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(All parts in English)

BEIRNAERT

LACAN

After the very interesting contribution made by our friend GRANOFF, and which fitted like a ring to the progress that the previous seminar had opened up, I continued my purpose in the easiest way and was able to lead you up to that clarification which had until then been held in suspense, a succession of questions posed before you.

This clarification is on the level of the symbolic, in the field of the function of transference, that it can be understood, so that around this central point all the manifestations in which we see it appear to us may be ordered. And this even in the domain of the imaginary. To make it understood, to make it grasped, I did not believe I should place the emphasis better than on the definition of transference, on the first definition FREUD had given of it, which consists exactly in this, which I think I stated to you sufficiently the last time for you to have grasped it well, namely that what is at stake fundamentally in transference is, in sum:
– the taking possession of an apparent discourse by a masked discourse,
– that this masked discourse is very precisely on this occasion the discourse of the unconscious.

We will suspend here the point at which this fundamental conception in a certain way rejoins the common idea one can form of it, I say in a certain way, obviously in a way different from that common idea, for you can already glimpse that if this masked discourse, which is that of the unconscious and which takes hold, as for example in the story of the dream illustrated by FREUD in this first definition of transference, of those elements more or less emptied out, available, of discourse, such as for example the Tagesreste[day residues], and everything that can be called what, in the order of the preconscious, is made available by a lesser investment, of this fundamental need of the subject which is to have himself recognized.

And it is in this void, this hollow, with these materials—more exactly, what from that point properly becomes materials of discourse—that the secret, deep discourse expresses, which is exactly what we find again not only in the dream, but also the slip, all the psychopathology of everyday life, in our way of listening to the discourse of the one who speaks to us.

You also sense that from there we find again what I called a moment ago ‘the common conception’, but this time taken up and at the same time synthesized. If you think of what I have always taught you about the meaning of this discourse of the unconscious, of which I told you that it was the discourse of the Other, in this intra-subjective transference, we need only refer to our definition of the unconscious to realize how it authentically joins intersubjectivity, in the final analysis, in this full realization of speech, which is dialogue.

But there was a point that stopped us, the point where we stopped last time: the fundamental phenomenon of the analytic revelation of one discourse to another discourse that takes the first as its support. We find manifested there something fundamental of semantics, namely that every semanteme refers to the whole of the semantic system, to the polyvalence of its uses.

I explained to you last time that, as well, for everything that is properly of human language, there is never—inasmuch as it is human language, that is, usable in speech—univocity of the symbol. Every semanteme is always of several meanings. Hence we arrive at this absolutely manifest truth in this subjective empiricism within which our experience moves. Here we see revealed concretely what linguists know well—not indeed that they accommodate themselves to it, and so much the better, what problems it poses for them!—that every meaning never does anything but refer to another meaning. Linguists have in fact come to terms with it, and it is within this field that they henceforth develop their science.

One must not believe that this proceeds without ambiguity, and that for a Ferdinand de SAUSSURE, who saw it in a perfectly clear way, the very definitions were always given in a perfectly satisfactory way. This sort of lure—and here it is a perfectly ambiguous term when you speak of a lure, for it is a fundamental lure—consists in the fact that when one speaks of the signified one thinks of the thing, whereas that is precisely not what is at issue when we speak, within a theory of language, of the signifier and the signified.

When we speak, within language, of the signifier, we speak of the audible material; I specify: that does not mean, however, sound, because everything that is in sound, everything that is of the order of phonetics, is not thereby included in linguistics as such; what is at issue is the phoneme, that is, sound insofar as it is opposed to another sound, a set of oppositions within which the phoneme is as such recognizable, that is, can be distinguished from the phoneme that is opposed to it.

In stenotype, ‘pou’ and ‘bou’ are noted in exactly the same way: pou. In general, reference to the context makes it possible to determine the phoneme originally heard and to dispel the ambiguity. Error is exceptionally possible. Correct interreading is therefore possible in stenotype, despite this ambiguity of the signs.

When I do not find a satisfactory interpretation in French, I look to see whether the phoneme or group of phonemes over which I hesitate has a possible meaning in English, German, Latin; if so, it then takes on a meaning; if not, it is impossible for me to transcribe it. This, moreover, only confirms what you say in this seminar about the material of language. The signified—that is what we are on—is the meaning, and meaning is not thereby the thing signified or, if you prefer, the signifiable.

