Force, Drive, Desire: A Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) [Reprint ed.] 0810139987, 9780810139985

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FORCE, DRIVE, DESIRE

Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

General Editor 

Anthony J. Steinbock

FORCE, DRIVE, DESIRE A Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

Rudolf Bernet

Translated from the French by Sarah Allen

Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois

Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu English translation copyright © 2020 by Northwestern University Press. Originally published in French as Force—­Pulsion—­Désir: Une autre philosophie de la psychanalyse. Copyright © 2013 Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, Paris. http://www.vrin.fr. Published 2020 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​P ublication Data Names: Bernet, Rudolf, author. | Allen, Sarah, 1974– translator. Title: Force, drive, desire : a philosophy of psychoanalysis / Rudolf Bernet ; translated from the French by Sarah Allen. Other titles: Force, pulsion, désir. English | Northwestern University studies in phenomenology & existential philosophy. Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2020. | Series: Northwestern university studies in phenomenology and existential philosophy | “Originally published in French as Force-Pulsion-Desir: Une autre philosophie de la psychanalyse. Copyright © 2013 Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, Paris.” Identifiers: LCCN 2018052223 | ISBN 9780810139985 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810142337 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810139992 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis and philosophy. Classification: LCC BF175.4.P45 B4513 2019 | DDC 155—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052223

Contents

Introduction

3

Part I. The Drive Dynamic 1

Aristotle (and Heidegger) on Natural Movement and the Drive Force of Living Beings

19

2

The Metaphysics of Drive and Desire in Leibniz

47

3

Schopenhauer on the Drives of Bodies and the Ambiguities of Human Desire

87

4

The Three Stages of Freud’s Drive Theory and Lacan’s Amendments

137

Part II. Drives and Subjectivity 5

Husserl on the Pleasures of a Bodily and Drive-​Based Subject

229

6

The Freudian Subject

255

7

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Lacan on a Drive Subject Sublimated by the Encounter with Art

301

Abbreviations

333

Notes

337

Index

387

FORCE, DRIVE, DESIRE

Introduction

From where he is standing, the human animal that I am clearly observes a vast entanglement of excessive forces. But do these forces obey a general law that is external and distinct from them? Or do they obey laws that are—­so to speak—­internal, inhabiting each atom, compelling them to work out a kind of “personal” destiny? Rather than being dominated from outside, do these forces obey laws that are indistinguishable from them, that only move them in some sense? —­Roger Martin du Gard, Les Thibault

These questions, raised by Antoine Thibault, will guide the reflections in this work. Indeed, one cannot help but question how drives are regulated and ordered when observing their often conflictual plurality in “the human animal.” Are the “laws” that oppose the destructive excessiveness of these drives immanent to them or imposed “from outside”? What is it in human beings that restrains or inhibits the precipitated course of a specific drive: another complementary or antagonistic drive, the order of reason or logos, the subjective authority of an ego carrying out the categorical imperatives of a superego? Or is it possible for a human drive to regulate its own “ ‘personal’ destiny” by channeling and fostering the renewal of its overflowing energy, rather than exhausting itself in the excesses of a sterile repetition? More generally speaking, can a drive want something other than itself, and what does the self-​realization it seeks consist of: the pleasure of self-​affection, the self-​affirmation of its growing power, the extension of its sphere of influence, or the imposing of its own authority or hegemony? These broad questions will be addressed within the framework of a constant dialogue between philosophy and psychoanalysis. While the main concern will be the nature of human drives themselves, we will also trace 3

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these drives back to forces of nature or animal instincts, as well as considering their subsequent articulation in symbolically structured desires. A few words of explanation and justification on this twofold choice are needed. First, when reflecting today on the signification and reach of the “drive” concept, the proposed rapprochement between philosophy and psychoanalysis is in some sense unavoidable. Furthermore, this approach cannot help but be beneficial to both disciplines—­at least if one avoids the temptation of giving too much importance to one discipline to the detriment of the other, or of trying to found one on the other. Nor is the proposed encounter between psychoanalysis and philosophy condemned to being purely academic. On the contrary, the overall approach herein is governed by the question of the nature of the drive as an absolutely fundamental reality that is too often neglected by philosophers and psychoanalysts alike. This approach will, to begin with, afford a better understanding of psychoanalytic doctrine on the drive and desire by bringing to light its hidden indebtedness to various philosophies of nature. Rather than draw up a mere list of Freud’s borrowings from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or Lacan’s from Hegel and Sartre (a task already accomplished long ago by others), the aim here is to construct the framework for a philosophical history of psychoanalysis that goes far beyond what these eminent psychoanalysts knew about philosophy. By relating the writings of Freud and Lacan (and, more tacitly, Jung, Ferenczi, Klein, Laplanche, and Pontalis) to those of Aristotle, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger (and more tacitly, Deleuze), my project is to bring to light how psychoanalysis repeatedly both prolongs and breaks with the history of Western metaphysics, and could even—­in a certain light—­be seen as a part of this history. This philosophical genealogy of psychoanalysis is markedly different from other similar approaches that, not content to present psychoanalysis as captive to philosophy, go so far as to present it as bad philosophy. Instead, I hope that bringing psychoanalysis face to face with its philosophical heritage will be a beneficial opportunity for clarifying and renewing its conceptions of the drive and desire. More generally speaking, I think that when psychoanalysis harbors the legitimate ambition of liberating itself from the ball and chain of the classical psychology of consciousness and introspection, or from the self-​censorship of a strong ego perfectly adapted to reality, it cannot avoid a critical return to the philosophy that has nourished it throughout its (short) history. At the same time, I hope that this project will be just as profitable for philosophy. Rereading the (long) history of metaphysics (or at least a few of its key moments) in the light of psychoanalytic inquiries into the nature and function of the drive and desire is also a way of rewriting the history of philosophy. It helps to bring to light a different history

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of metaphysics: one centered less on Aristotelian substance (ousia) and more on his concept of dunamis, that is, a suspended power or a potentiality deprived of the realization toward which it nonetheless strives with all its might. In fact, already in Leibniz, Aristotelian substance becomes a matter of forces or drives and is understood as an individual subject. In this other history of metaphysics, which culminates in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the dynamic takes precedence over the static, restraint over actualization, lack (sterèsis) over accomplishment, and the presence of an absence over full presence. The psychoanalytic inquiry into drives is thus an excellent opportunity for writing the history of a philosophical reflection that is more sensitive to conflict than harmony, more attentive to negativity than positivity, and more preoccupied with the disorder of excess than with certain and reassuring final goals. It is thus no surprise that the sphinx of repetition rears its head at the crossroads of philosophy and psychoanalysis, without any of its many manifestations being able to contain and securely limit all of its menacing power. We will begin the history of a metaphysics of forces (originating in Heraclitus) with Aristotle’s Physics and his analysis of movement. Inspired by a Heideggerian reading of Aristotle, we will explore the hypothesis that Aristotle’s concept of a dunamis marked by sterèsis, that is, the pressing presence of a yet-​to-​be realized power, best captures the dynamic mode of being of the Freudian drive. Rather than the traditional approach of attempting to conceive the obscure nature of a hidden dunamis from the more obvious presence of energeia, we will attempt to access the mode of being of this potentiality—­much more pressing than a simple possibility—­directly and in itself. In this unrealized but nonetheless real potentiality—­this non-​actualized virtuality, this restrained but effective power, this pressing but provisionally inhibited force—­it is my view that we have found the common root of the forces of nature and the drives of living beings. On the coattails of an analysis of natural movements and their moving forces, a manifestation of the drive as the positivity of a negativity (that is, the effectiveness of a non-​realization) and the negativity of a positivity (that is, the restraint or inhibition of an actual power) enters onto the scene. We will see that this negativity inherent to all drives is in fact amplified by the clash of contrary drives and the choice—­reserved for human drives with “rational potency” (dunamis meta logou)—­of voluntarily restraining power. Far from unfolding directly and automatically from the pressing power and tension of a drive, the realization of all natural forces and animal drives also depends on external conditions arising that are favorable to the release of inner constraints. Long before Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and Husserl explicitly introduced the idea of drives being realized through “disinhibition,” the paradoxical nature of drives

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was already anticipated in Aristotle’s Physics. It is only with the Freudian doctrine of the death drive, however, that the fecundity of an approach to drives in terms of dynamic processes of inhibition and disinhibition reaches its full force. Philosophically speaking, to approach the nature of the drive from the concept of an inhibited force, we will have to attempt to think the tension of a suspended moment, the—­perhaps infinitesimal—­instant in which an impulse is held back before it shifts (metabolè) into an actual movement. A true Aristotelian, Leibniz meditated repeatedly on the mode of being of the “metaphysical force” which expresses itself as much in material forces and animal instincts as in human hopes and desires. He clearly explains what distinguishes the active reality of an inhibited power from a simple or naked possibility. He further analyzes with finesse how a dormant power awakens, increases in tension, and becomes active through the removal of the obstacle that stands in its way. As was the case with Aristotle, examining the Leibnizian analysis of human drives will require turning first to his physics, or rather, dynamics. Leibniz takes up Aristotle’s analyses of the active forces (vis activa) and passive forces (vis passiva) that constitute the being of all substance, but he adapts them to the new physics of the moderns. In so doing, Leibniz attempts to reconcile the image of a world that is particularly unstable—­ because in constant flux—­w ith his optimistic faith in the harmonious order of divine creation. It is thus not from his conception of a desire for perfection that we should expect much clarification on the nature of the death drive. Nonetheless, Leibniz (much more than Spinoza—­who will unfortunately not be addressed enough herein) represents an essential link in our inquiry into the nature of drives, for it is he who definitively inserts drives into the framework of individual subjectivity (a framework that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well as all of psychoanalysis, will have so much trouble leaving behind). Though a “monad” secure in its own subjective unity, individual substance is always in renewed need of unifying the multiplicities toward which it is endlessly drawn by its desire for perfection, according to Leibniz. For all finite monads, this results in a state of tension, instability, and lack of perfection, manifesting itself in humans as an unbalanced state that Leibniz calls “disquiet” (inquiétude). It is this inherent disquiet, this fundamental ontological lack, that is behind the endless drives and desires that characterize human beings. In Leibniz, the lack of realization of active drives—­due to the obstacle of various forms of resistance and hindrance—­becomes a lack of being that makes humans into essentially desiring beings. It is thus in Leibniz that we find—­perhaps for the first time—­the specific definition of human desire that subsequently spread to the

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analyses of Schopenhauer and Freud. According to this conception, desire arises from a drive that has invested itself in a (conscious or unconscious) representation of an object. For Leibniz, the intentional representations of a monad simultaneously refer to other individual monads and to the world as a whole. Their investment by drives is in no way fortuitous; and in humans at least, it leads to the immediate differentiation of active forces into “appetites” and “perceptions” (or “apperceptions”). From this difference, Leibniz especially retains the fact that representational human knowledge is nourished by the dynamic of specific desires and that human desires need to be safely contained in appropriate representations. However, this complementarity and solidarity in human existence between drive affects and intentional representations does not prevent appetites from extending to new perceptions, nor perceptions from giving rise to new appetites. In other words, the dynamic of drives and representations is paired in Leibniz with a dynamic arising between drives and desires. Long before Freud and Husserl, Schopenhauer carefully explores this play between affective tendencies and object representations, as well as how it can lead to various forms of displacement and repression. At the same time, he radically breaks with the optimistic rationalism of Leibniz by demoting individual human representations and psychological tendencies to the status of derivative, diverted, and even misleading manifestations of what he takes to be the one true metaphysical reality or drive-​substance, namely, the “will.” Schopenhauer conceives of the will as an active and irrational impulse that completely ignores the Leibnizian principles of sufficient reason and individuation. However, the illusory nature of the “world as representation” in which the behaviors, desires, and knowledge of human individuals arise does not prevent this false world from remaining an “objectification” or phenomenal expression of the real world, that is, the noumenal world of the will or “Thing-​in-​itself.” (We thus rediscover the Leibnizian distinction between “metaphysical” and “phenomenal” forces in Schopenhauer, but in a wholly different way.) Among the many forms of objectification of this will in-​itself, some forms—­less illusory than others—­allow us to glimpse the nature of this absurd and tyrannical will that leads the dance of natural phenomena and governs our lives. For Schopenhauer, these privileged objectifications are essentially of two kinds: “Platonic Ideas” and my own body. In the aesthetic contemplation of Platonic Ideas, the will-​to-​live shows itself to a spectator provisionally freed from its control. As we will see, this is Schopenhauer’s version of drive sublimation. Furthermore, all humans have an intimate experience of the will that directs their bodily behavior, which—­unlike their will—­is visible to all in the phenomenal world. This

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experience that each individual has of their own body as simultaneously an “organ of the will” and an object of phenomenal representation, allows them to better understand how a libidinal body, entirely dominated by the will’s pleasure principle, can nonetheless adapt itself to the reality principle of the world of representation. Once again, as in Aristotle and Leibniz, it is a detour through physics—­through the possibility of a twofold knowledge of the movements of material bodies in terms of forces of nature and causal laws—­that allows Schopenhauer to better explain to us the double nature of our own bodies. The movements of material bodies in the phenomenal world can be explained, in the final analysis, by the animating will or the forces of nature that inhabit them; and we can envision these by observing natural phenomena. Analogously, the observable behavior of my own body in the phenomenal world presents itself to me (and only me) as a manifestation of my will, which I also and simultaneously experience intimately from the inside. In other words: similar to the intuition I can acquire (through a Platonic Idea) of a rock’s will as I observe it fall in the phenomenal world, I feel from the inside what my body wants, though others can only observe its external behavior. While the will in-​itself may indeed remain unknowable, I still have the experience of particular wills that animate material and living bodies—­and especially my own body—­in the form of forces of nature and vital drives. Since the movements of all these bodies also lend themselves to an analysis in terms of causality or the principle of sufficient reason that governs the world of representation, my double experience of bodies serves as a guide for a metaphysical understanding of the identity of the world as will and as representation. This Schopenhauerian doctrine on bodies is in fact very favorably and faithfully echoed in Husserl’s phenomenology of the human body as both “organ of the will” (and of perception)—­or Leib—­and “object of perception”—­or Körper. In Husserl, this leads to a systematic study of all sorts of bodily sensations; time will be taken to emphasize the “extimate” character of these sensations, which locates them before any differentiation between immanence and transcendence, or even naked drive and intentional representation. Given the importance that Schopenhauer places on bodies and their twofold mode of givenness, it is not surprising to observe the zeal with which he tracks the key contribution of human bodies into the realm of even the most spiritual and intellectual activities. However, his naturalizing of human intelligence into an epiphenomenon of the brain happens less in the name of a materialist ideology than as an extended demonstration that humans are drive-​based beings, slaves to an inhuman will even in the most elevated and personal activities and goals. As is well

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known, for Schopenhauer our sexuality is a privileged expression of the unstoppable will to live that animates us (which consequently prevents him from recognizing a sexual drive independent from vital drives or even contrary to these latter). Yet, sexuality does not constitute our whole drive-​based life, and our drives thus hold other pleasures in store for us than sexual-​v ital pleasure. For instance, our knowledge is also animated by drive interests, and it also gives us pleasure. However, among our many intellectual perceptions, representations, and knowledge, we nonetheless get the most pleasure from those that are most in tune with our vital drives. Schopenhauer therefore concludes that all our representations of things, states of affairs, and in the end of the whole phenomenal world, are managed from behind, as it were, by our drive to live and its thirst for pleasure. This results in a strange theory of repression in Schopenhauer according to which it is the drive itself that represses disturbing representations—­not under the injunction of a narcissistic self-​image or a representation of a spiritual ideal, but under the will’s pleasure principle alone. The feeling of pleasure is thus not only our one sure guide when seeking to know what the (for the most part) unconscious will that inhabits us wants. It is also, often in spite of ourselves, the only principle recognized by the will in its rule over our actual life. We will examine at length the surprising convergences between the psychological descriptions given by Schopenhauer and Freud of: the pleasure principle and the principle of reality, the drive and desire, consciousness and the unconscious, neurosis and psychosis, repression and foreclosure, and even sublimation. As such, it is important to point out in advance any fundamental divergences. While Schopenhauer’s psychology arises from a transcendental deduction or justification of empirical phenomena based on metaphysical principles, it is only when constrained to do so that Freud traces his clinical observations of empirical phenomena back to their foundation in a “mythological” theory of the drive. And despite Freud’s frequent and obvious borrowings from the metaphysical tradition in his doctrine of the drive, he apologizes each time for his excursions into the perilous realm of philosophical speculation. In fact, his “metapsychological” theory of the a priori principles of the drive derives more from “eidetics” (in the Husserlian sense—­a doctrine of the essential or invariable structures of a phenomenon) than from metaphysics in any true sense. We will further see that there are yet other good reasons to draw parallels between the Freudian approach and phenomenology. As such, a fruitful dialogue can easily be initiated between Freud and Husserl on: drives, desires, and wishes; the nature of pleasure and the libidinal body; as well as the way the subject attempts to face or even master its own tendencies and drives.

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Freud approaches the drive and desire through the observation of sexual phenomena with an undeniable constancy (much to the regret of some). And (even more scandalous for these same critics) it is the clinical study of adult sexual perversions that serves as the foundation for his research on the genesis and development of the sexual drive in early childhood. Following Lacan, pride of place will be given to a structural understanding of the oral, anal, and genital sexual drive, rather than taking a biological, goal-​oriented, and normative approach. Furthermore, rather than treating the distinction between vital drives and sexual drives as simply a problem of empirical observation, its philosophical dimension will be emphasized. This will come in handy when we turn to the Freudian doctrine on the opposition between erotic drives and death drives. In these two versions of drive dualism, metapsychological questions and clinical observations, differences of principle and of phenomena, are in fact inseparable. Midway between the clinical analysis of sexual perversions and metaphysico-​biological speculations on the nature of the death drive, a veritable a priori eidetics on the essential structures of drives in general is to be found in Freud. The opportunity to compare his description of the drive in terms of “its ‘pressure,’ its ‘aim,’ its ‘object’ and its ‘source’ ”1 to the more philosophical interpretation given by Lacan will not be passed up. Despite its theoretical dryness, this eidetics constitutes the foundation for the whole edifice of Freudian theories on the drive. It is only on the basis of this foundation that voyeurism and exhibitionism, or even sadism and masochism, can be understood as different “vicissitudes” of a same specific drive. For, paradoxically, what arises out of this static and structural eidetics is the great plasticity of the drive as dynamic force. Moving force rather than substance with stable qualities, driving energy rather than rigid mechanism, versatile and capable of being influenced rather than faithful and consequential, a given drive changes its object and aim like one changes shirts, that is, without changing its nature. The only true change in nature that Freud admits in the drive is its “sublimation” (which he is still tempted to understand as a shift from one—­sexual— ­drive to another—­ego— ­drive [Ichtrieb]). This thesis on the plasticity of the drive in general is in no way contradicted by the nature of the death drive. The strongest signs of the latter’s versatility are that: we can see it either as a specific drive or as a vicissitude that concerns all drives; we can emphasize either its resistance to all binding, or its persisting through sterile repetition; and we can emphasize either its excess or its lack of energy. As a result of the preceding analysis, it becomes clear that the psychoanalytic doctrine on the drive, in its very foundation, naturally meets or at

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least crosses paths with philosophical concerns. The benefits that can be drawn for psychoanalysis from this encounter with classical metaphysics and phenomenology go far beyond a more precise specification of its concepts and theoretical framework. A phenomenology of bodily behavior and affectivity may turn out to be most valuable when psychoanalysis addresses the study of drive phenomena that blur the lines between an objective description of pathological behavior and a psychological introspection into conscious intentions. A phenomenological analysis of the “extimacy” of drives as they are actually experienced might also save psychoanalysis from the double pitfall of naturalism and psychologism. The drive can therefore no longer be reduced to a primitive psychophysical residue that is impossible to put into words because it stubbornly resists symbolic or imaginary representation. Similarly, a body dominated by drives can no longer be reduced to a biological montage or a smooth surface reflected in an indifferent mirror. Without a phenomenological analysis of the libidinal body and the experience of drives, one might also fear that the nature of the well-​known psychoanalytical “Triebrepräsentanz”—­that is, the simultaneous presence of the drive in the living body and the mind of the individual—­remains forever a mystery. Psychoanalysis also has much to learn from philosophy, and even from classical metaphysics, when it comes to the ontological dimension of the drive, that is, the drive as mode of being of a living being who experiences its life in the form of a tense expectation. In fact, nothing could better preserve psychoanalysis from a relapse into mechanistic biologism than philosophical reflection on the tension of the drive as intensity, and on this intensity as qualitative difference. Moreover, when faced with the difficulty of thinking primary processes and their repetitive nature, how could psychoanalysis do without enlightenment from the philosophers who strove to understand the nature of a repetition situated midway between a sterile mechanism and the establishing of symbolic difference? In short, a philosophy that tracks the secret work of difference and negativity all the way into the lived experience of drives is the best guarantee against any drifting of psychoanalysis into positivism.2 Conversely, the psychoanalytic approach to the drives experienced by all living beings could very fruitfully be used to question and inspire the traditional philosophy of the human subject as originally conscious and egological. What is then at stake is a genesis and even constitution of the ego itself (and no longer of the world by the ego). In the present day, any philosophy of human subjectivity that proudly ignores the Freudian analysis of narcissism discredits itself by that very fact. It is therefore important to provide ample space for a conception in which the human ego is to be understood as a transcendent and constituted object —­while at the same

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time completing the contribution of Freud’s theory on narcissism with his analysis of melancholy. It follows that, instead of arising from positive self-​ affirmation, the narcissistic identification in which the ego is constituted is in fact inseparable from the negative experience of a loss. This narcissistic ego-​object constituted through the loss of a love object then finds itself caught between the demands of the “id” and the “superego.” Thus, the subject always speaks in many voices in Freud. This subject contains within itself the intrigues of intersubjectivity. Furthermore, as if subjective life were not already complicated enough, the Freudian subject adds to these complications by falling prey to phantasms that dramatize its own desires and its relation to the desires of others. The nature of these phantasms should give philosophers pause to think, not only because they are often unconscious, but also (and more importantly) because they take place beyond the classical opposition between truth and illusion. We will make sure to take stock of the progressive development in Freud of the role played by these “fantasies,” or originary phantasms, involved in the constitution of the subject and its desires. It therefore seems that psychoanalysis and philosophy have much to learn from each other and could even serve to reform each other through their respective speculations on the nature of the drive and the subject as a drive-​based and desiring being. This encounter allows psychoanalysis to distinguish itself from the empirical sciences, and it allows philosophy to renounce its metaphysical claims in favor of a focus on the experience of empirical phenomena. Lacan and Husserl will serve as our guiding lights for better articulating the two-​sided change that leads both psychoanalysis and philosophy toward a type of knowledge that is neither metaphysical nor simply empirical. In fact, part 2 of this work in its entirety is dedicated to the intersections between the psychoanalytic and the philosophical approaches to the relation between human subjectivity and drives—­whether these latter be human, animal, or superhuman. The first and likely most important discovery we will make on this path is that human subjectivity is in no way to be confused with the ego of psychoanalysis and philosophy. A look at Freud’s efforts to understand the nature of “primary” narcissism suffices to bring to the fore that our question concerning the nature of a self that would precede the constitution of the ego was not foreign to his line of inquiry. More simply, already in Freud’s first analyses of oral and anal autoerotism, the existence of a drive-​based self whose primary mode of functioning is one of self-​a ffection is clearly brought to light. Similarly, in his move to the second topography, Freud’s desire to keep a specific place for the “id” in the psyche is proof of an explicit concern with distinguishing the self as drive subject from the ego. Indeed, what else might this “id” distinct from the “ego” and the “superego” be other

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than a primitive and paradoxical form of subjectivity, that is, a self that is both subjective and impersonal, individual and neutral, embodied and formless, finite and immortal? If the heart of subjectivity already beats at the level of this embodied self as drive-​based subject, for which the ego is no more than one object of investment and identification among others, the task of philosophically rethinking the relation between the human and the animal becomes pressing. Here, Schopenhauer can serve as an excellent guide, on condition that one abstract from his metaphysical prejudices and his tendency to disparage everything to do with the human. Is it not the case that his whole, remarkably lucid, analysis of madness and other human neuroses is inspired by his nostalgic admiration for the simplicity of well-​ordered animal life? We will see that Schopenhauer’s contribution is less likely to be as valuable when it comes to the status of a human subjectivity that has overcome its embeddedness in individual animal drives. In this latter case, Schopenhauer is too quick to fall back on the figure of a “pure subject of knowing,” that is, a subject that judges (from above) the nature of human drives. This aesthetic subject—­who is easily disgusted when unmasking the dark work of the will under the beautiful Platonic Ideas that it contemplates—­remains a superego (albeit, in a non-​Freudian sense). Yet, just as it is a mistake to confuse the self as drive-​based subject with a simple sub-​ego, does our real task here not similarly consist in avoiding the conflation of a subject delivered from the power of its individual drives with a superego? We must therefore attempt to think this more elevated form of human subjectivity through the transformation of the drive rather than the transformation of the ego. This is precisely the goal of a theory of drive sublimation as it was outlined but never firmly established by Freud. We will therefore look to Nietzsche and Lacan to elaborate on the subject in relation to sublimated drives. First, we will turn to Nietzsche, for in his Birth of Tragedy he shows acute awareness of the impasses of the Schopenhauerian position. Rather than elevating themselves above their subjective drives, Nietzsche’s tragic spectators instead give in to artistic drives that infinitely surpass them. This amounts to a true sublimation of vital drives into artistic drives, and this sublimation—­which justifies rather than negates Life—­also brings about a radical decentering of the individual ego (or even superego). It is also in the domain of aesthetic contemplation that Lacan contributes to a new theory of sublimation. As in Nietzsche, it is the ego, believing itself to be in control of impersonal drives, that suffers the consequences of the sublimation of these drives. Based on a precise analysis of the phenomena of mimicry and the transformation of seeing into being-​seen, Lacan shows how, while

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contemplating a trompe-​l’oeil painting or even an anamorphosis, the scopic drive turns back on the ego, not in order to comfort it in its narcissism, but rather to annihilate it. This leads to a complete transformation of the visual drive and the voracity of the eye. In a more general sense, the positions of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Lacan bring us face to face with the difficult philosophical choice between the immanent or transcendent nature of drives, as well as raising questions about the position of the subject in relation to drives. Perhaps less beholden to metaphysics than Heidegger would have us believe, Nietzsche is surely the first to have drawn the outlines of a subject who—­ according to Deleuze’s insightful formulation—­“surfs” on the waves of drives rather than drowning in them or contemplating them while shivering on a well-​protected beach. Undoubtedly, he also shows the best understanding of how all drives carry an undercurrent of nihilism. Our journey through the history of the drive concept will thus lead us from a dynamizing of substance in Aristotle and, even more explicitly, of the substance–­subject in Leibniz, to a decentering of the ego-​subject beginning with Schopenhauer and increasing with Nietzsche, Freud, and Lacan. As we wend our way, we will rethink not only the relation between human and animal, but also the nature of a human drive opening up to the new powers of a unifying logos that lends rationality to the drive by transforming it into a “dunamis meta logou”—­w ithout presupposing that this dunamis and this logos must have an egological or conscious character. Finally, the reader will surely ask: but why this focus on the drive? My first answer does not require much further explanation: because studying the nature and function of the drive provides fertile ground for exploring the encounter between philosophy and psychoanalysis—­more fertile, in any case, than the oft-​debated question of the unconscious, which suffers from the all-​too-​equivocal meaning of “consciousness” in philosophy and even more in psychoanalysis. Drives also provide a more fundamental ground for such an encounter in that, both genetically and ontologically, all conscious and unconscious representations and desires are animated by and thus grounded in the energy of a bodily drive and its pleasure principle. It is true that the fundamental ontology of the drive developed in this work, which I hold to be more fundamental than any ontology of the human subject or Dasein, considerably expands the meaning of the “drive” concept, making it inseparable from the concept of “force.” And even though the task of reformulating the drive concept and reconstructing its foundation belongs essentially to philosophy, it would be a mistake for psychoanalysis to ignore this endeavor. For the drive remains a central reality of the psyche for the psychoanalyst as well; it functions as a principle whose fundamental value cannot be reduced to being a

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handy hypothesis for explaining pathological, blind, compulsive, repetitive, destructive, or even primitive behavior on the part of psychopaths, perverts, and addicts of all kinds. My second response is more specifically directed toward the benefits for a renewal within philosophical thinking itself of this encounter between a metaphysics and a psychoanalysis of the drive. In my view, the best way for philosophy to leave metaphysics behind—­or for metaphysics to leave behind its philosophical presuppositions—­is to bring the metaphysics of the drive face to face with its psychoanalytic counterpart. For a philosophical conception of the drive passed through the filter of clinical psychology no longer lends itself to the hierarchy of opposing concepts of traditional metaphysics, nor does it remain fascinated by the shining presence of an active and positive force for perfection. Already in Freud’s eidetics of the drive, a framework opposing subject and object, the interior and exterior of one’s own body, self and other, consciousness and unconsciousness, repeatedly reveals itself to be poorly suited to the phenomena under analysis. Moreover, the understanding of the drive’s mode of being as dunamis presented herein no longer squares with its metaphysical interpretation in terms of the opposition between potentiality and actuality. Much to the contrary, I will try to bring to the fore a dunamis whose internal sterèsis is best understood through the phenomenon of the presence of an absence. As such, thanks to (the Heideggerian interpretation of) Aristotle, a particular kind of temporality comes onto the scene, characterized by the not yet mode of being, that is, by a suspension and the deferred actualization of a virtuality. Leibniz, great metaphysician that he is, will then help us through his notion of force (vis) to better understand the nature of a drive that precedes the metaphysical rifts of Cartesian dualism. Subsequently, as the last representative of my version of the great metaphysical tradition, Schopenhauer tears down the barrier erected by traditional metaphysics between animal and human, and within the human, between drive and intelligence. In Schopenhauer, as well as Nietzsche further down the line, the drive becomes intelligent and the body starts to think. By spanning the history of metaphysics under the guidance of psychoanalysis, we will find something in each metaphysician to help us free the drive from the limits set by classical metaphysics itself. My third and last response to the question “why this focus on the drive?” is that this philosophy of the drive at the limits of metaphysics and psychoanalysis carries the promise of a new approach to an old question—­the question regarding the dynamic essence of Life. This new approach avoids the pitfalls of metaphysical vitalism. And even if I haven’t sufficiently emphasized their contribution, this book is also indebted to the philosophies of life of Bergson and Henry.3 Thanks to them, we have

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been liberated from a (narrowly) biological conception of life without having to pay the price of renewed subservience to metaphysical finalism. It is less certain, however, that Bergson and Henry fully grasped the negativity of vital forces, and could thus help us to think the nature of human drives right through to the end. For a human drive left to itself and becoming frenzied in the explosion of its excessive energy carries the risk of ending in the destruction of life. Originally set up with the goal of promoting the drive as energetic principle of human life even in its highest forms, the research presented here also sensitizes us to the menacing presence of the inhuman at the heart of human life, that is, of drives that are characterized by a cruel indifference toward all human goals and goods. While the initial fear may have been that a philosophy of the drive would lead to a magnification of the animal in the human to the detriment of human spirituality, as my research progressed it came to the fore that it is rather this animal side of human nature that constitutes the best defense against the nihilist drives set free in our individual lives and in the contemporary world.

Part I

The Drive Dynamic

1

Aristotle (and Heidegger) on Natural Movement and the Drive Force of Living Beings

Lyricism is the pathos of a force whose triumphant effort enters into action and encounters no obstacle. . . . When two forces are present and thus enter into conflict, . . . we are in the domain of drama. This dramatic aspect increases . . . when the action of two antagonistic forces is simultaneous. It is taken to its paroxysm when a large number of forces come from all sides and fuel the battle to the point of making it a sort of cosmic clash. —­Michel Henry, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky

Introduction The choice of wanting to begin with Aristotle might seem surprising in a book dedicated to clarifying the philosophical concept of the “drive.” This can be explained, in a first sense, by the fact that, long before its popularization by Freudian psychoanalysis, the drive (but often under different names) already held a central place in the history of Western metaphysics. Yet, does this history of metaphysical thought on a drive dynamic not begin much later, that is, with modernity and its philosophy of subjectivity? Was it not Leibniz who first called upon a drive force to explain the individual unity of the substance-​subject constituting a monad? Indeed, the development of a metaphysics of the drive subject from Schopenhauer to Husserl, with its passage through Fichte and Nietzsche, indubitably and clearly carries the trace of Leibniz’s thought. However, one shouldn’t for this reason forget everything owed to Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Physics by the Leibnizian problematic of the “tension” at work in a vis activa and, more particularly, its realization in the form of a disinhibition. For it is unquestionably Aristotle’s concept of the power of a dunamis—­whose 19

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pressing force tends toward a change (metabolè) into a realization taking the form of an actual enactment (energeia)—­that is the matrix of this long history of metaphysics still at work in the Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theories of the drive. In fact, we will see that Aristotle’s thought goes far beyond what is retained in any traditional reading of it, and its potential remains considerable for a new reflection, both philosophical and psychoanalytic, on the nature of the drive. In fact, even if the Aristotelian conception of a drive dunamis is indeed embedded in the well-​known framework of a metaphysics of potentiality and actuality, it nevertheless already devotes much attention to the various forms of an original negativity that affects this dunamis: to the presence of a lack (sterèsis) or the absence of a force, to the sometimes complementary and sometimes conflictual relations between different drive forces, to the multiple forms of a resistance that opposes the disinhibition of a tension, and even to a holding back of power from enactment. For all these fundamental aspects of a philosophy of the drive, Aristotle’s Physics, and more particularly his analysis of the nature of movement (kinèsis), will prove to be more relevant than his Metaphysics. For in his Physics, Aristotle develops what is truly a metaphysics of nature, and more specifically of the natural movements on which the entire tradition of a metaphysics of forces or vital drives largely based itself. This explains my second choice to focus primarily on the first books of the Physics and not on the Metaphysics, from which we will only be considering the first chapters of book Theta. Heidegger, more than any other, was fully conscious not only of the debt owed to Aristotle’s Physics by the modern philosophies of Life, but especially of what could be drawn from it for a putting into question and ontological renewal of these vitalist trends. As such, Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotelian kinèsis and phusis will naturally serve as a guide for us in our interrogation into the drive-​based life of living beings. This third choice can only really be justified by its results. What requires explanation at the outset, however, is why the following analysis of the drive force of living beings, and more specifically of the drive-​based life of human beings, will draw so little on Heidegger’s reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, despite the decisive influence we know it had on the conception of fundamental ontology in Sein und Zeit. For the issues at work in a philosophy of the drive, the decisive advantage of a renewed and ontological interpretation of Aristotelian kinèsis essentially comes from the fact that it gives us a much more immediate access to the drive dynamic and, especially, does not judge in advance on a difference between animals and humans, nor on the status of a drive subject. Indeed, one need only recall the difficulties encountered by the fundamental ontology of Being and Time (1927) and the

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1929/​30 lecture course on The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics when trying to describe how human Dasein could relate to its own vital or “animal” drives in a comprehensive way. To the indirect and “privative” access to vital drives from a Dasein whose first mode of being is constituted by “care,” I will prefer an ontological understanding of drives within the horizon of dunamis as the central moment of all movement. It will thus be enough to measure, with Aristotle, what is shared by and what differentiates the respective capacities of a material, a tool, a bodily organ, and a human force animated by logos. This will allow us to avoid opening an artificial gulf between the potentiality-​to-​be of these different beings and condemning ourselves to an understanding of all forms of life from the sole perspective of the human subject—­be it the human understood as “Da-​sein.” It is thus an ontological understanding of the drive force of a vital dunamis common to animals and humans that will serve as our guiding thread and further allow us to understand a dunamis meta logou proper to the human being and how this human being can or must behave with respect to its drives. Beginning from the idea that the general and formal ontological structure of a dunamis according to movement (kata kinèsin) can give rise to different modes of being of a drive experience not only saves me the trouble of having to hastily pronounce myself on the question of the anthropological difference, but also guards against the assumption that all human drives necessarily come from our so-​called animal nature. My method here will lead us from a general examination of dunamis kata kinèsin, toward the dunamis involved in natural movements—­and more specifically in the drive-​based life of living beings—­and finally to the analysis of a specifically human potentiality-​to-​be saturated with logos. This method does not, however, dispense us from reflecting on what an in-​depth meditation on the bodily drives could contribute to the fundamental ontology of Dasein’s existence. Such reflection will help us to better understand the drive nature of human forces, their opening on to desirable things in the world, and the human freedom to give in to or withdraw from them. By taking into consideration all Heidegger’s texts on Aristotle’s Physics and the analysis of dunamis in Metaphysics Theta 1–­3 from 1922 to 1939, we will also be able to better evaluate the effects of Heidegger’s distancing from fundamental ontology, as early as the 1931 lecture course, and of the new perspective of the Turn, clearly implied in the 1939 text on Heidegger’s conception of the essence of the drive. I will take my main inspiration from the following texts, in chronological order, by Heidegger on Aristotle: 1922: “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle” (Natorp report)1

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1924: Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy 2 1926: Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy 3 1931: Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1–­3. On the Essence and Actuality of Force 4 1939: “On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle’s Physics B, I”5 It is true that, unlike in other texts from Heidegger—­such as his 1929/​30 lecture course6 (which I will certainly refer to occasionally)—­the “drive” (Trieb) is rarely explicitly addressed in his writings on Aristotle. It will thus be my task to show, both with Heidegger and in part against his explicit intentions, that his understanding of the Aristotelian conception of movement, and more particularly of dunamis, actually lends itself to a phenomenological-​ontological investigation into the essence of the drive. This means, once again, that in my reading of Heidegger, I will have to leave aside anything that does not relate directly to our project, in particular, his interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics in the 1924/​25 winter semester lecture course.7 As such, through a progressive restriction of our inquiry, I will be content to investigate, with Heidegger, Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics on: the essential structures common to all natural movements, a possible reading of dunamis as drive force, and the nature and vicissitudes of a specifically human drive, that is, one illuminated by logos. Progressing in this way, particular attention will be paid to: both the dynamic and unstable character of the drives that animate the life movements of living beings, the deep ambivalence between activity and passivity in these drives, opposing or contrary drives and impotent drives, the finitude of all human drive force, and the sometimes painful choices to be made between holding drives back and gratifying them through action. We will see that it is not enough to take interest in the ontological dimension of the drive in order to decide in advance on questions regarding its belonging to the movement of life, its dependence on a possible or impossible actualization, and its breaking up into antagonistic drives that fall prey to both internal and external forms of resistance and to more or less favorable circumstances.

