Parallax

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Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan, Kojève and

Hyppolite on the concept of the subject

Caroline Williams

To cite this article: Caroline Williams (1997) Philosophy and Psychoanalysis:

Lacan, Kojève and Hyppolite on the concept of the subject, Parallax, 3:1, 41-53, DOI:
10.1080/13534645.1997.9522373

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.1997.9522373

Published online: 30 Sep 2011.

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 Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan, Kojève and
Hyppolite on the concept of the subject

Caroline Williams

...when one is made into two, there is no going back on

it. It can never revert to making one again, not even a
new one. The Aufhebung /Sublationy is one of
those sweet dreams of philosophy.

Jacques Lacan, "A Love Letter'"

Introduction

This essay will explore the relationship between the experience of subjectivity, and
the production, or formation of knowledge. It thus begins with the assumption that
die structure tiiat knowledge may take is inseparable from the conditions of possibility
for subjectivity. Arguably, the form of die subject can reflect or reveal its contents as
knowledge only when two conditions are fulfilled: first, there is an assumed
boundedness and containment of subjective experience, and second, tiiere is an
epistemological contract between subjectivity and the means of representation. The
writings of Jacques Lacan have brought the terms of this philosophical relationship
into new relief. Philosophical discourse cannot reveal me subject, neither can it simply
reflect die contents of consciousness. For Lacan, subjectivity is not only an effect of
a complex formation of imaginary, symbolic and real dimensions, it is also enmeshed
in the structure of language, both of which delimit the possibility of knowledge.

It is die linguistic component of Lacan's conception of the subject that is usually

privileged. But the dieoretical configurations of Lacanian thought are more complex.
Lacan has, arguably, incorporated a first reading of the subject influenced by Hegel,
and a second reading derived through an interest in the fundamental structuring
role of language which owes much to Saussure. T h e first reading (begun in die 1930s
and 1940s, but undergoing continuous repositionings and retractions) creates a
complex pattern of interference with the later structuralist reading of the subject, so
much so that it is often difficult to trace the development of Lacan's concepts to any
single philosophical source.2 Furthermore, given that psychoanalysis is primarily
orientated towards clinical practice, to pose the question of the inter-relation of
philosophy, psychoanalysis and the concept of the subject, may seem misplaced.
Lacan spoke of his own recourse to philosophy to be of propaedeutic value only.3
However, as Jean-Luc Nancy and Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe point out, Lacan's

parallax 4 (febrooryl997} : 41-54

psychoanalytic conception of the subject is also a philosophical project, one which
creates contradictions and inconsistencies in his position. 4 T h e consideration of the
intersection between philosophy and psychoanalysis proposed here, aims to produce
a richer, non-reductive understanding of some aspects of the Lacanian conception
of the subject.

Lacan's use of Hegelian categories is clear throughout his work, but what is more
important is his interpretation of Hegelian phenomenology in relation to his conception
of the subject. Lacan, it seems, finds a 'natural ally' in Hegel. 5 David Archard goes
as far as to say that there is a "grafting of Hegel onto Freud". 6 In The Function of
Language in Psychoanalysis (1953), Lacan writes:

...it is impossible for our technique to fail to realize the structuring moments
of the Hegelian phenomenology: in the first place the master-slave
dialectic... and generally everything which permits us to understand
how the constitution of the object is subordinated to the bringing to
realization of the subject.7

In his essay "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in
Psychoanalytic experience" (1948), Lacan makes an important distinction between
the subject as ego or T , that which may achieve an elusive sense of wholeness and
autonomy of self, and the subject as primordial being, which lies in a place 'beyond'
the ego-as-subject and may be approached through analysis. The experience of the
formation of the T is opposed to "...any philosophy directly issuing from the Cogito."8
There is no thinking subject prior to the recognition of the T ; this ego requires an
identification with an image before it can function as subject, that is, before it can
become a social animal. The event of the mirror-stage, through which the subject
perceives an image which is other than the largely mute, discordant being that it is,
offers the subject itsfirst apprehension of bodily unity. This gestalt, which fixes the image,
engenders the subject of desire; it charges the subject with an impulse, a libidinal
energy which translates itself into a narcissistic fantasy of wholeness, and an
aggressivity towards the other who may challenge theform of this imago. The mirror
thus allows the fragmented being to become an T , to be harnessed to an ontologica!
structure according to which the ego or Ideal-I may think, perceive and recognise
itself as a permanent, coherent structure. This imaginary ego becomes the support for
a division, Spaltung, of the subject, which remains forever divided between a seemingly
coherent self and a mode of being which is always other to the subject.

