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(All parts in English)

Last time, I told you something that was centered on the Other. This is more convenient than what I am going to talk about today, of which I have already characterized what one might call the relation, the relation to the Other, quite precisely in that it is not inscribable, which does not make things any easier.

It is a question of the One.

Of the One inasmuch as I have already indicated to you, also showing you how its trace was carved in Plato’s Parmenides, whose first step to understanding anything about it is for you to notice that everything it states about it—as dialectizable, as developing—of all possible discourse about the One, it is first and foremost—and to take it only at that level, which is nothing else to say about it, as it is expressed—that “it is One.”

And perhaps there are a certain number of you who, at my urging, have opened this book and have realized that it is not the same thing to say that “the One is”:
– “It is One,” that is the first hypothesis,
– and “the One is,” that is the second.

They are distinct. Naturally, for this to make an impact, you would have to read Plato with a little bit of something coming from you; Plato should not be for you what he is: an author. You have been trained since childhood to do “author-stopping.” Ever since this has become customary, this way of addressing those things there, as if authorized: you should know that it leads nowhere, even though of course it may take you very far.

These observations having been made, it is about the One then… for reasons for which I will again have to apologize, for in the name of what would I occupy you with this? …it is about the One that I am going to talk to you about today. It is even for this reason that I invented a word that serves as the title for what I am going to tell you about it.

I am not very sure, in fact I am quite sure of the contrary: I did not invent “the unary.” The unary trait, which in ‘62 I thought I could extract from Freud, who calls it einzig, translating it thus. This appeared at the time miraculous to some.

It is indeed curious that the einziger Zug, the second form of identification distinguished by Freud, had never until then retained their attention. On the other hand, the word, which I will bracket to what I am going to say to you today, is entirely new, and it is made as a kind of precaution, because in truth there are many things that are concerned with the One.

So that it is not possible… I will try nonetheless to clear up right away something that situates the interest that my discourse… insofar as it is itself a clearing of the analytic discourse… the interest that my discourse has in passing through the One.

But first, take in the field, broadly designated then as “the onian”: o.n.i.a.n. It is a word that has never been said, which nonetheless has the interest of introducing a note—a note of alertness—for you each time the One is concerned and that in taking it thus, in the form of an epithet, it will remind you what Freud… [slip] what Plato first promotes: that by its nature it has various inclinations.

In analysis, when it is spoken of, what does not escape you, I think, if you recall what presides over this bizarre assimilation of Eros to what tends to coagulate. On the pretext that the body is very evidently one of the forms of the One, that it holds together, that it is an individual except by accident, it is—it is singular—promoted by Freud. And indeed, it is what calls into question the dyad advanced by him of Ἔρως [Eros] and Θάνατος [Thanatos].

If it were not supported by another figure, which is very precisely the one where the sexual relation fails, namely that of the One and of “not-one,” namely zero, one sees poorly what function this astonishing couple could have. It is a fact that it serves, it serves in favor of a certain number of misunderstandings, of pinning the death drive, so called left and right. But it is certain in any case that the One could not, in this wild discourse that is instituted from the attempt to state the sexual relation, it is strictly impossible to consider the copulation of two bodies as making but one.

It is extraordinary that in this regard, Plato’s Symposium… while scholars sneer at the Parmenides… the Symposium of Plato is taken seriously as representing anything concerning love.

Some may still remember that I made use of it in a certain year… precisely the one preceding the one I referred to earlier, the year 61-62… it was in 60-61 that I took the Symposium as a field of exercise and I had no intention to do anything else with it but to found transference on it.

Until further notice—the transference—that there may be something of the order of two, perhaps, on its horizon, cannot be taken as a copulation. I think I still managed at that time to indicate a little bit the mode of derision on which this scene unfolds, a scene most properly designated as Bacchic.

That it is Aristophanes who promotes, who invents, the famous “bipartition of being” [bête à deux dos: “beast with two backs”—word play], which at first would have been nothing but the “beast with two backs” held tightly together, and that it is the jealousy of Zeus that makes two out of it from then on, this is enough to indicate in whose mouth [Aristophanes] this statement is placed to show that it’s a joke, and indeed a good one.

The most remarkable thing is that it goes unnoticed that the one who crowns the entire discourse, the one named Diotima, does not play another role, since what she teaches is that love is only sustained by the fact that the beloved—whether homo or hetero—is not touched, that only the Uranian Aphrodite counts.

