Gadamer (VM): Abbildung

For this we need to make a more exact analysis—one that accords the old priority to what is living, the zoon  , and especially to the person  . The essence of a copy is to have no other task but to resemble the original. The measure of its success is that one recognizes the original in the copy. This means that its nature is to lose its own independent existence and serve entirely to mediate what is copied. Thus the ideal   copy would be a mirror image, for its being really does disappear; it exists only for someone looking into the mirror, and is nothing beyond its mere appearance. But in fact it is not   a picture or a copy at all, for it has no separate existence. The mirror reflects the image—i.e., a mirror makes what it reflects visible to someone only for as long as he looks in it and sees his own image or whatever else is reflected in it. It is not accidental, however, that in this instance we still speak of an image (Bild  ), and not of a copy (Abbild) or illustration (Abbildung). For in the mirror image the entity itself appears in the image so that we have the thing itself in the mirror image. But a copy must always be regarded in relation to the thing it means. A copy tries to be nothing but the reproduction of something and has its only function in identifying it (e.g., as a passport photo or a picture in a sales catalogue). A copy effaces itself in the sense that it functions as a means and, like all means, loses its function when it achieves its end. It exists by itself in order to efface itself in this way. The copy’s self-effacement is an intentional   element in the being of the copy itself. If there is a change in intention—e.g., if the copy is compared with the original and judgment is passed on the resemblance, i.e., if the copy is distinguished from the original—then its own appearance returns to the fore, like any other means or tool that is being not used but examined. But it has its real function not in the reflective activity of comparison and distinction, but in pointing, through the similarity, to what is copied. Thus it fulfills itself in its self-effacement. Truth and Method I 2