Kant's Examples Author(s): David Lloyd Source: Representations, No.

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DAVID

LLOYD

Kant's Examples
OF "The Methodologyof Taste," the closing AT THE CONCLUSION Kant evokes as an exemplary sectionof the first part of TheCritique ofJudgement, moment a cultural situationthat resembleswhat a series of cultural thinkers, notablyGeorg Lukaicsand Mikhail Bakhtin,will conceive to be the moment of epic:

in which theactive a sociallife impulse towards werenations There wasan age and there with community-grappled the converts a peopleinto a permanent regulated by laws-what freedom (and therefore by the trying problem of bringing huge difficulties presented that force ofrespect submisand dutiful constraining (more equality also)intounionwith that havebeentheage,and suchthenation, first dissionthanof fear).And suchmust communication of ideas between the morecultured and coveredthe art of reciprocal thedifference between theamplitude and howtobridge rudersections ofthecommunity, and originality of theformer and thenatural of thelatter-in simplicity and refinement culture and themodest worth this meanbetween ofnature, higher wayhitting upon that to all mankind, that truestandard which no thatforms fortaste also,as a sensecommon rulescan supply. willa later with those models.' age dispense Hardly It is a moment of appealing utopianismin a heretoforerigorouslytheoretical work,one whose appeal can scarcelyhave been negligiblein the disintegrating Germany.It can be taken as a postfeudal condition of late-eighteenth-century document for an historiccompromisebetween an intellectually powerfulbourunderdeveloped economic base and a traditionally geoisie witha comparatively the specterof bourgeois revoluconfronting powerfulbut embattledaristocracy tion. As such, this passage may appear as a blueprint,if not theblueprint,for definingthe politicalfunctionof aestheticculture.2For thisidealized representation of cultural harmonymarksthe turnof a "disinterested" aestheticinto an ofjudgment is indeed interestthatis not merelymoral-for the explicitfunction to ethicsand reason-but also political. to mediate fromsense and understanding judgment The universal claims of aestheticculture,the postulationof aesthetic as ifit were valid for all men, are most politicalpreciselywhere theyclaim to be least so, representing,in the very denial of interest,the bourgeois interestin for all mankind, irreforginga sphere of purely formal equality and identity The aestheticsphere is held to transpectiveof culturalor economic distinctions. scend all such "contingent" differences, and, withless paradox than mightat first the beyond it is in the turn to this domain as of politicalinterest thatthe appear, 34
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Fall 1989 C) THE

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

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As we shall see, any reflection formaltermsof bourgeois ideologyare constituted. elements upon the constitutive upon the aestheticthereforeentails a reflection in relation to the pedagogical forof bourgeois ideology,and that particularly mationof the subject.3 when The concern of thisessay,then,is withthe fateof aestheticdisinterest it fallsback, as it must,on a pedagogical imperativein order to realize the very ifjudgment To formulatethe relationschematically, conditionsof its possibility. the mediates between understandingand reason, it is pedagogy thatconstitutes bridge between politicsand ethics.Understandingpoliticsas a mode of freedom effective in the sphere of nature, one can easilygrasp how politicsitselfshould of what are, for Kant, othrequire the aestheticsphere to enable the interaction erwise entirelydiscrete spheres. Any pedagogy formed according to aesthetic of politicsitself. of the very possibility reflectionwill thereforebe constitutive Central to the analysis of these relationshere will be some questions as to the statusof the exemplary (withwhichwe can scarcelydispense) in the aestheticand in the pedagogical spheres, questions thatwillbe akin to logicallyadjacent ones in the politicalsphere. of representation cultural Kant's ideal is not merely ideal; it has the status of an example it Critique, As an exemplarymoment,and there are othersin the Third (Muster). historical.4 draws up into a transcendentalanalysisquestions thatare inevitably This is not merelya matterof Kant's adducing an historicalexample by way of That he should do so and, at the end of a possible culturalsynthesis. illustrating both a century thathad foregroundedthe Roman model to the pointof inspiring 1776 and 1789, that he should choose what is apparentlya Greek model are But the very details of intellectualhistory.5 doubtless in themselvesinteresting that it is indeed the Greek problem we find in establishingwith any certainty model that Kant has here in mind is indicativeof a far more profound,and in of the aestheticby way of this context profoundlyproblematic,historicization itself as theyare to "laterages." examples thatare as indispensableto theaesthetic arises fromthe factthatKant's exemplarymomentis a formalizaOur difficulty derivesa concept tionof a specific culturalmomentwhich,to adapt hisown terms, from a manifold of (historical)phenomena. The concept in question is clearly we could not construct such a cultureforourregulativeratherthan constitutive: selves, but its supposed prior existence nonetheless regulates our judgment according to the idea of an exemplaryunion of freedom and constraint.The aestheticjudgment involved here demands the formalizationof the specific and the example (Beispiel)in order that it may become exemplary(musterhaft) singularinstancegain universalvalidity. judgment that, Universalvalidity is achieved in such a mannerbyan aesthetic in this as in other instances,the formal qualities apparentlyattributedto the of freedomand constraint, the individual and object (namely the reconciliation instancepropertiesof thejudgment itself: the collective)are in the first Kant's Examples 35

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is to be understood the idea of a publicsense, i.e. a critical By the name sensuscommunis of act takes account (a priori)of the mode of representation faculty which in its reflective to weigh itsjudgement withthe collectivereason of every one else, in order, as it were, mankind,and therebyavoid the illusionarisingfromsubjectiveand personal conditions whichcould readilybe taken forobjective,an illusionthatwould exerta prejudicialinfluby so far as possible lettinggo of the ence upon itsjudgement.... This ... is effected and conactivity, i.e. sensation,in our general stateof representative element of matter, or general stateof repof our representation finingattentionto the formalpeculiarities resentative activity. (CJ,? 40, p. 151; emphasisin original)

The "common" or "public" sense thatis involvedhere appears as at one and the same time the foundation for and the product of the mode of judgment that of the individual subject produces and depends upon the identity recurrently at the foundation withmankind in general. The insistenceof such a circularity of the aestheticthat is of aestheticjudgment enforces a formalhistoricization inextricablefromitsdependence on the exemplary. To elaborate this point: it would be possible to conceive of the relationship between the individual subject and mankind in general as a spatial figure,the fromwhichit is differentiated. subject being set then over against the humanity the geographyof relationsof domSuch a spatial figurewould perhaps highlight ination and would certainlyaccentuate questions of interest.Indeed, such a thatcrystallizes in momentsof a self-evidence figurehas a certainself-evidence, forms of barricadesand guerantirepresentational strugglein the fundamentally rilla warfare,where the political and the aestheticmightbe said to coalesce.6 Kant's example, however,saves representationpreciselyby endowing a geogeffective at more thanone level. witha temporaldisposition, raphyof differences that or Muster), as an aesthetic presentation In the first place, the example (Beispiel of a conceptof "happyunion" (glicklichen willbecome the means to the formation ... is suspended between its own age and a later one (Das Zeitalter Vereinigung), thiscultotality, being to itselfan unreflective For the first, ein spdteres Zeitalter). tural solution cannot be exemplary;forthe later age, the example becomes the mark of a certaininadequacy or fallingaway froman exemplaryoriginal.But in this suspension, the presentationof the exemplarymomentbecomes its reprebut of an ideal to whicheven the example not of itself sentationas representative, If must be as a later age continues to depend upon an inadequate. itself seen and freedom, earlier example to conceive of a possibleunion betweenconstraint culture and nature,itsverymovementaway fromnature (weiles derNaturimmer "universalcomnaheseinwird),in the historical process thatdifferentiates weniger munication"from"the narrow life of the lower animals,"necessitatesthe independence ofjudgment fromtheveryexampleswithwhichithardlycan dispense. This paradoxical demand is rooted in the firstplace in the problem of a common sense thatis at once the a priorifoundationof tasteand itsproduct.The common sense that is the foundation of taste, preciselyas a sense,cannot be
36 REPRESENTATIONS

