Ethics of the Real
Kant, Lacan
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Verso Books
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Drawing on a wide range of writers from Sophocles to de Sade, the author shows that Kant and Lacan stake everything on a similar ethical enterprise. For both, ethics is a necessary impossibility - impossible because of the infinite and inhuman demands it makes on us.The idea of Kantian ethics is both simple and revolutionary: it proposes a moral law independent of any notion of a pre-established Good or any 'human inclination' such as love, sympathy or fear. In attempting to interpret such a revolutionary proposition in a more 'humane' light, and to turn Kant into our contemporary-someone who can help us with our own ethical dilemmas-many Kantian scholars have glossed over its apparent paradoxes and impossible claims. This book is concerned with doing exactly the opposite. Kant, thank God, is not our contemporary; he stands against the grain of our times.
Lacan on the face of it appears the very antithesis of Kant-the wild theorist of psychoanalysis compared to the sober Enlightenment thinker. His concept of the Real, however, provides perhaps the most useful backdrop to this new interpretation of Kantian ethics. Constantly juxtaposing her readings of the two philosophers. Alenka Zupan?i? summons up an 'ethics of the Real', and clears the ground for a radical restoration of the disruptive element in ethics.
If Zupancic's book does not become a classic work of reference, the only conclusion will be that our academia is caught in an obscure desire to self-destruct. -- Slavoj Zizek
ISBN: 9781859842188
Dimensions: 191mm x 137mm x 23mm
Weight: 340g
284 pages