Truth through a Mistake: the Question of Lacan’s Hegelianism

V Truth through a Mistake and the Question of Lacan’s

Hegelianism

The four discourses of knowledge

We can conclude on a point of apparent synthesis and

reconciliation with Hegel. This final development will also serve

to summarize what we have previously developed on Lacan. In order

to show the relationship between knowledge and jouissance in Seminar

XVII, Lacan introduces four mathemes which represent various

discourses of knowledge. The first discourse is the famous

master/slave dialectic.

fig. 1

agenttruth

theotherproduct/loss

S1, the master signifier

S2, knowledge

$, the (barred) subject

a, surplus jouissance

TRUTH THROUGH A MISTAKE 190

Master University Hysteric Analyst

S1$→S2a

S2S1→ a$

$a→S1

S2

aS2→ $S1

The master’s discourse represents the entropic technics of

phallic jouissance. S1, the master ‘addresses’ the slave S2,

(knowledge in the position of the other). The slave produces objet

a which is subjected to the technics of jouissance (and is thus

equivalent to both product and loss). This process then produces

the subject as barred. This is the discourse of the drive, but it

also illustrates the ‘economics’ of jouissance. Hegel’s dialectic is

reproduced such that it is at once a social and psychical

relationship. The master’s discourse reveals that “[i]t is with

knowledge as a means of jouissance that work as a meaning, an

obscure meaning, is produced. This obscure meaning is the meaning

of truth” (S:XVII 51).1 Knowledge here is revealed to be the

‘means’ of jouissance of the slave qua signifier for the other: the

1 Lacan, Jacques. The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Russell Grigg. New York:Norton, 2007.Cited parenthetically as S:XVII followed by the page number

191 AFTERWORD

technical procedures (means of production) or drive/symptom that

produces jouissance. Lacan characterizes it as “headless” knowledge

or knowledge that “no one knows about,” the masters discourse,

then, is the discourse of unconscious enjoyment (S:XVII 90-1).

Lacan states in Seminar XX: “the foundation of knowledge is

that the jouissance of its exercise is the same as that of its

acquisition” (S:XX 97).2This is university discourse. Knowledge,

S2 inquires into its ‘object of inquiry’ (objet petit a in the

position of the other). Objet a, here, is in the position of the

other, it thus finds equivalency with the signifier of the lack in

the other (utternonsense): the radical alterity that serves

simultaneously as the locus of the subject’s lost jouissance and

the excessive other jouissance that underlies the signifying order.

This discourse produces knowledge of the signifier. It is the

‘scientific’ discourse that Descartes produces in his Meditations:

it inquires into the nonsense of the signifying order and

attempts to understand it qua signifier. Naturally, this leads to

the ‘barring’ of the subject: $, is the product/loss since the

2Lacan, Jacques. On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Trans. BruceFink. New York: Norton, 1999. Cited parenthetically as S:XX followed by thepage number.


barred subject is both produced and obscured by being ‘sutured’

to this discourse. The truth of university discourse is thus the

truth of the signifying order itself: S1 or Φ in the position of

truth. Thus the exercise and acquisition of knowledge is the

same: this discourse is recursive since it can only legitimate

the status quo of the signifying order.

The discourse of the hysteric is properly the discourse of

the philosopher: it is the discourse that Descartes undertakes in

order to establish and found his knowledge. $, the hysterical

(doubting, divided, and otherwise uncertain subject) subject

addresses the subject supposed-to-know S1 in order to obtain

knowledge. In this process, knowledge is produced and lost:

produced in the sense that self-knowledge or connaissance is

gained; lost in the sense that knowledge of the subject as barred

or savoir is lost. This discourse re-establishes the ego in the

field of the subject supposed-to-know: “From every academic

statement by any philosophy whatsoever, even by a philosophy that

strictly speaking oculd be pointed to as being the most opposed

to philosophy, namely, if it were philosophy, Lacan’s discourse—

the I-cracy emerges, irreducibly” (S:XVII 63).

193 AFTERWORD

Truth thus emerges as surplus jouissance in the form of the

other’s jouissance: the subject obtains certainty and finds a place

for themselves in the other’s fantasy qua university discourse.

