gabriel motzkin, iser's anthropological reception of the philosophical tradition (2000)
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Iser's Anthropological Reception of the Philosophical TraditionAuthor(s): Gabriel MotzkinSource: New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 1, On the Writings of Wolfgang Iser (Winter,2000), pp. 163-174Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057592
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Iser's Anthropological Reception of the
Philosophical Tradition
Gabriel Motzkin
I
In PREMODERN philosophy all relations to another world were
conceived in terms of transcendence. The world that is another
than the one we are in is transcendent to it. The way we get from this
world to that one is through transcending this one. And the presence,
however conceived, of the other world in this one is the presenceof
somethingin this world that is transcendent to it.
In reading Wolfgang Iser's The Fictive and theImaginary, it became clear
to me for the first time what iswrong with this conception. It is not a
priorierroneous to
suppose that some other world than this one, with
other laws, exists. Nor is it a
priori
erroneous to
suppose
that we
conceive of this other world in terms of laws that do not properly belongto our world. Nor even is it a
priorierroneous to
suppose that we
conceive of one world in terms of laws that do notproperly belong to it,
but that have their origin elsewhere.
The philosophical tradition's basic error was to presuppose that
absolute transcendence, the act oftranscending,
and transcendence-in
immanence, are all the samething,
or indeed that they belong together.If one substitutes the imaginary for the absolutely transcendent,
whether as dream orreality, the fictionalizing
act for the act of
transcending, or of boundary crossing, and the synthesis of absence and
presence,of exclusion and inclusion, of
imaginary objectand real
object, for the three phenomena labelled transcendence, then instead
of transcendence, one obtains the imaginary, the fictive, and the
synthesis of consciousness and object. While these may belong together,there is no reason to
suppose thatthey
have a commonorigin,
or are
similarphenomena.
Iserpoints
out that the source of aphenomenon,
or the reason for it, and the phenomenon itself, are not the samething.
He does not goas far as Hans Blumenberg, for whom the connection
between aplace
vacated for aphenomenon
and thatphenomenon may
be quite happenstance. There is for Iser an inherent link between the
fictive and the imaginary, but it does not derive from anontological
identity.
New LiteraryHistory, 2000, 31: 163-174
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164 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
In my language, that means not only that the path out of the worldand the place whither we are
going, while related, are different. The
relations of constitution between them are also different. Iser'spolemic
is directed against those who would derive the fictive from the real. No
less, however, does his polemic work against those who would derive the
fictive from the imaginary. The transcendent world, the substitute world
of a"reality" beyond itself does not emerge from this one.1 Nor, however,
was this one createdthrough
aprocession
from another one. It is the
main point of the text that world-making takes place between worlds, in
the cross between them, and it is therefore the fictionalizing act that
must be shown in its world-creating order. Instead of immanence in
transcendence, or absolute transcendence, thetranscending
act be
comes central.
However, thetranscending
act becomes central in another way than it
does in most modern philosophy,or indeed in traditional religion. For
thistranscending act, Iser's
fictionalizing act, is not a self-transcendence,
a self-invention, or a self-creation, but rather a world-creation. Nowhere
does the self go along entirely with the transcending act. While in Iser's
model, the self is preservedeven while it is annulled in another world,
there is no final
synthesis
of the real, the fictive, and the
imaginary.Inopting for this plurality of modes, Iser clearly sides against
a
traditional philosophical view that was current even at the beginning of
this century. However, by refusing the evisceration of the distinction
between the imaginary and the real, Iser seeks a way out of that late
twentieth-century sophism which would derive the identity of both from
the imaginary.At the beginning of this century, German Idealist philosophy dis
solved in (at least) three distinct ways. Iser is obligatedto two of them
directly, and to a third indirectly. These three ways aresignified by the
names Emil Lask, Hans Vaihinger, and Edmund Husserl. Lask appearsin Iser's work in the guise of Constantine Castoriadis, who, like Lucien
Goldmann and Martin Heidegger,was affected by his modern Neo
platonism. Vaihinger appearsas
Vaihinger,a second-rate
philosopher
who happened upon, malgr? lui, a very interesting theory which has
continued to serve as a referencepoint.
