For Kant, there is first an aesthetic pleasure that accompanies the perception of an object,
but the pleasure tells us nothing about thecontentof the object. We thus apprehend theform
not thecontent. The aesthetic pleasure remains, crucially, asubjectivefeeling, yet, it is, at the
same time, judged as necessarily connected with the perception of the object. It is almost a
noumenalding an sichof the object. Kant is insistent that one cannot logically move from
the conception of the formtoits pleasantness. We can only know theformalproperties.
Nothing is therefore known of thecontent, judged as beautiful; but, importantly, it is still
asserted that,a priori, there is a feeling of pleasure connected with it in the subjective
consciousness. Kant identifies this aesthetic subjective feeling as nonetheless based on the
‘finality’ that the representation of the object possesses for our faculty of knowledge.
Most judges, Lyotard thinks, do this most of the time anyway.
As one commentator notes, ‘postmodernism abandons all sense of historical continuity
and memory, while simultaneously developing an incredible ability to plunder history and
absorb whatever it finds’, Harvey (1989: 54).
See, for example, Rosenau (1992: 14 and 16, n.11); Harvey (1989: vii); Rengger (1992: 564).
‘A political theory delineates the parameters of a way of life, defending the limits it must
accept in light of the possibilities it realizes. It provides answers against which we can
test ourselves while rethinking assumptions and demands...In this respect Nietzsche is a
disappointment. But perhaps this deficiency is also an advantage in some respects. For it
stimulates thought about the presumptions within which contemporary political discourse
takes place without requiring the thinker to commit oneself in advance to a single theory
of politics’, Connolly (1988: 168).
In fact he sees similar logic at work in Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Luce
Irigaray, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, see Connolly (1995: 25).
The ‘either/or’ mentality is taken, in fact, by Connolly as ‘masculinist’, Connolly (1991:
53)—whatever that means.
Rorty remarks that a ‘critical vocabulary which revolves around notions like “rational”,
“criteria”, “argument” and “absolute” is badly suited to describe the relation between the
old and the new’, Rorty (1989: 49). There are some parallels here with some of the work of
John Gray, see Gray (1993: 259ff.).
There are undoubtedly individuals who would die for such ideas, but they are rare. Not
many of us, I think, have the capacity to say ‘this principle is something I made up and
it has no universality whatsoever, but I will still sacrifice my life for it’. In Rorty solidarity
sounds more like a plea.
It is not surprising here that Rorty expressed some satisfaction at Rawls’s move to political
liberalism, although he would obviously have liked him to go a few steps further, see Rorty
(1989: 78ff.).
Although the writings of Christopher Norris have continuously and quite touchingly car-
ried on believing in Derrida’s real Enlightenment and philosophical qualifications, against
all comers, see, for example, Norris (1987: ch. 6).
‘There is clearly a story within a story in this transition or shift from the Derrida of 1966
to the Derrida of 1986, which would seem to have much to do with his move from a
confrontation with structuralism to his discovery or rediscovery of Emmanuel Levinas.
The grammar of responsibility, which guides Derrida’s response...has a heavy Levinasian
tone’, Schrag (1997: 14, n. 3).
It is worth noting that Rorty does think that Foucault can be assimilated into a genuine
postmodern liberal perspective.