A purely development account of this event, whether biological or anthropogenetic,

cannot appreciate the "epistemological void" 9 which characterises the structured
reality of the mirror-stage, or why the subject remains captivated by its alienating
tendencies. T h e mirror-stage situates die instance of die ego in a line oi fiction, of
alienation; a function of méconnaissance, misrecognition, is tiius seen to characterize
die ego in all its structures. Furthermore, such an account cannot understand die
Hegelianism underlying Lacan's mirror-stage, an event which is experienced as "...a
temporal dialectic that decisively projects the formation of die individual into
history".10 This mode of temporality cannot be reduced to a linear development of
die individual subject (or the historical process) because this subject is distributed
widiin a two-dimensional structure of reality, which at diis point in our analysis we
have idendfied as a duality: the (misrecognised) being of the self, and die active ego
who thinks and deliberates. It is die imaginary ego which attempts to solder, to
mend, the discordance created widiin the subject, who remains ignorant of its
alienadon. As Lacan writes:

It is this moment diat decisively tips die whole of human knowledge

into mediadzation dirough die desire of die odier, constitutes its objects
in an abstract equivalence by die co-operadon of others and turns die
I into diat apparatus for which every instinctual thrust constitutes a
danger, even diough it should correspond to a natural maturation..."

This description of die structuring moment of die mirror-stage certainly seems redolent
of Hegel's description of die master-slave dialectic. In some respects, Hegel has a
similar aim to Lacan: to re-situate die primacy of die knowing subject and to
understand die object in relation to die movement of subjectivity in time. Hegel's
depiction of the master-slave dialectic reads, in parts, like a commentary on Lacan's
mirror-stage:

Self-consciousness is faced by anodier self-consciousness; it has come

out of itself. This has a two-fold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it
finds itself as an other being; secondly, in doing so it has superseded die
other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its
own selfi2

What is not to be found in die mirror for eidier Hegel or Lacan, is the subject's self-
recognition; it is an imaginary wholeness diat is experienced here. Both Hegel and
Lacan would agree that die mirror cannot reflect the subject's desire. T h e life and
deatii struggle leaves die desire for recognition in die subject unsatisfied and negated.
However, as Wilfried Ver Eecke points out, for Hegel, die master-slave dialectic also
has a positive function; tiiis Hegelian dialectic charts die development and education
of consciousness; for Lacan, in contrast, "...die dialectic of the mirror-stage does not
assign consciousness a crucial role in bringing about die dialectic move..." 13 Rather,
Lacan limits the scope and meaning of desire to die dominant themes of law, language
and dieir relation to méconnaissance. Here, die emphasis is taken away from the dialectic
of desire as a (possible) moment of intersubjective recognition, and towards the
symbolic structure of language (the field of die Other), a dialectic of die "incessant
sliding of the signifier under die signified",14 which appears to fix itself, through the
system of differences and inter-relations between signs, as a Symbolic Order. It is via
the gaps in signification that desire (as unconscious) is seen to emerge, and not dirough
the speech of the speaking subject who remains ensnared by the synchronic law of
language. It is thus important to question whether desire can be synthesised with die
subject in a dialectical movement.

In his book Lacan in Contexts, David Macey notes that one should refer not to Hegel,
but to the Hegel-Kojève matrix in Lacan. "To return to Kojève after reading Lacan,"
Macey writes, "is to experience the shock of recognition, a truly uncanny sensation
of deja vu.",h Lacan attended Kojève's lectures on Hegel between 1933 and 1939,
and it is dierefore likely that Lacan's concept of desire for recognition repeats Kojèvean
formulas.16 This may also account for die Heideggerian conceptual motifs in Lacan's
writings: these too may be filtered dirough Kojève's reading.17 Nevertheless, a direct
assimilation of Lacan to Kojève may risk producing, I will argue below, a philosophical
reduction of Lacan's theoretical position and his conceptions of die subject and
knowledge.

