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Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan
The idea of Kantian ethics is both simple and it proposes a moral law independent of any notion of a pre-established Good or any ‘human inclination’ such as love, sympathy or fear. In attempting to interpret such a revolutionary proposition in a more ‘humane’ light, and to turn Kant into our contemporary—someone who can help us with our own ethical dilemmas—many Kantian scholars have glossed over its apparent paradoxes and impossible claims. This book is concerned with doing exactly the opposite. Kant, thank God, is not our contemporary; he stands against the grain of our times.
Lacan on the face of it appears the very antithesis of Kant—the wild theorist of psychoanalysis compared to the sober Enlightenment thinker. His concept of the Real, however, provides perhaps the most useful backdrop to this new interpretation of Kantian ethics. Constantly juxtaposing her readings of the two philosophers. Alenka Zupan?i? summons up an ‘ethics of the Real’, and clears the ground for a radical restoration of the disruptive element in ethics.
Lacan on the face of it appears the very antithesis of Kant—the wild theorist of psychoanalysis compared to the sober Enlightenment thinker. His concept of the Real, however, provides perhaps the most useful backdrop to this new interpretation of Kantian ethics. Constantly juxtaposing her readings of the two philosophers. Alenka Zupan?i? summons up an ‘ethics of the Real’, and clears the ground for a radical restoration of the disruptive element in ethics.
284 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Alenka Zupančič
36 books260 followersAlenka Zupančič is a Slovenian philosopher whose work focuses on psychoanalysis and continental philosophy.
Born in Ljubljana, Zupančič graduated at the University of Ljubljana in 1990. She is currently a full-time researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a visiting professor at the European Graduate School. Zupančič belongs to the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, which is known for its predominantly Lacanian foundations. Her philosophy was strongly influenced by Slovenian Lacanian scholars, especially Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek.
Zupančič has written on several topics including ethics, literature, comedy, love and other topics. She is most renowned as a Nietzsche scholar, but Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henri Bergson and Alain Badiou are also referenced in her work.
Born in Ljubljana, Zupančič graduated at the University of Ljubljana in 1990. She is currently a full-time researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a visiting professor at the European Graduate School. Zupančič belongs to the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, which is known for its predominantly Lacanian foundations. Her philosophy was strongly influenced by Slovenian Lacanian scholars, especially Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek.
Zupančič has written on several topics including ethics, literature, comedy, love and other topics. She is most renowned as a Nietzsche scholar, but Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henri Bergson and Alain Badiou are also referenced in her work.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
July 4, 2018
Sapere aude + ne pas ceder sur son desir = ∞!
Everything recommends this work. In an arch-Hegelian twist (in that Hegel is hardly mentioned here) Zupancic rescues Kant from his own contorted deadlocks by discerning in them a summons for Lacanian dis-tensioning. Where Kant thought he ought to find God and immortality guiding mor(t)al action—and, true to dogma, asserted he did, The Void be damned!—Zupancic shines the luminary Lacan to reveal the shadow of the Real behind these fantasies. Kant desired a supreme guarantor of the Good first; Lacan teaches that this Other of the Other is the (barred) Subject herself imbued with all the Radical Evil of freedom who thus makes Good apres-coup.
The mélange served up by the Slovenian School continues to provide the most abundant theoretical nourishment for practical daring and audacious thinking in a time of postmodern quiescence. To the teeth-gnashing “WHAT IS TO BE DONE?!” comes the response, “The doers will discover themselves in what gets done, but nothing will get done without doers to seize the need to do.” Published almost simultaneously with Zupancic’s book was Zizek’s The Ticklish Subject. Both mobilize Badiou’s notions of being, truth, and event, without overtaxing them. Zupancic’s focus contrasts nicely with Zizek’s freneticism; if the latter simply has too much on his mind, the former makes clear precisely what she has in mind. One need not have read all Kant to comprehend (or is it apprehend…?). The bulk of the first seven chapters are given primarily to introducing and developing the Kantian ethical apparatus, with occasional references to kindred concepts in Lacan, and secondarily to illustrative literary excursions via Moliere’s Don Juan and Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons. The long eighth chapter, “Ethics and Tragedy in Psychoanalysis,” provides the most sustained engagement with Lacan through readings of (his speaking of) Oedipus and Synge de Coufontaine. The effect is galvanizing.
I believe this excerpt is an exemplary summation:
“This is why (cf. previous 94 pages) we have to maintain that it is only the act which opens up a universal horizon or posits the universal, not that the latter, being already established, allows us to ‘guess’ what our duty is, and delivers a guarantee against misrecognizing it. At the same time, this theoretical stance has the advantage of making it impossible for the subject to assume the perverse attitude we discussed in Chapter 3 (“The Lie,” “The Sadeian Trap”: I use my duty as an excuse for my actions): the subject cannot hide behind her duty—she is responsible for what she refers to as her duty.”
----------------------------------
Reaffirming all the above, plus a few notes on my second reading: I cannot overemphasize just how trenchant is Zupancic’s writing, almost taboo for this type and pitch of philosophizing. She ranges widely across the already dauntingly vast works of Kant and Lacan to hunt down the most telling and tastiest bits, leaving us lucky scavengers stuffed with her seasoned experience. The sections typically open with the presentation of a problem or question which is then assembled with the materials of the source texts, then with everything thus laid out she will provide a pedagogic summary reiterating the findings (a model of exposition in which the restatements are hardly repetitions of established points but slight twists revealing facet after facet), and conclude by mediating the findings through the pressing contemporary problematic of ethics, extrapolating and setting the stage for the next section. The immersive flow makes my notes and extracts seem stilted and obtuse in comparison.
The big question of ethics—what is good?—simply cannot be broached without first defining the subject supposed to act AND the process by which they constitute and (mis)recognize the parameters of their possible action. Ergo: philosophy, psychoanalysis, and politics (poetry is there, too). Anguish and guilt over the rectitude of our actions makes no sense if we are not free, yet the overhasty exculpation offered by a deterministic worldview (whether theist or vulgar materialist) only buries guilt under the “bad infinity” of egoistic exploits. This cynical all-too-human alibi is the oldest and laziest trick whereby the impossibility of proving freedom exists is twisted into the inevitability of hedonistic relativism: regardless of our highfaluting aspirations, we all only do the good that brings us pleasure. So the first condition for a discourse of ethics is not to establish an authoritative list of pragmatic prescriptions but rather to flesh out the ontological horizons of subjectivity and objectivity, the finite and infinite, sublime and ridiculous, desire and drive. Zupancic navigates these straits with enviable ease.