The Structure of Movement and the Particularity of Natural Movements Although the analysis of natural movement remains the primary focus in Aristotle’s Physics, the movement involved in making or producing

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something (poiein) is nevertheless taken as the fundamental basis for his analysis of the essential components or archai of movement (according to Physics A) in terms of dunamis, energeia, and sterèsis.8 One can think of at least two good reasons for doing this. The first has to do with the fact that the structural moments common to all movement are easier to distinguish in the process of making something. For in the making proper to the fabrication of a man-​made product, both the origin of this movement and its result remain external to its realization. It is entirely different for natural movements and, more particularly, for the life of the living being as fundamental natural movement. Though it is true that life always comes from another living being, each living being holds onto life through itself, in a life whose main goal is to live, that is, to stay alive. The movement involved in making a table, however, does not have its origin in another table, but in the project of a designer (architektôn) who conceives in advance what the finished product will look like (eidos proaireton), as well as in the technical know-​how (technè) of a craftsman who works on its production. Once finished, the result of their work (ergon) escapes them completely, for as a general rule they are not the users of this table. In this movement of poiein, neither the origin (archè) nor the end (telos) of the thing produced (poioumenon) can be confused with this thing, and as a result each structural moment is more easily identifiable. In the movement of making, the ability to make and the making that attains its end remain distinct from the enactment (energeia) of the making. The second reason why Aristotle chooses to analyze the general structure of movement in terms of making something consists, according to Heidegger, in his marked preference for entities whose presence is distinguished by their high degree of stability and permanence. Such is the case for the work (ergon) completed through a process of production that attains its end. This is why the being-​present (ousia) of a being is more fully realized in the constant availability of a produced thing than in a living being whose life consists precisely in deferring the termination of its life movement.9 This is all the more true given that such termination can in no way be mistaken for the perfection of a finished product. The being (phusis) of living beings thus entails that they are always in movement, and two things seem key about this movement of life: that it always remains in the process of actualizing itself (energeia), and that it always remains on the way toward its completion in a final totality (entelecheia) that can only be a moving totality. This is why movement (kinèsis) epitomizes the being of natural moving beings (kinoumena) more profoundly than the being of things produced (poioumena), even though the latter—­as the result of a movement of production—­are equally kinoumena. Living beings are moving beings whose life movement has its origin

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(archè) and its end (telos) in their life (phusis) itself, where the being of such life consists precisely in “movedness” (Bewegtheit).10 Likewise, the begetting of one living being by another also takes part in the movement of life itself (phusis), whose being equally consists in being-​en-​route. The being of life consists in movedness, and this life movement is “the path that leads from phusis to phusis [hodos phuseôs eis phusin].”11 The power or force (dunamis) that allows the living being to live and to pass its life on to another living being can thus only come to it from its life movement or, as Heidegger says, from its Lebensbewegtheit (“movement of life”).12 Since the life of every worldly living being is finite, or (what amounts to the same) since no form of life of a worldly living being has its terminus in absolute perfection, the life of a living being always disposes of still more resources (dunamis) that have not yet been exploited (and this, right up to the moment of its death). In other words, this life is marked by a lack (sterèsis) of actualization (energeia) that is at the same time a richness of as yet unused or unrealized potentialities. This is why the dunamis that underlies the actual life of a living being is, for Heidegger, simultaneously a “force” and a weakness, a “capability” (Vermögen) and the acknowledgment of a possible impotence (adunamia). It is this fundamental ambiguity of dunamis that makes the Aristotelian conception of a “drive” that sustains the life of a living being so interesting. We shall return to it later after having clarified the general meaning of this dunamis in its relationship to energeia or entelecheia and sterèsis. One approach to dunamis, energeia, and sterèsis would be to take them as the essential structures (or eidetic characteristics) necessarily presupposed—­as “grounds” (archai)—­by the possibility of all movement, irrespective of the difference between natural movement and the movement of a poiein. By insisting on the ontological character of these grounds, Heidegger takes a somewhat different tack and favors presenting them as the fundamental modes of being of the moving thing in its state of movement. This movement (kinèsis) is thus to be understood as the mode of being of the moving thing (kinoumenon). If dunamis, energeia, and sterèsis can still be legitimately designated as fundamental categories of movement in Heidegger, this is only on condition of correctly understanding these “categories” as ways of making visible the different modalities of the moving thing in its state of movement.13 They thus provide us with a differentiated clarification of what movement is as the moving thing’s mode of being. A moving thing in fact has these three different modes of movedness: the mode of a not yet actualized potentiality (dunamis), the mode of an actual movement that is in the course of taking place (energeia), and the mode of an (as yet or already) absent movement (sterèsis). The main difficulty in properly understanding

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these archai of kinèsis is rooted, according to Heidegger, in the fact that their ontological character makes them invisible for a natural life: “these archai, that from which a being is seen, are concealed [verdeckt], dissimulated [verstellt].”14 Nevertheless, Heidegger’s insistence on the ontological character of the Aristotelian conception of movement or of movedness as a mode of being should not make us think that movement could exist without particular moving things, that is, exist in itself (kath’auto) or distinct from (para) that which is in movement.15 Dunamis, energeia, and sterèsis are, to the contrary, modes of being of a particular being, different modes of behaving or being present that a moving being can adopt either simultaneously or successively. Aristotle’s presentation of these categories of movement in Physics Gamma is subjected to an exacting analysis in Heidegger’s course on the Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy in the 1924 summer semester.16 Energeia or entelecheia designate, in Aristotle, the preeminent mode of being or presence of a moving thing usually understood in the tradition as “actuality” or “reality” (Wirklichkeit).17 A truly existing being is to be distinguished from a being whose presence is only possible (dunamis) or a being whose presence is paradoxically the presence of an absence (sterèsis). What moves relates, in each moment of its actual movement (energeia), to the end, that is, the totality of its movedness.18 A distinction can also be made between the presence of a moving thing whose actual movement is already finished and a moving thing whose movement is still underway. A moving thing that has reached the end of its movement or whose movement had been provisionally interrupted is characterized by a specific mode of being usually called “rest” (Ruhe)19 or “repose” (Ruhigkeit).20 Heidegger repeatedly insists that this state of rest is to be understood on the basis of the movement that preceded it and may follow it. Repose is thus but a modality of movedness, even if this movement is currently lacking. This comes most clearly to the fore in the case of an interrupted movement, for example, when the making of an ordinary object is interrupted during a break from work. Heidegger places great importance on this case for at least two reasons. First, the movement of work is nowhere more evident than in work that is unfinished or in a work (ergon) in which the movement of its making (poiein) has not yet actualized its virtual potentialities (dunamis). A work waiting to be finished is characterized by a mode of presence that is much more pressing and visible than the already finished work.21 Second, Heidegger seems to be suggesting that all things—­not only an unfinished work—­are filled with potentialities that have yet to be realized. It is thus only in a superficial approach that the being of things seems to coincide with their Being-​there, their presence before me (vorhanden) as

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entirely offered to my gaze. A gaze that “looks around” (Umsicht)22 would discover, beneath this banal presence, a whole network of implicit references only awaiting a first opportunity to be realized. This circumspect gaze on things is thus more attentive to what they could be (dunamis) than what they already are. It is only by looking around oneself and around things that we discover their dormant potentialities, their availability (Zuhandenheit)23 and their “meaningfulness” (Bedeutsamkeit)24 for a movement of use or of a new work of production. This mode of presence in which dunamis is privileged over entelecheia (or—­in the language of Sein und Zeit—­“Zuhandenheit” over “Vorhandenheit”) is the first mode of being of things in our “surrounding world” (Umwelt).25 The dunamis of such an availability characterizes, in particular, the mode of presence of the material (hulè) for a production that remains to be undertaken. Heidegger repeatedly insists on the fact that the dunamis of such a “usability” belongs to the being itself, constituting its mode of being-​present; it is thus not a meaning to be externally added to the being by a specific mode of subjective grasping.26 However, dunamis as a being’s mode of being need not necessarily manifest itself in the form of availability for a future production. It can just as well be grasped retrospectively as constituting the past mode of being of a present being. As such, a product that comes from an already finished work of production presents itself as what we call, even in common language, a “realization,” that is, the realization of a project that was no more than a mere possibility to begin with. In such a case, dunamis as anterior mode of being remains co-​present in the finished product of a work or in a movement of production that has reached its end; it remains co-​present “in the sense of being-​from-​out-​of [im Sinne des Herseins aus].”27 Finally, a third mode of presence of dunamis is to be found midway between the movement of a poiesis that has not yet begun and one that is already finished. This is the case for a work of production that is still underway, in which the presence of the unfinished product, that is, one that is still being made (energeia), is mainly characterized by a “potentiality-​to-​be [Seinkönnen].”28 This mode of being of a product that is underway, in which dunamis and energeia intimately intertwine to form the unity of an “effective possibility [tätige Möglichkeit],”29 is characterized by its great instability. Indeed, for Heidegger, this is no more than a half-​presence (halbes Da).30 It is in such a case that dunamis becomes most pressing; and this will allow us to understand the dunamis that is on its way toward realization as the clearest way for a force or drive to become manifest. This case also has the merit of bringing to the fore what separates the “drive” from a neutral “possibility,” as it is understood by one metaphysical tradition (that is not the tradition of Leibniz or Schopenhauer, as we will show further on).

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The reader will have understood on his or her own that this intermediary mode of being-​present of dunamis, this “effective possibility,” is the best one for characterizing the being of Dasein as an existence that takes the form of a potentiality-​to-​be. These three different presentation modes of dunamis have in common an intertwining of dunamis and energeia (or entelecheia). This is explained by the fact that in Aristotle’s Physics dunamis is never a merely speculative possibility, but always the possibility of a movement or, more specifically, a possibility in movement. The essential relationship to the impending event of a change (metabolè) in its realization places dunamis midway between (or on the way toward) the (stable and immobile) presence of a mere possibility, on the one hand, and that of a simple reality, on the other. As Heidegger writes, dunamis is a “preparedness” (Bereitheit) for “actualization” (Wirken).31 Its intimate relationship with one or another form of energeia (Wirken) is thus what essentially makes dunamis into a mode of being of kinèsis, that is, a dunamis kata kinèsin. This relationship of dunamis to kinèsis can further take on the double form of either a passive susceptibility to undergoing a movement or an active “capability” (Vermögen), or even a sort of “push” (Drängen) toward the realization of a new movement.32 (In Physics Gamma, Aristotle says that these two modes of being-​in-​potentiality necessarily go hand in hand for beings according to phusis, for by imparting movement to an external being, they are themselves always already moved by other beings. We will come back to this.) In neither case, however, does dunamis constitute an enduring property of the thing; it is, on the contrary, a mode of being that irremediably exposes that thing to a change in its nature as well as in its relation to other things in the surrounding world. For even if the dunamis of a real thing is to be distinguished from a simple sterèsis by its actual mode of presence, this actual presence of dunamis essentially consists in a referral to “something further away [Entfernteres, ekeininon]” and “remote [Jenliches]”33 that this thing “is not yet.”34 This unstable character of the presence of a dunamis kata kinèsin, in which a being tends toward a state-​of-​t hings that does not yet actually exist, is further reinforced by the fact that this being can always either acquire new forms of dunamis, or lose a potentiality-​to-​be that it already possesses. However, such acquisitions, conservations, and losses of dunamis by a being rarely come from a being’s own power alone; it is usually other things and circumstances that are the deciding factors. By acquiring a new dunamis, the thing also changes meaning. When related to a potential use or transformation, the thing that was simply there (vorhanden) to begin with becomes more present, and through the urgency of its presence, its mode of being is transformed into an availability

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(Zuhandenheit). Conversely, this same thing can turn out to be unusable and return to its neutral mode of presence, that is, one without any anticipation of change. Thus, it is the relation to a still-​to-​be-​realized energeia or the absence thereof that differentiates the modes of presence in which the thing appears as “proper,” “usable,” “available,” or “simply there.” As such, there are two reasons for the instability of dunamis as a mode of being-​present: first, for the dunamis of a thing to appear, this thing has to appear within the perspective of a not yet realized energeia; second, the presence of this dunamis is subject to the movement of its possible acquisition or loss by the thing. As Heidegger writes in his lecture notes: “When is a particular being dunamei? Not always, now and again, now and again not . . . only now and then.”35 As a result of this presentation of the structure common to all kinds of movement, all moving beings (kinoumena) must simultaneously appear according to the modes of being of dunamis and energeia. In other words, the presence of a movedness is always comprised of a blend between a pressing dunamis and an energeia that has yet to be fully realized. Without this tightly knit relationship to an energeia-​in-​waiting, dunamis would not be a real possibility, but an empty or purely imaginary one, and it would have no relationship to movement. For the metaphysical essence of all movement (kinèsis) consists, for Aristotle, in a change or switch (metabolè) from dunamis into energeia. In like fashion, a being actually given in the mode of being of energeia is only presented as a movedness to the extent that the already realized dunamis from which its movement results and the dunamis still dormant within it are co-​present. Aristotle calls this co-​ presence of an absence “lack” (sterèsis), and he quite logically holds this form of privation to be the third archè of movedness.36 It is through the intermediary of such a sterèsis that the dunamis and the energeia of a thing can be simultaneously present, and the negativity of this same sterèsis is the true engine behind the shifting relationships between dunamis and energeia. For it is sterèsis as positing an actual non-​being that ensures, in the appearing of dunamis, the co-​presence of energeia in the mode of being something-​not-​yet-​realized. Moreover, this same sterèsis ensures, in the appearing of energeia, the co-​presence of dunamis in the mode of being something-​no-​longer-​freely-​available. As affirming a non-​being, sterèsis is certainly part of the Aristotelian categories of logos, that is, the modes of saying or addressing a being. Yet, since all the categories—­such as, for instance, quality, quantity, and so on—­can be said according to their being or their non-​being, sterèsis can legitimately claim the status of a privileged category, making it almost the equal of ousia. If, for Heidegger, ousia means presence (Anwesenheit) and sterèsis means a present absence or, more specifically, a coming to

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presence of absence,37 and if all beings can be addressed or called to appear through these two categories, it is indeed tempting to understand all forms of appearance as resulting from an original entanglement between ousia and sterèsis.38 This is what Heidegger will systematically do in his conception of alètheia after “the Turn”—­yet he will insist on the difference between an absence of truth in the form of privation (sterèsis) and this other form of non-​truth, more fundamental and more familiar to the pre-​ Socratics than Aristotle, consisting in a “concealment” or “withdrawal” (lèthè) of presence.39 The 1924 lecture course, from which I have drawn my presentation of the archai of kinèsis, does not yet risk such a bringing together of the essence of movement and the essence of truth as “unconcealment” (Unverborgenheit). But its interpretation of Aristotelian sterèsis already establishes, with a striking insistence, a very close link between the essence of movement and the “double saying” (dichôs legetai) of all the categories. It follows that sterèsis is not only an essential moment of the structure of all movement, but, since sterèsis is also the category of negation, that all modes of movedness can be said or addressed in a double—­positive or negative—­form. More concretely speaking, this means that logos reveals how, as a matter of principle, all movement has a corresponding countermovement. We will see that this is particularly the case for the movements that make up human life. On a more general level, sterèsis opens up, in movement as well as speech, the space of a separation or an interval that constitutes the most original locus (or the “there”) of the moving thing. More specifically, as regards speech, the fact that it can be addressed to a being both in terms of what that being is (morphè, eidos) and in terms of what it is not (sterèsis) entails that every being is, in each case, only “more or less” what speech says about it. What this duplicity of speaking reveals is nothing less than that every being is fundamentally in movement: “a being, as it is determined as this dichôs, shows in itself the essential being-​possibility [Seinsmöglichkeit], to be something that is ‘from . . . toward.’ Since it is the possibility of the ‘from . . . toward’ something like a change [Umschlag], it can be in movement.”40 This passage is characteristic of how Heidegger tends to draw a close link between the categories of logos and a being’s mode of appearing, as well as between modes of speech and modes of movement. It is the double way of addressing a being in speech that reveals its movedness in the most originary manner. Conversely, a form of linguistic explanation that embodies movement must correspond to the appearance of movement. As early as his first draft of the systematic framework of his phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle in his report to Natorp in 1922, Heidegger had already drawn the logical conclusion: if the revelation of the being of

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movement depends on the movement of logos, then any investigation has to be an investigation that is itself in movement. We can thus not examine the Aristotelian doctrine on movement without simultaneously examining the movement of its exposition in the Physics.41 Heidegger’s 1924 summer course on Aristotle concludes with an interpretation of the third chapter of Physics Gamma, in which the analysis of movement is extended beyond the perspective of the movement of a single moving thing. Factoring in the relationship between different moving things and their respective movements leads Aristotle to augment his theory of movement with a new category. While the categories of dunamis, energeia, and sterèsis suffice for understanding the movedness of a singular moving thing, study of the interaction between various moving things demands that one append to them the category of a “relation” (pros ti). What this pros ti adds to the understanding of the moving thing’s mode of being is the manner in which the moving thing is related, in its movement, to other beings.42 Aristotle distinguishes between two fundamental forms of such a relationship between a moving being and another being, namely, the active form of a doing (poièsis) and the passive form of an undergoing (pathèsis). That which is in movement owes its movement (pathèsis), in most cases, to another moving thing, and as a result of its movement, sets other things in movement (poièsis). Setting-​in-​movement and undergoing-​a-​movement are thus two forms of movedness bound to each other through a form of “reciprocation” (Wechselwirkung)43 or an interaction between a movement and a countermovement belonging to different beings. More closely considered, these two modalities of movedness are generally already at work in one and the same moving being as soon as this moving being enters into relation with other moving beings: a being that is in movement simultaneously moves and is moved.44 Heidegger repeatedly insists on the fact that one should not confuse this duplicity of movement with the separation between two beings where one initiates movement and the other undergoes it. The Aristotelian analysis of the double movement of “teaching and learning” appears to confirm this line of reasoning in that, here, it is indeed a case of a movement and a countermovement where the one cannot exist without the other and where their conjunction has to be understood as a necessary unity. This boils down to saying, with Heidegger, that it is ultimately a question of two modes of being of one and the same complex movement that is typically distributed across two different moving beings. The student is never confused with the teacher, but it is one and the same movement that constitutes their relation, their separation, and their different manners of relating to knowledge through teaching and learning.45 It is thus once again confirmed that every movement is itself related to a

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countermovement, and we shall have to gauge the consequences of this originary duplicity of movement when turning to a metaphysical conception of the human drives. It has to be admitted, however, that the interpretation of the pros ti and of the double nature of movement as poièsis and pathèsis follows a different path in the 1924 course. Heidegger is above all interested in showing that this relationship of every moving being to other moving beings is inserted into an all-​encompassing set of different beings that all relate to each other (albeit in diverse manners). Heidegger already has a term for this set, namely, the “world.” All moving beings are related to each other in this world that thus forms the horizon for all authentic comprehension of the meaning of the being of movement. “The moving of what sets in movement [das Bewegende] and the becoming-​moved of what is moved is the same there [Da], i.e., movement is not a being, but the how [Wie] of the being of the world.”46 Through this identification of the Aristotelian category of the pros ti with the mode of being of the “world” (which is the horizon on the grounds of which a being is related to other beings),47 the world is thus established as the cornerstone of the Heideggerian reconstruction of Aristotle’s theory of kinèsis. It follows that, for Heidegger, different modes of movedness equally (or rather, first and foremost) have to be understood as different modes of being-​in-​the-​world. In this way, Heidegger’s 1924 interpretation introduces a shift that is both subtle and laden with crucial consequences; the world is inserted into the role Aristotle reserves for phusis as archè of all natural movements. If life is indeed the most original form of a natural movement, then, following the direction of this shift, one must understand the different forms of enactment of the movement of life on the basis of the different ways of relating to the world: “Living [Das Leben] as a definite type of being-​in-​the-​world, is characterized by the pros ti.”48

The Double Movement of Human Existence In the Natorp report from 1922, as well as in his courses on the Aristotelian theory of movement from 1924 and 1926, Heidegger is essentially concerned with the particular movement that characterizes the life of human beings. It seems that it is only in courses after the publication of Being and Time that Heidegger becomes positively interested in the life of plants and animals and, more specifically, in a determination of the movement of life (Lebensbewegtheit) applicable to all living beings. The

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best-​known evidence of this evolution is certainly the course from 1929/​ 30, which nonetheless takes animal life, from within the perspective of fundamental ontology, to be a deficient (“poor”) or deprived mode of being-​in-​t he-​world of Dasein.49 It is only in Heidegger’s last course on Aristotle, in 1931, that his point of view changes and the analysis of the relationship of the movement of life with the world becomes less dominant. By situating the life movement of living beings within the compass of dunamis, and by understanding this dunamis as “force” or “capability,” Heidegger’s earlier interest in the integration of living beings into the harmonious milieu of the world makes room, in the 1931 course, for a different sort of focus: that of the duplicity of all force, the multiplicity of forces that govern life, and above all their possible antagonism. Further, it is no longer the thing as revealing its meaning in its way of making itself available (zuhanden) that serves as model for the phenomenological analysis of dunamis, but rather the starting point is that of possessing an as-​of-​yet unrealized capability or an inhibited force or power. In truth, this new way of understanding the dunamis of living beings as a drive force impatiently awaiting the opportunity to become active became unavoidable for Heidegger as early as the 1929/​30 course within the framework of his analysis of animal life. This course already emphasized not only the essential difference between the dunamis or “serviceability” (Dienlichkeit) of a Zeug and the dunamis or “subservience” (Diensthaftigkeit) of a living being’s bodily organs,50 but it also characterized with as much precision as could be desired the realization of a living being’s “capacities” (Fähigkeiten) or “being capable” (Befähigtsein)51 as the event of a drive’s “disinhibition” (Enthemmung).52 However, it is no less true that it is only in the 1931 course that Heidegger draws the unavoidable consequence, namely, that neither the difference in relation to the world, nor “care” as a mode of being and its absence in animal life can account for what is common to the drive-​based life of animals and humans. In fact, true to Sein und Zeit’s fundamental ontology perspective, the 1929/​30 winter semester course understood the difference between animals and humans essentially on the basis of their different ways of relating to the world. Drawing at length on various contemporary theories on animal life, Heidegger opposed Dasein’s openness to the world to a “poverty in world” characteristic of animals.53 This poverty of the animal’s relation with its surrounding world was presented at the time as a kind of “captivation” (Benommenheit)54 that constricts and circumscribes the animal’s drive behavior within the narrow limits of its immediate environment (Umgebung). The animal’s entire drive-​based life is thus enclosed within the limits of a “ring” or “circle” (Ring, Kreis), that is, an “instinctual sphere” (Triebkreis).55 According to this same course from 1929/​30, the

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ontological structure of human existence or Dasein as “care” also means that the human being can only experience its own “animal” drives in an indirect way and only has a “deprived” access to the drive-​based life of animals. However, Heidegger nonetheless showed himself not only to be sensitive in this course from 1929/​30 to the diversity of bodily organs and the vital drives that govern them, but also—­very explicitly—­drew attention to the necessity for an ontological understanding of the drive-​based flesh of living beings. Such an ontological understanding of drive forces implies, according to Heidegger’s purposefully provocative formulation, that dunamis or the drive capacity, far from being a property of the particular bodily organ, should instead be conceived as a mode of being of the living organism as a whole. By virtue of its drive-​based being, this latter should thus be able to procure for itself all the bodily organs it might need for realizing its potentialities in the form of actual behavior. 56 On the back of this newly awakened interest in the drive dynamic of animal and human life, it is remarkable how much the focal point of Heidegger’s analysis of Aristotelian kinèsis shifts away from energeia and toward dunamis, particularly in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta 1−3. Heidegger also presents us here with a new understanding of a specifically human dunamis as a power that humans can have without necessarily wanting to make use of it. Such restraint in the exercise of power ought to be seen, according to Heidegger, as the expression of a typically human sort of reserve, and should be regarded as the most redeeming quality of a force whose mode of being is that of a dunamis saturated with logos (meta logou). Possessing (haben, echein) a specifically human power would thus entail having the capacity to keep it in reserve (an sich halten). As such, this introduction of logos into the dynamic of the movement of life not only changes the meaning of the double nature we have already discovered in all forms of movement, but equally opens up within human existence the new dimension of choosing a sort of asceticism in the usage of power. To better appreciate the novelty of the understanding of human existence in the 1931 course, it is necessary to briefly recall the purport of Heidegger’s understanding of Aristotelian kinèsis in the framework of fundamental ontology—­a s it is presented in the 1922, 1924, and 1926 texts. If this framework indeed recognizes a double movement at work in human existence and its “tense” or drive-​based character, it continues to do so within the horizon of a being-​in-​the-​world whose most fundamental ontological character is one of care (Sorge). The essential traits of a reappropriation of Aristotle’s doctrine on kinèsis in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology are laid down as early as 1922, that is, five years prior to the publication of Being and Time. In fact, we can already read in the Natorp report that the movement of

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human life (menschliche Lebensbewegtheit) has the nature of a “movement of caring” (Sorgensbewegtheit)57 and that this consists in a “basic movement [Grundbewegtheit] of factic life. Factic life in such a way that in the concrete temporalization and maturation of its being it is concerned about its being.”58 Similarly to all other movements, this movement of human life lends itself to a double form of address (dichôs legetai) and realization: the human being can either live concerned especially with the “security” of its conditions of existence, or by adopting a mode of existence more appropriate to its true being in choosing to orient its life according to “a movement that counteracts the lapsing of care [verfallenden Sorgen].”59 These two modes of life are essentially distinguished by the opposite direction taken by the movement and countermovement of human existence: either toward its being-​toward-​death, or in avoidance of this self (“away from itself” [Wegvonihm]).60 Finally, the 1922 text also already mentions the possibility of an obstruction in the accomplishment of this movement and countermovement. It associates the fact of acting purely as a spectator of an indifferent presence (Vorhandenheit) of things to such an “obstruction [Sperrung] of the tendency toward concerned coping” with them.61 For Heidegger, such an understanding of things, guided by “curiosity” alone, is what best characterizes the attitude of science. This latter thus still comes from a mode of being of factic life, even if the accomplishing of the movement that leads this life either to concern itself with things or to care for its own existence, is disturbed and even interrupted by the attitude of a theoretical contemplation. We have seen how Heidegger, in his 1924 course, placed the category of pros ti—­which was meant to bring together the interaction between beings-​in-​movement and their common relation to the world—­ next to the Aristotelian triad of the archai of kinèsis (dunamis, energeia, and sterèsis). If human life has a privileged relation to the world (called “being-​in-​the-​world”), then it goes without saying that this pros ti becomes even more important when considering the specific nature of the movement of human life.62 As such, the summer semester course from 1924 strongly insists on the fact that human life is “being open [aufgeschlossen] to the world.”63 Depending on whether the caring movement of this life leads the moving human being toward surrounding things or, to the contrary, toward its own mode of existing, the opening to the world once again takes on the double form of either a circumspective concern with worldly things, or a sojourn in the world in the mode of “abiding” or “dwelling” in it.64 In the first case, that is, when the being-​in-​the-​world of human life is accomplished through a movement of concern, this movement consists in “manipulating” or handling (hantieren) and “busying-​oneself-​w ith” (Sich-​ zu-​schaffen-​Machen-​mit) things.65 The being of things that refer to each

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other within the world is then characterized by a specific pros ti that is nonetheless based, according to the well-​known doctrine of fundamental ontology, on the opening brought about by the circumspective movement of a human handling. For the 1924 course, the fundamental form of pros ti is thus clearly the one that characterizes the being-​in-​t he-​world of human existence. It follows that the double direction we attributed to the pros ti (poièsis or pathèsis, that is, activity or passivity) must present itself in a paradigmatic manner in the movement of this human life. As such, pathèsis can be said not only of things in their relation to the activity of human poièsis,66 but instead there is also a specifically human form of pathèsis—­w ithout which the understanding of human poièsis would remain incomplete. In the movement of human life as being-​in-​the-​world (that is, as pros ti), poièsis and pathèsis are thus inseparable: the discovery of things through their being handled, the opening of the world horizon, a “generally-​ having-​discovered” (Überhaupt-​Entdeckthaben)—­a ll these a priori forms and conditions of poièsis go hand in hand with the pathèsis of a “being approached by the world” (Angegangenwerden von der Welt) and a “disposition” (Befindlichkeit).67 For Heidegger, the various forms of pathèsis and poièsis do not, however, have exactly the same weight in relation to the movement of human life. Even if nous poiètikos (or active understanding) and nous pathètikos (or passive understanding as Befindlichkeit) both participate in the fundamental movement of human life constituted by noein (the intentionality of understanding, Vermeinen), and even if the latter serves as a kind of springboard for the former, it is still the former, that is, the nous poiètikos, that is favored by Heidegger.68 A same preference for the active mode of accomplishment of the movement of human life and for the specific movement constituted by noein (or understanding) can also be observed in the 1926 course (and in Being and Time, as is well known), even if this course also draws much attention to the fact that human life is governed as much by appetites as by nous and logos. A phenomenological approach to human life can thus not remain silent on the central role played by “conation” or desire (Streben, orexis) and the objects of desire (Erstrebtes, orekton) in this life, that is, that which is “desired” or “desirable.” Moreover, these desires share with all the other kinds of movedness characteristic of human life a double direction: “to ‘make for’ something” (pheugein) and “to ‘avoid’ it” (diôkein).69 It must be admitted, however, that these desires, despite their “function of disclosing,” only characterize what human life has in common with animal life, and not the relation to nous and logos that is the privilege of the human being. For humans alone: “The world is not then known only in the horizon of pursuit and flight, instead, beings in their being

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such and such [Soseindes] are spoken of [angesprochen], determined, understood, conceptualized, and thereby grounded [begründet] in their ‘what’ and their ‘why.’ ”70 It is time to return to the 1931 course reading of Metaphysics Theta 1–­3 and to the new understanding of human life to be found there. I have already mentioned the central role played in it by a new interpretation of dunamis in terms of “force,” and we will see that this leads Heidegger—­ contrary to the 1926 course that we have just left behind—­to recognize in humans a specifically human tendency that allows itself to be guided by logos, that is, a dunamis meta logou.

Dunamis as Drive Force of the Living Being. The Ambivalence of All Forces and the Obstacle of a Counterforce or an Unforce Heidegger’s interpretation of the first chapter of Metaphysics Theta contains the most significant developments not only for a properly ontological understanding of dunamis kata kinèsin (according to movement), but also for a metaphysics of the drive more generally speaking. In order to provide an idea of the semantic richness of dunamis as archè of kinèsis, Heidegger proposes a long list of terms for it—­“ force [Kraft], capacity [Fähigkeit], art [Kunst], talent [Begabung], capability [Vermögen], competence [Befähigung], aptitude [Eignung], skill [Geschicklichkeit], violent force [Gewalt], power [Macht]”71—­while still insisting that these terms are in no way “subjective” in meaning.72 He also underlines once more that such a force or dunamis kata kinèsin can be manifested either as a passive force (dunamis tou pathein) or an active force (dunamis tou poiein).73 Similarly to the emphasis already laid in the 1924 course on teaching and learning as two sides of one and the same movement,74 Heidegger here highlights once again that the force involved in doing something and the force required to endure something—­even if both these forces are distributed across different beings—­constitute two manners of being and appearing that together belong to the very essence of all force. (It should be noted, however, that in 1931 this original duplicity of the being of movement—­ teaching and learning—­is based on the primal duplicity of dunamis alone understood as force.) The being of force thus has the ability to manifest itself in a double guise and can be simultaneously invested in different beings. The “ontic” relation between a being that acts and a being that is acted upon by it, thus presupposes a complex “ontological unity” at work in force itself.75 In other words, all force can be characterized by an

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original duplicity, ambivalence, or versatility, and all force already comprises a counterforce within itself: This of course does not mean that a definite individual force directly at hand [vorhanden] consists of two forces, but rather that this force in its essence, that is, being as force as such, is this relation of the poiein to a paschein: being a force is both as once. . . . Force-​being [Kraftsein] does not consist of two present-​at-​hand forces, but rather, to the extent that a force is present, there is in this being present the implicating directedness toward the corresponding counterforce [Gegenkraft]. This is so because this outwardly directed implication belongs to the being-​force of force.76

This internal opposition or tension belonging to the being of all force clarifies why the focal point of Heidegger’s analysis of movement shifts from energeia to dunamis. It is important to note, however, that this takes nothing away from the fact that dunamis essentially aims at exercising its power, that is, it aims to “surpass itself” in a realization of its capacities.77 This orientation or pressure toward exercising its talents is so strong that a dunamis without (actual or deferred) energeia would be incomplete; in fact, it is only in the triumph of a successful realization that all the richness of a force can, retrospectively, be manifested.78 All the same, by underlining the role of dunamis at the expense of energeia, Heidegger is led to pay greater attention to the ontological status of a capacity as such, that is, to a form of actuality or reality that belongs to it independently of any realization. This then further leads Heidegger to a generous appraisal of curbed capacities and of the indispensable role that forces held in reserve play in the movement of human life. All these changes in the Heideggerian interpretation of Aristotle stem from a novel, more acute sensitivity to the original negativity that inhabits all force, independently of its relation to a not yet realized energeia. In the 1931 course, as a result, we will become acquainted with the essential relations that force has not only with a “counterforce,” but equally with an “unforce” (Unkraft) and with the force of a “resistance” (Widerständigkeit). When applied to the movement of human life, this means that all human activities and behaviors are the result of a choice and, above all, a previous confrontation regarding opposite and antagonizing drives. This also means that our experience of impotence, conflict, and resistance is not only due to our confrontation with the interests of other human beings, or with a reality that turns out to be indifferent or even hostile to our desires. Rather, our powers and drives are deeply marked, from the beginning, by an original and indelible negativity.

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Heidegger’s increased sensitivity to the different forms of an original negativity at work in dunamis is not limited to noting a reciprocity between the “force” of a doing or making (poiein) and the counterforce of an undergoing (pathein). That aspect of dunamis had already been well established at least since his 1924 course. The novel facet of the 1931 course is the observation that a certain mode of negativity can already be found in each of these two fundamental forms of force. Passive force or the force involved in receptivity (dunamis tou pathein) is already split between a positive “capacity to endure” (Ertragsamkeit) or “plasticity” (Bildsamkeit), on the one hand, and a negative “intolerance” (Unduldsamkeit) or “attitude of resistance” (Widerständigkeit; hexis apatheias), on the other.79 In the case of a production process, this double, contradictory form of passive force (dunamis tou pathein) means that a material (hulè) can either lend itself or be opposed and adverse, if not hostile, to receiving a particular form (morphè). That is, the material may be either appropriate or inappropriate for the realization of a certain work. Such inappropriateness or resistance is “not nothing”; rather, it entails the exercise of a force and even its most originary manifestation: That which resists is the first and most familiar form in which we experience a force. . . . What resists is itself the forceful and the force. . . . We experience the forceful first . . . in the resisting object. And in its resistance, we experience first its non-​ability [Nichtkönnen], its being-​inhibited [Gehemmtsein]. And only in this do we experience a wanting to be able [Können-​wollen], a tending to be able [Können-​mögen], and an ought to be able [Können-​sollen].80

One can conclude from this that the most originary mode of presence of a drive force is not a force waiting to be realized, but rather an inhibited force. This new interest in the negativity that is constitutive of forces is clearly evinced when Heidegger moves from discussing passive force (dunamis tou pathein) and its resistance, to an analysis of active force (dunamis tou poiein). In his view, impotence or “unforce” (Unkraft; adunamia) constitutes the negative counterpart of active force.81 This “unforce” should not be confused with the external “counterforce” to which I have repeatedly referred in the foregoing. For this “unforce” is neither a contrary force, nor a force of resistance that a patient opposes to the (too) dominant power of an agent; rather, it involves a loss or a “withdrawal” (Entzug; sterèsis) of power that directly affects active force as such. Fatigue, weariness, collapse, and all the other states in which we are without force should thus still be understood as modes of being and appearing of an active

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force. The nature of active force is conserved even when its potency has vanished, and this demonstrates, once more, that the being of force as dunamis does not at all depend on the actual exercise or realization of its power.82 There are thus two ways to understand Heidegger’s citation of the passage where Aristotle writes “every force is [also] unforce with reference to and in accordance with the same.”83 First, no real power is immune to a loss of its power or to a “breakdown” arising in the course of its exercise. Second, the being of a force (dunamis) remains fundamentally unaffected (“the same”) by any such events; that is, the existence of a force does not depend at all on the presence of a possibility to assert its power by being realized in an energeia. Heidegger seems to want to say that these two interpretations amount to the same, since the event of a loss of actual power only confirms how the ontological nature of force always comprises a form of unforce. Precisely when it acts as a check upon the actual power of active force, this unforce appears best able to reveal the being of force in general; in the negative mode of unforce, dunamis most clearly evinces its ontological difference with energeia. By explicitly insisting upon the revelatory power of “loss and withdrawal,” Heidegger thus renounces, at least implicitly, the principle of analyzing the nature of dunamis from the starting point of energeia and from within the privileged horizon of an actual movement. The following passage can thus be read as a retraction of earlier interpretations of dunamis, such as are to be found in the courses prior to Being and Time: “The steretic alteration of force into unforce is accordingly of a different kind from, say, the turn from a movement toward rest, not only because in general force and movement are different according to their material determination [Sachgehalt], but because the possessive character [Besitzcharakter] proper to force is more intimately bound up with loss and withdrawal [Verlust und Entzug].”84 It is thus a loss and withdrawal of power that most plainly shows how the existence of a force does not at all depend on the actual possibility of being exercised, and furthermore, that such an exercise of power is secondary to the being of force, because it is extrinsic to the very essence of force. It is in impediment, and not in realization, that forces become most pressing, and there is no better way than this of conveying everything that distinguishes the essence of a drive from the essence of acting: The incapable [Unvermögende] is precisely actual insofar as it does not find the transition to enactment. To not find the transition to . . . : this is not nothing, but instead can have the pressing force [Eindringlichkeit] and actuality of the greatest plight [Bedrängnis] and so be what is properly pressing [das eigentlich Drängende].85

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Human Life in Thrall to the Negativity of Drives. Choosing between Their Restriction and Disinhibition The richness of this newfound understanding of dunamis is revealed above all in its application to the movedness of life and, more particularly, the movement of human life. We have seen that dunamis has to be understood as a force that encapsulates the opposite poles of passivity and activity, and that these two fundamental forms of force are most clearly shown under the negative guises of a resistance and an unforce. When considered in view of the human experience of pressing drives and oppressing impotence, of painful inhibitions and chimerical volitions, and of enthusiasm and subjugation to an overwhelming force of passions, these findings entail a natural ontological anchoring of such experience within the framework of an Aristotelian conception of kinèsis. But a wholly new understanding of human life is announced in this novel Heideggerian interpretation of dunamis. Human existence henceforth seems more deeply marked by the disquiet of a “not-​having the force-​to” than by the proud assurance of a “can-​be” (Sein-​können), and the non-​being or privation (sterèsis) of the possibility of being able to realize one’s talents seems to add considerably to the burden of Dasein’s being-​toward-​death. Accordingly, the human being comes to be seen as an existent whose force of being is irremediably lacking full realization and for whom we cannot but wish happy encounters and favorable circumstances so as to avoid its remaining an unkept promise throughout its life. In fact, the high esteem in which one holds one’s own faculties often seems to have no other foundation than the fact that their prestige remains insulated against the trial of any possible realization. And even when not lacking the force of action or favorable circumstances, a human being must still face the fact that the realization of its forces will always be beset, along the way, with the obstacle of its own counter-​drives and the resistance of a reality that obstinately refuses to fulfill its wishes. It is true that these perspectives on human life, quasi-​ Schopenhauerian in their somberness, do not hold Heidegger’s attention for long. In his commentary on Metaphysics Theta 2 and 3, he quickly succumbs yet again to Aristotelian optimism. In his discussion with the Megarians in Theta 3, Aristotle is in fact less concerned with the loss of a power than with the conservation of a power that has not been exercised. This concern testifies to his wish to do justice to the independence of the being of dunamis in relation to its realization in an energeia, but one hardly finds mention in the text of any disquiet incited by the disorderly character of antagonistic drives or the impotence of humans to face up

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to deeds that outstrip them. Aristotle seems content to show that, even if all dunamis presses toward change (metabolè) into an energeia, the absence or lack of such a realization does not abolish the actual being of a force. In his view, this independence or excess of the being and the reality of a power in relation to its exercise comes about for at least two reasons. First, the realization of a power, far from exhausting and abolishing that power, to the contrary, only confirms and reinforces it. Second, the impossibility of realizing a capacity does not annihilate a power any more than its actual realization. As Heidegger notes, since the acquisition (Einübung) of a new capacity is so arduous and requires so much effort on our parts, we can at least count on the fact that, once acquired, its possession is not dependent on its being constantly exercised (Ausübung).86 Yet, how ought we to understand such a preservation of a capacity that has not been exercised, and what is to be said about its mode of presence or absence? It goes without saying that a capability that has not been realized or a competence that has not been exploited are completely different from a force that is lacking or an unforce. We know that, in Aristotle, the having (echein) or possessing of a habitual disposition to a certain type of action is called hexis. Heidegger has moreover always shown himself to be quite sensitive to the Aristotelian conception of the supreme practical hexis: what Aristotle calls phronesis. It is nonetheless striking to observe once more how, in his 1931 course, Heidegger gives his interpretation of hexis a new twist, of which one cannot yet find any trace in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics in his 1924/​25 course. Once more, the negative character of hexis is set in a positive light, namely, in the roles assigned to reserve and restraint in Heidegger’s appreciation of what it means to possess a certain skill or capability. In this connection, Heidegger describes the possession of an unexercised power that has the form of a hexis in the following way: “Something which is capable [das Vermögende] is capable in that it ‘has’ a capability [Vermögen]; it holds itself in this capability and holds itself back [an sich hält] with this capability—­and thereby precisely does not enact it. This holding itself back is at the same time a holding onto for . . . [Aufbehalten für] (the enactment itself).”87 One should not conclude from this that Heidegger has converted into a proponent of unused talents or the suspension of all active life. What he seems to have in view is rather a deepening of the understanding of active life that lays emphasis on its anchoring in a set of drive-​like forces that both precedes active life and makes it possible, and whose potentialities life will never come close to exhausting. Couched in more classical language, the exercise (energeia) by which a power (dunamis) is made explicitly present in the world rests upon an anterior, more hidden, and more steadfast presence of this power: that of a dunamis that

