2. Second lecture: Modern takes and Evolutionary Disposition
In this lecture, I introduce a more postmodern approach to subjectivity and explain how Lacan and Žižek have addressed this concept. Much now depends on the worldview and strength of the students’ fundamental beliefs. Although I have, in many ways, a rather ambivalent attitude toward postmodern perspectives, I generally find common ground regarding the separation of the ego from the actual subject. The second half of the lecture focuses on evolutionary disposition, which is, in most cases, a rather divisive subject. As the Evolutionary Truth model essentially supports the idea of a shared unconscious and archetypes, I firmly align with the Jungian perspective while incorporating meme-related and additional social influences as contributing factors in the formation of subjectivity. The key is to spark a conversation, the depth of which depends on the students’ preparation and their prior reading.
Lacan’s Ego as an Object
When we leap from Kant to more modern psychoanalyses, we find principal confirmation for refuting our subjective social identity (“ego”) as the actual agent of our minds. Lacan developed this idea well, particularly in tracing true subjectivity. However, let us begin with a fact that seems quite obvious a posteriori: the moment we speak about our “ego” as the subject, we have already detached the subject’s status from it and reduced it to the position of the object.
That idea is one of the keys to understanding Lacan, Žižek, and more modern approaches to the unconscious in general, including, but not limited to, our receptiveness to the influence of social ideologies. Lacan states in his Seminar I that “ego is an imaginary function.”
Lacan articulates this principle as follows: “If the ego is an imaginary function, it is not to be confused with the subject. What do we call a subject? Quite precisely, what, in the development of objectivation, is outside of the object.” This means that our true subjectivity is always fundamentally out of reach of objectivation. It is not the subject we refer to when describing our “ego” and its identity (e.g., in self-development or social contexts), but rather the obscure “speaker” who verbalizes those statements.
When analyzing Lacan’s take on such subjectivity, we must consider the progress made by Freud and Jung (both of whom built significantly on Kant). At the beginning of the 20th century, language and its structure had a profound effect on ontological thought. Lacan frequently refers to linguistic structures in his work.
However, when it comes to locating the true subject, Lacan frames his approach similarly to Kant: “The point is not to know whether I speak of myself in a way that conforms to what I am, but rather to know whether, when I speak of myself, I am the same as the self of whom I speak.” Thus, regarding Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum, Lacan reaches a seemingly provocative yet logical conclusion: “I am thinking where I am not; therefore, I am where I am not thinking.” What he means is rather straightforward and aligns with our previous arguments: the thought of the “thinking subject” (“I am”) represents an object of thought, while the true (unconscious) subjectivity remains elsewhere.
What makes Lacan’s approach to true subjectivity fascinating is the fact that, although our primordial subjectivity is an unreachable “noumenon,” it should not be neglected. On the contrary, as we shall explore later, he sheds much light on the “speaking subject.” He states that it is “not expressed, except by deformation, Entstellung, distortion, or transportation.” We are unable to perceive our true subjectivity (due to its unconscious nature); all we can observe are the traces it leaves behind. Thus, Lacan valued “full speech insofar as it realizes the truth of the subject,” framing it against “empty speech.” Here, we find “symptoms” as the traces of our true subjectivity—much like physical symptoms of a health condition in medicine. Symptoms, while valuable, are never the disease itself; they merely point us toward the true subject.
The essence of the Lacanian subject is thoroughly explained from various angles (especially social ones) in Žižek’s writings. Žižek highlights the emergence of our true subjectivity as follows: “The subject of the signifier is a retroactive effect of the failure of its own representation; that is why the failure of representation is the only way to represent it adequately.” This underscores the importance of appreciating one’s symptoms: what seems out of place is, in fact, the core of subjectivity. In this sense, the subject is precisely the lack that remains when all self-constructed subjective representations are removed. Žižek puts it succinctly: “If we subtract all the richness of the different modes of subjectivation, ... what remains ... is the subject, the subject of the signifier.” Both Lacan’s and Žižek’s approaches to subjectivity will be explored in greater detail in later chapters.
In simplest terms, the Lacanian subject resides in our unconscious. Our “ego” is not the real subject but its object. We can explore true subjectivity only indirectly, by following its traces as symptoms (e.g., through distortions in our speech).
The Gravity of Our Primordial Disposition
Knowing that our true subjectivity influences our lives is one thing; realizing the gravity of that influence is something else entirely. Here, we approach a terrain concerning the formation of subjectivity that is primordial and extemporal, preceding one’s consciousness to such a degree that it may feel mystical. Be that as it may, the grounding question regarding the formation and possible evolution of our pure apperception over time is entirely practical and current (especially in the context of therapy). Namely: even if we accept that our true subjectivity, the agent of our thoughts, resides outside our constructed social ego, we need to determine whether it comes with inherent predispositions (such as propensities, abilities, and limitations like fears) or whether it acquires everything over a lifetime.
In the context of evolutionary truth, it must be posited that primordial subjectivity is, at least to some degree, the opposite of a “blank slate.” It is uncertain to what extent our primordial pure apperception has evolved throughout human history. However, the notion of total empiricism—that it “brings nothing” with itself, learning everything it uses to “cook” the thoughts that influence us during our lifetime—is ultimately indefensible (as this book will explain further). Nevertheless, let us briefly examine this idea.
The Latin term tabula rasa is attributed to John Locke, who famously stated: “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? ... To this I answer, in one word, From experience; in that all our knowledge is founded.” While it is true that knowledge can be gained and abilities enhanced through empirical learning, such claims become problematic if experience is considered the sole source. For example, Pavlov’s work on classical conditioning and Panksepp’s studies demonstrated that fear is not “simply learned anticipation of harmful events” but rather a “genetically ingrained function of the nervous system.” Thus, we cannot claim a scientific consensus supporting the “blank slate” theory. Indeed, as Steven Pinker notes, the approach is increasingly applied in social sciences and humanities, resulting in “a long and growing list of concepts that would seem natural to the human way of thinking (emotions, kinship, the sexes, illness, nature, the world) now being said to have been ‘invented’ or ‘socially constructed.’”
Let us not go further down this rabbit hole here. Instead, let us return to Kant’s perspective on the inherent disposition of our subjectivity. According to Kant, we develop a propensity as a predisposition of our character. He states: “When I speak of one or another disposition as ‘inborn’ and ‘natural,’ I don’t mean that it hasn’t been acquired by the man whose constitution it is, or that he didn’t create it; all I mean is that this didn’t happen over time—that he has always been good or bad from his youth onwards.”
Here, Kant acknowledges the power of our primordial subjectivity in determining the basic nature of our character before any opportunity for conscious interference. We develop preferences for certain maxims over others unconsciously and trans-temporally (outside of time). As Kant explains, this basis of our character “precedes every action that is apparent to the senses.”
Schelling combined a similar approach with mysticism and Boehme’s theogony when he stated that Judas acted as he did, betraying Christ “not under compulsion but willingly and with complete freedom.” Schelling added: “It is exactly the same with a good individual; namely, he is not good arbitrarily or by accident, and yet is so little compelled that, rather, no compulsion, not even the gates of hell themselves, would be capable of overpowering his basic disposition. This sort of free act, which becomes necessary, admittedly cannot appear in consciousness to the degree the latter is merely self-awareness and only ideal, since it precedes consciousness.”
In simplest terms, Kant (and Schelling) opposed Locke’s notion of the tabula rasa. Instead, they posited that our basic character has a predisposition toward being good or bad.
