A sociologist taking up a theme like "romantic art" should endeavor to add nothing new to the subject matter itself. Faithfulness to the ob-ject is called for—even if only in the ordinary sense of "empirical." In what follows it is therefore not a matter of competing with literary or aesthetic inquiry or of offering new interpretations of Romantic texts or other contemporary works of art. Nor shall I intervene in the broad discussion bearing on the relationship of Romanticism, and above all early German Romanticism (Fruhroniantik), to modern society and its self-description as "modern";1 this discussion is too dependent on crude evaluations (for example, "irrationalism") and will necessarily remain controversial as long as the concept of modernity itself remains controversial. It is, then, not a question of hermeneutics, not a matter of 'knowing better' in the domain of the critical analysis of art; in fact it is not even, at least not directly, a question here of a more adequate understanding of key Romandc concepts such as poetry (Poesie), irony, arabesque, fragment, criticism. Such may emerge as a byproduct of our investigation. But disciplinary discourses operate in their own spe-cific recursive networks, with their own intertextualities, their own self-fabricated pasts, which, for instance, determine what one has to do in order to assume the standpoint of second-order observation and to re-main intelligible—regardless of whether one continues the discursive tradition or suggests particular changes. And, as is well-known, it is dif-
1 See Karl Heinz Bohrer, Die Kritik derRomantik, Frankfurt 1989.
ficult (if not impossible, at least dependent on coincidences hard to foresee) to intervene in disciplines from the outside in the name of in-terdisciplinarity.2
This should be emphasized in advance when, as here, it is a matter of redescribing with systems-theoretical instruments what happened when Romanticism discovered its own autonomy and realized and worked through what had already taken place historically, namely the social differentiation of a functional system specifically related to art .3There is a considerable literature bearing on this development, a literature that takes as its point of departure the notion that the spe-cific character of Romanticism as well as subsequent reflections of art is conditioned by the reorganization of society along the lines of func-tional differentiation.4 If Romanticism was modern and still is, then not because it preferred the "hovering" (das "Schwebendt") or the "ir-rational" or the "fantastic," but because it attempts to endure system autonomy. Up till now, however, there have not been any investigations that seek to make clear, at the level of abstraction of general systems theory, what is to be expected when functional systems are differenti-ated as self-referential, operationally closed systems. This process can-not be grasped according to the schema—still predominant at the time of Romanticism—of part and whole. The same goes for general concepts of the advantageous division of labor or, negatively formu-lated, of the eternal conflict of apriori binding values; phrased in terms of proper names: the point holds for Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. For neither can one assume that an "organic" solidarity corre-sponding to the division of labor emerges on its own, nor is it justified to conceive of values as fixed points on the horizon of action orienta-tion. Today entirely different theoretical instruments are available for a discussion of these foundational issues.
2 On these difficulties, but also on possible parallelisms among developments in the natural sciences, cybernetics, and literary studies, see the book by the English scholar trained in chemistry: N. Katherine Hayles, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science, Ithaca 1990, esp. p. 37.
3 The concept of "redescription" is here employed in the sense of Mary Hesse, Mod-els and Analogies in Science, Notre Dame 1966, p. 157ff. One should, however, speak of "metaphorical redescriptionw only if one accepts that no theory can do without metaphors and furthermore that the concept of metaphor is itself a metaphor that uses "metapherein" in a figural, extended, or translated sense.
4 See, for example, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert\ Frankfurt 1989; Niels Werber, Literatur als System: Zur Ausdifferen-zierung literariscker Kommunikation, Opladen 1992. Cf. also Gerhard Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, Vol. I: Von Kant bis Hegel, Opladen 1993.
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II
Important changes in the conceptual repertoire of systems theory re-sult when one substitutes "essential definitions" (Wesensdefmitionen), but also so-called analytic system concepts, with the theoretical notion of the operative closure of systems. Essential definitions rested on a hetero-referential (fremdreferentiell) orientation, analytic definitions on a self-referential orientation of the observer. The nouon of operative closure and, related to it, die theory of autopoietic systems presuppose that self-referential systems must be observed. They are just that which they make out of themselves. An observation is therefore only then appro-priate if it takes the self-reference of the system and, in the case of sys-tems operating with meaning (sinnhafl operierend), (he self-observation of the system into account. The "paradigm shift" that is thereby ac-complished displaces systems theory from the level of first-order obser-vation (systems as objects) to the level of second-order observation (sys-tems as subobjectsor obsubjects, to employ formulations o f j e a n Paul).5
With this turn, the distinction between self-reference and hetero-reference is relocated within the observed observing system. Not only the scientific observer must be able to distinguish between him/herself and others (that is, between concepts and objects); this verba/res dis-tinction is valid for all observing systems, even when they are occupied with sense perceptions and have to rely on the external world without being able to distinguish between reality and illusion.' 'The generaliza-tion of the concept and the structural problems of observing systems has far-reaching consequences, which only became apparent through mathematical analyses. This detour via mathematics frees us at the same time from the mystifications previously attached to concepts such as "meaning" (Sinn) or "mind" (Geist). They enable us to sec today more clearly why and how something like "imagination" is required and in what sense construct ion/deconstruct ion/ reconstruction as an on-going process, an ongoing displacement of distinctions (Derrida's dif-ferance), is necessary in order to dissolve paradoxes in and as l ime. '
5 See Clavis h'ichteana seu Leibgeberiana, in Jean Paul, Werke, vol. 3, Munich 1961. pp. 1011-56, or Ftegetjahre, arte Biographie, in Werke, vol. 2, Munich 1959, pp. 567-1065, esp. 641.
