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A Redescriptionof "RomanticArt"
Niklas Luhmann
MLN, 111 (1996): 506-522 ? 1996 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
MLN 507
II
5 See Clavis Fichteana seu Leibgeberiana,in Jean Paul, Werke,vol. 3, Munich 1961,
pp. 1011-56, or Flegeljahre,eine Biographie,in Werke,vol. 2, Munich 1959, pp. 567-1065,
esp. 641.
6 This special condition of an unavoidable trust in the world that can only be dis-
rupted through critical reflection holds, however, only for psychic systems. For this rea-
son we can leave it out of consideration in what follows.
7 The parallels between deconstruction and second-order cybernetics are treated
more thoroughly in: Niklas Luhmann, "Deconstruction as Second Order Observing,"
New LiteraryHistory24 (1993), pp. 763-82.
M LN 509
8 See
George Spencer Brown, LawsofForm,New York 1979. Cf. also Dirk Baecker, ed.,
KalkiilderForm,Frankfurt 1993.
9 Heinz von Foerster, ObservingSystems,Seaside, Cal. 1981. See also the German edi-
tion expanded with several additional contributions: Heinz von Foerster, Wissenund
Gewissen.VersucheinerBriicke,Frankfurt 1993.
10This presupposes, of course, a de-subjectification of the concept of meaning. For a
thorough elaboration of this point see Niklas Luhmann, SozialeSysteme:Grundrifieiner
allgemeinenTheorie,Frankfurt 1984, p. 92ff.
11On this point and on what follows, see Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm,54ff., 69ff.
12 Ibid., p. 76.
13 Ibid., p. 57.
510 NIKLAS LUHMANN
14 Hence of the
freeing-up and the reimpregnation of the observational capacities of
the system. This according to Heinz F6rster, Das Geddchtnis.Eine quantenmechanische Un-
tersuchung,Vienna 1948. This formulation, by the way, shows how identities emerge,
namely through confirmation (Bewdhrung) in reimpregnation or, in the terms of
Spencer Brown (Laws of Form,p. 10), through condensation and confirmation; in any
case, however, through the ongoing equation (Abgleichung)with new irritations but not
with fixed contents of the environment.
15 In doctrines of wisdom the opposite requirement is occasionally stated: "The wise
perceive every thing as new, in attentive observation if not at first glance." Baltasar
Gracian, CriticonoderUeberdie allgemeinenLasterdesMenschen,Hamburg 1957, p. 15.
MLN 511
includes what it excludes, indicates what in any given case can be oth-
erwise. This too does not require, but rather makes possible a chrono-
metric ordering of future temporal positions.
The differencebetween the simultaneously required memory and oscil-
lator functions makes the construction of time necessary, the distinc-
tion of past and future and the insertion of a present between them in
which alone the system can operate. Via temporal difference modal-
theoretical paradoxes can be dissolved, for example the supramodal
necessity of contingency that was once so important to theology. The
necessary can now be seen as a consequence of its being past, the con-
tingent as a feature of the future. With the distinction of past and fu-
ture the system can, additionally, deal with the requirement that it si-
multaneously (!) generate and hold in store both redundancy and
variety;the requisite redundancy will then be attributed to the past, the
requisite variety to the future. And that still leaves the question open
whether one conceives of the present as constant, as enduring, and
time as flowing through it, or construes the present of the system as
process, as a movement out of the past in the direction of the future.
The system can think of itself as static and as the correlate to the eter-
nity of God, for example as a soul which must endure its temporal ex-
istence; or as dynamic and with the necessity/impossibility of using the
present in order to shape the future. This distinction can then be used
to adapt the temporal structures to socio-cultural configurations. In any
case, however, the constructivist analysis compels one to conclude that
every present is furnished with past and future horizons and for that
reason that the future can never become present.16 The temporal hori-
zons only shift with, indeed by virtue of, the operations of the system so
that from moment to moment new pasts and futures are being selected.
Reformulated in terms of the theory of games, what follows from
this analysis is that the game can only be played within the game and
only with distinctions that identify the individual operations and si-
multaneously the play itself.17 That's why Adam (in Paradise Lost) had to
have the world explained to him by the archangel Raphael; and that's
why Henry Adams can only describe his education as the play of an in-
determinate I against an indeterminate world.18
16 On this point see Niklas Luhmann, "The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Struc-
tures in Modern Society," SocialResearch43 (1976), pp. 130-52.
17For several mathematical variants of this theme, cf. Louis H. Kauffman, "Waysof
the Game-Play and Position Play,"Cybernetics and Human Knowing2/3 (1994), pp. 17-
34.
18
Henry Adams, TheEducationof HenryAdams,New York 1918.
512 NIKLAS LUHMANN
III
In certain respects, mathematical theories have today overtaken what
in the so-called human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), but in sociology
as well, had always been intuited and expressed through a rather am-
biguous use of language. This is true above all for chaos theory.19 It is
also true of the catastrophe theory of Ren6 Thom and of the post-
Godelian calculus of forms of Spencer Brown discussed above. Of
course, it is not to be expected that Romanticism anticipated and more
or less intuitively took such a development of formal theory programs
into consideration. However, a close examination of the texts of
Romanticism can disclose so many correspondences that it becomes
unavoidable to ask how they can be explained.
An overhasty conclusion would be to say that Romanticism is nothing
other than the poetic paraphrase of a mathematical problem, a poetic
version of mathematics. We shall leave that view aside and instead make
our way via a sociological theory that can sustain empirical verification.
