대상, 주체, 그리고 심미적인 것: 칸트와 라깡의 미학

Object, Subject, and the Aesthetic: Kant and Lacan

&nbsp;&nbsp;Since his radical critique of traditional aesthetic theories, Kant has been at the center of aesthetical discourse. Lacan&quot;s aesthetic idea also draws many interests but has not been examined very well except the theory of the object a. It will provide a new insight for aesthetic discourse to analyse and compare Kantian and Lacanian aesthics and to find the fundamental similarity between them.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;For Kant, the judgment of an object as beautiful or sublime is a reflective judgment in which universal concept is lacking and is to be constituted or remain as absence. We feel that an object is beautiful when the judgment of the representation of the object is determined not by empirical material sensation of the object or the concepts of the understanding but by our subjective feeling of the free play of the representative powers in a given representation with reference to a cognition in general. Judgment of the beautiful is disinterested, purposeless but still purposive, free, subjectively universal to all the subject.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;According to Lacan, the subject beams her/his beauty when s/he gets close to or encounters her/his Thing, which is separated from signifiers and is unrepresentable, unconceptual, unphenomenal, singular/subjective, and universal. We feel beautiful, when encountering the object a, which is circulated by drive, which is unrepresentable, disinterested to concepts or purpose, unphenomenal, subjective, and universal to all subjects. When drive turns around an object, it is given surplus value and becomes the "object more than object itself," that is, the object a. A representative object a is the gaze, which is radically different from the representable sight of the eye but is a pure trace of the drive. The gaze is unrepresentable, unconceptual, subjective, and universal to all subjects.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;For both Kant and Lacan, the aesthetical is disinterested, unconceptual, purposelessly purposive, free, subjective, and universal.