Above I discussed the principle of ambiguity as moral disposition and problematic construct. Again, modern psychology and phenomenology use the term «perceptive ambiguities,» which indicates the availability of new cognitive positions that fall short of conventional epistemological stances and that allow the observer to conceive the world in a fresh dynamics of potentiality before the fixative process of habit and familiarity comes into play. Husserl observedthat
each state of consciousness implies the existence of a horizon which varies with the modification of its connections together with other states, and also with its own phases of duration .. . In each external perception, for instance, the sides of the objects which are actually perceived suggest to the viewer’s attention the unperceived sides which, at the present. are viewed only in a nonintuitive manner and arc expected to become elements of the succeeding perception. This process is similar to a continuous projection which takes on a new meaning with each phase of the perceptive process. Moreover, perception itself includes horizons which encompass other perceptive possibilities, such as a person might experience by changing deliberately the direction of his perception, by turning his eyes one way instead of another,orbytakingastepforwardorsideways,andsoforth.’°
Sartre notes that the existent object can never be reduced to a given series of manifestations, because each of these is bound to stand in relationship with a continuously altering subject. Not only does an object present different Abschattungen (or profiles), but also different points of view are available by way of the same Abschattung. In order to be defined, the object must be related back to the total series of which, by virtue of being one possible apparition, it is a member.
In this way the traditional dualism between being and appearance is replaced by a straight polarity of finite and infinite, which locates the infinite at the very core of the finite. This sort of «openness» is at the heart of every act of perception. It characterizes every moment of our cognitive experience. It means that each phe nomenon seems to be «inhabited» by a certain power—in other words, «the ability to manifest itself by a series of real or likely manifestations.» The problem of the relationship of a phenomenon to its ontological basis is altered by the perspective of perceptive «openness» to the problem of its relationship to the multiplicity of differentorder perceptions which we can derive from it.»
This intellectual position is further accentuated in MerleauPonty:
How can anything ever present itself truly to us since its synthesis is never completed? How could I gain the experience of the world, as I would of an individual actuating his own existence, since none of the views or perceptions I have of it can exhaust it and the horizons remain forever open? … The belief in things and in the world can only express the assumption of a complete synthesis. Its completion, however, is made impossible by the very nature of the perspectives to be connected, since each of them sends back to other perspectives through its own horizons . . .
The contradiction which we feel exists between the world’s reality and its incompleteness is identical to the one that exists between the ubiquity of consciousness and its commitment to a field of presence. This ambiguousness does not represent an imperfection in the nature of existence or in that of consciousness; it is its very definition . . . Consciousness, which is commonly taken as an extremely enlightened region, is, on the contrary, the very region of indetermination.12
These are the sorts of problems which phenomenology picks out at the very heart of our existential situation. It proposes to the artist, as well as to the philosopher and the psychologist, a series of declarations which are bound to act as a stimulus to his creative activity in the world of forms: «It is therefore essential for an object and also for the world to present themselves to us as ‘open’ . . . and as always promising future perceptions.» 13
It would be quite natural for us to think that this flight away from the old, solid concept of necessity and the tendency toward the ambiguous and the indeterminate reflect a crisis of contemporary civilization. On the other hand, we might see these poetical systems, in harmony with modern science, as expressing the positive possibility of thought and action made available to an individual who is open to the continuous renewal of his life patterns and cognitive rocessesSuch an individual is productively committed to the de p
velopment of his own mental faculties and experiential horizons.
This contrast is too facile and Manichaean. Our main intent has been to pick out a number of analogies which reveal a reciprocal play of problems in the most disparate areas of contemporary culture and which point to the common elements in a new way of looking at the world.
What is at stake is a convergence of new canons and requirements which the forms of art reflect by way of what we could term Structural homologies. This need not commit us to assembling a rigorous parallelism—it is simply a case of phenomena like the «work in movement» simultaneously reflecting mutually contrasted epistemological situations, as yet contradictory and not satisfactorily reconciled. Thus, the concepts of «openness» and dynamism may recall the terminology of quantum physics: indeterminacy and discontinuity. But at the same time they also exemplify a number of situations in Einsteinian physics.
The multiple polarity of a serial composition in music, where the listener is not faced by an absolute conditioning center of reference, requires him to constitute his own system of auditory relationships.» He must allow such a center to emerge from the sound continuum. Here are no privileged points of view, and all available perspectives are equally valid and rich in potential. Now, this multiple polarity is extremely close to the spatiotemporal conception of the universe which we owe to Einstein.
The thing which distinguishes the Einsteinian concept of the universe from quantum epistemology is precisely this faith in the totality of the universe, a universe in which discontinuity and indeterminacy can admittedly upset us with their surprise apparitions, but in fact, to use Einstein’s words, presuppose not a God playing random games with dice but the Divinity of Spinoza, who rules the world according to perfectly regulated laws. In this kind of universe, relativity means the infinite variability of experience as well as the infinite multiplication of possible ways of measuring things and viewing their position. But the objective side of the whole system can be found in the invariance of the simple formal descriptions (of the differential equations) which establish once and for all the relativity of empirical measurement.
This is not the place to pass judgment on the scientific validity of the metaphysical construct implied by Einstein’s system. But there is a striking analogy between his universe and the universe of the work in movement. The God in Spinoza, who is made into an untestable hypothesis by Einsteinian metaphysics, becomes a cogent reality for the work of art and matches the organizing impulse of its creator.
The possibilities which the work’s openness makes available always work within a given field of relations. As in the Einsteinian universe, in the «work in movement» we may well deny that there is a single prescribed point of view. But this does not mean complete chaos in its internal relations. What it does imply is an organizing rule which governs these relations. Therefore, to sum up, we can say that the «work in movement» is the possibility of numerous different personal interventions, but it is not an amorphous invitation to indiscriminate participation.
The invitation offers the performer the opportunity for an oriented insertion into something which always remains the world intended by the author.
In other words, the author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee a work to be completed. He does not know the exact fashion in which his work will be concluded, but he is aware that once completed the work in question will still be his own. It will not be a different work, and, at the end of the interpretative dialogue, a form which is his form will have been organized, even though it may have been assembled by an outside party in a particular way that he could not have foreseen. The author is the one who proposed a number of possibilities which had already been rationally organized, oriented, and endowed with specifications for proper development.
Berio’s Sequence, which is played by different flutists, Stockhausen’s Klavierstiick XI, or Pousseur’s Mobiles, which are played by different pianists (or performed twice over by the same pianists), will never be quite the same on different occasions. Yet they will never be gratuitously different. They are to be seen as the actualization of a series of consequences whose premises are firmly rooted in the original data provided by the author.
This