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or be supplied byuniversalrule: itsexerciseas itsmandeduced transcendentally ifestationdepends upon prior examples. But the danger of this dependence is that it threatensto produce dependence in the verysubject whose relation to to law."(Withoutthisrelationof the judgment should be one of "freeconformity individual to humanityin general,we could not even speak of "common sense," for without autonomous subjects there could be no communicationthrough of common sense could be realized.) At the same time,that whichthe universality and foundationof the aescommon sense whichis a universalhuman property judgment, is thetic,to which appeal is alwaysmade in the processes of aesthetic in the first place a latencywhich must be drawn out and made manifestby the of the particularsuch that it force of examples. The example, a formalization comes to represent a universal idea, is indispensable to the production of the statusis based. common sense on whichassent to itsexemplaryor representative It is the sine qua non of a pedagogy which must produce in its subjects that common sense fromwhichit derivesitslegitimacy. An exemplary pedagogy, by virtue of its dependence on examples, must accordingly always entail a formallyhistoricalformationof its subjects. This is evidentat severallevels: 1) The exemplarystatusof theexamformalhistoricity thatis ples called upon in pedagogical practiceis predicated on a formalization historical,dependent at once on a lapse and an idealizing projection. 2) Only temporally is the common sense latentin each and everyhuman subjectrealized or developed. 3) The subject of pedagogy is alwaysbelated withregard to the examples thatare held up forjudgment. 4) The subjectof pedagogy alwaysfalls shortof the examples thatare projected. 5) The pedagogue is alwaysexemplary forthe student,thatis, at once precedentand projectedas a model. We willelaborate each one of these propositionsin turn. 1) We have already seen, in relationto an example,how the example contains necessarylapse away from an historicalstructure, predicated on an historically what looks like the natural immediacyof an historicalcultureto itselfand proor by way jected forwardas exemplaryof what mustbe reproduced, artificially in a futurestate. Furtheranalysis,by means of a of pedagogical formalization, will show that the historicalcharacterof this example is furtherformalization, to the not an accidental result of the general claims being made but is intrinsic structureof the example as such. For an example is alwaysan example for the or universalcommunicability judgment and, in order to have the generalvalidity of the exemplary(i.e., of thatto whichthe assent of otherjudgments may be at demanded), the example mustbe judged foritsformaland not for least formally place, then,comes itsmaterialor accidentalqualities(CJ,? 40, p. 151). In thefirst in accidental itsinternalrelathe presentationof a sensuous manifold,relatively forthejudgment, "letting tions,and only in the second place its representation our attention to the formalpeculiargo of the elementof matter"and "confining (ibid.). ities of our representationor general state of representativeactivity" Kant's Examples 37

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Insofar as it servesas an example, therefore, any objectofjudgment,whetheran apparently atemporal form such as a Grecian urn or an apparentlyhistorical mattersuch as Greek culture,necessarilyinvolvesa temporal structurein the fromBeispiel to Muster (bleibende movementfrompresentationto representation, to Begriff Beispiel)and finally (see KU, 300). is not a characof the example in its temporalstructure 2) The exemplarity of the object itself(indeed, as we have seen in the example of Greek culteristic ture,it cannot be exemplaryto or foritself)but mustbe referredto the "general of thejudging subject. The temporality of the state of representativeactivity" of an exemplary in each temporality example forthissubjectis alreadya function act ofjudgment. If we considerthe formonlyof the act ofjudgment,abstracted fromits specificmaterialinstance,it becomes exemplaryof anyact ofjudgment valid representation of commonsense,and thatprecisely as a universally byvirtue of the temporal movementfromthe materialto the formalthatis definitive of such ajudgment. But the act ofjudgment,formally considered,is simultaneously exemplary of the relation betweenjudgment and the production of common itself constitutes sense, since the repetitionof acts ofjudgment in theirformality the sphere of common sense both withineach individualand as a public sphere. This entailsan analogous formalization, wherebyeach act ofjudgment becomes exemplary by rising above "subjectiveand personal conditions"and by being ratherthan the actualjudgments of others.The forweighed against thepossible of a necessaryformalizaeach judgment is therefore malizationwithin exemplary of the public sphere of common sense. It tion of all judgment thatis constitutive to show that,forKant,the processdescribedhere is formally idenis not difficult ticalwiththatwhichthe human race undergoes in the movementfromthe primcharacteristic of "the savage" to the interestin itive immediacyof gratification of civilization.7 "universalcommunication" characteristic thatan exemplarypedagogy is direc3) It is to thisprocess of formalization ted, assuming as its metahistoricalpoles a prior immediacy from which the example lapses (or rises: theologyis neverfaroff here)8and a projecteduniversal that is at once its goal and its product. On the one hand, it communicability whichitcould not produce a concept of itsend and depends on examples,without it would become a systematic withoutwhich,more importantly, or "mechanical" ratherthan an exemplarypedagogy; thatis, itwould operate bywayof determinate concepts upon the understandingratherthan by evokingthe free play of the subjectivejudgment. On theotherhand, dependence upon examples remains a constantthreatto whatis to be produced, namely, a freerelationof the subject to itself and to others,thatis, a freeconformity to law.There is,at first, the purely empirical problem thatthe subjectof pedagogy has the example held up before him or her, that she or he comes always afterthe fact and depends upon the example for edification.That is, however,merelya way of expressingthe more common sense cannot criticalpoint that,preciselybecause it is a mode of sense, 38
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be manifestedor produced in the absence of examples. Whichis to say that,in a certainsense, what is mostoriginalto human being,the foundationofjudgment and of communicationif not, indeed, of reason itself,is not autonomous but actuallydepends upon its objects.9The sphere of common sense, properlyone and equalityof alljudging human subjectsas possible thatestablishesthe identity can onlybe produced or reproduced bywayof the conby way of formalization, The power of the example over the student stantinsistenceof its instantiations. of aesthetic is accordinglyitselfa formaland not merelyincidentalcharacteristic pedagogy. It is not merelythat dependence on examples-"the go-cartsof the judgement"'0-hampers the independence of the mind emergingfromtutelage on the fixating insofaras the studentmistakesthe example forthe rule, thereby moreover a dependence is than the form. That general matter rather particular of examples themselves, historicity necessaryformalconsequence of the intrinsic "withwhicha later age can scarcelydispense." 4) The dependence of the belated student upon historical examples is matched by the students'inadequacy withregard to the exemplaryas projected of the exemplary.The ideal, and again in consequence of the formalhistoricity necessarycontingentinadequacy of the studentto the ideal projected by pedaso to speak, of lackingage, experience,erudition,or whatever, gogy,a function, is here no more than the expression of a as well as of institutional positioning, incapacity.Only by the achievementof an entireindependence from systematic examples, as the matterof or forjudgment, could thejudging subject attainto of the ideal. But even supposing the example were given of the pure formality an exemplary pedagogy, such indeed as Kant describes here, in which examthat seeks to dispense ples continuallygive way to a process of formalization inconceivablewithoutan-even minimal with them, the ideal remains strictly irreducibleas what must have been thatis finally -instance of exemplification formalized. of the studentis the inexpungible 5) One resultof thistwofoldshortcoming in itsironicmode. A melancholyof the pedagogical scene, even,ifnot especially, certain theological residue taintseven the most secular accounts of liberal eduof thatwhichbecomes exemcationwiththeidea of a fallfromtheself-immediacy withthe anxietyof an unattainableredemption. plary but is not that for itself, But the allure of a melancholyaura should not preventrecognitionof the intimate relationbetween preciselysuch a model of enlightenededucation,directed at developing the autonomyof the studentsby way of an always projectivedisof pedagogy themselves,with their placement of "truth,"and the institutions humane hierarchiesof power thatthe geographyof everyclassroomreproduces beneath the temporalscheme it frames."IWe willreturnto locate and reinforces the logical ground of thisrelationin the universalclaimsmade by liberalor aeshere on the theticeducation, as by criticalphilosophygenerally, concentrating of as Kant. status the pedagogue presentedby exemplary Kant's Examples 39

