Gerhard Richter’s first commitment to pragmatism, found on the opening page of his collected writings, dates from 1962: “Anything that is good or bad is so not in itself, but only under specific circumstances and because we will it so. This fact means that there is nothing guaranteed or absolute about conventions, and it assigns to us the daily responsibility of distinguishing good from bad. [ . . . ] As there is no such thing as absolute rightness and truth, we always aim at the artificial, the leading, the human truth. We judge and make a truth that excludes others. Art plays a formative part in this production of truth.”1 What something is is determined through characteristics that don’t belong to it “in itself,” but rather “only under specific circumstances,” that is, through the role it fulfills in a specific context. If things have no essential characteristics, their determination cannot be “absolute” or unconditional, but only for this time; it cannot be presupposed but must be determined anew in each particular case. It is not encountered or discovered, but “made.”