The Jouissance Principle

Kant, Sade and Lacan on the Ethical Functioning of the Unconscious

Christian Fierens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000478617
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book examines the concept of jouissance, a Lacanian term that refers to enjoyment experienced in different ways, from the enjoyment taken in an action that is ethically disapproved to the hidden pleasure taken by the patient in and from his symptom.

Christian Fierens offers a new and rigorous explanation of jouissance as a third principle in the functioning of the unconscious, in addition to the technical and pleasure principles. The Jouissance Principle presents a detailed cross-reading of two key works: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Lacan's paper 'Kant with Sade', explaining how the functioning of the unconscious is a genuinely ethical process. The book also focuses on the role of psychoanalysis in relaunching the functioning of the unconscious, outlining the fourth form of Lacan's object a and its stakes in the psychoanalytic process.

An intriguing discussion of the relationship between pleasure, ethics and rationality, The Jouissance Principle will interest scholars of psychoanalysis and European philosophy, as well as helping clinicians to find a practical and ethical pathway through their practice.

Section II

A reading of Lacan

DOI: 10.4324/9781003055662-15

How can we remain faithful to the way the unconscious works? The unconscious operates according to the pleasure principle and according to the jouissance principle (“beyond the pleasure principle”, which is more of a “short of”). The first overlaps with, wipes out, and represses the second, whereas the latter contains the specific nature of the operation of the unconscious.

The opposition between these two principles only recapitulates the opposition between the principle of the quest for happiness and the principle of the moral law, between the pragmatic principle and the practical principle, or again between the hedonistic pre-Kantian moral philosophies and Kant’s moral philosophy of virtue.

How can the Kantian advance of the moral law be given its full weight in order to allow the emergence of the jouissance principle specific to the unconscious? How can the scales be tipped towards the side of the moral law and the jouissance of the unconscious, while it is rather the search for happiness and pleasure which dominate the landscape?

The method of practical reason begins with the principle of the moral law to then determine what the Good is and finally ends with the mobilisation of sensibility towards the moral law (respect). This pathway is never finished with once and for all. It must be made and re-made, and it is only in repetition that it becomes effective.

The method of psychoanalysis, which is none other than the method of the unconscious, should give its rightful place to the specific principle of the unconscious, the jouissance principle. This pathway is never finished with once and for all; it is only in repetition that it becomes effective.

The method of psychoanalysis is thus a recapitulation, a repetition of the method of pure reason. From this double pathway, two admirable and venerable things will be retained. On the one hand, that which is: “the starry sky above me” is none other than the sign of the generalised humiliation of humanity’s naïve self-love. In the order of knowledge, knowing, sensibility and pleasure, I am worth next to nothing [je ne suis que quatre fois rien]. On the other hand, that which should be – “the moral law within me” – points towards an extraordinary power of creation (out of the “ordinary” associated with pleasure). In the order of making proper to the unconscious, which is not, but which should be, it should be to give things a new form, a new creation from nothing.

Lacan’s seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960), takes full measure of man’s narcissistic humiliation: I am basically nothing not only in the face of the real of the universe, but more radically in the face of The Thing (Das Ding), which is absolutely unknowable to me, in the face of the Real which completely eludes me. It is from this emptiness that the Kantian moral question which must shed light on the ethical workings of the unconscious takes its place.

The text “Kant with Sade” (1962–1963) first takes what Kant regards as the second admirable and venerable thing, the moral law, into consideration, to give it its full value in sensibility by the intermediary of a reading of Sade. Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795) “yields the truth of the Critique”¹ (the Critique of Practical Reason, 1788). It is supposed to reveal it in sensibility.

***

By “lecture de Lacan”, we understand both the reading made by Lacan of Kant’s Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason and the reading which we make of Lacan reading Kant’s writings, though we have already read the same Kantian texts. In the course of this enlightened reading of Lacan’s texts, we will be led to take a certain number of deviations and misunderstandings of the part of Lacan towards precisely these Kantian texts into consideration. Let us note, among other things: the primordial and explicit place of the principle as a principle in Kant is erased in Lacan’s presentation (but the function of the principle as a principle is most probably taken up again through the introduction of the Thing and the object a). The moral law centred around autonomy in Kant is presented as a purely formal universality in Lacan (which allows him to insist a contrario on the synthetic side and on the enunciation of the law in Sade). The place of the secondary good in Kant is primordial in Lacan’s reading of it (notably to oppose Sade and evil to it). The place of basic respect in Kant is obscured in favour of pain in Lacan’s presentation (pain allows the reconciliation of Kant and Sade). The value of the transcendental dialectic centred first of all on the moral law is presented from the perspective of happiness in Lacan. Examples, in Kant, are little more than occasions for illustrating the main moral reflection, whereas in Lacan they function as a basic element of argumentation.

From all these deviations and misunderstandings, we will remember that Lacan presents quite a loose and subtly out of step version of Kantian moral philosophy. His reading, however, corresponds quite well to the common opinion of Kant (including the opinion that Lacanian psychoanalyst have in general about Kant, most often without having read him closely).