Husserl israrely
discussed
explicitly in Iser's work, but it is unclear how Iser's work could have been
written without presupposing Husserl.
As neo-Kantians, Lask and Vaihinger both began with an ideal of a
logic of knowledge that would provideaccess to laws which could
account for the phenomena that appear to consciousness as indicating
objects that can be presumedto exist in a world that is transcendent to
consciousness. Neither was able tomaintain Kant's equilibrium between
the intuition and the understanding. However, neither replicated the
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ISER'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECEPTION 165
consequent development from Kant to Hegel. Instead, Lask opted for a
hyperrealism, presupposinga
primordial world in which all real and
logical statements really exist.2 Whereas Bernard Bolzano had also
believed in such a transcendence of truth to consciousness, he, like
Husserl, did not qualify this transcendent world with the predicate of
existence. For Lask, the two worlds of material being and logical validity
exist independently of the mind, including all the negations that they
contain.Negations
have the sameontological
status aspositions,
to
which theyare conjoined. The mind crosses this boundary in a
negative
fashion: in searching for the positions and affirmations, the true
statements, it breaks them off from the false statements, and in that way
destroys the primordial harmony between validity and being. It then, in
aquasi-transcendent act, seeks to reunite these worlds. However, it
cannot do so, for it cannot penetrate back to the world from which it has
extracted true statements, and therefore it creates a world of its own, a
quasi-transcendentrealm that Lask
qualifiesas the realm of sense. In
this philosophy there exist two worlds. In each world, the excluded and
negative exists primordiallyas the included and positive. Excluded by
consciousness, it then resurfaces in apale, ectypical way in a world that
is created by a boundary-crossing subjectivity. This subjectivity cannot besaid to create an
imaginary world, or even a fictional one, but the world
of sense ormeaning with which it then surrounds itself is clearly
different from the primordial world. And this ontological difference
between meaning and primordial Being in turn signifiesa fundamental
disjunction orheterogeneity between the activity of the mind and the
world, one which the mind seeks to destroy. This destructive search for
identitythen creates a second, virtual world. Castoriadis is a Laskian
romantic: he has substituted the imaginary for the primordial, and Iser
has accepted this notion of the primordial nature of the imaginary,a
second potential world lying alongside a real one. For Iser, however, the
point is that this second world is onlya
potential world: itmust first be
awakened throughan act such as the fictionalizing act.
IfLask stretched Kantianism in the direction of realism, then Vaihingertook it in the opposite direction. Faced with the Idealist problem of the
reality of Kantian appearances and representations, Vaihinger drew the
conclusion that all worlds areonly
accessible to consciousnessthrough
virtual acts, because theonly way for consciousness to obtain access to a
world is?not to take the real world as if itwere fictional?but rather to
take the fictional world as if it were real while at the same time
maintaining the consciousness of its fictionality. In this way, Vaihingercame up with a variation of the theme that both Lask and Husserl
confronted: if for Lask the output of sense is only quasi-existent, that is,
nonexistent, just because a real world exists, forVaihinger the
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166 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
transformation of the input is such that we treat it as if it exists, but the
hiatus between sense and construct is such that we cannotsay that the
construct is a consequence of elements that exist for the original feelingthat we had of the existence of something.
In this way, Vaihingerwas
able todevelop much more thoroughly than Lask the possibility of a
simultaneouslydouble consciousness, one of Iser's central motifs, that is,
a consciousness that istransgressive precisely
because it can be at two
aspectsor
points of view at the same time. While Lask had some
primitive suggestions to make in this regard, he was much more
interested in the
decomposition
and
recomposition
of consciousness.
