The Beetle in the Box:

Philosophical Fictions and the Logic of Sexuation

Senior Project submitted to

The Division of Social Studies

of Bard College

by

Neşe Lisa Şenol

Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

December 2008

.

…

…dedicated to…

…Inge Hill and Annemarie Şenol…

…without whom I would not be here, in all senses…

…Benjamin Lorber…

…for all his help and support…

…and…

…William Drelles…

…for all he is doing in Africa…

…thank you…

…

.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Immanuel Kant and the Prodigal Thing-in-Itself 2

Chapter 2: Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Grammar of Philosophical Fictions 19

Chapter 3: Slavoj Žižek and the Real‘s Traumatic Kernel 48

Bibliography 61

1

INTRODUCTION

There are such things as white lies in philosophy, but they go by different names. And

like all white lies, these philosophical anomalies serve useful, practical purposes in particular

situations. They are methodological tools, functioning to frame valuable systems in which,

however, they take no part. Sometimes those who develop them are aware of their special,

unfounded status in relation to other concepts within a philosophical system, but often they are

not. In the latter cases they are reified, hypostatized to the point where they are equated with

unlike entities, which can only lead to contradiction and confusion. It is as if, seeing all gaming

pieces alike, one transposes a chess piece to a checkerboard and is at a loss upon consulting the

rulebook. And so, in order to take full advantage of these instruments, it is necessary to

acknowledge both their scope and limitations.

My thesis is that the Kantian thing-in-itself is one such white lie, which the philosopher

Eva Schaper has designated a philosophical fiction. The hope is that, in examining the

functionality of the thing-in-itself within Immanuel Kant‘s philosophical system, the important

phenomenon of philosophical white lies will be revealed in sharper focus.

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CHAPTER ONE: Immanuel Kant and the Prodigal Thing-in-Itself

For Kant, categories are pure concepts of the understanding, ―a priori cognitions that

contain the necessary unity of the pure synthesis of the imagination in regard to all appearances‖

(238). They are what enable us to think any object whatsoever, since without the categories on

the side of the understanding, intuition from our passive sensibility only provides the raw

material for appearances (136). Without concepts, sensory inputs are nothing but data, flashes of

information without any unifying structure. When we look at a rose, we don‘t merely see patches

of red and green: we see a rose, a concept of which we developed empirically from previous

experiences of such an object, and which in turn was developed from the higher a priori

categories.

These categories are split, in what Kant terms ―the table of categories,‖ into four major

subsections: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation

(substance and accident, cause and effect, community), and modality (possibility, existence,

necessity) (212). As Howard Caygill describes in ―A Kant Dictionary,‖

These fundamental concepts, which Kant also calls 'original and primitive', are

embedded in every act of judgement, and have their own peculiar properties. The

categories of quantity and quality share the property of referring judgement to

objects of intuition and are entitled 'mathematical', while the categories of relation

and modality are labelled 'dynamical' and refer judgement to a relation either

between the objects of intuition themselves, or these objects and the

understanding. Within each group...the first pair of categories in each set forms a

dichotomy, with the third arising from their combination. (Caygill 105-6)

Although Kant‘s justification for delimiting the categories in this manner rests outside of the

scope of our investigation, it is critical to understand Kant‘s views in order to understand the

controversy that surrounds the thing-in-itself.

Kant insists that ―Categories do not serve to cognize things for themselves, but only to

order intuitions in space and time, i.e., appearances…. Until now one believed that through

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categories one actually already cognized something; now we see that they are only forms of

thought for bringing the manifold of intuitions to synthetic unity of apperception‖ (338). This

distinction is crucial to Kant‘s philosophical system. Kant is essentially a dualist, and he divides

the world into two distinct realms. On the one hand there is the world of appearances, of

phenomena, which we experience with our uniquely human faculties of intuition and the

understanding. But Kant goes further, insisting that there is a real world hidden beneath the veil

of reality—the world of things-in-themselves, of noumena—and there is nothing in our sensory

experience that tells us that we are experiencing things the way they really are. Categories,

although a priori in that they found the possibility of all cognition, only have significance when

paired with sensory information from experience. If things-in-themselves really do exist, our

categories are insufficient for describing them.

It is for this reason that Kant insists, ―the categories are not by themselves cognitions, but

mere forms of thought for making cognitions out of given intuitions. – In the same way it follows

that no synthetic propositions can be made out of mere categories‖ (334). After all, it is possible

to have what Kant terms ―empty concepts,‖ concepts with no objective reality in the world:

A concept that includes a synthesis in it is to be held as empty, and does not relate

to any object, if this synthesis does not belong to experience, either as borrowed

from it, in which case it is an empirical concept, or as one on which, as a priori

condition, experience in general (its form) rests, and then it is a pure concept,

which nevertheless belongs to experience, since its object can be encountered

only in the latter. (323)

To ‗borrow‘ from experience is not to mix and match at random, such as pairing the concepts of

horse and horn to form the concept of a unicorn. The latter concept is still empty, since a unicorn

cannot be found anywhere in experience to match the concept. It is for this reason that Kant

continues:

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For every concept [including the categories] there is requisite, first, the logical

form of a concept (of thinking) in general, and then, second, the possibility of

giving it an object to which it is to be related. Without this latter it has no sense,

and is entirely empty of content, even though it may still contain the logical

function for making a concept out of whatever sort of data there are. (340-1)

The concept of a unicorn is a functional concept, since if a unicorn were magically to appear one

day we could all recognize it as a unicorn; but until this event takes place, the concept has

nothing to pair with from intuition, and thus can acquire no object and claim no objective

validity.

In his insistence on empty concepts Kant differs notably from his predecessor René

Descartes, whose ontological proof for the existence of God relies on the reality of concepts

removed from all empirical evidence. Descartes uses, as a metaphorical basis, the geometrical

concept of a triangle, which cannot be conceived of apart from its necessary attributes:

I saw very well that if one supposed, for example, a triangle, it was necessary for

its three angles to be equal to two right angles, but I did not see anything in all

this to assure me that there was any triangle existing in the world. On the other

hand, returning to examine the idea I had of a perfect being, I found that existence

was contained in it in the same way in which the equality of its three angles to

two right angles is contained in the idea of a triangle…. (D 21)

Descartes‘ argument is that a triangle cannot be conceived without the property that its three

inner angles add up to 180˚, or two right angles. It is not a matter of empirically testing the fact

with a series of drawn triangles and a protractor; rather, the very definition of a triangle

necessitates its mathematical properties. Descartes parallels reason‘s access to the concept of a

triangle to reason‘s access to the concept of a perfect being, which he originally arrived at in the

following manner: ―I decided to search for the source from which I had learned to think of

something more perfect than I was, and I plainly knew that this had to be from some nature that

was in fact more perfect…and that it even had within itself all the perfections of which I could

have any idea, that is to say, to explain myself in a single word, that it was God‖ (D 19). In other

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words, a perfect being exists because the idea of perfection cannot come from an imperfect

being, and that being would not be perfect if it did not exist.

Although the Critique carries many implicit refutations of Descartes‘ ontological proof,

in Section V of the Doctrine of Elements Kant even mentions it by name. The introduction to this

section is framed in one of Kant‘s stylistic embellishments, in which he takes up an analogy in

exchange for his usual logical methodology:

Thus the famous ontological (Cartesian) proof of the existence of a highest being

from concepts is only so much trouble and labor lost, and a human being can no

more become richer in insight from mere ideas than a merchant could in resources

if he wanted to improve his financial state by adding a few zeros to his cash

balance. (569)

But despite the flair with which he confronts the Cartesian proof, Kant‘s wording here is central

to the refutation itself.

Kant aims to be particular about his vocabulary, and he sets out the definition for the

word ‗idea‘ in very explicit terms. Earlier, in Section III of the Doctrine of Elements, he

explains,

the concept of an absolutely necessary being is a pure concept of reason, i.e., a

mere idea, the objective reality of which is far from being proved by the fact that

reason needs it, since this only points to a certain though unattainable

completeness, and properly serves more to set boundaries to the understanding

than to extend it toward new objects. (563-4)

Earlier still, he directs a plea regarding the issue directly to his readers:

I entreat those who take philosophy to heart…to take care to preserve the

expression idea in its original meaning, so that it will not henceforth fall among

the other expressions by which all sorts of representations are denoted in careless

disorder, to the detriment of science…. A concept made up of notions, which goes

beyond the possibility of experience, is an idea or concept of reason. (398-9)

The strict definition of an ‗idea‘, for Kant, is a concept of reason, which says absolutely nothing

about the empirical confirmation that is necessary to give a concept objective reality. But if an

6

idea has no basis of existence in the world, where does it arise from? To answer this question, it

is necessary to examine Kant‘s description of the function of reason in the human mind.

Reason is ―the faculty of the unity of rules of understanding under principles‖ (389). It

never applies directly to experience or to any object, but instead applies to the understanding in

order to give unity through concepts to the understanding‘s manifold cognitions. To this end, it

aims to systematize and schematize the concepts of the understanding as they are applied to

appearances. Reason leads every ‗conditioned‘ concept that has been given through appearances

to an ultimate ‗unconditioned,‘ that which completes the series to a highest order.

As Kant explains in the ―System of transcendental ideas,‖

Pure reason has no other aim than the absolute totality of synthesis on the side of

conditions (whether they are conditions of inherence, dependence, or

concurrence), and that reason has nothing to do with absolute completeness from

the side of the conditioned. For it needs only the former series in order to

presuppose the whole series of conditions and thereby give it to the understanding

a priori. But once a complete (and unconditioned) given condition exists, then a

concept of reason is no longer needed in respect of the progress of the series; for

the understanding by itself makes every step downwards from the condition to the

conditioned. In this way, the transcendental ideas serve only for ascending in the

series of conditions to the unconditioned, i.e., to the principles. (407)

To begin with, in Kant‘s view, there is absolutely nothing transcendental in the move from a

given conditioned (empirical phenomena) to its series of conditions (the causes of that

phenomena). As he explains in Section VII of ―The Antinomy of Pure Reason,‖

the concept of the conditioned already entails that something is related to a

condition, and if this condition is once again conditioned, to a more remote

condition, and so through all the members of the series. This proposition is

therefore analytic and beyond any fear of a transcendental criticism. It is a logical

postulate of reason to follow that connection of a concept with its conditions

through the understanding, and to continue as far as possible. (515)

So far, reason is merely operating on material from experience. The moves along this descending

series are analytical because each condition is already contained in the conditioned from which it

7

is retrieved. Analytic judgments are those in which ―the predicate B belongs to the subject A as

something that is (covertly) contained in this concept A‖ (130), whereas synthetic judgments are

those in which ―B lies entirely outside the concept A‖ (ibid). But the unconditioned is another

case, since it deals with ―inferred concepts, whose object cannot be given empirically at all, and

so lies wholly outside the faculty of the pure understanding‖ (405). Since pure reason is a

synthesizer and system-builder, it is always striving for a ―universal‖ under which the series of

conditions can be contained.

The unconditioned is, in other words, a transcendental idea of the type described

previously. Kant orders these ideas as they relate to our manner of cognition:

concepts of pure reason (transcendental ideas) have to do with the unconditioned

synthetic unity of all conditions in general. Consequently, all transcendental ideas

will be brought under three classes, of which the first contains the absolute

(unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject, the second the absolute unity of

the series of conditions of experience, the third the absolute unity of the

condition of all objects of thought in general. / The thinking subject is the object

of psychology, the sum total of all appearances (the world) is the object of

cosmology, and the thing that contains the supreme condition of the possibility of

everything that can be thought (the being of all beings) is the object of theology.

(406)

And as a natural extension of these three classes,

pure reason furnishes the idea of a transcendental doctrine of the soul (Psycologia

rationalis), of a transcendental science of the world (Cosmologia rationalis), and

finally also of a transcendental cognition of God (Theologia transcendentalis).

