Throughout his corpus, Žižek applies the thinking of Kant, Hegel, and Lacan to question the meaning of the symbolic order we take for granted in everyday life, from the laws passed by the parliament to trade agreements signed by countries. Following these philosophers, Žižek delves into abyssal and meaningless negativity within the subject: the inhuman, undead part in human subjectivity. This abyssal negativity of the real is both hypnotically constructive and fatally destructive. On the one hand, its
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existence galvanizes the symbolic order to explore the unknown. On the other, it disrupts the stability of the symbolic order. Kant initiates a philosophical revolution by designating a transcendental turn, indicating there is something else beyond our reason and experience: incomprehensible and insensible negativity in phenomenon.
Kant discovers and endows this devouring, abyssal, and destructive negativity with moral meaning. Hegel merges this negativity into his dialectical mechanism and transforms its destructive disposition into the positive good. Lacan continues to look into the negativity of the subject and sees it as the disruptive death drive.
Incorporating these philosophical analyses of negativity, Žižek seeks to explore radical negativity resisting the ideological fantasies of global capitalism. But it is sometimes confusing rather than inspiring when he discusses these philosophers briefly. In most of his books, Žižek often stops the philosophical enumeration abruptly after a brief discussion, which confuses many of his readers. Therefore, to give a clear picture of the philosophical backgrounds formulating Žižek’s complicated relationship between the negativity and the ethics of the real, I will proceed by underscoring his perspective on Kant, Hegel, and Lacan. By rereading Kant, Hegel, and Lacan, I want to present not only a clear picture of Žižek’s own thinking but also my own
interpretations of these philosophers on the significance of undead negativity.
Having confronted the rising tension between traditional values and science, Kant separates the world into two ontologically discrete realms — phenomenon and
noumenon5. He employs these two notions to reconcile tensions between the tradition of the feudal society and natural science. From the phenomenal and the noumenal
5 Kant employs “phenomenal” and “noumenal” to designate two “different ways of regarding objects”
(Kant, Critique of Pure Reason liii). From the phenomenal perspective, “our knowledge is a reflection of both sensory evidence and our own ways of knowing objects and hence is only of phenomenal objects” (liii). With our restricted knowledge, we can never know the noumenal objects, which are “in themselves apart from our ways of knowing” (liii). Our metaphysical knowledge is limited to the phenomenal object (liii).
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notions, Kant positions the “transcendental idea” beyond the reach of the subject’s experience (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason 533). It refers to objects that are thinkable but unknowable. Kant’s “Transcendental Analytic” leads to the conclusion that our understanding can never transcend the limits of sensibility (304). All our knowledge starts from experience which mainly relies on our limited senses and “the exposition of appearances” (304). The transcendental idea is an independent noumenal being that serves to direct our action. It is an ideal that is constantly approached but never
attained. From transcendental ideas, Kant develops his thinking on moral law, which cannot be known by experience. He claims that transcendental ideas have an
“excellent, and indeed indispensably necessary regulative employment, namely that of directing the understanding towards a certain goal up” “outside the bounds of possible experience” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason 533). And, this unknowable notion of transcendental ideas is also the basis for universal morality. Because of its thinkable but unknowable quality, the transcendental idea becomes an impossible but
imperative concept the subject must engage in on its way to universal morality.
This unknowable notion is in fact characterized with negativity. What Kant discovers in his philosophy of the unknowable transcendental idea is the traumatic thing6 in the real. Yet he is unwilling to acknowledge the transcendental idea as the negative real since Kant intends to orchestrate a path to the absolute good. In Religion
within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, he writes that there is an innate object
6 The traumatic thing that Kant discovers is the Lacanian thing in the real which is “the beyond-of-the-signified” (Lacan, Seminar VII 54). For Lacan, “the thing is characterized by the fact that it is
impossible for us to imagine it” (125). Therefore, the Lacanian thing is an “unknowable X, beyond symbolization” that has a close relationship with the Kantian “thing-in-itself” (Evans 205). The thing is related to the impulse to find something that has been lost upon the subject’s entry into the symbolic order. For Žižek, “the thing is retrospectively produced by the very process of symbolization, i.e., that it emerges in the very gesture of its loss” (Žižek, Tarrying 37). The thing appears in the Lacanian real, as a threat of the symbolic order. The thing also indicates an intermediary state between animal and human, a void that the subject fails to represent in imaginary and symbolic order. Therefore, the thing can only be presented as a traumatic loss, an intolerable deficit that the subject must fill with the objet petit a.