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has become hexis.88 The exercise of a human capacity is thus signaled by an intensified and reinforced presence of this capacity. The possession of a power is confirmed and reinforced by its exercise.89 However, exercising capacities also entails their transformation. What then happens, exactly, when a capability, power, or drive actualizes itself, that is, leads to an action that reveals it for what it truly is? Right at the end of the 1931 course, Heidegger makes use of the fairly surprising example of a hundred-​meter sprinter (Hundertmeterläufer) “taking his or her mark” to help us better understand the nature of the actualization or enactment of a power that has been acquired and perfected thanks to countless prior instances of exercise: What presents itself to us is not a man standing still, but rather a man poised for the start. . . . The only thing needed is the call “go.” Just this call and he is already off running, hitting his stride, that is, in enactment. . . . Now everything of which he is capable is present [anwesend]. . . . This execution of his capability [Vermögen] is not its brushing aside, not its disappearance, but rather the carrying out of that toward which the capability itself as a capability pushes [drängt]. . . . To actually be capable is the full preparedness of being in position to, which lacks only the disinhibition [Enthemmung] into enactment, such that . . . when it has happened, this means: when the one who is capable sets himself to work [sich ins Zeug legt], then this enactment is truly practice [Ausübung] and just this.90

The most interesting contribution to our discussion of this phenomenological description (which would have deserved to be cited in full) undoubtedly lies in how it makes the actualization of a capability or power, whose latency does not cease to be pressing, dependent upon the event of a “disinhibition.” This consideration sheds new light on our question concerning the change in nature undergone by a capability or a drive when it moves to action. What Heidegger’s description of the hundred-​ meter sprinter suggests to us is that there is little gained in this transition to action, and it is dictated by an external event of a purely negative nature, namely, the mere disappearance of an impediment or obstacle. If there is any novelty at all in the actualization of a virtual power, it exclusively concerns the enactment, and thus the visibility, of a force and not its deepest nature. There is no better way than this of expressing just how much energeia owes to dunamis: in being realized, the power or force only undergoes a superficial modification consisting in the suppression of a privation, that is, the suppression of a form of negativity that still weighed upon its latent presence as a simple drive. The positivity of an act that

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realizes a drive force is thus, in truth, nothing more than the result of a double negation. Recalling what Heidegger said about “being-​inhibited” (gehemmt sein) under the form of a hexis apatheias (attitude of intolerance [Unduldsamkeit] and “resistance” [Widerständigkeit]),91 it is tempting to make the event of a pressing capability’s or drive’s “disinhibition” depend not only on the external “call” of the race starter, but also on the disappearing or surpassing of the internal resistance constituted by apathy. This would further lead one to think that, despite its pressing character, the drive could go hand in hand with an inhibition that belongs to it, and is thus not due to an external drive counterforce or a norm imposed on the drive from outside. As such, when comparing the inhibition of an active force due to internal resistance to a hexis apatheias, the example of the laziness or indolence that often accompanies being sure of possessing a talent spontaneously comes to mind. The drive—­much like desire—­can thus be thought of as concerned with preserving itself as drive rather than with “emptying itself” of its tension in a “fulfillment” of its striving. In actuality, neither laziness in promoting our talents nor the conservative character of our drives receive much attention in Heidegger’s commentary on Metaphysic Theta 2, a text where Aristotle very explicitly addresses the nature of specifically human forces. According to Aristotle, a human force can be distinguished from all other types of force—­whether forces of nature or animal drives—­by the fact that it is governed by logos, making it into a dunamis meta logou (a power with logos). While the forces belonging to a lifeless being (apsychos) remain foreign and are often even hostile to humans, every human being partakes in the set of capabilities manifest in animals and plants, that is, in the forces and instincts that govern the life of living beings (empsychos). It is well known that the study of these vital forces or instincts has prime importance in Aristotle’s De Anima. Given that Heidegger is more particularly interested in the nature of dunamis according to movement (kata kinèsin), he never fails to underline the central role played by movement in the vital forces of plants and animals. The perception (aisthèsis) shared by all living beings and their faculty of discernment (krinein) are held to depend on their capacity to move (kinein). Consequentially, the differentiation between their faculties of perception depends on the richness of the forms of movement that are at their disposal. Heidegger’s term for this perception by living beings consisting in such a discernment or exploration (Erkunden)92 of the surrounding world by way of bodily movements is “orientation.”93 This animal power to find its way in the world in function of its needs is conjoined, in human beings, with logos. For Heidegger, this logos, no less than animal aisthèsis, is still related to movement in an essential manner, that is, to that very particular movement that constitutes the concerned commerce of

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the human being with worldly things and the care for itself. The mark of this logos is so deeply imprinted in all human capabilities that the being of the human is designated by Aristotle as a “having logos” (logon echein). In this way, the “being” of the human and, above all, its “potentiality-​to-​be” according to the dunamis of its capabilities are grounded in the “having” of logos: When we speak of the besouled being who has logos, we do not mean that logos, conversance [Kundschaft] (discourse) [Rede], is merely added on [Beigabe]; rather, this echein, having, has the meaning of being. It means that humans conduct themselves, carry themselves, and comport themselves in the way they do on the basis of this having. The echein means having in the sense of disposing of . . . ; to be empowered to [in Kraft sein zu] and above all through conversance (logos) means: to be conversant [kundig sein] in oneself and from out of oneself.94

This logos that so profoundly marks all the specifically human capabilities and powers nonetheless does nothing to alleviate the original opposition or clash that characterizes, as we have seen, all dunamis in general as force. The dunamis of human beings, sculpted as it is by logos, is no less (but perhaps differently) ambivalent than any other sort of force: “force as dunamis meta logou has, from its moment of origin, a double direction [zwiegerichtet] and a duplicity [zwiespältig].”95 What logos adds to the natural clash of nonhuman forces is perhaps nothing more than the privilege of the capacity, or rather the obligation, of having to choose between opposing forces or even of having to choose to simultaneously pursue one and the same force in its double directionality. All these choices can, ensuingly, turn out happily or unhappily. With respect to all these natural drives or forces, the choices that humans receive from logos are essentially limited to a decision as to their inhibition or disinhibition. Just as one must distinguish between the impact of logos on the natural versus the acquired forces of human beings, these drive-​based choices are not to be confused with the rational deliberation that should regulate human action according to Aristotle. For a natural drive does not choose its goal, and any reflection as to the best way of realizing it is further foreign to it. Human drive-​based action is thus not true action, and the freedom that accompanies the drive-​based decisions imposed by logos is a limited freedom. Nonetheless, the logos that places its mark on the human drive, and distinguishes it from the animal drive, leads to an increased negativity in the drive and inevitably complicates its mode of actualization. By definition human beings (that is, beings with logos) cannot escape drive-​based choices.

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Combined with the necessity of drive-​based choices, the duplicity that characterizes the dunamis meta logou (force with logos) still lends itself to different scenarios of realization or enactment. In conformity with his characteristic optimism, Aristotle’s preference always tends toward the scenario of a complementarity between opposing human forces. Such is the case in the medical arts, the example that Aristotle uses most readily. This example is remarkable in that it highlights a dunamis meta logou or conversance (Kundigheit) conjoining in itself two human capabilities that, despite going in opposite directions, not only complete each other, but mutually reinforce each other. In the medical art of treating an illness, the human art and know-​how (technè) of providing care or doctoring (Verarztung, iatreusis) and the opposite capability of letting the natural power of healing (hugiaisis) that belongs to phusis run its course are called upon to complete each other.96 Upon closer examination, such a complementarity of opposite powers can already be observed in the process of hugiaisis itself: the negative force to combat illness and the positive force to promote health both feed into each other.97 However, it should immediately be added that this is not always and necessarily the case. Far too often, the exercise of medical power to promote health runs up against the negativity of the “unforce” at work in the doctor’s impotence or incompetence when it comes to combating illness efficiently: “Every dunamis meta logou prepares for itself, and this necessarily, through its proper way of proceeding, the continually concomitant opportunity for mistaking, neglecting, overlooking, and failing; thus every force carries in itself and for itself the possibility of sinking into un-​force.”98 And, the third scenario, there are also circumstances—­by far the most frequent—­in which there is neither complementarity between opposing forces nor a human skill to pursue a force in its twofold direction. These are situations where human beings cannot escape the painful choice of making a decision that is either wholly positive or wholly negative. It is only at the very end of his interpretation of Metaphysics Theta 2 that Heidegger draws our attention to the origin of this necessity for humans to make such decisions and such choices between opposing and nevertheless equally possible directions in the realization of their powers; it stems from an ontological finitude that characterizes force in general: Over and above the particular discussions, however, this is the decisive content of the second chapter, the fact that therein the essential notness [Nichtigkeit], that is to say, the inner finitude of every force as such is illuminated. . . . The inner essential finitude of every dunamis lies in the decision, required from out of itself and indissociable from its enactment, to turn to one or the other side. Where there is force and power, there is finitude.99

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This natural tension and opposition in all force is perceptibly reinforced, deepened, and accentuated when it combines with the logos whose nature also consists, as we have noted, in being related to opposites. The intimate contradiction residing within all dunamis thus comes to be conjoined, in the human dunamis meta logou, with the oppositions due to dichôs legetai (doubleness in saying). Human logos thus appears as the most originary site where all forms of opposition and all forms of non-​being are revealed.100 Only logos is capable of bringing into appearance the profound nature of a lack (sterèsis) that inhabits all dunamis kata kinèsin (force according to movement) and that consists in the affirmation of a non-​being. It is also only in logos, to which belongs the power to unite opposites within itself, that there can be a manifestation of the original interweaving between positivity and negativity, between givenness and withdrawal.101 It is only in logos that the experience of this original interweaving of opposites can be distilled into an experience of human finitude. Only through logos, finally, can a human being come face to face with the finitude of its own life’s movedness as well as with the necessity of making choices between the inhibition and the disinhibition or release of its drives.

2

The Metaphysics of Drive and Desire in Leibniz

Chemical affinities and physical causalities themselves refer to primary forces capable of preserving their long chains by contracting their elements and by making them resonate: no causality is intelligible without this subjective instance. Not every organism has a brain, and not all life is organic, but everywhere there are forces that constitute microbrains, or an inorganic life of things. —­Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-​ce que la philosophie? For when unfathomably stirred, the subtler elements of man do not always reveal themselves in the concocting act; but, as with all other potencies, show themselves chiefly in their ultimate resolvings and results. —­Melville, Pierre or the Ambiguities Our hearts find no peace until they rest in you. —­Saint Augustine, Confessions

For everything that interests us, Leibniz is the most Aristotelian of the philosophers of modernity. Like Aristotle, he considers movement or, more precisely, being-​in-​movement as the most fundamental mode of being of all beings. As in Aristotle, the question concerning the being of beings, that is, their “ousia” or “substance,” is thus inseparable for Leibniz from the question concerning the being of movement and change. And again like Aristotle, Leibniz understands actual movement on the basis of what precedes it and constitutes its condition of possibility, namely, dunamis or, in Leibnizian language, “force” (vis). For Leibniz, this means that all substances are constituted by a set of internal forces from which all their activities are derived. As such, in Leibniz’s metaphysics we will 47

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find once again the vast problematic of the forces that we addressed in our interpretation of Aristotle: blind forces and forces guided by reason (dunamis meta logou), acting forces and impotent forces (adunamia), opposing forces and the conflict between forces and counterforces. We will take advantage of these deep resemblances to examine Leibniz on questions for which we did not find a satisfactory answer in Aristotle: questions such as how to understand a force’s actualization in terms of its modification under the influence of other forces, or how a multiplicity of antagonistic forces come together in an ordered fashion in one and the same substance. In the context of a metaphysical analysis of the drive, however, the most pressing of these questions concerns how a restraining force holds back the exercising of an active drive, in other words, how a drive is inhibited by an internal and thus essential force, rather than by an external and thus accidental counterforce. For Leibniz is not content to accentuate the active nature of dunamis to the point of conflating it with “entelechy,” nor with making this “active force” (vis activa) the very principle of all substance (forma substantiae). He also adds to it, as its complement, a “passive force” (vis passiva) of “resistance” that weighs on all finite substance and holds it back from the immediate and unlimited realization of all its powers of action. In a deepening of this question concerning the essential negativity of the drive and, most particularly, of the human drive, we will make sure to ask Leibniz to enlighten us on the essential negativity of human desire and what differentiates desire from drives. If it turns out that desire is marked more by lack than by the power of drives, Leibniz may be led (perhaps despite himself) to go back from Aristotle’s Physics to Plato’s Symposium and the story it tells of the birth of Eros, born from the unequal parentage of Penia and Poros, that is, from the severity of lack and the profuseness of riches. Leibniz’s metaphysics is better suited than Aristotle’s to deal with the dialectical relation between drive and desire (that is, a complementarity based on an essential difference) for the simple reason that it is already part of the tradition of the philosophy of subjectivity characteristic of modernity. Indeed, Leibniz’s return to Aristotle is always mediated by a discussion with his contemporaries, among which Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke hold pride of place. The meaning of “substance” in Leibniz includes both an “ousia” made up of forces striving for change and a “subject” with “perceptions” and “appetites.” Though it is true that Aristotle already attributed the powers of aisthèsis (or noèsis) and orexis to the souls of living beings in his De Anima, it is also true that he was far from making these into subjective powers held by all substance—­and thus even by a material substance. What is it then that makes all force subjective and all substance a subject for Leibniz? Without a doubt, the answer is that

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substance is a “subject” because of its “individual” unity, and not because of its subjective powers of representation and appetition (which are but an “expression” of its subjective being). In other words, these powers and actions belong to this substance alone and distinguish it from all other substance. Or, put otherwise, in the end all substance is only preoccupied with its individual unity or, more precisely, with the “unification” of its different “subjective” modes of being. The substantial being of all beings (material, living, or spiritual) thus consists for Leibniz in continuously affirming and reaffirming itself, across all its powers, instances of lack, and actions, as an absolutely unique “monad.” For Leibniz, all substances are individual monadic subjects whose most fundamental activity consists in gathering their forces together in view of their unity. All substances are thus drive subjects for Leibniz. Their forces simultaneously disperse and unify them or, more precisely, push them toward unifying their dispersion. To be sure, this is only possible to the extent that the forces of dispersion that lead monads to take an interest in other monads bring them back without fail to their own individual unity. Wanting to encompass all other substances within itself without ever losing itself in them—­this is the most fundamental drive of all monads and the whole secret of Leibniz’s monadology. The secret of this monadology that extends the dimensions of intersubjectivity to the universe in its entirety thus consists in understanding how a monad (any monad—­even a material one) can encounter other monads, which it already (at least virtually) contains within itself through its representations and appetites. This secret of a drive seeking what it already possesses is, in the final analysis, the secret of a subjective finitude that encompasses the infinite richness of the world from its own particular, individual, and unique “point of view.” Finally, it is the secret of a universal harmony that rests, nonetheless, on a conception of monadic substances that are all subject to internal conflicts between antagonistic forces. This Leibnizian monadology is open to at least two readings, depending on whether one emphasizes the transcendence or the immanence of monadic drives. According to the first reading, the monad possesses a kind of will to power that moves it to conquer the world—­ while watching over its own interests, that is, without ever losing sight of its own individual unity. According to the second reading, the former is but a false and useless venture out of oneself since, from the moment of its creation, the monad already contains everything that it is not, that is, the whole universe, within itself. Allowing for a fair bit of schematization, the second interpretation can be attributed to Deleuze, and the first to Heidegger. It is too early to take sides, and it is not at all certain that one has to take sides. I will thus focus on a direct interpretation of Leibniz’s

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texts and only return in the end to the Heideggerian reading of the monadology to point out both its originality (a temporal understanding of the drive dynamic) and its lacunae (a total absence of the notion of desire). It is essentially in order to show the deep-​seated unity between his way of reading Aristotle (which we made much use of in the preceding chapter) and of reading Leibniz that I will emphasize Heidegger at the expense of Deleuze. Moreover, in treating the active forces of monadic substances in terms of the “pressing” (Drängen) “drive” (Trieb, Drang), Heidegger’s interpretation of Leibniz is also closer to my own concerns. This interpretation of Leibniz by Heidegger in his 1928 summer semester lecture course1 (briefly revisited in his course from the following semester)2 precedes his summer semester lecture course from 1931 (Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1–­3. On the Essence and Actuality of Force);3 it will thus also allow us, in an accessory and retrospective manner, to take stock of what Heidegger’s understanding of dunamis in Aristotle owes to his prior readings of Leibniz. However, let us leave to interpreters of Heidegger the task of deciding whether and to what extent this is also the case for his long Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche in the years that followed.

Substance as Force and as Subject (Leibniz and Aristotle against Descartes) I have already stated that the meaning of Leibniz’s return to Aristotelian metaphysics is to be understood in the context of the debate with his contemporaries, as well as his concern with giving a general and positive definition of the notion of “substance.” Given the focus on what all kinds of substance (material, living, and spiritual) have in common,4 the question regarding the nature of substance belongs to general metaphysics. Indeed, according to Aristotle and Leibniz, general metaphysics is mainly concerned with the mode of subsistent being that characterizes all beings and that can be said (“analogically” according to Aristotle) of each being. For Leibniz’s contemporaries, influenced in this regard by Scholasticism, being in the form of a substance is opposed to being in the form of an accident, and thus means: existing in itself, that is, autonomously. Descartes’s definition of substance in his Principia is well known: “it needs no other thing in order to exist.”5 What thus exists in itself can also be understood through itself, that is, as Spinoza says in his Ethics: “that the conception of which does not require the conception of another thing from which it has to be formed.”6 As Heidegger judiciously points out, this characterization of the autonomy of substance only through its

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independence in relation to another substance could not satisfy the Aristotelian in Leibniz, for it remained purely “negative.”7 As a good phenomenologist, Heidegger also raises the question concerning how to approach or access the nature of a substance in general. In other words, what kind of particular substance was used as “guiding thread” (Leitfaden) by Leibniz’s contemporaries for their definition of substance-​ in-​general? Given the advance of the natural sciences in the seventeenth century, the first candidate to present itself for this function must have been the substance of material bodies. This is why Leibniz’s critique of the Cartesian definition of the particular substance belonging to material bodies offers a privileged access, according to Heidegger,8 for better understanding the meaning of Leibniz’s definition of substance-​in-​general as a monad. The opening move of Leibniz’s monadology thus consists in opposing Descartes by calling upon the Aristotelian understanding of the ousia of material things, that is, their being-​in-​movement, in order to give a, this time, positive definition of their monadic substance. It is only at the end of this investigation of the nature of material substances that the surprising reversal occurs which leads us to understand that Leibniz’s true model for the definition of the material monad is none other than the substantial being of the “soul” of living monads, or the “ego.”9 In this chiasmic interweaving of guiding threads, the material substances that were supposed to help us understand the monadic substance-​in-​general turn out, in the end, to be quasi-​living substances whose forces are too bound up in matter to be able to detach themselves from it and awaken to an autonomous psychic life. The ultimate guiding thread for Leibniz’s definition of the monad-​in-​general is thus not the physical movement or change of material bodies, but rather the life movement of living beings. Much like the souls of living beings, the forces that govern material substances are thus already to be understood as drives. We know—­and Leibniz continuously reminds us10 —­that Descartes defines the substance of material bodies by its “extension” and “impenetrability.” While impenetrability is partially accepted in Leibniz’s view (on condition of reinterpreting it as the result of a force of resistance of material substance to penetration),11 the same cannot at all be said for extension. It is not that material bodies are not extended, but that this extension does not suffice to define the nature of material substance for the simple reason that it already presupposes the subsistent existence of that which is thus extended. Or, to speak in Leibnizian terms, far from being an absolute predicate that sufficiently determines what it is to be a material body, extension is but a relative predicate of material substance, and only one predicate among others, at that.12 For in order for there to be a material substance, there has to be a substantial unity of the material body

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(or of its parts), and extension, given its infinite divisibility, can never account for this. The same argument is also valid for the geometrical points making up the extended surface of a body. These points are no more substances than the entire surface of a body, for they also lack a positive principle of unification. As simple (negative) residues from the operation of dividing an extended body, these geometrical points have no positive unity to provide them with an independent and autonomous, that is, substantial, existence. For these points to become “atoms of substance,” according to Leibniz, they would have to transform themselves into “animated points”—­animated, more specifically, by an active force of self-​unification. In other words, geometry has to be left behind for a metaphysics of monadic substances.13 These points are to be conceived as primitive autonomous substances having the dual active force to distinguish themselves, through their individuality, from all other primitive substances, and to unite with other primitive substances to construct the unity of a composite body or a surface. As Deleuze claims, by becoming both a force of unification and a force of division in Leibniz, the point becomes a “fold.” The discussion concerning the metaphysical nature of the point leads to a discussion on geometry and its contribution to a mathematical physics of material bodies. In Leibniz’s view, not only is geometry incapable of accounting for the nature of the point except as the (negative) result of dividing a continuum, it is also incapable—­regardless of what Descartes or Spinoza might think—­of serving as a guide for either the physics or the metaphysics of material bodies. For both physical atoms and geometrical points lack an active unifying force.14 Mechanics as the model of physics thus has to be left behind for a “dynamics” that accounts for the nature and movement of bodies through the notion of force that Descartes had explicitly excluded from the natural sciences.15 This new dynamic physics is the natural complement of the new monadological metaphysics in which material substances are made up of forces. Among these forces, the active unifying force of substance has “preeminence” of place. This dynamic metaphysics is in fact less new than the dynamic physics to which it leads, for it is in large part inspired by Aristotle, for whom—­a s we have already seen—­metaphysics and physics go hand in hand. To close and before going into more depth on Leibniz’s dynamic conception of the nature of the metaphysics and the physics of material bodies, let us summarize what his monadology owes to Aristotle. Firstly, an understanding of the mode of being of substance in terms of the activity of a movement. For Leibniz, like Aristotle, movement in space only constitutes one kind of movement among others. Referring explicitly to

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Aristotelian alloiôsis,16 Leibniz reproaches Descartes for overlooking not only forces, but also the multiple forms of qualitative change explained by a variation in these forces.17 Secondly, Leibniz’s monadology owes to Aristotle the conviction that those things whose substance consists of being-​in-​movement (and in-​change) must possess within themselves the active principle of this movement. To the extent that this substance strives with all its might (conatus) to accomplish this active movement and to the extent that it possesses within itself the necessary force for this accomplishment (and that it does not thus require any external help to this end), it can be said to already contain this future action within itself.18 As such, all monadic substance is comprised of active forces, the most primitive of which is the active force of individual unification for all its acts and appetites. All finite substance also includes passive forces that hamper the complete realization of its active forces. As such, all finite substance is thus a drive subject whose being-​in-​movement arises from a struggle between antagonistic forces. True, these active and passive forces are of a different nature for material, living (that is, made up of a body and a soul), or purely spiritual substance. However, it is no less true that all created substance includes active forces that act and passive forces that hold back and resist this action.19 Finally, Leibniz’s monadology owes to Aristotle’s hylomorphism the conceptual tools necessary for conceiving this antagonism between primitive active forces and primitive passive forces without putting the unity of monadic substance at risk. Indeed, these primitive active forces and primitive passive forces relate to each other in monadic substance in the same way as “substantial form” and “prime matter” do in Aristotle. Yet, even though Leibniz understands the prime matter of substance as consisting of a passive force (essentially of resistance), he still falls in line with the Aristotelian model that privileges morphè over hulè.20 By emphasizing the fact that no finite substance lacks primitive passive forces, Leibniz also seems to protect in advance against the danger of an active drive with nothing to stop its impulse and that would thus threaten the very subsistence of the substance that it animates. If such a “death drive” (in the Freudian sense) has any meaning in Leibniz, it would have to be limited to a substance that, instead of being “finite,” that is, “created,” is free of all material attachment and any passive counterforce of resistance, and thus has recourse to an unlimited creative force. If God alone is a monadic substance comprised exclusively of active forces, if the power of these active forces is without limit or impediment in God alone, then God alone could be inhabited by a death drive. To be sure, such a hypothesis is without meaning in Leibniz, for the unlimited power of God—­far from being a blind passion—­is enlightened by his Wisdom

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and his Love. In human beings as well, according to Leibniz, drives are much more durably cured of their blindness by the active force of reason than by the “impediments” of these passive forces that express nothing more than bodily weariness. We will come back to this.

Drives and the Movements of Bodies The interactions of bodies condition a sensibility, a proto-​ perceptibility and a proto-​a ffectivity that . . . complete their actualization only in the living being. What is called “perception” is no longer a state of affairs but a state of the body induced by another body, and “affection” is the passage of this state to another state as increase or decrease of potential-​power through the action of other bodies. Nothing is passive, but everything is interaction, even gravity. . . . Even when they are nonliving, or rather inorganic, things have a lived experience because they are perceptions and affections. —­Deleuze and Guattari, Qu’est-​ce que la philosophie?

For Leibniz, material bodies are no exception to his doctrine of general metaphysics according to which every substance is “animated” by active and passive forces. It is under the impulse of this new metaphysics that Leibniz replaces the mechanistic physics of extended bodies with his new “dynamic” physics through which he intends to free himself from a purely geometrical conception of inanimate nature. His famous opuscule Specimen Dynamicum (1695) lays the foundations for this new physics.21 And in his subsequent texts from the years 1695 to 1706, 22 Leibniz will continue to refer back to this opuscule each time he addresses the nature of material bodies. In all these later texts, Leibniz once again continuously uses as guiding thread the critique of the Cartesian conception of the composition and local movements of inanimate bodies, as well as of the union of body and soul in living organisms; and he again cites Aristotle’s physics as his inspiration. This is already true for his first sketch of the metaphysical conception of substance in terms of forces, to be found in a very short text from 1694, the title of which, by the way, leaves little doubt as to its author’s great ambitions: On the Correction of Metaphysics and the Notion of Substance.23 In these texts, Leibniz often starts by conceding to Descartes and the Cartesians that living bodies as well as material bodies are “aggregates” composed of parts that are more or less independent from each other.

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Showing himself to be both an authoritative critic and a refined diplomat, he grants this point in a letter written to the Cartesian De Volder on the 20th of June 1703.24 This concession to the Cartesians should not come as too much of a surprise to us, however, for it is only the nature of these parts and their unifying principle that Leibniz finds problematic in Descartes. For Leibniz, they cannot be “atoms” or “mathematical points” that are all the same, but must, on the contrary, be individual simple substances (“metaphysical points”) that are thus all different from each other. While the composite living body may certainly be an organism that works like a “machine of nature”25 or “organic machine,”26 and while it may be without metaphysical—­that is, substantial—­existence, this purely phenomenal being is nonetheless made up of simple substances or “monads” that cannot directly act on each other.27 And this point is clearly stated long before the writing of Specimen Dynamicum. As proof, let us cite the draft of a letter from Leibniz to Arnauld on March 23, 1690: “A body is an aggregate of substances; it is not, properly speaking, one substance. Consequently, there must be found throughout the body indivisible substances incapable of generation and corruption, corresponding somewhat to souls.”28 The same can be said for inorganic material bodies. When a physical body collides on its trajectory with another physical body that is at rest, rather than hitting an inert body without any forces of its own and to which the first body communicates its force, the first body merely awakens and modifies, according to Leibniz, the primitive forces belonging to the metaphysical substance of the hit body from the very moment of its creation by God. As such, there is no law of mechanics that can fully explain what happens when two material bodies collide. For this impact between two physical bodies must, in the final analysis, always be understood from a metaphysical point of view as a relation between two simple substances that, despite being inhabited by many primitive forces, are each indivisible, unique, and completely autonomous. The observation of a physical impact between bodies thus always lends itself to a reading that emphasizes “conflict” between the metaphysical forces that govern each of the bodies involved. Contrary to Descartes, for Leibniz the hit body is not content to passively undergo the impact; rather, this physical impact awakens and mobilizes an active metaphysical force that lay dormant within it. Given that all simple material substance is already necessarily and indissolubly made up of “matter” and “form,” and that its monadic unity implies a passive force and an active force, far from merely undergoing the force of the body that hits it passively in its “mass,” the hit body actively responds by mobilizing its own active force, that is, its “elasticity” (vis elastica).29 Thus, its movement is never the direct or exclusive result

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of the hitting body’s movement: “each one [i.e., globe] is set in motion by its own force, namely, by elastic force [sua propria vi, nempe elastica], when driven back by the body striking it.”30 As such, to properly understand the nature of this dynamic interaction between two material bodies, one must move from the observation of a physical impact to its metaphysical explanation based on the substantial nature of each of the bodies involved and their “primitive” active and passive forces. If the being or “substance” of each simple material body taken in itself is to be understood as an indivisible unity containing many primitive forces, it follows that the physical encounter between different material bodies is equivalent to a conflict between the individual “primitive” forces of the two substances involved. To be even more precise, when a body at rest is hit by a moving body, the hit body reacts with its own “primitive” passive and active forces;31 however, as a result of the modification brought about by the impact, these latter are transformed into “derivative”32 forces. It is this internal modification (brought about, however, by an external collision) of material substance that is the only veritable cause of the outwardly observable change in which a material body shifts from immobility to movement. Even a physical body, then, can only move by itself in the final (metaphysical) analysis. “By itself” does not mean “out of itself,” and this is why the movement of one body under the influence of another body concerns modified or “derivative” primitive forces. Yet, what one material body can receive from another material body is never movement itself; even less is it the force to move itself. All it can receive is a constraint that leads it to reorganize all the internal forces it already possesses. The change of a body from rest to movement is thus nothing but the effect of this reorganization of its own internal forces. Though internal and autonomous, this reorganization is not for that reason spontaneous. It is true that, according to Leibniz, the simple substances of the material universe cannot act directly on one another; however, they are nonetheless so intimately tied to each other that the modification of one necessarily implies the modification of all the others. Nothing speaks against a purely physical analysis of the way in which a body’s movement seems to be caused by the movement of another body that hits it. Yet, Leibniz says, this would be to remain on the level of observing simple, empirical “phenomena.” These simple phenomena are nonetheless real phenomena, for primitive forces and the changes they undergo never manifest themselves directly. This is why an approach through physics is to be privileged in reaching a metaphysical understanding of the primitive forces of material bodies. In order to take on this propaedeutic role, however, physics needs to go beyond its limitation, in Cartesian physics, for instance, to observing only the locomotive

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movements of material bodies in geometrical space and their analysis in terms of mass and speed. The “correction of metaphysics” in Leibniz thus involves reforming physics from mechanics to a “dynamics” that no longer leaves out natural “forces.” Yet, to stop at this dynamic physics without progressing toward a dynamic metaphysics of material bodies would be to close oneself off from an ontological understanding of them in terms of monadic substances made up of complementary and antagonistic forces. On the contrary, the new dynamic physics should seek out its philosophical foundation in a dynamic metaphysics that serves, moreover, as its source of inspiration.33 The observable forces with which the physicist works are, in the end, nothing more than a derivative manifestation of metaphysical forces brought to light by the first philosophy of substances. As such, the “phenomena” of physics only concern the “derivative” forces of material bodies, and not the “primitive” forces belonging to the monadic substances from which they arise and which fall within the purview of metaphysics alone.34 What “primitive” forces animate the material body, then, and how should we understand the unity of these different forces and, thus, the individuality of the body’s monadic substance? If, in opposition to “physical points,” “atoms of substance” or “metaphysical points” are truly “indivisible” unities,35 what is the principle of their unity and what is the diversity that they unite within their simultaneously indivisible and unique substance? At first sight, there seems to be little difference between Leibniz’s metaphysics of the substance of material bodies and the Scholastic revisiting of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Does Leibniz not claim that all material substance is made up of a “substantial form” (“forma substantialis” or “entelecheia prima”) and a “primary matter” (“materia prima”) or “mass” (“molis”)?36 Yet, this would be to forget the profound change in meaning of these terms once the “form” and “matter” of material substances are to be understood as “forces.” Indeed, as we will see, in his conception of the “primitive active force” belonging to “substantial form,” Leibniz very explicitly plays Aristotle (“entelecheia hè prôtè”)37 off against the “potentia nuda”38 of the Scholastics. For Leibniz, as is the case for Aristotle’s morphè, the primitive active force that characterizes the substantial form of a material body is an “absolute” force that relates to an action of which it is not only capable, but toward which it strives (“conatus seu tendentia”) with all its might and that it brings about through its own forces—­on the condition that no obstacle stands in its path.39 As the substantial form of a material body, the first task of this primitive active force is to unify the different forces that make up the unity of its substance and thus also to unify the different parts that make up the matter or mass of this body.40 The action (continuously to be begun anew!) toward which the primitive active force

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of a material body strives is thus to be understood by analogy to the way in which the soul, that is, the first substantial form of a living being, unifies the different organs that make up the natural machine of its body.41 Leibniz’s conception of the force of “primary matter” or “mass” is no less original, and it takes explicit distance from the Cartesian doctrine in its turn. For Leibniz, the mass of material bodies is a substantial, that is, metaphysical, principle that is not reducible to the geometrical property of extension, but rather has its own specific primitive force—­one that is thus distinct from the primitive active force belonging to the formal principle of material substance. To characterize this force belonging to the primary matter of material substances, Leibniz refers to begin with to the Keplerian notion of inertia (“inertia naturalis a Keplero pulchre sic denominata”). He characterizes it as a force of resistance to the movement (“resistere motui”) continuously lent to material substances by their primitive active force.42 Though he agrees with Descartes that “impenetrability” is indeed an essential property of the mass of material bodies, Leibniz strongly emphasizes that it is to be understood as a passive force of “resistance” to penetration—­analogous to the force of inertia with which this mass resists movement.43 Let us add, however, that the force of inertia of primary matter seems more fundamental than its force of resistance to penetration. There are two reasons for this: first, the passive force with which a material substance (or, more precisely, its primary matter) resists movement is related to a mobilizing active force that belongs to it as its own primitive active force or substantial form. Unless we hypothesize that a material body can penetrate itself, then the force of penetration that is vainly exercised on it must come from another material body. This force remains external to it. Second, a passive force analogous to the inertia of material bodies is to be found in spiritual substances, namely, what is called “an insensible laziness or slackness” in the New Essays.44 To hypothesize that these same spiritual substances have a passive force of impenetrability, however, is to speak metaphorically—­as teachers often do when referring to their students. Leibniz’s New Essays give a particularly clear (and conciliatory) summary of his conception of primitive and derivative forces: There will be two powers, one active and one passive. The active power can be called “faculty,” and perhaps the passive one might be called “capacity” or “receptivity.” It is true that active power is sometimes understood in a fuller sense, in which it comprises not just a mere faculty but also an endeavor; and that is how I take it in my theorizing about dynamics. One could reserve the word “force” for that. Force would divide into “entelechy” and “effort”; for . . . “entelechy” . . . seems

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to me more suitable to apply . . . to primary acting forces, and “effort” to derivative ones. There is, furthermore, a more special kind of passive power which carries more reality with it: it is a power which matter has, for matter has not only mobility (i.e., the capacity for or receptivity to movement) but also resistance, which includes both impenetrability and inertia.45

Leibniz’s understanding of the primary matter of material substances is not only new, it is also weighty with consequences. Indeed, it implies that, in its passivity, the “primary matter” of a body is opposed less to an external active force from another body than to its own active force. It is precisely this internal active force of the body that constitutes its primary substantial form, and it is only through this form that the body, by overcoming the obstacle posed by the resistance of the passive force belonging to its mass, can set itself in “motion” (motus). For Leibniz, this active force or substantial form that sets the body in motion thus no longer requires being (nor can it be) moved by an external agent. From the beginning, it is an actual movement,46 that is, an actual action, and not only a power to act. Consequently, this primitive force always acts on the body—­even when its action does not translate into any observable movement on the level of “physical phenomena.” Even if we still do not have a very good understanding of how both the motion and rest of a material body can arise from its monadic substance being composed of active and passive forces, we already understand that these two types of force can be complementary. Indeed, if determining the nature of the passive force that characterizes a body’s primary matter necessarily relates to the active force that characterizes its primary form and to which primary matter opposes its resistance, and given that we can never have one without the other, then it should not be too difficult to demonstrate that these two antagonistic forces in no way threaten the unity of the monadic substance belonging to the material body that they govern. To understand the nature of the material body’s monadic substance even better, it is best to move from the passive force of its primary matter to examining its active force—­whose specific nature as drive, by the way, is not difficult to demonstrate. As it constitutes the substantial form (“forma substantiae”) of the material body, the primitive active force (“vis activa primitiva”) must necessarily belong to it as what is most essential. A material body owes both the geometrical form of its appearance (“figura”) and its movement to its primitive active force.47 Using Aristotle48 once again against Descartes, Leibniz emphasizes the fact that the actual movement brought about by the primitive active force is not limited to the

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movement of a body in space, but also includes all other forms of change or alteration (“alloiôsis”).49 The substantial form of a material body is thus a force consisting in its power either to move and transform itself by itself, or to persist in its state. It consists in its dunamis or, more precisely: “en tôi dunamikôi.”50 How are we then to understand why, more often than not, Leibniz uses the Aristotelian term “entelecheia” rather than “dunamis” to characterize the dynamic power of the primitive force?51 And how are we to understand that, despite the active force of movement and change that animates it, a material body can remain at rest and even unchanged? It is easier to answer the second question than to account for the many consequences this answer has for addressing the first question. The rest and qualitative persisting of a material body mean that the active force at work within it has not succeeded in bringing about movement and change, in other words, the “action” toward which it nonetheless continues to “strive” with all its might.52 For Leibniz, this is explained by the fact that this primitive active force comes up against the “obstacle” (“obstaculum”)53 of the resistance belonging to the passive primitive force of this same body, that is, against the force of inertia belonging to its prime matter or “mass.” The primitive active force and passive force comprising the substance of a material body can thus neutralize each other; their rivalry can end up in a draw that allows this body to persist in its current state. For a body to actually move or change itself, this static equilibrium between its active and passive forces has to be broken and the dynamic endeavor of its active forces has to overcome the laziness of its passive forces. The passive force has to diminish or be vanquished by an increase in power of the active force. For the action the active force “contains” in itself to become actual or operative “by itself,” a lifting is required of the “impediment,” in Leibniz’s words, presented by the resistance the passive force opposes to the realization of the active force’s power.54 The dynamic force of the body’s substantial form has to be stronger than the static force of its primary matter. The success of the active force thus necessarily requires the capitulation or at least the rallying or tolerance of the passive force. In realizing itself, that is, in moving from potency to act (or at least appearing to do so!), the active force of a body frees itself from the fate of impotence cast on it by its primary matter. But what exactly happens in the moment of sudden shift when a material body overcomes the quietude of its state of rest and sets itself in motion? What happens not only within the material substance as a whole, but already in its primitive active force? Is this shift to be understood as a change from a dunamis to an entelecheia or, on the contrary, is it only made possible—­as Leibniz seems to suggest—­because dunamis is always already

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active, that is, already entelecheia (which in Leibniz means: active substantial form)? How can we avoid thinking back to the way in which Heidegger described the precise moment when “the hundred-​meter sprinter” takes off on his race once the signal is given?55 Indeed, are we not faced in this case with an “explosion” of his curbed forces, a fulgurous “disinhibition” of the active force once the impediment that stood in its way has been lifted? But is this still to be considered as a setting into action, that is, a realization of a mere power? Does Leibniz not emphasize, to the contrary and with his characteristic opinionatedness, the fact that the active force was already active and effective before it succeeded in moving or changing the body it inhabits?56 We must thus be dealing with a very particular kind of power in the case of a restrained active force. Indeed, Leibniz tells us quite explicitly that this active dunamis or entelecheia is not to be confused with a merely “close possibility of acting,” that is, with the “potentia nuda” or “ facultas” of the Scholastics “which needs an external excitation or a stimulus, as it were, to be transferred into action [quae tamen aliena excitatione et velut stimulo indiget].”57 To the contrary, we are dealing with a “pressing” and actual active dunamis, such as Heidegger, in his interpretation of Aristotle, has taught us to think of it, that is, one that is “midway between the faculty of acting and the act itself and involves a conatus.”58 Inspired by Freud, I have already called this active power a “drive,” a name that Leibniz very explicitly accepts by saying that the active force of a material substance “involves a conatus.” Like the Freudian drive, the primary active force of a material body acts continuously, even when the action toward which it strives with all its might does not come about—­this “not” always meaning: “not yet.” To clearly understand what an active force that is held back from operating is for Leibniz, one must avoid confusing it with a mere potentiality. Instead, one must try to think of it as an actual activity affected by the negativity of a lack. Since this lack belonging to the active drive can be neither a lack of activity, nor a lack of actual reality in Leibniz’s doctrine, it must therefore be a lack of success in attempting to overcome the inertia of the primitive passive force. The active force fails to upset in its favor the static equilibrium of the primitive substantial forces belonging to a body. Far from only concerning the “derivative” changes of the “phenomenal” world, this active drive, the change toward which it “strives,” and the actual coming about of this change therefore affect the material body in its metaphysical essence. The change toward which the drive of the primitive active force strives is nothing less than an alteration of the material body’s monadic substance. Such an active and current, but not “actualized” power is called a “virtuality” in Bergson. For Bergson as well, despite its lack of

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actualization, this virtuality is a positive force that belongs to the very essence of what he calls “consciousness.” It also relates to an actuality that is held back, that is, the virtuality of memories whose actualization is inhibited. For Bergson, however, this inhibition comes less from a passive force than from an antagonistic active force, namely, the counterforce of the pressing needs belonging to the perception of the current situation and of the necessity, characteristic of practical life, to immediately and effectively deal with it through action—­rather than abandoning oneself to dreaming about the past.59 The metaphysical analysis of the nature and movements of material bodies in Leibniz thus takes us back to our previous question concerning the negativity of drives. An active drive force that has not yet succeeded in taking over and changing the body to which it belongs remains an activity, but a restrained activity, and this restraint is what constitutes its negativity. It is unthinkable, in Leibniz, for a force to hold itself back from doing what is in its power. As such, the lack weighing upon an active force that is not (yet) able to achieve its ends can only come from another force, that is, from a counterforce that is at least as strong as it. If a restrained active force is made impotent, this impotence (the adunamia that we have already encountered in Aristotle)60 must be imposed on it from the outside. This is only half true. For the first force that opposes the primitive active force is not the primitive active force of another body with which it would enter into conflict,61 but rather the primitive passive force of inertia at work within the same material substance. We must thus distinguish between the “derivative” passive force (vis passiva derivata) by virtue of which a body resists the active force of another body, and the “primitive” passive force (vis passiva primitiva) belonging to the primary matter of a material substance; this latter consists in the force to undergo (vis patiendi) or to resist (seu resistendi) the primitive active force of the same substance. It is with the passive force of its inertia (ignavia) that a body’s mass undergoes or, to the contrary, repulses (ad motum repugnatione)62 the movement the primitive active force seeks to impress upon it. This primitive passive force—­w ith which the primitive active force is obliged to team up within a same individual substance—­is thus almost as familiar to it as its own force. In other words, before encountering an obstacle in the external world, the active drive force is always already faced with an inhibition, a restraint or a break that comes from inside, that is, from the very body that it animates or drives. This internal impediment is none other than the passive force belonging to the primary matter of a substance whose active force constitutes its substantial form. The active force can triumph over the passive force, but should never hope to one day get rid of it.

