University of Oklahoma

Grounds of Comparison
Author(s): Claudia Brodsky Lacour
Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 69, No. 2, Comparative Literature: States of the Art
(Spring, 1995), pp. 271-274
Published by: University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40151135
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Groundsof Comparison
By CLAUDIABRODSKYLACOUR
"Ce n'est que par une comparaisonque nous
connaissonsprecisementla verite. . . . Toute con-
naissancequi ne s'obtientpas par rintuition simple
et pure d'une chose isolee, s'obtient par la compa-
raison de deux ou plusieurs choses entre elles. Et
presquetout le travailde la raisonhumaineconsiste
sans doute a rendrecette operationpossible"1(It is
only by way of comparisonthat we know the truth
precisely.. . . All knowledgewhich is not obtained
throughthe simple and pure intuitionof an isolated
thing is obtainedby the comparisonof two or more
things among themselves.And almost all the work
of human reason consists without doubt in making
this operation possible). In the terms of "human
reason" first laid down by Descartes, knowledge
that is not intuitionaldependsupon acts of compar-
ison. Comparisonoperates whenever "an isolated
thing"is not the object of knowledge,and theoreti-
cal reflection,ratherthan "pureand simple"appre-
hension, offers the only approach to knowledge
possible. Although its reception by idealist
neo-Cartesianssuch as Malbrancheled to the his-
toricalassociationof Cartesianismwith divine intu-
itionalism,Descartes'smodernizationof philosophi-
cal discourse and scientific procedures centered
upon the notion of a man-made "method,"an or-
dered, essentially comparativemode. Never fully
defined by Descartes, method nonetheless appears
throughout his theoretical writings as the single
means rigorousenough to investigatethe real, little
of which- as the famous exercisesin skepticismof
the Meditationsdemonstrated - is perceivedby us in
intuitableform.2
The only "thing"we may intuit directly,accord-
ing to Descartes, is spatial extension; for all other
things,including"the thinkingthing"that is the self
and "the infinite substance" that is God, Des-
cartes's theory prescribesthe method of compari-
son.3 If, following Descartes, the fundamentally
nonintuitional,made "things"that are literaryand
otherculturalformsfirstbecome knownto us not in
themselvesbut by way of comparison,the problem
Claudia Brodsky Lacour teaches comparativeliteratureand
theoryat PrincetonUniversity.She is the authorof TheImposi-
tion of Form: Studies in Narrative Representationand Knowledge
(1987), a study of Kant's epistemologyand fictionalform; nu-
merous articleson English,German,and French literatureand
philosophyfromthe eighteenthcenturyto the present;and Lines
of Thought:Discourse,Architectonics,and the Origin of Modern Phi-
losophy(forthcoming),a studyof Descartes.
Descartes confrontedwhen he theorizedthe neces-
sity of comparingin the Discoursand Regulaenow
confronts contemporaryliterarytheory that under-
stands the "workof reason"to be, for good or for
ill, inherently comparative:on what basis do we
makecomparisonsin the humanities?
In order to understandwhy comparativetheory
designedto advancetheoreticalcertaintynow raises
instead what seem like inevitabledoubts, one must
first examinethe shiftingcourse of the comparative
method since Descartes. Inquiryinto the develop-
ment of modern comparativetheoryrevealsa histo-
ry of disciplinaryexchanges.The cognitivevalue at-
tributed to comparison in the humanities would
seem to owe most immediatelyto nineteenth-centu-
ry developmentsin the naturaland social sciences,
fields such as ethnography,sociology, psychology,
lingustics, political economy, evolutionarybiology,
anatomy, and paleontology, some of which came
into being with the descriptive,comparativemeth-
ods they employed.In the comparativephilologyof
Bopp and Humboldt and, a century later, Propp's
Morphology of the Folktale (1928), the methods of
comparativeanalysishoned in empiricalfields were
transposedto the realms of grammarand shaped
cultural phenomena, and a nonnatural basis for
comparisoncame to the fore. Yet, by the second
half of the twentiethcentury,within a generationof
the Czech and Russian formalists, comparative
analyses of cultural phenomena turned back into
naturalist anatomies: the narratologicalproject of
applyingmethods of structuralphonetic and syntac-
tic analysisto the languageof literature - aimed at
establishinga "science"in imitation of taxonomic
natural sciences- proved a nightmare of vacuous
categorizationfrom which it took neither Barthes
nor Todorov long to awake.If the patternsof natur-
al morphologywere irrelevantto linguisticmorphol-
ogy, the scientistic classificationof literaryforms
was doublyso, an antiliterary,naturalistmythology.
