3Epistemology
3.1 Psychology
3.1.1 Cognition
The ambiguity of aesthetics arisesfrom its combination of epistemology and media theory.The order of knowledge forms its epistemological basis, literature is its object,establishing its autonomyfrom logic is its goal, analogyits method, and etymologyits style. The eighteenth-century order of knowledge parcels cog- nition up into abright upperpart and adarklower part at the ground of the soul (fundus animae) – therebyrevisitingwhat Niklaus Largier analyzes as apromi- nent “trope of mystical discourse.”¹ As is well known, Baumgarten’s “science of everything that is sensate” contradictsthe topical order of the faculties of the soul, which was established by Leibniz and confirmed in Wolff’s Psychologia em- pirica (1732), by transposing the vertical spatial order into ahorizontal order in which sensation (sensatio/Empfindung) is the equal of reason. But in recon- structing the epistemology of Baumgarten’saesthetics, the scholarship often makes adecisive mistake: it attends to the cognitivefaculties (facultates cogno- scitivae) but neglects the appetitive faculties (facultates appetitivae). In the fol- lowing,Iwilldiscuss the lowercognitive faculty in relation to the appetitive fac- ulty.Incontrast to affect in the seventeenth century and feeling in the late eighteenthcentury,Baumgarten posits that both sensate cognition and sensate desire follow laws analogous to thoseofreason, making it possible to analyze the formal processes of both. His aesthetics thus does not give emphatic irratio- nality the role that it will later have in the eighteenth centuryintheorieslike Her- der’s. Baumgartendifferentiates between higher cognitive faculties (facultates cog- noscitivae superiores) and lower cognitive faculties (facultates cognoscitivae in- feriores). He articulates this distinctionindetail in the Metaphysica,but it is al- readypresent in the Meditationes,wherehedistinguishes between thingsknown (noeta) and thingsperceived(aistheta), and determines that “things known are to be known by the superior faculty as the object of logic; things perceived [are to be known by the inferior faculty,asthe object] of the science of perception, or
Niklaus Largier, “The Plasticity of the Soul: Mystical Darkness,Touch, and Aesthetic Experi- ence,” MLN 125.3(2010): 537. See also Hans Adler, “Fundus Animae – der Grund der Seele: Zur Gnoseologie des Dunklen in der Aufklärung,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fürLiteraturwissen- schaft und Geistesgeschichte 62.2 (1988): 197–220.
OpenAccess. ©2020Frauke Berndt, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110624519-004 3.1 Psychology 29 aesthetic” (MED §116;Sint ergo νοητα cognoscenda facultatesuperioreobiec- tum logices, αισϑητα επιϛημης αισϑητιϰης sive AESTHETICAE).² He thus under- stands sensation “as an organ of cognition independent from reason” that rep- resents “the connections of thingsinits ownparticularway.”³ In this conception of sensation, the discipline of psychologyisresponsible for articulating the laws of “representing”⁴ or “appropriating the world sensate- ly.”⁵ In part 3ofthe Metaphysica on psychology(psychologia) – where Baum- garten treats both empirical and rational (speculative) psychology – he derives the following series of sensate faculties (facultates sentiendi) from the different characteristics of sensations:
(1) the inferior faculty for knowingthe correspondences of things (§572, 279), to which per- tains asensitive wit (§575); (2) the inferior faculty for knowingthe differences of things (§572, 279), to which pertains sensitive acumen (§575); (3) sensitive memory (§579, 306); (4) the faculty of invention (§589); (5) the faculty of judging(§606,94), thus sensitive judg- ment (§607) and that of the senses (§608); (6) the expectation of similar cases (§610,612); and (7) the sensitive faculty of characterization (§619,347). All of these, insofar as they are similar to reasoninrepresentingthe nexus of things,constitutethe ANALOGUE OF REA- SON (§70), or the collection of the soul’sfaculties for representinganexus confusedly.
1) inferior facultas identitates rerumcognoscendi, §. 572, 279quo ingenium sensitivum, §. 575. 2) inferior facultas diversitates rerumcognoscendi, §. 572, 279. quo acumen sensiti- vum pertinet,§.575.3)memoria sensitiva, §. 579, 306.4)facultas fingendi, §. 589.5)facultas diiudicandi, §. 606,94. quo iudicium sensitivum, §. 607. &sensuum, §. 608. 6) exspectatio casuum similium,§.610,612. 7) facultas characteristica sensitiva, §. 619, 347. Hae omnes, quatenus in repraesentando rerum nexu rationi similes sunt,constituuntANALOGON RA- TIONIS,§.70. complexum facultatum animae nexum confuse repraesentantium. (MET §640;see also AE §§ 30 –37)
Baumgartenthen organizes the third part of the Metaphysica,which is based on this list of faculties, as follows:
See Hans Adler and Lynn L. Wolff, eds., Aisthesis und Noesis:ZweiErkenntnisformen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Wilhelm Fink,2013). See also TedKinnaman, “Aes- thetics beforeKant,” in ACompanion to Early Modern Philosophy,ed. Steven Nadler (Malden: Blackwell, 2002), 578–582. Ursula Franke, Kunstals Erkenntnis: Die Rolle der Sinnlichkeit in der Ästhetik des Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner,1972),37. See also Franke, “Sinnliche Erkenntnis – was sie ist und was sie soll: A. G. Baumgartens Ästhetik-Projekt zwischen Kunstphilosophie und Anthropologie,” in Aichele and Mirbach, “Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten,” 73– 99. Franke, Kunst als Erkenntnis,41. Friedhelm Solms, Disciplina aesthetica:Zur Frühgeschichte der ästhetischen Theorie bei Baum- garten und Herder (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990), 21. 30 3Epistemology
Section IIII: Imagination (phantasia) Section V: Perspicacity (perspicacia) Faculty of wit (ingenium) Faculty of acumen (acumen) Section VI: Memory (memoria) Section VII: Faculty of invention (facultas fingendi) Section VIII: Foresight (praevisio) Section VIIII: Judgment (iudicium) Section X: Anticipation (praesagitio) Section XI: Faculty of characterization (facultas characteristica)
The science for analyzingthese sensate faculties requires, like anyscience,a method.Aswesaw in the last chapter,Baumgarten’s “science of everything that is sensate” is largely based on the rhetorical figureofanalogy, so it employs arhetorical method.⁶ He thus follows, as Herder astutelynotes,apath thatis more philologicallythan philosophicallygrounded: “Iamgetting closertothe heart of Baumgarten’sphilosophyand have noticed thatitissotied up with lan- guagethat his explanations, differentiations, and proofs oftenseem to work ety- mologically.”⁷ In other words, Baumgarten seems to shift the weight of his argu- ments onto the conceptsthat constitutethem. Herder becomes especiallyriled up with Baumgarten’suse of sensitivus,inEnglish “sensate,” which he seems to applytoeverything possible. In the context of the analogon of reason, the data (sense perceptions), organs (faculties), and products (representations, with regardtoboth quantity and quality) are all described with one and the same word: sensitivus. Herder bemoans this fact in his discussion of Friedrich Justus Riedel’s Theorie der schönen Künste (1767), which follows Baumgarten’s mold:
We Germans disputewordsasother nations disputecauses; we areasblessed with defini- tions as others arewith inventions,and in his definition Baumgarten has moreover used a word that is rich and pregnant enough to conceal multiple meanings,thus leavingitself open to disputeand misuse: the word sensuous [sinnlich;Itranslateas“sensate,” F. B.]. Howmanyconcepts German philosophyassociates with this word! Sensuous leads us back to the source and medium of certain representations, and these arethe senses;itsig- nifies those faculties of the soul that form such representations, and these arethe so-called lower faculties of the soul; it characterizes the species of representation, confused and pleasant preciselyinthis rich, engagingconfusion; that is, sensuous;finally, it refers also to the intensity with which the representations enraptureusand excite sensuous pas-
See 2.2Analogy. Johann Gottfried Herder, “VonBaumgartens Denkart in seinen Schriften,” in Werke,ed. Martin Bollacher et al., vol. 1, Frühe Schriften 1764–1772,ed. Ulrich Gaier (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985), 653. 3.1 Psychology 31
sions – on all four conceptual paths the multifacetedwords sensuous, sensitive areinkeep- ing with the definition of Wolff, Baumgarten, and Mendelssohn.⁸
Baumgarten’sconceptual politics made more than asmall contribution to this inflation. Even the concept aesthetics itself is an argument based on words (ar- gumentum ex vi verbi). By deriving aesthetica from an etymological topos (locus ab etymologia) in the first paragraph of the Kollegium,Baumgarten traces the name for the “science of everything that is sensate” back to its original meaning and provides an etymological explanation for the analogybetween reason and sensation:⁹
It actuallycomes from aisthanomai [I sense]; this wordrefers to whatsentio refers to in Latin, namely, to all clear sensations.Sincesensations can be divided intoexternal and in- ternal ones – into those that Iamconscious of occurringinmybodyand that relatetoall the senses,and those that onlyoccur in my soul – this word, which referstoclear sensa- tions in general, applies to both. Since, furthermore, the word sentio refers to perceiving somethingwith the senses and the Greek is completely the same, it will also refertosensate representations.
Es kommt eigentlich von αισϑανομαι her;dieses Wort bezeichnetdas,was sentio im Latei- nischen bezeichnet,nämlich alle klaren Empfindungen. Da die Empfindungen in äußerliche und innerlicheeingeteilt werden, in solche, die in meinem Körper als mir bewußtvorgehen und sich aufalle Sinne beziehen, oder in solche, die nur in meiner Seele vorgehen, so wird dieses Wort,das klare Empfindungen überhaupt bezeichnet,auf beides gehen. Da ferner das Wort sentio etwas sinnlichwahrnehmen bezeichnet,das griechische aber mit ihm völlig einerlei ist,sowirdesauch sinnliche Vorstellungen bezeichnen. (KOLL§1; see also MET §535)
Baumgarten’setymologytwists and turns, exhibitingastylistic technique that does not reach an ontological origin –“asemantics beyond language”–but rather always onlyrefers,inaprocess of “continual displacement,” to other words.¹⁰ In his thoroughlycircular conclusion,heequatesthe subjective activity of sense perception (aisthanomai/sentio) with the resultofthis activity,the (ex- ternal or internal) clear sensations, which are thenascribed, based on etymolo- gy,the samesensate quality thatcharacterizes the verb. In this definition, Baum- garten contorts the topical methodfor securing proofs into the stylistic technique of the figuraetymologica, which produces words by moving through different morphological formsofthe sameroot word, transformingetymologyfrom a
Johann Gottfried Herder, “Critical Forests,” 264. See Cic., Top. 2.8–10. Willer, “Orte, Örter,Wörter,” 39. 32 3Epistemology method for dialecticalproofsinto astylistic technique on the surface of dis- course. Herder recognizesthat preciselysuch an etymological method, which is at work in the vocabulary of the Leibniz–Wolffian school, would be “conducive to new paths” in philosophy:¹¹
If onlytherewereaGerman philosopher whocould forgetall the tradition of the schools and all Greek and Roman philosophy(avery difficultart!) and philosophized in our lan- guagethroughand through; whodid not placeour language’snames as addendums after the accepted scholastic concept,whether it be Latin or Latinized German – but rather made acquiringaphilosophyfor our languagehis primary goal. He would proceed from the common use of aword, try to develop his concept,todefine it,toexplain it,and, when necessary,toimproveitusingthe receivedphilosophyofother languages.¹²
Separating Baumgarten’sphilosophical arguments from his etymological meth- od, as the scholarship has been wont to do, is thus acrude simplification. In Baumgarten, there is no philosophywithout philology. That is even the case when he takes up the traditionalassumption in the Metaphysica thatthe reflective organofthe soul is arepresenting power (vis re- praesentativa). When he defines the analogon of reason as the reflective organ that processes sensate cognition,Baumgarten’sarguments do not address the matter at hand but rather ground the concepts: “Ithink about my present state. Therefore, Irepresent my present state, i.e. ISENSE it.The representations of my present state,orSENSATIONS (appearances), are representations of the present state of the world (§369)” (MET §534;Cogito statum meum praesentem. Ergo repraesento statum meum praesentem, i.e. SENTIO.Repraesentationes sta- tus mei praesentis seu SENSATIONES (apparitiones) sunt repraesentationes sta- tus mundi praesentis, §. 369; see alsoMED §§ 24,27). The philosophical defini- tion of sensation as representation onlyreproduces what Baumgarten stipulates in his etymological practice of writing.The word sensio – the substan- tive that comes from sentire and that he especiallyuses in the Meditationes – be- comes sensatio through adding the letters at in the middle. By first shifting the root wordfrom one morphological form to the next and, second, by adding two letters,Baumgarten’setymological method anticipates what the definitionex- plains with great effort or disguisesasalogical derivation. The letters at mark the conceptual aspect of sensation, which refers to bothits repeatability and its orientation toward aconsciousness for whom this sensation is given. The ar-
Herder, “VonBaumgartens Denkart,” 654. Herder, “VonBaumgartens Denkart,” 653 – 654. 3.1 Psychology 33 gument of repetition is depicted by the prefix re-, that of representationbythe prefix prae-. Together with sensatio,they yield the word re-prae-sentatio,in which, additionally, the s in the middle of sensatio is switched to a t to form re- prae-sentatio. In the Metaphysica,Baumgarten analyzesthe etymologicallyproducedcon- cept of sensation – or sensate representation – first with regardtothe temporal relations of representations and represented states and theirchanges (past,pres- ent,future); second with regardtothe media of representation (imagination, lit- erature, foresight,prophecies); and third with regardtothe fundamental sensate operations that comparestates with one another (similarity and difference). Con- sidering the effort he investsinhis etymologies,itissurprising that Baumgarten does not trust his etymological method when he dealswith sensations in more detail; instead, he introduces aforeign wordtoadequately describe sensate rep- resentations: “Arepresentation that is not distinct is called aSENSITIVE[Itrans- late as “sensate,” F. B.] REPRESENTATION.Therefore, the power of my soul rep- resents sensitive perceptions through the inferior faculty (§520,513)” (MET §521; REPRAESENTATIO non distincta SENSITIVA vocatur.Ergovis animae meae re- praesentat per facultatem inferiorem perceptiones sensitivas,§.520,513). While the attribute distinctus qualitatively differentiates between indistinct representations and distinct ones, the attribute sensitivus seems at first to be su- perfluous since sensations are alreadysensate on the basis of theiretymology. Have they now become even more sensate? We can onlyfind an answer by turn- ing from the cognitive faculties to the appetitive faculties. That is whereBaum- garten obtains this attribute so as to import it into his characterization of cogni- tion.
3.1.2 Desire
The use of the concept sensitivus implies, as Franke explains, “differentiating” sensation “from the sensual.”¹³ This would mean that the concept offers apar- ticular perspective on processing sensate data that is more beholden to episte- mological interests thanpsychological ones. While Hans Rudolf Schweizer, who translated parts of the Aesthetica into German,has assertedthat thereis “no reason to differentiatebetween ‘sensualis’ and ‘sensitivus,’”¹⁴ the concept
Franke, Kunst als Erkenntnis,40. Schweizer, Ästhetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis,22. 34 3Epistemology sensitivus actuallydoes mark adifference to the attribute sensualis,the adjective derivedfrom the substantive sensus. Thisdifference emphasizes the non-sensual nature of sensitivus,which Itranslate as “sensate”: “Sensate does not mean sen- sual.”¹⁵ This differentiation adds afurther argument to the conceptual one, an argument thatisinsightfullyexplained in the Kollegium: “Hereone is not look- ing at their [the acute senses’]tools,for example, at the eyeorthe ear” (KOLL §29; Man sehe hier nicht aufdie Werkzeuge derselben, z. B. aufdas Augeoder Ohr). In contrast to the external organs of sensation, the faculties of sensation refer to an “inner consciousness” (inneres Bewußtsein), an “inner feeling” (innere[s] Gefühl; KOLL §29). Unlikethe inner senses (sensus interni), the outer senses (sensus externi) merelysupplyraw sensations (see MET§535; AE §30) by functioningas“aids” (Hülffs-Mittel), “weapons,” (Waffen), or “tools” (PHB 8; Werckzeuge[]). As markers of two different interests in sensation, the two competing attributes, sensualis and sensitivus,onlymeet in the Meditationes asingle time: “By sense representations we mean representations of present changes in thatwhich is to be represented, and these are sensate, §3” (MED §24; REPRAESENTATIONES mutationum repraesentantis praesentium sunt SEN- SUALES,eaeque sensitivae §. 3). Sensitivus is aloanword. Baumgarten imports this epistemological neolo- gism along with its ethical implications from Wolff’stheory of desire into his Meditationes,whereittechnicallydoes not belong. Fordesire and cognition are two different psychological realms.Wolff defines desire in general as the soul’sinclination to an object due to the good represented in the object.¹⁶ Ade- sire is called rationalwhen it comes “from adistinct representation of the good”;¹⁷ in contrast,adesire is called sensate when it comes “from aconfused idea of the good.”¹⁸ It is against this backdrop that Baumgarten applies the at- tribute sensitivus to the representations he is interested in: “By sensate repre- sentations we mean representations receivedthrough the lower part of the cognitive faculty” (MED §3;REPRAESENTATIONES per partem facultatis cognos- citivae inferiorem comparatae sint SENSITIVAE). The risky transferfrom the theo-
Alfred Baeumler, Das Irrationalitätsproblem in der Ästhetik und Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zurKritik der Urteilskraft,2nd ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer,1967; repr., Darmstadt: Wissen- schaftliche Buchgesellschaft,1981), 214. See Christian Wolff, Psychologia empirica, methodo scientifica pertractata, qua ea, quae de anima humana indubia experientiae fide constant, continentur et ad solidam universae philoso- phiae practicae ac theologiaenaturalis tractationem via sternitur,new rev.ed., in Gesammelte Werke,ed. Jean École, vol. 2.5(Frankfurt,1738; facsimile, Hildesheim: GeorgOlms,1968), §579. Wolff, Psychologia empirica,§880. Wolff, Psychologia empirica,§580. 3.1 Psychology 35 ry of desire into epistemologyisagain elegantlymanaged by means of analogy. Both sensate desire and sensate cognition share the tertium comparationis of being confused, which Baumgartenmentions in the note to the third paragraph of the Meditationes:
Sincedesire,sofar as it derivesfromaconfused representation of the good, is called sen- sate, and since,onthe other hand, aconfused representation, along with an obscureone, is receivedthrough the lower part of the cognitive faculty,wecan applythe same name to confused representations, in order that they maybedistinguished from concepts distinct at all possible levels.
