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(All parts in English)

In order to properly see the nature of the undertaking to which I am being drawn, so that you can bear with its twists and turns, however tedious they might be, since after all you are not here to listen to a commentary on a Greek text, we are being drawn into this, and I do not claim to be exhaustive, I assure you that, after all, most of the work I have done for you, I mean in your place, in your absence, and the best service I can render you, all in all, is to encourage you to refer back to this text. Without a doubt, if you have referred to it at my suggestion, it may happen that you will read it, to some extent, through my lens, which is surely better than not reading it at all. All the more so since the goal I was pursuing—which dominates the whole enterprise, and which you can accompany in a more or less commented way—is that it is important not to lose sight of what we are meant to arrive at; I mean something that answers the question from which we set out.

This question is simple, it is that of transference, I mean that it is formulated using already elaborated terms. A man, the psychoanalyst, from whom people seek the knowledge of what is most intimate within themselves, for that is the mindset with which one generally approaches him, and thus of that which should, right from the start, be supposed to be most foreign to him, and which, moreover, one supposes at the same time must be most foreign to him—we encounter this at the start of analysis—this knowledge, however, he is supposed to possess.

Here is a situation that we present in subjective terms, I mean in the stance of the one who comes forward as the questioner. For now, we do not even need to bring in all that is objectively involved in or sustains this “situation”—namely, what we must introduce in terms of the specificity of what is presented to this knowledge: the unconscious, as such. This, the subject has—whatever he may think—no idea of any kind about.

By simply defining this situation subjectively, how does it produce something that, at first approximation, resembles love, for that is how transference can be defined. Better yet, let us say further: something that brings love into question, brings it into question deeply enough for us—for analytic reflection—to have introduced as an essential dimension what is called “its ambivalence,” let us say it: a new notion compared to a certain philosophical tradition from which, not in vain, we will seek it here right at the origin.

This close attachment of love and hate, this is something we do not see at the outset of this tradition, since this beginning—since it must be chosen somewhere—we choose it as Socratic, even though—as we will see today—there is something prior from which it truly begins. Of course, we would not so boldly put forth this question if, in some way, the tunnel had not already been cleared at the other end. We are going to meet something. We have already closely grasped the topology of what the subject, as we know, must find in analysis in place of what he seeks. For we know: if he sets out to look for what he has but does not know, what he will find is what he lacks.

It is precisely because we have articulated, posited this in our previous path that we can dare to pose the question I first formulated as that in which the possibility of the emergence of transference is articulated. We thus know well that it is as what he lacks that what he finds in analysis is articulated, namely his desire, and desire is therefore not a good in any sense of the word, nor—quite precisely—in the sense of a ktèsis [property, treasure][ktèsis][the original Greek word means possession or treasure], this something that, in any capacity, he might have.

It is in this time, in this blossoming of transference love, this time defined in both senses: chronological and topological, that one must read this inversion, so to speak, of the position that turns the search for a good strictly into the realization of desire. You understand well that this discourse supposes that “realization of desire” is precisely not “possession of an object,” it is about emergence into the reality of desire as such.

It is precisely because it seemed to me… and not by chance in some encounter but, in a sense, when I was searching, starting from the very heart of the field of my memories, guided by a sort of compass created from experience, where to find the central point of what I had been able to retain articulated in what I had learned… it seemed to me that the Symposium was, however distant from us, the place where the meaning of this question was agitated in the most vibrant manner.

It is agitated there precisely in that concluding moment, when Alcibiades, one can say “strangely,” in all senses of the word: as much, that is, as it is manifestly there, at the level of the composition by Plato of what is the work, that manifestly there he breaks the sequence of orderly speeches, foreshadowed in a program, which suddenly is broken by the irruption of the true feast, the upending of the order of the celebration, and also in his very text, this speech of Alcibiades—since it is about the confession of his own disconcert—all that he says is truly his suffering, his tearing away from himself, from an attitude of Socrates that still leaves him—almost as much as at the moment—wounded, bitten by some strange wound.

