--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.
MLN 111.3 (1996) 506-522
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Access provided by New York University
Niklas_Luhmann_A_Redescription_of_Romantic_Art
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I

A sociologist taking up a theme like "romantic art" should endeavor to add nothing new to the
subject matter itself. Faithfulness to the object 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 (Frhromantik), 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 Romantic 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 specific 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 remain intelligible--
regardless of whether one continues the discursive tradition or suggests particular changes. And,
as is well-known, it is difficult [End Page 506] (if not impossible, at least dependent on
coincidences hard to foresee) to intervene in disciplines from the outside in the name of
interdisciplinarity. 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. 3 There is a considerable literature
bearing on this development, a literature that takes as its point of departure the notion that the
specific character of Romanticism as well as subsequent reflections of art is conditioned by the
reorganization of society along the lines of functional differentiation. 4 If Romanticism was
modern and still is, then not because it preferred the "hovering" (das "Schwebende") or the
"irrational" 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
differentiated as self-referential, operationally closed systems. This process cannot 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 formulated,
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
corresponding 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 orientation. Today entirely different theoretical instruments
are available for a discussion of these foundational issues. [End Page 507]
II

Important changes in the conceptual repertoire of systems theory result when one substitutes
"essential definitions" (Wesensdefinitionen), 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 notion of operative closure and, related to it, the 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 appropriate if it takes the self-reference
of the system and, in the case of systems operating with meaning (sinnhaft operierend), the self-
observation of the system into account. The "paradigm shift" that is thereby accomplished
displaces systems theory from the level of first-order observation (systems as objects) to the level
of second-order observation (systems as subobjects or obsubjects, to employ formulations of
Jean 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 distinction 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. 6 The
generalization 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 see today more clearly why and
how something like "imagination" is required and in what sense construction/deconstruction/
reconstruction as an ongoing process, an ongoing displacement of distinctions (Derrida's
diffrance), is necessary in order to dissolve paradoxes in and as time. 7 [End Page 508]

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
immediately 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 external observations can predict the
operations of the system. A further inference that can be drawn from these mathematical
analyses: the system 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 algebra 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 context, 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
concludes 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 [End
Page 509] 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:

a memory function. Memory must be understood here as the presentation of the present as the
result of the past; or alternatively as the result of an ongoing discrimination between forgetting
and remembering. 14 The memory function is thus a necessary accompaniment to all operations
of observing systems. It is by no means a matter of the occasional calling up of memories on the
time-scale of the past (after the pattern: where did I put my glasses?).

an oscillator function. This can be interpreted--going beyond Spencer Brown-- as the correlate of
the use of distinctions. With every deployment of distinctions in observation the system will also
observe (mitbeobachten) the possibility of crossing the border of the distinction with a further
operation and thus moving from one side to the other--for example: from the positive to the
negative, from the good to the bad, from the allowed to the prohibited, from the useful to the non-
useful, from the profane to the sacred, etc., from the realistic to the fantastic and back again.

With the memory function the system binds itself to its own, now unalterable 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. 15 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 regard to the fact that everything
can arrive different; and this not arbitrarily, but depending on the distinction being used, which,
because it [End Page 510] includes what it excludes, indicates what in any given case can be
otherwise. This too does not require, but rather makes possible a chronometric ordering of future
temporal positions.

The difference between the simultaneously required memory and oscillator functions makes the
construction of time necessary, the distinction 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 contingent as a feature of the future. With the distinction of past and future the system can,
additionally, deal with the requirement that it simultaneously (!) 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 eternity of God, for example as a soul which must
endure its temporal existence; 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 horizons 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 simultaneously 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 indeterminate I against an indeterminate world. 18 [End
Page 511]

III

In certain respects, mathematical theories have today overtaken what in the so-called human
sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), but in sociology as well, had always been intuited and
expressed through a rather ambiguous use of language. This is true above all for chaos theory.
19 It is also true of the catastrophe theory of Ren Thom and of the post-Gdelian 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 conceived in terms of autonomous, operatively closed,
autopoietic functional 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. The transition from 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 decisive feature of Romantic literature 20 (and, one can
add, Romantic art in general). That encourages us to be on the lookout for the above described
consequences of re-entry. For in the final analysis the distinction between self- and hetero-
reference is nothing other than the re-entry of the distinction system/environment into the system
itself.