The lectures, translations and interpretations of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by

.Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in die 1930s and 1940s have had a profound
effect upon the development of contemporary French philosophy. It may be
considered a simplification to associate the former writer with a humanist reading of
Hegel, and die latter with a structuralist reading, but it is crucial to emphasise the
philosophical divergences of their respective interpretations and, in consequence,
the markedly different conceptions of subjectivity which emerge. 18 In their
interpretations of Hegel, both Kojève and Hyppolite question the totalising
implications of the dialectic, and the tiieological formulation of die Absolute, and
bodi expose the structuring moments of the dialectic which may in turn generate
the structure of die subject. Additionally, both writers share a certain recourse to
Heidegger's dioughts on time, death and the subject's finitude. However, I will argue
below in sections II and III for the distinctiveness of their philosophical positions. For
Kojève, time will be understood as tied to die creative action of the subject, who
transforms history, whereas in Hyppolite's philosophy, time will constitute human
reality and be understood as a structure of all living beings. These distinctions are
important; they unravel into markedly different readings of Hegel and, necessarily,
different constructions of subjectivity. They may further act to indicate Lacan's
distance from the Kojèvian problématique of die subject.

II

Kojève's central thesis is that the movement of self-consciousness and subjectivity in

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is first and foremost an anthropology. History and
knowledge, historical becoming and the subject's gradual acquiring of a truth for self
and world, are giving temporal movement only by the human act of making history.
Like the early Marx in the Paris Manuscripts, Kojève places being and becoming,
negation and negativity firmly within the historical field of human action where it
becomes subsumed by the act of labour. There can be no acting self prior to social
interaction with others. In the natural state, being can only be a being-for-itself
Natural consciousness may achieve an isolated, singular self-certainty; it may generate
a certain knowledge of objects and thus produce a simple unmediated identity with
itself. However, consciousness of the other is reduced to a function of its own self-
consciousness: the other becomes a mere thing. In contrast, for Kojève, the subject
who desires recognition of the other and external reality has transcended the "animal-
being" described above; its desire for transformation assimilates, negates and absorbs
animal or given-being' 9 and hence creates and reveals the I. Thus, "Man is negating
Action, which transforms given Being, and, by transforming it, transforms itself".20
The subject is the ground, the movement of history; it is not the passive, contemplative
behaviour of natural being which transforms reality for Kojève, but the active,
humanising desire (as negativity) of a subject seeking self-recognition through the
recognition of the other. Kojève places desire at the centre of what it means to exist
and it is the centrality of this concept to the humanist problématique which Lacan
appears to take from Kojève - although not without it undergoing a significant
theoretical transformation.

Kojève's philosophical discourse utilises Hegel's discussion of the master-slave

dialectic. Here, it risks for some critics, turning the duality which Hegel emphasises
as both an interior relation between the self and itself (perhaps most clearly expressed
in the 'unhappy consciousness'), and a social relation between self and other, into a
dramatic account of two distinct, clashing subjectivities.21 For Kojève, it is the master
who represents consciousness existing for itself, that is, a given-being. The slave's
reality, on the other hand, is constituted both by a recognition of the dignity and
superiority of the master, which imparts on the slave a sense of contingency, loss (in
short, the spectre of death), and by the object of its labour, which remains a negative
act. However, whilst the master is fixed in his pure negativity, viewing desire of the
object as an end in itself, the slave is ready for transcendence and transformation of
the negative. The slave's is a non-essential activity. Here, desire or negativity, as
work, modifies the natural world and in this process its own relation to the slave. As
Michael Roth observes, whilst "Hegelian time is the temporality of desire, the master's
time is the rhythm of satisfaction". 22

Work is time for Kojève; it exists within time and requires time; by working, the slave
creates human temporality as human history, halting the evolution of nature and
exceeding slavish consciousness. 23 Furthermore, the creative dimension of desire as
action is expressed in speech. Knowledge is at once the expression of the experience
of the acting subject in Discourse, and a transformation and revelation of nature as
human knowledge of the Real. Following Kojève's distinction between the natural
and the human world, knowledge is always made manifest in human action. Ideas
appear as the products o/"objects and projects mediated by work and action. 24 Truth as
Totality (read absolute knowledge) can be gleaned by the subject only witfi the
culmination of the dialectic, with the synthesis of action and history, and the
recognition of man as free individual. 20 Kojève's anthropological reading of Hegel
thus appears to have a dual significance: firsdy, it allows desire to be humanised and
tied to the agency of me subject so diat it may, in turn, order die dialectical movement
of history; secondly, it generates die conditions of possibility for truth/absolute
knowledge in die enunciating subject.

