🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I believe that you found satisfaction in the inauguration this year, as it took place last night.
You have been indulged. You were given something good. Now it is a question of knowing what you want to do with it.

I have two questions for you. One pertains to something preceding last night’s event, and the other relates to it.
The prior matter is this: Who has read Beyond the Pleasure Principle?

It might not be a bad idea for those who still have some mnemonic trace of what I left you with at the end of our last session—namely, the Wiederholungszwang, or as I took care to emphasize to you, what we would rather translate as repetition compulsion than repetition automatism. This concept was identified and isolated by FREUD as being detached from what he had defined since the very beginning of his writings, even his earliest works, which were revealed last. I am referring to the work in the Project for a Scientific Psychology, a text I often mention and which, in the coming weeks, someone will need to address so that we can analyze and critique it here.

From that point forward, what FREUD had defined as the pleasure principle—which, as I will explain as we revisit it today, is entirely a principle of constancy—marks an essential difference:

• The principle of constancy, which he originally termed the pleasure principle and consistently maintained as such whenever he dealt with the theoretical exposition of the pleasure principle,
• And this other thing, this other principle, which analysts are almost as bewildered by as a fish is by an apple, something they attempt to call the nirvana principle.

For example, it is truly remarkable to see in the writings of an author like HARTMANN, for instance, the three terms—principle of constancy, pleasure principle, and nirvana principle—identified in an absolutely identical relationship to constancy. It’s as if FREUD had never shifted from this mental category, where he sought to structure the construction of facts, and as if he were always speaking of the same thing. One might then ask:

• Why would he suddenly call what we refer to as the nirvana principle the beyond the pleasure principle?
• Why would he place it beyond the pleasure principle?

I explained to you last time how, at the beginning of the pleasure principle, FREUD introduces the two systems of the ego, demonstrating how what constitutes pleasure in one system is experienced as pain in the other, and vice versa. And how it is precisely to go beyond this perfect symmetry, this reciprocity between the two systems—this complete coupling, which, if it were purely and simply a coupling, would amount to making them one—that FREUD intervenes. If the primary and secondary processes were nested within one another as mere inverses, it would suffice, as we now often hear, to act upon one system to simultaneously affect the other—to act on the ego and resistance to thereby touch the core of the problem.

However, in 1920, FREUD wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle to assert that it is clear we cannot stop there. The question remains open, given that the manifestation of the primary process at the level of the ego, in the form of a symptom, translates into displeasure, into suffering. Yet it keeps recurring. And this very fact should give us pause for a moment. It is not enough to say, “What works well in one system doesn’t work in the other.”

• Why, then, does this repressed system, where things function in a certain way, continue to manifest itself with what I called last time its insistence?
• Why, given that the entire nervous system is designed to reach a state of equilibrium, is equilibrium never achieved?

These things, when expressed in this way, seem self-evident. But precisely, the extraordinary value of FREUD’s work is that he was a man who, once he had seen something—and he was able to see it, and often as the first—never let go of its distinctiveness, originality, and sharpness. And immediately, of course, like anything new brought to thought, the gnawing work of habit, of intellectual routine, set in around each of his discoveries, aiming to subsume them back into conventional mental frameworks.

You only need to look back to the first significant theoretical concept he introduced—the notion of libido—to see the immediate attempts to obscure its uniqueness. On this occasion, represented by JUNG, the attempt was made to dilute the distinct, irreducible nature of FREUD’s concept by saying, “This libido is sexual.”

Perhaps we would now need to reemphasize this point, stating explicitly what FREUD brought forth: the essential driving force behind what one might call human progress—its conflicts, its pathos, its fecundity, its creativity—must be stated clearly to make it understood. Because this libido has become the most amorphous concept in the world: luxury, they say, is what it means. And already, within ten years, JUNG had interpreted it as referring to psychic interests.

Libido is sexual libido. When I speak of libido, I mean sexual libido. That is why, when the shift—which had already begun between 1915 and 1920, the so-called analytical technical turn—occurred, a consensus was reached to focus analytic technique on resistance. This move, while valid in itself and undoubtedly productive, introduced a theoretical confusion, as I pointed out earlier: that by acting on the ego, one operates on one half of the apparatus.

This brings us back to the starting point, which might suffice. FREUD reminds us at this juncture that the Freudian discovery lies in the fact that the unconscious:

• is that which cannot be accessed as such,
• makes itself heard in a paradoxical, painful, irreducible way—precisely in a manner that does not conform to the pleasure principle.

In other words, FREUD brings the essence of his discovery back into focus, to the forefront, where it tends to be forgotten.

That is where I ended last time, and I told some of you: during this break, read Beyond the Pleasure Principle. If anyone would like to speak up and share what they have seen, grasped, or discovered in that text—whether it aligns with what I am saying or contradicts it—I will give them the floor.

Octave MANNONI
I would gladly ask for clarification on a point that slightly confuses me. Perhaps I am mistaken: it seems, when reading FREUD, that one encounters two aspects of the repetition compulsion:

• In one aspect, it involves reattempting a failed effort in hopes of succeeding, revisiting a problem. This appears as a defense against danger or trauma.
• In the other aspect, it seems to revert to a more comfortable position because the subsequent position, viewed from an evolutionary perspective, has been missed.