Universalistscientisticanatomieshad at least the
potentialsalutaryeffect (borrowedfrom structuralist
anthropology)of wideningthe focus of the humani-
ties beyond predefined canons. Subsequent criti-
cism of scientisticand traditionalhumanistcompar-
ative projectshas, however,questionedthe value of
comparing cultural phenomena in the first place.
While taking the need for theoreticalreflectionfor
granted, skepticism in the late twentieth century
doubts whether comparisons should or can be
value-neutral,whethercognitivevalue is not itself a
myth determinedby an epistemicallydefinedcultur-
272 WORLDLITERATURE
TODAY

al context, and, in a late reenactmentand reversalof Goethe'srhetoricof understatementregardinghis

the neoclassical querelledes anciens et des rnodernes, findingonly servedto underscorewhat he perceived
whether the comparativepursuit of knowledge in to be the enormity of its historical significance:
the name of progressdoes not fundamentallydistort "Lange Zeit wollte sich der Unterschied zwischen
the objectswhose effectsit pretendsto explain. Menschen und Tieren nicht finden lassen, endlich
What is suspected in skepticismof all compara- glaubte man den Affen dadurch entschieden von
tive projects, arising precisely with the "postmod- uns zu trennen, weil er seine vier Schneidezahnein
ern" proliferationof differentcultural traditions, is einem empirischwirklichabzusonderndenKnochen
that comparison,understoodas the identificationof trage"7(For a long time the differencebetweenmen
similarityin difference,will effacedifferencein a de- and animalscould not be found, and finallyit was
sire for unity, either self-servinglyor by a weak believedthat the ape could be differentiatedfromus
Hegelianismthat absorbsdifferenceas the necessary in that its incisorswere located in a bone that was
ballast to transcendent thought. The nonnatural really empiricallydistinguishable).By transforming
groundsof comparisonthat are particularto the hu- the appearance of a differentiatingcharacteristic
manities involve a necessarytension between unity into evidence of a single feature, his comparative
and differencethat "neutral"classificationor syn- study, Goethe argues, should eradicateany future
thetic resolution must work to efface. Dialectical "doubts"about the sharedtraits (and, by inference,
and scientistic schemes which employ the concept the common genealogy) of human and animal
of differenceas a means to an end negate the inter- anatomy: "Es wird also wohl kein Zweifel iibrig-
play of opposingpurposeswhich objects in the hu- bleiben, dafi diese Knochenabteilungsich sowohl
manitiesrepresent. bei Menschen als Tieren findet"8(There will thus
The productive tension that characterizesthe no longer remain any doubt that this classification
made "things"of the human sciences was the ex- of bone is to be found in man as well as in animals).
