aesthetic illusion (theoretical and historical approaches) || aesthetic illusion in the eighteenth...

JOCHEN SCHULTE-SASSE

University of Minnesota

Aesthetic Illusion in the Eighteenth Century1

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In discussing the disparate explanations of aesthetic experience in the eighteenth century, historians often stress a fundamental difference between two lines of argument, one centered around aesthetic pleasure and the other around morality. In my view, this difference is unimportant since the distinction is merely superficial. Whether they highlight aesthetic pleasure or morality, explanations of aesthetic experience are essentially interested in the same mental state, one of non-differentiation or decenter-edness. Eighteenth century thinkers generally approach both aesthetic pleasure and the moral effect of art with the same philosophical categories. From Shaftesbury to Henry Home and the early Schiller, morality under-goes a process of aestheticization — an aestheticized notion of morality intersects with a moralized notion of aesthetic pleasure. Or, to be more precise, morality is split up into two different notions, an aesthetic, sentimental one that refers to a state of decentered experience (cf. the description of sympathy as an affective state both moral and aesthetic) and a non-aesthetic, 'rational' one that engages our cognitive faculties.

Most often, eighteenth century theories juxtapose an aesthetic state of decentered experience viewed as both moral and pleasurable to forms of separation, be they connected with the delimiting functions of our rational faculties or with the social experience of alienation from fellow human beings in competitive and agonistic interactions. Reason could thus be called "the active and separating power",2 whereas taste, i.e. the ability to experience an object aesthetically, could be defined in terms of our ability to transcend our individuality in moments of communal enjoyment of that object. Henry Home thus saw the "final cause" of beauty and "uniformity

' This essay summarizes some readings of seventeenth and eighteenth century aesthetic thought which I have developed in more detail in a book manuscript. See Jochen Schulte-Sasse: Toward a Historical Critique of Aesthetic Culture, forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press.

2 Brown: Essays on the Characteristics (1751), p. 14.

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106 Aesthetics and the Referentiality of Symbols and Signs

in taste" in the possibility of experiencing the community that the former offers:

The separation of men into different classes, by birth, office, or occupation, however necessary, tends to relax the connection that ought to be among members of the same state; which bad effect is in some measure prevented by the access all ranks of people have to public spectacles [including art], and to amusements that are best enjoyed in company. Such meetings, where every one partakes of the same pleasures in common, are no flight support to the social affections.3

How closely the aesthetic was associated with softness during the eigh-teenth century can best be illustrated with a footnote in Home's Elements of Criticism. After praising the "gaiety and harmony of mind" which the beautiful occasions in people, Home adds:

The manufactures of silk, flax, and cotton, in their present advance toward perfection, may be held as [. . .] branches of the fine arts; because their produc-tions in dress and in furniture inspire, like them, gay and kindly emotions favorable to morality.4

Like the communication of "satisfaction to others", material comfort and smoothness was occasionally viewed as a moral phenomenon!

However, the relationship between the "active and separating power" of reason and the sensuality of aesthetic experience was at first seen as hierarchical, with reason designated as the dominating faculty in the well-established scale of higher and lower cognitive faculties. Georg Friedrich Meier, for instance, a disciple and popularizer of Alexander Baumgarten, whose works were largely unaccessible since they were written in an obscure eighteenth century Latin, summarizes the enlightenment's convic-tion that sensuality, which includes the imagination and aesthetic illusion, has to be tamed by the authority of the rational in the following manner:

In aesthetic thought, understanding and reason must guide, govern and moder-ate the lower cognitive faculties. If one gives full rein to the lower cognitive faculty, it cannot be on guard against excesses. The sensual cognitive faculties are, as it were, the plebeians of the soul, and cannot keep themselves within the proper limits; and it is the greatest indecency if a reasonable man, whose actions at all times should be free and according to reason, even when he thinks in terms of a sensual beauty, does not submit the use of his lower faculties to the control of reason.5

3 Home: Elements of Criticism vol. 2, p. 496. 4 Ibid. pp. 453-454. 5 Georg Friedrich Meier: Anfangs-Gründe aller schönen Wissenschaften (1748) vol. 1, p. 515:

"Verstand und die Vernunft [müssen] die untern Erkenntniskräfte im schönen Denken leiten, regieren und mäßigen. Wenn man der untern Erkentniskraft den Zügel schießen läßt, so kan sie sich vor Ausschweifungen nicht in acht nehmen. Die sinlichen Er-



Schulte-Sasse: Aesthetic Illusion in the Eighteenth Century 107

Nevertheless — and this will serve as a point of departure for my essay —, authors of the same period and sometimes even the very authors who insist on the superiority of reason often do not follow their own advice; rather, a subversive desire for the relaxation of boundaries and cognitive constraints leads (1) to a redundancy of images like the string metaphor6

referring to ego transgression, (2) to constant attempts to valorize the sensual, and (3) to the promotion of the aesthetic as a realm in which a transgression of boundaries can take place without harm. In this context, aesthetic illusion — viewed as a method of relaxation — is elevated to one of the basic concepts of aesthetic theory.

