument on the
definability of the notion of sameness, which he takes to be a rather restrictive, and
therefore, strict notion. “One thing cannot be merely the same as another: it must be the
colour, the same shape, the same size, the same kind of animal, or whatever.” But such
sameness cannot be asserted with respect to private sensations, and therefore one needs “to
leam under what sort of (public) conditions the sensation-words can be properly used.” (137)
I wonder whether such strict definition of “sameness” could at all be asserted as the
necessary condition for the application of a word to a sensation: often the words are vague or
indefinite enough so that they could be applied to a variety of sensations or phenomena: day,
sky, thing, etc. I completely agree with Pitcher that some of the sensation-fields, to which
words are made to refer to, may be more regulated than the others, by way of conventions,
and particularly culture, as it does happen, very prominently in the field of color-sensations
or in the field of distance-sensations. But the extent to which a certain field of sensations is
regulated cannot put limits on the act of designating a sensation-field with a word. It would
be enough that a certain field is imagined to repeat itself, even when a strict measure of
similarity is not at all settled. One may then question the necessity of such a designation,
whether such a designation does have any bearing within a particular cultural setting,
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practically says: “ here is a slab; so draw a Picture of the slab in your imagination
next time I call out the name, ‘slab.” Wittgenstein argues that this use is very
different from the use we give to the same word in another game, in which a
construction worker orders another one to fetch the object whose name he calls out
(“Slab!” or “bring me the slab!”). The name, in this latter game, no longer
corresponds to a Picture, but an action, i.e., the worker’s fetching the object.
[The] ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an association
between the word and the thing. But what does this mean? Well, it can mean
various things; but one very likely thinks first of all that the Picture of the
object comes before the child’s mind when it hears the word. But now, if this
does happen—is it the purpose of the word?—Yes, it can be the purpose.—I
can imagine such a use of words (of series of sounds). (Uttering a word is
like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination). But in the language
of [the construction workers] it is not the purpose of the words to evoke
images. (It may, of course, be discovered that that helps to attain the actual
purpose). (§6, p. 4 ) 3 7
whether it responds to a necessity, whether it may survive time. In his discussion of
Wittgenstein’s private sensation, “S” example, Hanfling comes to a similar conclusion: in
designating his private feeling as “S, the diarist might not be “attempting] to give a specific
meaning to the sign, between ‘right’ and ‘seems right’: [he] may be content without that
distinction” (36). But such designations, as Hanfling notes, “would be private only in the
context of a language that is not private” (36). I interpret Hanfling’s words to mean that a
private sensation, in so far as it is named, written and uttered, is made available to the
interpretations of the linguistic community, which would then reevaluate the sensation,
determining whether such sensation is of any significance, whether it can reoccur with
sufficient determinacy, and even, whether it exists. For an exposition of Wittgenstein’s
private language argument, see Kripke; for a repudiation, see Ayer.
3 7 “Dieses hinweisenden Lehren der Worter, kann man sagen, schlagt eine assoziative
Verbindung zwischen dem Wort und dem Ding. Aber was heiBt das? Nun, es kann
Verschiedenes heiBen; aber man denkt wohl zunahst daran, daB dem Kind das Bild des
Dings vor die Seele tritt, wenn es das Wort hort. Aber wenn das nun geschieht, -ist das der
Zweck des Worts?- Ja, es kann der Zweck sein.-Ich kann mir eine solche Verwendung von
Wortem (Lautreihen) denken. (Das Aussprechen eines Wortes ist gleichsam ein Anschlagen
einer Taste auf dem Vorstellungsklavier.) Aber in der Sprache [der Bauenden] ist es nicht
der Zweck der Worter, Vorstellungen zu erwecken. (Es kann freilich auch gefunden werden,
daB dies dem eigentlichen Zweck forderlich ist.)” In the German, the keyboard of
imagination is more precisely the keyboard of representations: a word (or name) could be
played out as (in other words, corresponds to) one representation or one picture. The
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The writing in this passage betrays a characteristic indecisiveness despite several
strong statements: “it is not the purpose of the words to evoke images [or
representations].” The role of the Picture of the object (“das Bild des Dings”) is at
once dismissed and reasserted, with the immediate opening of a parenthesis, where
Wittgenstein acknowledges that a use may be given to the Picture also in the
construction workers’ language game: “(it may, of course, be discovered that [the
Picture of the object] helps to attain the actual purpose).” While the Picture is
definitely not the actual purpose (“der eigentliche Zweck”) of the use of the word, it
serves a purpose in attaining it. This means that the possibility of another purpose or
another use (“die Verwendung”) should already be contained in the evocation of the
Picture, raising the suspicion that the use of the Picture cannot be limited to the
“pointing to” game or to the teaching of this game (“das hinweisende Lehren der
Worter”).
The strength of Wittgenstein’s arguments in these discussions lies not in his
rejection of the Picture, but in the rebuttal of the notion that there is always one
“meaning,” one “signification” or one language game that forms the foundation for
all the different uses of a word: “When we say: ‘every word in language signifies
something,’ we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we have established what
keyboard, therefore, is a figure of the assumed one-to-one correspondence between words
and Pictures.
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distinction we wish to make.” (§13, p.7)3 8 In other words, there does not exist one
self-contained way by which the signification (“Bezeichnung”) of the word could be
established. Wittgenstein suggests that there are multiple ways of signification, each
referring to a different use or marking a difference (“Unterschiedung”) among the
many possible uses of the word. In the context of this argument, Wittgenstein’s
undermining the role of the Picture may result from his inclination to see the Picture
as a token of that one way o f “ meaning” or signification, a symbol of that one
privileged use (“Verwendung”) that disseminates the possibility of other uses.
One suspects that there is a mismatch of concepts in comparing meaning
(“Bezeichnung”) with Picture (“das Bild”), given that, throughout Philosophical
Investigations, meaning refers to the use made of words in a language-game,
whereas the Picture is the atemporal and almost useless appearance of the object.
The one way of meaning, to which Wittgenstein objects, stems from that particular
game upon which all other games are purportedly based: the “pointing to” or the
referencing game. Wittgenstein is arguing against the privileging of this game in
which the Picture of an object is matched with, pointed to, and called out upon the
utterance of a word, as in the game of attaching a label to a thing (§15, p.7).3 9 His
objection is leveled against not the Picture per se, but the particular use of the Picture
in the “pointing-to” game. Wittgenstein’s rebuttal of the argument that every time we
3 8 Wenn wir sagen:” jedes Wort der Sprache bezeichnet etwas” so ist damit vorerst noch gar
nichts gesagt; es sei denn, daB wir genau erklarten, welche Unterschiedung wir zu machen
wiinschen.
3 9 Etwas benennen, das ist etwas Ahnliche, wie einem Ding ein Namentafelchen anheften.
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play a language game, we need to play the “pointing-to” game cannot imply the
rebuttal of the Picture. In other words, Wittgenstein’s objection should have been
leveled only against the privileging of the “pointing-to” game, and not against the
Picture. By equating meaning with the Picture, however, Wittgenstein gives the
impression that we do not need the Picture, and therefore, imagination, in all
language games (although, parenthetically, of course, the Picture may prove useful in
attaining the actual purpose of some of these games). This may be because, in
Wittgenstein’s particular conceptualization, the Picture can only be the inert and
static Picture of an object, analogous to a photograph that displays the object as in
usual and everyday perception. There is not much use to such a Picture other than,
very occasionally, pointing to it.
But the argument that the Picture (and hence, the imagination) may be
unnecessary in other language-games is in at least one more way self-serving: it
assumes that the Picture is generated at the level of the word, with the utterance of
the word, as the Picture of an object. Concerning the levels of Picturing,
Wittgenstein’s point of view in the Tractatus is much more ambivalent: there, the
Picture corresponds to the whole sentence (proposition) and not the constituent
parts.4 0 Wittgenstein’s thinking inthe Philosophical Investigations does not admit the
possibility of the Picture that may be applied to a work of language or a linguistic
4 0 In Tractatus . Pictures correspond to the whole sentence, and to a whole fact, whereas only
Pictorial elements correspond to names and to objects; although, as I pointed out earlier, the
exact difference between Pictures and Pictorial elements is elusive and not quite worked out,
giving the impression that a Pictorial element could in fact be a smaller Picture.
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configuration larger than the word (as in the groupings of words, in whole sentences,
paragraphs). It is significant that in Wittgenstein’s account, a Picture is made of a
word, and a use (or application) is made of larger linguistic configurations, despite
appearances: the order “slab!” is a short form of “bring me the slab!” Obviously, a
Picture of the “slab”, insofar as it is indexed to the level of the word, would be
inadequate to explain how we use or apply the word while responding to all language
games. If a language-game is usually played at the level of larger linguistic
configurations, rather than the level of words, then, Wittgenstein implies, there is no
need to insist that the Picture and hence the imagination should make an appearance
to tell us how we make sense of language.
In another example, based on the “slab” example, Wittgenstein further
delineates the uselessness of the Picture, emphasizing the differences between an
application (use) and the Picture. What is interesting in this example is the
automatism in which the linguistic utterance gives way to actions, within the
structure of linguistic input and rule-following, without necessitating any
intermediaries. Wittgenstein refers to a hypothetical situation, in which a foreign
speaking construction worker thinks of a sentence, which is made of four words
(“Bring me a slab!”), as if it were a long word (“bringmeaslab”). This foreign worker
is nevertheless capable of responding to the sentence competently: he may go and
fetch the slab upon the utterance of the sentence; otherwise, he may utter the same
sentence/word in order to order someone else to do so when he needs the slab. As
long as he understands the use of the sentence, it makes little difference whether he
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has imagined the sentence correctly, as four separate words, or incorrectly, as one
long word. To put this differently, the worker’s wrong conception of the sentence
would have been an issue if and when he had not understood the use (or application)
of the sentence or did not develop an adequate response to it, and not because he had
imagined it one way or another: “What we call his wrong conception need not lie in
anything that accompanies the utterance of the command [or the sentence]” (§20,
p.9). In other words, we do not need to look elsewhere to see what went wrong: the
responses or actions speak for themselves. That, which accompanies the utterance,
but which we do not need to see, is the work of the imagination, or the Picture.4 1
In these few passages, Wittgenstein has taken several steps to demystify the
notion of “meaning:” The “meaning” of the word is its use in language (“Die
Bedeutung eines Wortes ist sein Gebrauch in der Sprache”) (§43, p.20). 4 2
Wittgenstein does not deny that there may be a Picture in the imagination, which
comes into being with the utterance of a word. He argues, however, that one cannot
pretend as if the Picture’s mere existence could vouch for all the possible
“meanings” and stand for all the possible uses of the word. One could, of course,
look at how we apply the Picture, or what application the Picture has, but this may
not even be necessary when the application is an inter-subjectively observable fait
accompli, a linguistic or physical action that is adequate as a response within the
4 1 Aber, was wir die falsche Auffassung nennen, mufi nicht in irgend etwas liegen, was das
Aussprechen des Befehls begleitet.
4 2 In Wittgenstein, the words, “Beniitzung, Gebrauch, Verwendung” are used
interchangeably to refer to use.
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context of the language-game in which the word is uttered. Whereas the Picture may
in fact be applied for a specific purpose, or a specific use, why insist on it when the
adequacy of the application is self-evident as a part of this physical world?
(b) Pictures versus applications in Wittgenstein’s “cube” example
There are also times when language is used or played out at a far remove
from this world, as in reading. These are times when there are no objective, physical
or objective ways of showing others that I have understood the rules of the game, I
played the game competently.4 3 There are times when one“means,” one understands
in silence. In Wittgenstein, the Picture will return in these moments; in the account
of these silent, non-physical and subjective applications of words, he will still have
to reckon with Pictures. Wittgenstein has established that the Picture, by itself,
cannot stand for all “meaning,” and that we have to find an application for the
Picture every time we conjure it up. He did not, however, go further than attributing
the Picture’s application exclusively to the “pointing to” game.
In the passages that include the “cube” example, Wittgenstein will have to
make room for other applications that the Picture may have aside from its application
in that game. While discussing the silent “meaning” or understanding of a word,
4 3 These moments are not easily attributable to language games. Interestingly Hintikka calls
them “missing language games:”
Sometimes no language game can apparently be found to provide a connection
between a word and what it designates. In such cases, either we have an instance of
language idling or else there is a language-game hidden somewhere, which does not
first meet the philosopher’s eye (234).
This is reading: language hidden or missing from the philosopher’s eye, idling in the face of
the public; but not so hidden from the reader, and at busy work in idling.
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Wittgenstein will address both old and new questions with an analytical agility that
does not reduce the phenomena to simples, but will not settle with chaos either. What
is this Picture on whose existence I insist when I “mean”? Is this a Picture of one
application or multiple applications? 4 4 Under what circumstances can I say that a
Picture conflicts with an application, when I know that I can use that Picture for that
same application? The agility in Wittgenstein’s arguments in these passages will also
result in many ambivalences, ellipses of thought, mere suggestions and seeming
inconsistencies that will leave the door open for many interpretive possibilities,
turning the following passages into alternating instances of richly-textured confusion
and analytic insight.
Before I start my interpretation, I should repeat that in the following
passages, the real conflict is that between the imagination and this world, presented
in terms of the conflict between the Picture and the application. To recapitulate, the
Picture is like a static photograph or drawing of an object corresponding to the word,
whereas the application is a narrative that includes the use of the word in this world.
The Picture is shot, drawn, made, conjured upon the mere suggestion or utterance of
a word, whereas the application is made with a specific practical purpose in mind.
4 4 The language I use here may wrongly suggest that what is at stake is the number of
applications, raising the curious question of “enumerating” applications. What I mean is
rather the kind of application, or the kind of use. So the question: “is there one application,
or multiple applications?” could be more precisely reformulated as “is there one kind of
application, or many kinds of application?”
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Wittgenstein begins his account of the Picture when he pretends to be at a
loss about what “understanding a word” means: he knows what “cube” means but
cannot explain:
When someone say the word “cube” to m e.. .1 know what it means.
But can the whole use of the word come to my mind, when I understand it in
this way?.. .Yes but on the other hand, isn’t the meaning of the word also
determined by this use? And can’t these ways of determining meaning
conflict? Can what we grasp in a flash accord with a use, fit or fail to fit it?
And how can what is present to us in an instant, what comes before our mind
in an instant, fit a use? (§139, p.54)4 5
Wittgenstein understands the word, “cube,” within an instance, in a flash, without
having found a use for the word. This “understanding in a flash” that could refer to
the whole use of the word should also agree with the specific use that I have in mind.
It is as if there were two phenomena that existed side by side, and both defined what
one understands by the “meaning” of the same word. On the one hand, there is the
indeterminate, subjective and momentary feeling of “understanding in a flash,”
within the blinking of an eye, and on the other hand, the determinate, and therefore
less momentary, use that fixes meaning, or makes it definite (“bestimmt”).
Wittgenstein will then give a name to that feeling, which could include all the uses of
the word, i.e., the Picture:
4 5 Wenn wir jemand z.B. das Wort “Wiirfel” sagt, so weifi ich, was es bedeutet. Aber kann
mir denn die ganze Verwendung des Wortes vorschweben, wenn ich es so verstehe?
Ja, wird aber anderseits die Bedeutung des Worts nicht auch durch diese
Verwendung bestimmt? Und konnen sich diese Bestimmungen nun widersprechen? Kann,
was wir so mit einem Schlage erfassen, mit einer Verwendung ubereinstimmen, zu ihr
passen, oder nich zu ihr passen? Und wie kann das, was uns in einem Augenblicke
gegenwartig ist, was uns in einem Augenblick vorschwebt, zu einer Verwendung passen?
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What really comes before our mind when we understand a word? Isn’t it
something like a Picture? Can’t it be a Picture? .. .[S]uppose that a picture
does come before your mind when you hear the word “cube,” say the
drawing of a cube. (§139, 54)4 6
The indeterminate Picture will accompany the determinate use of the word. The
drawing will then have to correspond to “what is grasped in a flash,” potentially all
the possible uses in which the word can be used. At this point, Wittgenstein does not
seem to be interested in the fact that the Picture (the drawing of the cube) is drawn
upon a most imprecise use of the word. It is as if one drew the Picture upon the
order: “I will mention the word “cube” without specifying a use and you will draw a
picture.” If the use of the Picture is not specified, then one will have to come up
with a particular Picture that could be applied in many ways, or could be used for
multiple applications. It is obvious that such a Picture, drawn upon a very imprecise
utterance that does not specify a use, should normally fit any specific use that one
makes of it. The problem arises, however, when the drawing refuses to fit a use that
Wittgenstein wants to make of it:
In what sense can this picture fit or fail to fit a use of the word
“cube”? -Perhaps you say: “It’s quite simple;-if that picture occurs to me and
I point to a triangular prism for instance, and say it is a cube, then this use of
the word doesn’t fit the picture.”-But doesn’t it fit? I have purposefully so
chosen the example that it is quite easy to imagine a method o f projection
according to which the picture does fit after all.
The Picture of the cube did indeed suggest a certain use to us, but it
was possible for me to use it differently. (§139, p.54)4 7
4 6 Was ist denn eigentlich, was uns vorschwebt, wenn wir ein Wort verstehen?-Ist es nicht
etwas, wie ein Bild? Kann es nicht ein Bild seinl .. .Nun, nimm an, beim Horen des Wortes,
“Wurfel” schwebt dir ein Bild vor. Etwa die Zeichnung eines Wurfels.
4 7 In wiefem kann dies Bild zu einer Verwendung des Wortes “Wurfel” passen, oder nicht zu
ihr passen?- Vielleicht sagst du: “das ist einfach;-wenn mir dieses Bild vorschwebt und ich
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The Picture of the cube, which one draws, simultaneously refuses to fit the triangular
prism, which one wants to turn the cube into. The Picture of the cube prescribes
certain uses (as just a cube), while disseminating others (as a cube transformed into a
triangular prism). While the Picture of the “cube” was produced such that it could be
applied to all the uses as they paraded in front of one’s eyes, once congealed into a
Picture, some applications appear to have vanished, or hidden somehow, applications
such as those of the mathematician or a cubist painter, who desire to turn the cube
into something else, into a triangular prism, for instance.
Once drawn, the Picture regulates the applications that could be applied to it,
allowing some, while refusing others. The Picture has now assumed a false
normative role in determining the correctness of an application. I use the word
correctly, if I point to the drawing of a cube and call it a “cube”, or incorrectly, when
I point to a triangular prism and call it the same. But someone with an adequate
knowledge of mathematics can potentially take the drawn cube, attach coordinates to
it, come up with a simple formula that defines a particular method of projection,
convert the coordinates of the cube into that of the triangular prism and draw a
triangular prism based on the model of the cube. In this way, the mathematician can
apply the word “cube” to a triangular prism, which, when viewed in conjunction with
zeige z.B. auf ein dreieckiges Prisma und sage, dies sei ein Wurfel, so paBt diese
Verwendung nicht zum Bild.” Aber paBt sie nicht? Ich habe das Beispiel absichtlich so
gewahlt, dafi es ganz leicht ist, sich eine Projektionsmethode vorzustellen, nach welcher das
Bild nun doch paBt.
Das Bild des Wurfels legte uns allerdings eine gewisse Verwendung nahe, aber ich
konnte es auch anders verwenden.
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the Picture of the cube, appears to be a wrong kind of application of the word,
“cube”. The problem is that the interpreter of the uttered word cannot see this use in
the drawing of the “cube.” How could, then, the triangular prism be hidden behind
the cube?
There is a turn of thought in this passage, almost imperceptible, a new
question rising out of the question of the Pictures and applications. There is someone
who just says “cube” and wants to show a triangular prism; but, there is another one,
who listens to this other and draws the Picture of the cube. The one that does the
saying (or the applying) wants to communicate his particular use to the other who
does the interpreting or (the Picturing). In the example of the cube, Wittgenstein
couples the problem of communication and interpretation with the problem of the
application and the Picture.
Imagination This World
Picture (?) Application
The drawing of a cube The “pointing to” a triangular prism
(drawing of?)
Interpretation Communication
Something interesting and very unusual happens in this example:
Wittgenstein pretends as if the one who utters the word cube, while intending a
triangular prism, is the same as the one who has drawn the Picture of a cube, but has
forgotten that he has drawn it. Assuming that this someone is Wittgenstein himself—
Wittgenstein goes to the drawing of the cube with a particular application in mind,
but when he cannot see this application in the drawing immediately, he suspects that
his own drawing is an inadequate representation of the application. It seems that
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Wittgenstein has conjured up the wrong Picture for his specific application. There is
either something wrong with the Picture (the drawing of the cube), or with the one
who does the drawing: instead of the Picture of the cube, he should have drawn a
better fitting Picture for his application:
What sort of mistake did I make; was it [that] I should have thought the
picture forced a particular use on me?.. .Is there such a thing as a picture, or
something like a picture, that forces a particular application on us; so that my
mistake lay in confusing one picture with another? (§140, p. 55) 4 8
In this paragraph, Wittgenstein’s thinking takes a definite turn: he admits that he has
made a mistake by mixing up Pictures, and that some other Picture may have better
served his purpose. He also seems to correct his thinking in the previous passages by
saying that the Picture of the cube may also be applied to the mathematician’s
specific use, despite the appearances. That “a [PJicture forces a particular
application on us” should be negated as a psychological notion and not a logical one.
The pressuring force (“Zwang”) that the Picture exerts on us towards a particular use
(“Verwendung”) is a psychological inclination, and cannot be justified
philosophically. Wittgenstein continues to say that we should be ready to
acknowledge that the same Picture may have different applications (“Anwendung”)
than the one it appears to force upon us. In other words, we should not be fooled by
the deceptive appearance of the Picture, and be able to see beyond the picture, as in
seeing the triangular prism beyond the cube
4 8 Welche Art war dann aber mein Irrtum.. .ich hatte geglaubt, das Bild zwinge mich nun zu
einer bestimmen Verwendung?.. .Gibt es denn ein Bild, oder etwas einem Bild Ahnliches,
das uns zu einer bestimmten Anwendung zwingt, und war mein Irrtum also eine
Verwechslung?
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What was the effect of my argument? It called our attention to (reminded us
of) the fact that there are other processes, besides the one we originally
thought of, which we should sometimes be prepared to call “applying the
picture of a cube.” So our belief that the picture forced a particular
application upon us’ consisted in the fact that only the one case and no other
occurred to us. “There is another solution as well” means: there is something
else that I am also prepared to call a “solution;” to which I am prepared to
apply such-and-such a picture, such-and-such an analogy, and so on. What is
essential is to see that the same thing can come before our minds when we
hear the word and the application still be different. Has it the same meaning
both times? I think we shall say not. (§140, 55) 4 9
There is something else (“etwas Anderes”) in this Picture that is besides, and beyond,
the original one that I have imagined: another process (“einen andem Vorgang”),
another solution (“eine Losung”); something else that I might call “another
application.” I should also be prepared to draw a Picture for this hidden application
(“das und das Bild”); and if I were made to do so, I could draw a more fitting picture
from the original one. It is as if one could beget other Pictures from this original
Picture that seems to contradict the use or uses that I want to make of it, Pictures that
fit my purpose (or application or use) better. In this begetting of other Pictures (say
that of a triangular prism) from an original Picture (the drawing of the cube), one
could display the kinship between the Picture and the seemingly contradicting uses,
i.e uses that may appear to clash with one’s experience of seeing the original Picture.
4 9 Was tat denn mein Argument? Es machte darauf aufmerksam (errinerte uns daran), daB
wir unter Umstanden bereit waren, auch einen andem Vorgang “Anwendung des
Wurfelbilds” zu nennen, als nur den, an w elchen wir urspriinglich gedacht hatten. Unser
‘Glaube, daB Bild zwinge uns zu einer bestimmten Anwendung’ bestand darin, daB uns nur
der eine Fall und kein andrer einfiel. “Es gibt eine andere Losung” heiBt: es gibt auch etwas
Anderes, was ich bereit bin, das und das Bild, die und die Analogie anzuwenden, etc..
Und das Wesentliche ist nun, daB wir sehen, daB uns das Gleiche beim Horen des
Wortes vorschweben, und seine Anwendung doch eine andere sein kann. Und hat es dann
beide Male die gleiche Bedeutung? Ich glaube, das werden wir vemeinen.
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This amounts to a disenchantment with the one application/use/purpose that the
Picture portrays: it requires an analytic “seeing beyond”, an analytic Picture-making
that projects and transforms the Picture into another Picture, and consequently, into
the territory of another use.
That one can produce other, “more fitting” Pictures from one seemingly
misleading Picture is understandable; but when is this ever the case? Does one ever
draw one Picture, first, that does not fit his application, and then draw another one
that is fitting? How can Wittgenstein insist that there is one Picture, the same thing
that “come[s] before our minds and the application [could] still be different”? Didn’t
he come up with the drawing of the cube with an application in mind to begin with?
5 0 In coming up with the Picture of the cube, didn’t he assume that the application
5 0 Why did Wittgenstein draw the Picture of the “cube” without a definite use of the word,
“cube,” in his mind? There could in fact be more logic to the automatism in the process of
going from the utterance of the word to the drawing of the picture. First, there is,
quantitatively speaking, a high level of ambiguity and fuzziness in the mere mention of the
word, “cube.” The word has not been put into a context, which could have somewhat
decreased the level of fuzziness involved in the non-contextual use. In language, such
context is usually, and not always, invented at the larger levels, such as the level of
sentences, which may explain Wittgenstein’s conviction in Tractatus that it is the
sentence/proposition (der Satz) that corresponds to the Picture [of a fact]. In applications of
language in this world, one may point to the existence of several contextual cues that may
decrease, or eliminate, the fuzziness of the application: this happens, for instance when we
play Wittgenstein’s “slab!” game or “pointing to” game with children, or when we call out
the names of individuals. If a Picture is to correspond to a word that has not been put into a
context, and that has not been given a particular use, the Picture should reflect the high level
of fuzziness of the decontextualized use of the word. One’s almost automatic inclination to
substitute the drawing of the cube for the word “cube” could probably be explained by the
fact that the drawing is probably quite an adequate representation of all the fuzziness that the
imprecise use entails. This is because the use of the Picture of the cube is as imprecise, as
general as the use of our actual experience of “seeing the cube.”
Even then, it is easy to dismiss “the Picture as seen” as an inadequate substitute for the
high level of fuzziness inherent in the mere mention of the word, “cube.” The mere drawing
of the cube implies less than all that fuzziness of the utterance: in this drawing a picture, we
unconsciously specify “under what conditions the cube is seen,” whether under what one
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was indefinite, indeterminate, imprecise, as if it corresponded to the whole use of the
word? Wittgenstein seems to take it for granted that we have the same Picture before
our minds regardless of what use one wants to make of the word. How can my
Picture that corresponds to an indefinite and imprecise use be the same as the Picture
of the mathematician who wants to “transform the cube into a triangular prism so
that I could apply the word “cube” to the prism?” Can’t the mathematician have
another kind of “flash” in his mind in order to be able to apply the word in his own
way? In other words, can’t he have another Picture or Pictures that fit his
applications in the first place? Shouldn’t the mathematician’s admittedly unusual, but
nevertheless possible application already imply, alongside the Picture of the cube,
the Picture of the triangular prism, for instance? Doesn’t the mathematician also
come up with a Pictorial narrative or fiction, in which the cube is fitted in stages into
the triangular prism? Shouldn’t we admit that in projecting different uses or
takes to be, “normal” conditions or under the distorting, transformative eye of a cubist
painter. The drawing of the cube may be a fit for the fuzziness under “normal” conditions,
and hence, it will be quite a bad fit for the fuzziness under the “abnormal” conditions. This
does not mean, however, this fuzzy Picture, in itself, is normative: it is the user of the
language that applies this fuzzy Picture, and not this other one. The imagination always fits a
Picture onto an utterance, but it is always a fit, that is partly logically, partly normatively
determined by the one who applies the Picture to the work of language.
Despite this caveat, there is admittedly a great difference between “seeing the cube,” or
“seeing the cube as the projection of a triangular prism;” the second implies fo r us a much
more precise use than the first one. If Wittgenstein does not know what to do with the
drawing of the “cube” and therefore sees it as somewhat misleading, this is because the
drawing of the cube adequately represents this “not necessarily knowing what to do with the
word ‘cube.’” Similarly, one treats the mere utterance of the word, “cube,” in an everyday
situation, outside an unimaginable context, as quite useless, if not strange; one does not
know what to do with just the utterance of the word. This is because, the Picture of the cube
has not been specified, contextualized, or “seen as.” A Picture “ just seen” could be used in a
million ways; as opposed to the cube of the mathematician that is to be transformed into a
triangular prism.
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applications for words, we are constantly coming up with different Pictures, some
referring to what we eventually want to do with language (where we would like to go
with it, as in going from the utterance “cube” to the Picture of a triangular prism) and
some referring to how we can do it (how we can get there, as in finding a way to
project the cube into a prism, or to go from the Picture of the cube to that of the
triangular prism)? Is the dichotomy between the Picture and the application a false
one?
All these questions raise the suspicion that there really cannot be a conflict
between a Picture and application; if there is a conflict, it is between two different
Pictures as they apply to the same word, or between the two different applications of
the same word. It is a very unlikely scenario that one will have a very specific
application for a word in his mind, while having a very indefinite Picture that is in
stark contrast with such a specific application. If the Picture of the cube conflicts
with the application of the mathematician, it is only because the mathematician had
the two Pictures in his mind to begin with, one referring to the imprecise or what
Wittgenstein calls, the “normal” use of the word, the other to his own unintuitive and
specific use. Even so, the contrast between the Picture of a “normal” application and
another Picture of an “abnormal” one would not be felt as a conflict fo r the
mathematician, as long as the mathematician knew how to connect the normal
Picture (of the cube) with the abnormal one (of the triangular prism): he will have
already filled the space in between with other Pictures that could stand in for the
transformation from the one Picture to the other.
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Utterance of “Cube”
a)Picture of the Cube b) A Fill-in Narrative c)Picture of the Triangular Prism
[transformation of a cube
to a triangular prism]
(A Pictorial Narrative?)
Consequently, Wittgenstein suspects that the mathematician’s Picture(s) may be
different than the Picture that corresponds to the imprecise, normal use:
Suppose, however, that not merely the picture of the cube, but also the
method of projection comes before our mind?—How am I to imagine this?—
Perhaps I see before me a schema showing the method of projection: say a
picture of two cubes connected by lines of projection.—But does this get me
any further? Well, yes, but then can’t an application come before my
mind?—It can: only we need to get clearer about our application of this
expression. Suppose I explain various methods of projection to someone so
that he may go on to apply them; let us ask ourselves when we should say
that the method that I intend comes before his mind. (§141, p.55)5 1
In the above thought-segment, Wittgenstein admits that an application can, in fact,
come before his mind. Remembering that Wittgenstein has previously defined what
comes before one’s mind in a flash (“vorschweben”) as a Picture, this means that the
application is already a Picture. If Wittgenstein is now able to admit this flash, it is
because he has to account for the fact that the scheme of projection should
necessarily appear before the mind of the mathematician in order for him to perform
5 1 Aber wie, wenn uns nicht einfach das Bild des Wiirfels, sondem dazu auch die
Projektionsmethode vorschwebt?-Wie soil ich mir das denken?-Etwa so, daB ich ein Schema
der Projektionsart vor mir sehe. Ein Bild etwa, das zwei Wurfel zeigt durch
Projektionsstrahlen miteinander verbunden.- Aber bringt mich denn das w esentlich weiter?
Kann ich mir nun micht auch verschiedene Anwendungen dieses Schemas denken?-Ja aber
kann mir denn also nicht eine Anwendung vorschweben?-Doch; nur miissen wir uns tiber
unsre Anwendung dieses Ausdrucks klarer werden. Nimm an, ich setze jemandem
verschiedene Projektionsmethoden auseinander, damit er sie dann anwende; und fragen wir
uns, in welchem Falle wir sagen werden, es schwebe ihm die Projektionsmethode vor,
welche ich meine.
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the transformation that he has in his m ind.5 2 The consequence is that an application
may not be thought as separate from a Picture.
If Wittgenstein still insists on the difference between the Picture and the
application, despite his own concessions, however, it is because of the conviction
that the Picture appears in one time, while an application runs in time:
Now we clearly accept two different kinds of criteria for this: on the one hand
the picture (of whatever kind) that at the same time or other comes before
[the mathematician’s] mind; on the other, the application which-in the course
of time-he makes of what he imagines. (And can’t it be clearly seen that it is
absolutely inessential for the picture to exist in his imagination other than as a
drawing or model in front of him; or again as something that he himself
constructs as a model?) (§141, p.55)5 3
5 2 Wittgenstein immediately complicates his insight (that an application cannot be thought
separate from a Picture) by bringing in the questions of communication and interpretation. In
demanding further clarifications, he turns the mathematician’s transformation narrative,
played out in silence and in solitude, into an instance of communication between two
subjects: the interpreter knows that the mathematician is transforming a cube into a
triangular prism, but the mathematician wants to make sure that the interpreter also know the
specific transformation technique he is using. In other words, the interpreter is cognizant of
the Pictures of the cube and the triangular prism as they are applied to the utterance, “cube,”
but he does not know the specifics of the Pictorial transformation narrative. While the
mathematician has a specific Pictorial narrative or a specific projection technique in his mind
when he is using the word, the interpreter cannot know which projection technique is at
stake.
The interpreter’s ignorance can only be a problem, however, when the
mathematician expects the interpreter to have the exact Picture(s) or Pictorial narratives as
his. In communication, one does not act with such exactness, maybe for the sake of
economy; there is usually something frustrating about someone specifying his particular
technique or application at every utterance and expecting others to take note of these
specifics. When I utter a word, with an application in mind, the other person may simply
refer to a dossier of Pictures that he has in store for this application of the word, a dossier
that confirms that the utterance of “cube” could be applied to a triangular prism under
specific conditions. The interpreter does not necessarily have to draw out a particular page,
which refers to a specific transformation technique, and in which the transformation from the
cube to the prism is shown with all the technical details; for all we know, the dossier may be
empty.
5 3 Aber wie, wenn uns nicht einfach das Bild des Wtirfels, sondem dazu auch die
Projektionsmethode vorschwebt?-Wie soli ich mir das denken?-Etwa so, daB ich ein Schema
der Projektionsart vor mir sehe. Ein Bild etwa, das zwei Wurfel zeigt durch
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The Picture here is indexed to some time (“zu irgendeiner Zeit”); it occurs at one
time, while the application occurs in the course of time (“im Laufe der Zeit”). One
takes the Picture and makes an application out of it; or, turns it into an application.
One places the Picture in time or narrativizes the Picture within an application, so to
speak. Wittgenstein is now reluctant to admit that a narrative/use/application in time
could be Pictured, something like a Pictorial narrative. The dichotomy between the
Picture and the application now assumes a temporal and spatial dimension; the
Picture, once it comes before the mind in a flash, is frozen, atemporal and spatial, in
contrast with the application that is a narrative in time. It is as if one had to do some
cinematic editing in the tradition of Russian constructivists in order to construct the
“meaning” of the word: in this specific style, there will be several Pictures, as frozen
shots, but no Pictorial narrative that transforms one to the other: the mind will fill in
between them with an application/narrative. It is as if one could not Picture or
pictorialize the in-between of two Pictures: there is a spatial shot of the cube, a
spatial shot of the prism, and no temporal shot(s) of the transformation from the cube
to the prism. But there could in fact be other pictorial styles, in which Pictorial
narratives display these transformations for us. The contradiction between the Picture
Projektionsstrahlen miteinander verbunden.- Aber bringt mich denn das wesentlich weiter?
Kann ich mir nun micht auch verschiedene Anwendungen dieses Schemas denken?-Ja aber
kann mir denn also nicht eine Anwendung vorschwebenl-Doch; nur miissen wir uns iiber
unsre Anwendung dieses Ausdrucks klarer werden. Nimm an, ich setze jemandem
verschiedene Projektionsmethoden auseinander, damit er sie dann anwende; und fragen wir
uns, in welchem Falle wir sagen werden, es schwebe ihm die Projektionsmethode vor,
welche ich meine.
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and the application, as another Picture, could therefore be resolved, in a
straightforward fashion, with the admission of the Pictorial narrative, an option that
Wittgenstein does not investigate.
The language of applying
In the above thought segments, Wittgenstein discusses questions concerning
the use of language, with little mention of language. After the moment in which the
word “cube” was uttered, a battle between Pictures and applications ensues, without
much mention of the status of language in this battle. Having discussed the
untenability of the contradiction between the Picture and the application, which
Wittgenstein himself admits in between the lines, I now come back to the question of
language in Wittgenstein’s cube example, in order to make further clarifications that
concern the terms: works of language (word), Pictures, applications.
In the first instance, the question of language is one that involves the
interpretation of the word: what Pictures could be applied to the word? The
utterance of the word leads to two or more different Pictures, or to be more precise,
two or more different scenarios or fictions in which a Picture was applied to the same
word. According to one both “everyday” and “sufficiently” fuzzy fiction, the Picture
of a cube is applied to the word, “cube,” such that one could be point to it upon the
utterance: in other words, its application is that it be available for others to point to
it. According to another imaginative or technical fiction, a Pictorial narrative is
applied to the word, “cube” such that one could transform the cube into a triangular
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prism;5 4 here, the application is that it enable the transformation of a cube to a
triangular prism. A Picture that was applied to the word does not occur randomly: it
is always drawn with an application in mind. The application is always in the
Picture, implying that the conflict between the Picture and application is untenable.
If there is ever a conflict, it has to be sought between two applications or two
Pictures as they refer to the same work o f language (in this case, the word “cube”)
and not between a Picture and an application as if they were in a vacuum.
In his arguments, Wittgenstein destabilizes the correspondence between a
word and an object, without destabilizing the correspondence between a Picture and
an object. A Picture is always equivalent to an object: it is always a Picture of the
object. If a Picture ever gets made in language games, it is always the same, usual,
static, everyday Picture, that one Picture of the object, like a rather useless
photograph only there to be pointed to. It is easy, then, to feign bafflement at the
mathematician’s imaginative Picture or Pictorial narrative of transforming the cube
5 4 Insofar as the issue is a problem is communication, and not only interpretation, between a
speaker with the imaginative fiction and the conservative audience with the everyday fiction,
one may admit that the speaker’s fiction is an unusual and even “abnormal” one, and dismiss
it as uncommunicative.
Speaker Audience
Fiction 1: Imaginative Picture Fiction 2: “Everyday” Picture
Transformation narrative of the cube Drawing of a cube
The conflict between two Pictures in a com m unicative situation arises because the speaker
does not satisfy a certain expectation that the audience has regarding the use of the word. If
the conflict occurs in an interpretive situation, in which the speaker has spoken but is now
absent, and the interpreters apply their own Pictures to “what was spoken,” it becomes more
difficult to decide under what conditions one Picture could conflict with another one, as long
as both Pictures could be applied to the same word. In both situations, however, the conflict
concerns two Pictures, two fictions, two applications, and not a Picture and an application.
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into the triangular prism upon hearing the word. Since Wittgenstein does not admit
the possibility that different Pictures may be applied to the same word under certain
conditions (and here, the condition is the high level uncertainty of the utterance, “the
cube”), he refuses to call the mathematician’s work of imagination, “another
Picture,” and instead, calls it an application.
Several confusions arise in the grammar of thought when Pictures and
applications are kept separate. According to this grammar, a word, a Picture and an
object are on one side of thought, the application or the use on the other. A word
corresponds to one Picture, or to that one Picture of the object, but can be applied in
two different ways, which means that it may have two (and more) different
applications. But, in order to have two different applications, Wittgenstein admits,
there has to be two different Pictures to begin with. But this contradicts the premise
that a word corresponds to one Picture, therefore these applications cannot be
Pictures at all.
The grammar of thought seems to construct a little paradox. All this paradox
could be avoided with a change in words. In this reformulation, a Picture does not
correspond to a word/object; Picture(s) are applied to a word, as in reading, or
alternatively word(s) are applied to a Picture, as in writing. We might as well make
this reformulation more accurate by saying that Picture(s) are not only applied to
words, but also to other works of language, which may include fragments, sentences,
paragraphs, both small and large linguistic configurations or figures. The Picture’s
relationship with the word is not neutral or disinterested, as in mere correspondence;
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rather it is determined with the perspective of a use, of an application, of an interest.
Different Pictures may be applied to the word, depending on whether the application
is a “pointing to” or a transformation.
To make the above argument more relevant to the act of interpretation, as in
reading, we may then say that, during this act, we are following the route:
w ordapplication (s)-^Picture(s)
The above route is in variance with Wittgenstein’s route:
one word[one Picture] -^multiple applications.
One may be tempted to think that he or she is missing steps in this logic
(word->application (s)->Picture(s)). This happens, for instance, when one seems to
have skipped the intermediary step, “application,” as it happens when one
automatically responds to the words, as if there were no application to start with or
think about, as Wittgenstein himself thought when the Picture of the cube came to
his mind in a flash. The conviction that one can produce a Picture from the word
automatically, with no application in mind, could be easily negated for the specific
case in which the application is exactly “having no particular application in mind.”
For other cases, the logic in which the intermediary “application” is skipped,
(word->Picture) may be shown to be a form of (word-> [application]-^Picture). The
Picture always implies an application, regardless of whether the notion of application
is made implicit or explicit.
If Wittgenstein may suggest that an application may exist without Pictures, it
is because he has the limited and limiting conception of the Picture as static and
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atemporal. A static Picture, to be sure, cannot reflect a temporal application or use
that one has in mind when using a word. But this seeming contradiction could easily
be avoided when one may also construct a temporal fiction with Pictures or a
Pictorial narrative, based on a particular application. In other words, one can always
imagine a Picture that corresponds to an application. This equality between the
picture and the application would have important consequences. To say that one has
an application in mind without a Picture would become impossible: it would be
equivalent to saying: “I am applying this Picture to this word, but I don’t know what
picture.” Similarly, to say that my application contradicts, or as Wittgenstein says,
collides with (“kollidieren”) with my Picture would be equivalent to saying: “this
Picture can be applied to this word, but the same Picture cannot be applied to the
same word.” So what should we make of Wittgenstein’s following comments, which
hint at the possibility of such a collision?
Can there be a collision between picture and application? There can,
inasmuch as the picture makes us expect a different use, because people in
general apply this picture like this [an alternative, more literal translation:
people make this application out of this Picture] I want to say: we have a
normal case, and abnormal cases. (§141, 56)5 5
The grammar in English translation simplifies Wittgenstein’s sentence considerably,
by turning the noun used in German (“Anwendung machen: to make an application”)
into a verb (“applies”). Such simplification brings Wittgenstein’s thought to a crisis,
5 5 Konnen nun Bild und Anwendung kollidieren? Nun, sie konnen insofem kollidieren, als
uns das Bild eine andere Verwendung erwarten laBt; weil die Menschen im allgemeinen von
diesem Bild diese Anwendung machen. .. .Ich will sagen: Es gibt hier einen normalen Fall
und abnormale Falle.
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so to speak, raising the suspicion that there could at times be more truth in imprecise
translations. What can “applying this picture like this” mean? Like what? If
Wittgenstein is talking about a Picture and its various applications, what happens to
the word from which both the Picture and multiple applications originate? If the
sentence appears to be incomplete in the translation “people in general apply this
picture like this,” this is because Wittgenstein has left out language, or the word,
from the discussion of the Picture and the application. This confusion could easily be
eliminated by changing the language a little bit, and saying that “people generally
apply this [kind of] Picture to this word [or work of language]” under normal
circumstances.5 6
5 6 The collision between the “normal” and “abnormal” application use of a word usually
happens as a question of communication, in which a party has to account for his “abnormal”
Picture in the presence o f another party who has an interest in the use of a “normal” Picture
for the same word. Such collisions may regularly occur when there is not a general
agreement on whether an “abnormal” Picture could be applied to a word among the people
that use the word. These disagreements may be more pronounced when the users are split
among two or more user-groups: one group has a Picture that contradicts another Picture
used by another group, and both groups make validity claims as to the normalcy of their own
interpretations. Collisions may also occur when the Picture of one party is not so obvious to
another party who conceives it as “abnormal.” To resolve the collision, the party with the
unusual Picture may be invited to show how his or her abnormal Picture is a-kin to the
normal Picture as they are both applied to the same word. The resolution of the collision can
easily take place, for instance, when the different parties recognize the conflict as the
application of the Pictures in two different but valid perspectives/ kinds of use/ contexts. For
the resolution to occur without any glitches, it is necessary that the validity of these
perspectives be established prior to the application. The table is one to my everyday sight,
but multiple to the sight of an electroscope; but, once the perspective of use is established,
there is no conflict between the Picture of the table as one, and that of the table as multiple.
Following Wittgenstein’s tradition of analogy, one may illustrate this idea with the
analogy of the production of a film with a conceptual filmmaker and conservative producers.
One may imagine the pre-screening of the movie as it is taking place in front of the
producers who sponsored the movie, thinking that it would be based on the use of a cube.
The stipulation for the movie was that every shot be directly related to the Picture of the
geometric cube: someone chewing on a sugar cube, a structure being built with cubic
building stones, kids playing with a plastic cube as if it were a ball, etc. The conceptual
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A collision may then occur between a usual Picture and an unusualicture, or
between a usual application and an unusual application, as they refer to the same
work o f language (words, sentences, fragments), but not between a Picture and an
application. Even then, however, one has to clarify what is meant by collision, and
indicate how it could be resolved or could not be resolved, in the use of language by
the interventions, negotiations, conventions of the users of the language.5 7
Results
To recapitulate the previous commentary on the cube example, Wittgenstein
sketches a cube and a triangular prism upon the utterance of the word, “cube;” he
pretends that the latter sketch corresponds to an application, whereas the former one
is the sudden reincarnation of the whole use of the word. The drawing of the cube
filmmaker, however, chooses to make a brief conceptual movie that consists of two
atemporal, descriptive shots: one straightforward shot shows the drawing of a cube, and
another rather “enigmatic” one shows the drawing of a triangular prism. The conservative
producers protest, saying that the shot of the triangular prism has nothing to do with the
cube, while the filmmaker insists on the opposite. The resolution occurs when, with the help
of animators, the filmmaker includes a temporal, narrative shot, in which the drawing of the
cube is fitted in stages into the drawing of the triangular prism.
5 7 Of course, one should agree on what is meant by “collision” or contradiction; A usual
Picture may not necessarily collide with an unusual Picture. Such contradictions occur very
frequently in the metaphorical use in colloquial language, such as “a fat chance” referring to
“very little chance.” The blatant contradiction between the literal picture (“a fat-looking, a
big chance”) and the non-literal Picture (“little chance”) can only be resolved when
conventions or mles dictate that we only apply the non-literal Picture to the phrase, and not
the literal one. We act as if we had one Picture to begin with and we have forgotten the
literal Picture; but this is, after all, a game of “as-if” and pretension. A trace of that literal
Picture will accompany the non-literal Picture in the background, imparting a sense of
playfulness or mischief to it, unless, of course, the literal Picture is indeed forgotten (no one
pays attention to it) and the phrase has turned into a tired cliche.
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eclipses the Picture of another application, i.e., that of the triangular prism; from this
he concludes that there could be a collision between the Picture and an application.
Wittgenstein cannot, however, dismiss the suspicion that both Pictures, and another
one that displays the transformation from one to the other, may be applied to the
same word. In my discussion above, I radicalized this dormant suspicion, and turned
it into an argument that also destabilized Wittgenstein’s dichotomy between the
application and the picture. The result of my argument is the statement “Picture(s)
are applied to a word,” which also implies that a Picture, applied to a word, always
embodies an application
Wittgenstein’s dichotomy between the picture and the application might have
stemmed from the persistent correspondence equation
Picture = Object
This assumption implies that, there is, under all circumstances, one Picture that
corresponds to a word, as that one Picture of the object, which the word is supposed
to correspond to. It is interesting that the assumption (Picture == Object) also implies
another assumption that must also hold under all circumstances:
Word = Object
The word (or name) should correspond to the object, so that a Picture of the object
could correspond to the utterance of the word. With this, we are back to the
isomorphic correspondences of the Tractatus:
Just the Word = Picture == Object
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It is not that these assumptions are untenable: a word may certainly evoke an object,
or a Picture of the object, as it does in the “pointing-to” game. What is questionable
is the assumption that the Picture can only produced at the level of the word, and not,
say, at the level of sentence, and hence would be insufficient as a model for linguistic
applications that involve more than just the word. The applicability of the Picture is
limited to the use of just the word in the “pointing-to” game. In Philosophical
Investigations. Wittgenstein emphasizes that the Picture is rendered useless in a
linguistic application in the world that involves more than the use of just the word:
words, expressions, objects, life-situations. So the use of the word, and not just the
word, can be understood only with regard to the application at hand, without the
mediation of any Picture.
Use of the Word == Application in-the-world
The Picture, therefore, is inadequate in explaining the uses of language in the
territory of applications, or this world. For Wittgenstein, the Picture, once drawn in
correspondence with just the word, hides all the possible applications that we may
make of the word in this world. In my analysis, I have integrated Wittgenstein’s
insight into the uses of language in this world in Philosophical Investigations, with
the Picture theory of language that he repudiates: I have suggested a way out of one-
to-one, isomorphic correspondences with the formulation of the simple statement:
“Picture(s) are applied to a word (or to a work of language)”. A Picture, conceived as
in this statement, does not need to seek any immediate correspondences with the
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constitutive elements of a work of language—it does not have to correspond to the
words of a sentence, for instance—it only needs to be applied to it.
Work of Language-^ Applications Pictures
If one brings back the Pictures, by destroying the false dichotomy between
the Picture and application (or use), what happens to the language-games that
constitute the stuff of this world in later Wittgenstein, and are supposedly more
relevant to the notions of use and application? In Max Black’s insightful treatment of
language games in Wittgenstein, it becomes obvious that the language-game is as
much of an analogy as the Picture, except that it proves to be a much more loose one,
whose use becomes equivalent to the use of the ordinary saying: “game with words.”
In fact, such looseness in Wittgenstein use of “language games” results in the
consequence that anything and everything about language can designate a language
game. Black claims “there is nothing at all, apart from using words-not even obeying
“fixed-rules”- that anybody must be doing in playing a language-game [in
Wittgenstein’s use of language-game]; but then what will he be doing? I am tempted
to say: just using words!” (350) But if the language game is just using words or
works of language, the problematics laid out in Philosophical Investigations cannot
be far from the theories of the Tractatus. As I have noted earlier, the structure of
isomorphism and of correspondence is therefore preserved within Wittgenstein’s
C O
later choosing of another analogy (game) to replace the Picture.
5 8 See Kenny for the continuities between earlier and later Wittgenstein. I do not consider
language-games as “the mediators between language and reality” (Hintikka, 94) in the same
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Interestingly, Black concludes his essay with a reference to a Picture made
out of words or a poetic image:
It may therefore be a mistake to try to define and analyze the notion of a
“language-game;” and the appropriate mode of explication should perhaps
resemble the interpretation of a poem rather than the articulation of a
doctrinal proof. I am therefore inclined to treat Wittgenstein’s language-
games as images, in the literary critic’s sense of “picture made out of words.”
(350)
This is in fact what I have been trying to do in this chapter: bring the Picture back
into our dealings with language. Such bringing back can happen if we modify our
notions of the Picture, and, as I will discuss in the next section, if we relax the hold
of this world. The first would suggest a change in our aesthetic and formal biases;
the second would suggest the abandonment of our ontological priorities.
Black’s comments are also interesting in the way they underscore
“interpretation” as an appropriate way to approach an analogy, rather than trying to
articulate “a doctrinal proof.” The philosopher often needs to turn into a literary
critic to make sense of philosophy.5 9 In trying to draw support for the Picture, Black
refers to one of Wittgenstein’s thought-segments in which the Picture is at its worst,
holding us captive with its manipulative inertia: “A Picture held us active. And we
could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to
way as the Picture figured in Tractatus: in the concept of the language game, the world gets
collapsed into language.
5 9 In doing so himself, however, Black ends up with the poetic image, rather than, say, the
images of an action-packed pulp fiction or a soapy romance novel, which could also have
served the rapprochement between language games and Pictures.
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97
us inexorably” (§115, p.48). 6 0 Commenting on this most negative outlook on the
Picture, Black suggests that “one way of loosening the “mental cramp” [caused by
the Picture] would be to produce other Pictures.” In my close readings of
Wittgenstein, I tried to show what assumptions about Wittgenstein’s Picture may
have caused such mental cramps, and how the “other Pictures” that Black anticipates
can be drawn or produced from applications, as a way out (“heraus”), a way whose
possibility Wittgenstein already hints at in his own “cube” example.
Why just this world?
In my reading of Wittgenstein’s “cube” example, I have followed him as he
tries to answer the question:
When someone say the word “cube” to m e.. .1 know what it means. But can
the whole use of the word come to my mind, when I understand it in this
way?
Someone else has said the word, used it in a certain way; and I, the audience, have to
find out what he “meant.” The conflict exists between my Picture of what is said,
and someone else’s Picture of what he has said. In the first instance, the question is
one of communication, between a speaker and an audience, but the ambiguity in this
passage suggests that Wittgenstein treats the question of communication as if it were
a question of interpretation between two Picture makers, or interpreters.
Is Wittgenstein here concerned about the question of communication between
an audience (me) and a speaker (that someone else), or the question of interpretation
6 0 Ein Bild hielt uns gefangen. Und heraus konnten wir nicht, denn es lag in unsrer Sprache,
und sie schien es uns nur unerbittlich zu wiederholen.
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98
between two interpreters, concerning two incompatible interpretations of that which
is already said? If what is at stake is the question of interpretation, for instance, the
one who does the saying (the speaker) has to act as if the word were put out for
display, so to speak, by a third person, and the conflict concerned two different
interpretations.6 1 This “being put out for display” may alternatively be seen as the
word’s first being written. Wittgenstein’s almost imperceptible shifts from the
question of communication to that of interpretation suggest that he folds the question
of communication into the question of interpretation. 6 2 Such folding may
alternatively be seen as a kind of unfolding in suggesting that one has to reveal the
6 1 The transformation of the question of communication into one of interpretation involves
several interesting hypothetical states or pretensions. Here the speaker acts as if the word has
been written first and to account for the word’s being written at the first place as result, he
invents a hypothetical, third person, as the absent speaker, or, more accurately a writer. This
is a curious mechanism: the speaker says something to the audience, but in order to make
any sense, s/he will have to become a member of that audience, pretending that a
hypothetical third person, who is currently absent, was the speaker.
6 2 In Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein constantly folds arguments into another. In
my interpretation, I have tried to follow and, at times, to explain Wittgenstein’s logic of
folding. Kripke notes the dialectical nature of the Philosophical Investigations, where
“persistent worries, expressed by the voice of the imaginary interlocutor, are never definitely
silenced...Since the work is not presented in the form of a deductive argument with definitive
theses as conclusions, the same ground is covered repeatedly, from the point of view of
various special cases and from different angles.” Shanker remarks that interpreters have
traditionally treated the folding, twisting and turning arguments by breaking Philosophical
investigations into issues: “the private language argument,... criteria, the meaning of proper
names, the significance of language games and...the nature of rule-following... [however] it
was not clear how these particular issues fit in with the overall structure of Philosophical
Investigations.. .For the basic problem with approaching the Investigations in this topic-by-
topic manner is that it is difficult to see how Wittgenstein’s opaque remarks on these
individual topics mesh with one another.” (6, Approaching) The topic-by-topic approach,
despite being helpful, may also result in the oversight of their interconnections. Despite this,
many helpful maps of the work has been suggested (See, for instance, Genova 63-73)
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99
question of interpretation folded or hidden in the question of communication, to find
out what communication is, and visa versa. 6 3
Following his discussion of the dichotomy between the Picture and
application, however, Wittgenstein will perform another shift: he will push the world
to the forefront of his investigation, pretending to forget both the question of
communication and that of interpretation. What becomes more important is neither
the speaker, nor the audience, nor the interpreters): now, the focus is the act of
saying, or remembering the first translation in the Tractatus. translating the world
into language. If Wittgenstein’s unfolding of the question of communication into one
of interpretation implied the absence of the world, as a consequence of which
different Pictures surfaces, this present shift will bring the focus back to this world,
making it present once again. Remembering that the opening sentence of the
Tractatus declares the world to be all that is the case, the following thought segment
may be seen as referring to the application of language in this world as it involves
objects, situations, experiences:
It is only in normal cases that the use of a word is clearly prescribed; we
know, are in no doubt, what to say in this or that case. The more abnormal the
case, the more doubtful it becomes what we are to say. And if things were
quite different from what they actually are—if there were for instance no
characteristic expression of pain, of fear, of joy; if rule became exception and
exception rule; or if both became phenomena of roughly equal ffequency-this
will make our normal language games lose their point.. .(§141, p.56) 6 4
6 3 A member of the audience may also go to the stage to be the speaker to see whether s/he
could have said the original utterance, imagining the application of another Picture to the
same word.
6 4 Nur in normalen Fallen ist der Gebrauch der Worte uns klar vorgezeichnet; wir wissen,
haben keinen Zweifel, was wir in diesem oder jenem Fall zu sagen haben. Je abnormaler der
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100
The statement, “the way things handle themselves factually” (“als [die Dinge] sich
tatsachlich verhalten”) reminds one of the thing-states or “die Sachverhalten” of the
Tractatus. further justifying the interpretation that Wittgenstein has now shifted his
focus to the application of language in the world comprised of facts (Tatsachen). In
this shift, we no longer apply the Pictures of imagination to works of language
(words, sentences, fragments, bits of language); rather, we are producing, or putting
forth a work of language in relation to cases, both normal or abnormal, as they occur
in the world. There is no longer the mention of the Picture; instead, we are in the
comfort of a world already sorted out into “normal” and “abnormal” cases. The way
things are, the rules of the game, the characteristic expressions, etc. will take care of
my linguistic dealings with the world. There could be some exceptions, of course,
but the higher frequency of the rules will take care of them.
How did it happen that in one segment of thought, Wittgenstein folded all
questions that concern language into the question of “applying language to the
world”? A direct consequence of this folding was to underscore the order of things
whenever one uses language; but is such order necessary in all applications of
language? What do the terms, “normal” and “abnormal” use, mean for instance when
it comes to the act of reading? What is a normal or an abnormal use of language,
Fall, desto zweifelhafter wird es, was wir nun hier sagen sollen. Und verhielten sich die
Dinge ganz anders, als sie sich tatsachlich verhalten-gabe es z.B. keinen charakteristischen
Ausdruck des Schmerzes, der Furcht, der Freude; wiirde was Regel ist, Ausnahme und was
Ausnahme, zur Regel; oder wiirden beide zu Erscheinungen von ungefahr gleicher
Haufigkeit-so verloren unsere normalen Sprachspiele damit ihren Witz...
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when I have no experience of what I have imagined, or drawn in my imagination? Is
it an abnormal use of language, for instance, to call a unicorn a “unicorn”?
Obviously, what I take to be “normal” or “abnormal” in this world does not
need to have any bearing whatsoever on what I take to be “normal” or “abnormal” in
the world(s) of (my) imagination, insofar as these two notions imply the prior
existence of things and situations and games, to which the works of language are
applied. To adopt Wittgenstein’s language, while actual existence is a game we play
in this world, we do not always need to play this game in the world(s) of imagination
or in all the Pictures that we draw in imagination. In bringing forth this world in the
place of the imagination, Wittgenstein’s normalizing gestures keep us in check by
insisting on the priority of the “actual existence” game. Doesn’t Wittgenstein’s
suspicion of Pictures reflect an uneasiness with a concept that may refuse to
materialize, externalize, become part of this world, and get sorted out with the same
criteria that we apply to existing games, situations, things as they are in this world?
If the standards of this world are normally put on hold in the imagination, how can
one make the imagination part of this world, or fold it into this world?
One way to make the imagination (and its Pictures) part of this world is to
make this world part of the imagination. This means that one could see this world, as
an imagined world, a certain space offictions that we live by.6 5 To clarify this, I go
651 could have said, “a space of Pictures.” A Picture is a fiction, in the same way as actual
visual pictures, whether they are paintings or movies, are fictions. In using the word fiction,
rather than the Picture, I would like to delineate the conjunction of works of language,
Pictures, and the world(s) of imagination, implied in any Picturing or fictionalizing work.
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back to the Tractatus and readopt Wittgenstein’s analogy of the Picture (the
imagination) as the measuring rod of this world. We have to have a measure of the
fictions that we do not live by, but also of those fictions that we might have lived or
may still live by, before we live in this world, a measure that we construct in our
imagination. In other words, we live in the space of fiction, before we live in this
world. Conversely, we might consider literary fictions, or the works of imagination,
as illustrations not of the world as it is, but of the world as it might have been, or
another world, or not this world, or an alien world, etc.
By redefining this world as the space of the fictions we live by, one can then
loosen the grip of this world on the Pictures of the imagination. Such loosening,
however, does not mean that, in acts of imagination, as in reading, one may cease to
imagine the fictions of this world, keeping this world on hold or out of sight. Fictions
belong exclusively neither to the space of imagination, nor to the space of this world;
rather, they travel in-between, making themselves handy both in the imaginary and
actual worlds.6 6 There is, therefore, very little use in turning this world into that
6 6 One may certainly relate, translate, move, make travel the fictions that one lives by to
those that one reads; but even in this relation or traveling, one does not need to insist on
using the same Active standards in both instances. Standards may need to be readjusted, fine-
tuned, forgotten, invented, imported, which necessitates the intervention of our imagination
doing all this “fine” work. In the reading of a fantastic novel, for instance, I suspend or relax
my Active standards of “existence”; in the reading of “a true story”, I may reactivate those
same standards. The traveling of fictions is not an arbitrary phenomenon, but a logical one
that stems from the possibility that Wittgenstein himself mentions in Tractatus: the two
pronged possibility of Picturing the world and language. The Picture, here, is the
intermediary fiction that may capture the world upon being in it, while it may also draw
something of the world, from reading its linguistic signs, as it happens in hieroglyphic
reading. As a result, one cannot help relating this world of my living to the other world of
my reading. The relation between the Pictures of this world and those of the reading would
be felt even stronger when I see, interpret or recognize several aspects of fictions that I read,
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103
privileged fold from which all questions concerning the application of Pictures to the
works of language could be unfolded. In fact, Wittgenstein’s own discussions
strongly suggest that to make sense of this world, we may have to move it to the
space of imagination (and then, possibly, bring it back).6 7
Throughout his Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein reveals to us the
multiplicity of the fictions (or games or ways) that comprise this world. But
Wittgenstein’s delineation of this world entails the dismissal of the imagination and
its Pictures, insofar as they cannot have an actual bearing on the games that we play
or on the fictions that we live by in this world. One of Wittgenstein’s central interests
are the rules or standards of specific fictions, or of specific language games, as they
occur in this world. As long as we play a specific game in this world, such rules or
standards are determined by inter-subjective and consensual rule following.
Moreover, the rules of a specific fiction can only concern the externally observable
and characteristic responses as actualized in the events of linguistic responses
(utterances) or actions.
as aspects of fictions realizable in this world. Such effect or affect, which is not a given, but
a product of my reading, sometimes leads to the declaration: “the world is reflected in
fiction.”
6 7 This is also explicit in Wittgenstein’s discussion of the question of com munication, by
turning it into a question of interpretation in the absence of this world. From this seemingly
this worldly question of communication, Wittgenstein unfolds a hypothetical and fantastic
question of interpretation, in which the word is said in the absence of the speaker, and we
have to find out what Picture could be applied to it. In other words, Wittgenstein unfolded
the path of literary interpretation or the path of reading as strategies to resolve questions
concerning communication.
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In all this, however, Wittgenstein does not show us the prior process by
which this specific language game becomes more relevant to or a better fit for a
certain situation of this world, compared with others. There is a missing step in
immediately moving into this world, while not finding a fitting or adequate entryway
into it. How we play a specific game is a different question than which specific
game, among a multiplicity of games, we choose to play in a certain situation.6 8 The
hints of specific games, as if they were labels, do not attach themselves to the
situations of the world; we usually have to do the attaching or the application
ourselves. There should be a space, therefore, that precedes the application of this
specific fiction, a space that includes the possibility of imagining other fictions. This
space is the imagination.
By starting out from the imagination, and not necessarily from this world,
however, it becomes not only possible to delineate the importance of imagining other
6 8 In critiquing Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games, Black concludes that “[real]
language games [according to Black, and in contrast with Wittgenstein] unlike genuine
games, are not autonomous, are not played without mastery of related language-games”
(352). Black therefore finds “Wittgenstein’s commitment to the autonomy of language-
games... unacceptable” (344). I interpret Black’s conclusion as a reminder that, before one
settles with this game/ fiction/Picture in this world, one has to go through the other games/
fictions/Pictures in imagination at every instance of language-use, which would turn the
language game into something much more fluid than a game whose territory of use is
predetermined. In trying to understand how language hangs together, Rhees appears very
skeptical about the explanatory power of language games: “I do not see that you can give an
account of [dealings with language] by reference to the interrelations of different games. We
might say that if you tried to do that, you could lay too much emphasis on ‘making up the
rules as you go along.’ But also, if you are speaking about ‘various games’—it is bizarre that
none of them seems to be finished; at least most of them never are. Also it is not often clear
whether you are still playing the same game or whether you are not. But I criticized [the
notion of language games] especially because it suggested that it would be conceivable that
there were only one game that was ever played” (268).
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fictions in our dealings in this world, but also to see such fictions in continuation and
in relation with the fictions of this world, even when that relation is one of fantastic
negation. In fact, it is often the case that those fantastic fictions, which most
forcefully negate this world, are also those, which best illustrate it. In the course of
his Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein repeatedly makes use of such fantastic
fictions, or literature, to show us what this world is like, as he will show us in the
ensuing analogy in the same thought-segment.
The unusual scales of imagination
Returning to Wittgenstein’s train of thought in the same thought-segment, we
see that the issue, here, are the games of this world; among these games,
Wittgenstein is particularly interested in those that are supposedly played in
isolation, in hiding, with hidden Pictures, as in the game of internal states and
emotions. Even in such games, we have to have some outward, inter-subjectively
determined, consensual language so that we may determine standards concerning
their normal and abnormal execution. We need to have characteristic expressions
(“Ausdruck”) of those internal states that are hidden from others, such as pain, fear,
and joy. There is an order or a rule in the ways that we express ourselves, in the ways
we use language; and such order gives us the measure of “normal” and
“characteristic” at all times by which one may dismiss uncertainty (of Pictures): 6 9
6 9 Why privilege “characteristic expressions” over works of language? In this respect, I
completely agree with Ayer’s repudiation of Wittgenstein’s criticism of private languages.
Ayer comes to the conclusion that
.. .for anyone to understand a descriptive statement [about sensations], it is not
necessary that he should himself be able to observe what it describes. It is not even
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106
necessary that he should himself be able to observe something, which is naturally
associated with what it describes, in the way that feelings are associated with their
“natural expressions” (76).
To put this in another way, “observing” would be the same as publicly “pointing to”; natural
expression is the language-game played publicly in communicating “sensations.”
Interestingly, for Wittgenstein, the pointing-to game, which is quite secondary in general
language-use, is primary in the language-game of sensations. He would rather see this
language-game played out in the open, if ever it must be played out. This is because for
Wittgenstein, the ontological status of the hidden “original” Picture raises anxieties: it could
be potentially absent. The interpreter draws his own secondary Pictures, without the
guarantee of its correspondence with the original Picture that the speaker, in saying,
withdraws from this world’s circulation. The “presence” of the characteristic/ natural
expressions is thought to take care of all these anxieties. It is ironical, however, that the
availability of characteristic or “natural expressions’ does not guarantee the “presence” of
the hidden Picture, either: such observable expressions can also lies.
There is one aspect in which Wittgenstein’s emphasis on “characteristic expressions” is
insightful: it suggests that “characteristic expressions” or gestures, experiences which one
may call “Pictures” of everyday life, can do the job of language. To put this differently, one
may treat the characteristic expression as if it were a work of language. In singling out a
characteristic expression from the world (this facial expression is “anguish,” this other is
happiness, etc.), one is fictionalizing the world, which also means that one is imposing
language onto the world.
But how immediate is such fictionalizing? If I see someone smile, I may form a Picture of
happiness that could be applied to the smile; but before this Picture could be applied with
confidence, I probably have to do a bit of detective work, investigate the context or
conditions that define that smile. In many instances, the conditions under which I can form a
Picture of happiness from a smile could be very complex, demanding that I work through the
possibility of other Pictures, or other fictions, as they might be applied to the same
characteristic expression. In such instances, I might need to Picture the larger context in
which the characteristic expression takes place. In order for me to conceive this smile as the
smile of happiness, or the linguistic expression of happiness, I need to do at least some work
with my imagination, before I can settle with the “normal” fiction or “characteristic
expression.” There could therefore be perfectly normal cases, in which a smile may be the
expression of a suppressed anger, or of a congenital eccentricity. The detour through the
imagination becomes absolutely necessary, for instance, when there is a very high level of
uncertainty that surrounds the characteristic expression. Wittgenstein’s treatment of
“normal” and “characteristic expressions,” sometimes gives the impression that such
expressions are similar to the grin of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland that appears in
the air without a face, or a head, or a body, or other surrounding things, or others. If we go
with Wittgenstein’s account of “normal” or “characteristic” expressions, we would be
inclined to think that such grin is a Picture of happiness immediately, without much interest
in (imagining) the context. We know from a Picture offered to Alice’s vision beforehand, in
which the cat grins peacefully in the midst of a culinary chaos with a baby’s grotesque
shrieks, sneeze-inducing peppery particles and flung crockery in the air, that the cat’s grin,
as part of this larger, context-endowing Picture, is more likely the Picture of an alien
indifference.
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107
[I]f things were quite different from what they actually are-if there were for
instance no characteristic expression of pain, of fear, of joy; if rule became
exception and exception rule; or if both became phenomena of roughly equal
frequency-this will make our normal language games lose their point—The
procedure of putting a lump of cheese on a balance and fixing the price by the
turn of the scale would lose its point if it frequently happened for such lumps
to suddenly grow or shrink for no obvious reason.. .(§ 142, p. 56) 7 0
In this thought segment, Wittgenstein takes us to the realm of fantasy, literature and
imagination. It is by way of imagination, Wittgenstein implies, that this world gains
its sense of normalcy and its sense of order. In the chaos of Wittgenstein’s imaginary
world, things regularly get out of control and “grow or shrink for no obvious
reason.” There, life-situations regularly disavow rules or standards; they refuse to be
pinned down to the usual or normal fictions that we live by in this world. In the
strange world of imagination, exceptions become the rule while the scales of
normalcy or the measures of fiction that we use in this world become useless.
When the order of things becomes chaos, the cords that tie words with the
things as they are, language with this world, loosen. This is when the imagination,
and not just this world, sets in. If language has ceased to be useful in this world, it
has become useful in the imaginary worlds of restless, mischievous, incessant self
transformations. That one can imagine other worlds with the same words that one
uses in this world implies that language cannot be only of this world. In imaginary
70... Verhielten sich die Dinge ganz anders, als sie sich tatsachlich verhalten-gabe es z.B.
keinen charakteristischen Ausdmck des Schmerzes, der Furcht, der Freude; wiirde was Regel
ist, Ausnahme und was Ausnahme, zur Regel; oder wiirden beide zu Erscheinungen von
ungefahr gleicher Haufigkeit-so verloren unsere normalen Sprachspiele damit ihren Witz-
Die Prozedur, ein Stuck Kase auf die Wage zu legen und nach dem Ausschlag der Wage den
Preis zu bestimmen, verlore ihren Witz, wenn es haufiger vorkame, daB solche Stiicke ohne
offenbare Ursache plotzlich anwiichsen, oder einscrumpften.
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108
worlds, I stop seeing language as regularizing principles or scales, but this does not
mean I stop seeing it altogether. Language that was once the allegory of “the order of
the things as they are” cannot stop becoming allegories of other orders, other non
orders, or other worlds. Even in Wittgenstein’s scale analogy, where language, as the
scale of things, has become inadequate in the prevailing chaos, one can find the hint
of other, imaginative scales in which the scale did not measure the things in one time
(“zu einer Zeit”), but in the course of time (“im Laufe der Zeit”) . 7 1
What is even more interesting in Wittgenstein’s scale analogy is the
fundamental truth that it pronounces about the fictional status of the world; that
things as they are do not remain the same; they grow, shrink, change and transform
constantly. If I put a lump of cheese on a scale and leave it in the sun for some time,
I know that the scale will show a different measure over the course of time. Even our
“normal” use of language in this world allows for a measure of irregularity,
abnormality or self-transformation. The analogy implies that one should
acknowledge this world as one of the many imaginary fictions of transformation,
necessitating the conjuration or the imagination of these other fictions, to which this
world may be compared. The question, “when do we stop calling the cheese by itself
and declare it a creature possessed by the devil?” is not a nonsensical question, but
one that gives the order of things as they are the measure by which this order takes
7 1 There might be a scale, for instance, that recorded the weight of the shrinking and growing
lump of cheese only between the hours of 1:00 PM to 10:00 AM.
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109
upon its measure of “normalcy.” What is lost in sense (“den Witz [verloren]”) is
gained not only in wit, but also in a better sense.
This is what happens to Alice in the Wonderland; she loses this world to
regain it, through her fantastic adventures, in a better sense. Like the lump of cheese
on the scale, Alice will grow enormous and shrink almost to the point of
disappearance during the course of her adventures. While she will experience such
shrinking and growing as a frustrating chaos at the beginning, she will gradually
establish an order or a scale by which she will be able to control her size (by way of
eating two diametrically opposite pieces of a round mushroom). Alice’s fictions are
not only allegories of chaos, as the negation of this order that I live by, but also
examples of other orders, other fictions, which might have been adopted in another
world. Her fictions destabilize, destroy and reinvent the fictions of this world, as they
concern our (this) worldly dealings with works of language, objects, actions,
situations, games, imagination, thinking (in silence and out loud), communication,
monologue, inter-subjectivity.7 2
7 2 For an account of Alice books in relation to the traditional problems (of fiction) in
philosophy, see Holmes 159-174. Holmes remarks that in Alice “ there are superbly
imaginative treatments of logical treatment of logical principles, the uses and meanings of
words, the function of names, the perplexities connected with time and space, the problem of
self-identity, the status of substance in relation to its qualities, the mind-body problem.”
