Beauty as a four-fold paradox 
Alenka Zupančič 
In this study we will attend to the problem of the beautiful as it is posed in Kant's philosophy, where it is closely associated with the problem of the 
form. First of all, however, it is appropriate to make a problem out of the 
beautiful, that is to say, to point out the »problematical« status of the 
beautiful. 
The paradox of the beautiful arises above all from the fact that »scientific 
analysis« is of no use on this territory. Beauty does not stand the definition as 
long as the latter means positive determination of what makes something 
beautiful. - If such a definition of the beautiful were available, we would have 
missed what we call the »specifics of art«: by following certain rules or 
instructions anyone could produce beauty. The whole prestigious status, charm 
and spell of beauty is due to its quality of something that cannot be 
»captured«, to the fact that it cannot be reduced to the »actual« description of 
a certain object. 
Nevertheless, beauty is something we discuss extensively, make judgments 
about it, and try to articulate theoretically one way or another. We are 
concerned here precisely with the possibility of a theoretical articulation of the 
beautiful - bearing in mind that beauty eludes the fundamental apparatus of 
theory, i.e. the concept. One of the most productive attempts to pursue such a 
theoretical articulation is Kant's analysis of the beautiful, in which the very 
impossibility of the classic definition of the beautiful is taken as a positive 
starting point of the theory. As we are about to see, Kant tries to approach the 
beautiful in four steps, with four paradoxical definitions, the essential part of 
which is »the signifier of the lack«, the word without. (Beauty is »a liking 
without interest«, »universality without concept«, »purposiveness without 
purpose«, and »necessity without concept«.) The essential twist that Kant's 
analysis achieves is his conception of the lack, which is not tied only to our 
knowledge of the beautiful, but turns out to be in some intimate and 
irreducible relation to beauty itself. This is not simply the question of »some« 
lack. If we look a bit closer at the definitions quoted above, we will soon 
discover that with formulations as »X without Y« Kant always deprives the 
first concept (X) exactly of that (Y) which is regarded as its essential 
characterization. - Is it not the essence of every liking that it is bound with 
interest, is it not the essence of universality that it is based upon concept, is it 
128 Alenka Zupančič 
not the essence of purposiveness that it has a purpose...? On the grounds of 
these paradoxical »descriptions« we could formulate Kant's »project« in the 
following way: we can achieve the qualities of the beautiful only by way of 
following the effect of beauty itself on these very qualities - what happens to 
a liking when it is tied to the beautiful, what happens to universality when it is 
tied to beauty...? This also represents the mode of our reading of Kant's 
theory. 
* 
Although the beautiful as a domain of the aesthetic is on the one hand defined 
as the third link, the link between theory and practice, it could, on another 
perspective, be read as the fourth moment: if the first three are sensibility, 
understanding and reason. Kant's theory of the aesthetic is based upon the 
concept of sense, but nevertheless it cannot be reduced to it. Aesthetics in the 
third Critique is not the theory of sensibility. When Kant introduced the 
concept of »transcendental aesthetics« in the first Critique he pointed out the 
double use of the word aesthetics. The difference between aesthetics as a 
theory of sensibility (which is the original meaning of the Greek aisthesis and 
which is at stake in Critique of Pure Reason) and aesthetics as a theory of the 
beautiful or a theory of judgements of taste is in the following: for sensibility 
as such it is possible to find a priori principles (space and time as a priori forms 
of sensibility) but this is altogether impossible for »sensibility« appearing in the 
phenomenon of the beautiful (a priori conditions of the beautiful cannot be 
defined). This is the main problem of the third Critique-, what do we base the 
discourse of the beautiful on if there is no defined (a priori) concept, law or 
purpose to rely on. - If, therefore, we can neither rely on theory nor practice, 
how do we then define the phenomenon of the beautiful? In the following 
pages we will follow Kant's analysis from § 1 to § 22, in which Kant tries to 
approach the definition of the beautiful in four steps, each representing a 
peculiar paradox. 