IV
With the differentiation of the art system and its disconnection from external compulsions, an
excess of communicative possibilities [End Page 512] emerges internally and must be internally
controlled and brought into form. 21 The relationship of redundancy and variety, which for a long
time had accompanied the description of art, 22 shifts in the direction of a flood of variational
possibilities that can hardly any longer be mastered. 23 The "marvelous" is not an invention of
Romanticism, but of the Cinquecento; 24 but when its differentiation is fully accomplished, art can
more forcefully distance itself from a pre-given reality. 25 More and more, art must generate the
requisite redundancies itself, and this through the restriction of variety. Today one would speak of
"self-organization." For this reason, Romanticism discovers itself as if new born in an empty
space and called on to give itself its own meaning. How that's supposed to happen becomes a
question in terms of which one can gather together diverse themes of Romantic literature.

For example, the call for a new mythology. 26 With a formulation coined to describe postmodern
architecture but entirely applicable to Romanticism, one could say: "Whereas mythology was
given to the artist by tradition and by patron, in the postmodern world it is chosen and invented."
27 That can happen in an entirely "sentimentalist" fashion by drawing on antiquity and
Christianity, through borrowings that reflect on the fact that they form their observations from a
different [End Page 513] 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 past.

Or--second example--the accentuation of writing as a form in which absences (author or content)
can appear as present. 28 "Die Schrift hat fr mich," Friedrich Schlegel confesses, "ich wei nicht
welchen geheimen Zauber, vielleicht durch die Dmmerung von Ewigkeit, welche sie
umschwebt." 29 In Ludwig Tieck's William Lovell, the characters reveal themselves and their
opinions only through writing. What's Romantic in this is not the presentational form of the
epistolary novel, but rather the fact that an image of "vorberfliegenden Gefhlen, die mit unserer
Vernunft (nicht) in eins zu schmelzen (sind)," 30 is fixed in writing. And when that which has been
supposedly written down is published, the reader can dissolve the narrative and accept as his/her
own one of the possible points of view. Writing evidently compensates for the displacement of an
enduring present with process, since it can be reused in the present, but also read differently. 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. Romanticism, then, seeks forms with which it can respond to the
necessity/impossibility of transcending the limits of the imagination. The expressive devices on
the literary plane that correspond to this are irony and the fragment, in music the preference for
the piano with its context- and continuation-dependent tonal qualities. The unambiguous
distinctions are no longer sufficient, every frame of observation refers to a further frame 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 functional differentiation of society. One can no
longer expect instruction [End Page 514] 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 intervention; 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 freedom of the artist derived from it, but not on the
social level of the functional system of art; for only in this way can Romanticism define its
position. The social system of art lets itself be represented through the idea of art.

All that reads like a commentary on the self-generated "unresolvable indeterminacy" that is
unavoidable as soon as one reintroduces the difference between system and environment within
the system itself. And just as in mathematics imaginary numbers or imaginary spaces are
required in order to absorb paradoxes, 32 Romanticism condenses the imaginary to the fantastic,
and thereby to forms that precisely do not mean what they show, but are nothing other than
materialized irony. 33 But that by no means implies that all forms dissolve, that no distinction any
longer holds, that everything becomes arbitrary. 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
disciplined and cautious use of his geniality. 34 Rather, the artwork receives 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 [End Page 515] with
"reality," doubling identities in the form of Doppelgnger, twins, exchanged 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 difference (Leitunterscheidung)
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 confirmed--other guiding distinctions
appear, for example, the distinction finite/infinite (determinate/indeterminate) or, alternatively,
inside and outside. 35 Ontological metaphysics, which took only one possible primary distinction
as its point of departure, now had to be outtrumped by a meta-metaphysics, which could take
shape with the typically Kantian question regarding conditions of possibility. The localization of
reality with respect to the distinction inside/outside was then as now a hardly solvable problem:
36 "Ist das Reale auer 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 onto aesthetics. Translated into constructivist terminology, that means that
the decision as to what can be treated as reality and what not is made internal to the system. The
reality test of "resistance" doesn't have to be given up as a result, but it is no longer a matter of a
resistance of the environment to the system, rather of system operations to system operations
within the same system--above all the resistance of the self-produced memory against new
impulses or occurent ideas, or the resistance of the already begun artwork or narrative against
something which can no longer be added to it. Viewed in this way, reality is nothing 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 explanation
for all the strangeness is provided. 38 The figure of the Doppelgnger thus means nothing more
than that in reality there is [End Page 516] 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 (Entdinglichung) of the concept of world introduced
already by Kant. World is no longer a totality of things, an aggregatio corpororum, a universitas
rerum, 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 distinction being used, employing it as a
starting point for subsequent observations, 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 presupposed world had dramatic
consequences for Kant, Fichte, and above all for the Romantics. It leads to an overburdening of
the individual 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 receives the title of "subject." But the higher and more complex the expectations
that subjects direct toward themselves and their others, the greater is the probablity of a failure of
their communications. Texts exemplary of this are Jean Paul's Siebenks (the marriage scenes)
and his Flegeljahre. 40 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. [End Page 517]