(160) Heath thinks that A lice books are “works o f unsleeping rationality, w hose frolics are
governed throughout, not by a formal theory of any kind, but by close attention to logical
principles, and by a sometimes surprising insight into abstract questions of philosophy”(4).
Heath also points out that Alice books have long been compulsive reading for philosophers
who have felt “slightly ashamed” about their addiction. According to Heath, such uneasiness
stems from the fact that “fiction, of course, is normally of no interest to philosophers”(7).
One would hope that fiction has, by now, become an interest for philosophers also.
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110
In my interpretation of Alice’s adventures, I will not be able to dwell on the
interpretation of all of the very interesting passages of Alice that refer to the
destabilization of the fictions of this world, which could take up an entire book by
itself. Instead, I would like to undertake the interpretation of several passages, in a
series of snapshots, as they concern some of the problematics that I have discussed in
my reading of Wittgenstein. An indirect outcome of my reading is that the
application of works of language to Pictures, and conversely, the application of
Pictures to works of language are always performed within the parameters of a kind
of fiction, or from the perspective of a kind of application. The formulation “Pictures
are applied to a work of language,” implies that different Pictures have different
applications as they refer to the same work of language. Two different Pictures, in
other word, embody two different kinds of fiction or two different kinds of
application.
In my reading of Alice in Wonderland. I will focus on several passages that
concern the application of Pictures to a work of language. This is because such
application is most directly relevant to a preliminary, but nonetheless, intuitive
notion of the act of reading as the drawing of Pictures from the works of literature. I
must insist, however, that the act of reading, which is an act of interpretation, could
also be shown to be in direct relationship with the seemingly converse act of
“applying a work of language to a Picture.” I have previously discussed this
relationship in Wittgenstein’s unfolding of the question of interpretation, from the
question of communication. In Wittgenstein’s unfolding, the speaker who has said
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I l l
something (application of a work of language to a Picture) assumes the position of a
member of the audience or an interpreter in order to perform the act of interpretation
(application of Pictures to the works of language). In saying, one hears oneself speak
as if he were someone else. The implication is that the act of saying requires a
looking glass to repeat itself in the act of interpreting. This mirroring will materialize
most forcefully in the passage that dramatizes Alice’s bafflement concerning the use
of the label “I” when this “I” has changed so much. Here Alice does not know
whether she is the one who calls herself an “I” (the act of saying) or the one who
does not know how to interpret the “I” that is already called out as if by someone
else (the act of interpretation).
Another example will concern the interpretation of “nonsense,” or the poem,
“Jabberwocky”, which necessitates fuzzy interpretive strategies in order to draw
Pictures from this work of language. The question of interpretation will surface when
it becomes technically difficult and sometimes impossible to draw Pictures from
nonsense.7 3 One will then have to either settle for either enjoyable fuzzy half-
7 3 For an excellent treatment of the relationship between Wittgenstein’s notion of nonsense
and Carroll’s nonsensical oeuvre, see Pitcher 591-611. Pitcher is convinced that Carroll
exerted a profound influence on the later Wittgenstein, and even provides a biographical
proof in a footnote, noting Wittgenstein’s close familiarity with Carroll’s work (611). As
Pitcher also notes, Carroll gets mentioned twice in Philosophical Investigations: PI §13, p.
198. Pitcher thinks that “it is a safe bet that the nonsense poems referred to in PI §282 are
those of Carroll” (611). In his article, Pitcher establishes remarkable similarities between
Wittgenstein’s examples concerning nonsense and passages from Carroll’s work, implying
that some of Wittgenstein’s examples may have originated from readings of Carroll. My
particular interest in nonsense is only limited to the application of (fuzzy) Pictures to a work
of language that contains nonsensical words: the “Jabberwocky” poem. Ignoring the many
difficulties in the definition of “nonsense” and assuming that an overarching definition may
be possible, I admit that “Jabberwocky” is a different kind of nonsense than the Hatter’s or
the White Knight’s remarks which Pitcher compares to Wittgenstein’s examples. These
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Pictures that will do, or surrender to an interpretive authority, personalized in
Humpty Dumpty, who promises to account for missing Pictures. The Pictures of
Humpty Dumpty will then serve as the keys to the poem, turning interpretation into a
technically possible, but sometimes tedious affair, necessitating the drawing of very
difficult Pictures.
The question of drawing Pictures is explicitly addressed in the narrative’s
gestures to Tenniel’s Illustrations in the book. Some of these illustrations instruct the
reader as to how he or she should Picture a work of language, such as the name of a
Active creature “Gryphon,” which, unlike the more popular “unicorn”, may not have
a precedent for the reader as a culturally determined, conventional Picture. In
discussing Tenniel’s illustrations, I will also look at how the illustrations perform the
sometimes very unintuitive editing operations in the making of Pictures (similar to
Disney “imagineering”) that are necessitated by the text’s suggestions. These
illustrations often anthropomorphize the Active creatures, resistant to such operations
by nature; as such, they become the Pictures of technically more accomplished
instances of reading the text.
The Philosophical Adventures of Alice
Before concentrating on these passages, I want to trace the opening
statements of Alice’s adventures as a prologue to my more specific interpretations
concerning the application of Pictures to language, as in reading, which cannot be
latter would be examples of nonsense in which the logical operations involved in the
instructions for the making of Pictures may turn the enterprise into an impossible (self
contradictory), trivial (tautological) or unnecessarily repetitive affair.
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isolated from the converse application, that of language to Pictures. The majority of
these applications will take place in Alice’s imagination within the narrative: the
reader will be made to act through Alice to recreate the worlds of imagination while
reading her adventures. Alice will frequently serve as the surrogate reader, who
instructs the reader on the ways to interpret the worlds of imagination and the ways
to Picture works of language. It will be seen that the same role could be effectively
assumed by Tenniel’s illustrations accompanying Carroll’s text.
Alice’s musings on her sister’s book at the beginning of her adventures
display the Wittgensteinian underpinnings of her following adventures. In this
beginning, she explicitly reiterates Wittgenstein’s conviction that every instance of
language implies a certain use. Alice is feeling tired, and is dreamily “peeping into”
the book which her sister is reading:
[B]ut [the book] had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of
a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” (19)
This is what Alice expects from language, that it have some kind of use: the written
text should accompany Pictures and should contain real life applications. Alice’s
adventures, therefore, reflect Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations, in which
the question of the use of language is intertwined with the questions of interpretation
(“pictures”) and real life applications (“conversations”). This book of our reading,
which tells us Alice’s adventures, is what Alice expects a book (or language) to be; it
is a Picture book with conversations. Alice’s adventures with language, however,
will take place not in this world, which is the world that is at the core of
Wittgenstein’s investigations, but in a fantastic, fanciful world. It is the world of
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shrinking and growing things that Wittgenstein had recourse to as a counter example
to this world. Alice may indeed be a philosopher in Wittgenstein’s tradition, who
cannot help coming back to this world, while opening up a space for the imagination
(fancy and fantasy), in which this world will be negated only to be regained.
A more skeptical reading of Alice’s initial musing may, in fact, point out that
there’s something too normal or “normative” in Alice’s search for pictures and
conversations in a book; her delineation of “use” is too pragmatic, too immediate. It
is as if in everyday use of language, only this world with its usual norms of use, and
not another, were the measuring stick. Something needs to be stirred so that the
notions of Pictures and conversations, as we take these to be in this world, could be
destabilized and put to test. At the end of Alice’s seemingly endless fall into
imagination, all notions of normal, intuitive, given Pictures and communicative
conversations will have become inadequate and insufficient. In imagination,
language will be given a new use in forgetting the uses of this world, in being
useless. During Alice’s adventures, unintuitive, fanciful Pictures will be drawn from
works of language. Conversations will lose or loosen their claim to communicate,
turning into fragments of language to be read or interpreted, unfolding the question
of interpretation dormant in every linguistic act that aims to communicate. What is
also unfolded is the ability of Picturing works of language, an ability that survives
even when all grounds are lost.
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Alice re-marks A White Rabbit
Before her fall, Alice sees “a White Rabbit with pink eyes [run] close by
her.” This is not a white rabbit, not any white rabbit, but a White Rabbit. It is not
surprising to see, in a book supposedly written for children7 4 , the names of the
animals capitalized, and turned into proper names: the Cat, the Rose, the Walrus, the
Duck, the Dodo, the Eaglet, etc. What is unusual is to run into an argument that
accounts for this linguistic quirk.
In the passage of the White Rabbit, the narrative suggests that the
capitalization of ordinary names results from the narrative’s desire to treat, and
741 would like to mention Virginia W oolfs excellent answer to the question of the genre of
Alice books, i. e., whether a book for children or adults:
In order to make us children, [Carroll] first makes us sleep. “Down, down, down,
would the fall never come to an end?” Down, down, down we fall into that
terrifying, wildly inconsequent, yet perfectly logical world where time races, then
stands still: where space stretches, then contracts. It is the world of sleep; it is also
the world of dreams. Without any conscious efforts dream come: the white rabbit,
the walrus, and the carpenter, one after another, turning and changing one into the
other, they come skipping and leaping across the mind. It is for this reason that the
two Alices are not books for children: they are the only books in which we become
children. (48)
The debate, whether the books are children’s or adult literature, seems to be unresolved, and
does not seem to be resolvable either. Heath agrees with the claim that Alice books are not
children literature: “of all those who read them, it is children especially who have the
smallest chance of understanding what they are about (3). Heath then claims that the proper
(adult) genre of the book is that of the absurd (4). Despite this, Baum reports Carroll
biographer, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood’s claim that Alice books “became primers for
many Victorian children” (65). Both Leach and Gordon intend to place Carroll’s books in
the context of Victorian children literature or literature concerning children. Leach finds that
Alice books are in many ways radically different from the children literature of the time, in
being anti-didactic, dream-centered, anti-realistic. Tracing the figure o f the jaded dandy in
the figure of the bored child, Gordon claims that the books should be viewed as “decadent
adult literature” rather than children’s literature. (113) For Auerbach, Carroll books are
subversive imaginative (adult) literature: unlike the other literature of its century, which
includes the female child of Wordsworth and the developing woman of Bronte, these books
stand alone in exploring the chaotic and “unregenerate” underworld of a little girl’s psyche
(44).
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therefore to title, its “remarkable” Pictures differently from ordinary ones. The
Picture of a white rabbit is different from that of a White Rabbit; the latter should
have something remarkable about it to justify its being re-marked differently in
language.7 5 One has to stop at the sight of this Picture and account for its
remarkability. Alice does exactly this for us:
There was nothing so remarkable in [the sight of a White Rabbit]; nor did
Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself “Oh
dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (when she thought it over, afterwards, it
occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all
seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its
waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her
feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never seen a rabbit with either
a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it... (19)
The flash across Alice’s mind is the Picture of an extraordinary and remarkable
sight. But what exactly is the measure of remarkability? How does one account for
remarkability? Alice’s passage into the territory of imagination, results in her
destabilization of “normal” measures: in imagination, other measures for
remarkability need to be reinvented. That the white rabbit is a talking one does not
make the sight an extraordinary one. She needs other evidence to call this Picture of
7 5 Kelly shows how Tenniel illustrations do the remarking and de-remarking of the White
Rabbit for us. Tenniel turns the splendidly dressed White Rabbit in the first chapter into an
ordinary, “naked” white rabbit in the last chapter: here the white rabbit is indistinguishable
among the other animals behind Alice’s skirt. Kelly notes: “Carroll does not mention this
detail in his story, but Tenniel’s drawings captures the essential transformation of dream into
reality.. .by undressing and dehumanizing the animals, especially the highly civilized White
Rabbit.” (65)
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the rabbit a remarkable one, such as seeing the rabbit take a watch out of his
waistcoat and look at it.
Alice’s elevated standards for remarkability suggest that in the world of
imaginary Picturing, one may stretch, distort, forget and relativize the standards
operative in this world, to regain them “afterwards.” This “afterwards” is suggested
within the space of a parenthesis, implying this world in the moment in which it is
supposed to be forgotten: “(when she thought it over, afterwards, it occurred to her
that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural).”
Alice’s lapse in(to) the imagination, her error at remembering the standards for
remarkability (when does a white rabbit become a White Rabbit?) are all exercises in
which the fictions of this world (like the fiction of remarkability) are destabilized in
order to be thought over afterwards.
The passage of a White Rabbit stages the question of labels: how does one
mark the difference between the sight of an ordinary white rabbit and the sight of an
extraordinary one in language? To this problem, Carroll offers a linguistic solution
by re-marking the ordinary name. In finding such a solution, Carroll implies that in
imagination, it is possible to operate with the same words as they are (in this world):
one only needs a few readjustments. Carroll’s narrative brings the question of labels
to a seemingly irresolvable crisis, however, in a passage in which Alice experiences
an excruciating dilemma concerning the application of the label “I.” Alice’s account
of the dilemma dramatically reveals the fictionality of the label “I.”
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Alice and the fiction(s) of “I”
Alice has changed so much after the fall that she can no longer recognize
what “I” she belongs to. The transformations of her “I” happen very shortly after the
fall; in a few pages, she has already shrunk and grown, shut up and opened out like a
telescope. Like the measure of the scale that was inadequate to pin down the ever
shrinking and growing lump of cheese in Wittgenstein’s analogy, Alice thinks that
the label “I” does not seem to be immediately applicable to her extraordinary
experiences.
How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on as usual. I
wondered if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same
when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little
different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am
I?’ Ah, that’ s the great puzzle. And she began thinking over the children she
knew, that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been
changed for any of them.
“I’m sure I’m not Ada,” she said, “for her hair goes in such long
ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel,
for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little!
Besides, she’ s she, and I ’ m 1.1 must have been changed for Mabel! (28)
The word “I” cannot be applied both to the usual experiences of yesterday and the
unusual experiences of today. Alice’s dilemma is very similar to Wittgenstein’s
dilemma concerning the mere utterance of the word “cube”, which gives rise to both
the Picture of a cube and the Picture of a triangular prism. It is as if after the word
“I” was merely uttered, two contradictory Pictures, one belonging to the previous
world, the other belonging to the world of imagination, were drawn7 6. In this curious
7 6 Alice’s dilemma may also be seen as a variation of the following question:
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passage, Alice does not know where she stands; she cannot tell whether she is the
one who is doing the uttering (the act of saying) or the one who is doing the
Picturing as if the “I” was already uttered by someone else (the act of interpretation).
Alice is therefore lost and tom between the “I” that says and the “I” that interprets.
Her lapse destroys the comfort of calling out (saying) the “I;” it turns the “I” into a
space (or fiction) of incompatible Pictures.
With the unfolding of the question of interpretation, Alice may now treat her
present problem as one that concerns the application of incompatible Pictures to the
same word/label “I”. There is a puzzling uncertainty when the word is taken out of
its usual sphere of experiences (applications) and brought into the space of
imagination. Alice should either admit that “I” is that very indeterminate label under
which any Picture whatsoever could be brought; otherwise, she should declare that
she has been changed with someone else.
It is interesting that Alice briefly opts for the second option: “I wonder if I’ve
been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this
morning?” As if in the blackout of imagination, during the time of sleep, Alice’s
usual “I” of yesterday has been severed from the unusual, self-transforming “I” of
today: “was I the same when I got up this morning?” The change must have
happened overnight, and Alice finds a proof for this: “I almost think I can remember
feeling a little different (this morning).” But isn’t this a scenario of this world that
Under what circumstances can one apply an “abnormal/unusual” Picture (her
unusual experiences in the Wonderland) to the same label (“I”), to which one applies a
“normal/usual” Picture without any ambivalence (Alice’s usual experiences in this world)!
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not only Alice, but also everyone goes through over and over, at each fall into sleep
and at each awakening? The “I” of tomorrow morning is never the same as the “I” of
yesterday night. That Alice may have felt a little different from yesterday could not
prove that Alice’s “I” has been changed for someone else overnight, so that her
current “I,” in contrast with her previous “I,” is now the shrinking and growing
phenomenon of imagination. Anyone may feel a little different at every awakening;
but such difference in experience does not necessarily result in the same confusions
that Alice has concerning the interpretation of “I.” This is because what one takes to
be an everyday truth, the fiction of the same “I,” is reasserted upon the fiction of
different “I”s. By unfolding the question of “I” in imagination, Alice has shown us
that there is nothing immediately normal, normative, usual, or truthful in the
everyday “fiction” of the same “I;” and that the fiction of the same “I” always
contains a measure of difference and transformation, a measure of the fictions of
irreconcilably different “I”s.
There are other insights in this segment, wrapped in the language of
puzzlement. We know from the narrative that all the dramatic changes concerning
Alice’s “I” have occurred during the course of the day. Alice’s transformations took
after the fall into the well, which followed the time of her sitting on the bank with
her sister. Despite this, however, Alice thinks that she should have been changed for
someone else overnight. It is interesting, therefore, that Alice’s puzzlement over the
label “I” depends upon a fiction of severance, that emphasizes and magnifies the
spatial difference between the “I” of last night and the “I” of this morning. Alice is
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not puzzled over her experiences during the day that may account for the temporal
transformation of the usual “I” of this morning into the unusual “I” of the time after
the fall. In a strange way, there is nothing puzzling about this fiction of
transformation: Alice’s “I” is directly implicated in it.
This is the same puzzlement of Wittgenstein, who draws two “contradictory”
Pictures, or two applications, from the utterance of the same word, while pretending
to leave out the Pictorial narrative of transformation that could destabilize such
apparent contradiction. It turns out that such spatial differences, which magnified
the incompatibility between the two Pictures, could in fact be overcome with the
application of a temporal, fill-in, Pictorial narrative. Insofar as Alice traces her own
transformations temporally, within a temporal narrative, there may be no
contradiction in the use of the label “I”: this becomes apparent when she declares,
with some confidence, that she’s she. In other words, Alice’s adventures in the
Wonderland makes complete sense, insofar as the incessantly transforming “I”
occurs within it. What makes less sense, through the distorting lens of the
imagination, is our experience in this world: that we apply the same “I” in the next
morning as in the previous night, without thinking at each awakening, that we may
have been changed for someone else. In filling in the gap between the “I” that goes
to sleep and the “I” that awakens, we apply fictions of transformation and sameness
in imagination; when, we say, for instance, that “I” was not changed for someone
else, but “I” was there, in the bed, asleep. This happens even if such fictions have not
been made present to the “I” in this world: “I” am not awakened, therefore am not
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attuned to the changes that may occur in my sleep, as Alice is during her imaginary
transformations. Imagination sets in to enable the invention of a temporalizing
fiction, which may fill in the gap between two spatial Pictures, as they are applied to
the same label in this world. In making this world more unreal, more imaginary than
her own fantastic adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s investigations delineate the
necessity of a detour through imagination as one seeks fictions to account for both
transformation and sameness in this world.
Picturing at what level? Alice’s fuzzy read of the “Jabberwocky”
The indefinite use of a word, both in Wittgenstein’s “cube” example and
Alice’s troubles with the label “I,” results in the possibility of applying contradictory
Pictures to the same word. In my discussion of Wittgenstein’s “cube” example, I
tried to show that the problem of contradiction could be resolved when the gap
between one Picture and another was filled in with a Pictorial narrative, transforming
one to the other. The problem of contradiction is a symptom of indefiniteness that
would have been resolved if the initial use of the word had been more definite. Alice
looks for more definiteness when she moves away from the label/word “I” to the “I
of yesterday.” Wittgenstein implies that the problem of contradictory applications
could have been eliminated if the utterance of the label “cube” had been replaced by
the larger work of language: “imagine a cube that transforms into a triangular prism
under a specific law of transformation.”
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Given a work of language, then, one may Picture it both at the level of the
smaller figures 1 1 {words/ small fragments/ punctuation marks) and at the level of
larger figures (sentence/ large fragments/ paragraphs/ chapters/ stanzas) to decrease
the level of fuzziness or indefiniteness. Interpretation is a fuzzy strategy that involves
the right amount of Picturing work, which one performs at the levels of the larger
and smaller figures constituting a specific work of language.
The reading of Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem, which is half nonsense and
half half-a-sense, most dramatically raises the question of strategizing the Picturing
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of a text. The nonsensical smaller figures (such as “toves,” “to gimble,”
“frumious”) exacerbate the process of drawing Pictures during the course of reading,
forcing the interpreter to explore the possibility of drawing Pictures from the larger
figures. One such large figure may be the whole poem itself, from which one could
draw a temporal and narrative Picture, with subsequent sequences of description,
conversation, action, celebration, etc in each stanza. With respect to the narrative
771 adopt the word, “figure,” to refer to the various shapes, configurations, concentrations
and fragments of language, also to emphasize that insofar as language is a material etching
on a surface, like the microscopic etches on the gramophone record, it is a (visual and sound)
Picture on its own right.
7 8 These are the first two stanzas of the poem upon which the following arguments are made:
‘T was brillig, and the slithy toves,
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
A ll m im sy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
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Picture that belongs to the whole poem, one may Picture another figure of the poem,
the very nonsensical first stanza, as a descriptive shot. The cue for such an
interpretation is given in the structure of the whole figure, i.e. the entire poem: the
same stanza gets repeated at the end of the poem. It is as if what was at stake in the
first and last stanza was the unchanging, almost static Picture of the nature,
7Q
unperturbed by heroic actions and human triumphs.
One could also choose to carry out Picturing at the level of the figure of the
sentence, in order to decrease further the level of the fuzziness of the interpretation:
“the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe,” or “[s]hun [my son!] the frumious
Bandersnatch.” At this level, one could settle with a Picture that shows, for instance,
“some animals moving around and gyrating somewhere” without zooming onto the
smaller figures, and treat this Picture as if this was once a clear movie shot, now
distorted by multiple fuzzy filters. Interestingly, one could also intend to decrease the
level of fuzziness of these Pictures—much like eliminating the noise from a signal,
or adjusting the antenna to get a clearer Picture on the TV screen—by drawing
Pictures from figures even smaller than the word. If one cannot get a clear sense
from a composite word, for instance, one could at least get half-a-sense, by drawing
7 9 John Hollander articulates such a fuzzy interpretation of the poem in more literary detail.
Jabberwocky is a great heroic tale, and the son, the “he” o f the poem , is one o f with
the tribe of Cadmus and Beowulf and Siegfried and Redcrosse, and his song of
sallying forth, preparatory meditation, conquest, and triumphal return is framed in
the identical stanza of prologue and epilogue, a cluster of stage-setting details which
Humpty Dumpty .. .so memorably annotates. (146)
Alice’s interpretation is an accomplished fuzzy interpretation, in stark contrast with the
tedium of “Humpty Dumpty’s etymological glosses.” (146)
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a clear Picture from half the word. This happens when one breaks “Bandersnatch”
into “bander” and “snatch”; “Jabberwock” into “jabber” and “wock”, and pretends
that the Pictures of “snatch” and “jabber” will be fit enough to replace
“Bandersnatch” and “Jabberwock” during the time of interpretation. Here, one has
a more definite sense that the interpretation is doing violence to the poem, cutting the
words in half, drawing the Picture of one half, while pretending to forget the other.
But, these violations are moves in a fair game, also fairly harmless ones, when the
work of language is recognized to be largely nonsensical. The fuzziness in the work
of language may motivate one to take interpretive risks, shuffle through different
Pictures and, while Picturing, to move from at one level of figures to the other, and
to invent new levels of figures by cutting figures.
Even smaller figures, such as morphemes, could be suggestive in the process
of Picturing. In imagination, there is something “slimy” about “slithy;” “nimble” in
“gimble,” “furious” in “frumious;” galloping in “galumphing,” etc. suggesting the
possibility of drawing even less fuzzy Pictures with slimy creatures, nimble
gyrations and furious snatches.8 1 Later in the narrative, Humpty Dumpty’s
8 0 It is hinted, later in the narrative, in a conversation with the King that Bandersnatch is a
kind of quick animal. Here, the King notes: “the White Queen is so fearfully quick. You
might as well try to catch a Bandersnatch!” (201)This remark indicates that the word,
“Bandersnatch” may refer to the species of the monster, Jabberwocky, who is “the frumious
Bandersnatch;” this designation is similar to another designation in the narrative, the
Cheshire cat.
8 1 Sewell offers brilliant explanations to the reader’s dealings with nonsense and nonsensical
neologisms during the reading of Alice: “[the reader’s mind] will produce from its memory
all the other words the neologism resembles, and this will multiply the relationships and
associations in a manner quite alien to the operation of logic.” (116) Sewell theorizes the
reader’s engagements with nonsensical words, as they seek resemblances and trains of
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exhaustive exegesis of the first stanza will also build on these morpheme-inspired
interpretive strategies. All these operations resemble those that a digital photographer
performs using a photo-shop software: she eliminates the fuzziness of an initial
Picture with her own speculative use of filters that may also involve cuttings and
pastings. The poem does not instruct the photographer as to what filter she should
choose at each step, or does not show what Pictures to apply to its figures. Rather, its
figures seem to drop hints and make fuzzy suggestions, as if they spoke a garbled
language; but these speculative, and, very likely, nonexistent hints may become
handy in the choices made in the drawing of a clearer Picture or adoption of the
association with words with which they are familiar. Sewell’s remarks on the defeat of
nothingness (or the decrease in the level of fuzziness) are particularly interesting. Referring
to several examples in which the reader is able to draw sense from nonsense, Sewell
concludes: “nothingness is successfully defeated .. .by [the] close association [of nonsense
words] with things, and by illustrations. The Jabberwock is pictured for us.” (120) Her
conclusion would be more relevant with respect to the illustration of the Gryphon, rather
than that of the Jabberwock. The “Jabberwocky” illustration does not draw and secure the
reference, since the reference is already drawn at the level of larger figures in the
interpretation of the whole poem. The illustration only draws the reference further.
It would be interesting to contrast Sewell’s approach that underscores the reader’s
associations with Holquist’s structuralist interpretation, in which he sees Carroll’s nonsense
as “[an] attempt to create an immaculate fiction, a fiction that resists the attempts of readers
who write criticism, to turn it into an allegory, a system which is equatable with already
existing systems in the non-fictive world.” (146) He then claims that the meaning of
Carroll’s nonsensical Snark poem consists “in the several strategies (whose?) which hedge it
off as itself, which insure its hermetic nature against the hermeneutic impulse.”(148)
Holquist’s nonsense is a “hermetic” fiction, respectfully closed off, and full of “resistance.”
The “meaning” is made available to the strategies of the critic, guiding the sealed doors of
fiction and trained in fighting the allegorizing “hermeneutic impulse,” that is ordinarily
brought upon the reading from our “non-fictive” world. That nonsense may be a fiction (a
system, or an order) is an insight; that it is a hermetic fiction sealed off from (the fictions of)
this (very Active) world is a bias. It is not surprising that Holquist himself partakes in the
same allegorizing reading that he explicitly renounces by bringing forth the romantic figure
of the author “fighting back, experimenting with new ways to insure the inviolability of
[his/her] own systems.” (164) The “modernist” author always saves the fiction and the
critic’s otherwise pointless attempt to interpret it.
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noise-decreasing filters. It is as if one were invited to draw a Picture in an empty
space in a museum, once occupied by another Picture which is now infinitely
withdrawn from circulation and whose only reminder is its eccentric title “the
frumious Bandersnatch” given to it by its alien creator. One could as well choose to
draw the Picture of a “furious snatch” to replace it.
In all this, however, there is another level, and that is the level of the figures
themselves. As long as the figures are etched on the surface of the paper, they are
themselves Pictures; one may also call them material Pictures. The figures of the text
could be translated into the level of sound-Pictures, as in the recital of the poem, just
like the etchings on the record were translated into music on Wittgenstein’s
gramophone.8 2 The senseless words, rhymes, pronunciations, exclamations,
repetitions, configurations, all have their own senses, or more precisely, affects, in
the ways they engage one’s perfunctory look, which, under special circumstances,
may be the look that is the most exhilarating.
Alice seems also to have engaged in such a perfunctory look during the
reading of the poem, which results in a kind of exhilaration:
“It seems very pretty,” [Alice] said when she had finished [the poem], “but
it’s rather hard to understand!” (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to
herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) “Somehow it seems to fill my
8 2 Unlike Wittgenstein’s immediately translatable Pictures however, the translation from the
visual Picture-figures to the sound-Pictures, itself, is hard, and often, speculative work when
it comes to nonsense and the very nonsensical phonetic traditions of English pronunciation,
satirized in the name of the King’s messenger, “Haigha,” a name that rhymes with “mayor.”
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head with ideas - only I don’t exactly know what they are! However,
somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate—(138)
Interestingly, Alice’s first reaction to the poem is that “it seems very pretty:” Alice is
first and foremost interested in looking at the poem. Her reaction also makes it clear
that she has interpreted the poem competently; the poem for Alice is not entirely
senseless: it seems to fill her head with ideas. But these ideas, which, in
Wittgenstein’s language, would be thought/ Pictures, are unclear and fuzzy: Alice
does not exactly know what they are. Despite all this fuzziness and inexactness,
however, there is at least one idea that is clear: the poem is about somebody killing
“something;” Alice knows that the victim is not a human. The authorial voice, which
intends to assure us (“you”) that Alice “couldn’t make it out at all,” is wrong: Alice
does not make out the entire poem, also because she doesn’t need to; nonetheless,
she figures it out very well. This authorial voice also foreshadows Humpty Dumpty’s
appearance and his authoritative interpretations during which he will “make out all”
of the first stanza for Alice.
Humpty Dumpty interprets exhaustingly
Humpty Dumpty’s interpretations (189-191), as opposed to Alice’s half-
sensical, fuzzy, but enjoyable reading of the poem, detail a very exhaustive
interpretive strategy that aims to draw clear Pictures from all the figures of the first
stanza, from every nonsensical word. He does this with the authority of having the
exclusive rights to see into an imaginary world-Picture undisclosed to others: he is
the seer and possible purveyor of missing Pictures. His interpretations reflect the
insider’s elucidation of, or insights into, a world-Picture from which Alice is shut
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out. He is the privileged subject who claims to possess the knowledge of the keys,
tools and filters that provide access to the sight of that peculiar world-Picture, which
he himself has grounded. For those outsiders, who are discontented with their own
fuzzy Pictures of the missing imaginary world, and who, therefore, strive to get
clearer Pictures, he is also an instructor who may choose to unlock the interpretive
doors.
The problem is that no one is discontented: Alice has already enjoyed the
poem in all its fuzziness. Humpty Dumpty needs to carve out a space for his
authority out of the fuzzy landscape of interpretation, which is already interpretable
and is not in need of any interpretive authority. He chooses to become the authority
of the blind spot whose oversight will not result in any interpretive shortcomings: he
interprets the first stanza of the poem in isolation from the rest of the poem. It is
therefore significant that he interrupts Alice’s recital of the poem at the end of the
first stanza, so that he could magnify the importance of his own interpretations in
order to establish his authority. Not only is his authority is unnecessary, but, as
Spack emphasizes, his interpretations are also very tedious:
[His] interpretations—reducing the splendid stanza to an account of animals
resembling badgers, going through various gyrations in the plot of land
around a sundial during the part of the afternoon when one begins broiling
things for dinner—destroys the poem. One can hardly think of these
grotesque animals and their sundial while appreciating the masterful narrative
poetry of “Jabberwocky:” it is an interpretation forgotten as soon as it is read.
Surely the filling of [“Alice’s”] head with cloudy ideas is a higher poetic
achievement than the reduction of these ideas to the ridiculous. (272)
One would have had difficulty in holding onto Humpty Dumpty’s “missing” Picture,
as long as one appreciates the “narrative poetry.” Paradoxically, there is nothing
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narrative about the first stanza; it merely sets the stage for the following narrative
stanzas. Humpty Dumpty’s tedious interpretations are even more inconsequential
than the relatively inconsequential experience of the first stanza. This is because he
attempts to assert his authority in the minutia of irrelevance, turning what Alice does
not need to know into what she must strive to know: Alice must see the missing
Picture. But Alice sees enough; as Hollander puts it, “[her] initial response remains
absolutely central, and Humpty Dumpty’s philology averts its gaze from what she
knows,” (146), or I would like to add, what she already sees.
Interestingly, Humpty Dumpty’s nonsensical interpretations do not negate the
fuzzy interpretive strategies that depend on the “guesswork” of any interpreter; his
interpretation of “slithy,” for instance, also contains the notion of the “slimy.” These
interpretations are different, not because they display a unique logic of interpretation,
but because they take one specific instance of “guesswork” to ground a clear
(imaginary) world-Picture, with respect to which truth claims could be made. If
Humpty Dumpty is a lunatic, it is because he takes the Picture that he has drawn to
be the Picture of the truth. His drawing of clear Pictures from largely nonsensical
figures of the work of language must have involved exhaustive, speculative,
intermediate guesswork; despite this, he acts as if this Picture were always there,
available to his immediate sight.
But immediate sight is an absolute fiction: in interpreting a work of language,
one first has to draw a Picture from it before one sees it. It is, nevertheless, a useful
everyday fiction: one often acts as if one has forgotten the drawing of the Picture, as
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if the Picture were there, given, immediate. Humpty Dumpty’s deception lies in the
fact that the fiction of immediate sight cannot be applied in an interpretation that
deals with nonsense. That the ultimate world-Picture is a Picture that he himself
drew, invented, put together cannot be forgotten when he drew it from nonsense.
One consequence of Humpty Dumpty’s interpretive deception is the reign of
the reference, or using Wittgenstein’s language, of the “pointing-to” game, in which
every word is matched with a Picture. The reference is made present to the
interpreter, and absent to the others. The interpretation of nonsense cannot involve
the communication of an external reference to another; it can only refer to the
communication of a non-referential, subjective Picture. Humpty Dumpty acts as if
he has the privilege to behold the Picture of “truth” or the reference; Alice, since she
is shut out from the immediate sight, can only draw secondhand Pictures that
approximate it.
When Alice asks what “toves” are, Humpty Dumpty replies “ ‘toves’ are
something like badgers-they’re something like lizards-and they’re something like
corkscrews.” Three Pictures are impossibly put together and applied to the word.
Alice must have a hard time drawing such a Picture, given that such a Picture should
be even hard to draw for a surrealist painter; she says, “they must be very curious-
looking creatures.” Alice assumes that Humpty Dumpty has seen these creatures
directly, giving him the authority to confirm her assessment of the missing Picture.
“They are that,” says Humpty Dumpty, while he should have said: “They are drawn
to be that [by me]” (190).
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Humpty Dumpty, apart from the lunatic that he is, may also be seen as a
visionary. The imaginary world-Picture, which he pretends to behold with clear
vision but which he, himself, has drawn with much ingenuity, reflects a strangeness
that, in destroying those standards that regulate the drawing of Pictures from the
works of language, gives this world its measures of normalcy. His interpretations
brilliantly display the ability of the imagination to apply itself even to nonsense.
There could be an imaginary world in which nonsense made sense; this happens
when Humpty Dumpty treats nonsensical words as portmanteaus that have currency
in an imaginary world. A portmanteau, according to him, is a literary device that
holds two or more Pictures together: “slithy” holds together, or in Humpty Dumpty’s
8 3 Is Humpty Dumpty a surrealist artist in the making? Stem also points to the surrealist
potential in Humpty Dumpty’s interpretations of Jabberwocky, and particularly
portmanteaus: “[his] verbal freedom [in linking words with his images] brings imaginative
and perceptual freedom.”(143) Stem claims that verbal collage, as a surrealist technique
used to provoke confusion and ambiguity, “owes its origin to Carroll’s portmanteau words”
(143). In his discussion, Stem delineates the most important aspect of portmanteaus to be
their visuality.
Stem’s article is also useful in showing “what is Carrollian about surrealism and
what is surrealist about Carroll,” (132): he does this thematically and historically. The
historical connection between surrealism and Carroll include Breton’s references to Carroll
in his “What is surrealism” pamphlet (“Carroll is a surrealist in nonsense”) and Louis
Aragon’s essay on Carroll. The thematic correlations include the conspicuousness of the
“dream”, the disavowal of “reason” and consciousness, the acceptance of insanity and
irrationality and the automatism involving in the production of nonsense (revealed, as Stem
claims, in Carroll’s apparent cluelessness as to the meaning of his own “Snark” poem). In
drawing examples from the visual arts, Stem focuses on Magritte’s paintings and painting
strategies comparing these paintings with the narrative passages and Tenniel’s illustrations in
A lice in Wonderland, w hile briefly referring to Ernst’s and D ali’s illustrations to Carroll’s
works. Holquist lists more literary connections between Carroll and surrealists, as well as
modernists: Parisot’s publication of a study of Carroll, Artaud’s attempt to translate the
Jabberwocky poem, but also Joyce’s use of portmanteau technique in Finnegan’s Wake
(145). In an excellent reading of Alice books, Baum shows how the Freudian logic of dream
(a central aspect of surrealism) acts through the portmanteau word formations, as well as
verbal and visual puns (70).
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language, “packs up”, “lithe” and “slimy;” while “mimsy” holds together “flimsy”
and “miserable.” 8 4 If two different Pictures can be brought together and
amalgamated into a composite Picture under any title whatsoever, then the title has
already stopped becoming nonsensical; this happens very frequently when artists
name their own pictures in the most unintuitive ways. The title may not have
currency for the majority of us like it may for the artist (and maybe, for his or her
aficionados). The portmanteaus are in fact the titles of Humpty Dumpty’s drawings
of composite Pictures.
The language of nonsense, then, allows Humpty Dumpty to put a Picture of
his own choosing under it. He makes this explicit in his previous declaration to Alice
“When I use a word.. .it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more, nor
less” (188); what he intends to say is that he can put any Picture under a nonsensical
8 4 In unpacking another interesting portmanteau in the “Jabberwocky” poem in his preface to
the Snark poem, Carroll, who replaces Humpty Dumpty, reveals “frumious” packs up
“fuming” and “furious.” His following explanation, while instructing the reader as to how
they could ever use the word, only brings confusion to the act of saying:
Make up your mind that you will say both words “fuming” and “furious,” but leave
it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your
thoughts incline ever so little towards “fuming,” you will say “fuming-furious;” if
they turn, by even a hair’s breadth, towards “furious,” you will say “furious-
fuming;” but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say
“frumious.” (Carroll, ed. Donald Gray, 220)
Carroll’s instructions may also be interpreted as satirizing Wittgenstein’s correspondence
argument in Tractatus. One should draw a Picture that involves the Pictures of “furious” and
“fuming” first; but once this Picture is drawn, the utterance of the word is automatic:
pictures translate into language immediately. Carroll’s instructions also bear resemblance to
Wittgenstein’s imaginary scale; but here the scale is unevenly dense: it maps measurements
onto (linguistic) utterances unevenly. Here, for instance, the measurements [1-1.49999 lbs.]
is uttered as “lib”, while the measurements from 1.50001 to 2 lbs. are uttered as “2 lbs.,”
leaving the utterance of “1.5 lbs.” to the improbably and ridiculously exact measurement
[1.500001bs.], taking into account even the “hair’s breadth.”
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figure or word. When he explains to Alice, what “outgrabe” means, he makes her
draw a Picture and apply it to the word: “ ‘outgribing’ is something between
bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you’ll hear it
done, maybe-down in the wood yonder-and, when you’ve heard it, you’ll be quite
content.” This is a perfectly imprecise sound-Picture, with messy, indistinct strokes
of bellowing, whistling and sneezing, “something [in] between”, a little like a Punk
New Age soundtrack. There is something frustrating in the elusiveness of this
Picture; while “what it is” cannot quite be pinned down, it could potentially be
experienced, in the way one experiences an abstract painting. What is brought under
the title “outgribe” can be Pictured alternatively as an abstract painting, an
unintuitive sound recording, or the memory of an indefinite experience.
But there is more to Humpty Dumpty’s exegesis of the word, “outgrabe”. If
Alice has difficulty drawing this Picture from the given cues, this is because it is
impossible to draw an abstract painting with instructions given in language. There is
much more difficulty involved in such a drawing than Humpty Dumpty’s
portmanteau, “mimsy”, with the everyday Pictures of “flimsy” and “miserable”
already hanging on it. It is here that the question of reference becomes much more
acute: one needs a reassurance that there is an experience, or a Picture out there, that
could be applied to the word. The problem, here, is that the experience or the Picture
could not be referred or pointed to; it is currently missing, and the instructions to
redraw it are very inadequate. This inadequacy results in the suspicion that Humpty
Dumpty’s explanations concerning “outgrabe,” depend on the metaphysical premise:
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“Name it first, it will come later.” 8 5 Interestingly, it is also here that Humpty
Dumpty turns into a compassionate instructor, caring for his pupil’s level of
satisfaction, when he points to a possible experience in the future when the promise
of the Painting will be satisfied: “you will hear it done, maybe—down in the wood
yonder—and when you’ll have heard it, you’ll be content”. Insofar as impossible
Pictures are applied to nonsensical titles, there is a doubling of nonsense: the
language of metaphysics is then brought in to make ontological promises, which
intend to subside the anxieties for a reference, pretending that such reference may be
made present. In one short brushstroke, Carroll depicts Humpty Dumpty himself as a
portmanteau, with multiple figures hanging onto him: an interpretive authority, a
visionary artist, a lunatic and a metaphysician.
Illustrating Alice
In the course of reading Carroll’s text, the reader, like Alice, faces the task of
drawing and redrawing a multitude of quite difficult, “unintuitive” Pictures, some in
the surrealist, others in the abstract style, like Humpty Dumpty’s missing imaginary
world-Pictures. It is an enormous imagining (and “imagineering”) enterprise, for
instance, to draw the Picture of a “tove” as the portmanteau that amalgamates the
8 5 Of course, the problem of reference could have been easily solved, or Wittgenstein’s
“pointing to” game could have been satisfactorily played out, if Humpty Dumpty, while
uttering the word “outgrabe,” had also played the soundtrack that he had recorded from
nature during a field trip (reference as the “external reality” Picture, or reference as the thing
out there), or the soundtrack that he had produced with on his synthesizer at his music studio
(reference as his own Picture, or reference as another Representation). There is no
difference between the two; they equally satisfy the referencing requirement. The question,
of course, is whether such referencing act could ever be repeated.
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Pictures of a badger, a lizard and a corkscrew. One may even think that such
difficulties may alienate the “intended audience,” i.e. children who might lose
interest in the technical difficulties of such imaginings. Fortunately, Carroll’s text is
a Picture book, whose illustrations by John Tenniel are often a direct help to the
reader’s Picturing workshop. Tenniel’s illustrations alleviate the reader’s Picturing
task: the reader may use the technically more accomplished illustration placed under
(or above) a work of language to supplement his or her rough, fuzzy, quickly put-
together Pictures. The reader may often do without drawing her own Pictures in
detail: the illustrations may take away the pressure to be exact, or precise. The
inclusion of Tenniel’s illustrations sometimes feels as if the alien artist whose Picture
titles included “the Jabberwock with the frumious Bandersnatch” or “toves,
borogoves and raths under the wabe” showed up with his two drawings: the first
depicted a dramatic scene (Figure 1), while the second depicts an idyllic one in an
alien land (Figure 2).8 6
The accompaniment of Tenniel’s illustrations also serves a major purpose; it
eliminates the tedium of playing Wittgenstein’s “pointing to” game by way o f
language only. Humpty Dumpty’s exhaustive descriptions of foreign landscapes
without Pictures are as tedious as they are fascinating. Alice’s remark “the [toves]
must very curious looking creatures” may be a sign of frustration, when another
“tove-Picture,” not the one that she is drawing upon Humpty Dumpty’s linguistic
suggestions, is missing. It is of little importance whether such a Picture is the
8 6 The Figures 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 that I refer to in this secition occur on pages 137, 190, 90, 100 ,
164, 165, 140, 26 respectively in the Signet Classic edition that I have been using.
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Figure 1: Tenniel’s Illustration to “Jabberwocky’
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Figure 2: The Alien World of the First Stanza of “Jabberwocky”
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photograph of the “tove,” or Humpty Dumpty’s surrealist painting or the sudden
appearance of the toves from amidst the bushes. Alice could, of course, draw her
own Picture through the linguistic instructions of Humpty Dumpty, without requiring
another Picture. To do this, Alice should be sufficiently invested in such a task, not
to mention that Humpty Dumpty should be a competent instructor in helping her
draw the Picture by way of instructions in language. Alice’s investment, however, is
a precarious thing, not only because she is an easily distracted child, but also because
the Picture of the “tove” contribute almost nothing to the overall understanding of
the poem, “Jabberwocky.” Using Wittgenstein’s language in the Tractatus. the
“tove” is only a small Pictorial element in the larger Picture, a part of an
inconsequential descriptive shot. The overall importance of this Picture is not that it
depicts a specific scene, but that it precedes the more significant, action- packed
narrative Pictures that stage the fight between a monster and a human. The reader
may not desire, in every application of language, to play the “pointing to” game in
which a word is matched with a Picture (or a thing). There may be more relevant
Pictures to make or fictions to put in effect on the suggestions of the work of
language.
The inclusion of Tenniel’s illustrations not only eliminates the need to play
the “pointing to” game by way of language only; they sometimes make an appeal to
the reader to move on to the drawing of other Pictures. This appeal to move on is
most direct when “[Alice and the queen] came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in
the sun.” (Figure 3) Here, the narrative does not bother to describe the Gryphon,
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rather it opens a parenthesis to refer the reader to Tenniel’s illustration of the
Gryphon8 7 included above the passage: “(If you don’t know what a Gryphon is, look
at the Picture.)” The text’s pragmatic gesture, carried out by a direct address to the
reader, implies that there is no need for the reader to draw any kind of Picture at this
point in the text; the reader can just take this one Picture, as a favor, and use it in his
or her future dealings with the narrative.8 8
Illustrations also interfere with the reading to perform many of the difficult
Picturing tasks for the reader, as if the reading of the text necessitated idiosyncratic
hieroglyphic translations (as in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus), or to use a contemporary
8 7 Kelly, who also touches on the text gesture of pointing to the illustration, reports that the
image of the Gryphon is a “ready-made” image from Greek mythology (71). It is interesting
that in Carroll’s own depictions, the Gryphon is very different than Tenniel’s: it is a very
ugly rat, much smaller in stature, with a bird’s beak and talons (Stoffel: 72). It is more
possible that here, Carroll may have intended the Picture of a previously “unseen” creature,
for which a precedent has not been set as a culturally available, ready-made image, as might
have been the case with Tenniel’s illustration, and is the case with the usual depictions of the
unicom.
8 8 In his discussion of the Gryphon, Kelly is somehow skeptical about Carroll’s pointing-to
gesture, and Tenniel’s illustration: “In directing the reader to “look at the picture,” Carroll
avoids the ambiguity of language that would damage the nonsense game.” (73) Kelly’s
remarks are reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s: one only needs to replace the word “ambiguity”
with “application(s)” in the previous remark. Kelly continues: “The illustrations, then, help
to establish the characters as “things,” unchanging and unchangeable figures in a swirl of
abstract linguistic play, marvelous puppets who speak the language of the master wit, Lewis
Carroll.” (73) Pictures (illustrations) reify; they hold the figures in place; they are static,
“unchanging and unchangeable,” while the abstract linguistic play resumes on a very
different “swirling,” non-static, narrative plane of puppetry. In this dichotomy-rich
judgment, Pictures are things, while linguistic play is the mastery of the use of language. Is
this an argument against the (static) illustrations, which could have been technically resolved
with the Disney version of the narrative, or against all actual visual Pictures? Kelly’s quote
from Langer’s work points to the latter: “A picture, [Langer claims], “in itself represents one
object-real or imaginary, but still a unique object.” (73) Therefore, Kelly concludes,
illustrations turn the characters of Carroll’s work into things. This is the same as
Wittgenstein’s conviction that a Picture corresponds to one word and one thing, a conviction
that persists both in Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations.
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Figure 3: The Gryphon
Figure 4: Lobster Looking in the mirror
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term, animations that could be made technically more “accurate” with the expertise
of the illustrator-reader. Tenniel’s illustrations are supplements to reading, either
replacing some of the Picturing tasks, or helping the reader in his or her drawings.
Among the more difficult hieroglyphic translations that Alice necessitates on behalf
of the reader are the many instances in which body parts are chopped and pasted to
create the portmanteaus, odd animals and monsters of the narrative: the “bread and
butterfly,” the fish and frog footmen in a livery, lobster-quadrille, the animated
oysters. The technical superiority of Tenniel’s illustrations is indisputable in the way
they make Pictures of (“Abbildung”) such freaks of nature from descriptions
(“Beschreibung”). Tenniel’s illustration to “Jabberwocky” shows that a sufficiently
clear Picture, materialized in the illustration, could be drawn from and therefore
applied to the entire poem, even when the levels of smaller figures (words) suggest
very fuzzy Pictures (Figure 1). The illustration also marks a different Picturing
strategy from the ones implied in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Philosophical
Investigations: a Picture is applied to a whole poem, and not to one proposition or to
one word. This illustration, which depicts a young fighter with a huge sword in the
midst of fighting with a formidable monster with enormous claws that are swinging
in the air, with a thick forest in the background, is a most fitting Picture that could be
drawn from a fuzzy reading of the poem. The illustration fits the poem, not because
it corresponds to it, but because it may be applied to it. This does not mean that the
material of illustration may be consumed, once and for good, when applied to the
work of language that is the poem; it fact, it generates the possibility of its own
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discourse, both as a individual instance of reading the poem, and also, as that which
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is not contained within its application to this poem.
The difficulty of hieroglyphic translations is also a thematic aspect within the
narrative, revealed, for instance, in Alice’s puzzlement at the Picture of the lobster-
quadrille, in which lobsters are made to move on their feet. Such puzzlement results
in Alice’s recital of a nonsensical poem in which a lobster puts sugar on his hair,
complains that he is overbaked, trims his belt and buttons with his nose and turns out
his toes, leading to the Tenniel illustration, in which a footed lobster contemplates
himself in a mirror (Figure 4). In another illustrated poem, the Walrus and the
Carpenter beseech the oysters to come and walk with them along the briny beach,
upon which four young oysters hurry up to join them. A description of their
appearance follows:
[The young oysters’] coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat-
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn’t any feet. (163)
8 9 As part of this potentially very expansive discourse of the work’s materiality, for instance,
one may apply two hypothetical arguments to Tenniel’s accompanying illustration to
Jabberwocky:
1) Tenniel has added wings to the Jabberwock, possibly on the poem’s rather
nonsensical suggestion of the monster’s “whiffling and burbling” through the
wood..
2) Tenniel possibly intended to accentuate the struggle between the nature and the
human by drawing the wings, limbs and head of the monster such that they meld
in with the thick forest.
Both arguments bring in questions of cultural and historical representation, concerning, for
instance, the actual visual depictions of monsters, woods, heros etc., illustration techniques
and traditions in late 19t h century England. For a detailed account on Tenniel’s Jabberwocky
illustration and its historic relationship to other artistic works, both by Tenniel and other
artists in late 19t h century England, see Hancher 1985.
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The illustrations in these passages form a backdrop to such Picturing confusions: In
one illustration (Figure 5), Tenniel depicts oysters with little shoes, without further
anthropomorphizing them with brushed coats and washed faces, but drops the shoes
out of the subsequent illustration (Figure 6) which depicts the Walrus and the
Carpenter feasting on them. In this pasting and cutting gesture, there is also a sense
that the Pictures, drawn on the suggestions of the nonsensical poem, have a very
short life span. The illustration of the oysters with feet is a momentary, situational
and optional Picture; it may not be necessary to drag it along the narrative. In other
words, there is no need to hold onto a technically difficult, detailed, tedious Picture,
if what will be needed in the next instance is its “bare bones.”
If Tenniel brilliantly performs the anthropomorphizing techniques necessary
in the animations of a toe-changing lobster or a fish footman, he over
anthropomorphizes, and consequently fails to illustrate a significant passage, during
which Alice comes upon a flower bed with talking tiger-lilies, roses and daisies. In
the course of the conversation, it becomes increasingly clear that the talking flowers
treat Alice as a kind of flower: the tiger-lily, for instance, remarks that “[she does
not] care about [Alice’s] color...if only [Alice’s] petals curled up a little more, she’d
be all right” (141). The flower’s floral-izing perspective becomes even more curious
when the flowers liken Alice, a child, to the Red Queen, a grown up. When the rose
notes that there is one more flower in the garden like her, which, compared to her, is
more bushy, Alice wonders:
“Is she like me?” Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her
mind, “There’s another little girl in the garden, somewhere!”
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145
“Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,” the Rose said: “but
she’s redder-and her petals are shorter, I think.”
“They are done up close like a dahlia,” said the Tiger-lily: “not
tumbled about, like yours.”
“But that’s not your fault,” the Rose added kindly. “You’re beginning
to fade, you know-and one can’t help getting one’s petals a little untidy.”
(142)
The thought that crosses Alice’s mind, like the thought or “Gedanke” in
Wittgenstein’s the Tractatus. is the Picture of another “little girl.” In this
philosophical debate that concerns Alice’s notions of self-gestalt and resemblance,
Alice assumes that she can only resemble another little girl, having already assessed
her self body-Picture as that of a little girl. There is something disturbing and
depressing in the way in which the flowers draw their notions of resemblance from
the perspective of the “floral” gestalt. According to this almost misanthropic
perspective, Alice fares rather badly: she is not only awkward and untidy looking;
she is already beginning to fade, despite being a child.
Tenniel’s accompanying illustration to this passage chooses not to draw
Pictures of Alice from such disturbing “floral” perspective, which would involve the
treatment of the human figure as if it were one of the odd creatures, monsters or
portmanteaus of the narrative. It neither espouses the floral perspective, nor deforms
Alice’s body-Picture, in order to make it resemble a faded flower; instead, it further
anthropomorphizes the talking flowers by adding very small, very cute faces to the
roses (Figure 7). This is in significant variance with another illustration that
accompanies the passage in which Alice starts growing or opening out like a
telescope, an illustration in which Alice’s much elongated neck suggests the likeness
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146
Figure 5: Oysters in Shoes
Figure 6: Oyster Feast
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Figure 7: Talking Flowers
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Figure 8: A lice Opens like a Telescope
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149
of an actual telescope or a giraffe (Figure 8). Tenniel’s illustration in the “flower
bed” passage, however, reflects the work of a conservative reading that, despite the
suggestions of the text, is uneasy about drawing Pictures, or assuming Picturing
perspectives, that temper with the human figure.9 0
Conclusion
In this chapter, I pursued the question of the Picture: what does it mean to have a
Picture of the written word or to Picture it? The question brought me to the
consideration of Wittgenstein’s theories of language: an early one that allows room
for the Picture and a late one that rejects it. While arguing with and against
Wittgenstein, I underscored the indispensability of the Picture, and of imagination, in
our dealings with language. In late Wittgenstein, the rejection of the Picture stems
from an understanding that language, first and foremost, belongs to the world of
applications or language-games. In this understanding, language is posited outside
imagination and is played out in the world. The implication is that to make sense of
language, one does not need any subjective intermediaries, such as personal
imagination; it is sufficient to be able to act in agreement with the demands of
9 0 It is hard to say whether such conservatism could be attributed to Tenniel and Carroll. As
Lull reports: “[Carroll] often insisted on his conceptions of a scene with minute
particularity” (102) during Tenniel’s illustration process. Carroll’s own illustration, which
depicts Alice’s stem-like neck rising above a tree into the sky to support her head, is much
more frightening than Tenniel’s illustration. Rackin thinks that “Carroll’s illustration is
thereby so much closer to the spirit of the adventures than are any of Tenniel’s pleasant
confections.” (10-11) Carroll’s illustrations succeed in conveying the miseries of Alice’s
tribulations, whereas Tenniel’s illustrations “dispel the reader’s consternation,” and “[sugar]
over the inherent horrors [of Alice’s adventures], emphasizing only the joys.” (12).
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150
pragmatic linguistic situations and to play language games competently. In my next
chapter, I analyze Heidegger’s theory of language that radicalizes the dismissal of
any subjective intermediary. His theory of language seeks to find out the essence of
language; such essence, Heidegger claims, cannot be located in those instances of
language use that has the imprint of the subjective; instead only exceptional and
exemplary uses of language, in art and in poetry, have the power to point beyond the
subjective and to reveal this essence. The essence of language in Heidegger is
intimately related to the experiences of things, artworks and equipments. It is true
that Wittgenstein and Heidegger have very different approaches to language: The
Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations intends to describe what language is and
does in ordinary linguistic situations, and does not at all engage with questions
concerning the essence of language, its truth, its revelation, questions that motivate
Heidegger’s inquiry. What they share is an objection to the subjective imagination,
and the Picture, as these interfere with the workings of the world and language. In
the next chapter, I investigate the role of the Picture in Heidegger’s theory of
language, by tracing the Picture in a variety of essays on language, art and
technology. I show that much like Wittgenstein, Heidegger’s approach to the Picture
is also far from being unambiguous.
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WORKS CITED
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Diamond, C. “Throwing Away the Ladder: How to Read the Tractatus.” The
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— . “Ethics, imagination and the method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.” The New
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Gefwert, Christopher. Wittgenstein on Thought. Language and Philosophy.
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Guiliano, Edward. Ed. Lewis Carroll: A Celebration. New York: Clarkson N. Potter
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—. “The Rise and Fall of the Picture Theory.” Perspectives on the Philosophy of
Wittgenstein. Ed. I. Block. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. 85-109
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Hanfling, Oswald. Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life. London: Routledge,
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Heath, Peter. The Philosopher’s Alice. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974.
Hintikka, Jaako. “Language-games.” Dialectica Vol. 31. No.3, 1977: 226-45.
Hollander, John. “Carroll’s Quest Romance.” In Bloom 1987. 141-151.
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Holquist, Michael. “What is Boojum? Nonsense and Modernism.” Yale French
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Kelly, Richard. “ ‘If you don’t know what a Gryphon is:’ Text and Illustration in
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Kenny Anthony. “The Ghost of the Tractatus in Understanding Wittgenstein.” Royal
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Kripke, Saul A. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge,
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Lull, Janis. “The Applicances of Art: The Carroll Tenniel Collaboration in Through
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and Russell’s Theories Of Judgment.” Philosophical Review Vol.86, 1977:
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Pitcher, George. “Wittgenstein, Nonsense, and Lewis Carroll.” The Massachussetts
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.“About the Same.” Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy and Language. Ed. Alice
Ambrose and Morris Lazerowitz. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd,
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Rackin, Donald. “Laughing and Grief: What’s so funny about Alice in Wonderland7”
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CHAPTER 2: Heidegger’s Shoes
The way to Language: Bringing Language as Language to Language
In a late essay entitled, “The Way to Language,” Heidegger’s way to
language is a self-referential one.9 1 This is not a circuitous way; it does not digress
from language; one can hear Heidegger’s resolution to remain within language in his
self-consciously repetitious way-formula (“Wegformel”): he intends—and advises
us, readers, to do the same—“to bring language as language to language”: “die
Sprache als die Sprache zur Sprache bringen” (WzS, 230; WTL 398). Along the way
to language, Heidegger anticipates an unusual experience, in which one leaves
behind the everyday and instrumental use of language and moves towards something
more essential: towards the locale of the essence of language (“Sprachwesen”). By
loosening the weft of language (“Gflecht”), Heidegger promises the reader a look at
this essential locale.
What this locale essentially is, however, remains very elusive throughout the
entire essay. Heidegger is not dealing with any instrumental, and therefore,
immediately intelligible or tangible way to language; but even in the haze of the
elusive essence of language, he gives us a few visual hints to help us figure our way
out. At one point, Heidegger shifts the essence of language to “saying” (“Sage”),
9 1 All the quotes in English that pertain to Heidegger’s “Way to Language” essay refer to the
English translation by David Farrell Krell in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell,
HarperSanFransisco: 1993, 397-426. All quotes the quotes in German refer to “Der Weg zur
Sprache,” Unterwegs Zur Sprache. Vittorio Klostermann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann GmBH, 1985, 227-258. I will use the acronym WTL while referring to the
English translation and WzS while referring to the original.
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and, excavating the history of this word in German, to “showing” (“Zeige”). At
another point, Heidegger adopts a visual metaphor, “Aufri/3,” —both a technical
drawing and an outline sketch in German—in order to illustrate the locale in which
language essentially happens. It is not our will, or the will of the subjects, Heidegger
claims, that makes language happen, say or show. The essential showing of language
is not similar to representing (“vorstellen”) or designating (“bezeichnen”), terms that
imply the intervention of the subject. This primordial, originary, subject-less
showing precedes any subjective representing, and, insofar as the notion of sign
implies the gesture of signaling something else, the essence of language, or its
showing, must precede any sign:
The essence of language is saying as showing. The showing of language is
not founded in any signs whatsoever; rather, all signs stem from a showing,
in whose realm and for whose objectives they can be signs.9 2 (My
translation)
The way to language is then the way to the locale or realm (“Ortschaft-Bereich”) of
the showing, and in Heidegger’s characteristically repetitive idiom, it is also the way
to the structure or drawing (“Gefuge-AufriB”) of the saying. Repetition, it seems, is
the rule of the language-game, by way of which the philosopher thinks the language
of essence and the essence of language. Through the rhetoric of repetition, which
raps impressively in Teutonic tones, Heidegger intends to secure the self-
referentiality of language, if language is to be thought essentially: “Instead of
9 2 Das Wesende der Sprache ist die Sage als die Zeige. Deren Zeigen griindet nicht in
irgendwelchem Zeichen, sondem alle Zeichen entstammen einem Zeigen, in dessen Bereich
und fur dessen Absichten sie Zeichen sein konnen (WzS 242)
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explaining language as this or that, the way to language wants to let language be
experienced as language.”9 3 (WTL 406) One should not let anything else speak for
language; since, Heidegger cautions us, we may be holding language too tight, and
choking it: “In the essence of language, language can be grasped for sure, but it is
caught in the grip of something other than itself” 9 4 (WTL 406). The showing of
language should be described on its own terms, without attributing it to an act of the
human subject (“[das] menschlich[e] Tun”).
But then, Heidegger asks, does language speak on its own? (“Aber spricht denn
die Sprache selbst?”) (WzS 243) Where does our speech come from, if not from the
subject? It is the giving of language, Heidegger proclaims, that grants our speech; the
giving, or one may even say, the gift of the primordial “there is,” “es gibt,” “il y a.”
Heidegger conceives these language particles as signs or traces of something larger,
grander, more suggestive, more grandiose. He then wraps the gift of language in the
celebratory rhetoric of an event (“Ereignis”) which carries the traces of both essential
owning and seeing (“Ereignen/ Er-augnen”). These traces are chanced upon, along
the way to language, as archaic and imaginary signposts drawn from Heidegger’s
speculative science of etymology. In the event of language,9 5 the subject does not
9 3 Statt die Sprache als dieses und jenes zu erklaren und so von der Sprache wegzufluchten,
mOchte der Weg zu ihr die Sprache als die Sprache erfahren lassen (WzS 239).
9 4 Im Wesen der Sprache ist diese zwar be-griffen, aber durch ein Anderes als sie selbst in
den Griff genommen (WzS 239).
9 5 For a good review of Heidegger’s language as event or “Ereignis” thinking, see Mansbach
115-120. Mansbach notes that after Heidegger’s turn to language and linguistic event at the
end of the 1940s, any trace of subjectivism that existed in Heidegger’s Being and Time
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own language, or see through it; instead, he is owned, or even, possessed by it,
abandoning his sight to an all-penetrating, much larger in-sight that comes, as if,
from outside, like a thunderbolt, to take the subject in. There is little to say about this
event, except that it cannot be traced back to (“zuriickfuhr[en]”) or explained
(“erklar[en]) in terms of anything else, other than itself.9 6 It gives, “es gibt,” in
giving, it happens, it grants the gift, the gift of authentic being, in a flash, in a
lightning of self-referentiality, of itself, from itself, out of itself. No one knows when
and how the event of language happens:
What if the event —no one knows when and how—were to become an in
sight [“Ein-blick”], whose clearing lightning strikes what is and what the
being is held to be? (WTL 422, translation altered)9 7
This is an event that clears when it strikes, as if it cleared the fog; it is a lightning
(Blitz), a prominent seeing and “eyeing” (er-blicken/ er-augen), that provides an
insight (Ein-blick) into the nature of beings: it takes beings from what we, the human
disappear: “the topos where Being is disclosed is no longer a projection of human beings and
their transcendentality. It is a demand (Anspruch) that Being makes on human beings, and to
which they must respond (ent-sprechen)” (118). I interpret Mansbach’s comment to mean
that in later Heidegger, much like in later Wittgenstein, the world (“Being”) and language
are collapsed into one another, and granted a primary status, no doubt, by the philosopher
himself. The demand placed on the human (“Anspruch”), supposedly by Being, is the
philosopher’s polemical demand that the subject admit his secondary status in his dealings
with a linguistic world or world-disclosing language.
9 6 [E]s gibt nichts anderes, worauf das Ereignis noch zuriickfuhrt, woraus es gar erklart
werden konnte (WzS 247).
9 7 Wie, wenn das Ereignis - niemand weiB, wann und wie - zum Ein-blick (footnote-Er-
augen, Er-blicken, Er-blitzen) wurde- dessen lichtender Blitz in das fahrt, was ist und fur das
Seiende gehalten wird? (WzS 253)
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subjects, take them or order them to be (“bestellen”), 9 8 in order to bring them to
their own (“eignen”). Is Heidegger describing language as it is or anticipating its
happening or event (“Ereignis”)? The essay points in the latter direction, looking
forward to a transformation of language, which must happen—no one knows when
and how—of its own.
In order to think the essence of language, in order to reiterate what is its own,
we need a transformation of language, a transformation we can neither
compel nor concoct. (WTL 424) 9 9
We, the human subjects, might, at least, to a slight degree, prepare for this
transformation, by thinking (“denken”), which is, insofar as it concerns the essence
of language, is also poetizing (“dichten”) and poetry (“Dichtung”).
Perhaps we can in some slight measure prepare for transformation in our
relation to language. This experience might awaken: Every thinking that is on
the trail of something is a poetizing, and all poetry a thinking. (WTL 425) 1 0 0
There is, then, a way to experience the transformation of language, in language, but
the human subject is not capable of actively initiating it. Therefore, he must follow
the way of poetizing, which, drawing on the many suggestions with which Heidegger
overcharges this word, connotes both poetry and the activity of composing poetry.
Language, thought essentially and anticipated in the essential event, constitutes a
9 8 I will discuss the notion of ordering, and the related notion of Gestell, in a later section in
my chapter.
9 0 Um dem Sprachwesen nachzudenken, ihm das Seine nachzusagen, braucht es einen
Wandel der Sprache, den wir weder erzwingen noch erfinden konnen (WzS 255).
1 0 0 Vielleicht konnen wir den Wandel unseres Bezuges zur Sprache um ein Geringes
vorbereiten. Die Erfahrung konnte erwachen: Alles sinnende Denken ist ein Dichten, alle
Dichtung aber ein Denken (WzS 256).
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self-referential realm. Our slight (“Geringes”) preparations for the essential event of
language—an event, in which the lightning-producing, piercing insight of language
will replace subjective sight—are to be guided by poetry and poetic thinking. It is
ultimately language itself, however, which decides when to transform itself and
when to offer the gift of letting others follow its leading essence.
A faithful way to language
A faithful follower of language would not seek any way out of the self-
referentiality of language. According to Peter J. McCormick, who seems to be
walking on Heidegger’s path, one should not develop
any criteria forjudging Heidegger’s claims and the availability of decision
procedures for arriving at those criteria [which] might well be set aside in the
interests of a patient pragmatic attempt to describe how Heidegger uses
language to present a meditation of language. (153)
The interpreter of Heidegger, who professes to do philosophy, turns out to be a
literary connoisseur, closing up the gap between philosophy and rhetoric, in his own
way, and for good reason. According to Me Cormick, one should look at “[f]or
example, [how Heidegger] uses declarative sentences not simply to state that
something is the case but to describe, to comment, to exhort, to indicate, to
recommend, to warn and so on” (152). McCormick’s strategy is
[T]o illustrate precisely those moments [in Heidegger’s meditation on
language] when the expression of that meditation changes its tone, as if we
were in conversation with him, and to show wherever possible just what
problems about his doctrine of language are dissolved when that shift is
illustrated as well as what problems remain. (153)
While promoting a reading strategy to better appreciate the many nuances in
Heidegger’s essay, McCormick tells us that his approach to Heidegger’s “Way to
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Language” essay does not intend to do what another philosopher, Pitcher, claims to
have done in relation to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: to give an over
all picture of Wittgenstein’s work:
The difficulty [in Heidegger] is that, not only does the point of [Heidegger’s]
discussion as a whole remain difficult to grasp, but in addition the sentences
are not easy nor is their meaning clear. Hence giving an overall picture of
Heidegger’s concerns, issues, and aims is a function of giving a particular
picture, to keep Pitcher’s unfortunate image, of Heidegger’s sentences. (150)
Why is the Picture “an unfortunate image”? When and how is an image unfortunate?
McCormick’s subsequent, “unpictorial” strategy would be not to draw anything out
of Heidegger’s language, but to follow its already self-determined contours. In his
own “analysis,” the “pragmatically patient” philosopher also repeats Heidegger’s
repetitive, self-referential formulas while occasionally marking the rhythms,
cadences and equivalences in them:
[In Heidegger] language concerns itself only with itself in the sense that
language speaks authentically when language speaks singly and solely.. .the
proper character of the linguistic essence is glimpsed only insofar as man is
already antecedently appropriated by the linguistic essence... The essence of
language is unified and differentiated in a self-reflective movement whose
elements are inseparable, irreducible, and manifest in the speaking of
language
etc. (89-91). McCormick’s restatements, classified under the title of “analysis,”
strengthen the impression that one is faced here with a scarcely approachable
linguistic deity, speaking on its own (“singly and solely”), issuing licenses of its
own, from within the “self-reflective” realm or movement of its essence, for the
human subject to experience it. If there is a way to language, this way is left to the
device of the self-referential event of language, which somehow takes place—no one
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knows when and how—of its own accord and which is to be experienced in the
repetition of tautologies.
But maybe, it is possible to think of another way to Heidegger’s language, a
way whose outline is sketched about twenty years prior to Heidegger’s essays that
deal exclusively with language. This other way, laid out in Heidegger’s “Origin of
the Work of Art” essay, would explain language by way of something else, thus,
running counter to Heidegger’s later thoughts on language, which emphasize the
self-referentiality of language. This something else, as I will show, is the visual
artwork.
The visual way to language
The work of art, in the “Work of Art” essay, stands for what poetry is in the
later essay: it designates that privileged figure (“Gestalt”) in which truth happens
(“Werden und Geschehen der Wahrheit”)1 0 1 . The correspondences between the
earlier and the later essay are remarkable: in place of the event of language
(“Ereignis”) in the “Way to Language” essay, we have the happening of the truth in
the “Work of Art” essay (“das Geschehnis der Wahrheit.”) If language speaks of
itself in poetry, then truth sets itself to work in the artwork. In the “Work of Art”
essay, Heidegger describes the happening of truth, using the same anticipatory
1 0 1 All the quotes in English that pertain to Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art” essay
refer to the English translation by Albert Hofstadter in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell
Krell, HarperSanFransisco: 1993, 143-212. All quotes the quotes in German refer to “Der
Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” Holzwege. Vittorio Klostermann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann GmBH, 1977, 1-74. I will use the acronym OWA while referring to the
English translation and UKW while referring to the original.
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rhetoric which he uses to describe the event of language: he looks forward to the
miraculous opening up of the open (“die Eroffnung des Offenen”) and the clearing of
beings (“Lichtung”), as these will accompany the happening of truth in the artwork
(OWA 196, UKW 59). It is also in this earlier essay that Heidegger first introduces
the oblique visual metaphor that he will later use to describe the structure of
1 (Y)
language-the outline sketch or Aufriss.
If, in the later essay, the way to language is a thought (“denken”), analogous to
both poetizing (“dichten”) and poetry (“Dichtung”), the way to truth, in the earlier
1 0 2 Here, Heidegger plays with the etymological resonances of the German root-word “Rifi,”
as the rift that is writ-ten, as both an inscription and a crack on a surface. He then groups
these images, excavated from the history of a word, under the curious notion of the figure
(“Gestalt”). In his philosophical imagery, the figure is a constellation of images that has the
pull, or the power of truth. A work of art is like an inscription pulled into or projected onto
something larger, onto a powerful figure—a figure of power? -when truth is said to inhabit
it. In introducing the figure for the first time, Heidegger notes: “Createdness of the work
means truth’s being fixed in place in the figure. Figure is the structure (“Gefuge”) in whose
shape the rift composes itself.”1 0 2 In one of Heidegger’s most eccentric definitions, the figure
is somewhat like the drawing of the truth from an inscription. That Heidegger first mentions
the figure in relation to the created-ness of the artwork is significant, because of the
implication that the figure may be thought as something placed (“stellen”) and framed,
potentially implying the doing of the human subject:
What is here called figure is always to be thought in terms of the particular placing
[Stellen] and the frame [Ge-stell], as which the work [of art] happens, when it sets
itself up and sets itself forth.
Heidegger’s language is purposefully ambiguous about who or what does the placing of the
figure, if not a human subject: the work’s createdness disguises the subject’s creation.
Interestingly, the placing here does not assume the negative tones of the placing, thought in
terms of representation (“vor-stellen”), w hich literally means placing-before in H eidegger’s
“Age of the World-Picture” essay. Neither is the frame, Gestell, become the ever-threatening
essence of technology, which can block the “shining” of the truth of beings, as it does in
Heidegger’s later essays. It is important that for Heidegger, the figure, as Gestalt, brings
around itself a host of terms that are the real subjects of Heidegger’s critical work: starting
from the subject, as the one who posits (“stellt”), these are representation (vor-stellen),
ordering (“bestellen”) and frame (Ge-stell).
