Lambert Wiesing

Lambert Wiesing (born April 9, 1963 in Ahlen ) is a German philosopher specializing in phenomenology , perception and image theory, and aesthetics .

Life

Lambert Wiesing, brother of the medical ethicist Urban Wiesing , studied philosophy, art history and archeology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and received his doctorate there in 1989. In 1996 Wiesing completed his habilitation in philosophy at the Technical University of Chemnitz with the thesis The Visibility of the Image. History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics .

Together with Birgit Recki and Karlheinz Lüdeking , Wiesing founded the German Society for Aesthetics in 1993 , of which he was Vice President from 1993 to 1999 and 2002 to 2006 and of which he was President from 2006 to 2009. Wiesing held visiting professorships at the Universities of Vienna, Oxford and Dartmouth College in Hanover (New Hampshire). In 2001 he became the professor for comparative image theory in the field of media studies at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, where he received the chair for image theory and phenomenology at the Institute for Philosophy in 2009. In 2015 Wiesing was awarded the Aby Warburg Foundation's Science Prize for his scientific work, and in 2018 the Thuringian Research Prize in the field of basic research. In 2019 Wiesing was elected President of the German Society for Phenomenological Research . Together with Thomas Fuchs, who was elected Vice President at the same time, he leads the company.

research

Image theory

In the collection of articles Artificial Presence from 2005, Wiesing classifies current image theory - which can be distinguished from image science - into three main currents: an anthropological, a sign-theoretical and a phenomenological one. In Phenomena in the Picture (2000) he outlines the tradition of the phenomenology of the picture by Edmund Husserl , Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and connects his approach to this school of thought, which understands picture theory against the background of a theory of consciousness and perception . Wiesing resolutely opposes the sign or synonym: language- analytical approach, which subsumes image theory under semiotics with its language-analytical instruments and vocabulary . He criticizes the "semiotification" of the image and emphasizes a plurality of image phenomena:

"Pictures can, but they don't have to act as signs."

The main thesis states that the image must not be interpreted as a sign , but primarily described in its particular visibility. Because for Wiesing you don't always have to deal with a symbol with a picture. Already in the habilitation thesis published in 1997, The Visibility of the Image, he coined the concept of pure visibility based on Konrad Fiedler and refers to the asemantic use of the image:

"The fact that a picture can also be a sign is the product of a subsequent use of pure visibility as a sign for what it is similar to."

The character of a picture is therefore a contingent property that is applied afterwards when the picture is used as a practical symbol to refer to something that is outside the picture.

This use of the picture for showing is described in detail in Let Seeing . There Wiesing turns against the opinion widespread in art history that pictures can show something of themselves or even show themselves. For Wiesing this is an anthropomorphization of the picture, which ends in a new picture mythology .

In connection with his inverse transcendental philosophy of perception, elaborated in 2009 in The Me of Perception , Wiesing states:

"Image perception is something special because the object of image perception is ontologically unique."

By creating images, it is possible for people - this is the anthropological condition of the image - to free themselves from the visual clasp, to only see what is actually present. If you look at a picture, you are looking into a " physics-free zone ", since the picture object represents an " ontological exception " that presents an object in a " ghostly reality ":

"Visibility without the presence of real things."

Although this phenomenological approach applies to every phenomenon of imagery, there are special areas of application in which one finds corresponding images that are not signs: Firstly in the fine arts, especially in parts of abstract art - the collages by Kurt Schwitters are paradigmatic - , and secondly in the new media , where computer simulations are used to present the digital image as an “ amplifier of the imagination ”.

Perceptual philosophy

At the moment, in philosophy of perception - as Wiesing's diagnosis in Das Mich der perception is - interpretiveism and constructivism in their different varieties are predominant. Such interpretationism is characterized by the fact that it assumes a primacy of the subject and traces perception back to the interpretive achievements of this subject. An alternative position, which nowadays hardly exists in the philosophy of perception - think of the image theories of antiquity and English empiricism - conversely assumes a primacy of the object and explains perception by looking at the causal effects of reality returns the subject. Instead of explaining the possibility of perception either from the subject or from the object , Wiesing now proposes a third way that does not want to explain the perception but rather describes it phenomenologically: If the perception itself is an inexplicable primal phenomenon, then subject and Understand the object as the consequences of this primal phenomenon. For Wiesing, this consequently results in an inversion of the transcendental philosophy , because the place of the transcendental is no longer the subject, but rather the perception itself: This inverse transcendental philosophy does not ask about the conditions of possibility, but about the consequences of reality. It is not the subject that constitutes the object of perception, but rather the perception, conversely, constitutes me - therefore one can speak of a me of perception. The subject is a me because it is a consequence of perception; and if this perception is constantly expected of him, then it must itself be perceptible, bodily, affectable and public - in short, a part of the world:

“In order to be able to be my perception at all, my perception needs me as a sensual subject that can be affected by things - and that's exactly how it is for me to be a perceiver. I not only feel present, but also get involved in causal relationships, to a part in the causal relationship of worldly things, to an effected subject. "

Humane research

In 2007 Wiesing published a detailed commentary on David Hume's study of the human mind . In addition to the purpose of presenting this work by Hume in its creation, argumentation and effect, Wiesing particularly shows Hume's particular proximity to phenomenology.

luxury

In his book Luxus , published in 2015, Wiesing developed a phenomenology of luxury. The basic idea is that luxury cannot be determined through material properties, but should be understood as a phenomenon in which someone can be put in a position to have an aesthetic experience by owning a certain thing:

“A thing becomes a luxury when it is experienced by a person in a certain way. [...] Luxury is a phenomenon in the specifically phenomenological sense of the word: something that is for someone. "

Wiesing succeeded in a fundamental change of perspective in the humanities debate on this topic. Because instead of evaluating luxury, as is customary in the previous discussion, the question is asked: What is luxury anyway? To do this, Wiesing draws on a figure of thought that Schiller developed in his letters on the aesthetic education of man . Schiller argues that a person is only human in the true sense of the word if he can achieve a harmonious balance - Schiller speaks here of the state of play - between his bodily nature and reason. However, if he comes under the rule of one of these two poles, between which a person inevitably always moves, he threatens to degenerate into either a savage or a barbarian. Wiesing on this:

"Friedrich Schiller's barbarians [...] are an apt example of people who are unreasonably sensible and therefore do not lead a good, balanced life from Schiller's point of view."

This is where Wiesing's considerations on luxury come in. Luxury is: if you do it anyway; if a person, although he knows that it would be irrational , excessive, inefficient , too expensive and therefore clearly unreasonable, he nevertheless comes to the conclusion that he wants to own a certain thing. But not for the sake of provocation, and certainly not to demonstrate your purchasing power or your social position - Wiesing reserves the term `` ostentatious '' for this and distinguishes it sharply from the luxury experience - but rather to have an experience in which you can feel Freed from the usual notions of a supposedly sensible life. Like Dadaism in art, so Wiesing, luxury can therefore be understood as an attempt to assert oneself “against bourgeois norms”. In short: "Luxury is the Dadaism of owning". An example can illustrate this:

“Imagine a person who, because of their poverty, is dependent on grants to make a living. But this person does not spend the small donations - perhaps even to the annoyance of the donor, luxury can quickly be provocative to outsiders - not sensibly and sensibly for the urgently needed and useful things, but cheekily and defiantly takes out the freedom, despite all reason to eat a piece of cream cake in the first café on site. "

According to Wiesing, luxury can therefore be experienced without an extremely expensive item being part of an event. And vice versa, according to Wiesing, it is possible to live in luxury without actually experiencing it. It can even be assumed that due to “megalomania, greed and arrogance, but also due to naivety and habituation” the latter is not so rarely the case. But phenomena of ostentatious wealth should not lead one to deny per se the experience that can be had by owning something . Following the tradition of Adorno , Wiesing argues: In a society that is thoroughly trimmed for reason and efficiency, the experience of irrational luxury can be seen as a way of not having to allow oneself to be completely absorbed by rampant efficiency thinking and the dictate of reason:

"The living person feels in the moments of luxury experience that he is alive and that only those who are not forced to have to be reasonable can be reasonable."

Phenomenology of Self-Awareness

In his 2020 book Ich für mich. Phenomenology of self-consciousness , Lambert Wiesing advocates the thesis that self-consciousness is an inexplicable event, which is undeniably real, but cannot be further derived. Therefore a change of method of transcendental philosophizing is proposed. Instead of asking, following the philosophical tradition since Kant, about the conditions of the possibility of self-consciousness, the question is phenomenologically reversed: What are the tangible consequences of the reality of self-consciousness? Wiesing calls this method "inverse transcendental philosophy".

“A subject is not self-aware of the conditions of the possibility of self-awareness; therefore they cannot be developed phenomenally. Because whoever is conscious has no awareness of why he is conscious - but he is aware of the consequences of reality. "

The consequences of the reality of self-confidence, for which Wiesing argues, which are also referred to as "co-original correlation priori", are:

1. Your own existence: Because there is self-consciousness, there is also one who is self-conscious. Wiesing refers to this I as “me”, because it is a tangible consequence and not a logically necessary condition of self-confidence.

"From the reality of my self-confidence, it follows naturally and naturally that I exist for me."

2. A style of being: Those who have self-confidence have to be in the world with a style and this style of being necessarily takes place between the extremes of a painterly being-connected-to-the-world and a linear-being-distanced-from-the-world .

