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Subjectivity as a Feature of Reality: On Diffraction Laws of Consciousness and Reality Within Justified True Belief

  • Dominik Finkelde
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Idealism, Relativism, and Realism
This chapter is in the book Idealism, Relativism, and Realism

Abstract

In any account of how things really are, subjectivity can be both a formal and a distorting factor for Hegel and Lacan’s adaptation of Hegelian dialectics. Lacan speaks of a pre-theoretical experience of being in the world where human beings are literally called by reality to be social agents and fill in gaps of this reality at the same time with their fantasies. As such, fantasies play an epistemic role, neglected often in both epistemological and ontological debates. But since the status of reality, with or without fantasies, is never all and complete, antagonisms within reality cannot be contained. Ontology, as our inquiry into ‘what there is,’ affects ‘what there is’ in that subjectivity, troubled by antagonism, always goes beyond established forms of facts, theoretically, practically and phantasmagorically. Finkelde argues, especially with reference to Kant and Hegel, that subjectivity, with its imaginary intertwinement of what Lacan calls the symbolic order, is a feature of reality (as virtuality) and not just a hallmark of the conscious mind.

Abstract

In any account of how things really are, subjectivity can be both a formal and a distorting factor for Hegel and Lacan’s adaptation of Hegelian dialectics. Lacan speaks of a pre-theoretical experience of being in the world where human beings are literally called by reality to be social agents and fill in gaps of this reality at the same time with their fantasies. As such, fantasies play an epistemic role, neglected often in both epistemological and ontological debates. But since the status of reality, with or without fantasies, is never all and complete, antagonisms within reality cannot be contained. Ontology, as our inquiry into ‘what there is,’ affects ‘what there is’ in that subjectivity, troubled by antagonism, always goes beyond established forms of facts, theoretically, practically and phantasmagorically. Finkelde argues, especially with reference to Kant and Hegel, that subjectivity, with its imaginary intertwinement of what Lacan calls the symbolic order, is a feature of reality (as virtuality) and not just a hallmark of the conscious mind.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part 1 Idealism
  5. Metaphysics, Thinking, and Being 17
  6. Jacobi’s Dare: McDowell, Meillassoux, and Consistent Idealism 35
  7. How Not to Be a Naïve Realist: On Knowledge and Perception 57
  8. Is Hermeneutic Realism a Dialectical Materialism? 81
  9. Nature After Nature, or Naturephilosophical Futurism 97
  10. Part 2 Relativism
  11. Metaontological Deflationism and Ontological Realism 115
  12. Stances, Voluntarism, Relativism 131
  13. Subjectivity as a Feature of Reality: On Diffraction Laws of Consciousness and Reality Within Justified True Belief 155
  14. Concrete-in-Thought, Concrete-in-Act: Marx, Materialism, and the Exchange Abstraction 175
  15. Matter and Indifference: Realism and Anti-realism in Feminist Accounts of the Body 193
  16. Part 3 Realism
  17. Saying What is Not 217
  18. Sense, Realism, and Ontological Difference 233
  19. Realism without Hobbes and Schmitt: Assessing the Latourian Option 257
  20. The Objectivity of the Actual: Hegelianism as a Metaphysics of Modal Actualism 275
  21. Nomological Realism 293
  22. Realism Without Entities 311
  23. Notes on the contributors 325
  24. Index of Names 329
  25. Index of Subjects 333
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110670349-009

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part 1 Idealism
  5. Metaphysics, Thinking, and Being 17
  6. Jacobi’s Dare: McDowell, Meillassoux, and Consistent Idealism 35
  7. How Not to Be a Naïve Realist: On Knowledge and Perception 57
  8. Is Hermeneutic Realism a Dialectical Materialism? 81
  9. Nature After Nature, or Naturephilosophical Futurism 97
  10. Part 2 Relativism
  11. Metaontological Deflationism and Ontological Realism 115
  12. Stances, Voluntarism, Relativism 131
  13. Subjectivity as a Feature of Reality: On Diffraction Laws of Consciousness and Reality Within Justified True Belief 155
  14. Concrete-in-Thought, Concrete-in-Act: Marx, Materialism, and the Exchange Abstraction 175
  15. Matter and Indifference: Realism and Anti-realism in Feminist Accounts of the Body 193
  16. Part 3 Realism
  17. Saying What is Not 217
  18. Sense, Realism, and Ontological Difference 233
  19. Realism without Hobbes and Schmitt: Assessing the Latourian Option 257
  20. The Objectivity of the Actual: Hegelianism as a Metaphysics of Modal Actualism 275
  21. Nomological Realism 293
  22. Realism Without Entities 311
  23. Notes on the contributors 325
  24. Index of Names 329
  25. Index of Subjects 333
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