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The demand made by Kant upon the Master is that he should be at once exemplaryand the siteof examples: "Der MeistermuB es vormachen was und wie es der Schuler zu Stande bringensoll."1'2 The act of exemplification is here at once spatial and temporal: if the Master can stand before the studentsin his role as exemplar,it is only because he has done beforewhat theyin theirturnmust do afterhis example. What the Master'sstandingin the classroom spatiallyrepreto sents,namelya punctual gatheringof disparateand ill-informed subjectivities a temporal relationin the lightof the exemplary,representsmore importantly the Masteris at once priorand projected,instance(Beispiel) which,as exemplary, Needless to say,the exemplarystatusof the pedagogue has and model (Muster). nothing to do with personal or moral character;it is an effect of the historical of exemplification as itinforms whatis precisely structure a liberal education. The incidental,material,and spatial presence of the Master,a Beispiel whose singubecomes indifferent, is assumed in his transformation larity along temporallines into a Muster thatis, as is any example thatis trulyexemplary, projected toward an ideal. One mightsay,according to the logic of the example outlined above, thatit of the exemplarypedagogue to disappoint. Following is intrinsic to the function both this logic and that of the liberal education that Kant here sketches,it becomes clear thatthe "perfect" pedagogue, insofaras such a prodigyis conceivan example as would the pedantic pedagogue whose able, would be as imperfect practiceis limitedto the inculcationof rules and regulationsbyrote. For it is the forceof the example to fallshortof the ideal to whichit gestures, just as it is the of theexample proper procedure of the pedagogue to pointout thisshortcoming withregard to the ideal: thepupil'simagination to conformity with a given Onlybyexciting concept, bypointing outhowtheexpression falls short oftheidea towhich, as aesthetic, theconcept itself fails to attain, and bymeansof severe is itpossible to prevent hispromptly criticism, looking himas theprototypes setbefore ofexcellence, upontheexamples [Beispiele] and as models forhimtoimitate, without submission toanyhigher [Muster] standard ortohisowncritical in genius This wouldresult ofthe judgement. beingstifled, and,with it,also thefreedom in itsvery to law-a freedom which a fine imagination conformity without artis notposnorevenas muchas a correct taste ofone'sownforestimating it.(CJ,? 60, p. 226) sible, This passage, whichamounts to a sketchof the procedures of a liberal as well as a specifically artistic of disappointeducation, is deeply informedby a structure In the realm of the aesthetic, ment,or of un-deception, Ent-tauschung. everyconcept must be revealed to be a deception, since it is only the formal of possibility being subsumed under a concept that the example should represent.The free play of the understandingand the imaginationwould otherwisebe stifled, and with that the possibility of the reconciled and reconcilingwork of the genius. in the relationshipbetween the Master and the studentsas in that Accordingly, between the concept and thejudgment,all thatthe Masterexemplifies (vormacht) 40
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disappointment The students' mustdisappointifhis pedagogyis to be exemplary. of in the Master,itselfa crucial momentin aestheticeducation,is the fulfillment whose goal is to produce autonomyofjudgment in a process of exemplification the student. unafof course,the exemplarystandingof the pedagogue is formally Clearly, fected by the disappointmentof the students.Rather,that exemplarystatus is in the students'relationto the example fromconcenreinforcedby a transition of apparent rules of procedure trationon itsmaterialor conceptualinstantiation judgments are to be made. The pedagogue now to the process by whichaesthetic bythe perceptionof the thatis initiated the process of enlightenment exemplifies perpetual and determinateinadequacy of the example to the ideal. It would be correctto say thatthe exemplarystandingof the pedagogue is, in consequence, were itnot forthe factthatthe material merely, of structure an ineradicableeffect of exemplification. presence of the Masteris a crucialmomentin the temporality of any example, it is the spatial preIn accordance withthe historicalstructure of the Masterin all his materisentationof the pedagogue, the there-beforeness founded that mustbe overcome or displaced by a temporalrepresentation ality, in the fact of the Master's absolute priority-his always having been there before-but is then deferredinto the perpetual inadequacy of the model to the ideal. We can see that,in thismovementfrompresence to deferral,the structure discoveredin the inadof the example is retained,such thatthe disappointment equacy of the pedagogue givesway to an exemplarinessfounded in a process of projectionwhichthe Master now comes to representto the students. of the exemplarywithin There is consequentlyno escape fromthe insistence is but for the genius,a concept there only one, Or rather, this model pedagogy. to create a rupture, Critique thatin a veryreal sense is required withinthe Third of exemdismal continuities in the formof exemplaryfreedom,in the otherwise has been freplary repetition.The concept of the genius in the ThirdCritique it to quentlyenough discussed elsewhereto need littleelaborationhere.'3 Suffice which is say that the principal problem for Kant is to account fora productivity apparentlyat once rule-bound and free,which,in otherwords,achieves what is elsewhere impossible,a followingof examples combined withindependence of them: thenthe and serving as a precept-for It [therule]cannot be one setdownin a formula Rather must toconcepts. according wouldbe determinable uponthebeautiful judgement others theproduct, which mayuse from theperformance, i.e.,from therulebe gathered notforimitation so as toletitserve as a model[Muster], owntalent to thetest, to puttheir
but forfollowing (CJ,? 47, p. 171; KU, 245)14 [Nachahmung]. [Nachmachung],

to explain," Kant goes on, and at least part "The possibility of this is difficult of a followingof examples that is to explain the possibility of the difficulty The to do with opposition of genius to learning is absohas nothing learning. Kant's Examples 41