Everything recommends this work. In an arch-Hegelian twist (in that Hegel is hardly mentioned here) Zupancic rescues Kant from his own contorted deadlocks by discerning in them a summons for Lacanian dis-tensioning. Where Kant thought he ought to find God and immortality guiding mor(t)al action—and, true to dogma, asserted he did, The Void be damned!—Zupancic shines the luminary Lacan to reveal the shadow of the Real behind these fantasies. Kant desired a supreme guarantor of the Good first; Lacan teaches that this Other of the Other is the (barred) Subject herself imbued with all the Radical Evil of freedom who thus makes Good apres-coup.
The mélange served up by the Slovenian School continues to provide the most abundant theoretical nourishment for practical daring and audacious thinking in a time of postmodern quiescence. To the teeth-gnashing “WHAT IS TO BE DONE?!” comes the response, “The doers will discover themselves in what gets done, but nothing will get done without doers to seize the need to do.” Published almost simultaneously with Zupancic’s book was Zizek’s The Ticklish Subject. Both mobilize Badiou’s notions of being, truth, and event, without overtaxing them. Zupancic’s focus contrasts nicely with Zizek’s freneticism; if the latter simply has too much on his mind, the former makes clear precisely what she has in mind. One need not have read all Kant to comprehend (or is it apprehend…?). The bulk of the first seven chapters are given primarily to introducing and developing the Kantian ethical apparatus, with occasional references to kindred concepts in Lacan, and secondarily to illustrative literary excursions via Moliere’s Don Juan and Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons. The long eighth chapter, “Ethics and Tragedy in Psychoanalysis,” provides the most sustained engagement with Lacan through readings of (his speaking of) Oedipus and Synge de Coufontaine. The effect is galvanizing.
I believe this excerpt is an exemplary summation:
“This is why (cf. previous 94 pages) we have to maintain that it is only the act which opens up a universal horizon or posits the universal, not that the latter, being already established, allows us to ‘guess’ what our duty is, and delivers a guarantee against misrecognizing it. At the same time, this theoretical stance has the advantage of making it impossible for the subject to assume the perverse attitude we discussed in Chapter 3 (“The Lie,” “The Sadeian Trap”: I use my duty as an excuse for my actions): the subject cannot hide behind her duty—she is responsible for what she refers to as her duty.”
----------------------------------
Reaffirming all the above, plus a few notes on my second reading: I cannot overemphasize just how trenchant is Zupancic’s writing, almost taboo for this type and pitch of philosophizing. She ranges widely across the already dauntingly vast works of Kant and Lacan to hunt down the most telling and tastiest bits, leaving us lucky scavengers stuffed with her seasoned experience. The sections typically open with the presentation of a problem or question which is then assembled with the materials of the source texts, then with everything thus laid out she will provide a pedagogic summary reiterating the findings (a model of exposition in which the restatements are hardly repetitions of established points but slight twists revealing facet after facet), and conclude by mediating the findings through the pressing contemporary problematic of ethics, extrapolating and setting the stage for the next section. The immersive flow makes my notes and extracts seem stilted and obtuse in comparison.
The big question of ethics—what is good?—simply cannot be broached without first defining the subject supposed to act AND the process by which they constitute and (mis)recognize the parameters of their possible action. Ergo: philosophy, psychoanalysis, and politics (poetry is there, too). Anguish and guilt over the rectitude of our actions makes no sense if we are not free, yet the overhasty exculpation offered by a deterministic worldview (whether theist or vulgar materialist) only buries guilt under the “bad infinity” of egoistic exploits. This cynical all-too-human alibi is the oldest and laziest trick whereby the impossibility of proving freedom exists is twisted into the inevitability of hedonistic relativism: regardless of our highfaluting aspirations, we all only do the good that brings us pleasure. So the first condition for a discourse of ethics is not to establish an authoritative list of pragmatic prescriptions but rather to flesh out the ontological horizons of subjectivity and objectivity, the finite and infinite, sublime and ridiculous, desire and drive. Zupancic navigates these straits with enviable ease.
January 27, 2021
Update 2025 Re-Read:
Just as good if not better the second time around!
Zupančič has quickly become my favorite Lacanian.
I find her writing positively thrilling to read and ponder.
She manages to provide as clear a grasp of Lacan's ideas as you could hope for.
Without oversimplifying them.
In fact, while leaving much of what's uniquely magical about them in tact.
There are already great summaries/highlights of this book to be found here in reviews.
Here are two if interested:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The only thing you really need to know is that if you have any interest in Kant or Lacan or ethics (or importantly, how you might learn to live within your life with some sense of accepted agency) you should have already stopped reading this review, clicked the tab closed, and immediately started searching for a copy of this book that you could start reading.
What... you're STILL here reading this? Go!
Just as good if not better the second time around!
Zupančič has quickly become my favorite Lacanian.
I find her writing positively thrilling to read and ponder.
She manages to provide as clear a grasp of Lacan's ideas as you could hope for.
Without oversimplifying them.
In fact, while leaving much of what's uniquely magical about them in tact.
There are already great summaries/highlights of this book to be found here in reviews.
Here are two if interested:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The only thing you really need to know is that if you have any interest in Kant or Lacan or ethics (or importantly, how you might learn to live within your life with some sense of accepted agency) you should have already stopped reading this review, clicked the tab closed, and immediately started searching for a copy of this book that you could start reading.
What... you're STILL here reading this? Go!
