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Lacan's counterargument here is: what if we [[encounter]] a subject (as we do regularly in psychoanalysis), who can only fully [[enjoy]] a night of [[passion]] if some [[form]] of "gallows" is threatening him, i.e. if, by doing it, he is violating some [[prohibition]]?
There was an Italian film from the 60's, [[Casanova]] 70, starring Virna Lisi and Marcello Mastroianni that hinged on this very point: the hero can only retain his [[sexual]] potency if doing "it" involves some kind of [[danger]]. At the film's end, when he is on the verge of marrying his [[beloved]], he wants at least to violate the prohibition of premarital sex by sleeping with her the night before the wedding-however, his bride unknowingly spoils even this minimal [[pleasure]] by arranging with the priest for special permission for the two of [[them]] to [[sleep]] together the night before, so that [[The Act|the act ]] is deprived of its [[transgressive]] sting. What can he do now? In the last shot of the film, we see him crawling on the narrow porch on the [[outside]] of the high-rise building, giving himself the difficult task of entering the [[girl]]'s bedroom in the most dangerous way, in a desperate attempt to link sexual [[gratification]] to mortal danger… So, Lacan's point is that if gratifying sexual passion involves the suspension of even the most elementary "egotistic" interests, if this gratification is clearly located "beyond the pleasure [[principle]]," then, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, we are dealing with an ethical act, then his "passion" is stricto sensu ethical…4
Lacan's further point is that this covert Sadean [[dimension]] of an "ethical (sexual) passion" is not read into Kant by our eccentric [[interpretation]], but is inherent to the Kantian [[theoretical]] edifice.5 If we put aside the [[body]] of "circumstantial evidence" for it (isn't Kant's infamous definition of [[marriage]]-"the contract between two [[adults]] of the opposite sex about the mutual use of each other's sexual organs"-thoroughly Sadean, since it reduces the [[Other, the]] subject's sexual partner, to a [[partial]] [[object]], to his/her [[bodily]] [[organ]] which provides pleasure, ignoring him/her as the [[Whole]] of a [[human]] Person?), the crucial clue that allows us to discern the contours of "Sade in Kant" is the way Kant conceptualizes the [[relationship]] between sentiments ([[feelings]]) and the [[moral]] Law.
2.
It's via this central [[role]] of pain in the subject's ethical [[experience]] that Lacan introduces the [[difference]] between the "subject of the [[enunciation]]" (the subject who utters a statement) and the "subject of the [[enunciated]] (statement)" (the [[symbolic]] [[identity]] the subject assumes within and via his statement): Kant does not address the question of who is the "[[Subject of the Enunciation|subject of the enunciation]]" of the moral Law, the agent enunciating the unconditional ethical injunction-from within his horizon, this question itself is meaningless, since the moral Law is an impersonal command "coming from nowhere," i.e. it is ultimately [[self]]-posited, autonomously assumed by the subject himself). Via the reference to Sade, Lacan reads [[absence]] in Kant as an act of rendering invisible, of "repressing," the moral Law's enunciator, and it is Sade who renders it [[visible]] in the figure of the "sadist" executioner-torturer-this executioner is the enunciator of the moral Law, the agent who finds pleasure in our (the moral subject's) pain and humiliation.
A counterargument offers itself here with [[apparent]] self-evidence: isn't all this utter nonsense, since, in Sade, the element that occupies the [[place]] of the unconditional injunction, the maxim the subject has to follow categorically, is no longer the Kantian [[universal]] ethical command Do your duty! but its most radical opposite, the injunction to follow to their utmost [[limit]] the thoroughly pathological, [[contingent]] caprices that bring you pleasure, ruthlessly reducing all your fellow [[humans]] to the instruments of your pleasure? However, it is crucial to perceive the [[solidarity]] between this feature and the emergence of the figure of the "sadist" torturer-executioner as the effective "subject of the enunciation" of the universal ethical statement-command. The Sadean move from Kantian Respect-to-Blasphemy, i.e. from respecting the Other (fellow being), his [[freedom]] and autonomy, and always treating him also as an end-[[in-itself]], to reducing all [[Others]] precisely to mere dispensable instruments to be ruthlessly exploited, is strictly correlative to the fact that the "subject of the enunciation" of the Moral Injunction, invisible in Kant, assumes the [[concrete]] features of the Sadean executioner.
And, again, the crucial point is that this breaking up is not Sade's eccentricity-it lays dormant as a possibility in the very fundamental tension constitutive of the [[Cartesian]] [[subjectivity]]. [[Hegel]] was already aware of this reversal of the Kantian universal into the utmost idiosyncratic [[contingency]]: isn't the main point of his critique of the Kantian ethical imperative that, since the imperative is empty, Kant has to fill it with some empirical content, thus conferring on contingent [[particular]] content the form of universal [[necessity]]?