6 This special condition of an unavoidable trust in the world that can only be dis-rupted through critical reflection holds, however, only for psychic systems. For this rea-son we can leave it out of consideration in what follows.
7 The parallels between deconstruction and second-order cybernetics are treated more thoroughly in: Niklas I.uhmann, "Deconstruction as Second Order Observing," New Literary History 24 (1993). pp. 763-82.
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In what follows we rely on the calculus of form developed by George Spencer Brown.8 Similar considerations are to be found in the second-order cybernetics which Heinz von Foerster has elaborated.9 Here the consideration as to what happens when the output of a system is im-mediately reintroduced into the system (that is, when the system forms reflective loops within itself) leads to the concept of the non-trivial, and therefore unpredictable, machine. And here too the problem consists in the fact that the space of possibilities of the system is so greatly expanded through self-reference that neither internal nor ex-ternal observations can predict the operations of the system. A fur ther inference that can be drawn from these mathematical analyses: the sys-tem requires meaning in order to deal successfully (zurechtzukommen) with both itself and its world.10
With reference to this problematic locus Spencer Brown employs the concept of the "re-entry" of a distinction into itself.11 Here too it is a question of deploying possibilities of ordering that cannot be achieved through the normal operations of the arithmetic and alge-bra and can only be demonstrated as paradoxes. Spencer Brown's mode of presentation has the advantage of being directly applicable to a very formal concept of observation. Observation is, in this con-text, nothing other than the use of a distinction for the indication of one and not the other side of the distinction, however the system that performs this might be constituted. For this reason the analysis con-cludes by referring back to its beginning in the equation of observing and drawing a distinction: "We see now that the first distinction, the mark, and the observer are not only interchangeable, but, in the form, identical."12
For the analysis of the Romantic, world, the consequences of such a re-entry are of central importance. If it can be accomplished (whether it is accomplished is then an empirical question), the system reaches a state of "unresolvable indeterminacy."13 The decisive aspect of this
8 See George Spencer Brown, Laws o/F<ntn, New York 1979. Cf. also Dirk Baecker, ed., Kalkul der Form, Frankfurt 1993.
9 Heinz von Foerster, Observing Systems, Seaside, Cal. 1981. See also the German edi-tion expanded with several additional contributions: Heinz von Foerster, Wissen und Geurissen. Versuch einer Briicke, Frankfurt 1993.
10 This presupposes, of course, a de-subjectification of the concept of meaning. For a thorough elaboration of this point see Niklas Luhmann, Souale Systeme: Grundrifi einer aUgemeinen Theorie, Frankfurt 1984, p. 92ff.
" On this point and on what follows, see Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, 54ff., 69fT. 12 Ibid., p. 76. 13 Ibid., p. 57.
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concept is that the indeterminacy is not explained with reference to dependence on an overpowering, itself indeterminable environment, but rather is caused by the re-entry within the system itself. It is thus a matter of self-generated uncertainty with which the system in one way or another, but in any case selectively, must deal.
In order to do this the system requires:
1. a memory function. Memory must be unders tood here as the presentation of the present as the result of the past; or alternatively as the result of an ongoing discrimination between forgett ing and remember ing . 1 4 The memory funct ion is thus a necessary accompaniment to all operat ions of observing systems. It is by no means a matter of the occasional calling u p of memories on the time-scale of the past (after the pattern: where did I put my glasses?).
2. an oscillator function. This can be in terpreted—going beyond Spencer Brown— as the correlate of the use of distinctions. With every deploy-men t of distinctions in observation the system will also observe (mit-beobachten) the possibility of crossing the border of the distinction with a fu r the r operat ion and thus moving f rom one side to the o ther—for ex-ample: f rom the positive to the negative, f rom the good to the bad, from the allowed to the prohibi ted, f rom the useful to the non-useful, f rom the profane to the sacred, etc., f rom the realistic to the fantastic and back again.
