Slavoj Zizek is amongst the public intellectuals whose works have had a profound impact on his field. Besides being a philosopher, the Sloven was both a cultural theorist and a philosopher. Zizek's works touched on such themes as politics, popular culture, and psychoanalysis. Some of his earliest influences include Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Jacques Lacan. The latter is credited with developing the psychoanalytic theory, which played a key role in the development of Zizek's ideas ( Yibing, 2004 ). One of Zizek's most important philosophical outputs was his take on the sublime in The Sublime Object of Ideology . The other notable philosopher who delved into the idea of the sublime is Immanuel Kant in Critique of Judgement . This paper is aimed at exploring the link between the two philosophers' ideas. While Zizek's idea of the sublime connects ideology to the political landscape, Kant argues that the sublime is not an attribute of nature, but rather of the mind.
Background
Ideology and the Political Landscape
The use of the term 'ideology' was central to Zizek's works. Traditionally, ideologies were conceptualized as discourses that are used in promoting false consciousness in subjects regarding the political regimes that they lived in. Since subjects believed these ideas to be true, they were deemed useful in reproducing the existing status quo ( Ziek, 1989 ). This narrative posited that to critique ideology, one had to discover the truths that these ideologies concealed from the subjects' knowledge. Proponents of this theory had misgivings that subjects would become aware of their current regimes' political misgivings. This would enable the subjects or move them to better these regimes. These earlier notions of ideology had been advanced by Karl Marx.
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According to Zizek, the Marxian perspective of ideology had theoretical shortcomings from several fronts ( Ziek, 1989 ). Firstly, criticizing a discourse as ideological implied gaining access to some 'truth' about the political things that the ideologies, though considered false, are likely to conceal. However, there have been disputes in the humanities about the possibility of having such a theoretically accessible truth. Secondly, this notion of ideology is viewed to be irrelevant when used in describing contemporary socio-political life. This may be due to the increased importance of what is termed media-steered subsystems and the widespread cynicism associated with today's subjects towards political authorities. Ultimately, for ideologies to bear any political importance, critics have to comment while subjects need to have some level of faith in politicians, ideals, and public institution. Today's libera-cosmopolitan subjects are deemed to be lacking in these.
Zizek was in agreement with critics in regard to this model of ideology that he deemed 'false consciousness.' Nevertheless, the philosopher was of the idea that times had changed since people were no longer living in a post-ideological world. As a result, Zizek reckoned that a different notion of ideology was needed in understanding present-day politics ( Ziek, 1989 ). He subsequently argued that the current day's widespread consensus that the world is more post-colonial strengthened what he termed as 'archideological fantasy.' Accordingly, for the term 'ideology' to mean anything at all, ideological positions should always be conceptualized as what individuals ascribe to others.
To ensure that subjects believe in a given ideology, it is crucial that the ideology is presented to them and subsequently accepted as being non-ideological. In advancing this narrative, Zizek was alert to the realist insight that declaring some contestable matters as being above any political contestation is a very effective political gesture. Further, Zizek argues that proponents of ideologies often present them as discourses about things that are too sacred to be profane in politics. It is due to this reason that in The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek claims that ideology today cannot be decoupled from the political landscape (Ziek, 1989). As a result, ideology is often dismissed in accepted theoretical and political opinion.
T he Idea of Ideological Disidentification
Zizek contradicted Marx in his description of ideology today. The former contends that at the center of ideology today is the fact that subjects know that which they are doing (Ziek, 1989). The cynicism associated with this narrative by proponents of the classical Marxist perspective, according to Zizek, is indicative of the deeper efficacy of the political ideology. Often, ideologies as political discourses are seen as existing to help obtain the voluntary consent of individuals about political arrangements or policies that are deemed contestable. In contrast, Zizek reckons that subjects are only likely to voluntarily accept to follow an arrangement or policy if they reckon that by doing so, they will be communicating their free subjectivity.
Zizek drew substantially from Jacques Lacan. Thus, informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, Zizek argued that it is erroneous for one to think that for a given political position to win the support of the people, it also has to brainwash them. Instead, the philosopher argued that for a political ideology to succeed, it has to ensure that subjects have and value a sensible distance towards its explicit prescriptions and ideals. He calls this ideological disidentification ( Ziek, 1989 ). Zizek then argues that the subjects' attitude towards authority as revealed by ideological cynicism today is akin to an obsessed individual's attitude towards obsession. This argument is supportive of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory.
