Sigi Jottkandt

Marc de Kesel's book on Lacan's Seminar VII is an extraordinary piece of commentary. Seminar VII, which takes as its topic "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis," is one of the crucial points in Lacan's work (along with Seminars XI, XVII, XX, and XXIII) for the way it not only rethinks the whole point of psychoanalysis - "[t]here's absolutely no reason why we should make ourselves the guarantors of the bourgeois dream," remarks Lacan in one extraordinary moment - but also for how it connects to other major thinkers on the theme of ethics. As such, Aristotle, Saint Paul, Kant, Bentham, and Sade are all engaged by Lacan in the course of this seminar.

De Kesel masterfully does a number of crucial things that make him stand out as a superb commentator. First, he provides the philosophical framework required to understand Lacan's ideas. There is an extensive breakdown, for instance, of Aristotle's ethics and their relevance to this seminar. Second, there is a (relatively) accessible discussion of Lacan's concepts and how these grow out of his readings of Freud. Thirdly, and most impressively, de Kesel shows his ability to deal with the evolution of Lacan's ideas, which are not static but change over time. There is a particularly helpful explanation of how the final session of Seminar VI begins to lay the groundwork for the ideas in Seminar VII, for instance. I also love how blunt de Kesel is in his criticism of both Jacques-Alain Miller (whose textual manipulations he repeatedly rails against) and Lacan himself (especially when it comes to questions of clarity and consistency, for Lacan often announces he will explain a particular idea, only to go off on a tangent from which he never returns).

Chapter 1 of de Kesel's book focuses on Lacan's theory of the subject. De Kesel argues that, for all Lacan's criticism of object-oriented theory, his work is marked by this approach, and that his work must be seen, in particular, as a response to the ideas of Maurice Bouvet. The chapter begins with a fairly standard overview of the Lacanian subject as emerging from the intersection of the imaginary and the symbolic. De Kesel nonetheless notices a crucial new development in the last few lessons of Seminar VI, in which Lacan posits a "residue" in the formation of the subject, a supplement that marks the intrusion of the real. It is this emergence of the real, in particular, that makes an ethics of psychoanalysis all the more urgent.

Chapter 2: Crucial Problems points out just how much of a break this new focus on ethics really is. In Seminar V, for instance, he points out that Lacan had stated the psychoanalysis was revolutionary precisely because it broke with ethical concerns. However, Lacan's initial resistance to ethics was always about a critique of the superego, whereas the ethics examined in Seminar VII is *beyond* the law, in the real. As such, psychoanalysis cannot be just another superego: it can only lead the analysand to the threshold of the real and allow desire to take its course from there.

Chapter 3: Aristotle Reconsidered locates Lacan's critique in relation to the Nicomachean Ethics. Particularly important is the modern aspect of this change, for whereas pre-modern thinkers assumed an ethical Other in the form of nature or God, the modern subject understands the world to be divorced from any such Other - i.e. natural is amoral. Also crucial to this chapter is its engagement with Bentham. Whereas Aristotle assumes that happiness is grounded in nature, Bentham locates happiness in a "fiction" - that is to say, however people choose to "narrate" their own version of happiness (regardless of whether it *actually* makes them happy). But the limitation of Bentham's formula is that it locates desire in the symbolic, not the real, and this is where Lacan draws on both Aristotle and Freud to provide a critique of utilitarianism. Lacan's insight is that people don't *actually* know what they want, and this is the limit of utilitarianism. Psychoanalysis allows the subject to discover their actual desire, as opposed to their utilitarian fantasies.

Chapter 4: An Intimately Distant "Thing" is an explanation of the infamous exploration of "The Thing" (Das Ding) in Seminar VII. Lacan tries to explain this idea as the intrusion of the real into language, but a real that is felt only by its absence. Understanding this difficult concept provides the basis for concept of sublimation.

Chapter 5: Critique of Pure Practical Reason reflects not only on Kant, but on the ethical challenge set for us by the Enlightenment. The modern subject is free from the tyranny of the Other (God, the law, etc.), but the new dilemma that arises is what can now give moral weight to ethics? Lacan looks at how Kant's practical philosophy is a symbolic (and ultimately doomed) defense against the threat of The Thing - that is, against the unbridled enjoyment of whatever we like.