Nevertheless, it is clear that each time we use language through the signified, it is the signifiable that we say, that is, the thing signified. When I say that there is a lure there, it is a lure only insofar as we are making the theory of language, and within it insofar as we let ourselves be taken in by this. It is quite understood that language is not made to designate things. This lure is a structural lure of human language. In a sense it is on this lure that every verification of any truth whatsoever is founded.

This to the point that, during a conversation I recently had with the most eminent person we have in France, since legitimately he can be qualified with the title of linguist: Mr. BENVENISTE, he pointed out to me that one thing had never been brought to light, which of course you may be surprised by because you are not linguists, but which in truth is extremely profound.

If we start from the notion that any internal meaning whatsoever of language must be defined, as I told you last time, by the totality of the possible uses of the term, we will thus arrive, by means already evoked…
last time I took the word that came to my mind, the word ‘hand’, with everything that this word is, the contexts in which it can be situated in French: main-d’œuvre, mainmorte, toutes mains, etc.
…at circumscribing the meanings of a term.

Note that this can also extend to groups of terms, and that in truth there is no theory of language except also of group uses, that is, set phrases, and also syntactic forms. But this has a limit, and it is this, in fact never formulated as such from this perspective: that if we take up the sentence again, it has no use; there are therefore two zones of meaning. I give you this as an opening; you will see that it is of the greatest importance, for these two zones of meaning are perhaps something to which we refer; for example, it is a way of defining the difference between speech and language. Well, a man as eminent as Mr. BENVENISTE made this discovery recently. Since it is unpublished, he entrusted it to me as the current movement of his thought.

It is something that is certainly well suited to inspire a thousand reflections in us, when we see that a text…
Father BEIRNAERT recalled it to my memory:

‘Everything you have just said on the subject of meaning, would it not be illustrated in the De locutionis significatione discussio, which constitutes the first part of the De Magistro?’

I said to him: ‘You speak gold’; this text has not failed to leave a few traces in my memory, and within even what I taught you last time. And I believe we must not neglect that the words I send you obtain such responses, even such commemorations, as Saint AUGUSTINE expresses it, which in Latin means exactly the equivalent of ‘rememoration’. The rememoration of R.P. BEIRNAERT also comes at just the right moment as do the articles GRANOFF had brought us.

And I believe in any case that it is quite exemplary, significant, instructive, that we realize, as I think you will be able to realize within Father BEIRNAERT’s presentation, that the notions that linguists, in sum…
if indeed we can, across the ages, make a great family that would be called by this name ‘linguists’
…have taken fifteen centuries to rediscover, like a sun that rises again or like a dawning dawn, are already set forth in this text of Saint AUGUSTINE, which is one of the most admirable things one can read.

For of course you think that I gave myself the pleasure of rereading it on this occasion. You will see that Saint AUGUSTINE speaks of the sharpest problems of modern linguistics. Everything I have just told you about the signifier and the signified is there developed with a sensational lucidity—so sensational that I fear the spiritual commentators who have devoted themselves to it may not always have seen all the subtlety: one sees clearly that, for what is seen, acknowledged, the commentator finds that the profound Doctor of the Church strays into things that in sum seem quite futile to him. It is curious that these futile things are nothing other than the sharpest point of modern thought on language.

BEIRNAERT- I had exactly 6 or 7 hours to explore this text a little. So it is surely only a small introduction.

LACAN – How do you translate significatione locutionis?

BEIRNAERT–On the meaning of speech.

LACAN – Yes, locutio is indisputably speech.

BEIRNAERT-Oratio is discourse.

LACAN

We could say: on the signifying function of speech. Farther on we have a text where significatio itself is well clarified in this sense of the signifying function of speech. Here speech being used in the broad sense of language put into function in elocution, even eloquence, and it is not full speech nor empty speech; it is speech as a whole.
Full speech, how would you translate it into Latin?

BEIRNAERT

There is an expression, at a certain moment, the full utterance, the sententia plena. The full utterance is the one where there is not only a verb, but a subject, a noun, and so long as there is only the verb, and there is not a subject for this verb, there is no full utterance.

LACAN

Precisely, I wanted to speak to you about it. It is at the moment when he discusses what he calls sententia plena; that simply means the complete sentence, it is not speech.

BEIRNAERT- Yes. It is the complete sentence, as verb and subject.

