Freedom qua Spontaneity:
The Lacanian Subject in the Critique of Pure Reason
WILLIAM J. URBAN
First Paralogism of Substantiality
That the representation of which is the absolute subject of our judgments, and hence cannot be used as the determination of another thing, is substance.
I, as a thinking being, am the absolute subject of all my possible judgments, and this representation of Myself cannot be used as the predicate of any other thing. Thus I, as thinking being (soul), am substance. [A348]
Johann G. Schultz, Kant’s contemporary reviewer, correctly points out that Kant treats this categorical syllogism of the rational psychologist, as well as those in the following two Paralogisms, as involving the fallacy of a sophisma figurae dictionis. (Schultz 1995: 56) In such a fallacy, there is confusion over the validity of some subject. On the one hand, there is the manner in which something can be merely considered subjectively valid (ie, the way a subject is thought within a given judgment); while on the other hand, something can also be considered objectively valid (ie, thought as an object ‘in-itself,’ as independent of any particular judgment). The former manner concerns the major premise, which properly takes the pure concept of substance, a category, as a rule for conceptualizing its content, implying the necessity of conceiving the subject of the major premise as if it were a substance, not in the strong ontological sense, but only within the judgment. This is a requirement of judging categorically. Thus, the (categorical) judgment of the major premise is perfectly legitimate, provided we acknowledge that ‘substance’ here is never to be conceived as a predicate of anything else, but only within this particular judgment’s horizon. The latter, objectively valid, conception of substance concerns the minor premise and conclusion. Here, substance is treated as an entity that must be conceived ontologically, that is, in every judgmental context. (Allison 1983: 120) Therefore, the claim that the inference of the first Paralogism commits a sophisma figurae dictionis fallacy of equivocation points toward an ambiguous middle term, resulting in ‘substance’ being taken in different senses in the major and minor premises. The syllogism is thus obviously invalid since it really consists of four terms and not three.
However, by concentrating their efforts almost exclusively on the formal invalidity of the syllogisms, most commentators in the 220 year period since Schultz’s expositional review have missed the precise nature of the critique, as Kant’s critical focus is elsewhere. Kant went beyond a mere demonstration of the formal falseness of the Paralogisms and quite rightly did so, since doing otherwise would have kept open the possibility that a rational psychologist could, as yet, provide a valid, rational argument.3 To specify what Kant’s approach actually entails, one would need to utilize his results from the Analytic to show that the major premise takes the category in its transcendental sense as a concept of something in general, which can involve only a logical and not a real use. (Allison 2004: 335)The I qua thinking subject qualifies for a logical but not a real use, since, for the latter, we are lacking the mediating schema which would provide the conditions under which the category (here, substance) could be made sensible. Only then could the soul be legitimately subsumed under the category. Since these conditions are not provided, no (real) metaphysical conclusions of the soul’s presumed immaterial, indestructible or persistent nature can be derived from it.
