Biblioteca digitale Progetto Agorà
According to the much-quoted remark of Whitehead the whole of West-
ern philosophy
is a series of footnotes to Plato. If he was right, as I think he
was, the
twenty-one relazioni of this colloquio
have added at least 20 new and
important footnotes, and since these were commented
upon in the discussion
there are more footnotes to these footnotes. I am sure you
will appreciate
that if I now attempted in my turn to comment on these footnotes and
their
progeny we would arrive at an infinite regress, or possibly at an infinite
con-
gress. Admittedly this transition to eternity would not frighten us, the
partici-
pants, for who would not enjoy to continue these discussions and to
benefit
forever from the hospitality of our wonderful hosts? The question is only,
how
long our hosts could sustain the burden of such an infinite congress and I
must
limit myself therefore to a few remarks only in addition to those you
have
seen printed in the “Messaggero” and displayed on the notice board of
this
aula
of the conference.
What struck me, as a student of art, in these contributions is the
frequent
reference to the experience of seeing, of visual perception, in the many
trans-
formations of the concept of idea. Not that this is
surprising. We have learned
from Professor Saffrey’s introduction, that in ancient
Greek the word idea clearly signified «the outward
appearance of things perceived by the sense of
sight». I believe that many of the
subsequent contributions offered interesting
reminders of the fact that the very
word “seeing”, or its equivalents, prefi-
gures the multiplicity of meanings which
the term idea inherited, as it were.
I would never complain about this multiplicity. I side with those who
have reminded
us of the value of plasticity in the use of words. If every term
of the language
were only allowed one meaning that excluded any metaphori-
cal use, we could never
acquire such a vocabulary let alone use it for commu-
nication. I hope that some of
you will see this danger.
I believe in fact that it is only in the encounter with concrete problems
that the
ambiguity of language can be noticed and resolved. As a student of art
interested in
representation I remember that the artist could be asked to repre-
sent faithfully
what he sees, let us say his hand, and that there are means of
checking whether he
has achieved this aim. But when he is asked to repre-
sent to us how he sees his
hand while, for instance, focussing elsewhere, the
task becomes more elusive.
Critics from Roger de Piles and Hogarth to the
Impressionists have reminded us of
this difficulty The Sense of Order , Oxford 1979 (Italian edition II Senso
dell’ordine, Torino
1984), Ch. IV, Sect. 2-3.
mines the whole concept of mimesis.
We know that from the outset Plato devalued seeing and therefore mimesis as mere belief,
doxa. But he held fast to the episteme
mediated by geometry.
The famous inscription over the gate of the Academy — however
apocryphal
it may be: μηδείς άζεωμέτρητος είσιτω. (Let no one enter who does not
know
geometry) Platonica, The anecdotes concerning the life and writings
ofPlato («Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition» ed. W. V. Harris
et al., Ill) Leiden 1976,
pp. 138 ff. The argument derives essentially from Republic, 510, D, E.
Nobody has ever seen or drawn a real triangle of which
the three angles add
up to 180°, but we can all think of it and of the consequences
of this fact. We
can think of it, because we have seen the real triangle before our
soul entered
our body and it is this doctrine of anamnesis
which explains our limited grasp of
ideas.
Professor Gregory has reminded us yesterday of the central role which
theology
plays in the history of Western philosophy. The fact that the doc-
trine of anamnesis clashes with the central belief of Christianity in the
divine
creation of every individual soul at the moment of conception seems to me
to
be of much importance in the further modifications of Plato’s wholly
self-con-
sistent system of thoughts. True, his firm belief in the immortality of
the soul
recommended him to theologians, but pre-existence had somehow to
be
glossed over or eliminated. There is no such pre-existence in Aristotle,
but
then his view of the soul as the form of the body was not so easily
reconciled
with immortality, as Pomponazzi was bold enough to show.