February 12, 2025
Zupančič is the queen of Lacanian theory (and can share the throne with Joan Copjec). I’m pretty sure I haven’t understood all intricacies of her arguments (especially due to my lacking knowledge of Kant), but the main gist is very convincing. The aim of the book is to develop a Kantian/Lacanian ethics of the Real, as the Real is often excluded in more traditional ethical theories. Importantly, it is not an ethics of striving towards the Real (which would paradoxically kill it), but it is an ethics which takes the Real into account as a structural possibility. This consequently makes ethics fundamentally excessive and impossible by nature. Zupančič thus aims to “[…] provide a conceptual framework for an ethics which refuses to be an ethics based on the discourse of the master [as the discourse of the master would equal following social norms or legal structures], but which equally refuses the unsatisfactory option of a postmodern ethics based on the reduction of the ultimate horizon of the ethical to ‘one’s own life’ [which would overly rely on one’s subjectivity and not take the social into account]“ (p. 5) [parenthesis added].
As one needs a degree of freedom to act ethically, Zupančič starts with the question of freedom for Kant and Lacan. Clearly, freedom is not acting in accordance with one’s desires, as one has no control over desire, as it is rather our desires that at times control us. Being less controlled by one’s desires - which Kant describes reductively as psychological freedom – is therefore not a helpful path to take. One rather becomes free when one recognizes that the Other does not exist, that there is no Other of the Other, and that one’s subjectivity is structured around a lack. Recognizing that the Other does not exist more specifically means a refusal of the concept of the Other, which is different from a vague awareness that ‘in the end, nobody knows what they want/are doing/what is good or evil after all.’ This vague awareness is precisely what causes anxiety, as this fundamental indeterminacy does not allow one to escape the responsibility of ethics. A refusal of the Other is what reduces anxiety and gives the subject a sense of certainty. In other words, the subject becomes ethical when they recognize that they need to become their own cause (in accordance with Freud’s wo es war, soll ich werden). This can be helped by encounters with the Real, as they pose the following question onto us: “will I act in conformity to what threw me 'out of joint', will I be ready to reformulate what has hitherto been the foundation of my existence?” (p. 235).
Zupančič finally pleas for an ethics of the impossible, to be more precise, the impossibility of the drive (and not the impossibility of desire). This coincides with an ethics of a loss of self: of objectifying oneself to go beyond one’s subjective - in Kantian terms pathological – desires to find a partial enjoyment. This is a ‘desubjectivized subject:’ a subject who becomes objectified, and therefore detached from subjective desires. More pragmatically, this means a passage to the end of one’s desire, to arrive at the drive: the surplus-enjoyment that comes as a side-product from following the circuit of the drive.
As stated beautifully by Zupančič: “To sum up: 'wanting jouissance' maintains us on the side of desire, whereas 'realizing desire' transposes us to the side of the jouissance” (p. 255). In other words: trying hard to find enjoyment is doomed to fail, whereas understanding that desire is infinite and without an object transpose one to the domain of enjoyment. Very similar to understandings of enjoyment as found in certain Zen-Buddhist traditions, which probably means that we can either go into psychoanalytic therapy, read a lot of tragedies (like Antigone or Hamlet), or we can find enjoyment if we spend enough time on a meditation pillow. It was new to me that Lacan has phrased this beautifully in terms of ‘abyssal realization:’ realizing that there is nothing (a mere abyss) is what paradoxically opens up the domain of the impossible (and therefore of everything) (p. 256).
Side note: the section on the Kantian and Lacanian sublime (p. 149 – 160) is in particular worth reading, even on it’s own, just like Zupančič’ link between an ethical act and terror (p. 216), and the short section on the double, sameness and difference (p. 226).
The book is written in an extraordinary clear style as well. It’s truly an inspiring read and has given me a lot to chew on.
As one needs a degree of freedom to act ethically, Zupančič starts with the question of freedom for Kant and Lacan. Clearly, freedom is not acting in accordance with one’s desires, as one has no control over desire, as it is rather our desires that at times control us. Being less controlled by one’s desires - which Kant describes reductively as psychological freedom – is therefore not a helpful path to take. One rather becomes free when one recognizes that the Other does not exist, that there is no Other of the Other, and that one’s subjectivity is structured around a lack. Recognizing that the Other does not exist more specifically means a refusal of the concept of the Other, which is different from a vague awareness that ‘in the end, nobody knows what they want/are doing/what is good or evil after all.’ This vague awareness is precisely what causes anxiety, as this fundamental indeterminacy does not allow one to escape the responsibility of ethics. A refusal of the Other is what reduces anxiety and gives the subject a sense of certainty. In other words, the subject becomes ethical when they recognize that they need to become their own cause (in accordance with Freud’s wo es war, soll ich werden). This can be helped by encounters with the Real, as they pose the following question onto us: “will I act in conformity to what threw me 'out of joint', will I be ready to reformulate what has hitherto been the foundation of my existence?” (p. 235).
Zupančič finally pleas for an ethics of the impossible, to be more precise, the impossibility of the drive (and not the impossibility of desire). This coincides with an ethics of a loss of self: of objectifying oneself to go beyond one’s subjective - in Kantian terms pathological – desires to find a partial enjoyment. This is a ‘desubjectivized subject:’ a subject who becomes objectified, and therefore detached from subjective desires. More pragmatically, this means a passage to the end of one’s desire, to arrive at the drive: the surplus-enjoyment that comes as a side-product from following the circuit of the drive.
As stated beautifully by Zupančič: “To sum up: 'wanting jouissance' maintains us on the side of desire, whereas 'realizing desire' transposes us to the side of the jouissance” (p. 255). In other words: trying hard to find enjoyment is doomed to fail, whereas understanding that desire is infinite and without an object transpose one to the domain of enjoyment. Very similar to understandings of enjoyment as found in certain Zen-Buddhist traditions, which probably means that we can either go into psychoanalytic therapy, read a lot of tragedies (like Antigone or Hamlet), or we can find enjoyment if we spend enough time on a meditation pillow. It was new to me that Lacan has phrased this beautifully in terms of ‘abyssal realization:’ realizing that there is nothing (a mere abyss) is what paradoxically opens up the domain of the impossible (and therefore of everything) (p. 256).
Side note: the section on the Kantian and Lacanian sublime (p. 149 – 160) is in particular worth reading, even on it’s own, just like Zupančič’ link between an ethical act and terror (p. 216), and the short section on the double, sameness and difference (p. 226).
The book is written in an extraordinary clear style as well. It’s truly an inspiring read and has given me a lot to chew on.