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essay, is the work of art. Here, the work of art, poetry, language, thought and truth
are held together in an analogical string:1 0 3
Work of Art == Poetry Thought Truth = Language
The left hand of the string is obvious: all artworks, as the loci of truth are poetically
composed (“gedichtet”) and therefore, Heidegger declares, all artworks are, “in
essence,” which means, in analogy, are poetry (OWA 59, UKW 197). In the
happening, or event, that takes place in the work of art, we even encounter the
1 0 3 In explaining Heidegger’s approach to language, through an essay of Heidegger that does
not exclusively deal with language, Sefler also follows a methodology similar to the one that
I have been pursuing in this essay. Analyzing Heidegger’s essay, “Discourse on Thinking,”
Sefler notes
As in all of Heidegger’s writings, we find [in this essay] a continuing search for the
meaning of Being. Within the work, Heidegger’s approach to Being is not so much
through language, as through thought. If, however, we assume no structural
differentiation between modes of thought and varieties of language, then
Heidegger’s approach to Being in the work is an excellent introduction to his views
on language. We will make such an assumption; the terms “thought” and “language”
will be used interchangeable [in the following analysis]. (137)
This methodological assumption is that of analogy. In comparison with the analogizing axis
that Sefler assumes in his treatment, namely (thought = language = Being), I follow the
following analogizing axis, which is quite explicitly sketched in Heidegger’s “Work of Art”
Essay:
Work of Art == Poetry - Poetizing - Thought - Language = truth (theme)
To remember, the equivalence of thought with language is also a basic assumption of
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. I would also like to note that the more existential occupations
prior to Heidegger’s linguistic turn may also be included in the above analogizing axis: all
that needs to be done is to add an existential term, such as “experience” or “Dasein” to the
left of the above axis. The last term, “truth,” in Heidegger, insofar as it stands for an
apophantic, revelatory, or ontological event, is more precisely, H eidegger’s (literary) theme,
and may assume different names, depending on Heidegger’s philosophical preoccupations.
With the addition of experience, or Dasein, to the left of the axis, one could also trace the
historical progression in Heidegger’s philosophy, as it proceeds from more “subjectivistic”
terms to less subjectivistic ones. In this analogical axis, I would like to situate the implicit
Picture as an in-between term, mediating between Van Gogh’s “shoes” painting and the
thought of the shoes, and placing the demand on the thought that it be (like) a work of art.
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transformation (“Wandel”) that Heidegger’s later thought anticipates in the event of
language (“Ereignis”):
It is due to art’s poetic (or poetizing) essence that, in the midst of beings, art
breaks open an open place, in whose openness everything is other than
usual.. .through the work, everything ordinary and hitherto existing becomes
an unbeing.. .[The working of the work] lies in a transformation (“Wandel”),
happening from the work, from inside out, of the unconcealment of beings,
and this means, of being. (OWA 197, Translation altered)1 0 4
The essence of art, including the essence of poetry, is contingent upon the founding
of an open place (“eine offene Stelle”), in which an ordinary being which otherwise
exists as it is assumed, ordered, or represented to be by the human subject, goes
through a transformation that turns it into something “other than the usual.” This
transformative event, according to Heidegger, attests to the being’s unusually
suggestive appearance, to its being more in conformity with its essential Being
(“Sein”), to its “unbeing,” to its unconcealment (“Unverborgenheit”), or understood
in the Greek tradition, to its truth (“alethia”). All these grand terms are now gathered
around the general title that is truth, forming the rhetorically ever productive,
conglomerate figure of the truth:
“being” -> Transformation 4 Being/ Open
“thing” unbeing Alethia/ Essence/
Everyday OF Truth
Representation Thought
Philosophy
Work of art, Poetry
1 0 4 Aus dem dichtenden Wesen der Kunst geschieht es, daB sie inmitten des Seienden eine
offene Stelle aufschlagt, in deren Offenheit alles onders ist als sonst...[duech das Werk]
wird...alles Gewohnliche und Bisherige zum Unseienden. [Die Wirkung des Werkes] beruht
in einem aus dem Werk geschehenden Wandel der Unverborgenheit des Seienden, und das
sagt: des Seins (UKW 59)
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On several occasions, Heidegger employs the rhetorical power of his productive
terms of truth to drive away the notion of imagination, as imagination, for
Heidegger, implies the subject. This is probably because imagination, as the ever
subjective, is an immanent threat that lurks behind all his truth claims and truth
rhetoric, endangering and destabilizing their self-sufficiency, raising the nagging
suspicion that all this talk about happening, truth, open, essence etc. could be
subsumed under the notion of imagination, as works of imagination. Let me briefly
comment on one of these occasions in which he dismisses imagination in relation to
one of his grand truth-terms: “the open place.” In the happening of truth in the
artwork, “art breaks out an open place” (“eine offene Stelle”); but what and where is
this open place, exactly? The open place cannot be just the place of the material
figure (“Gestalt”), localizable in the visual artwork: Van Gogh, as it is hung on a
wall, or the temple, as it is erected on a rocky hill. The material artwork is already at
a place, which suggests that the anticipated “open place” be more than just the place
of the artwork, a much larger place that originates from the artwork. Can this open
place be imagination, as it breaks out from the experience of the artwork? Can it be
the very imagination of the interpreter of the artwork, which transforms and
translates the artwork into the fantasy of the open place?
The question of open place becomes even stranger when it comes to
Heidegger’s beloved medium of art, namely, poetry. Where is the place of poetry, as
a work of language, to be found, if not in the imagination? Does the “figure” of
poetry belong to imagination? Almost symptomatically, Heidegger dismisses
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imagination at the very point when he declares that poetry, as the open place of the
unconcealment of beings, is the essence of all art. There is, it seems, something
unsettling about the place-ness of poetry, not to forget, as I will show, the thing-ness
of language, which might invite the imagination, with all its subjectivistic baggage,
to take effect. The subjective imagination must be left out in all the transformations
that inhabit an artwork; and the transformation in the artwork, from the being of
everyday into the Being of truth, must be thought to happen on the whim of a truth-
endowing power. In the brief dismissal of imagination that follows, Heidegger states:
Poetry, however, is not an aimless imagining of whimsicalities and not a
flight of mere notions and fancies into the realm of the unreal. What poetry,
as clearing projection, unfolds of unconcealment and projects ahead into the
rift of the figure, is the open, which poetry lets happen, and indeed in such a
way that only now, in the midst of beings, the open brings the being to shine
and ring out. If we fix our vision on the essence of the work and its
connection with the happening of the truth of beings, it becomes questionable
whether the essence of poetry, and this means at the same time the essence of
projection, can be adequately thought of in terms of the power of
imagination. (OWA 197) 1 0 5
If imagination connotes the subjective unreal (“das Unwirkliche”), by virtue of
being mere representations or fancies of the human subject, Heidegger’s truth
connotes the ever non-subjective open (“das Offene”). His conception of the open
hints at an expansive realm, which is to reside beyond the capabilities or the powers
1 0 5 Dichtung aber ist kein schweifendes Ersinnen des Beliebigen und kein Verschweben des
bloBen Yorstellens und Einbildens in das Unwirkliche. Was die Dichtung als lichtender
Entwurf an Unverborgenheit auseinanderfaltet und in den RiB der Gestalt vorauswirft, ist das
Offene, das sie geschehen laBt und zwar dergestalt, daB jetzt das Offene erst inmitten des
Seienden dieses zum Leuchten und Klingen bringt. In Wesensblick auf das Wesen des
Werkes und seinen Bezug zum Geschehnis der Wahrheit des Seienden wird fraglich, und das
sagt zugleich des Entwurfes, von der Imagination und Einbildungskraft her hinreichend
gedacht werden kann. (UKW 60)
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of imagination. Even Heidegger’s language wants to suggest such expansiveness: the
open place (“die offene Stelle”) of the previous paragraph now becomes just the
“open,” which is more than a place: the open is an expanse. But, what if all this
expanse just another place in the subjective imagination? Our imagination,
Heidegger almost dogmatically asserts, cannot think of the expanse of the open: it is
inadequate, in-sufficient (“[nicht] hinreichend”). If there is any imagination at work,
it is not the subjective imagination, but the imagination of that locus of truth, also of
power, which is beyond and above the subject.
I will return to the issues of the subject and imagination in a later section. For
the time being, let us continue thinking about the analogical equation (Work of Art
== Poetry) as it is made explicit in Heidegger’s assertion that “all art is poetry.” Not
only does this assertion bring out the question of imagination, but it also strikes
Heidegger as somehow arbitrary:
If all art is in essence poetry, then the arts of architecture, painting, sculpture
and music must be traced back to poesy. That is pure arbitrariness. It
certainly is, as long as we mean that those arts are varieties of the art of
language, if it is permissible to characterize poesy by that easily
misinterpretable title. But poesy is only one mode of the clearing projection
of truth, i.e., poetizing/ poetic composition (“Dichten”) in the wider sense.
Nevertheless, the linguistic work, poetry in the narrower sense, has a
privileged position in the domain of the arts. (OWA 198)1 0 6
1 0 6 Wenn alle Kunst im Wesen Dichtung ist, dann m iissen Baukunst, Bildkunst, Tonkunst auf
die Poesie zuruckgefahrt werden. Das ist reine Willkiir. GewiB, solange wir meinen, die
genannten Kiinste seien Abarten der Sprachkunst, falls wir die Poesie durch diesen eicht
mifideutbaren Titel kennzeichnen diirfen. Aber die Poesie ist nur eine Weise des lichtenden
Entwerfens der Wahrheit, d.h. des Dichtens in diesem weiteren Sinne. Gleichwohl hat das
Sprachwerk, die Dichtung im engeren Sinne, eine ausgezeichnete Stellung im Ganzen der
Kiinste. (UKW 60)
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In this thought-segment, that belongs to the end of the essay, Heidegger seems to be
reluctant about playing the “tracing-back” game he so vehemently denounces in his
“Way to Language” essay, where he refuses to trace language back to anything else.
The essay largely deals with discussions of visual works of art, especially, of the Van
Gogh painting and the Greek temple; therefore, this sudden affirmation of the
primacy of poetry over art does seem very arbitrary. To remember, until this thought-
segment, he did not need the primacy of poetry to develop his ideas about the
artwork. If poetry, and the related notion of poetizing, is not at all necessary in a
philosophical account of artwork, what is the logic of Heidegger’s tracing the
artwork back to poetry? And what does this “tracing-back” mean? Is the artwork
really being traced back to poetry or visa versa?
In the following paragraph, it becomes obvious that for Heidegger, this
gesture of tracing artwork back to the ever-privileged poetry is contingent upon a
theory of language: “[To see how poetry has a privileged position in the domain of
the arts] only the right concept of language is needed.” The focus of the essay now
changes from artwork, via poetry, to language in general. In other words, in probably
the most enigmatic section of a very elusive essay, Heidegger’s ultimate interest
turns out to be not just poetry, but language. The curious thing is that there is nothing
very new in what Heidegger says about language, except that it is just like poetry. In
fact, Heidegger’s idea of language is so close to poetry that Heidegger ends up
declaring that “language itself is poetry in the essential sense.. .it is the primal poesy
(“Urpoesie”)” (UKW 62). Language, therefore, becomes the enigmatic foundation,
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or origin of both poetry and artwork. Heidegger establishes a typical hierarchy, in
which language is endowed with a primordial, and even, theological status, as also
was the case in his “Way to Language” essay. In this hierarchy, poetry resides just
below language; as a particular instance of language use, it assumes a privileged
position in comparison with other works of art, whose relation to language is more
mediated.
It is possible, however, to turn things on their head, while shaking the
mysticism out of Heidegger’s language. I would like to argue that there is a logic in
Heidegger’s shift to language, in view of which the understanding of the “Work of
Art” essay changes considerably. In a reversal of sorts, I would like to argue that
language, and not the work of art, constitutes the underlying subject matter
throughout the essay, and from the very beginning of the essay. In other words, the
whole essay may be construed as the exposition of a theory of language, in which
Heidegger employs various interpretations of works of art as analogies that
exemplify his thoughts on language. Heidegger’s hierarchy—in which language, in
general, and poetry, in particular, are positioned above the visual artwork, as if the
artwork would be nothing without language—could be interpreted as a rhetorical
maneuver that intends to disguise the fact that the supposed foundation of a subject
(language) is ultimately in need of referencing to the subject (artwork). Admittedly,
reference, in Heidegger’s thought, is a dangerous position since it might imply
reverence to an other, and hence, take away from the force of a foundation or an
origin. To understand what language and poetry are, Heidegger uses analogies,
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references and examples from (visual) arts; but such use implies that, the relation
between poetry and artworks is not one of pure arbitrariness (“reine Willkur”), but of
necessity. In other words, the way to poetry, and also, the way to language, goes
through the (visual) artwork.
The implicit theory of language in the “Work of Art” essay, much similar to
Heidegger’s philosophy of language expounded in his later essays, does not intend to
understand language in its ordinary use, and therefore, is not descriptive or neutral. It
is motivated by Heidegger’s desire to understand and promote a certain use of
language, which enables the “happening of the truth” of the things referred to within
it. I would like to call the use of language, which Heidegger theorizes and privileges
in his account of language, the aesthetic use of language, and I do this despite
Heidegger’s self-declared anti-aestheticism, which I will critique at the end of the
chapter. Heidegger’s “truth” and the host of myriad equivalent or related terms
which gather around this notion in Heidegger’s representation-machine—event,
open, Being, Unconcealedness, Essence, clearing, revelation, alethia, to name a
few1 0 7 —whose in-depth discussions would be moot, unless espoused in a theological
treatise—interest me only to the extent of defining the overwhelming and seemingly
inexplicable affects that Heidegger experiences vis-a-vis the works of art and of
1 0 7 Mansbach notes some other equivalences in Heidegger’s truth-idiom: “ The term ‘Being’
is sometimes replaced by other terms— ‘the possible’ (das Mogliche), ‘appropriation’
(Ereignis), ‘play’ (Spiel), and ‘Being’ ” (25). For the interesting relation between the
possible and Being, see Kearney 35-49.
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language of his preferences.1 0 8 Heidegger’s account of the truth in the work of art,
which is analogous to the truth in the work of language, could in fact be thought as
an account of truth-affects. Such truth-affects, as I will show, are experienced by the
interpreter and attributed to the work in the form of “truth as such,” or “truth in
itself,” or some other variant that could adequately suggest the purported self-
sufficiency of an overwhelming affect. While shifting the focus of the essay to
language, I will show that Heidegger’s rhetoric of truth is a discourse on the affects
produced during the experience of a work of language or of art. Truth-affects,
considered to constitute the “truth” revealed in the artwork, endow the interpretation
of the work of language with a kind of associative expansiveness, by way of which
the work assumes an imaginary, world-disclosing function. A central claim in the
Work of Art essay is that the artwork, as the locus of the happening of truth, sets up
(“stellt auf’) a world; but as my following discussions will show, the world thus set
up is a setup of imagination, an imaginary world, which is then supported by the
particular truth-affects that belong to the act of interpretation. I would like to show
how such truth-affects, in Heidegger’s account, are likely to result from the
ambiguity, suggestiveness or abundance of the interpretive possibilities vis-a-vis the
work of language or of art, and also, from the very subjective decision on the
interpreter’s behalf to detect in such qualities the attribute of world-disclosing
significance.
1 0 8 For theological implications of Heidegger’s thought, see, for instance, Kearney 58-64.
Here, Kearney compares and contrasts eschatological God with Heidegger’s Being, as well
as eschaton with Ereignis (63).
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In the following, I draw out the outline of a particular kind of aesthetic
imagination, which thrives on representations that exhibit or stage the ambiguity of
the name of the thing, and which is involved in bringing the name of the thing into
the field of the name of other things. This field, in which the thing is to be revealed
in its fullness, is then given the name of the world. I would like to point out that for
Heidegger, the relation between poetry, as a particular use of language, on the one
hand, and artwork, as a particular use of material, on the other, is possible only
because poetry and fine arts make similar use of the name and the fiction of a
“thing,” respectively. Therefore, the most important analogy of the essay is probably
the one that is between the name and the fiction of the thing:
Name of the thing = Fiction of the thing
What particularly interests me in my outline of Heidegger’s aesthetic imagination are
the first moments in the Work of Art essay, in which the visual work of art, as a
particular use of the fiction of the thing, is summoned to set the stage for
Heidegger’s ideas on poetry, as a particular use of the name of the thing. In my
analysis of Heidegger’s complex recourse to visuality and visual experience, I would
like to show how Heidegger is effectively formulating a theory and a program of
linguistic use, while purportedly working on a theory of art. Heidegger’s examples
from art are marked by his desire to see visual artworks as analogies, through which
poetry and language, as ur-poesy, may be understood. That his treatment of the
artwork is essentially a theory of language may also account for his, what might be
considered, failed interpretation of Van Gogh’s shoes painting and his too hasty
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construal of the world of the painting, without due attention to the artwork’s
particular materiality, and visuality. As Foti notes, Heidegger’s treatment of the
visual artwork “shows a disturbing inattention to visuality, even though the
exemplary works discussed are a painting and a work of architecture and sculpture.”
Foti also complains that “Heidegger does not allow [the visual glance of the
interpreter] to respond always freshly to the [visual] work in sheer visuality and
plasticity...” But Heidegger’s inattentive use (and, according to Sassen, ab-use) of
the artwork would not come as a surprise from the analogical standpoint: the visual
experience of the artworks, in the “Work of Art” essay, becomes relevant only to the
extent that it illustrates the interpretation of works of language. In fact, Foti also
hints at this analogical aspect, which becomes particularly conspicuous in a remark
that Heidegger makes in relation to the Van Gogh’s shoes painting (“the painting
spoke”), a remark which, Foti claims, shows that the painting “is not looked at or
interrogated in its visuality, but is brought to ‘speak’ ” (Foti 1998, 343). I will come
back to this most suggestive remark in my own reading of Heidegger’s account of
the shoes painting.
The logic that enables the relation between language and works of art, is the
notion of poetizing (“dichten”) which Heidegger declares to be the essence of all
works of art, poetry and otherwise, and which also has an affinity with philosophical
thinking (“denken) that takes place in language.1 0 9
1 0 9 For a detailed rhetorical analysis of the affinity and distinction between the notions of
poetizing and thinking in Heidegger, see White 143-168.
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Thinking = Poetizing
Language = Works of Art
The affinity between the poetizing of visual works of art and philosophical thinking
leads to another theme of my exposition: that the essay, in its entirety, is an exercise
in poetizing thinking, or, in writing. Heidegger’s various references to visual arts in
the Work of Art essay may be understood as illustrations that instruct Heidegger’s
own writing, which, otherwise, pose as interpretations of artworks. In other words,
the philosophical writing in this essay could be thought not, primarily, as
elucidations of the works of art, but rather, as attempts to produce works of language
in a particular kind of literature, which, in writing, strives to reproduce the affects
that the experience of visual artwork has on the interpreter. I will investigate the
question of literature and writing in my analysis of Heidegger’s interpretations of
artworks, and especially, in my discussion of Heidegger’s ruminations on Van
Gogh’s shoes painting. I will also show how Heidegger’s imaginative writing
disturbs and destroys the boundaries between literature and philosophy.
In the following sections, I shift my focus from the end of the “Work of Art”
essay, where language acquires a seemingly arbitrary primordial status, to its
beginning, in order to show that Heidegger is, almost secretly, preoccupied with
issues of language, and issues of writing. Throughout his essay, language figures as
the operative link that goes through several analogical transformations: it traces itself
back to the notions of the thing, thought, and most emphatically, to the visual
artwork. This path is remarkably different from those self-referential, circular paths
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of the “Way to Language” essay, where the essence of language is to be experienced
by way of the enchanted repetition of its name, a repetition that also marks its
authority.
From artwork to the thing to the thought: Heidegger’s analogical chains
In the essay’s first analogical chain of substitutions, Heidegger poses the
question of the essence of the artwork, but quickly moves to the question of the
essence of the “thing.” This question is also the question of thing-interpretation
(“Auslegung der Dingheit des Dinges”), in that the thing’s essence will be revealed
by an adequate interpretation of what the thing is (UKW 7).
Artwork Thing Thing-interpretation
The move from the artwork to thing is possible, because, according to Heidegger, the
work of art is fundamentally a thing. Heidegger’s idea of the thing is unspecific and
all-inclusive: the “picture that hangs on the wall” is surely a thing, and so are
Holderlin’s poems which, “during the First World W ar.. .were packed in the
soldier’s knapsack together with cleaning gear” (OWA 145, UKW 3). Accepting
Heidegger’s questionable assumption that Holderlin’s poems have the same thing-
status with a Van Gogh picture, we need to ask, what does he want to accomplish
with this seemingly unproblematic move from the artwork to the thing and from the
thing to the interpretation of the thing? At first glance, the move to the thing-
interpretation (or to the thinking of the thing) implies the move to the philosophical
thought or thinking (“Denken”).
Artwork Thing - ) Thing-interpretation "3 Thought (Denken)
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The move to the philosophical thought facilitates another move, a composite one:
thinking (“denken”), according to Heidegger, is analogous to the poetizing
(“dichten”) inherent in the work of art. Since poetizing is immediately related to
poetry (“Dichtung”), as a particular use of language, it becomes clear that the
analogical move of the essay is directed toward language. The following analogical
chain displays the overall structure of the essay:
Artwork Thing -> Thing-interpretation -> Thought (Denken)
Poetizing (Dichten) of Artwork Poetry (“Dichtung”) Language
According to the logic of this analogical chain, only in the experience of the thing in
the artwork do we think truthfully about the thing; to put this differently, only in this
experience, does the philosophical thought acquire the attribute of “truth.” It is the
philosophical thought of the thing, and not the experience of the work of art that
becomes Heidegger’s main interest after his reformulation of the question of the
artwork; consequently, Heidegger investigates the experience of the work of art to
the extent that this experience might illustrate an exemplary kind of thinking
(“Denken”), whose affinity with poetry (“Dichtung”) and language, for Heidegger, is
obvious.
The ambiguous thing of the artwork
Thinking the thing or the interpretation of the thing is motivated by
Heidegger’s intention to reveal the thing in its truth, or in its essence. To do so,
philosophical thought must apply itself to a work of art, in which the truth of the
thing happens. But, what exactly is the relationship between the thing and the
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artwork? How may one move from the artwork to the thing so effortlessly? By virtue
of being first and foremost a thing, the work of art, Heidegger claims, enables an
entry to the thingness (“Dinghafte”) or the essence of the thing; but it is not
altogether clear what exactly this thing is. Here, I would like to make a distinction
between the thing that is the work of art and the things referred to in the work of art.
Heidegger refers to this distinction in a very brief remark that implicitly points out
the difference between representational and nonrepresentational art: a “fountain”
poem that refers to a fountain or Van Gogh’s “shoes” painting that refers to shoes
will be representational, whereas a Greek temple, that “portrays nothing” (“bildet
nichts ab.”) will be nonrepresentational (OWA 167, UKW 27). The thing, whose
essence is revealed in the artwork, could be two very different things: it could be the
thing that the artwork is, as the temple, or the thing that the artwork refers to, as the
shoes in Van Gogh’s shoes painting. It is even possible to conceive the thing of Van
Gogh’s shoes painting to be what it materially is: colors, two-dimensional shapes and
arrangements, the traces of brush strokes, etc.
While it is plausible to accept that the essence of the temple is revealed in the
temple-work in the visual experience of the temple, it is questionable whether the
essence of a pair of shoes or a fountain could ever be revealed in the poem or
painting-work during the (silent or vocalized) reading of the poem or the visual
experience of the painting, without the implication of an interpretive imagination that
draws the thing that the work refers to (shoes) from the thing that the work is
(painting of the shoes). In the particular example of a painting or the poem that
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refers to a thing, what is made available to the painting or the poem cannot be “the
thing as it is,” but a certain fiction of the thing. If the shoes in the painting are to be
associated with the shoes that one wears, such association can only take place if one
could apply the same word, or name, “shoes” to both the fiction of the shoes in the
painting and the fiction of everyday shoes. Van Gogh’s “shoes” painting, for
instance, uses not the shoes that one wears everyday, but a fiction of the shoes that
one is familiar with, namely, a pictorial representation (“eine Bildliche Darstellung”)
of the shoes, as Heidegger puts it. Thus, when Heidegger refers to the truth of the
thing, he cannot intend to say anything other than the truth of the name or the fiction
of the thing referred to within the artwork. Heidegger’s comparisons between two
very different fictions of the thing, i.e., everyday shoes and the shoes in the painting,
structurally demand that the comparisons between them concern not the thing as
such, but the name of the thing, as a primary fiction that subsumes both fictions of
the thing, (i.e., everyday shoes and the shoes in the painting). It is therefore the
name, and hence, language, that makes the very first analogical move in Heidegger’s
analogical chain: from the artwork to the thing.
Artwork = Fiction of the thing = Name of the thing = The “thing”
Therefore: Artwork Thing
Where there is a name, there is also a thought. There is no difference, for
Heidegger, between the truth of the “shoes”, of the name or the fiction of the shoes,
and of the thought of the shoes. The artwork is most important, because it makes use
of the name or the fiction of the thing in such a way that it congregates, or to use a
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Heideggerian term, gathers a multiplicity of the fictions of the thing. Somewhat like
a black hole, it pulls in, but also brings out the endless possibilities of the thing’s
being. Heidegger’s thing-interpretation or his philosophical thought, if it is ever to
belong to truth, must engage the name or the fiction of the thing in the same way as
the artwork. The reason why non-Heideggerian thing-interpretations, which he
discusses and critiques at the beginning of his essay, and which consider the thing as
material for form, for subjective sensations and for equipmental use, fail is that they
only engage those fictions of the thing that they deem important. These thing-
interpretations sort out, order and hierarchize the fictions of the thing, according to
an arbitrary will; but such ordering takes away from the multiplicity of possible
fictions gathered under the name of the thing, apparently, without any preconceived
order. Thinking the thing in its truth should be as abundant and as loose, as thinking
about the poetic use of the name of the thing, which Heidegger fashions after the
poetizing use of the fiction of the thing in the artwork. I would like to refer to the
poetic use in the work of language, and the poetizing use in the work of art, as
aesthetic use.
Heidegger points to the painting
Using a most suggestive metaphor from Heidegger’s “Way to Language”
essay, one may say that the analogical thread that Heidegger runs through artwork,
thing, fiction, name, thought, use, interpretation and “truth” forms a complex and
sometimes tangled weft (“Gflecht”). I intend to loosen this weft through my analysis
of Heidegger’s evocation and interpretation of a Picture, i.e., Van Gogh’s painting of
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a pair of peasant shoes. Before I start my analysis, I would first like to point ou some
structural similarities between Heidegger’s references to the Van Gogh painting in
the “Work of Art” essay and Wittgenstein’s “cube” example, which I have discussed
in depth in my previous chapter. In his “cube” example, Wittgenstein interprets a
most indefinite use of the word, “cube,” which results in his drawing of the cube. In
his “shoes” example, Heidegger similarly interprets the most indefinite use of the
name of a thing, “shoes,” which results in his evocation of Van Gogh’s painting of
the shoes. While Wittgenstein’s Picture (the drawing of the cube) falls short of
revealing all the multiple uses of the cube that one makes of in the world of
language-games, Heidegger’s Picture (the Van Gogh painting of the shoes) contains
an expansive and affective suggestiveness that may point to a whole field of use,
which Heidegger christens as the “world.” If Wittgenstein’s drawing of the cube is
an analogy of a non-specific application, or of the indeterminate use of the name of
the thing, then, Heidegger’s evocation of the Van Gogh painting is the analogy of a
specific application, or of the aesthetic use of the name of the thing. In fact,
Wittgenstein’s worthless Picture of the cube, which tyranically hides the multiple
applications of the world, sharply contrats with Heidegger’s Van Gogh painting,
which expands to disclose a world abundant with possibilities.1 1 0 In Heidegger’s
1 1 0 The name of the world and world-disclosure may be related to any of the many truth-
terms Heidegger uses or invents. In fact the term, world, may as well be interpreted to be the
same as Heidegger’s truth. Young notes that in the World of Art essay, “the ‘world’ is the
same ‘truth’—the ‘truth of beings’ or ‘being of Beings” (22). This remark is in harmony
with Heidegger’s overall methodology: his philosophical inquiries normally proceed through
establishing equivalences between various terms, say between, Ereignis, truth, alethia,
Being, essence, language, etc; and the world may be easily added to this list. In order to
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illustrate what the world means in its relation to Heidegger’s notion of truth-as-disclosure,
and in its difference from truth-as-correspondence theories, also engaged in Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus, Young comes up with the most wonderful example, which is also interesting in
the way it could be used to illustrate Heidegger’s ideas on language, using the methodology
that I have been pursuing in my dissertation, namely, by way of Pictures:
Consider the table on which I write. Let us call it “Smith.” Suppose I say, pointing at
Smith, “Smith is colorless.” It might seem obvious that I say something false. But
suppose that.. .1 am actually referring, not to the table, but rather to the collection of
molecules, which Smith also is. A further possibility is that what I am talking about
is neither the table nor the collection of molecules, but rather the space-time region
they exactly occupy. Or maybe I refer to the demigod whose residence is just that
place. And so on. The point this example makes is that truth as correspondence
presupposes reference, and reference presupposes - a point often overlooked—a
“horizon of disclosure” which, through disambiguation, first makes it possible. Only
when we know what kinds of beings belong to a given domain of discourse do we
know what kinds of facts there are to which propositions may or may not correspond
(23).
Heidegger’s world, then, corresponds to the “horizon of disclosure” that makes referencing
possible. In Young’s otherwise insightful philosophical example, the difference between
reference and “horizon of disclosure” is not so obvious. I agree with Young’s last statement:
truth-as-correspondence, which is a central idea in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is rather useless,
unless it is used pragmatically, as it was adopted as verificationism in the positivist practice.
The suspension of correspondence, however, does not imply the suspension of reference, or
the will to Picture; it only means that notions of “truth” have little if nothing to do with
language. Secondly, of course, referencing does not necessitate measures of presence or
constancy; the act of referencing may concern hypothetical, fictive Pictures. The reference
does in fact persist even if what is implied in the statement “the table is colorless” are the
molecules of the table, and not the table of perception. A perceptual Picture (the table on
which I write) is different than the scientific Picture of its molecules, and it makes little
difference that the latter Picture is not available to the naked eye, and is scientifically or
hypothetically constituted. Even more interesting is the demigod that Young places on the
table; here, all is needed is a Picture of Young’s imagination. All these different Pictures
have different frames, of course, namely, the frames of common perception, scientific
constitution or imaginative speculation. These three Pictures are related to the extent that
they may be brought under the linguistic designation “table,” without necessitating a sort of
“ur-Picture” that contains the notion of every and each frame. If the “horizon of disclosure”
points to the multiplicity of frames that the interpreter must have at his disposal in order to
draw his Pictures, then, the “horizon of disclosure” amounts to the notion of imagination,
whose outlines I have drawn in my previous chapter. A space of imagination is always
needed to determine what kind of a frame, among possible frames, is being adopted in a
particular linguistic instance. Some prior experience with an unusual frame may be needed,
if, for instance, the possibly unintuitive statement “the table is colorless” is to make the sense
required by a scientific frame, and is not to be reduced to “nonsense” or viewed within the
same linguistic frame as that of the oxymoronic statement “the table is not a table.” It is
important to note, however, that the detour through the imagination, or the “horizon of
disclosure” is a logical and rather ordinary operation in every linguistic act of interpretation;
and it hardly requires the “world-disclosing” event, or Ereignis which Heidegger anticipates.
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worldview, the aesthetic use of the name of the thing (“shoes”), whose analogy is the
Picture or the fiction of the thing in a work of art (Van Gogh’s shoes), is given the
attribute of a truth-revealing and world-disclosing suggestiveness, an imaginary
expansiveness, by which the thing achieves relevances beyond the usual frames or
fictions accorded to it in its unreflective, ordinary and everyday use.
It is not surprising that Heidegger’s search for truth in the work of art
concentrates on the equipment (“Zeug”) as the thing whose use is framed by the
form that is imparted on its matter. The usual consideration of the equipment,
Heidegger thinks, does not normally expand beyond its well-framed sphere of
usefulness. There might, however, be a use of the name or the fiction of the
equipment, where even the ordinary equipment can assume the sort of imaginary
expansiveness that carries the suggestiveness or the affect of truth. This will happen,
Heidegger implies, when a work of art, like Van Gogh’s painting, uses the fiction of
the equipment. The reference to the painting occurs at the moment in which
Heidegger chooses an ordinary equipment: a pair of peasant shoes (“ein Paar
Bauemschuhe”). This is how Heidegger’s “shoes” example begins:
We choose as example a common equipment: a pair of peasant shoes. We do
not even need to exhibit actual pieces of this sort of useful article [the peasant
shoes] in order to describe them. But since it is a matter here of direct
description, it may be well to facilitate the visual realization of them. For this
purpose a pictorial representation suffices. We shall choose a well-known
painting by Van Gogh, who painted such shoes several times. But what is
there to see more here? Everyone knows what shoes consist of. If they are not
wooden or bast shoes, there will be leather soles and uppers, joined together
by thread and nails. Such gear serves to clothe the feet. Depending on the use
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to which shoes are to be put, whether for work in the field or for dancing,
matter and form will differ. (OWA 158)1 1 1
The consideration of the thing, which is equivalent to thinking the word “shoes,”
gives way to two different views: the first one concerns the ordinary view, which
does not need the exhibition of actual pieces (die Vorlage der wirklichen Stucke”),
while the second belongs to the Van Gogh painting. According to the first view, one
already knows the shoes: he has already exhibited such shoes in his imagination by
way of usual and ordinary representations. To illustrate this pedestrian view,
Heidegger describes the makeup of the object using a decidedly technical language:
soles, uppers, threads, nails, dance vs. field shoes, wooden or bast shoes. The
description is reminiscent of a catalogue that exhibits the technical features of the
shoes: the thing is framed within a particular frame of usefulness (which could also
be understood as a sphere or horizon of usefulness). This catalogue-view magnifies
the technical, useful aspects of the thing and is not interested in seeing the thing
beyond the frame of usefulness; in fact, it is not interested in seeing the thing at all.
According to this frame, the thing is in the vicinity of only those things that are
relevant to its own function as useful (the feet or the terrain).
1 1 1 Zu deren Beschreibung bedarf es nicht einmal der Vorlage wirklicher Stucke dieser Art
von Gebrauchszeug. Jedermann kennt sie. Aber da es doch auf eine unmittelbare
Beschreibung ankommt, mag es gut sein, die Veranschaulichung zu erleichtem. Fur diese
Nachhilfe gentigt eine bildliche Darstellung. Wir wahlen dazu ein bekanntes Gemalde von
van Gogh, der solches Schuhzeug mehrmals gemalt hat. Jedermann weiBt, was zum Schuh
gehort. Wenn es nicht gerade Holz- oder Bastschuhe sind, finden sich da die Sohle aus Leder
und das Oberleder, beide zusammengefugt durch Nahte und Nagel. Solches Zeug dient zur
FuBbekleidung. Entsprechend der Dienlichkeit, ob zur Feldarbeit oder zum Tanz, sind Stoff
und Form anders (UKW 18).
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What is the purpose of the second view, the one afforded by the evocation of
the Van Gogh painting? The evocation of the painting is rather curious; Heidegger
first mentions the painting, in order to “facilitate the visualization” of the shoes, but
the description of the shoes that follows has nothing to do with the painting. Instead
of describing the painting, which is evoked to enable an immediate description of the
shoes (“eine unmittelbare Beschreibung”), Heidegger first espouses the catalogue-
view of the shoes, which does not need such visualization or exhibition (“Vorlage”)
to begin with. The description of the shoes is already immediate, easy, effortless, and
maybe, a little too facile; in other words, anyone can conjure up the catalogue-view,
which is more at hand, more accessible than the painting. Heidegger’s reference to
the painting cannot be on account of an immediate description, since such
immediacy is already available in the catalogue-view. Nor can Heidegger’s reference
be on account of the facilitation of the visualization of the shoes; since, by
Heidegger’s own admission, thinking the shoes does not need any exhibit or
visualization of the shoes.
It is possible to think that the evocation of the painting makes the enterprise
of thinking the shoes even harder. The painting is not only unneeded, it is also
inadequate, if what Heidegger really intends is a direct description (“eine
unmittelbare Beschreibung”) of the actual shoes (“wirkliche Stucke”). The shoes in
the painting are pictorial representations, whose name, i.e., “shoes,” we also apply to
our everyday fiction of “actual” shoes. The relation between the two fictions,
between the “actual shoes” and the shoes in the painting, far from being immediate,
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is a relation mediated through the two-dimensionality of the painting medium, Van
Gogh’s subjective use of color, shape, to say the least. If a truth about the actual
shoes is ever to be revealed in the interpretation of Van Gogh’s painting, which uses
pictorial shoes instead of actual ones, such truth cannot be an immediate truth. The
truth needs the mediation, and, I would like to emphasize, the imagination of a
subject. Heidegger’s description of actual shoes, based on pictorial ones, is
dependent upon the work of an imagining subject, who can see the actual shoes in
place of the Active ones. Thus, the subject of mediation is necessarily implied as the
locus of mediation between the shoes of everyday and the shoes of the painting, in
that initial, seemingly unproblematic gesture of Heidegger’s pointing to the painting.
Why the Picture?
If Heidegger’s appeals to direct description and facilitation of the
visualization of the shoes are questionable, why the Picture? If “direct description”
was ever the issue, then Heidegger could have made us look at the shoes that we
wear; this would have, indeed, facilitated the visualization of the shoes. It is true that
Heidegger wants us to visualize not any shoes, but peasant shoes; but it is not
obvious that one could describe the shoes in the Van Gogh painting as peasant shoes,
just by looking at them. As Sassen notes, the ownership of the shoes has led to a
debate in art criticism: according to Shapiro, the shoes belong to Van Gogh himself,
112
while, according to Derrida, the question of ownership cannot be answered (160).
1 1 2 The debate centers upon Heidegger’s ambiguous statement “We shall choose a well-
known painting by Van Gogh, who painted such shoes several times,” (“wir wahlen dazu ein
bekanntes Gemalde von van Gogh, der solches Schuhzeug mehrmals gemalt hat”), but which
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The somewhat inadequate evocation of the Van Gogh painting in a passage where
Heidegger wants to figure out the essence of an equipment (the shoes) is certainly a
rhetorical strategy that brings the focus of the essay to its apparent subject-matter:
the essence of the work of art. But, with this evocation, Heidegger does something
more: he shows that his interest lies not in the actual thing, but in the thought of the
thing, which, in turn, is analogous to the name or the fiction of the thing. The
visualization in question, therefore, concerns less the actual shoes and more the
thought of the shoes. The same logic runs through both the thought of the thing, and
its depiction in an actual Picture, which, by Heidegger’s choice, is the Van Gogh
painting. It is possible to think that the reference to the Van Gogh painting is an
analogy of the thought of the thing. If the thought of the thing in Heidegger’s
analogical chain is closest to poetry and also language as ur-poesy, then the painting
might be thought as the analogy of an exemplary use of language. In other words,
“well-known painting” is he talking about, given that, according to Shapiro, there are eight
of these to choose from? “Such shoes” (“solches Schuhzeug”) refer to the pair of peasant
shoes (“ein Paar Bauemschuhe”), but, according to Shapiro, the two pictures of Van Gogh
that unequivocally depict peasant shoes “lacks the characteristic worn surface and dark
insides of Heidegger’s [following] description of the painting.” (205). In fact, there are only
three shoes paintings, in which the shoe pairs may be said to have these characteristics,
which are “clearly pictures of the artist’s own shoes.” In a personal communication through
correspondence, Heidegger reveals to him that “the picture to which he referred [in the
essay] is one that he saw in a show at Amsterdam in March 1930;” doing some detective
work, Shapiro concludes that this is the painting of the shoes, referred to as “no.255” in de la
Faille’s catalogue of all of Van Gogh’s canvasses. The shoes, Shapiro notes, are depictions
of Van Gogh’s own shoes, which he produced while in Paris. Neither pairs o f shoes are
referred to as “peasant shoes” in the literature: the title is usually “old shoes,” “pair of
boots,” “/as souliers,” or “boots with laces.” According to a catalogue: “Contrary to the title
‘old’ shoes, these shoes are most likely Van Gogh’s own ones.” (Vincent Van Gogh.
Amsterdam: NV’t Lanthuys, 1969). Interestingly, while there seems to be a general
agreement that the shoes are the artist’s own shoes, Jameson’s interpretation of the painting
unreflectively adopts Heidegger’s assumption that they are peasant shoes.
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Heidegger’s use of the painting, serves, first and foremost, as the illustration of
truthful philosophical thought, and of eventful language. This means that the
painting, if and when truth happens in it, does not “stand for” the thing’s being, since
such a Picture would be more reminiscent of representative thinking (“Vorstellen” or
“vorstellendes Denken”) than the philosophical thinking of truth. As my later
discussions will show, representative thinking for Heidegger holds the thing, just like
Wittgenstein’s drawing of the cube, in a conceptual straitjacket, and must be rejected
for a truly philosophical thinking, that reveals the thing in its truth. The underlying,
and very sound, assumption in Heidegger’s ideas on the work of art is that there is no
way of knowing anything about the thing in itself, unless one goes through the
thought of it, which means, through the fiction or the name of the thing. To put this
differently, and assuming, at this early stage, that the notion of truth is
unproblematic, any search for the truth of the thing must start in the realm of
thought, language and fiction, and I would like to add, in the realm of the Picture.
There is first the everyday catalogue view of the thing, a view that is
available, ready to hand, unexciting and orderable, which the philosophical thought
must overcome by thinking the fiction of the thing in another way, a way that would,
according to Heidegger, deserve the designation “truth.” It is at this point in his
discussion, in which philosophical thought is to find the truth of the shoes, that
Heidegger evokes Van Gogh’s fiction of the shoes. But what exactly does
Heidegger expect from it? Interestingly, after the introduction of the painting,
Heidegger does not mention the painting again; instead he points out the
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shortcomings of the catalogue view of the shoes, while espousing another view, a
third view, which is the view of the peasant’s world:
The equipmental quality of equipment consists in its usefulness. But what about
this usefulness? In conceiving it, do we already conceive along with it the
equipmental character of equipment? In order to succeed in doing this, must we
not look out for useful equipment in its use? The peasant woman wears her shoes
in the field. Only, here are they what they are. They are all the more genuinely so,
the less the peasant woman thinks about the shoes while she is at work, or looks at
them at all, or is even aware of them. She stands and walks in them. This is how
shoes actually serve. It is in the process of the use of the equipment that we must
t i l
actually encounter the character of the equipment. (OWA 159)
The painting, and its description, is still not in sight; instead, we have Heidegger’s
first description of the world of a peasant, as Heidegger imagines it. The catalogue
view that demands an exclusive focus on the shoes and their technical aspects is now
abandoned for a much broader view that involves the use of the shoes by the bearer
of the shoes, who is a peasant standing, walking and toiling in the field. In the
meantime, Heidegger assigns a specific gender to the user of the shoes: somehow,
the peasant wearing the shoes is a woman. In the peasant woman’s world, Heidegger
is particularly interested in the process (“Vorgang”), or I would like to add, the
narrative of the use of the shoes.
Heidegger’s description of the peasant woman’s attitude towards her shoes is
peculiar; he tells us that she just uses the shoes, without thinking about, or even
1 1 3 .. .Das Zeugsein des Zeuges besteht in seiner Dienlichkeit. Aber w ie steht es mit dieser
selbst? Fassen wir mit ihr schon das Zeughafte des Zeuges? Mussen wir nicht, damit das
gelingt, das dienliche Zeug in seinem Dienst aufsuchen? Die Bauerin auf dem Acker tragt
die Schuhe. Hier erst sind sie, was sie sind. Sie sind dies um so echter, je weniger bei der
Arbeit an die Schuhe denkt oder sie gar anschaut oder auch nur spiirt, Sie steht und geht in
ihnen. So dienen die Schuhe wirklich. An diesem Vorgang des Zeuggebrauches muB uns das
Zeughafte wirklich begegnen (UKW 18).
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looking at them (“sie gar anschaut”). There seems to be a point in her not-looking at
the shoes, as if her indiscrimination or inattention authenticated the use of the shoes
as equipment. The shoes do not suffer from her visual or reflective inattention; they
are “what they are,” genuine (“echt”), and genuinely actual (“wirklich”), when they
are used in the peasant’s world. The description of the peasant’s world has, by far,
nothing to do with the Van Gogh painting. Rather than being any kind of description
(“Beschreibung”) of the shoes, this is the beginning of Heidegger’s exercise of
imagination, of a piece of imaginative writing (“Schreiben”). While pointing to the
necessity of considering the process of the use of the shoes, Heidegger is, in fact, in
the process of inventing a narrative around the use of the peasant shoes.
Why, then, the Van Gogh painting? In other words, why the Picture?
Interestingly, in the next passage that somewhat directly engages the painting,
Heidegger does not seem to think that the painting offers something more, different
or new compared to the catalog view of the shoes:
As long as we only imagine a pair of shoes in general, or simply look at the
empty, unused shoes as they merely stand there in the picture, we shall never
experience what the equipmental being of the equipment in truth is. From
Van Gogh’s painting we cannot even tell where the shoes stand [and to whom
they belong (Heidegger’s addition in I960)]. There is nothing surrounding
this pair of peasant shoes in or to which they might belong- only an
undefined space. There are not even clods of soil from the field or the field-
path sticking to them, which would at least point to their use. A pair of
peasant shoes and nothing more. (OWA 159)1 1 4
1 1 4 Solange wir uns dagegen nur in allgemeinen ein Paar Schuhe vergegenwartigen oder gar
im Bilde die bloB dastehenden leeren, ungebrauchten Schuhe ansehen, werden wir nie
erfahren, was das Zeugsein des Zeuges in Wahrheit ist. Nach dem Gemalde von Van Gogh
konnen wir nicht einmal feststellen, wo diese Schuhe stehen (und wem sie gehoren). Um
dieses Paar Bauemschuhe herum ist nichts, wozu und wohin sie gehoren konnten, nur ein
unbestimmter Raum. Nicht einmal Erdklumpen von der Ackersscholle oder vom Feldweg
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Is this a description of the Picture or the anticipation of another Picture? If there is
anything at all about the painting in this paragraph, it is about what the painting is
not. The depiction of the shoes in the painting, as Heidegger sees it, is a largely
deficient one: one cannot figure out the place of the shoes, or the owner of the shoes.
There is no sign attached to the shoes that could point to the use of the shoes: no
clods of soil from the field or the field-path sticking to them. While talking about the
shoes in the negative, Heidegger could, in fact, have even gone one step further, and
said that there is no sign in the painting that these shoes are peasant shoes either.
Despite the fact that Heidegger has summoned the painting to facilitate the
visualization of the shoes, so that by looking at it, we could come up an immediate
description of it, there is, apparently, nothing to be gained from simply looking at it.
The shoes are merely there (“bloB dastehend”), empty (“leer”), unused
(“ungebraucht”), up in the air, indeterminate, surrounded by an indeterminate space
(“ein unbestimmter Raum”). The look at the painting, which never facilitated the
direct description of the shoes to begin with, reveals even less than the catalogue
view, which, at least, offers a general description (“in allgemeinen”) of any pair of
shoes. If the look at the painting’s shoes is so worthless, why bring up the Picture?
In this (non-) description of the painting, Heidegger makes an indirect appeal
to the reader to stop just seeing (“ansehen”) the empty shoes, and begin to experience
(“erfahren”) the truth (“Wahrheit”) of the shoes. Interestingly, Heidegger has already
kleben daran, was doch wenigstens auf ihre Verwendung hinweisen konnte. Ein Paar
Bauemschuhe und nichts weiter (UKW 19).
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mentioned the basic attributes of such truth in the preceding paragraph in which he
introduces a peasant woman, using such shoes, standing, walking and working in
them without even looking at them. In the (non-) description of the painting, he has
already set the direction, which the experience of the truth will take, towards the
world of the peasant woman. He sees the shoes in the painting, exclusively, in terms
of what they are lacking in comparison with the imaginary use of the shoes in the
field. By pointing to the lack of “the clods of the soil from the field” in the depiction
of the shoes, he indirectly anticipates the coming of another Picture, in which the
shoes bear the signs of the soil, field and field ways. The surrounding, or
environment, which the shoes lack in the Van Gogh painting, will be provided in an
anticipated Picture, whose mainlines have been sketched in the very brief evocation
of the peasant woman’s world. The anticipated Picture will, as Heidegger will do in
the next paragraphs, build a world around the shoes (“um dieses Paar Baumschuhe
herum”). This world, already somewhere in between Heidegger’s lines, will
constitute an environment (“Um-welt”), with which, these unyielding shoes, floating
in an indeterminate space (“unbestimmter Raum”), will receive a place and belong to
1 1 5 This implicit idea of the world as an environment or Umwelt resonates with Jones’s
suggestive account of the notion of circumspection, or Um-sicht, in H eidegger’s Being and
Time: “[Umsicht] is a mode of ‘sight’ by which we look around and take in a structured
whole. In it, entities are uncovered not just in the way they look in themselves, but rather in
their significance, that is, as related to other items in the complex and to the complex as a
whole” (73). The world as such a structured whole is the environment (Umwelt) of the
entity, constituted by circumspection (Um-sicht) that displays the relations between the thing
and the world.
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In the painting, the unused shoes just stand there, with no visible sign that could
point to their use (“auf ihre Verwendung hinweisen”). A truthful experience of the
shoes, as opposed to the simple contemplation of the shoes in the painting, must take
the unused shoes and bring them into the field (“Feld”) of other signs in which they
are in actual use. What is the use of the painting, then, if it places the thing in an
indeterminate space and removes its sign of use, if all it depicts are “a pair of peasant
shoes and nothing more,” and nothing further (“ein Paar Bauemschuhe und nichts
weiter”)? Why, then, the Picture? Here, Heidegger’s “account” of the painting seems
to break, or come to a halt. But then... It goes further:
“A pair of peasant shoes and nothing further. And yet.”
“Ein Paar Bauerschuhe und nichts weiter. Und dennoch.”
This “and yet” is probably the clearest statement in Heidegger’s reference to the Van
Gogh painting: one does not just look at the shoes in the painting, as they are unused,
indeterminate, cut off from any environment; one goes further (“weiter”) with them.
There is something yet to experience (“erfahren”) with the painting, something more,
different and new, which cannot be grasped by simply looking at it. But, where does
one go further with the painting? What is the territory of the experience of the “and
yet” of the painting? In the following, it becomes obvious that such territory is
Heidegger’s personal imagination, his very own fancy. Here, Heidegger engages in
the making of an imaginary Picture, whose outlines he had already anticipated:
From-the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of
the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is
the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and
ever uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the
dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles stretches the loneliness of
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the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth,
its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the
fallow desolation of the wintry field. This equipment is pervaded by
uncomplaining wony as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy of having
once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending childbed and
shivering at the surrounding menace of death. The equipment belongs to the
earth, and it is protected in the world of the peasant woman. From out of this
protected belonging to the equipment itself rises its resting-within-itself.
(OWA 159-160)
Is Heidegger still looking at the shoes in the painting, or somewhere else? There are
a few signs in this paragraph that could refer to the visual experience of the painting
(“dark opening of the dark insides,” “stiffly rugged heaviness” and the “leather”),
but these are much fewer in comparison with the imagery, with which Heidegger
himself supplements this passage with: far spreading and ever uniform furrows, the
raw wind, the damp and rich soil, the peasant’s toilsome walk, the impending
childbed, etc. Isn’t this another Picture that Heidegger’s imagination has made on the
suggestions of the first Picture, which is, (or rather, happens to be) the Van Gogh
Painting?
In this obvious flight of imagination, Heidegger takes the signs of the shoes
and weaves them into another Picture, a broader, spacious, panoramic, world-
1 1 6 Aus der dunklen Offnung des ausgetretenen Inwendigen des Schuhzeuges starrt die
Mtihsal der Arbeitsschritte. In der derbgediegenen Schwere des Schuhzeuges ist aufgestaut
die Zahigkeit des langsamen Ganges durch die weithin gestreckten und immer gleichen
Furchen des Ackers, liber dem ein rauher Wind steht. Auf dem Leder liegt das Feuchte und
Satte des Bodens. Unter den Sohlen schiebt sich hin die Einsamkeit des Feldweges durch
den sinkenden Abend. In dem Schuhzeug schwingt der verschwiegene Zuruf der Erde, ihr
stilles Verschenken des reifenden Korns und ihr unerklartes Sichversagen in der oden
Brache des winterlichen Feldes. Durch dieses Zeug zieht das klaglose Bangen um die
Sicherheit des Brotes, die wortlose Freude des Wiederuberstehens der Not, das Beben in der
Ankunft der Geburt und das Zittem in der Umdrohung des Todes. Zur Erde gehort dieses
Zeug und in der Welt der Bauerin ist es behiitet. Aus diesem behtiteten Zugehoren ersteht
das Zeug selbst zu seinem Insichruhen (UKW 19).
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disclosing one. In fact, Heidegger ends up so far from the Van Gogh painting that it
would be fanciful to insist that his writing could be a description, or an interpretation
of the painting at all. The enterprise of description seems to be destroyed in the very
moment that Heidegger makes an appeal to the beyond, to that which is “yet” to
come. The experience of that, which is to be captured in the fragment “and yet,”
results, not in any further description of the painting, but in the rush of Heidegger’s
own imagery, which brings the world around the shoes, or brings about a world-
Picture.
What Picture?
There is, then, Van Gogh’s Picture, “and yet” other Pictures. By way of this
“and yet,” the Van Gogh painting begets other Pictures; it becomes a Pictorial
source. But insofar as these other Pictures are the making of different subjects, who
use the painting (or the fiction or the name of the things referred to in the painting),
Heidegger’s Picture is only one possibility out of many. On the one hand, Heidegger
treats the Van Gogh painting as a Pictorial source from which the fantasy of the
world of the peasant (woman) could be brought out, or to use Heidegger’s language,
set up (“aufstellen”). Heidegger’s imagination feeds on the suggestiveness, on the
indeterminancy, on the un-use of the shoes in Van Gogh painting; he brings the sign
(“the shoes”) into the larger, broader, fuller field of signs, which he designates as
“the peasant woman’s world,” but which he could as well have designated as the
field of language. On the other hand, however, it is not at all plausible that Van
Gogh’s painting, necessarily and of itself, entails Heidegger’s world-Picture. It is one
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thing to say that the painting, by virtue of suggesting an “and yet,” is a Pictorial
source, it is another to say that this “and yet” is as in Heidegger’s description of his
world-Picture. One may conjure so many other Pictures, smaller ones, Pictures of
smaller worlds: a small humble memory—my memory of learning to tie shoelaces—
brought about with the suggestion of a look at the Van Gogh Picture, could be
devoid of any world-significance for anyone else but me. There is no reason, as
Jameson would like us to believe, why an interpreter of the painting has to
reconstruct “some initial situation,” a “vaster reality” out of which the finished work
emerges, so that the painting not “sink to the level of sheer decoration” (8): any
interpreter’s life is vast enough to take care of producing affect.1 1 7 It would be
1 1 7 Jameson’s interpretation of the painting shares many of the same elements with
Heidegger’s interpretation. He proposes that the interpreter “reconstruct some initial
situation out of which the finished work emerges” if the painting is not to “sink to the level
of sheer decoration.” This initial situation in Jameson’s interpretation is the world of
Heidegger’s peasant-woman: “the whole rudimentary human world of backbreaking peasant
toil, a world reduced to its most brutal and menaced, primitive and marginalized state.” The
intense materiality of the paint, by magnifying visual pleasures, transforms this world into a
“whole Utopian realm of the senses,” as different from the setting up of the imagined world
of the “peasant woman”, emphasized in Heidegger’s interpretation. Despite this difference,
Jameson describes both his and Heidegger’s interpretation “as hermeneutical, in the sense in
which the work in its inert, objectal form is taken as a clue or a symptom for some vaster
reality which replaces it as its ultimate truth.” (8) The question Jameson’s hermeneutic
interpretation must face is whether in the process of interpretation, there is at all a moment,
in which a work of art, insofar as it uses the fiction of an actual object such as the “shoes”,
could be posited as “inert” or “objectal” or “sheerly decorative,” unless, of course, we are
thinking of an interpreter who has neither used, nor heard of, any shoes. The shoes could
indeed be seen as “a clue or a symptom for some vaster reality,” but such reality is always
some reality, and not the reality, and most definitely, not the “ultimate truth.” The fact that
one uses such shoes in everyday life is enough to produce this “vaster reality;” and there is
no reason why such a simple fact should be dug out as if it constituted the ultimate truth of
the “symptom,” which Jameson takes the work of art to be. It turns out that the treatment of
artwork as a symptom serves Jameson’s historical speculations about postmodemity:
Jameson characterizes the vast reality of Van Gogh’s painting with high-modemist affect,
with respect to which he somehow chooses to see Warhol’s shoes as exemplifying the
affectless simulacra of postmodernism, devoid of the world-disclosing dimension (9). In
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submissively yielding to an interpretive authority to accept that one’s memory of the
shoes is in any way lacking in comparison with Heidegger’s peasant shoes narrative.
Heidegger’s fantasy is as arbitrary as any other that originates in the look at Van
Gogh’s painting.
But what is the painting, then, if not an excuse to build another Picture upon
it, around it, with it? Shouldn’t one be just to the Picture and stay with it, at least for
some time, without comparing it to other ones? There is too much of a rush in
Heidegger’s imagery; too rapid a move from what is inside the frame to that
imaginary world of the peasant woman. The revelatory potential that Heidegger
expects to originate from the painting is tremendous: the painting that depicts a pair
of unused shoes is anticipated to bring to mind all those scenes of the peasant life,
including the desolate wintry fields and the impending childbed. The relation
between Van Gogh’s painting and the world—a world, which is thought to originate
in the painting, but which is ultimately Heidegger’s own fantasy—is so tenuous that
even Heidegger seems to be unsure about the role of the painting in his “account” of
it. The language he uses after the introduction of his peasant world-Picture betrays a
confusion as to what Picture he is looking at:
But perhaps, it is only in the picture that we notice all this about the shoes.
Aber all dieses sehen wir vielleicht nur dem Schuhzeug im Bilde an.
All this (“all dieses”) refers to the elements of the imaginary world Picture, in other
words, the fantasy of the peasant woman’s world that Heidegger has built around the
other words, depth, symptom and the hint for a “vast reality” belong to the Van Gogh
painting, and, in a dichotomy-producing fashion, not to the Warhol production.
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shoes. 1 1 8 We notice “all this,” which reveals the essence of the shoes in the Picture,
but what Picture? With “Picture,” Heidegger apparently refers to the Van Gogh
painting; and, if this is the case, this is the second time he uses the word “Picture” in
reference to the painting. In the first time, Heidegger casts a simple look at the
Picture, only to see the shoes, as they “merely stand there, empty, unused” (“gar im
Bilde die blob dastehenden leeren, ungebrauchten Schuhe ansehen”). In the second
time, his look at the Picture reveals the essence of the shoes (“all dieses dem
Schuhzeug im Bilde ansehen’). He therefore replaces the empty first look with a
revelatory second look. But, how did Heidegger learn about the essence of the shoes
in the Picture, if not through the other Picture that he conjured upon the call of the
“and yet,” in between the first and second look? Doesn’t this second look, perhaps
(“vielleicht”), concern Heidegger’s own Picture, rather than Van Gogh’s painting?
His language, here, reflects ambivalence concerning the Picture of his gaze: it is
“perhaps” the Van Gogh Picture, or, perhaps, something else: Heidegger’s own
Picture. Perhaps, in attempt to bridge the two Pictures, Heidegger comes back to a
view of the shoes, as standing there, empty, unused, just as he first saw them in the
Van Gogh painting:
1 1 8 This fantasy of the peasant woman’s world may have partially developed from
H eidegger’s admiration for the paintings o f Paula Becker-M odersohn. According to Petzet,
Heidegger paid a special visit to Worpswede, “in order to visit [the painter’s] grave and to
get to know her paintings,” both at a gallery and at an art exhibition of those paintings that
belonged to the Roselius Collection. Petzet notes: “They were mostly paintings from her
early years as an artist - pictures from the rural surroundings of Worpswede, pictures of old
women ravaged by heavy work, pictures of people in the poorhouse, on whose faces lay the
dull-weight of a used-up life” (136).
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But perhaps, it is only in the picture that we see all this about the shoes. The
peasant woman, on the other hand, simply wears them. If only this simple
wearing were so simple. When she takes off her shoes late in the evening, in
deep but healthy fatigue, and reaches out for them again in the still dawn, or
passes them by on the day of rest, she knows all this without noticing or
reflecting. (OWA 160)1 1 9
Unlike the world (and earth) disclosing gestures of the previous paragraph, the tone
of Heidegger’s narrative here is much simpler: The peasant woman takes off the
shoes late in the evening, and wears them in the still dawn, or passes them by on the
day of rest. Heidegger’s Picture implies a shot of the empty, unused shoes as they
stand there, in between her evening and dawn and during the course of her day of
rest.
Just looking at the Picture or the actual shoes would not reveal anything
about the shoes if Heidegger did not come up with a world-Picture, chronicling the
life of a peasant woman; it is through his imaginary world-Picture that Van Gogh’s
Picture of the shoes assumes significances of a world-disclosing variety. In other
words, it is not the contemplation (“observation and reflection”) of the thing, but the
contemplation of the field of the peasant woman’s world, which in putting the thing
to use or leaving it to its un-use, can show the thing’s essence or truth. But, such a
conclusion, which Heidegger draws from his own Picture, can hardly be the outcome
of contemplating the Van Gogh painting; as I tried to show, the painting has very
1 1 9 Aber all dieses sehen wir vielleicht nur dem Schuhzeug im Bilde an. Die Bauerin dagegen
tragt einfach die Schuhe. Wenn dieses einfache Tragen so einfach ware. Sooft die Bauerin
am spaten Abend in einer harten, aber gesunden Mudigkeit die Schuhe wegstellt und im
noch dunklen Morgendammem schon wieder nach ihnen greift, oder am Feiertag an innen
vorbeikommt, dann weifi sie ohne Beobachten und Betrachten all jenes (UKW 19-20).
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little, and in fact, almost nothing to do with Heidegger’s “account” of it. What seems
to be the interpretation of the painting turns out to be an exercise in a kind of
imaginative writing, an example of a particular kind of aesthetic imagination which
intends to Picture the world around the name “peasant shoes,” and not even around
the shoes of the Van Gogh painting.
The repetition that is the truth
Heidegger’s writing does not so much describe the painting as it mimics it in
its affect. It is the “ and yet," the expansiveness of the experience of the painting,
which Heidegger tries to recreate in his writing, as he evokes the peasant-woman-
world-Picture. He Pictures this “and yet,” which cannot be anything other than the
aesthetic affect of the painting on the viewing subject, as the world of the peasant
woman. To draw the Picture of the “and yet;” he looks for a way of writing - the
writing o f the world—whose affect on the reader is commensurate with that of the
painting. One may even suspect that the grand themes of the essay, such as the truth,
essence and opening, are surface themes compared with Heidegger’s real occupation,
which is, to find a non-ordinary style of writing. The truth of the “shoes,” as I will
show, is ultimately, a foregone conclusion: whatever Heidegger says about it after
looking at the painting, he says it even before he looks at the painting. Such truth is
somewhat stated, in ordinary prose, within the passage in which Heidegger first
brings up the walk of the peasant woman. Let’s repeat:
The equipmental quality of equipment consists in its usefulness. But what
about this usefulness? In conceiving it, do we already conceive along with it
the equipmental character of equipment? In order to succeed in doing this,
must we not look out for useful equipment in its use? The peasant woman
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wears her shoes in the field. Only, here are they what they are. They are all
the more genuinely so, the less the peasant woman thinks about the shoes
while she is at work, or looks at them at all, or is even aware of them. She
stands and walks in them. This is how shoes actually serve. It is in the
process of the use of the equipment that we must actually encounter the
character of the equipment.
It is in the use of the shoes that one must actually encounter (“wirklich begegnen”)
the essence of the shoes, which here is referred to as the character of the equipment
or the equipmental (“Das Zeughafte”). Heidegger has now introduced the gendered
peasant woman, while she is working, standing and walking in the shoes. Granted,
the truth of the shoes, or the encounter (“begegnen”) with its character, reads like a
future project that will be realized only after looking at the picture. Curiously,
however, nothing that Heidegger says in his “account” of the painting adds to the
statements in the above paragraph, philosophically. After looking at the painting,
Heidegger repeats the ideas in these statements, but the second time around, he says
them differently. Let’s repeat:
From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of
the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is
the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and
ever uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the
dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles stretches the loneliness of
the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth,
its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the
fallow desolation of the wintry field. This equipment is pervaded by
uncomplaining worry as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy of having
once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending childbed and
shivering at the surrounding menace of death. The equipment belongs to the
earth, and it is protected in the world of the peasant woman. From out of this
protected belonging to the equipment itself rises its resting-within-itself.
We have, in essence, the peasant woman again using the shoes as she walks across
and works in the field; a narrative that documents her use of the shoes. Whatever
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Heidegger says before in synopsis, he now says it again as a literary narrative. In
these restatements and repetitions, he turns an ordinary philosophical example into a
resonating piece of literature. His style appeals and triggers our imagination for the
making of an affective Picture, in which the shoes are to be seen in the context of the
peasant woman’s world. The shoes are no longer mere shoes, but sensualized,
aestheticized things: their sensuousness brings about the sensuousness of the world
of their use. Heidegger’s shoes, i.e. the shoes of his imaginative literary narrative,
now become saturated with the affects of their use-narrative in the peasant world:
the leather reveals the “dampness” and “richness” of the soil, on which the peasant
walks. But since the soil is not an issue in the painting (in fact, Heidegger has
previously remarked, in a slight complaining manner, the lack of “clumps of soil” in
it), such “dampness” and “richness” must be imaginary and must be imagined by his
reader. Without the reader’s (subjective) imagination, there is no affect, and
therefore no Heideggerian truth. Heidegger’s shoes are in touch with his imaginary
earth, imagined as the damp and rich soil, the lonely field paths in the evening, the
fields of ripening grain, the desolate wintry fields. They are also in touch with the
imaginary world of the peasant woman: with her toilsome or tenacious walk, and I
imagine, with her state of mind during that walk, (the “uncomplaining” worry as to
the certainty of bread), with her memories (the “trembling before the impending
childbed”), with her anxieties (“shivering at the surrounding menace of death”).
What Heidegger seems to have found out in the Van Gogh painting, is not the
truth about the shoes, since such truth has been previously stated, but a way to make
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his writing resonant, sensuous, affective. Ordinarily speaking, or in Heidegger’s
ordinary writing, one must encounter the truth of the shoes in the use of the shoes,
which implies that there might be a difference between the use of the shoes and the
truth of the shoes. But Heidegger’s non-ordinary rewrite unknowingly shows that
such “truth” can be nothing other than the affective quality of that encounter with the
use of the shoes, nothing other than the affect-producing potential or associative
expansiveness of imagining a certain kind of use. To put this differently, the truth is
only an affect, produced by the affective encounter with the use of the shoes in
Heidegger’s own writing. 1 2 0 Contrary to this, however, Heidegger insists on having
1 2 0 Or, following Habermas’ interpretation of Heidegger, such truth is the force of
Heidegger’s own writing. Habermas’s description and critique of Heidegger’s truth-claims in
Being and Time and in his later philosophy could equally be applied the truth of the artwork
and of language in the “Work of Art” essay:
The truths of [Heidegger’s] temporalized Ursprungsphilosophie are in each case
provincial and total: they are more like the commanding expressions of some sacral
force fitted out with the aura of truth.. .Already in [Being and Time], the world-
project disclosive of meaning is raised above any and every critical forum: The
luminous force of world-disclosing language is hypostatized. It no longer has to
prove itself by its capacity to throw light on beings in the world... [Similarly in
Heidegger’s later philosophy] Heidegger misleadingly furnishes the metahistorical
authority of a primordial force set temporally aflow with the attribute of being a
happening of truth. (154-155)
The “sacral,” “luminous,” and seemingly “primordial” force of the “and yet” endows the
experience of the artwork with an “aura,” thereby arbitrarily grounding a fantasy of “truth”
1 2 0 without necessitating any proof. To rephrase Tugendhat’s criticism, one may ask
Heidegger “what justification and what significance does it have that [he] chooses ‘truth,’ of
all words,” to name this sacral force (116, Quoted by Lafont)? That Heidegger’s “truth” is a
genre of “force” is also mentioned in Lafont’s analysis of the truth in the “Work of Art ”
essay. In Lafont’s following statements, the phrase “putting truth into force” could be
substituted with “putting ‘truth’ into affect.”
[Heidegger] aims to show that [scientific] knowledge is dependent on (and
derivative of) the regions of culture that genuinely possess world-disclosing force
(art, religion, politics, philosophy, etc.) Because of this force, these cultural
institutions (in contrast with science) are capable of “putting truth into force” (in the
form of ontological background knowledge or a knowledge of meaning that “opens
up a world”). (156)
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chanced upon the truth of the shoes during his reflection on the Van Gogh shoes, or
his own writing about the shoes.
The equipmental being of the equipment consists indeed in its usefulness. But
this usefulness itself rests in the abundance of the essential being of the
equipment. We call it reliability. By virtue of this reliability of the equipment
[the peasant woman] is made privy (“eingelassen”) to the silent call of the
earth; by virtue of the reliability of the equipment she is sure of her world.
(OWA 160)1 2 1
It is indeed usefulness, which is the truth of the shoes; so the encounter with the use
of the shoes in the rewrite did not reveal anything different. In the rewrite, the use of
the shoes has been endowed, by way of a different use of language, with the “and
Since there is no substance in this “truth,” but the affect of its abundant, world-disclosing
force, Heidegger’s “truth” is an empty signifier to be filled out with a theological and
apophantic readiness for the “truth” to take place, not through subjective acts of will, but, as
Habermas notes, through “resignation to fate” (140). According to Habermas, Heidegger’s
“propositionally contentless speech” about Being, and I would like to add, “truth,” results in
the “effect of a diffuse readiness to obey in relation to an auratic but indeterminate authority”
(140). Insofar as “truth” is nothing but a force, it may be arbitrarily attributed to a political
authority, which is thought to embody its force, and thus, is to be obeyed. In the continuation
of his critique, Habermas fleshes out the political implications of Heidegger’s philosophy, in
relation to Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism” essay, in which human beings are described
as the “shepherds of Being’” and in which their “thoughtful remembrance of Being” will be
determined, not by their own actions, but by ‘the destining of Being:”
[Heidegger’s] later philosophy suggests the submissiveness of an empty readiness
for subjugation. To be sure, [Heidegger’s] empty formula of “thoughtful
remembrance” [of Being] can also be filled in with a different attitudinal syndrome,
for example with the anarchist demand for a subversive stance of refusal, which
corresponds more to present moods than does the blind submission to something
superior. (140)
The adherents of Heidegger’s genre of “truth” either obey the authority, which they
arbitrarily take to embody the force of “truth”, as Heidegger’s own acceptance of and
willful submission to fascism well into the end of the 1930s, or, as a simple extension of the
same attitude, doggedly refuse that, which does not a ppear to them to have the “force” of
truth, as Heidegger’s critique of technological frame and the contemporary anarchist’s
refusal of societal structures. The flip side of arbitrary submission is arbitrary subversion.
1 2 1 Das Zeugsein des Zeuges besteht zwar in seiner Dienlichkeit. Aber diese selbst ruht in der
Fulle eines wesentlichen Seins des Zeuges. Wir nennen es die VerlaBlichkeit. Kraft ihrer ist
die Bauerin durch dieses Zeug eingelassen in den schweigenden Zuruf der Erde, kraft der
VerlaBlichkeit des Zeuges ist sie ihrer Welt gewiB (UKW 19).
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yet,” or with the abundance, fullness, saturation or surplus (“die Ftille”) of its being
with other things. Heidegger takes the notion of usefulness from the immediate
territory of the frame of the use, a territory indicated in the catalogue-view of the
shoes, in order to bring the thing into the realm of other things, which is the world of
the thing. If Heidegger renames “usefulness” as “reliability,” it is not because the
second designation is more precise, but because, in it, Heidegger can hear the
affective nuances that suggest the “and yet.”
It is now possible to display the mechanics of Heidegger’s thinking about the
shoes. Following the structure of Wittgenstein’s cube example, we may posit a
hypothetical moment of linguistic utterance in Heidegger’s shoes example in which
his thought says “shoes.” Upon this utterance, Heidegger evokes the Picture of the
shoes, or the Van Gogh painting, in which the shoes just stand there, empty, unused,
and which, therefore is an inadequate, unyielding Picture at first sight, or at a sight
that does not see the promising beyond, or the “and yet.” What differentiates this
Picture is not that it contains the fiction of the shoes—any ordinary Picture of the
catalogue view could do that—but that it marks this fiction with the “and yet,” as the
trace of the beyond. Heidegger does see this beyond, and intends it; in other words,
when he thinks the shoes, he means something other than just the shoes; he means
the truth of the shoes, or the use that the peasant woman makes of the shoes. It makes
little difference for him that there is no sign of the use (or truth) in the Van Gogh
painting. Rather than putting restrictions on thought, as it was the case with
Wittgenstein’s drawing of the cube, Van Gogh’s painting, marked with the “and
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yet,” is a Pictorial source and therefore is the origin of the truth of the shoes,
regardless of how far it seems from the peasant’s world. Heidegger draws another
Picture from this source, not an ordinary one, but a non-ordinary, a literary world-
Picture that resonates across an expansive field of signs, or language. Without
question, however, it is Heidegger himself who does the drawing.
The worst self-deception that is the subject
Having renamed “usefulness” as “reliability,” Heidegger treats such
renaming as the “discovery” of the truth of the equipment, and offers a summary of
how he achieved this:
The equipmental quality of equipment was discovered. But how? Not by a
description and explanation of a pair of shoes actually present; not by a report
about the process of making shoes; and also not by the observation of the
actual use occurring here and there; but only by bringing ourselves before
Van Gogh’s painting. This painting spoke. In the nearness of the work we
were suddenly somewhere else than we usually tend to be. (OWA 161)1 2 2
This is an incongruent summary, given that Heidegger’s “finding” completely hinges
upon the use of the shoes by the hypothetical peasant woman, whose relationship to
the Van Gogh painting is rather arbitrary. How, then, shall we understand his remark
that it has nothing to do with “the observation of the actual use occurring here and
there?” Is Heidegger’s distinction here between an actual use of ordinary experience
and imaginary use of his literary writing? In other words, is Heidegger admitting,
1 2 2 Das Zeugsein des Zeuges wurde gefunden. Aber wie? Nicht durch eine Beschreibung und
Erklarung eines vorliegenden Schuhzeuges; nicht durch einen Bericht iiber den Vorgang der
Anfertigung von Schuhen; auch nicht nur durch das Beobachten einer hier und dort
vorkommenden, wirklichen Verwendung von Schuhzeug; sondem nur dadurch, daB wir uns
vor das Gemalde van Goghs brachten. Dieses hat gesprochen. In der Nahe des Werkes sind
wir jah anderswo gewesen, als wir gewohnlich zu sein pflegen. (UKW 20-21)
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between the lines, that the use of the shoes by the peasant woman is not actual, but
imaginary?
