Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-03T00:30:25.700Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Ethics and tragedy in Lacan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Jean-Michel Rabaté
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

Lacan's discussion of the ethics of psychoanalysis is closely connected to his discussion of tragedy, yet one must not forget that this connection is not an immediate one. Ethics, as well as tragedy, is approached in relation to another central notion, that of desire. Whatever link there is between ethics and tragedy, it springs from this notion. One should also bear in mind that, in Lacanian theory, there is a very direct link between desire and comedy. Lacan introduces, develops, and illustrates his famous graph of desire through his reading of Freud's book on the Witz (Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious), adding some of his own examples and bringing the discussion to its climax with a brief but poignant commentary on Aristophanes and Molière. At the end of the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, the seminar in which the central question of the relationship between action and the desire that inhabits us is explored in its tragic dimension, Lacan reminds us again of this other, comic dimension:

However little time I have thus far devoted to the comic here, you have been able to see that there, too, it is a question of the relationship between action and desire, and of the former’s fundamental failure to catch up with the latter.

(SVII, p. 313)
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×