Freedom qua Spontaneity:
The Lacanian Subject in the Critique of Pure Reason
WILLIAM J. URBAN
Closing remarks
A majority of contemporary theories on subjectivity endorse some version of an assertion of multiple subjectivities over against the specter of a hypostatized, unified Subject of transcendental philosophy and thus Kant and especially the later German idealists are seen to be irredeemable and hopelessly out-of-date with the demands of (post)modern reality.10 Rejecting a mistaken version of Kantian subjectivity, they tell us that in today’s world, we must give up the impossible search for a subject constitutive of reality and focus on asserting our own unique, particular (ethnic, gay, feminist etc) subjective position while somehow taking into account its fictional status. The more sophisticated theories tend to point toward the identity of self-consciousness with the very misrecognition surrounding its (culturally, etc) contingent constitution. It is, however, at these extreme theoretical points that we can discern the hidden re-introduction of the pre-modern ‘cosmological’ notion of a positive order of being, the very thing these theories ostensibly argue against. (Žižek 1998: 270) A Lacanian reading of Kant’s transcendental idealist philosophy offers an alternative to the false opposition between a unified subject of self-awareness and the post-modern, dispersed, pre-subjective multitude with its (hidden) ontological presupposition. What should be acknowledged is that such an opposition relies on an exclusion of Kant’s I of pure apperception. In other words, we are driven to Kant’s notion of the cogito as a ‘crack’ in reality as only that which can allow us to break free of the deadlock of this opposition and to properly account for the ontological incompleteness of reality itself.
As we saw above, such a notion of cogito informed the background to Kant’s thinking throughout his critique of the Paralogisms. This was so because of his assertion that the I of apperception is only a logical variable (not function) that ‘exists’ only as the necessary condition of the activity of thinking. Now, although to be aware of oneself as engaged in this activity might be construed as an ‘awareness’ of one’s existence, it does not bring with it any knowledge of what one is qua thinking substance (res cogitans). To hypostatize a determinate, substantial self as a thinking being is therefore an illusion. To get to the proper notion of the subject, we must endeavor to subtract all empirical, substantial content of the ‘person’ to reach the ephemeral punctuality of the cogito. It is only by de-psychologizing our self-acquaintance that we are able to arrive at this ‘subject of the unconscious’ – a purely logical presupposition – purified of all actual self-experience to whom we assign attributes.
But while this purely logical construct is beyond the reach of self-experience and thus cannot be ‘phenomenalized,’ it is equally critical not to equate the subject of apperception with the noumenal self. In fact, Allison shows how Kant rules this out as a logical contradiction, since the subject would then have to be both in possession of ‘intellectual intuition’ (in order to intuit and therefore know himself in his capacity as a spontaneous, determining self) and ‘discursive intelligence’ (in order to be known as a spontaneous, determining self). (Allison 1983: 289) Allison, of course, is not Lacanian and thus does not equate ‘rational agency’ with the subject of apperception, while Žižek does draw the proper conclusion that any direct access to the noumenal domain would deprive us of the very spontaneity and autonomy that forms the kernel of transcendental freedom, turning us into lifeless automata. (Žižek 1998: 270)
It is Žižek’s conclusion which best accounts for a curious subchapter in the second Critique entitled ‘On the Wise Adaptation of the Human Being’s Cognitive Faculties to his Practical Vocation’ which, as a general rule, is never cited by those commentators (such as Allison) who would consign freedom to the noumenal realm. And for good reason, as Kant tells us what would happen if the subject gained access to the noumenal dimension:
‘instead of the conflict that the moral disposition now has to carry on with the inclinations, in which, though after some defeats, moral strength of soul is to be gradually acquired, God and eternity with their awful majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes... hence most actions conforming to the law would be done from fear, only a few from hope, and none at all from duty, and the moral worth of actions, on which alone in the eyes of supreme wisdom the worth of the person and even that of the world depends, would not exist at all. As long as human nature remains as it is, human conduct would thus be changed into mere mechanism in which, as in a puppet show, everything would gesticulate well but here would be no life in the figures.’ (Kant 1996: 258; 5: 147)
In short, direct access to the noumenal domain deprives the subject of his freedom, which must therefore persist only in the very space between the phenomenal and the noumenal if we are to consider the subject free. If our horizon is limited to the causality of the phenomenal domain, this must mean we are free only insofar as the noumenal domain remains inaccessible to us. (Žižek 2006: 22–3)
It is here that we perhaps reach the greatest implication of Kant’s achievement regarding subjectivity, that which most separates his notion of cogito from contemporary thinking. If the transcendental subject is neither phenomenal nor noumenal, if he is not directly accessible to himself, then there is no stable substantial ground to guarantee the unity of the subject. Moreover, the (transcendental) freedom associated with such a subject must then be conceived as a non-phenomenal and strictly autonomous act of primordial choice, by means of which the subject atemporally ‘chooses’ his own eternal character. This should be strictly opposed to current (eg, feminist) readings that argue that the (‘masculine’) nature of cogito necessarily misses the ‘true core’ of (a feminine) subjectivity: on the contrary, the transcendental I or cogito is nothing but the empty place from which the subject ‘chooses’ that ‘thing-in-itself-in-us,’ that which Kant termed the Gesinnung (or noumenal ‘disposition’) of the subject. (Zupančič 2000: 37) This must mean that freedom and autonomy simultaneously stand as their own conditions, so while ‘[t]here can be no freedom without a subject, the very emergence of the subject is already the result of a free act.’(Zupančič 2000: 41) Thus, Kant’s legacy has radical implications for conceiving the freedom of the modern subject. This is to be accounted for with direct reference to a Lacanian notion of the structure of subjectivity,11 a notion that still largely remains the unthought ‘in-itself’ of contemporary philosophy.
Of course, the conclusions drawn in the foregoing few paragraphs regarding the proper location of the subject’s freedom in terms of the phenomenal/ noumenal distinction takes us well into Kant’s practical philosophy and thus well outside the scope of this paper. However, there are significant conclusions for the status of freedom to be drawn from Kant’s theoretical philosophy as well, which should be grasped prior to any exploration of his later practical texts. We now turn to an extended examination of the Transcendental Deduction in an attempt to locate the point where the subject’s freedom can be properly conceptualized qua spontaneity.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