»Pure pleasure<r or primacy of the form 
A formulation as »pure pleasure« or »pure liking« (Wohlgefallen), 
Wohlgefallen without any interest, seems to be in general - and especially in 
terms of Kant's philosophy - contradictio in adiecto. Did not Critique of 
Practical Reason teach us exactly that the essential component of any pleasure 
is its being pathological, i.e. its being »non-pure«? Nevertheless, Kant uses this 
very formulation for the first definition of the beautiful, the definition in 
terms of quality. Pure pleasure, liking without any interest, without any desire 
in the common sense of the word, is the first condition for aesthetic 
judgements to exist at all and for »critique of taste« not to be dissolved into 
the puddle of de gustibus non est disputandum. Pleasure in the beautiful is 
pleasure without interest, enjoyment or representation (Vorstellung) of a 
concept. First of all, this means that we can comprehend and judge an object 
Beauty as a four-fold paradox 129 
aesthetically only when its existence is put in parentheses. - Namely, Kant 
defines interest as liking that is associated with representation of existence of 
an object. I am »interested« in something if its existence means something to 
me. I do not like only the object but also its existence. If an object is pleasant 
for me and evokes contentement in me, this is usually connected with desire 
for that object. Pure pleasure, though, is pleasure that is not the pleasure of 
satisfaction. The fact that our senses or our reason are pleased with e.g. a piece 
of art does not make it beautiful. The beautiful is not what our senses revel in, 
nor what our understanding would enjoy, nor is it connected with reason's 
concept of the good. Although a piece of art could consist of all three 
components, what we call the beautiful cannot be reduced to any of them. 
After Kant develops the difference between the concept of the good, the 
sensation of the agreeable and pure liking, the only sensation connected with 
the beautiful, he concludes: » Taste is the ability to judge an object, or a way of 
presenting it, by means of a liking or disliking devoid of all interest. The object 
of such a liking is called beautiful.«1 
There are different readings of this thesis of Kant. For example, Manfred 
Frank2 attaches it to Sartre's thesis from L'imaginaire, in which Sartre 
emphasizes that the aesthetic object is a kind of irréel. There are the results of 
brush strokes, the saturation of canvas with colour, the grained structure of 
canvas, the gloss with which we cover the colours, which are real. But all this, 
says Sartre, does not at all form the object of aesthetic evaluation. On the 
contrary, the »beautiful« is a being which is not offered to perception and 
which is in its own nature separated from the world. The artist's aim is to 
create a totality of real shades of colour, which enable the manifestation of 
that unreal. 
According to this interpretation the aesthetic judgment does not refer to a 
»real« exhibit, an object, but to something in this object that cannot be 
reduced to its »existential description«. Attractive as this interpretation may 
seem, its range is nevertheless rather limited. It offers no basis, on which we 
could conceptualize that »unreal« and above all its relation to the subject that 
»evaluates aesthetically«. We are only told that Beauty is an X, some 
paradoxical surplus of all the material and »real«, of everything that can be 
»objectively« stated e.g. about the quality of a painting. Above all this 
interpretation cannot save Kant from the accusation of not being consistent in 
his theory. The essential question remains: what authorizes Kant suddenly to 
introduce the sensation of pleasure as pure, non-pathological, when all his 
previous theory has demonstrated quite the opposite? In comprehending the 
beautiful, how could we eliminate the sensibility of our senses, which are in 
fact our only approach to the beautiful? Does Kant not require an 
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, Hackett, Indianapolis 1987, p. 53. 
2 . Manfred Frank, Einführung in die frühromantische Ästhetik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M, 1989. 
130 Alenka Zupančič 
impossiblility? Is there not a lie of some artificial »spiritualization« hidden in 
this requirement? And does Kant's insistence on pure pleasure not mean that 
before each comprehension of the beautiful one should go through an infinite 
process of purification of one's senses and one's »pleasure«? 
In this respect, Lacan's interpretation is much more farreaching, i.e., his 
commentary on Antigone, which is not just a commentary on Antigone but 
also a commentary on Aristotle's and Kant's aesthetics. 