I think it is before the background of these momentous issues that we
must see the
debate to which this colloquio has been devoted, and not least
also those concerned
with the theory of art. Remember for instance the
solemn words which Vasari devoted
to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment·. «E ques-
to nell’arte
nostra è quello esempio e quella gran pittura mandata da Dio agli
uomini in terra, acciocché veggano come il fato fa, quando gli intelletti
dal
supremo grado in terra discendono, ed hanno in essi infusa la grazia e la
divi-
nità del sapere» Le Vite, ed. Milanesi, VII, Firenze 1881, pp. 214-215.
derives of course from the
Theologia Platonica. It may therefore serve me as atransition
to the topic of my relazione as I had originally planned it, I
refer tothe famous book by Erwin Panofsky,
Idea. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte derälteren
Kunsttheorie, originally published by the Warburg Institute in Hamburg in
1924,
about 65 years ago
In reluctantly yielding to the request of preparing a revised edition in
1960 the
author somewhat distanced himself from his early work. He
explained very frankly how
far he considered it out of date, but merely added
a bibliography of writings which
had been published on the topic in the inter-
vening decades. I must leave them and
many other points on one side
because I think that Panofsky’s Idea in its original form still deserves to be
called a classic. It represents
a highly significant stage in the historiography of
ideas and may therefore be all
the more useful to us in pointing to certain
problems of method which have, in my
view, contributed to a change in our
point of view.
The book is very short, only 72 pages of text though almost as many
pages of notes
and appendices in smaller print. Naturally I cannot offer an
adequate summary and I
must hope all the more that this brief outline and
any critical remarks which will
follow will not prevent you from reading the
original text which must give anyone
pleasure who can appreciate intellectual
ingenuity combined with immense erudition.
The first chapter on the ancient world lends itself comparatively easily to
a
précis. Taking Plato’s theory of ideas and his views on art more or less as
read,
Panofsky opens the discussion with a brilliant analysis of the passage in
Cicero’s
Orator where the perfect orator is described as an idea that
cannot be
found in reality but only conceived by the mind. Cicero compares this
image
with the creations of artists who must strive to transcend the beauty of
real
things and even the beauty of previous works of art.
Though Cicero refers to Plato in this passage it is clear that he has trans-
formed
his views. He has offered a synthesis between Plato’s doctrine and
that of Aristotle
who had located eidos in the mind of the artist, identifying
it,
for instance, with the architect’s plan for a house before that house is
ever
built. In thus setting up the Platonic view as his thesis, the Aristotelian as
his
antithesis and the Ciceronian passage as his synthesis, Panofsky arrives at
a
cognitive map onto which he can enter other currents of thought. Seneca, in
talking
of the painter interprets the idea almost exclusively as a psychological
notion, a
mental image. Plotinus, of course, reverts to Platonic metaphysics
but concedes the
possibility of the artist being granted a vision of the superna-
tural idea.
Having thus established these contrasting positions Panofsky proceeds to
describe
their subsequent evolution and interaction, demonstrating how they
cross,
intertwine, separate and join again almost like the dancers in an intri-
cate
ballet.
Passing rather quickly over the middle ages, mostly in the thrall of
the
Aristotelian view, and the earlier writers of the Renaissance, not yet
touched
by the Neo-Platonic revival that dominated philosophy, he concentrates
on
the period of Mannerism, which had of course just come into view in the
early
twenties as a hitherto neglected period in the history of art. He aims at
find-
ing parallels to the various currents of artistic style which had just been
postu-
lated by Friedländer, playing on the instrument of dialectics with a
virtuosity
to which only long quotations could do justice. Very briefly, he finds
an
intrinsic tension in Mannerist art between the rejection of rules and their
eag-
er acceptance, a tension he finds also reflected in the contradictory attitudes
of
theoreticians who for instance both despised and advocated systems of
propor-
tion. While in his view the antithesis between subject and object had
not
troubled the writers of the Renaissance it is now recognised as a problem.
