The Neo-Kantian philosopher Cassirer and the psychoanalyst Lacan are two key figures in the so-called medial turn in philosophy: the notion that any form of access to reality is mediated by symbols (images, words, signifiers). This explains why the theories of both philosophers merit a description in their own unique idioms, as well as having their respective basic tenets compared. It will be argued that, rather surprisingly, these tenets turn out be complementary - actually correcting each other â based on their shared notion of man as an animal symbolicum. Its fruitfulness will be substantiated for a limited number of topics within the humanities: perception, language, politics and ethics, and mental disorder, all to be considered from this perspective.
Antoine Mooij, Ph.D (1975), is Professor Emeritus of Law and Psychiatry, Utrecht University. He has published on Lacanian psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and hermeneutical psychiatry. Among his books are Intentionality, Desire, Responsibility. A Study in Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis and Law (Brill, 2010) and Psychiatry as a Human Science. Phenomenological, Hermeneutical and Lacanian Perspectives (Rodopi, 2012). ââââ
Introduction
â1 An Outline of the Human Condition
â1.1 Three Levels of the Human Condition: From Intentionality to Structure
â1.2 Three Types of Hermeneutics: From Signification to Signifier
â1.3 Three Levels of the Human Condition Revisited
â1.4 Application in Psychopathology
â1.5An Inquiry into Possibility: The Capacity to Symbolise
â2 Cassirer
â2.1 A Return to Kant
â2.2 Cassirerâs Ambition
â2.3 Cassirer and Heidegger
â2.4 The Mind and Critical Idealism
â2.5 The Concept of a Symbolic Form
â2.6 Myth and Religion, Language, Science
â2.7 Symbolisation: Three Sources and Three Modes
â2.8 A Symbolic Form in the Making?
â3 Lacan
â3.1 A Return to Freud
â3.2 The Autonomy of the Symbolic Order
â3.3 The Dialectics of Desire
â3.4 Differential Character of the Language Sign
â3.5 Symbolic Identification
â3.6 The Real: Three Domains, Three Forms
â3.7 The Later Lacan
â3.8 Joyce and Lacan
â3.9 Substance or Function
â3.10 Lacan and Cassirer Juxtaposed
â3.11 Lacan and Cassirer Put into a Mutual Relationship
â4 Variations on the Theme of Symbolisation
â4.1 The Human Condition and the Symbolic Function
â4.2 The Medial Turn and Its Philosophy
â4.3 Symbolisation in Perception
â4.4 Homo Symbolicus: An Evolutionary Perspective
â4.5 The Symbolic Order from A Normative Perspective: Politics, Law, Ethics
â4.6 Shades of Symbolisation: The Psychic Disorder
â4.7 One and the Same Theme?
Bibliography Annex: Diagram of the Symbolising Process Index of Names Index of Subjects
All interested in 20th century continental philosophy, in contemporary psychoanalysis and cultural theoryâ