Heidegger’s references to the Van Gogh painting in this paragraph are also
peculiar in that it does not mention the moment of his looking at the painting in
discovering the truth of the shoes. One gets the impression that “we” or Heidegger
did not look at the painting at all; instead, “we brought ourselves” or he brought
himself “before the painting.” A gesture of reverence is implied, it seems, in
bringing oneself before the painting, as opposed to looking at it. Maybe “we” did not
need to look at the painting, since, according to Heidegger, “this painting spoke.” In
making the painting speak, rather than show, Heidegger’s statement enforces the
analogy between language and visuality: the truth of speaking or of language is the
same as the truth of the painting or of the visual. But the same statement may also be
interpreted, negatively, as Heidegger’s prioritization of language over the visual
experience. To remember, Heidegger’s discussion of the visual Picture, which is
summoned to tell us something about the truth of a thing, betrays half-heartedness,
and even suspicion, about attributing a “truth-revealing” potential to the simple act of
looking at the painting. The truth of the shoes, supposedly discovered by “bringing
ourselves before the painting,” has little or nothing to do with the fiction of the shoes
in the painting. As Sassen also notes, the specific images of the peasant woman is “at
most remotely connected to the painting,” which is just “a painting (albeit an
arresting one) of shoes.. .not ensconced in an interpretive framework,” a framework
like the one which Heidegger imaginatively draws around the fiction of the shoes
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(167). Sassen’s unwavering conclusion is that “Heidegger’s reading [of the painting]
is in the end not an interpretation of this painting.. .The work might provide the
occasion for [Heidegger’s] reflections, but he does not need this painting for these
particular reflections.” 1 2 3 (171-172) The Van Gogh Painting, therefore, while a
Pictorial source, has little significance as an actual visual picture, except that it has
the effect of triggering a kind of aesthetic imagination and imaginative writing that
affectively undertakes the project of speaking the truth.
But, who or what does the speaking, if not Heidegger, himself, and his own
imaginary world-Picture? This would entail the admission that the truth is
Heidegger’s own subjective doing (“ein subjektives Tun”), and such an admission
comes in the strongest denial of it:
The artwork lets us know what the shoes are in truth. It would be the worst
self-deception to think that our description, as a subjective action (“ein
subjektives Tun”), had first depicted everything thus and then projected into
the painting. If anything is questionable here, it is rather that we experienced
too little in the nearness of the work and that we expressed the experience too
crudely and too directly. But above all, the work did not, as it might seem at
first, serve merely for a better visualizing of what a piece of equipment is.
1 2 3 However, I do not agree with Sassen’s other conclusion that Heidegger’s reading or
interpretation is not a legitimate one. The difference between a legitimate and illegitimate
reading is a very fluid one, ultimately determined by cultural, historical and institutional
criteria. Sassen, in fact, makes an interesting, and rather compelling, case concerning
Heidegger’s abuse of the painting, particularly his evocation of the peasant woman figure,
which she relates to the ideology of National Socialism. “It remains.. .unclear why
Heidegger uses [this] specific image [of the peasant woman], particularly given, again, that it
is so far removed from the painting. The discrepancy between the image and the painting,
accordingly, points to a further question: what Self is to be retrieved here?” (168) Sassen
interprets this self to be the Germanic self, whose representations in the National Socialist art
bear striking resemblances with Heidegger’s depiction of the peasant woman. But then, if
Heidegger abuses the painting, it is not because his fantasy is illegitimate, but because he
uses it as a kind of veiled propaganda piece, which is questionable from an ethical
standpoint.
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Rather the equipmentality of equipment first expressly comes to the fore (is
visible) through the work and only in the work. (OWA 161)1 2 4
Heidegger denies what he has precisely been doing throughout: it is his
“description,” or given that this is more of a non-description, it is his own writing
that first Pictured (“ausmalen”) the truth of the shoes, as the overwhelming affect of
imagining the use of the shoes in the peasant woman’s world-Picture, and then,
attributed such truth, arbitrarily, to the experience of the painting. In other words,
what makes the painting “speak” the truth, is Heidegger’s own subjective doing (“ein
subjektives Tun”), whether it be describing (“Beschreiben”) or writing (“Schreiben):
Heidegger’s denial of the subject is also self-denial. Coming from the perspective of
art-criticism, Shapiro nicely describes Heidegger’s self-deception, or even, delusion,
without noting the consequences such deception may have on Heidegger’s
(philosophical) “encounters” with, or more accurately, his literary writings of the
non-subjective truth:
Alas for him, the philosopher has indeed deceived himself. He has retained
from his encounter with Van Gogh’s canvas a moving set of associations
with Van Gogh’s canvas a moving set of associations with peasants and the
soil, which are not sustained by the picture itself but are grounded rather in
his own social outlook with its heavy pathos of the primordial and earthy. He
has indeed “imagined everything and projected it into the painting.” (206)
1 2 4 Das Kunstwerk gab zu wissen, was das Schuhzeug in Wahrheit ist. Es ware die
schlimmste Selbsttauschung, wollten wir meinen, unser Beschreiben habe als ein subjektives
Tun alles so ausgemalt und dann hineingelegt. Wenn hier etwas fragwiirdig ist, dann nur
dieses, da(3 wir in der Nahe des Werkes zu wenig erfahren und das Erfahren zu grob und zu
unmittelbar gesagt haben. Aber vor allem diente das Werk nicht, wie es zunachst scheinen
mochte, lediglich zur besseren Veranschaulichung dessen, was ein Zeug ist. Vielmehr
kommt erst durch das Werk und nur im Werk das Zeugsein des Zeuges eigens zu seinem
Vorschein (UKW 21).
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In the delusion of interpretation, the subject projects the world-Pictures of his own
writing onto a Picture, which he takes to be the origin or the source. In his criticism,
Shapiro seems to imply the possibility of a kind of interpretation, which might
somehow be “sustained by the [PJicture itself.” If such interpretation were possible,
however, the Picture’s “being itself’ would still have to be determined through some
other subjective (but also, inter-subjective, and ideological) “outlook,” likely with
the pathos of “objectivity,” which would set the criteria that determine the picture’s
“being itself.” It is not delusion that Heidegger suffers from (we all do); rather, it is
his dismissal of delusion, which prevents him from seeing the truth as his fiction.
The opening (“Eroffnung”), unconcealedness (“Unverborgenheit”), the
happening of truth (“das Geschehen der Wahrheit”), the essence (“Wesen”) of the
thing, the Being of beings (“das Sein des Seienden”) that Heidegger supposes to be
revealed in the work of art, may then be seen as the grandiose, and metaphysical
products of Heidegger’s imaginative enterprise of giving names to the affects of
subjective aesthetic experience. The weight of aesthetic affect, in Heidegger, may
only be imagined by picturing Heidegger’s inexplicable, impossible fragment “and
yet.” This no-name also connotes the inspiration to move forward to the works of
imagination, in order to set up a world or to conjure a world-Picture. Heidegger’s
imaginary world-Picture surrounds, supports, supplements or contextualizes the
thing as referred to in the work of art (in other words, “shoes” and not Van Gogh’s
“peasant shoes”), or as the work of art itself (the “temple”). It is the artwork that
inscribes the truth of the thing, while it is interpretation that sets up its world. One
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may roughly point out the three literatures operative in Heidegger’s “Work of Art”
essay as follows:
1) Thing-literature, a supposedly primary or source literature, that makes
aesthetic use of the name or the fiction of the thing, in such an affective
way that this use points to its beyond, or the “and yet.” This “and yet”
signals the abundant, multitudinous uses of the thing in the world (Van
Gogh’s painting).
2) World-literature, a supposedly secondary literature, which, while
claiming to be interpreting the primary literature, thematizes this beyond,
and intends to bring an aestheticized, sensualized world around the name
or the fiction of the thing. Doing so, it founds the “truth” of the thing,
while attributing such truth to its source, or the thing-literature
(Heidegger’s “interpretation”)
3) Truth-literature, truth-speech, rhetoric or “pure” philosophy engaged in
the naming of aesthetic affects (Heidegger’s “truth” idiom).
In his world literature, Heidegger supplements the affective indeterminancy of the
use of the name or fiction of the thing in the thing-literature (Van Gogh’s painting of
unused shoes) with the affective abundance (“Ftille”) of the multiple uses of the
thing (the peasant woman’s use of the shoes). In his truth-literature, he translates the
aesthetic affects, engendered by both indeterminancy and abundance, into an
elevated idiom, in which one grandiose name, in many instances of his own
invention, gets substituted with another. The shift of focus to Heidegger’s
involvement in different literatures, in literary writing and re-writing, might also
provide a different way to look at his shoes example, than the one in which it reduces
to utter absurdity. While summarizing the seemingly absurd, and delusional, premise
of Heidegger’s example, Shapiro notes: “I find nothing in Heidegger’s fanciful
description of the shoes represented by Van Gogh that could not have been imagined
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in looking at a real pair of peasant shoes” (206). Sassen also wonders “whether the
[truth] of the equipment could not also have been detected by considering an actual
pair of shoes rather than the painting, and what it is about the painting that invites the
type of reflection that Heidegger engages in” (162). There is, without doubt, nothing
about the painting that invites Heidegger’s reflections, except for the hint of the “and
yet.” Surely, Heidegger could have looked at a “real” or “actual” pair of peasant
shoes, instead of the shoes in the painting to write his descriptions; and in fact, he
does so, in his imagination, when he sketches the use of the shoes by the peasant
woman in ordinary language, before he repeats it in his literary rewrite that allegedly
takes place in the wake of his hypothetical look at the painting. A poet, who is
specialized in prose poetry, could have looked at an “actual” pair and conjured the
same “fanciful” descriptions as those of Heidegger, but Heidegger is not, or rather,
desires not to be, a poet: he is a philosopher. His philosophy denies its status as
literature at the very point in which it becomes literature. But there is something
specific about Heidegger’s literature, in that it wants to say something about
language and literature: it is a meta-literature. I have noted how this meta-literature
relies on self-referential affects, repetitions and tautologies in his later essay “The
Way to Language,’’and on analogy in the “Work of Art” essay. Both Sassen and
Shapiro miss this analogical aspect: yes, for the sake of argument, Heidegger should
be looking at “actual” shoes, and not those pictorial ones in the painting; but those
“actual” shoes, insofar as they are, for Heidegger, devoid of the call of the “and yet,”
would not tell him what language and thought “is,” or, given that the “Being” or
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“truth” of language or thought can only be a wish, what they should be like.
Heidegger’s look at the painting says this: “Let language, and philosophical thought,
be like the painting.”
The world-rhetoric vs. the earth-Picture
Heidegger’s world-literature, disguised as philosophy, intends to draw the
world around the “thing,” but just how this could be done is not a settled issue. In the
world-Picture that he constructs around the “shoes,” he gives us the impression that
one has to place the shoes within a human narrative (walk, work, death) and within a
non-human environment (wind, field, cold). In his account of the Greek temple,
however, the focus is primarily the non-human environment, and the human
narrative is reduced to rhetorical references to the Greek world. In fact, the more
Heidegger refers to examples from the classic art, the more rhetorical (and
theological) his language becomes. In the “temple” example, Heidegger is
purportedly “looking at” a Greek temple, while he is, in reality, inscribing a world-
Picture around the name or the fiction that is “the Greek temple:”
It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same time gathers
around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death,
disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the
figure of destiny for human being. The all-governing expanse of these open
relations is the world of this historical people. (OWA 167)1 2 5
1 2 5 Das Tempelwerk fugt erst und sammelt zugleich die Einheit jener Bahnen und Beziige
um sich, in denen Geburt und Tod, Unheil und Segen, Sieg und Schmach, Ausharren und
Verfall-dem Menschenwesen die Gestalt seines Geschickes gewinnen. Die waltende Weite
dieser offenen Beziige ist die Welt dieses geschichtlichen Volkes. (UKW 27-28)
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The temple’s world portrayed here is one that is rhetorically saturated with
significance, by way of Heidegger’s references to grand themes: birth, death,
disaster, blessing, destiny. Since Heidegger is “describing” a Greek temple, he may
expand the temple’s world to include all the Greeks and all their history (“dieses
geschichtliche Volk”). In Heidegger’s shoe narrative, we, at least, had the figure of
the woman, who could mediate the relation between the shoes and the “surrounding
menace of death.” With the temple example, the world has become a rhetorical
token, or an immediate cliche, whose evocation does not say more than the
commonplace: “the temple had world-significance for the Greeks.”
If Heidegger fails to convey the temple’s human world, he, nonetheless,
manages to come up with a very affective descriptive shot that temporally observes
the temple and its non-human environment, using deep focus. Heidegger names the
togetherness of the temple with its context-endowing non-human environment, “the
earth” (“die Erde”) . 1 2 6 This is his earth-Picture:
1 2 6 The earth, which comes out as the work’s “being” as it is imagined or thought in its
relations with its non-human environment, is the all-inclusive and expansive name
Heidegger gives to the realm to which the materiality or “thingliness” of things belongs:
“Anticipating a meaningful and weighty interpretation of the thingly character of things, we
must aim at the thing’s belonging to the earth.” In a helpful and succinct description,
Jameson “translates” Heidegger’s “earth” as the meaningless materiality of the body and the
nature, and his conception of the “world” as the meaning endowment of history and of the
social (7). Jam eson’s translation, w hile making H eidegger’s philosophical constructs more
accessible to his contemporary academic audience, takes the notion of “meaning” for granted
and consequently, does not explain what he means with the “meaningless-ness” of
materiality or the “meaning-endowment” of the history and of the social (7). Can non-human
material ever be meaningless, escaping human perception or evaluation? Despite the
uncritical use of terminology, Jameson’s translation nicely points out the human status of the
world and non-human status of the earth.
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Standing there, the building [the temple] rests on the rocky ground. This
resting of the work draws up out of the rock the obscurity of that rock’s bulky
yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against
the storm raging above it and so makes the storm itself manifest in its
violence. The luster and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing
only by the grace of the sun, first brings to radiance the light of the day, the
breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering
makes visible the invisible space of air. The steadfastness of the work
contrasts with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging
of the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into
their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are. (OWA 167-
168)1 2 7
Heidegger’s treatment of the temple seems to be more attentive than his treatment of
Van Gogh’s shoes: here, he seems to be, less unequivocally, looking at the temple.
The shoes, which just stood there, (“dastehend”), were cut off from an environment,
which led to his previous remark: “there is nothing surrounding this pair of peasant
shoes in or to which they might belong- only an undefined space.”The temple’s
standing there, on the other hand, already constitutes an environment, which
diminishes the kind of imaginary work that Heidegger had to do with the shoes, in
order to introduce the peasant woman’s earth: soil, wind, grain, furrows.
But what temple is Heidegger looking at? Is this a generic Greek temple?
Heidegger’s “description” of the temple is as much imaginative writing as his
1 2 7 Dastehend ruht das Bauwerk auf dem Felsgrund. Dies Aufruhen des Werkes holt aus dem
Fels das Dunkle seines ungefugen und doch zu nichts gedrangten Tragens heraus. Dastehend
halt das Bauwerk dem tiber es wegrasenden Sturm stand und zeigt so erst den Sturm selbst in
seiner Gewalt. Der Glanz und das Leuchten des Gesteins, anscheinend selbst nur von
Gnaden der Sonne, bringt doch erst das Lichte des Tages, die Weite des Himmels, die
Finstemis der Nacht zum Vorschein. Das sichere Ragen macht den unsichtbaren Raum der
Luflt sichtbar. Das Unerschutterte des Werkes steht ab gegen das Wogen der Meerflut und
lafit aus seiner Ruhe deren Toben erscheinen. Der Baum und das Gras, der Adler und der
Stier, die Schlange und die Grille gehen erst in ihre abgehobene Gestalt ein und kommen so
als das zum Vorschein, was sie sind. (UKW 28)
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evocation of the peasant woman’s world; it is a writing that concerns Heidegger’s
own Picture of the “temple.” Here, Heidegger is somewhat engaging the materiality
of the temple- work; most directly in the reference to the stone’s luster and gleam,
and more indirectly in the somewhat oblique references to the temple’s features,
combined with their effects on him, such as the temple’s firm towering (verticality?)
and its steadfastness (volume? Bulk?). Interestingly, Heidegger does not exclusively
focus on the materiality of the work: his look at the “temple” brings out the
abundance (“die Fulle”) of the temple’s being, by locating it in the abundance of its
environment. Heidegger’s vision is a shot of the temple from a critical distance, a
shot by which the temple’s connectedness to its environment is not suppressed, but is
made conspicuous: the temple is made open to relations (“die offene Beziige”) with
the sea, rock, storm, air, tree, cricket. Heidegger’s earth, therefore, cannot only
concern the materiality of the temple: it is supplemented by an imagination that
situates the temple in an affective setting, a setting in which the relations between the
temple and its surroundings can be seen or at least imagined.
That Heidegger’s temple, just like his shoes, is imaginary literature is
acknowledged, a little reluctantly, by Young:
It is important to be conscious of the fact that the overall character of this
beautiful passage, like that of the equally famous (but largely irrelevant)
evocation of Van Gogh’s painting of shoes... is poetic rather than analytic. A
great deal of misreading of “The Origin” derives, in my view, from a literalist
reading of the temple passage.. .In subsequent chapters we will repeatedly
encounter Heidegger’s preference for philosophizing by way of interpreting
poetic texts, those for example, of Sophocles, Rilke, Trakl, George and,
above all, Holderlin. In “The Origin” however, he, as it were, provides his
own text.. .Its purpose, I suggest, is to provide an intuitive entry into the
experience the Greek might have had before his temple, an intuitive
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understanding which the remainder of the essay will attempt to articulate
philosophically. (22)
According to Young, Heidegger, “as it were,” provides his own poetic or literary
text. The curious aspect of Young’s insightful comment is his implicit distinction
between literature and philosophy, which is clearly reflected in Young’s reference to
the “literalist” meaning of Heidegger’s temple passage; the literalist interpretation, as
opposed to the philosophical one, is thought to result in a misreading. The passage is
an “intuitive entry” into the experience of art, but is definitely not a philosophical
entry, or “articulation.” My present approach, on the other hand, questions the
assumption that there might be anything beyond this “intuitive,” i.e., literary, entry
that is more “philosophical” in Heidegger’s essay. The “literalist” reading, regardless
of whether it is a “misreading,” is a felicitous one in that, in interpreting Heidegger’s
literary text, it also opens up an excellent view of his entire philosophy.
The use material of language: Heidegger’s analogies between the word and
painting
That Heidegger’s world is grounded in imagination and in subjectivity does
not turn it into a purely arbitrary affair. The possibility may exist that such
imaginary world is grounded in an ideological or discursive community or gathering
of interpreters, or, using Heidegger’s language, a community of preservers who draw
out world-significances from the artwork. If the members of an interpretive
community may come to an understanding or agreement, implicit or explicit, about
the ways in which an artwork inspires their imagination, as a community of religious
believers may do so in relation to their use of the temple, there might be concrete
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evidence, for these users, that something, as comprehensive as the “world,” is set up
in the work of art. It is, however, only in the ideological dominance of such an
interpretive community, that the “world-disclosing” potential of the artwork can take
effect. The references to the “world,” insofar as they are unwilling to specify what
significance such “world” may have for all, or at least a majority of interpretive
communities, remain, primarily ideological and rhetorical. Unlike the rhetoric of the
world summoned around the Greek temple, the significances of the “peasant” world,
as Heidegger constructs it around Van Gogh’s shoes, are much more dependent, and
contingent, upon the existence of a specific interpretive and ideological community,
who may ascribe truth-disclosing significances to the peasant world, based on their
“real” or “imaginary” experiences, life-views, desires, and nostalgias, while choosing
to view Van Gogh’s painting as the aesthetic locus, from which that world could be
drawn. The work may occasion, in many instances, the setting up of just “my world,”
and possibly and contingently of “our” world but hardly of an all-inclusive “world.”
Such subjective proliferation and relativization of the worlds, however, does not take
away from the effect of the artwork. Insofar as such worlds are composed of fictions,
it is possible that the artwork—regardless of what its “authentic” world may be like,
or whether such a world is ever possible or available—may occasion the reenactment
of those fictions, deemed by the interpreter to be “significant,” without assuming the
very elusive attribute of “setting up the world.” It is possible that the artwork never
sets up an entire world, but much smaller ones.
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Despite the fact that Heidegger dedicates a considerable amount of time trying to
figure out the world of the artwork, as in his construction of the peasant world
around the Van Gogh painting, he appears, at times, to be grounding the
“significance” of such world on the material effects, and I would like to add, affects
of the artwork on the interpreter. By conflating discursive significance with material
affectivity, the “world” becomes the name of the over-all aesthetic affect of the
artwork, whose abundance, fullness and surplus is also hinted at in Heidegger’s “and
yet” fragment. This conflation happens in a passage in which Heidegger most
directly addresses the main subject matter of his essay: the aesthetic use of the name
or fiction of the thing. Unlike in the equipment, in which (the fiction of) the thing is
used up by the thing’s usefulness, the aesthetic use of the fiction of the thing in the
artwork lets its material take effect and impress itself upon the interpreter:
Because it is determined by usefulness and serviceability, equipment takes
into service that of which it consists: the matter. In fabricating an equipment-
e.g., an ax - stone is used and used up. It disappears into usefulness. The
material is all the matter and more suitable the less it resists vanishing in the
equipmental being of the equipment. By contrast the temple-work, in setting
up a world, does not cause the material to disappear, but rather causes it to
come forth for the very first time and to come into the open region of the
work’s world. The rock comes to bear and so first becomes a rock; metals
come to glitter and shimmer, colors to glow, tones to sing, the word to say.
All this comes forth as the work sets itself back into the massiveness and
heaviness of stone, into the firmness and pliancy of wood, into the hardness
and luster of metal, into the brightening and darkening of color, into the clang
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of tone, and into the naming power of word. (OWA 171)
1 2 8 Das Zeug nimmt, weil durch die Dienlichkeit und Brauchbarkeit bestimmt, das, woraus es
besteht, den Stoff, in seinen Dienst. Der Stein wird in der Anfertigung des Zeuges, z. B. der
Axt, gebraucht und verbraucht. Er verschwindet in der Dienlichkeit. Der Stoff ist um besser
und geeigneter, je wiederstandsloser er im Zeugsein des Zeuges untergeht. Das Tempel-
Werk dagegen laBt, indem es eine Welt aufstellt, den Stoff nicht verschwinden, sondem
allererst hervorkommen und zwar im Offenen der Welt des Werkes: der Fels kommt zum
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Here, the artwork’s world-setup is conceived only in terms of its materiality or
“thingliness”; as such, Heidegger’s “world” becomes interchangeable with his
“earth.” The “open of the work’s world” (das Offene der Welt des Werkes) may then
be interpreted to be the locus of the aesthetic experience in which the interpreter
takes the material affects of the work to be world-disclosing. In the last instance, it is
aesthetic experience that grounds Heidegger’s world, necessitating that such world
fall back on it, when it feels too far.
The above passage is also the most direct and concrete account of what
Heidegger anticipates from the use of language: that it not use up (“verbrauchen”)
the stuff of language (“der Stoff’). In this passage, it is in fact possible to substitute
the “equipment” (“Zeug”) with the normative, communicative, pragmatic, purposive,
propositional use of language, based on the ideas of usefulness and usability. Just
like the stuff of the temple is the stone, the stuff of language, in this thought section,
is the word. If the stuff is used up to the point of disappearance in the equipment,
such disappearance can only be taken figuratively, as the speculation that the
material of the equipment does no longer have an aesthetic affect, or that it has lost
its affective resistance: the aspect of its purposive use takes over the aspect of its
Tragen und Ruhen und wird so erst Fels; die Metalle kommen zum Tragen und Ruhen und
wird so erst Fels; die Metalle kommen zum Blitzen un Schimmem, die Farben zum
Leuchten, der Ton zum Klingen, das Wort zum Sagen [footnote: Verlauten, Sprechen]. All
dieses kommt hervor, indem das Werk sich zuriickstellt in das Massige und Schwere des
Steins, in das Feste und Biegsame des Holzes, in die Harte und den Glanz des Erzes, in das
Leuchten und Dunkeln der Farbe, in dem Klang des Tones und in die Nennkraft des Wortes
(UKW 32).
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affective use. I will discuss, in a later section, how Heidegger’s emphasis on the
affective use of the fiction and the name of the thing, as an alternative to purposive
use, may be seen in the tradition of aesthetic thought, which he briefly repudiates at
the beginning of his essay.
Heidegger’s conceptualization of the word as a kind of stuff or thing in this
passage is rather complex: in the work of art, rock bears, metal glitters, tones sing,
colors glow; and similarly, the word says. Heidegger wants to clarify the last
statement in a footnote to the 1960 Reclam edition, the word “make[s] known”
(“Ver-lauten”) and speak[s] (“Sprechen”)). The list is incongruent in that it compares
the glowing of colors, the glittering of metals, etc. with the saying of the word, and
not with its more logical corollary, i.e., with the sounding of the word. Heidegger
expects more from the affect of the word than its mere sound: the word says. The
footnote somewhat more explicitly brings out the aspect of material speech or
utterance, while it does not eliminate the aspect of referential “saying:” the word, in
being a sound (“Laut”), makes known (“ver-lauten”) and speaks. The same
incongruity also exists in the second list of the same paragraph: here, the naming
power (“Nennkraft”) of the word is likened to the “massiveness and heaviness of
stone, into the firmness and pliancy of wood, into the hardness and luster of metal,
into the brightening and darkening of color, into the clang of tone.” This is a very
intriguing analogy indeed: the affective power in the experience of things is likened
to the naming power in the experience of words. The analogy gives the impression
that Heidegger considers the “naming,” a referential attribute of the word, in the
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same way he considers “massiveness” to be an affective attribute of the stone. To
consider the massiveness of the stone and the naming power of the word within the
same analogical register displays Heidegger’s wish to equate the referential function
of language with its affective and expressive materiality. The incongruity in the
analogy could have been resolved in two ways: Heidegger could have given up on
the referentiality of the word, magnifying its “pure” materiality, as sound-figures of
speech, and even, as in Apollinaire’s poems, as visual figures of writing, or,
alternatively, he could have given admission to subjective imagination, which not
only makes senses of the word, but is also attuned with and sensitive to its affects.
Without this recourse to imagination, Heidegger’s account draws standard parallels
between the visual arts and the art of language. While exemplifying language-use in
poetry, he notes:
To be sure, the sculptor uses stone just as the mason uses it, in his own way.
But he does not use it up. That happens in a certain way only where the work
miscarries. To be sure, the painter also uses pigment, but in such a way that
color is not used up but rather only now comes to shine forth. To be sure, the
poet also uses the word—not however, like ordinary speakers and writers
who have to use them up, but rather in such a way that the word only now
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becomes and remains truly a word. (OWA 173)
1 2 9 Zwar gebraucht der Bildhauer den Stein so, wie nach seiner Art auch der Mauer mit ihm
umgeht. Aber er verbraucht den Stein nicht. Das gilt in gewisser Weise nur dort, wo das
Werk miBlingt. Zwar gebraucht auch der Maler den Farbstoff, jedoch so, daB die Farbe nicht
verbraucht wird, sondem erst zum Leuchten kommt. Zwar gebraucht auch der Dichter das
Wort, aber nicht so, wie die gewohnlich Redenden und Schreibenden die Worte verbrauchen
mtissen, sondem so, daB das Wort erst wahrhaft ein Wort wird und bleibt. (UKW 34)
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In this most direct analogy between language and painting, the word becomes
analogous to the coloring material (“Farbstoff”). While the artist’s colors shine forth,
Heidegger enigmatically notes, the word of poetry “only now becomes and remains
truly a word.” In emphasizing the self-ness of the word in his characteristic
tautological fashion—a word remains a word—Heidegger assumes that the word is,
primarily, a thing, and the analogy between language and painting must be sought in
their both being affective things. But exactly what kind of thing the word is, without
the intervention of an affect- and sense-making imagination remains unexamined
throughout Heidegger’s essay. Despite this, Heidegger’s essay makes the assumption
of the thing-ness of language from the very beginning of the essay, without
mentioning the execution of works of language in imagination:
[T]he works [of art] are as naturally present as are things. The picture hangs
on the wall like a rifle or a hat. A painting, e.g., the one by Van Gogh that
represents a pair of peasant shoes, travels from one exhibition to another.
Works of art are shipped like coal from the Ruhr and logs from the Black
Forest. During the First World War, Holderlin’s hymns were packed in the
soldier’s knapsack together with cleaning gear. Beethoven’s quartets lie in
the storerooms of the publishing house like potatoes in a cellar. (OWA 145)
This is also a moment of analogy, in which Heidegger wants to bring all artworks
under the concept of the “thing.” While Heidegger’s analogy is admissible, based on
the fact that all artworks are physical things, regardless of whether they are statues or
pictures, on the one hand, and books or music scores, on the other, there is,
undoubtedly, a considerable difference between a book that contains Holderlin’s
hymns and the Van Gogh painting, insofar as they both are affective things. Unlike
the painting, whose affectivity derives from its being (experienced as) a physical
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thing, the affectivity of work of language primarily depends on its being an executed
or imagined thing, notwithstanding the possibility that, the book, by virtue of being a
physical object, may possess an important and sometimes primary level of affectivity
as it does so in calligraphic writing, in special edition collections or in books on tape
by celebrities.
That Heidegger is not at all interested in making a distinction between the
physical and affective thingness of the artwork is important, in that his idea of the
truth in the artwork depends completely on the work’s being an affective thing. Thus,
Heidegger’s happening of the “truth,” in the example of a book with poems, cannot
concern the physical thing per se, as it may do so in the example of the painting. The
“truth” of the artwork belongs to the affective thing, that is, when the work is
experienced, primarily, as an imagined thing, in the case of language-work, or as a
physical thing, in the case of painting. The consequence that drawing the affective
thing from a language-work may need the execution of the human subject or
subjective imagination is also felt in the incongruity of Heidegger’s analogical lists,
in which the word stays somewhere in between the level of just the sound and of
informative speech (“Ver-lauten”), and embodies the power or the affect of a
referential relation (“Nennkrafit”). If the affective thing of language-work is not just
the sound of the word, but a figure (“Gestalt”) of imagination, then it is possible to
establish the analogy between language and visual arts in the way Heidegger uses it
throughout the essay, without actually theorizing it: the analogy concerns not only
how they are (color pigments == word sounds), but also how they depict or refer to
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another thing, in other words, how they use the fiction or the name of the thing (the
shoes depicted in the painting = fountain described in the poem).
Is the world a frame?
The experience of the works of art as affective things gives way to
Heidegger’s expansive imagination which, impressed by the epiphany of the “and
yet,” engages in the writing of the world. Artworks may be conceived as catalysts or
Pictorial sources for writing exercises, which intend to imagine, stretch and sketch
the human and non-human context, the world and earth, around the things referred to
in the artwork or the thing that it is. One predominant characteristic of Heidegger’s
writing is the reluctance to see the thing in isolation, and his interest in bringing the
thing into contact with other things, by way of a world-Picture (the peasant woman’s
world) or world-rhetoric (the Greek world). In the making of his world-Pictures,
Heidegger correlates the abundance of the experience of the artwork with the
abundance of its imagined world. That the world, to which the thing belongs, is an
imagined one is precisely what Heidegger denies in an interesting passage, in which
he uses a pictorial term, the frame (“Rahmen”), in relation to imagination:
World is not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and
unfamiliar things that are at hand. But neither is it a merely imagined frame
(“eingebildeter Rahmen”), a frame represented (“vorgestellter”) to add to the
sum of such present (“Vorhandenen”) things. World worlds, and is more fully
in being than the tangible and perceptible realm in which we believe
ourselves to be at home. World is never an object that stands before us and
can be seen. (OWA 170, translation altered)1 0
1 3 0 Welt is nicht die blofie Ansammlung der vorhandenen abzahlbaren oder unabzahlbaren,
bekannten und unbekannten Dinge. Welt is aber auch nicht ein nur eingebildeter, zur Summe
des Vorhandenen hinzu vorgestellter Rahmen. Welt weltet und ist seiender als das Greifbare
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The world, while it is not at hand (“vorhanden”) or present, is not one that is
imagined either. In the second sentence, it becomes clear that, for Heidegger, the
imagination frames and represents only those things that are at hand. But going back
to the “shoe” example, what would be the status of Heidegger’s imaginary world in
light of these statements? Where does one place the peasant woman, her walk, the
soil, the raw wind, etc.? Heidegger’s use of language suggests the role of
imagination in making the world: the world is more “in being” (“seiender”) than
what is tangible (“das Greifbare”) and perceptible (“das Vemehmbare”). The soil,
which is neither tangible nor perceptible nor at hand in the painting, is imagined and
belongs to the imagined world of Heidegger’s writing. In imagination, the world is in
more being (“seiender sein”), because it contains the abundance (“die Fulle) of the
relations among things.
The last statement, “world is never an object that stands before us and can be
seen (“angeschaut”),” if taken literally would in fact mean that Heidegger’s world is
an imaginary one; but Heidegger is implying more than this literal meaning. An
object that stands before us (“vor uns stehen”) is one that is put forth, placed before,
or in German, represented (“vorstellen”); but insofar as representation implies the
availability, and presence of the represented object, Heidegger claims, the world
cannot be a represented object. The world must be set up by an expansive
imagination that puts things, which are at hand and present, in touch with those other
und Vemehmbare, worin wir uns heimisch glauben. Welt ist nie ein Gegenstand, der vor uns
steht und angeschaut werden kann (UKW 30).
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things and relations (“Beziige”), which are not at hand, and must be imagined. The
circularity of this thought is clear: the very moment a thing is drawn out of absence
and imagined by the subject, it is placed before the subject, and is thus represented,
in Heidegger’s particular, but by no means authoritative, conception of
“representation.” His discussion of the world, however, implies that, somehow, there
may be things and relations in this world outside representability, escaping the
framing or placing act, or representation. If, despite his very wishes, imagination is
what Heidegger needs in order to set up his world, his particular conception of
“representation as placing-before” prevents him from articulating a notion of
imagination without representation; instead, he dismisses imagination, with the same
force that he dismisses what he understands as “representation.” Heidegger’s
wholesale repudiation of “representation as placing-before,” and of the representing
subject, makes it impossible for him to give imagination its due; he would rather not
accept what is so obvious in between his lines: that the world he refers to is a work
of imagination. In the next section, I will discuss how Heidegger relates the trope of
“representation as placing-before” to that of the Picture. The world is not a
“represented frame,” which implies, according to Heidegger, that it is not an
imagined frame. Consequently, the world is either nothing, or it is what it is. One
may as well say that “world worlds.” It is in the repudiation of imagination that the
philosophical thought returns to what it can only be sure of—to tautologies.
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The age of world-pictures or frame-Pictures:
My choice to refer to Heidegger’s imaginary worlds as world-Pictures is not
arbitrary; it is in order to compare his world-Pictures with the world-pictures he
critiques in another essay, “the Age of World-Pictures” (“die Zeit des Weltbildes”).
1 3 1 As I will discuss, there is no reason to think that Heidegger’s descriptions of the
world are somewhat over and above representing, picturing or systematizing the
world, and that they cannot be subsumed under his own notion of the world-Picture.
Even at first sight, the affinity between Heidegger’s thought and world-Picture is
obvious, in that they share the same world-disclosing desire. In his “Work of Art”
essay, Heidegger intends to draw the world (and the earth) from the aesthetic
experience of the name and the fiction of the thing within several imaginary sweeps,
carrying us from the “thing” to the world (and the earth) of the thing. To interpret
Heidegger’s world as a world-Picture, is to interpret against and despite Heidegger,
who would strongly deny this affiliation; but, as I will show, his idea of the world-
Picture is so inclusive, so broad that, in comparison, his own defenses against it
appear much weaker. Heidegger’s world can hardly withstand the powerful and
invasive hold of the world-Picture, let alone constitute an alternative to it. In the
following, I will look at several passages in this essay in order to mark the
1 3 1 All the quotes in English that pertain to Heidegger’s “Age of the World Picture” essay
refer to the English translation by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes in Off the Beaten
Track, edited by translators, Cambridge University Press: 2002 ,57-85. All quotes the quotes
in German refer to “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” Holzwege. Vittorio Klostermann. Frankfurt
am Main: Vittorio Klostermann GmBH, 1977, 75-114. I will use the acronym AWP while
referring to the English translation and ZWB while referring to the original.
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similarities and differences between Heidegger’s world-Pictures and those he is
arguing against.
The Picture, in Heidegger’s “the Age of World Picture” essay, connotes the
gesture of placing the thing in a kind of subjective frame or framework. Throughout
this essay, when Heidegger points to the Picture, he points to the Picture’s having a
frame; it is therefore possible to see the Picture of his criticism as both frame and
Picture, or, as frame-Picture. The Picture, as frame-Picture, is conceptually
equivalent to other frame-words in Heidegger’s writing: the picture-frame
(“Rahmen”) in the Work of Art essay and the frame-thing (“GestelV) in his later
essays. Heidegger’s persistent contention against the frame-thing is that framing the
thing in a predetermined system or world-Picture imposes constraints and limits on
Heidegger’s project of thinking the thing in the abundance of its being. His polemic,
therefore, is directed against the frames and frameworks that privilege only certain
relations of the thing with certain other things, and suppress others. Modem science
is this kind of a framework.
The critique of modem science, in this essay, turns into the critique of all
representation (“Vorstellung”) and, since representation implies a representing agent,
the critique also concerns the mindset of the (modem) subject. The Picture becomes
a token of “representing thinking” (“das Vorstellen”) by which the subject
objectifies beings through placing them before him. Heidegger’s “Vorstellung” in
this essay stands for all thinking performed in the representing mode done by the
subject:
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The objectification of beings is accomplished in a placing-before [“Vor-
stellen”] aimed at bringing each being before it in such a way that the man
who calculates can be sure—and that means, certain—of the being. (AWP
66, ZWB 87) 1 3 2
Heidegger sees the gesture of placing-before as a calculating act that makes the
calculating subject (“der rechnende Mensch”) certain of the beings or the things in
question. The calculating spirit of the modem subject results in the world-Picture of
the modem times, in which the subject, having placed all things and beings before
him, becomes the measure of the world. By world-Picture, Heidegger means “the
totality of beings taken, as it is for us, as standard-giving and obligating”(AWP 67).
1 3 3 Therefore, Heidegger’s polemic against the world-Picture is aimed at the human
subject, who, in the process of representing the things in the world in his subjective
world-Picture, also takes himself to be the master of the world.
But what does the Picture in the world-Picture mean? In order to clarify this,
Heidegger explains the meaning of the word as used in the German idiomatic
expression, “to be in the picture” about something (“fiber etwas im Bild sein”):
To “put oneself in the picture” about something means: to place the being
itself before one just as things are with it, and so placed, to keep it
permanently before us. But a decisive condition in the essence of the picture
is missing. That we are “in the picture” about something means not just that
the being is placed before, represented by us. It means rather that [the being],
in all the things that belongs to it and stands together in it, stands before us as
a system. To be “in the picture” resonates with: being well informed, being
equipped and prepared. When the world becomes picture, beings as a whole
1 3 2 [Die] Vergegenstandlichung des Seienden vollzieht sich in einem Vor-stellen, das darauf
zielt, jegliches Seiende so vor sich zu bringen, daB der rechnende Mensch des Seienden
sicher und d.h. gewiB sein kann. (ZWB 87)
1 3 3 ... das Seiende im ganzen, so wie es fur uns maBgebend und verbindlich ist (ZWB 89)
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are set in place as that for which man is prepared; that which, therefore, he
correspondingly intends to bring before him, have before him, and therefore,
in a decisive way, place before him. Understood in an essential way, “world
picture” does not mean “picture of the world” but, rather, the world grasped
as a picture. Beings as a whole are now taken in such a way that a being is
first and only in being insofar as it is set in place by representing-producing
humanity.. .the Being of beings is sought and found in the representedness
(“Vorges'/e//theit”) of beings. (AWP 67-68, Translation altered)1 3 4
The subject places and keeps the being before him as a Picture; and when he does
this, he also constructs a system (“System”): he sees the being in connection with
those other beings, which belong to the being and stand together with it, within a
system of his own choice and creation, i.e., within a world-Picture. When the subject
is certain about, or well equipped and prepared for the beings in the world, he can
grasp the world as a Picture (“die Welt as Bild begreifen”). The placing-before of
representation (“vor-stellen”) forces beings into conforming to the subject’s
measure-giving domain (“der maflgebende Bereich”). The man becomes the scene
(“der Szene”) in which beings must place themselves before [the subject] and must
become a Picture.1 3 5 As soon as the world becomes a Picture in the modem times,
1 3 4 Sich uber etwas ins Bild setzen heiBt: das Seiende selbst in dem, wie es mit ihm steht, vor
sich stellen und es als so gestellten standig vor sich haben. Aber noch fehlt eine
entscheidende Bestimmung im Wesen des Bildes. Wir sind uber etwas im Bild, meint nicht
nur, dafi das Seiende uns uberhaupt vorgestellt ist, sondem daB es in all dem, was zu ihm
gehort und in ihm zusammensteht, als System vor uns steht... .das Bescheid wissen, das
Geriistetsein und sich darauf Einrichten. Wo die Welt zum Bilde wird, ist das Seiende im
Ganzen angesetzt als jenes, worauf der Mensch sich einrichtet: was er deshalb entsprechend
vor sich bringen, und vor sich haben und som it in einem entschiedenen Sinne vor sich stellen
will. Weltbild, wesentlich verstanden, meint daher nicht ein Bild von der Welt, sondem die
Welt als Bild begreifen. Das Seiende im Ganzen wird jetzt so genommen, daB es erst und
nur seiend ist, sofem es durch den vorstellend-herstellenden Menschen gestellt ist. Das Sein
des Seienden wird in der Vorgestellheit des Seienden gesucht und gefunden (ZWB 89-90).
1 3 5 Damit setzt sich der Mensch selbst als die Szene, in der das Seiende fortan sich
vorstellen, prasentieren, d.h. Bild sein muB (ZWB 91).
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the man establishes himself as a subject: his position as a subject is then grasped as a
worldview (“.. .begreift sich die Stellung des Menschen als Weltanschauung.”)*
which, above all, means “view of life” (“Lebensanschauung”), or the contemplation
of the subject’s life.
There is something too powerful about this definition and critique of
representation, which may expand to devour anything and everything, including
Heidegger’s own philosophy. Reconsidering the “Work of Art” essay, for instance,
one could see that Heidegger’s approach to artworks cannot stand against his own
criticism of representation. Curiously, his account of the truth-happenings in the
artwork is in perfect harmony with his account of the representations of science. To
facilitate the visualization of the shoes, he brings a Picture before us. His thinking of
the shoes involves the creation of a subjective scene, in other words, a scene, which
belongs to Heidegger and in which he puts the shoes in contact with the elements of
his fantasy. The experience of his imaginary world gives a measure (“maGgebend”)
of significance to the shoes in the painting, whose experience, without such a world,
would be unrevealing, and therefore insignificant. But insofar as this world is
Heidegger’s subjective doing (“ein subjektives Tun”), the subjective status of his
world-Picture cannot be denied. In this very important aspect, there is no difference
whatsoever between Heidegger’s world and the scientific world-Picture of his
critique.
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The Heideggerian machine works like a scientific one: it consists of a
representing-producing (“vorstellend herstellend”) technology that takes the (fiction
and the name of the) thing and blows it up into an imaginary scene of a world-
disclosing magnitude. In the expansive rush of conjoining the thing with other things
in the world, he takes a thing-Picture (the Van Gogh painting) and produces a
subjective world-Picture out from it (the peasant woman’s world). His thesis that the
shoes in the painting set up the world of the peasant woman tells us infinitely more
about his worldview, his view of life, his nostalgia and his politics, than what it says
about the work of art. If Heidegger is in fact making any valuable claims about
representation, these should be sought, not in his criticism of all representing
(“Vorstellen”), a criticism from which nothing, including his own thought, can
escape, but in the kind or genre of representations which he finds to resist the
shortcomings of representing. In the following section, I would like to discuss
Heidegger’s world as a specific world-Picture and a system. Not surprisingly, this
discussion will take us from the philosophical world of truth, to the literary world-
Picture and to the literary system.
Heidegger’s Literary System
While explaining Heidegger’s notion of the world, Edwards notes:
[According to Heidegger] A thing is not independent of other things; on the
contrary, without its correlative world, the thing cannot be what it is. For
Heidegger it is always “thing-world” and “world-thing.” A thing gathers a
world. (92)
Heidegger’s world-thing could be thought in relation to, and as different from the
world-Picture of his critique. The world needs to be gathered or set-up (“herstellen”)
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in the happening of truth around the fiction of the thing. To formulate this in less
non-subjective terms, the interpreter gathers a field of affective references around the
fiction of the thing, references, which then acquire the fictive name, the “world.”
Edwards accurately describes Heidegger’s world:
Heidegger’s “world” is a holistic system of back-and-forth references among
the things that constitute it; it is a structured totality (like a language) within
which each part is just the part it is only because of its relationship to all the
other parts. (93)
Heidegger’s world accompanies what it takes to be its source, namely, the thing,
creating a “holistic system” by way of back and forth references between the world
and the thing. But is it ever possible to ground such holism without referring to some
subjective, inter-subjective or ideological experience, which has the affect of
imaginarily mobilizing a “whole” system of other references? Interestingly, Edwards
describes Heidegger’s world as a system, which, for Heidegger, is the marker of a
world-Picture. As I have argued, Heidegger’s world or world-thing may indeed be
viewed as a kind of world-Picture. Heidegger’s world-Picture, as a system, differs
from other representational systems, but what exactly is this difference? What is the
genre of Heidegger’s world-Picture? Iser’s analysis of the notion of the literary text
as a system is useful in describing the genre of Heidegger’s world-Picture. Iser first
gives a general definition of the system:
[No] literary text relates to contingent reality as such, but to models or
concepts of reality, in which contingencies and complexities are reduced to a
meaningful structure. We call these structures world-pictures or
systems.. .[E]ach system has a definite structure of regulators which marshal
contingent reality into a definitive order... [and] must effect a meaningful
reduction of complexity by accentuating some possibilities and neutralizing
or negating others.” (71)
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Despite the problems in this characterization,1 3 6 Iser’s analysis is suggestive in the
way it introduces the literary text into the field of “prevalent thought systems,” as a
system whose relation to these other systems is quite particular:
The literary text.. .takes the prevalent thought system or social system as its
context, but does not reproduce the frame of reference, which stabilizes these
systems. Consequently, it cannot produce those “expected expectations”
which are provided by the system. What it can and does do is set up a parallel
frame within which meaningful patterns are to form. In this system, the
literary system is also a system, which shares the basic structure of overall
systems as it brings out dominant meanings against a background of
neutralized and negated possibilities. However, this structure becomes
operative not in relation to a contingent world, but in relation to the ordered
pattern of systems with which the text is meant to interfere. (72)
Literature does not set up but upsets the world as it is framed to be by the “prevalent
thought systems.” But this upset does not take effect or become “operative” in
relation to a “contingent world,” which I take to be “the world as unframed;” rather,
it does so by setting up “a parallel frame” which brings out the “neutralized and
negated” possibilities that are left out from dominant systems, and I would also like
to add, from dominant life-fictions. Iser continues by marking the difference between
the literary text as system and the overall system, the name that he gives to the
totality of dominant systems without definition:
Although in structure basically identical to the overall system, the literary
text differs from it in its intention. Instead of reproducing the system to which
it refers, it almost invariably tends to take as its dominant ‘meaning’ those
1 3 6 These are some of the questions that Iser’s description of the literary system
invites: What are “contingent reality” and its measure of contingency? Is contingent
reality what we take to be the supposedly irreducible and utterly complex “everyday
life”? Is a definitive order a definite or definable order? What is a “meaningful”
structure or a “meaningful” reduction? Does “meaning” here connote intention,
purpose or will?
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possibilities that have been neutralized or negated by that system. If the basic
reference is to the penumbra of excluded possibilities, one might say that the
borderlines of existing systems are the starting point for the literary text. It
begins to activate that which the system has left inactive. (72)
Iser’s overarching descriptions may be too ambitious: one wonders whether the
borderlines between existing systems and the literary text can ever be definable.
Throughout the discussion, Iser promotes the genre of “subversive” literature, which
necessitates that the literary critic be in the know of the “dominant systems” with
respective to which the literary text acquires a subversive status. Consequently, Iser
considers popular fiction to be somewhat less literature, and more ideological
propaganda, insofar as popular fiction often affirms such dominant systems. The
question facing such “subversive” bias, which goes hand in hand with a critical
preference for “high art,” would be whether all literature could be thought as
referencing to the “penumbra of excluded possibilities.” Such thinking would lead to
the attractive and academically fruitful dichotomies between dominance and
subversion, between the center and the fringe, between existing systems and literary
texts, between the foreground and the background. Iser’s unquestioned assumption,
in implicitly laying the seeds of such dichotomies, is that existing systems
historically precede the literary frame, which somehow carries the function, or
mission, to subvert these systems, via the return of the negated and the neutralized.
What interests me in Iser’s discussion is less the complications of his
“subversive literature” argument, and more the insights that he provides with his
designation of the literary text as a frame. In fact, Iser’s discussions of the system
and the literary text are in perfect agreement with Heidegger’s ideas of the world-
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Picture and the world—or using Edwards’ precise definition, as the “world-thing”—
respectively. The world-thing is a literary construct that intends to provide an insight
(“Ein-blick”) into “the penumbra of [the] excluded possibilities” of the thing, with
respect to the existing world-Pictures, and particularly scientific research or
technological framing, which, according to Heidegger, provides the frame of
subjectivism. As I have noted while discussing the world-Picture that Heidegger
institutes around Van Gogh’s “shoes” painting, this literary construct, or world-
literature, assumes ideological valences, producing a “truth” that cannot be anything
other than the forceful affect of the “and yet,” grounded in the subject’s aesthetic
experience of the thing. Following Iser’s lead, we may also say that Heidegger’s
literary frame or world-Picture takes its “truth” to be those aesthetic possibilities
neutralized by the scientific, or, in a more general sense, epistemological, systems. In
a later section, I will show that Heidegger’s world-Picture is an offshoot of the
aesthetic thing-interpretations that he repudiates in his “Work of Art” essay.
The frame of things: Gestell
The Picture, in Heidegger’s critique of modem science and subjectivity,
connotes the gesture of placing before, which could also be conceived as framing.
While elaborating on the distinction between scientific and philosophical thinking in
Heidegger, Sefler notes:
Heidegger [distinguishes] two types of inquiry each utilizing a different
method: philosophy, or metaphysics employs the methods of essential, or
original thinking [whereas] science [employs] the methods of
calculation.. .[According to Heidegger] not only do these two disciplines
have different methods, but also they have different linguistic structures: non-
representational and representational language respectively. Non-
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representational language does not deal with entities, things. Representational
language, on the other hand, pictures', it deals with entities, things [Emphasis
added]. (138)
Picturing, then, is an attribute of “representational language.” It is implied in Sefler’s
distinction that Picturing corresponds to “dealing with entities, things” in the same
way it corresponds to the placing-before, or “vor-stellen” in Heidegger’s “Age of the
World Picture essay.” In this quick dismissal of the Picture and Picturing, fashioned
after Heidegger’s repudiation of the world-Picture, Sefler continues: “Can this
horizon-Being representationally be portrayed? Obviously not. The specific character
of depiction is that what is pictured is objectified within an articulated structure;
whereas the character of the horizon as Being is a surd-like matrix of relations”
(139). This devaluation of the Picture, which could be understood as portrayal,
depiction, designation, primarily stems from the conviction that a Picture frames the
thing, and therefore restricts the thing’s capability to relate to other things.
Heidegger’s conception of the Picture, not as a work of art, but as a scientific
and subjective frame, is therefore along the same lines with Wittgenstein’s
conception, according to which the Picture restrains the uses or applications that one
makes of a word in the world. The polemic against the Picture, in both Heidegger
and Wittgenstein, is also a polemic against the frame. The frame-Picture
impoverishes; it takes away from the fullness (“die Ftille”) of the thing’s being, of
the manifold ways in which the thing stands in relations with other things. It forces a
subjectively determined system onto things, a system whose arbitrariness cannot be
overlooked or overcome, insofar as it is the making of a subject or subjects. In
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another, later essay, “The Question concerning Technology,” 1 3 7 Heidegger’s Picture,
or frame-Picture, acquires another name, while still resonating with the “placing”
(“stellen”) of representation, as the gesture of placing before (vor-stellen): “Ge-stell”
or the frame-thing. The frame, in this later formulation, runs not only around the
thing, as in the frame-Picture, but also through or across the thing, like a skeleton, as
in Heidegger’s “eerie” (“schaurig”) image of it (“Rnochengerippe”) (QCT 325, FT
20). Modem technology, as Gestell, makes the claim and acts on the challenge, or
the will, to frame the thing, or run a frame through the thing. As Heidegger puts it in
his resonant prose: “We now name the challenging claim [“den herausfordemden
Anspruch] that gathers man with a view to ordering the self-revealing as the
inventory [“Bestand”]— Gestell.” (QCT 324) Gestell, in ordinary use, is the frame of
things, and particularly, the frame of machines, to which smaller, constitutive parts
are attached; but Heidegger means more than this: he draws from it the sense of an
impoverishing gesture, which, in ordering (“bestellen”) the constitution of the thing,
suppresses its “self-revealing” and fullness, and treats it as an inventory-object that
stands in a readily available, conceptual and practical reserve (“Bestand”). The
representing (“vorstellen”) and the object (“Gegen-stand”) of science, in the
terminology of this later essay, are renamed as the ordering (“bestellen”) and
1 3 7 All the quotes in English that pertain to Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology”
essay refer to the English translation by William Lovitt in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell
Krell, HarperSanFransisco: 1993, 311-342. All quotes the quotes in German refer to “Die
Frage Nach der Technik,” Vortrage und Aufsatze, ed. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am
Main: Vittorio Klostermann GmBH, 2000, 5-36.
I will use the acronym QCT while referring to the English translation and FT while referring
to the original.
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inventory (“Bestand”) of technology, while the frame-Picture (“Bild”) is renamed as
the frame-thing (“GestelV').
In Heidegger’s account of Gestell, the peasant world, this time with a male
peasant, makes a brief appearance to set a nostalgic contrast to modem technology,
whose “challenging claims” exact a technological order from the peasant’s soil.
While playing with the double meaning of the verb, “bestellen,” which means both
cultivating and ordering, Heidegger marks the difference between the caring
cultivation of the peasant and the challenging ordering of technology:
[A] tract of land is challenged in the hauling out of coal and ore. The earth
now reveals itself as a coal-mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit. The
field that the peasant formerly cultivated [“bestellte”] appears differently than
it did when cultivating/ ordering still meant to take care of and maintain. The
work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field. In sowing grain it
places seed in the keeping of the forces of growth and watches over its
increase. But meanwhile even the cultivation of the field has come under the
grip of another ordering, which sets the nature. (QCT 320)1 3 8
Technology’s setting the nature [“die Natur stellen”], Heidegger implies, is similar to
setting a machine to work, by turning a switch. In contrast, Heidegger’s peasant
world-fantasy is equivalent to a work of art or of language; the peasant’s use of the
soil of the field, analogous to the aesthetic use of the name or the fiction of the thing,
does not violate, but nurture the essence of the soil. Technology, in contrast,
challenges, orders, in-authenticates, and violates that essence. In an immediate
1 3 8 Ein Landstich wird dagegen in die Forderung von Kohle und Erzen herausgefordert. Das
Erdreich entbirgt sich jetzt als Kohlenrevier, der Boden als Erzlagerstatte. Anders erscheint
das Feld, das der Bauer vormals bestellte, wobei bestellen noch hiefi: hegen und pflegen. Das
bauerliche Tun fordert den Ackerboden nicht heraus. Im Saen des Koms gibt es die Saat den
Wachstumskraften anheim und hutet ihr Gedeihen. Inzwischen ist auch die Feldbestellung in
den Sog eines andersgearteten Bestellens geraten, das die Natur stellt (FT 15-16).
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example that follows the evocation of the peasant world, Heidegger points to the
Rhine River and the technological transformation of its essence:
The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River as was the old
wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather, the
river is dammed up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely, a
water-power supplier, derives from the essence of the power station. In order
that we may even remotely consider the monstrousness that reigns here, let us
ponder for a moment the contrast that is spoken by the two titles: “The
Rhine,” as dammed up into the power works, and “The Rhine,” as uttered by
the artwork, in Holderlin’s hymn by that name. But, it will be replied, the
Rhine is still a river in the landscape, is it not? Perhaps. But how? In no other
way than as an object orderable [bestellbar] for sightseeing by a tour-group
ordered [bestellt] there by the vacation industry. (QCT 321)1 9
These are relatively plain words in an essay packed with continuous wordplay,
curious etymological diggings and elusive formulations. In contrasting the old with
the new, Heidegger uses another nostalgic image: this time, of the old bridge (“die
alte Holzbrucke”), which also surfaces, with more expressively poetic prose, in his
“Building, Dwelling, Thinking” essay. The essence of the Rhine River is not only
dammed or obstructed, but also used up (“verbaut”) by the overbearing prominence
of the power-work; the river acquires a derivative essence (“Wesen”) as “a water
power supplier.” The question of the essence of the river turns, for Heidegger, into a
question of language that concerns the “monstrous” (“ungeheuer”) contrast between
1 3 9 Das Wasserkraftwerk ist nicht in den Rheinstrom gebaut wie die alte Holzbrucke, die seit
Jahrhunderten Ufer mit Ufer verbindet. Vielmehr ist der Strom in das Krafitwerk verbaut. Er
ist, was er jetzt als Strom ist, namlich Wasserdrucklieferant, aus dem Wesen des Kraftwerks.
Achten wir doch, um das Ungeheuere, das hier waltet, auch nur entfemt zu ermessen, fur
einen Augenblick auf den Gegensatz, der sich in den beiden Titeln ausspricht: “Der Rhein,”
verbaut in das Kraftwerk, und “der Rhein,” gesagt aus dem Kunstwerk der gleichnamigen
Hymne Holderlins. Aber der Rhein bleibt doch, wird man entgegnen, Strom der Landschaft.
Mag sein, aber wie? Nicht anders als bestellbares Objekt der Besichtigung durch eine
Reisegesellschaft, die eine Urlaubsindustrie dorthin bestellt hat (FT 16-17).
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two ways of imagining or Picturing the name or the label “The Rhine.” This
“monstrous” contrast consists in that one can simultaneously bring the Picture of the
hydraulic plant damming up the river, and the Picture of the imagery of Holderlin’s
hymn under the same title. 1 4 0
In juxtaposing the two Pictures of the same river, Heidegger is also pitting
the view of technology, or Gestell, against the view of poetry, or as it gets mentioned
in this essay, poiesis. He uses the same kind of contrast in his shoes example in the
“Work of Art” essay, where the catalogue view of the shoes, espoused in
technological terms, constitutes an implicit contrast with the fiction of the shoes in
the Van Gogh painting, or—if we remember that all artworks, as conceived in that
essay, are instances of poetizing and poetry—with the poetic use of the name
“shoes.” In Heidegger’s contrast between the two uses of the river, between the
technological and the poetic use, it is also possible to detect the resonances of
Wittgenstein’s “cube” example, where the plain drawing of the “cube” contrasts with
the transformative, mathematical and I would like to add, technological use of the
mathematician, who converts the cube into a triangular prism. If the mathematician’s
use may be understood as an in-authenticating use, in which the “essence” of the
cube is replaced by that of the triangular prism, the same could also be said in the
technological use of the Rhine, whose essence, according to Heidegger, is dammed
1401 would like to remind the reader that Heidegger intensely engaged with Holderlin’s
poetry; in fact, he dedicated several volumes to the literary interpretation of his romantic
poems, which are reputedly difficult and elusive. For a sampling of Heidegger’s literary
interpretations see Elucidations of Holderlin’s Poetry. Heidegger 2000.
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up or obstructed out of view by the hydraulic plant. Heidegger’s difference, and
originality, is the emphasis he lays on the poetic, affective and aesthetic use of the
“river;” not only does the poetic use contrast, or “collide with” the technological use,
but it also says something about the essence of the thing.
But what exactly does this contrast mean? Is there really a contradiction
between the poetic and technological use? In setting up the contrast, Heidegger does
not at all mention the fact that the poetic use is, in many ways, as idiosyncratic as the
technological use of the “river,” with respect to the “plain” view of the river; it is
available only to those who are familiar with Holderlin’s hymn, to say the least. A
contrast of the sort Heidegger tries to set up would only be tenable if and when the
mediation between the two uses were elusive or difficult; but as long as the river is in
“plain” sight, it is inferable that both the technological and the poetic use of the
“river” relate to the same sight, as a consequence of which the contrast could easily
be resolved. Having pointed out the “monstrousness” of the contrast, Heidegger,
himself, brings up or rather, condescends to this “commonsensical” view, speaking
the language of everyman: “.. .one will be reply, the Rhine still remains a river in the
landscape.” This plain seeing of the river, as a river in the landscape, which
Heidegger satirizes, and in satirizing, brushes away, as a commodifing act that reifies
the river and reduces it to a profitable object, orderable (“bestellbar”) for the tourist’s
gaze.
But, this dismissal, even if it does not work as a rebuttal, is significant, or to be
more precise, affective. Heidegger’s half-hearted acceptance of the everyday view,
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“perhaps” is followed by the questioning, “but how?” If Heidegger does not want to
take a plain look at the Rhine, this is perhaps because he anticipates much more
affect from an encounter with the “essence” of Rhine than what a plain look at it
could ever provide him with. It is the “how” or the affective quality of any encounter
with the name or the fiction of “Rhine” that matters; among such encounters,
Heidegger privileges the affective encounter with the river’s “essence.” Since, in
actuality, such encounter would concern, not any “essence” of the river, as
Heidegger’s metaphysical language would want us to believe, but an aesthetic use of
a fiction of the river, be it a painting of the river with the old bridge or Holderlin’s
rhyme, Heidegger’s affective encounters are primarily with artworks. It is possible,
therefore, to think of Heidegger’s emphasis on the “monstrousness” of the contrast
between the two Rhine-Pictures as marking the difference between the aesthetic
affects that these two Pictures generate on the interpreter, despite the possibility of
the straightforward mediation that enables their reconciliation.
The contrast between the powerwork and artwork, Gestell and poiesis,
technology and poetry may also be conceived as the affective contrast between
instrumental framing and aesthetic revealing as it concerns the use of language or the
use of the fiction or the name of the thing. Significantly, Heidegger’s essay starts
with the questioning of the instrumental, as the essence of technology, before it is
renamed as Gestell. That which is upsetting for Heidegger in Gestell or instrument is,
once again, the modem subject’s will to frame things and beings, and to be in control
of them. In Heidegger’s quasi-theological parlance, the technological will to frame
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things takes itself to be the will to constitute the destiny (“das Geschick”) or the
endpoint of the revelation (“die Entbergung”) of things:
[W]hen destining reigns in the mode of enframing, it is the biggest danger.
This danger attests itself to us in two ways. As soon as what is unconcealed
no longer concerns man even as object, but exclusively as inventory, and man
in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the inventory, then
he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point
where he himself will have to be taken as inventory. Meanwhile, man,
precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself and poses as the lord of the
earth. In this way, the illusion comes to prevail that everything man
encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. (QCT 332, translation
altered)1 4 1
Instead of encountering (“begegnfen]”) the essence of things, the modem subject
(“Mensch”), reduces everything to his own making or construct (“Gemachte”), or to
that, which exists (“bestehe”) only as an inventory (“Bestand”), and therefore, is
amenable to his ordering (“bestellen”) will. The gesture to order (“bestellen”), much
like the gesture to place before (“vorstellen”), gives way to the nihilistic and self-
negating consequence in which every man is orderable for every other man. Man
assumes the figure of the lord of the earth (“die Gestalt des Herm der Erde”),
spreading himself over the earth; and the earth, here, must be taught as the nostalgic
earth of those authentic non-subjects, i.e., of the peasant woman, who toils in
Heidegger’s shoes, and of the peasant man, who reverently and self-effacingly
1 4 1 Waltet.. .das Geschick in der Weise des Ge-stells, dann ist es die hochste Gefahr. Sie
bezeugt Sich uns nach zw ei Hinsichten. Sobald das Unverborgene nicht einmal mehr als
Gegenstand, sondem ausschliefllich als Bestand den Menschen angeht und der Mensch
innerhalb des Gegenstandlosen nur doch der Besteller des Bestandes ist,— geht der Mensch
am auBersten Rand des Absturzes, wo er selber nur doch als Bestand genommen werden
soil. Indessen spreizt sich gerade der so bedrohte Mensch in die Gestalt des Herm der Erde
auf. Dadurch macht sich der Anschein breit, alles was begegne, bestehe nur, insofar es ein
Gemachte des Menschen sei. (FT 27-28)
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maintains the soil. The figure (“die Gestalt”) of the modem subject, in ordering and
framing the world, becomes the technological reference-point by which everything is
made out to be (“Gemachte”): his all dominating, all consuming technological
framework (“Gestell”), and his tyrannical figure (“Gestalt”) as the lord of the earth,
therefore, “block (“verstellt”) the shining (“Scheinen”) and ruling of the truth” of
things.
It becomes obvious that, for Heidegger, such shining is an attribute of poiesis,
and by extension, poetry. While acknowledging that Gestell is also a way of
revelation, in which man is able to place demands on things, or challenge them
(“herausfordem”), Heidegger highlights the more originary revealing in which man
lets things come forth or brings them forth into appearance, namely, poiesis
(“hervorkommen lassen” or “hervorbringen”). 1 4 2 In the conclusion to his essay,
Heidegger mentions the saving power (“das Rettende”) of poiesis, a term that
Heidegger culls from Holderlin, which might help overcome the subjectivizing,
framing, essence-blocking dangers of Gestell, and bring about the event of truth
(“Ereignis der Wahrheif’), in which technology does not block poiesis (FT 36). If
poiesis has the power to transcend the shortcomings of technology, this is because in
142... [G]estell conceals that revealing, which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences
come forth into appearance (QCT 332)... The revealing that challenges [i.e., Gestell] has its
origin as a destining in bringing-forth. But at the same time Ge-stell, in a way that is
characteristic of destiny, blocks [verstellt] poiesis (QCT 335).
Vor allem verbirgt das Ge-stell jenes Entbergen, das im Sinne des poiesis das Anwesende ins
Erscheinen her-vor-kommen labt. (FT 28)... Das herausfordemde Entbergen hat im
hervorbringenden seine geschickliche Herkunft. Aber zugleich verstellt das Ge-stell
geschickhaft die Poiesis. (FT 31)
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its essence, poetry, while more originary than technology, is also a kind of
technology. To show this, Heidegger points to the ancient Greek application of the
same word “techne” to both notions, which, displays their kinship.1 4 3 The fine arts,
as poiesis and as a kin to technology by way of techne, may rise to the occasion of
enabling the growth of the saving power:
Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential
reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in
a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology, and on the
other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art. (QCT 340)1 4 4
Heidegger’s main contention against technology, Ge-stell, frame-thing and frame-
thinking, therefore, is their implication of a subjectivity, which, according to him,
uses up the name or the fiction of the things, by ordering, framing and representing
them. His main alternative to technology is another technology—a more originary
one fashioned after the classical Greek notion of techne—the technology of art and
poetry. In Heidegger’s “The Way to Language” essay, with which I started my
investigation of Heidegger’s thoughts on language, Gestell represents the formalized
1 4 3 Why did art bear the modest name “techne”? Because it was a revealing that brought
forth and made present, and therefore belonged within poiesis. It was finally that revealing
which holds complete sway in all the fine arts, in poetry, and in everything poetical that
obtained poiesis as its proper name. (QCT 339)
Warum trug [die Kunst] deb schlichten Namen techne? Weil sie ein her- und vor-bringendes
Entbergen war und darum in die poiesis gehorte. Diesen Namen erhielt zuletzt jenes
Entbergen als Eigennamen, das alle Kunst des Schonen durchwaltet, die Poesie, das
Dichterische. (FT 35)
1 4 4 Weil das Wesen der Technik nichts Technisches ist, darum muB die wesentliche
Besinnung auf die Technik und die entscheidende Auseinandersetzung mit ihr in einem
Bereich geschehen, der einerseits mit dem Wesen der Technik verwandt und andererseits
von ihm doch grundverschieden ist (FT 36).
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and informative use of language, which, since it orders things according to the will
of the calculating human subject, blocks the event (“Ereignis”) of language:
Ge-Stell, because it.. .challenges [human beings] to order everything that
comes to presence into a technical inventory.. .distorts the event, in as much
as all ordering sees itself committed to calculative thinking and so speaks the
language of Ge-stell.. .Speech, when posed in this fashion, becomes
information. ..Gestell orders for itself a formalized language—that kind of
informing by virtue of which man is molded and adjusted into the technical-
calculative creature... Formalization, as the calculating orderability of
saying, [in the language of Ge-stell] is the goal and the standard. (WTL 420-
4 2 )1 4 ?
In the language of Gestell, we find the antithesis of the poetic use of language: we
find a use in which the subject orders language purposefully, and in a calculating
manner. We still have the calculating spirit of the representing subjectivity of science
(“der rechnende Mensch”) of the “Age of the World-Picture” essay, carried over to
Heidegger’s dealings with language. The subject is in control of the language, just as
he is in control of his technological frames, or Gestell: he uses language as an
instrument, for purposes of information and, recalling Heidegger’s remarks in his
“Work of Art” essay, for purposes of communication. In fact, for Heidegger, the
communicative character of language is a straightforward extension of its
instrumental character. As Lafont notes
1 4 5 Insofem es den Menschen .. .herausfordert, alles Anwesende als technischen Bestand zu
bestellen, west das G e-Stell...zw ar so, da!3 es [das Ereignis] zugleich verstellt, w eil alles
Bestellen sich in das rechnende Denken eingewiesen sieht und so die Sprache des Ge-stells
spricht....Das so gestellte Sprechen wird zur Information. Das Ge-stell...bestellt sich die
formalisierte Sprach, jene art der Benachrichtigung, kraft deren der Mensch in das technisch-
rechnende Wesen eingeformt, d.h., eingerichtet wird...Die Formalisierung, die technische
Bestellbarkeit des Sagens, ist das Ziel und die Mal3gabe(WzS 251-252).
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Heidegger repeatedly emphasizes the ‘derivative’ character of the pragmatic,
communicative dimension as opposed to its semantic, world-disclosing
function.. .Heidegger regards the conception of language as a ‘means of
communication’ to be simply another version of the view of language as tool.
1 4 6 (91)
Remembering the “Work of Art” essay, the “view of language as tool” corresponds
to the view of language as equipment. Gestell surfaces an all-inclusive trope that
sweeps across all aspects of language, insofar as the human subject is implied in
these aspects. To be in control of language means to be able to formalize it, to turn it
into a skeleton of goals, standards and rules, to give it a subjective measure of the
using subject (“maBgeben”) and hence, to use it up. Gestell, then, stands for an
account of language, which also orders the constitution of the “human,” who,
henceforth, sees himself as the “technical and calculative” user of language,
1 4 6 Lafont nicely summarizes the three “reductive” conceptions of language, to which
Heidegger objects in the period after his linguistic turn known as Kehre: these are
intentionalistic, pragmatist, cognitivist conceptions of language (100). All these three
conceptions could be linked with the theme that I have been pursuing in my dissertation,
namely, the making of a Picture by the subject, especially when the Picture is viewed to
embody a purpose whatsoever. Trying to replicate Heidegger’s way of thinking, however,
Lafont is quite sympathetic with Heidegger’s objections to these three conceptions, despite
her forceful critique that Heidegger’s alternative conception, namely the world-disclosing
function of language, results in the “reification” of language. Lafont’s elucidations waver in
between the acknowledgement of the validity of Heidegger’s objections and her criticism of
Heidegger’s reification of language, which necessitates a rethinking of the pragmatic
standpoint:
The reification of language seems unavoidable... insofar as this model of language
already presupposes a priority o f semantics with respect to pragmatics. O nly on the
basis of an understanding of language that permits us to rethink the constitutive role
of language from a pragmatic standpoint does any possibility of avoiding such
reifications of language open up.” (104ff)
Note that Lafont’s acknowledgment of Heidegger’s objections amounts to a most basic
observation: we find ourselves sharing a language or that we find ourselves being in the
world.
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equivalent to the subject of representation. Edwards aptly summarizes Heidegger’s
contention against the instrumental, purposive and communicative use of language:
Both language-as-representation and language-as-expression agree in the
assumption that language is essentially a human instrument adapted to human
purposes. We speak [a] language. Language is our creation, a human
invention, and it is used by us to further our own purposes: communication,
first of all; then, whatever other purposes—science, art, grocery shopping—
communication itself serves. (87)
Heidegger’s critique of instrumental, communicative, purposive account of language,
according to Edwards, is also a critique of the representationalist account of language
(72). 1 4 7 Heidegger’s difference from these accounts would be to disturb the
1 4 7 But what exactly is this representationalist account of language, whose critique Edwards
attributes to Heidegger? Perhaps there is not a fixed “representationalist account”, but
different accounts, that revolve around similar tropes, metaphors or figures. Among these
figures, Edward refers to the representationalist account as the one that attributes a mirroring
or correspondence function to language, which we have also seen in Wittgenstein’s
language-as-correspondence argument in his Tractatus. In the following lines Edwards
brilliantly recapitulates such a representational account of language, which he then
repudiates with sound argumentation.