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lute, since "learningis nothingbut imitation" (CJ, ? 40, p. 169). For the genius, the example (here, Beispiel)is no more than a minimalstimulusto production thatare originalto him and thatwork"on similarlines" according to naturalgifts Art)to those of the previous genius (CJ, ? 47, p. 170). The genius (auf Ahnliche stands outside the repetitionsof an exemplarypedagogy,since his skillscan be of the genius is not neithercommunicatednor learned and since the originality progressivebut returnsalwaysto the same ground in nature. Paradoxicallyfor and forprethe repetitionproper to Genius is one thatcannotdevelop aesthetics, ciselythatreason leaves the freedomof the subjectintact. [musFor all that,genius remainsexemplary:it is the "exemplaryoriginality employof an individualin thefree of thenaturalendowments Originalitdt] terhafte ment of his cognitivefaculties"(CJ, ? 49, p. 181; KU, 255). Exemplary for the sense implied above, the subsequent genius only in the accidentalor contingent genius produces forhumanityat large exemplaryproductsforthejudgment of associated with and intimately taste.Unlike genius, taste is a progressivefaculty of tasteis insepapedagogy. Indeed, as we have seen, the progressiveformation rable froman exemplarypedagogy.The problemthatariseshere is thatalthough the concept of genius indicatesan example of human freedomindependent of imitation,it provides no solution to producing that freedom in the sphere of pedagogy. Not thatthiswould be a problem,were it not thatwhatdefinesgenius of tasteis intendedto bringthe subject, thatto whichthe formation is effectively namely, to the perfect reconciliationof freedom and constraint.(Hence, of of a "correcttaste" course, the ease withwhich the conditionsforthe possibility of a "fineart"at all; CJ,? 60, p. 226.) those forthe possibility are subsumed within The discussion of genius thus recapitulatesin many respectsthe discussion of taste that precedes it. In other,equally importantrespectsit is incompatible with the termsestablished for the developmentof taste. To reiterate,both the are inseparablefromthe conceptof taste. and of autonomy conceptsof development Thus, in section32, Kant writesof the young poet: ofhisown hasbeensharpened that byexercise, in aftertime, whenhisjudgement It is only injust thesamewayas judgements-behaving hisformer freewilland accordhe deserts to on reason.Tastelaysclaimsimply which dependwholly with thoseof hisjudgements ofone'sownwould ofothers thedetermining ground To makethe judgements autonomy. ? 32, p. 137) be heteronomy. (CJ, Though the young poet can byno means be coerced to conformto thejudgment of others,nonethelessin the independent developmentof his tastehe comes to of indeed froma certainstandpointthe inevitability, conform. The possibility, in the mode of aesthetic judgment in thisprocess derives froma formalidentity of a judgment of taste'just as if all subjectsthatpermitsthe claim to universality it were objective" (CJ, ? 32, p. 136).15 The process of judgment occurs conse-

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betweenthatprocess distinction quentlyin a fashionwhichseems to make no firm as it takes place in the genius or in the mere person of taste: [Nachahmung], and notimitation to a precedent, which has reference [Nachfolge] Following [exemplarof an exemplary which theproducts forall influence is theproperexpression mayexertupon others-and thismeansno morethangoingto thesame ischen] author forhis he went as those towhich Quellen sch6pfen] fora creative work [ausdenselben sources oneself themodeofavailing no morethan one'spredecessor from and learning creations, or byconcepts be determined cannot Taste, just becauseitsjudgement of suchsources. in needofexammost stands one that thevery and talents is amongall faculties precepts, [in in esteem itself longest maintained of whathas in thecourseofculture ples [Beispiele] ofitsearliest totherudeness and a return crudity, lapseinto an early Thus itavoids Beifall]. in original) efforts. (CJ,? 327,pp. 138-39;KU, 213; emphasis two faculties-genius thatagain distinguishes It is the process of development and taste-which are otherwise apparently identical in their processes, both demanding originalityand autonomy,both required to return to exemplary instances for procedures not for rules.'6 Genius constitutesan exceptional example, by definitionunpredictablein the mode of its productions,which in judgfrominstanceto model by way of aesthetic turn only make the transition the objectsof aesthetic ment. Where the productsof genius,and indeed initially theirexemitis tastethatidentifies judgment in general,are conceivedas Beispiele, of this regularity of the convinced be not hard to quality.It is plary (musterhaft) time and again, the termBeispielis conceptual patterningin the ThirdCritique: employed for objects thatare in the process of being or have yetto be taken up into thejudgments of tasteor that,forthe subsequentgenius,are mere initiating musterand itsadverbialderivative Muster, instancesto be followed,not imitated. are reserved for that which is on the contrary, haft(or, less often,exemplarisch), of all projected as exemplaryin the strongersense of a model forthe estimation a become exemplary,musterhaft, attainmentsor judgments. Insofar as Beispiele here; insofaras a developmentis implied from developmental logic is intrinsic move from to a universalclaim,whatis narratedis the critical the casual intuition judgThe analysisof aesthetic judgment to "universalcommunicability." private ment as a facultyis thus governed by its implicationin the form of universal for which the insistenceof the exemplaryis indispensable,just as the history, both produces and estimates progresstowarduniversal aesthetic judgment itself that through it become communicabilityon the basis of examples, Beispiele, Muster: or aversion)-a comof thesensation (of delight communicability But in the universal of so faras possible, anyconcept-intheaccord, apartfrom exists too,that municability, we havethe ofcertain objects, in therepresentation as to this all ages and nations feeling ofthederitoraisea presumption, sufficient weakindeedand scarce criterion, empirical and from deep-seated grounds thusconfirmed [Beispiele], vation of a taste, byexamples

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theiragreementin estimating the formsunder which shared alike byall men, underlying objects are given to them. [exemplarisch]. For this reason some productsof tasteare looked on as exemplary (CJ, ?17, p. 75; KU, 149)

absent in the case of The problem that recurs here for taste,one by definition ofjudgmentsof tasteunder productivegenius,is how to guarantee the autonomy the conditionof theirconstitutive dependence on examples. The argumentthat followsanticipatesthat made much later in section60, though withspecificreference to tasteratherthan to genius:
[exemplarisch]-not For this reason some products of taste are looked on as exemplary otherstastemaybe acquired. For tastemustbe an origthatbyimitating meaning thereby a model [Muster], whileshowingskillcommensurate inal faculty; whereas one who imitates sofern er es trifft, withhis success, only displaystasteas himselfa criticof thismodel [zeigt, erdieses Muster selbst beurteilen kann].Hence it zwarGeschicklichkeit, abernurGeschmack, sofern the archetype[Urbild] of taste,is a mere Muster], followsthatthe highestmodel [dashochste idea, which each person mustbeget in his own consciousness,and according to whichhe thatis an Object of taste,or thatis an example [Beismust formhis estimateof everything piel] of criticaltaste,and even of universaltasteitself.(CJ,? 17, pp. 75-76; KU, 149-50)

The archetype of taste must be autonomouslybegotten or, rather,"brought forth" [hervorbringen] by each judging subject as the "highest example," the are at first to example of examples bywhichall otherexamples,as mereBeispiele, of the statusof idea,however, would demand be estimated.Clearlyitsattainment status,cruthe impossibleconditionof the example of losing itsexemplificatory of whateverkind. in a representation cial to which is its material instantiation Even the highestof examples must fall shortof the idea thatis, as Kant goes on and be to remark,"a concept of reason," i.e., not susceptibleof representation, of an individualexistenceas adequate redefinedas an ideal,"the representation to an idea":
idea of a Hence thisarchetypeof taste-which rests,indeed, upon reason'sindeterminate maximum,but is not, however,capable of being representedby means of concepts,but only in an individual presentation-may more appropriatelybe called the ideal of the beautiful.While not havingthisideal in our possession,we stillstriveto beget it withinus streben]. (CJ,?17, p. 76; KU, 150) [dochin uns hervorzubringen

in each and everyindividual as the unproblematic What appears at first begetting of an idea that would guarantee the subject'scriticalautonomybecomes, by the i.e., the imagproper to the aesthetic, verylogic of the example and of the faculty afteran unattainablepossession. For no example can escape ination, a striving the condition of being given in a presentationeven where its exemplaryrepresentationis projected toward the ideal to which no presentationcould be adequate, nor can the activityof (aesthetic)judgment take place without such