This intention was already alluded to above. Its point of departure is the
notion that the functional differentiation of modern society can be con-
ceived in terms of autonomous, operatively closed, autopoietic func-
tional systems. That leads to the hypothesis that all functional systems
draw limits or borders and therefore must reproduce the difference
between inside and outside internally as the difference self-reference/
hetero-reference. The transition from hierarchically fixed positional
orders describable as nature to the primacy of the distinction between
self- and hetero-reference is considered a characteristic, if not the deci-
sive feature of Romantic literature20 (and, one can add, Romantic art in
general). That encourages us to be on the lookout for the above de-
scribed consequences of re-entry. For in the final analysis the distinction
between self- and hetero-reference is nothing other than the re-entry of
the distinction system/environment into the system itself.
IV
With the differentiation of the art system and its disconnection from
external compulsions, an excess of communicative possibilities
19 On this point see Hayles, ChaosBound (note 2). On the discussions set into motion
by the theory of thermodynamics, see Kenneth D. Bailey, Sociologyand the New Systems
Theory,New York 1994.
20 See esp. Earl R. Wasserman, TheSubtler
Language.CriticalReadingsofNeoclassicaland
RomanticPoems,Baltimore 1959.
M LN 513
from the religious system, the political or economic systems, nor from
the households of the most important families as to how artworks are
to be made. For this reason one could almost say: autonomy becomes
the destiny which is interpreted as a defence against external inter-
vention; or the invisible cage in which the artist is forced to select,
to be original and free. Romanticism thus views and deals with the
problem of autonomy on the level of the artwork and the creative free-
dom of the artist derived from it, but not on the social level of the func-
tional system of art; for only in this way can Romanticism define its po-
sition. The social system of art lets itself be represented through the
idea of art.
All that reads like a commentary on the self-generated "unresolv-
able indeterminacy" that is unavoidable as soon as one reintroduces
the difference between system and environment within the system it-
self. And just as in mathematics imaginary numbers or imaginary
spaces are required in order to absorb paradoxes,32 Romanticism con-
denses the imaginary to the fantastic, and thereby to forms that pre-
cisely do not mean what they show, but are nothing other than mate-
rialized irony.33 But that by no means implies that all forms dissolve,
that no distinction any longer holds, that everything becomes arbi-
trary.On the other hand, it does not suffice to postulate with Kant that
freedom is given for its rational use or that the genius must make a dis-
ciplined and cautious use of his geniality.34 Rather, the artwork re-
ceives the task of demonstrating its own contingency and being its own
program; and that makes very severe demands on both productive and
receptive observation, which therefore cannot happen 'just any way."
Self-generated indeterminacy does not by any means imply that no
meaningful operations, no determinations are possible; merely that
determinations must be recognizable as self-determinations and as
such observable. In other words, communication must be transferred
to the level of second-order observation.
Against this background the reason that the Romantics begin to play
32 See
Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm,p. 58ff, where a tunnel is introduced beneath the
surface on which the system performs its acceptable calculations. Cf. Dirk Baecker, "Im
Tunnel," in Dirk Baecker, ed., ProblemederForm,pp. 14-37.
33 On the further development of this tendency-with ever new outraged oppo-
nents-up to surrealism, see Bohrer, Die KritikderRomantik,p. 39ff.
34 This is, by the way,a longstanding, pre-romantic idea. One encounters it in the dis-
tinction libertas/licentiaof natural law theory or in the disegnodoctrine of the cinquecento
with its distinction between creative imagination and the skilled and practiced execu-
tion of a drawing.
516 NIKLAS LUHMANN
39 On this
point, see Heinz von Foerster, "Das Gleichnis vom blinden Fleck," in Ger-
hard Johann Lischka, ed., Der entfesselteBlick: Symposium,Workshops, Ausstellung,Bern
1992, pp. 15-47.
40 See also
Ludwig Tieck, WilliamLovell,p. 603: "Esist ein Fluch, der auf der Sprache
des Menschen liegt, daB keiner den anderen verstehen kann." Cf. also p. 383 (Balder's
letter to William Lovell).
518 NIKLAS LUHMANN
41 One can
speculate that Kant's Kritikder Urteilskraftaimed at such an integration,
but failed to provide it.
MLN 519
42 For the
subsequent development of this configuration, see Karl Heinz Bohrer,
Plotzlichkeit:ZumAugenblickdes dsthetischenScheins,Frankfurt 1981.
43 This is the formulation of Matei Calinescu, "From the One to the
Many: Pluralism
in Today's Thought," in Hoesterey, ed., PostmodernistControversy,pp. 156-74; here, 157.
520 NIKLAS LUHMANN
46 On this
point, see Ingrid Oesterle, "Der 'Ffihrungswechsel der Zeithorizonte' in
der deutschen Literatur,"in Dirk Grathoff, ed., StudienzurAsthetikund Literaturgeschichte
derKunstperiode, Frankfurt 1985, pp. 11-75.
47 A concept of memory based in quantum physics that fits this state of affairs can be
found in Heinz von Foerster, "Wasist Gedachtnis, daB es Rufickschauund Vorschau er-
m6glicht?" in Wissenund Gewissen,pp. 299-336. See also by the same author, Das Geddcht-
nis (note 14).
48 Werke(n. 29), vol. I, p. 199.
49 For example, frogs. SeeJ. Y Lettvin, H. R. Maturana, W. S. McCulloch, and W. H.
Pitts, "Whatthe Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain," Proceedingsof theInstituteof RadioEn-
gineers47 (1959), pp. 1940-59.
522 NIKLASLUHMANN