And I have not noticed that these two positions ultimately align—or if they do, I missed that alignment—and this difficulty confuses me.

LACAN
I don’t know if you recall this distinction I believed—and I no longer have the notes I took when LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS spoke—this ambiguity in the use of the term Wiederholungszwang, showing that two tendencies intertwine and interlace: one restitutive and the other repetitive.
[Addressing Jean-Bertrand Lefèvre-Pontalis] You studied this at the time.

You clearly noted that there were two registers, and I wouldn’t say that FREUD’s thought oscillated between them—there is no less oscillating thinker than he—but there was indeed a series of transitions that could give the impression at any moment that his research was circling back on itself. It is almost as if there were a kind of self-monitoring process, where, each time he leaned too far in one direction, a sort of internal warning compelled him to say: “Isn’t this simply the restitutive tendency?”

And once again:
“No, that isn’t enough. There is something that persists beyond the manifestation of this restitutive tendency; it is something distinctly repetitive.”

And in this framework, what is repetitive paradoxically presents itself at the level of individual psychology as gratuitous. This is where the question lies, the enigma: what we see at the level of individual psychology does not align with our hypothesis of the pleasure principle, which suggests that the entire system should revert to its original state and function homeostatically, as we say nowadays. Why is there something that, from any perspective, does not conform? This is precisely the movement of the pleasure principle, which constantly tries to reclaim the assurance that it involves a phenomenon of restitution. And yet the facts, the experience, always push back against this idea.

It is striking to see that FREUD does not find the most paradoxical phenomena to be the most instructive. Ultimately, it is the massive fact of reproduction in transference that compels his decision: repetition compulsion must be accepted as it is.

Octave MANNONI
My question was aimed at clarifying whether the second sense of repetition compulsion forced FREUD to revise his initial conception or whether they coexist as distinct layers. I haven’t quite grasped whether this led him to abandon the idea of pure restitution or if, conversely, he added repetition compulsion to pure restitution.

LACAN
Based on your reading of the text?

Octave MANNONI
I haven’t finished rereading it.

LACAN
It is precisely through this that FREUD is led directly to the function of the death instinct—that is, he moves beyond the framework, as he does here.

Jean HYPPOLITE
Why does he call it the death instinct? When rereading this, one gets the impression of something deeply enigmatic. There is a sense of heterogeneous phenomena that he describes as not fitting within the framework, such as people who repeatedly experience failures. He cites all these things and other heterogeneous phenomena, and he calls it the death instinct.

What connection is there between the term death instinct and these phenomena beyond the pleasure principle? Why call it the death instinct? The term suddenly opens up perspectives for him, some of which seem rather strange, like the notion of a “return to matter.” It’s interesting but somewhat odd, and there are other… The very act of calling it the death instinct opens up phenomena quite heterogeneous to those he discusses.

Octave MANNONI
He might have done better to call it the anti-instinct.

Jean HYPPOLITE
Once he names it the death instinct, it suddenly leads him to discover other phenomena or to open perspectives that were not implicated in what initially drove him to label it the death instinct.

LACAN
That’s accurate.

Jean HYPPOLITE
The notion of a “return to matter” is an extraordinary enigma, and in my view, somewhat vague. But here one has the impression of confronting a series of enigmas, and even the name he gives them—the death instinct—is itself a leap beyond the phenomena he described, a prodigious leap that philosophical explanations struggle to account for.

LACAN
Does anyone else have anything to add?

M. BEJARANO
I have the same difficulty in grasping that leap. He gives the example that this would oppose the life instincts, the instincts of self-preservation, and he therefore calls them death instincts. But one thinks—I thought—of an example, that of fire: does saying that fire aims at non-fire align with what he seems to suggest, that the instincts of preservation, even of life, lead to death, but along a specific path that he insists must be this one and no other?

In essence, while defending against pitfalls and saying that death is willed by these instincts of preservation, can we not, by transposing, say that fire too—that is, heat—is cold? At that point, it seems to me equally specious in this duality; they seem like two sides of the same thing. I do not understand why he calls it the death instinct.

Jean HYPPOLITE
Isn’t there, in this somewhat nebulous philosophy, which is expressive philosophy, the claim that libido tends to form increasingly interconnected and organic groups, while the death instinct tends to return to the elements, to the elemental? It’s somewhat vague as a philosophy, but that’s what he seems to conclude.

LACAN
It does not give the impression of vagueness. Reading the text, one gets the sense that he is following what I would call his “little idea.” There is something driving him, and ultimately, when he himself realizes it, he acknowledges the extraordinarily speculative nature of his entire development.

Or more precisely, what I alluded to earlier as that kind of circular questioning, the movement of his thought, continually returning to its starting points, forming a new circle, rediscovering the path, and finally crossing it. And once he has crossed it, he recognizes and admits that there is indeed something that I described as entirely beyond the framework, something that cannot rely solely on reference to experience for its foundation.