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Indeed, if the unity of the active force (that moves) and the passive force (that undergoes or resists this movement) is what constitutes its monadic substance, then there can be no force without a counterforce in a material body. Active force and passive counterforce constitute a difference within the same, that is, within the same substance of a material body in which they always have been and always will be inextricably linked. A purely active force or a drive that is not impeded is thus unthinkable for Leibniz so long as we are dealing with created, that is, finite, substances. All created substances, whether material bodies, animals, or humans, are constituted of a passive force alongside their active force, and necessarily so. What Freud calls a “death drive” thus has no equivalent in Leibniz’s metaphysics.63 To be sure, the fact that all monadic substance is made up of the union of an entelechy and a primary matter that “truly constitute one substance,”64 that is, of an active force and a passive force, should not lead us to think that these antagonistic forces are of equal power. If this were the case, these two forces would always neutralize each other and all material bodies would necessarily and indefinitely persist in their current state. Neither does the intimate intertwining, in all created or “finite”65 substance, of a drive’s activity and inhibition imply for Leibniz that these two forces have the same metaphysical weight or importance. Given that it constitutes the “primary form” of substance, it goes without saying that the primitive active force has pride of place over the primitive passive force of its “primary matter.” This latter is merely that upon which the former acts with all the drive tension of its force. The passive force that belongs to primary matter or bodily mass can thus not, strictly speaking, be called a “drive,” even if it is indeed a force of substance and a counterforce capable of paralyzing an active drive. Strictly speaking, it is only the primitive active force, and, more specifically, the inhibited active force, that deserves the name of “drive.” Matter, in its passivity, only sustains the active force that weighs upon it, and its force is limited to its power to restrain (more often than not, only provisionally) the substantial change toward which the active force or drive strives. By thus deferring the realization of the active drive, the primitive passive force maintains and even intensifies the drive tension of the monad. This is why Leibniz often compares the interaction between active force and passive force to a “heavy hanging body which strains at the rope which holds it” or to “a bent bow.”66 As was already observed in our interpretation of dunamis in Aristotle,67 it is thus in a momentary paralysis or suspension of drive activity that the drive impulse and the passive force that impedes its realization or relaxation are best made manifest. This confirms that a body’s rest is in no way static and that in this momentary pause in the dynamism of

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its movement, its different forces, far from being at rest, are simply and momentarily held in check. Aristotle was thus right to understand rest as a modality of movement instead of questioning, in the way of Descartes, how a body, supposedly naturally at rest, could be set into motion (by the movement of another body). True to his metaphysical understanding of substance as monadic subject made up of antagonistic and complementary forces, Leibniz does not hesitate to attribute quasi-​psychological capacities usually reserved to animals and humans to the active force of a material body. As such, he not only draws our attention to the force of a “striving” or a “conatus” in material substance,68 but also to its “perceptions” (perceptiones) and its “appetite” (appetitus).69 True, Leibniz himself qualifies this way of speaking as “analogous.”70 More precisely, determining the action that a material body’s primitive active force strives toward as a perception or an appetite (and not simply as a movement or an alteration) is based on claiming an identity of function between this active force of material bodies and the soul of living beings. What the soul of a living being and the primitive active force of a material body share is that, within an individual monadic substance, they constitute the “substantial form” or the “dynamic” entelechy of matter.71 Primitive active force is to the mass of a material body what the soul is to the organic body of living beings. In fact, nothing gives us a better idea of the nature of the primitive active force belonging to material substances and of their “active power, as we have from [our] reflection on the operations of our mind.”72 Surely, this does not mean that material bodies think, nor that their substantial form actually contributes to constituting the unity of a “self.”73 Nor does this justify the (common, it is true) reproach against Leibniz that he encloses himself in a psychologizing, anthropomorphic, or spiritualist conception of the metaphysical nature of material bodies. For what justifies the similarities brought to the fore by Leibniz between material bodies, animals, and humans is not his idea of man, but his idea of monadic substance. His conception of the monad belongs to the framework of a general metaphysics; what is thus to be understood is that the same being is said of different beings, namely, of material bodies, animals, and human minds. As such, the concept of a monad is not a concept borrowed from the special metaphysics of anthropology in order to then generalize it. Rather, it is because material bodies and humans (analogically) share the same general-​being of monadic substance that they resemble each other, and not because material bodies are quasi-​human beings for Leibniz. It must be admitted, however, that all these considerations do not suffice to explain why Leibniz felt he had to attribute perceptions and

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appetite to material bodies. Could he not have been content to observe that, similarly to the souls of living beings drawing their perceptions and appetite from themselves, material bodies set themselves in motion by themselves? If Leibniz attributes to material bodies (that is, to the primitive active force that animates their matter or mass) not only a capacity to move and change, but also perception and appetite, it is for the precise reason that he does not want their metaphysical nature as autonomous monadic substances to lead to their complete isolation from one another. For if it is impossible for individual material substances to act directly on each other, and if they must nonetheless integrate themselves into the harmonious order of a same universe that makes them all solidary, then a kind of primitive relation or familiarity comparable to animal perceptions and human thoughts has to exist between them. Finally, if this relation that a monad (even a material one) has with all other monads cannot come from outside, that is, be caused by monads that it encounters by chance, then the only remaining solution is to claim that each finite monad carries within itself, from the moment of its creation by God, a “representation” or “expression” of all other monads. Contrary to the perceptions and appetites attributed to material monads only by analogy with living beings, the capacity to “represent” or “express” all other monads of the material world from its absolutely unique “point of view”74 belongs to each material monad literally and by full (metaphysical) right. By virtue of this capacity, all material monads are similar and all material monads are different. For even if the universe that each one reflects is the same, and even if it is always the universe in its entirety that is reflected, to the point of making each monad “a concentrated world,” each monad is nonetheless distinguished from every other by its absolutely singular and unique point of view on the universe.75 This singular point of view, which the individual monad is, does not however condemn it to immobility or inaction. For this point of view is liable to change by changing the monad. Conversely, all substantial change to the monad necessarily also affects its point of view on the universe. This is why Leibniz makes all monads into “living mirrors” (specula vitalia) of the universe. As with any other mirror, all monads reflect the monads that surround them with more or less clarity, distinctness, and currentness. However, unlike ordinary mirrors, monads have the power to draw closer to or further away from their environment, that is, to modify their point of view. Any new perception on their part amounts to such a drawing closer to certain preferred monads. It goes without saying that this drawing closer does not take place in geometrical space; it is nothing more than an internal modification of the field of perception accessible to the monad from its singular point of view. However, since each monad

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already contains every other monad within itself, this new perception can never be entirely new. For Leibniz, the activity that leads a monad to a more distinct perception of other monads cannot therefore be anything but modification of a previously “imperceptible” perception, that is, the actualization of a virtual perception and the awakening of dormant or unconscious perception. For material monads as well as all other kinds of monads, their primitive active force must thus be joined to their capacity to represent, express, and perceive. If this active force truly deserves the name of drive, then all monads must be animated by a perceptual drive. It is because of this drive that monads turn, indefinitely, toward new perceptions. What Leibniz calls the monad’s “appetite” is thus to be understood as an appetite for new perceptions.76 Leibniz would not be Leibniz if he had not already discovered therein an appetite for perfection. The series of perceptions or “progressus perceptionum”77 is thus not a mere “procession” of equivalent perceptions, but implies a “progress” in the perception of the universe. What every monad wants, because of the active drive principle that animates it, is to better perceive the universe that it already contains within itself. If this is already true for material substance, it follows that the relations between material bodies thematized by physics within the order of phenomenal causality require conversion, on the part of the metaphysician, in terms of perception, representation, or intermonadic expression. As such, the active force of movement and change that we have recognized in material monads is essentially placed at the service of perception and of a better perception of the world. This not only means that the perception unleashed by the primitive active force of a monad should be understood as a kind of movement, but it also implies, conversely, that the movement or change of which this monad is capable is never without direction or aim. The movement toward which a material monad strives with all its active force is therefore not, in Leibniz, a movement of change of place in space, but the movement of a perception that strives for a self-​unfolding or self-​explanation of the monad. This movement of perception in which the monad probes its own depths at the same time draws it more and more distinctly toward other monads. The progress of intermonadic perceptions is inseparable, for Leibniz, from an intermonadic perfection. It goes without saying that this appetite for perfection that pushes the monad toward progressively clearer and more distinct perceptions is best expressed in human activities. Even though all finite monads are made up of active and passive forces, these forces have different degrees of perfection. The metaphysical degree of perfection of a monad is essentially measured by the degree of perfection of its substantial form, that

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is, of its active force and the activities that result from it. In other words, monads are mainly distinguished from each other by the articulation of their perceptions and thoughts, the intensity and quality of their force or will, and the degree of consciousness or awakeness with which they act. They are also distinguished, though in a secondary manner, by their passive forces, that is, by the greater or lesser resistance or the intensity of the counterforces that their active forces encounter on the way toward realization.

Human Pleasure Put into Question: Force, Drive Inhibition, and “Disquiet” or Lack in Desires It is high time that we left behind the study of the drives and passions of material bodies to turn toward human drives and desires. Everything Leibniz owes to Aristotle will nevertheless continue to be taken into account, and the questions that accompanied us throughout the interpretation of the Aristotelian conception of dunamis, particularly of dunamis meta logou, will quickly be rediscovered. Our examination of the structure of human desire will mainly be inspired by the New Essays on Human Understanding. First published in 1764, the writing of this book in fact goes back to 1704. It was thus written at the same time as the last texts on the forces of material substances on which we based ourselves in the preceding section.78 We know that these New Essays are a long critical commentary by Leibniz (designated in the text by “Theophilus” or simply “TH”) on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 79 by Locke (designated as “Philalethes” or simply “PH”).80 I will refrain from looking for a confirmation in this work by Leibniz of what we already know about his physics and his metaphysics; I will instead take advantage of the surprising richness of his observations only to clarify the nature of human drives and desires. It will turn out that Locke develops a conception of desire that greatly anticipates, and with surprising precision, the Freudian doctrine of the “pleasure principle.” The critical comments addressed to Locke by Leibniz can thus also be read as a critical meditation on the metaphysical presuppositions of Freud’s first drive theory. Referring to “disquiet” (inquiétude) as the fundamental ontological characteristic of human existence and distinguishing this disquiet from all psychological “desires” regulated by the search for “pleasure” and the avoidance of displeasure or “pain,” Leibniz clearly makes way for an ontological desire situated this side of (rather than beyond)

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the pleasure principle. He thus prepares the way for the problematic of Freud’s last drive theory and for a Lacanian conception of desires as anchored in a “lack of being” (manque à être). In other words, on the margins of Locke’s robust positivism, Leibniz introduces a new understanding of the drive and desire bringing to the fore that, far from being restricted to the exteriority of counterforces, negativity already imposes its rule within a mode of human being that precedes and grounds all drives and all psychological desire. As soon as they emerge and long before they become concerned with “pleasure,” “ joy,” or “happiness,” human drives and desire are already shaped by a “disquiet” that no satisfaction or attachment to an object will succeed in quieting. At first sight, however, nothing in Leibniz’s conception of the metaphysical nature of the human subject prepares us for these penetrating views on a soul and a mind that, despite their greater perfection, are distinguished from the calm force of material bodies by their disquiet and lack of being. Has it not been shown that it is only by analogy to the body and soul of living beings, and especially human beings, that the forces of material substances can turn into appetites and perceptions? It thus seems obvious that the powers borrowed by material bodies from human nature must be characteristic of this latter not only with more reason but with more perfection. This impression is confirmed not only in what Leibniz has to say about the human soul, but also and a fortiori about the human mind as having the power to free itself of all dependence on the body. What distinguishes human perception from that of “beasts” is essentially the power of reflexive consciousness to transform “many minute perceptions of which we are unaware” into an “apperception.”81 Contesting the Lockean doctrine according to which such minute unconscious (auditory) perceptions directly result from the “impressions of [certain] bodies, made upon the organ of hearing,”82 Leibniz makes way for the mental character of unconscious perceptions in the “soul” and thus clearly directs himself toward the (Freudian) conception of a mental and nonmaterial unconscious. Thus, the line separating unconscious minute perceptions and reflexive apperceptions is not drawn between the body and the soul for Leibniz, but between the (animal or human) “soul” and a specifically human “mind.” Let us add, however, to complete the picture of Leibniz’s theory on perception, that situated between unconscious minute perceptions and reflexive apperceptions are prereflexive conscious perceptions, that is, attentive perceptions accompanied by memory. The power of the human mind is not limited to making unconscious minute perceptions conscious; it develops an activity of its own that Leibniz calls “thought.”83 While the influence of this thought on the flow

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of our perceptions necessarily remains limited (for the mind turns out to be incapable of transforming all our perceptions into apperceptions and of thus entirely abolishing our unconscious),84 its power seems to develop without obstacles or impediments in its own activities—­those of the order of “intellection.”85 The human mind also has a practical side; it becomes a rational will and allows us to carry out voluntary and free acts. However, just as reflexive thought will never grasp all our unconscious perceptions, the practical mind only acts indirectly and to a very partial extent on our unconscious “appetitions,”86 “passions,” or “confused inclinations.”87 The autonomy of the mind does not therefore mean unlimited power, and Leibniz is ready to recognize everything that mental activities still owe to the solicitations of an often preconscious “disquiet.” Corresponding to the power of intellection in the mind or “understanding” (entendement) in Leibniz is thus the power of the “will” to consciously or deliberately carry out acts that are free and in conformity with a rational knowledge of good and bad: “for one describes as ‘voluntary’ only actions one can be aware of and can reflect upon when they arise from some consideration of good and bad.”88 In the same way as conscious apperceptions and rational thoughts are distinguished from (and relate to) unconscious perceptions, this free and rational willing is distinguished from (and relates to) unconscious “appetites” and sensible “endeavors.” Thus, the practical power of rational action arising from a conscious and free decision is added in the human being to the mental power of theoretical intellection. In its strong sense, this “freedom of willing” does not consist in a de facto freedom allowing us to do what we want, but rather in a rational willing in which “the understanding can determine the will.”89 This practical power of the rational will should be understood as arising from a “force,” that is, not from a mere potentiality or faculty, but from an actual rational striving (“conatus”) that actively seeks to actualize itself in a free and good action.90 Though it distinguishes itself by its mental character from the “primitive forces” of material bodies, the human will remains a kind of rational drive. It is, in the language of Aristotle, a “dunamis meta logou.” As such, human life is governed by two kinds of drive: “sensibility and appetite [that] lead us only toward pleasure” and “reason and will that lead us toward happiness.”91 Despite the fact that the former owe a great deal to our body, Leibniz wants to maintain their mental character—­even when they remain unconscious and have no clearly defined object.92 Bodily drives are governed by a search for pleasure that they seek to reach by following the “road [that is] . . . shortest.”93 They are, for Leibniz, essentially “natural desires” linked to bodily needs whose satisfaction unfolds within a natural teleology.94

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However, nothing is further from Leibniz than a dualism attempting to oppose the salutary force of the rational will to the pernicious force of bodily drives. For the distance separating human bodily drives from the forces of material bodies is much greater than the one separating them from the rational will, which still arises, in its turn, from a rational striving or drive. This proximity between the two kinds of human drive is shown both in the mechanism through which they are actualized and in their common rootedness in a “disquiet.” As far as the first point is concerned, the actualization of mental (bodily and rational) drives—­just like the actualization of the primitive active forces of material bodies, by the way—­is always at the mercy of an inhibition or impediment. Thus, for the free will or rational drive—­even if “will and power [are] together” in this case—­action only follows if it is not “prevented.”95 Among all the things likely to impede our good will giving rise to effects, foremost in Leibniz’s thought are the “passions”96 or bodily desires that make us do things that we don’t want to do. However, one must not conclude that, in opposition to rational endeavors, these bodily desires are always and automatically realized. The latter also encounter impediments and break down. More perspicacious and inventive than ever, Leibniz enumerates a whole series of possible obstacles that stand in the way of the realization of our bodily desires: The execution of our desire is suspended or prevented when it is not strong enough to arouse us and to overcome the difficulty or discomfort involved in satisfying it. This difficulty sometimes consists merely in an insensible laziness or slackness. . . . Even when the desire is strong enough in itself to arouse us if nothing hinders it, it can be blocked by contrary inclinations. . . . But as these contrary inclinations, propensities and desires must already exist in the soul, it does not have them within its power; and consequently it could not resist them in any free and voluntary way in which reason could play a part, if it did not have another method, namely to turn the mind in a different direction.97

So many kinds of impediment, so many kinds of impotency for an active power seeking realization, that is, so many kinds of “adunamia” for dunamis! Notice that Leibniz explicitly adds an internal cause here, namely, the passive force of a “laziness or slackness,” to the external causes of this impotency characterizing active force, namely, rival active counterforces. This is reminiscent of the nature of the “internal” impediments and obstacles we saw material bodies come up against. Corresponding to the passive force of inertia characterizing primary matter or “mass”

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that opposes the active forces of material substances, in human beings we thus find the laziness or bodily and mental asthenia that impedes the realization of our bodily drives and leads us to prefer a comfortable tranquility to the effort needed to maintain and realize our desires. This same passive force of indolence that leads us to renounce realizing our bodily drives is also the source of the weakness of the rational will or akrasia denounced by moralists. Yet, strikingly, Leibniz does not share in the naïveté of these moralists and their faith in the coercive force of a good will to overcome our passions. On the contrary, he calls on the force of a voluntary distraction, evoking our power to “turn the mind in a different direction.” However, what Leibniz has in mind is not the diversion of our bodily passions toward other, more worthy, objects. In other words, he takes as much distance from Freud’s theory on sublimation as from the precepts of moralists. This “different direction” that detaches us from our current passions is rather a direction we are led in by questioning ourselves and, more precisely, the meaning of our future life and its “end”: “It helps with this if one accustoms oneself to . . . rising above the hubbub of present impressions—­as it were getting away from one’s own situation and asking oneself ‘Why am I here?’ (Dic cur hic?), ‘Where am I going?’ ‘How far have I come?’ ”98 Much more than the prescriptions of practical reason, it is this questioning that turns a blind bodily drive into a “dunamis meta logou,” that is, according to our interpretation of Aristotle, a potency that has the force to hold back from and suspend exercising its power. Yet, one should not conflate this vigilant “to what end?” turned toward the future, with the disillusioned “to what end?” of the sedentary lazy person who is complacent in the comfort of his present state. The restraint imposed by a disquieted concern for tomorrow on the realization of our desires is the exercising of an active force that is essentially distinguished from both the counterforces of antagonistic active drives and the passive force of inertia or of a simple resistance to movement. Contrary to a bodily drive whose frantic race toward pleasure can only be stopped by the active counterforce of an antagonistic bodily drive of superior force, by the passive force of laziness, or by the disarming question, “Why am I here?” (Dic cur hic?), contrary to desire that cannot but desire, the will can thus refrain from willing. Yet, does this question, with which reason interrupts the force our passions have to carry us away, not come from an even deeper disquiet, one so deep that it always already affects the exercising of our desires and our passions? This is precisely what is at stake in the disagreement between Leibniz and Locke on the nature of our desires and on the search for pleasure as fundamental human mode of functioning and being. Through his discussion with

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the positivistic Freudianism of Locke, Leibniz continuously sounds ever deeper the depths of the negativity that inhabits and torments us. His exploration will touch bottom when this negativity comes to present itself in the form of a lack of being that affects us much more than the external and internal counterforces that prevent the realization of our desires and deprive us of pleasure. It is only a slight caricature of Locke to present him as a fervent partisan of the pleasure principle. Here is the summary that Leibniz gives us of the Lockean doctrine: “a little pain serves to mar all the pleasure we enjoy. And therefore that which of course determines the choice of our will to the next action will always be the removing of pain.”99 If the main motive of our actions is to avoid pain and seek pleasure, then it follows that desire is what regulates our will and our action. This is why Leibniz has Philalethes, so close to Locke, say: “The ‘uneasiness’ a man finds in himself upon the absence of any thing, whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it, is what we call desire. . . . The chief if not only spur to human industry and action is uneasiness.”100 And it is once again Philalethes who says: “It is as well to bear in mind, though, that what determines the will to action is not, as is generally supposed, the greater good, but some current, and for the most part the most pressing, disquiet. This can be called desire, which is a disquiet of the mind caused by the lack of some absent good—­or the desire to be relieved of pain.”101 Leibniz does not directly contest this Lockean definition of human desire; rather, he attacks its presuppositions linked to the motivational force of desire and its source (which Locke calls “uneasiness” and Leibniz translates as “inquiétude”), and the Lockean definition of pleasure. Unsurprisingly, Leibniz sides with the Aristotelian definition of pleasure as being “a sense of perfection.”102 This already suffices to put into doubt the Lockean doctrine according to which the search for pleasure and the avoidance of displeasure constitute the main motive for human action. For if the feeling of pleasure accompanies or even follows an action, reaching it remains dependent on the success of this action. Pleasure is thus a random effect of action and, since it can only be reached indirectly, it cannot constitute the only or the main cause of action. However, this post-​A ristotelian conception that presents pleasure to us as a kind of bonus given to an action that is well carried out is less important to us here than the reasons for which Leibniz makes disquiet the source of all human action (and passion) and for which he distances himself from the Lockean understanding of “uneasiness” as a feeling of pain. Since he accepted Locke’s thesis according to which everything the human being can do, desires to do, wants to do, and actually does arises from “uneasiness” or disquiet, and he further refused to entirely

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subordinate human life to the rule of a desire regulated by the pleasure principle, two options were open to Leibniz: he had to either contest any relation between this disquiet and desire, or relate it to a desire not regulated by the pleasure principle. Leibniz clearly turns toward the second solution, despite a certain reticence on his part to present disquiet not only as the source of all desire (as well as all human passion and action), but as a desire sui generis. The first point of his demonstration: disquiet is a state that not only tolerates pleasure as much as pain, but can even precede any feeling of pain and pleasure. Addressing Locke, Leibniz writes: “If you take ‘uneasiness’ or disquiet to be a genuine displeasure, then I do not agree that it is all that spurs us on. What usually drives us are those minute insensible perceptions which could be called sufferings that we cannot become aware of, if the notion of suffering did not involve awareness.”103 The second point of his demonstration: this disquiet is in fact the source (most often unconscious) of all human activity. Leibniz writes: “These minute impulses consist in our continually overcoming small obstacles—­our nature labors at this without our thinking about it. This is the true character of that disquiet which we sense without taking cognizance of it; it makes us act.”104 The third point of his demonstration: this disquiet points to an insufficiency and imperfection in man, that is, to an ontological lack by virtue of which human beings are not only perfectible, but inhabited by an endless desire to perfect themselves. Leibniz further writes: In German, the word for the balance of a clock is Unruhe—­which also means disquiet; and one can take that for a model of how it is in our bodies, which can never be perfectly at their ease.105 Far from such disquiet’s being inconsistent with happiness, I find that it is essential to the happiness of created beings; their happiness never consists in complete attainment, which would make them insensate and stupefied, but in continual and uninterrupted progress toward greater goods. Such progress is inevitably accompanied by desire or at least by constant disquiet.106

Whether they allow themselves to be carried away by bodily desires, turn their will toward a good action, or give themselves over to theoretical speculations, human beings always remain in a state of disquiet, according to Leibniz. They are thus distinguished from material bodies and animals by active forces that are not only greater and more perfect, but are also constantly disturbed by a fundamental disquiet. Our citations

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clearly show that Leibniz takes this human disquiet to be both a curse and a blessing. For it is to its fundamental ontological disquiet or imperfection that human existence owes its openness toward an indefinite progress and perfecting—­even in pleasure: “I doubt that a greatest pleasure is possible; I am inclined to believe that it can increase ad infinitum.”107 However, it is just as true that no pleasure and no progress or perfecting of our powers can abolish our disquiet, which can also, in its turn, deepen “ad infinitum.” The “infinity” of progress and the infinity of a disquiet that never rests are in fact intimately linked, for the deeper the experience of a lack (even if “insensible” or unconscious), the greater the desire to escape from it as well. This is why Leibniz is led, almost despite himself, to consider disquiet itself as a kind of desire108 —­while at the same time maintaining that its function is to arouse desires (and actions). What confused “disquiet,” in Leibniz’s sense, has in common with specific desires is that it is neither a psychological state, nor any other stable mode of being. To be disquieted is to be endlessly disquieted; and to have different desires is to desire without end. This disquiet is distinguished, however, from specific or psychological desires by the fact that it constitutes a fundamental (dynamic) mode of being for human beings and not an occasional behavior. As a mode of expression of a mode of being characterized by an ontological lack, “disquiet” is not, strictly speaking, “psychological.” It is neither a conscious feeling, nor the representation of a particular object one desires because it is lacking: “But to return to disquiet, i.e., to the imperceptible little urges which keep us constantly in suspense: these are confused stimuli, so that we often do not know what it is that we lack.”109 Yet, even if disquiet is not a psychological and conscious desire, it is nonetheless in conscious desires that it manifests itself the most explicitly: “It can be said that wherever there is desire there will be disquiet; but the converse does not always hold, since one is often in a state of disquiet without knowing what one wants, in which case there is no fully developed desire.”110 And Leibniz defines this “developed desire” in a quasi-​Freudian manner as the imaginary projection of an object fed by the memory of past pleasures: Various perceptions and inclinations combine to produce a complete volition: it is the result of the conflict among them. There are some, imperceptible in themselves, which add up to a disquiet. . . . Finally, there are some impulses which are accompanied by actual pleasure or suffering. All these perceptions are either new sensations or the lingering images of past ones (whether or not accompanied by memory): these images revive the charms which were associated with them in those

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earlier sensations, and thereby also revive the former impulses in proportion to the liveliness of the imagining.111

What “developed desire” and the confused desire of disquiet have in common, however, is that they are both manifestations of a lack. For Leibniz, what developed or psychological desire lacks is just as much pleasure and perfection as the possession of an object. Since this object can be a mental object, next to bodily desires there are thus mental and singularly intellectual desires and pleasures. As these mental pleasures have a different quality and much greater constancy, Leibniz prefers to reserve the term “happiness”112 for them. In our life on this earth, we lack happiness much more than pleasure, and this inevitably causes suffering in us, or to speak in the language of Locke, pain or displeasure. “Disquiet,” as it is understood by Leibniz, is neither pain, nor a feeling of the absence of pleasure or happiness. More precisely, it is (as Leibniz continuously repeats) just as compatible with a feeling of pleasure as with a feeling of pain, for in itself it is neither one nor the other. Nor is it a psychological drive or striving governed by forces of attraction and repulsion. To the contrary, disquiet is an ontological “malaise” brought about by “small obstacles” that lead to us never being “completely in equilibrium.”113 Disquiet is the expression of the fact that all human, that is, finite, creatures never coincide with themselves, and are indefinitely searching for their own being. What human beings lack and fundamentally desire—­both prior to and beyond particular desires, that is—­is nothing more than to fully be what they are (not). Leibnizian “disquiet” thus corresponds quite precisely to what Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, called ontological desire,114 which Lacan will make into the very essence of a “pure desire” that underlies all sexual desire. As figures of lack and despite the difference separating fundamental desire or “disquiet” from the desires we have called “psychological,” these two forms of desire are also both distinguished in an essential way from the mode of being of drive forces, these latter always being invested with a power (pouvoir). Obviously, this does not mean that drives owe nothing to desire or, more particularly, to disquiet as ontological desire, but it remains that there is a clear metaphysical difference for Leibniz between drives and desires. One can perfectly understand the essence of drives by following the canons of a traditional metaphysical thought that understands being as potentiality-​to-​be. The same cannot be said for psychological desires nor, especially, for ontological desire. Understanding the essence of desire requires another metaphysics, a metaphysics if not of nothing, then at least of non-​being or of an indefinitely deferred being. Thus, one has to

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distinguish not only ontological desire from bodily drives, but rational drives or endeavors from intellectual desires. The first point goes without saying, for the actions toward which we are pushed by our natural tendencies and sexual drives in no way remedy our lack of being. The second point is no less obvious, despite the fact that all rational drives, that is, all good will, all rational action and powers of intellection, simultaneously arouse the indefinite desire for a greater spiritual perfection. Yet, at the heart of this doubly obvious metaphysical difference between desire and drive, a relation of mutual dependence simultaneously manifests itself. For if it is true that our natural tendencies and sexual drives never abolish our lack of being, it is no less true that they are powerfully sharpened by it. The same can be said for our rational drives, whose power and force owe much to the stimulation given to them not only by rational desires for a particular perfection, but also by fundamental desire or ontological lack. Does this mean that the richness of a power can arise out of a privation, and a force can arise out of the weakness of a lack of being? For Leibniz, the answer can only be in the negative. While he distinguishes ontological desire from psychological desires, it remains that this ontological desire or fundamental disquiet cannot, strictly speaking, be the cause of a drive. However, what disquiet can do, and in fact does, is to awaken the dormant force of our bodily drives and the yearnings of our practical and theoretical reason. Without being itself a drive, disquiet is nonetheless “the spur that urges us on.”115 This function of Leibnizian “disquiet” thus corresponds exactly to the “Triebreiz” that Freud makes into the “internal source” of drives—­w ithout really being able to explain its nature to us. Leibniz’s contribution here is, once again, decisive. For Leibniz does not only show the difference of (metaphysical) nature between the drive and the ontological desire that stimulates or arouses the drive (without being able to cause it). He also shows that the exercise of any drive power or active force remains tributary, in human beings, to a fundamental and continuous disquiet. Far from limiting itself to the role of a Triebreiz, that is, of a one-​time stimulus for a specific drive, the ontological malaise of disquiet thus continues to linger around the triumphal march of all drives that have overcome the obstacle of rival active forces and vanquished the resistance of internal passive forces. This miring of drives in an ontological disquiet perhaps also explains the fact, already observed by Aristotle, that drives usually strive as much toward accomplishing an action as toward avoiding another action. And it is doubtless also because the actualization of a virtual drive power never fully liberates itself from its dependence on ontological desire or disquiet that the realization of a drive usually arouses derivative desires that

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we have called “psychological” and that Leibniz qualifies as “developed.” Our bodily and intellectual drives are thus continuously reactivated by ontological desire, and it is rare that the satisfaction accompanying their realization does not awaken new psychological desires. Unlike the primitive active forces or drives of material substances, exercising the power of human drives is thus solidly surrounded or enclosed, both before and after, by the experience of a lack—­that is, our lack of being and our lack of an object to give us pleasure or ensure our perfection. Just as disquiet or ontological desire can awaken the force of our drives, it can also—­and this is surely its principal role in Leibniz’s view—­directly arouse specific or “developed” desires. Even if the realization of these latter often requires mobilizing our drive forces, these psychological desires are nonetheless a direct and preferred expression of our fundamental lack of being. Unlike our desires, the poteniality-​to-​be of our drives—­being of a different metaphysical essence—­can only be “spurred” on (or partially inhibited) by disquiet. As concerns the pleasure that accompanies the realization of our desires, Leibniz sometimes presents it to us as a “victory” over the malaise or “[imperceptible] minute sufferings” of disquiet—­while at the same time maintaining that “without these semi-​sufferings [of disquiet] there would be no pleasure.”116 But it is Locke, or Philalethes, who turns out to be the most sensitive to the fact that no pleasure arising from the accomplishment of our desires is exempt from disquiet, and it is precisely this disquiet that seeps through into the pleasure that gives birth to a new desire: “we look beyond, no matter what pleasures we are now enjoying, and desire, which accompanies these anticipated views on the future, always carries the will with it. So that even in the middle of joy, what keeps the action on which the present pleasure depends going is the desire to continue this pleasure and the fear of being deprived of it.”117 It is to the disquiet that awakens and accompanies our bodily and rational drives that these latter owe their creative force, which distinguishes them from the repetitive stereotypical nature of the drives inhabiting material bodies. It is this same disquiet, once again, that transforms our “developed” particular desires into indefinite desires, that is, into desires of desire of desire . . . And, finally, it is also the hold that disquiet has over our reason that gives this latter its questioning nature. In all these cases, we encounter the prodigy of a lack of being and a lack of power that transfigures the course of a natural movement. If the Aristotelian analysis of natural movements put us on the track of our exploration of the human drive or desire, Leibniz’s conception of disquiet has led us to the point of doubting that this human drive and desire can be assimilated to a movement or a force of nature.