(Haywood 93)

Why is the word ‗transcendental‘ used in these three cases of absolute unity? Kant works

to define this recurrent term in the Transcendental Logic:

not every a priori cognition must be called transcendental, but only that by means

of which we cognize that and how certain representations (intuitions or concepts)

are applied entirely a priori, or are possible (i.e., the possibility of cognition or its

use a priori). Hence neither space nor any geometrical determination of it a priori

is a transcendental representation, but only the cognition that these representations

are not of empirical origin at all and the possibility that they can nevertheless be

8

related a priori to objects of experience can be called transcendental. Likewise the

use of space about all objects in general would also be transcendental; but if it is

restricted solely to objects of the senses, then it is called empirical. The difference

between the transcendental and the empirical therefore belongs only to the

critique of cognitions and does not concern their relation to their object. (196)

Subjects that fall under the title of ―transcendental,‖ in other words, are those that address the

possibility of cognition and experience. While a priori rules structure our experience and account

for the latter‘s possibility, transcendental rules account for the possibility of the former. They

are, in a way, the ―a priori‖ of the a priori. He argues that such a tripartite distinction is

necessary because ―where would experience itself get its certainty if all rules in accordance with

which it proceeds were themselves in turn always empirical, thus contingent?‖ (138). And if a

priori rules exist, where do they come from? It is with this particular definition in mind that Kant

uses the transcendental differently from the a priori, the latter of which some philosophers treat

as an umbrella term that—often ambiguously—includes the former sense. Kant insists upon the

specification of the transcendental in order to safeguard its unique position within the realm of

the a priori:

it is customary to say of many a cognition derived from experiential sources that

we are capable of it or partake in it a priori, because we do not derive it

immediately from experience, but rather from a general rule that we have

nevertheless itself borrowed from experience. So one says of someone who

undermined the foundation of his house that he could have known a priori that it

would collapse…. Yet he could not have known this entirely a priori. For that

bodies are heavy and hence fall if their support is taken away must first have

become known to him through experience…. Among a priori cognitions…those

are called pure with which nothing empirical is intermixed. Thus, e.g., the

proposition ―Every alteration has its cause‖ is an a priori proposition, only not

pure, since alteration is a concept that can be drawn only from experience. (136-7)

The cognition of rules derived from experience may be called a priori, but only cognitions

completely divorced from the empirical may properly be called transcendental. But how is it

possible to have knowledge of something with which one has no experience? Kant explains:

9

certain cognitions even abandon the field of all possible experiences, and seem to

expand the domain of our judgments beyond all bounds of possible experience

through concepts to which no corresponding object at all can be given in

experience. / And precisely in these latter cognitions, which go beyond the world

of the senses, where experience can give us neither guidance nor correction, lie

the investigations of our reason that we hold to be far more prominent in their

importance…than everything that the understanding can learn in the field of

appearances…. These unavoidable problems of pure reason itself are God,

freedom and immortality. (139)

Using the language developed in the preceding discussion of pure reason, the move from the

empirical to the a priori is analytical because the necessary rule (condition) is already contained

in the experience (conditioned) from which it is derived. But the second move to the

transcendental (unconditioned) is bereft of this grounding in experience. While reason‘s

systematizing enables us to move from the empirical to the a priori rational, it is rather like an

algorithm which only stops upon reaching the absolute completion of a series. For Kant, it is

because we can ask why experience is possible that we must ask how a priori cognition is

possible.

In Kant‟s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion, Michelle Grier offers this phenomenon a

descriptive metaphor from Sir Isaac Newton‘s Optiks. Released to the public in 1704, Newton‘s

treatise describes an optical illusion related to mirror vision:

On Newton‘s view, what characterizes optical illusion in these cases is the fact

that a ―background‖ image is ―projected‖ as lying before the subject in a place

where it would be if the object were actually in front…. An object that is actually

outside of our field of direct vision appears ―in front of us,‖ in a place where it

would be if the ―lines‖ of light actually proceeded along a straight course. This

case, it appears, provides a very powerful metaphor for Kant in his own attempts

to characterize our epistemological position with respect to the transcendent

objects of traditional metaphysics. In the Dreams Kant suggests that the mind or

brain ―mirrors‖ certain (subjective) features of its own constitution, thus

presenting them as objects external to the subject itself. (Grier 37-8)

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The empirical phenomenon of an object seeming to appear ―behind‖ a mirror is relatively

commonplace, but its metaphysical corollary is Kant‘s major concern. On this latter subject,

Grier continues:

The problem…is that the metaphysician takes the soul to have some kind of

―place‖ in the world by virtue of which it ―acts‖ or exerts forces or influences on

the body. To view the soul in this way is to assign it a ―place‖ or ―locality‖ in

space and time surreptitiously, even as we gainsay its physical status. (39)

The human faculty of reason, with all its synthesizing inertia, cannot apply anything other than

the categories and concepts of the understanding to the sense data of intuition. All cognition is

dependent upon these concepts, and any attempt to think beyond experience is chained by the

understanding to what we have experienced. How, for example, could one describe the sense of

sight without ever having seen? Using concepts and vocabulary derived from the other senses

would hardly suffice. And since all human experience depends on the pure forms of intuition—

time and space—we are perpetually tempted to think of things in terms of time and space. But

what if a world exists beyond our limited dimensions? How would we begin to conceive of this

difference?

By the time he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant was assuredly aware of reason‘s

tendencies to push the categories further than prescribed. Without having reached the conclusion

that concepts dependent on experience (that is to say, all concepts) cannot be applied outside of

experience, he would not have been able to offer a solution to the antinomy of pure reason. In his

preface to this section of the Critique, Kant explains:

by ―antithetic‖ I understand not the dogmatic assertion of the opposite but rather

the conflict between what seem to be dogmatic cognitions…without the ascription

of a preeminent claim to approval of one side or the other. Thus an antithetic does

not concern itself with one-sided assertions, but considers only the conflict

between general cognitions of reason and the causes of this conflict. The

transcendental antithetic is an investigation into the antinomy of pure reason, its

causes and its result. If in using principles of the understanding we apply our

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reason not merely to objects of experience…but instead venture also to extend

these principles beyond the boundaries of experience, then there arise sophistical

theorems, which may neither hope for confirmation in experience nor fear

refutation by it. (467)

Kant‘s opening question, in other words, is how reason can seem to confirm—with equal

confidence—two mutually exclusive metaphysical propositions. Kant was no skeptic, and he

deemed it imperative that there be an explanation for the transcendental antithetic‘s purported

disavowal of positive knowledge claims.

The antinomy of pure reason addresses four conflicts of the transcendental ideas, each of

which Kant develops as a thesis countered by an equally valid antithesis. The four conflicts and

their dogmatic resolutions are as follows:

1. Thesis: The world has a beginning in time, and in space it is also enclosed in

boundaries.

Antithesis: The world has no beginning and no bounds in space, but is infinite

with regard to both time and space.

2. Thesis: Every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts, and

nothing exists anywhere except the simple or what is composed of simples.

Antithesis: No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts, and nowhere

in it does there exist anything simple.

3. Thesis: Causality in accordance with laws of nature is not the only one from

which all the appearances of the world can be derived. It is also necessary to

assume another causality through freedom in order to explain them.

Antithesis: There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens solely in

accordance with laws of nature.

4. Thesis: To the world there belongs something that, either as a part of it or as its

cause, is an absolutely necessary being.

Antithesis: There is absolutely no necessary being existing anywhere, either in the

world or outside the world as its cause.

It is important to note that Kant explains in his remark to the first antinomy that:

In these mutually conflicting arguments I have not sought semblances in order to

present (as one says) a lawyer‘s proof, which takes advantage of an opponent‘s

carelessness and gladly permits a misunderstanding of the law in order to build

the case for his own unjust claims on the refutation of the other side. Each of

these proofs is drawn from the nature of the case, and any advantage that could be

given to us by the fallacies of dogmatists on either side is to be set aside. (472)

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Kant believes he is being equally fair to both sides in all cases. But if he is not presiding over a

gladiatorial arena of straw men, what explains the perseverance of both sides in the place of

skepticism?

The key to the antinomy, as previously suggested, lies in the systematizing tendency of

pure reason. As Kant explains in this section, ―Human reason is by nature architectonic, i.e., it

considers all cognitions as belonging to a possible system, and hence it permits only such

principles as at least do not render an intended cognition incapable of standing together with

others in some system or other‖ (502). But even if human reason is architectonic, that is not to

say unequivocally that the real beyond reality is actually structured in a compatible fashion. Kant

explains:

Thus we cannot evade the obligation of giving at least a critical resolution of the

questions of reason before us by lamenting the narrow limits of our reason and

confessing, with the appearance of a modest self-knowledge, that it lies beyond

our reason to settle [the antinomy]…. For each of these questions concerns an

object that can be given nowhere but in our thoughts, namely the absolutely

unconditioned totality of the synthesis of appearances. If we cannot say or settle

anything certain about these questions on the basis of our own concepts, then we

must not pass the blame on to the subject matter, as hiding itself from us; for such

a subject matter (because it is encountered nowhere outside our idea) cannot be

given to us at all, but rather we must seek the cause in our idea itself, as a problem

permitting of no solution, about which, however, we stubbornly insist on an actual

object corresponding to it. (506)

The synthesizing tendency of reason here posits objects with no empirical correlate and then

proceeds to apply empirical relationships to those transcendental objects. If these empirical

relationships fail to determine the objects in one way or the other, the fault may lie with reason‘s

methodology rather than the objects in question.

But if this is the case, and Kant is aware of this limitation, why does he continue to insist

on the existence of noumena? Kant formally rationalizes his introduction of the noumenon in

―On the ground of the distinction of all objects in general into phenomena and noumena,‖ the

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third chapter of ―The Transcendental Doctrine of the Power of Judgment (Analytic Principles).‖

He begins with a lengthy trope, offering a topological metaphor to represent his investigation of

the understanding:

We have now not only traveled through the land of pure understanding, and

carefully inspected each part of it, but we have also surveyed it, and determined

the place for each thing in it. This land, however, is an island, and enclosed in

unalterable boundaries by nature itself. It is the land of truth (a charming name),

surrounded by a broad and stormy ocean, the true seat of illusion, where many a

fog bank and rapidly melting iceberg pretend to be new lands and, ceaselessly

deceiving with empty hopes the voyager looking around for new discoveries,

entwine him in adventures from which he can never escape and yet also never

bring to an end. (338-9)

In this poetic summary of the anterior sections of the Critique, Kant parallels the course of the

philosopher‘s speculative reason with the voyager driven by a thirst for adventure. Just as the

voyager attempts to penetrate the unyielding barriers to his island, the philosopher aims to

venture beyond objective reality towards the transcendent. Deceived by the false allure of empty

concepts, the philosopher is unable to uncover new truths just as the voyager fails to discover

new lands. While the preceding sections of the Critique aimed to establish what the

understanding lets us know (the island), the task of this chapter is to demarcate the boundary of

what we cannot know (everything else).

Central to this aim, Kant justifies his insistence on the noumenon by reiterating the

inchoate nature of appearances from sensible intuition. Summarizing the Transcendental

Aesthetic, he explains, ―[s]ensibility and its field, namely that of appearances, are themselves

limited by the understanding, in that they do not pertain to things in themselves, but only to the

way in which, on account of our subjective constitution, things appear to us‖ (348). The sensible

data of appearances are neither things-in-themselves, nor are they yet full cognitions subsumed

under the categories of the understanding. When these categories are finally applied, appearances

14

are organized into the distinct objects described as phenomena, which rely on the understanding

for coherence. Kant explains that ―[a]ll our representations are in fact related to some object

through the understanding, and, since appearances are nothing but representations, the

understanding thus relates them to a something, as the object of sensible intuition: but this

something is to that extent only the transcendental object‖ (347-8).

This transcendental object is purely on the level of the understanding and, as such, should

not be conflated with the noumenon. It is ―the concept of something in general,‖ that which

allows the understanding to make objects out of appearances at all (348). As such, it exists

―before‖ the noumenon; if the world were a series of sense impressions, and we were unable to

conceive of concrete and self-contained objects, no conception of the cause of objects-as-

appearances would ever arise. The transcendental object enables the understanding to organize

representations (which would otherwise remain a mélange of indistinguishable sensations) as

discrete objects. Although existing ―prior,‖ it works on appearances after the fact rather than

dealing with their production.

But Kant is not satisfied with the transcendental object alone, since it fails to explain the

cause of appearances beyond the mind. He insists:

it…follows naturally from the concept of an appearance in general that something

must correspond to it which is not in itself appearance, for appearance can be

nothing for itself and outside of our kind of representation; thus, if there is not to

be a constant circle, the word ―appearance‖ must already indicate a relation to

something the immediate representation of which is, to be sure, sensible, but

which in itself, without this constitution of our sensibility (on which the form of

our intuition is grounded), must be something, i.e., an object independent of

sensibility. (348)

Kant suggests the existence of something objective in the world outside us, from which the

understanding extracts material appropriate to intuition in order to form appearances. This

―objective‖ thing is not ―an object‖ for us, and we can only know it insofar as it at least partially

15

corresponds to the constitution of our sensibility. But Kant insists that this distinction is not

merely theoretical:

the reservation must also be well noted, that even if we cannot cognize these same

objects as things in themselves, we at least must be able to think them as things in

themselves…. [I]n order to ascribe objective validity to such a concept (real

possibility, for the first sort of possibility was merely logical) something more is

required. This ―more,‖ however, need not be sought in theoretical sources of

cognition; they may also lie in practical ones…. For otherwise there would follow

the absurd proposition that there is an appearance without anything that appears.

(115, 115n)

Since phenomena are appearances, Kant supports the distinction based on the practical necessity

for something to cause them to appear. Contrasted with phenomenon, Kant designates this

―necessary something‖ the noumenon. While the transcendental object explains ―how‖

appearances are organized in the mind, the noumenon explains ―why‖ they occur in the first

place. While the transcendental object is projected outwards, the noumenon is the external link

that provides its content.