If Lask surfaces as Castoriadis in The Fictive and the Imaginary, Husserl
surfaces as Sartre. A move from Sartre should then have been like a
move to Heidegger, but Iser notes that Castoriadis explicitly rejects this
Heideggerianmove
precisely because he values the primordialmore
highly than Heidegger (FI209). What does itmean, however, to say that
Husserl surfaces as Sartre? Husserl also believed in the essential neces
sityof nonexistent frameworks in order to
penetrate,or even in his later
philosophy, in order to constitute reality. However, Husserl locates
nonexistence in a different place than either Lask orVaihinger, and he
thus firmly betrays his sources in the anti-Idealist tradition stemmingfrom Bolzano.
Namely,Husserl does not
suggesteither the nonexistence
of the input, of the subjectiveact of cognition,
nor of the output, of the
world that the subjectcreates as a heuristic frame for knowing, but
rather locates his nonexistence in the middle. Entities of sense are not
the objects that are intended: consciousness intends real objects, but in
order to makemeaningful truth-statements, consciousness must traverse
an ideal but nonexistent realm of ideal meaningsso that out of this
certain realm the probabilisticnature of the real, transcendent world
becomesapparent.
Thisphenomenon
of nonexistence is what makes
bracketing out the real world possible, since by leaving out what is really
intended, the process of constituting what is intended first becomes
visible. In the sameway, what consciousness does is to create noemata,
schemata of the object that organize the pixels that areappresented
to
sensation. Every object has in it inherentlya moment of ideal nonexist
ence, and it is through this ideal nonexistence that consciousness
constitutes the objects with which it deals in the world.
For Husserl, however, this ideal spherecan never exist: one cannot
make areality from a noema. What consciousness does then is to enter
the ideal
sphere
in search of the real one: all that consciousness adds to
this world as for both the others and for Iser as well is an act; there is no
special sphereor
being belonging to consciousness. However, this act is
not animaginary act, not for Husserl, not for Vaihinger,
not for Lask,
and certainly not for Iser. The fantastic makes-believe that the act of
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ISER'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECEPTION 167
consciousness is imaginary, but Iser's discussion of the fantastic showshis rejection of this possibility implied by Kant's discussion of the
imagination. Reality, instead of being in the world, or in the mind, is in
the act itself. And if this act is afictionalizing act, then that act is as real
in this actual sense asany other act. If we were to
map Iser'sterminology
onto Husserl, we would say that the fictionalizingact enters the
imaginary in search of the real, and from out of the imaginary composes
its access to the real. Now this is not at all what Iser says, but its familyresemblance is
apparent.
However, all three philosophers succumb to what could be called the
philosopher's temptation, from which Iser saves himself. Namely, theyare unable to distinguish ontologically between the act of consciousness
and its creation. For Lask, adecomposing
consciousness extracts truth
particles from the world-mine, and then builds itsmeaning-edifice from
thosetruth-particles:
there is no difference between consciousness'
quest for truth and the truth that consciousness makes or fails tomake.
ForVaihinger,
the as-if nature ofreality
can never be transcended: there
is no consciousness that does not have an as-if dimension; the not-as-if
functionsonly
as animpassable boundary-condition.
"DasDing
an sich
ist keineHypothese,
sondern eine Fiktion"["The thing
in itself is not a
hypothesis, it is rather a fiction"].3While Lask believed that conscious
nessprovides
a distorted picture of the world, Vaihinger believed that
the purpose of consciousness is not torepresent
the world, but rather to
providea
practicalorientation within it; representations
are an instru
ment of this purposiveness (22-23). Whereas the world as such is
inaccessible to arepresentational consciousness, in the
sphereof that
representation,there can be no distinction between consciousness and
itsrepresentations.
For Husserl, an intentional consciousness confronts
theheterogeneous experience
of sensationby creating
intentional ob
jects, rather than representational objects, in order to organize itssensations. These intentional objects of consciousness in turn make the
world accessible.