In order for aesthetic illusion to be established and accepted as a legitimate and valuable form of experience, its relationship with the supervising power of reason needed to be redefined. What was the charge of reason in aesthetic culture? Early in the eighteenth century, there existed essentially two alternative ways in which reason's role as overseer and regulator of fiction could be thought. First, fiction could be valorized as a medium of socialization, replacing the prescriptive and admonishing discourse of the church with exemplary narratives that endowed the reader with a certain independence, no matter how closely the portrayed norms and values were, in fact or in theory, subjected to the authority of a rational discourse. The images used by the church as social agent were still, in Schiller's words, "riddles without a solution, terrors and tempta-tions from afar";7 they were without reference to and applicability in

kentniskräfte sind gleichsam der Pöbel der Seele, welcher sich selbst nicht in den gehörigen Schranken halten kan, und es ist einem vernünftigen Manne, der jederzeit

vernünftig frey, auch wenn er sinlich schön denkt, handeln mus, höchst unanständig,

wenn er den Gebrauch seiner untern Kräfte nicht der Herrschaft der Vernunft unter-

wirf t ." — All German quotes were translated by my research assistant, Lisa Roetzel. 6 From Shaftesbury to the early Schiller, the string metaphor serves as a widely used

collective symbol for the moralizing effect of the aesthetic and for the possibility of

social harmony. See Lessing: "Es ist bekannt, daß, wenn man zwei Saiten eine gleiche

Spannung giebt, und die eine durch die Berührung ertönen läßt, die andere mit ertönt,

ohne berührt zu seyn. Lassen Sie uns den Saiten Empfindung geben, so können wir

annehmen, daß ihnen zwar eine jede Bebung, aber nicht eine jede Berührung angenehm

seyn mag, sondern nur diejenige Berührung, die eine gewisse Bebung in ihnen hervor-

bringt. Die erste Saite also, die durch die Berührung erbebt, kann eine schmerzliche

Empfindung haben; da die andre, der ähnlichen Erbebung ungeachtet, eine angenehme

Empfindung hat, weil sie nicht [ . . . ] berührt worden. Also auch in dem Trauerspiele."

Lessing, Mendelssohn, Nicolai: Briefwechsel über das Trauerspiel, pp. 102 — 103. The emo-

tional resonance and covibration of the audience with the tragic hero is supposed to

have a lasting moral and, thus, political effect. 7 Schiller: "Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken". Nationalausgabe

vol. 20, p. 91: "Räzel ohne Auflösung, Schreckbilder und Lockungen aus der Ferne".




everyday life — a life that needed likewise to be structured normatively. The church's abstract didactic discourse found itself competing with the concrete narratives of a secular stage — stories that could serve, according to Schiller, as "a school of practical wisdom, a guide through civic life".8

In a similar vein, Johann Jakob Breitinger could call the internalization of norms and values through secular narratives an "einspielen", a "playing [of morality] into" the belief system of individuals.

The promotion of secular narratives played a major role in the culture-revolutionary process that led to the internalization of authority, a process that accelerated considerably between 1680 and 1740. Its philosophical and psychological precondition was the replacement of God as 'transcendent anchor' lending individuals a secure identity by the super-ego. In other words, the understanding and control of self transferred from an external authority (God and his worldly representatives) to an internal entity (super-ego). In this process, authority displays a tendency to "mutate" from a social to a psychic component. The church as social agent was being replaced by secular intellectuals. The Jeremy Collier debate and John Brown's critique of Shaftesbury are good illustrations of the struggle over the question which institution should serve as social agency. The discourse of religion could not provide images that would accustom people to the requirements of secular interaction.

The transfer of social agency from the church to secular intellectuals changed nothing in respect to the subjection of aesthetic illusion to an external authority. As long as an elite group of rational intellectuals representing the superior faculty of reason was considered qualified to critique the norms inherent in narratives and to supervise literary commu-nication, aesthetic illusion had to be underrated. As John Brown wrote in his 1751 polemic against the transfer of social agency to worldly intellectuals:

without the aids of reason [...] the mind can never distinguish real f rom

fictitious Objects. [...] it is the Province of Reason only, thus to regulate the

Senses and Imagination, when they impress a Truth, or suggest a Falsehood.9

Evidently, aesthetic illusion could be regarded as legitimate only when the authority of reason standing in for the authority of social agents was limited and qualified. The fact that the subjection of aesthetic pleasure to the prevailing and supervising power of rational cognition devalued the

8 Ibid. p. 95: "eine Schule der praktischen Weißheit, ein Wegweiser durch das bürgerliche Leben [...]". Emphasis added.

9 Brown: Essays on the Characteristics, p. 14.




state of aesthetic illusion still reflects — within the realms of epistemology and psychology — the hierarchical order of stratified societies. 10

More or less concurrently, however, one can observe a second approach to the relationship between reason and sensuality, reflection and illusion. This approach conceived of the supervising jurisdiction of our rational faculties as merely a latent one — one which might very well never be called upon to intervene. Under the cover of such a latent and ultimate jurisdiction, aesthetic experience could be envisioned as a realm in which the rules of rationality can be momentarily suspended (without simultane-ously being burdened with the demands of moral and rational behavior; see, for instance, Addison in his essay on the imagination). In this case, aesthetic illusion — although still subordinated to the preponderance of a superior rational faculty — is viewed as a relatively independent and separate mode of experience that can roam freely as long as the supremacy of rationality in regard to the organizational mode of society is guar-anteed — in the last instance, so to speak. Here, aesthetic experience, as a separate function within a structurally balanced system, gains a relative independence. Only as aesthetic theories of the eighteenth century move towards a model of functional differentiation does the concept of aesthetic illusion gain the status of a foundational category.

