Towards a Rogue Reality: Kant to Freud, and Beyond

Arthur Schopenhauer articulated a rogue reality that contrasts with the intelligible (aristocratic) reality defined by Kant as the thing in itself and the quantifiable (bourgeois) reality embodied in the notion of energy. The rogue reality provided the brain model for Freud’s later works, and the conceptual foundation for the death drive of Lacan’s theory. The rogue reality is accompanied by a non-Cartesian dualism that is fundamental to the modernist impulse.