In the representationalist account, consciousness is directly aware only of its own
ideas. Conceived as the mirror of nature, mind “contains” only the images of things,
not the actual things themselves. One’s knowledge of reality thus can come only
through one’s representations of it; and however coherent and convincing a given set
of representations may be, there is always the possibility of its falsity. The essential
nature of a representation is that it is always distinguishable, and therefore different
from, what it represents. No representation carries its warrant of truth on its face, not
even the second order, philosophical representation that our ideas resemble the
objects that cause them. What then could be the source of one’s assurance that (at
least sometimes) the things-in-themselves match up appropriately with the things-as-
they-seem? What could be our guarantee of the " “natural resemblance” of idea to
object asserted to be at the heart of all representation? None, its seems, barring some
Cartesian deus ex machina.. .The immediate upshot of this recognition is a virulent
epistemological skepticism...in the representationalist account, objective reality (i.e.
the Ding-an-sich) has become completely inaccessible to thought; one is only left
with the representations themselves. But this breaks the back of the philosophical
metaphor of representation altogether. If there are nothing but representations
available to me for inspection, then there are no representations. (72)
It is interesting that for Edwards, representation is a metaphor by which language is to be
understood. The shortcoming of this metaphor is obvious: it necessitates a precedent, which
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it then represents. I have pointed out such shortcoming in Wittgenstein’s representational
account of language, in which propositions are taken to be pictures of the facts that they
represent. My own proposition was to suggest that propositions be thought as just pictures
before they are attributed to that something else, which they are made to represent and with
respective to which they may acquire a representative status.
Edwards’ sweeping claim, however, is to turn this representational account as the source
of the persistent philosophical nihilism, which needs to be overcome. In the fight against
nihilism, Edwards uncritically accepts Heidegger’s critique of representational thinking or
“vorstellendes Denken,” without realizing, perhaps, that his own critique of the
representational account of language is not at all the same as Heidegger’s critique. As
Edwards also points out, Heidegger’s approach to the representational thinking is primarily
linked with the etymology of the word “vor-stellen,” that involves the framing gesture of
setting-before the subject: “[Heidegger’s] vorstellendes Denken is a sort of conquest [of the
object as Gegenstand]” (42). I have noted, in the course of my essay, how Heidegger’s
critique of representation is too broad and inclusive, leaving nothing outside its grasp,
including his own gestures to the beyond. It is one thing to critique the account of language
as representative correspondence, and another, to repudiate each and every representation on
the basis of its being rooted in a gesture of subjectivistic placing-before. Edwards himself is
struggling to bring together Heidegger’s critique of “vorstellendes Denken” as the basis of
metaphysics and his own critique of representational account of language as the basis of
nihilism, and he tries to translate Heidegger’s thought into “an idiom less eccentric, so as to
show us something important about the threat of nihilism” (46). But this translation comes
with the admission that “[philosophy] is always representational thinking,” and with the
endeavor to expand the definition of representation, such that it may be made to conform to
Heidegger’s ideas of “vor-stellen” (46). The all-inclusive redefinition is that all philosophy is
“vorstellendes Denken” in that it “ represents] human rationality and human action in a
particular way.” All philosophical representation, then, is an act of rationalization of “social
practices as essentially rule-governed, as essentially constituted by principles accepted and
followed (with some degree of awareness) by the agents participating in them” (57).
Notwithstanding the polemical difficulties this redefinition will encounter as to what
constitutes “rationality” -is, for instance, the representation of genocide as a practice of
cruelty to be counted as an act of rationalization, and, is therefore to be objected? -
Edwards’s redefinition arbitrarily conflates the notion of representation with that of
rationality. A rational representation, whatever its definition may be, is to be seen as
equivalent to any representation. Rationality-as- representation, as Edwards calls it,
ultimately leads to the philosophical skepticism which “[reduces] our practices to sets of
rules to be followed by action.” If Edwards resorts to Heidegger’s philosophy of language, it
is because of the nostalgia for the possibility of a philosophy that negates the supposedly
nihilism-inducing predicament “one is only left with representations themselves.”
It is quite puzzling, however, that Edwards’ excellent objection to the representationalist
account of the language, which is not the same as Heidegger’s, results in the following
unfounded argument: “mind is not the mirror of nature, so the proposition cannot be the
publicly exhibited photograph of the image caught in one’s inner glass” (84). The mind,
nature and photograph, in this statement, correspond to Wittgenstein’s thought, world and
photograph, respectively in his Tractatus. The statement, “mind is not the mirror of nature,”
is an empty statement, given Edwards’ own critique of the representational account of
language: if one cannot assert a representative relation between the representation and what
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predominant paradigm “we speak language,” by getting “behind the linguistic
‘humanism’ common both to language-as-representation and to language-as-
expression.” (88) In Heidegger’s later thought, this much-coveted anti-subjectivistic,
anti-humanistic account of language is thought to be achieved, as I have noted at the
beginning of my chapter, by way of tautological repetitions and reassurances such as
“language speaks” (“die Sprache spricht”) . 1 4 8 As Kusch notes:
is represented (unless the latter is another “representation”); one cannot deny the existence of
such relationship either. The “mirror” trope can only concern two “representations” or two
thoughts, and cannot mediate between a thought and a thing, as the latter is supposed to
reside outside the thought. That the “mirror” is still an effective trope only indicates that the
other trope, “nature,” is unreflectively “naturalized”, so to speak, to constitute that, which
belongs to the beyond of the “representation” or the thought.
1481 would like to add a note on Heidegger’s “nonsensical” tautologies, and in relation to it,
his use of arbitrarily overcharged terminology, since Heidegger’s unorthodox use of
language appears to be at the very root of the divide between Continental and Analytic
philosophy. In relation to another tautological formula, “the Nothing itself nothings” (“das
Nichts selbst nichtet,”), Witherspoon concludes:
Heidegger seems to have insulated his method from criticism by those who do not
share the original experience [of the Nothing], For if the only way to see the
legitimacy of Heidegger’s inquiry and to grasp its results is to experience the
Nothing, then anyone who has not been vouchsafed such an experience will fail to
recognize the legitimacy and the results of his inquiry. It is impossible to understand
what Heidegger is up to unless you have an experience which will make plain to you
both what the Nothing is and why it cannot be described. What the uninitiated
cannot but regard as nonsense becomes a fundamental truth for those who have had
this experience. (318)
The uninitiated in the above paragraph, is, of course, Camap whose mockery of Heidegger’s
tautological formulas has resulted in the seemingly unbridgeable divide between Continental
and Analytic philosophy. For my interests, Witherspoon’s remarks are interesting in that it
points to the necessity that the interpreter possess the notion of a particular experience, and I
would like to add, using Kearney’s designation, a particular interpretive imagination, in
order to make sense of Heidegger’s statements. Given that these statements have found
much following in a certain “philosophical” discourse is enough proof that they are not
“meaningless” for a particular discourse community. Of course, my last statement would
open Pandora’s box about the relativism of “meaning,” which is, for better or worse, a
reality that any theory of language needs to reckon with. It is also a reality that Heidegger’s
formulations, including that of Being, Ereignis or Unconcealment, etc., while being
appropriated or eventuated by a particular community, may not do anything, or rather,
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The reason why [in Heidegger] the world worlds, the time times, the space
spaces, and the language speaks (die Sprache spricht), is that predicating
anything else of the world, time, space, or language would lead us to the
temptation of turning them into something in toto accessible, to the
temptation of turning them into something we can—without circularity—
speak about. (219)
To speak about language would be equivalent to ordering and re-presenting it,
according to the will of the human subject. Better repeat the same word twice, rather
than succumb to the temptation of saying something about it. The loyalty to
tautology ultimately pays off: there is something extraordinary along the path of
repetition, which one must patiently await: this is the event (“Ereignis”) of language
coming to its own, like a homecoming, after its long exile in the territory of
representational, instrumental, communicative, subjective use. But one wants to say
something about this event, and when Heidegger does so, he refers to the aesthetic
use of the name or the fiction of the thing, as experienced by that ever-intrusive
subject.
nothing for other discourse communities that are sensibly and affectively incapable of the
experiences necessitated by such formulations. The question is why the discussion of these
formulations should matter for the one who has not experienced, or, who simply refuses to
experience what is entailed in these designations, unless they are converted, not by methods
o f argumentation, but by divine circumstances. It is, therefore, quite illuminating that
Witherspoon’s parenthetical remarks, immediately following the above quote, concern the
theological accounts of conversion:
(There are structural parallels between the experience of the Nothing in Heidegger’s
philosophy and certain theological accounts of conversion, according to which an
experience of grace transforms the believer in such a way that she can—indeed
must—embrace what to the nonbeliever is absurd). (318)
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Back to the Picture: World-disclosing Picture and World-disclosing function of
Language
To bring language into language as language is to move away from language
as instrument of communication, and experience it as the place from which
something, as expansive as the world, comes into being, and grants authentic being
to whatever comes to its vicinity. Coming from a primarily linguistic perspective,
Christina Lafont refers to this aspect of language, which Heidegger emphasizes in his
account of language, as the “world-disclosing” function of language. In the
analogical perspective that I have tried to develop in this work, the world-disclosing
function of language becomes equivalent to Heidegger’s world-disclosing Picture, or
simply, world-Picture, which Heidegger exemplifies in his account of the visual
artwork in the “Work of Art” essay. In placing Heidegger’s general argument in the
context of the linguistic turn in German hermeneutic philosophy, Lafont implies that
Heidegger’s delineation of the word-disclosing function of language is to be seen as
a reaction to the philosophy of consciousness, according to which “language is
merely an ‘instrument’ for the designation of entities independent of it, or for the
communication of pre-linguistic thoughts” (2). Heidegger’s emphasis on the world-
disclosing function, then, must be seen as a critique of the perception of language as
subjective instrument.
The Pictorial angle that I have adopted in my accounts of Wittgenstein and
Heidegger may help illustrate Lafont’s point. In Wittgenstein’s later critique of the
Picture, which also constitutes a counter-example to the subjectivist view of
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language, the designative function of language is reduced to the only marginally
relevant pointing-to game, which is often eclipsed by the prevalence of inter-
subjective and this word-ly language games. The implicit critique of the
“instrumentality” of the Picture, in later Wittgenstein, would correspond to the more
explicit, anti-subjectivistic claim that the subject cannot be in control of language,
just by using the internal Pictures of his private language: adequate linguistic
responses are shaped, not by way of referring to a subjective interior, which
somehow connotes the field of pre-linguistic thoughts, but, by way of playing, or to
use a Heideggerian term, by being, within the field of context-endowing language
games. Language as the field ofplay in later Wittgenstein resonates with language as
the house o f being in Heidegger.
It is always possible to describe the afore-mentioned “field” or “house,” using
the vague metaphor of the “world,” in order to delineate the multiplicity that is
characteristic of our dealings with language. With the introduction of the world, the
subjective Picture may be critiqued for not taking into account the multiplicities of
being/playing-in-the world. In my previous chapter, I noted how the Picture, in
Wittgenstein’s cube example, is rendered static, and lacking in multiplicity, and is
therefore given an ontological deficiency. I have also noted how the notion of the
application, which is Wittgenstein’s alternative to the thought-captivating, inert
Picture, could be subsumed under a temporalized and generalized notion of the
Picture. In Heidegger’s critique, the Picture, which is an immediate token of the
instrumental and representing (“vorstellend”) world-Picture, is deficient, not because
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it is static, but because it has been neutralized in a calculated manner and is therefore
stripped of its affectivity. But Heidegger’s embrace of a world-disclosing Picture,
namely Van Gogh’s painting, already implies that his own thoughts are implicated in
a representational technology, or a world-Picture, in which Pictures do not reduce
themselves to the sense of being a technological instrument, or as it is mentioned in
the “World of Art” essay, to an equipment: they are thought, composed, and set
before (“vorstellen”) as the source of expansive aesthetic affects, which suggest the
beyond of the Picture that Heidegger captures in his fragment and yet. Then,
Heidegger’s alternative to the Picture, as it assumes such multiple names as Being,
unconcealment, poiesis, etc. could also be subsumed under a deneutralized,
aestheticized notion of the Picture. As Lafont notes, there is no justification in
Heidegger’s account of language for absolutizing the “world-disclosing” function of
language at the expense of its “designative” function. 1491 would like to take
1 4 9 Lafont notes that Heidegger’s argument, alongside Humboldt’s, absolutizes the world-
disclosing function of language:
The absolutizing of the world-disclosing function of language [in the tradition of
Heidegger] entails consequences that are just as harmful as those of the inverse
procedure: the absolutizing of its designative function that occurs in the classical
view of language... With [Heidegger’s] reification of the world-disclosing function
of language, what things are becomes thoroughly dependent on what is contingently
“disclosed” for a historical linguistic community through a specific language. Thus,
the world-disclosure that is contained in a given language becomes the final
authority forjudging the intrawordly knowledge that this world-disclosure has made
possible in the first place; in this sense, it comes to be regarded as “the essence of
truth.” But this world-disclosure is itself not open to revision on the basis of
intrawordly experience and therefore cannot be understood as codetermined by our
processes of learning. Hence, this theory culminates in Heidegger’s well-known
thesis that in language there occurs a contingent, fateful “happening of being” into
which we are thrown. (7)
Lafont’s precise description also hints at the authoritative bias at the heart of Heidegger’s
arguments. Lafont then rightfully claims that Heidegger’s “reification of the world-
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disclosing function of language” is a result of his misinterpretation, and simplification of the
designative function of language. The “constitutive rank” Heidegger “grants” to the world-
disclosing function of language could be seen as the unexamined assumption that Lafont
notes elsewhere: that “meaning determines reference” (70). She brilliantly shows how
Heidegger replicates the dichotomy between meaning and reference, “analogous to that
between subject and object,” the latter of which Heidegger claims to have destroyed (180).
Lafont notes that “[meaning-reference pair] is a dichotomy in which one pole (the meaning
pre-given in an understanding of beings) necessarily assumes constitutive powers over the
other (i.e. over our access to the referents, to the intrawordly entities)” (180). On the other
hand, however, Lafont does not as much destroy the dichotomy, as formulate a kind of
reconciliation between the two terms. Analyzing Putnam’s arguments on the designative
function of language, Lafont emphasizes the theoretical advantages of this function
compared with the world-disclosing function of language, prioritized in the Heideggerian
tradition:
.. .the linguistic function of designation does not at all suggest that designation is to
be regarded as the sole basis for explaining the function of language (as was the
case, before the linguistic turn, in the conception of language as an instrument.)
Rather what is shown out by Heidegger is highly dubious, namely the program of
regarding the world-disclosing function proper to predication as the sole explanation
for the functioning of language as a whole. (244)
The function of the designation would, in the context of the pictorial angle that I have been
pursuing in my dissertation, correspond to the function of the Picture. Lafont’s
acknowledgment of designation, and consequently, of the Picture, however, does not
contradict the supposed insight that the function of designation cannot tell us what is specific
about language:
The function of designation is shared by natural languages with other, simpler sign
systems...in this case, designation does not represent something specific to
language. On the basis of designation alone, we thus find no direct answer to a
fundamental question in the analysis of language: “What do we bring about by
means of language that could not be brought about without it?” (244, Quoted from
Taylor’s “Theories of Meaning”)
Lafont does not question why such a question must be a “fundamental question in the
analysis of language,” and to what extent the assumption of such fundamental status is a
matter of historically canonized speculation, rather than a theoretical necessity. Of course,
the question of specificity would bolster a tradition of thinking, in which “language as such”
is given revelatory powers, raised to world-disclosing heights, treasured with untranslatable,
world-disclosing values. It is obvious that Lafont is trying to reconcile the world-disclosing
and designative, meaning-endowing and referential functions of language, while not quite
venturing to problematize, and possibly to destroy, the world-disclosing dimension:
[it is o f little necessity] to deny the world-disclosing dim ension o f theoretical
concepts, that is, that on the basis of the holistic, definitional relations among them
in the context of a theory they provide an answer to the question of “what there is.”
(244)
Lafont does not offer any examples to show what she means by the “holistic and definitional
relations” or “the context of [a] theory;” nor does she explain why the question of “what
there is” needs to be answered in a theory of language. While reluctant to get rid of, or at
least, to demystify this supposedly inevitable dimension, she does recognize the
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Lafont’s point one step further and suggest that there is also no justification in
inserting clear cut divisions, and establishing dichotomies between the aesthetic,
“world-disclosing,” “meaning-endowing,” use of the Picture and its purposive,
designative, referential, communicative, subjective, instrumental, and to use a
Heideggerian word, equipmental use. In the next section, I will try show that it is
possible to recuperate the Picture, as both an aesthetic and equipmental notion, by
working through Heidegger’s conceptualization of the equipment in the “Work of
Art” essay. To work through the equipment will entail shaping it, not only through
well-structured frames of purposiveness, characteristic of Heidegger’s Gestell, but
also through the fluid mold of aesthetics that never ceases to endow its matter with
the suggestion of the beyond. But this attempt to bridge between equipmentality and
aesthetics, or, the equipment and the aestheton, will necessitate a critique of
Heidegger’s notion of the equipment and his repudiation of aesthetics.
indispensability of the much more accessible (and perhaps, therefore, much more
overlooked) “designative” function of language:
[The fact that the designative function cannot prescribe the specificity of language]
in no way contradicts our ascribing to precisely this function (which is indispensable
for an analysis of the use of signs precisely because of its presence in all interpreted
sign-systems) a central role in bringing about our relation to the world. Without this
relation, language as a whole would almost completely lose its raison d ’ etre. (244)
D oes the designative function bring about our relation to this world or any world? I have
discussed, in some depth, that the designative function must not be anchored in the
ontological assumption of the presence of the world, during my first chapter. Despite this,
Lafont’s delineation of the designative function as constituting the raison d ’ etre, or,
remembering that being should always be taken as a possibility, the raison de pouvoir etre of
language points to the necessity of theorizing this function—anonymous with seeing the
Picture thoroughly—in any theory of language.
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The aesthetics of equipment
Given his profound interest in poetry and fine arts, as central to his
formulations of truth, world and language, Heidegger’s repudiation of aesthetics is
rather curious. In fact, Heidegger’s account of truth, world and language, when
stripped of its truth rhetoric, becomes a particular account of aesthetics, which
concerns the aesthetic use of the thing, or, of the name or the fiction of the thing, in
poetry and fine arts. The aesthetic use of the thing, according to Heidegger,
corresponds to the use of material in the temple, and the use of the stuff of painting
and language, which he takes to be color pigments and words. Similarly, the
aesthetic use of the name and fiction of the thing corresponds to the use of the fiction
of the shoes in Van Gogh’s painting, and the use of the fiction of the fountain in Carl
Meyer’s “Fountain” poem, which Heidegger, in a passing reference, quotes without
analyzing. Both kinds of aesthetic use, in Heidegger’s account, result in the
production of supposedly non-subjective affects that reveal the fullness of things,
engendering a world-disclosing imagination, affects that are then given over to the
naming technology of Heidegger’s truth rhetoric.
But why would Heidegger not want to be seen as proposing a theory of
aesthetics, and an aesthetic theory of language, despite the fact that everything else,
including his grandiose truth speech, indicates that this is what he is doing? In the
epilogue to Heidegger’s “Work of Arts” essay, it is clear that the employment of
aesthetics in thinking about art, not to mention in Heidegger’s own thought, is
completely unacceptable since the notion of aesthetics demands the presence of a
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human subject experiencing the aesthetic object (Gegen-stand), i.e., as the object of
“sensuous apprehension” (“das sinnliche Vemehmen”).1 5 0 When the subject
apprehends the thing, or takes it to be a sensuous object, Heidegger claims, the thing,
in becoming an object, is over-taken by the subject (“Vemehmen”). Heidegger gives
a name to this overtaking gesture, by which the subject senses the object: “we call
the apprehension lived experience” or “das Erleben.”1 5 1 When the thing becomes
1 5 0 Young summarizes Heidegger’s contention to aesthetics based on the “Work of Art” and
other essays: “In two ways, then aesthetics is the element in which great art ‘dies,” descends
from greatness into triviality. It becomes marginal within the lives of those who choose to
take it up. And it becomes marginal to the culture as a whole, devoid of the world-historical
significance which, for both Hegel and Heidegger, great art must have.” (12) In other words,
aesthetics restricts art to the lives of those subjects, who enjoy art, as a result of which, art,
somehow immediately, becomes trivial. Where there is subject, Young seems to imply, there
is no world-significance and therefore, no great art. Interestingly, Young downplays the
importance of Heidegger’s account of the Van Gogh painting, declaring that “[the essay’s]
reverie on Van Gogh’s painting of shoes ...[is] almost completely irrelevant to,
indeed.. .inconsistent with the real thrust of the essay.”(5) Is this attempt to dismiss the Van
Gogh painting also an attempt to cover up what I take as the conflicted thrust of the essay:
that the essay’s insistence on the non-subjectivistic world-significance of art contradicts the
subjectivism, and therefore aestheticism, inherent in its reverie of the Van Gogh painting? In
his following discussion, Young implies the “real thrust” is to be found in the essay’s much
less unequivocal, but I would venture to say, infinitely less interesting example of the Greek
temple, which, rhetorically and with much ease, “possesses world-historical significance.”
(12) In devaluating the obvious centrality of the shoes painting, Young also misses the very
interesting, and “relevant,” analogizing gestures of Heidegger’s account that extends from
the work of art, not only to poetry, but also to language. In my chapter, I tried to underscore
such gestures to constitute the “real thrust” of the essay, as it intends to develop an implicit
theory that concerns the use of the fiction (work of art) or the name of the thing (language).
1 5 1 Almost from the time when specialized thinking about art and the artist began, the
thought was called aesthetic. Aesthetics takes the work o f art as an object, the object o f
aisthesis, of sensuous apprehension in the wide sense. Today we call the apprehension lived
experience. The way in which man experiences art is supposed to give information about its
essence. Lived experience is the source that is standard not only for art appreciation and
enjoyment but also for artistic creation. Everything is an experience. Yet perhaps lived
experience is the element in which art dies. The dying occurs so slowly that it takes a few
centuries (WOA 204).
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something to be sensuously (“sinnlich”) experienced by the subject, it is not left to its
own selfness, or as Heidegger names such selfness elsewhere, to its “self
containment” (Insichruhen”) (OWA 152). The subject forces the thing of the
artwork to comply with a particular thing-interpretation or representation in that it
expects or demands from the thing to provide the subject with a sensuous experience.
This objection to the aesthetic conceptualization of artwork is a direct
extension of Heidegger’s very apt repudiation of the aesthetic thing-interpretation
(“Dingbegriff ’ or “die Auslegung des Dinges”) in the beginning of the “Work of
Art” essay. The repudiation of existing truth-interpretations has direct relevances for
Heidegger’s account of the artwork, in that, the happening of the “truth” in the
artwork is to be viewed as a more authentic, more truthful alternative to those other
thing-interpretations, which, according to Heidegger’s critique, do injustice to the
thing one way or another. In his specific critique of the aesthetic thing-interpretation,
Heidegger objects to the possibility that the thing could ever be experienced with
immediate (“unvermittelbar”) and pure sensations (“Empfmdungen”). According to
Heidegger, the aesthetic thing-interpretation intends to
[grant] the thing, as it were, a free field to display its thingly character
directly. Everything that might interpose itself between the thing and us in
Man nennt, fast seit derselben Zeit, da eine eigene Betrachtung iiber die Kunst und die
KUnstler anfSngt, dieses Betrachten das asthetische. D ie Asthetik nimmt das Kunstwerk als
einen Gegenstand und zwar als den Gegenstand der aesthesis, des sinnlichen Vemehmens im
weiten Sinne. Heute nennt man dieses Vemehmen des Erleben. Die Art, wie der Mensch die
Kunst erlebt, soli iiber ihr AufschluB geben. Das Erlebnis ist nicht nur fur den KunstgenuB,
sondem ebenso fur das Kunstschaffen die maBgebende Quelle. Alles ist Erlebnis. Doch
vielleicht ist das Erlebnis das Element, in dem die Kunst stirbt. Das Sterben geht so langsam
vor sich, dafl es einige Jahrhunderte braucht (UKW 67).
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apprehending and talking about it must be set aside. Only then do we yield
ourselves to the undistorted presencing of the thing. The situation always
prevails. But we do not need first to call or arrange for this situation in which
we let things encounter us without mediation. In what the senses of sight,
hearing, and touch convey, in the sensations of color, sound, roughness,
hardness, things move us bodily, in the literal meaning of the word. The thing
is the aestheton, that which is perceptible by sensations in the senses
belonging to sensibility. (WOA 151)1 5 2
When the thing is taken to be the aesthetic object, or the aestheton, one pretends as if
the thing could be experienced in the form of immediate (“unmittelbar”) sensations,
pressing themselves upon the body (“Leib”). Interestingly, the language that
Heidegger uses here to describe the aesthetic thing-interpretation resonates with his
later ideas on poiesis, whose happening is disguised (“verstellt”) by the essence of
modem technology, or Gestell. In contrast, when poiesis takes effect, the essence of
things may prevail in an undisguised form (“unverstellf’). This inconspicuous lexical
shift from the immediate (“unmittelbar”) to the undisguised (“unverstellf’) may be
thought as an indicator of the shared premise between Heidegger’s philosophical
thought and the aesthetic thing-interpretation of his critique: they both strive towards
the “undisguised presencing of the thing,” (“das unverstellte Anwesen des Dinges”).
While the aesthetic thought wills to capture this by way of the lived experience
(“Erlebnis”) of the human subject, Heidegger sees such presencing as a revelation
1 5 2 ...e in freies Feld gewahren, damit es sein Dinghaftes unmittelbar zeige. A lles, was sich
an Auffassung und Aussage iiber das Ding zwischen das Ding und uns stellen mochte, muB
zuvor beseitigt werden. Erst dann uberlassen wir uns dem unverstellten Anwesen des
Dinges. Aber dieses unvermittelte Begegnenlassen der Dinge brauchen wir weder erst zu
fordem noch gar einzurichten. Es geschieht langst. In dem, was der Gesicht-, Gehor- und
Tastsinn beibringen, in den Empfindungen des Farbigen, Tonenden, Rauhen, Harten riicken
uns die Dinge, ganz wortlich genommen, auf den Leib. Das Ding ist das aistheton, das in den
Sinnen der Sinnlichkeit durch die Empfindungen Vemehmbare. (UKW 10)
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that comes from outside the thing, as the happening of “truth” that takes place in the
artwork and can only be thought within poetic and philosophical discourse. Within
the space of the same discussion, Heidegger also marks some of the differences
between the aesthetic thing-interpretation and his own philosophical thought. If,
according to the aesthetic thing-interpretation, the aesthetic object could be
encountered at any instance, by merely “let[ting] things encounter us without
mediation” ( “die unvermittelte Begegnenlassen der Dinge”), in other words, if the
encounter (“Begegnung”) with the essence of the thing already prevails, as
something already happening (“es geschiecht langst”) in its sensuous experience,
then there would be nothing extraordinary and special about the encounter with the
essence of the thing, or the happening o f the truth of the thing (“Geschehnis der
Wahrheit”). It would be hard to find the world-disclosing suggestiveness of the
artwork in its potential for subjective sensations. Heidegger’s truth, on the other
hand, is to be kept at a distance from the ordinary, and if the word, “experience,”
could ever be used in relation to Heidegger’s truth, the experience of the truth should
be, not in the manner of subjectivistic grasping or capturing, but of selfless striving.
Heidegger’s more direct criticism of the aesthetic thing-interpretation is
based on his irrefutable observation that it is (often) impossible to experience the
thing as immediate sensations, without having already conceived it as the thing:
We never really first perceive a throng of sensations, e.g., tones and noises, in
the appearance of things—as this [aesthetic] thing-concept alleges; rather we
hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-motored plane, we
hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen. Much
closer to us than all sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door
shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations or even mere sounds.
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In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our
ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly. (OWA 151-152)1 5 3
While it must be an exceptionally well-trained ear to make the distinction between
the Mercedes and the Volkswagen, Heidegger is right in pointing out that one
usually hears the noise of a car, and not some indistinct, pure sounds, and that the
hearing of such pure sounds is often an impossible endeavor, if not a downright
unnatural, abstract, forced attempt. Despite this, however, it is hard to accept
Heidegger’s conclusion that “much closer to us than all sensations are the things
themselves;” with this assertion, Heidegger has already started to talk on the behalf
of the things themselves (“die Dinge selbsf’), while prescribing a measure of their
vicinity (“die Nahe”). His untenable conclusion entails a difference between the
sensations (“Empfindungen”) and the things themselves, while ignoring that such
sensations, as his own argument has shown, belong to the things to begin with. His
argument directly implies that sensations are attributes of a thing, and not the thing
itself, as the aesthetic thing-interpretation would claim according to Heidegger. The
problem is that Heidegger treats “sensations” and “thing itself’ as separate entities,
thereby drawing two things out of one: the aestheton, as the sensuous thing, besides
and as different from the “thing itself.” The examples that Heidegger has chosen to
1 5 3 Niemals vemehmen wir, wie [dieser Dingbegriff] vorgibt, im Erscheinen der Dinge
zunachst und eigentlich einen Andrang von Empfindungen, z.B. Tone und Gerausche,
sondem wir horen den Sturm im Schomschein pfeifen, wie horen das dreimotorige
Flugzeug, wir horen den Mercedes im unmittelbaren Unterschied zum Adler-Wagen. Viel
naher als alle Empfindungen sind uns die Dinge selbst. Wir horen im Haus die Ttir schlagen
und horen niemals akustische Empfindungen oder auch nur bloBe Gerausche. Um einen
reines Gerausch zu horen, mussen wir von den Dingen weghoren, unser Ohr davon abziehen,
d.h. abstrakt horen. (OWA 10-11)
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refute the aesthetic thing-interpretation do, in fact, show that the sensations are often
the closest to us, not as pure sensations, but as they belong, as attributes, to the
(fiction of the) thing.
Heidegger’s unwarranted recourse to the “thing itself,” are followed with
similar statements that continue to speak on behalf of the thing. According to the
aesthetic thing-interpretation, Heidegger claims, “[the thing] disappears...The thing
itself must be allowed to remain in its self-containment. It must be accepted in its
self containment” 1 5 4 (OWA 152). Heidegger does not discuss how and why a
wholesale disappearance of the thing must happen when one considers the thing as
an aestheton, as “that which is perceptible by sensations in the senses belonging to
sensibility.” (“das in den Sinnen der Sinnlichkeit durch die Empfindungen
Vemehmbare”). While Heidegger is refuting the aesthetic thing-interpretation based
on the unavailability of “pure sensations” separate from the thing, he also appears to
be refuting another claim, which he attributes to the aesthetic thing-interpretation,
namely, the claim that the thing, primarily and exclusively, is an aestheton. In other
words, the car may refuse to make noise; a thing may have some sense to it, without
emanating sensations for us. By forcing sensations out of the thing, the aesthetic
thing-interpretation is not content with what the thing gives to interpretation, in the
German modality of “it gives” or “es gibt;” or to put this simply, it is not content
with the fact that a car without a noise would still be a car, or would still have the
1 5 4 ... [verschwindet] das Ding. Das Ding selbst muB bei seinem Insichruhen belassen
bleiben. Es ist in der ihm eigenen Standhaftigkeit hinzunehmen (UKW 11).
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sense of being a car. To counter the primary status, which the aesthetic thing-
interpretation accords to sensation over the “thing,” which means the sense of the
thing, Heidegger makes the following statement, as if he were standing up for the
rights of the thing against interpretive assaults: “the thing must be allowed to remain
in its self-containment” (“Insichruhen”).1 5 5
It is not surprising that the next thing-interpretation that Heidegger
approaches to critique is the one in which the sense of the thing, and not its sensation
is of primary importance. According to this other thing-interpretation, the stuff of the
thing (“das Stoff’) acquires a sense, through receiving a form (“die Form”), for the
purpose of use. Such a thing is the equipment (“das Zeug”), which, as I have
discussed before, implicitly stands for the “word” in the communicative, purposive
or instrumental use of language. It is important to remember that Heidegger’s
consideration of the equipment sets the stage for his account of the happening of
truth in the artwork. Heidegger does not so much refute the interpretation of the
equipment as formed matter or used stuff, as he makes a claim about the nature of
the equipment: he thinks that the equipment uses up (“verbraucht”) its matter, by
placing a restrictive frame around it, a frame defined by purpose, usefulness and
1 5 5 The fantasy that runs through these remarks is that the thing, and not the subject,
determines what gives, what it will give, or “was es gibt.” The thing, in its self-standing, is
pregnant with the possibility of this as yet-not-realized giving, by which the thing might
decide to open itself to something else or relate to it. The thing is not of us, but of its own.
Foti’s describes Heidegger’s fantasy of the self-standing thing (“Insichselbststehen[des
Ding]”) as the “enigmatic alterity of the thing,” which Heidegger contrasts with “the
technological set up (in the manner of stellen, bestellen, or representation vorstellen) which
does not leave the thing sufficient independence...” (Foti, 308, 1986). The thing-
interpretations, which Heidegger critiques in the “Work of Art” essay, would also be such
technological setups.
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usability (“Dienlichkeit und Brauchbarkeit”). Unlike the equipment, the work of art
does not “let the stuff disappear, but rather causes it to come forth for the very first
time and to come into the open region of the work’s world.” (“[es] laflt.. indem es
eine Welt aufstellt, den Stoff nicht verschwinden, sondem allererst hervorkommen
und zwar im Offenen der Welt des Werkes”) (OWA 171, UKW 32). As I have
indicated in my previous discussion of the use-material, Heidegger illustrates “the
open of the world” by way of sensations, feelings, affects engendered in the aesthetic
experience of glittering metals, glowing colors, singing tones. Since Heidegger’s
objection of the aesthetic thing-interpretation has been the disappearance of the
“thing in itself;” his remark that the artwork does not “let its stuff’ disappear leads to
this conclusion: Heidegger’s “thing in itself’ is equivalent to the “stuff of the thing”.
His ideas on the artwork could then be thought of as a variation of the aesthetic
thing-interpretation: in relation to the claim of the aesthetic thing-interpretation that
the thing is [always] an aestheton, Heidegger ends up making a similar claim: the
stuff of the thing is (experienced as) an aestheton in the artwork.
This claim, however, depends on the dualism between the used-up stuff of
equipment and the forth-coming (“hervorkommen[der]”), “world-disclosing,”
affective stuff of the artwork. But to what extent can this dualism be retained,
without the interference of the experiencing human subject? That the stuff of the
artwork, unlike that of the equipment, is not used up, can only be confirmed by the
interpreter’s subjective experiences of the artwork or the equipment. But if what is
used-up, and what is not, is primarily a subjective matter, then it is impossible to
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draw rigid boundaries between the equipment and the artwork, as well as, between
the instrumental and poetic use of language. In fact, the possibility always exists that
a subject may, perversely, find a world-disclosing suggestiveness in the experience
of the powerworks, or the Gestell on the Rhine, while the same subject may remain
indifferent to what is offered to her as an artwork, or a poem on “the Rhine.” Instead
of retaining an untenable dualism, which depends on the indeterminable measure of
used-up-ness, it is much simpler to see the artwork as a kind of equipment, a Gestell,
whose aspect of aesthetic or affective use is to be primary, and is not to be
overshadowed by its (possible) aspect of purposive or instrumental use. This
alternative formulation is not in need of either the stuff or the form, whose
boundaries are impossible to determine when it comes to language.1 5 6 In fact, this
formulation is in accordance not only with Heidegger’s conception of poiesis as a
kind of Gestell {techne), but also with Heidegger’s point of departure in his
exposition of the truth in the work of art, namely, the equipment: in a reversal of
sorts, the equipment or the Gestell, becomes more originary than the artwork. I
would also like to point out the ontological modality and conditionality of the
artwork, as conceived in this formulation: an artwork is not, but is to be; it is always
a promise made to the subject who experiences it. To put this differently, an artwork
is an equipment framed with an aesthetic promise. It is, therefore, perfectly possible
1 5 6 and particularly, when it comes to the word, which Heidegger takes to be the stuff
of language, but to which he ascribes, nonetheless, the function of saying.
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that a proper equipment, such as Duchamp’ urinal, may also become an artwork with
the right kind of framing.1 5 7
That Heidegger’s distinction between art and equipment is arbitrary, is a
powerful, albeit brief point that Young makes in relation to cinema, as the art of
movmg-Pictures:
[With] regard to films, attention to the elegance of the spatial organization of
the frames is usually a sign that the drama has failed to capture our
attention—that the film has failed as an artwork—and that one is seeking
diversion in order to evade boredom. Art can sometimes be in this respect
similar to ‘equipment.’ It can conceal its materials or pretend that they are
other than they are. And to insist that if it does, it cannot count as great art is
entirely arbitrary. (48)
Young’s choice of words is insightful in that he aligns art as equipment with cinema,
as different from Heidegger’s alignment of authentic art with painting and sculpture.
If art is to be differentiated as “setting up a world,” there is no reason why an
1 5 7 The actual title of Duchamp’s urinal is Fountain. While I do not intend to flesh out the
implications of my argument for art criticism, I would like to comment on Sassen’s brilliant
interpretation of Duchamp’s urinal, which must be viewed in conjunction with the shoes
painting, insofar as both works use the fiction of the equipment. Interestingly, Sassen’s very
apt critique of Heidegger is followed by her attempt to recuperate the notion of truth, not
Heidegger’s larger, world-disclosing truth, but, as she suggestively names this, a lesser truth,
which also happens in Duchamp’s urinal. This lesser truth, according to Sassen, as it
happens in Duchamp’s urinal, “has the ability to assign or change the ontological status of
things that are or become works of art.” Thus, holding onto the truth, regardless of its
magnitude, also means to assign an ontological difference between the equipment and the
work of art. Does such an ontological change really occur as a result of the happening of a
lesser truth in the urinal; or does the frame, in which the work is exhibited, a frame which is
constituted by the artists, interpreters and cultural institutions, solicit a response, accepted by
some and rejected by others, in which the urinal is to be viewed with the same aesthetic
promise as that, which is offered by more traditional artworks? The aesthetic promise, which
might be more evident in one’s interaction with the shoes painting—one is quite easily taken
in by the color, material, and visual arrangement—may also come in the form of a discourse,
an informative booklet on the work, for instance, which may be circulated and carried
around, and which, like paper bills, or institutional bonds, may count as currency within
specific interpretive communities.
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equipment should not be raised to the status of art. Heidegger’s misconception
derives from his incoherent account of the notion of the used-up-ness of the
equipment: using an equipment does not need to result in using up or making
disappear its affect.
What disappears, of course, is the thing itself. Insofar as the thing is always
of some use, as the source of one’s sense and affect making, as when one holds the
cold rock, they are also equipments, even when their purposive use is nonexistent, or
indeterminate. But as Heidegger notes, the equipmental thing-interpretation (the
interpretation that treats the thing as an equipment) is an assault (“Uberfall”) upon
the thing:
The situation [in which the equipmental thing-interpretation rules] is revealed
as soon as we speak of things in the proper sense as mere things. The “mere,”
after all, means the removal of the character of usefulness and of being made.
The mere thing is an equipment, albeit equipment denuded of its equipmental
being. Thing-being consists in what is then left over. But this remnant is not
actually defined in its character of Being. It remains doubtful whether the
thingly character comes to view at all in the process of stripping off
everything equipmental. Thus [this] mode of interpretation of the thing, that
which follows the lead of the matter-form structure, also turns out to be an
assault upon the thing.1 5 8 (OWA 156)
1 5 8 Schon indem wir die eigentlichen Dinge bloBe Dinge nennen, verrat sich die Sachlage.
Das “bloB” meint doch die EntbloBung vom Charakter der Dienlichkeit und der Anfertigung.
DaB bloBe Ding ist eine Art von Zeug, obzwar das seines Zeugseins entkleidete Zeug. Das
Dingsein besteht in dem, was dann noch ubrigbleibt. Aber dieser Rest ist in seinem
Seinscharakter nicht eigens bestimmt. Es bleibt fraglich, ob auf dem Wege des Abzugs alles
Zeughaften das Dinghafte des Dinges jemals zum Vorschein kommt. So stellt sich auch
[diese] Weise der Dingauslegung, diejenige am Leitfaden des Stoff-Form-Gefuges, als ein
Uberfall auf das Ding heraus. (UKW 15).
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Heidegger’s objection to the equipmental thing-interpretation is that its definition of
the “mere” thing, as an equipment denuded of its equipmental being, does not try to
understand “what is then left over,” or define this remnant in its character of being
(“Seinscharakter”). His subsequent speculations show, on the other hand, that that
the character of the thing’s being is revealed in the abundance of aesthetic affects
produced by the un-used-up stuff of the artwork. The assumption, of course, is that
the equipment does not and cannot produce the same aesthetic affects as the artwork:
it is defined, solely, on the basis of its equipmentality (“Zeughafte”), which for
Heidegger connotes practical, determinate, purposive use. But if the equipment is
defined in terms of both its purposive and aesthetic use, then it becomes
questionable, why defining the thing as a kind of equipment without purposive use
would take away from the thing or from its character of being (“das Dinghafte”). A
thing denuded of determinate purposiveness could, at least, serve me as the source of
my sensations o f it, as I imagine the thing to frame them, not to mention that the
thing may, under an adequate framework, also become the object of my scientific
representation (“Vorstellen”), without having to serve an actual purpose. It is so
much more fruitful to accept the inescapability of the frame— and therefore, the
ubiquity of the equipment— rather than waging unwarranted, already lost battles
against it. The equipment, both in its “proper” sense and in its “derivative” senses as
a thing or an artwork, is my Picture.
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WORKS CITED
Derrida, Jacques. “Restitutions.” The Truth in Painting. Tr. Geoff Benington and Ian
McLeod. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 255-382.
Edwards, Janies C. The Authority of Language: Heidegger. Wittgenstein, and the
Threat of Philosophical Nihilism. Tampa: University of South Florida Press,
1990.
Foti, Veronique M. “Heidegger and ‘The Way of Art’: the Empty Origin and
Contemporary Abstraction.” Continental Philosophy Review Vol. 31, 1998.
337-351.
—. “Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s Turn from Technicity to Art.” Philosophy
Today Winter 1986: 306-316.
Habermas, Jurgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Tr. Frederick G.
Lawrence. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995.
Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York:
HarperSanFransisco, 1993.
—. Elucidations of Holderlin’s Poetry. Tr. Keith Holler. New York, Humanity
Books, 2000.
—. Holzweee. Vittorio Klostermann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann GmBH, 1977.
—. Off the Beaten Track. Ed. and Tr. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
—. Poetry. Language. Thought. Ed. and Tr. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper &
Row, 1971.
—. Question Concerning Technology. Tr. William Lovitt. New York: Harper
& Row, 1977.
—. Unterwegs Zur Sprache. Vittorio Klostermann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann GmBH, 1985.
—. Vortrage und Aufsatze. Vittorio Klostermann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann GmBH, 2000.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or. the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1994
Jones, Edwin. Reading the Book of Nature. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989.
Kearney, Richard. Poetics of Modernity: Toward a Hermeneutic Imagination. New
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Jersey: Humanity Press, 1995.
Kusch, Martin. Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium.
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
Lafont, Christina. Heidegger. Language and World-Disclosure. Tr. Graham Harman.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Mansbach, Abraham. Beyond Subjectivism: Heidegger on Language and the Human
Being. London: Greenwood Press, 2002.
McCormick, Peter J. Heidegger and the Language of the World: An Argumentative
Reading of the Later Heidegger’s Meditations on Language. Ottowa:
University of Ottowa Press, 1976.
Petzet, Heinrich W. Encounters and Dialogues with Marin Heidegger. Tr. Parvis
Emad and Kenneth Maly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Sassen Brigitte. “Heidegger on Van Gogh’s Old Shoes: The Use/ Abuse of a
Painting.” Journal of British Society for Phenomenology Vol. 32, No. 2, May
2001: 160-173.
Seller, George F. Language and the World: A Methodological Synthesis within the
Writings of Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein. New Jersey:
Humanities Press, 1974.
Shapiro, Meyer. “The Still Life as a Personal Object-A note on Heidegger and Van
Gogh.” The Reach of Mind: Essays in Memory of Kurt-Goldstein 1878-1965.
Ed. Marienne L. Simmel. New York: Springer Verlag, 1968.
White, David A. Heidegger and the Language of Poetry. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska, 1978.
Witherspoon, Edward. “Much Ado about the Nothing: Carnap and Heidegger on
Logic and Metaphysics.” A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and
Continental Philosophy. Ed. C.G. Prado. New York: Humanity Books, 2003.
Young, Julian. Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001.
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CHAPTER 3
Words as Image, Image as Words: Language and Sign in Sartre’s
Theory of the Image
In the Tractatus. Wittgenstein’s Picture (Bild) is intimately tied with language
and the world. The Picture-thought projects fictions onto the world (or, as
Wittgenstein puts it, we make fictions of the world) while it animates the written
works of language (our sentences are pictures of reality). While sketching the
Picture, Wittgenstein does not recoil from visual analogies: the Picture is both
tableaux vivant (lebendiges Bild) and hieroglyphic script. The consequence of the
rapprochement between the visual and linguistic in the Picture is two-fold: it is by
way of the Picture that we read the world and we see our works of language.
Unlike Wittgenstein’s Picture which describes the interface of the material
world and material language, Sartre’s image is freestanding and autonomous: it
primarily refers to a species of non-reflective thought (and in Sartre’s
phenomenological language, to an act of consciousness) that engages in conjuring
objects, in the absence of these objects. Sartre’s overall interest in the image is to
create mental images by spontaneous acts of consciousness, unbounded by the
experience of material words and things, and study them, define them, fix them. In
his work on the imagination, Sartre does not intend to tie images with the world or
with language; rather, he attempts to reinforce the separation of the image from the
world and from language. An image-space is explored as if it constituted an
independent realm of consciousness different from the distinctive realms of
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perception and concept. Sartre’s phenomenological descriptions aim at
conceptualizing those effervescent, flighty, intangible, immaterial experiences,
which may be grouped under the title of mental images or mental representations.
More specifically, for Sartre, these image-experiences are characterized by absence
or nothingness.
From the point of view of methodology, Sartre’s study of the image in
L’Imaginaire is taxonomic and dichotomous: not only must the image must be
studied in its own right, as different and distinct from perception and concept; these
distinctions must be respected and sustained (La Capra, 56). 1 5 9 In fact, in an earlier
study that predates his L’Imaginaire titled L’Imagination. Sartre tries to show the
philosophical fallacy that results from confusing the image with the things of one’s
perception, a fallacy that he names the “illusion of immanence,” tracing it in all
previous philosophy, from Descartes, through Leibniz, Hume and Spinoza, to the
1 5 9 La Capra is clearly frustrated with Sartre’s analytic methodology “The dominant line of
argument in L’imaginaire may be seen as an attempt to disentangle in terms of clear and
distinct analytic dichotomies the noeud de viperes...The ambiguous overlap of the imaginary
and the real, of imagination and perception—indeed of affirmation and negation—are at
times implicit in the language Sartre uses...but it is not recognized, and is in fact explicitly
denied on the level of theory. In the interest of purity, a logic of identity and difference
analyzes, controls and guides a conception of the imagination and art. Sartre employs
analyzes to distribute “ambiguity” or the supplementary interplay of the same and the other
(the imaginary is in the same as the real but as differed) into distinct categories, or distinct
boxes, of experience... Life is one thing. Art is another. Reality is one thing. Imagination is
another. Perception is entirely different from imagination. Perception is presented as
excessively rich: we can always leam more about the perceived “real” object as we walk
around it and acquire new perspectives on it. Imagination is poor. It gives its object all in one
go, and it corresponds to a lack in reality created by freedom itself. Excess and lack are thus
squarely placed on the opposite sides of an unbreachable barrier. ” (56)
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psychological theories of his time. His conclusion is simple: the image is not a thing;
it is an act of consciousness.
Sartre, who acts on the principle that an act of consciousness is always a
consciousness of something, finds out in L’imaginaire that the study of the image, or
imaging consciousness, cannot be carried out without referencing to some thing. In
what I think to be the most interesting passages in L’imaginaire. Sartre seeks
imaging consciousness in those things of the physical world that are called “images”
(photos, portraits, caricatures, imitations). This interest in the image-thing also
results in considering the image in terms not only of mental or psychic, but also of
physical matter, i.e., matter borrowed from the physical world, like the matter in
painting (colors, shapes, lines) or in bodily performance (gestures, facial
expressions).
Ironically, as others have noted, these same passages lead to the ultimate
failure of Sartre’s theory, and by Sartre’s own standards: whenever Sartre seeks the
image in perceptual experience, absence in presence, irreality in reality, he keeps
falling into his very own “illusion of immanence.” But, as I would like to show,
Sartre’s failure is a richly textured one that deserves more critical attention. Sartre’s
account of the image in the LTmaginaire would have been almost entirely devoid of
any commentary on language, if he had not chanced upon the sign, as an auxiliary
concept to the imaging consciousness of imitation, or as a concept to be
distinguished and set apart from the imaging consciousness of the picture-portrait. In
fact, Sartre’s search for the image in the material artifacts sets off a play, not only
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between the image and perception, but also between the image and perception, on the
one hand, and the sign, on the other. Granted, Sartre’s overall project intends to keep
these players apart: he wants to show how the image is not perception (therefore, not
of the world), or how the image is not sign (therefore, not of language). His analyses
lack the broad insight that enables Heidegger to tie up and gather the word, the thing
and the work of art under the same question of the happening of truth, in the space of
one swift philosophical breath. But, as it is often the case with the most fascinating
failures, Sartre often admits to the heterogeneity among the various forms of
consciousness in between his lines, in the slippages of his use of language, in his
suggestive descriptions of intricate images, and this, despite his surface analytic
claim to fix the essences of the same images so as to drive away philosophical
confusions. Sartre’s account of imagination becomes the most suggestive when it
lays out a tripartite philosophical constellation (perception, image, sign), parallel to
Wittgenstein’s (world, Picture, language).
In this chapter, I intend to do two things: first, to trace the work of the sign,
and language, in the constitution of the image in Sartre’s L’imaginaire: and second,
to critique the distinctions that Sartre explicitly holds to exist between the image and
the sign. In a more general sense, I would like to find out where one can locate
language in Sartre’s theory of the image, and whether it is at all possible to construct
a theory of language from it, which would also integrate Sartre’s more explicit
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arguments concerning the image. 1 6 0 The more general ambition of this chapter is to
tie up the image with the “sign” and hence, with language, and to sketch the
continuum of [Image— Sign—Perception] by working through Sartre’s claims on
and examples of the image. With this, I intend to show the interconnectedness of the
three fundamental acts performed around the object or the thing: seeing the thing
(perception), imagining the thing and reading “the thing.”
To make the work of language more visible in Sartre’s study of the image as a
form of consciousness, I adopt a structural approach by textually noting those
theoretical clusters and groupings in L’lmaginaire that envelope Sartre’s notion of
the sign. In one predominant cluster, the sign belongs to the field of [thought,
knowledge, concept, intention], in another, less prominent, and more problematic
one, it belongs to the field of [matter, body, inscription, drawing]. This double
alliance of the sign is hardly surprising, given the sign’s curious nature: it is both the
1 6 0 There is, unlike in Wittgenstein and Heidegger, no explicit theory of language in Sartre.
Indeed, his inattention to language, as a subject matter that must be studied on its own right,
has been criticized by LaCapra and Levy. Levy, for instance, notes that “it is no
exaggeration to say that Sartre was, in principle and out of principle, the least inclined of
contemporary philosophers to allow language, and thus literature,.. .to govern.. .the tasks of
thought.” (57) In an interview later in his life, Sartre is asked whether he ever thought about
writing a philosophy of language. He replies:
No. Language must be studied within a philosophy, but it cannot be the basis for a
philosophy. I think that a philosophy of language could be drawn out of my
philosophy, but there is no philosophy of language that could be imposed on it. (ed.
Schilpp, 17)
In this chapter, I am, among other things, hoping to do exactly this for Sartre: to draw out a
philosophy of language from his theory of the image, by bringing to the fore the work of the
sign (and the word) in L’imaginaire. Kenneth Anderson also intends to draw another theory
language from Sartre, by way of focusing on Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, and comes up
with an entirely different discussion, that includes a close analysis of Sartre’s use of the
following terms in this work: speech, spoken word, other and discourse.
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material word of inscription and the silent word of thought. In Sartre’s account, the
movement of sign in the first cluster (and the substitutions of one word of this cluster
with another) takes place effortlessly, and almost imperceptibly, while, in the second
cluster, it often faces those somewhat obstructive analytical distinctions that Sartre
holds among perception, image and sign. By delineating the role of the sign in the
constitution of the imaging consciousness (and, in fact, of any consciousness), and
by introducing the language of the sign in Sartre’s theory of the image, I would like
to show how Sartre’s phenomenological account of consciousness engages questions
of language throughout, and could in fact be recast as a theory of language.
While arguing against Sartre’s notion of sign consciousness, separated and
distinguished from other forms of consciousness by way of its characteristic features,
I would instead like to propose that the sign is a diffuse property of all
consciousness, penetrating and “contaminating” its every act. I suggest that a close
reading of Sartre’s account of imaging consciousness reveals the irreducible
hybridity of the sign with both the image and perception. Sartre allows for such
hybridity most explicitly, in those cases in which distinct forms of consciousness
materialize over time. In his case study of Franconay’s imitation of Chevalier, Sartre
employs a somewhat cautious logic, according to which distinct instances of
perception, image and sign may follow each other temporally, but cannot occur
simultaneously. 1 6 1 Running counter to Sartre’s checks against hybridity, I would like
1 6 1 In the particular sign-ative perspective that I am proposing, I will also look at other, more
implicit forms of heterogeneity and more covert forms of the sign in Sartre’s account of the
image and consciousness. In Sartre, “all consciousness requires an intention and a prior
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to argue that the image (and by extension, perception) is first and foremost a species
of sign consciousness. Despite Sartre’s intention to provide clear-cut distinctions
between the image and the sign, his understanding of the physical image (the portrait
and imitation) and of the sign-thing (word), contain the germs of the destruction of
such distinctions, suggesting the irreducible heterogeneity of any consciousness.1621
intend to show how Sartre’s account of the physical image or analogon, and
particularly his description of Franconay’s imitation of Chevalier could be read as an
account of complex, pictorial sign.1 6 3 In this description, Sartre generalizes the
knowledge”; and I read these references to knowledge and intention as veiled references to
sign and language.
1621 will use the term “thing” to refer to physical matter, and I will sometimes use the terms
“sign-thing” and “image-thing” to refer to the physical sign and the physical image,
respectively. In Sartre’s account, for instance, a physical picture (a portrait or a caricature) is
both a thing and an image-thing, and the question that I will be posing in my discussion of
the portrait is whether it is also a sign-thing. In Sartre’s account of imaging consciousness
concerns both the “mental image,” image whose matter is borrowed from the psychic world,
and the various material forms of “image,” whose matter is borrowed from the physical
world. But as a hurried sort of criticism goes, to claim that there is matter in mental image is
to suggest that the mental image is first a thing, and then something else (much like the
portrait is first a thing and the image of someone); and, hence Sartre falls into his own all-
inclusive “illusion of immanence.” Such criticism is correct to the extent that it points to the
internal inconsistency of Sartre’s exposition, but rather misleading in that it does not take
issue with Sartre’s “illusion of immanence”; in other words, it takes it for granted without
critiquing or overcoming it. In fact, that Sartre seeks the image in physical matter is probably
the most compelling aspect of his theory of the image, regardless of whether such search
results in problematic conclusions concerning the mental image. My interest lies primarily in
Sartre’s physical image (physical analogon) and the interpretation of physical matter, and not
in his notion of mental image. Significantly, Sartre’s account of sign consciousness
concerns the interpretation of the word as a sign-thing, or as physical matter consisting of
letters: the word.
1 6 3 The act of signing would involve the projection of complex signs onto a certain matter.
While undergoing the act (and sometimes, multiple acts) of signing, the matter is read as a
complex sign of an “object,” which makes it possible to interpret the consciousness of the
matter as belonging to that “object.” Going back to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. it is also
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notion of the sign: the sign connotes not only the linguistic sign, such as the word or
the name, but also the characteristic traits (gestures, movements) or the pictorial
elements of a perceptual experience.1 6 4 Sign as word and sign as Picture, as two
supplementary forms of sign consciousness, guide and instruct the making of the
image, or analogon, in Sartre’s account of imitation.
A final question that motivates my search for language in Sartre’s theory of
the image is whether works of language—as written or uttered physical matter—do
also perform as an analogon in the same way as physical images. This question is
particularly important for my purposes in that it explicitly addresses the analogical
relationship between the Picture and the work of language that I have been
exploring. While distinguishing imaging- from sign-consciousness, Sartre contrasts
the image-portrait with the written word (sign), and concludes that the word, and
therefore the sign, would be deficient in embodying the “representative”
complexities of the “object” which surface in the consciousness of the portrait.
Unlike the relation between the portrait and its object (what it represents), Sartre
concludes, the relation between the word and its object (what it signifies) is a simple
one that is determined by convention.
possible to construe such projection o f the com plex sign onto a given material as the
projection o f the Picture onto the material world
1 6 4 To be able to see the analogon is to be able to read the matter. But for this, the matter
must be constituted, taken, interpreted as sign: it must be signed through and through. This
signing involves not only calling out the “object” (uttering or writing its name), but also
drawing the “object” on the matter, which leads to the constitution of the matter both as a
linguistic and pictorial sign.
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But concerning the relation between the linguistic sign and its “object,”
Sartre’s understanding of linguistic sign elsewhere in L’imaginaire is far from rigid.
For instance, Sartre does admit to the heterogeneity of the states of consciousness,
engendered during the act of reading literary works of language. He groups these
states that oscillate in between the sign and the image under the category of “imaging
knowledge.” I contend that Sartre’s notion of imaging knowledge eliminates the
difference between the linguistic sign and the physical analogon, making it possible
to conceive the work of language as the analogon par excellence under particular
regimes of reading, as in reading literature. I emphasize the privileged position of
literature in Sartre’s theory of the image as the place where material words impress
themselves on consciousness like physical pictures.
My chapter starts with Sartre’s discussion of the physical image (or the
physical analogon) and continues with the analysis of two of Sartre’s examples: the
portrait and the imitation. These examples are significant in the way Sartre sets the
physical image and imaging consciousness against the linguistic sign and sign
consciousness. Towards the end of my chapter, I analyze another section of Sartre’s
study of the imaginary, in which he complicates his understanding of sign
consciousness in his account of “imaging knowledge” (“le savoir imageant”) by way
of another significant example that refers to the act of reading a novel.
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Perception, image and concept:
Sartre’s study of the imaginary is object-ive in the sense that it understands
the image as a particular consciousness o f an object}6 5 The image is not a thing, but
a consciousness that aims (“viser”) or intends an object. This very fundamental
objective-ness, or, in Sartre’s phenomenological terms, the intentionality towards the
object, is a prerequisite not only to the imaging consciousness, but to all forms of
consciousness. The difference between various forms of consciousness concerning a
particular object is not that they intend different objects, but that they intend the
same object in different ways.
To define the specificity of imaging consciousness, Sartre contrasts it with
the two other forms of consciousness that intend and constitute their objects
differently: perception and the concept. “To perceive, to conceive, to imagine: such
are indeed the three types of consciousness by which the same object can be given to
us.” 1 6 6 (8) The image in Sartre’s distinction is, strictly speaking, the mental image,
1 6 5 An alternative to Sartre object-ive investigation of consciousness would have been
linguistic. In Sartre, there exists no explicit discussion of what he means by the “object;” but
nearly all his examples indicate that Sartre equates the object with those things which one
may chance upon in ordinary perceptual experience: Pierre, chair, Pantheon, etc. Sartre does
not explain whether the object of consciousness can always be distinctly and readily
available to consciousness, and what it would mean to be conscious of those things that are
not immediately available to any perceptual experience: suffering, velocity, democracy,
molecules or a particular number. A result of this implicit bias towards the perceptual object
results in many problems when it comes to imaginary object (the centaur), which needs to be
distinguished from the perceptual one by way of problematic distinctions between presence
and absence, existence and non-existence, reality and irreality, and implicitly, between non
fiction and fiction.
1 6 6 Percevoir, concevoir, imaginer, tels sont en effet les trois types de consciences par
lesquelles un meme objet peut nous etre donne. (18)
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which Sartre frequently exemplifies with the memory of an absent friend, Pierre.
Sign consciousness does not appear among these three major forms of
consciousness; Sartre will define it later when he makes distinctions between the
consciousness of the linguistic sign (the word) and that of the physical image
(portrait).1 6 7
In perception, Sartre claims, one is in the presence of an object, but such
presence is only a partial one: one is given only a partial view of the object. To grasp
the object in perception, one has to learn the object by making a tour around it; each
new view of the object would then teach something new about it. The perceptual
object is situated in a relational matrix that is infinitely rich: it maintains “an infinity
of determinate relations with the infinity of other objects,” and hence, overflows
consciousness with its overwhelming richness (10). To exhaust the richness of
perception “would take infinite time;” and even a partial understanding of it would
necessitate an apprenticeship (9). In the conceptual consciousness of the object,
however, one is “at the center of [his] idea”, and is able to apprehend the entirety of
the object in one glance. To conceive an object implies a knowledge-consciousness
of itself (“savoir conscient de lui-meme”); it is pre-given knowledge, and not
apprenticeship that characterizes the concept (8).
1 6 7 Given that Sartre’s overall discussion suggests the affinity between sign consciousness
and conceptual consciousness, as well as several other forms that concern knowledge and
thought, however, it is possible to read Sartre’s observations on conceptual consciousness as
covert expressions of his understanding of sign consciousness: to conceive an object is to do
something with the word “o-b-j-e-c-t” even when that word is not said or written.
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The image, on the other hand, is a paradoxical middle term between
perception and the concept, one that contains mutually contradicting elements of
apprenticeship-in-time and pre-given, timeless knowledge. Just like perception, the
image is given in partial views, profiles, and projections (“Abschattungen”), and
hence seems to be an object of observation. As different from perception, and similar
to the concept, the knowledge of the object in the image is immediate:
An image is not learned: it is organized exactly as the objects that are learned,
but, in fact, it is given whole, for what it is, in its appearance. (9 )1 6 8
Unlike perception, Sartre characterizes the image with essential poverty (“[une]
pauvrete essentielle”): “[t]he different elements of an image maintain no relations
with the rest of the world and maintain only two or three relations between
themselves” (9).1 6 9 Despite this essential poverty, however, one still appears to be
observing the object in the image, as if it were given to perception. But the
observation of the imaginary object in the mental image teaches nothing or reveals
nothing new, and consequently, Sartre names the characteristic of the image as
“quasi-observation.”
The quasi-observed [mental] image is given to instability between sensuous
observation, typical of a perception evolving in time, and the prescribed, hence
1 6 8 U ne im age ne s ’apprend pas: elle est exactement organisee com m e les objets qui
s ’apprennent, mais, en fait, elle se donne tout entiere pour ce qu’elle est, des son apparition.
(19)
1 6 9 Les differents elements d’une image n’entretiennent aucun rapport avec le reste du monde
et n’entretiennent entre eux que deux ou trois rapports, ceux, par exemple, que j’ai pu
constater...(20)
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surpriseless, trajectory of the same observation, indicative of conceptual knowledge.
In his explanation of quasi-observation, Sartre notes that the imaging consciousness
of the object consists of a certain knowledge (“savoir”) and a certain intention (L 22,
111), and that while the intention aims at the object, the knowledge “which is
indissolubly linked to the intention, specifies that the object is such and such, adds
1 70
determinations synthetically” (1 11). Due to such predetermining knowledge, the
world of (mental) images is one in which nothing happens: in the image, there is not
a moment of surprise since one already knows beforehand the course that the object
171
will take in the act of imagining it, because one has intended it as such. To
illustrate the phenomenon of “quasi-observation,” Sartre gives possibly the most
curious example in L’imaginaire. one that refers to the act of reading:
If I give myself in image the page of a book, I am in the attitude of the reader,
I look at the printed lines. But I do not read. And, at bottom, I am not even
looking, because I already know what is written. (110)
1 7 0 Le savoir, qui est indissolublement lie a l’intention, precise que l’objet est tel ou tel,
ajoute synthetiquement des determinations. (22)
1 7 1 In the image, an object “never precedes the intention” (I 11). “[L’objet] ne precede jamais
l’intention (22)” This is one of the more obscure claims in Sartre’s theory of the image, also
because of the implication that there might be some other instance when the object can
precede intention. Sartre makes this comment in relation to the non-surprise of the image,
which then implies that the instance in which the object precedes intention would belong to
perception, which, in Sartre, also connotes surprise. How can the object exist before
intention, when it is intention? That an object that can precede intention also hints at an even
more problematic assumption: that a thing can precede language.
1 7 2 Si je me donne en image la page d’un livre, je suis dans l’attitude du lecteur, je regarde
les lignes imprimees. Mais je ne lis pas. Et au fond, je ne regarde meme pas, car je sais deja
ce qui est ecrit. (L21)
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Despite the particular emphasis that Sartre places in the knowledge in the
constitution of the mental image, his example reveals a difference between the
knowing in the image and the writing of it. Sartre does not tell us explicitly what he
means by knowledge; does he mean, for instance, that he knows that he is writing or
that he knows what he is writing about? Is Sartre not reading the image-inscription
because he is in the middle of writing it, or he has just written it? The mental image
implies the double act of writing and reading one’s own lines, which are, after all,
one’s own things, while the perception of an object implies the act of reading the
things that are written elsewhere, the things for whose understanding one must serve
an apprenticeship. But since there is no temporal distance separating reading from
writing, there is no surprise offered by a fresh look at the printed lines, at the
perceptual object, and therefore, no apprenticeship in the mental image.1 7 3 Nothing
could be learned from one’s own memory (or writing); the implication is then that
memory is and has been known. But Sartre leaves out an obvious possibility: surely
one can go back to one’s own printed lines after a distance in time, treating it as an
object about which he knows little about, as if he were reading it for the first time.
This surpriseless, impoverished image seems suspiciously close to the model of
1 7 3 Sartre pretends to be looking at the letters, but he does not, at bottom, look at them either;
he know s the letters. One looks without learning, because one know s beforehand what he
will look at. The image is a curiously paradoxical act: it requires a looking, which is from the
very beginning, prescribed, but the time of inscription is the same time as that of looking. So
can the mental image be a looking, or a consciousness that is simultaneous with the knowing
of the word, a consciousness produced during the act of writing? Sartre’s analogy raises the
question whether the act of perception could be understood as the act of reading for the first
time; which includes looking and reading and not just knowing, but learning.
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memory as the re-presentation of a novel and rich previous perception, already
studied, known and stowed away; a memory that is memorized once and for good,
and hence stable and reproducible.
The alliance that Sartre draws between knowledge and (mental) image is, to
say the least, questionable; it does justice to neither the image nor knowledge, by
taking the surprise out of the image, and similarly, by turning knowledge into a static
assumption that both brings about and pre-determines the course of the image,
without undergoing any change.1 7 4 Despite Sartre’s hasty speculation concerning the
role of knowledge in the image, however, his curious illustration of the mental image
looks forward to his account of the physical image, in which a given matter—matter
1 7 4 Wamock has a strong criticism of Sartre’s characterization of the image as impoverished:
“A real object overflows what we can see of it... [b]ut an image is not such that we can leam
anything from it. All that [the image] contains is immediately available to us, because we put
it there ourselves. This is Sartre’s view, and it seems to me to be neither very clear, nor, as
far as I can understand it, strictly true. For, in fact it is sometimes plausible to conjure up an
image specifically in order to find out more about the object under consideration.” (9)
Wamock goes on to give an example in which she tries to remember the color of the tie
worn by a man that she saw yesterday, by creating the mental image of the man. “The
difficulty is that I may get the color wrong, and if I do, there is no immediate check on this.
But at least this example might suggest that we sometimes suppose that we can study an
image, and leam from it something which we did not, at least consciously, build into the
image.” Wamock’s criticism suggests that we assume that our memories may contain more
than what is immediately available to consciousness. In other words, what we retain as the
image is more than what we know of it. The implication is that a memory-image may
contain unconscious, or subconscious elements that could be brought to consciousness upon
further examination, which makes the image a sort of thing. But Sartre’s theory of the image
does not speculate upon this unconscious aspect; also, because of this the image, for Sartre,
becomes synonymous with conscious knowledge.
As an additional note, in L’imaginaire. it is rather unclear what knowledge is, and
what it does in the constitution of consciousness. I suspect Sartre means acquaintance
(connaissance), where he says knowledge (savoir); an acquaintance with the language of
being that enables the act of writing and imagining. But knowing, in the sense of ac
knowledging (reconnaissance) that a particular image is written in words or in pictures
would not necessitate the knowledge (savoir) of that image thoroughly and in its entirety.
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written not in the psyche, but elsewhere, in the physical world—needs to be read in
the same way as the matter of a perceptual object.1 7 5 It also displays the logic that
remains implicit throughout his theory of consciousness: the image could also be
understood in terms of particular ways of engaging and dealing with words, with
language, within the terms of reading and writing.1 7 6
Positional determinations of the image
Closely related to the characteristic of quasi-observation is the characteristic
of nothingness that the imaging consciousness posits when it conjures its object. The
positing act, constitutive of both perceptual and imaging consciousness, concerns the
existential status of the object. While perception posits its object as existing, imaging
consciousness posits four forms of nothingness:
.. .the [positing] act can take four and only four forms: it can posit the object
as nonexistent, or as absent, or as existing elsewhere; it can also “neutralize”
itself, which is to say not posit its object as existent. (1 3 )1 7 7
1 7 5 As a result, the phenomenon of quasi-observation, which, according to Sartre, is an
essential characteristic of the image, becomes much more elusive in the case of image-
things: the distinction between perception and image fades when consciousness occupies
itself with a physical artifact. It then becomes rather impossible to differentiate, for instance,
the experience of the portrait of Pierre (image) and the Pierre in flesh and blood (perception)
in terms of a difference between quasi-observation and observation, knowing and
apprenticeship.
1 7 6 Namely, in the terms defined by the act of reading, in the consciousness concerning
image-things, and in the terms defined by the dual act of writing-reading, in the
consciousness concerning mental images.
1 7 7 “L’image enferme.. .un acte de croyance ou acte positionnel. Cette acte peut prendre
quattre formes et quattre seulement: il peut poser l’objet comme inexistant, ou comme
absent, ou comme existant ailleurs; il peut aussi se “neutraliser,” c’est-a-dire ne pas poser
son objet comme existant [Footnote: Cette suspension de la croyance demeure un acte
positionnel.” (L 24) This positional classification is dependent on the knowledge of
“existence.” The instability of the last term “neutralization” is all too apparent: if a conscious
act refrains from positing, which means, refrains from articulating any knowledge about
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The positional distinction between the perception and the image, then, involves the
multiple distinctions between presence and absence, existence and non-existence,
here and there, non-fiction and fiction, reality and irreality. 1 7 8 Concepts and
knowledge (le savoir), on the other hand, “pose the existence of the natures
(universal essences) constituted by relations and are indifferent to the ‘flesh and
blood’ existence of objects” (13).1 7 9 In contrast to the essential indifference of the
concept and knowledge, the image assumes its negative, nothingness-positing, non-
thetic, absent character on the ground of sensory intuition (13) (“sur le terrain de
existence, how can it still remain (“demeure”) in a category that is entirely based on such
knowledge? Not positing existence is different from “suspension of belief’: in the latter, the
non-existence of the object is already posed, while in the former, there cannot be any
suspension of belief, because there is no question of belief.
1 7 8 The four forms of absence that Sartre seems to have taken from Husserl with some
modifications, are often impossible to distinguish from each other: when I turn my head
away from this perceptual Pierre, for instance, do I posit Pierre as absent and existing
elsewhere? The centaur is non-existent, but when I take pleasure in the centaur’s adventures,
does it mean that I “neutralize” such “non-existence” since I begin to respond to it as if it
existed? Where do we place the literary fiction? In the course of his argument, Sartre does
not seem to put much of an emphasis on these four distinctions among the positional acts
concerning the image: the most important distinction for Sartre is that between the presence
of perception and absence of the image. In those compelling instances in which images seem
to be closer to presence than absence (as when, during a visit to a museum in Rouen, Sartre
mistakes the people in a painting with real people (121)), Sartre still preserves the positional
distinction between the unequivocal presence of perception and the equally unequivocal
presencing absence of the image.
1 7 9 “...les concepts, le savoir posent l’existence de natures (essences universelles) constitutes
par des rapports et sont indifferents a l’existence “de chair et d’os” des objets.” (L 24)
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l’intuition sensible” (25))1 8 0 : the image aims its object in its corporeality, in the
modality of the as if:
[M]y intention aims at.. .the Pierre that I can see, touch, hear, were I to see
him, touch him, hear him.. .Only, the Pierre that I could touch I posit as not
jot
being touched by me.
The object is intended simultaneously 1) as if it were available to sensory experience
and 2) as not being available to it. “The image posits nothing [and] refers to
nothing,” at the same time when one treats it as if it posited and referred to
something (14). Due to the sensory aim of the imaging consciousness, the image
acquires certain qualities that “spring towards existence,” but “stop halfway” (16). 1 8 2
If the image is a nothing, it is so by virtue of falling short of existence, reality and
presence, or by lagging behind perception. This self-negating sensory aspect of the
image relates it with perception: the ground of sensory intuition, therefore, is that of
perception:
[T]he imaging consciousness may be called representative (“representative”)
in the sense that it will seek its object on the ground of perception (“sur le
terrain de la perception”) and aims at the sensitive elements (“les elements
sensibles”) that constitute that object. (I 15/L 27)
1 8 0 C’est seulement sur le terrain de l’intuition sensible que les mots “absent,” “loin de moi”
peuvent avoir un sens, sur le terrain d’une intuition sensible qui se donne comme ne pouvant
pas avoir lieu. (L 25)
1 8 1 [Mon] intention actuelle vise...ce Pierre que je peux voir, toucher, entendre, en tant que
je puis le voir, Fentendre, le toucher. Seulement, voila: ce Pierre que je puis toucher, je pose
en meme temps que je ne le touche pas.
1 8 2 “des qualites qui s’elancent vers l’existence et qui s’arretent a mi-chemin.”(28)
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Sartre’s lines imply a further distinction between the representative image and a
presentative perception. Re-presentation is a particularly tricky concept for Sartre’s
overall theory of the image: while Sartre emphatically notes that the image is
supposed to reach its object directly, without any intermediary, he undercuts such
directness with the re-presentational assumption: the image must visit the grounds of
perception, that is, it must know what it is like to present an object, before it reaches
its object as a representation.