Let us take turns. At first Lacan avoids the slippery and often obscure field of 
distinctions between the real and the unreal by establishing some other 
distinction, a split between reality and the real, between existence and 
ex-sistence. From this perspective, beauty has at most to do with the real, and 
at the same time, it cannot be something attained through description of 
reality. This is not only a correction in terminologically-cosmetic terms. The 
real is - as opposed to the unreal - concept; concept in terms of which also 
that mysterious X gets its name: objet a, the object-reason of desire. Hence 
one can derive the subject's basic relation to the beautiful, a relation which is 
guided by the dialectic of desire. In Lacan's perspective, it is the subject's 
desire that plays an essential role in the »sensation« of the beautiful. But the 
way - and this can be seen as Lacan's interpretation of Kant's pure 
Wohlgefallen - taken by Lacan in his commentary on Antigone is the very 
way of distinguishing between two components of desire: desire for something 
and »pure desire«, desire in »pure condition«, the way, if we may say, of 
purification of desire. 
»By crossing this field, this area, the ray of desire is here reflected and 
refracted, thus giving us this extraordinary effect, this most basic effect that 
we call the effect of the beautiful on desire. It is to see what duplicates desire 
on its way. We can by no means say that by comprehending beauty, desire 
completely fades away. Desire goes its own way, but here it is more than 
anywhere else accompanied by the feeling of deception, in some way displayed 
by the field of ray and glitter, into which desire has allowed itself to be 
mislead. On the other hand, there is its non-refracted, but reflected, 
rebounded unrest, about which desire knows that it is as real as possible. But 
there is no object anymore. From there stems two sides of nature or fading 
away of desire in view of beauty, on which some scholars insist, such as 
Thomas Aquinas, whom I previously quoted. On the other hand the 
breakdown of every object originates here, the breakdown on which Kant's 
analysis insisted in Critique of Judgement.« 
Lacan thus interprets Kant's insistence on the breakdown (of existence) of any 
object when we enter the territory of beauty. Concerning the problems and 
questions which were revealed above and were brought forth by Kant's 
introduction of pure, non-pathological liking, the following Lacanian emphasis 
is essential: this breakdown of an object or of our interest is already an effect 
Beauty as a four-fold paradox 131 
of the beautiful. Not that we must purify our »pleasure« of all pathological 
impulses and inclinations, interests, to be able to sink in pure contemplation of 
the beautiful. On the contrary, this pureness of pleasure or desire is already a 
sign that we have encountered the beautiful, is already »the effect of the 
beautiful on desire«. Kant alone emphasizes that pleasure is the effect of and 
not the cause for our comprehension of beauty (cf. 9). An »indicator« of our 
dealing with beauty is the very fact that we cannot enjoy (uživati) it, that we 
cannot consume (užiti) it. We are dealing with beauty only when it is 
accompanied with the threat »do not touch the beautiful...!« in our conscience. 
This is the moment completely overlooked in Derrida's interpretation3, which 
is preoccupied with the search for »clean cuts«. So the formulation used by 
Derrida himself, namely »fascination without desire«, is for him merely an 
inscription of the clean cut on the way of searching for a coherence of the 
system. And it leaves aside the possibility that fascination may actually have 
such, that is the rebounding effect on desire: that I can never come too close to 
what really fascinates me, that beauty is something to which the subject 
himself responds by a »clean cut«, that a clean cut is not merely a 
theoretically-metaphysical instrument. 
Furthermore, Kant's insistence on the suspension of existence may be related 
to what we could call »primacy of the form« and to a specific meaning of the 
form itself. The beautiful is a form. However, a form, »the pure form of a 
liking«, does not here mean the shape (which is meant in some other 
contexts), but, as M. Frank has already pointed out, above all the absence of 
every consideration of the existence of matter of representation. Or, more 
precisely, it is exactly what is left if we, for example, subtract all - if we may 
say so - that can be »seen« in the picture. Form is not simply the (beautiful) 
shape of matter, it is more than this: it is something that »deprives« matter of 
the character of materiality and an object of the character of object, the 
character of something accessible. We may say that it is the object which has 
lost the character of being object, that is beautiful. The form is not something 
beyond matter but matter itself which has lost its materiality - it is 
»sublimated matter«. Here is this coexisting attraction and repulsion of the 
beautiful: what seems to be a beautiful body, an enticing body, turns into, 
turns out to be »beauteous body« - and exactly in the sense we use 
formulation luminous body. The body is here only to make light visible. The 
turned-off »bulb« is »the bulb«, but the turned-on »bulb« is no longer »the 
bulb«, it is light itself, which, such as it is, keeps us at a distance - if we touch 
it, we meet only hot matter, too hot for us not to be burnt. In this sense beauty 
is »the breakdown of an object« and in this sense Wohlgefallen, which is dealt 
with in beauty, is pure, it is without any interest in the object - for, as Lacan 
