Ideology in Between Radical and Diabolical Evil: Kant's «Ethics of the Real»
Ideology in Between Radical and Diabolical Evil: Kant's «Ethics of the Real»

Summary/Abstract: Kant's distinction between radical evil (i.e. 'pathologically' motivated via recourse to certain contingent interest) and diabolical evil (i.e. disinterested, lacking any self-oriented, contingent motivation) presents itself to a Lacanian-style analysis that illuminates the mechanism by means of which ideology functions at its most deleterious yet fundamental level. In de-subjectivizing the Law, thus relieving the subject from the indeterminacy inserted by Kant in the moral Law - the indeterminacy which ultimately forces the subject to assume full responsibility for his own deeds, ideology is capable of effectively rendering diabolical evil conceivable. Indeed, in instances such as the Holocaust or more current genocides and fights against "terror", diabolical evil becomes phenomenalizable once the subject loses his recourse to the dimension of "teleological" or final judgment and replaces it with certain pseudo-final judgment defined by the imperatives of a contingent duty within a particular ideology. Herein lies the kernel of Kant's 'ethics of the Real' as a fundamental rejection and condemnation of ideology: the encounter with the moral Law is always conditioned on its failure, on 'not going all the way', since at the 'end' awaits the diabolical evil of jouissance, the terrifying dimension of the Real, of self-disintegration and collapse of reality and morality alike. This paper attempts to conceive of a possible phenomenalization of diabolical evil as manifested in the conflict in Chechnya, therefore becoming extremely topical in its reference to "war against terrorism" and its potential for becoming an ideological mask for the mechanism that brings about the eruption of the Lacanian terrifying dimension of the Real in the midst of contemporary social reality.

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