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propensity in human beings “in view of the multitude of woeful examples that the experience of human deeds parades before us” (Kant, Religion 80-81). Kant unfolds an immanent unknown crack that is within us but is beyond our control and
experience. It represents not only the abyssal and disturbing characteristics of the real, but the emancipating potential that might enable us to resist the restrictions of the symbolic order. Fearing the catastrophic effect of the “evil in every human being”
(Kant, Religion 80), Kant sees this chaotic willing as the “diabolical vice”7 which we must avoid at all costs. Instead of exploring the unknown power of evil/real, he shifts his focus to the enigmatic nature of the moral law and claims that we can never grasp the “unconditional practical necessity of the moral imperative” (Kant, Groundwork 155). Stopped in his exploration before the threshold of the unknowable evil/real, he stresses that we can only know its “incomprehensibility . . . which in its principles strives to reach the boundary of human reason” (155). With the content of the repressed incomprehensibility qua the real, Kant presents us with an empty form of the law as an ethical contribution. With the Kantian neutral universal form of the law, the subject must review its own behavior constantly to check if it meets the criteria of ethical adequacy. Despite his discovery and contribution, Kant’s exploration of the real grinds to a halt when he reaches the limits of experience and morality.
This Kantian “immanent unknown” later influences Žižek’s view. While Kant puts the unknown part in our mind as a guideline of morality, Žižek sees the unknown X as the Lancanian thing which founds the subject. After its entry into the symbolic order, the subject constantly seeks the “objet petit a”8 to cover the Lacanian “thing”9
7 In Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, Kant defines diabolical evil as the evil that is done for its own sake. The individual violates the law simply for the sake of violating it. As diabolical evil, it is characterized with “extreme degree that surpasses humanity” (27).
8 The objet petit a is a “privileged object, which has emerged from some primal separation, from self-mutilation induced by the very approach of the real, whose name in our algebra, is the objet [petit] a”
(Lacan Seminar XI 83). The objet petit a is “something from which the subject, in order to constitute
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(Lacan, Seminar VII 54). The unknown thing in the real is the main driving force of the subject’s exploration. Kant asserts that the human mind is not a passive receiver that takes any stimulus. Instead, there is a gray area that allows the human to freely choose and actively construct the experience he senses. Kant regards this
incomprehensible area as a positive force helping humans to categorize the
experienced world into orderly and manageable information. Humans follow reason to accumulate and make raw experience into perception and conception. This gray area is the free ability of the human mind to make the sensible world into a rational world of morality (Critique 836). Different from animals, humans have the active power of reason to choose moral order.
Žižek focuses on the undeveloped part of Kant’s incomprehensibility, especially the chaotic willing of the diabolical evil. He shifts the attention from Kantian reason to the immanent contradiction that derails the subject. With the immanent and uncontrollable willing of the diabolical evil, the subject sometimes does things that are immoral and irrational. For instance, driven by the diabolical will, a man drives so fast only to enjoy an immoral and irrational symptom known as thrill. Žižek stresses that Kant senses the “topological discord between the form ‘I think’ and the substance
itself, has separated itself as organ” (112). It must be an object that is “firstly, separable and, secondly, that has some relation to the lack” (112).
In Parallax View, Žižek describes the ambiguous characteristics of the objet petit a. Objet petit a has two contradictory faces and can be regarded as both the excess and lack. Objet petit a can be the object
“which overlaps its loss, which emerges at the very moment of its loss (so that all its fantasmatic incarnations, from breasts to voice and gaze, are metonymic figurations of the Void, of nothing) . . . within the horizon of desire” (61). In desire, the subject seeks the “fantasmatic incarnation” qua the objet petit a to fill the void (61). The subject will spend its life constantly looking for its objet petit a.
So the objet petit a is regarded as the excess. While in drive, the subject confronts the loss qua the objet petit a itself as its own object. The subject stops looking for desired objects qua the objet petit a to fill the void. It shifts from desire to drive and see the void as its desired object qua the objet petit a. Here the objet petit a is seen as the lack. In drive, the subject “pushes for to enact ‘loss’- the gap, cut, distance- itself directly” (62). The objet petit a is the “residue of the real after the onset of the symbolic order . . . and the elusive object that occurs as a consequence of the symbolic order” (Butler, The Žižek Dictionary 215).
