The Ground of the Image by Nancy Jean-Luc

Author:Nancy, Jean-Luc.
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2005-11-06T05:00:00+00:00

The Heideggerian Image

In his analysis of the schematism, Heidegger perfectly understands what is at stake here, and the necessity of thinking it in order to penetrate the secret of the schematism (reputed by Kant to be unassailable, as is well known)—which, however, does not exactly amount, it will be noticed, to “wrenching away” this secret (Kant uses this expression), to extract its “art” (also Kant’s term). It means, rather, entering into the logic of what can be called, for the sake of convenience and in order to provide an image, the self-imagining of the schematism.

I would like to examine the operation by which Heidegger attempts to do this, and, in particular, the way in which this operation images self-imagining for us, the way in which it exemplifies or provides a model for “making an image.” I would like to do this by commenting on section 20 of the Kantbuch,4 entitled “Image and Schema.”

There Heidegger writes: “First of all, image [Bild] can mean: the look [Anblick] of a determinate being insofar as it is manifest [offenbar] as something at hand [Vorhandenes]. It offers the look.”5 The usual sense of image here, then, is “first of all” the aspect offered by something. (It should also be noted that the German Bild has an etymology very different from that of imago—which is the representation of the dead—implying rather form, aspect, or overall outward appearance.) It is the Anblick, the “glance” or the “look” presented, directed toward us by the thing. Heidegger continues by saying that this sense can be extended to Abbild or copy (the translator says “likeness,” in the sense of a portrait or reflection; a photo is commonly referred to as an Abbild)—the copy of a present thing, then, or else to Nachbild, an imitation, reproduction, or “after-image” of a being no longer present, and to Vorbild, the model or “fore-image” of a being yet to be created.

We find ourselves, then, before the immediate image-aspect, as well as the mimetic triplicity of portrait-reconstruction-model; Heidegger adds to this the “very broad” sense of “look in general,” in which it is not said whether what is rendered visible (anschaubar, “intuitable”) is “a being or a non-being” (consequently, this is also true for the “look” of a projection, an ideal configuration). He says that Kant uses all three senses without formally distinguishing them, and he expresses a doubt that these distinctions alone will be able to clarify the schematism. But of course that is precisely what he sets out to do. In fact, he will attempt to show how the production of the possibility of “creating a look” in general refers back, prior to any kind of mimetic image, to the originary sense of the Bild as an aspect that makes itself seen. One could also formulate it in this way: he will attempt to show how every creating-a-look finds its condition in a primordial putting-into-the-look. And how this putting-into-the- look—that of the schematism—must be envisaged (quite literally) with regard to its native constitution.

In fact, the elucidation proceeds from here first by discussing the three senses.

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