This is not exactly to say that it is the One that reigns over Ἔρως [Eros]. That alone would already be a reason to advance a few propositions—already paved elsewhere—about the One, if there were not, in addition, this: that in the analytic experience the first step is to introduce One, as the analyst that one is, one makes it take the step inside.

By means of which, the analysand in question—this One—the first mode of its manifestation is obviously to reproach you for being only “one among others,” but of course without realizing it. By which, what is manifested is very precisely that he has nothing to do with those others, and that it is for this reason that with you—the analyst—he would like to be the only one so that it makes two, and that he does not know that what it is really about is precisely for him to realize that two is this One he believes himself to be and where it is a matter for him to be divided.

So then “Yad’lun.” One should write that, today I am not really inclined to write but then why not: Yad’lun. Why not write it that way?

Writing it like this, as you will see, has a certain interest that is not without justifying the choice of that earlier Unien. It is that “Yad’lun” written in this way highlights something favorable in the French language, and I do not know whether the same advantage can be drawn from “there is” or from “es gibt.”

Those who are familiar with it may perhaps indicate it to me. Es gibt governs the accusative, doesn’t it? One says:
– es gibt einen…something, when it’s masculine,
– there is, one can say there is one, there is a…something.
I do know that there is the there which is a start on that side, but it’s not simple. In French one can say: Y’en a.

Very strange thing, I haven’t managed… that does not mean it can’t be found, but, as it happens, in the somewhat hasty way I proceed after all, I know a little about the function of haste in logic, I have to hurry, time is pressing… I haven’t managed to see, to find something, nor even simply…

I’ll tell you what I consulted:
– the “Littré,”
– the “Robert,” while I was at it,
– the “Damourette and Pichon,” and a few others all the same.

The historical emergence… everything that a dictionary like “Bloch et von Wartburg” is made to give you… the emergence of a formula as crucial as “il y a” which means this: “y en a.”

It is against the background of the indeterminate that what is properly designated and pointed to by “il y a” arises, for which, curiously, “y a”—I am going to say “n’y a pas”—there is not—there is not an equivalent—it is true—a current equivalent in what we will call the ancient languages.

In the name of what, precisely, it is designated that discourse… well, as is said and as is demonstrated by the “Parmenides”… discourse, it changes.

It is indeed in this that analytic discourse can represent an emergence and that perhaps you could make something of it, granted that from the moment of my disappearance… in the eyes of many minds, of course always present as possible if not imminent… from the moment of my disappearance, one expects, in the same field, the true downpour of filth that is already announced because it is believed that it cannot take much longer. [Laughter]

In the trace of my discourse, it might be better for those to find support who could give this clearing a continuation, for which, fortunately as well, I have in one place, a very precise place, a few premises, but rare ones.

Because I keep getting my feet and ears broken with the issue of knowing “the relation of analytic discourse with the revolution.” It may be precisely this that carries the germ of no possible revolution, of the fact that revolution must not be confused with the vague melancholy that can seize you at any moment under that label. It is not quite the same thing.

“So there is” (“Y en a”) then, it is against the background of something that has no form. When one says “y en a” it usually means “y en a du…” or “y en a des…”. One can even sometimes add to this “des” a “des qui”: those who think, those who express themselves, those who tell, things like that… it remains a background of indeterminacy.

The question begins with what it means “of the One.” For as soon as the One is stated, the “of” is nothing more than a thin pedicle over what is of this background. From where does this One arise? It is precisely what, in the first hypothesis, Plato tries to advance, to say as best he can, for lack of other words at his disposal, ἓν εἰ ἔστιν: if it is One?

For ἔστιν clearly has here the function of supplementing what is not accentuated in French as in “il y a.” And what one surely should translate… I understand the scruple that halts translators there… one should surely translate: “if there is One” or “the One,” it is up to you to choose. But what is certain is that Plato chooses, and that his One has nothing to do with what encompasses.

There is even something remarkable, which is that what he immediately demonstrates is that it could not have any relation with anything of which he has made, in a thousand forms, the metaphysical inventory and which is called the dyad inasmuch as in experience—in the thought experiment—it is everywhere:

– the largest—the smallest,
– the youngest—the oldest, etc., etc.,
– the includer—the included,
– and everything else of this kind you want.

What he begins by demonstrating is precisely this, that in taking the One by the means of discursive interrogation. And who is being interrogated there? It is obviously not the poor little one, the dear darling, the one called Aristotle if my memory is right, of whom it seems difficult to believe that he could at that time be the one who left us his memory; it is quite clear that, as in every dialogue, in every Platonic dialogue, there is no trace of an interlocutor.