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The Human Being as a Subject Desiring Other Desiring Subjects and as Drive-​Based Dasein With Leibniz’s New Essays we have made some important progress. We now have at our disposal a solid metaphysical foundation for the distinction between drive and desire. Following the model that the Poros and Penia characters in Plato’s Symposium have already allowed us to glimpse, drive and desire are distinguished like the richness of a power and the poverty of a lack. The metaphysical distinction between drive and desire has also received, through Leibniz, a formulation that preserves their intertwinement. All the desires that have been called “secondary” or “psychological” owe the force with which they impose themselves on us and strive toward realization to their alliance with one drive or another. Inversely, not only does the human drive voluntarily flow into the bed prepared by a psychological desire; from its awakening until its resolution, it remains under the influence of what Leibniz calls “disquiet,” that is, the experience of a fundamental lack of being to which we have given the name “ontological desire.” Thus, the force of a drive is held back or inhibited, in human beings, not only by a bodily “laziness or slackness” or by the wisdom of reason, but also by “disquiet.” This does not mean that the fate of the drive and of a possible “death drive” is therefore sealed. For I am not saying that the triple obstacle encountered by a drive force on the way toward its actualization calms its fire and necessarily leads it to bifurcate into the diverted paths imposed on it by the psychological desires whose realization depends on the availability of appropriate objects. On the contrary, it remains entirely possible for the drive to place itself at the service of a desire without a precise object or to choose to realize itself at all costs, that is, independently of any desire. In other words, we cannot exclude the possibility that “disquiet,” after having held the drive back, to the contrary pushes it toward its end, and does so regardless of what it may cost the drive subject. Moreover, the same can be said about the experience of finitude and, more particularly, mortality, which can just as well lead us to flee death through the indefinite perfecting of a “progressus perceptionum,” as to flee the tensions of life by desiring our own death. The Leibnizian metaphysics of the drive and desire does not, thus, relieve us in advance of the questions with which Freudian metapsychology struggles in his last drive theory. Is it because of optimism or because of a secret contamination by the pleasure principle defended by Locke that the New Essays are hard put to give the attention they deserve not only to the experience, but especially to the seeking out of pain? Could the indifference to one’s own pleasure and to the desire of the other

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characterizing an unbridled death drive (that is, detached from any link: “ungebunden,” in Freud’s words) not be explained by the attraction of pain, just as much as by the wish to put an end to the infinite twists and turns of one’s desires? Similarly, by putting so much emphasis on what human creativity owes to disquiet, has Leibniz not neglected to take seriously enough the fascination that a sterile repetition of the same behavior can hold for human beings tired of their disquiet and their endless desires? But Leibniz’s monadology and his metaphysics of desire hold still other resources of which we have not yet made sufficient use. Does Leibniz not say that every monad—­through its forces and desires, its perceptions and appetites—­always relates to other monads and even, implicitly at least, to all other monads in the universe? We considered what this might mean for material substances, but not for a monadic human subject and its “point of view” on other monads and, more particularly, other human monads. Thus, we must now come to an understanding of what the fundamental unity between primitive active forces (drives) and perceptions or appetites (desires) within a same human subject-​substance means within the framework of what is commonly called “intersubjectivity.” At first glance, the way in which a human subject relates to other human subjects, through its drives and desires, does not seem to be strongly distinguished in Leibniz from the way in which any other monadic substance relates to the other monads in its universe. For these other human subjects differ from the desiring subject less through their properties and qualities (which are always general in some sense) than through the individuation of these properties and qualities. Whether the human monad is conscious of it or not, the fact is that its desire is never directed toward an other-​in-​general, but always relates, on the contrary, to other individual monads invested with singular desires. However, given that Leibniz defines my monad’s individuality as coinciding with my point of view on the universe (while at the same time admitting that within this point of view there can be a “progressus” of my perceptions relating to other monads), it follows that these other monads differ among themselves not only (in themselves) through their individuality, but also (for me) through their lesser or greater proximity to me. Thus, Leibniz’s metaphysics does not overlook that my desire relates to this monad rather than that one and that my desire for this proximate monad, chosen from among all others, is dependent on the desire that this monad feels for me. Less trivially, Leibnizian monadology draws our attention to the fact that this dual relation is inseparable from a network of relations that progressively includes all of humanity. Indeed, all of humanity is involved in my desire for my chosen monad—­w ithout my being aware of it and in a way that will always escape my understanding. Unique in itself, the monad I desire

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can only become unique for me against the backdrop of my more or less distinct representation of all the other monads that are more or less close to or distant from me. All these monads and their desires are “expressed” in me. I am the “living mirror” of the way in which they desire the monad I have chosen for myself and these third-​party monads desire each other, desire me, and desire us. A dual relation between human monads is thus always fragmentary. As a fragment of a monadology, that is, of a universe of individual points of view, a relationship between two can be neither absolute, nor even reciprocal. In my desire for you and your desire for me, an infinity of other desires cross paths, or rather become concentrated, that are more or less close and known to me, but whose network of old and new connections extends far beyond the consciousness I can have of it. For it extends to infinity. As has already been said, the most difficult thing to understand is how, in this immense monadological network of desires, individual desires, far from obstructing each other and entering into perpetual conflict, always end up, to the contrary, coming into harmonious accord with each other. This presupposes, firstly, that Leibniz conceives of the difference between monads and between their individual desires in terms of complementarity, not opposition. Their difference can essentially be reduced to a complementarity between their points of view on the same universe. Consequently, the other and its desire cannot, for Leibniz, be a part of the (always internal!) “obstacles” that hold back the actualization of my forces and the realization of my desires. My singular encounter with this monad among all other monads thus seems to require an accompanying (kept) promise of enrichment. This bias on the part of Leibniz toward harmony between individual monads (guaranteed, it is true, by divine creation) is inseparable from this second presupposition according to which I already contain, at least implicitly, all other human monads that I could desire. Am I not, from the moment of my creation, “the living mirror”118 of all monads and the expression in one single point of the whole universe? This mirror is living and dynamic because it is likely to desire and enrich itself. This enrichment that a monad can draw from other monads should not be confused with a simple perfecting of its own active forces. This central difference comes from the fact that a monad does not contain other monads in the same way as it contains the primitive forces making up its own individual substance. It is its own forces and their dynamic unfolding, but it is not the other monads that it represents (and always has represented, it is true) from its individual viewpoint and that it desires according to the (changing) topology of its space of proximity. Its finite point of view on the universe is always affected by a blind spot: it opens

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onto everything, it brings together and unifies everything in itself, it wanders, it unifies itself by unifying the other points of view—­but it will always be its own point of view and not the point of view of another monad. One must thus not lose sight, within the immanence of monadic substance, of the distinction between what properly belongs to it and what, to the contrary, takes it beyond its “sphere of ownness” (Eigenheitssphäre, in Husserl’s words) toward the encounter with other monadic substances. Yet, it is still one and the same dynamism that conjointly rules over these two spheres of monadic immanence. Developing my active capacities and forces does not only mean overcoming the “laziness and slackness” of my passive forces, or becoming more active and more intelligent; it also and necessarily means to renew myself in a creative way by directing my interest and my desires toward new monadic-​subjects. It is thus one and the same movement of perfecting that crosses and intertwines an individual monad’s two spheres of immanence. For within my most immanent immanence, my active forces or drives already lead me toward acts that necessarily involve other agents. If my drive actions lead me to be concerned with new things and if they always imply intersubjective interactions, it follows that the immanence of my monadic subject is never without one or another form of transcendence. This was not only well understood by Heidegger; he made it into the very focal point of his entire interpretation of Leibniz’s monadology. It is thus even more surprising how little he emphasizes the perspectives offered by this latter for both a phenomenology of human intersubjectivity and a metaphysics of desire. Completely concentrated on the issue of defining the unity of monadic substance in terms of “drive” (Trieb, Drang) and focused on the twofold direction of a vital drive that brings the monad into contact with both the world and itself, Heidegger’s interpretation of Leibniz pays little attention to human desire in its threefold dimension: the “disquiet” of “ontological” desire, the lack governing “psychological” desires, and desiring the desire of the other. It is thus not surprising that Heidegger is content to cite Leibniz’s New Essays only once and only in passing.119 It is even less surprising to see that, in its reading of Leibniz’s dynamic metaphysics, the course given during the 1928 summer semester (that is, only a few months after the publication of Sein und Zeit) is massively (though only tacitly) inspired by the teachings on fundamental ontology. In one of the extremely condensed formulations characteristic of the young Heidegger, the 1928 course defines the Leibnizian monad as “that which simply originally unifies and which individuates in advance.”120 We will turn, successively, to the Heideggerian understanding of: the transcendence of the drive force that accomplishes this work of unification, the

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nature of the multiplicity that the monad “unifies . . . in advance” within its simple unity, and the dimension of “self-​opening” (Selbtsoffenheit) that allows each monad to relate to its own individual unity or, put otherwise, each created monad to relate to the finitude of its point of view on the world. Without the slightest hesitation and right from the start, Heidegger identifies the “primitive active force” (vis activa primitiva)—­which, for Leibniz, constitutes the “substantial form” of the monad—­w ith a “drive” that, due to its consubstantial “inhibition,” is always “tensed.”121 This concurs on all points with the interpretation that we ourselves gave of it (a much more laborious one, it is true). It should, however, be noted that Heidegger has little concern for maintaining drive “tension” or for the consequences of a possible total “disinhibition” (Enthemmung) of this drive. In other words, despite his unquestionable proximity to the metapsychology of psychoanalysis, the Heideggerian reading of Leibniz pays no attention to the Freudian problematic of a “pleasure principle” and a “death drive.” This complete and absolute ignoring of the question of pleasure and desire should not be confused with the way in which Leibniz himself, in his discussion of Locke, affirms the anteriority of the experience of “disquiet” over any consideration of or strategy tied to pleasure. Ignoring pleasure, then desire, and finally, the desire for the displeasure tied to the total resolution of drive tension, disregarding everything linked, in his eyes, to mere psychology, Heidegger focuses entirely on the ontological and unifying meaning of the drive according to Leibniz. This bias in his interpretation in no way diminishes its speculative strength, nor its admirable coherence and conciseness. Through its vis activa or original drive, the monad pursues, according to Heidegger, the goal of continuously reaffirming its own individual unity. There are two reasons that explain the necessity and urgency of this Sisyphean task. First, this monadic unity is never a given, for it necessarily has to accommodate a multiplicity. For the monad to feel the pressing need to gather together this latter within its own unity, it has to be concerned with this multiplicity to the highest degree—­perhaps to the point of being threatened by it in its very identity and persistence in existence. This multiplicity must thus be a necessary and intimate one,122 that is, a threat of dispersion that overcomes the monad not from the outside, but from the inside. The second reason for the Sisyphean task of the monad’s unifying drive: the work of unifying this intimate and essential multiplicity has to be infinitely repeated, for this multiplicity is subjected, in its turn, to continuous change. Even though the work of the monad always consists in a self-​unification, the resulting unity and the multiplicity that it unites are continuously transforming themselves. For Heidegger, this means that the monad’s work of unification implies a

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dual drive process, that is, the multiplicity that the original drive strives to unify is itself inhabited by a drive.123 What these two drive processes of monadic unification and dispersion have in common, however, according to Heidegger, is that they are ruled by the a priori form of unity belonging to the sensible multiplicity that we call “time.” It is time that scans the unfolding of the dual drive process, and Heidegger does not hesitate to conclude from this that the drive is the source of time.124 Let us be more precise! The internal and changing multiplicity that the monad has to unify anew in every moment is constituted by its “representations” or “perceptions” through which it relates (more or less distinctly) to the universe of all other monads. These representations continuously change and “progress” under the impulse of the monad’s “appetites.” For Heidegger, these appetites are the kind of particular drive that pushes the monad to move from one representation to the next, and so forth.125 The Heideggerian term “trend toward transition” (Übergangstendenz) captures well what Leibniz means by “progressus perceptionum.” It is an impulse attached to (changing!) representations and, consequently and very precisely, a drive in the sense found at work in what I called “psychological desires.” My analysis was attached to bringing to the fore the indefinite march of desires and its way of deepening rather than fulfilling an original lack. Heidegger’s interpretation takes a different approach. It emphasizes everything owed to the original drive or vis activa by the “appetites” tied to “perceptions.” For Heidegger, far from being desires rooted in the lack of a fundamental disquiet, these appetites are drives. More precisely, they are the vis activa inasmuch as this latter relates to a temporal continuity. They are the original drive for unification inasmuch as it follows the rhythm of the temporal succession not only of representations, but also of the drive states of monadic substance.126 Far from pressing one toward an indefinite drifting of desires, appetites thus remain rooted, despite their temporal changes, in the unifying drive that constitutes the monad’s substantial form. The Heideggerian interpretation of Leibnizian “representations” is not much more orthodox than his interpretation of “appetites.” In fact, Heidegger directly admits to us that, in understanding these representations on the basis of the unifying tendency of monadic substance, he thinks he understands Leibniz better than Leibniz understood himself.127 Before giving itself over to the progressus perceptionum, the monad already reunites within its unity the multiplicity of perceptions that it will be led to explore. According to Heidegger, monadic unity thus includes a priori an outline of the multiplicity that it is driven to unify. In other words, the de facto multiplicity of actual perceptions that are still to be unified must be founded on the de jure multiplicity that is always already unified

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within the unity of the monad.128 How are we then to understand, phenomenologically speaking, this difference between a multiplicity that is outlined in advance and a multiplicity that is still to be discovered? Not surprisingly, Heidegger thinks that Sein und Zeit already answers this question by drawing a distinction between the world and worldly things. The human monad, better understood by Heidegger than by Leibniz himself, is thus the unity of a Dasein whose Being-​in-​the-​world already involves an a priori familiarity with worldly things and whose “drive” or transcendence consists in actually being concerned with worldly things—­at the risk of becoming dispersed and losing itself in them.129 Heidegger’s entire interpretation of the “representations,” “appetites,” and unifying drive of Leibniz’s monadology is visibly and to a great extent inspired by his fundamental ontology. According to this reading of Leibniz, the march of “representations” is made possible by a fundamental unifying drive that has a “world-​character” (Welt- C ​ harakter). One might as well say that Leibniz’s vis activa becomes a figure of what Sein und Zeit called “transcendence.” The fundamental drive or vis activa primitiva that forces the monad to indefinitely begin its work of unification again is thus understood as the “ek-​static”130 movement that consists in continuously “surpassing” oneself (Sichüberholen).131 And Leibniz’s “perception” or “representation” becomes a “Vor-​stellung,” that is, the expression of a drive movement through which the monad not only anticipatively spreads itself out (ausgreifend) over the multiplicity that will actually be given to it, but encompasses (umgreifend) it in advance within the simplicity of its own unity.132 Inversely, what §43 of Sein und Zeit says about the experience of resistance and disinhibition already lends itself to a Leibnizian reading (in the Heideggerian sense, to be sure). Let us once again, however, leave this task to Heidegger scholars, who will surely also draw attention to the Kantian heritage of this interpretation of Leibniz, where the a priori synthesis of unification and its temporal form are turned into a mode of being of the drive equivalent to the most fundamental mode of being of the monadic substance-​subject. Let us only retain that, in this Heideggerian interpretation of Leibniz, the vis activa primitiva of the monad becomes a unifying force whose drive character is inseparable from its movement of anticipating a monadic unity that is never definitively acquired. To be sure, this does not mean that the human monad only cares for itself. If it is forced to care for itself, this is precisely because its drive concerns most often lead it far away from itself, that is, toward other monads. The multiplicity that the monad has the task of unifying thus has its origin in the monad’s own tendency to disperse itself and not in the diversity of monads that make up the universe. We can recognize, in this line of interpretation of Leibniz by Heidegger, the

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double movement of Dasein’s existence as it is understood in the fundamental ontology of Sein und Zeit and the Marburg lectures. However, we should also be sensitive to the fact that, thanks to the reading of Leibniz, the double movement of existence becomes a double drive movement, for both the unifying force and the appeal of the multiplicity of representations to be unified arise from a drive impulse (Drang). As such, the return to itself of the human monad, that is, to its own simple unity, depends neither on a particular effort of concentration or recentering, nor on an event such as the collapse of the meaning of worldly things in anxiety. It is rather forced on the monad by its own vis activa primitiva. Are we dealing with two different drives or with the double direction of one and the same drive in this double centrifugal and centripetal movement of the monad? Heidegger seems to lean toward the first solution, that is, toward the plurality of drives—­while still insisting, however, on their intertwinement. Since the unity of the human monad is never achieved, it requires a unifying drive. This unity has to be conquered by overcoming the antagonistic drive that pushes the monad to become dispersed in the multiplicity of its appetites and representations. But what, more precisely, is this unity that the monad “predelineates” or has in view in advance when it encompasses (umgreift) the multiplicity of its perceptions and its appetites, and brings them back into the lap of its own simple and original unity? Here is Heidegger’s answer: it has its own “point of view” on the world in view, that is, what makes its simple unity into an individual and unique unity.133 The simple unity that “regulates” the unifying drive of the monad “in advance” is thus the self of a particular and limited point of view, and consequently a self whose individuality is inseparable from its “finitude.”134 This original finitude of the simple and individual unity of a unique point of view on the world and the universe as a whole thus constitutes the ultimate anchor point of all monadic drives. It is the point where the centrifugal drive and the centripetal drive must cross paths in a chiasmatic intertwining—­despite their differences of interest and direction. This crossing is explained, to begin with, by the fact that the centrifugal drive of the monad’s “appetites” for new “perceptions” cannot completely ignore the contrary impulse of the centripetal drive characterizing its “vis activa primitiva.” For Heidegger, all human monadic drives, even centrifugal ones, involve a “self-​openness” (Selbstoffenheit),135 however rudimentary it may be. All drives “traverse” (durchmisst) the “dimension” of ipseity belonging to a finite point of view,136 and this is why all centrifugal drives lend themselves to a reversal into centripetal drives. Inversely, there is no centripetal drive that is not underpinned by the multiplicities brought about by a centrifugal force. The relationship to self is thus

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always present in the relationship to the world; before being explicitly in view, the self is “co-​presented” (Mitvorstellen) on the margins of the representation of the world.137 The explicit consciousness of its individual point of view on the world presupposes a non-​reflexive consciousness of itself, that is, the ontological dimension of the Selbstoffenheit belonging to a Dasein that flees itself toward the world. In Leibnizian language: between the implicit relation linking perceptio to the self from the individual point of view and the reflexive consciousness characteristic of apperceptio, there is only a difference of degree, not of nature. Far from constituting the origin of the self, self-​consciousness merely makes explicit the relation that all drives belonging to a human monad maintain with its own unity.138 If we (like Leibniz) attribute a primitive active force to all monads (even material ones), and if we (like Heidegger) understand this primitive active force as a drive striving to unify the monad, we cannot escape the conclusion that every monad must harbor within itself a kind of relation to its own ipseity—­be it an implicit or even unconscious one.139 Thus, the consciousness that is lacking in material substances does not only concern the lack of distinctness or clarity with which they represent other monads; it also, and more fundamentally, concerns the lack of explicit consciousness of their own point of view on the world. For Leibniz, unconsciousness first affects ignorance or lack of knowledge with respect to oneself before disturbing the relation to foreign monads. Before weighing upon the relation a human monad maintains with its innate ideas, other people, and worldly things and events, its unconscious renders it (at least partially) foreign to itself.

3

Schopenhauer on the Drives of Bodies and the Ambiguities of Human Desire

Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of force; I, on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to be conceived as will. —­Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation A metaphysical school of the North, impregnated to some extent with fog, has fancied that it has worked a revolution in human understanding by replacing the word Force with the word Will. —­Hugo, Les Misérables

If Schopenhauer’s entire merit were reducible to attributing a new name, “will,” to Leibniz’s “force” (vis activa), it is true that the examination of his metaphysics would not provide us with much that is new concerning our research into the philosophical meaning of the psychoanalytic concept of the “drive.” Yet, one might ask whether we are faced here with a simple “word” change, and further whether Victor Hugo (usually so perspicacious) has properly understood the meaning of “the word Will” in the “metaphysical school of the North.” One has to admit that this new denomination is not without ambiguity. Schopenhauer claims repeatedly that no known “name” or “concept” truly captures this primary reality or “thing-​in-​itself,” which he designates for lack of a better term as “will,” basing himself on our specific experience of it through our own body (Leib).1 At the same time, he seems to be particularly attached to the term “will,” clearly preferring it to the term “force” because he thinks it is better equipped to capture the essential characteristics of this primary reality or true and universal substance from which all genera of being (or “Platonic Ideas”) as well as all the particular beings that make up the 87

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phenomenal world are derived. It goes without saying that this ambiguity is not accidental. It can be explained first by the fact that the word “ force” has a much more limited meaning in Schopenhauer than in Leibniz, and second by Schopenhauer’s extension of the term “will” to include the metaphysical essence of all beings. For Schopenhauer, the only forces that exist are the “forces of nature,” and these are to be understood as the “objectification” of the universal “will” within the realm of material nature alone. In other words, Schopenhauer does not recognize the existence of the mental forces that are so important to Leibniz’s philosophy. As for the “will,” he extends its application well beyond the realm of human action, including animal “instincts” and “drives” as well as human “desires.” This surprising extension of the meaning of “will” is justified by the claim that, while only humans are explicitly conscious of the will, it stems from the same metaphysical principle as the forces of material bodies and the animal drives. For even when the human will is guided by rational representations or motives, the roots of rational action still reach down into the same universal will at work in the blind mechanisms of natural forces and the primitive teleology of animal instincts. We are, thus, far removed from the rational force of a human will as it is understood by Leibniz. While Leibniz’s “force” is characterized by rational determinations that are generously communicated to the behavior of all beings, the “will” that animates all beings in Schopenhauer is instead characterized by blindness, ignorance, indetermination, unavoidable dissatisfaction, and confinement in a sterile and destructive repetition. Schopenhauer’s will takes no interest in the rationality of the principle of reason; it completely ignores the individuation of particular substances and the subjectivity of human subjects; it is not bound by any of the inhibitions that restrain the force of finite substances in Leibniz; it is everything, yet from the standpoint of the requirements of the phenomenal world, the will is nothing. Unknowable in itself and barely recognizable in a few specific phenomena, it still governs the play of phenomena and thus continuously and inevitably discredits all rational constructions that our intellect and conscious representations project onto the superficial appearances of the world. It seems that everything separating Schopenhauer’s will from Leibniz’s forces must bring it closer to Freud’s drive. Like the Freudian drive, Schopenhauer’s will is free from all original attachment to an object and leads a life ruled entirely by the pleasure principle. Moreover, the will also draws all of its inexhaustible and potentially destructive energy from itself, rather than from occasional stimuli or impulses (Freud’s Triebreize) that only bring about its temporal actualization. Like Freud’s drive, the Schopenhauerian will is much closer to our libidinal body and its affects than to the conscious representations of our intellect and their intentional

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objects. Freud was not blind to these deep similarities. One should, however, also remain mindful of the differences, particularly the fact that from the outset, unlike the monolithic nature of the Schopenhauerian will, Freud’s drive breaks apart into a multiplicity of partial drives that can just as well come into conflict with each other as form alliances, but are never reducible to one and the same force. This plasticity, in Freud, of a force that is both originally and finally multiple owes much to Leibniz. We will have to remember this when revisiting the Freudian doctrine on the drive in the next chapter.

Substance as Blind Will and the Precarious Rationality of the Phenomenal World (Transvaluation of Leibnizian Metaphysics) In his early days, Schopenhauer could still be seen as a loyal disciple of Leibniz. In his 1813 doctoral dissertation (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason),2 he proposed a systematic overview of the Leibnizian principles of rationalism by formulating this latter according to the fashion of his time, that is, by raising it up to the level of Kantian critique. Over the course of the subsequent evolution of his thought, Schopenhauer never went back on this exposition, and the first book of The World as Will and Representation, entitled “The World as Representation,” is essentially nothing more than a summary of the views defended in his doctoral dissertation. One can thus conclude that, if The World as Will and Representation truly carries out a transvaluation of Leibnizian metaphysics, it cannot be with respect to “The World as Representation,” but must rather characterize “The World as Will” (title of the second and fourth books) and the relation of this latter to the phenomenal world of representation. According to the doctrine of the doctoral dissertation, the rational coherence of the phenomenal world lends itself to a fourfold reading and, more precisely speaking, to a fourfold attempt at foundation. This can be explained by the fact that this world is made up of four types of objects, requiring just as many rational principles governing the four corresponding types of representation. First, there are the material objects of empirical experience and the rational principle that regulates the relation between these objects. This principle consists in giving reasons for the appearance of an empirical fact by explaining how it occurs based on one or more previous empirical facts. Unsurprisingly, Schopenhauer identifies the principle of such

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an occurrence of a new fact (principium rationis suifficientis fiendi) with causality. We can dispense here with a more detailed account of the Schopenhauerian understanding of the nature of this causality and its subjective representation arising out of his long discussion with the positions of Kant and Hume. What is more important to us is the question regarding what this causality, as the sufficient reason behind the phenomenal becoming of material bodies, explains and what it leaves in obscurity. Has Leibniz not already drawn our attention to the limits of a phenomenal physics and to its dependence on a dynamic meta-​physics? Schopenhauer proceeds in the same fashion and limits the reach of causality to explaining how (and not why) empirical facts appear. Does this mean that for Schopenhauer, like Leibniz, the rational order of physical phenomena is founded on a deeper rational order that governs the relation between monadic substances? In this case—­to the contrary of what Schopenhauer implies—­it should be admitted that the principle of causality offers, at most, a necessary reason, but certainly not a sufficient reason for these phenomena. This, let us recall, was Leibniz’s position. Another solution: causality is indeed the ratio sufficiens fiendi, but phenomena have a metaphysical origin that does not spring from reason and its principles in any way. Schopenhauer will come around to this latter position already in the second book of The World as Will and Representation and in a subsequent short work bearing the significant title On the Will in Nature.3 Thus, for Schopenhauer the principal of causality only concerns the world as representation and, strictly speaking, only a part of this latter, namely, the empirical objects of the natural sciences. For these sciences, it constitutes an indispensable principle, that is, one that is necessary and sufficient: it says everything that can be rationally said about nature. But what suffices for the scientist, no longer suffices for the philosopher, for whom the why of natural phenomena arises, in the final analysis, from an irrational will and, more precisely, from its objectification in the form of “natural forces.” It will not take this disillusioned philosopher long to oppose the spontaneous realism of the natural sciences with an idealist—­not an ideal—­version of the order of the empirical world: for Schopenhauer, the rationality of this world is nothing more than a creation of the subject of experience. In other words, the rational world of science is nothing more than the world as the scientist or any other intelligent subject represent it to themselves for the sake of intellectual comfort. As such, it consists of a rational order projected onto the world by the subject of intellectual knowledge, and tells us nothing about the will as Thing-​in-​ itself or metaphysical reality at the true origin of all phenomena. We can quickly skim over the treatment given in Schopenhauer’s doctoral dissertation to the two following formulations and applications of

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the principle of sufficient reason. In his second formulation, this principle concerns conceptual representations and applies to the abstract objects known as judgments. While the principle of causality regulates the rational relation between material phenomena, the principle of noncontradiction regulates the rational relation between judgments with a view to ensuring the logical coherence of the order of human knowledge. As such, the principle of sufficient reason becomes a principium rationis sufficientis cognoscendi. Following Kant, Schopenhauer shows the greatest distrust for the reasoning processes of a reason cut off from the experience of empirical objects. For him, true (though not for this reason metaphysically “true”) knowledge arises from an understanding grounded in the material provided by the experience of sensible intuition. The third formulation of the principle of reason is still mostly inspired by Kant when it treats time and space as objects of a formal a priori intuition, rather than of an empirical experience or conceptual articulation. While they are not themselves empirical objects, time and space nonetheless characterize the mode of being of all empirical objects and thus fall under the authority of the principium rationis sufficientis essendi. This principle applies, more particularly, to the pure knowledge at work in mathematics in the double form of arithmetic and geometry. The formulation of the fourth principle of reason in Schopenhauer’s doctoral dissertation differs from the three other principles in that he in this case explicitly emphasizes the limits of its application and thus clears the way for his subsequent metaphysics of the will. The objects regulated by this fourth form of the principle of reason are essentially the motives for human action and, more generally, the nature of human beings as acting subjects. The rational foundation of human action thus falls under the jurisdiction of a reason that takes the form of a principium rationis sufficientis agendi. It is within this reflection on the nature of human action and the rationality specific to it that the concept of will (in its traditional and narrow sense) first appears in the doctoral dissertation. While human action, unlike the objects of the three other forms of the principle of reason, belongs more to will than to representation, Schopenhauer claims that this acting will is only rational to the extent that it lets itself be guided by rational motives which are, themselves, representations of our intellect. This motivation of human action through rational representation, Schopenhauer further claims, is like a causality seen from the inside, that is, from the viewpoint of the rational acting subject. In this new form of a principium rationis sufficientis agendi, the principle of reason thus defines the domain of rational motivation for human action. The fourth formulation of the principle of reason, like the other three, thus calls upon the capacities of human intelligence. In the case

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of the principium rationis sufficientis agendi, what is more specifically called upon is the human capacity to represent the legitimacy of the rational motives likely to guide one’s will when it becomes active. However, anything that does not arise from reason in the human will and human action remains foreign to this principle. Human beings never act purely upon the instigation of rational motives, and the imperative necessity that these latter impose on human beings does not suffice to make particular human beings submit themselves entirely to it, without any reticence or personal preference. While Kant was content to point to sensible “inclinations” as the source of human actions that did not meet the requirements of pure practical reason, as early on as his doctoral dissertation, Schopenhauer delves deeper and brings to light the source of these subjective inclinations or irrational motives in the particular “empirical character” of each man and woman. The World as Will and Representation does not hesitate to take a further step by recognizing, in this individual empirical character of each human being, a particularization of the essence of human nature (more precisely: of the Platonic Idea of human beings’ “intelligible character”); this essence (like the other Platonic Ideas of material “force” and animal “instinct”) is nothing more than an “objectification” of the universal and unknowable will that, in the final analysis, gives rise to all the phenomena that present themselves on the scene of the world as representation. But if this is the case, we can no longer avoid the question regarding how, more precisely, the influence of this irrational will and the influence of the motives arising from rational representations are distinguished and combined within actual human action in the phenomenal world. We will come back to this. It is now time to say a bit more about this will that forms the gravitational center of the metaphysics at work in The World as Will and Representation 4 as well as in subsequent works by Schopenhauer. From where we are standing, there is no better introduction to this problematic than the comparison of the Schopenhauerian “will” to the “active forces” of Leibniz. We have seen that vis activa, in Leibniz, falls within a general metaphysics and constitutes the most fundamental ontological principle of all monadic substances, namely, the forma substantiae. As such, the being of all beings is characterized, in Leibniz, by this active force that pushes beings to actualize all their virtual power through constantly new actions (which can take the form of changes of place, qualitative changes, perceptions, or even reasoning processes). During this drive-​process of actualizing its virtual aspirations, monadic substance progressively perfects itself “ad infinitum.” For Schopenhauer as well, the being of all beings is constituted by a will; however, having no determinate or final aim, it stays the same throughout. Unable to perfect itself internally in any way, the

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life of the will thus consists in eternally beginning again.5 For, through all of its objectifications and realizations, the will wants nothing more, in the end, than to affirm and conserve itself as it already is, that is, “in itself.” It is thus not surprising that the principle of reason has no hold over such a will. Yet, it remains that this will is nonetheless a dynamic substantial form in Leibniz’s sense—­w ith the all-​important difference, however, that for Schopenhauer the will is the form of only one substance. In other words, the will as substantial form or formal ontological principle and the will as actual concrete substance are one and the same. It follows not only that being is to be said univocally of all beings in Schopenhauer, but that the multiplicity or diversity of beings is without substantial, and thus metaphysical, foundation. Since only one substance exists, namely, the will, Schopenhauer logically concludes that the principle of individuation (as well as the principle of sufficient reason) applies at most to the (ideal or phenomenal) objectifications of the will, but certainly never to the will itself. Schopenhauer’s substance/​w ill can thus not be a monad, for monadic being in Leibniz’s sense is necessarily to be said of a plurality of individual monadic substances. Upon closer examination, one might even question whether, without multiplicity or individuality, one can even talk about a true unity of the substance/​w ill. For if this will is in itself strongly refractory to any multiplication, then it does not need to unify itself. Instead of unity in a strict sense, it is thus better to speak of the will as “indivisible.”6 This will is further distinguished from monadic substances in Leibniz because it is not characterized by any original passivity or substantial finitude. Schopenhauer’s substance/​w ill is thus not subjected to the internal restraint of a vis primitiva passiva attributed by Leibniz to all finite substances. Schopenhauer’s will is pure activity; its power is infinite and its force, inexhaustible. It would be God if its completely irrational nature did not undermine the Judeo-​Christian vision of divine creation. If “nihilism” is an irrational atheism that continues to think in a theological manner, then Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is unquestionably nihilistic. Rather than God, Schopenhauer’s will resembles the unshakeable death drive, brought to the fore by Freud, and its blind fanaticism. Yet, this will that is everything in-​itself, is nothing from the standpoint of knowledge governed by the principle of sufficient reason, for it can neither be clarified nor even accessed by intentional or representational consciousness. Schopenhauer’s will in-​itself thus has to be “unconscious” in the twofold sense that it neither possesses an original self-​consciousness, nor can it be represented by another consciousness. Moreover, as well as withdrawing from all rational awareness, the will in-​ itself offers no handhold to the metaphysical principle of individuation.

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As such, it cannot be an unconscious subject, and its unconsciousness is not subjective in any way. In fact, this absence of subjectivity is yet another reason for not calling it a “monad.” But does this allow Schopenhauer to thus avoid any tendency to subjectify the will? If the will has absolutely nothing in common with subjectivity (for instance, that of an evil genius), why then qualify all of its expressions and manifestations in the world of representation as “objectifications”? This brings us face to face with the central problem of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, namely: the relation of the will to a phenomenal world in which it recognizes itself as if in a “mirror,”7 but from which it differs so greatly that, from its own viewpoint, this world of representation is without any true, that is, substantial, existence. This is a problem that did not trouble Leibnizian metaphysics; it is thus not surprising that, in addressing this important question, Schopenhauer turns to Kant (and Plato). Even if Leibniz clearly distinguished the order of phenomena examined by a dynamic physics from the order of metaphysical substances with their active and passive forces, he had no reason to think that the rationality of the phenomenal world was without metaphysical foundation. Much to the contrary: the principles of reason and individuation originally apply to metaphysical substances, and the rational order of phenomena is the tangible expression of these principles belonging to a metaphysical rationality. There is no divide, for Leibniz, between the world of metaphysics and the world of physics, for the latter is nothing more than the prolongation of the former. It is Kantian critique that opens the way toward such a divide by questioning what allows Leibniz to pronounce himself on the nature of metaphysical substances of which we in fact have no phenomenal experience. This is how the metaphysical substance of material things becomes a “Thing-​in-​itself” in Kant, that is, an unknowable foundation for the phenomenal object of our experience. Yet, Kant does not go so far as to conclude that this noumenal world which escapes our knowledge constitutes a mere fiction of which we would be best to rid ourselves as quickly as possible. What prevents him from taking this further step is his conviction that practical reason offers us what theoretical reason cannot, namely, an authentic access to noumenal realities. In brief, one can say that Schopenhauer takes the cards from the decks of Leibniz and Kant in order to deal them out again in his own way. The trump card of this audacious game consists in turning out to be more Kantian than Kant himself by identifying the Thing-​in-​itself that hides behind the phenomenal objects of our cognitive experience with the will as organ of practical reason. Transformed into the will, the Kantian Thing-​in-​itself thus lends itself to an original merging with the Leibnizian monad, that is, with an acting substance animated by dynamic

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forces. As such, Kant’s Thing-​in-​itself becomes Schopenhauer’s will. It is true that this takeover leads to some conceptual restructuring and speculative patch-​up jobs on the part of Schopenhauer. First (and this is what constitutes the “original intuition” from which the rest of Schopenhauer’s thought is derived), the Thing-​in-​itself becomes an irrational “will in-​itself,” a pure will to power whose only goal is self-​affirmation and self-​preservation through increasing and intensifying its forces. We are thus quite far from Kant’s “good will.” Second, what follows is a radical scission between the rationality belonging to the phenomenal objects of our experience and the Thing-​in-​itself, which is not only unknowable (as Kant had already brought to the fore against Leibniz), but completely devoid of reason (which Kant never would have been willing to admit). Third, in a quasi-​acrobatic movement of his thinking, Schopenhauer finally sacrifices Kant to the metaphysics of Leibniz by making the Thing-​in-​itself (understood as will in-​itself) into the dynamic substantial origin not only of human action or knowledge, but of all beings (and all events): from material objects to human subjects, including plants and animals on the way. Participating in the same mode of dynamic substantial being, the diversity of phenomenal beings is thus understood, by Schopenhauer as it was already by Leibniz, as constituting a continuity with only gradual differences. All the kinds of being are thus situated on a continuous scale of development and perfecting belonging to one and the same mode of substantial being, namely, that of the will in-​itself. All the objects of one’s experience, as well as oneself as the subject of experience or representation, are thus phenomena grounded in one and the same noumenal substance, namely, the will. However, to the contrary of Leibniz’s bene fondata phenomena, Schopenhauer’s phenomena are poorly grounded, for they are grounded on the groundless ground of an irrational, blind, and tyrannical will.8 How then does Schopenhauer manage to bridge the gap that he himself has opened up between phenomena ruled by the principle of reason and the will as an irrational metaphysical principle? In other words, why does the will want and need to objectify itself in a world of rational phenomena, and how can it “know itself” in a world from which it differs so greatly? Furthermore, how can a will “free of all plurality” (frei von aller Vielheit) simultaneously want different sorts of things, and how can these different things, immanent to its arbitrary volitions, be transformed into transcendent worldly phenomena governed by the principle of reason? Finally, we must also satisfy the post-​K antian in each of us by explaining how individual human subjects living in a world of representational objects can know or at least experience (in themselves or by observing the phenomena of material nature and animal life) the action of the will in-​itself.

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Let us answer the first of these questions by recalling our analysis of Aristotelian dunamis and Leibnizian force. As this dunamis and this active force, Schopenhauer’s will is nothing more than a striving toward the realization of its immanent power, that is, toward the actualization of a merely virtual multiplicity. The will in-​itself is thus a reined-​in tendency or force that impatiently awaits the appropriate “circumstances” (Umstände) to let itself loose and thus “manifest itself” (hervortreten).9 These occasions which allow the will to realize its dynamic potential are the only things that do not stem directly from its own nature and power. They thus remain external to the will and are constituted of objects or events that are situated or happen in the transcendent (or quasi-​transcendent) realm of the phenomenal world. In the next section, I will illustrate this interaction between the will in-​itself and the phenomenal world by showing how, despite being the result of a direct objectification of the will, the natural forces that inhabit material bodies remain dependent on these empirical occasions, the rational organization of which is studied by the sciences on the basis of the principle of causality. As such, despite being “sufficient” from the standpoint of a natural science studying empirical phenomena, from the standpoint of the will in-​itself this rational principle of causality or principium rationis sufficientis fiendi is reduced to an “occasional causality” behind the manifestation of the will’s power and the realization of what it wants.10 One can thus say that the formless will in-​itself requires phenomenal forms in which to release itself in order to realize and manifest its dormant powers. However, such a claim is insufficient since it explains neither how the will can be simultaneously one and many, nor how the noumenal multiplicity of its powers (which are situated outside time and space) can be embodied in the multiplicity of phenomenal objects constituting the spatiotemporal world of representation. This leads us to our second question. Answering it requires imagining the existence of a layer of intermediate realities—­between the will and empirical objects—­that would draw their noumenal nature from the will but their multiplicity from the phenomenal world. This is exactly what Schopenhauer proposes by inserting a middle and mediating realm of ideal (and representational) objects that he calls “the Platonic Ideas” between the unity or indivisibility of the will in-​itself and the multiplicity of phenomenal objects in empirical representation: If, according to what has so far been said, all variety of forms in nature and all plurality of individuals belong not to the will, but only to its objectivity and to the form thereof, it necessarily follows that the will is indivisible and is wholly present in every phenomenon, although the

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degrees of its objectification, the (Platonic) Ideas, are very different. For easier understanding, we may regard these different Ideas as individual, and in themselves simple, acts of will. . . . But the [empirical] individuals are phenomena of the Ideas, and hence of those acts, in time, space, and plurality.11

Given their intermediate status, one can analyze the Platonic Ideas in two different ways, that is, starting from the will in-​itself or from empirical phenomena. From the standpoint of the will, the Ideas manifest the will’s unfolding into different powers or “acts” as well as its articulation in different forms. In this way, the Ideas explain how an “indivisible” will can give birth to different types of objectification such as material nature, vegetable and animal nature, and humankind (or, more specifically, human individuals). It is thus the same noumenal will, the same metaphysical drive, that realizes itself in the forms tied to the natural forces of material bodies, the tendencies and instincts of living beings, and the will to live and desires of each human being. This realization of the will in various types of “objectivity”—­w ith specific forces, tendencies, and desires—­delineates a realm of pre-​phenomenal and pre-​empirical diversity, that is, the ideal diversity of (the different kinds and degrees) of “Platonic Ideas.” As such the Ideas define an a priori ontological order for the objects of the phenomenal world. From the standpoint of phenomenal objects and their spatiotemporal individuation, these ideal forms of objectivity represent the paradigm or ideal form behind their empirical existence (similar to the Ideas in Plato himself). It is thus important to clearly distinguish between the will’s immediate objectifications (the Platonic Ideas) and its mediated objectifications (empirical objects), as well as between what these two types of objectivity can tell us about the nature of the will in-​itself. To reiterate from the standpoint of the will: the will recognizes itself better and with more immediacy in the mirror offered by the Platonic Ideas than in the deforming mirror of phenomenal objects. The will is no less present in the latter than in the former, but its action is veiled by the rule of the principles of reason and individuation. Distinguishing in human knowing and acting what arises from irrational drives and desires and what arises instead from the rational order of representation requires great psychological dexterity. We will return to this point in our last section. It should further be noted that, without this diversity in fields of objectification introduced by the Platonic Ideas for one and the same will, it would be impossible to understand how a phenomenal world arising out of the objectification of this same will could give birth to so many conflicts. As such, the Platonic Ideas explain both the beautiful and gradual

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ordering of the phenomenal world, and its most visceral conflicts.12 Yet, according to Schopenhauer, it is possible to apprehend the Platonic Ideas in a way that, though supported by the empirical world, simultaneously delivers us from the conflicts that ravage this world and from the submission of our subjective life to the tyranny of our will to live. This precious remedy is offered by aesthetic contemplation, that is, by a representation (of the Platonic Ideas) that has freed itself from all the constraints of the principle of reason and is thus more of an “intellectual intuition,” strictly speaking, than a representation: “Now in such contemplation, the particular thing at one stroke becomes the Idea of its species, and the perceiving individual becomes the pure subject of knowing.”13 Since the most perfect Platonic Idea is the idea of humanity, contemplating the beauty of the human form is what provides the empirical individual with the surest escape hatch, for a time at least, from the conflicts, fears, and difficulties of human life in the phenomenal world. Turning us into “pure subjects,” aesthetic contemplation delivers us (temporarily, it is true) both from the moral suffering that arises from being subjected to a will to live that leads us to fear death, and from the intellectual suffering brought about by the experience of absurdity in a life exposed to the blind violence of natural forces and of desires that are irrational and contradictory.14 This brings us to our third above-​mentioned question, namely: how far can human beings—­whose intelligence is limited to understanding the ideas and phenomena belonging to the rational world of representation—­ perceive the work of an irrational will within this rational world? This is a central question for Schopenhauer’s entire philosophical system in the sense that, from a post-​K antian perspective, claiming that the will is at work behind the scenes in the empirical world necessarily requires an (a priori!) proof of the possibility of experiencing its action in some way. Without this proof, Schopenhauer’s claim that the world as will and as representation is in fact one and the same world would lack any critical foundation. This being said, it seems that any attempt to provide such a proof is doomed to failure from the outset given the radical difference Schopenhauer opens up between the will and objects of representation, thus creating an apparently insurmountable gap. To produce the required proof, one would need at least one type of phenomenon that could be immediately and indubitably apprehended in the categories of both ontological realms. One could then try to show through analogy how other types of phenomena were to be understood in the same way. As was already the case in Leibniz, a particular phenomenon belonging to a special metaphysics plays the role of “guiding thread” for Schopenhauer’s general metaphysics. For Leibniz, this guiding thread allowed him to attribute active forces to all substances and was none other

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than the active powers of the human soul. In Schopenhauer, the specific phenomenon used as guiding thread to argue for the identity of the world as will and as representation is not the human soul, but the human body. The proof that we require from him is thus a demonstration that, for each of us, our empirical and individual body actually lends itself to a twofold experience: as body among other bodies in the empirical world, and as immediate manifestation or even organ of the will. In other words, Schopenhauer would have to show us how we apprehend our body through an originally double phenomenon, that is, as a phenomenon governed by the rational laws of the natural sciences and as an indubitable and direct manifestation of the irrational will that rules over our lives. To do this, our body would have to perform the miracle of phenomenalizing the noumenal.

