Hans Jonas Homo Pictor
Hans Jonas Homo Pictor
Hans Jonas Homo Pictor
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HOMO PIGTOR AND THE
DIFFERENTIA OF MAN*
BY HANS JONAS
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202 SOCIAL RESEARCH
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HOMO PICTOR 203
1 This statement has to be qualified with respect to mirror images, shadows, and
the like. A reflection in water is a natural, that is, non-artificial, resemblance, and
it is an image of the object that is reflected, while the latter with all its likeness
cannot be said to be an image of the former. But here the image is an accompani-
ment of the object and not an object by itself; and even if it is detachable, like
the imprint of an animal form (a potential "image" for the later paleontologist), the
likeness is the member of a cause-effect relation rather than a representation.
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2O4 SOCIAL RESEARCH
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HOMO PICTOR 205
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2o6 SOCIAL RESEARCH
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HOMO PICTOR 207
by the number of variables of which visual identities admit.
There are many, equally recognizable, visual shapes to the same
object, as a result of relative position and perspective: its "aspects";
each of these enjoys an independence from the variation of size
due to distance; an independence from variations of color and
brightness due to conditions of light; an independence from the
completeness of detail, which can merge and disappear in the
simultaneous wholeness of an object's view. Through all these
variations of sense the form remains identifiable and continuously
represents the same thing.
With such phenomenological traits, to which no other sense
offers a full analogy, vision itself suggests the idea of represen-
tation and, as its means, an idea of "form" whose identity rests
entirely in the proportion of its parts. In visual imagery, there-
fore, the large can be represented by the small, the small by the
large, the solid by the plane, the colored by black and white, the
continuous by the discrete and vice versa, the full by the mere
outline, the manifold by the simple. Sight is the main perceptual
medium of representation because it is not only the chief object-
sense but also the home ground of abstraction.
7) The image is inactive and at rest, though it may depict move-
ment and action. These it can conjure into a static presence
because the represented, the representation, and the vehicle of
representation (the imaging thing, or physical carrier of the image)
are different strata in the ontological constitution of the image.
In spite of its embodiment, the likeness is unsubstantial, like a
shadow or a mirror image. It can represent the dangerous without
endangering, the harmful without harming, the desirable without
satiating. What is represented in the mode of image is, in the
image, removed from the causal commerce of things and trans-
posed to a non-dynamic existence that is the image existence
proper - a mode of existence to be confounded neither with that
of the imaging thing nor with that of the imaged reality. The
last two both remain involved in the movement of becoming. As
the imaged reality goes on in its course, the body of the image-
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2o8 SOCIAL RESEARCH
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HOMO PICTOR 209
expression may become a goal and conspicuous by choice (as in the brushwork of
baroque painters or of Van Gogh), and with this shift from the representational
to the expressive the very role of image changes.
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21O SOCIAL RESEARCH
If these, then, are the properties of image, what properties are re-
quired in a subject for the making or beholding of images? The
two, making and beholding, do not differ in the basic condition of
their possibility. Making an image involves the ability to behold
something as an image; and to behold something as an image and
not merely as an object means also to be able to produce one.
This is a statement of essence. It does not mean that he who
appreciates a painting by Rembrandt is therefore able to produce
its like. But it does mean that whoever can perceive a pictorial
representation as such is the kind of being to whose nature the
representational faculty belongs, regardless of special gifts, actual
exercise, and degrees of proficiency attained. What kind of being
is this?
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HOMO PICTOR 211
s Or, in the latter case, should we have said it is not that man is more easily
satisfied with respect to likeness, but that he is more perceptive for it even in faint
traces? But then it would have to be the bird that is the more perceptive in the
first case - perceptive for likeness, not for difference.
6 Man can of course be deceived occasionally and confound an image with the real
thing; but this merely means that for the moment he does not apply the image
category at all, not that to him it has lost its meaning. Contrariwise, it may occur
that he fails to perceive a likeness and the very intention of a likeness, and thus
fails to recognize the perceptual object as an image; here again the image category
simply does not come into play, this time for lack of likeness, and the object is
just taken for itself. This also does not mean that the difference between the
vehicle of representation and the function of representation has become invalid for
the observer.
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212 SOCIAL RESEARCH
hi
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HOMO PICTOR 213
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214 SOCIAL RESEARCH
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HOMO PICTOR 215
But did we not encounter these selfsame features before, when
we analyzed the ontology of image? Thus it turns out that ab-
straction, representation, symbolism - something of the image
function - already inheres in the performance of seeing, as the
most integrative of the senses. This, in degrees, must then be
credited even to some higher animals.