says, »there is no object anymore«. It may not be irrelevant to note that Lacan 
3. Jacques Derrida, La včritčen peinture, Flammarion, 1978. 
132 Alenka Zupančič 
here uses the word object in its usual sense and not of objet a. The words 
above could also be understood like this: objet a »frees itself«, distracts itself 
from every particular object with which it may otherwise inhabit the subject's 
fantasy. The moment of catharsis is also connected with this, the moment 
which cleanses our feelings of all that is »pathological« - that is of fixation to 
any particular object which is supposed to promise satisfaction. Antigone is 
beautiful but she is not the »object of lust«. 
Universality without concept, necessity without concept 
A further problem that Kant tackles in his analysis of the beautiful is the 
problem of universality. What is in my aesthetic judgment that makes it more 
than mere opinion? This is not a small dilemma. It seems to be insoluable in 
terms of Kantian paradigm, as is stated in Critique of Pure Reason. If we start 
with a division between objective and subjective judgments in the strict sense, 
then the case is so to say lost. Aesthetic judgments cannot be objective 
judgments since that would mean that they arise from pure concepts of 
understanding as a priori concepts. If this were true, it would be possible to list 
in advance all conditions that something has to satisfy in order to be beautiful. 
Aesthetics would become science and art mere technical implementation, 
realization of pure concepts. But if aesthetic judgments were merely and 
purely subjective, then they would lose all validity. They would not be 
judgments anymore but expressions of opinion. De gustibus non est 
disputandum. Aesthetic judgments are neither a priori nor a posteriori, they 
come neither from law (or concept) nor from (past) experience. Then what 
are they? Kant's solution to this problem is extremely elegant. It simply 
assumes that besides the a priori universality of the law, there also exists some 
other universality - symbolic universality, the universality of »symbolic pact«. 
For Kant, the judgment of taste is an unique act of interpellation: 
»He must not call /the object/ beautiful if he means only that he likes it. Many 
things may be charming and agreeable to him; no one cares about that. But if 
he proclaims something to be beautiful, then he requires the same liking from 
others; he then judges not just for himself but for everyone, and speaks of 
beauty as if it were a property of things. That is why he says: The thing is 
beautiful, and does not count on other people to agree with his judgement of 
liking on the ground that he has repeatedly found them agreeing with him; 
rather, he demands that they agree. «* 
The judgment of taste »lays claim to the agreement of everyone«, »it does not 
postulate everyone's agreement, it merely requires this agreement, as instance 
of the rule«.5 Derrida's reading of Kant sees in this a kind of simple 
»legalization of suppression«, which is of course in itself »bad« enough, and 
4. Kant, p. 55. 
5. Ibid, p. 59, 60. 
Beauty as a four-fold paradox 133 
therefore he does not try to discover the theoretical interest of the mentioned 
Kant's assumptions. (Except, of course, that »universality without concept« is 
again a clean cut, incorporated in the word without.) Here we will rather start 
from the question, what is in this »clean cut« which separates universality 
from the concept and a priori laws that may be of theoretical interest? As 
already mentioned, we do not arrive at the universality of judgment of 
something as beautiful on the basis of (former) experience, nor on the basis of 
the a priori concept of the beautiful, but through a kind of speech act. Thus 
we arrive at the moment we usually refer to as »how to do things with words«. 
In this context Urteilskraft could be translated quite literally as power of 
judgment, power of judgment to constitute a symbolic universe of validity of 
this judgment. 
But the »speech act« that is characteristic of aesthetic judgments is quite 
specific. Let us look at it closely. Judgment of taste is a demand with which 
the subject refers to others. Thus it has to contain in its own form a place, the 
place of all others, wherein every singular subject has to recognize himself. 