This interpretation of subjectivity and desire is grounded upon an inherent dualism

between the natural and die human which Kojève insists he finds in tacit form in
The Phenomenology of Spirit.26 The social ontology described above distinguishes between
a natural and an historical world, a distinction which is at once incompatible widi
Lacan's own symbolic construction of die human world which claims, following Lévi-
Strauss, to transcend any nature/culture opposition. T h e Spalhmg of die subject
described by Lacan, does not generate two distinct ontologies; if it generates ^ o n t o l o g y
of the subject and die structure of human reality, diese discursive delimitations are
not dien opposed to a natural world; the former place remains unformalised,
undifferentiated and unrealized, in short, £re-ontological real?1 Neidier would Lacan's
category of language allow for die collapse of die distinction of die structure of
language into the subject's speech. Language is a formal structure which is anterior
to die experience of die subject; it introduces certain structural limits upon die subject's
speech (ie. die subject-as-signifier in die symbolic order). T h e subject is not, dierefore,
die enunciator of discourse as Kojève proposes, but the enunciated. Finally, whilst
for Lacan, "desire takes shape in die margin in which demand becomes separated
from need", 28 this formulation cannot be simply subsumed into the Kojèvean
conception of humanised desire in action. Certainly, desire is not, following Kojève,
a biological instinct but it is for, Lacan, bound to die Spaltung of die subject. Thus,
desire always points to the past even as it instils in die subject die (impossible) imaginary
spectacle of a fulfilled future, it always reminds die subject of tiiat which it lacks.
There is no vision of wholeness and self-realization in Lacan's conception of die
subject. It is die structure of the subject's experience which Lacan wishes to delineate.
This is a markedly different project to the one developed by Kojève. It is a
philosophical position which, I would argue, has more in common with Jean
Hyppolite's interpretation of Hegel. Jean Hyppolite attended many of Lacan's
Séminaires and his views are often noted in die discussions which end die sessions.29
The remaining discussion will thus seek to establish parallels between Hyppolite
and Lacan at the level of dieir conceptions of subjectivity.

Ill

Hyppolite's reading of Hegel's conception of the subject emphasises the tragic

component of human existence and whilst he, like Kojève, also focuses upon the
historical dimension of the subject (ie. the subject's temporality), this philosophical
discourse of history has no humanist component, and no interpretation of die subject
as historical actor. Hyppolite does read the condition of human experience to be the
struggle for recognition, and views this struggle as fixed on desire: desire for the
other and recognition by the other.30 However, there can be no dialectical recognition
of these experiences by the subject. As Hyppolite writes, "...the accomplishment of
the absolute is forever deferred." 31

Whilst, according to Hyppolite, Hegel privileges a retrospective point of view in the

Phenomenology of Spirit, which describes the different figures of knowledge and the
journey of consciousness from sensuous certainty through perception towards
understanding, Hyppolite asks whether there is not a logic of consciousness, structural
conditions of experience, which are constant for every historical situation. 32 This
structure would not be "...the appearance of a unique subject but an original ensemble,
a totality of a quite different type from Hegel's spiritual principle".33 If, then, Hyppolite
maintains a focus on the existential plight of the subject in the social world, this
ontology is not to be viewed anthropologically, but rather in terms of conditions
which structure the possibility of self-consciousness and its experience of truth.
Hyppolite writes: "It is not a question of man considered as a biological species, but
of the emergence in the very heart of life of a being who becomes conscious of this
life as a condition of his existence." 34

The being of life is "the disquiet of the self",35 the anxiety, suffering and alienation of
a subject which will never coincide with itself "for it is always other in order to be
itself".36 For Michael Roth, this is indicative of the centrality of the Unhappy
Consciousness to Hyppolite's conception of the subject. This experience is one of
inadequacy, infinite non-correspondence with the truth of the object; the subject
always fails to reach unity with itself. However, because consciousness always exceeds
itself in its reflection it is doomed to oscillate forever on the brink of self-discovery:
"This feeling of disparity within the self, of the impossibility of the self coinciding
with itself in reflection [the unhappy consciousness], is indeed the basis of
subjectivity."3'

