Iser's Anthropological Reception of the Philosophical Tradition

Author(s): Gabriel Motzkin

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 1, On the Writings of Wolfgang Iser (Winter,
2000), pp. 163-174
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 Iser's Anthropological Reception of the
Philosophical Tradition

Gabriel Motzkin

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 of
presence
in this world
that is transcendent to it.
something
In reading Wolfgang Iser's The Fictive and the Imaginary, it became clear
to me for the first time what is wrong with this conception. It is not a
erroneous to that some other world than this one, with
priori suppose
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 belong
to our world. Nor even is it a erroneous to
suppose that we
priori
conceive of one world in terms of laws that do not properly belong to it,
but that have their origin elsewhere.
The philosophical tradition's basic error was to presuppose that
absolute transcendence, the act of and transcendence-in
transcending,
immanence, are all the same thing, or indeed that they
belong together.
If one substitutes the imaginary for the absolutely transcendent,
whether as dream or reality, the fictionalizing act for the act of
or of and the of absence and
transcending, boundary crossing, synthesis
presence, of exclusion and inclusion, of and real
imaginary object

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 that have a common or are
they origin,
similar Iser out that the source of a
phenomena. points phenomenon,
or the reason for it, and the phenomenon itself, are not the same thing.
He does not go as far as Hans Blumenberg, for whom the connection
between a vacated for a and that
place phenomenon phenomenon may
be quite happenstance. There is for Iser an inherent link between the
fictive and the imaginary, but it does not derive from an ontological
identity.

New Literary History, 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 world
and the place whither we are going, while related, are different. The
relations of constitution between them are also different. Iser's
polemic
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 created a from another one. It is the
through procession
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, the act be
transcending
comes central.

However, the act becomes central in another than it

transcending way
does in most modern or indeed in traditional religion. For
philosophy,
this act, Iser's act, is not a self-transcendence,
transcending fictionalizing
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 preserved even while it is annulled in another world,
there is no final synthesis of the real, the fictive, and the imaginary.
In opting 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 obligated to two of them
directly, and to a third indirectly. These three ways are signified by the
names Emil Lask, Hans Vaihinger, and Edmund Husserl. Lask appears
in Iser's work in the guise of Constantine Castoriadis, who, like Lucien
Goldmann and Martin Heidegger, was affected by his modern Neo
as a second-rate
platonism. Vaihinger appears Vaihinger, philosopher
who happened upon, malgr? lui, a very interesting theory which has
continued to serve as a reference Husserl is discussed
point. rarely

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 provide access to laws which could
account for the phenomena that appear to consciousness as indicating

objects that can be presumed to exist in a world that is transcendent to

consciousness. Neither was able to maintain Kant's equilibrium between
the intuition and the understanding. However, neither replicated the

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ISER'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECEPTION 165

consequent from Kant to Hegel.

development Instead, Lask opted for a
a primordial world in which all real and
hyperrealism, presupposing
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. have the same status as to
Negations ontological positions,
which they are conjoined. The mind this boundary in a negativecrosses
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
a act, seeks to reunite these worlds. However, it
quasi-transcendent
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

realm that Lask as the realm of sense. In

quasi-transcendent qualifies
this philosophy there exist two worlds. In each world, the excluded and
negative exists primordially as the included and positive. Excluded by
consciousness, it then resurfaces in a way in a world that
pale, ectypical
is created by a boundary-crossing subjectivity. This subjectivity cannot be
said to create an imaginary world, or even a fictional one, but the world
of sense or meaning with which it then surrounds itself is clearly
different from the primordial world. And this ontological difference
between meaning and primordial Being in turn signifies a fundamental
disjunction or heterogeneity between the activity of the mind and the
world, one which the mind seeks to destroy. This destructive search for
then creates a second, virtual world. Castoriadis is a Laskian
identity
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 only a potential world: it must first be
awakened through an act such as the fictionalizing act.
If Lask stretched Kantianism in the direction of realism, then Vaihinger
took 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 are accessible to consciousness
only through
virtual acts, because the way for consciousness to obtain access to a
only
world is?not to take the real world as if it were 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, Vaihinger
came 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, for Vaihinger 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 cannot say that the
construct is a consequence of elements that exist for the original feeling
that we had of the existence of something. In this way, Vaihinger was
able to develop much more thoroughly than Lask the possibility of a
double consciousness, one of Iser's central motifs, that is,
simultaneously
a consciousness that is because it can be at two
transgressive precisely
aspects or of view at the same time. While Lask had some
points
primitive suggestions to make in this regard, he was much more
interested in the and of consciousness.
decomposition recomposition
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
move because he values the primordial more
Heideggerian precisely
highly than Heidegger (FI209). What does itmean, however, to say that
Husserl surfaces as Sartre? Husserl also believed in the essential neces