The exemplary [[case]] of the "pathological," contingent element elevated to the status of an unconditional [[demand]] is, of course, an [[artist]] absolutely [[identified]] with his artistic mission, pursuing it freely without any [[guilt]], as an inner constraint, unable to survive without it. The sad fate of Jacqueline du Pré confronts us with the [[feminine]] version of the [[split]] between the unconditional injunction and its obverse, the serial universality of indifferent empirical [[objects]] that must be sacrificed in the pursuit of one's Mission.8 (It is extremely interesting and productive to read du Pré's [[life]] story not as a "[[real]] story," but as a [[mythical]] [[narrative]]: what is so surprising about it is how closely it follows the preordained contours of a [[family]] [[myth]], the same as with the story of Kaspar Hauser, in which [[individual]] accidents uncannily reproduce familiar features from ancient [[myths]].) Du Pré's unconditional injunction, her [[drive]], her absolute passion was her art (when she was 4 years old, upon [[seeing]] someone playing a cello, she already immediately claimed that this is what she wanted to be…). This elevation of her art to the unconditional relegated her [[love]] life to a series of encounters with men who were ultimately all substitutable, one as [[good]] as the other-she was reported to be a serial "man eater." She thus occupied the place usually reserved for the [[Male|MALE ]] artist-no wonder her long [[tragic]] [[illness]] (multiple sclerosis, from which she was painfully dying from 1973 to 1987) was perceived by her [[mother]] as an "answer of [[The Real|the real]]," as divine [[punishment]] not only for her promiscuous [[sexual life]], but also for her "excessive" commitment to her art… 3.
This, however, is not the whole story. The decisive question is: is the Kantian moral Law translatable into the Freudian notion of [[SuperEgo|superego ]] or not? If the answer is yes, then "Kant with Sade" effectively means that Sade is the truth of the Kantian ethics. If, however, the Kantian moral Law cannot be identified with superego (since, as Lacan himself puts it in the last pages of [[Seminar XI]], moral Law is equivalent to desire itself, while superego precisely feeds on the subject's compromising his/her desire, i.e. the guilt sustained by the superego bears [[witness]] to the fact that the subject has somewhere betrayed or compromised his/her desire),9 then Sade is not the entire truth of Kantian ethics, but a form of its perverted realization. In short, far from being "more radical than Kant," Sade articulates what happens when the subject betrays the [[true]] stringency of the Kantian ethics.
This difference is crucial in its [[political]] consequences: insofar as the libidinal structure of "totalitarian" regimes is [[perverse]] (the totalitarian subject assumes the [[position]] of the object-[[instrument]] of the Other's jouissance), "Sade as the truth of Kant" would mean that Kantian ethics effectively harbors totalitarian potentials; however, insofar as we conceive of Kantian ethics as precisely prohibiting the subject to assume the position of the object-instrument of Other's jouissance, i.e. to calling on him to assume [[full]] [[responsibility]] for what he proclaims his Duty, then Kant is the antitotalitarian par excellence…
4./…/ if, as Kant claims, no other thing but the moral law can induce us to put aside all our pathological interests and accept our [[death]], then the case of someone who spends a night with a lady even though he [[knows]] that he will pay for it with his life, is the case of the moral law." Alenka [[Zupancic]], "[[The Subject]] of the Law," in [[Cogito]] and the Unconscious, ed. by [[Slavoj Zizek]], Durham: Duke UP 1998, p. 89.
5.The most obvious proof of the inherent [[character]] of this link of Kant with Sade, of course, is the (disavowed) Kantian notion of "diabolical Evil," i.e. of Evil accomplished for no "pathological" reasons, but out of principle, just for the sake of it." Kant evokes this notion of Evil elevated into a universal maxim (and thus turned into an ethical principle) only in [[order]] to disclaim it immediately, claiming that human beings are incapable of such utter corruption; however, shouldn't we counter this Kantian disclaimer by pointing out that [[de Sade]]'s entire edifice relies precisely on such an elevation of Evil into an unconditional ("categorical") imperative? For a closer elaboration of this point, see Chapter Chapter II of [[Slavoj zizek|Slavoj Zizek]], The Indivisible [[Remainder]], [[London]]: Verso 1996.
6.Butler, Judith, The Psychic Life of [[Power]], Stanford: Stanford [[University]] Press 1997, p. 28-29.