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and essentially examples being presented to it. The ideal is accordinglystrictly are not yet reason thatmankindor itsartists unattainable,not forthe contingent adequately cultivated, but according to the logic of the aestheticitself.'7 This logic of the aesthetic,predicated on the insistenceof exemplarymateout rial,howeverresidual or minimalit maybecome, places the ideal irrevocably to the aesthetic, that of reach. At the same time,itis the demand, equallyintrinsic to whichleads, a littleparadoxically, judgments of taste be made autonomously, the limitsto be posed on the autonomy of the aestheticsphere itself.For the necessityto pose an "ideal of beauty" as the only guarantee of the autonomyof each subject's judgment of tasteentailsa movementfromthe purelyaestheticto end must be the moral. Where an ideal is posited for any object,an underlying the end of determinableforthatobject. In consequence, "Only whathas in itself its real existence,only man that is able himselfto determinehis ends by reason ... admits ... of an ideal of beauty" (CJ, ?17, p. 77).18 This figureof Man is at once the ground and the end of the aesthetic;like common sense, it is the basis on which the universality of the aestheticcan be posited and the end thatmoral reflection findsin the examples of taste. Encapsulated in section 17, "The Ideal a narrativethat of Beauty,"is the narrativethat everywhere shapes the Critique, fromexample to idea, moves frommatterto form,fromsense to commonality, from beauty to morality.It is also, crucially,the narrativewithinwhich the in percep"normal idea," which allows of culturaland geographicaldifferences tion and judgment (cf. CJ, ? 17, p. 78), is superseded by the rationalidea whose Within proximal attainmentis governed by a singular and ethical temporality. this narrative the importance of judgments of taste is to negotiate developto common sense and to do so the circularmovementfromcommonsense mentally character is containedalreadyin thehistorical bywayof examples. This narrative of the example and in the aestheticdispositionof thejudging subject,in both of theparticular and difference cases proposingto mediatebetweenthe necessary of communicability the equally necessaryuniversality (Mittelbarkeit). We have already seen how the historicalstructureof the example as such causes a perpetual deferral withinthe pedagogical scene, given that the ideal Now, since we see which the example representsis alwaysbeyond attainment.'9 to lead to theautonomyof thejudging in section 17 thatin order forthe aesthetic subject it must connect withthe moral throughthe positingof an ideal,we can state that the process of this pedagogy must be ironic. For it entails the formal of the subjectupon the conditionsof anyjudgment in particularupon reflection an (exemplary)object as a conditionat once forthejudgment of itsadequacy to the ideal and of the formalcapacityof the subject as critic, i.e., as autonomous upon the particratherthan dependent on the example. The formalreflection insofaras thesecondaryreflection structure has an ironicnarrative ular reflection ifonlybyvirtue always"knowsmore" than thatpriorone upon whichit reflects,

Kant's Examples

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of its generalization.This is to say thatironyis alwaysof a temporalor narrative nature and requires a developmental economy that is always at someone's expense. to take issue with To describe ironyin these termsis of course immediately argumentconcerningthe what at presentis probablythe singlemostinfluential In namelyPaul de Man's essay"The Rhetoricof Temporality."20 nature of irony, part 2 of thisessay,de Man emphasizes whatare forhim two crucial featuresof of its splitconsciousness,appearing "as an instantaneous irony:the simultaneity process that takes place rapidly,suddenly,in one single moment"(BI, 225), and but also to the "reconciliation thinking itsradical antagonismnotonlyto historical of the selfwiththe world bymeans of art" (BI, 219) thatis the burden of several To an extent,and despite the necessityit involves versions of aesthetichistory. the problem raised by Lukacs's (and, indeed, Bakhtin's)idenhim in of skirting of of the novel withan ironicconsciousness,de Man's characterization tification the it ignores as insofar precisely It however, ironyis persuasive.2' is insufficient, of irony, the formaltemporality regardless developmentalschema thatstructures apperceptionof a splitconsciousness of whetheritsdurationis the instantaneous or the extended narrativetimeof the novel. For as in the case of the exemplary, that regulatesthe pedait is preciselythe recognitionof a perpetual inadequacy to attain"which,as of an ironic aestheticin a continuous"striving gogical effect indeed de Man puts it,appears as "an endless process thatleads to no synthesis" (BI, 220). Only thisdivisionof the subject,betweenthe materialand the formal, the interestedand the ethical,or, in the termsof Baudelaire's essay "De l'essence du rire,"on which de Man leans, the inferiorand the superior,produces the de Man's of the human. Accordingly, ethical Subject as a formalrepresentative and inferiority "become merelyspatial assertionthat,forBaudelaire, superiority of levelswithin a subjectthat and a plurality metaphorsto indicatea discontinuity from what is not" an differentiation (BI, 213), comes to know itself by increasing suppressionof the explicitly is not only erroneous but depends on a significant boththe individual of Baudelaire's essay.Within framework "universalhistorical" man and withinhumanityin general, Baudelaire contends,the capacityto perto transcendit in the aestheticof a "poesie pure," ceive the comic,and eventually culture.The clarity withwhichBaudelaire's historical is a product of specifically remarkindicatesthe relationbetweenthe double natureof man and the folding over of the historyof "l'homme" with that of "l'humanite"'-another mode of "dedoublement"-makes it worthquoting at some length: liesin theone wholaughsand in no wayin theobject thepowerof laughter, The comic, unlesshe is a philosopher, does notlaughat hisownfall, The manwhofalls oflaughter. thecapacity to dividehimself from rapidly [sededoubler] habit, a manwhohas acquired, as we thephenomena ofhisself .... Comparing, as a disinterested and observe spectator man [l'humanitg we see thatprimitive to individual a l'homme], are entitled to,humanity of caricature (theholy and haveno comedies cannotconceive nations, just likeVirginie, 46
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bylittletowardthe of whatevernation,neverlaugh); and that,advancinglittle scriptures, the nations or bent over the dark furnacesof metaphysics, cloudy peaks of intelligence, that,if in these same ultrabegin to laugh diabolicallywithMelmoth'slaugh; and finally civilizednations an intelligencedrivenby superior ambitionwishesto cross the limitsof limpid and proin thispoetry, boldlytowardpure poetry, worldlypride and launch itself found as nature,laughterwillbe lackingas in the soul of the Sage.22

thatthispassage should reproGiven itsironicpremises,itis all the more striking in itsmovement history duce so accuratelythe developmentalschema of aesthetic throughthe disinterest forself-reflexive incapacity fromthe supposed primitive to divisionof the subject,and of subjectfromsubject,thatthisentails, a possible transcendence of that division in an identitybetween the purest artificeand nature. irony formof aesthetics, of thehistorical a dismantling Far fromrepresenting the of temporality formal developmental withinthe belongs in itsverystructure to assoto note,insofaras de Man attempts interesting aesthetic.It is accordingly thathe evincesa simto the symbol, ciate ironywithallegoryin contradistinction itself. aesthetics of symbolist structure ilarblindnesswithregard to themetaironic to suggestthat,in any simple aesthetics For it is an entiremisreadingof symbolist sense, "in the world of the symbolit would be possible forthe image to coincide or of an identity withthe substance"or that"the symbolpostulatesthe possibility (BI, 207). The erroris appropriate,since it is preciselythe ironic identification" the symbol of symbolist aestheticsto presenteverysymbolas, in effect, structure upon any sign or object presented as of an error: that is to say,the reflection thatit is held to symbolicentails the recognitionof its inadequacy to the totality of symrepresent. Preciselythis inadequacy gives way to an ironic methodology whichthe the truthor totality bolism thatcauses the subjectto seek to constitute passage object is inadequate to represent.Thus, to cite a quite representative in which he is discussingthe comfrom Samuel Taylor Coleridge's TheFriend, municationof truththrough"a rightthoughinadequate notion":
her human children. She cannot give us the Observe, how graciouslyNature instructs to mistakeimages of reflecknowledge derived fromsightwithoutoccasioningus at first to itsdetection forsubstances.But the veryconsequences of the delusion lead inevitably tion; and out of the ashes of the errorrises a new flowerof knowledge.We not only see, in but are enabled to discoverby what means we see. So too we are under the necessity, of mistakinga square for a round object; but ere the mistakecan given circumstances, have any practical consequences, it is not only removed,but in its removal gives us the symbolof a new fact,thatof distance.23