Kant is initially careful to emphasize that the noumenon is ―not at all positive and does

not signify a determinate cognition of any sort of thing‖ (349). It is only ―the thinking of

something in general,‖ the concept of a type of object that cannot be compared or equated to

objects of experience in any way (ibid). In order for the noumenon to be a ―true object,‖ rather

than an empty concept, ―it is not enough that I liberate my thoughts from all conditions of

sensible intuition, but I must in addition have ground to assume another kind of intuition than

this sensible one, under which such an object could be given‖ (ibid). This is why Kant remarks

that ―[n]oumenon properly signifies something which is always the same, namely the

transcendental object…of sensible intuition. However, it is not a real object…or given thing, but

rather a concept, in relation to which appearances have unity‖ (732n). Since we are limited to

sensible intuition, the noumenon can never be a positive object for us, but Kant leaves open the

16

possibility for another type of intuition (such as intellectual intuition through a pure

understanding): ―To be sure, above we were able to prove not that sensible intuition is the only

possible intuition, but rather that it is the only one possible for us‖ (ibid). Kant describes this

conception of the positive noumenon as ―problematic‖ since it ―contains no contradiction but…is

also…connected with other cognitions, the objective reality of which can in no way be cognized‖

(350). Nonetheless, this possibility of another form of intuition remains an empty concept:

we also could not prove that yet another kind of intuition is possible, and,

although our thinking can abstract from that sensibility, the question still remains

whether it is not then a mere form of a concept and whether any object at all is left

over after this separation. (ibid)

Such a positive conception of the noumenon could exist, since there is nothing outright

contradictory about it, but we will never be able to say definitively that it does exist. Thus, the

existence of a non-sensible intuition, and the existence of the positive noumenon along with it,

must remain purely speculative at this point. And as such, they have no place on our island.

But there is further significance to the noumenon beyond any pretensions to positive

existence, and this significance is a negative one:

The concept of a noumenon is therefore merely a boundary concept, in order to

limit the pretension of sensibility, and therefore only of negative use. But it is

nevertheless not invented arbitrarily, but is rather connected with the limitation of

sensibility, yet without being able to posit anything positive outside of the domain

of the latter. (350)

In other words, not only does the noumenon have no place on our island, but it is the ―unalterable

boundaries‖ imposed by nature around it. The noumenon in its negative significance serves only

to demarcate the limits of our understanding, providing a swift backwards tug on the leash of

ideas that, unchecked, would fly off in any which direction.

It is for this reason that ―the concept of a noumenon, taken merely problematically,

remains not only admissible, but even unavoidable, as a concept setting limits to sensibility‖

17

(351). The understanding is able to limit sensibility to its own objects without claiming

―intelligible objects‖ of its own, since ―by calling things in themselves…noumena…it also

immediately sets boundaries for itself…merely thinking them under the name of an unknown

something‖ (ibid). This is dramatically opposed to the distinction between the world of sense and

the world of understanding in ―the writings of the moderns‖ (ibid). Described as an ―empty

trafficking with words,‖ this distinction relies on answering positively ―whether beyond the

empirical use of the understanding…a transcendental one is also possible, pertaining to the

noumenon as an object,‖ which Kant definitively answers in the negative. (352) But despite

Kant's intentions in writing the Critique, much empty trafficking has continued since the

publication of his works.

Subsequent philosophers in the Neo-Kantian tradition and beyond have rejected the

thing-in-itself as a contradictory flaw within an otherwise efficacious philosophical system.

Rudolf Malter and Hamilton H. H. Beck address some of the most noteworthy critiques in ―Main

Currents in the German Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason Since the Beginnings of

Neo-Kantianism.‖ They note:

[Otto] Liebmann sees the ―real‖ substance of the Critique of Pure Reason in the

―position of transcendental idealism, which de facto involves empirical realism‖

(23). In Liebmann‘s view, however, this eternally valid and irrefutable position

was made inconsistent, was in fact betrayed, by Kant‘s assumption of a thing in

itself. Liebmann seeks to explain its illegitimate presence in both historical and

psychological terms. Since the ―epigoni‖ (by which name he means Fichte,

Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Fries, and Schopenhauer) either could not or would not

eliminate the thing in itself, they could not be bases for relevant Kantian

philosophizing, i.e., for philosophizing based upon Kant but having contemporary

relevance. Rather, one had to return to Kant himself, but to a Kant radically

purged of the thing in itself. (Malter 536-7)

18

For Liebmann, a claim to ―know‖ anything beyond experience spits in the face of the empirical

realism/transcendental idealism distinction. The transcendentally ideal should be unknowable, so

why address any knowledge claims to anything within its authority? Additionally:

[Friedrich Albert] Lange, too, wants to liquidate the thing in itself as a matter of

principle, though his recourse to Kant goes much more into detail than

Liebmann‘s book on the epigoni did…. In Kant‘s theoretical philosophy, Lange

rejects the thing in itself as a real entity…. He finds untenable Kant‘s assumption

of the theoretical possibility of freedom and his thesis that reason in its practical

application can prove the reality of freedom and the existence of an intelligible

world. Precisely this last point, the transition into metaphysics, contradicts,

according to Lange, the basic insight of the Critique of Pure Reason: namely, the

doctrine that our knowledge is absolutely bound to appearances—the doctrine that

Lange sees as Kant‘s real contribution. (537)

Lange, like Liebmann, views the thing-in-itself as flagrantly opposed to the major claim of the

Critique: that knowledge is based on experience and that it flounders in any attempt to be

extended beyond it. But how is it possible that Kant, who spent years of his life writing and

revising the Critique, overlooked what subsequent philosophers have deemed an obvious flaw?

In insisting upon its inclusion in his philosophical treatise, did Kant see a value in the thing-in-

itself that was later overlooked?

19

CHAPTER TWO: Wittgenstein and the Grammar of Philosophical Fictions

In her article ―The Kantian Thing-in-Itself as a Philosophical Fiction,‖ Eva Schaper

asserts that the thing-in-itself serves an invaluable role in Kant‘s philosophy even if its objective

existence cannot be posited absolutely. She opens:

A philosophical fiction need not be philosophically useless. On the contrary,

many fictive constructs are indispensable as methodological devices, and accepted

as such in philosophical and scientific procedure. To see the Kantian Ding an sich

as such a device is not to accuse Kant of having invented a fairy-tale. Rather, it is

an attempt to understand what is involved in the philosophical method which its

author himself believed to be revolutionary. It is also an attempt to rescue some of

Kant‘s important insights from being misunderstood as merely speculative

gestures. (233)

Schaper‘s suggestion that Kant‘s thing-in-itself serves a practical purpose outside the realm of

transcendent speculation, and her emphasis on ―the indirect value of fictive mental constructs in

the pursuit of truth,‖ seems to accord with Kant‘s own definitions of the term. He emphasizes

that it is a concept rather than an object, and frequently reiterates that nothing can be said of it

outside of its concept (ibid).

Schaper is continuing in the tradition of Hans Vaihinger, whose Philosophy of the “As-

If” describes this theoretical approach as occurring ―when the leading concepts employed in it

are fictitious, that is to say, when they are not expected to conform or to correspond to anything

given, and when confirmation of their veracity is in principle impossible‖ (ibid). Although

Schaper finds Vaihiger ―a little vague on the distinction between hypothetical and as-if

formulations,‖ she differentiates the two:

Whilst a hypothetical assumption employs concepts in the hope of having their

veracity confirmed or indirectly verified, or at least their applicability not

conflicted with, attempts to provide confirmation for a fictional construct lead to

contradiction. And yet such conceptual fictions can be of the greatest theoretical

value. (ibid)

20

If a hypothesis is tested and leads to contradiction, it is deemed ineffectual and cast aside in place

of another. But philosophical fictions, as ―instruments ‗for finding our way about more easily in

this world,‖ necessarily lead to some form of contradiction if carried to their ―logical

conclusions.‖ Rather than confirmation of veracity, the test of a philosophical fiction depends on

its theoretical value and usefulness for the task at hand (ibid). They are ―conceptual aids which

not only can be opposed to the facts as we think we know them, but may even lead to self-

contradiction when their fictive character is not recognized‖ (234).

While Vaihinger never distinguishes the function of philosophical fictions from fictions

in the natural and social sciences, Schaper focuses on philosophical fictions as they relate to the

Kantian thing-in-itself. She explains, in describing the scope of her essay, that ―Vaihinger‘s

conviction that this concept [the thing-in-itself] exemplifies most strikingly what a philosophical

fiction is and does, has not…been taken seriously enough‖ (235). The elaboration of

philosophical fictions definitively alters the terrain of arguments against the thing-in-itself, in

which ―it [the thing-in-itself] has come under attack for its failure to provide a hypothesis which

is not self-defeating‖ (ibid).

If Vaihinger, who published the Philosophy of the “As-If” in 1911, was ―ahead of his

time‖ (233) it is not difficult to understand—given Schaper‘s description of the concept—the

accumulated sources of contention since the Critique was first published:

Reading Kant‘s proposal as a hypothetical assumption about reality, things-in-

themselves are ultimately real, and phenomena are derivative from confrontation

of agents, under irreducibly human perspectives, with this reality. But, according

to the same hypothesis, things-in-themselves are unknowable, and no relation

between them and human phenomena—no relation which would make the

assumed derivation intelligible—can be formulated. For relations can only be

stated in terms of categories, and these have no validity beyond phenomena.

Speaking about things-in-themselves as either causes, or grounds, or backgrounds

of phenomena leads to contradiction or to merely metaphorical expressions.

Things-in-themselves cannot be characterized. If we try to do so nevertheless, in

21

order to exhibit them as ultimate reality, we reach deadlock. (Whether we speak

of the noumenon in the singular or plural is immaterial: strictly speaking no

numerical differentiation applies.) (235)

Without the approach to philosophy afforded by the notion of philosophical fictions, the

articulation of something that is both ―ultimately real‖ and tangled in contradictions might lead

to discomfort. But Kant, a studied logician, was acutely aware of these contradictions in

expounding the thing-in-itself, and he maintained his insistence in spite of these:

Kant himself again and again vetoed the attempt to reveal the structure of the

noumenal world in terms of concepts applicable to the world which we can know.

He again and again pointed out that things-in-themselves cannot be provided with

a description, or even in any ordinary sense be said to exist. (235)

And yet he refused to omit the thing-in-itself from his philosophical system.

Although Kant does not always seem to treat the thing-in-itself as a philosophical fiction,

Schaper attributes this to the fact that ―[i]n the Kantian As-If, the ‗as‘ unfortunately often drops

out when Kant is carried away by his own enthusiasm for his specific solution‖ (236). And while

―[t]he results of this have often been pointed out by Kant‘s acutest critics as the defects of the

transcendental method, [Schaper] would locate these defects in Kant‘s failure to develop the as-if

approach consistently‖ (ibid). Which is not to say that philosophical fictions are not being

employed by Kant in the Critique, since his descriptions of the thing-in-itself as a theoretical

limit require that ―we proceed as if things-in-themselves really existed, as if they influenced us

through their appearances, as if they constituted a structured, noumenal world‖ (235). But due to

his historical limitations, he was unable to formally acknowledge or articulate this process.

Just as ―scientists find it convenient to look at light sometimes as a wave phenomenon

and sometimes as a particle phenomenon‖ but not simultaneously as both, Schaper explains that

Kant changed freely between two positions, according to the circumstances:

22

At times he seems to suggest that things-in-themselves must be presupposed

because they are there, i.e. he uses the noumenon as a basic concept in a

hypothesis about the nature of things,…which can be directly confirmed by the

detailed application of its consequences. At other times, however, Kant sees the

noumenon as a conceptual assumption by means of which we can define

phenomena as that which appears to us, i.e. he uses the thing-in-itself as a

theoretical limit. (234, 235)

But even though both perspectives on light are valid applications of fictive constructs, Schaper

insists that ―[o]nly what he says about it as a limiting concept directly supports the view that the

thing-in-itself is a fictional construct to be handled as an as-if proposal‖ (235).

If the value of a philosophical fiction is based on its consequences, what is significant

about the thing-in-itself for Kant‘s philosophy? Even though ―statements about things-in-

themselves which employ categories‖ lead to contradiction, ―[t]hese categories are themselves

developed on the as-if assumption of things-in-themselves, and cannot serve to give access to a

description or definition of that which is assumed‖ (236). Without the thing-in-itself, there is

nothing to ―[delimit] the use of categories formulated on the as-if assumption of that which lies

beyond the limit‖ (ibid). They ―permit us to derive and exhibit a complicated set of consequences

if we proceed as if they were real,‖ allowing us to ―consider things as they really or

independently are as outside the scope of the knowable‖—the possibility of which Schaper

places at the crux of Kant‘s Copernican Revolution (ibid). Additionally, they ―[yield] the

formally ideal character of space and time, and the implication of categories in the very having

of experience‖ (ibid). And even though the consequences of the thing-in-itself cannot be applied

back to their source,

the consequences are immensely fruitful for purposes other than verification and

confirmation of the hypothesis…in that they allow us to handle material which

can be considered in the light of the consequences and which would otherwise

remain inaccessible or insufficiently investigated. (ibid)

23

In other words, the thing-in-itself as a philosophical fiction is justifiable insofar as its

consequences have useful applications and as long as it is not reified to the level of a concrete,

objective thing.

But Vaihinger was not the only person before Schaper to consider the functional

significance of the thing-in-itself as a philosophical fiction. Schaper refers to Salomon Maimon,

who in his Kritische Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Geist first used the analogy of

imaginary numbers (as they were understood in his time) to examine its practical utility.