In order to more closely examine Kant’s claim, we need to first understand that the act of the I of transcendental apperception (or alternatively, the act of the self-perceiving, thinking subject), is a pure, originary act which is identical to an act of self-consciousness. This act produces the transcendental unity of apperception (TUA). Kant explains this in the opening pages of the B-Transcendental Deduction: through the necessity of the possibility of the ‘I think’ accompanying all of the subject’s representations (so as for them to become representations), not only must the I that thinks each representation be identical in order to reach a consciousness of these representations as constituting a unity, but ‘it must also be possible for [this I] to become conscious of its own identity as subject with respect to the thought of each of these representations... [and] these conditions are reciprocal.’ (Allison 2004: 165) The point here is that the TUA that results is purely a logical construction or requirement of (self-) consciousness and cannot itself be accompanied by any further determination or representation and hence is not itself a possible object of experience. The logic here strangely echoes the ‘logic of the signifier’ Lacan developed with respect to the transcendental ‘phallic’ dimension of the Master Signifier as that with ‘which the subject experiences his radical limitation (the fact that he is confined to the limits of his world) as his constitutive power (the a prior network of categories structuring his perception of reality).’ (Žižek 1989: 223–4) In both cases, the ‘I think’ that accompanies each representation of reality for the subject continually ‘searches’ for the missing subject, which has always-already been found at a strictly logical, non-experiential level. Further, for the psychoanalyst, the error that arises in the subject is the notion that this reflective, totalizing Master Signifier, through its very capacity to simultaneously represent and not represent the subject of the unconscious, ultimately points toward a substantive subjectivity. Likewise with the First Paralogism, the ‘syllogism conflates the logical ineliminability of the ‘I think’ with the real ineliminability (permanence) of the thinking subject as object.’ (Allison 2004: 336)
This fallacy, applicable to all the Paralogisms, Kant calls the ‘subreption of the hypostatized consciousness (apperceptionis substantiate)’ [A402] and is key to understanding Kant’s radical contribution to our notion of subjectivity. Already at a high level this is clear, as noted by Žižek, the preeminent defender of the thesis that the psychoanalytic subject is none other than the Kantian logical articulation of the Cartesian cogito. According to this thesis, when Descartes and other rational psychologists fall prey to this fallacy, they wrongly conclude that through this empty ‘I think’ which accompanies all of our representations, we gain access to a positive, phenomenal thinking-entity, a res cogitans which renders to consciousness a simple, permanent and substantial presence of self. However, what is lost is the topological gap existing between the empty form of the ‘I think’ (which is nothing but an analytical proposition on the identity of the logical subject of thought, as we have seen); and the fantasmatic content (fashioned by the synthetical proposition on the identity of the thinking thing/substance we call a ‘person’). This gap has been maintained in psychoanalysis by Lacan in the guise of his distinction between the subject of the enunciation (the empty, logical, non-substantial barred $) and the subject of the enunciated (consisting of a ‘personally meaningful’ substance of self which fills out the void of $)4. (Žižek 1993: 13–4) To further bring out this topological discord, we will examine more closely the ramifications of the fallacy of a ‘subreption of the hypostatized consciousness,’ and in doing so, indicate that a proper account of Kant’s notion of subjectivity, in as much as it relates to his critique of the Paralogisms, is inseparable from his notion of the transcendental illusion.
What Kant understands by ‘subreption’ involves a metaphysical error stemming from a confusion of the sensibility-understanding distinction which is required for properly grasping the nature of human cognition. (Allison 2004: 13) This distinction concerns what Allison has christened Kant’s ‘discursivity thesis’ which states that cognition requires both concepts and sensible intuition (ibid xiv), for, as Kant famously writes, ‘[t]houghts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.’ [A51/B76] Via the fallacy of subreption, the understanding mistakenly extends its principles to objects in general, making a transcendental use of the categories, since it erroneously assumes that the conditions of sensibility are also conditions of things in general. This is in clear violation of the discursivity thesis. (Allison 2004: 325–6) In the First Paralogism, the rational psychologist clearly falls victim to this fallacy, as is evident by the minor premise where there is an illicit substitution of the schematized for the pure use of the category of substance. This substitution is necessary in order to generate the conclusion that the I of apperception is not merely substance (and simple and permanent as claimed in the other two syllogisms) ‘in concept’ but also actually a substance (and simple and permanent). (Allison 2004: 337, 499n.8)
However, the illusory nature of this conclusion is not simply equivalent to the error of subreption, for there is another metaphysical error involved, that of ‘hypostatization.’ This is the error of taking what merely exists in the realm of thought to be a real object existing outside the thinking subject. In the Paralogisms, it is the I of apperception that is hypostatized, as is clear from Kant’s use of the Latin expression ‘apperceptionis substantiate.’ While these two reciprocal errors have a complex relationship with each other, they are nonetheless conceptually distinct and cannot be strictly equated with the illusory nature of the conclusions about the I of apperception in the Paralogisms. (Allison 2004: 338) So what exactly is the nature of the transcendental illusion and why is it fruitful to distinguish it from the metaphysical errors of subreption and hypostatization?