Yet, interestingly enough the two modes of relating the sensuality of aesthetic illusion to the superiority of human rationality cannot be at-tributed to distinct and competing theories. They occur within one and the same body of writing and, thus, refer to a fundamental tension within eighteenth century thought.

Henry Home, for example, who argues that illusion or ideal presence, as he calls it (which is, in spite of Werner Strube's comments, the same concept under a different label), is necessary for the survival of society. For the "final cause" of fiction is according to Home the fact

that examples both of virtue and of vice raise virtuous emotions; which becoming stronger by exercise, tend to make us virtuous by habit as well as by principle. [ . . .] [Fictitious] examples to improve us in virtue may be multi-plied without end; no other sort of discipline contributes more to make virtue habitual, and no other sort is so agreeable in the application.

Having thus made some traditional concessions to the socializing role of literature, Home goes on to add, "with thorough satisfaction", "another final cause" of aesthetic experience which

1 0 M y use of the terms "hierarchically stratified societies" versus " functional ly differentiated

societies" is informed by the work of Niklas Luhmann. O f his books pertinent in this

context, t w o are available in Engl i sh translation: Luhmann: The Differentiation of Society

and Luhmann: Love as Passion.




shows, that the author of our nature is not less kindly provident for the happiness of his creatures, than for the regularity of their conduct: the power that fiction hath over the mind affords an endless variety of refined amusements, always at hand to employ a vacant hour: such amusements are a fine resource in solitude; and by cheering and sweetening the mind, contribute mightily to social happiness.11

The two "final causes", the socializing or moral and the sweetening or decentering ends of the aesthetic, form a tension that thoroughly permeates aesthetic thinking in the eighteenth century. It is a tension created by the transition from stratified, hierarchically ordered societies to functionally differentiated societies. In a first and inadequate shift, this transition led, as I stated above, to an appropriation of narration as a secular and indirect mode of socialization. In a second and contradictory shift, the gradual establishment of functionally differentiated societies created a need for the imaginary compensation for rational labor; in Addison's word's, a desire to experience

the pleasures of the fancy [which] are more conducive 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. 1 2

In the course of the eighteenth century, one can observe a developmental drift toward structurally and functionally unfolded institutions — toward a social system in which the aesthetic function is no longer directly connected with the realm of normative reflections upon political and judicial standards.

This developmental tendency led to a constellation in which notions of a pleasurable suspension of and compensation for the "labour of the brain" entered aesthetic theories while the aesthetic — at first glance in a very contradictory fashion — was simultaneously valorized as a moral discourse. How did contemporaries deal with the apparent tension between these components and how did they attempt to defuse the tension? The most obvious and most prevalent attempt at defusing the tension was the tendency to aestheticize morality. Aesthetic morality gained the dimension of a kind of psychological Utopia. The redefinition of morality as a state of sentimental community and of the aesthetic state as a psycho-utopian state in which agonistic interactions are momentarily suspended was an early, however brief expression of the emerging establishment of the aesthetic as a functionally autonomous realm within modern societies.

11 Home: Elements of Criticism vol. 1, pp. 103 — 104. 12 Addison: "The Spectator", No. 411 (June 21, 1712). Addison: Works vol. 3, p. 396

("Essays on the Pleasures of the Imagination").




II.

In this context, aesthetic illusion could be and was thought of as a means of suspending reason's "active and separating power". The tension I have described can even be observed in theories that forcefully postulated the ultimate superiority and authority o f reason; even here, illusion was seldom lightly dismissed as a non-legitimate form of experience and, thus, excluded from aesthetic theory. On the contrary, even within theoretical frameworks still dominated by the hierarchical order of cognitive faculties and social estates, the concept of aesthetic illusion found acceptance. The progression of Moses Mendelssohn's theory of aesthetic illusion from 1757 to 1771 is a good case in point. Here the desire to upgrade and redefine illusion, i.e. to turn a state of suspension into a foundational category of aesthetic experience, turns out to be a structural force exerting pressure on the overall design of aesthetic theories. The difference between Mendelssohn's earlier and later conceptions of aesthetic illusion lies in the changing supervisory role of our reflective and rational powers. The earlier theory still subjects aesthetic experience directly (not only in the last instance) to the interventionist power of rationality. However, even at this point Mendelssohn recognized the necessity of pleasurable aesthetic experiences as much as, say, Henry Home. In 1771, Mendelssohn goes much further; he now justifies the aesthetic disposition as such and feels no compulsion to thematize the potential intervention of our rational faculties in the aesthetic illusion.13 The condition is legitimate in and of itself as long as the functional primacy of the rational is in place for society as a whole. Mendelssohn's modifications of his theory reflect the progression of the functional differentiation of society.