As articulated in The Sublime Object of Ideology, according to Zizek, ideologies are aimed at identifying individuals with various rallying or important political terms. Drawing from Lacan's structuralism, Zizek reckons that the most crucial words in a political doctrine are the words that do not necessarily refer to any distinct and clear demonstratable object or concept ( Ziek, 1989 ). Zizek's conceptualization of political belief was also informed by Lacan's take on transference in psychoanalysis. The belief in psychoanalysis is that the analyst knows the meaning of an individual's symptoms ( Yibing, 2004) . While this belief is false at the beginning of an analytic process, the work of conducting the analysis can only proceed when this belief about the analyst is held. It is also the only way that the transferential belief can prevail.
The strange dialectical or intersubjective logic of belief in the clinical psychoanalysis, according to Zizek, is also what characterizes the political beliefs of people. In particular, the philosopher argues that belief should be conceptualized as belief via 'the other' ( Ziek, 1989 ). If the subjects are unaware of the precise meaning of the signifiers with which they can identify politically, it is often due to the fact that their political belief has been mediated by their identifications with others. While the subjects may not know what they are doing, they are able to maintain their deepest levels of belief via the belief that there are others who know nevertheless.
Jouissance as a Political Factor
An emphasis is often placed on what is termed as ideology's materiality,' its embodiment in institutions as well as in everyday lives and practices of people. Zizek's idea on this is that all the world's ideas are not likely to have a lasting political effect. This can only be reversed if such ideas are used in informing the subjects and institutions in their day-to-day lives (Ziek, 1989). Based on his sentiments in The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek can be seen as a constant critic of the significance of knowledge during the establishment of political consensus and the significance of the 'inwardness' in politics.
Zizek asserts that traditional political philosophy had given little emphasis on the cultural practices of communities. He termed this issue inherent transgression (Ziek, 1989). This entails the practices approved by a particular culture allowing subjects to experience what is prohibited or exceptional in their day-to-day lives as enlightened political subjects. These experiences entail what Zizek referred to as jouissance, a technical term for enjoyment that he obtained from Lacanian psychoanalysis. The philosopher contends that subjects' experiences of the practices and events are often as close as they can get to know the deeper truth that the master signifiers of their regime suggest for them. This is particularly the case when the subjects' political culture organizes its relations to jouissance. Zizek further asserts that it is such seemingly culturally and non-political specific practices that essentially single out a community from its enemies and other people.
Zizek's and Kant's Idea of the Sublime: Differences, Similarities, and Convergence
In The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek closely follows the idea advanced by Lacanian psychoanalysis. In the book, Zizek critiques the view that one can escape ideology, meaning that he or she can gain satisfaction or make particular choices independent or outside of ideology (Speck, 1998; Choi, 2012; Rudd, 2012). Specifically, the philosopher rejects the idea of a substantial individual subject. For Zizek, the subjects' transformations in politics and psychoanalysis can be conceptualized as the refusal to accept political and psychic realities that are often taken for granted. Thus, according to Zizek, a subject can be conceptualized as a void, emptiness of being, or a negative.
Zizek contends the subject's transformation in politics and in psychoanalysis constitutes a creative refusal to accept political and psychic realities that have been taken for granted. The subject's transformation in politics occurs when an individual's self-understanding is altered by fundamental political change (Choi, 2012; Rudd, 2012). The refusals are often catalyzed in a decision that is not only radical but not fully conscious. Lacan argues that this act is likely to disturb the unconsciously accepted norms and assumptions of day-to-day life (Evans, 2006).
Building upon such ideas as jouissance as a political factor and ideological disidentification, the main point in Zizek's political philosophy is that for regimes to inspire a sense of collective identity, their governing ideologies have to give subjects an apprehension of how their regime associates with what supplements, challenges, or exceeds its identity (Ziek, 1989). It is due to this reason that Zizek had a profound theoretical interest in Kant's analytic of the sublime as articulated in The Critique of Judgement.
According to Zizek, Kant's analytic of the sublime singles out two crucial moments to its experience. In the first, the force or size of an object impresses upon the subject the limits of its perceptual abilities. In the second, a representation occurs where it is least expected. The representation resignifies that the perceptual failure of the subject is an indirect testimony about the inadequate nature of human perception. This narrative is supportive of what Kant refers to as Ideas of Reason (Kant, 1931).
Zizek reckons that the success of political ideologies is dependent on sublime objects. These sublime objects, according to political subjects, are the meanings of the central words of their regimes' ideologies. Zizek reckons that once a subject believes in a particular political ideology, it does not necessarily mean that they are aware of the 'truth' about the objects which the ideology's key term name (Ziek, 1989). Zizek also draws a parallel with Kant on the idea of the sublime. The failure of a subject to apprehend the sublime object, according to Kant, can be resignified as an indirect testimony to the presence of a faculty within herself that is entirely supersensible. On the other hand, Zizek reckons that the subjects' inability to explain the nature of their political beliefs does not necessarily indicate the presence of abnormality or disloyalty.
