Kant Trouble: Obscurities of the Enlightened

KANT TROUBLE

‘This is a wonderfully rich and suggestive book which is sure to have a large and enthusiastic readership among students of cultural and literary theory. It is full of original observations that shed new light both on the intrinsic interest of Kant’s thought and on his relation to other thinkers and movements of his time and ours. Not least of its virtues, the study displays a rare combination of sympathy for its subject and critical distance, resulting in a reading that is both generous and searching.’ Susan Shell, Boston College Kant Trouble: The Obscurities of the Enlightened offers a highly original and incisive reading of Kant’s philosophy. Diane Morgan focuses her investigation on a radical reappraisal of Kant’s writings on architecture, justice and ethics, faith in progress, chemistry, life and matter. Throughout her study Morgan challenges the widely held view of Kant as the exponent of a rigid and restricting rationality. She argues that the philosopher’s professed aim in The Critique of Pure Reason to attain an airtight ‘architectonic’ mode of reasoning is in fact a project which never really gets off the ground. Even before its inception it is troubled by Kant’s intriguing explorations of other, ultimately more intriguing, ideas. Morgan goes on to provide a convincing analysis of themes apparently of minor interest to Kant and Kantian studies—such as landscape gardening, freemasonry, chemical affinities and Egyptology—and demonstrates that these are in fact of major importance to a philosopher well capable of accommodating troubling and subversive ideas. This compelling discussion arrives at a fresh and ground breaking perspective on Kant, whereby he is no longer to be regarded as a concrete rationalist but as a daring thinker, not afraid to entertain ideas highly threatening to his own system and to the humanist legacy of the Enlightenment. Diane Morgan is Senior Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies at University College, Northampton.

WARWICK STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY Edited by Andrew Benjamin Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick This series presents the best and most original work being done within the European philosophical tradition. The books included in the series seek not merely to reflect what is taking place in European philosophy but also to contribute to the growth and development of that plural tradition. Work written in the English language as well as translations into English are included, engaging the tradition at all levels—whether by introductions that show the contemporary philosophical force of certain works, collections that explore an important thinker or topic, or in significant contributions that call for their own critical evaluations. Titles already published in the series: BATAILLE Writing the sacred Edited by Carolyn Bailey Gill EMMANUEL LEVINAS The genealogy of ethics John Llewelyn MAURICE BLANCHOT The demand of writing Edited by Carolyn Bailey Gill BODY- AND IMAGE-SPACE Re-reading Walter Benjamin Sigrid Weigel (trans. Georgina Paul)

ON JEAN-LUC NANCY The sense of philosophy Edited by Darren Sheppard, Simon Sparks and Colin Thomas VERY LITTLE…ALMOST NOTHING Death, philosophy, literature Simon Critchley BLANCHOT Extreme contemporary Leslie Hill

PASSION IN THEORY Conceptions of Freud and Lacan Robyn Ferrell

TEXTURES OF LIGHT Vision and touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty Cathryn Vasseleu

HEGEL AFTER DERRIDA Writing the sacred Edited by Stuart Barnett

ESSAYS ON OTHERNESS Jean Laplanche

RETREATING THE POLITICAL Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and JeanLuc Nancy

PHILOSOPHY AND TRAGEDY Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks

DELEUZE AND PHILOSOPHY The difference engineer Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson

HYPOCRITICAL IMAGINATION Writing the sacred John Llewelyn

KANT TROUBLE The obscurities of the enlightened

Diane Morgan

London and New York

First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 2000 Diane Morgan All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morgan, Diane Kant trouble: the obscurities of the enlightened/Diane Morgan. p. cm.—(Warwick studies in European philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. (alk. paper) 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. I. Title. II. Series. B2798.M69 2000 193.21–dc21 99–044820 ISBN 0-203-45169-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75993-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-18352-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-18353-7 (pbk)

TO MY PARENTS AND BROTHER, WITH LOVE

CONTENTS

List of plates Preface Acknowledgements

ix x xii

Introduction Freemasonry and the unfinished project Landscape gardening: the ‘folly’ of flimsy construction The Egyptians: those obscure beginners Architecture: monumentality and mortality—the ruinous act of foundation Notes

1 8 12 25

1

Three cases of doubling: Ka, Kant and Kantorowicz Egyptian groping and the duplicity of the ‘Ka’ Kantorowicz: kingly duplicity Kant: the founding of the sovereign and regicide Conclusion Notes

65 66 71 75 90 97

2

The architectonic in Kantian philosophy I: of an uncertain affinity 106 Notes 135

3

The architectonic in Kantian philosophy II: Kant, Goethe, Benjamin: beautiful affinities and the architectural Notes

4

30 56

140 156

Devilish dissimulations in human nature: radical ethics and the evil abyss 159 Notes 194

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CONTENTS Conclusion: the revelation of the impossibility of revelation: Kant, Hamann, Hegel 201 Kant205 -Hamann209 -Hegel 212 Conclusion: Kant-Hamann-Hegel 213 Notes 218 Bibliography Index

221 234

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PLATES

I II

III

IV

V

VI

‘La colonne détruite’ in Le Désert de Retz: perspectival view of column. Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. ‘La colonne détruite’ in Le Désert de Retz: cross-section of building with cellars. Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. ‘La colonne détruite’ in Le Désert de Retz: partial section indicating the distribution of the floors. Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. The windowed pyramid. Taken from Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurff einer historischen Architektur (1721). Reproduced with the kind permission of Harenberg Verlag, Dortmund. An Egyptian ‘false door’ through which the ‘Ka’ is passing: painted limestone tomb portal of Iteti from Saqqara; height 195 cm, 2390 BC; Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich. A temporary triumphal arch dating from 1604. Photo courtesy of the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

ix

15

17

19

27

73 81

PREFACE

This book is a rewritten version of my doctoral thesis, entitled ‘The Obscurities of the Enlightened: Reflections on Kantian Blind Spots’ and submitted in 1993 to the University of Sussex. My supervisor was Geoffrey Bennington, and I take this opportunity to thank him for his helpful guidance. My examiners were Howard Caygill and George Craig, and I am also grateful to them both for their encouraging enthusiasm for the project. The first version of Chapter 1 was given as a paper to Jacques Derrida’s seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris under the title ‘Trois cas de dédou-blement: Ka, Kant et Kantorowicz’ in February 1990. The concluding chapter was also given as a paper at Derrida’s seminar in March 1993 with the title ‘La Révélation de l’impossibilité de la révélation: Kant, Hamann et Hegel’. While researching this project, I benefited greatly from Derrida’s seminars and from others at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. Also indispensable was a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship for the academic year 1990–1, which permitted me to study at the Comparative Literature Institute (AVL) and Philosophy Department of the Freie Universität, Berlin. My experience of reading Kant has been that he is at times most strange, sometimes even outlandish in his ideas, but consistently intriguing and even exciting. Having later read Kleist’s description of his strong reaction to Kantian philosophy, one that led to an existential crisis, I saw that his sense of compelling urgency, that here was a philosophy which was at times radically questioning the foundations we traditionally rely on to orient ourselves in the world, was missing from much Kantian commentary. Kant is far from being just the Königsberger eccentric whose movements were so regular that people set their watches by him and whose philosophy aims at all costs to establish domestic security. This book draws on a wide range of Kant’s texts—some of them still not available in English translation—thereby overriding the distinction that commentators sometimes make between the pre-critical writings and what follows, and giving much attention to the Anthropology, often treated disparagingly as the late work of a senile old man. It also draws very widelyon other areas not usually associated with Kant studies, which

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PREFACE necessitates lengthy forays into the disciplines of architecture and literary/ cultural studies. This goes some way towards justifying the unconventional layout of the text: a very long introduction, subdivided into shorter sections, and a substantial conclusion, which introduces new figures as well as returning to previously explored ideas. After much thought, I decided to retain this unusual structure, as one of my central concerns in this book is precisely to speculate on an alternative to the traditional architectonic or, to use Kant’s words ‘art of constructing systems’, with its assumptions about laying down foundations and building securely and determinedly up from them. The burgeoning form of this book seemed apposite for a work that intends itself to be suggestive, an opening up of debate, rather than an authoritative closing of it.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank numerous friends and colleagues (past and present) for their encouragement, support, stimulating conversation and very much for being there at crucial stages of this project: at University College, Northampton, to my head of school, George Savona, and division leader, Chris Ringrose, for their understanding and for granting me an essential leave of absence, which permitted me to prepare the manuscript, and to Charlie Blake and Ian McCormick; at the University of Teesside, Dave and Steffi Boothroyd, and June McQuade; at the American University of Paris, Dan Gunn, Richard Beardsworth, Philippa Nevin and Karen Wagstaff; also in Paris, Dan Katz and Nachida Titouche (for her fine intelligence and voracious appetite for new ideas); for DAAD Berlin days and the subsequent years—Claudia Diedenhoven, Bettina Bartzen, Carola Feddersen, Esther Leslie and Kate Lacey (the trip to Wörlitz!); to Peter Dempsey, Joanna Hodge, Jacqueline Rose (for being an excellent teacher) and Kate More. I thank Tony Bruce at Routledge and the series editor, Andrew Benjamin, for their patience. In particular, I wish to thank Keith Ansell Pearson for his kind generosity and general enthusiasm for ideas. I sincerely appreciate his friendship and greatly admire his work. My greatest debt is to my partner, Bernard Vaudeville, who has shared this project with me ever since its early stages and whose professional expertise helped me to clarify my ideas on architecture.

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INTRODUCTION

Enlightenment: the very word conjures up sunny clarity. Furthermore, it evokes the power of rationality to throw light on the unknown and to dispel darkness. Modernist critics have often portrayed Enlightenment thought as wanting at all cost to expel and eliminate any dark elements that detract from the brilliant brightness of reason. Indeed, they regard the Enlightenment project as having artificially segregated a non-problematic, easily controllable area from which those aspects of life can be relegated that are elusive and threatening to the one-track mind of megalomaniac reason.1 Enlightened rationality comes to be seen as the product of censorship, resulting in the repression of anything that is unpredictable and contingent, of anything that resists its totalitarian order. This, so the argument goes, results in the denial of, for example, the body and its sexuality, of imagination and madness, of nature and its creatures. Anything that threatens the anthropocentric sanctity of the rationalist project must be put in a subservient place. The limitations of the Enlightenment, its self-defined and self-imposed limits, are seen as producing sets of binary opposites such as subject/object, form/matter, human/animal, which boil down to the difference between reason and its Other. These unacknowledged, repressed elements, which have become representative of the irrational in their enforced opposition to reason, return to haunt and destroy the petrified clarity of Enlightenment. The consequences of the vengeful return of these artificially excluded elements are deadly serious and tragic.2 Indeed, for Adorno and Horkheimer, the legacy of the Enlightenment is fascism. The Dialectic of Enlightenment opens with the following remark: In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant. The program of the Enlightenment was the disenchantment of the world; the dissolution of myths and the substitution of knowledge for fancy. (Adorno and Horkheimer 1987:3)

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KANT TROUBLE The crucial idea here is that the Enlightenment’s wish to demythologise the world is carried out in the name of mastery—of the self, of history and the future. The freeing of humans from fearful superstition leads to a belief in a completely new, autonomous order, with firm foundations in reason. It is this misguided illusion that eventually leads to the ‘triumphant disaster’ of fascism. The undaunted Age of Enlightenment regards itself as completely detached from the past because of its enlightened superiority. It is not indebted to tradition because of its capacity to generate its own laws through the powers of reason. The epitome of the Enlightenment period, Kant, apparently confirms these suspicions of arrogance with statements such as: ‘If one now asks, What period in their entire known history of the church up to now is the best? I have no scruple in answering, the present’ (1989:797; 1960:122). Concomitant with this excessive self-confidence is the faith in progress; the conviction that humanity is now on the path of moral, political and spiritual improvement. Harmut and Gernot Böhme’s reaction to this proposition, in The Other of Reason, is a damning indictment of Kant’s misplaced optimism: ‘after Auschwitz one catches one’s breath when one reads that Kant can earnestly address the question: “whether the human race is constantly progressing towards the good?”’ (Böhme and Böhme 1983:11).3 The assumptions of the Enlightenment are unbearable and unacceptable for a post-Auschwitz world. My work, while not directly addressing the specific criticisms of such critics, does take issue with their line of attack, which has now become a form of institutionalised orthodoxy promulgated at the general expense of eighteenth-century studies. For far too long Kant, in particular, has been nailed to the stake of such dry and unsatisfactory readings. In their attempt to be all-encompassing, such readings are themselves absolutist. By contrast, this book does not try to sum up Kant and his philosophy. Instead, it contents itself with highlighting an ongoing problematisation within the Kantian system of the possibility of founding the progressive Enlightenment project securely in the here and now. This necessitates a discussion about architecture, since this discipline is the prime reference for Kant’s metaphysical edifice, supposedly founded on safe and sound architectonic principles: Kant describes his aim as being the building of ‘a secure home for ourselves’ (1983a:B735). This book also pays special attention to those aspects of Kantian philosophy that it sees as troubling claims that his project ever manages to delimit its restricting terrain around reason and exclude its Other—even temporarily, before its haunting return. The Böhmes write: ‘The accusation [against the Kantian system] comes from the other side of the limit, from the Other of reason’ (Böhme and Böhme 1983:9).4 By examining a few, seldom studied, aspects of Kant’s work, I hope that it will become evident that the ‘accusation’ mentioned by the Böhmes comes from within the system, not from a banished exterior on the other side of an initially successfully policed border. Rather than dismissing Kantian Enlightenment as

2

INTRODUCTION totally inappropriate, even scandalous for modern times, still very much scarred and haunted by the memory of the concentration camps, I attempt to give a reading of Kant that emphasises the continued importance of his writings for us. The aim of the Dialectic of Enlightenment has been described as that of providing a ‘metahistory of thought’ (Wellmer 1985:137). Likewise, the Böhmes suggest that they too mean to get above and beyond the imperfect Kantian system by filling in its gaps with the help of psychoanalysis, by making the repressed Other speak (Böhme and Böhme 1983:24). Their ‘metacritical’ project declares itself to be a ‘reconstruction’ of Kantian philosophy (ibid.). In contrast, the present analysis makes no such claim to rebuild and complete the Kantian construction. It also does not just want to set itself up as a critique of the Kantian system, able to pass judgement on its ‘inadequacies’. As the Conclusion on Hamann hopes to explain, this work aims instead at a ‘hypo-critical’ deconstruction of structural blind spots. These zones of darkness are not there to be removed or cleared up. They are structurally necessary for insight and vision, however partial and distorted, just like the blind spot in the eye itself. 5 This area, devoid of visual cells, is produced by the optic nerve leaving the eye to transmit its messages to the brain. If the eye was completely flooded with sight, it would be blind. It would not be able to communicate the substance of its ocular witnessing to the brain for processing. Likewise in my discussions of architecture, the king, affinities and radical evil, the suggestion is not at all that these dark areas of Kantian thought can be removed. They are not signs of his personal failure and lack of insight, which could have been avoided. Rather, they reflect back on the process of constructing philosophical vision. These reflections on blind spots are in themselves most illuminating: they open up theoretical possibilities mis-recognised by Kant himself. As a consequence, this study is no simplistic psychoanalytical reading of Kantian symptoms,6 or a brilliant revelation of the repressed items of his system. The troublesome points that I will address are in full evidence in Kant’s works, not deviously hidden away. Implied in my re-readings of Kant, therefore, is the suggestion that blind spots are not to be attributed solely to the Enlightenment period: they are instead indicative of Western metaphysics in general. Indeed, the exposure to danger referred to by Adorno and Horkheimer and the Böhmes in their discussions of Kant arises from every philosopher’s inability to ever give a complete and adequate account of the world or, more generally, every text’s inability to completely account for itself. There is always a residual mystery, which should never become occluded by the illusion of the mind’s capacity to explain and clear up. The sentiment of disillusioned abandonment arising from the realisation that philosophy had claimed and promised too much is beautifully expressed in Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well:

3

KANT TROUBLE They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear. (Shakespeare 1986:II, iii, 1–6) The problem facing us is how to be a more or less autonomous, thinking individual who is not enslaved by fearful timidity, while still recognising the dark unsettling depths into which no mind can penetrate.7 In a similar vein, Jean-Joseph Goux, in his impressive reworking of the Oedipus myth, explains the tragic hero’s fault as being that of philosophical hubris. The philosopher runs the constant risk of transgressing what is ‘proper’ to humanity and thereby upsetting the gods. Apollo’s injunction to ‘Know thyself!’ is unfortunately too often taken to be a confirmation of the mind’s capacity for absolute autonomy from the outside world and for authoritative all-knowingness. What is thereby overlooked is Apollo’s implicit warning that the mind is riddled with dark caverns that radically call into question the self’s ability to gather itself fully around an autonomous I, or an absolutely seeing eye. Intelligence also implies trying to understand one’s weaknesses as much as possible as well as respecting the ‘demon’ inside one, as did Socrates. 8 By contrast, the blindly arrogant Oedipus has no doubts about his abilities. He considers the riddle of the Sphinx to be just an enigma to be solved and neglects the possibility that it represents instead an ordeal (une épreuve) that demands initiation (Goux 1990:160). Goux explains in detail the probable content of this traditional initiation into the secrets of fertility (sexual and agricultural), of combat and the sacred sciences (ibid.: 69ff). This initiatory journey involves humiliation (being devoured and then regurgitated by the monstrous Sphinx) and a subsequent rebirth. It is a rite of passage that is requisite for recognition within the community and hence especially essential for kingship. This reference to initiation, and the recognition it implies that our self-taught knowledge is only ever partial and incomplete, will be important for our later discussions of Freemasonry. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Teiresias the prophet, who is an initiate in what are basically Egyptian mysteries, is insultingly and recklessly mocked by the protagonist.9 Oedipus brags: ‘I solved the riddle by my wit alone/ Mine is no knowledge got from birds’ (Sophocles 1954:ll. 399–400). Teiresias gleans his information from signs scattered in nature, whereas Oedipus believes that he can generate absolute knowledge through the independent functioning of his reason and denies the necessity of a residual mystery and incurable blind spots: ‘How needlessly your riddles darken everything’ (ibid.: 1. 439). By reducing the problem posed by the Egyptian Sphinx to a challenging riddle for the powers of reason, Oedipus humanises the mystery of this

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INTRODUCTION threatening creature.10 Already, its strange mixture of beast (the lion) and human should alert one to the possibility that the Sphinx has a relevance that exceeds the answer of Man. It has a bearing on a world and a history that supersedes the anthropomorphic. As Goux explains: The enigma arises from the intellect, from language, from the sagacity which is properly human. Its solution is always man. By contrast the ordeal (l’épreuve) of combat cannot be reduced to the human, it is founded in the non-human in man, an alterity which reason is not able to grasp entirely, even if negotiation is possible. (Goux 1990:160) In Western philosophy, this anthropocentricity is celebrated most notoriously by Hegel in the Philosophy of History. 11 For Hegel, Oedipus’ destruction of the Sphinx is an unequivocal success story. It represents the liberation and assertion of the human mind, a break with Egyptian obscurity and superstition into the world of sunny clarity (Hegel 1978:271–4; 1900:220–1). After this split, humans can gradually become more and more self-sufficient and no longer need to be reminded that they belong to the animal world. The Sphinx—half human, half beast—is typical of the Egyptians’ inability to separate themselves from, to lift themselves out of, the ‘spirit sunk in nature’ (1978:269–70; 1900:218). Such characterisations are crucial for what I will later be calling—and explaining thoroughly—the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor. So it seems plausible to argue that all Western metaphysics necessarily contains blind spots, not just Kant’s or the Enlightenment’s. Some of the reasons for this can be gleaned from Heidegger’s statement in his essay ‘What is Metaphysics?’: ‘Metaphysical thinking [enquires] into the source of Being and the creator of light’ (1986:7). The founding pretension of metaphysics is to legitimate the knowledge of the totality of what is, to provide the fundamental cognitive key to understanding the world. In its search for the first principles of things, for origins and foundations that present secure building blocks for speculative investigation, metaphysics has to be blind to the instability of its project. Like a detective, the philosopher has to work systematically, assembling evidence to prove the solidity of his case. Both are trying to reveal the Truth. 12 Oedipus, who, as Goux has demonstrated, is the archetypal philosopher, is also a detective. As he took it upon himself to be in charge of the mission to discover Laius’ murderer, he assumes that he is not the person he has set out to look for. 13 This irreducible blindness and weakness of the systematic investigation is independent of one’s personal merits or failings as a detective, or as a philosopher. The latter also scrupulously lays the groundwork for the object of his attention, trying to be objective and faithful to the revelations of reason. However, this necessitates the same assumption that Oedipus falls

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KANT TROUBLE prey to: ‘Hark to me; what I say to you, I say as one that is a stranger to the story as stranger to the deed’ (Sophocles 1954:1. 219). One assumes that one can approach the task neutrally, fairly, as a clear-sighted I. The members of the community in which the crime has taken place are necessarily partial, inextricably involved with their fellow citizens, prejudiced by ancient feuds and loyalties, no longer reliable as independent witnesses. The detective/philosopher, by contrast, is the stranger coming in from the cold who, one would assume, can lay down the law justly.14 He apparently has the capacity to judge the issue at hand decisively. As Kant declares: ‘the philosopher is not an artificer in the field of reason, but himself the lawgiver of human reason’ (1983a: B867). However, the clue, the guiding thread that he bases his investigations on, is a presumption. He has decided to begin, to found his case on what he considers a certainty. However, this factor is part of a complicated chain of cause and effect, rational and irrational behaviour, necessity and chance. This unmasterable network informing his choice of starting-point renders contentious and contingent the positioning of this single, isolated factor as a grounding basis. This disputable, vulnerable beginning, by becoming the base, the foundation stone for a system, is originary. Origins cannot admit contingency, since the ensuing presuppositions supposedly flow logically from them, as from a source. In his gloss on Johann Georg Hamann’s expressions of impatience with systematic contrivance, Oswald Bayer (1988:89)15 states: Thought-up truth claims timeless validity—just like some people see the laws discovered by Galileo and Newton as ‘transfigured into eternal laws of nature’, instead of taking them as ‘impromptus’ of human language, as improvisations, ideas, as the answers produced by human inventiveness, which belong to a specific time and context. In order to become a founding origin, the arbitrary beginning has to be petrified into a necessary law. The founder of a system consistently fails to acknowledge its temporary, contingent status. He discounts its dependence on a specific context and instead claims universal validity for his ‘discovery’. Within political systems, the origin is central to the concept of an adhesive community, of a group of individuals who nevertheless belong together. This exposed nudity of the origin, on which so much depends, therefore cloaks itself in fictional and mythical coverings to appear more imposing and convincing. Every beginning that becomes a systematic origin is a contamination of the idea of a source of Truth, an obscuring of the claim for an absolute, unmanipulated revelation. In my discussion of the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor and its relation to the ‘Greek’ origin for Western metaphysics in ‘Three cases of doubling’, the difference between a ‘beginning’ and an

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INTRODUCTION ‘origin’ is addressed. This distinction is characterised as a site of injustice and violence, a perversion that disallows any claim to Truth with a capital T. Despite this unavoidable problem with beginnings and origins, cases are solved, systems are developed. However, in the process, the detective has committed tactical errors, or become fatally involved by falling in love with a suspect, or has played foul to get his way. He is, at the end of the story, a fallible, worn-out mortal in spite of any eventual success. Even when the case has been proven, the messy process of collating information systematically means that the detective is not regarded as the undisputed embodiment of Justice and Truth. Equally, while the reader has been following the philosophical tracts, the philosopher has tripped over stumbling blocks, has assumed in a blasé fashion things that indicate unacceptable prejudices, given us hints of his (unavoidable) lack of total vision and hence revealed that his system is ill-founded. This work tracks down the following troublesome moments for Kant: the question of the king and regicide; the concept of ‘affinity’ (Verwandtschaft) and Radical Evil. All these moments prevent the Kantian project from being able to locate the secure foundations it needs to be architectonic. 16 They testify to an uncontrollable doubling at the all-important origin and introduce undecidable concepts that obstinately refuse to stay in one clearly delimited place. My obscuring of Kantian Enlightenment, my aim to reveal necessary obscurities in its basic elements, has been linked with a residual mystery that can never be completely revealed. This mystery will be identified in Chapter 1 as being the origin of the Law and the Sovereign, in Chapter 2 as the community of beings and in Chapter 3 as human nature itself. This reference to ‘mystery’ does not necessarily imply a sudden influx of the ‘mystical’ into the Kantian system, although this is a permanent danger. The ‘mysterious’ in German would be translated geheimnisvoll, ‘secretive’, not mystisch, ‘mystical’. The latter term is linked by Kant to Schwärmerei, an insane visionary delusion that we can see or grasp what lies beyond all bounds of sensibility.17 The recognition of a secret and a mystery implies respect for the symbol, an analogical, indirect way of representing what is inaccessible for human understanding. The mystical does not; it presumes to be able to schematise the supersensual: ‘the mysticism of practical reason, which makes into a schema which should serve only as a symbol’ (Kant 1988d:190; 1956:73). The mysterious, despite ruling out a complete disclosure of Truth, is also not opposed to a certain type of revelation. This point will be addressed in the Conclusion, where it will be reformulated as ‘the revelation of the impossibility of revelation’. A similar approach to mystery and revelation is also explored by Levinas in his analyses of the Old Testament. In Beyond the Verse, he writes: A Revelation that can also be called mystery; not a mystery which dispels clarity, but one that demands it with an increased intensity.

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KANT TROUBLE An invitation to intelligence, which at the same time, by the mystery from which it comes, protects it against the ‘dangers’ of truth. (1982a:162; 1994:133, 213; translation slightly modified) The mysterious does not resist clarity as a reactionary, obscurantist force would. Likewise, the mind that has given up illusions of absolute knowledge does not settle down to a life of handed-down beliefs and untested opinions. The acceptance of the residual secret is instead a more economical way of being granted partial peeks at the Truth. In Exodus (33:18–23), discussed by Levinas, Moses learns that one must be content with seeing God’s ‘back parts’ and not hanker after seeing his glorious face. Only then can one avoid being annihilated by the dangerous brilliance of the divine disclosure.18 In this book, four themes already at work in the Kantian system, shaking and unsettling it, will be explored.19 These are architecture, Egypt, landscape gardening and Freemasonry. Despite this apparent heterogeneity, these are all related between themselves and have an important bearing on Kant.20 I will give the reasons for focusing on these themes now to avoid encumbering the detailed analyses of Kant within the chapters themselves. Freemasonry and the unfinished project Freemasonry was highly influential in the eighteenth century. In Germany alone, the list of active Freemasons included Goethe, Lessing, Herder and Fichte.21 The goals of the Enlightenment period—freedom of expression, self-development through education, equality—are also those of Freemasonry. Despite the negative example set nowadays by the reactionary United Grand Lodge of England among others, Masonry does theoretically aspire to be a progressive, open-minded association of working people.22 The Masonic belief in progress is, however, not a faith in an ever-improving world, in an ever-greater accumulation of knowledge. Instead, the Freemason believes in an endless progression, related to Kant’s and similar to the Egyptian ‘groping around’ (herumtappen) to be discussed in Chapter 1. Masonic theorist Daniel Beresniak calls this world view that of ‘a dynamic world of becoming’ (1989:9–10, 30ff). The Freemason accepts that we are always going to be on the road of wisdom, that there is never going to be a revelation of absolute knowledge. 23 Just as one of Kant’s main enemies is presumptuous dogmatism, devoid of introspection and selfcriticism, so too does Masonry reject dogmatic attempts to lay down the law for all times and places: the spirit of geometry [which is Freemasonry] efficiently protects against the temptation of generalisations and against the traps of dogmatism. In fact the constructor [i.e. the Freemason] knows that every affirmation is true within the limits of a space of n dimensions.

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INTRODUCTION What is true of two-dimensional space is not necessarily the case for three or more dimensional space. (Beresniak 1986:122) Freemasonry is alert to the historical and social context of accrued knowledge, to what Nietzsche would call ‘perspectival thinking’ and the limitations of human faculties of comprehension. Hence Masonic thinking concerns itself less with collecting supposed certainties than with attempting to find ways of avoiding error: More than truth [the truly Masonic science] attacks error. The scientific approach to truth is concerned to avoid error. This science does not have foundations, nor infallible sources, neither in reason, nor in the senses. (ibid.: 15) Masonic thinking defines itself negatively to minimise mistakes, as does the Kantian critique: ‘The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of pure reason is therefore only negative…has only the modest merit of guarding against error’ (Kant 1983a:B823). Chapter 4, on Kant’s notion of ‘radical evil’, develops a thinking of differences that, despite being rigorous and demanding judgement where injustice occurs, declines to consider good and evil as clear-cut oppositions.24 This works against Kant’s definition of his critique as a Grenzbestimmung for reason, as a means of setting strict limits and drawing firm distinctions for reason (ibid.). Daniel Beresniak describes Masonic thought as also being intent on rejecting binary oppositions, which allow us to conceive of ourselves as the good and thereby comfortably externalise evil: ‘…dualism, the pillar of a general vision of a reassuring world; on the one hand darkness, on the other, light’ (1986:125). Good and evil are not separated by a decisive barrier that will keep them apart definitively. They are unfortunately related, akin to one another (or verwandt, as I will suggest in Chapters 2 and 3 that Kant would say): ‘Properties differentiate but not nature’ (Beresniak 1989:35). As a consequence, there is a permanent risk of contagion; the balance between the two is highly volatile: ‘The difference between a poison and a remedy resides in the dose, which must be adapted to the terrain’ (Beresniak 1986:121).25 Vigilance is needed, as one can never be sure that virtue is well founded and not under attack. Freemasonry is intimately related to architecture. The divine principle for this secular movement is called the Great Architect. 26 The architect is traditionally held to be the paradigm of the Freemason. The ultimatearchitectural reference for Freemasons is the Temple of Solomon. In the Bible (1 Kings 6:12), God promises Solomon that if he executes the

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KANT TROUBLE building strictly according to his plans and orders then he ‘will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake them’. The Temple is the promise of a reconciliation of humankind with the divine. Here architecture is not just the art of building. It is the concrete proof that humanity is morally and spiritually sound enough to build an ethical community. This Temple, commissioned by God, was in fact a prefab, all the components being cut to size, off site, prior to construction. Hence in 1 Kings 6:7 we read that ‘there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building’. The abrasive cutting and banging sounds, the dirt and disruption normally associated with building, are removed and denied in this project. The place of worship, which is to be literally God’s house, is not violated by the aggression and potential violence of the building site.27 Instead, this building is easily assembled, like a furniture kit from Ikea. To onlookers, it must have seemed to rise incredibly quickly and miraculously from the ground, as if growing organically. Chapters 2 and 3 of this book on ‘affinities’ address the problem of the articulation between the ‘technical’ and what is described as the ‘organic’ in the communal project for an ethical community. The ‘technical’ side to the construction of such a project is the calculation and mechanical contrivance needed to plan such a structure and the diplomatic negotiations between, and oratorical persuasion of, the citizens concerned. The ‘organic’ aspect is suggestive of the building as a natural confirmation and a non-contrived, non-violent embodiment of the communal wish to belong together ethically. The building should grow ‘naturally’, like a biological organism. Additionally, the organic quality of this project represents the natural worth of the citizens to reside in such a city without the technical props and reinforcements normally needed to keep them on the path of virtue. The ethical community is necessarily founded on the, unfortunately impossible, reconciliation of these two aspects, the mechanical with the organic. In the building of Solomon’s Temple, however, the chance was once given to realise this project without the risk of contamination from mechanical manipulation. It is for this reason that its destruction was so catastrophic. The Temple was destroyed by God because of humanity’s failure to live up to divine expectations. The Israelites revealed themselves to be idolatrous and sinful. Its destruction marks a temporal schism that is equivalent to the Fall. To quote Henry Corbin: ‘the destruction of the temple represents the entry into a world of exile’; ‘it is the end of the life before, of the previous world’ (cited in Bayard 1991:90). The aim to reconstruct the building is also the parallel striving for an eradication of human weakness, a redressing of the ‘crooked wood’ that is the human race (Kant 1997a:41; 1991c:46). It is a search for that lost promise of God’s presence among us. In The Symbolic of the Temple, Jean-Pierre Bayard explains:

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INTRODUCTION a reconstruction of the Temple would mean a harmonious organisation of humanity…to restore man to his original dignity by making him participate in collective life. This would produce both material and spiritual regeneration. (1991:127) This communal building would therefore be a reconstruction of an original archetypal edifice that existed at some time in a past whose historicity is blended with the mythical. Taken as a project for society, this is a building that will never be finished. Kant would be in agreement with the Masonic belief that: this infinite and indefinite temple, which embraces the universe is nevertheless closed and covered. A temple which could never be finished but which must however be built a little more each day. (ibid.: 130–1) While striving to hold on to the idea of the organically grown Temple of Solomon, all too aware of its ultimate unattainability, we industriously work away at our project for a reconciled community. In tune with these Masonic reflections on building, Chapter 3 will locate a thinking by Kant of an architecture that testifies to, or demonstrates its inability to be completed. An example of this ‘demonstrative’ architecture is a temporary edifice—this will be explained in the sections on landscape gardens and architecture below. Such a building type is also typically Masonic.28 When Masonry was faithful to its progressive claims, radically questioning established values, it was, as a consequence, often persecuted by the police. Unable to settle down in permanent buildings, the Masons were forced into nomadic wandering. This was generally the case for Masons in preRevolutionary France, who found refuge in, for example, the riverside guingettes outside Paris. Anthony Vidler explains: ‘The precarious social position of the Masons, save perhaps in the most highly protected personal lodges…did not lend itself to a permanent architecture’ (1986:87). Instead of physically built lodges in space, the Masons made do with cloth representations, diagrams, which were allegories of the Temple of Solomon. Such temporary architecture befits people on the move:29 Easily erased after a meeting, or rolled up and carried, these chalk ‘floor-drawings’ and ‘floor-cloths’ were the temporary, but typical, form by which the early Freemasons defined the space of their ritual and marked the emblems of their ‘craft’. (ibid.: 87)

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KANT TROUBLE These drawings were laid out in such a way as to depict ‘a route from the point of entry into the lodge to the point of reception, the route of initiation’ (ibid.). Vidler also explains that the prototypes of the Masonic ritual of initiation were Egyptian (ibid.: 98).30 Indeed, in Black Athena, a text central to my later discussions of the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor and the Greek model, Martin Bernal also states that ‘masonry remained the great repository of respect for Egypt’ (1991:268). These Egyptian-influenced initiations are connected with the next motif I will discuss, that of landscape gardening: the spatial order of the early lodges was gradually transformed by an increasing emphasis on the initiatory route. These routes…were no longer confined to the space of the lodge building itself, but extended out into the landscape. (Vidler 1986:99) Landscape gardening: the ‘folly’ of flimsy construction Eighteenth-century landscape gardens continue my analysis of architecture. Landscape gardens and architecture are bound together; they cannot be detached from each other. The garden does not stand in isolation; it relates back to the country house, the seat of local power. The landscape gardener worked in close partnership with the architect: indeed their collaboration was crucial for the eventual success of the project.31 The garden sets up the site of the country house, deciding how it is to be framed. The gardener tailors the ground and trees around the various ‘follies’, themselves architectural oeuvres, to highlight a specific aspect of them or create a certain ambience. Here gardening and architecture are working together for theatrical effects.32 The gardens themselves offer us a catalogue of architectural references, ‘follies’ typically including miniature copies of Greek temples; Roman theatres; medieval ruins; grottoes (often as humanity’s first dwelling place, the origin of architecture itself); Egyptian pyramids and obelisks. This claim for the inextricable relationship between landscape gardening and architecture is already a break with Kant’s analysis of landscape gardening in the third Critique, where he describes it as a form of painting (Kant 1990a:§51 261; 1988a:187).33 In fact, Kant defines landscape gardening against architecture: the former does not have as its condition of composition a concept of the object or ‘end’ (Zweck), unlike the latter. Instead, landscape gardening is merely the ‘free play of the imagination in the act of contemplation’ (ibid.). The garden is created purely for the eye’s pleasure, like a picture, not for a real use. It should therefore be light-hearted, not too regimented; not like a French formal garden but an English landscape garden. It should contain nothing irritating, offensive or difficult. In the ‘General Remark’ at the end of the first part of the ‘Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement’, Kant draws another direct comparison between

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INTRODUCTION architecture and landscape gardens. I will deal with it in two parts. First, architecture: With a thing that owes its possibility to a purpose, a building, or even an animal, its regularity, which consists in symmetry, must express the unity of the intuition accompanying the concept of its end, and belongs to its cognition. (Kant 1990a:§22 162; 1988a:88) Architecture is very tightly confined by Kant: its form must be regular so as to convey the ‘end’ (Zweck) or ‘use’ (Gebrauch) of the building (Kant 1990a: §51 260; 1988a:186). Presumably a school, for example, must look like a building with an educational purpose. This purist view of architecture is what drives him to the attempt to detach colonnades from the body of architecture and classify them as a parergon, an ‘addition’ (Zutat), a ‘decoration’ (Zierat) (Kant 1990a §14:142; 1988a:68). Colonnades are regarded as non-essential for architecture as they do not support the building’s function. This attempt to judge what is necessary and natural to a discipline and what is superfluous opens up enormous problems for the credibility of Kant’s argument. The act of judgement claims to be decisive and incisive. It supposedly cuts clearly between the natural and the artificial, fact and fiction, guilt and innocence, for example. It works on the basis of such binary opposites and draws a dividing line between them. Here, as is often—if not always—the case, the act of passing judgement, far from settling the case once and for all, in fact creates more problems than it solves. Instead of a convincing placing of the different art forms, we are left here with territorial disputes. Do caryatids belong to sculpture because they are figures that could exist in nature and do express aesthetic ideas? Or are they functional, thereby belonging to architecture, as their use is to support the door- or window-frame?34 For my purposes, it is crucial to note that Kant’s analysis, as it stands, cannot take account of what is known as ‘ornamental architecture’. For him, according to the definition of architecture discussed above, this would be a contradiction in terms: architecture is tailored to an ‘end’; it cannot be a parergon. ‘Ornamental architecture’ (which incorporates ‘follies’) is a building type, found in landscape gardens, whose function is to be ornamental and whose eventual use, if there is one at all, is often dissimulated and secondary. One illustration of Kant’s inadequate categorisation is the case of a garden-house. This he classifies under architecture because it presupposes an ‘end’, which determines its form by giving it a ‘concept of its perfection’ (Kant 1990a:§16 147; 1988a:73). That is, he defines the garden-house according to his very restrictive ideas on architecture. As it is tied down by an ‘end’, the garden-house is prevented from being regarded as a ‘free beauty’ (of which the garden is an example) and is relegated to the status of an ‘appendant beauty’ (ibid.).

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KANT TROUBLE However, landscape gardens give many examples of garden-houses that are most inadequately described by these Kantian categories. For example, one expects the ‘folly’ at the Désert de Retz known as ‘the destroyed column’ (see Plates I–III) to be yet another non-functional, fake ruin, but it unexpectedly turns out to be a fully equipped house. This column poses a riddle not to be solved easily: is it an example of a garden-house disguising itself as a ruin? Or is it principally a built ruin, which generates its own Aha-Erlebnis (‘surprise experience’) when one comes across it, even before one has worked out that it is habitable? Once we have discarded Kant’s separation of the garden-house from the garden, we can adapt one of his later comments on landscape gardening to develop these reflections. He states that ‘landscape gardening gives the Schein of use and being used’: Schein can be translated as ‘semblance’ (along with Meredith), ‘pretence’ or ‘sham’ (Kant 1990a:§51 261; 1988a:187). Here the garden-house, which was lived in by the estate’s owner, M.de Monville, as soon as it was built (i.e. around 1781–2), gives us a semblance of utility and employment. This offers us a possible interpretation that is not catered for in the two positions suggested above. This is neither a garden-house pretending to be something else (i.e. just a column) nor a teasing structure that we later discover to be a garden-house. Instead, more interestingly, it is a garden-house playing at being a sham garden-house.35 As a consequence, it is a folly: it pretends to be what it is. This crazy theatricality links up with the ‘demonstrative’ architecture evoked in the Masonic section: this building stages or demonstrates architectural inadequacy. ‘Follies’ in general, i.e. not just garden-houses, confirm this proposition: these temporary constructions, roughly patched together, are not supposed to convince the viewer that he/she is actually confronted with, for example, a Greek temple. Part of the pleasure, which can be unsettling, is seeing the wood and plaster that barely keeps the edifice together and discovering, in some cases, its one-dimensionality (e.g. Pfaueninsel at Wannsee, Berlin, and Sanderson Miller’s ‘eye-catcher’ near Bath). Instead of being convincing, they are intended to act like a trompel’oeil that conveys illusion. Fountains Abbey, which was incorporated as a magnificent Aha-Erlebnis into the landscape garden at Studley Royal, conjures up the impression of a medieval ruin, despite its being one. I continue with the comparative passage between architecture and landscape gardening begun above: But where all that is intended is the maintenance of a free play of the powers of representation (subject, however, to the condition that there is to be nothing for understanding to take exception to), in ornamental gardens…in all sorts of furniture that shows good taste, etc., regularity in the shape of constraint is to be avoided as far as possible. Thus English taste in gardens…push[es] the freedom of imagination to the verge of what is grotesque—the idea being that in

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Plate I

‘La colonne détruite’ in Le Désert de Retz: perspectival view of column. Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

KANT TROUBLE this divorce from all constraint of rules the precise instance is being afforded where taste can exhibit its perfection in projects of the imagination to the fullest extent. (Kant 1990a:§22 162–3; 1988a:88) Unlike the sublime, which provokes an ‘attraction and repulsion’ in the mind, the beauty of a landscape garden should not present the viewer with any challenging difficulty, any sort of offence (Kant 1990a:§27 181; 1988a: 107). However, Kant then describes the English taste in gardens as driving liberated imagination almost into the arms of the grotesque. These gardens encourage the imagination to release itself from all constraint, from all inhibiting regularity. The result of this beautiful inspiration is to push the imagination so far that it is practically exposed to the ugliness and distortion of the grotesque. Now we are no longer in the domain of straightforward perfection (Vollkommenheit) of an agreeable, docile beauty. Just as the sublime colossus is described as ‘almost too great’, so too this form of the beautiful is ‘almost grotesque’ (Kant 1990a:§26 175; 1988a:100). The playful game (Spiel) that characterises the beautiful is not as uncomplicated as Kant would have us believe. This mirroring relation between the beautiful and the sublime and the reinterpretation it necessitates of the beauty of landscape gardening is central to Chapter 3, on ‘affinities’. Landscape gardens are cited by the Böhmes as another example of the alienation and repression of the Enlightenment. The ruling classes, having set up artificial barriers around themselves in the name of rationality, are haunted by the threat of untamed nature and therefore convert it into a playful, peaceful garden created for them.36 It is here that they can live out their Rousseauist dreams of a ‘return to nature’. The garden also acts as a buffer zone between the property owners and the village labourers who work for them. It is here that they can forget the instability of their social position, based on inequality and exploitation. In spite of this dismissive reading, landscape gardens are texts that can be read in many ways. Although it is undeniably true that the landscape gardens of the eighteenth century were greatly helped in their development by unjust enclosures, which robbed the poor of their common ground, these horticultural texts are sufficiently complicated and contradictory for them still to be objects of serious interest, even as attempts to think the project of an ideal community. As Joseph Addison wrote in The Spectator, the garden has always been a copy of the paradisal garden of Eden: A garden was the first Habitation of our First Parents before the Fall. It is naturally apt to fill the Mind with Calmness, and to lay all its turbulent Passions at rest. (cited in Hunt and Willis 1988:147)

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Plate II ‘La colonne détruite’ in Le Désert de Retz: cross-section of building with cellars. Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

KANT TROUBLE The ‘calmness’ referred to by Addison tallies ill with Kant’s analysis of the imagination’s point of almost collision with the grotesque. It also does not correspond with the Masonry-influenced landscape gardens that present themselves as a route of ‘hazardous’ masonically inspired initiation. Such a garden is Wörlitz (near Dessau, BRD): the visitor enters a cavernous labyrinth, where he/she is tempted by alluring statues and easy paths. Before the wanderer is tempted to take the easy, restful way out and to leave the laborious, circuitous journey of ‘reason’, he/she is warned by inscriptions of the dangers of facility. Presumably, the result is that he/she is convinced of the necessity for perseverance with the slopes and climbs of the ‘way to wisdom’, which is also the way to a better, more ethical world.37 The landscape garden is a type of paradise, as Addison claims, but an artificial, cultural one. It renders nature ‘more natural’ by forcing it to offer shade at the appropriate moment, by wearing it down when it provides a slope that is too steep, by accentuating its views as vistas. This forcible adaptation of nature to our needs is required because we are irredeemably fallen, no longer at one with nature. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica, refuses to see this when he too describes landscape gardens in terms of paradise: ‘Paradise…properly signifies Gardens of Pleasure, the Residence of Angelick and Happy Souls, unsullied with Guilt’ (cited in Pugh 1988:125). The fact that we are sullied with guilt is what makes the falsity, pastiche, even kitsch of the landscape garden necessary. That is why we can see the fragility of the ‘follies’, their temporariness. The attempt at a re-creation of paradise, of a ‘return to nature’, reveals itself in the landscape garden to be in fact a failed utopia. Just as Disneyland is a crazy attempt to build ‘the happiest place on earth’,38 the landscape garden is a pathetic project for an ideal community. An essential difference between these two examples, Disneyland and the landscape garden, is that the former is supposed to be a money-making industry, whereas the second was an effective way of spending fortunes and often led to personal ruin.39 Indeed, many owners of landscape gardens had moral pretensions and saw themselves as creating in the countryside a projection of what a better world might look like. Adrian von Buttlar explains that they considered themselves to be ‘pioneers in new ideas for the state and society’ (1989:18). They withdrew from public, political life in London and prepared the way for ‘better times’. An example of such a project would be the garden of Stowe, designed as a place of resistance against the corruption and misuse of power of the Whig government under Walpole.40 Stowe sets itself up as a bastion of morality. It passes judgement on the contemporary politics in its crumbling ‘Temple of Modern Virtue’, where a headless bust of Walpole is to be found. In the ‘Temple of Ancient Virtue’, the ancient Greek contributions to politics, lawgiving, art and philosophy are celebrated. Finally, the ‘Temple of British Worthies’ contains busts of Shakespeare, Newton,

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Plate III ‘La colonne détruite’ in Le Désert de Retz: partial section indicating the distribution of the floors. Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

KANT TROUBLE Milton, Pope and others, thereby conserving the ‘great tradition’ regarded as under siege in the Hanoverian age. The retreat of these idealistic gentlemen to the countryside should not be seen as proof of the anthropophobia or misanthropy condemned by Kant (1990a:§29 203; 1988a:129). Instead, their return to the country was supposed to be more the sign of the moral, cultivated person praised in the third Critique, who happily leaves superficial social occasions to admire the beauties of nature in solitude or, indeed, the moral individual, who sadly goes into seclusion, leaving society to its evils. The former case is discussed in the following manner: If a man…readily quits the room in which he meets with those beauties that minister to vanity or, at least, social joys, and betakes himself to the beautiful in nature, so that he may there find as it were a feast for his soul in a train of thought which he can never completely evolve, we will then regard his choice even with veneration, and give him credit for a beautiful soul. (Kant 1990a:§42 233; 1988a:158–9) This ‘beautiful soul’ turns to nature as an Ersatz for the disappointments of society. Here he seeks nourishment for his imagination. In response, nature sets off a train of thought that the man can never completely catch up with. He can never successfully develop his reflections. Connected, reasonable thought and understanding suffer a defeat by the capacity for being inspired, the imagination. This confounding conflict between the faculties is usually associated by Kant with the sublime. The sublime exhausts the synthesising powers of imagination by forcing it to try to present the unpresentable ideas of reason. In our analysis of the beautiful, however, it is the imagination that, instead of breaking down, violates the other two faculties. This particular confrontation takes place without the person being faced with all the drama of ‘bold, overhanging and threatening rocks’, ‘volcanoes in all their violence of destruction’, hurricanes and the like. Instead, he is presumably looking at a pleasing pastoral scene (Kant 1990a:§28 185; 1988a:110). Even so, this ‘beautiful’ soul catches a glimmer of the sublime despite his experiences being not as emotionally shattering as those described in the ‘Analytic of the Sublime’. Chapter 3 will likewise be proposing a reassessment of the beautiful, one that draws the sublime closer to it instead of seeing it as fundamentally different, as recent criticism has insisted. The second type of seclusion described by Kant offers another example of sublimity: This sadness, which is not directed to the evils which fate brings down upon others (a sadness which springs from sympathy), but to those which they inflict upon themselves (one which is based on

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INTRODUCTION antipathy in questions of principles), is sublime because it is founded on ideas, whereas that springing from sympathy can only be accounted beautiful. (Kant 1990a:§29 204; 1988a:129–30) The individual suffering from sublime sadness leaves society not out of sympathy for the human plight but saddened by the perversity of human nature. In isolation, he hopes to find protection for his wishes for a better humanity. Kant explains that it is to conserve the idea of ‘what humans could become if only they would try’ that the person segregates himself. This utopian idea needs protection, as the recluse is otherwise in danger of hating humanity. Whereas the first type of seclusion was undergone in order to search for things in nature that could supplement the lacks of hollow society, the second leaves society to save his pre-formed ideas about progress. The propertied gentleman who also left society for nature out of moral conviction and decided to conserve his progressive, moral ideas for a better society by inscribing them on a modest scale in his country estate would encounter problems that are insurmountable. As the example of the ‘beautiful soul’ has just shown us, when searching for encouragement in the countryside, one is gently overwhelmed with imaginative thoughts that cannot be developed into a coherent structure. The gentleman already has his ideas and just wants to live them out in his landscape garden. Unfortunately, nature does not confirm his hopes in a way that he can build on naturally. He runs the constant danger of forcing nature, imposing his ideas on it in a way that would contaminate his ‘sublime’ state of mind. Kant makes clear that one should not attempt to tie the sublime to an ‘end’, to a determining project (Kant 1990a:§26 175; 1988a:101). Additionally, by trying to set up a mise-enscène of Arcadia, he risks upsetting the ‘beautiful soul’ who wants beauty to be natural, to be produced by nature herself (Kant 1990a:§42 232; 1988a:158). The beautiful vistas, which can be seen only from a given angle if one wants to avoid seeing the artificiality of the ‘folly’ strategically placed in the view, are all too reminiscent of the artificial flowers and simulated birdsong described by Kant (1990a:§42 232, 236; 1988a: 158, 162). For the ‘beautiful soul’, who turns to nature for inspiring nourishment, the devices of the landscape garden would be the equivalent of deception (Betrug). What would he make of the theatricality of, for example, Alexander Pope’s employment of a man to be a hermit, to live in moral and aesthetic reclusion in his grotto at Twickenham? Maybe the country gentleman should resign himself to the ‘vigorous’, sublime grief that Kant describes (1990a:§29 204; 1988a:130) rather than hope to find an adequate form in nature for his moral aspirations for society. We are always hoping to come across a trace (eine Spur) or a hint (ein Wink) of an accordance (Übereinstimmung) in nature that would justify our aesthetic and moral interest in it (Kant 1990a:§42 234; 1988a:159–60). The problem is

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KANT TROUBLE that nature does not assure us directly; instead it speaks to us figuratively in code (ibid.). Codes are cryptic messages that one can easily decipher wrongly. We can therefore never be completely certain that we are on the right path. Perhaps there are two options open to us: we can either give up plans to inscribe our moral projects in nature or we can try to represent the problematical and fragile nature of getting this sort of project off the ground. The suggestion of the second part of the analysis of ‘affinities’ (Chapter 3) will be that the rather pathetic, temporary ‘follies’ of a landscape garden are to some extent able to demonstrate the instability of our attempts to lay the foundations for an ethical community. The garden undoes its own utopian pretensions. One example of this demonstrative self-destruction of the landscape garden would be the invention of the ‘ha-ha’: this hidden ditch was supposed to camouflage the borders separating the estate from the outlying village and thereby give the impression of an uninterrupted natural progression from the house, the seat of power, to its underprivileged dependants. However, the difference between these two social groups cannot be denied, as one would soon see if one tried to walk directly down to the village. The garden is also what it is because of its borders. As Simon Pugh states: ‘The minimum condition for a garden is an enclosure’ (1988:135). Goethe’s Elective Affinities, which takes place in a landscape garden, also provides many illustrations of the undoing of the projection of an ideal community because of the problematic nature of its borders.41 In the novel, the owners of the estate, Charlotte and Eduard, are like players of a Space Invaders computer game. They hopelessly attempt to parry dangers that come from all directions.42 Their rustic seclusion signifies for them that everything outside the estate is potentially threatening. Even a good friend’s visit is regarded with mistrust as an impediment ([etwas] Hinderndes) and necessarily as the arrival of something foreign, alien ([etwas] Fremdes) (Goethe 1972:35; 1971:48). Their plans for the estate engage them in continuous activity. However, the further they continue in their project to realise the perfect estate and the ideal landscape garden, the more they multiply the seeds of future disaster. The beautifying improvements made to the estate mean that it is rationalised, smoothed out, opened up. Concomitantly, their exposure to the village community and to the mythical forces of nature is increased. The villagers are necessarily already part of the garden. They therefore have to be organised, cleaned up, arranged in casual, familiar groups to convey the ease of a happy community.43 As the aim or end of the project is to represent an ideal community, the landowners are in contact with the lower classes much more than they care to be. They have to negotiate with them and even rely on their knowledge of the land.44 Eduard states that he prefers to avoid such people if he cannot give them direct orders (1972:52, 1971:67). His friend, the Captain, replies that it is indeed difficult ‘not to despise the means by which one achieves the desired end’. The ruling

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INTRODUCTION classes are carrying out a social project that they want, even despite themselves. The Captain concludes that ‘Anything which really promotes the common good can be attained only through unlimited sovereignty’ (ibid.). The perfect communal project for the ruling classes would be one that they could impose on their subordinates with the full force of a sovereign will. As this is not possible, as they have periodically to replay the mythical founding of the democratic community (see the section on architecture below), this leaves them permanently insecure and haunted by dangers. Consequently, the increasingly open-plan style of estate has to be surveyed regularly and overseen so as not to overlook a source of potential danger; lists have to be drawn up to keep things under control.45 The space, which is increasingly devoid of obvious, physical boundaries, has to be strategically divided between the occupants of the country house.46 The stability of the family house and the estate is gradually undermined by their own lack of control. This arises from their phobic relation to boundaries, which produces a curious rigidity around sharing. The novel is a documentation of their varying alliances; a relationship for each of the four main characters is always obsessively exclusive. For Eduard, for example, he is either with Charlotte or the Captain or Ottilie. There can be no sharing of that person with the excluded members of this weird household. The borders between the ensconced friends are (too) clearly defined—their rigidity is in fact brittleness. When Eduard is with the Captain, they even occupy a separate wing of the house to be exclusively together. For these characters, alliances immediately generate oppositions and borders to be policed. The property and propriety of the estate is undone by the violence of these artificial separations. The very ‘affinities’ (Verwandtschaften) that they discuss so learnedly one evening reveal the inadequacy of their selfdefence.47 ‘Verwandtschaften’ teach us that boundaries do not mean that the Other—which includes the forces of nature—can be excluded, even if the frontier is patrolled. The border artificially and inadequately marks an already commenced relationship with others.48 This relation to others will not be denied, because it is a necessity.49 The characters delude themselves when they presume that they can choose or elect their affinity to one other person in complete isolation from the more general relation to others. The force of the artificially pent-up relation to others explodes in the estate itself: the megalomaniac dam that Eduard has built gives way and almost kills some of the villagers. This violent outburst of nature is accompanied by Eduard’s reckless abandonment of all previous ties and responsibilities in the form of a firework display for two, for himself and Ottilie, for whom he is prepared to give up everything and everyone.50 So, to conclude my analysis of Elective Affinities for the time being, we can say that the landscape garden confounds a heavy-handed, autocratic mastery of borders. The demarcations and separations that were set up by the characters to compensate for this lack of control unleash a violence that stems

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KANT TROUBLE from beyond the human. The violent forces of nature take their revenge and lay waste the estate. Paradoxically, rather than destroying the surrounding community, the resistant strength of the community is confirmed: its refusal to be excluded (although this refusal is not enunciated as a conscious political aim by the villagers, far from it). Further support for my apparently fragile example of the landscape garden—as something inextricably linked with a communal plan and of great interest for a discussion of Kant—comes from the introduction of the third Critique. Here Kant describes the two distinct realms of the theoretical and practical as separated by an inestimable ‘abyss’ (Kant 1990a:§III 83; 1988a:14). The third Critique is presented as a middle term that permits a crossing over (Übergang) from the domain of nature to that of moral freedom. This bridging device is only a temporary solution for the future edifice of metaphysics, as aesthetic judgement cannot stand up to the rigorous demands that will be placed upon it. Kant explains how metaphysics necessitates an indepth survey of the foundations (Grundlagen) of the faculties to be sure of the solidity of the system. This is an examination that aesthetic judgement is unable to pass. Aesthetic judgement is incapable of identifying its ‘determining grounds’: it is recognised as ‘a priori for everyone as law…without being able to ground it upon proofs’ (Kant 1990a:§42 234; 1988a:159). Mark Wigley clearly highlights the consequences of this inability of aesthetics in his ‘Postmortem architecture: the taste of architecture’ (1987:161): aesthetics cannot be constructed on the ground like metaphysics. The third critique is constructed to produce a ground plan, a plan for the foundations of metaphysics. It is only a temporary structure which, like a scaffolding, precedes the building then becomes an ornament which must be detached. But the convoluted logic of ornament ensures certain difficulty in detaching art from the interior of philosophy, a difficulty which binds architecture to philosophy. This inextricable, necessary relation between philosophy and architecture will be addressed later. Here it remains to tie up this section by signalling the poetic and philosophical justice of my example of the landscape garden with its ‘follies’. These temporary constructions, otherwise known as ‘ornamental architecture’, were also built in the attempt to bridge the distance between the theoretical ideas of a better world and praxis, or between moral freedom and nature. The example that I have been focusing on is necessitated by Kant’s own description of the aesthetic, that is, as an architectural link between the critiques. Later, I will not only be suggesting that this architectural type is central to the Kantian architectonic but also that, as temporary architecture, it stages the stakes of architecture itself.

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INTRODUCTION The Egyptians: those obscure beginners For my purposes, one of the most important ‘follies’ is the Egyptian pyramid. I will be implying that every dwelling place (Wohnhaus) has the uncanny pyramid as its supplement, whether this be literally as a ‘folly’ in the garden or as an unsettling principle. This is of consequence for an analysis of Kant because he describes his architectonic system as a modest ‘dwelling house’ with its feet firmly on the ground (1983a: B735). The pyramid and the Egyptians per se are described in Chapters 1 and 3 as witnessing the inability of a community ever to found itself completely or really to settle down. That is to say, what I will be calling the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor demonstrates the inability of a community to ever completely unite itself under the authoritative person of a sovereign founder or lawgiver. I will now explain the reasons for appealing to Egyptians and pyramids in this way. The Egyptians are themselves necessarily associated with architecture, foundations and laws. Architecture, the very first art form, is traditionally considered to have had its birth in Egypt.51 Indeed, for Hegel, Egyptian architecture represents a double origin: architecture is the beginning of art and what is proper to architecture was born in Egypt. 52 However, this Egyptian origin is regarded, by Hegel and others, as a merely formal beginning that does not fulfil architecture’s potential, while, at the same time, in its very inadequacy remaining typical of this art form. The Egyptians therefore lose on two counts: they are bound up with the fate of architecture, which is already unfortunate for them. On top of this, they are unable to come up with the ultimate architectural example. The Greek temples or the Gothic cathedrals or some other architectural type is always seen as superior to the ‘symbolic’ Egyptian pyramids and temples. The particular failure of the pyramids is attributed to their lack of articulation between the outside and the inside. They are mere shells, husks, crystals housing a foreign, unrelated ‘kernel’ (Kern) that is, to top it all, a dead body (Hegel 1986d:294; 1991:653). The relation between the form of the building and its content is ‘inorganic’ (ibid.). Despite this criticism being particularly pertinent to Egyptian architecture in Hegel’s eyes, it is also the complaint habitually levelled against architecture in general. As we saw in the Freemasonry section above, architecture’s problem has often been seen, even in the Bible, as how to reconcile its awkward, inhibiting technical or mechanical side with the ‘organic’ aim it is called upon to represent and the ‘organicism’ that it needs to be a ‘proper’ art form.53 We will now examine Egyptian architecture’s double problem in greater detail. I will begin with the suggestion that ‘inadequate’ Egyptian architecture is nonetheless typically architectural. Within a hierarchy of art forms, architecture is often denigrated as too tied down by practical considerations of ‘use’ or ‘end’. 54 It is not as free as sculpture, let alone equal to the

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KANT TROUBLE ‘Romantic arts’ of painting, music and poetry.55 All of these art forms would be more ‘organic’ than architecture, because they stand for themselves; they are independent of an external determination defining their shape and form. This underestimation of architecture—which we have already encountered in the previous section on landscape gardens and will re-encounter in the section on architecture below—is one also suffered by the Egyptians themselves. Both are often equated with heaviness and matter. The Egyptians were unfortunate fellows, who were forced to heave great masses of stone around on their backs to build their colossal monuments and so leave their mark on history. This is why Hegel characterises the Egyptians as ‘artisans’ (Werkmeister); they are hard-working manual workers. Like the activity of busy bees, their work is instinctive and not the product of reflection (Hegel 1970:508; 1977:704). Similarly, architecture is dragged down, and by the very materials it depends on: ‘The material for this first art is the inherently non-spiritual, i.e. heavy matter, shapeable only according to the laws of gravity’ (Hegel 1986d: 258; 1991:624). Both the Egyptians and architecture are enslaved because they are tied down by stringent laws of necessity. Architecture is restrained by the realm of technical feasibility. The Egyptians, according to Winckelmann, are held back by their very climate: ‘[In Egypt] where nature was impeded in its operations by stricter laws [than in Greece]’ (Winckelmann 1982:8, cited in Nisbet 1985:35). This takes us on to the subject of Egypt’s inability to be anything but a formal beginning. In On Egyptian Architecture, Quatremère de Quincy credits Egypt with the invention of architecture, but he later adds: ‘Egyptian architecture lacked the means which essentially constituted architecture, imitative art’ (1803:11, 204). The Egyptians never quite developed themselves sufficiently in the field of the arts, politics or religion to qualify for the status of the historical origin of Western civilisation.56 As mentioned above, the latter is traditionally regarded as Greek. Greece is the real foundation stone for Western progress, clarity and insight.57 Quatremère de Quincy agrees with Winckelmann. For him, too, Greece is naturally the homeland of the arts and a liberated rationality: Nature…after having passed through all the degrees of hot and cold, fixed itself in Greece as a central point equally removed from the two contrary extremes…under the influence of this fortunate temperature, all the arts (could) receive their due degree of maturity, the transports of the imagination were able to submit themselves to the calculations of reason and reason could embellish the flowers of the imagination. (Quatremère de Quincy 1788:486)

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Plate IV The windowed pyramid. Taken from Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurff einer historischen Architektur (1721). Reproduced with the kind permission of Harenberg Verlag, Dortmund.

