#bertholdreiss

[porcileorg]

Karte / Map

Author: Berthold Reiß, 2017.

The original text (in German) appears in the collected writings of Berthold Reiß – Antinomia. Gesammelte Schriften 1989-2019. Published by Monika Bayer-Wermuth and Daniela Stöppel (Kunstraum München, 2020).

Text contribution for The Happy Fainting of Painting #2 – Galerie Krobath, Vienna, September 15-October 14, 2017.

"What gives space reality [Realitet] is the organic process of nature; what gives time reality is the plenitude of history." This sentence is a footnote, so not quite in the text. In 1841, Søren Kierkegaard wrote this text The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates as a dissertation. The talk of space and time, of the organic process, which is visible, and of history, which promises not only hardship but also abundance, seems arabesque in that it tries to show as such both field and sequence. It explains a synthesis that does not appear as a conclusion in Plato's dialogues, but as a myth or a metaphor. The synthesis is validly represented "[w]hen the metaphor* finally acquires such dimensions that all existence becomes visible in it."

Kierkegaard finds the same synthesis in the thing-in-itself. And he finds it represented differently when Kant tries to get hold of it. He can really grasp it as a taboo, in his whole view of "radical evil."** And he can give it up to irony: "since grasping it was impossible, then [he] had the obviously great advantage, the rather ironic good fortune, of always hoping." Apocalyptic terror is serious, while hope is ironic. The map is a form in which this relationship does not appear as psychological, but contingent and at the same time geometrical. And it is coincidence, but also necessary, that this form can be so different that one map of the same shows the opposite of another.

The modern era still suggests that the same beginning can be made all over the world. In 1781, Immanuel Kant in Königsberg uses the identical preface for the Critique of Pure Reason that Francis Bacon used in London for his Instauratio Magna of 1620, which states that "not to imagine and construe my Instauration as something [unending or] infinite and suprahuman, when it is in fact unending error's end and proper boundary." Apparently, it is about a joint project. People should "in their own interest, [give up the rivalries and prejudices regarding opinions and] be mindful of the common good; [and that] they themselves, [being now freed and protected by the safeguards and aids I have provided against errors and impediments in the methods,] also take part [in the tasks that remain]."

Only a picture that Kant draws with words reveals that one conclusion is not always legitimate next to the other. "Instauratio Magna" means 'the great instauration.' On the frontispiece [engraved cover] we see ships moving in front of a horizon and the whole view framed on the left and right by mighty pillars. These pillars are mentioned in the Critique of Pure Reason when it describes a "determination of reason’s bounds," that "is carried out according to secure principles, and that affixes with utmost reliability its nihil ulterius*** to the Pillars of Hercules." The image that appears in copper for Bacon and in words for Kant is less artistic than mythical. For Kierkegaard, the mythical consists of the fact that it also overwhelms the one who employs it: Hence the Pillars of Hercules can steer Bacon and Kant in opposite directions. Bacon writes under the image, "Many will travel and knowledge will be increased" The outlook and pull-out [Ausblick und Ausfahrt] are like an outward extension [Ausgriff]. This is what lies outside the ancient map, described as hic sunt leones, hic sunt dragones [here be lions, here be dragons]. On the other hand, the myth of the Critique of Pure Reason probably consists in restoring the complete vision [Anblick] of the world. The rightful conclusion must also be seen.

The Pillars of Hercules, which the ancient imagination placed on the left and right of the Strait of Gibraltar, mark the border of the world. In what Plato calls 'idea,' their sight is at the same time a view. "Wisdom is power," the famous phrase by Francis Bacon on the other hand seems to lead behind the horizon as behind the light.**** But does Kant only see the limits of growth? Is science evil? The insight that wisdom is power is deepened and expanded when the idea returns as a prototype.

