The texts collected in the present volume were written, or delivered as lectures on the basis of notes, during the last years of de Man's life, between 1977 and 1983. With the possible exception of the earliest text2_" The Concept of Irory"(1986)—all as these essays and lectures were produced in the context of a project that we might call, for shorthand purposes, a critique or, better, a" criticallinguistic analysis,” of “aesthetic ideology." This project is clearly the animating force of all the essays de Man produced in the early 1980s—and not just those explicitly concentrating on philosophical aesthetics to be included in the book

1. Last entry in de Man's notebook for the last class he gave in a seminar on the topic" Théorie rhétorique au 18ème et 20ème siècle"(fall 1983). 2. I say" possible" here because" The Concept of Irony," which is on Fichte and Schlegel, nevertheless covers part of the subject matter de Man planned for the seventh chapter of his projected book Aesthetics, Rhetoric, Ideology:" Aestheticism: Schiller and Friedrich Schlegel's Misreading of Kant and Fichte." See note 4.