Quoniam appetitus quam diu ex confusa boni repraesentatione manat,sensitivus appella- tur: confusa autemcum obscura repraesentatione comparatur per facultatis cognoscitivae inferiorem partem, poterit idem nominis ad ipsas etiam repraesentationes applicari, ut distinguantur ita ab intellectualibus distinctis per omnes gradus possibiles.(MED §3n)
With regard to Baumgarten’simport of the concept sensitivus from Wolff’sanal- ysis of the appetitive faculties, ClemensSchwaiger pointsout that Baumgarten “does not take over asingle essential definition unchanged, and he introduces aseries of central new terms.”¹⁹ Most significantly, his “reformulation of the [Wolffian] ‘lex appetitus’ is […]kept morallyneutral.”²⁰ But even more remarkable thanthe foreign origin and transformation of the concept is, once again, Baumgarten’setymological technique, which he uses to displace the word sensitivus from the theory of desire into epistemology. The analogydoes not,however,obscure the fact that he must first semantically empty the concept sensitivus in order to be able to redefine it in the foreign dis- cipline. In emptying the concept of meaning,the surface of discourse again moves into the foreground and the argument retreats into the background. The made-up wordbuildsonthe root of sentire, sensio,and sensatio,aboveall through the addition of the letters itiv,which markthe performative aspect of sensation in the adjective.The German translations of Baumgarten’swritings nullify the etymologicallyproduced differencebetween sensitivus and sensualis by using the word sinnlich for everythingbased on the root sens. Imaintain this differencebyfollowing Aschenbrenner and Holther’stranslation of sensitivus as “sensate,” which Ihavechosen over the English word sensitive,since the latter term often denotes the quality of being easilyand acutelyaffected by external objects.
Clemens Schwaiger, “Baumgarten’sTheory of Freedom: AContribution to the Wolff–Lange Controversy,” in Fugate and Hymers, Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics,45. Schwaiger, “Baumgarten’sTheory of Freedom,” 46. 36 3Epistemology
In the transferofsensitivus,its original connotation from the theory of desire is not,however,entirelyreplaced but rather suppressed into latency.Desirere- mains desire and never fullybecomes cognition. Anditisimportant to remember that in rationalist philosophy, the appetitive faculties and the cognitive faculties are always juxtaposed. In his Metaphysica,Baumgarten defines the appetitive faculty as follows: “If Iendeavor or make an effort to produce some perception, i.e. if Idetermine the power of my soul, or myself, to produce some perception, I DESIRE. The opposite of what Idesire, IAVERT” (MET §663;Siconor seu nitor aliquamperceptionem producere, i.e. si vimanimae meae seu me determino ad certam perceptionem producendam, APPETO. Cuius oppositum appero, illud AVERSOR). Here Baumgarten makes the faculties of the soul, which are in them- selvesonlypotential powers,dependent on arepresenting power and defines this power through its effect.One can thus understand desire and aversion as purposeful (dis)inclinations towardanobject. The cognitive facultyand the appetitive facultyrelate to each other in such a waythat desire and cognition can never be fullydetached from one another.²¹ Mario Casula stresses the dependence of the appetitive faculty on the cognitive faculty.²² Desire is not just ablind drive;rather,asaperception or representa- tion, it is whitewashed so as to appear to some extent logical. The common de- nominator consists in the fact that Baumgarten understandscognitionand de- sire as representations. Representations that contain the basis of an intention are the “moving” causesofdesires and aversions: “Whoever desires or averts in- tends the production of some perception (§341, 663). Hence, the perceptions con- taining the ground of this sort of intention are the impelling causes of desire and aversion, and thus they are called the INCENTIVESOFTHE MIND
See Ernst Bergmann, Die Begründung der deutschen Ästhetikdurch Alex. Gottlieb Baumgarten und GeorgFriedrich Meier (Leipzig:Röder &Schunke, 1911), 166–172. See Mario Casula, La metafisica di A. G. Baumgarten (Milano: Mursia, 1973), 177– 180. 3.1 Psychology 37 sire, it must not leave me indifferent,but rather must plainlyand simplyplease me.”²³ Cognition is thus living when it effectively sets desire or aversion in mo- tion; and desire or aversion are successful whenthey have reachedtheir goal in the future.Baumgarten thus makes the soul dynamic and differentiates between moving and inert cognition: “KNOWLEDGE [I translate as “cognition,” F. B.], in- sofar as it contains the incentivesofthe mind, is MOVING (affecting,touching, burning,pragmatic, practical, and, more broadly, living), and insofar as it does not contain these incentives, it is INERT(theoretical and, more broadly, dead)” (MET §669;COGNITIO,quatenus elateres animi continet,MOVENS(affi- ciens, tangens, ardens,pragmatica, practica &vivalatius), quatenus minus, INERS (theoretica &mortua latius)). When one considers this context,itmakes sense that Baumgarten equates sensate cognition with intuition and movement.Itthus guarantees an interpre- tation of the world far more effective than logic:
Hence,symbolic knowledge,assuch, is notablyinert (§652), and onlyintuitive knowledge is moving(§652). […]Therefore the vaster,nobler,truer,clearer,hence morelivelyordis- tinct,morecertain, and morebrilliant knowledge is, the greater it is (§515, 531).
Hinc cognitio symbolica, qua talis,est notabiliteriners,§.652, sola intuitiva movens, §. 652. […]Ergoquo vastior,quo nobilior,quo verior,quo clarior,hinc vividior veldistinctior,quo certior,quo ardentior cognitio est,hoc maior est,§.515,531. (MET §669)
Finally, he captures the emphasis on movement in the opposition between living cognition (cognitio viva) and dead cognition (cognitio mortua):
The KNOWLEDGE THATMOVES effective desires or aversions,and ITS MOTIVE power (§222), is LIVING (more strictly, cf. §669, rousing or sufficient for what is to be done). The KNOWLEDGE, and ITS MOTIVE power(§222),ofineffective desiresoraversions is DEAD (morestrictly, cf. §669, insufficientfor whatever must be done, solicitation). The KNOWL- EDGE that moves complete desiresoraversions,and ITS POWER,isCOMPLETELY MOVING, and the knowledge that onlymoves incompletedesiresand aversions is IMCOMPLETELY MOVING. Livingknowledge,all else beingequal, is greater than dead knowledge,and in- completelymovingknowledge is less than completelymovingknowledge (§669).
COGNITIO MOVENS appetitiones aversationesveefficientes, &VIS EIUSMOTRIX,§.222. est VIVA(strictius cf. §. 669. incendens,sufficiens ad agendum). COGNITIO &VIS EIUSMO- TRIX,§.222. appetitionum aversationumveinefficientium est MORTUA(strictius cf. §. 669. insufficiens ad agendum, sollicitatio). COGNITIO movens appetitionesaversatio- nesveplenas,&VIS EIUSest COMPLETE MOVENS,movens tantum minus plenas est IN- COMPLETE MOVENS.Cognitio viva,caeteris paribus,maior est mortua, incompletemovens minor complete movente, §. 669. (MET §671)
Schwaiger, “Baumgarten’sTheory of Freedom,” 47. 38 3Epistemology
Like in the faculties of cognition,Baumgarten differentiates between ahigher ap- petitive faculty (facultas appetitiva superior)and alower appetitive faculty (fa- cultas appetitiva inferior). When desires and aversions are formedbythe higher faculty and are rational (see AE §689), he treats them as volitions and nolitions of the faculties of the will and of refusal:²⁴
Rational desire is VOLITION
Appetitio rationalis est VOLITIO.Volo. Ergo habeo facultatem volendi,VOLUNTATEM, §. 216. Aversatio rationalis est NOLITIO.Nolo, ergo habeo facultatem nolendi, NOLUNTATEM, §. 216. Facultas appetitiva superior est velvoluntas,vel noluntas, §689.Repraesentationes, volitionis nolitionisquecaussae impulsivae,sunt MOTIVA. Elateres animi, §. 669. velsunt stimuli, velmotiva, §. 677, 521. (MET §690)
When desire and aversion are formedbythe lowerfaculty,they are sensate (ap- petitiones&aversiones sensitivae; see MET§676). Baumgarten calls the faculty of sensate desire the concupiscible faculty(facultas concupiscibilis) and the fac- ulty of sensate aversions the irascible faculty (facultas irascibilis): “Sensitive de- sires and aversions arise either from obscure representations or from confused ones (§676,520). And, insofar as they are the impelling causes of desiring and averting,bothare STIMULI (§669)” (MET §677;Appetitus aversationesque sensi- tivae veloriuntur ex repraesentationibus obscuris,vel ex confusis,§.676,520. Utraeque, quatenus appetendi aversandiquecaussae impulsivae sunt,sunt STIMULI, §. 669). Together,the lower cognitive and appetitive faculties belong to the flesh (carus). Interestingly,desire and aversion can either be pure – that is the default mode of desire or aversion –“or they follow thatintellect in which there is some admixture of confusion, and these are volitions and noli- tions in which thereissome sensitiveadmixture” (MET §692;vel sequuntur in- tellectionem, cui aliquid admixtum est confusionis, &erunt volitiones nolitio- nesque,quibus aliquid admixtum est sensitivi). Thisleads to an interesting problem: “Then aCONFLICT BETWEEN THE INFERIOR AND SUPERIOR FACUL- TIES OF DESIRE (dissension)arises(aconflict between sensitiveand rational de- sire, between flesh and reason). […]That faculty of desire is VICTORIOUS through which Icompletelydesire or avert after aconflict” (MET §693;LUCTA FACULTATIS APPETITIVAEINFERIORIS ET SUPERIORIS (appetitus sensitivi &ra-
See 6.3.2 Parrhesia. 3.1 Psychology 39 tionalis, carnis &rationis). […]Per quam facultatem appetitivam post luctam plene appetoaut aversor,illa VINCIT). In the wake of this impure admixture of desire from the lower and higher faculties,Baumgarten stumbles on aparadoxinsections 20 on choice (arbi- trium) and 21 on freedom (libertas), aparadoxthatishighlyrelevant to his theo- ry of literature,both to the structure of literarydiscourse²⁵ and to the ethics of literature.²⁶ There sensate choice (arbitrium sensitivum) forms in the realm of de- sire the counterpart to rational free choice (liberum arbitrium): “The faculty of sensitivelydesiring and averting accordingtoone’sown preference is SENSITIVE CHOICE. The faculty of willingorrefusingaccording to one’sown preference is FREEDOM(free choice), cf. §707,708, 710(moral freedom, freedom in the unqual- ified sense)” (MET §719;Facultasappetendi aversandive pro lubitu suo sensitive, est ARBITRIUM SENSITIVUM, facultas volendi nolendive pro lubitu suo est (li- berum arbitrium) LIBERTAScf. §. 707, 708, 710. (moralis, simplicitersic dicta)). As Schwaiger explains, “With this conceptual opposition of sensibleand free choice, Baumgarten more distinctlyemphasizes the cognitive character of human freedom than does Wolff. Freedom, in astrict sense, belongs onlytowill- ing or rational desire […]not to sensible desire.”²⁷ In the paragraphs thatfollow,Baumgarten equipssensate desire and aver- sion with anoteworthyrationality, which moves bothofthem into close proxim- ity with the faculties of the will and refusal. He notices this when he is brooding over sensate choice and comes to the conclusionthat volitions and nolitions are always imbuedwith sensate choice:
Isensitively desireand avert manythings accordingtomyown preference.Therefore, Ihave sensitive choice (§216,719). Iwill and refuse manythings accordingtomyown preference. ThereforeIhavefreedom(§216,719). Manyactions of mine, manyactions of my soul, and the soul in manyofits own actions arefree. Somethingofthe sensitive is mixed with all of my volitions and nolitions(§692). Hencepurefreedom does not belongtome; for in my freest actions,myfreedom is mixed with sensitive choice (§719). Both sensitive and free choiceare actualized through the power of the soul for representingthe universe according to the position of my bodyinit(§712, 667).
Multaappetoaversorque sensitive prolubitu meo. Ergo habeo arbitrium sensitivum, §. 219, 719. Multa volo noloque pro lubitu meo. Ergo habeo libertatem §. 216, 719. Multae actiones meae, multae actiones animae meae, &anima in multis actionibus suis,sunt liberae. Omnibus meis volitionibus nolitionibusque sensitivi quid admixtum est,§.692.Hinc non convenit mihi pura libertas,inliberrimis meis actionibus arbitrio sensitivo mixta mea est
See 3.4.3Performativity. See 6.1Anthropology. Schwaiger, “Baumgarten’sTheory of Freedom,” 52. 40 3Epistemology
libertas,§.719.Tam arbitrium sensitivum, quam liberum, actuantur per vim animae reprae- sentativam universi pro positu corporismei in eodem, §. 712, 667. (MET §720)
If there is no pure freedom (puralibertas) and if, in addition, the upperand lower appetitive faculties cooperate to acertain extent in all decisions, then a problem appears in the theory of desire: the question inevitably arisesofwheth- er thereisnot onlyarational will but alsoa“sensate will,” which would be by definitionparadoxical. Since sensate desire and rational will as well as sensate aversion and rational refusal are analogous, the will reigns both in the realm of reason and in the realm of sensation. Andsuch asensate will is the actual con- tentious proposal of the “science of everythingthatissensate.” It is not the pos- itive revaluation of the lower faculties but rather the consequenceofasensate will thatriles rationalist philosophy. The scholarship has drawnmuch attention to the content of the argument but has ignored the etymological methodatits base. It has focused on how,con- trary to the alternative sensualis,the concept sensitivus emphasizes an indepen- dent, “productive modeling” in sensation.²⁸ Sensate cognition represents “man’s ability for structured creation, for meaningfullyformativeaction,”²⁹ an activity or an “independent organ”³⁰ that makes present the states, changes, and relations of the soul and the world in its ownparticularway.Due to acertain tunnel vision in philosophy, the discussion quicklyreaches apoint that abstracts from Baum- garten’sstylistic techniquesofargumentationand instead judgeshis concept of sensate cognition in terms of the history of philosophy. Such scholarship aboveall asks how Baumgarten’spsychologicallybased aesthetics relates to Kant’stranscendentallybased aesthetics. While some, like Heinz Paetzold, assume thatBaumgarten’sgroundingofaesthetics attains its goal with Kant,³¹ others, such as Schweizer,denysuch ateleology: “As the ‘sci- ence of all apriori principles of sensation,’‘transcendental aesthetics’ almost has nothing more than aname in common with Baumgarten’snew discipline.”³² In contrasttoKant,Baumgarten emphasizes, as Caygill explains, “the continuity between sensation and reason in place of astrict separation between the facul-
Schweizer, Ästhetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis,22. Steffen W. Groß, Felix aestheticus: Die Ästhetikals Lehre vom Menschen; Zum 250.Jahrestag des Erscheinens von Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens “Aesthetica” (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001), 70. Franke, Kunst als Erkenntnis,37. See Heinz Paetzold, Ästhetik des deutschen Idealismus:Zur Idee ästhetischer Rationalität bei Baumgarten, Kant,Schelling,Hegel und Schopenhauer (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner,1983), 54. Schweizer, Ästhetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis,23. 3.2 Rhetoric 41 ties of reason and sensation.”³³ AccordingtoPetraBahr,this position constitutes avirtuallyinsurmountable “distance” between Baumgarten and Kant: “Whereas Baumgartenremains in the imponderable threshold on the border of rationalist philosophy, which he duly strains yetcannot overcome, Kant sees the landscape of human consciousness in anew light – and recognizesits boundary lines, for which he designs amap with transcendental philosophy.”³⁴ In fact,however,this philosophical discussion is about nothing more than the meaning of the word sensitivus. Does it have atranscendental meaning? Does Baumgarten “already” consider the conditions of the possibility of process- ing sensate data?Does he alsoassume an operating system that serves as the foundation for this process but is itself independent from it?Ordoes the word have adifferent meaning – and in this context,different would mean one that is not transcendental. The etymologyofthe worddetermines whether the rela- tionship between reason and sensation is basedoncontinuity or difference, and it thereby also defines how Baumgarten’sand Kant’saesthetics are related. But onlyanevenmoreprecise analysis of Baumgarten’setymological meth- od – which does not allow itself to be reduced to simple statements and whose stylistic techniques are themselvesrelevant to meaning – can reveal the subtle- ties of the “science of everything thatissensate.” In the caseofthe word sensi- tivus,the etymological method leads away from psychologyinto rhetoric, where the concept obtains its profile.
3.2 Rhetoric
As aloanwordfrom the theory of desire, the concept sensitivus acquires asophis- ticated rhetorical profile in the Meditationes before Baumgarten elaborates it psy- chologicallyinthe Metaphysica. In the first six paragraphs of the Meditationes, he uses the concept to define discourse (oratio): “By discourse we shallunder- stand aseries of words which designateconnected representations” (MED §1; ORATIONEM cum dicimus, seriem vocum repraesentationes connexas significan- tium intelligimus). Thisdefinition invokes Baumgarten’sdecisive analogy, in which discourse leadstocognition and cognition to discourse as in acircle. He thus concludes that “connected representations are to be apprehended from discourse, §1”(MED §2;Ex oratione repraesentationes connexae cognoscen-
HowardCaygill, “Über Erfindung und Neuerfindungder Ästhetik,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 49.2 (2001): 239. See also Caygill, Art of Judgement,152. Bahr, Darstellung des Undarstellbaren,173. 42 3Epistemology dae sunt §.1). After introducing the unexpected loanword sensitivus for represen- tations formedbythe lower cognitive faculties in the third paragraph, he uses the term to define discourse that does not captureits objects with concepts but rather visualizes them: “By sensatediscourse we mean discourse involving sensate representations” (MED §4;ORATIO repraesentationum sensitivarum sit SENSITIVA).Fiveparagraphs later,this definition sets the stagefor turning to lit- erature, which is related to discourse as the particularisrelated to the general: “LITERATURE is perfectsensate discourse” (MED §9,mytranslation; Oratio sen- sitivaperfecta est POEMA). The general discipline of rhetoric correspondingly forms the background for the particular discipline of poetics.³⁵ Ut oratio cognitio sensitiva – this analogyisatthe epistemological epicenter of the “science of everything thatissensate.” While nothing changes in Baum- garten’setymological method – he transfers the word sensitivus from one side of the definitiontothe other so that it now defines discourse and cognition – dra- matic thingsstill take place in the opening paragraphs.Thisisbecause the con- cept sensitivus becomes the door for rhetoric to enter epistemology.Rüdiger Campe is thereforeright to ask if, since it is based on the Meditationes,Baum- garten’s “phenomenal aesthetics” interprets rhetoric and, further,ifthe Aesthe- tica even outlines “amaterial rhetoric and poetics.”³⁶ What role does rhetoric playinthis theory?Hehimself calls for an experimental use of rhetoric, which he differentiates from the usual technique of compilation (actum compilationis; see KOLL §114). But in contrast to this demand, the function of rhetoric in his writingsturns out to seem rather conventional. Following Wolff’s Philosophia rationalis sive logica (1728) and manyother texts,Baumgarten uses rhetoric as ablueprint.Al- though he simplynumbers the paragraphs of the Meditationes consecutively and does not divide it into parts or chapters, he still successively treats the rhetorical canons of invention (inventio), method (dispositio), and style (elocutio), as he outlines in the preface:
To this end, through§11 Ishall be occupied in developingthe notion of apoem and the appropriateterminology.From §13to§65 Ishall try to work out some view of poetic cog- nition [inventio]. From §65to§77 Ishall set forth that lucid method of apoem which is common to all poems [dispositio]. Finally, from §77to§107Ishall subject poetic language to arather careful investigation [elocutio]. AfterIhave in this wayexhibited the fruitfulness of my definition, Iregarditproper to compare it with some others and to add at the end a few words about poetics in general.