of
plicit ground comparison in one of the most ex- A discoveryof this nature, Goethe remarks,re-
tensive bodies of early modern writing on "natural quireslittle discursiveintroduction,for it is available
science." Goethe's lifelong compositionof a "com- to anyone who both "looks and compares."9Com-
parative morphology"in the domains of botany, parisonis the indispensablecomplementto empiri-
anatomy, osteology, mineralogy,and geology (Zur cal vision, and if the search for part of a jawbone
Morphologie,1817-24; Zur Naturwissenschaft,1820- strikesus as a less than inspiringcomparativepro-
23), largelywrittenin responseto the new descrip- ject, the stakesinvolvedin it should not. By compar-
tive projects of Cuvier, Buffon, Geoffroy Saint- ingvisiblecharacteristicsand thus seeingwhat could
Hilaire, and Linne, already betrays the equivocal not be perceivedin isolation,Goethe overturnedthe
attractiontowarddifferenceand unity demonstrated anthropocentricview of nature that had precluded
in contemporarycomparativetheory and the ten- the recognitionof continuityby assertingdifference
dencyto exchangenaturalfor culturalbases of com- merelyout of fearof the same.
parisonwhich such equivocationentails. From the Yet Goethe makes the case for the comparative
outset, Goethe declared the centralityof compari- method from the vantagepoint of differenceas well,
son to the study of naturalphenomena. His early writing of distant plant types in his botanicalstud-
"Allgemeine Einleitung in die vergleichende ies: "Die allerentferntestenjedoch haben eine aus-
Anatomie,ausgehendvon der Osteologie"(General gesprochene Verwandtschaft,sie lassen sich ohne
Introductionto ComparativeAnatomy, Based on Zwang untereinandervergleichen"10(The furthest
Osteology;1793) opens with the followingtheoreti- aparthave, nonetheless, a pronouncedrelationship;
cal claim: "Naturgeschichteberuht auf Verglei- they can be compared among each other without
chung. Aufiere Kennzeichen sind bedeutend, aber forcing the comparison).What permits Goethe as
nicht hinreichend,um organischeKorpergehorigzu naturalscientistto compareunlikeno less than like,
sondern und wieder zusammenzustellen"4 "
(Natural finding "pronouncedrelationship[s] if not empiri-
historyrests on comparison.Externalcharacteristics cal missing links, is his dynamic "view"of a "na-
are significant, but not sufficient for the task of ture" directed at once by what he calls "two great
properlyseparatingorganic bodies and joiningthem drivingwheels" ("die Anschauungder zwei grofien
back together again). That comparisoncould indi- TriebraderderNatur"):"polarity"("Polaritat")and
cate the underlying"continuity"5of naturalhistory "intensification"or "rising"("Steigerung"),the for-
which isolated characteristicsbelie was the guiding mer signifyingthe "unendingattractionand repul-
principlebehind Goethe's celebratedidentification sion" ("immerwahrendemAnziehen und Absto-
of the os intermaxillare or "Zwischenknochender fien") or alternatingtendenciestowardidentityand
obern Kinlade" (intermediaryupper-jawbone) in differencethat take place in "matter,"the lattersig-
human anatomy, the "small discovery,"as Goethe nifying the "permanentstrivingtoward greaterin-
calledit, of the missinglink in the naturalhistoryre- tensity" ("immerstrebendemAufsteigen")of "spir-
latingapes to men.6 it."11And what makes these two tendencies truly

dynamicin a Goethean(ratherthan Hegelian)sense
is that they themselves can be exchanged:just as
matterand spirit can never "exist and be effective"
("existiertund wirksamsein") without each other,
so mattertoo, accordingto Goethe, increasesin in-
tensity and spirit engages in separationsand join-
ings.12
Always "mobile," Goethe's nature is, however,
not an aimless,Lucretiandance of forms.13The pur-
posivenessof the apparentlyanti-Cartesianconjunc-
tion of matter and spirit14he describes is perhaps
best exempified in his recorded search for the
"Urpflanze,"the description of which memorably
caused Schillerto commentthat Goethe sought not
a plant "butan idea."15Goethe's comparativetheory
of naturalphenomemadid indeed allow for a theory
of identity in a realm of ideas: in experience all
things appear either "similar"or "dissimilar"("als
ahnlich,ja sogar als vollig unahnlich"),but "in the
idea," Goethe writes, they are "the same" ("in der
Idee gleich").16Whetheror not Schiller's"idea"re-
sembled Goethe's (let alone his notion of a proto-
typicalplant), one of Goethe's groundsof compari-
son seems to be a vision of things in which
temporary differences between appearances are
erased and the drives of matter and spirit are sus-
pended.
