Freedom qua Spontaneity:
The Lacanian Subject in the Critique of Pure Reason
WILLIAM J. URBAN
Allison and ‘proto-conceptualization’
Our problem, to more clearly specify the nature of the relation between the two faculties of transcendental apperception and transcendental imagination so as to better locate the spontaneity of the subject, brings us to the core of Kant’s first Critique: the Transcendental Deduction, notoriously the most difficult and contentious item in Kant’s philosophical canon. Adding to its difficulty is the fact that Kant completely rewrote this section for his second, ‘B-edition’ and in doing so apparently recast his thinking on the status of pure imagination. So properly speaking, when we referred to imagination above as its own faculty, separate from the faculties of sensibility and understanding, it should be noted that Kant only explicitly held this to be the case within the text of the A-Deduction. As we shall see, in the B-Deduction, Kant links imagination closely to the understanding. Thus, because of these complexities, we potentially have a myriad of readings not only due to the difficulty of the text itself, but also according to which of the two versions the interpretation focuses on.13
Allison, representative of the majority of contemporary commentators in this respect, chooses to almost exclusively examine the B-Deduction over the A-Deduction. When we consider that the overall theme of the Deduction seems to be the correlation between self-consciousness (ie, the capacity to apperceive the I) and the conscious experience of an objective, spatio-temporal world, this seems quite reasonable. The B-Deduction has traditionally been characterized as favoring the ‘logical’ over the more ‘psychological’ factors one finds in the A-Deduction, so a focus on the B-Deduction would reflect an acknowledgment of the necessity to approach that correlation as objectively as possible.14 More specifically, Allison’s choice reflects his own insistence on the importance of the aforementioned ‘discursivity thesis’ in understanding Kant’s approach to human cognition which, it will be recalled, views it as requiring both concepts and (sensible) intuitions. Coupled with the fact that Kant appears much more ‘objective’ in his demonstration of a connection between the sensible and intellectual conditions of human cognition in the B-Deduction, thereby avoiding the apparent ‘murkiness’ of the so-called ‘psychological’ contribution the independent faculty of imagination makes toward human cognition in the first edition account, again it seems quite reasonable to focus on the B-Deduction since it deals with two, rather than three distinct faculties. Most importantly, perhaps, is that the entire fundamental exposition of his general theory in the Critique – the Doctrine of Elements – is of a bi-partite structure. On the one hand, there is the Transcendental Aesthetic which deals with the faculty of sensibility, and on the other, a Transcendental Logic which deals with the faculty of understanding. Thus, a Transcendental Deduction that does not consider the pure imagination its own separate faculty fits more satisfactorily within the ‘architectonic’ of Kant’s overall project.
A problem immediately presents itself, however. It would seem that our task to locate spontaneity is immediately solved if we focus on the B-Deduction. That is to say, Žižek is quite right in speaking of spontaneity in terms of either transcendental apperception or imagination, since the transcendental synthesis of the latter is ‘an effect of the understanding on the sensibility’ [B152], so the difference between the two seems to be merely nominal: it is the understanding ‘under the designation of a transcendental synthesis of the imagination’ that determines inner sense. [B153] In fact, Kant states that ‘[i]t is one and the same spontaneity that, there under the name of imagination and here under the name of understanding, brings combination into the manifold of intuition.’ [B162n]
However, before we completely abandon the B-Deduction for the earlier version as Heidegger (and Žižek) claims is necessary, it may still be worth exploring. True, the imagination is no longer ‘accorded the dignity of being a separate cognitive power mediating between sensibility and understanding,’ but the great advantage is that Kant paradoxically deals with the imagination much more fully in the B-Deduction, as any cursory glance of the text will prove. (Allison 2004: 186) This means that a close reading might still prove fruitful and this is exactly Allison’s conclusion: despite his claims to the contrary, in the B-Deduction Kant still manages to clear away some space for quasi-independent activity on the part of the imagination. Allison’s general approach is to argue that Kant retains a ‘division of labor’ whereby the task of imagination is to synthesize while that of the understanding is to bring this synthesis to concepts. The implication here is that the activity of the imagination is not itself directly conceptual, but rather ‘proto-conceptual.’ The idea is that the imagination unifies the ‘sensible data in a way that makes possible its subsequent conceptualization, without itself being a mode of conceptualization.’ (Allison 2004: 188) In order to understand this approach, a close examination of §24 is in order, where Kant links the unity of apperception (and the categories) to time as the form of inner sense via the connection of both with the transcendental synthesis of the imagination. (Allison 2004: 185)
