Peter Bornedal:

The Interpretations of Art

Part II: Transition and Preromanticism

Contents

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: Classical Transparency and Romantic Opaqueness

1) The Modern Conception of Poetry
2) A General Theme of the Work
3) The Question of Method and Reading-Strategy
4) A Brief Overview of the Composition of the Work

1
1
2
5
8

PART ONE: NEOCLASSICISM

Chapter 1: Neoclassicism, Its Freedoms and Its Norms
1) Rejecting Poetry as Irresponsible and Deceptive
2) The Consistency of Platos Doctrine on Poetry
3) Poetry as a Discourse Without an Object
4) The Justifications of Poetry
4.1) Poets are not Liars 25
4.2) An Evasive Distinction Between
Imitation and Inspiration 28
4.3) The Purposes of Poetry Between
History and Philosophy 32
5) Reason as an Image of Nature
5.1) Rationality as Self-Evaluation Under
the Influence of an Other 36
5.2) Moderation and Excess 42
5.3) The Dangerous Excess of Refinement in Art
the Medium as Structural Principle 45
6) The Rules of the Theater
6.1) The Justification of Rules 48
2

15
15
17
21
25

36

48

6.2) Aristotle and The Unities 50

6.3) The Unities as Imitation of the Theater 53
Chapter 2: The Law of the NameLe Cid as Example
1) Code and Text
2) The Code of Honor
3) The Lack of Choice and Freedom
4) The Deathdrive of the Text
5) The Role of the King

65
65
70
73
76
78

PART TWO: TRANSITION AND PREROMANTICISM

Chapter 3: Classicists against Classical Ideals
1) Another Nature
2) Consequences of an Epistemological Breakdown
2.1) Transcending Discourse, Discovering Life 93
2.2) The Rejection of the Unities 98
3) Abolishing the Parallelism Between Poetry and Painting
3.1) Parallels Between Poetry and Painting 101
3.2) Interpretations of the Mouth of Laocoon 104
3.3) Lessings Semiotics 106
Chapter 4: Learning How to Judge Beauty
1) Abandoning the Neoclassical Episteme
2) Art and Nature, a New Juxtaposition
2.1) The Reorientation of Art 122
2.2) The Sublime as a Quality Found in Nature 125
2.3) Sight and Image, and the New Definition of Art 127
3) In Pursuit of a Uniform Standard of Taste
3.1) A Brief Sketch of the Problem 130
3.2) In Pursuit of Order (Hume) 131
3.3) In Pursuit of Order (Burke) 137
3.4) Burkes Analysis of Beauty and Sublimity 142
4) Kants Notion of Transcendental Beauty
4.1) Beauty as an Experiential and as a
Transcendental Quality 144
4.2) Beauty as Disinterest 145
4.3) Beauty as Universal 151
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89
89
93

101

119
119
122

130

144

4.4) Beauty as Purposiveness Without Purpose 153

5) Kants Concept of Genius

155

Chapter 5: The Origins of Man, Language, and Poetry

1) The Rational Principle: Origins and Differential Systems
2) The Formation of the First Words and Before
2.1) The First Passions and the Emergence
of Language 172
2.2) The Reflective Process, and how the First
Word Finds Its Way To Human Consciousness 176
2.2.1) The Non-Origin of Language 176
2.2.2) The Origin of Language in Reason 179
3) The Living and the Dead Languages, Voice and Writing
3.1) The Influence of the Climate 182
3.2) Sound and SenseA New Concept of Poetry 184
4) The Natural and the Contrived
4.1) A Desire for the Return of Nature 189
4.2) The Naive Artist 193
5) The Distinction Between Classic and Romantic
5.1) The Controversy About the Invention
of the Distinction 196
5.2) The Natural Realist and the Cultural Idealist 198
5.3) Schlegel About the Objective and the Interesting 203

169
169
172

Chapter 6: Emotions and Social Restrictions

Die Leiden des Jungen Werther as Example
1) Narrative Framework
2) A Natural Structure, the Seasons
3) The Ambiguous Evaluation of Naivet
4) The Sensitive Artist Contra the Prosaic Bourgeois
5) The Lack of Presence of Death

215

182

189

196

215
217
219
225
232

PART THREE: ROMANTICISM

Chapter 7: Inventing an Other Reality
1) Individualism and Transcendentalism in the
Romantic Paradigm
2) The Romantic Artist and the Discontent With the World
2.1) Inspiration and the Other World 241
2.2) A Ray of Dim Light 243
2.3) Art as Auto-Affection 245
2.4) Music as Imitation of Feelings;
a Language of the Heart 249
3) Art as a Universal and Infinite Task
3.1) The View of Art as Mythology 253
3.2) Poetry as an Infinite Ideal 257
3.3) Romantic Irony 259
4) Philosophy and Art. Art Without Frame
4.1) The Work of Art In-and-For-Itself 262
4.2) Schellings Dialectics 263
4.3) The Universe as Art and the
Construction of Genius 268
4.4) Self-Reflection and Imagination 272
5) Imaginative Language Contra Rustic Language
5.1) Imagination 276
5.2) Coleridges and Wordsworth
Controversy over Poetry 279
5.2.1) The Problem Stated 279
5.2.2) Wordsworths Low and Rustic
Poetic Language 279
5.2.3) Why Rustic Language Bothers Coleridge 285

239
239

Chapter 8: Infantilizing People, Sentimentalizing Society

Heinrich von Ofterdingen as Example
1) Representing Romantic Reality
2) Beyond the Poetry of the Blue Flower
3) Descending into the Underground in Search of Truth
4) Metaphysical Ignorance and the
Importance of Illegible Books
5) The Metaphysical Task of Undoing the
Death of the Beloved

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241

253

262

276

302
304
311
314
320

Conclusion: Summary of the Point of View

1) Neoclassicism
2) Transition and Preromanticism
3) Romanticism

331
331
336
343

Bibliography

347

Index

356

Chapter 3
________________________________________
Classicists Against Classical Ideals

1) Another Nature
In neoclassicism, the rules of the theater were regarded as natural
laws regulating the drama. Within the neoclassical paradigm itself,
however, one begins to perceive these rules as artificial constraints on
poetry, increasingly becoming outdated. If beforehand natureas the
nature of dramaimplied that the drama was organized according to
certain natural rational standards, one begins now to understand nature as something more chaotic and disordered. Nature is no longer
the order of things and appearances, no longer an order with a reassuring uniformity and harmony, repeating itself as the same from work to
work.
If beforehand nature fundamentally was understood as an order of
identical standards organizing different appearances, such as dramatic
poetry, nature is suddenly understood as an order beyond rules and
laws. If beforehand, nature fundamentally was a logic, repeated as the
same and applied as the same on diverse material, nature is now the
opposite of logic. Now nature is not repeated as the same logic or applied as the same rules to dramatic poetry; nature is a disorder in
much better agreement with the things, appearances, and phenomena
themselves. Nature now grows in the things themselves as a quality
and essence of things, not as alien and artificial man-made regulations.
Thus, gradually, nature gets another definition, a definition approximately opposite to the former. Nature is not rule governed, it is something much more chaotic, confused, and unpredictable, and as such it
better resembles innate and general human behavior and psychology.
Nature is not a logical order of things but an inherent (dis-) order of
human beings.

The spectator, one begins to argue, is no longer interested in tragedies restrained by the rules of the unities. This regularity becomes absurd because neither does it depict a natural development in human life
nor does it recognize the actual capacity of abstraction and imagination
in the spectators.
As we have seen, the unities were meant to provide probability to
the action on the stage. This probability was viewed in relation to the
specific situation of the audiences as spectators. There had to be resemblance between two realities: the action on the stage and the situation in the theater hall. It was like an equation: in the ideal case, two
hours here should equal two hours there; one stage here should equal
one place there. One realizes now that measuring fiction against the
physical surroundings of the auditorium and the stage is to apply highly
artificial and arbitrary standards to dramatic poetry.
The formerly celebrated argument that spectators watching a play
for only a few hours ought not be presented with an action extending
over several weeks or months because that would stretch their powers
of imagination beyond limits, this argument is not valid any longer.
Now, the play should formally refer to, or rather formally allegorize,
an exterior reality, a reality outside the theater, the reality of human life
as such. This implies that in the plot-construction one is suddenly permitted to include several plots. Regarding the duration of action one is
allowed to depict several years of a persons life (Macbeth and King
Lear gradually becomes legitimate examples of grand theater). Finally,
the stage is now allowed to image several different places in the enactment of fiction. The correspondence between fiction and human life becomes important; the theater is to a lesser extent required to illustrate
the code and to a higher extent to illustrate life.
The new epistemology pivots around a new definition of nature, no
longer understood as the logical order of things and surfaces but as a
universal essence of the human being. With regard to both content and
form, this new definition restructures the requirements of the theater.
However often the credo of poetry as imitation of life was repeated in
neoclassical writing, the theater was typically imitating only highly
idealized and stylized forms of life. The theater was not supposed to imitate the historical truth, or rather, it was only supposed to imitate this
truth in an idealized manner; it was obliged to beautify this truth to fit
the stage. The biensance was pursued to accommodate good taste
and conduct, and the stage often presented a world of kings, gods, or
2

semi-gods, choosing its material from certain well-known historical or

mythological events. This idealization of poetical content is replaced
with a universalization where human beings are depicted as they are,
as men as they act as men.
Also formally, the theater has to comply with the new requirements.
The theater is no longer supposed to be viewed as a small, closed universe of its own, as a discourse, a language-game with its own rules
which the spectators play for a couple of hours while suspending their
actual life-world, because this life-world was not understood as theatermatter. According to the new paradigm, the theater is not just a province with its well-defined place in the order of discourses; it has opened
up itself to the life-world of the people. Now one demands that plays
should resemble the actions of real men. This demand is implicit in
Lessings famous repudiation of the classical stage when he complains
about the inanity of the rules of the French theater, and suggests that the
poet should represent men in their universality: If pomp and etiquette
make machines out of men, it is the task of the poet to make men again
out of these machines.1 Now the spectators look for a delightful confusion in the play resembling their own life, not for rules.
Thus, the rules of the unities are not abandoned because they per se
are illogical, artificial, and intolerable constraints on the play, but because of an epistemological break where one advocates another interpretation of humanity and nature. The unities are not exposed by a universal reason, suddenly waking up and becoming aware of itself. The
unities have their logic and rationality within a certain context, in
another context they lose this logic and rationality.
In these discussions, Shakespeare becomes the illustrious symbol of
the paradigmatic transformation. Formerly criticized for his crudeness
and lack of sophistication, Shakespeare is suddenly interpreted as a poet
truly representing the new universal nature of human beings. In neoclassical criticism, Shakespeare was typically viewed as crude and unrefined, although one had developed a classificatory system sufficiently
refined to acknowledge sides of excellence in Shakespeare. With the dichotomy of invention and copying, one had a classificatory tool to recognize and commend Shakespeare as the inventor, as the naturally
gifted poet, who was nevertheless in need of learning and discipline.
Now this inventive side of Shakespeare is accentuated. Shakespeare is
the naturally gifted poet representing life and human beings as they are,
and it does not matter that he lacks discipline. Shakespeare is now qual3

ified by his relationship to nature and through the spontaneity of his

work: All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew
them not laboriously but luckily.2 It now becomes a qualification that
he is less educated, but draws upon his own natural resources: Those
who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation; he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books
to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. 3
In the quotation, an important displacement of the definition of nature is announced. From being something one supposedly is able to
learn from or perceive through the spectacles of books, nature is now
becoming something outside or beyond the domain of books insofar as
nature abodes inside every human being. With this new understanding, nature is now something that writes itself, not something already
written in any book. It is, in effect, something not written, something
that cannot be learned through writing. To be able to perceive and
represent this inside, this un-written, is already considered by Dryden
a mark of extraordinary excellence and found only in a few poets such
as Shakespeare.
A major epistemological break occurs around this new and different
notion of nature; it manifests itself as hostility to and suspicion of writing (understood as the generic term for laws, rules, structures, mechanics, decorum, etc.) If formerly poets were recommended to understand
writing (in this specific generic sense), poets are increasingly recommended to understand the un-written, that is, the human soul, their
own poetic soul, the soul of nature, the sacred moment of divine inspiration. Poets, in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, become name-givers of things and states of affairs which not yet have
found expression and articulation because they exist beyond the visible
world in a metaphysical universe outside the range of senses. This appears to be a general tendency in modern Western criticism up to today.

2) Consequences of an Epistemological Breakdown

2.1) Transcending Discourse, Discovering Life
For the critics it becomes a question what one ought to imitate after
the transgression of the neoclassical ideals. The critics of neoclassicism,
like Johnson and Lessing, never give up the Aristotelian notion of art as
imitation of life. But this notion gets an entirely different content. Slow4

ly, one develops a new idea of what life is, an idea altogether different
from the neoclassical concept. Art remains an imitation of life, but
life with a new and different content.
When the neoclassicists imitate life and nature, it is beautified and
idealized lifethe biensance. Often the lives of the royalty and their
court are the objects of imitation, and consequently are represented with
a poets keen sense of how the royalty like to see themselves
represented. Poets, like Shakespeare, who to a lesser extent observe this
etiquette, are criticized by Rhymer and Voltaire for crudeness. Shakespeares Romans are not sufficiently Roman, his kings are not completely royal, and in Hamlet it offends that the Danish Usurper is
represented as a drunkard, as Samuel Johnson mockingly renders this
early Shakespeare criticism.4
With the epistemological breakdown a more general representation
of life becomes possible. Representation of the unrefined becomes legitimate and is even recommended by critics like Johnson and Lessing.
The doctrines of verisimilitude and biensanceas doctrines pertaining to the probability and morality of the playare conceived as
narrow and artificial. If nature is the nature of human beings, as they
are and have been through all times, the theatrical representation of
kings, gods, and semi-gods does not respond well to this new interest in
a representation of humans as universal and generic beings.
This criticism of the artificial and idealized French theater is indicated as early as in Dryden when, in An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, he
lets Neander (defending the English theater) answer Lisideius (defending the French neoclassical theater): Tis true, those beauties of the
French poesy are such as will raise perfection higher where it is, but are
not sufficient to give it where it is not; they are indeed the beauties of a
statue but not of a man.5
A criticism of perfection, of the obligatory beautification of facts
represented on the stage, is already indicated. The biensance is now
interpreted as artificial, lifeless, and mechanical. Actors enacting their
characters as statues do not represent human beings as they really are.
Spectators are consequently alienated from real human life and action.
This was, as mentioned, not the first time one interrogated the neoclassical rules of the unities or the ideas of decorum. Within the neoclassical paradigm itself, the rules of the unities were in fact already discussed, and also critically discussed. But typically one would interrogate their inherent logic or their philological sources.6 The rules of the
5

unities and decorum are now countered by a different type of argument,

ultimately a type of argument pertaining to presence. The rules of the
unities are not criticized because it is impossible to carry them out according to the logic which they themselves are supposed to institute; the
rules are now perceived as alienating. They alienate human beings from
their nature, distort the representation of what human beings are, and
misrepresent the powers of human imagination. Now one realizes that
the regulations of the stage are far less sophisticated than the capacity
of human experience and imagination outside the theater.
This idea of a universal nature of man, as the true object for artistic
rendition, permeates the criticism of the artificial neoclassical theater
with its different regulations. In regard to tragicomedy, it was, according to French theater-theory, impossible to mix tragedy and comedy.
One could not mingle the mirth of comedy with the seriousness of the
tragic plot because the spectators were not able to shift this quickly
from a scene of passion to a scene of merriment. It was established wisdom that tragedy and comedy were contraries, not to be represented in
the same play. As early as in Dryden this idea begins to sound hollow,
and his argument is basically that what we are capable of doing in real
life we can do equally well in the theater.
He tells us we cannot so speedily recollect ourselves after a scene of
great passion and concernment as to pass to another of mirth and humor and to enjoy it with any relish; but why should he imagine the soul
of man more heavy than his senses? Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant object to a pleasant in a much shorter time than is required to
this? And does not the unpleasantness of the first comment the beauty
of the latter? A continued gravity keeps the spirit too much bent; we
must refresh it sometimes, as we bait in a journey that we may go on
with greater ease.7

Also Johnson defends the mixture of the genres, and appeals in his
defense explicitly to nature as the alternative one should choose when
the rules of criticism become too rigid and inflexible: That this is a
practice [the unification of tragedy and comedy] contrary to the rules of
criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open
from criticism to nature.8
Another issue is the status of the plots. In French drama only one
plot is allowed, but this strictness makes their plays dry and barren.
There is no delightful confusion, as experienced on the English stage
6

where several plots are allowed. In the French plays there is just the
main plot, whereas in the English there are, besides the main plot, a lot
of underplots. The same is the case with regard to characters. Where
French plays are centered around one main character, the English have
a variety of characters, a diversity assessed as more pleasing since it is
unpredictable and contains surprises. It is infinitely pleasing to be led
in a labyrinth of design where you see some of your way before you, yet
discern not the end till you arrive at it.9 Thus, the English theater
represents a confusion of things, more like real life and nature.
A chief advocate for universality and common sense is Samuel
Johnson. In Johnsons Shakespeare criticism, Shakespeare is first and
foremost commended for his renditions of the common and universal in
the human being. Shakespeares heroes are real men, even when they
are royal. Shakespeare depicts real life, not life confined, on one hand,
to the formal strictures of the stage and the theater hall, and on the other
hand, to the thematic strictures regarding the obligatory beautification
and accommodation of the play to a certain established decorum.
It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excels in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other
authors.10 Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by
men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself
have spoken or acted on the same occasion . . . Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he
represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would
probably be such as he has assigned. . . . This is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life.11 Shakespeare always makes
nature predominate over accident. . . . His story requires Romans or
kings, but he thinks only of men.12

Shakespeares drama is a mirror of life. But life is now understood

as human nature which has never changed or will change in the course
of history, a nature which remains invariably the same. Therefore, Shakespeare is also excused if his historical figures do not follow the customs of their historical time, because if human nature is timeless and
unchanging, Shakespeare simply depicts the universally human in his
historical characters. With this, Shakespeare is closer to the truth of
human beings, than are those poets who faithfully represent changing
customs in their poetry. Shakespeare depicts emotions and tempers as

they exist, and will exist forever, in all human beings. He is not depicting the individual, but the type.
His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions
and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of
life continues in motion. In the writing of other poets a character is too
often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.13

Shakespeare is both more general and less artificial in his renditions

of persons. His characters speak a plain language and act as everybody
would act in similar situations. The universally human is better exposed
through the life of the common person as well as it is better represented
through ordinary language. The poet has the task of representing this
ordinary language as it is spoken in everyday life; it has to be sought
among those who speak only to be understood.
If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never
becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and
congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to
remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the
common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching
modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of
speech, in hope of finding or making better. . . . But there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides.14

To speak only to be understood implies conducting a discourse,

where the speakers have a transparent relation to the objects or states of
affairs about which they speak. In consequence, the speakers refer to a
world of permanent and immutable matters. They do not speak an elegant language just to impress themselves and each other. Ordinary language pertains to an unchanging world of objects and state of affairs,
contrary to the trendy discourse of polite society which changes with a
new style or fashion. Thus, ordinary language never becomes obsolete;
it naturally complements humans in their universal being. Both in his
use of language and in his rendition of characters, Shakespeare is seen
as the first to grasp this new ideal of common sense. Because Shakespeare applies this language beyond change to the stage, he shall never
become obsolete; he will remain forever new: The stream of time,
which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets,
passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.15
8

Therefore, Johnson supports his Shakespeare-criticism with a language-theory, a language-theory that was already developed in his
Preface to the Dictionary, the introduction to the English dictionary
which Johnson composed. In this preface, Johnson attempts to determine the principles for investigating the English language, and he emphasizes how he directs his pursuit into what appears unchanging and
universal. In this dictionary, Johnson attempts to convey an original
English language; he searches the roots of English. In this pursuit, it is
as important to avoid modern decorations as it is to avoid the crude.
Johnson is sufficiently neoclassical to avoid extremes, still emphasizing
the sound and reasonable medium. Johnsons project is to represent unrefined, ordinary, and original English. English as it was spoken before
the Restoration is understood as a source of this original English.
So far have I been from any care to grace my pages with modern decorations, that I have studiously endeavored to collect examples and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works I regard
as the wells of English undefiled, as the pure sources of genuine diction. . . . But as every language has a time of rudeness antecedent to
perfection, as well as of false refinement and declension, I have been
cautious lest my zeal for antiquity might drive me into times too remote.16

Shakespeares fame and notoriety begins to a great extent with

Johnson, and it begins because it is possible to interpret him within
Johnsons theoretical paradigm. Shakespeare becomes the author par
excellence who speaks Johnsons ideal English between crudeness and
refinement.
At this point, one notices the beginning of a tendency which is accentuated during the century. One looks back into the past; one turns
away from ones alienating present situation in order to find the roots
for something more original, authentic, genuine, and natural. This is a
tendency that is developed fully by authors like Rousseau and Herder
later in the century. A discrepancy is instituted between the present and
the past. On one side, there is the inauthentic present society with its
spurious politeness, mannerism, and beautification, rendered in a synthetic and ostentatious language, and, on the other, there is the authentic
past of genuine and solid norms conveyed in a simple and transparent
ordinary language. This dichotomy also develops into an opposition between city and countryside, and finally between culture and nature. At
9

this historical point, the dichotomy between nature and culture, as it is

known today, is entirely new, because nature in this new sense, as simplicity, rusticity, originality, or authenticity, simply was absent in the
neoclassical paradigm.

2.2) The Rejection of the Unities

Dryden complains that when the French theater, because of the unities, prohibits the representation of phenomena that do not occur within
a day, it discriminates against all the incidents that need more than
twenty-four hours of representation. It does not represent life universally, but only small departments of life. In his criticism of the French
theater, Drydens Neander insists that the theater should be given the
possibility of representing occurrences that extend the compass of twenty-four hours.
By their [the French] servile observations of the unities of time and
place and integrity of scenes, they have brought on themselves that
dearth of plot and narrowness of imagination which may be observed in
all their plays. How many beautiful accidents might naturally happen in
two or three days which cannot arrive with any probability in the compass of twenty-four hours?17

The basis of Drydens criticism is that confined by the rules of the

unities, we are deprived of experiencing life in its manifold, that the
rules imply a waste of occurrences that cannot be adequately
represented within this confinement. By submitting ourselves to these
rules we simply lose too much material which the imagination would
have enjoyed seeing represented. The criticism is raised from an economical point of view; the rigid neoclassicists squander incidents and
material.
In Johnson, the criticism of the unities becomes more radical and
sophisticated. Johnsons basic complaint is that the neoclassicists defending the unities confuse fiction and reality. The mind always revolts
against falsehood, the neoclassical critics argued, and if the drama departs too much from its resemblance with realitythat is, the reality of
the time and place of the theaterit loses credulity. Johnson sums up
the point of view.

10

The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the
supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it
impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed
to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in
the theater, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings,
while armies are levied and towns besieged.18

Thus, the neoclassical critics presume that the audience in their imagination readily confuse their own situation and the action on the
stage, and that the poet ought to moderate the effects of this confusion
by making the action, time, and place of the play, and the context of
stage and theater, as much alike as possible. In this situation, Johnson
commonsensically rejects as false the presupposition that the spectator
mistakes representation for reality. In claiming such confusion between
fable and reality, one assumes that the spectators actually would experience the play in the belief that they were partly in Alexandria and partly in Rome when the actor on the stage is supposed to be there. But in
such a hypothetical case the spectators would have to be out of their
senses, they would have to be living in a state of ecstasy without being
able to distinguish life and fiction, and Johnson emphasizes that this
presupposition is false because nobody mistakes representation for reality.
It is false, that any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment
was ever credited. . . . The objection arising from the impossibility of
passing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes,
that when the play opens the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theater has been a voyage to
Egypt.19

On the contrary, Johnson assures, the spectators are always in their

senses; they know that the stage is just a stage, the players only players.
Consequently, if the neoclassical precepts are established to protect the
spectators from being seduced by representation, they do not need this
protection because they have never allowed themselves to be seduced in
the first place.
The neoclassicist critic assumes that the audiences in their imagination confuse representation and reality and that the spectators cannot
abstract from representation. This assumption had the further consequence that representations of particularly strong or violent scenes were
11

discouraged. Poets were recommended not to enact fights and killings

in the play, but only to represent such events through a narration. A killing enacted on the stage would frighten and shock people, and it would
furthermore appear implausible, because nobody could bring themselves to believe that it actually happened. Either way, the spectators allegedly have difficulties separating the action on the stage from their
reality as spectators. The spectators are either regarded as overly imaginative beingsbeings who spontaneously live the events on the
stage and who cannot distinguish fiction and reality, consequently
somebody whose imagination must not be exposed to shock; or they are
regarded as applying a rational censorship to everything they see
relegating stage-events to the incredulous and implausible if they transgress rational stipulations. The illusion of the theater should be held in
tight reins to maintain its credulity against the judgment of this rational
censorship. Therefore, one should not transgress the theater, for example, by presenting occurrences on the stage which are implausible, or by
letting the fiction deviate from the frame of time and place within which
it unfolds.
In both cases the borderline between fiction and reality is fragile,
and sometimes invisible. The effect of the rules is to cancel this boundary between imitation and imitated, between signifier and signified,
between stage and context, between fiction and reality. Because of the
rules, these two realities are related; the borderline between them is
made as least offending as possible. In this endeavordenounced as restrictive to artistic creation a few years laterthe relationship between
fiction and reality is drawn in the theater. Formally the neoclassicists
believe in the distinction between fiction and reality as a distinction established in the theater. Thematically, however, the play typically imitates an ancient historical or mythological world, with no, or little, reference to the audience.
With critics such as Johnson, entirely different distinguishing principles are suggested; an entirely different dividing line between fiction
and reality is suggested. The dividing line is now established between
fiction and worldunderstood in a much wider sense. The formal relationship between imitation and imitated is not supposed to run
through the theaterstage and place, action and timebecause everybody knows that their situation as spectators has no part in the actions
on the stage; everybody knows that they are not situated in but apart
from the fiction on the stage. The spectators world as spectators, and
12

the characters (fictive) world are two radically different worlds with
no connection from the beginning; they cannot even be compared. In
consequence, one should no longer try to accommodate the fiction to
the surroundings of the audiences. One should not try to protect the
spectators from experiencing the falsehoods of fiction because the presupposition that they experience stage occurrences as compatible with
their own situation is insultingly naive. Spectators need no protection;
they already know that fiction is merely fiction, stage merely stage.
When fiction no longer has a connection to the specific circumstances of the audiences, fiction has a connection to the life-world of
people. The object imitated is replaced from theater to life-world, from
a relationship between fiction and theater to a relationship between fiction and life-world. Now, fiction begins to illustrate universals abstracted from an ordinary world in which people live, talk, and feel.

3) Abolishing the Parallelism Between Poetry and Painting

3.1) Parallels Between Poetry and Painting
According to a celebrated neoclassical doctrine, poetry and painting
were parallel arts. Poetry was a speaking picture; painting was dumb
poetry. They essentially did the same thing, but they did it, respectively, talking and silently.
In the essay, A Parallel betwixt Painting and Poetry, Dryden sums
up the commonly acknowledged similarities. For the most part they
concern the end, subject, and manner of the artistic creation. The end
is understood as the instruction and pleasure a poem or painting should
provide; the subject as what they properly ought to imitate, and the
manner as how they should be composed and structured. In these three
respects poetry and painting were regarded as parallel arts.
Thus, the neoclassical doctrine, defining poetry as pleasure with the
end to teach, also suits painting. Both genres must please, but whereas
poetry pleases the mind, painting pleases the eye. In both disciplines,
however, the higher purpose of pleasure is instruction: They would
both make sure of pleasing, and that in preference to instruction.20 If
poetry imitates stories or actions, painting imitates bodies or things, but
in the choice of either actions or bodies they both instruct because they
do not choose their subjects indiscriminately. There are stories which
are more or less proper for a poem to imitate as well as there are scena13

rios and subjects more or less proper for a painting to take up. Neither
poem nor painting ought to imitate the immoral and low. As such they
instruct, or ought to instruct, the proper, the great, and the noble: The
subject of a poet . . . is a great action of some illustrious hero. Tis the
same in painting; not every action, nor every person, is considerable
enough to enter into the cloth.21
When painting and poetry imitate, they have to imitate in the same
manner. When imitating nature, painting and poetry are not supposed to
imitate nature as it is, but nature beautified. The rule of the biensance
from the neoclassical stage also applies to painting. They present us
with images more perfect than the life in any individual; and we have
the pleasure to see all the scattered beauties of nature united by a happy
chemistry, without its deformities or faults.22
This is also a reason why both arts please; they both illustrate elevated ideas in nature; they illustrate what causes admiration, and admiration is always the cause of pleasure.23 Pursuing this objective they
moreover use the same means, as they both use deceit; they imitate
either objects or actions which are not real, events which are absent, not
present, events non-existent.
Even regarding the laws of the unities of place and time there are
parallels between poetry and painting insofar as the ideals of time, the
ideal of expressing an action in the shortest span of time, and the ideal
of the singularity of the place, is carried out perfectly in painting. In
painting, everything is unity as the painting illustrates only one moment
and one place. The painting has no extension in time but illustrates the
pregnant moment, the instant, the presence of the now. Painting therefore comes even closer to meeting the rules of the unities of place and
time than the poem ever has: The action, the passion, and the manners
of so many persons as are contained in a picture are to be discerned at
once, in the twinkling of an eye.24
Dryden also applies the rule of the unity of action to painting. The
laws of consistency and coherence are basically the same in poetry as in
painting. This is also the law of the greatest economy. All persons in the
play must be of use, as must all figures in the painting: All things else
are like six fingers to the hand, when nature, which is superfluous in
nothing, can do her work with five.25 The principal character in the
play is the center of action and must be like a sun around which all the
other characters circle. In painting also the principal figure appears in

14

the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to distinguish it from
the rest, which are only its attendants.26
Finally, the requirement that a play should be consistent also applies
to painting. As the poet must observe what is proper for the beginning,
the middle, and the end of a poem, and should avoid mingling these
parts, the painter must also observe what is proper to paint in the upper
part and at the bottom of the canvas: The painter is not to paint a cloud
at the bottom of a picture, but in the uppermost parts; nor the poet to
place what is proper to the end or middle, in the beginning of a
poem.27
For these reasons painting and poetry are established as identical
arts, governed by the basically same Aristotelian rules. In a neoclassical
paradigm where different disciplines such as astronomy, law, theology,
mathematics, philosophy or history are determined according to their
exclusive object, art is regarded as another unique discourse within the
paradigm, without the different arts being further differentiated. Lessing
begins to differentiate this established discourse as he suggests certain
essential distinctions between poetry and painting. From this point art
is no longer simply regarded as one unique discourse with the same
identical set of rules. In Lessing, a distinction is established by the way
poetry and painting represent action. If poetry represents continuous
action, painting represents arrested action. Thus poetry renders a succession of events, it represents things that occur step by step, things that
unfold in time, whereas painting renders only what can be accumulated
side by side, something that is grouped together, something that is combined in space.
Although both painting and poetry in a certain sense paintpoetry
paints action and painting paints actionLessing notices the difference that whereas poetry paints action that unfolds itself in the succession of time, painting paints arrested action in which the different parts
are arranged side by side in space. Painting combines objects in space
without them having a temporal and successive dimension, whereas
poetry arranges a series of continuous actions and events in time with
no spatial depth.