He
claims that it is for the first time in history that the question is posed
how
artistic creation is altogether possible, in other words how the artist’s mind,
in
confronting reality through the senses, can ever conceive ideas. Art theory,
in
Panofsky’s view, is now faced with the task of legitimising artistic activities
by
asking in accents that must remind you of Kant: «How is artistic
representa-
tion and, in particular the rendering of beauty, at all possible?» Wie ist diekünstlerische Darstellung, und insbesondere die
Darstellung des Schönen überhaupt möglich? ).
It is in answering this question,
or rather these two questions, that Panofsky
sees the theorists using the
traditional notion of idea in two typically antitheti-
cal
ways. He dwells at some length on Federico Zuccari’s L’idea
de’pittori, scul-tori ed architetti of 1607 which draws on the Aristotelian
tradition by stressing
the idea in the artist’s mind, which Zuccari calls the disegno interno , while fol-
lowing St. Thomas in regarding
these ideas as mere reflections of the perfect
ideas in the mind of God and the
nearperfect ideas in the minds of angels.
For Panofsky this ricorso to Scholastic ideas is of profound symptomatic signifi-
cance,
because it acknowledges the gap between subject and object he finds
so
characteristic of Mannerist art. He sees Zuccari’s approach complemented
by
Lomazzo’s reversion to Ficino’s Neo-Platonic conception of beauty which,
as
Panofsky was the first to notice, he simply plagiarized. The chapter concludes
with a psychological diagnosis of the spirit of the age: «Divorced from nature,
and
the human spirit seeks refuge in God in an emotion that is both helpless
triumphant
and that we recognize in the sad and proud physiognomies and
gestures of Mannerist
portraits and of which the Counter-Reformation is but
one expression among many».
The subsequent chapter on the Neo-Classical theory which Panofsky sees
emerging in
the 17th century again proceeds dialectically to another antitheti-
cal position
codified in Bellori’s famous oration on the Idea. Bellori is
shown
to have called in the notion of the idea as an ally for his fight on two
fronts —
the fight against Mannerism which is said to rely on formulas and against
Nat-
uralism which is said to neglect the artist’s vocation of improving on
nature.
Thus the metaphysical creed of the late Cinquecento which attempted
to
resolve the opposition between subject and object by taking recourse to
God,
was followed by an attitude that tried to achieve an immediate
harmony
between subject and object, Spirit and Nature, which manifests in
Panofsky’s
view that return to the doctrine of purified nature that was summed up in
the
slogan of the Ideal. In a sense, it is here that the book
should end, but Panofs-
ky appended a chapter on Dürer and Michelangelo whose ideas
he could not
quite fit into his intellectual epic.
I hope I have at least given you the flavour of that remarkable tour
de force
though I must still refer you to its concluding paragraph in which the
produc-
er of that ballet of ideas steps before the public and explains that it was
all an
idle play, because that antithesis between idealism and naturalism which
con-
tinued to engage the minds of philosophers/is really nothing but a
dialectical
antinomy, since we now know — if I may cruelly over-simplify
Panofsky’s
involved argument — that what we call reality is in itself nothing but
the
product of our minds Idea»,
in “Il se rendit en Italie'”. Études offertes à
André Chastel, Paris-Rome 1987, p. 674 and note.
Soon afterwards Panofsky gave substance to this conviction in his famous
essay on
Perspective as a Symbolic Form
Die Perspektive
als symbolische Form, «Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg»,
1924-25, Italian
in La prospettiva come 'forma simbolica’ e altri scritti,
Milano 1961.
linked with the same
kind of deterministic dialectic which he saw as uniting
the successive world views
with the evolution of human consciousness and
human art, a vision of history surely
derived from Hegel.
Ladies and Gentlemen, having explained, when speaking to this forum a
year ago, why
I personally cannot accept any such version of historical relativ-
ism, I hardly
need spell out why my admiration for Panofsky and my profound
respect for his intellect has not sufficed to make me accept his reading of
Re-
naissance artistic theory. As a realist in the modern, not the mediaeval
sense
of the term, I remain convinced that intellectual history should not be a
ballet
of abstractions, however enticing, but an investigation of enduring problems.
