Ideal of the Redoubtable

The "Ideal of the Redoubtable" names the archaic, Homeric ethical posture in which the hero's self-possessed, fearless bearing — his claim to autonomous, self-determining power — is exposed as a symptomatic defensive formation rather than a genuine ethical stance. In Boothby's argument (source: diaeresis-richard-boothby-embracing-the-void-rethinking-the-origin-of-the-sacred), this ideal presents itself as a mastery over contingency and vulnerability, yet structurally it depends on precisely what it repudiates: the abyssal, pre-symbolic void of das Ding. The hero's pose of self-sufficiency is, in Lacanian terms, an imaginary construction — an inflated ideal ego — that keeps das Ding at bay by substituting a grandiose specular image for a genuine confrontation with the Real kernel that grounds and de-centres the subject.

The concept is therefore "symptomatic" in the precise analytic sense: it is a second-order solution that forecloses the anxiety das Ding would otherwise produce. The hero's celebrated redoubtability — his capacity to inspire dread in others, to stand firm before any threat — turns on the Other's gaze for its validation. Far from being self-grounding, the ideal is parasitic on recognition; it is a narcissistic formation whose "self-controlled and self-determined power" is revealed, under analysis, to be structured exactly like the ideal ego: an imaginary totality compensating for an underlying fragmentation, and sustained by the symbolic reference-point of the Other's look. The ideal of the redoubtable is thus homologous with what Lacan calls the "service of goods" — an ethics that domesticates desire and avoids the radical exposure demanded by a genuine encounter with das Ding.

Within the source (diaeresis-richard-boothby-embracing-the-void-rethinking-the-origin-of-the-sacred), the ideal of the redoubtable is positioned as a critical foil: Boothby invokes the Homeric heroic code precisely to diagnose its structural failure as an ethics, using it to set up a contrast with whatever he treats as a more adequate engagement with the void. The concept cross-references das Ding most directly — the hero's "self-determined power" is a defensive formation against the abyssal Thing, reproducing the logic Lacan describes in Seminar VII, where the subject is enjoined to keep das Ding "at the right distance" rather than eliminating it. The ideal of the redoubtable is a failure of this injunction in the opposite direction: rather than getting too close to the Thing (as in psychosis or transgression), the hero erects an imaginary citadel that treats the Thing as if it were masterable, thereby bearing false witness to das Ding and falling into the "service of goods."

The concept is equally anchored in the cluster of Ideal Ego, Gaze, and Anxiety. The hero's self-image is precisely the ideal ego — an imaginary, totalizing self-portrait — whose narcissistic coherence is secretly dependent on the Other's gaze (the admiration of peers, enemies, and spectators) for its maintenance. This dependency structures the ideal of the redoubtable as a form of imaginary identification rather than symbolic assumption of desire. Anxiety, meanwhile, is the affect that the ideal is designed to foreclose: the hero's imperviousness is a theatrical suppression of the very anxiety that, for Lacan, signals the genuine proximity of the Real. Insofar as the ideal thus manages anxiety through imaginary means, it is also implicitly related to the Master–Slave Dialectic: the hero's fearlessness performs the master's position but, like Hegel's master, is ultimately hollowed out by its dependence on the slave's (or audience's) recognition, confirming that what presents itself as pure self-determination is in fact constituted through the Other.

Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the SacredRichard Boothby · 2023 (p.99)

We might call this rough and ready, even rogue, ethics 'the ideal of the redoubtable.' The unifying theme is one of self-controlled and self-determined power.

The phrase "self-controlled and self-determined power" is theoretically loaded because it names precisely the imaginary fantasy of ego-sovereignty — the claim to autarky — that Lacanian theory systematically dismantles; calling it a "rogue" ethics signals that the ideal operates outside the law of desire (das Ding) while still presenting itself as an ethics, exposing its symptomatic, defensive character.