KANT TROUBLE Greece is blessed by nature with a climate possessing the right balance of temperature, reason and imagination.58 That is why the Greeks themselves are youthful, fresh, energetic and healthy, free from the slightest blemish, knowing no smallpox or venereal diseases (Winckelmann 1982:7, cited in Nisbet 1985:35).59 The Egyptian population, in contrast, is dulled (dumpf) (Hegel 1978:261; 1900:212). Egypt is not favoured with a climate conducive to penetrative and artistic thinking: the country is subjected to a relentless sun, unmitigated by cloud cover, the consequences of which are that: In Egypt nature is herself compelled to laws which seem to deprive her of liberty. She seems to have done everything for reason and nothing for the imagination. (Quatremère de Quincy 1788:495) The Egyptians are rather boring mathematicians with no imaginative wit: ‘Everything had to lead the spirit of this people to the calculations of necessity, rather than to the caprices of pleasure’ (ibid.).60 It is clear that my insistence in the previous section on the Egyptian pyramid as a lightweight, witty, amusing ‘folly’ is already a radical reassessment of the usual stereotypical characterisations of Egypt. Although the Egyptians are closely associated with architecture, they fail to consider its true addressee, the community. Architecture’s task is to build (for) the community. The Egyptians, though, are regarded as never having taken the community into consideration (at least not the living, only the dead one). They had absolutely no idea of interior space—they cluttered any space they did have with ‘forests of columns’ (Hegel 1986d:284; 1991a:645). Hence their temples reserved no place for the community, unlike Christian churches (1986d:285; 1991a:645). 61 The prime example of this monolithic inarticulation, of this failure to receive outside elements inside a constructed form, are the pyramids themselves: these colossal buildings apparently serve no one still on Earth; they are intended for the departed. The pyramids have no doors or windows; they are hermetically sealed and accessible to no one living. They are sheer folly: in their absolute heaviness they are indeed as light and negligible as the eighteenth-century garden follies discussed above. They are polysemic; they cannot be tied down to any one meaning: are they based on astrological or mathematical principles? Do they have something to do with divine prophecy or are they really just crazy tombs? Whatever they are, they do not correspond to a human scale, are not tailored to our needs, are not simply for us.62 One of the challenges implied by my use of the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor will be to think through this given (non-)relation between architecture, the Egyptians and the community. Symbolic of this attempt would be the possibility of a pyramid having doors and windows (see Plate IV). This is a conception that threatens stereotypical images of inarticulate, unsociable

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INTRODUCTION Egyptians by closing the gap between the pyramid and the habitable house. In Chapter 1, this image of a pyramid with doors and windows is bound up with a theory of the pharaoh’s two bodies, the mortal pharaoh and his ‘Ka’. The ‘Ka’ or immortal body of the head of state is believed to pass through the phantom, false doors chiselled into the stone walls of the otherwise apparently shut-off and impenetrable pyramids and temples. This image allows us to reread traditional ways of regarding the Egyptians, to break away from the negative representations of them as mindlessly enslaved to autocratic leaders.63 Instead, it will enable us to release a logic that troubles any claim to incorporate the state. It challenges any conflation between the political leader and the community as a whole. The work of Martin Bernal and Basil Davidson has addressed the systematic belittlement of Egypt. For them, Egypt becomes, in the nineteenth century, a site of struggle for the European colonising powers against Africa. Egypt becomes a buffer zone, a grey area just before the Greek act of founding but after the dark, threatening, African stage of development. Africa is the Other, to which Europe and America are indebted and which they must dehumanise to continue their exploitation of its peoples and resources with a clear conscience. As Davidson (1987:3–4) says: After the 1830s Ancient Egypt ceased to be seen as part of Africa, and Pharaonic civilisation ceased to be an aspect of Africa’s development and initiative. As for the Ancient Egyptians, the builders of the Pyramids and of the greatest civilisation of High Antiquity, they were steadily reduced to the status of a rather feeble bunch of mystics and magicians. Davidson continues by saying that whereas Herodotus and his readers saw the Egyptians as being ‘absolutely African in origin and nature…later European attitudes lifted the Egypt of the Pharaohs entirely out of African history, and either added it to the history of Western Asia or assigned it to mysterious isolation’ (Davidson 1984:21–2). This strange and vague positioning of Egypt is indicative of the way that ‘Egypt’ accumulates significance. It stands for a whole range of troubling events and concepts that are threatening to a system bent on establishing itself, on laying down its political and cultural foundations in an originary way. This involves an artificial break with what now becomes the ‘past’, the ‘primitive’. The ‘new’ system, freed of its debts and guilt because of its novelty, can now define itself in terms of ‘progress’. Bernal argues that this ‘break’ is what distinguishes ‘the Enlightenment and the Masonic tradition’, with their belief in reason, from the later ‘Romantic passion for movement, time and “progressive” development through history’. The enlightened Freemasons could in principle accept anyone, regardless of colour, creed or sex, into their order as long as their

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KANT TROUBLE reason could be appealed to—reason is regarded by Masons, as it is also by Kant, as necessarily producing tolerance. This would provide an explanation for the syncretic nature of Masonic models. Beresniak tells us that not only Pythagoras but also Zoroaster, Moses and Jesus are among its spiritual leaders. He also points out that Greece, Egypt, Israel and Persia are all privileged places of Masonic knowledge. Freemasonry refuses any separation between a primitively obscure and overbaked ‘Egypt’ and a civilised, pleasantly sunny ‘Greece’ (Beresniak 1989:134, 173). The Romantics, on the other hand, are seen by Bernal as having lost their faith in reason. This is replaced by a faith in the Zeitgeist: people now had to be seen in their geographical and historical contexts. The racial genius or spirit of the age belonging to its people changed its forms according to the spirit of the age…but a people always retained its immutable essence. (Bernal 1991:206) Hence the Egyptians are doomed to remain strapping, well-meaning lads to whom maturity is forever denied. They never quite get there: ‘The Egyptians are vigorous boys, eager for self-comprehension, who require nothing but clear understanding of themselves in an ideal form, in order to become young men’ (Hegel 1978:271; 1900:220). They strive to separate themselves from what is seen as the previous stage of spiritual (non-)development, that of ‘African stupidity’, but fail to achieve the necessary degree of reflective understanding (1978:252; 1900:204). This present work will be examining Kant’s idea of progress in the light of these reactionary stereotypes. Chapter 1 directly analyses his portrayal of the Egyptians. At first glance, Kant seems to go along with the above clichés: in the Logic, for example, he describes Egyptian philosophy as mere child’s play (Kinderspiel) in comparison with the more sophisticated, more grown-up Greek thought (Kant 1977d:451).64 I will, however, be suggesting that Kant’s system can dismiss such prejudiced accounts of history, i.e. that his system does not need them to function. His account of the obscurity of the origin and the difficulties facing founders and the act of foundation within his philosophy prevent a simplistic designation of the supposed ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’.65 Architecture: monumentality and mortality—the ruinous act of foundation This final introductory section draws together many of the ideas addressed so far. Its aim will be to suggest that architecture is most architectonic, that architecture reveals most clearly the stakes of the architectonic—i.e. of our construction and the systematisation of knowledge—when its constructions

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INTRODUCTION are either unbuildable (utopian), ruined or temporary. We have already encountered the last category of construction, the temporary, in the sections on Freemasonry and landscape gardening. Here the wider claim will be made that architecture is most architectonic when it fails, falls; when its foundations are flimsy. From this logic, it follows that the need to build more or less permanent and solid buildings for society is in fact a (necessary) act of violence that short-circuits the possibilities inherent in the shaky process of founding and building. It diverts the constructive act, the act of construction, away from its closer ties with finitude and impossibility.66 My point of departure is that architecture is necessarily monumental.67 This is a term that is often used disparagingly. For example, Charles Jencks equates monumentality with massive, domineering structures typical of ‘closed’, authoritarian forms of society. This he opposes to so-called ‘ironic’, ‘plural’ postmodern buildings, which are indicative, according to him, of open, pluralistic societies based on choice and a mixture of possible tastes (Jencks 1989:345, 370, 380). In order to break away from such a ridiculously simplistic opposition, I suggest a re-evaluation, or rather a return to the etymological roots, of the monumental. The word ‘monument’ comes from the Latin verb monere, which means ‘to remind’. The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following definitions: 1 2

3

4

a sepulchre, tomb, burial place; [perhaps surprisingly, the second definition links monumentality with writing] a written document, record, a piece of information given in writing; [this relation will be important for my subsequent analysis of Hegel and Kleist later in this section] an indication, evidence or token, a portent; any object fixed permanently in the soil and used as a means of ascertaining the location of a tract or a boundary; [this idea of the monument as fixed and capable of delimiting space will be interrogated with the help of Heidegger’s work on Gegend] anything that by its survival commemorates a person, action, period or event.

Hence the monumental nature of architecture links it directly to death, absence or residual presence, the testimonial demarcation of space and writing. Architecture and philosophy are traditionally regarded as being polar opposites. As we have seen, the former is often regarded as basically a practical, down-to-earth art form. This is particularly the case when it is compared with philosophy, which can produce nothing as solid and tangible as a building. Indeed, philosophy is considered to be a theoretical and sedentary discipline, which is by and large restricted to institutions, having minimal repercussions on the world outside. Consequently, despite the

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KANT TROUBLE consistently disparaging remarks made about architecture within a hierarchy of the arts, philosophers often recall the image of the architect as a symbol of energetic, productive power, who uses his judgement in a determinative fashion.68 The architect is often jealously regarded as a creative individual able to manifest his will in action. 69 The archetypal figure would be the uncompromising architect, Howard Roark, of Ayn Rand’s notorious The Fountainhead. This imposing demiurge can exclaim: ‘I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one’ (Rand 1988:16). These powerful architects can really make the Earth move, unlike the impotent philosopher cooped up in his dark study crammed with books full of other people’s systems. However, these supposed differences between the two disciplines are mere platitudes. They rely on a series of oversimplified binary opposites: theory/practice; inside (society)/outside (society); static (sedentary)/dynamic (active). Such distinctions are ill-founded and ultimately most uninteresting. Despite these reservations about the way that architecture is represented in philosophy, it is not a reliance that can be easily corrected. Indeed, within philosophical discourse it would appear that the architectural metaphor is not just a tool used to represent a specific type of activity but rather is a necessity (i.e. more than, not simply, a metaphor) to get an argument off the ground. Metaphors are supposed to be ad hoc, provisional comparisons, whereas the appeal to architectural terminology appears indispensable to philosophical discourse.70 Kant constantly appeals to the architectural metaphor to describe the nature and structure of his philosophical system. In the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, he explains his project in the following terms: Now it does indeed seem natural that as soon as we have left the ground of experience, we should, through careful enquiries, assure ourselves as to the foundations of any building that we propose to erect, not making use of any knowledge that we possess without first determining whence it has come, and not trusting to principles without knowing their origin. (1983a:B7) Here it is the practical and economic preoccupations of building that are used to express the need, even for speculative philosophy, for measured progress and a gradual building up from firm foundations, which here are rooted in the ‘ground of experience’. Although the edifice rises away from empirical conditions, it cannot be constructed in a haphazard fashion, without design. Indeed, the need for a securely constructed framework arises exactly when one has left the ground of experience—it is then that architectonic is crucial. Philosophy is required to emulate architecture for the exact reasons that often lead to the latter’s disparagement: it is an art that nevertheless has its feet

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INTRODUCTION firmly on the ground. The architect is still also an engineer or builder, tied to practical considerations.71 The implications of the above passage from Kant are that: 1 2 3 4

foundations are the guarantee of a strong, solid edifice; these foundations, their ‘origin’ and place, can be determined, fixed in the ground; the building rises naturally from the foundations that have been laid down; the definition of architecture as building is a suitable analogy for the systematic accumulation of human knowledge.

Kant claims that the ‘origin’ of architecture can be designated without problem. As discussed in the first section of this introduction, metaphysics is always looking for the origin. This it uses as a supposedly secure building block on which to base its speculation. Hence Wigley can aptly state that metaphysics is ‘the determination of architecture as [more than] metaphor’ (1992:245). However, this section will show that the ‘origin’ of architecture, of the architectonic as a founding, building motif, is like other origins elusive. I will also be interrogating the other three assumptions—especially the use of architectonic itself. In the Preface to the first edition of the third Critique the same architectural image is used: For if such a system is some day worked out under the general name of Metaphysic…the critical examination of the ground for this edifice must have been previously carried down to the very depths of the foundations of the faculty of principles independent of experience, lest in some quarter it might give way, and, sinking, inevitably bring with it the ruin of all. (Kant 1990a:74–5; 1988a:5) The context for this passage is the assessment of the faculty of judgement to determine whether it possesses its own a priori principles and area of interest in the philosophical system or not. Kant decides that judgement has no ‘special realm’, because the ‘territory’ has already been divided up by reason and understanding into the (practical) concept of freedom and the (theoretical) concept of nature (1990a:82; 1988a:12). Judgement does in principle have a place for itself as a ‘middle term’ between the other two faculties of knowledge (1990a:74; 1988a:4). However, the possibility of its being annexed, of its Anchluß, by either of the other two faculties is justified, as it always tends to be, in times of emergency (im Notfälle) (ibid.). It would appear that it is this last, third, term of judgement that must provide the essential keystone (Schlußstein) or even ‘foundation stone’ (Grundstein)—it

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KANT TROUBLE is the very first basis (die erste Grundlage)—for the edifice. It has temporarily to bridge the abyss between the sensible and super-sensible (Kant 1990a:83, 106; 1988a:14, 37) and thereby render the system possible in principle, or make feasible its realisation in the future.72 Aesthetic judgement is allocated this role despite its own inability to be part of a metaphysics—as we saw at the end of the section on landscape gardens, this form of judgement is presented as remaining at the stage of ‘critique’ as it has no corresponding doctrine.73 The architectural motif is presented as the key(stone) to the possibility of systematic thought itself. The preparing of the site, the laying of the foundations by the critical procedure, is essential for an eventual metaphysics. Critique itself is presented as a tribunal in which legitimate claims of speculative reason are separated from groundless pretensions (Kant 1983a: B779). Critique concerns itself with: ‘[deciding] as to the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics in general, and [determining] its sources, its extent, and its limits—all in accordance with principles (ibid.: AXII). As it is so closely bound up with the critique, architecture too has to be involved with the judging and setting of limits. The architectonic critique is concerned with determining boundaries, deciding what ground is ‘proper’ to metaphysics and what is not: the stones of the foundations are boundary stones (Marksteine). Critique is presented as a framework or even a protective barrier against madness (garde-fou) with an essentially negative function. It keeps us from making errors and committing follies; it decides what belongs to the faculties of reason and understanding and what does not. Critique finds an ideal partner in architecture. The latter is also traditionally seen as a sensible discipline. It is tied to the realisable. However, wayward builders do exist. Some go against the practical and solid nature of their profession and attempt to construct impossibly high-rise projects. Such projects resemble castles in the sky or Towers of Babel, which lack a reliable rootedness in the ground. Unlike them, Kant is true to the founding principles of the architectural motif. His project is nothing exotic. It is a humble down-to-earth house (ibid.: B735).74 This claim suggests that Kant is under the illusion that his architectonic system will encounter no founding problems because of its modesty. Nevertheless, regardless of how few storeys a building has, some structures are fundamentally badly built. Kant draws our attention to structures that are more or less thrown together, constructed in a haphazard, ‘technical’ manner. His critique, however, is ‘architectonic’, based on the ‘affinity’ (Verwandtschaft) between its component parts. Its elements are touchstones (Probiersteine) interrelating and justifying one another. So Kant has located three types of construction for us. The first is merely ‘technical’, from which Kant has distanced his project. The second type is his ‘architectonic’, which is presented as tediously methodical foundational work, for which he excuses

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INTRODUCTION himself, and yet relying on mysterious ‘affinities’. However, the architectonic is not as organic as the third type of structure, the metaphysical system itself. This is presented as developing naturally within the constructed scaffold or mould set up by the critique. Unfortunately for Kant, each of these distinctions is fragile, is contaminated by its opposite. The first two can be shown to break down around the notion of ‘affinity’. This term was originally a chemical metaphor designating the separations and unions of substances. In Chapters 2 and 3, this process will be shown to be both organic and mechanical, acting with, and at the same time without, outside mediation. It thereby straddles the technical/ architectonic divide. The second distinction, between the ‘critique’ and ‘metaphysics’, is collapsed by Kant himself. For, despite Kant’s feeling of confident safety with his homely project, his use of the architectural metaphor is problematised from within his own project. The second unsettling effect arises from the distinction made between the now-possible critique and the future possibility of metaphysics. Despite being the stage before, the teaching beforehand (propaedeutic), the preparation for, metaphysics, critique is also part of metaphysics. To paraphrase Derrida, critique will have had to be included within metaphysics (1986a:46; 1987d:39–40). The before is also after (the not-yet). This temporal involution is evident in the following passage from the first Critique: The philosophy of pure reason is either a propaedeutic (preparation), which investigates the faculty of reason in respect of all its pure a priori knowledge, and is criticism, or secondly, it is the system of pure reason, that is, the science which exhibits in systematic connection the whole body (true as well as illusory) of philosophical knowledge arising out of pure reason, which is entitled metaphysics. The title ‘metaphysics’ may also, however, be given to the whole of pure philosophy, inclusive of criticism, and so as comprehending the investigation of all that can ever be known a priori as well as the exposition of all that which constitutes a system of the pure philosophical modes of knowledge of this type. (Kant 1983a:B869) The foundation/system distinction is revealed here as unstable, as is the edifice itself, owing to the necessity for the building/edifice to be able to come before its own foundations. The framework, the scaffolding, is also disclosed as permanent, not to be discarded, as it is already part of the metaphysics it was supposed to be propping up temporarily. This suggests that the foundations of the critique are not delimiting boundary posts (Marksteine) posted on the outermost limits of the knowable and the understandable, but are instead of central importance, being built into the structure of the edifice itself.

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KANT TROUBLE All this is to suggest that the modest proposal of founding a down-to-earth house, a homely abode, with a strong sense of what is proper, of what belongs in and outside its limits, runs the risk of faulty, flimsy foundations that will not lie down, will not stay in their place. The difference shrinks between the stable house and the crazy fragility of the megalomaniac Tower of Babel, from which Kant was keen to distance his project. The architectural metaphor is far more complex than Kant claims. We are forced to ask whether the ideal project of metaphysics can ever be built. Due to the fact that the foundations of the Kantian critique cannot be different from the system itself, the question arises whether the architectural model which best corresponds to its demands is necessarily utopian, ruined or temporary, without solid foundations. Kant has tried to use the architectural act as a symbol of determinative judgement whereby given laws are applied safely and surely to the particular concrete problem faced. In the third Critique, Kant, when he has to think the keystone that will prevent the ruin of his edifice, turns to aesthetic judgement, which is reflective. So, while using the architectural more-than metaphor, Kant is able to dismiss architecture, within a hierarchy of the arts, as too tied down by functions and ends.75 He therefore simplifies the architectural act by tailoring it to fit his needs. He then is all the more able to reject it as an art form in the last critique. Except that he cannot. As is well known, in the discussion of the sublime the architectural example comes back. The sublime is the experience of the failure of the imagination to grasp intuitively the representation of the ideas of reason. Despite Kant’s claims to situate this experience in the world of nature, when it comes to his giving examples he chooses the Egyptian pyramids and St Peter’s in Rome as the best representations of the failure of representation. 76 Given my earlier examination of the stakes of things Egyptian, his inability to shake off this nagging reference is not surprising. In this analysis of Kant, I have tried to suggest that the foundations of the critical project risk being unsettled by the architectural example. To explore further the stakes of foundations and of architecture as monumental, I shall turn again to Goethe’s Elective Affinities: Three things, began the Mason, have to be taken into account when erecting a building: that it is standing on the right spot, that the foundations are sound, that it is well constructed. The first is properly a matter for the owner: for as in a town only the prince and municipality can decide where a building is to be erected, so in the country it is the privilege of the landowner to say: Here and nowhere else shall my house stand…the second, the foundation, is the Mason’s business and if we may make so bold as to say so, it is the chief business in the entire undertaking. It is an earnest labour and our summons to you is earnest: this ceremony is dedicated to the depths. Here within this narrow excavated space you do us the

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INTRODUCTION honour of appearing as witnesses of our secret labour…this foundation-stone is to be a memorial-stone also. (Goethe 1972:65–6; 1971:83–4) This passage from Chapter 9 of Goethe’s novel deals with the ceremony of the laying of the foundation stone for the new pavilion in the main characters’ landscape garden. Although this building was purely for the use of its propertied owners, the whole village has to attend the initiation ceremony. When built, the villagers will not have access to this pavilion, but this moment of laying down the foundation stone is seen as a parallel of the communal laying down of the law; hence attendance is obligatory. The event is of communal concern. The foundation of the building mirrors the originary foundation of society, at which everyone is supposed to have been present to participate freely in the process that will restrict his or her actions by putting him or her under the control of the law—and also of the aristocratic class. Indeed, with its powerful fiction of consensus, the ceremony justifies the status quo. This episode depicts the re-enactment of an event that has never taken place as such: when, at what point in time, before they were actually citizens, did all the citizens get together to give their unanimous assent to the law? When was this sacrifice of their independence supposed to have taken place? Since these questions have to remain unanswered, we can conclude that a community has been continuously re-founded (although it can never have been ‘invented’), and its members initiated. The community always exists already; it pre-dates any event of foundation (which is inevitably a reenactment, never the thing itself). In Elective Affinities, the Free-Mason, who plays the role of the legislator, explains how the laying of the foundation stone is a commemorative act (the Grundstein is a Denkstein) marking a certain period in time and an epoch. The foundation stone being laid down is simultaneously a commemorative stone, a stone to make the community-tocome think (Denkstein). It is a stone that commemorates the death of the community (currently present) and the destruction of the building (yet to be built). This illustrates how the act of foundation is no single, straightforward event. Indeed, we can say that as the community is never actually founded as such, what is being demarcated is an artificial ‘event’ that can form only part of a series of repetitions. In Chapter 1, this analysis of the ‘event’ will be combined with the idea of the king’s two bodies. In passing, note how the Mason states that the foundations, which are mysterious (‘our secret labour’) and by nature hidden underground, are described as the most important part of the edifice. It is as if the rest of the building is of minor relevance. The (re-)enactment of the communal will, the staging of the act of consensus, is what counts. The ensuing structure— whether it be architectural or social; whether the building be private or public, aesthetically pleasing or ugly, whether the society be just or unjust—is of

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KANT TROUBLE secondary consideration. This would suggest that the act of ‘founding’ is by nature reactionary. So that that foundation stone can be laid and be fixed, it requires, continues the Mason: lime and cement: for as men who are naturally inclined to one another hold together better when they are cemented by the law, so too bricks who are already well matched are better united by this binding force. (Goethe 1972:65; 1971:83) The question poses itself: are we to accept this analogy between architecture as the art of building and human societies? The notion of ‘inclination’ (Neigung) is directly related to the idea of ‘affinities’: separations, repulsions and attractions between elements. These can be induced (by a mediator, whether a scientist or a marriage agency), or happen spontaneously, apparently out of free ‘choice’ (hence the term ‘elective’ affinities). Is it possible to see the law as a mere confirmation of a choice, as is suggested in this passage? It is assumed here that the apparently free choice of affiliation is natural; what happens if the natural inclinations are inherently perverse? Is the law, which enforces this perversity, rational? One would have to ask whether for humans the separation can be made at all between inclinations, drives and the law. One can equally talk about bad, ‘perverse’ building materials, but can the laws of construction also be perverse? If the laws governing building bear no resemblance to those of ethics and society, we must give up our illusions of seeing ourselves reflected in our buildings; we must begin to think a ‘non-representative’ architecture that no longer represents human concerns.77 These issues will be returned to in the later discussion of Kleist. I will now consider one last, long, passage from Goethe: Let us recall those alterations Charlotte had made in the churchyard. All the gravestones had been moved from their place (Stelle) and set up against the wall…There were many parishioners who had already expressed disapproval that the place (Stelle) where their ancestors reposed was no longer marked, and that their memory had thus been so to speak obliterated. There were many who said that, although the gravestones which were preserved showed who was buried there, they did not show where they were buried, and it was where they were buried that really mattered…‘You will understand’ [said the solicitor who has come to complain to Charlotte] ‘that all persons, the highest and the humblest, are concerned to mark the place (Ort) in which their loved ones lie…even though such a memorial must, like that of grief itself, at last be wiped away by time…But it is not the stone itself which draws us to the spot (der uns anzieht), but that

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INTRODUCTION which is preserved beneath it. The question here is not so much of the memorial (Andenken) as of the person himself, not of the memory (Erinnerung) but of the present fact (von der Gegenwart). I can embrace the departed far more readily in a grave than in a monument (Denkmal), for a monument has in itself (für sich) little real meaning: it should rather be a landmark (Markstein) around which (um dasselbe her) wives, husbands, relatives, friends continue to assemble even after their departure hence, and the survivor should retain the right to turn strangers and ill-wishers away from his dear ones at rest.’…‘And are these people to pass on without any kind of memorial, without anything to be remembered by?’ said Ottilie. ‘By no means!’ said the architect. ‘It is only a particular place we ought to renounce, not a memorial (Keineswegs! nicht vom Andenken, nur vom Platze soll man sich lossagen).’ (Goethe 1972:122–3; 1971:156–7) Emphasised are the three possibilities offered to us in this passage for defining ‘place’: Stelle, Platz and Ort. Ort, I suggest, is radically different from Stelle and Platz. The first two are more punctual, controllable and definable, while the last is bound up with the monument and mortality in ways that defy fixed boundaries and punctual spots.78 This passage raises the question of whether the architect is ever able to grasp the complexities of the monument as a boundary stone that marks a ‘place’ as Ort. Indeed, Goethe’s architect fails to understand the difference between the Ort referred to by the solicitor and the Platz he replaces it with in his speech. A thinking through of Ort would put into question the Mason’s opinion in the first quotation from Goethe that the site is in the right place just because power and money decide that it is. The Ort is not simply the site, is not encapsulated by any one designation, by any one building. The monument is that construction which renounces the illusion of dominating the site as Ort. This passage discusses the survivor’s rights over the monument: it sounds as if the survivor possesses the ground as property. However, Ort followed through logically would call into question any suggestion of the recuperation of loss, of death, through the possession of the monument. This certainly does not mean, on the other hand, that the thinker of Ort would be on the side of the architect and Charlotte, who wrench tombstones away from the graves they mark. One way of developing this reference to Ort is by analysing Heidegger’s use of the phrase from the essay on technology: ‘die ortlose Ortschaft alles Anwesens’ (‘the placeless dwelling place of all presencing’) (Heidegger 1962:41–2; 1977:43). Heidegger disallows any step outside an existential questioning of space and time. There is no position, fixable, no determinable place outside an ontological questioning of our In-der-Welt-sein, of our beingin-the-world. This rather complicates the problem of determining and building

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KANT TROUBLE on a site. Space for Heidegger is not an abstraction to be mastered as an external or abstract object: ‘Space is not something that faces man’ (Heidegger 1954:157; 1975:156). In ‘Art and Space’, he describes how particular ‘regions’ or ‘areas’ (Gegende) are opened up by Ort, not by specific constructions (Heidegger 1983:207).79 It is not the fact of building that creates localised sites but rather Gegend that has always already disclosed the world; it is a priori. As he writes in Being and Time: ‘Regions (Gegende) are not first formed by things which are present-at-hand together; they always are readyto-hand already in individual places’ (Heidegger 1987: H103). Gegend is later explained by Heidegger in terms of the movements of the sun, and this will lead us back to the passage from Goethe about graveyards and monuments. Churches and graves, for instance, are laid out according to the rising and the setting of the sun—the regions of life and death, which are determinative for Dasein itself with regard to its ownmost possibilities of Being in the world. (ibid: H104) The placing of monuments commemorating the dead and the construction of churches to celebrate life and death are both pre-empted by the a priori structure of Gegend and made possible by it.80 The Gegend traces the site of construction in advance of any building, but it is detectable only subsequent to construction even if it comes neither ‘before’ nor ‘after’ construction but is rather always already ‘there’, which is nowhere in particular. Heidegger’s analysis of Gegend both enables and undermines the placing of the monument as a singular event. The ‘tracing’ carried out by Gegend is comparable with the Derridean term or quasi-concept ‘trace’. In ‘Ousia and gramme’, he writes: In order to exceed metaphysics it is necessary that a trace be inscribed within the text of metaphysics, a trace that continues to signal not in the direction of another presence, or another form of presence, but in the direction of another text. Such a trace cannot be thought more metaphysico. No philosopheme is prepared to master it. And it (is) that which must elude mastery. Only presence is mastered. (Derrida 1972:76; 1982:65) The ‘logic’ of ‘trace’, or of the other quasi-concepts that Derrida poses as equivalent terms, différance and réserve, is one that refuses to be thought according to the oppositions presence/absence or space/time. The trace is the condition of possibility for something being present, but it is also the impossibility of presence ever detaching itself from deferral and difference, i.e. of ever being free from what is absent. Différance is an attempt to think a

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INTRODUCTION spatialisation of time (or vice versa), a ‘before’ of the opposition of time and space whereby space cannot be trodden underfoot by the development of spirit as temporality. It resists the discarding of writing, seen as scrawled and fixed in the space of a page, in favour of the apparently dynamic freedom of speech, which just takes up time. Not surprisingly for us, this is an Egyptian question: the silence of the pyramidal ‘A’ is what makes all the différance. It is this silent ‘A’, imperceptible in French when spoken, that not only makes the case for a re-evaluation of writing but also undermines the privileged position traditionally accorded to so-called phonetic writing against nonphonetic writing (Derrida 1972:4; 1982:4). Différance opens itself out into a recognition of what Derrida has called ‘writing in general’ (1985:161; 1976b:109), which, as we will see, is inextricably linked with a reassessment of architecture. Such a re-evaluation of the traditional and stereotypical assumptions of the discipline of architecture would involve an awareness of our inability to master and exhaustively define spatiality and the site. It would promise a closer engagement with the stakes of Heidegger’s Gegend and Derrida’s ‘trace’ through its awareness of what we can call—echoing Derrida’s analysis of writing referred to above—‘architecture in general’. The elusive nature of spatiality and the concomitant anthropomorphic illusion of spatial mastery are unwittingly highlighted by Kant. In ‘Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space’ Kant, like Heidegger, discusses Gegend and defines it as ‘space in general’ (allgemeiner Raum). As such, Gegend comes ‘before’ and ‘is’ over and above the particular divided and defined spaces that we know and have access to (Kant 1988c:994). However, Kant goes on to collapse the importance of this potentially unsettling Gegend by claiming that the only way ‘we’ can appreciate distances and the unfurling of space is to index them to us, to our body: Exactly the same situation applies to our geographical knowledge and even to our most ordinary knowledge of the location of places. They are no use to us at all if we cannot determine the ordered items and the whole system of reciprocal positions in terms of the sides of our own body, as they relate to the regions. (ibid.: 996) ‘We’ cannot position ourselves unless space—including Gegend—is reduced to a human scale. Kant then suggests that all sorts of worldly phenomena confirm the accuracy of this anthropocentric understanding of spatiality by kindly and conveniently dividing themselves up in a way that we can relate directly to our own body, i.e. by abiding by the humanised distinction between right and left. Kant enthusiastically lists a whole variety of things— snails, hops, beans and even the sun itself—that move or grow towards either

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KANT TROUBLE the left or the right, thereby apparently confirming the centrality of our standpoints (1988c:996). Instead of being seen as a mysterious and inexplicably generous act of ‘condescension’ on nature’s part to be marvelled at,81 one that highlights the relative unimportance of the human in this world, Kant seems to assume the natural human right to dominate and command creation. He then goes on to adapt the distinction between right and left testified to in nature for human, all too human, purposes. It becomes a tool strategically used to privilege right-handers against left-handers and one type of writing against another. Kant prioritises the right hand by claiming that it is undeniably privileged: ‘The right-hand side enjoys the undeniable advantage of dexterity and perhaps also of strength over the left-hand side’ (ibid.: 997). For Kant, left-handers are abnormal, like people who squint because they have something wrong with them. In fact everyone, apart from these unhealthy exceptions, is right-handed: That is why the earth’s population is right-handed (if one puts aside the few exceptions which, like the handful of cases of people who squint, do not upset the generality of the rule corresponding to the natural order). (ibid.) In a similar manner, Kant describes how, when faced with a written page, we frame it by distinguishing its top from its bottom, registering the edges and margins of the page and determining what sort of linearity is in play, i.e. whether our eye should travel from left to right or right to left. We can make sense of this writing only if we have previously worked out which direction has been chosen. If we go against the grain, by turning the page around, we will not recognise anything that is understandable for ‘us’ (ibid.: 995). This theory of spatiality and writing is reassuring inasmuch as the framing devices and ascertainments that we carry out make sense according to a human scale. Geography becomes anthropology. However, Kant does allow us to see the inadequacy of this anthropomorphic way of understanding spatiality in his example of the two hands. The left and right hands can never complement each other; space cannot close in on itself to bridge the gap between the two hands. The only way of turning the ‘incongruous’ hands into identical confirmations of each other, and thereby into justifications of humanised spatiality, is by twisting them in towards each other as if to pray— whereby they either become two left hands or two right hands—or by bringing in the prosthesis of a mirror, which can generate the complementary other (ibid.: 999). The artificiality of these solutions attests to the inadequacy of this humanoid way of seeing spatiality. I now turn to another example, that of the Australian Aborigines, which at least promises a closer engagement with the stakes of the Gegend. However, the trace eludes attempts at exemplarity.82 Empirical Aborigines will only

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INTRODUCTION inadequately represent the idea.83 The Australian Aborigines use the term ‘Dreamtime’ to express a very complicated notion of interlocking spatiality and temporality. Dreamtime belongs to the mythological past, when the totemic ancestors created space by meandering over the continent singing the world into existence.84 The invisible tracks that they left behind are known as ‘songlines’, ‘dreaming-tracks’, ‘footprints of the ancestors’ or ‘way of the law’. As Bruce Chatwin (1987:15) explains: each totemic ancestor, while travelling through the country, was thought to have scattered a trail of words and musical notes along the line of his footprints and…these Dreaming-tracks lay over the land as ‘ways’ of communication between the most far-flung tribes. The songlines are a type of writing, but not one that can be enframed or situated precisely. The lines run in several directions at once—not just to the right or to the left. Settlements are indicated as resting places along the continuing lines of communication.85 Consequently, for Aborigines, the land is not divided into plots of territory to be fenced off and policed but rather an area—each pertaining to a particular ‘Dreamtime’—is always on the point of becoming another zone, the neighbouring one. Chatwin relates a conversation that he had with an Aborigine on this subject: White men, [the Aboriginal] began, made the common mistake of assuming that, because the Aboriginals were wanderers, they could have no system of land tenure. This was nonsense. Aboriginals, it was true, could not imagine territory as a block of land hemmed in by frontiers: but rather as an interlocking network of ‘lines’ or ‘ways through’. ‘All our words for “country”,’ he said, ‘are the same as the words for “line”.’ (ibid.: 62)86 Before the Whites arrived, no Aboriginal was born landless, as he/she inherited ‘a stretch of the Ancestor’s song and the stretch of country over which the song passed’ (ibid.: 64). This territory cannot, however, be regarded as private property because of the songlines that intersect the area. This with-holding of the proper is reflected in the fact that ultimate responsibility for the land rests not with the owner but with a member of the neighbouring clan (ibid.: 109). Settlements are unsettled or undercut by the arche-lines of communication that run through them. The awareness of the a priori structure of the lines means that Aboriginals do not claim to found communities or build villages in an ‘originary’ way. Architecture is not regarded as having firm foundations and as dominating a specific place. This apparent recognition of what I have defined as ‘Gegend’ means that the community cannot live in isolation. A

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KANT TROUBLE regular ‘walkabout’ has to take place in which the Aboriginal walks along the songline, reading it as one would music. This journey is a ritualised recreation of the mythological creation of space. If the arche-lines are not periodically read, the land dies (ibid.: 16, 58). It is the link between these lines as a generalised form of writing and architecture that is of interest to us here. Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’ seems to be akin to what Derrida calls ‘writing in general’. As Catherine Ingraham points out in her article ‘The Burdens of Linearity’, Derrida’s re-reading of writing in ‘The violence of the letter’ necessarily also implies a reassessment of architecture: when Derrida radically ‘corrects’ Lévi-Strauss’ perceptions of the relation between writing/violence/origins of culture, he apparently leaves the link with architecture untouched. If writing is pushed beyond its narrow inscriptional sense into ‘arche-writing’, one might well ask if architecture too gets pushed back from a narrow inscriptional sense into the ‘more ancient sense’. (Ingraham 1992:144) Having analysed Lévi-Strauss’s (ethnocentric) description of writing in detail in Tristes tropiques, Derrida fails to remark upon the anthropologist’s recognition of the simultaneous birth of writing and architecture. Indeed, Lévi-Strauss (1984:354; 1978:392–3) writes that: The only phenomenon which has faithfully accompanied [writing] is the creation of cities and empires, that is to say, the integration of a large number of people into a political system and their hierarchisation into castes and classes. This is, at any rate, the typical evolution we have been witness to since Egypt and up to China, until the moment came for writing. It seems to have favoured the exploitation of man rather than his illumination. This exploitation, which permitted the bringing together of thousands of workers in order to subject them to exhausting tasks, provides a more likely account of the birth of architecture than the direct relation envisaged earlier. Previous to this passage, Lévi-Strauss had already suggested a link between the births of architecture and writing. However, he corrects himself with the remark that American Indians had architecture despite their lack of writing (1984:353; 1978:392). The above paragraph is his amendment of the earlier, faulty theory. What he now suggests is that a specific type of architecture, which constituted the ‘real’ ‘birth of architecture’, accompanied the birth of writing. The nations that provide the architectural types most indicative of architecture are China and, not surprisingly for us, Egypt. Lévi-Strauss turns

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INTRODUCTION to them for examples of massive, imposing buildings that, in his eyes, confirm the links between writing, architecture, violence, slavery and exploitation. Derrida’s analysis of Tristes Tropiques clearly demonstrates that, in his eagerness to respect the Nambikwara tribe of Brazil as different, unspoiled, more natural, than Western civilisation, Lévi-Strauss denies them access to a generalised form of writing. He defines writing according to his very narrow ideas of phonetic inscription and thereby reveals the ethnocentricity he was so desperate to avoid. His respect for the Other can be regarded as an almost patronising encounter with the ‘primitive’. His descriptions suggest at times that the Nambikwara people are the poor, vulnerable survivors of the terrible catastrophe of writing that has already dominated the rest of the world and whose innocence he, Lévi-Strauss, might have violated by unthinkingly giving them pens and paper to play with (1984:347ff; 1978:388ff). The same danger exists with Lévi-Strauss’s limited notion of architecture as being essentially massive pyramids. Here, too, he risks imposing ethnocentric definitions of the architectural. He relegates to the status of the primitive (belonging to the stage prior to the emergence of ‘certain characteristic traits of civilization’) (1984:354; 1978:392), an architecture that keeps the undermining Gegend in mind and that is compatible with nomadism.87 He also reduces the complexity of Egyptian architecture itself. It is too simplistic to dismiss ‘phonetic’ writing and ‘monumental’ architecture as violent and therefore bad. In the passage quoted above, Lévi-Strauss claimed that writing and architecture led to enslavement rather than ‘illumination’. By indirectly equating writing and architecture with obscurity and ignorance (rather than with ‘enlightenment’), he repeats a most traditional gesture whose reactionary ramifications we have already followed in the section on Egyptians above. Architecture and writing have always been the blind spots of theorists in search of an air-tight theory, a solid structure or ‘architectonic’ system. Leading on from his experiences with the Australian Aboriginals, Chatwin reflects upon nomads in general. He remembers a Chinese text he once read as part of his research into nomadism for a book that he wanted to write: Useless to ask a wandering man Advice on the construction of a house. The work will never come to completion. He tells us that: ‘After reading this text, from the Chinese Books of Odes, I realized the absurdity of trying to write a book on Nomads’ (Chatwin 1987:199). Chatwin had harboured the intention of proving his theory that nomads had been the key or ‘crankhandle’ of history (ibid.: 91). However, he eventually

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KANT TROUBLE discovered that the very subject-matter undid his attempts at systematisation. As the quotation suggests, the architecture that pertains to nomads in general defies incorporation into an ‘architectonic’. ‘Their’ architectural text, or writing, does not have an end. It cannot be summed up and completed. It does without firm foundations and consequently also evades attempts to be pressganged into exemplarity as a designated ‘their’/‘there’. This ‘nomadic’ approach to architecture and writing in general promises a more interesting way of looking at things Egyptian. By highlighting the underlying but shifting nature of Gegend, as that which facilitates and unsettles, I hope later to go on to trouble the notion that any architectural type, even the most apparently solid and massive, can ever be firmly founded. Egyptian architecture, as we have repeatedly seen, is regarded as most typical of architecture in the narrow sense. Having established the relation between architecture and writing, I will now explore architectural textuality so as to begin to release the arche of architecture from founding myths and origins. Hegel is again an obvious person to rely on for dubious information about the Egyptians. He repeatedly describes the Egyptians as preoccupied with writing. They work away at their stone edifices, and what the Egyptians scribble on them are obscure riddles in the form of hieroglyphs (Hegel 1978:265; 1900:214). However, Hegel cannot admit that Egyptian inscription is ‘proper’ writing; that is why he claims in the Philosophy of Religion that the Egyptians had no written documents (Hegel 1986e:441; 1988:325). However, he does suggest that we consider the pyramids as pages of a book, as substitute books (Hegel 1986d:283–4; 1991a:644), but the hieroglyphic writing that we see in evidence on the stone façades is not phonetic. It lacks the residual presence of voice. The hieroglyphs do not represent sounds. Therefore, despite Hegel’s definition of all art as an impassioned ‘call’ (Hegel 1986c:102; 1991a:71) for answers to transcendental questions, the pyramids, and the hieroglyphs they are covered with, are mute and dumb, devoid of spirit (1986c:457; 1991a:354). Quatremère de Quincy also describes Egyptian architectures as similar to books: As [these Egyptian edifices] were destined to receive inscriptions in symbolic characters on all of their surfaces, one must regard them as large books, always open for public instruction; they could neither be too simple, nor too smooth, nor offer too many pages for the development of figurative signs which were able to make use of the slightest of spaces. (Quatremère de Quincy 1803:59) These architectural texts are open pages that have no borders or margins, i.e. most unlike Kant’s description of a written page. There is never too much writing for the Egyptians; the scribbling is all over the place. Like grass, the

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INTRODUCTION texts crop up in the most unexpected in-between places. 88 The learning process, the ‘instruction’, never stops with these monuments. Quatremère de Quincy adds: ‘All these monuments were types of public libraries, their ornaments were the indexes (légendes)’ (ibid.). Légende can mean the key to understanding a list or map, or an explanatory caption. However, here the other meanings of ‘légende’ are more appropriate: the (mythological) legend or (fabricated) fairy tale. Just as the principle of nomadism thwarted Chatwin’s intention to define their strategic position as the key to all history, so too does the Egyptian example reveal the idea of a ‘key’ as legendary, as a myth.89 Likewise, in Chapter 1, I will be appealing to the term ‘Egyptian’ as a way of complicating and undoing designations of the origin or originator. The myth of the ‘Egyptian’ reveals that the key to history, to the law, to absolute knowledge, is not to be revealed. As a conclusion to this section on architecture, I return to the final question: whether the architectural ‘metaphor’ is suitable for reflecting human projects and ideals. For this, I turn to Kleist, who in March 1801 became acquainted with Kantian philosophy. The philosopher’s revelation of the irremediable limitations to human knowledge and the subsequent uncertainties that surround the individual unleashed a violent ‘crisis’ in Kleist, for whom Kant was not at all the thinker of the dependable ‘architectonic’ with its feet firmly on the ground. Kant was not the thinker who, having once mapped out a modest yet safe and secure haven, enabled a gradual, but still confident, consolidation of material. Instead, he was rather he who radically placed in doubt all of Kleist’s previous assumptions about the security of an investment in a gradual Bildung of his personality and teleological guarantees of creation’s striving towards ever-greater perfection. Kleist relates his Kant crisis to Wilhelmine von Zenge in the following manner: Not long ago…I became acquainted with the Kantian philosophy— and I now have to tell you of a thought I derived from it, which I feel free to do because I have no reason to fear it will shatter you so profoundly and painfully as it has me…We are unable to decide whether that which we call truth really is truth, or whether it only appears to us to be. If the latter, then the truth we assemble here is nothing after our death, and all endeavour to acquire a possession which will follow to the grave is in vain…If the point of this thought does not penetrate your heart, do not smile at one who feels wounded by it in the deepest and most sacred part of his being. My one great aim has failed me and I have no other. (1984a:199–201, also cited in Nietzsche 1988:355–6; 1987:140–1) Kant shook the very foundations of Kleist’s belief in personal improvement as a certain means of accumulating Truth and Wisdom. Kleist’s sense of the dangerous side of Kantian studies, his experience that a reading of Kant

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KANT TROUBLE meant Big Trouble for his comfortingly homely preconceptions, has been lost from most recent academic work on Kant. 90 Kleist reminds us of the major and exciting challenges that Kant posed for orthodox thinking. However, the letter I will now consider was written four months before this shattering exposure to Kantian philosophy. Kleist still has, virginally intact, his confident faith in architectonic systems, in reliable building blocks and in himself as a brilliant young man, on a par with Newton, Galileo, Pilâtre and Columbus, making rapid intellectual progress towards increasingly important discoveries (Kleist 1984:151–3). Indeed, Kleist’s intriguing letters to Wilhelmine come in the form of somewhat arrogant instructions to his young, naive girlfriend, whom he perceives as being in need of a (male) guiding hand. He writes for the express purpose of giving her philosophical ideas to reflect upon for her intellectual improvement. One such idea, which Kleist presents to his ‘dear girl’ in a letter dated 16 November 1800, is that she should draw her lessons from nature. Every natural phenomenon is important. He states that one must constantly look out for Ähnlichkeiten, similarities, parallels between nature and life/culture (ibid.: 155). The natural world will once again be illustrated by an architectural example, as it was with Goethe in Elective Affinities. There the affinities in nature were applied to the ‘natural’ bonds between building components. With Kleist, we are still looking for analogies, for a Gleichnisrede, to use Goethe’s term. Kleist states that ‘the thinking person’ sees in ‘nature’ things that one could not get from a book. However, this implies that the world is a type of text, full of signs to be analysed. These messages, presumably intended for ‘us’ humans—at least that is ‘our’ assumption—are written in cryptic hieroglyphs that must be deciphered. This necessarily implies a risk of misinterpretation. We force a meaning on to something that maybe was not intended for us at all. This risk is not discussed by Kleist in the letter I am going to look at, although it is addressed by him elsewhere. Kleist relates the following episode to Wilhelmine: That evening before one of the most important days of my life I went for a walk in Würzburg. As the sun went down it was as if my happiness was sinking with it. I shuddered to think that I perhaps had to cut myself off from everything that was dear to me. Then I went, deep in thought, through the vaulted gateway back into the town. Why, I thought, does the vault not sink inwards as it has no supports? It stands, I replied, because all the stones want to collapse at once and I drew such refreshing comfort from this thought, which has stood by my side even in the most decisive moments with the hope that, I too will maintain myself when everything lets me go. (1984:154)91

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INTRODUCTION Purely on a biographical level, there is tragic poignancy in this description of Kleist’s supposedly unfailing recipe for pulling himself though life’s most difficult moments, since he was later to commit suicide. So much for his good advice! This passage seems to be suggesting that things hold only because of the law condemning bodies to a potentially destructive headlong fall. As the vault’s stones are perilously perched inwards and downwards towards their immanent destruction, the structure holds. It is precisely the concerted confrontation of destruction, all the stones abandoning themselves at once to the law of gravity, that causes bodies to fall, that permits the structure to hold. Stability comes through overall instability; security thanks to insecurity. Kleist all too confidently compares the rules dictating construction to the laws governing society and human nature. There are limited possible solutions for constructing a vault: if one element is missing, the whole structure collapses. Engineering projects that push structures to their limits are projects that apply the laws governing construction ‘literally’, reducing the margin between what holds and what falls. Structures become more unstable, not less, the closer one follows the geometrical and mechanical rules of construction. As the margin around the law decreases, so the risk involved increases. There is, however, someone to calculate more or less the risk involved. The engineer cannot influence the laws involved, but he/she can hopefully work out the laws of probability surrounding them, enabling a constructive turn away from destruction. 92 Vaults, especially, need to be pre-planned, carefully calculated in advance. Vaults are precisely not naturally found in nature. Kleist deceives himself by drawing solace from the vault as if it were really a natural phenomenon. The law of gravity condemning bodies to a destructive plunge is natural, but the vault is cultural, the result of human experimentation. And yet, the vault is also not the pure product of arduous human work, gradually accrued over the centuries. The posing of a vault has to happen all of a sudden: once the formwork is removed, either the vault is in place or it is not. It cannot be built bit by bit. There is always a residual risk that the exact positioning of the elements might be slightly off the mark. This risk Kleist is blind to. He far too confidently read the vault as a confirmation of a natural parity between himself and an ultimately reassuring order in the world. By forcing one interpretation on to a building, by trying to determine it as a message for us, one is ignoring the Heideggerian Gegend, which calls into question the limits and positioning of the buildings as an act of mastery. One is also neglecting the links between buildings and writing, the scribbling that must go on, that can never stop. By trying not only to ascertain a message but also to tailor it to suit anthropomorphic needs, one risks being crushed under the weight of the failed analogy. The vault most probably does not imminently collapse (although it immanently has to), but Kleist does. In 1811, a year after writing ‘On the Marionette Theatre’, he shoots himself.

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KANT TROUBLE In ‘On the Gradual Composition of Thoughts while Speaking’ (1805/6), Kleist sets out to prove that ideas are generated from speech (l’idée vient en parlant) (1984:453). He explains that even if the person who is being addressed does not know anything about the subject concerned and even if the speaker does not have a clue about what point he/she wants to make, the act of speaking is conducive to a sort of Ersatz revelation. Kleist’s narrator describes how this method works for him: I mix in inarticulate sounds, I draw out the conjunctions, I use an appositional clause where none is necessary and implement other devices to stretch out my speech in order to gain the requisite timespan for the fabrication of my idea in the workshop of reason. (ibid.: 454) Here it is the empty formalism of spoken language that permits a theory to be pinpointed or a meaning to be followed through to a conclusion. Spoken language, because it creates the illusion of an impromptu dialogue, allows many ritualised hesitations, automatic phrases that fill in and pad out the speech. These structural devices facilitate the clarification of ideas. By abandoning himself to the formal laws of language, ‘Kleist’ manages to express interesting ideas. But such an expression does not come from any ‘inner mind’ that is giving vent to carefully nurtured personal reflections. Indeed, when ‘Kleist’ struggles with ideas in isolation and tries to work them out by himself on paper, he achieves nothing. If he writes without knowing in advance exactly what he wants, his ideas never become clear no matter how much he applies himself to them. However, the supposed inspirational interaction between speaker and addressee celebrated by ‘Kleist’, which permits a ‘gradual composition of thoughts’, is only a nominal one. ‘Kleist’ admits that he does not give his sister a chance to intervene to express her views or objections. Sometimes, his sister appears to want to interrupt his reasoning, and this is enough to compel him onwards with his monologue: Thereby there is nothing more beneficial than a movement made by my sister indicating that she wants to interrupt me. My mind, which is already tensed, is further stimulated by this attempt to rob it of the prerogative of speech. (ibid.: 454) The supposed addressee is reduced to silence. Any attempt by the sister to give voice to an opinion serves as fuel to the relentlessly developing speech, which instinctively resists intervention and exchange.93 Later on in the essay, the implications of this become clear: speaking subjects become talking automatons manipulated and dispossessed of their cherished thoughts by oral language:

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INTRODUCTION Now that [the speakers] have drawn everyone’s attention to them, the speakers appear to intimate, by means of embarrassed gestures, that they no longer really know what they wanted to say. It is probable that these people did originally have something very pertinent and well thought-out to say. However, the sudden change in activity, the mental transition from thought to expression, knocked flat the mind’s feelings of excitement which are necessary to hold thoughts together as well as promoting their resurgence as delivered speech. (ibid.: 457) In comparison with these unfortunates, those speakers who, prior to their speech, had not painstakingly worked out their ideas are able to perform well. Kleist concludes that those who originally did not intend to express anything in particular end up saying a lot. At least that is sometimes the outcome. In his analysis of ‘affinities’ in the Anthropology, Kant suggests another, one that is far less amusing: In social conversation people sometimes leap from one subject to another, quite different one, following an empirical association of ideas whose ground is merely subjective…This desultoriness is a kind of nonsense in terms of form, which disrupts and destroys a conversation. Only when one subject has been exhausted and a short pause follows can we properly launch another subject, if it is interesting. (Kant 1977b:479; 1974:52) A far cry from Kleist’s genially inspired ad hoc speakers, Kant reminds us of another scenario, one that is all too familiar: those megalomaniac speakers who go on and on, who think that they are inspired and being inspirational but who are actually deadly boring. Their tedium is embarrassing, and they manage to kill any interesting social exchange by their arrogant domination of the conversation. Kant’s solution to such counterproductive leaping from one boring point to another is to string the association of ideas one by one along a ‘theme’. He quaintly suggests that social conversation should always start off gradually—as we will see later, graduality is Kant’s standard response to all sorts of leaps (biological, political, aesthetic). 94 Rather too sagely, he recommends that we, before embarking on our speech, preface it with a little preliminary conversation about the weather: ‘When we go from the street into a group gathered for conversation, the bad weather is a good and common expedient’ (ibid.). Instead of barging in on company and straightaway talking about Turkey (Kant’s example), an action that greatly upsets people’s imaginations, Kant advises us to begin our conversation with the overcast sky.

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KANT TROUBLE He seems to be suggesting that, in order to remain within the socially acceptable one must curb one’s loquacity, taming its excesses with the discipline of a theme. ‘Kleist’, on the other hand, shows us that even those who, acutely conscious of social etiquette, turn up with their speech already planned for the event, are comically divested of their pre-packaged words. The more they presume to dominate language, to eliminate any risk in their delivery of speech, the more inhumanly mechanical it becomes. ‘Kleist’ opts instead for the abandonment of self to the structure of language itself. Giving oneself up to the formal laws of language implies a renunciation of the cherished presumption of giving voice to one’s innermost thoughts. Kant, by contrast, checks our enthusiasm by drawing our attention to the serious risk of being antisocial and of not really coming up with anything really interesting that would justify such a violent intrusion. However, the solution he proffers us is lamentably humdrum. It is difficult to imagine ever being able to generate anything really inventive if one’s starting-point each time is the adverse meteorological situation. Between them, Kleist and Kant highlight a problem about expression and representation that both think a certain architectonic, or ‘art of constructing systems’, can settle (Kant 1983a:860). Kant appears to stick to his advice to restrict our speeches to modest beginnings, building our theme up gradually from solid consensual foundations (everyone likes moaning about the weather); Kleist, who began by celebrating the vault as an ultimately consoling analogy for humans, opts for the structure of language itself as a machine that can carry one through the process of the elaboration of thoughts. However, Kleist has now learned, thanks to his sensitive reading of Kant, that the world is not tailored to our needs; that the universe is not gathered around the human, facilitating his personal development and understanding of things in themselves. He shows us how, in abandoning one’s self to structural laws (like those programming language and those constituting the vaulted archway), the status of the human can be reinterrogated. In tune with the recent theories of cognitive neuropsychologists such as Steven Pinker, language is not seen by Kleist as a wholly human attribute over which we have complete control. It is not perceived as a simple tool that humans once invented and subsequently hand down by teaching it to their offspring. Indeed, according to Pinker, language cannot be regarded as a pure cultural artifact but is instead something in us, an ‘instinct’ or ‘computational module’ produced by genes (1994:15–32). Consequently, our control over this propensity for language is limited. Pinker tells us that language ‘develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction’ (ibid.: 18). Language is produced by ‘the innate grammatical machinery of the brain’ (ibid.: 35). As a way of deflecting a gut rejection of his theory of language, Pinker points out that our having an innate instinct for language need not necessarily mean that we act as a ‘fatal automaton’, as if demonically possessed by a talking machine

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INTRODUCTION (although this is a danger that Kleist and Kant are aware of). Indeed, Pinker himself concurs that: The workings of language are as far from our awareness as the rationale for egg-laying is from the fly’s. Our thoughts come out of our mouths so effortlessly that they often embarrass us, having eluded our mental censors. (ibid.: 21) However, Pinker suggests that we can nevertheless still be creative with language, we possess ‘an instinct to acquire an art’. The relinquishment of absolute control, of the claim to a wholly human form—constructed by and for humans—of expressivity, brings the human into contact with other life forms, thereby widening our sense of the world and its interactivity. Indeed, Pinker makes this rapprochement between the human and other creatures explicit: he tells us that the language instinct is ‘not peculiar to humans but seen in other species such as song-learning birds’ (ibid.: 20). He also compares our propensity to use words to the spider’s web-spinning aptitude. No ‘unsung spider genius’ ever invented web spinning, just as no human actually invented language (ibid.: 18). In ‘On the Marionette Theatre’, Kleist continues to draw on Kant’s lessons about the ultimate unknowability of the world, and the absence of a guarantee backing the human’s privileged place within it, by developing further his exploration of an expressivity that is ‘improper’ inasmuch as it does not completely emanate from a self-reflectively nurtured, ‘authentic’ interiority. In stark contrast to the self-consciously affected prancings of humans, the dance of the marionette is graceful. The marionette’s dance is ‘innocently’ expressive, it is evocative without being willed; the marionette ‘moves without prejudice’, it is ‘a relative force in the fluid world of relative forces’ (Parry in Kleist 1981:9). Unburdened by the bitter fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, marionettes do not seek to express themselves or to knowingly possess the world around them.95 For the Principal Dancer in Kleist’s tale, if we were able to shed our prejudices about the inferiority of the ‘art’ demonstrated by the mechanically operated, inanimate puppets, we— including even professional dancers—could learn a lot from them. But, as Kleist has already shown us with the example of those speakers desperately clutching their pre-planned speeches, and Kant also unwittingly corroborated with his quaint suggestions about speech making, humans have difficulty in letting go. Indeed, de Man explains that allowing the aesthetic effect to be created through ‘the formal laws of tropes’ presents no problem to the marionette, whereas the human strains himself, thereby restraining the aesthetic effect, in an attempt to give vent to a thought, to determine the action ‘by the dynamics of [a] represented passion or emotion’ (de Man 1984:286).

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KANT TROUBLE Returning to my reflections on architecture, it too—like dance—can also be regarded as not expressive in the traditional anthropocentric sense. It is not governed by rules that are identical to those dear to humans. Architecture, like puppets, abides by the laws of gravity and equilibrium— as Kleist noticed when looking at the vault. This does not mean that there is an obvious parallel between humans, who are also determined by weight, and buildings or puppets. As de Man continues in his analysis of the mechanical puppets: Caught in the power of gravity, the articulated puppets can rightly be said to be dead, hanging and suspended like dead bodies: gracefulness is directly associated with dead, albeit a dead cleansed of pathos. Rather than speaking of a synthesis of rising and falling one should speak of a continuity of the aesthetic that does not allow itself to be disrupted by the borderlines that separate life from death, pathos from levity, rising from falling. (ibid.: 287) Following de Man’s exegesis of Kleist’s texts, we can say that, in his 16 November 1800 letter to Wilhelmine, Kleist was ignorant of what was later to be his own theory. He was blind to his own dark revelations that mechanical art forms cannot be anthropomorphised. Buildings do not rise and fall as humans do. They are not mortal but inhuman; they do not necessarily reflect human concerns. It is not surprising that Kleist should not see his own later insight. The lesson that buildings are unfeeling and devoid of pathos for humans is hard to learn. Many see architecture as a majestic gift given to humankind by God that holds out the promise of a better world to be built here on Earth.96 In the Masonic section, I showed that this promise, in the form of the Temple of Solomon, was unfortunately not to be fulfilled in a concrete way. If we still insist on investing architecture with ‘pathos’ (see the passage from de Man above), I suggest that we must turn to pathetic examples of building types.97 Maybe these inadequate structures are able to demonstrate the impossibility of finding one key(stone) to an architectonic system that can successfully link the ideas of reason to the phenomenal world. For buildings to represent human attempts to link the sensible to the supersensible, phenomena to ideas of reason, one would have to use an example of experimental architecture. Such an architecture could be utopian or temporary, effacing itself, revealing its lack of foundations or, on the other hand, a ruined structure. 98 Experimental architecture is a product of an explorative, reflective judgement looking around for rules and guidelines. It is not the product of a determinative will carried out by the architect as action man. Experimental architecture therefore breaks with the reductive, unhelpful

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INTRODUCTION image of the architect taken from The Fountainhead (discussed at the beginning of the section) and apparently espoused by Kant. To conclude: architecture is most architectonic, that is it most clearly reflects human concerns for an art that corresponds to our attempts at systematisation, when its buildings are utopian (unbuildable), temporary (doomed to destruction) or ruined (destroyed). The last has been portrayed by Simmel, in an essay entitled ‘The Ruin’, as the result of the fight between the ‘will of the spirit’ or reason and the ‘necessity of nature’. Forced together into a unity, the Einheit sought by Kant in the third Critique, the two realms subsequently burst apart again, making the building collapse (Kant 1988a:84; 1990a:14). This unique balance between the mechanical, oppressive material, which passively withstands pressure and the formative spirituality which surges upwards, breaks asunder at the moment in which the building falls apart. (Simmel 1998:118) Simmel sees this reaction as being nature’s ‘revenge’ for human violation: Now the dilapidation appears as nature’s revenge for the violation she suffered at the hands of the spirit when it tried to mould her according to its conceptions. (ibid.) Simmel dramatises the ruination of a building in human terms, anthropomorphising nature by attributing the emotion of revenge to it. My suggestion is that, in order to distance architecture from the mechanical dance described above and to relate it more closely to the expressive arts such as drama, we have to adopt such theatricality. This has been the case made throughout this introduction for temporary architecture, such as garden follies, and we will now see that Kant has much to contribute to this subject. Having introduced the four, rather improbable, ‘themes’ at work in this book—Freemasonry, Egypt, landscape gardening and architecture—I now turn to the specific analyses of Kant. These themes are devices that, it is hoped, will lead us to the heart of the Kantian problematic. They will not illuminate the shadowy areas of Kantian philosophy but will rather reveal not only how obscurity is to some extent necessarily inscribed in his systematic but also how he himself goes some way towards theorising the destabilising effects that they provoke. This will provide us with a shaky basis for advocating Kant as a philosopher who means Big Trouble for settled ways of thinking.

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KANT TROUBLE NOTES 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10

11 12 13 14 15

For example, see ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’ in Lukács 1983:83–222; Adorno and Horkheimer 1987; Böhme and Böhme 1985. See, for example, Wellmer (1985:138): ‘Fascism and Stalinism as the heirs of bourgeois Enlightenment.’ In this book, where no reference is given to currently existing English editions all translations are my own. The Romantic period is traditionally regarded as the moment when the hidden ‘truth’, the Other, of the Enlightenment came to its full-blown proto-fascist (nationalistic, irrational) expression. See, for instance, Böhme and Böhme 1983:115. In Chapter 4, it will be implied that, far from being a mere predecessor to his romantically inclined followers, Kant’s idea of ‘negative magnitudes’ and his concept of radical evil is more radical than the Romantic interpretation of these same concepts. See also Derrida (1985:234; 1976a:163), who expresses the same idea in his analysis of Rousseau: ‘The concept of supplement is a sort of blind spot in Rousseau’s text, the not-seen that opens and limits visibility.’ On this way of reading texts, see Derrida (1985:228; 1976a:159): ‘The reading of the literary “symptom” is the most banal, most academic, most naive.’ Kant (1977a:61; 1983b:45) defines the Enlightenment as the freeing of the individual from his fear of shadows. See Goux 1990:150. See Davidson (1987:4): ‘Without exception, so far as surviving texts can show, every Greek thinker of the Classical Age looked to Egypt for inspiration and guidance, and accepted the cultural primacy of Egypt’. The racist views on Egypt, which will be examined later in the section on Egyptians, were not shared by ancient Greeks but developed much later (around the 1830s, suggest Davidson and Bernal). The Greeks themselves considered Africans—and Egypt is part of Africa—to be ‘people of equal if not superior stature to themselves’ (Davidson 1984:21). Consequently, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King should be read as highly critical of Oedipus’ disregard for the religious mysteries that Teiresias has borrowed from Egypt. See Demisch (1977) to appreciate how the Egyptian Sphinx has been adapted and reduced by the Greeks and subsequent philosophers, most notably by Hegel. For example, the tripartite Sphinx (lion’s body, bird’s wings and human female’s face) is not faithful to the Egyptian model. The latter was bipartite: wingless, with a male face. This is interesting, because that male face was for 3,000 years the image of the reigning Pharaoh. The Sphinx posed unresolvable questions about power and the Law. This point will be of general interest for my chapter on the king’s two bodies. Equally, the riddle that Hegel quotes with such assurance, and on which he bases his theory of Greek superiority, is only one version. See also Goux (1990:162–3) on Hegel. See Heidegger (1986:6): ‘The truth of Being can therefore be called the ground in which metaphysics is held as the root of the tree of philosophy and out of which it is nourished.’ Alan Parker’s film Angel Heart (1987) is another good exposition of this fatal illusion. In the Social Contract—to be discussed in Chapter 4—Rousseau explains how the lawgiver is traditionally and with good reason a foreigner. The pertinence of Hamann’s philosophy of revelation to Kantian studies is the subject of the Conclusion. Too often, Hamann has been rapidly dismissed as impertinent and irrational (see, for example, Lukács 1983:110) or as an outright

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INTRODUCTION

16 17 18

19 20

21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

opponent of Enlightenment thought (see Berlin 1993). Such judgements leave the reader unable to understand why figures such as Kant and Goethe gave him so much time. My focus of interest will therefore parallel Derrida’s self-professed concerns. See Derrida (1987a:25). Schwärmerei is defined by Kant (1988a:§29 202; 1990a:128) as: ‘fanaticism, which is a delusion that would will some vision beyond all the bounds of sensibility; i.e. would dream according to principles (rational raving).’ One might be tempted to say that having to make do with God’s ‘back parts’ is a bit of a bum deal, but this is what being a mortal is all about. Hamann, discussed in the Conclusion, gives us further reasons why revelation can never be absolute for us mortals. See Derrida (1979:13; 1981b:6) on ‘soliciting’. In venturing an analysis of four such incongruent and contingent ‘motifs’, I draw support from Derrida’s reassurance in that ‘We must begin wherever we are and the thought of the trace, which cannot not take the scent into account, has already taught us that it was impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely’ (1985:233; 1976a:162). In England, Pope, Swift and Burlington were all Freemasons. The Grand Orient of France, which is not recognised by the United Grand Lodge of England, is open to men and women alike and appears to be liberally minded. In order to belong to the order as a brother or sister one has only to practise a trade. See Beresniak (1986:118): ‘reflection does not lose itself in the search of an absolute truth, revealed by God.’ This thinking of non-oppositional differences also pertains to Chapter 2 on affinities, where I suggest the formula: ‘the beauty of the sublime’. This Masonic thinking of a quantitative (not qualitative) difference between a remedy and a poison, between good and evil, mirrors the analysis of the pharmakon in Derrida (1984:71–196; 1981c:61–171). For a discussion of the secularity of Freemasonry, see Porset 1993. Such was the case with Salisbury Cathedral as described by William Golding in his novel The Spire (1964): the holy mission to build the House of God was corrupted through the unholy events surrounding its construction. See Beresniak (1986:148) for his impatience with the majority of Masonic lodges, which have tried to ossify and turn into an absolute norm what is transitory. A building completely faithful to the dynamic Masonic thinking of becoming could never be a finished product. A completed edifice already defines the future of the movement through its present, concrete, embodiment as an institution. See Vidler (1986:88) for a description of these drawings. Vidler (1986:98) also cites an interesting passage from Wiliermoz on the specific qualities that the Egyptians were considered to bring to the rite of initiation: [The Egyptians] employed all their Emblems and allegories to exercise the intelligence of the Aspirants and prepare them for the development of the mysteries that were their object. Thus the Triangular form of the pyramids, which in Egypt cover the underground vaults destined for initiations, the form and number of the Routes that lead there, all the ceremonies that were there observed, offered to the aspirants a sense of mystery, relating to the principal object of initiation.

