Forma e figura. Una riflessione sul problema della rappresentazione tra Ernst Cassirer e Paul Klee

In Cassirer’s Basisphänomene, the so-called hermeneutical turn is made concrete. The account of “objectivity of perception” as the invariant structure of experience provides Cassiser with the proper foundation of culture. The topological space resting on this structure is the space of expressive perception, whose the logical foundation are found in the preliminary unity of I-world as the «originary phenomenon of the work». It is in the rethinking perception that the Leibnizian idea of expression comes to fruition, as Merleau-Ponty points out. The phenomenological reflection on Paul Klee’s theory, carried out by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Lyotard, seems to take a new form after the – Baroque – inclusion of a new reactive point of view. As a result, the philosophical interpretations of Klee seem to include Cassirerian motifs in their ontologies of the Kunstwerk: this inclusion may be just such a retaking, as a pretext; . The comparison between a «con-figurative thought» and a «figurative thought» is, therefore, only becomes possible by means of detour through Goethe and Leibniz and is rooted in the figurative Zwischen of representation, “between” Cassirer and Klee. 1. THE FOUNDATION OF PAINTING-CULTURE Quelle est donc cette science secrète qu’il a ou qu’il cherche? Cette dimension selon laquelle Van Gogh veut aller «plus loin»? Ce fondamental de la peinture, et peut être, de toute la culture? (Merleau-Ponty) This quotation, from L’Œil et l’Esprit (1961) by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, contains in nuce the thesis of my study as well as the core of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Paul Klee. On these premises rests also the possibility of philosophically questioning Klee’s art, and to make his thought come together with the thought of Ernst Cassirer. The Merleau-Ponty’s cogito, understood as the looking-being looked at which is found at the basis of perception is compared here both to Cassirer’s account of perception of expression (Ausdruckswahrnehmung) and to Klee’s transcendental schemes Ich-Werk and Ich-Du-Erde-Welt. My reflections take as their starting point, the fact of perception and that nature appears to have eyes with which to look; in other words, the very fact of perception is to be founded in the reversible character of human vision. Besides distinguishing humans from things, the peculiarity of human perception binds the I to the presence of the you, since the you returns the I back as its own image, otherwise incomplete without this correspondence of the regard of the other. Nonetheless, nature’s gaze is no mere mirroring; as in the Ich-Werk relationship, the means through which vision takes place are invisible in themselves. Is then perception the place for immediacy? That the means of vision are invisible, does not account for immediacy of self-knowledge nor of knowledge in general. However, the invisibility of the means of figuration corresponds to the rejection of the “object” in painting. The relationship with the picture, as a relationship between the Ich and the Werk, goes beyond that of the I and the object of representation. As Klee puts it, there is no mere exterior of a picture any more than there is a mere exterior of the I. The common earthly route joining Ich and Werk in Klee’s scheme is a metaphysical one leading the I to the You and vice versa. Nevertheless, this non-optical route runs inside the frame of the Welt, inside the world of Vorstellung. The opposition between Darstellung and Vorstellung, as both Cassirer and Klee put it, is the opposition between perception of expression and perception of things (Dingwahrnehmung). What is left to demonstrate is whether perception of expression is a form of objective knowledge and to which extent. Perception of expression is the experience of the other that I can seize only going through his works. This is what Klee call[...]