With the memory function the system binds itself to its own, now un-alterable past. In this way it produces a present with a past horizon and motivates itself to proceed from the present state of the world rather than presupposing everything as new and unknown at every moment and thus always starting from the beginning.1 5 For this reason there is no "originary" present, no present that would be its own origin. With the oscillator function the system holds its future open—and not merely as the freedom of performing this or that action, but with re-gard to the fact that everything can arrive different; and this not arbi-trarily, but depending on the distinction being used, which, because it
14 Hence of the freeing-up and the re impregnat ion of the observational capacities of the system. This according to Heinz Forster, Das Gedachtnis. Eine quantenmechanische Un-tersuchung; Vienna 1948. I his formula t ion , by the way, shows how identities emerge , namely through conf i rmat ion (Rewahrung) in re impregnat ion or, in the terms of Spencer Brown {Laws of Form, p. 10), th rough condensat ion and conf i rmat ion; in any case, however, th rough the ongoing equat ion (Abgieichung) with new irritations bu t not with fixed contents of the envi ronment .
15 In doct r ines of wisdom the opposi te r equ i rement is occasionally stated: "The wise perceive every thing as new, in attentive observation if not at first glance." Baltasar Gracian, Criticon oder Ueber die aUgemeinen Laster des Menschen, H a m b u r g 1957, p. 15.
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includes what it excludes, indicates what in any given case can be oth-erwise. This too does not require, but rather makes possible a chrono-metric ordering of future temporal positions.
The difference between the simultaneously required memory and oscil-lator functions makes the construction of time necessary, the distinc-tion of past and future and the insertion of a present between them in which alone the system can operate. Via temporal difference modal-theoretical paradoxes can be dissolved, for example the supramodal necessity of contingency that was once so important to theology. The necessary can now be seen as a consequence of its being past, the con-tingent as a feature of the future. With the distinction of past and fu-ture the system can, additionally, deal with the requirement that it si-multaneously (!) generate and hold in store both redundancy and variety; the requisite redundancy will then be attributed to the past, the requisite variety to the future. And that still leaves the question open whether one conceives of the present as constant, as enduring, and time as flowing through it, or construes the present of the system as process, as a movement out of the past in the direction of the future. The system can think of itself as static and as the correlate to the eter-nity of God, for example as a soul which must endure its temporal ex-istence; or as dynamic and with the necessity/impossibility of using the present in order to shape the future. This distinction can then be used to adapt the temporal structures to socio-cultural configurations. In any case, however, the constructivist analysis compels one to conclude that every present is furnished with past and future horizons and for that reason that the future can never become present.16 The temporal hori-zons only shift with, indeed by virtue of, the operations of the system so that from moment to moment new pasts and futures are being selected.
Reformulated in terms of the theory of games, what follows from this analysis is that the game can only be played within the game and only with distinctions that identify the individual operations and si-multaneously the play itself.17 That's why Adam (in Paradise Lost) had to have the world explained to him by the archangel Raphael; and that's why Henry Adams can only describe his education as the play of an in-determinate I against an indeterminate world.18
16 On this point see Nildas Luhmann, "The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Struc-tures in Modern Society," Social Research 43 (1976), pp. 130-52.
17 For several mathematical variants of this theme, cf. l-ouis H. Kauffman, "Ways of the Game—Piav and Position Play," Cybernetics and Human Knowing2/3 (1994), pp. 17-34.
18 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, New York 1918.
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III
In certain respects, mathematical theories have today overtaken what in the so-called human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), bu t in sociology as well, had always been intuited and expressed through a rather am-biguous use of language. This is t rue above all for chaos theory.1 9 It is also t rue of the catastrophe theory of Rene Thorn and of the post-Godelian calculus of forms of Spencer Brown discussed above. Of course, it is not to be expected that Romanticism anticipated and more or less intuitively took such a development of formal theory programs into consideration. However, a close examination of the texts of Romanticism can disclose so many correspondences that it becomes unavoidable to ask how they can be explained.
An overhasty conclusion would be to say that Romanticism is nothing other than the poetic paraphrase of a mathematical problem, a poetic version of mathematics. We shall leave that view aside and instead make our way via a sociological theory that can sustain empirical verification. This intention was already alluded to above. Its point of departure is the notion that the functional differentiation of modern society can be con-ceived in terms of autonomous, operatively closed, autopoietic func-tional systems. That leads to the hypothesis that all functional systems draw limits or borders and therefore must reproduce the difference between inside and outside internally as the difference self-reference/ hetero-reference. T h e transition f rom hierarchically fixed positional orders describable as nature to the primacy of the distinction between self- and hetero-reference is considered a characteristic, if not the deci-sive feature of Romantic li terature2 0 (and, one can add, Romantic art in general). That encourages us to be on the lookout for the above de-scribed consequences of re-entry. For in the final analysis the distinction between self- and hetero-reference is nothing o ther than the re-entry of the distinction system/environment into the system itself.
