Ethics and the Real

Descartes German Idealism Marxism Frankfurt School Heidegger French post-structuralism

Freedom and Agency: Kant, Sade and the 'Ethics of the Real'

Lacan's discussions of ethics are contained in books VII and VIII of his Seminar and the paper "Kant with Sade."

Lacan distinguishes between ethics and morality. Morality, for Lacan, is a product of the pleasure principle and the Oedipal law.

Unlike Freud, for whom sublimation is the corner-stone of ethical endeavor, Lacan emphasizes the link between sublimation and perversion. Since the subject had no choice but to enter the symbolic order, the giving up of his or her personal jouissance was inevitable, and teh very idea that the subject 'could have had it' is an illusion.

When the père-vers of the superego punishes the subject for having accepted this forced choice, he is acting perversely. Although he may appear to encourage us to sacrifice ('sublimate') jouissance, in reality he is binding us ever more closely to it in the form of its monstrous surplus of plus-de-jouir. The more we obey the superego imperative, the more our sense of guilt over our illusory sacrifice increases, and the more we need to be punished, so the more surplus enjoyment we get.

Because Lacan sees morality as belonging in the symbolic order, with its aspiration to universality, he points the finger at Kant for having been the first to formulate its principles. The categorical imperative adduced by Kant, "So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle in a giving of universal laws", is for Lacan the prototype of the moral law. Lacan observes that the same principle is formulated by the Marquis de Sade: "Anyone can say to me, I have the right to enjoyment of your body, and I shall exercise that right without any limit to put a stop to whatever capricious demands I may feel inclined to satisfy."

Lacan praises Kant for having perceived that the object of ethics, "the good", is not pre-given, but results from the way we apply the law. It is not the law which defines the good. Sade's formulation makes it easier to see that this object, which Lacan identifies with the objet a, is bound up with the subject's jouissance.