October 21, 2024
اخلاقیات امر واقعی: کانت، لاکان/ آلنکا زوپانچیچ/ علی حسن زاده/ نشر آگاه
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در آغاز بحثمان دربارهی تراژدی، پیشنهاد کردیم که نوعی سهگانه وجود دارد که میتوان میانِ ادیپ، هملت و سیگنه برقرار کرد. سهگانهای که دقیقاً نتیجهی تغییر در جایگاه دانش است. میتوانیم در سیگنه دوکوفونتن، ادیپی را ببینیم که در لحظهی سرنوشتساز نمایشنامه میداند که در شرف کشتن پدرش و همخوابگی با مادرش است؛ که در شرف انجام دادن آن کاری ست که بر همهی باورهایش خط بطلان میکشد، بیآنکه به لطف این دانش بتواند از چنگ فجایع این اعمال بگریزد بلکه، بیشتر، خود را در وضعیتی مییابد که در آن خود این دانش او را وا میدارد تا تصمیم ارتکاب به آنها را بگیرد. ادیپ پدرش را میکشد و با مادرش همخوابه میشود چون نمیداند. هملت تردید میکند؛ عمل کردن را به نمیتواند به گردن گیرد چون میداند (که دیگری میداند). سیگنه برعکس خود را در وضعیتی مییابد که باید به رغم این دانش تصمیم به عمل کردن بگیرد و مرتکب همان عملی شود که این دانش امکانناپذیرش میسازد. اخلاقیات مدرن باید در این بعد قرار داده شود.
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در آغاز بحثمان دربارهی تراژدی، پیشنهاد کردیم که نوعی سهگانه وجود دارد که میتوان میانِ ادیپ، هملت و سیگنه برقرار کرد. سهگانهای که دقیقاً نتیجهی تغییر در جایگاه دانش است. میتوانیم در سیگنه دوکوفونتن، ادیپی را ببینیم که در لحظهی سرنوشتساز نمایشنامه میداند که در شرف کشتن پدرش و همخوابگی با مادرش است؛ که در شرف انجام دادن آن کاری ست که بر همهی باورهایش خط بطلان میکشد، بیآنکه به لطف این دانش بتواند از چنگ فجایع این اعمال بگریزد بلکه، بیشتر، خود را در وضعیتی مییابد که در آن خود این دانش او را وا میدارد تا تصمیم ارتکاب به آنها را بگیرد. ادیپ پدرش را میکشد و با مادرش همخوابه میشود چون نمیداند. هملت تردید میکند؛ عمل کردن را به نمیتواند به گردن گیرد چون میداند (که دیگری میداند). سیگنه برعکس خود را در وضعیتی مییابد که باید به رغم این دانش تصمیم به عمل کردن بگیرد و مرتکب همان عملی شود که این دانش امکانناپذیرش میسازد. اخلاقیات مدرن باید در این بعد قرار داده شود.
October 20, 2008
One of the all time best books I've ever read. Severely underrated. Zizek said he was jealous of it. Best secondary text on Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason' I've ever read. (Thierry de Deuve's 'Kant after Duchamp' is the best one I've seen on Kant's 'Critique of Judgement') and clearest and most thorough explanation of Lacan's important essay "Kant avec Sade," finally available in English many many years after it's French publication.(Bruce Fink's new complete, unabridged translation of Ecrits). For a while the only available English translation of Lacan's essay had to be photocopied from libraries from back issues of October magazine.
May 15, 2026
Love her arguments to the point of wanting to recite them aloud until they stick forever. This is scholarship of the highest order - the kind one can only dream of. Hats off to the queen
March 7, 2022
For me as a person to emerge, the perspective of the other still has to be ‘perspectivized’ back by myself. I have to see the Other’s point of view on me. Similarly, in Kant, for the point of view of reason on the understanding to impact the activity of the understanding, it has to be seen by the understanding as well. This glimpse caught by the understanding of reason’s point of view is properly transcendental. This leads us to the schema of the Ego-Ideal in Lacan’s Ecrits:
http://liliane.fainsilber.free.fr/lec...
The vase on the left is upside down with flowers on top and a concave mirror next to it, further on the left. In Kantianese, the flowers are nothing with something around it, in other words transcendental unity of apperception itself, which I never see as such, because it is the unity of thought and thought is what I ‘think’ through. It is like making your voice, the means of your speech, the object of it. The spherical mirror unites what is reflected onto it into a totality, but as what is reflected onto it is in my back, I need a second mirror (the flat one in the middle) in which I can see the totality and myself included in it as subject ‘among the flowers’ as Lacan puts it. I couldn’t do it by just turning around and looking into the curved mirror on the left, because I don’t simply want to see: I rather want to see what seeing does to what is seen.
