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History of Art, Reason 107figured, invested with the prestige of Kantian reason. Panofsky, then,lifts his hat (his neo-Kantian hat) by way of greeting the new scholarlycommunity of art historians. Then he places the hat on the table (theVasarian table) and, in the manner of magicians, he lifts it again: thefour doves or four white rabbits of humanist history then reappear,more beautiful and more vibrant than ever. Everyone, dazzled andreassured, applauds. The discipline is saved.Let’s clarify the hypothesis. The Kantian tone adopted by the historyof art is merely a ‘‘magical’’ agent of transformation, aiming toredirect, in the mode of an ‘‘objectivity’’ or ‘‘transcendental objectivism,’’the principal totem-notions of the humanist history of art—manifestly transfigured by the operation, and yet, in a certain sense,reverting to the same. As if the operation had criticized them, invertedthem, but also reinforced them by giving them a new reason, simpleKantian reason. The hypothesis, if it has any worth, entails at leasttwo corollaries. First, it presupposes that rigorous concepts operativein one discursive field can be used in another as floating signifiers, inother words as tools, no less operative, for another kind of work,the ‘‘magical’’ and closed work of thought. 59 This presupposes thatphilosophical discourse is a matter of articulation, of pragmatics and‘‘presentation,’’ as much as of positive statements and conceptual representations.60 This presupposes, finally, that we will find, in the methodologicalvocabulary of Panofskian art history, something of the magicwords advanced by Vasarian art history to secure its academic legitimation.In 1959, when Panofsky—who was then working on Renaissance andRenascences in Western Art—authorized the republication, after thirtyfiveyears, of his short book on the history of artistic theory, eloquentlyentitled Idea, he wrote a brief foreword that at first glanceseems quite conventional, a text cautioning his readers that the bookwas ‘‘old.’’ Beyond this formulaic warning, Panofsky remarked on the‘‘problem of conscience’’ with which the book presented him: althoughover time his conceptions had changed ‘‘in many details’’(whose correction would entail writing a new book), his intentionsremained ‘‘fundamentally unchanged.’’ 61 But what were these inten-