The subject supposed-to-know, God, the signifying order, the

other, etc. provides all the answers.3 The discourse of the

hysteric, for Lacan, is implicitly a privileged discourse: it is

this discourse that produces ‘truth’ or ‘knowledge’ by revealing

that there is a limit (or loss) in the other’s knowledge and that

behind university discourse or the signifying order is S(), the

other’s nonsensical jouissance. However, the subject’s desire is

compromised in favor of enjoyment since the hysteric also ‘gets

off’ on the process of infinite questioning and production of

dissatisfying answers: the subject’s existence is secured qua

jouissance, by situating themselves as the objet a of the other’s

jouissance.4

3 The other way to read this is more so in light of the clinical structure ofhysteria itself: when the subject addresses a master or a subject supposed-to-know, the master cannot help but reveal a lack in their answers: they willeventually be revealed to be inconsistent, contradictory, or insufficient insome way. However, because the hysteric ‘gets off’ on her endless questioning(surplus jouissance is the position of a in the location of ‘truth’) and therevealed impotence of the master through the exposure of their limit ofknowledge this discourse has an end. It suffers from a dialectical limitationbecause the question “why?” is an end in itself.4 Thus the hysterics discourse is the metonymical transformation of the chevuoi? which allows the subject to run away from the question of their being(their desire) by finding it in the other. It is this that produces the


The analysts discourse is the discourse that allows us to

conceive of ‘true’ knowledge in the psychoanalytic field. Objet a

confronts the subject, barring them. This is the traumatic moment

of interruption or the moment of jouissance that occurs in the

analytic process that brings forth the subject as barred (reveals

the unconscious). The product/loss is the master signifier, the

original identification, the unlawful master or Law that produces

the regulative fundamental fantasy of the subject’s jouissance.

This signifier has the status of knowledge that is known without

the subjects awareness, i.e., knowledge as savoir that is

unconscious: the product of unconscious dialectical unfolding of

the signifier. “Analysis came to announce to us that there is

knowledge that is not known, knowledge that is based on the

signifier as such” (S:XX 96). Knowledge, then, is finally

situated in the position of truth: it reveals the savoir the

unconscious signifying process that produces the subject’s

symptom. Conceivably, this is the knowledge that leads the

subject to the knowledge that there is no sexual relationship, no

jouissance of the other or silent demand that subordinates them to

other’s silent demand to which the subject hysterically conforms qua symptom(E 698).

195 AFTERWORD

a symptom, and no possibility of unity with the other. The

subject is divested of their fundamental fantasy and the

identifications that produced it and reformed around new

knowledge of the unconscious. The subject recognizes their

division, allows it, and instead of finding their being in the

other or their ego (in the illusion of a unified subject) they

find their being as ‘not-all’: as the excess of signification

itself.

Knowledge: Freudian and Hegelian

University discourse inscribes a split in the subject

between knowledge of the signifier and the obscured ‘barred’

knowledge of the subject (revealed at the level of enunciation).

This split within knowledge—between the subject of the signifier

and the subject of enunciation—is elaborated in Lacan’s

“Subversion of the Subject” essay. It establishes the

relationship between conscious and unconscious knowledge;

knowledge that is characterized as “Freudian and Hegelian” (E


679) respectively.5 It is here that he calls attention to what

constitutes truth in the field of psychoanalysis and constitutes

the moment of a definite break with Hegel. Lacan takes up

Copernicus as his reference and recalls the popular

characterization of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious as a

‘Copernican step’ but swiftly problematizes the meaning of such a

characterization: “[W]e must home in more precisely on what Freud

himself articulates in his doctrine as constituting a

‘Copernican’ step. For such a step to be constituted, is it

enough that a privilege should be revoked—in this case, the one

that put the earth in the central place?” (E 674). That is to

say, the mistake of placing the earth as the center of the solar

system had to take place in order for the Copernican step to be

considered revolutionary. The progression of knowledge includes a

moment of the ‘impact’ or ‘effect’ of truth by correcting an

error.

Copernicus’ theory, however, proves to be not so Copernican

because of its ‘reabsorption’ into common doxa: “Don’t we realize

5 Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. Bruce Fink. NewYork: W.W. Norton &, 2006. Cited parenthetically as E followed by the pagenumber.

197 AFTERWORD

that, by exalting the center, heliocentrism is no less of a lure

than seeing the earth as the center, and that the existence of

the ecliptic probably provided a more stimulating model of our

relations with truth, before it lost of its interest when it was

reduced to being no more than the earth bowing assent” (E 674).

The simplicity of the model is what asserts the correctness of

the theory, the relocation of the earth in this regard is a

‘convenient truth’ that affirms the dominant discourse of reason,

rationality, and knowledge of the time: “Lacan takes Copernicus

to task for leaving the door open to the continued split between

knowledge and truth, between scientific savior and Revealed Truth.

Knowledge, in Copernicus’s work, becomes something with no real

impact, just a game–like epicycles” (LL 109).6 What occurred was

the erasure of the aporetic moment of truth where one’s worldview

collapses and the subject’s knowledge is remade around the basis

of new truth—Lacan’s criteria for revealing psychoanalytic

knowledge. What was affirmed in its stead was the legitimacy of

science as the discourse of truth. The mathematical calculations

6 Fink, Bruce. Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely. Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota, 2004. Cited parenthetically as LL followed by the page number.Internal citations to Écrits refer to the edition cited above.


simplified, the physics of it ‘made sense,’ and it could be

verified according to the stringent epistemic criteria of truth

at the time—it was therefore, only merely true, which is to say,

valid.