LACAN

There, the point is to demonstrate that all words are nouns. He uses several sorts of arguments: that they can be used as nouns in a sentence. I am going to give you an example: the ‘if’ is conditional, but the ‘if’ displeases me; in that case the ‘if’ is used as a noun. Saint AUGUSTINE proceeds with all the rigor and the analytic spirit of a modern linguist. He shows that it is the use in the sentence that defines the qualification as a ‘part of speech’. I believe that sententia plena is not what I call ‘full speech’ when I speak of full speech. Have you thought about how to translate full speech into Latin?
 

Louis BEIRNAERT

I do not see it clearly; perhaps we will encounter it in the course of the text. If you permit, I will situate the philosophical dialogue. It was composed by AUGUSTINE in 389, a few years after his return to Africa. It is a dialogue entitled De magistro, On the Teacher, which includes two interlocutors: AUGUSTINE on the one side, and on the other his son ADEODATUS, who was then sixteen years old. This ADEODATUS was very intelligent. Saint AUGUSTINE himself says so, and he says that the words he puts in ADEODATUS’s mouth are words truly spoken by this sixteen-year-old boy, who proves to be a disputant of the first order.

LACAN – The child of sin.

Louis BEIRNAERT

The central theme—I would rather say the axial theme that marks the direction toward which the whole dialogue is oriented—is language transmitting truth from outside, foras sonantibus verbis, by the words that sound outside. The disciple always sees the truth within. It is within that he has conceived it. That is the axis of the discourse. Only, before arriving at this conclusion toward which the discussion rushes, the dialogue meanders at length and delivers a kind of doctrine of language and speech from which we can draw some profit. I give its two large divisions, two large parts:
– the 1st, at which we will stop first, is the Disputatio de locutionis significatione, discussion on the meaning of speech.
– The 2nd part: Veritatis magister solus est Christus.

The 1st part is divided into 2 sections:
– one, synthetically entitled ‘De signis’, translated rather badly here as ‘on the value of words’. It is about something quite different, for one cannot identify signum and verbum; ‘value’ is not there.
– The second part: ‘Signs are of no use for learning’.

Let us begin with the first: ‘De signis’, on signs. A question posed by AUGUSTINE to his son:

– ‘What do we want to do when we speak? (cum loquimur).’

Answer:
– ‘We want either to teach or to learn, depending on the position of teacher or disciple.’

– ‘That is not enough.’

Says Saint AUGUSTINE. He will try to show that even when one wants to learn and questions in order to learn, one still teaches.

– ‘Why?’

– ‘Because one learns precisely from the one to whom one addresses the question. One teaches him in which direction one wants to know—thus, general definition—You see then, my dear, that by language one does nothing other than teach.’

LACAN

Will you allow a remark? I think you grasp how from this start we are truly on the level of everything I am trying to explain to you here, on the difference there is between the ordinary schemas of communication as signals, and the exchange of interhuman speech. We are already straight away in intersubjectivity, since immediately, straight away, he puts the emphasis on docere and discere, which are impossible to distinguish, that every question is essentially an attempt at agreement between the two speeches, which implies first the agreement of the languages.

There is no kind of exchange possible except through the reciprocal identification of the two complete universes of language. Every speech act is already as such teaching. It is not a play of signs. It is precisely on the level of that higher-level meaning of which I was speaking a moment ago; already it is situated on the level not of information but of truth.

Louis BEIRNAERT- ‘I do not think we want to teach anything when no one is there to learn.’

LACAN – Each of these replies would deserve to be isolated in itself.

Louis BEIRNAERT

Then from there, having put the emphasis on teaching, he moves to an excellent way of teaching ‘per commemorationem’, that is, by recollection. There are therefore 2 motives of language. We speak ‘either to teach, or to make someone recollect, whether others or ourselves’. The emphasis is placed here on a function of speech to make someone recollect something. Following this beginning of the dialogue, AUGUSTINE asks the question:

– ‘In your opinion, was speech instituted only to teach or to remember?’

Here let us not forget the religious atmosphere in which the dialogue is situated. The interlocutor replies:

– ‘There is also prayer.’

– ‘In prayer, one dialogues with God. Can one believe that God receives from us a teaching or a reminder? This would not hold in this form of dialogue.’

I pass over what he says at that moment. The conclusion being the following: that when one speaks in this dialogue, it is not to make someone recollect or to teach the subject with whom one is dialoguing, but rather to warn others that one is in the process of praying. Thus, not in relation to the dialogue, but to those who can see us in this dialogue.

