Sublime Truth (Part 2)

Author(s): Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and David Kuchta

Source: Cultural Critique , Winter, 1991-1992, No. 20 (Winter, 1991-1992), pp. 207-229
Published by: University of Minnesota Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354228

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 Sublime Truth (Part 2)

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

nlike the words of Moses, the statement of Isis is constative,

not prescriptive. It speaks Mystery itself and has always been
treated as a model esoteric statement. This is why it received such
attention near that end of the Enlightenment which is marked by
Masonic mysticism, from Hamann to Hegel or from Schlegel to
the Novalis of The Disciples of Sais. Abstracted from the basic meta-
phor that sustains it, this constative is a statement of truth: it
speaks the truth, the essence of divinity, that which is unreveal-
able. It matters little that Kant gave it a "rationalist" interpreta-
tion, that he transformed it (Isis became "Mother Nature"), that
he thus treated it like a sort of personification of nature: the
stated truth remains fundamentally the same, its mystical import
unaffected. Inscribed in the frontispiece of a book by Segner, it
fills the reader "with such a holy awe as would dispose his mind to
serious attention" (Kant 179). One can easily see how this mystery
allowed Kant to hyperbolically associate Isis with the Biblical Law:
the statement of Isis is similarly concerned with the unpresen-

? 1991 by Cultural Critique. 0882-4371 (Winter 1991-92). All rights reserved.

207

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208 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

tability of the metaphysical, understood as the truth or essence of

phusis. It is an echo of Heraclitus's physis kruptesthai philei: phusis
loves to conceal itself. It presents that there is something unpre-
sentable.
Nevertheless, and thus I come to the metaphor, if it is a
metaphor, the unpresentable is here understood as unrevealable,
and this makes a great difference. The difference is that the per-
sonification of the totality of nature, of the totality of being (it is
the totality itself, the unity of all being, its Being, which is unre-
vealable), is also a personification of the truth. The statement of
Isis is not only a statement of truth, it is a statement of truth about
truth (in fact the entire speculative epoch understood it as such). It
is, in other words, a statement of truth about the play of veiling
and revealing, of presentation and the unrevealable. It is stated
in the well-known form: Me, the truth, I speak. Me, the truth,
I speak the truth about truth. And undoubtedly this is why the
sentence is absolutely sublime, because it is purely and simply
contradictory sentence. It is the syntactic equivalent, if you will, of
an oxymoron.
What is it, then, to "speak the truth"? By a constraint that
been long forgotten (at least for those capable of philosoph
memory), a constraint that is not at all a compulsion to speak
metaphor, to speak the truth is to unveil the truth. The telling-
the-truth, in this sense, is apophantic, as it has been since Arist
(and as Heidegger reminds us [Being and Time 55]): it makes se
(or appear, phainesthai) emanating (apo) from that which it spea
It renders manifest or obvious, it unveils. The telling-of-the-tr
is logos alethes. Now what takes place in the statement of Isis (a
this is probably why it is so fascinating) is that, while speaking
truth about itself, while speaking the truth about truth and unv
ing itself as truth, the truth (the unveiling) unveils itself as t
impossibility of the unveiling-or the necessity for the veiling
the finite, mortal being. Speaking of itself, unveiling itself, tr
states that the essence of truth is nontruth-or that the essence of
unveiling is veiling. Truth (the unveiling) reveals itself as veiling
itself.

Recall Hegel's jubilation when he bursts with joy in describ-

ing the journey (itself symbolic) from the symbolic and sublime
world (the Orient, Egypt) to the world where the Spirit and self-

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 Sublime Truth 209

consciousness first emerge as such: Greece. The jo

ble, made by the response by Oedipus (he who k
riddle of the Sphinx,' but made also in a heliotro
scription by the goddess Neith on the sanctuary of
rises in the Orient and makes the stones of the statues in Mem-
non's temple sing. But in Egypt the sun or the Spirit is still
closed in rock, despite the momentary appearance of a su
(which so captivated Freud). Greece, on the contrary, is the la
"high noon": the sun is at its zenith, the Spirit has escaped f
the rocks, from tombstones and enigmatic inscriptions. The p
sophical West begins with a flight from Egypt, an uprooting
the somber, stony empire of the dead. Hegel cites the inscri
"I am all that is, and that was, and that shall be." But he add
the utterance is followed by: "the fruit which I have produc
Helios," the sun god. Then he comments: "This (solar) clar
Spirit, the Son of Neith, the mysterious night-loving divini
the Egyptian Neith, truth is still a problem. The Greek Apol
the solution; his utterance is 'Man, know thyself"' (Philosoph
History 220, translation modified).
The truth of truth is a pure and simple unveiling, a s
flight from night brought on by a pure burst of the sun. It
appearance of the Spirit basking in its own light, a subjec
scious of itself. This is why Hegel can be filled with joy
ciphering the enigma.
When Kant, on the contrary, pronounces the same sente
sublime, the enigma's "solution" is not Helios, even less so A
No sun comes to remove the veil from the goddess, no s
consciousness dissolves truth's contradictory discourse about i
The sentence is left with its paradoxical enigma, which prod
not jubilation but a "holy awe." Truth, in its nature, is untruth
This proposition-truth, in its nature, is untruth-figur
Heidegger's second meditation on "The Origin of the Wo
Art." It comes shortly before Heidegger defines the beautifu
"this shining [Scheinen] joined in the work" and as the "mea
which truth as unconcealedness displays itself in its essen
sums up an analysis that has led Heidegger toward the contr
tory structure of a-letheia and to the demonstration that "t
nature of truth as unconcealedness [Unverborgenheit] bel
denial in the form of a double concealment [Verbergen]." He