Summarizing this ―first attempt to bring out what is involved in the operation with constructs,‖

Schaper explains:

The imaginary number √-a is required for mathematical construction; it allows us

to proceed to complicated deductions which are otherwise impossible. But the

inference that the symbol √-a ―stands for‖ anything real is illegitimate. It is

nothing but a ground for a specific operation. Whenever the attempt has been

made to speculate metaphysically, in terms gained from mathematical deductions,

about ―negative quantities‖, mathematically and philosophically meaningless

jargon has resulted. √-a is a mathematical fiction. To proceed with this construct

is perfectly legitimate. To try to ask what √-a is, is nonsense. In the first case one

operates with a fictive concept; in the second case one would try to express

something about it. (237-8)

Although this use of imaginary numbers is by now commonplace, it took centuries for

mathematical constructions to be accepted as mathematical fictions rather than direct correlates

of the objective world. Mathematicians considered algebraic equations to be means of solving

concrete problems, and ―if applying the quadratic formula led you to the square root of a

negative number, this meant that your problem had no solution‖ (Berlinghoff and Gouvêa 177).

But when it turned out that imaginary numbers could be used in intermediate computations to

derive real answers, mathematicians were faced with a quandary.

It was not until the 1560s that a mathematician by the name of Rafael Bombelli argued

that ―one could just operate with this ‗new kind of radical‘‖ (178). Rather than treating ―these

24

new kinds of radicals‖ as real numbers, he translated them into formal rules that allowed him to

simplify and solve complicated problems. His work showed that ―sometimes the square roots of

negative numbers are needed in order to find real solutions‖ and that ―the appearance of such

expressions did not always signal that a problem was not solvable‖ (179). Although it took years

until mathematicians began to fully acknowledge that they could operate with imaginary

numbers ―as if‖ they were real, by the 19th century, mathematicians were looking for a firm

basis for imaginary numbers since ―by then they were so useful that one could hardly avoid

dealing with them‖ (182). The mathematicians Augustin Louis Cauchy and Johann Carl

Friedrich Gauss devised a version of calculus that used complex numbers, and this complex

calculus ―turned out to be extremely powerful, in part because it proved to be easier than

calculus that used only real numbers‖ (ibid). This discovery of the efficacy of imaginary

numbers was expressed by the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard in a gnomic

proposition: ―the shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the complex

domain‖ (qtd. in Berlinghoff and Gouvêa 182). His point was that ―[e]ven if we care only about

real number problems and real number answers...the easiest solutions often involve [imaginary]

numbers‖ (ibid). Schaper‘s argument is that the thing-in-itself functions in a comparable way,

and even though this does not constitute the sole source of contention, such acceptance of

legitimacy based on usage has faced considerable resistance.

A philosophical fiction of the as-if variety is like a metaphor in that it must serve a

cognitive purpose without being reified to the level of a concrete thing. But metaphors can be

expressed in numerous ways, and a philosophical fiction can either be elucidating or extremely

misleading. In The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the „Philosophical

25

Investigations‟, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein examines concrete examples to determine the

efficacy of analogical thinking:

It isn‘t wrong, according to our new convention, to say ―I have unconscious

toothache‖. For what more can you ask of your notation than that it should

distinguish between a bad tooth which doesn‘t give you toothache and one which

does? But the new expression misleads us by calling up pictures and analogies

which make it difficult for us to go through with our convention. And it is

extremely difficult to discard these pictures unless we are constantly watchful

(Books 23)

For the later Wittgenstein—a term encompassing the corpus of his philosophical works after the

disavowal of his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—language does not operate according to

a strict schematic of logical rules. Any combination of words can be strung together in whatever

fashion, but that is not to say that any such combination will be understandable and

communicable. Linguistic constructions are evaluated based on their usefulness, and not upon

any a priori laws. Something that ―makes sense‖ linguistically is not on that account effective,

and its appropriateness can only be judged according to the construction‘s consequences and

repercussions.

The effectiveness of a linguistic construction is, however, not automatically evident, and

there is an equal dearth of rules for what cannot be said as for what can. Wittgenstein explains:

When we say that by our method we try to counteract the misleading effect of

certain analogies, it is important that you should understand that the idea of an

analogy being misleading is nothing sharply defined. No sharp boundary can be

drawn round the cases in which we should say that a man was misled by an

analogy. The use of expressions constructed on analogical patterns stresses

analogies between cases often far apart. And by doing this these expressions may

be extremely useful. It is, in most cases, impossible to show an exact point where

an analogy begins to mislead us. Every particular notation stresses some particular

point of view…. The cases in which particularly we wish to say that someone is

misled by a form of expression are those in which we would say: ―he wouldn‘t

talk as he does if he were aware of this difference in the grammar of such-and-

such words, or if he were aware of this other possibility of expression‖ and so on.

(28)

26

Establishing the usefulness of a philosophical fiction is, like that of an analogy, no simple matter;

a philosophical fiction is not like an object whose existence can be denied or confirmed

according to empirical observations. And like analogies, different articulations of philosophical

fictions can highlight different perspectives without one being ―true‖ and another ―false‖. Just as

Wittgenstein predominantly aims to renounce those analogies that are predicated upon a

fundamental misunderstanding, philosophical fictions that are based upon oversight or confusion

are more likely to perform an impotent role within a philosophical system.

Such a misunderstanding, in the case of both analogies in general and philosophical

fictions, can arise due to linguistic errors and a misconception of the nature of language—of

which hasty associations, attempts at reification, and affective appeal are only instances. Words,

as symbols, develop by being put to use, and accordingly symbols must not be conflated with

what they symbolize and assigned an absolute, transcendent meaning. Kant examines the effects

of such ―linguistic inertia‖ in the case of the antinomies, where concepts developed for

application to experience are taken as absolutes and extended beyond experience. And as

Wittgenstein remarks:

The contradiction which here seems to arise could be called a conflict between

two different usages of a word…. Solving this puzzle will consist in comparing

what we mean by ―measurement‖ (the grammar of the word ―measurement‖)

when applied to a distance on a travelling band with the grammar of that word

when applied to time. The problem may seem simple, but its extreme difficulty is

due to the fascination which the analogy between two similar structures in our

language can exert on us. (26)

In Wittgenstein‘s example, the use of a single word (―measurement‖) seems to imply an identity

between concepts that are actually operating in two mutually exclusive contexts. Although the

measurement of time is not the same as the measurement of a distance, the word has been reified

into an object that is thought to contain both meanings. For poetic effect, the two can certainly be

27

used in combination; but any attempt at equation based on overlooking their differences is likely

to disorient.

If philosophical constructions, phrasings, and terminology are going to be based on their

consequences—their efficacy—then nothing is strictly or automatically proscribed. As many

philosophers will be quick to remind us, there is no solid demarcation between ―philosophy‖ and

―poetry,‖ and poetic techniques and principles are routinely applied to philosophic treatises. But

problems arise when language ―suggests‖ (Wittgenstein‘s word) connections that obscure the

facts in reality, as in the example above with a single word appearing in different contexts.

Wittgenstein writes, in another example,

To say that we are trying to express the idea which is before our mind is to use a

metaphor, one which very naturally suggests itself; and which is all right so long

as it doesn‘t mislead us when we are philosophizing. For when we recall what

really happens in such cases we find a great variety of processes more or less akin

to each other. (41)

In this case, an idiomatic phrase (―the idea…is before [my] mind‖) has become so integrated into

normal expression that it is tempting to forget that it is, in fact, an idiom. After all, the

significance of an idiom is that it does not apply literally to what it signifies, and its meaning

cannot be inferred (as by a non-native speaker) from the individual words that make it up. If I

consider the phenomenon of expressing an idea ―before my mind‖ (on the tip of my tongue, etc.),

it may be tempting to conceive of ideas in a peculiar way. The expression might suggest an idea

existing objectively somewhere, fully-formed and coherent, that I am just on the verge of

retrieving. And if I go on to philosophize about ―where‖ this fully-formed idea is, and how it is

that I retrieve it, I run the risk of getting tangled up in word associations at the expense of

investigating reality. This is why Wittgenstein makes the striking claim that ―philosophical

problems arise when language goes on holiday‖ (Investigations 19e).

28

These are not Kant‘s explicit concerns in the Critique, but Wittgenstein and Kant are

provocative philosophers to read in conjunction. Their styles and interests vary greatly, but their

similarities are no less striking. Although Kant was hailed as the ―all-destroyer,‖ the title would

apply no less to Wittgenstein; although their methods differed, both philosophers were ultimately

concerned with unveiling the dubious suppositions behind many philosophical questions and

attempted answers. In ―Metaphysics as the Shadow of Grammar,‖ P. M. S. Hacker remarks:

Both thought that many propositions of traditional metaphysics violate the bounds

of sense, misuse concepts, and hence make nonsensical claims. More than any

other philosophers, Kant and Wittgenstein were concerned with the nature of

philosophy itself and sought to curb its metaphysical pretensions by clarifying its

status and circumscribing what one may rationally hope for in philosophical

investigation. Both saw philosophical and metaphysical illusions of reason as at

least a large part of the subject, and the eradication of such illusions as a major

goal of their work. (Hacker 200)

Since Kant‘s thing-in-itself withstands the scrutiny of his own critique, perhaps an investigation

into Wittgenstein‘s methods of dispelling ―illusions of reason‖ will illuminate the matter.

Like Kant before him, Wittgenstein was acutely aware of the reifying tendencies of

language and their impact on philosophy. Kant, for his part, explicitly describes the process of

reification in his description of the genesis of the transcendental ideal:

In accordance with a natural illusion, we regard as a principle that must hold of all

things in general that which properly holds only of those which are given as

objects of our senses. Consequently, through the omission of this limitation we

will take the empirical principle of our concepts of the possibility of things as

appearances to be a transcendental principle of the possibility of things in general.

That we subsequently hypostatize [reify] this idea of the sum total of all reality,

however, comes about because we dialectically transform the distributive unity

of the use of the understanding in experience, into the collective unity of a whole

of experience; and from this whole of appearance we think up an individual thing

containing in itself all empirical reality. (559)

Related to his solution to the antinomies, here Kant describes the tendency to project concepts

from experience onto imagined situations beyond experience, expecting them to hold there no

29

less consistently. In a footnote to this section, Kant links this ―natural illusion‖ to the ideal of

God:

This ideal of the supremely real being, even though it is a mere representation, is

first realized, i.e., made into an object, then hypostatized, and finally, as we will

presently allege, through a natural progress of reason in the completion of unity, it

is even personified, for the regulative unity of experience rests not on

appearances themselves…, but on the connection of its manifold by

understanding…; hence the unity of the highest reality and the thoroughgoing

determinability (possibility) of all things seems to lie in a highest understanding,

hence in an intelligence. (559n)

In taking the contingent to hold literally and absolutely, we transform particular experiences and

their particular contexts into cookie-cutter shapes with which to chop up the rest of our

experience. Ideas like ―the universe‖ are structured in such a manner, transformed into an object

and treated interchangeably with other objects. Kant and Wittgenstein both acknowledge the

necessary and useful role this process can play, but they are also aware of its pitfalls; without a

watchful eye, overhasty comparisons can become strict equations at the expense of noticing

differences and alternatives.

But if Kant‘s insistence on the thing-in-itself rests on its being the necessary inner to the

outer of appearances, doesn‘t this assertion rely on an inside-outside polarity gleaned from the

experiential world? Writing on a different although applicable example (describing mechanisms

of the mind based on conscious mental events), Wittgenstein remarks:

Now there is no doubt that, having the visual image of a string of beads being

pulled out of a box through a hole in the lid, we should be inclined to say: ―These

beads must all have been together in the box before‖. But it is easy to see that this

is making a hypothesis. I should have had the same image if the beads had

gradually come into existence in the hole of the lid. (Books 40)

If a succession of mental events is compared to pulling a string of beads out of a box (where a

bead represents one mental event), it is tempting to trace the former back in terms of the latter.

―If I perceive these mental events one after the other, then they must have already existed in my

30

unconscious in the same order before they were perceived.‖ Wittgenstein‘s point here is not to

encourage extreme skepticism with respect to reality, or to motivate us to check inside the box

every time such a maneuver is performed, but to highlight the pitfalls of assuming something that

holds in one context will automatically hold in another. But whether this is a fatal blow to Kant‘s

philosophy requires further investigation.

Central to Wittgenstein‘s method of observing instances of misleading analogies and

other manifestations of ―natural illusion‖ is the notion of ―grammar,‖ which he uses as a

technical term:

Wittgenstein…speaks of ‗the grammar of‘ particular words, expressions, phrases,

propositions/sentences, and even of the grammar of states and processes…. But

properly speaking, it is the corresponding linguistic expression which has a

grammar, namely in a certain way of being used. ‗Grammatical rules‘ are

standards for the correct use of an expression which ‗determine‘ its meaning: to

give the meaning of a word is to specify its grammar…. ‗Correct‘ here does not

mean ‗true‘, since one can use a term in accordance with linguistic rules without

saying something true. But a term is not used meaningfully if it is applied to

objects to which it could not apply truly. (Glock 150-1)

And further:

[Wittgenstein] used the expression ‗grammar‘ in an idiosyncratic way…to refer to

all the rules that determine the use of a word, i.e. both rules of grammar

acknowledged by linguists and also what linguists call ‗the lexicon‘ and exclude

from grammar—i.e. the explanations of meaning…. To grammar belongs

everything that determines sense, everything that has to be settled antecedently to

questions about truth. The grammar of an expression, in Wittgenstein‘s generous

use of ‗grammar‘, also specifies the licit combinatorial possibilities of the

expression, ‗i.e. which combinations make sense and which don‟t, which are

allowed and which are not allowed‘…. Wittgenstein contended that the questions

‗How is the word used?‘ and ‗What is the grammar of the word?‘ are one and the

same question (Baker and Hacker 145-6)

Since the grammar of an expression is based on the rules of its use in the broadest sense, the term

is invaluable in articulating linguistic illusions and their relation to subsequent

misunderstandings.