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KANT TROUBLE 31 32

33

34

35 36

37

38 39 40 41 42 43

See Hunt and Willis (1988:26) for a similar emphasis on the proximity between architecture and landscape gardening. For a confirmation of the accuracy of this reference to the theatre, see Hunt and Willis (1988:18). Indeed, they specifically mention Inigo Jones’s masque designs for the Stuart court, which adds support to the comparison that I will draw in Chapter 1 between the temporary architecture of masques and landscape ‘follies’. It is interesting to note that it is at this point of his analysis of aesthetic forms that Kant registers his reservations about his categories. He hesitates about the justice of his divisions with the example of the landscape garden. He stops to say in a footnote that what he is setting down is a provisional attempt to differentiate and not a grouping that should be considered as decisive and fixed for all time. This can be read as Kant’s awareness that especially the landscape garden with its temporary architecture is a slippery example, not to be placed easily. The definition of ‘sculpture’ draws on Kant (1990a:§51 260; 1988a:186). In fact, both these categories lack sophistication when one appreciates how caryatids are also inseparable from the symbolic and mythological. They mark the separation between the outside and the inside of the edifice. This in-between figure does not just reiterate a previously demarcated distinction but instead produces that which it separates—it makes the outside different from the inside, not just geographically but also psychologically and spiritually. The threshold that the female goddess or Herculean figure should protect is also the site of initiation (into a cult, for example). It can also be the marker for a rite of passage—e.g. from virginity into the married state or from a sinful state into a purified absolution. This latter example of a rite of symbolic cleansing akin to a rebirth was the case for ancient Roman warriors returning home after battle—they had to pass over the threshold marking the city boundary in order to be freed from the bloodguilt that they had incurred. This threshold was in the form of a triumphal arch. Indeed, the caryatid has a lot in common with the triumphal arch. Kant’s inclusion of the latter in the architectural category (ibid.) already suggests that his sense of the architectural is larger than his definitions allow for. On the subject of thresholds, see Menninghaus (1985). This theatricality of the garden-house is also demonstrative of the uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit) within domesticity. It highlights the impossibility of ever being completely at-home, settled and secure. See Böhme and Böhme (1983:45ff): ‘nature had to be discovered as a landscape’. The Böhmes presume that there is such a thing as a completely natural nature, outside of any technicity. This assumption is questioned in Chapter 3 in relation to Kant’s analysis of parerga in the third Critique. Compare this description of Masonic initiation with the reference to the ‘narrow gate’ (enge Pforte), which leads the way to wisdom in Kant (1988d:302; 1956:168). For further information on Wörtlitz, see A. von Buttlar (1989:141–52) On the Masonic symbolism in the Désert de Retz, see Cendres and Radiguet (1997:76–81). See Marling (1997) for the utopian side to Disney imagineering. See Hunt and Willis (1988:23–5). See Hunt and Willis (1988:17, 26, 36–43) on Stowe. This novel is a key reference for my later analyses of architecture and ‘affinities’. See Goethe (1972:35; 1971:48): ‘and so she sought to do away with anything that might be harmful or deadly’. See Goethe (1972:69; 1971:87): ‘When [the company] had eaten they were invited to take a walk through the village so as to see the new arrangements there too. At the Captain’s instigation the villagers had assembled in front of their houses. They

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were not standing in line but grouped naturally in families, some busy with evening tasks, some relaxing on benches newly provided’ (my italics). See also the references to ‘Swiss cleanliness and tidiness’ (1972:51; 1971:66). Another source of anxiety stems from the fact that the landowners depend on the villagers for their expertise on the estate. They owners do not know their own property and have to rely on their subjects, whom they mistrust. See, for example, Goethe (1972:14; 1971:22): ‘The country people possess the knowledge, but the information they give is confused and not honest.’ For references to their compulsive list making, survey compiling, map drawing, stock taking, etc., see, for instance, Goethe (1972:14, 33, 56; 1971:22, 46, 72). For their maniacal attempts to divide ‘life’ from ‘business’ and male from female rationally, see Goethe (1972:33, 14; 1971:46, 61). ‘Verwandtschaften’ are the subject of Chapters 2 and 3. See Goethe (1972:39; 1971:52): ‘Just as each thing has an adherence to itself, so it must also have a relationship to other things.’ This is a point made by Charlotte herself during the conversation about affinities. See Goethe (1972:41; 1971:54): ‘I would never see a choice here but rather a natural necessity’ Charlotte touches on the important question of whether affinities belong to the realm of freedom (i.e. whether they can be elected) or to the world of compulsion. The fact that it is a firework display that announces Eduard’s downfall is highly symbolic. These events are another example of the temporary architecture discussed above or the Festarchitektur to be discussed in Chapter 1. Firework displays are intended to bring together groups of people. They are a communal celebration, a celebration of the community. Their architectural links arise from the shapes and forms that the fireworks assume when set off. These can be very elaborate, depending on the sophistication of the scaffolding and mise-en-scène constructed around them. In the novel, this communal form has been so emptied that only Eduard witnesses the display—Ottilie buries her face because the noise frightens her. This marks the imminent break-up of the estate. See Hegel (1986d:258, 294; 1991a:624, 653). Egyptian architecture brings forth essential characteristics of that art form. A double origin is evidently not an integrated, united origin that can, even supposedly, be placed firmly in a specific time and circumscribed place. Instead, it marks a split from a provisional beginning, thereby highlighting the instability of systematic foundation stones. Such a double origin is an example of the more general doubling that I associate with the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor in Chapter 1. This ‘Egyptian’ duplicity will be used, within an analysis of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, to confound any attempt on the part of a sovereign to embody and encapsulate the Law. For an exposition of the differences between the organic and the inorganic, see Hegel (1970:196; 1977:293–4). The organic is characterised as not determined by anything external to it but instead defined in terms of itself. The inorganic, on the other hand, is essentially determined in terms of an other (e.g. a building and its designated function) and is only complete in relation to this other thing external to itself. We have already seen that this is the case with Kant. See also Hegel (1986d: 296ff; 1991a:654ff). I follow Hegel’s categories here, as laid out in his Aesthetics. This ‘never quite’ is normally expressed by those unsympathetic to Egypt in their search for a Greek origin as a ‘not yet’. See Hegel (1986e:440; 1988:322–3): ‘This colossal diligence of an entire people was not yet pure fine art…Inasmuch as the

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spirit has not yet arrived at the stage of freely thinking itself Things Egyptian are at the most preparative; its symbolic architecture is a Vorkunst, on the threshold of becoming art but not yet ‘properly’ art (see Hegel 1986c:393, 408; 1991a:303, 314–15). The problem for Hegel is that Egyptians are not anthropocentric enough; they still persist in worshipping natural phenomena and conceive the human as still in conjunction with the animal world (Hegel 1986e: 440; 1988:322–3). The ‘not yet’ tag attached to the Egyptians is not just indicative of eighteenth- or nineteenth-century thought. See Giedion (1981:2) for a recent example. This distinction between the (Egyptian) ‘beginning’ and the (Greek) ‘origin’ together with Kant’s standpoint will be discussed in Chapter 1. This remark opens an enormous debate that deserves a chapter all by itself. Such a chapter would have to include detailed analyses of the theories of history of at least Kristophe August Heumann, Winckelmann, Hegel, Herder, Voltaire, Quatremère de Quincy, Warburton and Kant. The treatment of the Egyptians, as representatives of the ‘primitive’, has become a question of climate. Here we are in the field of geographical determinism (Klimatheorien). When it cannot be attributed to the ‘stay-at-home’s stereotypical ideas about unknown beings who inhabit unknown lands’ (Bernal 1991:17), this deterministic approach to nations is indissociable from racism. See also Bernal (1991:213). Bernal (1991:212) also mentions that Winckelmann thought that, in stark contrast to the Greeks, the Egyptians were ‘pessimistic and unenthusiastic’. See also Giedion (1981:ix) for the same comparison. See Goux (1990:127–46), where he compares Egyptian architecture, defined as ‘not a building in itself…[but] offered up to the inscrutable gaze of God’ with Greek architecture, which is ‘a building for Man who looks at it’. Once again, the Egyptian draws our attention to a more than human perspective that troubles (Greek) anthropomorphism. See, for example, Voltaire (1969:166), who writes that the pyramids ‘were erected by despotism, vanity, servitude and superstition.’ See also his letter (dated 3 February 1784) to Plessing wherein he explains how he cannot agree with his addressee’s opinion on ‘the great wisdom and insight of the ancient Egyptians’ (Kant 1922:363). It is clear that his inability to concur with Plessing is tied up with his ongoing battle with the ‘oriental thinking’ of his infuriating friend Hamann. See also Zammito (1992:39–40). We note for starters that Kant finds theories of climatic determinism inadequate (see Kant 1977b:661; 1974:175). However, an exhaustive study of Kant on anthropology and race will not be attempted in this book. Such a study would have to cover not only the shorter essays specifically on the origins of race but also his Physische Geographie. Here I note that my interests again run parallel to those of Derrida. See, for example, Derrida (1976:27), where he discusses a construction that is ‘erected in its ruin, propped up by that which never ceases to interrupt its sapping or undermining work’. This thinking of architecture as a structural ruination (anthérection) is also explored in Derrida (1981a:51, 183, 186). All I am doing in this section is proposing architectural types that seem to ‘demonstrate’ this logic, and in Chapter 1 this will be linked with a possible politics of demonstration. This is not a surprising claim, as Egyptian architecture, which, as we have seen, is supposed to be typical of this art form, is often described in monumental terms: see Hegel (1978:245; 1900:198): ‘Its ruins, the final result of immense labour, surpass in the gigantic and monstrous, all that antiquity has left us.’ However, I will here be suggesting that ‘monumental’ edifices do not just mean big buildings.

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See also Olsen (1986:10) on the ‘monumental impulse’. This impulse, a specifically nineteenth-century phenomenon, is ‘the desire that European cities become monuments themselves, instead of just containing them’. This means that even sewerage, transport and lighting systems count as ‘monuments’, not just ‘aweinspiring public buildings and triumphal ways’. Monumentality is indissociable from notions of civic responsibility and morality. It traditionally concerns the integrity of the city (its wholeness, uprightness and health). Monumentality, which I will be suggesting is nothing other than architecture itself, is a communal project or projection. Its usual aim is to ‘jolt the individual out of his mundane concerns…to remind him that he is fortunate to be a citizen of such a splendid metropolis’ (ibid.: 9). The ‘determinative’ way of judging is a reference to Kant’s distinction between the ‘determinant’ and the ‘reflective’ forms of judgement. The former consists of applying a general law to a particular case; the latter, seemingly more artistic and experimental, more difficult, consists of finding the general law to fit the particular case one is confronted with. See Kant (1983a: B674–5) for the distinction between the apodeictic and the hypothetical use of reason and the two types of judgement they produce. See Saint (1983) for a general account of this subject. Also Agacinski (1992:10) discusses the need to detach architecture from philosophy’s attempts to use it to signify its own dreams of ‘auto-foundation and autonomy’. See Payot (1982) for a thorough account of the architectural ‘metaphor’ from Plato to Heidegger. It was not until 1760 that the ‘Ponts et Chaussées’, the first engineering school in the world, was founded. This could be seen as the initial separation between the architect and the engineer. A further division was enforced by the establishment of the Institute of British Architects in 1834. See Kant (1990a:74; 1989:5): ‘For if such a system is some day worked out under the general name of Metaphysics…’. The critique is not the science itself. See Kant (1983a:BXXII). See Kant (1977d:436). See also Edelman (1984) for a racy analysis of Kant’s (mad-)house. See my previous discussions of architecture in the landscape garden section. For the sublime defined as an ‘object of nature’, see Kant (1990a:§29 193; 1988a: 119). For the description of the sublime pyramids, see 1990a:§26 174; 1988a: 99– 100. See Derrida (1986b) for this expression. For an informative analysis of how architecture needs to reformulate its concerns in the light of new technologies that undermine its traditional representative role, see Mitchell (1996). See Zizek (1991:272–3), where he describes the drive in a way that is relevant for this discussion of graveyards: the drive: the compulsion to encircle again and again the site of the lost Thing, to mark it in its very impossibility—as exemplified by the embodiment of the drive in its zero degree, in its most elementary, the tombstone which just marks the site of the dead. The repetitive encirclement of the tombstone does not master the absence of the dead one. The lines ‘here lies so and so, dearly departed…’ underline the recognition that the person is there as a body but not there as a living person. The grave marks a ‘lost Thing’ around which the community of ‘wives, husbands, relatives and friends’ (see Goethe) circulate in an impossible quest for reunion. In

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This further underlines the fictive, ritualised nature of the event of burial. It symbolically marks a loss that in effect cannot be contained by experience. Also quoted by Norbert-Schulz (1983:66): ‘The place opens a domain, in gathering things which here belong together.’ The effects of Gegend therefore confirm Heidegger’s analysis of ‘Beingtowardsdeath’. In Being and Time, it is stated that ‘Dying is not an event’ (1987:H240). Instead, it is a constitutive element of existence. As Jean Wahl (1956:205) has said, it is ‘an event that unceasingly happens to Man’. The permitting of place (Ort), which is at the same time an undercutting of positioning, mirrors this event, which is not one, as it is part of a series that never stops happening to mortals. I am using the word ‘condescension’ in the same way that Hamann uses the term ‘Herablassung’ to refer to the mysterious divine act of stooping down to unworthy mortals. Viewed in this light, we would be able to conclude that it is exactly nature’s (too) generous ‘condescension’ that confounds human attempts to manipulate and master natural phenomena. ‘Condescension’ and Hamann’s use of it as a concept that illustrates the impossibility of an all-enlightening revelation forms the subject of the Conclusion. Any example of tracing will be ‘the trace of the trace’ (Derrida 1972:76–7; 1982:65–6), not the ‘thing itself’. This inadequate exemplarity is illustrated in Bruce Chatwin’s travel book, which I use as my source for information on the Aborigines. His encounters are full of disappointments: drunken and corrupted Aborigines, brutish customs. As a result, he can glean only sporadic scraps of experience to justify the image of the rich Aboriginal culture that he is attempting to research. Australia, too, horrifies him with its redneck kangaroo killers. See also Dean and Massumi (1992:75): ‘nomadism like its statist counter-extreme, is not reducible to a particular economic or political system.’ See Chatwin (1987:16): ‘By singing the world into existence…the Ancestors had been poets in the original sense of poesis, meaning creation.’ See Chatwin (1987:173): Aboriginals, when tracing a songline in the sand, will draw a series of lines with circles in between. The line represents a stage in the Ancestor’s journey (usually a day’s march). Each circle is a ‘stop’, ‘waterhole’, or one of the Ancestor’s campsites.

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See Deleuze and Guattari (1980:471ff; 1988:380ff) on the importance of journeys (motion) rather than fixed points for the nomad and on the ‘smooth’ distribution of space. See also Dean and Massumi (1992:75):

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INTRODUCTION nomadic formations affirm the spaces between stops rather than beelining to a promised land; [they] reach a resting point only to use it as a relay to a future move; [they] have no finality, only process; [they] skim the surface rather than implanting a symbolic edifice or superimposing a code or statistical grid.

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In Chapter 2, in the discussion of Kant’s analysis of crystallisation, we will return to this supersedence of motion over static points. See also Leroi-Gourhan (1964:157) on ‘itinerant space’ (as contrasted with ‘radiating space’): ‘The hunter-gatherer nomad seizes the surface of his territory through his journeying.’ See Deleuze in Deleuze and Parnet (1996:51) on grass and how different it is from the ‘architectonic’ arborescence that arises inevitably and far too systematically from roots firmly implanted in the ground. This is also the experience of George Eliot’s sinister character Casaubon. He intends to write conclusive ‘new Parerga’ on the Egyptian mysteries, which he has entitled the ‘Key to all Mythologies’ (see Eliot 1983:314–15). Faced with a bewildering mass of endless parerga and a scribbling that can never be mastered with a systematic ‘key’, he never manages to finish this hopeless project. This failure is just as well in Casaubon’s case, because his striving for immortal, intellectual recognition is bound up with the unsavoury attempt to raise his ‘monument’. This criticism of recent Kant commentary can be extended to include Nietzsche, who also has a disappointingly flat reading of Kantian philosophy. For example, in his discussion of Kleist’s crisis, Kant’s philosophy is described as permeated with ‘sceptical gloom’ and Kant himself is portrayed as a hack, clinging to his institution, submitting to its regulations. Kant’s philosophy, for Nietzsche, has ‘produced above all university professors and professorial philosophy’ (1988:351– 6; 1987:137–41). For an architect/engineer’s understanding of this Kleistian passage, see the entry ‘Structure’ by Vaudeville in Picon (1997:470–1). I say reservedly ‘hopefully’ because all too often the predetermining calculation of the engineer is overstated, particularly by biologists, eager to strike a difference between the unpredictable contingency of natural selection and the comparatively risk-free, made-to-measure work of the engineer. For one such unsatisfactory comparison between the ‘bricolage’ of nature and the methodical engineer see Jacob (1981:63–9). See also Deleuze and Guattari (1980:468–9; 1988:378). They refer to the ‘antidialogue’ between brother and sister, a ‘becoming-woman of the thinker, the becoming-thinker of the woman’ but fail to remark upon the fact that the female is completely subaltern to the brother’s mind (Gemüt) turned war machine. In their commentary, Deleuze and Guattari are drawing on Uexküll’s Kantian elaboration of the term ‘Gemüt’, which, instead of carrying its traditional meaning of ‘whole inner world of Man’, refers instead to a process that constructs and synthesises with the surrounding world (see T. von Uexküll 1992:311). Hence they suggest that Kleist’s essay is ‘a denunciation of the central interiority of the concept as a means of control of speech, language, affects, circumstances and even chance’ (Deleuze and Guattari: 1980:468; 1988:378). However, there is a strong suggestion in the Kleist piece that the speaker may just be relinquishing his illusions of pre-planned domination to gain in return a superhuman (not transhuman) strength once boosted by his pact with the demonic automation of language. Once empowered, he cannot lose his battle for dominance; he

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KANT TROUBLE necessarily wins the unequal competition with the sister. ‘Chance’ is not really given a chance. 94 Chapters 2 and 3 will demonstrate that Kant’s other reactions to ‘affinities’ are far less down-to-earth and dull than the one exposed here. The feasibility of being able to tame imaginative affinities by the discipline of a ‘theme’ is radically called into question by his own analysis elsewhere in the Anthropology. 95 Kleist’s texts are so rich that they would need far more analysis than is attempted here. For instance, there would be much to say about the way that, in ‘On the Marionette Theatre’, not only the marionettes themselves but also the bear strike a blow against the anthropocentric view of the world. 96 This was certainly the opinion of Boullée (1968:37–8), who wrote: The plan of the universe formed by the Creator is the image of order and perfection. If all men became sufficiently wise to form one and the same family, one would be tempted to believe that the divinity gave them architecture so as to put into operation the establishment of Man on earth. Architecture’s constitutive principles are founded in a symmetry which is the image of order and perfection.

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Boullée also reminds us that ‘architecture is an art which fulfils the most important needs of our social life’ (ibid.: 32–3). The Principal Dancer’s proposal, at the end of ‘On the Marionette Theatre’, that we must ‘eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence’ but that doing so would spell ‘the final chapter in the history of the world’ suggests that humans cannot do anything but try to invest ‘pathos’ in buildings, language and dance. Kleist’s suicide seems to corroborate this suspicion. The links between experimentation and temporary architecture, otherwise known as Festarchitektur, are illustrated by the architectural group Coop Himmelblau’s comment that ‘Follies are prospective studies of future buildings’ (in Papadakis 1990:78). In ‘Festarchitektur und das erweiterte Spektrum der Architektur’, W. Oechslin states that ‘Festarchitektur is an experimental field for built architecture …it is used as a demonstration of new architectonic ideals’ (see Oechslin and Buschow 1984:80).

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1 THREE CASES OF DOUBLING Ka, Kant and Kantorowicz

Kant is the Moses of our nation; he led it out of its Egyptian drowsiness and into the free desert of his speculation by bringing down from the sacred mount the energetic Law. (Hölderlin, letter to his brother, 1 January 1799) a king’s crown was a hieroglyph of the laws. (Coke Reports 1792–3, quoted by Kantorowicz) A supplement capable of doubling the king…Thoth. (Derrida, ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’)

An articulation that could be called the three ‘Kas’ (Ka, Kant, Kantorowicz) will dominate this chapter. The ‘Ka’ is an Egyptian concept used to designate, crudely, the soul or immortality of the Pharaoh, which was seen as doubling his mortal body. The implications of this doubling within the Kantian system will be explored with the help of Ernst Kantorowicz’s exegesis of the ‘king’s two bodies’. This analysis will form the basis of what I have already, in the Introduction, called the ‘Egyptian metaphor’. This term, ‘Egyptian metaphor’, is a device that helps to reveal architectonic foundations in general, and more particularly Kantian philosophy, as flimsy, as not fixed. The reference to Egyptians also unmasks the founders of systems and communities as floundering beginners, unable to lay down the Law in an authoritative, determining fashion. Additionally, this formula will be used to trouble Kant’s presentation of the king as the figurehead of the state and the ultimate authority behind the Law in The Metaphysics of Morals (‘Doctrine of Right’). These preoccupations are well illustrated by the above epigraphs. Hölderlin celebrates Kant as a dynamic lawgiver who mobilises his disciples, forcing them to adopt a broader, freer and clearer outlook on life. Kant entices his followers away from their ‘Egyptian drowsiness’ and invigorates them with his ‘energetic law’. He opens out the frontiers of human knowledge, but this

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KANT TROUBLE adventurous freedom is well disciplined; there are carefully demarcated limits to be respected. Like Moses, Kant is a father, a spiritual leader, a founder who gives identity to the community guided by him, by laying down the Law. The second quotation, from Kantorowicz’s book, suggests the complexity of this gesture by referring to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The king’s crown is the symbol representing the laws; it, being ‘hieroglyphic’, is also ‘an enigmatic and secretive figure’ (OED). This points to the difficulties facing the sovereign, who is meant to incorporate the nation and its laws. Whereas the first quotation suggests that the Egyptian element is to be left behind as a retrograde stage of national development, the second hints that the Egyptian connection continues to be of consequence, to exert influence, because of the mysterious nature of the Law itself. The third quotation, from Derrida, refers to Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and death. Derrida reinforces our association of the Egyptians with the doubling of the king. This chapter is divided into several sections. The first develops the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor, especially one ‘Egyptian’ association not elaborated on in the introductory section: Egyptian doubling or duplicity. The second introduces Kantorowicz’s ‘theory’ of the king’s two bodies. The third examines Kant’s treatment of founders and the sovereign by applying the troublesome motifs of the first two sections to passages from the first Critique and The Metaphysics of Morals. We conclude with a more general section, which tries to follow through the wider implications of our unoriginal discoveries about the functioning of the Law and the place of its representative, the sovereign.

Egyptian groping and the duplicity of the ‘Ka’ In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant holds up mathematics and physics as models of how a priori knowledge can be obtained having once embarked upon the ‘secure path of a science’. It was thanks to the Greeks that mathematics was able to break through the obscurity of empiricism to reach the purity of an a priori determination of its objects: In the earlier times to which the history of human reason extends, mathematics, among that wonderful people, the Greeks, had already entered upon the sure path of science. (Kant 1983a:BX) This was no easy step, to be underestimated or too lightly accepted. Indeed, Kant continues: on the contrary, I believe that it long remained, especially among the Egyptians, in the groping stage (beim herumtappen geblieben ist),

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING and the transformation must have been due to a revolution brought about by the happy thought of a single man. (ibid.: BXI) This Greek ‘revolution’ marks a decisive advance away from the ‘groping around’ (herumtappen) of the Egyptians. Herumtappen is an expression employed by Kant on several occasions, mostly in the first Critique, to signify a random and therefore essentially unsuccessful searching around for knowledge capable of yielding apodeictic judgements.1 The Egyptians, like the nomads to be discussed later, apparently cannot provide the secure foundations that metaphysics needs to become a ‘proper’ systematic based on proven, safe principles. This example of the Egyptians is both unimportant and important, nonessential and necessary for Kant: unimportant because he is not interested in the particularity of the Greek founder of geometric certainty: ‘be he Thales or some other’. The isosceles triangle cannot be discovered as such. Instead, only the necessary possibility of the method for deriving a priori knowledge is revealed: a ‘new light flashed upon the mind of the first man’ (ibid.). 2 However, what is not explained is why it should be an individual Greek or the Greeks as a nation who had this ‘happy, sudden thought’ (glücklicher Einfall) in the first place (ibid.). Although for Kant this event, as an actual historical occurrence, can never be known, and despite the fact that it is impossible and unimportant as a first beginning, there must have been some sort of minimal intuitive, imaginative or cultural configuration that allowed this necessary possibility to come to light among the Greeks (and nowhere else). This privileging of the Greek against the Egyptian would not be an issue of any great importance if the Egyptians had not come to represent, in philosophy and architectural theory, a primitive starting-point, not sufficiently developed ever to become an origin for Western culture and identity. This traditional prejudice and its concomitant dangers we have already encountered in the introductory section. Even this apparent Kantian ‘lapse’ into traditional, prejudicial ideas of the stunted Egyptian could be regarded as a comparatively minor issue, excusable because shared with other ‘great’ thinkers of the philosophical tradition. However, this solution is not open to us once we recognise that the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor is exactly that which is not only left behind, yet carried on elsewhere, but also necessarily present within the Kantian system itself. I shall explain: the ‘Egyptian’ lack of certitude, its ‘groping’, is supposedly ‘left behind’ by the critique itself, as a development that parallels the enlightenment of the Greeks. It is ‘carried on’ with the herumtappen of the empiricists, described by Kant as incapable of ever lifting themselves far enough out of the empirical and conditioned to reach up to the ‘overwhelmingly great [and] sublime’ transcendental ideas (ibid.: B649). Lastly, I suggest that the obscurity of the ‘Egyptian metaphor’ is present in

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KANT TROUBLE the Kantian project itself in the form of its limits: that is to say, where the powers of reason have to come to an end (which does not mean that it collides with the irrational), in the enforced ‘modesty’ of the Critique necessitated by the residual empirical element. Reason cannot look after its own interests; it has to be curbed by understanding, which forces it to concentrate on ‘objects of possible experience’ (ibid.: BXIX–XX). To prevent reason running away with itself, and us, in its attempt to think ‘things in themselves’, we always have to be on guard. We must stay vigilant, testing the ground of our assumptions carefully and closely with ‘touchstones’.3 We always have to ‘grope around’ a bit; we cannot settle down in all security—there is necessarily a residual nomadism to come to terms with. Also, when considered as moral beings, we are always more or less bent, never completely straight and sure of our standing.4 Also, I will be suggesting that the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor continues to exert its influence with regard to the mysterious doubling of the Law, together with its ‘impenetrable’ origin.5 Indeed, the attempt to establish the duplicity of the term the ‘Egyptian metaphor’ will, it is hoped, help to throw light on Kant’s own duplicative logic. This enlightening device comes to us from a source that, in the only direct reference to the Egyptians in the first Critique, is characterised by Kant as possessing, by inference, dark obscurity and a feeble rationality. Disregarding this characterisation, we intend to show that there is something akin to the mysterious ‘Egyptian’ doubling in Kant’s philosophy. When this logic is cut short, as I intend to show it is around the question of regicide in The Metaphysics of Morals, he is depriving himself of logical possibilities that are to a certain extent already present in his system. The association of a double movement with the ‘Egyptian metaphor’ comes from various sources. Most straightforwardly, Freud in ‘On the Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words’ describes the strangely contradictory nature of the Egyptian language, in which some words combine completely contradictory meanings. Freud quotes the philosopher Bain: The essential relativity of all knowledge, thought or consciousness cannot but show itself in language. If everything that we can know is viewed as a transition from something else, every experience must have two sides; and either every name must have a double meaning, or else for every meaning there must be two names. (Freud 1945:219; 1986:159) The double-sided, ambivalent language of the Egyptians is regarded as testifying to the archaic truth about life, thought and language. Egyptian language carries traces of what Derrida has described as a ‘prior medium in which differentiation in general is produced’ (Derrida 1984:144; 1981c:126). We see how what we generally consider to be ‘naturally’ clear-cut oppositions are in fact products of a process of differentiation that does its best to deny

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING the possibility that what is strong could also be weak; that what is proper is equally improper; that what is enlightened is still not detached from darkness and obscurity. This ‘Egyptian’ testimony to radical ambivalence is also to be located in Kantian philosophy, where, despite his claims to lay down the Law by drawing up strict limits and policed boundaries, he nevertheless reveals the artificiality of his distinctions and their contamination by their ‘other’.6 Freud also reveals a double act associated with things Egyptian in Moses and Monotheism. He suggests that there were in fact two characters called Moses. The Egyptian Moses represents the repressed, hidden agenda behind the Jewish figure. Freud uncovers a plot to deny any Egyptian connection: ‘every trace of Egyptian influence was to be disavowed’ (Freud 1989:493; 1985:284).7 This denial has worked successfully, despite several tell-tale signs that point unmistakably, at least for Freud, in the direction of Egypt. For instance, most clearly the name ‘Moses’ itself obviously derives from the Egyptian word mose, meaning ‘child’ (1989:460; 1985:244). Also, the practice of circumcision, a traditional Jewish ‘trait’, was well known, even to a reliable historian such as Herodotus, to be an established custom in Egypt (1989:477; 1985:265). This ‘denial’ should not surprise us. In the introductory section, with help from Bernal and Davidson, we saw just how anchored are the resistances preventing the recognition of the significance of Egypt. We have to work out what, in this specific context of Jewish history— indeed, of the foundation of Jewish history, as incorporated by the figure of Moses—is at stake in this particular repression of Egyptian influence. The Egyptian Moses’ murder by his people is said to repeat the original parricide, which ‘took place’, Freud suggests, during the (mythical, inaccessible) time of the primal horde (1989:536; 1985:333). 8 The Jews differ from the Christians by taking upon themselves the burden of guilt for this original murder of the Father. The Christians are seen to admit their guilt and atone for it, thereby freeing themselves from its burden. To help to bridge the gap between the divinity they outraged and their murderous selves, they introduce various mediators, sympathetic to human pleas for help at the cost of a candle, a confession and a prayer.9 The most important of these go-betweens is the murdered Father’s son, Christ. The Jews do not go along with this conversion; they still carry the scar of humanity’s crime by stubbornly subjecting themselves to an absent God who denies himself to them even figuratively, as an image, and who also demands strict monotheism. So whereas the Jews are regarded as refusing to admit the paternal murder, they paradoxically betray all the signs of having taken upon themselves the tragic burden of guilt for the crime (1989:581; 1985:386). They are still obviously preoccupied with the Father and thereby arouse the hatred of Christians, who do not want to be reminded of the original crime, the Urtat. If Judaism can both deny but also in some way acknowledge the murder of the Father, why should the ‘Egyptian’ strand of the Mosaic story be

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KANT TROUBLE systematically covered up? The answer to this dilemma can perhaps be found in Freud’s discussion of the Jewish claim to be God’s ‘chosen people’. This forms part of Freud’s provocative and, many would say, extremely badly timed criticisms of Judaism, as partially responsible for some of the general anti-Semitism of which it has always been a victim and was more than ever suffering at the hands of the Nazis at the time of the composition of these essays. Freud describes the Jewish text, which claims to give the account of the religious and political history of the Jewish nation, of its origin and founding fathers, as a series of falsifications and contradictions (1989:492; 1985:283). We discover that there are good reasons why this has been necessary. At the beginning of the story, there was no clear-cut origin, no single founder to give a shapely unity to the Jewish nation. Instead, Freud insists, there were many ‘dualities’: ‘two peoples…two realms…two names for the Godhead…Two religious founding moments…two religious founders’ (1989:501; 1985:293). To make things worse, one of these groups—the followers of the Egyptian Moses—were still in a state of traumatic shock after having killed off their leader. The unitary founding myth tries forcibly to smother these differences, splits and foreign elements.10 In so doing, it repeats the guilty act by carrying out a textual murder (1989:493; 1985:283). The origin is always a guilty violation of disseminated, bewildered and traumatic truths. This fictionalised account of the founding of a nation is necessary to establish historical ‘continuity’ and also to preserve the myth of national uniqueness (1989:514; 1985:307). If the truths were and could be rigorously told, there would be no ground for claiming national exclusivity. The idea of national identity would have to be replaced by the concept of international diversity. This would lead to a recognition of the mixture of divergent influences, wherein mixed races are in fact the norm and not regarded as a weird hybrid product artificially manufactured out of ‘naturally’ discrete, ‘pure’ races. The Jewish attempt to found itself behind the determined figure of one great man, a single Moses who laid down the Law for his people, rehearses the fallacy facing every nation anxious to justify and found itself safely and securely. 11 It is the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor that, once again, stands for the confounding of these myths. An additional and important example of duplicity is the Egyptian Pharaoh himself. Jean-Pierre Bayard describes him in the following manner: the consecration of the Pharaoh includes…a real power of practical efficiency, working towards the realisation of the supreme purpose of the enthronement: the transition of he who is to wear the double crown from the mortal state to the divine. (Bayard 1984:32)

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING The Pharaoh, in Egyptian the Piroui-aoui—‘the double palace’, ‘he who wears the double crown’ (ibid.: 33)—represents, uneasily holds together in his person(s), both temporal and spiritual power.12 In accordance with the antithetical nature already characterised as Egyptian, the Pharaoh was in possession of a vital force that could be curative and beneficial but also detrimental and destructive. As Bayard explains: The priest-king carries within him a terrible force, whose power can be dangerous…The etiquette of the court allowed the solitary king to act when he pleased. But he needed to be protected against himself and his desires as his power could only be taken from him by surprise; his people made it their business to prevent any wastage of this force as it belonged to them all.13 (Ibid.: 36–7) This vital force was called the ‘Ka’: it lived with and ‘after’ the particular, mortal body of the Pharaoh and represented the immortal body of the king, of kingship as a ‘corporate perpetuity’ (Axton 1977:12).14 These distinctions are taken from Kantorowicz’s influential The Kings Two Bodies, and they lead us into our next section. Kantorowicz: kingly duplicity The two bodies of the sovereign, which interlock and play off one another, which are both separable and inseparable, will be distinguished in the following manner: the mortal body pertains to the king (with a small letter) and the immortal one signifies the King (capital letter) as an institution. To explain the historical necessity of this distinction between bodies, Kantorowicz quotes the Elizabethan jurist Plowden: by the Common Law no act which the King does as King, shall be defeated by his Nonage. For the King has in him two Bodies, viz.; a Body natural and a Body politic. His Body natural (if it be considered in itself) is a Body mortal, subject to all Infirmities that come by Nature or Accident, to the Imbecility of Infancy or old Age, and to the like Defects that happen to the natural Bodies of other People. But his Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or handled, consisting of Policy and Government, and constituted for the Direction of the People and the Management of the public weal, and this Body is utterly void of Infancy, and old Age, and other natural Defects and Imbecilities, which the Body natural is subject to, and for this Cause, what the King does in his Body politic, cannot be invalidated or frustrated by any Disability in his natural Body. (Kantorowicz 1981:7)

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KANT TROUBLE The credibility of sovereign power could be undone by the monarch’s infancy, mental state or old age. The reference to the immortal body therefore provided a guarantee that kingship is infallible, untouchable, not to be brought down by human weakness or incompetence. It is intended to protect the state from criticism and discontent with the particular reigning monarch who is its figurehead. However, this logic necessarily also implies that the principle or epitome of kingship can never be brought down to earth in human, mortal form. Its invisibility can never be rendered completely visible, even if the monarch is a worthy, just and successful individual. As a consequence, while the state is protected against dissatisfaction with the mortal example of kingship, it is also simultaneously undermined in its claim to represent the ideals of sovereignty. These can never be exemplified. Mary Axton, who continues the work of Kantorowicz in The Queen’s Two Bodies, provides us with further explanation of the utility of this concept: The lawyers were formulating an idea of state as a perpetual corporation yet they were unable or unwilling to separate state and monarch. Their concept of the King’s Two Bodies was an attempt to deal with the paradox: men died and land endured: kings died and the crown endured. (Axton 1977:12)15 The appeal to the immortal body of the King lends continuity to the state as an institution. Axton speaks of the Elizabethan lawyers being ‘unable or unwilling to separate state and monarch’. Undoubtedly, the fate of the state is symbolised through the figure of a King. But which one? As we have seen, the king’s two bodies were also a way of separating the mortal king from the institution of kingship. As a mortal being the monarch can never completely embody the state. He is both a king and a miserable impostor who can never be equated with the immortality of kingship per se. Hamlet gives us an explicit illustration of this split between regal glory and negligible nothingness: ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to the King. HAMLET: The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King is a thing. GUILDENSTERN: A thing, my lord? HAMLET: Of nothing. (Shakespeare 1982:IV, iii, 125ff)16 The king both is and is not with his body. His royal person is both his and something impersonal, not his property. The faceless institution of kingship is

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Plate V An Egyptian ‘false door’ through which the ‘Ka’ is passing: painted limestone tomb portal of Iteti from Saqqara; height 195 cm, 2390 BC; Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photo courtesy of Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich.

KANT TROUBLE both what creates the need for his body as a symbolic representation of the state and that which radically undermines any pretensions that he may have of being a ‘real’ king, i.e. something more than a charlatan. Probably the Egyptian ‘Ka’ does not correspond exactly to Kantorowicz’s term the ‘king’s two bodies’. Kantorowicz does insist on the specificity of the Tudor example as an offshoot of Christian theological thought. He pinpoints its particularity as being that, instead of thinking a split between the body and its soul or spirit, this idea is most definitely of two bodies (Kantorowicz 1981:505–6). However, Kantorowicz does concede that: ‘the representation of the “Ka” (in Egypt) would lead ipso facto to duplication’ (ibid.: 497). 17 Indeed, the ‘Ka’ does repeat the movements of the Pharaoh. In Kingship and the Gods, Francfort (1948:69) translates an Egyptian text in which this repetition is apparent: Wash thyself and thy KA washes itself Thy KA seats itself and eats bread with thee Without surcease, throughout eternity. Despite not being explicitly conceived as a second body (but more as a force or power), it is still sufficiently material—and represented as such—to require doors (though false ones) to go through to receive the sacrificial offerings of food (see Plate V). The ‘Ka’ ate.18 These false doors, like the ‘Ka’ that they serve and together with the attempt to think the windowed pyramid (as mentioned in the Introduction), release a logic that not only prevents Egyptian architecture from being regarded as hermetically sealed but that also destabilises the sovereign by thwarting any conflation between Kingship and its mortal example. In the following discussion of the Law and the king’s two bodies, the suggestion is not that Kant should have studied the principles of English law or that the Tudors were like Pharaohs.19 The interest lies not in the ‘king’s two bodies’ as a particular historical event (it is hardly something that can ‘take place’ as such), or even as a historical possibility (as its historical veracity has been disputed by Maitland in particular),20 but rather in its logical possibilities as a ‘legal fiction’ (Kantorowicz 1981:3–4). It is not to be found anywhere in particular, indeed it complicates the very idea of founders, foundations (of a community, of a system as an architectural/architectonic act). This relation between the logic of the king’s two bodies and unsettled foundations can be explained by appealing again to Elective Affinities: Goethe’s (Free)Mason explains that the ‘foundation stone’ (Grundstein) of a building inaugurates a community (the community of those witnesses present; Goethe 1972:65ff; 1971:84ff). Those invited, chosen to participate (to be initiated), are asked to provide testimony to the fact that the foundation stone being laid down is, at the same time, a commemorative stone (Denkstein) for communities to come. As such, it encourages reflection on the death of the

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING community (which is present) and the destruction of the building (yet to be built). It is to be noted that in the foundation of a just community the Law is laid down like a Grundstein/Denkstein as a recognition of human finitude and the accompanying inability fully to found the perfect community here on Earth. The Kantian analysis of the Law, of history (origins and beginnings) allows us—sometimes despite itself—to develop this logic further: a community has to be ‘founded’ and initiated, although this is at the same time an impossible invention. The act of founding is never an absolutely first beginning; it is always already one of a series, repeating a mythical, original founding. The dissolution of the community in the process of being formed is enacted in its very initiation. As we will see, this in no way excludes the impossibility of a community ever being substantially founded or, as a consequence, ever being completely broken up. In a similar manner, the king’s two bodies double (over) the notion of beginnings and ends of reigns, complicating the celebration of a coronation or a royal death—as it is impossible for the king to become the King or for the King to die—but, at the same time, making possible a negotiated celebration. The device of the two bodies was used to blur, but also to contain safely and hence permit recognition of a historical date. A coronation, which could take place years after the death of the former monarch if the successor to the throne was in foreign lands, marked the ascent to the throne of a ‘new’ king. However, owing to the logic of the body politic, the King can never actually die. Despite being absent in person, the throne was continually occupied by the other immortal, unerring, royal person, hence (ideally) revolts and pretensions to the throne were pre-empted during the interregnal period—in fact, this concept was banished altogether.21 This complicated recognition and non-recognition of the monarch (who could never be completely new, independent of past traditions and able to fully represent the body politic in his own, private body natural) gave rise to a sophisticated symbolic architecture. This art form was aware of its own lack of solid foundations (it was ceremonial and temporary) but also of the necessity of demarcating and commemorating events. Kant: the founding of the sovereign and regicide In his first preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant describes the fortunes of metaphysics: while she was dominated by dogmatism her rule was despotic; subsequently, owing to internal strife, anarchy broke out and scepticism took over: ‘the sceptics, a species of nomads, despising all settled modes of life, broke up from time to time all civil society’ (Kant 1983a:AIX). Those sceptical nomads refuse to settle down, to lay down laws and found a community. They despise the fixed constructions (both systematic and

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KANT TROUBLE architectural) essential for a bringing together and uniting of individuals in a state. The sceptics can provide only a temporary ‘resting place’ for reason. Like the groping (herumtappenden) Egyptians, the sceptics also cannot provide a permanent ‘dwelling place’ in which one could settle down, assured of a solid roof over one’s head.22 Kant’s project, by contrast, promises a system firmly founded on a ‘full guarantee for the completeness and security of all parts’, where the foundation stones are ‘touchstones’ interrelating and justifying one another (ibid.: B27–8). His construction is not just piled up on top of its foundations (gehäuft) but is articulated (gegliedert) like an organism (ibid.: B861–2). Indeed this unity, although constructed, is ‘natural’ (ibid.: B862–3). It is certainly more natural than the ceaseless drifting of the nomads and more so than the artificial, haphazard, ‘technical’ (i.e. not architectonic) foundations established by the actual founders or originators (Urheber) of the various sciences.23 These founders flounder. Although they are not exactly described as ‘groping about’ (herumtappen) like the Egyptians, they do wander around, making mistakes all over the place (herumirren). Despite being originators, they do not succeed in giving a secure base to their findings, since their theories are not determined according to an idea grounded in reason itself. This idea, hidden away in reason, resembles a Keim (a ‘seed’ or ‘germ’), which is still tightly closed (ibid.: B862–3). Kant goes on state that: It is unfortunate that only after we have spent much time in the collection of (building) materials in somewhat random fashion at the suggestion of an idea lying hidden in our minds, and after we have, indeed, over a long period assembled the materials in a merely technical manner, does it first become possible for us to discern the idea in a clearer light, and to devise a whole architectonically in accordance with the ends of reason. (ibid.)24 The idea becomes clearer and more visible with the passage of time as more and more inadequate systems accumulate. The actual idea, though, does not grow and develop, becoming evident in time. Systems themselves start off as maimed or distorted, but with time they gradually become completely formed (ibid.). As regards the ideas, however, the passing of time is only an incidental, empirical factor. Whereas within history the establishment of secure foundations would represent the ‘perfection of all culture’, Kant has already made it clear in ‘Explanation of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom…’ that the ideas of reason are not subject to temporality: Pure reason, as a purely intelligible faculty, is not subject to the form of time, nor consequently to the conditions of succession in time. The

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING causality of reason in its intelligible character does not, in producing an effect, arise or begin to be at a certain time. (ibid.: B579)25 Ideas of reason are not within time, or else they would be subject to the laws of empirical causality and could never be free. Within time and history originators of sciences do exist, but they cannot be the sources of original acts. They do not, through their actions, discover anything completely new. Such originality can only come from reason. This faculty possesses the capacity to begin a series of events (ibid.: B582). However, Kant adds that nothing can actually begin in reason (ibid.). Reason has always already begun. While it has effects in the world, which come to light as the beginning of a series of appearances, Kant concludes that these cannot be regarded as absolutely first beginnings (ibid.).26 We began this chapter with Hölderlin’s analogy of Kant and Moses, who were characterised as two founders who laid down the Law in a determinative, original way. However, it is now obvious that for Kant the status of founders and the act of founding is not that straightforward. Equally, the critical edifice itself is described by Kant as a ‘new enterprise’. Its founder, the adventurous philosopher, is presented as starting from scratch and risks, in his toilsome preparation of the uncharted terrain, being scratched along the untamed ‘thorny paths of the Critique’ (ibid.: BXLII). However, he equally describes himself as foraging among the ‘ruins’ of previous systems, recuperating and recycling useful elements (ibid.: B863). The founder must be able to bring something new to light for us. Or maybe it is more correct to say that he lifts it for the first time (he is an Ur-heber) out of a pool of things that, while not exactly hidden away inasmuch as they are always already there, are revealed to us as new. Be this as it may, he is nevertheless an unoriginal uncoverer (not discoverer) of concepts already there that just require reorganisation or sorting out (ibid.: B9). The ‘original’, systematic foundations that he lays down are also composed of the remains of old constructions. Kant describes his ‘mission’ as a clearing away of the undergrowth that obscures the one true path of philosophy. This path has always been there; it has already been faintly traced out as a ‘mere idea’ (ibid.: B866). However, in this last example, Kant still retains the notion that one fine, sunny day the philosophical event will take place: ‘until the one true path, overgrown by the products of sensibility, has at last been discovered’ (ibid.). This event is supposed to bring with it far-reaching social and political changes. Indeed, it is a ‘revolution’, akin to that of Copernicus and Galileo, which Kant is staging. Such a revolution must be able to take place as it has been carefully planned in advance (ibid.: B27–8). Kant is adamant that his philosophical project is not analogous to any unrealisable castle in the sky or a crazy flight of fancy like the Tower of Babel (or indeed a pyramid). It is rather a modest, down-to-earth house (ein

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KANT TROUBLE Wohnhaus (ibid.: B735). 27 That it is to say, it is something we would recognise as being useful and practical in a homely sort of way. This can only mean that this domestic project is strangely familiar, rather uncanny— ‘strangely’ as the familiar is also revolutionary (a certain novelty remains).28 One thing is sure: the presentation of Kant as a founder akin to Moses is an extremely complex issue, not to be settled (down) easily. In the ‘Architectonic of Pure Reason’, Kant goes on to add that this philosophical, residually revolutionary discovery, which will put human beings on the path to enlightened rationality, is itself approximative, not absolute. Even if, despite all the reservations about founders, founding and originality in time and history, there is still necessarily a thinking of the revolutionary event, or discovery, wherein ideas of reason will become clear, this is in turn qualified by Kant: ‘…and the image, hitherto so abortive, has achieved likeness to the archetype, so far as this is granted to [mortal] men’ (ibid.: B866). As has already been shown, the question of temporality (Ur- and Nachbild) is problematised by Kant: there can be no ‘after’-image or copy of an ‘original’ image (or archetype), which is never given in time or space as such. The ‘so far as this is granted to (mortal) men’ warns us that even if reason can have originary effects and that revolutionary events do, to a limited extent, take place, the ideas will never come down to earth to rest and remain among us—although (yet a further complication) Kant does advise us elsewhere that, in the case of a possible and sometimes even confirmed progression towards an ideal (such as perpetual peace), we are obliged to act as if (als ob) this were indeed possible.29 This state of affairs leads us back to the Egyptian example. As we have seen, this reference traditionally functions as a ‘primitive’ stage before the (revolutionary) event/advent of (the) Greek ‘origin’. Despite the tools provided by a priori understanding, Kant makes it clear that the (‘Egyptian’) herumtappen is never completely left behind, laid to rest, by the Greek act of founding. We still have to act without full knowledge of the ‘things in themselves’ as our reason has its limits. Our ignorance can only be regulated, not completely dispelled, although we have to grope around as if the search for an absolute revelation could be successful. This has important repercussions for our capacity to judge, to be just or unjust, for our relationship to the Law. Additionally, these unsteady foundations unsettle the throne of the Law’s representative, the sovereign. In ‘The Empirical Employment of the Regulative Principle of Reason’, Kant discusses the twofold nature of objects of the senses: they are both empirical phenomena, subject to the causal law of nature, and intelligible noumena, which have the capacity to begin something spontaneously (i.e. freely) without being known as ‘things in themselves’ (ibid.: B561). The intelligible character of objects is thinkable (in pure understanding) but never knowable; it has effects in the world (it provides the ground of appearances)

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING (ibid.: B566) but cannot at all be derived from them. In an accompanying footnote, Kant draws out the implications of this: The real morality of actions, their merit or guilt, even that of our own conduct, thus remains completely hidden from us. Our imputations can refer only to the empirical character. How much of this character is ascribable to the pure effect of freedom, how much to mere nature, that is, to faults of temperament for which there is no responsibility, or to its happy constitution can never be determined; and upon it therefore no perfectly just judgements can be passed. (ibid.: B579; my italics) This passage clearly exposes the dilemma facing judgement; its inability to be completely in line with Justice when attempting to attribute actions either to a determining nature or to a free will. This is not at all to say that, owing to the never fully knowable motives of others and of ourselves, that the Law itself is obscured. Justice, like freedom, is a transcendental idea and as such borrows nothing from experience (in the form of, for instance, illustrative examples). Justice has as its object something that cannot be given in experi-ence (ibid.: B561). Kant provides a further example a few pages later to describe how, despite our ignorance of the true morality of our actions, we can still judge an act as immoral or otherwise. At the very moment when a lie is uttered, the culprit is entirely guilty (ibid.: B583). Despite whatever extenuating circumstances subsequently come to light, we still know that he is guilty of lying (that this is what is being judged). Indeed, the knowledge that the subject, regardless of the restrictions and determinations of the law of nature, was entirely free according to the law of reason when committing the crime, is what allows us to judge the case in the first place. Using the initial moral condemnation as a yardstick, we can subsequently alleviate or rein-force our judgement with the circumstantial evidence. Hence the impossibility of obtaining a balanced view of someone’s innocence or guilt turns out to be a condition of possibility for the (necessarily more or less unjust) act of judgement. Our inability to penetrate into the accused’s psyche is what allows us to muster our initial, stark, utterly detached judgement. But this inability is also the condition of impossibility of us ever being able to judge justly. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant damningly refutes the claim of the Marquis of Beccaria that capital punishment is illegal because no one in his right mind would agree to a contract that might mean his own death (Kant 1989:457; 1991b:143–4). Such an agreement could not have been included in the original social contract, because no one wants to be punished with death. Kant retorts that the marquis has confounded two people in one body: ‘As a colegislator in dictating the penal law, I cannot possibly be the same person who, as a subject, is punished in accordance with the law’ (ibid.). When

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KANT TROUBLE acting in the capacity of co-legislator, I cannot be the same person who might be punished according to that self-same law. Kant continues: a criminal cannot have ‘a voice’ in law making (as a criminal), because the legislator is ‘sacred’, as is the Law itself. The suggestion would appear to be that, at the moment of my dictating the Law, my fallible person is elsewhere. I am, as two persons, in two different places but at the same time: Consequently, when I draw up a penal law against myself as a criminal, it is pure reason in me (homo noumenon), legislating with regard to rights, which subjects me, as someone capable of crime and so as another person (homo phaenomenon), to the penal law, together with all others in a civil union. (ibid.) I am able to judge myself (unjustly) as another, in my other person. In my capacity as legislator, in my sacred function of laying down the Law, I am infallible, although elsewhere I could be a criminal. It is at this point that the logic of the king’s two bodies comes into play. It has just been established that the subject is not only split into two characters (the empirical and the intelligible, the latter remaining mysteriously unknown) but as legislator he/she has two persons or bodies. At the moment when the legislator dictates a law, he/she is a sacred, necessarily infallible representative of Justice. It now remains to see how Kant interprets the person(s) of the sovereign himself. Kantorowicz provides a useful way to highlight the mysterious duplicity of sovereignty and to suggest where Kant could be seen as cutting short his logic, being unfaithful to the spirit of the Law. As discussed above, Kantorowicz begins by explaining that the theory of the king’s two bodies, his (immortal, unerring) body politic and his (mortal, fallible) body natural, was a ‘legal fiction’ intended to account for the fact that kings died but kingship and the state survived. Considering the Commentaries of Blackstone (1765), he sees the risk, if this logic is used in a specific way, of it being haunted by the ‘spectre of absolutism’ (Kantorowicz 1981:4). This would arise if the two bodies of the sovereign were pasted together so firmly that no separation between them was permitted, even in death. 30 Despite being haunted by a ‘spectre’, there is with this approach to kingship a minimal amount of doubling: the mortal man becomes the concept of kingship and Justice. As a monarch, he is then regarded as faultless and considered as being in a ‘state of superhuman “absolute perfection”’ (ibid.).31 A less dogmatic use of this logic, one that avoided or negotiated with the autocratic danger, was exploited by the Tudors, most notably by Elizabeth I. The second nimbler application of the theory of the duplicity of the sovereign permits the king to be extolled and criticised, flattered and berated

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Plate VI A temporary triumphal arch dating from 1604. Photo courtesy of the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

KANT TROUBLE at the same time.32 This was enabled by an appeal to the kingly element of the king (that is: to his heritage, ancestors, the idealised tradition of kingship). By doing so, it could be demonstrated just how far short he falls from the model while at same time flattering his sense of historical importance by evoking his royal heritage (which could be largely mythological). Through such analogical representations of kingship (borrowed from the past, from the Bible, literature, myth), the monarch could be instructed and educated in what was expected of him/her in the way of virtuous and judicious actions; grievances could be aired under the pretext of total fidelity (and in theory without fear of reprisals).33 On great state occasions such as the ritualistic entry of a new monarch into the City of London on his/her birthday, stagecraft and architecture had an essential role to play in this double-sided approach to monarchy. They represented the taking place of the political; the ritualistic re-enactment of a social contract between the monarch and the people, which had never taken place as such. As an example, here follows a description of Queen Elizabeth I’s entry into London during her coronation procession in 1559: She passed under five triumphal arches which carried symbolical figurations of political virtues; the Queen was not only welcomed by her subjects, but she was also given guidance, by means of a series of instructive tableaux, in the art of governing a country which had known years of religious persecution and foreign intervention. The Queen’s entry was a long-remembered success because of her ready participation in the spirit of the day’s pageantry: she studied the devices with care, reacted to their implications and made a number of spontaneous speeches along the route. (Parry 1981:1–2) These triumphal arches were occasional constructions, that is, they were mounted for a particular event and dismantled afterwards (see Plate VI). Like the garden ‘follies’ of the eighteenth-century landscape gardens, which were often mere façades, trompe l’oeil, not ‘properly’ constructed buildings, they were just nailed together and then painted. Therefore, they resembled carnival floats more than the fixed, monumental triumphal arches commemorating military victories and the like. These temporary arches were not the only art form that exploited the potential of royal duplicity in an obvious way. So too did the court masques of artists like Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. This was also an ephemeral art form: the texts were rarely kept, as the onus of the production was as much on the decor and costumes as it was on the written word.34 That which is temporary, subject to the laws of temporality, was used to signify the mysterious, immortal nature of power and the Law. As Parry suggests, the masque could appropriately be compared to a mass as both ‘solemnly and ceremoniously reveal a mystery about the higher powers that

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING operate in the world’ (ibid.: 44). Since this chapter is concerned with the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor and kingship, we should also note that the sophisticated personifications presented in the tableaux of the royal pageantry and masques, which were heavily coded with classical references and contemporary allusions requiring partial decipherment, were called ‘hieroglyphs’.35 At first sight, Kant seems to embrace the first, the heavily dogmatic version of the logic of the king’s two bodies. This allows the monarch to become a potential autocrat by closing down the space of critical difference between the mortal example and the immortality of the kingly principle. In ‘General Remark on the Effects with regard to Rights that Follow from the Nature of the Civil Union’, he presents the Law as unquestionable and ‘inscrutable’ (Kant 1977b:437; 1991b:129). It has no provenance, no origin, because one is always already subject to it (1977b:438; 1991b:130). To doubt or criticise the Law, to suspend its power over one for even a moment, renders one liable to punishment by the very same laws that one wanted to put into question: A law which is so holy (inviolable) that it is already a crime even to call it in doubt in a practical way, and so to suspend its effect for a moment…’ (ibid., my italics). The line between what is ‘practical’ and the theoretical/hypothetical is hard to draw. Pushed to an extreme, a thought—even a hypothetical one imagining for philosophical purposes a certain possibility or situation— could represent treason, since at the moment that the possibility has been entertained that the Law could be unjust, that the king could be a tyrant and could be killed, one has already ‘suspended’ the ‘effect’ of the Law.36 One has already considered oneself as no longer subject to it and can be consequently punished as being, or wanting to be or just conjecturing the possibility of being, outside the Law.37 Consequently, Kant concludes that the ruler/sovereign has only rights visà-vis his subjects: no duties can be forced upon him (keine Zwangspflichten) (1977b:438; 1991b:130).38 No resistance against the sovereign is permitted, although complaints (Beschwerden) can be voiced. However, this distinction between practical/active resistance and the expression of grievances is an unworkable distinction seeing that a mere thought against the sovereign is already treacherous resistance to the state. Despite this complication, Kant nevertheless affirms the right to complain—although an actual riot or uprising (Aufruhr and Aufstand) (1977b:439; 1991b:131) against the representative power are apparently out of the question. Least of all can one attack the sovereign as an individual person with the pretext of his misuse of power. Any ‘assault on his person’ is considered to be high treason. The question must however be addressed: which ‘person’ of the king is being discussed here? We have already seen that any single subject has two characters (the empirical and the noumenal) and even two persons (the infallible body, which dictates laws and can even judge itself, and the fallible, merely mortal self). Is the sovereign the only exception to this doubling up of persons? Is the king to be

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KANT TROUBLE completely conflated with the King (i.e. with the idea of supreme power and Justice)? In ‘On the Relation with regard to Rights of a Citizen to his Native Land and to Foreign Countries’, Kant proposes that the pure idea of a supreme head of state is capable of having ‘objective practical reality’ (1977b:461; 1991b:146). Indeed, he goes so far as to say that: But this head of state (the sovereign) is only a thought-entity (to represent the entire people) as long as there is no physical person to represent the supreme authority in the state and to make this Idea effective on the people’s will. (1977b:461; 1991b:146–7) Here the sovereign would appear to be fully capable of assuming the position of representative of the idea; indeed, without his person it risks being a mere chimaera, without substance or content. However, at a later stage of his analysis, Kant admits that there can be no adequate example of a sovereign will. This supreme legislative power is a regulative principle lying a priori in the idea of a state constitution, that is to say, in a concept of practical reason: ‘no example in experience is adequate to be put under this concept [of a supreme power], still none must contradict it as a norm’ (1977b:499; 1991b:177). As an example of sovereignty the king is necessarily inadequate; he can only ever be an approximation. But, as a norm, he cannot be disobeyed without confounding the whole state mechanism, because resistance against the sovereign means that one finds oneself in the position of a criminal outlaw. How can anyone judge the principle of absolute power itself without already being in an illegal position? Moreover, who could possibly be the judge in any dispute that could arise between the people and the sovereign? After this passage, Kant adds in brackets: ‘for, considered in terms of rights, these are always two distinct moral persons’ (1977b:440; 1991b:131). However, it should not be forgotten that these ‘persons’ are not integral, are only ever inadequate representations of their positions and, if they do fulfil their capacities (as, for example, legislators), they no doubt have another person belonging to them elsewhere. In his discussion of the actual killing of the king, Kant states that it is not the murder of the monarch that is the main evil, because this could have been rashly committed out of a fear of reprisals (1977b:440; 1991b: 132). The natural body of the king is negligible. The real unredeemable crime is the formal execution of the king—or, one could say, the killing of the body politic: It is the formal execution of a monarch that strikes horror in a soul filled with the Idea of men’s rights, a horror that one feels

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING repeatedly as soon as one thinks of such scenes as the fate of Charles I or Louis XVI. (ibid.) The population has put itself in the impossible (perverse) position of appropriating the Law so as to judge with it the very representative of that same Law. The fact that the Law has thus been contradicted and abused to such an extent creates a confusion that precipitates the state to its suicide: ‘Like a chasm that irretrievably swallows everything, the execution of a monarch seems to be a crime from which the people cannot be absolved, for it is as if the state commits suicide’ (1977b:442; 1991b:132). The question to be asked is: can the state die or commit suicide?39 Can the idea (of just sovereignty) be brought down by the crimes of mortals? At the beginning of this chapter, Kant’s example of Egyptian groping (herumtappen) from the first Critique enabled us to test the foundations of his theories of origins, founders and revolutions as first beginnings. The conclusion drawn was that the illusion of the origin was a necessary one (that is, its possibility as a necessary ‘as if). An originating history, however vague, has to be found for metaphysics. Metaphysical systems need to appeal to a ground, an origin. This is traditionally to be found(ed) in Greece, with the necessary proviso that the Egyptians did not possess this capacity to found. Progress towards scientific knowledge starts with the Greeks, and we have the possibility of advancing further. However, at the same time, Kant also recognises that knowledge is always already on the right path (the way is merely more or less permanently obscured by undergrowth). The letter of the Law has already been sent out: the ‘original contract’ is an idea; that is, it is outside (or rather not subject to) temporality (1977b:463; 1991b:148). The state is never founded as such; it never as such comes to life (as its birth does not, cannot take place as an event). As a consequence, it never dies, or commits suicide. My suggestion is that this duplicity of origins, these fixed foundations that shake, that cannot be securely placed, are ways of accounting for the ambivalence around the ‘Egyptian metaphor’ described above, an ambivalence that repeats itself throughout the history of philosophy and architectural theory. The illusion of a primitive stage, a starting-point from which to distinguish an origin (the ‘origin’ coming after the beginning), is a necessary one for metaphysics anxious for solidity. However, within the same system, a second movement can be detected that testifies to the ‘eternal present’, the alwaysalready on the way. 40 This nomadic motion leads to a recognition of the artificiality of events, forcibly carved out from an indifferent and formless temporality. It is accompanied by an awareness of the very temporary nature of our settlements. It resists not only the centralist drive towards fixity but also, as we will see, towards fusion and synthesis in one representative body.41

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KANT TROUBLE The example of the Egyptians can once again provide us with a demonstration of this way of thinking. Theirs was a culture wherein the person (of the Pharaoh but also of his subjects) was systematically doubled by the ‘Ka’. This resulted in a ‘demise’ rather than a ‘death’ taking place, as the ‘place’ or event of death is displaced through repetition. Communities were founded around those stone buildings of death, the pyramids. These contained not just the mummified persons but also their miniature doubles in a desperate attempt to supplement the mortal remains and safeguard the human against the onslaught of faceless time.42 This attempt was doomed to failure, as safe-guards in turn need safeguarding; the chain of protective, back-up systems cannot be broken off without the last mechanism being in turn exposed to erosion by time. Additionally, rather than the human being preserved, the mummy is a thing that is no longer of the world of finite beings. Mummification means that the sovereign body is neither dead nor alive but just is (a mummy). The pyramid, symbol of intelligible temporality and human mortality, is the monument around which the community was founded. Here the foundation stone of the community is literally commemorative. 43 By comparison, the house—that symbol of (uncanny) familiarity for Kant— founds nothing. The Egyptian house is almost as temporary as those Renaissance masques, triumphal arches and eighteenth-century ‘follies’ mentioned above. Their fixed, colossal pyramids and temples are equivalent to (or the same as) ‘our’ houses; it is around these eternal necropolises that the community is founded, as temporary. Diodorus tells us that houses were regarded as mere ‘resting places’, whereas the stone graves were treated as ‘permanent houses’ (Diodorus, cited in Fischer von Erlach 1988: Tab. IV). It is in the light of this double movement (the fictive/historical startingpoint and the origin, together with the always-already of the ‘eternal present’) that the question of the suicide of the state must be addressed. On the one hand, the state cannot die; it is always there.44 It is not mortal, and a mortal body does not personify it sufficiently to symbolise its downfall. On the other hand, the state does change and hopefully progresses, by an accumulation of eventful moments, towards the idea of a perfect society (or, Kant tells us, at least we must act as if this is the case). This latter aspect of the state, its capacity for change, is a delicate process according to Kant at one point in Metaphysics of Morals. A mistake, he claims, could throw the state back to a ‘state of nature’, to a barbaric age outside and before civil society. Here Kant appears to be a stronger advocate of a pre-existing state of nature than even Rousseau. The latter openly admits that the state of nature is most probably a fiction: ‘a state which does not exist, which perhaps never existed at all’ (Rousseau 1971:151; 1979:39). Kant, by contrast, seems to assume that the ‘primitive’ can be reached all too easily. The state can be completely destroyed by criminal actions. In a discussion of honour as a motive both for infanticide (of an illegitimate child)