Both Heidegger and Derrida criticize the philosophical tradition for
its preference for apresentist philosophy of identity. I think that this
cursory examination shows that the objection iswell-taken ifwe under
stand identity asmeaning homogeneity, that is, the denial of the
experience of heterogeneityas
being itself afounding experience of
consciousness. For aphilosophy
thataccepts heterogeneity, however,
there can be nogood-faith investigation of the ways in which the mind
transforms its inputs in order to know them because such aphilosophy
would have to deny the possibility that thingscan be known through
their homogeneous transformations. Heidegger appeared to accept
heterogeneity, but the heterogeneity he had inmind wasultimately not
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168 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
the Husserlian one between a thinking consciousness and the things youcan touch or bite, but rather between time-things
asbeing
now and me
as never now. In the end, he was in our sense also a traditional
philosopher, because the world of the now-things isultimately swallowed
up in my world, the apparently nonexisting but actually only existing
world. Nonexistence and existence converge. Heidegger had a different
theory of subjectivity from all the others, including Iser, who also
believes in aweakly cognitive subjectivity, but he could not accept that
the world is composed of different structures that can never add up.
Derrida has quite accurately recognized this problem, but he wishes to
conserveHeidegger's
nihilism in aheterogeneous world-scheme, a
nihilism that is unnecessary for Iser because of what philosophers would
view as Iser's essential lack of seriousness. The question that should be
posed following Iser is not if the procedure he outlines applies only to
literary texts, as he seems to think it does, but rather whether thegood
faith positionmust be that all acts function like his fictionalizing acts,
but some arequalified
as thetic or doxic, or whatever. However, in that
case the question arises of whether the imaginary only exists for the
fictionalizing act, or forexample
whether a doxicimaginary
exists as
well. One couldargue
that all acts draw from the sameimaginary.
I do
not think that this is Iser's position. One could argue that what the
doxic, the act of belief, confronts, is quite different from what the
fictionalizing confronts, so different that it cannot at all be called
imaginary. Finallyone could argue that there are different imaginarles
that make themselves available to different acts, justas there are
different possible worlds, and that following Iser we have to understand
these as different ontological worlds. We thus find ourselves in a limitless
set of different ontological worlds all the time.
II
Iser is concerned to retain one element of traditional philosophy
which both Lask and Heidegger deny: the possibility of observability,or
at the extreme, of self-observability. Inmodern philosophy, this problem
ofself-observability
reveals afundamentally
aestheticconception
of
observability, namely that observability is linked to the problemof
whether the observer is part of the same world together with what is
observed. Can I look at apicture, and then observe myself looking
at the
picture? I can, if I either assume that I am performing two acts at the
same time that are very different, because looking at apicture and
looking at myself lookingat a
picture take place in different worlds; or if
I assume that I can look at myself lookingat the picture either by
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ISER'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECEPTION 169
asserting that there is no world-difference between the picture and
myself, in either direction: either I say that lookingat the picture is like
looking at anything else, assuming I can look atmyself like looking
at
anything else. Or I can say that inlooking
at apicture I enter the world
of the picture and then look atmyself in and through the picture, since
I am now part of the picture. Or, finally, I can say that observabilitycan
take placeas a
boundary crossing, that I can look at myself lookingat the
picture in and through the picture because I canactually
see from one
world to another, and even see from the other world back into this one.
In other words, I can assert that
perception
is not a
sign
of immanence,
but rather of transcendence. But ifmy aim is self-observability, I have to
assert some sort of homology between perception and self-perception,for otherwise Iwould have to assert some other kind of link between the
two, and then Iwould have to find a way of grounding self-perception,
assuming that self-perception is possible, in something other than
perception. In that case, if I think that both are foundational acts, I
would have todevelop
atheory of double constitution, for I have then
denied the common origin of perception andself-perception.
In traditional philosophy, this problem is a central issue because the
aim of philosophy is not only the legitimation of the knowledge of theexternal world, but the acquisition of such knowledge
as anindispens
able correlative toself-knowledge. Kant argued that self-knowledge and
knowledgeof the external world
belongto
separaterealms. Since self
knowledgehas no
bearingon existence, therefore, the rules of
percep
tion for knowledge and for self-knowledgeare different: knowledge is
perspectival, since objectscan only be viewed through aspects, but self
knowledge is notperspectival, since we must know the whole being from
all sides, and therefore self-knowledge cannot be based onself-perception.
