Reflexivity in perspective: A note on Davis and Klaes' reading of Las Meninas

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This note emerged from a visit to the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School by John Davis. His comments on the critique, along with those of Jakob Vestergaard, Nicolai Foss and the editors of this journal are very appreciated.

Notes

1. It should be noted that Foti (1996), who is cited in this footnote, includes Cohen and Snyder in her analysis. Her point, however, is that one should not make too much of the role of formal perspective in Las Meninas, but should look rather at the ‘materiality’ of the painting. She by this means dismisses the readings of Foucault and Searle and the careful rebuttal of Snyder and Cohen for being, as it were, fixated on its geometrical properties. It is a common argument, but one that is simply irrelevant in this discussion. One thing you can ask about the painting is how it represents a geometrical space (and our view of it), and how this representation is reflexive. If you cannot or should not ask this question about Las Meninas then the puzzlement of Searle and Foucault in looking at it is simply an indication that they don't know how to, say, ‘appreciate a work of art’. Fine. But those who are involved in this particular discussion (Foucault, Searle, Snyder and Cohen, Davis and Klaes, and myself ) are not trying to appreciate the painting's aesthetic merit. They are enjoying one aspect of that merit and applying it in their work. The obvious fact that much more can be said about Las Meninas is not an argument against using its peculiar, but finally rigorous, perspective to learn something about what it means to find oneself in the scene depicted on a canvas, i.e., to set oneself in relation to it.

2. Obviously, the first problem is to identify something in economics that can guide a reflexive methodology in the way that geometry was able to guide a reflexive practice in painting. In this regard I have only a general framework to suggest how we might begin. If painting is understood in terms of methodical perception then economic management (like the making of funding decisions) can be understood as a methodical species of action. The structure of perception is defined by the general structure of our intuition (in a somewhat Kantian sense) and our understanding of spatial intuition is largely explicated by our theories of geometry. The structure of action is, by comparison, defined by the general structure of our institutions (in a sense similar to that suggested by North) indicating that the task in this case is one of better understanding specifically economic institutions, i.e., the specific reflexivity of funding transactions on one or another economic theory.