And why this public confession? Why, in this public confession, this “interpretation” of Socrates, which shows him that this confession has an entirely immediate goal: to separate him from Agathon, an occasion right away for a kind of return to order?

All those who have referred to this text, since I have been speaking to you about it, have not failed to be struck by how consonant this whole strange scene is with all sorts of situations, of instantaneous positions that might be experienced in transference. Still, of course, it is only an impression, it is something that must be related to it. And of course, it is in a closer, more refined analysis that we will see what is revealed to us by a situation that in any case is clearly not to be attributed to something that would be, as ARAGON says in Le paysan de Paris, a kind of premonition of “sychanalysis” [wordplay on psychoanalysis].

No, but rather an encounter: a sort of appearance of a few outlines that must be there to reveal something to us. I believe, and this is not simply a sort of hesitation before the leap—which must be, as FREUD says, like that of the lion, that is, unique—that I am delaying in showing it to you, it is that: to fully understand what the emergence of the ALCIBIADES–SOCRATES scene means, we must fully understand the overall design of the work, that is, the Symposium.

And this is where we advance. Establishing the terrain is indispensable. If we do not know what PLATO means by introducing the ALCIBIADES scene, it is impossible to precisely situate its significance, and here is why: today we are at the beginning of the speech of ERYXIMACHUS, the physician—let us hold our breath for a moment… The fact that he is a physician must nonetheless interest us. Does this mean that ERYXIMACHUS’s speech should lead us to a search for a “history of medicine”? It is clear that I cannot even sketch such a thing. For all sorts of reasons: first because it is not our concern to take such a detour, which would be quite excessive, and then because I truly do not believe it is possible. I do not believe that ERYXIMACHUS is really specified, nor that it is of any particular physician that PLATO is thinking in introducing this character.

Still, there are fundamental features of the position he brings, which are what need to be identified, and which are not necessarily a feature of history, except as part of a very general dividing line, but which, perhaps, will cause us to pause for a moment, in passing, on what medicine is. It has already been observed that there is in SOCRATES a frequent, almost ambient reference to medicine. Very often, SOCRATES, when he wants to bring his interlocutor back to the plane of dialogue where he wants to lead him toward the perception of a rigorous approach, refers to such a technical art.

I mean: if on such and such a subject you want to know the truth, to whom will you address yourself? And among them, the physician is far from excluded, and even he is treated with particular reverence. The level at which he is placed is certainly not of a lower order in the eyes of SOCRATES. It is nevertheless clear that the rule of his approach is something that is far from being able in any way to be reduced to what might be called “mental hygiene.” The physician in question speaks as a physician, and right away, even, promotes his medicine as the greatest of all the arts: medicine is the “great Art” [186b].

Right after beginning his speech, and I will just briefly note here the confirmation given to what I told you last time by the speech of PAUSANIAS, in the fact that at the start of his speech [185e-186a], ERYXIMACHUS expressly states this: “Since PAUSANIAS, hormesas [Greek: having made a vigorous start][hormesas], after a fine beginning—not a good translation—having set the topic of the speech in motion with honor did not finish as brilliantly, in a suitable manner…”

This is an understatement; it is clear to everyone, and I think it should be emphasized here how much is taken as self-evident, this something to which we must admit our ear is not exactly attuned: we do not have the impression that this speech by PAUSANIAS ended so badly, we are so used to hearing this sort of nonsense about love, it is very strange how much, in its sense, this remark in the speech of ERYXIMACHUS truly calls for the assent of all: as if, in short, the speech of PAUSANIAS had truly—for everyone—turned out to be rambling, as if it went without saying that all these big jokes about the “pausamenou” [wordplay: pausamenos/pausanias, previous lecture], on which I insisted last time, were taken for granted by the ancient reader.

I think it is quite essential for us to refer to what we can glimpse regarding this question of tone, to which, after all, the ear of the mind always clings, even if it does not openly make it a criterion, and which is so often in the Platonic texts invoked as something to which SOCRATES constantly refers. How many times, before beginning his speech or in opening a parenthesis in another’s speech, does he invoke the gods expressly and formally so that the tone is sustained, maintained, or attuned. You will see, this is very close to our topic today.