Kant speaks of "reason [that] sets limits to a freedom that in itself is lawless." One can assume that this act of reason follows a principle. But it is certain that he first sets out, indeed discovers, this principle. If the sun stands for the idea of the good, then this picture can connect sight and view better than principle and action. These belong rather to technology or to politics. However, it is noticeable that Kant describes them geographically. It is known that Kant lectured on geography. But Kant likewise has in mind a "land of pure understanding." He says that he "not only traveled throughout the land of pure understanding and carefully inspected its every part, but have also surveyed it throughout, determining for each thing in this land its proper place." And then Kant finds not only a land, but a metaphor: "This land, however, is an island, and is enclosed by nature itself within unchangeable bounds. It is the land of truth (a charming name), and is surrounded by a vast and stormy ocean, where illusion properly resides and many fog banks and much fast-melting ice feign new-found lands. This sea incessantly deludes the seafarer with empty hopes as he roves through his discoveries, and thus entangles him in adventures that he can never relinquish, nor ever bring to an end."

When reason sets limits like nature, then that is not a conclusion, but a prototype, a beginning that is technical, moral and symbolic at the same time. A first device, a free beginning and a first sight appear in the same light. The map, in which Cartesian coordinates are supplemented by lines from the landscape, stands for this analogy. And Kant finds not only land or sea, but Herculean columns. It is to be expected that action and representation will emerge again from the construct (see Nietzsche's Concept of Appearance in this volume, 1992, p. 10ff).

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Published and translated with the permission of the author. This text is part of an ongoing series on the writings of Berthold Reiß which porcile.org wishes to make accessible to a non-German speaking audience. The text is translated by porcile.org in exchange with Berthold Reiß, who is an artist that lives and works in Munich, Germany.

For the English equivalent of the quotes from Kant this translation refers to Werner S. Pluhar’s translation of Critique of Pure Reason (Unified Edition) (Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1996).

For the English equivalent of the quotes from Kierkegaard this translation refers to Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong’s translation of Kierkegaard's Writings, II, Volume 2. The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates (Princeton University Press, 1990).

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Victor’s notes

*The German translation that Berthold Reiß refers to translates here as Bild (image), in terms of bildlich (figurative or metaphorical). Hong&Hong translate this as metaphor.

**radical evil is an expression that is borrowed from Kant and also quoted as such in Kierkegaard

***nothing beyond – beyond the line connecting the Pillars of Hercules

****While here we went for the literal translation this is actually a play of words. Hinter den Horizont zu führen wie hinter das Licht. With the idom 'Hinter das Licht' in mind this could translate as '... lead behind the horizon and down the garden path.'

[porcileorg]

Ada

Author: Berthold Reiß, 2014.

The original text (in German) appears in the collected writings of Berthold Reiß – Antinomia. Gesammelte Schriften 1989-2019. Published by Monika Bayer-Wermuth and Daniela Stöppel (Kunstraum München, 2020).

Concept for a workshop, 2014.

"This land, however, is an island, and is enclosed by nature itself within unchangeable bounds. It is the land of truth (a charming name), and is surrounded by a vast and stormy ocean, where illusion properly resides and many fog banks and much fast-melting ice feign new-found lands. This sea incessantly deludes the seafarer with empty hopes as he roves through his discoveries, and thus entangles him in adventures that he can never relinquish, nor ever bring to an end." (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, I. Transcendental Elementary Doctrine, [Second Part. Transcendental Logic,] First Division. Transcendental Analytic, Book Two. The Analytic of Principles, Chapter 3. On the distinction of all objects into phenomena and noumena)

Every sign arises from an outline on a surface. The outline distinguishes what it encloses from what it excludes. Very often the sign is like the color black on white. What is inside is closed off* to the outside. That which is enclosed is cut out of unlimited ground. Unlike this ground, the sign can be surveyed as a whole. Unlike this ground, the sign can be recognized.

Mostly one recognizes what the sign stands for. It rarely stands for a person. More often it stands for a company or an institution. But above all else, the sign exists as its own identity. The sign rarely stands for an island, even more rarely does it represent an island. But it is always an island itself.

