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(All parts in English)

Here we are at our final discussion on what I have tried to present to you regarding the Ethics of Psychoanalysis.
To conclude these discussions, today I will offer you a number of remarks—some conclusive, others of a suggestive nature based on experience. I also think I will leave open the indication that we have not finished—something I believe will not surprise you—our discourse. In short, it is not easy to find a medium to wrap up a subject that is, by its very nature, unconventional. Let us say that what I am offering you today is a mixed grill.

Ethics, in essence—it is always necessary to return to definitions—consists primarily, as ethics, of a judgment on our actions, with the essential condition that such a judgment pertains only insofar as the action involved inherently includes judgment. In any case, it is always presumed to encompass this implicit judgment as soon as one dares to pass judgments on action—in other words, to engage in ethics. The presence of judgment on both sides of this matter is essential to its structure.

If there is an ethics of psychoanalysis—a question that must be posed—it is precisely because, to some degree, however small, psychoanalysis might offer us something, or simply claim to do so, that serves as a measure of our actions. Of course, as an idea that has long since fallen out of favor, one might initially think this measure of our actions would propose a return to our instincts. There may still be a few scattered individuals who find this notion frightening.

In truth, I have even heard, within a philosophical society, someone raise objections of this sort that seemed to me to have vanished some forty years ago. In truth, everyone is fairly reassured on this point. I mean that no one imagines fearing a moral degradation of this kind as a consequence of analysis.

What has happened, as I have often pointed out, is that what analysis appears to have done in practice—by constructing, so to speak, these instincts and making them the natural law of moral harmony—has taken on the guise of a rather disconcerting alibi, a moralizing bluff, a type of deception whose dangers, I believe, cannot be overemphasized. This is a commonplace point, so I will not dwell on it further.

To remain at the level of a preliminary observation, it is clear that, for quite some time now, everyone understands that the humblest aspect of analysis is its effort to return to the meaning of action. And this alone justifies situating us within the moral dimension: it is because human beings—whether healthy or ill—under Freud’s hypothesis of the unconscious, are presumed to be motivated by hidden meanings in their actions, whether normal or pathological, which can be uncovered.

In this dimension, the notion of κάθαρσις (catharsis) naturally emerges, which, in this context, means purification, or rather distillation and the isolation of layers. There exists, at a certain level of lived experience, a deeper guiding meaning that can be accessed. Things cannot remain the same once these layers are separated. This is not, I think, a revolutionary discovery. And there exists this minimal position which, fortunately, does not seem overly obscured in the general understanding of analysis. This perspective does not go very far. I might even say it aligns with a highly generalized notion of any form of what could be called “inner progress.” It is, in truth, the embryonic form of an ancient “γνῶθι σεαυτόν” (know thyself), though admittedly with a distinctly unique inflection.

Even at this stage, however, it becomes apparent what justifies the emphasis I have placed throughout this year: namely, the stark difference introduced by the analytic experience—at least in Freud’s thinking—which lies in the following:
Once this return to meaning is achieved, once the deeper meaning is liberated—that is, simply separated (κάθαρσις, in the sense of distillation)—the question arises, one that ordinary people often pose and to which we offer an answer in varying degrees of directness: once this task is accomplished, does everything take care of itself?

To make the matter perfectly clear, does this imply nothing but benevolence remains? This question takes us back to one of the oldest debates. A figure named MENCIUS, as the Jesuits called him, tells us that the question of human benevolence is judged as follows: Benevolence is innate; it is like a mountain covered with trees. However, nearby inhabitants begin by cutting down the trees. The blessing of the night allows new saplings to sprout, but by morning, troops come to devour them, and eventually, the mountain becomes a bald surface where nothing grows. You see, this problem is not new.

It is no coincidence that I mention MENCIUS. We will return to him. Whatever the case may be, benevolence, in our experience, is so far from being assured that it is precisely around what is delicately termed the negative therapeutic reaction—what I previously described in more elevated literary terms as the curse assumed, the consented-to malediction of μὴ φῦναι (mé phunai, “not to be born”) from OEDIPUS (Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus)—that we begin.

