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.
Patterns in Twentieth-Century European Thought contains interpretive essays in the history of the century’s Marxism, psychoanalysis, quantum physics, logic, language theory, philosophy, art, literature, and theology. A concluding essay argues that the philosophy and social theory – not to mention the physics and theology – constitute a twentieth-century Counter-Enlightenment that has replaced the Cartesian- and Newtonian-based Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.