3.2) Interpretations of the Mouth of Laocoon

15

Lessing derives this difference between poetry and painting from his
reflections over the sculpture, Laocoon (under the term painting Lessing includes all the plastic arts). This sculpture depicts the naked Laocoon struggling with two giant snakes as he attempts to rescue his two
sons from their deadly embrace. In his struggle, Laocoon does not show
any sign of torment even though commentators commonly assumed that
he was in great pain. His half-closed mouth does not express any
screaming, but merely an oppressed sigh, as Winckelmann describes
the struggling Laocoon.
Winckelmann studied this sculpturecommonly regarded as the
greatest work of Greek art in Winckelmanns daysand noticed that
Laocoon in his agonizing struggle never reveals any pain. Therefore, to
Winckelmann, Laocoon is an accurate expression of his thesis of the
dignity and nobility of the Greek soul. Laocoon expresses the noble
simplicity and quiet greatness (Edle Einfalt und stille Gre) of the
Greek. Laocoon endures the pain inflicted on him as a great man should
endure pain. While struggling with the serpents, he does not raise any
outcry, contrary to Virgils description of Laocoon in the Aeneid. Laocoon, as depicted in the Greek sculpture, suffers, but he represses his
suffering. Therefore, according to Winckelmann, the sculpture
represents Greek serenity and dignity.
The general and most distinctive characteristics of the Greek masterpieces are, finally, a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, both in posture and expression. Just as the depths of the sea always remain calm
however much the surface may rage, so does the expression of the figures of the Greeks reveal a great and composed soul even in the midst
of passion. Such a soul is reflected in the face of Laocoonand not in
the face alonedespite his violent suffering. The pain is revealed in all
the muscles and sinews of his body, and we ourselves can almost feel it
as we observe the painful contraction of the abdomen alone without regarding the face and other parts of the body. This pain, however, expresses itself with no sign of rage in his face or in his entire bearing. He
emits no terrible screams such a Virgils Laocoon, for the opening of
his mouth does not permit it; it is rather an anxious and troubled sighing as described by Sadoleto. The physical pain and the nobility of soul
are distributed with equal strength over the entire body and are, as it
were, held in balance with one another. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers
like Sophocles Philocretes; his pain touches our very souls, but we
wish that we could bear misery like this great man.28

16

Winckelmann equates the lack of outcry in the statue with the dignity and nobility of the Greek soul, with its greater endurance and ability
to tolerate pain.
Lessing contests this interpretation. In Homers descriptions of the
Greek hero, Lessing finds evidence to the contrary because Homer allows his heroes to cry out in pain and suffering without these outcries
subtracting from their heroic deeds or stature: By their deeds they are
creatures of a superior order, by their sensibilities mere men. 29 Homers heroes express their sufferings without compromising the greatness
of their souls. Therefore, Lessing concludes that Greek dignity and nobility is not the reason why the sculptor has refused to represent Laocoon screaming: [The Greek] both felt and feared; he uttered his pain
and his trouble; he was ashamed of no human weaknesses.30
Virgil too represented Laocoon as screaming in his Aeneid. Lessing
therefore suggests that as neither the Greeks nor the Romans were
afraid of letting their heroes cry out, the sculptor must have had other
reasons for repressing Laocoons outcry, reasons that Virgil, for example, did not have in his poem. This reason is not found in the psychology of the Greeks, their dignity and serenity, but in the specific requirements for the art of sculpturing itself (or in general painting). This
reason is basically found in sculpture as form, and not because this
sculpture imitates Greek life and psychology. Sculpture belongs to a
genre, according to which it would have been unfortunate for the successful art-work if Laocoon were represented as screaming in pain.
Therefore, Lessing does not contest the idea that the figure of Laocoon does not show pain. Like Winckelmann, he interprets the closed
mouth of Laocoon as the artists reluctance to show pain, but he explains this reluctance differently. Winckelmanns historicalpsychological explanation is dismissed as invalid, and replaced with an
explanation that pertains to the formal requirements of the plastic arts,
an explanation semiological in essence. If the final objective of plastic
art among the Greeks was beauty, and if they consequently avoided
everything that would distort and violate this ideal, then a passionate
outcry, a screaming Laocoon depicted with a distorted mouth, would offend this ideal. This was the actual consideration of the artist, and the
reason why he could not let Laocoon express his pain.
The master was striving after the highest beauty, under the given circumstances of bodily pain. This, in its full deforming violence, it was
not possible to unite in that. He was obliged, therefore, to abate, to

17

lower it, to tone down cries to sighing; not because cries betrayed an
ignoble soul, but because they disfigure the face in an unpleasing manner. Let one only, in imagination, open wide the mouth in Laocoon,
and judge! Let him shriek, and see!31

Offending as it would have been if Laocoon had been represented

with an open mouth in the sculpture, it was perfectly befitting to render
him as shrieking in Virgils Aeneid. There seemed to be different requirements in poetry and painting. What was unfortunate in one of the
arts seemed fortunate in the other. The two arts had different rules governing them; they were not parallel arts with the same identical requirements.
3.3) Lessings Semiotics
The parallelism between painting and poetry was established according to general principles of imitation, rules, and purpose. According to these general principles poetry and painting were regarded as
similar or parallel arts. One noticed differences in their various means
of representing their subjects, painting would, as a visual art, please the
eye, whereas poetry would, as an auditory art, please the mind. But
these differences were considered trivial and superficial, and overruled
by the more important recognition that both arts please. Or one recognized that poetry and painting differed by representing, respectively, action and bodies, but this difference as well would be overruled by the
recognition that both painting and poetry represented these bodies and
this action according to one single logic, insofar as both arts followed
the general laws of the unities. Indeed, the unities of time and place
were perceived as represented in painting in the most ideal manner, and
the unity of action could be applied to painting as a requirement for
consistent composition.
The differences between poetry and painting were ignored particularly because of the prevailing assumption that both disciplines were
imitations. They belonged to the species of discourses which as their
distinguishing quality imitate, and because all imitation was regarded as
governed by definite rules, they followed the same logic and rules. The
general determination of art as something that pleases, imitates, and has
rules was organically connected. Art was primarily synonymous with

18

imitation, imitation was impossible without rules, and was furthermore

the immediate cause of pleasure.
Having thus shewn that imitation pleases, and why it pleases in both
these arts, it follows that some rules of imitation are necessary to obtain
the end; for without rules there can be no art, any more than there can
be a house without a door to conduct you into it. 32

It followed automatically that as both painting and poetry are arts,

and all art is imitation, and all imitation is impossible without rules,
then painting and poetry had to follow the same identical principles and
rules.
In Lessing this symmetry between poetry and painting is now challenged. Lessing suggests a semiotics that emphasizes rather than annihilates the differences between visual and audible, body and action. He
does not bring these differences under one general law.
In Lessing, poetry and painting imitate, but they use distinctive
signs in their means of imitating, and they also have distinctive references. In painting, one employs figures and color in space, while in
poetry, one articulates sounds in time. These two different types of
signs, figures, and sounds, refer to distinctively different objects. Painting arranges figures in space in order to refer to objects arranged side
by side, whereas poetry arranges sounds in time referring to actions
succeeding each other. The objects of painting are called bodies; the
objects of poetry are called actions.
If it is true that painting employs in its imitation quite other means or
signs than poetry employs, the formerthat is to say, figures and colours in spacebut the latter articulate sounds in time; as, unquestionably, the signs used must have a definite relation to the thing signified,
it follows that signs arranged together side by side express only subjects which, or the various parts of which, exist thus side by side, whilst
signs which succeed each other can express only subjects which, or the
various parts of which, succeed each other.
Subjects which, or the various parts of which, exist side by side, may
be called bodies. . . . Subjects which, or the various of which, succeed
each other may in general be called actions.33

Painting pictures figures (and colors) in space, poetry articulates

sounds in time. These picturing figures and articulating sounds refer,
respectively, to bodies and action. Although this insight is not particu19

larly novel, and merely repeats already established components in the

neoclassical paradigm, Lessing emphasizes the differences as an opposition, not as a parallelism, between painting and poetry. The difference
between painting and poetry indicates how the arts have distinct objects: bodies and actions, which are represented by means of distinct
signs: figures and sounds. Because of this difference, painting and poetry are rendered as two qualitatively different disciplines.
We have a theory of two essentially different artistic sign-systems
where there are means of representation (figures and sounds) and objects of representation (bodies and action). Moreover, the different contexts in which these two different sign-systems exist are equally important for the determination of the differences between painting and poetry. Thus, the sign-system of painting is applied in space (space constitutes the general context of the visual representation of the body), whereas the sign-system of poetry is applied to time (time constitutes the
general context of the audible representation of action).
The structural distinction between painting and poetry is now firmly
established, and we can describe it by means of the following scheme:
TABLE II: Structural Differences Between Painting and Poetry, I

Sign
Reference
Context

Painting
Figure
Body
Space

Poetry
Sound
Action
Time

However, as it appears when Lessing continues his reasoning, these

two sign-systems are not as pure and distinct as desired. The problem is
that the respective references, or objects, may be represented in both
painting and poetry. Bodies are not only rendered in space by means of
figures (and colors), they may also be rendered in time by means of discourse. And actions are not only rendered in the succession of time, but
may also be rendered by figures in space. The rigid distinction between
art and poetry thus seems underminedself-deconstructed.
Yet all bodies exist not in space alone, but also in time . . . painting can
also imitate actions, but only by way of suggestion through bodies. On
the other hand, actions cannot subsist for themselves, but must attach to
certain things or persons . . . poetry too depicts bodies, but only by way
of suggestion through actions. Painting, in her coexisting compositions,

20

can use only one single moment of the action, and must therefore
choose the most pregnant, from which what precedes and follows will
be most easily apprehended. Just in the same manner poetry also can
use, in her continuous imitations, only one single property of the bodies, and must therefore choose that one which calls up the most living
picture of the body on that side from which she is regarding it.34

At this point, bodies no longer exist isolated from poetry. Although

imperfectly and one-dimensionally they are represented in the continuum of action. Action no longer exists isolated from painting. Although represented in only a single moment, action is depicted in painting in a pregnant instant, in such a way that one can apprehend what
preceded and what follows it. Where painting only depicts the pregnant
moment, poetry depicts the succession of time, and where painting fills
up an entire space, poetry only depicts a one-dimensional fragment of
space.
Thus, it appears that poetry and painting share the use of time and
space, but still differently. The structural differentiation of poetry and
painting now depends on this different relationship to time and space.
As regards to time, painting emphasizes the instance of the now, whereas poetry emphasizes the succession, the continuum of instances. Poetry includes all the dimensions of time in its description of action. As
regards to space, painting depicts an entire object, including all its
parts in its depiction. The object is beheld in a glance, an instant, whereas poetry can only depict a side, a facet, a fragment of the object. Poetry describes the object fragment by fragment successively, point by
point; for example, her dark hair, her blue eyes, her rosy cheeks, her
slender neck.
The differentiation between poetry and painting now looks like this:
TABLE III: Structural Differences Between Painting and Poetry, II

Time
Space

Painting
Instant
Extension

Poetry
Succession
Point

Poetry represents an object as a succession of points consisting of

bodies or part of bodies, and painting represents an object as an extension in space frozen in a particularly significant instant.

21

We are in fact still facing a certain parallelism between poetry and

painting as they are parallel in the way they differ regarding time and
space. Poetry and painting are parallel in their differences, as these differences are articulated and formalized. They are symmetrical in the
way they share time and space because they share the fundamental notion that they both represent a part (an element) and a whole (a
spread) of something. Poetry represents a spread in the form of the
succession, painting in the form of the extension. Poetry represents an
element in the form of the point, painting in the form of the instant.
Painting only takes part in time, but represents the whole of space; poetry only takes part in space, but represents the whole of time. This constitutes Lessings new semiological parallelism between poetry and
painting. But this parallelism is conceived in order to explain why poetry and painting are essentially different forms of representations, essentially different genres. It is not conceived in order to support their essential identity.
After Lessings refinement or self-deconstruction of his initial
distinction he recognizes that poetry does not simply consist of signs
representing action. Poetry also represents bodies, things existing in
space, but it does so in the element of narration, discourse, and sound.
Even though this recognition appears to undermine Lessings initial distinction between poetry and painting (respectively describing action and
bodies), the distinction survives due to a rhetorical construction, an auxiliary definition of poetry and painting devised according to their best
purpose. The best purpose of poetry, the consummation and completion
of its innate task, is to describe action, characters, and world in the continuum of discourse. When it tries to describe objects, it deviates from
this path, and becomes poor poetry. Whereas in perception we survey
all the parts of a whole and the combination of these parts in one swift
conception, the poet, painstakingly, needs many descriptions in order to
render a complete image of a whole: What the eye sees at a glance, he
counts out to us gradually.35 Poets are so slow in their descriptions that
when they have finally described the last feature of an object, we have
already forgotten their description of the first. Still, despite this impossible strain on our memory, we are expected to understand the image described in the course of narration. What presents no problem in perception, to behold an image in one glance, appears to be impossible in discourse.

22

To the eye the parts beheld remain constantly present, and it can run
over them again and again; for the ear, on the contrary, the parts heard
are lost if they do not abide in the memory. And if they so abide, what
trouble, what effort it costs to renew their impressions, all of them in
their due order, so vividly, to think of them together with even a moderate swiftness, and thus to arrive at an eventual conception of the
whole.36

This implies that whenever poets try to describe a thing in order to

make the thing appear with great clarity, they fail, not because language
cannot refer to things, but because poets can never render the thing with
such clarity that it is clearly transmitted to the reader. When, for example, poets try to render in detail a flower or a face, their efforts are in
vain because the reader does not achieve a conception of the thing as it
is conceived by the poet: I hear in every word the toiling poet, and am
far enough from seeing the thing itself.37
I do not deny to speech in general the power of portraying a bodily
whole by its parts: speech can do so, because its signs or characters, although they follow one another consecutively, are nevertheless arbitrary signs; but I do deny it to speech as the medium of poetry, because
such verbal delineations of bodies fail of the illusion on which poetry
particularly depends, and this illusion, I contend, must fail them for the
reason that the coexistence of the physical object comes onto collision
with the consecutiveness of speech, and the former being resolved into
the latter, the dismemberment of the whole into its parts is certainly
made easier, but the final reunion of those parts into a whole is make
uncommonly difficult and not seldom impossible.38

Therefore, Lessings initial denunciation of the parallelism between

art and poetry has prescriptive and normative consequences. Poetry
ought to avoid representing things in their coexistence, but render things
consecutively. Poetry is not adapted for painting things, but only for
rendering action.
And if things have to be described in poetry (a thing being understood as a whole consisting of coexisting parts), then the poet
should avoid merely describing this coexistence but instead turn the description into consecutive action. Homers famous description of
Achilles shield is a description of a single physical object, but it is not
rendered merely as a thing where different parts and components are
lined up one by one. It is correctly described as a process where the
23

reader follows how this shield is made, and how the different decorations and adornments are completed under the hammer and chisel of the
artisan. It is therefore described as action.
Poets are recommended to follow this immanent consecutiveness of
language, and restrict themselves to illustrate action. They cannot depict
physical beauty in language, for if they wish to give the reader an impression of a beautiful face, the reader must perceive all the partsthe
eyes, the nose, the cheeks, the mouth, etc.as subsisting side by side,
coexistently. The reader should be able to behold the face in one
glance, should be able, in one concentrating gaze, to see this object arranged as a whole. But in poetry this arrangement of a whole is impossible because of the inherent deficiency of language, its consecutiveness. The poetic representation of a beautiful face does not imprint itself as a whole in the imagination of the reader. The reader cannot
translate the described details of the face into a conception of the face.
Consequently, poets should refrain from descriptions of objects; their
efforts are in vain from the beginning. Again one of Homers laconic
descriptions of beauty provides an ideal to Lessing, because here Homer merely indicates beauty: Nireus was beautiful; Archilles was more
beautiful still; Helen possessed a divine beauty.39
As such language cannot represent physical beauty. In general it remains in the dark regarding representation of the physical object. Authors who have tried to describe Helen in detail (describing her fair
brow, her fine complexion, her lovely face, her large eyes, her curling
eyelashes, her youthful charm, her pale countenance, etc.) have not provided us, the readers, with any objective conception of her: if a thousand men read this, every man of the thousand make for himself his
own conception of her.40
But this poetical insufficiency regarding the transmission of images
from author to reader does not imply that poetry in general is a powerless form of art; it just have a different power. Poetry cannot represent
beauty in an image, but it can produce the effects beauty has, for example as when it describes the awe amongst the spectators of beauty:
Paint us, then, poet, the satisfaction, the affection, the love, the delight,
which beauty produces, and you have painted beauty itself.41 Once
more Homer provides Lessing with an example, and again the beauty of
Helen is the issue. Homer indicates here the power of her beauty, not by
describing her, but by describing the expression of awe it provokes in
an assembly of venerable elders: Small blame that Trojans and well24

grieved Achaeans should for such a woman suffer woes for so long; for
she is indeed like an immortal goddess to look upon.42 Homer only describes how beauty effects these venerable old men.
But as well as poetry cannot produce the image of beauty, except in
its effects, painting cannot render the aspects of beauty that produce
these effectsand neither should it try. Lessing refers to two artists,
one who has simply painted Helen in all her naked beauty, and one who
has tried to paint the scene Homer refers to, when Helen steps into the
assembly of elders. Here the artist has emphasized not Helens beauty,
but the awe of the elders. There is no doubt to Lessings mind which
painting shows real beauty: That [painting] in which I myself feel it, or
this where I must argue it from the grimaces of the susceptible graybeards.43 The latter painting is out of the question because a lustful
look makes the most venerable countenance ridiculous.44
In this semiological conception, the arbitrariness of the linguistic
sign prevents full and direct representation of objects in the imagination. The arbitrariness of the linguistic sign generates a breach between
the imagination of the author and the imagination of the reader; a
breach that hinders the transmission of a transparent language read,
understood, and seen by the reader as it was originally conceived by
the author.

25

Chapter 4
________________________________________
Learning How to Judge Beauty

1) Abandoning the Neoclassical Episteme

Although in the neoclassical paradigm one is primarily concerned
about how to apply standards of composition and decorum to the work
of art, a more general attitude to art is under discussion. In Boileau and
Pope, one is preoccupied with determining how one should relate to art
from both the perspective of the producer and the receiver of art. One
discusses the question of taste.
In Boileau and Pope, however, a uniform and objective taste seems
to be taken for granted, although it may still be under definition. In an
essentially prescriptive criticism, one excels in advises about what artists should do and what they should avoid. In general, there is no doubt
that one must apply certain principles of reason and propriety to the
work of art to meet the recipients approval, and to avoid ridicule.
These principles are presumably identical in all societies and in all ages.
A sense of historical distance has not yet developed, and in these
discussions one appeals to Horace and Aristotle as the obvious authorities. Taste is like a general equivalent of mankind. Surely poets can fail
to understand what good taste is because theylike anybody elsemay
fall victims to human frailties, such as pride and vanity; but then again,
it only takes a more reflective and judicious person to point out what
has corrupted their judgment, and how it can be corrected. Taste therefore still has the character of objectivity. It can be prescribed in a do
thisavoid that criticism. It is this objectivity of taste which now
slowly undergoes a transfiguration and a transmutation during the eighteenth century. Taste slowly develops into an ideality; it develops from
being a question of code into being a question of psychological state of

26

mind, with this transformation losing its comprehensibility and transparency.

In Hume and Burke, and later Kant, one summons up considerable
efforts to substantiate the idea of a uniform taste, but a doubt regarding
this objectivity has already invaded the enterprise. One is from the beginning aware of the differences between cultures, countries, and single
individuals. Producing a neoclassical list of what is pleasant and what
is offensive is out of the question. Art is no longer produced according
to a universal artistic practice, and, accordingly, taste is no longer prescribed in the pragmatics of a do thisavoid that criticism. Now the
uniformity of taste presumably shows itself as uniform reactions to certain general impressions. As well as sour and sweet are perceived as
such by all people (for example according to Burke), there are certain
uniform perceptions of beauty and ugliness among all people, if and insofar as the conditions for these perceptions are not distorted. These
(ideally) uniform perceptions bear witness to the existence of a universal taste. People supposedly make the same basic judgments when perceiving sweetness and beautyor bitterness and ugliness. And if the
uniformity of this judgment can be argued, at least the enlightened and
informed audienceswith identical educational and social backgroundswould make the same judgments. This is to say that at least
as soon as the recipients learn how to perceive beauty and sublimity,
they learn to judge uniformly. If the same contextual circumstances are
present to a judging audience, it ought to arrive at similar results. Despite the new difficulties of the task, one still endeavors to assert a basic
identity in a field which one already realizes is infested with differences
in opinion and tainted by ardent polemics between antagonists.
The question of taste now becomes psychological. Although one
cannot produce a list of the beautiful and the ugly, one surmises that
human nature, mind, or sentiment follow certain identical principles and
standards of judgment. One is in this conviction undoubtedly inspired
by Newton and his detection of natural laws behind phenomena seemingly behaving chaotically.45 Because humans receive impressions in
a similar fashion, and because one assumes the imaginative apparatus to
be the same in all humans, they seem to harbor the same general standards of taste. Taste is related to sentiments and imagination. It becomes an ideality which is not, in the final analysis, substantiated in the
linguistic sphere of opinion and debate, but whose uniformity rather derives from certain possibilities of condition for a general and universal
27

taste, located in the human mind. The naive confidence in practical

rules for composition and decorum yields to a discussion of certain constitutional psychological conditions of taste.
Now beauty is also perceived as doing something to people. How
and why beauty affects humans must be elucidated, and not just beauty
in the arts, but beauty in nature as wellmoreover, not only beauty,
but in general what affects the imagination, including what one now begins to discuss under the heading the sublime. The sublime is something which seems to lack the tranquil character of beauty, but affects
man insofar as it incites respect and aweor fear and terrorin humans. The field of criticism is expanded in both depth and width. The
modest enterprise of describing the requirements for making a opportune and successful poem, the recommendation on what to observe in
order to accommodate an audience, is extended to include what in general affects the imagination of humans. In this program, art is merely a
corner of the beautiful, and it is, as it were, less impressive than beauty
in nature. In critical discussions, art and nature are now intertwined.
The new extended field is termed Aesthetics by Baumgarten. According to Baumgarten this is a field which should deal with everything
concerning perception, as opposed to the traditional philosophical
preoccupation with logic. Poetry is also regarded as dealing with perception because it allegedly reproduces images, or reorganized, restructured images, gathered from the impressions of previous perceptions.
Art represents what Addison shall term secondary pleasures of imagination, as derived from the so-called primary pleasures of imagination, the original simple sense-impressions.
Art is now constituted on perception, not logic; it relies ultimately
on sight, and discussions center around the further determinations of
these pleasures of sight. The new general philosophical discipline,
aesthetics, through which one attempts to understand art, is constituted
as a science of perception. Criticism develops as an ocular-centrism,
centered around visible objects and the pleasures or displeasures perception provides.
Based on perception, art is not a question of technique, rules, and
decorum. Technique and rules no longer warrant good art; on the contrary, technique distorts the similarity art ought to have to nature. If beforehand art had an intrinsic nature of its own, qua certain specific rules
applied to certain specific genres, art now is referred to another, an exterior, naturea nature which is in principle outside and foreign to the
28

art-product. Art is no longer a unique discourse with its unique rules, its
unique role of imitating life, and its unique ends of pleasing and instructing an audience. These laws are not easily implemented anymore,
as laws independent of time and circumstances. Slowly art loses the secure position it occupied in the episteme of the neoclassical world. During the Renaissance, the position art had endeavored to establish
through discussions of its different objects and tasks (compared to disciplines such as history, moral philosophy, and theology) is now lost
again. The understanding of art as a discursive provinceas a specific
language-game with its own nature, its own laws, rules, and tasks
is discarded.
From being a well-defined language-game, with its place and task
within a linguistic world, a process begins where art becomes an increasingly ill-defined language-game. An ill-defined language-game where
indeed it shall become blasphemous to understand Art in terms of a
language-game.

2) Art and Nature, a New Juxtaposition

2.1) The Reorientation of Art
In the Renaissance, criticism tries to come to grips with a predominantly theological interpretation of the world: poets defend themselves
against the accusations of profaning humans religious vocations. In
neoclassicism, criticism struggles to adapt poetry, partly to the universal
thinking of the ancients and partly to the conformity of the practical and
political regulations of the aristocracy. Now criticism tries to adapt poetry to a world where nature and recently detected natural laws dominate.
A connection between nature and art is established. In aesthetic discussionsfrom Addison, Hume, and Burke to Baumgarten, Kant, and
Schillerit is taken for granted that art is defined in a relationship to
nature, not understood as the intrinsic order of things, but as the extrinsic and physical world.
According to this new understanding, nature sets an example for
what and how art should imitate. Without this relationship to nature, art
is at risk of becoming too artificial, degenerating into mere craft and
technique. An overly artful art is no longer art, art ought to be unconstrained like nature. A merely artful work of art suggests an inane and
insipid product, in the same sense as the German Kunst in some con29

texts is used derogatorily, indicating the artificial, the pretended, the

non-genuine, the ersatz. If now art is to be acknowledged and recognized, it must be natural. But it must not just imitate life and nature, it
must affect and inspire as nature affects and inspires. It must be beautiful and sublime in a sense similar to nature.
A discussion by Addison about the plantation of English gardens indicates this new tendency. Addison is discontented with English gardens because they are too neat and elegant. There is too much art and
too little nature in the traditional way of planting English gardens.
Writers, who have given us an Account of China, tell us, the Inhabitants of that Country laugh at the Plantations of our Europeans, which
are laid by the Rule and Line; because, they say, any one may place
Trees in equal rows and uniform Figures. They chuse rather to shew a
Genius in Works of this Nature, and therefore always conceal the Art
by which they direct themselves. . . . Our British Gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring Nature, love to deviate from it as much as
possible. Our Trees rise in Cones, Globes, and Pyramids. We see the
marks of the Scissors upon every Plant and Bush. I do not know
whether I am singular in my Opinion, but, for my own part, I would rather look upon a Tree in all its Luxuriancy and Diffusion of Boughs
and Branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a Mathematical
Figure.46

Now, art is to conceal art. Still art is man-made, but it should disguise its relation to man, and redirect itself to nature. Now, art ought to
efface itself as art, and attempt to look like nature itself. And as nature
is rough and jagged, irregularity and lack of symmetry become new
recommended standards. Thus, English gardens displease the spectator
by being too artificial; they are planted according to rules, lines, and
mathematical shapes deviating from the shapes of nature. British gardeners show no understanding of the new orientation of art, the idea
that humans in their art should not demonstrate their supremacy over
nature by mastering it in geometrical shapes, but instead willingly submit themselves to natures unpredictability and grandeur.
Where art in the old sense appeared to be a sphere in which humans
constructed a understanding of themselves, their lives, their surroundings, or their moral principles by means of distinct and intelligible principles (such as rules, forms, shapes, symmetry, regularity, balance),
with the introduction of the new fashion, humans are recommended to
deconstruct this understanding again. Humans begin to de-understand
30

themselves, to revoke, unmake, debunk the understanding they had

conceived of themselves and their world. They begin to consider a new
leniency regarding rules and structures as a much more superior and sophisticated attitude, and the former strictness as simple-minded and ingenuous. This unmaking of former human self-understanding results
in the emphasis on the enigma of nature, understood now as something un-man-madeun-man-made both in the understanding of being extrinsic nature untouched by humans and interior human nature,
equally original and universal.
Art has now to imitate or render or inspire or relate itself to this unman-made (which is just a synonymous expression for nature in the
new sense); anything else is naive and trivial. A man-made art
exhibiting its made-nessis a naivet.
In his fifth paper on the pleasures of the imagination, Addison
writes about the Effects of Nature and Art Compared and Contrasted.
His first sentence indicates this new reservation against art. In comparison to nature, art is defective.
If we consider the Works of Nature and Art, as they are qualified to entertain the Imagination, we shall find the last very defective, in Comparison of the former. . . . There is something more bold and masterly
in the rough careless Strokes of Nature, than in the nice Touches and
Embellishments of Art.47

Compared to extrinsic nature, art is imperfect and artificial. Art does

not represent the vastness, immensity, and magnificence of nature. Art
represents the delicate and small, and therefore it does not give rise to
the same impressions in the perceiver as nature does. In this change of
paradigm, the sublime gains new importance.
2.2) The Sublime as a Quality Found in Nature
The original notion of the sublime, as it was introduced by Longinus, was presented in a rhetorical theory on how poetic style and writing affects an audience. In Longinus, the sublime indicated excellence
particularly in writing, whereas now, with the change of paradigm, it is
typically conceived as an aesthetic experience, defined as a relationship
between human perception and impressive, especially natural, objects.
In Longinus, the term is used with a sense, much different from the
sense its gets with the aesthetic revolution of the eighteenth century.
31

The word signifies a certain elevation of style, a certain excellence in

writing, and Longinus work is a rhetorical work on how to obtain this
excellence. In Longinus discussions, a sublime style is defined as he
suggests linguistic and stylistic criteria for the sublime. His first two criteria are called innate; they describe the necessity of certain intellectual and emotional capacities of the poet: the poets must 1) be in command of full-blooded ideasthey must master strong and powerful
and effectful ideas; and 2) the poets must be inspiredthey must write
in a state of vehement emotion. The latter three criteria are technical
and can be obtained by study, such as the study of 1) figures of thought
and speech, 2) nobility of speech, choice of words, and use of metaphor, and 3) dignity and elevation in speech. Most of Longinus treatise
is devoted to the explanation of these technical issues. Sublimity, therefore, is still a question of obtaining a certain technique in the refinement
of ones writing, something which in principle one can attain by observing certain prescriptive rules and laws. According to this rhetorical
study, speech and poetry may be sublime, not nature, which as theme is
absent in the essay.
Addison still emphasizes the sublime as a question of fine writing.
In Addisons interpretation of Longinus, one should peruse the very
Spirit and Soul of fine Writing, instead of pursuing the mechanical
rules which people of little taste may discourse upon. This soul of refined writing is represented in the idea of the sublime: the great, the
elevated, and the astonishing.
Thus altho in Poetry it be absolutely necessary that the Unities of
Time, Place and Action, with other Points of the same nature, should
be thoroughly explained and understood there is still something more
essential to the Art, something that elevates and astonishes the Fancy,
and gives a Greatness of Mind to the Reader, which few of the Criticks
besides Longinus have considered.48

The idea of the sublime is juxtaposed to the neoclassical emphasis

on consistency and propriety of the work. Mechanical rules are still
acknowledged as useful, but only if supported by something that stimulates the imagination. The ability to affect the imagination of an audience now becomes essential in art. The surprise, the shock, and the
feeling of elevation is what art should render, not the instruction, the insights in a higher justice, or the purging of the audience.

32

This emphasis on a sublime style changes slowly in Addison and

Burke. Longinus is recognized as emphasizing qualities in poetical writing which are different from those Aristotle formulated, because he
does not emphasize the rules of unity or plot as much as the formation
of single great sentences. However, in contrast to Longinus, the critics
begin to perceive humans in relation to nature itself, and interpret the
feeling of sublimity as an emotional response to the confrontation between human and nature. The sublime becomes a term for a certain relationship between human and nature. It becomes a term indicating the
confrontation between human and nature, in which the individual recognizes natures greatness with excitement, respect, and fascination.
The individual reflects him- or herself in nature. The sight of greatness fills the soul with awe and reverence, Addison tells, because humans perceive something that applies to themselves and their existential-social circumstances. Briefly, they perceive their own freedom in
natures greatness. By the sight of open and infinite horizons, a world
opens up, unrestrained by limits and rules.
The Mind of Man naturally hates every thing that looks like a restraint
upon it . . . [A] spacious Horizon is an Image of Liberty, where the Eye
has room to range abroad, to expatiate at large on the Immensity of its
Views, and to lose itself amidst the Variety of Objects that offer themselves to its Observation.49

Nature becomes an enigmatic mirror: the more difficult to read, the

more eagerly interpreted. What is true in nature is now possibly true for
humans as well. Natures unpredictability and diffusion reflects the unpredictable and diffuse in the individual. The great in nature strikes in
the individual a chord of greatness. Open horizons mirror the freedom
of humans.

2.3) Sight and Image, and the New Definition of Art

With this growing emphasis on exterior nature, sight also achieves
increasing significance in the rendition of art. The sublime is first and
foremost determined in relation to sight. Sublimity is a response to what
is perceived as impressive and awesome, while in Longinus sublimity
still was an emotional response to what was heard in speeches, or read
in writings; therefore, a concept pertaining to the ear.
33

Even though Addison discusses how to render an effective and sublime style, beauty and sublimity pertains to perception, because writing
recreates in imagination the beautiful or awesome perception of the object. Through the sight the artists receive the world. Sight is the passage from the world to mind and understanding. Artists relate exclusively to this sense-quality in their literary products. Art ought to visualize
sense-impressions; it is derived from, and ought to re-present, visible
objects.
Thus, sight has become the most important sense in rendering and
comprehending poetry. A certain ocular-centrism determines aesthetics. An ocular-centrism, according to which Addison suggests two major pleasures resulting from sight, a primary pleasure (which simply indicates the pleasure in perceiving a present object) and a secondary
pleasure (which indicates the imaginative activity of recollecting images derived from perceptions of formerly present objects).
Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our Senses. It
fills the Mind with the largest Variety of Ideas . . . It is this Sense
which furnishes the Imagination with its Ideas; so that by the Pleasures
of the Imagination or fancy . . . I here mean such as arise from visible
Objects, either when we have them actually in our View, or when we
call up their Ideas into our Minds by Paintings, Statues, Description, or
any the like Occasion. We cannot indeed have a single Image in the
Fancy that did not make its first Entrance through the Sight, but we
have the Power of retaining, altering and compounding those Images. .
. . By the pleasures of the Imagination, I mean only such Pleasures as
arise originally from Sight, and that I divide these Pleasures in two
Kinds: My Design being first of all to discourse of those Primary Pleasures of the Imagination, which entirely proceed from such Objects as
are before our Eyes; and in the next place to speak of those Secondary
Pleasures of the Imagination which flow from the Ideas of visible Objects, when the Objects are not actually before the Eye, but are called
up into our Memories.50

The fact that an artistic creation frequently does not (and perhaps
rarely) depend on actual existing images, but for example takes its images from a phantasmagorical and mythological universe, is explained
by the introduction of secondary pleasures. Secondary pleasures of imagination consist of recollected actual images which are compounded
according to other laws than those in the empirical world. Thus, sight
first provides the imagination with images, but after this introduction of
34

images, artists are able to recall these images and to reorganize and restructure them into a variety of visions which they find most agreeable
and entertaining. Secondary pleasure arises from this recollection of
images. Secondary pleasure therefore arises from the recollection of
absent images whereas primary pleasure arises from the perception of
present images. Primary pleasure relates primarily to nature, secondary
primarily to art, or a further divisionwhich is later qualified and modifiedprimary pleasure is concerned with the sublime, secondary with
beauty.
It is possible to define the function and object of art through these
pleasures of imagination. Art is confined to a specific area of human
cognitive activity defined as imagination. This imagination is defined as
an activity situated between sensuous and intellectual activities; imagination is a medium by which the necessity of art is explained and justified.
On one hand, imagination is defined as a sensuous activity, but it is
different from other sensuous activities by being confined to the mind.
One the other hand, although related to mind and intellect, imagination
is still a sensuous activityor at least an activity with sensuous roots,
what distinguishes imagination from pure intellectual activities, and
consequently from discourses built on understanding, such as scientific
or philosophical discourses. Still imbedded in the neoclassical paradigm, Addison defines art as an activity between these two boundaries,
the senses and the understanding. The pleasures of primary imagination
are more refined than the simple pleasures of the senses and the pleasures of secondary imagination are not as refined as understanding
(which constitutes a more perfect form of knowledge, because it provides humans with new knowledge, and implies their moral improvement). Hence, the purpose and object of art is established within these
boundaries. In a simple scheme it may look like this:
TABLE IV: Primary and Secondary Imagination as Medium
Sense
|
Primary imagination
|
Secondary imagination
|
Understanding

Perception

Work of art

35

Thus, art is still defined as an activity above the crudeness of the

senses, but below intellectual refinement: The pleasures of imagination, taken in their full Extent, are not so gross as those of Sense, nor so
refined as those of the Understanding.51
Art is an enjoyment which perhaps does not improve knowledge,
but it is still morally justified. The pleasures of imagination are innocent pleasures, recommended by Addison because they imply a justifiable and necessary relaxation. They are pleasures in which any wise
man may indulge himself without shame: A Man should endeavor to
make the Sphere of his innocent Pleasures as wide as possible, that he
may retire into them with Safety.52 Nurturing these pleasures is considered good for health. They give the person a vacation from intellectual
occupations and bring harmony to both mind and body.
The Pleasures of the Fancy are more conductive to Health than those of
the Understanding, which are worked out by Dint of Thinking, and attended with too violent a Labour of the Brain. Delightful Scenes,
whether in Nature, Painting, or Poetry, have a kindly Influence on the
Body, as well as the Mind, and not only serve to clear and brighten the
Imagination, but are able to disperse Grief and Melancholy, and set the
Animal Spirits in pleasing and agreeable Motions.53

Poetry therefore still pleases in a morally responsible way. As in

neoclassicism, it is still juxtaposed to fact-orientated disciplines like
history, moral philosophy, or the natural sciences. And, as in neoclassical discourse, it complements these hard and abstract disciplines
by providing humans with imagery that relaxes the mind and makes
people better suited to take up their more serious occupations. This is a
traditional, utilitarian self-justification on the purpose of poetry.
But there is also a new theme introduced in Addison, anticipating
the preromantic discourse. Beauty is what is seen or represented in nature, and it is the seen that soothes and relaxes the person. It is a specific eye-pleasure that serves the well-being of the person. It is from
looking at the world one recuperates from the seriousness and constraints of life.