Chapter 6: The Weight of Enjoyment shows that the anarchy of enjoyment occupies an ambivalent place. On the one hand, humans naturally have the fantasy of an orgy of enjoyment, but on the other hand, such abandonment of ourselves to desire would ultimately be extremely destructive. Paradoxically, then, we have a tendency to fantasize about our own enjoyment, even self-destruction. Unleashing The Thing was the central fantasy of Sadean fiction, and yet Lacan shows how this attempt was doomed to remain trapped within the symbolic. In a scenario rather like the sorceror's apprentice, Sade's heroes repeatedly defy nature, but they find that the ultimate gesture of denial is impossible, beyond their reach. There is always one more defilement, one more thing to smash, just as Sade's novel similarly seem to drag on without end or resolution. In this long chapter, de Kesel connects with the problem of the neighbor, and how and ethics of the good and enjoyment are incompatible. The ultimate Lacanian conclusion is that, despite our fantasy of unleashing pure, anarchic enjoyment (The Thing), the reality is that, ethically, we are looking for a place of shelter from such a demand, and that this is precisely what psychoanalysis aims to provide.

Chapter 7: Sublimation is probably the highlight of the book. De Kesel brilliantly shows how Lacan critiques Freud's notion of sublimation, which posits that one desire can be satisfied by an act of substitution that allows its energy to be released in a non-negative way - sports, for instance, can be a substitute for war, in the famous example from Civilization and its Discontents. Lacan, by contrast, conceives of sublimation as the process of turning a signifier into something that makes "The Thing" visible. This inevitably takes place by a process of concealment whereby the subject sees only the outside of an Other, arousing a curiosity that (wrongly) imagines that something important/valuable/enjoyable is concealed in the Other. This dynamic is the kernel of analyst/analysand relationship: the analyst reveals nothing about themselves, and even though their "secret" is an entirely empty one, it nonetheless causes the analysand to sublimate their desire onto the analyst. What is she hiding? What does she know? What is the secret of her enjoyment? The analyst thus creates a *simulation* of the emptiness of the The Thing, the real, and it is in this way that the true desire of the analysand reveals itself.

Chapter 8: Radiant Antigone then analyzes Sophocles's play. Antigone is not held up as a direct example, argues de Kesel, but rather she reveals the structure of law and desire. I am still rather uncertain as to the purpose of the beautiful in her case - supposedly this is a kind of ethical "trial run" that shows how sublimation works as an illusion, revealing that desire is not really connected to the good, but I am not entirely convinced by this reading.

Chapter 9: Ethics of Psychoanalysis comments on how Lacan - again in implicit relation to Bouvet - focuses on the desire of the *analyst*, a strategy that is unusual for his time (and prefigures what is to come in Seminar XI). Particularly important in this chapter is the fact that, for psychoanalysis to remain ethical, it must always place itself in the field of the object, of the Other. It can only lure the analysand to engage with it on these terms. As soon as it makes itself into the subject as Other, it becomes the law, a superego that commands without leaving any space for ethical choice.

I have read a number of other commentaries on Lacan's seminars, but this one stands out as one of the very best, both for its thoroughness and insight. De Kesel does an extraordinary job of unraveling the complex ideas that make up Seminar VII, which is such a crucial turning-point in Lacan's work, and makes them understandable for readers of all levels.… (más)

Much like Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow, I found De Kesel's detailed examination of Lacan's 7th seminar, Ethics of Psychoanalysis, to be essential in further understanding the original text. Although De Kesel sometimes can be equally confusing in parts, I certainly felt like I was gaining a deeper understanding of Lacan's concepts and arguments as I re-tread the ground with De Kesel as guide. By the time I got to De Kesel's review of the Antigone lessons I felt dialed in, and with the addition of the last Ethics chapter, felt like I had a much firmer grasp on Lacan's motive's and goals for this seminar. Lacan himself is never entirely clear what exactly he means by "the ethics of psychoanalysis" and what his main goals are in using ethics as the center for that year's seminar. But now, after reading both the seminar itself and De Kesel's in depth review of it, I feel that what Lacan presents is a clear-sighted and tragic account of what it means to be a conscious human with conflicting gravitational waves of almost-unknowable Desire, uncontrollable attempts at meaning and what it means to be or acquire "Good" in life, the utter destructiveness of Desire's true target and realm, and the very Real absence/lack/cut/extimate source of these drives that forms the black hole around which our essential structure endlessly circles.
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