International Colloquium
30 Oct - 1 Nov 2009
Institute of Romance Studies at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany

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Charles Snyder (New School for Social Research, New York, USA)
Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Metaphysics

This paper situates a conception of the imagination based on Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic notion of primary identification (Einfühlung) squarely within the abyss of metaphysics left open and abandoned by Kant’s “analytic” of subjectivity. This paper is an English translation of an article published in Kristeva’s journal L’Infini (Automne 2008) entitled«Psychanalyse et le problème de la métaphysique: Kristeva, l’identification primaire.»  The preferred language of the presentation is English.
The limits of Kant’s propaedeutic criticism of human pure reason and the novelty of his conception of finite knowledge become perspicuous where the “root” of our two or three stems of knowledge, depending on which edition of the deduction you like, is not made manifest, but is left remaining “unknown.”  To leave the “root” unexamined is to leave suspended in a psychic space of narcissistic emptiness crucial Kantian distinctions that depend on the character of this “root”. Without an uncovering of the “root”, Kant’s transcendental “analytic” remains incomplete and insufficient.  At stake then is a hitherto “unknown” concept of transcendence. In this sense, Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s Critique is also insufficient.