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210 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

ger understands concealment or "reserve" to be the essence of

Lichtung, of clearing, clearance, the "open place," the Open,
"where being comes to stand." "The clearing happens only as this
double concealment," which means: the essence of aletheia is lethe
(the essence of unveiling is veiling). The clearing itself, the unveil-
ing of being, never takes place. In other words, the opening from
which being appears and presents itself as such (this opening itself
which, "thought beginning with being," as Heidegger says, is
"more being" than being) does not present itself. It is not in the
form of that which is. The opening, the clearing, has no being:
"This open center is therefore not surrounded by what is; rather,
the lighting center itself encircles all that is, like the Nothing
which we scarcely know" ("Origin" 53-56 and passim, translation
modified).
This veiling of the unveiling, this "reserve" of the clearing,
is double, says Heidegger. On the one hand, it is a dissembling
[Verstellen] instability: "one being places itself in front of another
being" and veils it, presents it as what it is not. This is the origin of
appearance and error. This first reserve affects being in that which
it is (Washeit, quidditas). But, on the other hand, it is above all and
essentially a denial, a refusal [Versagen], and it thus affects being in
its very being, in its "that it is" (Dassheit, quodditas). "Beings refuse
themselves to us down to that one and seemingly least feature
which we touch upon most readily when we can say no more of
beings than that they are" ("Origin" 53-54).
This refusal is precisely what the statement of Isis pro-
nounces: "no mortal hath raised my veil." If you will, it is finitude,
but finitude understood as "not simply and only the limit of
knowledge," in that it is also "the beginning of the clearing of
what is lighted [der Anfang der Lichtung des Gelichteten]" ("Origin"
53-54). It is the condition for the very possibility of unveiling.
This is why Heidegger can write:

Concealment can be a refusal or merely a dissembling. We are

never fully certain whether it is the one or the other. Conceal-
ment conceals and dissembles itself. This means: the open
place in the midst of beings, the clearing, is never a rigid stage
with a permanently raised curtain on which the play of beings
runs its course. Rather, the clearing happens only as this dou-
ble concealment. ("Origin" 54)2

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 Sublime Truth 211

Time will not fail us, it should show us how, fr

bottom, this whole development reinterprets transcen
thetics beginning with the coming-into-view of ale
because, in supposing that clearing is nothing but ope
space without ontic localization ("this emptiness," he w
Heidegger immediately adds: "The unconcealedness
this is never a merely existent state, but a happening [
("Origin" 54),3 that is, pure temporality, pure histori
What is this "happening," and where does it come
answer is self-evident: it comes from the clearing itself
the concealment and reserve of the essence of the unve
How then does this happening, this coming, distingui
in no way can be an appearance or presentation, sin
all beings' modes of being. And yet it arrives, it takes
place. It distinguishes itself by that which being, even
familiarity, suddenly finds to be "estranged." The hap
coming, is the estrangement, the Un-geheuere or de-fa
of being:

We believe we are at home [heimisch] in the immediate circle

of beings. That which is, is familiar, reliable, ordinary
[geheuer]. Nevertheless, the clearing is pervaded by a con-
stant concealment, a perpetual reserve in the double form of
refusal and dissembling. At bottom, the ordinary is not ordi-
nary; it is extra-ordinary, strange. ("Origin" 54, translation
modified)4

One could argue that this is still a "negative presentation,"

but it is not at all. Heidegger prevents such a misinterpretation. A
few lines later, after having stated that "the nature of truth is
untruth," he explains, "the proposition, 'the nature of truth is
untruth,' is not, however, intended to state that truth is at bottom
falsehood. Nor does it mean that truth is never itself but, viewed
dialectically, is always also its opposite" ("Origin" 55). The es-
trangement or defamiliarization of being is not a kind of "nega-
tive presentation" (one should not jump all over the "Un" of Un-
geheuere, even less over the "Un" in Un-Wahrheit) for the simple
reason that estrangement affects the presented and, in an absolute-
ly paradoxical fashion, simply because presentation itself (the
"that there is presence") comes to "present" itself. Or rather, since

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212 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

the word presentation is inappropriate, presentation "happens."

And this is Ereignis.
Now, it is essentially the work of art which produces the event
of clearing as concealing, the happening of a-letheia as the de-
familiarization of being's familiar (unveiled) being. Such is the
"thrust" or "shock" [Stoss] which it provokes. Mysteriously added
to a given being, as a supplement or a surplus, the work of art has
the conspicuous power to display itself as having been created,
thereby indicating, in the same being that it is, that being is.