LACAN

It is very striking. Prayer is clearly pulled in the direction of the ineffable. He excludes prayer as fundamental from the field of speech, which has an important value.

Louis BEIRNAERT

In that case, it is not a matter of recollecting or learning. That said, teaching is done by words:

– ‘What are the words that one uses to teach or to recollect?’
– ‘They are signs.’

Here we have an entire reflection on verbum and signum. A sign is always made to signify something; otherwise it is not a sign. To develop his thought and make explicit a little how he conceives this relation of the sign to the signifiable, he proposes to his interlocutor a line from the Aeneid.

LACAN – He has not yet defined ‘signifiable’.

Louis BEIRNAERT

No, not yet: to signify something. What? We do not yet know. He therefore takes a line from the Aeneid:

– ‘Si nihil ex tanta Superis placet urbe relinqui’ [Aeneid, II, 659: If the gods wish that nothing remain of so great a city]

And here there will be an entire maieutics, thanks to which he will try to search for this aliquid. He begins by asking his interlocutor:

– ‘How many words are there in the line?’
– ‘Eight.’
– ‘There are therefore eight signs. Do you understand this line?’
– ‘I understand it.’
– ‘Tell me now what each word signifies.’

Then ADEODATUS is a bit embarrassed about the ‘si’. He says:

– ‘I find no other word that can explain its meaning. One would have to find an equivalent; I do not find it.’
AUGUSTINE says:

– ‘Whatever the thing signified by this word may be, do you at least know where it is found?’

It is not at all a material thing.

– ‘This “si” signifies a doubt. Now, where is doubt if not in the soul?’

It is interesting because immediately we see that the word refers to something that is precisely of the spiritual order, of a reaction of the subject as such.

LACAN – Are you sure?

Louis BEIRNAERT- I think so.

LACAN – In any case, he is speaking there of a localization…

Louis BEIRNAERT

…which must not be spatialized: I say ‘in the soul’ as opposed to the material. Then he moves to the following word, it is ‘nihil’, that is, ‘nothing’. ADEODATUS says:

– ‘Obviously, it is what does not exist.’
– ‘You may be speaking truly,’ replies Saint AUGUSTINE, ‘but what does not exist cannot in any way be something. Therefore the second word is not a sign, because it does not signify something. And it was by error that it was agreed that every word is a sign, or that every sign is a sign of something.’

ADEODATUS is embarrassed:

– ‘If we have nothing to signify, it is madness if we speak. Therefore there must be something.’

AUGUSTINE gives him the answer:

– ‘Is there not a certain reaction of the soul when, not seeing a thing, it nevertheless realizes, or believes it has realized, that a thing does not exist? Why not say that such is the object signified by the word “nothing”, rather than the thing itself, which does not exist? Thus what is signified here is the reaction of the soul before an absence of something that could be there.’

LACAN

The value of this first part is very exactly to show that it is impossible to handle language by referring term by term the sign to the thing. And it is done in a way that for us has a signal value, and we must not forget that negativity had not been elaborated in Saint AUGUSTINE’s time, and yet, by the force of the signs or of the things—we are precisely here to try to know it—it is nonetheless on this ‘nihil’ that he stumbles.

First by taking this very beautiful line, of which I point out to you in passing that the choice is not quite indifferent. FREUD certainly knew VIRGIL very well, and this line that evokes vanished Troy curiously echoes the fact that when FREUD wants to define the unconscious, in another part of his work, if you look closely, it is in the same way, in ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’, that he speaks of a kind of co-presence in our knowledge of the history of Rome, of all these monuments of vanished Rome, through which FREUD mentally walked at the same time as he walked through the ruins of Rome. And it is by a metaphor of this kind, historical, tied to the disappearance of things that remain essentially there—however little remains of the city of Troy—in this presence-absence, that FREUD at another moment of his work sets out his explanation of the unconscious: at the beginning of ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’.

Louis BEIRNAERT

AUGUSTINE then moves to the 3rd term, which is ‘ex’. There his disciple gives him another word to explain what the word ‘ex’ signifies. It is the word ‘de’, moreover explaining this word in detail, that it is a term of separation with a thing where the object is found, of which one says that it comes from that. Following which, AUGUSTINE points out to him that he has explained words by words: ‘ex’ by ‘de’, one very well-known word by other very well-known words. And then he pushes him to go beyond the level where he continues to situate himself, and he says:

– ‘I would like you to show me, if you can, the things of which these words are the signs.’