31

Wittgenstein‘s articulation of grammar in various contexts provides insight into moments

when usage, frequently without intent, strays from its usual or applicable domains. He remarks,

in describing his method,

The scrutiny of the grammar of a word weakens the position of certain fixed

standards of our expression which had prevented us from seeing facts with

unbiased eyes. Our investigation tried to remove this bias, which forces us to

think that the facts must conform to certain pictures embedded in our language.

(Books 43)

Without disciplined attention, it is easy to forget that language exists as a tool for us rather than

the other way around. Pre-established parallels between expressions in language in no way limit

the facts of reality, which is not to say that those facts never correspond to such parallels. But

without the awareness that these parallels are originally linguistic in nature, it is tempting to cede

to language its own agency in structuring our thoughts: ―104. We predicate of the thing what lies

in the method of representing it. Impressed by the possibility of a comparison, we think we are

perceiving a state of affairs of the highest generality‖ (Investigations 46e). As Kant has already

pointed out in his discussion of empty concepts, the possibility of thinking a thing does not relate

to the possibility of that thing‘s existing.

Part of the difficulty involved is that words (phrases, etc.) do not come packaged with

directions for their use. Despite the homogenizing effect in the organization of dictionaries,

words that appear similar on first glance may actually have wildly different functions:

11. Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-

driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.—The functions of words are as

diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.)

Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we

hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not

presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy! (6e)

Just as all words can be used in creating meaning through language, all the tools in a tool-box

can be used to fix or otherwise transform other objects. There is a ―family resemblance‖ in both

32

cases here, but such a resemblance is not all-pervasive. We forget that ―we calculate, operate,

with words, and in the course of time translate them sometimes into one picture, sometimes into

another‖ (131e). With a particular task in mind, it is not simply a matter of reaching into the tool-

box and making do with whatever comes out. If I want to dismantle a cabinet assembled with

screws, a screw-driver would obviously be a more practical choice than glue. (Which is not to

say that cabinets always require screw-drivers; if my intent had been to reaffix a handle, the glue

certainly would have been appropriate.)

In the case of words, similarly:

17. It will be possible to say: In language…we have different kinds of word. For

the functions of the word ―slab‖ and the word ―block‖ are more alike than those

of ―slab‖ and ―d‖. But how we group words into kinds will depend on the aim of

the classification,--and on our own inclination.

Think of the different points of view which one can classify tools or chess-

men. (8e)

Once again, Wittgenstein alerts us to the fact that there are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes

to language use—which is not to say that everything goes. The word ―block‖ can be related to

other words based on the categories of building materials, defensive maneuvers, obstacles, or

otherwise. But as children are especially capable of demonstrating, or when novel situations and

requirements arise, new constellations are constantly capable of forming.

Because tools, techniques, and expressions that are valid in a particular case are not

necessarily valid in another—and vice versa—and the particular case involved in any application

must not be divorced from the corresponding expressions:

413. Here we have a case of introspection, not unlike that from which William

James got the idea that the ‗self‘ consisted mainly of ‗peculiar motions in the head

and between the head and throat‘. And James‘ introspection shewed, not the

meaning of the word ―self‖ (so far as it means something like ―person‖, ―human

being‖, ―he himself‖, ―I myself‖), nor any analysis of such a thing, but the state of

a philosopher‘s attention when he says the word ―self‖ to himself and tries to

analyse its meaning. (And a good deal could be learned from this.) (124e-25e)

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It is not as if a philosopher‘s introspective analysis of the word ―self‖ is an absolutely useless

activity. But it is crucial to keep in mind that all descriptions resulting from such introspection

cannot be understood as the universal meaning of ―selfhood.‖ James‘s description, in fact, only

holds in the particular case of ―the state of a philosopher‘s intention when he says the word ‗self‘

to himself and tries to analyse its meaning,‖ and this must remain constantly implicit in any

further use of this concept.

Similarly:

499. To say ―This combination of words makes no sense‖ excludes it from the

sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language. But when one

draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. If I surround an area with

a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone from

getting in or out; but it may also be part of a game and the players be supposed,

say, to jump over the boundary; or it may shew where the property of one man

ends and that of another begins; and so on. So if I draw a boundary line that is not

yet to say what I am drawing it for. (138e)

Although this description might seem, at first glance, to contradict the notion that nothing is

forbidden from being said, it is actually an elaborated counterpart of that maxim. For if one is to

draw a boundary to the domain of language, Wittgenstein‘s point is that different types of

boundaries can be drawn, at separate times, for different purposes. This description actually

serves to buttress the initial maxim, since it reinforces its implicit extension: nothing is forbidden

from being said in all circumstances. Every statement can be justified with a little ingenuity, but

that ingenuity will only apply it to a particular situation.

With this in mind, misleading analogies can be critically approached and ―analyzed‖ into

a more coherent form, based on the original intentions:

Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds

light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings

concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies

between the forms of expression in different regions of language.—Some of them

34

can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be

called an ―analysis‖ of our forms of expression, for the process is sometimes like

one of taking a thing apart. (43e)

As Wittgenstein has already emphasized, the process of ―analyzing‖ forms of expression is not a

matter of checking them against a master rulebook. No string of words (or sounds) is outright

prohibited—or, for that matter, ―perfect‖ in an absolute sense: ―we eliminate misunderstandings

by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a

particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our

investigation‖ (ibid). But where misunderstandings are concerned, something has gone wrong

with the functioning of language as a medium of communication, and unless misunderstanding

was the goal in mind (it sometimes is), it can be productive to pursue an alternative approach.

Wittgenstein‘s emphasis on analysis is based on his view that philosophical problems are

largely problems of language use. In its most general definition, analysis is ―[t]he…process of

dissolving a whole into its components and the relations between its components‖ (Bunnin and

Yu 25). But the analysis that Wittgenstein speaks of in his Philosophical Investigations should

not be confused with the logical analysis he expounds in the early Tractatus Logico-

Philosophicus. In the latter, ―analysis aimed to overcome traditional philosophical problems

through replacing the apparent structure of statements by their real and underlying logical

structure…involv[ing] a reduction of complex discourse to simple elementary propositions‖ (ibid

26). And as he explains, ―In giving all these examples I am not aiming at some kind of

completeness, some classification of psychological concepts. They are only meant to enable the

reader to shift for himself when he encounters conceptual difficulties‖ (Investigations 206e)

Rather than relying on a strict logic, Wittgenstein‘s later form of analysis involves shifting and

comparing terms in order to remove the difficulties associated with a particular phraseology:

35

There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away

with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this

description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical

problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by

looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us

recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them. The

problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we

have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our

intelligence by means of language. (47e)

Kant‘s analysis of the antinomies is a prime example of such an analysis. Rather than attempting

to solve those philosophical problems with an appeal to empirical evidence and hypothesizing,

Kant addressed the rational and linguistic phenomena that initially contributed to the paradoxes.

This process is that of ―description‖ rather than of any ―explanation‖ that would be involved in

empirical testing. Although it may be tempting to misunderstand the antinomies due to the

seductive appeal of each ―rational‖ account, the only solution lies in arranging their descriptive

language in a new way, without the need for additional information.

The problem of the antinomies, and the later Wittgenstein‘s deprecation of logical

analysis, is further expounded by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations:

125. It is the business of philosophy, not to resolve a contradiction by means of a

mathematical or logico-mathematical discovery, but to make it possible for us to

get a clear view of the state of mathematics that troubles us: the state of affairs

before that contradiction is resolved. (And this does not mean that one is

sidestepping the difficulty.) / The fundamental fact here is that we lay down rules,

a technique, for a game, and that then when we follow the rules, things do not turn

out as we had assumed. That we are therefore as it were entangled in our own

rules…. / The civil status of a contradiction, or its status in civil life: there is the

philosophical problem. (Investigations 50e)

Once again, a philosophical contradiction like that of the antinomies cannot be solved by

scrutinizing the logic involved on both sides of the ―paradox‖: it is precisely reason‘s failure to

declare a winner between any thesis and antithesis that precludes the success of a ―mathematical‖

36

approach. For Kant, this division between logical analysis and Wittgenstein‘s later form of

analysis accords with his division between a thetic and an antithetic:

If any sum total of dogmatic doctrines is a ―thetic,‖ then by ―antithetic‖ I

understand not the dogmatic assertion of the opposite but rather the conflict

between what seem to be dogmatic cognitions…without the ascription of a

preeminent claim to approval of one side or the other. Thus an antithetic does not

concern itself with one-sided assertions, but considers only the conflict between

general cognitions of reason and the causes of this conflict. (467)

The point here is not to ―dogmatically‖ assert one side or the other of the contradiction, but

rather to determine the ―state of affairs‖ that determine and found that contradiction.

This move from an attempt at cohesion—reason‘s foremost inclination—towards the

acknowledgement of an irreconcilable division is further described by Slavoj Žižek in The

Parallax View. Citing Claude Lévi-Strauss‘s analysis of ―the spatial disposition of buildings in

the Winnebago, one of the Great Lakes tribes,‖ Žižek transforms an account of contradictory

descriptions into a metaphor of this very phenomenon:

Claude Lévi-Strauss‘s exemplary analysis, from Structural Anthropology, of the

spatial disposition of buildings in the Winnebago, one of the Great Lakes tribes,

might be of some help here. The tribe is divided into two subgroups (―moieties‖),

―those who are from above‖ and ―those who are from below‖; when we ask an

individual to draw on a piece of paper, or on sand, the ground-plan of his or her

village (the spatial disposition of cottages), we obtain two quite different answers,

depending on his or her belonging to one or the other subgroup. Both perceive the

village as a circle; but for one subgroup there is within this circle another circle of

central houses, so that we have two concentric circles, while for the other

subgroup the circle is split in two by a clear dividing line. In other words, a

member of the first subgroup (let us call it ―conservative-corporatist‖) perceives

the ground-plan of the village as a ring of houses more or less symmetrically

disposed around the central temple, whereas a member of the second

(―revolutionary-antagonistic‖) subgroup perceives his or her village as two

distinct heaps of houses separated by an invisible frontier…. The point Lévi-

Strauss wants to make is that this example should in no way entice us into cultural

relativism, according to which the perception of social space depends on the

observer‘s group-belonging: the very splitting into the two ―relative‖ perceptions

implies a hidden reference to a constant—not the objective, ―actual‖ disposition

of the buildings but a traumatic kernel, a fundamental antagonism the inhabitants

of the village were unable to symbolize, to account for, to ―internalize,‖ to come

37

to terms with, an imbalance in social relations that prevented the community from

stabilizing itself into a harmonious whole. The two perceptions of the ground-plan

are simply two mutually exclusive endeavors to cope with this traumatic

antagonism, to heal its wound via the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure.

(Parallax 25-26)

In this instance, the endeavor to impose a balanced symbolic structure can be equated to pure

reason‘s system-building syntheses (from Kant) and to following the rules/technique laid down

for a game (from Wittgenstein). But when this attempt at synthesis produces a contradiction, the

rules of the game/logic cannot be invoked to remedy the situation that it caused. And as Žižek

explains, the point is not to ―entice us into…relativism‖—a case in which the world would

sometimes be boundless and sometimes have boundaries and a beginning in time. Rather, there

exists a constant ―traumatic kernel,‖ some ―fundamental antagonism‖ that has not or cannot be

acknowledged by our method of describing the facts. Or as Wittgenstein would explain, ―Here

we have two different language-games and a complicated relation between them.—If you try to

reduce their relations to a simple formula you go wrong‖ (Investigations 180e). Although this

was not Žižek‘s central concern here, the only way we can hope to understand such paradoxes is

by reexamining the facts and reorienting our methods of describing them.

For ―we can avoid ineptness or emptiness in our assertions only by presenting the model

as what it is, as an object of comparison—as, so to speak, a measuring-rod; not as a preconceived

idea to which reality must correspond‖ (51e). The ideas of reason without any corresponding

empirical object must be understood as possibilities, as objects of comparison, without assuming

that every such idea must necessarily have objective reality. The fact that reason can produce

coherent descriptions of both the thesis and the antithesis of an antinomy does not prove that this

paradox is a fact of existence, since:

291. What we call ―descriptions‖ are instruments for particular uses. Think of a

machine-drawing, a cross-section, an elevation with measurements, which an

38

engineer has before him. Thinking of a description as a word-picture of the facts

has something misleading about it (99e)

For Wittgenstein, a description that is not useful has defeated the purpose of its existence. If, for

example, poor instructions obstruct me from assembling a desk out of prefabricated pieces, I

cannot automatically conclude that the desk is impossible to assemble. It may simply be that the

instructions are not appropriately suited for the task at hand. Additionally, while a certain set of

instructions may be useless in helping me to assemble this desk, those same instructions might be

ideally suited for navigating the roads into New York City.

