Subjectivity and Otherness A Philosophical Reading of Lacan

What should interest us the most here concerning Kantian ethics is its unexpected

link with a dimension of “massive” jouissance.Lacan juxtaposes the opposition be-

tween Kant’s “pathological” Wohland das Guteas the object of ethics to that between

the pleasure principle that regulates unconscious life—the fundamental fantasy

which includesinherent transgression^187 —and the Freudian das Dingwhose “extreme

good” the subject cannot stand.^188 Just as das Dingis “far beyond the domain of

affectivity”^189 and, at its level, the subject can only “groan, explode, curse,”^190 so

the establishment of a “natural society” through the implementation of the cate-

gorical imperative requires an elimination of the “realm of sentiment.”^191 Lacan

quotes a surprising passage from the second Critique in which Kant clearly states

that the only correlative of the moral law in its purity is pain.^192 On the basis of what

I have just said, we are confronted with a kind of suffering which is not simply un-

pleasant, since it cannot be related to “sentimental” pleasure in an oppositional

way: the Lacanian name for this “pleasure in pain,” this “outer extremity of plea-

sure [which] is unbearable to us,”^193 is nothing other than jouissance.

Kant’s refoundation of a nature which is, in the end, essentially characterized

by pure jouissance,finds a perfect parallel in Sade’s theories, “for in order to reach das

Dingabsolutely... what does Sade show us on the horizon? In essence, pain.”^194

The fundamental fantasy of Sade’s novels can easily be identified with the inflic-

tion of eternal suffering on the other’s body:^195 conversely, in order to endure eter-

nal suffering, the body of the victim must be made immortal.^196 Most importantly,

according to Sade, the immortality of the suffering body isthe immortality of Na-

ture: it is first and foremost Nature that enjoys through the continuous succession

of generation and destruction that the sadist inflicts on the body of the victim. And

as Lacan observes in Seminar XVII, this is precisely what makes libertine material-

ists of the end of the eighteenth century “the only authentic believers.”^197 For them,

Nature to be understood as matter is God; or, better, Nature is the jouissanceof a

“single [divine] being.”^198 In other words, Sade is proposing a general equation be-

tween Nature as matter (a primordial Real which is a “totality”), God as the One

par excellence,and jouissance.Crime is therefore perpetuated in the name of such a God;

crime is the destruction that favors Nature’s eternal regeneration; the sadist “fol-

lows Nature in its deadly operation, from which always new forms are reborn.”^199

Both Kant and Sade intend to reach the Thing—or, better, the primordial Real of

unbearable jouissancebeyond the law—precisely by means of an exasperation of the

law itself. I believe it is in this sense that Lacan affirms that “transgression in the di-

rection of jouissanceonly takes place if it is supported... by the forms of the law.”^200

Here Lacan is definitely not just referring to the transgression structurally inherent

to any form of positive law—the “partial” jouissanceprovided by any given funda-

mental fantasy, the “rut of a short and well-trodden satisfaction”^201 —rather, he is

the subject of the real (other)