The way to the image on the ground of perception:
Sartre does not stop with these observations on the mental image, which he
takes to be certain, but intends to seek the image on the sensory ground of the
physical world. A linguistic cue makes it possible for him to make the passage from
the psychic to the physical world: there are things in the physical world (pictures,
portraits, caricatures) that are called “images.” “Is this a homonymy,” Sartre asks
“or is it that the attitude of our consciousness in front of these [image-things] is
1
comparable to that which it takes in the phenomenon of ‘mental image” (17)?
Having answered this question in the affirmative, Sartre takes upon himself the task
of explaining the common traits shared by the experience of the physical image-
things and the mental image. These physical images, along with the mental image,
constitute an image-family (17). Sartre has several other additions to his image
1 8 3 ...il existe dans le monde exterieur des objets que Ton nomine aussi des images (portraits,
reflets dans un miroir, imitations, etc.). S’agit-il d’une simple homonymie, ou bien l’attitude
de notre conscience devant ces objets est-elle assimilable a celle qu’elle prend prend dans le
phenomene “d’image mentale”? (L 30)
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family, among which are, most significantly, Franconay’s imitation of Chevalier
(Franconay’s body is the image of Chevalier), but also schematic drawings,
arabesques on the wall, and “scenes and persons seen in coffee grounds or in a
crystal ball,” which Sartre names “hypnagogic images.” It is on the ground o f
perception of the image-things in this image family that Sartre intends to ground his
understanding of the mental image.
In fact, Sartre could have ended at the same place by seeking a similar
homonymy between the mental representation and those physical artifacts called
“representations”: all of his examples of physical images are predicated upon the
absence of a particular perceptual object with respect to which the image functions as
a re-presenting artifact. The question that drives Sartre’s search for the image in the
physical world is, therefore, how it is possible to distinguish perception and physical
image, the physical presentation of an object as present and its physical
representation as absent. As Ricoeur also sees it, in Sartre’s conception, the question
of the image becomes that of the representation of an original, or more precisely, of
an original perception. According to this differentiating logic, a man, when present,
is perceived, while the physical portrait of the same man, since it implies the absence
of the man, is imaged.
Ricoeur’s critique of Sartre: fiction or picture?
In modeling the image after absence, Sartre gives an originary role to the
present-making perception. The image, therefore, is secondary to the perceptions of
an original. In his brief, but most incisive critique of Sartre, Ricoeur notes:
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[Sartre] recognize[s] the irreducibility of the image of the art of imagining,
but.. .fail[s] to liberate the image from its bondage to the model or original of
which it would be the picture or the replica. (167)
This enslavement of the image to the original, according to Ricoeur, results
primarily from Sartre’s conceptualization of the image as picture. In Ricoeur’s
critique, picture simply connotes the mental or physical replica of an original thing
that is absent. By choosing the memory of “Pierre” as the paradigmatic example of
the image, Sartre exclusively uses the model of picture as the replica of an absent
thing in his account of imagination, while obliterating an alternative model: the
model offiction as the invention of a non-existent thing:
A principal decision is made at the beginning of Imagination: A
psychological Critique. That decision concerns a paradigmatic example that
will never be dislodged from its prominent position. The example: I produce
an image of my friend Pierre, who dwells in Paris. This choice of
examples.. .is not without consequences. It imposes from the very outset the
paradigm of absence. Later on, the case of non-existent entities will introduce
no dramatic change in this description. (168)
“The case of non-existent entities” refers to the case of fiction, which corresponds to
those images with the attribute of “non-existence” as one of the four forms
o f‘ positionality” of the image in Sartre’s discussion. The attribute of “absence” is
one other form, which, in Ricoeur’s critique, strictly refers to those images that are
replicas, i.e., pictures. Ricoeur intends to sharpen the positional difference between
non-existence and absence, and therefore, between fiction and picture, which Sartre
classifies under the same category of the image. Ricoeur’s critique, then, aims at
Sartre’s privileging of picture over against fiction:
Philosophy of imagination has a preference for images that can be regarded
as mental and physical replicas (photographs, pictures, drawings, diagrams)
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of an absent thing. Thus it tends to neglect heuristic fictions in a logic of
invention, fictional narratives (such as tales, dramas, novels), and political
fictions (ideologies and utopias). In a general way, philosophy of the
imagination-ancient as well as classical and modem-fails to account for
“productive” imagination in terms that do not reduce it to “reproductive”
imagination. The claim of the fiction-image, over against the picture-image,
is difficult to maintain throughout. (167)
In the following lines, Ricoeur makes it clear that Sartre follows in the footsteps of
other philosophers, in privileging picture-images and reproductive imagination over
fiction-images and productive imagination. Ricoeur’s critique is indeed justified:
Sartre’s image hardly goes beyond the confines of the notion of representation; and,
since, in his conception, the image is bound with absence, it harbors nothing new and
nothing surprising.
In Ricoeur’s distinction between fiction and picture, the merely reproductive
picture is aligned with the field of visuality, in the form of photographs, pictures,
drawings and diagrams, while the productive fiction, exemplified with tales, dramas
and novels, has to do with the field of language. In a certain sense, Ricoeur’s critique
may be understood as being directed against Sartre’s decision to locate imaging
consciousness, and imagination, in the visual, and not in the linguistic artifacts of the
physical world, in a portrait and not in a novel. However, as I will show in a later
section, Sartre does in fact consider what might be called the “novelistic image,” and
he does this without bringing up the question of the representation of an original
perception, while, instead, endowing the read-matter with the attribute of a “curious”
kind of “representativeness.”
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What is problematic in Ricoeur’s critique, however, is the ease with which
Ricoeur inserts a difference between picture and fiction, reproductive and productive
imagination. To what extent can Ricoeur’s difference between fiction and picture
sustained? Why does imagination necessarily have to be productive or creative? How
does one distinguish between reproduction and invention? Why can the fiction not be
treated within the same framework as that of the picture? Is the picture not the
fiction, and visa-versa?
The paradox is that [Sartre’s theory of imagination] does not shake the
privilege of the original in the slightest. On the contrary it reasserts that
privilege. As Husserl tells us, to have an image is to be intentionally directed
toward something. In the example of the flute-playing centaur discussed by
Husserl in Ideas I, the centaur as such (that is, as represented) is not a psychic
state; it exists nowhere; nevertheless, it is not the invention itself. This
example from fiction compels us to consider the problem of fiction in terms
of a transcendental nothing. But what about the object of the image of
Sartre’s friend Pierre? Here is a real object that is the same for perception as
for imagination. Image and perception aim in two different ways at the
existing Pierre. Shall we say that the image nevertheless has an object (Peter
“in image”), in the same way that the invention of the centaur has the
represented centaur as its object? Then there are two objects, and we
unwittingly re-establish the inert content which we have denounced and at the
same time deny our initial statement that the image was only a relation, a
mode of givenness. It seems, therefore, that the referent of the fiction and the
referent of the picture cannot be treated within the same framework.
Husserl’s centaur is not an image of an existing object, as Sartre’s image is.
But in Sartre’s Imagination, it is uncritically assumed that the theory of the
picture may be extended to that of the fiction, and vice versa.. .[Sartre claims]
“An image is an act, not some thing. An image is a consciousness o f some
thing” (Im, 146). But which some thing? The real Pierre, or a mental
appearance as the object of the act? (168)
It is true that Sartre “does not shake the privilege of the original in the slightest”; but,
the original at stake is not the original “thing,” or “object,” as Ricoeur’s critique
suggests, but what Sartre takes to be an original, and originary act of consciousness,
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i.e, an original perception, with respect to which the act of imagination is seen, in
comparison, as impoverished and irreal. In the above lines, Ricoeur does not at all
question the distinction between the fiction and the picture, between productive and
reproductive imagination; in fact, he would rather this distinction be reinforced; and,
to this end, he amplifies the positional difference between the nonexistence of the
fiction and the absence of the picture.
Fundamentally Ricoeur’s critique is on the same plane of “positional
determinations” with Sartre’s positional distinctions between perception and the
image; he focuses on one set of positional distinction (existence/ non-existence, non
fiction/ fiction), while marking it as different from the other set, which Sartre
privileges (presence/ absence, “original”/ picture). Consequently, Ricoeur’s critique
does nothing “to shake the privilege” of positionality. More problematically, to
follow Ricoeur would result in allowing an even more restricted space for
imagination than the already restricted space Sartre allows for it in that imagination
would be sought not in the field of the irreal, but in one of the sub-fields of the irreal:
the “nonexistent,” which Ricoeur also identifies with the fictive. Ricoeur’s critique
also makes an unfounded distinction between the fiction and the picture from the
point of view of the “referent,” which is a transcendental nothing in the case of the
fiction and a real thing (“real Pierre”) in the case of the picture. By “referent,”
Ricoeur means the “thing” that the act of consciousness intends; the “nothing” of the
“referent” in the case of the fiction is therefore a non-existing thing. The implication
is that it is not sufficient to say that a fictive image is the consciousness of “a flute-
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297
playing centaur,” but the “thing” must come with a positional attribute immediately
and from the very start; the same fictive image must be the consciousness of a “non
existent flute-playing centaur.” So the transcendental realm is already ordered with
some predetermined positional knowledge: in acts of consciousness, one encounters
not just things, but things that are, of themselves, present/ absent, existent/ non
existent, fictive/ non-fictional. But, I would argue, one must be silent about what one
takes to be transcendental, and, if not, then at least consistent: if the “referent” of a
fiction (“a flute playing centaur”) is taken to be a transcendental nothing, so must the
“referent” of a picture (Pierre’s portrait) be taken to be a transcendental nothing.
Furthermore, insofar as the thing is transcendental to any act of consciousness, the
same must apply to perception, with the consequence that the “referent” of the actual
seeing of Pierre must also be understood as a transcendental nothing.
Ricoeur himself repeats what he critiques Sartre for: he privileges the original
by declaring the picture to be the representation of what is given as “absent” or of the
“real thing,” without applying the force of the fiction to destroy the assumptions of
“re-presentation” (representing what can be presented), of “reality, o f” “presence,”
and hence, of the “original.” Instead, Ricoeur implies, the search for imagination
must be shifted to a territory that is safely isolated from questions of “representations
of the original,” to a framework that excludes the picture: from reproduction to the
logic of pure invention or of pure fiction. Inconsistencies abound in this separation of
frameworks, and one is particularly obvious: the boundaries between the picture and
the fiction, between “reproduction” and “invention” are often vague and slippery. As
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examples of the physical image, Sartre often refers to artifacts that cannot be simply
equated with non-imaginative reproduction, such as portraits in a museum and
caricatures. Undoubtedly, there are levels of invention, creation and fictionality in
representational art, in scientific diagrams, in photographic arrangements, in
documentary filmmaking. Memory itself is subject to revisions, reinventions,
distortions; our diaries, (auto)biographies and histories are often hard to distinguish
from tales. I would therefore like to suggest that, instead of sharpening the
distinction between nonexistence and absence, which presumes a prior knowledge of
what is real and what is not, the question concerning positionality be suspended and
that picture and fiction be viewed one and the same.
The cue for such a possibility is indeed afforded by certain passages in
LTmaginaire, and this, despite the dichotomous tendencies of the very same
passages, which intend to distinguish, rather than unite. Something interesting
happens when Sartre introduces a third term into a discussion that primarily involves
two terms (perception and the image): the sign. The confounding sign threatens
Sartre’s clear analytic distinctions: the image resides too close to the sign and must
be set apart from it. To this end, Sartre attempts to formulate the differences that
must hold between the image and the sign. The distinction between perception and
sign, for Sartre, is out of question, perhaps because no sign could ever approximate
the richness of perception in Sartre’s formulation.
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The question of the portrait: sign or not?
In my close reading of Sartre’s discussion of the physical image, I offer an
alternative formulation of the physical image, which Sartre hints at, but dismisses:
that the physical image, which Sartre also calls the physical analogon, is a particular
kind of sign, written in the language of shapes, figures, schemes, or pictures. With
this formulation, I suggest a rapprochement between image and sign. I argue that the
ground of perception on which Sartre’s image rests is itself grounded by the sign,
whose grounding work is semi-obscured with Sartre’s more primary references to
intention and knowledge. The image-thing must be signed; or, the sign must be read
off from the perceptual matter of the image-thing. The sign is there, even in the most
“perceptual” of physical analoga (portraits and caricatures), which presumably
receive their representative status without any delay, on the “ground of perception,”
in the same immediate way in which perceptions are supposed to receive their
presence-giving status. While discussing Sartre’s discussion of the portrait, I bring to
the fore the pre-ground of the consciousness concerning the image-thing: the silent,
busy work of the sign, and of language. I argue that the sign is there, in the
construction of image as image, even before Sartre explicitly mentions it.
While Sartre attempts to remember his friend Pierre, he fails to conjure up a
satisfactory image of his face, and seeks help from the physical world: he first looks
at a photograph and then a caricature of Pierre. The portrait perfectly represents the
features of Pierre, Sartre notes, but it is the caricature that is more successful in
capturing his characteristic facial expressions:
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In the three cases [mental image, portrait, caricature of Pierre] we find an
“intention,” and that intention aims, in the three cases, at the same object.
This object is neither the [mental] representation, nor the photo, nor the
caricature: it is my friend Pierre. Moreover, in the three cases, I aim at the
object in the same way: it is on the ground of perception that I want to make
the face of Pierre appear, I want to “make it present” to me. And, as I cannot
make a direct perception of him spring up, I make use of a certain manner
that acts as an analogon, as an equivalent of perception. (1 8 )1 8 4
It is “intention” in quotes and not intention that marks these perceptual phenomena.
A matter given to perception is only animated by an “intention.” It is only after
projecting an “intention” onto a certain matter that the matter may be imagined to
belong to the object and start to act as an analogon. There must be a difference
between the perceived matter and the imagined analogon: the analogon corresponds
to an intention, while the matter can exist without any intention: “[the matter] can be
perceived for itself. It is not part of the nature [of the matter] that it must function as
matter for an image” (19).
Both the photograph and the caricature are primarily perceptual things: one
may study their matter, their shapes, textures, colors, for instance, without thinking
of their representative function (“la fonction de representer quelque chose”) (19/31).
But, this would mean that the analogon, as long as it is still related to the matter that
it stems from, would also precede the intention, which would be in variance with
what Sartre has said earlier about the analogon: that the intention never precedes the
1 8 4 Dans les trois cas nous trouvons une “intention,” et cette intention vise, dans les trois cas,
le meme objet. Cet objet n’est ni la representation, ni la photo, ni la caricature: c’est mon
ami Pierre. En outre, dans les trois cas, je vise l’objet de la meme maniere: c’est sur le terrain
de la perception que je veux me le “rendre present.” Et comme je ne puis faire surgir sa
perception directement, je me sers d’une certaine matiere qui agit comme un analogon,
comme un equivalent de la perception.(31)
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analogon. Sartre resolves this difficulty by suggesting two different, and
incompatible moments: 1) a perceptual moment in which the image-thing functions
as matter or just a thing without any intention, and 2) an imaginary moment in which
it functions as the analogon of an intended object. The analogon, belonging to the
second moment, cannot exist at the same time with the matter of the first moment,
and, hence, must be divorced from it: it is either we have an image of (imagine, or
185
“see”) Pierre, or we see (perceive) curious shapes and textures in the photo.
This conception of the physical image complicates the status of the mental
image in the image family. The matter of the image-thing may exist outside the
intention (“at least theoretically” (19)); but, while Sartre thinks that the mental image
must have a substrate of matter like the physical matter of the image-thing, he denies
* • • 186
that such psychic matter can exist outside “the intention that animates it” (18).
1 8 5 To help my readers, I would like to make a few clarifications concerning my use of
terminology. Sartre’s approach to the physical images concerns its being both the perception
of matter, and the image of an intended object. To give this double sense of the physical
image, I sometimes use the word “image-thing” in order to refer to it. I do not make a
distinction between matter and thing: both terms belong to the realm of perception, which,
according to Sartre, is different from and exclusive of the realm of the image to which the
image of the intended object, or the analogon belongs.
Image-thing or a) Perception or perceptual consciousness
Physical image Matter or thing (no intention)
b) Image or imaging consciousness
Analogon or the image o f intended object
The same difference may be recast as the difference between two acts: “seeing the thing”
and “seeing the thing as another thing”
1 8 6 McCullogh has an interesting take on Sartre’s conception of the materiality of the “mental
image.” In his argument, Sartre’s repudiation of the “illusion of immanence” and of the
miniature pictures in the mind that corresponds to real objects outside also means the
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repudiation of the thing-status of the mental image, and hence, of the representative content
of the mind. Surely, one can “visualize” and “picture things to oneself,” but any explanation
of such phenomenon must not have recourse to mental contents. According to McCullogh,
that Sartre wants to create “an image family” out of material things (but not of words)
complicates his theory of imaging consciousness, implying that mental image might as well
be treated as the consciousness of a thing, by way of which one intends an object that is not
this image-thing of perception. While the object-hood of the image-thing is obvious (a photo
or a caricature is some material thing that one can sense), it is not so obvious when it comes
to the mental image, and if one insists that this latter too consists of a matter, as Sartre does,
then one will also have to accept the consciousness of, what McCullogh calls, a crypto
object, which would be something like the material configuration of brain activity and by
way of which the intentional object is reached (76). He notes that despite making
distinctions between the imaging consciousness of the thing-image and of the mental image,
Sartre “remains committed to the idea of ‘material’ which is ‘transformed’ [by the function
of the analogon] even in ordinary cases of mental imaging, and he thus seems also
committed to the idea of a crypto-object” (78). The perception of the image-thing and
imaging consciousness of the object as the other thing of which this image-thing is an
analogon, which occur only in a temporal progression of distinct forms of consciousness in
Sartre, in McCullogh’s argument, both imply the perceptual presence of an object, which
poses itself as a problem in the case of the mental image, where the presence of mental
contents remains inaccessible.
The curious thing is that it is always possible to draw a cryptic object from one that
is the most “present,” accessible, immediate, as in modem art that routinely presents its
audience with extreme close-ups, with things distorted by the unintuitive use of filters. Such
are also the routine representations of science, which, instead of a table as seen, may give us
the same table in molecules. It would be impossible to drive away the possibility of such
crypto-objects even in the most “present” experiences: the immediate sight of an object
would imply its own crypto-object as biochemical configurations in the human body. One
may find a crypto-object whenever and wherever one looks for it. There would exist a biased
mismatch if the crypto-object is thought as a possibility only in the case of the mental image
(or thought) of an object, but not in the case of the perception of the same object, which
would then be thought to imply its own, proper, given, present object. There is no reason,
why, like McCullogh, one must affirm or deny the “presence” or “existence” of crypto
objects, when even the posing of the question is problematic, and unnecessary, In support of
McCullogh’s argument, one may note that perception is that experience in which the
question of the presence of the “crypto-object” does not (usually) become relevant, and
hence, does not lead to the impression of presence. The question of relevance, rather than of
existence, becomes the decisive factor in deciding whether a crypto-object needs to be
constituted, as besides this object or this image-thing that I see. But the same also applies to
the mental-image, in which case it may not at all be necessary to think in terms of a cryptic
object, or a biochemical bodily code, which is not available to me. The question of crypto
object becomes even more irrelevant also from the point of view that I have been espousing:
thinking about experience in terms of language. If in seeing a horse, one reads “horse”
inscribed in the intelligible hieroglyphic language that Wittgenstein mentions in the
Tractatus. then it must also be possible that one can imagine the thing, without necessitating
any perceived matter, in the same way that one may use the word “horse” in thought,
without saying and inscribing the word. The word of the inner speech creates material
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Hence, “a mental image gives itself immediately as an image. This is because the
existence of a psychic phenomenon and the meaning that it has for consciousness is
one” (19).1 8 7
ambiguity: does the silent word consist of matter? Or is the silent word the crypto-object
from which the thing is drawn? Kamber seems to suggest so in his summary of those
materials that serve of analogon in Sartre’s Imaginary: “[T]he material of the image may be
drawn from relatively random patterns in one’s visual field—clouds, flames, coffee grinds,
splatter designs, etc.—or from inner sensations—muscular contractions, internal speech,
phosphenes” (51). Nowhere does the inner speech in Sartre’s Imaginary become an
analogon; nevertheless, Kamber’s slippage is suggestive in the way it takes the silent word
as some matter, and even more suggestive in the way it implies internal speech to be a most
bodily matter, in the same league with muscular contractions. What is the matter of an
unsaid, unwritten word? If the silent word consists of matter, like the uttered word, then
there is no reason why the same cannot be said of the mental image, which, being a complex
pictorial sign, is structured like the word. The difference between the inscribed “horse” and
the silent “horse” of the internal speech could be thought as the same difference between the
perceived thing (the seen horse) and the thing of the mental image (imagined horse). If the
silent word exists without begging the question of the presence of a crypto-object, so can the
mental image. One does not need to pose crypto-objects in the case of the mental image, and
this is somewhat in conformity with McCullogh’s argument, which makes a much stronger
claim: that one must not pose such objects. Unlike Me Cullogh, however, I choose to remain
silent, and noncommittal, concerning the question of existence or non-existenceof such
crypto-objects. In addition, I would argue that any attempt to address the question of crypto
object must also address the question of the status of the word in “inner speech” and its
(im)materiality.
1 8 7 This immediacy is related to the issue of the residue: in the mental image, unlike in other
physical analoga, there exists no residue. Flynn notes: “The analogue may be a physical
object such as the lines of the Diirer engraving or the gestures of a mime, or it may be the
physiological changes, eye movements, for example, which serve as content for hypnagogic
images. What Sartre calls the sensible residue, that which remains when the material ceases
to function as analogue, as we move along the scale from external to mental image. At one
extreme stands the photo, for example, which remains a piece of chemically treated paper,
and at the other, of course, the mental image, which has no residue whatsoever.” (Flynn 435)
According to Sartre, in the case o f the physical image, residue is what remains in the act o f
comparing a perceptual moment with an imaginary one; but what portion of the matter
should be involved in such comparison is not a straightforward issue. In a different sense,
residue may also suggest the comparison between a vague “intention” (lines of the photo)
with a more determinate one (the man in the photo). In this understanding, residue does not
concern itself with the matter, but the projection of different intentions (signs) onto the
matter. Sartre’s residue, however, is grounded on a sharp division between a moment of
intention-less matter and a moment of intention that constitutes the object. This second
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To show that the mental image must also have a matter somewhat
comparable to the physical object images, Sartre establishes a further distinction
between his “initial empty intention with [his] mental image of Pierre” (18) (“je
compare, a mon image mentale de Pierre, mon intention vide du debut” (31)).
moment, however, cannot be matter-less, implying, therefore, the necessity of a perception
of matter that is simultaneous with the imaging act.
It seems that the residue is unavoidable whenever the image is based on matter, or
content. Sartre’s residue implies that there is more in the matter than what my intention
suggests. This conceptualization results in problems when Sartre begins to think about the
mental image, whose affinity with physical images he takes for granted. The mental image,
in Sartre’s formulation, is a spontaneous act without any perceptual, and hence, passive
moment. The paradox is clear: if the mental image needs a content to become an image, then
it must also contain a residue. Inasmuch as one fashions content after perception, then one
must also reckon with the possibility that the image of Pierre must have a residue
somewhere, as a perception that could theoretically precede or follow the moment of the
image. The question of residue, even in the most'perceptual of images, i.e. the photograph,
obtains after the perception of the photograph as the image of a man: the purely perceptual
moment of the photo as “chemically treated paper” is highly speculative. If perception is
hidden behind the image, then it becomes impossible to dismiss the possibility that mental
images do also have residues. I will not be able to address the problem of the residue wholly,
but I would like to hint that the problem could be solved when the image is thought not in
terms of sensuous matter, but of schemata.
As long as Sartre starts talking about matter, residue and content, then,
contamination occurs: the mental image, which is an act of consciousness, must be treated
like an image-thing, implying that something like perception of the matter, or of a thing must
also take place in the mental image, before it becomes the analogon. The immediate fall into
Sartre’s own “illusion of immanence” is obvious: the mental image implies some sort of
existence of a psychic phenomenon and is, more properly speaking, a mental image-thing.
Then, one mentally perceives some matter or some thing, before he starts imagining. Sartre
wants to overcome his dilemma by suggesting that there is no moment of perception: the
meaning of the image is the same as existence of the “psychic phenomenon.” He does not
tell us, however, whether such “psychic phenomenon” is equivalent to psychic image or
psychic matter. If there is no perceived thing, then, there is only the quasi-observation of the
matter, its complete mastery with knowledge. But once the matter (existence) is admitted,
this qualification does little to change the foregone conclusion: the image is a thing, but it is
a thoroughly known, surprise-less thing. It also displays Sartre’s refusal of the unconscious
(image): one knows one’s own image. For Sartre’s ambivalent relation with the unconscious
and especially Freud’s version of it, see Charme 24-34.
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Initially I wanted to represent Pierre to myself out of the void, and then
something emerged, which came to fulfill my intention. The three cases are
therefore strictly parallel. (18)1 8 8
There are several problems associated with the “strict” parallelism that Sartre sees
between the physical and mental image. According to Sartre, there is first the empty
intention and then the fulfilled intention in the mental image; and the fulfilled
intention coincides with the emergence, or the “something” of the matter. But this
temporal sequence (an empty intention followed by fulfilling matter) does not apply
to his discussion of the portrait as physical image, whose temporal sequence consists
of a moment of perception followed by another of the image. In fact, in his effort to
keep matter and thereby the attribute of thingliness away from the image so as not to
fall into the “illusion of immanence,” 1 8 9 Sartre keeps silent about the matter that
1 8 8 D’abord j ’ai voulu a vide me representer Pierre, et quelque chose a surgi alors, qui est
venu remplir mon intention. Les trois cas sont done rigoureusement paralleles. (31)
1 8 9 Sartre’s critique of all philosophy of imagination that precedes his own is fraught with
illusion of immanence itself and hardly ever consistent. In all of the preceding philosophy,
Sartre claims, “the image is a lesser thing, possessed of its own existence, given to
consciousness like any other thing, and maintaining external relations with the thing of
which it is the image.” (Imagination, 5) Sartre also stresses that in the image, the object is
directly reached by consciousness: “[i]n the act of imagination, consciousness refers to
Pierre directly, not by means of a simulacrum in consciousness” (Imagination, 134). In the
conclusion, the same point is restated: “ There are not, and never could be, images in
consciousness. Rather an image is a certain act, not some thing. An image is a consciousness
of some thing.” (Imagination, 146) So, seeing images in consciousness results in falling into
the illusion of immanence. I have remarked that Sartre falls into the same illusion when in
LTmaginaire, he has to refer to a content, which, according to him, is a constitutive element
o f the mental image. A s Morgan also notes, Sartre wants to get around this difficulty by
suggesting that there is no residue in the mental image, which could have turned the mental
image into an object-like simulacrum of the illusion of immanence. In negating such residue,
Sartre claims that the content (or the psychic matter) and the intention (the object that
consciousness intends) of the mental image are simultaneous. But to suggest a content, or
matter is also to suggest a moment of perception of that content as pertaining to the structure
of the mental image; so the content becomes precisely that kind of simulacrum-image, which
prevents consciousness from reaching its object directly. The question of directness is also
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raised in relation to Sartre’s account of physical images, where, he divides the consciousness
into moments of perception and the image: here, the object is reached, somewhat indirectly,
through a matter that could function otherwise than representing an object.
Here, I would like to pose a similar objection to Sartre’s illusion of immanence.
According to Sartre, the image is not a thing, but an act of consciousness, just like
perception. In addition, as in any consciousness, it involves a consciousness of some thing;
so the thing is placed outside consciousness, as being transcendent to it. The question is how
Sartre can insist on claiming that an image is not a thing, while he places the thing outside
consciousness. If the thing were transcendent to consciousness and unknowable as a thing,
what proof would exist to show that the image is not a thing? Insofar as Sartre tries to show
that an image is not a thing, his argument is as nonsensical as the opposite argument that
claims that it is a thing. Strangely enough, for Sartre, the proof exists, because the thing is
inert, isolated, discrete, rigid, etc., but it is not clear how this specific conception of the thing
would be available without some act of consciousness determining it. It seems that
perception (and the notion of reality that perception entails) is precisely that act of
consciousness from which Sartre can draw such judgments concerning the constitution of the
thing. This perception of the thing is also in direct contrast with the opposite perception of
consciousness as spontaneous. Flynn notes: “[cjonsciousness constitutes the world in the
mode of not-being-the-world, as a no-thingness in opposition to the nonconscious whose
paradigm is the inert thing. “ (Flynn, 439) Similarly, Smith observes that “.. .a thing [for
Sartre] .. .is an inert phenomenon that is independent of all conscious spontaneities, and that
is governed only by the mechanical forces exerted upon it by other things that are external to
it.” (Smith, 70) A thing, for Sartre, is a trope of passivity, denoting inert mechanisms outside
the spontaneous consciousness.
In Sartre’s conception, the image reaches its object directly, like perception
(although this argument becomes immediately problematic when Sartre discusses the image
in relation to the physical analogon in the Imaginary). The problem is this: what is the
measure of such directness when the thing is placed outside consciousness and posed as
transcendental? Who knows and how can one know how close the thing is? One final
objection concerns the idea that underlies Sartre’s critique of the “illusion of immanence”:
what could bar one from claiming that an act of consciousness may be conceptualized as a
thing? Sartre’s critique could have achieved some success if it had addressed the question of
what the “thing” is and argued that his transcendental formulation, in which the thing is
placed “outside” consciousness, is a more consistent way of thinking about the thing, which
may further help thinking about all acts of consciousness, including the image; but the
question of the thing is precisely the one that Sartre never asks (in contrast to Heidegger, for
instance, whose thinking is motivated by the question of the thing in the Work of Art essay),
and consequently, Sartre uses the notion of the “thing” with the same level of lack of
vagueness as in those arguments of previous philosophy that he charges with “illusion of
immanence” or with conceiving the thing, qua image, as immanent to consciousness.
Sartre’s account of the illusion of immanence, I would argue, largely concerns a question of
rhetoric: one must be conscious o f an object, Sartre would assert, and an object, whether as
the perceived object or the image of the object, cannot be in consciousness (and hence,
Sartre’s emphasis that consciousness is a nothingness). If there is any merit in this argument,
it is not in the rhetorical difference between the uses of the terms “in/ o f’ in the definition of
the relation between consciousness and the object, i.e. between an “immanentist” and
“transcendental” approach, but in the insistence that there is something common in
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perception and image that make both acts as consciousness of the same “object.” Sartre,
however, never tries to find out what this “object” (or “thing”) is.
Looking forward to the discussion that will follow, I would like to note that Sartre’s
proposition, the image is not a thing, but an act of consciousness, is also a reflection of the
dichotomous distinction that Sartre draws between consciousness and the thing throughout
the L’Imaginaire. Here, I would like to open short parenthesis on Sartre’s notion of
consciousness, as well as on the image and its relation to the object (the thing) of which it is
an image. As Flynn notes, Sartre’s consciousness is prepersonal and nonsubstantial, and it
has the nihilating function to “derealize its object” by holding the real thing at bay. (431)
The notion of substantiality, as well as inertness, are associated with a variety of terms, all of
which are somewhat unstable and indeterminate: thing, object, content, reality and presence.
Like any act of consciousness, the image is in need of a content, but, as Flynn remarks, the
content in Sartre functions “not as an object in itself but as the vehicle making the intended
object present-as-absent, i.e., present in the imaginary mode.” (432) In the image, therefore,
the object is given as “present-absent.” Perception, on the other hand, gives the object-in-
itself; in other words, the content that pertains to perception does not function as a vehicle
for the intended object. I have raised my objections to this ontology throughout my chapter,
first by questioning the distinction between a consciousness and a thing outside, second by
underscoring the necessity to defer the question of positionality in order to display the
continuity between various forms of consciousness (imaging, sign and perceptive), and
third,by delineating the work of sign, both in its linguistic and pictorial forms, as it
contributes to the making of the consciousnesses that Sartre studies in L’lmaginaire,
particularly of perception and the image. In this revised ontology, there would exist no need
to posit a distinction between consciousness and object, between immanence and
transcendence: an object, then, becomes an amalgam of signs, which I have designated as the
sign-object, as such objects are derived from experiences which are to a certain extent
sensual, and which one may consider to be matterial (or, with content). To be conscious of
something, then, is to make that “something” out of the matter of experience. It is a
particular modality of the making of that “something” that Sartre locates in the physical
image: the matter falls short of giving the thing in “presence,” or, to put this in the
formulation that I have proposed, a certain complex sign-object which is brought under a
particular matter, without any doubt by way of bodily processes of modeling (among which
one may list reduction, inference, extrapolation, contextualization), such a field of complex
object-sign does not display the same kind of affects associated with reality-models (among
which one may underscore the positionality of presence), that another field of the same sign-
object would display under that material regime of experience labeled as “the perception of
the thing.” Of course, what mediates between the field of the image and of perception is the
same sign, that one may often point out in spoken or written language (“object”), while
occasionally, such pointing out occurs with more difficulty, requiring the aid of other
languages, such as, languages of shapes, of sensations, of mathematical formulations, of
webs of connectivities. The object is perceived therefore in both the physical image and in
perception; and this conceptualization obviates the need to pose any immediate essential
differences between the two. It makes little difference whether a thing is available only in
image (a centaur, for instance): the image does not require any immediate measure of
“presence of the object” or of the “object in itself’ with respect to which its image status
must be established. This also means that there is no need to separate “object in itself’ from
its “vehicle”: insofar as every thing is made from a content, all content functions as vehicle,
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concerns the moment of the image in the portrait: the image is a matter-less intention
that has little to do with the matter of perception. It is, therefore, all the more curious
that in the mental image, “something” (“quelque chose”) appears to fulfill an initial
empty intention: not only is this “something” in the mental image problematic for
Sartre’s repudiation of the thingliness of the image, which might also be conceived
as his refusal to work with and through the thing-metaphor as a model for the image,
but it is also at odds with the sequence that he projects on the physical image in
which the “some thing” is first given, and then revisited, or, I would add, interpreted
by an imaging intention.
Where to locate this empty intention? In Sartre, there is no discussion of
emptiness of the intention and fullness of the mental image; consequently, the
category of empty intention remains somewhat of a mystery. If, however, there were
indeed two different moments in the mental image, comparable, as Sartre’s “strict”
parallelism suggests, to the two moments of the physical image (the matter and the
analogon), then the empty intention of the mental image would correspond to a kind
of psychic matter or a thing. But, paradoxically, this empty intention is, by
definition, not a thing: the thing emerges later, separately from the empty intention,
in order to fulfill it.
Setting this paradox aside and assuming that the strict parallelism holds, i.e.,
the empty intention is a thing, such a thing must also be a curious one because of the
or more precisely is made subject to an intelligence that makes it function as “object-in-
itself’(“in flesh and blood”) or as “an image of the object” (its analogon).
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other condition that Sartre sets for the mental image: it will never be without or
accessible outside an immediate “meaning”: “the existence of a psychic phenomenon
and the meaning that it has for consciousness is one.” This suggests, however, that
there are not two moments in the mental image, but only one: existence of the
psychic matter and its meaning are simultaneous, one and the same. More
incompatibility is introduced: the temporal sequence of [empty intention; fulfilling
thing] or [perceptual thing; imaging intention] is contradicted by the atemporal
equation [thing == meaning]. In the case of the mental image, therefore, the different
moments of perception and image that characterize the physical image are collapsed
into only that moment of the image. The outcome is a significant addition to the
image: the image is not only meaning or intention, but is also a thing.
It may be best to think of Sartre’s “empty intention” not in terms of any
temporal sequence [empty intention; fulfilling thing], or of the chiasmic frame of
spatial metaphors [“emptiness vs. fullness”], but a sine-qua-non property of the
image that presupposes it.1 9 0 I would like to suggest that in the mental imagining of
objects, of “Pierre” for instance, this empty intention could be understood as sign in
general, and linguistic sign or the word in particular. As Sartre’s ensuing remarks on
the sign suggest, the emptiness of intention resonates with the emptiness of the sign,
suggesting an alliance, and even, an equivalence, between the two concepts. The
1 9 0 This is in no way a dismissal of metaphoric thinking; in fact, my whole project is one that
explores and embraces a specific metaphor, i.e. Picture, as a model to understand language.
In fact, it is perfectly possible to think that the model of belonging (being of) that I suggest
to hold between “intention” and image is as much a spatial model as the model of “empty/
full,” but not a chiasmic one.
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inceptive, initial intention marks out, or as-signs a site of imagination, from which
and in which the image unfolds. The time of this initial sign is hypothetical: it makes
little difference whether the sign is deposited knowingly, or intentionally before the
image occurs (the image of Pierre is initiated by the prompting sign “Pierre”) or
whether the sign never becomes explicitly intended, and is silently ingrained in, or
belongs to the image integrally (the image of Pierre occurs without any explicit
prompt “Pierre”, but nevertheless presupposes and implies it).
It is then possible to conceive of the “empty” intention preceding the image of
Pierre as a linguistic sign or the word “Pierre”, which, being silently imprinted in the
consciousness, directs the course of the imaging that follows it. With the substitution
of “intention” with the “word,” the mental image becomes some thing done with and
by way of the word, and corresponds to a use of the word.
This sign-ative (and linguistic) reading of “intention” also bears
consequences for the consciousness of the physical image. To recall, Sartre makes a
distinction between the intention-less perception of the thing and the intention that
constitutes the thing as the analogon. But such distinction between the thing without
an “intention” and the analogon with “intention” is ultimately an arbitrary one and at
odds with Sartre’s principle that every act of consciousness must be intentional: even
the perceptual thing (the seeing of Pierre’s photo not as “Pierre” but as a thing
composed of lines, shapes, colors) must always be animated with an “intention”: it is
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the “thing.” The thing is the analogon of itself, by virtue of the word “thing.” 1 9 1
Perceptions of a thing may be difficult and resistant, but they are still intended,
marked out, signed or seen as some “thing”; even when this signing may be
inadequate, unsatisfactory, incomplete. One may also claim that no thing is immune
to the silent or voiced interventions of language, and that, every thing is subject to
those linguistic operations that concern the fitting of “intentions,” the projections of
words onto it. The thing is run through language, first as the “thing,” and then as the
“image of something else.” The perception of the thing is always heterogeneous with
the sign “the thing”: any thing and eveiy thing is already marked with “intention” or
the sign, even when it appears to be simply a thing. Sartre himself notes various acts
of signing in the perception of the image:
[I]t is not only the mental image that needs an intention to constitute it: an
external object cannot function without an intention that interprets as such. If
someone suddenly shows me a photo of Pierre, the case is functionally the
same as when an image appears in my consciousness suddenly and without
being willed. However this photograph, if it is simply perceived, appears to
me as a paper rectangle of a special quality and color, with shades and clear
spots distributed in a certain way. If I perceive that photograph as “photo of a
man standing on the steps,” the mental phenomenon is already of a different
structure: a different intention animates it. And if that photo appears to me as
the photo ‘of Pierre,’ if in some way, I see Pierre behind it, it is necessary that
the piece of card is animated with some help from me, giving it a meaning it
did not have. If I see Pierre in the photo, it is because 1 put him there. (19) 1 9 2
1 9 1 The difference between the thing and the analogon is not an essential one involving
different forms of consciousness; and if there is any such difference, it occurs between two
words or two images or two perceptions as they concern the same image-thing.
1 9 2 Ce n’est pas seulement l’image mentale qui a besoin d’une intention pour se constituer:
un objet exterieur fonctionnant comme image ne peut exercer cette fonction sans une
intention qui l’interprete comme tel. Si l’on me montre brusquement une photo de Pierre, le
cas est fonctionnellement le meme que lorsqu’une image apparait comme un rectangle de
papier d’une qualite et d’une couleur speciales, avec des ombres et des taches claires
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Not just one “intention,” but a series of different “intentions” animate the physical
matter (and if the unconscious were admitted, the psychic matter). Each different
“intention” marks out a different experience of the same matter: first as a perceptual
“thing,” namely, a paper rectangle of a special quality and color, and then as “photo
of a man standing on the steps,” and finally, the photo “of Pierre.” These different
“intentions” are the words that one puts there, on the photo like possible labels
attached to its surface. No thing could be put outside this operation, not even the
perceptual, the “present” and “real” body of Pierre, or the Pierre of “flesh and
blood,” who, in a series of similar intentions, would also be some thing, “the body of
a man,” and “the body of Pierre.” When the “intention” is the word, there can be no
essential difference between “seeing the matter” and “seeing the matter as.” To see
Pierre behind the photo is to be able to take the photo as the sign of Pierre, to mark
out this seeing in language as “Pierre,” to see the matter signed as “Pierre.” “If I see
Pierre in the photo, it is because I put him there, ” says Sartre; he might as well have
said: “if I see Pierre on the photo, I put the sign “Pierre” there.”
The sign and the analogon
The act of putting the sign there in the image-thing, however, does happen
from the outside, in the particular case of the photo, portrait, caricature. Sartre does
distributes d’une certaine fa?on. Si je per9ois cette photographie comme “photo d’un
homme debout sur le perron,” le phenomene mental est forcement deja d’une autre structure:
une autre intention l’anime. Et si cette photo m’apparait comme la photo “de Pierre,” si
derriere elle, en quelque sorte, je vois Pierre, il est necessaire qu’un certain concours de ma
part vienne animer ce bout de carton, lui preter le sens qu’il n’avait pas encore. Si je penyois
Pierre sur la photo, c ’ est que j e I ’ y mets.
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not attach the linguistic label, “Pierre,” arbitrarily to the matter of the photo, which,
otherwise, remains indifferent to such attachments. Rather, the matter, itself,
functions as sign and language, in its own material way, through and through. In
signing the physical matter with particular “intentions,” Sartre takes the matter to be
a particular configuration of physical language, a particular space of material writing
or of material signs.1 9 3 He assigns “the paper rectangle of a special quality and color,
with shades and clear spots distributed in a certain way” to a “man”, and then to
“Pierre,” because he finds there something of the sign of the man, and then, the sign
of Pierre. The photo serves as a complex, pictorial sign of a man, and then, of Pierre,
who is inscribed, imprinted on this matter, on the paper. Pierre emerges from, what
is, theoretically, a perceptual mess, a noisy thing, an endless string of random letters:
hutyklPicierreqvws.
With this conception, the relationship between the linguistic and pictorial
sign becomes not one of contrast, but of supplementarity and continuity. That Sartre
can establish “Pierre” as a pictorial sign in the thing implies that he could also call
1 9 3 Hence, one may also propose an alternative understanding of intention based on pictorial
sign, where this material thing of my consciousness could be read as confirming to or
diverging from those signs, written in the language of shape, and also of sound, smell, touch,
taste, for which no intention in what one strictly calls language, i.e., in words may be
available. The “disjunction” between word and picture is nothing but the preference that one
may give in using a pictorial system of signs over a linguistic one, as it happens in
perception, for instance: the systems of linguistic signs and pictorial ones may or may not
overlap. In the seeing of a horse from a far-away distance, in the lack of a “clear” picture, in
the absence of picture-signs that makes the “horse” qua picture sufficiently available, for
instance, the word “cow” may leap forward, only to be replaced with the “horse” when the
question of identity is finally settled with a clearer sighting (if, at all the question of
identifying the horse becomes relevant), thereby engendering first a mistaken and then
corrected consciousness.
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him out in words. The linguistic sign “Pierre” is already there, in the matter, as soon
as the matter begins to functions as a pictorial sign, as soon as one “put[s] Pierre
there.” Whether the word “Pierre” is explicit or implicit, whether it is external
(uttered or written) or internal to the experience of the photo is only a secondary
matter. To repeat Heidegger, the image speaks, and in speaking, renders itself to the
heterogeneous field of the words and the discourses of the world. To see a thing, is to
be in the presence of, not the thing, but a pictorial sign of the “thing,” and therefore,
to be able to apply the word “thing” to the present consciousness. “The word sticks
to the perception,” says Sartre elsewhere; and this may be because perceived matter,
itself, consists of words written in Pictures. Within the signing of the matter, or,
within the moment of establishing the matter as pictorial sign, a parallel signing
takes place, implicitly or explicitly: the signing in words.1 9 4
The Analogon:
The name that Sartre gives to the pictorial sign in his theory of the image is
the analogon. In that particular reading of the matter that Sartre calls imaging
1 9 4 If the sign, linguistic or pictorial, is always imprinted on any consciousness, it would
become impossible to posit a sign consciousness separate from imaging consciousness: there
is no consciousness without the sign, and all consciousness is sign consciousness. Going
further, one may also suggest that imaging consciousness is a species of sign consciousness,
and more particularly, a complex sign consciousness that signs its matter pictorially, or
engages in marking its matter with pictorial signs. The corollary to the imaging act would be
the act of marking the physical matter with linguistic signs, which corresponds to the
possible acts of saying or writing: “Pierre” or “the photo of Pierre.” What can be said of the
imaging consciousness concerning image-thing could also be said of perception of the
“things as they are:” perception is also a complex sign consciousness of matter. It is
important to note that this conceptualization of perception and image would not drive the
linguistic sign out of the picture: in fact, both perception and the image call for the linguistic
sign, starting from their inception, from the moment of “intention.”
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consciousness, the matter of the image-thing serves as an analogon or the “analogical
representative” of another thing or the intended object (l’objet vise):
[L]’image est un acte qui vise dans sa corporeite un objet absent ou
inexistent, a travers un contenu physique ou psychique qui ne se donne pas en
propre, mais a titre de “representant analogique” de l’objet vise. (L 34)
[T]he image is an act that aims in its corporeality at an absent or nonexistent
object, through a physical or psychic content that is given not as itself but in
the capacity of “analogical representative” of the object aimed at. (120)
It is at this point in Sartre’s account that the word, and the sign, appear, for
the first time, to complicate the question of the analogon. In the section titled “Sign
and Portrait,” the underlying question is whether the inscribed word, as a perceptual
thing, may also serve as an analogical “representative” of another thing, or whether
the sign-thing can become an image-thing. This would also be the question of
reading: could one treat a work of language as if it were a Picture, in the way one
may treat a picture as if it were a work of language? To paraphrase Sartre, is the
attitude that the consciousness takes in front of the letters comparable to that which it
takes in front of the image-things (photos, portraits, caricatures)? In other words,
does the work of language belong to the image-family?
But Sartre answers all these questions in the negative: the sign, and
particularly the linguistic sign, must be shown to be different than the physical
image. He then attempts to clarify the distinctions between the linguistic sign and the
pictorial analogon, between the word and the portrait; but his distinctions become
problematic in the face of three possibilities: that 1) the analogon, itself, is a complex
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pictorial sign;1 9 5 and that 2) the pictorial sign implicitly, if not explicitly, implies the
involvement of the linguistic sign: (in the analogon “Pierre,” there is always
1 9 5 Casey also mentions the signative underpinnings of Sartre’s analogon, while not
discussing the many distinctions Sartre draws between the sign and the analogon.
As a representative, [the analogon] is conceived as an “analogical representative” of
what is imagined. Precisely as a representative, the analogon stands for an imagined
object; it has the status of a sign, albeit not an indexical sign. An indexical sign
represents or stands for what it indicates without having to share anything with it by
way of contiguity or resemblance; consequently the relationship between sign and
signatum is arbitrary: indexical designation can occur between any two terms.
Representation by analogy, in contrast, requires that the analogon and that of which
it is the analogon (the “analogate”) resemble each other. This resemblance can take
the form of functional or qualitative similarity; either way, the relationship between
the representing and the represented terms is iconic rather than indexical. In a two-
termed iconic relationship, each of the terms resembles the other in some essential
way, typically pictoriographically. The intrinsic similarity between sign and
signatum means they cannot be related to each other in a wholly arbitrary fashion. In
Sartre’s theory of imagining, then the physical or psychical analogon enters into a
non-arbitrary iconic relation with the imagined object. (148)
Casey’s description of Sartre’s analogon as iconic sign is somewhat unusual in the literature
on Sartre’s Imaginary, which hardly ever mentions the sign-status of the analogon. This brief
note, which seems to have been inspired more by Pierce’s description of the sign than by
working through Sartre’s own arguments, is in agreement with my description of Sartre’s
analogon as pictorial sign, although I use pictorial sign in a much wider sense, in comparison
with iconic sign, to include perception. It must be stressed, however, that Sartre does not
consider the analogon as sign. Sartre fashions his own idea of the sign after the word, or the
linguistic sign, and, as his account of Franconay’s imitation suggests, the moment of the
sign, which precedes that of the analogon, is truly a hybrid moment: it is structurally
linguistic, while the linguistic units it involves are pictorial. I believe this hybridity is the
most productive aspect of Sartre’s account: it displays the continuity between the linguistic
and the pictorial, offering cues as to how pictures speak. The analogon is a writing in
pictorial signs, or as Casey’s description of iconic resemblance suggests, “pictoriographic.”
Unfortunately, Casey does not elaborate on his insight, and discuss, more in depth, what he
means by “resemblance,” which cannot be taken for granted in “psychical analoga” (147) or
mental images. What does it mean to claim that an “imagined horse” and an “actual horse”
resemble? Furthermore, the notion of analogy is never developed in Sartre: I therefore
suspect that Casey is acting on Sartre’s analogon to suggest that “representing by analogy”
requires resemblance. In Sartre, the function of the analogon, and not of analogy, is to make
the object present while absent, and it is true that he draws largely on physical resemblance
to an absent object in the instance of the portrait and imitation. In the above paragraph,
Casey talks of two kinds of resemblances without defining them: functional and qualitative
similarity. I suspect, by qualitative similarity Casey means what Sartre means by
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somewhere the word “Pierre”); and therefore 3) that the analogon and the word, the
image and the sign are continuous with each other.
At the beginning of his discussion of the sign, and before his final
distinctions between the sign and the portrait, Sartre also point to these possibilities:
I look at the portrait of Pierre. Through the photo, I am at Pierre in his
physical individuality. The photo is no longer a concrete object that provides
me with perception: it serves as matter for the image.. .But here, it seems, is a
phenomenon of the same nature: I approach these large black lines printed on
a placard nailed above a door of the station. These black lines suddenly cease
to have their own dimensions, color, place: they now constitute the words
“Assistant Manager’s Office.” I read the words on the placard and I now
know that I must go in here to make my claim: one says that I understood,
“deciphered,” the words. This is not absolutely accurate: it would be better to
say that I created them out of these black lines. These lines are no longer
important to me, I no longer perceive them: actually, I have taken a certain
attitude of consciousness that aims at another object through them. That
object is the office where I have business. It is not present, but thanks to the
inscription, it does not escape me entirely: I situate it, I have knowledge
concerning it. The matter at which I direct my intention, transformed by this
resemblance, while I am not sure what he means by functional similarity. In any case, one
must admit that there is at least one level that a linguistic sign (the word, “Pierre”) functions
similar to the way in which a pictorial sign (Pierre’s portrait or the seeing of actual Pierre)
functions: they both give “Pierre,” or the fiction of Pierre as an “object.” So if resemblance
by way of functional similarity holds for the portrait, it must also hold for the word.
Furthermore, the transpositions from one material signative realm (writing in pictures) to
another (writing in words)—transcriptions, depictions, descriptions, adaptations—always
rely upon some functional similarity in between these realms.
The other distinction that needs to be questioned in Casey’s paragraph is the
arbitrariness of the indexical sign versus the non-arbitrariness of the iconic sign. Such
arbitrariness, which is often used to describe the relation between a word and the “object”
that the word signifies but does not resemble, is strikingly conspicuous in the course of
learning a new language, and much less so, when that language is part of one’s physical
environment. In a routine sense, arbitrariness is a way of referring to the attribute of non
resemblance of the word to its “object,” which is obvious (or rather, understood to be
obvious) in one aspect (physical resemblance), but not so in another (functional similarity).
In another sense related to this, arbitrariness is also a way of referring to the attribute of
conventionality, to which the realm of iconic or pictorial signs cannot remain immune, as
long as one lives in and by way of conventions that are cultural or ideological.
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intention, now forms an integral part o f my current attitude: it is the matter o f
my act, it is a sign. In the case o f the sign, as in that o f the image, we have an
intention that aims at an object, a matter that it transforms, an object aimed at
that is not present. (2 1 )1 9 6
Interestingly, Sartre no longer sticks with Pierre: his example for the sign is not the
word “Pierre,” or an written account o f Pierre, which might have given way to fond
memories, but a most dry, bureaucratic, official sign. This sign is first and foremost,
a sign-thing, with its own matter (the letters, “these black lines”), like an image-
thing. To read is to create something out o f the sign-matter, to transform it with an
“intention” in order to aim at something else. Just like in the case o f the photograph,
it is possible to imagine not just one, but two different “intentions” that animate the
sign: Sartre signs the sign, first as a “thing,” and then as a sign for “something else.”
The word is animated with two subsequent acts o f signing: as a sign o f “a thing”
followed by a sign o f “something else,” the second sign theoretically following the
first. It is not the first, but the second “intention” that constitutes the sign as sign and
1 9 6 Je regarde le portrait de Pierre. A travers la photo, je vise Pierre dans son individualite
physique. La photo n’est plus l’objet concret que me foumit la perception: elle sert de
matiere a 1 ’image...Mais voici, semble-t-il, un phenomene de meme nature: je m’approche
de ces gros traits noirs imprimes sur une pancarte qu’on a clouee au-dessus d’une porte de la
gare. Ces traits noirs cessent soudain d’avoir des dimensions propres, une couleur, un lieu:
ils constituent a present les mots “Bureau du sous-chef.” Je lis les mots sur la pancarte et je
sais, a present, que je dois entrer ici pour faire ma reclamation: on dit que j’ai compris,
“dechiffre,” les mots. Ce n’est pas absolument exact: mieux vaudrait dire que je les ai crees a
partir de ces traits noirs. Ces traits ne m’importent plus, je ne les per?ois plus: en realite, j’ai
pris une certaine attitude de conscience qui, a travers eux, vise un autre objet. Cet objet, c’est
le bureau ou j ’ai affaire. II n’est pas la, mais, grace a 1 ’inscription, il ne m’echappe pas tout a
fait: je le situe, j ’ai un savoir qui le conceme. La matiere sur laquelle s’est dirigee mon
intention, transformee par cette intention, fait maintenant partie integrante de mon attitude
actuelle; elle est la matiere de mon acte, c’est un signe. Dans le cas du signe comme dans
celui de l’image nous avons une intention qui vise un objet, une matiere qu’elle transforme,
un objet vise qui n’est pas la. (L 35)
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connotes the ability to “have an intention that aims at an object”; in other words it is
this second intention that includes the reading of the “object” off the perceived
material word “O-b-j-e-C-x" The “intention” and the sign are one and the same
thing; in other words, there is no difference between “intending” the office and
reading “the office.”
Given that both the image and the sign are animated by an “intention” which
aims at another object, Sartre notes that one may be led to think that both have the
same function (“Au premier abord il semblerait que nous ayons affaire a la meme
fonction.” (L35)). Sartre dedicates the next few pages to argue against this position:
he uses his distinctions between the word (sign-thing) and the portrait (image-thing)
to keep the sign out of the image family. The image family moves more and more in
the direction of abstraction before it reaches the mental image, by way of dropping
its physical matter; it includes portraits, caricatures, imitations, schematic drawings;
but it never includes the word, or the linguistic sign. Even schematic drawings,
which are replete with the kinds of conventions typical of the sign, and which are
therefore “intermediate between the image and the sign,” are not “signs because,”
Sartre notes in a somewhat elliptical remark, “they are not considered as such.”(129)
197
1 9 7 Similarly mental image is not a sign. Sartre dismisses, in veiy few words, the possibility
of making from the word a mental image:
When one makes a word such as it appears in inner language a mental image, one
reduces the function of the sign to that of the image... [A] word of inner language is
not... .the mental image of a printed word, but is in itself and directly a sign (L 35).
The word, which typically functions as a sign, cannot function as an analogon when it
surfaces in the image: Sartre refuses to explore the possibility that the mental image directly
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First distinction: Resemblance of the portrait, indifference of the word
Sartre’s first distinction between the word and the physical image concerns
the difference in the ways the matter in them relate to the respective object: between
signification and resemblance.
The matter of the sign is completely indifferent to the object signified. There
is no relation at all between ‘Office,’ black lines on a white page, and the
complex object ‘office’ that is not just physical, but social. The origin of the
association is convention; subsequently it is reinforced by habit. Without
habit, which motivates a certain attitude as soon as the word is perceived, the
word ‘office’ would never evoke its object. Between the matter of the
physical image and its object there is a very different relation: they resemble
each other. (I 27) 1 9 8
What is questionable in Sartre’s distinction is how “resemblance” (or, what Sartre
perceives to be its opposite: “indifference”) could at all be a determining factor in
distinguishing the image from the sign. Sartre’s idea of resemblance rests on the
presence of the perceptual object, and becomes problematic when the perceptual
stems from an engagement with words. Consequently, one may imagine Pierre, by intending
“Pierre” as “such and such,” without any interference of the word, and therefore, of the sign.
But there is at least one problematic result of posing an image-less sign and sign-less image:
one would have to pretend that there must be a difference between an instance in which an
imaging consciousness has been occasioned by the explicit utterance “Pierre” and another
instance in which the same consciousness occurs without any external stimulus, or any
intervention of sign-matter, without the word “Pierre.” He therefore fails to provide a
plausible explanation concerning the difference between the signless imagination of the
object (mental image) and the consciousness of the object occasioned by the sign-thing
(sign).
1 9 8 La matiere du sign est totalement indifferente a 1 ’objet signifie. II n’y a aucun rapport
entre le “Bureau,” traits noirs sur une feuille blanche, et le “bureau” objet complexe qui
n’est pas seulement physique, mais social. L’origine de la liaison est la convention; par la
suite, elle est renforcee par l’habitude. Sans l’habitude, qui, des que le mot est per?u, motive
une certaine attitude de la conscience, jamais le mot “bureau” n’evoquerait son objet. Entre
la matiere de l’image physique et son objet il existe une tout autre relation: il se ressemblent.
(L 36)
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object is absent. One may certainly agree with Sartre in his claim that the linguistic
sign “Pierre” has nothing to do with the way the object looks, but in so far as the
perceptual object is absent, it must also be true that this portrait of Pierre has nothing
to the with the memory of Pierre, whose matter must be a certain configuration in the
biological makeup of the brain. Wamock also notes, in relation to Sartre’s
“resemblance” argument, that “an imaginative thought of Peter does not resemble
Peter.” (9) In one moment of “intention,” physical image and the word are just
things; as such, they both must equally be indifferent to their respective object.
Sartre’s distinction between resemblance and indifference must concern the other
moment of “intention,” in which the image serves as analogon and the word serves
as sign of the object. But in the case of the image, Sartre does not distinguish
between these two “intentions;” the resemblance between the image and its object,
for him, must be there, present, in the matter of the image. The implication is that the
object must be perceived in the image:
The matter of our image, when we look at a portrait, is not only that tangle of
lines and colors that I just called in the interest of simplicity. It is, actually, a
quasi-person, with a quasi-face etc. (I 22) 1 9 9
This sudden insertion of actuality (or “realite) has the effect of obliterating
the image as sign, of making sure that the natural resemblance between the object
and the image is given, present, immediate throughout. The matter of Pierre’s
portrait, as physical image, is “actually, a quasi-person, quasi thing,” but how one
1 9 9 La matiere de notre image, quand nous regardons un portrait, n’est pas seulement cet
enchvetrement de lignes et de couleurs que nous disions tout a l’heure pour plus de
simplicite. C’est, en realite, une quasi-personne, avec un quasi-visage, etc. (36)
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could determine such quasi-ness, without the “wholeness” of the thing in perception,
remains unanswered. Therefore, the quasiness of perception must exclude any hint of
wholeness, which it otherwise suggests, as if it were an absolute property. The image
then turns into a curious perception, with the inherent, present quality of “quasiness,”
which Sartre often describes as magical, strange, enchanting.2 0 0
Sub-distinction: Resemblance of the portrait and conventionality of the sign
But, as I have suggested, the physical image, and therefore, the portrait could
be perceived also as a pictorial sign, in which case Sartre’s distinction between the
portrait and the word becomes one that distinguishes between natural and
conventional signs. According to Sartre, the word is “indifferent” to its object; it is a
linguistic sign governed by convention or habit. The portrait, on the other hand,
2 0 0 Magic is an important concept that Sartre uses to define both imaging and emotional
consciousness. This latter consciousness is described in Sartre’s Esauisse d’une theorie des
emotions. Like Sartre’s emotional consciousness, imaging consciousness is marked with
particular modalities of affect, and among such modalities, the most important one is the
feeling of presencing absence. It is precisely a kind of emotion that constitutes the image as
that consciousness that intends its object as absent, and as if it were present. As I discuss in
my chapter, the words become images in literary reading, when the reader becomes
emotionally involved in the adventures of the heros of the novel. In Sartre’s Esauisse.
emotional consciousness connotes the magical and imaginary transformation of the world,
and reality, and unlike the image, involves a kind of action upon the world, but an action that
is in variance with the kind that a real situation demands: “[Emotion] is a transformation of
the world. When the paths before us become too difficult, or when we cannot see our way,
we can no longer put up with such a difficult and exacting world. All ways are barred and
nevertheless we must act. So then we try to change the world; that is, to live it as though the
relations between things and their potentialities were not governed by deterministic
processes but by magic” (Sketch, 63). Emotion, in Sartre’s account, involves an imagining
that confers on the objects of its intention qualities that may not exist, or otherwise, it
magnifies or attenuates such qualities: “Emotional consciousness seeks.. .to confer another
quality upon [the object], a lesser existence or a lesser presence (or a greater presence, etc.).”
(65) Emotion also contains the same annihilation of the world or real that one observes with
Sartre’s image; for instance, fear “is a consciousness whose aim is to negate something in
the external world by means of magical behavior, and will go so far as to annihilate itself in
order to annihilate the object also” (68).
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“resembles” its object; it is a pictorial sign that is “natural,” i.e., not governed by
convention or habit. This distinction between the portrait and the word, however, can
only concern a circumscribed subset of pictorial and linguistic signs, and can not
constitute a general or essential distinction between the pictorial and linguistic sign:
certain pictorial signs can be heavily coded and therefore conventional, as in
schematic drawings, while certain linguistic signs can be said to resemble their
objects, as in onomatopoeia and hieroglyphic script. The distinction concerns the
“extreme” ends of the same sign continuum in which the terms (portrait and word)
are thought to exclude each other. Interestingly, Sartre often shifts between the
“portrait” and the “physical image,” giving the impression that the distinction made
between the portrait and the word can be made, without any qualification, between
the image and the sign in general.
But even this distinction is subject to failure with the recognition that even
the most natural “resemblance” is in continuity with “convention.” The portrait, in
resembling its object, is not immune to social, ideological, historical conventions, as,
for instance, attested in the history of pictorial representation in art. The same can
even be said of the presence-endowing claim of perception, which must therefore be
included on the same sign continuum to which the portrait and the word belong. This
body that I see “is” Pierre; but the “being,” or rather “actual being” of this
perception, whose corollary is the “resemblance” of the portrait, is not immune to the
conventions that determine such being. Whether the perceived human-body-matter is
to be seen as an “actual” human, or as “resembling” a human, or a “quasi” human, or
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not as a human at all, has historically been a question of convention, whose often
destructive answer is sought in those often “naturalized” discursive and ideological
conventions that determine how the “human” is, and should be, signed.
Sub-distinction: Complex resemblance of the portrait and Simple indifference
of the word
Closely related to the distinction between “resemblance” and “indifference,”
is that between “complexity” and “simplicity.” The portrait is said to resemble its
object, because it aims at the object in its complexity. Granted, there is a difference
between the Pierre in the photo and the word “Pierre”: the former visually reminds
one of the “actual Pierre” and “resembles” it. But the same could not be said in a
situation when the object of the portrait has never been encountered before, as when
the reader sees Tenniel’s illustration of the “gryphon” and reads Carroll’s reference
to the “gryphon” for the first time. Technically speaking, one can still claim that the
portrait is more complex than the word; but such an assessment would have little
justification beyond the fact that Tenniel’s visual material in the portrait is more
complicated than the word “gryphon” typed in Times New Roman. To determine this
kind of material complexity, one does not need a “signified” or “represented” object
outside the two terms whose complexity is to be assessed comparatively.
Tenniel’s gryphon still resembles some animal; it is a montage of half hawk
and half horse, and if one sticks with Sartre’s definition of the image, the picture of
the gryphon is quasi-quasi-hawk and quasi-quasi-horse. So, insofar as the gryphon
resembles a horse in complexity, even if partially, then one can readily admit to a
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kind of complexity of resemblance that does not hold between the inscription
“gryphon” and the horse that is seen or depicted, perceived or imaged. But, one may
still think of other examples in which complexity could be attained without any
resemblance to any other object than the two objects in question; one can still
compare an abstract painting with a nonsensical title “tainto,” and finally the
calligraphic writing of some words in an unfamiliar language with the ordinary
writing of the same words, Tai N to with tainto. In this final example, Tai Nfo
resembles tainto, in a much more rigorous sense than the portrait of Pierre resembles
the object “Pierre.” So if Sartre attributes “resembling” complexity to the portrait, he
could as well attribute it to the calligraphic word.
But the difference is in fact there, in the language: unlike “tainto,” one is
already acquainted with the word “Pierre” and the portrait “Pierre”, with the
linguistic sign and the pictorial signs that accompany the linguistic sign. With this,
“resemblance” becomes related to a specific linguistic or pictorial use of the sign,
and whether such use diverges from or converges to the prior uses of the same sign.
To say that the portrait “resembles” Pierre is to say that the portrait uses the sign
“Pierre” in a way that is similar to the way my perception uses the sign “Pierre.”
This sense of “resemblance,” however, has little to do with the sign being pictorial or
linguistic, and may indeed be explained in either in linguistic terms (this portrait
describes Pierre) or in pictorial terms (this paragraph depicts Pierre).
If Sartre claims that the portrait “resembles” a complex object, and the word
does not, this is mainly because he does not consider the word, simply and by itself,
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as capable of depiction, and does not, therefore, take into account those other units of
language (lines, stanzas, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, poems) by way of
which one “normally” depicts. There is no reason, however, to think that the
“complex resemblance” aimed in the portrait could not be actualized in those
particular instances of reading, in which one falls under the impression that the
written word “resemble,” or “imitate” the world of objects, as in mimesis.
Second distinction: The enriching portrait and the un-contributing word.
Sartre’s further distinction between the portrait and the word, which
immediately becomes a distinction between the “physical image” and the sign,
concerns the relation of the word and the image to their respective objects:
In signification, a word is but a milestone: it presents itself, awakens a
signification, and that signification never returns to it but goes to the thing
and drops the word. In the case of the image with a physical base, on the
contrary, intentionality constantly returns to the image-portrait. We place
ourselves facing the portrait and we observe it [Footnote: It is this
observation that becomes quasi-observation in the case of the mental image];
the imaging consciousness of Pierre is constantly enriched; new details are
constantly added to the object: that wrinkle that I had not noticed on Pierre, I
allot it to him as soon as I see it on his portrait. Each detail is perceived, but
not for itself, not as a spot of colour on a canvas: it straight away incorporates
itself in the object, which is to say in Pierre. (123) 2 0 1
2 0 1 Dans la signification, le mot n’est qu’un jalon: il se presente, eveille une signification, et
cette signification ne revient jamais sur lui, elle va sur la chose et laisse tomber le mot. Au
contraire, dans le cas de 1 ’image a base physique, l’intentionalite revient constamment a
Fiamge-portrait. Nous nous p lain s en face du portrait et nous 1 'observons [C’est cette
observation qui deviendra la quasi-observation dans le cas de 1 ’image mentale]; la
conscience imageante de Pierre s’enrichit constamment; des details nouveaux sont
constamment ajoutes a l’objet: cette ride que je ne connaissais pas a Pierre, je la lui attribue
des que je la vois sur son portrait. Chaque detail est per?u, mais non pour-lui meme, non
comme tache de couleur sur une toiler il s’incorpore sur-le-champ a l’objet, c’est-a-dire a
Pierre. (L 37)
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This distinction is yet another variation of the distinction between the complex,
pictorial sign and the simple linguistic sign: it contrasts the complex solicitations of
the former with the simple referrals of the latter. In complexity, one lingers over the
image, going back and forth between the image and its object; while, in simplicity,
one pays no attention to the self-effacing word, which takes its leave from the realm
of materiality and disappears into the object. To linger over the complex image is to
learn from it, by facing and observing it. What is more, such learning takes place not
only in relation to the physical image that is observed, but also, as the footnote
suggests, in relation to the mental image that is quasi-observed.
There is an obvious contradiction here with what Sartre says earlier about the
image: “in the image, there is a kind of essential poverty (9).. .one can never learn
from an image what one does not know already (10).” This is because Sartre’s
explanations concerning the physical image, and in the above case, to the portrait,
oscillate between imaging and perceptual consciousness, the supposed poverty of the
former and plenitude of the latter. For my purposes, such contradictions are in fact
fortuitous turns of thought, at the very least, destroying the boundaries between
perception and the physical image: the physical image is not quasi-observed, but
simply observed as image. If the physical image of Pierre is observed in the same
way as “Pierre in flesh and blood,” then one may preliminarily understand what
Sartre means with his claim that “new details are added to the object,” i.e., to the
general field of the complex signs that constitute the object, which might also be
called the sign-object.
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But supposing that one knows how a portrait may be capable of contributing
to the sign-object, regardless of whether it is a faithful rendering of “Pierre in flesh
and blood,” the assumption that linguistic signs must be incapable of such
contributions is questionable. One objection is straightforward: the linguistic unit at
which Sartre addresses the question of the sign is the word: for Sartre, the use of the
word (signification) just means “go[ing] to the thing and drop[ping]the word,” or
merely pointing to the (sign-) object. There might be, however, other linguistic levels
of signification that might attempt to add new details to their sign-object: sentences,
paragraphs, narratives, discourses, etc. It is not clear why the utterance “there is a
wrinkle on Pierre’s forehead” for instance, would have no effect on the constitution
of the (sign-) object, while the portrait can so readily become the source of
immediate contributions. But a second objection may also be raised: words could
simply be strung together, and such configuration might still be thought to add “new
details” to some object: “wrinkle Pierre forehead,” a surrealist caricature of Pierre, a
passage from Joyce’s Ulysses, a Magritte painting. Such artifacts may impress with a
rigorous sense of addition: Pierre with the wrinkle, and room with an enormous
apple, etc. This is indeed the metaphoric addition of certain genres of fiction, and
particularly poetry.
Third distinction: positionality of the portrait and the nothingness of the sign
and others: giving/ non-giving, fulfillment/ emptiness
There is more at stake in Sartre’s distinction between the enriching portrait
and un-contributing sign: the portrait implies positionality, which also means
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affirmation, judgment, and knowledge, all of which are there, immediate, given in
the perception of the portrait. A third distinction between the word and the physical
image immediately follows:
For the sign, the object is clear: the sign consciousness is not positional.
When accompanied by an affirmation, this affirmation is synthetically
attached to it and we have a new consciousness: judgment. But to read on a
placard “Assistant Manager’s Office” is to posit nothing. In every image,
even in the one that does not posit its object as existent, there is a positional
determination. In the sign as such this determination is lacking. From an
object which functions as sign, a certain something is aimed at; but, of that
something, one affirms nothing, one limits oneself at aiming at it. (123) 2 0 2
So, positionality is reserved only for affirmations, and judgments, which correspond
to the difference between “this is Pierre” and “Pierre,” between a proposition and a
word. But how can the physical image have the capability of positional
determination, while the sign-thing lacks it? What characteristic of the image,
lacking in the sign, endows the image with the ability to posit? If indeed the sign
posits nothing, the same can be said of a grotesque photomontage of Pierre, or a
caricature of someone unknown, or a surrealist painting.
Sartre’s “positional” distinction between the image and the sign, which also
separates the presencing “absence” of the former from the nothingness of the latter,
is intricately related to his understanding of “affect” and “emotion.” Looking at the
2 0 2 Pour le signe, la chose est claire: la conscience significative en tant que telle n’est pas
positionnelle. Lorsqu’elle s’accompagne d’une affirmation, cette affirmation lui est
synthetiquement rattachee et nous avons une conscience nouvelle: le jugement. Mais lire sur
une pancarte “Bureau du sous chef,” ce n’est rien poser. Dans tout image, meme dans celle
qui ne pose pas son objet comme existant, il y a une determination positionnelle. Dans le
signe en tant que tel cette determination manque. A partir d’un objet qui fonctionne comme
signe, une certaine nature est visee; mais, sur cette nature, on n’affirme rien, on se bome a la
viser. (L 38)
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portrait of Charles VIII at the Uffizi in Florence, Sartre thinks that “the physical
qualities [of the portrait] are there, before us,” and that these qualities provoke a
certain “affective impression,” which acts directly on his “sensibility,” with the
consequence that “the dead Charles VIII is .. .present” (23). The affectivity or the
force of the experience of the portrait gives way to the false impression that tricks the
consciousness into believing in the presence of the lacking subject, who is given as
absent in the image. In comparison, the sign-thing, which Sartre understands strictly
to mean the word, is truly lacking in affect, and hence, is incapable of positing:
[T]he picture gives Pierre, though Pierre is not there. The sign, on the
contrary, does not give its object. It is constituted as a sign by an empty
intention. It follows that a sign consciousness, which is empty by nature, can
be fulfilled without destroying itself. I see Pierre, and someone says “it’s
Pierre;” I join the Pierre sign to the Pierre perception by a synthetic act. The
signification is fulfilled. The image consciousness is already full in its own
way. If Pierre appears in person, it disappears. (124) 2 0 3
Hence, one of Sartre’s basic distinctions: between empty intention of the sign and
fulfilled intention of the picture (portrait) or of perception. Emptiness connotes a
lack in the sign that does not exist in perception or image: Sartre assumes that the
sign is incapable of giving Pierre or the thing that it signifies. He does not give any
measure, however, by which the emptiness of the sign, or the fullness of the
perception or the image could be determined.
