The House That Kant Built by Bernard Edelman (review)

HUMANITIES 219 However, Stewart is undoubtedly right to see in the ephemeral nature of graffiti a shiftin society that leaves 'value reservoirs' as disappearing acts. Fekete also contributes an article to the volume, which in spite of its daunting title, 'Vampire Value, Infinitive Art, and Literary Theory: A Topographic Meditation,' does provide a good overview of the value debate. Fekete's own position is to propose a retheorizing of aesthetic value and aesthetic autonomy. In this he underlines the most common theme of the volume that there is value in the art/aesthetic as it establishes itself in a 'field' or 'economy.' He also proposes a research program 'to clarify the concepts ofliterary value and evaluation in relation to a general theory of value' (74). The main threat to the program resides in what Fekete cleverly calls vampire value. The perspective will be familiar from the writings of Jean Baudrillard. Here value becomes an operator in a parasitical system or simulacrum. This is the postmodernism which Fekete hopes to outlive. The irony, however, of the collection is that the 'devil' is not so much within but surrounding the text. The jacket of the book reproduces Alex Colville's brilliant painting Pacific, a work that in its juxtaposition of power (the gun) and fashion (the table and man) signals the nihilism of America that voids the question of value. The theoretical reflection of this postmodernism is also found in the last essay by Arthur Kroker, 'Panic Value: Bacon, Colville, Baudrillard and the Aesthetics of Deprivation.' Kroker's comment on Baudrillard that he 'has drunk deeply of Nietzsche's insight that "value" is the dynamic discourse of nihilism, and to speak of the "recovery of the question ofvalue" is only to assent to the language of deprivation' (183) is also a summary of his position. Here the work of Bacon and Colville does not lead to values but rather indicates the nihilism of a culture whose final success has been cynically to persuade us of 'artistic value' - a view I share. Despite the internal contradictions I have mentioned, the range of these thoughtful and forceful essays gives the collection its value. (DAVID COOK) Bernard Edelman. The House That Kant Built. Translated and introduced by Graeme Hunter Canadian Philosophical Monographs 9, Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy. v, 68. $9.50 paper There is something incongruous in circumspect, well-argued, and carefully documented critiques of the Enlightenment ideals of reason, planning, and calculation: such studies pay tribute, through theirform, to . the object of their attack. Not so this book. It is a beautifully written lyrical satire, not a scholarly argument but a powerful synthesis of critical intent 220 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 andliterary form. Still, at issue is a certain thesis. And so, with apologies, I shall pay no further attention to Edelman's elegance of style or his lush metaphors, and concentrate on content. This is an analysis of the person and character of Immanuel Kant, his understanding of human nature and the regimen of life that flowed from it as he set out to realize within himself the high Enlightenment ideals, only in the end to become stunted, narrow, lifeless. The book begins with an evocation of Louis Capet's execution and the delirium ofthe crowd: 'Republicans, the blood ofa king brings happiness' (7). Kant, says Edelman, read this and trembled with horror. 'Why was the tribunal of reason so obstinately silent, while actual history ran riot?' (5). And so reason, not onlypowerless to preventthe bloodbaths but itself guilty of them, withdraws to design a shelter, a house of law, 'a tranquil place, a place obedient to reason ... a home composed, purified and withdrawn' (9). From here must be ejected the cannibalism of carnal pleasure; woman must be domesticated, subjugated; a morbid economy of male strength must be enforced. The child must be drawn to the father: 'Educating is liberating the child from his mother, making hard what was soft' (33). 'Having come thus far, the educator (even Kant himself, wistfully) is moved to think of the cruelty of the world. "Of what use is a home full of disenchanted children and a loveless wife? Of what use is constructing a...