While the significance of context in language use is a crucial aspect of Wittgenstein‘s

philosophy of language, another major component of his thought is evoked by a concise image:

simply, a beetle in a box, and its role in a theoretical society. The motivation for this image is to

address the philosophical problem of ―pain‖ and its relation to solipsism. Although there have

been very few genuine solipsists in the history of philosophy, solipsism as a metaphysical

theory—like nihilism and skepticism—has provided a major challenge to other philosophical

theories that would seek to overcome it. In its purest and most extreme form, solipsism is the

doctrine that only I and my experiences exist. Less extreme is ―epistemic solipsism,‖ in which an

external world is acknowledged to exist, but where the other people are suspected of being

automatons instead of thinking beings. John R. Searle summarizes this view in Mind: A Brief

Introduction by expressing: ―maybe other people have mental states, but I can never know for

sure. It is quite possible that they do but I have no way of finding out, because all I can observe

is their external behavior‖ (Searle 20). An even more moderate form of solipsism accepts that

other people exist and have mental states, but it insists that there is no way of knowing whether

these mental states are the same as my own. As Searle explains, ―For all I know, what I call

‗seeing red,‘ if you could have that very experience you might call it ‗seeing green,‘ and if I

39

could have your experience that you call ‗seeing red‘ I would call it ‗seeing green‖ (ibid). When

confronted with the counterevidence of color blindness tests, Searle suggests that nothing has

been refuted since ―we both make the same discriminations in our behavior. If asked to pick out

the green pencil…we both pick the same pencil. But how do I know that the inner experiences

you have that enable you to discriminate are similar to the ones that enable me to discriminate?‖

(ibid). Wittgenstein addresses all three forms of solipsism in his philosophical writings, but he

frequently emphasizes the latter, most innocuous form.

Wittgenstein‘s refutation of solipsism ultimately centers around his ―private language

argument,‖—or, in other words, his argument against private language. Rather than ―a private

code‖ or ―a language spoken by only one person,‖ private language refers to a language that is

―in principle unshareable because it is used to refer to an individual‘s allegedly private

experiences‖ (Warburton 234). The problem here is that there is no criterion of correctness to

verify usage in a private language, and the argument asserts that other people must exist in the

world for the existence of language at all. In Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of

Wittgenstein, Peter Hacker is careful to point out that Wittgenstein‘s refutation of solipsism and

private language ―is a ‗refutation‘ not in the sense of showing solipsism to be a false theory (for

then one might pursue the will o‘ the wisp of a ‗true theory‘) but in the sense of showing it to be

nonsense‖ (Insight 243). This ―nonsensical‖ element is highlighted by Nigel Warburton in his

description of private language, comparing the latter to a mental timetable without an external

correlate. He explains,

[Private language] is like checking the time a train leaves by calling up your

memory of the timetable, but with one important difference: there is no actual

timetable out there in the world to serve as the touchstone of correctness. Where

there is no possible way of checking up to see if I am correct in my application of

a term, the term cannot have any meaning. (234)

40

If meaning is created by the use of a term and legitimized by its consequences, there needs to be

some external referent or acknowledgment by another party in order to establish verifiability. If

no external criterion of correctness exists, I can apply a word of my own invention to a particular

series of mental events, assuming these events are identical. But if I was somehow mistaken, and

my subjective recollection of past mental events inaccurately led me to equate them with later

mental events that were in fact quite different, I have no way to recognize or correct this mistake.

As a thought experiment designed to explain this phenomenon, Wittgenstein remarks:

Let us imagine the following case: I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a

certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign ‗S‘ and write this sign in

a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation.—I will remark first of all

that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.—But still I can give myself a

kind of ostensive definition.—How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the

ordinary sense [of pointing to an external object]. But I speak, or write the sign

down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation—and so,

as it were, point to it inwardly.—But what is this ceremony for? For that is all it

seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.—Well,

that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I

impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation.—But ―I

impress it on myself‖ can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember

the connexion right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of

correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right.

And that only means that here we can‘t talk about ‗right‘. (Investigations 258)

In this instance, ―a definition of the sign cannot be formulated,‖ because a definition would

requite the use of ―public‖ language to describe a wholly private experience. But neither is the

matter resolved by establishing an ostensive definition through the ―ceremony‖ of concentrating

on the sensation while writing the letter ‗S‘, since this ostensive definition would require that

inner sensations be purely and universally objective occurrences, which of course they are not.

This is why Wittgenstein insists that ―[l]anguage is public, and the criteria for the

application and reapplication of words are public‖ (ibid). The emphasis of the private language

argument is not that a word I invent for myself cannot be used coherently, since it is possible in a

41

theoretical sense that I have correctly or coherently classified a series of temporally distinct

mental events; rather, ―the trouble is that we can‘t be mistaken about whether it is being used

correctly, for ‗whatever is going to seem right to me is right‘. The private language is not a game

at which we can‘t win, it is a game at which we can‘t lose‖ (Marconi 108). But even so, I cannot

make the argument that I am using my private language correctly, since for Wittgenstein, strictly

speaking, this statement makes no sense:

the private language thought-experiment has been so set up that it simply does not

make sense to speak of my being right in the use of 'S' "whether I know it or not":

for "being right in the use of 'S'" has been defined as 'conforming to my private

convention concerning the use of "S"', and, by hypothesis, I am the only one who

can "check" whether the convention has been respected or not. There is no being

right per se, whether I know it or not. (ibid)

Private language is therefore logically impossible, nonsensical. Its downfall, in Wittgenstein‘s

eyes, lies in the fact that it overlooks the fundamental nature of language as based on collective

conventions of use. Without the existence of others, language as such would not exist. And since

solipsism is a theoretical idea expressed with language, solipsism as such is nonsensical.

In Wittgenstein‘s example of the diary-keeper above, the use of ―S‖ is intended to

contrast with the word ―pain‖ ―so as to break the spell of the ‗private object‘ model of pain and

other sensations‖ (Hanfling 24). From the point of view of a fictional antagonist, Wittgenstein

describes this ―private object‖ model of pain in the Philosophical Investigations: ―246. In what

sense are my sensations private?—Well, only I can know whether I am really in pain; another

person can only surmise it‖ (Wittgenstein PI 89e). But Wittgenstein‘s voice immediately returns

to counter, ―In one way this is wrong, and in another nonsense‖ (ibid). The ―nonsensical‖

element in play here stems from the problem of private language, since ―[i]f we treat ‗pain‘ as

the name of a private object, the question of the identification and misidentification of its referent

must arise, since…[t]here are no criteria of identity for private mental entities‖ (Glock 314). This

42

is not to say that pain cannot be recognized or compared to other pains, but it assumes a sort of

static experience of pain that I can describe linguistically without being able to share it with

others. The problem here, as with private language in general, is that no criterion of correctness

exists to ward off misidentification.

The ―wrong‖ portion of the description of pain as a private object relates to Bertrand

Russell‘s theory of types, even though the latter was ultimately rejected by Wittgenstein ―as an

illegitimate attempt to say what could only be shown‖ (LePore and Smith 46). The early

Wittgenstein was heavily informed by Russell, and was even described as ―Russell‘s personal

disciple, anointed to carry out the logicist program‖ (Collins 725). But as Wittgenstein turned

away from logical positivism, from his published Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and from the

idea that language operates as a calculus according to a set of explicitly-defined rules, he began

to define himself in separation from his early mentor. While Russell and others investigated the

possibilities of a logically perfect language, Wittgenstein turned toward the phenomena of

ordinary language and its everyday uses. Nonetheless, Wittgenstein‘s intellectual development

was heavily informed by Russell, and inspection of the latter‘s theory of types can illuminate

something of the present topic by contrast.

Russell's theory developed in response to what has been labeled ―Russell's paradox,‖

which is referred to as ―the most famous of the logical...paradoxes‖ (Irvine). ―Discovered‖ by

Bertrand Russell in 1901, the paradox arises from the following scenario:

Some sets, such as the set of all teacups, are not members of themselves. Other

sets, such as the set of all non-teacups, are members of themselves. Call the set of

all sets that are not members of themselves "R." If R is a member of itself, then by

definition it must not be a member of itself. Similarly, if R is not a member of

itself, then by definition it must be a member of itself. (ibid)

43

To rephrase, the-set-of-all-teacups, considered as a thing, is not a teacup, and is therefore not

contained within itself as a member of the set of all teacups. On the other hand, the-set-of-all-

non-teacups, considered as a thing, is also not a teacup, and is therefore contained within itself as

a member of the set of all non-teacups (i.e., everything that is not a teacup). But if a ―higher‖ set

is then imagined to contain [all sets that are not members of themselves], a problem arises upon

asking whether or not this higher set is also a member of itself. Following the same line of logic,

―if it is, it isn‘t, and if it isn‘t, it is‖ (Wegner 47).

Russell‘s solution to the paradox involves a rephrasing of the problem—a technique that

Wittgenstein may have respected, even if he considered the overall procedure to be lacking. The

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes:

Recognizing that self-reference lies at the heart of the paradox, Russell's basic

idea is that we can avoid commitment to R (the set of all sets that are not

members of themselves) by arranging all sentences (or, equivalently, all

propositional functions) into a hierarchy. The lowest level of this hierarchy will

consist of sentences about individuals. The next lowest level will consist of

sentences about sets of individuals. The next lowest level will consist of sentences

about sets of sets of individuals, and so on. It is then possible to refer to all objects

for which a given condition (or predicate) holds only if they are all at the same

level or of the same ―type.‖ (Irvine)

Using Wittgenstein‘s phraseology, the ―grammar‖ of a class is different from the grammar of the

members of that class, so the two types cannot be compared on the same level or operate

interchangeably. Thus, ―members and classes are different logical types, and speaking of both in

a way that is not reducible to either one alone produces a line of thinking that typically leads to

paradoxes‖ (Wegner 47).

Wittgenstein‘s aversion to Russell‘s logical demonstration rests on the fact that it

approaches language abstractly, rather than in the manner of its actual use. Although both

Wittgenstein‘s method and Russell‘s theory would declare the statement ―the class of tables is a

44

table‖ to be nonsense, Wittgenstein does not believe that the theory says anything valuable. He

thought that ―such a syntactical rule could not be formulated‖ since ―what it is trying to say is

something that, given the meanings of our words, is necessarily true. If our words mean what

they do mean, then it follows with necessity that that sentence is nonsense‖ (Schroeder 89).

Words, Wittgenstein already knew, are not of the homogeneous variety, and their grammars

differ according to the context of their use. The ―paradox‖ was really not a paradox at all, since it

resulted from a leveling of terms whose natures were never identical.

It is just this sort of logical move, exemplified by Russell‘s theory, that Wittgenstein

resists in the Philosophical Investigations—even if he usually refrains from pointing fingers and

naming names:

106. Here it is difficult to keep our heads up,--to see that we must stick to the

subjects of our every-day thinking, and not go astray and imagine that we have to

describe extreme subtleties, which in turn we are after all quite unable to describe

with the means at our disposal…. 107. The more narrowly we examine actual

language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement [for a

neat, universal logic of language]. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of

course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.) (Investigations 46e)

For Wittgenstein, language is a collection of overlapping conventions rather than a ―crystalline

purity of logic‖—conventions that must be demonstrated, since their ―rules‖ are inherently tied

to their (plastic) use. So continuing, he remarks: ―108. We see that what we call ‗sentence‘ and

‗language‘ has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is the family of structures more or less

related to one another‖ (ibid). He expresses this position directly to Russell in their

correspondence of 1913: ―All theories of types must be done away with by a theory of

symbolism showing that what seem to be different kinds of things are symbolised by different

kinds of symbols which cannot possibly be substituted in one another‘s place‖ (qtd. in Schroeder

89). It is this ―theory of symbolism‖ that explains the error involved in our discussion of pain.

45

These philosophical problems surrounding the word ―pain‖ result from a misrecognition

of its grammar and an attempt to pair it with different words in a ―confusion of types‖:

Words like ‗pain‘, ‗itch‘ or ‗tickle‘ are names of sensations, but not in the way in

which ‗table‘, ‗chair‘ and ‗sofa‘ are names of pieces of furniture. One can point at

a table and say that ‗table‘ is the name of this piece of furniture, but one cannot

point at a sensation and say that ‗pain‘ is the name of this sensation. Instead, to

say that ‗pain‘ is the name of a sensation is to say that there are characteristic

behavioural manifestations of pain which provide criteria for statements like ‗She

is in pain‘, and that a sentence like ‗I am in pain‘ is (typically) an avowal—not the

report of an inner object but an expression of pain. In the case of genuine

sensations, the problem about criteria of identity does not arise, since there is no

such thing as either identifying or misidentifying one‘s own sensations. (Glock

314)

When I speak of my pain, I am saying something different than when I speak of your pain. When

I say that I am in pain, I am expressing a sensation that I feel, which cannot be identified or

misidentified because it is the experience of it. I might say it because I want help, or pity, or

attention, but in any case I am not referencing an inner object with concrete parameters. When I

speak of your pain, conversely, I am not speaking of a concrete object worthy of my suspicion or

belief. The word ―pain‖ is a tool for communication, and the repercussions of its invocation have

nothing to do with a reified referent.

