indicating how, by fully complying with the exponential strengthening of the
superegoic imperative, one might hypothetically become an “infinite sinner”
(démesurément pécheur),^202 as Saint Paul has it. However, Lacan reminds us once again
that the point at which the Symbolic real-izes itself by means of a sort of self-
saturation—a point where “the other’s pain and the pain of the subject himself are
one and the same thing”^203 —is a mythical one;^204 we may thus only conceive the
logical possibilityof a strengthening of jouissance.
We approach here what is possibly the main ambiguity of Seminar VII: Lacan
definitely thinks that the Pauline dialectic between the law and desire (supple-
mented by inherent phantasmatic transgression/jouissance) can be overcome by a
radical transgression carried out by the superegoic law itself; yet, at the same time,
despite the fact that “whoever enters the path of uninhibited jouissancein the name
of the rejection of the moral law... encounters [insurmountable] obstacles,”^205
Lacan also seems to imply that we can go beyond such a dialectic by means of a
transgression which opposes itselfto the superegoic law. In particular, the ethics of
psychoanalysis does not “leave us clinging to that dialectic” of law and desire, and
is concerned with a (pure) desire which, by eliminating morality, “transgresses in-
terdiction” and “rediscovers the relationship to das Dingsomewhere beyond the
law”;^206 elsewhere, Lacan adds that the “true duty” of psychoanalytic transgression
is in fact “to go against the command” of the “obscene and ferocious figure” of the
superego.^207
Now, the big question is: how does the “transgressive” ethics of pure desire
advocated by Lacanian psychoanalysis in Seminar VII concretely differ from the
superegoic transgression of Sado–Kantian jouissance? Is such a distinction adequately
defended, or do Lacan’s arguments, rather, risk confusing these two kinds of trans-
gression? Is such a confusion not a consequence of the very notion of ethical
“transgression” aimed at an alleged “beyond” of the Symbolic—which, as I have
already explained, in the context of Seminar VII, Lacan still inconsistently identi-
fies with the “totality” of the primordial Real?^208
Let us dwell on these questions. If, on the one hand, Sado–Kantian ethics rep-
resents for Lacan an important milestone in the history of ethics insofar as it has
done with the servicing of goods (and, in so doing, resumes “the question of das
Ding” in its relation to “whatever is open, lacking, or gaping at the centre of our de-
sire”),^209 on the other hand, his appreciation of Kant and Sade should not be over-
estimated. The ethics of psychoanalysis is certainly anti-Kantian and anti-Sadean.
One of the underlying leitmotivs of Seminar VII is precisely the necessity to dis-
tance the ethics of psychoanalysis from these two authors, and the awareness of
how difficult it is to delineate such a demarcation in a clear way. Concerning Sade,
Lacan thus preemptively claims that “it is extremely important to clear up [the]
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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