Between Word and Image

Dennis J. Schmidt

Description

Word, image, and aesthetics of ethical life

Engagement with the image has played a decisive role in the formulation of the very idea of philosophy since Plato. Identifying pivotal moments in the history of philosophy, Dennis J. Schmidt develops the question of philosophy's regard of the image in thinking by considering painting—where the image most clearly calls attention to itself as an image. Focusing on Heidegger and the work of Paul Klee, Schmidt pursues larger issues in the relationship between word, image, and truth. As he investigates alternative ways of thinking about truth through word and image, Schmidt shows how the form of art can indeed possess the capacity to change its viewers.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Genesis of the Question
1. Unfolding the Question: An Excentric History
2. Heidegger and Klee: An Attempt at a New Beginning
3. On Word, Image, and Gesture: Another Attempt at a Beginning
Afterword: The Question of Genesis for Now
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Esthétique et philosophie de l'art
• Movements
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Phenomenology
• Immanuel Kant
• Aesthetics
• Plato
• Continental
• Klee
• Hans-Georg Gadamer
• Emmanuel Kant
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Martin Heidegger

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253006226
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
John Sallis, editor
 
Consulting Editors
 
Robert Bernasconi
Rudolph Bernet
John D. Caputo
David Carr
Edward S. Casey
Hubert Dreyfus
Don Ihde
David Farrell Krell
Lenore Langsdorf
Alphonso Lingis
William L. McBride
J. N. Mohanty
Mary Rawlinson
Tom Rockmore
Calvin O. Schrag
†Reiner Schürmann
Charles E. Scott
Thomas Sheehan
Robert Sokolowski
Bruce W Wilshire
David Wood
BETWEEN WORD AND IMAGE

HEIDEGGER, KLEE, AND GADAMER ON GESTURE AND GENESIS

DENNIS J. SCHMIDT
Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
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© 2013 by Dennis J. Schmidt
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NO part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The association of american university Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schmidt, Dennis J.
Between word and image : Heidegger, Klee, and Gadamer on gesture and genesis / Dennis J. Schmidt.
    p.   cm.  —(Studies in Continental thought)
Includes bibliographical references (p.    ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00618-9 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-253-00620-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00622-6 (electronic book) 1. Image (Philosophy) 2. Aesthetics. 3. Thought and thinking. 4. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. 5. Klee, Paul, 1879–1940. I. Title.
BH301.I52S37 2013
111'.85—dc23
2012022626
1  2  3  4  5    18  17  16  15  14  13
For Zoe
Die Besinnung darauf, was die Kunst sei, ist ganz und entschieden nur aus der Frage nach dem Sein bestimmt.
—Martin Heidegger, “Ursprung des Kunstwerkes” Zusatz of 1956

The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge; it is the ability to tell epigraph1 from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And this, at the rare moments when the stakes are on the table, may indeed prevent catastrophes, at least for the self.
—Hannah Arendt , the Life of the Mind: thinking