Which brings us back to Wittgenstein‘s image of the beetle in a box. In the Philosophical

Investigations, Wittgenstein explains:

293. If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word

―pain‖ means—must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I

generalize the one case so irresponsibly? / Now someone tells me that he knows

what pain is only from his own case!—Suppose everyone had a box with

something in it: we call it a ―beetle‖. No one can look into anyone else‘s box, and

everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.—Here it

would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One

might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.—But suppose the word

―beetle‖ had a use in these people‘s language?—If so it would not be used as the

name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not

even as a something: for the box might even be empty.—No, one can ‗divide

through‘ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. / That is to say: if

46

we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‗object

and designation‘ the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.

(Investigations 100e)

The thought experiment invoked here by Wittgenstein has strong parallels with the argument for

the thing-in-itself as a philosophical fiction—that is, as an efficacious linguistic concept within a

system of symbolic exchange. In this example, the objective, material reality of the beetle in each

box can certainly be called into question—since no one can look into anyone else‘s box, there is

no empirical evidence to support such a claim. The solipsist, in such a case, would say that he

can only be sure of the existence of his beetle, since his beetle is the only privileged object of his

perception. If he is of the more rigid variety, the solipsist will continue by asserting that his

beetle is the only beetle at all that exists.

Wittgenstein‘s point here is, precisely, that the solipsist is missing the point. It does not

matter if there is a beetle identical to his beetle in every box that is carried around by others in

the society. The function of the word ―beetle‖ is not to act as a description of the physical

universe: ―Look into your box! Everyone else‘s box contains a beetle just like yours.‖ This

description can certainly be brought up legitimately in certain contexts—such as amongst a

group of schoolchildren, arguing for and against the proposition in a playground during recess.

Rather, the original function of the word ―beetle‖ refers to a use—it serves a purpose in

communicating something across the population of a shared language. Although Wittgenstein

does not specify the particular use in his thought experiment, one can conceive of a number of

varied possibilities. If someone in this society exclaimed, ―My beetle is orange today,‖ this might

signify that this person felt ill, or happy, or disconcerted. Or perhaps the beetle is a symbol for

the projected intentions of the speaker, and a pronouncement of ―My beetle is walking‖ informs

us that the speaker is planning to go on a walk in the near future. Although these and

47

Wittgenstein‘s other ―language games‖—thought experiments of language use in imagined

[societal] situations—may be seen as fantastical in relation to our own linguistic needs and

usage, they nonetheless exhibit how our own language functions through their simplified

scenarios.

The immediate significance of this language game to the question of the thing-in-itself

rests on the beetle‘s objective significance. As Wittgenstein explains, ―one can ‗divide through‘

by the thing in the box‖ since ―the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.‖ The argument

for legitimizing the thing-in-itself based on its status as a philosophical fiction rests on a similar

understanding: the objective status of the thing-in-itself is irrelevant to its role within Kant‘s

philosophical system. The burden of proof rests, then, on whether the thing-in-itself as a concept

is significantly useful (which would legitimize its inclusion) or a peripheral distraction to the

overall theory.

48

CHAPTER THREE: Slavoj Žižek and the Real’s Traumatic Kernel

Other than the uses postulated above by Eva Schaper, an argument can be made for the

persistence, adaptability, and significance of the thing-in-itself within philosophical thought, up

the current age of postmodern self-reflexivity. In the context of 20th

century psychoanalysis,

theorist Jacques Lacan acknowledges the ―suppressed object‖ of Kantianism, characterized by a

―particular domain…that…contains no knowledge and cannot lead to knowledge‖ of itself

(Ronen 25). As Ruth Ronen explains in Representing the Real: Psychoanalysis and Culure, ―the

object that concerns us here is precisely not the referent…not the signified of our linguistic or

conceptual…formulations‖ (25-6). Describing this phenomenon as an ―imaginary object,‖ Lacan

interprets the thing-in-itself—as the newly-minted das Ding, even in Lacan‘s original French—

along lines compatible with Wittgenstein‘s beetle: ―The idea that signs of a language can

successfully denote anything definite is an illusionary projection of symmetry and

correspondence which is nevertheless necessary and consequential for the operation of our

language and cognition‖ (26). An imaginary representation such as this is considered to exist

―before or beyond its being represented, forming a set of things separate from the set of

representations‖ that refer to it (27).

And why is this concept of interest to such a specialized branch of philosophical thought

as psychoanalysis? The answer lies in psychoanalysis‘ concern with the unconscious, ―an object

that cannot be directly or determinably represented,‖ so that ―the relation between the object

represented by an image and the object of the Real…is of major concern‖ (ibid). Without a

language for articulating the real of the unconscious, psychoanalysis has no solid ground on

which to demarcate its foundation. As Lacan explains in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, ―thought

processes [of the] unconscious…are only available to consciousness to the extent that they can

49

be verbalized‖ (Ethics 48). While the unconscious cannot be rendered as such, the ―movement of

speech‖ centers around an ineffable kernel, a necessary structural element that is ―only accessible

through the artifice of the spoken word‖ (ibid). Since the unconscious is so formidably important

to the overall theory and its successful practice—as Freud was wont to insist in face of consistent

opposition—the conditions and legitimization of its rendering are crucial.

In opposition to the arbitrariness of language, which has cast doubt on the significance of

free association, Lacan emphasizes the experiential process of language acquisition and its usage.

In ―Beyond the ‗Reality Principle,‘‖ he explains that the psychoanalyst ―comes upon the simple

fact that language, prior to signifying something, signifies to someone‖ (Beyond 66). This is the

revelation of Wittgenstein‘s beetle, which locates the source of the solipsist‘s angst as removed

from language‘s practical function. Instead, the analyst focuses on this practical function as such,

recognizing an intention in the analysand's discourse that ―represent[s] a certain tension in social

relations: a demanding intention, a punitive intention, a propitiatory intention, a demonstrative

intention, or a purely aggressive intention‖ (67). The psychoanalyst picks up on the method‘s

discursive employment, based as they are on societal conventions and the accumulation of lived

experience. The result is that even if the language does not refer to a situation as it exists

―objectively,‖ if it is ―approached via its function of social expression, [it] reveals both its

significant unity in intention and its constitutive ambiguity as subjective expression, admitting

something that contradicts thought or using thought to lie‖ (ibid). The subject of psychoanalysis

is located at the boundary of such tension.

For his part, Lacan was very conscious of the impact of imaginary objects on lived

experience. In his discussion of ―courtly love‖ in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, the poetic figure

of the Lady exists only as an abstract ideal, emptied of all positive qualities or defining

50

characteristics. She is ―nothing more than a correlative of the functions of social exchange, the

support of a certain number of goods and of symbols of power‖ (Ethics 147). But even though

this feudal character is nothing but an imaginary, inaccessible feminine object, a ―symbolic

function,‖ its persistence in its body of literature had very real societal repercussions (149). In

summarizing the unanimous account from historians, Lacan describes that ―courtly love was, in

brief, a poetic exercise, a way of playing with a number of conventional, idealizing themes,

which couldn‘t have any real concrete equivalent‖ (148). The significance lies in the fact that,

while the status of the Lady was imaginary, ―these ideals…are to be found in subsequent periods,

down to our own. The influence of these ideals is a highly concrete one in the organization of

contemporary man‘s sentimental attachments, and it continues its forward march‖ (ibid). Lacan‘s

language here is unambiguous—a concept with no objective correlate can nonetheless exercise a

very concrete influence.

Set in motion by his reading of Kant, a functional, topographical affinity links the

Lacanian concepts of das Ding, objet petit a, and the Real. All three, mediated by the symbolic

order, are strictly fantasy objects, ―at once the void, the gap, the lack around which the symbolic

order is structured and that which comes to mask or cover over that lack‖ (Homer 88). They

―come forth as exteriorized incarnations of [that] exterior void, the ‗embodiment‘ of the limited

logic of the Self‖ (Smith 31). Neither Lacan‘s symbolic reality nor the realm of appearances, its

Kantian correlate, are totalized systems; there is always a remainder, something pointed to on the

outside that cannot be internalized by structural necessity. But just as the Kantian thing-in-itself

calls attention to the ―not-all‖ status of human reason and intuition, it simultaneously forms the

boundary within which human reason can articulate a coherent domain. Likewise the Lacanian

real, as fantasy object, serves the paradoxical role of buttressing the very symbolic system that it

51

calls into question: ―The role of the Lacanian real is…radically ambiguous: true, it erupts in the

form of a traumatic return, derailing the balance of our daily lives, but it serves at the same time

as a support of this very balance‖ (Žižek 29). The former ―little piece of the real‖ ―fill[s] out the

place of this void that gapes at the very heart of the symbolic,‖ while the latter ―answer of the

real‖ is the ―psychotic kernel that serves as a support for (symbolic) reality‖ (33, 34). Just as

removing the thing-in-itself fails to ensure reason‘s sovereignty over appearances, elimination of

the real is an impossible attempt to heal the inconsistency of the symbolic order.

If the comparison holds, both symbolic and phenomenal reality are ―nothing but an

embodiment of a certain blockage in the process of symbolization. For reality to exist, something

must be left unspoken‖ (45). But if Lacan and Kant consent to this prognosis, why is there a

simultaneous urge to speak the unspeakable? In a radical move that mirrors the source of

complaints by Kant‘s critics, Lacan attempts to found a certain ―knowledge in the real,‖ which

Žižek describes as ―the idea that nature knows its own laws and behaves accordingly‖ (Ideology

134). In Looking Awry, The Indivisible Remainder, and elsewhere, Žižek uses an example from

subatomic particle physics to illustrate this concept. He explains that even though the scientific

discipline is supposed to be objective and exact, ―it repeatedly encounters…phenomena that

seem to imply a transport of information faster than the maximum admissible according to the

theory of relativity‖ (Žižek 45). His point of reference is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect,

―where what we did in area A affects what happens in area B, without this being possible along

the normal causal chain permitted by the speed of light,‖ (ibid). Further,

if we observe the electron‘s trajectory in order to discover through which of…two

slits it will pass, the electron will behave as a particle; if, on the other hand, we do

not observe it, it will display the properties of a wave—as if the electron

somehow knows whether it is being observed or not…. (Indivisible 223)

52

Slavoj Žižek uses these examples to support a ―knowledge in the real‖ that is irreducible to

symbolic truth. For Žižek and Lacan, this is based on an unsymbolizable kernel that ―can only be

retroactively reconstructed in a desubjectivized knowledge‖ rather than directly comprehended

(Enjoyment cvn). Opposed to Aristotelian common-sense philosophical ontology, ―[t]his gap [in

scientific discourse] emerges with Galileo, and is brought to an extreme in quantum physics,

where we‘re dealing with laws which do work, though they cannot ever be retranslated into our

experience of representable reality‖ (Matrix 247).

Žižek elaborates the significance of this ―knowledge in the real‖ by referring to another

instance within the discourse of science, drawing on the consequences of Stephen Hawking‘s

hypothesis of ―imaginary time‖ (that is, calculable only in terms of imaginary numbers) as it

relates to the limits of the universe:

Hawking attempts to construct an alternative to the standard big bang theory

according to which, to explain the evolution of the universe, we must presuppose

as a starting point a moment of ―singularity‖ at which universal laws of physics

are suspended. The big bang theory would thus correspond to the ―masculine‖

side of the logic of the signifier: the universal function (the laws of physics) is

based on a certain exception (the point of singularity). What Hawking attempts to

demonstrate, however, is that if we accept the hypothesis of ―imaginary time,‖ we

do not need to postulate the necessary existence of this ―singularity.‖ By

introducing ―imaginary time,‖ the difference between time and space disappears

totally, time begins to function in the same way as space in the theory of

relativity: although it is finite, it has no limit. Even if it is ―bent,‖ circular, finite,

there need be no external point that would limit it. In other words, time is ―not-

all,‖ ―feminine‖ in the Lacanian sense. Apropos of this distinction between ―real‖

and ―imaginary‖ time, Hawking points out clearly that we are concerned with two

parallel ways of conceptualizing the universe: although in the case of the big bang

theory we speak of ―real‖ time, and in the second case of ―imaginary‖ time, it

does not follow from this that either of these versions possesses an ontological

priority, i.e., that it offers us a ―more adequate‖ picture of reality: their duplicity

(in all senses of the word) is irreducible. (Žižek 47)

The feminine ―not-all‖ / masculine ―exception‖ distinction relates back to the parallactical

distinction between the two topological versions of the village from Levi-Strauss‘s analysis. In

53

that case, the version of the village as two concentric circles corresponds to the logic of the

masculine ―exception‖: everything is complete, totalized, rational—except for some errant

category that sticks out, defying the system. The village as a circle split in two by a dividing line,

on the other hand, corresponds to the logic of the feminine ―not-all,‖ where ―[n]o single

universal encompasses the entire particular content, since each particular has its own universal,

each contains a specific perspective on the entire field‖ (Real 69). Here, the standard theory of

the big bang accords with the masculine logic: the universe expanded according to the laws of

science, founded on an initial condition—outside of the series—that set those laws into motion.

