Bref air de fête

(Momentary Festive Atmosphere)

Abstract

Festivities are a break within time. They are the exception, the suspension of courses and discourses. This is the reason why, as Thomas De Quincey writes, “there was no friend of Kant’s but considered the day on which he was to dine with him as a day of pleasure [jour de fête in French].” Kant desired precisely that a meal taken in common be a distraction from the course of obligations, proprieties, and analytic decompositions. He knew the bad infinity of causes enchained within time too well not to desire instead, without concession, a rupture in such a chain through a time of festivity. Such a festive time would be the festivity of time itself; it would be something, whether force or form, that alone would not be found within time.