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING and for murder by duelling, Kant presents it as a psychological vestige of former times. The state is still relatively ‘barbaric and uneducated’, hence it threatens to distort Justice by tolerating crimes disguised as points of honour (Kant 1989:459; 1991b:145). In the same passage, Kant describes illegitimate children as outside the Law, beyond the reach of its protection, because conceived out of the institution of marriage, which for Kant is one of the most paradigmatic of contracts (1989:459; 1991b:144). Here the Law is seen to have limits, outside which there is lawlessness. If this were the only possibility for interpreting the Law, then the murder of the king would indeed mean the suicide of the state—the forms of the state would be rendered impossible; the populace itself would no longer be subject to the Law, which constitutes it as a populace. By admitting that the state could revert to barbarity, could commit suicide, Kant is cutting short the possibilities of his complex argument, which otherwise works on two levels in a double movement. Instead of a sovereign who both stands (in) for and yet cannot represent the state and its ideals, we have a sovereign who fully personifies the state. Instead of a state that both has a founding principle and yet cannot be founded, we are offered a state that is present in its entirety. That is, instead of two sets of double possibilities to negotiate with (using all the persuasive tools of theatricality), when Kant claims that the state cannot survive the death of the king, he collapses his own play of differences. It is not in his body natural that the king becomes Justice—this murdered body remains relatively insignificant (1989:440; 1991b:132). It is rather that, when he is formally judged, for example in a court of law (thereby making a total mockery of the juridical system), he becomes his body politic; he does fully represent the fate and destruction of the state (not in his mortal self but in his immortal capacity). The king becomes the Sovereign Good or, one could say, the autocratic Pharaoh, the Pharaoh of the closed, colossal pyramids. Excluded are the interesting implications of the repetitive doubling of the ‘Ka’, where the ‘Ka’ renders mortal death immaterial (without denying mortality; indeed, it works with it). Lost is the possibility of thinking of pyramids as having doors and windows through which the doubling ‘Ka’ passes, thereby reducing the difference between the supposedly down-to-earth domestic scene of the architectonic and the anti-communal death chamber of the unsettling pyramid (see Plate IV, p. 27).45 The nimbler, less dogmatic logic of the king’s two bodies would have resulted in the conundrums ‘Fight the king to protect the King’ and The king is dead, long live the King’. 46 This logic builds the regicide as an extraordinary event, as an ‘exception’—which historically took place because it cannot (the King cannot be killed off)—into the philosophical system and into the ‘form’ of the state. This means that regicide is not relegated to the status of a mistake and an illusion or explained away as the result of unthinking panic.47 Regicide does not emerge as the unthinkable, horrible

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KANT TROUBLE deed that ruptures the system. The philosopher is no longer restricted to advocating gradual reform of the political system and to outlawing revolutionary deeds at all costs. 48 Instead, the exceptional moment of the murder of the monarch becomes the moment when the state is functioning most efficiently, in a most stately manner, without any short-circuiting of its logic or conflation of its elements. In order to show how Kant does himself an injustice (or how, in other words, he cuts off his nose to spite his face), an analysis of talion law (‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’) is required. This will show how the Law cannot be regarded as having an outside into which one can fall, or as having a barbaric ‘before’ to which the state can revert. For Kant, talion law (Wiedervergeltungsrecht) is the only method of enforcing the Law and inflicting punishment that can correspond to ‘pure and rigorous justice’ (Kant 1989:454; 1991b:141). The ius talionis does not compromise Justice, since it is a punishment whose just severity can be understood, even by a criminal: Moreover, one has never heard of anyone who was sentenced to death for murder complaining that he was dealt with too severely and therefore wronged; everyone would laugh in his face if he said this. (1989:456; 1991b:143) It is also a form of punishment that, although severe, is not excessive: it functions so that it can be adapted to the ‘inner maliciousness’ of the offender. Kant demonstrates this with his example of the two participants in the 1745– 6 Stuart uprising in Scotland (1989:455; 1991b:142–3). When insurrection is punished with murder, the rebel who resists the state out of sincere conviction is not actually punished in the same way as the hanger-on, eager to exploit the disorder for his own benefit, although both receive the death sentence for their treason. The honourable man willingly dies for a cause in which he believes, whereas the scoundrel goes unwillingly. The latter’s punishment is greater than the former’s, although the sentence is the same, and this is just as his corruption is greater. The purity of talion law permits this internal conversion, where a punishment is converted and individually regulated by a series of pluses and minuses (+honour, -death/ -dishonour, -death).49 Talion law, as well as providing the purest expression of the Law for Kant, also conveniently conforms to basic human understanding. Freud explains, this time in Totem and Taboo, that: The law of Talion, which is so deeply rooted in human feelings, lays it down that a murder can only be expiated by the sacrifice of another life: self-sacrifice points back to blood-guilt. (Freud 1989:437; 1985:216)

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING Talion law is a law that has no outside: individuals do not fall or lie out of its reaches. This law is anchored in the psyche—it cannot be left behind or escaped from. While it permits psychological regulation, talion law is an imperative that cannot be compromised or relativised. Its severity can only be diluted, Kant explains, if its enforcement in a society full of criminals would mean that the state would no longer have any subjects (Kant 1989:456; 1991b:143). But even this extreme case is contradicted by Kant one page earlier in the bizarre example of the hypothetical dispersion of a community: Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in this public violation of justice. (1989:455; 1991b:142) As for Freud, here also talion law is related to ‘blood-guilt’ (Blutschuld). The dissolution of the community is impossible, since if each member went separately to a different country, the mere fact of one single murderer resting in the prison on the island would reconstitute the community by an assignation of guilt. It is one thing to argue that humanity has been debased by the character of the unpunished murderer, quite another to talk about blood-guilt. The community, though dispersed, is still accountable; it still has debts to pay, not to the sovereign but to the Law itself. Talion law would not be compromised by the failure to kill that last lonely murderer—it cannot be compromised (there is no position possible outside it, and it is instinctively recognised by all). Talion law always exists, it being the purest expression of the Law, and to that extent a community is always bound together by it (it cannot disband or dissolve). It shares a guilt not to be paid off by the killing of that last murderer. 50 The debts will always be outstanding, and Freud suggests the reasons for this: The law of Talion…lays it down that a murder can only be expiated by the sacrifice of another life: self-sacrifice points back to bloodguilt. And if this sacrifice of a life brought about atonement with God the Father, the crime to be expiated can only have been the murder of the father. (Freud 1989:437; 1985:216) The King/Father was murdered long ago (although whether the event actually took place cannot be determined). This might help to explain some of the

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KANT TROUBLE ambivalence towards founders, origins, the sovereign himself (as Ersatz father) and not least the ‘Egyptian metaphor’: ‘a king’s crown was a hieroglyph of the laws’ (see the epigraph from Kantorowicz). The king’s crown is a unremovable stop-gap that marks the mysterious, traumatic split between the King, since forever inaccessible for us, and the mortal kingly example (fallible and forever substitutable). The sovereign both manages to function as a representative of the laws and yet stands in for something, the Law, which is mysterious and enigmatic (i.e. which cannot be completely embodied, portrayed). This Law is both universally understood and acknowledged as lawful and yet it doubles, repeats the crime (‘an eye for an eye’). It brings with it a ‘blood-guilt’ that was contracted in a time not adhering to the rules of the causality of nature, a period that cannot be historically circumscribed. The killing of a Charles I or a Louis XVI can change nothing, inasmuch as the King cannot be killed off: the King cannot be had, dead or alive. The Egyptian reference has allowed us to reach the obliterated theoretical origin of the Law. The origin exists as a traumatic split between two founders or sovereign representatives of the Law. This split also opens up the possibility of a negotiated politics that plays with and thereby demonstrates the radical difference between the two bodies.51 This logic has been compared with the act of foundation, traditionally regarded as ‘Greek’. This creates the illusion of a determined founder who is able to lay down the Law and hence the foundations of society firmly and securely. With this logic we are still under the illusion that the state can be incorporated by a powerful individual. Conclusion This analysis raises two main problems: the question of the sovereign as a necessary symbol of the Law and talion law as a ‘natural law’. I will deal with them in this order. The proposition that the sovereign/monarch cannot be killed off, that he/ she is a necessary symbol (although not in person), could be applied to Republican France, for example. An argument could also be made for the French royal family having been merely displaced, not eradicated, as a result of the revolution—there is still a Pretender to the French throne, the Comte de Paris. Still on a purely empirical level, it is evident that, with his ‘grands projets’ and his powers of amnesty—for prisoners’ sentences and parking fines—exercised after elections (a use of the Law categorically disapproved of by Kant (1989:459–60; 1991b:145), François Mitterrand was able to conduct himself in a regal fashion. He inscribed his signature on the city of Paris in ways impossible for the British queen in London. It could also be claimed that Louis XVI’s murder allowed the sovereign to come back in another form, a form that is much more efficient than that of the hybrid British nation because it allows identity to be celebrated, accompanied by unashamed flag waving,

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING with a clear conscience. 52 France has a republic not just because of the separation of the legislative and executive powers demanded by Kant, but also because the president is more ‘representative’ than a constitutional monarchy. He symbolically gives the nation form: ‘Every form of government that is not representative is properly speaking without form’ (Alle Regierungsform nämlich, die nicht repräsentativ ist, ist eigentlich eine Unform) (Kant 1977a:207; 1983b:114; 1991c:101). To push my logic even further: he is more of a monarch than the British queen.53 The British queen has in theory extensive powers (e.g. to dissolve Parliament), but these powers are symbolic. Her power is suspended, as she herself is a representative of the Law (between mortality and immortality). This point is crucial: the powers are theoretical—if she dared to put them into action she would render herself completely null and void. According to commentators, this was the case with Baudouin I, the recently deceased Belgian king: in 1990, he abdicated for twenty-four hours (which was theoretically completely within his powers) to avoid having to acknowledge the parliamentary Bill facilitating abortion (to which he was strongly opposed). The specialists’ opinion was that, by actually putting into practice his theoretical, symbolic, rights, he had rendered the monarchy redundant. These are important points to consider, especially in the light of the resurgence of royalist tendencies in Eastern Europe (and in France itself, encouraged by the far Right). The monarchy can be regarded as a symptom of the attempt to represent the residual, irreducible mystery around the Law and the nation. It would make sense that this monarchic device would seem tempting, especially in times of disquiet and unease about national identity; the sovereign appears to offer the chance to incorporate and personify an otherwise disparate and faceless entity. This is no new phenomenon in Eastern Europe. Even under the communist regimes the kingly, pharaonic principle was in play. Like the Egyptians, the Communists embalmed their leaders. Lenin and Dimitroff (of Bulgaria) were preserved like mummies, or like the ‘un-dead’ in Dracula. This attempt to cancel out the difference between the mortal and immortal bodies of the sovereign leads to a short-circuiting of the system, just as it did with Kant’s apparent refusal to accept the possibility of regicide. In Dracula, the ‘undead’ vampires were once exceptional, good and loveable persons. Evil is seen as feeding off the good, ‘preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best’ (Stoker 1979:284). The transformed beloved unwittingly corrupts those he/she cherishes the most: ‘the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks’ (ibid.: 354). Likewise, Lenin and Dimitroff, revolutionary freedom fighters working for the good of the working class, become oppressive dictators through their frozen suspension between life and death. These ‘un-dead’ were used to demonstrate that as the ‘king’ cannot die, the state is also immortal. Their lying in state (the ceremonious display of their bodies to the people without any subsequent

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KANT TROUBLE burial) became a lie due to the attempt to saturate the excess mystery of the Law’s origin with their person. We discussed above the theatricality associated with the king’s two bodies, its expression through masques and temporary architecture. The diplomatic negotiation between the two bodies involved an appeal to mythological references. Indeed, I would argue that, as regards stagecraft, ‘myth’ cannot be completely dispensed with. This proposition runs counter to the ideas expounded by Lacoue-Labarthe and Lyotard. It would seem that for LacoueLabarthe myth is inextricably linked to fascism. When discussing Rosenberg, he writes: In this sense, as is perfectly clear from a reading of Rosenberg, myth is in no way ‘mythological’. It is a ‘power’ (puissance), the power that is in the gathering together of the fundamental forces and orientations of an individual or a people, that is to say the power of a deep, concrete, embodied identity. (1987:135; 1990:93–4) While the ‘legal fiction’ of the two bodies does group together people under the auspices of a shared identity, it is not at all an identity that can simply be embodied by force. It must also not be overlooked that the doubling located by Kantorowicz as an ‘invention’ of the Tudors is not immune to the unsettling effect that it tries to manipulate. The effects of two bodies can be deduced outside and beyond an ‘invention’ willed by the Tudors. It is anchored deep in the human psyche and bears traces of some traumatic ‘primal deed’ committed in a time that cannot be dated or inscribed in any way into an eventual history of humankind intended to yield reassuring origins. Rather than confirming a supposedly deep and rooted sense of belonging together as strength, the myth of the two bodies disrupts one’s faith in founding figures, who can only be inadequate (Ersatz), and binds people together only through their shared guilt: theirs is a guilty association to be negotiated, not simply celebrated. In Postmodernism Explained to Children, Lyotard draws a strict, value distinction between ‘myths’ and ‘grand narratives’: the latter are futureoriented, based on an idea—such as freedom or equality—to be aimed for; whereas the former are categorically reactionary, inseparable from ideas of origins, foundations and past identity (Lyotard 1988a:76; 1992:61). Such an opposition is too simplistic. A more satisfactory analysis can be found in Derrida’s essay ‘Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German’. In this discussion of Renan, Derrida suggests that a nation is built not on an account of a shared memory but rather on a shared forgetting; the violent act that founded the national identity is forgotten, repressed, and this is what forges the (promise of) unity. Hence the question of myth is more complicated than a mere fictionally historical account of past roots and acts

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING of heroic foundation—one could say that it is exactly these supposedly originary events that it cannot remember because of their violence (Derrida 1991a:88–9). In the same essay, Derrida paraphrases Rosenzweig’s thoughts on the unnatural birth of the Jewish nation: [Unlike other nations] the Jewish one does have a history, so to speak, before being born. It does not come to be born naturally but by being taken out from another nation, having been known, having been called by God’s Law even before its birth. (ibid.: 76) Despite the claim of a specifically Jewish ‘unnaturalness’, one could generalise this state (and by so doing the Jewish nation becomes the archetype of all nations): every nation has a history before being born because the birth, the memory of the origin, is necessarily repressed, inaccessible. At one point in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant denies that Judaism is a religion: instead, he suggests that it is more of a political organisation (Kant 1989:790; 1960:116). Kant also admires the miracle of the Jewish identity, which has conserved itself despite the diaspora and persecution (1989:803; 1960:127). This reference to a community that cannot be broken up echoes our discussion above of talion law and Kant’s hypothetical dispersion of an island population. Indeed, talion law is, most obviously in the New Testament, associated with the Jews. In Matthew 5:38– 9, it is written: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Christian forgiveness is regarded as superior to the vindictive Jewish law of retaliation. This privileging of the former over the latter is blatantly apparent in Hegel’s ‘The Spirit of Christianity and its Destiny’: he insists on the difference between the ‘infinitely antagonistic’ Jewish nature as opposed to the loving reconciliation of Christianity (Hegel 1990a:277–8, 327). In Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the same talion law is associated not with the Jews but with the Furies. These are represented as barbaric female divinities who precede the Greek act of civilised founding. The trilogy ends with Athene, who has openly admitted her allegiance to the supposedly superior male, laying down the Law and with it firm foundations for the city of Athens, so that: ‘our ground may shine in the future of strong men to come’ (Aeschylus 1954: Eumenides, 1. 1031). Here is a reactionary myth that is linked to the future, thereby running contrary to Lyotard’s simplistic division between

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KANT TROUBLE ‘myths’, indexed to the past, and future-oriented ‘grand narratives’. In the Eumenides, it is the talion law of the Furies that threatens to disrupt the taking place of the event of foundation. The logic of ‘an eye for an eye’ is traditionally regarded as sheer primitive retaliation. It is denied the status of a moral law and relegated to the level of revenge. The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics defines ‘revenge’ against ‘punishment’ in the following way: As soon as the mere application of the lex talionis is perceived to be impossible, so soon as the idea of vicarious action and vicarious suffering enters in; so soon as injuries to intangible values (e.g. as honour, reputation), which cannot be assessed at a definite price, are taken into account, so soon does the apparently non-moral principle of revenge take upon itself an ethical aspect. (Spooner, in Hastings et al. 1918:751) Talion law seems to require such a ‘pricing’ in order for the crime to be repeated. However, we have seen that for Kant talion law was nevertheless the purest, most efficient form of justice. Indeed, when discussing the Stuart rebels, he considered it to be the form of legal morality best suited to taking honour into account (Kant 1989:455–6; 1991b:142–3). Human honour and dignity, so cherished by Kant, are precisely those priceless values mentioned in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics that are supposed to render talion law inappropriate. These ‘intangible values’ are traditionally regarded as being too sophisticated for talion law, because it needs to be able to attribute a definite ‘price’ to a criminal action in order to exact its retaliation. Honour and dignity are priceless assets, as Kant agrees, to be appreciated and assessed by the more subtle legal system of the courts and jury—and it is here that the difference arises.54 In entrusting honour to talion law, Kant reveals that his understanding of this law of retaliation differs substantially from the standard reading. Like Kant, Levinas also appeals to talion law. He presents it as a ‘suitable’ expression for crimes against humanity: Yes, eye for an eye. And all eternity, all the money in the world can never cure the outrage done to man. A wound which bleeds for all time, as if the same suffering was needed to stop this eternal haemorrhage. (Levinas 1976:210–11) Here, talion law is considered ‘suitable’ because it memorialises the crime by refusing an equivalence; there is no punishment that could possibly compensate for the atrocities that have been committed. The crime refuses to be judged once and for all and subsequently forgotten. It exceeds all possible

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING punishment and never ceases to cry out for Justice, thereby reminding us of the pain and suffering. This equating of talion law with a refusal of equivalence necessitates a rereading of this expression of the Law. Normally, talion law is seen as exacting the strictest of correspondences with the letter of the Law—hence Shylock’s stereotypical, cruel mercilessness and his eventual failure to get his payment as he cannot cut off precisely one pound of flesh (Shakespeare 1979:IV, i, ll. 320ff).55 However, in The Myth of the Talion Law, Raphaël Dräi suggests that in fact no new interpretation of talion law is necessary—instead, a return to its original meaning is required. This leads to a refutation of the presentation of talion law as barbaric revenge—a prejudice that has been used as evidence for Jewish viciousness by anti-Semites throughout the ages. Dräi states that the doubling repetition of âin tah’at âin, ‘an eye for an eye’, is ‘polluted by a radical mistranslation’. While âin does mean ‘eye’, the tah’at has been systematically misrepresented: ‘there is no way that the term tah’at corresponds to the preposition “for” which suggests an immediate retaliation and a recursive relation. Tah’at actually means: “in replacement for”’ (Dräi 1991:20). Dräi demonstrates how talion law was never intended to be based on exact equivalence but instead contains a principle of substitution within it. The repetition is not based on identity; repetition involves change: Since in fact nothing can be replaced with its identical, that a replacement consists, by definition, in putting a different or new object in the place of the former, whether it has deteriorated or disappeared…the saying ‘eye for an eye’ offered as a rendition of âin tah’at âin is only an image and must be interpreted metaphorically, strictly speaking it cannot have the authority of a juridical injunction. (ibid.) The metaphorical level to talion law leads back to the Levinas passage. While the juridical institutions can judge and sentence war criminals, talion law provides a radical ethics that cries out the inconsolable injury to human dignity. One problem posed by talion law is its status as a universally accessible and comprehensible so-called ‘natural’ law that bridges the distinction between the individual and society, the public and private realms, the inside and the outside. This moral law is also political; it forms the community and holds it together, allowing no separation. Like Kant, Freud regards talion law not as a Jewish particularity but instead generalises it to apply to all human beings. Indeed, Dräi suggests that ‘he situates the talion not in a particular culture or particular religion, but in the centre of the human psyche’ (ibid.: 24). As mentioned above, it is seen as resulting from the act of parricide, which becomes the source of morality:

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KANT TROUBLE The earliest moral precepts and restrictions in primitive society have been explained by us as reactions to a deed which gave those who performed it the concept of ‘crime’. They felt remorse for the deed and decided that it should never be repeated. (Freud 1989:441–2; 1985:222) However, as Derrida points out in ‘Préjugés’, this attempt to generate the Law and morality from this deed founders on the question of the subsequent regret and guilt supposedly experienced: ‘Repenting of this act (but how and why if it happens before morality, before the Law)’ (Derrida 1989c: 116). Indeed, it is the Law that creates the awareness of sin. Guilt alone does not and cannot produce the need for codes of moral conduct: ‘Nay, I had not known sin but by the law…For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died’ (Romans 7:7–9). The consequence of this is that the origin of the Law remains nonderivative. It cannot be derived from an act or deed. The status of the parricide as ‘event’ is also impossible to pin down precisely, because the death of the Father is exactly what keeps him alive: ‘this event is a sort of non-event…[the father is] more dead alive than post mortem’ (Derrida 1989c:116). The event of killing off the Father does not take place inasmuch as he impinges more on the minds of the population when dead; i.e. he is more powerful, more present, in his absence. The impossibility of accounting for the beginning of the Law, the fact that it always precedes the attempt at family history, neither clarifies the identity of the Father (he cannot be the originator of the Law as it cannot be invented) nor elucidates whether it is of a political or purely ethical nature. In any case, it is a natural law corresponding to Diderot’s definition from the Encyclopaedia: This natural law, having been founded on such essential principles, is perpetual and invariable: no convention, no law can depart from it and the obligations it imposes cannot be dispensed with. In this it differs from positive laws. (Diderot 1966:131) Talion law is a natural law that cannot be compromised but is for us already cultural. This natural law is cultural because it is intimately associated in incontrovertible ways with collective identity as a community, shared guilt and eventual responsibility. In Natural Law and Human Dignity, Ernst Bloch celebrates Kant’s progressive rejection of the ‘natural model of patria potestas’. He quotes with approval the following passage from ‘On the Common Saying: “This may be true in theory but it does not apply in practice”’:

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING Under such a paternal government (imperium paternale) the subjects, as immature children who cannot distinguish what is truly useful or harmful to themselves, would be obliged to behave purely passively and to rely upon the judgement of the head of state as to how they ought to be happy, upon his kindness in willing their happiness at all. Such a government is the greatest conceivable despotism. (Kant 1977a:145–6; 1991c:74) However, Bloch laments, as a shocking, reactionary throwback to archaic ideas of right, Kant’s advocacy of talion law and his apparent rejection of the right to oppose even a satanic authority (1985a:82–3). What Bloch fails to appreciate is that these two sides to Kant’s discussion of the Law in the The Doctrine of Right’ of The Metaphysics of Morals—the apparently incomprehensible reference to the barbaric talion law and the radical Kantian theory of right—must be thought together. By making us radically responsible and guilty for a crime not to be paid off, we are free in our obligations—at least towards the sovereign as a mortal body, who is necessarily an impostor, though a necessary one. The articulation between talion law and Kant’s theory of right, anchored in a conception of the king’s two bodies, rather than being a strange mixture of reactionary progress or the late work of a half-senile old man, is exactly what could prevent the monarchy from being despotic. The king’s two bodies prevent regicide being the suicide of the state by refusing any successful mortal incorporation of the Law. The ‘Egyptian’ doubling confounds attempts to found the state in the person of the sovereign. In the first Critique, the plodding and groping (herumtappenden) Egyptians, by problematising any recourse to an originating event, turn founders into floundering beginners who cannot lay down the Law once and for all. NOTES 1

2

3

Examples of references to herumtappen include Kant (1983a:BVII, BXI, BXIV, BXV, BXXXI): grundloses Tappen und leichtsinniges Herumstreifen inadequately translated by Meredith as ‘groping at random, without circumspection or selfcriticism’; Kant (1977a:128): Herumtappen in Versuchen und Erfahrungen, translated (in Kant 1983b:61) as ‘stumbling about in experiments and experience’. This question of ‘revelation’ in the Kantian system is to be addressed in the Conclusion. See Derrida (1962:23) for a commentary on this passage from the first Critique. Derrida highlights how Kant allows a certain degree of historical invention while also problematising the notion of a particular foundation or origin. See, for example, Kant (1983a:XVIII). The term ‘touchstone’ (Probierstein) is discussed in detail in Chapter 2. Kant invests much simplistic faith in this concept as a pseudo-scientific means of distinguishing between supposed discrete

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identities and of drawing up hard and fast limits between what is proper and permissible and what is not. For example, see the discussion of the Enlightenment in Kant (1977b:549; 1974:97): Before this revolution others did his thinking for him, and he merely imitated them or let them lead him by guide ropes. Now he risks walking forward with his own feet on the ground of experience, even if he wobbles along, (my italics)

See Philonenko (1968:28–30) for an analysis of Kant’s portrayal of humanity as ultimately made of ‘crooked wood’. 5 See Kant (1989:437; 1991b:129). 6 Indeed, on the same page of ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ Derrida also makes the link between his ambivalent subject of discussion, the ‘undecidable’ of Plato’s pharmakon, and Kant. He refers to the transcendental imagination as described in the first Critique: ‘an art concealed in the depths of the human soul’ (Kant 1983a: B180). Kant’s transcendental imagination also blurs oppositions and distinctions. 7 I note that if the syncretic Masonic model—discussed in the Introduction—could be adopted as a mode of historical analysis, the figure of Moses would not be robbed of his Egyptian past. 8 This theme of the repetitive re-enactment of the original parricide and the concomitant ‘blood-guilt’ or ‘original sin’ will re-emerge at the end of this chapter in the concluding discussion of the possibility of regicide. 9 Hence Freud can say that Christianity is no longer strictly monotheistic. See Freud (1989:536; 1985:332). 10 See Goux (1978:15) for an explanation of why these ‘splits’ and ‘differences’ are not just external character traits but psychic patterns to be repressed. 11 In Moses and Monotheism it is very interesting to note that Freud’s own concerns about institutional foundations and his position as founding father of psychoanalysis are triggered off by the subject matter of his essay. He does not want to risk publishing a work that could undermine the security of the School of Psychoanalysis in Vienna. Later, after Hitler’s ‘invasion’ of Austria, this question is no longer an issue as he finds himself in exile in London. There, assured of his position after ‘the friendliest of welcomes’, he feels secure enough to carry on with his Mosaic thinking (Freud 1989:506; 1985:298). This work on Jewish history encapsulates the traumatic difficulties and violence surrounding unity and belonging together (grouping people together under the auspices of a single national identity). These are exactly the terms that Freud uses to describe his own anxieties regarding his work. He lacks the feeling of ‘unity and belongingness (Einheit und Zusammengehörigkeit) that should exist between author and work’ (1989:507; 1985:299). That bond has to be forged forcibly; the writer has to impose his/her will on the material confronting him/her to create the illusion of being the originating ‘author’ of a particular theory. However, as Freud points out, the text itself betrays the signs of its mutilations (1989:492; 1985:283). The attempt to rid the text of its uncontrollable ‘Egyptian’ element fails, as the scribbling takes on a life of its own.

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See Frazer (1987:174) for a description of the inconveniences of this nonseparation between the temporal and the spiritual for the King concerned: The Kings of Egypt were worshipped as gods, and the routine of their daily life was regulated in every detail by precise and unvarying rules. ‘The life of the kings of Egypt’, says Diodorus, ‘was not like that of other monarchs who are irresponsible and may do just what they choose; on the contrary, everything was fixed for them by law, not only their official duties, but even the details of their daily life’.

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The theocratic ruler was not as free as we might have believed. This idea of protecting the King from himself will be of central importance for the later debate around regicide, whereby, according to the logic of the king’s two bodies, one is permitted to kill the king to protect the King. Bayard also cites a helpful passage from Totem und Taboo, where Freud describes the sovereign and his ‘magical force, mysterious and dangerous’ (Bayard 1984:35). On this subject of volatile vital forces, see also Mauss (1950) on the hau and mana, and Bloch (1961). Jacobsen defines the ‘Ka’ as ‘not only a divine force which relates the King with his ancestors and with the deity, but it also relates the people with their ruler, and through him with the godhead’ (cited in Giedion 1981:91). In this book I only discuss kings, but the whole point of Axton’s work is to show how the same principle applied to queens as well. She provides an interesting account of how Elizabeth I very successfully used the device of monarchical duplicity and the two bodies to evade pressure to come up with an heir to the throne. Shakespeare is a mine of information on the king’s two bodies. Kantorowicz (1981) draws on Richard II, and Axton (1977) discusses King Lear and Henry VI. Maspero adds further weight to my suggestion that the ‘Ka’ provides a logic analogous to that of the Tudor two bodies when he writes: ‘Ka, a second exemplar of the body, of a less dense matter than the matter of the body’ (cited in Giedion 1981:93). See Giedion (1981:282): ‘Many false doors were indicated upon the enclosure wall, to allow King Zoser’s Ka freedom of movement.’ See Schwaller de Lubicz (1961:284) on the sacrificial offerings of food to the ‘Ka’ of the dead Pharaoh. Aldred (1987:112–13) underlines the link between the ‘Ka’, the false door and food: The offering niche…was [by the Fourth Dynasty] gradually expanded… into a simple chamber with the stela filling the upper part of the false door on the rear wall, with reliefs of the deceased on the jambs as though coming forth from the tomb to partake of the offerings.

Aldred also uses the illustration of the false door (Plate V, p. 73). 19 This would be inadvisable considering Kant’s remarks about the arrogance of the British, thinking their constitution the best in the world when they too have no right to resistance against the sovereign (in Kant 1977a:160; 1991c:83).

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24 25 26

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See Kantorowicz (1981:3–4). See Kantorowicz (1981:328–40). See Kant (1983a: B789). Neither provide ‘a dwelling-place for permanent settlement’. This parallel between the restless Egyptians and the nomadic sceptics leads back to our attempt in the introductory sections to bring the nomadic principle into our discussions of architecture in general and Egyptian architecture in particular. Indeed, this is no news to theorists of Egyptian art—see Giedion (1981:134, 353, 387) and his analysis of the Egyptian fascination with ‘eternal wandering’, as reflected in their architecture. See Kant (1983a:B862–3): ‘For we shall then find that [the] founder, and often even his latest successors, are groping for an idea which they have never succeeded in making clear to themselves.’ Kant’s proposed split between the technical/mechanical and the organic/ architectonic is called into question in Chapter 2. See Rogozinski (1984:147; in Copjec 1996:34) for an analysis of the ethical possibilities opened up by this noumenal temporality. I note the similarity between Kant’s approach to temporality and the impossibility of absolutely first beginnings and that of Derrida’s (see, for example, Derrida 1987c:363–86). Reason is elsewhere linked by Kant to a faith in ‘ends’, which are presented as controlling and guaranteeing reason’s progress. This optimistic notion constitutes an essential difference between the two philosophers. However, in Chapter 3, we show how Kant’s belief in a comforting overseer for human reason is dislodged by his concept of ‘radical evil’. Kant opposes his modest domestic project to castles in the sky in 1977b:484; 1974:55; 1988c:952. Despite his rejection of these high-faluting, unrealisable projects, I have tried to show how utopian architecture, together with temporary and ruined architecture, could be seen to engage best of all with the stakes of the architectonic. See Freud (1955:229–68; 1990:336–76) for how the uncanny presides over the domestic and the familiar. See Kant (1983a:B714; 1989:474–9; 1991b:156–61). For an exegesis of such a pasting together of the two bodies, see Morgan 1993. Axton (1977:145–6) neatly contrasts the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I by analysing their understanding of the device of the monarch’s two bodies: During Elizabeth’s reign both the Queen and her advisers made full use of an ideology which consisted of technical concepts, myth and metaphysics, suggestion and subtle coercion, to maintain a precarious balance of power. James did not really understand that he had been asked, but mistook veiled warning and criticism for compliment. Those pageants which greeted his entry into London were an expression of expectant hope and faith which demanded justification; they were not a celebration of James’ actual achievements and personal virtues as King of Scotland…James was now insisting in Parliament that there was no discrepancy [between his two bodies]; the millennium had arrived, perfection was achieved. His vision of union within his body natural did not correspond to political realities as the Commons saw them; worse, he had pre-empted the very theory

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING by which they might have criticised him. On these terms opposition was driven to more explicit channels, and a workable consensus about the balance in the state broke down.

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James I attempted to fuse together the two bodies, thereby contributing to the decline of this theory. This device of the monarch’s two bodies had as much to do with the arts as it did with legal wrangling. It combined both in an inventive, brilliant fiction. James I’s mishandling of the two bodies can be seen as leading directly to the decline of the arts in the later Jacobean period (see also Axton 1977:146). See, for example, Wilson (1980:12–13): ‘The message of pageantry [included] a compliment to the monarch and an invocation of the true monarch [e.g. Oberon].’ Despite praising James, the compliments are ambiguous: ‘the stress is on the homage due to the throne of Arthur and its inheritors including the present incumbent rather than to James himself identified with Arthur’ (ibid.). See Axton (1977) on the use by the court masques of the king’s two bodies in the Elizabethan succession debate. Parry (1981:3) explains the function of triumphal arches in a similar manner: The main intention of a triumphal arch is to celebrate, and these frontispieces to the Jacobean era celebrate not the historical achievements of a victor, as did their Roman archetypes, but the imagined virtues and ideals of the ruler. In a sense, too, they are incantatory, conjuring up forces that are expected to influence the King, and, in order to realise the full potential of their design, they require the presence of the King to release their message. Orgel (1975:40) describes masques in a similar fashion: As a genre it is the opposite of satire, it educates by praising, by creating heroic roles for the leaders of society to fill. The democratic imagination sees only flattery in this sort of thing, but the charge is misguided and blinds us to much that is crucial in all the arts of the Renaissance. The age believed in the power of art—to persuade, transform, preserve.

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The balance to be struck between the written text and the ‘painting and carpentry’ (see Ben Jonson’s ‘An Expostulation with Inigo Jones’ 1.50) was the subject of the feud between Jonson and Jones. On this disagreement, see Gordon (1980:77–101). See Parry (1981:66). The author points out that these theatrical, but nevertheless most political, events were so highly charged with erudite references that it was most improbable that a spectator could unpack them all, so an explanatory account was often published afterwards. The masque or triumphal arch was not a failure if its sources and allusions remained not fully understood or incompletely deciphered; rather, it served its purpose if the audience had grasped the general symbolic significance and the ‘secret operation of powers’ that had been hinted at (ibid.: 44). What is especially interesting about the ‘legal fiction’ of the king’s two bodies is that, despite its similarities with the religious mass and myth, it is

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theoretically not simply a device to blind, intimidate and control the nation’s subjects. Instead, it possesses a double capacity to create an identity, to found a community, while also allowing criticism and judgement (of the very identity it con-founds). See Shakespeare (1977:I, iii, ll. 134ff), where the actual regicide could be seen as a mere enactment of the imagined, ‘fantastical’ murder (‘My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical’). The latter is technically more guilty that the ‘actual’ killing, as it is the prerequisite for the murder. Macbeth’s disturbing regicidal fantasy opens up an abyss that confounds his ability to differentiate and distinguish, thereby disallowing any clear-cut separation between the real/unreal, fact/fiction, good/bad: My thought… Shakes so my single state of man, That function is smother’d in surmise, And nothing is, but what is not.

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38 39

40 41

This confusion leads to murder. Such a collapse of binary opposites is part of the questioning of absolutes in Macbeth: truth itself, in the discussion of the Witches’ prophecies and equivocation, is revealed as being unable to stand up by and for itself; it is relative and hence would have to be saturated, completely informed by a context, to avoid being misleading. However, in his discussion of the Jewish joke listed in the Standard Edition under ‘truth, a lie (Jewish)’—i.e. the Cracow/ Lemberg ‘joke’—Freud shows that the expectations of the addressee and the context can never be completely taken into account. Truth telling cannot exclude the risk of falsity and cannot anticipate how it may be mistaken for a lie (see Freud 1978:161; 1915:247). Our analyses of Kant, especially in Chapter 4 on ‘radical evil’ as an inevitable and irremediable distortion, would permit him to join in these reflections on the relativity of absolutes. This hypothetical, internalised questioning of the Law would not necessarily have to trouble Kant’s theory of right and its juridical laws, as they concern themselves merely with actions (or with thoughts, but only as they bear on the facts as revealed by deeds). It is the ethical law that interrogates thoughts and intentions regardless of whether they have any claim to empirical truth (see Kant 1990b:228). Nevertheless, confusion does arise with the person of the sovereign, because he is used to providing a transition between the political state and the community’s ethical and cultural identity. Kant explains that although the sovereign is not necessarily a monarch, this is the easiest and therefore the best constitution (Kant 1989:461–2; 1991b:147). The other question to be asked would be: given Kant’s distinction between the empirical (political) state and the idea of the (ethical) community, even if the former could commit suicide, how could its destruction involve the death of the latter? Consequently, there would in any case be no ‘chasm which irretrievably swallows everything’. See Giedion (1981:ix) for the reference to the Egyptians’ ‘eternal wandering’. See also Dean and Massumi (1992:72) on the repressive tendencies of states to fuse ‘the disparate elements of the social and physical environments into a unified whole belonging to a single body’.

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The Egyptian Department of the Bodemuseum in Berlin tells us that figurines were placed alongside the mummified corpse: ‘The primitive figures in the coffin, wrapped up in canvas strips, represented the dead in so-called “fake-burials” which were supposed to guarantee the eternal life of the deceased beyond the natural burial.’ The repetition, doubling and theatricality (of the pretend burial) carries on beyond the grave. Giedion (1981:264) notes the commemorative birth of Egyptian buildings: ‘it was the grave that gave birth to the first stone architecture.’ The stone itself, even before its particular, commemorative use, is already a monument re-marking (on) an irretrievable origin. Stone inescapably engenders doubling: see the German Romantic, Ritter (1984: no. 614): Also that which is solid, i.e. stone, was used first of all as monuments, for worship. Stone is what lasts. Stones were already the first monuments of the world and its creation—solid matter was the first thing to separate itself from liquid. For this reason wherever they found themselves stones were still monuments, in fact they were twofold monuments: they were already monuments of monuments even before any particular monumental use was applied.

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For the same idea, see ‘On Granite’ (Goethe 1998:253–8; 1994:131–4). To develop this idea of the state that cannot die, we could appeal to the many recent examples of crumbling Communist regimes: when the Berlin Wall was demolished, many East Germans crossed over into West Berlin during the evenings because during the day they were working as usual. The infrastructure, the ‘embodiment’ of the state, did not disappear as the Communist direction or ‘flavour’ given to it did. The government might not function, but people still try to send letters, still need electricity and gas, so people continue to work in the name of, for the sake of, the state. Money, how ever devalued, still needs to be earned. Another example taken from a novel, based on historical fact, would be Stefan Heym’s Schwarzenberg (1987). This examines the situation of a territory during the Second World War that was a no-man’s land, a vacuum between the retreating Nazis and the advancing Soviet army on the one side and the American forces on the other. This artificially created area, what was once a mere limb of a greater identity, has become a new sort of country—but one apparently without a state inasmuch as it is only governed by an emergency committee awaiting the verdict on the area’s future—who will arrive first to claim it, the Soviets or the Americans? The question of what type of political direction will be given to the region is crucial (it is the subject of the novel), but what is also revealed is that the state does go on despite the lack of government. In chapter 18, Heym describes the ghostly situation in the bureaucrats’ offices, where papers have to be dealt with as usual (even though they do not know who they are in effect working for). The postal service still functions, although it does have one major difficulty: what symbol should it put on the stamps? This highlights a ghostly indifference to revolutionary change. The basic structure remains in place—merely awaiting the new batch of headed notepaper or the new type of rubber stamp. This is a haunting thought.

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50 51

See also Shell (1996:11): ‘Leibniz’s substances are windowless mirrors of the universe; Kant’s have open windows if not doors.’ See Kantorowicz (1981:18, 410). Such conundrums conjugate with ritual killings of the monarch—which does not imply the end of monarchy—a subject that has been widely documented; see for example Frazer (1987:378); Bayard (1984:37); Freud (1989:548; 1985:347). Renaut and Sosoe (1991:384) suggest that Kant can only find regicide acceptable if understood as resulting from blind panic. For his apparently dogmatic rejection of revolution, see Kant (1989:441; 1991b: 133). For a sensitive analysis of Kant’s The Conflict of the Faculties where revolutionary events are also thought of positively as ‘signs of history’ for the cosmopolitan spectator, see Lyotard (1986). Chapter 2 will highlight further the possibility within the Kantian system of a sudden quasi-revolutionary break with graduality (in relation to the generation of natural phenomena). This part of The Metaphysics of Morals is reminiscent of Kant’s ‘pre-critical’ essay ‘Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy’, which explicitly uses ‘mathematical’ equations to represent competitive forces. This text is discussed in Chapter 3 on ‘radical evil’: Kant tries to control the effects of evil through this type of mathematical manipulation, but fails. In Chapter 3 we will discuss further the nature of this guilt, which precedes any guilty act in terms of Kant’s notion of ‘radical evil’. This leads to the notion of a demonstrative politics, indissociable from the sort of theatricality suggested in the introductory sections. This political form does not have to be nostalgic for a public space: it is not necessarily naive but stages its temporary status, its own impossibility, without negotiation or comprehension. The triumphal arches and masques stage their aspirations and their undoing (by not covering up their lack of foundations). They are temporary structures requiring the attention of the sovereign. He/she has to read and analyse the messages conveyed. This idea also highlights the difference between a political form like a ‘sit-in’, with its claim to appropriate space, and the theatrical ‘die-in’, performed by participants in the anti-nuclear campaign. The latter also requires the understanding recognition of passers-by and of the authorities. Their actions require decoding to be understood as an enactment of what happens when the bomb drops. The anti-nuclear activists fall down dead as if the effects of the nuclear bomb have made themselves felt. This ‘Kantian’ as if perhaps marks the space, which is not a clear-cut public forum, wherein a possible politics of demonstration could operate. There is no obvious public space in which the event of resistance can take place, because events cannot be founded, and place (Ort) is not to be so easily designated. The parodic, pathetic quality to the theatricality that I highlighted in the discussion of follies can be reintroduced with the example of the Ramblers’ Association. Here is a group of people who, in imitation of the Aboriginal ‘walkabout’, which was a requisite to keep the land living, ritually walk down public footpaths. The paths run the risk of being taken out of public use if not walked down every so often. Like the Tudor masques, which slide in and out of the difference between the actual king and the King who belongs in the realm of

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THREE CASES OF DOUBLING fiction and myth, these ramblers take literally the saying: ‘to exercise your rights’. 52 It must be remembered that both for Rousseau and for Kant a republic can also be a monarchy: see Rousseau (1976:171; 1979:193) and Kant (1977a:206; 1983b:113–14; 1991c:101), where a republican constitution is distinguished from despotic ‘democracy’ insofar as the former separates the legislative from the executive powers. For Kant, Friedrich II provides an exemplary instance of this form of government. 53 The president represents the people but, because of the separation of the executive and legislative powers, not ‘in one and the same person’—the logic of the two bodies is at play. See Kant (1977a:207; 1983b:114; 1991c:101). 54 See my discussion in Chapter 4 of Kant’s distinctions between ‘worth’ (Wert) and ‘dignity’ (Würde). This distinction comes from Kant (1988d:68–9; 1964:102–3). In The Eumenides, the Furies with their talion law are presented as incapable of appreciating the difference in nature between Orestes’ murder of his mother and Clytaemnestra’s murder of her husband: It is not the same thing for a man of blood to die honoured with the king’s staff given by the hand of god and that by means of a woman, not with the far cast of fierce arrows, as an Amazon might have done but in a way that you shall hear, O Pallas and you who sit in state to judge this action by your vote …It was in the bath (ll. 625–33) The disgraceful iniquity of Agamemnon’s murder, the smear on his honour that the jury are to assess, is the fact that he died in his bath-tub. Apollo claims that this blow to male pride must be assessed differently, separately. 55 For a reading of Shakespeare’s use of talion law in The Merchant of Venice, see Dräi (1991:37–48).

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2 THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I Of an uncertain affinity

an…almost magical force of attraction. (Goethe 1971:286)1

In The Philosopher and the Architect, Daniel Payot describes the stakes of the third Critique as being that of ‘a general theory of the link’. He writes: [The third Critique] is…the very last architectural manifestation before the organicity of the system: the display, the critique of the general faculty of the liaison or rather, as (reflective) judgement is not strictly speaking a faculty, the updating of the agreement (‘free, undetermined, spontaneous’) of the intermediary, of the Mittelglied which makes the determined exercise of the faculties possible. (Payot 1982:139) It is, he declares, ‘in order to designate the liaison that Kant evokes architecture’ (ibid.: 140). In the third Critique, reflective judgement and architecture are brought in to provide the central link between the other two Critiques, thereby bridging the gap between the realms of theoretical and practical reason. As we know already from the Introduction, architecture is conventionally used by philosophers to represent the philosophical ‘art of systems’ (Kant 1983a: B860). It appears to provide the requisite founding and binding principle for philosophy and therefore cannot be dismissed as simply a metaphor. In disregard of its key importance for systematic thought, architecture is often treated miserably and ungratefully when it comes to its place within a hierarchy of art forms. As has been indicated, this ill-treatment of architecture is also an Egyptian question. In the Introduction, we were able to show how they have been closely associated with each other because of what is seen as their shared ‘slavery’ to weight and strict laws, and their inescapably grounded nature. This chapter aims to focus on another troubling ‘blind spot’ in Kantian

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I philosophy, that of ‘affinity’ (Verwandtschaft). The importance of ‘affinity’ to the work of Kant appears to have been entirely overlooked by commentators. I will be suggesting that, once followed through Kant’s system, the concept of ‘Verwandtschaft’ becomes another unsettling device that not only necessitates a reassessment of the place and function of architecture in the third Critique but also frustrates Kant’s attempt to separate the organicity of his eventual system, post-critique (if this stage can ever be reached), from the mechanics or technicity of the architectonic. Indeed, I will propose that it calls into question the oft-repeated and somewhat overstated claim that, intent on policing the distinction between inert matter and living organisms, Kant manages to stamp out any trace of hylozoism in the post-critical works. For instance, drawing on Kant’s admittedly categorical statement in the ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’ that ‘all matter is lifeless’ and to think otherwise would spell the ‘death of all philosophy of nature’ (Kant 1977c:110), Bloch laments the gradual loss of materialism in the Kantian system. He claims that, whereas the early writings contained a dynamic, even dialectical, understanding of matter as a site of forces of tension, the ‘mechanistic’ drive to control matter gradually imposes itself on the philosopher’s way of thinking. Matter is turned into a static, ‘surprise-free’ substratum as the deadening hand of ‘calculation’ wins its battle against ‘energetic vitalism’. Bloch concludes that ‘the organic is in no way an originary condition of matter’ for Kant (Bloch 1985b:201). While it cannot be denied that Kant is obviously very perturbed by creatures such as maggots and worms that suddenly spring to life from apparently dead matter and does his best to circumvent the potential disaster such phenomena represent to his system,2 he is not entirely successful. Appositely for us, ‘Verwandtschaft’ has often been identified as indicative of Egyptian ways of thinking. One classic criticism of Egyptians is the incompleteness of their thinking, their want of incisiveness and lack of decisive distinctions. The modernist theorist Sigmund Giedion, who elsewhere shows himself to be a most radical thinker, inspiring, among others, Walter Benjamin to appreciate the revolutionary potential of late nineteenth-century architecture,3 lets us down in his The Beginnings of Architecture. Here, despite initial claims to break away from stereotypical opinions, 4 he repeats the traditional, all too familiar lamentation about the Egyptians’ mental feebleness: the Egyptians never completely lost the eggshells even of their prehistory. The cord which connected them with their prehistoric development was never entirely severed. Indeed, this continued linkage was at the basis of their nature; it accounts for what is to us largely incomprehensible—the inseparability of the probable and improbable, logic and illogic, science and mysticism. (Giedion 1981:30)5

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KANT TROUBLE Unlike Freud in ‘On the Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words’, Giedion is unable to consider the possibility that binary opposites could be related to each other, that their differences could be more a question of degrees of similarity. Such a recognition would not have led to an indifference to or a denial of difference. As Heidegger points out in Identity and Difference, the same is not the identical but rather a set of differences (Heidegger 1957:14). But instead Giedion sticks to his belief in discrete and fixed identities. He presents the binary opposites as given, obvious distinctions. This capacity to separate cleanly and clearly the logical from the illogical, the scientific truth from sheer mysticism, is a stage of sophistication not yet reached by the ‘primitive’ Egyptians. Likewise, Hegel claims that Egyptian art is not susceptible to revelation (Hegel 1986c:466; 1991a:361). It is insufficiently enlightened, not properly symbolic, as the symbols are incomplete, always referring to something else: In Egypt, on the whole, almost every shape is a symbol and hieroglyph not signifying itself but hinting at another thing to which it has affinity (Verwandtschaft) and therefore relationship. (1986c:461; 1991a:357–8) Above, we saw that architecture is bound up with the problem of origins and its (non-)origin or beginning in Egypt and that this is the question of the community. Here, we find that the Egyptians are also related to the notion of ‘Verwandtschaft’—meaning ‘affinity’, ‘sympathy’ but also ‘relations’ and ‘relationships’, family (whatever that might mean) or otherwise. For Hegel, the Egyptians are too aware of the ‘Verwandtschaften’ between things. This awareness, he believes, has the drawback that they cannot separate ideas and symbols from related concepts and signs. The ability to separate and distinguish is also central to Kant’s declared philosophical aim.6 On several occasions, he compares the philosopher to a chemist who divides substances up so as to control and purify the various chemical compounds: What the chemist does in the analysis of substances, and the mathematician in his special disciplines, is in still greater degree incumbent upon the philosopher, that he may be able to determine with certainty the part which belongs to each special kind of knowledge in the diversified employment of the understanding and its special value and influence. Human reason, since it first began to think, or rather to reflect, has never been able to dispense with a metaphysics; but also has never been able to obtain it in a form sufficiently free from all foreign elements. (Kant 1983a:B870)7

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I Like the chemist (in German Chemiker or Scheidekünstler, ‘the artist of separation’), the philosopher also has to separate (scheiden) the empirical components of our knowledge from the rational or speculative elements (with which experience cannot help us). The concepts of understanding need to be separated from the a priori principles of pure reason. Indeed, these delimiting splittings are central to the success or failure of Kant’s declared intention of determining scientifically the limits (Grenzbestimmung) between what we can know and the things-in-themselves that we must not hope to penetrate.8 In this chapter, we will see how Kant’s development of the idea of ‘Verwandtschaften’, already identified as one of those ‘Egyptian’ characteristics, will trouble these supposedly clear-cut distinctions with their unmasterable violations of borders. Also, it will become evident that this chemical analogy, used to represent the workings of reason, is more than an analogy. I permit myself this expression by taking as my definition of analogy a sentence from the first Critique: there, Kant explains that the model examples of mathematics and the natural sciences should be imitated as far as is useful and appropriate for philosophy: Their success should incline us, at least by way of experiment, to imitate their procedure, so far as the analogy which, as species of rational knowledge, they bear to metaphysics may permit. (ibid.: BXVI) Likewise, the chemical analogy is intended to help metaphysics along the path towards becoming a secure science. We will see how this relation, instead of uncovering reassuring and reasonable foundations, instead opens up a bewildering entanglement of faculties that do not know when they have gone too far in their imitation of the separations and unions observed in natural phenomena. The analogy ceases to be a useful rhetorical device that can be dropped when it becomes menacingly counterproductive. We now return to the above citation from Payot. In this passage, he suggests that the interrelated, organic system (of Verwandtschaften, as we will see) sought after by Kant is the stage after the architectonic. Kant’s fantasy reveals itself to be that of a self-regulating, auto-formative metaphysics to be formed after the general shape has been set and the scaffolding of the architectonic has been dismantled.9 This separation between the architectonic and something less monotonously structural, more organic, is echoed by Eliane Escoubas in ‘Kant and the Simplicity of the Sublime’: in spite of its architectonic ‘façade’, the Kantian text constitutes itself more through the operations of the imagination, of Einbildungskraft.

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KANT TROUBLE The mode of its ‘constitution’, its ‘making the text’, is not that of building (bauen), but rather of forming (bilden). (Escoubas, in Courtine et al. 1988:77) We have already examined the impossible presupposition of a clear-cut separation between the critique and the metaphysical system. With help from Derrida, we showed that critique has already to be part of the system to be constructed in the future. Despite being characterised as the critical stage before—it is vorübend (see Kant 1983a:B878)—it also cannot be other than the metaphysical stage after. Metaphysics will have to include the critical moment of its founding within itself: it cannot claim to leave the architectural link behind as an inferior, preliminary stage. Hence the aim of this chapter is not to circumvent the architectonic as a mere façade so as to penetrate more exciting levels, or to peer down from the now redundant scaffolding of the architectonic dazzled by the sinuous, serpentine organism forming itself within its midst.10 Rather, it is to see how the architectonic and the organic relate to one another: i.e. whether, for there to be a ‘Verwandtschaft’ between the two, a different kind of, or a different approach to, architecture is required. This examination of the convoluted relation between the organic and the architectonic will also necessitate a reappraisal of the value placed by Kant on forming matter, on informing matter with teleological ends and guiding principles. In the first Critique Kant describes the a priori schema required for the foundation or growth of metaphysics as a science. It is: not formed in a technical fashion, in view of the similarity of its manifold constituents or of the contingent use of our knowledge in concrete for all sorts of optional ends, but in architectonic fashion, in view of the affinity (Verwandtschaft) of its parts and of their derivation from a single supreme end through which the whole is made possible. (Kant 1983a:B862) A few pages later, the distinction between the architectonic and the technical has altered, because the ‘Verwandtschaft’, previously related to a priori necessity, is now placed on the side of contingency and unreliability: The originative idea of a philosophy of pure reason itself prescribes this division, which is therefore architectonic, in accordance with the essential ends of reason, and not merely technical, in accordance with accidentally observed similarities (Verwandtschaften) randomly placed (auf gut Glück angestellt). (ibid.: B875)

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I What these ‘Verwandtschaften’ are exactly and, if they can be tied down at all, how they are related to architecture are the main questions addressed in this and the following chapters. Where is the line to be drawn between the close family (the Blutverwandten) of the first quotation, who have to stick together and live in the ‘dwelling house’ that Kant plans to build for them (ibid.: B735), and the vast extended family of the second passage of dubious connections, who belong outside? If Kant cannot determine the extent of the relations he is willing to take in, he will be unable to build an architectonic with clearly defined boundaries that demarcate the division between the proper, acceptable elements and those improper members who should not find cover under his domestic project. As we will be suggesting, it is through the unavoidable seepage that Kant’s pursuit of ‘Verwandtschaften’ provokes that the human, all too human project of a homely abode comes tumbling down. ‘Verwandtschaften’ run away with Kant’s own categories and as a result a whole set of binaries caves in between the organic/inorganic, human and other life forms as well as between the various faculties of the mind that Kant is ostensibly so concerned to discipline. The longest explanation of the nature of ‘Verwandtschaft’ appears in the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. There it is defined as one of the three ‘faculties of [imaginative] composition’ (Dichtungsvermögen) (Kant 1977b:479–85; 1974:50–7). Kant reminds us that ‘Verwandtschaft’ (affinitas) is a chemical term for the reciprocal effect of two bodies that, though radically different from each other, strive for unity. Through their union, these two elements produce a ‘third thing’. Kant suggests that this procedure is analogous to the binding process of understanding with sensibility, i.e. the fusion of two heterogeneous faculties, which cannot spring from the same source (as something different cannot possibly result from two identical elements) but which nevertheless spontaneously (so von selbst) combine to produce knowledge (ibid.: 480; 53).11 Such affinities beg the question about how and why such disparate elements actually come together if the presupposition does not hold that their conjunction is overseen by the guiding hand of a mediator (such as God, the chemist). Kant also demonstrates how ‘Verwandtschaften’ work between people. There is a certain ‘sympathy of the imagination’, which means that a human being can put him/herself in the place of someone else, thereby experiencing exactly the same feelings as, or even growing to resemble, the other person. Kant suggests that nature encourages the most unlikely couples to come together, as a useful way of developing ‘all the variety it has implanted in their seed’. ‘Verwandtschaft’ overcomes such odds by gradually making the couple resemble one another. Indeed, after many years of marriage, of sitting close to one another and looking each other in the eyes, they end up developing identical fixed features (ibid.).12 By concentrating on ‘Verwandtschaften’ as ‘sympathy’, Kant is drawing on ancient theories of cosmic harmony and of a natural correspondence between

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KANT TROUBLE the cosmos and Man found, for example, in the philosophies of Anaximander and Pythagoras. Behind the term ‘Verwandtschaft’ lies a long and varied history, which it is impossible to cover here. However, for our purposes, two sixteenth-century reformulations of the concept are worth noting. With the German doctor, alchemist and philosopher Agrippa von Nettesheim, ‘affinities’ took an occult turn: he regarded them as omnipresent, encrypted within everything from stones to people, to speech and writing. Such ‘sympathies’ were understood to be precious, secret communications to the initiated that, once decoded, led straight to the Godhead. Born in the same year that von Nettesheim was poisoned, the Neapolitan Giambattista della Porta, author of Magia naturalis, used the term ‘Verwandtschaft’ to draw a parallel between the animal organism and the world. He wrote that: The parts of the world behave no differently than the limbs of an animal/they all hang together from one origin/and are connected with one another through the communion of one unique nature (durch die Verwandtschaft einer eintzigen Natur). (quoted in Adler 1987:41) Akin to Kant’s definition in the Critique of Judgement, for della Porta the organism is infused with purposiveness, each part relates to and is dependent on the others; the perfectly functioning whole, which forms a self-contained system, is not just an amalgam of its constituent parts. The whole—‘one unique nature’—is greater than the sum of its parts; no mere aggregate, it is a fully integrated and unified system.13 This conception of the organism, whose very perfection is elusive (and illusory), has recently often been associated with despotic thought. For instance, drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Dean and Massumi suggest that [the] organism is a despotic overcoding of the physical body. With the emperor are invented the organism, organs and the master organ, the phallus…the individual as modern western civilisation understands it is a miniaturisation of the organicity of despotic desire to fit the confines of the family. (Dean and Massumi 1992:81) The organism is an organised and institutionalised body, whose mystified perfection suits the prevailing regime. Every organ has its place and function, contributing to the greater whole, which remains inscrutable. The organism is reactionary as it helps to prop up the status quo with its model self-regulating closed system. In Chapter 1, the traditional conception of the ‘Egyptian’ law as the epitome of authoritarian megalomania was questioned by examining the king’s duplicitous body. Here, a different approach to Kant’s understanding of

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I the organism will be suggested, one that is anchored in ‘Egyptian’ ‘Verwandtschaften’. It is hoped that we will thereby gain a sense of what Dean and Massumi call, in opposition to the despotically overcoded organism: ‘a pragmatic deregulation that opens up the body to the world in such a way as to intensify its sensations and multiply its potentials’ (ibid.: 77). ‘Verwandtschaften’ must break with the organismatically systematised in order to avoid being trapped by the reactionary theological menace that lurks in della Porta’s analogy between the animal body and the world with its ‘one origin’ and ‘one unique nature’. Another contributor to this long tradition of affinity as ‘sympathy’ is Newton. This is perhaps surprising, as he is usually represented as an archetypally enlightened thinker, who replaced mystical obscurantism with clear rationalism.14 The law of gravity that he discovered appeared to explain how the cosmos hung together, but no mathematical explanation was found for how, having overcome the void that separates them, bodies attract and act upon each other (or, at least, behave as if they did). Newton recognised that there was an attractive force at work in the universe that eluded his grasp. In his suppressed ‘Conclusio’, the unpublished ending to his Principia Mathematica, he wrote the following rather vague words: The force of whatever kind by which distant particles rush toward one another is usually, in popular speech, called an attraction. For I speak loosely when I call every force by which distant particles are impelled mutually towards one another, or come together by any means and cohere, an attraction. (Newton, in Cohen and Westfall 1995:73) Later, we will see the importance of concursion, the ‘rushing together’ of molecules in the process of crystallisation, for Kant and the damage it will do to his attempts to theorise organic life systematically. Here, Newton also faces a dilemma: he refuses to admit that matter could be anything but inert. The attractive force, capable of acting at a distance, which he freely recognises as enigmatic, cannot possibly be an inherent property of matter itself. Koyré explains how Enlightenment science had replaced the pre-Galilean and preCartesian conception of motion as ‘a species of becoming, as a kind of process of change that affected the bodies subjected to it’ with the idea of motion as a ‘status’ or ‘kind of being’. As a consequence: Motion and rest no longer exist in the bodies themselves; bodies are only in rest or in motion in respect to each other, or to the space in which they exist, rest and move; motion and rest are relations, though, at the same time, they are considered as states. (Koyré, in Cohen and Westfall 1995:62)

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KANT TROUBLE Holding on to his rationalist faith in mechanical laws yet unable to explain those that might govern ‘attraction’ between bodies, Newton turned to the divine origin of the world for help, indeed for constant help. 15 Kant, otherwise a faithful adherent of Newtonian ideas, took issue with the scientist’s reliance on God’s direct intervention in the shifting around of bodies in space. Newton had been intent on replacing theories of the world’s cohesion, which led to an atheistic assumption of contingency, with necessary universal laws. Most notably, Epicurus had suggested that atoms are able to link up owing to an ‘inclination’ or ‘bias’ (clinamen), which throws them slightly out of their headlong downward plunge, enabling a fortuitous encounter with others. Kant feared that Newton’s advocacy of God’s unmediated hand in the ‘community of movements’ of the cosmos was still not far removed enough from such contingency. To base such a fundamental order on a will or miracle, however divine and ever-present, was insufficiently reassuring and inadequately necessary (Kant 1991a:331). Instead, Kant posits formless matter as being initially scattered all around the cosmos. Being outside time (before the universe is created), this originary motionless state scarcely lasts a moment. As soon as time begins, matter is already striving to form itself, to move away from some atoms and draw closer to others (ibid.: 276). As Bloch elegantly explains, for Kant: ‘Repose is a leap towards movement’ (Bloch 1985b:196). The forces of attraction (Anziehung), but also of repulsion (Empedocles’ ‘love’ and ‘hate’, ‘sympathy’ and ‘antipathy’, to refer to another ancient predecessor), are already at work, fighting each other. 16 Atoms jostle each other as they traverse the vast void that will become the celestial heavens. They bind together around an inflnitesimally small seed (Keim) to build up the planets. The young Kant feels confident that he has found a theory that, despite similarities to Epicurus’ (both appear to be proposing matter possessing immanent vital forces), avoids the trap of monstrous hylozoism. Kant feels that he has eliminated the danger of generatio aequivoca, of life suddenly springing up out of the lifeless, by implanting his system with an original divine plan. God stocks nature with the potential for life; he funds it with enough transformative growth to last an eternity. Nature does not need the continual forming hand of God to predetermine its genesis in its entirety; he lays the virtual seeds for later growth. As Shell neatly explains, Kant feels that he has hereby astutely replaced ‘the awkward Newtonian separation of matter and motion …with a conception of natural fertility—of a matter essentially endowed with motion and life.’ This he does while at the same time ultimately deriving ‘the principle of life…from a source extrinsic to the body it vivifies’. Shell concludes that ‘[a] truly self-subsistent nature— a material mother uncoupled from a spiritual father—is for Kant…quite literally unthinkable’ (Shell 1996:51). How ever intent Kant is on governing nature in the last instance, nevertheless we do feel the strain in The Theory of Heavens as he tries to tie down matter’s proliferating fecundity while

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I unravelling its ever-increasing propensity to produce ‘new things and new worlds’ (Kant 1991a: 335). This chapter will be examining how Kant’s grip on vital matter slips to the extent that he is no longer able to infuse it with an extrinsic forming principle. This breakdown of Kantian hylomorphism arises from his explorations of ‘Verwandtschaften’, to which we now return. In the Anthropology, Kant draws on the various meanings of ‘Verwandtschaft’—affinity, attraction, sympathy—which are as old as philosophy itself. Interest in this subject was reanimated in the eighteenth century, thanks to the Swedish chemist Tobern Olof Bergmann’s influential Disquisitio de attractionibus electivis (1775). Kant himself refers to Bergmann explicitly in ‘Karsten, Kenntnis der Natur’ (1980:296). He also praised the recent achievements of chemistry in the ‘Danziger Physik’, recognising the discipline’s ‘right to lay claim to teachings on nature in their entirety’. 17 Bergmann’s work was translated into German as Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) and inspired Goethe’s novel of the same name, written in 1809 (after the death of Kant). Goethe’s novel uses Bergmann’s term ‘Verwandtschaft’, designating the union and separation of chemical substances, as an analogy—or Gleichnisrede (Goethe 1972:37) for relations between his characters, just as Kant does. In the Anthropology, the mind’s capacity to create ‘Verwandtschaften’ is different, even superior, to the other two qualities of imagination previously discussed by Kant: ‘formation’ (Bildung) and ‘association’ (Beigesellung).18 The former (imaginatio plastica) can be the products of intentional, artistic formations and of the modelling of images. But, if the images are involuntary, they cease to belong to art and become pure fantasy, comparable to dreams. Although, as Kant adds, this distinction between the intentional and the involuntary is often difficult to determine: we often think that we are playing with our imaginations when the contrary is far closer to the truth (Kant: 1977b:476; 1974:51). The section entitled ‘The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding’ in the first Critique helps us to understand more about this aspect of the imagination: ‘the image is a product of the empirical faculty of productive imagination’ in accordance with the schema of pure imagination (Kant 1983a:B180). 19 A priori imagination makes the corresponding images possible, even though it cannot actually be represented itself. The second characteristic of imagination, Beigesellung or imaginatio associans, is the often bewildering imaginative capacity to make rapid associations. In ‘Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding’ in the first Critique, Kant attributes these associations to reproductive imagination (whose synthesis is subjected solely to the empirical laws of association), and as such he concludes: ‘[it] therefore contributes nothing to the explanation of the possibility of a priori knowledge. The reproductive synthesis falls within the domain, not of transcendental philosophy but of psychology’ (ibid.: B152).20

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KANT TROUBLE Whereas Bildung and Assoziation are mathematical forms of extension (Vergrößerung), ‘Verwandtschaft’, although it is still an association of sorts, is a ‘dynamic’ ‘generation’ (Erzeugung) (Kant 1977b:480; 1974:53). Equally, as Kant suggests in the ‘Rostocke Anthropologiehandschrift’ (included in the Suhrkamp edition), one can distinguish between two mathematical ‘aggregations’ and a dynamic ‘coalition’. The latter ‘brings forth’ not just a ‘third thing’, as Kant first stated, but even more interestingly, ‘something quite new’ (wodurch ein ganz neues Ding…hervorkommt) (Kant 1977b:480). The Rostock variation also provides us with an example linking ‘Verwandtschaft’ to a forming process more substantial than that of the mere production of images: Bildung through crystallisation, which he describes as the mechanical formation of form: ‘die mechanische Bildung der Gestalt’ (Kant 1977b:480). As we will see, Kant’s references to crystallisation are always most suggestive in their implications; here, the association of ‘Verwandtschaften’ with crystals allows us to conceive of them as being both organic and mechanical, a natural formation and a technical construction. This suggestion opens up avenues that are far more intriguing and inventive than those previously offered to us by Payot and Escoubas. Indeed, the traditional binary opposites proposed by them, ‘architectural manifestation’ versus ‘organicity’, bauen versus bilden, are here revealed to be defunct. Indeed, in the Anthropology, the processes of ‘Verwandtschaften’ disregard the traditional distinction between the organic and the inorganic: Kant suggests that they describe the ongoing transformations at work not only within ‘living beings’ but also in ‘lifeless nature’ (stones, minerals, chemicals): ‘The play of forces in inanimate as well as in living nature, in the nature of the soul as well as in the body, is based on the dissolution and union of the heterogeneous’ (Kant 1977b:480; 1974:53). The mystery of life itself is hidden in these half-organic, half-mechanical decompositions and combinations, which are found not only within those beings generally perceived as living but also in those conventionally seen as inert and lifeless. Elsewhere, Kant is keen to police the distinction between matter, conceived as inert, and life, but in his analysis of ‘Verwandtschaften’ he slips in and out of an analysis of the faculties of the human mind, the natural world (which human beings are usually seen as partially outside of and superior to) and inorganic substances. Ostensibly, the Anthropology should just discuss the family of Man; however, ‘Verwandtschaften’ necessarily widen the debate beyond the human to include other species and other substances. Kant goes on to suggest that the breakings up and bringings together of dissimilar elements that are visible across such an unexpectedly wide range of natural forms can become a ‘game’ for someone who knows how to provoke and manipulate such startling transformations. Out of curiosity or a sense of fun, weird couplings of otherwise unrelated substances, or separations that seem to go against nature, can be enforced by scientists. Hence, in the first

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I Critique, Kant evokes irresponsible ‘chemists’ (Scheidekünstler) who divide and unite elements for the sake of it and who take the reduction of minerals and metals too far (Kant 1983a:B680–1). Compared with such dubious pursuits of reckless scientists, the behaviour of God must stand out as pertaining to a starkly different nature. To the Creator and his transformative activities within nature no such frivolous motive and irresponsible attitude can possibly be ascribed. In accordance with this belief in divine seriousness, this union of two substances that are essentially different is regarded as absolutely necessary. This union leads straight to the enigma of sexual difference and reproduction itself. There is no way that one can admit that this awkward, partly mechanical, partly organic coming together of the female and the male is due to some unnecessary perversity on God’s part: ‘We cannot admit that the Creator was for some odd reason (bloß der Sonderbarkeit halber) just playing around with our globe to find an arrangement which appealed to him’ (Kant 1977b:480; 1974:53, translation modified). One would have thought that He could easily have made us into autogenerative, complete organisms that do not depend on such ungainly couplings to reproduce themselves. However, if this were true, then God would be seen as wishing to humiliate us, as enjoying watching us negotiate the need for a complementary sexual self.21 However, Kant insists that this thesis of a manipulative, playful Creator is untenable, and he concludes: ‘It rather seems that, given the material of our world, it must be impossible to have organic creatures reproduce without two sexes established for that purpose’ (1977b:480; 1974:53). This originary division or split between the two sexes must have been necessary, although we cannot hope to explain its origin. Origins are always divided and shrouded in mystery: as we saw in Chapter 1, the origin of the authority of the Law’s representative was also presented as ‘impenetrable’ (unerforschlich) (Kant 1989:437; 1991b:129) and as being split between the ‘two bodies’ of the king. In the Anthropology, this mysterious double source, which despite being inexplicable and obscure as an origin is known to lie at the very beginning of existence, is seen as the precondition for all union and procreation. It is the necessary, architectonic ‘Verwandtschaften’ (halfmechanical, half-organic), the desirable ‘Verwandtschaften’ of the above quotation (‘architectonic, in view of the affinities’) that lead us to this furthest limit of human reason, to the question of the origin of life itself: ‘In what darkness does human reason lose itself if it ventures to fathom, or just conjecture about the source from which it descends?’ (Kant 1977b:480; 1974:53, translation modified). Reason must, at this limit, abandon its enquiries for fear of losing itself in darkness. These ‘good’ architectonic ‘Verwandtschaften’ would therefore appear to be in league with reason itself (and not be straightforward products of imagination). They are in league with reason as its own self-limiting stricture, pulling it back from the abyss.

