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History of Art, Reason 1031932 article were not without echo. We come across them again, likedistant radio waves, here and there, in the work of historians attentiveto the status of their own practice. For example in Ernst Gombrich,who broached the problem of imitation by positing, in typical Kantianfashion, a series of aporias—aporias of object and subject, of truth andfalsehood in a painting, of the alienating choice presented to us byillusion: ‘‘I cannot have my cake and eat it. I cannot make use of anillusion and watch it,’’ etc.—aporias that he then sought to resolvedialectically. 44 Robert Klein, in an extended discussion of the status oficonography, brought the question back to the point where Panofskyhad opened it some twenty years earlier in Studies in Iconology: ‘‘In thecase of art history, in particular, all theoretical problems are reduced. . . to the one and basic question: how to reconcile history, whichfurnishes its point of view, with art, which furnishes its object.’’ 45 Weshould also mention, among many others who unwittingly rediscoveredthe strength of the young Panofsky’s formulations, 46 MeyerSchapiro, Pierre Francastel, and, more recently, Michael Baxandall, aswell as the highly self-conscious reconsideration of Panofsky’s‘‘threshold text’’ undertaken by Hubert Damisch. 47On the other hand, it is a bit precipitous to imagine an ‘‘antithetical’’Panofsky in Germany as opposed to the ‘‘synthetic’’ Panofskywho succeeded him. The interrogation and the critical thought of ourauthor were not simply tossed overboard during his voyage toAmerica. We would do better to orient our reflections in the otherdirection: for it quickly becomes apparent that the synthesis was inscribedwithin the critical discourse from the outset. It is so inscribed inKant’s text, where the word ‘‘abyss’’ (Abgrund) recurs so often only tonestle into the word ‘‘subsumption’’ and the word ‘‘synthesis.’’ Thecritical philosophy aimed, in effect, for doctrinal stability. The antitheticalopening and the play of aporias sought, basically, only theirresolution, their transcendental closure. To be sure, the Kantian aestheticspeaks of the ‘‘subjective,’’ but only the better to include it inits own universality, which is that of the judgment of taste. 48 It is aporeticin one sense, but in another it is devoted to the power of theIdea, to ends, to the famous Kantian teleology that guides the wholemovement of the third Critique. 49 It demolishes trivial problematics of