Das Ding - Lacan and Levinas

"Das Ding": Lacan and Levinas
Author(s): SIMON CRITCHLEY

Source: Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 28 (1998), pp. 72-90
Published by: Brill
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Das Ding: Lacan and Levinas1
SIMON CRITCHLEY
University of Essex
The Ethics of the Real
In Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-60), Lacan's thesis i

that the ethical as such is articulated in relation to the order of the
real, which is variously and obscurely glossed as "that which resists, the
impossible, that which always comes back to the same place, the limit
of all symbolizadon, etc. etc." Indeed this thesis is finessed in the fol
lowing, crucial way: namely, that the ethical, which affirms itself in
opposition to pleasure (hence Lacan's linking of the reality principle
and the death drive, of Freud's very early and very late work, insofar
as both are articulating what is opposed to or beyond the pleasure
principle), is articulated in relation to the real insofar as the latter
can be the guarantor of what Lacan calls, following a certain idiosyn
cratic and radical reading of Freud, das Ding, la Chose, the Thing.2
The whole thematic of das Ding, which, it would seem, only appears
in Seminar VII (although what is named by das Ding might be said to
be replaced later in Lacan's work in the guise of the "objet petit a"—
the cause of desire in the subject), is somewhat tortuous, overdetermined
as it is with suggestive but unspecific Heideggerian and Kantian allu
sions. Although Lacan places das Ding at the very centre of Freud's
work, insofar as that work is, for him, governed by a founding ethical
intuition, the central Freudian text that motivates Lacan's discussion
of das Ding appears very briefly towards the end of the 1895 Entwurf
72
DAS DING: LACAN AND LEVINAS 73
einer Psychologie, only published in 195

the Entwurf is an uncannily prophetic
the metapsychology of the First Topo
of the Traumdeutung and much of th
larly the economic analysis of the dea
Beyond the Pleasure Principle} I shall exa
the Entwurf below, but the remark tha
Lacan is that the figure of the Nebenm
the neighbor, what I shall call below le
subject "als Ding."* Such is what Freud
des Nebenmenschen," the complex of th
Of course, and here I come back to a
discussion of Levinas and Freud,5 it is
Lacan articulates itself in relation to the real that it is traumatic. Con
tact with the real leaves the subject with the affect of trauma, and we
might say with Kristeva that, "Le traumatisme met à jour le rapport de
sujet à la chose [traumatism illuminates the relation of the subject to
the thing]".6 Furthermore, what is particularly suggestive from a
Levinasian point of view is that the cause of trauma in the subject is
the figure of the neighbor, the fellow human being, namely, that be
ing with whom I am in an ethical relation.
Das Ding and the Face of the Other
Let me try and clarify my initial claim anecdotally: I remember a friend

saying to me several years ago, "What prevents the face of the other in
Levinas from being das Ding?" I did not know quite what he meant at
the time, but the question was clearly meant critically. I would like to
answer the question directly now by saying that nothing prevents the
face of the other being das Ding, and furthermore that there is a com
mon formal structure to ethical experience in Levinas and Lacan. To use
Dieter Henrich's expression, what Levinas and Lacan share is a com
mon concept of moral insight, a shared pathology of the moral, al
though the tone, form, method, sources, and normative consequences
of this pathology are starkly different.7
In my discussion of Levinas and Freud, my aim was to borrow ele
ments from Freudian psychoanalysis in order to delineate, criticize,
and complicate the structure of the subject that is at the basis of ethi
cal experience in Levinas. What I would like to propose here is an
extension of that argument that brings together the Levinasian con
ception of the subject with Lacan 's account of ethical experience and
attempts some kind of rapprochement. On the one hand, I am using
74 SIMON CRITCHLEY
psychoanalytical cat
deepen what is going
it should be noted
tion: namely, that th
not lead into some
opens up the possibil
analytic experience,
tion at the basis of
Revolution, like that
subscribes to the pri
However, such stat
although tempting,
ences between Levin
the validity of psych
their evaluations of H
ence might be said t
Hegel, specifically th
Lacanian understandi
cept of the transfere
claim that the truth
Other" is arguably t
subjectivity is consti
tic graphically repr
it is precisely this d
from the beginning
defies Hegel and th
absolute relation or u
model of intersubjectivi
However, the constr
and Lacan on the b
derstanding of the s
munity has to be c
the order of the Rea
where the ethical moment in psychoanalysis is articulated in the
"relationless relation" to das Ding. As Lacan says, "I am concerned with
the ethics of psychoanalysis, and I cannot at the same time discuss
Hegelian ethics. But I do want to point out that they are not the same"
(LEP, 126/EP, 105). To this one might add that, in Seminar VII, Lacan
explicitly seeks to distance his dialectic of desire from any Hegelianism
(LEP, 160/£P, 134), and furthermore—and the importance of this remark
will become increasingly apparent—"Hegel nowhere appears to me to
weaker than he is in the sphere of poetics, and this is especially true
of what he has to say about Antigone" (LEP, 292/EP, 249).
Ethics and Aesthetics—the P