If there is any pointon which the German Idealists disagreed with
Kant, itwas that one. Johann Gottlieb Fichte begins philosophy with the
possibility of self-representation, that is, self-perception becomes a
necessary foundingelement of self-constitution and hence of world
constitution. Hegel also believed in the necessity for self-perceptionboth in the encounter with the external world, and finally
as an
indispensable part of the truth process. Nineteenth-century theories of
edification through literature as well aspsychological theories all
believed in the possibility of self-perception, although Ernst Mach
revealed his doubts preciselyon this point.4
None of thetwentieth-century philosophers
we have mentioned
believed in the possibility of aself-perception that is founded on
externalperception and that is then arrived at
through introspection. In
Downcast Eyes, Martin Jay has argued that twentieth-century culture is
characterized by the denigration of vision as the basic metaphor for the
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170 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
human relation to the external world.51 believe that this is not quite
precise: there is agreat deal of counter-evidence. But certainly very few
twentieth-century thinkers have argued for the possibility o?self-perception
based on external observation. A behaviorist would argue for such a
possibility, but then the self-observation in question is as external as were
HermannEbbinghaus's memory-experiments.
Lask engaged in alengthy polemic against the possibility of arriving
at
truththrough the logic of reflection, through self-reflection, indeed
through any kind of introspection. Vaihinger thought that onlya limited
kind of self-observation is possible,a self-observation that recognizes the
fictional nature of the as-if sphere, and then fictionally posits external
reality by fictionally doubling the sensations that are the basis for as-if
representations (FI 144). Husserl believed that consciousness could
make itself into its ownobject, but only through the double procedure
of focussingon itself as its object and at the same time bracketing
out
the question of its existence. One should note that this is not the way in
which Husserl thought external objectsare constituted. External objects
are constitutedthrough
noemata.Bracketing
out the externalobjects
makes the noemata visible. But here the object in question is itself the
noema.
Normally
in order to constitute the noema, I first have to focus
on someobject, and then extract the noema from it. There is no blank
noema. Therefore consciousness, while a consciousness ofobjects,
cannot be anobject. If consciousness is not an
object, then it cannot be
perceived in the same way. Husserl actually sought to avoid this
conclusion, especiallyin his later
writings.The consequence, however,
was, that like the Idealists, he then had to argue for the possibility of
deducing perception from self-perception and notself-perception from
perception. However, he did notreally believe that we
perceivecon
sciousness. The sense of external time is founded in the sense of internal
time, but the sense of internal time can only be visible throughextraction from a process that is itself not just time, such as
listeningto
amelody. Thus self-perception is actually not deduced from perception
at all, but rather from some other act, and a hiatus isrequired
for self
perception. Husserl is then forced to conclude that there really exist two
quite different kinds of external perception, sense-perception and
object-perception. Self-perception would then be an act between the
two. In that case, itmust be modally different from external perception.Hence perception cannot be self-perception, but, unlike Kantian and
Hegelian perception,must be able to cross the world-boundaries,
especially the world-boundary between inside and outside.
Heidegger believed that there is onlyone world and that in that world
wesimply
can neverperceive
ourselves. He concluded that we cannot
perceive ourselves because there is no inside, no distinction between self
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ISER'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECEPTION 171
and world, no position outside of the picture. In the picture we cannot
perceive ourselves because we cannotperceive the horizon of the world
inwhich we are, in his case, the temporal horizon. Heidegger must have
believed that ifwe could perceive the limit of the world, then, throughan act of refraction, we could perceive ourselves, but that this is preciselywhat is not
given.We therefore then have no
position from which to
look back. Our relation to the past ismuch more one of bringing the
past into the present than the specular relation that is assumed by
believing in a past that belongs to an external world.