of nonexistent frameworks in order to or even in his later

sity penetrate,

philosophy, in order to constitute reality. However, Husserl locates

nonexistence in a different place than either Lask or Vaihinger, and he
thus firmly betrays his sources in the anti-Idealist tradition stemming
from Bolzano. Husserl does not either the nonexistence
Namely, suggest
of the input, of the subjective act of cognition, nor of the output, of the
world that the subject creates 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 make truth-statements, consciousness must traverse
meaningful
an ideal but nonexistent realm of ideal meanings so that out of this
certain realm the probabilistic nature of the real, transcendent world
becomes This of nonexistence is what makes
apparent. phenomenon

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 same what consciousness does is to create noemata,
way,
schemata of the object that organize the pixels that are appresented to
sensation. Every object has in it inherently a 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 sphere can never exist: one cannot
make a
reality 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
this act is
special sphere or being belonging to consciousness. However,
not an imaginary 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 shows

his 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 a fictionalizing act, then that act is as real
in this actual sense as other act. If we were to map Iser's
any terminology
onto Husserl, say we would
the fictionalizing act enters thethat
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 family
resemblance is
apparent.
However, all three philosophers succumb to what could be called the
philosopher's temptation, from which Iser saves himself. Namely, they
are unable to distinguish ontologically between the act of consciousness
and its creation. For Lask, a consciousness extracts truth
decomposing

particles from the world-mine, and then builds itsmeaning-edifice from

those there is no difference between consciousness'
truth-particles:
quest for truth and the truth that consciousness makes or fails to make.
For the as-if nature of can never be transcended: there
Vaihinger, reality
is no consciousness that does not have an as-if dimension; the not-as-if
functions as an "Das an sich
only impassable boundary-condition. Ding
ist keine Hypothese, sondern eine Fiktion" ["The thing in itself is not a
hypothesis, it is rather a fiction"].3While Lask believed that conscious
ness provides a distorted picture of the world, believed that
Vaihinger
the purpose of consciousness is not to the world, but rather to
represent
a orientation within it; representations are an instru
provide practical
ment of this purposiveness (22-23). Whereas the world as such is
inaccessible to a consciousness, in the of that
representational sphere
there can be no distinction between consciousness and
representation,
its For Husserl, an intentional consciousness confronts
representations.
the of sensation intentional ob
heterogeneous experience by creating
jects, rather than representational objects, in order to organize its
sensations. These intentional objects of consciousness in turn make the
world accessible.
Both Heidegger and Derrida criticize the philosophical tradition for
its preference for a presentist philosophy of identity. I think that this
cursory examination shows that the objection is well-taken if we under
stand identity as meaning homogeneity, that is, the denial of the
experience of heterogeneity as itself a of
being founding experience
consciousness. For a that
philosophy accepts heterogeneity, however,
there can be no good-faith investigation of the ways in which the mind
transforms its inputs in order to know them because such a philosophy
would have to deny the possibility that things can be known through
their homogeneous transformations. Heidegger to accept
appeared
heterogeneity, but the heterogeneity he had in mind was ultimately not

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168 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the Husserlian one between a thinking consciousness and the things you
can touch or bite, but rather between time-things as being now and me
as never now. In the end, he was in our sense also a traditional

philosopher, because of the now-things

the world is ultimately 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 a weakly 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
conserve nihilism in a world-scheme, a
Heidegger's heterogeneous
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
texts, as he seems to think it does, but rather whether the
literary good
faith position must be that all acts function like his fictionalizing acts,
but some are as thetic or doxic, or whatever. However, in that
qualified
case the question arises of whether the imaginary only exists for the
act, or for whether a doxic exists as
fictionalizing example imaginary
well. One could argue that all acts draw from the same imaginary. 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
confronts, so different that it cannot at all be called
fictionalizing
are different
imaginary. Finally one could argue that there imaginarles
that make themselves available to different acts, as there are
just
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. In modern philosophy, this problem
of reveals a aesthetic of
self-observability fundamentally conception

