Secondary literature 2000

Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan

Alenka Zupančič

by (2000)

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Synopsis

Alenka Zupančič's Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan (Verso, 2000) advances a sustained philosophical argument that Lacanian psychoanalysis and Kantian practical philosophy share a deeper structural kinship than either their defenders or their critics have recognized — a kinship that, properly articulated, yields a genuinely novel "ethics of the Real." The book opens by distinguishing two blows psychoanalysis delivers to philosophical ethics: the Freudian reduction of the moral law to the superego, and the Lacanian "Kant with Sade" thesis; but Zupančič insists that Lacan's engagement is simultaneously a critique and a retrieval, crediting Kant with discovering the irreducible dimension of desire and the Real in ethics. Working through the Kantian concepts of the pathological, freedom, the subject of practical reason, the categorical imperative's relationship to lying, the transcendental dialectic, the postulates of immortality and God, radical and diabolical evil, respect and the sublime, and the schematism of the moral law, Zupančič shows in each case that Kant's text is haunted by a structural surplus — a "crack in the Other," an extimate object — that his own framework cannot contain but that Lacan's concepts of objet petit a, jouissance, the Act, and the drive illuminate. The book's climax is a long reading of Lacan's Seminar VII and its tragic exemplars (Antigone, Oedipus, Hamlet, Claudel's Sygne de Coufontaine), which allows Zupančič to draw the distinction between an ethics of pure desire (Antigone's sublime heroism) and an ethics of the drive (Sygne's "enjoyment of the remainder"), proposing this as the trajectory from early to late Lacan and as the genuine content of an "ethics of the Real."

Distinctive contribution

What distinguishes Ethics of the Real from other Lacanian engagements with ethics — including Žižek's The Sublime Object of Ideology and The Indivisible Remainder, Joan Copjec's Radical Evil, or Mladen Dolar's work — is the rigor and granularity with which it moves through Kant's entire critical corpus: not only the Critique of Practical Reason but also the Critique of Pure Reason's transcendental dialectic, the Critique of Judgement's analytic of the sublime, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone's doctrine of radical evil, and the essay on the supposed right to lie. In each case Zupančič is not simply applying Lacanian concepts to Kantian text but performing a genuine comparative reading: showing that the transcendental subject occupies the structural position of objet petit a (extimate to both subject and Other), that Kantian "respect" is structurally the Lacanian object-cause of anxiety, that the postulate of the immortality of the soul is a fantasy in the strict Lacanian sense (the immortality of the body, not the soul), and that "diabolical evil" and the "highest good" are formally indistinguishable at the level of the act — conclusions with which Kant himself could not come to terms.

A second distinctive contribution is the book's architecture of ethical figures. By reading Valmont (Les Liaisons dangereuses) as the paradigm of desire-as-infinite-approach and Don Juan (Molière) as the paradigm of desire-as-overhasty-capture, and then setting these against Antigone (sublime desire between two deaths) and Sygne de Coufontaine (the drive, the grimace, the "enjoyment of the remainder"), Zupančič constructs an original typology of ethical failure and ethical accomplishment that is neither a taxonomy of character types nor a simple application of Lacan's graphs. The final pivot from "pure desire" to the drive as the properly modern ethical register — tracking the movement from Lacan's Seminar VII to his later teaching — is one of the most careful treatments of this transition in the secondary literature, grounded in close reading rather than assertion.

Main themes

The structural homology between Kantian practical reason and Lacanian ethics of desire
The 'pathological' as the entire register of normal action, and the revolutionary break required by the ethical
The Act as 'subjectivation without subject' — the subject passing over to the side of objet petit a
Radical and diabolical evil as transcendental-structural concepts rather than empirical-historical ones
The superego as the perverse underside of the moral law, and respect/anxiety as the genuine ethical affect
The Kantian sublime and the postulate of immortality as structures of fantasy
The distinction between tyranny and terror as two ethical situations (Antigone vs. Sygne)
The transition from pure desire (ethics of Seminar VII) to the drive (ethics of the Real) in late Lacan
Extimacy: the objet petit a as that which belongs neither to the subject nor to the Other but conditions both
Guilt as the paradoxical mark of freedom, not moral conscience

Chapter outline

Foreword: Why Is Kant Worth Fighting For? (Slavoj Žižek) — p.6-13
Introduction — p.14-19
Chapter 1: The (Moral-)Pathology of Everyday Life — p.20-33
Chapter 2: The Subject of Freedom — p.34-55
Chapter 3: The Lie — p.56-76
Chapter 4: From the Logic of Illusion to the Postulates — p.77-91
Chapter 5: Good and Evil — p.92-118
Chapter 6: The Act and Evil in Literature — p.119-152
Chapter 7: Between the Moral Law and the Superego — p.153-182
Chapter 8: Ethics and Tragedy in Psychoanalysis — p.183-273
Chapter 9: Thus — p.249-260