About Kant and Sade: the essential thing here is unfortunately you can only torture someone as long as his body remains alive. The body is not made to the measure of enjoyment. It has to be supplemented by fantasies, in which torture could go on infinitely. Kant makes a similar point with the postulate of the immortality of the soul, as a condition of possibility of the Supreme Good, which is noumenal in nature. It is crucial to remember that neither radical evil, nor the supreme good are phenomenal entities. It is the difference between radical evil and other forms evil (frailty, wickedness and corruption). A common misconception about the categorical imperative states that it provides us with a means of testing the morality of our actions but it is exactly the opposite: the act comes first. The universal to which we have to conform our action doesn’t precede it: it is posited by the act itself. Which is why Kant doesn’t allow one to hide himself behind his own duty (‘I’m only doing my duty’). This has a nice connection with the Lacanian notion that there is a difference between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the statement: here, the ethical subject would be the subject of the statement as an act or rather: in matters of ethics, the two subjects have to coincide; there is no ethical act without a subject who is equal to his act. It is a process of subjectivation (insofar as it produces a subject) without subject (starting from nothing). But where Lacan departs from Kantian orthodoxy is when he introduces the notion of jouissance (enjoyment) as another force that can make us go against our pathological interests and well-being aside from moral law. Jouissance makes the Real the object of the will. However, Lacanian ethics are closer to Kantian ethics than it may first seem: Kant indeed defines morality as a non-pathological determination of actions, and finds it paradoxical. Usually, the subject is affected by a certain representation which gets him moving towards the actualization of this representation, making the representation both the cause and the goal of his action. Therefore, Kant’s difficulty is going to consist in finding another mode of causality that is foreign to representation and here, morality and affection exactly map onto the Lacanian dichotomy of desire and drive. Desire is in the realm of the symbolic: desire is always the desire of the Other, it has a representation of its object and tends to it without ever reaching it. Drive, on the other hand, belongs to the Real, and it is free of representation (indeed, the Real is what escapes representation or symbolization by definition) and even more than that, it doesn’t share the two-fold structure of desire, with an itinerary leading to a certain goal which is satisfaction of the desire. With drive, the satisfaction coincides with the itinerary itself. Satisfaction of the drive, in other words, is unavoidable. This is exactly how Kant defines respect: not the drive to morality, but morality itself. Respect is the leftover quantum of affect that is no longer pathological, subject to a sort of ethical transubstantiation. Here, we find a connection between the feeling of respect and the experience of the sublime: with respect, I watch myself being humiliated by the moral law, both inside and outside myself, just like when I witness a hurricane toy with a car from a safe place. With the sublime, I discover something inside myself that is more powerful than what I see outside (a phenomenon). It is finality within (transcendental subject as in possession of the Ideas of reason) and not without (the feeling experienced in the beautiful that what I consider beautiful has an end though I don’t know what). In short, with the beautiful, we get the feeling that nature knows what it is doing, while with the sublime, we feel nature enjoys; on the one hand, with have a senseful form, on the other, a senseless one (pure waste and discharge of raw energy: a hurricane). And similarly, in the end, we have actually two Kantian versions of the moral law: the moral law in a void, experienced precisely as a lack of motive and another one, the moral law of the Metaphysics of Morals, with its voice and its gaze (two Lacanian objects par excellence), which is a kind of instance of Superego. And here we come back to the reason why the categorical imperative is not a test: it doesn’t tell you what to do, but how you do it. But the ‘it’ remains an enigma, since we know pure conformity to the law is not going to secure its coming about, due to the formal identity between highest good and radical evil. So I go through a series of failure (‘that’s not it’, ‘try again’) not because I don’t know the moral law/the big Other doesn’t exist, but precisely because I know it, and that very negative certainty gives my actions a compass. If anything, the guilt that I consequently experience is only to make the Other forget that he doesn’t exist. It is only with his act that the subject creates what the Other/the law wants. This is the crucial point here. And it explains much of what there is to understand about Oedipus.
It is not true, to begin with, that Oedipus finally identifies with his destiny. He doesn’t recognize who he is, but refuses to see it (he blinds himself), but in another way, he embraces something else, namely his symptom; he has been blind to the meaning of his actions all the time (because he is born in the Real and not in the symbolic, so his process of subjectivation runs backward to ours) and at the end, he literally blinds himself. In Zizekese, we can literally say that he enjoys his symptom. The tragedy of Oedipus is that of a man who enters the symbolic order. This is shown for instance by the fact that Oedipus doesn’t kill the monster like all other mythological heroes but says a word – just one word – to it and it disappears without a remainder, without bloodshed. The whole point of the Oedipal myth in psychoanalysis is that the symbolic value of the Father or Mother is never its Real value, or, in Hegelese: the spirit is a bone. But with Oedipus, Lacan argues, it is just the opposite that happens: he first comes across his father as his Real father (the aggressive stranger at a crossroads) and only then identifies the individual as his symbolic father. In Hegelese, what Oedipus realizes is rather that the bone is spirit. He doesn’t kill his father as the symbolic agency of the moral law it embodies in Freud, the one who has the phallus, but as the empirical father who, of course, is not equal to his task. The other thing with the Oedipus myth is the importance of the contingency of signifiers, or one’s own role in the constitution of meaning. And here we have a nice, Kripkean point: in order for the meaning to be fixed, an act on the part of the subject is required, and a Lacanian act at that, for an ‘act’ is always what changes the coordinates of the symbolic order (which is why Lacan argues suicide is the ultimate act). The oracle only mentions the father and the mother attributively and not referentially, so to speak.
There is much more in this book than I have cared to summarize here. There are studies of Valmont, Don Juan, observations on modern ethics (how the infinite parasitizes the finite: with desire and drive) and ideas about Lacan’s relationship to Heidegger being quite different from what you think, but this is also supposed to make you want to read it and I only wrote down the points I found most useful and illuminating to me.
http://liliane.fainsilber.free.fr/lec...
The vase on the left is upside down with flowers on top and a concave mirror next to it, further on the left. In Kantianese, the flowers are nothing with something around it, in other words transcendental unity of apperception itself, which I never see as such, because it is the unity of thought and thought is what I ‘think’ through. It is like making your voice, the means of your speech, the object of it. The spherical mirror unites what is reflected onto it into a totality, but as what is reflected onto it is in my back, I need a second mirror (the flat one in the middle) in which I can see the totality and myself included in it as subject ‘among the flowers’ as Lacan puts it. I couldn’t do it by just turning around and looking into the curved mirror on the left, because I don’t simply want to see: I rather want to see what seeing does to what is seen.