He asserts—he affirms—that the ultimate necessity of this development, which he considered worthy of being communicated anew, is rooted in his own assent, in the fact that he is necessarily driven by the life of this investigation, of this problematic.

Jean HYPPOLITE
One also gets the impression, reading the article, that for him, in the unconscious, the life and death instincts are essentially one. But the critical and narrative element arises when the components of a unified thing separate. There is something very striking and beautiful about this, akin to a child who kisses you while scratching you. He explicitly states that there is indeed an element of aggression in what we call human love, without which there would be little more than impotence, yet which can escalate to the point of killing the partner. Similarly, there is an element of libido that would lead to actual impotence without a degree of aggression. When these work together, they constitute human love. But when one component functions in isolation, the death instinct emerges.

LACAN
This pertains strictly to what might be called the immediate, what is observed in the psychological experience of an individual taken as such—that is, isolated, if one could say so, even imagining, for the sake of thought, a puppet and its behavior. But what he speaks of when referring to the death instinct, as well as the life instinct, is the strings. What interests him is determining which strings direct the puppet.

This brings me back to the central question raised following our discussion last night, the question I felt necessary to pose in the form: “Is this a humanism?” And which is the same question I ask when I say:

“Is it consistent with the Freudian discovery to speak of an ‘autonomous ego’ in any sense?”

In other words, does FREUD truly introduce a question and answer that are absolutely fundamental to the perennial question at the most common level of human experience, the universal concern?

What does this notion, this mirage, or this eternal question mean?
What is the degree of autonomy in man?
In this sense, what does FREUD contribute to us?
Is it truly a fundamental discovery, a revolution?

And this also leads back to the third question I posed last night:

“What is new—if we place them on the same plane, at the same level, in the same register—from HEGEL to FREUD?”

Jean HYPPOLITE
There is a lot.

LACAN
I certainly will not provide a complete answer today, as there are steps to take along a certain path that is, perhaps, itself a long one. I will try, in my own way, to clarify, to glimpse, to precisely situate the meaning of what I earlier called his “little or great idea” when he oscillates and circles around this notion, this function of the death instinct.

However, we can indeed begin the journey from this fundamental question, for it is present, and it is the question we place at the forefront here, starting from practice and analytic technique:

What should the analyst aim for?

LACAN
Does the analyst, to put it bluntly—
as is now being done in very broad circles, so broad indeed that one might say it is universal, with only a few exceptions—
need to revert to this notion, this essentially individualist perspective of the subject, which remains intact and, in a rather surprising way, for it is nonetheless quite surprising that today—
in a perspective we could polarize between the two extremes of a conquering thought and a retrograde thought, literally a polarity between light and obscurantism—
it is, generally speaking, what one might call laboratory scientists who continue to sustain this sort of mirage, this persistent veil of thought […] aimed at reducing, at questioning this mirage that, ultimately, it is the individual, the human subject—and why this subject among all others?—who is truly autonomous. That, ultimately, somewhere within, whether in the pineal gland or elsewhere, there is a signalman, the little man inside the man, who directs the entire apparatus.

Well, it is precisely to this that analytic thought currently returns, manifesting in a thousand forms. When we hear talk of:

• the autonomous ego,
• the healthy part of the ego,
• the ego that must be strengthened,
• the ego that is not sufficiently robust to be relied upon for conducting an analysis,
• the ego that must be the ally of the analyst, the ally of the analyst’s ego…

You can picture these two “egos,” arm in arm, aided by this remnant within the subject’s ego, subordinated by this so-called trust or alliance—which, truthfully, one might say has no basis whatsoever in experience, as it is precisely the opposite that occurs. That is, it is precisely at the level of this ego that all resistance inevitably arises. One truly wonders where resistance could come from if not from this ego.

And here, I will refrain from elaborating further; I do not have time today to extract from my notes some texts, but I will do so someday. I will quote a few recently published paragraphs, in which this notion is expressed with a sort of complacency, a satisfaction born of the ease finally achieved. This notion claims it is very simple, as simple as saying “good morning,” and that is how it is: there are good elements in this dear little subject where libido is neutralized, delibidinized, where aggression itself is dis-aggressed. It is a conflict-free sphere, free of turmoil. From there, it’s like Archimedes: give it its little point outside the world, and it can lift everything.

But unfortunately, this little point outside the world does not exist. Thus, I am returning to the question. One must fully understand its scope, which extends to what I discussed last night:

“Is this a humanism?”

This is yet another way of phrasing the question, and it goes beyond these trivialities, these naiveties—it reaches much further.

“Is it in him—that is precisely where this leads—that man finds his measure?”

That is to say, it challenges a sharp, absolutely essential point, which carries—of course, provided one fully grasps it—one of the most fundamental premises of all classical thought since a certain moment in Greek philosophy:

“Man,” we are told, “is the measure of all things.” [Protagoras]

But where is his own measure?

Jean HYPPOLITE
Don’t you think—and this is almost a response to your question, which I spent part of the night reflecting on, and which aligns with what you are saying—that there is a profound conflict in FREUD, a conflict between:

• a rationalism—and by rationalist, I mean someone who believes humanity can be rationalized, and this aligns with the ego,
• and another entirely different man, infinitely detached from healing others, ultimately more eager for a knowledge of a wholly different depth, and constantly opposed to that rationalist?

