Lacan's Ethics of Psychoanalysis: A Critical Stance

Abstract

Abstract: The ethics of psychoanalysis is both an indispensable branch of ethical knowledge and one of the theoretical bearing points of Ethical Literary Criticism. While combing through and questioning the ethical concepts of Aristotle, Bentham, Kant, Sade, and Freud, Lacan keenly realized that Aristotle's “Goodness” with strong hierarchical attributes could not belong to the majority of people and, therefore, they would not be able “to love one's neighbor as oneself” as Enlightenment philosophers called for. The ethics of psychoanalysis requires a subject to obey his own desire, which originates from the desire of the Other represented as a symbolic order. Due to his cognitive limitation, Lacan never supplemented any ethical content from social, historical, and cultural perspectives, but he shook up almost all previous cognitions about the Good. The ethics of psychoanalysis, though seemingly hollow, actually engraves a certain demand for a comprehensive review, amendment, and even subversion of traditional ethics into its own internal logic. The dynamics of this negation appropriately presents a critical posture for the ethics of psychoanalysis, targeting the master's ethics under the power discourse and the hypocritical morality that claims to be for the welfare of all.

Key words: Lacan, ethics of psychoanalysis, critical position, Aristotle, Kant

Zhao Chun. Lacan's Ethics of Psychoanalysis: A Critical Stance[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2021, 43(5): 93-105.

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