The Big Other as the Expressive Autonomy of Normative Statuses-Jacan 2013

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©Lacques Jacan 2013

Reflections on Reality

The Big Other as the Expressive Autonomy of Normative Statuses

Lacques Jacan

July 2013

“In dealing with the big Other, it is crucial to be attentive to the interplay between the anonymous field and the subject impersonating it ”.

— Žižek, Slavoj. (2012).

The Žižeko-Lacanian notion of the Big Other has often been invoked as a kind of reproach to all normative statuses, whether they express an autonomous convention or a

contingent individual case of difference from the norm (Žižek 2012, p. 76; Žižek 2001,

p. 531; Žižek 2000, p. 762). Accordingly, it has been suggested that the mere repetition of assertive gestures can approximate efficacy by making a particular, unforeseen, and

ontologically ungrounded interpretation stick (Žižek 2012, p. 3703). In the course of this

essay, I will offer a reading of individual intentionality and social normative statuses, andthe participatory horizon these two interfaces share. This discussion will open out apragmatic trajectory through which the notion of the Big Other as a referent of projecteddesires can be rejected, without remainder, in exchange for the reciprocal recognition of normative statuses as supervenient to individual autonomy. The benefit of this

1 “…the space of implicit meanings, surmises, etc., which can no longer be controlled” ( Žižek 2001, p.53).

2

“[D]oes not Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit tell us again and again the same story of the repeatedfailure of the subject's endeavour to realize his project in social substance, to impose his vision on thesocial universe - the story of how the 'big Other', the social substance, again and again thwarts his projectand turns it upside-down?” (Žižek 2000, p. 76). The answer to this rhetorical question is, of course, no.

The Hegelian story doesn’t fail to mention that autonomy for the individual is precisely the product of theBig Other’s mediation of arbitrary individual desires (Hegel 2010, § 92), and this in turn legitimates folk,or individualistic, conceptions of what counts and what does not count as adherence to the symboliccommitments of discursive practice (Brandom 1994, 2007, 2008; Malle & Nelson 2003).

3 “The subject’s desire is here the transcendental void, and the object is a contingent ontic filler of this void. For the drive, in contrast, the objet a is not only the metonymy of lack, but a kind of transcendentalstain, irreducible and irreplaceable in its very contingent singularity, not just a contingent ontic filler of a

lack. While the drive involves getting stuck on a contingent stain‐

object, dialectical negativity involves aconstant process of “un‐sticking ” from all particular content: jouissance ‘leans on’ something, hanging onto its particularity — and this is what is missing in Hegel, but operative in Freud”. ( Žižek 2012, p. 370).



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radicalisation are the re-opening of a space where thought continues to be a relevant modeof opposition to regressive, oppressive, and decadent normative statuses in dialogue withan autotelic, and global normative field.

While it is possible to use fictions as analogies for concrete situations, thecomprehensive semantic commitments of such fictions, treated de dicto, depend on theagent’s awareness of their fictionality. In this case they become realities endowed withnormative commitments in their position as analogical referents of a concrete situation.Treated de re the fictionality of these stimuli remains inferentially non-decomposablebecause these ‘fictions’ do not sufficiently distinguish themselves from the ‘concretesituations’ to which they must stand in relations of material incompatibility, andinferential consequence for the inquirer. In order to comprehend the ontological referentsof such disparate fictions one must first necessarily acquaint oneself with the horizon

where inferential states necessitating other states, and making others impossible, allow arobust explication of synthetic apperceptive judgement and its conceptual commitments.While a fiction analogous to a particular concrete world may be interpreted to uphold thestrings of hypotheses that belong to it, other disparate and logically disjunctive individual

universes in some “crazy pluralistic ontology” (Žižek 2012, p. 38) cannot be invoked asthe necessary and sufficient criteria for normative judgement of such individual sets of commitments assumed to be implicit in the vocabulary of the fiction in question 4. “The

whole interpretive problem arises when this result is read as merely negative: such a readinggenerates the need to fill the gap, to propose a new positive theory — which is what the