2 0 3 Ainsi le tableau donne Pierre, quoique Pierre ne soit pas la. Le signe, au contraire, ne
donne pas son objet. II est constitue en signe par une intention vide. II s’ensuit qu’une
conscience significative, qui est vide par nature, peut se remplir sans se detruire. Je vois
Pierre, et quelqu’un dit: “C’est Pierre”; j ’accole par un acte synthetique le signe Pierre a la
perception Pierre. La signification est remplie. La conscience d’image est deja pleine a sa
maniere. Si Pierre apparait en personne, elle disparait. (L 39)
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Contrary to Sartre’s claim, there are ways to argue that the word does give
the thing, and Sartre himself describes a way, albeit a simple, one directional one, in
which such giving takes place: “[the word] presents itself, awakens a signification,
and that signification never returns to it but goes to the thing and drops the word.”
Regardless of Sartre’s injunction “never [to] return,” as long as one goes to the thing
by way of the word, the word gives the thing; and, in fact, as Heidegger could have
said, without this giving of the word, there is no thing. If there is a giving in the
sign-word, “Pierre,” there must also be giving in the sign-proposition “it is Pierre.”
2 0 4 But if giving is admitted to the sign, then the sign cannot be entirely lacking or
empty; in other words, the “emptiness” of the sign must be understood not as an
essential property, but a relative one that might only hold when the linguistic sign is
compared with the pictorial signs of perception and the image, whose affect is
perceived to be less empty.
Sartre’s sign language and the portrait:
The portrait and the word are on the same continuum, on all accounts:
convention, resemblance, indifference, complexity, enrichment, positionality, giving,
fulfillment. That the sign penetrates all perception (“seeing Pierre”) and image
(“seeing the portrait of Pierre”) could also be inferred from Sartre’s own account of
the consciousness of the physical image, of the portrait and of Franconay’s imitation.
Despite his reluctance to acknowledge the work of the sign in the constitution of the
physical image, the image speaks: at every moment of imaging consciousness that he
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examines, Sartre pronounces and inscribes words, making it possible to rewrite his
phenomenological theory of the image in the language of the sign. Sartre’s account
of the resemblance of the portrait, for instance, could be expressed as a movement of
the sign:
Resemblance is a tendency of the portrait to give itself as Pierre in person.
The portrait acts upon us—almost—like Pierre in person, and, because of this
fact it solicits us to make the perceptual synthesis: Pierre in flesh and blood.
(122)2 0 5
The consciousness aims at “Pierre in flesh and blood,” as it does in perception, but it
does not, and cannot, fully accomplish this “intention”: it quasi accomplishes it.
While the image solicits the sign of “Pierre in flesh and blood,” it fails, and remains
as “Pierre as imaged.” The consciousness of the image-object reckons with, in one
and the same movement, the extent to which the image resembles the object, which
also means, the extent to which the current consciousness could be brought under the
complex, pictorial sign “Pierre in flesh and blood,” as this sign characterizes the
perceptual consciousness. The image solicits a complex, “flesh-and-blood” field of
the sign-object, which, significantly, results in the linguistic judgments that Sartre
utters in the course of experiencing the image:
Presently my intention appears; I say: “This is the portrait of Pierre”
or more briefly “This is Pierre.” Then the picture ceases to be an object, it
functions as matter for an image. This invitation to perceive Pierre has not
disappeared, but has entered into the imagined synthesis. To tell the truth, it
is the invitation that functions as an analogon and it is through it that my
intention is directed at Pierre, I say to myself: “ Look, it is true, Pierre is like
2 0 5 La ressemblance.. .c’est une tendance qu’a le portrait de Pierre a se donner pour Pierre en
personne. Le portrait agit sur nous-a peu pres-comme Pierre en personne et, de ce fait, il
nous sollicite de faire la synthese perceptive: Pierre de chair et d’os. (L 27)
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that, he has these brows, this smile.” All that I perceive enters into a
projective synthesis that aims at the true Pierre, a living being who is not
there. (12 2 )2 0 6
Here, Sartre implicitly lays down a model of the perception of the image-object, a
model that encompasses the three intertwining instances of perception, image and
sign. First, there is the moment of solicitation or invitation to perceive Pierre in flesh
and blood, which could also be construed as the possibility of applying the sign
“Pierre in flesh and blood” to the current perception. But the invitation becomes only
partially actualized; the material space of the image (Pierre’s portrait) cannot provide
all the signs, both in intensity and in kind, which the material space of a
corresponding perception (Pierre’s flesh and blood perception) would require, even
in instances when the image comes somewhat close to perception, as in the cinematic
image. Nevertheless, both the material spaces of the image and perception do share a
set of signs that makes them resemble one another. With this partial realization of
the perceptual synthesis, “an intention appears”; Sartre “says,” utters, or writes
down the linguistic judgment: “This is the portrait of Pierre.” Interestingly, Sartre
feels like abbreviating this sign consciousness: “more briefly,” Sartre says, “This is
Pierre.” Both the complex, pictorial sign “Pierre in flesh and blood,” by which the
perception becomes the perception of the thing, and the complex sign “portrait of
2 0 6 A present mon intention paralt; je dis: “C’est le portrait de Pierre” ou, plus brievement
“C’est Pierre.” Alors le tableau cesse d’etre objet, il fonctionne comme matiere d’image.
Cette solicitation de percevoir Pierre n’a pas disparu, mais elle est entree dans la synthese
imagee. A vrai dire, c’est elle qui fonction comme analogon et c’est a travers elle que mon
intention se dirige sur Pierre. Je me dis: “Tiens, c’est vrai, Pierre est comme ceci, il a ces
sourcils, ce sourire.” Tout ce que je per9ois entre dans une synthese projective qui vise le
vrai Piere, etre vivant qui n’est pas la. (L 37)
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Pierre,” by which the image becomes an analogon of the thing, belong to the
inclusive field: the sign of the object “Pierre,” which constitutes the intentionality of
both perceptual and imaging consciousness.2 0 7 Such an inclusive sign (the sign of
the object) would then have its material counterpart in the inscribed word, as the
name of the thing, “Pierre.” What Sartre understands as “strict” sign-consciousness,
2 0 7 1 would argue that it is by way of sign that Sartre’s distinctions between perception and
image could be disturbed, insofar as such distinctions concern the consciousness of material
things and bodies, of physical images. Here, I would like to mention Ishigura who critiques
Sartre’s sharp separation of imagination from perception, without having recourse to sign
consciousness. Ishigura notes: “Perceiving and imaging are, [Sartre] claims, two irreducible
and mutually exclusive attitudes of the mind. But is this dichotomy.. .as evident as Sartre
suggests?.. .He thinks that the when I see the actor as the person he is mimicking, I cannot be
really perceiving the actor. Similarly, if I see a painting as a portrait of X, according to Sartre
I am no longer perceiving the painting.. .And this seems to me to be evidently wrong. If I see
Laurence Olivier as Hamlet, I must on the contrary also be perceiving Laurence Olivier. One
cannot see X as Y without seeing X.” (176) Ishigura seems to be fashioning his example of
Olivier’s performance after Sartre’s example of Franconay’s imitation, which I will discuss
in a later section. Ishigura does not mention the moment of sign consciousness, which,
according to Sartre, takes place in Franconay’s imitation but not in the portrait; he therefore
couples the example of imitation with that of the portrait. In Sartre the portrait and the
imitation are somewhat different, in that the portrait’s immediate resemblance, according to
him, is at variance with the imitation’s temporal constitution of the imitated object. Despite
these qualifications, I completely agree with Ishigura’s criticism. In the example of the
portrait, Sartre inserts a division between the moment of perception (or seeing) the matter of
the portrait and the moment of imagining what the portrait depicts (Perceiving M and
imagining X). Similarly, in imitation or in performance, the actor is perceived in “flesh and
blood,” while the one, who is imitated, is imaged (Perceiving X [the actor] and imagining Y
[the imitated]). Ishigura is correct in pointing out that in Sartre, one cannot perceive M as X
(portrait) or X as Y (imitation).
I would make one more qualification concerning Ishigura’s criticism. I would like to
add that, in perceiving an actor (perceiving X), one imagines him as himself (in that one may
always ask whether Olivier is acting as his regular self), or as (if he were) someone else.
This is because the actor’s body can always be interpreted as matter M, with the
consequence that perceiving X may be expanded into perceiving M as X (Olivier’s body as
the actor). Olivier’s body, even when it is not acting, is always an inscription (like Ishigura’s
X), temporal and spatial, an inscription which one must make sense of: OoLiiwiieerrr. Such
inscription of “Olivier” becomes altered within the space of performance in which Olivier
acts as Hamlet “OoLhiiamwiiLETeerrr.” In other words, Olivier becomes Hamlet in word,
while Hamlet becomes Olivier in body. It is not enough to say that one perceives Olivier as
Hamlet; one must also note that one imagines (or perceives) Hamlet as Olivier.
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which is the consciousness of the thing by way of the word, is always already
assumed in the imaging and perceptual consciousness. In signing a thing as the
complex physical, pictorial sign of “the thing in flesh and blood” (perception) or “the
analogon of another thing” (image), there is always the silent, implicit word grafted
onto the experience: “the thing.”
The different shores of signing:
The characteristic trait of the image is primarily the affect that it produces,
while performing as a complex, pictorial sign: it invites the thing, without actualizing
it. Sartre’s distinctions between the non-positional, empty, indifferent sign and the
positional, fulfilled “resemblance-soliciting” image (or “actual” perception)
ultimately rest on a questionable distinction between the affect-less sign and the
affective perception. As I will discuss in a later section, Sartre, himself, repudiates
his own assumption of affect-less sign in his discussion of “imaging knowledge.”
Even more unexpected are his strange, and strangely overlooked remarks, which
immediately follow his thought-segment on the distinction between the sign and the
image, and which point to the possibility of affect-less perception. The radical
consequence of this brief thought-segment is that whether a matter is to be
interpreted as sign, perception or image is an arbitrary decision that depends on the
affective circumstances which envelope the consciousness of that matter. But since
such decision is arbitrary, the distinctions between the sign, on the one hand, and
perception and the image, on the other, cannot be based on the naturally inherent or
essential lack of affect in the former and presence of it in the latter. An even more
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radical consequence is that since these distinctions are entirely contingent upon an
arbitrary ordering of affect, carried out in the terms of positionality, presence,
existence, reality, etc., they may be discarded with the admission of irreducible
heterogeneity: in Sartre’s brief endnote to his discussion of the portrait, both image
and perception become the sign.
To recapitulate, according to Sartre, perception posits its object as present,
while imaging consciousness posits it as 1) absent, 2) existing elsewhere, 3)
nonexistent, or 4) it does not posit it as existing (suspension or neutralization of the
thesis), and is therefore nonthetic. Concept and knowledge posit the existence of
natures (universal essences) and “are indifferent to the ‘flesh and blood’ existence of
objects” (13). Similar to the concept, sign consciousness does not posit at all, and is
indifferent to the existential status of its object. But, as Sartre suggests in his endnote
to his sign-portrait distinctions, these distinctions are easily disturbed by the
particular character of the act of consciousness, turning the questions of position into
conditional determinations. As an example, Sartre says that he “can very well posit a
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centaur as existent (but absent)” despite the fact that a centaur is non-existent.
2 0 8 “II faut insister sur ce fait que ce qui distingue les differents types positionnels, c’est le
charactere thetique de l’intention, et non l’existence ou non-existence de l’object...” So it is
not a certain knowledge of existence, independent of the experience, but the thetic, which
means, the affective force of experience that determines positionality. But such
independence from the knowledge of existence, and the arbitrariness of the positional
determinations, are reserved for the sphere of the image, and only in those cases in which a
particular imaging consciousness strays from how it “normally” posits: one remains
indifferent to positing the people in an image-photo; or one takes centaurs to be absent and
not non-existent (although the import of this final difference, between non-existence and
absence, is somewhat vague). In his overall argument, Sartre reasserts what he repudiates
within marginal imaging experiences: it is the knowledge of existence, and not the “thetic”
character of consciousness, that determines the difference between image on the one hand,
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Conversely, when Sartre looks at some photos in the magazine, he takes note of the
strangely non-positing character of his consciousness:
[these photos] can very well ‘say nothing to me,’ which is to say I look at
them without positing their existence. Thus, the people whose photographs I
see are indeed reached through these photographs, but without my positing
their existence, just as the Knight and Death are reached through Diirer’s
engraving, but without my positing them. One could also find cases where
the photo leaves me in such a state of indifference that I do not care for any
imaging. The photograph is vaguely constituted as an object, and the people
that it depicts are indeed constituted as people, but solely because of their
resemblance to human beings, without any particular intentionality. They
float between the shores of perception, sign, and image, without touching any
of them. (125) 2 0 9
In other words, it is possible to see the people in the photos as “pure fictions,” as if
they were the figures, the Knight and Death, in the Diirer engraving that Husserl
discusses in his renowned example.2 1 0 One is supposed to see the people as absent
(these people are not here), or existing elsewhere (they are at the beach), or
sign and perception on the other. If positional determinations are arbitrary, how can they be
used to differentiate image, perception and sign? The possibility of destroying the distinction
between the sign and the image is suggested even in the instability in the definition of the
positional categories: what is the difference between the image’s being “nonthetic”
positionality and the sign’s non-positionality, between a pictorial fiction of the centaur and a
written description of it?
2 0 9 ...[S]i je regarde les photos du journal, elles peuvent tres bien “ne me rien dire”, c’est-a-
dire que je les regarde sans faire de position d’existence. Alors les personnes don’t je vois la
photographie son bien atteintes a travers la gravure de Diirer, mais sans que je les pose. On
peut d’ailleurs trouver des cas ou la photo me laisse dans un tel etat d’indifference que je
n’effectue meme pas la “mise en image.” La photographie est vaguement constitute en objet,
et les personnages qui y figurent sont bien constitues en personnages, mais seulement a
cause de leur ressemblance avec des etres humains, sans intentionnalite particuliere. Ils
flottent entre le rivage de la perception de la perception, celui du signe et celui de 1 ’image,
sans aborder jamais a aucun d’eux. (L 40)
2 1 0 For Husserl’s analysis of Diirer’s engraving, see Flynn (432-433)
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nonexistent (this is a very photo of the now dead at the beach); instead, one does not
at all consider the object from a positional point of view, as if there were no
difference between the photograph or a cartoon populated by alien characters: the
photo says nothing about the existential status of the people. Not positing any thing
in the image implies not having any imaging consciousness at all, allowing the
consciousness to float towards the non-positional sign, where it was supposed to be
anchored in the positional image.
The floating movement of indeterminate consciousness could have allowed
Sartre to revise the distinctions that he has just made, and to reassess his definition of
sign consciousness. To recall, Sartre’s sign consciousness implies indifference to its
object; but the blurring between the image and the sign in the endnote also suggests
that the indifference that Sartre talks about is nothing other than the indifference of
the sign toward the question of positionality, and toward what comes with it:
“existence,” “reality,” “presence,” etc. As Sartre’s example also suggests, however,
Sartre confuses “indifference” with “indifference to positionality”: if one does not
image the people in the photo, this is on the account of both remaining indifferent to
the people in the photo (emotional affect) and indifferent to the question of
positionality that determines their existential status (positional affect). This is, of
course, untrue: one may be very much engaged with Tenniel’s illustration of the
Jabberwocky: one may study it in fascination, attentively, regardless of the question
of the existence of the figures in it. But this conflation also results in a more
problematic confusion in the notion of affect: Sartre confuses “affect in general”
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(emotion, feeling, indifference/ engagement, etc.) with “positing affect” (the feeling
that something is real/ irreal, present/ absent, existence/non-existence), subsuming
the former under the latter.
The questionable conclusion is that, for Sartre, the sign, in so far as it is non-
positional, is also affect-less. While Sartre withdraws from such a conclusion in his
discussion of “imaging knowledge”; he can only do so by discussing how the
linguistic sign, by way of taking upon an affective quality, almost becomes an image;
therefore, he still preserves the essential association of the image with affect, while
not questioning the affect-less conception of the sign. But, as I would like to contend,
the recognition that the image is the sign, and visa versa, also implies that the
linguistic sign, in becoming an image, does not become less of a sign; it mainly
implies that it initiates a movement of signs, from linguistic to pictorial and back,
from letters to shapes to words, a movement that does not rely on the determinations
concerning positionality, in order to give affect.
Sign and the image: the hybrid consciousness of imitation
If the blurring of the distinctions among perception, the image and the sign,
in the consciousness of a photograph that says nothing, gives the impression of being
an exception rather than the rule, reduced to an afterthought as a peripheral
possibility, such blurring becomes a central aspect of Sartre’s discussion of the
consciousness of imitation. To be sure, Sartre does not throw out his distinctions
among perception, sign and image, or place these distinctions on a continuum of sign
consciousness. Nevertheless, Sartre’s admission of sign consciousness as the sine
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qua non of the consciousness of imitation points towards the possibility of making a
similar admission in relation to all forms of consciousness.2 1 1
In his discussion of imitation, Sartre uses the example of Franconay, a plump
and short woman performer impersonating Maurice Chevalier. Sartre claims that the
relation between Franconay and Chevalier cannot be that of immediate resemblance:
1) One does not see a resembling pair, Franconay and Chevalier, side by side; there
is no miniature Chevalier appearing in the mind to bear out the resemblance between
the imitator and the imitated. 2) Unlike in the portrait, where the resemblance comes
from the image naturally, as an invitation or solicitation to be interpreted as the
“flesh and blood” incarnation of a certain object, in Franconay’s imitation,
resemblance between the imitation and the imitated object is forced, mediated and
has to develop over time: “the consciousness of imitation is a temporal form.. .it
develops its structures in time” (126).2 1 2 This unlikely resemblance suggests that
the relation between the consciousness of Franconay’s performance and the object
“Chevalier” must be conceptualized as something other than the terms that Sartre
2 1 1 La Capra makes a similar in regards to Sartre’s description of Franconay’s imitation:
“.. .There are at least marginal, unexplored elements in the text that place his
dominant view in question—for example the fascinating case of the woman
impersonating Maurice Chevalier in such a way that an interplay between perception
and imagination is generated, which threatens to undermine or contaminate the
decisive analytic opposition between the two. “(57)
R. Cumming also deems the example “crucial,” noting that “[the] bodily moments of the
impersonator... .provide, as in the instance of the portrait, perceptual materials for the act of
imagination, but what Sartre stresses is the recalcitrance of these materials” (22), a
recalcitrance, as I will discuss, that leads to the sign.
2 1 2 [L]a conscience d’imitation est une forme temporelle, c’est-a-dire qui developpe ses
structures dans le temps. (L 41)
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uses to describe the resemblance in the portrait. But, how does resemblance take hold
in the portrait without the function of sign? Cumming notes: “[Sartre’s] assumption
that in the portrait the resemblance can be so close as to be “complete” [parfaite],
seems rather implausible, but the implausibility betrays his effort to push the
differences between [his] two examples [the portrait and the imitation] until they
amount to an opposition” (44). By pushing the difference, Sartre can take the
“resemblance” of the portrait to be sign-less, while construing the sign as a property
of the consciousness of imitation. Consequently, in his analysis of imitation, Sartre
adopts a different route to the imitated object than the direct, immediate shortcuts of
natural resemblance: the sign.
One would have to go round the sign, like a detour, to be able to reach the
object. The recourse to the sign becomes necessary during those moments in
consciousness, in which the somewhat elusive and indirect terms of resemblance in
imitation have to be figured out, and then called out within the temporal structure of
the consciousness of imitation. If the sign appears to be too forced and conventional
a notion to approach the portrait, which, in immediate resemblance, gives its object
immediately, it is nonetheless adequate for the consciousness of imitation, whose
“structures” develop over time. These structures include the three major forms of
consciousness that follow one another: perception, sign consciousness and imaging
consciousness. Sign consciousness corresponds to that interim consciousness, which
temporally bridges between perception and imaging consciousness, and which could
otherwise be eliminated if a particular perceptual matter gives its object immediately,
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as in resemblance (the image-thing) or as in the perception of “the thing as it actually
is” (perception proper):
The difference between the consciousness of imitation and the consciousness
of a portrait comes from the difference in matter. The matter of the portrait
itself solicits the spectator to effect the synthesis, because the painter has
given it a perfect resemblance to the subject. The matter of the imitation is a
human body. It is rigid, it resists. The imitator is small, stout, brunette; a
woman, she imitates a man. The result is that the imitation is approximate.
The object that Franconay produces by her body is a feeble form, which can
always be in two distinct ways: I am always free to see Maurice Chevalier as
imaged, or a small woman pulling faces. From this essential role of signs:
they must enlighten and guide consciousness. (126)2 1 3
Unlike in the portrait, the presencing solicitation of the body-matter for the imitated
thing is only feeble, and delayed. In the opening space of indecision, in between the
presence of perception and the presencing absence of the image, in the suspension of
positionality, the consciousness of imitation gives the thing as sign. The sign is also
given a self-effacing mission: it enlightens and guides consciousness in such a way
that consciousness eventually begins to see the matter as the image of Chevalier
(or—to follow Sartre’s use of words—begins to see Chevalier as imaged) and hence,
transitions into the image:
The first consciousness of consciousness is toward the general situation: it is
disposed to interpret everything as an imitation. But it remains empty, it is
2 1 3 La difference entre la conscience d’imitation et la conscience de portrait vient des
matieres. La matiere du portrait sollicite d’elle-meme le spectateur d’operer la synthese,
parce que le peintre a su lui donner une ressemblance parfaite avec le modele. La matiere de
Limitation, c’est un corps humain. II est raide, il resiste. [Footnote: Seules nous interessent
les imitations qui ne s’accompagnent pas de grimage.] La fantaisiste est petite, replete,
brune; femme, elle imite un homme. II en resulte que Limitation est un a p eu p res. L’objet
que Franconay produit au moyen de son corps est une forme faible, qui peut constamment
s’interpreter sur deux plans distincts: je suis constamment libre de voir Maurice Chevalier en
image, ou une petite femme qui fait des grimaces. De la le role essentiel des signes: ils
doivent eclairer, guider la conscience (L 42).
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merely a question (who will be imitated?), a directed attention. From the
outset, it is directed, through the imitator, at an unspecified person, conceived
as the object X of the imitation. [Footnote: Of course, we are considering the
theoretical case in which all the steps of consciousness are clearly distinct. It
can also happen that an imitation resembles as closely as a portrait (for
example, the artist is made-up). In that case, we are back to the analyses in
the preceding section [that concerns resemblance] [197]]. The instruction that
it gives is double: it must determine the object X from the signs furnished by
the imitator; it must realize the object as imaged through the person that is
imitating. (126)2 1 4
The consciousness of imitation is not the temporal development of the sign,
or the temporal unfolding of the act of signing the matter, as such an act touches the
different shores of “seeing as” or “signing as.” Rather, it is the temporal succession
of “clearly distinct” moments of consciousness, in which the sign functions as the
mediator, or guide, facilitating the passage from perception to the image, between
two consciousnesses otherwise untouched by the sign.
The perceptual thing as sign lasts, shortly, in the time of indecision, in the
time of a curious perception which cannot immediately be pinned down as an image,
but which, at the same time, solicits that it be taken as an image. Sign consciousness,
which remains hidden, silent, implicit becomes visible only in those brief moments
when consciousness fails to be determinate. The matter resists the act of “seeing as,”
and as Sartre would refrain from admitting, the act of “signing as”; and, the sign
2 1 4 La conscience s’oriente d’abord sur la situation generale: elle se dispose a tout interpreter
comrae une imitation. Mais elle reste vide, elle n’est qu’une question (qui va-t-on imiter?),
qu’une attente dirigee. Des l’origine elle se dirige, a travers l’imitateur, sur un personage
indetermine, conenvisageons le cas theorique ou toutes les demarches de la conscience sont nettement
distinctes. II peut arriver aussi qu’une imitation soit aussi ressemblante qu’un portrait (par
exemple si l’artiste s’est grime], Dans ce cas, nous sommes renvoyes aux analyses du
chapitre precedent. (L 42)
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takes place in between two signs, in between the seeing of the body-matter as
“Franconay” and the seeing of it as “Chevalier.” But it only takes place
conditionally: it would disappear in those cases when “the imitation resembles as
closely as a portrait” or, when the other thing (“Pierre”), of which this thing (the
portrait of Pierre) is an image, is given immediately to the consciousness.
In the wait for an unknown “object X,” the matter becomes a sign-thing, just
like the word, but a word in a language to be learned. The sign, which Sartre
frequently associates with “intention” and “knowledge,” turns into its exact opposite:
unknowing. Suspended in between the two determinate moments of positionality, the
indeterminate sign is hesitant about its object: having lost its objective, it is now
wandering, or, in Sartre’s words, floating in vague “intentions” and “knowledges,” or
in the indeterminate space of words. In Sartre’s example of Franconay’s imitation,
sign consciousness also connotes the act of reading:
The artist appears. She is wearing a straw hat; she protrudes her lower lip, she
tilts her head forward. I cease to perceive, I read, which is to say, I effect a
signifying synthesis. The boater is at first a simple sign, just as the cap and
scarf of the chanteur realiste are signs that he is about to sing a ruffian song.
That is to say that, at first, I do not perceive the hat of Chevalier through the
straw hat, but the imitator’s hat refers to Chevalier, as the cap refers to the
“ruffian milieu.” To decipher the signs is to produce the concept “Chevalier.”
At the same time I judge: “She is imitating Chevalier.” With the judgment the
structure of consciousness is transformed. The theme now is Chevalier. By its
central intention, the consciousness is imaging, it acts to realize my
knowledge in the intuitive manner that is furnished for me. (I 27) 1 5
2 1 5 L’artiste parait. Elle est coiffee d’un chapeau de paille; elle avance la levre inferieure, elle
tend la tete en avant. Je cesse de percevoir, je lis, c’est-a-dire quej’opere une synthese
signifiante. Le canotier est d’abord un simple signe, de meme que la casquette et le foulard
du chanteur realiste sont signe qu’il va chanter une chanson apache. C’est-a-dire que, tout
d’abord, je ne percois pas le chapeau de Chevalier a travers le chapeau de paille, mais que le
chapeau de la fantaisiste renvoie a Chevalier, comme la casquette renvoie a “milieu apache.”
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Reading is not continuous with perception, however; perception ceases where
reading or signing starts. One does not perceive Chevalier’s hat through Franconay’s
straw hat: the latter hat, when it acts like a word, merely refers to Chevalier’s hat.
Sartre reverts back to his usual terms of distinction at the point where his analysis
may have proven to be most compelling: according to these terms, the evidence of
sign consciousness connotes lack of intuition, unperceiving indifference and empty
knowledge, while imaging consciousness connotes the “intuitive” realization of
knowledge. The contradiction is obvious: what is the knowledge of “object X,” let
alone its emptiness or intuitive realization? If there is some knowledge, it belongs to
what Sartre has set aside and isolated from the sign as a previous instance: the
perception of Franconay’s body. Sartre could have used the contradiction in the
designation “object X” productively: in the knowing of “Franconay’s body,”
consciousness is also in the unknowing of “object X,” which would have implied not
only the sameness of perception and the sign, but also the continuity between
determinateness and indeterminacy.
Sartre’s reading of the body-sign, however, does not engage
indeterminancies; instead, it solicits linguistic judgments that determine the threshold
of imaging consciousness: having reached the image by way of the sign, for instance,
one utters the judgment: “she is imitating Chevalier.” The judgment confirms that the
Dechiffrer les signes, c’est produire le concept “Chevalier.” En meme temps jejuge: “elle
imite Chevalier.” Avec ce jugement la structure de la conscience se transforme. Le theme, a
present, c’est Chevalier. Par son intention centrale, la conscience est imageante, il s’agit de
realiser mon savoir dans la matiere intuitive qui m’est foumie.(L 42)
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matter (the boater, Franconay’s body) is no longer an empty sign; the sign is
overcome once and for all. The matter is now brought to the level of intuition, and
starts to serve as the image (analogon) for the imaging consciousness of an other
(Chevalier’s hat, his body). But where does the sign end and the image begin?
[In the consciousness of imitation] it is not a question of constituting a perfect
analogon of Chevalier’s body from Franconay’s body. I use only a few
elements that functioned, until now, as signs. In the absence of a complete
equivalent of the person imitated, I must realize in intuition a certain
expressive nature, something like the essence of Chevalier delivered to
intuition. (128) 2 1 6
This is probably one of the clearest statements in Sartre’s theory that indicate the
sameness between the sign and the image: both are composed of the same “few”
pictorial, visual “elements”; there is no difference in their matter. So in Franconay’s
performance, both the image and the sign rise out of the same sighting of the same
elements, of the same words that shape up in the temporal consciousness of the
performance, first vaguely perhaps “Chevalier”, and then, more clearly
“C h e v a l i e r . ” But while there may be no difference in matter, there is a
difference in “function”: the same few elements, according to Sartre, function as sign
now and image (analogon) later. This functional difference, which might be as trivial
as the font size, is once again expressed, in essential terms, as the difference between
empty knowledge (sign) and its intuitive realization (analogon). It is reiterated in
216II n’est pas question de constituer avec le corps de la fantaisiste Franconay un analogon
parfait du corps de Chevalier. Je ne dispose que de quelques elements qui fonctionnaient,
tout a l’heure, comme signes. Faute d’un equivalent complet de la personne imitee, il faut
que je realise dans 1 ’intuition une certaine nature expressive, quelque chose comme 1 ’essence
de Chevalier livree a l’intuition. (L 44)
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other ways: as the difference between mere nature and expressive nature, between
mere essence and essence delivered to intuition, between indifference and
engagement, between empty and fulfilled intention, and as Sartre’s further remarks
suggest, between lifeless schemas and animating experience.
The lips of Franconay
But how does one understand this intuitive realization, by which emptily
(un)knowing sign turns into intuitively-knowing image, in other words, the process
by which the sign acquires “life”?
I must first lend life to these dry schemas. But let us take care: if I perceive
them for themselves, if I note the junctures of the lips, the colour of the straw
boater, the imaging consciousness vanishes. I must execute the movement of
the perception backwards, start with knowledge, and according to the
knowledge determine the intuition. That lip was formerly a sign: I made it
into an image. But it is an image only to the degree to which it was a sign. I
see it only as “large protruding lip.” (12 8 )2 1 7
When are the signs ever lifeless; when are the lips ever dry? Such dryness and
lifelessness are symptoms of Sartre’s retrospective view of knowledge: one must
execute the movement of the perception, which is, in fact, that of the sign,
217II faut d’abord que je prete vie a ces schemes si secs. Mais prenons garde: si je les persois
pour eux-memes, si je remarque les commissures des levres, la couleur de la paille du
canotier, la conscience d’image s’evanouit. II faut executer a rebours le mouvement de la
perception, partir du savoir et, en fonction du savoir determiner 1 ’intuition. Cette levre etait
signe naguere: j ’en fais une image. Mais elle n’est image que dans la mesure ou elle etait
signe. Je la vois seulement comme “grande levre avanpante.” (L 44) Immediately following
this, Sartre also introduces the idea of “degraded knowledge” (savoir degrade), which takes
place in the image and is related to the characteristic of “quasi-observation”: “Nous
retrouvons ici une caracteristique essentielle de l’image mentale: le phenomene de quasi
observation. Ce que je per?ois, ce que je sais: 1 ’objet ne saurait rien apprendre, et l’intuition
n’est que du savoir alourdi, degrade.” (L44). There is an implicit classification of knowledge
here, that relates to the image, sign and perception: degraded knowledge and pure
knowledge, belong to the image and sign respectively; both of these types are given, and are
separate from perceptual knowledge that is constituted in time, by way of observation.
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backwards. A sign, which one does not know of what (Object X), must be known
already (“Chevalier”), from the very start. This also means that the distinction
between perception and sign is made backwards: one does not see the lip (the
junctures may be too distracting), but isolates from this lip-perception a sign: “large
protruding lip,” since it is this sign that recalls Chevalier. The consequence is that the
sign, reduced to “knowledge,” is perceived as dry, lifeless, non-intuitive, schematic,
studied, and finally, affect-less.
The problem is that the non-intuitive sign remains elusive: to isolate the
“large protruding lip” means to have already grouped together “Chevalier” with the
“large protruding lip,” or, following Sartre’s terms, to have already gone through the
image and the “presencing” intuition that it entails. If there is any question
concerning the “dryness” of the sign, then Sartre can only come up with such
“dryness” by way of evaluating the effects produced in the movement of the sign
only comparatively, i.e., by comparing the affective status of the prior moment of the
perception-sign as “Franconay’s body” with that of the later moment of the image-
sign as “Chevalier.” If the sign is dry, lacking in affect and intuition, then this is not
because it is a sign, but because the matter that performs as perception-sign
(Franconay’s body, her lips) is felt to be lacking in affect compared with the same
matter that performs as image-sign (“Chevalier”). In other words, dryness must
come after intuitiveness, placing, against Sartre’s chronology, the time of image
before that of the sign.
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When exactly do Franconay’s lips become lifeless? The passage from the
sign to the image is not a straightforward transition: it consists of a multiplicity of
moments, which Sartre attempts to order chronologically, as the temporal evolution
of structures of consciousness. But Sartre also reverts this order, when the model
calls for not just moving-backwards, but also starting from backwards. What results
is a chronologically implausible sequence of events that jumps back and forth:
a) Perception: the perceptual matter as Franconay’s body
b) Perception to Sign: the perceptual matter that performs as a sign (Franconay’s
body as sign of object X)—“Full Lips”
c) Sign to Image: The determination of the sign by way of judgment (Franconay is
imitating Chevalier)
d) Sign: Indifferent (affect): Empty knowledge (the body is a sign of Chevalier)—
“Large Protruding Lips”
e) Sign to Image: Affect: Intuition of knowledge or affect (the body is an image of
Chevalier)
f) Image: Affect: Knowledge: consciousness and the analogon
The moving-backwards occurs when the moment of the sign as “object X”
(b) is obliterated and exchanged for the determinate sign of “Chevalier,” “full lips”
for “large protruding lip” (d) which also implies that the moment of the image must
have occurred with the determination “Chevalier” (c). In the above scheme Sartre
wants to place three layers simultaneously: the layer of the fiction or of the “thing,”
or as I would like to call, of language (in Sartre’s phenomenological terms:
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perception, sign, image), the layer of affect (in Sartre’s terms: perceptual presence,
indifference, presencing absence) and the much vaguer level of knowledge
(“intention,” “empty knowledge,” intuitive knowledge, the unknown “object X”). As
I have tried to argue earlier, in Sartre’s exposition, this final layer is indeed an
amalgam of two kinds of affects: positional affect, and affect in general. That Sartre
conflates the layer of knowledge with the positional affect is particularly noticeable
in that peculiar term: “empty knowledge”, which connotes, in the example of
imitation, the lack of any knowledge (object X), as well as the existence of
determinate knowledge in the lack of “intuitive affect” (empty knowledge of
“Chevalier”). The conflation of terms in Sartre’s conception results from the way
Sartre associates these three layers (language, knowledge, affect) in essential terms,
while establishing correspondences that cut across and order things:
(perception=presencing affect=temporal knowledge), or (sign=indifference=empty
knowledge), etc.
Intuition, unity, affect
The distinction between the sign and the image, as in the consciousness of the
portrait, once again relies on the positional affect, engaged in terms of the distinction
between empty knowledge and intuitive knowledge. To obliterate the sign, Chevalier
must be made present in Franconay’s body, just like Pierre makes himself present in
the portrait. While the presencing of the image occurs immediately in the sign-less
consciousness of the portrait, it must be mediated through the sign or signs in the
consciousness of imitation. The intuitive realization of knowledge, which is
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supposed to be an intrinsic property of the image, and therefore of imitation,
becomes somewhat of a problem: “[h]ow is [Maurice Chevalier] to be found through
these fat and painted cheeks, this black hair, this female body, these female clothes?”
(27)2 1 8 Sartre’s anxiety is understandable: What if the body as sign persisted in
remaining in ambiguity, choosing to remain as the non-intuitive sign of “object X,”
unbecoming of the present-making image that would obliterate it? What if, for
instance, Franconay’s body contorted, jerked and moved about without purpose or
intention, making the already difficult sighting of “Chevalier” impossible? What if
the “object X” were deferred indefinitely, exasperating the advent of “knowledge”?
Would Franconay’s body still be a sign of “object X”? That the body is the sign of
“object X” is as good as the claim that the body is just a sign: an indefinite,
indeterminate, ample sign that harbors the possibility of becoming the sign of not
just one, but a multiplicity of other “objects X.” The consequence is that the matter
of perception cannot help becoming a sign: perception is sign and sign is perception.
Furthermore, as long as object X of imitation is deferred, the reading of Franconay’s
body might move in directions that are not necessarily foreseeable and determinable.
But if the body is a sign, regardless of what object there may be at sight, then it could
hardly be that the sign could be dry or lifeless, unless, of course, one sees the matter
of perception, i.e., Franconay’s jerking, contorting body, as dry and lifeless.
2 1 8 Comment retrouver Maurice Chevalier a travers ces joues grasses et fardees, ces cheveux
noirs, ce corps de femme, ces vetements feminins? (L 43)
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Sartre, however, chooses to go with the assumption of dry schemas, and of
lifeless signs, while repeatedly contrasting the affectivity in perception and in image
with the dryness of the schemas. “All perception is accompanied by an affective
reaction,” Sartre claims, and this principle also concerns the consciousness of
imitation:
When I see Maurice Chevalier, this perception includes a certain affective
reaction. It projects on the physiognomy of Maurice Chevalier a certain
indefinable quality that we call his “sense.” In the consciousness of imitation,
the intended knowledge, starting from signs and the beginnings of intuitive
realization, awakens this emotional reaction that comes to be incorporated in
the intentional synthesis. Correlatively, the affective sense of the face of
Chevalier will appear on the face of Franconay. It is this that realizes the
synthetic union of the different signs, it is this that animates their fixed
dryness, that gives them life and a certain depth. It is this that, giving to the
isolated elements of the imitation an indefinable sense and unity of the object,
can pass for the true intuitive matter: the signs united by an affective sense,
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which is to say the expressive nature. (I 28)
2 1 9 Quand je vois Maurice Chevalier, cette perception enveloppe une certaine reaction
affective. Celle-ci projette sur la physionomie de Maurice Chevalier une certaine qualite
indefinissable que nous pourrions appeler son “sens.” Dans la conscience d’imitation, le
savoir intentionne, a partir des signes et des commencements de realisation intuitive, reveille
cette reaction affective qui vient s’incorporer a la synthese intentionnelle. Correlativement,
le sens affectif du visage de Chevalier va apparaitre sur le visage de Franconay. C’est lui qui
realise l’union synthetique des differents signes, c’est lui qui anime leur secheresse figee, qui
leur donne de la vie et une certaine epaisseur. C’est lui qui, donnant aux elements isoles de
l’imitation un sens indefinissable et l’unite d’un objet, peut passer pour la vraie matiere
intuitive de la conscience d’imitation. Finalement, en effet, ce que nous contemplons sur le
corps de la fantaisiste, c’est cet objet en image: les signes reunis par un sens affectif, c’est-a-
dire la nature expressive. (L 45)
Talking about the same passage, Barnes translates “sens” as “meaning” and notes
the extent to which Sartre departs from Husserl. An indefinite affection, and not only a
definite cognition, can endow the experience with meaning. Barnes notes: “Husserl would
find a contradiction in terms [in] [a] meaning that is “indefinable”... [For Sartre], [m]eaning
can become indefinable to the extent it is not cognitive but affective, and equitable (to go on
with Sartre’s analysis of the example) with ‘the essence, as it were, of Chevalier.” (Role
Playing, 45)
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Not only does the affect lend life to and animate the “dry” schemas that are the signs,
but it also unites them, and gives them a certain depth. Without the affect, or the
emotional reaction accompanying the act(s) of signing the matter, neither perception
nor the image could survive: both would then turn into “isolated” signs. So, no affect
is produced within the movement of the sign from this “thing” to “another.” The
affect in the image is fashioned after perception: it would exist where there is
perception and image, and would lack where there is sign.
The primary contribution of affect is to unite the different signs, to give the
experience of imitation a unified sense. The unity of image is an imaginary one: it is
the affective sense that appears on the face of Franconay, and not the actual face of
Chevalier, whose signs form only a disjointed, isolated, patchy configuration on that
face (a “large, protruding lip” etc.). In this interesting turn of thought, the difference
between the sign and the image is recast as the difference between a fractal plurality
and an affective unity. Flynn makes a similar point: “Sartre sometimes ascribes to
affectivity a unifying and synthesizing role with regard to the imaged object which
accounts for a specific kind of presence which some images enjoy and others lack”
(435).2 2 0 If taken for granted, the distinction between fractal sign and the unified
2 2 0 Similarly, “Sens is the affective meaning correlative to our affective analogue and not
really distinct from the object which that analogue constitutes.. .the totality as revealed by
sens is ‘presence’” (Flynn, 437) Flynn also marks the difference that Sartre inserts between
affective sense that presentifies and non-affective signs that signify, a difference that will
have bearing on Sartre’s distinction between the artist and prose-writer (philosopher?): “The
distinction between images and signs... can be stated in terms of sens and signification. Sens
is self-referring or “presentifying” while signification refers to an other, the signified. The
realm of the artist and “poet” differs from that of the writer precisely as the image and its
sens function differently from the sign and its signification.” (436)
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image would have some important consequences: not only would it evacuate the sign
of any affect; but, it would also lead to a somewhat limited conceptualization of
affect as that intuitive element whose sole function would then become to realize the
unity of the object. Sartre seems to have fashioned this idea of unity after the
experience of the object in perception—he first discusses affect in relation to the
actual seeing of actual Pierre—but, as his own brief discussion of perception in his
first chapter suggests, even a perceived object is only given in partial aspects and
profiles (Abschattungen). In fact, one may even make the opposite claim and argue
that there exists no unity in any consciousness of the “thing” whatsoever, except,
perhaps, in the consciousness of that particular sign in the physical world, supposed
to be lifeless and schematic, that is, in the consciousness of the word to which the
“thing” belongs, of this string of letters, the “thing,” under which one brings a
plurality of sign-things, pictorial and linguistic, that are thought to belong to it. If
unifying affect could be so readily assigned to the image, it must also be assigned to
the sign.
In Sartre’s discussion of the consciousness of imitation, the image is, first and
foremost, a sign: it is a complex pictorial sign (fractal, isolated, disjointed, temporal
on the surface of the matter, of the face, of the body, revealed in gestures, poses,
facial expressions, etc.) whose affective sense gives the thing, not only as “absent,”
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but also as if it were present.2 2 1 From this point of view, Sartre’s image is a
particular way of reading the matter—signing it, seeing it as if it were made of
words—with affect: it is a species of sign consciousness. Sartre’s notion of
perception is also as a species of sign consciousness: perception concerns those
complex pictorial signs whose affective sense gives the thing as “present.” In both
image and perception, the sign is infused with positional affect, which bears on some
immediate knowledge of “positionality,” i.e., of “presence,” “reality,” “existence.” It
is Sartre’s sign, however, that sheds off any immediate knowledge of positionality;
but in doing so, it also sheds off affect. But, as I have suggested in my reading of
Sartre’s consciousness of imitation, the sign can never be isolated as a single
moment with its own singular properties: it is continuous with the entire
consciousness. What Sartre isolates as the sign in Franconay’s imitation is the
temporal movement of the sign, as one sign marked out in word (“Franconay’s
body”) leads to another that is similarly marked out (“Chevalier”), without ever
disappearing. In the affect-producing, temporal progression of the sign, language—
spoken, silent, inscribed, implicit, explicit—always takes place: from this pictorial
sign of the thing to the word “another thing,” to the complex remembering of this
2 2 1 Cumming notes that such affective sense also connotes the “meaning” of experience.
“Meaning can become indefinable in Sartre to the extent it is not cognitive but affective, and
equitable ...with ‘the essence, as it were, of Chevalier’ (Sartre: 61)” (45). Sartre’s
conception of feeling, Cumming notes, “[as] ‘a kind of knowledge’ and of ‘affective
meaning’ are anagrams that would be intolerable to Husserl, with his commitment to the
distinctness on which...meeting the criterion of clarity depends for him” (63). From my
perspective, I would substitute Cumming’s designation “affective meaning” with the
“affective use of the word” or the “affective use of the fiction of the thing,” with the
reminder that there is no thing outside fiction, therefore no “real thing” that could take upon
the function of some kind of truth before and beyond fiction.
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other thing as memory-sign, to other words and signs and “things” and other
complex rememberings and so on.
The relation of the word with the sign in the psychic realm: Imaging knowledge
and imaging consciousness
I have tried to show the heterogeneity of the forms of consciousness in
Sartre’s account, in order to question the boundaries which Sartre otherwise tries to
insert between the sign and the material image, between the word and the physical
analogon. Several heterogeneous forms of consciousness are suggested at different
phases in Sartre’s thoughts on the consciousness of images whose matter is borrowed
from the physical world: In Franconay’s imitation, for instance, the performer’s body
becomes the matter for sign. The other heterogeneous form that blurs the distinction
between the sign and the image concerns a particular consciousness in the psychic
world comprised of ideas, thoughts, knowledges and mental images. Sartre has to
invent a name in order to refer to this particular consciousness that oscillates between
image and knowledge, without ever becoming a full image or “pure knowledge”:
imaging knowledge.
The rapprochement between the sign and the image in imaging knowledge
takes place in the psychic world, supposedly without any recourse to the physical
matter. Nevertheless, an ambiguous matter, that of the written word, surfaces; and,
Sartre’s comments become particularly interesting from a literary point of view when
he exemplifies imaging knowledge with the consciousness that occurs during the
reading of literary works. This example sets off a reexamination of the relationship
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between the sign and the image, and points towards the elimination of the distinction
between them. I would like to make several clarifications before proceeding into the
relationship between imaging knowledge and the act of reading in Sartre’s account.
In Sartre’s L’Imaginaire. the distinction between the sign and the image is a
secondary distinction, albeit the most elaborate (and for the purposes of this chapter,
the most interesting) compared with the primary distinctions that he establishes
between the image, on the one hand, and perception and concept, on the other. The
second distinction (image and concept) is picked up again in the third chapter of
L’lmaginaire, and recast as the distinction between image and knowledge.
In these primary distinctions, Sartre’s comments exhibit a persistent bias
against the image, particularly in the dichotomous contrast Sartre sets between the
image and perception. Despite the surface claim to give the image its theoretical due,
the image often remains derivative of perception, inasmuch as Sartre characterizes
the image with those attributes antithetical to those of perception. In making his
many distinctions between the image and perception, for instance, Sartre contrasts
the plenitude, reality and presence of perception with the poverty, irreality and
absence of the image. However, not only do such distinctions become questionable
at the very moment Sartre seeks a material counterpart (analogon) to the image,
particularly in the form of pictures and visual experiences, but they also render the
image powerless, errant, misleading and indefensible, as long as the pressing
(positional) demand to distinguish the real from the irreal, the present from the
absent presides over any form of consciousness.
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Concerning the relationship between the image and knowledge, Sartre’s
overall account insists less on a sharp dichotomy, as is the case in Sartre’s distinction
between the image and perception, and more on a hierarchy in which “pure”
knowledge (“savoir pure”) stands above the image which becomes, more and more, a
“degraded,” debased kind of knowledge (“savoir degrade”) (167/ L 91). As Bossart
reminds us: “[s]o sharp is the line which Sartre draws between [perception and
imagination] that he never tires of repeating that perception and imagination exclude
one another absolutely. The distinction between imagination and conceptual
thinking, is never so clearly drawn, and this is because it is a distinction of degree
999
rather than one of essence.” (41) The image that Sartre compares with pure
knowledge is one that is evacuated of any physical matter: “mental image.” 2 2 3 For
2 2 2 Bossart continues: “Imagination is unreflected thought which constitutes itself by virtue
of its object. But since this object in image is its own creation, the imagining consciousness
is the beginning of a process which reaches its conclusion in a pure conceptual
consciousness which is reflectively sure of its independence and spontaneity.” (41) Pure
thought is spontaneous, also because shaped in pure knowledge, while mental image is still
involved with its object, which, more precisely, means the “perception” of the object. There
is much to suggest, in Sartre, that the image represents one end of a process of consciousness
in which a pictorial sign system, depictive of the object, is abandoned for a linguistic one,
descriptive of the same object.
2 2 3 “The characteristic of pure knowledge is that it always envisages rules rather than objects,
such that in a pure knowledge the object is envisaged as a relationship, as a support of the
rule. On the other hand imaginative knowledge always envisions objects rather than rules,
such that the rule is envisaged only insofar as it is constitutive of the object.” (Smith 70)
The difference between pure and imaginative knowledge intimates, in Smith’s assessment of
Sartre, is derivative of the difference between the envisagem ent of object-as-rule and of
object-in-itself, which, also may be thought to connote a difference between written and
visual language. One must possess the imaginative knowledge of forms and shapes of an
object to be able to form a mental image. The object must be drawn in the imagination, and
such drawing is best understood as concrete body movements, or kinaesthetic sensations in
the eye, and as Smith extrapolates building upon Sartre’s argument, in all the other sensory
organs. “The seemingly sensuous shapes and forms of our images, Sartre says, are brought
by an intentional animation of certain kinaesthetic sensations that we produce in ourselves
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during our imaginative attitudes.. .the movements themselves function as “analogical
substitutes” ’’(Smith 71). One crucial question that comes out of Sartre’s analysis of the
kinaesthetic sensations is whether bodily movements in the sensory organs are required
when imagining objects. After all, if images have affinity with visuality, shouldn’t their
visual character be produced by way of movements in the visual sensory organ, i.e., the eye?
While imagining the object “8”, does one not visually trace the well-known trajectory of the
pen that produces the material sign? Smith, who is in agreement with Sartre, answers these
questions in the affirmative, noting that “the movement [in the eye] is converted into an
analogue of a visual form.” By extension, Smith argues, one may also speculate that
muscular movements in the other sensory organs serve as analogues of olfactory, auditory,
tactile, gustatory forms. I will not be able to elaborate upon the many fascinating sides to this
very ambitious argument that seeks to describe the mental image physiologically. Answers
concerning this argument must be sought by way of experimentation in the field of
neurobiology and cognitive science. Philosophical inquiry of the sort that Sartre (and Smith
engages) could certainly help formulate the ways in which these experiments must be
conducted; but, by itself, cannot be decisive. Smith’s argument attempts to understand the
extent to which the image must be understood to reflect a quality (qualia) that is specific to
the senses of the visual, but also auditory, olfactory, auditory, etc. As Smith suggests “the
eyeball describes an arc whether the moon is being perceived or imagined.” The visual
always seems to be the privileged locus in the inquiry into the sensuality of the image, or, to
use the term of my first chapter, the Picture. To begin to critique Smith’s argument, it might
be best to think of the Picture as a (sense and affect) field, effectuated in a particular instance
of imagining. But any effectuation, hence, any Picture would need a movement to occur (and
such movements must be the subject-matter of neurobiology); the question, is, therefore,
whether such movements, as they constitute the Picture of an object, occur in the sense-
organs and in the same way as the movements pertaining to real perceptions of the same
object (here we assume, of course, that the object can be given to both perception and
remembrance, and hence is subject to the criteria of “absence/presence,” as Pierre given in
“flesh and blood” or in a memory). If Smith is correct, then the Picture of the object (the
Picture brought under the name “object”) must also contain a measure of sensual quality
experienced in the perception of the object: I must be able to imagine the object as red, sour,
loud, angular, fragrant.
Suppose there is an imaging task on the one hand that demands that the word “red” be
imagined, and a perception that includes the experience of an abstract modem painting, a
canvas painted in red. Assume that the red triggered in field Picture consists of N(Pic)
number of determinations, while the red triggered in perception consists of N(Per) number of
determinations. There will be a subset of determinations, made of N(common)
determinations, shared by both the Picture and perception. The question is whether any
determination concerning sensual qualities, so prominent in the perception, would belong to
such a subset, as Smith claims. Here, one might state what is the most obvious: that there is
at least one common determinant between the Picture and the image: the word “red.” As for
any determinations concerning sensual qualities, I would make the rather weak argument
(based on the much scorned and exceedingly subjective armchair-introspection) that it is
rather unlikely that the Picture has such sensual qualities, and therefore, it is also unlikely
that the Picture would resemble the perception because of such qualities. Imagination, I
would claim, is largely spatial and not equally sensual (or sensually affective). Of course this
speculation would have to reckon with the almost-perceptual sensuality of the dream, or of
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Casey, Sartre’s hierarchy is nothing short of an “intellectual illusion,” which
“consists in the belief that imagination is an inferior form of intellection, and that
intellection itself is the apogee and paradigm of all mental activity” (158). If the path
of perception is fraught with the dangers of the illusion of immanence (Sartre warns
us never to mix the image with perception), the path of knowledge entails the
enslavement of the image, and imagination, to superior intellectual powers. In fact,
Sartre’s hierarchy debilitates the image as much as his other dichotomies: compared
to “pure” knowing, the debased knowing of the image remains inconsequential and
confounding.
What is often unnoticed, however, is the constant slippage that occurs
between theoretical terms, both in Sartre’s account of the image and Casey’s critique
of it: between “knowledge” and “thought.” The difference between the two terms, as
Sartre uses them, remains somewhat of a mystery: somewhere in the middle of
l’lmaginaire. Sartre often substitutes knowledge with thought. His critics and
interpreters often engage in the same slippage: Casey notes, for instance, that, for
Sartre, the “degraded knowing [in the image] is knowing or thinking in terms of
images alone” (159) [emphasis mine].2 2 4 The path of knowledge that Sartre embarks
several curious mental occurrences like “singing a song in one’s head” etc.; its truth or
falsity, therefore, must be settled by way of scientific experimentation.
2 2 4 The question, then, concerns the distinctionbetween thinking and imagining, which,
somewhat corresponds to Sartre’s earlier distinction between the concept and the mental
image. Such question opens up a field that consists of a web of obscure, imprecise terms. Is
imagining visualizing (which Sartre’s mental image suggests), or can it also something else?
A linguistic investigation of the use of the term, imagining, would in fact reveal that it is not
always used in relation to what are normally understood as acts of visualizing. To what
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upon after the vanishing of physical matter is more precisely the forked path of
thought: one that leads to purity, the other into degradation. Sartre does fall short of
the rigor with which Heidegger uses the term thought (“Denken”), as opposed to
knowledge: knowledge, as science, denotes only that more specific sub-field of
thought ordered around a system. In Sartre’s conception, the relationships among the
three terms (knowledge, thought and image) are often confused: there is degraded
knowledge in imaging consciousness on one side and pure knowledge (in thought?)
on the other. The confusion is further exacerbated by the fact that Sartre sometimes
insists on the difference between image and thought, which he often explains
extent is imagining visualizing? Reverting to Sartre’s distinctions, one may posit a difference
between “pure thought” and “debased thought,” with the caveat that the latter term be
associated with the visualization of thought. But this difference would also suggest that there
could be instances of imaginings, which, not being visual, may fall under the category of
pure thought. Rabb, for instance, subsumes imagination under thought, and then proposes
that the difference between two acts of imaging consciousness, “imagining” and
“visualizing” (or “imaging”) corresponds to that between “imageless thought” and “thinking
in images” (77). This classification eliminates the boundary between “pure thought” and
“imageless thought”, between thinking proper and imagining.
In Sartre’s account, “thinking in images” has the connotations of “visualization,”
and since it represents a digression from pure thought, it is viewed as a degraded, and even
suspicious way of thinking. In talking of pure or degraded thought, Sartre acts as if one
could confidently assess the particular nature of imagery, or the “visual” status of thinking
with accuracy: pure or with image. There is a need to problematize such confidence, which I
will not undertake. I would like to note, however, that if the “visual” in the act of mental
visualization is in a more precise sense “spatial,” and if the visualized (mental) image
involves a “spatial” involvement with language (with words that make up consciousness, as
in writing, or words of one’s seeing, as in reading), then one will have to admit that such
spatial involvement may occur even in those word-environments (or regimes) that seem to
be the least touched by the sense of the “visual”, understood in terms of the sensual qualities
of visual experiences. A clear example of this is the spatiality that Wittgenstein discusses in
relation to prepositional sentences in his Tractatus: “aRb.” “Pure” thought, therefore, may
have to do a lot more with visualization than Sartre seems to think, or conversely,
visualization may routinely enter into thought—or speaking in terms of material artifacts,
into speech, or writing—that is abstract, technical, not visual.
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away.2 2 5 “[The image] is not something heterogeneous with thought,” Sartre notes,
and then he adds: “an imaging consciousness includes knowledge, intentions and can
include words and judgments.” 2 2 6 Referring to the same passage, Casey notes,
somewhat despairingly: “[in Sartre] an image is ‘nothing heterogeneous to thought’:
it is thought in its lowest, non-reflective form” (159).
Unlike Casey, I believe that what is problematic is not Sartre’s effort to seek
the image somewhere, i.e., either in the physical or psychic matter, either in the
picture or in thought, but his theoretical persistence in establishing dichotomous
distinctions, which end up becoming restrictive, if not untenable, wherever he lands
with the image, i.e., in picture or in thought. In other words, it is perfectly possible to
2 2 5 At other times, image simply becomes unreflective thought. Sartre notes that “between
image and thought [there is] no opposition but only the relation of a species to the genus that
subsumes it” (122), and that “[t]he image is like an incarnation of unreflective thought...”
(112) The image is a “lower level of thought,” that is “too charged with sensible content”
and “too poor in logical content.” The proclivity of the image towards the senses leads to
that ambiguous, and even dangerous situation, where consciousness, unable to grasp the
concept by itself, “is captive in spatial representation^]” (114) If “the thought is enclosed in
the image and the image is given as adequate to the thought,” Sartre says, “the thought is
irremediably warped; we no longer follow the idea directly, we think by analogy” (117). In
this negative conception, analogy connotes captivity and degradation of thought, reminiscent
of Heidegger’s distinctions between thing-interpretation and thing.
2 2 5 “L’image ne joue ni le role d’illustration ni celui de support de la pensee. C’est qu’elle
n’est rien d’heterogene a la pensee, Une conscience imageante comprend un savoir, des
intentions, peut comprendre des mots et des jugements.” (LI27) Immediately following is a
distinction between the thought and the image: “La difference reside essentiellement dans
une attitude generale. Ce qu’on appelle ordinairement pensee est une conscience qui affirme
telle ou telle qualite de son objet mais sans les realiser sur lui. L ’image, au contraire, est une
conscience qui vise a produire son objet: elle est done constitute par une certaine fa9on de
juger et de sentir dont nous ne prenons pas conscience en tant que telles mais que nous
apprehendons sur l’objet intentionel comme tel ou telle de ses qualites.” The various
differences in attitude between the thought and the mental image are the same differences
between the word and the portrait, and the sign and the physical image, which I have
discussed earlier, differences projected onto and repeated in the psychic plane of thought.
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seek the image in thought, while, it is somewhat unnecessary, if not spurious, to
insist on a hierarchy between pure and degraded knowledge, reflective thought or
unreflective image. As Casey notes: “...by the very act of differentiating ‘pure’ and
‘degraded’ knowing, and then by ranging the image under the latter heading alone,
[Sartre] severely downgrades the status of imagining” (159).
But something interesting happens along Sartre’s path of knowledge (or
thought): he turns back to material signs, and to the act of reading, which entails the
revisiting of those material shapes: letters, words, sentences. This gesture is
reflective of the indeterminate status of the sign, as it surfaces in a discussion of the
picture (portrait), and of thought. The sign partakes in both the material and psychic
world: signs are those inscribed words whose letters one sees; they are also those
ghostlike, silent words of one’s thoughts. As Sartre’s discussion of imaging
knowledge suggests, the distinctions Sartre has made previously between the word
and the portrait, linguistic sign and material analogon cannot hold in that particular
case when the linguistic sign assumes the affective force of the image.
Sartre articulates the image-becoming of the linguistic sign through his
discussion of the relationship between the image and knowledge. As could also be
seen in the previous discussions, Sartre’s understanding of the sign and the word is
very closely linked with his notions of knowledge, intention, concept and thought. In
fact, it might be structurally accurate to bring together these notions, along with the
linguistic sign, under the title of a sign-family, which is separated from the image-
family that includes a variety of physical images, along with the mental image.
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Significantly, the overall physical character of the image-family contrasts with the
overall non-physical, i.e., psychic character of the sign-family: it is not surprising,
therefore, that both the non-physical, mental image and the physical, material,
linguistic sign forge awkward alliances with their respective family-members. Such
awkwardness is obvious, for instance, when the “object X” of the sign-thing
(Franconay’s body) is deferred in the consciousness of imitation; in the “object X,”
both the knowledge and (determinate) intentionality in Sartre’s consciousness of
imitation turn into their opposites, undergoing states of unknowing and
indeterminateness. His chronologically ambiguous, retrospective invention of an
“empty” knowledge in the unknowing moment of the sign, contrasted with the
intuitively knowing moment of the image, intends to make sure that the sign always
remain in knowledge.
Sartre often tries to keep the mental image separate from knowledge and
thought, and hence from words and language, just as he tries to keep the words
outside the image family. In one example, Sartre attempts to imagine the staircase of
a house he has been to a long time ago; and he remembers, with some delay, that the
staircase of his memory was “covered by a carpet.” (97) The question then becomes
whether the words used to describe the memory of the carpet come before the image
or after them, or whether the image comes from the word. The remembrance of the
stairs does not “pass through a stage of pure knowledge (connaissance) or a simple
verbal affirmation,” Sartre claims, “[t]he act by which I engaged myself.. .was
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precisely an imaging act.” 2 2 7 In the slippage that occurs across various terms
(language, thought and knowledge), a linguistic act (simple affirmation) corresponds
to a stage of “pure” knowledge, and as such, is different from the imaging act.
However, Sartre does not see the differences between the linguistic and
imaging act, between “pure” knowledge and mental image, as arbitrary and
inessential differences that may arise from the variances in the affective engagement
with the same “verbal affirmation,” or with the same words. The knowledge in the
mental image must be different from pure knowledge, and to explain this difference,
Sartre invents a new category of knowledge: “imaging knowledge.” (savoir
imageant) Sartre’s account of the imaging knowledge is by all means a description of
the knowledge involved in the mental image; but, to complicate matters, Sartre also
considers it to be different from the mental image. According to this logic, imaging
knowledge refers to a heterogeneous, degraded state of knowledge; as such, it is a
'J 'J O
description of a kind of knowledge, and not of the mental image. Further
2 2 7 “II s’agit bien ici d’un acte de ma pensee, d’une decision libre et spontanee. Mais cette
decision n’a pas passe par un stade de pure connaissance ou de formulation simplement
verbale. L’acte par lequel je me suis engage, l’acte d’affirmation a ete precisement un acte
imageant.” (127)
2 2 8 That one takes the concept and links it with an image, according to Sartre, leads to a
degraded version of knowledge. Such degradation is elsewhere referred to as the
symbolizing apprehension of the concept. Sartre offers an interesting example for
degradation of knowledge that concerns the concept of Renaissance. While being prompted
by the statement of the word “Renaissance,” Sartre imagines or “sees” Michelangelo’s
David. Sartre chooses to analyze this phenomenon by going backwards: he wants to find out
how an image-thing could be related to the word. In a simple thought experiment, he
pretends that he first saw the statue, and then had the thought of Renaissance. While
observing the statue, Sartre is confronted with two possible ways of understanding (or
signing) it, which he names “symbolizing” and “non-symbolizing apprehension.”“The
symbolizing apprehension confers on David the sense “Renaissance”: the non-symbolizing
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confusions occur as to whether the image and knowledge occur on the same plane, or
on different planes; it is unclear, therefore, whether Sartre’s distinction between
imaging knowledge and pure knowledge is an internal distinction on the plane of
knowledge, or whether this distinction also refers to a distinction between the mental
image and pure knowledge.2 2 9 This latter distinction would treat pure knowledge on
the same plane with the image, assuming that instances of pure knowledge (as states
apprehension constitutes it as ‘Michelangelo’s statue to be found to be found in Florence,’
etc.” (110). What happens then when one first says “Renaissance” and imagines the statue?
Is the mental image of David’s statue is symbolic of “Renaissance,” or just a thought in
itself, just like the statue found in Florence.
If my first goal was to give a brief definition of what I understand by “Renaissance,”
I am obliged to recognize that my thought deviated [when having a mental image of
David].
In the imaging movement of the sign, one makes a detour around the concept by way of
something else. Symbolic apprehension corresponds to the deviating travel of the sign from
this (“Renaissance”) to another (“David”). A sense of indeterminacy and arbitrariness mark
this movement: a “mystical link” becomes established between the image (David) and the
concept (“Renaissance”), as if, Sartre says, in a daydream. This detour around the word, or
this passage to it by way of the image, however, may lead to “unintelligent thought” and
“naive empiricism,” and may delay the true comprehension of the concept (112).
2 2 9 Sartre’s mental image largely relies on knowledge: to imagine an object is to have an
“intention” towards the object, which necessitates the prerequisite knowledge of that object.
The intention in the mental image “is charged with knowledge (connaissances), it must aim
through a certain layer of consciousness that we call the layer of knowledge. So that, in the
imaging consciousness, one can distinguish knowledge and intention only by abstraction.” (I
57) [Mais l’intention ne se borne pas, dans l’image, a viser Pierre d’une fa< ?on
indeterminee...Il faut done qu’elle [l’intention] se charge de connaissances, qu’elle traverse
une certaine couche de conscience que nous pourrions appeler la couche de savoir du
savoir.] (L 79) Imaging consciousness is always mediated through knowledge: “an image
could not exist without a piece of knowledge that constitutes it.” [Une image ne saurait
exister sans un savoir qui la constitue.] But “knowledge, on the other hand, can exist in a
free state, which is to say constitute a consciousness all by itself].” (I 58) [“Le savoir au
contraire peut exister a l’etat fibre, c’est-a-dire constituer a lui seul une conscience.” (L 79)]
Knowledge, in Sartre’s conception in L’Imaginaire, is a privileged category: both
freestanding and acting through other forms of consciousness. Consequently, it is both an
instance of consciousness and a layer that defines instances of consciousness.
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of consciousness) could alternate with those of the mental image. A further
confusion occurs when Sartre refers to “imaging knowledge” as a third, interim state
of consciousness that needs to be differentiated from the instances of mental image
and also from those of pure knowledge, which leads to ever finer distinctions. For
reasons of clarity, I will take Sartre’s distinctions between imaging knowledge and
pure knowledge to refer to the distinction between the knowledge in the mental
image and the knowledge in imageless, and hence “pure,” thought.
Imaging knowledge and the Act of Reading Literature:
In making the distinctions between pure knowledge and imaging knowledge,
Sartre uses some of the very same elements that he has previously used in
distinguishing the sign and the image. In fact, in all accounts, Sartre’s description of
pure knowledge is the same as his description of sign consciousness: as if to mark
this sameness, he often describes pure knowledge as knowledge of pure signification
(163) (“savoir de pure signification” (L86) or signifying knowledge (I 64) (“savoir
signifiant”), suggesting the affinity between pure knowledge and sign
consciousness.2 3 0 While Sartre does little to disturb the oppositional structures that
2 3 0 “Nous pensons qu’il y a plus de difference entre un savoir imageant et un savoir de pure
signification qu’entre un savoir imageant et une image dans son plein epanouissement. Mais
il convient d’approfondir cette difference, c’est-a-dire de determiner exactement la nature de
la degradation que subit le savoir en passant de l’etat de “Meaning” pur a l’etat imageante.”
(L 86) [Meaning is in English in the original] Note that Sartre is recasting the difference
between pure knowledge and imaging knowledge in terms of pure “meaning” and degraded
meaning, the latter of which corresponds to the imaging state. Note also that in these lines,
Sartre understands imaging knowledge to be an act of consciousness on the same plane with
image and pure knowledge; the implication is that pure knowledge is also a state of
consciousness. This is hardly surprising, since, in Sartre, there is no difference between pure
knowledge and pure sign consciousness, which is the consciousness of works of language. In
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underlie his distinctions between sign and imaging consciousness, his admission of
imaging knowledge (savoir imageant) as that interim state of consciousness, which
resides between pure knowledge and the mental image, is somewhat of a concession
to the heterogeneity of sign and image consciousness.
Most interestingly, Sartre exemplifies imaging knowledge with the state of
consciousness during the act of reading a novel, which, according to him,
predominantly takes place without any images:
I read a novel. I am highly interested in the fate of the hero who will escape
from prison, for example. I learn with great curiosity about the least details of
his preparations for escape. However, writers are agreed in pointing out the
poverty of images which accompany my reading... [The few images] are
generally outside the activity of reading, properly so-called, when the reader
retrogresses and remembers the events of the preceding chapter, dreams
about the book, etc. In brief, the images appear with the stops and failures of
reading. The rest of the time, when the reader is engrossed, there is no mental
image. I have noted this in myself and several people have confirmed it to
me. A multitude of images is the characteristic of an inattentive and
frequently interrupted reading. (I 63).2 3 1
If Sartre emphasizes the poverty of images, this is because he also wants to
emphasize what he takes for given: the act of reading, since it deals with words, must
all his speculations concerning “le savoir” Sartre never questions the assumption of pure
knowledge, which he takes for granted and obvious.
2 3 1 Je lis un roman. Je m’interesse vivement au sort du heros qui va s’evader de prison, par
example. J’apprends avec beaucoup de curiosite les moindres details de ses preparatifs de
fuite. Pourtant les auteurs sont d’accord pour faire remarquer la pauvrete des images qui
accompagnent ma lecture. De fait la plupart des sujets en ont fort peu et de tres incompletes.
On devrait meme ajouter qu’elle apparaissent en general en dehors de l’activite de lecture
proprement dite, lorsque, par exemple, le lecteur revient en arriere et se rappelle les
evenements du chapitre precedent, lorsqu’il reve sur le livre, etc. Bref les images
apparaissent aux arrets et aux rates de la lecture. Le reste du temps, quand le lecteur est bien
pris, il n’y a pas d’image mentale. Nous avons pu le constater sur nous-memes a bien des
reprises et plusieurs personnes nous l’ont confirme. L’affluence des images et la
caracteristique d’une lecture distraite et frequemment interrompue. (L 86)
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primarily involve sign consciousness. If one imagined while reading a novel, this
would mean that the act of reading, which should normally involve sign
consciousness by way of words, also involves imaging consciousness, by way of the
same words. But such conception would lead to the confusion between different
forms of consciousness: words would then become both sign-things and image-
things. The consciousness engendered by a string of words can not be both imaging
and sign consciousness— Sartre categorically denies the simultaneous occurrence of
two or more different consciousnesses; and if there is some evidence that mental
images do occur during the act of reading, such images may only occur outside the
actual act of reading, while retrogressing from, remembering the preceding moments
of, or dreaming in reading.
It therefore becomes difficult for Sartre to determine the status of the
imagination during the act of reading without having any recourse to imaging and
sign consciousness taking place simultaneously. If the lack of mental images is an
uncontestable fact, confirmed by Sartre and several other people, wouldn’t this mean
that reading has nothing to do with imagination? “However,” Sartre continues, “it
cannot be that the imaging element is completely lacking in reading. If it were, how
would we explain the force of our emotions?” (1 63) 2 3 2 Sartre coins the term
“imaging knowledge” to refer to those circumstances, under which the sign—or its
material counterpart, the word—acquires the elements that typically characterize the
imaging consciousness. In imaging knowledge, “the sphere of objective signification
2 3 2 Cependant il ne peut se faire que 1 ’element image fasse totalement defaut dans la lecture.
Sinon comment expliquerions-nous la force de nos emotions. (L 87)
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becomes an irreal world.” The signs render themselves to forceful affect, expanding
beyond their objective sphere to encompass a larger sphere, or the world.
It is not the word, but the sentence that carries the function of imaging
knowledge: “[t]he sentences of the novel are soaked with imaging knowledge,”
which is comprised of “simple syntheses of relations, [but].. .of something that has
this or that quality with something that possesses such-and-such a characteristic.” (I
66) 2 3 4 Unlike pure knowledge that concerns simple relations between things in the
2 3 3 “...la sphere de signification objective devient un monde irreel.” (L 87) To recall, this is
similar to the expansive potential of language in Heidegger where the word, endowed with
the powers of the “and yet” in aesthetic use, acquires a world-disclosive potential. The very
important difference, however, is that this “irreal,” world, just like the image, is a very weak
one, and is ever ready to retreat and vanish in face of a “real” world from which it is sharply
separated.
The whole thought segment requires more attention than I could afford here. It is
here that Sartre explains the differences between the reading of a poster, a scholarly work
and a literary work which might be understood to belong to three different sign
consciousnesses: “La conscience de lecture est une conscience sui generis qui a sa structure.
Lorsque nous lisons une affiche ou une phrase isolee de son contexte nous produsions
simplement une conscience de signification, une lexis. Si nous lisons un ouvrage savant,
nous produsions une conscience dans laquelle 1 ’intention viendra a chaque instant adherer
sur le signe. Notre pensee, notre savoir se coule dans les mots et nous en prenons conscience
sur les mots, commepropriete objective des mots. Naturellement ces proprietes objectives ne
restent pas separees mais fusionnent d’un mot a I’autre, d’une phrase a l’autre, d’une page a
l’autre: a peine avons-nous ouvert un livre, nous avons en face de nous une sphere objective
de signification. [New Paragraph] Jusqu’ici rien de neuf. II s’agit toujours du savoir
signifiant. Mais si le livre est un roman, tout change: la sphere de signification objective
devient un monde irreal.” (L 88) The following is a description of the imaging knowledge
involved in the reading of a literary work. Note that in the reading of a scholarly work,
thought (pens6e) and know ledge (savoir), not differentiated from each other, flow and fuse
into the words, becoming their objective properties: knowledge and/or thought is the same as
sign consciousness.
2 3 4 Revenons a la conscience de lecture. Les phrases du roman se sont imbibees de savoir
imageant: c’est lui que j ’apprehende sur les mots, non de simples significations: les
syntheses qui.. .constituent de page en page une sphere objective de signification ne seront
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abstract, imaging knowledge concerns an intuitive determination of the things that
come into such relations, resulting in the affective sense of such things and their
relations. To further distinguish imaging knowledge, that is ever too close to imaging
consciousness, Sartre thinks that the intuitive determination in imaging knowledge is
an attempt, an effort, a will, a striving and a waiting-for its actualization, different
from the intuitive determination in imaging consciousness, in which it is actualized:
“[i]maging knowledge presents itself ...as an effort to determine the ‘something,’ as
a will to reach the intuitive, as a waiting for images” (166). In imaging knowledge,
the “as if ’ modality of imaging consciousness becomes doubled: the thing is as if it
were an image, or as if [as if [the thing were present]].