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KANT TROUBLE Maybe the recognition of this limit to knowledge constitutes the difference between the ‘good’ necessary ‘Verwandtschaften’ (combined with reason) and the contingent, undesirable ‘Verwandtschaften’ of the second quotation from the Critique of Pure Reason above: ‘merely technical, in accordance with accidentally observed similarities’ (Verwandtschaften)? The latter would be merely the results of the games of the imagination described in the Anthropology. This means that their playful, lawless associations run the risk of irresponsibility and often bewilder the mind: ‘a lawless, vagrant imagination [which] disconcerts the mind by a succession of ideas having no objective connection’ (Kant 1977b:479; 1974:52). However, we must not forget that they do unconsciously conform to the rule of understanding, to which they do not belong directly. These associations, even if apparently perceived and assembled haphazardly (auf gut Glück), do nevertheless correspond to a rule of understanding: ‘the play of imagination still follows the laws of sensibility, which provides the material, and this is associated without consciousness of the rule but still in keeping with it’ (ibid.). Random and unconscious they might appear, but they do conform to a necessary order; a certain order emerges out of their chaos. ‘Verwandtschaften’ can only be partially ‘invented’ (i.e. constructed or mechanically put together); the other part of the process is organic, beyond the reach of human manipulation. Maybe not enough fantastic fabrication is produced by the imagination to lead one astray. In fact, Kant tells us in the following passage that we are fooling ourselves if we claim to possess a really creatively original imagination: ‘however, the imagination is not as creative as we pretend’ (1977b:479; 1974:53). The imagination is also limited; the ‘bad’ ‘Verwandtschaften’ cannot be as naughty and transgressive as they might like to be. The distinction between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, playful, contingent ‘Verwandtschaften’ is difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Kant’s architectonic dwelling (Wohnhaus) now seems flexible enough to accommodate more relations than one might have thought, since the selection process, the picking out and exclusion of undesirables, is not as strict as has been suggested. In his ‘Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”’ essay, Benjamin (1977:65) had claimed that living in the world projected by Kant would be a rather glum affair made up of cold and meaningless contractual relationships. He describes the Kantian project in the following terms: ‘Kant’s work was finished and the way through the shorn wood of the real had been drawn up’ (ibid.: 64). However, having seen that the Kantian project is to include these imaginative ‘relations’, it might well be that it is not as dull and down-to-earth as Benjamin made out. Kant’s world of ‘Verwandtschaften’ embraces the playful and dynamic forces within substances that we did not even know had life. Kant was unable (or unwilling) to tie his thinking down to some spurious depiction of the purely human, so Anthropology allows us to perceive an ongoing interest for disruptive matter(s), for that which provokes a far-reaching destabilisation of

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I conventional categories (between the human world and the natural world, between organic and inorganic). However, one must also realise that Kant is torn between his conflicting interests: he also insists that no wild and extravagant gathering can take place within his house. Even the most flighty, reckless participants (those who are apparently most imaginative and creative) must be seen as conforming to conventions and obeying rules. To have a clearer idea of the nature of ‘Verwandtschaften’ as they feature within the human faculties, we must be able to place them more precisely, though still permitting them ample space to move around in nature generally. At the moment, these ‘affinities’ are hovering somewhere between the imagination and its obedience to understanding but are suspected of having an alliance with reason itself. Ideas of reason are described in ‘The Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason’ as a focus imaginarius (Kant 1983a:B672). They are products of hypothetical reason, to be used only as problematical concepts in a purely regulative fashion to facilitate the greatest possible unity and extension of knowledge gathered. As we shall see, ‘Verwandtschaften’ are one such idea. Reason is in charge of ‘the systematisation of knowledge’ (ibid.: B673). It produces a schema that provides no knowledge of things themselves ‘but only a rule or principle for the systematic unity of all employment of the understanding’ (ibid.: B693). This schema is later, in ‘The Architectonic of Pure Reason’, described as possessing ‘architectonic unity’ (ibid.: B861). The ideas are used to interrogate nature, they are not created out of our experience of it. As is often the case in Kantian philosophy, the chemical reactions in nature are chosen to illustrate this point. He states that ‘pure earth, pure water, pure air’ do not actually exist as such in nature, but these concepts are necessary tools, eventually enabling research into impure mixtures of gases and matter: ‘in order to explain the chemical interactions of bodies in accordance with the idea of a mechanism’ (ibid.: B674). As concepts, they testify to an underlying idea of ‘systematic unity’ that originates in reason. Reason determines the way the natural scientist perceives nature. The hypothetical use of reason, its idea of systematic unity, is the ‘touchstone of truth’ (der Probierstein der Wahrheit) for the rules of understanding (ibid.: B675). The term ‘touchstone’ (Probierstein) is used repeatedly in Kantian philosophy.22 It is combined with the search for an architectonic system made up of components of equal and of the highest value, necessarily belonging together. A touchstone is used to test the quality of gold and silver alloys. It separates the genuine elements from the inferior, base articles. Kant puts so much faith in the touchstone’s pseudo-scientific powers of Scheidung, relying on it to separate the rational from the empirical, the ‘principle of happiness’ from true morality, that it becomes almost magical. 23 Kant needs the ‘touchstone’ as a guarantee of a natural, scientific law that carries out incisive, clear distinctions. The philosopher’s search for these miraculous stones for his

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KANT TROUBLE perfect system explains his fascination for the chemist, admired as he who can completely transform substances by skilfully separating or uniting them. However, these stones also bind the philosopher in partnership with the alchemist in search for the elusive philosopher’s stone, the ‘stone of the wise man’ (der Stein des Weisen). This stone was supposed to remove base, corrupted metals by transforming them into pure gold. Kant attempts to reject the adepts of the ‘philosopher’s stone’ as dreamers of fantastic treasures, devoid of any disciplined method (Kant 1988d:302; 1956:167). However, his dreams of a pure organic system forged by natural affinities, and resistant to those disruptive, untested components pertaining to base experience or fanciful speculation, is not unlike the alchemists’ search for pure, intrinsic worth. Benjamin can help us to explain this (al)chemical connection in more detail. In his essay on the ‘Elective Affinities’, Benjamin begins with a distinction between the critic and the commentator, which he pairs up with the difference between the alchemist and the chemist: ‘Critique seeks the truth content of a work of art, commentary its subject matter…[in front of the pyre] the commentator resembles the chemist, the critic is like the alchemist’ (Benjamin 1977:63–4).24 Kant compares the philosopher to a chemist testing and applying scientific rules, but in his search for the mysterious truth he is also inescapably related to the alchemist.25 When peering into the flickering flame of truth, even the critical philosopher cannot break through the residual mystery, the unlit dark zones that surround him. Already we can anticipate that it is not just the well-analysed and fashionable sublime that threatens the passage (Übergang) between the sensible and the supersensible, nature and the world of ideas, thereby throwing doubt on the ‘promise of a reconciled community’ (Rogozinski, in Courtine 1988:183). 26 The beautiful ‘Verwandtschaften’ of nature itself, exactly those phenomena most intimately related to the question of the architectonic ‘link’ (see Payot above), also throw open the question of whether a harmonious community of relations, belonging together in a supposedly ‘natural’ manner, without coercion and without border disputes, is possible. There is a lot at stake in Kant’s reliance on ‘touchstones’ as infallible guarantees for his interrelated, architectonic system.27 To return to the first Critique: the ‘systematic [or ‘projected’] unity’ of reason as a regulative idea is to be aimed at, to be approached as much as possible (Kant 1983a: B675). This rule cannot just be a logical principle with no basis at all in reality (or else reason would be pointing understanding in a direction that it can have no faith in (ibid.: B679). Underlying its assumption has to be a transcendental a priori law. Following this line of thought, Kant goes on to consider as a necessary, logical possibility even the melting down of the faculties of the human mind to form one ‘fundamental power’ (Grundkraft):

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I Now there is a logical maxim which requires that we should reduce, so far as may be possible, this seeming diversity, by comparing these with one another and detecting their hidden identity. We have to enquire whether imagination combined with consciousness may not be the same thing as memory, wit, power of discrimination, and perhaps even identical with understanding and reason. (ibid.: B677) The discussion of the Anthropology above has already shown that any formula such as ‘imagination combined with consciousness’ presupposes an impossible distinction. By Kant’s own admission, we cannot be sure whether we are deliberately using imagination or whether it is deviously playing with us (Kant 1977b:476; 1974:51). However, here he is not suggesting that this fundamental power, undivided and radical, actually exists—it is ‘purely hypothetical’ (Kant 1983a:B677)—but that the search for such a convergence, both in the human mind and in nature, is necessary; for without it we would have no reason, no use of understanding and no possibility of empirical truth (ibid.: B679). Different substances (gases, liquids), different minerals, plants and animals, different species, faculties of the mind, must all be interrelated to some extent (but to what extent?). If each entity was living its own monadic life in its own separate world, unaffected by its environment, unperturbed by neighbouring life forms, we would have no cognitive point of entry into their existence at all. In order for our scientific enquiry to have a sense of direction and to come up with coherent answers to questions, we must at least assume that natural phenomena mean something, that they have a raison d’être or purpose. Otherwise, it is difficult to imagine how reflections on natural phenomena could ever cohere to form a systematic study of life forms instead of remaining at the unconvincing level of fluke observations of random happenings. The enquiring mind needs to be able to read adaptive necessity into the world to some extent so as to see ‘into the reasons why and the end for which they are provided with such and such parts’ (Kant 1990a:§66; 1988a:25).28 In the same vein, this necessary assumption of unity excludes any idea of the excessive proliferation of principles in nature. To relate back to our previous discussion of sexual difference: the fact that there is difference and not auto-reproduction—the principle of parsimony (Ersparung)—has to be the economic law of reason and nature (Kant 1983a: B678). If the source of life itself is in excess of a unitary, single element that could serve as a unifying origin, then this must be an economical excess. However, if elsewhere reason’s folly is to transgress the bounds of all possible experience, soaring to impossible supersensible heights misled by its ‘drive to extension’ (ibid.),29 Kant draws our attention here to another danger. This is the drive that pushes the reduction of substances too far, to a state of unjustifiable parsimony. It is now that we come across the example of the

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KANT TROUBLE irresponsible ‘Scheidekünstler’ mentioned above in relation to ‘Verwandtschaften’ and imagination: Already a great advance was made when chemists succeeded in reducing all salts to two main genera, acids and alkalies; and they endeavour to show that even this difference is merely a variety, or diverse manifestation, of one and the same fundamental material. Chemists have sought, step by step, to reduce the different kinds of earths (the material of stones and even of metals) to three, and at last to two; but, not content with this… (ibid.: B681) These chemists cannot help but go too far in their search for analytical similarity. They get carried away by reason and are driven on by restless dissatisfaction to amalgamate ever-more different specimens into ever-larger generic groups. Kant explains that this potentially dangerous desire (Begierde) to reduce or collapse differences into one generalised unity needs to be moderated rather than encouraged: ‘This unity, although it is a mere idea, has been at times so eagerly sought, that there has been need to moderate the desire for it, not to encourage it’ (ibid.: B680). However, he continues in a different vein: just because reason is economical, this does not mean that it is egotistical (selbstsüchtig), only interested in saving itself trouble by seeing unity where there is none. On the contrary, the presupposition of the idea of a ‘unity of reason’ is that it actually corresponds to the mechanisms of nature itself. Reason ‘does not beg [before nature], but commands’ (ibid.: B681). There is a curious vacillation in this passage between the idea of summoning, calling up unity from nature, which has to be there for us to have any hope of making at least partial sense of the world around us, and the danger that we run of irresponsibly simplifying natural mechanisms by determinedly enforcing an imagined and desired unity. Reason both complies and commands. Kant concludes the passage with the following words: ‘although indeed unable to determine the limits of this unity’ (ibid.). Reason still cannot know when to stop unifying. As Kant confirms in the following paragraph, we cannot know how far to take the unifying process, to what ‘degree’ (Grad) to pursue it, to what extent nature actually is one kingdom (ibid.: B862). Like the imagination, reason is violent and runs the risk of forcibly bringing together elements that do not belong together. One difference between them is that imagination was at one time in the Anthropology presented as merely complying with understanding’s rules. Understanding in turn just follows reason’s guidelines. It is reason that is responsible for providing the systematic ordering of the knowledge acquired by understanding. Reason is supposed to help understanding (not mislead it): ‘to

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I assist the understanding by means of ideas, in those cases in which the understanding cannot by itself establish rules’ (Kant 1983a: B676).30 Acting as a counter-force to this single-minded, harmonising compulsion of reason, defined as the logical, but also necessarily transcendental, principle of genera (Gattungen), Kant postulates another principle, which seeks differences between species. The former is a characteristic of ‘wit’ (Witz), the latter of the ‘faculty of distinction’ (Unterscheidungsvermögen). Kant brings together these two faculties and treats them both as merely different qualities of reason itself. He thereby implements his (supposedly hypothetical) suggestion, discussed above, of finding a ‘hidden identity’ that functions as a ‘fundamental power’ at the root of apparently completely diverse qualities. Reason reveals itself as split, interested in both differences and unified generalities: ‘reason thus exhibits a twofold, self-conflicting interest’ (ibid.: B682). Its interests pull it in two opposed directions, towards seeing the world around us as composed of vast generic groupings of comparable things and towards differentiating the world and its elements into ever-smaller categories characterised by distinctive, individualising properties. It is the idea of ‘Verwandtschaft’ that is brought in as a third principle to solve this dilemma. It acts as a ‘keystone’ (Schlußstein) or ‘mediator’ (Vermittler) bridging the gap between the interests of the ‘wit’ and the ‘faculty of distinction’. ‘Verwandtschaft’ provides a continuity of forms by uniting the two contradictory laws: The third law combines these two laws by prescribing that even amidst the utmost manifoldness we observe homogeneity in the gradual transition from one species to another, and thus recognise a relationship (Verwandtschaft) of the different branches, as all springing from the same stem. (ibid.: B688)31 This third, crucial, instance recuperates the violent disagreement between the two antagonistic tendencies. ‘Verwandtschaft’, although introduced last, moves into a central position as ‘Mittelglied’, mediating between the forces of homogeneity and heterogeneity. Here we note the similarities with the Critique of Judgement, discussed at the end of ‘Landscape gardening: the “folly” of flimsy construction’, where judgement was also the third but essential central term bound up with the question of the architectural bond or tie. Payot (1982:139) described the third Critique as: this presentation of the liaison—of this foundation that has to be sounded out to avoid ruination—this bridge which holds up the philosophical by joining it, by organising its two banks (between the sensible, the domain of nature and the supersensible, the domain of the concept of freedom), through a general theory of the link.

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KANT TROUBLE The stakes involved in our discussion of imaginative ‘Verwandtschaften’ also pose the problems confronted by the faculty of judgement.32 Both have to straddle the gap, provide the transition (Übergang) between the empirical and the intelligible worlds, the theoretical and the practical.33 Indeed, this is hardly a coincidence; the two are closely related: the act of judging relies on the imagination for it to take place at all.34 Just as the faculty of judgement has no ‘special realm’ for itself (Kant 1990a:74; 1988a:4), so too is it unclear where ‘Verwandtschaften’ belong and how they fit in. The faculty of judgement can be ‘annexed’ by the understanding to help it with its search for theoretical knowledge or by pure practical reason in its work with desire and morality (1990a:74; 1988a:5). Equally, the ‘Verwandtschaften’ have been associated with understanding and the accumulation of scientific knowledge about nature, but also with the regulative ideas of reason. We will now continue our analysis of the difficult, if not impossible, bridging task facing the ‘Verwandtschaften’, having previously established the deficiency of guidelines for reason’s contradictory tendencies: the compulsion to differentiate and its opposite, the urge towards unification. To return to the first Critique, Kant claims that ‘Verwandtschaft’ holds together and to that extent reconciles the divergent desires of reason, thereby containing the tension. He then tries to conclude that as a consequence the apparent disparity within reason is merely an unimportant preference in favour of one type of analysis. Some thinkers are interested in diversity, and others have interests that engage them with questions of identity. Having hastily repaired the damage, Kant concludes: there is no real conflict. The dispute is due simply to the twofold interest of reason, the one party setting its heart upon, or at least adopting, the one interest, and the other party the other. (Kant 1983a:B694–5) However, this solution is thwarted by Kant’s previous disclosures: the conflictual split between the forces of decomposition and combination cannot be reduced to a question of methodological choice. This split was seen as constitutive of reason itself. Reason does not know what is in its best ‘interest’. It transgresses the laws of economy, losing its interest on the way. Reason goes too far in its divisions, breaking up elements into such small, individualised components that nothing can be related to anything else and, in its attempts at unification, it packs together completely disparate items that have nothing in common. If, through the mediation of ‘Verwandtschaften’, any reconciliation is possible, then the continuity achieved will not be maintained without violence and tension. The solution containing these two elements is volatile—if it explodes, with it goes the myth of a well-balanced, harmonious relationship between the faculties of the mind and, by extension,

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I the idea of a reconciled ‘great family’ of beings amenable to philosophical systematisation. Our initial analysis of ‘Verwandtschaft’ as a faculty of the imagination revealed it to be superior to imaginatio plastica and imaginatio associans as it produces not just ‘mathematic aggregations’ but ‘dynamic coalitions’. Towards the end of ‘The Regulative Employment of Ideas of Pure Reason’, we discover that here too it is exceptional and if possible, purer and more a priori than the other two principles of ‘homogeneity’ and ‘variety’. Whereas the latter two are transcendental principles, ‘Verwandtschaft’ is based on ‘pure transcendental grounds’. All three are ‘in accordance both with reason and with nature’, but for ‘Verwandtschaft’ there is no question of a corresponding possible object in experience (Kant 1983a: B689). The principle of harmonious continuity between different but interrelated species, belonging to the same communal ‘stem’ (see above), is disproved by experience. Observation tends to reveal that instead of this communal principle, nature really is divided into different species and warring factions (ibid.). All three are merely regulative ideas serving as rules for possible experience, which must be looked for and realised as much as possible ‘without ever reaching them’ (ibid.: B691). As synthetic a priori principles, they have an ‘objective but indeterminate validity’ (ibid.). However, in the case of ‘Verwandtschaft’, one has even less chance of ‘reaching’ it as an idea than in the other two cases. All three have no object in concreto, but ‘Verwandtschaft’ has even less objectivity than the others since it pertains more to a ‘power’, ‘force’ or ‘property’: ‘The affinity of the manifold… refers indeed to things, but still more to their properties and powers’ (ibid.: B690). There is no clue as to how and when (at what stage in our search for differences or similarities in the world) we should start looking for affinity. We only know that it is the most desirable principle of an uninterrupted community, with gradual transitions between elements and substances, across species, and that it is a rational project, a reasonable idea of projected unity. We are also left with the following nagging questions, to which we will eventually have to return. If ‘Verwandtschaften’ are now apparently something as elusive and intangible as a ‘power’ found in all things, how on earth is Kant expecting to build an architectonic system with them? Why draw on precisely this most contagious of analogies to describe one’s philosophical project? However, not yet having got to the end of our pursuit of ‘Verwandtschaften’, such questions will have to be further deferred. In ‘The Only Possible Argument for a Demonstration of the Existence of God’, Kant had already attempted to prove the existence of a principle of continuity and affinity governed by necessary, and to a certain extent knowable, laws in the universe: 35 ‘order and harmony, along with such necessary determinations, prevail throughout space, and that concord and unity prevail throughout its immense manifold’ (Kant 1988c:655; 1992:137).

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KANT TROUBLE This harmony is then used as an a posteriori confirmation of God’s existence. Kant dismisses the theories of Epicurus and Democritus: the formation of the universe by a clinamen of atoms leaves too much to chance and provides no feasible theory to work with. 36 Kant intends to give scientific investigation as much leeway as it requires to penetrate through to necessary laws, convinced that scientific progress is not incompatible with a belief in God and that there is no risk of explaining away His existence; indeed, the need for Him increases. The more unity one finds, the more one uncovers economical laws that govern several different phenomena according to one simple, perfect principle, the more one can be convinced of the necessity of a God. It is the distinction between ‘organic’ or ‘organised’ and ‘non-organic’ nature in ‘The Only Possible Argument…’ that is important for this chapter. The former (which includes plants, animals and humans themselves) cannot be attributed to necessary laws as easily as the physical and chemical phenomena of ‘non-organic’ nature seem to lend themselves. There would appear to be no other solution but to resort to an appeal to God’s wisdom, His ‘wise choice’ and teleological ends (Kant 1988c:666; 1992:148). However, Kant is not content to attribute ‘organised’ or ‘organic’ nature to an ‘artificial [and therefore contingent] order’ whose only authority stems from a will (however divine) (1988c:685, 694; 1992:160, 164). He wants to encourage the search for necessity even among these elusive organisms. These organic beings appear to defy all explanation owing to their extraordinary capacity to reproduce, repair and even improve themselves by adapting to circumstances:37 One will presume that the necessary unity to be found in nature is greater than strikes the eye. And that presumption will be made not only in the case of inorganic nature but also in the case of organic nature as well. For even in the case of the structure of an animal, it can be assumed that there is a single disposition, which has the fruitful adaptedness to produce many different advantageous consequences for which we, initially, may have supposed that a variety of special provisions must have been necessary to produce such effects. (1988c:694; 1992:167, translation modified)38 These ‘organised and self-organising beings’ are described as having ‘physical ends’ (Naturzwecke) in the Critique of Judgement (Kant 1990a:§65 322; 1988a:22). They defy explanation by our causal laws and force us to adopt teleological principles. Like the Epicurean theory of atoms which clash and are supposed somehow to connect together, these beings do not show us a way of latching on to them, of making sense of them as part of a ‘Verwandtschaft’, of a continuity or community of beings. However, in The

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I Only Possible Argument…’ Kant nevertheless encourages us to pursue a parallel that he presents to us between organic and inorganic beings as a way of breaking down the former’s elusive indifference to analysis.39 Later, in the ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgement’, Kant yet again draws on the chemical analogy as a means of securing a possible hold on these slippery, self-organising beings: we have nature in its free formations displaying on all sides extensive mechanical proclivity to producing forms (der mechanischen Hang zu Erzeugungen von Formen) seemingly made, as it were, for the aesthetic employment of our judgement, without affording the least support to the supposition of a need for anything over and above its mechanism, as mere nature, to enable them to be final for our judgement apart from their being grounded upon any idea. (1990a:§58 290; 1992:217) Kant proceeds to give us the process of crystallisation ‘according to chemical laws’ as an example of ‘free formation’. Crystals freely form themselves through a sudden ‘concursion’ (Anschießen), thereby presenting us with an organisation that can be aesthetically appreciated without an appeal to ends: in free activity aesthetically final forms, independently of any particular guiding ends, according to chemical laws, by means of the chemical integration of the substance requisite for the organization. (1990a:§58 293; 1992:219) This ideal finality in the beauty of nature gives humans back their autonomy when faced with its manifestations, as these free formations are not products of an impenetrable organic process but instead testify to ‘a mechanical proclivity to producing forms’. This mechanical, automatic process has no mysterious ulterior cause. It obeys laws similar to the chemical ones governing crystallisation but is also free since the beauty produced is not functional but for tasteful appreciation by ‘us’. Flowers and birds are then brought back within the grasp of human faculties through the mediation of the ‘extreme beauty’ of crystallised minerals (1990a:§58 292; 1992:219). In the next chapter, I will be attempting a reassessment of the beautiful, which is often neglected and underestimated in favour of the sublime. Here we see that the aesthetic judgement of beauty is applied to those organisms that threaten the order of the world for us. The designation of beauty turns out to be the site of an attempt at forceful recuperation of apparently unrelatable beings. The sublime is characterised by Kant as both the unpleasant realisation of the inadequacy of our faculties to reach the heights of the idea and also as a certain feeling of superiority: ‘the feeling of the sublime

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KANT TROUBLE …renders intuitable the supremacy of our cognitive faculties on the rational side over the greatest faculty of sensibility’ (1990a:§27 180; 1992:106). Similarly, faced with the humiliating inability to understand anything about the functioning of organised beings, which seem to make a mockery of our attempts to explain natural phenomena scientifically, we also experience the reassuring satisfaction of being able to judge and compare them aesthetically as beautiful. The beautiful arouses ambivalent feelings in us, not unlike those provoked by the sublime.40 Despite his attempts at aesthetic compensation and theoretical recuperation, Kant is still forced to admit that we do not actually know through what sort of mediation (Vermittlung) salts and stones are dissolved in water to form crystals (1990a:§58 291; 1992:218). This admission is important because, according to the hylomorphic tradition, the mediating agent is that which imposes form on matter, provoking its enlivened reaction. If no external mediator can be located, then life can only be situated within matter itself. If this is the case, then, instead of trying to fix substances in a state (with motion either being applied to or not being applied to them), one has instead to talk of ‘species of becoming’ and ‘processes of change’ (Koyré, in Cohen and Westfall 1995:62).41 Matter is no longer to be perceived as static but rather in potential movement and flux. Following Bloch, we would have to say that even in its apparent state of ‘repose’ vagrant matter is already on the way to becoming a ‘leap into movement’ (Bloch 1985b:196). Far from being a mere ‘mechanical proclivity to producing forms’, what we have here is the ‘mechanical formation of form’ (mechanische Bildung der Gestalt), discussed above, which straddles the divide between the organic and the mechanical, generating ‘something quite new’ from its ‘dynamic coalition’ (Kant 1977b:480; 1974:53). The impact model of mechanical movement analysed by Kant in the ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’ is a totally inadequate description of the activity evident in the process of crystallisation. Indeed, Kant draws this conclusion himself in the same text, where he compares this reductive definition of the mechanical to the chemical: ‘the effect of materials however, insofar as they, even in repose, interactively change the connection of their own parts through their own force is called chemical’ (Kant 1977c:92, my italics). At work in the process of crystallisation is active matter, endowed with its ‘own force’. This instance of an inventive alliance of the mechanical and the organic would necessitate a reassessment of the place of the machine in Kant’s thinking. Crystals have not only mechanical qualities but also possess ‘formative force’ (Kant 1990a:§65 322; 1988c:22).42 Having already conceded his inability the locate a guiding principle for the process of crystallisation, Kant goes on to admit that some end (Zweck) must originally have been intended for these beautiful compositions: ‘admittedly, in obedience, primarily, to a certain original bent of nature directed to ends’ (1990a:§58 292; 1988a:219). Such an end is now not at all accessible to us.

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I Kant shows that he is uncomfortably aware of strategic teleological territory being lost to the aesthetic judgement at this point of his argument: The fluid state is, to all appearance, on the whole older than the solid and plants as well as animal bodies are build up out of fluid nutritive substance, so far as this takes form undisturbed—in the case of the latter, admittedly, in obedience, primarily, to a certain original bent of nature directed to ends (which…must not be judged aesthetically but teleologically by the principle of realism); but still all the while, perhaps, also (aber nebenbei dock auch vielleicht auch) following the universal law of the affinity of substances in the way they shoot together and form in freedom (dem allgemeinen Gesetze der Verwandtschaft der Materien gemäß anschießend und sich in Freiheit bildend). (ibid.) All too aware of the risk of loosing his mediating teleological principle—note his stumbling hesitancy: ‘but still, all the while, perhaps, also’—but evidently sorely tempted by these spectacular ‘free formations’, Kant lets loose the ravishing analogy. Chemical substances suddenly shoot together in accordance with the ‘universal law of affinity’, which, as we have already seen, not even Newton was able to explain. Likewise, plant and animal bodies form themselves by springing out of fluid lability into crystallised form. This actualised process signals, to use Deleuze’s expression, ‘a bursting forth of life’ (1985:117; 1989:88). These crystallised ‘free formations’ give us a glimpse of the inexhaustible potentiality of life, with its ever-increasing aggravated fecundity, that Kant described in The Theory of the Heavens: But because in fact the remaining part of temporality is forever infinite and the past part only finite, because the sphere of shaped nature is only an infinitely small part of the whole (Inbegriff) which has in it the seed (Samen) of future worlds and which endeavours to generate itself in longer or shorter periods out of the raw condition of chaos: creation is never accomplished. It has begun but will not finish. (Kant 1991a:335) This becoming-life is not chaotic, but nor is it predetermined by the (paternal) seed. The seed is no totalising encapsulation of all future growth; indeed, in the Critique of Judgement Kant objects to the idea of individual preformation as if all life was already trussed up by the Creator in advance just waiting to be unfurled as a simple ‘educt’ (Kant 1990a:§81 379; 1988a: 83). Instead, he espouses epigenesis, which, to use the terms we have already explored from the Anthropology, allows for a thinking of ‘something quite new’ being

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KANT TROUBLE produced out of the spontaneous ‘dynamic coalition’ of two heterogeneous substances (Kant 1977b:480; 1974:53). The third Critique attempts to curb the freedom of these individuating ‘processes of becoming’ by stating that, although organisms are not individually preformed, they are generically, inasmuch as ‘the inner final tendency that would be part of their original stock and therefore the specific form’ is ‘virtualiter’ preformed (Kant 1990a:§81 379; 1988a:83–4). Humans do not give birth to fish, but the offspring of human reproduction is not for all that a simple descendant of the parents in miniature. Differences between species apparently prevent the breeding of monsters, but, as we have seen, we often try to foist too large or too small notions of genera on the natural world. We cannot make up our minds entirely about where one species begins and where another ends. Indeed, the concept of genealogical ‘descendance’ appears to be a glaringly inadequate way of trying to relate Kant’s explorations of the ‘universal law of the affinity of substances’ to the dazzling displays of crystallisation. The ‘dynamic coalitions’ of ‘Verwandtschaften’, akin to the ‘mechanical formation’ (mechanische Bildung) of crystals, are unpredictable alliances that challenge attempts to distinguish clearly between the mechanical (inor-ganic)/organic, inanimate/animate, let alone between different species, each with their discrete properties and reproducing their own. The ‘great family’ of ‘Verwandtschaften’ does not fit the human conception of relationships based on handed-down blood ties. Crystallising processes demonstrate the endless spatial and temporal unfolding of life as they themselves are never finished. Deleuze (1985:117; 1989:88) tells us that: ‘…there is never a completed crystal; each crystal is infinite by right, in the process of being made, and is made with a seed which incorporates the environment and forces it to crystallise’. For Deleuze, the formation of a crystal is certainly not to be defined as a one-way line of descent but as a ‘perpetual exchange between the virtual and the actual’. And, as we have already seen, Kant too encouraged us to pursue matter’s incessant movement by suggestively pointing out to us that the ‘fluid state’ is originary, underlying any solidity that bodies gradually accrue for themselves: ‘The fluid state is, to all appearance, on the whole older than the solid and plants as well as animal bodies are built up out of fluid nutritive substance’ (Kant 1990a:§58 292; 1988a:219). Yet more critical ground is lost in the Critique of Judgement when it is recognised that the initially reassuring ‘concursions’—supposedly adept as confirming ‘our’ place as aesthetically attuned humans in a systematically ordered world—are the product of the elements’ sudden ‘leap’ or ‘jump’ towards one another: The formation, then, takes place by a concursion, i.e. by a sudden solidification—not by a gradual transition from the fluid to the solid

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I state, but as it were by a leap (Sprung). This transition is termed crystallisation. (1990a:§58 291; 1988a:218) Concursion, the spectacular ‘shooting together’ of molecules, does not take place as a gradual transition from a fluid state into crystalline solidity. This inexplicable ‘leap’ ruptures the idea of ‘Verwandtschaft’ as the principle of systematic continuity between disparate substances. In ‘The Regulative Employment of the Ideas’, such a ‘leap’ had already been discounted as a movement impossible for our understanding to grasp: all the manifold genera are simply divisions of one single highest and universal genus. From this principle there follows, as its immediate consequence: datur continuum formarum, that is, that all differences of species border upon one another, admitting of no transition from one to another per saltum, but only through all the smaller degrees of difference that mediate between them. (Kant 1983a:B687) The first Critique clearly states that transitions must happen in a mediated fashion whereby the degrees of ever-smaller differences are processed bit by bit and reassuringly knitted back into the continuous principle, common to all. The gradual nature of the continuity is crucial for Kant as it still permits reason time enough to attempt a systematic ordering of phenomena into genera and different species. The revelation of such an unthinkable gap, of a sudden jump in nature, spells the failure of the whole system to maintain an essential unity.43 The ‘enemy’, that which postulates the possibility of an unmediated yet nevertheless active matter, which ruins any strict policing between the inorganic and the organic, is already within the system. By exploiting its network of relations (‘Verwandtschaften’), this runaway continuity infiltrates the sanctity of the human, causing a meltdown of its faculties into one power, one Grundkraft (Kant 1983a:B677). The philosopher is unable to implement his ‘art of separation’; his hopes of cleanly and decisively separating ‘foreign elements’ from the ‘domestic’, those which do and those which do not belong in his system, are frustrated. This slippery ‘enemy’—at once the object of Kant’s disciplinarian scrutiny and yet courted by him in the pursuit of exciting affinities—is all the more unthinkable because of its fluid condition. Crystallisation with its concursive jump from fluidity into solidification eludes our schematic grasp. Kant himself suggests why in his ‘Lectures on Metaphysics’: When nothing smaller is possible, there is continuity; e.g. space and time are quanta continua…If something could go from one place to

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KANT TROUBLE another without going through the place in between (Zwischenörter) this would be a mutatio loci per saltum. (Kant 1975:91) The bursting forth of life that is the concursion would also be a leap out of time and space as we humans know it towards an unpredictable future, one partially preformed around a virtual seed but nevertheless the product of originality.44 As Deleuze explains, fluidity forces us to abandon our doggedly grounded sense of progressive continuity from one point to another: ‘on land movement always takes place from one point to another, always between two points, while on water the point is always between two movements’ (1983:115; 1997:79). For Deleuze, the watery medium is indicative of a ‘more than human perception, a perception not tailored to solids, which no longer [has] the solid as object, as condition, as milieu’ (1983:116; 1997:80). This move away from a human fixation on solid states, for which, to use Koyré’s words, ‘motion and rest no longer exist in the bodies themselves’, returns volition to matter itself. Bodies can again be opened up to ‘processes of change’ and to the kind of symbiotic alliances that Kant mentions in the third Critique, such as that between the tapeworm and the human or animal, wherein the ‘parasite’ supplements an organic lack in his ‘host’ so that they form one ‘dynamic coalition’ (Kant 1990a:§67 329; 1988a:29). Later on, in the Critique of Judgement, Kant still insists that, when attempting an explanation of ‘physical ends’ (Naturzwecke), one should subordinate mechanical principles to teleological ones. However, if all research and insight into the functioning of nature is not to be denied, there must be a ‘ray of hope, however faint’ that ‘mechanical’ principles can have some grip or bearing on nature (1990a:§80 374; 1988a:78). Already, in ‘The Only Possible Argument…’, Kant had observed that analogies were very necessary aids for our understanding (1988c:702; 1992:173). Accordingly, he introduces here an ‘analogy of forms’, a ‘comparative anatomy’ of different natural species, in order to suggest a ‘common type’—an original image of a community (ein gemeinschaftliches Urbild) from which the divergent natural phenomena originally sprang. He continues: This analogy of forms which in all their differences seem to be produced in accordance with a common type strengthens the suspicion that they have an actual kinship (Verwandtschaft) due to descent from a common parent. This we might trace in the gradual approximation of one animal species to another, from that in which the principle of ends seems best authenticated, namely from man, back to the polyp, and from this back even to mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest perceivable stage of nature. Here we come to crude matter; and from this, and the forces which it exerts in

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I accordance with mechanical laws (laws resembling those by which it acts in the formation of crystals) seems to be developed the whole technic of nature which, in the case of organised beings, is so incomprehensible to us that we feel obliged to imagine a different principle for its explanation. (Kant 80 1990a:§80 374–5; 1988a:78–9, my italics) Ideally, one would be able to follow the analogy through all forms of life, from humans right through to polyps and mosses. The result would be that, instead of being dismayed by an unmasterable heterogeneity and baffled by variety, one could focus on a ‘general schema’ that encourages us to see slight differences between beings that are nevertheless indissociably related to one another by a common ‘parent’. In this passage, Kant still hangs on to his quaint (and, as we have seen, inappropriate) ideas of ‘descent’ but, nevertheless, the prospect held out to us through our reading of ‘Verwandtschaften’ is of a different order. Once the principle of gradual, hierarchising continuity through nature is blasted by the unthinkable jump in nature he evoked earlier, Kant’s vision looks quite different. Indeed, it becomes one that potentially has similarities to Darwin’s, as understood by Ansell Pearson (1997:135): Darwin does not understand genealogy in linear terms, but rather in terms of a ‘branching’ in which ‘all living and extinct beings are united by complex, radiating, and circuitous lines of affinities into one grand system’. ‘Radiating and circuitous lines of affinities’ replace the hierarchically informed idea of evolution, just as the ‘more than human perception’ that ebbs and flows in the fluid condition replaces a despotically anthropomorphic government of the natural kingdom intent on fixing creatures into static categories. Also, as we have seen, Kant can no longer hold on to the distinction between matter and life by relying on his touchstone, the restricted notion of blind, automated ‘mechanical laws’ governing the formation of crystals. Consequently, his own analysis would force him to admit that the principle of generatio aequivoca is at work in nature. The mysteries of life can no longer be contained within organisms but rather have to be sought in matter previously deemed to be inanimate. The prospect facing him is of pulsating slime that spontaneously erupts with a vast variety of living creatures.45 Indeed, Kant does represent nature as one gaping fertile womb that churns out a great variety of offspring until one day (but when? at what point?) drying up. He also proposes that the ‘archaeologist of nature’ is faced with a fantastic and ultimately impossible task, that of searching for the shared origin of all natural forms. This, he states, has to be a goal and must be at

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KANT TROUBLE least partially realisable.46 This need is understandable if we return to our earlier discussion of ‘The Regulative Employment of Ideas’ section of the first Critique: ‘Verwandtschaften’ were seen as the key principle of continuity, which—although on the one hand imperilled by a multitude of differences and, on the other, threatened by monolithic homogenisation—has to mediate and find a balance between these two contradictory tendencies. Kant wants ‘Verwandtschaft’ to remain a family affair of how to live together under one roof. He accordingly harks back to the homely imagery of a ‘great family of living things’ and the ‘womb of mother earth’ (Mutterschoß) (Kant 1990a:§80 374–5; 1988a:79). Equally, we can say that for Kant the impossible necessity of finding a ‘general interrelated affinity’ is the question of where to find or found (as we will have to return to our architectural concerns) a community of beings (1990a:§80 374–5; 1988a:79). A demonstrable affinity running through the whole of nature is also the condition of possibility for an understanding of nature that does not resort to the joker of the Great Creator to explain origins. It would permit real insight into the workings of nature without the cop-out theological clause. However, such a prospect is also horrifyingly monstrous, the worst possible scenario, concomitantly conjuring up a vile, polluting continuity and mutation across species, irrespective of the divisions that separate one from another. This vision of Man’s singular dignity being dragged down by his relations (Verwandtschaften) to the level of pulsating sea slime violates the very distinctions of generic preformation that he sought to hold on to while exploring the fascinating intricacies of epigenesis.47 Staggering back from the precipice, in fast retreat—but is it not already too late?—Kant hastily proclaims that: As regards the hierarchy of organisms…its use with reference to the realm of nature here on earth leads nowhere…The minuteness of differences when one compares species according to their similarity is, in view of such a great multiplicity [of species], a necessary consequence of that multiplicity. But a consanguinity (Verwandtschaft) among them, according to which either one species springs from another and all of them out of one original species or as it were they originate from one single generative mother-womb, would lead to ideas which are so monstrous that reason shrinks back. (1977b:792) Having already called into question the presupposition that reason knows its own limits, that it possesses its own self-limiting stricture that prevents it losing itself in abyssal enquiry, we are most reluctant to allow him to retreat from this exciting prospect. In our discussion of ‘Verwandtschaften’ we showed precisely how Kant’s attempt to divide them into ‘good’ (in league with a sage reason) and ‘bad’ categories was untenable. It was precisely this

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY I nebulous duplicity of ‘Verwandtschaften’ that permitted us to tap otherwise unexplored potential latent, or even already actively at work, within the Kantian system. It was shown that this generative potential opens up for Kant a source not only of fecund, tempting associations but also of catastrophic horror. NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6

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This quotation from Goethe’s novel has been used by Jeremy Adler as the title of his book. See Adler (1987) for a fund of knowledge on Goethe, eighteenth-century chemistry and affinities. For maggots and worms, see Kant (1983a:B863; 1990a:§78 366; 1988a:69). See the amazing Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete (Giedion 1995), which Benjamin relies on very heavily in his Passagenwerk. See Giedion (1981:2): ‘Greek art is not taken as the universal standard against which perfection and less than perfection can be assessed.’ See also Giedion (1981:471, 484, 489). This quasi-chemical concern with quantities and composition was not just Kant’s philosophical aim but also the principle governing his fanatical personal life. See Goulyga (1985:175–6) and my forthcoming ‘The Discipline of Pure Reason: Dosing the Faculties’. See also Kant (1983a:BXX): ‘This experiment of pure reason bears a great similarity to what in chemistry is sometimes entitled the experiment of reduction’; Kant (1988d:301; 1956:167): ‘We may analyse [the examples of the morally judging reason] into their elementary concepts, adopting…a process similar to that of chemistry, i.e., we may…separate the empirical from the rational…’. As pointed out in the Introduction, Kant’s critics have often criticised his attempts at delimitation. Kant is regarded as shutting out the Other of his system, which eventually returns to haunt him. See Böhme and Böhme (1983:11–12, 88): ‘fundamental for these new delimitations is the principled separation (Scheidung) of reason from its other, unreason’. Payot (1982:137) presents the aim of Kant’s philosophy as being the eventual construction of an ideal system: when the construction plan of the system is at the same time and immediately the plan of auto-foundation of the system itself, the critical enterprise will have succeeded in completing the liaison, constructing the affinity; it will then be able to efface itself, leaving place for the liaison and the affinity.

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Payot thinks that the architectonic is a modest go-between for Kant, who disappears when the desired alliance is sealed. I want to show how this is an impossible position, even from within Kant’s own system. See Kant (1983a:B863), where the architectonic is compared to a worm. Also, in the ‘Dreams of a Spirit-Seer’, Kant refers to the ‘eel’ of science (1988c:971). On the interdependence of the very different faculties of understanding and sensibility, see Kant (1983a:B75). However, these differences are surprisingly difficult to tie down. For example, despite his claims for a heterogeneous origin, Kant elsewhere suggests a ‘hidden identity’ between ‘imagination with

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consciousness’, understanding and reason; see Kant (1983a:B677). This passage is discussed later. Incidentally, the same idea is explored by Henry James in his very weird The Sacred Fount (1953). James’s narrator observes the transmuting appearances and behaviour of his acquaintances, pent up together on a country house estate, and reads off their nascent and declining alliances from their physiognomies. They leech off each other, like vampires. See Roqué (1985) for a thorough examination of Kant on the subject of organisms. For example, see Pope’s famous ‘Epitaph to Newton’ (1963:808): Nature and Nature’s laws lay in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was Light.

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It is for this reason that John Maynard Keynes permits himself the following opinion: Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians…he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood…He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty.

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See Keynes in Cohen and Westfall (1995:314–15). This conception of the world as composed of antagonistic forces or, to use Kant’s term, ‘negative magnitudes’, will be the subject of Chapter 4. Kant’s relationship to the emergent discipline of chemistry is most contradictory. For instance, in the ‘Danziger Physik’, he celebrates its achievements and binds it indissociably to the tasks facing philosophy (Kant 1955:97). Having fatefully coupled the two, he then (misguidedly) relies on the chemical analogy to build up his philosophical system. Elsewhere, however, he categorically denies chemistry the status of a real science (Kant 1977c:13, 15). See also Zammito (1992:207). As we will see, ‘Verwandtschaften’ are indeed exceptional as they are both that which is synthesised and that which synthesises; they are part of the system and the system itself. They are not just relations that are ‘given’ (that originate from within the system) but also relations that are created, invented (that come from outside). In fact, they disrupt any such simple oppositions: for example, as discussed below, in the fight between the ‘wit’ and ‘the faculty of distinction’, they contain the problem of disunity and a too much reduced unity but, at the same time, they are this problem. The problem posed by the ‘Verwandtschaften’ can be seen as that of a well-negotiated, balanced unity, of a community of beings. Meredith chooses to accept Vaihinger’s variation at this point and translates ‘productive imagination’ as ‘reproductive’. See also Kant (1988a:§49 176; 1990a:250), where it is explained that analogical laws bring us ‘freedom from the law of association (which attaches to the empirical employment of the imagination)’. See Shell (1996) for an interesting account of the battle of the sexes in Kant’s philosophy and his image of (maternal) nature as simultaneously uplifting and degrading, attractive and repulsive. In her book, Shell shares the preoccupations of this chapter: ‘community’ and ‘generation’.

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For example Kant (1956:65 (‘Probierstein’ is here translated as ‘criterion’); 1960:55, 105, 157, 189; 1979:89; 1977a:317; 1977b:535–6; 1983a:B26, B493, B849, B852, AVIII; 1988d:181; 1988e:282–3; 1989:714, 776, 840, 879; 1991c:249): ‘To think for oneself means to look within oneself (i.e. into one’s own reason) for the supreme touchstone of truth; and the maxim of thinking for oneself at all times is enlightenment.’ However, during his discussion of ‘egoism’ in the Anthropology, Kant tells us that the ‘Probierstein’ is a ‘criterium veritatis externum’ a ‘means for assuring the truth of our judgements’ that is situated outside of the solipsistic individual (Kant 1977b:408–11; 1974:10–11). The egotist believes he can forgo the necessity of a ‘Probierstein’, but in so doing he runs the permanent risk of being wrong. In order to avoid error, one’s judgement or message must be tested for its intrinsic value. This testing ground is located in the ‘pluralism’ of the public arena. The nature of this ‘space’ and where it is to be ‘found’ are questions addressed further in Chapter 4. Here, it remains to note the connection between Probierstein, judgement and a certain type of community that not only keeps the writer (the example used by Kant) from going astray but also encourages him to continue working: ‘public applause’ keeps at bay self-doubts. 23 See Kant (1988d:216–17, 301; 1956:96, 167). We will see how these powers of Scheidung can be justifiably called ‘pseudo-scientific’ later when it becomes apparent that they cannot be mastered completely, that the experiment of separation can all too easily go out of control. They are not straightforwardly subject to objective scientific laws. 24 In ‘Critique and Commentary/Alchemy and Chemistry’, Rabinach explicates Benjamin’s remarks in the following way: The source of Walter Benjamin’s appeal is that as a critic he is closer to the alchemist than the judge, as a commentator closer to the palaeographer than the lofty scholar. His work does not derogate the wood and ash of experience, nor does it disavow the mystery of the flame. His image of the interpreter returns to the antediluvian world where critique and commentary had not yet become separated.

I am trying to show that the absolute separation between the chemical commentary and the alchemical critique is illusory. As with the Egyptian example, the ‘has not’ marks the stage before a violent forcing apart of words, ideas and concepts that are intimately related (verwandt). 25 This awareness of the affinity between the world of scientific truth and mysterious, at times mystical, truth is familiar to Freemasonry. Beresniak (1989:33–4) tells us how Freemasonry has always been divided against itself between ‘illuminism (with its components: esoterism, hermetism, occultism) and enlightenment (rationalism, empiricism, materialism)’. See Adler (1987:48) for mechanistic philosophy’s attempts to detach itself definitively from alchemy. 26 Indeed, Nancy writes in Courtine (1988:37): ‘…the sublime is fashionable’. See also the edited collection Pries (1989). 27 Payot is too quick when he claims that, in Kantian philosophy, ‘there is no longer any place for something like “nature”, neither for its laws…nor for any harmony one could imitate’ (1982:135). In fact, Kant still relies heavily on the ‘naturalness’ of these powers of differentiation. However, I intend to show that the ‘nature’ of these forces is both organic and mechanical. 28 For a similar point, see Pinker (1998:165–74), who takes issue with those who reject ‘reverse engineering’ (the attempt to discover the function of organs) as reactive adaptationism, i.e. as a crass form of natural selection understood as ‘the

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adoption of optimal solutions to problems’. He insists that ‘reverse engineering’ does not mean that one cannot think contingency and coincidence at all. See also Rogozinski on reason’s madness in Courtine (1988:199). For why reason so often gets us into trouble, see Kant (1983a:BXX, B88). Reason’s prescriptions should ‘assist the understanding by means of ideas, in those cases in which the understanding cannot by itself establish rules’ and give it ‘unity’ (Kant 1983a:B676). As we saw in Chapter 1, Kant’s tendency is always to present change as having to take place gradually. Revolutions, the sudden overthrow of a political regime, are illogical: they cannot be thought, let alone justified, rationally. Instead, change must take the form of a gradual reform. However, contrary to his own belief, we demonstrated that Kant can indeed think the sudden elimination of the mortal monarch thanks to his sophisticated exegesis of the ‘king’s two bodies’ and of the ‘event’. Likewise, here too I will be suggesting that, despite his insistence on gradual transition being (or having to be) the in(forming) principle in nature, Kant also thinks ‘jumps in nature’. See Davis (1996) for the conventional image of Kant as wanting at all costs to impose ‘grand unified theories’ and ‘abstract linearly calibrated time’ on nature to exclude the catastrophe of contingency. See also Gould (1992) for the biologist’s application of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ to the political realm. See also Zammito (1992:84). This positioning of ‘Verwandtschaft’ as a go-between mediating between the empirical and the intelligible will be addressed more clearly in the subsequent analysis of the third Critique when it becomes clear that the stakes of ‘Verwandtschaft’ are those of the idea of a community of beings that one wants in some form or other to put into practice. ‘Verwandtschaft’ itself is an analogy linking the empirical world of scientific investigation into the workings of nature to the world of intelligible ideas. See Arendt (1985:106) and Philonenko (1968:21) on this reliance. The word ‘Verwandtschaft’ is not used in ‘The Only Possible Argument…’ to suggest ‘affinity’ but in a more general way to mean ‘relation’; this can be explained by the fact that Bergmann’s De attractionibus electivis was published twelve years after this Kantian text. References to clinamen and/or Democritus and Epicurus can be found in Kant (1991a:233; 1988c:690, 721, 971–2). Clinamen is analysed by Jean-Luc Nancy (1986:17) in the following manner: ‘A world cannot be made out of atoms. There has to be a clinamen. There has to be an incline or an inclination from one towards the other, of one by the other, or from one to the other. The community is at least the clinamen of the individual.’ Nancy anticipates our later analysis of ‘Verwandtschaften’ as the question of the (founding) of the community. For a different reading of clinamen, see Deleuze (1989:70), where it is defined as the ‘smallest internal circuit’ between the actual and the virtual. See Kant (1990a:§65 322; 1988c:22): ‘An organised being is, therefore not a mere machine. For a machine has solely motive power, whereas an organised being possesses inherent formative power…this therefore is a self-propagating formative power.’ We will be suggesting that crystallisation provides an example of a machine-like (quasi-mechanical) process that does have ‘formative force’. In ‘Kant et le problème religieux’, the introduction to his French translation of Kant’s shorter writings on religion, Festugière suggests that Kant wants to get rid of teleological explanations altogether, the teleological just being a ‘provisional category’ that marks the limits of each era’s scientific knowledge’ (in Kant 1931:30). Festugière continues: ‘Kant seems sometimes to have anticipated

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Darwin’s attempt to definitively suppress this category and to integrate the whole of nature in a necessary order whilst doing without final causes for explaining the formation of living organisms.’ For a rejection of the idea that Kant could be presented as a pioneer of evolutionism, see Lovejoy 1959. Goethe felt that such encouragement was typically Kantian. He portrays the philosopher as a man with a great sense of witty irony who screws our capacity for understanding down within the narrowest of confines and then, with a sly wink, enjoins us to spring over the very boundaries he has set us and venture off on a ‘daring venture of reason’ (Goethe 1994:31; Kant 1990a:§80 375; 1988a: 79). See the description of the sublime as provoking both pleasure and displeasure in Kant (1990a:§27 180; 1988c:106). See also Beresniak (1989:9–10; 30ff) on the Masonic/Judaic ‘dynamic world of becoming’ versus the static world view. For the claim that Kant has only a reductive and uninteresting notion of the machinic, see Ansell Pearson (1997:136) and Welchman (1997:213). See also Zammito (1992:162) on the need for reason’s movement to be continuous in order to preserve the essential unity of the system. For the current polemic about ‘jumps in nature’, see Gould (1980; 1982; 1992) and Eldredge (1972; 1993) on ‘punctuated equilibrium’. For a supercilious rejection of this view of evolution, see Dennett (1995:282–99). Deleuze (1985:117; 1989:88). See my forthcoming ‘The Discipline of Pure Reason: Dosing the Faculties’ on Kant, epigenesis and the originality of ‘Character’. The reference to vitalised (sea) slime occurs in Kant (1977c:164). See Cassirer (1991:107) for an account of Goethe’s enthusiastic reception of this project of ‘an archetypal and primordial origin’. See the excellent chapter on Kant’s fight against hylozoism in Zammito (1992:189–213). Zammito makes clear that Kant’s reference to ‘sea slime’ is not actually directed at the ostensible target of ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, Forster, but at Herder.

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3 THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II Kant, Goethe, Benjamin: beautiful affinities and the architectural Still dazzled by the brilliance of crystals and bemused by the epic journey we have been obliged to undergo in our pursuit of ‘affinities’, we now reformulate the problematic posed to us by ‘Verwandtschaften’ in terms of our more general preoccupation with architecture. The problem facing us is not just how to find (define and locate) but how to found a community of beings. The object of this chapter is to emphasise that Kant clearly relates the artic-ulatio of his revolutionary but domestic philosophical system to the stakes of ‘Verwandtschaft’ (Kant 1983a:B861). The project for the accommoda-tion of a community based on affinities cannot be detached from the architectonic or from the question of architecture. A community has to be founded and initiated, although it can never have been ‘invented’. As has already been discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 1, the (Free)mason of Goethe’s Elective Affinities explains how the laying of the foundation stone (Grundstein) is a commemorative act (the Grundstein is a Denkstein); it at once marks a specific event and epoch but also artificially demarcates a period that can only form part of a series of repetitions. Similarly, we also have seen that the possibility of first beginnings and (apocalyptic) endings is problematised in Kantian philosophy. The dissolution of the newly founded community is enacted in its very initiation, although this does not exclude the impossibility of a community ever being substantially founded or, consequently, of it ever completely breaking up. To ‘initiate’ is an ideal term meaning both to ‘commence’ and also to ‘ritually admit someone into a society (based on certain principles and practices)’. The architect or mason also acts in the capacity of a Freemason inasmuch as the inauguration of a building and the community it ‘founds’ have to be ritualised.1 We will remember the (Free)mason’s words in Elective Affinities that the community is gathered around the foundation stone as ‘witnesses of our secret labour’. Through his explanations, he initiates them into the stakes of building (as a project of communal concern). Just as Goethe’s mason, a manual worker primed in the various technical solutions to building problems, doubles as a Freemason, versed in the more

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II obscure myths of founding, so too does Kant’s architectonic project reflect the dual identity of its promoter. As Chapter 2 suggested in relation to the ‘touchstone’, the task in store for the philosopher means that he resembles both the chemist and the alchemist. The former creates the illusion—most attractive to the philosopher—of being able to manipulate the natural world, by dividing it into discrete elements, bringing it together into wholesome compounds. In this pursuit, he resembles the alchemist, who seeks the production of the purest identity of matter by transforming base metals into gold as if by magic, according to laws not completely comprehensible. The proposal that a community is a system built on affinities presents several problems already raised by our exploration of these ‘Verwandtschaften’. How can one build or base anything on these elusive, volatile, perhaps chemical ‘powers’ or ‘forces’ (Kräfte) that irresistibly incline towards other elements or, if not, that are forced by a mediator to mix with other elements? The word ‘system’ is also inappropriate, not sufficiently supple: the network linking together nature’s disparate elements is not only technical/mechanical but also organic. An ideal model for a human community would be a combination of mechanical and organic laws. Kant initially thought the analogy of the crystallising process of matter would offer the prospect of a society that runs like clockwork according to straightforward mechanical laws that do not require any ulterior (teleological) explanations and that do not seem forced. Crystals he described as ‘free formations’ (Kant 1990a §58 290; 1988a:217). However, he was forced to admit that crystals are produced by processes that confound the distinction between the mechanical and the organic. Elsewhere, the difference between the organic self-sufficiency of organised beings and the mechanical is also reduced. In the following passage, the organic is brought down to earth through the device of an analogy with the state as a body politic: Strictly speaking, therefore, the organisation of nature has nothing analogous to any causality known to us…We may, on the other hand, make use of the analogy to the above mentioned immediate physical ends to throw light on a certain union, which, however, is to be found more often in idea than in fact. Thus in the case of a complete transformation, recently undertaken, of a great people into a state, the word organisation has frequently, and with much propriety, been used for the constitution of the legal authorities and even of the entire body politic. For in a whole of this kind certainly no member should be a mere means, but should also be an end, and, seeing that he contributes to the possibility of the entire body, should have his position and function in turn defined by the idea of the whole. (Kant 1990a:§65 323; 1988a:23)

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KANT TROUBLE Kant describes here the harmonious community, where each person fits in without being exploited as a mere means but is also not a self-seeking individualist who regards the stately union as just a way of realising his own ends. Although this community remains an idea not realisable in practice, the analogy throws a bridge between the otherwise inaccessible world of the selfsufficient, well-balanced organised beings and the human world.2 The mere fact that an analogy can be drawn between these organisms, which obey the rules of a causality completely unknown to us, and the all too human goal of an ideal, just state makes them more accessible. We might not understand how organised beings function, but we can use what we have observed of them as a guideline. The ideal society is both technical (to be built) and organic— although neither of these distinctions is pure and uncontaminated by its other. It can be represented by both the mechanically engineered hierarchy of the ‘vertical’ ‘great chain of being’ and the organicist ‘horizontal’ ‘body politic’.3 That is to say, the ideal society can be represented by two metaphors, which, although opposed to one another, are nevertheless often found together, working with and against one another. Together, they offer symbols of the highest good to be achieved in a community of human beings. Artificially separated, they provide us with too simplistic notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ‘Verwandtschaften’, as we can see in Kant’s either/or example: In this way a monarchical state is represented as a living body when it is governed by constitutional laws, but as a mere machine (like a hand-mill) when it is governed by an individual absolute will; but in both cases the representation is merely symbolic. (1990a:§59 296; 1988a:223–4) Neither the organic body nor the mechanical hand-mill uniquely correspond exactly to the nature of the communal state. The idea that the body politic organises itself ‘naturally’, ‘spontaneously’, without visible coercion, is a sign of the most fully integrated despotism, not a sign of a ‘free formation’.4 Some degree of ‘mechanical’ structuration is required to give any hope to the ideal of communal justice.5 In our search for ways to represent our hybrid state, we utilise both organic and mechanical imagery to help us. ‘Verwandtschaften’ place beings to an uncertain extent (the ‘degree’ is never settled)6 within a community whose conflicting interests—the drives towards homogeneity (identity) and heterogeneity (difference)—are held together in tension. Community is partly already constructed (there in the world) and partly yet to be constructed. Just as we can only partially choose our relations, we are to some extent always already within ‘the great family of living things’ with its strange mixture of disparate beings, which are nevertheless attached to one another. Equally, ‘community’ is an ideal that does not yet exist, whose completion we should strive towards.

