Category: ethics_real

parallax kant sade

So, far from announcing a triumphant solution, Lacan’s “Kant avec Sade,” his assertion of Sade as the truth of Kant, rather names an embarrassing problem that Lacan failed to resolve — and did not even fully confront — in his Ethics seminar: how are we to distinguish the appearance of pure desire—the violent gesture of transgressing the social domain of “servicing goods” and entering the terrifying domain of ate, that is, the ethical stance of the subject who “does not compromise his desire”—from the fully consummated “passion for the Real,” the subject’s disappearance-immersion in the primordial jouissance? 95

What, then, is the Fall from this Kantian perspective? Consider the first moments of a feminist awakening: it all begins not with a direct attack on patriarchy, but with experiencing one’s situation as unjust and humiliating, one’s passivity as a failure to act—is this very overwhelming awareness of failure not in itself a positive sign? Does it not, in a negative way, bear witness to the fact that women clearly perceive the need to assert themselves, that they perceive the lack of it as a failure? In the same way,“Fall” is the first step toward liberation—it represents the moment of knowledge, of cognizance of one’s situation. Thus “fall into sin” is a purely formal change: nothing changes in reality, it is just the subject’s stance toward reality that undergoes a radical change.

This means that the Fall in the religious sense (the knowledge of sin) is already a reaction to the Fall proper, the retreat from the “dizziness of freedom.”This is why it is crucial to realize that Kierkegaard leaps over the first contraction of finitude, the first emergence of a sinthome which makes the subject a creature proper, and goes directly from the primordial repose to the Prohibition.We should focus on the difference between the two withdrawals from the Void of infinity: the first one is the primordial contraction that creates the sinthome — it precedes Prohibition, while it is only the second one, the retreat from the “dizziness of freedom,” which is the Fall proper: with it,we enter the domain of the superego, of the vicious cycle of the Law and its transgression.

parallax ethics real

Žižek, S. Parallax View MIT Press, 2006. Pages 81-84.

That is to say: how should we interpret the great feminine “No!” of Isabel Archer at the end of The Portrait of a Lady?  Why doesn’t Isabel leave Osmond, although she definitely doesn’t love him and is fully aware of his manipulations? The reason is not the moral pressure exerted on her by the notion of what is expected of a woman in her position — Isabel has sufficiently proven that, when she wants to, she is quite willing to override conventions: “Isabel stays because of her commitment to the bond of her word, and she stays because she is unwilling to abandon what she still sees as a decision made out of her sense of independence.”

In short, as Lacan put it apropos of Sygne de Coufontaine in The Hostage, Isabel is also “the hostage of the word.” So it is wrong to interpret this act as a sacrifice bearing witness to the proverbial “feminine masochism”: although Isabel was obviously manipulated into marrying Osmond, her act was her own, and to leave Osmond would simply equal depriving herself of her autonomy.

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zupančič ethics of real

Zupančič, Alenka. Ethics of the Real. 2000
It is at precisely this point that we must situate the scandal of this dialogue: the terror of Turelure ‘s demands pales before the terror inflicted upon Sygne ( through the intermediary of Badilon ) by the Holy Father.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, has not lost its currency. The commandment in question is evident in the profane discourse of ethics (and politics), where it presents itself under the flag of ‘cultural diversity’ and the associated commandment: ‘Respect the difference of the other.’ This commandment, it is true, does not ask that we love the neighbour/other — it suffices that we “tolerate” him or her. But it seems that at bottom, as Freud would say, it comes down to the same thing. … Thus Badiou has observed:

A first suspicion arises when we consider that the proclaimed apostles of ethics and of the ‘right to difference’ are visibly horrified by any difference that is even a bit pronounced. Because for them, African costumes are barbarous, Islamic fundamentalists are frightening, as is the Chinese totalitarian, and so on. In truth, this famous “other” is not presentable unless he is a good other, that is to say, insofar as he’s the same as us … Just as there is no freedom for the enemies of freedom, so there is no respect for those whose difference consists precisely in not respecting differences.

That is to say: one finds here the same conjuncture as in the case of the commandment to ‘love thy neighbour’: what happens if this neighbour is ‘wicked’, if he or she has a completely different idea of the world, if he or she gets his or her enjoyment in a manner that conflicts with mine?

When Lacan, in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, comments on the commandment ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’, and on Freud’s hesitation regarding this subject, he formulates its impasse with essentially same words as Badiou uses in speaking of the ‘right to ‘difference ‘ :

My egoism is quite content with a certain altruism, altruism of the kind that is situated on the level of the useful. And it even becomes the pretext by means of which I can avoid taking up the problem of the evil I desire, and that my neighbour desires also … What I want is the good of others in the image of my own. That doesn’t cost so much. What I want is the good of others provided that it remain in the image of my own.

we cannot conceive of radical alterity, of the ‘completely other’ (to which Lacan gives the Freudian name das Ding [the Thing]), without bringing up the question of the Same (as opposed to the similar). The similar [le semblable] presupposes and necessitates difference; it requires — in Badiou’s terms – a multiplicity, even an ‘infinite multiplicity’.