Negativity is at the centre of being for Hyppolite; it is immanent in all content and is
therefore the condition of possibility of any subject whatsoever.38 "This is why,"
Hyppolite notes, "the individual is the 'absolute impulse', rather than merely the
tendency of being to remain in a given state, and it is this in virtue of an internal
c o n t r a d i c t i o n . " 3 9 In his essay " T h e H u m a n Situation in the H e g e l i a n
Phenomenology", Hyppolite considers the mode through which this impulse of life,
that is, subjectivity, may be authenticated in human history. The dislocating force of
negativity is the desire on the part of the subject for unity and recognition by the
other. In the activity of work/labour, the subject negates itself and shapes and
refashions the object; labour humanises nature and conveys a sense of coherence
and universality upon human existence.10 In other words, it grounds reason as a human
event. Despite the implicit references to Marx here and the evident parallels with
Kojèvian account above, it is important not to subsume Hyppolite's conception of
the subject within this philosophical perspective. This conception of desire is not
secured by a dualist ontology, rather it is an original structure of experience. The
humanising of desire is closer to the structure of recognition as an imaginary
movement. Indeed, elsewhere Hyppolite describes the desire for recognition which
structures the master-slave dialectic as "Self-consciousness as a mirror pUry" .4 ' Furthermore,
Hyppolite posits time as the concept which supersedes all other categories; it is the
condition of all human reality and it places a limit upon the subject's creative
possibilities.42 This really makes the subject's encounter with the object of labour a
missec encounter, conta Marx and Kojève, labouring on nature offers no resolution for
the unhappy consciousness, just as desire in its infinitude, can only find an imaginary
satisfaction in the object. For Kojève, time, desire and knowledge were all humanised;
they could only gain meaning within a theory of human action. Hyppolite's
philosophical discourse is markedly different: it is time which gives birth to the subject;
temporality which is the basis of all existence. Time is the condition which structures
life. It is "...the middle term which makes it possible to conceptualize life and the
living relation and the means whereby the problem of knowledge and the problem of life are
identifiable"." Time, moreover, cannot be annulled by the subject by whatever means;
its destiny is not be be "vindicated by Spirit" as Hegel writes in the final chapter of
the Phenomenology of Spirit," and Kojève interprets as the end of History. Rather, it is
the disquiet of the self (or the 'unhappy consciousness') which Hyppolite continues
to emphasise: a subjective state of temporal disjuncture witii the world. This precludes
an identity between being and knowledge and ensures that die fissure between forms
of knowledge and their linguistic expression/enunciation by the subject will be
ceaselessly re-encountered and re-uhought. 45

IV

Lacan's psychoanalytic theorisation of die subject attempts a difficult feat which

cannot easily be achieved. Lacan attempts a philosophical marriage between an
account of subjectivity, which must remain non-subjective in formulation, witii a
structuralist account of language and die social world. Lacan's Hegelianism, dierefore,
must be tempered by his structuralism. Such a dieoretical syndiesis, if one may call
it thus, is itself complex and not widiout contradiction. It does point to a more
critical reading of Hegel than die one often noted by Lacan's commentators and
critics. In "The subversion of die subject and die dialectic of desire" (1960), Lacan
develops a number of critical points regarding Hegel's phenomenology. Firsdy, it is
viewed as a "permanent revisionism", where trudi is continuously reabsorbing itself.46
In Lacanian terminology, dialectic syndiesis results only witii die conjunction of die
real and the symbolic. According to the Lacanian theory of the real, such a
convergence is theoretically and practically impossible. Trudi will be searched for
forever in the images of others, but never attained. Lacan notes that the real, for
Hegel, is "...a subject fulfilled with his identity to himself", a subject "...always already
perfect".47 Lacan's subject, in contrast, is always divided and this disjuncture is perpetual;
the conception that consciousness has of itself and its real content are radically
different, the concept of the real in Lacan's work is equated with the pre-discursive,
the unrepresentable; it is the residue of the subject's articulations, confined, repressed
in the unconscious. The 'contents' of the real furnish an element of experience which
can never be fully disclosed to the subject. Its channel is the vehicle of language
itself. Consciousness then, is unable to account for discontinuity through recourse to
itself, because this discontinuity is part of the ontological structure of the subject.