In relation to this obvious gap between Kant’s text and Lacan’s reading, there are several possible options. First, recognising Lacan’s immense amount of work compels us to trust him. Lacan would thus have corrected what had needed to be corrected and reading Kant would have become useless or obsolete. Second, recognising Kant’s philosophy takes precedence, and we should simply reject Lacan’s reading, which would fail some kind of university examination on Kant’s moral philosophy. Third, we must give an account of Kant and Lacan and of the gap which exists between Kantian morality and its common and Lacanian reading. What should be done with this gap? Here, two sub-positions are possible. The first one consists of an observation: one may remark that Lacan generally subverts the borrowings he makes from linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, or whatever author it may be, and it is always in an innovative and creative direction – armed with this observation, we will simply be able to rely on the Lacanian text alone. The second sub-position consists in a task, which involves analysing the gaps, deviations, and misunderstandings to restore Kant’s radical positions as well as Lacan’s propositions. This not in order to end up separating out one group from the other, but rather in order to put them into tension in their common structure. This is the work we undertake with Lacan’s reading of Kant.

The value of this work is completely in line with Kant’s doctrine of the method of practical reason: to bring the moral law to light (the jouissance principle), to give a sensible access to the invention and the exercise of freedom. This work, which is irreplaceable because it is the exercise of the structure at play in practical reason as well as in the unconscious, will lead us to the clarification of the fundamental principle of psychoanalysis: the jouissance principle specific to the unconscious.

Note

• 1 Lacan, “Kant with Sade”, in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, New York, Norton, 2006.

Part I

The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960)

The real

Chapter 8

Critique of “ethics” centred on happiness and perfection

DOI: 10.4324/9781003055662-17

“Ethics” centred on happiness

Following on from Seminar VI, which was devoted to desire, Seminar VII had to clarify ethics as an ethics of desire. But how is desire to be understood? The central thesis of The Interpretation of Dreams, “a dream is the (disguised) fulfilment of a (repressed or suppressed) wish”, could mean that the work of the unconscious quite simply operates in the direction of the pleasure principle. This quest for pleasure in any case presupposes prudence, because one person’s pleasure is not another’s and pleasure in one part of the psyche (the unconscious) is not pleasure in another part (the preconscious and conscious). This conception of ethics polarised towards pleasure and moderated by prudence on the level of individuals is that of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. This same conception of ethics (pleasure and prudence), transposed to the level of psychic loci, may also seem to be that of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (we shall see that this is not at all the case). In this sense, psychoanalytic ethics would aim to liberate desire from what is repressing or suppressing it.¹ The ethics of psychoanalysis would thus come within the framework of a general quest for pleasure or happiness.

The Aristotelian conception of ethics is still prevalent today: it would suffice to follow the path of one’s desires with prudence (Aristotle’s phronesis, Kant’s Klugheit), that is, to take into account their consequences, the ins and outs they involve. It presents itself as natural and therefore has nothing to teach people (the prudent are already immersed in ethics and the imprudent do not, in any case, listen to the advice they might be given). The Nicomachean Ethics, just like current, contemporary ethics, is not, therefore, addressed to individuals, but to lawmakers who, through the laws of the state, may favour the exercise of this prudence at the social level. It is a political ethics which aims to set aside all that might oppose the reign of a well-proportioned happiness. It dismisses a certain number of human phenomena as monstrous aberrations from human nature,² notably many sexual desires, as well as the morbidity of transgression, the ferocious superego, the essential guilt which undermines humanity independently of any real transgression.

“Ethics” centred on perfection

Now, psychoanalysis does not follow this general Aristotelian tendency. It does not aim to carefully re-organise happiness and, most of all, it does not put either sexuality or basic guilt to one side. On the contrary, it makes them its central concern. Is this in order to guide the sexual aberrations towards sexual perfection, to erase basic guilt, and to be guided towards perfection in general?

Sexuality and the superego would have to be led in the right direction. The ferocious superego could then make way for a good superego, a beneficent Ideal which simultaneously takes into account reality, the sexual drives, and the Id, under the control of an Ego which provides them with structure. A certain psychoanalytic moral philosophy focused on three types of perfection: the ideal of genital love as the final aim of a correct form of sexuality in which the subject would be perfectly fulfilled, the ideal of authenticity as a perfect alignment of what the subject says and does with what they fundamentally are, and the ideal of autonomy as the independence of the subject from everything that might disturb his perfection. Have we not tried to grasp the moral law at the heart of the unconscious and jouissance at the heart of nascent sexuality in an attempt to allow it to blossom in its full structure, of which genital love would be the image? Does not both the Kantian moral law as well as jouissance aim for authenticity, the alignment of the subject with his kernel of jouissance? Do the autonomy of the moral law and of jouissance not imply putting to one side, not letting oneself be disturbed by the inclinations of the pleasure principle?

Perhaps. But when “genital love”, “authenticity”, and “autonomy” are proposed as perfection or as ideals, they become aims determining the ethics or the morals of psychoanalysis. Now, as we have seen, acting according to aims, as noble as they might be, is always to act in fine according to pleasure and happiness. The aim as aim is in fact presented as a reality ext...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: jouissance and the unconscious
• Section I Reading Kant
• Section II A reading of Lacan
• Section III Practice of the unconscious
• Bibliography
• Index