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II In his essay ‘Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”’, Benjamin (1977:123–4) writes: ‘Affinity’ is in and for itself already (bereits) the purest and closest conceivable human bond both in terms of its worth and because of its foundations…It cannot be strengthened by a choice nor would the spiritual part of such affinities be based on a choice. In this passage, Benjamin reductively anthropomorphises the question of ‘affinity’, a move that would be disallowed by our previous reading of Kant. He also distances the concept from the question of ‘choice’. Kant would have to concur with this second move. ‘Verwandtschaft’ does not lend itself to choice: it is a ‘power’ that produces imaginative movement (whether that be in natural or psychic matter) and has little objectivity. Benjamin stresses that one is already (bereits) in a communal state, related to others. Hence we cannot choose our ‘affinities’ as if they could be brought down to the level of a series of business options that permit us to contract in or out. Instead of the term ‘choice’, Benjamin proposes the transcendent ‘decision’ (Entscheidung) as a more suitable concept to express the stakes of ‘Verwandtschaft’. This ‘decision’ can be seen as corresponding to the phrase ‘vigorous resolution’ used by Kant in the third Critique (Kant 1990a:§29 200:1988a:126). For Kant, this ‘resolution’ means the determined attempt to counteract human frailty insofar as it is inhibited by sensuality and evil. ‘Our’ terrible weaknesses will not go away, but ‘we’ can prevent ourselves from becoming pathetic, passive sufferers from them, devoid of all dignity. Despite ‘our’ irremediable slavery to vice and weakness and ‘our’ a priori relatedness to others, ‘we’ must vigorously try to gain autonomy as moral beings.7 Benjamin adds that, despite our predetermined social state, caught up as we are in customs, legislated codes of conduct, we must still be able to rise above petty human conventions (Benjamin 1977:120). We must exploit and explore the limits of human strength. This exposure of and to our weaknesses is part of the sublime experience. We give ourselves up to and simultaneously pull ourselves back from the sublime. A sublime ‘happening’ leaves behind a particular ‘state’, ‘pitch’ or ‘tone’ of mind (Gemütsstimmung) ‘which though it be only indirectly, has an influence upon the consciousness of the mind’s strength and resoluteness in respect of that which carries with it pure intellectual finality’ (Kant 1990a:§29 200; 1988a:126). The transition towards the sublime is described both as a movement towards, almost a self-abandonment to, the power of the sublime and a retraction, a pulling away from it. This ambivalence is indicated by Kant’s description of one’s reaction to the sublime not only in terms of an attraction (Anziehung) but also as a repulsion (Abstoßen) (1990a:§27 181; 1988a:107). Both Kant and Benjamin insist that the sublime wants no victims (kein Opfer), as would something monstrous.8 Hence the appreciation, the effect, of

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KANT TROUBLE the sublime is experienced from a position of security. Sublimity is not the same as those dizzy heights of transcendent thought. 9 The ‘shaking up’, ‘disruption’ (Erschütterung) that both Kant and Benjamin describe in relation to the sublime is not a complete destruction of the cultured subject.10 The sublime is still beautiful. The suggestion of a ‘sublime beauty’ is provocative considering Lyotard’s work on Kant, which is based largely on a complete separation of these two terms.11 However, I am not claiming here that they are the same thing but rather am suggesting that there is a relation of non-oppositional difference between them. Support for this proposition can be solicited from Benjamin’s essay. When discussing the character from Goethe’s Elective Affinities, Ottilie, he describes her beauty as provoking an ‘emotion’ (Rührung) that provides a point of transition to the ‘shaking up’ (Erschütterung) of the sublime (Benjamin 1977:128).12 Also, Kant writes that, although different, beauty and the sublime are not opposed: The sublime is the counterpoise but not the contrary of the beautiful. It is the counterpoise because our effort and attempt to rise to a grasp (apprehensio) of the object awakens in us a feeling of our own greatness and strength; but [it is not the contrary of the beautiful because] when the sublime is described or exhibited, its representation in thought can and must always be beautiful. (Kant 1977b:569; 1974:111) Because the sublime is no monstrous, destructive force, it is not opposed to beauty but rather there is a communication between them. Just as in the previous chapter the chemical analogy was implemented to provide the beautiful transition between those mysterious, bewildering organised beings and ‘us’ (and ended by opening more questions than it solved, one of which was: who are ‘we’?), so too does it here carry us over to the sublime. Benjamin writes: ‘Therein the illusion/appearance (Schein) of this beauty becomes cloudier and cloudier like the transparency of a liquid when it is shaken and crystals begin to form’ (1977:324).13 The truth of the sublime, not covered over by illusions, becomes more and more impenetrable and opaque as one proceeds to examine it, like a liquid that, when shaken, begins to form crystals. In Goethe’s novel, it is Ottilie’s sublime beauty, beauty destined to fade into sublimity, that is regarded as most beautiful. Charlotte’s stunning (but obnoxious) daughter Luciane does not attract admirers as much as the retiring beauty of Ottilie: it is the gentle fragility of Ottilie’s beauty that makes it sublime.14 This definition of sublime beauty compares with what we saw above in the introductory section on landscape gardens; there the beautiful countryside was described as gently overwhelming the ‘beautiful soul’, thereby provoking a state of mind analogous to that of the sublime—but without the dramatic props of volcanoes and cliffs.

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II In the last chapter, we saw how Kant presented the ‘great family of living things’ governed by laws we can understand as the ‘weak ray of hope’ needed if the search for a community of beings was not to be completely in vain. Nevertheless, he also recoiled in horror from this prospect of concatenated consanguinity as if it were something truly monstrous. However, if our analysis so far has been correct, the sublime project of community in its very beauty could not really be monstrously catastrophic for ‘us’ humans. It demands no victims as its foundation stone, although we would be obliged to surrender numerous preconceptions about our place in the natural world.15 Kant also suggested that this vision of the natural world as one family of alliances, a plethora of comprehensible relations, was probably impossible to achieve. Benjamin too speaks of a hopeless hope alimenting the search for affinity (1977:135). For Benjamin, this hopeless hoping is for a victorious tie or relationship (siegreiche Bindung) that can live up to the promise of affinities (ibid.: 323). Goethe also reiterates many of Kant’s concerns when discussing the natural world. In ‘Analysis and Synthesis’, he explains how a scientific analysis always presupposes a synthesis. He uses the example of the chemist to illustrate this point: ‘Thus modern chemistry depends largely on separating what nature has united. We do away with nature’s synthesis so that we may learn about nature through its separate elements’ (Goethe 1998:14; 1994:49). The chemist breaks down the elements in order to gain access to them. However, the danger is that one treats a substance as if it were a ‘secretive synthesis’ when it is merely ‘an aggregation of things which merely happen to be found next to or with one another’: Therefore a great danger for the analytical thinker arises when he applies his method where there is no underlying synthesis…Thus the analytical thinker ought to begin by examining (or rather noting) whether he is really working with a hidden synthesis or only an aggregation, a juxtaposition, a composite, or something of the sort. (Goethe 1998:52; 1994:49–50) The chemist, that ‘artist of the separation’ (Scheidekünstler), needs a synthesis to begin his skilful analysis. Unfortunately, he runs the permanent risk of starting from the wrong premise. He violates the objects of his interest by grouping them together with alien elements to which they are not at all related. Kant had already broached the subject of such chemists in the first Critique (1983a: B681). They were subsequently cleared of the charge of ‘irresponsibility’ or professional negligence because reason’s runaway pulsions were to blame for their erroneous judgements. In the previous case brought up by Kant, the enforced and inappropriate homogeneity was the endproduct of the chemists’ research. Goethe reveals that a false amalgamation can also occur at the very beginning of the study. The chemist therefore runs

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KANT TROUBLE the risk not only of commencing but also of terminating his studies on false grounds, by incorporating alien features into both his initial and his final syntheses. As we have seen all along, Kant’s portrait of the chemist, used as a model for the philosopher, is far too idealised. He relied on the chemist to illustrate how foreign elements could be evacuated from a system constructed on close affinities. I t emerges that it is really not that easy to police the boundary between those fake relations, similar to gatecrashers, who just turn up by chance but nevertheless clamour to be let in, and the ones who really belong in the scientific architectonic. To make the matter even worse, the ‘gate-crashers’ are actually encouraged, even invited by the over-generous parsimony of reason. 16 Our previous analysis went so far as to let in a perception of the ‘more than human’ (Deleuze 1983:116; 1997:80). Goethe also insists that in our investigations of nature we must shift perspective, no longer relating natural phenomena to our all too human gut reactions of taste or our preconceptions about what must be. However, this shift necessitates a jettisoning of our mental props. He explains why: A far more difficult task arises when a person’s thirst for knowledge kindles in him a desire to view nature’s objects in their own right and in relation to one another. On the other hand he loses the yardstick which came to his aid when he looked at things from the human standpoint; i.e., in relation to himself. (Goethe 1998:10; 1994:11) To understand something of nature, we must discard our anthropomorphising categories of (pre)conception but, in so doing, we risk not being able to make sense of what we see, as we have nothing, no ‘yardstick’, by which to assess it. We always need to idealise and represent what we see in empirical nature: The human being takes more pleasure in the idea than in the thing; or rather, the human takes pleasure in a thing only insofar as he can represent it to himself (insofern er sich dieselbe vorstellt) (1998:15; 1994:14, translation modified) Kant would probably add to Goethe’s analysis the remark that, in order to see anything at all in nature we have to ‘idealise’ (form an idea of it via the processes of schematisation) and represent it to ourselves. Without this subjective engineering of nature, spatially and temporally it does not exist for us—or, indeed, for any other species. To get beyond our preconceptions of what nature is, we have to take into account that each living being carves its own subjective world (or, to use the biologist Jacob von Uexküll’s term ‘Umwelt’) out of its environment.17 The distinction referred to by Goethe between a well-grounded synthesis and a mere aggregation of diverse elements is reminiscent of the categories

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II used by Kant in ‘The Architectonic of Pure Reason’. There Kant explained that the architectonic unity that is ‘built’ on and with ‘Verwandtschaften’ is not ‘piled up’ (gehäuft) but ‘articulated’ (gegliedert). The structure is not supposed to be an artificially constructed composition of elements randomly thrown or technically forced together. Relations between members who are related are not like those of neighbours who just happen to live next door to one another and have nothing in common apart from the garden fence. The affinities studied by the ‘chemist’, who observes the dissolutions (Zersetzungen) and unions (Vereinigungen) that happen across the whole range of living and non-living substances, are secretive, full of secrets, never fully understandable (Kant 1977b:480; 1974:53). As was suggested in Chapter 1, mystery is never totally dispelled by the light of an Enlightenment. Goethe himself describes how nature follows a methodical analytic course— ‘development out of a living, mysterious whole’—until suddenly seeming to ‘act synthetically in bringing together apparently alien circumstances and joining them together’ (indem ja völlig fremdscheinende Verhältnisse einander angenähert und sie zusammen in eins verknüpft wurden) (Goethe 1998; 27; 1994:29). Nature is irreducibly ‘concursive’. Goethe’s ‘The Influence of Modern Philosophy’ describes the effect that the discovery of Kantian philosophy had on him. The first Critique he confesses to have found daunting; it represented a ‘labyrinth’ into which he was not prepared to venture. However, the third Critique made immediate sense to him: ‘Here I saw my most dispersed interests brought together; products of art and nature were dealt with alike, esthetic and teleological judgment illuminated one another’ (Goethe 1998:27; 1994:29). The ‘Verwandtschaft’ between art (Kunst)—later reduced to just poetry (Dichtkunst) during the course of the essay—and the natural sciences, the fact that the two are presented in the Critique of Judgement as ‘related (verwandt) so closely’, appealed to Goethe’s own main areas of interest (1998:28; 1994:29). This relation between the arts and the sciences is also discussed in ‘The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject’: Goethe compares the artist (Künstler) with the natural scientist, but the former is once again restricted, this time to the writer (Schriftsteller), later on in the article. Goethe explains how the aims of the artist and the scientist differ from one another. The artist must leave lots to the imagination of the public: ‘[The writer] will bore his readers if he does not leave something to the imagination.’ Art is suggestive, not exhaustive as science has to try to be. The scientist, on the other hand, must try to conquer his discipline, to stamp his authority on his domain for all time: ‘[the scientist] must work tirelessly as if he wanted to leave nothing over for his successors to do’ (1998:18; 1994: 16, translation modified). This the scientist must do despite knowing full well that human understanding can never fathom enough of any one subject to consider it as definitively dealt with and sorted out. Nevertheless, the scientist must prove himself, whereas the artist’s modest task is ‘to entertain’.

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KANT TROUBLE This analysis reflects Kant’s own in the third Critique. An aesthetic idea gives ‘so much to think about’ in an unfinished, inadequate yet excessive way (Kant 1990a:§49 251; 1988a:177, translation modified). It finds no concept to fit its ingenious outburst. It proceeds by a series of ‘attributes’ linked together by their ‘Verwandtschaft’ with one another: Those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given concept itself, but which, as secondary representations of the imagination, express the derivatives connected with it, and its kinship (Verwandtschaft) with other concepts, are called (aesthetic) attributes of an object, the concept of which, as an idea of reason, cannot be adequately presented. (ibid.) As was discussed in relation to the Anthropology, aesthetic ideas that are free from the laws of association tied to the empirical use of understanding can produce ‘dynamic coalitions’ rather than coming up with mere ‘mathematical aggregates’. Like Goethe, Kant ties art to entertainment. He extols the modesty of the poet who claims just to entertain his audience but in fact achieves far more: ‘The poet promises merely an entertaining play with ideas and yet for the understanding there ensures as much as if the promotion of its business had been his intention (1990a:§51 259; 1988a:185). The ability of the artist to open up a ‘whole host of kindred (verwandter) representations’ is limited by Kant to painting, sculpture, poetry and rhetoric (1990a:§51 251; 1988a:177). Having traced the implications and affiliations of ‘Verwandtschaft’ right through to its inextricable alliance with the (impossible) founding, foundation of a community, the absence of architecture in this section (§49) of the third Critique is hard to accept. For Kant, ‘Verwandtschaft’ is the problem of the architectonic: ‘in architectonic fashion, in view of the affinity of its parts’ (Kant 1983a: B862). As we saw in the Introduction, the architectural ‘metaphor’ cannot be dismissed as a mere rhetorical device but is instead central to metaphysics’ need for secure and well-grounded foundations and origins. The place of architecture, whether it can really be dismissed as a mere preliminary scaffolding or whether it in fact straddles the critical divide between the built architectonic part and the organic formation stage of the project, is what started us on our search for the nature of the elusive ‘Verwandtschaften’. Kant attempts to classify the art forms most suitable for conveying aesthetic ideas. In our Introduction, we analysed the working relationship 148 between architecture and landscape gardening in their search for a (sometimes almost grotesquely) beautiful expression of an ideal, reconciled community. Disregarding this close collaboration, Kant goes on to make the all too familiar, traditional claim that architecture actually restricts the free

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II expression of aesthetic ideas owing to its servitude to a use (Gebrauch) (Kant 1990a:§51 260; 1988a:186). This is most difficult to reconcile with the express aim of this (and the previous) chapter: that of highlighting the stakes of ‘Verwandtschaften’ as precisely being those of a certain architectonic that, in various ways and in different disciplines, one desires to get off the ground. It is at this point, after having followed through all the ramifications of ‘Verwandtschaft’ and the desire for an architectonic, that one can question the traditionally humble place of architecture within a hierarchy of the arts. As was suggested at the beginning of the last chapter (against Payot and Escoubas), the stakes of the architectonic are not just those of a structural shell, mould or scaffolding to be dismantled after the organic system has ‘taken’. In its attempt to give form to the ideal communal system, architecture cannot be separated from the mystery of the unbuildable organic. It is engaged with both bauen and bilden. In ‘The Experiment as Mediator…’ Goethe, having limited his definition of an artist uniquely to the activity of a writer, concludes his essay with an example of how scientific investigations should be organised and presented to the public. Most naturally, it is an architectural example that he will go on to use: as we have seen on many occasions, thinkers have no qualms about appropriating architectural imagery, even if they intend later to derogate architecture as an artistic discipline. Consequently, Goethe tells us that scientific material is the result of painfully pedantic work that could make for rather dry reading. The presentation of such material is of the utmost importance, since it must appeal to the way in which human understanding functions. The investigations must be bound together (verbinden) and formed (bilden) into a whole. This is achieved through the exercise of understanding, imagination and wit, which cannot affect the seriousness of the project in any detrimental way—indeed they produce a beneficial effect: ‘therefore the understanding, imagination and wit work on the [results as the scientist fancies]. This will not have a detrimental effect, indeed on the contrary, it will be most useful’ (Goethe 1998; 20; 1994:17, translation modified). The relations (Verwandtschaften) binding together the material of the project are mediated by imagination, wit and understanding, which, as Kant informed us, might well be part of the same ‘fundamental power’, together with reason (Kant 1983a:B677). The elements are both mechanically ordered and fused together, which turns them into a living system capable of relating to a public. The dry substance of the work itself, taken as a series of results independent of its presentation and organisation, is not living but is intended for timeless posterity (Nachwelt). Goethe concludes: Everyone will then be free to connect them in his own way, to form them into a whole which brings some measure of delight and comfort to the human mind. This approach keeps separate what must be kept separate; it enables us to increase the body of

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KANT TROUBLE evidence much more quickly and cleanly than the method which forces us to cast aside later experiments like bricks brought to a finished building (als wenn man die späteren Versuche, wie Steine die nach einem geendigten Bau herbeigeschafft werden, unbenutzt beiseitelegen muß). (Goethe 1998:20; 1994:17) The edifice that does justice to the complexity of ‘Verwandtschaften’ is, despite being well constructed and lacking in nothing, not a finished-off construction (no geendigte Bau). A completely integrated building has no place for possible further additions or extensions. It has fixed limits and cannot accommodate (take into account) any distant relations (human, animal, mineral, transhuman, android or otherwise)18 who might turn up. Goethe’s image is one that we have already identified as ‘Masonic’. Another Freemason, Herder (Kant’s errant disciple), provides the link that we need between the ideal presentation of a system of thought, as defined by Goethe, and the perfect community to be constructed. He writes: ‘The right symbol for society would be a never-ended building like that of Solomon’ (in Appel and Oberheide 1986:51). The ideal architectonic structure for an imaginative but reasonable system of affinities is one similar to the never-to-be-finished reconstruction of the Temple of Solomon. This building, of central symbolic importance for Masonic thinking, held out the promise of a harmonious community when the divine being came down to live among us and turned our utopian projects into reality. In the first Critique, Kant explains that, in accordance with Goethe’s directions to the systematic thinker, his architectonic can grow—but only in the same way that an animal grows bigger. The animal develops only internally, suffering no new addition but only an increase and consolidation of its original members (Kant 1983a:B861). 19 However, in the case of an architectonic system, one is not proposing an addition from outside that is unrelated, completely different. The new addition to the family is always a relative (Verwandter), whether desired, welcome or not. Once again, the nature of ‘Verwandtschaften’ prevent Kant from drawing up fixed limits and clear distinctions for his architectonic system. In ‘The Experiment as Mediator…’, Goethe describes the human tendency to multiply ‘Verwandtschaften’ even when this multiplication is completely inappropriate: ‘we will tend to view [two pieces of empirical evidence] as more related to each other than they really are. This is an inherent part of human nature’ (1998:15; 1994:14). Kant also presented ‘Verwandtschaften’ as uncertain: when and how should we start looking for them among differences and identity? Where are we to draw the limit to our drive for variety or homogeneity? If the ‘dwelling house’ is the archetype of the architectonic project, it is not a

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II strictly private and puritanically proper settlement. It is a structure in a permanent state of being unsettled. Internal disputes often happen between those supposedly responsible and in charge of the operation: reason runs wild and imagination is always changing its affective allegiances. The household is also haunted by traumatic worries about unjust exclusions and rash inclusions. However, this building, impossibly founded on affinities, is only an idea. Difficult it would be to construct, since it also grows itself. It is both mechanical and organic (if these distinctions can be kept long enough apart from each other to signify an opposition). What would the architecture be like that by analogy could do justice to such complexity and uncertainty? The most general guidelines for an art form aspiring to present aesthetic ideas that give ‘much to think about’ (Kant 1990a:§49 251; 1988a:177) are a certain modesty—as demonstrated above by Goethe’s poet—and a finality without an end (Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck) (1990a:§17 155; 1988a:80). This modesty makes an acceptance of failure necessary. The sublime is never attained but is merely suggested in art—Benjamin explained how the sublimity of truth grows more and more cloudy and impenetrable as one approaches it. The finality without end accompanies a lack (which is not a default) of technical perfection: the delight arising from aesthetic ideas must not be made dependent upon the successful attainment of determinate ends (as an act mechanically directed to results)…[and] must not be regarded as a product of understanding and science, but of genius. (1990a:§58 294; 1988a:220–1) The work of art must not deceive, must not transmit false illusions. This is one of the characteristics of poetry to which it owes its place as the highest art form (together with the fact that it is almost entirely the work of genius): [Poetry] plays with semblance, which it produces at will, but not as an instrument of deception; for its avowed pursuit is merely one of play, which, however, understanding may turn to good account and employ for its own purpose. (1990a:§53 267; 1988a:192) We can begin by asking ourselves whether it really is truthful of poetry to declare itself a mere game when we know, thanks to Goethe, that the poet actually gives so much food for thought that it looks as if he was planning all along to indoctrinate our understanding with his powerful ideas. Additionally, the notion of ‘deception’ (Betrug) in this passage is a tricky one. Elsewhere, Kant tries to give clear examples of the sort of deceit he

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KANT TROUBLE means with his references to artificial flowers and imitated birdsong (1990a:§42 232, 236; 1988a:158, 162). Implied in the rejection of deceptive appearances is the assumption that there is a genuine thing that is being improperly rendered through simulation, distortion or disguise. Here, the notion of ‘deception’ tallies with Kant’s definition of a parergon as a nonessential, i.e. detachable, addition to a pure item. 20 In his search for a purist classification of art forms, Kant rejects ‘drapery on statues’ as unnecessary but, although it also is a piece of clothing, extols the veil of Isis. This veil is not a parergon. The image is also not deceitful—if false illusions are not entertained as to the possibility of lifting it up or passing through it. On the contrary, this image of a goddess covered by a veil never to be lifted by mortal hand conveys a most sublime truth about the limits of human understanding. Kant adds that the goddess’s words, ‘I am all that is, and that was, and that shall be, and no mortal hath raised the veil from before my face’, offer us a useful tool for the correction of human arrogance and flippancy (1990a:§49 253; 1988a:179). 21 Humans are so anthropocentric that they need such aesthetic devices to teach them modesty and to inspire in them a sense of the mysterious unknown and of a beautiful world (wider than the mere human one). In ‘Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime’, Kant describes the choleric temperament as possessing a mere ‘glimmer (Schein) of the sublime’. The choleric person is all outer appearance and hollow inside. As an illustration of this type of character, he describes a false building: Just as a building that imitates stone carving by means of a whitewashing makes as noble an impression as if it were really made of the genuine article, and just like pasted-on cornices and pilasters give the impression of reliable solidity although they have little hold and support nothing at all, so too do alloyed virtues, flashy wisdom and painted merits sparkle. (Kant 1988c:844; 1991d:68, translation modified) The choleric person appears to be something he is not. He is deceitful. In this, he appears to resemble the superficial façade of a false house. However, we have already seen in the Introduction that the falsity of landscape garden follies is far more complex than this comparison allows for. For instance, the garden-house we examined did not ‘appear to be something it is not’ but instead ‘pretended to be what it is’. The proposition of this chapter is that these landscape follies, together with the temporary triumphal arches described in Chapter 1, can be seen as corresponding precisely to Kant’s criteria for an art form capable of conveying aesthetic ideas. As architectural types, they have the added advantage of being related to the question of the community. 152

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II These follies and triumphal arches, although sometimes flamboyant (especially in the case of the latter), are modest inasmuch as they are technically imperfect and not finished off. They are obviously temporary structures, not by any means professing monumental endurance or validity. They are not straightforwardly built for use (Gebrauch) inasmuch as they are not necessarily habitable; their finality aims at provoking reflection and staging ideas rather than serving a particular functional end. Follies can be built ruins (that is, buildings constructed as ruins) or pyramids.22 Both can perhaps provide access to sublime thoughts.23 As Kant states, it is not the object itself that counts for a passage towards the sublime to happen but rather ‘the cast of mind’ of the beholder, his/her susceptibility to culture and moral ideas: This makes it evident that true sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the judging Subject, and not in the Object of nature that occasions this attitude by the estimate formed by it. (Kant 1990a:§26 179; 1988a:104) Additionally, while discussing the properties of the imagination, Kant writes: By this means we get a sense of our freedom from the law of association (which attaches to the empirical employment of the imagination), with the result that the material can be borrowed by us from nature in accordance with that law, but be worked up by us into something else—namely, what surpasses nature. (1990a:§49 250; 1988a:176) As we saw above, this capacity of imagination, which, while still obeying analogical laws, remains independent of the empirical laws of association, is ‘Verwandtschaft’. In this passage, it is suggested that we can build up images taken from nature, thereby transforming them into aesthetic ideas that go beyond the reach of natural phenomena. The material usually offered by nature is insufficient, too ‘small’ for our reason. However, in the ‘Theory of the Heavens’, Kant makes clear that every single living being is crucial to the interrelatedness of nature regardless of its relative insignificance for humans. For a flea, a beggar’s head is a world, the world until one day it catches a glimpse of a nobleman’s head and exclaims in amazement: ‘Why! Here too live fleas!’ Equally, however difficult it might be for us to digest, our world is also just one actualised version of a plethora of potential planets that perhaps supersede ours in importance, regardless of their size (Kant 1991a: 379–80). Consequently, the ‘little’ offered by nature is already ample for imaginative reason to set to work on and try to build up.24 Similarly, garden follies, which try beautifully to stage the problematic of an ideal society, can be worked on

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KANT TROUBLE by the imaginative ‘Verwandtschaften’—which are in themselves related to the communal project of the architectonic—into a sublime, aesthetic idea. Indeed, sublime thoughts can be generated by minor stimuli, not always requiring the ‘absolutely great’ (1990a:§25 169; 1988a:94). 25 Despite the ‘absolutely great’ being the definition of sublimity offered to us at one stage by Kant, we can glean other information, which permits us to qualify it somewhat. Our aim thereby is not to refute the Kantian analysis of the sublime as the almost overwhelming (which would seem to suggest a certain size—although even this stimulus is insufficient, as we saw in the previous paragraph), but to point out the other sort of sublimity also at play. This other type starts from modest beginnings and is inflated, added to by the workings of imagination. Kant would seem to approve of this reading: For the beautiful in nature we must seek a ground external to ourselves, but for the sublime one merely in ourselves and the attitude of mind that introduces sublimity into the representation of nature. (1990a:§23 167; 1988a:93) In this passage, the sublime and the beautiful are not necessarily opposites; rather, the former can be simply one stage further on from the latter. The sublime is what is added to beautiful nature by a certain type of mind attuned to this potentiality. This sublime supplement reveals that the beautiful was already receptive towards the sublime experience. Previous chapters of this book have alerted us to the strange relationship between the pyramid and the community: the Egyptian pyramids were interpreted as inverting the meaning of the community, providing no space for it. The ‘Egyptian’ doubling also confounded any idea of an original foundational act. A pyramid in a landscape garden could bear a rather beautiful witness to the complexity and impossibility of an original founding of a community. A (built) ruin can dramatise the transience of solid foundations. Both the pyramid and the ruin could provide excellent examples of the tasteful, beautiful sublimity described in the Anthropology: So the sublime is not an object for taste. It is, rather, the feeling of being stirred that has the sublime for its object. But when an artist exhibits the sublime to us, by describing it or clothing it (in ornaments, parerga) it can and should be beautiful, since otherwise it is wild, coarse and repulsive, and so contrary to taste. (Kant 1977b:569; 1974:111) The pyramid or built ruins are modest parerga—although they are not at all to be disregarded or set aside from ‘real’ art because of that. Indeed, according

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II to Kant’s description, they would fill the most important role of stimulating sublime thoughts (1990a:§49 251; 1988a:179). As architectural types, they would bring with them the additional benefit, not directly available with other arts that are not so closely related to the stakes of ‘Verwandtschaft’, of bearing witness to the necessary striving for foundations, for founding an ideal community. Additionally, they would testify to the impossibility of ever being able to actually realise the idea of a harmonious community, the impossibility of our ever being able to settle down, to abandon our nomadic ways once and for all, with no further need to work for improvement and progress. With this last sentence, we allude to the theme of herumtappen explored in Chapter 1. Kant’s short text ‘On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy’ is a defence of the slow, plodding (schulmäßig) work of critique (1977d:378). This approach has more in common with the dull, rather obscure, Egyptian groping around (herumtappen), initially criticised in the first Critique, than with those who claim the privilege of direct access to revealed truth. In the Anthropology, Kant also defends the methodical, systematic working patterns of the plodders: although they are not epoch-making, have not mechanical heads— with their quotidian understanding which advances slowly with the aid of sticks and crutches—contributed the most to the growth of the sciences…But the [buffoons of genius have] declared that arduous learning and research is dull. (1977b:545; 1974:94, translation modified) Although they do not reveal the brilliant flashes of genius that others profess to possess, they have perhaps contributed as much to sciences and the arts. The buffoons of genius (Genieaffen) are those who reject the mechanical and believe that they can create in an absolutely original way, as if they were purely organic beings, independent of any sort of application or work methods. The ‘mechanical heads’ learn patience and diligence; they hesitate and examine their subject matter in scrupulous detail before ripping apart ‘Verwandtschaften’. Unlike those who slice through elements, convinced of the existence of clear-cut binary opposites, the ‘Egyptian’ ‘mechanicals’ painstakingly try to think through all the ramifications of ‘Verwandtschaften’ before applying the knife. They know that the moment they do move in to realise the communal project, they are not doing justice but rather violence to the idea itself. They are also aware that all we can achieve is, in the most beautiful manner possible, to catch ‘glimmers of the sublime’ by gesturing towards it.

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2 3 4 5

6

7 8

9

Unlike Kant, Goethe differentiates between the architect and the mason. In the Wahlverwandtschaften, it is the (Free)mason who is closer to the stakes of building for the community than the supposedly enlightened architect (who defends Charlotte’s violation of the cemetery). To my knowledge, Kant only makes two oblique references to Freemasons: in the Logic, he alludes to the origins of Freemasonry when discussing Pythagoras. He describes Pythagoras’ secret society of initiates who shared a private language of symbols allowing them to communicate between themselves (see Kant 1997d:452). Beresniak (1989:26) explains the importance of Pythagoras, with his knowledge of ‘the spirit of geometry’, for Freemasonry: ‘The Freemasons of the Middle Ages received a secret teaching of architecture, based on symbols and a science of numbers as defined by Pythagoras.’ As was explained in the introductory section on Freemasonry, a Masonic approach to architecture acknowledges the impossibility of ever being able to rebuild the harmonious community symbolised by the destroyed Temple of Solomon. We can only repeat inadequately and in a ritualised form that original, promising project. Kant also refers to secret societies in Kant (1989:446; 1991b:135). See Derrida (1986a:134; 1987d:117–18) for a discussion of the recuperative logic of analogy. Catherine Belsey (1981:177–81) also uses the terms ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ to discuss the imagery of state formation and the wielding of power. See Dean and Massumi (1992:81). See Büchner’s ‘Danton’s Death’ for a vivid portrayal of a too rigorously implemented political ideal. Under Robespierre’s regime, not even a minimal hierarchy can be permitted; as soon as someone steps into a position of power he or she becomes suspect and is executed. The guillotine is unstoppable in its relentless quest for purity. As Danton says: ‘the revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children’ (Büchner 1980 I, 5:22; 1993:21). The Terror arising from the confusion of politics and ethics will be readdressed in Chapter 4, in relation to the Kantian idea of ‘radical evil’. See, for example, Kant (1990a:§78 370; 1988a:73) for the problem of the unknown ‘how far’ one should pursue mechanical laws before resorting to teleological principles. In Chapter 4 we address the issue of the irremediable nature of human evil by analysing Kant’s concept of ‘radical evil’. See Benjamin (1977:106): ‘The lovers do not buy peace at the price of a sacrifice’ and ‘[because] these people do not risk everything for a wrongly conceived sense of freedom, there are no victims among them’. Kant (1990a:§28 185:1988a:110) explains that we experience the sublime without fear and, despite being shaken up by it, from a position of security. For all its size, the sublime colossus is not monstrous (1990a:§26 175; 1988a:100). See Kant (1983a:B717). These are not sublime heights but rather dizzy heights where the inquiring mind loses any grip, any fixed position from which to judge or make sense of what it sees. By comparison, the experience of the sublime does not imply the loss of all equilibrium.

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THE ARCHITECTONIC IN KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY II 10 11 12

13 14 15

16

17

18

19

20

21 22

For Erschütterung, see Benjamin (1977:127) and Kant 1990a:§27 181; 1988a: 107, translated too weakly as ‘vibration’ by Meredith). See Lyotard (1986:243; 1988a:25; 1991a). See also the heading to Kant (1990a:§23 164; 1988a:90): ‘Transition from the faculty of estimating the beautiful to that of estimating the sublime.’ There is a transitional movement between the two experiences. See also Lacoue-Labarthe on sublime truth in Courtine (1988). See Goethe (1972:148; 1971:186). For instance, we would have to admit that ‘[we] are the glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction’ (Gould 1997:216). Here I am referring to the above analysis of the necessary grounding of reason in economic principles as well as our unavoidable recognition of reason’s excessive tendencies. See Jacob von Uexküll (1992: especially 325–6) on the tick and its curious Umwelt. See also T. von Uexküll (1992:326–7) on the influence of Kant on Jacob von Uexküll. See Kant (1991a:377–94) on the necessity of taking into account the strong probability of the existence of extraterrestrials. See also Shell (1996:66): ‘Man’s unhappiness can be reconciled with the purposiveness of the whole but only if we give up our geocentrism and view matters from an interplanetary perspective.’ This passage from the first Critique is comparable to Nietzsche’s definition of a ‘monster of energy’ as a ‘household without expenditure or loss, without growth, without income’, ‘without beginning or end, a firm expanse made of ore, which does not get bigger or smaller, which does not get used up, but only transforms itself (Nietzsche 1968:§§967 and 1067). See my forthcoming ‘The Discipline of Pure Reason: Dosing the Faculties’ for a rapprochement between Kant and Nietzsche on the question of individuation. For a definition of the ‘parergon’, see Kant (1990a:§14 142; 1982a:68; Kant 1989:704; 1960:47–8). See Derrida (1986a:66, 97; 1987d:57, 85) for a discussion of these passages. This attempt to cut away ‘excess’, to return to the basic, pure, classical essence of a particular art form is one that is well documented in architectural theory. For example, in his highly influential ‘Essai sur l’architecture’ (originally published in 1753), Laugier, whose express aim was to ‘tear the veil’ covering the mysteries of architecture, declares war against ‘nonessential’ elements that have been ‘tacked onto’ its aesthetic repertoire (1979:xxxvi). The examples he gives of impure appendages include pilasters and arcades. However, Laugier’s task is not as easy as he envisages: he has real trouble expelling these supposed ‘supplements’ in the name of a pure, original, natural order that is ‘given’, offered up to mankind without originary violence. Nature and the natural order are not easily defined and not to be straightforwardly counterposed to what is constructed. There is already an originary technicity at work within nature itself. Techne nature’s supplement; see Derrida (1985:208; 1976a:144–5). For further discussion of the veil of Isis, see Kant 1977d:389–90. The supposedly monolithic, inarticulate architecture of the Egyptians has several characteristics in common with the light, temporary garden follies in question. As

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KANT TROUBLE discussed in Chapter 1, it often featured false doors, and Giedion (1981:282) describes the Zoser complex as containing many ‘dummy’ buildings ‘consisting of a stone façade directly backed with rubble—like a stage set’. This for him is yet another sign of the Egyptians’ lack of interest in, their sloppy attitude towards, ‘proper’ interior, i.e. communal, space: ‘The Egyptians never showed great interest in the elaboration of enclosed interior space…Some of [the buildings] have fragments of interior space, but only as a kind of gesture.’ The Egyptian pyramids and landscape gardens share this non-deceptive falsity and the gestural. They gesture towards a communal space that as an ideal never takes place in some sort of unmediated, non-‘mechanical’, purely ‘organical’ fashion. 23 We have already noted how the Egyptian pyramids are used to illustrate the experience of the sublime, despite Kant’s denigration of architecture as an art form (1990a:§26 174; 1988:99). See also Payot (1982:147). 24 For a contemporary account of the challenges to our conception of the world by ‘simple’ and microscopically small life forms, see Gould (1997:175–213) on the resistant and inventive modal bacter. 25 See also Derrida (1986a:155–6; 1987d:136) on the ‘absolutely small’ as equally sublime.

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4 DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE Radical ethics and the evil abyss

Whoever searches out the seed of evil in humans is practically the devil’s advocate. (Kant, Lecture on Ethics) Herault: The revolution has reached the stage where it must be reorganised. The revolution must end and the Republic must begin…Everyone must be able to come fully into their own and assert their own nature. No matter whether they’re reasonable or unreasonable, educated or uneducated, good or bad: that’s no business of the state’s. We are all idiots. (Büchner, Danton’s Death)

In Chapter 1, the Egyptian metaphor was privileged as a prime troubling concept that causes a complication of origins and foundations. By tracing through the doubling that it permitted and necessitated, we were able to arrive at the heart of Kant’s theory of right. There, in close proximity to the royal head, we felt bold enough to suggest that the Kantian system could in fact have permitted regicide to take place. Kant’s theories can be seen as giving their support to the event apparently abhorred the most in the Metaphysics of Morals. Regicide can take place within the Kantian system in so far as the notion of ‘taking place’ is itself displaced, deferred by the symbolic of the Law itself. This displacement was tied in with the mythical re-enactment of a community of beings, bound together by a guilt or debt never to be paid off. In Chapters 2 and 3, the idea of ‘Verwandtschaft’ was followed through to its inextricable association with the architectonic and the ideal community. ‘Verwandtschaft’ was seen to problematise limits, distinctions and boundaries, rendering the communal project impossible to tie down with complete success. This chapter continues and develops the theme of foundations and origins by addressing the question of the basic constitution of human nature on which the juridico-ethical community is to be based. This chapter will therefore

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KANT TROUBLE examine Kant’s conjecture, in the Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, of a ‘radical evil’, an original propensity to evil in human beings: there is in man a natural propensity to evil; and since this very propensity must in the end be sought in a will which is free, and can therefore be imputed, it is morally evil. This evil is radical, because it corrupts the ground of all maxims; it is, moreover, as a natural propensity, inextirpable by human powers. (Kant 1989:685–6; 1960:32) This possibility of an evil so anchored in human nature that it can ruin the foundations of moral maxims is both recognised in all its ramifications and foreclosed by Kant. In the Metaphysics of Morals, when discussing Louis XVI’s murder by the Jacobins, he evokes the possibility that someone could deliberately violate the law, not just exceptionally in order to gain something illegally, but for the sole purpose of breaking with what is right. That is to say, the person acts out of a conscious, diabolical hostility to the form of the Law itself. Having broached this subject, Kant rapidly dismisses it: such extreme evil is, as far as we can see, impossible for humans. Nevertheless, we do have to entertain the possibility that such a being could exist, but only as a mere idea (Kant 1989:442; 1991b:132). Similarly, in Religion within the Limits…, he also denies that anyone can be so wicked that defilement of the law can become a sufficient motive in itself for committing unlawful acts: ‘for thereby opposition to the law would itself be set up as an incentive…and thus the subject would be made a devilish being’ (Kant 1989:683–4; 1960:30). This cannot possibly be admissible, as it would be equivalent to acknowledging that the moral law itself can be obscured or even eradicated: Neither can the ground of this evil be placed in a corruption of the morally legislative reason—as if reason could destroy the authority of the very law which is its own, or deny the obligation arising therefrom. (1989:683; 1960:30) For Kant, ‘radical evil’ functions as another necessary blind spot, related to the question of regicide and akin to the problems encountered with ‘Verwandtschaften’. The exploration of the term ‘radical evil’ opens up an abyss within human nature into which certainty tumbles, together with all claims to be able to erect a secure system based on knowable principles. For Descartes, the cogito was the means by which he could test the stability of the rest of his system. In Replies to Seven Objections, he wrote: In my writings I have often declared that I have everywhere tried to imitate the work of architects, who, in order to erect large edifices in

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE places where rock, clay and firm earth are covered with sand and gravel, first dig large ditches and reject from there not only gravel but all that depends on it or is mixed together, in order to rest their foundations on rock and firm ground. I too have always rejected as if it were sand and gravel anything which is dubious and uncertain and after that, having considered that one can never doubt that the substance which likewise doubts of everything, or which thinks, exists whilst it is doubting, I made use of that as if it were solid ground on which I had posed the foundations of my philosophy. (Descartes, cited by Payot 1982:111–12) The Cartesian cogito provided a solid basis with firm foundations on which to build. Descartes is assured that one can have faith in a mind that positively encourages rigorous questioning and scrupulous examination of the basis of things. One way of reading Kant would be to locate the same belief in subjective certainty in his philosophy. This is Kant seen as the philosopher of an absolute morality, for whom there is one simple, inalienable and unique categorical imperative. For instance, in the second Critique we can point to a strong conviction that the subject is inescapably conscious of his duty as a moral being and that he can use this knowledge as a reliable touchstone for all his actions. Kant uses the by now familiar chemical analogy to express this belief: The majesty of duty has nothing to do with the enjoyment of life; it has its own law, even its own tribunal, and however much one wishes to mix them together, in order to offer the mixture to the sick as if it were a medicine, they nevertheless soon separate (scheiden) of themselves. (1988d:143; 1956:91) Here Kant once again draws on a theory of affinities to provide the clear-cut distinctions that he seeks. Life’s pleasures can never be mixed or mistaken for sublime duty. Since they share no affinity with each other, they repel each other, just as some chemicals do. However, we have already seen that the chemical analogy is far more complicated than this comparison gives credit for. Instead of being an infallible technique for drawing up discrete opposites, ‘Verwandtschaften’ problematise the act of cutting. Divisions turned out to be the product of a violent short-circuiting of transgeneric interrelatedness. The potentiality of such a vision was perceived by the mind’s runaway faculties, which in flagrant disrespect for their supposed differences tended towards an indiscriminate ‘fundamental power’ (Kant 1983a:B677). A similar troubling of limits and identity will be the result of our interest in ‘radical evil’ in this chapter. The doubts about the nature of human beings that this concept causes

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KANT TROUBLE thwart attempts to use the human subject as a dependable building block for a systematic philosophy. In Religion within the Limits…, Kant does show his awareness of the complexity of ‘Verwandtschaften’ regarding the question of good and evil. While holding on to the conviction that reason receives the moral message clearly and without interference, he also tells us of very serious limits to human faculties. Humans are unable to think good and evil outside of the dramatic images of heaven and hell. Human deficiencies have to be supplemented by introducing vivid, graphic devices that render the fight against evil understandable for practical reasons. These devices are discussed in terms of ‘Verwandtschaft’: The complete dissimilarity of the basic principles, by which one can become a subject of [the realm of good or evil], and the danger, too, which attends the imagining of a close relationship (Verwandtschaft) between the characteristics which fit an individual for one or for the other, justify this manner of representation—which though containing an element of horror, is none the less very exalting. (Kant 1989:712; 1960:53) There is a difference between what is good and bad but, at the same time, an identity between the differences that is dangerously mediated by the ‘Verwandtschaften’ of the imagination. However, we have already seen that the imagination is not solely to blame; the fault extends to understanding and even to reason itself. Here, in Religion within the Limits…, imagination is both accused of contaminating what is good, by confusing it with its absolute opposite, and appealed to in order to keep these heterogeneous realities apart. Imagination is limited, as it cannot help practical reason grasp the stakes of the moral battle without the inventions of red, forked-tail devils and white, winged angels. But it is also presented as extremely powerful inasmuch as it forcibly brings together two realms, which have nothing in common. As we saw in Chapter 2, by nature ‘Verwandtschaften’ fail to respect limits. They run the permanent risk of overstepping the mark—but they are not transgressive. They problematise the very idea of limits by revealing them as ill-founded, artificial distinctions. Equally, we will find here that the affinity supposedly discovered by errant imagination is no inventive fabrication but that good and evil are indeed related. This affinity will be ascertained through our explorative analysis of ‘radical evil’, although it will be detached from the latter and called ‘dissimulation’ (Verstellung).1 Radical evil itself will be seen as a condition of the possibility and impossibility of the distinction between good and evil. The concept of a ‘radical evil’ created a scandal among Kant’s contemporaries. For example, in a letter to Körner, Schiller (1984:321) wrote:

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE It is true that I find one of his first principles in this essay on religion outrageous (as you probably do as well), namely his assertion that the human heart has a propensity to evil. This he calls radical evil, a notion which must not be confused under any circumstances with the irritations of sensibility. What shocked Schiller is the fact that ‘radical evil’, defined as the human inclination to evil, is not reducible to human sensuality. It cannot be attributed to the weaknesses of the flesh. For Kant, this was an essential point, central to his argument in Religion within the Limits…, as he does not wish evil to be reduced to a simple lack or frailty. Such evil could be regarded as an all too excusable and understandable effect of weakness of character—perhaps to be counterbalanced by the firm hand of a spiritual or political leader. Instead of this option, Kant offers an interpretation of evil as radically constitutional and structural. It cannot be compensated for or made better. The refusal to credit the senses with the dubious honour of being the source of evil is not without relevance for Schiller’s critique of Kant’s Religion within the Limits…in the essay ‘On Grace and Dignity’ (ibid.: 71– 3). Schiller claims that the philosopher underestimates the role of the senses, thereby neglecting the need to work with them. The moral law cannot just speak to reason and a monastic sense of duty but must be combined with pleasure and joy as well. He therefore rejects Kant’s search for a clear-cut distinction between the sublime duty and the pleasures of life, which we saw expressed in the passage from the second Critique quoted above. As our aim in life must be to become a moral being (sittliches Wesen) and not just to carry out moral actions (sittliche Handlungen), Schiller proposes that we should seek the beautiful reconciliation of reason and sensuality. The latter’s participation is a requisite for the creation of a unified, harmonious being who is neither a slave to passions nor subjugated by a coldly authoritarian reason: If neither the reason governing sensibility, nor the sensibility dominating reason can get along with the beauty of expression, then the state of mind which harmonises reason and sensibility, duty and inclination, will be the condition for the success of the beautiful play between the two. (ibid.: 70) Schiller postulates a mediated but nevertheless rigorous approach to the sublimity of the moral law. Otherwise, he sees the categorical imperative taking on the appearance of a foreign and determinative law, completely alien to any notion of human freedom. This impression is most definitely not helped by Kant’s notion of a radical tendency in humans that works incessantly against morality. How can one prevent oneself thinking that we

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KANT TROUBLE are forcibly subjected to moral commands, since Kant himself tells us that we naturally do our utmost to reject them (ibid.: 74)? The (at first sight) surprising and sudden emergence of the ‘radical evil’ in Kant’s work was equally shocking for Herder, but for different reasons. He reacted to it by claiming that the philosopher had betrayed his own progressive, enlightened thinking. He equated Kant’s theory of a built-in propensity to evil with a misguided return to superstitious beliefs. Kant’s proposition of an evil that differs from deviance and the disorder of basically good instincts, that is irreducible to bad habits, decadence or sensual temptation, is an idea even more reactionary than those found in the Bible, exclaimed Herder. The Bible allows evil to be attributed to human fallibility or gulli-bility—the evil serpent tempts us by exploiting our weaknesses. Kant, however, now attributes it to our very own diabolical nature: ‘the devil himself is in us—the devil has crept into us’ (Herder 1967:220). Evil no longer emanates from the devil but is, for some unknown reason, already within us. This radical evil, of mysterious origin, ruins any hope that we have of acting in accordance with the moral law: Of what use to me is the high moral law which I give to myself if, not only another law, but, even worse, a radical force within myself systematically destroys it? (ibid.: 221) Herder concludes that with this idea Kant has encouraged pagan beliefs; he is complicit with ‘belief in magic and witches’. Unlike Jesus, who promises us redemption from our sins, the philosopher ascribes the ‘radical evil’ to an original, inherited sin (Erbsünde) from which there is no escape. In this chapter, we will be deciding whether Herder is justified in equating ‘radical evil’ with the orthodox religious notion of original sin, used throughout the ages to bind individuals to the patriarchal authority of the Church.2 First of all, though, we shall ask whether Kant’s contemporary audience was right to be so taken by surprise by ‘radical evil’. Did they not make the same mistake as Bloch? In Chapter 1, we saw how Bloch was unable to understand Kant’s advocacy of talion law and his treatment of kingship. He presumed that these ideas were reactionary and that they signalled a return to out-of-date notions that partially undid the progressive, pioneering work that Kant had achieved elsewhere. Instead of unsatisfactorily accounting for these ideas as inexplicable aberrations that run counter to Kant’s ‘normal’ way of thinking, we reintegrated them into his philosophical scheme. In the same manner, traces of ‘radical evil’ will be sought before the late arrival of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. In the early work, ‘Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy’ (1763), we come across an idea that will serve as a basis for Kant’s later discussion of good and evil. He distinguishes

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE between two types of opposition: one ‘logical’, the other ‘real’. The first is based on contradiction and results in nothing: one positive proposition is cancelled out by its (negative) contradiction. The latter, the real opposition, leads to a state held in tension between two conflictual ‘magnitudes’ (Größen) that positively resist each other.3 The first can be seen as being based on a (negative) lack (Mangel or mala defectus): for example, money is given, then money is not given—the financial aid is lacking. In comparison, the more radical, second opposition is produced by ‘privation’ (Beraubung or mala privationis). That is to say, using the same example, that money is taken from us; we are ‘robbed’ of it (Kant 1988c:794–5; 1992:221). It is clear that the implications of the ‘real’ opposition are far more serious than the merely ‘logical’ opposition. Kant then goes on to apply this principle to the question of morality. The ‘real’ opposition is a particularly apt way of illustrating a human being’s moral state. The assumption is that, unlike animals, the human cannot suddenly lack a sense of what is right. Any wicked deed is the result of an overcoming of the good in us by a positive negation. Kant writes: ‘it really does initially cost some people a noticeable effort to refrain from doing good, which makes them aware of the positive drives within them’ (1988c:796; 1992:222, translation modified). Even if the deadening patterns of habitual life mean that one grows less alert to the demands of the moral law and can neglect it all the more easily, without deep soul-searching and sleepless nights, still bad deeds cannot be excused by such forgetfulness. Evil remains attributable (zurechnungsfähig) (Kant 1989:679; 1960:26). Hence the difference between bad deeds actually committed (Begehungssünden) and those good deeds that were merely omitted (Unterlassungssünden) is only one of degree, not of nature. As a consequence, there is not much of a qualitative difference between not particularly liking people, or even having no feelings towards them, and actively hating them. Once we are deemed to possess the knowledge that we should love our neighbour, our indifference towards someone else is not morally neutral but instead a sinful breaking of the law. We are never innocent but always more or less guilty.4 As Jean-Louis Bruch points out, Kant subsequently tries to minimise the implications of this assertion. He exempts the faults of saints and ‘noble souls’ from the aspersion that their little peccadilloes are the result of a successful battle waged against goodness. These beings cannot contain within them any sort of ‘magnitude’ encouraging them to resist the demands of the moral law. Their faults ‘must be considered to be pure negations arising from the lack of the highest degree of perfection and not from a manifestation of opposition’ (Bruch 1968:50). So these saintly beings are curiously exempt from the inner battle between positive negations and they are thereby transformed into almost angelic beings. Meanwhile, the rest of humanity has to come to terms with its conflictual, psychic doubling. This doubling we have already analysed in Chapter 1: we saw how the criminal has to double up as his own judge, aware

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KANT TROUBLE of the crime being committed. There too, Kant tried to limit the extent of duplicity and made an exception to his otherwise general rule for the person of the king. Here, apart from the named special cases, the range of our doubling covers practically all our activities: Therefore we must conclude that the play of representations and, in general, all the activities of our soul, in so far as the consequences which they produce are actual and then cease to exist, presuppose the occurrence of conflictual actions of which one is the negative of the other. (Kant 1988c:804; 1992:229, translation modified) Kant tells us that all our thought processes and actions are the result of an Aufhebung of something else (ibid., translated as ‘cancellation’). This Aufhebung is in operation even when we are not conscious of it, even when we believe that we are thinking a pure, independent thought or carrying out a completely good action outside all contextual calculation. Kant’s Aufhebung extends the range of our noxious, contaminating side right into the realm of our morally good qualities. We can never rise completely above the powerful oppositional powers of evil. Each time we must fight it off, and even as victors we are morally impure: our temporary victory is the result of a mathematical balancing act between differing sizes of opposing forces. This can be contrasted with Hegel’s Aufhebung, often—and probably too often— characterised as a recuperative logic whereby negativity is put to work in the name of a telos, thereby reducing its destructive force.5 Hegel’s opposition to Kant’s commitment to the endless struggle with an ever-resilient evil can be seen in the following passage from Philosophy of Religion, where he describes the realm of the spirit: The struggle is over, and it is the consciousness that it is not a struggle as in the Persian religion or in Kantian philosophy, where evil should be conquered but in and for itself opposes the good, which is the height of infinite progress. There the striving is never ending, the resolution of task is postponed forever and one remains at the stage of the ought. (Hegel 1986f:325; 1988:111) For Hegel, Kant’s attitude to negativity is tied up with his theory of history; it reflects a bad, infinite progress that can never be accumulated into an epochmaking, foundational history with landmarks and original discoveries. Here Hegel denies a non-profit-making negativity that would ruin one’s moral, political and cultural economies. Kant himself tends to detract from the implications of his radical theory of evil with his pseudo-mathematical calculations in the 1763 ‘The Concept of

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE Negative Magnitudes’ essay. He gives the impression that negativity can be quantified and counted with. This attempt to control and judge negativity is thwarted by its radicality and intelligibility, a fact recognised even in ‘The Concept of Negative Magnitudes’ essay itself (and developed further in Religion within the Limits…). He writes that the quantities of oppositional forces are for us unknowable. Therefore, rather than permitting us to grapple with our moral make-up as if it were a simple sum of pluses and minuses, we instead have no idea how deep our virtue goes: For this reason, it is impossible for us, with certainty, to infer from another person’s actions the degree (Grad) of that person’s virtuous disposition. He who sees into the inmost chambers of the heart has reserved for Himself alone the right to pass judgment on others. (Kant 1988c:815; 1992:238) Our actions must be judged, but the intelligible radicality of the evil prevents any definite knowledge of the degree of virtue or morality possessed by the person in question.6 Religion within the Limits…will go on to add that the evil is both originary (but not hereditary) and that which complicates any idea of an origin by its obscure, impenetrable nature (Kant 1989:693; 1960:38). Judgement lacks support and firm foundations: [radical evil] (inasmuch as it puts out of tune the moral capacity to judge what a [human being] is supposed to be taken for, and renders wholly uncertain both internal and external attribution of responsibility) constitutes the foul taint in our race. (1989:687; 1960:34) The difficulties surrounding the faculty of judgement were also addressed in the previous chapters: the inability to judge completely justly or morally, in full knowledge of the distinctions to be drawn, owing to the limits, and the lack of limits, of human faculties.7 Here ‘radical evil’ is what falsifies our moral judgement. Our evil interferes with the reception of the moral voice (Stimme) inside us, which should guide us in our judgements. The distortion means that we are not on the same wavelength as the moral message; we are out of tune (verstimmt) with it, unable to judge ourselves or others completely justly. This foul, indelible stain on our characters, which is constitutional for all humanity, calls into question Kant’s claim in the first Critique that the Enlightenment period is one of a more mature capacity to judge (1983a:AXI). It is impossible to see how one generation could suddenly grow out of a structural lack. Evil has a strange relationship to the good and moral: despite being a ‘foul stain’, it apparently also possesses a certain positivity. Whereas above it ruined our hopes that we could gradually build up our resistance to evil

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KANT TROUBLE because we had no way of knowing how deep its roots penetrated into our constitution, Kant nevertheless appears to turn evil to profitable use. Evil is sometimes represented as functioning like a ‘whetstone’ for virtuous persons, spurring them on in their fight for moral amelioration (Kant 1989:801; 1960:125). Additionally, it is even presented by Kant as the very prerequisite for virtue: The perfection of a Diogenes is a goodness without virtue—virtue is the strength of the soul to withstand the attacks of evil out of a sense of duty. Diogenes’ perfection does not need virtue since he has no concept of evil. (1980:603) Virtue is acquired by combating evil. It is a fact that one is ‘already in a state of transgression’ and that one is ‘no longer res Integra’ that individuals are forced to develop (Kant 1955:102). Humans are incomplete, not integral units. They lack perfection—they are not purely virtuous and ‘holy’, but holey. This lack is nothing that can be completely filled in or surmounted. Right ‘from the earliest days of our childhood’, when we could not even think for ourselves, we had already violated the moral law (ibid.: 101). Even before we are capable of taking our life into our own hands and carrying out good or bad actions, we are already imperfect. Innocence is lost before it is even known to be possessed. Consequently, human fallibility is not to be written off as simply the result of the ‘baseness of uncultivated, natural pulsions’ or attributed to a ‘lack of culture’ (ibid.: 102). Instead, it forms an essential component of civilisation as we are driven to search for self-improvement and for the moral amelioration of society generally. If we were perfect and whole we would not have much to do. However, we must abandon any illusions of ever becoming perfectly healed beings. Our ‘lack’ of perfection has never been lost (i.e. as an event, due to a wicked deed). It has always already been missing as a structural characteristic and therefore cannot be (re)found. This necessarily complicates any notion of teleological progress: every generation starts off afresh on its moral repair job. The elder’s patched hole cannot be bequeathed to the newborn. As we will see later, the systematically destructive nature of human evil lays waste to Kant’s sporadic attempts to salvage it economically. For example, we will not permit one of its major by-products, war, to be thriftily recycled as ‘divine wisdom’ or ‘nature’s providence’, working secretly in our favour by bringing different nationalities into what will later turn out to be productive contact.8 To sum up: on the one hand, evil possesses a certain positivity, spurring us on to fight for the acquisition of virtue. On the other, it destroys each attempt to capitalise on gains, to systematise and consolidate earned assets by introducing an undecidable, incalculable element. While being that which makes judgement necessary (our human failings necessitate the intervention

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE of judgement),9 it is also that which makes it to some extent impossible, by ruining its basis. Nevertheless, judgement does and must take place. Chapter 1 of this book was concerned with Kant’s ‘Doctrine of Right’, the relation between the representative of the state and his subjects, whereas Chapters 2 and 3 looked at the project of an ideal community of ‘Verwandtschaften’. It now remains to examine the articulation between these two realms in relation to the difference between good and evil. The main preoccupations of this chapter are the basic characteristics of human nature on which a legal/ethical structure is supposed to be built. In Transparency and Obstacle, Starobinski (1971:97; 1988:76) remarks: The law of conscience, based on both universal reason and intimate feeling, provides firm support. Kant, in affirming the primacy of practical reason, was merely giving Rousseau’s idea its fullest philosophical formulation. Starobinski seems to view Kant as the philosophical continuation and confirmation of Rousseau’s ideas of human nature. However, it will become obvious in relation to the question of evil that Kant’s approach differs markedly from Rousseau’s. Whereas Rousseau searches for maximum transparency, Kant works with what is obscure and illusory in the world and in the human psyche. We will pursue such differences between the two thinkers in order to ascertain the specificity of Kant’s conception of evil. In ‘The Concept of Negative Magnitudes’ essay, Kant uses the example of a Spartan mother’s reaction to the death of her son, killed in battle, to demonstrate the conflict that takes place between pleasure and pain: Suppose that the news is brought to a Spartan mother that her son has fought heroically for his native country in battle. An agreeable feeling of pleasure takes possession of her soul. She is thereupon told that her son has died a glorious death in battle. This news diminishes her pleasure a great deal, and reduces it to a lower level. (Kant 1977a:792–3; 1992:219) The same example was used by Rousseau the previous year, in Emile. He relates this anecdote to illustrate the transformation or translation that must take place within the individual for him/her to become a fully fledged citizen of a community: A Spartan woman had five sons in the army and was awaiting the battle. A Helot arrives; trembling, she asks him for news. ‘Your five sons were killed.’ ‘Base slave, did I ask you that?’ ‘We won the

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KANT TROUBLE victory.’ The mother runs to the temple and gives thanks to the gods. This is the female citizen. (Rousseau 1966:39; 1991:40)10 The Social Contract echoes this logic with the description of the relationship between the individual and society as that of expropriation and alienation:11 [The founder of a people] must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and give him instead new ones alien to him, and incapable of being made use of without the help of other men. (Rousseau 1976:180–1; 1979:194) Human nature must be changed, the individual must be transformed— probably against his/her better judgement—so that he/she gives up his/her independence from others, personal freedom and integrity in exchange for dependence and partiality (being a small part of a much larger whole). The Spartan mother is presented by Rousseau as the epitome of the citizen. However, Kant’s version of the same example fails to define clearly the ultimate motive governing the mother’s conquest of her personal feelings of suffering and loss in terms of the state. The fact that the son died a heroic and praiseworthy death, that his bravery was proven, does not necessarily point to the emotional expropriation lauded by Rousseau. In Emile, the translation of ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ to ‘ours’ is the means whereby the loss is recovered: a personal loss becomes on a different level a collective gain. By contrast, in the Kantian example the profit could still be a personal one inasmuch as the family name will gain in stature in the eyes of the other citizens; they will learn of the son’s courage. The calculation that takes place between pain/ pleasure, bad/good remains at the same level of personal appearance, reputation, even vanity. This leaves open the question of the actual nature of the relation between the individual and the community and/or state in Kantian philosophy. As we saw in Chapter 1, the individual is split between the person as he/ she is inscribed into the law of the state, whether as a monarch, judge or ordinary subject, and the person as mortal and fallible (who is perhaps secretly a liar or a criminal). The judge can still fulfil his/her public function despite any private breaches of the Law. Similarly, the criminal, despite his faults, is nevertheless capable of judging him/herself as guilty and of seeing the justice in the Law’s condemnation of any crime committed. This thesis is confirmed by a passage in the ‘Perpetual Peace’ essay, where Kant draws a clear line between the ideally moral person (akin to an angel), who is rarely, if ever, found, and the ordinary, fallible individual, who, one would have thought, is hardly a suitable candidate for a project aimed at founding a republic. However, Kant insists: ‘Hard as it may sound, the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils’ (Kant 1977a:224;

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE 1991c:112).12 The state can still function and be a good system even if its subjects possess a ‘bad cast of mind’, as long as they pay lip service to the system. 13 They must hide and dissimulate their tendency to exclude themselves from the reach of the law:14 [as] each separate individual is secretly inclined to exempt himself from [universal laws] the constitution must be so designed that, although the citizens are opposed to one another in their private attitudes, these opposing views may inhibit one another in such a way that the public conduct of the citizens will be the same as if they did not have such evil attitudes. (1977a:224; 1991c:113) This separation between the person who contracts into the state and the private person who ‘in secret’ aims at making him/herself the exception to the rule, is permitted, claims Kant, because the state does not have to rely on ‘human moral improvement’ for its success. Instead it can, once it has determined the public code of conduct, eventually rely on the ‘mechanism of nature’ to carry out the plan.15 This idea is glossed by Philonenko (1968:30) in the following manner: In this way ethical dignity remains a difficult conquest for man—on the other hand, juridical and consequently political dignity was understood to be part and parcel of the definition of a reasonable, intelligent being, independent of the question whether he be a demon, an angel or simply a man. The political abstracts from the personal and the ethical. It addresses the idea of a reasonable being, leaving the individual to his/her private moral struggle. This leads to ‘the separation of the problem of the Republic and that of the reign of ends, of right and morality’ (ibid.). Philonenko comments that this split is exactly what allows the political to become a concept: he quotes Fichte, saying that the perfect constitution is not an idea but ‘an absolutely determinable concept’, a ‘concrete possibility’. Our reading will differ substantially from Philonenko’s. It will run as follows: the political cannot remain solely an ideal, one has therefore to try to put it into practice, despite the inevitable failure. This compromise with worldly dissimulation detaches the political from its rigorous union with the ethical. This is the political union’s condition of possibility. It needs this dissimulation; in fact, that is all it needs (it does not require a wholehearted psychological conversion to the philosophy of the state). However, the very same compromise also releases distorting forces, which are permanently threatening to ruin it. This means that the state can never be securely founded once and for all.