In The Future of an Illusion, FREUD tells us: what will happen when all illusions are gone? And here, the ego—the strengthened, human, active ego—intervenes: one envisions a liberated humanity, man… One sees there a figure. But there is also a deeper figure. Isn’t the discovery of the death instinct tied to this deeper figure that FREUD finds within himself and which the rationalist does not express? What do you think?

There are two men in FREUD:

• At times, I see the rationalist, aligned with humanism: “We will rid ourselves of all illusions; what will remain?”
• And then there is the pure speculative thinker, who, in a way, is not particularly invested in healing others and who aligns more closely with the death instinct, on the side of speculation.

LACAN
I believe this is intrinsic to FREUD’s journey as a creator. I absolutely do not believe this represents a conflict for him. It is really only by adopting a rationalist aspiration, by considering it as embodied in a dream of rationalization, that one could say such a thing. However, I believe that, regardless of the attention he paid—or appeared to pay—in certain texts, such as The Future of an Illusion or Civilization and Its Discontents, no matter how far he pushed this dialogue, I would characterize it as operating at the level of Einsteinian optimism or utopianism. By this, I mean EINSTEIN when he steps outside his brilliant mathematics to offer platitudes.

Jean HYPPOLITE
There is a certain grandeur in FREUD’s materialism.

LACAN
Platitudes have their own grandeur; there are platitudes as far as the eye can see. I do not believe FREUD operates at that level.

Jean HYPPOLITE
That’s why I appreciate him—because he does not operate at that level; there is something profoundly enigmatic.

LACAN
In Civilization and Its Discontents, we see once again how FREUD detects where resistance occurs. As though, no matter how far one introduces not rationalism but rationalization, it is inevitable that something will break down somewhere.

Jean HYPPOLITE
That is the most profound aspect of FREUD. But the rationalist is also a part of him.

LACAN
Precisely, if there is one quality in his thinking, it is its distinctly traditionalist nature—in the fullest sense of the term—from beginning to end. Ultimately, even this text, which we struggle with and circle around as something so difficult to penetrate, represents nothing less than the most vital, most immediate, most striking demands of a reason that concedes to nothing. That is to say, it never declares, “Here begins the opaque and ineffable.”

He enters into it—and even if he seems to lose himself in complete darkness—he continues with reason. I do not believe there is in him any form of abdication or submission to something that renounces reason, as implied in what you suggested earlier—that, in the end, he would retreat somewhere on a mountain, thinking, “All is well as it is.”

Jean HYPPOLITE
He advances toward the light, even if that ultimate light must be antithetical. By rationalism, I did not mean to suggest he was giving himself over to a new religion. On the contrary, the ausführung (accomplishment) is a religion against religion.

LACAN
Indeed, the meaning of that—its antithesis, if we may call it so—the death instinct, is precisely this: an absolutely decisive step in grasping reality. And a reality that far exceeds what we call reality within the reality principle, achieved through a rational operation as such. It is a concept, not an admission of powerlessness, not a concession to some irreducible or ultimate ineffable—it is a concept.

Now we will attempt to take a few steps toward it. Ultimately, I believe we must begin—since this is where we find ourselves—with what you proposed to us last night as being the Phenomenology of Spirit in HEGEL, which indeed corresponds to what HEGEL has taught us. HEGEL is entirely about consciousness. Yet in HEGEL, it is clear that Bewusstsein (consciousness) is much closer to knowledge than to consciousness. It concerns the progress of knowledge. I believe this is where the division arises.

Even so, I said that one of the questions I might have asked last night—had the assembly, which was very composed, not remained within its limits—would have been:

“What is the function of non-knowledge in HEGEL?”

What we need is for you to give us a second lecture next semester to discuss this. But as you outlined things yesterday evening, it is certain that the concern is with the progress of knowledge. Since earlier we discussed future perspectives—the future of humanity, the goal of history, and, in the same breath, the endpoint of our therapeutic endeavor—and since this remains directly relevant to FREUD’s concerns, I pointed out last night that there are several articles addressing what we must anticipate.

What should ultimately be expected from the reclamation of this psychological Zuiderzee, as FREUD wrote somewhere, this unconscious—when we have drained the swamps of the Id? What will result in terms of human productivity? Well, as we have already indicated today, this prospect did not seem particularly exhilarating to him. It appeared to him that some levees might still rupture. All of this is written in FREUD; I recall it only to show that we remain within the commentary on Freudian thought.

What is at stake now is to determine—and I am glad that M. HYPPOLITE is here to address this question and confirm whether I might be pushing this too far—what the Hegelian perspective shows us as being precisely “this realization,” “this end of history,” this sense of a certain manifestation, whether of progress or not, within human community. I believe that, ultimately, the entire progress of the Phenomenology of Spirit in HEGEL involves all of you—it is for this reason that you are here. This means nothing other than what you do, even when you do not think of it—in other words, always the strings of the puppet.

Will M. HYPPOLITE agree with me if I say that the entire progress of this Phenomenology of Spirit ultimately represents an increasingly refined mastery? Do you accept this framing?