See 3.4Poetics. Rüdiger Campe, “Bella Evidentia: Begriff und Figurvon Evidenz in Baumgartens Ästhetik,” Deutsche Zeitschrift fürPhilosophie 49.2 (2001): 252. 3.2 Rhetoric 43
usque ad §. XI. in evoluenda poematis &agnatorum terminorumidea teneor,deinde co- gitationum aliquam poeticarumimaginem animo conciperelaboro a§.XIII–LXV. post haec methodum poematis lucidam, qua communis est omnibus,eruo a§.LXV–LXXVII. tan- dem ad terminos poeticos conversus eos etiam ponderare curatius instituo §. LXXVII–CVII. Definitionisnostrae foecunditatedeclarata eandem conferre visum est,cum non nullis aliis, &infine de poetica generali tria verba subnectere. (MED,[preface], 4–5)
He later organizes the Aesthetica likeaneducational book of rhetoric into two parts, afirst part on theoretical aesthetics (aesthetica theoretica) and asecond part on practical aesthetics (aesthetica practica). The first part again encompass- es the rhetorical canons:
Our aesthetics (§ 1), just like logic, her older sister by birth, consists of (I) aTHEORETICAL first part that is instructive and general, teaching(1) about matters and potential thoughts HEURISTICALLY(chapter 1), (2)about lucid organization, METHODOLOGY(chapter2), and (3) about the signsofwhatisthoughtand organized beautifully, SEMIOTICS(chapter3); and (II) aPRACTICAL second part that is applied and particular.
Aesthetica nostra §. I. sicuti logica, soror eius natu maior,est I) THEORETICA,docens,ge- neralis, P[ars]. I. praecipiens 1) de rebus et cogitandis HEURISTICE. C[aput]. I. 2) de lucido ordine, METHODOLOGIA C[aput]. II. 3) de signis pulcrecogitatorum et dispositorum, SE- MIOTICA, C[aput]. III. II) PRACTICA, utens, specialis.P[ars]. II. (AE§13)
In boththe Meditationes and the Aesthetica,asecond structure runs obliquely to this one; it organizes the paragraphs based on the canon of style. This is because Baumgartentreats threeconcepts that further delineate sensate discourse: con- fusio, claritas, and vita. These concepts obviouslymirror the threemost impor- tant categoriesofthe six categories of style.³⁷ EverythinginBaumgarten revolves around these threeconcepts: aestheticabundance (ubertas aesthetica)=confu- sio, aestheticlight (lux aesthetica) =claritas, and aesthetic life (vita cognitionis aesthetica)=vita.Healso organizes the fifty-three finished sections on heuristics (inventio) in the Aesthetica accordingtothe six stylistic categories. Within each set of sections, another schema from ancient rhetoric divides the argumentation into general and specific problems;³⁸ under specific problems, the canon of style is also extensively treated. In thesesets of sections, Baumgarten is particularlyinterestedininterpret- ingthe stylistic techniquesofornamentationasoperationsofbothsensate cog-
See 2.1Ambiguity. See Marie-Luise Linn, “A. G. Baumgartens Aesthetica und die antikeRhetorik,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fürLiteraturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 41.3 (1967): 429; Klaus Dock- horn, Macht und Wirkung der Rhetorik:Vier Aufsätze zur Ideengeschichte der Vormoderne (Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1968). 44 3Epistemology nitionand sensatedesire. To do so,heunderstandsrhetorical figuresasform- giving patterns andturns hisattentiontofiguresofthought(figurae senten- tiae), figuresoforder (figurae ordinis),and figuresofspeech(figuraesignifica- tionis,figurae dictionis;see AE §26).Baumgarten’sintentionisobvious:he aims to revealthe laws of sensation usingthe canonofstyle.Trustinginanal- ogy,hethus outlines “the singularity and diversity of things” accordingtothe figuresofdetail,oramplification(amplificatio), andfiguresofpresence, or hy- potyposis.³⁹ Againstthis backdrop, he canclassifysensate representationrhe- torically:
APERCEPTION whose power manifests itself in knowingthe truth of another perception, and ITS POWER,isPROBATIVE. Aperception whose power renders another perception clear,and ITS POWER,isEXPLANATORY(revealing). Aperception whose power renders an- other perception lively,and ITS POWER,isILLUSTRATIVE (depictive). Aperceptionthat renders another perception distinct,and ITS POWER,isRESOLVING (explicative).
PERCEPTIO,cuius vis se exserit in veritatealterius perceptionis cognoscenda, &VIS EIUS, est PROBANS(g), cuius vis alteram claram reddit,&VIS EIUS, est EXPLICANS (h)(decla- rans), cuius vis alteram vividam reddit,&VIS EIUS, est ILLUSTRANS (i)(pingens), quae al- teramdistinctam, &VIS EIUS, est RESOLVENS (k)(evolvens). (MET §531)
One could thus saythat the Aesthetica presents the first philosophyofthe rhe- torical figure, an endeavor that would onlybetaken up again two hundred years later by deconstruction. Baumgartenprofesses his commitment to this ex- periment in the Kollegium: “We will group them accordingtothe six parts of cog- nition” (KOLL §26; wir werden sie aber mitGrund nach den sechs Stücken der Erkenntnis einteilen). He thus organizes the sections of the first part of the Aesthetica as follows:
Sections VIII–XIIII: aesthetic abundance(ubertas aesthetica) Section XI: enrichingarguments (argumenta locupletantia) Sections XV–XXVI: aesthetic greatness (magnitudo aesthetica) Section XXIII: magnifyingarguments (argumenta augentia) Sections XXVII–XXXVI: aesthetic truth (veritas aesthetica) Section XXXIII: evidential arguments (argumenta probantia) Sections XXXVII–XXXXVIII: aestheticlight (lux aesthetica)⁴⁰ Section XXXXIII: illustrative arguments (argumenta illustrantia)
Rüdiger Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck:Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17.und 18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1990), 5. In the synopsis of the Aesthetica,the concepts claritas and certitudo are replacedbylux and persuasio. 3.2 Rhetoric 45
Sections XXXXVIIII–LIII (fragmentary): aesthetic persuasion (persuasio aesthetica) Section LIII (fragmentary): persuasive arguments (argumenta persuasoria) Planned sections: aestheticlife (vita cognitionis aesthetica) Planned section: passionate arguments (argumenta ardentia)⁴¹
In the course of this unconventional use of rhetoric, Baumgarteninverts the tra- ditional production phases of discourse. He does not proceed from sensate cog- nition (inventio) but from sensate representation(elocutio).⁴² The analysis of ex- pression therefore always precedes the analysis of thought,and stylistic categories are transferred from the canon of style into the canons of invention and method.Inother words, thought is “never clearlyseparated from aspects of linguistic expression.”⁴³ This “interest in representation corresponds with a changeinthe weighting of aesthetic inventio and elocutio in favorofthe latter. As has been shown, GeorgFriedrich Meier would later expand the significance of aesthetic elocutio to such adegreethatitalmost makes up the entire disci- pline of aesthetics.”⁴⁴ Dispositio and inventio are left out of rhetoric so that rep- resentation can become “coextensive with the rhetoricalingeneral.”⁴⁵ In projecting the canon of style onto the canon of invention, Baumgarten not onlyinitiatesconsiderable changes within the rhetorical system but also within the order of knowledge.Since such an extension cannot remain without conse- quences,Ulrich Gaier has diagnosed this “rhetoricization of thinking” as afun- damental epistemic change, which he sees not onlyinBaumgarten but also in Leibniz and Wolff.⁴⁶ The “downgrading of rhetoric into philosophy” comesat the end of the classical episteme,⁴⁷ which portrays cognitionand representation as transparent reflections of one another.Inthe episteme that follows, rhetoric – or at least inventio and dispositio – loses its significance,and representation be- comes opaque.Menninghaus describes this process as follows: “People have fre- quentlyoverlooked how the avowed end of the rhetorical model of discourse is onlyone side of aprocess; on the other sideofit, agenuinelyrhetorical concep- tion of languageasnontransparent action migrates into the basic assumptions of
See 3.4.3Performativity. See 2.1Ambiguity. Linn, “Baumgartens Aesthetica,” 428. Caygill, “Erfindung und Neuerfindungder Ästhetik,” 238. See also Linn, “Baumgartens Aesthetica,” 441–443. Menninghaus, “Darstellung,” 220. Ulrich Gaier, “Rhetorisierungdes Denkens,” in Homo inveniens:Heuristik und Anthropologie am Modell der Rhetorik,ed. Stefan Metzger and Wolfgang Rapp (Tübingen: Gunter Narr,2003), 19. Gaier, “Rhetorisierung des Denkens,” 19. 46 3Epistemology poeticsand philosophy.”⁴⁸ But when rhetoric moves into philosophy, the pure, free thought of rational logic also comes to an end since, instead of linguistic ex- pression, “thought becomes principallyaform of selectable elocutio.”⁴⁹ Men- ninghaus makes asimilar argument when he emphasizes thatelocutio still dis- plays remnants of inventio: “From amodern perspective,representation [Darstellung] is no longer merelyasupplementary,decorative performance; rather,ititself arranges the field of the represented, which was otherwise found in inventio and ordered in dispositio.Elocutio thereby becomes theoreti- cal.”⁵⁰ Campe thereforeconcludes that “philosophicalaesthetics assesses rheto- ric in one of its parts not as an art(of words) but rather as asimple or antecedent fact of the human (cognitive)faculty.”⁵¹ Like the eighteenth century in general, Baumgarten was vexedbythe effects of employing rhetoric in an experimental manner. This vexation reveals itself in the fact that he abandoned the Aesthetica,despite having onlycovered four and ahalf of the six stylistic categories, because he must have found that he had al- readysaid everything there was to say. Whatmore could he possiblystate about dispositio and elocutio when the Aesthetica alreadyexhaustively deals with the canon of style in inventio?Strictlyspeaking, nothing!And the concept of repre- sentation itself also produces problems.Baumgarten cannot exhaust its potential for his philosophicalproject because he remains committed to the rationalist ideal of transparencydespite the innovative forceatwork in his writings. This ideal is continuallychallenged by the materiality of representation, for which ra- tionalist philosophydoes not provide anyconcepts. Onlymuch later would phe- nomenologydevelop the concepts used in aesthetic theory today. Forthat rea- son, Baumgarten falls backonrhetoric to express his interests in materiality. Rhetorical terms function for him as “search term[s] for the material, pre-predi- cative shapingofour language,”⁵² as concepts for the pre-predicative aspect of representation. This causesimmense cracks in the foundationofBaumgarten’sphilosophi- cal project.Although he does everythinghecan in the Aesthetica to subordinate rhetoric to philosophyand degrade elocutio to apropaedeutic for epistemology, the ambiguity of aesthetics again breaks through preciselywherehetransfers the
Menninghaus, “Darstellung,” 221. Gaier, “Rhetorisierung des Denkens,” 19. Menninghaus, “Darstellung,” 220 –221. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,5–6. Sybille Krämer, “Sprache – Stimme – Schrift: Sieben Gedanken über Performativität als Me- dialität,” in Performanz:Zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Kulturwissenschaften,ed. UweWirth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 332. 3.2 Rhetoric 47 canon of elocutio into the canon of inventio. In contrast to what the scholarship has presupposed until now,this transfer does not carry out areplacement but rather maintains aconstitutively equivocal discourse. Baumgartendoes not treat representation to draw conclusions about cognition; nor does he simply treat representation. Rather,asinareversible figure, the epistemological argu- ments turn out to be rhetorical, and the rhetorical ones epistemological, and there is no wayout of this circle. In these etymological transfers from one disci- pline to another,ambiguity is continuallyproduced anew.⁵³ It is Kant who inadvertentlycompletes what Baumgarten started. That is sur- prising since Kant’sconceptsofpure sensation and pure intuition are epistemo- logicallyanchored. While Baumgarten’sconcept sensitivus marks aspecifically material interest in representation, Kant’sconcept of representation does not have amaterial aspect “in the sense of re-praesentatio, meaningreproduction” but rather has “the meaning of ‘sensatelyconstruable,’‘viewable,’‘immediately palpable to the senses.’”⁵⁴ There is, however,one passageinKant that is comparable to Baumgarten. At one point in the Kritikder Urteilskraft (1790), Kant is forced to employ an etymo- logical method, which immediatelyresults in acomparable surplus of insight into media theory.Likethe Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781), the Kritik der Urteils- kraft probes the question of how concepts and intuitions come together.Inthe relevant passage, Kant is concerned with the assertion thatideas of reason (Ver- nunftideen) do not have anycorresponding immediate intuitions. As aresult, the productive imagination must find mediated intuitions for rational ideas by using metaphors:
All intuitions that areascribed to concepts apriori are thus either schemata or symbols, the first of which contain direct,the secondindirect presentationsofthe concept.The first do this demonstratively,the second by means of an analogy (for which empirical intuitions arealso employed), in which the power of judgment performs adouble task, first applying the concept to the object of asensible intuition, and then, second, applyingthe mererule of reflection on that intuition to an entirelydifferent object,ofwhich the first is onlythe sym- bol.⁵⁵
With the symbol, Kant also transforms epistemologyinto rhetoric. As the form of intuition for ideas of reason, the symbol requires that Kant describe it in its ma- teriality;todoso, he falls back, like Baumgarten, on the canon of style, mainly
See 2.1Ambiguity. Scheer, Einführung in die philosophische Ästhetik,107. ImmanuelKant, Critique of the PowerofJudgment,ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Guyer and Eric Mat- thews (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2000), §59. 48 3Epistemology on analogical figures.Suchanintuition is just as much ahypotyposis – which means a “presentation [Darstellung], subjecto sub adspectum”⁵⁶ – as an episte- mological category.Ataloss for aconcept for this peculiar problem, Kant im- ports hypotyposis into his aesthetics: “The use of the word symbolic in contrast to the intuitive kind of representation has, of course, been accepted by recent logicians,but this is adistorted and incorrect use of the word: for the symbolic is merelyaspecies of the intuitive. The latter, namely (the intuitive), can be di- vided into the schematic and the symbolic kinds of representation. Both are hy- potyposes, i.e., presentations (exhibitiones).”⁵⁷ Kant turns to the concept of hypo- typosis when there are no other available terms for what he wants to say. Where he struggles with words, the canon of style appears in his epistemology,just as it does in Baumgarten’s. But in contrasttoKant’sthird critique, the problem Baum- garten encounters is not an epistemological state of exception but rather the rule. LikeKant,Baumgarten also refers to sensate cognition in the traditional philosophical sense as intuitive cognition (cognitio intuitiva; see MET§620). Be- cause intuitivecognition requires mediation, he also has to come to grips with the same methodological problem for which Kant employs the concept of the symbol. But Baumgarten onlyrefers to intellectual cognition as symbolic cogni- tion (cognitio symbolica). Forthe mediation of intuition, he instead mobilizes the loanword sensitivus. The ambiguity of aesthetics is thus bundledupinthis attribute such that sensitivus is not onlyitself an ambiguous concept but also aconcept that refers to the principle of ambiguity.Nostrategyofdisambiguation is in aposition to removethe ambivalenceintroduced by this concept because it always refers to two different things: amode of cognitionand amode of representation. The one can never be had immediatelybut is rather always mediated in the mirror of the other in such away that the permanent referenceofcognition to represen- tation and of representation to cognition inevitably drivesdiscourse about liter- ature into an infinite regress. How can one acknowledge representation even onlyfor asecond as the index (the materiallyfixed trace) of cognition if one al- ways projects cognitionfrom representation?One can thus bid farewell to the categorical separation of epistemologyand rhetoric. In Baumgarten, there is no cognition measured without mediation.
Kant, Critique of the PowerofJudgment,§59.See Rodolphe Gasché, “Some Reflectionsonthe Notion of Hypotyposis in Kant,” Argumentation 4.1(1990): 85 – 100. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment,§59. 3.3 Semiotics 49
3.3 Semiotics
The concept of representation confronts rationalist philosophywith materiality, which defies the ideal of the transparency of cognition. The discipline wherethis confrontation occurs is neither psychology(the theory of the soul) nor rhetoric (the theory of representation) but rather semiotics (the theory of signs).⁵⁸ Until the mid-eighteenth century,semiotics wasbased on the rationalist paradigm of representation; its theories uncoupled the relation of sign and meaning from all relations of similarity and described signification as apsychological processofrepresentation. AccordingtoDavid E. Wellbery,this rationalist para- digm of representation “replaces rhetoric with semiotics. Semiotics makes possi- ble the comparative studyofdifferent types of aesthetic representation, the de- scription of theirintrinsic limits and possibilities, the measurement of their relative efficacy.”⁵⁹ Before Baumgarten, rhetoric was “onlyseldom explicitlyconfronted with the representational theory of the sign”⁶⁰ – in the seventeenth century aboveall in Bernard Lamy – but after Baumgarten, semiotics was everywhere. He did not, however,establish asemiotic aesthetics. His specific interest in representation as it becomes manifest differentiates his approach from a “general theory of signs.”⁶¹ He is neither asemiotician nor amedia theorist,and that applies to all the steps in his argumentation. Semiotics (scientia de significanda) does not replace rhetoric (scientia de proponenda; seeKOLL §1)inhis discipline ei- ther; rather,itonlyadds afurther perspective to the ambiguity of aesthetics.⁶² Following Leibniz and Wolff, Baumgarten differentiates the representation of the signified (repraesentatio signati) from thatofthe sign (repraesentatio signi). Rationalist semiotics adds athird representationtothese twosince, as Mi- chel Foucault has explained,asign “can become asign onlyoncondition that it manifests, in addition, the relation that links it to what it signifies.Itmust rep- resent; but that representation, in turn, must also be represented within it.”⁶³
See Ursula Franke, “Die Semiotikals Abschlußder Ästhetik: A. G. Baumgartens Bestimmung der Semiotik als ästhetische Propädeutik,” Zeitschrift fürSemiotik 1.4(1979):345 – 359; Dietfried Gerhardus, “Sprachphilosophie in der Ästhetik,” in PhilosophyofLanguage:AnInternational Handbook of ContemporaryResearch,ed. Marcelo Dascal et al., vol. 2(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 1519–1528. Wellbery, Lessing’s “Laocoon,” 47. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,473. Wellbery, Lessing’s “Laocoon,” 70. See 2.1Ambiguity. Michel Foucault, TheOrder of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Rout- ledge,2005), 71. 50 3Epistemology
Based on this premise, Baumgarten differentiates logical signs from sensate signs:
Iperceive signstogether with the signified, and therefore Ihaveafaculty of joiningsigns together in arepresentationwith the signified, which can be called the FACULTY OF CHAR- ACTERIZATION (§216). […]The nexus of signification is known either distinctlyorindistinct- ly,and hencethe faculty of characterization will be either sensitive (§521) or intellectual (§402).