I would like, before entering into the speech of ERYXIMACHUS, to make some remarks whose hindsight, even if it leads us to very fundamental truths, is nonetheless something not given so easily. Let us observe this, concerning the speech of ERYXIMACHUS—I will show you in passing that medicine has always believed itself scientific—ERYXIMACHUS makes statements that refer to… since, in short, it is “in your place,” as I was saying earlier, that I had to try during these days to untangle this little chapter of the history of medicine, it was indeed necessary for me to leave the Symposium in order to do so and to refer to various points in the Platonic text… there is a series of schools you have heard of, however neglected this chapter of your medical education may be. The most famous, which no one ignores, is the school of HIPPOCRATES: “the school of Cos,” opposed to the neighboring school of Cnidus. You know that there was a school—before the school of Cnidus—of Sicily, the earlier one, whose great name is ALCMAEON and the Alcmaeonids, with Croton as its center. What must be known is that it is impossible to dissociate its speculations from those of a scientific school flourishing at the same time and in the same place, namely the Pythagoreans. You see where this leads us. We must speculate on the role and function of Pythagoreanism on this occasion, and indeed everyone knows, it is essential for understanding Platonic thought.

Here we find ourselves engaged in a detour where we would literally get lost. So I will rather try to bring out from it themes, and themes insofar as they very strictly concern our topic. Namely, that toward which we are advancing, regarding the meaning of this episode in the Symposium, I mean of this speech, of this work, the Symposium, in so far as it is problematic.

We do not—I think—know much about the character of ERYXIMACHUS himself nor about those who are supposed to have taught a number of other characters. But we know something about the characters who appear in PLATO’s dialogues and who are directly connected to this medical school through the Alcmaeonids, insofar as they are linked to the Pythagoreans. We know that SIMMIAS and CEBES—those who converse with SOCRATES in the Phaedo—are disciples of PHILOLAUS, who is one of the masters of the first Pythagorean school.

If you refer to the Phaedo, you will see what SIMMIAS and CEBES bring in response to SOCRATES’s initial propositions, specifically on what is to guarantee the soul its immortal duration: that these responses refer exactly to the same terms that I am going to speak of here, namely those that are brought into play in the speech of ERYXIMACHUS [187a], foremost among which is the notion of harmonia [Greek: harmony][harmonia], agreement.

Medicine, then, as you notice here, has always believed itself scientific. This is moreover where it has always shown its weaknesses. By a sort of internal necessity of its position, it has always referred to a science that was that of its time, good or bad. Whether it was good or bad, how can this be known from the perspective of medicine?

As for us, we have the feeling that our science, our physics, is always supposed to be good science and that for centuries we had very bad physics. This is indeed absolutely certain. What is not certain is what medicine has to do with this science, namely how and by what opening, by which end it must take hold of it, as long as something is not elucidated for it, medicine, and which is not, as you will see, the least of things, since what is at stake is the idea of “health.”

Very precisely: what is health? You would be wrong to believe that even for modern medicine, which, with respect to all others, believes itself scientific, the thing is fully assured. From time to time the idea “of the normal and the pathological” is proposed as a thesis topic for some student. This is a topic generally proposed to them by people with a philosophical background, and on this we have an excellent work by M. CANGUILHEM. Obviously, it is a work whose influence is quite limited in strictly medical circles.

Now there is one thing at least—in any case, without trying to speculate at a Socratic level of certainty about “health in itself”—which, by itself, for us especially psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, shows how problematic the idea of “health” is: it is the very means we use to reach the state of “health.” Which means show us, to put things in the broadest terms, that whatever the nature, the fortunate form that would be the form of “health,” within this fortunate form we are led to postulate paradoxical states, to say the least, those very states whose manipulation in our therapeutics is responsible for the return to a balance, which remains on the whole, as such, quite uncriticized.

This, then, is what we find at the level of the postulates least accessible to demonstration in the medical position as such. This is precisely what is going to be promoted here in the speech of ERYXIMACHUS under the name of harmonia [harmonia]. We do not know what kind of harmony is meant, but since the notion is very fundamental to any medical position as such, all we must look for is agreement.

