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[[Image:Sem7.jpg|thumb|right|'''L'éthique de la psychanalyse.''']]
''Le séminaire, Livre VII: L'éthique de la psychanalyse, 1959-1960'' . Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1986.
English version: ''The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The [[ethics]] of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960''. Ed. J.-A. Miller. Trans. D. Porter. London: Routledge, 1992.
==Description==
This [[seminar]] has been crucial for the wider dissemination of [[Lacan]]ian ideas in the [[humanities]] and [[social science]]s and it provides a constant reference point for [[Žižek]] as well as [[feminism|feminist]] [[criticism|critics]].
The [[seminar]] contains [[Lacan]]'s only reference to ''[[das Ding]]'' (the [[Thing]]) as well as his reflections on [[sublimation]] and ''[[''[[jouissance]]'']]''.
The [[seminar] is probably most well known though for [[Lacan]]'s discussion of [[Sophocles]]' [[ancient]] [[Greek]] [[tragedy]] ''[[Antigone]]'', where he elaborates one of his most influential definitions of the [[[[ethics]]|ethical]] [[act]] - "not to give way on one's desire" - and [[feminine]] [[sexuality]] in relation to [[courtly love]] [[poetry]].
This seminar is a very accessible and essential reading.
==Back of the Book==Jacques Lacan dedicates this seventh year of his famous seminar to the problematic role of ethics in psychoanalysis. Delving into the psychoanalyst's inevitable involvement with ethical questions and "the attraction of transgression," Lacan illuminates Freud'Le séminaires psychoanalytic work and its continued influence. Lacan explores the problem of sublimation, the paradox of jouissance, the essence of tragedy (a reading of Sophocle's Antigone), and the tragic dimension of analytic experience. His exploration leads us to startling insights on "the consequence of man's relationship to desire" and the conflicting judgments of ethics and analysis. ==Summary== At the root of the [[[[ethics]]]] is [[desire]], Livre VIIbut a [[desire]] marked by the "fault". [[Analysis]]' only promise is austere: Lit is "the entrance into-the-I," ''l'éthique de la psychanalyseentrée-en-Je''. "I must come to the place where the ''Id'' was," where the [[analysand]] discovers, in its absolute nakedness, 1959the [[truth]] of his [[desire]]. The [[end]] of the [[cure]] is then the purification of [[desire]]. [[Lacan]] makes three statements: * one is only [[[[guilt]]y]] of "having given in on one's [[desire]]"; * "the [[hero]] is the one who can be betrayed with impunity"; * [[good]]s [[exist]], but "there is no other [[good]] than the one that can pay the price of the access to [[desire]]," a [[desire]] that is only valid insofar as it is [[desire]] to know. [[Lacan]] laudes [[Oedipus at Colonus]] who calls down curses before [[death|dying]], and he associates him with [[Antigone]], walled up alive, who has not given in at all. Both have rejected the right to live in order to enter the "[[between the two deaths|in-between-two-deaths]]," - ''entre-deux-1960morts'' - that is [[immortality]]. Paris Since ''Le désir et son intépretation'', the [[analysis]] of the son's passion ([[subject]]) has become more pressing. Who is the [[Father]]? Here is the terrible [[Father]] of the [[primal horde]] ([[Freud]]'s ''[[Totem and Taboo]]''); [[Luther]]'s [[God]] with "his eternal hatred against men, a hatred that existed even before the world was born"; the [[father]] of the [[law]] who, as to [[Saint Paul]], leads to [[temptation]]: Editions du Seuil"For me, the very [[commandment]] - Thou shall not covet - which should lead to [[life]] has proved to be [[death]] to me. 1986For [[sin]], finding opportunity in the [[commandment]], [[seduce]]d me and by it killed me." English version[[Lacan]] adds, "I have put the [[Thing]] in the place of [[sin]]," denouncing the complicity between the [[law]] and the [[Thing]], "which is called [[Evil]]." But what is the [[Thing]] against which the [[Father]] cannot or does not know how to defend himself? It has nothing to do with the [[object]], which is created by [[word]]s. It is the [[outside]] [[signifier]] and also the hostile [[outside]] [[signified]]: a mute [[reality]] prior to [[primal]] [[repression]] that puts in its place the pure [[signifying]] web