Kant speaks of the island to describe the place where human understanding** lies. The text comes from a time when there were still countries to be discovered, a matter of venturing out or finding the coast, but also a matter of staying at home. Today the text can describe the place of people abandoned to the global economy, "surrounded by a vast and stormy ocean, where illusion properly resides." Immediately after, Kant speaks of what the understanding "draws"*** from itself and of what it "borrows" from experience. And he elaborates that these debts are less dangerous than that production. Because being creative always means to go beyond one's own limits.****

In my project Ada (Turkish for 'island', editor's note) I want to compare today's art and today's work. For this I choose the sign as a form. Because in every sign a meaning is connected with an appearance. The same sign can appear in an office and in a studio. Or an entrepreneur looking for a logo for his company can understand a painter standing in front of a blank canvas. The work that aims to make what is needed for appearance to occur starts from the void. The work that consists in understanding what appears comes from abundance. This production corresponds to the economy of the real. This administration corresponds to the economy of capital. In economics as in art, the signs are set at the beginning and read at the end. The connection between production and administration allows for the distinction between the particular work involved in art and the general work found in economics.

Therefore, I will first introduce the project Ada in a workshop. Figuratively speaking, Ada is like a map where factual and individual existence can be drawn. More literally, I invite everyone who participates in the workshop to create their own world from signs that they find in the everyday world. This world can look like a self-portrait, but it is composed of the signs that everyone works with. One's own language is at the same time the foreign, and vice versa.

When I try to understand Kant from today's experience, I follow a broad concept of modernity. If I call everything modern that is not ancient, then I must note that modernity has lived, expressed in the dead language of antiquity, for two thousand years. If in antiquity meaning was once one with its appearance, then this unity still exists in the most modern, in the ideo-pictographic sign, in the pictogram. Only on this ground of hidden harmony can Kant say: the land of pure understanding "is" an island.

The first part of the workshop consists in looking in the contemporary world of work for forms of unity. I draw on my own research as an example for this. The second part of the workshop consists in looking in the contemporary world of work, for forms of unity. I draw on my own research as an example for this. The second part of the workshop consists in finding forms where meaning occurs at the same time as appearance. I draw on my own work as an example for this. This sequence, in which the analysis turns into the synthesis, reverses the usual arrangement in which production appears first and then administration. And already the analysis and even more the synthesis can only be done by everyone on its own. Reversal and experience that can only proceed from an individual are two important steps when it comes to understanding the particularity that characterizes artistic work.

Published and translated with the permission of the author. This text is part of an ongoing series on the writings of Berthold Reiß which porcile.org wishes to make accessible to a non-German speaking audience. The text is translated by porcile.org in exchange with Berthold Reiß, who is an artist that lives and works in Munich, Germany.

For the English equivalent of the quotes of Kant’s text this translation refers to Werner S. Pluhar’s translation of Critique of Pure Reason (Unified Edition) (Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1996).

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Magda’s notes

*The German term used here is 'begrenzt' which is usually translated as 'limited' or 'restricted.' However, because of the reference to the island and because the term also relates to 'border' as well as 'limit' I have tried to express both meanings by beginning my translation efforts more geographically with a sense of enclosure, and only then shift towards the term's meaning as 'limitation,' in order to give a taste of Berthold Reiß's play with words.

**It is important to note that the term used by Berthold Reiß, 'Verstand' is taken directly from Kant, and is translated in the Pluhar edition consistently as the faculty of understanding. The land in question, the island that Kant is referring to in the first quote, is this faculty of understanding, which at this point in the first Critique Kant had just finished defining.

***Again, this is a Pluhar translation. While 'Schöpfen' means to 'draw' as in 'to draw water out of a well' or 'to draw hope from something,' a 'Schöpfer' is a creator. Kant is referring here to the spontaneity that characterises the faculty of understanding. Unlike the perceptual or 'intuitive' aspect of experience, that must always draw on something else, understanding draws on itself only. Only when combined is knowledge produced.

****Saying this however, before there can be any synthesis of intuitions and understanding, intuitions must be gathered in a form that understanding can work with. This task is given by Kant to the faculty of imagination. Imagination for Kant has two powers, reproductive and productive. The productive one is considered to be a 'hidden art.' Understanding therefore 'administers' over intuition, but imagination is able to create.