late Plato then attempts to do, passing from one supplement to another, from chora inTimaeus to … But what if such a reading is conditioned by a kind of perspectival illusion,involving a failure to see how the result is not merely negative, but is in itself alreadypositive, already what we were looking for? To see this, one has only to effect a parallax

shift and grasp the problem as (containing) its own solution” (Žižek 2012, p. 42). For,when we talk of fictionality we have already invoked the normative commitments implicitin the coherence of the referent ‘fiction’, and how it may be distinguished from concrete

world situations by inferential explication of its relations of material incompatibility and

consequence for the interlocutor’s life world. There is no Big Other out there who allowsthe agent to prejudge these disparate ‘fictions’ from within his inferential relations of

consequence, and material incompatibility according to a normative reality that furnishesthese judgements without appeal to a merely phenomenal ‘self ’. The normative is equalparts social and personal, autonomous and supervenient to personal autonomy for thesimple reason that it is not subject to the arbitrary trends of judicature, academic andphilosophical schools while continuing to remain the express referent of discourses that

4 The view that all crazy and contradictory positions entailed by different readings of a concrete situation

hold equally strongly on the agent is unsupportable, and in this respect I must differ most vehemently with my interlocutor Slavoj Žižek. See Žižek, Slavoj. (2012). Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism . London, UK: Verso. Print. p. 40 onwards.



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demand normative recognition (Malle & Nelson 2003). The social dimension of thenormative is complemented, and curtailed, on the individual level of rational integrationby communal practices of reciprocal recognition and rational doxastic updating of thenormative statuses corresponding to the force of the better reason in currency among the

individual discursive expressions articulated under the vocabulary wherein the conceptfinds occasion (Ibid., p. 17; Brandom AI & P, 2007).

Though the Big Other does not exist (Žižek 2012, p. 42) for agents that invokesituations non-decomposable to propositional contents, agential will invokes its ownsuggestive ineptness for explication as the One motivating principle corresponding to hisintentions, and desires as an agent who subscribes to the existential statuses of hisinferential nexus. The absence of the Big Other necessitates that the agent takeresponsibility for his own commitments to the objects of his discourse. Thus, the agent

stands in place of the Big Other when he invokes “…[t]he autonomously acting will, inthe ends which” the agent “pursues in relation to the existence [Dasein ]” he “has before

it, has an idea [Vorstellung ] of the circumstances which” his “existence involves. But since,on account of this presupposition, the” agent “is finite, the objective phenomenon[ gegenständliche Erscheinung ] is contingent for” him, “and may contain something otherthan what was present in” his “idea [Vorstellung] of it. It is, however, the right of the” agent “to recognize as” his “action, and to accept responsibility for, only those aspects of”

his “deeds which” he “knew to be presupposed within” his “end, and which were present

in” his “purpose” (Hegel 2011, § 117). Thus, it is quite poss ible to conceive the

impossible; only, this in a way that is impossible to explicate, and impossible to execute,and therefore properly futile, and non-committal for the agent articulating its particularcommitments according to normatively determined criteria of synthetic judgement.Ultimately, because we cannot “…posit a realm of ideas actually exterior to Cosmos…”

limiting “ourselves to the One-All of the eternally changing reality…” that “reveals itself

to be nothing at all” (Žižek 2012, p. 45) we are compelled to examine all that it is notsuffered to be by the consensus of all discursive communities involved in the process of giving and asking for reasons, and accepting the semantic externality of normative criteria

of sufficient and necessary conditions (Brandom HRR 2007; Brandom 1994, p. 18- 46).More specifically, the specific judicial apparatus of the discursive community, its regimensand modalities of doxastic update, in conjunction with the state of normative discourse,and its continual expression as appeals to normative judgement in individual participationin discourse are actually the reciprocally recognised inventory, or the autotelic summa of semantic conventionalism.