Signa cum signatis una percipio;ergohabeofacultatem signa cum signatis repraesentando coniungendi, quae FACULTASCHARACTERISTICA dici potest […]. Nexus significativus vel distincte, velindistincte cognoscitur,hinc facultas characteristicavel sensitiva erit, §. 521. velintellectualis,§.402.(MET §619)
The signified and the sign are thus the twosides of semiotics;and onlyamiracle – aformal function – makessure that the sign means something by representing that something.Since the Enlightenment always strivestosuppress the material aspectsofthe sign – aspects that Baumgarten comes face to face with – it “can be considered as fundamentallyinconflict with the sign.”⁶⁴ He manages this conflict by means of the concept sensitivus,which always emphasizes something in the process of signification other than what is signified.⁶⁵ Based on this at- tempt to capturethe sign, Bahr determines that Baumgarten’ssemiotics cannot do “without being qualified through rhetoric”: “Only in this waycan he set it off from the logical sign theories of the time […]. Asemioticized rhetoric should save the indexical and iconic aspects of the sign.”⁶⁶ It is not,however,the attention Baumgarten drawstothe sign’srepresenta- tional function, its function as an image, that subverts the paradigm of represen- tation but rather the attention he drawstothe sign’sown materiality.Hecomes to consider the materiality of signs through anew interest in representations that are essentiallybasedonarelational logic: signs stand for something else; they signify or represent this other. Such anegativity applies to bothintellectual and sensate representations. Material representations are affirmative. “They do not onlyrepresent or substitute for something,” as Dieter Mersch, who elaborates on semiotics by drawing on media theory,concludes, “but rather with them the thing itself comesinto view – not the thing of reference, the signified, but rather the reality of the symbolic or of the representation itself, its specific ma-
Wellbery, Lessing’s “Laocoon,” 71. See Dieter Mersch, “Medial Paradoxes: On Methods of Artistic Production,” in Critical Com- position Today,ed. Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (Hofheim: Wolke, 2006), 62– 74. Bahr, Darstellung des Undarstellbaren,51. 3.3 Semiotics 51 teriality or mediality.”⁶⁷ Mersch thus defines representations not as signs but as acts of “showing.”⁶⁸ In opposition to the rationalist ideal of transparency, Baum- garten proposes – likeother theorists after him – asign whose materiality makes the sign opaque. This semiotic model takes into account the “surplus of the sign over the signified in the representation of aesthetic ideas” and “the (reflexive) inclusion of unrepresentability in the representation itself.”⁶⁹ Forthatreason, the material surplus of the sign characterizes the sensate process of significa- tion:
If the sign is joined together in perception with the signified, and the perceptionofthe sign is greater than the perception of the signified, this is called SYMBOLIC KNOWLEDGE. If the perception of the signified is greaterthan the perception of the sign, the KNOWLEDGE will be INTUITIVE (intuited).
Si signum &signatum percipiendo coniungitur,&maior est signi, quam signati perceptio, COGNITIO talis SYMBOLICA dicitur,simaiorsignati repraesentatio, quam signi, COGNITIO erit INTUITIVA(intuitus). (MET §620)
In the Aesthetica,Baumgarten does not reservesuch amaterial surplus of the sign for anyspecific medium. On the contrary,different media of one sensate representation stand for each other unproblematically: “Herewedonot only mean language. One can alsoexplain oneself to someone else through other signs” (KOLL §37; Wirverstehen hier nicht bloß die Sprache. Man kann auch durch andere Zeichen sich dem anderen erklären), and one can do so “in facial expressions,words, brush strokes, and so on” (KOLL §13; in Mienen, in Worten, in Pinselstrichen usw.). All rhetorical figures and tropes can thus be performed with anysign material. Forametaphor is, accordingtoBaumgarten,
every elegant substitution of one perception for another,whether signified with transferred words,which is most familiar,orwith sounds substituted for each other by amusician, or with colors by apainter,orwhenthroughany other type of signyou express that youele- gantlyhaveone thinginmind in placeofanother.
omnem elegantem perceptionis unius proalterasubstitutionem, sive vocabulis translatis significetur,quod notissimum,sivesonis sibi invicem substitutis amusico, sive coloribus apictore, sive per aliud quodcunque signorum genus eleganter te prouno aliud cogitasse exprimas.(AE §780)
Dieter Mersch, “Paradoxien der Verkörperung: Zu einer negativenSemiotik des Symboli- schen,” in Aktualitätdes Symbols,ed. Frauke Berndtand Christoph Brecht (FreiburgimBreis- gau: Rombach, 2005), 34. Mersch, “Medial Paradoxes,” 67. Menninghaus, “Darstellung,” 219. 52 3Epistemology
In contrast to,for example, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’smedially differentiated semiotics in his Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (1766), the problem of medial difference and competition thus plays onlyanancillary role in this “earlytheory of the sign and communication” (see MED §§ 40 –41).⁷⁰ There is no trace of the premodern paragone in Baumgarten’swrit- ings. Steffen Groß finds that this “abstaining from fixing acanon of acceptable forms or media of expression” constitutes the “modernity und current relevance” of the Aesthetica,which Baumgarten seems to advertiseasbeing useful for all the arts (see AE §4).⁷¹ In this semiotics, the messenger or medium does not disappear after deliver- ing the message; instead, it remains present on the semiotic scene of the literary text.But with its concept of an abstract sign thatapplies to various media, the Aesthetica forfeitsmedial differentiation and insteadimplicitlyfocuses on the medium of literature.The materiality of the literary text plays amajor role in the Meditationes,and the prefaceofthat work bringstogethersemiotics and the three-stagemodel of production from rhetoric, the discipline responsible for the tangible materiality of the linguistic medium: “The various parts of sen- sate discourse are: (1) sensate representations, (2)theirinterrelationships, (3) the words, or the articulate soundswhich are represented by the letters and which symbolize the words, §4,§1”(MED §6;Orationis sensitivae varia sunt1)reprae- sentationes sensitivae, 2) nexus earum 3) voces sive soni articulati litteris con- stantes earum signa. §. 4. 1). Semiotically, the signs of sensate discourse are based on the links (nexus) between representations (repraesentationes) and signs (signa). And Baumgarten does not begin with individual signs but rather with links between multiple signs,which he bases on the rhetorical canon of method and transfers into semi- otics. This focus on links makes clear that his semiotics is based on atextual model.⁷² Against this backdrop, the concept of nexus becomes theoreticallyrel- evant because it is the first argument that ascribes aconcrete media profile to sensitivus. Adiscourse is onlysensate when it links togethermultiple elements, which Baumgartencalls marks (notae), following rationalist philosophy. With these links and marks, he is thinking of the materiality of sensate discourse, its words, and, most of all, its letters.Words or articulated sounds (voces sive soni articulati) consist in written letters (litterae) as their signs.This doubling on the side of the sign goes backtoAristotle, who couples sensate signs with
Groß, Felix aestheticus,88. Groß, Felix aestheticus,87. See 3.4.1Complexity;5.2.1 Sequentiality. 3.3 Semiotics 53 soundsand soundswith letters: “Now spoken soundsare symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds.”⁷³ ForAristotle, both soundsand letters are media, which means they are events in an emphatic sense – unrepeatable in their auratic eventfulness: “And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of – affections of the soul – are the samefor all; and what these af- fections are likenesses of – actual things – are also the same.”⁷⁴ Baumgartensteers clear of this eventfulnessofsounds – signs of asensate representation – by not defining them: “But these thingsthe poem has in com- mon with imperfect sensate discourse. We may, then, easilypass them over so as not to wander too far from our purpose. There will, therefore, be nothing here about the character of apoem as aseriesofarticulate sounds” (MED §97; sed haec ipsi cumimperfecta sensitiva oratione communia facile transimus, pro fine ne nimii simus. Nihil ergo de qualitate poematis, qua seriessonorum arti- culatorum). Instead of considering soundsasevents, he works with aconcep- tualized voice so as to address the problematic relation between the two medial representations of languageinany discourse: text and voice.Inhis few para- graphs on metrics – in which he refers not onlytoancient Greek and Latin po- etics but also to Hebrew philology – Baumgarten notes how the transformation from the acoustic medium of the voice into the graphic medium of the text does not proceed without aloss duetofriction: “By quantity of asyllable we mean that property which cannot be known apart from association with another sylla- ble. Therefore, quantity cannot be known from the value of the letters” (MED §98; QUANTITAS SYLLABAE est, quicquid in ea non potest cognosci sine com- praesentia alterius syllabae. Ergo ex moris elementorum non potest cognosci quan- titas). The orthographic measurement of syllables is thus alsofundamentallydif- ferent from the prosodic measurement of syllables because the latter is basednot on the number of letters but on the syllable as an internallystructured phonetic entity.Defining the length of syllables occurs in the context of quantitative met- rics, which uses aratio of 1:2for short:long: “Amongst the grammarians, the value of aletter is the unit of time necessary for pronouncingit. Now,since the matterconcerns onlysyllables,bythe ‘duration of asyllable’ we shall under- stand, allowing necessary changes, the unit of time necessary for pronouncing the syllable” (MED §100n; Moraingrammaticis est pars temporis elemento ef- ferendo necessaria, iam ergo quum de syllabis solum agendum est,mutandis
Arist., Int. 16a3–4. QuotedfromAristotle, De interpretatione,inTheComplete WorksofAris- totle: TheRevised OxfordTranslation,ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 1(Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1984). Arist., Int. 16a5–8. 54 3Epistemology mutatis per moramsyllabae intelligimus partem temporis efferendae syllabae necessariam). The reference to “grammarians”–boththoseofantiquity like Quintilianand Ciceroand those of Renaissance humanism likeJoseph Justus Scaliger and Gerhard JohannesVossius (seeMED §9)–shows what Baumgarten is aiming at.InDe causis linguae latinae (1540), Scaliger relates the differential principle of languagetothe paradigm of the sign. And Scaliger outlinesthis prin- ciple of clearlydifferentiable sounds with reference to the graphic medium of text and aconcept for the representation of sounds: litterae.⁷⁵ As aproper voice of the text,the so-called vox producesideal “lettersounds” that distinguish themselvesfrom real soundevents by their repeatability – and this voice stays silent. The vox, or voice, of the text,which Baumgarten wrestles with in acharac- teristicallymeticulous wayfollowing rationalist semiotics, appears in the Medi- tationes next to avoice whose sounds cannot be represented by letters,orat least not completely. There can thus be no doubtabout whether he differentiates between medial aspects and conceptual aspectsofwritten and spoken lan- guage.⁷⁶ Baumgarten’srationalist model of the linguistic sign assumesthat it represents both asound and the letterthat represents that sound. Forthe letter to represent the sound, it must be able to recall the sound concept;that is, it must recall the concept of the other medium. Since he understands letters as sig- nifying sounds, Baumgartenmoves soundstothe sideofthe signified. Along these lines, Charles S. Peircedetermines that the meaning of asign always con- tains “the translation of asign into another system of signs” as its interpretant.⁷⁷ From this, it follows that “the meaning of asign is the sign it has to be translated into.”⁷⁸ But the matter is even more intricate. Baumgarten not onlydifferentiates the concepts of signs and the media of their realization but also assumesthatthe
See GregorVogt-Spira, “Voxund Littera: Der Buchstabe zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schrift- lichkeit in der grammatischen Tradition,” Poetica 23.3/4 (1991): 295–327, esp. 311–315;Albrecht Koschorke, Körperströme und Schriftverkehr: Mediologie des 18. Jahrhunderts,2nd ed. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2003), 323–346. See Wulf Oesterreicher, “Grenzen der Arbitrarietät: ZumVerhältnis vonLautund Schrift,” in Mimesis und Simulation,ed. Andreas Kablitz and GerhardNeumann (FreiburgimBreisgau: Rom- bach, 1998), 218. See also Peter Koch, “Graphé: IhreEntwicklung zur Schrift,zum Kalkül und zur Liste,” in Schrift, Medien, Kognition: Über die Exterioritätdes Geistes,ed. Koch and Sybille Krä- mer (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1997), 43 – 81. Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Logic of Quantity,” in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce,ed. CharlesHartshorneand Paul Weiss, vol. 4, TheSimplestMathematics (Cambridge:Har- vard UniversityPress,1933),99. Peirce, “The Logic of Quantity,” 105. 3.4 Poetics 55 medial qualities are themselvespreserved in memory and retrievable in the pro- cess of remembering.Thus, despite all the rationalist abstraction, asecret Ur- szene of articulation is actuallythe basis for how he models the voice of the text.Every stimulation of the senses through optical,olfactory,haptic, or acous- tic stimuli is processed into asensate representation. He thus converts the rela- tion of concept and event into acycle in which the phonetic sequenceofanar- ticulated wordisperceivedbut this perception assumes the concept of the phonetic sequence: “Words,inthe respect that they are articulate sounds, be- long among audible things; hence they elicit sense perceptions” (MED §91; Voces,qua soni articulati, pertinentadaudibilia, hinc ideas sensuales produ- cunt). Baumgarten’smodel of the sign offers the possibilityofdefining all the qual- ities of the media of representation – including, for example, the graphic qual- ities of the textual imageperceivedbythe reader (lector;see MED§113) – as sen- sate representations. With this move, he converts the relation of event and concept into acycle withoutbeginning and end, since the perception of articu- lated soundsbothassumesand produces concepts. One can thus find the para- doxofaconceptualized performativity at the base of the Meditationes. In Baum- garten, acomplex semiotic process replaces the simple rationalist model of the sign. He integrates asyntactic complexity,which creates alinking of signs,with a medial complexity of text and voice, breaking through, in multiple respects,the rationalist fixation on the singular word.