Jean HYPPOLITE
That depends on what you mean by “mastery.”

LACAN
Of course! Well, I will attempt to illustrate it. Not, of course, by trying to smooth over the angles—to water down my term—but on the contrary, by showing where it might strike a nerve. I will illustrate it.

Jean HYPPOLITE
Do not take me as an opponent; I am not a Hegelian. Probably, I am against it. Do not take me as a representative of HEGEL; I oppose the conventional Hegelian conclusion.

LACAN

This will simplify things greatly for us. I simply ask you, as someone more specialized in HEGEL than I am, to let me know if I am going too far—specifically, in such a way that important texts could contradict me. So, an increasingly refined mastery. I would like to illustrate it to clearly delineate where the sharp edge of the knife will be. Whether it is HEGEL or not doesn’t matter to me; what matters is knowing that it is HEGEL, because HEGEL is still HEGEL.

As I have often pointed out, I don’t much like hearing people say, “We have surpassed HEGEL,” as they say, “We have surpassed Descartes, etc.,” “surpassed everything, always”—they simply remain in the same place. So, let us illustrate this refined mastery. The end of history is absolute knowledge: there is no getting around it. If consciousness is knowledge, then the end of this dialectic of consciousness is absolute knowledge, as HEGEL explicitly writes.

Jean HYPPOLITE

Yes, but one can interpret HEGEL. Even within the Phenomenology, one may ask whether the chapter on absolute knowledge indicates a moment, within the course of experience, when absolute knowledge appears—or whether absolute knowledge resides in the total presentation of experience. That is to say:

• Does absolute knowledge always accompany every state of phenomenological consciousness? Are we always and at all times in absolute knowledge?
• Or is absolute knowledge a specific moment? In other words, can we consider the Phenomenology like the figure of KAFKA’s protagonist who reaches a door that says “absolute knowledge,” suggesting a series of steps leading to absolute knowledge, followed by a final stage—whether NAPOLEON or anyone else—called absolute knowledge?

HEGEL suggests this somewhat, but fortunately, one can understand HEGEL differently. In particular, the interpretation HEIDEGGER offers of HEGEL is tendentious but possible, fortunately—that is why one does not surpass HEGEL.

It is entirely possible that the notion of absolute knowledge is, so to speak, immanent at every stage of the Phenomenology. At each stage, there is absolute knowledge. Only, consciousness misses it: it transforms this truth, which could be absolute knowledge, into another natural phenomenon that is not absolute knowledge. Thus, absolute knowledge would never be a moment in history; it would always be… absolute knowledge as experience itself—not a moment of experience but experience as such, with its presences and absences. That is to say, by closing the field of presences and absences, consciousness, being within the field, does not see the field. Seeing the field—that is absolute knowledge.

LACAN

Still, this absolute knowledge in HEGEL is embodied in a discourse.

Jean HYPPOLITE

Yes, yes!

LACAN

And last night, you emphasized what we might call “the third stage of consciousness.” First, there is unconscious consciousness, if we may put it that way, then the consciousness of discourse.

That is to say—what seemed to me, at a certain moment, perhaps missing in your exposition—the moment when the subject recognizes themselves through being recognized is not purely and simply, and in HEGEL (however much glory I might derive from it)—if you see that, nonetheless, the entire relationship between one and the other would be so specular…

I believe there is, nonetheless, the introduction of something you called at one point consciousness as it justifies itself, as it gives reasons for its actions. And as you said: indeed, there is no principled reason, in HEGEL’s theory, why everything should not only be justifiable but justified.

Yet I believe—whatever we think about this constancy that would manifest—I believe that when I responded to you, I emphasized this—all is always there: all of history is always present, currently present, present in the vertical sense. It cannot be otherwise. Otherwise, it would be a kind of childish tale.

Nevertheless, there is something to be said about this absolute knowledge, which indeed is present from the time of the first Neanderthal idiots—it is still embodied in a discourse. And I believe that HEGEL’s texts themselves would provide the precise technical detail that what is at stake is the closure of the discourse upon itself: that it fully agrees with itself, that everything expressed in the discourse is coherent and justified.

In this sense, in terms of formulation within the discourse, there is still something that must come to pass. This is where I stop and pose the question. We proceed slowly, step by step. But it is better to go slowly to proceed surely. I will not say a quarter of what I intended to say today. But this will lead us to what we are seeking: the meaning and originality of what FREUD contributes in relation to HEGEL. And you will see that it is absolutely essential. It is a phenomenon of the same dimension.

Let us return to HEGEL. I will proceed step by step. Having established this, M. HYPPOLITE, I will clarify my thoughts. I spoke of refined mastery, and you will see how directly this touches upon our technical problems.

It seems to me that as soon as we admit this—something that, to me, does not seem foreign to the texts…
One must not disregard the fact that HEGEL’s texts are extremely diverse, and even the moments of his thought, life, and political action speak in divergent ways…
…have I said something too advanced in clarifying “refined mastery” with this idea that, ultimately, absolute knowledge, if we consider it as discourse finally reaching completion…

Let us set aside the notion that once discourse reaches its completion, there will no longer be a need to speak—what is called the post-revolutionary stages—let us set that aside.