the Need for Tragedy
Of course, such an attempted r

teresting but unanswerable ques
opment of Lacan 's teaching and a
that teaching. In its extensive u
to the body of the mother "als
articulating and anticipating Lac
sexuality in Encore (Seminar XX
cussion of Joyce in the as yet un
nar XXIII, 1975-76), Seminar VII contains Lacan's most sustained
discussion of aesthetics in his extended analysis of the Antigone, the
literature of courtly love, and the phenomenon of anamorphosis in
art. But why is it that when Lacan discusses ethics, he also gives one of
his most sustained discussions of aesthetics?
Obviously, the question of the relation of ethics to aesthetics raises
the problem of sublimation, which is an absolutely essential topic of
Seminar VII. Let me try and briefly broach this topic by summarizing
what Lacan says at the beginning of the final séance of the seminar.
What is demanded in analysis is happiness, nothing less. However, in
the time since Aristotle—what Lacan variously and gnomically calls "the
crisis of ethics", which implies a rather encoded but detectable genealogy
of ethics; i.e., in Hegelian terms, the crisis of ethics is the disappear
ance of the world of Sittlichkeit, a crisis in the position of the master
revealed inter alia in Hegel's master/slave dialectic—the question of
happiness is not amenable to an Aristotelian solution; it has become
what Lacan calls a political matter, a matter for everyone, "there is no
satisfaction apart from the satisfaction of all." That is to say, happiness
is no longer referable to the position of the master or subsumable
under the ideal of contemplation, as it was for Aristotle, but rather is
referred to an abstract quantitative generality. Happiness becomes that
of the greatest number. Of course, what Lacan is describing here is
the Benthamite world of utiliarianism, which is surprisingly generously
treated in Seminar VII, mainly through a reading of Bentham's Theory
of Fictions, where Lacan picks up on the idea that fiction is not decep
tion but is the structure of a truth, where he claims that Bentham
approaches the question of ethics "at the level of the signifier" (LEP;
269/EP, 228).'°
However, despite this concession to Bentham, it is clear that within
utilitarianism happiness becomes the object of a moral calculus; it is a
question of the happiness of the greatest number. In this utilitarian
context—and this is the context for Freud, as is clear from his early
16 SIMON CRITCHLEY
translations of John Stu

psychoanalysis is throu
satisfaction without re
insofar as the drive is,
its aim (Ziel). For exa
aim through religiou
female mystics discuss
terms, sublimation is the realization of one's desire, where one real
izes that one's desire will not be realized, where one realizes the lack
of being that one is. So, in the absence of the possibility of happiness,
that is, in the awareness of the tragic dimension of human experience
(a tragedy confronted on the couch in the form of symptoms), only
sublimation can save us.
Thus, Lacan dismisses the conventional idea of the moral goal of
psychoanalysis, namely, that it might be able to achieve some kind of
psychological normalization, i.e., that the subject might be able to re
adjust to reality by achieving a new harmonization of drive and object.
Such an idea of the ethics of psychoanalysis is nothing less than "a
kind of fraud [une sorte d'escroquerie]"; "[t]o make oneself the guarantor
that the subject might in any way be able to find its good itself (son
bien même) in analysis is a kind of fraud" (LEP, 350/EP, 303). Within
the conventional moralization of psychoanalysis, the success of analysis
is reduced to providing individual comfort, or what Lacan refer to as
"the service of goods." With a delightfully restrained sarcasm, he quips,
There is absolutely no reason why we should make ourselves the
guarantors of the bourgeois dream. A little more rigour and firm
ness is demanded in our confrontation with the human condition.
(LEP, 350/EP, 303)
Thus, the moral goal of psychoanalysis does not consist in putting the
subject in relation to the Sovereign Good, not only because s/he does
not possess this Good, but also because s/he knows "that there isn't
any [mais il sait qu'il n'y en a pas]" (LEP, 347/£7), 300). Lacan adds in
relation to the moot point of the end of analysis,
To have carried through an analysis to its end is nothing other than
to have encountered that limit where the entire problematic of de
sire is posed. (LEP, 347/EP, 300).
Rather, the moral goal of psychoanalysis consists in putting the sub
ject in a relation to its desire, of confronting the lack of being that
one is, which is always bound up with the relation to death. Such is
what Lacan calls, with surprising forthrightness, "the reality of the human
condition [la réalité de la condition humaine]" (LEP, 351 /EP, 303). In
relation to the death-bound reali

