Aspekte visueller Epistemologie. Zur ‚Logik‘ des Ikonischen

Abstract

Is there something similar to the ‘logic’ of proposition in images, a symbolic structure of its own, or ways to express the negative or ‘modal forms’ such as the impossible or the conjunctive to address more hypothesises and the like? Images were often considered to be non-rational or only ‘pre-linguistic’. Instead, the presentation argues that there is a genuine ‘logic of showing’ which differs from the ‘logical form’ of language, but which function as a structure of its own, based on a series of differences and differential systems such as frame, line (contour), contrast (also contrast of colours), the play of figure and background and so on. Moreover the difference between ‘showing’ (Zeigen) and ‘showing-in-itself’ (Sichzeigen) ruptures all images and allows for the formulation of a ‘critique of pictorial reasoning’ as it was suggested by the plural approach of the late Wittgensteinian investigations on images.