[On machines and instruments (II): the world in the eye of the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann]

Continuing with the subject of the previous work, this article considers the whole series of problems connected to the question of vision provoked by the mere existence of the body of the automaton. The eyes of the android and, above all, the reactions aroused by looking at these human-shaped machines are the object of Hoffman's reflections, from a viewpoint apparently firmly set within the Goethean concept of the <> - Welt des Auges. Similarly, there is as it had been perceived in science since the seventeenth century.