is not comfort but "an experienc
the reason why, at the end of S
psychoanalytical point of view,
guilty is giving way on one's d
categorical imperative of Freud
way on your desire.
Thus, the problem of sublimatio
the death drive as the fundame
The question is: how can the hum
How can one grasp the meaning
the human condition"? In Lacan
signifier, that is to say, through
beauty. Thus, the function of th
mation of the beautiful, is to
death. But "reveal" is perhaps too
the aesthetic, in the form of bea
or places the subject in a relat
finitude. It is rather that the aesthe
the aesthetic. In other terms, th
ceeds the symbolic (the realm of
the only access to the former. Th
only achieved through a form of
excess within symbolization. The
an oblique passage.
Hence, the importance of the
ence of the tragic in Seminar V
lence for the beautiful, embodies this excess of the ethical over the
aesthetic. The effect of her beauty, or what Lacan refers to as her
"splendor", is to trace the sublime movement of the ethical within the
aesthetic. The key term in Lacan's extraordinary reading of Antigone is
άτη, which he renders as "transgression".11 Thus, the function of art is
transgression, the transgression of the aesthetic through the aesthetic.
Namely, that Antigone transgresses the laws of Creon, refuses to feel
any guilt for her transgression and, in so doing, does not give way on
her desire, which is to say, she does not give way on "the laws of heaven".
As Lacan remarks in the penultimate paragraph of Seminar VII, in
allusive defiance of Hegel's interpretation of the Antigone, "The laws
of heaven in question are the laws of desire" (LEP, 375/EP, 325).
The law of desire is death, and Antigone goes all the way unto death
because she will not give way on her desire. Thus, the work of the
beautiful—of Antigone as the beautiful—takes the human being to the
78 SIMON CRITCHLEY
limit of a desire th
mation traces the o
object describes the
ence; the shadow of
why, earlier in Sem
mula that I can give
object... to the dign
de la Chose}" (LEP; 13
Sublimation produce
or protective Schleie
jected while not bei
in this case the work
of that Thing that r
both allows the subje
trauma in the psych
das Ding. We need ar
the truth. The aesth
which allows un dévo
aletheia in Heidegge
ment. The question
rather than tragedy
relation of the subje
Sublimation in Levinas?
An interesting and open question that is raised here, in passing, by

the problem of sublimation is the following: namely, given Levinas'
refusal of the categories of psychoanalysis, what might be imagined as
the place of sublimation in his work? Furthermore, and more impor
tantly, is there not a need for sublimation in Levinasian ethics? What
I mean is that, as some critics have pointed out, there is an undoubted
ethical extremism in Levinas that, in my presentation of his work, centers
around the theme of the subject as trauma. That is, Levinas seems to
be describing ethical responsibility as the maintenance of a perma
nent state of trauma. Now, I think this raises a twofold question: first,
what is our access to this state of trauma in Levinas? And second, is
(or should) this state of trauma (be) sustainable?
Obviously, our access to this state of trauma, as Levinas describes it,
occurs through Levinas' uniting, through his ethical language that "de
scribes the paradox in which phenomenology suddenly finds itself."
Levinas' writing is an excessive a

aesthetic presentation that breache
order of presentation and presen
strangely hyperbolic rhetoric is to
the unthematizable Saying within t
him, characterizes philosophical dis
use the Said of philosophy against
within it. Levinas' books—and thi
ingly explicit in his later writings—
limation that keeps open the trauma
the Saying to circulate within the S
There is no pure Saying, there is n
Said. Levinas' writing might be seen
A further thought in relation to s
on the whole question of philosophy
The first four chapters of Otherwis
phenomenological reduction from in
proximity, to the subject of substi
But in chapter 5 of Otherwise than
for the passage from the Saying to
and injustice that precedes the redu
justified Said, the Said that is just
prior Saying. It is in this context th
justice, ontology, politics, and cons
usual definition of philosophy from
dom of love". "Love" is here empl
and "wisdom" is the discursive-theoretical articulation of the ethical in
a discourse that aspires to justice. Philosophy is the wisdom of love "at
the service of love".15 Twisting the intention of Levinas' words, might
one not say that philosophy itself—as the work of love in the name of
justice—is the Levinasian discourse of sublimation? In Kleinian regis
ter, might one not wonder whether the radical separation of trauma
that defines the ethical subject requires reparation in a work of love?
What this in mind, might one not imagine the rhythm of Levinas'
discourse as a movement between separation and reparation, between
the tear and repair, between the traumatic wound and the healing
sublimation, between the subject and consciousness, between ethics
and ontology?16 In this sense, Levinasian ethics would not simply be a
one-way street from the Same to the Other, but would also, in a sec
ond move, consist in a return to the Same, but a Same that had been
altered in itself.
80 SIMON CRITCHLEY
Ethical Subjecti
But let me now turn