Thus, what was realized was not a proper revolution scientific

discourse such that it would shake its certainty but an

affirmation of the scientific method and the powers of insight of

an observing rational self-consciousness. Truth, for Lacan,

vanished into knowledge by affirming the subject’s cohesion,

unity, and certainty—the fundamental mistake of all discourses of

knowledge (E 673). Thus, when Lacan announces the division of

truth and knowledge by pairing the two categories to Freud and

Hegel, truth falls on the side of the subject, or rather, the

divided subject of the Freudian unconscious: “Lacan situates the

subject not on the basis of some experience or state of consciousness but

on the basis of a logic that is ‘already operative in the

unconscious’ (E 796)” (LL 107). On the other side, knowledge, we

find Hegelian self-consciousness: “For in Hegel’s work it is

desire (Begierde) that is given responsibility for the minimal

link the subject must retain to Antiquity’s knowledge

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[connaissance] if truth is to be immanent in the realization of

knowledge. The ‘cunning of reason’ means that, from the outset

and right to the end, the subject knows what he wants” (E 679).

Hegel continues this tradition because his subject ‘knows what he

wants,’ that is to say; his subject desires unity, reconciliation

of its splitness, and the perfection of absolute knowing.7

The schema of the four discourses and the characterization

of knowledge split between Freud and Hegel traverses several

‘moments’ in Lacan’s theory: his initial theoretical affinity

with Hegel qua the discourse of mastery and slavery followed by

his ‘break’ with Hegel by situating Hegelian philosophy as

university discourse or connaissance. Despite Hegel’s lucid account

of the desiring subject, he is ultimately taken up as the image

of the philosopher who desires not to desire. This is achieved by

reconciling their division through that attainment of a final

state of supreme knowing consciousness. Hegel is placed as the

heir to Descartes, participating in a long line of theorists who

assert the primacy and unity of the subject as the way to achieve

7 Antiquity’s knowledge is characterized as prioritizing the correspondence ofthought with reality, oneness, unity, and the closure of discourse such thatit resembles the perfection of the sphere. See below.


knowledge. For Lacan, Hegel is inscribed into the tradition of

the fundamental fantasy of philosophy: unity of discourse,

totality, unity/reconcilation with the other, negating the

question “what am I?” by answering it with a closed discourse,

and achieving the desire not to desire which ‘sutures’ the

subject. Knowledge, in the psychoanalytic sense, is established

in opposition to this, it is savoir: it ‘unfolds’ or is enacted,

it is not necessarily known and is not contingent upon a state of

consciousness.

[I]n Freud’s work something quite different is at

stake, which is a savior certainly, but one that doesn’t

involve the slightest connaissance, in that it is

inscribed in a discourse of which the subject—who, like

the messenger slave of Antiquity, carries under his

hair the codicil that condemns him to death—knows

neither the meaning nor the text, nor in what language

[langue] it is written, nor even that it was tattooed

on his shaven scalp while he was sleeping. (E 680)

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The subject can be aware of knowledge or not, but particularly in

the case of the unconscious, the subject is not founded by or a

condition for knowledge as has been traditionally asserted in

philosophy. Indeed, the subject does not know what they know—their

knowledge is encoded or ciphered: “Knowledge is inscribed in some

way and in some place in the subject, but the latter does not

know what he is doing. (When asked why he is doing what he is

doing, he concocts a rationalization, much like the neurotic who

contrives a reason for acts motivated at the unconscious level)”

(LL 107). Any discourse of knowledge will always be at the level

of a ‘rationalization,’ it covers over any unforeseen or unstable

‘other force’ that might motivate the subject’s action with

rationality.

Lacan criticizes any knowledge that is founded upon a self-

aware, rational, and autonomous subject because it obscures the

subject’s splitness or divided nature. However, this Cartesian

conception of the subject (which Lacan relegates to a historical

deception) is a necessary dialectical condition for the emergence

of the unconscious—the truth of the subject. Thus, Hegel and

Descartes remain essential points of reference for Lacan: they


establish the preconditions for psychoanalytic knowledge by

asserting a self-aware self-conscious subject and serve as the

historical instance of the ‘original sin’ of autonomous rational

self-consciousness. However, it is ultimately the problematic of

this subject that reveals the dimension of psychoanalytic truth.

The Cartesian cogito, Lacan establishes, is indeed the

precondition for scientific knowledge. Descartes is not wrong in

his task: the desire for certainty is the essential moment that

creates the possibility for real, valid, and objective knowledge.