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KANT TROUBLE A split between the political and the ethical, such as the one espoused by Kant, would be inadmissible and abhorrent to Rousseau. His idea of a ‘total alienation’ actually represents the fusion of the individual and the state, or, to be more precise, the fusion of the individual with himself as the state. This type of fusion is what stops contracting-in turning into slavery: the two forms of subjectivity—the individual and the citizen—are not completely different, just ‘translated’.16 The Kantian separation of the individual into two halves, whereby the public/political aspect does not have to reflect one’s private convictions, would correspond to the state described by Rousseau as being ‘outside of himself’ (hors de soi-même). This is a negative alienation (unlike, paradoxically, ‘total alienation’, which, as we have just seen, is positive), whereby ‘everything being reduced to appearances, everything becomes fictitious and staged’ (Rousseau 1971:234; 1979:105, translation modified). Furthermore, the result of this injurious alienation is that ‘Being and appearing became two completely different things, and from this distinction sprang insolent pomp and cheating trickery, with all the numerous vices that go in their train’ (1971:216; 1979:86). Rousseau draws the distinction between an essential being and artificial appearance. For him, the latter is something spurious to be eliminated. In this, Rousseau proves himself to be a true advocate of the Enlightenment, as defined by Foucault (1980:152): What in fact was the Rousseauist dream that motivated many of the revolutionaries? It was the dream of a transparent society, visible and legible in each of its parts, the dream of there no longer existing any zones of darkness, zones established by the privileges of royal power or the prerogatives of some corporation, zones of disorder. It was the dream that each individual, whatever position he occupied, might be able to see the whole of society, that men’s hearts should communicate, their vision be unobstructed by obstacles, and that opinion of all reign over each. We have already seen how different Kant’s theory of right is from this definition: in The Metaphysics of Morals, there was no question that transparency and clarity should reign supreme. We were dealing with mysterious laws whose origins were not to be dragged out into the light. Foucault goes on to discuss the Enlightenment in terms of a search for a space of ‘absolute legibility’ (ibid.: 154). This reading forms part of the traditional critique of Enlightenment, also adopted by Adorno, Horkheimer and the Böhmes. It runs as follows: the Enlightenment, in its search for rational clarity and visibility at all costs, is haunted by shadows, by mysterious areas that reason fails to penetrate. The relentless ripping down of barriers, even protective ones, between us and the unknown creates the fear of dispossession and exposure. This terror is evident from another passage in Goethe’s Elective

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE Affinities, where Eduard reacts aggressively to his wife Charlotte because she has tried to read along with him as he recites from a book on chemical affinities: ‘If I read aloud to someone’ he said, ‘is it not as if I were speaking to him and telling him something? What has been written down and printed takes the place of my own mind and my own heart; and would I ever take the trouble to speak at all if a window were constructed in my forehead or in my chest, so that he to whom I want to expound my thoughts one by one, or convey my feelings one by one, could always know long in advance what I was getting at? Whenever anyone reads over my shoulder it is as if I were being torn in two.’ (1972:36–7; 1971:49)17 This is an extraordinary image of someone cloven in two watching hopelessly as his words escape against his will from a cavity in his chest. It provides fuel for those opponents of the Enlightenment who regard its claims for freedom and progress as absolutist, hypocritical and constantly plagued by a return of the repressed. Here, the subject is decimated by his alienated subjectivity. This passage is a useful measuring stick for Kant’s philosophy, allowing us to appreciate how far removed he is from this analysis. The split between the two bodies, although produced by an originary, traumatic ‘event’, which continues to have repercussions, is also the possibility for a creative, negotiated politics. It is not the destructive by-product of a misguided search for absolute transparency but rather the result of a partial recognition of the impenetrability of origins. Kant does not share Rousseau’s and Eduard’s impulse to protect a core of inner being that is supposed to be proper and essential to the subject. However, to return to Rousseau, if we examine what happens to his distinction between essential ‘being’ and mere ‘appearing’ later on in the Discourse, we will see that it is in fact eroded by his subsequent comments. The individual becomes so completely obsessed with other people’s opinions that he/she only ‘is’ what he/she wants to become for others: sociable man lives constantly outside himself and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgement of others concerning him. (Rousseau 1971:234; 1979:104) It is now less obvious what the difference is between positive alienation and its unacceptable counterpart. The latter also contains the ‘I’ within the larger

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KANT TROUBLE social whole, which, despite being called ‘they’, public opinion, rather than ‘we’ (as was the case with the Spartan woman), nevertheless also allows no private, individual space ‘untranslated’. This would open up the whole question of the ‘social contract’ as event: is it a state to be founded, to be reenacted? What is the nature of its reality? The difference between the ‘I’ as defined by ‘them’ and ‘I’ as ‘we’ is presumably that ‘I’ is included in ‘we’ (as a fully participating citizen) but not in ‘them’ (where ‘I’ am not myself—but what does this mean?). Would this imply that for Rousseau the ideal society ‘just’ poses the problem of how power should be divided and shared, i.e. is it solely a political problem, to be solved? Rousseau is troubled by what he sees as the untranslatable, that which cannot be transformed into immanence, into the living reality of the political as social contract.18 He is made anxious by the idea of appearances acting as barriers behind which private inclinations, working contrary to the notion of a ‘general will’ (volonté générale), can be secretly hidden and nurtured. Despite disagreeing with Rousseau’s simplistic account of the detrimental effects of a split between the public/political and the private/ethical sphere, Kant also presents the source of evil as Verstellung (‘dissimulation’) (1977b: 689:1974:192). In ‘On the Presumed Right to Lie from Love of Mankind’, the lie, regarded as ‘a falsification’, undermines confidence of, and in, the legal system and the social fabric itself as: ‘Statements (declarations) do not find any credence anymore and therefore all rights based on contracts also become void and lose their weight’ (Kant 1989:638). The feigning, like counterfeiting, renders the system of exchange unusable by corrupting the ‘source of justice’ (ibid.). The lie is not only pernicious for the judicial system as a whole but also for ethics, interpreted as a duty to oneself (to live truthfully in accordance with the moral law): ‘Untruthfulness is an injury to one’s duty to oneself (ibid.). The lie, taken in its broadest sense, can cover the most destructive crime that eats away at the general well-being from within. This position, in close proximity to Rousseau’s, most obviously contradicts the claim discussed above that the citizen is allowed to harbour secret inclinations to exclude him/ herself from the state laws or established rules of conduct, because the ethical can take place in all its rigour elsewhere. This divergence of standpoints is crucial for our analysis of the ‘radical evil’, as Kant does attempt to cut short the implications of his insights. After turning away from the prospect of an absolutely evil, diabolical being who has no respect at all for the Law,19 he attempts to reduce radical evil to a mere wrongness, a rather banal perversion (Verkehrtheit des Herzens). This arises from human weakness and dishonesty (Unlauterkeit), and it encourages the individual to conform to the mere letter of the moral law rather than deducing the correct, moral way to behave from it (i.e. obeying it in spirit as well) (see Kant 1989:686; 1960:32–3). It remains to be decided whether the restrictive and reductive definition of ‘radical evil’ as all too human fault (which might even be reparable through purification) is permissible or not according to Kant’s own categories.

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE We continue with our comparative analysis of Kant and Rousseau to clarify further their respective positions regarding appearance, deception and evil. Here follows another passage from Emile: Let us set down as an incontestable maxim that the first movements of nature are always right. There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered. The sole passion natural to man is amour de soi or amour propre taken in an extended sense. This amour propre in itself or relative to us is good and useful; and since it has no necessary relation to others, it is in this respect naturally neutral. It becomes good or bad only by the application made of it and the relations given to it. Therefore, up to the time when the guide of amour propre, which is reason, can be born, it is important for a child to do nothing because he is seen or heard— nothing in a word, in relation to others; he must respond only to what nature asks of him, and then he will do nothing but good. (Rousseau 1966:111; 1991:92–3) Rousseau clearly rejects any notion of an originary evil that from the start puts us in the wrong before any evil action is performed. As Cassirer (1989:37) makes clear in ‘The Problem of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’, he dismisses the possibility of a ‘radical evil’:20 What separates Rousseau, with all his authentic and deep religious pathos, from traditional religious belief is the decisiveness with which he rejects all thought of man’s original indebtedness. For Rousseau, the question of good or evil enters only when the individual’s natural tendencies come into contact with other people; when they are applied and related to others. Despite postulating this original moral indifference (i.e. the ‘natural’ in itself, without contact with others, is neither good nor bad),21 he suggests that, if one refuses the influence of social relations and obeys the voice of nature then one’s behaviour will automatically be good. There is an essential core to the individual, which should be protected against the wrong sort of relations to others and can be separated from them as if it were essentially independent: ‘Foresight which takes us ceaselessly beyond ourselves’ (Rousseau 1966:97; 1991:82). Rousseau admits that there is no absolute goodness, that good and evil are mixed together, that sentiments are never pure, but he attributes this to the imagination, which is activated in the state of culture and violates natural boundaries: ‘The real world has its limits, the imaginary world is infinite’ (1966:93–4; 1991:81). Imagination forces the individual on to desire that which he/she does not and cannot have.22

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KANT TROUBLE In ‘The Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception’ section of the first Critique, Kant states that an essential identity to subjectivity is a logical necessity, not that it is an empirical reality. He writes: ‘It must be possible for the “I think” to accompany all my representations’ (1983a: B131). Philonenko (1989:163–4) glosses this assertion in the following manner: it is not a question of a real and existent consciousness like the empirical consciousness can be—which is a determinable phenomenon—but rather of an essence, that is to say, a transcendental and logical condition forming the method of knowledge which consists of demanding within constituted time the synthetic unification of all the diversity of sensibility or of phenomena. Kant’s idea of subjectivity differs from that of Rousseau inasmuch as he does not appear to posit an actual, pure, integral subjectivity (which can be subsequently divided or distorted). Also in contrast to Rousseau, it is doubtful whether, for Kant, the ‘individual’ can be thought, or can think, outside a certain intersubjectivity, abstracted from relations with others. In the Anthropology, the healthy, well-balanced mind is one that thinks of itself as part of a (world) community; the subject regards him/herself as defined in terms of this larger identity—this being the difference between him/her and the egoist: The opposite of egotism can be only pluralism, that is, the attitude of not being occupied with oneself as the whole world, but regarding and conducting oneself as a citizen of the world. (Kant 1977b:411; 1974:12) To defend oneself against egotism, Kant tells us that we must use others as a testing ground, or ‘touchstone’ (Probierstein or criterium veritatis externum), for our ideas (1977b:409; 1974:10). In the essay ‘Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’, the ‘others’ are scholars who belong to the public ‘world of readers’ accessible to the individual (outside his/her private position as defined by professional activity) (1977a:55; 1991c:55). This address to a generalised public is also offered to us as the means of distinguishing between sanity and insanity. Someone who talks to him/herself or gesticulates when alone is suffering from a ‘loss of public spirit (sensus communis)’: the person is mad (Kant 1977b:535; 1974:88). On the other hand, the minor bureaucrat who, after work has finished, goes home and writes pamphlets and letters, maybe to leading international intellectuals, proposing revolutionary reforms to the Civil Service, is not. Nevertheless, the cosmopolitan ‘public’ in question in the latter case is, as Lyotard has argued, not something that can be present in any obvious way. He writes:

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE As for the common of the ‘sense’, the ‘community’ or communicability that qualifies it, that certainty is not to be observed in experience. It is certainly not what one calls a ‘public’. (1989:168; 1991b:224) The difference between an author testing his theories on an absent ‘community’ and a supposedly insane person speaking into space is not so evident as Kant makes out. We should have already been alerted to this eventuality given his by now familiar reliance on ‘touchstones’, which are supposed magically to separate true value from dross and, by extension, sanity from insanity. Furthermore, Kant describes the logical obstinacy of the mad as sensus privatus, not as a sensus defectus (1977b:535:1974:88). Consequently, according to his own definitions as given in ‘Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy’, it is not a question of a simple lack (Mangel or mala defectus) of rational understanding but of a privation, a robbing of it (Beraubung or mala privationis) resulting from a ‘real opposition’ (Kant 1988c:794; 1992:221). The difference between the sane and the insane becomes one of mere degree and no longer one of clearly distinguishable opposing natures. This will be important for our discussion of good and evil. As a result of an originary split in human nature (or ‘two bodies’ as I chose to call it in Chapter 1), the difference between good and evil is also to be understood as a sliding degree of difference and, unfortunately (for Kant), not as a clear-cut opposition. The very complicated idea of subjectivity held by Kant is evident in ‘Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’: the individual is deemed to be freer, less defined by his/her daily (private) function within society, more of an individual when addressing a generalised ‘world’ of others, supposedly composed of scholars who are also more independently individual the more public they are. Despite addressing named intellectuals and societies, the off-duty revolutionary bureaucrat can never in fact reach this ‘world of scholars’, never be at one with it, as it has no fixed address.23 It is therefore difficult to locate the ‘real’, ‘intrinsic’ self in Kantian philosophy that is to be expropriated and distorted along the lines outlined by Rousseau. In Religion within the Limits…, Kant refers to Rousseau’s presupposition of ‘a natural basis’ to the ‘seed of goodness’ in human beings (1989:666; 1960:16). A few pages later, he discusses the ‘original predisposition to good’ in human nature. Philonenko (1986:71) provides us with the following commentary:

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KANT TROUBLE Kant is only really in agreement with Rousseau on one point…the originary goodness of man…there is in man a disposition to good on which nothing bad can be grafted. However, this ‘originary goodness’ is outside all time as ‘everything happens as if ever since the (empirical) beginning, which is opposed to the metaphysical origin, man was bad’ (ibid.). The ‘predisposition to good’ is presented as incorruptible in its root but susceptible to vices being grafted (gepfropft) on to it (in time) (Kant 1989:673; 1960:22). However, in his discussion of the ‘predisposition for humanity’ Kant, like Rousseau, does rather simplistically attempt to place the blame for a degradation of this predisposition to good on the vices of society and exempt nature from any participation in it: ‘vices, however, which really do not sprout of themselves from nature as their root’ (1989:674; 1960:22). Also like Rousseau, he attempts to separate the inviolable good from the negative characteristics by claiming that the latter do not spring from the former but, one could say, rather ‘parasitise’ it. However, analogies, as was seen in Chapter 2 with the chemical motif, can be tricky devices. Here, too, it is exactly this botanical metaphor of grafting that threatens Kant’s economy: for something to ‘take’ there must be some sort of affinity between the two objects or qualities concerned.24 The parasite does not violate an uncontaminated host.25 Hence, human nature is by nature complicit with envy, ingratitude and the like. Like Rousseau, Kant attempts to separate the vices of society from the supposedly positive intentions of nature. Nature allegedly only used ‘competition’ as an inspirational force motivating us towards the state of culture (Triebfeder zur Kultur). It did not intend us to transform this ‘healthy’ competition into aggressive feelings that rule out reciprocal love for others. Nature did not mean to promote envy, ingratitude and maliciousness. However, thanks to our reading of ‘grafting’, we can reject this exoneration of nature and suggest that these vices are not secondary developments for which nature has no responsibility but are instead already contained in nature. The ruses of nature, which try to manipulate human drives for ulterior purposes, are also to be held responsible for the general viciousness of humanity. The separation cannot be made between a basically healthy and positive state of nature and an artificial society that corrupts. Kant also attempts to close down the economy of his argument in his discussion of ‘personality’ (Persönlichkeit). He rejects the possibility of any negative elements being grafted on to our readiness to respect the moral law (Kant 1989:674–5; 1960:23). Kant’s whole idea of ‘human nature’ is at stake here. On the one hand, he cannot admit the possibility that our receptivity and respect for the moral law could be occluded. But, on the other hand, he problematises the very notion of knowing the make-up of human nature. For example, he defines human nature as ‘the subjective ground of the exercise of freedom’ (1989:667; 1960:16), which is radically independent from the

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE senses and empirical considerations. But this ‘ground’ and its guiding maxim cannot be placed: ‘this ground—wherever it might lie (er mag nun liegen, worin er wolle)’ (1989:667; 1960:16, translation modified). It also cannot be known, being ‘inscrutable’ (1989:667; 1960:17). Our capacity to be basically receptive to the Law is also problematised by the risk of misinterpreting its message, as his example of Abraham in Religion within the Limits…highlights: After all the revelation has reached the inquisitor only through men and has been interpreted by men, and even did it appear to have come to him from God Himself (like the command given to Abraham to slaughter his own son like a sheep) it is at least possible that in this instance a mistake has prevailed. (1989:861; 1960:175)26 Messages, regardless of whether they are divine communications or not, still need to be interpreted and often diffused or repeated to others. Herein lies the permanent risk that the revelation will not disclose the truth but lead us instead to error or, in Abraham’s case, to a heinous crime—the murder of his own son in the name of a God who was perhaps telling him to do something quite different. Kant is obviously aware of all the dangers that can hijack the moral, ‘natural’ voice guiding us towards the good, in a way that Rousseau certainly was not in the passage from Emile quoted above. The latter does not entertain the possibility that carrying out what (you think) a voice has told you to do could be highly problematic. Kant, like Rousseau, also posits a state of natural innocence but only as a regulative idea, as an ‘as if’: ‘every [evil] action must be regarded as if the individual had fallen into it directly from the state of innocence’ (1989:690; 1960:36). This hypothetical assumption is necessary for judgement, for assessing responsibility and blame. In Preliminary Work for the Philosophy of Religion, Kant, unlike Rousseau, does not even leave the question open as to a possible state of innocence (away from the corrupting influence of others). During the stage of one’s earliest childhood, despite being completely dependent on others for one’s judgement of oneself, the young individual already suspects (i.e. without outside interference, without being influenced in any way) that he has spoiled his natural predisposition to good and neglected his duty. He is already guilty; it is already too late for originary innocence: ‘but he finds himself already spoilt, not in a state of innocence but in one of transgression; his situation is that he is someone who is no longer res integra’ (Kant 1955:102). Hypothetical innocence is necessary, but guilt is originary. Kant’s argument here echoes his analysis of the liar in the Critique of Pure Reason discussed in Chapter 1. Even if the transgressor was not fully responsible for his actions (i.e. there are extenuating circumstances), the misdemeanour must be attributable. He must be named guilty, as if he had just

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KANT TROUBLE stepped out of innocence into crime by his own free will, so as to be able to work out the judgement and suitable punishment. The initial designation of guilty innocence is indispensable for judging both the punishment most suitable to his misdemeanour and whether a pardon is more appropriate. As we have seen, for Rousseau the ills of society are associated with dissimulation, ‘cheating trickery’ (Rousseau 1966:216; 1991:86). Society is seen as perverting an essentially good human nature because of its emphasis on superficial appearances and its manufacture of the artificial. In his discussion of this point, Cassirer (1991:40), having pointed out the hypothetical nature of Rousseau’s social theories,27 states that: [The theory of the social contract] was supposed to show [men] that all that they venerate in the values of civilization stems from hypocrisy and imposture. This distinction is equally fundamental for Kant. To support his claim that Kant shares Rousseau’s abhorrence of the artificiality of society and that evil is synonymous with such ‘deceit’, Cassirer quotes from Kant’s Anthropology: ‘All the human virtue in circulation is mere vile coppers…anyone who takes it for real gold is a child’ (Kant 1977b:444; 1974:32, translation modified). The practically worthless coins that Kant equates with public signs of human virtue are deceptive because one believes that, as the coins are money, they have a value. However, Cassirer fails to consider the sentence that follows directly in the original text: But we are better off having token money (Scheidemünze) in circulation than no money at all; and it can eventually be converted into pure gold, albeit at a considerable loss…Even the appearance of goodness in others must be worth something to us, because out of this play with pretence—which earns respect without perhaps meriting it—moral worth which is meant seriously might well arise. (Kant 1977b:444–5; 1974:32, translation modified) Whereas for Rousseau Schein (sham, pretence, appearances) can only be negative, for Kant things are not that simple. For Kant, two types of Schein exist: one that deceives and one that does not. The non-deceptive Schein is actually the equivalent of the coins of small value.28 They appear valuable, they promise riches despite being practically worthless. Nevertheless, they can be exchanged, however restrictedly, and eventually—after many years of determined saving—could be converted into gold. In a marginal comment, Kant adds that even printed paper, with no recognised value as currency at all, is not worthless.29 These fake notes are token money. ‘Real’ money is itself just printed paper with no intrinsic worth. These other bits of paper also

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE represent money and are therefore not devoid of all value. Token, simulated value is not evil in social relations—in spite of the risk that the worthless money might be used to defraud an unsuspecting visitor, unacquainted with the national currency and contrary to the apparently unequivocal rejection of counterfeiting in ‘On the Presumed Right to Lie from Love of Mankind’. In the Anthropology, the acceptable, even commendable Schein is described as ‘playing with pretences’, a playful distortion of one’s ‘true’ nature (Spiel mit Verstellungen) (1977b:445; 1974:32). The bad, deceptive Schein, in contrast, is defined in the following manner: Only the semblance of good in ourselves that we ruthlessly wipe away: we must tear off the veil with which self-love covers our moral defects. For if we delude ourselves that our debt is cancelled by what has no intrinsic moral content, or reject even this and persuade ourselves that we are not guilty, the semblance deceives us. (ibid.) The difference between noxious, potentially evil falsity and the benign type depends on us. We must be able to see through our own sham virtue and not delude ourselves by our own appearances. This is in line with the general claims for Enlightenment made by Kant: the independence acquired by rigorously thinking for oneself is supposed to free us from ‘false knowledge’ (Scheinwissen). For example, in the first Critique, he talks of the effect of ‘the matured judgement of the age’ ‘which refuses to be put off with illusory knowledge (Scheinwissen). It is a call to reason to undertake anew the most difficult of all tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge’ (Kant 1983a:AXI).We have already pointed out how Kant’s ‘radical evil’ ruins the idea of a more able capacity to judge. By extension, it must also call into question our ability to cut away our false merits from our real ones, as we have no way of knowing to what extent our virtue is genuine.30 In the Prolegomena, the same claim is made: Thanks to critique, however, a standard has been given to our judgement whereby knowledge may be with certainty distinguished from pseudo-knowledge (Scheinwissen). (Kant 1988c:263; 1982:132, translation modified) ‘Radical evil’ is what removes the measuring stick used as a prop by judgement, thereby rendering the limits between the ‘genuine’ and the ‘fake’ not clearly distinguishable and indeed distinctly blurred. Dispelling the ‘bad’ appearance or sham merit was predicated on our ability to know ourselves, to reveal our true moral nature to ourselves—a capacity that is placed in doubt by ‘radical evil’. Schiller’s reservations about the strict, monastic quality of Kant’s portrayal of the moral law come into

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KANT TROUBLE play at this point. Kant defended himself against this criticism in Religion within the Limits…by separating ‘virtue’ from ‘duty’: virtue is associated with the ‘graces’ of beauty, which permit an exemplary representation of the virtuous attitude, whereas the ‘concept of duty’ is sublime and uncompromising in its refusal to be associated with sensuous aids (Kant 1989:669–70; 1960:19). The former is related to the world of nature and art: it is social; whereas the latter does not invite familiarity (Vertraulichkeit) and is more private, being ‘inside us’ (ibid.). Such an insistence on a (sublime) interiority, on the private which does not express itself freely in the ‘public’ realm, which does not circulate and cannot be exchanged, is taken up in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Here, a distinction is drawn between exchangeable qualities or values, which allow an ‘equivalent’ because they possess a market or sentimental ‘price’, and that which cannot be put into play because it contains an incalculable ‘inner worth’ or dignity (Würde) (Kant 1988d:68–9; 1964:102–3). Duty is sublimely austere, strictly personal and invaluable, not for the marketplace. The beautiful values belong to society, they seek ‘universal communicability’ and are linked to the pleasures and charms of life (see Kant 1990a:§41 228–9; 1988a:154–6). However, this insistence on an uncompromisingly internal core of dutiful integrity, which relies solely on the ‘inner scrutiny of self-examination’ (Kant 1988d:211; 1956:91), ignores the points established above: that is to say, the necessity of taking into account an inevitable intersubjectivity; the advisability of directing one’s assumptions towards a certain plurality, by sending out thoughts and ideas to ‘others’ for testing. There probably is a radical difference between the addressee of the cosmopolitan world of scholarly readers and the second type of ‘other’ met face to face in society, where communication is informed by beautiful social codes and graces. However, that does not exclude the need to send out even one’s convictions about moral duty into the world of exchange and Schein. Hence, the concept of sublime duties is inevitably exposed to the evil risk of dissimulation and falsification, but equally, it could also meet the beautiful vehicle capable of providing a graceful transition to sublimity. In a brief newspaper article on Kant’s Groundwork, Jacques Derrida (1991c) discusses this attempt to avoid the ‘market’ of priceable and (therefore) exchangeable objects, seen as endangering or fetishising a priceless dignity. This avoidance, he says, runs the risk of destroying exactly that which it hoped to preserve immaculate: The rejection of money or of its principle of abstract indifference, the disdain for calculations can connive with the destruction of morality and law—and, for example, with electoral democracy which counts ‘voices’, etc.

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE An episode from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus provides a good illustration of this point. Coriolanus’ problems stem from the fact that he is ‘too absolute’ (Shakespeare 1984:III, ii, l. 39): he refuses to accept the possibility that the consulship that befits his dignity can have a price. That price is decided by the exchange of ‘voices’ in the marketplace (ibid.: II, iii, ll. 73, 124). His refusal to comply threatens the community with destruction. The problem for both Kant and Coriolanus is that they assume that dignity is being irreparably denigrated by being attached to a price. It is true that the latter has to dress up in a ‘gown of humility’ and expose his scars as trophies of his victorious battles in the streets to passers-by in order to solicit their sympathetic response to his wish to become consul. This touting for recognition and support is humiliating. However, dignity has not been permanently sullied by this form of publicly recognised ‘equivalence’ of his merits as consul. In fact, no equivalent price has been attached to his ‘intrinsic worth’ but rather an exchange value—which functions without recourse to supposedly pure, inner worth. The point is that without this exchange value priceless dignity is price-less: it cannot be assessed, or defined, or fought for. The principle of exchange and substitution is also the means by which a theoretical equality can be instituted between singularities: it is the actual possibility of money, of prices, namely the principle of equivalence, which also permits the neutralisation of differences in order to attain pure singularity such as dignity or universal law. To be sure the access to the dignity of others is the access to the singularity of his absolute difference, but that is only possible via a certain indifference, via the neutralisation of differences. (Derrida 1991c) In order to be respected as a singularity, there must be an exposure to the indifference, to the fetishism, of the commodity market31 so that differences can be neutralised and packaged as a unit of ‘pure singularity’. The ‘Rights of Man’ violates, through its generalising redefinition of, the rights of individual women and men so as best to defend the dignity of ‘Man’ as a priceless singularity (who is nobody in particular). 32 This will inevitably be an insufficient defence, as singularity is exactly that which cannot be purely represented or re-produced. As Nancy has written: ‘singularity is not an oeuvre resulting from an operation…[it] is neither extracted nor produced, nor derived’ (1986:69–70). We can never put a price on singularity; the nearest we can get to respecting it is by defining it, i.e. naming it as ‘dignity’ and continuously refusing an equivalence for it within the exchange system.33 The naming means that ‘dignity’ is already part of a (linguistic) exchange and that there is a price to pay. In ‘The Violence of the Letter’, Derrida (1985:164–5; 1976a:112) writes:

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KANT TROUBLE Naming…is the originary violence of language…arche-violence, the loss of the proper, of absolute proximity, of self-presence, in truth the loss of what has never taken place, of a self-presence which has never been given but only dreamed of and always already split, repeated, incapable of appearing to itself except in its own disappearance. The price that is paid by naming does not have a fixed value; we do not lose a specific sum of something valuable. What we ‘lose’ is the illusion of an absolutely private, inner worth that we never had in the first place. We lose our fantasies of possessing this pure presence that is intrinsically us, outside all duplicitous intersubjectivity and negotiated exchange. We gain an admittedly grossly inadequate, distorted and impure concept, which can, however, be used as a means to argue about and for the inaccessible, sublime idea of what this ‘dignity’ could be. Kant, therefore, cannot retract an intrinsic, purely private core of subjectivity from the exposure to Schein. As a consequence, he has to accept the stakes attached to this exposure: Schein can offer us a helpful transition to sublimity, but it also distorts and makes impure the goods it transports. Kant’s presentation of Schein is also complicated by his comments elsewhere in the Anthropology. Rather than positing an innocuous play with false appearances on the one hand and another type of falsity that can be controlled, unmasked and dispelled on the other, here we have a Schein that necessarily arises from the originary split in the human constitution, which refuses to remain trivial: So it already belongs to the basic composition of a human creature and to the concept of his species to explore the thoughts of others but to withhold one’s own—a nice quality that does not fail to progress gradually from dissimulation to deception and finally to lying. (Kant 1977b:688–9; 1974:192) Only angels can directly communicate their thoughts without having to economise with the truth. Angels do not manipulate their ideas into words and sentences, but most probably radiate their messages spontaneously, independently of will or consciousness. As we saw in the example from Goethe’s Elective Affinities, Eduard found this prospect of an immediate communication that leaks out of the body without one being able to control its content most traumatic. However, this was a delusion: humans could never reach this angelic state, even if they wanted to. Humanity belongs in the realm of the unavoidable Verstellung. This distorting twist to human nature is constitutional (ursprünglich), not accidental. It also runs the permanent risk of becoming a lie, from which it differs only in degree, not in nature—to allude

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE to the theme of the previous chapter, the slight wrongness of the Ver-stellung and the wicked lie are related (verwandt). We can also add that sociability is made possible thanks to a certain secondary deception, which takes place on the conscious, deliberate level. If one immediately gave voice to one’s thoughts, to one’s dislikes, to the boredom felt in someone’s company, there could be no social exchange—a certain diplomatic reserve is essential to the economy of exchange. The limit between this socially acceptable Verstellung and the dangerous distortion of the lie is also not clearly marked. When does tact actually become downright hypocrisy? In the ‘Perpetual Peace’ essay, Kant attempts to close down the implications of his other—much more radical—analyses and to plaster over the split between ethics and politics that we have seen arise from our originary state as transgressive beings who are not res integrae. The evil that Kant cannot recuperate by an appeal to nature’s ‘ends’ is, as in Rousseau’s analysis, associated in this essay with opacity, lack of transparency, secrecy. Kant also reduces the threat and importance of evil by suggesting that its aims mean that it is ‘self-destructive and self-contradictory’ (1977a:242; 1991c:124). This proposition is incompatible with his discussion of Verstellung, which was seen as even non-contradictory with the good, let alone with itself. The self-destructive character of evil is linked with humankind’s natural ‘drive to communication’ and the principle of ‘publicity’ (1977a:87, 163, 244ff; 1991c: 85–6, 125, 222). By applying the same logic as that used in the second Critique for the categorical imperative, Kant offers us a handy touchstone for dispelling evil: intentions that cannot be publicly revealed are bad, as are those that cannot be transformed into a general law. Kant suggests that wicked desires cannot be made public without defeating their purpose. However, one could easily make a case that the prime characteristic of politics or diplomacy (i.e. politics when it deals with an ‘external’ ‘other’), is exactly this reservatio mentalis that Kant is here so eager to dissolve (1977a: 196; 1991c:94).34 First, I will deal with Kant’s attempt to make evil work for teleological ends and then discuss secrecy and politics. It is the guarantee of the ‘mechanism of nature’ that transforms the evil and secretive tendencies of humans into beneficial drives for society (1977a: 217; 1991c:108). These can then be recuperated as a means by which a gradual movement towards perpetual peace can be established. This idea is elsewhere discussed as a question of scale and point of view: it might look to us as if human actions are disordered, even anarchic and leading nowhere, but taken ‘on a large scale’ (im großen) and seen from a global point of view (auf der großen Weltbühne), we can perhaps perceive the guiding hand of wise nature (Kant 1977a:33–4; 1991c:41). These tempting solutions are used to introduce goodness, transparency and sense into what could otherwise be thought potentially evil, obscure and random. War is designated as the prime device of

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KANT TROUBLE nature for achieving its teleological ends (1977a:221; 1991c:111). War forces peoples to leave their homes and populate zones that would otherwise be wastelands (i.e. devoid of humans). It encourages people to mix with other nationalities. Military conflict brings them together; admittedly this meeting is a bloody, conflictual one, but the clash with other cultures shakes up their insular assumptions by forcing them to shed their complacency and work harder for an eventual peace (1977a: 231–2; 1991c:99–100). All this is thanks to nature’s wisdom, asserts Kant. However, Kant himself suggests the provisional character of this term ‘nature’. It is a surrogate word, more in keeping with the limitations of human reason, for ‘Providence’. ‘Nature’ modestly designates something that we should not claim to know much about (1977a:219; 1991c:109). He also states that it is inevitable for us to think of ‘nature’ anthropomorphically, ‘by analogy with human artifices’ (1977a:218; 1991c:109). For us, nature is just like a human artist, mechanically creating phenomena. This hardly seems a very modest way of expressing what is beyond mortal comprehension. Also, since this immodest slippage is apparently inevitable with the word ‘nature’, it does not suggest that this means of expressing an eventual sense to events like war is particularly suitable either. Indeed, my proposal is that this term ‘nature’ is inappropriate, especially for a discussion of war. War is unrelated to the state of nature, being rather—in all its varying degrees from diplomacy to blatantly violent confrontations—the (natural) state of culture.35 War, as an external threat, is the factor that constitutes the nation as an internal ‘identity’. This cultural identity is always in terms of something else, of an Other, as Kant states: Even if people were not compelled by internal dissent to submit to the coercion of public wars, war would produce the same effect from outside. For…each people would find itself confronted by another neighbouring people pressing in upon it, thus forcing it to form itself internally into a state in order to encounter the other as an armed power. (1977a:223; 1991c:112) If war is cultural and constitutive of culture (‘armed peace’ is the state and precondition of culture; Kant 1977d:409), then it cannot be attributed to the ruses of nature. These ruses therefore provide no guaranteed dissolution of the evil belligerence driving humans (or of the secretive opacity driving politics). This lack of a guiding, caring principle looking after humanity’s interests is especially easy to understand considering how clearly the ugliness of human nature is revealed in armed combat: the discord of inner natural tendencies betrays him into further misfortunes of his own invention, and reduces other members of his

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE species, through the oppression of lordly power, the barbarism of wars, and the like, to such misery, while he himself does all he can to work ruin to his race…. (Kant 1990a:§83 388; 1988a:93) Kant himself admits that this disclosure of human barbarity can easily destroy one’s belief that Man has been chosen and promoted as the ‘ultimate end of nature’. Contrary to Kant’s claim that the light of ‘publicity’ can flush secrets out into the open, I suggest instead that one of the main characteristics of democracy could be defined as the possibility of keeping things secret. This surely lies behind Kant’s idea of the separation of the executive and the legislative powers as essential for republicanism (Kant 1977a:206–7; 1991c: 99–100). 36 Despotism arises when someone or a group of people knows everything about what goes on in the state. They do not have to be informed about what has already been decided without them; they do not have to negotiate to find out this information later, because they know already. Hence a separation between the powers, which functions both as a physical separation and as a temporal gap between decision and implementation, is necessary to make it possible to keep and divulge ‘secrets’. For Rousseau, on the other hand, the Law is generated by the ‘general will’ in the here and now.37 That same ‘will’ can dissolve the communal contract or the body politic. There must be a permanent identity between the sovereign and the ‘general will’—as the (more than) sum of the ‘particular wills’. When, inevitably, ‘particular wills’ begin to work against the union, this eventually produces the destruction of the state: ‘The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born and carries in itself the causes of its destruction’ (Rousseau 1976:327; 1979:235). While there is unanimity, the political event actually takes place in all purity for Rousseau: ‘The sovereign merely by virtue of what it is, is always what it should be’ (1976:106; 1979:177). Considering what we have established in previous chapters, it becomes clear that Kant would be in complete disagreement with Rousseau: the Law is transcendental and non-appropriable; it cannot be personified or fully represented. The body politic is completely distinct, is of a completely different nature, from the natural body, hence the impossibility of it decaying like the mortal, human body.38 The community has no outside, no exterior,39 and this thwarts the claim to leave it behind and to return to one’s own personal ‘natural freedom’ (1976:323; 1979:233). Kant’s sophisticated notion of ‘Verwandtschaften’ also presented the community as non-reducible to the human, indeed as a potentially continuous unfurling of alliances with other living forms. The impossibility of suddenly opting out of the social contract is what produces the shared responsibility never to be shed and the debt never to be paid off that we encountered in Chapter 1.

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KANT TROUBLE Previous chapters discussed how Kant poses the impossibility of designating and characterising an origin and how this unsettles his attempt to found an architectonic. The ‘Egyptian’ metaphor symbolised the obscure origin of history and later came to represent the doubling of the Law (whose origin is unknowable). This shook the foundations of the state and frustrated our attempts to embody it in the mortal person of the king. The Verwandtschaften were associated with the puzzling, split origin of life itself, originarily divided between the two sexes. They highlighted the complexity of any project to found a community of beings that is as interrelated as the organisms we presume to observe in nature. Kant’s discussions of evil and ‘radical evil’ continue these preoccupations with the origin. It has already been established that ‘radical evil’ is originary—it takes the place of an originary innocence. It is not hereditary but is reborn with every generation, and its relation to the Christian idea of original sin is unclear. Questions still to be answered are: can ‘radical evil’ be regarded as diabolical or perverse? Is it identical with Verstellung, which is also originally constitutive of human beings as an innocuous, even beneficial Schein that can easily slip into becoming wicked deception? What is the nature of this ‘radical evil’? In Lecture on Ethics, Kant once again emphasises the need for reserve, even in the most intimate social and ethical relations, this time so as not to injure the face of humanity: This confidentiality concerns only one’s state of mind and feelings, not one’s sense of decency; this must be observed and weaknesses therein restrained so that humanity is not injured thereby. Even to one’s best friend one must not reveal oneself as one naturally is and knows oneself to be, as that would be disgusting. (Kant 1990b:222) Our mortal, disgusting body should always remain hidden behind a screen of good manners. We should not show ourselves in our true light, should not reveal what we know ourselves to be or behave as we would naturally. But what is our true nature? How well do we know ourselves? What is this ‘seed of evil’ that Kant both forbids us to seek out (with the warning that if we do so we are in league with the devil (ibid.: 103) and yet attempts himself to define and analyse? The question of ‘human nature’ is problematic. Religion within the Limits…makes it clear that its basis (Grund) cannot be natural inasmuch as its subjective driving force must be independent of ‘natural pulsions’ to be free. The ‘natural law’ of freedom could be said to be cultural for Kant inasmuch as there is no real freedom, although no absence of it either, in the harmonious shepherd’s life: spending one’s days peacefully living out a pastoral idyll does not fulfil the potential of humanity (Kant 1977a:39;

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE 1991c:45). The assumption of our freedom is indispensable for responsibility to be attributed and judgement to take place. We are necessarily always responsible for our actions, which is itself a horrific thought. We cannot plead diminished responsibility, as we can never stop being free, even if there are pressing extenuating circumstances: ‘for through no cause in the world can he cease to be a freely acting being’ (Kant 1989:690; 1960:36). As Derrida (1991b:212) points out, even when we refuse to stop being immature minors, that is to say even when we decline to leave our state of Unmündigkeit by not assuming our responsibility for ourselves, we are (paradoxically) responsible for our irresponsibility.40 Human ‘nature’ does not reveal its subjective basis, the force governing its decisions is inscrutable for us (einen (uns unerforschlichen) ersten Grund) (Kant 1989:667; 1960:17). If it possessed a fixed origin this would become a determining factor, and humans must be free from determination. Our freedom is the precondition for any implementation of the law. However, this does not mean that we have a choice whether to be free or not. As we saw in the previous chapter, thanks to Benjamin, questions of responsibility and freedom of associations cannot be decided upon by a ‘choice’ (Wahl) but require a transcendent ‘decision’.41 How ever far back we search for the origin that could throw light on the constitution of our motives and drives, we will never get past dependent elements that refer to other principles. We will never actually arrive at the unconditioned first principle, the key to our ‘natural’ freedom: ‘we are referred back endlessly in the series of subjective determining grounds, without ever being able to reach the ultimate ground’ (Kant 1989:667; 1960:18). This obscurity does not prevent humans from being the originators of their actions (1989:668; 1960:17). Our knowledge of the individual’s make-up and driving force is lacking. Nevertheless, we must judge and attribute responsibility despite this aporia; our judging is hence necessarily unjust to an (un)certain extent. This is, I suggest, the tragedy of humanity. Guilty acts cannot be attributed to a weakness or a failing; they cannot be completely explained or excused. We are complicit with crime inasmuch as it is the unnatural nature of humans that is in question. As we saw in Chapter 1 with the example of the last murderer, guilt is not contained within the boundaries of the criminal individual. The community cannot disperse and wash itself free of his bloody crime. In this chapter we have also learned that there is just a question of degree, not of nature, between the socially acceptable, even beneficial Verstellung, and the distortion that contaminates and undermines social structures. This shared exposure to the dangerous slippage of Verstellung is what turns evil into a collective responsibility. ‘Radical evil’ has on several occasions been used to describe the Third Reich and the Holocaust. It is, however, a concept that has been left unthought by the philosophical tradition as a whole. Indeed, Arendt singles out Kant as one of the rare philosophers to whom one can turn for an understanding of

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KANT TROUBLE Nazism and the crimes it perpetrated.42 For Arendt, ‘radical evil’ is an evil that ‘breaks down all standards we know’ (1968:157). However, on the same page of Totalitarianism she describes the totalitarian in terms of ‘nihilistic banality’ (ibid., my italics). Her work on Eichmann is subtitled ‘A Report on the Banality of Evil’ (1964; 1976). Hence we can conjecture that the diabolical is not the eradication of all traces of the moral law;43 such a total or absolute evil would inevitably involve a certain purity in its complete absence of any contradictory attributes or ‘negative magnitudes’.44 Instead, diabolical evil is perhaps rather the ‘ghostly, pernickety thoroughness’ of the bureaucrat (Arendt 1964:175; 1976:137, translation modified): the bureaucratic, although not faceless, attention to detail; the meticulous mise-en-forme of that which should remain monstrously formless and undefined, unrecognisable in its shapelessness. The diabolical is Eichmann’s claim to have been a faithful adherent of Kant’s categorical imperative except on two occasions. The ‘crime’ that Eichmann admits to was to have made exceptions to the ‘Law’ (the personal law of the Führer transformed into a universal law) by exempting a Jewish cousin and a Viennese Jewish couple from extermination. This exemption he is prepared to admit was wrong. Eichmann’s insistence on not only carrying out the ‘letter’ of the ‘Law’ by fulfilling his duty but also complying with the ‘spirit’ of it, that is being particularly zealous in implementing the ‘Final Solution’, is a grotesque parody of Kantian moral philosophy.45 Part of the horror comes from the recognition of the distorted theory of Kant.46 Evil characterised as a Verstellung, as a perversion of a moral and cultural system of which the parasite is not alien, could be a helpful term, in its bland inadequacy, for expressing such a phenomenon. It highlights the anxiety about where the distortion of the ‘Ver-’ actually takes place. Arendt writes: ‘Seen through the eyes of the ideology, the trouble with the camps is almost that they make too much sense, that the execution of the doctrine is too consistent’ (1968:155). The actual boundary between the correct amount of order and ‘too much’ is indistinct, although clearly there is excess. Where does the social actually become its opposite? This human inability to police boundaries efficiently is also the difference between one individual’s crime, which can be condemned and forgotten, and one that will never cease to be judged, which cannot be forgotten.47 The Verstellung draws attention to the critical breakdown of krinein, to our inability to draw decisive distinctions and to judge justly once and for all. ‘Radical evil’, on the other hand, is that which leaves us open to the responsibility for good and evil. Kant defines it in a later section of Religion within the Limits…in the following way: [human beings] nevertheless started from evil, and this debt [they] can by no means wipe out…This debt, which is original, or prior to

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE all the good a [human] may do…can never be discharged by another person…For this is no transmissible liability. (Kant 1989:726; 1960:66) This ‘radical evil’ is a guilt that precedes any act. It is a guilt and a debt that is not there to be paid off (it remains uneradicable (unausrottbar) (1989:679; 1960:27). It is an obligation of the most personal nature. Another person cannot take its burden upon him/herself for me: it remains mine.48 It consists not of a sentence that we passively receive but of a ‘gift’ to be taken up (aufgenommen) (1989:679–80, 691; 1960:27, 36). 49 We have already affirmatively taken it upon ourselves (it is selbstverschuldet) (1989:680; 1960:28).50 This transgressive guilt represents an evil that is not the result of an evil will, that pre-dates any particular malign action. It can coexist with the best of wills (1989:680; 1960:27). Similarly, in Being and Time, Heidegger (1987:H286) postulates an originary state of guilt as the prerequisite of the being for good and evil: This essential Being-guilty is, equiprimordially, the existential condition for the possibility of the ‘morally’ good and for that of the ‘morally’ evil—that is for morality in general. This originary guilt leaves us receptive to the ‘call’ (Ruf) of conscience (Gewissen); it calls us to our responsibility. The ‘call’ both emanates from within me and comes upon me, falls on me: ‘The call comes from me and yet from beyond me’ (ibid.: H275). We are in a state of autonomous heteronomy: I give to myself that which can only come from the Other.51 With the concept of Bezeugung, Heidegger postulates the necessity of us being able ‘to testify for’, ‘attest to ourselves’: ‘Dasein…needs to have the potentiality (for-Beingits-Self) attested’ (ibid.: H268).52 The ‘call’ itself says nothing to us (ibid.: H273). Heidegger states that the voice of the call cannot even be embodied or personified: ‘one supplies a possessor for the power thus posited, or one takes the power itself as a person who makes himself known—namely God’ (ibid.: H275). Kant also detaches the voice of the Law from divine authority, claiming that it can have no originator—just as triangles cannot: ‘However the moral laws can be in the hands of a legislator…This being is then a legislator, not a creator in the same way that God did not create the three-sided triangle’ (Kant 1990b:60).53 God can be seen as a legislator who interprets the Law but not as its inventor, its origin(ator). God also does not spend his time making triangles: they defy creation. Triangles do not exactly come before God—as God himself has no beginning—but they are independent of him. Triangles exist without his help, as does the Law. Additionally, we cannot rely on our knowledge of God’s interpretation of the Law to eradicate problems of comprehension as this knowledge is just symbolic, not schematic.54 God is a

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KANT TROUBLE symptom of the limits of our understanding—an irreducible symptom, Kant would hasten to add, not one to be cured. We are indebted to the Law, not to God (although we might later choose to focus our attempts at moral amelioration on Him). Consequently, radical evil cannot be equated with original sin. Considering these similarities between Heidegger and Kant, we could ask whether Heidegger is really justified in so adamantly distinguishing his ‘call’ from the Kantian: ‘Characterising conscience as a call is not just giving a “picture”, like the Kantian representation of the conscience as a court of justice’ (Heidegger 1987:H271).55 Rather than just dismissing Kant’s analysis of the recognition of responsibility, of conscience, as only an ‘image’, we might do better to relate it to Derrida’s theories of the gift and responsibility. Derrida has described deconstruction as being ‘an affirmation linked to promises, to involvement, to responsibility’ (1989a:10). Our analysis of Kant’s ‘radical evil’ (together with the ‘king’s two bodies’ and Verwandtschaften) would permit us to draw the two thinkers closer together. Instead of presenting Kant as the philosopher of fixed and secure foundations, of certainties and strict limits, other aspects of his work can be emphasised. We can focus more on his problematisation of origins, on his awareness of the insecurity of the foundational act of laying down the law and on his theorisation of the necessity of communal responsibility in the light of all this obscurity. In ‘Nombre de oui’, Derrida writes: ‘The arche-originary yes…which does not describe or corroborate anything but rather engages in a sort of archeengagement, alliance, consent or promise’ (1987c:647).56 Radical evil is also an assent that did not take place as a historical event. At some undatable time before our earliest days, we accepted the obligations of the Law that was offered to us. On this a priori assumption rests our ability to attribute responsibility to human actions. Despite not being an explicit social contract with general terms that can be agreed on and put into action, this Law relates us inextricably to others. Our ineradicable obligations to our ‘Verwandtschaften’ hold out the promise of a community of beings. However, the fact that this ethical Law is without a knowable origin and has no divine inventor to give us clear directions thwarts our attempts to realise politically the communal project—as does our dangerous tendency to slide from the socially necessary dissimulation and beneficial restraint into the perverse distortion of evil. In its non-negativity, ‘radical evil’ is also non-dialectisable, not to be eradicated. It cannot be calculated on or with. It is secretive and cannot be completely revealed. The distinction between good and evil, which is both produced and frustrated by it, can best be summed up by returning to ‘The Concept of Negative Magnitudes’ essay. Here, the ‘real’ opposition between one factor and its negation (Beraubung) gave rise to a state that could not be a third different term as it was comprised of its components held in tension.

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DEVILISH DISSIMULATIONS IN HUMAN NATURE Kant offers us an example: ‘Taking from is a negative giving to’ (1988c:795; 1992:221). An apparently static position is in fact the balance between divergent forces, a struggle between conflictual elements held in tension. One can always count on the opposition being there, despite not being able to count, to calculate, the degree of its presence. The opposition cannot be known and quantified. This expels any notion of an utterly pure action. It also confounds any attempts to recuperate negativity. Evil cannot be put to work in the name of a dialectic seeking its own teleological ends. The difference between Kant’s logic and this other recuperative position can be illustrated by the following fragments by the Romantic poet Novalis: ‘From two conflicting elements—the actual real emerges’ (Novalis 1965:226, no. 333), and: Opposition is strictly—to unite—inasmuch as both elements become opposed to one another through the intervention of a third …but through this their differing characteristics are united in One consciousness—as a consequence a real difference between their essence and characteristics is sublated (aufgehoben). (ibid.: 240, no. 439) Novalis looks for a ‘truthful’ synthesis wherein differences are distilled into a sort of mystical communion. In contrast, the ‘actual real’ (eigentliche Reale) for Kant is the irreconcilable and irreducible opposition itself and not a subsequent product. There is no question for us of ‘unified consciousness’, only a perilous balancing operation and perpetual struggle between opposing forces. Hence our eventual conversion to morality can only be the result of a painful, gradual reform, even though God, looking at us from a different angle, might well be able to see that our redemption actually took place years ago. He is the only one who can see the moral revolution.57 We cannot become conscious of this event; it does not exist for us. It belongs to a non-human temporal dimension (the duratio noumenon) (Kant 1989:698, 720; 1960:60– 1). Consequently, the evil refuses to be ironed out in the name of an inevitable, guaranteed, movement towards the good, such as is postulated by another Romantic thinker, Johann Wilhelm Ritter: ‘All evil is only a phenomenon inhibiting the drive towards the good, the consumption of good’ (1984:212, no. 481). For Kant, evil is not just a hindrance or obstacle to the underlying drive towards goodness but is instead constitutional. However, this cannot be equated with inevitability, as we must be free. It also does not detract from our responsibility and the necessity to judge. ‘Radical evil’ itself is central to Kant’s theory of history. Humans are already in the moral/immoral. They are already necessarily placed within an ethical community: it does not have to be constructed from scratch or refound(ed). Just as with the king’s two bodies and ‘Verwandtschaften’, ‘radical evil’ is that which blurs the idea of an origin and confounds any hope

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KANT TROUBLE of clear-cut limits. It prevents history being regarded as an inevitable progress from the primitive to the sophisticated, from immorality to morality. There is no reassuringly teleological schema; instead, we are marked by a contaminated opposition between good and evil. This opposition fuels the permanent moral revolution within the individual, which can only express itself for him/her as a perpetual reform. Every single time that good needs to be wrested from evil, there are no moral funds that we can bank on or invest in. In the political realm, we can hope and should work for the revolution but, unfortunately, can also get by with the compromises that would characterise a ‘nation of devils’ (Kant 1977a:224; 1991c:112). NOTES 1

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Verstellung also means (1) adjustment, alteration, misplacing; (2) disguise; (3) blockage, obstruction. The ‘Ver-’ can indicate a state of something being ‘too much’ (as in versalzen, to over-salt) or that something is wrong, false (e.g. ‘sich verhören’, to mishear). Drehen means to turn or rotate, but verdrehen means to wrench, twist, sprain, crick, distort, pervert or screw up. The turning has gone too far. In his ‘Letter to Herder and his Wife’, dated 7 June 1793, he also criticises what he sees as Kant’s treacherous, sycophantic reconciliation with the Church by means of ‘the shameful blot of radical evil’ (Goethe 1982:54). Whereas the philosopher had previously attempted to rid us of our prejudices without fear of his readers’ reactions, Goethe suggests that he now seeks worldly acceptance and acclaim and therefore resorts to the establishment’s idea of original sin. In exploring ‘negative magnitudes’, Kant is explicitly extending the Newtonian laws of attraction and repulsion governing the universe to every aspect of our psychic and physical life—see Kant (1988c:781; 1992:209) for a reference to Newton. By showing how, throughout his writings, Kant activates the permanently volatile forces at play within our faculties, we are rewriting Bloch’s theory about the gradual, ‘post-critical’ loss of dialectical materialism from his system (see Bloch 1985b:199–200). Once again, we detect at work in Kant’s system an undercurrent of relativity that runs counter to the strict limitations sought by Newtonian Enlightenment. In Chapter 2, I cited Koyré’s lamentation about the loss of transformational volition from bodies but went on to show how Kant’s explorations of affinities return the potential for dynamic becomings to natural substances otherwise deemed to be inert. Here too, with his concept of ‘negative magnitudes’ and the quantitative ‘more or lesses’ that ensue, another of Koyré’s reservations about Enlightenment thought are addressed: ‘the whole scientific revolution of the seventeenth century of which Newton is the heir and highest expression, is just to abolish the world of the “more or less”, the world of qualities and sense perception, the world of appreciation of our daily life and to replace it by the (Archimedean) universe of precision, of exact measures, of strict determinism’ (Koyré, in Cohen and Westfall 1995:59). See, for example, Derrida (1979:376; 1981b:255–6) on the Hegelian recuperative approach to death. See Kant (1977a:356; 1979:85): ‘Because of his ignorance about the degree to which the bad is mixed with the good within himself, he does not know what effect he might expect from it’ (translation modified). Similarly, in Chapter 1 on

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those volatile affinities, we could not judge to what extent, to what Grad, we should unify natural phenomena into one community. Rogozinski (1984:150; 1996:36) insists that Kant’s ‘mal radical’ cannot be simply reduced to human weakness and the limits of human faculties but instead ‘“There is wrong” means that radical evil resides in its dissimulation, that being-wrong is twisted, being the falsity or the feint, the Unlauterkeit, the torturous impurity of bad faith.’ I will be suggesting that ‘radical evil’ is different from this dissimulating evil, although it is its condition of possibility. For references to ‘divine providence’ and ‘nature’s care’ see Kant (1977a:217, 220, 225; 1983b:102, 121, 125; 1991c:108; 110, 113). If all people were perfect, they would automatically behave morally and as a result there would be nothing to judge. Just as private grief counts less than public victory, so too does private joy take second place after public happiness; see Rousseau (1948:182): ‘No, there is no purer joy than public joy.’ The question of ‘purity’ is crucial for a comparison between Kant and Rousseau on the question of human nature and the political. One could argue that for Kant the pure is only a negative concept, not a constitutive one; see, for example, Kant (1983a:B823): the (pure) critique is just a ‘negative delimitation which, instead of discovering truth, has only the modest merit of guarding against error’. See Rousseau (1976:90; 1979:174): ‘These clauses properly understood, may be reduced to one—the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community.’ See also Rousseau (1971:234; 1979:104): ‘the savage lives within himself, while social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinions of others’; this is not the same alienation as the former but the damaging alienation of a society that does not reflect the ‘general will’ (volonté générale) and cannot return you to yourself as a transformed person with full civic rights. This ability of the state to incorporate ‘devils’ into it is at once a sign of its strength and of its terrible failure, as will be discussed later. Unlike the demands of morality for inner virtue, politics relies on mere ‘public behaviour’. See Kant (1989:337; 1991b:56), where Right’s concerns are defined in terms of external formality. One could say that politics deals with the letter of the law, but can and should its ‘spirit’ be kept out of the political realm? ‘Dissimulation’ will be used later on to translate Kant’s term ‘Verstellung’. Crucial for our analysis of ‘radical evil’ will be whether it is the same thing as this ‘dissimulation’, which not only undoes all social bonds but also is all that is required for the founding of a state. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant used the ‘exception’ as a way of circumventing the problem of regicide: it was regarded as an exception to, instead of a deliberate, formal manipulation of, the Law (see Kant 1989:440–1; 1991b:132). See Althusser (1967:23–4; 1982:136): Rousseau’s defence against Hobbes is to transform total alienation in externality into total alienation in internality…the Prince becomes the Sovereign, which is the community itself, to which free individuals totally alienate themselves without losing their liberty, since the Sovereign is simply the community of these same individuals.

17

There would be much to say about this passage and what it tells us about writing. The superficial, written page threatens us with an insidious disappropriation of

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KANT TROUBLE thoughts, an infringement of property and privacy. Speech, on the other hand, is presented as offering control, depth and integrity. 18 See, for example, the exegesis of ‘la fête’ in Letter to Mr. Alembert in Starobinski (1971:116:1988:92): ‘The feast, which evokes the originary state of mankind, is not intended to be “mnemonic” or “commemorative”.’ It is ‘generated spontaneously, unexpectedly’ (translation modified). This spontaneous celebration of the community, which takes place in the here and now, compares starkly with the negotiated, mediated, oblique ‘celebration’ that I discussed in Chapter 1. That ‘Kantian’ celebration played with a mythical form of temporality, infinity and mortal time. It certainly did not simply take place in the ‘here and now’. 19 See Kant (1989:683; 1960:30): ‘as if reason could destroy the authority of the very law which is its own, or deny the obligation arising therefrom’. Here, Kant equates the diabolical with someone who has exterminated all traces of the Law within him: ‘a cause operating without any laws whatsoever’. However, thanks to Sade, we know that the most diabolical perversities can also be committed in the name of the Law (see Lacan 1966:765–90). Equally, we saw in Chapter 1 that regicide, initially condemned by Kant as the sign of the ‘most extreme evil’ (1989:442; 1991b:132), could be seen as having been carried out in the name of, for the sake of, the Law. 20 Cassirer uses the term ‘radical evil’ but equates it with an ‘original sin’, which, as we will see, is not Kant’s understanding of the term. 21 Unlike Rousseau, Kant discounts the possibility of moral indifference, of our acts being neither good nor bad. See Kant (1989:669; 1960:18): ‘Between a good and evil disposition…according to which the morality of an action must be judged, there is therefore no middle ground.’ Indeed, this is, for him, one of the differences between ethical virtue and juridical right. See also Reboul (1971:59, 81–2): ‘There is no “zero” in morality; the neutrality of our actions is only apparent and the moral law could say, like the Gospel: “he who is not for me is against me”.’ 22 See also Rousseau (1971:200; 1979:70): ‘the imagination, which causes such ravages among us’. Rousseau’s analysis of imagination differs starkly from Kant’s, who sees the often positive role played by the imagination, for example, in sexual relations. In ‘Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History’, he explains that the imagination permits one to embroider on sexual stimuli, sublimating our momentary urges into creative desires, detached from the immediate sexual object (Kant 1977a:89; 1991c:224). I also note in passing that Kant postulates that life begins with pain (and that pleasure arises from it as its cessation), not, as for Rousseau, with peaceful satisfaction (see Kant 1977b:550ff; 1974:100). 23 Kant could be talking about cyberspace here, echoing contemporary liberal discussions about the freedoms of the Internet and the Web. 24 For an analysis of ‘grafting’ as breaking down the notion of a discrete identity that can be mastered outside any dissemination, see Derrida (1984:230–1; 1981c: 202). 25 See Derrida (1990:43; 1977a:190–1) on ‘the general theory of structural parasitism’. 26 The radicality of Kant’s thought on religion becomes evident in this discussion of God’s command to Abraham. He makes it clear that God is not the originator (Urheber) of the Law and thereby throws doubt on whether such a command can claim the status of being the Law. This point will be important for the later discussion of ‘radical evil’. 27 That is, the notion that the appeal to a ‘state of nature’ is intended as a regulative, not constitutive, principle, as Kant himself points out; see Kant (1977b:681;

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28 29 30 31

32

33 34 35

1974:88): ‘Rousseau did not really want man to go back to the state of nature, but rather to look back at it from the step where he now stands.’ Foucault interestingly, but not unproblematically, translates Scheidemünze as ‘paper money’; see Kant (1970:36). The marginal comment reads ‘or simply with stamped paper with no inner content at all’; see Kant (1977b:444, not in English translation). See also Kant (1989:666; 1960:16): ‘but a [person’s] maxims, sometimes even his/ her own, are not thus observable; consequently the judgement that the agent is an evil [person] cannot be made with certainty grounded in experience’. While on the subject of fetishism, I note that Kant uses the term ‘fetish faith’ (Fetischdienst) to describe the merely external formalities of ‘simulated service’ (Scheindienst). Prayer for Kant is a fetishising delusion, as it attempts to ‘clothe’ the spirit of the silent, continuous prayer that should always be taking place within us, in words and formulas to be exchanged through communication (Kant 1989:852–3, 869–70; 1960:168, 181). Kant’s analysis of clerical fetishism will be discussed further in the Conclusion. A notorious and grotesque example of pricing would be the events of December 1984 in Bhopal following the Union Carbide factory explosion. There, American insurers, squabbling about how much compensation to pay out, placed a different price on lives belonging to Indians (compared with those belonging to Americans). The compensatory sums that would have be paid out if the explosion had taken place in the United States were deemed inappropriate for Indians as their standard of living is so much lower. Such sums would have been fortunes, it was argued, that would destabilise the local economic environment. This is a case of a financial settlement that priced too cheaply, and thereby violated, the dignity and worth of ‘Man’. Here I refer the reader back to my analysis of talion law (Chapter 1) as a crying out for justice and as a continual refusal of any one judicial act that can satisfactorily compensate for crimes against the dignity of humanity. See also Arendt (1987:8). See Kant (1977a:203; 1991c:98) for his definition of war as the state of nature. To illustrate the point that war is not natural but instead a cultural phenomenon, we could, rather perversely, use Rousseau against Kant. For example, in Rousseau (1986:95–7), he writes: ‘Those barbarous times were the golden age… Humans, as it were attacked one another if they met, but they met up rarely. Everywhere a state of war prevailed and everywhere the earth was at peace.’ These sporadic hostilities between early humans are not organised enough to be categorised as ‘proper’ wars. The state of nature is neither belligerent (the animosity was based on ignorance and weakness, not design) nor peaceful (the non-occurrence of violence was due to a mere lack of opportunity). In Henry V, the outrage provoked by the killing of the messenger boys (Fluellen: Kill the poys and the luggage! ’tis expressly against the law of arms…(Shakespeare 1983:IV, vii, ll .1–2)) and the elaborate use of propaganda reveal that wars are constructed and structured. Theoretically, they are not supposed to be a barbaric free-for-all; the very atrocities of war are defined against these rules. While killing is obviously part of war (and the murder of innocent citizens regarded as a lamentable, but often unavoidable by-product), war is defined by scrupulous, subtle differences in status. For example, a pilot in a bomber plane is an obviously legitimate target, but should he parachute to the ground, he is then protected by the Geneva Convention and becomes a POW. From then on, he should not be harmed despite being in all likelihood the very same person who has killed your whole family and destroyed your home through incessant night raids. But the point is that it is not the same

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36 37

38

‘person’—there are two bodies, which correspond to different levels of the law (see Chapter 1). As we saw above, the possibility of naming and defending human rights is produced by this almost perverse logic. The individual is theoretically protected (but inadequately) by the concept of the ‘dignity of Man’, which does not refer to any one person in particular. Likewise, the parading of POWs on television (as during the Gulf War) is no longer deemed to be legitimate propaganda but a war crime, which can be judged later. War is structured by fine distinctions that could easily seem absurd: civilians can be killed, but captured soldiers cannot be filmed. War is also often the product of a systematic escalation of hostilities: a diplomatic slight will be interpreted as a step on the way to a declaration of war (this was the reaction to the Iraqis receiving the Japanese ambassador before the American in 1991). A more sympathetic account of Rousseau would show the necessity of the ‘secret’ in his system also. See especially de Man (1979:269). The sovereign can only lay claim to an ‘“I now will actually what this man wills, or at least what he says he wills”; but it cannot say: “What he wills to-morrow, I too shall will” because it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent on any will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the being who wills’ (Rousseau 1976:136; 1979:182). Hence Hegel can claim that in such a system laws have no substance and do not last from one day to the next, being based only on fickle will: ‘Universal freedom can thus produce neither a positive achievement nor a deed’ (Hegel 1970:435; 1977:604). See also Bennington (1991a:42). The possibilities opened up by Kant’s exegesis of the king’s two bodies, which go so far as justifying regicide in the name of the immortal idea, would pre-empt the ultra-reactionary defeatism of Rousseau’s version of biopolitics, evident in the following lines: As the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general will, the government continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty…sooner or later the prince must inevitably suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty. This is the unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body politic, tends ceaselessly to destroy it, as age and death end by destroying the human body. (Rousseau 1976:321; 1979:232)

39

The Other, defined as the foreign enemy by Kant, helps to constitute the nation (as we saw above). This threatening Other gives the nation its identity and form (the nation is defined against what it creates as external to it). Hence there is a relation of dependence, not of distinct otherness, between a country and its Other. The boundary between the inside and the outside is artificially carved out of mutual dependence. 40 See Kant (1977a:53; 1991c:54): we are responsible for the failure (it is selbstverschuldet) to take the decision (Entschließung) in favour of responsibility (Mündigkeit). 41 See also Kant (1989:332–3; 1991b:52): ‘But freedom of choice cannot be defined…as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law…’. 42 See Arendt (1968:157): ‘It is inherent in our entire philosophical tradition that we cannot conceive of a “radical evil”.’ 43 That is, unlike the definition of the ‘diabolical’ in Kant (1989:683–4; 1960:30), discussed above.

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An eventuality foreseen in Kant (1990b:103): In its own way the idea of a diabolical evil is something quite pure, inasmuch as it does not contain a single seed of goodness, or even a good will—just like the angelic and heavenly goodness is completely purified of all traces of evil.