Contrary to this, the problem of enjoyment is the problem of the Same, which must be excluded so that this multiplicity can be closed, or ‘united’.

The moment the similar gives way to the Same, evil appears, and with it the hostility associated with the ‘completely other’.

Sygne’s real ethical act does not consist simply in her sacrifice of everything that is dearest to her; this act is, rather, to be found in the final scene of the play: the act in the proper sense of the term, the ethical act, resides in Sygne’s ‘no’ It is only this ‘no’ that propels her sacrifice into the dimension of the real. Let us now turn to this ‘no’ to determine its status, and to specify the relation between the two scenes or ‘events’ in question, Sygne’s sacrifice and her ‘no’.

The thesis which seems the most questionable is the one according to which we realize at the end that Sygne, ‘by some part of herself’, had not really given way or adhered to the politico-religious compromise demanded of her. Contrary to this reading we would insist that:

1. Her act (of sacrifice) is not an instance of ‘giving up on one’s desire ‘ but, rather, one of pure desire; it is characteristic of the logic of desire itself to have as its ultimate horizon the sacrifice of the very thing in the name of which Sygne is ready to sacrifice everything.

2. There is in fact a connection that leads from ‘Sygne’s choice ‘ (her sacrifice) to her final ‘ no ‘. That is to say: without her initial choice, Sygne would never have reached an occasion for Versagung, and — it follows from this —

3 . In the final analysis, it is precisely Badilon who leads her to this ‘negation’; this means that he is not the simple opposite of the analyst but that, in a certain respect, he ‘personifies’ the position of the analyst.

Maxim of ethics of desire: Sadder than to lose one’s life is it to lose one’s reason for living.

Sacrifice everything, including her life to HONOUR (her reason to live).

Life is situated not in the register of being, but in the register of having, HONOUR is something that belongs to the very being of Sygne. 231

It is not this choice: Life or HONOUR

It is this choice: if HONOUR is the only thing left to her, if she has nothing else to give, she will have to give this last thing 231

The logic of Sygne’s sacrifice remains inscribed in the logic of desire, and represents the ultimate horizon of her ‘fundamental fantasy’. But the paradox here is that the moment Sygne attains this ultimate horizon, she is already obliged to go beyond it, to leave it behind.

ethics zupancic review

Jason B. Jones. “The Real Happens” Emory University jbjones AT emory.edu Review of: Alenka Zupančič, Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. New York: Verso, 2000.

The point of Lacan’s identification of the Real with the impossible is not simply that the Real is some Thing that is impossible to happen. On the contrary, the whole point of the Lacanian concept of the Real is that the impossible happens. This is what is so traumatic, disturbing, shattering–or funny–about the Real. The Real happens precisely as the impossible. (“Signs”)

Ethics of the Real merits the serious attention of anyone interested in one of the great ethical crises of our time: Why is nothing but fundamentalism deemed worth dying for any longer?
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calum on Ž the act part 1

Neill, Calum. “An Idiotic Act: On the Non-Example of Antigone.” The Letter , 34, 2005, 1-28.

J. Lacan. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Ed. J.A. Miller. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. Trans. D. Porter. London, Routledge, (1986) 1992.
S. Žižek. Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? London, Verso, 2001.
J. Lacan. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Ed. J.A. Miller. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. A. Sheridan. London, Penguin, (1973) 1977.
J. Lacan. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Ed. J.A. Miller. Book II. The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. S. Tomaselli., New York, Norton, (1978) 1988.
J. Lacan. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Ed. J.A. Miller. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. Trans. D. Porter. 1992. London, Routledge, 1986,

The term ‘act’, in Lacanian theory, is differentiated from the sense of “mere behaviour” by the location and persistence of desire. This is to say that the act is necessarily a subjective undertaking and that it can be understood to be coterminous with the assumption of subjectivity and the responsibility entailed in such an assumption,the Freudian Wo Es war, soll Ich werden.

Where behaviour would describe the response to needs, for example, the act is defined by the impetus of desire. Desire makes the subject act and as such the weight of responsibility for the act committed lies with the subject. Desire cannot be treated as a given which would determine the subject’s act without the subject’s volition. The very subjectivity which would be taken to act cannot be described without the manifestation of desire which would allow its constitution. But such desire must always be particular to the subject; it is the subject’s desire. The act would be the moment of subjective assumption in which the desire which is in one is manifest and thus brought into existence. The act in this sense should be understood to be coterminous with the emergence of desire; the act is desire made manifest. It is in this sense that the Lacanian act is always, necessarily, idiotic, in the etymological sense, wherein idios would designate ‘one’s own’.

There is in the act, says Lacan, always ‘an element of structure, by the fact of concerning a real that is not self-evidently caught up in it’. This would appear to correspond to the structure we encounter in Antigone. The laws of the gods ‘speak’ from beyond, that is, on the side of the Real. Which is, of course, to say they do not in fact speak at all. They are manifest in Antigone and given expression through her act in such a way that ‘it isn’t a question of recognising something which would be entirely given, ready to be coapted’. In giving voice to the law of the gods, Antigone should be understood to have created and brought forth ‘a new presence in the world’. She should, that is, be understood to have named her desire and, moreover, assumed herself as the cause of this desire.

