May 14, 2026 03:59 PM
Just recently I have been studying Lacan's notion of the Real as "that which resists symbolization absolutely." It is in this sense impossible in terms of the symbolic dimension that frames our experience (the structure of so-called "reality" we conceive of and relate to as our world). And yet it exerts an influence and has bearing on the nature of our experience in terms of negativities such as contradictions and trauma and absolute otherness. It is an example of what I call a "boundary concept"--of an entity or property not manifesting positively either empirically or rationally but asserting itself negatively as the limit of what is possible and what can be experienced or understood.
A similar case can be made for Kant's concept of the noumena, which is defined as that object that lies beyond experience and thought and yet negatively informs them as the absolute limit of their possibility. Here's one author's elaboration of this idea: https://ucupr.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/a...tive-idea/ Here the noumena is conceived as a regulatory concept that restrains thinking from overabstraction while preserving its it openness to the transcendent as precisely that which is NOT thinkable.
Another example of a boundary concept is Derrida's notion differance, which he describes in negative terms as the trace or horizon of what cannot be said.
A similar case can be made for Kant's concept of the noumena, which is defined as that object that lies beyond experience and thought and yet negatively informs them as the absolute limit of their possibility. Here's one author's elaboration of this idea: https://ucupr.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/a...tive-idea/ Here the noumena is conceived as a regulatory concept that restrains thinking from overabstraction while preserving its it openness to the transcendent as precisely that which is NOT thinkable.
Another example of a boundary concept is Derrida's notion differance, which he describes in negative terms as the trace or horizon of what cannot be said.