Chapter summaries

Foreword: Why Is Kant Worth Fighting For? (Slavoj Žižek) (p.6-13)

Žižek's foreword sets the polemical stage by challenging the liberal 'return to Kant' (Habermas, Arendt, Rawls) and insisting on a different, more uncanny Kant — the Kant whose decentred transcendental subject is, contra received opinion, not opposed to Freud's decentred subject of the unconscious but is in fact its precursor. Using the Hegelian figure of the plant whose intestines are outside its body, Žižek argues that Lacan's subject is 'decentred' in a constitutive, not merely derivative sense: the symbolic order is the spiritual intestine of the human animal, lodged outside the self. This reframing positions the book's central wager: that Lacan's 'Kant with Sade' is not simply a debunking of Kantian ethics but a productive philosophical encounter that recovers the Real kernel of the ethical that Kant discovered but could not fully theorize.

Key concepts: Splitting of the Subject, Symbolic Order, Desire, The big Other Notable examples: Wagner, Die Walküre (Wotan, Fricka, Brünnhilde as externalized psychic components)

Introduction (p.14-19)

The Introduction defines the book's project in terms of two successive 'blows' dealt to philosophical ethics by psychoanalysis. The Freudian blow is the identification of the moral law with the superego — ethics as ideological tool, ethics as malaise. The Lacanian blow is 'Kant with Sade': the claim that the pinnacle of philosophical ethics harbors a perverse, Sadeian core. But Zupančič insists that Lacan's move is double: it simultaneously exposes the perverse underside of Kantian ethics and credits Kant with having isolated the real core of ethical experience — 'the moral law, looked at more closely, is simply desire in its pure state' (Lacan). The Introduction thus announces the book's thesis: that Lacan's engagement with Kant is not merely critical but reconstructive, and that the project of an 'ethics of the Real' requires both taking Kant seriously and supplementing his account with the Lacanian concepts of the drive and jouissance. The step beyond 'Kant with Sade', Zupančič argues, is from pure desire to the drive.

Key concepts: Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Superego, Desire, Jouissance, The Act Notable examples: Lacan, 'Kant with Sade'; Sade, Practical Philosophy in the Bedroom

Chapter 1: The (Moral-)Pathology of Everyday Life (p.20-33)

This chapter establishes the conceptual foundation of the Kantian 'pathological' — not the abnormal or the neurotic, but the entire domain of action motivated by any incentive (Triebfeder), however elevated. Kant's ethics, Zupančič argues, is not an ethics of asceticism or infinite purification; the ethical subject does not suffer the loss of pleasure but rather finds that pleasure 'loses its attractive power'. The relationship between happiness and duty is one of indifference, not negation — and this structural 'missed encounter' is illustrated with Proust's Swann in Love, where the hero wants his suffering to end while remaining in love.

Key concepts: Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Desire, Jouissance, Objet petit a, Drive, Surplus-jouissance Notable examples: Proust, Swann in Love

Chapter 2: The Subject of Freedom (p.34-55)

The chapter's central thesis is that the subject of Kantian practical reason is a divided subject from the outset — divided not between the pathological and the pure but between the pathological subject (S) and the divided subject as such. This division is formalized through the structure of forced and excluded choice: the subject cannot choose unfreedom (S) without ceasing to be a subject; the only genuine choice is to choose oneself as freedom, as the pure form of division. But this requires first traversing the territory of radical determinism — the 'excluded choice' of the postulate of complete determination — before the 'leftover' element on which freedom is founded can appear.

Key concepts: Splitting of the Subject, Objet petit a, Alienation, Symbolic Order, The big Other, Extimacy

Chapter 3: The Lie (p.56-76)

This chapter uses the Kant-Constant controversy on the 'right to lie' as a laboratory for working out the structure of the unconditional ethical duty. Zupančič first defends the philosophical coherence of Kant's position against critics who dismiss it as an aberration: Constant's 'middle principle' is not, as Kant charges, an exception to a rule but rather a specification of when the rule applies at all — a distinction between violating a law and the law's non-application. Zupančič shows that Kant's argument, rigorously followed, preserves the unconditional character of ethical duty: the duty of truthfulness is not violated when one lies in necessity; rather, there is no such duty in that situation. This logic anticipates the Lacanian structure of the Real that exceeds the binary of legal/illegal.