"The reality of my self-confidence forces me to be stylistically varying in the spectrum of painterly and linearly in the world."

3. Self-esteem: Anyone who is in the world with a self-existential awareness must have a self-esteem. Wiesing thus shows an internal connection between self-confidence in the sense of the philosophy of mind and self-confidence in everyday language use.

“I only exist in the world with self-interest and self-respect. Because reality allows me to be so contingent in the world that I have to be of value to myself. "

The parallel to the art-historical categories of the linear and the picturesque is also shown here. According to Wiesing, self-esteem also moves within the limits of a spectrum, namely between self-giving and self-assertion.

“The answer to the question of how I feel when I am extremely bodily or extremely painterly in the world is: Being a painterly existence is the world-inclusive self-esteem; the being of the painterly existence is the expectation of an immersed self-giving [...] The answer to the question how I feel when I am extremely physically-linear in the world is accordingly: the existence of a linear existence is a world-excluding self-worth; the being of my linear existence is the imposition of an emerging self-assertion. "

4. These two extremes of self-esteem in turn correspond to two extremes of self-care and, as a result, two extreme forms of living, namely world-inclusive and world-excluding living.

“This spectrum can be shown using conceivable extreme examples for the respective form of living: the chosen living in the wooden hut in the rural forest as a manifestation of extremely inclusive self-care of the resident and the chosen living in the penthouse of a large city skyscraper as a manifestation of extremely exclusive self-care of the resident . "

Works

Monographs

• Style instead of truth. Kurt Schwitters and Ludwig Wittgenstein on aesthetic forms of life . Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1991. ISBN 978-3-7705-2704-5 .
• The visibility of the image. History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics . Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag 1997. ISBN 978-3-593-38636-2 .
• The clock. A semiotic view . Saarbrücken: Verlag St. Johann 1998. ISBN 978-3-928596-33-6 .
• Phenomena in the picture . Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2000. ISBN 978-3-7705-3532-3 .
• Together with Gottfried Jäger: Abstract Photography. Possibilities for thought and images . Bielefeld: Verlag der Fachhochschule Bielefeld 2000.
• Artificial presence: studies on the philosophy of the image . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2005. ISBN 978-3-518-29337-9 .
  • English: Artificial Presence. Philosophical Studies in Image Theory . Stanford: Stanford University Press 2010. ISBN 978-0-8047-5941-0 .
  • Polish: Sztuczna obecnosc. Studia z filozofii obrazu . Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa 2012. ISBN 978-83-7737-014-8 .
• The visibility of the image. History and Perspectives of Formal Aesthetics . Frankfurt am Main; New York: Campus Verlag 2008. ISBN 978-3-593-38636-2 .
  • French: La visibilité de límage. Histoire et perspectives de lèsthètique formelle . Paris: Vrin 2014. ISBN 978-2-7116-2598-7 .
  • Polish: Widzialność obrazu. Historia i perspektywy estetyki formalnej . Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa 2008. ISBN 978-83-7459-058-7 .
  • English: The Visibility of the Image: history and perspectives of formal aesthetics. London; New York [u. a.]: Bloomsbury Publishing 2016. ISBN 978-1-4742-3264-7 .
• The me of perception: an autopsy . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2009.
  • English: The Philosophy of Perception. Phenomenology and Image Theory . London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury 2014. ISBN 978-1-78093-759-5 .
  • Italian: Il Me della percezione. Un'autopsia . Milan: Marinotti Edizioni 2014. ISBN 978-88-8273-149-6 .
• Together with Jens Balzer: Outcault. The invention of the comic . Bochum and Essen: Ch. Bachmann Verlag 2010. ISBN 978-3-941030-07-7 .
• Let see. The practice of showing . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2013. ISBN 978-3-518-29646-2 .
• Luxury . Berlin: Suhrkamp 2015. ISBN 978-3-518-58627-3 .
  • English: A philosophy of Luxury . London, New York: Routledge 2019. ISBN 978-0367138417 .
• The me of perception: an autopsy . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2015. ISBN 978-3-518-29771-1 .
  • English: Philosophy of perception. Phenomenology and image theory . London: Bloomsbury Academic 2016. ISBN 978-1-4742-7532-3 .
• I for myself. Phenomenology of Self-Awareness . Berlin: Suhrkamp 2020. ISBN 978-3-518-29914-2 .

