ABSTRACT
If asked, Kant – and Lyotard too – would certainly hasten to add that this kind of a ‘non-existent’ consensus or harmony of feelings has absolutely nothing to do with the universality of fashion which is always ‘only’ empirical by its nature. Still, Simmel’s characterization of the fashion pattern includes features resembling, to an amazing extent, Kant’s idea of sensus communis as interpreted by Lyotard:
The kind of consensus implied by such a process, if there is any consensus at all, is in no way argumentative but is rather allusive and elusive, endowed with a special way of being alive, combining both life and death, always remaining in statu nascendi or moriendi, always keeping open the issue of whether or not it actually exists. This kind of consensus is definitely nothing but a cloud of community.