In a work... this fact, that it is a work, is precisely what is

unusual [das Ungewiihnliche]. The event [Ereignis] of its being
created does not simply reverberate through the work; rather,
the work casts before itself the eventful fact that the work is as
this work, and it has constantly this fact about itself. The more
essentially the work opens itself, the more luminous [leuchtend]
becomes the uniqueness of the fact that it is rather than is not.
The more essentially this shock comes into the Open, the more
unsettling [befremdlich] and unique the work becomes. In the
bringing forth [Hervorbringen] of the work there lies this offer-
ing [Darbringen] 'that it be.' . . . The more solitary the work,
fixed in the figure [festgestellt in die Gestalt], stands on its own
and the more cleanly it seems to cut all ties to human beings,
the more simply does the shock come into the Open that such a
work is, and the more essentially is the extraordinary [das
Ungeheure] thrust to the surface and the long-familiar thrust
down. ("Origin" 65-66)

Heidegger immediately adds that this shock is without violence:

The more purely the work is itself transported (or carried off,
entriick ist: this is one possible translation of the Greek [lantha-
nein]) into the openness of beings-an openness opened by
itself-the more simply does it transport [einriicken] us into this
openness and thus at the same time transport us out of the
realm of the ordinary. To submit to this displacement [Ver-
riickung] means: to transform our accustomed ties to world and
to earth and henceforth to restrain [ansichhalten] all usual
doing and prizing, knowing and looking, in order to stay
within the truth that is happening in the work. ("Origin" 66)

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 Sublime Truth 213

Defamiliarity, deportation and derangement, shock

city, subtraction or retraction, restraint: this is all the ver
able vocabulary of the sublime (as is obvious in das Ungeheu
least its transcription into a Heideggerean idiom. But th
is obviously not a simple matter of semantics, espec
Heidegger was never unaware of his linguistic inherita
this text describes, in its own way and undoubtedly with
of profundity, is the sublime experience itself. This is
what Heidegger attributes to the ek-static behavior of D
ek-sistence when he is concerned elsewhere with an
being-at-death. The shock, the estrangement of being
artwork produces, is just such an ecstasy or rapture. "T
hurried out of itself," as Burke says (62). From Longinu
and from Fenelon to Kant, it is this emotion or affect w
been described as sublime-on the condition, Heideg
say, that this pathos is understood in its strictest mean
What happens, then, in this experience and ord
surely happens is that a being presents itself (it appe
therein "estranges" the whole of being. By its own burs
by its own radiance, being presents that there is bei
nothing. The artwork is this absolutely paradoxical
"being being" as Heidegger would say [Introduction to M
which an-nihil-ates being in order to bring being itself
light of day, to let it shine and sparkle. The artwor
clearing, the luminous opening in which it remains as
the (empty) base, the base without basis from which it
itself as being. The artwork presents a-letheia, the
nonbeing, this "obscure clarity" which "is" the being of
is. And this is sublimity.
In a certain sense, and by yet another paradox, H
confirms the Hegelian definition of the sublime: the m
tion of the infinite annihilates manifestation itself. Thi
what traverses these pages. Or rather: this would be
being could be called infinite (which is strictly impossi
above all, if Heidegger considered manifestation as
presentation of being, that is, if he defined manifesta
ing to the coming into account of Washeit, the quiddit
What defamiliarizes the artwork, what an-nihil-ates (an

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214 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

annihilate) the presentation of presentation, is thus presented

being, being as such, that which ontically presents itself and, in
effect, never ceases to stand out from the background of being in
general. Presented being, being in its Washeit, is never conceivable
except as eidos. Presented being is always figured, always con-
figures itself, constitutes itself with a shape. It creates a Gestalt.
This is, moreover, how Heidegger conceives of the beingness of
the artwork. But the work of art is not only of being (a conspicuous
privilege it shares with Dasein). It is the opening of the "that there
is being." In other words, from the moment that the Dassheit of
being is at stake, presentation as configuration fades into the
background. Prior to the coming forth of any particular being,
prior even to what one might still imagine as the coming forth of
being in general on the basis of nothingness (although nothing-
ness is never a basis, and being in general does not come forth:
there is no ontic coming forth), there is the "that there is being."
This in effect is what the work of art offers, but this offering, this
Darbringen, is for Heidegger an offering of pure appearance,
pure Scheinen or phainesthai, a pure epiphany of being as such.
What is, in its being, does not come forth but shines and dazzles in
the night without darkness, in the beyond-night of nothingness,
which is clarity itself.
This is why, under the motif of lethe, of the concealed, re-
served, retained, or retracted, there is no negativity. And this is
why the "phantic" conception of the sublime does not imme-
diately or finally give way to any dialecticization. It only means
that the sublime is the presentation that there is something unpre-
sentable, which is negative being. This does not postulate any
"negative presentation"; it simply posits that the sublime is the pre-
sentation that there is presentation. There is, if you will (although I
still having misgivings about the term), an "affirmative" com-
prehension of the sublime, of "great art."

II

For Heidegger, it should be understood, all of this falls with

in the realm of the beautiful. The move from the was ist to the das
ist, from "what being is" to "that being is," signifies the shift from

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 Sublime Truth 215

philosophical, eidetic-aesthetic determination of the b

more original determination. Once again, this sublime
the sublime5 knows nothing of the sublime.
Nevertheless, there has always been maintained, w
concept of the sublime (or at least in one version of t
the vague and half-forgotten trace of an understa
beautiful more original than its Platonic interpretatio
gins with eidos-idea. It is even worth considering whe
cept of the sublime (or again, at least one, if not t
version of the sublime) is not born, or indeed reborn,
to rediscover (or simply discover) in the beautiful t
manifestly irreducible to its eidetic conception: th
quoi" (without which the beautiful would be only bea
epiphany, this bright light, the very brilliance of ap
phanestaton.
This is what occurs in Longinus's treatise On T
perhaps the first version of the concept of the sub
true, however, only if we begin to read this text not
rhetoric, poetics, or, as has been claimed, as a "critiqu
it is unarguably also these things), but as a philosophic
readable without understanding the precise philosoph
hind its fundamental statements-statements that are much more
than an occasional rehash of some Stoic or antique banality
What is the philosophical aim of this work? It is an attemp
understand the essence of art beginning with the sublime,
greatness, that is. It seeks to determine the enabling condi
for artistic greatness. Longinus, moreover, is truly modern i
stance, as he considers his examples of "great art" (the G
tragedies, Pindar, Sappho, Thucydides, Plato) as art that is
ever gone, "finished."
Very typical for a treatise of this genre, Longinus's in
question is in effect a narrow one, conforming perfectly to So
ic topoi. It asks whether or not the sublime stems from a parti
techne, and whether or not it is subject to "technical rules" (
ginus II). Answering his first question, Longinus underst
techne in its narrow and weak sense, as "know-how." From the
beginning we can expect to find the traditional collection of exam-
ples and formulas-of which, of course, this treatise is one-until
Longinus directly announces his own thesis: yes, the sublime de-