Hawking‘s alternative, on the other hand, is representative of feminine logic: the ―laws‖ of time

and space are already perforated, such that the ―common sense‖ logic of cause and effect cannot

be retroactively extended to any first cause.

The insurmountable divide between the logics of feminine ―not-all‖ / masculine

―exception‖ would later be identified by Žižek as forming a ―parallax gap,‖ ―the confrontation of

two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral common ground is possible‖ (Parallax

4). The phenomena on each side of the gap ―are mutually untranslatable,‖ despite the illusion of

being able to use the same language to describe them (ibid). This is also strictly homologous to

Wittgenstein‘s interests in the non-coincidence of language games, discussed above. Žižek‘s

ultimate point, which is homologous to Kant‘s discussion of the antinomies, is that

our knowledge of the universe, the way we symbolize the real, is ultimately

always bound, determined by the paradoxes proper to language as such; the split

into ―masculine‖ and ―feminine,‖ i.e., the impossibility of a ―neutral‖ language

not marked by this difference, imposes itself because symbolization as such is by

definition structured around a certain central impossibility. Not even the purest

subatomic physics can escape this fundamental impasse of symbolization. (Žižek

47).

54

Although this language might suggest a stance of relativity with deconstructionist

tendencies, Žižek‘s explicitly rejects Derrida‘s Deconstruction in Looking Awry. It is important

to preface this distinction, however, with a note from Rex Butler and Scott Stephens in their

glossary to Interrogating the Real: ―We might wonder…how different Žižek actually is from

Derrida, whether there is not a systematic misreading by him of Derrida that allows a distinction

between them to be drawn?‖ (Real 360). Nonetheless, Žižek‘s denunciation offers elucidating

insight into a shift from masculine to feminine logic in the history of philosophy, which is

relevant to our interests here.

For Žižek, despite the usual academic categorization,

Deconstructionism is a modernist procedure par excellence; it presents perhaps

the most radical version of the logic of ―unmasking‖ whereby the very unity of

the experience of meaning is conceived as the effect of signifying mechanisms, an

effect that can only take place insofar as it ignores the textual movement that

produced it. (Žižek 142)

This view proceeds from Žižek‘s own definitions of modernism and postmodernism, the latter of

which he describes as ―consist[ing] not in demonstrating that the game works without an object,

that the play is set in motion by a central absence, but rather in displaying the object directly,

allowing it to make visible its own indifferent and arbitrary character‖ (143). The significance of

the ―object,‖ in this case, is ―strictly structural,‖ pertaining ―only to its place in the symbolic

order‖ (ibid). The difference lies in the fact that ―[t]he lesson of modernism is that the structure,

the intersubjective machine, works as well if the Thing is lacking, if the machine revolves around

an emptiness; the postmodernist reversal shows the Thing itself as the incarnated, materialized

emptiness‖ (145). Or, as Žižek describes in ―The Eclipse of Meaning: On Lacan and

Deconstruction,‖

Derrida…likes to indulge heavily in exuberant variations on the paradoxical

character of the supplement (the excessive element which is neither inside nor

55

outside; it sticks out of the series it belongs to and simultaneously completes it,

etc.). Lacan, on the contrary—by means of a gesture which, of course, for Derrida

would undoubtedly signal reinscription into traditional philosophical discourse—

directly offers a concept of this element, namely the concept of the Master-

Signifier, S1, in relation to S2, the ‗ordinary‘ chain of knowledge. This concept is

not a simple unambiguous concept, but the concept of the structural ambiguity

itself. That is to say, Lacan reunites in one and the same concept what Derrida

keeps apart. (Real 194-5)

In both cases, the first deconstructive/modernist stance in away corresponds to the masculine

logic of sexuation, since its process rests on discovering the element that ―sticks out‖ of every

coherent discourse. But from the perspective of the realm of discourse, this element is still an

―other‖ that cannot be inscribed within it, leading to a constant destabilization of meaning.

Another way to describe this process would be to picture Derrida before a series of ―masculine‖

village types, constantly pointing out the excluded circle. The second

psychoanalytic/postmodernist stance, on the other hand, corresponds to the feminine logic, since

the unsymbolizable gap is a constitutive part of the articulated discourse. To provide a

corresponding image, Lacan would be gesturing towards the split in every feminine variation of

village, demonstrating how each is structured around a central impossibility.

It is notable that Žižek has remarked upon a shift from the masculine to the feminine even

within Lacan‘s own writings. As Suzanne Barnard explains in her introduction to Reading

Seminar XX,

Reading the formulas of sexuation with a particular emphasis on the illusory

nature of the phallic exception and on the feminine logic of the not-whole, Zizek

underscores how Lacan‘s interest in the real represents a passage in priority from

the masculine logic of law and transgression to the feminine logic of love.

(Barnard 13)

And as Žižek himself describes,

what distinguishes the last stage of Lacan‘s teaching from the previous stages is

best approached through the changed status of the notion of the symptom:

previously, the symptom was a pathological formation to be (ideally, at least)

56

dissolved in and through analytic interpretation: an indication that the subject

somehow and somewhere compromised his desire, or an indication of the

deficiency or malfunctioning of the symbolic Law that guarantees the subject‘s

capacity to desire. In short, symptoms were the series of exceptions, or

disturbances, malfunctionings, measured by the ideal of full integration into the

symbolic Law, the big Other. Later, however, with his notion of the universalized

symptom, Lacan accomplished the paradoxical shift from the ‗masculine‘ logic of

Law and its constitutive exception towards the ‗feminine‘ logic in which there is

no exception to the series of symptoms—in which there are only symptoms, and

the symbolic Law (the paternal Name) is ultimately just one (the most efficient,

the most established…) in the series of symptoms. (Absolute 116)

The significance of Lacan‘s feminine reinterpretation of the symptom is that it is no longer an

outlier to the texture of the patient‘s symbolic reality. The subject‘s personality would be

complete, totalized, rational—if only it were not for his aberrant, malfunctioning symptom.

Instead, the ideal of a totalized personality is scrapped altogether, leaving a constellation of

symbolic formations and symptoms in its wake.

Quite significantly, we find the same transition to feminine logic from the early to late

Wittgenstein. The ―ambitious programme‖ of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as Roger M.

White explains in an overview of its themes, was to ―establish ‗the general form of proposition‘:

the general form of a variable that would range over every possible proposition‖ (White 11). The

early Wittgenstein, in other words, ―in the fashion of analytic logical positivism, limited

philosophy exclusively to that which can be said‖ (Michener 38). This is the

deconstructive/masculine Wittgenstein, in which the exception was always gestured to—

shown—while remaining apart from his rational, totalized system. As Žižek explains, ―in the

early Wittgenstein of Tractatus, the world is comprehended as a self-enclosed, limited, bounded

whole of ―facts,‖ which precisely as such presupposes an exception: the ineffable mystical that

functions as its limit‖ (Four 83). It is for this reason that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus jumps

57

from statements of the strictest logicality to an elevated mysticism, both of which are absent

from his later writings. There is, in the first instance,

3.33 The reason why a function cannot be its own argument is that the sign for

a function already contains the prototype of its argument, and it cannot contain

itself.

For let us suppose that the function F(fx) could be its own argument: in

that case there would be a proposition „F(F(fx))‟, in which the outer function F

and the inner function F must have different meanings, since the inner one has the

form φ(fx) and the outer one has the form ψ(φ(fx)). Only the letter ‗F‘ is common

to the two functions, but the letter by itself signifies nothing.

This immediately becomes clear if instead of „F(Fu)‟ we write „(З

φ):F(φu). φu=Fu‟. (Tractatus 19-20)

In the second instance, by contrast:

6.432 How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what

is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.

6.4321 The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution.

6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole—a limited

whole.

Feeling the world as a limited whole—it is this that is mystical.

…

6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who

understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used

them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the

ladder after he has climbed up it.)

He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world

aright.

7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. (88-89)

The mystical elements of the Tractatus are, as it were, a sort of surplus—the necessary

remainder that does not fit into its rational, totalized system: things are revealed in the world, but

God remains outside of it.

In demonstrating his transition, Žižek describes that, in the late Wittgenstein,

the problematic of the ineffable disappears, yet for that very reason the universe is

no longer comprehended as a whole regulated by the universal conditions of

language: all that remains are lateral connections between partial domains. The

notion of language as the system defined by a set of universal features is replaced

58

by the notion of language as a multitude of dispersed practices loosely

interconnected by ―family resemblances.‖ (Four 83)

Although undeniable similarities exist between early and later phases of Wittgenstein‘s work,

such as the considerable emphasis on the effects of language on thought, this distinction is

equally significant. By shifting his attention to family resemblances in place of a unifying logic

of language, Wittgenstein‘s theory becomes perforated by the very negativity that it earlier

sought to exclude. This new, ―feminine‖ Wittgenstein no longer needs to posit a structuring

element to found his universal, since the unsymbolizable gap itself is incorporated into his

system.

The significance of all this to the Kantian thing-in-itself is that, traditionally, it is viewed

along the masculine lines, as a necessarily-excluded element serving to buttress the solid

rationality of the rest of his system. As Clayton Crockett explains in ―Postmodernism and the

Crisis of Belief: Neo-Realism vs. the Real,‖

Masculine logic works by positing an exception that paradoxically maintains the

limit. The Kantian Thing-in-itself is viewed as a mysterious, transcendent

substance that lies somewhere beyond the phenomena that appear to human

intuition and can be comprehended by human understanding. (Crockett 273)

The thing-in-itself as a philosophical fiction, on the other hand, approaches something quite

different. In this case, the thing-in-itself is no longer an objectively-existing ―something‖ outside

the confines of our subjective universe. On the contrary, the thing-in-itself is a symbol for

nothingness, but a symbol within our subjective universe and rational discourse nonetheless.

The negativity, in other words, exists on our side of the equation. It would be too simple

to differentiate Kant‘s ―transcendental object‖ from the noumenon by saying that the first

pertains to the subject while the second pertains to the object. They are both ideas, properly

speaking, and as such they both pertain to the understanding. In his Logic, G. W. F. Hegel

59

praises Kant for his description of the antinomies while criticizing his ultimate interpretation of

their import. As with imaginary numbers in the history of mathematics, Hegel describes how,

before Kant, the principles of metaphysical philosophy led to the belief that a subjective error

had been made whenever cognition led to contradiction. While Kant‘s antinomies helped to

dispel this principle, Hegel describes Kant‘s conclusion as, ―thought has a natural tendency to

issue in contradictions or antinomies, whenever it seeks to apprehend the infinite‖ (99). But

Hegel was not satisfied by the negative result that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, and instead

declared that the ―true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual thing

involves a coexistence of opposed elements‖ (100). Our thought (and not merely our thought‘s

flight towards objects) consists of opposed elements, positive and negative.

Although the das Ding of psychoanalytic theory was not strictly what Kant had in mind

with the thing-in-itself, Lacan‘s ―postmodern‖ integration of negativity within the psyche relies

heavily on its original postulation. For Kant, who sought to articulate the possibility of freedom

within the confines of rational discourse, the thing-in-itself served a valuable purpose without the

need for such retroactive legitimization. Nevertheless, the value of its reinterpretation for modern

philosophy is equally significant. As Žižek (who is heavily influenced by Hegel) explains, ―the

empty place in the structure is in itself correlative to the errant element lacking its place: they are

not two different entities, but the obverse and reverse of one and the same entity‖ (Absolute 27).

As he fully articulates in describing the parallax view, the gap separating the empty place in the

structure (not-all) from the errant element lacking its place (exception) is constitutive of reality

itself. A purely ―masculine‖ reading of the thing-in-itself, where the thing is a real entity existing

beyond our knowledge and experience, is therefore incomplete. But it is not ―false‖ on that

account.

60

Lacan, with a feminine reading of the thing-in-itself, brings the latter into the

understanding alongside the transcendental object. If the transcendental object represents the

subject‘s ability to signify an object in general, then the thing-in-itself represents the leftover

real, resisting signification. In his own terminology, Lacan exchanges the transcendental object

for the Master-Signifier, ―the signifier that signifies nothing precisely because it is the signifier

that stands in for the fact of signification in general‖ (Egginton 51). And instead of the thing-in-

itself, das Ding relates to the negativity formed by the act of signification, just as a vase creates

the empty space within it: ―The value of the substance filling that space, the value brought to it

by the space itself, is a value extracted from das Ding, from the nothingness produced by the act

of creation that is the signifier‘s first distinction‖ (52). By emphasizing the not-all nature of

thought itself, it becomes increasingly clear that any act of signification is going to be

―incomplete,‖ in the sense that something will always resist encapsulation. With this in mind,

philosophical fictions will be necessary for as long as our ontological systems remain confronted

by negativity. The more aware we are of this phenomenon, the more likely we can put

philosophical fictions to good use, without expending our energies on creating frictionless

systems for a Weltanschauung free of logical contradiction.

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