Abstract
What does Lacanian psychoanalysis contribute to the well-established, but ever-renewed, discipline of ethics? Does he provide us with a new moral theory? Is it critical rejection of previous or possible moral theories? Or, is it something in between these two extremes? If Lacan is right, ethics becomes both unavoidable and irremediably incomplete, if the desire inhabiting it is supposed to culminate in a moral perspective and practice that is both unproblematic and unambiguously prescriptive. “[P]sychoanalysis might seem at first to be of an ethical order,” he remarks, in his seminar devoted to “The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.”1 There are several reasons why this makes good sense, and they provide a fitting place to begin this chapter.
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Notes
J. Lacan (1992) Seminar 7: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, D. Potter, trans. (New York: W. W. Norton), p. 88.
J. Lacan (2002), Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, B. Fink, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton), p. 227.
J. Lacan (1998b), Seminar 20: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, B. Fink, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton), p. 105.
J. Lacan (1991b), Seminar 2: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, S. Tomasselli, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton), p. 263.
J. Lacan (1998a), Seminar 11: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, A. Sheridan, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton), p. 131.
J. Lacan (2013), The Triumph of Religion, preceded by The Discourse to Catholics, B. Fink, trans. (Malden, MA. Polity Press), pp. 20–21.
J. Lacan (1991a), Seminar 1: Freud’s Papers on Technique, J. Forrester, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton), p. 86.
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© 2015 Gregory B. Sadler
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Sadler, G.B. (2015). Outlines of Jacques Lacan’s Ethics of Subjectivity. In: Imafidon, E. (eds) The Ethics of Subjectivity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472427_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472427_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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