Political ideologies, according to Zizek, are aimed at elevating their specific political perspectives to the point where they can own, strengthen, or represent such a political whole as a nation. To achieve this political aspect, Zizek reckons that each group has to succeed in its efforts to identify its worldview with the extra-political and sublime objects that are accepted within the particular culture as giving body to the whole (Ziek, 1989). Likewise, each group has to replace the sublime objects of previous ideologies with new objects.
Zizek was convinced that for a political regime to sustain the political consensus that it is dependent on, its core ideology has to give subjects a sense of freedom or individual distance in the context of its explicit prescriptions (Ziek, 1989; Choi, 2012). Secondly, the regime has to be grounded in some sublime or larger truth. Thus, Zizek's political philosophy also identifies several interconnected instances of these dialectical ideas. These include his concept of ideological disidentification; his argument that ideologies ought to accommodate the subject's experiences of jouissance; and his idea of sublime or exceptional objects of ideology.
The key idea in Zizek's political philosophy is in agreement with what the philosopher terms as ideological fantasy. Ideological fantasy refers to Zizek's conceptualization of the deepest framework of belief (Choi, 2012). This framework is responsible for structuring how the political community and/or political subjects accept whatever exceed their boundaries and norms. The idea of ideological fantasy can also be conceptualized as a political adaptation of a notion whose genesis is Lacanian psychoanalysis (Evans, 2006). This idea was obtained from Lacan's structuralist re-reading of the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious fantasy according to Freud. Both Zizek and Lacan are in agreement that the civilization of subjects calls for their initial sacrifice of jouissance ( Sharpe, 2016) . This sacrifice is approved in the form of socio-political law. Therefore, to the extent of their civilization, subjects are distanced from their desire's primal object. Rather, social law forces them to pursue the lost special thing that Zizek refers to as 'objet petit a.'
According to Lacan, the fundamental fantasies of subjects can be conceptualized as unconscious structures that help them in accepting the traumatic loss that is evident in the initial sacrifice. The subjects create a narrative concerning the lost subject and the events surrounding its loss. Specifically, a subject's fundamental fantasy resignifies jouissance's founding repression by law ( Ziek, 1989). Lacan reckons that this phenomenon is important for an individual to become a speaking subject. For Zizek, what for the subject is a constitutive event in the fantasy can be re-narrated as some exceptional individual's historical action.
Zizek, in the context of ideological fantasy, embraces the psychoanalytic framework and subsequently applies it in understanding political groups' constitution. Political theory in this regard is concerned with the laws of a particular regime. These laws, according to Zizek, are double or split in kind. The philosopher argues that each regime features a body of written laws that are more or less explicit (Choi, 2012; Rudd, 2012; Sharpe, 2016). These laws require subjects to forego jouissance so as to achieve a greater good and in accordance with the regime's proscriptions.
Zizek also reckons that the explicit laws of a regime have to conceal and harbor a darker underbelly for it to be effective. This underside may comprise a set of unspoken rules which, apart from repressing jouissance also implicate subjects as being guilty of enjoying the repression ( Ziek, 1989) . Accordingly, the philosopher likens this phenomenon to what Kant terms 'pleasure-in-pain' in his idea of the sublime. Zizek also agrees with Lacan that at the core of the law's darker underbelly lays a constant call to subjects to jouis. The subjects can achieve this by pursuing their socio-political community's inherent transgressions.
There is a direct intersection between Zizek's idea of a split in the law with his idea of ideological disidentification. Political subjects undoubtedly maintain a responsive sense of freedom from their culture's explicit norms. However, Zizek argues that this disidentification is anchored on their unresponsive attachment to the law as superego ( Rudd, 2012) . Subsequently, this acts as an agency of enjoyment. Guilt, according to Zizek, refers to the way in which subjects enjoy their subjection to laws. This guilt is crucial in understanding the political commitment of subjects. Thus, the philosopher argues that individuals are only likely to turn around if the law hails them in the context that they are also subjects of the unconscious belief that others have access to the jouissance that they have duly lost as subjects of the law. The lost jouissance can only be reattained through the subjects' political allegiance. This belief can be conceptualized as the political economy of jouissance. The fundamental fantasies that underly the worldview of political regimes subsequently structure this belief in subjects.
Zizek contends that a difference exists between premodern and modern political regimes. The two, he argues, are founded on profoundly different approaches of organizing the relationship of their subjects to jouissance and law. For instance, the philosopher reckons that in the premodern ideological and authoritarian regimes, the will and word of the master or King were sovereign ( Ziek, 1989). In this regard, the King's word or will acted as a source of political authority, and no questions were asked. The King's subjects are thus expected to be aware of the decrees of the sovereign as well as the law. In this context, while fantasy and jouissance are considered political factors, the particular regimes' quasi-transgressive practices are exceptional to the political arena.
