The Law of Desire: On Lacan’s 'Kant with Sade’

by Dany Nobus

This book offers the first comprehensive discussion of Lacan’s Kant with Sade , an essay widely recognised as one of his most important and difficult texts. Here, the reader will find a detailed roadmap for each section of the essay, including clarifications of the allusions, implicit borrowings and references in Lacan’s text, unique insights into the essay’s publication history, and a critical assessment of its reception. The author expertly defines key terms, explains complex theoretical arguments, and contextualises the work within a larger philosophical discourse. No prior knowledge of Lacan, Kant or Sade is assumed, allowing both newcomers and those who are well-versed in psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary criticism to benefit from the book. This engaging book clears the path for a long overdue re-discovery and a proper appreciation of one of Lacan’s most challenging works, inspiring a renewed debate on the significance of Lacanian psychoanalysis for moral philosophy and literary theory.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Theory

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author acknowledges at the outset that he would have preferred not to extrapolate this Ecrit. The admission harmonizes with--perhaps itself strikes?--an undertone of joylessness throughout the writing, certainly not rare in academia but puzzling for Lacaniana, what with the centrality of desire and comedy. (I am not asserting that Lacanians are especially ardent or jovial peoples [do you know any?], only reiterating the dogma that the constitution of the subject is an irreducibly absurd affair from which ensues the only meaningful high drama.) That said, Nobus's work is impeccable, meticulous, and stringently clear. Not one hair or feather falls unremarked. Should any troublesome obscurity persist between the Ecrit and S.VII The Ethics, I believe the reader would find it focused herein. One last carp: the fucking footnotes. Like any Good obsessive, I enjoy a humbling squinty march through the detoured tracts of fine print, but when more than half the pages are more than half given over to unrolling such minutiae, methinks they deserve better body, or a proper burial in the end matter. But as Le Maitre sez: "I prefer there to be only one way in, and as difficult as possible."

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 'Kant with Sade' Lacan situates Sade's formulation of integral atheist egoism (every body has an unlimited right to jouissance over every other's body such that the other must suffer) in proximity with Kant's formulation of the moral law as a pure formality emptied of all empirical, 'pathological' contents. Juxtaposed this way, what becomes immediately obvious is that if the moral law is simply pure form, then the pursuit of the highest good becomes indistinguishable from the pursuit of evil for evil's sake, viz diabolical evil. This book puts Lacan's paper in context, specifically, Lacan's intention to read Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom as an obscene supplement to the Critique of Practical Reason, and his critique of Sade's failure to liberate desire from its dialectics with the Law, and offers a much needed exposition of the paper for those of us who can't be bothered with Lacan's arcane theoretical references that tend to detract from the philosophical substance of the argument at hand.
Sade truly is Kant's neighbor.