Medieval monks and nuns experimented with ways to evoke particular sensation and emotions -- and people use similar techniques today, such as creating operas to evoke sadness and paintings to evoke horror, said Niklaus Largier, professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California-Berkeley, in delivering a College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Lecture Sept. 13 that spanned literary, cultural and intellectual history to explore aesthetics.

Largier, an expert on how the medieval religious imagination informs aspects of modernity and how it translates into aesthetic experience, has written about how medieval practices -- of prayer, song, image, etc. -- were designed to stimulate the imagination and create certain emotions. The importance of imagination and creativity in producing strong emotions led to his book "In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal." According to Largier, the point of flagellation was not to hurt the body but to set free the imagination and the senses in order to feel one with Christ.

Recently, Largier's work has shifted to explore how the concept of possibility underlies the modern notion of aesthetic experience. In his lecture, he examined how Austrian writer Robert Musil used German theologian Meister Eckhart's concept of "a man without qualities" as a springboard into a utopian world of possibilities and new relations between words, things and concepts.

A "man without qualities" embodies freedom, said Largier, and opens the door to a world containing new forms of aesthetic experience.

Musil saw possibility not in messianic terms but as something that comes through interaction with the world of the imagination, said Largier. According to Musil and Eckhart, if a person could see something -- such as a fly or a stone -- without any preconceptions, but as "a sheer moment in the realm of possibilities," intellect, reason, sensation and affect would merge.

In Musil's reading of Hungarian writer and critic Béla Balázs' silent film theory, the silent film sets free the realm of possibilities by uncovering "the infinite and ineffable character of all things," said Largier. For Balázs, silent film frees viewers from the binding qualities imposed on things through words. The figures in this cinematic realm of possibility move us emotionally and have the ability to stimulate the senses, said Largier, noting that Musil hoped film would contribute to a new "culture of the senses" that would be created when words are absent.

Largier then turned to an earlier philosopher, Johann Gottfried Herder from the 18th century, famous for his presentation of the sense of touch as a basis for the modern concept of aesthetic experience. Herder described the eye as seeing limited, defined, shapes, forms and colors, whereas the experience of touch is a moment of liberation that transcends the visual. Through the tactile, a person can fully experience the effects of something like a sculpture upon the soul, and the aesthetic experience becomes an exploration of possibility. In Herder, said Largier, "the dualism of soul and body, spirit and matter, is being replaced by a new kind of aesthetics that brings together sensual, emotional and cognitive experience."

Largier is a world authority on Eckhart and more generally on European mysticism, said Patrizia McBride, chair of German studies, in her introduction to Largier's lecture. He based his talk on his forthcoming book, tentatively titled "Topics of Possibility."

Linda B. Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.