namely that observability is linked to the problem of

observability,
whether the observer is part of the same world together with what is
observed. Can I look at a picture, and then observe myself looking at the
I can, if I either assume that I am performing two acts at the
picture?
a
same time that are very different, because looking at picture and
at at a take in different worlds; or if
looking myself looking picture place
I assume that I can look at myself looking at 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 looking at the picture is like
can at
looking at anything else, assuming I look myself like looking at
anything else. Or I can say that in at a picture I enter the world
looking
of the picture and then look at myself in and through the picture, since
I am now part of the picture. Or, finally, I can say that observability can
take place as a boundary crossing, that I can look at myself looking at the
picture in and through the picture because I can actually see from one
world to another, and even see from the other world back into this one.
In other words, I can assert that is not a of immanence,
perception sign
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 I would 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 to develop a theory of double constitution, for I have then
denied the common origin of perception and self-perception.
In traditional philosophy, this problem is a central issue because the
aim of philosophy is not only the legitimation of the knowledge of the
external world, but the acquisition of such knowledge as an indispens
able correlative to self-knowledge. Kant argued that self-knowledge and
of the external world to realms. Since self
knowledge belong separate
has no on existence, therefore, the rules of
knowledge bearing percep
tion for knowledge and for self-knowledge are different: knowledge is
perspectival, since objects can only be viewed through aspects, but self
knowledge is not perspectival, since we must know the whole being from
all sides, and therefore self-knowledge cannot be based on self-perception.
If there is any point on 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 element of self-constitution and hence of world
founding
constitution. Hegel also believed in the necessity for self-perception
both 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 as theories all
psychological
believed in the possibility of self-perception, although Ernst Mach
revealed his doubts precisely on this point.4
None of the twentieth-century philosophers we have mentioned
believed in the possibility of a self-perception that is founded on
external perception and that is then arrived at through In
introspection.
Downcast Eyes, Martin Jay has argued that twentieth-century culture is
characterized by the denigration of vision as the basic for the
metaphor

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170 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

human relation to the external world.51 believe that this is not quite
there is a deal of counter-evidence. But
precise: great 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
Hermann
Ebbinghaus's memory-experiments.
Lask engaged in a lengthy polemic against the possibility of arriving at
truth through the logic of reflection, through self-reflection, indeed
through any kind of introspection. Vaihinger thought that only a 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 own object, but only through the double procedure
of focussing on itself as its object and at the same time out
bracketing
the question of its existence. One should note that this is not the way in
which Husserl thought external objects are constituted. External objects
are constituted noemata. out the external
through Bracketing objects
makes the noemata visible. But here the object in question is itself the
noema. in order to constitute the noema, I first have to focus
Normally
on some and then extract the noema from it. There is no blank
object,
noema. Therefore consciousness, while a consciousness of
objects,
cannot be an object. If consciousness is not an object, then it cannot be
perceived in the same way. Husserl actually sought to avoid this
conclusion, in his later The consequence, however,
especially writings.
was, that like the Idealists, he to argue for the possibility
then had of
deducing perception from self-perception and not self-perception from
perception. However, he did not really believe that we perceive con
sciousness. The sense of external time is founded in the sense of internal

time, but the sense of internal time can only be visible through
extraction from a process that is itself not just time, such as listening to
a melody. Thus self-perception is actually not deduced from perception
at all, but rather from some other act, and a hiatus is for self
required

perception. Husserl is then forced to conclude that there really exist two
quite different kinds of external perception, sense-perception and
would then be an act between the
object-perception. Self-perception
two. In that case, itmust be modally different from external perception.
Hence perception cannot
self-perception, bebut, unlike Kantian and
Hegelian perception, be able to cross
must the world-boundaries,
especially the world-boundary between inside and outside.
Heidegger believed that there is only one world and that in that world
we can never ourselves. He concluded that we cannot
simply perceive

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 cannot perceive the horizon of the world
in which we are, in his case, the temporal horizon. Heidegger must have
believed that if we could perceive the limit of the world, then, through
an act of refraction, we could perceive ourselves, but that this is
precisely
what is not given. We therefore then have no position from which to
look back. Our relation to the past is much 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
unlike else on this list, that can cross world
anybody perception
boundaries. Moreover, he also believes that crosses
perception always
world-boundaries, since the act of perception must always assume the
nonexistence of the excluded, and by that act have already taken
account of that exclusion. He does not really believe that the fictionaliz
act brackets out existence in some Husserlian since the realm
ing way,
that is activatedthe fictionalizing
by act 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 position at all.
The reason is that Husserl did not believe that we can take up a point
of view that is outside our world. Starting from an existing point of view,
we a nonexistent world to at the real one. However, Iser
go through get
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 a For while it becomes clear that all
problem.