3) In Pursuit of a Uniform Standard of Taste

3.1) A Brief Sketch of the Problem
36

Both David Hume and Edmund Burke wish to determine a stable

standard of taste in what appears to be unstable and unpredictable opinions regarding products of art, and in general, pleasures concerning the
senses: imagination, sound, and palate. As one acknowledges that individual sentiments determine taste, the task seems impossible from the
beginning. Taste apparently does not refer to facts or objects outside the
individual judgment of what is tasteful or distasteful. Taste cannot be
proven either true or false. Taste seemingly refers strictly to personal
sentiments. Now one begins with the assumption that taste is chaotic
and unpredictable, something as disparate as single individuals. But
from this basic assumption one nonetheless presumes that this divergence is rather apparent than real. One is, or ought to be, able to detect
and establish a stable principle of judgment beneath the chaos, a principle of judgment common to all mankind.54 One looks for the stable,
the fixed, the general, and the common, behind the apparent individuality of taste. Appearance is superficial, beneath it, a universal standard
of taste is concealed.
On a superficial view, we may seem to differ very widely from each
other in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures: but notwithstanding this difference, which I think to be rather apparent than real, it is
probable that the standard both of reason and Taste is the same in all
human creatures . . . my point in this enquiry is to find whether there
are any principles, on which the imagination is affected, so common to
all, so grounded and certain, as to supply the means of reasoning satisfactorily about them.55

Although acknowledging differences between people, cultures, and

historical societies, one nonetheless attempts to deduce a natural law, a
set of principles which may establish taste as a universal phenomenon.
In this endeavor, one perceives differences in taste as distortions of one
veritable taste, distortions which can be corrected under ideal circumstances, or which could be eliminated by establishing an identical context for the judging and tasting subjects, or through continuous practice
of the subjects. In the argument for one veritable taste one seeks something so simple that everyone should agree to it: It is natural for us to
seek a Standard of Taste; a rule, by which the various sentiments of
men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one
sentiment, and condemning another.56
37

Thus, one attempts to establish the conditions for a universal standard of taste in spite of acknowledged empirical differences. From the
beginning of this project, one directs oneself toward the presumed constitution of the subject, toward the interior organization of the perceptive and imaginative apparatus of humans in order to learn how a common human constitution warrants an identical taste in art, and other objects appealing to the senses.

3.2) In Pursuit of Order (Hume)

In his essay, Of the Standard of Taste, Hume starts out acknowledging the existence of two seemingly contradictory affairs: the existence
of great variety in taste and the legitimate endeavor to determine a uniform standard by which various tastes can be reconciled.
The skeptical objection against the latter endeavor is that the attempt to reconcile tastes is futile because of an a priori categorical difference between judgment and sentiment. In judgment, one judges
something either true or false because in judgment one refers to an object outside oneself, whereas sentiments, on which taste depends, refer
to nothing beyond themselves and are in consequence neither true nor
false. Taste refers not to an object, neither to what is in the object (to a
quality of the object), but solely to what is in the mind of the perceiver. Thus, beauty is not a quality of the thing itself. Beauty exists only in
the mind of the beholder, as the proverb goes.
Humes argument oscillates between these two borders. On one
hand, he objects to the skeptical point of view represented above, the
entire lack of standard, the principle that all tastes are equally good.
This principle may be right, he asserts, when one can only perceive
small differences between one object and another, but it becomes absurd when one compares two radically different objects; for example, if
one, comparing a minor work of art to a superior one, argues for their
equality. Because everyone is supposed to realize this state of affairs,
one has to profess the existence of some kind of uniform standard.
On the other hand, uniform standards cannot be established mechanically from specific rules (like the neoclassical): None of the rules
of composition are fixed by reasoning a priori. 57 General rules can only be founded upon experience. One must try to observe how humans
react in the confrontation with great art, and try to determine some
38

common features, a common denominator, between people. This would

constitute a general standard: all the general rules of art are founded
only on experience, and on the observations of the common sentiments
of human nature.58 Still, rules derived from empirical observation can
never include the feelings and sentiments of all humans; therefore disagreements between people will continue to exist. Neither general rules a
priori nor general rules a posteriori constitute an ironclad warranty for
universal agreement in the judgment of beauty.
Even educated people, exercised in the perception of beauty, may
disagree on how to judge beauty (or deformity), because beauty affects
the mind in a very delicate way. The mind reacts unpredictably to these
delicate impressions. The mind does not necessarily comprehend its
own sentiments concerning these impressions; its reaction to a beautiful
object is unstable, and the mind is therefore easily moved soon in one
direction, soon in another.
Minor disorders in the external circumstances in which one apprehends an object may disturb the impression; likewise, internal disorders
may invalidate the perception of beauty. Something like a fever would
invalidate the taste of food, a headache might distort the perception of
sound; but one could go further still and suggest that also an objects
association with unpleasant memories, conscious or unconscious, might
undermine the perception of beauty. Thus, the judgment of beauty relies
on sentiments of a very tender and delicate nature, and is only accomplished under the most ideal circumstances. The least agitation of these
sentiments invalidates the whole project: The least exterior hindrance
to such small springs, or the least internal disorder, disturbs their notion
and confounds the operation of the whole machine.59
These disturbances are obviously not a part of a beautiful object,
and they are not defined as essential to beauty. A beautiful object exists
by itself and by its own means unaffected and undisturbed by the difficulties humans may encounter perceiving it. Beauty exists as an ideal
objectivity beyond the real perception of beauty. Even if this perception
appears to be virtually impossible to carry out because of various obstacles, it nevertheless remains a continuous task to eliminate the causes
of these obstacles, and to perceive beauty in its own right, in its pure
and ideal objectivity.
It is the task of Humes essay to determine which strategies one
should learn in order to perceive beauty and by which education or
practice humans would learn to be able to see and discern.
39

According to this determination of strategy, one must first be attentive to the circumstances under which one perceives beauty; the moment and place of judgment must be chosen with meticulous care: we
must choose with care a proper time and place.60 This proper time and
place transpire when the mind is in perfect balance, tranquillity, and
equilibrium: A perfect serenity of mind, a recollection of thought, a
due attention to the object.61 This is defined as a moment where the
mind is free of exterior and interior influences, a moment where it is
solely contemplating the beautiful object, where it has attained a state of
absolute attentiveness, and is completely alert to the presence of its own
contemplation of the work of art. This is consequently also a state
where the mind is void of interest, as emphasized later by Kant as a
major criterion requisite for the contemplation of beauty.
In order to bring oneself to this state of tranquillity and equilibrium
of mind, it is necessary to learn how to perceive and taste beauty. If
this perception demands a full attentiveness of mind (a full selfpresence in which outer and inner disturbances are eliminated), it is important to determine how this pure state of mind is attained. Explaining
this requirement, Hume is not only abstract and idealistic, he tries to
give practical instructions in how to achieve this full art appreciation.
Attentiveness to and appreciation of beautiful objects demands a keen
sense of distinctions, contrasts, and differences. Presence in the recipients perception of beauty is founded upon an acquired perception of
differences.
First, one must be able to distinguish the sound from the defective,
the healthy from the ill. As well as a person with a fever cannot taste
food or drink adequately (a man in fever would not insist on his palate
as able to decide concerning flavours62), also in the judgment of beauty
there may be circumstances debilitating taste. There are sound and defective states of mind validating or invalidating judgments. But as a socalled healthy state of mind does not provide any substantial definition of the judgment of beauty, it remains to be determined what such a
sound taste of beauty might look like. Hume therefore determines this
taste further as delicacy, practice, comparison, and lack of prejudice.
One acquires delicacy of taste by exercising the sentiments by
which one judges taste. This implies training the senses to detect minute
qualities in order to be able to distinguish between what pleases or displeases. Without delicacy one cannot distinguish the pleasurable from
the displeasurable. It is because of this lack that numerous people are
40

excluded from developing a distinguished taste. People lacking delicacy

are not able to observe small differences incited by the object, and this
deficiency explains their misjudgments. However, people with a sense
of minute differences have achieved delicacy of taste.
There is a parallel, an artificial analogy, between the taste of food
and drink and the taste of beauty in aesthetic theory. The taste of food
and drink provides Hume, and others, with examples on what the taste
of beauty might be like. As we can taste degrees of sweetness, we are
supposed to taste degrees of perfection in a work of art. As a continuous practice of the palate exercises a delicate taste regarding food
and drink, continuous practice of our judgment of the beautiful exercises a sense of perfection and imperfection in the work of art.
A good palate is not tried by strong flavors but by a mixture of small
ingredients, where we are still sensible of each part . . . In a like manner
a quick and acute perception of beauty and deformity must be the perfection of our mental taste.63

Therefore also practice is imperative to the development of taste.

Beauty does not announce itself to the recipient subject; it is discerned
though practice, understood as a training in the ability to discern differences. This practice is essential and fundamental in the development of
good taste to the extent that initially and prior to this practice there is
no taste, no sense of beauty. Without exercise and practice, the subject
does not discern to which degree it senses pleasure or displeasure regarding an object: so advantageous is practice to the discernment of
beauty, that, before we can give judgment on any work of importance, it
will even be requisite.64
Before this requisite practice in discerning a beautiful object as
beautiful, there is simply no perception of beauty. At this early state, the
mind is confused, and a beautiful object is looked upon as any other object.
When objects of any kind are first presented to the eye or imagination,
the sentiment, which attends them, is obscure and confused; and the
mind is, in a great measure, incapable of pronouncing concerning their
merits or defects. . . . There is a flutter or hurry of thought which attends the first perusal of any piece, and which confounds the genuine
sentiment of beauty. The relation of the parts is not discerned: The true
characters of style are little distinguished: The several perfections and

41

defects seem wrapped up in a species of confusion, and present themselves indistinctly to the imagination.65

With this emphasis on practice and experience there is no a priori

principle to warrant the perception of a beautiful object. The ability to
perceive and judge beauty becomes a question of exercise and education. How to attain this practice is further elucidated as it is necessary to
know how one should carry out this practice in order to attain the capability to discern and judge degrees of beauty. And again Hume emphasizes the ability to discern differences. A person is properly trained in
judging beauty by receiving the opportunity to compare different kinds
of beauty. Thus, a person may develop delicacy of taste through practice in making comparisons between different works of art.
This training of a good critic aims to refine skills that all pertain to
the ability to discern differences. Delicacy implies that the critic is able
to discern different degrees of pleasure and displeasure evoked by the
object in question. Practice implies overcoming the original confusion
and indifference of the mind when confronted with an aesthetic object.
The practiced critic is able quickly to distinguish the authentic from the
inauthentic, the genuine from the non-genuine, the good from the bad,
by means of his or her psychological reactions to beauty. This competence is acquired through comparison between works, or between different degrees of beauty.
Finally, lack of prejudice also characterizes the good critic. Prejudice means that persons are unable to distinguish between their own situation and conditions and the situation and conditions under which the
work they are judging was created. Lack of prejudice relies on an ability to discern cultural differences.
A person influenced by prejudice, complies not with this condition; but
obstinately maintains his natural position, without placing himself in
that point of view, which the performance supposes. If the work be addressed to persons of a different age or nation, he makes no allowance
for their peculiar views and prejudices; but, full of the manners of his
own age and country, rashly condemns what seemed admirable in the
eyes of those for whom alone the discourse was calculated.66

Beauty is an elusive quantity, but even though it easily escapes fully

trained recipients of beauty, it perseveres. Unaffected by outer forces
and influences, beauty persists and survives by itself, notwithstanding
42

all the different contexts and situations in which it is misrecognized.

Thus, despite everything, survival and durability characterizes beauty;
that is, although beauty may be temporarily misunderstood and misinterpreted, it will always survive historically and eventually receive its
proper appraisal. Beauty is ascertained by: the durable admiration,
which attends those works, that have survived all the caprices of mode
and fashion.67 This perseverance and durability of the proper work of
art is an indication on the existence of stable standards of taste. A proper work of art can never disappear; at most, it can be temporarily repressed or misunderstood.
There are disagreements about good taste because not all people are
educated or have practice in judging taste. And there are disagreements
about good taste even among people who have this practice, who are
educated in the required delicacy.68 Still Hume maintains that there are
stable standards. The beauties of eloquence and poetry remain the same.
In the cause of history, true and genuine standards persists, even if they
are suppressed for a while. Humes essay, to the end, oscillates between
these two borders; on one hand, the existence of a universal standard of
taste is advanced, one the other, the existence of different opinions and
tastesbetween young and old, between countries, between historical
periods, etc.is acknowledged.
However, in this aesthetics it remains to be determined what characterizes a beautiful object, what innate qualities a beautiful object
might possess (and Hume either intentionally abstains from doing it, or
does not possess the conceptual framework to do so). Later Kant starts
his aesthetics from this point of departure.

3.3) In Pursuit of Order (Burke)

The point of departure is the same in Burke as in Hume. People
seem to disagree about taste; there seem to be no unequivocal and obvious standards by which to judge taste. Nonetheless, in his inquiries
Burke attempts to ascertain certain fixed principles; but whereas Hume
emphasized what was required regarding experience and education in
order to judge beauty, Burke to a larger extent argues by means of the
analogythe artificial analogy as termed abovebetween the taste
of our senses, especially the taste of the palate, and the taste of beauty.

43

Of the three powers of the human beingthe senses, the imagination, and the judgment (in that order)the senses constitute a foundation on which the other powers build, a foundation upon which imagination and judgment are merely derivations. If therefore it can be demonstrated that humans have a uniform sense of palate, sight, or hearing,
they presumably also have a uniform imaginative activity.
Because this analogy between palate and aesthetic judgment is taken
for granted, one starts the argument by discussing sweetnessa savor
everybody is able to distinguish: what seems sweet to one palate, is
sweet to another.69 Thus, what one can establish regarding taste in food
and drink is automatically deduced regarding taste in art because of the
cause-effect relationship between the senses and imagination. The
senses are perceived as causes providing the imagination with material.
One assumes that all humans are endowed with the same perceptive and
receptive apparatus, and sense-impressions therefore affect subjects of
the same kind, operating in the same manner. Consequently, the primary sense-impressions necessarily produce identical responses in humans. The pleasures and pains which an object excites in one human
being it must excite in another, as well as in all human beings. Theoretically, mankind is endowed with a unique homogeneity regarding taste.
All men are agreed to call vinegar sour, honey sweet, and aloes bitter. .
. . They all concur in calling sweetness pleasant and sourness and bitterness unpleasant.70
However, as soon as this theory is introduced, it is qualified, modified, and adjusted. Immediately, the uniformity of the taste of the palate is rather the exception than the rule because frequently one experiences people preferring the taste of sour or bitter to that of sweet: A
man frequently comes to prefer the Taste of tobacco to that of sugar,
and the flavour of vinegar to that of milk.71
This deviation of taste is so far incomprehensible. It calls for an explanation how a person may come to prefer the unnatural taste of bitter
or sour (tobacco and wine) instead of the natural, pleasant taste of sweet
(honey and milk). This deviation is in consequence explained as a seduction of the natural taste. Persons who prefer tobacco and wine have
made this particular taste their habit, not under directions of their palate, but because of the side effects these articles have as drugs. The
taste of tea and coffee is explained similarly.
All of these would lie absolutely neglected if their [tobacco, wine, etc.]
properties had originally gone no further than the Taste; but all these,

44

together with tea and coffee, were taken for health before they were
thought of for pleasure. The effect of the drug has made us use it frequently; and frequent use, combined with the agreeable effect, has
made the Taste itself at last agreeable.72

If taste had been given a chance to operate naturally, by its proper

powers only, there would have been no divergence in taste. If humans
had remained faithful to what they liked from the beginning, there
would have been universal agreement about taste. Burke, therefore,
must distinguish between the acquired and the natural. At this early
point the apparently simple distinction between sweet and sour is jeopardized because peoples preference for such popular stimulants as tobacco, wine, opium, garlic, coffee, or tea cannot be explained within
this paradigm according to which everybody should agree on their preference for sweetnessas a parallel to beauty.
If people had never acquired taste, they would have remained faithful to what was originally tasteful to them. If they, or rather their taste
buds, had stayed uncorrupted, the original taste from their childhood
would have survivedpreference for the taste of sweet, the taste of
milk and honey, would prevail. However, people are supposedly still
able to remember this original and natural taste, and distinguish the natural taste from the taste formed by habit.
Even more complicated is it to carry through the argument for a
universal and uniform taste when imagination is introduced into the
considerations. Imagination is responsible for our creative activity and
therefore art; it represents to the mind images of things, or the combination of images. Imaginative activity, therefore, also relies on the senses.
This power of imagination is incapable of producing any thing absolutely new, it can only vary the disposition of those ideas which it has
received from the senses. . . . For since the imagination is only the representative of the sense, it can only be pleased or displeased with the
images from the same principle on which the sense is pleased or displeased with the realities; and consequently there must be just as close
an agreement in the imaginations as in the senses of men.73

Because of this cause-effect relationship between the pleasures of

the senses and the pleasures of the imagination, there also ought to be
an immediate and direct correlation between what is pleasurable for the
senses and what is pleasurable in imagination. Regarding imagination
45

there is, however, an additional source of pleasure, not directly stemming from sense-pleasure, something weakening the influence the
senses have on imaginationin effect counteracting the reign of the
senses.
According to Burkes initial theory, according to the cause-effect relationship, what pleases the senses pleases the imagination. If light
pleases more than darkness, accordingly, light represented pleases the
mind better than darkness. If the sight of a swan is more pleasing than
the sight of goose, the representation of a swan consequently pleases
the imagination more than that of a goose, etc. However, imagination
has an additional source of pleasure, namely imitationthe resemblance between the original object and the object represented by imaginative activity. Resemblance always pleases the mind, and a successful imitation pleases the mind better than an unsuccessful one. Thus, a
successful imitation of a goose, we must assume, pleases better than a
less successful imitation of a swan.
According to this criterion, the pleasure of imitation arises from the
relationship between representation and object, signifier and signified;
it does not deal with a natural and constitutional ability to distinguish
the pleasurable from the displeasurable in primitive sensations of
sweet/bitter, light/dark, swan/goose, etc.which presumably everybody
could agree upon. By the introduction of a pleasure of imitation, the
immediate and strong relationship between sense and imagination collapses. Sense of beauty no longer derives from dispositions as natural as
the ability to taste the difference between sweet and bitter, or perceive
the difference between light and dark, but from the manner by which
the world is represented. If the analogy between palate and beauty was
conceived in order to argue for the uniformity and universality in human judgment concerning beauty and deformity, the pleasure of imitation is conceived in order to argue for the opposite. It explains why
people happen to disagree about the beauty of objects.
Regarding imitation, there is considerable discrepancy in peoples
knowledge about either the object represented or the image
representing. There is no doubt that all human beings enjoy resemblance, but their knowledge of the work of art differs greatly because
this knowledge is merely accidental and random; it becomes relative to
the person in question.
Now as the pleasure of resemblance is that which principally flatters
the imagination, all men are nearly equal in this point, as far as their

46

knowledge of the things represented or compared extends. The principle of this knowledge is very much accidental, as it depends upon experience and observation, and not on the strength or weakness of any
natural faculty; and it is from this difference in knowledge that what we
commonly, though with no great exactness, call a difference in Taste
proceeds.74

(Burke is inconsistent here as he talks about how lack of knowledge

of the object represented constitute differences in taste. What he intends to say, and what all his examples substantiate and emphasize, is
that the lack of knowledge of the object representing, that is, the work
of art, constitutes differences in taste. This is consequently how we are
obliged to discuss the issue.) So, a person seeing a sculpture for the first
time may be greatly impressed by its likeness to a human being, however clumsily it is contrived. But after some experience, the person may
learn enough about sculpture to realize how inadequate his/her first
judgment was.
Judgment of beauty, therefore, relies on training and experience in
perceiving a beautiful object, and differences in taste can be explained
by different degrees of experience, by different degrees of sensibility
and attention to the object.
Matters become still more complex when Burke recognizes that
many works of art do not rely on the representation of sensible objects
at all, but on representation of characters, their manners, thoughts, actions, vices, and virtues; on the design of plots or on the style of writing. We are talking here about poetry. To judge poetry apparently requires entirely different qualities in the judging agent, qualities, depending not on senses, but on reasoning faculties.
Recognitions like these appear to make the question of aesthetic
taste independent of the senses. They are recognitions that counteract,
undermine, or deconstruct the fundamental attempt to infer a uniform
aesthetic taste from the uniform taste of the senses (which was not uniform from the beginning). Partly, taste is a question of experience in
judging the adequacy of an imitation, partly it is a question of sound
judgments of conduct, propriety, or consistency in representation of
human action. Despite these recognitionsin which it is admitted that a
work of art never has a direct relation to simple sense-impressionsthe
doctrine of a cause-effect dependency between senses and artistic creations is maintained throughout Burkes work.

47

The groundwork for all these is the same in the human mind; for as the
senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of all
our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of Taste is common to all, and therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning these matters.75

Burkes reasoning contradicts this status of the sense-impressions as

fundamental and primary; nevertheless it is sustained. From the beginning, differences among people regarding primitive sense-impressions
are recognized; Burke realizes that there are different opinions about
the taste of sweet and sour. As soon as he suggests a taste whose universality should be indisputable, differences disseminate in order to
explain why some people apparently have no preference for this universally pleasurable taste. Burke, therefore, has to rely on an old metaphysical device to sustain his argument: the natural versus the acquired.
There would be a taste de jure before the taste de facto. And this taste
de jure, from which humans commonly deviate, warrants the universality of taste, and consequently the universality of the perception of beauty. According to the artificial analogy between palate and artwhich
the text can neither substantiate nor dismiss as a failurebeauty is to
the eye what milk and honey are to the palate.
3.4) Burkes Analysis of Beauty and Sublimity
The following is only a brief sketch of the understanding of sublimity and beauty in Burke. It serves as a transition from the empiricist notion of the judgment of taste to Kants transcendental notion of the
judgment of taste.
Pain and pleasure are simple ideas, incapable of definition. 76 The
statement which begins Burkes analysis of beauty and sublimity implies that pain and pleasure are primitive ideas, existing by their own
account, incapable of being inferred from anything more primitive.
They are consequently also positive ideas in the sense that neither of
them derive from the negation of the other: a diminution of pain is not
pleasure, and a diminution of pleasure is not pain. The ceasing or diminution of pain does not bear a sufficient resemblance to positive
pleasure . . . the removal or qualification of pleasure has no resemblance to positive pain.77

48

The sensation deriving from removal of pain, Burke terms delight as

different from positive pleasure. The sensations deriving from the removal of pleasure are determined in three ways, either as indifference
(if pleasure ceases after having continued a while), as disappointment
(if pleasure ceases abruptly), or as grief (if an object is totally and irrecoverably lost).
Burke discusses under the heading self-preservation feelings related
to pain, danger, fear, death, or sickness. Feelings related to life, love,
health, are discussed under the heading society.
What is related to pain and self-preservation is in general the source
of the sublime. But although ideas relating to pain such as terror or
death are a source of the sublime, the effect of the sublime experience is
not in itself pain or, at any rate, painful. Sublimity is, on the contrary, a
delightful experience, and there is no delight if pain or danger directly
affects us. If pain and danger are removed and brought on a distance
from us, there is delight; that is, if they are merely represented. Pain
(danger, horror, or death) represented is not pain the spectators or readers actually tolerate themselves.
When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any
delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful. . . . The passions which belong to self-preservation, turn on pain and danger; they
are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances.78

Pain represented is a source of delight. However, this delight is not

the same as positive pleasure because it is based on the removal of pain,
and therefore still relates to pain. Encountering a sublime object excites
delight. Thus, sublimity arises as an experience of the ambivalence between a frightening object and the safe refuge in which the spectator
protects him/herself from the implied danger of the object.
The experience of beauty is less complex. It simply relates to positive pleasure as it relates to social feelings necessary for the generation
and the preservation of the human species, contrary to the sublime
which relates to the preservation of the single individual. An object
which excites this social pleasure, and which preserves the human
race by encouraging the generation and reproduction of the human species (implying everything related to sex and love), is called beautiful.
49

I call beauty a social quality; for where women and men . . . give us a
sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them, (and there are many that
do so) they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons.79

Positive pleasure and removal of pleasure are pleasures relating to

the preservation of the species, to the sustenance of society. Positive
pleasure is directly related to the generation and reproduction of the
species as the experience of sex and love, and the object exciting these
emotions is termed beautiful.
Positive pain and removal of pain relates to the self-preservation of
the individual. When positive pain and removal of pain relate as object
and image, signified and signifier, it produces delight. The object exciting this delight is termed sublime.
4) Kants Notion of Transcendental Beauty
4.1) Beauty as an Experiential and as a Transcendental Quality
When Hume tries to determine a standard of taste, he tries to determine what kind of education a person should undergo in order to acquire this standard. Although beauty is assumed to be something in itself existing, something objective not simply relying on random subjective taste, the judgment of taste relies on how well a person is educated
in the assessment of beauty. Humes emphasis is on how humans learn
to approach this objective quality, on how humans refine their sense of
beauty, and learn to discern the pleasing qualities of beauty. This emphasis on experience and education still relates to the pragmatic neoclassical concept of the artist and critic. It has a neoclassical air of solidity and soundness about it.
Although Burke also assumes that beauty is an objective quality, as
permanent and well-established as supposedly the taste of the palate, or
that beauty is something anchored in the ontogenetic psychology of
human beings derived from their innate drive to preserve the species, he
still discusses which qualities are needed in order to perceive this firmly
established beauty. It is also Burkes aspiration to be able to account for
how humans acquire a uniform sense of beauty and an identical standard of taste.

50

The empiricists, however, never manage to analyze this claim of universality. If a judgment of taste (a judgment concerning the beautiful)
is a judgment claiming universality (despite its apparent subjective
foundation), then the judgment of taste appears to presuppose an a priori principle which consequently one should be able to determine. The
attempt to determine how to assess beauty by means of experience appears insufficient. Beauty must have a transcendental quality. The determination of this transcendental principle becomes a main task for
Kant.

4.2) Beauty as Disinterest

It is a prevalent notion in the emerging aesthetic paradigm that there
is a specific pleasure related to the perception of beauty. However, this
pleasure is different from sensuous pleasures; it is not by any means related to desire. The pleasures related to the conception of beauty are
different from the pleasures evoked by desire. Already Burke notices
this in his Enquiries.
We shall have a strong desire for a woman of no remarkable beauty;
whilst the greatest beauty in men, or in other animals, though it causes
love yet excites nothing at all of desire. Which shews that beauty, and
the passion caused by beauty, which I call love, is different from desire.80

Beauty is from the beginning an innocent pleasure, and this particular innocent quality is emphasized once and again within the paradigm.
Beauty pleases, but as the pleasure has no sensuous originand is
not simply related to the single individualbeauty pleases universally.
The pleasure appears to be both innocent an universal. And it is in
effect only a pleasure of the beautiful, if it can be construed as a pleasure valid for mankind as such. Pleasure restricted only to the individual, and for the sake only of the individual, is from the beginning invalid.
Unlike other kinds of pleasure, beauty is something that produces pleasure for or in everybody.
This presupposition is fundamental when Kant tries to determine
beauty in his Third Critique. However, Kant realizes that a judgment
of taste refers to a subjective basis. The feeling of pleasure or displea51

sure cannot be a quality in the object, but refers to how a subject is affected by the presentation of the object. A judgment of taste refers to
subjective feelings; its determining basis cannot be other than subjective.81 But this subjective feeling of beauty is beyond the mere pleasurable. It is a pleasure, but a pleasure that does not take an interest in the
existence of the beautiful object. If pleasures commonly refer to desire
(to a Begehrungsvermgen), the judgment of a beautiful object is
beyond desire. If we judge something beautiful we do not care about the
existence of the object: If the question is whether something is beautiful, what we want to know is not whether we or anyone cares . . . about
the things existence, but rather how we judge it in our mere contemplation of it.82
While judging a beautiful object, we contemplate the object. And
this contemplation implies that the judgment of taste does not involve
the usual exchange between perceiver and world, subject and object.
Contemplation is a relation between the object as it is presented to the
subject, as impression, and the cognitive powers of the subject; it
emerges as an interior relation. Therefore, the judgment of taste becomes indifferent to and disinterested in the existence of the object.
Everyone has to admit that if a judgment about beauty is mingled with
the least interest then it is very partial and not a pure judgment of taste.
In order to play the judge in matters of taste, we must not be in the least
biased in favor of the things existence but must be wholly indifferent
about it.83

Objects can be pleasurable in different ways, ways determined according to what extent the subject takes an interest in the existence of
the object. If one takes interest in the existence of an object, one does
not judge it by its beauty, but by the enjoyment and agreeableness it
provides. However, pleasure in a so-called agreeable (angenehm) object has nothing to do with pleasure in beauty. The agreeable provides
gratification of desires. It is a primitive form of liking, a form we share
with the animals. It is also an indiscriminate form of liking insofar as
people fond of enjoyment dispense with all judging.
The liking of the agreeable (angenehm) is obviously the most crude
and primitive form of liking, because the existence of the object is crucial and necessary. The object is liked in order to be consumed or taken
possession of in some way or other. Food is Kants best example on an
object of the agreeable, especially if the eating person does not discri52

minate between what she or he eats. The hungry eats everything without
tasting the food, without discrimination, without judgment.
Hunger is the best sauce; and to people with a healthy appetite anything
is tasty provided it is edible. Hence if people have a liking of this sort,
that does not prove that they are selecting by taste. Only when their
need has been satisfied can we tell who in a multitude of people has
taste and who does not.84

But even though the gourmet might be more discriminate, the taste
of a discriminating consumer is still an angenehm liking insofar as the
interest in the object is obvious. In this primitive liking one takes possession of, consumes, and destroys the object. The object exists for the
fulfillment of physical or sensuous pleasures.
There is, however, another kind of liking, still not disinterested as
the liking of beauty, but neither is it dependable on the agreeable. This
liking is related to an object, but not in the form of desire or inclination.
This is the liking of the good. When something is liked because it is
good, it is liked because it is good for something (or good for its own
sake). The liking of the good is as such related to a purpose.
The liking of the good is a sophisticated form of liking because it
contains a moral component. It presupposes interest in the object and is
engaged in the object because of a purpose. Judging something as good
implies that one looks ahead for moral consequences.
The agreeable and the good are two sorts of liking between which
the liking of the beautiful is located. Between an interested liking (strict
and rigorous) of the good, and an interested liking (excessive and frivolous) of the agreeable, the liking of the beautiful is located as a disinterested desire. In its disinterestedness it enjoys without gratifying
concrete senses and projects a morality without being morally engaged
in an object.
The liking of the beautiful becomes a sort of legitimate and ideal enjoyment; an enjoyment that never degenerates into sensuous pleasure
because the subject merely contemplates the object and allows it to exist on its own.
In the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful liking, the subject
therefore obtains three different relationships to the world. Its liking
for an object may be determined by drives (animal spirits) towards the
fulfillment of immediate pleasures or it may be purely determined by
rationality. But between drive and rationality (Id and Super-ego), we
53

find the possibility of a liking which also represents a potential for human beings in their most genuine and full existence. Here they are neither wholly sensuous nor wholly rational beings, but contemplative beings, enjoying the abstract pleasure of beauty.
We call agreeable what GRATIFIES us, beautiful what we just LIKE,
good what we ESTEEM, or endorse, i.e., that to which we attribute an
objective value. Agreeableness holds for non-rational animals too;
beauty only for human beings, i.e., beings who are animal and yet rational, though it is not enough that they be rational (e.g., spirits) but
they must be animal as well; the good, however, holds for every rational being as such.85

Although the liking of the beautiful is represented as a medium between pleasure and reason, it becomes apparent in the further developments of Kants aesthetics that the liking of the beautiful and the liking
of the good are related in their general project and orientation. They
are, so to speak, on the same side, although on different levels. This becomes apparent in the final paragraph of the analysis of beauty in On
Beauty as the Symbol of Morality. Here beauty is what exemplifies the
morally good as it operates in the medium of the image where morality
operates in the medium of the concept.
Although employing different media, beauty and morality have the
same end, namely virtue. The two different kinds of liking are accordingly mobilized against the non-virtuous, the liking of the agreeable,
that is, enjoyment and pleasure. To marginalize and restrict this latter
kind of liking becomes important in the development of aesthetics. It
becomes important to emphasize that the liking of the good is essentially different from the liking of the agreeable.
The agreeable could never be called good, a dish, for example, is
not good. Not even health is good, as Kant emphasizes, unless we by
such a statement imply that health is directed to a higher purpose, unless an obligation is implied in maintaining ones good health. Health
could for example be called good if we imply that it enables us to attend to our business, our tasks or our duties. Thus, the liking of the
good implies a liking that anticipates moral consequences of the object
whereas the liking of the agreeable merely looks for the fulfillment of
pleasure through the object.
Kant anticipates a possible objection to this rigid distinction between interest in gratification and interest in moral consequences.
54

Someone might call the agreeable a good, implying that the agreeable is a moral obligation, and by this suggesting that pleasure is a higher
purpose in life. Such a hedonism is, however, entirely unacceptable:
Surely everyone believes that happiness, the greatest sum . . . of what
is agreeable in life, may be called a true good, indeed the highest good.
And yet reason balks at this too.86 Even though a majority (jedermann)
appears to wander about in this delusion, reason cannot accept this. And
Kant emphasizesreminding himself and the reader that enjoyment is
not identical to the goodthat agreeableness is enjoyment. Reason
can never be persuaded to appreciate the value of enjoyment, or to appreciate the value of a person living for enjoyment.
But reason can never be persuaded that there is any intrinsic value in
the existence of a human being who lives merely for enjoyment (no
matter how industrious he may be in pursuing that aim), even if he
served others, all likewise aiming only at enjoyment, as a most efficient
means to it because he participated in their gratification by enjoying it
through sympathy.87

The parenthesis is interesting. Even if a person was very industrious

(geschftig) in his or her pursuit of enjoymentin which case one
would suspect him/her to pursue enjoyment much harderone cannot
extenuate this pursuit, but it would, however, make the person a less
aggravating case. If the person was very industrious in this pursuit,
his/her industry and sense of obligation would constitute an excuse of
sorts. This industry would indeed appeal to reason, but it would never
persuade her. The persons industry might charm reason, but it would
never seduce her.
Even in the case where a person merely served other people in attaining enjoyment and only participated indirectly in their gratification
through sympathy, neither this case would be acceptable to reason. Reason is not prepared to accept the pursuit of enjoyment in any form. Indirectly attained enjoyment, attained through sympathy, would still constitute enjoyment, and pursuit of this indirect enjoyment would be
equally worthless. Only that which is done without enjoyment at all
gives a person value and existence: Only by what he does without concern for enjoyment . . . does he give his existence an absolute value, as
the existence of a person.88
Happiness is by no means an unconditional good, Kant emphasizes,89 and inserts at this point a footnote for the sake of those still stub55

born enough to believe in a connection between enjoyment and good,

those who are still inclined to perceive happiness and enjoyment as a
higher purpose of life. Happiness is not only not a good, in this footnote
the warning against happiness becomes more urgent and pertinent. An
obligation toward happiness is now a self-evident, a blatant absurdity:
Eine Vorbindlichkeit zum Genieen ist eine offenbare Ungereimtheit.
And the footnote continues to explain and to make the point.
[An obligation to enjoy oneself is a manifest absurdity.] So, consequently, must be an alleged obligation to any acts that aim merely at
enjoyment, no matter how intellectually subtle (or veiled) that enjoyment may be, indeed, even if it were a mystical, so-called heavenly, enjoyment.90

An obligation to seek enjoyment, however intellectually subtle or

veiled, is absurd. One has an obligation to pursue the good, but not if
this pursuit involves enjoyment, even though the specific obligation to
pursue good is in fact determined as a Begehrungsvermgen, a dependency of desire, and even though the good carries a liking with it.
Both the agreeable and the good have a relationship to desire.
For the good is the object of the will (a power of desire that is determined by reason) . . . Both the agreeable and the good refer to our
power of desire and hence carry a liking with them, the agreeable a liking that is conditioned pathologically by stimuli, the good a pure practical liking.91

According to the footnote, the good seems to be determined as

something it should not be, namely, a subtle and veiled enjoyment. It
seems to be an intellectual enjoyment, depending on reason, but nevertheless involving desire. Thus, if the good implies a Begehrungsvermgen (a desire) then it must be a desire entirely without enjoyment, an intellectual desire for obligation, an intellectual desire in itself only obligation, task, duty. This would define the good as an obligation to obligation without any remainder (however intellectual or
religious, subtle or veiled) of enjoyment.
Neither the good nor the beautiful object must produce pleasure in a
physical or sensuous sense. The beautiful exists by itself, as well as the
judging person should be detached from the world: Taste is the ability
to judge an object, or a way of presenting it, by means of a liking or dis56

liking devoid of all interest. The object of such a liking is called beautiful.92
The person tasting beauty avoids the agreeable because the person
in his or her judgment only exists in a relationship to him or herself. Insofar as the object is internalized, the relationship to the object is ultimately auto-affective. It is brought back to oneself in a test of how it
effects the persons abstract, extra-mundane, and, therefore, innocent
pleasures.

