After I completed my studies at the École normale supérieure, I came to the United States with a single interest: Kant scholarship. I knew that I would shift shapes, smash paradigms, and sing the sorts of songs that had never been sung. It was my intention to move towards the spirit, to become the fiercest visionary since Kevin Spacey. My agenda, dear reader, was biblical.

I became well–known and well–liked: my visa was extended, the peasants worshipped me, and I sent my writings on reflexive modernity to several prestigious journals (one does not discuss Kant until one has established oneself in the field). Then, I had a dream.

I dreamt that I was traveling through a forest in pre–Columbian North America. Alone, and wholly bereft of food, I made my way through the wood with little hope of survival. Suddenly, I spotted Nietzsche. Dressed like a gentleman, he was bent over a pile of twigs; if I remember correctly, he was rather frantically attempting to start a fire. My arrival seemed to comfort him in some way. He greeted me, and I approached him and asked whether he ever grew tired of being insistent? He said nothing, but smiled and hugged me lovingly. He then gave me some provisions for my journey and told me, incidentally, that Kant had been heavily influenced by his writings.

I awoke and began writing a hermeneutic analysis that would transform the course of history; it was clear to me that, in its importance, my analysis would rival Steven Seagal. My task was simple: I needed to alert the world that Kant—that most sagacious of all Königsbergians—had studied Nietzsche. My plans were cut short, however, when—just three days after my dream—I noticed that The _______ Review of Philosophy had published an article by Domenico Alberti, my archrival. I read Alberti’s article as soon as I saw it—to my horror, it revealed what only I was supposed to know: that Kant had read Nietzsche. Within seconds, it became clear to me that I had been bested...every man, it seems, has the right to dream. After I realized that the glory destined for me had been stolen, I joined the Green Party, sang songs that had been sung before me, and wrote two books on Ibn Qutaybah, the ninth–century Muslim scholar. I then toyed with the idea that Alberti and I are the same man, but I gave that up, for such a thesis is highly unmarketable. Below is a verbatim transcription of Alberti’s article.

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The literature is strangely silent when it comes to the question of Nietzsche’s influence on Kant. That Kant had Nietzsche’s work in mind as he developed his metaphysics is obvious; what is uncertain is why scholars have ignored the matter for over a century. It is almost unnecessary to point out the ways in which Kant’s system represents a rewriting of Nietzsche. Consider, for instance, the opening of Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason:

That “the world lieth in evil” is a complaint as old as history, even as old as the older art of poetic fiction; indeed, just as old as that oldest among all fictions, the religion of the priests. All allow that the world began with something good: with the Golden Age, with life in Paradise, or an even happier life in communion with heavenly beings. But then they make this happiness disappear like a dream, and they spitefully hasten the decline into evil...so that now...we live in the final age; the Last Day and the destruction of the world are knocking at the door, and...Rutra...already is worshipped as the God now holding power, after Vishnu...resigned it centuries ago.

Is it not clear that all of the idiosyncrasies of Nietzsche’s prose are present in this momentous paragraph? The unearthly wit, the sardonic critique of history, the nearly perverse obsession with metaphor—are not all of these features combined in such a way as to make it clear that the paragraph could only have been composed by a man who knows Nietzsche? To my knowledge, I was the first to examine Kant’s debt to Nietzsche when I published The Four–Sided Triangle: Towards a Memory of the Future, my analysis of the critique of modernity embedded in Homer’s Iliad.ⁱ Few, it seems, have taken the time to read my Triangle; how else can one explain the fact that scholars still maintain an uncanny silence—a silence disturbing enough to be audible—in the face of the Nietzsche–Kant question? After two weeks of study, I have concluded that this silence can be explained in only one way. It seems to me that there exists some unseen force—some indeterminable quantity of power—that compels scholars to speak (mistakenly, of course) of Kant’s influence on Nietzsche. Foucault has made it clear to us that power cannot be understood as a purely prohibitive force; power, after all, can be deployed to multiply particular forms of discourse. What this suggests is that—as the mental patient of the nineteenth century was prodded by his doctors to reveal the details of his sexual life—so the contemporary scholar is compelled by an invisible machinery to produce (erroneous) histories in which Kant influences Nietzsche. One cannot help but ask, in fact, whether the production of such histories functions as a therapeutic operation? It seems that, whenever the modern scholar approaches the question of Nietzsche’s influence on Kant, several mechanisms of power come into play and compel him to change the subject. As the scholar sits down to write, he perceives that he is being acted upon by a force whose origin he cannot determine; glasses fog up, typewriters break, and the scholar’s will to knowledge is subverted before he can even reach the discursive act. The scholar is silenced before he speaks; he is, in some strange sense, always–already unable to broach the subject. In truth, I do not know why these mechanisms of power have not affected me. I do not know, in other words, why I am the only one who has been able to cross the invisible threshold. It may have something to do with my interest in Spinozism, but that is a matter for another day. It has been suggested to me on several occasions that my explanation is mistaken, and that the Nietzsche–Kant question has been ignored only because scholars have deemed it unimportant. What, I ask, can be more important? If something does not work in theory, it is a sure sign that it must work in practice—I learned this while interpreting two crucial texts: The Bible Code and its sequel, The Bible Code II: The Countdown. I dare to dream the impossible dream.

***

There you have it. Since I learned that Alberti published the secrets of my dream in a journal of philosophy, I have been tormented by a very particular question: Did Alberti dream me? Did I, in other words, appear to him in a dream and inform him about Kant, that sagacious Königsbergian? To answer this question, I need a methodology that has not yet been developed. I need to find a deserted road that is flanked on both sides by forest. I need to follow this road until I see Kevin Spacey crouching beneath a tree, yelling at me, informing me that he has seen things I would not believe. Only then will I move towards the spirit.

ⁱ The Four-Sided Triangle is the sequel to my self-published and privately circulated monograph, Stop Bustin’ on Me: Critical Reflections on Lacan.

PHILIP PETROV is a Columbia College junior. He is interested in politics, literature, music, and philosophy. Though he does dream at night, his visions have yet to tell him anything about the relationship between Kant and Nietzsche.