54 Tahir Wood
an absolute state of affairs is not reasonable. There is a glimmer of recognition between the
master and the slave in their communication and therefore in actuality there is semiosis. In
fashioning the object of labour, the slave achieves a measure of independence, an awareness
of self and of the master‘s dependence on that labour and the essential know-how that goes
with it. The master comes to a recognition of his own dependence on the slave, and the
semiosis that occurs in this relationship must therefore be co-extensive with the dialectic that
leads to the ultimate dissolution of such a relationship.
So in practice law generally cannot be this pure exteriority, except at moments of brutal
conquest, as has been seen at certain points in history, since its inhuman aspect would be all
too apparent, as indeed it is to slaves. Therefore it comes to involve some or other notion of
citizen participation, even if such citizens are a minority of the total community, or even
where their powers of participation are limited or unequally distributed, as in parts of ancient
Greece or in South Africa until recently. The law must become subjective rather than a purely
exterior objectivity.
3.2. Internal Representation and Subjective Morality
In subjective morality the law is internally represented within each individual and the
need for continual coercion is overcome in this way. This morality is a sense of right and of
duty. Semiotically here we see a preponderance of the iconic within the symbolic order in the
way in which the law is reproduced internally.
We should imagine a typical 'good subject',^16 the one who identifies completely with the
discourse that dominates him or her. Just because the law is internally represented, the
individual knows which are right and wrong actions and he or she acts accordingly. It is
apparent that from the point of view of this perfectly moral individual consequences of
actions are less important than their essential rightness. To have acted rightly, according to
deontic prescription, is to have done one's duty, and this duty is prescribed by the law for
certain categories of situations involving persons and things. Thus the correct action for each
situation is something known in advance and coercion is not needed for social order. One is
reminded by one's conscience or one's sense of civic or religious duty. This sense is copied
iconically, one might say, within the receptive plasticity of each subject‘s mind.
Introjectivity and projectivity in the case of the good subject are both governed by a
prevailing doxa, so that the good subject, as an ideal type, does not imagine a world, and his
or her own actions within it, that has not been derived from this doxa. Consequently, in the
purest form of this subjectivity, reflectivity consists in a type of self-valuation whereby the
individual judges his or her own success in bringing actions into line with those envisaged in
the moral law.
The instability in the standpoint of subjective morality comes in due course from the very
imperfection of the system of categorisation on which it depends. The concrete contingencies
of actual situations will always elude the abstract way in which they have been categorised in
the moral discourse and give rise to the moral dilemma: 'is this one of these situations or one
(^16) The terms ̳good subject‘ and ̳bad subject‘ are borrowed from Pêcheux (1983). In my usage they refer to those
individual subjects who identify with the law by conviction, on the one hand, and those who perceive the law
as only a formal constraint, quite apart from any convictions that they may or may not have, on the other. In
the latter case one must at least postulate a certain gap between any personal ethics and positive moral law.