Symbolistpedagogy shares the structureof the exemplarypreciselyinsofaras or unwhat is involved in everyinstanceis the productionof a disappointment deception. And as becomes veryclear in the above passage, what thisinvolvesis assumed naive perceiverand the alwaysan ironicrelationbetweenthenecessarily
superior consciousness. Kant's Examples 47

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of a liberalpedagogy to produce thatironicrelaIt is, of course, the function instancethroughschooling,but also tion not only between subjects,as in the first withineach subject as an internalizedethicalattitude.We mightargue that the condition of such an ironic dispositionis the fundamentalprerequisitefor the inculcationof ideology since it assumes, as an internalmechanismof the most kind,the subordinationof the individualto the uniformaland "transferrable" opens on to the political. It is at thispoint thatpedagogy necessarily versal.24 giventhe extentto whichthe though thismayseem surprising Furthermore, associatedwitha certainkindof autonomyofjudgment, ironicmode is habitually insofaras the there is an intimatelink between the ironic and the institutional ironic is a moderather than an incidentalattitude.Exactlyinasmuch as liberal is drawntowardan ironic pedagogy,as a consequence of itsexemplarystructure, relations,by the same token disposition (or displacement)of power/knowledge as a mode, is inseparable froma splitdispositionof superiority/inferiority irony, or of latent and manifestconsciousnessthat must always make an example of someone. The ironic attitude is the internalizedmodalityof the institutional the subjective geography of the classroom. The ironic attitudeis, accordingly, counterpartto the idea of the canon, since onlyin relationto examples subjectto can an ironicpedagogy take place. As the body of a universalizingformalization "exemplaryproductsof taste"throughwhichthejudgment is cultivatedforeach of the judgment whose subject, a canon is indispensable to that formalization progressivenature is inspired by its own perpetual inadequacy to thatexample a of examples, the ideal. The subjectiverelationto the canon implies,therefore, forceis in no progressivenarrativeof aestheticconsciousnesswhose assimilative Paradoxwaydiminished-rather, itis augmented-by itsformalinterminability. ically,however,what the canonical examples exemplifyis the "grounds deepthe theiragreementin estimating seated and shared alike byall men, underlying formsunder whichobjectsare givento them"(CJ,? 17, p. 75). There is a tension, of the canon as a body ifnot a contradiction, in otherwords,betweenthefunction of examples subjected to judgment to the end of its developmentand the lesson or equivalence ofjudgmentsof identity of the canon, whichis the transhistorical This paradox, whichperhaps marksthetransition tasteas of productsof genius.25 of the Enlightenment to the developmental unifrom the historicalrelativism is only resolvableby subordinatinga versal historiesof the nineteenthcentury, culturalproducts and judgments to a temporal of differing spatial distribution that entails an ethicaljudgment as to the adeof aesthetic development model productorjudgmentto theideal. The formin which quacy of any givenhistorical anyjudgment takesplace alwaysremainsidentical;thedevelopmentofjudgment takes place throughthe increasingautonomyof itssphere,in the individualor in willemergetheexplicitly develthe species. Out of thisparadox and itsresolution opmental aesthetic pedagogies that run through the nineteenthcenturyfrom Friedrich Schiller to Matthew Arnold, though these will in turn come to be

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giventheir namelythedifficulty, aporia of aesthetics, haunted bythe fundamental historicalclaims, of accounting for the continuingappeal of ancient artifacts.26 This slippage fromthe aestheticto the ethicalis, as we have seen, not a misthatis reading of the aestheticbut an elaborationof a productivecontradiction an inevitableconsequence of the universalizingclaims of aestheticphilosophy to practicalapplication.There is, accordingly, even where it seems mostresistant no clear demarcationbetween Kant's "philosophical"deduction of the aesthetic of Kantian ideas: the latter and, for example, Schiller'spedagogical Verwendung is not so much a "regression"as, as in Hegel's perceptionof it, a completionof Fromitsinception, aesthetics givesthe example to Critique.27 the logic of the Third a pedagogy withwhich it can scarcelydispense, requiringthat pedagogy as the of itsexamthe veryspace whichgrounds the verisimilitude means to constitute ples. This space being that of "common sense," it provides in turn the fundaof politicalsubjectsin the specificform mental conditionboth forthe formation of the canon individualsand for the apparent self-evidence of "representative" as a body of representativetexts.What this meshing of the aestheticand the political withinthe field of pedagogy implies is that any sustained attemptto of culturaleducation froma radical perspective rethinkthe nature and function In of a prior critiqueof the politicalcultureof representation. must pass byway the absence of such a critique,radical pedagogy will continue to reproduce, at the processesof ideological interpractices, the "microscopic"level of itsimplicit pellationthatitsexplicittendencyseeks to disrupt.

Notes
ofJudgement, trans.withanalyticalindexes byJames Creed 1. Immanuel Kant, Critique Meredith (Oxford, 1982), ? 60, p. 226-27, referredto in the text hereafteras CJ. are from Kritik derUrteilskraft, ed. Wilhelm Critique Citationsin German fromthe Third in the textas KU. The allu1974), cited throughout Weischedel(Frankfurt-am-Main, Novel, trans. ofthe sions to Georg Lukaicsand MikhailBakhtinare, of course,to Theory Anna Bostock (Cambridge,Mass., 1971), esp. chaps. 1 and 3; and to TheDialogicImagFourEssays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans.CarylEmerson and Holquist (Austin, ination: in the essay"Epic and the Novel" that"theepic Tex., 1981). Bakhtinremarkstypically true for and indubitably world knowsonlya singleand unifiedworldview,obligatory heroes as well as for authors and audiences" (35). It should be remarked fromthe is always already the outset that for Kant the organic nature of such a community product of an art,dependent on the formof the "as if" which,as we shall see, governs a primal conditionof the human disall aesthetic productions. It is not, therefore, it appears forLuka'csand affect, as, withvarying rupted by the advent of modernity Bakhtin.This, as I argue at the end of thisessay,is closelyrelated to the ironicstructure of exemplarypedagogy. function of aestheticculturein David Lloyd, 2. I have discussed the specifically political Cultural "Arnold,Ferguson,Schiller:AestheticCultureand the Politicsof Aesthetics," Kant's Examples 49

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Critique 2 (Winter 1985-86): 137-69; and in "Analogies of Aesthetics: The Politics of Culture and the Limits of Critique" (unpublished); in both I attempted to delineate some of the crucial historical determinants on the emergence of a doctrine of aesthetic culture in late-eighteenth-century Germany. The best account of the sociohistorical condition of Germany and of its bourgeois intelligentsia at this epoch is still W. H. (1935; reprint ed., Cambridge, 1959). See also Georg Lukaics, "Zur Aesthetik (Neuweid and Berlin, 1969), 18-19, Schillers," in Werke,vol. 10, Problemeder Aesthetik 26-27, on the constraint on the German bourgeoisie to conceive of attaining the results of a bourgeois revolution without engaging in an actual revolution. More gen-

TheSocialBackground ofthe Literary Revival Bruford,Germany in the Eighteenth Century:

derdeutschen Revolution und Ideologie: erally,see Nicolao Merker,An den Urspriingen