What I call “refined mastery” is the idea that when discourse is complete—I mean purely from a Hegelian perspective…
And you will see, later today or next time, what I mean by trans-Hegelian perspectives, and why they are conceivable within the Hegelian perspective…
…this completed discourse, as an incarnation of absolute knowledge, as it appears at the forefront, in perspective, ideally becomes an instrument of power, the scepter, and the property of those who know. Nothing implies that all will participate in it.

When the scholars I spoke about last night…
this concerns something more than a myth—it is truly the very essence of the progress of the symbol…
have succeeded in closing off human discourse, they own it. And those who do not possess it, well, they can only engage in jazz, dance, [sic] have fun—the kind, gentle, libidinous folk.

This is what I call refined mastery, meaning that no matter how far mastery is developed, what remains, precisely embodied in knowledge, is the function of the master. Consequently, a final division, a final separation—if I may say ontological—remains within man. This is quite curious! For it takes us to the very heart of how HEGEL surpassed a certain religious individualism, let’s say, that existence the individual derives from their unique tête-à-tête with God, to show that the reality—or, so to speak, the essence—of one half of a human lies in the being of the other.

But ultimately, this results in reciprocal alienation, as you perfectly demonstrated last night, an alienation that remains irreducible and—I insist—terribly inescapable. Because, if we examine each of its moments, you can see how, at the very outset, in the division of the master and the slave, what could be more foolish than the primitive master? He is the true master.

We have lived long enough to recognize what happens when this aspiration to mastery takes hold of men! We saw it during the war: a political error made by those who ideologically believed themselves to be masters—believing that it was enough to extend their hand to take something, to seize it. Think of the Germans advancing toward Toulon to capture the fleet—a true story of masters—while the mastery lies entirely on the side of the slave, who develops their mastery in opposition to the master.

We observe this reciprocal alienation to the very end, even to the ultimate conclusion. Imagine, at the end, how little the refined discourse will matter compared to those enjoying jazz at the corner café, and how much the masters will long to join them—while conversely, the others will consider themselves miserable slaves, treated as nothings, believing the master to be blissfully enjoying their status, yet, of course, remaining wholly and utterly frustrated.

I believe this, in the end, is the ultimate limit HEGEL brings us to, and it is still something extraordinarily curious!

This becomes even more evident when I point out the step taken since then—even if only at the level of anthropology—showing what becomes of man when he is truly interrogated. That is, what FREUD has brought us.

Has FREUD, in this sense, departed from anthropology? Or has he extended it? Or can one still speak purely and simply of anthropology? That is the question. Is FREUD, or is he not, purely a humanist? For HEGEL, it is evidently a limit.

For FREUD, I believe it moves beyond, and FREUD’s discovery is precisely that man is not entirely within man. I will attempt to explain why this is so. Let us begin with the simplest, most elementary things, which are nonetheless worth recalling: FREUD, you will tell me, was a physician.

But he was born [1856], roughly a century after HEGEL [1770]. A great deal occurred in that interval. I want to draw your attention to the importance of those events and the fact that the meaning he could give to the word “physician” is intrinsically tied to the historical events that transpired in that interval.

In other words, FREUD was not a physician like ESCULAPIUS, HIPPOCRATES, or Saint LUKE. He was a very particular kind of physician. He was a physician much like we all are today, more or less. A physician who, in essence, was no longer a physician. No more than we are now, with the medical education we increasingly receive today—a kind of physician entirely outside the tradition of what the physician always represented for humanity.

Indeed, this fundamental proposition, which consists of naïvely, foolishly…
it carries within itself a truly strange sort of incoherence. People don’t pay attention to it, but if they did, they’d realize how absurd it is to say:

“Man has a body.”

He has a body—it is clear that this makes sense to us, a completely immediate sense.

It is even likely that it has always made sense, but it makes more sense to us than to anyone else, precisely because we have pushed—consciously or unconsciously, along with HEGEL—to an extreme the identification of man with his knowledge, and of course, with something that is accumulated knowledge.

It is entirely strange to be localized within a body—this kind of strangeness that cannot be minimized, despite all the flapping of wings [sic] and declarations like:

“We have reinvented human unity; everything was once separated; that idiot DESCARTES dissected everything utterly…”

It is clear that we are still faced with this function. There is man, with everything that constitutes man, and all of this accumulated knowledge. Yet he must explain this strange mechanism he is confronted with, one he still does not understand how to approach.

It is utterly futile to make grand declarations about the “return to the unity of the human being,” Thomism, Aristotelianism, […] the form of the body, and other such nonsense. The division is established once and for all, and this is what matters. That is why the modern physician is not the physician of old—except those who persist in imagining temperaments, constitutions, and such things.

Ultimately, the physician’s attitude toward the body is that of someone disassembling a machine, viewing the body as such. Declarations of principle will not change this fundamental attitude, which is radical and central. This is what FREUD began with. FREUD’s ideal was precisely this: to conduct pathological anatomy, anatomical physiology, to discover what this little apparatus, this construction, this complex thing served for—particularly as it was embodied in the nervous system.