And we are not much further advanced compared to the position in which an ERYXIMACHUS is situated regarding what is the essence, the substance, of this idea of agreement, namely of something borrowed from an intuitive domain of which he is simply closer to the sources, it is historically more defined and perceptible when we expressly notice here that it refers to the musical domain, insofar as here the musical domain is the model and the Pythagorean form.

Likewise, anything that in any way relates to this agreement of tones, even if it is of a more subtle nature, even if it is the tone of the discourse to which I was alluding earlier, brings us back to this same appreciation—which is not for nothing that I spoke, in passing, of “the ear”—to this same appreciation of “consonance” which is essential to this notion of harmony.

This is what is introduced, you will see it if you enter the text of this discourse—even if I spare you, after all, the boredom of reading line by line, which is never very possible in the midst of such a large audience—you will see there the essential character of this notion of “agreement” for understanding what it means, how this medical position is introduced here. And you will see that everything articulated here functions as a support that we can neither exhaust nor in any way reconstruct, namely the thematic of the discussions that in advance are assumed to be there, present in the minds of the listeners.

Let us not forget that we are at the historical peak of a particularly active, creative era: these 6th and 5th centuries of the golden age of Hellenism are overflowing with mental creativity. There are good works to which you can refer. For those who read English, there is a great book such as only English publishers can afford to produce. It is something of a philosophical testament, since it is Bertrand RUSSELL in his old age who delivers it to us.

This book is very good for New Year’s Day, because—I assure you, you only have to read it!—it is filled with admirable color illustrations in large margins, figures of extreme simplicity appealing to a child’s imagination, in which there is, all in all, everything you need to know, from this fertile period to which I refer today, which is the pre-Socratic era, up to our own day: up to English positivism, and no one truly important is neglected. If your only goal is to be unbeatable at dinner parties, once you have read this book you will really know everything—except, of course, only the important things, that is, those that are unknown. But I still recommend you read it. It will fill in, for you as for everyone else, a considerable number of almost inevitable gaps in your education.

So let us try to bring a bit of order to what takes shape when we set out on this path of understanding what ERYXIMACHUS means. The people of his time always faced the same problem we face. Except, perhaps lacking as great an abundance of small facts with which to furnish their discourses as we have—I am in fact putting forward a hypothesis here that results from deception and illusion—they go more directly to the essential antinomy, which is the same as the one I began to bring before you earlier, namely this: no “agreement,” in any case, can be taken at its “face value.”

What experience teaches us is that something is concealed within this “agreement,” and the whole question is to know what is required from this substratum of agreement. I mean from a point of view that cannot be settled by experience alone, that always involves a certain “mental a priori,” that cannot be posited outside a certain “mental a priori.”

Within this agreement, must we require the similar or can we content ourselves with the dissimilar? Does every agreement suppose some “principle of agreement,” or can agreement arise from the uncoordinated, from conflict? Do not imagine that it was with FREUD that such a question appeared for the first time. And the proof is that it is the first thing brought before us by the speech of ERYXIMACHUS.

This notion of the attuned and the untuned—for us, let’s say: of the function of anomaly in relation to the normal—comes right at the forefront in his speech (186b, about the ninth line):

“In fact, the dissimilar desires and loves the dissimilar. Different—the text continues—is the love inherent to the healthy state, different the love inherent to the morbid state. Hence, when PAUSANIAS said earlier that it was fine to give [186c] one’s favors to those men who are virtuous, and shameful to do so for disordered men…”

Here we are brought to the physical question of what this virtue and this disorder signify, and straight away we find a formula that I hold onto, that I can only pin on the page. It’s not that it reveals so much to us, but it must nonetheless be for us analysts the object of a kind of interest in passing, where there is some resonance [186c] to hold our attention. He tells us that “medicine is the science of the erotics of the body”: epistémè tôn tou sômatos erôtikôn [Greek: science of the body’s erotic matters][épistémè tôn tou sômatos erôtikôn].