Editorships, text commentaries and text editions

• Editing and text comments: Philosophical Aesthetics . Aschendorff's philosophical text series, course 7. Münster: Aschendorff-Verlag 1992.
• Editing together with Birgit Recki: Image and Reflection: Paradigms and Perspectives of Contemporary Aesthetics . Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1997.
• Edition and introduction: Philosophy of Perception: Models and Reflections . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2002.
• Editing and commentary on the German translation: Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Das Primat der perception . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2003.
• Editing, commentary and revision of the German translation: David Hume: An investigation into the human mind . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2007. ISBN 978-3-518-27005-9
• Publication of the congress files of the German Society for Aesthetics: Aesthetics and Everyday Experience . VII. Congress of the German Society for Aesthetics. Vol. 1. 2008. http://www.dgae.de/impressum.html . ISSN  2192-7871 .
• Editing together with Wolfgang Ullrich: Make large sentences: About Bazon Brock. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2016. ISBN 978-3-7705-5878-0

literature

• Arndtz, Florian: L. Wiesing: The me of perception . In: Journal Phenomenology 32 (2009). Pp. 109-112.
• Gillo Dorfles : Devi fidarti della percezione se vuoi davvero capire te stesso . In: Corriere della Sera . January 29, 2015. pp. 42-43.
• Gaiger, Jason: The Idea of ​​a Universal Bildwissenschaft . In: Estetika 51 (2/2014). Pp. 208-229.
• Hildebrandt, Toni: "The me of perception". In: Officine filosofiche: Vita, natura, soggetto (2010), pp. 169–171.
• Karl-Heinz Lembeck : Lambert Wiesing: The me of perception. An autopsy . In: Phenomenologische Forschungen , Volume 2009. pp. 240–243.
• Streubel, Thorsten: Lambert Wiesing, The Me of Perception. An autopsy . In: Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35/2 (2010). Pp. 203-209.
• Sauer, Martina: Review of The Visibility of the Image. History and perspectives of formal aesthetics , 2nd edition, Campus Verlag: Frankfurt a. M. 2008, in: Sehepunkte. Review journal for historical sciences, Issue 10 (2010), No. 7/8, ISSN 1618-6168.
• Wilde, Lukas Roland: At the limits of the picture object: On Lambert Wiesing's phenomenology of “pure visibility” . Munich: Grin Verlag 2013.
• Sauer, Martina: Review to see. The practice of showing . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2013, in: sehepunkte. Review journal for historical sciences, issue 14 (2014), no.3, ISSN 1618-6168.
• Lederle, Sebastian: Ars bene indicandi - Review essay on Lambert Wiesing: Let see - On the practice of showing . In: Journal for Aesthetics and General Art History 60 (2/2015). Pp. 299-316 (18).
• Bonnemann, Jens: Beyond Physics - Values ​​and Submedial Spaces. On the phenomenological media theory of Lambert Wiesing and Boris Groys . In: Handbook of the media philosophy. Edited by Gerhard Schweppenhäuser. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2018. pp. 55–62.
• Nico Orlandi: Lambert Wiesing, The Philosophy of Perception: Phenomenology and Image Theory . Reviewed by Nico Orlandi, University of California, Santa Cruz, in: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-philosophy-of-perception-phenomenology-and-image-theory/ (accessed April 17, 2019) .
• Katrina Mitcheson: Lambert Wiesing, Artificial Presence: Philosophical Studies in Image Theory .Reviewed by Katrina Mitcheson, Bath Spa University, in: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/artificial-presence-philosophical-studies-in-image- theory / (accessed April 17, 2019).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lambert Wiesing. In: Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar Online. De Gruyter. Retrieved March 6, 2015.
2. ↑ See Lambert Wiesing: "The main currents of the current philosophy of the image", in: ders .: Artificial presence , pp. 17–36.
3. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: "Phenomenology of the image according to Edmund Husserl and Jean-Paul Sartre" and "Maurice Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of the image", in: ders .: Phenomenology in the image , pp. 43–59 and 61–77.
4. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: "When images are signs: the image object as a signifier", in: ders .: Artificial Presence , p. 40.
5. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: The Visibility of the Image , p. 166.
6. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: The Me of Perception , p. 201.
7. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: The Me of Perception , p. 204f.
8. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Style Instead of Truth , 1991.
9. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: "Amplifier of the Imagination" and "Thinking with Images: The Virtual Thought Experiment", in: ders .: Phenomena in Images , pp. 9–29 and 31–41.
10. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Das Mich der perception , p. 193.
11. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Das Mich der perception , p. 177.
12. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Luxury . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2015, p. 14.
13. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Luxus , p. 152.
14. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Luxus , p. 156.
15. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Luxus , p. 156.
16. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Luxus , p. 158.
17. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Luxus , p. 161.
18. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Luxus , p. 19.
19. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: I for myself. Phenomenology of Self-Awareness , p. 70.
20. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: I for myself. Phenomenology of Self-Awareness , p. 84.
21. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: I for myself. Phenomenology of Self-Awareness , p. 171.
22. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: I for myself. Phenomenology of Self-Awareness , p. 207.
23. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: I for myself. Phenomenology of Self-Awareness , p. 216.
24. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: I for myself. Phenomenology of Self-Awareness , p. 236.