The first enemy of the aesthetic was meaning.
—Roberto Calasso , the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION The Genesis of the Question
CHAPTER 1 Unfolding the Question: An Excentric History
CHAPTER 2 Heidegger and Klee: An Attempt at a New Beginning
CHAPTER 3 On Word, Image, and Gesture: Another Attempt at a Beginning
AFTERWORD The Question of Genesis for Now
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My interest in the question of the relation of word and image grew out of two essays in my previous book, Lyrical and Ethical Subjects. Those essays—one on Cy Twombly's series of paintings 50 Days at Iliam , the other on the question of writing in Plato's Cratylus —first led me to recognize the depth of this question. At that time, I did not recognize the full complexity of these issues, nor did I see the importance and originality of Paul Klee's contribution to them. The impulse for the new push that would lead to this book came from James Risser's invitation to present a lecture course on the hermeneutics of the image at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Citta di Castello, Italy, in 2007. I am grateful to him and to all who attended those lectures for the intellectual stimulation they provided then and that continues still today Other forums and audiences allowed me to address these questions in greater detail. Here I must especially thank Donatella di Cesare for her invitation to the Universita di Roma, La Sapienza, where I was able to give two weeks of lectures on these themes. Other invitations—from Rodolphe Gasche to the University of Buffalo's “Just Theory” series, from Günter Figal to the Universität Freiburg's “Hermeneutische Symposium,” from Jeffrey McCurry to give the Silverman Lectures at Duquesne University, and from Luc Van der Stockt to the Universiteit KU Leuven—provided much-needed criticism and support as I was bringing these investigations to a conclusion. I am always struck by how important such events can be in helping me understand myself better.
Conversations with individuals have reminded me in the happiest of ways that one is never alone when one thinks. Here, without detail, I need to thank the following friends: Maria Acosta, Andrew Benjamin, Robert Bernasconi, Walter Brogan, Miguel de Beistegui, Donatella di Cesare, Nicholas Davey, Paul Davies, Günter Figal, Bernard Freydberg, Rodolphe Gasche, Theodore George, Drew Hyland, David Krell, Jennifer Mensch, Michael Nass, James Risser, John Sallis, Charles Scott, Stephen Watson, and David Wood. My graduate students at Penn State have been a continual source of intellectual energy, and they continue to teach me more than I could ever teach them. Finally, I have come to realize that I will need to thank Hans-Georg Gadamer for the rest of my life. Even after his death, he somehow still remains a living conversation partner for me in a way that reminds me of the truth of the lines from Celan that Derrida cites: “Die Welt ist fort, ich muss Dich tragen.” All of these people prove that Hülderlin was right when he said, “Denn keiner trägt das Leben allein.”
This book would not have come to be without the help of Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press and the careful copyediting of Julie Bush. I am grateful to Shannon Sullivan, head of the Philosophy Department, and to the deans of the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State University for funds to help cover the cost of permissions for the images reproduced here.
Among all of these conversations, the ongoing conversation with my wife, Jennifer Mensch, has been the most decisive and most instructive. She always manages to remind me that I could and should be clearer, more careful, and more rigorous. I have learned more from her than I have managed to tell her. That she always managed to take time away from finishing her own book to help me with mine has been to my great benefit. Her support, insights, and friendship mean the world to me. Our daughter, Zoe Mensch Schmidt, who took her first steps in Citta di Castello during my final lecture on Klee, surprises me, renews my spirit, and reminds me every minute of the day what, in the end, really matters. She has made the world brighter than I could ever have imagined and continually lives up to her name, reminding me that creation always exceeds understanding. This book is dedicated to Zoe.
INTRODUCTION
THE GENESIS OF THE QUESTION
Four sets of questions gave birth and shape to this book.
The proximate and most specific of these questions was occasioned by the publication of a large portion of Heidegger's “Notes on Klee.” 1 Those fragmentary notes, which Heidegger made during a visit in 1956 to an exhibition of Paul Klee's paintings, express a great excitement about Klee's work. It was an excitement that seemed unbridled and that would last for some years. So, for instance, three years after that first encounter with Klee's work, Heidegger wrote a letter to his friend Heinrich Petzet in which he emphasized the originality and radicality of Klee's work: “Something which we all have not yet even glimpsed has come forward in [Klee's works].” 2 And it is clear that Heidegger's enthusiasm for Klee had a great philosophical significance for him: he even spoke with friends of the need to revise or to write a “counterpart to” “The origin of the Work of Art” in light of what he saw in Klee, and in 1960 he promised a seminar on Klee, Heraclitus, Augustine, and Chuang-tzu. 3 The impact upon Heidegger of discovering Klee's paintings and of reading his theoretical writings was great, and the consequences of this discovery were not simply to confirm Heidegger's own views but to change them. Indeed, Heidegger's acknowledgment of Klee's accomplishments constituted a reversal of his earlier sweeping condemnations of modern art as nothing more than the reflex of a technologically defined world. But it was not just Klee's painted works that gripped Heidegger; rather, Klee was a prolific writer, and his written texts were as esteemed by Heidegger as his painterly works. Just as Heidegger had found in Friedrich Hölderlin his poet, so too was it the case that during the years of his engagement with Klee he found his painter. Importantly, both Hölderlin and Klee were artists who were capable of theorizing the achievement of the work of art from out of the experience of that work. This capacity for theoretical reflection distinguishes most all of the artists to whom Heidegger turns in his discussion of the work of art and, as such, serves as a reminder not only that the work of art is worth attending to but also that there is a form of reflection that emerges out of the experience of the artist that is of genuine philosophical importance. 4
Klee's work—both his painterly works and his theoretical works—has come to have a rather unique status among philosophers of the past half century. 5 Heidegger was not at all alone in finding something genuinely new for philosophy in Klee: Adorno, Benjamin, Deleuze, Foucault, Gadamer, Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre all single out Klee as marking something new and as making an advance on how we are to understand the world. The qualification that what each finds in Klee concerns something new for the deepest concerns of philosophy is important. The turn to Klee by these philosophers was not governed by a concern with “aesthetics”—an approach structured by catego