1 Warburg and Jolles: a cognitive approach to the art of viewing and the art of reading

My brief reflection is based on two assumptions that might be controversial. The first assumption is about Pathosformel [pathos formula] and Sprachgebärde [language gesture], the two fundamental terms in Warburgs ' art of viewing art, who first used the term in his 1906 writing on Dürer and the Italian antiquity (Warburg, "Dürer und die italiensche Antike") , and in André Jolles ’ art of reading literature, developed mainly in his book on Einfache Formen from 1930. My first thesis is that these two terms can be compared and that they – phenomenologically taken – refer to the same concept. In further research this reflection might even be extended to Panofky's concept of "type" and to Ernst Robert Curtius ' notion of "topos". 1 My second and main thesis is that this concept can be explained (and explored) by some of the recent theories developed in cognitive studies. In this sense I will simultaneously deal with Warburg and apply a Warburgian interest in joining insights from the so-called culture studies and the so-called cognitive sciences, one of the leading and promising research areas in present times. The interesting point about Pathosformel and Sprachgebärde is that they seem to exist before concretization in the arts and even before their concrete meaning. Oscillating between a morphological preexistence and its meaningful appearance, their floating experience is a challenge both to history and eternity, to universalism and cultural relativism. Whenever one deals with Warburg's famous Mnemosyne-Atlas-Project one can observe this challenge in action: The fact that the project is only bequeathed in vague drafts and ambiguous representations only highlights the permanent entanglement of its observer between "I do not really understand what it means " and "There is something about it". 1 From the perspective of a methodological challenge a comparison of Pathosformel, Topos and Type has been developed by Pfisterer. See also the fundamental findings in Wuttke, "Ernst Robert Curtius und Ab