9 Compared to the objet petit a that “has its place within the lack of the symbolic order”, the real of das Ding (the thing) has “its place in the primordial real as that which is not at all lacking (there is nothing lacking in the primordial real)” (Butler 215). Das Ding (the thing) is the thing that lacks a signifier (215).
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which thinks” (Žižek, Tarrying 13). A great gap exists between the process of thinking and the insensible mortal subject where the thinking process occurs. That is, an
unknown gap persists between the man who does the thinking and the living being that breathes. Žižek underscores and looks into the abyssal gap of the subject where the thinking process occurs. Kant maintains that it is impossible to fill out the
unknown part of the subject with our intuited experience (Tarrying 14). Human beings can never completely understand themselves. Because of this limitation, the subject cannot fully comprehend the reason in its decisions or realize which decisions are better for the subject. Sometimes people make choices so harmful and irrational that they can’t fathom why they made them. In ancient times, humans sought instruction from oracles and signs in nature to make decisions. Nowadays, people rely on experts and information to guarantee a promising future. But even with so much help from
technology, the public can hardly know themselves and the reasons for their decisions.
Kant’s original purpose is to direct the impossibility of our reason to realize the universal moral duty. Our noumenal reason serves as a regulative tool that guides us towards morality. For Kant, the guiding principle of the moral law is impossible for us to experience. So it becomes an a priori idea, which is a fundamental concept of reason. Kant’s subject is constructed on “a transcendental subject of the thoughts=X”
(Kant, Critique 346). It founds the thinking of the subject, making universal moral law possible. In other words, the fundamental concept of reason as the unknown X not only founds our thinking but directs us to choose the moral law. For Žižek, Kant’s contribution lies in discovering the unknown part X. Žižek concentrates on Kant’s discovery of the unknown abyss that makes humans unique beings. Kant highlights
“the impossibility of locating the subject in the ‘great chain of being’, into the Whole of the universe . . .” (Žižek, Tarring 12). Kant specifically points out for Žižek the
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mysterious center of gravity in the decentered subject.
With the shift of gravity from Kantian morality, Žižek stresses the unique side of the abyssal Thing rather than the side of reason in man. The human becomes a partial object/subject between the substance that does the thinking and the thinking itself.
Žižek transfers the human from “real person” to the monstrous “living dead”
(Tarrying 113). He sees the monstrous living dead as a bridge connecting man and animal. This monstrous living dead escapes the control and dissolves the regulation of the subject. Therefore, the threatening mediator needs to be repressed beyond the senses and reason of the subject. It is the monstrous “vanishing mediator”10 of partial objects between “direct animality and human freedom subordinated to Law” (Ticklish 52). The significance of this monstrous partial object/subject is something we neither feel nor control. It infiltrates our life secretly. However, as a contradiction, this threatening uncanny object/subject offers us an absolute freedom. If we project this uncanny outcast of ourselves on people around us, we can understand why Žižek asks us to love one’s neighbor as ourselves and repeatedly demands that we ask ourselves what we really desire as a responsible subject. Yet, from Žižek’s perspective, Kant goes “halfway in his destruction” (Žižek, Parallax View 27). Kant is the first one who distinguishes phenomenon from noumenon. He scrutinizes the limits and boundaries, but does not elucidate the close relationship between the finite phenomenal and infinite noumenal. He posits that human finite ability can never experience the infinite noumenal field. In effect, it is unknown negativity, and this initiates the thinking
10 Žižek borrows this notion from Fredric Jameson’s discussion of capitalism. Jameson reveals how capitalism appeared out of Protestantism in a dialectical process. Jameson argues that Protestantism is the “vanishing mediator” between feudalism and capitalism (Jameson, 31). Protestantism created the suitable condition for capitalism to emerge. But the advent of capitalism brought results in the obsolescence of Protestantism (31). Here, the “vanishing meditator” means the missing link between two terms. The “vanishing mediator” is the idea which “mediates the transition between two opposed concepts and thereafter disappears” (Myers 38). Although Protestantism serves as an important catalyst, it has to disappear so that capitalism can emerge. Žižek sees the monstrous part in the subject as the vanishing mediator. We need to get rid of the monstrous part “before we can construct a substitute for it in the form of the symbolic order” (37).