3.4 Poetics
3.4.1 Complexity
Turning rhetoric and semiotics into aesthetics depends on qualities of literary texts.Toanalyze these qualities in more detail, Baumgarten drawsonconcepts from poetics instead of from rhetoric, aswitch that forces him to determine heu- risticallythe importance of literaturewithin the framework of rhetorical argu- mentation. That he then works with acategorical differentiation between rheto- ricus and poeticus is indicatedthrough the most important analogyinthe Meditationes – through Baumgarten’snotoriouslyrepeated phrase sensate, hence poetic (sensitvus ergopoeticus). With this switch from rhetoric to poetics, he generates the added value of aesthetic cognition over “merely” sensate cog- nition, which in the end does aim to applyaconcept.This added value is thanks to the harmless replacement of one wordwith another.Henot onlyensures that 56 3Epistemology the “sensuousconstitution”⁷⁹ – and that means the “stock”⁸⁰ of an object’ssen- satelyperceivable qualities – is recognizedand conceptuallyclassified but also that this process goes hand in hand with attention to the nondiscursive, “phe- nomenalpresenceofthe object,”⁸¹ which does not enter into the archive of knowledge that is held to be true. On this basis, Martin Seel differentiates sensate cognition from aesthetic cognition, and this differentiation formsthe coreof Baumgarten’stheory of literature in the Meditationes. In articulatinghis theory of literature, Baumgarten replaces the word dis- course with the word literature,for which the samethingsapplyasfor discourse: “The several parts of apoem [I translate as “literature,” F. B.] are:(1) sensate rep- resentations,(2) their interrelationships, (3) words as their signs,§9, §6”(MED §10; Poematis varia sunt, 1) repraesentationes sensitivae 2) earum nexus 3) voces earum signa. §. 9. 6). This replacement specifiesthe preconditions for discourse that Baumgarten creates with the concept sensitivus,but instead of sensate dis- course, suddenlyperfect sensate discourse is being put to the test: “By perfect sensate discourse we mean discourse whose various parts are directed toward the apprehension of sensate representations, §5”(MED §7;ORATIO SENSITIVA PERFECTA est, cuius varia tenduntadcognitionem repraesentationumsensitiva- rum. §. 5). At first,the differencebetween sensate discourse and perfect sensate discourse is not an essential differencebut aquantitative one, so Iwould actual- ly propose first translating perfectus at the disciplinary interface of poetics and rhetoric as “complete” instead of immediatelyarguing on ametaphysical level with “perfect.” Adiscourse is more completethe more marks it integrates: “A sensate discourse willbethe moreperfect the more its parts favorthe awakening of sensate representations, §4,§7”(MED §8;Quopluravaria in oratione sensi- tivafacientadexcitandas repraesentationes sensitivas, eo erit illa perfectior. §. 4. 7). Afterdefining completesensate discourse by this gradation,Baumgarten sim- plyreplaces it with the concept of literature, which stands at the end of the scale since it integratesthe most marks: “LITERATURE is perfect sensate discourse” (MED §9,mytranslation; Oratio sensitivaperfecta est POEMA). But behindthis definition hides nothing other than an affirmation of the “phenomenal individuality”⁸² achieved by literary texts.While sensate cognition can storeits objects in aconceptual archive,literature – especiallyinits poetic passages – is characterized by the highest possible degree of completeness and
Martin Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing,trans. John Farrell (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2005), 45. Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing,46. Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing,25. Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing,28. 3.4 Poetics 57 so usuallybyanopenness thatdoes not aim for conceptual fixation. Literature is thus the most prominent and worthyexample of aesthetic cognition. Andinan ingenious move, Baumgarten transforms the argument of quantity into one of quality by making the substantive poema into the adjective poeticus: “By poetic we shall mean whatever can contributetothe perfection of apoem” (MED §11; POETICUM dicetur quicquid ad perfectionempoematis aliquidfacere potest). With the adjective poeticus,herefers to aspecific structure of discourse oriented to- ward an excellence that elevates the material surplus of the literarytext into a distinguishing criterion. Discourse has apoetic structure when it deviates stylis- ticallyfrom “normal” discourse. Irefertothis structure as the structureofliterary discourse. With confusio, claritas,and vita,Baumgarten conceptualizes threefunctions of the structure of literary discourse: the functionsofcomplexity,opacity,and performativity. These threefunctions follow from one another and correspond in the Aesthetica to ubertas aesthetica,lux aesthetica,and vita cognitionis aesthetica,respectively.Todescribe these functions in his theory of literature, he can continue to relyonthe six rhetoricalcategories of style, which serveas categories of perfection in the Metaphysica and the Aesthetica: “Thereforethe vaster,nobler,truer,clearer,hencemore lively or distinct,more certain, and more brilliant knowledge is, the greater it is (§515,531)” (MET §669;Ergoquo vastior,quo nobilior,quo verior,quo clarior,hinc vividior veldistinctior,quo cer- tior,quo ardentior cognitioest,hoc maior est,§.515,531). Iwill begin by reconstructing the first function of the structure of literary dis- course: complexity.The starting point is, as stated, the poetic passages of literary texts.Eventhough single marks can be sensatelydiscerned in such pregnant representations (repraesentationes praegnantes),⁸³ there are too manytopro- cess,sothe passagecannot be captured in aconcept.This main idea leads Baumgarteninthe Meditationes to adescendingseriesofobjects from the higher genus, the lower genus, and the species down to individual objects (see MED §20): “Individuals are determined in every respect.Therefore, particular repre- sentations are in the highest degree poetic, §18”(MED §19; Individua sunt omni- mode determinata, ergo repraesentationes singularessuntadmodum poeticae §. 18). Thisiswhy his theory of literature is grounded in examples; as asingular term that represents abundle of marks, an example is preferable to anygeneral term.⁸⁴ Surprisingly,Baumgarten demonstrates the example’sparticularitywith proper names, which – like rhetoricalantonomasia – are poetic duetotheir
See 4.1.3Twilight. See 2.2Analogy. 58 3Epistemology abundanceofmarks: “Proper namesare names designating individuals.Since these are highlypoetic, proper namesare alsopoetic, §19”(MED §89; Nomina propria sunt individua significantia, quae quum admodum poetica, poetica etiam nomina propria §19). Baumgarten’stheory of literature depends on this conceptuallyundefinable abundanceofmarks in poetic passages. Because he always relates epistemology and media theory,⁸⁵ the affirmation of particularity requires the affirmation of a harmony (consensus) that,ashesaysagain and again in the Aesthetica,isaphe- nomenon (AE§18;qui phaenomenon sit,§.14).⁸⁶ This harmonic unity is not phe- nomenallymanifest on the level of thoughts or organization but rather on the level of signs.Because Baumgarten attends in the Aesthetica to phenomena as phenomena, he alsotakes into consideration the difference between sensate and aesthetic appearance,which corresponds in the Meditationes to the differ- ence between the attributes rhetoricus and poeticus. On this difference, Seel notes that “bothare ways in which the empirical appearance of an object is ac- cessible. Aesthetic appearingisthus amode of the sensuous givenness of some- thing.” This is because aesthetic objects “are giventousinanoutstandingly sen- suous manner; they are grasped by us in an outstandingly sensuous way.”⁸⁷ Following Baumgarten three decades later,Kant attributes this quantitative excellence to,above all, the mode of the aesthetic idea. He defines the aesthetic idea as “thatrepresentation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possiblefor anydeterminate thought, i.e., concept,to be adequate to it,which, consequently, no languagefullyattains or can make intelligible.”⁸⁸ In acomparable waytoBaumgarten, when Kant writes that it “oc- casions much thinking,” he meansitinathoroughlyquantitative sense: “The aesthetic idea is arepresentation of the imagination, associated with agiven concept,which is combined with such amanifold of partial representations in the free use of the imagination that no expression designating adeterminate concept can be found for it,which therefore allows the addition to aconcept of much thatisunnameable, the feeling of which animates the cognitive facul- ties and combines spirit with the mere letter of language.”⁸⁹ From asimilar quantitative point of view,Baumgarten defines sensation – as well as the other sensate and intellectual cognitive faculties – using Leibniz’s and Wolff’stwo-coordinate system. One of its axes measures the recognizability
See 2.1Ambiguity. See 4.1.1Perfection. Seel, Aesthetics of Appearing,22. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment,§49. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment,§49. 3.4 Poetics 59 of arepresentation and stretches from obscure(cognitio obscura) to clear (co- gnitio clara); its other axis measures the differentiability of the marks of arep- resentation and ranges from distinct (cognitio distincta) to confused (cognitio confusa). Intellectual representations aim to be clear and distinct,while sensate representations aim to be clear but confused (repraesentatio claraetconfusa; see MED§12; MET§§519–533). Clear,confused representations guarantee the recognizability and repeatability of their marks but not differentiation or identi- fication (see MED§§13–14). Knowledge is “confused,” as Leibniz explains, “when Icannot enumerate one by one marks [nota]sufficient for differentiating athing from others, even though the thing does indeed have such marks and requisites into which its notion can be resolved. And so we recognize colors, smells, tastes, and other particular objects of the senses clearlyenough, and we distinguish them from one another,but onlythrough the simple testimony of the senses, not by wayofexplicit marks.”⁹⁰ In fact,however,Baumgarten’s concepts have less to do with Leibniz’sthan one might initiallythink.Inpartic- ular,Baumgarten seems to take the attribute confusus somewhat literally. Al- though the two functions of complexity (confusio) and opacity (claritas) are com- plementary,their respective etymologies emphasize different aspectsofthe structure of literary discourse. “When it is said thatpoetry is confused,” as Aschenbrenner and Holther state to explain their translation of confusus, “it is meant that its representations are fused together and not sharplydiscriminated. (The reader of the Reflections must be careful to keep fusion foremost here and not confusion in the derogatory sense.)”⁹¹ The etymological playisbasedonthe meaning of the Latin words fusio and confusio. The translators emphasize that representations in literarytextsflow into one another like liquids mixing togeth- er. Based on the etymological proximitytofusus,the spindle (of the Parcae), I think it is even more productive to shift the metaphorical resonance for confusus from liquids to textiles in the sense that atextile is acomplex, interlinked struc- ture. In the Meditationes,Baumgarten at one point speaks of singular terms as complex concepts (conceptus complexus; see MED§23), and in the Aesthetica, he correspondingly equates complexus with abundance (see AE §§ 731– 732). In sum, he is interested less in confused cognition than in complex cognitio (co- gnitio complexa), cognition in which manymarks are con-fused, or fused togeth- er.Aglance at the Kollegium,inwhich he mathematicallycalculates complexity
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Meditations on Knowledge,Truth, and Ideas(1684),” in Philo- sophical Essays,ed. and trans. RogerAriew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis:Hackett,1989), 24. Karl Aschenbrenner and William B. Holther, “Introduction,” in Baumgarten, Reflections on Poetry,21. 60 3Epistemology and makes proposals for increasingthe number of marks, can substantiate the degree to which Baumgarten actuallythinks about this in amaterial manner: “One first thinks, for example, of only10marks of athing and afterwards, in the mixture of clear and confused, one thinks of the thing perhaps in 150 marks” (KOLL §80; Man denkt sich z. B. erstlich nur 10 Kennzeichen voneiner Sache und hernachinder Mischung vomKlaren und Dunkeln denkt man die Sache vielleicht in 150 Kennzeichen). Complex cognition assumes, of course, acertain form of intuition in which a representation is giventoconsciousness.This is whythe phenomenon of the se- ries is central to Baumgarten’stheory of literature. He alreadysettled on the se- ries in the first paragraph of the Meditationes as the definingcriterion for dis- course. In series, marks not onlyfollow one another but are alsofirmly located in their sequence such that the spatial relations between the linked marks can be described. Thequestion as to whether or not Baumgarten relates the spatial form of intuiting literature to the graphic medium of text does not ac- tuallyplayarole in his argumentation. Even if one did not start – as he in fact does – from sequencesofletters but rather onlyfrom phonetic sequences,the spatial form of intuition would remain constitutive for the literary text.Inthis case, one would have to treat akind of “textual phoneticism” that can be real- ized either graphicallyoracoustically.⁹² The poetic passages in literary texts thus lead Baumgarten to syntagmatic structures with at least two parts and usuallyinfinitelymany. He delineates these structuresduring along and tedious foray through the rhetorical canon of style, mainlythrough the figures of amplification. In searchingthere for the logic of literature, he encounters the so-called figures of repetition, figures that link their marks into aspatial composition (see MED§39) according to the maxims of similar with similar (simile cum simili) and related with related (cognatum cum cognato; see MED§§72, 69). In the Aesthetica,hedistributes his analyses of the figures of repetition into sections on enriching,magnifying, and evidential arguments. There he also registers the established phonological and morphological figures of repetition: homoeoteleuton, anaphora, epiphora, symploce, repetitio, epizeuxis, epanalepsis, anadiplosis, ploce, pleonasm, and polyptoton. Every form of repetition is at first an “intratextual copy” because the “element thatqualifies as (‘mere’)repetition […]refers to an earlier” ele-
See 3.3Semiotics. 3.4 Poetics 61 ment.⁹³ One could thus consider the figure as amatrix of literature. It is formed by the aesthetic rule: out of one, make two. Fortrained phenomenologists such as Eckhard Lobsien, the form of intu- ition in which spatial simultaneity is givenimmediatelyentails also considering the temporal form of intuition. “One can onlyspeak of arepetition if the percep- tion of an element (A) is explicitlyaccompanied by an awareness thatitactually has to do here with the repetition of an earlier element (that is, with AO,ormore precisely, AO [A]).”⁹⁴ As soon as consciousness links two elements or marks of a series together, this mutual dependence of the spatial and temporalforms of rep- etition becomes manifest.Lobsien thus describes the spatiotemporalstructure of the literary text as follows: “Rhetorical repetition bringsout the similarity of signs (from the level of phonemes up to the level of the entire text)inthe organi- zation of succession; it assembles series of correspondence and paradigmatic se- quences in linear succession”⁹⁵ because “one and the sameitem [appears] at two different points in time.”⁹⁶ In his aesthetic theory,Baumgarten does not,howev- er,consider aesthetic repetition in which marks can be experienced in their spa- tial “simultaneity.”⁹⁷ Instead, aesthetic repetition remains what it was as rhetor- ical repetition: arelation of marks that are reproduced in aseries and can only be experiencedsuccessivelyintheir linking. In further elaborating on the phenomenon of repetition, Baumgarten deline- ates four relations of identity between repeated elements: they can be similar, equal, congruent,ormarkedlythe same(see AE §735). It is possiblethatheim- ported his categories from Aristotelian metaphysics or rationalist philosophy. But in the disciplinary context of topics, Ciceroand others translate these logical and ontological relations into linguistic, material ones.⁹⁸ In the course of this mate- rialization, the categorial differences between the various relations of identity lose their distinctiveness such that Baumgartenonlyusesthe concepts to evalu- ate greater or lesser degrees of identity,resulting in astructural approach to the phenomena. Figuresare basedonthe technique of sensate mnemonics and sen- sate wit (see MED§73)because they constituteeither relations of correspon- dence (ingenium) or relations of difference(acumen;see MET§640). Following
EckhardLobsien, Wörtlichkeit und Wiederholung:PhänomenologiepoetischerSprache (Mu- nich: Wilhelm Fink, 1995), 15. Lobsien, Wörtlichkeit und Wiederholung,15. See also Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repeti- tion,trans. Paul Patton (London: Bloomsbury,2013). Lobsien, Wörtlichkeit und Wiederholung,23. Lobsien, Wörtlichkeit und Wiederholung,22. Lobsien, Wörtlichkeit und Wiederholung,23. See Cic., Top. 2.7–9; De or.2.130. 62 3Epistemology
Roman Jakobson, we can saythatBaumgarten’stypologyoffigural operations does not just try to differentiaterelations of identity (that is, repetitions of the same elements)from relations of equalityand similarity but also that each of these relations – and not merelythe method of forming asyntagm –“projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination. Equivalenceispromoted to the constitutive device of the sequence.”⁹⁹ This is whyBaumgarten is aboveall interestedinfigures thatcan be catego- rized as amplifying adiscursive object.Asfigures of quantity,they produce text by dissecting adiscursive object into all its marks and lining up the elements ac- cording to the rules of syntax (see MED§20n). He fundamentallydifferentiates between amplification thatonlydefines one object and amplification that moves from one object to another.Hethen adds asecond differentiation to this first one. Sometimes amplification divides an object into its marks and subordinates them. This wayofamplifying the object aims for aself-contained, closed repre- sentation of it that encompasses the object in all its marks. To this kind of am- plificationbelong the figures of definition (determinatio; see MED§§19–21, 50 –52), addition(epitheton; see MED§86), and description (descriptio; see MED§§54–55); one would also expectenumeration (enumeratio) and distribu- tion (distributio) to belong here. To this group Baumgarten adds enriching,¹⁰⁰ magnifying,¹⁰¹ evidential,¹⁰² illustrative,¹⁰³ and persuasive figures in the Aesthe- tica.¹⁰⁴ Alternatively,amplification can simply collect the marks of an object and coordinate them in arepresentation that never completelygrasps the object in its manifold marks and relations. “Textsofthis kind,” notes Heinrich Plett,asifhe
Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” in Language in Literature,ed. Krystyna Pomor- ska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge:BelknapPress of HarvardUniversity Press, 1987), 71. See section 11 on argumenta locupletantia: pleonasmus (AE§145); synonymia, synthesis, ellipsis (AE§146); hypallage,homoeoteleuton, periphrasis (AE§147); praeteritio, synathroismus (AE§148). See section 23 on argumenta augentia (followingPseudo-Longinus’s On the Sublime): αὔξη- σις (amplificatio) – augmentum/incrementum (AE§330); meteora(AE §331); hypotyposis (AE §332); repetitio (AE§333); hyperbaton, climax, gradatio (AE§334); anticlimax (AE§335);meta- phora, similia, comparatio (AE§336); hyperbole (AE§§339–341); polyptoton (AE§342);ana- phora (AE§343); epistrophe/epiphora (AE§344); symploce, epanalepsis,anadiplosis,ploce, epizeuxis (AE§345); synathroismus (AE§348); parrhesia (AE§349); exclamatio (AE§351). See section 33 on argumenta probantia: sententia (AE§549); definitio, descriptio (AE§551). See 3.4.2Opacity. See 6.3.1 Ethopoeia. 3.4 Poetics 63 werereferring directlytoBaumgarten’stheory of literature, “can be either clearer or more cryptic than others.”¹⁰⁵ One wayorthe other,amplification is, of course, always threatened with los- ing sight of the object or talking it to death. Baumgarten’sexamples show how increasinglydistinguishing the marks constantlycrosses the limit of perception into knowledge,leading him to justify famous examples of digressive series like the famous Homeric catalogue of ships:
Our tyro poets,far from observingthis nicety of apoem, turn up their noses at Homer, who tells in Iliad II of the Leaders and chieftains,commandersofships,and all the fleet. In VII he tellsthe stories of all those whocrossed Hector’spath. In the Hymn to Apollo he lists the manyplaces sacredtothe god. Likewise, in Virgil’s Aeneid,anyone whoreads through book VII and followingwill have manyopportunities to observethe same thing. We mayalso cite,inthe Metamorphoses of Ovid, the enumeration of the dogs who rend their master to shreds.
Nostris Choerilis tantum abest,utobservetur haec poematis elegantia, ut potius naso adun- co suspendant Homerum Il. β. ηγεμονας ϰαι ϰοιρανȣς, αρχȣςαυνηων νηας τε προπασας di- centem, narrantem Il. η omnes,Hectori qui obviam ire sustinebant, in Hymno autemApol- linis plurima regnantis dei loca sacra recensentem. Idem in Virgilii Aneide, qui libr.VII. finem &posteriores evolverit satis superque notarepoterit.Addatur &Ovidii catalogus canum dominum lacerantium in Metamorphosi.(MED§19n)
ForBaumgarten, the most significant digression is in Horace’sfirst ode. Such ex- amplesare particularlyexciting since they expand the links of the structure of literarydiscourse; in them, all words function as “nodal points of numerous ideas”¹⁰⁶ and so open up the literary encyclopedia:¹⁰⁷
If therewere no merit in puttingnarrower concepts for broader ones, why, then, in this poem “great-grandsires” for ancestors, “Olympic dust” for the dust of the Games fields, “the palm” for the prize, “Libyan threshing-floors” for productive countries, “the circum- stances of Attalus” for affluence, “Cyprian beam” for atrading ship, “Myrtoansea” for a dangeroussea, “Africus strugglingagainst the Icarian floods” for the wind, “Old Massic” for awell-aged wine, “the Marsian boar” for adestructive animal, and so on?
Heinrich F. Plett, Einführung in die rhetorische Textanalyse,9th ed. (Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 2001), 57. Sigmund Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” in TheStandardEdition of the Complete Psychological WorksofSigmundFreud,ed. and trans.James Strachey in collaboration with Anna Freud, vol. 5, The Interpretation of Dreams (Second Part) and On Dreams (1900–1901) (London: Hogarth Press,1964), 340. See 5.3.3Accessibility. 64 3Epistemology
Curineaatavi pro maioribus, pulvis olympicus, propulvere ludorum, palma pro praemio, Lybicae areae proterrisfrugiferis, Attalicae conditiones promagnis, trabs Cypria pro merca- toria, maremyrtoum propericuloso, luctans Icariis fluctibus Africus ,pro vento, vetus Mas- sicum pro vino generoso, Marsus aper profulmineo &c. nisi virtutis esset substituerecon- ceptibus latioribus angustiores. (MED §20n)
Similarity is, in the end, alsothe central category of the amplifications that leads to the comparisons,the heart of the figures of repetition:
By resemblances [I translateas“comparisons,” F. B.] we shall indicatethe means by which asuperior concept combines likewith like. Therefore,resemblances pertain to the same species or the same genus.Therefore,itishighlypoetic to represent resemblances along with an imagetoberepresented, §35.
