ABSTRACT
The last days of liberalism are mirrored in Immanuel Kant's depiction of the Last Day of Judgement. It is the thesis that Kant, in his last days, reverses the field of liberalism creating the topology of the postmodern society of the spectacle under the sign of the aesthetic. As Martin Heidegger points out in his study of Kant's metaphysics, the Critique of Judgement establishes the central role of transcendental imagination. The aesthetic is further emphasized by Kant's use of good taste. In the ideological schema, the passivity of the citizen as voyeur is contrasted to the activity in the realm of free beauty created by the genius. Kant identifies how nihilism at the core of aesthetic liberalism gives rise to a vision of postmodern world that has lived out the logic of Critique. Part of this future is sketched in Kant's footnote commenting on the implications of the negative. This he describes as giving rise to inimical, partly nauseous allegories.
