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Freedom qua Spontaneity:

The Lacanian Subject in the Critique of Pure Reason

WILLIAM J. URBAN

Part II: Locating the Subject’s Spontaneity

Opening Remarks

If it is argued that the central concern of psychoanalytic theory is to put forth its own notion of subjectivity, this would come as no surprise. After all, psychoanalysis occupies itself daily with the human subject and has presumably developed its theories from the clinical experience of the subject as it grapples with itself in its environment. Lacanian psychoanalysis is certainly no exception in this respect. But what is unique to Lacanian psychoanalysis is the specific series of features it identifies with the subject. These features historically first appear together only with Lacan and are literally quite unimaginable as a specification of subjectivity. To be sure, the difficulty at grasping Lacan’s subject leads us to retroactively re-read our intellectual heritage as so many attempts to disavow the truth of its own subjective origins in order to maintain its cohesiveness and assume its place within our collective knowledge. This implies that Lacan has identified the existence of a certain excessive gesture surrounding subjectivity which no school of thought has or can completely account for, including the Lacanian school itself. Put rather simply, the merit of Lacan is that this troubling, traumatic aspect no longer need remain unacknowledged, but rather should be conceived as the constitutive element of subjectivity.

From his very first publications, Žižek has always set aside significant space to expound a Lacanian notion of subjectivity. In fact, regardless of whether his books are philosophically focused or more politically or culturally oriented, the first part of the typical tripartite structure of his books is usually dedicated, often explicitly so, to a Lacanian defense of the Cartesian cogito as an empty, purely logical form.12 Together with entire books dedicated to subjectivity, such as The Ticklish Subject and Cogito and the Unconscious, we find in these texts translations of the basic logical matrix which sustains Lacanian subjectivity into the unique terminology from a full range of philosophical traditions, from Descartes to Derrida, Hegel to Heidegger and Kierkegaard to Kant, among many others. As the above discussion demonstrates, our interest here in this paper is how Žižek specifies Lacanian subjectivity in Kantian terms, specifically as found in the Critique of Pure Reason.

It should be clear that Žižek considers Kant’s I of pure apperception as equivalent to Lacan’s barred $. Our analysis in Part I confirms that we should consider Kant and Lacan’s conception of the subject as identical. Both should be conceived as an empty form without content, a non-substantial or pure void which merely has a logical ‘existence’ as a necessary accompaniment to every thought. One arrives at such a notion of the subject ‘at the very moment when, by way of the utmost abstraction, I confine myself to the empty form of thought, which accompanies every representation of mine. Thus, the empty form of thought coincides with being, which lacks any formal determination-of-thought.’ (Žižek 1993: 14–5) At the same time, Žižek has always further maintained that this notion is the only one which can logically account for the fact of the subject’s (transcendental) freedom, autonomy or spontaneity. Consider the opening chapter of The Ticklish Subject where he speaks of the ‘spontaneity of transcendental apperception’ and the ‘central tenet of Kant’s transcendental idealism [as being] the subject’s “spontaneous” (i.e. radically free) act of transcendental apperception.’ (Žižek 1999: 26, 44) However, on these very pages, Žižek takes up another Kantian faculty of human cognition using the same exact terms, speaking of the ‘mystery of transcendental imagination qua spontaneity’ and how ‘Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, elaborates the notion of “transcendental imagination” as the mysterious, unfathomable root of all subjective activity, as a “spontaneous” capacity.’ (Žižek 1999: 25, 31) Thus Žižek depicts two Kantian faculties – on the one hand, pure thinking (ie, transcendental apperception), and on the other, the pure power of imagination – as both being the crucial theoretical node in which we are to locate the subject’s ‘spontaneity.’ Now, how can this be? Are these two faculties essentially the same, or is the concept of ‘spontaneity’ broad enough to be associated with two distinct faculties? Or are there other proposals?

Žižek gives little direct explanation in support of his seemingly disparate statements, but before one charges his analysis with incongruity, perhaps one should consider that this may simply be yet another instance of which Žižek’s work is often accused: an occasional laxness in the use of some philosophical concepts when a more rigorous use is called for. This paper considers the latter to be the case and not simply for the obvious reason that if there is a philosophical school that demands a rigorous treatment, it is the one Kant launched with his Critique of Pure Reason. More importantly, we find an implicit challenge in the very laxity of Žižek’s text, something which urges us to further extend his own defense of Lacan’s resuscitation of the cogito against contemporary attempts to discredit it. We thus consider this an opportunity to further demonstrate Lacan’s revolution in thinking subjectivity. To this end, we will seek to further specify the Lacanian subject qua spontaneity in terms of Kant’s key notions of transcendental apperception and transcendental imagination, through a detailed exploration of the nature of the relationship between these two faculties.

In this part of the paper, we discuss three Kantian commentators and consider their respective thoughts on spontaneity. We begin with an examination of the issue by making use of the work of the authoritative contemporary Kantian interpreter, Henry Allison, and then proceed to Heidegger’s work on Kant before we conclude with an examination of Žižek’s criticism of the latter’s thesis. This strategy will hopefully position us to more fully appreciate Žižek’s particular reading of spontaneity in the Critique of Pure Reason, a feature Žižek insists is essential to any proper notion of (Lacanian) subjectivity.

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