perceptions are boundary crossings, and that therefore reality requires

the imaginary, does the imaginary require reality in the same way as the
real requires the imaginary? In other words, does an imaginary me need
to enter the real in order to look at the
imaginary me? Is the imaginary
of equal status with the real as world-constituting? I believe that the
answer is no, the does not need to enter the real. However,
imaginary
that does as Lask
not mean, that all imaginary worlds are of
thought,
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 are
objects
imagined. Iser would reply that an me is bound the same
imaginary by
as the real me, even when it appears to violate those rules. In
reality-rules
other words, the imaginary me, in seeing itself, looks at an infinite series
of mirrors. For an imaginary me to see an it must go
imaginary me,
a act of the same kind, and therefore construct an
through fictionalizing
imaginary world of second degree through a act of second
fictionalizing

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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 through an act of the first
degree, but it is different. I a fictional me who certainly
quite imagine
believes in the existence of God. A first-order fictionalization creates a
second-order doxic context.

From this, two conclusions emerge. First, the fictionalizing act is

directional: it is away from the given. A return to the given from the
imaginary is simply a boundary transgression from that world. For the
movie characters in The Purple Rose of Cairo it must be the real viewers
who are beyond 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 no way to

synthesize the real and the imaginary. In other words, for Wolfgang Iser,
it is the fact that boundaries are constantly being crossed that makes it
certain that worlds can never collide or Thus self
merge together.

perception is always possible, but only through the admission of its

virtuality.
In what way is that different from Kant? Namely the following: for
Kant the rules of perception are different in the two cases of perception
and this has been taken to mean that we can
self-perception. Normally
never know the as it is, since we can never see it from all sides. On
object
the other hand, the reverse must also be true: that we can never
namely
see a moral for the moment we do so, it ceases to
object perspectivally,
be a moral There can be no moral science. Therefore we cannot
object.
study morality or social behavior. Something is lost by giving up the idea
of the good as an object, as something that we can look at and admire.
Iser has no such since he does not base his distinction
problem,
between worlds on the kind of vision that is in play, on the difference in
the way that we one world and then the other world.
perceive perceive
Therefore there is no discussion of a difference in the way of seeing in
the real world and in the imaginary one. 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 perception as boundary
How is that different from a perception that is immanent to
crossing?
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
as if they were part of
paintings?
objects
What to look at an object as part of a painting?
does itmean however
it means to see the painting
the ability as finite, as having
Surely,
borders. Perhaps one cannot see a work by Christo in this way, because
it is so big, 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,
one can never see the whole border. In the same when we
although way
see the world, we see it enframed so that it has a border. However in
the real world, I assume that the real world has no border, that my
seeing
sense of a border at thirty-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 quite
distinct doxic imputations are identical. In reading this paper, I can both
be conscious of and and moreover be
myself myself-reading-this-paper,
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 this paper means that I can see myself both perspectivally
and 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 the to take on another of view, but it also assumes
ability point
that Bali will never be Konstanz.
There is a quite banal danger here, and I think a clear one:
abandoning a faculty theory of human capabilities means that there can
be no of human nature. We are not alike because we are
faculty theory

possessed of similar faculties. All men are not created equal. If they are to
be viewed as equal, it must be on some other basis than a logic of
in a common essence. I think that there is a solution to this
participation
problem in the concept of the fictionalizing act: it is not because we
common faculties, nor because we hold the same
possess imaginary
absolutes, that a common humanity is to be desired, but rather because
of the quite universal capability of fictionalizing, that is, of seeing aspects
from different worlds. Derrida, following Husserl, is quite right that that
is not Husserl wanted to limn a consciousness that is the same
enough.
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 in denying the
possibility of a universal it must affirm the universal
perspective,

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174 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

possibility of boundary crossing. But then the question to be addressed

to any postmodernity must be the one of the desirability of difference,
not of its facticity.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

NOTES

1 Wolfgang 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. System der theoretischen, praktischen und religi?sen
Fiktionen derMenschheit auf Grund eines idealistischen Positivismus, 8th ed. (Leipzig, 1922), p.
109; hereafter cited in text; in English as The Philosophy of "As If": A System of the Theoretical,
Practical and Religious Fictions ofMankind, tr. C. K. Ogden (London, 1968).
4 Manfred Sommer, Evidenz im Augenblick. Eine Ph?nomenologie der reinen Empfinding
(Frankfurt, 1987).
5 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought
(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.

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