Taking into account these views, I would argue that Lacan's conception of the subject
is much closer to Hyppolite's reading of Hegel than the Kojèvean position often
linked with his conceptualisations. For Hyppolite, and Lacan too, "... the self never
coincides with itself, for it is always other in order to be itself".48 Moreover, the
project of attaining identity and reconciliation between the subject and the objects
of its desire are always overshadowed and doomed to collapse. Lacan's understanding
of the petit objet a is indicative of such a position. The object (a) of desire will always
deceive the subject; its meaning will always dissipate in the light of the subject's
experience of it. Desire may be viewed as having a two-fold significance. Firstly, it is
a relation of being to lack; the experience of desire is a reminder of the subject's lost
relation to itself which, arguable, cannot be reclaimed. Secondly, desire is always for
the desire of the Other, it is linked therefore, to language and the law of the symbolic
order. It is articulated within a linguistic framework which has always in effect, crossed
out the subject's significance before signification occurs. Quite clearly then, desire, in
so far as it is constructed through language, fails to express the being of the subject.
This task is reserved for the unconscious.49

This theoretical parallel, with Hyppolite's anti-humanism rather than Kojève's

impending anthropomorphism, can be extended further with reference to Lacan's
interpretations of history, of the possible end of analysis, and his views on the
realization of the truth of the subject. Hyppolite, Lacan and Kojève all subscribe to
a Heideggerian account of temporality.50 Human temporality, for Heidegger, cannot
be represented by a uni-linear time sequence. Dasein, the order of Being, is caught
up in past, present and future temporal modes; to be human is to be divided between
these three dimensions. Thus Malcolm Bowie writes, "Being is borne forwards on a
composite tide that pulls it towards the utmost fullness of being and, concurrently,
towards death, its ultimate loss."31 Time is seen to structure human existence; the
discord, that which Lacan describes as a primary characteristic of the subject, is
mediated by these different temporal modes. The subject becomes a subject-in-time
as soon as it takes up a place within language and tries to signify absence. The oft-
quoted example of this temporal/linguistic moment is found in Freud's account of
the Fort/Da scenario, where the small child tries to represent absence and its desire
for the mother using a cotten-reel. By throwing the object out of sight {fort) and then
reclaiming it (da), the child comes to terms with the temporal absence of the mother
through the presence of language. According to Lacan, these two phonemes together
encapsulate the mechanism of alienation. T h e child learns to separate die thing
from its name, in effect producing a division between the real and the symbolic and
creating the basis for subjective meaning. Furthermore, this setting up of signifiers in
a binary relationship, creates the rupture and consequentialfading of being which is
effectively excluded from the temporality of the symbolic order.52 Casey and Woody
attach this experience more closely to temporality when they note:

...whether through memory or through anticipation of a wished-for

object... whether I project toward a past or a future horizon,
temporality exhibits itself in its radically differentiating role: as allowing
me to differ form my present self, to be other man myself, to be self-
alien in time.53

Lacan's psychoanalytic discourse can, therefore, be seen to establish three temporal

registers (symbolic, imaginary and real) which present the structure of subjectivity in
markedly different ways and can never by actualised as a singular, self-bounded
experience, or contained within a dialectical 'model'. Whilst the Kojèvean account
of time (itself a reading of Heidegger with Hegel) recognises the temporality of desire
and its relation to language and speech (which certainly appear emblematic of some
of Lacan's own terminology), both discourse and time are linked to authentic human
action and realized with the end of history. However, in Lacan's psychoanalytic
account, the subject's history exists in bits and pieces, strewn across these temporal
registers, and often alienated and hidden in the form of (repressed) memory, fantasy,
and psychoses. The role of analysis is not to demystify or merely reveal the subject to
itself. Such an act is radically impossible given the structure of social existence and
the ontological form that subjectivity may take. Time cannot be annulled by the
subject. Psychoanalysis then, can only forge links between the different temporal
registers. The closest die subject may come to 'authenticity', according to Heidegger
and Lacan, occurs with being-towards-deatii where authenticity is itself foreclosed.
It is here that the finitude and historically contingent form of the subjectivity is most
dramatically exposed. Thus Lacan writes: "...when we wish to attain in the subject
what was before the serial articulation of the word, and what is primordial in die
birth of symbols, we find it in death, from which his experience takes on all the
meaning it has." 54