SIMILIA sunt, quibus idem convenitconceptus superior,ergosimilia ad eandem speciem vel genus idem pertinent.Ergo cum repraesentando phantasmate uno repraesentare similia ad- modum poeticum. §. 35.(MED §36)
Baumgartenelaborates this further in the sections of the Aesthetica on illustra- tive arguments (argumenta illustrantia), which is based on the eighth and ninth books of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria. Baumgarten does not “rewrite” his men- tor Quintilian’stext in an emphatic sense but rather simplycopies from him.¹⁰⁸ To acertain extent,inalongwinded compilation, Baumgarten plays Quintilian off against Quintilian in such away that something new appears through this transtextual relation. Baumgarten explicates comparison in the broad sense (comparatio latius dicta), which, as the principal illustrative figure (figura princeps illustrantium), encompasses all the special cases of producingcomplex- ity qua similarity(see AE §§ 735, 742).The comparisons are based on substituting or linking words that are in arelation of similarityoraffinity to one another:
Hence the substitution of one beautifullythinkableperceptionfor another,orthe conjunc- tion of one with another,not without vividness,will produce an ARGUMENT that illustrates BY COMPARISON,which others call BY MEDITATION (§ 730). As for us,let us call the figure (§ 26)COMPARISON and collation IN THE BROADER SENSE, which includes assimilation but also extends to manykinds of arguments other than those based on somethingsimilar.
Hinc substitutio illius prohac pulcrecogitanda, velconiunctio illius cum hac, non sine vivi- ditate, dabit ARGUMENTUM illustrans ACOMPARATIS, quod aliqui dicunt AMEDITA- TIONE, §. 730, nos dicamus figuram, §. 26,COMPARATIONEM et collationem LATIUS, quae complectitur assimilationem, sed in multa etiam alia argumentorum genera diffundi- tur,quam quae petantur asimili. (AE§734)
Cf. Haverkamp, “Wiedie Morgenröthe,” 17. 3.4 Poetics 65
Baumgartendivides up comparison as the master figure into four groups;of these four groups,hefirst names those that are basedonthe four types of iden- tity:
Comparison morebroadly speakingcan include an argument that illustrates (1) from some- thingsimilar,equal, congruent,orquitemarkedlythe same; this figure is moreproperly called ASSIMILATION (§ 734) if similar,equal, congruent,orquitemarkedlythe same things areconjoined. It is also possible for one of these to be substituted for the other in thought.
comparatio latius dicta sub se comprehendet argumentumillustrans 1) asimili, aequali, congruente, notabilius eodem, quod figuradicitur apotiori ASSIMILATIO,§.734 si similia, aequalia, congruentia, notabilius eadem coniungantur.Potest et eorundemunum cogitan- do substituipro altero. (AE§735)
Yetcomparisons in which the relationship between object and detail is regulated accordingtootherrelations that go back to topics also belong to comparisons in the broad sense.These include comparisons based on relations of part and whole (comparatio maioris et minoris/comparatio adscendens et descendens; see AE §742), antitheses (antithesis; see AE §763), and comparisons in the nar- row sense (comparatio strictius dicta). Under the last of these, Baumgarten treats external amplification, which crosses the border from one object to another (see AE §773). This differentiation of the methodsoflinking comparisons reduces the dis- tance of the leap when one moves from the level of figures to the level of texts. The microstructure of figurality thus models the macrostructureoftextuality.
3.4.2 Opacity
Complexity and opacity are complementary functions of the structure of literary discourse. Yetthe scholarship has paid much more attention to the concept of claritas because Baumgarten uses it to analyze the evidentia of poetic passages. In Baumgarten, evidentia serves as the collective name for the entire registerof figures and tropes.¹⁰⁹ Bahr thus refers to evidentia as the “master trope” of Baumgarten’saesthetics.¹¹⁰ Evidentia certainlyhas aspecial place in his theory of literature; and in engagingwith evidentia,the very luminosity of the Enlight- enment is to some extent at stake. The epistemologicalpreeminence of intuition
Cf. Campe, “Bella Evidentia,” 253. Bahr, Darstellung des Undarstellbaren,109. 66 3Epistemology in the eighteenth century grants evidentia acentral role in metaphysics.¹¹¹ But even in rhetoric, the matter is not as simple as the one-size-fits-all definitions suggested in the scholarship. With regardtoevidentia, Baumgarten does not treat asingle concept but insteadconsiders the two stylistic categories of clarity (enargeia)and vividness (energeia) – which are tied togetherinthe rhetorical concept of evidentia – as two different functions of the structure of literary dis- course. Literature is therefore, in away Iwilldefine more precisely, bothclear (clarus) and vivid (vividus). With vividus (or vivus in the Aesthetica), the third function of the structure of literary discourse comes into play: the performativity of literature.¹¹² With regardtoclarity,Baumgarten combines the textile metaphors of the first literaryfunction, complexity,with visual metaphorstoproduce an algo- rithm: the more complex arepresentation is, the clearer it is – or,more precisely, the more extensively clear.For this differentiation, he adds athird axis to the Leibniz–Wolffian two-coordinate system; this third axis differentiates between the intensive and extensive clarity of cognition. Asensate representation is thus not distinct but confused, not obscurebut clear,and in this qualitynot in- tensively but extensively clear.With regard to the lowercognitive faculties,the Metaphysica states the following: “Therefore, clarity is increased by amultitude of notes [I translate as “marks,” F. B.] (§162).Greater clarity due to the clarity of notes can be called INTENSIVELYGREATER CLARITY,while greater clarity due to the multitude of notes can be called EXTENSIVELYGREATER CLARITY” (MET §531;Ergomultitudine notarum augetur claritas, §. 162. CLARITAS claritate nota- rum maior,INTENSIVE (a), multitudine notarum, EXTENSIVE MAIOR (b)dici potest). The resultofthis combination presents aparadox: the light of arepre- sentation increases, the more denselythe marks are interwoven (seeAE§747). Thus, if arepresentation’sdegree of complexity increases due to the number of marks, the degreeofclarity also intensifies:
When in representation Amoreisrepresented than in B, C, D, and so on, but all arecon- fused, Awill be said to be extensively clearer than the rest. [n] We have had to add this restriction so that we maydistinguish these degrees of clarity from those, alreadysufficientlyunderstood, which, through adiscrimination of character- istics,plumb the depths of cognition and render one representation intensively clearer than another.
Si in repraesentatione Aplurarepraesententur,quam in B. C. D. &c. sint tamen omnes con- fusae, Aerit reliquis EXTENSIVE CLARIOR.
See 4.1.2Truth. See 3.4.3Performativity. 3.4 Poetics 67
[n] Addenda fuit restrictio, ut distinguerentur hi claritatis gradus asatis cognitis illis, qui per notarum distinctionem descendunt ad cognitionis profunditatem, &unam repraesenta- tionem altera intensive reddunt clariorem. (MED §16; see also MED§§15, 17)
With this paradox, Baumgarten makes several unreasonable demands. How should something be clear if it is thicklywoven together at the sametime? Or, put differently, how can the successiveness of linking be converted into the si- multaneity of vision?Hetreats this problem in the Aesthetica in the sections on aesthetic light (lux aesthetica). With liberal recoursetoQuintilian,¹¹³ he ties the clarity of thicklywoven sensation to sensate perspicuity (perspicuitas sensi- tiva), which must be differentiated categoricallyfrom the concept of perspicuity in Cartesian logic (see AE §614). Since he obtains his concepts by aestheticizing logical conceptsbased on the analogicalmethod, the oldconcepts acquireato- tallydifferent meaninginthe new context.Contrary to intellectual perspicuity, which appears step by step, sensate perspicuity takes Baumgarten once again to the register of figures and tropes (see AE §852).Insection 43 on illustrative arguments (argumenta illustrantia), the concept of clarity acquires aprofile that sharpens the structure of literary discourse:
ARGUMENTS whose force (whether unique, moreproper, or now most worthyofconsider- ation) is to shed light on agiven perception areDECLARATIVE (explanatory). Accordingly, they impart perspicuity,either intellectual – such arguments areSOLVENT (analytic), such as adefinitionthat explainsthe particularnatureofany given thing (Cic., De or. 1.190) – or sensate(§§ 614, 618); such arguments exhibit brilliance, at times, to be sure, absolute bril- liance(§§ 617, 625), at other times,atany rate,some brilliance, and arepreferablycalled ILLUSTRATIVE (depictive).
ARGUMENTA, quorum (vel unica, velpotior,vel nunc maxime consideranda,) vis est,lucem datae perceptioni affundere, sunt DECLARANTIA (explicantia). Dabunt itaque perspicuita- temvel intellectualem, RESOLVENTIA (analytica) quale est definitio,propriam cuiusvis rei vim declarans,Cic. de Or.I.190.vel sensitivam, §614,618. nunc absolutam certe, §. 617, 625, nunc omnino nitorem aliquem exhibent, et apotiori dicuntur ILLUSTRANTIA (pingen- tia). (AE§730)
With such depictive arguments (argumenta pingentia), sensate “images” now trulystand at the center of Baumgarten’stheory of literature. Yetthey raise sur- prising points, since he does not consider the simultaneity of images and also does not advanceanemphatic concept of the image. The starting point of his analysis of the structure of literary discourse is rather the integration of visuality into the complexity of the literary text.
See Quint., Inst. 8.2.22–23. 68 3Epistemology
Like manyeighteenth-century theories of literaryimagery,Baumgarten’sis characterized by an analogical method:statements about the medium of the imageare applied to the medium of the text.Like others, he derives the visual function of languagefrom mental images (phantasmata): “for who would denythat an imageiswhat we have imagined?[…]What,then, are images if they are not newlymade (reproduced) impressions (representations) received from sense? This is what is intended here under the concept of thingssensed” (MED §28n; quis enim negaret phantasma esse, quod imaginati sumus?[…] Quid ergo phantasmata,nisi refictae (reproductae) sensualium imagines (reprae- sentationes) asensatione acceptae). Following this presumption, Baumgarten differentiates the media of pictures and textsbydescribing apicture as repre- senting just the surface of amental image(phantasma in superficie) and a text as images of words and discourse (phantasma vocum et orationis; see MED§§40–41). Projected onto the rationalist paradigm of representation, both picture and text can be combined into the Horatian analogy: “Poetryislike apicture” (MED §39n; Ut pictura, poesis erit). Both representations of pictures (repraesen- tationes picturarum) and images (phantasmata) are similar to the sensualidea (idea sensualis) of what they represent (seeMED §§ 38–41). That Baumgarten is using the attribute sensualis is due to the fact that the picture, as amedium closer to perception, is more stronglyanchored in reality thanliterature. He thus concludes: “Therefore, apoem and apicture are similar,§30” (MED §39; Ergo poema &picturasimilia §. 30). When he speaks of this imagery of literature, he oftenusesthe concept imago insteadofpictura and speaksofthe poetic image(imagopoetica). But neither the analogical method nor the reference medium of the picture is suitable to define the concept of claritas, though Baumgarten does not explain why. He merelyremarks:
Sinceapicturerepresents an imageonlyonasurface,itisnot for the picturetorepresent every aspect,orany motion at all; yetitispoetic to do so, because when these thingsare also represented, then morethingsare represented in the object than when they arenot, and hencethe representingisextensively clearer,§16.
Pictura cum repraesentet phantasmainsuperficietantum,eius non est omnem situm ul- lumque motum repraesentare, sed est poeticum, quia his etiam repraesentatis plurain obiectorepraesentantur,quam non repraesentatis iis,&hinc fit illud extensive clarius §. 16.(MED §40)
Atheory and critique of images thus go hand in hand in the Meditationes when, in an about-face, Baumgarten holds images to be less clear – and that means less poetic (seeMED §29) – than other sensate representations and even explicitly 3.4 Poetics 69 evaluates visions (visiones; see AE §490) negatively.The medial comparison does not,however,anticipate the arguments about the simultaneity of images and the successiveness of texts (see MED§§49–51) – arguments that will deter- mine the semiotic debate starting in France and Germany afew years later. In- stead, Baumgarten’sinterest in the reference medium of images simply langui- shes to such an extent thatinthe end images entirelydisappear from the argumentation. At first the imageisreplacedbythe literarytext’svisual function of repre- sentation; examining this function would have affected Baumgarten’sassump- tions about the reference medium if he had risked even just another sidelong glanceatit. From the beginning,heemphasizes the poetic image’snet-like links, which are stored in the spatial form of intuition but do not allow asimul- taneous vision.Inthe Aesthetica,heonlyapplies one and the sameconcept – claritas – to the long list of all the figures of description, the visual figures that come under the general concept of hypotyposis: “Since HYPOTYPOSIS, the vivid description of something,not onlyillustrates (§ 618) but also proves something (§§ 550,551), it is deservedlyreckoned among the better depictive ar- guments (§ 731)” (AE§733; Quoniam HYPOTYPOSIS,vividaalicuius descriptio, non illustrat solum, §. 618, sed etiam probat,§.550,551.inter meliorapingen- tium argumenta meritorefertur,§.731). Placing before the eyes (ob oculos po- nere) is accordinglythe task of literature (seeAE§39 passim), as Baumgarten copies from Quintilian, who copied from Cicero: “As for what Cicerocalls ‘put- ting something before our eyes,’ this happens when, instead of stating that an event took place, we show how it took place, and thatnot as awhole, but in de- tail. […]Celsus actuallycalls the Figure evidentia,but others prefer hypotyposis, that is, the expression in words of agiven situation in such away that it seems to be amatter of seeing rather than of hearing.”¹¹⁴ “Not as awhole” (simultaneity) “but in detail” (successiveness) – this formulation of Quintilian’scan easilybe made consistent with what Baumgarten intends for the structure of literarydis- course. Thedemand to see successiveness refers to anew function of this struc- ture, which he discusses with recourse to visual figures.Inthe “abundanceofits roles and the variety in its types of substitution and effect,placing before the eyes appears itself like the unknown of afunction,” afunction that Baumgarten explores without having anything more than one unsuitablereference medium (images) and an unwieldycatalogue of figures and tropes.¹¹⁵ Forthis literary the-
Quint., Inst. 9.2.40. Rüdiger Campe, “VorAugen Stellen: Über den Rahmen rhetorischer Bildgebung,” in Post- strukturalismus:Herausforderung an die Literaturwissenschaft; DFG-Symposion 1995,ed. Gerhard Neumann (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler,1997), 209. 70 3Epistemology orist,there is no other alternative thantomake use of these inadequate concepts as best as possible. In the rhetorical tradition, enargeia encompasses “painterly description, plastic expression, and modeling;examples here are hypotyposis, diatyposis, illustratio, demonstratio with the subforms effictio, conformatio, de- scriptio, topographia.”¹¹⁶ The stylistic technique of description (descriptio) there- fore takes up alot of space in the Meditationes. By developing it in four variants – descriptio rei, descriptio personae, descriptio loci,descriptio temporis – Baum- garten moves this antiquated concept from baroque poetics into the center of the first modern theory of literature (see MED§§31–32, 54–55). Descriptions pro- ducedetailed poetic images by accounting for as manymarks of an object as possible. With this elevation of description, Baumgartenfollows the otherwise feud- ing parties – which includeJohann Christoph Gottsched, Johann Jakob Bodmer, and Johann Jakob Breitinger – in the contemporaneous poetology of the imagi- nation, though unlike them he givespriority to description for theoretical rea- sons. Moses Mendelssohn and the supporters of sensualist aesthetics also held description as suitable for producing evidentia and wereinfluenced by Baum- garten.¹¹⁷ But unlike the others, Baumgarten could not getanywherewith the contemporaryconcepts of clarity based on simultaneous vision. In his view,sen- sate perspicuity is never clear since the inner gaze cannot pause and fixate on a poetic image. Instead, this gaze wanders through space, realizingasmanylinks as possible until the poetic imagebecomes completelyopaque in the movement of this wandering.Baumgarten thus has to make afew corrections to the visual figures,especiallytothe tropes,since they have been held since antiquity to be the quintessential visual technique. Metaphors in particular are traditionallyun- derstood to belong to atext’s “imagery” in English or are referred to as Sprach- bilder in German. They are understood to deal with images and could thus guar- antee asimultaneous vision. But does Baumgarten’s “metaphorology”¹¹⁸ actuallyrenouncethe syntag- matic linking of marks merelybecause he turns to theirparadigmatic replace- ment in tropes?Anything but!Neither in the Meditationes nor in the Aesthetica does he exclude the concept of metaphor from the complexity that makes meta- phor into afigure sui generis. In section 47 on tropes (tropi), Baumgarten lets the
Ansgar Kemman, “Evidentia, Evidenz,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik,ed. Gert Ueding,vol. 2(Tübingen: Max Niemeyer,1996), col. 40. See Moses Mendelssohn, Philosophical Writings,ed. and trans.Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cam- bridge:Cambridge University Press, 1997), 178. Bahr, Darstellung des Undarstellbaren,74. 3.4 Poetics 71 cat out of the bag.¹¹⁹ There he defines tropes not onlybytaking aspirited posi- tion in an old rhetorical fight but also by resolving the conflict between text (suc- cessiveness)and image(simultaneity). He at first confirms substitution as the primary operation of tropes,which are neither just ornamentation nor alexical necessity:
Idonot attend much here to TROPES, seeingasthey are the skillful exchangeofaword’sor phrase’sproper meaning for another meaning (Quint., Inst. 8.6.1), and even less to tropes that necessity and the poverty of languagemakenecessary whenever somethingistobe expressed for which agiven languagedoes not have adedicated word, and least of all to tropes forgedinthe process of speakingbyignoranceofaword’sproper meaning. In- stead, Iattend to every elegant substitution of one perception for another.
TROPUM hic non attendo tantum, quatenus est verbivel sermonis apropria significationein aliam cum virtute mutatio,Quint.VIII. 6. multo minus,quem necessitas et linguae paupertas necessarium facit,quoties significandum est,cuius non est in data lingua proprium voca- bulum, minime, quem ignorantia proprietatis in loquendo procudit: sed omnem elegantem perceptionis unius pro altera substitutionem. (AE§780)
In opposition to Quintilian, who defines metaphor as the substitution of the meaning of aword(translatio),¹²⁰ Baumgarten does not treat the metaphorical operation on the side of the signified. In the Meditationes,heisconcerned with the complexity of metaphors,acomplexity they acquire, like all other tropes,onthe basisoftheir ownphenomenal particularity;and this particularity depends, first of all, on literalness. Thus, while Baumgarten defines tropes as producing atension between wordand meaning,hereckons not with the trans- ferred meaningbut with the literalone of the metaphor – and in this he is closer to Aristotle than Quintilian:
Nonproper meaninglies in the nonproper word. Nonproper terms,sincemost of them are appropriatetosensaterepresentations, arepoetic figures, because (1) the representation which approaches athingthroughafigure is sensate, hence poetic, §10, §11; and (2) these terms supplycomplex confused representations in abundance, §23.