It seems to be called dialogue only to illustrate what I have stated for a long time, that dialogue, precisely, there isn’t any [y en a pas: “there isn’t any”—word play]. That does not mean that there is not, present at the heart of the Platonic dialogue, quite another presence—a human presence, let us say—than in many other things that have been written since.

We would need no other evidence than this, that in the first approaches, the way in which what constitutes the bone of the dialogue is prepared, what I will call the preliminary interview.

The one who explains to us, as in all dialogues, how it happened that this crazy thing, which resembles nothing that could be called “dialogue”… it is here that one can really feel it, if one did not already know from common life that one has never seen a dialogue lead to anything… what is at stake in what is called “dialogue,” in that literature which has its date, is precisely to grasp what is the real that can make one believe, that gives the illusion that one can reach something by dialoguing with someone.

So it is worth preparing the thing, to say what kind of contraption it was. Old Parmenides and his clique who are there, nothing less was needed for something to be enunciated that makes—who speak?—well, precisely: the One.

And from the moment you make the One speak, well, it is worth looking at what use it is, the one who holds the other’s talking stick, who can only say things like this:

– “ταυτο ἀνάγκη οὐ γὰρ οὐν τί δὲ ἀληθῆ”
– oh, there, there, three times more true than you said it, isn’t it?

That is dialogue, of course, when it is the One speaking. What is curious is the way Parmenides introduces him. The One, he pats him on the back, he explains to him,

“dear little one, go ahead, speak dear little One, all of this is only babble.”

Because do not translate ἀδολεσχὶα as if it has to do with adolescents, I say this for those who are not aware, especially since on the facing page it says that one should behave like innocents, like youngsters, you might get confused. They are not named like that, the youngsters, in the Greek text; ἀδολεσχὶα [adoleskia] means babble.

But one can consider that this is something of the beginning, of the prefiguration of what we call in our rough language… woven by what we could, the phenomenology that was at hand at that time… what we have translated as “free association.”

Naturally, association is not free; if it were free, it would have no interest, would it? But it is the same thing as babble: it is made to tame the sparrow. Association, it is well understood that it is linked, I do not see what its interest would be if it were free.

The babble in question, it is certain that—it is beyond doubt—as it is not someone who is speaking but the One, one can see here to what extent it is linked. Because it is very demonstrative.

By bringing things into this relief, it allows many things to be situated, and in particular the step that is crossed from Parmenides to Plato.

Because there was already a step crossed by Parmenides in this environment where it was a matter, all in all, of knowing what is real. We are all still there. After it was said that it was air, water, earth, fire, and after that one had only to start again, there was someone who realized that the only common factor of all this substance in question was being “sayable.” That is the step of Parmenides.

Only, the step of Plato is different: it is to show that as soon as one tries to say in an articulated way what is outlined as “the structure”… as one would say in what I called earlier “our rough language”… the word “structure” is no better than the word “free association,” but what is outlined presents difficulty, and that the real must be sought in this direction.

Εἰδος [Eidos], improperly translated as “form,” is something that already promises us the tightening, the encircling of what makes a gap in saying. In other words, to say everything, Plato was Lacanian. [Laughter] Naturally, he could not have known it.

Moreover, he was a bit feeble-minded. [Laughter] This does not make things easier, but it surely helped him. I call mental debility the fact of being a speaking being who is not solidly installed in a discourse, that is what gives the value of the feeble-minded. There is no other definition one can give except to say that he is what is called a bit off the mark, that is, between two discourses, he floats.

To be solidly installed as a subject, one must stick to one [discourse], or else know what one is doing. But it is not because one is on the margins that one knows what one is saying. So in his case, it allowed him solidly… after all, he had frameworks, one should not believe that in his time things were not taken up in a very solid discourse, and he shows a glimpse of it somewhere in the preliminary interviews of this Parmenides. Still, it is he who wrote it.

We do not know if he is laughing or not, but anyway, he did not wait for Hegel to give us “the dialectic of Master and Slave,” and I must say that what he states about it is on a different footing from what the whole “Phenomenology of Spirit” puts forward. Not that he concludes, but that he gives the material elements.

He moves forward, he moves forward, he can do it because in his time it was not a sham. One wonders whether it was better, rather than worse, to think that masters and slaves were asserted there, it allowed one to imagine that it could change at any moment, and indeed it did change at any moment: when masters were taken prisoner, they became slaves, and when slaves were freed, well, they became masters.