4.3) Beauty as Universal

When internalizing a beautiful object, the connoisseur of beauty
judges it with disinterest. He/she is neutral and without desire in relation to the object. This neutrality, implying a lack of personal interest in
judging the object, also makes the judgment (semi-) universal.
He cannot discover such private conditions because his liking is not
based on any inclination he has. . . . Hence he will talk about the beautiful as if beauty were a characteristic of the object and the judgment
were logical . . . because the judgment does resemble a logical judgment inasmuch as we may presuppose it to be valid for everyone.93

This universality designates the so-called quantitative aspect of

beauty as derived from the qualitative disinterest in beauty. Because
of the disinterest and neutrality of the judging subject, the subject believes it asserts a logical judgment when judging something to be beautiful. The judgment of beauty resembles a logical judgment because it
seems to be valid to everyone and demand everybodys consent. Despite this apparent universality, it still does not arise from concepts, it
cannot be explained.
The qualitative difference between the judgment of the agreeable
and the judgment of the beautiful consists of interest and disinterest, respectively. The quantitative difference is also derived from this distinction. The agreeable is based on a private subjective feeling whereas the
beautiful is based on a universal subjective feeling.
Burke was convinced that the sense of the palate was the same for
every person. Everybody could distinguish sweet and sour, and if
somebody got into the habit of liking tobacco and wine better than
honey and milk, it was explained away as the degeneration of an orig57

inal taste. From this essential common sense of taste, Burke would by
analogy deduce a common taste regarding art and literature. By means
of the distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful, Kant instead
distinguishes between the taste for food and the taste for art as the difference between a private and a universal taste. In the first case everyone has his own taste, in the second, a judgment of beauty demands
everybodys agreement. He must not call it beautiful if only he likes it.
. . . If he proclaims something to be beautiful, then he regards the same
liking from others; he then judges not just for himself but for everyone.94
The judgment of beauty is universal; it requires the same sensation
of pleasure and displeasure in every person. When people express
themselves about the beauty of an object, they speak with a so-called
universal voice (allgemeine Stimme). With this universal voice the
judging subject requires agreement regarding its judgment. However,
this requirement is merely a possibility, an expectation that agreement
will be accomplished.
Nothing is postulated in a judgment of taste except such a universal
voice about a liking unmediated by concepts. Hence all that is postulated is the possibility of a judgment that is aesthetic and yet can be
considered valid for everyone. The judgment of taste itself does not
postulate everyones agreement . . . it merely requires this agreement
from everyone, as an instance of the rule, an instance regarding which
it expects confirmation not from concepts but from the agreement of
others. Hence the universal voice is only an idea.95

The universal voice is only an idea. This qualification makes the

judgment of taste uncertain because now it does not postulate everybodys agreement, it merely requires everybodys agreement. The judging subject believes it speaks with a universal voice that requires universal consent. But if this universal force is merely an idea, it is still only present as the subjects private imagination. A universal voice reduced to my idea necessarily makes the subjects judgment uncertain
because the subject cannot transgress the limitation of its reflections
and verify the universality of this private voice aspiring to universality:
Whether someone who believes he is making a judgment of taste is in
fact judging in conformity with that idea may be uncertain.96
The subject, within its subjective limitations, tries to make sure of
its universal aspirations by using the term beauty about that which it
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judges. If the subject does so, at least it intends to display a disinterested judgment, a judgment of taste. It tries to secure everybody elses
agreement by separating the liking of the agreeable from the liking of
the beautiful.

4.4) Beauty as Purposiveness Without Purpose

Beauty is purposiveness without purpose reads Kants often
quoted phrase. What is at all a purpose (Zweck)? Acting with a purpose presupposes the notion of a willful subjectivity directing its action
towards certain ends or goals. The subject does something in order to
attain or realize something. The subject expects to realize certain ends
qua its action, and the ends are regarded as the purpose of the action.
The purpose, therefore, relies on the will or intention of the subject;
it is formed before and precedes the action; it is the justification of the
action. The subject has a rationale, an idea regarding the action, and
the action strives to realize this idea. The purpose is the telos (finis) that
as concept underlies the action.
But there is also purposiveness if there is no concept underlying an
act, or if an act does not present an articulated purpose. If the final form
does not derive from will, we still talk about purposiveness simply because we can only understand the possibility of this final form by explaining it by will.
Hence there can be purposiveness without a purpose, insofar as we do
not posit the causes of this form in a will, and yet can grasp the explanation of its possibility only by deriving it from a will. Now what we
observe we do not always need to have insight into by reason.97

Thus, the famous Kantian phrase, Zweckmssigkeit ohne Zweck, indicates that in certain objects one discerns purpose without concept.
The will behind the action (the object, the product) escapes rational
explanation. This distinction between purpose and purposivenessas a
distinction between the concept of an objects purpose and the representation of the objectis reminiscent of the traditional distinction between content and form. Thus, a judgment of taste should never base itself on the content of an object, but merely on its form (its Vorstellungsart).

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The judgment of taste is the presentation of an object with purposiveness but not purpose. This purposiveness is determined in the apprehension of mere form. It is furthermore a purposiveness that must
neither precede nor accompany the feeling of pleasure produced by the
perception of beauty. If purposiveness precedes the feeling of pleasure,
one is judging the object according to a rational concept, interest has
invaded ones judgment; consequently one is not judging beauty, but rather something good or beneficial, something the object is good for.
But if pleasure accompanies, if the feeling of pleasure is based on purposiveness, then we fall back into the agreeable, the object merely gratifies us, the universal aspect of judging is lost.
All interest ruins a judgment of taste and deprives it of its impartiality,
especially if, instead of making the purposiveness precede the feeling
of pleasure as the interest of reason does, that interest bases the purposiveness on the feeling of pleasure; but this is what always happens in
an aesthetic judgment that we make about something insofar as it gratifies or pains us.98

Interest is at stake for example where charm and emotions are

mingled in the judgment of taste. Charm and emotion are effects produced by pseudo-works of art. But works of art producing these effects,
or being liked for them, take pleasure as its purpose. They deviate from
pure interest in the form of the work: A pure judgment of taste is one
that is not influenced by charm or emotion . . . and whose determining
basis is therefore merely the purposiveness of the form.99
Charm and emotion are impure components in the judgment of taste,
and they constitute judgments of taste that deal with agreeable or disagreeable objects, judgments also termed empirical judgments. Whereas
empirical judgments deal with agreeable or disagreeable objects, pure
judgments only deal with beautiful objects. In this attempt to establish a
pure judgment of beauty, there are several kinds of pseudo-beauty to
avoid. Pseudo-beautiful objects may seem to belong to beautyand in
the tradition of aesthetics they may have been related to beautybut
nevertheless, they have nothing to do with beauty in its pure form.
Among such pseudo-beauties Kant mentions charm, ornaments, emotions, and perfectionwith a generic term, accessory beauties (pulchritado adhaerens) in juxtaposition to free beauty (pulchritudo vaga).
False or impure beauties like charm, ornament, emotion, or perfection are empirical, extrinsic, additional, and supplemental to beauty as
60

pure form. They do not belong to the intrinsic nature of the beautiful
object; they invade the beautiful as something from the outside only to
blur our judgment of real and pure beauty, even though these impure or
supplemental beauties occasionally enhance the impression of beauty in
the object.
Beauty concerns only the intrinsic nature of the beautiful object, its
form or design as independent of any purpose. Charmbecause it is
based on a feeling of pleasure, because it appeals to a liking which is
agreeableis a supplement. Charm seduces. It adds itself as something extrinsic to the beautiful object such that the unpracticed taste
may confuse the object with the mere charming presentation of the object. The charming attribute draws attention away from the object and
draws attention to itself. One fails to notice the form, the design, and the
structure of the beautiful object; one is fascinated by an inferior, extrinsic, and supplemental feature.
Form and structure is what we like not because we enjoy it, not because it gratifies us, not because it interests us, but exactly because it
defies enjoyment and interest, and constitutes the condition for a disinterested perception of beauty. Charm spoils the disinterested sense of
the objects intrinsic structure. It belongs to the work of art as a frame
belongs to a painting; as little as one like a painting for its frame, one
should like a work of art for its charm. These ornaments (parerga) destroy the perception of the work of art as self-sufficient and pure form.
Beauty is in itself independent of interest, independent of any purpose, and independent of any addition to the form it conveys. It is in
this independence of context, frame, audience, world, or purpose, the
judging subject has to learn how to perceive beauty.
5) Kants Concept of Genius
Fine art is not nature, but it has to look as if it is nature. This impliesas when Addison discusses the plantation of English gardens
that it must be free from all constraints of rules. Like nature it must look
as if it has been produced without purpose. Although art differs from
nature by having been produced with a purposethat is, produced intentionallyit must conceal this purpose. The artists should avoid any
indication of dependency on precepts, principles, and rules: Therefore,
even though the purposiveness in a product of fine art is intentional, it
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must still not seem intentional; i.e., fine art must have the look of nature
even though we are conscious of it as art.100
The production of art according to this intentional unintentionality
becomes a prevalent idea in the determination of the ingenious artist.
The same idea is at stake in Schillers concept of the naive artist.
In the roughest form the idea appears to be a kind of recommended
deceit. Even though artists produce a work of art according to an intended form, they ought to hide this fact. Although artists rely on rules
in their work, the work has to appear as if no rules were ever present,
there must be no trace of rules or precepts in the work. This might
sound as a recommendation to aesthetic deception, but as soon as we
talk about ingenious works of art, so-called fine art, this element of
conscious deliberation and calculation regarding the creative process
disappears. The geniuses do bring rules to a work of art, but they do so
spontaneously and without knowledge of the concept (Begriff) determining these rules. Because of this lack of conceptual knowledge, the
genius cannot devise a rule for art, cannot impose precepts or standards
for art and poetry. The rules imposed on the work of art are so well
concealed that even the artists themselves are unaware of these rules.
The rules are in fact rules which nobody senses or notices. Ingenious
artists, therefore, do not simply keep their rules invisible in their work
of artthat would it be a matter of deliberate decisionthey never notice any rules themselves; they produce out of nature. And still the genius artist is someone who gives rules to art: Genius is the talent (natural endowment) that gives the rule to art.101
As such, ingenious artists are giving a gift of which they have no
knowledge. Strictly speaking, artists have nothing to give; the giving
acts through them as something coming from within and of which they
are unaware and unconscious. This endowmentthe artists Talent or
Naturgabeis a quality belonging to nature.
Since talent is an innate productive ability of the artist and as such belongs itself to nature, we could also put it this way: Genius is the innate
mental predisposition (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule
to art.102

Kant tries, in these considerations, to establish the idea of ingenious

art as something wholly original and uniquely self-sufficient. A genuine
product of art is conceived according to its own uniquely devised rules,
independent of former models or examples of art; therefore, it is also a
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product without history and context. Original means that the product
must be absolutely new, absolutely unknown, and the talent (Naturgabe) of the ingenious artist consists of the ability to produce the absolutely new. The genius is a unique inventor-creator of original, poetical
signification. Hence, we have in Kant four requirements for the ingenious creation of art: 1) Genius must first and foremost be original. 2)
The work of art must be exemplary, it must give rules to subsequent recipients, but never in itself rely on rules, or imitate those. It must have
derived from nothing, it must have no context. It must not imitate, but it
must be exemplarish, and thus it must itself give occasion to imitation.
3) Genius must be ignorant about determinate concepts for the creation
of the work of art; genius must be inspired, and thus unable to communicate his or her creativity. 4) Therefore, nature prescribes rules to art,
or art relies on nature.
These rules are imperceptible, they cannot be illuminated by
means of concepts, or in general, by any linguistic means. They seemingly have no linguistic format. They work in the genius as a prelinguistic form transmitted to the successful work of art. They are like
black holes we cannot see, but whose existence we surmise from noticing certain effects in the surrounding matter.
Since one cannot conceptualize and communicate the genuine rule
for an ingenious work of art, ingenuity cannot be taught. Artistic creation is now the opposite of imitationthe common and prevailing definition of artistic creation until the eighteenth century. Artistic creation
is consequently something that cannot be learned. The influential Horacian idea of teaching artistic skills is abandoned with Kant.
On this point everyone agrees: that genius must be considered the very
opposite of a spirit of imitation. Now since learning is nothing but imitation, even the greatest competence, i.e., teachability (capacity) qua
teachability, can still not count as genius.103

The genius artist must give rules to art, but unconsciously. If those
rules derive from concepts, they serve as precepts, and what an artist
conceives according to precepts is not art. Still, these non-conceptual
rules must be handy for others to follow.
Rather, the rule must be abstracted from what the artist has done, i.e.,
from the product, which others may use to test their own talent, letting
it serve them as their model, not to be copied but to be imitated.104

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And Kant adds rightfully: Wie dieses mglich sie, ist schwer zu
erklren.105 This rule should never serve as a precept, but must nevertheless serve followers as a modelnot to be copied, but only to be imitated. This is difficult to explain.
The ingenious work of art is beyond rules and precepts, and with
this, it is distinguished from so-called mechanical art. According to
the definition, fine art is independent, self-sufficient, and uncontaminated, but this definition is too exacting and demanding as it subsequently becomes clear. Ingenious or fine art needs to have a mechanical
component.
Even though mechanical and fine art are very different from each other,
since the first is based merely on diligence and learning but the second
on genius, yet there is no fine art that does not have as its essential
condition something mechanical, which can be encompassed and complied with, and hence has an element of academic correctness. For
something must be thought, as purpose, since otherwise the product
cannot be ascribed to any art at all, but would be a mere product of
chance.106

This is a necessary modification, a supplement added to the definition of ingenious art. There are, after all, rules in art; rules inscribed as
purpose and intention. There is something mechanical about every
work of art as its conception demands academic education in the poet.
From this new modified perspective it even makes Kant furious to
perceive art without rules, without mechanical components and socalled academic correctness. Artists who believe in spontaneityin
fact believing in geniusare merely charlatans and shallow minds. We
laugh, and we laugh hard at them, as well as we laugh at people confusing these shallow minds with real geniuses.
Shallow minds believe that the best way to show that they are geniuses
in first bloom is by renouncing all rules of academic constraint . . . it is
utterly ridiculous for someone to speak and decide like a genius even in
matters that require the most careful rational investigation. . . . One
does not quite know whether to laugh harder at the charlatan who
spreads all this haze . . . or laugh at the audience, which naively imagines that the reason why it cannot distinctly recognize and grasp this
masterpiece of insight is that large masses of new truth are being hurled
at it.107

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In this context, threatened by the nuisance of self-proclaimed geniuses, a genius no longer simply creates out of spontaneous nature;
he/she must also be academically trained. In order to maintain a balance
between the first statement, a genius is nature (spontaneous, etc.), and
the second and supplemental, a genius is culture (educated, etc.), Kant
has to invent an additional distinction in order to elucidate and explain
how a genius can be both. This turns out to be the traditional distinction
between material and form; artists become natural talents owing to the
fact that nature provides them with material, but their talent has to be
appropriately cultivated by means of proper training and education.
Through this training, their talents are able to process and format the
material endowed to them into an adequate form: Genius can only provide rich material for products of fine art; processing this material and
giving it form requires a talent that is academically trained.108
In the successful fusion of material and form, the genius appears to
produce works of art containing spirit (Geist), which must not be confused with elegance, order, grace, thoroughness, entertainment, prettiness, etc. Spirit is an aesthetic idea animating the soul, something
which prompts thoughts, but no distinctive thought. A spiritual aesthetic
idea has no unequivocal concept, it cannot be clearly expressed in language, it is an intuition lacking a specific sign that could match it.
By an aesthetic idea I mean a presentation of the imagination which
prompts much thought, but to which no determinate thought whatsoever, i.e., no determinate concept, can be adequate, so that no language
can express it completely and allow us to grasp it.109

The genius should create presentations of the imagination, but without concepts. These presentations of imagination are also called ideas;
they are partly beyond experience (which nonetheless strives to give a
semblance of reality) and partly inner intuitions to which no concept is
completely adequate.
Spirit therefore relates to imagination. By means of imagination we
create another nature out of actual natureKant repeats here a century old conception of the relationship between imagination and world,
echoing for example Sidneys or Addisons criticismsurpassing the
actual world and our dependency on actual experience. By imagination
the poet gives expression to invisible beings or to ideas, but in such a
way that the images representing a concept (as for example hell, eterni65

ty, creation, death, love) are so many and various that they have no single expression. The aesthetic idea destroys the one-to-one relationship
between concept and expression (Begriff/Ausdruch) because it
represents the concept by various ideas which do not expose the concept. It adds to the concept something unnamable, and this unnamable
is what the aesthetic idea adds to language as Geist.
As an example on an aesthetic idea Kant mentions Jupiters eagle
with the lightning in its claws. This eagle is an attribute to Jupiter, telling something about the god; but it is not a logical attribute, it does not
present us to one single unequivocal concept explaining the meaning of
this eagle. In this eagle we are presented a multitude of ideas prompting
our imagination; we imagine an inexhaustible realm of presentations.
We never attain a definite concept of what Jupiters eagle signifies. And
this indeterminateness and inexhaustibility indicate an aesthetic idea.
A poem of King Frederick the Great where the king compares the
end of life to the end of a summer evening provides Kant with an example of an aesthetic idea.
Let us part from life without grumbling or regrets, / Leaving the world
behind filled with our good deeds. / Thus the sun, his daily course
completed, / Spreads one more soft light over the sky; / And the last
rays that he sends through the air / Are the last sighs he gives the world
for its well-being.110

Kant interprets this poem according to his newly developed idea of

the aesthetic attribute, arousing in the imagination of the reader a multitude of sensations without one single definite concept.
The king is here animating his rational idea of a cosmopolitan attitude,
even at the end of life, by means of an attribute which the imagination
(in remembering all the pleasures of a completed beautiful summer day,
which a serene evening calls to mind) conjoins with that presentation,
and which arouses a multitude of sensations and supplementary presentations for which no expression can be found.111

When the king leaves the world, he is satiated and without regrets.
As it is a king speaking through the poem, he adequately compares himself with the sun. Like the sun he has spread his light and well-being on
earth. And now he has, like the sun, completed a day, completed his
course of life. In his death he continues to send his last soft rays through
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the air. His last thoughts go to the world; they indicate his concern. He
goes down as the sun goes down, with a final blessing of the day/his
kingdom.
Apparently, this is an example on an ingenious poem. It illustrates
what fine art does, and ought to do, regarding the difficult relationship
between imagination and reason, sensation and concept. This unnamable, which we here name blessing, is an effect of the poem. But exactly, blessing is only one possible expression for this poetical effect, one
might suggest among many others: peace, well-being accomplishment. As such, the poem produces something unnamable It remains an
open question what exactly the sun does at sunset which is equal to
what the king does when he dies. In its/his death the sun/the king seems
to present the world with a final present, a gift. This gift, however, is
unnamable or indecidable. And in this indecidability, Geist is endowed
to poetical language.
To give spirit to what seems spiritless, to what seems mere letter, to
produce the unnamable, the idea for which there is no single expression,
to connect imagination and reason, this is the task for the genius. That
is, it is a task to produce metaphors. The genius is someone who, by
combining imagination and understanding (verstehung), produces the
unnamable, that is, Geist, that is, metaphors. For example, the genius
produces the sunset as a metaphor for a certain comprehension of death
which remains abstruse to our rational understanding.

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Chapter 5
________________________________________
The Origins of Man, Language, and Poetry

1) The Rational Principle: Origins and Differential Systems

Why is it that at the end of the eighteenth century one begins to ask
questions about the origins of things? At this time, a title or subtitle for
a treatise about language, knowledge, music, poetry, or man, almost
certainly includes a sur lOrigine or a ber den Ursprung. One is
fascinated by the idea of the first languages, of the invention of speech,
of the origins of human knowledge or consciousness. One speculates
about the beginning of society, music, painting, and poetry. Treatises
proliferate during the end of the century contemplating about these origins, tracing the first, primitive sources.
The style of writing changes with this new interest in the roots of
human beings. One is no longer concerned with recorded origins, with
the written accounts of facts and events, with the known history of the
human being. One is not interested in imitating exemplary models in
ones art. Now, one begins speculating about origins that cannot be
traced because they are located in a fictitious prehistoric time. Origins
are now located in an era before humans learned to record their historical activity, therefore in an era irrecoverably lost. The origins one tries
to explore are beyond investigation because they are located before the
invention of writing. One can only speculate about this primitive constitution of language and society, and one speculates in a language that
yearns to attain and reproduce the object it is speculating about, a language that tries to revive this object in its own style and rhetoric. It is a
language that, if it describes the first languages as figurative, itself becomes figurative; and if it perceives later developments of language as
unfortunate rationalizations of language, tries to rid itself of rational
methodology. It is a language that, when it attempts to grasp the poetry
of the first languages, wants to persuade us as readers by exhibiting the
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tone and sound of this poetry. In this new style, one tries to compose
ones language more as a breath of passion than as a rational descriptive language. One wants to get beyond writing by making ones writing an echo of the voices of the first speakers.
In neoclassicism one believed in exemplary models as sources of
poetry. A source, an origin, was not found in the medium of sounds
and voices; it was rather identified as what we might call writing, recorded and well-established pieces of art, preferably either as poetry or
sculpture. As such, sources were not understood as generating language,
knowledge, society, and similar human affairs. Sources were not a
starting point, a zero, from which a consciousness supposedly learned
how to differentiate and distinguish its worldas origins in Rousseau
and Herder allegedly engender the perception of everything from society and sex to the individual itself. Exactly because these neoclassical
sources were understood as writing, they could not be reduced to first
causes. They were produced, caused by something else, by an outside
which was not questioned in the neoclassical paradigm. These works of
art one could imitate, and the imitation was a question of technological
skillfulness, not a question of empathy. One was not recommended to
identify oneself with the ancient Greeks; it was not necessary to understand their situation, feelings, and motives in order to produce a
work of art imitating the ancients. One still believed in the book, in the
recorded facts, and in ones ability to copy the technique or narrative
logic of ones ancient predecessors. Winckelmann stands on the threshold of these two tendencies. There is in his writings both an urge to
understand the Greek soul, the edle Einfalt und stille Grsse of Greek
mentality, in order to produce art like the Greeks, and a clear emphasis
on the importance of technique.
Now one begins a search for the first word: how it was spoken,
why it was spoken, and what made it necessary. One searches the origin
as a point zero, as a beginning from where mankind can not possibly
trace itself or its products farther back in time. Still, one will discuss
whether the origin is genuine or whether it is merely derived from a
principle even more original; and between philosophers disagreements
about what is most original developonly to confirm the general assessment, origins are always sought as the conceivably most simple and
primitive. They are located in a fictitious prehistory, presumably the
source of everything related to modern civilization: mankind, history,
government, society, language, writing, poetry, music, the alphabet, etc.
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Origins represent a lost paradise for human beings. Certainly, one

would refer to even older ages, a time before the first origins, but these
ages before the origins did not count as beginnings, they represented a
past where humans were more beasts than humans. What was interesting was the point at which humans became civilized, the point at which
the human being became a human being, the origin of civilization, and
not animal prehistory, which in itself could not be traced to any origin.
At this primitive stage of life, there was nothing distinctive about humans for which one could seek the origin: neither language nor speech,
neither society nor government, neither music nor poetry. In fact, there
was not even a perception of an opposite sex, or a distinctive perception
of the human being as such. This lack of distinctiveness characterizes
everything before the origin of language, society, and humans. Logically, it is a fictitious era where all differences have imploded, where
conscious perception of the world is still nonexistent. Only subsequently, with the emergence of the first words, does consciousness awake, a
distinct perception of the world arises, and systems of differences and
identities begin to establish themselves.
One is interested in beginnings because they supposedly represent
human beings as they were meant to be. Understanding these beginnings, therefore, can help to criticize and correct the alienation and corruption of present society. Thus, the origins of man, languages, and society represent the truth, the purity, and the happiness of human beings.
At these beginnings, societies are still uncomplicated, speech is still
harmonious and sonorous, feelings are still pure and innocent, human
beings are still passionate and sensuous, etc. These origins are conceived in contrast to the present life. If they represent a lost but happy
childhood of life, present life has become alienated, unnatural, unhappy.
This is why we cannot talk about origins without talking about
difference. That is why origins generateat a logical level in these
discussionsa system of differences and identities. Origins do not just
enable, rather they motivate the theoreticianswhether Winckelmann,
Rousseau, Condillac, Herder, or Schillerto compare the present to the
past, establishing an evaluative system in which nature is contrasted to
civilization, sounds of passion to rational language, speech to writing,
natural poetry to contrived poetry, etc. The antitheses are always situated as structural oppositions where one pole is positively and the
other negatively evaluated. The speculation in origins starts such a
distribution of differences. Origin and difference are inseparably in70

tertwined; they are related as two sides of the same paper (to borrow a
metaphor from Saussure).
According to this logical pattern, one began to criticize contemporary society, using these fictitious ideals of the past. Society was, in
consequence, also conceived to be changeable. It was now possible to
criticize society from the invented idea of what humans were supposed
to have been originally.

2) The Formation of the First Words and Before

2.1) The First Passions and the Emergence of Language
Rousseaus Essai sur lorigine des langues goes from the beginning
back to an indeterminable time of human prehistory. Rousseau wants to
account for the beginning of language, understood first and foremost as
the beginning of speech. This is simultaneously the beginning of society
because the need to talk is preceded by individuals mutual recognition
of themselves as belonging to the same species. They understand that
they belong to the same kind, what makes it possible for them to gather
into larger social groups.
Before speaking to each other, individuals have to perceive themselves as sentient and thinking. In their need to form a group, they begin
to reach out towards an identical other. This identification process is
what constitutes the need to communicate and what precedes the invention of language: As soon as one man was recognized by another as a
sentient, thinking being similar to himself, the desire or need to communicate his feelings and thoughts made him seek the means to do
so.112
Thus, there is something going on before the first words are uttered,
something that happens without words but explains the need for them.
This we describe as an identificational process. This is simultaneously
an imagination process, insofar as identification only succeeds if humans are capable of imagining. Without imagination, individuals would
remain isolated islands. They could not create social ties between themselves and would not feel the need to communicate: He who imagines
nothing is aware only of himself; he is isolated in the midst of mankind.113
This development of imagination, a prerequisite for the identificational process, is explained through the example of pitya preferred
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example of Rousseaus, and of the Age. One must have developed an

imaginative capability in order to feel pity because one can only be
moved to pity by transcending oneself in the simultaneous identification
with the other, by imagining oneself to be in his situation: [We are]
getting outside ourselves and identifying with a being who suffers . . . it
is not in ourselves, but in him that we suffer.114 Feeling pity implies being able to realize that the other is identical with oneself, that the other
(in kind and species) is the same: How would I suffer in seeing another
suffer . . . if I am ignorant of what he and I have in common.115 The
recognition of this general identityin what is other, different, and distinctis one reason for, one explanation of the emergence of language.
But there is another reason why speech becomes a necessity, a reason not solely founded in human psychology but caused by the geographical environment of primordial humans. We shall briefly term it
scarcity of water.
Humans, as it seems, from the beginning desire to avoid one another. They do not seek each others company naturally if they do not have
to. If they live in lush countries with plenty of supplies, in fertile lands
with flowing rivers, then they stay amongst themselves, then they
would remain isolated for a longer time within their families, without
communication.116 But in parched and dry countries, with fewer water
supplies, humans are forced to come together, as they gather around the
wells of the land to fetch water. This marks the beginning not only of
language and societyso closely relatedbut even of sex. If everything beforehand had been inbreeding within the familyincestuous relationships between brother and sister, aroused by instinctnow girls
and young men meet around the fountains to fetch water. They gradually begin to discover one another as sexual beings. If first they seek the
wells because of the water, they begin graduallyas their eyes get used
to see each other as different and distinctive sexesto seek the wells
because of the new discovery of a different sex. Slowly and imperceptibly, the water is no longer the main attraction, the other sex is.
Girls would come to seek water for the household, young men would
come to water their herds. There eyes, accustomed to the same sights
since infancy, began to see with increased pleasure. The heart is moved
by these novel objects; an unknown attraction renders it less savage; it
feels pleasure at not being alone. Imperceptibly, water becomes more
necessary. The livestock become thirsty more often. One would arrive
in haste and leave with regret.117

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Meeting around the fountains, the youth gradually try to make themselves understood. They want to explain themselves. Now gestures no
longer suffice but are accompanied by an impassioned voice.
Language would not have originated if environmental circumstances
had not forced people to come together, but, specifically, language develops because human beings, in this social gathering begin to detect
themselves as different in sex. Communication begins as an exchange,
as a transmission of thoughts and feelings between two different sexes.
It begins as an attempt to bridge a gab between man and woman. As
such, it also marks the beginning of passion and desirea desire, that
is, to bridge what is now perceived as a difference. Language was first
invented for means of seduction.
On the surface, Rousseau seems to have two contradictory explanations for the beginning of speech. Either men have to recognize themselves as identical to other men, or they have to recognize themselves
as different from other (wo-)men. But the contradiction is only apparent
(at least, it is not necessarily a contradiction). Men and women must
learn to recognize themselves as identical to other human beings, but
different from the opposite sex.
This invention of speech also marks the end of incest. In the indistinct ages before language, there is neither any passion nor desire. Love
is unknown. Instinct and natural inclination unify the sexes, implying
that there is no perception or recognition of a different sex. Instinct, the
natural inclination, is blind; what it does, it does unknowingly. Before
gathering at the wells, youth grow up without having anything to provoke speech.
There were marriages but there was no love at all. Each family was
self-sufficient and perpetuated itself exclusively by inbreeding. Children of the same parents grew up together and gradually they found
ways of expressing themselves to each other: the sexes became obvious
with age; natural inclination sufficed to unite them. Instinct held the
place of passion; habit held the place of preference. They became husband and wife without ceasing to be brother and sister. There would be
nothing stimulating enough in that to loosen the tongue, nothing to
provoke accents of ardent passion often enough to conventionalize
them.118

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In these indistinct ages, one does not even have a perception of oneself as human. The human as an independent species different from
the beast does not yet exist because one is not yet perceiving oneself
according to a fundamental taxonomic system separating human from
beast. A fundamental differential network allowing something to be
perceived in distinction to something else is still lacking and does not
come into existence before the youth meet around the wells, discovering
the existence of two sexes, which is, in effect, the discovery of difference as such.
Never having seen anything beyond their own immediate milieu . . .
they did not understand themselves. They had the concept of a father, a
son, a brother, but not that of a man. Their hut contained all of their fellow men. Stranger, beast, monster: these were all one to them. Apart
from themselves and their family, the whole universe would count as
nothing to them.119

Thus, the best characterization of this prehistorical Age is indistinctiveness. It is obviously comprehended as a primitive time which lacks
differentiating grids through which the world can be perceived in its
distinctive variety. As such, the world is hardly even perceived; there is
no conscious awareness of individual objects before language because
if one cannot perceive differences, then one cannot perceive identities.
If the stranger, the beast, and the monster appear the same to primordial
human beings, if primordial human beings cannot differentiate, it is only because they cannot establish any one of them as a singular identity.
If human beings lack the concept of beastwhich would establish the
beast as something non-human, something different from human beings,
as such establishing the beast in its identity as beastthen they do not
perceive the beast; they are not consciously aware of beasts.
Therefore, human beings must first learn the difference, and this
they learn around the wells, when they watch the other sex getting water. Thus, before a man sees himself as different from beasts and monsters, he sees himself as different from women. And yet he perceives
himself and her as belonging to the same species because she is someone with whom he must reproduce the species. He perceives both their
difference and identity. When his eyes open in this passionate moment
of awakening, he sees that she is neither beast nor monster, but someone somehow identical to and somehow different from himself.

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The first words, according to Rousseau, must have been an attempt

to explain, or at least to express, this recognition to one another. They
must have been born out of passion, signifying the discovery of oneself
and the other as the same in kind, but different in type. They could have
consisted of a fervent and vehement pointing from the me to the you,
followed by exited exclamations: MeYou, as the first discovery of
Self-identity and Otherness, Identity and Differenceand, simultaneously, as a first rudimentary expression for what was later called
love.