Not that the problem is resolved, nor that everything decided is decided beyond the return to meaning. What I have encouraged you to enter into as a mental experiment—experimentum mentis, as GALILEO calls it… contrary to what you might believe, he had far more mental experiments than laboratory ones; in any case, he would certainly not have taken the decisive step he did without mental experiments… this experimentum mentis that I propose to you here, because I believe it aligns closely with what analysis, and specifically our experience, incites us to undertake when we strive not to reduce it to a common denominator, to a shared measure, to fit it into pre-established drawers, but to articulate it within its own topology, its own structure—I assure you, this supposes precisely what I have already indicated to you: the locus where desire resides.

What I have proposed to you throughout my discourse this year as an experimentum mentis is this: to adopt what I have called “the perspective of the Last Judgment,” to take as a standard this revision of ethics that analysis incites us to pursue, specifically the relationship of action to the desire that inhabits it. To illustrate this, I have taken the example and support of tragedy. In this, I had sufficient assurance in the fact that this reference is unavoidable, proven by the simple evidence that FREUD himself was compelled to adopt it from his very first steps.

The ethical question of analysis arises not within a speculative framework of order or arrangement—what I call the “service of goods”—but rather involves this dimension expressed as “the tragic experience of life.” It is within the tragic dimension that actions are inscribed, and where we are prompted to orient ourselves in relation to values. Equally so, this dimension extends to the comic, and when I began discussing the formations of the unconscious with you, as you know, the comic was the horizon I referenced.

Let us say that this relationship between action and the desire that inhabits it, within the tragic dimension, operates in the direction, let us approximate, of a triumph of death. This is the fundamental characteristic of all tragic action. I have taught you to refine and correct this: the triumph of “Being-for-death.” The tragic μὴ φῦναι (mé phunai—”not to be born”) remains essential: this μὴ, this negation, is identical to the subject’s entry as such, borne upon the framework of the signifier.

For the comic, in a preliminary sense, it is not so much a triumph as the futile, derisive play of vision. Here too, and if we examine it more closely, in the comic (as little as I have been able to address it before you), you can see that what is at stake is also the relationship between action and desire, as well as its fundamental failure to achieve that desire.

What creates the comic dimension is something marked by the presence, at its center, of a hidden signifier. But, as I have told you, in ancient comedy, the phallus is present in person. No matter if it is later concealed; we must simply remember that in comedy, what satisfies us, makes us laugh, allows us to appreciate it in its full human dimension—including the unconscious—is not the triumph of life, but rather that life [φ] slips through, evades, escapes everything that opposes it, especially the most essential barriers constituted by the authority of the signifier.

What the phallus signifies, too, is that it is nothing other than a signifier—it is the signifier of this evasion, this triumph of the fact that life persists no matter what: even when the comic hero stumbles, falls into the mess, still, the little fellow lives on.

Here lies the dimension—whose pathos, you see, is exactly the counterpart and opposite of the tragic. And after all, they are not incompatible; the tragicomic exists—where the experience of human action resides.

It is because we understand better than those who preceded us the nature of the desire at the heart of this experience that an ethical revision becomes possible, that an ethical judgment becomes possible, reflecting this value of a “Last Judgment”: “Have you acted in accordance with the desire that inhabits you?” This is not an easy question to sustain. It is a question, I assert, that has never been posed in its pure form elsewhere—nor could it be, except in the analytic context.

Opposed to this pole of desire is tradition—not in its entirety, of course, for nothing is entirely new, and everything is, in human articulation—but what I have sought to make you feel, taking as an example from tragedy the antithesis of the tragic hero who, as an antithesis, nonetheless participates in tragedy with a certain heroic character: CREON. Around this figure, as I reminded you through a preparatory recall, I spoke of what is called the “service of goods.”

This position of the “service of goods” represents the stance of traditional ethics. All diminishment of desire, all modesty, all temperance, this middle path so remarkably articulated by ARISTOTLE—what does it measure itself against, and can this measure be grounded anywhere?

A detailed and attentive examination suffices to reveal that its measure is always profoundly marked by ambiguity. Ultimately, the order of things upon which it intends, claims, to be founded is the order of power—an all-too-human power. Not because we say it is human, all-too-human (Nietzsche), but because it cannot even take three steps to articulate itself without tracing the encircling wall that serves as the locus where, as we say, the frenzy of signifiers reigns. For ARISTOTLE, this locus is the caprice of the gods, insofar as gods and beasts meet there to signify the realm of the unthinkable. Certainly, this god is not the prime mover. These are the gods of mythology. Since then, we have learned to reduce this frenzy of the signifier. But it is not because we have placed almost everything at stake in the Name of the Father that the question is thereby simplified.