without being able to hide it. It is the [[center]] of the [[unconscious]] but it is [[exclude]]d; it is the [[real]] but always represented by an [[emptiness]], the nonthing, ''l'a chose''The Seminar , the [[nothing]], a [[hole]] in the [[real]] from which the [[Word]], the [[Signifier]], creates the [[world]]. It is the [[place]] of [[dead]]ly ''[[''[[jouissance]]'']]'' sanctioned by the [[prohibition]] of Jacques Lacan[[incest]]. It is associated with the [[mother]] who represents it by her [[manifest]] carnality, and with [[woman]] who, [[ideal]]ized in [[courtly love]], Book VIIspeaks the [[truth]]: "I am [[nothing]] but the [[emptiness]] which is in my cloaca."The Ethics idea of a distorted [[sexuality]] meets the 70s mantra: "There is no such [[thing]] as a [[sexual rapport]]." [[Woman]], who is the other, bears the burden of the curse, although the [[Thing]] is settled at the heart of Psychoanalysisall [[subject]]s who have to recognize it. Who am I? "You are the waste that falls in the world through the devil's anus."However, 1959-1960salvation holds on by a thread: the theme of the exquisiteness of the son's [[love]] for the [[father]] would be amplified in ''[[Other of the Other|D'un Autre à l'autre]]''. Ed This [[father]] is a [[symbolic]] [[Father]], he is all the more present for being [[absent]], a [[Father]] without a [[body]] or the glorious body of [[signifier]]s, a [[father]] who can only be the [[object]] of an [[act]] of faith, for: there is no [[Other of the Other]] to [[guarantee]] him. J[[Sublimation]] is an attempt to confront the [[Thing]]: true [[love]] for one's [[neighbor]] consists in recognizing in him, as in oneself, the [[place]] and the wound of the [[Thing]]. As for dis[[belief]], by [[rejecting]] the [[thing]] it makes it [[appearance|reappear]] in the [[Real]], which is the [[Lacan]]ian [[definition]] of [[psychosis]]. If [[ethical]] [[thought]] "is at the centre of our work as [[analyst]]s," then, in the [[cure]], [[[[ethics]]]] converges from two sides.-AOn the side of the [[analysand]] is the problem of [[[[guilt]]]] and the [[pathogenic]] nature of [[civilised]] [[morality]]. Miller[[Freud]] conceives of a basic conflict between the [[demand]]s of [[civilised]] [[morality]] and the essentially amoral [[sexual]] [[drive]]s of the [[[[patient]]]]. TransIf [[morality]] takes the upper hand and the [[drive]]s are too intense to be [[sublimate]]d, [[sexuality]] is either expressed in [[perverse]] forms or [[repressed]]. D[[Freud]] further develops this idea in his [[theory]] of an [[unconscious]] sense of [[[[guilt]]]] and in his concept of the [[superego]], that [[interior]] [[moral]] [[agency]] which becomes [[cruel]]er to the extent that the [[ego]] submits to its [[demand]]s. PorterThe [[analyst]], on the other hand, has to deal with the [[pathogenic]] [[morality]] and [[unconscious]] [[[[guilt]]]] of the [[[[patient]]]] and with the [[ethical]] problems that arise in the [[cure]]. London [[Lacan]] addresses the issue of how the [[analyst]] will respond to the [[[[patient]]]]'s sense of [[guilt]] by arguing that he must take it seriously, for whenever the [[patient]] feels [[guilt]]y it is because he has given way to his [[desire]]: Routledge, 1992"the only [[thing]] of which one can be [[guilt]]y is of having given ground relative to one's [[desire]]."
[[Lacan]] does not take such an approach because [[psychoanalytic]] [[experience]] has revealed the duplicity of [[pleasure]]: there is a limit to [[pleasure]], and when it is transgressed, it becomes pain.
''[[jouissance]]'' is the paradoxical [[satisfaction]] that the [[subject]] derives from his [[symptom]], the suffering he derives from his [[satisfaction]].
Finally traditional [[ethics]] puts work and a safe, ordered [[existence]] before questions of [[desire]] by telling people to make their [[desire]]s wait.
[[Lacan]] forces the [[subject]] to confront the relation between his [[action]]s and his [[desire]] in the immediacy of the [[present]].
[[Lacan]] introduces the notion of ''[[das Ding]]'', the [[Thing]], via the opposition between the [[pleasure principle]] and the [[reality principle|principle of reality]], this opposition, however, is deluding since the latter is but a modification of the former.
Two are the contexts where ''[[das Ding]]'' operates.