make good some of
cussion of das Ding
ous scenario. I quot
What if we brought
in the front row and asked him what Lacan means.
The simple soul will get up, go to the board and will give the
following explanation: "Since the beginning of the academic year
Lacan has been talking to us about das Ding in the following terms.
He situates it at the heart of a subjective world which is the one
whose economy he has been describing to us from a Freudian per
spective for years. This subjective world is defined by the fact that
the signifier in man is already installed at the level of the uncon
scious, and that it combines its points of reference with the means
of orientation that his functioning as a natural organism of a living
being also gives him."
Simply by writing it on the board and putting das Ding at the
centre, with the subjective world of the unconscious organized around
in a series of signifying relations around it, you can see the difficulty
of topographical representation. The reason is that das Ding is at the
centre only in the sense that it is excluded. That is to say, in reality
das Ding has to be posited as exterior, as the prehistoric Other that
it is impossible to forget—the Other whose primacy of position Freud
affirms in the sense of something entfremdet, something strange to
me, although it is at the heart of me, something that on the level of
the unconscious only a representation can represent. (LEP, 87/EP, 71)
My organizing claim here is that the structure of the Lacanian ethical
subject organized around das Ding—as the prehistoric other that it is
impossible to forget, as something strange, or entremdet, that is at the
heart of me (étranger à moi tout en étant au coeur de ce moi)—has the
same structure as the Levinasian ethical subject that I sought to eluci
date with the concept of trauma and that Levinas tries to capture with
various formulae, such as "the other in the same". On this construal
of their work, I think one can establish a formal or structural homol
ogy between ethical subjectivity in Levinas and Lacan. As stated above,
they share a common grammar of moral insight.
Of course, the consequences of such a homology between Lacan
and Levinas at the level of the concrete determination of the Good or
in providing prescriptions or procedures for action are far from being

identical and such is not my claim. To pursue this homology that far
would raise related and vexed questions that cut in two directions at
DAS DING: LACAN AND LEVIN AS 81
once. For example, in relation to Lac

ing; i.e., is this only an ethics of psy
this the basis for a more general
how exacdy does the establishment o
relate to specific and—as he calls th
of action at the level of social life
differentiates Lacan and Levinas is w
common, namely, the attempt to th
is, at the very least, questionable wh
Platonic conception of metaphysical
on the unconscious sexual desire of
that one must not confuse physical
reduce one to the other.
However, to return to my main argument for a structural or formal
homology between Lacanian and Levianian ethics, which I will pres
ently attempt to pursue through an analysis of the figure of the
Nebenmensch in Freud, it is fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on
how one looks at it) to note that my argument has already been antici
pated in an interesting essay by Monique Schneider, "La proximité
chez Levinas et le Nebenmensch freudien."18 The whole article is written
without any reference to Lacan, which is slightly bizarre, but what is
useful to me about this essay is that the link between Lacan and Levinas
can be made stronger by showing how Schneider establishes an inde
pendent link from Freud to Levinas.
The basic thesis of this essay (and Schneider tends to repeat this
basic point a little too insistently) concerns an interpretation of Freud;
namely, that in Freud's Entwurf, specifically in the brief discussion of
the Nebenmensch, there is both a recognition of the essential intrication,
ul'enchevêtrement inextricable" ( CH, 434), of the Same and the Other, and
the evaluation of this intrication by Freud as a threat, as something to
be excluded "in order to come back to a subject seen as a separated
being." Thus, Schneider's claim is that after the small breakthrough of
the Entwurf in 1895, the entire subsequent Freudian enterprise is con
cerned with trying to erect a barrier between the same and the other
and establishing a strict subject/object dualism. Although such a claim
is doubtless justified insofar as Freud's work is often informed by rather
traditional epistemological assumptions, one would, against Schneider,
have to acknowledge that the question of subject/object dualism in
Freud becomes much more richly entangled after the introduction of
the concept of narcissism in 1914, with the splitting of the ego and
the introduction of the agency of conscience or the super-ego in the
second Freudian topography.
82 SIMON CRITCHLEY
From the Levinasian

from an original ethic
analysis of the subject
tially intricated, is em
ethics in Freudian th
tangling what is stran
puts an end to the fir
"Levinas is thus placed
"If it Screams"—t
But what or who is thi

