The Nature of Political Theory

256 The Nature of Political Theory

corresponds a mode of presenting a universe, and one mode is not translatable into
another’ (Lyotard 1999: 128). Phrase regimens coincide with nothing.
In articulating his theory of the differend, Lyotard does though introduce a uniquely
idiosyncratic idea—derived from Kant’sCritique of Judgement—which enables a pro-
founder grasp of the differend (Lyotard 1994). When Kant focused on aesthetics
something unusual took place. Aesthetic judgement was encapsulated in a free play
of imagination and understanding. Contemplating aesthetic beauty involved both
imagination and understanding, in other words a form of subjective universality—it
was a conceptualism that remained rooted in subjective feeling.^29 In his ‘Analytic of
the Sublime’ Kant also distinguished the sublime from the beautiful. The concept of
the ‘sublime’ basically defied any sense of aesthetic proportion. In the sublime the
imagination and understanding were both engaged (as in the beautiful), but unlike
the beautiful in art the sublimeremainedincomprehensible. Beauty was also limited
by form, but the sublime was regarded as limitless. Further, whereas the beautiful
could and often was represented, the sublime by contrast exceeded representation
and often did violence to human sensibilities and imagination. The sublime there-
fore was not necessarily pleasurable for Kant, in fact it could be painful because it
was so indeterminate. Our imaginations were engaged and awestruck, but neither
our imaginations nor our understanding could actually grapple with it. Whereas the
aesthetically beautiful could educate and civilize humans, the sublime could have
the effect of isolating humans by revealing the incomprehensible and indeterminate
nature of things.
Kant does go on to distinguish types of sublimity, however I leave this aside, suffice
it to say that Lyotard finds a direct analogy in Kant’s concept of the aesthetic (and
more particularly his concept of the sublime) for his own perspectivist epistemology
of the differend. The aesthetic is a struggle to bring together (in a subjective manner)
our imagination and understanding. There is, in other words, a separation, or even
chasm, between our faculties; any resolution remains subjective. Further, there is
nothing objective or external founded in aesthetic judgement. It remains in the sphere
of subjective taste. In the sublime, however, a chasm opens up and remains open. The
differend is such an epistemological chasm. The sublime is thus directly analogous,
for Lyotard, to the unbridgeable difference between phrase regimens. They disclose
the unrepresentable and unpresentable. There is no ‘metanarrative’ or ‘metalanguage’
that can surmount this. A postmodern incredulity towards metanarratives—where
no metalanguage or metaphrase exists—is thus seen as equivalent to Kant’s feeling of
the sublime.
The effect of this conclusion is twofold. First, Lyotard suggests thatwheneverwe
make judgements (using phrases) we are in exactly the same position as Kant’s agent
experiencing beauty. We have no universals or pre-understanding to go on. Our
rationalizations are always completely removed from the world and incommensurable
with other rationalizations. In fact, the ‘world’per semakes no sense, we only have
phrases. There are no foundations to appeal to settle the matter, unless we simply force
the other to adopt our ‘phrase’. Lyotard repudiates any idea of a ‘sensus communis’.
Every consensus is just another imposed ‘phrase regimen’. He completely rejects, for