Figural Philology

Though inspired by a Panofskyan legacy, this book diverges at certain points from Erwin Panofsky's declared objectives, and calls attention to several of aspects that were until now less accentuated in his intellectual reception. Insisting on the importance of iconology as a method for art history and the humanities in general, it shows how examining this promotes a cooperation between the history of art and the history of philosophy. It discusses whether Panofsky's method could be of use for general questions in the epistemology of the historical sciences that examine human works.
Figural Philology also shows that Panofsky shares affinities with twentieth-century romance philology. A reading of Panofsky's work alongside the philological enterprise of Erich Auerbach and several other authors demonstrates that a proper appropriation of the philological impulse can provide a way out of the methodological antimony still hanging between hyper-formalist and hyper-theoretical approaches to the history of art.

Adi Efal is Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Cologne, Germany.

Acknowledgements 1 Philological rationality and the constitution of the history of art 2 Archimedean points: monuments as duration reservoirs Panofsky's Riegl Philological imperatives in Riegl's methods The curse and the blessing in the study of artworks Art history as Korrektur of monuments Riegl's Alterswert Kunstwollen and meaning Philological reproduction of past realities 3 Forms and figures: two fundamental modes of pictorial production Forms and figures within the pictorial domain Figuration in the history of art The figural situation Figuration and meaning Forms and figures From the plastic to the pictorial 4 Pictorial validities in art and history Panofsky's Idea and the disclosure of the iconoclastic structure Ideas between truth and reality in Idea Auerbach's 'Figura': plasticity and history ?Real and historical': the figural mechanics of validation Reality, value and truth: two versions of realist argumentation Iconophilic method 5 Sub figuralitate historiæ The figure and the reality of the past Figural and historical meaning 6 Iconological space: Panofsky with Warburg Panofsky's historical space-time Simmel's historical time Warburg's art history and philology Warburg's philological gaze Vitalisms and archaism Iconology and philology 7 The figural synthesis of historical reality in the iconology table Synthesis Symbols, ideas and values From symbolic value to synthetic intuition Intuition and synthesis Figural synthesis 8 Philology's recollective habitus: Panofsky with Spitzer, Auerbach and Curtius The Aristotelian distinction between memory and recollection Two modes of memory The role of figures in recollection Humanism as a recollective activity Hylomorphist humanism Figural distinction: a model for the recollective disjunction Elastic hylomorphism 9 Figural content and the past as a res extensa Iconoclasm, iconism and the reality of the past The past reality of a work versus historical meaning The unseen prototypes of the artwork Vanishing point and carrying surface: spatialities of historical explication Past reality of works and the reality of the past The distance between the reality of the past and the historical reality of a work Nonseen and figured Conclusion: towards a figural philology The domain Historical meaning, past reality, historical reality Philological production Figural synthesis Distinctive realism Untemporal history Moderate historicism Panofsky Notes Bibliography Index