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For a long time, in the tradition of semiotics the sign was considered to be of inferior epistemological value, and even Baumgarten’s attempt to develop the conception of a semiotic aesthetics did not free the sign from its theoretical low status. Following Kant and his Kritik der ästhetischen Urteilskraft, especially Humboldt and Hegel ascribed to the sign a considerably higher theoretical value in their reflections about aesthetics. The sign no longer was considered to be a mere expression of a content that existed independently from it, but a constitutive role was given to the sign within the production of sense. The discourse of aesthetics, emerging by the end of the 18th century, therefore seems to contain a semiological subtext that grounds its aesthetic program on a theory of signs, whereas in the tradition of semiology, the skepticism towards the semiotic idea of the sign originated from the presuppositions of its conception of aesthetic represenation (Darstellung). Within a work of art, the content and its expression are combined by means of a semiological mediation as a result of which they are “so voneinander durchdrungen, daß das Äußere, Besondere ausschließlich als Darstellung des Inneren erscheint” (Hegel). This conception of representation was later called ‘symbolische Prägnanz’ by Cassirer. The emancipation of signs from their inferior theoretical value was predominantly based on the idea of an aisthetische form of expression such as Hegel had established within his philosophy of Kunstversinnlichung.