IV
With the differentiat ion of the art system and its disconnection from external compulsions, an excess of communicative possibilities
19 On this point see Hayles, Chaos Bound (note 2). On the discussions set into motion by the theory of thermodynamics, see Kenneth D. Bailey, Sociology and the New Systems Theory, New York 1994.
2 0 Seeesp. Earl R. Wasserman, The Subtler Language. Critical Readings of Neoclassical and Romantic Poems, Baltimore 1959.
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emerges internally a n d mus t be internal ly cont ro l led a n d b r o u g h t in to fo rm. 2 1 T h e re la t ionship of r e d u n d a n c y a n d variety, which for a long t ime h a d a c c o m p a n i e d the descr ip t ion of a r t , 2 2 shifts in the d i rec t ion of a f lood of variat ional possibilities tha t can hardly any longer be mas-t e red . 2 3 T h e "marvelous" is no t an invent ion of Romant ic i sm, b u t of the Cinquecento;24 bu t when its d i f fe ren t ia t ion is fully accompl i shed , a r t can m o r e forcefully d is tance itself f r o m a pre-given reality.2 5 More a n d more , art mus t gene ra t e the requis i te r e d u n d a n c i e s itself, a n d this t h rough the restrict ion of variety. Today o n e would speak of "self-organiza t ion ." For this reason, Romant ic i sm discovers itself as if new b o r n in an empty space a n d called o n to give itself its own m e a n i n g . How that s supposed to h a p p e n b e c o m e s a ques t ion in t e rms of which o n e can ga the r toge the r diverse t h e m e s of Romant i c l i tera ture .
For example , t he call for a new mythology.26 With a f o r m u l a t i o n co ined to descr ibe p o s t m o d e r n a rch i tec tu re bu t ent irely appl icable to Romant ic ism, o n e could say: "Whereas mythology was given to the artist by t radi t ion a n d by pa t ron , in the p o s t m o d e r n world it is chosen a n d invented ." 2 7 T h a t can h a p p e n in an ent irely "sent imental is t" fash-ion by drawing on antiquity a n d Christianity, t h r o u g h bor rowings tha t ref lect o n the fact tha t they f o r m the i r observat ions f r o m a d i f f e r e n t
2 1 On this See Peter Fuchs, Modern* Kommunikalion: 7,ur Theorie des operaliven Displace-mentX Frankfurt 1993, p. 79ff.
2 2 For example, for the Renaissance in the twin concepts unita/mollitudine or, distin-guished from these, verisimile/meraviglioso. For a representative example, see Torquato Tasso, Discorsi delVartepoetica e in particulare sopra ilpoema eroica (1587), in: Prose, Milano 1969, where (p. 366) it is stated that the poet should rely more on the one than the other (uo piu del verisimile o piu del mirabile") in order to produce "magior diletto." The sphere of the "marvelous," however, is limited by the fact that means have to be found "per accoppiare il meraviglioso co'l verisimile." (p. 367) Beyond this example, one could of course recall such ancient cosmological distinctions as ordo/varielas or unitas/diversi-las.
2 3 At the same time, biology reorients its inquiries from pre-given essential charac-teristics to "irritability" as that characteristic which enables the evolution of living be-ings. Seejean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck, Philosophie zoologique, Paris 1809, reprint Weinheim 1960, esp. vol. I, p. 82ff.
24 Cf. Baxter Hathaway, Marvels and Commonplaces: Renaissance Literary Criticism, New York 1968.
2 5 Of course, that doesn't mean that art can indicate the one-way traffic on Fifth Avenue incorrectly or claim that Carthage defeated Rome. In this, Tasso is still right (Discorsi, p. 367), but today that's no longer the problem.
2 6 For example, in the sense of the "alteste System program m des deutschen Idealis-mus," here cited from G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, vol. I, Frankfurt 1971, pp. 234-36, or in the sense of Friedrich Schlegel.
27 CharlesJencks, "Postmodern vs. Late-Modern," in Ingeborg Hoesterey, ed., Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist Controi>ersy, Bloomington 1991, pp. 9-21; here, p. 9.