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process. The unknowable negativity of the human mind is the abyssal gap that propels the infinite thinking and generates creative, alternative, and even subversive ideas in the mind of the subject.
After Kant, Hegel continues to probe the enormous power of the Kantian
discovery. Hegel employs a complicated reflective thinking on the thinking process to understand and confront inhuman negativity. That is, by infinite reflective thinking, the finite phenomenal human can employ its finite reason to achieve an absolute understanding of the noumenal. Hegel criticizes the Kantian “transcendental idea” as a “bad infinity” (Hegel, Science of Logic 130-33). Kant builds the transcendental idea as the infinite noumenal separated from the finite phenomenal, and the opposition between the finite and infinite restricts the development of the transcendental idea.
The Kantian unknowable/infinite transcendental idea, which institutes the universal moral law, is a violent “abyss of nothingness” (Hegel, Faith and Knowledge 190), since it lies in the noumenal field beyond our understanding and experience. If Kant’s transcendental idea itself remains unknown, the universal moral law will be built on a rather fragile foundation. The institution of the moral law will become a weak and violent process. To strengthen Kant’s idea, Hegel claims that the progress of Kant’s moral task is a self-contradictory abyss of nothingness that requires further discussion (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit 368). Without content, the Kantian moral
progression will be “projected onto a future infinitely remote” (368). If the goal is actually reached, moral consciousness will disappear. This Kantian morality is a moral consciousness with an unreachable essence. In the end, Kant’s perpetual moral progress can never be genuinely fulfilled. Once the idea of morality is found, morality will disappear. Hence, Kant’s abstract concept becomes the “abyss of nothingness in which all being [is] engulfed” (Hegel, Faith and Knowledge 190).
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Based on Kant’s philosophy, Hegel works to transgress the boundary between the finite phenomenon and infinite noumenon. In other words, he holds that the human being has the potential to achieve the absolute spirit uniting both phenomenon and noumenon by speculation. Hegel claims that the finite human ontology possesses the motivation of infinite speculation. Because there is an impenetrable part of pure self, the subject cannot reach complete knowledge of itself. Hegelian radical negativity represents the tremendous power of speculation. Radical negativity helps the speculative reason of the subject to cross the limits and boundaries of its own thinking. Based on Hegelian infinite negativity, one constantly reflects on its own thinking and its boundaries to eventually reach the point of the “absolute” which will comprehend everything (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit 20). Negative reason reflects infinitely upon itself by crossing the boundary of identity and non-identity (Hegel, Science of Logic, 357). Because radical negativity goes beyond the realm of the phenomenon, the subject can speculate infinitely till it dissolves any restrictions and elevates itself. As a result, the infinite speculation, which continuously crosses the boundary, will reach an “absolute mind/spirit” (Hegel, Philosophy of Spirit 384).
Hegel turns Kant’s unknown negativity into a positive element that enables the subject to have infinite constructive speculation.
Despite his effort to endow negativity with positive effect, Hegel cannot fully embrace radical negativity with his dialectical mechanism. Theoretically, the subject can never truly embrace destructive negativity since it will be a gesture of self-obliteration in which the meaning of the subject disintegrates into “the night” and meaningless darkness. Still, with his dialectical machinery, Hegel’s contribution is to change the monstrous negative characteristic of the real into the positive and
acceptable norm of the symbolic order in the society. Instead of stopping before the
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abyssal gulf of the unknown “night,” Hegel takes a step further into the unknown, attempting to explore more possibilities of negativity. To some extent, Hegel
resembles Kant. Hegel transforms horrible negativity into the inner call of conscience.
Yet, different from Kant, Hegel transgresses and blurs the boundary between good and evil. Hegel’s intention is to delve into the meaning of unknowable negativity. Yet, Hegel’s intention was misused, and this led the way to catastrophes such as the Nazi holocaust or Stalin’s purges whereby the worst atrocities are legitimized by means of
Yet, different from Kant, Hegel transgresses and blurs the boundary between good and evil. Hegel’s intention is to delve into the meaning of unknowable negativity. Yet, Hegel’s intention was misused, and this led the way to catastrophes such as the Nazi holocaust or Stalin’s purges whereby the worst atrocities are legitimized by means of