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8 The Ethics of Psychoanalysis What the superego demands has nothing to do with that which we would be right in making the universal rule of our actions; such is the ABC of psychoanalytic truth. -Lacan 1992, 310 Consequently, the reconciliation of the conflicting impulses would involve the removal of this tyranny-that is, the restoration of the right of sensuousness. -Marcuse 1974, 190 In order to make it possible to think through, and live, this difference, we must reconsider the whole problematic of space and time. -Irigaray 1993, 7 At the outsetofthis book I argued that Kant's critical method was based on an insistence-an insistence on treating limits of experience as synthetic a priori. One might ask: Is that which motivates Kant best represented as an insistence on thinking the synthetic a priori or as a taboo against thinking the analytic a posteriori? The transcendental philosopher who deploys his cards in the first Critique refuses to play the game of "rationalists (Cartesians) versus empiricists (Lockeans)." Herein might seem to lie the hysterical side ofKant, the side that breaks with the moment of Cartesian mastery represented in both the rationalist and empiricist traditions; it is this that seems to justity Ziiek's reading of Kant as adopting the position of the hysteric: "Kant's 'transcendental turn' cuts this link between philosophy and the discourse ofthe Master: transcendental philosophy 'changes the register' to the discourse of the hysteric" (Zizek 1992, 146). As I have tried to show, however, it is not Kant but Hume-breaking with both Cartesian and Lockean pretensions to mastery-who makes the "quarter turn" to the discourse of the hysteric. Kant's encounter with this discourse leads to a further turn to the discourse of the analyst, from whose subject position Kant will analyze Humean symptoms. This is in keeping, moreover, 141 142 IMAGINING OTHERWISE with an observation Zizek makes elsewhere-namely that the manifest position ofthe analyst in relation to the barred subject coincides with the Kantian/Sadean formula of perversion (Zizek 1993, 71). For this reason, in the Kantian philosophy there are not simply three players (rationalists, empiricists, and Kant) but four (rationalists, Lockean empiricists, Hume, and Kant). The hand ofthe rationalists Kant calls analytic a priori; the hand of the empiricists, synthetic a posteriori. Kant, the dealer, gets the synthetic a priori, and since he takes the bid he gets to call trump. In order to play out his hand, he needs a dummy-the analytic a posteriori-whose cards Kant will play. No one gets to take up the cards of the dummy but the dealer-and only qua dealer, not qua dummy. Thus, this fourth hand never appears as such; it is a "vanishing mediator." By a sleight of hand, Kant will sometimes pretend that Hume is playing the cards of the empiricist, and he will sometimes pretend that he and Hume are playing the same hand. There is some question as to whether Kant actually read Hume or not: apparently, he knew reviews of Hume's works. (This "missed encounter" would be interesting to compare with Freud's "missed encounter " with Nietzsche.) At any rate, it is clear that Kant conceived of the Critique as a point-for-point attempt to refute Humean skepticism. Any parallels between Kant and metapsychology would therefore suggest parallels with Hume as well. The trajectory that links Hume, Kant, Freud, and Lacan might be characterized in terms of Lacan's understanding of the temporality of symptoms: The symptom initially appears to us as a trace, which will only ever be a trace, one which will continue not to be understood until the analysis has got quite a long way, and until we have discovered its meaning. In addition, one can say that, just as the Verdriingung is only ever a Nachdriingung, what we see in the return of the repressed is the effaced signal of something which only takes on its value in the future, through its symbolic realisation, its integration into the history of the subject. Literally, it will only ever be a thing which, at the given moment of its occurrence, will have been. (Lacan 1991b, 159) Humean skepticism, I suggest, is a symptom the significance ofwhich has been progressively constituted in the trajectory that links the works of Hume, Kant, Freud and Lacan. Hume is analyzed by Kantwho is analyzed by Freud who is analyzed by Lacan. And, at the end ofthis process, it turns out that Lacan is suffering from...

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