Antigone, in Her Unbearable Splendor: New Essays on Jacques Lacan's The Ethics of Psychoanalysis

SUNY Series: Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory

by Charles Freeland

A study of Lacan’s engagement with the Western philosophical traditions of ethical and political thought in his seventh seminar and later work.

With its privileging of the unconscious, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic thought would seem to be at odds with the goals and methods of philosophy. Lacan himself embraced the term “anti-philosophy” in characterizing his work, and yet his seminars undeniably evince rich engagement with the Western philosophical tradition. These essays explore how Lacan’s work challenges and builds on this tradition of ethical and political thought, connecting his “ethics of psychoanalysis” to both the classical Greek tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and to the Enlightenment tradition of Kant, Hegel, and de Sade. Charles Freeland shows how Lacan critically addressed some of the key ethical concerns of those the pursuit of truth and the ethical good, the ideals of self-knowledge and the care of the soul, and the relation of moral law to the tragic dimensions of death and desire. Rather than sustaining the characterization of Lacan’s work as “anti-philosophical,” these essays identify a resonance capable of enriching philosophy by opening it to wider and evermore challenging perspectives.

“Freeland’s reading of Lacan is distinctly philosophical not only because he examines the psychoanalyst’s debts to philosophical discourse, but, more forcefully, because his own approach is not indebted to any of the currently dominant trends in psychoanalytic theory. This book is as singular as it is insightful.” — Steven Miller, University at Buffalo, State University of New York

328 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2013

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Way beyond my expectations. Which were low, I confess, forgive me, because the author has scant previous contributions to Lacaniana. This ignorant prejudice of mine was pulverized in just a few pages. I have little doubt that this offering--this gift!--of Freeland's is the bountiful harvest of many long years quietly cultivating the material. Evidently not professionally indentured to publish-or-perish ultimatums, Freeland's fertile mind and poet's pen could tend with the patience of "limitless love" the vast fields where philosophy and psychoanalysis converge in the fold of ethics.

Freeland does not limit himself to extrapolations from S.VII alone. Probably the most impressive feature of his commentary is his ability to balance and shift between what Lacan said (dit), the saying of it (dire), and the as-yet unsaid (non-dit) in abeyance, all clamoring in the half-said (mi-dire). For the most part, this entails an adept shuttle-and-weave between S.VII The Ethics, S.XVII The Other Side, and S.XX Encore, but it seems that no thread from Lacan's knots is too tangled to be included. The result is a fetching tapestry ornately textured.

What does the unconscious do to traditional philosophical ethics qua habits for the Good Life? How are we to understand the charge of "anti-philosophy" directed at Lacan? Does Lacan's transgressive jouissance simply promulgate a Sadistic voluntarism as the force of satisfaction, or the forever unattainable allure of the Kantian Ding-an-sich as the summons to divinity dangling on the horizon? When Freeland compiles a list of questions like this--and he frequently does--one gets the impression that it is not the mere rhetorical flourish of Mastery but a register of genuine analytic inquiry into the spirit and letter of the meaning of Freud: "The meaning of the return to Freud is a return to Freud’s meaning. And the meaning of what Freud said may be conveyed to anyone because, while addressed to everyone, it concerns each person. One word suffices to make this point: Freud’s discovery calls truth into question, and there is no one who is not personally concerned by truth.”

So I found this book a marvelous composition, attentive to the finest nuances of Lacanian theory and sagacious in the act of discursive representation. Of particular note is the mediation of the "L'UN" of Encore and das Ding of Ethics, as well as the raising of "the pass" to the dignity of the ethical act par excellence. Regarding the titular landmark, Freeland's virtuoso reading is second to none in charting Lacanian ethics through the straits of (paradigms of) jouissance, desire, sublimation, and politics. In the dispute between "ethics of the real" and "ethics of (symbolic) desire," Freeland is a partisan of the real.

All the more surprising, then, that after five solid chapters of daunting brilliance, the sixth chapter reads like a standalone essay cut-and-pasted and tacked on as an unrevised yet not unrelated afterthought. To be fair, it is only the first sections that read like an introductory text squirreled away near the end, and as much as I appreciate summative recapitulations, it is something of a distinct decrescendo to rehash central themes and to do so in language that suggests the previous 180 pages never happened. While not the most seamless transition, it is but a temporary rupture, and the provisional conclusion opens a vista in which we are invited to continue the adventure newly imbued with these radiant points of orientation.

Highly, unequivocally recommended for Lacanthropes. I'm almost ready to read it again...
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...and now I have, and it was doubly delightful. Freeland illuminates the persistence of the ethical dimension in Lacan by bringing a number of later concepts to bear on the interpretation of S.VII: I have already mentioned "L'UN" from S.XX Encore, but also the vel of alienation and separation from S.XI on The Four Fundamental Concepts, and the four discourses from S.XVII The Other Side. In addition, Freeland clarifies the distinction between Wort and Sache which was a puzzling bit from The Ethics that I shrugged off. He demonstrates the precise ethical importance of various modes of lack (desire, castration, and being) and ultimately argues in convincing detail for the primacy of jouissance in any Lacanian approach to ethics. An excursion through "the pass" clears the way for the final word, one that in retrospect is strikingly absent from the text itself but which provides a most fitting and appropriately open-ended conclusion: the sinthome. At the end, it suddenly appears that that was what we were dealing with all along but could not yet enunciate.

[Goatboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my limited opinion, a really worthwhile book in the secondary sources canon for Lacan, and certainly one that works well alongside Seminar VII. I have a feeling it works just as well with XVII and XX, but since I haven't read those yet I can't say for sure.

Any work that manages to help me reach a deeper understanding of Lacan's theories is a worthwhile investment of time and Freeland's book of essays managed this in several ways. One was helping me much better understand Lacan's thoughts on Truth, and what he means when he says that "truth speaks." This seemed to be an essential concept and yet the altered use of truth by Lacan was always difficult to grasp before.

The other clarification came from the final essay on "the pass." For this not only explained the actual act/event and what it meant for becoming a Lacanian analyst, but also, and much more importantly, what it might mean to experience a "successful" analysis. What, according to Lacan, we should hope for at the end of analysis, when we finally walk away and begin again after traversing our fantasies and finding ourselves left only with our desire.

In fact, the whole last few pages of Freeland's book went by in this enjoyable rush as he seemed to tie up loose thoughts and leave the reader with a feeling of some future hope or direction, rather than only questions and frustration. Maybe my desire for this says more about me than the work, but sitting here in early April of 2020 it felt needed.