What does Wolfgang Iser believe? He believes, like Husserl, and
unlikeanybody
else on this list, thatperception
can cross world
boundaries. Moreover, he also believes thatperception always
crosses
world-boundaries, since the act of perceptionmust
alwaysassume the
nonexistence of the excluded, and by that act have already taken
account of that exclusion. He does notreally believe that the fictionaliz
ingact brackets out existence in some Husserlian way, since the realm
that is activated by the fictionalizingact is the imaginary, and on all
accounts the imaginary is distinguished by its own kind of existence. So
far he would seem to be closest to Lask. But that is not his positionat all.
The reason isthat
Husserl did notbelieve that
we cantake up
apoint
of view that is outside our world. Starting from anexisting point of view,
wego through
a nonexistent world toget
at the real one. However, Iser
does believe that we can take up a virtual position. He does not believe
like Vaihinger that all positions are virtual. Rather we can look out from
the picture into the world, and therefore I can look from the fictional
me into the real me. I cannot look from the real me to the real me. Now
here there arises aproblem.
For while it becomes clear that all
perceptions are boundary crossings, and that therefore reality requiresthe imaginary, does the imaginary require reality in the same way as the
real requires the imaginary? In other words, does an imaginary me needto enter the real in order to look at the
imaginary me? Is the imaginaryof equal
status with the real asworld-constituting? I believe that the
answer is no, theimaginary
does not need to enter the real. However,
that does not mean, as Lask thought, that all imaginary worlds are of
equal ontological order, that therefore the imaginary world is a closed
world of homogeneous actions, that in the imaginary world I can look at
myself, since both the imagined ego and its imagined objectsare
imagined. Iser would reply that animaginary
me is bound by the same
reality-rulesas the real me, even when it appears
to violate those rules. In
other words, the imaginary me, inseeing itself, looks at an infinite series
of mirrors. For animaginary
me to see animaginary me, it must go
througha
fictionalizingact of the same kind, and therefore construct an
imaginary world of second degree througha
fictionalizingact of second
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172 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
degree. Moreover, that second-degree world is only called by us an
imaginary world because we characterize it throughan act of the first
degree, but it is quite different. I imaginea fictional me who certainly
believes in the existence of God. A first-order fictionalization creates a
second-order doxic context.
From this, two conclusions emerge. First, the fictionalizingact is
directional: it is away from the given.A return to the given from the
imaginary is simplya
boundary transgression from that world. For the
movie characters in The Purple Rose of Cairo itmust be the real viewers
who arebeyond the line. The real self becomes the dream self of the
other. This directionality cannot be changed: there is no towards in the
fictionalizing act; it must always be away. Is that then true of all
perceptions,or
only of literature? I am not sure. Second, there can be
no closure. Oscillation cannot be transcended, since there is noway
to
synthesize the real and the imaginary. In other words, forWolfgang Iser,
it is the fact that boundaries areconstantly being crossed that makes it
certain that worlds can never collide ormerge together.
Thus self
perception is always possible, but only through the admission of its
virtuality.
In what way is that different from Kant? Namely the following: forKant the rules of perception
are different in the two cases of perception
andself-perception. Normally
this has been taken to mean that we can
never know theobject
as it is, since we can never see it from all sides. On
the other hand, the reverse must also be true:namely
that we can never
see a moralobject perspectivally,
for the moment we do so, it ceases to
be a moralobject.
There can be no moral science. Therefore we cannot
study moralityor social behavior. Something is lost by giving up the idea
of the goodas an
object,as
something that we can look at and admire.
Iser has no suchproblem,
since he does not base his distinction
between worlds on the kind of vision that is in play, on the difference in
the way that weperceive
one world and thenperceive
the other world.
Therefore there is no discussion of a difference in the way of seeing in
the real world and in the imaginaryone. In this, he learns from Husserl.
Virtuality confirms the rules of vision rather than defeats them.