This is, says Kant, the constellation »eines jeden fur jeden anderes«. -
Although we can draw from this the conclusion that everyone is with his 
judgment the first Judge (which means in other words that there is no first 
Judge) the whole thing is worth reconsidering. It is not simply a particular 
subject, a particular »1« that utters the demand, wherein all the others have to 
recognize themselves. On the contrary, »every one«, everyone that utters the 
judgment »this is beautiful«, already recognizes himself as the addressee of this 
very demand as the demand of the Other, of some symbolic place. The 
essential step we have to make is then in the following: it is not that I as I 
»impose«, that I attribute my judgments to others. In my judgment I myself 
already speak as the Other, I do not refer to »all the others« with my demand, 
but with the demand of the Other himself, the Other as the place, on the basis 
of which universality of judgments of taste is possible and only on the basis of 
which may I ask for consensus from all the others. Let us try to explain this by 
means of Kant's examples. Kant resolutely insists that judgments such as »1 
think this is beautiful« or »this is beautiful for me« are contradictio in adjecto. 
I may say »1 like this« but I cannot say »this is beautiful for me«. If something 
is beautiful, says Kant, then it is beautiful precisely because it is not beautiful 
for me as a particular subject. The aesthetic judgment is therefore constituted 
in the transition from 
»/like this« 
to 
»This is beautiful«. 
We can immediately see what happens by means of this transition: the 
judgment is »desubjectivized«. The inscription of the subject of the 
annunciated disappears, but the subjectivity is »removed« to the predicate (the 
134 Alenka Zupančič 
beautiful is the subjectively-universal concept). And this is how 1.) the subject 
of annunciation, the Other and 2.) the empty place, where »all the others« 
may recognize themselves as agents of annunciation, are inscribed in the 
judgment. Of course, the subject of annunciation is inscribed in the judgement 
precisely as absent. The statement seems to come from »nowhere«, and that is 
why (every) addressee can recognize himself as the source of it. It is now time 
to answer the question of what legitimizes my judgment that something is 
beautiful: the assumption that this is beautiful to the gaze of the Other. It is 
not that in my judgment I take into consideration »all the others«, what the 
others will say. I take into consideration the Other as a symbolic entity which 
only enables me as I to utter the universal judgment »this is beautiful«. What is 
in the beautiful thing »given to the universe«, is the way the look of the Other 
has already been inscribed in it. This answer is still partial. In the first place, it 
refers to the linguistic mechanism which makes this paradoxical universality 
possible where there is neither concept nor law. It has to be read together with 
Kant's fourth definition of the beautiful, which says that the beautiful is 
»necessity without concept«. Here Kant goes into the detail of that moment of 
the second definition (»universality without concept«), which says that in our 
judgment we demand consent from others. Kant lays stress on »exemplary« 
necessity, necessity that stems from a particular example from which I in my 
judgment make an instance of the rule. In the final analysis, it is only an 
example - entirely different from an object - that makes transmission possible 
in the category of the beautiful.6 And it is the example that is the inscription 
of the Other, constitutive of the symbolic place, which gives my judgment 
more universal validity and opens the dimension of truth in the register of 
discourse about the beautiful. 
It is important here that Kant distinguishes between the example and the ideal. 
The example does not and cannot have the role of the ideal, it is the agent of a 
symbolic and not imaginary function in the register of the aesthetic. The 
difference between the two might be most simply explained by means of the 
question of the »form«. The example is »pure« form, while the ideal is linked 
with the imaginary of a certain »content«. Let us try to explain this in 
particular. Lacan's analysis of Antigone is one of the clearest illustrations of 
the analysis of the beautiful that takes the beautiful as an example, namely as 
a »form«. Lacan interprets Antigone's beauty as the result, as the effect of a 
certain formal, symbolic constellation - of the fact that Antigone will be 
buried alive, confined in the tomb, condemned to »eternal suffering«. Her 
beauty is the effect of her being in the field »between two deaths«, and this 
gives her this mysterious ray that fascinates us (aesthetically). Therefore the 
beautiful is here the result of a certain entirely »formal« constellation and not 
6. Lacan takes this basic Kantian premise as a starting point for his commentary on Antigone, 
Antigone as an example. 
