This, however, is not the whole story. The decisive question is: is the Kantian moral

[Mr Looks]

This, however, is not the whole story. The decisive question is: is the Kantian moral Law translatable into the Freudian notion of superego or not? If the answer is yes, then "Kant with Sade" effectively means that Sade is the truth of the Kantian ethics. If, however, the Kantian moral Law cannot be identified with superego (since, as Lacan himself puts it in the last pages of The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, moral Law is equivalent to desire itself, while superego precisely feeds on the subject's compromising his/her desire, i.e. the guilt sustained by the superego bears witness to the fact that the subject has somewhere betrayed or compromised his/her desire), [9] then Sade is not the entire truth of Kantian ethics, but a form of its perverted realization. In short, far from being "more radical than Kant," Sade articulates what happens when the subject betrays the true stringency of the Kantian ethics.

This difference is crucial in its political consequences: insofar as the libidinal structure of "totalitarian" regimes is perverse (the totalitarian subject assumes the position of the object-instrument of the Other's jouissance), "Sade as the truth of Kant" would mean that Kantian ethics effectively harbors totalitarian potentials; however, insofar as we conceive of Kantian ethics as precisely prohibiting the subject to assume the position of the object-instrument of Other's jouissance, i.e. to calling on him to assume full responsibility for what he proclaims his Duty, then Kant is the antitotalitarian par excellence...

The dream about Irma's injection that Freud used as the exemplary case to illustrate his procedure of analyzing dreams is a dream about responsibility-(Freud's own responsibility for the failure of his treatment of Irma)-this fact alone indicates that responsibility is a crucial Freudian notion.

But how are we to conceive it? How are we to avoid the usual trap of the mauvaise foi of the Sartrean subject responsible for his existential project, i.e. of the existentialist motif of ontological guilt that pertains to the finite human existence as such, as well as the opposite trap of "putting the blame on the Other" ("since the Unconscious is the discourse of the Other, I am not responsible for its formations, it is the big Other who speaks through me, I am merely its instrument...")?

Lacan himself pointed the way out of this deadlock by referring to Kant's philosophy as the crucial antecedent of the psychoanalytic ethics of the duty "beyond the Good". According to the standard pseudo-Hegelian critique, the Kantian universalist ethic of the categorical imperative fails to take into account the concrete historical situation in which the subject is embedded, and which provides the determinate content of the Good: what eludes Kantian formalism is the historically specified particular Substance of ethical life. However, this reproach can be countered by claiming that the unique strength of Kant's ethics resides in this very formal indeterminacy: moral Law does not tell me what my duty is, it merely tells me that I should accomplish my duty, i.e. it is not possible to derive the concrete norms I have to follow in my specific situation from the moral Law itself-which means that the subject himself has to assume the responsibility of "translating" the abstract injunction of the moral Law into a series of concrete obligations.

In this precise sense, one is tempted to risk a parallel with Kant's Critique of Judgement: the concrete formulation of a determinate ethical obligation has the structure of aesthetic judgement, i.e. of a judgement by which, instead of simply applying a universal category to a particular object or of subsuming this object under an already given universal determination, I as it were invent its universal-necessary-obligatory dimension and thereby elevate this particular-contingent object (act) to the dignity of the ethical Thing.

So there is always something sublime about pronouncing a judgement that defines our duty: in it, I "elevate an object to the dignity of the Thing" (Lacan's definition of sublimation). The full acceptance of this paradox also compels us to reject any reference to "duty" as an excuse: "I know this is heavy and can be painful, but what can I do, this is my duty…" The standard motto of ethical rigor is "There is no excuse for not accomplishing one's duty!"; although Kant's Du kannst, denn du sollst! ("You can, because you must!") seems to offer a new version of this motto, he implicitly complements it with its much more uncanny inversion: "There is no excuse for accomplishing one's duty!" [10] The reference to duty as the excuse to do our duty should be rejected as hypocritical; suffice it to recall the proverbial example of a severe sadistic teacher who subjects his pupils to merciless discipline and torture. Of course, his excuse to himself (and to others) is: "I myself find it hard to exert such pressure on the poor kids, but what can I do-it's my duty!" The more pertinent example is that of a Stalinist politician who loves mankind, but nonetheless performs horrible purges and executions; his heart is breaking while he is doing it, but he cannot help it, it's his Duty towards the Progress of Humanity...

What we encounter here is the properly perverse attitude of adopting the position of the pure instrument of the big Other's Will: it's not my responsibility, it's not me who is effectively doing it, I am merely an instrument of the higher Historical Necessity… The obscene jouissance of this situation is generated by the fact that I conceive of myself as exculpated for what I am doing: isn't it nice to be able to inflict pain on others with the full awareness that I'm not responsible for it, that I merely fulfill the Other's Will…this is what Kantian ethics prohibits. This position of the sadist pervert provides the answer to the question: How can the subject be guilty when he merely realizes an "objective", externally imposed necessity? By subjectively assuming this "objective necessity," i.e. by finding enjoyment in what is imposed on him. So, at its most radical, Kantian ethics is NOT "sadist," but precisely what prohibits assuming the position of a Sadean executioner.

In a final twist, Lacan thus nonetheless undermines the thesis of "Sade as the truth of Kant." It is no accident that the same seminar in which Lacan first deployed the inherent link between Kant and Sade also contains the detailed reading of Antigone in which Lacan delineates the contours of an ethical act that DOES successfully avoid the trap of the Sadean perversion as its hidden truth-in insisting on her unconditional demand for her brother's proper burial, Antigone does NOT obey a command that humiliates her, a command effectively uttered by a sadistic executioner… So the main effort of Lacan's seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis is precisely to break up the vicious cycle of Kant avec Sade. How is this possible? Only if-in contrast with Kant-one asserts that the faculty of desiring is not in itself "pathological." In short, Lacan asserts the necessity of a "critique of pure desire": in contrast to Kant, for whom our capacity to desire is thoroughly "pathological" (since, as he repeatedly stresses, there is no a priori link between an empirical object and the pleasure this object generates in the subject), Lacan claims that there is a "pure faculty of desire," since desire does have a non-pathological, a priori object-cause-this object, of course, is what Lacan calls objet petit a.

Huh?