[porcileorg]

Das Schema / The Schema

Author: Berthold Reiß, 2014.

The original text (in German) appears in the collected writings of Berthold Reiß – Antinomia. Gesammelte Schriften 1989-2019. Published by Monika Bayer-Wermuth and Daniela Stöppel (Kunstraum München, 2020).

Speech. Türkenstraße, Munich, January 23, 2014.

The press release for my current exhibition mentions at the end a "trace that leads not from life into death, but from death into life." In 1998, an announcement began with the sentence: "In order for something to be able to be moved, that which is to be moved must be completely dead." (See in this volume Berthold Reiß, 1998, p. 34f.) One can certainly imagine a movement that does not take place only relative to its opposite. This, if you will, absolute movement is what we call 'life.' We can only imagine this if we do not imagine it only relative to its opposite. Life itself, or that which appears according to the relative meaning of the word, is therefore called eternal life, in the New Testament Greek 'zoe aionios.'

The aeon or the age of the world means duration, but also eternity. The aeon is a form that includes movement and rest, life and death. But does this form exist? It is logically not graspable. And it is aesthetically not tangible. Time does not begin, does not stand still and does not end. And it is impossible to survey as a whole a series that does not begin, does not stop and does not end. Wherever one turns to the Critique of Pure Reason, one finds this impossibility and this intangibility demonstrated. And yet, and presumably precisely because of this, this introduction of an impossible formlessness decides whether we can do anything at all with the Critique of Pure Reason.

The first book of Transcendental Analytic is comprised of the Analytic of Concepts. The second book contains the Analytic of Principles. Kant calls the Analytic of Principles, "a canon solely for the power of judgment, teaching it to apply to appearances the concepts of understanding, which contain the condition for a priori rules." The application of concepts to appearances consists in the ability to "to distinguish whether something does or does not fall under a given rule (is or is not a casus datae legis)." This ability is called power of judgment [Urteilskraft]. Kant notes that "the power of judgment is a particular talent that cannot be taught at all but can only be practiced." In the footnote he writes "A lack in power of judgment is in fact what we call stupidity, and for such a handicap there is no remedy." (Kant, Werke, vol. 3, p. 183ff., ed.)

The application of concepts to appearances or the determination of appearances by concepts, the ability to find cases that fit rules or to name the rule appropriate to the particular case always applies when, for example, we try to say what that, what we mean implies to the example. But with the exception of mathematics, this hardly ever happens. No matter whether the connection of a concept with an appearance succeeds or fails, whether it is right or wrong; an example of this kind of application is always a judgment. But above all, this judgment testifies, even if it is stupid, that concepts can be applied to appearances. And certainly, there is a rule for this application. The Analytic of Principles adds this rule to the Analytic of Concepts. It is therefore also called the Doctrine of the Power of Judgment. The second chapter of the Transcendental Doctrine of the Power of Judgment deals with "the principles of pure understanding." The first chapter, however, deals with "the sensible condition under which alone pure concepts of understanding can be used." I maintain that we can only make use of the Critique of Pure Reason if we understand what is meant by it.

This sensible condition is different from an object, an intuition, an appearance, which are likewise sensible. The difference consists in the fact that in a single thing we find nothing of a pure concept of understanding, that is, of a category. And no one has ever encountered a category. But the sensible condition for connecting such fundamentally different things is called the possibility of this connection. Therefore, while the category of possibility and the condition of sensibility are not the same, they are related. An egg can appear in a picture. Is this how possibility appears? Even if it is meant, it is still not correct that the possible gives rise to the egg, or that the egg gives rise to the possible. Instead, it is absolutely correct to say: according to the category of reality, an 'Egg-and-Dart'* appeared "in a certain time," in antiquity. According to the category of possibility it can appear "at some time," in the future.