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216 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

rives from a techne, since the sublime is not innate. Thus Longinus
breaks with all didactics, and shows us why. Quite simply, Lon-
ginus presents us with a quite different meaning of techne, since he
relies from the outset on the opposition between innate and ac-
quired. The innate is in effect phusei, a natural gift, the work of
nature (ta phusika erga). Consequently, everything in art (in techne)
stems from phusis itself. We are well acquainted with this problem:
it is the problem of genius, of ingenium, which dominates the
thematics of the sublime all the way through Kant and Nietzsche.
For Kant, genius (that is, the sublime artist of the sublime) is
defined as follows: "Genius is the talent (natural endowment)
which gives the rule to art. Since talent, as an innate productive
faculty of the artist, belongs itself to nature, we may put it this
way: Genius is the innate mental aptitude (ingenium) through
which nature gives the rule to art" (168).
In his own way, Longinus says nothing different. Not only is
his definition of genius the same-he speaks of "great nature"
(megala phusis or megalophuia), of extraordinary (deina) gifts or
presents from heaven (IX, XXXIII, XXXIV)-but, above all, he
creates exactly the same relationship between phusis and techne.
What in effect does Longinus say? What is the meaning of his
demonstration? How can he simultaneously claim that the sub-
lime stems from phusis (from genius) and from techne? At bottom,
how can he adhere to this oxymoron (an oxymoron which Kant
proposes as well, embodied in the very title of the paragraph
dedicated to genius in the third Critique, "Fine art is the art of
genius")?
Longinus proceeds in two directions:

Let us look at the case in this way; Nature in her more sublime
and passionate moods is without doubt a law unto herself
[autonomon], yet is not wont to show herself utterly wayward
and without method [amethodon]. This natural gift is the base
and principal of all our productions, yet to determine the
right degree and the right moment, and to contribute the
precision of practice and experience, is the peculiar province
of method. The great geniuses, when left to their own blind
and rash impulses without the control of discipline, are in the
same danger as a ship let drive at random without ballast.
Often they need the spur, but sometimes also the curb. (II,
translation modified)

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 Sublime Truth 217

Thus from the very first the argument runs: phusi

omous" vis-a-vis the sublime, which is the same as sayin
a law unto itself," autonomon. It rules and regulates a
by itself (as Kant will "translate" it), since, as Longinus
certainly not "without method." The gift of nature
thodically regulated, and genius as such only receiv
from "nature." This is why Longinus can say (and I
literally) that phusis "constitutes itself in all things as t
and the archetypal element of all birth [aut . . . proto
chetupon geneseos stoicheion epi pant8n huphesteken]" (II).
why he attributes to "method," as a form of techne, all
from the joyous and successful accomplishment of nat
sense of measure, a sense of the right moment, suren
practice. All this is calculated and learned, as Holderlin
must know how to calculate, since there is a danger w
ens genius when left to itself, a threat of going overbo
can also see here that techne is conceived only as the r
natural abilities, a sort of controlling power. And it is
way, within these limits, that the art of the sublime
techne.7
But what more fundamental meaning can this
answer forms the second part of the demonstration:

Demosthenes has remarked, with regard to human

general, that the greatest of all blessings is happiness, bu
to that and equal in importance is to be well advise
good fortune is utterly ruined by the absence of good c
This may be applied to literature, [if we substitute geni
fortune, and art for counsel. But the most important p
all is that the actual fact that there are some parts of lit
which are in the power of natural genius alone, must be
from no other source than from art. These are the consider-
ations which I submit to the unfavorable critic of such useful
studies. Perhaps they may induce him to alter his opinion as
to the vanity and idleness of our present investigations].
(Longinus II)

The editor considers the passage in brackets to be dubious:

appears in only one of the twelve more or less complete or corre
manuscripts that remain, and in this manuscript (which is a co
from the fifteenth century, edited for the first time in 1964) t