Take another passage from Vasari, this time one where he does use the
term idea. In his Life of Titian Vasari defends the Tuscan emphasis on
draw-
ing, alleging that Giorgione and the other Venetians shunned
preparatory
sketches and painted directly on the canvas: «non s’accorgeva, che egli
è ne-
cessario a chi vuol bene disporre i componimenti, ed accomodare
l’invenzioni,
ch’e’ fa bisogno prima in più modi differenti porle in carta, per
vedere come il
tutto torna insieme. Conciossiachè l’idea non può vedere né
immaginare per-
fettamente in se stessa l’invenzioni, se non apre e non mostra il
suo concetto
agli occhi corporali che l’aiutino a farne buon giudizio» op. cit., p. 427.
Here the word idea is used in its psychological meaning as
identical with
consciousness or mind, but what I find interesting in this passage is
that Va-
sari was right in stressing the importance of what we now call ’feed-back’
in
art, though of course he was wrong in claiming that the Venetians never
made
drawings.
I am equally convinced of the fact that the problem of universals which
had
originally given rise to Plato’s theory of ideas continues to confront us in
various
forms and that the historian has to take a stand in these matters.
It so happens that I had an opportunity of exemplifying my conviction
precisely in
relation to Raphael’s famous letter on the Idea. Having
suggested
a link between that formulation and a passage from the younger Pico’s Deimitatione (1512) I also attempted to show that we can
express the problem he
broached in our own terms when we consider the relation of
Ideal and Type inRenaissance Art
New Light on Old
Masters, Oxford 1986, Italian in Antichi maestri, nuove
letture, Torino 1987.
only objective
standards of fidelity to nature but that even the ideal of beauty
should not be
regarded as a purely subjective notion.
What sense we can make of Zuccari’s
disegno interno
have tried to show in
my book on
Art and Illusion
where I investigated the role of what I call the
schema
in representation
Art and Illusion,
Princeton-London 1960, Italian as
Arte e illusione,
Torino 1965.
Somewhere in this direction I’d be tempted to look for the answer to the
question
which Panofsky attributes to Zuccari of how painting is possible, but
frankly I’m
not persuaded that this was ever Zuccari’s concern. If you read
him you will find that what he desires to prove is not the possibility but
the
dignity of his art. It is strange that this concern is not mentioned by
Panofs-
ky. We realize increasingly how much more these questions of hierarchy
of
dignity and nobility mattered to the past than they matter to us.
Donald
Hirsch in his book
Validity in Interpretation
Validity in Interpretation,
New Haven-London 1967.
tant point that we cannot begin to interpret a text before
we have decided to
what genre it belongs. I think it is clear that Zuccari’s
treatise belongs to the
genre of eulogies or panegyrics in praise of a particular
vocation or discipline.
In writing such a panegyric, the orator will be at pains
to praise, among other
things, the noble connections of his subject. If he
praises a prince he will
dwell on his ancestry and if he praises a discipline he
will have to demonstrate
its direct line to Almighty God. If you had honoured me
with an invitation
three hundred years ago to speak at your
convegno
you would have expected me
to begin by saying that the first lexicographer was
God whose sacred work you
are now continuing and to produce many learned
quotations to back up my
claim.
It is not by accident, I believe, that some of Zuccari’s arguments for
the
divinity of painting are anticipated in Leonardo’s
Paragone
of a century earlier
exalting the nobility of painting. Being the genius that he
was, Leonardo con-
densed the whole lengthy argument in the wonderful passage:
«Come il pit-
tore
e Signore
d’ogni sorte di gente e di tutte le cose.
