Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Ethics and the Real

520 bytes added, 06:51, 24 May 2019
The LinkTitles extension automatically added links to existing pages (https://github.com/bovender/LinkTitles).
[[Descartes]][[German ]] [[Idealism]][[Marxism]]Frankfurt [[School]][[Heidegger]][[French ]] post-[[structuralism]]
=Belief and Ideology: Althusser and Pascal=
=FILLER=
Ethics and the [[Real]]
Lacan’s [[thought ]] around 1960 is characterized by a tension centering around the [[ethical ]] status of [[desire]].
What is the ethical status of desire?
In the late 1950s desire stood as a [[position ]] [[notion]].The [[goal ]] of [[psychoanalytic ]] [[treatment ]] is the analysand’s assumption of his desire.[[Hamlet ]] standards as a [[tragic ]] hero precisely because he shows us the ultimate importance and difficulty of assuming our desire.
In contrast, by the 1960s and 1970s desire seems to taken on a [[negative ]] connotiation in Lacan’s [[work]].In “The [[Subversion ]] of the [[Subject]],” for example, [[Lacan ]] seems to promote the [[value ]] of ‘’jouissance’’ over that of the desire shaped by [[castration]], and his account of women’s [[sexuality ]] raises profound questions [[about ]] the ultimate ethical status of desire.
Does the ethics of [[psychoanalysis ]] lie with Hamlet, with the [[ideal ]] of the [[human ]] subject’s assuming his desire? Or with [[Antigone]], who is willing to bo beyond the [[satisfaction ]] of desire in her pursuit of ‘’jouissance’’ itself?
Now I offer an account of how the real relates to sublimation.
[[Freud ]] introduces the [[concept ]] of sublimation in connection with his problematic [[analysis ]] of [[instincts ]] or [[drives ]] (‘’Triebe’’)Freud insists that sublimation must not be confused with the [[idealization ]] of the [[object]].In the essay “On [[Narcissism]]: An Introduction” (1914) Freud makes it clear that sublimation concerns the aim of [[drive]].Sublimation consists in the drive’s “directing itself towards an aim [[other ]] than, and remote from, that of [[sexual ]] satisfaction; in this [[process ]] the accent falls upon deflection from sexuality.” [It does not involve any necessary [[change ]] in the drive’s object; which a change is, in contrast, the province of idealization.]
Lacan’s own account of sublimation is put in [[terms ]] of a [[distinction ]] between ‘’l’objet’’ (object) and ‘’Chose’’ ([[Thing]]).“Sublimation which brings to the ‘’Trieb’’ a different satisfaction of its aim – this always defined as its [[natural ]] aim – is precisely [[instinct ]] but has a relation with ‘’das Ding’’ as such, with the Thing insofar as it is distinct from the object.”<ref>S 7, 133</ref>Sublimation then involves not a change in the drive’s object but the introduction of a new relation between the drive aand something in addiiton to the object, something [[separate ]] from the object but somehow related to it.This new relation neertheless does have some effect on the [[character ]] of the object, since Lacan gives as “the most general formula” of sublimation that it “lifts up an object … to the [[dignity of the Thing]].”<ref> S7 133</ref>
The foruth and fifth sessions of the [[seminar ]] of 1959-60 are devoted to ‘’das Ding’’.‘’Das Ding’’ stands beyond all human [[objects]], as the “outsive-the-signified” in relation to which the “subject keeps his distance and is constituted in a mode of relation, or primary [[affect]], prior to any [[repression]].”<ref>S 7 67-68</ref>Lacan’s notion of ‘’das Ding’’ emerges as “the absolute Other of the subject,” modeled on the [[Mother]], as the object forever lost around which the subject and his desire revolve.<ref> S7, 65, 82</ref>Lacan characterizes ‘’das Ding’’ as paradoxically both exterior to the subject and yet at the subject’s very heart, as something that “a [[representation ]] merely represents.”<ref>S 7, 87</ref>
‘’L’objet’’ designates an object in the human [[world]]; as such, the “object” is thoroughly determined by signifying chains in [[the symbolic ]] [[register ]] as well as given shape by fundamental constraints of the [[imaginary]].‘’Das Ding’’ or ‘’la Chose’’ here designates a real existent that transcends the “reality” produced through the intersection of the symbolic and [[the imaginary]]; as such, the “Thing” overlaps the realm of the ‘’objets petit a’’, and we may assimilate the Thing/objet relation to the relation between the real ‘’objet ‘’[[objet]] a’’, forever lost to the subject, and the symbolic and imaginary objects that takes its [[place ]] in the subject’s [[conscious ]] [[life]].
Then when Lacan defines sublimation as involving the lifting up of an object “to the dignity of the Thing,” which is involved is the subject’s attempt to reclaim the lost ‘’objet a’’ and in this way to map himself into the [[impossible ]] and unmappable real from which the [[primal ]] repression of [[language ]] has separated him.In this account, the subject’s attempt to refind himself in the real plays a significant [[role]].It is precisely this that brings out the fundamentally ethical [[dimension ]] of sublimation, because, as Lacan [[notes]], it is this notion of the Thing as fundamentally lost, as [[forbidden ]] by the primordial [[threat ]] of castration, that provides the very foundation of the “moral “[[moral]] law” in modern ethical [[theory]].<ref>S 7, 85</ref>
In his Critique of [[Practical ]] [[Reason]], first published in 1788, [[Kant ]] argues that ethical judgment ultimately refers to the [[presence ]] or [[absence ]] of a “good “[[good]] will.”For Kant, there is no guaranteed connection between the good will and human [[happiness]]; thus whatever it is that makes a will good, it is in no way related to its ability to produce happiness.Because the very [[idea ]] of moral goodness implies that morality be a matter of something universally and necessarily [[true]], Kant argues that what makes a person’s will a good will is that the person’s reason for acting can be universalized so as to apply to any and every human [[agent]].
Any maxim for acting that cannot be so universalized is thus immoral.
The result of all this is that, for Kant, the moral law is essentially empty of [[content]]: it is the very [[form ]] of [[universality ]] that is at issue in ethics, and any [[particular ]] content specified in a maxim will only serve to deprive that maxium of the universality that would make it morally acceptable.It is the “categorical imperative” – “So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same [[time ]] as a [[principle ]] establishing [[universal ]] law” – that determines the goodness of the will, and any specific [[pleasure]], [[desire, ]] or interest that an [[individual ]] might have must be isolated and purged from a will that is to be fully moral.
In his essay “Kant avec [[Sade]],” Lacan characterizes Kant’s position as follows: “So that [the Good] is imposed as superior by reason of its universal value. Thus the weight of this does not appear except by excluding drive or [[feeling]], everything that the subject can suffer by reason of its interest in an object, i.e., what Kant, for his part, designates as ‘pathological.’”<ref>E 766</ref>The moral law according to Kant, then, rests on the [[exclusion]], the [[prohibition]], from the will of any particular object of human interest.In [[Lacanian ]] terms, however, this prohibited, [[lost object ]] is of course ‘’das Ding’’, the “Thing,” even the ‘’objet petit a’’, around which the [[desiring ]] life of the human subject inevitably turns.
In this way it is the impossible real, the fundamentally lost ‘’Chose’’, ‘’das Ding’’, that provides the foundation for the moral law in Kant.<ref>S 7, 93-95</ref>
=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]].
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 [[perversion|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"<ref>[[Critique of Practical Reason ]] 28</ref>, 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]]."<ref>Kant with Sade</ref>
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''.
=Freedom and Agency: Kierkegaard and Repetition=
Anonymous user

Navigation menu