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218 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

text of Longinus is mixed with Problemes physiques, attributed to

Aristotle. Now, not only are the ideas presented here absolutely
coherent, but they are certainly one of the surest interpretations
of the Aristotelian theory of mimesis, the essentials of which can be
found in the Physics (Book B: 194a).
Demosthenes' adage, one of the "basic banalities" of antique
wisdom, serves as an analogical starting point for Longinus's argu-
ment. There are two goods, he claims: the first and higher good is
happiness (to eutuchein), which, as its Greek name indicates, does
not depend on us. The second, which is no less high, is the wis-
dom of one's resolutions, sound judgment gained through experi-
ence. If the second is missing, the first is lacking as well. The
structure of this formula is thus one of necessary supplementarity: all
gifts from god or nature, all favorable lots in life, are nothing
without good judgment. This same structure, says Longinus, reg-
ulates the relationship between phusis and techne. Remaining faith-
ful to Aristotle, techne is conceived literally as the overgrowth of
phusis, appearance, phainen, as a growth, blossoming or brighten-
ing (phuein) of light. Within the limits imposed by his genre (a sort
of "theory of literature"), Longinus explains this conception in the
following way: "our knowledge of the fact that there are some
parts of literature which are in the power of natural genius alone,
must be learnt from no other source than from art" (II). In an-
other formula: only art (techne) is in a position to reveal nature
(phusis). Or again: without techne, phusis disappears, since in its
essence as phusis kruptesthai philei, it loves to conceal itself.
This is not merely a recitation of Aristotle's Physics, since
Longinus adds to him by stating that techne brings phusis to an
end. But this is in fact precisely how we must understand Aristotle
when, in discussing poetry and poetic art (poietike), he defines tech-
ne or mimesis as representation, as "presentification," rendering
present:

It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two

causes, each of them natural [phusikai]. Imitation [mimesthai] is
natural [sumphuton] to man from childhood, one of his advan-
tages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most
imitative [mimetikotaton] creature in the world, and produces
[poieitai] his earliest knowledge [matheseis] by imitation [dia

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 Sublime Truth 219

mimese6s]. And it is also natural for all to delight in wo

imitation. (Complete Works 2318, translation modified)

Techne (of which poetry is but one mode, although it

the highest mode, if we read this passage correctly) is
tion (poiesis) of knowledge (mathesis). Thus one can und
it is not arbitrary that Heidegger insists on translatin
Wissen, knowledge. This knowledge appears by means of
which mimesis is the general faculty of rendering-pres
ulty of representing, which does not mean reprod
conventional sense, nor of duplication, even less of
mimicking, unless we stray wide of what we mean by
Rather, mimesis means: to render present that which
rendered present, that which would not be present as
mimesis, but would remain concealed, "encrypted." Mim
sentation, is the condition for the knowledge that th
(and not nothing), a knowledge which then (and only
used to obtain multiple knowledges of being. On th
because mimesis defines the relationship between kno
phusis, mimesis makes phusis appear, discloses it as su
reveals phusis: this power is what Emmanuel Martineau
the "apophantic" essence of techne.8 I believe Longinu
when, concerned with what derives from phusis, he sa
knowledge [ekmathein] of the fact that there are s
literature which are in the power of natural genius [p
must be learnt from no other source than from art [tec
ancient knowledge about mimesis, techne, and the ess
endures in Longinus, just as it equally endures in Aris
endures, in other words, is the Platonic interpretation
It is on the basis of such mimetology that Longinu
the sublime. But precisely for this reason his treat
sublime has an entirely different significance: he pos
the question of great art here but, within the question
he considers the possibility and essence of art.
What this first and foremost explains is that, for
well as for Kant), art's fundamental mystery is how ge
mitted. This is the enigma of the history of art. If
hand, there is little (or nothing essential) in the sublim
from didactics and from techne, in its restricted mean

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220 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

on the other hand, great art and the innate gift of the sublime are
techne in its wider sense (in the sense that techne is given by phusis to
humans in order for phusis itself to appear), then how does genius
arise? By what route (hodos) does one arrive at the sublime? And
how does one achieve greatness?
As with Kant, Longinus's answer is enigmatic. It explains little
or nothing, it offers no new surprises: genius arises by the mimesis
(but this time in its competitive sense) and zedltis (emulation) of the
great poets of the past, who were themselves "inspired" by the past
(in imitation of the Pythian priestess approaching the tripod at
Delphi). From the genius of these poets, emanations ("divine va-
pors") are exhaled like those at the oracle of Delphi, penetrating
the souls of their successors (Longinus XIII). The transmission and
repetition of genius is thus effected by a sort of (mysterious) mimet-
ic contagion, a contagion which is nonetheless not imitation. As
Kant tries to explain, one does not use the great artworks of the
past as models of imitation (Nachmachung) but as elements of an
inheritance or heritage (Nachfolge). He adds, "the possibility of this
is difficult to explain. The artist's ideas arouse like ideas on the part
of his pupil, presuming nature to have visited him with a like
proportion of the mental powers" (171). This works well for some-
thing like the oracle at Delphi, but not for more normal means of
transmission (didactics), as Kant explains: the discipline that genius
gives to art is untransmissible-for two reasons. First, this disci-
pline or rule is not a concept (by definition, being concerned with
the beautiful), and, second, a genius does not know what he or she is
doing and, unlike a "brain" such as Newton, is incapable of showing
how he or she works: "no Homer or Wieland can show how his
ideas, so rich at once in fancy and in thought, enter and as
themselves in his brain" (Kant 170). The rule thus needs
"abstracted" from great works, contact with which awakens
By such "contact" Kant means: "going to the same source
creative work as those to which an exemplary creator went
creations, and learning from one's predecessor no more tha
mode of availing oneself of such sources" (Kant 138-39, t
tion modified). This contact, for Kant as much as for Lo
never excludes a very rigorous and agonic competition, w
historic scenes and confrontations: what would Homer s
what will posterity say (Longinus XIV)? Yet this mimetic r