The constitutive elements of reason and self-conscious determination of reason,through a wilful negation of the free scope available for mediation among fictional and

real worlds, are the stuff of asking and giving reasons for beliefs and dispositions in a



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discursive community (Brandom 20085; Hegel 2010, § 216). So, even though theindividual agent may chose at variance with good reason an absurd vellity not of this worldas the real state of affairs this action only impairs his worthiness for judgement, and notthe criterions which make this possible within the discursive community to which the

agent belongs. Thus, at the level of individual intention, an agent may intend consequencesthat are not explicit in the terms of the stated intention, e.g. a prisoner planning an escapemay not have intended to kill a guard, but he may have had to anyway (Moore 2010, p.451)6. Is it not the case that the premeditated nature of some actions described as criminalobliges the perpetrator to adequately respond to the commitments entailed in theinferential consequences and material incompatibility of his actions in relation to thedeterminate normative criteria of judgement (Ibid.)? The notion of mens rea , or theideational component of a criminal action are what allow the criminal to see his actionsas deviations from the normative commitments of legal statutes, and allow the latter toaccess his performance as illegal and meriting punishment (Moore 2010; Malle & Nelson2003). This way of looking at the atomised constructivism of normative statuses asattitude-dependent allows one to appreciate the gestalt of the autonomous individual whois intelligible, responsive and committed to the responsibility of making himself intelligible, responsive and obedient to its determinations. “The attitude-dependence of normative force… is intelligible only in a context in which the boundaries of thecontent — what I acknowledge as constraining me and by that acknowledgment make intoa normative constraint on me in the sense of opening myself up to normative assessments

according to it — are not in the same way attitude-dependent” (Ibid., p. 15).It goes without saying that the sole purpose of any contemplative activity is to

explicate the practical business of how one may understand that one knows somethingsuch that it can be explained in terms of a more primitive, or generic, explanatoryvocabulary. It is hoped by such analysis to explicate the core commitments of a positionand thereby expedite action in accordance with individual, and public, reason. The notionof intentionality carries with it the commitment to be able to explicate what relations of inferential consequence, and material incompatibility obtain from an action that is to be

called intentional; it is a negotiation between personal discursive attitudes and normativevocabularies that circumscribe such discursive artefacts. A pragmatic approach to asubstantive concept of intentionality must entail an account of what may be adduced tothe formal commitments of a judgement that is intentional if it is to hold against

5 “… [ T]he process that synthesizes an apperceiving normative subject, one who can commit himself injudgment and action, become responsible cognitively and practically, is a social process of reciprocalrecognition that at the same time synthesizes a normative recognitive community of those recognized by and who recognize that normative subject: a community bound together by reciprocal relations of authority over and responsibility to each other” (Brandom 2008, p. 22).

6 Moore, Michael, S. (2010). “§ 11 Intentions and Mens Rea ”. Placing Blame: A Theory of Criminal Law . New York, USA: Oxford University Press. Print. PP. 447- 477.



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normative discursive elements that are irreducible to representative, or descriptive practice(Brandom 2008, p. 6; Brandom 1994, p. 46). Such an account can perhaps best be elicitedby interrogating the counterfactual robustness of inference ranges that coincide with thediscursive range of said intentional action. Since the very action of positing intentional

character to an expression assumes force there must be in principle a final order of appealto the validity of expressions of inferential and material incompatibility and consequenceentailed by a position (Brandom HRR 2007). Then, autonomy for the individual consistsin claiming the normative postulates about inferential and material incompatibility andconsequence of a position are valid without appeal to personal intentional vocabulary. Asa corollary, we can say, the autonomy of the idea from individual caprices is enshrined inthe non-inferential practices which preceded discursive expression and the institution of normative postulates. Since, to know empirical facts implies an understanding of whatconstitutes necessary, and sufficient conditions at least in some cases, with varying degreesof success, it is also already to know what ought to be done in such cases, even if in asimilarly vague and fallible way (Ibid., p. 5). Then, it follows that the irreduciblecomponents of discursive praxis are already part of the normative vocabulary which makesintentional expression of commitments possible as an empirical matter of determination,and they contain attitudinal ranges that have found expression in norms derived from thepractical experience of discursive subjects.