About Kant and Sade: the essential thing here is unfortunately you can only torture someone as long as his body remains alive. The body is not made to the measure of enjoyment. It has to be supplemented by fantasies, in which torture could go on infinitely. Kant makes a similar point with the postulate of the immortality of the soul, as a condition of possibility of the Supreme Good, which is noumenal in nature. It is crucial to remember that neither radical evil, nor the supreme good are phenomenal entities. It is the difference between radical evil and other forms evil (frailty, wickedness and corruption). A common misconception about the categorical imperative states that it provides us with a means of testing the morality of our actions but it is exactly the opposite: the act comes first. The universal to which we have to conform our action doesn’t precede it: it is posited by the act itself. Which is why Kant doesn’t allow one to hide himself behind his own duty (‘I’m only doing my duty’). This has a nice connection with the Lacanian notion that there is a difference between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the statement: here, the ethical subject would be the subject of the statement as an act or rather: in matters of ethics, the two subjects have to coincide; there is no ethical act without a subject who is equal to his act. It is a process of subjectivation (insofar as it produces a subject) without subject (starting from nothing). But where Lacan departs from Kantian orthodoxy is when he introduces the notion of jouissance (enjoyment) as another force that can make us go against our pathological interests and well-being aside from moral law. Jouissance makes the Real the object of the will. However, Lacanian ethics are closer to Kantian ethics than it may first seem: Kant indeed defines morality as a non-pathological determination of actions, and finds it paradoxical. Usually, the subject is affected by a certain representation which gets him moving towards the actualization of this representation, making the representation both the cause and the goal of his action. Therefore, Kant’s difficulty is going to consist in finding another mode of causality that is foreign to representation and here, morality and affection exactly map onto the Lacanian dichotomy of desire and drive. Desire is in the realm of the symbolic: desire is always the desire of the Other, it has a representation of its object and tends to it without ever reaching it. Drive, on the other hand, belongs to the Real, and it is free of representation (indeed, the Real is what escapes representation or symbolization by definition) and even more than that, it doesn’t share the two-fold structure of desire, with an itinerary leading to a certain goal which is satisfaction of the desire. With drive, the satisfaction coincides with the itinerary itself. Satisfaction of the drive, in other words, is unavoidable. This is exactly how Kant defines respect: not the drive to morality, but morality itself. Respect is the leftover quantum of affect that is no longer pathological, subject to a sort of ethical transubstantiation. Here, we find a connection between the feeling of respect and the experience of the sublime: with respect, I watch myself being humiliated by the moral law, both inside and outside myself, just like when I witness a hurricane toy with a car from a safe place. With the sublime, I discover something inside myself that is more powerful than what I see outside (a phenomenon). It is finality within (transcendental subject as in possession of the Ideas of reason) and not without (the feeling experienced in the beautiful that what I consider beautiful has an end though I don’t know what). In short, with the beautiful, we get the feeling that nature knows what it is doing, while with the sublime, we feel nature enjoys; on the one hand, with have a senseful form, on the other, a senseless one (pure waste and discharge of raw energy: a hurricane). And similarly, in the end, we have actually two Kantian versions of the moral law: the moral law in a void, experienced precisely as a lack of motive and another one, the moral law of the Metaphysics of Morals, with its voice and its gaze (two Lacanian objects par excellence), which is a kind of instance of Superego. And here we come back to the reason why the categorical imperative is not a test: it doesn’t tell you what to do, but how you do it. But the ‘it’ remains an enigma, since we know pure conformity to the law is not going to secure its coming about, due to the formal identity between highest good and radical evil. So I go through a series of failure (‘that’s not it’, ‘try again’) not because I don’t know the moral law/the big Other doesn’t exist, but precisely because I know it, and that very negative certainty gives my actions a compass. If anything, the guilt that I consequently experience is only to make the Other forget that he doesn’t exist. It is only with his act that the subject creates what the Other/the law wants. This is the crucial point here. And it explains much of what there is to understand about Oedipus.
It is not true, to begin with, that Oedipus finally identifies with his destiny. He doesn’t recognize who he is, but refuses to see it (he blinds himself), but in another way, he embraces something else, namely his symptom; he has been blind to the meaning of his actions all the time (because he is born in the Real and not in the symbolic, so his process of subjectivation runs backward to ours) and at the end, he literally blinds himself. In Zizekese, we can literally say that he enjoys his symptom. The tragedy of Oedipus is that of a man who enters the symbolic order. This is shown for instance by the fact that Oedipus doesn’t kill the monster like all other mythological heroes but says a word – just one word – to it and it disappears without a remainder, without bloodshed. The whole point of the Oedipal myth in psychoanalysis is that the symbolic value of the Father or Mother is never its Real value, or, in Hegelese: the spirit is a bone. But with Oedipus, Lacan argues, it is just the opposite that happens: he first comes across his father as his Real father (the aggressive stranger at a crossroads) and only then identifies the individual as his symbolic father. In Hegelese, what Oedipus realizes is rather that the bone is spirit. He doesn’t kill his father as the symbolic agency of the moral law it embodies in Freud, the one who has the phallus, but as the empirical father who, of course, is not equal to his task. The other thing with the Oedipus myth is the importance of the contingency of signifiers, or one’s own role in the constitution of meaning. And here we have a nice, Kripkean point: in order for the meaning to be fixed, an act on the part of the subject is required, and a Lacanian act at that, for an ‘act’ is always what changes the coordinates of the symbolic order (which is why Lacan argues suicide is the ultimate act). The oracle only mentions the father and the mother attributively and not referentially, so to speak.
There is much more in this book than I have cared to summarize here. There are studies of Valmont, Don Juan, observations on modern ethics (how the infinite parasitizes the finite: with desire and drive) and ideas about Lacan’s relationship to Heidegger being quite different from what you think, but this is also supposed to make you want to read it and I only wrote down the points I found most useful and illuminating to me.
April 18, 2023
Second read through. I cite this book like twice a week. Perhaps one of the only books to bring Kant and Lacan into view simultaneously. The Slovenians have done all of the work already— why think for yourself when they think for you? I used to think (stupidly) that you don’t need to understand Kant if you understand Hegel, but this is insane. Not only do you need Kant for Hegel, it’s clear after this second read that you need Kant for Lacan. Zupancic says early in the book that it’s easy to wave away the categorical imperative or other Kantianisms as idealist conclusions, which if you just take them as conclusions, I think this is true. But like all German idealism, and honestly all psychoanalysis after Lacan, you need to understand pure and practical reason. Ok, maybe you don’t need to. But it really helps put things into perspective.
Example: The biggest problem with the Real for Lacan is the conclusion that it’s some category in and of itself. “No, it’s not a category. It rejects all categorization!” But isn’t this a category, that which isn’t categorical? The clearest rebuttal for this argument is found in this book — the Real is an entirely separate register than a category. Just as desire is a separate category from demand, AND like Kantian ethics is an entirely separate category from Kantian legality. Brilliant move, and maybe no one but Zupancic has ever made this observation. How is it that the Slovenians keep making new discoveries in these centuries-old texts?? It honestly blows my mind. And how clear it is. Best out there, I’d put her over Dolar and Zizek.