The sensible condition under which the categories can be applied to the appearances seems to be time. The connection of all ideas in the "I think" corresponds to the one series; as all presentations of external things affect inner sense.**—This also and especially applies when thinking is called spontaneous and sensuality [is called] receptive. The conscious and the unconscious live side by side, if you will. Of course, they spend the same time together. In a time that is empty because it separates everything from one another, we*** can read the Critique of Pure Reason as a document of a blind practice.—Only this blind practice allows us to apply categories to appearances, to try, against all analysis, what is called connection, synthesis. "Synthesis as such," it is said in the Analytic of Concepts, "as we shall see hereafter, is the mere effect produced by the imagination, which is a blind but indispensable function of the soul without which we would have no cognition whatsoever, but of which we are conscious only very rarely." Thus "the sensible condition under which alone pure concepts of understanding can be used," is by no means simply time, but the determination of the time in which this application is possible. This determination of time Kant calls schematism, and when he explains it, he speaks of "a universal procedure of the imagination for providing a concept with its image." One can imagine commonplace things and tremendous things. It is commonplace to say, "The schema of necessity is the existence of an object at all times." But an abyss appears when this schema is presented in Latin and Greek: "aeternitas (,) necessitas phaenomenon": eternity, necessity as appearance. Eternity is the necessity, when it appears. The question of the aeon is thus answered. The aeon exists as a schema of pure understanding.

Ultimately, because necessity is "at all times" at work, it can be called blind. When the condition of the sensible is what allows for the application of the categories, the condition is what one calls reliability and the sensible, the sealed ground on which the applied sciences have free rein. The schematism of pure understanding, insofar as it is dominated by pure understanding, is a trail leading from life to death. Kant calls the question of application, of course in the sense that the gaze moves from the table of categories to the window, simply a "natural and important question." And after answering quite simply that there must be a third between concept and appearance, and that this can only be the determination of time, which he calls schema and attributes to the imagination, he goes on through the examples of five points, a triangle and a dog, to suddenly find himself in the language of the sublime: "This schematism of our understanding, i.e., its schematism regarding appearances and their mere form, is a secret art residing in the depths of the human soul, an art whose true stratagems we shall hardly ever divine from nature and lay bare before ourselves." The schema is called "a product and, as it were, a monogram of the pure a priori imagination through which, and according to which, images become possible in the first place." (Kant, Werke, vol. 3, p. 190, ed.).

This talk of how images become possible, presents itself in time as condition and possibility. According to its brief outline, this talk is the condition of the possibility of a second one. Which will be about the "hidden art" and about how it comes to light.

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Published and translated with the permission of the author. This text is part of an ongoing series on the writings of Berthold Reiß which porcile.org wishes to make accessible to a non-German speaking audience. The text is translated by porcile.org in exchange with Berthold Reiß, who is an artist that lives and works in Munich, Germany.

For the English equivalent of the quotes from Kant this translation refers to Werner S. Pluhar’s translation of Critique of Pure Reason (Unified Edition) (Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1996).

Magda’s notes

*The 'Egg-and-Dart' is a type of molding in which egg shapes alternate with V-shapes. It is one of the most widely used classical moldings. The literal german translation of ‘Eierstab’ would be 'egg-stick.'

**This would be Kant’s phrasing in the Pluhar translation of how inner and outer sense relate.

***First person plural is used instead of the passive, again in line with the Pluhar translation.

[porcileorg]

Antinomia

Author: Berthold Reiß, 2012.

The original text (in German) appears in the collected writings of Berthold Reiß – Antinomia. Gesammelte Schriften 1989-2019. Published by Monika Bayer-Wermuth and Daniela Stöppel (Kunstraum München, 2020).

Speech for the birthday of Ulrich Luhmann, 2012.

The title Antinomia recalls Kant's definition of "antinomy" as a contradiction (or mutual incompatibility) of two laws as much as possibly a record label or a disease. Giving a talk about art is, arguably, in equal parts necessary and impossible. It seems necessary to communicate an understanding of art to the general public. And it is precisely this generality that seems to be the background against which art as a construction appears as special at all. Likewise, however, both the foreground and its contrast speak against the speech as such. They present themselves as a perpetuating failure. The more often one turns and twists them, all the more that this foreground and this form become mere signs of impossibility. The talk of center knows what it wants to introduce: art as center, for example, in such a way that we can speak about it because we see it together, or in such a way that it can be both a presentation as well as an intuition [Vorstellung und Anschauung]. Likewise, the talk of form seems superfluous because of what it is about. The artist makes something new only when he makes something at all.

