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History of Art, Reason 105if for that reason scientific knowledge is unable to exhibit thehistorical and psychological causes of universal artistic formsof representation, then it is all the more important that itundertake to investigate the latter’s metahistorical and metapsychologicalmeaning [metahistorischen und metapsychologischenSinn]: in other words, to ask what it means—from theperspective of the fundamental metaphysical conditions ofartistic creation [von den metaphysischen Grundbedingungen desKunstschaffens aus betrachtet]—to say that a period representsin terms of the linear or the painterly, of planarity or depth. 53The tone is again set: the whole critical move will be made in viewof ‘‘fundamental metaphysical conditions.’’ The notion of Kunstwollen,for example, will be almost metaphysically defended against its owncreator, Aloïs Riegl, whom Panofsky reproaches for formulations thatare ‘‘still much too psychological’’ (noch vielfach psychologistisch), infavor of a recourse to a priori principles into which all sensible ‘‘phenomena’’should be subsumed. 54 The tone is set again and the requirementagain comes clear: ‘‘We must be able to characterize the contentof a Kunstwollen,’’ Panofsky will write, ‘‘through a concept based noton generic concepts obtained by abstraction from characteristic artisticphenomena, but on fundamental concepts (grundbegriffen) that exposethe inherent root of [the artworks’] essence and reveal their imminentmeaning (ihren immanenten Sinn enthüllt),’’ not only in its singularitybut also in its ‘‘objective’’ universality. And it is not by chance that,when clarifying this proposition, Panofsky borrows a famous examplefrom Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. 55 This last-resort tophilosophical prudence only indicates the loftiness, or dizzying depth,of the ends being envisioned for the history of art. 56The moment of antithesis taught us that all knowledge proceedsfrom a choice, which in many respects seems a scission of the subject,an alienating structure entailing the loss of something in all cases (inaccordance with the logical model of the threatening ‘‘or,’’ as in:‘‘Your money or your life!’’). Neo-Kantism, by contrast, in the idealiststakes of its gnosology, pretended to resolve the question of loss. How?Panofsky suggests an answer through an expression that recurs