I emphasized earlier that illusion was seen as a mode of experience countering feelings of dispersion and compensating for the one-sidedness of functionally differentiated activities. However, the desire to submit oneself to a state of illusion is seldom seen as a structurally generated need; rather, the state of illusion is valorized and hypostatized as a retrieval of an original, now lost state of happiness. When Home says, "the separation of men into different classes, by birth, office, or occupation [. . .] tends to relax the connection that ought to be among" humans, he nostalgically assumes an alleged former state of affairs, thus turning a structural feature into a temporal one.1 4 It is not the emergence of a new

13 Strube: Ästhetische Illusion, p. 131. 14 Home alludes to a widespread discussion and a popular figure of thought in eighteenth

century thinking. See, for instance, Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), a book which had a major influence on Schiller's aesthetics o f autonomy- Ferguson hymnically celebrates affection as a social principle in premodern societies: " In the breast of a parent, it is most solicitous amidst the dangers and disstresses of the child: In the




mode of social organization that created a new desire which, by definition, cannot be fulfilled; rather, a positive origin has to be retrieved and reinstituted. Aesthetic illusion is designed to convey an imaginary experi-ence of unity that can serve as a "Vorschein" (foreshadowing) of a better state of affairs vis-ä-vis the diversities of reality. The temporal unfolding of structural features serves as a mode of coping.

Countless allusions in eighteenth century theories refer to a state of presence in which the awareness of time is suspended. Even Meier states that those who are immersed in the aesthetic yield to a state of rapture and euphoria in which they dispense of their cognitive faculties. One who submits himself to illusion suspends his individuality; he transgresses the boundaries of his consciousness to an extent "that he doesn't think about his current condition". Through the "liveliness of perceptions" ["Lebhaf-tigkeit der Vorstellungen"] art helps the reader transcend his spatial and temporal existence, or, in Meier's words, "go outside of oneself, and into ecstasy" ["ausser sich selbst setzen, und entzücken"] — a phrase that simultaneously refers to a state of insanity and to religious rapture. Storytelling is for Meier the art that systematically induces a pleasurable loss of awareness; stories "entangle us in such a way in the sequence of their affairs that, over them, we forget our own present condition".15

A characteristic of aesthetic illusion central to eighteenth century the-ories is that it cannot be consciously enjoyed. Because we cannot reflect upon the state of illusion, i.e. because we cannot bend our attention back onto this state, we cannot enjoy the enjoyment it offers or experience its experience. Home calls the effect "produced by fiction" an ideal presence

breast of a man, its flame redoubles where the wrongs or sufferings of his friend, or his

country require his aid. It is, in short, from this principle alone that we can account for

the obstinate attachment of a savage to his unsettled and defenceless tribe, when

temptations on the side of ease and of safety might induce him to fly from famine and

danger, to a station more affluent, and more secure." Such statements are cognitively

determined by their counterpart. Thus, they only have to set the stage for a characteriza-

tion of modern, commercialized societies: "Let those examples be compared with the spirit

which reigns in a commercial state, where men may be supposed to have experienced, in

its full extent, the interest which individuals have in the preservation of their country.

It is here indeed, if ever, that man is sometimes found a detached and a solitary being:

he has found an object which sets him in competition with his fellow-creatures, and he

deals with them as he does with his cattle and his soil, for the sake of the profits they

bring. The mighty engine which we suppose to have formed society, only tends to set

its members at variance, or to continue their intercourse after the bands of affection are

broken." Ferguson: An Essay on the History of Civil Society, p. 19. 15 Meier: Anfangs-Gründe aller schönen Wissenschaften vol. 1, pp. 478 — 479: Geschichten "ver-

wickeln uns dergestalt in die Folge ihrer Begebenheiten, daß wir unsers eigenen ge-

genwärtigen Zustandes darüber vergessen."




in which our consciousness erases any awareness of difference. If the experience is complete, "the mind, totally occupied with an interesting event, finds no leisure for reflection".16 Considering the impossibility of consciously experiencing this experience, aesthetic illusion might be called a mental state that can only be articulated in negative categories. For the desire to suspend all separations and determinations forces the concept of illusion into the contradictory status of being both a foundational category of aesthetic theory and a concept that cannot be conceived of philosophi-cally. Witness Home:

In contradistinction to real presence, ideal presence may properly be termed a waking dream\ because, like a dream, it vanisheth the moment we reflect upon our present situation: real presence, on the contrary, vouched by eye-sight, commands our belief, not only during the direct perception, but in reflecting afterward on the object.

Home distinguishes "ideal presence from reflective remembrance". In order to create an ideal presence of an object, one has to "form a complete image of it [ . . . ] ; and this perception is an act of intuition, into which reflection enters not, more than into an act of sight".17 A man in the state of illusion "forgets himself [ . . . ] and hath a consciousness of presence similar to that of a spectator" who is completely absorbed in the situation he experiences.18 In a similar vein, Riedel says:

A phantasy is a lively and intuitive conception, in which we see the object itself and are present to it in an ideal manner. This phantasy, this mental presence, from our perspective seen as an effect, is called deception, or illusion. We forget when we are deceived that we are only imagining an imitation or an arbitrary sign; our phantasy puts us into the scene itself that the artist represented for us.19

III.

