Abstract

The inevitable illusion referred to in this title is the result of the mixture of the logical effort, which produces forms, and the critical effort, which destroys them. Such antagonism of logic and criticism is most acute in aesthetics. The produced forms, when taken as concepts, become illusory forms, predominantly poetic. While the idea is worth pursuing, the work is marred by an overly rhetorical mode of expression, reflecting a precipitous dialectical démarche and an indiscriminate accumulation of sources from all quarters of the history of philosophy.--A. M.