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 Sublime Truth 221

entails no "pillage," and certainly not the least bit

jealousy-no serious artist would stoop to play such
manner which finds its roots in Plato, if there is mime
means of the imprint or impression (apotupbsis) made by
beautiful plastic artwork or a good performance (Lon
The enigmatic transmission of genius stems from a fam
ogy: to be a genius is to be influenced by great art.
From this, moreover (and still corresponding co
with Longinus), Kant extracts the idea of the classical i
fact that we recommend the works of the ancients as m
rightly too, and call their authors classical, as constituti
nobility among writers that leads the way and thereby g
the people, seems to indicate a posteriori sources of tas
contradict the autonomy of taste in each individua
This clearly means that the ancients are in fact a pri
of art: there is a sort of transcendentality of the ancie
works conformed a priori to the universality of the ju
taste. Yet this happened only once, among the ancients
out doubt this is why art has reached its limit only
science one can hope for infinite progress (since it is a
"brains"), in art one can have no such hope:

Genius reaches a point at which art must make a halt, as

is a limit imposed upon it which it cannot transcend.
limit has in all probability been long since attained. In a
tion, such skill cannot be communicated, but requires to
bestowed directly from the hand of nature upon each ind
ual, and so with him it dies, awaiting the day when n
once again endows another in the same way-one who
no more than an example to set the talent of which
conscious at work on similar lines. (Kant 170)

This limit, however, is in no way an end of art-a d

within the Platonic-Hegelian interpretation of art. Gen
ways renew itself. A genius will never surpass the ancie
or she can always be as great as them: Wieland was for
Holderlin was for Heidegger. Or Trakl, or George.
But much more importantly, from the moment whe
is considered fundamentally to be "apophantic," two
contradictory consequences ensue: (1) Although the su

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222 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

great art) stem from techne, in its narrow sense, Longinus states
that it is also necessary that techne come to the aid of phusis, that it
correct it:

It has been urged by one writer that we should not prefer

the huge disproportioned Colossus [of Rhodes] to the Dory-
phorus of Polycletus. But (to give one out of many possible
answers) in art we admire exactness [to akribestaton], in works
of nature magnificence; and it is from nature that man de-
rives the faculty of speech. Whereas, then, in statuary we look
for close resemblance [to homoion] to humanity, in literature
we require something which transcends humanity [to huperair-
on ta anthr6pina]. Nevertheless, . . . since that success which
consists in avoidance of error is usually the gift of
art, . . . though unequal excellence is the attribute of genius,
it is proper on all occasions to call in art as an ally to nature.
(XXXVI)

Thus it is necessary to moderate the excesses of the sublime.

But this also obviously means that art, techne in the narrow sense,
is only capable of akribestaton, of exactness and perfection. In this
sense mimesis is interpreted as homoiosis, resemblance. In statues,
we look for human resemblances, to homoion. This in sum is what
defines the beautiful as appearance, as aspect (as eidos) under the
sign of resemblance. With the sublime (with great art), on the
contrary, a quite different mimesis is at work. This is undoubtedly
because, for Longinus, great art is primarily the art of logos, and
because humans by nature are essentially logikon, speaking-beings.
What is most sought after is the beyond-human, that which tran-
scends human affairs: by definition, nothing which can be repro-
duced. Great art has nothing to do with eidos because in its es-
sence, great art has nothing to do with the already-seen, the
already-present; and (2) Art (techne) should efface itself in the
sublime as such, in great art. This is what Longinus says, for
example, regarding the hyperbaton, a figure which is "a trans-
position of words or thoughts from their usual order, bearing
unmistakably the characteristic stamp of violent mental agita-
tion": "Now the figure hyperbaton is the means which are em-
ployed by the best writers to imitate these signs of natural emo-
tion. For art is then perfect when it seems to be nature, and

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 Sublime Truth 223

nature, again, is most effective when pervaded b

presence of art" (XXII).
Literally translated, Longinus writes: "techne re
when its seems to be phusis, and phusis succeeds wh
techne in concealing it from view [lanthanousan]." Th
closes an argument in which Longinus has demonstr
hyperbaton, a syntactical transposition, is perfect f
such violent pathos as anger, fear, indignation, or j
rupted logos reveals emotion and allows it to appear
its apophantic function, mimesis thus allows phusis it
as natural pathos. But in this revelation, this present
ance of phusis, techne effaces itself: only phusis is re
In decrypting phusis, then, techne is encrypted
describes it, this is the game of aletheia. This is
considers sublime logos to be the true logos: it unve
dox of the self-effacement of techne is embodied in
which defines genius as "natural art." It entails, f
hyperbolic logic:9 the more techne is realized, the l
The zenith of mimesis is when it is veiled and concealed. This is
perhaps what Kant meant in claiming that the sublime was fou
in simplicity. And it is also what Holderlin probably meant
sobriety.
Now how should techne efface itself? This is obviously a prob-
lem which preoccupies Longinus when addressing the disguising
of figures (schema) which, he says, always gives rise to the sublime,
and comes to its aid. This use of figures is always delicate, he
writes: "the use of figures has a peculiar tendency to rouse a
suspicion of dishonesty, and to create an impression of treachery."
This is why "a figure is then most effectual when it appears in
disguise [dialanthane]." It matters little that the example that
Longinus uses here is from Demosthenes. The important thing is
the question he asks: "What is it that hides [apekrupse] the figure
here?" Equally important is his response: "It is obviously its own
lustre [delon oti to photi auto]." And, finally, in order to show that
this light or lustre is not an accident, he immediately adds:

For as the fainter lustre of the stars is put out of sight by the
all-encompassing rays of the sun, so when sublimity sheds its
light all round the sophistries of rhetoric they become invis-