Utopie imjakobinismus, trans. Manfred Buhr (Berlin, 1984), on the political situation of the German bourgeois intellectuals. In "Kant und die Wende zur Aesthetik," Zeitschrriftfuir philosophischeForschung 16 (1962): 252, Odo Marquard raises the question, in this context, as to whether the aesthetic should be seen as the instrument or the substitute for the political realization of ethical ideals. 3. I have elaborated the political function of the formalism of bourgeois aesthetics more extensively in Lloyd, "Arnold, Ferguson, Schiller," esp. 166-68; and in "Genet's Genealogy: European Minorities and the Ends of the Canon," Cultural Critique 6 (Spring 1987): 161-85, esp. 171-72. 4. I should remark from the outset that since writing the firstdraft of this essay, I have been struck by Cathy Caruth's conclusions on the narrative form of examples in the rather different context of the CritiqueofPure Reason. As she remarks in her brilliant essay "The Force of Example: Kant's Symbols," Yale French Studies 74 (1988): 26, on account of the personification of philosophy itself "the mediation provided by the example must, therefore, be understood in narrative terms." I seek here only to extend that remark to the structure of the example as such. Brumaire ofLouis Bonaparte 5. Karl Marx makes the celebrated comment in The Eighteenth (Moscow, 1977), 11, that the participants in the French Revolution "performed the task of their time in Roman costume and with Roman phrases." The shiftfrom Roman to Greek models as a crucial element in the formation of post-Enlightenment theories of culturehas been apparent at least since Walter Pater's essay on Winckelmann in The Renaissance. But the most important recent study is Martin Bernal's The Fabrication of

RootsofClassicalCivAncient Greece, 1785-1985, vol. 1 of BlackAthena:TheAfro-Asiatic

ilization (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987). 6. A full demonstration of the antirepresentational form of barricades and guerrilla warfare would require another essay. Crucial to both, however, is the breakdown of the process of temporal deferral constitutive of the political culture of representation and its replacement by the dramatically spatial disposition of social relations as relations of conflicting forces. T.J. Clark's "The Picture of the Barricade," chap. 1 of The Absolute

in France,1848-1851 (Greenwich,Conn., 1973), is pecuand Politics Artists Bourgeois:

liarly suggestive on the difficulties of representing artistically the barricades thrown up by the people at the very point at which the possibility of their being represented politically has collapsed. The breakdown of representative politics is what Marx in The Brumaire perceives as the critical element of 1848 and the Bonapartist coup. Eighteenth In more general terms, Michel Foucault remarks programmatically on the necessity to spatialize discursive forms in order to analyze the disposition of power relations: Once knowledge can be analysed in terms of region, domain, implantation, displacement, transposition, one is able to capture the process by which

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knowledge functionsas a form of power and disseminatesthe effectsof of discourse in a vocabulary power.... Metaphorisingthe transformations of time necessarilyleads to the utilisationof the model of individual consciousnesswithits intrinsic temporality. Endeavouringon the otherhand to decipher discourse throughthe use of spatial,strategic metaphorsenables one to grasp preciselythe points at which discourses are transformedin, through,and on the basis of relationsof power. Selected Interviews and OtherWritings, "Questions of Geography,"in PowerlKnowledge: 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans.Gordon et al. (New York,1980), 69-70. I would only contend, as throughoutthis essay, that at any given moment the apparently "intrinsic" temporality of the individualis produced, in the presentinstancepedagogically. The geographyof classroomrelationsis a classicinstanceof the temporalization of power relations in which arbitrary dispositionsof authorityare legitimatedby of the exemplary.What gives thislocus of appeal to the transcendentaltemporality with is the foldingover of this institutional authorityits verisimilitude temporality what appears as the "intrinsic" temporality of the individualsubject. 7. The argumentconcerningthe social and developmentalcharacterof tasteis made at CJ, ? 41, pp. 155-56. I have discussed the relationbetween social developmentand in "Analogiesof Aesthetics." the narrativeinternalto each act ofjudgment more fully In "Parergon,"Jacques Derrida makes the suggestivebut unfortunately "undeveloped" commentthat If on the other hand a determinate in thiscritique anthropology intervenes of society, of aestheticjudgment, a whole theoryof history, and of culture moment.This theory makes the decision at whatis the mostformally critical weighsupon the frameswithall itscontents. In Truth in Painting, trans.GeoffBenningtonand Ian McLeod (Chicago, 1987), 105. This essay is intended to elaborate thisobservation. See again Caruth's "Force of Example," 25, where the life of philosophyis seen to of matter, a chiasmatic narrative thatshe attachesto a Chrisdepend on thelifelessness tian narrativeof redemption.The ethicalnarrativeof universalhistory thatinforms of the redemptive exemplarypedagogy is easilyenvisaged as a secular transposition narrativeof Christianity and clearlyretainsmuch of itstemporalfigurality. I am indebted forthisobservationto T. W. Adorno's expositionof the "primacy of the SchoolReader, object" in the late essay "Subject and Object," in TheEssential Frankfurt ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt(New York,1978), esp. 502-4. See Immanuel Kant, Critique ofPure Reason,trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London, 1978), 178. and Education: Teaching TerminShoshana Felman'sveryfineessay "Psychoanalysis able and Interminable,"in "The Pedagogical Imperative: Teaching as a Literary if not exemplary, Studies 63 (1982): 21-44, is instructive, of ironic Genre," YaleFrench of accounts of pedagogy, especially in its appeal to the potential interminability of its analysis,which teaching. This is open to critiquenot simplyfor the formalism of teaching,but also insofaras itoverlooksthe institutional entirely ignoresthe matter of mastery, and pedagogy thatshores up the effect geographyof both psychoanalysis esoteric or not, even in the moment of its self-critique. Satya Mohanty's "Radical in the ClassTeaching, Radical Theory: The AmbiguousPoliticsof Meaning,"in Theory room, ed. Cary Nelson (Urbana, Ill., 1986), 149-76, is a forceful critiqueof thisand several other essaysin the same volume fortheirpurely"transcendental" radicalism. KU, 299. I cite the German here since the Englishtranslation of vormachen (whichmy Kant's Examples 51

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

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13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

dienen)as "illustrate" German dictionarydefines,among othersthings,as als Beispiel (CJ,? 60, p. 226) considerablyreduces the semanticfieldof the originalterm. 11, no. 2 (Summer 1981): trans.R. Klein,Diacritics Jacques Derrida's "Economimesis," of genius in the Critique 3-25, is an indispensableanalysisof the problematic ofjudgeof the aestheticsphere. TimothyGould's "The in relationto the differentiation ment on the Receptionof Genius,"in Essays Kant and Wordsworth Audience of Originality: ed. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer(Chicago, 1982), 179-93, is a useful Aesthetics, in Kant's of the of genius and the possibility account of the relation between the definition of itsproductions. communicability between Derrida comments on this passage and on the punning differentiation in "Economimesis,"10-11. and Nachmachung Nachahmung of the mode ofjudgment can also be seen in termsof principles: This formalidentity can only (Ann Arbor,Mich., 1960), 9: "Uniformity see Immanuel Kant, On Education whichprincipleswould have resultwhen all men act accordingto the same principles, autonomouslyto to become withthema second nature."That the poet now conforms others' judgments is an index thatprinciplesofjudgmenthave become second nature in him. to be made here is thatwhichKant makes betweengenius and The other distinction and distincby sheer imitation, science: science can be communicatedmethodically tionsin achievementare of degree, not kind; genius can neverbe communicated.By whereas genius has and indefinitely perfectible the same token,science is progressive Thomas in all probability, reached itslimit(CJ,? 47, pp. 169-70). On thisdistinction, of knowledgeand the betweenthe literature De Quincey based his famousdistinction from literatureof power,designatingby the formerworksof practicalinformation, It is perhaps an important worksof theimagination. bythe latter cookeryto geometry, elides the disindex of the receptionof Kant in England thatDe Quincey effectively betweentasteand genius here: the reader repeatstheworkof the author and tinction is endowed therebywith some of the latter's"power."See De Quincey, "Alexander vol. 8 (Edinburgh, 1863), 5-9. Pope," in Works, Thomas Huhn has argued to me thatthisargumentcan be given a positivevalency, reading "the paradox of the exemplary"as "the revelationand critiqueof pervasive personal combecause italone refusesto forgeyetanothermis-identity"; mis-identity a veryforceful critiqueof myargumunication,16 January 1989. This is potentially the burden of thisessay to remarkthatitis precisely mentand raises the opportunity of "the affirmato critiquefromitsverygrounds the bynow habitualtransformation but stillspecular image. For this tive character of culture" into its negative,critical, the conof Left aestheticsleaves unbroached the necessarytaskof critiquing strategy of the politicalcultureof role of aestheticculturewithinthe totalformation stitutive to any current of the rethinking a taskwhichI take to be fundamental representation, politicsof culturaleducation. Derrida commentsin "Parergon,"108, of a similarpassage of the Critique ofjudgement that The thirdCritique depends in an essentialmanner-these examples showiton a pragmaticanthropology and on whatwould be called, in more thanone recourse,recognized in sense, a reflexivehumanism. This anthropologistic on thissupbyitscontent, itsjuridical and formalagency,weighsmassively, judgment. posedly pure deduction of aesthetic