Freud, which is at th
the center of Schneider's and Kristeva's contestations of a Lacanian
approach (see note 20), is the following. Allow me to quote Freud's
German and then paraphrase:
Nehmen wir an, das Objekt, welches [die] Wfahrnehmung] liefert,
sei dem Subjekt, âhnlich, ein Nebenmensch. Das theoredsche Intéressé
erklârt sich dann auch dadurch, dass ein solches Objekt gleichzeitig
das erste Befiedigungsobjekt, im ferneren das erste feindliche Objekt
ist, wie die einzige helfende Macht. Am Nebenmenschen lemt darum
der Mensch erkennen. Dann werden die Wahrnehmungskomplexe,
die von diesem Nebenmenschen ausgehen, zum Teil neu und
unvergleichbar sein, sein Ziige, etwa auf visuellem Gebiet, andere
visuelle W[ahrnehmungen], z.B die seine Handbewegungen, aber
werden im Subjekt fiber die Er[innerung] eigener, ganz àhnlicher
visueller Eindrficke vom eigenen Kfirper fallen, mit denen die
Er[innerungen] von selbst erlebten Bewegungen in Assoziadon stehen.
Noch andere Wahrnehmungen des Objekts, z.B. wenn es schreit, wenn
die Erinnerung, an eigenes Schreien und damit an eigene Schmer
zerlebnisse wecken. Und so sondert sich der Komplex der Neben
menschen in zwei Bestandteile, von denen der eine durch konstantes
Geffige imponiert, als Ding beisammenbleibt, wàhrend der andere
durch Erinnerungsarbeit verstanden, d.h. auf eine Nachricht vom
eigenen Kôrper zurûckgefûhrt werden kann. Diese Zerlegung eines
Wahrnehmung-komplexes heisst ihn erkennen, enthâlt ein Urteil und
findet mit dem letzes erreichten Ziel ein Ende.19
Thus, the fellow human being is the object of both love and hate: s/
he is both the first satisfying object and the first hostile object, both the
"helpful power" of the friend, and the enemy {feindliche Objekt). Note
the logic of Freud's text here, where the Nebenmensch is simultaneously
(gleichzeitig) predicated with opposing attributes: s/he is both incom
parable ( unvergleichbar), which is another word Levinas uses to describe
the relation to the other, and

being understood by the subjec
this way, the Nebenmensch comp
the one hand, the other stands o
imposes itself through what Freud
which Lacan translates as "un ap
ratus, which threatens to turn
machine. On the other hand, th
hended on the basis of its being
word is dhnlich. The other is bot
what Lacan called above "somet
the heart of me," what Levinas w
same." It can thus be seen how th
the logic of substitution.
Freud concludes the passage by c
plex is resolved or attains its ai
reduces the other to the same th
Freud, the work of judgment,
Wunsch in the Traumdeutung, re
about a state of identity. It is tem
tation of this last sentence in th
traumatic affect of the relation
move to judgment as the subjec
the subject lays hold of or takes
fold of intuition by placing it
noted that for Kant, like Lacan and Levinas, what is left over as the
inassimable remainder of das Ding continually escapes the cognitive
power of the subject, whether the Ding an sich of the transcendent
object X in the first Critique, the relationless relation to the incompre
hensibility of the moral law in the second Critique or the relation of
the subject to the sublime in the third Critique. However, the function
of judgment in the above passage from Freud has the function of resolv
ing the Nebenmensch complex and restoring the subject/object dualism
at the basis of the traditional predicament of philosophy.
But we have overlooked a crucial moment in Freud's text, a mo
ment at the center of Schneider's essay, namely, that the relation to
the Nebenmensch announces itself "wenn es schreit," if it screams, shouts,
cries, or screeches. The fellow human being is perceived als Ding when
it screams, that is, the other presents itself in a prelinguistic scream
that traumatically recalls the subject's own screaming and its own memory
of experience of pain (an eigenes Schreien und damit an eigenes
Schmerzerlebnisse). The other, which resists my attempts at comprehension,
84 SIMON CRITCHLEY
is presented to me
own screaming, my
pain, an archaic mem
hostile object. The N
to the other that rec
subjectivity. In relat
plex, the scream
prelinguistic affect,
the other's screamin
ful affect. The impo
stituted in the trau
This structure of th
Levinas, where the s
elucidate the prehist
alterity. As with R
course, the preling
gives the subject bo
radically in question
in Levinasian term
goodness that disapp
Second Discourse.
Thing Becomes Word—Lacan on Das Ding
With the above discussion in mind, let me now turn to Lacan's com
mentary on the figure of the Nebenmensch and its relation to das Ding,
which is scattered here and there in the first section of Seminar VII.
In a response to a presentation by Pontalis on Freud's Entwurf Lacan