This forgetting of the preconditions of a mental state we experience presupposes a very particular sign theory. Henry Home pointed to the most important aspect of this sign theory when he stated, "it is the

16 Home: Elements of Criticism vol. 1, pp. 94 — 95. 17 Ibid. p. 91. 18 Ibid. vol. 2, p. 418. 19 Riedel: Theorie der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften (1774), p. 151: "Eine Phantasie ist eine

lebhafte und anschauende Vorstellung, in welcher wir das Objekt selbst sehen und ihm

auf eine idealische Art gegenwärtig sind und diese Phantasie, diese mentale Gegenwart,

als Effekt auf Seiten unserer betrachtet, heist Tauschung; oder Illusion. Wir vergessen,

wenn wir getäuscht werden, daß wir nur eine Nachahmung, oder willkührliche Er-

dichtung uns vorstellen; unsere Phantasie versetzet uns in die Scene selbst, die der

Künstler uns abgebildet hat".




perfection of representation to hide itself, to impose on the spectator, and to produce in him an impression of reality", that is more like a state of trance or daze than an investigative encounter of subject and object. In the state of aesthetic illusion, the materiality and constructed nature of the sign has to be repressed. Home therefore compares the mental state of the aesthetic experience with the pleasurable exposure to a daydream: "any interruption annihilates that impression, by rousing him out of his waking dream, and unhappily restoring him to his senses".20 He shares with numerous eighteenth century thinkers a "quest for unmediated presence in the mediation of signs"21 — a quest that allowed the distinction between arbitrary and natural signs to gain an increasing prevalence and importance in eighteenth century theories of illusion. Moses Mendelssohn, for instance, states:

The signs by means o f w h i c h an object is expressed can either be natural o r

arbitrary. They are natural w h e n the connect ion between the sign and the

referent is g r o u n d e d in the characteristics o f the object itself [.. .]. T h e means

f o r render ing a discourse [that uses arbi t rary signs] sensual is f o u n d in the

selection o f such expressions that br ing, all at once, a mul t i tude of characteristics

back in to consciousness, so that w e experience the re ferent in a m o r e l ively

fashion than w e d o the sign. In this way o u r cogni t ion becomes intui t ive [or

graphic]. The objects are presented to o u r senses as if they w e r e unmediated,

and the l o w e r cogni t i ve faculties are deceived, in that they o f ten fo rge t the

sign and bel ieve to be perce iv ing the object itself. The w o r t h o f poet ic images,

similes and descript ions, and even specific poet ic w o r d s must be eva luated

according to these general maxims. 2 2

One of the most urgent issues perceived by early and mid-eighteenth century philosophers was the possibility of an unmediated access to "truth"; i.e., the possibility of conditions under which "representations that mediate all human cognition" acquire a form that permits signs "to

20 Home: Elements of Criticism vol. 2, p. 418. 21 Flax: "The Presence of the Sign in Goethe's Faust", p. 188. 22 Mendelssohn: Ästhetische Schriften in Auswahl, pp. 182—183: "Die Zeichen, vermittelst

welcher ein Gegenstand ausgedruckt wird, können entweder natürlich oder willkührlich

seyn. Natürlich sind sie, wenn die Verbindung des Zeichens mit der bezeichneten Sache

in den Eigenschaften des Bezeichneten selbst gegründet ist. [...] Das Mittel, eine Rede

[die sich willkührlicher Zeichen bedient] sinnlich zu machen, bestehet in der Wahl solcher

Ausdrücke, die eine Menge von Merkmalen auf einmal in das Gedächtniß zurück bringen,

um uns das Bezeichnete lebhafter empfinden zu lassen als das Zeichen. Hierdurch wird

unsere Erkenntniß anschauend. Die Gegenstände werden unsern Sinnen, wie unmittelbar

vorgestellt, und die untern Seelenkräfte werden getäuscht, indem sie öfters der Zeichen

vergessen, und der Sache selbst ansichtig zu werden glauben. Aus dieser allgemeinen

Maxime muß der Werth der poetischen Bilder, Gleichnissse und Beschreibungen, und so

gar der einzelnen poetischen Worte beurtheilet werden."




deliver some knowledge of ultimate, unmediated, extralinguistic reality".23

The three major concepts that served to suppress the representational status of signs and that permitted, according to prevailing views of the time, the assumption of a moment of unalienated, unmediated presence were imagination, illusion and the natural sign. Condillac, for instance, stated that the human imagination can establish presence. If the imagination is the faculty that helps create presence, then the natural sign is imagina-tion's means in this endeavor, and aesthetic illusion the resulting mental state to which we joyfully succumb. As Mendelssohn stated:

All illusions of the fine arts and letters spring f rom the same source. They are all based on the connection between the sign and the signified, as well as on the inference that we draw f rom incomplete inductions. When these, through early and frequent repetition, have become habit; when the sequence of ideas, as it were, becomes unmediated perception; then our senses continue to uninterruptedly form an association between the sign and the signified.24