One could not give a better definition of psychoanalysis, it seems to me. And he adds:

pros plèsmonèn kai kenôsin [Greek: as for fullness and emptiness][pros plèsmonèn kai kenôsin], “with regard to repletion and vacuity…”

the text translates bluntly. It is indeed the evocation of the two terms “full” and “empty” whose role we are going to see in topology, in the “mental position” of what is at stake at this point of junction between physics and medical operation. It is not the only text, I can tell you, where this full and this empty are evoked.

I would say that this is one of the fundamental intuitions that should be brought out, highlighted in the course of a study on the Socratic discourse, the role of these terms. And whoever undertook this project would not have to look far to find yet another reference.

At the beginning of the Symposium, when SOCRATES—as I told you—has lingered in “the vestibule of the neighboring house,” where we can suppose him in the position of the gymnosophist: standing on one foot, like a stork, and motionless until he has found the solution to I know not what problem, when he arrives at AGATHON’s after everyone has been waiting for him:

“Well! You found your trick, come near me” [175d] AGATHON says to him.

To which SOCRATES gives a little speech to say:

“Maybe, maybe not, but what you hope is that what I currently feel myself filled with will pass into your emptiness just as what passes between two communicating vessels when you use a bit of wool for this operation.”

It must be believed that this amusing physics operation was, for some reason, practiced fairly often, since it probably created an image for everyone. Indeed, this passage from the interior of one vessel to another, this transformation of full into empty, this communication of content, is one of the basic images of something that governs what one could call the “fundamental covetousness” of all these philosophical exchanges, and it is worth remembering to understand the meaning of the discourse offered to us.

A little further on, this reference to music as to the “principle of agreement” which is the basis of what will be proposed to us as the essence of the function of love between beings, this reference will lead us—to the following page, that is, to paragraph 187—to encounter, living in the speech of ERYXIMACHUS, this choice that I told you earlier is primordial regarding what can be conceived as being at the principle of agreement, namely: the similar and the dissimilar, order and conflictual.

For here, along the way, we see, when it is a matter of defining this harmony, ERYXIMACHUS note that we certainly encounter, in the writing of an author about a century earlier: HERACLITUS of Ephesus, a paradox when it is to “the opposition of contraries” that HERACLITUS expressly refers as being the principle of the composition of all unity.

“Unity—ERYXIMACHUS tells us—in opposing itself, is composed, just as harmony is composed from the bow and the lyre.” [187a]

This “harmoniè hokôspertoksou kai lyrès” [Greek: harmony like that of the bow and the lyre][ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερτόξουκαὶ λύρης] is extremely famous, if only for being quoted here in passing, and it is quoted by many other authors. It has come down to us in those few scattered fragments that German scholars have assembled for us, concerning pre-Socratic thought. This one, among those of HERACLITUS that remain for us, really stands out. I mean that in the book by Bertrand RUSSELL I recommended to you earlier, you will actually find the bow and its string represented, and even the simultaneous drawing of a vibration which is that from which the movement of the arrow will begin [p.60].

What is striking is this partiality, the reason for which we cannot easily discern in passing, which ERYXIMACHUS shows with regard to the Heraclitean formulation: he finds fault with it. It seems to him that there are requirements here whose source we can hardly fathom, because we are at a confluence where we do not know what part to ascribe to prejudice, to a priori, to choices made according to a certain temporal consistency in a whole theoretical ensemble, or to psychological tendencies of which, in truth, we are unable—especially when dealing with characters as distant as they are ghostly—to distinguish the share.

We must be content to note that indeed—something we find echoed in many other places in the Platonic discourse—I do not know what aversion is expressed at the idea of referring to any conjunction whatsoever of opposition of contraries—even if, in some way, it is located in the real—the birth of something that does not seem in any way assimilable to it, namely the creation of the phenomenon of “agreement.” Something that asserts and posits itself, is felt, is assented to as such: harmony, agreement. It seems that even in its principle the idea of proportion—when it is a matter of ensuring harmony, to speak in medical terms of diet or dosage, with all it implies of measure, of proportion—must be maintained, but that in no way can the Heraclitean vision of conflict as creator in itself, for certain minds, for certain schools—let us leave the matter unresolved—be upheld.