The philosophical problems of the relation of time and desire to a psychoanalytic

conception of subjectivity have important consequences for the interpretation of
Lacan offered in this essay. There is no end of analysis, if by which we mean die
realization of the subject, because the end-point can only be reached with the
obliteration of die human subject. If deadi is experienced as a 'tending towards' as
implied in botii Heidegger's and Lacan's readings, as well as Freud's clear presentation
of the pleasure-principle, then the termination of analysis becomes impossible. As one
commentary on this predicament puts it, "There is no redemption or reconciliation
to be had through history because the subject of desire can never be absorbed in
history, but only subverted or repressed tiiere"." In spite of this claim, it is often
argued nonetheless that Lacan seeks the truth of the subject. It is the notion of full as
opposed to empty speech which is the cause of such views. Certainly, speech imparts
presence within language, but this does not align die subject's speech with truth.
The unconscious after all, as Lacan points out, cannot be made continuous with
language. Discourse has no criteria of truthfulness unless it is diat of conjoining the
subject with its desires and introducing an awareness of this limit to the subject's
speech. A distinction must therefore be made between a correspondence theory of
truth which appeals to a substantial definition of reality, and a view of trudi which is
always panial and contingent, what Lacan has called a "limping truth". 56 What
must be emphasised here is that there can be no end-state which may restore plenitude
to the subject, or mend its division. Psychoanalysis, whilst orientated towards the
future, can have no hold upon the direction mat its path may take. Psychoanalysis
has in other words, no metaphysical warrant to totalise experience, or limit and
contain knowledge or subjectivity.

Notes

'Jacques Lacan, "A Love Letter", Feminine Sexuality:
Jacques Lacan and the ècolefreudienne, eds. J. Mitchell
a n d j . Rose (London: W. Vv' Norton and Company,
1975): 156.
• David Macey notes that Lacan's "...relationship
with, and use of, philosophy cannot be satisfactorily
interpreted in any unilateral fashion". See his Lacan
in Contexts (London: Verso Books, 1988): 103.
5
Noted by W. J. Richardson in "Psychoanalysis
and the Being-question", Interpreting Lacan, eds. J.
H. Smith and W. K. Kerrigan (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1983): 156.
* Jean-Luc Nancy and Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe
emphasise an ambiguity in the diverse conceptual
resources i m p o r t e d into L a c a n ' s discourse
(Saussurean, F r e u d i a n , C a r t e s i a n , Hegelian,
Heideggeriani which enter the constitution of the
subject-as-signifier in conflicting and irreconcilable
ways. For their discussion see, The Title of the Letter:
A reading of Lacan, trans. F. Raffoul and D. Pettigrew
(New York: S U N Y Press, 1992).
' E. S. Casey a n d j . M. Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger,
Lacan: T h e Dialectic of Desire", op. eft., Smith
and Kerrigan, Interpreting Lacan, 77.
6
D. Archard, Consciousness and the Unconscious
(London: Hutchinson, 1984): 80.
' Lacan, " T h e function and field of speech and
language in psychoanalysis", Écrits:A Selection, trans.
.Man Sheridan (London: Roudedge and Kegan
Paul, 1977): 80, emphasis added.
8 University Press, 1987) and M. S.Rodi. Knowing and
Jacques Lacan, ' T h e Mirror Stage", ibid, Écrits, 1.
9 History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth Century
T h e term is Malcolm Bowie"s, see his Lacan
(London: Fontana Press, 1991): 2 3 .
'" Op. cit., Lacan, " T h e mirror stage", 4.
" Ibid., Lacan, " T h e mirror stage", 5.
12
G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (New
York: Oxford U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1977): 1 1 1 ,
emphasis added.
" See W. Ver Eecke, "Hegel as Lacan's Source of
necessity in Psychoanalytic Theory", op. cit., Smith
and Kerrigan, 125.
" Lacan, "The Agency of the letter in the unconscious
or reason since Freud", o p cit., Écrits, 154.
15
Op. cit-, Macey, Lacan in Contexts, 98. It must be
pointed out that Macey does not then proceed to
reduce Lacan's conceptual apparatus to that of
Kojève. His admirable study pursues no such
c o m p a r t m e n t a l i s i n g of influences, r a t h e r it
generates an account of Lacan as a kind of bricoleur.
16
See A Wilden's interpretative essay, "Lacan and
the Discourse of the Other", Lacan, Speech and
Language in Psychoanalysis (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1968): 192-3.
" Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen's reading of Lacan's
philosophical debts in Lacan: The Absolute Master,
trans. D. Brick (California: Stanford University
Press, 1991 ), oudines the theoretical itinerary which
takes Lacan from Hegel and Heidegger to Kojève.
18
Two recent studies which have considered
Kojève's a n d Hyppolite's positions a n d their
relation to contemporary French thought areJudith
Buder, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in
TweniieuS Century France (New York: Columbia
France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).