Let us examine this clearly: ARISTOTLE’s morality—this is entirely evident, and it is worth taking a closer look—is entirely based on an order that, while ideal and carefully arranged, nonetheless corresponds to the politics of his time, that is, the point where the structures of the city were established. His morality is a morality of the master, designed for the virtues of the master; it is essentially tied to an order of powers. The order of powers is not to be despised. This is not an anarchist discourse; rather, it is essential to understand its limits concerning the field open to our investigation and reflection.

Concerning the matter at hand—namely, what relates to desire, its trappings, and its disarray—the position of power… regardless of the circumstances, historical or otherwise… has always been the same. It is the position of ALEXANDER arriving in Persepolis or HITLER arriving in Paris. It proclaims the following—its preamble is irrelevant—“I have come to liberate you.” From this or that, it hardly matters. The essential point is this:

“Keep working; do not stop working.”
Which means:
“Let it be perfectly understood that this is by no means an occasion to express even the slightest desire.”

The morality of power, of the “service of goods,” is thus:
“As for desires, come back later—they can wait.”

It is worth delineating the boundary within which questions can arise in a spirit that marks an essential turning point—a linear function within the articulation of philosophy—namely, KANT’s. He provides a great service by simply establishing this topological marker that distinguishes the moral phenomenon. By purifying it, he defines the domain of moral judgment as such—this is the κάθαρσις (catharsis).

A categorical opposition, a pure ideal limit—yet it is essential that someone at some point articulated this by purifying it of any interest KANT calls pathological. Pathologisches does not mean interests tied to mental pathology; rather, it signifies any human, sensible, or vital interest. For the domain to be valued as truly ethical, it must be entirely devoid of any interest on our part, in any form.

A step has been taken nonetheless. Traditional morality resided in the realm of “what must be done, insofar as possible,” as is still said—and must still be said. What must be unmasked is that its pivot point lies in the impossible—where we recognize the topology of our desire. The breakthrough is given to us by KANT. He tells us:

“The moral imperative does not concern itself with what can or cannot be done.”

The testimony of obligation, insofar as it imposes on us the necessity of practical reason, is an unconditional “You must.” This is profoundly interesting to us because, as I have shown you, this domain derives its significance precisely from the void left by KANT’s rigorous application of his definition. That void, where we analysts might say, is the space occupied by desire. The heart, the center of ethical desire, is the problem of this immeasurable measure, this reversal that positions, at its center, the origin of something that asserts itself as an infinite measure, which we call desire.

I have shown you how easily KANT’s “You must” is substituted by the Sadean fantasy of pleasure erected as an imperative. A pure fantasy, of course, and almost derisory, yet it does not exclude the possibility of establishing a universal law. Such is the significance of the Sadean commentary. Let us pause here, nonetheless, to observe what remains perpetually on the horizon.

For, indeed, if KANT had only pointed us to this crucial point, all would be well. Yet we also see where the horizon of practical reason concludes: in the respect and admiration inspired by the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

One might wonder why respect and admiration suggest a personal relationship. Here, everything both persists and is demystified—persisting despite being demystified. This, I believe, is where the remarks I propose to you concerning the foundation given to us by analytic experience—the dimension of the subject within the signifier—become essential. Allow me to briefly illustrate what I mean here.

KANT claims to find the singular and renewed proof of the immortality of the soul in the fact that the demands of moral action cannot be satisfied by anything here on Earth. Therefore, it is because the soul remains unfulfilled that it requires a life beyond this one for this unfinished accord to find, somewhere—who knows where—its resolution.

What does all this mean? This respect and admiration for the starry heavens may still be a fragile moment in history. Could it be that, even in KANT’s time, something remained that, for us, no longer seems so? When we consider this vast universe, does it not seem more like a massive construction site of various nebulae, with one peculiar corner—the one we inhabit—that somewhat resembles, as has always been shown, a watch abandoned in the corner of a room?

