The
famous «wager» to which Ricoeur has given currency is a
philosophical wager that, following «the indication of symbolic
thought,» «I shall have a better understanding of man and of the bond between the being of man and the being of all beings.»
Perhaps this search began in the mid-1980s, with Johns's cycle The Seasons (1985 — 86), in which picturing this venture of
thought required a detour through picturing something like a self — hard to commit to it being Johns's self — through references to some of the artist's earlier image strategies (flags, devices) as well as icons of
philosophical thinking such as the Platonic forms, Joseph Jastrow's duck - rabbit diagram (the latter made famous by Ludwig Wittgenstein's inquiry into «seeing as» in the Philosophical Investigations, 1953) and Pliny's origin story of the birth of painting as the tracing of a loved - one's silhouet
philosophical thinking such as the Platonic forms, Joseph Jastrow's duck - rabbit diagram (the latter made
famous by Ludwig Wittgenstein's inquiry into «seeing as» in the
Philosophical Investigations, 1953) and Pliny's origin story of the birth of painting as the tracing of a loved - one's silhouet
Philosophical Investigations, 1953) and Pliny's origin story of the birth of painting as the tracing of a loved - one's silhouette in shadow.