for "represent"is 19. The German word that Kant uses throughoutthe ThirdCritique of a "strikt verand suggestively extensively vorstellen. AlthoughOdo Marquard writes

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20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

representablesubject)in "Kant und die Wende (a strictly tretbareErkenntnissubjekt" withits double valence of interchange zur Aesthetik,"244, the concept of vertreten, of Kant's thought.Only in is as yetonly implicitin the structure and representation, begin to be ofMan does the usage of vertreten Aesthetic Education on the Schiller'sLetters attached to aestheticworks,and thisstillprecedes the modern politicalusage of the in "AnalI have discussedthesetermsfurther representation. termforparliamentary ogies of Aesthetics." Rhetin the andInsight: Essays in Blindness Paul de Man, "The Rhetoricof Temporality," 2nd ed. (London, 1983), 187-228; cited in the texthereCriticism, oricofContemporary afteras BI. The Bildungsromanin European Cf. BI, 210. Franco Moretti,in The WayoftheWorld: Culture (London, 1987), 98, emphasizesthe linkagebetweenironyand the novelmade account of byBakhtinand Yuri Lotman. I should perhaps remarkhere thatMoretti's seems to of achieved reconciliation the relation between ironyand the impossibility inherent me far more persuasive than de Man's in its account of the contradictions of the relationbetween irony withinironic representation.de Man's circumvention moment of and the novel even involves him in what is almost an uncharacteristic forinstance,the that"in Germany, in remarking positivism invertedliterary-historical does not coincide witha advent of a fullyfledged ironic consciousness . . . certainly parallel blossomingof the novel" (BI, 210). Charles Baudelaire, "De l'essence du rire et generalementdu comique dans les arts (Paris, 1980), 694-95; mytranslation. completes plastiques,"in Oeuvres ofFixed Samuel Taylor Coleridge, TheFriend:A SeriesofEssaystoAid in theFormation (London, with Amusements Interspersed Literary in Politics, Morals,and Religion, Principles 1899), 26. The "Essays on Method,"in the same work,are devoted to the exposition of the inadequacy of any of philosophical method in termsof the continualdiscovery "idols" to representthe truthadequately. In "The Force of Examples," 29-30, Cathy of Kant's symbols Caruth gives a brilliantdemonstrationof the relationalstructure of symbolism. coherentwiththisanalysisof the methodology thatis entirely In a quite literalsense,John StuartMill understandsthisconnectionbetweenpolitics of educational and pedagogy as requiringthe agencyof the statein the establishment Govof citizens.See On Representative whose principalend is the formation institutions Government (London, 1910), passim in Utilitarianism, and Representative Liberty, ernment, Central but esp. 280: "Universal teachingmust precede universalenfranchisement." to Louis Althusser'sanalysisof "ideological stateapparatuses" are the schools,a fact oftenoverlooked by discussionsof his essay,whichhave tended to emphasize itspsychoanalyticaldimension. What Althussergrasps mostclearlyin the concept of interin withthe momentof self-consciousness pellation,which indeed has close affinities or hailingof the Subject in any givenindiis thatthe formation Baudelaire's pratfalls, of thatindividualintothe ideovidual is the formalconditionforthe transformation logical form of the citizen. See Louis Althusser,"Ideology and Ideological State in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)," Essays,trans.Ben Brewster(New York, 1971), 152-57, 174, and 180-83. One can see the tension in Baudelaire's "De l'essence du rire"between the comic as of the index of a "dualite permanente"in humanityand the developmentalhistory on theotherhand, comic as a versionof thiscrux of theaesthetic.T. S. Eliot'sassertion, to escape this is an extremeversionof theattempt of an "ideal order" among artworks forhistory. to substitute myth crux, but it has as itsevidentconsequence the necessity Prose,ed. John Hayward (HarSee "Tradition and the Individual Talent,"in Selected Eng., 1963), 23. The poetic resultof the abandonmentof the developmondsworth, Kant's Examples 53

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to Eliot's politicalroyalismand religious correlative mental functionof the aesthetic, as the deliberateand defensivedeploymentof Anglicanism,is not so much classicism withthe cliche such thatit becomes impossiblefor the reader to claim identification gap havingbeen constituted or saint,an untraversable "experience" of poet, martyr, between the postulated inimitableexperience and the evacuated formsof the lanare exemplaryof thismode both theand FourQuartets in theCathedral guage. Murder of clichein thisfashionis of course no The deployment and performatively. matically designated and reproducibility more than an extensionof the dialecticof originality as a conditionof modern art byBaudelaire's commentthatthe poet's funcironically tion is to produce new cliches. See also WalterBenjamin, "On Some Motifsin Baued. Hannah Arendt,trans.HarryZohn (London, 1973), 194: delaire,"in Illuminations, Baudelaire "wentso far as to proclaimas his goal 'the creationof a cliche.' In thishe saw the conditionof everyfuturepoet; he had a low opinion of those who were not we are of the problemis probablyKarl Marx's: "The difficulty 26. The cleareststatement how Greek artand epic poetry thatof understanding confrontedwithis not,however, is thattheystill are associated withcertainformsof social development.The difficulty give us aestheticpleasure and are in certainrespectsregarded as a standardand unatto the Critique of PoliticalEconomy tainable ideal"; "Introduction" to A Contribution (Moscow, 1970), 217. The best discussionof this problem,and the most convincing is Michael McKeon's "The Origins aesthetics, attemptat its resolutionfor materialist of Aesthetic Value," Telos57 (Fall 1983): 63-82. For a compelling account of the untranscendable "antinomicstructureof the aestheticsof the bourgeois age," see of Aesthetics," and theIrreformability Ferene Feher and Agnes Heller,"The Necessity of theBudapestSchool Writings Aesthetics: in Feher and Heller, eds., Reconstructing (Oxford, 1986), 17 and passim. receptionsof characterizes 27. Paul de Man, in a late lectureentitled"Kant and Schiller," Kant of which Schilleris exemplaryas "a regressionfromthe incisivenessand from the criticalimpactof the original";unpublishedpaper, p. 2 (I am indebted to Lindsay to me). Hegel's remarkon Kant's completion by Waters for sending this transcript trans.T. M. Knox (Oxford, to theAesthetics, Schiller can be found in the Introduction 1979), 61.
up to it."

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REPRESENTATIONS

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