V
Nearly contemporaneous with Romanticism a new sort of concept of "culture" (Kultur) arises,
offering itself as a serviceable "memory function" for modern society. One can see this with
respect to the Romantics, but also other "humanistic" (geisteswissenschaftlich) endeavors,
including religion (Schleiermacher) and philosophy (the late work of Husserl). From the middle of
the eighteenth century, the term "culture" is employed as an independent expression, that is: it is
no longer related to the care of something else as in "agriculture" or "cultura animi" (Cicero).
Formally, culture is distinguished from nature, but that is merely an external delimitation and says
nothing about the contents that are seen as cultural and, as such, approved or disapproved.

Here too one must distinguish between themes and functions: the themes of culture and its
function with regard to the autopoiesis of a highly complex societal system. The 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
related to ideas (Ideen) or values, for which an "apriori" validity, or at least a fixed orientation, is
presupposed well into the twentieth century. Following 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 unreflected or is described as a tragic conflict (Weber) or as endless
discourse (Habermas). 41

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 retransform 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 occupies the thematic horizon of modern 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 [End Page 518] virtue of
the fact that it is found unexpectedly. This is called "wit" (Witz) and is found "interesting." 42 One
can show that the same is different and that diverse things allow identities to be known so long as
one directs 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 possible 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 component of this is that talk of ideas and values
provides a surface description that prevents inquiry from 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 not merely mean themselves, but also something else; and that
becomes especially noticeable when they are formulated as unconditional, transcendental, 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 around in allegedly latent structures is a way of searching out hidden interests. The
appropriate response to such searching is a tu quoque argument, namely the question as to the
interest behind this interest in latency. The suspicion of veiled motives becomes universal and
therefore trivial; it is then a matter of nothing other than a double description of reality with first-
and second-order observation.

The considerations set forth in the previous sections allow for a reformulation of the question as
to the function of cultural themes. Society requires a memory function that allows it to accept the
present as the result of the past and as the starting point for subsequent operations. A memory,
however, does not merely hold past events in reserve; it accomplishes above all a continuous
discrimination of forgetting and remembering. Most everything sinks away and very little is so
condensed and reconfirmed that it can be reused. This sortal [End Page 519] function serves the
ongoing adaptation of the system to that which it can construct as repetition. However, as a sortal
function it must remain latent because otherwise it would also remember what is forgotten. The
memory must, to put the matter differently, accomplish a re-entry of the difference between
forgetting and remembering within forgetting, and the form in which this occurs seems to be the
construction of themes--of identities and generalizations that can be fixed in communicatively
available designations. 44 Themes, in other words, make possible a forgetting of forgetting, and
at the same time the way in which themes are constructed serves the ongoing adaptation of the
system to itself, the continuing inscription of a consistent "reality."

To return to Romanticism after this long digression: one can assume that this systems-theoretical
concept will contribute to a socio-historical understanding of Romanticism. With a peculiar
preference for transitional tones, for paradoxes, for the narratively produced believability of the
unbelievable, for the cognition of what cannot be communicated, the Romantics cultivate a
symptomology that avoids congealing to theses, which could then be accepted or rejected. The
previously binding, early European tradition has to be forgotten in order to free up new capacities,
and then restaged in a timely form (zeitgem) with a nostalgia that reflects on itself. In
Romantic poetry and criticism ideas are evoked and simultaneously marked as unreachable.