makes the extraordinary claim:
it is through the intermediary of the Nebenmensch as speaking subject
that everything that has to do with the thought processes is able to
take shape in the subjectivity of the subject. (LEP, 50/EP, 39)
I will come back to the question of whether the Nebenmensch is a speaking
subject below, but the central discussion of das Ding comes slightly
later, and one might note the Levinasian resonances in Lacan's de
scription of the relation to others as "beside yet alike, separation and
identity":
On that basis there enters into play what we will see function as the
first apprehension of reality by the subject. And it is at this point
that reality intervenes, which has the most intimate relationship to
the subject—the Nebenmensch. A formula that is altogether striking
in as much as it expresses powerfully the idea of beside yet alike,
separation and identity [l'à-côté et

I ought to read you the whole
the climactic sentence, "Thus the
rated into two parts, one of which
apparatus [un appareil constant],
als Ding. (LEP, 64/EP, 51)
Thus, the subject's first appreh
real, occurs in the relation to the
ien, absolutely other and "Frem
to remark, also playing with the
nal division" in the experience of
itself in the beginning led tow
the claim even stronger, arguing
whole march, advance or progress
das Ding. That is, the Nebenmens
the subject" that is simultaneously
within the self that defines wha
trality that is not abstract but is
"the world of desires."
However, the really provocative passage on das Ding occur a couple

of pages further on, for it is here that Lacan will conjure up the spec
tre of Harpo Marx. I quote at length:
Das Ding is that which I will call the outside-of-the-signified (le hors
signifié). It is as a function of the outside-of-the-signified, and from
an emotional relation [rapport pathétique] with it that the subject keeps
its distance and constitutes itself in a kind of relation, primary af
fect, anterior to all repression. The entire first articulation of the
Entwurf takes place around it....
Well, here it is in relation to this original das Ding that the first
orientation, the first choice, the first seat of subjective orientation
takes place that we will sometimes call Neuronenwahl, the choice of
the neurosis. This first grinding [mouture première] will henceforth
regulate the entire function of the pleasure principle....
Today I only want to insist on this, that the Thing only presents
itself to the extent that it becomes word [qu'elle fait mot], hits the
bull's eye [fait mouche] as one says. In Freud's text, the way in which
the stranger, the hostile one, appears in the first experience of real
ity for the human subject is the cry [le cri, which is Lacan 's transla
tion of das Schreien—s.c.]. I would say that we do not have any need
of this cry. Here I would like to make reference to something which
is more inscribed in the French rather than the German language—
each language has its advantages. In German, das Wort is at once
word [mot] and speech [parole]. In French, the word mot has a par
ticular weight and sense. Mot is essentially "no response" [pas de réponse].
86 SIMON CRITCHLEY
Mot, La Fontaine say