But apart from this, it is clear, obvious, and simple: if we were to look for someone present in this vastness—assuming, of course, that we give meaning to what could constitute such a presence—there is no articulable sense to this divine presence other than what serves as our criterion for the subject: the dimension of the signifier.

Philosophers may speculate about this Being whose act and knowledge are indistinguishable, but religious tradition does not make this mistake. Properly speaking, it only gains the right to recognize one or more divine persons through what can be articulated in a revelation.

Only one thing could make these spaces inhabited for us by a transcendent person: the appearance of a signal in the heavens—not a signal in the sense of communication theory, which constantly tells us that what traverses space can be interpreted in terms of signs or warning rays—but something that makes us aware that something inhabits these spaces. And if we consider these spaces, you will see the mirages created by distance. For if it were near, it would be obvious. But because it comes from so far away, we believe it to be a message received from stars three hundred light-years distant.

Wherever it comes from, it is no more a message than when we look at this bottle. What would make it a message is if, somewhere, an explosion of a star occurring at those myriad distances corresponded to something that was inscribed in the Great Ledger—in other words, something that would make what happens a reality.

Some of you recently watched a film that did not entirely enchant me… but over time, I have reconsidered my impression. There are good details in it… it is DASSIN’s film.

In DASSIN’s film, from time to time, the character—presented to us as wonderfully attuned to the immediacy of his so-called primitive feelings—sits in a small bar in Piraeus, violently attacking those around him for failing to speak properly, meaning according to the moral standards of the character. At other times, he grabs a glass to express the excess of his enthusiasm and satisfaction, smashing it onto the floor.

Each time one of these crashes occurs, we see—something I find very beautiful and even brilliant—the frantic agitation of what is called the accountant or the cash register. It is this register that defines the structure with which we are dealing.

What allows for the existence of human desire and this field is precisely this supposition: that for us, for anything to count, everything real must be accounted for somewhere.

KANT was able to reduce the essence of the moral field to its purity at its central point. However, what remains—and this is nothing other than what is signified by the horizon of the immortality of the soul—is the necessity for there to be, somewhere, a place for accounting.

It seems that we have not been troubled enough on Earth with desire; a portion of eternity must now be dedicated to keeping track of it all. Of course, these fantasies project nothing other than this structural relationship—the very one I have tried to inscribe before your eyes on the graph with the line of the signifier.

It is insofar as the subject situates and constitutes itself in relation to the signifier that this rupture, this division, this ambivalence arises within them, at the level where the tension of desire resides. With this in mind, we can see that the film I just alluded to—which, as I later learned, features the director himself: it is DASSIN who plays the American—presents us with an intriguing and curious model of something that, from a structural point of view, can be expressed as follows: the one who plays the role of satire—by which I mean a satirical role, the character set up for ridicule—DASSIN himself, as he plays the American, finds himself, as the producer and creator of the film, in a position more quintessentially American than the Americans themselves, whom he subjects to derision.

Understand me clearly. Here he is, undertaking the reeducation, even the salvation, of a charming prostitute. The irony of the screenwriter places him, in this pious endeavor, in the employ of the one who might be called the grand master of the brothel. As is fitting, it is not the profound essence of this figure—this we know, and he signals it clearly enough for us to notice—by presenting before us a massive pair of dark sunglasses… that this is the one, and for good reason, whose face no one ever sees.

Of course, at the moment the woman discovers that it is this figure—her sworn enemy—who is financing the celebration, she pierces the noble soul of the American in question, leaving him humiliated after having entertained the highest hopes. What is amusing, of course, is this: if there is any dimension of social critique in this symbolism, it lies in pointing out that it is none other than the forces of order, so to speak, that hide behind the brothel.

There is undoubtedly a certain naïveté in suggesting—at the end of the screenplay and the story—that the hope lies in the simple suppression of the brothel to resolve the issue of the relationship between virtue and desire. What I mean is that throughout this film, there runs a true fin-de-siècle ambiguity, which involves confusing antiquity with the domain of free desire, so to speak. It clings to Pierre LOUŸS-like fantasies, imagining that it is outside her own position that the charming Athenian prostitute can focus all the illusions in whose center she finds herself.