Yet Goethe the writerof naturalscience was also
Goethe the writer,and it should be evidentthat the
naturewhose thingsGoethe comparesis less materi-
alist, or idealist,than it is literaryin conception.17
As
a makerof fictions, Goethe alreadyknew no other
method than comparison. If his comparativeap-
proach to nature was based upon the notion of an
ever-intensifyingpolarity of forces, and his under-
standingof the materializationsof those forces im-
plied an "idea"of materialform, the model for that
approachwas a medium that comes into existence
with comparison.Fictions, and other artifacts,are
forms whose "things"- words, or any other signs-
are, by nature,comparative.The differencesamong
these thingsyield "pronouncedrelationship[s]," and
what unites them also separates.In fiction no things
exist in isolation, and there are no "intuitions"of
isolated things; all things are part of an artificial
continuity, and one makes the knowledge one de-
rivesfrom them. Yet that knowledge,for being arti-
ficial and comparative,allows of less doubt than
"natural"perceptions- if one conceivesof naturein
a purelyempirical,non-Goethean,and noncompar-
ativesense.
No one approachedthe knowledge of nature in
less purely empiricalterms than Descartes. In the
course of doubting natural perceptions, Descartes
developed a theory of comparison.But in order to
effect comparisons, Descartes had to develop a
medium in which the method of comparisoncould
take place, a medium, that is, which would make
LACOUR 273
knowledgeof naturepossiblebecauseit was notnat-
ural. We now speak of Cartesiancoordinates,and
polynomialequationswritten in ordershigher than
three, because for spatial extensions, the basic unit
of the physical world, and even for the numbers
which identify and distinguish them by length,
Descartessubstitutedletters- purelydifferential,ar-
tificialthings.18
These "veryconcise signs" ("des signes tres con-
cis"), Descartesobserved,can be made as one likes
("queTon peut forgercomme on voudra").19 Things
made for the purpose of their comparison, they
allow the intellect to act in the mannerof Goethe's
nature, to draw from otherwise disconnected ele-
ments "a kind of continuousmovementof thought"
("une sorte de mouvementcontinu de la pensee").20
Continuityof thought replacesthe doubtfulpercep-
tion of things with links of similarityand relation-
ships of difference, creating out of the empirical
world for which signs substitute a kind of natural
historyof thinking.
Descartes'smethod for achievingknowledgepro-
vides the mind with the means of makingcompar-
isons, and those means, the groundsof comparison,
are neither inherent in nor external to the things
compared.If one comparesthese two differentcom-
parativetheories and procedures- Descartes'ssub-
stitutionof freelychosen signs for simple extensions
in space, and Goethe's detailedinvestigationof the
characteristicsof empirical objects- their grounds
and methods of comparisonprove to be equallyun-
questionable, due to the very fact that, in both
cases, they are not givenbut made.
Just as their theories of comparisonmake these
sciences appearnot so very naturalafterall, human
sciences suffer from a misplaced naturalismwhen
they judge the value of comparison in positive
terms, forgetting that what they are comparingis
formed of the activityof comparisonto begin with.
But it may be characteristicof the activityof com-
parisonthat, in comparingthings with other things
they are not, it also lends itself to exchangingfact
for fiction, fiction for fact. This would explain not
only the disciplinaryexchangesthat markthe histo-
ry of comparativetheory,but also the way in which
the human sciences can prove oddly skeptical of
comparison.Such skepticismmay be an enlighten-
ing form of self-criticism,or it may be an inevitable
fiction, partof the verypracticeof comparisonitself.