A question arises. He takes as an example:

– ‘Is it possible rather to grasp a thing outside words than to designate it by a word?’

He takes as an example the wall:

– ‘Can you point to it with your finger? I would see the thing itself, of which this three-syllable word is the sign. And you, you would show it without nevertheless producing any word.’

Consequently, here is a thing in relation to three syllables, which one can show without any word. This also holds for bodily qualities, color, etc. Can sound, smell, taste—things other than seen things—weight, heat, the other objects that concern the other senses—can one also point them out with the finger? Then here there is an entire exposition on language by gestures. AUGUSTINE asks his disciple whether he has closely observed the deaf who communicate by gestures, by means of gestures, with their fellows. And he shows that by this kind of language among the deaf:

– ‘Not only visible things are shown, but also sounds, tastes, the other things.’

He goes further…

MANNONI

That reminds me of the little game we played at Guitrancourt on Sunday. Actors in the theater make understood and develop plays without words, by means of dance.

LACAN

What you evoke there is indeed very instructive. In a little game that consists in splitting into two camps and having one’s partners guess as quickly as possible a word secretly given by the game leader, one brings to light exactly what Saint AUGUSTINE demonstrates to us, recalls to us, in this passage. I can show you several perfectly tangible illustrations of it. For what is said here is not so much the dialectic of gesture as the dialectic of indication. That he takes ‘the wall’ right away will not astonish us, for it is even more against the wall of language that he is going to collide than against the real wall. He thus notes that the things that can be indicated are not only things but also qualities. And it is all too clear that this dialectic of indication is ambiguous.

For it is not certain that, by indicating the wall, the one to whom this sign, which is still indication, is addressed…
that is where all the relief of the argument lies, that even indication is still a sign, but perfectly ambiguous
…for how to know whether it is the wall or, for example, the quality of being rough, or green, gray. Likewise, in the little game the other day, someone having to express ‘ivy’ went to fetch ivy. He was told, ‘You cheated.’ That is a mistake. For what did the person bring? Three ivy leaves. That could indicate the shape, the green color, or the Holy Trinity, etc.

MANNONI- I was going to make a remark about language when one uses the things themselves.

LACAN – Have you read the text?

MANNONI- No.

LACAN – Then you are going to reinvent it!

MANNONI

It seems that one is going to treat the thing like a word. If I use the word ‘chair’, if the word itself fails me and I brandish a chair to complete my sentence, it is therefore not the thing that I thus use, but the word; it is therefore not possible to speak by a thing, but always by words.

Louis BEIRNAERT

He says:

– ‘Granted, one does not always use words but signs. Then the question…’
LACAN

We touch there the heart of the ambiguity that he produces in his famous ‘interpretations’ said to be ‘of gestures or movements’, or purportedly of the subject’s emotions. Your example illustrates perfectly that everything we interpret in this register in analysis is exactly in the same way as you have just employed ‘chair’, whether the word fails you, or whether, speaking a foreign language, you no longer know it: Stuhl. And you will take the chair in your hand, and it will be understood that it is chair. If you look closely, everything we interpret on the level of the subject’s current reactions is always taken up in discourse in exactly the same way. And this should allow us to go much further.

Louis BEIRNAERT

There is nothing that can be shown without a sign. And ADEODATUS will try to show that there are things that can be. AUGUSTINE asks the question:

– ‘If I asked: what is walking? And if, getting up, you performed this act, would you not use, in order to teach it to me, the thing itself rather than speech?’

ADEODATUS, taken aback, says:

– ‘Yes, I admit it. I am ashamed not to have seen something so obvious. Then there are lots of other things that can be shown without signs, shouting, standing, etc.’

AUGUSTINE continues by asking him a question:

– ‘If I asked you, at the moment when you are walking: what is walking? How would you teach it to me?’

– ‘I would do, for example, the action a little faster in order to draw your attention after your question by something new, while doing nothing other than doing what had to be shown.’

– ‘Then you hurry, and it is not the same thing to hurry as to walk. So how to make the distinction between hurrying and walking? He will believe that you show him that what you designate by the verb to walk is to hurry, that “ambulare” is “festinare”?’