However, Lacan emphasizes that it is precisely desire that is

concealed by the foundation of this knowledge: the subject is

obscured and they are ‘sutured’ to a knowledge that is not

experienced as true. Truth is effectively ‘given up’ and relegated

to the knowing other who rubber stamps it as valid and believes

in this knowledge in the subject’s stead. This is the subject

‘supposed-to-know.’

Hegel is also not wrong in his task: knowledge that is

objective, universally valid, and corresponds to reality—absolute

knowledge—is not rejected outright. But Lacan adds a notable

caveat: it is only achieved as a lure that obscures the subject and

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their desire by achieving what effectively amounts to unification

with the other. Lacan does not explicitly assert that absolute

knowing is impossible, however, he implicates it (along with

Platonism and Buddhism) in the philosophical myth of a state of

consciousness which allows one to conceive of the subject’s

essential unity with the other (the world, the universe, God, or

some sort of mystical/spiritual transcendental substance) that

liberates the subject from their desire and causes their

illusions to fall away (E 673). Truth cannot emerge from a state

of consciousness. Truth, rather, emerges from error.

For Lacan, this is the Archimedean point of knowledge and

the position from which he engages with his own field. Where

other theorists search for a stable unity of their theory and

discourse, Lacan purposefully allows for his theory to change

with the movement of the unconscious by focusing on the

effectiveness of technique. It is around this issue of

psychoanalytic technique and its ability to make the unconscious

emerge that Lacan bases his theory. However, because of—what

Alain Badiou would call—his purely ‘praxiological’ orientation,

Lacan does not situate his theory as in anyway homogenized,


unified, or stable but rather gives it something that resembles a

dialectical structure: it is constantly evolving, changing in

accordance with the efficaciousness of technique, adapting to the

new resistances and strategies of the analysand, and so forth.

What remains stable is psychoanalysis’ epistemological

orientation towards error and truth. Lacan asserts this position

in his lecture “Truth from the mistake” in Seminar I:

It is clear that error is only definable in terms of

the truth. But the point is not that there would be no

error if there were no truth, as there would be no

white if there were no black. There is more to it than

that—there is no error which does not present and

promulgate itself as truth. In short, error is the

habitual incarnation of the truth. And if we wanted to

be entirely rigorous, we would say that, as long as

the truth isn’t entirely revealed, that is to say in

all probability until the end of time, its nature will

be to propagate itself in the form of error.8

8 Lacan, Jacques. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-1954. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988,pg. 263.

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Thus, we can see this fundamentally Hegelian point translated

into the very clinically oriented theory of Lacan. This notion—

already emphasized by Lacan’s Hegelian teachers and interlocutors

—is brought out of its Hegelian context and into the Freudian

field. Hegel indeed considered error as essential to the

historical process and evolution of consciousness. His conception

of Aufhebung [sublation] preserves the moment of error and by

revealing it, negating it, bringing it to a higher level (truth).

This completion of this process brings consciousness forward

dialectically by granting it an awareness of the total

dialectical movement of the truth. However, for Lacan, Aufhebung

is deprived of the moment of subjective realization and is

relegated to unconscious savoir.9

9Lacan does not deny that Aufhebung exists but relegates it to an ‘imaginary’fiction: “Aufhebung is one of philosophy’s pretty little dreams” (S:XX 86). InSeminar XX and in other places throughout his work, Lacan announces thatsynthesis is merely the imaginary residue of a sexual fantasy of union withthe object of desire. The dialectical process, meanwhile, persists but seemsto do so as a structural subterranean ‘symbolic’ logic that perpetuallyunfolds beyond the subject’s awareness. Lacan speaks of this apropos ClaudeLevi-Strauss in Seminar II and states that the symbolic order has a “dialecticstructure” and that “symbolic agencies function in the society from the start,from the moment it takes on human appearance. But this is nothing more norless than what is presupposed by the unconscious as such as we discover andmanipulate it in analysis” (S:II 30). That is to say, that the implicitprohibitions, taboos, the arithmetic of the elementary structures of kinship,the Oedipal complex, the “insistence of the signifying chain” (E 6) and so


For Lacan, reality, consciousness, history, and so forth are

dialectical but this logic cannot be revealed to the subject

since it penetrates their very being and mutatis mutandis produces

the very cultural myth of their self-consciousness.10 It is only

through the rupture that constitutes the emergence of the ‘real’