In §24, Kant distinguishes the purely intellectual synthesis attributed to the understanding from the transcendental synthesis of the imagination. This latter synthesis he calls the synthesis speciosa or ‘figurative synthesis.’ It has both an a priori dimension and a transcendental function in the determination of time as the form of inner sense, the latter function also necessarily being in accord with the conditions of the synthetic unity of apperception. (Allison 2004: 189) Thus, we have a rather strange situation. On the one hand, imagination possesses its own synthetic activity, but on the other, seems to retain some measure of dependency on the synthesis accorded the understanding (by way of apperception). Let us begin to make sense of this by noting Kant’s definition of the figurative synthesis of imagination as ‘the faculty for representing an object even without its presence in intuition.’ [B151] As Allison notes, this ability is necessary for the representation of time as Kant argues in the Transcendental Aesthetic. (Allison 2004: 189) There, Kant argues that each determinate extent of time is intuited as part of a single all-inclusive and infinite given magnitude and that the subject is aware of this as such. That is, in order to represent a determinate extent of time, we must represent past and future times that are not ‘present,’ as well as the single all-inclusive and infinite time of which they are mere parts. This is precisely the contribution of the imagination. However, this representation of the single, all-inclusive time is not literally a matter of simply forming an image but is rather like an ‘interpretation’ of that image as being an image of time. This is true since inner sense has no manifold of its own, so time must necessarily be interpreted in spatial terms. (Allison 2004: 190) For those familiar with Žižek’s use of Hegel’s reflective logic, we could say that in order for the subject to posit such an imaginative representation of time, it must first presuppose itself as positing. And it would precisely be in this presupposition that such a figurative synthesis would lie, as well as its ‘interpretation’ as an image of time.
The crucial point, however, is to show that the figurative nature of the imaginative synthesis (in its capacity to determine time) must conform to the (categorial) requirements of the understanding. However, Allison notes that Kant merely states that it does so without further proof, simply asserting ‘that the imaginative synthesis is an expression of the spontaneity of thought, that it determines inner sense a priori in respect of its form, and that this determination is in accord with the unity of apperception.’ (Allison 2004: 191) To provide the lacking explanation, Allison proceeds in two steps.
The first acknowledges the primacy of the conditions of the unity of apperception over-above all imaginative representing, the latter necessarily conforming to the former. That is, this first step is to show that the ‘expression of the spontaneity of thought’ of the imaginative synthesis, so to speak, falls within or under the unity of apperception. This is the simpler of the two steps and accords with the B-Deduction thesis that the synthesis of the imagination is just the synthesis (unity) of apperception viewed from another angle. The idea here is taken from Allison’s understanding of the first part of the B-Deduction, where Kant provides a general account of synthesis, considered as a spontaneous activity of the understanding on a manifold given from without, and where he provides the principle of the transcendental unity of apperception. (Allison 2004: 163) Despite involving a synthetic unity, Kant asserts this is an analytic principle and Allison (controversially) argues against the dismissal of this assertion in the current Kantian literature, taking Kant at his word. Allison argues Kant’s claim of analyticity is really equivalent to claiming that a subject (of discursive thought) brings a manifold of intuition under a concept only inasmuch as he is a numerically identical subject. This proposition is a claim about how such a thinking subject must be thought qua engaged in such synthetic activity. (Allison 2004: 166–7) Both in terms of the intuitive representation of some image of time, as well as ‘the “interpretation” of its successive synthesis as the pure image of time, [this means that we must presuppose] a single subject conscious of its identity throughout the generative process.’ (Allison 2004: 191) Thus, a unity of consciousness (apperception) is a requirement for the very determinate representation of time.
The second step taken by Allison to provide the missing rationale is by far the more important (and ambiguous) of the two, as it is to demonstrate the ‘proto-conceptual’ activity of the imagination, that is, the point of relative independence exercised by the imagination in its synthetic, spontaneous activity of forming determinate representations of time. In contrast to the first step, where all imaginative representing is seen to conform to the conditions of the unity of apperception, here we are to examine what is represented (time and space) and its determination by the forms of human sensibility. (Allison 2004: 191) To be sure, this ‘introduction of human sensibility and its a priori forms brings with it an element that cannot be accounted for in terms of the purely conceptual requirements of the understanding.’ (Allison 2004: 192) This element has everything to do with the necessity of representing some image (of time) in a single, all-inclusive time – a requirement by sensibility on the understanding.