" "Given-being" is the term Kojève uses to describe
the subject in the simple world of immediate
satisfaction where it is submerged in animal life.
M
Alexandre Kojève, Introduction lo the Reading of Hegel " Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 156.
(Ithaca: Basic Books 1969): 38.
-' This is the view of Shadia Drury in Alexandre
Kojhe: The Roots of Postmodern Politics (London:
MacMUlan Press, 1994).
" O p . cit., Roth, Knowing and History, 110.
:J
Op. cit., Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 53. Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 165-6.
-' Ibid., Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,
229-230.
?i
It must be noted that Kojève significandy revised
this interpretation of dialectical synthesis. In an
a d d e d c o m m e n t to the second edition of his
lectures, Kojève offers a more pessimistic reflection
on the nature of the end of History. He argues for
the perpetual opposition of subject and object, "To
remain human, Man must remain a 'Subject opposed
to the Object,' even if 'Action negating the given
a n d E r r o r d i s a p p e a r s . " See ibid., K o j è v e , to Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind", The
Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, n. 5, 158-162.
x
Ibid., Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,
212 and n. 15. Kojève states mat it is Kant and
Heidegger who explore the dualist ontology in the
most developed form. Some of the problems generated
by Kojève's ontological dualism are discussed in V
Descombes, Modern French Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980): chapter 2.
- ! See Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts " For Lacan, desire is alienated in the signifier. It
of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (London:
Perigline Books, 1986): 28-30. When Lacan does
draw a parallel wim non-human organisms, he
refers to me ethological findings of Henri Wallon
w h i c h emphasise the formative a n d fixating
tendencies of me image.
™ Jacques Lacan, "Subversion of the subject and
m e dialectic of desire", 3 1 1 .
w
See particularly me discussions following the
seminars III, IV, V, VI a n d VII, The Seminar of
Jacques Lacan Book II, eds. Jacques-Alain Miller and
S. Tomasselli (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988).
50
J e a n Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure in Hegel's
Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1974): 170, 160.
" Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 145 and Jean
Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel ( H a r p e r
Torchbooks, 1973): 159.
M
Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 21 and
Studies on Marx and Hegel, 154.
55
Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, ix.
* Op. cit., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 149.
* Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 150.
" Ibid., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 191.
" O p . cit., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 14.
39
Ibid., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 160.
10
" See Hyppolite's essay "Hegel's Phenomenology
and Psychoanalysis", trans. A. Richer, New Studies
in Hegel's Philosophy, ed. W. E. Steinkraus (USA Holt,
Reinhart and Winston, Inc., 1976).
13
Op. cit., Buder, Subjects of Desire, 82.
13
Op. cit., Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, 9,
my emphasis.
" O p . cit., Hegel, Phenomenology, S. 8 0 1 , 4 8 7 .
" H y p p o l i t e ' s later essay, " T h e S t r u c t u r e of
Philosophical Language According to me 'Preface'
Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the
Science of Man, eds. R. Macksey and E. Donato
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1972): 157-
185, also draws parallels between the formal structure
of language and the project of psychoanalysis.
* O p . cit., Lacan, Écrits, 2 % .
" Ibid., Lacan, Écrits, 296.
* O p . cit., Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure, 250.
can be retraced only by following the network of
displacements activated by particular signifiers with
symbolic connection to the unconscious. See, op.
cit., " T h e Agency of the letter", 146-178.
50
It could be argued that Kojève's anthropological
reading undermines, in turn, his development of
the structure of temporality.
'Jl Malcolm Bowie, Psychoanalysis and the Future of
Theory (Oxford; Blackwell, 1993): 24.
K
O p . cit., Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts, 62; on
the fading of the subject see Part IV of this text.
51
O p . c it., Casey and Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger,
Lacan", 105.
41
O p . cit., Lacan, Écrits, 85.
B
O p . cit., Casey a n d Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger,
Lacan", 105.
'* See Juliet Flower MacCannell's comments in
Figuring Lacan: Criticism and the Cultural Unconscious
(London: Croom Helm, 1986): 2 1 .
Caroline W i l l i a m s is lecturer in Political Theory at Queen Mary and Westfield
College, University of London. She has published "Feminism, Subjectivity and
Psychoanalysis: Towards a (Corpo)real knowledge", in K. Lennon and M. Whitford
(eds) Knowing and Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology (London: Routledge,
1994), and has an essay on Lacan forthcoming in The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of
Continental Philosophy. She is presently completing a manuscript on the problématique of
the subject in contemporary critical thought.