Conclusion

Looking at normative statuses and intentional autonomy of subjects as constitutiveof the realm of discursive praxis as such we can explain the emergence of the symbolicorder entire from non-discursive, and non-inferential practices. Indeed, the initiation of symbolic exchange presupposes the intelligibility of the concept not yet present in theefficient and practical dimension of symbolic interaction. Thus, the Big Other cannot besaid to be inexistent; for it is precisely this inexistence that is its proper determination asthe indeterminate grounds for an autonomous process of normative expression mediatedby individual appeals to the force of reasons given and received among discursivecommunities. Just as the very absence of laws impresses the need for laws on rational

discursive beings, the Big Other simulates its sufficient but contingent relations of inferential consequence and material incompatibility to the subject’s discourse in relationto an autonomous field of normative criteria for judgement. The Big Other, inasmuch, asits minimal/liminal function is to illuminate and authorise the expressive contentfulness

of inward states belonging to individual apperceptions (Žižek 2012, p. 747), participates

7 “ The big Other is a virtual order which exists only through subjects “believing” in it; if, however, asubject were to suspend its belief in the big Other, the subject itself, its “reality,” would disappear. The paradox is that symbolic fiction is constitutive of reality: if we take away the fiction, we lose reality itself.

This loop is what Hegel called “positing the presuppositions.” This big Other should not be reduced toan anonymous symbolic field — there are many interesting cases where an individual stands for the big

Other. One should think not primarily of leader‐figures who directly embody their communities (king,



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in the elements of discursive practice that are non-decomposable to intelligible postulatesof a more generic kind. Thus, the locus of the Big Other is circumscribed not to thediscursive commitments of a particular position endorsed by one individual, or a wholeregime, but to the non-discursive elements that are implicated in the pragmatic affair of

the sociology of discourse. Such a view of the Big Other is highly original, and does awaywith the perverse injunction to disregard all normative statuses as pathic projections, whileopening a way into the symbolic register of the normative by leveraging the coevalautonomous expression of individual intentionality, and normative pragmaticconventionalism, as moments of the same dialectical progression.

president, master), but rather of the more mysterious protectors of appearances — such as otherwisecorrupted parents who desperately try to keep their child ignorant of their depraved lives, or, if it is aleader, then one for whom Potemkin villages are built.18” (Žižek 2012, p. 72).



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Works Cited

Brandom, Robert. (1994). Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, & Discursive Commitment . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Print.

Brandom, Robert. (2007). History, Reason, and Reality . Accessed on July 7, 2013.Retrieved from < www.youtube .com/watch?v=83UAq2JUFNc >. Web.

Brandom, Robert. (2007). AI and Pragmatism . Retrieved from Accessed on July 7, 2013.< www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd2L_rvG7t8 >. Web.

Brandom, Robert. (2008). Animating Ideas of Idealism: A Semantic Sonata in Kant and Hegel, Lecture 2 Autonomy, Community, and Freedom . Pittsburgh University Website.Accessed July 7, 2013. Retrieved from < www.Pitt.edu/~brandom /... /AII2%20%20NSC%20Handout%20d.doc >. Web.

Hegel, George, Friedrich, W. Wood, Allan, W. Ed. Nisbet, H., B. Trans. (2010).Elements of the Philosophy of Right . New York, USA: Oxford University Press. Print.

Malle, Bertram, F. & Nelson, Sarah, E. (2003). “ Judging Mens Rea : The Tension betweenFolk Concepts and Legal Concepts of Intentionality”. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 21 : 563 – 580. Print.

Moore, Michael, S. (2010). Placing Blame: A Theory of Criminal Law . New York, USA:Oxford University Press. Print.

Žižek, Slavoj. (2000). The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology .New York, NY: Verso. Print.

Žižek, Slavoj. (2001). On Belief . New York, NY: Verso. Print.

Žižek, Slavoj. (2012). Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism . London, UK: Verso. Print.

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