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temporal position. In contradistinction to the Renaissance, the great discovery of which was that there had once been perfection in this world, the directive difference no longer lies in the distinction between secular and theological descriptions, but in the temporal difference between present and pas t
Or—second example—the accentuation of writing as a form in which absences (author or content ) can appear as present .2 8 "Die Schrift hat fur mich," Friedrich Schlegel confesses, "ich weiB nicht welchen gehe imen Zauber, vielleicht durch die Dammerung von Ewigkeit, welche sie umschwebt."2 9 In Ludwig Tieck's 'William Lovely the characters reveal themselves and their opinions only through writ-ing. What 's Romantic in this is not the presentational form of the epis-tolary novel, but rather the fact that an image of "voriiberfliegenden Gefuhlen , die mit unserer Vernunft (nicht) in eins zu schmelzen (sind),"3 0 is fixed in writing. And when that which has been suppos-edly written down is published, the reader can dissolve the narrative and accept as h i s / h e r own one of the possible points of view. Writing evidently compensates for the displacement of an endur ing present with process, since it can be reused in the present, but also read dif-ferently. It fixes itself, as it were, but not the reader.
And above all—third example—criticism (Kritik), conceived as the ongoing labor in reflection on the never-complete artwork. Romanti-cism, then, seeks forms with which it can respond to the necessity/ impossibility of t ranscending the limits of the imagination. The ex-pressive devices on the literary p lane that correspond to this are irony and the f ragment , in music the preference for the p iano with its con-text- and cont inuat ion-dependent tonal qualities. T h e unambiguous distinctions are no longer sufficient, every f rame of observation refers to a fur ther f rame of observation, which it confirms by realizing itself in it.31
Systemic autonomy, to which Romanticism in this way endeavors to respond, is just what happened to the art system as a result of the func-tional differentiation of society. O n e can no longer expect instruction
2 8 Here too the parallel to postmodernism, in this case to Dcrrida, is astonishing. 29 "Uber Philosophic," in Friedrich Schlegel. Werke, Berlin 1980, vol. II, pp. 101-29;
here, p. 104. 3 0 Ludwig Ticck, Friihe Erzahlungen und Rom/me, Munich 1963, p. 378. 31 In this regard also the correspondences to postmodernism are not accidental. See
David Roberts, Art and Enlightenment: Aesthetic Theory after Adomo, Lincoln, Neb. 1991; "Die Paradoxic der Form in der Literatur," in Dirk Baecker, cd., Probleme derForm, Frank-furt 1993, pp. 22-44.
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from the religious system, the political or economic systems, nor from the households of the most important families as to how artworks are to be made. For this reason one could almost say: autonomy becomes the destiny which is interpreted as a defence against external inter-vention; or the invisible cage in which the artist is forced to select, to be original and free. Romanticism thus views and deals with the problem of autonomy on the level of the artwork and the creative free-dom of the artist derived from it, but not on the social level of the func-tional system of art; for only in this way can Romanticism define its po-sition. The social system of art lets itself be represented through the idea of art.
All that reads like a commentary on the self-generated "unresolv-able indeterminacy" that is unavoidable as soon as one reintroduces the difference between system and environment within the system it-self. And just as in mathematics imaginary numbers or imaginary spaces are required in order to absorb paradoxes,32 Romanticism con-denses the imaginary to the fantastic, and thereby to forms that pre-cisely do not mean what they show, but are nothing other than mate-rialized irony.33 But that by no means implies that all forms dissolve, that no distinction any longer holds, that everything becomes arbi-trary. On the other hand, it does not suffice to postulate with Kant that freedom is given for its rational use or that the genius must make a dis-ciplined and cautious use of his geniality.34 Rather, the artwork re-ceives the task of demonstrating its own contingency and being its own program; and that makes very severe demands on both productive and receptive observation, which therefore cannot happen "just any way." Self-generated indeterminacy does not by any means imply that no meaningful operations, no determinations are possible; merely that determinations must be recognizable as self-determinations and as such observable. In other words, communication must be transferred to the level of second-order observation.
Against this background the reason that the Romantics begin to play
3 2 See Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, p. 58ff, where a tunnel is introduced beneath the surface on which the system performs its acceptable calculations. Cf. Dirk Baecker, "Im Tunnel," in Dirk Baecker, ed., Probleme der Form, pp. 14-37.
3 3 On the further development of this tendency—with ever new outraged oppo-nents—up to surrealism, see Bohrer, Die Kritik der Romantik, p. 39ff.
34 This is, by the way, a longstanding, pre-romantic idea. One encounters it in the dis-tinction libertas/licentia of natural law theory or in the disegno doctrine of the cinquecento with its distinction between creative imagination and the skilled and practiced execu-tion of a drawing.
