Unpacking the central role of the unconscious in the relationship between mind and world

Over a series of careful readings and accessible discussions, prefaced by a foreword from Eric Santner, Dominik Finkelde analyzes the central role of the unconscious in the relationship between mind and world. Moving beyond Freud, Kant, and Hegel and toward the contemporary work of the Ljubljana School, he explores how humans relate to facts and the influence of the unconscious on questions regarding truth, perception, and meaning.

Aspects of recognition and unconscious processes of transference are at stake in these fundamental questions of perception and knowledge, though these have been widely ignored in epistemological and ontological debates in contemporary philosophy. Finkelde draws on both the continental and analytic traditions, ultimately building from the work of current-day interlocutors to interrogate questions concerning the influence of enigmatic signifiers, the role of sublime objects of ideology, the importance of fantasy cultivation and transgression, and the power of jouissance as an ontological factor.

DOMINIK FINKELDE is a professor of epistemology and contemporary philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy. His many books include Excessive Subjectivity: Kant, Hegel, Lacan, and the Foundation of Ethics.

Foreword, by Eric Santner

Prologue: Epistemology and Psychotheology

I. Introduction

II. In Conflict with the Negative

1- Trauma, Interpellation, and Enigmatic Signifiers

2- Freud and Kant: Illusions of the Mind and Illusions of Reason

3- Madness and the Loss of Language: Daniel P. Schreber and the Failure of Symbolic Investiture

4- Hegel: Negativity as a Structural Moment of the Concept

5- The Metaphysics of Contingency

III. The Human Being and the Symbolic Order

1- In the Mirror, the Image of my Enemy

2- Lacan’s Graph of Interpellation

3- Infinite Desire

IV. Ideology as Ontology

1- Sublime Objects

2- Fantasy Maintenance and Transgression

3- Longing for Leadership. The Time of Haste

4- Betrayal in Times of Overdetermination

V. Enjoyment as an Ontological Factor

1- Jouissance

2- In Violation of the Pleasure Principle

3- The Thing

List of Illustrations

Bibliography