cisely that to which
and some people co
level than the world
true resource of the
as primary—are thi
are not exacdy the
words [paroles].
It is enough to evok
you, that of the terr
there anything which
[pressante], more cap
seating, more calcul
everything that take
marked with that smile of which one does not know whether it is
that of the most extreme perversity or foolishness. This mute on his
own is sufficient to sustain the atmosphere of placing in question
and radical annihilation that is the stuff of the formidable farce of
the Marx Brothers, of the uninterrupted play of jokes [in English in
original] that makes their acdvity so valuable. (LEP, 67-69/JEP, 54-55)
The first couple of paragraphs amplify the thesis presented above, namely,
that the relation to das Ding is that 'outside-of-the-signified' of the re
lation to the real, a relation to an 'absolute Other' that is un rapport
pathétique, a "primary affect" that is constitutive of the subject. This
relation or "first grinding" of the subject governs the entire function
of the pleasure principle for Lacan; that is, it overrides the pleasure
principle in the name of its beyond.
But—and here is a rather moot point challenged by Kristeva in her
discussion of precisely this passage from Seminar VII21—das Ding only
presents itself for Lacan insofar as it becomes word. In Lacanian word
play, the Thing fait mouche insofar as it fait mot, it hits the spot only
when it becomes a word. Lacan then refers back to the passage from
Freud's Entwurf where he recalls the point that was discussed above,
namely, that the Nebenmensch presents itself "wenn es schreit." He then
adds significantly that we do not have any need of this scream or cry,
a claim which is justified by one of Lacan 's rather opportunistic Franco
German etymologies, where das Wort is translated as both le mot and la
parole. That is, das Ding fait mouche insofar as it fait mot, and mot is
understood in distinction from what is spoken [la parole] as pas de réponse,
where the word is ce qui se tait, that which keeps silent. Thus, in a
further play, les mots are les choses muettes, words are essentially mute.
Hence the claim that le mot is present where no word is spoken [parlé].
The word is unspoken, it is dumb.
It is in connection with this claim about the muteness of the word—
a point that could also obviously be made in connection with silent

movie comedians like Chaplin and Keaton—and in order to illustrate
the relation of the subject to das Ding, that Lacan introduces the spec
tre of Harpo Marx. What Lacan is at the point of saying here is that
das Ding, as the subject's ethical relation with an alterity that resists
comprehension and which is constitutive for subjectivity and ethicality,
opens in the experience of jokes, in the comic. It is therefore, of course,
a quesdon of sublimadon, and of what form or forms of symbolization
are best able to evoke the in-adequate relation of the subject to das
Ding. How is one to approach das Ding? Lacan privileges tragedy, and
this privileging is hardly historically neutral or novel. Contra Lacan, I
will elsewhere raise the possibility of comedy because my worry is that
tragedy is a form of sublimation that risks reducing the trauma of the
relation to das Ding and disfiguring the problem of finitude.22 There is
a risk of losing sight of the ethical dimension to psychoanalysis through
its submission to what I call a tragic-heroic paradigm. But that is an
other story for a separate occasion.
NOTES
1. This text is the bridge between two other texts to which I make reference in t
present essay. The first deals with the relation between Levinas and psychoanaly
and attempts to give a reconstruction of Levinasian ethics in terms of the cate
ries of Freud's Second Topography, with particular focus on the question of trauma
and the death drive. Cf. "Le traumatisme originel—Levinas avec la psychanalyse
in Visage et Sinai. Actes du Colloque Hommage à Levinas, Rue Descartes (Paris: Presse
Universitaires de France, 1997), pp. 165-74. The other text tries to develop a critiqu
of Lacan's use of tragedy, and in particular Sophocles Antigone, in his discussio
of the ethics of psychoanalysis and goes on to explore the significance of the ph
nomena of humor, comedy, and laughter for approaching the question of huma
finitude. Cf. "Comedy and Finitude—Displacing the Tragic-Heroic Paradigm in Ph
losophy and Psychoanalysis," in Constellations, special issue on psychoanalysis an
social theory, forthcoming. All three texts will appear in Ethics, Politics, Subjectivit
Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought (London: Verso, 1999
2. L'éthique de la psychanalyse, Livre VII, ed. J.-A. Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1986, hereaf
LEP); translated by Dennis Porter under the title The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Book
VII, 1959-60 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 76, hereafter EP, with su
sequent page references given to original and translation in the text. Cited p
sages from the Ethics seminar have been retranslated. The only full commentary
know on Seminar VII is Paul Moyaert's excellent Ethik en sublimatie (Nijmegen: Sun
1994). But see also Moyaert's more critical engagement with Seminar VII in "Laca
on Neighbourly Love: The Relation to the Thing in the Other who is my Neighbour
88 SIMON CRITCHLEY
Epoché 4, no. 1 (1996): 1