Example: The biggest problem with the Real for Lacan is the conclusion that it’s some category in and of itself. “No, it’s not a category. It rejects all categorization!” But isn’t this a category, that which isn’t categorical? The clearest rebuttal for this argument is found in this book — the Real is an entirely separate register than a category. Just as desire is a separate category from demand, AND like Kantian ethics is an entirely separate category from Kantian legality. Brilliant move, and maybe no one but Zupancic has ever made this observation. How is it that the Slovenians keep making new discoveries in these centuries-old texts?? It honestly blows my mind. And how clear it is. Best out there, I’d put her over Dolar and Zizek.
July 7, 2026
the last chapter on tragedy and psychoanalysis was particularly incisive to me. very creative plus rigorous take on kant and lacan.
July 18, 2026
One of the most brilliant texts I’ve read.
May 7, 2023
Another “tour de force” from Zupančič, the pas-tout (not-all/non-all/not-whole) of Žižek’s constitutive exception to the All. Zupančič simplifies the dialectical materialist philosophy like no other while not forgetting that she stands on the shoulders of giants and a giant (like all great thinkers). Interestingly enough, as an atheist astrologer I find it quite the “coincidence” that Lacan, Žižek, and Zupančič are all Aries and my Teacher’s [Žižek’s] birthday is only 3 days after mine (with like 40 years in between of course). It’s these types of “coincidences” that allow me to continue to rely on astrology to signify [articulate] encounters with the Thing.
May 15, 2013
Right on Kant, but only partially right on Lacan. Google Mark De Kesel's paper, "There Is No Ethics of the Real."
July 30, 2013
important if challenging reading for anyone concerned with freedom, free will, compassion, and empathy.
July 21, 2025
I want to credit this with some decent readings of Kant on form and freedom, by way of Lacan on the forced choice (and seemingly a Hegelian move of form as content), but unfortunately this text mainly functions as a complete and utter lie. This lie begins with Žižek's For They Know Not What They Do, when he misquotes Lacan as having said that "the subject must not 'give way as to his drive,'" when what Lacan instead says is, "the only thing one can be guilty of is giving ground relative to one’s desire." This distinction between desire and drive is central to Zupančič's reading, and Žižek's switching of one with the other is blown out into a text-length tract here, in which Lacan's argument in Seminar VII is precisely inverted. There, Lacan counterposes an ethics grounded in the "service of goods" - and he places jouissance and thus the drive on the side of the good - to a(n) (psychoanalytic) ethics grounded in desire. Zupančič's claim here is that, in Seminar XI, Lacan supplements this reading with desire as something that must be traversed (through analysis) to its beyond, which is the drive, and that a true ethics is that of drive / the Real as opposed to an ethics of desire. But this is precisely the opposite of Lacan's argument in VII, and the textual support that Zupančič mobilizes in order to buttress her reading that XI so fundamentally alters Lacan's earlier thesis is founded on a second lie: she claims that "before this dimension [of the drive] opens up to the subject, he must first reach and then traverse 'the limit within which, as desire, he is bound.'" The footnote notes that the translation has been modified, and when one finds the reference in XI, it actually says "the limit within which, like desire, he is bound." When one looks up the original French, it says "comme désir," which translates precisely as "like desire." So one may well ask why the translation was modified when the original was accurate, other than as pure subterfuge, in order to replace a Lacanian ethics of desire with a "Žižekian" ethics of the drive / Real. But for Žižek, all this means is "the compulsion to encircle again and again the site of the lost Thing, to mark it in its very impossibility...," which means that Communism is simply the mourning of the end of really-existing socialism. Therefore, a revolutionary Lacanianism that critiques Communism precisely for not being radical enough, for remaining within the ethics of the "service of goods," is here replaced with a conservative defeatism whose task for "the Left" is simply as a "tombstone which just marks the site of the dead."
June 8, 2025
Of whatever freedom and ethics we can talk about would be useless if we don't take into consideration the ethics of the Real. Completely moving away from the dogmatic interpretation on Kant, Lacan saw in his categorical imperative the hidden force of jouissance. If pathology is always there in our so called normal behavior, then where can we find something that can justify our ethical thoughts? In this book, Alenka brilliant brought forth the elements of Kant and Lacan's thought that sometimes converge and sometimes diverge, but it always sticks to its claim. Maybe this is the best book written on Lacan that I have read. Alenka didn't just comment or connect Kant and Lacan's thought whimsically, there is a very strong philosophical foundation underneath all her claims. It is not possible to any way summarize this book through this review, and I am not doing this here. Here I am just jotting down my response(though vague and implicit) after reading this book. If I come to think about the idea that fascinated me the most about this book is how Alenka noticed that freedom and guilt are closely related, how freedom is always possible because as Lacan said 'there is no Other of the Other'. It just means that we can no possible casual determination is possible. Interestingly Kant also had a very similar idea when he said there is no cause of the cause. As the Other is always constituted through language and it is language which renders negativity and absence possible in the human world, and it is because of this lack in the Other that the subject can always renews his world and can get rejuvenated through a rupture.
All in all, this book will give you a chance to belittle all the contemporary ethics or virtue ethics, and make you think how ethics is more about the act itself rather than the goodness or being good.
All in all, this book will give you a chance to belittle all the contemporary ethics or virtue ethics, and make you think how ethics is more about the act itself rather than the goodness or being good.
September 11, 2025
Zupancic's clear and accessible writing unravels the dense matter of ethics. The book is simultaneously joyful for its content and painful to read for its difficulty however Zupancic illuminates her arguments beautifully with references to Antigone, Sygne, and Hamlet. She shows where Lacan departs or rather builds on Kantian theory and provides a convincing case for contemporary ethics. The final chapter seems at first to be a cliff hanger but in light of her introduction she definitely succeeded in providing a "contemporary framework for ethics that refuses to be an ethics based on discourse of a master and equally refuses post modern ethics reduced to the horizon of one's own life." This book, as well as Passolini's 1967 film 'Oedipus Rex' inspired me to go back to Sophocles' plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone) and also read Zupancic's 'Let them rot.' All of this to say that Zupancic is one of my favorite thinkers who understands how to insight her reader.
December 31, 2023
Laatste boek van 2023, en wat voor één!
Niet alleen een goede inleiding tot Kantiaanse en Lacaniaanse ethiek. Zupancic weet ook de twee te linken via het Kantiaans ethisch subject en het Lacaniaans verdeeld subject. Alhoewel de laatste hoofdstukken moeilijk te volgen waren (meer specifiek: de toepassing op Oedipus en Paul Claudel's Sygne de Coûfontaine), liet dit toch toe om een aantal concepten (zoals 'desire', 'drive') beter te begrijpen.