2.2) The Reflective Process, and how the First Word Finds Its Way to
Human Consciousness
2.2.1) The Non-Origin of Language. Herder believes himself in disagreement with Rousseau, and his treatise about language is written
partly as a polemic essay directed against Rousseau. We shall argue that
the reason for this disagreement is not a serious difference in basic assumptions. It does not arise because Rousseau and Herder have different epistemological foundations, different rationales, or paradigms, but
becauseemerging from the same paradigmthey interpret this paradigm differently. To be even more precise, they believe that they interpret this paradigm differently.
In a paradigm similar to Rousseaus, Herder performs a cut, a split,
a division between animal and human differently from Rousseaus.
They both discuss a fictitious point in primordial time when humans
transgressed their animal preconditions and began to discover themselves as humans; that is, they began to perceive themselves with human
self-consciousness and self-awareness.
Like Rousseau, Herder has an era, a prehistoric time, when language
was all passion, when language was figurative, when language consisted
of the mere sounds of an animated soul. This language, however, does
not enable human beings to relate words to distinct objects in the world.
It does not establish a grid of differences and identities through which
human beings learn to recognize the worldultimately making the
world perceptible to themselves. This language is still understood as an
animal language by Herder. It is a primitive pre-human language
which does not, like Rousseaus first human language, represent the

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world in a distinct perception. It is a language which consists of nothing

but mere expressions of passion, pain, agony, joy, or anger.
Yet according to Herder, one may still find reminiscences of this
primitive animal language in contemporary language. Modern language
is different from this inarticulate language, but it has inherited certain
enlivening elements, certain expressions which are only sounds and
screams.
That such a primitive emotional language still exists bears witness
to the fact that the human being was never created as an egoistic monad
from the beginningHerder argues in opposition to Rousseau, for
whom humans are not social before their discovery of language. Primitive sounds were social attempts to reach out to other sentient beings.
From the beginning, the pre-human man-beast is social. This simple
language, which Herder repeatedly states is neither a language nor the
origin of language, nevertheless communicates, since it communicates
emotions and passions. It is from the beginning social, and as it is understood by the members of a society, it is consequently conventional.
As little as this communicating, prelinguistic (non-) language is not
language, neither does it constitute the origin or root of language. It is
the defined as the sap that enlivens the roots, consequently as something before the origin, as a vital principle giving life to languages. The
oldest languages are especially immersed in this sap. In general, the
further a language is removed from this prehistorical (non-) language,
the colder and more unnatural it is.
These primitive sounds of passion are principles of life and authenticity; they ensure a certain purity in a language. The closer a language
is to these primitive sounds, the more harmonious and sonorous, the
more vocal and melodious, the more closely related to pronunciation, to
breath, and to life. Herder here appears to describe the passionate,
emotional language one would find around Rousseaus wells, but these
original, passionate sounds are neither language nor languages origin;
they are exclamations which humans share with the beasts. Interpreting
these outpourings as the origin of language is an error: I cannot conceal my amazement that philosophers [that is, Rousseau] . . . ever conceived of the idea that the origin of human language might be explained
from these outcries of the emotions.120
In his need to distance himself from Rousseau, Herders argument
becomes constrained and artificial. He argues that certain outcries
which entirely transcend languagebelonging to an completely differ76

ent order, neither language nor languages originnonetheless constitute the authentic core in all languages. These prelinguistic sounds of
nature determine whether a language is truthful to its nature and establish the degree to which languages have become alienated and unnatural. As such, these outcries have the same status of authenticity as in
Rousseau. They demarcate the difference between a living language and
a dead one. They reveal themselves in the oldest and most original languages, as in Hebrew and in wild Indian languages closer to the human
origin. Finally, they constitute a standard for authentic and genuine poetry.
In both Rousseau and Herder, these passionate languages are meant
to sound, not to depict. They are purer, more authentic, more passionate languages. They represent a beginning from where everything which
follows declines and degenerates. This paradigm is repeated by both. A
notion of origin and decline, and a basic belief that one might return
in Herder, by means of a poetical strategy, in Rousseau, by means of an
educational strategyto the gratifying times and the pure languages of
the first human beings; these are assumptions directing and guiding the
writing of both. On this background Herders disagreement with Rousseau is merely superficial and rhetorical, based entirely on the decision
not to call passionate communication communication or primitive language language.
Language does not originate in the passions but in the intellect,
Herder asserts. The rational subject marks the origin of language, an
idea which in many ways contradicts Herders manifest emphasis on
and his aspirations to reach a purer, more passionate, more authentic,
and more primitive language and poetry.
2.2.2) The Origin of Language in Reason. As distinct from animal
expressions, human language has reason. In order to explain why reason
is a specific human phenomenon not shared by animals, Herder develops his idea of biological habitat.
Animals develop their primitive languages according to the biological habitat they occupy and to the narrowness of their sphere of living.
If an animal lives in a very narrow sphere, it develops only a few skills,
but these few skills are developed much more acutely. Some animals
only develop visual senses because they do not need hearing, but then
their visual senses are superior. Human beings, on the contrary, have a
much wider sphere of living, the whole world is their habitat. They do
not focus only on one object. They have a sense for all things, but each
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of these senses is relatively dull. Therefore, human beings do not develop just a single skill; they develop many skills, all of which they can
improve. This ability to improve skills constitutes a deviation from the
normal course of nature. Improvement becomes, so to speak, their most
important skill; with this skill, humans act in freedom and with selfreflection.
Because of this fundamental constitutional deficiency and because
of human beings numerous yet undeveloped skills, they rely on reason
in their action. Where animals have developed an artifactive skill, humans have developed reason, developed from a life in a broader biological habitat. Reason is a unique skill different from instinctive animal
skills because it releases humans from their dependency on nature; it releases them from dependence on their instincts. As in Rousseau, the environment explains why language becomes necessary. Before the development of a self-reflecting subject and its corresponding language,
there is an environment, a geography or a biology, establishing the need
for language. Language develops out of constitutional biological deficiencies, either out of lack of supplies (as in Rousseau), or out of lack
of artifactive skills (as in Herder).
In this established relationship between reflection and language, reflection is a prerequisite for language. Reflection precedes the discovery
of the first word because it enables the person to focus on something,
on an object to which the word can be attached, on something which the
word can represent.
[Man] manifests reflection when, confronted with the vast hovering
dream of images which pass by his senses, he can collect himself into a
moment of wakefulness and dwell at will on one image, can observe it
clearly and more calmly, and can select in it distinguishing marks for
himself so that he will know that this object is this and not another. He
thus manifests reflection if he is able not only to recognize all characteristics vividly or clearly but if he can also recognize and acknowledge
to himself one or several of them as distinguishing characteristics. The
first act of this acknowledgment results in a clear concept; it is the first
judgment of the souland through what did this acknowledgment occur? Through a distinguishing mark which he had to single out and
which, as a distinguishing mark for reflection, struck him clearly. 121

Reflection halts the continuous flow of sensations. If there were only this flow of sensations, human beings would be unconscious about
the world. They would not be attentive to the surrounding world of ob78

jects because they would not be able to fix distinct impressions of these
objects in their consciousness. The impressions they receive from the
world would just pass by the mind. In order to see consciously or attentivelythat is, to perceive in the strict sensehumans have to arrest
the impressions they receive. They must dwell on an image, look at it
again, and finally recognize it as something characteristically. This is a
reflective faculty only human beings possess. Reflection is, therefore,
also a faculty that makes possible perception of the world.
This reflection establishes a distinguishing mark; it enables human
beings to see something as something; it constitutes identity in a flow of
otherwise indistinguishable impressions. This constitution of identity
precedes the emergence and articulation of the first word. It is a condition which immediately precedes language, and it is indispensable to its
constitution. The difference between the two phases, the establishment
of identity and the emergence of the first wordbetween reflection and
languageis, however, minuscule and hardly distinguishable. The slow
recognition of a thing as distinctivethe gradual capability to see
something as somethingis hardly separable from the emergence of
the word for this thing. Herder explains how this formation of language
occurred, how the origin of language was conceived.
Let that lamb there, as an image, pass by under his eyes; it is to him, as
it is to no other animal. Not as it would appear to the hungry, scenting
wolf! Not as it would appear to the blood-lapping lion. . . . Not so with
man! As soon as he feels the need to come to know the sheep, no instinct gets in his way; no one sense of his pulls him too close to it or
too far away from it. It stands there, entirely as it manifests itself in his
sense. White, soft, woollyhis soul in reflective exercise seeks a distinguishing markthe sheep bleats! His soul has found the distinguishing mark. The inner sense is at work. This bleating, which makes upon
mans soul the strongest impression . . . the soul retains it. The sheep
comes again. White, soft, woollythe soul sees, touches, remembers,
seeks a distinguishing markthe sheep bleats, and the soul recognizes
it. And it feels inside, Yes, you are that which bleats. It has recognized it humanly when it recognized and named it clearly, that is, with
a distinguishing mark.122

Before exercising reflection, man is already able to take a disinterested view of the lamb. Contrary to the predators, which smell a meal
and react according to their instincts, man has no impulsive reaction on
seeing the lamb. Before the emergence of a reflective process, percep79

tions must be freed from instincts. The object must represent itself indifferently to the subject; it must represent itself solely as what it is in
itself, not as in an interested perception, not as a scent, a meal, etc., but,
as something white, soft, woolly (this is how Herder imagines the representation of a disinterested view of a lamb). After this phenomenological exercise is executed successfully, and one has learned to
perceive an object freed from interest and desire, reflection starts looking for a distinguishing mark, that is something which distinguishes
the lamb within the disinterested impression. When the lamb finally returns, as white, soft, woolly, the soul summons forth this already retained image. The lamb is identified as lamb, as this white, soft, woolly living being.
The only thing left is now for the lamb to elicit a sound that specifically relates to and distinguishes this image. The sound of its bleating
constitutes such a mark. This is something the soul retains, and when
the lamb bleats again, the lamb is recognized as the bleating. One has
found a name, a signifier, for the lamb. This recognition enlightens the
human being and relieves the subject from the reflective struggle it has
undergone in order to identify the animal as something: Ha! du bist das
Blckende! The name-giving alleviates. The human being finally recognizes the lamb by its bleating; it finds a word for lamb, and what is
the entire human languages other than a collection of such words,123
Herder concludes.
The invention of language is due to the ability to hold back images,
retain them, and recollect them when they present themselves a second
time. It is the ability first to produce a trace of impressions and then to
reproduce the same trace of impressions. This ability to hold on to
something already seen, to stop it from disappearing, and then to revoke
the image when the object is seen again is, as such, an ability to remember. Remembrance, therefore, is a constitutional condition for language.124

3) The Living and the Dead Languages; Voice and Writing

3.1) The Influence of the Climate
The idea of an origin of man, languages, and society ultimately
causes a change in the concept of history. Logically, an origin is a
point from which something derives. It is the seed, the source, the birth,
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or the cradle of something. Defined as such, origins are also uniquely

authentic and natural; nothing precedes them, and nothing therefore has
as yet spoiled or perverted them. Defined as a unique beginning, there
is still no outside interference in the origin. First in the development
such decline and degeneration emerge as possibility. If, at the origins of
civilization, human beings were represented as they were meant to be,
later developments destroyed this initial representation. Compared to
the lost ideals, life, society, language, poetry, and music are now degenerating. In the new paradigm emerging around the concept origin,
something is now viewed as natural, contrary to un-natural. The natural one locates in bygone Ages: in a fictitious prehistory, in ancient
Greece, or in cultures foreign to modern civilizationthat is, still unspoiled cultures close to original life and language.
The discussions of climate reflect this initial distinction. The distinction between Southern and Northern climates is a repetition of the
distinction between natural/non-natural, original/derived. Natural/nonnatural is now located geographically, and repeated in new oppositions
describing temperaments, speech, or sensitivity: passionate/cold, sonorous speech/mechanical speech, voice/writing, poetry/rationality. The
Southern climate and Southern people are perceived as more original
or authentic than Northern. Southern is sometimes understood as
south of France, and usually south of Europe; it usually includes Greece
and the Arab, African, and Asian cultures. The Southern climates
represent warmth and fertility; they are conceived of as exotic places
untouched by civilization.
The development of human beingstheir history, civilization or
languagefrom original Southern into Northern conditions, is now
perceived as a plant that in its growth is being deprived of warm, moist,
and fertile natural conditions. Suddenly, it is exposed to colder and
dryer climates; it does not thrive and flourish as before, and it stops
growing as it should. Now it withers, loses its former strength, freshness, and vitality. This happens to speech and music as to human sensations and feelings. It is a process that starts from the time of the origins
onwards, and only in cultures with no apparent development or progression, such as primitive Indian tribes, one may find traces of the former
life and vitality.
From a carefree life in abundance to a laborious life in need, from
playfulness to work, from nature to society, from poetry to reason, from
voice to writingthese changes occur with the change of climate from
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Southern to Northern. Also this change in climate indicates a change of

the predetermination of mankind. Humans are suddenly deprived of
their destiny, their original meaning. What they were in the beginning
of history was what they were meant to be, but this original predetermination is now suspended. By the touch of a fingeras Rousseau
writesGod changes the rotation of the globe, and with this, the face of
earth, in effect forcing mankind to give up their happy pastoral lives
and to begin working.
Supposing eternal spring on the earth; supposing plenty of water, livestock, and pasture, and supposing that men, as they leave the hands of
nature, were once spread out in the midst of all that, I cannot imagine
how they would ever be induced to give up their primitive liberty, abandoning the isolated pastoral life so fitted to their natural indolence, to
impose upon themselves unnecessarily the labors and the inevitable misery of a social mode of life. He who willed man to be social, by the
touch of a finger shifted the globes axis in to line with the axis of the
universe. I see such a slight movement changing the face of the earth
and deciding the vocation of mankind.125

Western civilizations become Northern, explicitly Germany, England, and France. In this transformation of climate, the most radical
change occurring to human beingsand perhaps the most surprising
is their change of voice. In this paradigm, there is an intimate relationship between climate and voicewe perceive this relationship in both
Rousseau, Herder, and Schiller. In the Southern climates people used to
have delicate voices, but this delicacy is not sustained in the Northern
climates; the voices become coarser and cruder. About the Northern
people Rousseau writes:
Men, being more robust, are bound to have less delicate voices. Their
voices are bound to be rougher and stronger. Besides, what a difference
between the touching inflections that express the stirrings of the soul,
and the cries of physical needs! . . . the first words among them were
not love me, but help me. These two expressions, although similar
enough, are pronounced in a very different tone. The whole point was
not to make someone feel something, but to make him understand.
Thus what was needed was not vigor but clarity. . . . Our [the French]
tongues are better suited to writing than speaking, and there is more
pleasure in reading us than in listening to us. Oriental tongues, on the
other hand, lose their life and warmth when they are written. 126

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This is the most radical loss. With this change of climate, one loses
the subtlety of ones voice. Speech becomes mechanical, and finally, at
the end of this decay, there is no more pleasure in listening to Northern
people, one must be content to read them. Writing has replaced speech.
This view also influences the view of poetry. Poetry, when genuine
and original, reproduces this sonorous voice. According to the new paradigm, poetry should no longer strive to reproduce rational and mechanical rules, or to observe social proprieties; it should echo the original voice and sound of primordial people.

3.2) Sound and SenseA New Concept of Poetry

Speculation on origins establishes a paradigm, a grid, where natural is opposed to non-natural, and where nature, representing the happy prehistory of mankind, is distinguished by a different human voice, a
different sound of speech. If the first languages are different from the
modern, it is because they are closer to music and songif they are not
all song. The voice is more refined, the speech more melodious. There
is more breath, more air, more life in the original human voice.
Explorers and missionaries could still, in their encounters with primitive exotic tribes, recover this original speaking voice. Here, the distance between their own speech and this original voice is so great that
the original language has become utterly unpronounceable to Western
manit is all air. In such cases, it would be equally impossibleif not
absurdto try to contain this airy, unpronounceable language in letters.
A certain father Rasles, Herder tells, could notafter having spent ten
years among Indianspronounce even the simplest words.
Father Rasles, who spent ten years among the Abnaki in North America, complained bitterly that with the greatest care he would often not
manage to repeat more than one half of a word and was laughed at.
How much more laughable would it have been for him to spell out such
an expression with his French letters?127

And Herder continues reporting on how other explorers have had

difficulties comprehending Indian languages:

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Often two words consisting entirely of the same letters had the most
different meanings. . . . Some of their words could not be written, not
even most imperfectly. One would need a least nine or ten syllables
where in their pronunciation they appear to utter hardly three. 128

These languages cannot be contained in letters and writing; they are

entirely ideal and have no material clothing. Subsequent derivations,
such as letters and writing are insufficient means of containing these
primordial sounds. The closer these languages are to nature, the more
evident it becomes how insufficient these means of containment are. In
this paradigm, based on the opposition between natural and non-natural,
writing becomes a symbol of the non-natural, a symbol of dead language, artificial civilization, and human alienation. Containing a language in letters is effectively to prevent it from breathing. While a
natural language is associated with breath and respiration, writing
prevents this respiration, eradicates the life in a language, making it stiff
and petrified. According to this understanding, written languages are
dead languages removed from nature, sound, and breath, their ideal
realm.
Hebrew is regarded as an old language still containing all the qualities of a natural language.
Their [the Hebrews] pronunciation was so alive and finely articulated,
their breath so spiritual and etherlike that it evaporated and eluded containment in letters. . . . What the ear caught was the breath of God, was
wafting air; and the dead characters they drew out were only the inanimate body which the act of reading had to animate with the spirit of life
. . . What is more unwritable than the sounds of nature?129

Why can these sounds of nature not be written? We shall return to

the question shortly.
This paradigm, however, does not only establish the opposition between writing and voice, but also the opposition between writing and
life. The paradigm represents the beginning of modern Hermeneutics.
In reading a poet, one shall no longer simply read the text, learn from it,
take over its example. One shall revive it, revitalize it, animate it with
the spirit of life. One shall undress it of the dead characters disguising
this living body, these original sounds of nature, nothing but wafting
air. Writing becomes an unsuccessful attempt of representing something other, something radically different, something that cannot be
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adequately represented by writing because it is nothing but air. This

Otherness is, nonetheless, the living background, the context or horizon of the written product.
Why, then, can these sounds of nature not be written? First, because on the paper they lose the intimate relationship to what is their
reference: the feelings, passions, and emotions of the speaker. This primitive language is made up of highly emotional sounds, foreign to a
distinctive system of letters and the mechanical act of writing. It is opposite to the technology of writing, with its application of grammar
and language-system on the original, living world of speech. These
primitive sounds were never meant to be written. When spelled out on
paper, they lose their force because they are severed from their intimate
relation to feelings. They are spread out on a one-dimensional surface
without depth. The exactitude of a discriminating system deprives these
emotional sounds of their expressiveness. Secondly, these sounds cannot be written because they lose their context on paper. In themselves
they are nothing. Because in themselves they are still primitive, simple,
and indistinguishable, they are only something because of their context.
This context includes the gestures that accompany them, the pitch of
voice, the articulation, etc. Only living pronunciation can show what
these exclamations express. When they are cut off from this living context, they become no more than dead ciphers.
These tones are very simple, and when they are articulated and spelled
out on paper as interjections, the most contrary sensations may have
almost a single expression. A dull ah! is as much the sound of languid
love as of sinking despair; the fiery oh! as must the outburst of sudden joy as of boiling rage. . . . Severed from everything else, torn away,
deprived of their life, they are, to be sure, no more than ciphers, and the
voice of nature turns into an arbitrarily penciled symbols.130

The living context is what provides these one-syllable words with

meaning, and as this living context cannot exist on paper, they cannot
be written.
This general conception of an opposition between writing and
speech, with speech, not writing, expressing feelings, is also found in
Rousseau. For Rousseau writing also imposes restrictions on language
and deprives it of its original freedom. It replaces feelings with uniformity because writing constrains words to their conventional meaning.
Language is impoverished within the institution of writing because
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words here represent only one meaning. Originally, one could vary
the meanings by varying ones tone of voice. At a certain point in early history, meaning changed according to the tone of voice. To understand original speech, speaker and hearer had to be present to each other.
Thus, in Rousseau as in Herder, the living context determines the
meaning of speech. Meaning is essentially a product of tone and voice
in the pronunciation of words, and when the relationship between word
and meaning begins to stabilize, this ideal situation is jeopardized. At
this point, writing begins to control communication between people, the
living context disappears. Writing establishes exact relationships between word and meaning, and with this exactitude, language perishes as
living voice.
Writing, which would seem to crystallize language, is precisely what
alters it. It changes not the words but the spirit, substituting exactitude
for expressiveness. Feelings are expressed in speaking, ideas in writing.
In writing, one is forced to use all the words according to their conventional meaning. But in speaking, one varies the meanings by varying
ones tone of voice determining them as one pleases. Being less constrained to clarity, one can be more forceful. And it is not possible for a
language that is written, to retain its vitality as long as one that is only
spoken. Words, not sounds, are written.131

This opposition between speech and writing becomes a guideline in

the new conception of how to write poetry, as poetry is supposed to reconstruct the sounds and expressiveness of the first languages. Poetry is
no longer conceived as meaning and sense, according to the rational
standards of neoclassicism. Now poetry is a more vague representation
of the voice, sound, song, and melody of the first speech.
According to the new paradigm, with its newly established relationship between original and artificial, between speech and writing, poetry
ideally imitates original speech. If we render the relationships schematically, poetry would represent the bottom line:
TABLE V: Artificial versus Original
Artificial ~
Original ~

language of society
language of nature ~

~ writing
voice
~

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~ sense ~ reason
sound ~ passion

When Herder in Von Deutscher Art und Kunst describes original

poetry, the poetry of barbarous people, poetry of Ossian, he describes a
poetry more free and alive. It is removed from rationality and writing,
closer to nature and song: The more remote a people is from an artificial, scientific manner of thinking, speaking, and writing, the less its
songs are made for paper and print, the less its verses are written for the
dead letter.132 Herder repeats the idea that original languages are foreign to writing. A people remote from the scientific and rational ways
of thinking does not create its songs for paper and print, for the dead
letter. The power of these songs depends on living presence of images,
on the coherence and the urgency of the feelings, on the symmetry of
the words, on the flow of the melody, and on a hundred other things
suggesting a vast and immensely deep context, a living context that can
never be exhausted or depicted by writing, a context belonging to the
living present world of songs, images, and feelings. The savages were
ignorant about the artifices, the politics, the premeditations, and reflections of the mind, they comprehend the thought a whole with the whole
word, and the word with the thought.133 These savages painted with
words and gestures, and these paintings were closer to the living imagination, than abstract words.
Similarly, when Rousseau talks about original poetry, he refers to
the qualities of the first languages. There is in fact no difference between speech, song, and poetry in the first languagesas they develop
around the fountains. Language is intertwined with passion, and it has
no other purpose than to represent it.
All voices speak under the influence of passion, which adorns them
with all their eclat. Thus verse, singing, and speech have a common
origin. Around the fountains of which I spoke, the first discourses were
the first songs. . . . The first tales, the first speeches, the first laws, were
in verse. Poetry was devised before prose. That was bound to be, since
feelings speak before reason. And so it was bound to be the same with
music. At first, there was no music but melody and no other melody
than the varied sounds of speech.134

4) The Natural and the Contrived

4.1) A Desire for the Return of Nature

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The interest in origins, in nature, and in human beings as they were

meant to be is now an established theme, continuing into preromanticism and romanticism. It even continues into the twentieth century. But it
is repeated in new disguises; it proliferates and fuses with new disciplines, new interests of knowledge, new sciences. It ramifies into other
theoretical endeavors, gradually modifying them into the same epistemological root-system. It shows itself even where least expected, as a
nostalgia for the past, as a present sense of alienation, and as a hope for
future restitution of the human being (as in classical Marxism).
This interest in origins also defines the whole preromantic and romantic poetic theory as the distinction between classical/vital poetry
and romantic/sickly poetrya distinction that only makes the drive to
rejoin the healthy past even more urgent, although one recognizes the
unfeasible in a true return. The very impossibility of a return only fuels
futile speculations on how one might return, around which kinds of detours, by which strategies, by means of which sacrifices and forfeitures.
Without doubt, Marxism took these speculations more serious than any
other nineteenth century theory.
This early, one-and-a-half century before Heidegger, mankind suffers from forgetfulness of being. Humans have forgotten their determination. But these theories contain a promise, a promise of resurrection, recuperation, and recovery attained by the return of lost Agesas
when Schiller writes about the naive, and emphasizes: They are what
we were; they are what we should once again become.135 This thinking
about origins is circular; origins are not simply what existed in the past,
but also what shall come into being. We are not simply facing a polar
distinction between the happy past and the unhappy present, between
nature and society, between original and artifact. The distinction has a
further quality; it is not a static polarity, it is dynamic, insofar as everything in opposition to the natural/the naive is only a temporary suspension of the natural.
Thus, the sentimental in Schiller is not a simple antithesis to the
naive; the sentimental is a mode and a manner by which contemporary poets seek reunification with naivet and nature. The sentimental
is a detour one isin the present situationforced to take in order to
reconstruct and recover lost nature. Thus, the distinctions are not fixed
in static opposition; they are cycles, and it is the unfortunate lot of contemporary human beings to sojourn at the non-natural side of this revolving system. Schiller continues the quotation from above.
88

We were nature just as they, and our culture, by means of reason and
freedom, should lead us back to nature. They are, therefore, not only
the representation of our lost childhood, which eternally remains most
dear to us, so that they fill us with a certain melancholy. But they are
also representations of our highest fulfillment in the ideal.136

What we (mankind) yearn forthe highest fulfillment in the

idealis what we once were, and it is what we shall once again become. Culture is opposed to nature, but again non-antagonistically, because culture shall gradually lead us back to nature. We are at an intermediary point in this rotating system where the past is lost and the future has not yet arrived, where we are temporarily alienated from our
predetermined being as humans, but where the promised ideal has yet to
appear. The truth of mankind might be represented in the formula:
mankind were in truth what they in truth shall once again become.
Truth is absent, but we are awaiting its presence.
What we were, is what we presently seek, this is the so-called
naive, so-called nature. But what is naivet, nature?It is found
in prehistory, in children, and in nature which surrounds us. It is, for
example, qualified as spontaneity and immediacy. Nature is naive because it exists in voluntary presence, because things subsist on their
own, according to their own immutable laws. Nature is in contrast to
art and puts it to shame.
This naivet of nature is absolute; it cannot be imitated or
represented. A flower is in its sheer presence naive, as is the song of a
bird. One cannot reproduce the same naive effect by imitating the
flower or the chirping of birdsfor example, by creating an artificial
flower or generating an artificial bird songbecause the imitation
would duplicate something it is not in itself. Nature is therefore beingin-itself or self-presence; as such, it can never be imitated by mechanical means imposed from the outside. The discovery of an imitation of
nature being a mere imitationand therefore an illusionwould immediately destroy the experience of nature. Imitation is no longer a
means by which one can reproduce nature, as it was according to the
recommendations of Aristotle and the neoclassical Aristotelians. Naivet and nature are by now absolutes, existing in the presence of
themselvessomething utterly un-reproducible.
When Schiller asserts that what we love in naive nature is not the
appearance of nature in itself, but the idea represented in nature, then
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he reiterates the idea exposed here as being-in-itself or self-presence.

What is represented by and what attracts the perceiver of naive nature is
being-in-itself or self-presence because this idea reflects that which humans themselves could be. This self-present naive nature represents to
humans their own ultimate possibility.
It is not these objects, it is an idea represented by them which we love
in them. We love in them the tacitly creative life, the serene spontaneity
of their activity, existence in accordance with their own laws, the inner
necessity, the eternal unity with themselves.137

In this ruhige Wirken, innere Notwendigkeit, or ewige Einheit,

we perceive what we lack ourselves, i.e. what we were before becoming
alienated from nature and what we strive to attain: self-presence, selfidentity, self-sufficiency.
In the opposition, nature versus culture, nature is of higher worth
than culture, although culture currently represses the natural pole.
Therefore, contemporary human beings seek nature as something they
do not have. The necessity of this search exhibits a difference between
moderns and ancients. The following paradox arises when Schiller explains the differences between the ancients and the moderns: the ancients, who are natural, ignore nature; whereas the moderns, who are
not natural, seek nature. Certainly, this is not an uncommon logic; it is a
logic of desire, insofar as the desirous subject yearn for that which it
does not have. A lack is inscribed in desireas it must be inscribed
by means of all good logic. Therefore, it would be just as impossible for
the ancients to seek nature, something they possess in full, as it would
be for the moderns to ignore her, something they need entirely. Nature
is as important to the moderns, as it is unimportant to the ancients. Because of this situation, nature seems to escape reflection in both cases.
The ancients, who do know nature do not think about it; and the moderns, who do not know nature, attempt to reflect upon something they
do not know.
The natural ancients had no awareness of their naturalness because a
moment of self-awareness would immediately disrupt it; they cannot reflect and interpret their own nature without losing it. Thus, it is another
important qualification of nature that what is nature, or natural, is so
unknowingly. Ignorance of ones own naivet is required in the definition of the naive.

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In the examples presented by Schiller on nature this logic is at work.

The naives lack of self-knowledge and self-reflection is essential. Empirical, physical nature is natural and naive because it does not notice itselfit is self-present and self-sufficient. That which makes a
modest flower, a mossy stone, a stream, the chirping of birds, the
humming of bees natural is that these objects are absorbed in their own
tacitly creative life, in living according to inner necessity or in eternal unity with themselves. The unity and integrity, the presence in
which they are absorbed, their undisturbed self-identity, these are the
principles governing and defining the naturalness of nature. When we
walk around listening to the birds and the bees and the streams, then we
recognize this simplicity as a lost ideal in our alienated existence.
But as naivet is found in the self-sufficiency of nature, it is also
found in the self-sufficiency of the child. When the child acts spontaneously, without circumspection and reflection, it acts according to nature. In an example told by Schiller, a child, in an act of spontaneous
compassion, gives a person suffering from poverty his fathers purse.
This child acts out of healthy nature. Its innocent and naive behavior
is morally superior; it puts the world to shame. However, the most important thing about this example is that the child did not reflect on its
action; it did not discuss by itself (with this duplicating itself) whether
or not it should hand the purse to the poor. The child acted out of inner
necessity. It acted in unity of thought and action. This lack of selfreflection (where self-reflection is self-duplication, implying that the
self becomes an object for itself, and the person becomes divided in its
identity) assumes unity of thought and action, thinking and doing. This
self-identity makes the naive morally superior. The naive genius impersonates the same principle of self-presence and self-identity.
This complex thinking about the naive (the simplicity, the inner
necessity, or nature) becomes a standard for all grandiose art, a standard governing the idea of superior genius. But in itself this new standard defies all rules and practical advises on how to make art. It implies the collapse of a pragmatically and rationally determined poetic
creativity.

4.2) The Naive Artist

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In Schiller, it is clear that the veneration for the natural, the original,
and the naive also has implications on how art ideally should be conceived.
The naive artist is an artist in accord with nature. Nature guides truly naive artists, whereas sentimental poets, not guided by nature, only
painstakinglyby art, skill, and craftattempt to produce what they do
not possess in themselves. The naive artist is nature, while the sentimental merely strives for nature: poets will either be nature, or they
will seek lost nature. The former is the naive, the latter the sentimental
poet.138 Poets of the former kind are becoming extinct in present times:
Poets of this naive category are no longer at home in an artificial age,
they are indeed scarcely even possible.139 The feeling for nature is absent in contemporary poets, and generally in modern human beings.
Their feeling is only present like the desire for health in the sick: like
the feeling of an invalid for health.140
A true genius is naive. A poetic genius now conceives art, not by
employing accepted rules and principles of composition, but by
Einfllen und Gefhlen, by flashes of insight and feeling.
Only its naivet makes for its genius. . . . Unacquainted with the rules,
those crutches for weakness and taskmasters of awkwardness, led only
by nature or by instinct, its guardian angel, it goes calmly and surely
through all the snares of false taste in which, if it is not shrewd enough
to avoid them from afar, the nongenius must inevitably be entrapped. . .
. The genius must solve the most complex tasks with unpretentious
simplicity and facility. . . . And only thus does genius identify itself as
such, by triumphing over the complications of art by simplicity. It
proceeds not by the accepted principles, but by flashes of insight and
feeling; but its insights are the inspirations of a god, its feelings are
laws for all ages and for all races of men.141

There is in principle no difference between the warbling of birds

and the conception of an ingenious work of art. The song of birds and
the making of an ingenious work of art derive from the same naivet.
The songbird becomes, in much romantic theory, a favored metaphor
for the artist. The nightingale, as an example of such a metaphor,
represents how an ingenious artistic work should be conceived. The
nightingale produces something beautiful; it does so with ease and
without recognition; it is an inner necessity for the bird to sing. A nightingale cannot help but sing beautifully; it sings in absolute self92

presence; in this self-presence it is oblivious to the fact that it is singing.

The new artists cannot help but being artists, artistic creation is their
inner necessity.
In this new conception, creativity is never work; poets solve their
task with unpretentious simplicity and facility. This creative process,
therefore, also resembles the play of a child. (Presumably the child is
equally oblivious to its playing.) When the artists express their thoughts, it is like utterances of a god in the mouth of a child. 142 The poets
are not aware of the reception of what they are saying; they speak the
truth, but innocently and naively. Genius is spontaneous, simple, unreflective, innocent, ignorant about its own activity, etc.
This is why the principle for this creative process is precisely described as an Einfall. It is an instantaneous, brief, intense moment of
artistic insight, an insight not provoked by work and labor. An Einfall
is a sudden recognition of meaning condensed into an instance of profound importance. In this Einfall, things disclose themselves. In the
present now when insights emerge, the poet recognizes the laws for all
Ages and races. Furthermore, an Einfall emerges quickly and suddenly, without prior reflection. Such is the law of ingenious productivity.
According to this law, ingenious artists see into the depth of the
world, where suddenly its laws stand illuminated. The work is conceived or, more accurately, conceives itself in such brief and intense
moments of insight, and not from painstakingly employed intricate aesthetic rules and principles, not from knowledge of the dogmas of taste.
The ingenious artist is, and has to be, ignorant about the Schools of
poetry advocating certain grammatical, logical, narratological, and
moral principles.
Genius delineates its own thoughts at a single felicitous stroke of the
brush with an eternally determined, firm, and yet absolutely free outline. If to the former [the sentimental, intellectual artist] the sign remains forever heterogeneous and alien to the thing signified, to the latter [the naive, spontaneous artist] language springs as by some inner
necessity out of thought, and is so at one with it that even beneath the
corporeal frame the spirit appears as if laid bare. It is precisely this
mode of expression in which the sign disappears completely in the
thing signified, and in which language, while giving expression to a
thought, yet leaves it exposed; and this it is we generally call a gifted
style displaying genius.143

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This is the semiotics of genius. The sign is superfluous. Genius

makes the sign disappear in the thing signified. And if language never
disappears entirely in the expression of thoughts it is at least as if it has
disappeared, as if it is transparent, as if it is absorbed in the thing itself.
Genius never transmits a language, but a spirit, a thought, not the corporeal, material frame for this thought.
Things now express themselves. The ideal of spontaneity indicates
that the intellect, as the traditional mediator between idea
(thought/meaning) and language, is abandoned. Thoughts ought to express themselves without intellectual interference. In moments of selfpresence, the genius forget itself, and new insights are immediately expressed. Insights are hardly reflected upon because they continuously
sink back into oblivion, making room for new flashes of insights.

