Table Of ContentAntigone, in
Her Unbearable
Splendor
SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory
—————
Rodolphe Gasché, editor
Antigone, in
Her Unbearable
Splendor
New Essays on Jacques Lacan’s
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
Charles Freeland
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freeland, Charles, 1947–
Antigone, in her unbearable splendor : new essays on Jacques Lacan's the Ethics
of psychoanalysis / Charles Freeland.
p. cm. — (SUNY series, Intersections: philosophy and critical theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4649-3 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Lacan, Jacques, 1901–1981. Ethique de la psychanalyse, 1959–1960.
2. Psychoanalysis—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.
BF173.L1463F74 2013
150.19'5—dc23 2012023540
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
List of Abbreviations of Works by Jacques Lacan xi
Introduction 1
1. Toward an Ethics of Psychoanalysis 13
2. Philosophy’s Preparation for Death 35
3. The “Truth about Truth” 51
4. The Knots of Moral Law and Desire 97
5. Antigone, in Her Unbearable Splendor 145
6. The Desire for Happiness and the Promise of Analysis:
Aristotle and Lacan on the Ethics of Desire 187
7. To Conclude / Not to Conclude 239
Notes 281
References 297
Index 307
Preface
“To essay” means “to attempt.” Hence, the following may be read as
“attempts” at a philosophical reading of a difficult subject: namely, the
place, the role, and the function of “ethics” in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Such a subject is best approached with a hypothesis, and my hypothesis is
that especially in his seventh seminar, entitled The Ethics of Psychoanalysis,
Lacan’s psychoanalytic teachings became more closely and more urgently
“philosophical.” The European traditions of philosophical ethics provided
Lacan with a range of concepts and vocabularies that helped him to
shape his own ideas and ideals concerning the ethics of psychoanalysis.
In this regard, Lacan’s seventh seminar was in constant dialogue with one
of philosophy’s most classical and perennial concerns: the questioning of
the conditions, the limits, the scope, and the hopes of ethical thought
and ethical life.
To test this thesis, the following essays take up key questions and
perspectives in Lacan’s work where his psychoanalytic practice both con-
fronts and opens the philosophical traditions of ethical thought to new
dimensions. The ethical ideals of self-search and of self-knowledge, the
ethical challenge that one must “take care of one’s soul,” the very question
of who or what is the ethical subject, are examples of such intersections
between the great European ethical traditions and the work of Lacanian
psychoanalysis. Likewise, the limit experiences of death, truth, desire,
transgression, and the human quest for happiness and the moral-ethical
good, are all crucial areas of ethical experience transformed by the Laca-
nian conceptual approach. One pathos, if I may so call it, that Lacan’s
seminars and the great European traditions in ethics have in common is
the notion that the human being comes into being as a subject, an ethical
subject, somehow defined by a lack, as a “soul” in search of an “object”
from which it has been separated, an object that has been lost, that shall
be forever sought but never found or fully attained. The idealizing classi-
cal European philosophical tradition might have called this the True, the
Good, and the Beautiful. But, guided by the Freudian hypothesis of the
vii
viii Preface
unconscious, Lacan began to think of it as the price, the gatekeeper’s fee
that had to be paid for this very coming into being of the subject. He has
a term for this “lost object”: he calls it objet petit a, and in various other
guises and formulations that we shall be examining, he calls it the Thing
(das Ding) and the Real, objects of fantasy and foreboding. In any case,
it is the key to understanding human desire and the essential horizons
of human moral and ethical life. The following essays thus ask whether
or not Lacan’s teachings on ethics so obviously and directly constitute an
“anti-philosophy” or whether they succeed in putting the philosophical
questioning of moral and ethical life on a wider stage.
A couple of notes regarding the text: These essays were first pre-
sented as lectures given over the course of three seminars, the first of
which was held at Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, in 2006; the
second, a three-day seminar to which I was invited by of the Department
of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo
in October of 2007; and the third, another seminar that again convened
at Thammasat University, Bangkok, in December of 2008. The partici-
pants in those seminars, Krzysztof Ziarek, Ewa Ziarek, David Miller,
and David Johnson, to name just a few, provided much valuable criti-
cisms and questions that helped enormously in the development of this
project. I especially thank Distinguished Professor Rodolphe Gasché, not
only for his part in organizing the SUNY Buffalo seminars, but also for
his encouragement in getting these lectures rewritten for their eventual
publication as a book.
Because I do not take Lacan to have been a systematic thinker, I
have decided to present my readings in the form of a collection of essays
rather than as chapters in a continuously and systematically developed
narrative. Each essay takes up the question of the philosophical or “anti-
philosophical” dimensions of Lacan’s ethics of psychoanalysis in terms of
certain key concepts, sources, and texts to which he returned again and
again over the course of his seminars. An overall chronological approach
has been adopted in the order of presentation of these essays. The first
essays concern the earlier seminars, especially Seminar VII, and the later
essays deal with seminars and essays from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The essays try to develop working definitions of some of Lacan’s termi-
nology as it is pertinent to the perspective under discussion, so readers
unfamiliar with such terminology might benefit by reading these essays in
the order of their presentation. Readers more familiar with the Lacanian
discourse may read the essays in any order they wish.
Preface ix
Please also note that references to Lacan’s published seminars have
been given in the text and not as endnotes. The references appear in the
following example: (S7: 35). The “S” refers to “Seminar,” the number to
the numbered book of the seminar. In this case, S7 refers to Lacan’s
seventh seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. The number(s) following
the colon refer to the page number. I have used the standard English
translations for Lacan’s seminars where they are available. In some of
these translations, the pagination in the French text is also given. Where
the French pagination references are available, I have also given them.
For the convenience of the reader, references to Sophocles’ plays are also
given in the text.
I have also chosen to italicize the word jouissance to show that it is
a foreign word, in this case, a French word. I realize that many English
translations of Lacan’s terminology do not do this, but I have chosen
to do so because there is no exact English translation for this overde-
termined French word, and so I have left it as a French word and have
accordingly italicized it.
Finally, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the editors
and staff at SUNY Press, Albany NY, for all their efforts and patience
in working with me in the preparation of this volume. If the devils are
in the details, then it took the angels at SUNY Press to help me find a
way to overcome them.