In agreement with Marx, Zizek supports the notion that modern political regimes often yield power that is more far-reaching and less visible compared to that of the previous regimes. For Zizek, both totalitarian and liberal capitalist modern regimes are not predominantly anchored on the Lacanian discourse (Ziek, 1989). He thus maintains that the inherent discontents of the modern political world are neither archaic remnants of, or objections to the traditional authoritarian structures. Rather, they ought to be conceptualized as the pathological impacts of novel forms of social organization. The philosopher reckons that knowledge acts as the defining characteristic of modern political regimes. This enlightenment was representative of the unprecedented political venture whose aim was to replace belief in authority as the foundation of polity with human knowledge and reason.
In The Critique of Judgement, Kant claims that in nature, objects cannot be sublime, but they can be beautiful. This position is anchored on the narrative that it is not possible to find the sublime in a sensible form. This is particularly because it only the beautiful that can be concerned with form. Thus, according to Kant, the sublime is not an attribute of nature, but rather of the mind (Kant, 1931; Faruqee, 2009). For example, the philosopher claims that a powerful storm or vast ocean are subject to the imagination. This implies that what matters is not the ocean's sublimity per se but rather the sublimity of the ideas of reason. The concept alternates between repulsion and attraction of freedom or totality. Kant also claims that the sublime can be described as a feeling that comes about when individuals become aware of divine experiences or 'priori knowledge.' This knowledge can be conceptualized as bearing universal validity independent of experience.
Kant then categorizes the sublime into the mathematical and the dynamically sublime (Kant, 1931; Faruqee, 2009). The former overwhelms individuals with grandeur and magnitude, while the latter occurs when the presence of domineering forces restricts the ability of individuals to resist. One example of the mathematically sublime, according to Kant is our apprehension of the size of the universe, whose magnitude is not comprehensible. The dynamically sublime, on the other hand, can be conceptualized as a terrifying occurrence that has power over individuals' actions in life though it may not be deemed dangerous by a disinterested viewer. A notable example of this case is God's power or a powerful thunderstorm.
Kant shifted the focus of the sublime to the subject from the object. Therefore, although the sublime may be instigated by objects occurring in the world, it is rarely an external object in itself. Instead, the sublime ought to be conceptualized as a mental process (Kant, 1931; Faruqee, 2009). This way, the sublime is a subjective experience presenting the limits of human knowledge to the subject in question. The sublime, according to Kant, emphasizes the subject coupled with limits of human cognition.
The Kantian sublime does not rest in nature itself but rather in the human's capacity to reason about nature. This argument, according to previous understanding of the sublime, is both irrational and unreasonable. Nevertheless, by integrating reason into the sublime, it can be argued that Kant pacified the sublime into a rational and protestant vision. Likewise, the philosopher expanded and re-defined the possibilities of reason. Likewise, as opposed to inhibiting the sublime, Kant's take on the sublime's association with reason consolidates knowledge around the topic. Further, as opposed to pacifying the sublime, Kant's position deepens it, making it an integral part of human thought.
Kant's critical philosophy emphasizes the human mind's structures and its ability to know and ascertain the world. The philosopher then proceeds, dividing the mind into two key faculties. These include imagination and understanding (Faruqee, 2009). Also referred to as sensuous intuition, imagination is the faculty of senses or pure experience. Individuals often use imagination as an avenue for taking in things as they appear to them through sensory experience. This, according to Kant, is referred to as 'phenomena' (Kant, 1931). Also, imagination is used in presentation, apprehension, and perception. Understanding, on the other hand, cognizes the phenomena into a concept. In contrast to imagination, understanding is used in re-presentation, comprehension, and conception. Thus, understanding and imagination allow individuals to both comprehend and apprehend the sense particulars around them.
Beauty, for Kant, originates in senses, especially imagination, ultimately leading to what he terms as 'indefinite concepts' of understanding (Faruqee, 2009; Kant & Guyer, 2011). Accordingly, aesthetic judgment entails an experience whereby imagination presents a particular image to the understanding, ultimately producing an abstract concept that effectively renders intelligible or controls the sense particulars. Thus, as opposed to mastering the sensory data, the understanding harmonizes with it to produce an indefinite concept. A free play takes place between the faculties of imagination and understanding, with neither winning. Ultimately, Kant contends that perfect harmony exists between the two faculties. Kant further argues that beauty ought to be conceptualized as a pure aesthetic experience, or a "pure judgement of taste" (Faruqee, 2009). In this regard, certain criteria have to be adhered to when judging the beautiful or making pure aesthetic judgment.
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