Beauty as a four-fold paradox 135 
the collection of some positive or visible characteristics that Antigone may 
possess. This is what makes access to universality possible: we may say that we 
will perceive the mysterious ray of beauty in every being which turns up in the 
constellation of such an »instance of the rule«. On the other hand, the ideal of 
beauty, which always aims at a certain »content«, at the imagery of the image 
itself, functions as an exception or the point at which we are only approaching 
infinitly, as an inaccessible »model«. The analysis of the beautiful in the 
context of ideal is more or less always based upon fantasy, while the analysis of 
beauty as an example reveals the very mechanism and the role of fantasy (e.g. 
the fantasy of »eternal suffering«) in our understanding of the beautiful. 
Purposiveness without purpose 
Purposiveness without purpose (also »formal purposiveness«, »subjective 
purposiveness«) is the third step in Kant's analysis of the beautiful, the third 
crucial moment of the beautiful. It could be defined most simply like this: 
formal purposiveness does not concern things (in their relation to purpose), 
but the way we conceive these things. We could comprehend the thing as 
purposive by being led not by representation ( Vorstellung) of a certain 
purpose, but by the pure form of purposiveness itself. The beautiful 
corresponds to something whose concept is not known. M. Frank interprets 
this moment through Sartre too, more precisely through Sartre's interpretation 
of the grace (grâce) of movement, which he defines as the surplus of 
mechanical movement. A gracious body is »the instrument that manifests 
freedom«. Sartre's interpretation here follows the paradigm, which we have 
pointed out above in reference to the problem of form: in gracious movement 
»the nudity of flesh is entirely present, but it cannot be seen«7 This 
interpretation rather belongs to the interpretation of the first question, the 
question of »the quality« of the experience of the beautiful. Later, Frank 
actually connects it with the moment of the »unreal« in the aesthetic object. 
But the definition »purposiveness without purpose« brings into discussion 
about the beautiful also another, new dimension that cannot be reduced to the 
concept of the »ideal object« of art, whether understood as »unreal« or »real«. 
It introduces the dimension of sense, which was developed in detail by Eric 
Weill in his text »The sense and the fact«.8 Although we may not agree with 
all the conclusions drawn by Weil (especially that in this way the gap between 
theory and practice is abolished), his argument is well worth summarizing. His 
starting point is that - in accordance with Kantian's diction - there are two 
elementary, irreducible facts: the fact of understanding or the fact of science 
on the one hand and the fact of reason or the fact of moral law on the other. 
He adds a third »fact«, namely that mere fact in itself has no sense. Our 
7. J.-P. Sartre, L'être et le néant, Paris 1943, p. 470. 
8 . Erie Weil, »Sens et fait«, Problèmes kantiens, Vrin, Paris 1990. 
136 Alenka Zupančič 
thinking as such has the character of contingency. For Weil the third Critique 
is written exactly as the answer to this question, the question of sense. The 
new fact introduced by this critique, is sense, Sinn, and not only Sinn as 
sensation, but also and above all as meaning. If we say this with Weil's words, 
»la Critique de la Judicaire veut comprendre les faits sensés ... à présent, le 
sens est un fait, les faits ont un sens, voilà la position fondamentale de la 
dernière Critique.«9 
It is of course purposiveness that introduces the dimension of sense into the 
discussion. Beauty is beauty only if it is contingent, if we know that it does not 
serve any purpose, that it is not created with any particular intention. That is 
why, for Kant, elementary examples of the beautiful are natural creations. But 
what some natural creation makes beautiful is at same time what evokes in us 
the feeling as if nature knows what it is doing, as if this contingency has 
meaning. Kant calls this effect »purposiveness without purpose«. The 
expression »without purpose« which is inscribed in Kant's persistent repetition 
that this purposiveness or necessity is itself contingent, has the same 
consequences for the status of sense which it introduces: in this context the 
moment of contingency by definition attaches to sense. 