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224 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

ible. A similar illusion is produced by the painter's art. When

light and shadow are represented in color, though they lie on
the same surface side by side, it is the light which meets the
eye first, and appears [phainesthai] not only more conspicuous
but also much nearer. In the same manner passion and gran-
deur of language, lying nearer to our souls by reason both of
a certain natural affinity and of their radiance [dia lamproteta],
always strike our mental eye before we become conscious of
the figure, throwing its artificial character into the shade and
hiding it as it were in a veil. (Longinus XVII)

Longinus has chosen the example of light here not merely

because of the aptness of its comparison with truth. Its use should
be understood literally: this light is sublime, it is the sublime, from
the moment when the truth of the sublime is conceived as unveil-
ing, as the aletheia of that which is (phusis). Techne, mimesis, is the
illumination ofphusis: this is the truth, literally and in all its senses,
of great art. And this is precisely why great art can never be
seen-the light it radiates casts itself into the shadows. Thus it can
never come into presence, into any "form," "figure," or "schema."
In absenting itself, it presents that there is being-present. And this
brings astonishment.
This light, this very lustre of ekphanestaton, never stops shin-
ing and glistening in Longinus's text: "But a sublime thought, if
happily timed, illumines an entire subject with the vividness of a
lightning-flash" (I); "therefore, I say, by the noble qualities which
[Demosthenes] does possess he remains supreme above all rivals,
and throws a cloud over his failings, silencing by his thunders and
blinding by his lightnings the orators of all ages. Yes, it would be
easier to meet the lightning-stroke with steady eye than to gaze
unmoved when his impassioned eloquence is sending out flash
after flash" (Longinus XXXIV);10 "beautiful expressions are in
reality the light of one's thoughts [phos idion tou nou] (IX)." Or
again, he says of the aging Homer, the genius par excellence, that
as he writes The Odyssey he is like a setting sun (IX).
One could easily multiply the examples. But perhaps the best
expressions of the sublime as light and lustre are two notable
passages, duly accorded their places within the aesthetic tradition.
The first passage is the Fiat lux in Genesis, which remained

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 Sublime Truth 225

famous all the way to Hegel. It is an example of

performative statement, whose sole aim is to ann
exists. God reveals himself to be the principle (the ar
precisely logos apophantikos: the speaking of appear
epiphany. God is the light which appears as the sour
visible.
The second passage is when Longinus, in what is seemingly a
long digression opened by the just-mentioned tribute to Demos-
thenes ("silencing by his thunders..."), gathers together his
theses on the sublime: the sublime's superiority over the beautiful
depends on its being able to respond to "the true end of man's
being" (XXXV). Phusis, says Longinus, does not think of humans
as low and vile creatures but as beings destined for greatness:
phusis brings "us into life, and into the whole universe, as into
some great field of contest, that we should at once contemplate
[theaomai] and rival her mighty deeds." Humans exist, in other
words, so that the whole of being can be put on display. And,
Longinus adds, this is why phuszs "implanted [enephusen] in our
souls an invincible yearning [eros] for all that is great, all that is
more divine (daimonioteron) than ourselves" (XXXV, translation
modified).
What does this invincible eros yearn for? It yearns, Longinus
says, for that which goes beyond the whole of being. Eros is a
yearning which the whole of being cannot satisfy, satiating neither
the theoria nor dianoia of man: "not even the whole world [ho
sumpas kosmos] is wide enough for the soaring range [epibole] of
human theory and thought" (XXXV, translation modified). Hu-
mans are metaphysical beings, or more exactly (since Longinus
thinks more highly of phusis, considering it in effect as Being),
metacosmic beings, meta-ontic beings. And Longinus's definition
of eros (which is mixed with agbn, with violence, not simply with
emulation) is exactly how Heidegger defined the transcendence
of Dasein. As Longinus puts it, human epinoiai, the thoughts that
we project above and beyond ourselves, often "overleap the very
bounds of space" that surround us (XXXV). And in this projec-
tion we recognize the reason for our birth.
This, then, is the second light, or rather fire, which has burst
forth, the fire of phusis:

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226 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

And this is why nature [phusis] prompts us to be struck with

astonishment, not by the clearness and usefulness of a little
stream, but by the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, and much
more so facing the Ocean; not to turn our wandering eyes
from the heavenly fires, though often overtaken by obscurity,
to the little flame kindled by human hands, however pure and
steady its light; not to think that tiny lamp more wondrous
than the caverns of Aetna; from whose raging depths are
hurled up stones and whole masses of rock, and torrents
sometimes come pouring from earth's center of pure and
living fire, obeying only laws of their own. (Longinus XXXV,
translation modified)

This is ekphanestaton itself-whose echo, I believe, we can see

in Holderlin.
And so Longinus concludes: "whatever is useful or need
lies easily within man's reach; what men admire, on the ot
hand, is always the paradoxical [to paradoxon]" (XXXV, transla
modified). To paradoxon: this is usually translated literally. Ho
ever, I will translate it as das Unheimliche, obviously reflecting
degger's use of the term, but also reflecting Schelling's celebr
definition: "One terms unheimlich all that should remain secr
veiled, and yet appears."