The Inclinations of the Libidinal Body and the Natural Forces of Material Bodies Man can never be an animal, i.e., can never be nature, but is always either over the animal, or, precisely as human, under it. . . . The human body is pure nature neither in its mode of immediate givenness nor in its way of being. It is suspended, as it were, between its height and its abyss, as passage-​way from the one to the other and as an open dwelling-​place for both. —­Heidegger, The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus

For Schopenhauer, any phenomenalization of the noumenal will as Thing-​in-​itself has the status of an “objectification” (Objektivation). Schopenhauer specifies: “By objectification I understand self-​presentation or self-​exhibition [Sichdarstellen] [of the will] in the real corporeal world [in der realen Körperwelt].”15 Such an expressive representation (Darstellung) can be read in two ways: either from the standpoint of the will and its need or way of presenting itself (Darstellung); or from the standpoint of human knowledge, which can formulate an idea or representation (Vorstellung) of the noumenal will’s phenomenal objectifications. Even though the will is both subject and object in this twofold representation (Darstellung and Vorstellung), we are dealing in each case with a different form of the will. For in its “self-​presentation or self-​exhibition [Sichdarstellen] in the real corporeal world,” the will in-​itself (quoad se) not only becomes an object, but also an object for our representation (Vorstellung), that is, a will

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quoad nos. More specifically, the will in-​itself becomes a particular will that lends itself to being known (Vorstellung) by a subject—­a subject that is itself nothing more than a specific objectification of the will in-​itself. In other words, the will that objectifies itself by presenting itself (Sichdarstellen) becomes the object of a subjective representation (Vorstellung) in a subject that is nothing more than an objective Darstellung of the will in-​itself. In presenting itself as these two types of object, the will in-​itself also places a double constraint upon itself: it is first constrained by the multiplication or individuation of its Darstellungen, and further by the principle of reason that governs the world of human knowledge (Vorstellung). The objectification of the noumenal will in the phenomenal world thus always leads to a fairly important distortion of its ontological nature, a limitation of its originally absolute power, its dispersion into an infinity of particular bodies, and the further distorting of its nature by a rational knowledge that inevitably misunderstands the will’s irrational essence. To turn more specifically now to the human body, its particular way of manifesting the will principally consists in individual subjects immediately recognizing the action of their own will in the movements of their body. However, these voluntary movements of my body only express successive actions of my will and not my will in its entirety, which itself thus remains mostly unknown to me.16 The same can be said about material and animal bodies—­w ith the important difference that, unlike the acts of my own will, I never have immediate knowledge of the various natural forces and animal instincts that inspire the movements of these foreign bodies. Yet, my own voluntary bodily movements and the behavior of these foreign bodies have in common that they are worldly expressions (Darstellungen) of particular and distinct wills that I can represent to myself (Vorstellung). These different types of particular will found in natural forces, animal instincts, and the acts of the human will are themselves objectifications of one and the same noumenal will, a will that is omnipresent but remains entirely unknowable to me. All that I can know about this absolute will is its objectifications, that is, its manifestations (Darstellungen) conditioned by the rules of representation (Vorstellung). By investing empirical bodies, the will thus particularizes itself into diverse individual wills (according to different grades of an individuation that becomes maximal in the human will);17 these wills are further diffracted into a temporal succession of voluntary human acts, instinctive movements, and specific actions by natural forces. We have seen that the same cannot be said for the Platonic Ideas and their mode of Darstellung or objectification of the will in-​itself. As ideal Darstellungen of the will, these Ideas constitute the objects of an ideal human representation (Vorstellung) (that is, of a “pure intuition”) over which the principles of

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sufficient reason and individuation do not hold any sway. This is why Schopenhauer calls these Ideas “adequate” objectifications of the will in-​ itself.18 Like this latter, the Platonic Ideas exist in-​themselves. However, unlike the will in-​itself that they represent (Darstellung), these Ideas have neither the force, nor the need to manifest themselves “in the real corporeal world.” As such, the human subject can only apprehend (Vorstellung) them by distancing itself and abstracting from the phenomenal world, that is, through a “pure” intuition, and not an empirical perception. Among all the phenomena of my representational world through which the will realizes itself by presenting itself in the form of empirical objects, the human body (Leib)—­and more specifically my own body—­is exceptional in two senses.19 To begin with, I perceive the movements of my own body not only as the movements of a material body in the external world, but also as expressing my inner experience of the acts of my own will. Through this twofold subjective experience, my phenomenal body takes on two distinct meanings for me: it is a phenomenal object like (and among) all other empirical objects, and it is also the “organ” or “instrument” of my own individual will.20 Since both of these remain my body and my experiences, this twofold signification of my body must be the expression of a unity, and more specifically of a fundamental unity: my body (and my own body alone) allows the identity between my inner will and my actions in the external world to appear (to me). As such, the experience I have of my own body is the most reliable guide for understanding the action of the will in the phenomenal world and the fundamental metaphysical unity between the will in-​itself and its various kinds of objectification in the world of representation. To return to the language we used in our reading of Leibniz: my body is the distinctive being that serves as “guiding thread” (Leitfaden) for thinking the metaphysical relation between Being understood as will and the world of representation understood as an emanation (or “objectification”) of this same universal will. According to this first analysis of the distinctiveness of my body, it differs from all other phenomenal bodies in that it allows me to immediately experience the identity between the acts of my will and the movements or actions of my body in the external world.21 According to Schopenhauer, one can add to this identity between the specific acts of my will and the successive movements of my body a further identity (or at least a perfect “correspondence”) between my various bodily organs and the “chief . . . desires” of my will which make use of these organs as an “instrument.”22 What applies to my bodily movements and organs also applies to my body as a whole. In other words, for Schopenhauer there is a perfect correspondence or absolute parallelism between my body as a whole and my individual will as a whole. My will as a whole is

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what underlies the successive temporal acts of my will in me; unlike these latter, the former changes very little. This continuity of my individual will, which expresses itself in all my bodily behavior and makes me into a unique person, is what Schopenhauer calls: “my empirical character.”23 My external perception of my bodily movements is thus accompanied by both an internal perception of the successive temporal acts of my will and an internal experience of the deeper nature of my individual will as a whole. This being said, my internal perception of my acts and my intimate knowledge of myself are still representations, that is, apprehensions of my will (whether changing or constant) as an object. While it is more familiar to me than any other object, it is still impossible to adequately grasp: the true nature of my voluntary acts and my empirical character remains veiled behind any representation I can have of them. Regarding the successive acts of my will, even though I know them immediately through the movements of my body, they never represent my individual will as a whole (my “empirical character”), and even less my will in-​itself, that is, my atemporal “intelligible character.”24 Regarding my empirical character, since it is an object that persists in time, it does not—­ like the successive acts of my will—­allow itself to be grasped immediately. Instead, my empirical character, that is, my individual will insofar as it presents itself to me as the object of an empirical representation (and not as the Platonic idea of my timeless and bodiless intelligible character), only reveals itself to me through a prolonged experience that remains fragmentary and thus inadequate. As such, in my inner perception both my empirical character and my voluntary acts remain temporally determined in a way that is foreign to the true nature of my will. It is because of this temporal form that all objects of inner perception remain “empirical” objects. The empirical phenomenality of the objects of inner sense does, however, have the following advantage over the objects of outer sense: it is not bound by the phenomenal forms of space and causality. While my will is never adequately understood by me, and always remains somewhat “opaque” and “a riddle,” it is revealed to me through my internal empirical representations as a distinctive empirical object among all other empirical objects because of its greater familiarity, “more immediate” givenness, and maximal proximity to the will or “thing-​in-​itself.”25 This first analysis of my body as an object of double representation on the empirical level (immediate and mediated, internal and external, related to my will and to the external world) is followed by a further analysis that pays greater attention to how we internally feel the acts of our will without making them into objects of representation (Vorstellung). According to this second analysis, it is not through representation that the will animating my body is most originally known to me, but rather through

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feelings, or, more precisely, through the affects of pleasure and displeasure. Prior to the reality principle or the principle of sufficient reason governing objects of representation, it is the pleasure principle that governs the way in which my embodied will reacts to the various solicitations of the external world, the way in which it realizes itself in this world through successive acts, and the way in which my empirical character as a whole affirms itself. As the organ of my will, my body is thus not only an effective “instrument” for the realization of the will in the empirical world, but also and more importantly an organ of enjoyment and pleasure for me, that is, a libidinal body. Servant to one and the same master—­my will—­my body serves on two levels at once: as libidinal body, immediately sensitive to the “chief desires” of my irrational will; and as worldly body, an effective instrument for following the orders of the part of my will that is governed by rational motives and acts in the external world. As a result, all affections and impressions undergone by my body are experienced under the rule of both the pleasure principle and the reality principle: To the subject of knowing, who appears as an individual only through his identity with the body [mit dem Leibe], this body is given in two entirely different ways. It is given . . . as an object among objects, liable to the laws of these objects. But it is also given in a quite different way, namely, as what is known immediately to everyone, as is denoted by the word will. Every true act of his will is also at once and inevitably a movement of his body; he cannot actually will the act without at the same time being aware that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of the will [Willensakt] and the action of the body . . . are one and the same thing, though given in two entirely different ways, first quite directly, and then in intuition for the understanding. . . . Later on we shall see that . . . the whole body is nothing but the objectified will, i.e., will that has become representation. . . . Therefore, in a certain sense, it can also be said that the will is knowledge a priori of the body, and that the body is knowledge a posteriori of the will. . . . Every true, genuine, immediate act of the will is also at once and directly a manifest act of the body; and correspondingly, on the other hand, every impression [Einwirkung] on the body is also at once and directly an impression on the will. As such, it is called pain when it is contrary to the will, and gratification or pleasure when in accordance with the will [ihm gemäaβ].26

This new Schopenhauerian philosophy of the human body—­despite its complexity, to which we have not yet done full justice—­is based on one very simple intuition: my perception of the behavior of my own body

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differs from my perception of the movements of other bodies (whether living or only material) because the former includes my internal experience of the acts of my will as the source of my bodily behavior. I know with self-​evidence why my body behaves the way it does in the phenomenal world. Although similar in some sense to all other human bodies and to my perception of their phenomenal behavior, my own body is also an absolutely unique body for me in that I immediately grasp the identity between its movements and the acts of my will.27 It is in this sense that Schopenhauer can claim a double givenness of my body to me—­as object of empirical representation and as organ of my will—­w ithout undermining its individual identity. But what is then to be said about the “involuntary” movements of my body? Are they without relation to my will? Do they appear to me as movements of a foreign body? Or should we say instead that they express a kind of involuntary will that inhabits me but no longer allows itself to be guided by my explicit intentions or by rational motives? Schopenhauer tends toward the latter solution.28 For if my will is nothing more than an objectification of the universal will in an individual body, there is no good reason to think that my will would always follow rational and reflective rules. Taken in its entirety, the will that inhabits my body is nothing more for Schopenhauer than an irrational will to live29 that manifests itself through the modalities of my “empirical character,” which I know from experience to be far from completely rational. Even if I consider my will from the standpoint of its successive acts, there is still no reason to consider it as always guided by rational “motives.” If one keeps in mind my will’s source, that is, its origin in the universal will, it would seem much more plausible that all rational action on my part is the exception rather than the rule. What I want and my wanting this rather than that is often without rational explanation, and instead blindly follows the flow of passively endured “stimuli” (Reize). Among my many bodily acts and behaviors, those that arise from my desires rather than from rationally deliberated motives can thus be qualified as involuntary. Despite their involuntariness from the standpoint of a rational subject, these acts still remain, for Schopenhauer, acts of my will in that, taken in itself, my will is not fundamentally rational.30 But what about cases in which I only have a very obscure awareness (or no awareness at all) of my desire before acting? Do I then require recourse to an external perception of my bodily behavior to become conscious of the nature of my desire after the fact? This would suggest that, at least in one case, my awareness of the identity between the phenomenal actions of my body and my will is not as “immediate” as Schopenhauer would have us believe. However, we would only be led to this double conclusion

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if representation were the only way of being conscious of this identity. Yet, on the basis of what we have already seen concerning the sensations of pleasure and displeasure, it is also possible to conceive of these sensations—­which usually merely accompany our representations—­a s standing in for any lacking representation or internal perception of my will. Since the feeling of pleasure is an expression for Schopenhauer of my will’s agreement with an action I am engaged in or with an impulse or stimulus (Reiz) I am undergoing, this feeling of pleasure can infallibly provide an immediate awareness of identity between the involuntary behavior of my phenomenal body and the unconscious acts or desires of my will. My feeling of pleasure simultaneously reveals to me the irrational motive of my involuntary bodily actions and their undeniable origin in my will. As such, even in my involuntary actions, my body continues to promptly carry out the intentions of my will—­and my feeling of pleasure provides the proof of this. Indeed, this is how Schopenhauer seems to conceive of the pleasure principle governing all the acts of my will—­even when this principle has to take into account the requirements of the reality principle or the principles of sufficient reason. As such, the pleasure principle is a universal principle for the acts of my will, though it is not their only principle. Does this mean that what my will wants is always in a sense, directly or indirectly, a kind of pleasure? This presupposes that my will can form an idea of pleasure, that is, that pleasure can be an object of representation before becoming the goal of an action. Yet, much to the contrary and quite clearly, Schopenhauer argues that pleasure and displeasure are anything but (objects of) representation (Vorstellung).31 They are rather sensations or affects. More specifically, they are first bodily sensations that arise when an “affection” (Einwirkung) that touches my body pleases (is “in accordance with”) or displeases my will (recalling here that my body is an immediate objectification of this will). Second, they are also more general and less localized sensations that manifest my will’s agreement or disagreement with my rational acts and intellectual pursuits. Thus, for Schopenhauer, like Leibniz (as well as Plato and Aristotle), one cannot seek or obtain pleasure directly and for itself. Instead, physical enjoyment (Wohllust) and any other form of (even intellectual) pleasure arise as a kind of by-​product of an action or affection in which our libidinal body or intelligence (brain) is deeply engaged. Consequently, it is not pleasure that my will wants, but rather to realize its essence, that is, to realize the “will-​to-​live” (Wille zum Leben) that animates my body through and through. Pleasure is thus the sensation that I feel when the events that affect my body coincide with my will, that is, agree with my drives. Displeasure, on the other hand, is a feeling that arises in relation to bodily events or rational constraints that

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prevent or inhibit my will from realizing what its nature prescribes to it. Far from being wanted or sought by me, my pleasure for Schopenhauer is a sensation that forces itself upon me, that is, a sensation explained by the fact that, for any event that affects my body, the will animating my body is “forced” (erzwungen) to express whether it wants it or not. In this way, the universal application of the pleasure principle in Schopenhauer derives from the fact that everything which affects my body necessarily also affects my will. Yet, even though this affection of my will is inevitable, it can still happen in different ways. For instance, it can be more or less direct, or more or less powerful. Some bodily affections immediately trigger a passionate reaction of my will, while others seem to touch it very little or even leave it relatively indifferent. This depends not only on the strength of these affections, but also on the power of my body to offer any resistance to them. When the power to resist is lacking, any affection undergone by the human body is directly transmitted to the will, which results in the affection only being experienced as a sensation of pleasure or suffering. Overcome by the violence of this affection and unable to represent its nature or its cause, the subject is thus without capacity to defend itself or react. It is reduced to the passive or primitive feeling of finding this affection pleasant or unpleasant. Its body is reduced to nothing more than a purely libidinal body. For Schopenhauer, excessive sensitivity to pleasure or pain is the sign of a weakness that he calls “weakness of the nerves” and explains as “a morbid and hypochondriacal disposition.” The norm for him is rather when moderate affections are mastered and filtered through our intelligence (or our brain) before they reach our will. In this case, the bodily sensations that arise from an affection or impression provide our intelligence with the opportunity to form an objective representation of the external world.32 The knowledge or perception we have of external reality is thus explained by the way our intelligence represents to itself the cause of these filtered bodily sensations, which do not in this case immediately overpower our will and our sensitivity to pleasure. Hence, the victory of the reality principle over the pleasure principle is the result of both the weakness of the impressions that affect our body (and more specifically, our brain) and our power to offer sufficient resistance to them so that they do not immediately reach our will. We will return shortly to this dynamic of bodily affections that is at the origin not only of our objective knowledge of the external world, but also of our rational action in the phenomenal world. Among the bodies that make up the phenomenal world, our own body is the one we know best and the only body for which we have immediate access to the will that moves it. For Schopenhauer, it is the double experience we have of our own body—­as object of representation and as

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organ of our will—­that provides the “key” (or guiding thread) for understanding the being of all other bodies whose animating will remains inaccessible to us.33 In other words, “we must learn to understand nature [die Natur] from ourselves, not ourselves from nature.”34 This is the case both for the behavior of living organisms, that is, plants and animals, as well as the movements of material bodies. Concerning the latter, similarly to our own body, they are to be understood as objectifications of the will in-​itself, even if this objectification of the will “in the inorganic kingdom of nature” is not on the same level as its objectification in the human body. This difference of levels comes particularly to the fore in the fact that inanimate bodies and their movements lack individuality.35 This is not to say that all inorganic bodies are the same, nor that the will that inhabits them always wants the same thing. However, the difference between material bodies is limited to their species; it does not extend to particular cases of the same species. For example, even if the force of water and the force of fire are not identical, all water droplets and all fires in the world are animated by a same species of force. As such, the difference between natural forces remains general in character, and a given type of natural force can only be differentiated in a general way, for instance, through a change in its intensity.36 This general character of natural forces is very advantageous for the physical sciences, particularly when they seek to generalize the phenomenal manifestations of these forces. Identical quantities of water with identical pressures turn mills of the same design at an identical speed. This speed can be scientifically calculated, and the mechanical knowledge of engineers allows them to improve the productivity of existing mills or to build more efficient mills. The mill’s action thus lends itself to a scientific analysis where one reasons in terms of causality and proceeds by applying various laws of nature formulated in the physics of physicists. Even so, according to Schopenhauer, it is never the engineer or the laws of physics that turn the mill, but always the natural force of water, that is, “the powerful, irresistible impulse with which masses of water rush downwards.”37 Yet how are we to understand the perfect applicability of the laws of physical causality to natural forces of which they remain unaware, while at the same time predicting their phenomenal behavior with such high probability? Schopenhauer claims we should turn once again to our understanding of the behavior of our own body, and more specifically to its way of acting rationally in the phenomenal world. What we call the rational actions of our own body are those that are governed by rational motives, these motives being representations (Vorstellungen) governed by the fourth formulation of the principle of reason. When presenting this

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principle, I was careful to specify that it only gives us the necessary, and not the sufficient conditions of rational human action. For in the end it is not motives that push us to act, but our will. Our actions are thus rational when our will—­their principium executionis—­is guided by rational motives or representations that our understanding—­a s principium deiudicationis bonitatis—­presents to it. In other words, we act according to or in conformity with rational motives, but not because of these motives. For our will (that is, for our individual “character”) these motives are but an “occasion” (Anlass) for moving from potentiality to act. However, this “occasion” provided by (both rational and irrational) motives is a necessary condition of our actual action, that is, of the concrete realization or spatiotemporal “manifestation” of our will in the phenomenal world.38 (More or less the same thing goes for our “involuntary actions” or reactions to the stimuli [Reize] or situations of the phenomenal world. While these reactions cannot properly be called actions—­for they lack mediation by motives or representations—­their happening similarly depends on both our will and the phenomenal circumstances.) Without delving further into the analysis of human action, we can already see how Schopenhauer would frame this analysis in order to help us understand how “natural forces” and the “laws of nature” simultaneously govern the movements of material bodies.39 Analogously to our individual will or “intelligible character,” natural forces are to be understood as “Platonic Ideas,” that is, as ideal objectifications of the will in-​itself. As such, it is impossible to locate them spatiotemporally in the empirical world. Natural forces are “omnipresent” (allgegenwärtig) in nature. Moreover, this ideal and permanent presence is not limited to their actual action in particular natural phenomena, but permeates all of nature from the outset and even in advance (a priori). In other words, natural forces are really and insistently omnipresent, even if only virtually so, in a way that precedes and makes possible their concrete actualization. As such, their presence has the same form as the acting possibility or active potentiality that we have already encountered in Aristotle’s dunamis and Leibniz’s vis activa, and to which we gave the name “metaphysical drive.” For Schopenhauer, natural forces are thus already at work in all of nature before concretely actualizing themselves in particular empirical phenomena. Accordingly, such a phenomenal realization of natural forces is to be understood, in its turn, in terms of the Aristotelian model of a “transformation” of dunamis into energeia. Further, again following Aristotle, this ontological change brought about by the actualization of a virtual force never leads to the abolition or disappearance of this force. On the contrary, in Schopenhauer the (phenomenal) actualization of a natural force is rather to be understood as an affirmation of its (noumenal) way of

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being an actual force or vis activa. Natural forces thus remain omnipresent and absolutely unavoidable before, during, and after their specific actualization in the phenomenal world. Similarly to the will in-​itself—­of which they are an ideal objectification—­natural forces are inspired by an inexhaustible power or, in Schopenhauer’s words, an indefatigable will. Such a permanent force, subject neither to entropy nor negentropy, is foreign even to dynamics in physics. With its focus on studying singular empirical phenomena and their causal interrelations, experimental physics is completely unaware of the origin of these phenomena in noumenal forces. It breaks down the overarching movement that animates all of nature into instantaneous images, and contents itself with relating these images to each other in what Bergson calls a “cinematographic” way. Even in formulating general laws, traditional natural sciences remain and aim to be exclusively empirical sciences dealing with spatiotemporal facts. However, for Schopenhauer this limitation of the sciences is legitimate in at least two senses: what they claim about phenomena as empirical phenomena does not conflict with the teachings of a philosophy or metaphysics of nature; and the natural laws formulated by the sciences are the best possible explanation of these phenomena on the level of our empirical knowledge. How, in the eyes of Schopenhauer, are we thus to understand the phenomenal actualization of natural forces from the dual standpoint of metaphysics and physics? A metaphysics of the will teaches us that the drive power of natural forces impatiently awaits the arising of favorable “circumstances” in the phenomenal world that would provide the “occasion” (Anlaß) for this power to realize itself in an empirical material body.40 These phenomenal circumstances are empirical events that are characterized both by their spatiotemporal occurrence and their causal action. When a miller opens a dam lying upstream from his mill, this is a necessary cause behind the release of accumulated water and the subsequent turning of the mill wheel. However, from the standpoint of a metaphysics of nature, this can only be a Malebranchian “occasional” cause whose power is limited to providing the occasion for water to realize its virtual force, that is, the “irresistible impulse with which masses of water rush downwards.”41 As such, the “laws of nature” formulated in mechanics, which allow the precise prediction and calculation of the water’s movement and its effect on the mill wheel after the opening of the dam, only apply on a phenomenal level and not on a noumenal one.42 Yet, this does not detract from the necessity with which the laws of nature govern the movements of material bodies, nor from their incontrovertible power over all inorganic natural phenomena. In fact, while these laws remain bound by the spatiotemporal circumstances of the phenomenal world,

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they determine phenomena and their causal interactions in a normative fashion. Rather than getting caught up in the description of particular natural phenomena, the laws of physics address the necessary movements of all identical bodies, across all moments of objective time and everywhere in a homogenously conceived space. Physics precedes metaphysics in the order through which we come to know nature. Without the observation of patterns in physical phenomena, we could never even have begun to conceive of their metaphysical nature. Does this mean that metaphysical knowledge of the noumenal natural forces active within empirical phenomena is of lesser value or does not even truly deserve to be called knowledge? Could it not be said that everything we know about these forces comes from a superficial similarity between the movements of material bodies and the actions of our own body? Is this a well-​founded analogy, or is it rather the mark of an arbitrary and primitive anthropomorphism? Approached in this way, our metaphysical knowledge of material bodies would be merely hypothetical at best; as is well known, this is precisely the conclusion drawn by many post-​K antian or neo-​K antian metaphysicians. This is not, however, Schopenhauer’s position. In his view, natural forces have the status of Platonic Ideas, and these Ideas lend themselves to what he calls an intellectual “intuition.”43 Despite the fact that we intuit Platonic Ideas starting from the observation of empirical phenomena, and imagination plays a central role in this intuition,44 intellectual intuition remains for Schopenhauer a true form of knowledge. Like the laws of physics, metaphysical knowledge of natural forces involves objective representations (Vorstellungen); however, unlike our knowledge of empirical phenomena, the object of metaphysical knowledge is an ideal object given to intellectual intuition. Without detracting in the least from the value and legitimacy of the natural sciences, Schopenhauer attributes a twofold advantage to metaphysical knowledge over the physics of physicists: it brings awareness to the action of the will in nature; and it challenges the natural sciences’ illegitimate claim to provide us with an exhaustive and “sufficient” understanding of natural phenomena. Despite his (Kantian) critical concerns, Schopenhauer deliberately follows in the footsteps of Leibnizian dynamics—­w ith the central difference, however, that the metaphysical substance or Thing-​in-​itself is in no way rational for him.45 This Leibnizian influence is to be seen in the way Schopenhauer conceives of not only natural forces, but also the mechanism through which they are realized. For what more is a natural force than a vis activa or “desire [appetitus]”?46 That Schopenhauer more readily claims to be a follower of Saint Augustine, Suarez, and Spinoza does not change this (but it is enlightening with respect to what Leibniz

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himself owes to these authors). Like Leibniz, Schopenhauer understands the natural force internally animating material bodies as their “ forma substantialis.”47 Like Leibniz again, he conceives of the actualization of this virtual force as the event of its disinhibition. Finally, like Leibniz he describes the way in which a natural force takes hold of the matter belonging to an empirical body and sets it into motion as the victory (“repression”—­Verdrängung) of an active force over another force that “make[s] way [Platz machen]” for it.48 True, contrary to Leibniz, for Schopenhauer matter has no real metaphysical, that is, substantial, status. It is already an objectification of the will, and as such, “formless matter” (formlose Materie) constitutes the “never perceived basis” or the hard kernel of all the bodies populating “the world of experience.”49 Nevertheless, Schopenhauer’s description of the natural force animating material bodies is in accordance with Leibniz’s Aristotelianism and thus also with our reading of the Physics and De Anima. This explains how Schopenhauer can write in the Supplements that all objectification of the will is characterized by a “fundamental effort” (Grundstrebung) for “self-​preservation” (Selbsterhaltung) that manifests itself in the double form of a “seeking [Suchen] or pursuing [Verfolgen], [and] an avoiding [Meiden], shunning, or fleeing [Fliehen], according to the occasion [je nach dem Anlaβ].”50

Drive, Pleasure, Representation, Desire, and Knowledge in Animals and Humans The will in-​itself, as it is understood by Schopenhauer, is thus essentially characterized by the same drive nature already encountered in Aris­ totle’s dunamis and Leibniz’s vis activa. Like dunamis in Aristotle, the will constitutes the being of all beings to the extent that they are not only predisposed toward movement, but in fact strive with all their might toward movement and already contain within themselves the power to set themselves in motion, that is, to shift from a tensed potentiality toward a concrete act. Like Leibniz’s vis activa, however, in order to actualize its virtual power, Schopenhauer’s will depends on favorable circumstances lifting the “impediment” or “obstacle” posed by the inertia of matter or, more precisely, by the conflicts of interest arising from the explosion of the will into a multiplicity of antagonistic forces. A worthy inheritor of Kantian critique, Schopenhauer is nonetheless concerned about our ability to know, in a specifically metaphysical sense, the drive power of the will in-​itself from its phenomenal realizations. For Schopenhauer, like Kant, all our knowledge takes the form of a subjective representation of

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an object. As such, all our knowledge concerning the nature of the will in-​itself and its original action involves its objectification. Consequently, we will never know anything about the will in-​itself as the subject of its drive forces and their phenomenal realization. In fact, given that the will is completely blind and irrational, and it can thus have no knowledge of itself as object, we cannot even say, from a Kantian and Schopenhauerian point of view, that the will in-​itself is truly a subject. Further, it follows that we cannot attribute to the will an ability to objectify itself in-​itself and for-​itself. Instead, its drive consists in a self-​ affirmation and self-​realization of its blind power by taking control over the objects of the world of representation. Strictly speaking, what I continue to call (along with Schopenhauer) “objectifications of the will” are thus objectifications quoad nos, that is, forms and modes of what is, quoad se, a pure actualization of the will in-​itself’s virtual power. Similarly, the distinction between ideal objectifications (Platonic Ideas) and empirical objectifications of the will is a distinction quoad nos (that is, according to the modes of our knowledge), completely unknown to the will in-​itself in its fundamental indeterminacy. Yet, these specifications only accentuate the drive nature of the will in-​itself (and its possible proximity to the Freudian death drive). The will in-​itself is a metaphysical drive that does nothing but will, and it wills above all else to realize itself. As such, the conscious representations that we humans use to understand its actualizations and to think their conditions of possibility remain completely foreign to it. Similarly, the representations that guide our actions remain motives for, but not of our will. For these representations come from our intelligence and not directly from our will—­even if they facilitate the actualization of the will in our actions. Consequently, it is empirical phenomena unaccompanied in their realization by any conscious representation that allow the philosopher to have the clearest idea of the action of the will in the phenomenal world. In other words, it is the most primitive objectifications of the will that give us the best information on the drive nature of the will. We should thus not be surprised at the extensive place given in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics to the philosophy of nature and, more specifically, to the natural forces of material bodies, life, and vegetative processes, and the instinctive behavior of animals. True, Schopenhauer reserves the terms “drive” (Trieb) and “desire” (Begierde) for manifestations of the will in the world of living beings. Still, it remains that material bodies are indeed inhabited by the will’s metaphysical drive, which takes the form of a natural force in them. As such, the metaphysical essence of water can be reduced to its drive or “irresistible impulse” to “rush downwards.” This drive or natural

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force dwells in water permanently (it is “omnipresent,” says Schopenhauer) in the form of a virtual, but acting presence. Thus, a natural force requires no activation by an exterior cause, and its shifting into action in the phenomenal world is thus not the realization of a mere possibility, but the carrying out or actualization of an active and drive-​based virtuality. We have seen that such an actualization of a natural force nevertheless depends on favorable and particular phenomenal “circumstances,” that is, on spatiotemporal events such as, for instance, the lifting of a dam. But these circumstances add nothing to the drive force that is always active in water; they only concern its empirical effects, that is, the changes and movements it brings about in the phenomenal world. The same thing cannot quite be said for the drives of living beings, for the “circumstances” that allow them to become empirically active are of a completely different nature and a greater complexity.51 In the case of material bodies, the circumstances triggering the actualization of their natural forces are ones that remain completely external to them. This is why the term physical “cause” is perfectly suited to describing the empirical efficient causality of these circumstances, even if, given the metaphysical nature of natural forces, these are nothing more than “occasional” causes. The same cannot be said for the triggering or actualization of natural drives in animals. The appetizing antelope that crosses the path of a sated lion leaves him indifferent. Indeed, it is the feeling of hunger or the need for food that awakens his drive to eat, and not the favorable circumstance of food being available. As such, the occasional factor that triggers the actualization of drives in living beings is not external, but “internal” to the animal organism.52 Schopenhauer calls this internal cause that sets a dormant drive in motion: “stimulus” or “impulse” (Reiz). No name is more suited than the one we have already encountered in Freud: “Triebreiz.” Our long pathway through Aristotle, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer is enlightening, however, on the reasons why Freud speaks of the invariability or permanence of the drive, while at the same time recognizing that it requires the stimulation or impulse of a passing need. Indeed, the animal drive is a pressing and virtual force that requires a stimulus not to become active (which it always already is by its very nature), but only to actualize itself by freeing itself from what stands in its way. The stimulus is thus the event of an internal tension that disturbs the balance of an organism’s drive state. It goes without saying that such a stimulation of the animal drive is not mechanical in any way. This is not only because it is internal to the drive, but also because, contrary to the setting in motion of a material body, the intensity of an acting drive is not directly proportional, in living beings, to the intensity of the stimulus or the need that has awakened it.53 For certain human animals I know, all

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that is needed is a small thirst to trigger an irresistible need to drink and a hasty movement toward their favorite drink. Yet, Schopenhauer points out that such an immediate triggering of a drive activity through the impulse of a “blind” need alone is, already in animals, the exception rather than the rule. According to him, we only come across this mode of drive stimulation by the occasional arising of a simple natural need in the most elementary life processes, such as digestion, or in purely instinctive animal behavior, such as the nesting of birds.54 In most cases, the process that triggers a drive activity in animals is significantly more complex. This complication of the animal drive process can be explained, once again, less by the complexity of the external situations faced by animals, than by the increasing complexity of the dynamic at work in the organization of their drives. Given that we are dealing here with the stimulation of an animal drive, this complication must be situated, in its turn, on the level of the internal consciousness of the living organism. It thus has nothing to do with the complexity of external circumstances or the vital environment on which the animal’s survival—­but not the dynamic of its drives—­depends. For Schopenhauer, like Freud, the external circumstances or situation, as well as the choice of empirical objects at which an active drive aims, are essentially foreign to the intimate nature and the intrinsic workings of the animal drive. They are “variable” and leave the drive “indifferent.” It is thus not the empirical circumstances of the external environment that complicate the process of drive stimulation, but the fact that, even in animals, the feeling of an organic need is accompanied, more often than not, by mental “representations.” Indeed, Schopenhauer thinks that a natural sensibility to certain conscious representations or affections, which he does not hesitate to call “motives,” is already at work in animal drives. For Schopenhauer, the motive is a representation that relates to an action, rather than to knowledge of an empirical state of affairs or of an idea. Thus, according to him, already in animals we can find motives capable of stimulating the drive and imprinting a determinate direction on their drive-​based action. Such a hypothesis in which representations play the role of a Triebreiz is only plausible, however, on condition that it tells us how to distinguish these motives at work in animal drives from the other kinds of motives guiding specifically human action. This is precisely why Schopenhauer tries to show that drive motives, far from substituting themselves for the stimuli coming from the sensation of a natural need, instead combine or mix with the latter. As such, these are not representations born of intellectual knowledge (as in the case of human action), but primitive representations that directly affect the drive and, in certain cases, even come directly from a drive-​based consciousness. There is even such a proximity between

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these representations and the drive, says Schopenhauer, that in events of drive stimulation and action, it is often difficult to distinguish what comes from natural need and what already comes from a conscious representation or motive.55 What do animals “will,” then, and what conscious representations or motives affect their drive-​based willing to the point of making it similar to human “desires”? Further, what can be said of the “stirring”56 of the affects that constitute the animal drive in humans? Here is what Schopenhauer writes: Thus we know that the animal wills, indeed even what it wills, namely existence, well-​being, life, and propagation. Since we here presuppose with perfect certainty an identity with ourselves, we have no hesitation in attributing to it unchanged all the affections of will known to us in ourselves; and we speak positively and plainly of its desire [Begierde], aversion, fear, anger, hatred, love, joy, sorrow, longing [Sehnsucht], and so on. . . . We do not venture to say that the animal conceives, thinks, judges, or knows; we attribute to it with certainty only representations in general, since without these its will could not be stirred or agitated in the ways previously mentioned.57

Let us thus call “desires” or “longings” the drives whose stimulation by the internal sensation of a natural need or a physiological lack are accompanied by “representations” and whose concrete action follows the direction given to it by a “motive”—­a motive that has a strong affective component and which thus functions as a “stimulus.” Even if humans nourish other kinds of desire, carry out voluntary actions that are not drive-​based, and develop knowledge inaccessible to animals, on many occasions, humans behave like living organisms that do nothing more than follow the inclinations of their drives. Nothing that belongs to animals is foreign to us. This is the case not only for our drive behavior and our animal desires, but also for the sensations or “immediate awareness” related to these desires: Consciousness is known to us positively only as a property of animal nature; consequently we may not, indeed we cannot, think of it otherwise than as animal consciousness. . . . Therefore what is always to be found in every animal consciousness [thierischen Bewuβtseyn] . . . , in fact what is always its foundation [ihm zum Grunde liegt], is the immediate awareness [das unmittelbare Innewerden] of a longing [eines Verlangens], and of its alternate satisfaction and non-​satisfaction [Befriedigung und Nichtbefriedigung] in very different degrees.58

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This “immediate awareness” of the “satisfaction and non-​ satisfaction” of our will and our “desires” takes the form of a feeling of “pleasure” or “pain.”59 This sensitivity to pleasure that we share with animals constitutes the most primitive and fundamental form of our consciousness. This is explained by the fact that, as individual objectifications of the will in-​itself, all humans are, first and forever more, beings whose life is animated by drives. This drive-​based life in humans (and animals) is governed by the pleasure principle. How could it be otherwise if what the individual will that inhabits us indeed wants is the “satisfaction” that comes from realizing its will? The “organ” that allows for this realization is none other than our libidinal “body,” which can thus lay claim to being the “most immediate” objectification of our will/​drive. This is also why the consciousness we have of the realization of our will has to be a bodily consciousness. As such, the realization of our will is intrinsically linked to the bodily feeling of satisfaction that we commonly call “pleasure.” Our pleasure is thus dependent on the realization of our will/​drive, which is in turn dependent on favorable empirical “circumstances,” that is, on states of affairs in the phenomenal world that agree with our will (“genehm”).60 For Schopenhauer, these states of affairs are nothing more than objects of our representation, for any existence they have comes to them exclusively from the fact that we represent them. We can represent these worldly objects to ourselves either in order to know them better or in order to better serve the realization of our will/​drive. The way our representations function can thus follow the requirements either of a reality principle or a pleasure principle. It goes without saying that the pleasure principle is not content to observe the happy event of an agreement between worldly circumstances and the realization of our will. For our representations best serve our drive and its will to realize itself when they project themselves into the future. The representations that “stimulate” our drives thus most often relate to future circumstances that we have reason to think will satisfy our will and provide the ensuing related pleasure. As such, these representations of the future are similar to wishes; they are concerned with circumstances that we wish to bring about because they would allow for the realization of our drives. If desire is a drive movement in which representations play a double role as stimulant and channel, and if, in human beings, these representations are most often related to a wished-​for future event, we can thus better understand why Freud identified human desire with a “wish” (Wunsch). Let us recap. Desire always amounts to the complication of drive processes by the addition of stimulating representations or “motives” that awaken a dormant drive and trace the path by which it is to be carried out. Such representations that act directly on the drive should indeed be

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called “affections” (as they are by Schopenhauer), even though one should not confuse them with the “affects” of pleasure and non-​satisfaction. Only a bodily being can form such desires, for the body is the only “means” at one’s disposal for realizing one’s will/​drive, and one’s bodily consciousness or sensitivity to pleasure is what provides the best guide for carrying out one’s drives. This is true for animals as much as humans. For, once again as claimed by Schopenhauer, the drive is not characterized by “degrees”; only the force of its excitement and its excitability are variable, and this is the case in animals just as well as humans.61 Consequently, what distinguishes human desire from animal desire can be neither the drive, nor the nature of the libidinal body, nor the presence of stimulating representations at the service of the pleasure principle. Thus, it can only be the intervention of a new kind of desiring representation with the property of projecting itself into the future one wishes to bring about. A specifically human desire is thus distinguished from animal desire62 (which is also at work in humans) by these particular representations that present (possibly in the form of a “hallucination,” as claimed by Freud) the drive with future circumstances that are considered desirable because they allow for its realization and give rise to a satisfaction that translates into a bodily consciousness of pleasure. These desiring representations are thus indeed characterized, as Lacan says, by the temporal mode of the future perfect. Nothing prevents us from taking a further step and understanding these representations of the future, that is, these anticipations of a wished-​for drive realization that feed human desire, as the expression of a fundamental “disquiet” (or ontological lack) such as we encountered in our reading of Leibniz. Human desire would thus be distinguished from animal desire not only by representations relating to a wished-​for future, but also and especially by the presence of an internal Triebreiz of a metaphysical nature. The trigger behind the infinite wanderings of human desire could thus not be reduced to the sensation of a periodic natural need or to the occasional affection by a stimulating representation relating to the future. As well as these periodic or occasional stimulants, the human drive would be exposed to permanent stimulation by a disquiet amounting to an existential consciousness of the human being’s ontological finitude. To make this disquiet into a specifically human Triebreiz would also allow us to better understand why any realization of our “will” and any sensation of pleasure always leave us partially unsatisfied and arouse new desires. Indeed, the constant stimulation alone of our desire by a disquiet whose torment is unknown to animals, seems capable of accounting for why we not only have desires (be they animal or specifically human ones), but are desiring beings through and through.