LACAN

As earlier with nihil we brushed up against negativity, with this example of ‘festinare’ one notes that ‘festinare’ can apply to all sorts of other acts, and it is impossible to distinguish whether it is hurrying or walking. There is something else, more precisely another point of discourse: that in showing any act whatsoever in its particular time, the subject has no reason, without words, to conceptualize the act itself. For he can believe that it is that act there, at that time there. We find again: time is the concept; that is, it is insofar as it is the time of the act that is taken by itself and separated from the particular act that the act can be literally conceptualized, that is, kept in a name. We are going to arrive there at the dialectic of the name.

Louis BEIRNAERT

He distinguishes there the times. He says:

– ‘But all the same, if we are questioned about an act that we can do, without doing it at the very moment when we are questioned, if one asks us the question, and we do the act after, is it not at that moment that we show the thing by the thing itself?’ (question posed by ADEODATUS).

– ‘Accept that. It is therefore understood between us that one can show without sign either the acts that we do not do when we are questioned but that nevertheless we can accomplish at once, or the signs themselves, the sign, by being shown, by manifesting itself in the spoken action. For when we speak, we make signs “signa facimus”, from which one draws “significare”: to signify, and to speak: “signa facere”.’

LACAN

In this dialectic, what can in the final analysis be shown without signs, and of which he has just demonstrated the difficulties, he makes an exception for a single action, which is that of speaking. For that one… In any case, what is speaking? Whatever I say to teach it to him, it is necessary for me to speak. From there, I will continue my explanations until I make clear to myself what he wants, without departing from the thing he wants to have shown to him, and without departing from the signs of that thing itself. It is the only action that can indeed, in an equivalent way, be demonstrated. And it is precisely because it is the action par excellence that is demonstrated by signs. Meaning alone is found again in our appeal: meaning always refers to meaning.

Louis BEIRNAERT

He summarizes there everything he has found. Let us recall the question posed about the line. The request concerns certain signs that one can demonstrate by other signs. If, on the other hand, one questions about things that are not signs, one will show them
– either by performing them after the request, this is the case of walking when one has posed the request,
– or by giving signs that can attract attention, this is the wall.
Thus, a division into three parts. And he will take up this division again in order to deepen each of the parts thus set out.
Let us take the first thing, the fact that signs are shown by signs. It is on this that he will make his considerations bear:

– ‘Are only spoken words signs?’

– ‘No.’

– ‘It seems that in speaking we signify by words either the words themselves, or other signs.’

He takes the fact of speech and shows that by speech one can signify and designate other signs than speech, for example gestures, letters, etc.

LACAN

Examples of two signs that are not verba: gestus, littera. Here Saint AUGUSTINE shows himself healthier than our contemporaries, who can consider that gesture is not of the symbolic order and is situated at the level of an animal response, for example. Gesture is something that precisely would be brought as an objection to what we say, that analysis takes place entirely in speech: ‘But the subject’s gestures?’, they tell us. It is perfectly clear that a human gesture is a language; it is on the side of language and not on the side of motor manifestation; it is evident.

Louis BEIRNAERT

Verbum can refer to a real object. He deals with the precise case in which the sign refers to the same sign or to other signs than gesture. And then he comes back to the word:

– ‘These signs are words.’

He asks:

– ‘To which sense are they addressed?’

– ‘To hearing.’

– ‘And gesture?’

– ‘To sight.’

– ‘And written words?’

– ‘They are sounds of voice articulated with a meaning, which cannot be perceived by any other sense than by hearing. Thus this written word refers to the word that is addressed to the ear, so that this one then is addressed to the mind.’

That said, AUGUSTINE will then utter a precise verbum: ‘nomen’, the name, and pose the question:

– ‘Do we signify something with this verbum that is nomen?’

– ‘Yes. We can signify Romulus, Roma, virtus, fluvius…and other innumerable things; it is only an intermediary.’

– ‘Do these four names refer to something else? Is there a difference between this name and the object that it signifies? What is this difference?’

AUGUSTINE asks.

– ‘Names are signs,’ answers ADEODATUS, ‘and objects are not.’

So always on the horizon: objects that are not signs, entirely at the limit. And it is here that the term significabilia intervenes, which Saint AUGUSTINE uses for the first time in this dialogue, and he agrees that we will call ‘signifiables’ those objects susceptible of being designated by a sign without being themselves a sign, so as to be handled conveniently.
He returns to the four intermediary signs:

– ‘Are they designated by no other sign than by nomen?’

They are designated first by ‘nomen’.