5) The Distinction Between Classic and Romantic

5.1) The Controversy About the Invention of the Distinction
Does the distinction between classic and romantic mark a break in
the thinking about criticism and art-theory? Does the distinction herald
romanticism as a new era? Friedrich Schlegel appears to have named
this distinction, but is the naming identical to the invention of the distinction? Naming a distinction presupposes a body of thought already
existing before the namesomething one names and therefore more
original. From this complication originates a controversy between different individuals claiming to have invented the distinction.
The implicated players in this controversy are all aware that when
claiming to have introduced this celebrated distinction, it is not sufficient simply to have given the distinction name. Friedrich Schlegel is, in
his preface to Die Griechen und Rmer, certain, that Schiller develops
his [Schillers] notion of the sentimental from reading an early draft of
Schlegels work: Schillers dissertation on the sentimental poet has,
besides extending my insight in the characteristics of the interesting
poetry, given me a new perspective on the entire classical poetry.144
The sentimental or interesting poetry develops into a notion of
romantic poetry. According to Schlegel, this was originally his insight.
Not so according to Goethe. In his conversations with Eckermann,
Goethe states that the distinction developed between him and Schiller in
a discussion about Goethes objective approach to poetry versus Schil94

lers subjective. Inspired by these discussions, Schiller composes his

ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, where paradoxically he ends
up regarding Goethe a sentimental poet.
The notion of a classical and romantic poetry, which now is known to
the whole world and causes so many conflicts and divisions, Goethe
continued, is originally suggested by me and Schiller. In poetry I had
advanced the maxim about the objective, and would only let this count.
Schiller, however, worked in a quite subjective way, and regarded his
art to be right, and in order to protect himself against me he wrote the
essay about naive and sentimental poetry. He only proves that I against
my will is a romantic and that my Iphigenie, because emotions are predominant, in no way is such a classical and antique work as one might
believe. The Schlegel brothers have taken this idea and carried it further, so now it is spread to the entire world and everybody talks about
classicism and romanticism, which nobody thought about just fifteen
years ago.145

Here Goethe states that the thought originates in discussions between him and Schiller, almost as an analogy over these names: classic/romantic expressed as objective/subjective in Goethe/Schiller. So,
there is a signature behind this distinction, or rather two, Goethe and
Schiller. And when it leaves them and falls into the hands of the Schlegels, it only causes conflicts and confusions in the world. With the intrusion of the Schlegels, the distinction is extracted from its original
meaning; the signifier is separated from its signified.
The core of this distinction is the distinction between objective and
subjective. (This is, according to Goethe, the distinction impersonated
by Goethe and Schiller in their conversations.) Other commentators,
like Dilthey, have noticed that this thought existed before Goethe and
Schiller. Dilthey indicates that Schlegel develops it from his studies of
Winckelmann: I can not find anything [in Friedrich Schlegels distinction between classic and romantic] which was not already anticipated in
his related studies of Winckelmann.146 This implies that Friedrich
Schlegel was first and foremost inspired by Winckelmann, and not by
Goethe and Schiller.
There are, consequently, many opinions about the origin of this distinction, Friedrich Schlegel, Goethe, Schiller, Winckelmann, or before.
In other words, the origin of the distinction is unknown and indeterminable, because one has no clear understanding of the level of articulation
at which it comes into existence. Is it first coming into being with its
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expressed articulation, or is it already existing when it is conceived

structurally? In the latter case, the opposition cannot reflect a transparent and definable origin. Classic and romantic denote structurally a distinction between objective and subjective, and between natural and cultural. But this opposition dates back to the birth of Western philosophy.
The opposition is undoubtedly reshaped, reinvested with significance, and reinterpreted during the 18th century, before it finds a conclusive articulation in the distinction between classic and romantic. In the
attempt to overcome the contemporary sense of estrangement, nature
gains a new importance from the beginning of the 18th century. Rousseaus and Herders ideas are present in Schillers treatise and shape his
determination of two kinds of literature, one healthy, ancient, and natural, the other feeble, modern, and artificial.

5.2) The Natural Realist and the Cultural Idealist

The two major distinctions, objective versus subjective and natural
versus cultural, are fused into the final idea of a classic and a romantic
poetry. The distinction is never neutral, it is hierarchic and loaded with
valueoften despite earnest attempts by its proponents of neutralizing
it by rehabilitating the weaker side in the distinction, romantic poetry.
However, it proves almost impossible to reverse the values implicated
in this relationship, because one side is associated with nature, and thus
with the positive evaluation this notion carried since Rousseau. Naturesignifying either inner human nature or surrounding nature
represents the authentic pole: interior nature represents humans as they
were meant to be, while exterior nature represents an authentic state of
life and world before being corrupted by civilization. Nature establishes
the harmony between and the unity of these two natural states of being:
the authentic human being in harmony with its uncorrupted surroundings.
The distinction between classic and romantic goes as such back to
the discussions of origins. In Schiller, this becomes particularly clear in
his discussions of the idyll. Idyllic poetry is an illumination of the individuals alienated and estranged present existence in the light of an
ideal past. The idyll represents an innocent state of mankind, foreign to
modern people. It represents an irrecoverable past, a pastoral existence
beyond reach, a state before the beginning of civilization, a childhood
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or a golden age of mankind. Humans long to revive this healthy simplicity because they live in an artificial age where reason has become
their dangerous guide. They long to experience nature in its unspoiled
purity once more, even if it will be only through a poetic creation. Nature therefore can be perceived only as lostas it once was.
To the man who has once deviated from the simplicity of nature and is
delivered over to the dangerous guidance of his reason, it is of infinite
importance to perceive once again natures legislation in a pure example, and in this faithful mirror to be able once again to purify himself of
the corruption of civilization.147

Humans need to rid themselves of the dangerous guidance of reason, and to do so by perceiving the true laws of nature in the mirror
provided by idyllic poems. Glancing into this mirror they purge themselves from the current corruption. Poems describing the idyll always
place it at the beginning of civilization. In the idyll, the present is experienced as a loss of the past, but by bringing us back to the beginning,
the poets lead us forward; our loss becomes a future ideal. Theoretically then they lead us backwards, while practically they lead us forwards
and ennoble us. Unhappily they place that purpose behind us, toward
which they should, however, lead us.148
Goethe articulates the same paradigm in an essay where the opposition objective/subjective is expressed in the distinctions between necessity and freedom and sollen and wollen (duty and will). Whereas duty is something imposed upon humans, will is something they impose
upon themselves. Goethe explicates the antithesis by referring to two
different types of card games. Games dominated by chance, subordinating the players to a necessity they cannot control, resembles the ancient
hero submitted to fate. Games requiring skillfulness, giving the players
freedom to affect the outcome of the play, resembles the modern heros
freedom of choice.
TABLE VI: Ancient versus Modern
Ancient
Natural
Pagan
Classic/heroic
Realistic
Necessity

Modern
Sentimental
Christian
Romantic
Idealistic
Freedom

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Sollen

Wollen

This difference distinguishes the two kinds of poetry into two more
and less authentic forms: 1) Necessity and fate are conditions closer to
nature where life is dependent and conditioned. 2) Reflection and will
are predicaments of modern human beingsintroducing a state of unlimited intellectual freedom. The classical condition is always assessed
in Goethe and Schiller as the most genuine: Through the motive of necessity, tragedy became mighty and strong; through the motive of will,
weak and feeble.149 Ancient classicism is healthy, contemporary romanticism sickly.
In Schillerin these matters, a more powerful and dialectical thinker than Goethethe distinction is less schematic. Although Goethe repeats and borrows Schillers terms in the above scheme, Schillers distinctions have an additional quality ignored in the scheme: they have a
built-in self-annulment or self-deconstruction. Because Schiller pursues
matters logically and goes beyond conventional meanings of notions, he
reaches levels in his reflection where his theory must surrender itself to
the inconclusive, the indeterminable, andas we shall sayto the selfrepetitive. His thinking becomes more profound, because he pursues
matters until the rigor of concepts and the distinctiveness of oppositions
become invalid and defective.
The distinction between objective and subjective, real and ideal, necessity and freedom, sollen and wollen, becomes a paradox in Schiller,
because the subjective, cultural side of the opposition posits and holds
up the objective, natural side as its ideal. The general opposition is repeated in itself. If anything characterizes culture, it is the tension between nature and culture. The first step in self-deconstructing the general distinction consists in this instance of self-repetition.
TABLE VII: Schillers Self-Deconstruction, I
1st level:
2nd level:

nature

vs.

culture
|
nature

vs.

culture

Modern mathematics names such self-repetitive patterns fractals.

Consequently, we may talk about the second level as a fractal repetition of the first. This fractal repetition obviously makes the general
distinction less rigorous because nature (if it exists) exists in the im98

agination of the cultural subject. Thus, nature is not something separate from culture; it exists as a project built into culture. Nature, as a
project of contemporary culture and contemporary artists, can even be
specified further because artists look back on nature only in order to
project it as their ideal. As it appears on the second level in the above
scheme, nature in the life of the contemporary artist is, furthermore, a
distinction between what was and what shall be; it is a distinction between an actual past and an ideal future. Once more a distinction is repeated in a distinction.
The general distinction is finally canceled as a rigorous distinction
because what was and what shall be, the past and the projected, is the
same thing. A fundamental identity derives from the initial distinction.
The initial distinction deconstructs itself by means of its fractals because the distinction between nature and culture (naive/sentimental, objective/subjective, real/ideal, etc.)which unquestionably exists at the
surface of the textcannot be sustained when strictly pursued and interrogated.
There are two ways of denoting this complex situation. We can sustain the idea of the previous scheme by dividing the logic in levels:
TABLE VIII: Schillers Self-Deconstruction, II
1st level:
2nd level:
3rd level:

nature

vs.

culture
|
nature vs. culture
|
actual past vs. ideal future as the same

However, we can also choose a linear and algebraic mode of description, dissecting the notions of the general distinction into subdistinctions, designated by parentheses, and parentheses within parentheses: nature vs. culture(nature(actual past vs. ideal future as the
same) vs. culture)where the underlined and emphasized distinction
designates the first level, the emphasized distinction the second level,
and the last distinction, the third level. With this annotation we finally
get a comprehensive formula for the sentimental:
sentimental =
culture(nature(actual past vs. ideal future as the same) vs. culture)

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This is the significance of this formula Schiller tries to preempt. He

tries to conclusively articulate this formula in its overwhelming complexity and logical intricacy. He wants the general distinction between
naive and sentimental to stop drifting by grasping the meaning of sentimental.
However, in the drifting of his own writing Schiller experiences the
infinity in what he discusses. His reflection, his writing, does his
theme. He performs what he thematizes. He is sentimental when reflecting the sentimental; his writing drifts around in the above algorithm: culture(nature(actual past vs. ideal future as the same) vs. culture), focusing soon at one, soon at another corner of the system.
In the general distinction nature vs. culture, the side of culture is
obviously the most complex. This is the side of the distinction that
needs explanation in Schillers text. Nature is simple and qualified as
such, it is an undivided unity, an independent and complete whole,
etc.
The complex situation of culture has, however, also advantages for
modern human beings. The continuous repetition of the formula, the
fractal self-repetition imitating the reflective situation of the writer, is
associated with the freedom of sentimental poets, with the absence of
bounds and limitations. The naive poets have an advantage in understanding sensuous reality. They represent actual facts, which the sentimental can only strive to attain. But the sentimental poets have advantages over the naive, by having a so-called greater object. They are
not bound to the actual and empirical world because thinking, as a medium of the ideal, is infinite. Thus, the naive lives in a finite but undivided world, whereas the sentimental lives in an infinite, but alienated
world in which they take their own reflection as object.
Since naive poets are in harmony with nature, they are limited because reality is a limited and finite object. The naive poet depends on
experiences and influences from the outside. In contrast, the sentimental
artist creates out of thought and achieves thus a greater object because
thought is boundless and infinite. The naive creates out of necessity, the
sentimental out of freedom.
The naive genius is thus dependent upon experience in a way unknown
to the sentimental. The latter, we know, only begins his function where
the former concludes his; his strength subsists in completing an inadequate subject out of himself and in transforming by his own power a
limited condition in to a condition of freedom. Thus the naive poetic

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genius requires assistance from without, whereas the sentimental nourishes and purifies himself from within.150

The former is determined by the necessity of nature, the latter by the

necessity of reason. The distinction between naive and sentimental finally develops into a distinction between realist and idealist.
Of the first [the naive] nothing remains . . . but a sober spirit of observation and a fixed loyalty to the uniform testimony of the sense, and . .
. a resigned submission to the necessity . . . of nature: an accession thus
to what is and what must be. Of the sentimental character nothing remains . . . but a restless spirit of speculation that presses on to the unconditional in all its knowledge, and . . . a moral rigorism that insists
upon the unconditional in acts of the will. The member of the first class
can be called a realist and of the other class an idealist.151

5.3) Schlegel About the Objective and the Interesting

The
basic
distinction
between
realistic/idealistic
or
naive/sentimental also finds expression in Friedrich Schlegels early
work: ber das Studium der Griechischen Poesie,152 eventually becoming a distinction between objective and interested, or between beautiful and mannered, poetry. Although the distinction is determined
differently in certain respects, it remains a distinction between the better
and the worse, the positive and negative. The objective poetry is the
Wahrhaft Schne, whereas the interesting poetry is the blo interessanten. From the beginning, a value-hierarchy determines two basic
kinds of poetry.
The truly beautiful is only realized in Greek art and poetry as the
organic unity of a poem, where the beautiful construction is not disturbed by the slightest deficiency or by the least excess.153 In contrast
to this perfect ideal of classical Greek art, modern romantic poetry,
originating in the medieval age and developing up to Schlegels time, is
only a futile attempt to attain the same completeness.
In his Vorrede, written after he has composed his essay, and as a
response to his reading of the second half of Schillers ber Naive und
Sentimentale Poesie, Schlegel compares his own recognitions to Schillers.

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Schlegel has a different understanding and interpretation of the

same distinction: naive/sentimentalor in Schlegels terminology objective/interested poetry. What appears to constitute the difference is
that objective or naive poetry takes no interest in reality; whereas for
Schiller, reality is the limiting horizon to the naive poet.
The objective poetry has no interest in and makes no demands on reality. It only strives towards a play that is as worthy as the most sacred
sincerity, towards an appearance that is as universal and legislative as
the most unconditional truth.154

Not only does the interested or sentimental poem strive toward

the ideal and the truth, but the objective poem does so too. The ancients are not naively bound to their empirical world, creating poetry
from immediate sensuous impressions of this world. They strive toward
play and appearance (spiel and schein) even when their poetry is most
serious, universal, and legislative.
Accordingly, Schlegel also differs in his view of sentimental or
interested poetry. If ancient poetry strives toward the ideal, the socalled unconditional truth, one can obviously not distinguish interested poetry from objective poetry by determining the former as an identical strive towards the ideal and the absolute. Another characterization
of the interesting or sentimental poetry is necessary.
Not every poetic representation of the strive towards the infinite is sentimental: only that which is associated to a reflection of the relationship
between Ideal and Real.155 The characteristic peculiarity about sentimental poetry is the interest in the reality of the ideal, the reflection
upon the relationship between Ideal and Real, and the correlation to an
individual object for the idealizing imagination of the creative subject.156

Now sentimental poetry, not naive, introduces a concern with reality, by establishing a relationship between real and ideal. Although a
relationship between the two terms is also included in Schillers reflections about the sentimental (as a tension between nature/culture,
real/ideal, objective/subjective in the idealizing sentimental poet), the
distinction Schlegel proposes between objective Greek art and the interested modern differs from Schillers. Greek poetry becomes essentially idealizing by striving toward the ideal, the absolutely beautiful,
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but it succeeds where the modern fails. Modern poetry is deficient

compared to the ancient; it is unfulfilled, it strives to attain what it does
not have.
It catches the eye that modern poetry strives towards a goal that it has
either not yet attained, or that its strive is completely without definite
aim, its education without clear direction, the totality of its history
without lawgoverned coherence, the totality without unity.157

Modern poetry does no longer represent the beautiful, as classical

Greek poetry did. Modern poetry is marked by a restless striving toward
interesting subjectivity, whereas the classical has already achieved objectivity and beauty. Modern poetry is without aim and laws. What characterizes modern poetry is the the restless insatiate striving toward
the new, the piquant, and the striking, in which the longing remains ungratified.158 and what confirms the artificiality of the modern aesthetics
is the dominance of the individual, the characteristic and the philosophical in the totality of modern poetry.159 The aim of modern art is
to represent something; it is consequently also termed darstellende
Kunst by Schlegel. It is determined by its philosophical interest. Thus,
modern darstellende art is entirely different in kind from ancient art,
which is characterized by play.
The same quality Schiller and Kant apply to art, applies to Schlegels Schnen Kunst, the genuine and authentic work of art is determined as play without a definite purpose. In contrast, the representative
artist strives to represent certain laws and ideals: The specific characteristics of beautiful art is the free play without definite purpose, that of
representative art is the ideal of the representation.160
Interested, representative art is therefore the opposite of Kants
disinterested art. Only ancient Greek art fulfills the prescription of art
to provide disinterested pleasure. The modern interested art only
pursues certain interesting pursuits and inauthentic forms of liking. This
is art with a purpose and without universality. Only objective art is
purposive without purpose, universal, disinterested, and necessary.
Only the universal, the permanent, and the necessarythe objective
can fill out this big gap; only the beautiful can alleviate this burning
yearn. The beautiful . . . is the universal object of a disinterested pleasure, which is independent of the pressure of demands and rules, it is

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free and therefore necessary, completely without purpose and therefore

unconditional purposeful.161

But that which is interesting is nevertheless a preparation for the revival of the beautiful: The interesting is the preparation of the beautiful.162 The reign of the interested is just a passing crisis: A passing
crisis of taste.163 As in Schiller, the sentimental or interesting is only a
temporary state of affairs, a detour from which one shall finally recover
the lost ideal.

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Chapter 6
________________________________________
Emotions and Social Restrictions
Die Leiden des Jungen Werther as Example

1) Narrative Framework
Die Leiden des Jungen Werther consists mainly of letters written by
Werther to his friend, Wilhelm. Except for a brief intersection by the
fictive editor, the letters run from the beginning of May 1771 to the
20th December, 1772; a good one and a half year.
Werther is the sender of these letters, and his friend, Wilhelm, their
recipient. In the original staging of this narrative situation, the actual
audience is not included. The letters are supposedly private, and when
readers gain access to the intimate, emotional life of Werther, it is
strictly speaking inappropriate because the narrative situation only intends one addressee. The letters represent the psychology of an individual, not public, political, military, or heroic action. As such the letters
primarily are indifferent about the audience. They have one presumed
reader, Wilhelm, with whom Werther is on such an intimate footing,
that he or they (because he writes to them both; he addresses himself to
Wilhelm in a language they share) need not worry about plots, characters or decorum. The intimacy of the narrative situation corresponds to
the intimacy of the emotional content of the lettersin these letters to
Wilhelm, Werther recounts his growing love to the young girl, Lotte.
This constitutes the principal narrative frame of the novel; it encompasses the content of the novel. However, the novel has another
frame, another narrative situation as these letters of Werthers supposedly were recovered by an anonymous editor, who made them available to the public. In this narrative context, the audience is fully explicit
as the editor addresses himself directly to the reader in the short prologue introducing the novel. He appeals to the readers sympathy and
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pity regarding the fate of Werther: You will not want to deny his spirit
and character your admiration and love, nor his fate your compassion.164 The editor establishes a psychological bond between the reader
and Werther, since he assumes that Werthers and the recipients psychology is identical. The hero is not unique and the audience is expected to understand his sufferings; they are able to identify with him
and, consequently, to feel pity.
The editor becomes a mediator between Werther and the recipient,
between private letters and public life, between privacy and publicity.
In the short prologue, the editor indicates how the reader should interpret these letters which become increasingly deranged during the novel.
Werther is represented as a noble character, one who becomes the sorry
victim of a fate that would potentially have defeated anybody. One
should not applaud his fate, neither perceive Werther as solely responsible for his own tragic death. Werther is displayed by the editor as a
modern tragic hero, overpowered not by the gods but by uncontrolled
human emotions. As such, he deserves pity, not rejection.
From the beginning, the editor projects Werthers fate into an interpretive context, a context that anchors the text firmly in reality, here,
the reality of conventional opinion. This is the context in which Werthers fate, and the behavior leading to his suicide, become meaningful,
understandable, and excusable. The editor is represented as a self in
control, providing the narrative frame for a story narrated by a self losing control. And as the letters of Werther become more and more desperate and deranged, the editor ends up surrendering his own role as
Herausgeber. He finally interrupts the flow of letters and takes over
the narration of the story, eavesdropping on the mind of the character,
recounting Werthers last decisions and thoughts. Here, he interprets
Werther and advises the reader as to how to understand his deranged
state of mind. In a pseudo-documentary style, contrasting Werthers delusive grandiloquence, he firmly guides the reader through the disarray
of Werthers papers and through the confusions of his last experiences.
Thus, we have two narrative situations, two narrative frames, for the
novel. One is staged as a message between the fictive editor and the
reader, and the other as a message between Werther and Wilhelm. We
have two narrators. On the one hand, we have the editor, a self in control of public opinion and an impersonation of it; a rational and enlightened citizenwe assumemaking a demented monologue understandable and excusable. One the other hand, we have Werther, a sensi106

tive, artistic self, progressively losing control of himself and his surroundings.
In these two narrative frames: 1) an editor narrates a message to the
reader, and 2) Werther narrates a message to Wilhelm, the second narration is evidently incorporated in the first, such that the general narrative situation of the text is: an editor narrates (Werther narrating a
message to Wilhelm) to the reader. With this narrative arrangement, the
story is first and foremost anchored in the editor, that is in the reality of
public opinion. Werthers story is brought at a distance. Werthers discourse may progressively become more and more confused, and his sufferings may have inspired a certain Werther-effect, causing the youth
at the time to imitate his desperate suicide, but there is no Werthereffect in the narrative arrangement. Goethe has not lost his grip on reality.
2) A Natural Structure, the Seasons
There is no plot in the ordinary sense in Die Leiden des Jungen
Werther. We follow Werther one-and-a-half year in his developing love
for a young village girl, Lotte. This development, however, is still
represented according to certain structural principles. First, one notices
that it is divided into two major periods in between which Werther returns to his hometown in an attempt to forget Lotte.
The two periods have a certain symmetry, and they complement
each other. First, Werther arrives at Lottes village in the spring when
times are cheerful and light. Werther relishes his freedom and lack of
duties, enjoying the simplicity and integrity of the village people and
the beauty of their country. During the summer, he comes to know
Lotte. She is at first merely an impersonation of the simple, rural life.
But soon he becomes infatuated with her and falls in love, although he
knows from the beginning that she is already engaged. When Lottes
fiance returns from a journey, Werthers love becomes still more hopeless until he finally leaves the village in autumn, returning to his hometown in an attempt to forget her. This first periodrunning from spring,
through summer, till fallstill represents the more light and joyful
times for Werther in his relationship to Lotte.
Back in his hometown, Werther cannot get Lotte off his mind, and
in late summer the following year, he returns to the village. Albert and
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Lotte are now husband and wife, and Werther becomes formally a
friend of the house. Although he, more or less consciously, still hopes
to win his beloved, he also gradually realizes the futile in his aspirations, and he disintegrates psychologically, morally, and socially. Finally, in winter a break between Werther and Lotte becomes unavoidable,
and in the aftermath he shoots himself in despair. The second period
running from summer, through fall, till his death in December
represents Werthers most depressive and fatal period.
As such, the seasonsas a general structure of the novelare synchronized to fit Werthers different moods. Basically, his optimistic and
carefree mood in the beginning is coexistent with spring and summer,
while his troubled and distressed mood at the end coexists with fall and
winter. The congruence of seasons and moods is stated explicitly in the
novel, for example when Werther, in his second pessimistic period,
writes: As all nature tends toward autumn, it becomes autumn within
me and all around me. My leaves turn yellow, as the leaves of the nearby trees fall to the ground.165 The autumn becomes the autumn of the
person. His leaves turn yellow, his sap and vitality is no longer fresh.
He is degenerating.
The structure, spring, summer, fallbreaksummer, fall, winter,
constitutes a natural chronology describing also Werthers mental development. The course from spring to winter leads him from joy to misery, from health to illness, from life to death.
Other characteristics distinguish these two phases in Werthers development. In the first phase, Homer is his preferred literature, in the
second, Ossian. Hereby, it is indicated that the hero moves from an objective and naive state of mind to a subjective and sentimental;
that is, to a state of still greater discontent and sense of alienation. The
vehicle for this fatal change is love.
Thus, there is a distinctive difference between the time before and
after love. Because love is an emotion exclusively involving another
person, love implies emotional dependency. This dependency disturbs
the self-sufficient and self-centered universe of Werther; it disrupts the
harmony and idyll of the purely aesthetic relationship between Werther
and the surrounding world. During his first happy phase, Werther is
busy rendering his impressions of nature, he is absorbed in aesthetic
pleasures. He enjoys drawing the nature around him, and he describes it
extensively to his friend, William. In the second phase, he becomes increasingly more introspective, left to his own imaginative and delusive
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world. His art suffers in these periods of distress, and finally he abandons his drawing. The first extrovert attitude of Werthers is replaced
by an introvert. The first preoccupation with exterior nature is replaced
by imaginative and interior life. Comparing these two basic periods, the
time before love is associated with health and the time after love with
illness. At the beginning, Werther is self-reliant, self-confident, selfcentered, and self-sufficient, a condition associated with health. This
theme indicates the application of the prevailing contemporary critical
paradigm: the individual as objective-naive in the first case, as subjective-sentimental in the second. A table may represent the situation.
TABLE IX: Narrative structure of Die Leiden des Jungen Werther
Periods
Seasons

First period
Spring-Summer

Second period
Fall-Winter

Qualifications

Objective
Naive
Homer
Extrovert
Health

Subjective
Sentimental
Ossian
Introvert
Misery

3) The Ambiguous Evaluation of Naivet

In Werthers first letter, he seems to have left a situation in which he
has been the object of a young womans love. He has evidently not returned this love, and in the letter he reflects on the situation. Is it his
fault or not that she fell in love with him?he asks, slightly distracted
about the whole problem. And more as a matter of duty he blames himself for Leonores fate.
Poor Leonore! But I was not to blame. Was it my fault that, while her
headstrong sister charmed and amused me, a passion for me developed
in poor Leonores heart? Yet I ask myselfam I entirely blameless?
Did I perhaps encourage her?166

But this self-criticism is not sincere and genuine, and Werther regrets it immediately, as in the next sentence he promises his friend not
to dwell in the past, but instead enjoy the present.
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Oh, what is man made of that he may reproach himself? I shall do better in the future, my dear friend, I promise you. I shall stop dwelling on
the petty wrongs of providence, as has been my wont, I intend to enjoy
the present and let the past take care of itself.167

This is a representation of a healthy constitution in a person. First

and foremost, one does not dwell on the sufferings one has inflicted
upon others. Health implies indifference with regard to suffering, and
generally with regard to events of the past. Thus, health is defined according to a distinction between living in the past and living in the
present, a distinctionprevailing in the eighteenth and nineteenth century criticismdistinguishing between mental wholesomeness and degeneration of a people (as seen in the previous chapter). In their natural
simplicity, the ancestors supposedly understood how to enjoy a life
lived in presence, whereas the moderns, removed from these uncomplicated ages, were merely able to reflect on and fantasize about presence,
for example in poetic creations such as the idyll. As such, presence for
the moderns became absent presence, life turned into mere recollection
of life. It became the predicament of moderns that they were unable to
live a full and self-present life; instead, they lived unhappily in the remembrance of a lost Age. This constituted the distinctiondescribed
by Goethe and Schiller in their critical writingsbetween naive and
sentimental.
In this specific sense, Werther is healthy and naive from the very
beginning of the novel. In this naivet, he displays a healthy indifference to love. In his first letter to Wilhelm, he diagnoses the reasons for
the sufferings among people accurately according to this critical paradigm: people engage themselves in the past, the past of their recollections, instead of enjoying the indifferent present, the gleichgltige
Gegenwart. They are in the current critical vocabulary sentimental.
Of course, best of friends, you are rightthere would be less misery in
this world if man were not so ever-ready to recall past evils rather than
put up with the indifferent present. God knows why he is thus constituted!168

Being healthy is thus to live in the now, without noticing the past.
The cure which is here so eloquently prescribed as an antidote to the
sufferings of the modern human being, Werther evidently counteracts in
his later love affair with Lotte. In this early optimism, Werther
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represents the opposite of what he shall later become. Intellectually,

Werther comprehends a situation which subsequently runs out of control for him emotionally.
In this happy beginning, Werther is reading Homer, an important
hint, insofar as Homer is perceived as the epitome of a naive artist according to the critical paradigm. Homer is to Werther a life-confirming
artist; he is beyond any other author in the library; he even transgresses
the library. When Wilhelm apparently has asked if Werther needs him
to send him books, Werther declines the offer, he has his Homer: You
ask whether you should send me books. Dear friend, I beg of you
dont. . . . What I need is a lullaby, and I have found an abundance of
them in my beloved Homer.169 Homer represents nature and presence,
whereas books in general represent reflection, cultivation, and in consequence, absence of nature.
This is the situation in the very first letters. But it soon becomes
clear that Werther, rather than being fully naive, is situated between
the two powerful themes, naive and sentimental. If naive is to live a
carefree existence in the moment, to be indifferent to the past, to be affirmative when experiencing suffering, to be centered around ones own
immediate needs, then in all cases naive represents one essential quality, forgetfulness. According to this analysis, Werther is only naive for
a brief moment; soon he reveals himself as a sentimental dreamer.
Furthermore, to complicate matters, the distinction naive versus sentimental (oblivious versus reflective, health versus degeneration), as a
value-hierarchy distributing positive and negative does not remain stable. As soon as this distinction is employed within another context, it
changes value and signification. In another context, it is suddenly no
longer a sign of superiority to be naive.
The issue under discussion is whether it is best to live joyfully in the
presence, or reflectively in the past. In his first letters, Werther has no
doubt, the misery of people is caused by their incapacity of enjoying the
gleichgltige Gegenwart; they live too much in the pastthey think
too much. In later letters the admiration and envy of people living like
children in the present is still stated, but ironically: I am perfectly willing to admit . . . that those people are happiest who live for the moment,
like children dragging their dolls around with them.170 The envy here
expressed is irony; the advantages these naive people might have
make them ludicrous. Suddenly, the naive attitude, forgetfulness and
lack of self-reflection, is no longer perceived as an extension of nature;
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naivet is no longer a positive. What has happened is that these qualities are seen enacted in a social world. In this context naivet makes a
person inane, since the naive demonstrates neither self-criticism nor
awareness of social conditions and restrictions. Social position constitutes the narrow horizon of the person.
Happy creatures! And they are lucky, also, who know how to give
high-sounding names to their shabby professions, even to their passions, passing them off as great achievements that will benefit humanity. Any man is well off who can do that.171

These happy creatures are naive, but their happiness make them
ridiculous. In this context, the naive is determined as a prosaic bourgeois preoccupied with shallow business concerns and content with hollow social gratifications. Compared to this person, the sentimental and
reflective person is superior. Whereas the socially naive is content
with his or her immediate social world, and never sees beyond it, the
reflective maintains at least a sense of freedom by being able to reflect
on an alternative existence. Hence, although the sentimental are restricted by the same social environment as the naive, the awareness of
restrictions makes them more free. They recognize how the individual is
imprisoned by an alienating social world, and hypothetically they are
able to leave society behind them: And however confused he [the reflective] may be, he always carries in his heart a sweet feeling of freedom in the knowledge that he can leave his prison whenever he
likes.172
These are two different and contradictory representations of forgetfulness: either forgetfulness is a prescription for health, or it is a description of inanity. Either people should learn to live in the presence of
the now and be less concerned with past or imaginative life, or people
are ridiculous if they live in the present, instead of using their reflection
and imagination.
The two notions of presence and forgetfulness prevail throughout
the entire work. The two qualifications, presence and forgetfulness, are
intimately related insofar as a life lived entirely in the instance of the
present would imply a total eradication of past memories, as well as of
future expectations. This eradication is exactly what Werther seeks in
his suicide. Therefore, the work is preoccupied throughout in determining the validity of an existence lived in the presence of the now, insofar
as the possibility of such an existence would neutralize Werthers prob112

lems. It would alleviate his sufferings and solve his existential/sexual

crisis, because he would forget the very existence of it. In case he lived
solely in the presence of the now, he would have no recollection of his
problems.
In Werthers final letters, before the editor takes over the narration,
the theme of presence, forgetfulness, and eradication of past life is addressed again. At one of his solitary wanderings Werther has met an insane young man, looking for flowers for his fantasy princess in the
month of December. Although mad, the young man seems cheerful and
content and speaks joyfully about his past. His mother explains to
Werther that his glorified past represents his days in an asylum where
he lived chained to his bed. Now, he has lost all recollections of this,
and lives happily in the conviction that he is picking flowers for his
non-existent princess. The story makes a deep impression on Werther as
he applies it to his own situation.
So that was when you were happy! . . . When you felt like a fish in water! Oh dear God in heaven, hast Thou made it mans fate that he cannot be happy until he has found his reason and lost it again? Poor
Wretch! Yet how I envy him his dim mind, envy him pining away in
his confusion. He goes out hopefully in the winter to pick flowers for
his queen. . . . He doesnt feel, he doesnt even know, that his misery
lies in his destroyed heart, in his disordered minda fate from which
all the kings on earth cannot save him!173

In his insanity, the youth exemplifies a life lived in the presence of

the now. Recollections of his past and reflections on his own situation
are non-existent. In this oblivion, the subject lives in the present now,
and lives happily. Thus, the specific time-structure of the insane has a
logic that associates it with death rather than life. Because a life lived in
the now implies oblivion regarding past experiences and future possibilities, it is also lived beyond the demands and constraints of society. It
provides a foretaste of heaven, and the insane youngster appears to live
in such an artificially created paradise.
This encounter immediately gives Werther an occasion to discuss
suicide. Suicide is his first response to insanity. The discussion occurs
in form of a question: would God have the heart to punish a man who
could no longer endure his life on earth, and chose to interrupt it only in
order to return to God? Would God punish a man that could only be
happy together with God?
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Could any mancould any fatherbe angry with a son who comes
back unexpectedly and throws his arms around his neck, crying, Here I
am, returned to thee, my father. Be not angry that I interrupted my
wanderings, which according to Thy will, I should have endured longer. The world is the same everywherein effort and work, in reward
and joybut what concern is it of mine? only where Thou art can I be
content. There I will suffer and rejoice. Wouldst Thou, dear heavenly
Father, cast out such a man?174

There are consequently many forms of naivet in the novel. There

is the aesthetically naive, represented by Homer and Werther in his first
letters; this is a superior healthy naivet; it is an attitude of the powerful, creative, and self-sufficient. There is the socially naive, the contented merchant, preoccupied with inauthentic mundane affairsthe
contemptible naive. There is the naivet of the insane which is a scandal, an affront against humanity, as the subject here has had to sell out
its reason in order to buy peace of mind. Finally, there is death as a
naivet following the same logic as insanitythe subject who has had
to annihilate its reason, its memory, its existence in order to buy peace
of mind.
In all these cases the presence of the now defines the moment of
naivet. Presence is something that gives by taking away. It takes away
a persons personal horizon, a persons personal context, as it destroys
the persons temporal extensions, past and future. By this operation, it
either gives the person unprecedented intellectual strength, or weakens
the person fatally until death. In any case, whether this gift of presence,
this ultimate present, is a strengthening or a (fatal) weakening of the
person, it gives peace: the peace of creativity, the peace of stupidity, the
peace of insanity, or finally, the peace of death.