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with "reality," doubl ing identities in the form of Doppelganger, twins, ex-changed names, and mirror images, becomes intelligible: in order to show that the same can also be otherwise and must be set into relation with itself. Instead of the ontological guiding di f ference (Leitunter-scheidung) between being and non-being—which on the side of being congeals to substance so that in the reapplication of the distinction to itself the side of being is conf i rmed—other guiding distinctions appear, for example, the distinction finite/infinite (de te rmina te / indeterminate) or, alternatively, inside and outside.3 5 Ontological metaphysics, which took only one possible primary distinction as its point of depar ture , now had to be ou t t rumped by a meta-metaphysics, which could take shape with the typically Kantian question regarding condit ions of possibility. T h e localization of reality with respect to the distinction inside/outside was then as now a hardly solvable problem:3 6
"1st das Reale auBer uns: so sind wir ewig geschieden davon; ist es in uns: so sind wirs selber."37 However, because no adequate , sufficiently rich, many-valued logic is available, the problem is displaced on to aes-thetics. Translated into constructivist terminology, that means that the decision as to what can be treated as reality and what not is made in-ternal to the system. The reality test of "resistance" doesn ' t have to be given up as a result, bu t it is no longer a matter of a resistance of the envi ronment to the system, rather of system operat ions to system op-erations within the same system—above all the resistance of the self-produced memory against new impulses or occurent ideas, or the re-sistance of the already begun artwork or narrative against something which can no longer be added to it. Viewed in this way, reality is noth-ing more than the correlate of consistency tests within the system, and this can occur in such a way that magic, ghosts, the supernatural , etc. are introduced into a tale so as to acquire narrative plausibility, which can then be revoked within the tale itself when, at the end , a perfectly natural explanat ion for all the strangeness is provided.3** T h e figure of the Doppelganger thus means no th ing more than that in reality there is
3 5 On the plurality of such "primary distinctions," see Philip G. Herbst, Alternatives to Hierarchies, Leiden 1976, p. 88. Hcrbst's work is, by the way, quite probably the earliest sociological response to Spencer Brown.
3 6 On the contemporary version of the problem, see N. Katherine Hayles, "Con-strained Constructivism: Locating Scientific Inquiry in the Theater of Representation," in George Levine, ed., Realism and Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Rela-tion to Science, Literature, and Culture, Madison, Wise. 1993, pp. 27-43.
37 Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, in Werke, vol. 5, Munich 1963, p. 7-514 (445). 3 8 This is a well-known narrative technique of Ludwig Ticck's, from William Lovell to
Das '/Muberschlofi.
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no assymmetry of original and copy; rather, that this is a distinction art alone requires for itself, an entry on the cost side in the balance of its autonomy-
All this can be handled with the de-reification (Entding-lichung) of the concept of world introduced already by Kant. World is no longer a totality of things, an aggregatio corpororum, a universitas re-rum, but rather the final, and therewith unobservable, condition of possibility of observations, that is of every sort of use of distinctions. To formulate this another way, the world must be invisiblized so that observations become possible. For every observation requires a "blind spot,"39 or more precisely: it can only indicate one side of the distinc-tion being used, employing it as a starting point for subsequent ob-servations, but not the distinction itself as a unity and above all not the "unmarked space," precisely the world from which every distinction, as soon as it is marked as a distinction, must be delimited.
This invisibilization of the nevertheless doubtlessly given and pre-supposed world had dramatic consequences for Kant, Fichte, and above all for the Romantics. It leads to an overburdening of the indi-vidual with expectations regarding the production of meaning and therewith to the collapse of the communication weighed down with such expectations. The individual endowed with reflection now re-ceives the title of "subject." But the higher and more complex the ex-pectations that subjects direct toward themselves and their others, the greater is the probablity of a failure of their communications. Texts ex-emplary of this are Jean Paul's Siebenkas (the marriage scenes) and his Flegeljahre.'10 The forcing of subjectivity as the single answer to the problem of world makes intersubjectivity difficult, indeed, if one is conceptually rigorous, actually impossible. Today this necessarily leads to the question whether the "human being," the "subject," or similar collective singulars are a possible starting point for social theory at all. The Romantics used them and couldn't give the matter a second thought, for they had in any case no chance to develop an adequate theory of society. For them this position was occupied by the concept of "spirit" (Geist) and by the French Revolution.
3 9 On this point, see Heinz von Foerster, "Das Gleichnis vom blindcn Fleck," in Ger-hard Johann Lischka, ed., Der entfesselte Blick: Symposium, Workshops, AussteUung, Bern 1992, pp. 15-47.
40 See also Ludwig Tieck, William Lovell, p. 603: "Es ist ein Fluch, der auf der Sprache des Menschen liegt, daB keiner den anderen verstehen kann." Gf. also p. 383 (Balder's letter to William Lovell).
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V
Nearly con temporaneous with Romanticism a new sort of concept of "culture" (Kultur) arises, offer ing itself as a serviceable "memory func-tion" for m o d e r n society. O n e can see this with respect to the Roman-tics, but also o ther "humanistic" (geisteswissenschaftlich) endeavors, in-cluding religion (Schleiermacher) and philosophy (the late work of Husserl). From the middle of the eighteenth century, the term "cul-ture" is employed as an i ndependen t expression, that is: it is no longer related to the care of something else as in "agriculture" or "cultura animi" (Cicero). Formally, cul ture is distinguished f rom nature, but that is merely an external delimitation and says nothing about the con-tents that are seen as cultural and , as such, approved or disapproved.