PrincetonUniversity
1Rene Descartes,
Regulaead directionem ingenii,Rule XIV, in
his CEuvres philosophiques,3 vols., ed. FerdinandAlquie, Paris,
Gamier, 1963, vol. 1, p. 168. All translationsaremy own.
2As defined by Descartes,even intuitionsare not immediate
cognitionsbut, rather,representations:"Par intuitionj'entends,
non point le temoinageinstabledes sens . . . , maisune represen-
tation qui est le fait de l'intelligencepure et attentive, . . .
representationinaccessibleau doute" (By intuitionI understand
274 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

not the unstable testimony of the senses . . . , but a representa- 12Ibid.

13On the
tion which is the creation of a pure and attentive intelligence, . . . changing polarity of appearances, Goethe writes in
which is inaccessible to doubt). Regulae, Rule III, vol. 1, p. 87. Zur Morphologie,p. 57: "Darin besteht eigentlich das bewegliche
3 Leben der Natur" (Therein actually lies the mobile life of na-
Descartes, Meditations, in his CEuvresphilosophiquessvol. 2,
pp. 445, 449-50. Cf. also part 1, chapter 4, "The Things a ture).
14Cf. Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker,
Thinking Thing Thinks," in my Lines of Thought:Discourse,Ar- "Einige Begriffe aus
chitectonics,and the Originof ModernPhilosophy,forthcoming from Goethes Naturwissenschaft," Werke,vol. 13, p. 550.
15
Duke University Press and L'Harmattan in Paris. Ibid., p. 544. Cf. my "Freedom in Kant and Schiller," in
4 Friedrichvon Schiller and the Drama of Human Existence:Selected
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke:HamburgerAusgabe, 14
vols., Munich, DTV, 1982, vol. 13, p. 170. Papersfrom the Friedrichvon SchillerConference,"Contributions to
5 the Study of World Literature," no. 25, ed. Alexej Ugrinsky,
Ibid., vol. 13, pp. 546-47, 553, 560.
6 New York, Greenwood, 1988, p. 132.
Goethe, "Dem Menschen wie den Tieren ist ein Zwischen-
16
knochen der obern Kinnlade zuzuschreiben" [An Intermediary Goethe, Zur Morphologie,p. 57.
17Of note in this
Upper-Jaw Bone Is to Be Ascribed to Men as Well as to Ani- regard is the presence of Kant and Schiller
mals], Werke,vol. 13, p. 184. and the telling absence of Goethe in a recent volume of essays by
7 humanists tracing the intellectual evolution of the separation of
Goethe, Zur Morphologie(1817), Werke,vol. 13, p. 62.
8 the natural and human sciences: Die Trennung von Natur und
Goethe, "Dem Menschen wie den Tieren...," p. 194.
9
Ibid., p. 185: "Ich will mich so kurz als moglich fassen, weil Geist, eds. Rudiger Bubner, Burkhard Gladigow, and Walter
durch blofies Anschauen und Vergleichen mehrerer Schadel eine Haug, Munich, Fink, 1990. See especially Hans Robert Jauss's
ohnedies sehr einfache Behauptung geschwinde beurteilet wer- reprinted contribution, "Kunst als Anti-Natur: Zur asthetischen
den kann" (I will be brief in my remarks, because a claim that is Wende nach 1789," pp. 209-43.
in any case very simple can be quickly judged by the mere look- 18See the discussion of Cartesian mathematics, in
particular
ing at and comparing of several skulls). Descartes's introduction of notational signs into geometry, in
10 Lines of Thought, part 2, chapter 5, "Letters and Lines: Algebra
Goethe, "Geschichte meiner botanischen Studien," Werke,
vol. 13, p. 163. and Geometry in Descartes' Geometry."
11 19
Goethe, "Erlauterung zu dem aphoristischen Aufsatz 'Die Descartes, Regulae, Rule XVI, vol. 1, p. 186.
20
Natur'," Werke,vol. 13, p. 48. Descartes, Regulae, Rule VII, vol. 1, p. 109.