The Quality of the End: On the Life of Form in the ›Halbe Birne‹

Abstract

The following considerations aim to answer the question of why the whole has no end, and yet why the whole is nevertheless represented in the end. The considerations will differentiate between the end and the conclusion, and start with a discussion about the problem of differentiating between long and short. The latter are representative of the relationship between normative quantities through which the aesthetic impression of intensity arises when they are placed in a dynamic relationship of tension to one another. The thesis on this relation of intensity is that it can challenge a technical view that is no longer able to perceive the qualitative value of its dynamics. Paradoxically, the technical view means that this relation lacks precisely that which the finalising gaze had previously dreamed of as a goal. Where intensity – metaphorically speaking – appears to be alive, and where the impression of a living whole arises between the relationships of long and short, it becomes clear precisely on the basis of the factual conception of sizes that a gaze, which is simply desirous, becomes blind to the semantics of desire. Whether the distinction between wish and desire succeeds in building a bridge to the concepts of conclusion and end remains to be seen.