While imaging knowledge vis-a-vis sign-things attempts to grasp the object
intuitively and imaginatively, “a curious alteration of signs” occurs:
[Signs] .. .are perceived globally in the form of words and each word has its
own physiognomy. Roughly, we can say that the words, for the reader of a
novel, play the role of signs.. .But imaging knowledge tends too strongly
towards an intuition that will fulfill it not to attempt, at least from time to
time, to make the sign play the role of representative of the object: it then
uses the sign like a drawing. The physiognomy of the word becomes
representative of the object. A real contamination occurs. (I 67) 2 3 5
pas de simples syntheses de rapports: elles seront syntheses de quelque chose qui a telle ou
telle qualite avec quelque chose qui possede telle et telle characteristique. (L 90)
2 3 5 “II s’ensuit une curieuse alteration du role des signes. Ceux-ci, comme on sait, sont
per9us globalement sous forme de mots et chaque mot a une physionomie propre. En gros
nous pouvons dire que les mots, pour le lecteur d’un roman, gardent ce role de signe dont
nous avons donne, au chapitre precedent, les principales caracteristiques (Sartre is referring
to the distinctions he made between the sign and the physical image) Mais le savoir
imageant tend bien trop fort vers une intuition qui le remplirait pour ne pas essayer, au moins
de temps a autre, de faire jouer au signe le role de representant de l’objet: il use alors du
signe comme d’un dessin. La physionomie du mot devient representative de celle de l’objet.
II se fait une reelle contamination.” (L 91) Sartre’s following example makes a distinction
between signifying and representing, which corresponds to that between the sign and image:
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This is the only time in his discussions of the sign that Sartre pays some attention to
the physiognomy of the sign: the matter of the sign does not efface itself, as in the
one-way relation of the sign with its object when Sartre reads the dry, bureaucratic
words on a placard, but leaves its mark on the object it signifies. The term Sartre
uses to describe the work of the sign is no longer “signification” but
“representation.” But the “representativeness” of the sign is curious, and, and in fact
rather difficult to grasp, especially because the words do not bear any kind of
magical resemblance to the re-presented object which would immediately endow
them with the attribute of “quasiness.” What does it mean that the word “represents”
the thing? “Representation,” in Sartre’s LTmaginaire connotes the giving of an
object by an image. A perfect example for such giving would be the giving of the
shoes by way of Van Gogh’s painting in Heidegger’s theory of the work of art,
which, as I tried to show in my previous chapter, is also a theory of language. To be
sure, this giving is not a “purely” perceptual giving where one would only linger
“Lorsque je lis “cette belle personne,” sans doute et avant tout, ces mots signifient une
certaine jeune femme, heroine de roman. Mais il represented dans une certaine mesure la
beaute de la jeune femme; ils jouent le role de ce quelque chose qui est une belle jeune
femme.” (L 91) Sartre emphasizes the thing (chose), because the apparition of the “thing” is
normally a property of perception that presents it (as present), and of the image, which
presents it as absent (representation), while the sign, in Sartre’s conception, does not give the
thing. In imaging knowledge, the sign makes contact with presence: “Les choses se donnent
d’abord comme des presences. Si nous partons du savoir, nous voyons naitre l’image comme
un effort de la pensee pour prendre contact avec les presences. Cette naisance coincide avec
une degradation du savoir qui ne vise plus les rapports come tels nais comme qualites
substantielles des choses.” (L 91) Things give themselves as presences at the beginning,
which also means, as perceptions. So imaging knowledge is an attempt of the sign (or
knowledge) to make contact with the thing, or with perception. Note also the oppositional
axis that Sartre lays between relationality and substantiality, which is a variation of that
between the sign and the thing.
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over the shapes and sounds of the letters, as if they were written in a foreign
language, without imagining any other object; it is an imaginary giving where the
words give the object in the way only a physical image, resembling its object, is
supposed to give: with affect, with emotion.
[T]he word often plays the role of representative without ceasing to play the
role of a sign, and we are dealing, in reading, with a hybrid consciousness,
half-sign and half-imaging. (I 67)2 3 6
In imaging knowledge, sign consciousness is no longer the same as the
consciousness of the word: the word, as material sign or the sign-thing, now assumes
the role of representative. Much like the visual elements in the consciousness of
imitation, in which a given material functions both as sign (reading “Chevalier” on
the body of the performer) and an image (seeing Chevalier possess or animate the
body), the word in the act of reading assumes a similar double function: both as sign
and “representative.” There exists no straightforward way to determine whether a
given matter, whether it be the word or the portrait, functions as a sign, or as an
image, or as both. With the “contamination” of the sign, which, according to Sartre,
also connotes the degradation of knowledge, any thing, any matter, any
physiognomy might have the potential of becoming a “representative” of another
thing, regardless of what resemblance it bears to the thing that it “represents,” and as
long as there is a will to sign it as such, or, as Sartre suggests in one of his most
interesting formulations, as long as one may “use the sign like a drawing.” Even
2 3 6 “[L]e mot joue souvent le role de representant sans quitter celui de signe et nous avons
affaire, dans la lecture, a une conscience hybride, mi-signifxante et mi-imageante. “ (L 91)
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words, which, in Sartre’s conception, are arbitrary, conventional and indifferent to
the “object,” may become “representatives” of the same object. It is also possible to
extend this consequence to “the thing in perception,” which may lack the affective
sense of “presenting” itself, as it might happen in ordinary perception, while the
word that is only supposed to refer to it indifferently, may have the affective sense to
give the thing in its “truth.” In Heidegger’s example of the Rhine, for instance, it is
the “Rhine” of poetry that gives the “Rhine” in truth, rather than the “Rhine” made
available to the consumptive regard (perception) of the tourist. Sartre’s remarks on
imaging knowledge may then be understood to shed some light on Heidegger’s
notion of language, in which the aesthetic use of the material sign (in poetry and art)
engenders the drawing of truth of the thing (Auffiss), as it happens in the reading of
poetry or fine arts.
Despite this curious alteration of the sign and the hybridizing contamination
between the sign and the image, Sartre does not endow the word with the function of
the analogon. One may take the physiognomy of the word as the “representative” of
an object, or use the sign like a drawing; but this, according to Sartre, is somehow
different than interpreting the physical analogon as the image of some other thing, or
of an object.
Sartre insists on preserving the difference between imaging knowledge and imaging
consciousness, sign and image, even when the sign, by way of a “curious”
transformation, becomes a drawing. But what Sartre rules out is often betrayed in his
use of language: in an earlier argument he notes that “[t]he imaging consciousness
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375
may be called representative (“representative”) in the sense that it will seek its object
on the ground of perception (“sur le terrain de la perception”) and aims at the
sensitive elements (“les elements sensibles”) that constitute that object” (I 15/ L 27).
To seek the image on the ground of perception is to seek it as a representative in
view of a presenting perception. Representation calls for the presentation in
perception against which it is measured; a set of dichotomies is set off in which the
image is made to side with irreality, absence, non-existence. But between the
“representative” analogon and the “representative” drawing, the ground has changed:
in the latter, the object is sought on the ground of language. The representative status
of the signs on this ground is truly curious; since, here, it does not occur in view of
any presenting perception. If there is any “representation” on this ground, then it is
without any “presentation.” It is also curious that in granting the representative status
to the sign, Sartre does not mention “positionality”: there is intuition, affect,
emotion, engagement but no urgency to separate the present from the absent, the real
from the irreal. The physiognomy of the inscribed words does not afford any natural
resemblance to their object; and, “representation” occurs on a ground that is resistant
to all immediate notions of positionality, and even, despite this ground, which Sartre
often characterizes as indifferent. But, representation without presentation
destabilizes both notions of representation and presentation: on the ground of
language, they are collapsed onto one another: presentation becomes representation
and visa versa. As if to mark this point of unraveling, Sartre gives another name to
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representation, which precedes any distinction between presentation and
representation: dessin.
Transposition of terms: from sign, image, consciousness to the Picture
Sartre’s drawing (“dessin”) is related not only to Heidegger’s Aufriss, but
also to Wittgenstein’s tableaux vivant (“lebendiges Bild”). Language is to be
envisaged, imaged, seen; the words must be taken as if they were Pictures (portraits,
photos) so that the shapes may be animated, in the same way “thought” animates the
physiognomy of the simple proposition-sign “aRb” to visualize the relation R
between two objects, a and b. Sartre’s dessin finds its corollary also in
Wittgenstein’s hieroglyph, that hybrid material form of image-sign that stands
midway between the living Picture and the word whose essence is preserved in our
alphabetic, non-pictorial writing. To restate Wittgenstein’s claim in Sartre’s
language, our words act like an analogon of those objects they signify: in reading,
one also sees. But, to remain with the analogon, and the Picture analogy, requires a
fundamental caution: that the Picture not be made secondary to uncritical notions of
reality, presence, existence, that it be conceived as representation without
presentation, without being subservient to any immediate, pregiven, natural
conception of presentation beyond representation, of “reality” beyond fiction.
In reading, we are dealing with visual terms of drawing and painting: Picture,
dessin, Aufriss. In my interpretation of Sartre, I have tried to show the possibility of
bringing together the entire field of material fiction under the sign, which Sartre
sharply divides into perception (the perceptual thing or the thing as it actually is),
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377
image (physical analogon or the image-thing) and sign (word or the sign-thing). I
have tried to disturb the natural, essential bonds that Sartre tries to establish between
sign and image consciousness, on the one side, and the material sign and image, on
the other. These bonds are made problematic also in Sartre’s own account where sign
consciousness occurs in the consciousness of the physical image (Franconay’s body)
or imaging consciousness occurs in the consciousness of the words (reading a novel).
The categories collapse: there is only material sign and there is only sign
consciousness. One may then refer to the physical image and the word as pictorial
and linguistic sign respectively. While doing this, however, the arbitrary nature of
such collapsing needs to be noted: since the inscribed signs on the page, are also
pictorial at multiple levels: one could treat them in the same way one deals with
pictures, i.e., examine their calligraphy, study their sounds, and so on. There is no
reason why the field of material fiction could not be brought under the picture: it is
possible to conceive the word as linguistic picture, as much as it is possible to
conceive the portrait as pictorial sign.
Sartre’s sign and image consciousness could be understood as a study of the
use of the sign, and using the terminology of the previous chapters, it is the use of the
work of language or the fiction of the “thing.” The Picture refers to this use: it is the
application made of the sign, and can be traced in both Sartre’s accounts of sign and
imaging consciousness. To recall, the overall theme of Sartre’s sign consciousness is
knowledge, thought, schema, while imaging consciousness is characterized by affect,
intuition, engagement. His distinction between sign and imaging consciousness could
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therefore be interpreted as a distinction that Sartre intends between the schematic
Picture and affective Picture. This distinction also has its reverberations in
Heidegger’s distinction between Gestell and Aufriss, which sets off the oppositions
between knowledge and truth, between science and art, between world-Picture and
world-disclosure. Interestingly, in Heidegger, the Picture connotes schematic,
systemic, ordering thought characteristic of science. In Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.
there is no distinction but a significant act of double naming: the scaffolding thought
and the animating Picture are one and the same. Sartre himself resolves the
distinction between affective and schematic Picture when he chances upon the
dessin, which exhibits both aspects of schematism and affectivity, being as close to
“pure” knowledge (dessin geometrique) as to the most animated experience (dessin
anime).2 3 7
2 3 7 The continuity between sign and image, and by extension, between sign and perception is
suggested in Bossart’s brief, but fascinating discussion of Kant’s schemata in relation to
Sartre’s distinction between image and perception. Bossart here gives the example of an
architectural drawing, which is reminiscent of Sartre’s dessin and Heidegger’s Aufriss:
“the relation between concepts and precepts is basically ambiguous and it is by
virtue of this ambiguity that schemata fulfill their mediating function. In order to mediate
between concepts and intuitions the schema must share in the essential characteristic of both.
The architect’s drawing, for example, is neither individual nor general, nor sensible nor
intellectual. Yet in a sense, it is all of these, for it contains clues which enable a qualified
viewer to read it in either way.. .it is tempting to conclude that the sharp distinction which
both Kant and Sartre make between concepts and percepts is not fundamental, that concepts
and intuitions are abstractions from their prior unity in schemata. For if the schemata does its
job, the original distinction between concept and percept appears to collapse in a more
fundamental unity from which both are derived.” (48)
Schemata occur midway between the concept and the percept, and I would like to add,
between signs and perceptions, in a way reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s Bild, which occurs
between linguistic propositions and facts. The schema refers to both senses of the Picture,
i.e. as the schematization of the world (in which case it might connote a reduction of the
world, a reduction which is felt as “impoverishment,” and, in a more positive sense, as an
infusion of intelligence into the world, as well as its emotive ordering) and as the expansion
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Conclusion
In this chapter, I was led by a material question: the material words inscribed
on the page and how they relate to Sartre’s theory of the image. My particular focus,
therefore, has been Sartre’s account of the image family, the portrait and the
consciousness of imitation, and I tried to show how Sartre’s efforts to keep the sign,
and language, outside the image-family is, to say the least, questionable. Granted,
Sartre’s theory of the image runs into several problems when he wants to find a
material counterpart to the mental image and seeks it in the physical image.
However, that Sartre engages the material world (the physical image) in his theory of
the image, rather than merely speculating on the nature of a somewhat freestanding
mental image, must be considered a major strength of his account.
Sartre’s imaging consciousness is a pictorial and linguistic sign
consciousness of the material artifacts of the world, produced in the act of reading
these artifacts as if they were composed of letters, words, sentences. It is true that
Sartre does not pay any attention to the calligraphy of the physical image, and
therefore misses the sheer affective potential of the sight, sound and sensuousness of
signs, of words and pictures that becomes so prominent in the work of art.2 3 8 It is
of the sign (in which case the sign is “enlivened,” provided with a broader con-text, with
schematic extensions, with pictorial schemas that depict as well as describe). Sartre’s
spontaneous mental images can also be understood as schemata, formed or made by
consciousness (and not applied, therefore to a given matter), schemata which contain a
pronounced sense of spatiality (or pictoriality), and as such are more likely to be interpreted
as “individual” or “sensible.”
2 3 8 For a critique of Sartre’s theory of art, see Bossart 43. Bossart offers two lines of
criticism: 1) the object in the artwork, according to Sartre, is an imaginary, unreal object: it
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also fair to say that his theory of the image is a theory without the question of
imagination: Sartre’s image, impoverished by its very own essence, respectful of the
distinctions that are supposed to separate it from perception, is far from being a
positive understanding of imagination, as well as arts and literature, as his
ruminations on poetry in What’s literature? also suggest (Busch 511). According
to Casey,
is not individuated, genuine and is essentially impoverished. So, the fascination with
artworks does not mean fascination of consciousness with a real object; it means the
fascination of consciousness with itself. 2) Sartre excludes the sensuous surface of the
artwork from the aesthetic experience. The consciousness of the artwork, in Sartre, is similar
to the consciousness of the picture: the moment of perception (the lines, colors of the photo)
followed by that of image (the man in the photo). Sartre locates the aesthetic experience not
in the moment of perception, but in that of the image. Consequently, “the pleasure we
receive from the colors of a painting taken as a perceptual object has nothing of the aesthetic
about it.” So the pleasure must be located in the imaginary object, i.e., the man depicted in
the picture, which must be “non-sensible and unperceived.” (44)
2 3 9 “[Djespite the brief celebration of imagination by Sartre in the conclusion of the
Psychology of Imagination, his attitude toward it in his early works is often one of suspicion.
He speaks of it as “impoverished” in comparison with perception, and perhaps, most
tellingly, calls it a “magical” escapism, a projection of an unreal world which lured
consciousness from its “real” problems and effective solutions of them... Imagination is too
easily a tool for bad faith, for denial of responsibility and facticity” (Busch, 511). Such
escapism, whose opposite would be the commitment to and engagement with the real,
grounds Sartre’s distinction between poetry and prose in What is Literature? Escapist
imagination is relegated to poetry and poets, “[who] employ words in their materiality, their
look, sound and feel, their resonances with other words, which, Sartre claims, has the effect
of clogging the clear communication of meaning in favor of evoking images for their own
sake. Unlike the poet, the prose writer employs words as signs directing the reader to clear
meanings in the process of communicating a judgment about this world.” (Busch, 512).
Busch gives an excellent summary of Sartre’s conceptualization of writing, both in What is
Literature? where the relationship between prose and poetry is conceived in the usual
dichotomous terms, and also in “A Plea for Intellectuals”(1968), where Sartre seems to have
acknowledged the “ambiguity and materiality of each word” (Busch, 513).
In “What’s literature?” Sartre starts out his defense of committed literature by
refusing the parallelism among arts. “Notes, colors, and forms are not signs. They refer to
nothing exterior to themselves”(25). Interestingly, Sartre’s starting point is diametrically
opposed to Heidegger’s view of art, which suggests not only parallelism but the equality
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[V]iewed in a broader perspective, Sartre’s theory of the imagination.. .may
be regarded as part of a wide-spread twentieth-century reaction to the
among arts, insofar as all art can be traced to poetizing (“Dichten”) and language. The reason
for this refusal is to underscore the affinity of the sign with prose-writing that conventionally
signifies or refer to the real; consequently, Sartre sees poetry-writing as belonging to a
marginal species of sign, whose affinity with plastic arts takes away from its power to
signify, and from language: “The empire of signs is prose; poetry is on the side of painting,
sculpture and painting”(28). The dichotomy that Sartre lays out here is between language
and thing, signification and creation, instrumentality and thingness. This dichotomy parallels
Heidegger’s distinctions between representative use of the thing and the being of the thing,
despite the fact that Heidegger, unlike Sartre, asserts the primacy of the being of the thing
over its representative use, and the ambiguous word-thing over the merely signifying (or
referring) sign. “In prose,” Danto notes while looking at the same passages, “words are used
transparently, transporting us to a reality beyond themselves, and we recognize them as
having no substance of their own to arrest the understanding” (Danto, 32) While the engaged
or committed prose writer, utilizes words of his/her writing as transparent tools that refer to
meanings without any ambiguity, the poet confronts his/her words as things: “.. .[T]he poet
has withdrawn from language-instrument in a single movement. Once and for all he has
chosen the poetic attitude which considers the words as things and not as signs.. .the poet is
outside language”(Sartre, 29). This, once again, dramatically contrasts with Heidegger’s
position, which takes poetry as exemplary language. “The prose writer [is] a man who makes
use of words... [S/he] designates, demonstrates, orders, refuses, interpolates, begs, insults,
persuades, insinuates.”(Sartre, 34) One cannot help noticing a kind of masculine virility that
Sartre ascribes to the prose-writer, as opposed to the quite-likely irresponsible poet who
refuses to partake in the proper use of the word.
In addition to these dichotomies that Sartre establishes in order to determine the
difference between prose and poetry, Sartre also has recourse to the difference between the
sign and the image, which he explains in LTmaginaire: “ [N]ot knowing how to use [the
words] as a sign of an aspect of the world, [the poet] sees in the word the image of one of
these aspects.” [30] In this fascinating thought-segment, Sartre repeats his observations on
the image-becoming of the word in the reading of a novel in LTmaginaire to explain the
image-becoming of the sign in the writing of poetry. This passage attempts to describe the
“magical” or “curious” resemblance that obtains between the words that the poets use and
the things they represent: “[in poetic use] important changes take place in the internal
economy of the word. Its sonority, its length, its masculine and feminine endings, its visual
aspect, compose for him a face of flesh which represents rather than expresses
meaning...[B]etween the word and the thing signified, there is established a double
reciprocal relation of magical resemblance and meaning.” (31) It is never clear what Sartre
means by the resembling sign: whether it refers to the poetic onom atopoeia, which the
paragraph in question strongly intimates, or whether it means a kind of affective engagement
with words (and the “curious alteration of the sign”) which Sartre’s account of novelistic
reading in LTmaginaire suggests. The difference between the poet and the prose-writer,
therefore, corresponds to the distinction between the act of re-presenting and of signifying, a
distinction, which Sartre exemplifies, as I have discussed earlier, with his comparison of the
portrait (the physical image) with the sign.
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enthusiastic claims of Romanticism.. .In place of [the productive] powers [of
imagination], Sartre discerns a species of mental activity which promises
more than it can produce-or rather, which can produce only in accordance
with drastically lowered expectations. Imagining, in brief, is charged with an
impoverishment of form and content from which it cannot recover. All the
extravagant encomia that had been lavished upon imagination by its admirers
and adherents in the Romantic movement are forsworn in Sartre’s terse
testimony. Intentionally avoiding panegyrics, this testimony purports to bear
on the phenomenon alone” (141)
Along with Husserl, Sartre intends to “avoid Romantic Schwarmerei [fantastic
enthusiasm and idolization] by stressing the sanity of structure” (141). Sartre’s
thinking is far from construing the imagination as the locus in which the normative
distinctions between presence/ absence, real/ unreal, fiction/ non-fiction, deprived of
their didactic reassurances, become blurred, questionable, disposable.2 4 0 Despite this,
however, something must be said for Sartre’s attempt to place the image not just in
those specialized fields of imagination, traditionally allotted to it (fine arts and
literature), but in much more general fields of experience in so far as such
experience, for Sartre, contains some measure of absence, irreality, representation.
Unfortunately, Sartre’s inclination to seek out distinctions, rather than destroy them,
does not allow him to seek for the image (and imagination) in perception, absence in
presence, irreal in real. There is no account of “imaging perception” that would
create a most welcome contamination in the field of perception as Sartre’s account of
“imaging knowledge” does in the field of knowledge. But, Sartre’s theory of image
2 4 0 Casey also notes: “throughout Sartre’s writing career, the imaginary toward which
consciousness transcends has been identified with the realm of the unreal (l’irreel) which
may be embraced or rejected but never allowed to merge with the opposite realm of the
real.” (139)
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does contain productive moments of contamination and heterogeneity, particularly
when the sign appears to complicate the very distinctions it is supposed to enforce. In
these moments, Sartre’s theory of the image also betrays an underlying, untold
principle: that the image comes from language. Here, one may also find hints for
future thinking on imagination; and one particular hint is this: to think the image
away from uncritical, unmediated notions of reality and presence, to make it of
language, is to free it.
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WORKS CITED
Anderson, Kenneth L. “Sartre’s Early Theory of Language.” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 70, No. 4, 1996: 485-505.
Bames, Hazel E. Introduction to Being and Nothingness. Author: Jean Paul Sartre.
Tr. Hazel E. Bames. New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1974. .
Bossart, W.H. “Sartre’s Theory of the Imagination.” Journal of the British Society
for Phenomenology Vol. 11. No. 1. January 1980: 37-53.
Busch, Thomas. “Sartre and Ricoeur on Imagination.” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 70, No. 4, 1997: 508-518
Danto, Arthur C. Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: The Viking Press, 1975.
Casey, Edward S. “Sartre on Imagination.” The Philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre. Ed.
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Casey, John. “Emotion and Imagination.” The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 34, No.
134, January 1984: 1-14.
Charme, Stuart L. Meaning and Myth in the Study of Lives: A Sartrean Perspective.
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Cumming, Robert Denoon, Ed. The Philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre. New York:
Random House, 1965.
—.“Role Playing:Sartre’s Transformation of Husserl’s Phenomenology.” The
Cambridge Companion to Sartre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
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Flynn, Thomas. “The Role of the Image in Sartre’s Aesthetic.” Journal of Aesthetics
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Ishigura, Hide. “Imagination.” British Analytic Philosophy. Ed. Bernard Williams
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Kamber, Richard. On Sartre. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2000.
LaCapra, Dominick. A Preface to Sartre. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
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Levy, Bemard-Henri. Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century. Tr. Andrew
Brown. Cornwall: Polity Press, 2003.
McCulloch, Gregory. Using Sartre: An Analytical Introduction to Early Sartrean
Themes. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Morgan, Kathryn Pauly. “A Critical Analysis of Sartre’s Theory of Imagination.”
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1974:21-33.
Rabb, J. Douglas. “Prolegomenon to a Phenomenology of Imagination.” Philosophy
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Ricoeur, Paul. “Sartre and Ryle on the Imagination.” The Philosophy of Jean Paul
Sartre. Ed. Paul Schlipp. Open Court: La Salle, 1981. 167-179.
Sartre, Jean Paul. “Interview with Jean Paul Sartre.” The Philosophy of Jean Paul
Sartre. Ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1981. 5-55.
—. “What is Literature?” and Other Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
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—. Imagination. Tr. Forrest Williams. Ann Harbor:The University of Michigan
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—. The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination. Tr.
Jonathan Webber. London: Routledge, 2004.
—. LTmaginaire: Psychologie Phenomenologique de 1 ’imagination. Montrouge:
Gallimard, 1965.
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Co. Ltd, 1971.
Smith, Quentin. “Sartre and the Matter of Mental Images.” Journal of the British
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of Philosophy. Vol 16, No. 4: 373-389.
Wamock, Mary. “The Concrete Imagination.” Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology Vol. 1 No. 2,1970: 6-12.
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CONCLUSION AND COMMENTARY on Michael Tye’s Imagery
Debate and the Theories of the Image from the Cognitive Science
Perspective presented therein
While my dissertation may be viewed as three independent essays on the
theme of imagination and the image/Picture, it may also be viewed as the
incremental development of a larger argument. The argument, in its outlines, seeks
an understanding of the reader’s interactions with literary texts, and does so by
placing these interactions in the more general framework that concerns the mind’s
interactions with language, hence, transposing a literary question into the terms of a
philosophical one. An initial formulation, which is reached by way of analyzing
Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the Picture, asserts that the relations between the mental
image/Picture and material words may be understood using the language of
“application”: Pictures are applied to works o f language. I would like to remind the
reader of the critical supplement to this formulation, which, in lieu of my focus on
the image/Picture, might have appeared only secondary to it, despite having an equal
importance. The supplement is the reversal of the initial formulation, a reversal that
states that works o f language are applied to Pictures. This dual relationship between
the Picture and language is undoubtedly a prevalent aspect of Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus. which lays down the interactions between the world and language as
isomorphic laws, whereby the Picture, as the token of the mind’s engagement with
both the mind and works of language, acts as a necessary, albeit self-effacing,
medium of semi-automatic transformations and one-to-one correspondences between
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the world and language: we make Pictures of the world and we make Pictures of
language. The first of these statements refers to the language-becoming of the world,
while the second, more directly, refers to the Picture-becoming of language. There is
no reason why one should not reformulate Wittgenstein’s statements in light of
Sartre’s ontology of the image that I have discussed in my third chapter: there is
sign-consciousness in the physical perceptions of world, and image-consciousness in
the physical signs of language. It may well be seen that these reformulations are
directly linked to the conclusions of my chapter on Sartre, where I argue for the
continuity between sign and image consciousness in relation to the consciousnesses
of both physical images and physical signs. These formulations, reformulations, and,
as I like to call them, transpositions have the effect of introducing, to use Sartre’s
words, heterogeneity, hybridity and contamination to the general field of
consciousness. If words are applied to Pictures and Pictures to words, wouldn’t then
consciousness become a hybrid medium capable of apprehending the word as
Picture, and Picture as word, without the question of committing an error? To recall,
Wittgenstein gives a most powerful expression to such hybridity by describing the
image/ Picture as “hieroglyph.” The introduction of hybridity to the constitution of
consciousness would result in the admission that the boundaries between word and
image are blurred, and that, under certain circumstances, and particularly under the
specific circumstance that I have focused on in my dissertation, that is, in the act of
reading literature, words do become images for consciousness.
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In the three chapters of my dissertation, I critiqued the three philosophers’
ambitions to insert essential differences between word and image without giving an
explanation of the interactions between word and image: they do so by considering
word and image separately in their relationship with a third term (language-game,
thing or object) with respect to which both word and image are to be understood.
This relationship is further articulated with the use of other descriptive terms:
application, representation and giving. In these considerations, it is the image that
cannot compete with the applicative and truthful potentialities of language
(Wittgenstein and Heidegger) or it is the word that lacks the representational
capabilities of the image (Sartre). In Wittgenstein, it is the words, and not Pictures,
that adequately apply to orderly language-games constitutive of the world. In Sartre,
signs, understood as words, merely refer to their objects, while images represent
them. The image’s representativeness is based on the resemblance that the image
bears to the object it represents; consequently, Sartre takes it for granted that the
sign, not resembling the object to which it refers, does not represent. I have gone into
considerable length to argue against Sartre’s forcing of the difference between the
image and the sign based on resemblance, by pointing out the unavailability of the
criteria of “resemblance” in the lack of the object of resemblance, with respect to
which the image’s representing status must be determined. An important outcome of
the argument is that the representative status of the image cannot arise from the
inherent attribute of the image’s resemblance to an object, and that the word may
also represent, as Sartre’s description of reading novels suggests, despite its seeming
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non-resemblance. Resemblance is only secondary to representation, and by no means
does it determine representation as such.
This contention, however, does not explain what representation is, and whether
it is indeed an adequate term to describe the relations between word and image, on
the one hand, and the thing or the object on the other. In describing these relations,
Heidegger uses a remarkably different terminology and approach, which denounces,
for the sake of truth, what he sees as the ubiquitous hold of representation. Image,
Picture, Vorstellung, in this very negative conceptualization, all connote
“representation” in general. The Picture here expands beyond the periphery of its
visual connotations of a mental image, to refer to the overreaching gestures of
consciousness to grasp, to dominate, to stifle the thing of its representation. Against
the Picture, Heidegger welcomes language and works of art, as events that enable the
happening of the “truth” of things. Hence, while the Picture represents the thing,
which turns it into a mere object of a reigning subjectivity, it is language, and
particularly poetics that give the thing in its true being. With this, the truth of
material language is given privilege over the representations of subjective
imagination.
I have discussed the many problematic aspects of Heidegger’s truth-
representation dualism in my third chapter, and argued that his too broad
understanding of representation is inclusive of every thing that he thinks to fall under
“truth.” Aside from my criticisms, Heidegger’s ruminations on truth are intriguing in
two ways: they introduce the notion of affect in considerations of language,
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according to which language assumes an affective potential that ripples across the
connective tissue of consciousness in order to constitute or to disclose, in
imagination, what Heidegger calls “the world.” They also make a preference for
“giving” as opposed to “representing,” which may prove to be useful in describing
the relation between word and image, on the one side, and their relative objects, on
the other. The notion of representation, as I have discussed in my third chapter, often
relies upon an original, present-making perception, but becomes problematic when
such a perception is lacking as in the renowned example of the unicorn. The
representing image is then rendered secondary to the actual perception of the object,
from which the object is thought to originate, and this, despite the possibility that the
image, and not perception, may assume an originary status, or that the object may
emerge from the image, as can be seen in the relation between the painting of a
gryphon and its object “gryphon” in Alice in Wonderland. Representation is indeed
a rather tricky concept: here, it might be fitting to recall Sartre’s puzzlement when he
observes that the attributes that he associates with “representativeness” may also be
found in words, whose non-resemblance to their objects, in theory, must prevent
them from becoming representative. One may indeed substitute the phrase “images
and words represent things or objects” with the phrase “images and words give
things or objects” to signify that it is by way of images and words that things or
objects are given to consciousness. The last phrase may also be turned into one that
justifiably accentuates the oft-obscured and forgotten makings of consciousness: it is
consciousness that constitutes things or objects by way of the images and words
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391
given to it. This constitutive status of consciousness is couched in the
phenomenological terms of intentionality in Sartre’s theory of the image, according
to which an act of consciousness (facing the image or reading the word) always
implies a directed consciousness intending some thing or some object.
The preceding formulations, however, are themselves fraught with their own
problems, insofar as they do not address the tremendously hard questions: “what is a
thing?” and “what are the criteria for objecthood?” In my third chapter, I hinted at
the necessity of moving beyond an understanding of consciousness that is based on
objects, by stressing the capability of consciousness to deal with a plurality of
phenomena, not directly associated with the state of being an object for which there
might not be a clear perceptual precedent, including, for instance, “democracy,”
“flux,” or numbers. I have also suggested that at least some of the “objects” to which
consciousness is directed may be viewed as signs, which are put into play in
consciousness, with a most important reminder that the sign be understood to refer
not only to the linguistic word, but also to the visual sign, as located within the
phenomena of both perception and the image. The resulting dictum gives the
appearance of redundancy and circularity, at least in relation to the giving of the
signs: “signs give signs give signs.. .etc.”, a dictum that might alternatively
understood as “images give images give images, etc.” This circularity, however,
simply indicates a particular description of the process, in which the material signs of
the world are made the imaginary signs of consciousness. One may then make a
theoretical distinction between a material sign that belongs to the physical world, and
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an imaginary sign that has been put into play, or used in consciousness.
Consciousness, then, could be thought to constitute the “thing” out of the physical
matter given to it, i.e., the “T-h-I-N-g”; it becomes the enabling medium that
provides the transition from the matter to a conception of the thing. What is implied
in these alternatives—signs give (way to) signs, and “objects” are constituted out of
matter—is an attempt to circumvent the difficulty involved in the notion of the
“object,” without reverting to the language of “representation.” As it stands,
however, it is only an attempt, which undoubtedly needs further development.
It might be useful to pose, once again, the question that drives this study that
unavoidably finds itself embroiled in other, equally puzzling questions: How does
the word become the image of consciousness? This question is somewhat different
from, but immediately related to the following questions that focus on the terms
individually: What is the image or what is the word? To answer all these questions,
one may feel the urge to propose a model of consciousness that explains, how in the
medium of consciousness, word becomes word, and image becomes image. While I
will not undertake the gargantuan, and rather impossible, task of defining and fixing
the structures of consciousness in the space of this conclusion, I would like to point
out that some sort of modeling of consciousness may become indispensable in the
attempt to understand how word engenders image (or how image engenders word).
One such attempt would be to assert that consciousness must be both word-like and
image-like in its structure. Granted, there is ambiguity in this final statement: as long
as word and image remain elusive concepts, so do the attributes of being “word-like”
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and “picture-like.” As I have discussed, one may circumvent this ambiguity by
bringing word and image together under the generalized rubric of sign, with the
caveat that the sign not only be understood as linguistic sign, but also as visual sign.
The inclusion of visual sign would then result in the possibility of considering both
perception and image (or imaging consciousness) in continuity with sign
consciousness. The sign-consciousness, thus expanded, may alternatively be
understood as a sense- and affect-making consciousness. While the sign as material
sign is given to sensory organs, the sign as imaginary sign is made in consciousness;
and this imaginary making of the sign results in both sense and affect.
In this modeling of consciousness as sign consciousness, I posit one
particular figure, which functions as both linguistic sign and pictorial image, and
which needs to be thought out in more detail, i.e., the sketch or the schema. The work
of consciousness could also be understood as the sketching or schematization of
what is given in perception, physical images and word (linguistic sign).
Consequently, sign consciousness becomes a schematizing consciousness. These
considerations, of course, refer to the scenario, in which consciousness deals with the
material artifacts of the world (reading sentences, seeing films, seeing objects), and
hence, assumes a “passive” role in relation to an outside world that gives it material
or matter. There is no reason, however, that the schematizing work of consciousness
may not be thought to inhere in the active, or as Sartre says, spontaneous activities of
consciousness. In the active scenario, consciousness would be putting together and
shaping its own schemas, in dreams, in thoughts, in mental images. It is important,
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both in the active and passive scenarios, not to think of the schemata in the negative
terms of being reductive, dry and non-emotive (as Sartre, for instance, considers the
sign to be): the schemata must instead be viewed as intricate phenomena that are
capable of exhibiting enormous complexities and of engendering a wealth of
affective modalities, an ability that is reflected both in the art of animation and in the
art of dreaming.
I will not elaborate on any comprehensive model of consciousness; instead, I
will comment on the Imagery Debate by the cognitive scientist and philosopher,
Michael Tye, which, among other things, offers a brilliant overview of many models
of the image, and by extension, of consciousness. Some of these models make
scientific claims about the image, despite the fact that the scientificity of the claims
frequently appears to be less than obvious. The image, in these models, is primarily
understood as pictorial image or the Picture; so, in Tye’s account, the proponents of
the pictorial image are countered by its dissidents, who claim either that the image is
not pictorial, or that it does not exist at all. The relationship between word and image
becomes particularly prominent in two anti-pictorialist claims made in relation to the
image: that the image is nothing but words, or that the image represents in a
linguistic manner. I will take issue with the first claim, and briefly discuss the
second; but, before going any further, I would like to make a general observation
concerning the modeling of the image, which is nothing short of the modeling of
consciousness. As I will show, an interest in the modeling of consciousness
frequently divorces the model from what it belongs to, that is, consciousness. What
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results is a supposedly scientific approach that privileges the model over the
phenomena of consciousness, sometimes to the extent of denying their existence.
Hypothetically speaking, an ambitious model of consciousness may succeed in
locating and determining the neurobiological basis of consciousness, minutely
correlating the acts of consciousness with the specifics of the make-up of the brain;
but this would by no means imply that, with the determination of its neurobiological
basis, consciousness, along with its phenomena (thoughts, images, dreams), would
be rendered superfluous. Nor does it imply that the existence of such phenomena
could be put in question. The proponent of a model of consciousness must therefore
be cautious about the slippage that might occur between a scientific argument, “this
model may help explain this phenomenon of consciousness,” and a dogmatic one,
“consciousness must be so and so, because this model has declared it so.” A
consequence of the dogmatic stance might be the categorical rejection of
phenomenal consciousness, and, particularly, of the image, and the substitution of
consciousness by a particular model. This happens, for instance, in the behaviorist
models that take upon themselves the task of eliminating the whole consciousness,
regarding it to be hidden, inaccessible and phantasmagoric, therefore unscientific.
This task is presumed to be accomplished when consciousness is simply declared to
be some version of inner speech, whose outward, empirical signs could be detected
in the slight movements of the larynx. The equation between consciousness and
language, in the sense of spoken and written language, may also lead to the belief
that the “truth” of consciousness may be culled simply from an analysis of the
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outward form of language, by studying this form as the basis of understanding the
workings of the human. With this, a machinery of language analysis, led by
insightful professionals, may be instituted as the ruling paradigm for methodology, a
machinery that treats ordinary linguistic statements as the source of falsehoods and
make-beliefs, as relics of “folk” psychology. Ordinary and folksy statements, like
those ones that give the impression of the existence of the image and of
consciousness, must be overcome with the help of the professional who recasts them
into logical statements, which, by virtue of being logical, must be true. It makes little
difference whether this analytic machinery rolls outside consciousness, or has no
regard for it. By its sheer, monistic force, the machinery projects onto consciousness,
evacuated of its phenomenality, whatever fantasy it deems to be true.
The effort to model consciousness might not necessarily lead to the extreme
position that rejects both consciousness and the image. Two representational theories
of consciousness, pictorialism and descriptionalism, for instance, do acknowledge
the phenomenality of consciousness, and seek to propose models that explain the
phenomenal image. Occasionally, however, a tension emerges between their models
and the phenomena that they intend to explain, resulting not only in the often
imperceptible passage from their speculative models to overreaching generalizations
concerning the phenomenal image, but also in some rather unnecessary disputes
between pictorialism and descriptionalism, a point which I will discuss in relation to
Michael Tye’s Imagery Debate.
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Imagery Debate consists of a summary of a number of theories concerning
the image, Tye’s own theory of the image and some chapters that intend to clarify
issues around the image (image determinacy and causality). Tye’s study on the
image and imagery starts with a historical account of the ways in which image has
been understood by, what Tye calls, “historical” philosophers. Tye refers to the
methodology of these historical philosophers, who, by and large, belong to the era
before the 20th century, as “introspectively based armchair theorizing,” and sharply
critiques these philosophers for relying excessively on introspection, rather than
experimentation (3). Despite this, however, he feels sympathetic towards the
introspective philosophizing of some of the philosophers; he supports, for instance,
Descartes’ observation that asserts an essential difference between thought and
image, while repudiating Aristotle’s separation of the image from emotion, and he
does this without commenting on the introspective status of his own approvals and
disagreements vis-a-vis the historical philosophers’ “introspectively based”
statements. In the theories of the historical philosophers Tye considers, the image is
thought to be visual or pictorial in the sense that I tried to capture in my first chapter
as “Picture.” His overview of the British school of philosophy concentrates on the
following aspects: the debate concerning the indeterminacy of the image, particularly
in Locke and Berkeley; the understanding of percepts as images that retain waning
impressions of perception; the interest in the mechanics involved in the manipulation
of images; the all-inclusive use of the image (or in the empiricist’s parlance, “ideas”)
that cover not only the pictorial image but all thought.
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While critiquing historical philosophers’ introspective approach to images,
Tye makes the following remarks:
[According to the historical accounts] [mjental images look like the objects
that they represent. In this respect, mental images are similar to realistic
public pictures and dissimilar from other public representations, for example,
descriptions. Hence mental images represent in the manner of, or something
very like the manner of real pictures. This is the introspective argument for
the pictorial approach to imagery in its simplest form.. .Unfortunately, [this]
argument is badly flawed. (12)
The introspective argument, which, according to Tye, represents the pictorialist
views of the historical philosophers, does have some striking similarities with
Sartre’s phenomenology of the image: all that is needed is to substitute “realistic
public pictures” and “descriptions” in the preceding statements with Sartre’s
“physical images” and “signs/words,” respectively. Tye makes several arguments
against the introspective philosophers’ pictorialist stance; and, there are admittedly
some parallels between some of these arguments and the arguments that I have
developed in my chapter on Sartre. For instance, in my third chapter, I have argued
against the “dissimilarity” between imaging consciousness (seeing a physical image)
and sign consciousness (reading words, sentences, paragraphs, etc.); but, unlike Tye,
I have not argued against the “similarity,” which, in Sartre’s theory of the image,
takes hold between the mental image and physical images. To remember, Sartre
considers mental image and “realistic public pictures” within one and the same
image family.
One problematic aspect of Tye’s position on the introspective stance seems to
be the hastiness with which he declares the historical stance to be “badly flawed.” In
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fact, at a closer look, the “bad flaws” of the historical stance appear less than
obvious, while Tye’s counterarguments become unstable. In one counterargument,
for instance, Tye intends to show that “the parallel between mental images and
pictures is faulty;” to do this, he points out some differences between the ways
mental image and pictures represent their respective objects. The determination of
differences, however, requires Tye’s own introspective look at his own images, and a
prior knowledge of how pictures represent (12). In the following counterargument,
however, Tye seems to be less secure of this kind of knowledge:
[T]o assert [in the manner of historical philosophers] that a mental image of
my brother, looks to me like my brother is merely to assert that my imagistic
experience is like the perceptual experience I undergo when I view my
brother with my eyes. The latter assertion says nothing about how my brother
is represented in my perceptual experience. He might be represented there
pictorially, but equally he might be represented in some other way, for
example, in some linguistic manner. (13)
A linguistic shift occurs: the perceptual experience of the picture of a thing is
exchanged with the perceptual experience of the thing. So, the introspective stance
now claims that mental images are like perceptions, which is different than the claim
that they are like pictures. On the one hand, the historical stance, in claiming that
images are like pictures, is simply wrong; on the other, it is too vague and useless in
claiming that images are like perceptions. A consequence of this shift is that, while
we know how pictures represent, we do not know how perceptions do. The
assumption is that pictures must be treated differently than perceptions. But this
assumption creates further difficulties in the logic of Tye’s counterargument in that
pictures are also perceptions. Tye’s other remark, that perceptions may represent
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pictorially and linguistically, is intuitively comprehensible, despite the lack of clarity
concerning the definitions of “representing pictorially” or “representing
linguistically.” Assuming the validity of this statement, one may extend it to pictures
and claim that perceptions o f pictures may represent pictorially and linguistically, a
claim, which would entail that the previously presumed prior knowledge of picture
as “representing pictorially” rests on the same “shaky ground” that Tye takes the
historical, introspective accounts to rest on (13).2 4 1
In another counterargument, which complicates even more the already
inconsistent uses of the terms “image,” “picture” and “perception”, Tye claims that
the presumed likeness between images and pictures can be explained
straightforwardly through the observation that “imagistic experiences are like the
perceptual experiences undergone when viewing the appropriate pictures. This is
why mental images look like pictures. But whether the perceptual experiences
themselves contain pictorial representations is an open question.” In the italicized
“themselves,” it is possible to detect a desire to move beyond the phenomenality of
the imagistic experience (“looking alike”), to explore a more profound question that
is not unavailable to introspection: how perceptual and imagistic experiences
represent their objects. Overall, none of Tye’s counterarguments can prove that the
historical arguments are “badly flawed;” rather, these counterarguments express the
desire to go further with and improve on the historical arguments, to come up with
2 4 1 Interestingly, in his own theory of the image that I will discuss in a later section, Tye
makes use of the assumption that mental images “do represent in the manner of, or
something very like” perceptions, just like they do in the assumptions of historical
philosophers.
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more appropriate models that explain the phenomena of consciousness. It is fair to be
dissatisfied with others’ models, explanations and descriptions, and not so to dismiss
these same others, hastily and conveniently, with the wholesale accusation of a naive
reliance on introspection. It is one thing to critique someone on the basis of how she
used introspection while developing her models, and another thing, to critique her for
having used it at all.
Tye’s conclusion to his overview of historical accounts of the image is that
the questions concerning the mind “are best answered by empirical investigation into
the mind as a whole and not by armchair theorizing based upon the fruits of
introspection.”(16) His book suggests that such “empirical investigations” would
include, not only the neurobiological examinations of the brain, which would, among
other things, correlate mental anomalies with the empirically observable deviations
of the anomalistic brain from a normal one, making it possible to plot a functional
map of the brain. These investigations would also include psychological
experiments, which would subject their participants to carefully organized tests. The
outcomes of these experiments would determine the truth or falsity of particular
claims or theories made in relation to the workings of the mind. It is by way of
psychological experiments, with attentiveness to neurobiological research, that
cognitive science, psychology or philosophy, can achieve the overcoming of the
introspective trap. Tye finds the beginnings of the empirical approach to the mind in
the psychologists Oswald Kulpe and J.B. Watson; he credits both for “free[ing]
themselves from the introspective net,” while he finds behaviorist Watson’s
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categorical dismissal of introspection extreme (17). In a chapter where Tye gives a
superb overview of several anti-introspective and anti-pictorialist theories of the
image, Tye includes a most revealing quote from J.B. Watson, which I feel obliged
to replicate as a perfect example of behaviorist anti-pictorialism:
What then becomes of images.. .What does a person mean when he closes his
eyes or ears (figuratively speaking) and says “I see the house where I was
bom, the trundle bed in my mother’s room where I used to sleep—I can even
see my mother as she comes to tuck me in and I can even hear her voice as
she softly says good-night?” Touching, of course, but sheer bunk. We are
merely dramatizing. The behaviorist finds no proof of imagery in all this. We
have put all these things in words long, long ago and we constantly rehearse
those scenes verbally whenever the occasion arises.. .What we mean by being
consciousness of events which happened in our past is that we can carry on a
conversation about them either to ourselves (thought) or with someone else
(talk) [Watson, Ways of behaviorism, pp. 75-76] (Tye, 25)
So mental images, and by extension, all consciousness, are nothing but speech, or
more precisely, inner speech that involves “slight movements of the larynx” (25).
The person, who introspectively reports the experience of his mental images, is
castigated for spewing “sheer bunk.” But the castigation itself is nothing short of
sheer arrogance and sheer bunk: what is the proof, indeed, of the image being inner
speech, if not Watson’s own report, his own declaration? In interpreting this passage,
Tye understands Watson’s point to be that “people’s introspective reports do not
demonstrate that there are inner mental pictures''' (25) This is hardly ever surprising:
the only way the existence of inner mental pictures could be demonstrated, at least in
this very historical moment, is by way of “people’s introspective reports.” Is there
any other way to demonstrate the visuality of the dream, other than reporting that one
has experienced it as visual? Maybe, we, the common “people,” should desist from
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claiming that, in dreams, we may chance upon a house, a trundle bed, etc. since there
is no proof of visual imagery there either. Watson must have used some other way
of demonstrating that our images are tokens of inner speech, and nothing else: a
marvelous device, worthy of science fiction, that cuts into the mind and finds there
not pictures, but chatter.
Aside from Watson, Tye also discusses and critiques the anti-pictorialist view
of philosopher Gilbert Ryle, who also denies the existence of mental pictures in
imagination: it is our ordinary ways of using language (for instance, “ picturing
things in imagination”) that makes us believe that there are entities like mental
pictures. So the claim that asserts the existence of mental “pictures” does not
correspond to any actual experience of consciousness; we are simply caught up in the
misleading metaphors of our ordinary language, which make us believe that there are
mental pictures. In following, Tye offers gives an overview of two other anti
pictorial stances that are interrelated and that claim that there are no mental images.
The first of these, “adverbial theory,” intends to reform ordinary linguistic
statements about consciousness, by proving them to be illogical, misleading and
fraught with falsehoods, and by substituting them with non-ordinary linguistic
statements that are logical and therefore correct. So the ordinary statement “I have an
image of a trundle bed,” which misleads us into believing that there are mental
images of things, must be replaced with the more correct and logical linguistic
statement “I imagine trundle-bed-ly.” The second, more extreme anti-pictorial stance
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is “eliminativism,” propounded by Richard Rorty and Paul Churchland. According to
eliminativism, Tye observes,
[T]he ordinary psychological statements we make from day to day are no
more to be trusted than the statements of our predecessors made “about”
witches, caloric fluid and phlogiston. Radical error infects the former talk
just as it does latter. This, mental events and objects generally do not exist,
according to the eliminativists, for the simple reason that the everyday
statements of our folk psychology are, one and all, false.”(31)
Here, we observe a dogmatic approach that projects its delusions and delusional
theories onto the field of consciousness, declaring it to be nothing but figments of
“folk psychology” or deceptions of “ordinary statements,” while acting as if
consciousness were ever in need of such an authoritative declaration in order to
determine its being or nothingness. Tye aptly critiques the eliminativist stance, also
stressing “the success of theoretical cognitive psychology,” to which he, as a
philosopher, belongs. Cognitive psychologists, he tells us, all act with the
assumption of the existence of mental states, or “cognitive capacities;” rather than
asking whether or not mental states occur, they seek to understand how they occur:
[H]ow we remember, how we understand, how we image, how we perceive,
and so on. If none of these cognitive capacities really exist [as in
eliminativism], then it is very difficult to grasp w hat... [cognitive]
psychologies are doing and why.. .some of their theories seem to have been
so successful. (31)
Pictorialism and Descriptionalism
In the rest of his work, Tye intends to find out “how we image” or to use the
more often used terminology, how mental images represent objects. To do so, Tye
examines, interprets and critiques two opposing models of the image, pictorialism
and descriptionalism. He then presents his own model, which incorporates many
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aspects of both models and which, he argues, overcomes their theoretical
shortcomings. Both these models seek to present a model of the image that explains
the phenomenal image. According to the descriptionalist model, mental images
represent their objects in the manner of linguistic descriptions, or they are “neural
entities that represent objects in some neural code that is, in important aspects,
language-like.”(27) Among the descriptionalists, Tye pays particular attention to
experiments, explanations and models provided by Zenon Pylyshyn and George
Hinton. Tye’s primary focus, however, is Stephen Kosslyn, the advocate of the
pictorialism in cognitive psychology, according to whose theory mental images
represent pictorially. Both pictorialism and descriptionism depend on an
understanding of picture-like and language-like representation, which would, in turn,
necessitate a prior knowledge of how pictures or words represent. Of course, there
would be no opposition between pictorialism and descriptionalism if it were found
that pictures may represent linguistically and words may represent pictorially.
Rather, the debate is framed around a binarism: images either represent pictorially or
linguistically.
Kosslyn fashions his pictorialist theory using the analogy of computer
projection. The motivating question is the following: how must the image, which we
phenomenally experience as if we see it on the computer screen, be stored in the
hardware of the mind, which must be the hardware of the body? The projection
between the phenomenal image and its representation in the body is rather
straightforward: for all the pictorial shapes on the mind’s screen, there must be
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corresponding arrays or data-cells in the body and these cells must consist of
information that instructs how these shapes must be drawn. The model insists that
the constituent unit of representation be taken as object-parts; so, for every
representative cell, there must be a corresponding object-part. The sequence of cells
is capable of reflecting not only object-parts, but also full objects and the spatial
relations between various objects. It is obvious that Kosslyn’s model is inspired by
the binary logic of computers: a full cell represents the existence of an object-part,
while an empty one signifies the lack of it. The data, pertaining to the phenomenal
image and its constituents (objects, object parts, spatial relations among objects) do
not have to be stored in a localized, ordered fashion. In Kosslyn’s model, the data are
stored in scattered cells, the totality of which is said to constitute a functional picture
or quasi-picture.
Body Mind
Functional Image -> Phenomenal Image
Full Cell One Object-part
No-Cell-> No Object-Part
Cells -> Objects, Spatial arrangement of Objects
The functional picture serves as the hardware-equivalent of the phenomenal
image “seen” on the visual screen of the imagery, which Kosslyn calls the “visual
buffer.” His model, then, is based on a simple translation from phenomenal picture
to functional picture: a perfect correspondence exists between the parts of the object
and the scattered constituent cells of the functional image that store these parts.
Imagine, then, that one reads a bunch of numbers on a computational
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machine; according to Kosslyn’s model, she immediately sees a corresponding figure
on the imagery screen. The model takes it for granted that this seen figure is
immediately interpreted as an object-part. It therefore ignores the fact that the figure
still needs to be taken as the part of such and such object, and not just a random
figure. So some other kind of information must be admitted to the model aside from
the numbers of the machine, information that describes the operation(s) involved in
creating the consciousness of an object and that would function like the sentence:
“this is the consciousness of the part of such and such object.” Of course, this
operational information does not have to be sentential, but may be as simple as a
mark. The pictorialist model does not allow for any such marks, and consequently,
for the storage of any operational information. If this information is admitted to the
model, however, there would be not much of a difference between pictorialism and
descriptionalism, whose representational model admits such information as
“structural description.” Significantly, Tye, who is a very sympathetic reader of
Kosslyn, makes several efforts to sharpen the difference between functional pictures
and structural description, a difference without which the “imagery debate” between
pictorialism and descriptionalism is in danger of collapsing (40, 46, 61-64).2 4 2 The
primary gain of Kosslyn’s pictorialist model, in relation to the descriptionalist model
discussed later, seems to be the positing of a functional picture in the body that is
simply, and almost intuitively, translatable to the phenomenal image of the mind,
2 4 2 For instance, going back to the computer analogy, he briefly touches on the difference
between descriptionalist and functional-pictorial representations: the “unstructured lists on
[computer] files” constitute the former, and structuring “arrays” constitute the latter (47).
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without the intermediary of unintuitive symbolisms that describe the operations
involved in the making of the image.
In Tye’s description of the pictorialist model, one may observe the slippage
between a model of the image (functional picture) and the phenomenon of image;
this occurs when Tye observes that “[in] Kosslyn’s view, it is not literally true that
the mental images are pictures. Rather the truth in the picture theory is that mental
images are functional pictures.” Tye’s observation is very peculiar: in a certain
sense, of course, it is not literally true that “the mental images are pictures,” unless
one believes that mental images could be physically treated like the “realistic public
images” and that it is possible to hang mental images on the wall. He might mean,
instead, that it is not metaphorically true that mental images are pictures, or that it is
not (literally) true that mental pictures are picture-like; but these last statements
would contradict with the basic assumption of pictorialism that he is examining: that
phenomenal images are like pictures, in the sense of being visual or spatial. Rather,
what is implied here is a difference between a “metaphorical” image that, being
phenomenal, brings about the belief in the picture-likeness of the image, and, a literal
image, which, scattered in the cells of the computational mind and inaccessible to
consciousness, is the true image. This use of language grants a literal, therefore a
higher status to a model of the image (functional picture) with respect to the
phenomenal image.
Tye also gives an overview of Kosslyn’s experiments, which are taken to
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constitute empirical support for Kosslyn’s claims about the image, and which largely
depend on the introspective reports of the participating subjects. One of the
experiments suggests that “at least some of the same mechanisms are at play in both
imagery and perception,” and that “vision and imagery share a common fixed
medium;” claims that are surprisingly similar to those of the introspective
philosophers. (49) Kosslyn also makes more specific claims concerning the medium
or the “visual buffer” that is shared by imagery and perception: that the buffer is “a
medium with limited extent;” that the image cannot represent objects smaller than a
certain size (“the visual buffer” has a grain); that the resolution of the image
decreases towards the periphery of the visual buffer; that mental images can be
scanned at fixed speeds; and, through an experiment by Roger Shepard and Nancy
Metzler, that images could be rotated at fixed speeds as well. (50-57). The
mysterious buffer that Kosslyn talks about is, by all means, the spatial scene of the
pictorial image or the virtual space of imagining, which seems to have little to do
with the phenomenally inaccessible functional pictures. In conducting these
experiments, Kosslyn appears to be attempting to describe specific features of the
phenomenal image, with the purpose of developing a more complete model of the
image (functional picture).
Descriptionism, in Tye’s account, opposes Kosslyn’s pictorialism. Tye
explains the descriptionist hypothesis by drawing a distinction between two types of
images that occur whenever a person has an image of a thing: a “representational”
image that represents a thing and is inaccessible to introspection, and a “phenomenal
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image,” which is a “mental object upon which the image-experience is directed and
which is given to the person in introspection.” Accordingly,
[0]ne version of the descriptionalist thesis is (a) that the representational
image is not identical with (nor does it constitute) the phenomenal image and
(b) that the representational image is a structural description that underlies
and gives rise to the phenomenal image. A second version of the thesis is that
the representational image is a structural description that is identical with (or
constitutes) the phenomenal image.(63)
There are two comments that I would like to make: the first one about the so-called
“representational image” and the second about the “structural description.” The
representational image is a model for the image that seeks to display the bodily and,
particularly, neurobiological processes and mechanisms that “underlie and give rise
to the phenomenal image.” In a way, then, the modeling intends to find out how it
should be like in certain parts of the body so that it becomes possible to have a
phenomenal image of a thing of a specific kind. So the descriptionalist model is not
just any model of image: as a model of the workings of the mind, it is also a material
or physical aspect of the body. Referring back to Tye’s statements above, how could
one ever model the phenomenal image of consciousness based on the
representational image of the body as in (b), while denying any identity between
them, as in the first version (a)? It must be “the second version,” which allows the
modeling: the representational image is identical with the phenomenal image, which,
in turn, implies that the mind is to be seen as equal to the body. The assumption of
identity (representational image=phenomenal image) is, in fact, the most puzzling
and difficult assumption that underlies both descriptionalism and pictorialism. It is
important to note that the uncritical, unqualified acceptance of this assumption may
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have its problematic consequences, such as the dismissal of the phenomenal image
and its replacement with the representational image (“structural descriptions” or
“functional pictures”) .2 4 3
Descriptionalism, like pictorialism, seeks to know how a “representative
image,” (which, by all means, is the bodily counterpart of the phenomenal image)
stores, manipulates, “represents” its objects, based on introspective and experimental
evidence concerning the workings of the phenomenal image. In descriptionalism, the
phenomenal image is said to be constituted by “structural descriptions,” as opposed
to the “functional-pictures” of pictorialism; it is this difference that is supposed to
create an opposition.
Structural description, in Tye’s account of descriptionism, is a “complex
linguistic representation whose basic nonlogical semantic parts represent object
parts, properties and spatial relationships.” The linguistic aspect of these
2 4 3 In a passage, Tye addresses this issue, by taking sides with the descriptionalists that
equate the phenomenal image with the representational:
Perhaps the claim that phenomenal images are structural descriptions will strike
some philosophers as absurd. Does not introspection demonstrate that such a view is
mistaken? No, it does not. It is of course true that when I image something, I am
introspectively aware that the object of my experience is a mental image, without
being aware that it is a structural description.. .The general point is that the format of
imagistic representations—the way in which they encode their content—need not be
given in introspection, even if such representations are themselves objects of
introspective awareness (64).
Tye’s presents his point very well: the implication is that w e m ay not be aware o f the format
or codes that underlie our phenomenal images, while being certainly aware of them. What
Tye suggests here is less of an equality, and more of a difference that holds between
phenomenal images and structural descriptions. Such difference arises from their belonging
to different levels: one such level pertains to the level of introspectively available
consciousness, and the other, to a “deeper level” which is inaccessible to introspection and
which may be thought as the body.
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412
descriptions, however, remains elusive: one also suspects that, despite the scientific
tendency to be literal, “language” here is used as a metaphor for a code or a system
of symbolic representation, an example of which are mathematical and logical
propositions or computer commands, such as “this represents Object A,” or “Object
A is closer to Object B than Object C.” Tye notes that such propositions are “explicit
representations of properties and spatial relations”; and that, explicitness is not a
property of Kosslyn’s quasi-pictures: these latter consist of binary sequences of data
that automatically project the object on the mind’s screen.2 4 4 The difference appears
to be nothing more than that between propositions and data-cells: the pictorial image
is drawn either from a symbolic representation of the object (descriptionalism) or
from non-symbolic information contained in cells (pictorialism).
To better explain the descriptionalist perspective, Tye discusses, along with
Pylyshyn’s experiments, Hinton’s model of the image. Hinton’s model is quite
fascinating in giving a possible explanation of the process, in which the image of an
object is constructed by way of using the information concerning the object.
According to Hinton’s model, consciousness stores information about the object and
about the way we see the object, separately; consequently, we have object-centered
and viewer-centered information. The image is constructed, when “viewer-centered
information [concerning the imagined object] [is] affixed to object-centered
structural descriptions of object’s shapes” (71). So the object-centered information
(or “structural descriptions”) chronologically precedes the viewer-centered
2 4 4 Similarly, unlike Kosslyn’s quasi-pictures, “[s]tructural descriptions have syntactic
parts.”
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413
information. While generating an image, consciousness activates only a subset of the
stored object-centered structural descriptions—the activation of all these descriptions
may be unnecessary and economical—it then adds to this subset the viewer-centered
information. Viewer-centered information consists of information on the viewer’s
frame of reference, which spatially locates object and object parts with respect to the
viewer. With this information, the imagined object gains perspective, so to speak: it
becomes similar to the seen objects, which are always perceived from a point of
view. In fact, one of the unquestioned assumptions of Tye’s study and the models
that he examines is that, given the similarity between visual perception and the
image, the image must always contain a viewer’s point of view, with respect to
which the imagined objects are located. Interestingly, in his phenomenological
descriptions of the image in LTmaginaire. Sartre makes exactly the opposite
assumption, that images do not contain any viewpoints. If the words of inner speech
do not need viewpoints to appear in consciousness, I would ask, why would pictorial
images need them? What if the pictorial image were like signs in the sense of not
requiring any viewpoints? This last question relates to the possibility that I have
discussed in my third chapter: that pictorial images may also be understood as
“visual signs,” similar to words or “linguistic signs.”
Tye’s own model of the image, which integrates aspects of pictorialism and
descriptionism, acts on the premise that there are shared mechanisms and
representations in imagery and vision. To construct his model of the image, Tye
ingeniously utilizes David Marr and Keith Nishihara’s model of vision that offers a
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414
scientific explanation of the mechanisms involved in the experience of seeing an
object from the perspective of a viewer. The explanation is centered on shape-
recognition in perception, which consequently results in object-recognition.
According to the model, shape recognition happens in the following way: the
perception of an object generates retinal intensity-values that are stored in arrays;
and, the evaluation of dramatic changes in these values (zero-crossings) is
interpreted as indicators of changes in the surface of the object. By way of a series of
similar evaluations, a primal sketch and then a “2 V 2 -D sketch” of an object is
generated. These sketches, both generated from a particular viewpoint, represent the
object in two and three dimensions respectively. They belong to the early stage of
perception, or “early vision,” which results in the consciousness of the shape of the
object, but not in the consciousness of the particular object. As an example of early
vision, one might recall Sartre’s description of the photograph of a man, in which the
features that constitute the photograph are recognized before the recognition of the
man in the photograph. To achieve object-recognition, viewer-independent, or
object-centered representations of the object must be generated from the viewer-
centered 2 l A -D sketch. These newly generated object-centered representations must
be “matched against stored, object-centered shape representations,” which Marr calls
“3-D model descriptions,” and which are analogous to Hinton’s object-centered
“structural descriptions.” Once the matching is completed, object-recognition
becomes complete (82).
Tye bases his model of the image on Marr’s 2 l A -D sketch, which implies
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415
that the image must always contain a viewpoint. However, he is less interested in the
processes involved in the generation of the image, and more in the description of the
image as an already-accomplished, discrete representation. The image is an array that
is composed of cells that represent the features of the imaged object. To this array, “a
sentential interpretation having the content ‘This represents [the imaged object] is
affixed.’” (90) With this “sentential,” i.e., linguistic appendix, Tye appears to have
resolved the problem of Kosslyn’s pictorialist model, which in creating the picture of
an object cannot account for the consciousness of the pictured object (94).
Otherwise, the representational system that Tye adopts is rather similar to Kosslyn’s.
There are two kinds of cells that make up the image-array in Tye’s model: 1)
Kosslyn’s non-symbolic full or empty data-cells that represent the existence and the
nonexistence of object-shapes 2) symbol-filled cells that represent other phenomenal
features of the object (“color, intensity, texture, depth, orientation, presence of an
edge, presence of a ridge”, and cells that represent the third dimension of the object).
The image, which corresponds to Mart’s 2 1/2 -D sketch, is generated in two
different ways, from two kinds of information stored in memory: from stored viewer-
centered information concerning the object’s visual appearances, similar to 2 V i -D
sketches, or from object-centered or “structural shape” descriptions, similar to the
“3-D model descriptions” of Marr (95).2 4 5 In the latter case, a conversion from
2 4 5 In the latter case, Tye implies, converting descriptions to images (appearance) is
necessary, the former case, where the image is spontaneous, so to speak: the image is
generated as mere appearance. The reason why Tye wants to make such a distinction seems
to account for cases where spontaneously generated images reveal new information about
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416
object-centered descriptions to a 2 Vi -D sketch (viewer-centered image) becomes
necessary.2 4 6
Overall, Tye’s model is rather static: it assumes that the information
belonging to the imaged object is stored in discrete representations, as if these
representations themselves were not in need of being assembled or synthesized. In
this model, the image could, very simply, be looked up and fetched from the
corresponding parcel of information from long-term memory. The object is readily
given as already-existing sketches, as opposed to being drawn (or made) anew with
each generation of the image, by way of non-discrete, diffuse bits of information. A
most significant question does not get addressed in any of the models of the image:
how are objects stored in memory, or, to use the terms of some of the theories
presented, how are Hinton’s object-centered descriptions or Marr’s “3-D model
descriptions” made, if they ever exist, before they are given over to image-
generation?
Tye is fully aware of this kind of an objection that could be made against his
proposal 2 4 7 at the end of a brief discussion of the connectionist viewpoint, according
to which information in long-term memory is stored only dispositionally and not in
the imaged object, and no such new image could occur if the image is generated from an
already known, elaborate or “rich” structural descriptions (95).
2 4 6 This is exactly the inverse of the conversion from the 2 V i sketch to object-centered
descriptions that enables the recognition of a seen object in Marr’s theory.
2 4 7 This objection, he says, “concerns whether it is plausible to suppose that information
[concerning the object] is stored in long-term memory in discrete data-structures or
representations” (101)
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417
discrete representations, he concludes that his theory of the image does not need to
be taken to “commit him to holding that the information.. .is stored in discrete
representations,” and adds:
Perhaps it is possible to make sense of the fact that image generation draws
upon distinct parcels of information without holding that this information is
encoded in discrete, stored representations. If so, then my talk of such
representations may be viewed as a fagon de parler. (102)
I take this to be a covert admission that the image is in need of a still more “literal”
model, and that, until such a model is introduced, one will have to do with fagons de
parler. 2 4 8 At the end of the discussion of his model, Tye strikes a middle note
between the two fagons de parler that characterize the pictorialist and
descriptionalist points of view: “images as pictures” and “images as words”:
2 4 8 1 would to make two remarks in relation to Tye’s fagon de parler. In his model, as well as
in all the models that he examines, one may detect a tendency to overcome prevailing
models of the image with new ones that are thought to be less tainted with fashions and more
concerned with the “truth”; but even then, these ones cannot help bringing about their own
fagons de parler. The problem is not that such fashions are untruthful: to the opposite, they
may be replete with insights. There are insights to be drawn from both statements: “Images
are like pictures” or “Images are like descriptions.” The problem, I believe, is to turn these
fashions into critical orthodoxies, claiming, for instance, that “images, being like
descriptions, are nothing like pictures” and visa versa.
As a second note, Tye seems to have found a better fagon de parler in a later
chapter, while discussing an experiment cited by Pylyshyn in which 4-year old children view
an inclined beaker containing a colored fluid and are then asked to draw it. The result of the
experiment is that the children typically draw the fluid level as perpendicular to the sides of
the inclined beaker. Tye claims that the images of the children may be thought of in three
different ways: as “clear photographs” (snapshot memories of the inclined beaker with the
fluid), as “blurred photographs” (decaying memories or percepts where some parts are
invisible, or indistinguishable from other parts), or as “drawn pictures” (where the image is
generated by way of a process that involves the inclusion of some selective features of an
object that are of interest and the exclusion of others that are of no interest) (111). Tye
argues for the last of these possibilities: images are like drawn pictures.
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418
The problem with the [two] theories that I rejected.. .is not that they are
completely wrong-headed but rather that they are only partly right. In some
respects mental images are a little like pictures, but in others they are like
descriptions. The truth about images, I suggest, is that they are a mixed breed.
( 102)
I believe, what Tye suggests here, albeit in a rather different vocabulary, is the same
hybridity that I have discussed in relation to Sartre’s L ’ Imaginaire in my third
chapter. There, I have argued for a hybrid consciousness where words and pictures
converge, where sign and imaging consciousness become continuous. The image
may be seen as a product of a hybrid consciousness; as such, it can be both like
picture and like word. To go back to Wittgenstein’s accurate fagon deparler, the
image is hieroglyphic.
Summary
I have come to the end of my discussion of Tye’s study of the imagery. I
would now like to present a summary of a number of assumptions and claims made
about the image by Tye and others. Note that a majority of the claims, that are taken
to be scientific and empirical, are based on the kind of introspective, “armchair”
theorizing that Tye is critical of:
a) The image is discussed in relation to the phenomenon of having the image of
a visual object(s) in consciousness. Accordingly, the basic components of the
image are thought to be objects, object-parts, and spatial relations between
objects.
b) According to the pictorialist claim, images are similar to physical pictures.
This claim may be articulated in different ways:
1) The experiences that one undergoes while having an image are similar to
the experiences that one undergoes while seeing pictures
2) Images resemble their objects just like physical pictures that resemble
their objects.
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419
3) Images represent their objects just like physical pictures represent their
objects.
4) Images represent their objects pictorially, that is, in a picture-like code.
This code symbolically accounts for image-properties, such as spatial
properties, as well as color, intensity, depth, etc.
c) According to Tye, (1), (2) and (3) of the above claims, which belong to the
historical and introspective pictorialist thinking, are unsatisfactory. (4) is an
assumption of both his and Kosslyn’s theory.
d) According to the descriptionalist claim, images represent their objects
linguistically, that is, in a language-like code. The “linguistic” status of this
code, however, is not clear. The code symbolically accounts for image-
properties (spatial properties, as well as color, intensity, depth, etc.); it also
consists of explicit commands that create the consciousness of the object-
features, similar to the linguistic command “this code represents this object.”
Tye integrates such explicit commands into his theory. In addition, Tye very
briefly hints that images may represent their objects in a similar way as words
(descriptions, or linguistic representations) represent their objects.
e) Images and perception are thought to be similar in the way they represent
their objects, which implies that perception and image share similar
mechanisms. The implication that, by extension, the perception of the
physical picture and the consciousness of the image may share similar
mechanisms is not considered.
f) In some of the theories Tye discusses, there is a tendency to equate a
particular model of the image with the image itself. With this, the model
takes upon an ontological priority, a position of “literalness” and “truth,” over
the phenomenal image, which, in consequence, is rendered inessential.
g) Tye makes a special effort to show that images can be sketchy and
indeterminate, and that the image’s indeterminateness does not imply that the
analogy between physical pictures and mental images is entirely invalid. This
is not only because physical pictures, themselves, can be sketchy and
indeterminate; it is mainly because images are drawn (or made) pictures,
unlike physical pictures of one’s perception that are given.
h) As regards to terminology, the more “scientific” terms, “representing
pictorially” or “representing linguistically,” are hardly any improvement over
the historical terms, “picture-like” or “language-like.” In uncritical use, some
important questions concerning the terms and their relationship (what is
picture or word? how does picture or word represent? is it possible to mediate
between picture and word?) remain unanswered.
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420
There is at least one significant gain that results from going through some of the
speculations and theories of cognitive psychology and philosophy: that the image is a
phenomenon that is far from being adequately understood, and that it is worthy of
further research. Another gain, which I would like to note in relation to both my own
arguments and my commentary on Tye’s work, is the understanding that the
commitment to the affinity between words and images, language and imagination,
does not necessitate the denial of the visuality or the pictoriality of the image. Yet
another gain is the attention brought to some anti-pictorialist positions, not
uncommon in the fields of philosophy and literary criticism: positions that deny the
image altogether, with no other proof than the force of assertion.
The implication of my discussions for literary studies and literary theory is
clear: the use of the terms “image” or “picture” in relation to the readers’ response to
literary texts must not be dismissed as mere talk or mere analogy. Rather, these terms
reflect a puzzling phenomenon of consciousness, in which the reader undergoes an
imaginary visual experience during the act of reading literature. A better
understanding of this phenomenon may certainly lead to insights into the ways of
literature, by showing us how things, subjectivities, others, situations, worlds are
constructed, non-visually and visually, through the guidance of the written words in
the reader’s imagination. Then, we may perhaps begin, once again, to picture the
words of our books in the same way we have become accustomed to reading the
pictures of our world.
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421
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Creator Suner, Mustafa Ahmet (author)

Core Title Words pictured, pictures read: Imagination, literary language and visuality in Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Sartre

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Comparative Literature

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Language, General,Literature, General,literature, romance,OAI-PMH Harvest,Philosophy

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-590797

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Legacy Identifier 3236554.pdf

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Rights Suner, Mustafa Ahmet

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