that the subject is able to found any knowledge that is true and

reveal these unconscious structures. The reason for this is

because this rupture, manifesting as an ‘event,’ reveals a

‘cause’: “Cause is to be distinguished from that which is

determinate in a chain, in other words law… [T]here is cause only

in something that doesn’t work.”11 Žižek comments: “The cause qua

real intervenes where symbolic determination stumbles, misfires,

that is, where a signifier falls out. For that reason the cause

qua real can never effectuate its causal power in a direct way,

forth are the unconscious symbolic operations of language that plunge thesubject(through the unfolding of these operations) into a dialectic. 10 Aufhebung is maintained but deprived of its moment of the ‘subjectiverealization’ of an ‘objective’ truth. It becomes savoir, or ‘unconscious’knowledge that ‘unfolds’ according to a logical procedure. Thus, Aufhebungloses its function of bringing a reasoning self-consciousness forward to an‘elevated’ state of awareness and is instead merely a logical function (theproduct result) of the opposition of terms in certain dialectical conditions.This is why the symptom can be conceived of as the Aufhehung of the subject:something is repressed (negated), preserved (in the unconscious), and sublated(raised to the level of truth by being expressed or communicated in the formof the symptom).11 Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. Trans. AlanSheridan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998, pg. 22.

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as such, but must always operate intermediately, in the guise of

disturbances within the symbolic order.”12 It is this event—the

emergence of the real—that both reveals and destroys the

otherwise unconscious unfolding of the symbolic.13 However, the

very function of self-consciousness—and the cause of its

emergence—is to cover over (repress, disavow, or foreclose) the

trauma of the real. The reason for this is because the real

disrupts the imaginary/symbolic fabric of the subject’s life

world and compromises the homeostatic enjoyment of the subject.

Psychoanalytic knowledge?

At the beginning and end of Lacan’s career he defined

various criteria for what constituted psychoanalytic knowledge.

In his early seminars we can see his Hegelian influence: Lacan’s

conception of psychoanalysis is that it is never divested of

12 Feldstein, Richard, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus, eds. Reading Seminars I and II:Lacan's Return to Freud. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1996, pg. 398.13 We should not understand this in the Hegelian mode of the ‘real’ we havedeveloped thus far. The Lacanian real emerges simultaneously as the excess ofsignification that is unsignifiable (a ‘real’ that is produced by the différancebetween signifier and signified) and the prelinguistic pre-Oedipal primordialexperience of undifferentiated unsignified/unsignifiable experience. There isa complicated topology between the imaginary, symbolic, and real that can onlyunfortunately be referenced in this work and not explicitly developed. Sufficeto say, the emergence of the real is roughly equivalent to the Kantian sublimein that it eludes (linguistic) comprehension and [the] understanding.


illusions or deceptions. Rather, the position that he takes is

that it is precisely illusions and deceptions that are the means

toward and the precondition for truth. This is certainly the

position that he took towards his own field—Lacan’s seminars I

and II concern themselves with the fertile ground of errors,

theoretical missteps, and misconceptions produced by Freud, Jung,

Melanie Klein, and ego-psychology in its various permutations

(Balint’s two body psychology and object relations theory). He

identifies that the primary deception of his field is its

infatuation with the ego (the psychoanalytic equivalent to self-

consciousness and the cogito). However, his strategy was to meet

these theorists on their own terms and force their theories to

their breaking point to divine their points of rupture and error.

This is why Žižek emphasizes the Lacanian aphorism les non-

dupes errant as the fundamental maxim of psychoanalysis and its

epistemological orientation: “Even if the object of desire is an

illusory lure, there is a Real in this illusion: the object of desire in

its positive place is vain, but not the place it occupies, the place of

the Real, which is why there is more truth in fidelity to one’s

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desire than in resigned insight to the vanity of one’s

striving.”14 The subject must navigate the contingent illusions

of their objects of desire, fantasies, and so forth in order to

arrive at the essential truth of their being: their division,

their unconscious desires, drives, memories and fantasies, and

their jouissance. That is to say, they must err. Jacques Alain-Miller

explains this theoretical trajectory in an interview appearing in

the preface to Television:

The subject is naturally erring—in speech certainly,

like the truth which I qualified as vagabond;

discursive structures alone give him his moorings and

reference points; signs identify and orient him; if he

neglects, forgets, or loses them, he is condemned to

err anew. He must allow himself to be fooled by these

signs to have a chance of getting his bearings amidst

them; he must place and maintain himself in the wake of

14 Žižek, Slavoj. Interrogating the Real: [selected Writings]. Ed. Rex Butler and ScottStephens. London: Continuum, 2006, pg. 339.


a discourse and submit to its logic—in a word, he must

be its dupe.15

Indeed, it is not only the subject but psychoanalysis itself that

must found its knowledge and truth upon its errors. Thus, as

early as Seminar I, Lacan announces the fundamental epistemological

position of psychoanalysis: it must establish itself (its

validity and knowledge) around its technique and praxis that

brings forth the errors that reveal the divided dimension of the

subject. It must do this or risk succumbing to a university

discourse of knowledge based on a priori assumptions, doxa, and

epistemologically valid truth.