Here too one must distinguish between themes and functions: the themes of cul ture and its funct ion with regard to the autopoiesis of a highly complex societal system. T h e themes of culture are formulated with reference to possible comparisons, in particular regional (at first national) and historical comparisons. Historically, such comparisons can in principle reach back indefinitely, as far as the "sources" that are always being discovered allow. With respect to content , cultures are re-lated to ideas (Idem) or values, for which an "apriori" validity, or at least a fixed orientat ion, is presupposed well into the twentieth century. Fol-lowing the schema laid down in the Kantian critiques or by some other method, a plurality of validity types can then be posited, the unity of which either remains unref lected or is described as a tragic conflict (Weber) or as endless discourse (Habermas) . 4 1
Ideas, values, validity claims of all sorts emerge as correlates or, as it were, as secretions of the comparative construction of culture. In this way one endeavors to re t ransform contingency into necessity, with the result, however, that contingency reappears in daily practice—be it as the merely approximate realization of ideas, be it as the ever renewed necessity of deciding in cases of value conflict. This problematic oc-cupies the thematic horizon of mode rn society, but still doesn' t show wherein the persuasive force of the comparative method consists. It seems to be rooted in the fact that extremely diverse states of affairs can nevertheless be compared, in the conspicuousness value of the equality of the diverse, which is to say: in the successful solution of a paradox. What is similar fascinates and, so to speak, proves itself by
41 One can speculate that Kant's Kritik der Urteilskra/t aimed at such an integration, hut failed to provide it.
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virtue of the fact that it is found unexpectedly. This is called "wit" (Witz) and is found "interesting."42 O n e can show that the same is different and that diverse things allow identities to be known so long as one di-rects the comparison in terms of this cognitive interest. But why should one do that? For the reason that it is a cognitive strategy that makes it pos-sible to deal with extraordinarily complex, in the final analysis world-societal states of affairs. The semantics of the society is keyed to its structural complexity and one componen t of this is that talk of ideas and values provides a surface description that prevents inquiry f rom reaching the paradox of the equivalence of the different and thus from developing modes of description sufficiently complex to grasp the complexity of the society.
One could speak in this connection of a cultural symptomology.43
The themes of culture have a symptomatic function. They do no t merely mean themselves, bu t also something else; and that becomes especially noticeable when they are formulated as uncondit ional , tran-scendental, or absolute, and are introduced into the communicative process with precisely this import. Thus there arises in the course of the nineteenth century a second culture, a culture of suspicion that raises the question of what is being disguised by the themes of culture. I am referring, of course, to Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and the sociology of knowledge that follows in their path.
Poking a round in allegedly latent structures is a way of searching out hidden interests. The appropriate response to such searching is a tu cfuoqueargument, namely the question as to the interest behind this in-terest in latency. The suspicion of veiled motives becomes universal and therefore trivial; it is then a matter of nothing other than a dou-ble description of reality with first- and second-order observation.
The considerations set forth in the previous sections allow for a re-formulat ion of the question as to the function of cultural themes. So-ciety requires a memory function that allows it to accept the present as the result of the past and as the starting point for subsequent oper-ations. A memory, however, does not merely hold past events in re-serve; it accomplishes above all a continuous discrimination of for-getting and remembering. Most everything sinks away and very little is so condensed and reconfirmed that it can be reused. This sortal
4 2 For the subsequent development of this configuration, see Karl Heinz Bohrer, Plotzlichkeit: Zum Augenblick des dsthetischen Scheins, Frankfurt 1981.
43 This is the formulation of Matei Calinescu, "From the One to the Many: Pluralism in Today's Thought," in Hoesterey, ed., Postmodernist Controversy, pp. 156-74; here, 157.
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funct ion serves the ongoing adaptation of the system to that which it can construct as repetit ion. However, as a sortal funct ion it must re-main latent because otherwise it would also r emember what is forgot-ten. The memory must, to put the matter differently, accomplish a re-entry of the di f ference between forgett ing and remember ing within forgetting, and the fo rm in which this occurs seems to be the con-struction of themes—of identities and generalizations that can be fixed in communicatively available designations.4 4 Themes, in o ther words, make possible a forgett ing of forgetting, and at the same time the way in which themes are constructed serves the ongoing adapta-tion of the system to itself, the cont inuing inscription of a consistent "reality."