To show how thought is thus partially dependent on the conditions imposed by the nature of sensibility, Allison cleverly makes use of the notorious footnote in §26 [B160–61], in which Kant clarifies his initial strategy taken in the Aesthetic by introducing a subtle yet essential distinction to pure intuition. If we take ‘pure intuition’ as the genus, the footnote indicates that it has two species, a ‘form of intuition’ and a ‘formal intuition.’ This reflects a general distinction to be had between an indeterminate (or unconceptualized) and a determinate (conceptualized) pure intuition, respectively. Additionally, ‘form of intuition’ has two further senses, meaning either the form (ie, essential order or pattern) of that which is intuited and the form or manner of intuiting (ie, an innate capacity or disposition to intuit things in a certain spatio-temporal way). Hence, we must distinguish between three elements: the mental content, an object and an act sense of ‘pure intuition.’15 What interests us here are the first two, the formal intuition and the form of the intuited. (Allison 2004: 115)
This form of the intuited is what characterizes the single, all-inclusive time. It is neither a mere capacity to intuit, nor is it a formal intuition since it is clearly indeterminate (unconceptualized). That is, it is a ‘pre-intuited’ framework, or, as indicated above, presupposed by the actual representation of time by some spatial image. (Allison 2004: 116) The key here is the way the activity of the imaginative synthesis provides a concept by means of which this form (of the intuited) is determined in a certain manner. Alone, without a concept, the form of the intuited ‘merely gives the manifold, but the formal intuition gives unity of the representation.‘ [B160] Thus, formal intuitions are hybrids, composed of the indeterminate form of the intuited and a concept which results in a determinate intuitive representation of formal (ie, universal and necessary) features of objects qua intuited. It is important to note that this ‘concept’ is not a pure concept of the understanding (ie, it is not the result of the application of a category) but rather is a result of the ‘proto-conceptual’ activity on the part of imaginative synthesis. Such activity provides a unity to the sensible data (manifold) that makes possible its subsequent conceptualization at the level of thought. This is not to deny the dependence of the determinate representation of time on the requirements of the unity of apperception, as argued in the first step above, nor to the dependence of the imaginative synthesis on the categories in general. This is as it should be if we are to adhere to the B-Deduction status of imagination. Rather, the point is that this imaginative synthesis does achieve a certain independence in its unifying, synthetic activity by being constrained by space and time as the indeterminate forms of intuition, which is a constraint on the side of sensibility, not the understanding. (Allison 2004: 193)
There seems to be in Allison’s discussion of the relation between imagination and apperception an obstacle encountered, which would explain why his account does not seem to be all that persuasive. To be sure, there is a certain tension in Allison’s text. Presumably he takes seriously Kant’s downgrading of imagination from a faculty to its status as a mere extension of the understanding in the B-Deduction, but curiously never seriously takes issue with why Kant dramatically altered course between the two editions. Thus, his analysis is addressed to resolving the problem of the ensuing role of the imagination according to the explicit characterization it has in the B-Deduction. The resulting analysis, however, with its key notion of the so-called ‘proto-conceptual’ capacity of imagination, does not seem to convince. It seems to be rather devised to satisfy the two conflicting statuses of the imagination and the two versions of its role as a spontaneous synthesis in the two editions of the Deduction: as ‘proto-conceptual,’ the imagination is somehow able to maintain its independence from the understanding while simultaneously only differing from the understanding nominally. One is tempted to say that it is Allison himself who is engaged in resolving the problem in name only, while actually maintaining the unspoken idea that the imagination is its own faculty, rooted more in sensibility than in the understanding, as the A-Deduction would have it. If this is an accurate characterization of Allison’s approach, it would be better aligned with some of his later analysis. For instance, his treatment of the Transcendental Schema as the ‘third thing’ mediating between the intellectual and the sensible, in as much as such a schema involves a transcendental time-determination as a transcendental product of the figurative synthesis of imagination (Allison 2004: 215), is better supported if imagination is accorded a stronger status of its own.16
This idea, that the proper role of imagination can only consistently and logically be related to understanding if it remains on the side of sensibility, was robustly put forth by Heidegger. In fact, as we shall see, he so strongly placed the crucial accent of Kant’s critical philosophy on the transcendental power of imagination that he viewed the B-Deduction as Kant’s great retreat from the abyss he opened up in metaphysics by his initial focus on that very power.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