What is it then that we see when we view perceptionas
boundary
crossing? How is that different from aperception that is immanent to
our worlds? Must I conclude that all vision is perspectival, all vision
follows the rules of Piero della Francesca and Albrecht D?rer, that I see
objects
as if theywere part of paintings?
What does itmean however to look at anobject
as part of apainting?
Surely, it means the abilityto see the painting
as finite, ashaving
borders. Perhapsone cannot see a work by Christo in this way, because
it is sobig,
so that the border has to be imputed. But when one sees a
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ISER'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECEPTION 173
Christo work, one is actually seeing part of the border at each moment,
althoughone can never see the whole border. In the same
way when we
see the world, we see it enframed so that it has a border. However in
seeing the real world, I assume that the real world has no border, that my
sense of a border atthirty-seven degrees and twenty-eight degrees is an
illusion;6 whereas through the fictionalizing act we make the border
explicit. No, that iswrong: we accord truth-value to the border which we
denied to the border of perception in the real world.
However, there can be no closure because while we can hold both
contradictory beliefs simultaneously, we cannot make them dialectically
into one and the same belief: I can believe that I can see the border, the
frame, the closure of a work of art, while I also believe that it has no
border, and that I also do not see the border of my perception of this
room, while also believing that this border of perception is really there,
but I cannot believe that there is any way in which these two quitedistinct doxic imputations
are identical. In reading this paper, I can both
be conscious ofmyself
andmyself-reading-this-paper,
and moreover be
conscious of an identity between the two, but this identity is not a strict
identity and can never be one. Therefore the border crossing it takes to
be able to read thispaper
means that I can see
myselfboth
perspectivallyand aperspectivally,but I cannot believe, as Kant did, that there is some
point of view which totalizes all perspectives, that all points of view seek
unity. Hence Iser turns to the philosophy of play, for everything is to and
fro. Anthropology emerges from the recognition of difference. It
assumes theability
to take on anotherpoint
of view, but it also assumes
that Bali will never be Konstanz.
There is aquite banal danger here, and I think a clear one:
abandoninga
faculty theory of human capabilitiesmeans that there can
be nofaculty theory
of human nature. We are not alike because we are
possessed of similar faculties. All men are not created equal. If they are tobe viewed as
equal, it must be on some other basis than alogic of
participation in a common essence. I think that there is a solution to this
problem in the concept of the fictionalizing act: it is not because we
possesscommon faculties, nor because we hold the same
imaginary
absolutes, that a commonhumanity is to be desired, but rather because
of the quite universal capability of fictionalizing, that is, ofseeing aspects
from different worlds. Derrida, following Husserl, is quite right that that
is notenough.
Husserl wanted to limn a consciousness that is the same
in God, humans, and animals, with no difference?and the Jewish
convert quite religiously believed in his Protestant God. Derrida accuses
Heidegger of not having thought of the problem of animals in Being and
Time. Any anthropology raises this kind of question, for indenying the
possibility of a universal perspective, it must affirm the universal
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174 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
possibility of boundary crossing. But then the question to be addressedto any postmodernity must be the one of the desirability of difference,
not of its facticity.
Hebrew University ofJerusalem
NOTES
1Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Baltimore,
1993), p. 3; hereafter cited in text as FI.
2 Lask's main works are collected in Emil Lask, Gesammelte Schriften, ed.
Eugen Herrigel(T?bingen, 1923).
3 Hans Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob. Systemder theoretischen, praktischen
undreligi?sen
Fiktionen derMenschheit auf Grund eines idealistischen Positivismus, 8th ed. (Leipzig, 1922), p.
109; hereafter cited in text; in Englishas The Philosophy of "As If":
A System of the Theoretical,
Practical andReligious Fictions ofMankind, tr. C. K. Ogden (London, 1968).
4 Manfred Sommer, Evidenz im Augenblick.Eine Ph?nomenologie
der reinenEmpfinding
(Frankfurt, 1987).
5 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes:The
Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century FrenchThought
(Berkeley, 1993).
6 For a discussion of the issue of the borders of the visual field see Michael Kubovy, The
Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 104-11.