4) The Sensitive Artist Contra the Prosaic Bourgeois

Whether a person is closer to nature by being naive or by being
sentimental, by being oblivious or reflective, depends on the context. In the village and at the countryside, Werther is momentarily
naive, preoccupied by reading Homer and by drawing rural scenarios.
In relation to an aesthetic object, naivet is an advantage; it is a catalyst
of sorts for obtaining a pure and uncorrupted impression of nature. In
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the context of nature, one should be naive, there is no need for reflection. But within a social context, naivet indicates the oppositeat least
according to Werthers understanding. Being naive in society indicates
that the person has lost all bonds to nature and perversely accepts social
conditions and constraints as if they were nature itself. Within a social
context, the sentimental and reflective attitude is more adequate because this attitude distances the person from his or her social conditions, keeping the dream of nature and freedom alive. In the social
context, one should not naively absorb oneself in the norms and rules of
society as if these norms and rules were nature. One should manifest
reflection and sentiment as an antidote to the comfortable contentment
and narrow-minded inanity of the bourgeois.
These two contexts, natural and social, give different meanings and
values to the distinction naive/sentimental. In the change from natural to
social context, the evaluation of the opposition undergoes a reversal:
naive moves from positive to negative, and sentimental from negative to
positive.
TABLE X: Naive versus Sentimental

Nature
Society

Positive
Naive
Sentimental

Negative
Sentimental
Naive

In both contexts, nature is the predominant value. One must either

live by nature or avoid alienating oneself from nature, which amounts to
the same thing: one should appreciate nature as the superior value. In
both contexts, the overall purpose is to prevent nature from disappearing from the existential horizon of humans. This forms the content of
Werthers speculations on nature versus culture. But is this glorification
of nature Werthers only, or is it also the message of the work?
Whereas Werther unequivocally sides with nature, against the bourgeois or the citizen with his narrow prosaic and commercial interests,
the text remains ambivalent. The opposition between nature and culture
constitutes a conflict in the work, represented on all levels, country versus city, emotions versus social norms, artistic self versus bourgeois.
The conflict is first and foremost visible in the juxtaposition of Werther
and Albert, the sensitive self contra the prosaic bourgeois. These two
characters are rivals, not only because they are in love with the same
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woman, but also because of the different social role and ideology they
impersonate. This conflict defines the work from beginning to end,
creating a tension which only Werthers final suicide resolves. Through
this love triangle, Goethe represents and discusses the themes of emotion versus reason, feeling versus norm, artist versus bourgeois, individual versus society, nature versus culture.
In the reception of the novel there has been an inclination to perceive the text as accentuating emotion, individual, nature, and Werther in
the general juxtaposition of nature and culture. Typically, one has regarded the text as one long Werther-identification. This understanding
was prevalent in the first reception of the work, and brought about a socalled Werther-fever prompting the youth of the time to imitate
Werther from the way he dressed to his suicide. This has also been the
typical reception in the Marxist or Existentialist traditions, and it has
amounted to the reading of Die Leiden des Jungen Werther where
Werthers suicide is perceived as a social protest or a revolutionary
act.175
Whether romantic, Existentialist, or Marxist, this Wertheridentificational interpretation takes for granted that Werthers letters
represent the authoritative message of the worka message also
Goethe endorses. It is an interpretation that presupposes only one narrative frame for the story, the Werther/Wilhelm dialogue as discussed
above, and identifies the text with this frame. But it is also an interpretation that underestimates Goethe and the ambivalence of the text.
In this interpretation one fails to see the two hands writing Werther. One hand writing, the other hand erasing. One hand asserting
Werthers experiences, dwelling on his emotional life, eloquently recounting his sufferings, the other hand keeping him at a distance, exaggerating his enthusiasm, nullifying and counteracting his opinions, tirelessly debating the legitimacy and propriety of his suicide (or of suicide
in general), embarrassed about his inapt behavior. Thus, throughout the
novel there is a split perception of Werther. It is a split perception that
perhaps makes pity the most adequate response to Werther, as the editor
suggests in the very first sentences, but pity in the ambivalent Nietzschian sense where it becomes an altruism we apply only to those we
consider inferior.
By inserting the editor as a second narrative frame, the text imposes
a principle of reason and common sense into the narration. With this,
the discourse doubles into two overlapping levels. Werther is not the
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single enunciator of the message; he is not the only one seeing and reporting, as he is himself seen and reported on. He is also the object of
the critical eye of the general editor, which we can identify as at least
one side of Goethe. On this background, the text employs a voice of
reason that qualifies the radical character of Werthers statements. The
editor can be seen as the fictional pseudonym for Goethes other
hand, the hand that erases, the hand that detaches itself from Werthers excessiveness and extremism. It builds a critical level into the text,
with which Goethe indicates a distance to the adolescent character of
Werthers discourse, for example by irrationalizing Werther in order
to demonstrate the hopelessly dreamy, impractical, sentimental mind
set of his main character.
These characteristics are first and foremost demonstrated in the discussions between Werther and Albert, discussions interrogating the options Werther appears to have in his futile love to Lotte. They deal with
the options of either committing suicide or committing murder as possible ways of dealing with vain love. In these discussions, Werther merely projects his personal problems into the context of their discussions, a
fact apparently eluding Albert. Whereas Werther discusses his own
pain, Albert discusses the social proprieties and moral imperatives an
individual ought to obey as citizen. But because the text suggests that
Werther merely projects his personal problems into the discussions, it
also questions his credibility. It detaches itself from his erratic opinions
by suggesting that they are merely vaguely understood personal defenses of his own situation, and nothing one needs take seriously.
The first discussion between Werther and Albert starts with a casual
remark. Albert notices that he finds suicide foolish, and the whole idea
repulsive. Werther reacts vehemently against the remark, which he
perceives as an expression for Alberts whole established lifestyle.
Werther reacts strongly because this remark makes suicide something
society should judge, but also because Albert condemns one of Werthers options in solving his futile affection for Lotte. Therefore the pathos and vehemence of his discourse.
Oh you people, I cried, who, when you talk about anything must immediately declare: that is foolish, that is clever, that is good, that is
bad! And what does it all amount to? Do you think you can uncover the
vital circumstances of an action with questions? Are you sure you know
how to get at the heart of the matter: why did it happen? Why did it

117

have to happen? if you were, you wouldnt be so hasty with your decisions.176

This classification, judgment, and evaluation of suicide is understood as something executed by a certain social group, namely ihr Menschen, the Establishment. These people judge the act without understanding the circumstances that brought a person to such despair that
suicide became the only solution. According to Werther, the linguistic
operation of naming and identifying something as something
something as foolish, as clever, as good, as badbefore being able to
pass judgment on things, presents only a false pseudo-understanding of
things, of which the judging subject basically knows nothing.
In his Phenomenalism, Werther is beyond conceptual language,
beyond classifications, beyond good and evil, and consequently beyond
judgment. In this Phenomenalism, the elementary naming and judging
function of language is identified as suppression of emotions and passions. Conceptual language polishes the individuals emotional chaos,
but fails to understand the depth of the psyche and the multiplicity of
reasons that might prompt an individual to his or her suicide. Werther
defends the view that humans in their basic emotional constitution are
beyond language.
Whereas Werther maintains that passionate and emotional actions
cannot and should not be judged, Albert maintains that certain actions
are sinful no matter what, and should be judged accordingly. To Albert,
there is a universal morality which applies to all human beings. This
opposition is a major theme in their discussion. Are there only individual inclinations, of which we basically know nothing and therefore cannot judge, or do there exist universal moral laws, to which all humans
are subjected and according to which they have to act? Can certain actions be judged as either foolish or clever, good or bad? Albert insists
on the latter: You will grant me, I am sure, Albert said, that certain action are vicious whatever the reason may be.177
To Albert, suicide is a sin and a weakness in the subject, whereas to
Werther it is like a physical disease over which a person has no control.
To call a person taking his or her own life a coward is therefore as absurd as calling a person dying of fever a coward. Werther emphasizes
that the impulsiveness and passion of the person committing suicide are
authentic values, only judged as sinful by people like Albert because
they have never themselves taken part in any excess. Again Albert is
identified as a representative of the Establishment (ihr vernnftigen
118

Leute, ihr sittlichen Menschensee quotation below), selfrighteously passing judgment on other people without understanding
them.
Oh you sensible people! . . . Passion, Inebriation, Madness. You respectable ones stand there so calmly, without any sense of participation. Upbraid the drunkard, abhor the madman, pass them by like the
priest and thank God like the Pharisees that He did not make you as
one of these!178

However, this discussion on the legitimacy of suicide is also indirectly a discussion about how to love Lotte, about what kind of love she
deserves, and in general about how love ought to manifest itself.
Werthers objections about Alberts callous attitude regarding suicide
implicitly refer to his lack of enthusiasm regarding love. Albert does not
understand suicide because he does not understand the passions motivating it, that is, love. According to Werther there is virtually only one
reason to commit suicide, unsuccessful love. Werthers implicit objection is then, that Albert cannot love Lotte as highly as himself because
of his insensitivity and ignorance regarding passions. At this latent level, Albert is not blamed for his attitude toward suicide, but because his
insensitivity reveals an inability to understand true love as a fever in
which the lover abandons all social obligations. With this lack of sentiment, he is incapable of giving Lotte the true love she deserves, the love
which Werther could have given her. Look at man, with all his limitationshow impressions affect him, how ideas take hold of him until finally a passion grows within him to such an extent that it robs him of
his peace of mind and ruins him.179 To illustrate his point further,
Werther tells a story of a lonely young girl, whoin love with and later
deserted by an unfaithful lovercould only see it as her possibility to
take her own life. Here, to understand her suicide is to understand her
passion; not to understand her suicide indicates an inability to understand passion in general. Unaware of this logic, Albert commits the error of recommending that the girl in the example should have waited
until time had healed her wounds. His advice suggests that love knows
deferment, reason, and rationalization. Werther protests, in his identification with the suicidal girl, he maintains that her illness is like a fever;
exercising control would be unnatural and impossible.

119

What a wretch, the man who sees it happen and can say, Foolish girl! If
only she had waited, if only she had let time take effect, her despair
would have left her, another would have come forward to comfort her.
That is as if someone were to say, The fool! he died of a fever. Why
didnt he wait until he regained his strength, until his physical condition improved and the tumult in his blood died down? Then everything
would have turned out well and he would be alive today!180

Because the discussion latently concerns Lotte, the question is how

and how not to love her. Werther and Albert represent two different
economies. Albert represents an economy of deferment, Werther an
economy of spontaneity. To Albert, one should meditate before taking
action in any matter; to Werther, one should act impulsively.
At the end of the novel, after the editor has taken over the narration,
Werther tries for a second and last time to persuade Albert about a matter regarding love. A young man, whom Werther have met earlier,
stands accused of having murdered a woman and her husband. Earlier,
Werther learned that this man was in love with the woman who was
persuaded to abandon him and marry the other man. The situation illustrates another of Werthers options regarding his own relationship to
Lotte and Albert. Previouslyalthough horrified by his own thoughts
Werther has contemplated the murder of Albert.
Listening to the young man, Werther feels an urge to save him, and
he approaches the judge and Albert in an attempt to persuade them to
let him go free. Is this case also, love becomes an excuse for murder.
And although Werther set forth in the liveliest fashion and most passionately and truthfully anything and everything that one man could
possibly say to excuse his neighbor, still, as is quite understandable, the
judge remained unmoved. He didnt even let Werther finish what he
had to say, but disagreed heatedly and reproved him for defending a
murderer. He explained that all law would be voided and the security of
the state destroyed if Werthers viewpoint were accepted.181

Rejected, Werther presents the absurd suggestion that the judge

should look the other way, and give the young man a chance to escape,
a proposal firmly rejected. At this point, Werthers arguments are not to
be taken seriously. They are merely projections of his own desperate
situation. He no longer distinguishes clearly between outer and inner
life, and Goethe suggests that his desperate attempt to persuade the
judge to let the murderer go is an attempt to save himself from condem120

nation. This becomes explicit when Albert and the judge in the end tells
Werther: Nein, er [the young man] ist nicht zu retten! and Werther afterwards by himself recounts the whole situation: Du [the young man]
bist nicht zu retten, Unglcklicher! ich sehe wohl, da wir nicht zu retten sind. Werther identifies his own situation with that of the young
man. Thus, the discussion is about him being doomed. With this wir
Goethe indicates Werthers confusion.
5) The Lack of Presence of Death
Werthers anticipation of his own death, referred to in his last letter
to Lotte, and the editors description of his final death-struggle,
represent several differences. Werthers death is the final defeat of the
idealism he represents. His death, instead of giving him relief from an
intolerable reality, is prolonged into a death-struggle that reduces him to
mere corporeality and materiality.
In his letter to Lotte, Werther idealizes death into being an entrance
into another life. In this letter, he already perceives himself as dead, and
he looks upon himself and the world from a hypothetical point beyond
his death. In his last preparations, he oscillates between his immediate
determination to commit suicide and his perception of himself after he
is dead and buried. The suicide in itself represents a point, an instant
disappearing between these two temporal axes: preparations, death, future burial; anticipated future, point, future. He decides that moment
for his suicide has arrived when the hour strikes twelve midnight. Dying
is a point marking the end of the day, the beginning of the night. This
final hour determines the instant of transition from life to death: Sie
sind geladenEs schlgt zwlfe! So sei es denn!Lotte! Lotte, lebe
wohl! lebe wohl! The day becomes an metaphor on life. Now when it
dies, he dies.
This staging of his death is Werthers last metaphor, a final poetization of his lifewhich, as Goethe insists, does not prevail. The reality
of his death offends this well-conceived poem, in which day changes to
night as life changes to death. As he botches his suicide, shooting himself with an unclean shot which does not kill him instantly, his dying
becomes a protracted process, lasting more than twelve hours. Instead
of dying when the clock strikes twelve midnight, he dies around noon
the next day, the hour when a new day has reached its climax. The presence of instantaneous death is protracted into a twelve hour struggle be121

tween life and death. Even in his final hours, his idealism is contradicted by reality. The search for peace and relief is replaced with the
reality of protracted pain. In the painful and death-struggle, death is deidealized. Werthers protracted death is a final rebuff of his search for
ideality.
Next morning at six, the servant came into the room with a light. He
found his master lying on the floor, the pistol, and the blood. He cried
out, touched himno response. Werthers last breath was rattling in
his throat. . . . When the doctor arrived, he found the unfortunate man
on the floor. There was no hope of saving him. His pulse could still be
felt but all his limbs were paralyzed. He had shot himself in the head
above the right eye, driving his brains out. . . . The blood on the armchair was evidence of the fact that he had shot himself while sitting in
front of his desk, then had slumped down and twisted himself convulsively out of the chair. He was lying on his back, against the window,
fully clad in his blue coat and yellow vest . . . his breathing was terribleweak at one moment, then a little stronger. They were waiting for
the end to come.182

In this final description of Werther, the pantheistic idea that man

and universe become unified in death is contradicted by the reality of
Werthers death-struggle. The ugliness of the death-struggle replaces its
intended idealization and melancholic magnificence. Although Goethe
describes Werthers romantic understanding of the world, he has still
not abandoned himself to this understanding.

Notes
1. Lessing: Hamburg Dramaturgy, quoted from Ernst Cassirer: The Philosophy of Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 296.
2
. Dryden, John: An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (in: Literary Criticism, ed.:
Allen H. Gilbert (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967) p. 637.
3
. Dryden: An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 637.
4
. Johnson, Samuel: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Samuel Johnsons Literary Criticism, ed Stock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1974), p. 144.
5
. Dryden: An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 628.
6
. Also in Howards response to Drydens interpretations of the unities, the
unities are presented as absurd, but in critical terms still located within the
neoclassical paradigm itself. The unity of time is absurd, Howard contends, be-

122

cause whether one contracts the recommended twenty-four hours or twentyfour years to the two hours of dramatic action, it is equally impossible to maintain unity. And as impossibilities are all equal, and admit of no degree, one
represents twenty-four hours and twenty-four years equally poorly in two hours
of action on the stage. The unity of time is impossible either way Howard
quoted from Dryden: A Defence of an Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in: Dryden:
Of Dramatic Poesy (London, 1964), p. 124. One would question Aristotles authoritative text on poetry anew, in order to show that Aristotle never advocated
the use of unity of time and place. One would discuss matters logically or philologically.
7
. Dryden: An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, p. 629.
8
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 145.
9
. Dryden An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 632.
10
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 142.
11
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 143.
12
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 144.
13
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 141.
14
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 14748.
15
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 147.
16
. Johnson, Preface to the Dictionary, in: Stock, ibid., p. 118.
17
. Dryden: An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 634.
18
. Johnson: Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare, in: Stock, ibid., p. 152.
19
. Johnson, Preface to the Dictionary, in: Stock, ibid., p. 152-53.
20
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, in: Dryden: Of Dramatic Poesy (London: 1962), p. 186.
21
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 188.
22
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 194.
23
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 194.
24
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 189.
25
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 196.
26
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 199.
27
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 201.
28
. Winckelmann, Johann Joachim: Reflections on the Imitation of Greek
Works in Painting and Sculpture/Gedanken ber die Nachahmung der griechiesche Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Bilingual German/English
edition, La Salle, IL: Open Court Classics, 1987) p. 33-35. [Das allgemeine
vorzgliche Kennzeichen der griechischen Meisterstcke ist endlich eine edle
Einfalt, und eine stille Gre, sowohl in der Stellung als im Ausdrucke. So wie
die Tiefe des Meers allezeit ruhig bleibt, die Oberflche mag noch so wten,
ebenso zeiget der Ausdruck in den Figuren der Griechen bei allen Leidenschaften eine groe und gesetzte Seele. Diese Seele schildert sich in den Ge-sichte

123

des Laokoons, und nicht in dem Gesichte allein, bei dem heftigsten Leiden. Der
Schmerz, welcher sich in allen Muskeln und Sehnen des Krpers entdecket,
und den man ganz allein, ohne das Gesicht und andere Teile zu betrachten, an
dem schmerzlich eingezogenen Unterleibe beinahe selbst zu empfinden glaubet; dieser Schmerz, sage ich, uert sich dennoch mit keiner Wut in dem Gesichte und in der ganzen Stellung. Er erhebet kein schreckliches Geschrei, wie
Vergil von seinem Laokoon singet: Die ffung des mundes gestattet es nicht;
es ist vielmehr ein ngstliches und beklemmtes Seufzen, wie es Sadoleto beschreibet. Der Schmerz des Krpers und die Gre der Seele sind durch den ganzen Bau der Figur mit gleicher Strke ausgeteilet, und gleichsam abgewogen.
Laokoon leidet, aber er leidet wie des Sophokles Philoktet: sein Elend gehet
uns bis an die Seele; aber wir wnschten, wie dieser groe Mann, das Elend ertragen zu knnen. Winckelmann: Gedanken ber die Nachahmung der griechiesche Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, ibid., p. 32-34]
29
. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim: Laocoon, in: German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism, ed: Nisbet. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) p.
33-35. [Nach ihren Taten sind es Geschpfe hheren Art; nach ihren Empfindungen wahre Menschen. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim: Laocoon, in: Werke
und Briefe, band 5/2 (Frankfurt a/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1990), p. 19]
30
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 62. [(Der Grieche) fhlte und
furchte sich; er uerte seine Schmerzen und seine Kummer; er schmte sich
keiner der menschlichen Schwachheiten. Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 20]
31
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 65. [Der Meister arbeitete auf
die hchste Schnheit unter den angenommenen Umstnden des krperlichen
Schmerzes. Dieser, in aller seiner entstellenden Heftigkeit, war mit jener nicht
zu verbinden. Er mute ihn also herab setzen; er mute Schreien in Seufzen
mildern; nicht weil das Schreien eine unedle Seele verrt, sondern weil es das
Gesicht auf eine ekelhafte Weise verstellet. Denn man rei dem Laokoon in
Gedanken nur den Mund auf, und urteilen. Man lasse ihn schreie, und sehe.
Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 29]
32
. Dryden: A Parallel betwixt painting and poetry, ibid., p. 194.
33
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 65. [Ich Schliee so. Wenn es
wahr ist, da die Malerei zu ihren Nachahmungen ganz andere Mittel, oder
Zeichen gebrauchet, als die Poesie; jene nemlich Figuren und Farben in dem
Raume, diese aber artikulierte Tne in der Zeit; wenn unstreitig die Zeichen ein
bequemes Verhltnis zu dem Bezeichneten haben mssen; So knnen neben
einander geordnete Zeichen, auch nur Gegenstnde, die neben einander, oder
deren Teile neben einander existieren, auf einander folgende Zeichen aber,
auch nur Gegenstnde ausdrcken, die auf einander, oder deren Teile auf einander folgen. / Gegenstnde, die neben einander oder deren Teile neben einander folgen, heien Krper. / . . . / Gegenstnde, die auf einander, oder deren
Teile auf einander folgen, heien berhaubt Handlungen. Lessing: Laokoon,
ibid., p. 116]

124

34
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 99. [Doch alle Krper existieren
nicht allein in dem Raume, sondern auch in der Zeit. . . . Folglich kann die Malerei auch Handlungen nachahmen, aber nur andeutungsweise durch Krper. /
Auf der andern Seite knnen Handlungen nicht fr sich selbst bestehen, sondern mssen gewissen Wesen anhngen. In so fern nun diese Wesen Krper
sind, oder als Krper betrachtet werden, schildert die Poesie auch Krper, aber
nur andeutungsweise durch Handlungen. / Die Malerei kann in ihren coexistierenden Compositionen nur einen einzigen Augenblick der Handlung
nutzen, und mu daher den prgnantesten whlen, aus welchem das Vorhergehende und Folgende am begreitlichsten wird. / Eben so kann auch die Poesie in
ihren fortschreitenden Nachahmungen nur eine einzige Eigenschaft der Krper
nutzen, und mu daher diejenige whlen, welche das sinnlichste Bild des
Krpers von der Seite erwecket, von welcher sie ihn braucht. Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 116-17]
35
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 104. [Was das Auge mit einmal
bersiehet, zhlt er uns merklich langsom nach und nach zu. Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 124]
36
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 104. [Dem Auge bleiben die betrachteten Teile bestndig gegenwrtig; es kann sie abermals berlaufen: fr
des Ohr hingegen sind die vernommenen Teile verloren, wann sie nicht in dem
Gedchtnisse zurchbleiben. Und bleiben sie schon da zurch: welche mhe,
welche Anstrengung kostet es, ihre Eindrcke all in eben der Ordnung so lebhaft zu erneuern, sie neu mit einer migen Geschwindigkeit auf einmal zu
berdenken, um zu einem etwanigen Begriffe des ganzen zu gelangen! Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 124]
37
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 105. [Ich hre in jedem Worte
den arbeitenden Dichter, aber das Ding selbst bin ich weit entfernet zu sehen.
Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 126]
38
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 105. [Ich spreche nicht der Rede
berhaubt das Vermgen ab, ein krperliches Ganze nach seinen Teilen zu
schildern; sie kann es, weil ihre Zeichen, ob sie schon auf einander folgen,
dennoch willkrliche Zeichen sind: sondern ich spreche es der Rede als dem
Mittel der Poesie ab, weil dergleichen wrtlichen Schilderungen der Krper das
Tuschende gebricht, worauf des Poesie vornehmlich gehet; und dieses Tuschende, sage ich, mu ihnen darum gebrechen, weil das Coexistierende des
Krpers mit dem Consecutiven der Rede dabei in Collision kmmt, und indem
jenes in dieses aufgelset wird, und dis Zergliederung des Ganzen in seine
Teile zwar erleichtert, aber die endliche Wiederzusammensetzung dieser Teile
in das Ganze ungemein schwer, und nicht selten unmglich gemacht wird.
Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 127]
39
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 114. [Auch hier ist Homer das
Muster aller Muster. Er sagt sagt: Nireus war schn; Achilles war noch

125

Schner; Helena bes eine Gttliche Schnheit. Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p.

114]
40
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 115. [Werden nicht, wenn tausind Menschen dieses lesen, sich alle tausind eine eigene Vorstellung von ihr
machen. Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 147]
41
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 119. [Malet uns, Dichter, das
Wohlgefallen, die Zuneigung, die Liebe, das Entzcken, welches die Schnheit
verursachet, und ihr habt die Schnheit gemlet. Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p.
154]
42
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 118. [Greek original]
43
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 121. [Dieses (Gemlde), wo ich
ihn selbst fhle, oder jenes, wo ich ihn aus den Grimassen gerhter Graubrte
schlieen soll? Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 158]
44
. Lessing: Laocoon, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 121. [Ein gieriger Blick macht
das ehrwrdigste Gesicht lcherlich. Lessing: Laokoon, ibid., p. 158]
45
. As Adam Phillips has noticed in his introduction to Burkes A Philosophical Enquiry: Newtons God had set a limit to the world. If the universe
was rule-bound like a clock, regulated by discernible laws as Newton had
shown, then the presiding question was whether the idea of laws of nature
could be applied to human nature. Could there be a science, a principled code,
of ethics or aesthetics? Adam Phillips: Introduction, in: Edmund Burke: A
Philosophical Enquiry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. xi.
46
. Joseph Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, in: Richard Steele
amd Joseph Addison: Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator (New York:
Penguin Classics, 1988), p. 380.
47
. Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, ibid., p. 377-78.
48
. Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, ibid., p. 367.
49
. Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, ibid., p. 371.
50
. Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, ibid., p. 368-69.
51
. Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, ibid., p. 369.
52
. Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, ibid., p. 370.
53
. Addison: The Pleasures of the Imagination, ibid., p. 370.
54
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 11.
55
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 11 & 13.
56
. David Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, in: Essays; Moral, Political, and
Literary (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1987), p. 229.
57
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 231.
58
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 232.
59
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 232.
60
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 232.
61
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 232.
62
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 233.

126

63

. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 236.

. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 237.
65
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 237-38.
66
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 239.
67
. Hume: Of the Standard of Taste, ibid., p. 233.
68
. Even if critics are endowed with good sense, exercise delicacy, lack prejudice, etc., the problem about how to determine good continues on a still
higher level, insofar as there are disagreements between people about whom the
good critic is. The problem of what is good seems to regress to the same old
point of departure. If first Hume attemps to solve the disagreements between
people of how a good work of art should be judged, he is later confronted the
disagreements between people about how a good critic should be judged. This
problem in fact only brings him back to the beginning, and significantly
enough he declares that it cannot be solved. But it proves his thesisthat everybody pursues a uniform standard of judgmentbecause it makes apparent
that people hold the conscientious and judicious critic in high esteem. In their
disagreements about whom is the better critic, people pertain to some true and
decisive standards of taste; at least they agree that such standards exist somewhere, even if they disagree about what these sandards are, and even though
nobody is able to determine them.
69
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 13.
70
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 14.
71
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 14.
72
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 15-16.
73
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 16-17.
74
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 18.
75
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 22.
76
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 30.
77
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 33.
78
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 37 & 47.
79
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 39.
80
. Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry, ibid., p. 83.
81
. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Judgment (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1987) p. 44. [Seine bestimmungsgrund [kann] nicht anders als subjektiv sein. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft (Hamburg und Leipzig: Verlag von
Leopold Voss, 1884) p. 37]
82
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 45. [Nun will man aber, wenn die
Frage ist, ob etwas schn sei, nicht wissen, ob uns oder irgend jemand an der
Existenz der Sache irgend etwas gelegen sei, oder auch nur gelegen sein knne,
sondern wie wir sie in der bloen Betrachtung beurtheilen. Kant: Kritik der
Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 38]
64

127

83
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 46. [Ein jeder mu eingestehen,
da dasjenige Urteil ber Schnheit, worein sich das mindeste Interesse mengt,
sehr parteilich und kein reines Geschmacksurtheil sei. Man mu nicht im mindesten fr die Existenz der Sache eingenommen, sondern in diesem Betracht
ganz gleichgltig sein, um in Sachen des Geschmacks den Richter zu spielen.
Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 39]
84
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 52. [Hunger ist der beste Koch,
und Leuten von gesundem Appetit schmeckt alles, was nur ebar ist; mithin
beweist ein solches Wolgefallen keine Wahl nach Geschmack. Nur wenn das
Bedrfnis befriedigt ist, kann man unterscheiden, wer unter vielen Geschmack
habe, oder nicht. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 45]
85
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 52. [Angenehm heit jemandem
das, was ihn vergngt; schn, was ihm blo gefllt; gut, was geschtzt, bebilligt, d.i. worein von ihm ein objectiver Werth gesetzt wird. Annehmlichkeit gilt
auch fr vernunftlose Tiere; Schnheit nur fr Menschen, d.i. thierische, aber
doch vernnftige Wesen, aber auch nicht blo als solche (z.B. Geister) sondern
zugleich als thierische; das Gute aber fr jedes vernnftige Wesen berhaubt.
Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 44]
86
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 50. [In Absicht der Glckseligkeit
glaubt endlich doch jedermann, die grte Summe (der Menge sowohl als Dauer nach) der Annehmlichkeiten des Lebens ein wahres, ja sogar des hchste Gut
nennen zu knnen. Allein auch dawider strubt sich dies Vernunft. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p 42-43.]
87
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 50. [Da aber eines Menschen Existenz an sich einen Werth habe, welcher blo lebt (und in dieser Absicht noch
so sehr geschftig ist), um zu genieen, sogar wenn er dabeit anderen, die alle
ebenso wohl nur aufs Genieen ausgehen, als Mittel dazu auf das beste
befrderlich wre, und zwar darum, weil er durch Sympatie alles Vergngen
mitgensse: das wird sich die Vernunft nie berreden lassen. Kant: Kritik der
Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 43]
88
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 50. [Nur durch das, was er thut,
ohne Rcksicht auf Genu . . . giebt er seinem Dasein, als der Existenz einer
Person einen absoluten Werth. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 43]
89
. Die Glckselighit is mit der ganzen Flle ihrer Annehmlickkeit bei
weiten nicht ein unbedingtes Gut Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 43.
90
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 50, note. [Eine Verbindlichkeit
zum Genieen ist eine offenbare ungereimtheit. Eben das mu also auch eine
vorgegebene Vorbindlichkeit zu allen Handlungen sein, die zu ihrem Ziele blo
das Genieen haben: dieses mag nun so geistig ausgedacht (oder verbrmt)
sein, wie es wolle, und wenn es auch ein mystischer sogenannter himmlischer
Genu wre. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 43, note]
91
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 51. [Denn das Gute ist das Object
des Willens (d.i. eines durch Vernunft bestimmten Begehrungsvermgens) . . .