Let us return to our theme. To put it plainly, DASSIN need not confuse the effusive admiration evoked by this delightful silhouette with a return to Aristotelian morality—fortunately, we are spared a detailed lesson on it here. Let us return to our path and to this point that shows us how, on the horizon of guilt, insofar as it occupies the domain of desire, there are these chains, these limits of permanent accountability. This is entirely independent of any articulation that could be attributed to it. Part of the world has resolutely oriented itself toward the service of goods, rejecting everything related to the relationship between humanity and desire under what is called the post-revolutionary perspective.

Undoubtedly, the only thing one can say is that there seems to be little awareness that framing things this way merely perpetuates what I earlier called the eternal tradition of power, namely:
“Let us keep working; as for desire, you can come back later…” But so be it.

Within this tradition—one that, as I tell you, raises a question—I mean that the communist horizon is indistinguishable and cannot be distinguished from that of CREON, of the city, of the one who differentiates friends from enemies in the interest of the city’s welfare. It differs only in supposing—which is no small matter—that the domain of goods, in whose service we are enlisted, ultimately encompasses the entire universe. In other words, this operation is justified only insofar as the universal state lies on the horizon.

Nothing, however, tells us that at this limit, the problem that persists—even within the consciousness of those living within this perspective—is resolved. For either they imply that the state’s proper values, namely organization and policing, will vanish, or they introduce a term like “concrete universal state,” which means nothing other than that things will change at a molecular level. By this, I mean that something will be profoundly altered in the relationship that constitutes humanity’s position concerning goods, provided that, until now, this position has not been aligned with desire.

Well, whatever this perspective might offer, the very sign indicating that nothing structural changes along the proposed path is surely this: although, in orthodox terms, the divine presence may be absent, accounting is certainly not. This is evident in one precise theme: that the inexhaustible demand that for KANT necessitated the immortality of the soul has been replaced in this perspective by the notion of objective guilt—a concept explicitly articulated as such, demonstrating that, structurally speaking, nothing in this domain is resolved.

I believe I have sufficiently explored the opposition between the desiring center and the service of goods, on which my discourse proceeds and advances. Let us now delve directly into the propositions I present to you as experimental. Let us formulate them in the form of a paradox and see what they yield, at least to the ears of analysts.

I propose that the only thing for which one can be guilty—at least from an analytic perspective—is having given up on one’s desire. This proposition, whether acceptable or not in different ethical frameworks, nevertheless carries the weight of expressing quite accurately what we observe in our experience: that, in the end, what the subject feels guilty for—and this, whether acceptable or not to a moral guide—is always, fundamentally and at its root, tied to having abandoned their desire.

Let us go further. Often, one abandons one’s desire for a good reason, even the best of reasons. This, too, should not surprise us. Since guilt has existed, it has long been apparent that the question of good motives or good intentions, which shaped certain zones of historical experience and rose to prominence in discussions of moral theology—let us say, in the time of ABÉLARD—has nonetheless left people no better off. For at its horizon, the same question always resurfaces, and this is precisely why Christians of even the most common observance are never entirely at ease.

For if one must act “for the good”—and this is indeed what happens in practice—one must always ask: for whose good? From there, matters do not resolve themselves. Acting in the name of good, and even more so in the name of the good of the other, is far from shielding us from guilt, let alone from all kinds of inner catastrophes, and certainly not from neurosis and its consequences.

If psychoanalysis has any meaning, and if desire sustains the theme of the unconscious, then the articulation of what roots us in a specific destiny—which insistently demands that its debt be paid—returns to lead us back into a particular trajectory, into something that is truly our affair.

For each of us…
(someone was offended last time when I contrasted the hero with the ordinary person; I do not distinguish them as two human species)…
there is, within each of us, a path traced for a hero, and it is precisely as an ordinary person that this path is fulfilled.

The two domains I outlined for you last time…
(by calling the inner circle “Being-for-death,” placing desires at the center, and defining the renunciation of entry into the outer circle)…
do not oppose the triple realm of hatred, guilt, and fear as if they were the realms of the ordinary person and, conversely, the hero.

Not at all. Instead, this general form is clearly traced by the structure within and for the ordinary person. It is precisely to the extent that the hero navigates it correctly that they pass through all the passions in which the ordinary person becomes entangled—with the difference being that, in the hero, these passions are pure, and they fully sustain themselves within them.