Wat ik vooral meeneem, is dat we Kant kunnen lezen als iemand die inzag dat het subject verdeeld is. Dit komt tot uiting in het formuleren van ethische wetten (zoals de categorische imperatief) - die aantonen dat bij dit formuleren, er altijd sprake is van een wil. We moeten ethiek denken als een act, iets dat alleen maar kan bestaan als er een handeling is waardoor wetten objectieve geldigheid krijgen.
Lezen, die handel!
Niet alleen een goede inleiding tot Kantiaanse en Lacaniaanse ethiek. Zupancic weet ook de twee te linken via het Kantiaans ethisch subject en het Lacaniaans verdeeld subject. Alhoewel de laatste hoofdstukken moeilijk te volgen waren (meer specifiek: de toepassing op Oedipus en Paul Claudel's Sygne de Coûfontaine), liet dit toch toe om een aantal concepten (zoals 'desire', 'drive') beter te begrijpen.
Wat ik vooral meeneem, is dat we Kant kunnen lezen als iemand die inzag dat het subject verdeeld is. Dit komt tot uiting in het formuleren van ethische wetten (zoals de categorische imperatief) - die aantonen dat bij dit formuleren, er altijd sprake is van een wil. We moeten ethiek denken als een act, iets dat alleen maar kan bestaan als er een handeling is waardoor wetten objectieve geldigheid krijgen.
Lezen, die handel!
February 11, 2025
Becomes a different book after p. 105, but the first 105 pages are some of the clearest ethics I’ve read, reframing the field itself. (Well, “clear” if you’ve bought into Lacanianisms, I suppose.)
- We are freest when we feel most unfree; the possibility of a “radical act” emerges only when one fully acknowledges how much circumstance and pathological desire shapes one’s every action.
- “There can be no freedom without a subject, yet the very emergence of the subject is already the result of a free act.”
- Ontologically, it’s impossible to tell good and evil acts of freedom apart (??? but her argument holds)
- We are freest when we feel most unfree; the possibility of a “radical act” emerges only when one fully acknowledges how much circumstance and pathological desire shapes one’s every action.
- “There can be no freedom without a subject, yet the very emergence of the subject is already the result of a free act.”
- Ontologically, it’s impossible to tell good and evil acts of freedom apart (??? but her argument holds)
June 9, 2026
Tfw I follow my desire to the very end and sacrifice the exceptional Cause of that very desire
This is genuinely one of the best books I’ve ever read. A masterful re-thinking of the radicality of Kantian ethics infused with Lacanian psychoanalysis (which she does a WONDERFUL job at explaining and re-formulating).
“The ethical maxim upon which this attitude is based is not 'Better death than...' - here death is no longer one of the two terms of a forced choice. Instead it becomes the imperative and the agent carrying all its force within itself. The moment of death is the sole moment in life when we are truly awake.”
This is genuinely one of the best books I’ve ever read. A masterful re-thinking of the radicality of Kantian ethics infused with Lacanian psychoanalysis (which she does a WONDERFUL job at explaining and re-formulating).
“The ethical maxim upon which this attitude is based is not 'Better death than...' - here death is no longer one of the two terms of a forced choice. Instead it becomes the imperative and the agent carrying all its force within itself. The moment of death is the sole moment in life when we are truly awake.”
Read
June 1, 2025Zupančič writes well, handling difficult material in a clear way. Having said that, familiarity with both Kant and Lacan is recommended. Though sometimes I think Lacan is easier to understand by reading Post-Lacanians interpreting and utilizing Lacanian concepts. I particularly appreciated her understanding of desire vs drive, she explains it better than others I have read and listened too. Chapter 8: Ethics and Tragedy in Psychoanalysis was excellent. I need to re-read the Three Theban Plays again now equipped with all the insights provided.
August 18, 2017
Het beste werk over Kant en Lacan en de ethiek van psychoanalyse dat ik ooit las. Zupancic slaagt erin om de overeenkomsten tussen Lacan en Kant glashelder te structureren. Fijnzinnig gekaderd in voorbeelden uit literatuur, zoals de onmisbare Sade, Don juan en meer. Duidelijk wordt dat ethiek, verlangen en zuivere doodsdrift quasi synoniemen zijn. Zupancic argumenteert meer dan overtuigend dat ethiek in de kern ligt van het excessieve, van de drift, en niet in het moralisme. Aanrader!
August 19, 2026
Alenka is a heavyweight. My only lacking star is my own fault - some parts were just beyond my grasp without a solid foundation with Kant. All it did was deeply inspire me to read the Critiques, as I should have many years ago. What I could make of it was brilliant, left me mulling, left me thinking, has already affected my interpretation of film and music and literature. Bravo.
July 31, 2026
brilliant text, sort of post-kantian post-hegelian analysis of kant avec lacan, amazing readings of texts, and overall, a masterful work that not only provides new thoughts & ideas through the entire course but expands both on kant and lacan.
November 9, 2021
Finally cleared up many aspects of lacan and kant at the same time
May 23, 2023
Whaaat! So good! The writing is very clear
May 28, 2025
Zupancic Is on another level
November 4, 2025
Truly genius.
Want to Read
March 7, 2026Kant's ethics through Lacan. Bringing Kant into psychoanalysis. (zizek rec)
Read
August 6, 2026Read this twice took like 20 pages of notes and understood maybe 40%. Lacan just feels completely impenetrable to me but I feel like if I understood him I would love this book
March 9, 2016
The notoriously difficult Zupančič (an unjustly earned reputation, if you ask me) offers a lucid and engaging reading of Kant in this text with the added bonus of some mediation through Lacan's formulations. Zupančič draws comparisons between the logical maneuverings of Kant and Lacan to make clear the content of Kant's ethics and eventually develop an ethical structure that contains drives in such a way that the notion of ethics does not become absurd or irrelevant. This ethics is beyond positioning the extenuation and propagation of human life as the highest good. Kant's paradigmatic shift in the notion of the subject is essential for facilitating the formulation of such an ethics.
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