In Seminar XX, however, he does assert that psychoanalysis is

divested of a certain myth: the myth of the One. The mythology of

reconciliation, of unification, of the One and so forth find

their roots in the psycho-sexual constitution of the subject. The

subject will never recover their lost primordial ‘object of

desire’ and will never achieve some continuous unity with the

other. What establishes this divide is sexual difference, which

15 Lacan, Jacques, and Joan Copjec. Television. New York: Norton, 1990, pg.xxvii.

211 AFTERWORD

Lacan describes with his graph of sexuation. The logic of the

masculine and feminine positions to the signifier forever

inscribes an asymptotic non-coincidence between the sexes and

their relationship to their object of desire. It is this that

establishes the height of psychoanalytic knowledge: there is no

sexual relationship. It is this that also grants the subject,

within Lacan’s theory, the curious status of ‘not-all’: a subject

that is not amenable or equivalent to the subject of knowledge

founded by philosophy and science.

Psychoanalysis and Hegelian science

These developments strike psychoanalysis in highly

antagonistic position towards philosophy. Psychoanalysis

relegates philosophy to a purely ideological function of ‘knaves’

and ‘fools’ pushing against each other in a closed recursive

discourse.16 It ascribes to them a masturbatory jouissance of either16 Lacan produces two images of the philosopher in Seminar VII: a ‘knave’ (arepresentative of the status quo the subject supposed-to-know in the position ofuniversity discourse) or a ‘fool’ (the barred subject hysterically questioningthe established order).Each is a parasite off of the established order, each‘gets off’ on their respective position of either conformity or opposition tothe status quo. The ‘knave’ situates himself as the ‘realist’ subject supposed-to-know who finds his jouissance in the legitimacy and existence of the status quo.He admits to a quantum of impotence in his answers to subject’s questions butdoes so for the sake of his love of humanity and the ethical ‘goodness’ ofsociety (and that it might be much worse if things were different). The fool


finding their being in the status quo or through their impotent

polemics. Within the field of philosophy it introduces some

highly disruptive problematics: it reveals knowledge as to be

nothing more than connaissance and situates the philosopher as

living the symptomatic fantasy of ‘pursuing’ nonexistent unknown

knowledge simply because the subject is ‘supposed-to-know.’

Further, it situates philosophy within the discursive technics of

jouissance: obscuring the subject by producing knowledge as

jouissance. “In enjoying, the conquest of this knowledge is renewed

every time it is exercised, the power it yields always being

directed toward its jouissance” (S:XX: 96-7).

Almost bearing an unfortunate similarity to Wittgenstein,

Lacan reduces major philosophical questions to mere problematics

of the logical unfolding of the signifier: ontological arguments

are impossible, the quest for knowledge is merely the quest for

lost enjoyment, the signifier of the lack in the other takes the

place of the radical alterity from which the philosopher either

is the hysteric establishing his existence and certainty in the field of theother’s jouissance, questioning up until the moment where the question might benegated qua truth, brushing up against the unconscious but retreating into yetmore questions to obscure the truth. The philosopher establishes theirvalidity qua question: their polemics aim at not trying to undue the status quobut merely reveal its impotence. See Lacan, Jacques. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis,1959-1960. New York: Norton, 1997 pgs, 182-3.

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1. runs or 2. divines a silent injunctive (to which they

unconsciously comply qua drive). Knowledge has the status of a

lure because it excludes the dimension of the unconscious. The

otherwise noble pursuit of unknown knowledge inscribes philosophy

into the problematic of the subject supposed-to-know. Finally,

the subject as ‘not-all’ is strictly incapable of possessing

knowledge in a traditional philosophical sense.

Thus, the overall position of psychoanalysis is that it

denies the possibility of ‘other’ knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is held by

the other and knowledge that exists beyond the subject. Further,

does not conceive of ‘true’ knowledge beyond what is already unconsciously known.

The status of unconscious knowledge puts psychoanalysis in a

position of strict antagonism with philosophy. It is on this note

that we return to our question of Lacan’s Hegelianism. Hegelian

science and psychoanalysis, in this case, can only coincide by

announcing the death of philosophy.

However, on the basis of this similarity we can find

psychoanalysis’ affinity with Hegelian science: psychoanalysis is

out of the realm of philosophy, it is no longer the ‘love of

wisdom’ or the endless pursuit of hidden knowledge; it is rather


the achievement of actual knowledge or truth: knowledge that

subverts the subject (announces its disappearance), that is void

of love and enjoyment of wisdom (or knowledge), and is

fundamentally dissatisfied. This is the precise position that Hegel

ascribes to himself in his preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Lacan admits that when one claims to have moved ‘beyond’ a

theory they find themselves right back in it: “I don’t much like

hearing that we have gone beyond Hegel, the way one hears we have

gone beyond Descartes. We go beyond everything and always end up

in the same place.”17 Thus, the (dis)connection between

psychoanalysis and philosophy (especially Hegel) is

problematized. Within the framework of this problem we can return

to the question of Lacan’s position relative to his Hegelian

teachers.