I believe your vacations will allow you to assess whether the rigor of the topology I have outlined for you this year—what someone here aptly, though humorously, named “the zone of the between-two-deaths”—strikes you as effective.

I urge you to revisit this. Well, in SOPHOCLES, you will see what is at stake. You will better grasp the dance between CREON and ANTIGONE, and it will become clear that the hero, by marking their presence in this zone, indicates that something is defined and liberated, and in doing so already draws their partner, ANTIGONE, into it.

In the end, indeed, CREON speaks of himself as someone who is now a dead man among the living, insofar as in this affair, he has literally lost all his possessions. Within the tragic act, the hero liberates even his adversary. You must not limit your exploration of this field to ANTIGONE alone.

Take PHILOCTETES, for example, and you will discover many other dimensions, namely that a hero does not need to be heroic to be a hero. Poor PHILOCTETES is a wretched figure. He left, full of enthusiasm and zeal, ready to die for his homeland on the shores of Troy. Yet, he wasn’t even wanted there for that purpose. He was abandoned on an island because he smelled too foul.

He spent ten years there, consumed by hatred. The first person to find him again is a kind young man, NEOPTOLEMUS, who is manipulated by PHILOCTETES like a child. In the end, as you know, he will nevertheless go to the shores of Troy because the deus ex machina, HERCULES, appears to offer him a solution to all his troubles.

The deus ex machina, which is not nothing, has long been understood as a kind of limit, a frame of tragedy, something we need no more consider than the stage props and supports that define the scene’s boundaries. What makes PHILOCTETES a hero? Nothing other than his relentless adherence, his tenacity to the end, up to the limit of the deus ex machina, which acts as the curtain to his hatred. Let us even say this reveals something: he is betrayed, but he is also disillusioned. By this, I mean he is not merely disillusioned about having been betrayed—he is betrayed with impunity.

This is highlighted in the play by the fact that NEOPTOLEMUS, filled with remorse for having betrayed the hero—and thus showing himself to have a noble soul—comes to make amends by returning the bow, an object that plays such a crucial role in the tragic dimension. The bow is present, properly speaking, as a subject to whom and of whom one speaks, to whom one addresses oneself. It is a dimension of the hero, and not without reason.

Betrayal—what essentially characterizes what I call “giving up on one’s desire”—is always something, as you will observe, that is accompanied, in every case, by some betrayal in the subject’s destiny. By this, I mean either the subject betrays their own path, something that is palpable to them, or much more simply—and there is no need for self-betrayal for betrayal to have its effects—that someone to whom they were more or less committed in some endeavor has betrayed their expectations, failing at the critical moment to fulfill the pact. Any pact, whether beneficial or harmful, fragile, short-sighted, rebellious, or escapist—it matters not. Around betrayal, something plays out when it is tolerated.

The one who, even driven by the idea of good—I mean the good of the one who has betrayed them at that moment—yields to the point of lowering their own claims, to the point of saying, “Well, if that’s how it is, let’s abandon our perspective, neither of us is any better, let’s return to the ordinary way,” is where you can be sure the structure of “giving up on one’s desire” is found.

And at this crossing, this limit where I have linked for you in a single term the contempt for the other and for oneself, there is no return. There may be repair, but there is no undoing. Is this not an experiential fact that demonstrates that psychoanalysis can provide us with an effective compass in the field of ethical direction?

I have articulated what I have just said in three propositions:

1. The only thing one can be guilty of is having given up on one’s desire.
2. Secondly, the definition of the hero is the one who can be betrayed with impunity. This is not within everyone’s reach. This is the difference between the common person and the hero. It is therefore more mysterious than it seems. For the common person, betrayal—which almost always occurs—has the effect of decisively pushing them toward the service of goods, but under the condition that they will never truly rediscover what, within that service, orients them.
3. The third proposition is this: In the end, goods, of course, exist—their field and domain exist—it is not a matter of denying them. But by reversing the perspective, I propose this: there is no other good than what can serve to pay the price for access to desire, precisely as we have elsewhere defined desire as the metonymy of our being. Not merely the modulation of the signifying chain, but what runs beneath that chain, which is, properly speaking, what we are and also what we are not—our being and our non-being—what, in the act, is signified, passing from one signifier to another along the chain through all its significations. This is what I explained last time with the metonymy of “eating the book,” which I perhaps, with some inspiration, used as an example.