For Žižek, Antigone functions as the ethical example par excellence insofar as she is understood to ‘exemplify the unconditional fidelity to the Otherness of the Thing that disrupts the entire social edifice’.

Capitalising the ‘O’ of ‘Other’ in the ‘Otherness of the Thing’, Žižek can be understood to be emphasising the Thing, das Ding, as it relates to the field of the Symbolic. That is to say, das Ding as it would represent the limits of the Symbolic field, das Ding as indicative of the insistence of the lack in the Other as it is experienced by the subject. It is, as such, that das Ding would be understood as (a name for) that which would disrupt ‘the entire social edifice’.

The act, for Žižek, describes the moment of suspension of the Symbolic, the recognition of the limits of the Symbolic. In such a moment of recognition it is not that the Other would somehow be suspended to be subsequently resolved as a moment of a dialectic or integrated into a subsequent schemata. The act, for Žižek, is not a moment of Aufhebung.

Rather, in the Žižekian act, one would assume the very location of the lack which persists in the Other:“it is not so much that, in the act, I ‘sublate’/‘integrate’ the Other; it is rather that, in the act, I directly ‘am’ the Other-Thing.”

For Žižek, the ethical import of the act, (and the act is for Žižek the very definition of the ethical moment), is separated from any notion of responsibility for or towards the other. His is not an ethics of responsibility but, rather, his understanding of ethics is as the momentary and, in the moment, absolute suspension of the Symbolic order. The ethical act, for Žižek, is neither a response to the other nor a response to the Other.

The (ethical) act proper is precisely neither a response to the compassionate plea of my neighbourly semblant (the stuff of sentimental humanism), nor a response to the unfathomable Other’s call.11

Žižek contrasts this notion of the ‘ethical act’ as assumption of the lack in the Other, as the assumption of the location of das Ding, with the Derridean notion of ethics as decision. A notion described by Critchley as follows:

the political decision is made ex nihilo, and is not deduced or read off from a pre-given conception of justice or the moral law, as in Habermas, say, and yet it is not arbitrary. It is the demand provoked by the other’s decision in me that calls forth political invention, that provokes me into inventing a norm and taking a decision. The singularity of the context in which the demand arises provokes an act of invention whose criterion is universal.

Žižek perceives in this passage, and by extension, in the Derridean original, ‘two levels of the decision’.13 It is with this bifurcation of the decision that Žižek takes issue. The decision, understood as the act, would, for Žižek, have to be such that the two moments of decision he perceives in Derrida’s and Critchley’s accounts would coincide. Here, Antigone is offered as the paramount example.11

Is it not, rather, that her decision (to insist unconditionally on a proper funeral for her brother) is precisely an absolute decision in which the two dimensions of decision overlap?14

Žižek’s point here is that separating the decision into two moments, into, that is, the ‘decision to decide’ and ‘a concrete actual intervention’, is to render the decision or the act as non-absolute. That is, it is to render the act as less than an act.

The act, for Žižek, as we have seen, is situated in the moment of suspension of the Other, what he terms directly ‘being’ the ‘Other-Thing’,  the assumption by the subject of the irrecuperable rent in the social edifice.

To incorporate as a necessary aspect of the act its reinscription in the Symbolic is, for Žižek, to miss the radicality of the act.

The question which insists here is that, in divorcing the act from any reinscription in the symbolic, is not one necessarily, from a Lacanian perspective at least, rendering the act as the impossibility of the ethical?

That is to say, Žižek’s deployment of the ‘act’ appears closer to what Lacan designates as passage à l’acte, an action in which one takes flight from the Other, an action which would properly entail the, albeit momentary, dissolution of the subject and consequent impossibility of the ethical.

Phrased otherwise, the act so divorced from its reinscription is not party to a judgement which, in Lacan’s understanding, would define the ethical;

an ethics essentially consists in a judgement of our actions, with the proviso that it is only significant if the action implied by it also contains within it, or is supposed to contain, a judgement, even if it is only implicit. The presence of judgement in both sides is essential to the structure.

copjec ethics of psychoanalysis

The Ethics of Psychoanalysis

44:”Do not give way on your desire.”  … In short the ethics of psychoanalysis filiates itself with Kant’s argument that ethical progress has nothing to do with that form of progress promoted by modern industry, or the “service of good,” but is rather a matter of personal conversion, of the subjective necessity of going beyond oneself.

GAP BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND SPECIES: Freud argues that this gap can never be reabsorbed; moreover, it is the very maintenance of this gap that permits the individual subject from being annihilated by the history she inherits.

46: Creon is driven by his superego, which is that psychic agency which fosters in the subject a distaste for mundane, compromised pleasures and maintains us in a state of dissatisfaction.  Creon’s fixation on the lost object causes him to be relatively indfferent to all others available to him. He remains glued to an ideal he will never attain, since it is derived from his nostalgia for something he never possessed.

47: When she covers the exposed body of her brother, Antigone raises herself out of the conditions of naked existence to which Creon remains bound.