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For Schopenhauer, what distinguishes humans most fundamentally from animals is not to be situated, however, on the level of desire and its mode of stimulation, but on the level of a specifically human action and knowledge. It is the degrees and forms of intelligence that we respectively attribute to humans and animals that make all the difference.63 But this will not prevent us from asking what these intelligent activities of human beings still owe to their drive impulses, as well as what influence human intelligence can have over human desires. Intelligence, for Schopenhauer, is a faculty of knowledge that must be attributed to animals as much as humans. This knowledge is realized in a consciousness made up of subjective representations (Vorstellungen) relating to objects.64 This representational consciousness depends, in its turn, on a very specific bodily organ, namely, the brain. In fact, the knowing consciousness of humans and animals is nothing more, for Schopenhauer, than an epiphenomenon of the brain. This brain, much like any other organ of the living body, represents an objectification of the will.65 Yet, it is true that not all living beings have a brain and a consciousness. While no living being is without a body, there are certainly living beings without brains or other neurological organs. As such, the brain and the intellectual consciousness that results from it, despite being of excellent service to living beings in bettering their adaptation to the external world, are but a “secondary” objectification of the will.66 For Schopenhauer, the will as “drive”—­which is, in-​itself, “without consciousness [bewuβtlos]”67 and which, more often than not, carries out its work “in the dark”—­creates in superior animals the organ of consciousness/​brain/​intelligence to kindle “a light for itself.”68 Thanks to this light of consciousness/​brain/​intelligence, a superior animal or a human acquires knowledge of the external world as well as self-​knowledge, that is, knowledge of the will/​drive that inhabits and guides it.69 The knowing consciousness in which the will objectifies itself thus constitutes, for this latter, both an intelligent organ that allows it to better orient itself within the phenomenal world and a “mirror”70 that informs it about what it wants within a given particular set of circumstances. As such, this knowledge remains at the service of the will from which it arises.71 It is in both domains—­k nowledge of the external world and self-​ knowledge—­that the representational consciousness or intelligence of human beings differs from that of animals. The representations through which animals relate to the external world are subordinated to their instincts and desires, and are thus limited to becoming conscious of present phenomenal circumstances. With respect to the self-​consciousness or “immediate awareness” of animals, this essentially consists in a feeling of pleasure or pain that is the “immediate” expression of a present state of

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their will/​drive or “desire” as “satisfied or unsatisfied.”72 True, from the standpoint of their consciousness or intelligence, animals are not all the same. Indeed, Schopenhauer is very attuned to these differences, and he seems to be very sympathetic to evolutionism when he claims that it is the complication of living organisms as well as the extension and intensification of their needs that are at the source of the perfecting of animal intelligence.73 Nonetheless, the difference between animal and human intelligence constitutes, for him, a difference of nature and not merely of degree. What makes all the difference between the consciousness/​knowledge of animals and of humans and what deepens the “gulf” (Kluft)74 that separates them is the human capacity for prudent “reflection” (Besonnenheit) and “thinking.” To an intelligence made up of “perception” (Anschauung), already at work (to a lesser degree, it is true) in animals, a new intellectual faculty is added in humans, namely, “reason”: “For in man not only does the power of representation in perception [anschauende Vorstellungskraft], which hitherto has existed alone, reach the highest degree of perfection, but the abstract representation, thinking, i.e., reason (Vernunft) is added, and with it reflection [Besonnenheit].”75 More particularly with respect to the knowledge of the external world, human intelligence differs from animal intelligence by its greater objectivity and its greater freedom with respect to a will/​desire dominated by the pleasure principle.76 This double advantage of humans over animals can finally be explained by the refinement of the human brain, that is, of the bodily organ relating the human individual’s will/​ drive to the external world. To speak in Bergsonian terms, we can say that the human brain is the specific bodily organ that creates a “screen” between affections coming from the external world and the will of the living organism. The function of this brain-​screen is to shelter the will from external affections and allow an autonomous subjective response, that is, one that does not directly involve the organism’s will. This presupposes that the brain has a force of resistance with respect to the affections that afflict the body of the living being. Schopenhauer does not say any differently when he points out that, in human beings, direct affection of the will by the external world is a sign of “weakness of the nerves” (Nervenschwäche).77 Given that such a direct affection of the will translates into a feeling of pleasure or displeasure, the human brain’s force thus consists in putting out of play not only the will, but also the action of the pleasure principle. In other words, the overly exclusive rule of the pleasure principle over human behavior is the result, for Schopenhauer, either of a constitutional weakness of the nerves, that is, of the brain, or of an affection whose intensity and force are such that they overcome the force of resistance that the brain can muster against them.

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By placing itself at the service of knowledge of the external world,78 the brain ensures the triumph of the reality principle. However, in this triumph of the reality principle, the force with which the brain resists affections and throws them back into the external world from which they came is not the only thing at play. Paradoxically, knowledge of the external world is also highly favored by an “enhancement of sensibility” in the human organism with respect to the affections that come to it from the external world—­at least, with respect to the “extremely delicate affections” that strike the most evolved of our bodily organs, such as our sense of “sight” or “hearing.” These delicate affections that touch our body in its “nobler” parts also extend into a “reaction” of our brain/​intelligence that transforms, through causal reasoning, a passively undergone affection into an active representation of its origin in the external world. Knowledge of the external world is thus the work of an intelligent body/​brain that is distinguished from the brainless weakness and blindness of the libidinal body or the body of pleasure both by its force and its delicateness, by its impermeability and the lucidity of its openness. Even if the (phenomenal) world is not reducible to the knowledge we have of it, this knowledge is still equivalent, for Schopenhauer, to a veritable creation of the world (of representation). He also thinks that the same body that undergoes affections by the external world is also the body that, through its representations, gives birth to this world as the world of representation. For the world of representation is the work of the intelligent body; it is not an immediate objectification of the will. Only the bodies of the phenomenal world are an immediate objectification of the will or Thing-​in-​itself, and only an intelligent body, that is, one capable of representation, can create a world as object of representation. Yet, if this world is nothing more than the creation of its representations, then is it not the case that all affection of the human body by the world becomes a self-​a ffection? Embracing without any ambiguity the position of an idealism of representation, Schopenhauer does not seem to be able to avoid this paradoxical consequence. This paradox of a self-​ affection of the human body through the world looks less enigmatic, however, when we recall that, for Schopenhauer, this body is made up of a multiplicity of organs with very diverse functions. It is thus altogether possible that the bodily organs which create the world of representation are not the same ones as those that are exposed to affection by the world, and, consequently, that the world created by representation does not coincide with the phenomenal world that affects the human body. It is indeed this latter position that is taken by Schopenhauer when he declares that, in a visual perception of the external world, the “retina” undergoes affection by the external world, but it is the brain/​intelligence

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that grasps this impression to form a representation of its cause in this world: Yet through the enhancement of sensibility, with the higher development of the nervous system, there arises the possibility that in the nobler, i.e., objective, sense-​organs (sight and hearing), the extremely delicate affections appropriate to them are felt without affecting the will immediately and in themselves, in other words, without being painful or pleasant. . . . But in the brain this enhancement of sensibility reaches such a high degree that on received [empfangene] sense-​impressions there even occurs a reaction. This reaction does not come directly from the will, but is primarily a spontaneity of the function of understanding [Verstandesfunktion], a function that makes the transition from the directly perceived sensation of the senses to the cause of this sensation. In this way there arises the perception or intuition [Anschauung] of an external object, since here the brain simultaneously produces the form of space. We can therefore regard as the boundary between the world as will and the world as representation, or even as the birth-​place [Geburtsstätte] of the latter, the point where, from the sensation on the retina, still a mere affection of the body and to that extent of the will, the understanding makes the transition to the cause of that sensation.79

To this capacity of the human consciousness/​brain to objectively perceive (Anschauung) the external world, to this intelligent intuition that is already a “function of understanding,” is added in the human being the capacity of “thinking” (Denken) with “abstract concepts” that comes from its “reason” (Vernunft).80 It is through reflective thinking that the human being most decisively liberates itself from the bonds that hold it captive to its individual empirical character and the irrational requirements of the will in-​itself that invest this character. This autonomy of the rational subject cannot, however, be absolute, for human reason remains dependent on the proper functioning and force of its brain, which is, in its turn, also an immediate objectification of the will in-​itself. Yet, this autonomy with respect to the will suffices to allow the reasonable human being, with its prudent reflection or Besonnenheit, to take up the position of a “cold and indifferent spectator” and of a “guide and counselor of the will.” As a “mere subject of knowing,” the human being is in fact capable of objectively contemplating the “external world” and itself as pure spontaneous subject or “I.”81 This self-​knowledge does not, however, have an absolute privilege over the knowledge of the external world; it is “not . . . entirely adequate,” for what I know of myself is but an objectification or a mere “phenomenon” of the will—­while, at the same time, constituting

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“its most immediate manifestation.”82 Yet, even if the object of intellectual contemplation retains the status of an objectification of the will in knowledge of the external world and self-​knowledge, it remains that this contemplation follows different rules than the ones regulating the blind wanting-​to-​realize-​itself of the will in-​itself. As a reasonable intellectual subject, the human being has the capacity to promulgate laws and form representations that (contrary to itself) enjoy complete autonomy with respect to the will. This can be verified particularly in the laws and motives that regulate rational human actions. Human practical reason, to which no better name can be given than “phro­nèsis” (prudence) or Besonnenheit, becomes the “guide and counselor of the will” by channeling the will’s action through reasonable representations or “motives.” Such a counselor proposes, but in the end, it is always the will that disposes. Lacking any direct power over the will and lacking its own source of energy, human intelligence is thus reduced to petitioning the will with the hope that the latter will follow its sound advice. As such, the imperatives of practical reason remain hypothetical in Schopenhauer, for their effectiveness remains dependent on the condition of the will wanting, in its objectification or action in the phenomenal world, to flow into the mold prepared for it by the rational motives or representations of human intelligence. It is not because the human being actually can act rationally that its individual will itself becomes rational. It is thus useless, according to Schopenhauer, to hope for the individual will to always and spontaneously “obey” human practical reason and for ethics to successfully “mold and improve” human character.83 The will of each rational human being thus serves two masters, namely: the will in-​itself (and its incarnation in the individual human character) and human reason. As such, the self-​determination of the rational subject of action, and thus also of its freedom, is never complete, and the human being who acts rationally always remains dependent on its empirical character. Even in acting according to the principles of its reason, the human being continues to serve the will. Yet, it remains that its capacity for “reflection” and “deliberation” as well as its prudence “surveying the future and the past” allow human practical reason—­most often, offering sound advice for “premeditated action”—­to be liberated from the pressing requirements of an immediate present. Thanks to its practical intelligence, the human being knows what it is doing and its rational actions are accompanied by a consciousness that is “fully distinct” from “the decisions of [its] own will.” It is through this capacity to act lucidly, inspired by projection into its own future, that the human being distinguishes itself most significantly from animals. Yet, it is no less true that human practical reason can make “errors,” and propose “delusive

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motives” to guide us in our actions. It can also remain “irresolute” in “its decision” with respect to choosing the Good and thus burden us with a form of “uncertainty” that leads us to envy the “certainty” with which blind instinct operates in animal behavior: With [reason] there came into existence thoughtfulness [Besonnenheit], surveying [Überblick] the future and the past, and, as a consequence thereof, deliberation [Überlegung], care [Sorge], ability for premeditated action independent of the present, and finally the fully distinct consciousness of the decisions of one’s own will as such. . . . Then with the appearance of reason, this certainty and infallibility of the will’s manifestations . . . are almost entirely lost. Instinct withdraws altogether; deliberation . . . begets . . . irresolution and uncertainty [Unsicherheit]. Error becomes possible, and . . . delusive motives [Wahnmotive], resembling the real ones, slip in and abolish these.84

Human Reason at the Mercy of the Stubborn Will, Unconscious Desires, and the Pleasure Principle. Repression and Foreclosure: A Little—­a Lot—­Passionately—­Madly For Schopenhauer, reason and the will/​drive are condemned to cohabit in human knowledge and rational action. Their alliance is founded on a mutual dependence that Schopenhauer calls an “interplay” and “reciprocal relationship” (Wechselspiel or Wechselverhältnis).85 This reciprocal dependence is coupled with a complementarity derived from the fact that “the will in itself is without knowledge, but the understanding associated with it is without will [willenlos].”86 The effectiveness of the will is greatly served by the “light” of intellectual knowledge regarding the external world and one’s own intentions. And the intellect needs the energy of the will to have the force to act on the will by presenting it with rational motives for its diverse actions and with representations that stimulate the will’s dormant power. This reciprocal influence even brings about a reciprocal emulation: the stronger the will, the more the intellect develops, and the more the intellect is strengthened, the greater the increase in the passionate force of the will. It is by virtue of this double intensification of their drives and their intelligence that superior animals are distinguished from inferior animals, and humans are distinguished from superior animals. Moreover, this mutual emulation is not reducible to a mere linear parallelism between the development of drives and of intelligence;

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it translates into a spiral movement. As such, humans owe their greater intelligence to the force of their will, and this superior intelligence, in its turn, creates “emotions” and “passions” in humans that are unknown to animals. It is because they want more than them, that humans are more intelligent than animals, and it is because of their greater intelligence that they feel “greater joy,” “greater sorrow,” and even “boredom.”87 And it is once again the force of this enhanced affective sensibility that sharpens human intelligence and creates great minds. Great human intelligence will thus always be the fruit of great passions, even if it remains true that great passions and “vehement desires” do not necessarily make us more intelligent.88 While Schopenhauer (unlike Leibniz) does not elaborate at great length on this subject, there must thus be a difference between a good and a bad use of human passions or perhaps between passions that blind us and passions that sharpen our intelligence. Should we not then assume that the passions that favor the development of our intelligence are what are commonly called intellectual passions, that is, drives that are already transformed or sublimated by an intelligence that they can then render dynamic by giving it wings? This (usually very partial) sublimation of passions would thus be the very best of what Schopenhauer calls “a reciprocal relationship” between the will and the intelligence. In this case, the intelligence would make use of the force of the will against the designs of the will that are governed by the search for immediate pleasure. Just as the reforming or sublimation of drives by human reason gives birth to intellectual passions, it would create the new “emotions” constituted by intellectual pleasures. But is this not admitting that the appropriation of the will by human intelligence never amounts to a pure and simple abolition of the pleasure principle in favor of the reality principle? Should we not then rather say that, in placing itself at the service of intelligence, the will continues to find its own pleasure and, in reality, does nothing more than pursue its goal through diverted paths? Indeed, this is the position taken up by Schopenhauer. Incapable, according to him, of any substantial change, the will in fact persists in pursuing its own interests while serving the development of intelligence. While we can indeed speak of a sublimation of the “affects” of the will, namely, passions and feelings of pleasure, and while we can speak of a process of sublimation that gives birth to intellectual passions and pleasures, we can never speak of a sublimation of the will itself. As we all know, our intellectual work becoming less pleasant suffices for our intellectual passions to run out of steam and for our will/​drive to be tempted to return to its primitive passions. Even when investing itself in intellectual activities, the will maintains its mastery and remains vigilant. The supposed enslavement of the will to human intelligence thus

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remains, for Schopenhauer, a fool’s game, and it is the intelligence, not the will, that is the fool. There is no dialectical reversal in this game, for the supremacy of the will has never been threatened by its service to the intelligence. As such, the final victory of the will over reason is not a revenge of the will against the force of an intelligence by which it has been constrained; this force of intelligence was already lent to it by the will, and the will only conserves this force so long as the development of knowledge serves its own will to power and hunger for pleasure. Given this impossibility of transforming or sublimating the metaphysical essence of the will in-​itself, the only true form of intellectual revolution that can be admitted into Schopenhauer’s system is the fact of an intelligence that has completely and definitively liberated itself from its dependence on the will. Only “the genius” can achieve this exceptional condition. The mode of existence of the genius should thus not be confused with that of a very intelligent human being feeding on the source of strong intellectual passions. In the latter, the “intellect” and “memory” (Gedächtnis) are strengthened “by the incentive and spur of the will” and by a “yearning desire”—­at least, so long as this intelligence and memory continue to behave as docile “tool[s]” of the will.89 What distinguishes the genius from these passionate intellectuals, for Schopenhauer, is a form of intelligence that has resolutely broken away from any form of servitude to the will. The genius is thus a human being over which the will’s drives, as well as the procession of subjective affects and desires (even sublimated ones), no longer have any hold. The genius is a “pure subject of knowing” with a dispassionate lucidity, and behaves as a “purely objective” spectator or a “clear mirror of the world.”90 Geniuses, according to Schopenhauer, in some sense resemble the saint of Kantian ethics—­w ith the important difference, however, that their exceptional gifts detach them from any subjective willing and any ethical action. The existence of this Buddhist saint consists in giving oneself over to a life of pure intellectual and artistic contemplation, where morality is limited to compassionate contemplation of human misfortune. Schopenhauer’s genius or impartial spectator no longer wants anything, thus leading an existence that is necessarily situated beyond Good and Evil. The genius’s compassion is thus no longer a passion, but a detached contemplation of the passions and hardships afflicting all mortals, and this contemplation of the tragedy at work in human existence cannot help but reinforce the dispassionate and impersonal attitude of the genius.91 It goes without saying that this genius is, among us men and women, the exception rather than the rule. The rule is that human beings are just as incapable of liberating themselves from the will as of mastering it, that they deceive themselves about their own intentions, and they

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voluntarily give themselves over, with more or less complacency, to the requirements of their unconscious desires. This giving oneself over can go from avoiding any representation that would displease one’s will/​drive, avid for pleasure, all the way to repressing conflictual desires, and even as far as complete foreclosure of the realities of this world or of one’s own life, which are in such cases replaced by delusional hallucinations. Thus, in Schopenhauer’s view, the exceptional greatness of the genius makes us all the more aware of the hardship of ordinary human life. This hardship follows the human being all the way into the faculties of which one is most proud, such as one’s consciousness and one’s intellectual knowledge. Is the intellect not a mere epiphenomenon of the brain, and does this brain not live, according to Schopenhauer, as a close neighbor of, or rather in promiscuity with, the genital organs that constantly exert their influence on the progression of our thoughts? Nothing seems to be able to escape this humiliation of our intelligence by the “basic instincts” of our will/​ drive—­neither our knowledge of the phenomenal world, nor even our knowledge of ourselves. Indeed, all our intellectual knowledge is always animated and directed, behind the scenes, by the will itself. It is the will that draws our “attention” toward “this or that object.” It is also the will that nourishes our intellectual interests and secretly directs “the . . . association of ideas.” Even if the will’s influence on our thoughts “is frequently not noticed,” its influence is manifest in the fact that our interests do not change much. In the progression of our thoughts and the accumulation of our knowledge, the same will thus continues to stubbornly affirm itself, wanting nothing but itself through its most original movement of repetition or the eternal recurrence of the same.92 In the end, our most disinterested thoughts and our freest associations are nothing more than manifestations of one and the same blind mechanism or machinery of the will, which follows its course inexorably and at any cost, wanting only its own self-​realization and self-​satisfaction. For Schopenhauer, the true nature of the drive is to be found in this impersonal and unstoppable will, whose path is marked by the repetition of an imperturbable rhythm. In other words, Schopenhauer’s drive can be likened to Freud’s death drive. For even if the will/​ drive pretends to be interested in and affected by our representations, it remains at its core incapable of any transcendence or interest in anything other than the affirmation and intensification of its own power. This makes the pretenses of the will even more dangerous. Its greatest pretense consists in hiding its action from us and making us believe that we are the masters of our own consciousness/​knowledge. In the best-​case scenario, the will only hides from us our unconscious desires, of which it is the source; however, more often than not, it also leads us to deceive

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ourselves, and in the worst-​case scenario, it simply vetoes those of our representations that have the misfortune to displease it. If our intellect or consciousness/​k nowledge is nothing but an epiphenomenon of our brain, and our brain nothing but an embodied objectification of the will, it is no wonder that for Schopenhauer our “conscious ideas” are nothing but “surface” phenomena, that is, “offspring of our mysterious inner being” in which “rumination” takes place “unconsciously.”93 These ruminations of our unconscious continue to take place not only despite our consciousness, but even during the “deepest sleep,” that is, when our consciousness is interrupted.94 While we already lack a “clear consciousness” of many of our thoughts, this is even more so the case for our desires, that is, for those of our representations that are directly invested by our drives: “We often do not know what we desire or fear.” Most often, it is “only subsequently, and thus wholly a posteriori [erst hinterher, völlig a posteriori]” that we realize how our will/​drive has let itself be affected by our subjective “motives.” And even in this case, there is no guarantee that we are not deceived about our true motives and the desires that they inspire in us. For often “we lack the courage” to admit our desires and our fears to ourselves and thus “bring them to clear consciousness. In fact, we are often entirely mistaken as to the real motive from which we do or omit to do something, until finally some accident discloses the secret to us.”95 However, the misconception we have of our true desires and fears is not the only reason why we are self-​deceived. More often than not, it is not because our thoughts and desires are unconscious that we remain ignorant of them, but rather, they remain unconscious because we want to ignore them—­unless it is the will itself rather than us that has an interest in leading us into self-​deception. This is why Schopenhauer goes beyond a mere analysis of unconscious thoughts and desires, providing us with a full-​blown theory of repression. Let us first remember that Schopenhauer’s entire system contributes to making us accept the thesis that the will in-​itself always and without our knowing intervenes in the course of our conscious thoughts and the birth of our conscious desires. According to this first interpretation, our unconscious (or rather our preconscious!) would simply consist in our not knowing what our conscious experiences owe to the secret work accomplished by the will/​drive in our lives. Such an unconscious would thus only concern the immersed part of our explicit consciousness; it would be the unconscious of a consciousness whose authenticity it in no way threatened. Among modern philosophers, Husserl is not the only one to willingly accept the existence of such an unconscious. For it is not because we are often ignorant of what pushes us to take interest in this rather than that, that the knowledge we owe to our intentional consciousness is less real. The same

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thing goes for the invisible interventions of the will/​drive that “perturb” or “disturb” (stören),96 “hinder” or “paralyze” (hindern), and “depress” (deprimieren)97 our intellectual work and distract us. It is not because we are not always “in top form” for thinking that our thought thus becomes false or misleading. In this respect, Husserl’s refutation of psychologism remains completely relevant. It would be another thing entirely, however, if these unconscious drive-​processes acting on our conscious thought entirely prevented us from thinking, suggested false thoughts to us, or deceived us regarding what we truly thought and desired. In this case, the unconscious would no longer be merely the hidden face of our consciousness, but rather a fundamentally foreign force to consciousness, threatening both its integrity and its logical coherence. It is in fact this second and much more pernicious form of the unconscious that Schopenhauer wants to bring to the fore through his conception of repression. The line separating these two notions of the unconscious is drawn very precisely between an intervention of the will/​drive that “hinders” and “perturbs” the work of consciousness, and another intervention that “prohibits” (verbietet) certain representations, which the will is quick to dismiss from our conscious life by drawing our attention to other (often illusory) conscious representations that have the fortune of being more pleasing to it: The primacy of the will becomes clear again when this will . . . once makes its supremacy felt in the last resort. This it does by prohibiting the intellect from having certain representations, by absolutely preventing certain trains of thought [Gedankenreihen] from arising [aufkommen], because it knows, or in other words experiences from the self-​same intellect, that they would arouse in it any one of the [unpleasant] emotions previously described. It then curbs [zügelt] and restrains the intellect, and forces it to turn to other things.98

It is abundantly clear that, as a general rule, it is not our intellect that is the cause of the repression or prohibition that strikes some of our conscious representations; rather, it is the will/​drive, and in so doing it affirms its absolute “supremacy” over our conscious life. Yet, is it sufficient for a representation of our intellect to be unpleasing to the will for the will to dismiss it or keep it from entering our consciousness? Is the mechanism of repression nothing more, then, than an expression of the pleasure principle governing the workings of the will? Things are not quite so simple in Schopenhauer. For the will represses not only conscious representations that displease it, but also—­and surely more quickly—­ those that it cannot bear. For a representation to be truly unbearable, it is not enough that it be unpleasant; the will also has to feel simultaneously

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secretly drawn to this representation: “the will has an inclination [eine Neigung hat] in one respect for a representation it abhors [verabscheuet] in another.” 99 In this case, the repression of a representation is in fact the consequence (or rather, the resolution) of a conflict between the will’s attraction to and repulsion by one and the same representation. The mechanism of this repression thus corresponds very precisely to the Freudian conception of neurotic repression. But how are we to understand that the same thing is both wanted and not wanted by the will at the same time? How can we explain that one and the same conscious representation simultaneously pleases and displeases it? Is it possible that the will itself is already affected by such a neurotic ambivalence in Schopenhauer’s system? Certainly not! A distinction thus has to be drawn between a repression that is original and one that is secondary. Original repression occurs when the will, in the name of the pleasure principle that governs it, instinctively represses any representation that would keep it from doing what it wants, which it here wants without any ambiguity or ambivalence. Secondary repression, to the contrary, is a process of repression aroused by a neurotic conflict between different desires belonging to one and the same conscious subject, or by this latter’s ambivalence toward one and the same desire. Original or primary repression is thus the result of a conflict that directly concerns the will in exercising its drive, while secondary or neurotic repression is the result of a conflict that essentially concerns the subject. In the first repression, the will thus dismisses a representation that threatens its movement of self-​a ffirmation by disinvesting the representation; in the second repression, the will is content to rid the conscious subject of a problematic desire by pushing it back into this subject’s unconscious. One has to admit that Schopenhauer is far from clearly distinguishing between these two forms of repression, and his indications on the causes and general nature of repression remain rather fragmentary and at times even seem to contradict each other. What is certain, however, is that the process of repression, for him, follows from an experience of conflict that, directly or indirectly, is of sufficient concern to the will for it to dismiss the representation that is the source of the conflict. At one point, Schopenhauer says that this conflict is the result of the fact that the will learns from the intellect, that is, from an “abstract knowledge,” that a representation which attracts and “excites” it is at the same time nefarious for it, for it would “cause it a shock of painful and unworthy emotion to no purpose.”100 But “unworthy” with respect to whom and what? And how are we to understand that the will, which usually only cares for its self-​realization and self-​satisfaction, all of a sudden begins to care about its own worth and suffer from “painful” scruples? The least we can say is

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that this is not really consistent with what Schopenhauer has taught us about the nature of the will in-​itself. It is thus not surprising that, in another passage, a different analysis is given according to which such cares and scruples are the work of a subject who wants to preserve “the good opinion” it has of itself and thus wants nothing to do with these inadmissible desires that it judges to be unworthy of itself.101 In this last case, the objects of repression are not mere representations, but subjective representations that have already been positively invested by the will/​drive. They are thus “desires” or “wishes” (Wünsche). According to this new scenario, these desires are not repressed, that is, dismissed from consciousness because they enter into conflict with the will in-​itself, but rather because they conflict with the narcissistic image of the conscious subject or with its conscience. The new scenario thus best applies to what we have called neurotic repression. Such a repression becomes necessary when the subject is incapable of “assimilating” desires that it judges to be inadmissible. This (neurotic or secondary) repression is thus a consequence of a failed process of subjective “assimilation.” This failure is the result either of a too-​g reat contradiction between different desires of the subject, a too-​great weakness or lack of “courage” on the part of the subject that prevents it from assimilating its problematic desires, or both reasons at the same time. This process of the subject “assimilating” desires that are inadmissible is exactly what Freud calls “working-​through” (Durcharbeitung). Like Freud once again, Schopenhauer underlines that the choice of repression over assimilation/​working through is a result of the fact that the latter process can only be carried out very “slowly” or “painfully,” and constantly confronts the subject with its own “reluctance” (Widerstreben) or “resistance”: Remember how reluctantly we think of things that powerfully prejudice our interests, wound our pride, or interfere with our wishes; with what difficulty we decide to lay such things before our own intellect for accurate and serious investigation; how easily, on the other hand, we unconsciously break away or sneak off from them again [unbewuβt davon wieder abspringen oder abschleichen]. . . . In this resistance on the part of the will to allow what is contrary to it to come under the examination of the intellect is to be found the place where madness can break in on the mind. Every new adverse event must be assimilated by the intellect . . . ; but this operation itself is often very painful, and in most cases takes place only slowly and with reluctance [Widerstreben].102

This passage does not, despite its great lucidity, put an end to all of our questions. Schopenhauer should be reproached for a certain

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vagueness in his description of the subjective party in relation to which a desire becomes sufficiently “painful,” inadmissible, or “unworthy” to be repressed. Does this desire enter into conflict with our “pride,” the “good opinion we have of ourselves,” or even with our (moral) interests? Translated into Freudian language: is it our narcissistic image (Idealich), our “superego” (Über-​Ich), or a kind of combination of the two within our “ego ideal” (Ichideal) that makes a desire so problematic that it is repressed into our unconscious? A same vagueness is to be found in the Schopenhauerian conception of the party that does the repressing, that is, that dismisses from our consciousness a desire that does not conform with our subjective narcissistic image or our subjective conscience. In the passage we have just cited, it is both a question of the will’s reluctance and of the difficulty with which we decide to submit the things that hurt our pride to a precise and serious intellectual examination. But are we not asking the impossible of Schopenhauer’s system when we ask him to clearly separate the action of the will from the action of the conscious subject? Is the conscious subject or subject of the intellect not, for Schopenhauer, a mere offspring of the will or, more precisely, an epiphenomenon of the brain, which—­in its turn—­is an individual objectification of the will in-​itself? For Schopenhauer, a subjective conflict between contradictory desires can thus not leave the will indifferent, for in the end it is the will that has to decide whether it wants to continue to invest both desires at a time or only invest one, while disinvesting the other. We can further suppose that this decision of the will depends on its degree of implication in the conflict, that is, on the degree to which the conflict concerns it. In any case, the will always avoids involvement in the investment of representations that would put it into conflict with itself. Following conflict between the antagonistic desires of a subject, when the risk arises of such a contradiction threatening its own smooth operation, the will never hesitates to withdraw its entire investment from a subjective representation or desire that it judges (after having learned so from the “abstract knowledge” of the intellect) to be possibly nefarious to itself. This is the scenario of what we have called original or primary repression. If the will, on the contrary, continues to simultaneously invest both antagonistic desires, this means that it does not take on responsibility for what, for the conscious subject (only), represents an insurmountable contradiction. In this case, the will takes an, at least, partial distance from the conscious subject and its neurotic conflicts. It is careful, however, to spare the subject by hiding this double investment from it. As such, the will makes sure that its continuing investment in the desire that repulses the subject does not enter into the latter’s consciousness; it makes this desire unconscious. This is the scenario of what we have called secondary

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or neurotic repression. This amounts to a clear deception of the subject by the will, for the inadmissible desire, from which the conscious subject believes it has been freed, subsists in the form of an unconscious desire, positively invested by the will/​drive. For Schopenhauer, nothing stops the will in its deceptive manipulation of the conscious subject’s intelligence: in order to hide its true intentions, it will not hesitate to suggest new, more acceptable, conscious desires to the subject (“to turn to other things”)103 —­desires which advantageously replace repressed desires and play the role of distracting the subject from its prior attachments. We can assume that, for Schopenhauer like Freud, this counter-​investment of more innocent desires is an integral part of the process of neurotic repression and symptom formation. Yet, what these two forms of repression have in common is that they are both the work of the will. The repressing party, for Schopenhauer, is always and in all cases the will. The conscious subject is completely incapable of repression, not only because—­more often than not—­it does not have a clear and distinct consciousness of its desires, but especially because it can do nothing without the energy lent to it by the will. The two kinds of repression fundamentally differ, however, concerning the party with respect to which the conflict arises. In primary repression, this party is none other than the thirst for power of the will itself. The only subjective desire that can be problematic for the will is one that hinders its drive for self-​affirmation and self-​realization. The will in-​itself does not experience neurotic conflicts. In neurotic repression, however, the party that renders a desire problematic for the conscious subject (but not for the will) is a subjective party, namely, the narcissistic image or the conscience of the subject. For Schopenhauer, contrary to Freud, it seems to go without saying that the subject is conscious of this subjective party that exercises its power of censorship. For Schopenhauer, the subject does not have an unconscious superego, and the will in-​itself (which is always unconscious) simply cannot have any superego at all. Does this Schopenhauerian conception of a neurotic repression, in which the will hides the subject’s guilty desires from the subject by repressing them into the unconscious and forcing the intellect to shift its attention to other objects, also apply to human “madness” (Wahnsinn), already alluded to in our last lengthy citation? What part does the subject, then, have in this madness, and what part, the will? Let it be admitted, from the start, that Schopenhauer does not make a clear distinction between what I have called “neurotic” conflicts and the “delusions” or “delirium” of “madness”—­just as he does not clearly distinguish between neurotic repression and primary repression. It remains that what he has to say about the causes of madness, the mental

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constitution of the mad person, and the kind of repression that is at the origin of “delusion,” in fact contains the ingredients of a veritable theory of psychosis. Schopenhauer even gives himself the means to differentiate between the delusions of the schizophrenic, the “melancholic,” and the “erotomaniac.” He claims to have this knowledge not only from his reading of the authors whose theories he discusses (mainly Pinel and Esquirol), but also from his “own experience of many years [vieljährige Erfahrung].”104 Amongst the many causes of madness, Schopenhauer gives a central place to traumatic experiences, that is, to “unexpected and terrible events” (unerwartete entsetzliche Begebenheiten) with which the subject has been struck in the past.105 Such events, accompanied by a great “fear” (Schreck), leave indelible traces in this subject, that is, a pain that is as “insufferably great” (überschwänglich groβ), “harrowing” (quallvoll), and “unbearable” (unerträglich) as it is “lasting” (bleibend).106 As such, to free itself from this pain, the subject attempts to eliminate from its “memory” (Gedächtnis) any recollection related to this past traumatic experience. Such a voluntary eradication of a traumatic recollection is something entirely different from a mere forgetting, for it is precisely the impossibility of forgetting its traumatic past that causes unbearable pain to the subject and forces it to resort to this eradication. For several reasons, this latter is also to be carefully distinguished from repression. First, what is thus eliminated from consciousness concerns a past experience of the subject and not the present experience (of a conflict). Next, this suppression concerns a traumatic experience of the subject and not a problematic guilty desire. Finally, contrary to a repressed desire, which subsists in the unconscious, the traumatic recollection is truly excised or, as Freud says, “ foreclosed” (verworfen) from the psyche of the traumatized subject. According to Schopenhauer, such a foreclosure is an operation through which the subject wants not only to “wholly suppress” (völlig unterschlagen) any recollection of its traumatic experience from its “intellect” or consciousness, but even to “violently cast it out of its mind” (ein gewaltsames Sich aus dem Sinn Schlagen).107 Far from only hiding something from itself, the subject completely amputates its traumatic past, “breaks the thread of memory,” and “abolishes the continuous connection” (fortlaufende Zusammenhang) or the coherency of its mental life.108 It is thus never directly the traumatic experience itself, nor the lasting pain that results from it, but the foreclosure of any recollection relating to this painful experience that is the true cause of madness. This foreclosure of a part of one’s past life not only disturbs the functioning of the subject’s “memory”; on the contrary, it creates a real emptiness, a hole, a “lacuna” (Lücke) in the flow of its conscious life. The foreclosure of

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a traumatic recollection thus has the effect of disintegrating or fragmenting the personal identity of the subject. The subject exchanges its prior “unbearable” pain, provoked by an unforgettable traumatic recollection, for the new, no more bearable, pain of seeing its personal identity fall to pieces. It is in order to relieve this new pain that the will suggests “fictions” (Fiktionen) to the subject that may be able to “fill” the void created in the continuous flow of its conscious life by the foreclosure of its traumatic past.109 And it is these fictional representations, completely removed from the concrete reality of its life and of the real world, that weave the web of the mad person’s delirium. Moreover, very often this delirium is accompanied by actual “hallucinations.”110 As representations directly issuing from the will and forced by the latter on the subject’s intellect, these delusional “fictions” are regulated by the pleasure principle and not the reality principle. To be sure, this does not mean that they are, for this reason, necessarily pleasant. The insane, who are usually not completely insane or delusional, always end up suffering from their delusions in one way or another. The myth of the happy fool thus seems to be an invention of neurotics, too caught up in their own conflicts to imagine that more unbearable pains might exist. Yet, the lot of the insane is in no way enviable. For, having already exchanged the pain of the traumatic recollection for the pain of the experience of emptiness left by the foreclosure of the former, the pain of this emptiness is now exchanged for the pain of a delusion, which—­while it fills in the holes—­only accelerates the disintegration of the person. Precociously traumatized by life, the insane end up being fooled by the will, which shows a monstrous indifference to their personal well-​being and mental health by offering them the poisonous gift of delusional representations. Playing the therapist to the subject doubly traumatized by its painful recollections and by the loss of its personal identity, the will finally unveils its true nature as a stubborn and destructive drive force. In fact, the will couldn’t care less about subjective individuality, and it quite willingly sacrifices the survival and integrity of subjectivity to the satisfactions it gets from its self-​realization. Caring only for its own survival and intensification, the will/​drive sows death in its wake, and the pleasure principle that it blindly follows can only be a source of misfortune for human beings. As such, Schopenhauer’s will/​drive leads us directly to Freud’s death drive (and to the next chapter). While the will is in itself not at all mad, it drives human beings mad through its mad desires and, when humans are weighed down by, and powerless in the face of fortune, it suggests to them ideas that make them even madder. Let us retain, however, that one is not mad because one has delusions, but one has delusions because one is mad—­mad with the

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madness caused by foreclosure and originating (Ursprung) in the will. By “filling their head” (Sich in den Kopf Setzen) with the delusions suggested by the will, the insane do nothing more, in fact, than fill the void left by the foreclosure (ein gewaltsamens Sich aus dem Sinn Schlagen) of their traumatic past.111 For Schopenhauer, like Freud, delusion is thus already a fruitless attempt to cure oneself of one’s madness, that is, to repair the damages caused by foreclosure.112 To be sure, this does not mean that delusions themselves are not damaging, but this damage does nothing more than reinforce the damage brought about by foreclosure. Like the damage caused by foreclosure, the damage caused by delusions concerns both self-​knowledge and knowledge of the external world. Having already been deeply disturbed by foreclosure, these two kinds of knowledge end up being completely “falsified” (verfälscht) by delusion. By substituting an “imaginary past” (gewähnte Vergangenheit) for the real and traumatic past of the subject, delusion extends to and ends up contaminating even the mere perception of the “present.”113 It remains that, for Schopenhauer, madness first consists in not recognizing anything that “is absent and past” (auf das Abwesende und Vergangene). It is only secondarily and as a consequence that it ends up also distorting “the knowledge of what is immediately present” (Kenntniβ des unmittelbar Gegenwärtigen).114 If we read Schopenhauer carefully, foreclosure is not limited to excising recollections related to a traumatic past, but ends up engulfing the entire dimension of “what is absent”—­in the broad sense of anything that is not “immediately present” for the subject. This dimension of the absent, ruined by foreclosure, is what Lacan (among others) calls “the symbolic.” Stripped by foreclosure of their access to the symbolic dimension, Schopenhauer’s insane end up replacing the absent with the present, and with a present that is already a creation or a projection of their delusion. What else can this mean than that psychotic delusion consists in the representation of a present from which the horizon of absence (constitutive of any true presence) and thus any perspective and depth have been radically abolished? All that survives is a simulacrum of presence, that is, a present that is as oppressive as it is superficial and without escape. This is why Schopenhauer is justified in comparing this too-​present present of delusion with the stubborn platitude of a “fixed idea.”115 Indeed, a fixed idea is an idea that forces itself upon, and weighs down the subject by a repetitive presence so overwhelming that it no longer allows any escape. Rather than being true ideas, the fixed ideas of the insane are mere images. The delusions of the insane are thus “fictional” because they are a purely “imaginary” creation (and not the reverse). Even if Schopenhauer does not notice this, we can also assume that this fixation on an imaginary present—­whose keys the insane claim to hold