But when examined closely, you will see that this is the most extreme metonymy one could propose, something that does not surprise us coming from Saint JOHN, the one who placed the Word at the beginning.

It is, after all, an idea from a writer—and he was one like no other—but still, “eating the book” is something that confronts what FREUD imprudently told us was not susceptible to substitution or displacement, namely hunger, with something that is not quite made for consumption—rather, something decidedly not made for consumption—a book. “Eating the book” is precisely where we touch on what FREUD means when he speaks of sublimation, not as a change of object, but as a change of aim. But this is not immediately obvious.

The hunger in question—the sublimated hunger—falls into the gap between the two because it is clear that a book does not fill our stomachs. When I eat the book, I do not thereby become the book, nor does the book become flesh. The book becomes me, if I may say so. But for this operation to occur—and it happens every day—it is essential that I pay something: exactly the difference that FREUD weighs in a corner of Civilization and Its Discontents. Sublimate all you want, but you must pay for it with something.

That something is called jouissance. This mystical operation is paid for with a “pound of flesh.” That is the object, the good that is paid for the satisfaction of desire. And this is where I wanted to bring you to shed some light on something essential that is often overlooked: this is precisely where the religious operation lies, which is always so interesting for us to identify.

What is sacrificed of goods for desire—and you will observe that this is equivalent to what is lost of desire for the sake of goods—is precisely this “pound of flesh” that religion takes upon itself to recover. This is the sole common trait of all religions, extending across all religion and the entire religious domain.

Of course, I cannot go into further detail, but I will offer you two examples that are as expressive as they are concise. In religious rituals, what is offered to God—flesh upon the altar, whether through animal sacrifice or otherwise, it matters little—is, generally speaking, consumed by members of the religious community, often simply by the priest. That is to say, it is devoured: an exemplary form.

But this is equally true at the level of sainthood. What is paid for access to sublime desire, which is indeed the aim of the saint, is not necessarily their own desire. For the saint lives and pays on behalf of others. It is certain that the essence of their sainthood lies in the fact that they bear the price paid, in the form of suffering, at its two most extreme points: the classic point of the harshest ironies about religious mystification—namely, the priests’ feast behind the altar—and equally, at the farthest boundary of religious heroism, we find the same process of recuperation.

This is how the grand religious work distinguishes itself from what is at stake in a κάθαρσις (catharsis) that is properly ethical in nature, insofar as it unites elements as seemingly foreign as the tragic spectacle of the Greeks and psychoanalysis. If we have found our model there, it is not without reason.

Κάθαρσις, as I mentioned earlier, has the meaning of the purification of desire. This purification, as is clear from simply reading ARISTOTLE’s sentence, can only occur if one has, in some sense, crossed the boundaries called fear and pity. It is insofar as the spectator feels, sees unfolding and developing within the story—in the έπος (epos) of tragedy—that they see the temporal progression before them. It is insofar as they can no longer ignore where the pole of desire lies and that it necessitates crossing not only fear but pity as well, that the hero’s voice does not tremble before anything, and especially not before the good of others. It is insofar as this is demonstrated that the subject comes to know, deep within themselves, a little more than they knew before. It lasts as long as it lasts, whether for one attending the Théâtre-Français or the Theatre of Athens.

But, at the very least, if ARISTOTLE’s formulations mean anything, they signify this: one knows the cost of moving forward in a certain direction, and—oh well—if one does not proceed, one knows why. One can even sense that if one is not entirely reconciled with their desire, it is because they could not have done better.

What I mean is that this is not a path one can tread without paying a price. Thus, I offer you here an interpretation of tragedy and its effect that is almost prosaic. The spectator is disillusioned—you might think—about the fact that even for the one who advances to the extreme of their desire, not everything is rosy. But they are also disillusioned—and this is crucial—about the value of prudence that opposes this and about the entirely relative worth of benevolent motives, attachments, and what KANT calls, somewhere, pathological interests that might hold one back from this risky path.