The temporal conceptions of the Romantics also fit with this analysis. Time is still presupposed
as a movement in the old sense and therewith related implicitly to the cognitive possibilities of
conscious perception. But the present is experienced as precarious, as a caesura, as the
"Differential der Funktion der Zukunft und Vergangenheit." 45 The ambivalence in the evaluation
of the French Revolution provides [End Page 520] 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 present, by its de-ontologization. 46 The present is valued precisely because of
its undecidablity (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 remember it 47 ; 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 distinction movement/non-movement and can sustain not
merely movement but also the change from non-movement to movement and vice versa, that is,
the "crossing" of this distinguishing limit. Even Heidegger 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 undecidabilities in the temporal,
material, and social dimensions. It must aim for refutable theses. That does not, however,
exclude attempts to [End Page 521] do justice to Romanticism in a theoretical redescription. The
systems-theoretical instruments of description break with the semantic repertoire in terms of
which Romanticism sought to understand itself. For the actual aim of this redescription is a theory
of modern society for which Romanticism can only have--but this in a most revealing way--
symptomatic value. -- University of Bielefeld

Niklas Luhmann is one of the most influential social theorists of this century. Among his recent books are: Die Wissenschaft der
Gesellschaft (1990), Soziologische Aufklrung 5: Konstruktivistische Perspektiven (1990); Soziologie des Risikos (1992). His
most recent book-length study is a sociology of art, Die Kunst der Gesellschaft (1995). Luhmann's outline of his systems-
theoretical framework has just appeared in English translation: Social Systems (Stanford, 1995).

Notes
1 See Karl Heinz Bohrer, Die Kritik der Romantik, Frankfurt 1989.

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, Models and Analogies in Science, Notre Dame
1966, p. 157ff. One should, however, speak of "metaphorical redescription" 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 Ausdifferenzierung literarischer Kommunikation, Opladen 1992. Cf. also Gerhard Plumpe,
sthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, Vol. I: Von Kant bis Hegel, Opladen 1993.

5See Clavis Fichteana seu Leibgeberiana, in Jean Paul, Werke, vol. 3, Munich 1961, pp. 1011-56, or Flegeljahre, eine 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 disrupted through critical reflection holds, however,
only for psychic systems. For this reason 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 Luhmann,
"Deconstruction as Second Order Observing," New Literary History 24 (1993), pp. 763-82.

8 See George Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, New York 1979. Cf. also Dirk Baecker, ed., Kalkl der Form, Frankfurt 1993.

9 Heinz von Foerster, Observing Systems, Seaside, Cal. 1981. See also the German edition expanded with several additional
contributions: Heinz von Foerster, Wissen und Gewissen. Versuch einer Brcke, 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, Soziale Systeme: Grundri einer allgemeinen Theorie, Frankfurt 1984, p. 92ff.

11 On this point and on what follows, see Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, 54ff., 69ff.

12 Ibid., p. 76.

13 Ibid., p. 57.

14 Hence of the freeing-up and the reimpregnation of the observational capacities of the system. This according to Heinz Frster,
Das Gedchtnis. Eine quantenmechanische Untersuchung, Vienna 1948. This formulation, by the way, shows how identities
emerge, namely through confirmation (Bewhrung) in reimpregnation or, in the terms of Spencer Brown (Laws of Form, p. 10),
through condensation and confirmation; in any case, however, through the ongoing equation (Abgleichung) with new irritations but
not with fixed contents of the environment.

15 In doctrines of wisdom the opposite requirement is occasionally stated: "The wise perceive every thing as new, in attentive
observation if not at first glance." Baltasar Gracian, Criticon oder Ueber die allgemeinen Laster des Menschen, Hamburg 1957, p.
15.

16 On this point see Niklas Luhmann, "The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society," Social Research 43
(1976), pp. 130-52.

17 For several mathematical variants of this theme, cf. Louis H. Kauffman, "Ways of the Game--Play and Position Play,"
Cybernetics and Human Knowing 2/3 (1994), pp. 17-34.

18 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, New York 1918.

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.

20 See esp. Earl R. Wasserman, The Subtler Language: Critical Readings of Neoclassical and Romantic Poems, Baltimore 1959.