I believe there is something here whose troubling and scandalous nature has prompted an entire direction of thought to revisit it with various theoretical elaborations and well-intentioned efforts, such as Gestaltism and other similar approaches—a kind of return to the benevolence of nature and pre-established harmony. However, this must not blind us to the fact that it would not appear scandalous in this sense if we were to look closely.

It is not at all because this perspective dissects the unity of life that it should strike or alarm us, nor does it necessitate compensating, correcting, or reconsidering it. That is not the issue. Clearly, nothing proves that the body is a machine. Not only is there no proof, but there is every likelihood that it is not so. What matters is that this is how the question was approached.

When I say “we,” I earlier named the figure in question: “we” is, more or less, DESCARTES. Of course, he was not alone, and I will even demonstrate why. Many things had to fall into place for it to become possible to think of the body as a machine. Chiefly, there had to be one machine so striking that it not only operated on its own but also embodied something distinctly remarkable and human. Naturally, at the time, no one realized that this was the phenomenon taking place. But now, with a bit of hindsight, we can recognize it.

This phenomenon predates HEGEL by a fair amount. In this respect, one might even say that HEGEL, who had very little connection to all of this, is perhaps the last representative of a certain classical anthropology. Indeed, compared to DESCARTES, he was ultimately lagging behind.

The machine I am referring to is the clock. It is rare in our time to find someone truly astonished by what a clock is. LOUIS ARAGON, as I recall, in Le paysan de Paris, speaks of it in terms that only a poet can use to salute something in all its miraculous character—a thing that, he says, pursues a hypothesis whether man is there or not. He speaks of it with a certain fervor! I would need to reread the text to show you. But that, of course, is not the point.

There were clocks. They were not yet very miraculous, as it took a long time after The Discourse on Method for a proper, reliable pendulum clock to be developed—with M. HUYGHENS contributing his expertise. I have referred to this in one of my texts. Before that, there were clocks that worked “by weights,” which, more or less, served their purpose. In the broader historical perspective, they still embodied something essential to our being-there, as we call it—our ability to measure time.

Even though one might say that this time is not “true time,” still, the clock unwinds it on its own, as if it were autonomous.

And from there—one need only open a certain book called Treatise on Man, which I cannot recommend enough—you will find it illustrated, and it is relatively inexpensive. Treatise on Man is less esteemed than The Discourse on Method, popular with dentists, but it is worth flipping through to confirm that what DESCARTES sought in man was the clock.

From this point, the question develops: CONDILLAC and the statue, which I mentioned in passing last time and whose fragility I may demonstrate. This machine is not, as the ignorant might think, purely and simply the opposite of the living, a simulacrum of life, or the paradox of the inert imbued with false animation. The fact that it was designed to embody something called time—that is, the mystery of mysteries—should give us a clue.

At the same time, a certain PASCAL was building a modest machine for performing additions. This pursuit, coming from a mind not ordinarily given to whims or caprices, also had its significance. It aligns with the idea that these machines represent something far more intimately linked to human functions—radically, essentially, and fundamentally human—than anything else that exists.

In other words, the human machine is not purely and simply an artifice, like a chair, a table, or other more or less symbolic objects amidst which we live without realizing that they are portraits of ourselves. Machines are something else entirely, something that penetrates much further into what we truly are than even their builders suspect.

What I want to highlight is this: something very peculiar happened:

• If HEGEL saw himself as something akin to Spirit with a capital S, the embodiment of Spirit in his time,
• And if he dreamed that NAPOLEON was the Weltseele, the soul of the world—the other, more feminine, more carnal pole of power—

…both distinguished themselves, HEGEL as much as NAPOLEON, by completely overlooking the importance of a phenomenon emerging in their time—so much so that it could have been noticed: the steam engine.

Despite WATT being not too far off, there were other inventions—small bombs in mines, things that operated on their own. These were crucial developments.

They entirely failed to grasp the importance of the machine, which is, after all, what I want to emphasize: the fact that, in the machine, the most radical symbolic activity of humanity is embodied. Only one more step needed to be taken for the questions—questions you may not notice amidst all of this—to be posed at the level where we now consider them.

In FREUD, there is something that we discuss, yet which is entirely absent in HEGEL. The central concern, the dominant preoccupation, the one that, from a speculative perspective, is more decisive and significant than all the purely homonymous confusion we found ourselves in last night when discussing the opposition between consciousness in HEGEL’s time and the unconscious in FREUD’s time.

It is like comparing the Parthenon to hydroelectric power—it has absolutely no connection. The difference is that we are talking about energy, and, as I pointed out last time, this concept could only emerge once machines existed. Not that energy wasn’t always present—it certainly was when humans exploited spaces.

What is curious, however, is that people never notice the most immediate things. Those who owned slaves never realized that one could establish equations between the cost of their food and the work they performed on latifundia. There is no example of energy calculations in the use of slaves. One could read CATON and other serious writers on economics, but they never performed such calculations. No equations regarding the efficiency of slaves were established.