– ‘We established,’ answers ADEODATUS, ‘that written words are signs of those other signs that we ourselves express by the voice. If we express them, what difference is there then between these two signs: the spoken sign, Roma, Romulus, and the written sign? The ones are visible, and the others are audible. And why would you not admit,’ asks ADEODATUS, ‘this name, if we have admitted as signifiable the audible name?’

– ‘Of course,’ says AUGUSTINE, ‘but I ask again: the four signs we are dealing with, Roma, Romulus, virtus, fluvius, can they not be signified by any other audible sign than the four we have just spoken of?’

LACAN

Here we can go a bit faster. All the last questions will bear entirely on the signs that designate themselves. And this is oriented, I believe, if you have understood it as I have, toward a deepening of the sense of the verbal sign, which turns around verbum and nomen. We have translated verbum as the word; the translator at one point translates it as speech.

As for phonemes, or groups of phonemes employed in a language, it could be that a phoneme in a language, isolated, designates nothing. One can know it only by use and by employment, that is, integration into the system of meaning. It is very clear that verbum is employed as such, and what is important is this: that around it will turn the whole demonstration that he will follow, namely: can every word be considered as a nomen?

This is quite visible in grammar. And in Latin there is a use of nomen and of verbum that corresponds more or less. You know that this raises great linguistic questions. One would be wrong to distinguish verbs in an absolute way, even in languages where the use—for example, substantive—of the verb is extremely rare, as in French, where we do not say: ‘le laisser’, or ‘le faire’, or ‘le se trouver’; that is not done. Nevertheless, in French the distinction between noun and verb is more wavering than you can believe.

For the moment, it is a matter of what Saint AUGUSTINE… What value, Father BEIRNAERT, would you give in our vocabulary to ‘nomen’? After the whole demonstration, supposing we have crossed this whole long discussion that AUGUSTINE undertakes with ADEODATUS to convince him that nomen and verbum, although having different uses, can be considered as designating one another: that every nomen is a verbum goes without saying; the inverse goes much less without saying.

One can nevertheless demonstrate that there are uses of any verbum whatsoever, including ‘if’, ‘but’, ‘for’…
What is at stake in your view in the whole of the demonstration, what is his idea in this identification of nomen and verbum? In other words, does he not give, in this demonstration, the properly speaking nominal value? What does he mean? What does he aim at in our language? How do you translate ‘nomen’ in the language of the seminar?

Louis BEIRNAERT- I did not find it very well.

LACAN

It is exactly that which we here call the symbol; the nomen is the signifier-signified totality, particularly insofar as it serves to recognize, insofar as upon it the pact and the agreement are established, the symbol in the sense of pact. It is on the plane of recognition that the nomen is exercised. This is, I believe, in conformity with the linguistic genius of Latin, where there are all sorts of uses—which I noted for you—juridical uses of the word ‘nomen’, which can be used in the sense of ‘title of credit’.
On the other hand, if we refer to the Hugolian play on words—and one must not believe that HUGO was a madman—the play on words: nomen-numen, the word nomen is linguistically in a double relation. It has an original form that puts it in relation with numen, the sacred. But the linguistic evolution of the word was seized by noscere. And that is what gave forms like agnomen, from which it is difficult for us to believe that they do not come from nomen, but from a capture of nomen by cognoscere.

But juridical uses indicate to us enough that we are not mistaken in making it the word in its function of recognition, of pact, and of interhuman symbol.

Louis BEIRNAERT

Indeed Saint AUGUSTINE makes it explicit through the whole passage where he speaks of naming oneself: ‘this is called…’, ‘this is named…’.
Now, I believe that ‘this is called…’, ‘this is named…’ is with reference, obviously, to the intersubjective notion: a thing is named.

LACAN

Elsewhere he speaks of the two values of the word: verbum and nomen; he makes the fantastic etymology:
– verbum insofar as it strikes the ear, which corresponds, as to sense, to the notion we give of it, namely verbal materiality,
– and nomen insofar as it makes known.

Only, what is not in Saint AUGUSTINE…
and for certain defined reasons: simply because Saint AUGUSTINE had not read HEGEL
…is the distinction of the plane of knowledge: agnoscere, and of recognition, that is to say ‘an essentially human dialectic’…
that is to say to be put in single quotation marks, but as he, Saint AUGUSTINE is in a dialectic that is not atheistic…

Louis BEIRNAERT- But when there is ‘is called…’, ‘is recalled…’, and ‘is named…’, it is recognition.