Key concepts: Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Desire, The big Other, Jouissance, Perversion, Superego Notable examples: Kant, 'On a Supposed Right to Lie'; Constant, Des Réactions politiques; Lacan, Ethics of Psychoanalysis (parable of the gallows)

Chapter 4: From the Logic of Illusion to the Postulates (p.77-91)

Zupančič examines Kant's transcendental dialectic — the 'logic of illusion' as opposed to the 'logic of truth' — and shows that Kantian illusion is not the opposite of truth but a structural necessity: the transcendental ideas (soul, world, God) are produced compulsively by reason's own operation, a 'compulsion to repeat' analogous to Lacan's concept of le semblant (truth has the structure of fiction). The transcendental idea as 'heuristic fiction' — an object in the place of the lack of an object — is distinguished from the illusion of a false representation of a real thing. This aligns the transcendental dialectic with Lacan's conception of truth as situated at the level of signifier articulation, not at the level of correspondence to an external referent.

Key concepts: Symbolic, The big Other, Objet petit a, Real, Signifier, Fantasy Notable examples: Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (transcendental dialectic); Lacan, 'Remarks on Daniel Lagache'

Chapter 5: Good and Evil (p.92-118)

This chapter opens by arguing that Kant's postulate of the immortality of the soul is, in the strict Lacanian sense, a fantasy: what Kant actually needs to postulate is not an immortal soul (incapable of temporal progress) but an immortal body — indestructible, capable of endless change, approaching its end asymptotically. This is precisely the Sadeian fantasy (the torturer's victims cannot be killed, since their death would terminate the enjoyment), and 'Kant with Sade' finds its most convincing illustration here rather than in any abstract comparison of the categorical imperative with Sade's maxims. The postulate thus responds to the structural impasse of incommensurability between finite bodily capacity and infinite jouissance.

Key concepts: Fantasy, Jouissance, The Act, Real, Objet petit a, Splitting of the Subject, Drive, The big Other Notable examples: Terminator 2; Alien 3; Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone

Chapter 6: The Act and Evil in Literature (p.119-152)

Using Lacan's remark on Zeno's paradox (Achilles can only pass, not catch up with, the tortoise), this chapter develops two paradigmatic figures of ethical failure. The 'Sadeian movement' is an infinite part-by-part approach to the object of desire, the movement of 'one more effort always required'. The 'Don Juanian movement' is an overhasty pursuit, a one-by-one accumulation that always overshoots and must begin again. The case of Valmont (Les Liaisons dangereuses) is analyzed at length as the paradigm of the Sadeian structure: Valmont's entire project is to make Madame de Tourvel 'watch herself dying' — to produce in her the experience of being between two deaths — while he himself becomes an instrument of the enjoyment of the Other. Valmont's tragedy is that he cannot close the gap between enjoyment and consciousness, and thus perpetually requires 'one more effort'; his act remains unaccomplished, and when he shifts from the moral law to the logic of the superego, his sacrifices only entangle him further.

Key concepts: Desire, Jouissance, Drive, The Act, Objet petit a, Universality Notable examples: Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (Valmont, Mme de Tourvel, Merteuil); Molière, Don Juan; Mozart, Don Giovanni; Powell, Peeping Tom (film); Kierkegaard on Don Juan

Chapter 7: Between the Moral Law and the Superego (p.153-182)

This chapter addresses the 'quantum of affect' in Kantian ethics — the feeling of respect (Achtung) — and argues for its kinship with Lacanian anxiety. Kant's respect is not a pathological feeling but an a priori practical one, produced by the proximity of the moral law; it is not admiration, love, or fear but the very registration that the moral law is 'nearby'. Zupančič shows how Kant then oscillates between this rigorous conception and a subjectivized version of respect — 'boundless esteem' linked to trembling, fear, and humiliation — in which the law acquires a voice and a gaze (the two Lacanian objects par excellence), and respect becomes superegoic fantasy. The institution of the superego is shown to be correlated with a 'fear of success': the absolute Other is installed precisely to guarantee that the act will never fully succeed, that there will always be lack on the subject's side.

Key concepts: Superego, Anxiety, Sublime, Fantasy, Objet petit a, Ethics of Psychoanalysis, The big Other Notable examples: Kant, Critique of Judgement (analytic of the sublime); Monty Python, The Meaning of Life; Freud, 'Humour'

Chapter 8: Ethics and Tragedy in Psychoanalysis (p.183-273)

The longest and most complex chapter, this section grounds the book's argument in Lacan's reading of Greek tragedy and Claudel's dramatic trilogy. It opens by defending Lacan's use of tragedy against the charge that it represents an 'existentialist phase': tragedy, for Lacan, functions as myth functions — as an instantiation of formal structure, not merely narrative — and thus has the same fecundity as mathematics or the matheme. The chapter proceeds through three major figures: Oedipus, Antigone/Hamlet, and Sygne de Coufontaine.