It was only when we had machines that people realized they, too, required nourishment. At the same time, it became apparent why this realization was key: machines also required maintenance because they tend to deteriorate. Slaves, too, degrade, but no one thought about that with slaves. It was simply considered natural that they would age and die—nobody reflected on it.

This realization led further: to recognizing—something never considered before—that living beings sustain themselves. In other words, they are homeostatic systems. From here, you begin to see the emergence of what I would call modern biological concepts, which are characterized by never involving a notion of life itself.

There are two phases:

• The vitalist phase of thought, where life was considered original and distinctive,
• And the biological phase, expressed most clearly by the founder of modern biology, BICHAT, whose statue adorns the old Faculty of Medicine. He stated:

“Life is the totality of forces resisting death.”

Although BICHAT retained a vague belief in God, he was extremely lucid and understood that a new era had begun—one in which life would be defined in relation to death.

This aligns with what I am explaining to you: the decisive significance of referencing the machine as foundational for biology.

All biologists believe they are devoted to the study of life, and, indeed, we have made enormous advances in biology. Yet it is not always clear why, since their fundamental concepts—however fruitful they may have proven—derive essentially from origins that have nothing to do with the phenomenon of life itself. This phenomenon, in its essence, remains completely external, impenetrable. Numerous manifestations show that so-called biological concepts are fundamentally inadequate.

This does not, however, diminish their considerable value—a value I will try to demonstrate in the coming sessions. Not in relation to the phenomenon of life, which continues to elude us despite repeated claims that we are getting closer to understanding it, but rather in terms of their value for clarifying a certain progress in understanding humanity. Let us call it their value elsewhere.

This is why it may have surprised some of you that I endorsed these ideas last night when discussing the beyond, the third, or this third term we are seeking to understand—the essence of inter-human dialectics. Françoise [Dolto] brought us biology. And we might say the truth emerged from the mouth of someone speaking naively. She may not have conceived of biology exactly as I will explain it, but this is where we must focus, to take the next step and understand the matter clearly.

We will approach biology through antiphrasis: it has nothing to do with biology. It belongs to a chapter about the manipulation of symbols and the invocation of certain specifically energetic elements. These elements are prominently characterized by a reference to homeostasis, which defines not only living beings but also the functioning of their major systems.

And you can clearly see that the entire Freudian discussion revolves around this: energetically, what is it, and how does it function? This is where the originality of what is called Freudian biological thought lies. He was not a biologist, no more than any of us are. But he operated with a focus on the energetic function throughout his work. And it is around this that he developed the idea of posing the question of Beyond the Pleasure Principle:

• If we can understand what, at the level of FREUD, can be called semi-energetic regarding intra-psychic functioning,
• If we can reveal the meaning, that is, bring to light what FREUD implicitly conveyed—though it was not initially understood—in this metaphor of the human body as a machine.

Here, we see something emerge that moves beyond interpersonal reference and is, in fact, symbolic transcendence. You will see that this constitutes the symbolic beyond. If we understand this, we can grasp the sort of dawn represented by the Freudian experience.

FREUD started from a certain conception of the nervous system as always tending toward a point of equilibrium. That was his starting point because it was a necessary assumption for any physician at that scientific age when contemplating the human body.

In attempting to theorize the functioning of the nervous system, he encountered a significant obstacle.
I ask ANZIEU to review the drafts I am referring to—Project for a Scientific Psychology—and provide us with a report. It will show us this substantial fact: that everything culminates in the dream.

After constructing his framework to explain how the brain functions as a buffer organ between man and reality, as a homeostatic organ, he hits an impasse—it is the dream.

He realizes that the brain is a dream machine.
And it is in this dream machine that he rediscovers what, of course, had always been there, though unnoticed: that it is at the level of the most organic, the simplest, the most unconscious, the most immediate, and the most unmanageable, that meaning and speech fully reveal and develop themselves.

From this arises the complete revolution and the transition to the Traumdeutung—a perspective often inaccurately called “psychologizing,” as opposed to the earlier physiological one. That is not the issue. What he discovers is the functioning of the symbol as such. At this point, a turning occurs.

He is faced with a choice: to accept or overlook—like so many others close to him—what this discovery entails. This is the manifestation of the symbol in its dialectical state, its semantic state, and its state of displacement, pun, wordplay, and all manner of jest functioning spontaneously at the heart of the dream machine.

This turning point was such that he had no idea what was happening to him. It took him another twenty years—already in the later stages of his life when he made this discovery—to attempt to revisit his premises, that is, to understand what it meant on an energetic level.

This compelled the entire reworking of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and the death instinct. And within this reworking lies the significance of what we sought last night—beyond man’s reference to his counterpart—to establish this third term, where, since FREUD, the true axis of human realization lies.

At this point, I cannot yet name it for you. But you will see that we will make an essential step toward identifying, clarifying, naming, and precisely situating what this third term signifies.

Let me indicate, so as not to leave you entirely in mystery, that this lies in what is today called the development of the dialectic of communication. This concept is emerging and revealing itself on all levels of modern human science, albeit with a certain confusion—as always happens when things appear total and perfect. Nevertheless, we will attempt, with our tools, and especially the Freudian compass, to navigate and orient ourselves.