What greatly complicates matters is Kant says little about illusion in the Paralogism section, which Allison – a foremost commentator on Kant – points out has lead many other commentators to ignore this crucial issue and seriously underestimate its importance. (Allison 2004: 338) However, Kant does imply that a key to understanding the connection between the formal fallacies of rational psychology and transcendental illusion lies in the identification of a transcendental ground that supposedly underlies the fallacies and moreover, this ground clearly cannot be the ‘I think’ itself since it is precisely in regards to the ‘I think’ which rational psychologists are under an illusion. Kant states that the illusion has ‘its ground in the nature of human reason’ [A341/B399], a faculty the logical use of which follows its maxim to ‘find the unconditioned for the conditioned cognitions of the understanding, with which its unity will be completed.’ [A307/B364] This maxim can only be in effect by assuming that ‘when the conditioned is given, then so is the whole series of conditions subordinated one to the other, which is itself also given (ie, contained in the object and its connection).’ [A307–8/B364] Following Allison, we designate the maxim P1 and its inseparable companion P2 and further state that the latter principle is the sought-for transcendental ground. (Allison 2004: 339)
We are now in a position to distinguish between illusion and hypostatization. On the one hand, illusion results when P1, having merely subjective validity as a maxim of reason, as a mere subjective requirement of thought, is viewed as if it were P2, which has objective validity, involving itself in the determination of things-in-themselves. On the other hand, hypostatization does not involve a subjective-objective conflation of principles, but rather concerns itself with such a conflation of putative entities. And since to hypostatize is to assert a real existence, it is based on the illusion without being identical with it. This hypostatization error is what Kant accuses the rational psychologist of committing, rather than accusing them of being caught in some naive illusion. Why?
Because it is subjectively necessary to think the I of apperception as the absolute subject of thought and thus as a simple, permanent substance ‘in concept.’ The problem is that the rational psychologist falls under the influence of P2 and conflates this merely subjective necessity with an objective one and thus posits a real entity, the soul, as being a simple, permanent substance ‘in reality’. (Allison 2004: 339) As Kant writes, ‘nothing is more natural and seductive than the illusion of taking the unity in the synthesis of thoughts for a perceived unity in the subject of these thoughts.’ [A402] Thus, to consider the transcendental unity of apperception (TUA) as if it were the unity of a thing is strictly unavoidable, because this TUA is a condition of thinking of a thing (here, the I) as the unconditioned ground of thought. With hypostatization, however, one makes an existential assertion that goes well beyond this unavoidable way of considering the TUA. Thus, while the illusion is unavoidable, the hypostatization (as well as the error of subreption which follows from it) is not unavoidable. (Allison 2004: 340) And while no amount of thought or effort can remove this illusion, what is possible and what Kant aims at in the Paralogisms, is to show that we can avoid being deceived by it. His overall strategy in this respect is to reveal the hypostatization underlying the rational psychologist’s transcendental misapplication of the category of substance to the I of apperception. (Allison 2004: 341)
We can now see how Kant’s critique here is the first philosophical exemplification of the topological gap between the cogito as an empty, purely logical form (a certain constitutive ‘nothing’ necessarily conceived of as an illusory ‘something’) and the fantasmatic, hypostatized, ‘stuff’ that fills in the empty form (ultimately, an avoidable metaphysical error because of the nature of our thought as reflective)5. Of course, Kant was not entirely consistent across all his writings and can be seen at times shying away from this radical conception of cogito. At his worst, for instance, he often identifies the I of apperception with the noumenal I which has a phenomenal appearance as an empirical ‘person,’ thereby drawing back from his radical insight into how the transcendental subject is ‘beyond’ the noumenal/phenomenal opposition. (Žižek 2006: 23) However, the key point is that Kant’s analysis here, as elsewhere, points toward maintaining the notion of the ‘crack in the ontologically consistent universe’ Descartes first opened up, since Kant logically must conceive the cogito as strictly consubstantial with that topological gap in order for the overall Critique(s) to be coherent. Kant’s critique of the Paralogisms is a superlative exemplification of this logical requirement of his transcendental idealist philosophy.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