III

Ekphanestaton, or at least a certain interpretation of ekp

taton, is thus what has been at issue throughout the di
on the sublime. Effected by some sort of beyond-memory o
has never been exactly said or thought, ekphanestaton has b
issue because we can now understand that this beyond-ligh
this is one translation of ek-phanestaton) is the strange cla
being itself. "Though often overtaken by obscurity," it dazz
night without darkness, symbolized by the lightning (but
what Holderlin calls "sober clarity"). And ekphanestaton ha
the stake of this discourse because it has been thought that
art" beholds it, which is to suppose that, in one way or anot
can sustain a view of it, although this has never been a

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 Sublime Truth 227

matter of vision. Lichtung, the opening, the clearing of

ance, is beyond all light.
This is exactly what a certain thinker, a contempo
Heidegger-and apparently similar to him in his th
metaphysics-expressed with a rare rigor. I conclude w
sage from a text that, for many reasons, Heidegger m
read, and with which "The Origin of the Work of Art" is
related as to be troubling. I speak of Walter Benjami
essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities. I have taken these fe
from their context, where all that needs to be said is sai
simply leave them here to be read, or understood. To

All that is fundamentally beautiful is tied in a constant a

essential way to appearance, but in infinitely varying degr
This connection reaches its highest point everywhere whe
life is most manifest, and here specifically [in Goethe's wo
it is manifest in the double aspect of a burst of light [Sche
that either triumphs or is extinguished. For no living bei
even as his or her life grows more lofty, is far removed f
the realm of essential beauty. And it is for this reason tha
or she most often displays his or her stature [Gestalt], for
essence of beauty is appearance.

... without itself being appearance, the beautiful is o

beautiful as long as it maintains its link with appearance. T
appearance is its veil, since its very essence demands t
beauty only appear veiled.

Beauty is not an appearance [Schein], it is not a veil wh

covers another reality. It is not a phenomenon [Erscheinu
but a pure essence, an essence which only remains, howev
as long as it retains its veil. Everywhere else, appearances
be deceiving, but a beautiful appearance is a veil which hi
that which by all means must be kept veiled. Unveiled, th
object would remain indefinitely inconspicuous.... In
case of the beautiful, one should go further and say that
unveiling itself is impossible.... The beautiful is at bot
the only reality which is both veiling and veiled: the
tologically divine foundation of beauty resides in this myst
In it, appearance is not at all a useless veil thrown over th

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228 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

in themselves, but more precisely a veil which is for us the

essential clothing of things.

Because in itself the veil and the veiled are one, the veil has
essentially no value except where nudity and the veiling are
but one, that is, in art and in purely natural phenomena. On
the contrary, the more that this duality is expressed in an
obvious fashion, one sees more and more how the very es-
sence of beauty gives way in unveiled nudity and the naked
human body reaches a level of existence which transcends all
beauty: the level of the sublime. For this is not a work [Gebilde]
of human hands, but indeed the work of the Creator.

Only nature, God willing, retains its secret. It is in the essence

of language that truth conceals itself. When the human body
is stripped naked, it is a sign that humans themselves appear
before God. (Benjamin 250-55 and passim)

Translated by David Kuchta

Notes

1. I refer to my essay "Le dernier philosophe" in L'mitation des modernes (203-

25).
2. The "metaphor" of the stage curtain is not accidental.
3. In later editions, Heidegger replaced this Geschechnis with Ereignis.
4. "Das Geheure ist im Grunde nicht geheuer." The assured is at bottom not
assured: it is not reassuring at all.
5. Here is the proper effect of the contamination which is part of the concept
of the sublime, as has been shown by Neil Hertz and Michel Deguy. Sublime
poetry, writes Deguy, "does what it says" (209).
6. To my knowledge, only Michel Deguy, with his attentive ear for Greek, has
noted his debt to the thought of Longinus. I owe, incidentally, the direction of
this article to Deguy.
7. In considering the five sources of the sublime, Longinus uses the same
logic somewhat later: these five sources "presuppose oratory talent as their com-
mon foundation, without which they would be nothing" (Longinus VIII). There
is, more precisely, a proupokeimenon, an ability (dunamis) to speak, the faculty (or
Kraft, in Kant's sense) or power of speaking. This is what the gift of nature is.
This is why it is necessary to distinguish, among these five sources of the sublime,
between those which stem from phusis (the tendency toward elevated thought
and the tendency toward vehement and enthusiastic pathos) and those which
stem from techne (the shaping of figures [schemata], noble diction [phrasis], and
composition [sunthesis] "with a view to the dignity and elevation of style"). Lon-
ginus is so firm on this point that much later he considers harmony (the principal

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 Sublime Truth 229

element of sunthesis, in which the harmony of language-the arr

words-is modeled after musical harmony) to be innate in hum
XXXIX). This also explains the power of its effects: it touches th
8. I unreservedly share the conclusions of Emmanuel Martineau
mesis dans la 'Po6tique': pour une solution phenomenologique.
essays on art in La Provenance des especes. I should also mention
Heidegger's reading in "The Origin of the Work of Art" and Jean
article "Phusis et Techn," it was from the same phrase in Heidegger
to Metaphysics, cited in fine by Martineau, that I began to have access
the Poetics. The phrase is: "Thus techne provides the basic trait o
violent; for violence [Gewalt-tdtigkeit] is the use of power [Gewalt-br
the overpowering [Uber-wiltigende]: through knowledge it wrests b
cealment into the manifest as the essent" (160).
9. I have investigated this in L'Imitation des modernes.
10. Demosthenes is placed under the sign of Phoebus (Apollo): "B
as if animated by a divine breath, and in a way possessed by the spi
he offers this sermon in the name of the heroes of Greece" (L
translation modified).

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