Thanks to this, Plato imagines—and he says it in the preliminaries of this dialogue—that the master-essence, the εἰδος [eidos], and that of the slave, well, one can consider that they have nothing to do with what it really is. The Master and the slave are between them in relations that have nothing to do with the relation of the master-essence and the slave-essence.

That is indeed why he is a bit feeble-minded. It is that we have seen the great mixture being made, haven’t we, which always takes place by a certain path, which it is curious not to see to what extent it promises what follows: that we are all brothers!

There is such a region of history, of historical myth, I mean of myth insofar as it is history, it has only been seen once, among the Jews, where one knows what fraternity is for, it provided the great model. It is made for one to sell his brother, which did not fail to occur in the wake of all the subversions said to revolve around the discourse of the Master.

It is quite clear that the effort at which Hegel exhausts himself at the level of the “Phenomenology…”: “the fear of death,” “the struggle to the death of pure prestige”… and I tell you more, and I add more… By which—that is the essential to obtain—there is a slave.

But, I ask… all those who get a thrill out of changing roles like that… I ask: what can make it—since the slave survives—that he does not immediately… after “the struggle to the death of pure prestige,” today, and “the fear of death”… that he changes sides, that all this only subsists, has a chance to subsist, on the condition that one sees very precisely what Plato puts aside.

What Plato puts aside… but who will ever know in the name of what, because we cannot, my God, fathom his heart, maybe it is just mental debility… it is clear on the contrary, that this is the finest opportunity to mark what is at stake in what he calls μετέχειν [metéchein], participation.

Never is the slave slave except to the essence of the Master. Just as the Master… I call that “essence,” call it what you want, I much prefer to write it S1, the master-signifier, and as for the Master, if there were not S2, the knowledge of the slave, what would he do with it?

I linger, I linger, to tell you the importance of this unbelievable thing: that there is of the One. That is the point to highlight. For as soon as one interrogates this One, what it becomes, in the end like a thing that unravels, is that it is impossible to put it in relation with anything whatsoever, outside the series of whole numbers, which is nothing other than this One.

Of course, this only happens, only arrives, only emerges, at the end of a long elaboration of discourse. In Frege’s logic, the one inscribed in the “Grundlagen der Arithmetik,” you will see both the insufficiency of any logical deduction of 1, since it must pass through 0, of which one still cannot say it is the One, and yet everything unfolds: it is from this 1 which is missing at the level of 0 that the whole arithmetic sequence proceeds.

Whereas already, because already from 0 to 1 that makes 2, from then on it will make 3 because there will be 0, 1, and 2 before, and so on. And this, very precisely, right up to the first of the א [aleph] which, curiously and not for nothing, can only be designated as א0 [aleph zero].

Of course, this may seem to you a scholarly distance. That is precisely why it needs to be embodied, and that is why I first put “Yad’lun.” “Yad’lun!” and you, you could not exclaim too much at this announcement, with as many exclamation points in succession, since precisely aleph zero [א0] will be just sufficient to probe what it might be, if you approach it closely enough, of the astonishment that deserves that there is of the One.

X in the room – “ouch!”

Yes! It well deserves to be greeted with this ouch! huh, since we are speaking in the language of ouch, I mean “hoc est ille” [that is he].

Here, well, this one of whom it is a question, the One, the responsible one… for it is by catching it by the ears, isn’t it, that “there is” clearly shows the ground from which it ex-sists… the ground from which it ex-sists holds in this, which does not go without saying, that… to take first the first piece of furniture I had at hand… the feeble-minded One, you can add to it: a flu, a drawer, a thumbed nose, a smoke, a “hello from your Catherine!”, a civilization, and—even!—a mismatched garter, that makes 8. As scattered as that may seem to you, huh? There are heaps of them like that, but they all come at the call: here, here, here, here, here!

And the important thing… because obviously you must be made sensitive to one thing, to things otherwise than by a 0, 1 and by aleph [א], right?… the important thing is that it always presupposes the same One, the One which is not deduced, contrary to the smoke and mirrors that John Stuart Mill can throw our way, simply by taking distinct things and holding them as identical.

Because that is simply something illustrated, of which the abacus gives the model. But the abacus was made expressly so that it is counted, and so that on occasion the 8 scattered things that I made appear to you a moment ago are counted. Only what the abacus will not give you is this which is deduced directly and without any abacus from the One, namely that among those 8 “pieces of furniture” I spoke to you about earlier, there are—because they are 8—28 combinations two by two, not one more. And that is how it is, because of the One.

Naturally, I hope that strikes you and since I took 8, nothing prevents you… It stuns you! You did not know in advance that it would make 28 combinations?

