Is „the man himself” still the style?

Essay on the identification of style and the ECO-principle

Abstract

More than two and half hundred years ago (1753) Buffon said: „The style is the man himself”. („Le style, c’est l’homme même”.) It was also more than half a century ago (1964) that Deleuze said: „The style is not the man himself, the style is the essence itself”. („Le style n’est pas l’homme, le style, c’est l’essence elle-même.”) These claims symbolize the beginning and end of a peculiar trajectory, a path on which two concepts, the concept of „style” and the concept of „self” met one another time after time. In my paper, I intend to first present the main stages on the path of this exciting relation between „style” & „self”. I claim that in the period between the start of the modern age and the postmodern era four meeting points, four versions (monomorph, cryptomorph, heteromoph, and pseudomorph version) of this relationship can be identified. In the second part of my essay, I argue that in our age (called by many philosophers „the transmodern age”) Buffon’s thesis can be once again reinterpreted, which  implies that there is a new version that I call polymorph relation, and this version would be the fifth meeting point between „style” & „self”.