Implicit in this search for strategies that overcome a consciousness of difference was a theory of representation interpreting the gap between language and reality as a historically emerging form of linguistic and social alienation. In other words, in the process of civilization language changed into an instrument far better suited for logical operations. Philosophers like Condillac, Diderot and Herder principally welcome this development as progress. However, they all mourn the loss of semiotic immediacy in language and of a unity of sign and referent supposedly present in an original, graphic language.25 Many eighteenth century thinkers try to locate a redemptive site within modern societies in which such immediacy and presence can still be experienced, and they find it in art. Lessing, for instance, stated in a letter to Nicolai: "Poetic works must attempt to elevate their arbitrary signs [willkührliche Zeichen] to natural signs."26 The vacant space left in regard to emotional expressiveness by the logification of

23 Ibid. p. 187. 24 Mendelssohn: "Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes". Gesammelte

Schriften vol. 3, 2, pp. 32—33: "Alle Täuschungen der schönen Wissenschaften und Künste fließen aus derselben Quelle. Sie gründen sich alle auf die Verbindung zwischen dem Zeichen und dem Bezeichneten, und auf den Schluß, den wir aus unvollständigen Inductionen zu ziehen pflegen. Wenn diese, durch öftere frühe Wiederholung, zur Gewohnheit geworden sind; wenn die Ideenfolge gleichsam zur unmittelbaren Empfin-dung wird; so schließen unsere Sinne von dem Zeichen auf das Bezeichnete ungehindert fort".

25 See von Mücke: The Veil of Illusion in the Service of Virtue: Semiotic Transformations and Literary Genres Between 1740 and 1800, pp. 23—40; von Mücke's excellent manuscript will soon be published by Stanford University Press.

2<' May 26, 1769. Lessing: Sämtliche Schriften vol. 17, p. 291.




thinking and, accordingly, of language had led to the question, under which circumstances language can still serve emotional needs. From now on, it was a widely shared belief that the graphic and symbolic mode of representation that the arts display overcomes alienation, distance, media-tion. When still in a natural state, the arts and language exemplify the sacral, revelatory, transcendental function of a sign that overcomes the gap between language and reality. The imagination, a concept that was greatly valorized in the eighteenth century, creates such signs. Condillac's "images sensibles" help overcome the boundaries created by the separating power of reason. The imagination allegedly becomes a force of resistance whose power as human agency we experience when we enter a state of illusion and forget ourselves. From a different perspective, one can say that artistic imagination helps us reach back to prelinguistic, preoedipal experiences.

Thus, the major ideal or desire underlying eighteenth century theories of illusion is transparency of signification and communication. Such desired transparency starts with the readability of the human body and its move-ments. Home, for instance, holds that "soul and body" are "so intimately connected [ . . . ] that every agitation in the former, produceth a visible effect in the latter". Like art, bodily signs form a natural language:

The natural signs of emotions, voluntary and involuntary, being nearly the same in all men, form an universal language; which no distance of place, no difference of tribe, no diversity of tongue, can darken or render doubtful : even education, tho' of mighty influence, hath not power to vary nor sophisticate, far less to destroy, their signification. This is a wise appointment of Providence: for if these signs were, like words, arbitrary and variable, the thoughts and volitions of strangers would be entirely hid f rom us; which would prove a great or rather invincible obstruction to the formation of societies.27

Home belongs to a group of enlightenment thinkers who are not satisfied by qualifying art, aesthetic illusion and natural signs as a site of reconcili-ation within current societies; rather, he wants to merge the imaginary reconciliation of difference with the actual mediation of difference in society:

The effects produced in all beholders by external signs of passion [...] advance the social state [...] to improve the social state, by making us instinctively rejoice with the glad of heart, weep with the mourner, and shun those w h o threaten danger, is a contrivance no less illustrious for its wisdom than for its benevolence.2 8

This is why eighteenth century theories of aesthetic illusion are generally identical with an aesthetic of sympathy grounded in a philosophy of

27 Home: Elements of Criticism vol. 1, pp. 434 — 435. 28 Ibid. p. 448.




history. Just as illusion is an affect that overcomes an awareness of difference between subject and object, sympathy is an affect that eliminates distance between human beings. They both are designed to suppress an awareness of the materiality and constructedness of artifacts. As Men-delssohn stated unambiguously: "a mere awareness of signs and words [ . . . ] leaves the soul in an indifferent state"; the "intuitive cognition" of beauty induced by art should therefore strive with all its means to avoid such an awareness.29

IV.