To re turn to Romanticism after this long digression: one can assume that this systems-theoretical concept will contr ibute to a socio-histori-cal unders tanding of Romanticism. With a peculiar preference for transitional tones, for paradoxes, for the narratively produced believ-ability of the unbelievable, for the cognition of what cannot be com-municated, the Romantics cultivate a symptomology that avoids con-gealing to theses, which could then be accepted or rejected. The previously binding, early European tradition has to be forgotten in order to free u p new capacities, and then restaged in a timely form (zeitgemafi) with a nostalgia that reflects on itself. In Romantic poetry and criticism ideas are evoked and simultaneously marked as un-reachable.
T h e temporal conceptions of the Romantics also fit with this analy-sis. Time is still presupposed as a movement in the old sense and there-with related implicitly to the cognitive possibilities of conscious per-ception. But the present is experienced as precarious, as a caesura, as the "Differential der Funktion der Zukunft und Vergangenheit ."4 5
T h e ambivalence in the evaluation of the French Revolution provides
44 "Themes"—the reference, of course, is to communicating and therefore social sys-tems. For perceptual (psychic) systems one would have to speak of "objects."
4 5 Novalis, Werke, ed. Ewald Wasmuth, Heidelberg 1957, vol. I, p. 129 (fragment 417). Cf. fragment 2225 (vol. II, p. 125): "Alle Erinnerung ist Gegenwart. Im reinen Element wird alle Erinnerung uns wie notwendige Verdichtungerscheinen." Or Bluthenstaub 109: "Die gewohnliche Gegenwart verknupft Vergangenheit und Zukunft durch Beschrankung. Es entsteht Kontiguitat, durch Erstarrung, Krystallisation. Es gibt aber eine geistige Gegenwart, die Ixryde durch Auflosung identifiziert." Werke, Tagebiicherund BriefeFriedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hansjoachim Mahl and Richard Samuel, Darmstadt 1978, vol. 2, p. 283. Cf. also Jean Paul, Titan, in Werke, ed. Norbert Miller, Munich 1969, vol. II, p. 478: "Nein, wir haben keine Gegenwart, die Vergangenheit muB ohne sie die Zukunft gebaren."
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a political illustration of the same tendency. And that seems to suffice as a symptom of the insecurity of the Zeitgeist. One does not find the way to an adequate theory of time although the idea of a three-phase passage from the past through the present to the future has already been refuted by the experience of the precarious character of the pres-ent, by its de-ontologization.46 The present is valued precisely because of its undecidablitv (but wouldn't one then have to say: because of the necessity of deciding?) and is projected onto the historical moment of European society. The past loses itself in history. One can forget or re-member it47; one has to prophesize it, as Friedrich Schlegel claims.48
And the future becomes the best guarantee for the fact that the world is indescribable, and will remain so.
Despite this historicization and, if one can put it this way, rendering precarious of temporal conceptuality, however, the Romantics do not entirely succeed in detaching the concept of time from the premises of ontological metaphysics. Their concept of the world is too strongly oriented in terms of the human being for that. In contradistinction to many animals,49 for humans a thing remains identical to itself when it shifts from rest to movement. And that suggests an ontologically nested concept of time, oriented in terms of the phenomenon of movement, a concept that presupposes identities that bridge the dis-tinction movement/non-movement and can sustain not merely move-ment but also the change from non-movement to movement and vice versa, that is, the "crossing" of this distinguishing limit. Even Heideg-ger will still have difficulty with this. From the perspective of a radical constructivist theory of observation, however, identity is not a time-independent given, but merely an instrument for binding time when it is a question of mediating past and future in the present.
Science, including systems theory, cannot afford such cultivated un-decidabilities in the temporal, material, and social dimensions. It must aim for refutable theses. That does not, however, exclude attempts to
4 0 On this point, sec Ingrid Oestcrle, aDer 'Fuhrungswechsel der Zeithorizonte' in der deutschen Literatur," in Dirk Grathoff, ed., Studien zurAsthetik und Literaturgeschichte der Kunstperiode, Frankfurt 1985, pp. 11-75.
4 7 A concept of memory based in quantum physics that fits this state of affairs can be found in Heinz von Foerster, "Was ist Gedachtnis, daB es Ruckschau und Vorschau er-moglicht?" in Wissen und Gewissen, pp. 299-336. See also by the same author, Das Gedacht-nis (note 14).
48 Werke (n. 29), vol. I, p. 199. 4 9 For example, frogs. See J. Y. Lettvin, H. R. Maturana, W. S. McCulloch, and Wr. H.
Pitts, "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain," Proceedings of the Institute of Radio En-gineers47 (1959), pp. 1940-59.
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do justice to Romanticism in a theoretical redescription. T h e systems-theoretical ins t ruments of description break with the semantic reper-toire in terms of which Romanticism sought to unders tand itself. For the actual aim of this redescription is a theory of mode rn society for which Romanticism can only have—but this in a most revealing way— symptomatic value.
