Cause

In this corpus, "Cause" emerges at the intersection of two distinct but convergent theoretical trajectories. The first is Kantian: Kant's Second Analogy establishes causality as the a priori condition through which the understanding (apperception) determines objective succession in time. Change is not merely registered passively; it is constituted as objectively ordered only insofar as the understanding imposes the causal rule onto the continuous, infinitely divisible form of inner sense (time). Cause, for Kant, is thus not a feature discovered empirically in the world but a transcendental condition that makes empirical knowledge of change possible. Without causal determination, alteration would collapse into mere association; the concept of cause is what transforms temporal sequence into lawful, knowable succession.

The second trajectory is post-Lacanian and critical-ontological: in subject-lessons-hegel-lacan-and-the-future-of-materialism-northwestern-universit, "Cause" surfaces as the unresolved problem at the heart of Harman's object-oriented ontology. Harman attempts to sidestep both immanent causation (things acting directly on each other) and external causation (things being reduced to their relations), but his solution—"allure," borrowed from Husserl's phenomenological horizon—merely displaces the problem rather than solving it. The argument is that Lacan's own account of the object (implicitly, the objet a and das Ding) offers a more adequate resolution to the causal impasse, suggesting that causality, properly understood, is not a relation between fully constituted objects but an effect of the structural gap or void at the heart of the object itself.

In kant-immanuel-critique-of-pure-reason, "Cause" is anchored to several cross-referenced canonical concepts: it presupposes Apperception (the unity of consciousness that applies the causal rule), A Priori Knowledge (causality is a pure concept of the understanding, not derived from experience), Continuity of Change (every change passes through every intermediate degree because time is continuous), and Time (as the form of inner sense within which causal succession is determined). Cause here is the master-concept that synthesizes all of these: without the a priori causal rule supplied by the understanding, temporal experience would yield no objective knowledge of change. In subject-lessons-hegel-lacan-and-the-future-of-materialism-northwestern-universit, the concept migrates into a confrontation between Phenomenology (specifically the Husserlian horizon that Harman misappropriates) and the Lacanian framework organized around Das Ding—the Thing as a void or gap that is irreducible to either its sensory qualities or its relations. The cross-reference to Das Ding is particularly significant: Lacan's das Ding names the opaque, causally inert-yet-motivating kernel at the heart of the object, which is precisely what Harman's "allure" gestures toward but cannot theorize without smuggling in a phenomenological subject. The concept of Cause thus sits at a hinge between Kantian transcendental epistemology (where it is a condition of knowledge) and Lacanian ontology (where it points to the structural void that makes causation enigmatic). Reality, another cross-referenced canonical, is relevant here insofar as both Kant's causal framework and Lacan's response to Harman are concerned with how a stable, knowable field of reality is constituted—and what escapes or undermines that constitution.

Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of MaterialismRussell Sbriglia & Slavoj Žižek (eds.) · 2020 (p.205)

Harman's interest in causality brings him within sight of a solution already proposed by Lacan. So, let's grant that there is such a property X or 'allure' inherent to the object-in-itself. How does allure help Harman with his causal project?

The phrase "within sight of a solution already proposed by Lacan" is theoretically loaded because it positions Lacan not as a phenomenologist (the tradition Harman draws on) but as the thinker who has already resolved the causal problem Harman cannot escape; the term "allure" is then placed under suspicion—framed as an invented pseudo-property ("property X") that names rather than explains the causal gap, implicitly pointing toward Lacan's structurally grounded account of the object's void as the genuine theoretical advance.