I am not thrilled to reduce—no matter how sharp its edges—this interpretation to a level that might make you believe that what seems essential to me in κάθαρσις (catharsis) is pacifying. This might not be pacifying for everyone. I merely point out that this is, after all, the most direct way to reconcile what some have seen as the “moralizing face of tragedy” with the fact that the lesson of tragedy, in its essence, is not moral at all in the conventional sense. It is clear that not all κάθαρσις reduces to something akin to a topological demonstration, which I would call—no less external.

The value of κάθαρσις (catharsis) in practices referred to by the Greeks as μαινόμενοι (mainomenoi), those who drive themselves mad through trance, religious experience, passion, or anything of that sort, clearly lies in the fact that the subject enters, in a more or less directed or wild way, into the zone described here. The return from that zone brings with it certain acquisitions, which may be called by various names—possession, or something else. You know that PLATO does not hesitate to refer to possession in cathartic processes. This represents an entire range, a whole spectrum of possibilities, for which, of course, a full year would be needed just to catalog them.

What is important is to understand the field within which this takes place—the very field whose limits I outlined for you last time. A concluding word on this: this field, which is ours, and insofar as we can explore it, becomes, you might say, the object of a science. Will the science of desire fit into the framework being prepared for us—which, I assure you, is being carefully curated—the framework of the “human sciences”?

For once, and as a parting thought for this year, I wish to take a stance on this matter.

I cannot imagine that this framework, as it is being prepared, could represent anything other than a systematic and principled misunderstanding of everything at stake in this matter—everything I am speaking to you about here. I see no other function in the emerging programs proposed for the human sciences than to serve, as a likely advantageous yet subsidiary branch, the “service of goods.” In other words, it will serve powers that are more or less precariously balanced and will, in any case, systematically ignore all the phenomena of violence demonstrating that the path to this promised realm of goods is not paved with ease.

In short, let me remind you, as per the words of one of the rare politicians to govern France, namely MAZARIN: “Politics is politics, but love remains love.” And as for what occupies the place I designate as that of desire, what could it be as a science? Well, you need not look far. I believe that what currently occupies the place I designate as that of desire, in terms of science, is simply what is commonly referred to as science itself—the science you see advancing so energetically in the realm of so-called physical conquests. I believe that over this historical period, human desire… long probed, anesthetized, lulled by moralists, domesticated by educators, betrayed by academies… has simply retreated and repressed itself into the most subtle yet also the most blind passion—as the story of ŒDIPUS shows us—the passion for knowledge, which is currently advancing in ways that are far from exhausted.

One of the most amusing traits in the history of science is the propaganda scientists and alchemists once directed at powers when they began to falter slightly. They said, “Give us money; you don’t realize that if you gave us a little money, what machines, contraptions, and devices we could create for your benefit!” It’s a profound issue, this collapse of wisdom, to understand how powers could have allowed this. Yet they did, and science obtained funding. As a result, we now face the vengeance it exacts. It’s a fascinating phenomenon, but one cannot deny that, for those at the forefront of science, there is an acute awareness of being at the wall of hatred, and they themselves are shaken by the precarious flow of a heavy guilt.

Yet this does not matter because, in truth, this is not an adventure that, due to Mr. OPPENHEIMER’s remorse, could simply stop overnight. It is here, nonetheless, that the secret of the problem of desire for the future lies. Universal organization faces the challenge of determining what it will do with this science, which clearly pursues something whose nature escapes it, as is only natural. If this science, which occupies the place of desire, cannot quite be a science of desire except as a formidable question mark, this is undoubtedly due to a structural reason.

In other words, science, driven by some mysterious desire, knows no more—no more than anything in the unconscious—what this desire means. The future will reveal this, perhaps through those who, by God’s grace, have most recently “eaten the book.” By this, I mean those who did not hesitate to write this book of Western science with their efforts and even their blood. It remains, nonetheless, an edible book.

Earlier, I mentioned MENCIUS. MENCIUS explains very well—after making remarks you would be wrong to consider optimistic about human goodness—how it happens that what we are most ignorant about is the laws that come from heaven, the same laws ANTIGONE references. He provides an absolutely rigorous demonstration of this. It is too late to present it here. These laws of heaven are, in fact, the laws of desire. For the one who has eaten the book and who upholds its mystery, the question may indeed arise: Is this person good or bad?

This question now seems entirely irrelevant. What matters is not whether man is inherently good or bad; what matters is what the book will yield when it has been entirely consumed.