IV
What step then does the image faculty take in man when he pro-
ceeds to translate a visual aspect into a material likeness? We
see at once that in this step a new level of mediacy is attained,
beyond that which belongs to visual recognition of objects as such.
The image becomes detached from the object, that is, the presence
of the eidos is made independent of that of the thing. Vision
involved a stepping back from the importunity of environment
and procured the freedom of detached survey.8 A stepping back
of the second order takes place when appearance is comprehended
qua appearance, distinguished from reality, and, with its presence
freely commanded, is interposed between the self and the real
whose presence is beyond command.
This free possession is first achieved in the internal exercise of
imagination, by which, to the best of our knowledge, human
memory is distinguished from animal recollection. The latter
is joined to actual sensation. It may function on the occasion
of a present perception in which a previous one is recognized
by way of the quality "familiar" or "known" with which the
present experience is imbued. Or, instead of accompanying
repetitive perception as it occurs, recall may be evoked by appetite
and projectively guide animal action toward a desired repetition
("remembering" the way to yesterday's feeding place), with "recall
by familiarity" marking the successful progress of the action. But
there is nothing to show that this kind of remembering enjoys an
s For a more detailed and more comprehensive analysis of vision and the "image"
faculty inherent in it, see my article "The Nobility of Sight," in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, vol. 14, no. 4 (June 1954) pp. 507-19.
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2i6 SOCIAL RESEARCH
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HOMO PICTOR 217
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2i8 SOCIAL RESEARCH
envisaged form is not embodied by the wish, and the inner com-
mand of the eidos, with all its freedom of mental drafting, would
remain ineffective had it not also the power to guide the subject's
body in execution. Of this translation of an eidetic pattern into
movement of limb, writing is the most familiar example; dance
(by designed choreography) is another; and the use of our hand
throughout exhibits this motor translation of form in its widest
practical range as the condition of all technology. What we here
have is a trans-animal, uniquely human fact: eidetic control of
motility, that is, muscular action governed not by set stimulus-
response pattern but by freely chosen, internally represented and
purposely projected form. The eidetic control of motility, with
its freedom of external execution, complements the eidetic control
of imagination, with its freedom of internal drafting. Without
the latter, there would be no rational faculty, but without the
former, its possession would be futile. Both together make possi-
ble the freedom of man. Expressing both in one indivisible evi-
dence, homo pictor represents the point in which homo faber
and homo sapiens are conjoined - are indeed shown to be one and
the same.
I return once more to the mental side. The Bible tells us
(Genesis 2:19) that God created the beasts of the field and the
fowls of the air, but left it to Adam to name them. A Haggada to
this passage (Genesis Rabba xvn.5) states that God praised the
wisdom of Adam before the angels, saying that in giving names
to all creatures, to himself, and even to God, Adam had done what
the angels could not do. The giving of names to objects is here
regarded as the first feat of newly created man and as the first dis-
tinctively human act. It was a step beyond creation. He who did
it demonstrated by it his superiority over his fellow creatures and
foreshadowed his coming mastery over nature. In giving names
to "every living creature*' created by God, man created species
names for the plurality into which each would multiply. The
name, becoming general, would preserve the archetypal order of
creation in the face of individual multiplicity. Its use in each
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HOMO PICTOR 219
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22O SOCIAL RESEARCH
with potential reason (as with potential geometry and the like).
The potentiality resides in something that is not itself reason (and
so on), and may never happen to advance to it. But if it does
it will be an advance within the level constituted by that basic
* 'something* ' that operates in the earliest attempts at represen-
tation. The level of man is the level of the possibilities that are
indicated (not defined, and certainly not assured) by the pictorial
faculty: the level of a non-animal mediacy in the relation to
objects, and of a distance from reality entertained and bridged
by that mediacy at the same time. The existence of images, which
shows form wrested from fact, is a witness to this mediacy, and in
its open promise alone suffices as evidence of human freedom.
Former speculation demanded more concerning what should
be regarded as conclusive evidence for homo sapiens: at some
time, nothing less than figures exemplifying geometrical proposi-
tions would suffice. This surely is an unfailing, but also an over-
exacting, criterion. Where would it leave the bushman? The
criterion of attempted sensible likeness is more modest, but also
more basic and comprehensive. It is full evidence for the trans-
animal freedom of the makers. This freedom, in both theoretic
and practical respects, of which reason is a more specific develop-
ment, is distinctive of man. To see the differentia fulfilled in
the crudest likeness of an antelope as much as in the figure of the
Pythagorean theorem is not to scale down the stature of man.
For the gap between animal world-relation and the crudest at-
tempt at representation is infinitely wider than that between
the latter and any geometrical construction. It is a metaphysical
gap, compared with which the other is one only of degree.
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