Key concepts: Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Desire, Jouissance, Drive, Das Ding, Objet petit a, Real, Sublimation, Not-all, Surplus-jouissance Notable examples: Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus; Sophocles, Antigone; Claudel, The Hostage (Sygne de Coufontaine); Pakula, Sophie's Choice; Hamlet (Lacan's reading); Goux, Oedipus the Philosopher

Chapter 9: Thus (p.249-260)

The concluding chapter (pp. 249 ff., summarized through the book's final sections) synthesizes the argument: the 'Real in ethics' is not an additional element imported into ethics from outside but the constitutive excess produced by any genuine ethical configuration. The encounter with the Real — the impossible thing that throws the symbolic universe 'out of joint' — is the condition of possibility of ethics; what varies between ethical positions is whether and how one sustains fidelity to this encounter. Zupančič draws together the Lacanian and Badiouian vocabularies (Real/event, desire/fidelity to truth) while insisting that the Lacanian trajectory moves from desire to the drive: early Lacan places the accent on not ceding on one's desire (the Real as the impossible object of desire, sustained in the space between two deaths), while later Lacan re-conceptualizes desire itself as a defence against jouissance, and the drive — with its circuit around the object, its 'enjoyment of the remainder' — becomes the properly ethical register. The Antigone/Sygne contrast crystallizes this shift: Antigone's sublime figure embodies the infinite of pure desire, while Sygne's ticced body embodies the finite-infinite contamination of the drive. The 'do not give up on your desire' is preserved, but it is now understood as what must be traversed in order to arrive at the drive's circuit of satisfaction-without-object.

Key concepts: Real, Desire, Drive, Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Jouissance, The Act Notable examples: Antigone; Sygne de Coufontaine; Badiou, L'Éthique

Main interlocutors

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement
Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals
Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar VIII (Le transfert)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental Concepts)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar XVII (L'envers de la psychanalyse)
Jacques Lacan, Seminar XX (Encore)
Jacques Lacan, Écrits ('Kant with Sade')
Jacques Lacan, Television
Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology
Slavoj Žižek, The Indivisible Remainder
Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom!
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
Alain Badiou, L'Éthique
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles, Antigone
Paul Claudel, The Hostage
Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses
Jean-Joseph Goux, Oedipus the Philosopher
Jacques-Alain Miller, unpublished seminars (1,2,3,4; Extimité)
Benjamin Constant
Joan Copjec, Radical Evil
Mladen Dolar

Position in the corpus

Ethics of the Real occupies a singular position in the Lacanian secondary literature as the most philosophically rigorous and textually grounded comparison of Kant and Lacan available. Its closest neighbors are Žižek's early work — particularly The Sublime Object of Ideology and The Indivisible Remainder — and Joan Copjec's edited volume Radical Evil, which it explicitly engages and often corrects. Where Žižek's engagements with Kant tend to be brisk, strategic, and oriented toward ideological analysis, Zupančič is slow, meticulous, and genuinely philosophical: she reads Kant's own texts in detail (including the transcendental dialectic, the schematism, the analytic of the sublime, and the Religion) and insists that the Lacanian concepts illuminate rather than merely supersede them. The book should be read after a grounding in Lacan's Seminar VII (which it presupposes and extends) and in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, and it pairs naturally with Žižek's For They Know Not What They Do and The Plague of Fantasies. It is also in productive dialogue with Badiou's L'Éthique, a work it cites and argues with throughout.", "The book's contribution to debates about ethics in the Lacanian corpus is to provide a principled philosophical answer to the question Lacan himself left open: what happens after the traversal of fundamental fantasy, and what does the drive add to an ethics of desire? By reading this transition through the contrast between Antigone (sublime desire, heroism of the lack, early Lacan) and Sygne de Coufontaine (drive, jouissance of the remainder, late Lacan), and by grounding both in a reworked Kantian framework, Zupančič makes a contribution that readers interested in clinical ethics, political philosophy, and the theory of the act will find essential. It should be read before tackling Zupančič's later Why Psychoanalysis? and Comic Infinities, which presuppose its arguments about the act and the drive, and alongside Dolar's A Voice and Nothing More for its treatment of the voice as object and of extimacy."