45 46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53

54 55

56 57

Similarly, the epigraph to this chapter, from Büchner’s ‘Danton’s Death’, illustrates how the relentless and uncompromising insistence on rigorous ethical purity can itself become something diabolical. Eichmann’s ‘confessions’ are related in Arendt (1964:173–6; 1976:135–7). Paul Tillich (1970:287) defines the demonic in a similar manner to me: ‘The eruption of the abyss into the highest forms of meaning and their perversion into nonsensicalness is the demonic. The demonic is metaphysical perversion, not ethical lack.’ See also my analysis of talion law and Levinas in Chapter 1. See Levinas (1982b:91–8; 1985:95–101) for a similar idea of an absolutely singular, inalienable responsibility towards others. Greene and Silber translate aufnehmen passively and weakly as ‘adoption’. Greene and Silber opt for ‘we must…ever hold [humans] responsible for [their evil]’. Compare with Kant’s Aufnehmung, discussed above as an affirmative taking-up of that which is unavoidably given to us. Once again we have no choice (no Wahl) whether to submit ourselves to the Law or not, but instead can make a ‘vigorous resolution’ (Entscheidung) in favour of it—see above and Chapter 2. Compare with the ‘“I think” which must be able to accompany all my representations’ (Kant 1983a:B132, translation modified) discussed above. The non-origin of isosceles triangles, which cannot be discovered as such but only revealed (to the Greeks), was analysed in Chapter 1. See also Kant (1989:334; 1991b:53), where the legislator is described as the author of the obligation to abide by the law, but not as the actual author of the Law itself. See Kant (1990a:§59 297; 1988a:223). For Kant’s presentation of human consciousness of duty as a court of law, comparable with ‘judicial sentences’, see Kant (1988d:223–4; 1956:101–2: ‘The judicial sentences of that marvellous faculty in us called conscience are in complete agreement with this…But he finds that the advocate who speaks in his behalf cannot silence the accuser in him.’ Contrary to Heidegger’s pronouncements, this is no straightforward, banal ‘image’: the guilty person is divided between his defence and his accusation, clearly hearing simultaneously, from within and outside himself, the differing accounts of his actions. For a similar idea to Derrida’s ‘Oui, oui’, see ‘The original “After you, sir!”’ in Levinas 1982b:84; 1985:89. This obviously relates to Kant’s theories of political revolutions as well. The impartial spectator can read the French Revolution as a ‘sign of history’ (Geschichtszeichen) (Kant 1977a:357; 1979:151) but he cannot, by definition, actually ‘live’ the revolution. This idea is ratified by Wordsworth’s experience as described in The Prelude. While travelling in the Alps, he builds up great anticipation for the moment when he will be crossing over the border between France and Switzerland. For him, this is a highly symbolic moment to be savoured as he will be leaving France, the country of freedom, hope and revolution. However, this turns out to be a lost moment of epiphany, an event that did not take place for him as such. To his dismay, he discovers that he had actually entered

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KANT TROUBLE Switzerland miles back (Wordsworth 1986:236–7). This disappointing predicament is quintessentially human. Qualitative frontiers, especially revolutionary ones, are imperceptible for mortals. Similarly, during the 1989 ‘revolution’ (a revolution that revealed itself later to be a recuperated and manipulated coup d’état) ordinary Romanians revolted on the streets but rushed home for televisual confirmation that what they were actually doing did amount to a revolution in the eyes of the Western media. No diffusion of TV images abroad would mean no recognition of their ‘revolution’, which would mean that their revolution to all intents and purposes did not happen and was not happening (see Amelunken and Ujica 1990). The question of whether Kant’s cosmopolitan ‘public sphere’ could really exist outside the distortions of the media and the soft liberalism of the Internet is an important one.

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CONCLUSION The revelation of the impossibility of revelation: Kant, Hamann, Hegel

This concluding chapter returns to the general analysis of Kantian blind spots begun in the Introduction. It addresses the question of why the search for an absolutely enlightening revelation is destined to remain partial. As Hegel was the prime source of dubious information about Egyptians and their lack of susceptibility to clarity examined above, we will return to the important philosophical divergence on the subject of ‘revelation’ that exists between Kant and Hegel. The king’s two bodies highlighted the inability of a mortal to assume adequately the position of King. The radical difference between the idea of kingship and its representative was seen as both creating the need for a mortal sovereign and as relegating that position to the status of an impossible fantasy. The necessity for the mortal kingly example arises from the need to give human form to a communal state that, despite situating us and giving us a context, remains in itself horribly formless and inhuman. The singularised, mortal body is thrown up out of the mass of ‘commoners’ as an exceptional piece of flesh that promises a closer contact with the origins and founding principles of the community. However, the idea of an original community— outside and before any given society within space and time—also condemns every attempt to inscribe the mortal example within it to the status of a fraud—regardless of the individual merit of the impostor. This logic was equated with Kant’s arguments in The Metaphysics of Morals. By contrast, Hegel’s position on the question of sovereignty differs in important ways from that of Kant. For Hegel, it is exactly the mortal’s inadequacy ever to encapsulate successfully the state, his failure ever to be more than a hollowed-out, formal function, which makes a success of his embodiment. In a state with an established constitution, the monarch is limited to someone who listens to and agrees with his counsellors: ‘he has only to say “yes” and dot the “i”’ (Hegel 1986b:§280 451; 1967:289). However, the monarch also has the last word: his signature can never be circumvented for a motion to become law. This requirement exists regardless

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KANT TROUBLE of whether the king understands the bill he is signing or not. Only he holds the power of the performative. His dazzling regal splendour arises from his ability to perform haphazardly as a particular mortal.1 His authority is based in the ‘will’s abstract and to that extent ungrounded self-determination in which finality of decision is rooted’ (Hegel 1986b:§279 444; 1967:181). It is exactly the contingency informing his position as ‘king’ that constitutes his authority. Consequently, Hegel advocates a hereditary right to the throne because it provides continuity while blatantly reducing any authority to a mere question of tradition, completely independent of the individual’s intrinsic value. The Kantian two bodies allow for the mortal specimen’s (repeated) removal in the name of the King. This invocation of the idea of kingship encourages the search for an equivalent embodiment, of some body that can successfully incorporate the ethical community and the political state. This aspiration remains despite—or because of—the impossibility of embodying this utopian project. The Hegelian model eliminates this hope and search by successfully reconciling us to the mortal as a failure. The difference of standpoint can be further reinforced by touching on the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor as used by Hegel in Lectures on the Philosophy of Right: The state must be regarded as an architectonic building, a hieroglyph of reason which presents itself in reality} it is the solidity which represents nothing but freedom in its realization; it is sense, organisation in itself in accordance with concepts. (Hegel 1974:§279 670) In Chapter 1, we linked the ‘Egyptian’ metaphor with Kant’s analysis of the mysterious, impenetrable ‘hieroglyph’ of the Law. The ensuing conclusion was that the law can never be laid down in an originary way, fixed in empirical existence by reliable ‘architectonic’ principles. As a consequence, the state was never completely able to realise itself in the present but was forced to negotiate between a mythical past, the present and future promises. By way of a contrast, Hegel appears to suggest here that the state can present itself and be present as the concrete realisation of freedom. In Chapters 2 and 3 we followed through Kant’s references to ‘Verwandtschaften’. This resulted in a reassessment of the traditional binary opposition between the organic and the mechanical, whose implications are far from being negligible for questions of community. Indeed, the inextricable affinity between the two terms, their indissociability, placed in doubt any reassuring attempts to separate the sinuous organic from its heavy-handed, technical partner so as to unite it with teleological guarantees for the future success of the architectonic. In Science of Logic, Hegel identifies three forms of objectivity: the mechanical, the chemical and the teleological (1990b:402–61; 1969:711–54).

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CONCLUSION These three forms are in fact stages in the inexorable fulfilment of the teleological. In the Hegelian experiment, the chemical phase dissolves away to become a watery, ‘abstract neutrality’ acting as a medium in contact with the spirit of the teleological (1990b:431; 1969:729). Far from blocking our comfortable progress on to the teleological, Hegel’s chemical operations ferry us smoothly across to the realm of freedom.2 In Hegel’s system, there appears to be no place for the unrelieved undecidability that we located in Kant’s thinking of the tense relation between the mechanical and the organic. Kant was seen as radically problematising attempts to draw the limits, to make the incisive cut between the two. At the end of Chapter 3, we were left to consider painstakingly our concrete projects for the sublime community. Knife in hand, we were left in suspension with no clear-cut answers but an awareness of the difficulties and the dangers involved in founding systems. In The Differend, Lyotard also focuses on Hegel’s inability to accept a solution (chemical or other) that does not produce a result. He stresses that the Hegelian dialectic is informed by a teleological determination that functions like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It guarantees that the telos will emerge and present us with results: But the beginning can appear as this final result only because the rule of the Resultat has been presupposed from the beginning. The first phrase was linked onto the following one and onto the others in conformity with this rule. But this rule is then merely presupposed and not engendered. (Lyotard 1986:145; 1988b:97) Lyotard goes on to discuss the Hegelian system in terms of Auschwitz, a glaring example of non-recuperable negativity: For it is not even true, as Hegel believes, that afterward it still remains for us to chew and digest, in our lair, the ‘null and void’ of the legitimating linkage, the extermination of a determined we. The dispersive, merely negative and nearly analytical dialectics at work under the name of ‘Auschwitz’, deprived of its ‘positive-rational operator’, the Resultat, cannot engender anything, not even the sceptical we that chomps on the shit of the mind. The name would remain empty. (1986:151; 1988b:101) This passage evidently takes us on to the subject of Chapter 4 on evil. In this chapter, we had already posited that Hegel transforms negativity into a productive, positive commodity, which therefore further fuels the drive towards the realisation of spirit. On the other hand, the Kantian account of

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KANT TROUBLE Verstellung permitted us to formulate our anxieties about the distortion of the ‘Ver-’. This formula led us to questions of collective responsibility for crimes to be judged continually. Having sketched out a skeletal debate with Hegel, we turn to the triangular relation between Kant, Hamann and Hegel that concludes this book. Hamann, a much neglected and underestimated figure of the Enlightenment period, stands in for the type of approach to Kant that I have adopted here. As we will see, Hamann’s philosophical strategy is not unlike that of Derrida. The Enlightenment is often (too) straightforwardly described as the attempt to liberate human reason from all inherited, handed-down laws and principles. It is seen as permitting reason to define everything through laws that it gives and decides upon for itself, i.e. without tradition (Überlieferung).3 Those who question the nature of this reason are automatically placed on the side of the irrational.4 This is the case with Hegel’s lengthy review of Hamann’s work. This text, entitled Hamann’s Writings, is curious because Hegel takes it upon himself to defend Kant (against the so-called ‘irrational’): [Hamann] fights against the precepts of the Enlightenment. This movement, which strives to assert the freedom of speculation and the interests of spirit, together with the advance made by Kant to enforce the freedom of thought—despite his achievement remaining merely formal—is not recognised by Hamann at all…therefore he rants and raves here, there and everywhere against thinking and reason in general. (1986a:331) Hegel defends Kant and the Enlightenment project in the name of rationality, while Hamann is regarded as a threat to the progress of reason and as such must be reduced to the status of a raving ranter. Hegel has already made his firm, probably overdetermined, resistance to Hamann clear in many earlier passages of his review. For example, he gleefully quotes the disparaging opinion of one of Hamann’s best friends, Lindner. Despite being a ‘friend of long standing’ who recognised Hamann’s admirable mind and great talent, even Lindner could not avoid admitting that the ‘magus of the north’ was an ‘enthusiast’ (Schwärmer) and ‘a rigorous defender of the most crass orthodoxy’ (ibid.: 314). Using Hamann as a mediator between Kant and Hegel, this chapter aims to examine the question of revelation. This thematic focus will allow us to examine further differences between Kant and Hegel. Crudely speaking, Kant would appear to give no decisive place in his philosophical system to the necessity of revelation as he attempts to define religion solely according to the limits of reason. For Kant, revelation implies a supernatural intervention from above that is accessible to our understanding only as faith. It is therefore not

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CONCLUSION reconcilable with an investment in human reason’s ability to explain phenomena without divine aid. Hegel’s philosophy, on the other hand, can be regarded as having its roots in the principle of revelation. Far from placing us in the position of subjects of a mysterious power beyond our comprehension, revelation for him is the means by which we can gain access to God himself. Revelation is produced through purely speculative thinking and consequently, instead of being a symptom of the human inability to penetrate divine mysteries, it is proof of the power of knowledge.5 Situated between these two positions for and against revelation stands Hamann. I will be presenting him as the promulgator of a theory that can be called ‘the revelation of the impossibility of revelation’. Hamann’s philosophical contribution as the thinker ‘between’ Kant and Hegel will be shown not to provide an alternative standpoint or a third option that can form a clear-cut way out of the divisive taking of sides for or against revelation. Kant– In Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant attempts to reduce the importance of revelation. His definition of a rationalist is someone who, as his opinions respect the limits of human insight, does not and cannot deny the possibility of revelation; however, he sees the necessity of revelation only in its importance as a divine means of introducing the true natural religion (Kant 1989:823; 1960:143). True religious belief is characterised as a religion that has no secrets; consequently, divine revelation becomes merely an initial communicative device, a useful tool for promulgating a truth that the earliest of humans, the less enlightened, were otherwise not sophisticated enough to receive: And since this faith which, on behalf of religion in general, has cleansed the moral relation of men to the Supreme Being from harmful anthropomorphism, and has harmonised it with the genuine morality of a people of God, was first set forth in a particular (the Christian) body of doctrine and only therein made public to the world, we can call the promulgation of these doctrines a revelation of the faith which had hitherto remained hidden from men through their fault. (1989:808; 1960:132) The secret of revelation is the product of the human failure to see; it is necessary to render the faith visible, public, to its otherwise blind and unknowing followers. In the same essay, Kant opposes the natural religion of the rationalist to revealed religion. As we have just seen, this does not signify that the former contains no element of revelation but rather that the role it plays differs between the two types. Whereas revealed religion relies heavily on the

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KANT TROUBLE testimonies of witnesses to the revelation—it is the learned religion (gelehrte Religion)—natural religion adheres to the belief that, with time, human beings could have managed to acquire their faith without external inspiration and aid, through the sheer use of their reason. Revelation is just a useful device to speed up an in-any-case inevitable process: Such a religion, accordingly, can be natural, and at the same time revealed, when it is so constituted that men could and ought to have discovered it of themselves merely through the use of their reason, although they would not have come upon it so early, or over so wide an area, as is required. Hence a revelation thereof at a given time and in a given place might well be wise and very advantageous to the human race, in that, when once the religion thus introduced is here, and has been made known publicly, everyone can henceforth by himself and with his own reason convince himself of its truth. In this event the religion is objectively a natural religion, though subjectively one that has been revealed; hence it is really entitled to the former name. For indeed, the occurrence of such a supernatural revelation might subsequently be entirely forgotten without the slightest loss to that religion either of comprehensibility, or of certainty, or of power over human hearts. (Kant 1989:824; 1960:143) In the natural religion, the memory of the initial revelatory event can be forgotten. It is as if it never happened. Elsewhere, in a letter to Lavater (28 April 1775), Kant also describes revelation as a mere supplementary aid to human frailty. Using an image with which we are well acquainted, he claims that this device is a temporary scaffolding to be removed as soon as the solid moral edifice has been constructed: However when the teaching of the good way of life and the purity of mind in matters of religious belief…is sufficiently widely accepted as the only religion in which the true salvation of humans lies that it can maintain itself in the world, then the scaffolding must fall away as the construction is already standing by itself. (1969:26) Drawing support from Chapters 2 and 3, where the impossibility of the distinction between the supposedly temporary scaffolding provided by critique and the organic formation of the ensuing metaphysical system was established, we can posit here that this mechanical mould will also not retreat modestly as soon as the moral jelly has set. The moral edifice will never be sufficiently well grounded to permit a removal of the added support of revelation. The ethical structure will never be completed.

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CONCLUSION Following on from the passage taken from Religion Within The Limits Of Reason Alone, Kant proceeds to draw the distinction between natural religion and ‘learned religion’. Whereas the former can supposedly shake off its dependence on the tradition of revelation, this is not the case with the latter. Learned religion is characterised by its stultifying interpretative apparatus and reactionary clerical hierarchy. This form of religion needs its holy books and authoritative ministers to remind its followers, through repeated retelling, of the foundational event of divine disclosure so as to prevent the cult from disappearing altogether: [It is different with that religion which, on account of its inner nature, can be regarded only as revealed]…were it not preserved in a completely secure tradition or in holy books, as records, it would disappear from the world. (1989:824; 1960:144) In his struggle to liberate religion from the antiquated institutions of the established Church, Kant has to try to shake off religion’s reliance on writing. As he cannot dismiss the Bible, it has to become—for example in The Conflict of the Faculties—another tool (Leitzeug) to guide and lead would-be believers, to be used as a canon and not as an organon (Kant 1977a:301; 1979:61–3). That is to say, the Bible is there to discipline and restrain our reason and not as an organon, for the extension of our knowledge. The knowledge that we are offered in the organon is essentially ‘historical belief’ (Geschichtsglaube). This is a ‘simple sensory vehicle’ for our understanding, allowing us to visualise the gradual, inexorable and therefore necessary founding of the Church (1977a:302; 1979:63). This side to the Bible can be an important help to particular ages and particular individuals (who lack confidence in their powers of reasoning), but it does not necessarily belong to religious belief. These distinctions and separations of Kant are accompanied by an ongoing struggle, a juggling act, with writing that gets caught up in his battle against the rigidity, the formalism, of those aspects of the ecclesiastical repertoire that represent the ‘letter’ of the law. The ‘letter’ of the moral law requires scholarly, institutional interpretation (Auslegung) (ibid.). It is opposed to the ‘spirit’ of the law, to which the individual can gain access by him/herself. While it cannot be denied that this ‘spirit’ can be residually inscribed as writing—as letter—in the biblical texts, the main emphasis is most definitely placed on it being (re)produced through the independent operations, through the oral dictation, of reason itself (Kant 1977a:303; 1979:65). Reason’s ability to dictate the moral law to us is to be attributed to the fact that the divine law was primordially inscribed as writing (geschrieben) in our hearts (Kant 1989:764; 1960:95). However, because of Kant’s attempts to shake off

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KANT TROUBLE any reliance on the ‘letter’, this writing would have to become purely spiritual, a non-written writing. Ideally, Kant should be able to say that the moral law was originally revealed to us as a text of some sort, but we have to act as if we could have acquired this knowledge without this literary support, without this inscription—as he did when discussing revelation in general (as quoted above). However, as we can well understand after having studied the subject in Chapter 4, this is prevented by the recognition of our evil nature. As a consequence of our constitutional tendency to distort and the problems that that poses for our ability to pass judgement on human actions, the Law has been seen as revealed to us as a gift we cannot refuse. It is originarily forced upon us, engraved within us, so that to us in turn can be attributed that we have already affirmatively taken it down and recorded it (aufgenommen) within ourselves before carrying out any actual immoral or moral act. This has to be so since, knowing the propensity of human beings for evil and selfdelusion, we cannot rely on this action of accepting the Law occurring per se and occurring honestly. We must therefore continue to bear this residual revelation, this unavoidable reliance on inscription, in mind. What we can venture to say is that Kant has attempted to detach his moral religion from what he has defined as another kind of writing, the formula or ‘letter’. This he reduces to the status of parergon, along with miracles, mysteries, effects and means of grace (1989:704; 1960:48), which again means that, in effect, it is not a mere additional tool or device but rather that, as a supplement, it is indispensable. Revelation refuses to be flushed out of the Kantian system as a mere marginal detail. Hence, ideally, the importance of the ‘letter’ is reduced to the role of an (endlessly) provisional prop that, if the invisible church could ever be realised, would fall away completely: Rather one must labor to this end through continued clarification and elevation of the moral disposition, in order that the spirit of prayer alone be sufficiently quickened within us and that the letter of it…finally fall away. (Kant 1989:872–3; 1960:185) Before we turn to Hamann’s contribution to the subject of revelation, we shall take our lead from the above passage and conclude this section on Kant with an examination of his analysis of prayer. In Religion within the Limits…, Kant uses the term ‘fetish-worship’ to describe the merely external formalities of ‘simulated religious service’ (Scheindienst) (1989:852–3, 869–70; 1960:167–8, 181). Prayer for Kant is a fetishistic delusion because it attempts to clothe (einkleiden) the spirit of the continuous silent prayer that should always be taking place within us, in words and formulas (i.e. in the mere letter of prayer). As he regards language

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CONCLUSION as being often just a wordy (wortreich), meaningless babble (leerer Schall), Kant posits a prayer outside this delusive medium (1989:874; 1960:186). Children require the support of the letter of prayer, but we can and should grow out of it and dispense with it altogether (ibid.). However, he then goes on to assign an essential role to this mere parergon, to this supposedly secondary, totally dispensable ‘tool’, that of activating (Belebung) in us a suitable frame of mind (Gesinnung) for a receptive response to religious belief (ibid.). We can never liberate ourselves from our ‘childish’ reliance on the mechanics of the parergon. –Hamann– If cited at all, Hamann is best known for his criticism of Kant’s first Critique. Shortly after its publication, Hamann responded by writing ‘Metacritique of the Purism of Reason’. Here, he criticised Kant’s neglect of language, or rather, his attempt to rid reason of its debt to language in all its forms in the name of purity and autonomy.6 For Hamann, there is no reason before language (1967:201). Language is what is given to us as a revelation through the ‘Book of Nature and of History’ (1988:61). This metaphor of a book is crucial to understanding Hamann as it underlines the impossibility of reason ever being capable of autonomously engendering itself (erzeugen). Instead, nature is presented by him in ‘Brocken’ as being already revealed, as already given to us as revealed, which means that human beings can only decipher, interpret and testify to (bezeugen) its scattered gift.7 However, this is no simple chore but rather an enormous task in which the mortal witness has to imitate the actions of God. God’s act of creation (Schöpfung) leaves him exhausted, worn out (erschöpft). One evening, after a hard day’s creating, an extremely tired God spoke to mortals through his son: After God had exhausted himself through nature and writing, through creatures and prophets, through reasons and figures; and after he had spoken through his breath; he then, in the evening of the days, spoke to us through his son. (ibid.: 119) Speech always passes through an intermediary medium, is always, for Hamann, translated (ibid.: 102). This necessarily implies that the message is always in the realm of the equivalent; it never quite corresponds exactly to what one wants to say, to one’s meaning. God’s spoken speech through Christ is just one part of a more general communication that is imprinted, written, as a series of signs in the ‘Book of Nature and History’. The wonders of creation are the signs of God’s ‘infinite strength’ and majesty (1988:108). However, they are equally the products of the emptiest of divine

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KANT TROUBLE relinquishments, a most pointless giving-away (ein Beweis…der leersten Entäußerung) (ibid.). This is because, as a result of His extreme exertions, the worn-out God is almost annihilated. God is reduced to near nothingness (ibid.). 8 Furthermore, in his ‘Observations on Church Songs’, Hamann describes God’s gifts to humankind as excessive. For example, in creating Eve, God more than met Adam’s needs for a partner. Indeed, Adam was not yet capable of knowing that he wanted a woman. Equally, through His son Jesus, He offers us more than we are capable of hoping for, more than we wish for; He supersedes our demands: God anticipated his desires, he exceeded them. Faith finds this to be ever more the case with Jesus Christ. Everything that we lack, yes, more than we are capable of asking and hoping for, or desiring, is offered to us in him. (Hamann 1949–53:295, ll. 21ff) God lowers Himself, even debases Himself, in order to come into contact with humans. His communication (Mit-teilung) with humans implies that He breaks with Himself, divides Himself, so as to reveal Himself unto them. He ingratiatingly adapts Himself to such a degree that He even accommodates humankind’s sinful weaknesses and wicked prejudices: ‘God adapted himself as much as possible and lowered himself down to the level of human inclinations and concepts, even to their prejudices and weaknesses’ (Hamann 1988:71). After the first criminal couple have eaten from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, they hide their naked selves in sudden shame. Then God cries out to Adam ‘Where are you?’ and He asks Eve what act she has committed. By so doing He denies His omnipotence (Hamann 1949–53:19, ll. 5–8). He even lets Himself be challenged by the mere mortals He Himself created: Adam shouts up to God ‘Speak so that I can see you’ and God obeys his demand (Hamann 1988:101). Revelation is made possible through these degradations, denials and excessive anticipations of not-yet-articulated desires. However, revelation is also rendered impossible by these very devices. It can never be completely clear, truthful, adequate, because it is produced by God’s distortion of Himself (von dieser Verstellung Gottes) (Hamann 1949–53:19) and through the medium of translation. As we saw in Chapter 4, it is the slippery ‘Ver-’ of Verstellung that prevents us humans ever developing into perfectly autonomous, moral individuals. Hamann applies the same principle to God himself: the divine creator generously dissimulates His omnipotence so as to communicate with us humans. Unfortunately, but unavoidably, this heavenly strategy undermines His very attempts to reveal Himself to us. His feigning

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CONCLUSION becomes a distorting denial of Himself and results in an obscured revelation. Consequently, the most that is revealed to us is the impossibility of a complete revelation. A completely sunny enlightenment is denied to us. What we can see is the revelation of the impossibility of a complete revelation—and this impossibility is witnessed incompletely, inadequately. The Creator is a writer, states Hamann in ‘On Interpreting the Holy Scriptures’, and in our writing we should imitate the gestures of God (Hamann 1988:69). This obligation includes the philosopher. The philosopher is no different in this respect from the poet: philosophy is not a pure science and hence is not exempt from imitation—as it is not from borrowings, traditions, fashions (Hamann 1968:53). Consequently, in his letter to Kant, known as ‘On a Physics for Children’, Hamann tells his correspondent that he should demonstrate ‘the voluntary relinquishment’ of his superior wisdom and deny his vanity by writing a philosophical book for children (1988:126). Kant should adapt himself, lower himself, to the weaknesses of children, as God did to communicate with humans (ibid.: 127). Such a parodic imitation of God’s act of creation, of his incomplete and obscured revelation to mortals, would have the added advantage of being as ‘naive, foolish and distasteful’ as the idea of a divine book written for the attention of mere humans (ibid.: 126). It is both marvellous and absurd that God spent all His energy creating the world to try to reveal himself through it to us. The writer/philosopher must become the witness of this distorted, obscure revelation, which we cannot leave behind us—despite Kant’s unsuccessful attempts to do so. This fantastic revelation cannot be dismissed by us as a ‘childish’ weakness (see ‘Kant–’ above) but, instead, we have to simulate it incessantly. This analogy between the Creator’s act of revelation and the writer’s leads to the conclusion that the philosopher must also give up his/her claims to forge a speculative path to a completely enlightened revelation. Hamann denies us the fantasy of a successful illumination of the truth outside the permanent threat that the inevitable blind spot of Verstellung will develop into noxious deception and scheming manipulation. For Hamann, the wisest of all philosophers was the self-denying, one could say ‘hypocritical’, Socrates (the term ‘hypocritical’ will be developed later on in this chapter). In a manner similar to a hypochondriac who never stops talking about his illness, 9 Socrates never ceased to declare his ignorance. Likewise, Hamann agrees that ‘the last fruit of worldly wisdom is the recognition of human ignorance and human weakness’ (to Lindner, 3 July 1759; Hamann 1955–79, Vol. 1:355). Kant’s reaction to Hamann’s suggestion, or rather to his challenge of the ‘physics for children’, was his notorious silence (Stillschweigen), much lamented by Hamann (1988:131). The reasons for this stony reaction can be gleaned from a consideration of Hegel’s ‘review’ of Hamann.

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KANT TROUBLE —Hegel In a passage from ‘Golgotha and Scheblimini’ quoted by Hegel in his review, Hamann writes that, faced with God’s overwhelming, excessive, self-debasing gifts, the mortal is presented with a mystery. God does not demand favours, sacrifices and vows, says Hamann, but instead makes us promises (Verheißungen), gives us ‘satisfaction’ (Erfüllungen) and presents us with ‘sacrifices’ (Aufopferungen).10 His mystery does not stem so much from the noble commandment that he imposes on us as from the ‘highest good that he has offered us’ (Hamann, cited in Hegel 1986a:323). We are showered with so many good things and dazzled by his incredible double-sided display of great sublimity and base self-annihilations. God’s revelation does not come from on high; He has lowered Himself, stooped down to diffuse His message—which is therefore distorted—among us. Hence, concludes Hamann, those ecclesiastical institutions that insist on ‘authoritative despotism’ cannot be the correct medium for God’s revelation (ibid.). Such intermediaries are ‘earthbound, human and diabolical’ (ibid.). Hegel’s response to these ideas is indicative of the tone and manner of his assessment of the thoughts of Hamann. Despite having spent presumably a fair amount of time writing his lengthy (eighty-page) review, Hegel is so dismissive of Hamann’s work that one wonders why he bothered to occupy his thoughts with the subject in the first place. For example, Hegel claims that only some passages of his writings have any content. As a consequence, any publication of Hamann’s works could at best be a heavily edited collection of selected texts. This would be the most effective way to purify them, to cut out the bad ingredients that contaminate his writings (ibid.: 324). Just prior to this passage, Hegel has discussed Hamann’s views on the Church. He states that: One sees that, for Hamann, Christianity has only a simple presence in the sense that neither morals, nor the commandment to love as a commandment, nor dogma—the teaching and the belief in teaching—nor the Church are essential determinations for him…One thing that Hamann totally misrecognised is that the living reality of the divine spirit is not contained in a contraction. One must realise that it develops itself so as to constitute a world, a creation, and that this is only possible through the production of distinctions which, though they are limited, are necessary and correct for the finite life within them. (ibid.)11 This is a curiously inadequate account of what we have just seen to be a complex idea of God’s excessive presents to humans; one that most certainly cannot be summed up by the curt phrase ‘a simple presence’. God is not at all simply with us humans. Rather, when He most tries to adapt Himself to us by

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CONCLUSION ingratiating Himself into our world, He is also most absent as a God. Hamann’s idea of Christianity is also certainly no ‘contraction’. Instead of a restricted expression of religious belief, Hamann’s presentation of divine revelation suggests more an explosion, a dispersal into nature. Bits of God’s presents are found all over the place. This lack of a narrowly defined—and therefore easily located— ‘contraction’ of religion has important repercussions for human knowledge. Due to the absolute dispersal of God’s gifts, the knowledge we have is only ever fragmentary, gleaned from the cryptic signs in nature: ‘Our thoughts are mere fragments. Our knowledge is an incomplete work’ (Hamann 1988:50). This recognition of the limits of human comprehension is bound up with Hamann’s awareness of our finitude, of the provisional status of our achievements and the fragility of our philosophical systems. I suggest that Hegel’s hostility arises from his recognition of this threat to system building. Hamann breaks ranks with those thinkers who have invested their faith in method and logic as means of reaching certainty and knowledge. Therefore, to conclude, I shall now discuss Hamann’s particular method, his argumentative strategy, which shakes up philosophical conventions. Conclusion: Kant–Hamann–Hegel Hegel asserts that Hamann was incapable of writing a proper book and that his mind was incapable of expanding out of the deepest particularity into generality (1986a:280). This failure, Hegel adds, is what makes it impossible for Hamann, as he himself admits, to shed light on all the dark areas of his texts (ibid.: 276). This criticism is linked with the traditional and classical notion of obscurity. Obscurity is associated with darkness and irrationality and is consequently regarded as that element which must be transformed into light, clarity, rationality. If the presupposed illuminating conversion has not taken place, then this is regarded as a failure, betraying a lack of penetrative logic. Within such a reasoning, there is no room for thinking through the logic of an incomplete revelation of the impossibility of a complete revelation. The chance of conceiving obscurity as both the condition of possibility and of impossibility for a system is neglected. The logic that we have tried to elaborate through Kant in this book cannot be envisaged. This logic proposed residual, mysterious blind spots, which human reason cannot fathom. These were seen as facilitating and rendering necessary political and ethical projects but also as undermining the very foundations of such projects. Hegel cannot accommodate someone like Hamann, who advocates this type of logic. Indeed, paradoxically, despite the eighty pages, Hegel gives him no space at all—even when they would appear to share common ground. For example, Hegel mentions only in passing Hamann’s espousal of Koinzidenz, of the principium coincidentiae oppositorum, which, one would have thought, should have interested him more.12 This concept, which is actually borrowed

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KANT TROUBLE from Nicholas of Cusa, 13 could be seen as having at least something in common with the tensions and contradictory conflicts of a dialectic. 14 For Hamann, it describes the dynamic criss-crossing communication between the divine and the human, which should not be separated forcibly by the violent and hypostatising Scheidekunst of pure reason.15 However, instead of dealing seriously with this concept, Hegel goes straight for the ending of the ‘Metacritique of the Purism of Reason’ for additional fuel for his programmed dismissal of Hamann. The ‘Metacritique…’ closes self-reflectively with the lines: ‘I leave the reader the task of unfolding the clenched fist into a flat hand’ (Hamann 1988:212). Hegel draws the conclusion that Hamann evidently could not be bothered to develop his thoughts into a fully worked-out system, unlike God, who did make that effort: ‘For his part Hamann did not make the effort to unfold the clenched fist of truth, unlike God, if one can make the comparison’ (Hegel 1986a:330). God’s system, for Hegel, can be completely revealed. That is to say, there is no structural obscurity that would render an absolute revelation forever impossible.16 Indeed, God’s hand is an open one; He does not present us with a clenched fist; His fingers are stretched out for us to grasp so that He can pull us up to Him (ibid.).17 One can see how Hegel and Hamann are talking at cross-purposes; they are diametrically opposed—or rather, to be more precise, Hamann’s critical opposition comes not from a point of view that is external to the philosopher’s but rather is one that undermines his claim to systematic thought from within. This essential point can be illustrated by analysing a selection of quotations taken from Hamann’s texts. Addressing Kant, Hamann writes provocatively: ‘Like Socrates I believe everything that the other believes and all I aim to do is to disturb the other in his belief (Hamann 1955–79, Vol. 1:377; quoted in Hamann 1968:56). Hamann presents us here with a clear case of parasitism; he attempts to undermine a system of thought from within.18 Far from being a stranger to the object of his attention, he is closely related to it and basically sympathetic to the exertions of his philosophising hosts. Hence the importance of friendship for Hamann: it is out of the respect, dependency and sharing of friendship that serious competition and cutting criticism are generated. 19 This is clearly shown in the following letter to Kant, which, in its entirety, contains a whole range of sentiments: affection, reproach (because of Kant’s ‘silence’), bitterness, admiration. Hamann writes: Dear Friend, This name is not an empty expression for me but a source of duties and delights which are related to one another…It is necessary for us to know our weaknesses and our underlying characters sufficiently well that no jealousy or misunderstanding can come between us. Love is based on weaknesses and nakedness; love

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CONCLUSION is fertile…You will not be able to convince me—I’m not one of your listeners. Instead I’m your prosecutor who contradicts you. (letter to Kant, December 1759, in Hamann 1988:131–7) This continual laying bare of each other’s weaknesses introduces the principle of permanent revolution into the relationship. Friendship, for Hamann, consists of an incessant assessment of and the attempt to strategically undermine the adversary, the friend. This is what in turn can destroy, is permanently threatening to destroy, friendship. Hamann’s attacks on Kant come from within the friendship; they are even solicited by the ‘host’. This strange dependency is acknowledged by Kant himself in the third Critique: ‘Some persons say that men or animals that have a tapeworm receive it as a sort of compensation to make good some deficiency in their vital organs’ (Kant 1990a:§67 329; 1988a:29). There can be no cancellation of the difference between the friendly adversaries. The tension between them is maintained as the parasite supplements the other. 20 Instead of permitting a recuperative economy of differentiation and its suppression, this structure is eventually doomed to explode, to scatter those concerned or reduce them to a worn-out silence, as was the case with Kant. The description of Hamann’s method as parasitism can be reinforced by a further passage from one of his letters to Lindner: Just as nature made a present of poisonous plants together with their antidotes nearby and the Nile knows how to pair the crocodile with his murderer, Hume falls on the sword of his own truths. It only takes two of them to betray the real weakness of the whole industry behind his conclusions. ‘The last fruit of worldly wisdom is the recognition of human ignorance and weakness.’ The part which refers to our capacity to understand and know, shows us how ignorant we are; the moral part shows us just how bad and shallow our virtue is. This cornerstone is at the same time a millstone which ruins all his sophistries. (letter to Lindner, 3 July 1759, in Hamann 1955–79, Vol. 1:355, my italics) Like the double-sided pharmakon discussed above,21 what is good for and about Hume’s system is also what poisons it. Hamann aims at the inevitable weak spot, the ‘cornerstone’ within the architectonic of the system he admires. The ‘cornerstone’ of the system, the stone on which the edifice relies for its stability—even if it is based on scepticism—becomes the unsettling element in the system.22 It becomes the millstone that the system of thought carries around its neck as it tries to defy gravity, however modestly,23 how ever sceptically, by rising up from the levelling ground of ignorance.

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KANT TROUBLE Hamann tells us more about the inherent dangers of system building in the letter to Kant quoted above. He gives the famous philosopher of the ‘architectonic’ the advice that he should beware of trying to base his philosophy on solid and certain principles: ‘An axiom is preferable to a hypothesis; but the latter is not to be discarded. It should, however, be used not as a foundation-stone but as a scaffolding’ (letter to Kant, December 1759, in Hamann 1988:133). Philosophical principles can only be hypotheses. The tragedy of systems is that these temporary, provisional scaffoldings ossify and become permanent conclusions. The tentative frameworks become the (ill-founded) foundation stones on which the whole weight of the speculative edifice depends. Hamann tries to encourage Kant to think the temporary—in much the same way as we have in this book. We should not be under the illusion that the preliminary ‘scaffolding’ can be dismissively discarded as mere shell or parergon in favour of structural solidity. Indeed, Hamann insists the structure that would be the most ‘architectonic’ for us, i.e. that would most reflect our peculiar situation as philosophising but only partially enlightened mortals, would be the systematic that could build with what is unsure, fragile and temporary. In ‘Metacritique…’, Hamann quotes Archimedes’ famous phrase: ‘Give me a pivot and I’ll lift up the world’ (1988:212). For Hamann, the pivot point of Kant’s architectonic is reason’s ability to dream up a pure philosophical language all by itself. This implies the forceful exclusion of the (inevitable) mediation and conditioning influence of language in all its disparate forms. At the beginning of this chapter, we encountered an example of what Hamann is criticising here when we analysed Kant’s attempt to expel all traces of the handed-down inscriptions of revelation. This pivot point—e.g. reason’s purity—is a prerequisite for systematisation. It represents ‘the whole cornerstone of critical idealism and its tower and the balconies of pure reason’ (ibid.). It is from this point, from this artificially concentrated purity of reason, that the whole heavy edifice of the critique can be miraculously lifted. This is, however, a knotty point, a scene of struggle and exclusion that, once disclosed, undoes the system. We can sum up by suggesting that Hamann presents us with a witness to the inevitable crumbling of systems. In his texts, he testifies incessantly to their fragile artificiality. He also witnesses the impossibility of the witness providing us with the ultimate illuminating revelation. He does not give us a truth that we can build on and profit from constructively. His extremely demanding scrutiny would also ruin our attempts at a collaboration. As a final reflection, I suggest that instead of the term ‘Metacritique’ to describe the strategy of Hamann’s texts, the word ‘hypocritique’ would be more appropriate.24 This would have the advantage of highlighting the nonconstructive nature of Hamann’s works: 25 its status as an approach that is neither a critique nor a metacritique, that does not fill in the gaps of the system in question, passing judgement on its ‘errors’ and surpassing it in its

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CONCLUSION insights.26 The adoption of the term ‘hypocritique’ would also allow us to describe the dissimulation involved in Hamann’s strategy, which is something that we have not addressed in this short chapter: the masks he adopts, the pseudonyms he assumes, the ingenuous humour he displays that so impressed Kierkegaard. 27 Furthermore, it would refer back to his parasitism of the systems that he unsettles: duplicity with the friend/enemy and his repeated witnessing of the distortion of revelation and the crumbling of systems. His testimony throws light on the unavoidable blind spots that remain within a system of thought, which do not, cannot, evaporate in the brilliance of revelation. His disclosure of philosophical ‘cornerstones’ as necessary ‘millstones’ is a communication that one cannot build on in any obvious, constructive way. Hence the two responses to his ‘tidings’ that we have encountered in this chapter have been the silence of Kant, which might well conceal a tacit recognition of the validity of Hamann’s arguments, and his lengthy dismissal by Hegel as irrational, ‘against thinking and reason in general’. The above analysis of Hamann’s ‘hypocritical’ witnessing of the inevitable crumbling of structures provides us with a convenient, although temporary and improvised, resting place for this book. The systematic instability that he allowed us to focus on should not be considered an empirical feature, i.e. one that might eventually be obvious to the eye—one remembers how Kleist saw confirmatory stability and solidity when looking at the vaulted city gate in front of him. Instead, the instability we have traced is structural; it is a constitutive property of system-building itself. Systems systematically include within them the principle of their own crumbling, and this irremediable spot of obscurity, to which founders are unavoidably to some extent blind, is (at) their very foundation. For us, Hamann has not been a unique, privileged initiate into the well-guarded secrets of systematic fragility. Instead, he just confirmed what our other, so very heterogeneous, ‘themes’—architecture, Egypt, the king, ‘Verwandtschaften’ and evil—had already alerted us to. Yet even these ‘motifs’ and ‘concepts’ do not present us with a fully equipped toolbox with which we can dismantle architectonic edifices once and for all. These devices are parasitic: they belong both inside the very system they unsettle and extend invitingly outside it. They are not reliable building blocks for another, more solid structure, but only props and scaffoldings giving us temporary support in our search for a different perspective on Kant. This perspective has aimed not only at highlighting areas within his system that give him trouble in his attempt to produce an airtight account of his philosophy, but, paradoxically, also to present Kantian thought itself as troubling. Following Kleist’s lead, Kant’s philosophy is still to be seen as radical and challenging in its implications for settled ways of thinking.

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KANT TROUBLE NOTES 1

For instance, compare Kant’s and Hegel’s treatment of the issue of ‘the right to grant clemency’ (the Begnadigungsrecht). Kant is at pains to demonstrate how unjustifiable this practice is, proceeding as it does from an arbitrary, personal decision of the monarch that cannot be generalised into a rigorous law. He denies the monarch the prerogative of showing off ‘the splendour of his majesty’, even when the wrong is ‘done to himself (crimen laesae maiestatis)’, as he could by so doing ‘endanger the people’s security’. It is not for him to decide which of his two bodies is being attacked (Kant 1989:460; 1991b:145). Hegel, by contrast, celebrates this same act of royal pardon. The king is a magician who can conjure away the crime brought before him by implementing his majestic generosity: ‘The right to pardon criminals arises from the sovereignty of the monarch, since it is this alone which is empowered to actualise mind’s power of making undone what has been done and wiping out a crime by forgiving and forgetting it’ (Hegel 1986b:§282 454; 1967:186): Out of the sovereignty of the monarch flows the right to grant pardon to criminals. The putting into action of the power of the spirit to render undone what has been done and to destroy crime through forgiving and forgetting, befits uniquely this sovereignty.

(ibid.)

2 3

4

5

6

This Hegelian assumption that crimes can be wiped clean by a royal gesture could not be further apart from the Kantian analysis of talion law, which shrieks insatiably for compensation. For the definition of the mechanical as the laws of necessity and the teleological as the realm of freedom, see Hegel 1990b:441; 1969:734). For examples of this standard reading of the Enlightenment, see, for instance, Blumenberg (1983:166): ‘On the other hand the express task of the central works of the Enlightenment is to define everything according to laws they create for themselves.’ Also see Hamann (1988:206): ‘The first purification of philosophy consisted of the partly misunderstood, partly unsuccessful attempt to make reason independent of all customs, traditions and beliefs.’ This generalisation has already been problematised in our previous chapters: for instance, we have highlighted the impossibility of an originating act of foundation and Kant’s own description of his critical project as both new and recycled. We will also be demonstrating that Hamann has far more interesting things to say about Kant than is suggested in the passage just quoted. For example, in his superficial A History of German Literature, Ernst Rose writes: ‘Thus a whole new tendency was introduced by the more radical empiricists, and the Enlightenment was turning against itself. The breakthrough came with the irrationalist philosophies of Hamann and Herder’ (1960:158). See, for example, Hegel (1970:554; 1971:761): ‘God is attainable in pure speculative knowledge alone, and alone is in that knowledge, and is merely that knowledge itself, for He is spirit; and this speculative knowledge is the knowledge of revealed religion’ (translation modified). Throughout this book, I have implicitly problematised the validity of this standard criticism by focusing on Kant’s recognition of residual impurity within aesthetics, ethics and politics, which precludes the assertion of human autonomy, independent of other living beings.

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CONCLUSION 7 8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18

19 20

21 22 23

See Hamann (1988:61): ‘The Book of Nature and History are nothing other than ciphers, hidden signs that are in need of the key. The holy script inspires us to search for the key to its interpretation.’ See Shell (1996:53–8) on how for Kant God’s means ‘are actualised only by being spent’ and nature ‘shows her riches in a kind of prodigality’. Kant and Hamann have more in common, and the relation between them is more interesting, than has been traditionally recognised by commentators. For this comparison between Socrates and the hypochondriac see Hamann (1968:43). Hamann often described himself as a hypochondriac (and as resembling Socrates); see, for example, the letter to Buchholz, 7 September 1784, quoted in Hegel 1986a:304. I note the similarity with Kant here. Like Hamann, Kant also opposes the ceremonial vows pertaining to church worship (see Kant 1989:846ff; 1960:164ff) and with his example of Abraham and Isaac—discussed above—he problematises the assumption that we must make humbling sacrifices to make ourselves worthy of the moral law (Kant 1977a:333; 1979:115). On this passage, see also Colette’s excellent introduction to the French edition of Hegel (1981:17ff). The idea of Koinzidenz comes up in Hamann (1967:196; 1988:208). Both Hamann and Hegel were under the illusion that this notion originated with Giordano Bruno, when in fact it came from Nicholas of Cusa. See Nadler (1949:406) and Colette in Hegel (1981:20). See, for example, Hamann (1988:108): ‘The unity of the creator is even mirrored in the dialectic of his works.’ See Bayer (1988:12) for Hamann’s idea of ‘the life-threatening art of separation’ (lebensfeindliche Scheidekunst) and ‘the life-enhancing nuptial art’ (lebensfreundliche Ehekunst). See also Hamann (1988:76): ‘Consequently everything is divine. Every divine thing is however also human…This communicatio between divine and human idiomatum is a basic law and the key to all our knowledge and to all the visible housekeeping.’ See, for instance, the description of God in Hegel (1986f:223; 1988:111): ‘…no darkness, no colouring or mixture enters this pure light’. For Kant such an image would be a prime of the type of anthropomorphism that he wants to rid religion of (see Kant 1989:808–9; 1960:132–3). See Derrida (1990:43; 1977a:190–1) and also Derrida (1985:39; 1976a:24): The movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from the outside. They are not possible and effective, nor can they take accurate aim, except by inhabiting those structures…Operating necessarily from outside…’. See Morgan 1998 for an analysis of Kant’s and Hamann’s differing views of friendship. See Derrida (1985:208; 1976a:144–5) for an explanation of how the supplement both plugs a deficiency and yet is also in excess. It ‘insinuates itself in-the-placeof’ as well as adding itself to a pre-existing plenitude. Hamann provides us with a good example of the supplement whose complement/compliment(s) are full of potential yet are also potentially dangerous. See the section entitled ‘Egyptian groping and the duplicity of the “Ka”’ in Chapter 1 for a short exposition of the pharmakon. See Wigley (1992:251): ‘Derrida destabilises the edifice by arguing that its fundamental condition, its structural possibility, is the concealment of an abyss.’ As we saw in Chapter 2, Kant’s lowly domestic project was not immune to the dangers experienced by the builders of high-rise edifices.

219

KANT TROUBLE 24

The Greek prefix hypo- means that which is ‘under, beneath, below, deficient’, whereas meta- means ‘with, after, higher’ (Oxford English Dictionary). The term ‘Hypokrisis’ is used by Hamann himself—see the letter to J.M.Hamann in Hamann (1955–79, Vol. V:88). See also Bayer (1988:42). 25 The term ‘non-constructive’ does not imply a destructive approach to systems. Indeed, Derrida (1987c:388–9) rejects the definition of deconstruction as ‘destructive’. 26 This would also, by implication, distance Hamann’s approach to Kant from the self-professed ‘metacritical’ reading of the Böhmes discussed in the Introduction. In a similar vein, Nancy (1983:46) writes: ‘there is always hypokrisis in krisis’, 27 See Colette’s section on Hamann and Kierkegaard in Hegel (1981:37–53).

220

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Other works referred to Adler, J. (1987) Eine fast magische Anziehungskraft: Goethes ‘Wahlverwandtschaften’ und die Chymie seiner Zeit, Munich: C.H.Beck. Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1987) Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. J. Cumming, New York: Continuum Press. ——(1990) Dialektik der Aufklärung, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

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INDEX

Note: titles which appear as main entries are by Kant. Aboriginals 43–6, 63 n.85, 104 n.51 Addison, J. 16, 17 Adler, J. 135 n.1, 137 n.25 Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. 1, 3, 56 n.1, 172 Aeschylus: Oresteia 93–4, 104 n.54 affinity and affinities see Verwandtschaften Agacinski, S. 61 n.69 Aldred, C. 99 n.18 Althusser, L. 195–6 n.16 Amelunken, H. and Ujica, A. 200 n.57. Ansell Pearson, K. 133, 139 n.42 ‘Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?”’ 56 n.7, 176–7, 199 n.40 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View 60, 64 n.93, 98 n.4, 111–18, 121–5, 128–9, 137 n.22, 148, 154–5, 176–7, 180–1, 184, 196 n.22, 197 n.29 architectonic 2, 7, 24, 34, 45, 47–8, 54, 63 n.87, 76, 100 n.27, 107, 109–10, 125, 135 n.9, n.10, 140, 146, 147–50, 154, 159, 202, 215, 216, 217 architecture, 2, 3, 8, 11, 12–14, 25, 30– 55, 61 n.75, 100 n.22, 106–8, 140–58 passim, 217; the architect 9, 140, 160; demonstrative architecture 14; temporary architecture 11, 24, 55, 58, 75, n.32 and n.33, 59 n.50, 81, 92, 100 n.27, 104 n.51; ornamental architecture 13, 24 Arendt, H. 138 n.34, 190, 197 n.34, 199 n.42, n. 45 ‘Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into

Philosophy’ 104 n.49, 136 n.16, 164– 7, 169–70, 177, 193, 194 n.3 Auschwitz, 2, 203 Axton, M. 71, 72, 99 n.15, n.16, 100–1 n.31, 101 n.33 Bayard, J.-P. 10, 70–1, 99 n.13, 103 n.46 Bayer, O. 6, 219 n.15, 220 n.24 beautiful, the 20, 21, 120, 127–8, 144, 154–5, 156 n.12, 163, 182 beginning 6; see also Egypt and the Egyptians, beginnings Belsey, C. 156 n.3 Benjamin, W. 107, 118, 120, 137 n.24, 143–5, 156 n.8, n.10, 189 Beresniak, D. 8, 30, 57 n.28, 137 n.25, 139 n.41, 156 n.1 Bergmann, T.O. 115, 138 n.35 Bernal, M 12, 29, 30, 56 n.9, 60 n.59, n.60, 69 blindness, 5; blind spots 3, 4, 5, 45, 56 n.5, 106, 160, 201, 211, 213, 217 Bloch, E. 97, 107, 114, 128, 164, 194 n.3 Bloch, M. 99 n.13 Blumenberg, H. 218 n.3 Böhme, H and G. 2, 3, 16, 56 n.1 and n.4, 58 n.36, 135 n.8, 172, 220 n.26 Boullée, E.L. 64 n.95 Bruch, J-L. 165 Büchner, G. 156 n.5, 159, 199 n.44 Cassirer, E. 139 n.46, 175, 180, 196 n.20 Chatwin, B. 43, 45, 47, 62, n.83, 63 n.84, n.85. chemist, the (Scheidekünstler) 108–9, 117, 120, 122, 141, 145–7; the

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INDEX chemical 119, 128–9, 135 n.6, 137 n.24, 141, 144, 161, 178, 202; chemistry 135 n.1, 136 n.17, 145 community, the 89, 140–58, 159, 189, 192, 194, 195 n.6, 201, 203 ‘Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space’ 41–3 concursion 113, 127, 130–2, 147 Conflict of the Faculties, The 103–4 n.48, 195 n.6, 200 n.57, 207, 219 n.10 ‘Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History’ 196 n.22 Coop Himmelblau 64 n.97 Corbin, H. 10 Critique of Judgement 12–24, 33–6, 57 n.17, 58 n.34, n.36, 61 n.72, n.76, 106–7, 112, 123–35, 135 n.2, 136 n.20, 138 n.33, n.37, 139 n.39, n.40, 141–3, 148–9, 151–5, 156 n.12, 157 n.20, 158 n.23, 187, 199 n.54, 215 Critique of Practical Reason 135 n.7, 137 n.23, 161, 185, 199 n.55 Critique of Pure Reason 32–3, 61 n.68, n.72, 75–9, 85, 97, n.1, 98 n.3, n.6, 100 n.22, n.23, n.29, 108–10, 115, 117–25, 131–4, 135 n.2, n.7, n.11, 138 n.29, n.30, 140–1, 145, 149–50, 155, 156 n.9, 157 n.19, 176, 179, 181, 195 n.10, 199 n.52, 209 crystallisation and crystals 25, 63 n.86, 113, 116, 127–8, 130–1, 132, 133, 138 n.37, 140, 144 Darwin, C. 133, 138 n.38 Davidson, B. 29, 56 n.9, 69 Davis, M. 138 n.31 Dean, K. and Massumi, B. 62 n.83, n.86, 102 n.41, 112–3, 156 n.4 Deleuze, G. 63 n.87, 129–30, 138 n.36, 146; and Guattari, F. 63 n.86, n.92, 112, 139 n.44 della Porta, G. 112, 113 Demisch, H. 56 n.10 Democritus 126, 138 n.36 Dennett, D. 139 n.43 Derrida, J. 40–1, 44, 56 n.5, 57 n.16, n.19, n.20, n.25, 61 n.66, n.77, 62 n.82, 65, 66, 68, 93, 98 n.2, 98 n.6, 100 n.26, 110, 156 n.2, 157 n.20, n. 20, 158 n.25, 182–4, 189, 192, 195

n.5, 196 n.24, n.25, 199 n.56, 204, 219 n.18, 220 n.22, n.25 Descartes, R. 160–1 Désert de Retz, le 14, 17, 19, 59 n.37 Diderot, D. 96 Dimitroff, G. 91–2 Disneyland 18 dissimulation see Verstellung distortion see Verstellung doubling 7, 165–6; see also Egypt, double Draï, R. 95–6, 105 n.55 ‘Dreams of a Spirit-Seer’ 135 n.10 Edelman, B. 61 n.74 Egypt and the Egyptian(s) 5, 8, 25–30, 36, 45–7, 55, 56 n.9, 68–71, 85, 99 n.11, 106–9, 112–13, 137 n.24, 155, 157 n.22, 201, 217; beginners and beginnings 25, 60 n.57; double and doubling 25, 68, 97, 102 n.42, 154, 159; Egyptian groping around (herumtappen) 8, 66–7, 76, 78, 85, 97, 155, 219 n.21; ‘Egyptian’ metaphor, 5, 6, 11, 59 n.52, 65–8, 85, 159, 188, 202; Egyptian pyramids 12, 25, 36, 46, 61 n.76, 78, 87, 154, 157 n.22, 158 n.23 Eliot, G. 63 n.88 Enlightenment, the 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 16, 56 n.7, 98 n.4, 137 n.22, n.25, 147, 167, 172, 173, 181, 194 n.4, 204, 211, 218 n.3 Epicurus 114, 126, 138 n.36 epigenesis 129, 134, 139 n.44 Escoubas, E. 109 extraterrestrials 157 n. 18 fascism 1, 92 Festugire, P. 138 n.38 Fichte, J.G. 8 Fischer von Erlach 27 folly, the 21; follies 13, 14, 18, 25, 82, 86, 152–3, 157 n.22 Foucault, M. 172, 197 n.28 foundations and act of foundation 7, 24, 30, 34, 37, 44, 48, 75, 78, 85, 104 n.51, 148, 154, 159, 161, 166, 172, 213; foundation stone 6, 26, 37, 216; founders 6, 30, 66, 74, 76, 77, 85, 90, 97, 100 n.23.

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INDEX Fountains Abbey 14 Francfort, H. 74 Frazer, J; G. 99 n.12, 103 n.46 Freemasonry 4, 8, 25, 30, 55, 137 n.25, 156 n.1; Freemasons 11, 29, 140 Freud, S. 68, 69, 88–90, 96, 98 n.9, 99 n.13, 100 n.28, 102 n.36, 103 n.46, 107 friendship 214–17, 219 n.19 Galileo 6 Gegend 40–1, 43–4, 45, 46, 49, 62 n.80 Giedion, S. 60 n.56, n.61, 99 n.14, n.17, n.18, 100 n.22, 102 n.40, 103 n.43, 107–8, 135 n.3, n.4, n.5, 157 n.22 Goethe, J.W. 8, 103 n.43, 140–58, 157 n.14, 194 n.2; Elective Affinities 22– 4, 36–9, 48, 59 n.42, n.43, n.44, n.45, n.46, n.48, 62 n.78, 74–5, 106, 115, 135 n.1, 139 n.39, 139 n.46, 173, 184; Scientific Studies 145–50 Golding, W. 57 n.27 Gordon, D. 101 n.34 Gould, S.J. 138 n.31, 139 n.43, 157 n.15, 158 n.24 Goulyga, A. 135 n.6 Goux, J.-J. 4, 5, 56 n.8 and n.11, 60 n.62, 98 n.10 gradual, the and graduality 51, 104 n.48, 131, 132, 133, 138 n.31, 185, 193 Greece and the Greeks 26, 28, 30, 66, 85, 90; Greek model 12; Greek temple 12, 14, 25; and the origin 29, 59 n.56, 60 n.57, 78 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals 104 n.54, 182 Hamann, J.G. 3, 57 n.15, n.18, 62 n.81, 204–20 Hegel G.W.F. 5, 25–30, 31, 46, 56 n.10 and n.11, 59 n.51, n.53, n.54, n.55, 60 n.58, 61 n.67, 93, 108, 166, 198 n.37, 201–5, 218 Heidegger, M. 5, 31, 39–41, 57 n.12, 61 n.70, 62 n.80, 107, 191–2, 199 n.55 Herder, J.G. 8, 60 n.58, 139 n.47, 164, 194 n.2 Heym, S. 103 n.44 Hölderlin, F. 65, 77 Hume, D. 215 Hunt, J.D. and Willis, P. 58 n.31 and n.32, 59 n.39 and n.40

Ingraham, C. 44 Jacob, F. 63 n.91 James, H. 136 n.12 Jencks, C. 31 Jews and Judaism 69–93 Jones, I. 58 n.32, 82, 101 n.34 Jonson, B. 82, 101 n.34 judgement 33, 79, 123–4, 137 n.22, 167, 189, 190, 193; aesthetic 24, 34, 36; determinative 32, 61 n.68; reflective 55 jumps in nature see leaps Ka, the 29, 65, 71–4, 86–7, 99 n.14, 219 n.21 Kantorowicz, E. see king’s two bodies Keynes, J.M. 136 n.15 Kierkegaard, S. 217, 220 n.27 king’s two bodies, the 37, 56 n.10, 65, 71–90, 92, 97, 101 n.35, 173, 177, 194, 198 n.35, 201–2, 218 Kleist, H von 31, 38, 47–54, 63 n.89, 64 n.94, n.96, 217, 218 Koyré, A. 113, 128, 194 n.4 Lacan, J. 196 n.19 Lacoue-Labarthe, P. 92, 157 n.13 landscape gardening and gardens 8, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21, 23–4, 55, 58 n.33, 82, 123, 144, 149–55 passim, 157 n.22 see also Désert de Retz; Wörtlitz Laugier, M.A. 157 n.20 Law, the 6, 7, 60 n.52, 65, 69–70, 75–97 passim, 102 n.37, 159–60, 170, 188, 192, 196 n.19, 199 n.53, 208; lawgiver 6, 65, 78; the talion law 88– 90, 93–6, 104 n.54, 105 n.55, 164, 191–2, 195 n.15, 197 n.33, 218 n.1 leaps 51, 130, 131, 133, 138 n.31, 139 n.43 Lecture on Ethics 102 n.37, 159, 188, 191–2 ‘Lecture on Metaphysics’ 131 Lenin, V.I. 91–2 Lévi-Strauss, C. 44–5 Levinas, E. 7, 8, 94–5, 199 n.47, n.48, n.56 Lessing, G.E. 8 Logic 30, 156 n.1

236

INDEX Lovejoy A.O. 139 n.38 Lukács, G. 56 n1, 57 n.15. Lyotard, J.-F. 92, 94, 156 n.11, 203

organic 10, 25, 26, 35, 60 n.53, 100 n.24, 109, 110, 117, 120, 135 n.11, 137 n.27, 141, 142, 148–9, 151, 155; organicity 107, 116, 131, 202; organism(s) 10, 76, 112, 117, 133, 139 n.38, 142 Orgel, S. 101 n.33 origin(s) 5, 6, 7, 30, 44, 77, 85, 86, 92, 107, 113, 117, 135, 139 n.46, 148, 159, 164, 173, 188, 189, 192, 194; see also Greece and the origin

Marling, K.A. 59 n.38 matter 107, 114, 116, 118, 128, 130, 131, 133, 141 Mauss, M. 99 n.13 mechanical, the 10, 35, 116, 117, 128, 131, 133, 137 n.27, 138 n.37, 141, 151, 155, 202, 218 n.2; see also technical Menninghaus, W. 58 n.34 ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’ 107, 128, 136 n.17, 136 n.45 Metaphysics of Morals (Doctrine of Right) 59–60 n.52, 65–8, 79–90, 96– 7, 98 n.5, 102 n.38, 104 n.49, 117, 159–60, 169, 172, 195 n.15, 196 n.19, 199 n.53, 201, 218 n.1 Milton, J. 20 Mitchell, W.J. 61 n.77 Moses 77–8, 98 n.7

Parker, A. 57 n.13 Parry, G. 82, 83, 101 n.33, n.35 Payot, D. 61 n.71, 106, 123, 135 n.9, 137 n.27, 149, 158 n.23 ‘Perpetual Peace’ 104 n.52, 104 n.53, 171, 185–7, 194, 195 n.8, 197 n.35 Philonenko, A. 138 n.34, 171, 176, 177– 8 Pinker, S. 52–3, 137 n.28 Pope, A. 20, 21, 57 n.21 Preliminary Work for the Philosophy of Religion 179 Prolegomena 181

Nancy, J.-L. 137 n.26, 138 n.36, 183, 220 n.26 Nettesheim, A. von 112 Newton, I. 6, 20, 113–14, 129, 136 n.14, n.15, 194 n.3, n.4 Nietzsche, F. 9, 63 n.89, 157 n. 19 nomadic, the, nomadism and nomads 11, 45–6, 62 n.83, 63 n.86, 67, 68, 75–6, 85, 100 n.22, 155 Norbert-Schulz, C. 62 n.79 Novalis von Hardenberg, F. 193

Quatremère de Quincy 26, 46–7, 60 n.58

obscurity and obscurities 7, 30, 56, 68, 189, 213, 214; the obscure 211 Oechslin, W. 64 n.97 Oedipus 4, 5, 6 ‘On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy’ 155, 157 n.21 ‘On the Common Saying “This may be true in theory but it does not apply in practice”’ 97, 100 n.19 ‘On the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime’ 144, 152 ‘On the Presumed Right to Lie from Love of Mankind’ 174 ‘Only Possible Argument…(The)’ 125–6, 132, 138 n.35, n.36

Rabinach, A. 137 n.24 radical evil 3, 100 n.26, 102 n.36, 104 n.49, 104 n.50, 156 n.5, n.7, 159–200 Rand, A 32 Reboul, O. 196 n.21 regicide 7, 68, 84–5, 87–8, 91, 97, 98 n.8, 103 n.47, 159, 160, 195 n.15, 196 n.19, 198 n.38 Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone 93, 160–8, 174–9, 188–91, 196 n.19, n.21, 197 n.30, 205–9, 219 n.10, n.17 revelation 57 n.18, 62 n.81, 201, 204–20 passim. revolution 103 n.48, 138 n.31, 193, 194, 199 n.57, 215; revolutionary change/ events 78, 103 n.44 ‘Review of Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind’ 134 Ritter, J.W. 193 Rogozinski, J. 100 n.25, 138 n.29, 195 n.7 Roqué, A.J. 136 n.13

237

INDEX Rose, E. 218 n.4 Rousseau, J-J. n.5, 57 n.14, 86, 104 n.51, 169–81, 185, 187, 195 n.10, 195 n.10, 196 n.21, n.22, 197 n.27, n.35, 198 n.36, n.37, n.38 Saint, A. 61 n.69 Schiller, F. 162–3, 182 Schwaller de Lubicz, R.A. 99 n.18 Shakespeare, W. 20; All’s Well that Ends Well 3–4; Coriolanus 183; Hamlet 72; Henry V 197 n.35; Henry VI 99 n.16; King Lear 99 n.16; Macbeth 102 n.36; Richard II 99 n.16; The Merchant of Venice 95, 105 n.55 Shell, S. 103 n.45, 114, 136 n.21, 157 n.18, 219 n.18 Simmel, G. 55 Socrates 4, 211, 214, 219. Sophocles 4, 6, 56 n.9, Sphinx, the 4, 5 Starobinski, J. 169, 196 n.18 Stoker, B.: Dracula 91–2 Stowe 18 sublime, the 20, 21, 36, 61 n.76, 109, 127–8, 139 n.40, 143–4, 151, 153–4, 156 n.12, 157 n.13, 158 n.25, 163, 182, 203 Switzer, S. 18 talion law see Law technical, the 25, 34, 35, 76, 100 n.24, 110, 142 Temple of Solomon, the 10, 54, 150, 156 n.1

Theory of the Heavens 114–15, 129, 153, 157 n.18 Tillich, R 199 n.46. touchstone, the (Probierstein) 68, 98 n.3, 119–20, 133, 136 n.22, 141, 161, 176, 177, 185 two bodies see king’s two bodies Uexküll, J. 64 n.92, 147 Vaudeville, B. 63 n.90 Verstellung, die 102 n.36, 162, 188–90, 194 n.1, 195 n.14, 210–11, 217 Verwandtschaften, die (affinities) 3, 7, 10, 23, 34, 38, 59 n.47, 64 n.93, 106–58 passim, 159, 161, 162, 169, 178, 187, 188, 192, 194, n.4, 202, 217 Vidler, A 11, 12, 57 n.29, 58 n.30 von Buttlar, A. 18 Wahl, J. 62 n.80 war 168, 186, 197 n.35 Welchman, A. 139 n.42 Wellmer 56 n.2 Wigley M. 24, 33, 220 n.22 Wilson, J. 101 n.32 Winckelmann, J.J. 26, 28, 60 n.58, n.60 Wordsworth, W. 200 n.57 Wörlitz 18, 59 n.37 Zammito, J.H. 60 n.64, 136 n.17, 138 n.32, 139 n.43, n.47 Zizek, S. 62 n.78

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