There is here a partiality which, for us, to whom of course all sorts of models in physics have brought the idea of the fertility of contraries, of contrasts, of oppositions, and of a non-absolute contradiction of the phenomenon with its conflictual principle, to put it plainly, when all of physics leans so much more toward the image of the wave than—whatever modern psychology has made of it—toward form, Gestalt, the good form, there is a partiality here which we cannot fail to be surprised by, I say, as much in this passage as in many others in PLATO, to see even sustained the idea of I know not what impasse, I know not what aporia, I know not what choice to be made, I know not what preference to be made, which would be on the side of the necessarily conjoint, fundamental character of agreement with agreement, harmony with harmony.

As I told you, this is not the only passage, and if you refer to a dialogue—extremely important, I must say, to read for the foundation of our understanding of the Symposium, namely the Phaedo, you will see that the entire discussion with SIMMIAS and CEBES rests on this, that as I was saying to you the other day, SOCRATES’ entire plea for the immortality of the soul is presented there in the most manifest way in the form of a sophism which is strictly this, which is nothing other than what I have been circling around for a while in my remarks on ERYXIMACHUS’ discourse, namely that the very idea of the soul as harmony does not suppose excluded, that within it can enter the possibility of its rupture.

For when SIMMIAS, like CEBES, objects that this soul—whose nature is constant, whose nature is permanence and duration—may well vanish at the very moment when those elements which are the bodily elements, whose conjunction makes harmony, are dissolved, SOCRATES replies nothing else except that the idea of harmony of which the soul partakes, is in itself impenetrable, that it will evade, that it will flee from the very approach of anything that could put its constancy into question.

The idea of the participation of anything existing in this kind of incorporeal essence which is the Platonic idea, exposes its fiction and its delusion, and to such a degree in this Phaedo that it is truly impossible not to say to oneself that we have no reason to think that PLATO is less aware of this delusion than we are. This unimaginable, formidable, pretension we have of being more intelligent than the one who developed the Platonic work is truly astonishing!

That is precisely why, when, after PAUSANIAS’s speech, we see that of ERYXIMACHUS develop, he sings his little song, it does not immediately have obvious consequences, we are nonetheless right to ask ourselves what PLATO means, in having follow, in this order, this series of interventions of which we have at least noticed that the one by PAUSANIAS, which comes immediately before, is derisory.

And if, after all, we retain the general characteristic, the overall tone which characterizes the Symposium, we are legitimately right to ask ourselves whether what is at stake is not, strictly speaking, something that resonates with the “comic work” as such: concerning love, it is clear that PLATO has taken the path of “comedy.” Everything will confirm this subsequently, and I have my reasons for beginning to assert it now, at the moment when the great comic figure is about to enter the scene, this great comic ARISTOPHANES about whom people have always puzzled over why PLATO brought him into the Symposium.

Scandalous since, as you know, this great comic is one of those responsible for the death of SOCRATES. If the Phaedo, namely the drama of SOCRATES’s death, is presented to us with the lofty character given to it by the tragic tone you know, and besides, it is not so simple, there too there are comic elements, but it is clear that tragedy dominates and is presented before us, the Symposium already teaches us that there is not—and up to SOCRATES’s own brief speech, as long as he speaks in his own name—a single point in this discourse that should not be presented to us with this suspicion of the comic.

And I would even say, so as not to leave anything aside and to answer specifically to one of my listeners whose presence honors me the most, with whom I had on this subject a brief exchange [Paul Ricœur], I say specifically that even the speech of PHAEDRUS at the outset—of which, not without reason, not without motive, not without accuracy, he thought he perceived I was taking at face value, unlike PAUSANIAS’s speech—I would say that this nonetheless goes in the direction of what I am asserting here precisely: that this speech of PHAEDRUS, by referring on the subject of love to the appreciation of the gods, also has an ironic value.