Significatus improprius est in voce impropria. Improprii autemtermini, quum plerumque sint proprii repraesentationis sensitivae, tropi poetici :1)quia repraesentatioper tropum accedens sensitiva est,hinc poetica §. 10.11. 2) quia suppeditantrepraesentationes com- plexas confusas §. 23.(MED§79)
Baumgarten catalogues exceptio, metaphor,synecdoche, irony,metonymy, antonomasia, allegory,metalepsis, enigma, catachresis, hyperbole, and emphasis. See Quint., Inst. 8.6.4– 6. 72 3Epistemology
In the Aesthetica,hecomesinthe end to astunningconclusion: the metaphor is afigure. To be able to formulate this thesis, Baumgarten deconstructs Quintilian, who differentiates operations with words in their literal sense (figures) from op- erations with words in afigurative sense (tropes). At this point,Baumgarten plays Quintilianoff against Quintilian with aquote in which the question of method ranks abovethe question of meaning: “We must note, however,that Trope and Figure are oftencombined in the same sentence, because metaphor- ical words can contributetoaFigure justasmuchasliteral ones.”¹²¹ Thisstate- ment in Quintilianisenough for Baumgarten to justify his own theory of litera- ture (see AE §783). After first measuring all the tropes with the yardstick of the figure, Baum- garten is pushed towardasubtlerapproach that secures for tropes their own uniqueposition among the visual figures based on changed parameters. “Nor- mal” figures substitute an object with its features and portraythis operation in asequence. By contrast,Baumgartenspeaks of cryptic figures when the sub- stitution of one element for another is, to acertain extent,contracted into the smallest amount of space: “Every trope Ihavedefined is aFIGURE, but aCRYP- TIC one whose genuine form is not immediatelyapparent since it is afigure ab- breviated through substitution” (AE§784; Omnis tropus,quem definivi, estFI- GURA, sed CRYPTICA, cuius genuina forma non statimapparet,quoniam est figuracontracta per substitutionem §. 782).With the attribute crypticus,Baum- garten imports aforeign wordtaken from “Petrus Ramus” (KOLL §1)into his aes- theticsand adapts it to his needs:
Scholastic logicians teach that an EXPONIBLEPROPISITION is composed crypticallyout of an affirmative and anegativeproposition, which areexclusive,exceptive,restrictive,and so on. If Idid not fear beingdisagreeable to Latin ears, Iwould call tropes exponiblefigures.
Logici scholasticorum docent PROPOSITIONEM EXPONIBILEM, ex affirmanti et negante crypticecompositam, quales exclusivae, exceptivae,restrictivae,e.c.Nisivererer latinis in- commodusesse auribus,tropos figuras dicerem exponibiles.(AE §785)
Norman Kretzmann explains this Ramian concept with reference to the need for such propositions or figures to be elucidated if one wants to integrate this logical concept into aesthetics: “An exponible proposition is aproposition that has an obscure sense requiringexposition in virtue of some syncategorema occurring either explicitlyorincluded within some word.”¹²²
Quint., Inst. 10.1.9. Norman Kretzmann, “Syncategoremata, Exponibilia, Sophismata,” in TheCambridge His- toryofLater Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scho- 3.4 Poetics 73
But Baumgartenisless interested in the obscurity of exponible figures (fi- guraeexponibiles) or cryptic figures (figurae crypticae) than in their spatializa- tion through the necessary context,since he underlays the concept of claritas with the spatial form of intuition. It is this spatiality that, in acertain way, makes the trope into atextual image, aTextbild, and not into linguistic imagery, aSprachbild. Baumgarten accomplishes this turn by at first tying tropes to the methodsofcomparison that are at the center of amplification: “From this arises the trope, the not-inelegant substitution of the term of acomparison in the place of its subject (§ 780)” (AE§781; Unde nascitur substitutio termini comparationis pro subiecto eiusdem non inelegans, tropus,§.780). He changes course in this waysoassimplytoapplythe typologyofcomparison in the broad sense (com- paratio latiusdicta) to tropes,which he defines as contracted varieties of the fig- ural techniques: contracta assimilatio, contracta comparatiomaioris et minoris, contracta antithesis (see AE §782):
Explain ametaphor,and you’ll have amanifest assimilation (§ 735).Explain asynecdoche, and you’ll see acomparison of largerand smaller.Itistherefore either an ASCENDING or DESCENDING SYNECDOCHE (§ 742).Explain irony, and you’ll have an antithesis (§ 763). Fi- nally, metonymyisresolved intosome form of comparison morestrictlyspeaking(§§ 773, 782). And so whateverhas been said up to now about the figures mentioned above (§§ 730 – 779) is not necessary for us to repeat about tropes,the concealmentoffigures.
Metaphoram exponens habebis manifestam assimilationem, §. 735. Synecdochen exponens videbis comparationem maioris et minoris.Est ergo velADSCENDENSSYNECDOCHE, vel DESCENDENS, §. 742. Exponeironiam: habebis antithesin,§.763. Metonymia denique resol- vetur in aliquamcomparationem strictius dictam. §. 773, 782. Quicquid itaque de figuris commemoratis huc usque dictum est.§.730 –779. illud ut de tropis,earum crypsesi, repe- tamus,non est necesse. (AE§786)
In this context,Quintilian’sdefinition of metaphor,which Baumgarten makes the basis of his own, is put in anew light: “In general terms,Metaphor is ashort- ened form of Simile; the differenceisthat in Simile something is compared with the thing we wish to describe, while in Metaphor one thing is substituted for the other.Itisacomparison when Isay that aman acted ‘like alion,’ aMet- aphor when Isay of aman ‘he is alion.’”¹²³ While in “normal” figures,the sub- stitute and the substituted appear at twopositions of the syntagm, the cryptic figure diverts attention away from surface of the literary text.Attention is turned
lasticism, 1100–1600,ed. Kretzmann, AnthonyKenny, and JanPinborg(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1982), 215n17. See also Haverkamp, “Wiedie Morgenröthe,” 16;Haverkamp, Fi- guracryptica:Theorie der literarischen Latenz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002), 14. Quint., Inst. 8.6.9. See also AE §787. 74 3Epistemology to what is contracted in the techniquesbased on similarity or affinity – to the substituted, which is suspected to be in the crypt of the text.Haverkamp speaks of the “elementarydeep structures of the cryptic functioning of the senses for every interpretation” and apprehends the proper meaning “in the deepmoments motivating the surface, moments that Baumgarten’s arsanalogi rationis theorizes in detail.”¹²⁴ But this crypt knows neither depth nor deeper meanings. Despite all of his effortsinreflecting on the matter,the trope cannot be anything other than afurther figuration on the surface of the literarytext,anornament.While the “normal” figures are characterized by how they project the principle of repetition from the axis of selection (paradigm) onto the axis of combination (syntagm), the cryptic figures proceed exactlythe other wayaround. They posit that the paradigm alreadyhas the syntagmatic structure, which is actuallyfirst created by the figure through the processofprojection. The resultisclear: the surface of the literary text and the deep structure of the crypt can no longer be differentiated. In contrasttothe “normal” figures, the cryptic figures link one text to other texts,making it encyclopedic. With tropes, Baumgartenthus alsoidentifiesthe point when the structure of literary dis- course becomes encyclopedic. It is the point when the trope receiveshis atten- tion as asingular term. Hereagain, the more media-specific argumentationin the Meditationes proves to be superior to the Aesthetica. In his Halle master’s thesis, he favors the first two of the four Aristoteliantypes of metaphor – meta- phors in which aconcept of aspecies is replaced by aconcept of agenus or a concept of agenus by aconcept of aspecies. The relationship leads Baumgarten first to synecdoches,inwhich the species replaces the genus and the individual the species (see MED§84), and then to allegory,which results in this trope out- strippingmetaphor as the mastertrope. The structure of literary discourse, as ori- ented along the spatial form of intuition, would not actuallyallow it anyother way. Due to their doubled linking – both paradigmatic (words) and syntagmatic (sentences) – allegories surpass every other trope by farincomplexity,and Baumgartenelevates them to the figurative principle of the literary(seeMED §85; AE §§ 802–805).¹²⁵ The point of the compilation from Quintilianconsists,ofcourse, in how Baumgartendissolvesthe traditionaldifferentiation between tropes and figures. Tropes are figures because they,like all other figures,depict two elements at two
Haverkamp, “Wiedie Morgenröthe,” 16.See also Haverkamp, “Metaphora dis/continua: Figure in de/construction; Mit einem Kommentar zur Begriffsgeschichtevon Quintilian bis Baumgarten,” in Allegorie: Konfigurationen von Text, Bild und Lektüre,ed. Eva Horn and Manfred Weinberg(Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag,1998), 29–45. See 5.2.1Sequentiality. 3.4 Poetics 75 positions in space. Hypotyposis thereforebecomes the umbrella termfor all tropes.InBaumgarten, the sensate perspicuity of tropes does not result from im- agery but from the links between the positions of the substituted and the substi- tute. He not onlyreplaces the traditionalmodel of evidentia with amodel of complex and almostencyclopedic intertextuality,healso shifts his interest from the meaning of the sign to its materiality,with emphasis on the opacity of the literarytext.Inthis, he pursues apossibility suggested by classical rhet- oric, as when Quintilianemphasizes the moment of self-reference and how the figure exhibits itself in visual figures: “We must thus count as an Ornament the quality of enargeia,which Imentioned in giving instructions for Narrative, because vividness, or,assome say, ‘representation,’ is more than mere perspicu- ity,since instead of being merelytransparent it somehow shows itself off.”¹²⁶ This phenomenal “showing itself off” points to the performativity of literature at the center of Baumgarten’sliterarytheory.
3.4.3 Performativity
In the structure of literarydiscourse,the function of opacity depends on thatof complexity.Complex cognitionand representation are evident.Inrhetoric, how- ever,evidentia has always been discussed in relation to twodiscursivefunctions: on the one hand,itisabout acertain manner of clarity;onthe other,about viv- idness. Whereas clarity is manifestedasthe opacity of poetic passages, aesthetic vividness concerns the performativity of such passages. Analyzingittherefore re- quires changingthe frame of reference. While the scholarship has especiallyad- dressed the relation between art and epistemology in Baumgarten’saesthetics, I will show in the following that the third function of the structure of literary dis- course – which he refers to with the attribute vividus and then vivus in the Aesthetica – depends on the theory of desire. The form of the sensate will is vivus, “living,” in the structure of literary discourse. He thus categoricallydiffer- entiates figures into those based on images and thosebasedonmovement.The temporalform of intuition, which goes along with energeia, bringsmovement into the spatial form of intuition, which is activated by enargeia. As Iwill show in the following,clarity stimulates images and vividness stimulates ac- tions. The third function, performativity (vita), can first be described as an action – not as an action that is the object of aliterarytext like those Lessing considers in
Quint., Inst. 8.3.61– 62. 76 3Epistemology his Laokoon but rather as an action that consummates the structure of literary discourse. This actionisthus less an action thanafunction. WheneverBaumgar- ten defines the characteristics of literature in the Meditationes,the grammarof his sentences ascribes semantic agency – the role of the one who acts, “whose various parts are directed toward the apprehension of sensate represen- tations, §5”(MED §7;cuius varia tenduntadcognitionem repraesentationum sen- sitivarum. §. 5) – to the literarytext.Byemphasizing such aperformativity in per- fect sensate discourse, a “directingtoward” or an “aiming” (tendere), Baumgartenassigns both adirection and agoal – the goal of perfection – to the spatial linking of elements within the structure of literary discourse. In its performativity, the literarytext becomesthe agent of the sensate will. Just as poeticsistoguide literature towardperfection (perfectio; see MED §115), aesthetics aims for the perfection of sensate cognition. In this sense, the prolegomena of the Aesthetica make the famous claim that the “goal of aes- theticsisthe perfection of sensate cognition as such (§ 1)” (AE§14;Aesthetices finis est perfectio cognitionis sensitivae, qua talis, §. 1). The syntactic construc- tion leavesopen – as Michael Jägerhas pointed out¹²⁷ – whether the phrase “per- fectio cognitionis sensitivae” is to be read as an objectiveorsubjective genitive. As asubjective genitive,sensate cognition would indeed be an action that aims for perfection.Thisgrammaticaldecision complements Baumgarten’sstylisti- callyconspicuous personification of sensate cognition in the paragraph. Sensate cognition seems to be like an agent that intentionallyaims to reach agoal in the future. Because of this intentional aiming,one is forced to switch with Baumgarten from the cognitive faculties to the appetitive faculties when reconstructing this third function of the structure of literary discourse.This is because the first two functions and the third function are not – in contrast to what Caroline Torra-Mattenklott claims¹²⁸ – actually related accordingtotheir systematic posi- tions. Although this aiming still has to do with evidentia,the performative func- tion is not avisual function but rather sets the elements within the structure of literarydiscourse in motion. To refer to this performativity of literature, Baum- garten uses the traditional rhetorical concept vividus in the Meditationes: “We call that vivid in which we are allowed to perceive manyparts either simulta- neously or in succession” (MED §112; VIVIDUM dicimus, in quo pluravaria, seu simultanea fuerint,seu successiva, apperciperedatur).
See Jäger, Kommentierende Einführung in Baumgartens “Aesthetica,” 31. Cf. Caroline Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung:Ästhetische Theorie und Me- chanik im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich:Wilhelm Fink, 2002), 176. 3.4 Poetics 77
In eighteenth-century poetics, vividus is, as Baumgartennotes,generally translated in German as “lebhafft[ ]” (MED §112n). Not onlyliterature but also paintings, speeches, and behaviors are described as vivid. Instead of vividus, however,the Aesthetica usesthe term vivus,or“living,” which he takes from the Metaphysica. There it refers to living cognition (cognitioviva), which sets de- sire and aversion in motion such thatthey reach their goal in the future.¹²⁹ Scheer explains the relevanceofliving cognitiontoBaumgarten’saesthetics as follows: “Beautifulthinkingisthereby induced to an unending movement be- tween partial representations. In contrast,intellectuallydetermined thinking proceedsinamuch less moving and livelymanner.For it tends to make the pro- cess of representation finite in aresult; that is, it fixes its object with aconcept on the basis of fewer marks. This concept makes constantlyrunning through the object’sabundance of marks anew unnecessary.”¹³⁰ In section 37 on aesthetic light (lux aesthetica), Baumgarten therefore distin- guishesthe concept of life from vividness:
Brilliant vividness,graceful meditations – let it not be confused with its fire or life (§ 22), which will be further discussed later.Itisrightand beautiful that they arejoined as often as possible so that thoughts not onlygleambut arealso ablaze (§§ 142, 143; see Quint., Inst. 8.3). Yetbytheir naturethese beauties appear separatelyintheprocess of thinkingand should be judgedseparatelyaccording to an accurate theory of them.
Nitida vividitas venustae meditationis ne confundatur cum eius ardoreacvita, §. 22.dequa deinceps curatius.Recte pulcreque coniunguntur,quoties fieri potest,utcogitationes non splendeantsolum, sed et ardeant.§.142,143.cf. Quint.VIII.3. Natura tamen sua disiunctae sunt in cogitando veneres, per accuratam harum theoriam separatim expendendae. (AE §620)
The difference between vividness and life metaphoricallyencapsulates the two different functions of the structure of literarydiscourse. In contrasttothe con- cept of life (vita; vivus), which evokes the metaphors of fire that have belonged to the rhetoric of affects since antiquity,the concept of vividness (vividitas; vivi- dus) is related to metaphors of light,which belong to the second function of the structure of literary discourse, opacity (claritas; clarus). Before Baumgarten dif- ferentiates the two functions of vividness and life in the Aesthetica,heuses the concept vividus to integrate affect into the structure of literarydiscourse. In the Metaphysica,hedefines extensively clear perceptions as vivid in the sense that they stimulate the affects: “An extensively clearer PERCEPTION is LIVELY[I
See 3.1.2Desire. Scheer, Einführung in die philosophische Ästhetik,64–65. 78 3Epistemology translate as “vivid,” F. B.]” (MET §531;Extensive clarior PERCEPTIO est VIVIDA). This use of the concept corresponds to the contemporaneous poetologicalde- mands for “vivid perspicuity” in literature.¹³¹ In the Aesthetica,heremedies the excessive structural demand on this concept by differentiating within eviden- tia between opacity and performativity as twodifferent functionsofthe structure of literary discourse. It is not surprising that affect plays amajor role in Baumgarten’stheory of literature. Deleting the two letters i and d in vividus yields the word vivus and leads back to empirical and rational psychology, the disciplinesinwhich Wolff analyzes affect.AccordingtoCampe’sexplanation of the theoretical frame- work, empirical psychologycharacterizes and classifies the individual affects, and rational psychologyasks “how the passions are to be explainedfrom certain modifications to the faculty of representation in aperceptual apparatus that is bound to its bodyand so positioned within the world.”¹³² With this framework, Wolff removes “the reasons for the unanalyzability of affect as they had existed up to the end of the seventeenth century.”¹³³ In the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury,affect stands “between perception/judgment and desire/will, between theo- retical questions within perception and disciplinary moral practice.”¹³⁴ The way in which Baumgarten treats affect maythus not meet one’sexpectations, given that this epoch wasthe height of sensibility(Empfindsamkeit). He criticizes the definitionofaffect in Johann GeorgWalch’s Philosophisches Lexikon,arguing that literature does not speak a “languageofaffects”;hethereby marks asignifi- cant distance between himself and the epochalcode (seeMED §114). In his psychological definition,inwhich he follows Wolff, affects are libidi- nous impulses (stimuli), akind of representation,¹³⁵ which Baumgarten places on ascale from weak to strong:
The (stronger)desires and aversions originatingfromconfused knowledge are AFFECTS (sufferings,affections, perturbations of the mind), and their scienceis(1) PSYCHOLOGICAL PATHOLOGY, which explainsthe theory of these; (2) AESTHETICPATHOLOGY, which con- tains the rules as to how they aretobeexcited, restrained, and signified, and to this per- tains oratorical, rhetorical, or poetic pathology (§622);and (3) PRACTICAL PATHOLOGY, which exhibits the obligations of the human beingwith respect to their affects.