I will conclude with a more general assessment of the historical constella-tion in which this theory of aesthetic illusion became a prevalent part of aesthetic theory. I stressed that one can read the eighteenth century aesthetic of illusion as an aesthetic of decentered experience or "Entgren-zung", of an attempt to compensate in a linear fashion for other life activities. Such a perspective is both correct and one-sided; it has to be qualified after considering the figure of "Anschaulichkeit" or intuition. For "Anschaulichkeit" — a term that gained an increasing importance in eighteenth century aesthetic theories293 — evidently refers to a visual act based on a separation of subject and object; the subject views or looks at the aesthetic object (which is why the usual translation of this term as intuition in Kant's Critique of Judgment, for instance, is highly mislead-ing). How, then, can the aesthetic of illusion be an aesthetic of decentered experience? The term "Anschaulichkeit" unfolds its critical potential in relation to the aesthetics of illusion only gradually. Initially, the emphasized element in aesthetic experience was the reduction or sublation of subject-object separations. In my view, this was the result of secular changes in the constitution of modern subjectivity. In the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries, two radical breaks in the constitution of subjectivity seem to occur. The first comes about in the process of secularizing the dominant mode of socialization and of internalizing authority. The new type of socialization aimed at the constitution of strong super-egos. A strong super-ego, which can no longer anchor itself psychologically in a transcendent and redeeming being, runs the risk of disintegrating under the demands of autonomous behavior; it will experience autonomy less as "freedom" than as "pressure". Psychohistorically, the affiliation of a narra-tive culture with a new mode of socialization could only work temporarily. Modifications of the collective constitution of subjectivity in modern societies had to be aimed at a mode of organization that would not

29 Mendelssohn: "Rapsodie, oder Zusätze zu den Briefen über die Empfindungen". Gesam-

melte Schriften vol. 1, p. 385. 29a While this book was going to press Willems' comprehensive study Anschaulichkeit (1989)

was published.




diminish the ego's autonomy, while simultaneously providing an anchoring of subjectivity that reconciled the opposition of delimitation and decenter-ing, competition and community. This seemed possible only by establishing an internal transcendent anchor. In other words, a transcendent anchoring of human identity could be achieved only as a result of a split within the human psyche; one component of the psyche had to be turned into a substitute for a transcendent anchor. The second break in the constitution of modern subjectivity therefore occurs when modern culture begins to secure the imaginary as a site of an other experience and when it starts to institutionalize a type of discourse that could be viewed as, first, the external expression of an internal desire and, second, as a site that strengthens the belief in the prospect of a final overcoming of desire in a moment of presence. This discourse is the aesthetic. The first step towards such an institutionalization of the aesthetic was reached with the sentimen-talization of aesthetic experience in Shaftesbury and Du Bos with whom the aesthetic of illusion as described above originated. As important as the aesthetic of illusion was as a transitional phenomenon, it was unable to ground a new constitution of subjectivity. For illusion, as perceived in these theories, compensates in a linear and one-dimensional fashion; it cannot mediate between oppositional components that would rupture a structure, if it is not defused or reconciled within a more complex mode of organi2ation. As a linear form of compensation, the state of illusion as championed during this period favored reductive political and cognitive solutions to social and historical questions, as in the case of Home whom I will quote one last time:

Communication of passion to related objects, is an illustrious instance of the care of Providence, to extend social connections as far as the limited nature of man can admit. [ . . .] the progress of passion along related objects, by spreading the kindly affections through a multitude of individuals, hath a glorious effect. 3 0

The function of desiring illusion during this century can best be described in terms of Freud's distinction between a primary and a secondary process rather than in terms of Lacan's notion of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. As in Freud, the desire for "oceanic feelings", a memory trace of the child's symbiosis with his or her mother that has turned into a latent, all-present wish, stands in clear opposition to the secondary process or the rational differentiations of later life. The desired "oceanic feelings" of aesthetic illusion are supposed to elevate the individual beyond a state in which one mirrors one's desire in an aesthetic object.

However, even within an aesthetic of illusion the concept of "Anschau-lichkeit" or graphic cognition indicates the possibility of a different solu-

311 Home: Elements of Criticism vol. 1, pp. 192 — 193.




tion. For "Anschaulichkeit" refers to something we view with our eyes; as such it implies distance. With this, "Anschaulichkeit" alludes to a constitution of subjectivity based on a relationship to representation that does not have to suppress the materiality and constructedness of the sign. Here, the anchoring of subjectivity in the imaginary is augmented and reinforced by a representation of the imaginary in art — a move that intends to reconcile the difference of delimitation and dissolution in art while insisting on the difference of subject and representation. Aesthetic representation mirrors the individual's desires while turning desire's du-plicity and its dispersing effect into a unified image. Autonomous art thus intends to share the formal features of an Ideal-I in whose image the ego mirrors itself. Already Mendelssohn maintained:

As nature gave us the ability to perfect ourselves, at the same time it engraved in our being [the desire] to raise all of our faculties to the highest harmony. We should allow a type of wise government to be formed among them. No faculty should be suppressed, none should be forgotten; on the other hand, we should not place one unjustly on the throne.3 1

Mendelssohn describes a state which can only occur in the image or medium of art. Aesthetic representations serve as an anchor of subjectivity in the sense that the subject imagines its own unity in the projections it views in the aesthetic mirror. Aesthetic representation arrests the debilitat-ing force of split subjectivity in an imagined unity. However, it could not achieve what it set out to achieve without incessantly projecting its imagined reconciliations onto a vague future state of affairs. The nature of artistic representation as supplement forces the aesthetic to extend itself into a philosophy of history. The relationship between art and history repeats and reflects the relationship between real desires and their imagin-ary satisfactions within established institutional boundaries. It is a structure of compulsory projections and temporal displacements. Precisely as the icon Julie, the incarnation of "woman" in Rousseau's l^a nouvelle Heloi'se, was supposed to help Saint-Preux constitute his subjectivity, art achieves an anchoring of subjectivity by displacing and redirecting its drives onto representations of another state of affairs. The aesthetic of distance, ex-pressed in the concept of "Anschaulichkeit", is one based on the insur-mountable duplicity of representation and presence; as such it emphasizes its status as representation, while the aesthetics of illusion "supported the

