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6 Antinomies of Schizophrenia Ifphilosophy now and then reminds us ofsuch schizophrenic behaviour, that not only speaks against philosophy, but a bit also for schizophrenia. -Andreas-Salome 1985, 41-42 When we think in abstractions there is a danger that we may neglect the relations of words to unconscious thing-presentations, and it must be confessed that the expression and content of our philosophizing then begins to acquire an unwelcome resemblance to the mode ofoperation of schizophrenics. -Freud SE XIV, 204 For Kant, the idea ofthe world as totality-and its dynamical corollary, the idea ofnature-are regulative concepts that guide reason in its empirical employment. Treated as if they were constitutive of actual objects, these concepts give rise to a series of metaphysical antinomies, whose solution Kant claims to have discovered. In a similar way, both the idea of the unconscious as totality (understood in terms of the category ofcommunity rather than substance) and the idea ofthe subject as its "dynamical" corollary are regulative concepts which guide metapsychology. Treated as iftheywere constitutive ofactual objects, they too would give rise to a series of antinomies. Each of the Kantian antinomies corresponds to a particular principle ofthe understanding. The overarching concept guiding reason in the antinomies is the category ofcausality. Each pair of antinomies reflects a particular moment of the judgment that the category ofcausality can be extended beyond the limits of possible experience. In chapter 4, I argued that Kant's principles of the understanding represent perverse schemata that map obsessional neurotic symptoms on to hysterical neurotic symptoms. Ifwe think ofthe schemata as structures of experience, they can be imagined to have a kind of stability that would correspond to the strength of the "sense of reality" posited by the obsessional ego (the "I think" of the understanding). Strictly speaking, 117 118 IMAGINING OTHERWISE this sense of reality is structured like a fantasy-a fact which does not entirely escape the Kantian subject of apperception, who "knows" that its version ofreality ultimately counts merely as appearance. The movement from the pleasure principle to the reality principle can be characterized, I have suggested, in terms of a shift from a hallucinatory free play of imagination to the subordination ofimagination to the understandingwith results whose stability can be more or less precarious. Freud calls attention to the provisional character of the work of understanding when he suggests that 'Thinking ... is essentially an experimental way of acting" (SE XII, 221). This provisional, experimental character of thought is obscured by the understanding's strong censorship of the imagination. Nonetheless, the sense of reality maintained by this censorship is fragile. On the one hand, the imagination threatens to overstep the bounds ofsense, violating the principles which limit thought to what counts as a possible object of experience. On the other hand, and in order to counter this tendency, the understanding threatens to extend its principles so as to eliminate the gap between reality and the "Real" which underlies reality. Either the imagination or the understanding can prompt reason to action here. Kant's apparent strategy is to play the two sides off each other via his critique of the antinomies of reason. Corresponding to the division of the principles of understanding, there are two sorts of antinomies-mathematical and dynamical. The former give rise to ideas which have no possible legitimate employment. Their objects, accordingly, are classified as mere hallucinations which bespeak a suspension of the reality principle. The dynamical antinomies give rise to ideas that have a possible legitimate employment-but only if the subject imagines a gap separating reality (phenomena) from the Real (noumena). Insofar as the subject takes itself to know the objects given in these latter ideas, it is, Kant suggests, delusional-again signaling a breakdown of the reality principle. However, such delusion, I will argue, arises not in the dynamical theses themselves but in their "regulative" reinvocation after Kant has critiqued the antinomies. The difference between mere illusion at the level of a thesis and full-blown delusion at the level of the "as if knowing" will be strictly maintained. Insofar as the ideas posited in the theses represent a violation ofthe reality principle, they can be expected to make conscious the repressed ideas upon which the principles of the understanding rest. Part of the aim of Kant's critique of the antinomies is to prevent the subject from succumbing to these hallucinations. However, the antitheses--especially of the third and fourth antinomies-represent an illegitimate strengthening ofthe censorship ofthe...

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