Figural Philology Panofsky and the Science of Things [Hardcover]

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 Philologyalso 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.

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
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