For the gods cannot—precisely—understand anything about love. The expression “divine stupidity” is something that, in my view, should be more widespread. It is often suggested by the behavior of those beings to whom we specifically address ourselves on the terrain of love. Calling the gods as witnesses to the matter at stake regarding love seems to me to be something that, in any case, is not out of place in the course of PLATO’s discourse.

Here we are, at the threshold of ARISTOPHANES’s speech. Nevertheless, we will not enter into it yet. I simply want to ask you yourselves, by your own means, to complete what remains to be seen in ERYXIMACHUS’s speech. For Mr. Léon ROBIN, it is a puzzle that ERYXIMACHUS takes up again the opposition of the theme of heavenly love and common love, given what he presents to us concerning the physical and medical handling of love. He does not see very clearly what justifies it. And in truth, I believe that our astonishment is really the only attitude appropriate to answer that of the author of this edition. For the matter is made clear in ERYXIMACHUS’s own speech, confirming the entire perspective in which I have tried to situate it for you.

If he refers, concerning the effects of love [188a-b], to astronomy, it is precisely because what is at stake, this harmony to which it is a matter of converging, of attuning oneself, concerning the good order of human health, is one and the same thing as that which governs the order of the seasons, and that, “when on the contrary—he says—love—in which there is excess, hubris, something too much—succeeds in prevailing with regard to the seasons of the year, then that is where disasters begin, and chaos, the damages—as he puts it—the harms…,” among which are, of course, “epidemics,” but on the same level are placed: “frost, hail, wheat blight” and a whole series of other things. This is to put us back into the context where I believe that the notions I put forward before you as the fundamental, radical categories to which we are forced to refer in order to produce a valid discourse in analysis, namely: the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, are here usable.

People talk about primitive thought, and are surprised that a BORORO identifies himself with a macaw. Does it not seem to you that this is not primitive thought, but a primitive position of thought concerning what—for everyone, for you as for me—it is dealing with, when we see that man, questioning—not his place but his identity—has to orient himself, not within the confines of a limited enclosure which would be his body, but to orient himself in the total and raw real with which he is confronted, and that we do not escape this law from which it results that it is at the precise point of this delineation of the real, which constitutes the progress of science, that we will always have to situate ourselves.

In the time of ERYXIMACHUS, it is out of the question, for lack of the slightest knowledge of what a living tissue is as such, that the physician could make, let us say, of the humors, something heterogeneous to the moisture in which natural vegetation can proliferate in the world. The same disorder that will cause in man such excess due to intemperance, to overexcitement, is the one that will bring about the disorders in the seasons that are enumerated here.

The Chinese tradition presents us at the beginning of the year with the emperor, the one who can with his own hand perform the major rites on which the balance of the entire Middle Kingdom depends, drawing those first furrows whose direction and straightness are intended to ensure, precisely during that time of the year, the balance of nature.

There is, if I may say so, nothing but natural in this position. The one to which ERYXIMACHUS attaches himself here, which is, to put it plainly, the one to which attaches the notion of man as microcosm. What is this? Not that man is in himself a summary, a reflection, an image of nature, but that they are one and the same thing, that one can only conceive of man as composed from the order and harmony of the cosmic components. This is a position that I simply wanted to leave you with today, with the question of whether it does not retain, despite the limitation in which we think we have reduced the meaning of biology, in our mental presuppositions, some traces?

Certainly, detecting them is not so interesting, it is only a matter of seeing where we place ourselves: in what zone, on what more fundamental level we place ourselves, we analysts, when we bring up, to understand ourselves, notions like “the death instinct,” which is strictly speaking—as FREUD did not fail to recognize—an Empedoclean notion. Now it is to this that ARISTOPHANES’s speech will refer.

What I will show you next time is that this tremendous “gag,” which is manifestly presented as a clown’s tumble onto the scene of the Athenian comedy, refers expressly as such—and I will show you the proofs—to this cosmological conception of man. And from there, I will show you the surprising opening of what results from it, an opening left gaping concerning the idea that PLATO could have had of love—I go that far!—concerning the radical derision that the mere approach to the problems of love brought to that incorruptible, material, super-essential, purely ideal, participatory, eternal and uncreated order which is the one, perhaps ironically, that all his work reveals to us.