We can notice some conceptual overlaps: the fundamental

fantasy bares a close resemblance to the Hegelian concept as

producing a ‘structured presentation’ of the subject’s reality.

Lacan also does not depart from the notion of the subject as a

void. The lacking/desiring consciousness that Kojève outlines

17 Lacan, Jacques. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955.Trans. John Forrester. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1991, pg. 71.

215 AFTERWORD

bears a striking resemblance to the Lacanian subject. Lacan’s

account of the ‘decentered’ subject as a result of the logical

disjunction produced by its ‘alienation in language’ follows the

essential problematic of Hyppolite’s Logic and Existence. Indeed,

Hyppolite’s unhappy consciousness also ‘does not know’ and

endlessly searches for something that holds the identity of

transcendental substance. This has an obvious uncanny resemblance

to the Freudian subject looking for their lost primordial object—

identifying its unary trait in an object of desire or the other.

Thus, many of the same problematics are taken up by the three

theorists; Lacan is not ‘beyond’ them.

But while Lacan’s theoretical trajectory inherits and

addresses many of the same problems as his forebears, we may also

note several points of an obvious breakage. Kojève’s

phenomenological account of Hegel is abandoned in favor of a

structural linguistic or semiotic account. Meanwhile, Hyppolite’s

anti-teleological anti-anthropological approach deprived of the

moment of absolute knowing is also abandoned. We have in its

place the ambiguous teleology of the graph of desire that

culminates in castration and the ‘end-of-analysis.’ However, the


end-of-analysis is strictly opposed to absolute knowing. It is

the literal cessation of the analytic process that allows the

analysand to end their transference with their analyst—a moment

that has very little evaluative criteria besides its actual

occurrence. The two states occur as a result of a dialectical

process but fail to coincide in the product result. One is unity

with Spirit and a state of absolute consciousness while the other

is separation and abandonment from the subject’s absolute other:

the analyst as the subject supposed-to-know. Hegelian absolute

knowing cannot help but appear as the ultimate example of

conaissance and the ego myth of mastery, completed discourse, and

the assumption of the position of the subject supposed-to-know.18

This problematizes a Lacanian reading of Hegel since it

would have to exclude the essential characteristics of his

theory. However, again, we cannot help but note several

similarities between the Hegelian project (Hegelian science) and

psychoanalysis. The first is its ‘ideological’ orientation

towards knowledge. Both positions reject knowledge that is

satisfying, self-affirming, and self-certain. This is what Hegel

18 Ibid.

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calls ‘edifying’ knowledge: knowledge that excludes the subject’s

‘spiritual’ dimension (the unity of subject and substance), the

truth of their total dialectical existence, and their desire.

Hegelian edifying knowledge fits the definition of connaissance par

excellence. Secondly, psychoanalysis is the obvious heir to the

dialectical method. The truth and validity of Hegel’s methodology

is asserted and preserved by psychoanalysis. Thirdly, it

similarly considers philosophy as a field of errors and failures

that must be surpassed. However, it does this not through the

strict abandonment of philosophy as useless, but through a

genuine engagement. It thus achieves the Aufhebung of philosophy:

its preservation in the capacity of a negation.

A different Hegelianism

It is this orientation that discloses what is at stake in a

Lacanian reading of Hegel: it does not attempt to find the points

of difference or convergence (à la Ricoeur); it rather looks at

where Hegel erred in his own project, where he succumbed to

certain historical or structural limitations, and where he did


not or could not utilize his own theory. 19 It recognizes the

otherness in Hegel that he himself could not.20 The position of

such a reading is that we do not look at his work at the level of

its meaning but rather we look at it at the level of its

enunciation: what his theory implies in spite of the intended

meaning of the man himself. Thus, one does not surpass Hegel in

the sense of moving beyond him, one rather realizes Hegel by

working within the very limits of his theory. Or, to use Lacan’s

notation, we look at the excess that emerges at the level of his

statements qua S(), the signifier of the lack in the other,

rather than at the level of Φ, the intentional regulated meaning

of the signifiers.19 In regards to historical limitations Lacan states in Seminar II that Hegel wasdeprived of a proper metaphor for the unconscious: “In Freud something istalked about, which is talked about in Hegel, namely energy. That is the majorpreoccupation, the dominant preoccupation which from the speculative point ofview is more important than this purely homonymic confusion we got caught upin yesterday evening when we were talking of the opposition betweenconsciousness in Hegel’s time, and the unconscious in Freud’s time – it’s liketalking about the contradiction between the Parthenon and hydroelectricity,they’ve got nothing to do with each other. Between Freud and Hegel, there’sthe advent of the world of the machine” (S:II 74). This discussion appearsapropos the question of the status of non-knowledge for Hegel. Lacan does notgive a definite answer but we can infer that the status of non-knowledge—thegap in Hegel’s philosophy—is that of the machine; that which thinks withoutknowing.20 But was not necessarily unaware that he could not, his last words speak tothis: “Only one man understood me, but he didn’t understand me” quite possiblythe person he was referring to was himself. Regardless of his intendedreference, it seems that this statement contains within it the entireproblematic we are addressing here.