21 On this see Peter Fuchs, Moderne Kommunikation: Zur Theorie des operativen Displacements, Frankfurt 1993, p. 79ff.

22 For example, for the Renaissance in the twin concepts unita/moltitudine or, distinguished from these, verisimile/meraviglioso.
For a representative example, see Torquato Tasso, Discorsi dell'arte poetica e in particulare sopra il poema eroica (1587), in:
Prose, Milano 1969, where (p. 366) it is stated that the poet should rely more on the one than the other ("o 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/varietas or unitas/diversitas.

23 At the same time, biology reorients its inquiries from pre-given essential characteristics to "irritability" as that characteristic
which enables the evolution of living beings. See Jean-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.

25 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.

26 For example, in the sense of the "lteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus," here cited from G. W. F. Hegel,
Werke, vol. I, Frankfurt 1971, pp. 234-36, or in the sense of Friedrich Schlegel.
27 Charles Jencks, "Postmodern vs. Late-Modern," in Ingeborg Hoesterey, ed., Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist
Controversy, Bloomington 1991, pp. 9-21; here, p. 9.
28 Here too the parallel to postmodernism, in this case to Derrida, is astonishing.

29 "ber Philosophie," in Friedrich Schlegel, Werke, Berlin 1980, vol. II, pp. 101-29; here, p. 104.

30 Ludwig Tieck, Frhe Erzhlungen und Romane, 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 Adorno, Lincoln, Neb. 1991; "Die Paradoxie der Form in der Literatur," in Dirk Baecker, ed., Probleme der
Form, Frankfurt 1993, pp. 22-44.

32 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.

33 On the further development of this tendency--with ever new outraged opponents--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 distinction 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
execution of a drawing.

35 On the plurality of such "primary distinctions," see Philip G. Herbst, Alternatives to Hierarchies, Leiden 1976, p. 88. Herbst's
work is, by the way, quite probably the earliest sociological response to Spencer Brown.

36 On the contemporary version of the problem, see N. Katherine Hayles, "Constrained Constructivism: Locating Scientific Inquiry
in the Theater of Representation," in George Levine, ed., Realism and Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in
Relation to Science, Literature, and Culture, Madison, Wisc. 1993, pp. 27-43.

37 Jean Paul, Vorschule der sthetik, in Werke, vol. 5, Munich 1963, p. 7-514 (445).

38 This is a well-known narrative technique of Ludwig Tieck's, from William Lovell to Das Zauberschlo.

39 On this point, see Heinz von Foerster, "Das Gleichnis vom blinden Fleck," in Gerhard Johann Lischka, ed., Der entfesselte
Blick: Symposium, Workshops, Ausstellung, 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, da keiner den
anderen verstehen kann." Cf. also p. 383 (Balder's letter to William Lovell).

41 One can speculate that Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft aimed at such an integration, but failed to provide it.

42 For the subsequent development of this configuration, see Karl Heinz Bohrer, Pltzlichkeit: Zum Augenblick des sthetischen
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.

44 "Themes"--the reference, of course, is to communicating and therefore social systems. For perceptual (psychic) systems one
would have to speak of "objects."

45 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 Verdichtung erscheinen." Or Blthenstaub
109: "Die gewhnliche Gegenwart verknpft Vergangenheit und Zukunft durch Beschrnkung. Es entsteht Kontiguitt, durch
Erstarrung, Krystallisation. Es gibt aber eine geistige Gegenwart, die beyde durch Auflsung identifiziert." Werke, Tagebcher und
Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hans Joachim Mhl 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 mu
ohne sie die Zukunft gebren."

46 On this point, see Ingrid Oesterle, "Der 'Fhrungswechsel der Zeithorizonte' in der deutschen Literatur," in Dirk Grathoff, ed.,
Studien zur sthetik und Literaturgeschichte der Kunstperiode, Frankfurt 1985, pp. 11-75.

47 A concept of memory based in quantum physics that fits this state of affairs can be found in Heinz von Foerster, "Was ist
Gedchtnis, da es Rckschau und Vorschau ermglicht?" in Wissen und Gewissen, pp. 299-336. See also by the same author,
Das Gedchtnis (note 14).

48 Werke (n. 29), vol. I, p. 199.

49 For example, frogs. See J. Y. Lettvin, H. R. Maturana, W. S. McCulloch, and W. H. Pitts, "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's
Brain," Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 47 (1959), pp. 1940-59.