31 Mendelssohn: "Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes". Gesammelte Schriften vol. 3, 2, p. 89: "Hat uns die Natur das Vermögen geschenket, uns vollkommener zu machen; so hat sie zugleich unserm Wesen gleichsam eingegraben, alle unsere Fähigkei-ten in der vollständigsten Harmonie empor zu erheben. Wir sollen eine Art von weiser Regierung unter ihnen statt finden lassen. Keine soll unterdrücket, keine soll vergessen werden; hingegen sollen wir auch keine unrechtmäßig auf den Thron setzen."




construction of a rigidly unified subject, defined as pure interiority, as non-mediated presence, as pure voice without body: a non-theatrical aesthetics of illusion and a non-theatrical subject".32

The aesthetics of representation, which is one of ruptured illusions, accepts the notion (1) of a breached interiority, (2) of the impossibility of a unified subject and (3) of the necessity of aesthetic representations in whose image we strive to hold our subjectivity together. The image of a unified subject is a necessary internal projection. Any internal projection seeks its representations outside the psyche. The organizational mode of modern subjectivity is therefore a delicate one. It requires the constant consumption of textual representations, including images, to retain itself, both ideologically (in the sense of differentiated, alienating symbolic orders) and emotionally (in the sense of decentering aesthetic experiences). What mirror reflections initiate in the young child, is to a substantial degree taken over by textual reflections for the established subjectivities of older individuals.

In this context, the concept of illusion is not given up; rather, it gains a very different meaning. The early romantic Novalis, for instance, combines aesthetic illusion with the materiality and constructedness of the artistic sign and relates both to a conscious construction of human subjectivity that never arrests itself in the image of definitive achievements:

It is dogmatic — if I say — there is no God, there is no Non-Ego — there is no thing-in-itself — I can only say critically — For me there is now no such entity — other than a fictitious one. All illusion is as essential to the truth, as the body is to the soul — Error is the necessary instrument of truth — With error I make truth — complete use of error — complete possession of truth. [ ] Al l synthesis — all progression — or transition begins with illusion — I see outside of me, that which is in me — I believe that what I am doing has happened, and so on. Error of time and space. Belief is the operation of illuding — the basis of illusion — all knowledge f rom a distance is belief — [...] Al l knowledge ends and begins with belief. Forward and backward expansion of knowledge is deferment — expansion of the realm of belief. The Ego believes it sees a foreign entity — a different, intermediate entity arises through the approximation of the latter — the product — which belongs to the Ego, and which at the same time does not appear to belong to the Ego — the intermediate results of the process are of primary importance — the thing which has become — or has been made by chance — is the opposite of the intended thing.3 3

32 von Mücke: The Veil of Illusion in the Service of Virtue, p. 77. 33 Novalis: Schriften vol. 3, pp. 372 — 373: "Es ist dogmatisch — wenn ich sage — es giebt

keinen Gott, es giebt kein N[icht] I[ch] — es giebt kein Ding an sich — ich kann kritisch

nur sagen — Jezt giebt es für mich kein solches, Wesen — außer einem Erdichteten.

Alle Illusion ist zur Wahrheit so wesentlich, wie der Körper der Seele — Irrthum ist




For Novalis, one constantly has to mirror oneself in fictitious images in order to improve the never ending construction of one's subjectivity. Succumbing to illusion at least partially is a prerequisite for such an activity. Early Romanticism thus finally accepts illusion's recurring rupture as part and parcel of an aesthetic state of mind.

das notwendige Instrument der Wahrheit — Mit dem Irrthum mach ich Wahrheit —

vollständiger Gebrauch des Irrth[ums] — vo l l s tänd iger ] Besitz der Wahrheit. Alle

Synth[ese] — alle Progression — oder Übergang fangt mit Illusion an — ich sehe außer

mir, was in mir ist [ . . . ] Glauben ist die Operation des Illudirens — die Basis der

Illusion — alles Wissen in d[er] Entfernung ist Glauben [ . . . ] . Alles Wissen endigt und

fängt im Glauben [an]. Vor und Rückerweiterung d[es] Wissens ist Hinausschiebung —

Erweiterung des Glaubensgebiets. Das Ich glaubt ein fremdes Wesen zu sehn — durch

Approximation desselben entsteht ein andres Mittelwesen — das Produkt — was dem

Ich zugehört, und was zug l e i ch ] dem Ich nicht zuzugehören scheint — die Mittelresultate

des Processes sind die Hauptsache — das zufällig gewordene — oder gemachte Ding —

ist das Verkehrt Beabsichtigte." Brackets are in the original.



aesthetic illusion (theoretical and historical approaches) || aesthetic illusion in the eighteenth...

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