The ethical maxim behind the discourse of the master is perhaps best formulated in the famous verse from Juvenal: ‘Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori, et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas‘
Count it the greatest of all sins to prefer life to honour, and to lose, for the sake of living, all that makes life worth living.
Another version of this credo might be found in Paul Claude!: ‘Sadder than to lose one’s life is it to lose one’s reason for living.’
In ‘Kant with Sade’ Lacan proposes his own ‘translation’ of this ethical motto:’desire, what is called desire, suffices to make life have no sense in playing a coward.’ (EOR 5)