Se’l pittore vol vedere
bellezze, che lo innamorino, egli n’e signore di
generarle, et se vol vedere cose
mostruose, che spaventino, o’che sieno
buffonesche e risibili, o’veramente
compassionevoli,
ei n'e signore e Dio...
e in effetto ciò che nell’universo per
essentia,
presentia o’immaginatione, esso l’ha prima nella mente e poi nelle
mani; e
quelle sono di tanta eccellentia, che in pari tempo generano una pro-
portionata
armonia in un solo sguardo qual’ fanno le cose»
Trattato della pittura,
Codex Urbinus Latinus 1270, 5 r (ed.
A. P. McMahon, Princeton,
1956).
Even
Zuccari’s
claim that
disegno
governs
all
the
liberal
arts would not
have surprised Leonardo.
Needless to say, Panofsky was fully aware of the contents and import
of
Leonardo’s
Paragone
, he even prints the passage I have cited in one of his many
footnotes relating
to a different topic, but he obviously did not wish to discuss
it in the context
of
Idea,
because Leonardo did not use that word and his text
could therefore not find a
place in Panofsky’s
Begriffsgeschichte.
I am sure that
every lexicographer must be familiar with the problem posed by
this decision.
Should he concentrate on words, or on the thoughts behind the
word? If he
does the former, as Panofsky decided to do, he may be in danger of missing
important
clues, if the latter he may lose the thread which he decided to fol-
low.
Take the example I have just mentioned, the oration in praise of the dig-
nity
of certain disciplines or arts: in his useful volume of 1899
Reden und Briefeitalienischer Humanisten
pieces as inaugural lectures to university courses and letters on similar
topics
from the 15th century. The recent reprint
words where I find fifty entries for
dignitas,
forty for
gloria, twenty for
summumbonum,
but only one for
Idea
in a quotation from Cicero’s
Academica.
No doubt
this observation may be of relevance to the lexicographer, but the
question
remains whether the genre of epideictic oratory offers the right kind of
evi-
dence for
Begriffsgeschichte
, the historical analysis of philosophical concepts? Are
we not in danger of
doing violence both to philosophy and to rhetoric in ana-
lysing a speach such as
Bellori’s
Idea
too closely for contradictions and incon-
sistencies in the sources on which
the speaker drew? Did he really mind
whether he employed the word
idea
in its Platonic, Aristotelian or Neo-Pla-
tonic sense? Is it indeed always
legitimate to ask which of the meanings he
was after, given the fact that it had
been the aim of so many philosophers of
these centuries to demonstrate the
concordance of these various schools of
thought? So many, after all, held fast to
the conviction that ancient wisdom
must have been one and undivided and would not
admit that of two contrast-
ing systems only one could be true?
In raising this question in relation to Panofsky’s
Idea
I do not wish to
conceal from you that similar doubts may also apply to one of
my own studies,
my article on
Philosophies of Symbolism and their bearing on Art
Symbolic Images,
London 1972, Italian as Immagini simboliche, Torino
1978.
as a starting point precisely such an oration, Cristophoro
Giarda’s speech on
Icones Symbolicae,
and attempted to sort out the Platonic and Aristotelian cross-
currents in the
theories of allegorical and emblematic images, without perhaps
paying sufficient
heed to these syncretistic tendencies.
But if the words which occur in this kind of text should not necessarily be
used as
evidence of the writer’s or speaker’s allegiance to one or the other
philosophical
system, how should we look at them? I know no better answer
than the one given by
Arthur O. Lovejoy. I well remember that at this meet-
ing last year we heard a
certain amount of criticism of Lovejoy’s approach
some of which may have been quite
justified, but to the best of my memory
one of Lovejoy’s contributions was not mentioned, his notion of
metaphysicalpathos
which he explains in the methodological introduction to his book
TheGreat Chain of Being
of things... in terms
which, like the words of a poem, awaken through their
association... a congenial
mood or tone of feeling on the part of the philoso-
pher or his readers». True to
his habit of classifying and subdividing his
topics Lovejoy offers us «a good
many kinds» of metaphysical pathos. «There
is, in the first place, the pathos of
sheer obscurity, the loveliness of the incom-
prehensible... the reader does not
know exactly what they mean, but they have
all the more on that account an air of
sublimity; an agreeable feeling at once
of awe and of excitation comes over him
as he contemplates thoughts of so
immeasurable a profundity...». Lovejoy
concludes this witty and astringent sec-
tion with the words: «The delicate task
of discovering these varying suscepti-
bilities and showing how they help to
shape a system or to give an idea plausi-
bility and currency is a part of the
work of the historian of ideas».