LACAN

No doubt, but he does not isolate it because for him in the final analysis there is only one recognition, that of CHRIST. But it is certain, it is forced, that in a coherent language, at least the chapter, even if it is not developed, appears. Even the chapters that he resolves in a different way from ours are indicated.

Louis BEIRNAERT- You know, that is the essential.

LACAN

Move on to a 2nd chapter, what you called the power of language, which will give the occasion to take it up again next time.

Louis BEIRNAERT- ‘That signs are of no use for learning’.

LACAN – With the sense he gave to discere, which is fundamentally the meaning, the essential sense, of speech.

Louis BEIRNAERT

That is to say that this time we pass no longer from the relation of signs to signs, but that we approach the relation of signs to signifiable things.

LACAN – From the sign to teaching.

Louis BEIRNAERT- It is badly translated; it is rather to the ‘signifiable’.

LACAN – Signifiable: discendum… yes. On the other side he told us that discere is docere.

Louis BEIRNAERT

I skip two or three pages to arrive at the assertion he states at the beginning: that when signs are heard, attention turns toward the thing signified; thus the sign refers to the thing signified when one hears it. For such is the law, naturally endowed with a very great force: when signs are heard, attention turns toward the thing signified. To which Saint AUGUSTINE makes an interesting objection from the analytic point of view—one comes across it from time to time. ADEODATUS had said:

– ‘Granted: words refer to the things signified.’

So AUGUSTINE says:

– ‘What would you say if an interlocutor, by way of a joke, concluded that if someone speaks of a lion, a lion came out of the mouth of the one who speaks. He did in fact ask whether the things we say come out of our mouth. The other, having been unable to deny it, contrived so that this man, by speaking, would name a lion. As soon as this man had done so, he turned him into ridicule, and he himself, this man without malice, could not deny that he seemed to have vomited such a cruel beast.’

– ‘It is,’ replies ADEODATUS, ‘the sign that comes out of the mouth and not the meaning, not the concept but its vehicle.’

After which—let us not forget what he wants to orient us toward, namely that, at bottom, from where knowledge of things comes—
he will proceed by stages, beginning by posing the question:

– ‘What must one prefer, what is preferable, the thing signified, or its sign? The word or the thing it signifies?’

According to a principle, quite universal at that time, one must deem:

– ‘The things signified more than the signs, since the signs are ordered to the thing signified, and everything that is ordered to something else is less noble than that to which it is ordered, unless you judge otherwise.’

Says Saint AUGUSTINE to ADEODATUS. Then the other finds a word:

– ‘For example, when we speak of filth—the Latin word being “cœnum”—is it not in that case that the name is preferable to the thing? We very much prefer hearing the word to smelling the thing.’

This is interesting because it will make it possible to introduce, between the thing in its materiality and the sign, knowledge of the thing, namely science properly speaking.

– ‘Indeed,’ asks AUGUSTINE, ‘what is the aim of those who thus imposed a name on this thing, if not to enable them to conduct themselves with respect to this thing, to know it, and to warn them of the behavior to have toward this thing? One must hold in higher esteem this knowledge of the thing than the word itself.’

He specifies that science itself, given by this sign, must be preferred:

– ‘Knowledge of filth, indeed, must be held to be better than the name itself, which must be preferred to filth itself. For there is no other reason to prefer knowledge to the sign, except that the latter is for the former, and not the former for the latter.’

One speaks in order to know, not the inverse. There is a whole series of developments that I pass over: ‘just as one must not live in order to eat, but eat in order to live…’ etc. Another question posed—we were here between the thing and the sign; we have now introduced knowledge of things—another problem: is knowledge of signs going to be esteemed preferable to knowledge of things? This is a new problem; he opens it, but does not treat it.

Finally, he concludes all this development by saying:

– ‘Knowledge of things prevails, not over knowledge of signs, but over the signs themselves.’

He then returns to the problem addressed in the first part:

– ‘Let us examine more closely whether there are things that one can show by themselves, without any sign at all, such as: speaking, walking, sitting, and other similar things. Are there things that can be shown without sign?’

– ‘None,’ says ADEODATUS, ‘except speech.’

AUGUSTINE says:

– ‘Are you so sure of everything you say?’

– ‘I am not sure at all.’

AUGUSTINE brings in an example of something that is shown without sign (and then I thought of the analytic situation).

– ‘If someone, without being familiar with bird hunting practiced with rods and birdlime, met a bird catcher carrying his gear and who, not