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This orientation can be deployed upon Lacan himself who

perhaps too eagerly separates himself from Hegel. Žižek in his

preface to second edition of The Sublime Object of Ideology notes that

the Lacanian notion of ‘not-all’ cannot help but appear to be the

ultimate departure of Hegelian totality. Meanwhile, the

dialectical process, in its Hegelian conception, seems to be

determined by a collective spirit, humanity or God. However,

Hyppolite reveals that in Hegel’s notion of Spirit and the

dialectic there is already savoir; subject as substance is

‘headless’ knowledge par excellence: a self-deployed object. Or

rephrased, pure subject—as a void—is correlative to a ‘system’: a

self-moving totality.21

This reading cannot help but appear as a monstrous betrayal

of both theorists and a dupe’s errand. What could possibly come

from a reading that synthesizes the philosophy of grand

narrative, historical process/progress, and universal truth with

the most inward theory of dreams, fantasies, repressed desire,

and primordial drives? If we look at the leaders of this

Lacanian-Hegelian movement (Žižek and Alain Badiou) it seems that

21 See Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 2008, pgs.xviii-xxii.


what is at stake is nothing less than the truth, the reclamation of universality,

and the defense of the legitimacy of ideas. Their anti-postmodernism aims at

the resumption of a historical process and skepticism towards the

status quo as the final order (the end of history). The expression

of their fidelity to Lacan’s les non-dupes errant manifests as

bringing psychoanalysis out of the clinic, bringing people to

traverse their fantasies on a political/historical stage and

ending the search for answers from a subject supposed-to-know

(manifesting in our contemporary order as the search for a

‘structural solution’ in the capacity of a technocrat/bureaucrat

who can adjust the mechanisms of capital to find solutions to

things like war, poverty, and environmental collapse).

Thus, the Lacanian maxim “never compromise your desire”

manifests as an injunctive to disrupt the subject’s orbit qua

drive around objet a. Or rephrased, simply: “desire instead of

enjoyment.” The fantasy of finding one’s place in the other, the

adherence to the other’s silent injunctives, and so forth are all

a subordination to the other’s jouissance.22 The goal of these22 What is this if not the essential position of the subject in capitalism?:looking for a place for themselves in a system they disagree with, trying toenjoy themselves or find happiness despite living in a unjust world, adheringto its silent expectations so that they might not suffer and rather benefitfrom the status quo, and blaming the system for their problems while

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theorists is to transgress the seductive fantasy of ever

obtaining lost jouissance by paradoxically enacting the fantasy to

its limit—that is to say, realizing the fantasy by working in

accordance to one’s desires. It is this that will reveal the lack

in the other. A moment which coincides with the realization of

the truth that it is the subject, not the other, that determines the

structured appearance of lived reality. Subjective affirmation of

desire qua action and the revealed reality of objective truth

coincide in the ‘event.’ It is the passage à la act of extreme action

that reveals the truth and changes the way the subject evaluates

events, their history, and their identity.

Thus, the Lacanian maxim les non-dupes errant and the Hegelian

‘cunning of reason’ coincide: both injuctives require that the

subject have a ‘taste’ for trauma and that they be unafraid of

their own negation or disappearance (upon the slaughter benches

of history). The Hegelian and Lacanian subjects also coincide qua

void: both subjects dialectically survive their own deaths when

they drive their consciousness forward. The enthusiasm for action

in accordance to ideas (the subject’s fantasy or ‘concept’) and

simultaneously indulging in it to extract the most jouissance.


the admission of the inevitability of failure and error as the

means to disclose the truth is thus reasserted in this reading of

Hegel. One is implored to satisfy the ‘will’ of the other as

subject supposed-to-know (which we can take here as the

‘ideology’ of the other) not its demands by identifying with a

Lost Cause. In this regard jouissance must be “refused in order to

be attained on the inverse scale of the Law of desire” (E 700).

It is in this sense that Lacan is perhaps succeeds the Hegelian

project: whether Lacan is conscious of it or not we can identify

within psychoanalysis the will and Spirit of Hegelian science and

the repetition of its grand gesture.

Truth through a Mistake: the Question of Lacan’s Hegelianism

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