MARAWIS, Korina Mae

Philo 170: Thoughts on the Lecture on Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Cabural, Mark Kevin. 20161. Ethics, Psychoanalysis, and Alenka Zupancic: Philosophizing in
the Modern Time. National University.
There is an interesting paper by Marc De Kesel which he presented at an international
conference at Ghent University in 2005. It is entitled There is no Ethics in the Real. In this
paper, he accused Alenka Zupancic of misreading Lacans The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, a
worked usually summed up as a plea for an ethics of the real. De Kesel believes otherwise:
A careful reading of Lacan, however, permits only one conclusion: an ethics of the real is a contradictio
in terminis. With respect to ethics, the real can only be regarded as a radical evil. As radical evil, the
real is indeed the main reference of Lacanian ethics, but it certainly does not allow for an ethics of the
real. No ethics can be built upon the real, except a perverse and thus unethical one. 2

This contention attacks the very notion of the Real as postulated by Alenka Zupancic. Going
back to Mr. Caburals paper3, he mentioned that the Real is a lack and impossibility. In other
words, it is incomplete and it is not realizable (it cannot infiltrate the symbolic). Ethics has never
recognized the incompleteness of reality therefore it became restrictive and unscientific 4.
Because of this, ethics had attempted to describe reality as objective 5. Ethics, as concluded by
Zupancic and as implied by Mr. Caburals paper, must be then anchored on the state of reality as
incomplete and lacking. In relation to De Kesels contention, I argue and tend to agree with his
position that there cannot be an ethics of the real. There is ethics exactly because there is a
reality that is incomplete and lacking. Thus, it is indeed contradictory for an ethics of the real to
be possible. Isnt it that ethics arose in response to the incompleteness of reality? Is not ethics an
attempt to bridge the gap in reality? Objectifying or rather, I would go so far to say, rationalizing
reality is manifest in the development and adherence to ethical principles. It is through this code
of ethics that we pattern our lives, where we anchor our decisions on what is right for us 6 because
we, the subject, are clearly aware of our imperfections, of our incompleteness and lack 7. To have
an ethics of the real is perverse in the sense that it doesnt makes sense to have one, thus, it is
1 Year based on The 11th Annual Meeting of The Comparative & Continental Philosophy Circle held at
the National Taiwan University in Taipei on March 24-26, 2016.
2 I would not elaborate on this article but it is downloadable from
http//:www.rpe.ugent.be/de_Kesel_paper.doc
3 Mark Kevin Cabural, Ethics, Psychoanalysis, and Alenka Zupancic: Philosophizing in the Modern
Time
4 It cannot account for instances of moral crises where moral principles, as is usually understood in
everyday life, becomes useless and irrelevant.
5 Id est the code of ethics, the code of chivalry, etc.

unethical. I would not go so far as to say that the real is a radical evil but to the subject it is evil
for it denies the subject the capacity to be complete 8, the possibility to become whole. Ethics
might not have been successful in bridging the gap. Yet. But it is an attempt nonetheless.

6 Or what is appropriate to our subjectivity.

7 I, we (as subjects) are the gaps in reality itself according Miss Kelly Agras paper, THE EVENT
DIVIDES INTO TWO OR THE PARALLAX OF CHANGE: Badiou, iek, Bosteels, and Johnston.
8 To quote Miss Agra, the subject always tries to complete itself, but since it is the gap, it wont be
able to.