Landscape as a Device

Abstract

By the term “landscape”, I mean a technical device through which the modern subject tries to sketch its self-portrait. The subject I am talking about is cogito, mentioned in Descrates’ Second Metaphysics Meditation. On this matter, some fundamental clarifications need to be made. The cogito is neither the Ego, nor the res cogitans. It is rather the act of thinking itself, a thought that is thinking about what is actually being thought. According to William James, in order for the activity’s nature to be perceivable, it should be necessary to assign to cogito an impersonal subject, as it happens in the English expressions “it rains” or “it blows”. “As we cannot—concluded James—we simply must say that the thought goes on” [5]. Now, it will be objected that in landscapes there are no thoughts at all; rather than that, there are visual impressions as light, woods, rivers or valleys. “Thinking”, in the Cartesian sense of the term, does not mean anything but the consciousness’ intentionality. By the term “idea”, Descartes meant any form of intentional consciousness (any consciousness of something). Therefore, the action of observing is not only an intentional consciousness among others, but, considering the supremacy assigned by philosophy to the act of observing, it directly refers to the act of thinking, being its fundamental metaphor. To think means to contemplate, speculate, see. Therefore, if my hypothesis of landscape as the view’s self-portrait is valid, then it is also true that the landscape paintings tried to set up a special kind of mechanism, able to represent on canvas the anonymous act of thinking. This “modern” project entangles on an aporia that cannot help affecting those who question the creation of a possible “artificial” thought.