LE POINT DU STYLE. ETHICS BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: CONCEPT AND CRITIQUE

Abstract

Following Lacan’s Seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, this paper addresses a first axis relevant to practical philosophy: The reference of the discourses on ethics. Following Lacan, if approached from the key of desire and the relationship towards the other, the various ethical schools in philosophy coincide in a problematic fixation on the good to which they gravitate. Therefore they need to see its indecipherable and unutterable character. Nevertheless, an alternative interpretation of the Aristotelic good or the Kantian noumenon allows us to see what Lacan indicates with the term Ding, which would be the foundation of these determinations and, at the same time, would allow overcoming their stagnation. This movement is exposed in the second moment of this paper. Beginning with the Lacanian interpretation of “conceit,” I will show how a relationship may be established between concept and critique, taking especially into account the contributions of Gracián. Finally, it is proposed to understand desire as a singular perspective that allows us to question and relocate the role and contributions of philosophical ethics. This paper hypothesizes that the analysis of both issues and the tensions between philosophical and psychoanalytical discourses not only show a possible enrichment of both but also that these aspects function as a dispositive to show the lack which is constitutive to both and to propose compensation mechanisms. In the final section of this paper, it is proposed to establish some indications for this mechanism of mutual intervention, following the contributions of Honneth and Levinas.