Abstract
Jacques Lacan’s 1959–60 seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis is rich in ideas and deserves a very careful commentary, the kind that Bill Richardson has undertaken so successfully over the years. Even so, what I propose to do here is much more modest; I would like to highlight some of the key elements of Lacan’s discussion in the last section of the seminar and suggest a possibly illuminating parallel between Lacan and Heidegger.
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Notes
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VI: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959–1960, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 1992, p. 314. Hereafter referred to as The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.
William J. Richardson, “Ethics and Desire,” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 47: 4 (1987), pp. 298–299.
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis,p. 319. Porter renders cèdè sur in this line as “having given ground relative to one’s desire.” Throughout this essay, I have modified Porter’s text by following Richardson who translates this key line as “to have compromised one’s desire.”
Ibid.,p. 321.
Ibid.,p. 319.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.,p. 321.
Ibid.,p. 323.
Ibid.,p. 321.
Ibid.,p. 314.
Ibid.,p. 315.
Ibid.,p. 303.
See esp. William J. Richardson, “Psychoanalysis and the Being-question,” in Interpreting Lacan,ed. Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan, Psychiatry and the Humanities,Vol. 6 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 139–159. Of course, in some instances, Lacan explicitly acknowledged his indebtedness to Heidegger.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson ( New York: Harper & Row, 1962 ).
Ibid.,p. 151; Heidegger’s emphasis.
Ibid.,p. 164; Heidegger’s emphasis.
Ibid.,p. 166.
Another especially relevant text is Heidegger’s 1936 lecture course on Schelling [Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom,trans. Joan Stambaugh (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985)]. In the course of his commentary, Heidegger describes the “average man” as evading the “moment” of “resoluteness” in which he must “wrest his truth.” The “average man” defines himself vaguely and “recognizes himself complacently without further ado” (p. 155). “Only a few” are capable of such moment-ous resoluteness, Heidegger maintains, and such is the nature of “heroism”: “the clearest knowledge of the uniqueness of the existence taken upon oneself, the steadiest resolution to bring the path of this existence over its apex, the certainty which remains unmoved by its own greatness, and, lastly and firstly, the ability to be silent, never to say what the will truly knows and wants” (p. 157; slightly modified).
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis,p. 294.
Ibid.,p. 325; slightly modified.
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Capobianco, R. (1995). Lacan and Heidegger: The Ethics of Desire and the Ethics of Authenticity. In: Babich, B.E. (eds) From Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy, and Desire. Phaenomenologica, vol 133. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1624-6_25
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