Ladies and gentlemen! I have now told you that I have nothing to say. However, I have been asked to speak by the man honored today. In order to comply with this request as with what has already been said, it seems to me best to follow the double condition of necessity and impossibility by presenting you with a speech which you may find inspiring and daunting in equal parts.

The task of conveying art to the general public and at the same time pointing out to the general public what art is in particular, seems to be most nearly accomplished, if not fulfilled, or at least grasped in outline, through the talk of the expressive or of expressionism. In the talk of expressionism this outline is not only described as a periphery, but rather, much more dynamically as the expansion of the center. From a distance, a contraction that leads back to the center now seems to be experienced as a reverse dynamic. Physics began to do justice to the structure of the world when it recognized expansion and contraction, repulsion and attraction as the forces that both generate and stabilize the solar system.

I have now, however, nothing to say of expressionistic art. After what was stated at the beginning, it is not in my power or every word forbids itself, which goes beyond speech. Rather, the talk about the expressive is necessary and impossible only if it is expressive itself.

Wilhelm Worringer completed his book Formprobleme der Gotik (Form Problems of the Gothic), as he writes in the preface, "in the field, February 1918." The second chapter is entitled: "Kunstwissenschaft als Menschheitspsychologie" (Art Study as Human Psychology*). In it, Worringer states that the "study of the artistic activity of man ... has not yet gone through that radical transformation and broadening that the study of the mental activity of man owes to Kant’s critique of knowledge. His important shifting of emphasis from the study of the objects known, to the study of the knowing itself, would correspond in the field of art study to a method which regards all artistic facts merely as the working out of definite a priori categories of artistic, or, more exactly, of general psychic sensibility, and to a method for which these psychical categories that determine style are the real problem of investigation." (Wilhelm Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik, Munich 1920, p. 25) Worringer would certainly agree with the remark that Kant would consider "psychical categories that determine style"** to be messy and, if at all, analogous to it, would speak of schemata.

More important than this sketch is the picture that Worringer presents. For this picture is as necessary as it is impossible. Towards the end of the book are the following sentences: "For the Teutons,*** as we saw, are the conditio sine qua non of the Gothic. They introduced among self-confident peoples the germs of doubt of sense and of distraction of soul, out of which the transcendental pathos of the Gothic then shot up so mightily." (p. 147). In the Critique of Pure Reason, understanding and sensuality are so related to one another that transcendental logic does not break out of the binds of transcendental aesthetics. Every cognition is only possible in space and time. The more precise it is, the more it gives us nothing but appearance, that is: "doubt of sense." This doubt also applies to ourselves. Kant states that, "the form of this intuition lies at the basis beforehand in the mind; and this form determines, in the pre­sentation of time, the way in which the manifold is [placed] together in the mind. And thus this power does not intuit itself as it would if it presented itself directly and self-actively; rather, it intuits itself according to the way in which it is affected from within, and hence intuits itself as it appears to itself, not as it is." (Kant, Werke, vol. 3, p. 93). It is therefore only an assertion: the conditio sine qua non or the subject of the Gothic are the Germanic people. This assertion is impossible as knowledge. Worringer also touches on what Kant calls the transcendental dialectic. Is there a world? Is there a soul? Is there freedom? Is there God? Reason can only answer yes and no to these questions. That is, if you will, a "distraction of soul." The "the germs of doubt of sense and of distraction of soul," that Worringer ascribes to the Germanic people is also attributed to Kantian critique of knowledge in his own text.

The topic of Kant and the Gothic (see in this volume p. 74ff.) this is admittedly not: folk ideology and enlightenment can also be confused at some point. Far more often, the opposites present themselves in this way as forms of expression whose necessity and impossibility seem to be interdependent.