sion of Lacan in Truth an
Routledge, 1991), 28-85
Turia & Kant, 1995). A n
sis are collected in Fragm
esp. Hans-Dieter Gondek
3. On the importance of
aux origines de la psycha
4. Entwurf einer Psycholog
Marie Bonaparte, Anna
Reprinted in Gesammelt
Angela Richards (Frankf
5. See above, note 1.
6. "L'impossibilité de perd
no. 8 (November 1988),
7. See Henrich's classic
trine of the Fact of Reas
bridge, MA: Harvard Un
to Henrich to an ongoin
tion in "After Auschwit
8. For Lacan's discussion
Seuil, 1966), 429-30. In
guage, Validity and Tr
Subjectivities, ed. S. Cri
9. Obviously, the whole
work of Klein and Klein
repair of the lesions in
esp. "The Object and th
tion, the work of love
analysis of the subject
relation to the female bo
das Ding. Lacan writes:
The whole development
manner, while at the s
whole development at t
ing more than an imm
nal thing, of the moth
Ding. (LEP, 82/EP, 67)
And again, with explicit
Let me suggest to you t
following key, namely,
body of the mother at
10. In this regard, see t
Bentham, published wit
l'Association Freudienne
this edition by J. Parin
11. I owe this insight to
12. See above, note 1. In
tion, in particular its us
choanalysis, shows certain similarities

Schopenhauerian-theory of tragedy in Th
tioned twice in Seminar VII, and not in
38, 194/£P, 46, 233-34). For the latter, a
tion of the fundamental coupling and c
the Apollinian and the Dionysian, which
Schopenhauer. For Nietzsche, we require
in order both to reveal the excess of the D
the human condition," and to save us fro
13. I have tried to analyze Levinas' metho
in The Ethics of Deconstruction (Oxford:
14. On the vexed question of the aestheti
cle, "The Rhythm of Alterity: Levinas a
(1997): 9-16.
15. Otherwise than Being or beyond Essence
16. I owe these insights to conversations w
17. On prephilosophical experiences in L
Persecuted ...': Language of the Oppresso
as First Philosophy, ed. A. Peperzak (Lon
18. Cahier de l'Heme (Paris: Heme, 1991), 4
erences given in the text.
19. Freud, Entwurf einer Psychologie, in Gesa
20. Rousseau, Discours sur l'origine de l'inégeli
21. A short while after the publication of
translated by L. Roudiez under the title
Press, 1989), Kristeva presented a paper
question of trauma ("L'impossibilité de p
in relation to depression and tries to fo
the depressive person, specifically the n
is depressed by feeling afflicted by a fun
expression of an unsymbolizable, unna
pressed person is depressed not in rela
sion is the dumb articulation of that unknown loss that defines the structure of
melancholia in Freud.
For Kristeva, das Ding is "the real in rebellion against signification," the pole o
attraction and repulsion, the dwelling place of sexuality from which the object o
desire will detatch itself. Das Ding is the un soleil notr, the black sun of melancholi
what Kristeva calls "une insistance sans presence," a light without representation, th
unknown object that throws its shadow across the ego. When faced with this seem
ingly archaic or "prehistoric" attachment to das Ding, the depressive person has the
impression of being disinherited from an unnamabie supreme good.
Now, Kristeva's difference with Lacan is precisely on the interpretation of das Ding
and refers to the specific passage from Freud's Entwurf discussed in Seminar VII
In commenting on the notion of das Ding in Freud's Entwurf, Lacan claims tha
however withdrawn the Freudian Thing may be from judging consciousness, it is
always already given in the presence of language.
Kristeva's claim is that Lacan, by making the Thing a word, prioritizes language i
the ethical relation to das Ding. So—and here Kristeva is making the same point
Schneider—although for Freud das Ding presents itself as the scream, Lacan translate
90 SIMON CRITCHLEY
this as mot, even if it

mary affect of das Din
Kristeva's terms, reduces
affective energy of the
a point here, and ther
tempt to understand th
the latter is understoo
Thing, standing mute
understood linguisticall
Ding is not the word, bu
22. See above, note 1.

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"Das Ding": Lacan and Levinas

Author(s): SIMON CRITCHLEY

The Ethics of the Real

In Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-60), Lacan's thesis i

einer Psychologie, only published in 195

Das Ding and the Face of the Other

Let me try and clarify my initial claim anecdotally: I remember a friend

Ethics and Aesthetics—the P

Of course, such an attempted r

translations of John Stu

relation to the death-bound reali

An interesting and open question that is raised here, in passing, by

Levinas' writing is an excessive a

But let me now turn

in providing prescriptions or procedures for action are far from being

once. For example, in relation to Lac

From the Levinasian

But what or who is thi

the relation to the other, and

Thing Becomes Word—Lacan on Das Ding

In a response to a presentation by Pontalis on Freud's Entwurf Lacan

separation and identity [l'à-côté et

However, the really provocative passage on das Ding occur a couple

Mot, La Fontaine say

It is in connection with this claim about the muteness of the word—

a point that could also obviously be made in connection with silent

Epoché 4, no. 1 (1996): 1

choanalysis, shows certain similarities

this as mot, even if it

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