Even though it is easy: it is I don’t know what: n(n-1)/2, 8 times 7: 42 [slip] you see, that does not make 28, it makes 21… Well, so what, it changes nothing, the number, one can know it, that is what it is about.

If I had put fewer, it is something that would have led you to work, to tell me that maybe, that even I would also have to count the relations of each to the whole. Why don’t I do it? That is what I will be forced to wait for next time to explain to you. Because the relations of each to the whole do not precisely eliminate that there is One whole and that, as a result, it means that you add another one.

Which would indeed considerably increase the number of combinations two by two. At the level of the triangle, if I had put only three 1s, that would have made only 3 combinations. You have immediately 6 if you take the whole as 1.

But precisely what it is about is to notice here another dimension of the One, which I will try to illustrate for you next time with the arithmetic triangle.

In other words, then, the One does not always have the same meaning. It has the meaning, for example, of that 1 of the empty set which, curiously, in our counting of elements would add two—I will demonstrate why and from where.

Nevertheless, we are already approaching something, which, by not starting from the One as “Whole” at all, shows us that the One in its emergence is not univocal. In other words, we renew the Platonic dialectic.

This is indeed how I intend to lead you somewhere to continue, through this bifidity of the One… still, we must see if it holds… this One that Plato so clearly distinguishes from Being. It is certainly the case that Being is One, always, in any case, but that the One knows how to be as being, that is perfectly demonstrated in the “Parmenides.”

This is indeed historically where the function of existence came from. It is not because the One is not that it does not pose the question, and it poses it all the more because wherever—forever—it must be a question of existence, it will always revolve around the One.

The thing in Aristotle is only timidly approached at the level of particular propositions. Aristotle imagines that it is enough to say that “some”—some only, not all—are such and such, to distinguish them. That by distinguishing them from what is, itself, like that, if these ones are not, for example, that is enough to assure their existence. That is precisely where existence, already, from its very first emergence, immediately begins, is stated from its correlative inexistence. There is no existence except on a background of inexistence and vice versa: ex-sistere can only hold its support from an outside that is not.

And that is indeed what is at stake in the One. For, in truth, where does it arise? At a point where Plato manages to grasp it. One must not believe that it is, as it seems, only a matter of time: he calls it τὸ ἐξαίφνης [to ekxaifnés]. Translate that as you wish—it is the instant, it is the sudden, it is the only point where he can make it subsist, and it is indeed always where every elucidation of number, and God knows it has been pursued far enough to give us the idea that there are other alephs [א] than that of numbers, and that one, that instant, that point, for that is what would be the true translation, it is really what is decisive only at the level of a higher aleph [א], at the level of the continuum.

The One, then, here precisely seems to be lost and to bring to its height what is at stake in existence, to the point of bordering on existence as such, inasmuch as it arises from the hardest to reach, the most elusive in the speakable, and it is what made me discover… referring to this ἐξαίφνης [ekxaifnés]… in Aristotle himself, to realize that in the end there was the emergence of this term “to exist” somewhere in the “Physics” where you will be able to find it… where you will especially be able to find it if I give it to you… it is somewhere in Book IV of Aristotle’s “Physics”… I do not see it here in my papers, but in truth it must be there… Aristotle defines it precisely as that which… ἀναίσθητω χρόνω [anaisthēto chronō], in a time that cannot be felt, διὰ μικρότητα [dia mikroteta], by reason of its extreme smallness… is τὸ ἐξτάν [to extan]. [24: Τὸ δ’ ἐξαίφνης τὸ ἐν ἀναισθήτῳ χρόνῳ διὰ μικρότητα ἐκστάν: “Tout à coup” (suddenly) is used to express that the thing occurs by a sudden disturbance in a time which, by its smallness, is imperceptible. (trans. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire)]

I do not know if elsewhere than in this place, in this place in Book IV of the “Physics,” the term ἐξτάν [extan] is uttered in ancient literature, but it is clear that it comes from… It is a past participle, the past participle of the second aorist of ἵστημι [histēmi], of this aorist which is said ἕστην [esten], it is stan [stan], but I do not know that there is a verb ἐξίστημι [existēmi], that is to be checked.

Whatever the case, “sistere” is already there as stable being, stable being from an outside: τὸ ἐξτάν [to extan], that which exists only by not being, it is really about that, that is what I wanted to open today under the general heading of the Onian. And I ask your pardon, if I chose Onian, forgive me, it is because it is the anagram of ennui.