I think it is also a legitimate task of the lexicographer because it may
be
precisely in the context of such emotional exaltation that terms tend to
lose
their precision and gain in flexibility.
Idea
and
ideal
became words to conjure
with, words which would be sure of creating an effect
and this, maybe, was
how the inflation set in that led to the devaluation and
trivialisation of the
term. There is a nice little restaurant in London that is
called “The Good
Idea”. One wonders whether Plato would have frequented it.
Tayllerand is
supposed to have said that words exist to conceal our thoughts.
They may also
arouse the most surprising thoughts or emotions. There is a famous
English
anecdote about an old lady who thanked the pastor after his sermon for
that
comforting word Mesopotamia. Before we laugh at her, let us remember
how
many intellectuals have found comfort in outlandish words which they
experi-
ence as grand and dignified — I mentioned these O. K. words in one of my
interventions last year.
In stressing this psychological aspect of language I have the support of
a
highly intelligent pioneer of aesthetics who was also a great orator,
Edmund
Burke. Towards the end of his
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas ofthe Sublime
and Beautiful
surprising conclusion
that the clarity of speech often militates against its emo-
tional effect. In a
passage almost reminiscent of Vico he writes: «Unculti-
vated people are but
ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distin-
guishing them; but, for
that reason, they admire more, and are more affected
with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and
more
passionate manner. If the affection be well conveyed, it will work its
effect
without any clear idea; often without any idea at all of the thing which
has
originally given rise to it» (Part V, section 1). Burke, in short, denies
the
accepted view that words tend to conjure up images in our mind. True,
he
writes, «It seems to be an odd subject of dispute with any man, whether he
has
ideas in his mind or not» (Part V, section 5). He would have argued that
the
word
idea
itself conjures up no clear picture in his mind.
It so happens that his opinion anticipates the memorable dispute about
the very
topic of
idea
which was mentioned this morning by Professor Hinske,
the episode described in
Goethe’s Annalen oder Tag- und Jahreshefte,
for the year
1794, of the first meeting between Goethe and Schiller
Paralipomena zu den Annalen,
2,
in
GOETHE, Sämt-liche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe,
n.d., XXX, pp. 389-391.
sketched his theory of the
Urpflanze
and Schiller replied:
«Das ist keine Erfah-
rung, das ist eine Idee»
(This is not a concrete observation but an idea). Pro-
fessor Hinske’s context
did not demand that he also told us of Goethe’s gruff
reply: «It must indeed be
welcome news to me that I have ideas without
knowing it, and that I even see them
with my own eyes». As Goethe sums
up this encounter, «Schiller took for an idea
what I called a concrete observa-
tion
(Erlebnis)».
Maybe you allow me a different conclusion: what Goethe might have
said to
Schiller was that his
Urpflanze
came closer to an Aristotelian entelechy
than to a Platonic or Kantian idea. He saw it as a principle that worked
inside
the botanical creation to secure the basic requirements of any plant, the
roots,
the stem, the leaves, the blossoms and ultimate fruits in their order
and
function.
Had Goethe explained his view to Schiller today he might perhaps have
said that
plants are ‘programmed’ to follow this pattern in their development
and that this
programme is encoded in the sequence of their genes. But this
novel and useful
metaphor should not hide from us that with this idea of bio-
logical programming
anamnesis
has entered by the back door, as it were. If we
or other organisms were not
programmed to see, to interact with the world,
we would not survive, but since
our programming is not perfect it is only the
fittest that do survive.