So we come across form again. Due to formal purposiveness we are facing 
something that is purposive in terms of the form, but not in terms of the 
»content«, where the content simply means the description of the positive 
purpose which is to be served. In other words, it is the form of our vision 
which cannot see the gaze, for which this seeming purposiveness has a defined 
purpose. The absence of purpose generates our assumption that there is the 
gaze, for which this purposiveness follows some purpose. - We are dealing 
with the beautiful as long as this remains an assumption, as long as we cannot 
see anything but form itself. However, when this assumption turns into 
certainty, into knowledge of such a gaze and through it of some defined 
»content«, the object loses the charm of the beautiful and becomes a kind of 
»work of craftsmanship«. 
The formal purposiveness which is at stake here, is not the work of a 
particular mind or a particular person, it is not the result of some activity, but 
simply is, we come across it, it always has the form of an encounter, of 
something we do not expect. 
This starting paradigm has two interesting consequences, the first refers to the 
status of the subject and the second to the status of the thing in itself. Let us 
start with the second. According to problems of the sense of the relation 
between the thing in itself and the phenomenon, »the thing for us«, could be 
seen in a new light. The thing in itself is as such the field of a radical absence 
of the sense, it is the incorporation of non-sense. The thing is »in itself« 
9. Ibid., pp. 64-65. 
Beauty as a four-fold paradox 137 
exactly because »for us« it has no sense. And the phenomenon is exactly the 
thing in itself, which has been given some sense. It is also the sense what 
makes of the world of phenomena something more than a mere conglomerate 
of causes and effects since it introduces a new dimension, the dimension of the 
symbolic which is not reducible to them. (Hence we could understand Kant's 
insisting that »practice« as the register of pure moral acts should be tied to the 
sphere of the thing in itself, noumen, of that which escapes phenomena. The 
ethical act is never a »sensible« act. I perform an act only if I follow 
exclusively a pure, »senseless« form of the categorical imperative. The act 
draws its sense from remaining outside sense, from its being hors-sens in the 
strict meaning of the word. It is therefore not possible to say that by the 
inscription of the sense the gap between theory and practice, understanding 
and reason, is erased. On the contrary, only by this inscription does it gain its 
real dimension.) 
What does this dimension of sense mean for the status of the subject, which, 
for example, comprehends something as beautiful? 
It is well known that the third Critique deals with facts that do not provide the 
material to construct science in the classic sense of the word, which are not 
therefore a priori definable and legal, in a word, which are contingent. So we 
are dealing with a kind of nonsense which is found on the level of mere 
phenomena, but which nevertheless reveals some sense or, more precisely, to 
which we respond with sense. Our knowledge of nature (in a broader sense) 
remains »incomplete«, »non-whole«: and it is exactly this lack of knowledge 
that makes us the masters of sense. We are the masters of sense because we are 
not the masters of facts. It is the irreducible contingency, groundlessness, the 
absence of a cause of certain facts that generates the production of sense. 
Where the mechanism of causality fails, sense comes to take its place. And 
beauty is the effect of such a »missing link«. We could also place Lacan's 
thesis that beauty always arises from a certain lack or emptiness in this line of 
interpretation. 
On the other hand, this lack of cause or purpose in the phenomenon of the 
beautiful is inscribed in this phenomenon as the impossibility of »knowledge of 
the beautiful«. 
Scientific discourse can tell us everything about an object, everything but the 
reason for its being beautiful, - since its beauty is due precisely to the fact that 
it has no reason at all to be beautiful. The tulip has no reason to be beautiful, 
and this is its beauty. This »ignorance«, this lack of knowledge, the 
impossibility of finding the grounds of beauty, is necessary in terms of the 
structure, and it is not something that could be gradually »compensated for«. -
This is precisely the conclusion at which Derrida arrives in his analysis.10 We 
10. J. Derrida, La v6rit£ en peinture, p. 103. 
138 Alenka Zupančič 
may know everything about the tulip, claims Derrida, everything but the 
reason for its being beautiful. Why it is beautiful is not something that could 
be accounted for some day by means of progress of knowledge, providing us 
with an ability to regard it as beautiful and to know why. Ignorance is a 
standpoint, the irreducibility of which enables the beautiful to exist.