Firstly there is [[Freud]]'s distinction between ''Wortvorstellungen'', [[word-presentation]]s, and ''Sachvorstellungen'', [[thing-presentation]]s.
The two types are bound together in the [[preconscious]]-[[conscious]] [[system]], whereas in the [[unconscious]] only [[thing-presentation]]s are found.
This seems to contradict the [[linguistic]] nature of the [[unconscious]].
[[Lacan]] counters the objection by pointing out that there are two words in [[German]] for "[[thing]]": ''[[das Ding]]'' and ''die Sache''.
[[Freud]] employs the latter to refer to the [[thing-presentation]]s in the [[unconscious]] , and if at one level ''Sachvorstellungen'' and ''Wortvorstellungen'' are opposed, on the [[symbolic]] level they go together.
''Die Sache'' is the [[representation]] of a [[thing]] in the [[symbolic]], whereas ''[[das Ding]]'' is the [[thing]] in the [[real]], which is "the beyond-of-the-signified."
[[Thing-presentations]] found in the [[unconscious]] are of [[linguistic]] nature, as opposed to ''[[das Ding]]'', which is [[outside]] [[language]] and [[outside]] the [[unconscious]] .
"The [[thing]] is characterized by the fact that it is [[impossible]] for us to imagine it."
Yet, in relation to ''[[jouissance]]'', as well as being the [[object]] of [[language]], ''[[das Ding]]'' is the [[object]] of [[desire]].
It is the [[lost]] [[object]] which must be continually looked for, the unforgettable [[Other]], the [[forbidden]] [[object]] of [[incest]]uous [[desire]], the [[mother]].
The [[thing]] appears to the [[subject]] as the Supreme [[Good]], but if the [[subject]] [[trangress]]es the [[pleasure principle]] and attains it, it is experienced as [[suffering]] or/and [[evil]] because the [[subject]] "cannot stand the extreme [[good]] that ''[[das Ding]]'' may bring on him."
It would seem then fortunately that the [[thing]] is usually [[inaccessible]].
==defDefinition==During the second phase of Lacan’s teaching the real loses the sense of ‘thingness’ which his earlier conception had retained.In his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, Lacan sought to clarify Freud’s definition of the unconscious and especially the question of what is repressed.For Freud there can be no unconscious without repression, but what exactly is it that is repressed: words, images, feelings?For Lacan, what is repressed is not iamges, words or emotions but something much more fundamental.Freud hit upon this when, in ‘’[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]’’, he suggested that there was a hard impenetrable core of the dream – what he called the ‘navel’ of the dream – that is beyond interpretation.What is repressed, argues Lacan, is this hard impenetrable core.This is always a core of the real that is missing from the symbolic and all other representations, images and signifiers are no more than attempts to fill this gap.In seminar VII Lacan identified this repressed element as ‘’the representative of the representation’’, or ‘’dad Ding’’ (the Thing).
Indeed, the “relationship between [[action]] and [[desire]]” is what defines the field of [[ethics]],
==Contents==
====Outline of the [[seminar]]====
===Introduction to the [[Thing]]===
====[[Pleasure]] and [[Reality]]====
====Rereading the ''[[Entwurf]]''====
====''[[Das Ding]]''====
====''[[Das Ding]]'' (II)====
====On the [[moral]] [[law]]====
===The Problem of [[Sublimation]]===
====[[Drive]]s and [[lure]]s====
====The [[object]] and the [[thing]]====
====On creation ''ex nihilo''====
====Marginal comments====
====[[Courtly love]] as [[anamorphosis]]====
====A critique of [[Bernfeld]]====
===The [[Paradox]] of ''[[Jouissance]]''===
====The [[death]] of [[God]]====
====[[Love]] of one's [[neighbor]]====
====The ''[[jouissance]]'' of [[transgression]]====
====The [[death drive]]====
====The function of the [[good]]====
====The function of the [[beautiful]]====
===The Essence of [[Tragedy]]===
====A Commentary on [[Sophocles]]'s ''[[Antigone]]''====
====The Splendor of [[Antigone]]====
====The articulations of the play====
====[[Antigone]] [[between two deaths]]====
===The [[Tragic]] Dimension of [[Analytical]] [[Experience]]===
====The [[demand]] for [[happiness]] and the [[promise]] of [[analysis]]====
====The [[moral]] [[goal]]s of [[psychoanalysis]]====
====The [[paradox]]es of [[ethics]] ''or'' Have you [[act]]ed in conformty with your [[desire]]?====
[[Category:Terms]]