Abstract

In any account of how things really are, subjectivity can be both a for- mal and a distorting factor for Hegel and Lacan’s adaptation of Hegelian dialectics. Lacan speaks of a pre-theoretical experience of being in the world where human beings are literally called by reality to be social agents and fill in gaps of this reality at the same time with their fantasies. As such, fantasies play an epistemic role, neglected often in both epistemological and ontological debates. But since the status of reality, with or without fantasies, is never all and complete, antagonisms within reality cannot be contained. Ontology, as our inquiry into ‘what there is,’ affects ‘what there is’ in that subjectivity, troubled by antagonism, always goes beyond established forms of facts, theoretically, practically and phantasmagorically. Finkelde argues, especially with reference to Kant and Hegel, that subjectivity, with its imaginary intertwinement of what Lacan calls the symbolic order, is a feature of reality (as virtuality) and not just a hallmark of the conscious mind.