I would like to conclude with a passage from the chapter "Die geheime Gotik der frühen nordischen Ornamentik" (The Latent Gothic of Early Nordern Ornament):

"We see that the northern ornament, despite its abstract linear character, sets free impressions of life, which our feeling of vitality, bound as it is to empathy, would impute immediately only to the organic world. So it would seem that this ornament [PI. VIII] unites the abstract character of primitive geometric ornament [PI. II] and the living character of Classical organically tinged ornament [PI. V, A]. Such is, however, not the case. It can by no means raise the claim of presenting a synthesis, a union, of these fundamental antitheses. It deserves, rather, only the name of a hybrid phenomenon. It is not a question here of a harmonious commingling of two opposing tendencies, but of an unclear and, to a certain degree, uncanny amalgamation of them, of drawing upon our power of empathy, which is bound to organic rhythm, for an abstract world foreign to it. Our organically tempered sense of vitality shrinks back before this senseless violence of expression as before a debauchery. But when finally, yielding to compulsion, it lets its energies flow into these lines, dead in themselves, it feels itself torn away in an unheard-of manner and raised to a frenzy of movement which far outstrips all possibilities of organic movement. The pathos of movement inherent in this vitalized geometry, a prelude to the vitalized mathematics of Gothic architecture forces our sensibility to an unnatural feat of strength. Once the natural bounds of organic motion are broken through, there is no stopping; again and again the line is broken, again and again checked in the natural direction of its movement, again and again violently prevented from running out quietly, again and again diverted to new complications of expression, so that, intensified through all these restraints, it yields its utmost of expressive power, until finally, robbed of all possibilities of natural satisfaction, it comes to an end in intricate contortions, or disconsolately breaks off in vacancy, or senselessly runs back into itself." (Form Problems of the Gothic, 47-8)

Worringer deals with "form problems'' of the Gothic. In the passage we read, these form problems emerge from the connection between abstraction and liveliness. This opposition corresponds to the opposition of Kant's Critique of Judgment: the opposition between the mechanical and the organic. The Critique of Pure Reason also speaks dialectically of freedom and conditionality. If the expressive gesture is borne like no other by the "thesis" that the world leaves room for "absolute spontaneity" (Kant, Werke, vol. 4, p. 428), then it challenges the "antithesis" that this beginning, like every beginning, is conditioned.

In contrast to Worringer's talk of an "unclear and, to a certain degree, uncanny amalgamation," Kant found our position in the midst of opposites downright delightful the moment he discovered it: "I tried quite seriously to prove propositions and their opposite, not in order to demonstrate a theory of doubt, but because I suspected an illusion of the understanding and wished to find out where it resided. The year [17]'69 brought me great light." (Karl Jaspers, Kant. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, München, 1975, p. 22)

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Published and translated with the permission of the author. This text is part of an ongoing series on the writings of Berthold Reiß which porcile.org wishes to make accessible to a non-German speaking audience. The text is translated by porcile.org in exchange with Berthold Reiß, who is an artist that lives and works in Munich, Germany.

For the English equivalent of the quotes from Worringer’s book this translation refers to the authorized English translation of the third edition by Shapley-Rusk - Form Problems of the Gothic (G.E. Stechert & Co., New York, 1918).

For the English equivalent of the quotes of Kant this translation refers to Werner S. Pluhar’s translation of Critique of Pure Reason (Unified Edition) (Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1996).

For the English equivalent for the Kant quote in Karl Jaspers book this translation refers to Ralf Manheim’s translation of Karl Jasper’s Kant (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1962) that is based on Kant: Drei Gründer des Philosophierens (Piper, München, 1957), where the quote also appears.

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Victor’s notes

*While in the authorized translation the title of the chapter translates as Art Study of Human Psychology, in a contemporary and rather literal sense it would translate as Art History as Psychology of Humankind

**formbildende Kategorien der Seele would rather translate in contemporary language to form-constructing categories of the soul

***Worringer writes Germanen, which would translate in contemporary language to Germanic people