Johann JakobBreitinger, Critische Dichtkunst (Zurich: Conrad Orell, 1740;facsimile, Stutt- gart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung,1966), 52. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,71. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,71. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,71. See 3.1.2Desire. 3.4 Poetics 79
Appetitiones aversationesque (fortiores) ex confusa cognitione sunt AFFECTUS(passiones, affectiones, perturbationes animi), eorumque scientia PATHOLOGIA 1) PSYCHOLOGICA, eorundem theoriam explicans,2)AESTHETICA, eorum excitandorum,compescendorum, significandorumque regulas continens,quo pertinet pathologia oratoria, rhetorica, poëtica, §. 622. 3) PRACTICA, obligationes hominis respectu affectuum exhibens. (MET §678)
Neither in the Meditationes nor in the Aesthetica does Baumgarten actuallyoffer anew evaluation of affect likethe one with which Herder laterestablishes acul- ture of emotion. Contrary to affect,emotion always has asemantic script and tends towardnarration. The semantic catalogue of affective ready-mades in the Metaphysica maypoint in this direction (see MET§§682–685), but beyond that,affects in Baumgarten remain libidinous impulses and oftenappear as rep- resentations in conjunction with other sensations in poetic passages:¹³⁶
Sinceaffects are rather marked degrees of pleasureorpain, their sense representations are giveninthe representing of something to oneself confusedlyasgood or bad. Therefore, they determine poetic representations, §24; and therefore,toarouse affects is poetic, §11.
Affectus cum sint notabiliorestaedii &voluptatis gradus,dantur eorum repraesentationes sensuales in repraesentante sibi quid confuse, ut bonum &malum, ergo determinantre- praesentationes poeticas §. 24.ergo affectusmovere est poeticum. §. 11.(MED§25;see also MET §§ 655– 662)
Since Baumgarten integratesaffects into the paradigmofrepresentation, he un- derstandsthem “in their basic definition as types of perception, sensation, and representation.”¹³⁷ This allows him to incorporate affect “into the grammaticality of textual expression and into the logic of representation,”¹³⁸ erasing “the dis- tance between sign theory and rhetoric.”¹³⁹ Baumgarten accordinglyplaces af- fects on ascale in the sameway he does other sensate representations (reprae- sentationessensitivae):
Whatever increases the stronger sensitive pleasures and displeasures increases the affects (§678). Hence the morecomposite, the morenoble (§515), the truer,the livelier,the more certain, and the morebrilliant arethe pleasureordispleasurefromwhich affects arise (§658, 669), the greater are these affects (§656). If one wereonlytosense the cause of an affect as evil or good, and another wereatthe same time to imagine it to themselves
See Ernst Stöckmann, Anthropologische Ästhetik:Philosophie, Psychologie und ästhetische Theorie der Emotionen im Diskursder Aufklärung (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer,2009), 89. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,72. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,73. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,75. 80 3Epistemology
and foresee it,then the affect of the latter,all else beingequal, will be greaterthan that of the former (§595, 557).
Quicquid augetvoluptates &taedia sensitiva fortiora, augebit affectus,§.678.Hinc quo magis composita voluptas taediumve,exquibus affectus,quo nobiliores, §. 515. quo ve- riores, vividiores, certiores,ardentiores, §. 658, 669. hoc illi maiores, §. 656. Si altertantum sentiat affectus caussam, ut malum, velbonum, alter simul imaginetur,simul praevideat, posterioris affectus,caeteris paribus,maior erit,quam prioris,§.595,597.(MET§681)
Based on such statements,Albert Riemann points out that Baumgartenascribes affects with “an even greater clarity” than other sensations, since affectsform “a compositeconcept with the representations that they cling to,” aconcept “that, as aresult, possesses greater extensive clarity than asimple concept.”¹⁴⁰ Such complex representations legitimize “the poeticality of affect.”¹⁴¹ Despite the “pure occurrenceofmovement in affect,”¹⁴² he does not see aconflict between this paradigmofmovement and the paradigm of representation.¹⁴³ The “concat- enation of representation and movement”¹⁴⁴ is first dissolvedinthe 1770sinthe same breath with which modern antirationalist psychologybecomes the disci- pline that regulates the discourses concerning the newlyliberated emotions. The fact that Baumgarten does not always use the logicallycolored attribute sen- sitivus but rather alsothe attribute sensualis marks the border between the para- digms,between his premodern aesthetics, anchored in rationalism, and moder- nity.Itisthe border between sensation analogous to reason and “real” sensuality,between rationalist representation and the presenceofaesthetic ex- perience. But wherethen does affect become manifest in the structure of literarydis- course? The answer is obvious: not in visual figures but in what Icall perfor- mative figures. Forthe “movement that is affect” is analogous to the movement “through which the use of figures is defined.”¹⁴⁵ This has to do, first,with the performativityofevery figure in which vividness and life have been related to one another in the long history of these concepts.¹⁴⁶ In this history,Campe ex-
Albert Riemann, Die Ästhetik Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens unter besonderer Berücksich- tigung der “Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullisadpoema pertinentibus” nebst einer Überset- zung dieser Schrift (Halle an der Saale: Max Niemeyer,1928), 53 – 54. Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,175. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,34. See Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,102– 104,465 – 467. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,379. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,25. See Heinrich F. Plett, Rhetorik der Affekte: Englische Wirkungsästhetik im Zeitalter der Re- naissance (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer,1975), 135–136. 3.4 Poetics 81 plains, additions and substitutions are not onlyconfronted with “terminological mix-ups” but also with an “eclectic synopsis of different concepts of language”¹⁴⁷ that consolidates avisual, representational concept of languagefrom late antiq- uity (enargeia)with an energetic, performativeconcept of languagethat dates back to Aristotle (energeia). The one letter e that differentiates energeia from enargeia thereforemarks nothing other than amedia-theoretical expansion of static representation (enargeia)into dynamic representation (energeia). Search- ing for the technicaloperations of such arepresentation, Baumgarten touches on the temporallyindexed figures of actualization (present verb forms, the im- perative,apostrophe,direct speech), which Aristotle also provides,¹⁴⁸ but tropes are even more important techniquesofdynamic representation in the Aesthetica. “Twotypes of energeia,” as Torra-Mattenklott explains, “gain the most relief: on the one hand, the visualization of events and characters by being staged, and on the other, the metaphorical animation of inanimate objects.”¹⁴⁹ To adapt them theoretically, Baumgarten does not make recourse to anyparticular reference medium, as had been done until then, but rather to aphysical model: following Aristotle, he asserts that there is an analogybetween figures,physicalmove- ment,and desire. Aristotle transfers the principle of dynamism from his Physics into his Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics before importing it as the principle of movement into his Rhetoric and Poetics.¹⁵⁰ In his Rhetoric,Aristotle defines energeia in the following way: “Icall those things ‘before-the-eyes’ that signify thingsengaged in activity.”¹⁵¹ In this context,metonymyinparticular gains in significanceamong the tropes, leadingAristotle to saythat Homer,who always trusted in the power of metonymies of “the lifeless for the living” and of “meta- phor by analogy”¹⁵² in his epics, “makes everythingmoveand live,and energeia is motion.”¹⁵³ With reference to Quintilian,Campecaptures the merging of enar- geia and energeia in the theory of the figure as follows: “The rhetorical technique of ornament thus binds the simple seeing of something before oneself of enar- geia to arepresentation with action in mind, which is here called energeia.”¹⁵⁴
Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,230n22. See Arist., Rhet. 1410b;[Longinus], De subl. 27.1; Quint., Inst. 9.2, 9.41. Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,181. See Anselm Haverkamp, “Masse mal Beschleunigung:Rhetorik als Meta-Physikder Ästhe- tik,” in Masse und Medium: Verschiebungen in der Ordnung des Wissens und der Ordnung der Li- teratur 1800/2000,ed. IngeMünz-Koenen and WolfgangSchäffner (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), 65– 77;Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,185 – 196. Arist., Rhet. 1411b. Arist., Rhet. 1411b. Arist., Rhet. 1412a. Campe, “VorAugen Stellen,” 218. 82 3Epistemology
Because Baumgarten attempts to grasp the performativity of the structure of literarydiscourse with the concept of vita and the physical model of movement, nothing actuallyspeaksfor accepting adisplacement of the “moment of anima- tion or effectiveness from the metaphorical production of the represented to the relation between speech and listeners,”¹⁵⁵ as Torra-Mattenklott proposes.While “life and activity are qualities of representation in Aristotelean rhetoric, in Baumgartenthey concern, by contrast,the relation between the text and the reader or listener.”¹⁵⁶ From this, it follows that “movement and representation” coexist “in the context of the sameaesthetic and epistemologicalconfigura- tion.”¹⁵⁷ Since Baumgarten’sstudent Meier “develops alot thathis teacherjust hints at without deviating significantlyfrom the implications of Baumgarten’s concepts,” Torra-Mattenklott takes the concept of life from Meier’s Anfangs- gründealler schönen Wissenschaften (1748 – 1750), but this method has consider- able disadvantages.¹⁵⁸ Although the rhetorical discussion of figures offers con- nection points for the aesthetics of both production and reception – connection pointsthat Meier’skindred rendering of the Aesthetica realizes¹⁵⁹ – Baumgartenonlyextrapolates moving cognition (cognitio moventis) from the canon of elocutio. In this sense, the Renaissance scholarScaliger – whose works wereimportanttoBaumgarten – alsotreats energeia as the forceof words (vis verborum).¹⁶⁰ With his emphatic focus on reception aesthetics, Meier actuallydeviates considerablyfrom Baumgarten’sargumentation, which is primarilyoriented to- ward the literarytext.Reconstructing the third function of the structure of liter- ary discourse is certainlycomplicated by the fact thatthe Aesthetica remains a fragment and that the intended sections on aesthetic life (vita cognitionis aesthe- tica) are presented in the synopsis but then never developedfurther.According to the logic of the rhetorical system, these sections would have had to typologize the passionate arguments (argumenta ardentia)¹⁶¹ and translate the eighteenth- century theory of affects (Affektenlehre) into aesthetics. They would also have had to formulate the conditions for delineatingthe concept of vita in the canon of style. In other words, the theory of affects would not have migrated
Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,189. Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,184. Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,19. Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,142;see also 145. See GeorgFriedrich Meier, Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften,2nd ed., 3vols. (Halle an der Saale: C. H. Hemmerde, 1754–1759;facsimile, Hildesheim: GeorgOlms,1976). See Plett, Rhetorik der Affekte,116. See 6.2.3Melancholy. 3.4 Poetics 83 into the canonsofinvention and method but would rather have remained in the canon of style. In fact,the best clues as to how Baumgarten wanted to profile the concept of vita are found in the Metaphysica. Itsparagraphs on living cognition (cognitio viva) are key to understanding the performativityofthe literary text.The attri- bute vivus refers to cognitionthat is resolutelyoriented towardits object: “KNOWLEDGE, insofar as it contains the incentivesofthe mind, is MOVING (af- fecting,touching, burning,pragmatic, practical, and, more broadly, living), and insofar as it does not contain these incentives, it is INERT (theoretical and, more broadly, dead)” (MET §669;COGNITIO, quatenus elateres animi continet, MOVENS (afficiens, tangens, ardens,pragmatica, practica &vivalatius), quate- nus minus, INERS (theoretica &mortua latius)). One can therefore reconstruct how the sections on aesthetic life (vita cognitionis aesthetica) would have articu- lated the concept of vita in analogytothe “psychic apparatus as awish ma- chine”:¹⁶² certain rhetoricalfigures set the structure of literarydiscourse in mo- tion. Forthat reason, Baumgarten would probablynot have just considered fig- ures and tropes in general; instead, he would perhaps have carried out achange of medium from the visual medium of the text and its letters (litterae) to the acoustic medium of the voice (vox). The Meditationes suggest as much: as soon as he is concerned with movement, the spatial form of intuition, which is so important for analyzingthe structure of literarydiscourse, recedesinto the background of the argumentation. This is because movement presupposes atemporalform of intuition, and so performative figures draw Baumgarten’sat- tention to the voice.¹⁶³ As aconsequence of this attention to the voice, he does not discuss literatureingeneral but rather lyric poetry in particularinthe diffi- cult definitionofthe concept of life: “Since the poem, taken as aseries of artic- ulate sounds, excites pleasure in the ear,§92,§91, there must alsobeaperfec- tion in it,§92,and indeedthe highest perfection, §94”(MED §96; Quum poema excitet voluptatem aurium, qua series sonorum articulatorum §. 92.91. qua tali etiam inesse debet perfectio §. 92.&quidem summa §. 94). In eighteenth-century poetics like thoseofGottsched, Bodmer,and Breitin- ger – all of whom made new discoveries in the analysis of literature around the same time as Baumgarten – the “doctrine of generallyassigningactio to the af- fects is,” as Campe observes, “entirelydevelopedwith regard to the voice (pro-
Torra-Mattenklott, Metaphorologie der Rührung,147. See 3.3Semiotics. 84 3Epistemology nuntiatio,and in it the vox).”¹⁶⁴ Baumgarten thus holds meter to be the most im- portant performative figureresponsible for the actio of the voice: averse form that orders all the syllables of poemsaccordingtothe samepattern of long and shortsyllables: “Since meter produces sense impressions by §103,§102, and since these have the greatest extensive clarity,they are to thatdegree the most poetic, and more so than thoseless clear,§17.Thus it is highlypoetic to observemost carefullythe laws of meter,§29” (MED §107;Quum metrum ideas sensuales producat §. 103.102.eae vero extensive clarissimae adeoque maxime magisque poeticae, quam minus clarae §. 17. metri leges accuratissime observari admodum poeticum. coll. §. 29;see also MED§103). In his definition of meter,Baumgarten seems to orient himself obstinatelyonGreek quantitative meter.Accentual meter,which Martin Opitz campaigned for as aGerman prosody in the seventeenth century, does not interest Baumgarten at all; indeed, he ex- plicitlyobjects to correlatingaccent and the length of asyllable (see MED §101n). Baumgarten takes Greek quantitative meter to be so natural and univer- sallyaccepted that he onlyrecalls it in passing and instead relates meter in al- most all his arguments to its material, phonetic manifestation. Forexample, he explains the association of the length and the scansion of syllables as follows: “Thus, in scanning, as much time as the quantity of the syllable requires, so much will be its value” (MED §100n; in scandendo ergo,quantumtemporis syl- labae quantitas postulat,tantum eius est morae); and twoparagraphs later he introduces the ear as the éminence grise in his metrical theory: “Measure produ- ces pleasure in the ear,§101.Thereforeitispoetic, §95”(MED §102; Numerus voluptatem auribus creat §. 101. ergo est poeticus §. 95). Baumgarten invokes this organ of aesthetic cognitionagain and again, and in these invocations, apos- trophe follows closelyonthe heels of personification. The earshould differenti- ate one syllable from another,determine whether they are short or long,and rec- ognize their relation to forms of verse. The ear is the part of consciousness that first constitutes atemporalrelation, because it recognizessimilarity (ingenium) in the sequence of syllables,differentiates (acumen) them from othersequences, remembers (memoria) previous sequences, and anticipates (praesagitio) future ones. In short, the ear givesthe text of the poem its time; the aesthetics of move- ment is based on the sensate judgment (iudicium) of the ear. This discussion of meter mayseemtobetheoreticallyimprecise, but it proves to be extremelyconsistent with regard to the structure of literary dis- course. The ear’sconstant judgmentsabout the lengths of syllables and their re- lationshavearemarkable effect on how Baumgarten switches media to define
Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck,68. 3.4 Poetics 85 the concept of life. These judgments reverse, to acertain extent,the flow of the voice; they interrupt the spatial intuition of text by creatinglinks between ele- ments that project atemporalintuition onto it.Inevery individual act of con- sciousness, the ear projects the temporal form of intuiting the voice onto the spa- tial form of intuitingtext.This occurs,for example, in the definitionofend rhyme (see MED§106), which Baumgarten does not derive from the acoustic fig- ure of homoeoteleuton but rather from the graphic figure of paronomasia finalis. In the same enumeration of such textual, or eye, rhymes, he treats the playwith letters in acrostics and the phenomena that todayfall under the general concept of visual poetry (expressiones figurarum). Every trace of the voice is missing from this argumentation because, for Baumgarten, stable repetition cannot exist without memory,and memory is onlyreflected in the space of text. In this way, the ear actuallyreinstalls the spatial form of intuiting text, which was Baumgarten’sstarting point for analyzingthe structure of literary dis- course. Hans-Jost Frey posits this temporalization of space or,turned the other wayround, spatialization of time – and the resulting simultaneity of the two forms of intuition, the spatial one for text and the temporalone for voice – as acondition for the rhythm of literary texts (see MED§106). In going back to the model of walking,heemphasizes “that rhythm can onlybeconstituted as an experience and that it therefore does not onlydepend on how one walks but also on the fact that there is someone who walks and on how he experiences his walking.”¹⁶⁵ With this “that” and “how,” Frey relates the temporal form of intuitingexperience to the spatial form of intuiting text. “But this being swept along has an artificial structure as its precondition,astructure that, in creating expectations, stretches into the futureofwhat is yettocome, and this structure, not rapture, is the distinguishing feature of the rhythmic.”¹⁶⁶ In his Kollegium, Baumgartenrecalls an artform in which time and space have been related to one another since antiquity – dance: “Good feet and awell-structured posture are required from every single person, but they are required aboveall from fe- male dancers who have the intention of pleasing us with the dexterity of their feet” (KOLL §269; Man erfordert voneinem jeden Menschen gute Füße und eine wohlgeordneteStellung,man erfordert sie aber vorzüglich voneiner Tänze- rin, die den Vorsatz hat,uns durch die Geschicklichkeit ihrer Füße zu vergnü- gen). Agood poem is like agood dance – one also finds this comparison in the Meditationes,whereBaumgarten notes that the shepherds Damon and Al-
Hans-Jost Frey, Vier Veränderungen über Rhythmus (Basel: Engeler,2000), 89. Frey, Vier Veränderungen über Rhythmus,107. 86 3Epistemology phesiboeus from the fifth of Virgil’s Eclogae “will imitate the dancing satyrs” with their songs(MED§109; Saltantes Satyros imitabitur Alphesiboeus). With this comparison of literature to dance,Baumgarten attachesthe phys- ical reference model of movement – amodel he needstodefine the performative function of the structure of literary discourse – to areference medium from the sphere of the arts that would rise to prominenceunder the rubric of representa- tion (Darstellung) beginning in the 1770s. The relevant studies frequentlyreferto how Aristotle differentiates contemplation (theoria),action (praxis), and crea- tion (poiesis), which Quintilian later builds on to divide the arts into the theoret- ical arts (like astronomy), the active arts (like dance), and the creative arts (like painting and poetry). Whereas the goal of creation lies outside of itself in the work (ergon), action is limited to carrying out the action itself (energeia). Be- cause Baumgarten dismisses the reference medium of the image, the new refer- ence medium of dance must have appeared particularlyattractivetohim. With it, he is able to establish the performativity of literature and attain alevel of differ- entiation that no other theory of literature would be able to replicatefor centu- ries.