128

Das Angenehme und Gute haben beide eine Beziehung auf das Begehrungsvermgen und fhren sofern, jenes ein pathologisch-bedingtes (Durch
Anreize, stimulos) dieses ein reines practisches Wolgefallen bei sich Kant:
Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 43-44]
92
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 53. [Geschmack ist das Beurtheilungsvermgen eines Gegenstandes oder einer Vorstellungsart durch ein Wolgefallen order Missfallen ohne alles intersse. Der Gegenstand eines solchen
Wolgefallens heit schn. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 45]
93
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 54. [Denn da es sich nicht auf irgend eine Neigung des Subjects grndet . . . so kann er keine Privatbedingungen als Grnde des Wohlgefallens auffinden. Er wird daher vom Schnen so
sprechen, als ob Schnheit eine Beschaffenheit des Gegenstandes und das Urtheil logisch wre . . . weil es doch mit dem logischen die Ahnlichkeit hat, da
man die Giltigkeit desselben fr jedermann daran voraussetzen kann. Kant:
Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 46]
94
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 55. [Er mu es nicht schn nennen, wenn es blo ihm gefllt . . . wenn er aber etwas fr schn ausgiebt, so
muthet er anderen desselbe wolgefallen zu, er urtheilt nicht blo fr sich, sondern fr jedermann. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 47]
95
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 60. [In dem Urtheile des Geschmacks nichts postulirt wird, als eine solche allgemeine Stimme in Ansehung des
Wolgefallens ohne Vermittelung der Begriffe, mithin die Mglichkeit eines
sthetischen Urtheils, welches zugleich als fr jedermann giltig betrachtet werden knne. Das Geschmackurtheil selber postulirt nicht jedermanns Einstimmung . . . es sinnt nur jedermann diese Einstimmung an als einen Fall der Regel, in Ansehung dessen er die Besttigung nucht von begriffen, sondern von
anderen Beitritt er wartet. Die allgemeine Stimme ist also nur eine Idee. Kant:
Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 51]
96
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 60. [Da der, welcher ein Geschmacksurtheil zu fllen glaubt, in der That dieser Idee gem urtheile kann ungewiss sein. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 51]
97
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 65. [Die Zweckmssigkeit kann
also ohne Zweck sein, sofern wir die Ursachen diesen Form nicht in einen Willen setzen, aber doch die Erklrung ihrer Mglichkeit nur, in dem wir sie von
einem Willen ableiten, uns begreiflich machen knnen. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 56]
98
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 68-69. [Alles Interesse verdirbt
das Geschmacksurtheil und nimmt ihm seine Unparteilichkeit, vorhehmlich
wenn es nicht so wie das Interesse der vernunft die Zweckmssigkeit vor dem
Gefhle der Lust voranschickt, sondern sie auf diese grndet, welches letztere
allmal im sthetischen Urtheile ber etwas, sofern es vergngt oder schmerzt,
geschieht. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 58]

129

99
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 69. [Ein Geschmackurtheil, aus
welches Reiz und Rhrung keinen Einflu haben . . . welches also blo die
Zweckmssigkeit der Form zum Bestimmungsgrunde hat, ist ein reines Geschmacksurtheil. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 59]
100
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 174. [Also mu die Zweckmigkeit in Produkte der schnen Kunst, ob sie zwar absichtlich ist, doch
nicht absichtlich scheinen; d.i. schne Kunst mu als Natur anzusehen sein, ob
man sich ihrer zwar als Kunst bewut ist. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid.,
p. 148]
101
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 174. [Genie ist das Talent (Naturgabe), welches der Kunst die Regel giebt. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 148]
102
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 174. [Da das Talent als angeborenes produtives Vermgen de Knstlers selbst zur Natur gehrt, so knnte
man sich auch so ausdrcken: Genie ist die angeborne Gemtsanlage (ingenium), durch welche die Natur der Kunst die Regel gibt. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 148-49]
103
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 176. [Darin ist jedermann einig,
da Genie dem Nachahmungsgeiste gnzlich entgegen zu setzen sei. Da nun
Lernen nichts als Nachahmen ist, so kann die grte Fhigkeit, Gelehrigkeit
(Kapazitt), als Gelehrigkeit, doch nicht fr Genie gelten. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 150]
104
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 177. [Sondern die Regel mu von
der Tat, d.i. vom Produkt abstrahiert werden, an welchem andere ihr eigenes
Talent prfen mgen, um sich jenes zum Muster, nicht der Nachmachung, sondern der Nachahmung dienen zu lassen. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p.
151]
105
. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 151.
106
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 178. [Ob zwar mechanische und
schne Kunst, die erste als bloe Kunst des Fleies und der Erlernung, die
zweite als die des Genies, sehr von einander unterschieden sind: so gibt es doch
keine schne Kunst, in welcher nicht etwas Mechanisches, welches nach Regeln gefat und befolgt werden kann, und also etwas Schulgerechtes die wesentliche Bedingung der Kunst ausmachte. Denn etwas mu dabei als Zweck gedacht werden, sonst kann man ihr Produkt gar keiner Kunst zuschreiben; es
wre ein bloes Produkt des Zufalls Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p.
152]
107
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 178. [So glauben seichte Kpfe,
da sie nicht besser zeigen knnen, sie wren auf blhende Genies, als wenn
sie sich vom Schulzwange aller Regeln lossagen . . . Wenn aber jemand sogar
in Sachen der sorgfltigsten Vernunftundersuchung wie ein Genie spricht und
entscheidet, so ist es vollends lcherlich; man wei nicht recht, ob man mehr
ber den Gaukler, der um sich so viel Dunst verbreitet . . . oder mehr ber das

130

Publikum lachen soll, welches sich treu herzig einbildet, da sein Unvermgen,
das Meisterstck der Einsicht deutlich erkennen und fassen zu knnen, daher
komme, weil ihm neue Wahrheiten in ganzen Massen zugeworfen werden.
Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 152]
108
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 178. [Das Genie kann nur reichen
Stoff zu Produkten der schnen Kunst hergeben; die Verarbeitung desselben
und die Form erfordert ein durch die Schule bebildetes Talent. Kant: Kritik
der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 155-56]
109
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 182. [Unter einer sthetischen
Idee aber verstehe ich diejenige Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft, die viel zu
denken veranlat, ohne da ihr doch irgend ein bestimmter Gedanke d.i. Begriff adquat sein kann, die flglich keine Sprache vllig erreicht und
verstndlich machen kann. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 155-56]
110
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 184. [Lat uns aus dem Leben
ohne Murren weichen und ohne etwas zu bedauern, indem wir die Welt noch
alsdann mit Wolthaten berhaubt zurcklassen. So verbreitet die Sonne, nachdem sie ihren Tageslauf vollendet hat, noch ein mildes Licht am Himmel; und
die letzten Strahlen, die sie in die Lfte schickt, sind ihre letzten Seufzer fr
das Wol der Welt. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p 158]
111
. Kant: Critique of Judgment, ibid., p. 184. [So belebt er (Der Knig)
seine Vernunftidee von weltbrgerlicher Gesinnung noch am Ende des Lebens
durch ein Attribut, welches die Einbildungskraft (in der Erinnerung an alle Annehmlichkeiten eines vollbrachten schnen Sommertages, die uns ein heiterer
Abend ins Gemth ruft) jener Vorstellung beigesellt, und welches eine Menge
von Empfindungen und Nebenforstellungen rege macht, fr die sich kein Ausdruck findet. Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., p. 158]
112
. Jean Jacques Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Languages, in: Moran/Gode, eds.: On the Origin of Language (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966) p. 44. [Sitt quun homme fut reconnu par un autre pour un
tre sentant, pensant, et semblable lui, le dsir ou le besoin de lui communiquer ses sentimens et ses penses lui en fit chercher les moyens. Jean Jacques Rousseau: Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, in: Oeuvres Completes de
J.J.Rousseau volume 3, (Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1875) p. 495]
113
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 32. [Celui qui
nimagine rien ne sent que lui-mme; il est seul au milieu du genre humain
Rousseau: Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 505]
114
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 32. [En nous
transportant hors de nous-mmes; en nous identifiant avec tre souffrant . . . ce
nest pas dans nous, cest dans lui que nous souffrons. Rousseau: Essai sur
LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 505]
115
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 32. [Comment
souffrirois-je en voyant souffrir un autre, si je ne sais pas mme quil souffre, si

131

jignore ce quil y a de commun entre lui et moi? Rousseau: Essai sur

LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 505]
116
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 44. [Les premier
peuple . . . vcurent plus long-temps isols dans leurs familles et sans communication Rousseau: Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 540]
117
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 44. [Les jeunes
filles venoient chercher de leau pour le mnage, les jeunes hommes venoient
abreuver leurs troupeauz. L, des yeux accoutums aux mmes objets ds
lenfance commencrent den voir de plus doux. Le cur smut ces nouveaux objets, un attrait inconnu le rendit moins sauvage, il sentit le plaisir de
ntre pas seul. Leau devint insensiblement plus ncessaire, le btail eut soif
plus souvent: on arrivoit en hte, et lon partoit regret. Rousseau: Essai sur
LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 540]
118
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 45. [Il y avoit
des mariages, mais il ny avoit point damour. Chaque famille se suffisoit ellemme et se perptuoit par son seul sang: les enfans, ns des mmes parens,
croissoient ensemble, et trouvoient peu peu des manires de sepliquer entre
eux: les sexes se distinguoient avec lge; le penchant naturel suffisoit pour les
unir, linstinct tenoit lieu de passion, lhabitude tenoit lieu de prfrence; on
devenoit mari et femme sans avoir cess dtre frre et sur. Il ny avoit l rien
dassez anim pour dnouer la langue, rien qui pt arracher assez frquemment
les accens des passion ardentes pour les tourner en institutions. Rousseau: Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 540]
119
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 33. [Nayant jamais rien vu que ce qui troit autour deux, cela mme ils ne le connoissoient
pas; ils ne se connoissoient pas eux-mme. Ils avoient lide dun pre, dun
fils, dun frre, et non pas dun homme. Leur cabane contenoit tous leurs semblables; un tranger, une bte, un monstre, toient pour eux la mme chose:
hors eux et leur famille, lunivers entier ne leur toit rien. Rousseau: Essai
sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 505]
120
. Johann Gottfried Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, in: Moran/Gode, eds.: On the Origin of Language (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 99. [Aber Ich kann nicht meine Verwunderung bergen, da
Philosophen, das ist, Leute, die deutliche Begriffe suchen, je haben auf den
Gedanken kommen knnen, aus diesem Geschrei der Empfindungen den Urspring menschlischer Sprache zu erklren: Johann Gottfried Herder: ber den
Ursprung der Sprache, in: Frhe Schriften, Werke band 1, (Frankfurt a/M:
Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985) p. 708]
121
. Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 116. [Er (der
Mensch) beweiset Reflexion, wenn er aus dem ganzen schwebenden Traum der
Bilder, die seine Sinne verbeistreichen, sich in ein Moment des Wachens
sammlen, auf Einem Bilde freiwilling verweilen, es in helle ruhigere Obacht
nehmen, und sich Merkmale absondern kann, da dies der Gegenstand un kein

132

andrer sei. Er beweiset also Reflexion, wenn er nicht blo alle Eigenschaften,
lebhaft oder klar erkennen: sondern eine oder mehrere als unterscheidende Eigenschaften bei sich anerkennen kann: der erste Aktus dieser Anerkenntnis
giebt deutlichen Begriff; es ist das Erste Urteil der Seele . . . Wodurch geschahe die Anerkennung? Durch ein Merkmal, was er absondern mute, und
was, als Merkmal der Besinning, deutlich in ihn fiel Herder: ber den Ursprung der Sprache, ibid., p. 722-23]
122
. Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 117. [Lasset jenes
Lamm, als Bild sein Auge vorbeigehn: ihm wie keinem andern Tiere. Nicht wie
dem hungrigen, witternden Wolfe! nicht wie dem blutleckenden Lwen . . .
Nicht so dem Menschen! so bald er in die Bedrfnis kommt, das Schaf kennen
zu lernen: so stret ihn kein Instinkt: so reit ihn kein Sinn auf dasselbe zu
nahe hin, oder davon ab: es steht da, ganz wie es sich seinen Sinnen uert.
Wei, sanft, wollichtseine besonnen sich bende seele sucht ein Merkmal,
das Schaf Blcket! sie hat Merkmal gefunden. Der innere sinne wrket. Dies
blcken, das ihr am strksten Eindruck macht . . . hervorsprang, am tiefsten
eindrang, bleibt ihr. Das schaf kommt wieder. Wei, sanft, wollichtsie sieht,
tastet, besinnet sich, sucht Merkmaler blckt, und nun erkennet sies wieder!
Ha! du bist das Blckende! fhlt sie innerlich, sie hat es menschlich erkennt,
da sies deutlich, das ist mit einem Merkmal erkennet, und nennet. Herder:
ber den Ursprung der Sprache, ibid., p. 723]
123
. Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 117. [Und was ist
die ganze menschliche Sprache, als eine Sammlung solcher Worte? Herder:
ber den Ursprung der Sprache, ibid., p. 724. Herders emphasis]
124
. For this reason, language is not an outcry of emotions, but a reflective
process, man is not a breathing machine but a reflective being. A contrast to
Rousseaus emotional origin of languagewhere the first words allegedly are
born spontaneously, without external causes, purely voluntary from inner feelingsis assumed, although there are external causes for the origin of Rousseaus first words: not a lamb, but the other sex. Apparently there is in Rousseau and Herder the same need to name what one suddenly discoves being different from oneself. Herder gives an explanation of the origin of language challenging Rousseaus, but within the same paradigm, the same rationale, the same
prehistoric scene, the same environmental circumstances.
125
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 39. [Supposez
un printemps perptuel sur la terre; supposez partout de leau , du btail, des
paturages; supposez les hommes, sortant des mains de la nature, une fois desperss parmi tout cela, je nimagine pas comment ils autoient jamais renonc
leur libert primitive, et quitt la vie isole et pastorale, si convenable leur indolence naturelle, pour simposer sans ncessit lesclavage, les travaux, les
misres insparables de ltat social. Celui qui voulut lhomme ft sociable
toucha du doigt laxe du globe et linclina sur laxe de lunivers. Rousseau:
Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 507]

133

126
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 47-49. [Les
hommes, plus robustes, doivent avoir des organces moins dlicats; leurs voix
diovent tre plus pres et plus fortes. Dailleurs, quelle diffrence entre les inflexions touchantes qui viennent des mouvemens de lme cris quarrachent les
besoins physiques! . . . le premier mot ne fut pas chez eux, aimez-moi, mais aidez-moi. Ces deux termes, quoique assez semblables, se prononcent dun ton
bien diffrent: on navoit rien faire sentir, on avoit tout faire entendre; il ne
sagissoit donc pas dnergie, mais de clart . . . Nos langues valent mieux
crites que parles, et lon nous lit avec plus de plaisir quon ne nous coute.
Au contraire, les langues orientales crites perdent leur vie et leur chaleur.
Rousseau: Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 511-12]
127
. Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 93. [Der Pater
Rasles, der sich zehn Jahr unter den Abenakiern in Nordamerika aufgehalten,
klagt hierber so sehr, da er mit aller Aufmerksamkeit doch oft nur die Hlfte
des Worts wiederholet und sich lcherlich gemachtwie weit lcherlicher
htte er mit seinen franzsischen Buchstaben beziffert? Herder: ber den Ursprung der Sprache, ibid., p. 702-3]
128
. Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 93-94. [Oft htten
zwei Wrter, die ganz aus einerlei Buchstaben bestnden, die verschiedensten
Bedeutungen. . . . ein Teil von ihren Wrtern knnte nicht, auch nicht einmal
sehr unvollstndig geschrieben werden. Man mte wenigstens neun oder zehn
Silben dazu gebrauchen, wo sie in der Aussprache kaum drei auszusprechen
scheinen. Herder: ber den Ursprung der Sprache, ibid., p. 703]
129
. Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 95. [Ihre Aussprache war so lebendig und feinorganisiert, ihr Hauch war so geistig und
aethe-risch, da er verduftete, und sich nicht in Buchstaben fassen lie . . . Es
was Othem Gottes, wehende Luft, die das Ohr aufhaschete, und die toten Buchstaben, die sie hinmaleten, waren nur der Leichnam, der lesend mit Lebensgeist
beseelet werden mute . . . Was ist unschreibbarer, als die unartikulierten Tne
der natur? Herder: ber den Ursprung der Sprache, ibid., p. 704-5]
130
. Herder: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 89-90. [Nun sind
freilich diese Tne sehr einfach; und wenn sie artikuliert, und als Interjektionen
aufs Papier hinbuchstabiert werden; so haben die entgegengesetztesten Empfindungen fast Einen Ausdruck. Das matte Ach! ist sowohl Laut der zerschmelzenden Liebe, als der sinkenden Verzweiflung; das feurige O! sowohl
Ausbruch der pltzlichen Freude, als der auffahrenden Wut . . . von allen getrennet, herausgerissen, ihres Lebens beraubet, freilich nichts als Ziffern. Die
Stimme der Natur ist gemalter, verwillkrter Buchstabe. Herder: ber den Ursprung der Sprache, ibid., p. 699-700]
131
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 21-22.
[Lcriture, qui semble devoir fixer la langue, est prcisment ce qui laltre;
elle nen change pas les mots, mais le gnie; elle substitue lexactitude
lexpression. Lon rend ses sentimens quand on parle, et ses ides quand on

134

crit. En crivant, on est forc de prendre tous les mots dans leur acception
commune; mais celui qui parle varie les acceptions par les tons, il les dtermine
comme il lui plat; moins gn pour tre clair, il donne plus la force; et il
nest pas possible quune langue quon crit garde long-temps la vivacit de
celle qui nest que parle. On crit les voix et non pas les sons. Rousseau: Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 501]
132
. Herder: Extract from a Correspondance On Ossian and the Songs of
Ancient Peoples, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 156. [Je entfernter von knstlicher, wissenschaftlicher Denkart, Sprache und Letternart das Volk ist: desto weniger
mssen auch seine Lieder frs Papier gemacht, und tote Lettern Verse sein.
Von Deutscher Art und Kunst, in: Frhe Schriften, Werke band 1, (Frankfurt
a/M: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985), p. 452]
133
. Herder: Extract from a Correspondance On Ossian and the Songs of
Ancient Peoples, in: Nisbet, ibid., p. 158. [Sie [erfassen] den ganzen Gedanken mit dem ganzen Worte, und dies mit jenem. Von Deutscher Art und
Kunst, ibid., p. 473]
134
. Rousseau: Essay on the Origin of Language, ibid., p. 50-51. [La passion fait parler tous les organes et pare la voix de tout leur clat; ainsi les vers,
les chants, la parole, ont une origine commune. Autour des fontaines dont jai
parl, les premiers discours furent les premires chansons . . . : Les premires
histoires, les premires harangues, les premires lois furent en vers: la posie
fut trouve avant la prose; cela devoit tre, puisque las passions parlerent avant
la raison. Il en fut de mme de la musique: il ny eut dabord point dautre musique que la mlodie, ni dautre mlodie que le son vari de la parole. Rousseau: Essai sur LOrigine des Langues, ibid., p. 512]
135
. Friedrich Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, in: Nisbet, ed.:
German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985), p. 181. [Sie sind, was wir waren; sie sind, was wir wieder werden sollen. Friedrich Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, in:
Theoretische Schriften, Werke, band 8 (Frankfurt a/M: Deutscher Klassiker
Verlag, 1992), p. 708]
136
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 181, my emphasis.
[Wir waren Natur wie sie, und unsere Kultur soll uns, auf dem Wege der Vernunft und der Freiheit, zur Natur zurckfhren. Sie sind also zugleich Darstellung unserer verlorenen kindheit, die uns ewig das teuerste bleibt; daher sie uns
mit einer gewissen Wehmut erfllen. Zugleich sind sie Darstellungen unserer
hchsten Vollendung im Ideale, daher sie uns in eine erhabene Rhrung versetzen. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 708, my
emphasis]
137
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 181, my emphasis.
[Es sind nicht diese Gegenstnde, es ist eine durch sie dargestellte idee, was
wir in ihnen lieben. Wir lieben in ihnen das stille schaffende Leben, das ruhige
Wirken aus sich selbst, das Dasein nach eignen Gesetzen, die innere Notwen-

135

digkeit, die ewige Einheit mit sich selbst. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 707, my emphasis]
138
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental poetry, ibid., p. 193. [Der Dichter
. . . ist entweder Natur, oder er wird sie suchen. Jenes macht den naiven, dieses
den sentimentalischen Dichter. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 732]
139
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 193. [Dichter von
dieser naiven Gattung sind in einem knstlichen Weltalter nicht so recht mehr
an ihrer Stelle. Auch sind sie in demselben kaum mehr mglich. Schiller:
ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 732]
140
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 190. [gleicht der
Empfindung des Kranken fr die Gesundheit. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 727]
141
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 186, my emphasis.
[Naiv mu jedes wahre Genie sein, oder es ist keines. Seine naivett allein
macht es zum Genie. . . . Unbekannt mit den Regeln, den Krcken der
Schwachheit und den Zuchtmeistern der Verkehrtheit, blo von der Natur oder
dem Instinkt, seinem Schtzenden Engel, geleitet, geht es ruhig und sicher
durch all Schlingen des falschen Geschmackes, in welchen, wenn es nicht so
klug ist, sie schon von weitem zu vermeiden, das Nichtgenie unausbleiblich
verstrickt wird. . . . Die verwickeltsten Aufgaben mu das Genie mit anspruchlosen Simplizitt und Leichtigkeit lsen. . . . Dadurch allein legitimiert es sich
als Genie, da es durch Einfalt ber die verwickelte Kunst triumphiert. Es
verfhrt nicht nach erkannten Prinzipien, sondern nach Einfllen und
Gefhlen; aber seine Einflle sind Eingebungen eines Gottes (alles, was die
gesunde Natur tut, ist gttlich), seine Gefhle sind Gesetze fr alle Zeiten und
fr alle Geschlechter der Menschen. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale
Dichtung, ibid., p. 719, my emphasis]
142
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 187.
[Gttersprche aus dem Mund eines kindes. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 720]
143
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 187, my emphasis.
[So gibt das Genie dem seinigen mit einem einzigen glcklichen Pinselstrich
einen ewig bestimmten, festen und dennoch ganz freien Umri. Wenn dort das
Zeichen dem Bezeichneten ewig heterogen und fremd bleibt, so springt hier
wie durch innere Notwendigkeit die Sprache aus dem Gedanken hervor, und ist
so sehr eins mit demselben, da selbst unter der krperlichen Hlle der geist
wie entblet erscheint. Eine solche Art des Ausdrucks, wo das Zeichen ganz
in dem Bezeichneten verschwindet, und wo die Sprache den Gedanken, den sie
ausdrckt, noch gleichsam nackend lt, da ihn die andre nie darstellen kann,
ohne ihn zugleich zu verhllen, ist is, was man in der Schreibart vorzugsweise
genialisch und geistreich nennt Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 721]

136

144
. Friedrich Schlegel, my translation. [Schillers Abhandlung ber die
sentimentalen Dichter hat auer, da sie meine Einsicht in den Character der
interessanten Poesie erweiterte, mir selbst ber die Gnzen der klassischen
Poesie ein neues Licht gegeben. Friedrich Schlegel: Die Griechen und
Rmer, in: Ernst Behler, ed.: Kritische Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe, erster band
(Paderborn: Ferdinand Schningh Verlag, 1979), p. 211]
145
. Goethe, my translation. [Der Begriff von klassischer und romantischer
Poesie, der jetzt ber die ganze Welt geht und so viel Streit und Spaltungen verursacht, fuhr Goethe fort, ist ursprnglich von mir und Schiller ausgegangen. Ich hatte in der Poesie die maxime des objektiven Verfahrens und wollte
nur dieses gelten lassen. Schiller aber, der ganz subjektiv wirkte, hielt seine Art
fr die rechte, und um sich gegen mich zu wehren, schrieb er den Aufsatz ber
die naive und sentimentale Dichtung. Er beweis nur, da ich selber, wider Willen, romantisch sei und meine Iphigenie, durch das Vorwalten der Empfindung,
keines wegs so klassisch und im antiken Sinne sei, als man vielleicht glauben
mchte. Die Schlegel ergriffen die Idee und trieben sie weiter, so da sie sich
denn jetzt ber die ganze Welt ausgedehnt hat und nun jedermann von Klassizismus und Romantizismus redet, woran vor fnfzehn Jahren neimand dachte.
Goethe quoted from Ernst Behler: Einleitung, in: Kritische Friedrich Schlegel
Ausgabe, ibid., p CLXXI, my emphasis]
146
. Dilthey, my translation. [Ich kann nichts finden was nicht natrlicher
aus seinen an Winckelmann angeschlossenen Studien hervorgegangen wre.
Dilthey quoted from Ernst Behler: Einleitung, in: Kritische Friedrich Schlegel
Ausgabe, ibid., p CLXXII]
147
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 211. [Fr den
Menschen, der von der Einfalt der natur einmal abgewichen und der gefhrlichen Fhrung seiner Vernunft berliefert worden ist, ist es von unendlicher
Wichtigkeit, die Gesetzgebung der Natur in einem reinen Exemplar wieder anzuschauen und sich von den Verderbnissen der kunst in diesem treuen Spiegel
wieder reinigen zu knnen. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung,
ibid., p. 771]
148
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 211. [Sie fhren
uns also theoretisch rckwrts, indem sie uns praktisch vorwrts fhren und
veredeln. Sie stellen unglcklicherweie das Ziel hinter uns, dem sie uns doch
entgegen fhren sollten, und knnen uns daher blo das traurige Gefhl eines
Verlustes, nicht das frhliche der Hoffnung einflen. Schiller: ber Naive
und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 771]
149
. Johann W. Goethe. Shakespeare ad Infinitum, in: Spingarn, ed.:
Goethes Literary Essays (New York: Friedrick Ungar Publishing Company,
1964) p. 181.
150
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 215. [Das naive
Genie steht also in einer Abhngigkeit von der Erfahrung, welche das sentimentalische nicht kennet. Dieses, wissen wir, fngt seine Operation erst da an,

137

wo jenes die seinige beschliet; seine Strke besteht darin, einen mangelhaften
Gegenstand aus sich selbst heraus zu ergnzen und sich durch eigene Macht
aus einem begrenzten Zustand in einen Zustand der Freiheit zu versetzen. Das
naive Dichtergenie bedarf also eines Beistandes von auen, da das sentimentalische sich aus sich selbst nhrt und reinigt. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 779-80]
151
. Schiller: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, ibid., p. 225. [Es bleibt
alsdann von dem ersten (the naive) nichts brig als . . . ein nchterner Beobachtungsgeist und eine feste Anhnglichkeit an das gleichfrmige Zeugnis der
Sinne, in Rcksicht auf das Praktische eine resignierte Unterwerfung unter die
Notwendigkeit . . . der Natur: eine Ergebung also in da, was ist und was sein
mu. Es bleibt dem sentimentalischen Charakter nichts brig als . . . ein unruhiger Spekulationsgeist, der auf das Unbedingte in allen Erkenntnissen dringt,
im Praktischen ein moralischer Rigorism, der auf dem Unbedingten in Willenshandlungen bestehet. Wer sich zu der ersten klasse zhlt, kann ein Realist, und
wer zur andern, ein Idealist genannt werden. Schiller: ber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung, ibid., p. 728]
152
. F. Schlegel: ber das Studium der Griechischen Poesie, in: Kritische
Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe, erster band, ibid.
153
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Schnen Gliedernbau auch nicht durch
den kleinsten Mangel, den geringsten berflu gestrt wird. F. Schlegel
quoted from Ernst Behler: Friedrich Schlegel in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1966) , p. 39]
154
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Die objektive Poesie aber wei von keinem Interesse, und macht keine Ansprche auf Realitt. Sie strebt nur nach einem Spiel, das so wrdig sei, als der heiligste Ernst, nach einem Schein, der so
allgemeingltig und geseztgebend sei, als die unbedingteste Wahrheit. F.
Schlegel: Die Griechen und Rmer, ibid., p. 211]
155
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Nicht jede poetische uerung des Strebens nach dem Unendlichen ist sentimental: sondern nur eine solche, die mit
einer Reflexion ber das Verhltnis des Idealen und des Realen verknpft ist
F. Schlegel: ber Griechen und Rmer, ibid., p. 211-12]
156
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Die charakteristischen Merkmale der
sentimentale Poesie sind das Interesse an der Realitt des Ideals, die Reflexion ber das Verhltnis des Idealen und Realen, und die Beziehung auf ein individuelles objekt des idealisierenden Einbildungskraft des dichtenden Subjects. F. Schlegel: ber Griechen und Rmer, ibid., p. 212, my emphasis]
157
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Es springt in die Augen da die moderne
Poesie das Ziel, nach welchem sie strebt, entweder noch nicht erreicht hat;
oder da ihr Streben berhaubt kein festes Ziel, ihre Bildung keine bestimmte
Richtung, die Masse ihrer Geschichte keinen gesetzmigen Zusammenhang,
das Ganze keine Einheit hat. F. Schlegel: ber Griechen und Rmer, ibid., p.
217]

138

158
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Das totale bergewicht Charakteristischen, Individuellen und Interessanten in der ganzen Masse der modernen Poesie, vorzglich aber in den sptern Zeitaltern. Endlich das rastlose unersttliche Streben nach dem Neuen, Piquanten und Frappanten, bei dem dennoch die Sehnsucht unbefriedigt bleibt. Friedrick Schlegel: ber Griechen
und Rmer, ibid., p. 228]
159
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Nichts kann die Knstlichkeit der modernen sthetischen Bildung besser erlutern und besttigen, als das groe
bergewicht des Individuellen, Charakteristischen und Philosophischen in der
ganzen Masse der modernen Poesie. F. Schlegel: ber Griechen und Rmer,
ibid., p. 241]
160
. F. Schlegel, my translation [Der spezifische Character der schnen
Kunst ist freies Spiel ohne bestimmten Zweck; der der darstellenden Kunst
berhaubt die idealitt der Darstellung. F. Schlegel: ber Griechen und
Rmer, ibid., p. 242]
161
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Nur das Allgemeingltige, Beharrliche
und Notwendigedas Objektive kann diese groe Lcke ausfllen; nur das
Schne kann diese heie Sehnsucht stillen. Das Schne . . . ist der allgemeingltige Gegenstand eines uninteressierten Wohlgefallens, welches von dem
Zwange des Bedrfnisses und des Gesetzes gleich unabhngig, frei und dennoch notwendig, ganz zwecklos und dennoch unbedingt zweckmig ist. F.
Schlegel: ber Griechen und Rmer, ibid., p. 253]
162
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Das Interessante ist die Vorbereitung des
Schnen. F. Schlegel: ber Griechen und Rmer, ibid., p. 253]
163
. F. Schlegel, my translation. [Eine vorbergehende Krise des Geschmacks. F. Schlegel: ber Griechen und Rmer, ibid., p. 254]
164
. J.W. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, (New York: Signet Classic, 1962) p. XXI. [Ihr knnt seinem Geist und seinem Charakter eure Bewunderung und Liebe, seinem Schicksale eure Trnen nicht versagen. J.W.
Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther (New York, Oxford University Press,
1914), p. 3]
165
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 85. [Wie die Natur
sich zum Herbste neigt, wird es Herbst in mir und um mich her. Meine Bltter
werden gelb, und schon sind die Bltter der benachbarten Bume abgefallen.
Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 102]
166
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 23. [Die arme Leonore! Und doch war ich unschuldig. Konnt ich dafr, da, whrend die eigensinnigen Reize ihrer Schwester mir eine angenehme Unterhaltung verschafften,
da eine Leidenschaft in dem armen Herzen sich bildete? Und dochbin ich
ganz unschuldig? Hab ich nicht ihre Empfindungen genhrt? Goethe: Die
Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 3]

139

167
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 23. [O was ist der
Mensch, da er ber sich klagen darf! Ich will, lieber Freund, Ich verspreche
dirs, ich will mich bessern, will nicht mehr ein bichen bel, das uns das
Schicksal vorlegt, wiederkuen, wie ichs immer getan habe; ich will das Gegenwrtige genieen, und das Vergangene soll mir vergangen sein. Goethe:
Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 4]
168
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 23. [Der schmerzen
wren minder unter den Menschen, wenn sie nichtGott wei, warum sie so
gemacht sind!mit so viel Emsigkeit der Einbildungskraft sich beschftigten,
die Erinnerungen des vergangenen bels zurckzurufen, eher als seine gleichgltige Gegenwart zu ertragen. Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid.,
p. 4]
169
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 26. [Du Fragst, ob du
mir meine Bcher schicken sollst? Lieber, ich bitte dich um Gottes willen,
la mir sie vom Halse! Ich will nicht mehr geleitet, ermuntert, angefeuert sein,
braust dieses Herz doch genug aus sich selbst; ich brauche Wiegengesang, und
den habe ich in seiner Flle gefunden in meinem Homer. Goethe: Die Leiden
des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 7-8]
170
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 29. [Ich gestehe dir gern,
denn ich wei, was du mir hierauf sagen mchtest, da diejenigen die Glcklichsten sind, die gleich den Kindern in den hinein leben, ihre Puppen herumschleppen . . . Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p 12]
171
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 29. [Das sind
glckliche Geschpfe. Auch denen ists wohl, die ihren Lumpenbeschftigungen oder wohl gar ihren Leidenschaften prchtige Titel geben und sie dem
Menschengeschlechte als Riesenoperationen zu dessen Heil und Wohlfahrt
anschreiben.Wohl dem, der so sein kann! Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen
Werther, ibid., p 13]
172
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 29. [Und dann, so
eingeschrnkt er ist, hlt er doch immer im Herzen das Se Gefhl der Freiheit, und da er diesen kerker verlassen kann, wann er will. Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 13]
173
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 97. [Da du glcklich
warst! rief ich aus, schnell vor mich hin nach der Stadt zu gehend, da dir es
wohl war wie einem Fish im Wasser!Gott im Himmel! hast du das zum
Schicksale der Menschen gemacht, da sie nicht glcklich sind, als ehe sie zu
ihrem Verstande kommen und wenn sie ihn wieder verlieren!Elender! und
auch wie beneide ich deinen Trbsinn, die Verwirrung deiner Sinne, in der du
verschmachtest! Du gehst hoffnungsvoll aus, deiner Knigin Blumen zu
pflcken . . . Du fhlst nicht, du fhlst nicht, da in deinem zerstrten Herzen,
in deinem zerrtteten Gehirne dein Elend liegt, wovon all Knige der Erde dir
nicht helfen knnen. Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 12021]

140

174
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 98. [Und wrde ein
Mensch, ein Vater, zrnen knnen, dem sein unvermutet rckkehrender Sohn
um den Hals fiele und riefe: `Ich bin wieder da, mein Vater! Zrne nicht, da
ich die Wanderschaft abbreche, die ich nach deinem Willen lnger aushalten
sollte. Die Welt ist berall enerlei, auf Mhe und Arbeit Lohn und Freude; aber
was soll mir das? mir ist nur wohl, wo du bist, und vor deinem Angesichte will
ich leiden und genieen.Und du, lieber himmlischer Vater, solltest ihn von
dir weisen? Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 122]
175
. Werther is typically perceived as an individual confronting a restrictive
early capitalist society; a society which, by its norms and rules, restricts free
human sexual development, and finally, in its inhumanity, forces the individual
to commit suicidealthough some Marxist critics have pointed out how unreflected and void of class-consciousness this revolutionary act is, criticizing
Werther or Goethe on this account. Lukacs account is not the most rigid within
this tradition: Die Tiefe und Vielseitigkeit in der Problemstellung des jungen
Goethe beruht darauf, da er den Gegensatz zwischen Persnlichkeit und
brgerlicher Gesellschaft nicht nur in bezug auf den halbfeudalen DuodezAbsolutismus Deutschlands seiner Zeit sieht, sondern in bezug auf die brgerliche Gesellschaft im allgemeinen . . . Er [Goethe] zeigt in der Gestaltung der
leidenschaftlichen Liebe den unlsbaren Widerspruch zwischen Persnlichkeits-entwicklung und brgerlicher Gesellschaft. Georg Lukacs: Goethe und
seine Zeit. Deutsche Literatur in zwei Jahrhunderten (Neuwied und Berlin:
Luchterhand Verlag, 1964), p. 57 & 65.
176
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 58. [Da ihr Menschen, rief ich aus, um von einer Sache zu reden, gleich sprechen mut: das
ist tricht, das ist klug, das ist gut, das ist bs! Und was will das alles heien?
Habt ihr deswegen die innern Verhltnisse einer Handlung erforscht? Wit ihr
mit Bestimmtheit die Ursachen zu entwickeln, warum sie geschah, warum sie
geschehen mute? Httet ihr das, ihr wrdet nicht so eilfertig mit euren Urteilen sein. Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 58]
177
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 58. [Du wirst mir zugeben, sagte Albert, da gewisse Handlungen lasterhaft bleiben, sie mgen
geschehen, aus welchem beweggrunde sie wollen. Goethe: Die Leiden des
Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 59]
178
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 58. [Ach ihr
vernnftigen Leute! . . . Leidenschaft! Trunkenheit, Wahnsinn! Ihr steht so gelassen, so ohne Teilnehmung da, ihr sittlichen Menschen, scheltet den Trinker,
verabscheut den Unsinnigen, geht vorbei wie der Priester und dankt Gott wie
der Phariser, da er euch nicht gemacht hat wie einen von diesen. Goethe:
Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 59]
179
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 60. [Sieh den Menschen an in seiner Eingeschrnktheit, wie Eindrcke auf ihn wirken, Ideen sich
bei ihm festsetzen, bis endlich eine wachsende Leidenschaft ihn aller ruhigen

141

Sinneskraft beraubt und ihn zugrunde richtet. Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen
Werther, ibid., p. 62]
180
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 61. [Wehe dem, der
zusehen und sagen knnte: Die Trin! Htte sie gewartet, htte sie die Zeit
wirken lassen, die Verzweifelung wrde sich schon gelegt, es wrde sich schon
ein anderer sie zu trsten weggefunden haben.Das ist eben, als wenn einer
sagte: Der Tor, stirbt am Fieber! Htte er gewartet, bis seine Krfte sich erholt,
seine Sfte sich verbessert, der Tumult seines Blutes sich gelegt htten: alles
wre gut gegangen, und er lebte bis auf den heutigen Tag. Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 64]
181
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 103. [Und obgleich
Werther mit der grten Lebhaftigkeit, Leidenschaft und Wahrheit alles vorbrachte, was ein Mensch zur Entschuldegung eines Menschen sagen kann, so
war doch, wie sichs leicht denken lt, der Amtmann dadurch nicht gerhrt. Er
lie vielmehr unsern Freund nicht ausreden, widersprach ihm eifrig und tadelte
ihn, da er einen Meuchelmrder in Schutz nehme; er zeigte ihm, da auf diese
Weise jedes Gesetz aufgehoben, alle Sicherheit des Staats zugrund gerichtet
werde; auch setzte er hinzu, da er in einer solchen Sache nichts tun knne,
ohne sich de grste Verantwortung aufzuladen, es msse alles in der Ordnung,
in dem vorgeschriebenen Gang gehen. Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 130]
182
. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther, ibid., p. 127. [Morgens um
sechse tritt der Bediente herein mit dem Lichte. Er findet seinen Herrn an der
Erde, die Pistole und Blut. Er ruft, er fat ihn an; keine Antwort, er rchelt nur
noch . . . Als der Medikus zu dem Unglcklichen kam, fand er ihn an der Erde
ohne Rettung, der Puls schlug, die Glieder waren alle gelhmt. ber dem rechten Auge hatte er sich durch den Kopf geschossen, das Gehirn war herausgetrieben . . . Aus dem Blut auf der Lehne des Sessels Konnte man schlieen, er
habe sitzend vor dem Schreibtische die Tat vollbracht, dann ist er heruntergesunken, hat sich convulsivisch um den Stuhl herumgewlzt. Er lag gegen das
Fenster entkrftet auf dem Rcken, war in vlliger Kleidung, gestiefelt, im
blauen Frack mit gelber Weste . . . Die Lunge rchelte noch frchterlich, bald
schwach, bald strker; man erwartete sein Ende Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, ibid., p. 168-69]

142