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(for they created it!)—­must also distort the relationship of the insane with symbolic signifiers, and thus language. The speech of the insane (and the voices that they hear) can only be a speech in which every word becomes an image or the “pictogram” of an obsession, of a present with no depth or context, of an absolute signifier.116

4

The Three Stages of Freud’s Drive Theory and Lacan’s Amendments

The theory of drives [Trieblehre] is the most important but at the same time the least complete portion of psychoanalytic theory. —­Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality The theory of drives is so to say our mythology. Drives are mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness. —­Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-​Analysis For the Trieb can in no way be limited to a biological notion. It is an absolutely fundamental ontological notion. —­Lacan, Seminar 7

Introduction: Freud and (the End of) Metaphysics Freud is undeniably heir to the long-​standing tradition of a dynamical metaphysics whose quasi-​organic development we have just followed through the central figures of Aristotle, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer. Even though the pre-​Socratics, and especially Heraclitus, were brought to mind several times, it is still Aristotle’s Physics that established the signposts for our itinerary. Once we turned our attention to the definition of substance as vis activa and passiva and as “will” (Wille), the problematic of dunamis, understood as a drive force striving toward its own realization as energeia, never left us. The same can be said for the Aristotelian distinction between a dunamis that is active (dunamis tou poiein) and one that is passive (dunamis tou paschein). When questioning Leibniz and Schopenhauer on the internal stimulation of the drive or Triebreiz, the mode of being of a restrained or inhibited drive, the possibility and consequences of a drive conflict, the difference between natural forces, animal instincts, and 137

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specifically human drives, recollections related not only to Aristotle’s Physics, but also to his Metaphysics and De Anima also naturally came to mind. However, Leibniz’s and Schopenhauer’s subjectivization of substance, emphasis on a consciousness that is both representational and affective, and raising of the new problematic of an unconscious consciousness and a human body radically distinguished from material bodies brought about so many modifications that their successors were often no more aware than Freud of their indebtedness to Aristotle. I will try to demonstrate that reading Freud in the light of what Leibniz and Schopenhauer have taught us on the nature of the drive and its role as moving force in the often conflictual development of human life is no less fruitful than reading Leibniz and Schopenhauer in the light of Aristotle’s Physics. Interpreters of Freud have long been aware of what his thought (through the meandering paths of a filiation that need not be addressed here) owes to Schopenhauer. However, they are most often unaware (just like Freud himself!) that by taking sides (through his opposition to Jung) against Schopenhauer’s drive monism and radical separation between drives and representations, Freud restored a part of the Leibnizian (and Aristotelian) heritage repudiated by Schopenhauer. It is thus insufficient to draw attention to the clearly Schopenhauerian inspiration of Freud’s concept of the death drive, his refuting of any natural drive or desire for perfection, or his bringing to light of the thousand ways the consciousness we have of ourselves and external things misleads us, in order to draw the conclusion that Freud automatically subscribes to all of Schopenhauer’s criticisms regarding Leibniz’s optimistic rationalism. There is no need, at this juncture, to bring up the contrast between their respective views on human sexuality in order to demonstrate that the great proximity between Freud and Schopenhauer is also accompanied by important differences. Among those that by ricochet bring Freud closer to Leibniz, worthy of mention are: the great sensitivity to the dimension of absence provoked by an event of loss and, especially, the positive understanding of human finitude as it manifests itself, both psychologically and ontologically, in the form of a constitutive “lack” and fundamental “disquiet” (inquiétude) of the human monad. If Schopenhauer takes up anew the (physical, metaphysical, and psychological) dynamics of Leibniz while completely rejecting his monadology, Freud, on the other hand, recovers Leibniz’s interest in a process of original individuation and subjectivization that precedes the intervention of an egological principal and bears witness to a primitive ipseity already involving others. The criticism will certainly be made that this ostensible evidence concerning the metaphysical inheritance of Freud is doubly misleading, first, because it arises from an already quasi-​Freudian interpretation of

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Aristotle, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer. My response to this is that questioning a certain (and not the entire!) metaphysical tradition from the perspective of a psychoanalytic theory as unstable as that of the drive is in no way based in a dogmatic bias, and it has not prevented us from remaining attentive to the particular context and the different approach to drive-​based life in each of our metaphysicians. The second criticism that will certainly be made is that I have exchanged the authentically psychoanalytic dimension of Freud’s thought for a pseudo-​psychoanalytic philosophy or, even worse, a psychologized metaphysics. While this second criticism seems as unjustified as the first, it nonetheless points to a real danger. While harboring no illusions on the effects of my efforts on “authentic” psychoanalysts, I will thus take care to respect what separates “the Freudian cause” from traditional philosophical and psychological concerns. First, with respect to the difference between Freudian psychoanalysis and a certain kind of psychology (to which Freud himself sometimes remained beholden), I will take inspiration from Lacan’s thought, referring to it throughout my interpretation of the three stages of Freud’s drive theory, as well as in a subsequent chapter on the Freudian subject. Next, concerning the relation between Freudian psychoanalysis and philosophy, it does not seem offensive to Freud to underline the philosophical nature of his “metapsychological” investigations into the nature of the drive. While I will only refer to clinical psychoanalysis (like Freud himself) to illustrate a theoretical conceptualization of the drive, this does not mean that the clinical roots of the latter will be ignored. As such, I will attempt to respect the simultaneously empirical and speculative character of Freud’s theoretical reflections on the essence of drives, their mode of manifestation, origin and mode of maturation, divisions, unifications and disunions, management by the ego and superego as elements of the psyche, relation to pleasure and external reality, and so on. This respect will only be effective and sufficient if our philosophical reading of Freud avoids being guided by philosophical convictions, conceptions, or biases that are completely foreign to Freud’s own concerns. What is thus needed is a philosophical approach inspired by the Freudian descriptions of psychoanalytic phenomena in order to then better appreciate the value of Freud’s conceptualizations. In my view, the best approach to this task is phenomenology and its “zigzag” movement between the description and conceptualization of phenomena, which it has elevated to the dignity of a philosophical method. It is in fact as phenomenologists that we have already considered questions about the “guiding thread” (Leitfaden) in the Aristotelian, Leibnizian, and Schopenhauerian analyses of the drive. What phenomenologists

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call a “guiding thread” is a specific and particularly self-​evident phenomenon that has the advantage of facilitating our access to more general and less directly self-​evident phenomena. In most cases, this phenomenon is not singled out by a subjective methodological choice, but suggests itself (often, without our explicit awareness) as a guide for clearing a path toward the exploration of phenomena or even a whole new phenomenal dimension that sometimes radically transcend it. Already in Husserl, and even more clearly in Heidegger, the guiding thread is constituted by an ontic phenomenon that (partially) opens the door to an ontological phenomenon. In our phenomenological approach to Aristotle, it is the analysis of the natural movement of material bodies that served as our guiding thread for better understanding the being of movement in general or the movedness that presented itself both as an alternative to the understanding of being as ousia, and as the a priori of any ontological understanding of the drive. Among the different ontological categories representing as many interdependent points of view on, or ways of speaking of the being of movement, it was neither energeia, nor sterèsis, but rather dunamis that offered the best grasp on the being of the drive as the essential moment of the movedness of living bodies. The being of the drive thus came to the fore as a potentiality or force allowing natural beings to set themselves in movement by themselves, that is, without the intervention of an external cause. The guiding thread provided by the natural movement of material bodies thus only fully revealed its hermeneutic richness for exploring the nature of the drive against the backdrop of an ontological opposition between beings arising from physis and from technè. This then opened up vast perspectives for us on active and passive drive forces, on natural forces mutually encumbering each other to the point of leading to the repression of one by the other, or even to a mutual neutralization manifested by a general powerlessness (adunamia) of drives in a particular being. The opposition between physis and technè also drew our attention to the nature of specifically human drives that, while owing nothing to technè, set certain restraints on themselves and place themselves within the illuminating field and force of logos. Thus, the guiding thread provided by observing the natural movements of material beings showed us the way toward discovering the ontological status of human drives as dunamis meta logou. In Leibniz, the phenomenological guiding thread that gave us access to the force-​being (vis) of drives in all individual substances or monads was nothing other than the many particular ontic (or ontologically psychological) phenomena bearing witness to the agility, aspirations, and uneasiness of the human soul. The ostensible guiding thread of a

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material substance defined by its force of unification rather than by its extension, as well as Leibniz’s entire dynamic physics which he opposed to the mechanical physics of Descartes, thus finally revealed itself to be a ruse meant to facilitate, in his contemporaries, the acceptance of the surprising view according to which the human soul itself held the key to the metaphysical understanding of the drive forces of all finite beings, including material bodies. Just as the contrast with movements arising from technè served in Aristotle to better grasp the drive-​based being of all natural beings, Leibniz in his turn used the contrast with the divine monad to deepen his conception of the drive nature of all finite beings, that is, of all beings whose virtual force never lends itself to complete realization. Along the way, the being of the drive gained in precision by revealing itself as an “inhibited” active force. As surprising as this may seem in a philosopher known for his spiritual rationalism, in the end it was the very specific phenomena of (external and internal) inhibition affecting the active forces of the human soul that provided the ontic guiding thread in Leibniz for exploring the force-​being of drives in all finite substances—­even those addressed in his dynamic physics. It is thus not surprising that, conversely, forces thought to be purely physical, such as the force of “resistance,” entered into Leibniz’s metaphysical anthropology. While strongly emphasizing the difference between the degree of perfection of drive forces in various kinds of substances, Leibniz still elaborated a common vocabulary for metaphysics, physics, and psychology. A distant but unmistakable echo of this terminological and theoretical universalism can be found in Freudian psychoanalysis (which it would thus be wrong to consider as a variant of positivist materialism). We can see that in Leibniz, and with respect to Aristotle, the ontic guiding thread and the ontological phenomenon of drive-​based being have come much closer together—­to the point of provoking the (false) accusation that his general metaphysics is anthropocentric or even anthropomorphic. It is more difficult to wash away the stain of any such accusation from Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, given the extent to which the anthropological guiding thread and the ontological Thing seem to merge in his thought. For how else is one to interpret the substantial form of being in general borrowing even its name from the ontic phenomenon of the human will? We have seen that things are, in fact, more complicated. In one sense, it truly seems that the phenomena particular to the human will (in the broad and clearly drive-​based sense given to this term by Schopenhauer) provided the ontic guiding thread for his analysis of being as will. Among other things, this resulted in a philosophy of nature with clearly anthropomorphic tones and according to which water, for instance, is animated by a “natural force” that “rush[es] downwards.”1

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In another sense, however, Schopenhauer constantly widened the gap between being-​in-​general or the will in-​itself and beings—­to the point of even denying real existence to any empirical being, that is, any spatiotemporally individualized being. How can phenomena with only a semblance of being show the way toward a true being that they in fact mask more than they reveal? The successive acts of the human will are thus necessarily an illusory guiding thread for closing in on the drive-​ based being of the will. For everything that we know about it through our representations is not only more or less misleading, but fundamentally unsuited to the task of delivering the secret of a will that withdraws from all representation and thus remains necessarily unknowable in terms of representation. Even though the role of “Platonic Ideas” should not be neglected, the only ontic phenomenon, according to Schopenhauer, that can truly provide a guiding thread for the philosophical exploration of the drive nature of the will in-​itself is the experience that each of us has of our own body. This phenomenon of our own body is in fact less misleading than all other empirical phenomena, for it is the only phenomenon of which we have two complementary kinds of experience. We perceive our body both from the exterior, through our representations, as a body (Körper) among other living and inanimate bodies, and (simultaneously!) from the interior, through our affects, as a body of flesh (Leib) that presents itself to us as an organ of our will. Even though the pathway that leads in Schopenhauer from our intimate experience—­of the way our will directs the movements of our phenomenal body—­to the philosophical intuition of the nature of the will in-​itself is long and filled with pitfalls, it is the only pathway available to us for conceptualizing not only the drive nature of the Will, but also the way in which it objectifies itself in the phenomenal world. Moreover, this metaphysical path only fully reveals its richness when the ascent toward the ontological monism of the will is followed by a descent back down toward the plurality of Platonic Ideas and the multiplicity of empirical phenomena. In this way, we find in Schopenhauer a philosophy of nature that is tailored to the measure of the human body. This new philosophy of nature understands the movements of material bodies in close analogy to the movements of our own body and, beneath the network of causal relations explored by the natural sciences, it seeks to bring to the fore the action of “the will in nature,” that is, of “natural forces.” These natural forces (as with Freud’s drives later on) only meet with “occasional” phenomenal causes that facilitate their realization, but never constitute their a priori cause or ontological principal. Whether we take the path of ascent or the path of descent, it becomes self-​evident that the weight of Schopenhauer’s entire general

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metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and metaphysical anthropology rests on the fragile experience that each of us has of our own body. It thus falls to Schopenhauer to show how this vulnerable body, internally exposed to a constant drive stimulation and externally exposed to successive physical affections, can give rise to an objective knowledge of the world and a dispassionate knowledge of oneself. We have seen that he realizes this tour de force by making the brain not only the central organ of our body, but also an organ that serves both the pleasure principle of irrational drives or desires and the rational knowledge of the phenomenal world. If Freud’s psychoanalysis is (also) a metaphysics of the drive, what ontic phenomenon is thus most likely to take on the role of guiding thread for an investigation of the being of the drive in general, as well as the nature of particular drives such as the sexual drive, the drive for self-​ preservation, or even the death drive? We will see that Freud explicitly raised this question and that he considered it all the more pressing given that he seriously doubted whether it was possible for drive processes to manifest themselves directly and immediately. We know that it is essentially the phenomena of infantile sexuality (and their return in perverse adult sexuality) that prescribed themselves to him as the guiding thread for his eidetic investigation (that is, the analysis of the essential constituents) of the being of the drive in general. Contrary to a widely spread prejudicial opinion, this in no way means that Freud held partial sexual drives to be the most original drives. The reproach against Freud’s presumed “pansexualism” is thus to be managed with care. For in Freud as well, the guiding thread is not to be conflated with the Thing in-​itself of his metaphysics of the drive. What is most likely to play the role of guiding thread is an ontic phenomenon that initially presents itself, but what presents itself initially and immediately is rarely what is most fundamental in the sense of an ontological a priori. As such, the choice of (various) partial infantile sexual drives as guiding thread in no way implies that Freud held these to be (chronologically) first or the only drives ruling over the life of children and even newborns. This choice will in fact reveal itself to be a most judicious one given that the singularity of this guiding thread, far from leading toward a drive-​based sexual monism, opens the way to recognizing an original drive dualism, as well as to an investigation of multiple drive crossroads, such as “anaclisis” or “attachment” (Anlenhnung), “sublimation” (Sublimierung), and the “fusion” (Mischung) and “defusion” (Entmischung) of different kinds of drives. One must also take care not to confuse the function of a guiding thread with that of a theoretical model, possibly borrowed from the positive sciences. The theoretical model that inspires the Freudian analysis of infantile and adult sexuality, vital drives, and (especially!) death drives,

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and that underlies his entire eidetics of the drive in general, is something like an electrical circuit, a steam engine, or a thermodynamic system. But this scientific model does not make Freud into a positivist naturalist. For instance, it has never prevented him from recognizing a “mental causality” that is irreducible to the efficient causality of the natural sciences. It should also be specified that using such a scientific model is entirely compatible with a metaphysical understanding of the drive—­even if it must be admitted that it sometimes led Freud into extravagant metaphysical speculations. Yet, in the end, it is less metaphysics and more an authentic phenomenological approach that would be affected by an unreflective use of such theoretical models. But did Freud ever harbor the ambition of being a phenomenologist? It would be much more serious if the models borrowed from the sciences of his time hampered his ability to give unbiased phenomenological descriptions of the clinical phenomena he carefully brought to the fore. It is worth adding, however, that substituting more contemporary scientific theories better adapted to the field of psychoanalysis, such as structural linguistics or mathematical topology, for Freud’s outdated scientific theories would not automatically guarantee a better phenomenology. As with his metaphysics, Freud’s phenomenology will thus have to be judged based on the evidence. His reflections on the most suitable guiding thread for determining the being of the drive no more suffice to make him a phenomenologist than the bringing to the fore of his metaphysical roots suffices to make him a metaphysician—­whose type is, moreover, still to be specified. However, before beginning our interpretative work in earnest, it may be useful to briefly outline already how Freud’s thought fits into the long history of dynamical metaphysics, from which only the most central figures have been evoked. It goes without saying that, given the central place attributed to the concept of the drive in Freud’s thought, he is rooted for us, above all, in Aristotle, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer. Even though this drive is, for Freud, essentially an energy whose tension and intensity is quantitatively measurable, and even though he is strongly opposed to the spiritualist hypothesis of a drive for perfection, the drive is still for him the most fundamental mode of being of living beings and, more particularly, of humans. For Freud, all living being are drive-​based beings, and in higher-​order living beings the drive constitutes the dynamic ontological essence of their psychophysical constitution. In Scholastic terms: the drive is the ratio essendi of their psychophysical constitution, and the phenomena of intimate interaction between the soul and the body are the ratio cognoscendi of the drive. Even though Freud insists against Jung (and also implicitly against Schopenhauer) on an original plurality of antagonistic drives (following

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Aristotle and Leibniz here), he still provides us with an eidetics of all drives or of the drive in general in Instincts and Their Vicissitudes. His is thus certainly a general metaphysics of the drive, and this metaphysics reaches veritable speculative peaks in his later work Beyond the Pleasure Principle. We will thus focus on this text more than any other, and the presentation of Freud’s different versions of drive dualism will never lead us to lose sight of his investigation into the nature of the drive in general. The compulsion or drive to repeat, to which Freud attributes so much importance, will prove to be an inestimable guide in helping us understand the simultaneously excessive and nihilistic character of the pure drive. Freud’s metaphysics of the drive will thus connect with the most central intuitions of Schopenhauer’s thought, and in his later work Freud will in fact take up his historic place with increasing clarity in the age of a closure of metaphysics. Yet, this closure is not without new openings in Freud. Among these, perhaps the one with the most important and serious consequences is his remolding of the notion of subjectivity. For this remolding is nothing less than a demonstration that the subject is a mere epiphenomenon of drive-​ based reality, that is, a phenomenon that sometimes floats above and at other times is submerged by the flow of drives, and sometimes swims against and at other times is tossed to and fro by the current of drives, to the point of losing its head and becoming an “acephalic” subject. While it cannot quite be said that the Freudian subject is born from the tides like Venus, it is nevertheless true that it draws its substance and all its energy from its link to the flow of drives. The manager of drives and the official of the reality principle, the “ego,” while remaining the principle of representation, in fact feeds exclusively off (narcissistic) libidinal energy. This is why Freud has no reason for carving out the rift of an ontological difference between the world of drives and the world of representations. For him (as for Leibniz), drives are the matter out of which desires are made. A further similarity to Leibniz is that Freud is not interested in refuting (like Schopenhauer) the singularity of our desires and the individuality of our lives; he merely wants to provide a foundation for these that underlies our conscious ego. More tuned in than any of his predecessors to the dimension of loss, Freud still connects with the Leibnizian intuition of a human subject troubled by the “disquiet” that arises out of its “too little” being or its original ontological lack. In the end, Freud’s reflections on the nature of drive pleasure—­be it sexual, vital, or aggressive—­are indeed metaphysical, and not merely psychological. Even though the entire metaphysical tradition before him had already raised the question of the nature of pleasure and, more specifically, whether it constitutes the goal or only a premium of drive

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action, Freud was nonetheless the first to speak of a pleasure “principle.” He could not have stated more clearly that the search for pleasure is not constituted by a blind mechanism and that sexual pleasure cannot be reduced to the satisfaction of basic needs. The distinction Freud draws between the pleasure of complete relaxation and pleasure modulated by an alternating rhythm of increase and decrease in drive tension will provide a probing demonstration of this for us. This distinction brings to the fore two drive strategies that both amount to more than a natural mechanism, but less than a subjective managing of pleasure. Credit should also be given to Freud for having considerably enriched the metaphysical comprehension of our own body as we encountered it in Schopenhauer. Not only does he address the question of the unification of various (erogenous) organs of this body in directly bodily terms (and not in terms of authority or command), but, through his concept of autoerotism, he also introduces into this body the dimension of a purely bodily (and thus pre-​speculative) reflexivity—­of which only Schopenhauer, among our many metaphysicians, had a vague premonition. Conversely, Freud was certainly the first (and perhaps the last) metaphysician to be concerned about the devastating effects of a disincarnated drive, that is, of the fanaticism of the pure drive. More generally, Freud also exchanged the traditional psychology of his day for a new metaphysical anthropology that questions the nature of consciousness and contests the privileged place of self-​k nowledge through introspection. Whether this makes of psychoanalysis a hermeneutics of the hidden meaning of symptoms and delusions, or rather an exercise in listening to and reading the work of signifiers, is a question we can leave open for the moment. One comes quite close to thinking that Freud’s best metaphysics arises when he does metaphysics despite himself. His fertility and innovation as a philosophical thinker are thus not due to his speculations on the origin and goal of “life,” the unavoidable march of all living beings toward “death,” or the different function of “sexuality” for the life of the species or the individual. Instead, more than anything else, it is his way of carving out the dimension of negativity for each particular phenomenon that makes him a worthy successor of Aristotle, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer, and thus anything but a positivist. To be persuaded of this, it suffices to pay attention to how he deepens the indications of Aristotle on drive conflicts and powerlessness, of Leibniz on the drive as an active force that is held back or inhibited, and of Schopenhauer on drive repression and its pathological consequences. The result is a conception of the drive whose destructive negativity or nihilism is not due to the accident of disinhibition or disunion, but rather, much more deeply, to an original excess of energy. In his later metaphysics of the drive, Freud turns on its head the

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beautiful construction of degrees and levels of being so dear to his metaphysical predecessors by giving a central place to the negativity of a “too much.” From then onwards, it is no longer self-​evident that more drive force, energy, or power automatically goes together with progress on the scale of ontological perfection. In this way, psychoanalytic doctrine on the negativity of the “too much” or excess, combined with the negativity of the “too little” being or ontological lack of the human subject, inserts human destiny not only into the framework of a negative metaphysics, but also, simultaneously, into the dimension of tragedy. However, before addressing these questions as they were raised by Freud in the last stage of his drive theory, it is worth examining the two preceding stages—­which are equally worthy of our careful attention.

Sexual Aberrations, Infantile Sexuality and the Anarchy of the Sexual Drive, the Libidinal Body It would be a mistake to read the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 2 from 1905 as a mere draft of later developments in Freud’s drive theory. Freud’s first theory remains a definitive one, and the multiple revisions of the Three Essays from 1910 to 1924 can be considered additions, but never retractions or veritable corrections. For this inaugural text, it is thus appropriate to stick to its first version3 and learn about the developments of Freud’s conception of the drive directly from later texts such as Instincts and Their Vicissitudes or Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Making Three Essays both the inaugural and foundational text of Freud’s drive theory also implies a choice to remain silent about passages from “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895) or even Freud’s correspondence with Fliess (1887–­1902) devoted to vital forces and, more specifically, to a “sexual energy” that, in both its “somatic” and “psychic” forms, feeds neurotic symptoms. In my view, it is only in Three Essays that the theory of the sexual drive becomes the object of a systematic treatment, providing it with a central place in Freud’s metapsychology that he will no longer even call into question in his later works. Despite its apparent simplicity, right from the beginning this text raises good psychological and philosophical questions, as well as providing answers that Freud may have considered to be definitive. Along the way, the functional parameters of all other types of drives are definitively circumscribed. Schopenhauer, better than Aristotle or Leibniz, drew our attention to the fact that the first question to be raised regarding any drive theory

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concerns the access to its object. How can the drive be caught in action when it most often unfolds without human consciousness being aware of it? Three Essays, in its very first chapter, suggests a double line of approach that moves successively through the study of sexual perversions and infantile sexuality. A second and no less pressing question, also brought to our attention through the reading of Schopenhauer, concerns the specific nature of the sexual drive, that is, what distinguishes it from (and perhaps brings it closer to) natural forces and, more specifically, the basic instincts and needs of living beings. Three Essays responds to this question with its concept of “anaclisis” (Anlehnung). On the basis of these two responses, Three Essays develops a conception of the sexual drive where the indeterminacy of its objects as well as the variable nature of its source and aim lend to it a surprising plasticity or contingency in comparison to instinctive behavior. While Freud may seek out physiological causes of the sexual drive, advance bold hypotheses about the original bisexuality of all living organisms, and even refer to a natural development of the stages of infantile sexuality with a view to their resulting in genital sexuality, he will never manage to convince us of the trivially natural or vital character of human sexuality. In other words, mess-​ups, bifurcations, conflicts, bursts of mad enthusiasm, and fearful regressions all seem to be inseparable from the human sexual drive. Freud became aware of this long before writing Three Essays. Strongly underlining everything that distinguishes this sexual drive from the quasi-​automatic process of satisfying natural needs, Lacan is thus justified in presenting the sexual drive as a highly artificial composite, a “surrealist montage”4 or patchwork whose stitches are sewn together, come unsewn, and are sewn together again or become fixed through chance and repetition in human existence. From the standpoint of psychoanalysis, far from bringing us closer to animals, our sexuality makes us into a particularly unstable and vulnerable endangered species, since it often puts us in an awkward position with respect to the demands of self-​preservation. Freud never completely abandons, however, the idea that our sexual drives, despite their anarchical nature, are linked to our survival drives and that it is the often conflictual composite of these two types of drive that constitutes the most primitive layer of our psyche. According to him, this can be explained by the fact that our psychic life comes closest to its somatic substructure in its drive experiences. This is the source of the first and already definitive characterization of the drive as “psychical representative [die psychische Repräsentanz] of an endosomatic, continuously flowing source of stimulation [einer kontinuierlich flieβenden, innersomatischen Reizquelle].”5 This means that the drive originates inside the organism, the drive stimulus is thus to be understood as

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a self-​affection, and any stimulation of the drive by an external object is no more than a purely occasional cause—­exactly as was the case in Schopenhauer! According to Freud, the drive is the experience of a stimulus or tension that affects both the organic body (as a whole or in one of its particular organs) and the psyche, and he seems to continue to follow Schopenhauer by conceiving of the mental experience of drive tension as a mere epiphenomenon of the somatic state. Far from taking on the form of an intentional representation (Vorstellung) of an object, the “psychical representative” of organic tension has to be a representation in the sense of Darstellung, that is, a simple expression or translation of a somatic state. This mental Darstellung of a somatic lack of equilibrium takes on the form of an experience of tension that Freud also calls “unpleasure.” Freud’s theory thus seems to comply on all fronts with the drive scenario as we encountered it in our reading of Schopenhauer. Yet, the enigmatic “continuously flowing” character of any drive stimulus as described in the quotation just drawn from Three Essays remains to be understood. Is it not self-​evident that, quite to the contrary, we sometimes have respite from our natural needs? And does Freud not also write in Three Essays that with the orgasmic satisfaction of a sexual drive “the tension of the libido is for the time being extinguished”?6 It thus seems that the continuous character of the drive is to be conceived in a way that allows for quantitative variation, that is, for increase or decrease in intensity. This is why Freud writes that the drive stimulus is characterized by a continuous flow, that is, it is “continuously flowing” (kontinuierlich flieβend). Moreover, this fluctuation in the drive is not reducible to the fact that another drive comes to the fore when our sexual drive is at rest, and that we are thus never free from one stimulus or another being exercised on our psyche by our somatic body. Instead, taking inspiration from Aristotle’s analysis of movedness, we should understand the temporary resting of the sexual drive as still itself constituting a drive state. In this sense, it might be better to translate the “Befriedigung” of the sexual drive with the term “appeasement” rather than “satisfaction.” One can thus say that appeasement will never abolish drive tension. For if the pressing or drive tension of dunamis—­far from being a mode of non-​being or a state borrowing its paucity of being from the energeia toward which it strives with all its might—­characterizes our most fundamental mode of being, it thus follows that the suppression or “disappearance” of all drive tension can only be realized at the price of our own death. To be sure, this does not mean that we easily adapt during our lives to our drive-​based being, nor is it unthinkable that a drive might arise in us with the precise goal of definitively liberating us from all drive tension and ensuring our eternal rest. Yet, Freud’s hypothesizing of such a

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death drive will continue to be underpinned by the drive theory set out in Three Essays, that is, by the conception of a being that remains inexorably exposed to “an endosomatic, continuously flowing source of stimulation” because of its bodily existence. Whether it is the psyche trying to escape the unpleasure tied to drive tension, or the organism itself ceasing to strive for its own survival, the death drive nonetheless only becomes thinkable in Freud to the extent that this drive puts an end to the ancient alliance between the sexual drive and vital drives. More closely examined, the possibility of such a rupture between sexuality and life can already be envisaged in Three Essays—­even though this text does not yet consider the possible conflict between sexual drives and self-​preservation drives (as will be the case in the texts on the second drive theory), and it is even hesitant to recognize a true drive character in our organic needs.7 For it is not enough to say that the sexual drive arises when natural needs are satisfied (for instance, hunger by the mother’s milk) to conclude that the former’s appeasement follows as regular and preestablished patterns as the latter. The contrary is in fact the case, and the originally anarchic character of the sexual drive will, retrospectively, come to cast its shadow on the seeming simplicity of Freud’s theory of “anaclisis” (Anlehnung) and thus on the origin of infantile sexuality. Ferenczi was among the first to notice this, and Laplanche made a renewed theory of anaclisis into the main focus of his psychoanalytic works. Yet, whatever may be the case with respect to the pleasure of nourishment at the maternal breast and its transformation—­w ith or without the complicity of the mother—­into sexual pleasure, one is obliged to note that Three Essays inaugurates its sexual drive theory with the study of adult sexual perversions and not with infantile sexuality. To forget this would be to misunderstand the ensuing qualification of infantile sexuality as arising from a “polymorphously perverse disposition.”8 What the “perverse” forms of adult sexuality can teach us, according to Freud, is that the human sexual drive lends itself to multiple kinds of “transgressions” (Überschreitungen). Far from being a collection of abject curiosities, the enumeration of these perversions allows Freud to illustrate the incredible plasticity of the sexual drive, which willingly adapts to different kinds of objects, aims, and even organic sources. From this observation, it is but a small step to the conclusion that the human sexual drive is originally characterized by the absence of a unique and irreplaceable object, aim, or source that would be naturally prescribed by the sexual function. Freud easily takes this step toward an originally anarchic sexual drive in his analysis of infantile sexuality—­even though he does not seem to realize that he thus undermines the basis upon which his conception of genital sexuality as norm is founded. For how can he

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continue to assert that reproduction constitutes the natural aim of a heterosexual relation after having observed that “the sexual drive is in the first instance independent of its object,”9 any part of one’s own body can lend itself to sexual stimulation,10 and sexual pleasure can be obtained through all sorts of non-​coital forms of manipulation? It is no surprise, then, that Lacan jumped into this gap to contest the natural succession of the stages of sexuality in children, their teleological orientation toward a genital sexuality with normative value, as well as the subordination of partial drives and their “Vorlust” to the primacy of coital “Endlust”! According to Three Essays, the study of adult homosexuality shows us that the choice of an object (that is, a partner) of the opposite sex is not naturally written into the sexual drive. The great variability of objects toward which the sexual drive can turn for its “appeasement” suggests the opposite, namely, that contrary to natural needs,11 sexual drives have no natural object. As such, this counts as a first repudiation of the supposed analogy between “the sexual drive” (or “libido”) and “hunger” from which Three Essays starts out.12 Adult sexual perversions also provide us with an enlightening illustration of the great variability in source and aim of the sexual drive, that is, of the “process of excitation occurring in an organ” or “erogenous zone” and the way of obtaining “an appeasement [Aufhebung] of this organic stimulus.”13 The analysis of fetishism, voyeurism/​exhibitionism, and sadism/​masochism—­still only outlined at this point—­not only brings to the fore that our genital organs do not constitute our only erogenous zones, but also that their manipulation is not the only way of reaching sexual pleasure. A stimulation of “the oral and anal orifices” and “the neighboring tracts of mucous membrane,” of the “eye” or “the skin” can also do the trick.14 Perversions also draw our attention to the fact that the sexual drive can make do with, and find its final appeasement in a pleasure that remains merely preliminary (Vorlust) from the viewpoint of genital sexuality. We will revisit in more detail the, in the end, rather complicated structure of these sexual perversions when we consider Freud’s second drive theory. Let us, however, retain from Three Essays that voyeurism and exhibitionism, as well as sadism and masochism, manifest themselves as two sides or “pairs of opposites” belonging to one and the same partial sexual drive that reaches its aim either in an active or passive manner.15 Let us also retain that the “transgression” brought about by a perverse sexual drive concerns not only its object, organic source, and aim, but is also related to feelings in the psyche that are usually opposed to the actual satisfaction of such a drive. Among these “mental forces [seelische Mächte] that act as resistances” to the sexual drive and inhibit its course toward a perverse pleasure, Freud more particularly mentions “shame

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and disgust” as well as “the claims of aesthetic and moral ideals.” These feelings and claims are “forces” that “play a part in restraining that drive within the limits that are regarded as normal.”16 Without specifying the origin of these feelings in the psyche (the ego or the superego?) and without concerning himself with their natural or conventional character, Freud nonetheless already suggests that perverse pleasure is a pleasure that circumvents the inhibitions weighing on “normal” sexuality and remains unaware of the conflicts leading to a neurotic repression of phantasms arising out of a “shameful and disgusting” sexual drive. Hence, the clinical observation, never questioned in later works, according to which “neuroses are, so to say, the negative of perversions.”17 Neuroses—­no less than perversions, but in a far more painful way—­bring to the fore the fact that our sexual drive, with respect to its object, source, and aim, is by nature difficult to contain “within the limits that are regarded as normal.” And Freud thus suggests that neurotic symptoms, by their very form, allow the analyst to read the “negative” of the repressed perverse desires they have replaced and whose realization they are still ensuring, albeit in a way that is convoluted and heavy with compromise. The transition from “sexual aberrations” to the study of “infantile sexuality” thus takes place quite naturally in Three Essays on the basis of the hypothesis that the neuroses of adults, just as much as their perversions, bear witness to a persistence (or “fixation”) of their infantile sexual desires. Given the absence of reliable early childhood memories, adult sexual aberrations and neuroses constitute for Freud our best source of information on the sexuality of children. Yet, bringing adult perversions and infantile sexuality together is not without an element of risk, for it implies the obligation to specify why the same “perverse” sexual drives and acts are normal in children but abnormal in adults. We have already seen that Freud fulfills this task by inserting infantile sexuality into a teleological framework that turns the “phases of development” (Entwicklungsphasen) of infantile sexuality into steps leading toward a great leap at puberty into normal genital sexuality. Adult perverts and neurotics have thus not leapt, leapt badly, or leapt backwards. Yet, have we paid enough attention to the fact that, through these different phases of development, Freud also raises questions about what changes (the source, the aim, and the object) and what does not change (the nature of the “libido” as sexual energy) over the course of maturation of human sexuality? What is, in any case, certain is that a reading exists of Freud that pays less attention to the psychologizing normativity of his presentation of the “stages” of evolution in infantile sexuality than to the way in which he successively characterizes the structure or the organization of oral and anal drives.18 In fact, this is the very direction taken by the new section, entitled “The Phases of

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Development of the Sexual Organization,” inserted by Freud in 1915 into his chapter on infantile sexuality in Three Essays.19 Such a structuralist interpretation of the difference between oral and anal sexuality is far better suited to Freud’s interest in, and attempt to anchor his nosography of neuroses and his characterology of neurotics in, a theory of infantile sexuality. It is also better at revealing the philosophical issues raised by this theory. For, beyond the oral fixation of the hysteric and the anal fixation of the obsessive person, what is at stake in Freud is: the way in which the child oscillates between the autoerotism of a mere “organ pleasure” and recognizing a (most often lacking) external object; the way in which an organic drive gives birth to sexual desire; as well as the way this latter adapts to the definitive loss of its first object. We know that this was the path taken by Lacan in his “return to Freud.” This path leads Lacan to question the idea of a normal adult sexuality, defined in terms of a heterosexual genital sexuality that has definitively cut its ties with the regime of perverse, autonomous, partial sexual drives.20 True to his provocative spirit, Lacan goes on to question the very existence of a sexual drive that would not be partial in nature, and consequently of any “sexual relation.” In Freud’s theory, it is the regime of the partial oral drive that constitutes the most primitive form of infantile sexuality. According to the well-​known concept of anaclisis or attachment (Anlehnung),21 this primitive sexual drive arises in the infant through the pleasure felt during the appeasement of its hunger by the milk it receives while sucking at the maternal breast. Freud’s successors tried to make this theory more precise, first, by emphasizing the fact that a social dimension was involved not only in the satisfaction of a vital need, but also in experiencing this need in the form of a state of “distress” (Hilflosigkeit). According to this view, the biological fact of the human infant’s premature birth means that all its needs (including biological ones) are immediately inserted into the register of a demand addressed to the other and thus transcend the sphere of a purely biological reality. Long before sexuality comes into the mix, the natural is therefore never quite natural in human beings. It was often the same successors of Freud who remarked that the anaclisis of the oral sexual drive with the satisfaction of hunger in fact implies a twofold displacement,22 for its concerns not only a change in the object, but also in the aim of the two kinds of drive. The object of the oral sexual drive is no longer the mother’s milk but the breast, and its aim is no longer the activity of eating, but rather incorporating the maternal breast. As such, the child’s oral sexual drive would lead toward a primitive form of cannibalism. A few authors went even further and saw in the slippage of the drive from the milk to the breast a (thoroughly symbolic) process of metonymical displacement. They thus also associated the replacement

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of eating with incorporation to the linguistic process of metaphorical substitution. These refinements change nothing, however, in the debates that continue to be fueled by Freud’s theory of a shift from nutritional to sexual pleasure. But let us not devote further time to this, for what is of main interest to us is the structure of an oral drive detached from the need for food, and not the question of how to justify calling the nonfunctional pleasure it seeks “sexual” (and not “playful” [ludique], as some have suggested). In my view, Three Essays gives several good reasons for this terminology, and it also already makes explicit reference (as Laplanche will do after Freud) to the argument of a sexual pleasure felt by the mother when nursing and caring for her baby.23 As with all other forms of drive, the nature of the oral drive is to be understood based on its essential components, namely, its source, object, and aim. The source of the oral drive is a stimulation of “the mouth” or, more specifically, the “lips,” which thus play the role of an “erogenous zone.” Such a local stimulation manifests itself as a state of psychosomatic tension experienced by the child as unpleasure. Lacan will claim that this primitive unpleasure is a feeling of lack, but a lack felt only by the mouth itself and not by the child as subject (of desire). What is missing in this oral lack, that is, its original object, is clearly “the breast.” Once again, we are dealing here with the object of a partial drive (what Lacan will call “objet a”) that precedes the representation of the maternal body and (especially) of the mother as object of desire. The breast is thus a kind of transitional object linking child and mother long before their separation and constitution as subject and object of desire. This breast is lacking in the sense that it is absent or, as Freud explicitly says, “lost.”24 The first object of the oral drive is the breast as object of a lost pleasure. The unpleasure of drive tension thus only relates to a real and present object in a secondary way, for its source is a stimulation of the mouth and its aim is guided by the memory of a first object that is absent. Lacan will make this conception of the object more precise by trying to show that, already in Freud, the dimension of loss only manifests itself concretely through the experience of pleasure taken in finding the lost object again. While the loss of the first object may well be original, it thus only manifests itself “after the fact,” according to him, and in the ambiguous encounter with a substitute object that has been “refound”; this object—­because it never fully replaces the lost object—­w ill reveal the persisting lack in the subject.25 Freud’s theory of the oral drive fits directly into a metaphysical tradition for which—­as has been shown at some length—­a present object can never be the cause of something like a drive. For Leibniz and Schopenhauer, a present empirical object is at most an external “occasion” for the triggering of a drive process, and it is thus what is least specific to

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the drive. Nor can a present empirical object constitute the aim of a drive. Thus, the aim toward which the mouth’s experience of unpleasure directs the sexual oral drive does not consist in returning to the breast, providentially made accessible again, to “suck.” What the oral drive seeks to “find again” and what constitutes its aim is the lost pleasure of the mouth or the lips. What it strives for is the pleasure given by the rhythmic activity of “sucking” (Lutschen, Ludeln, or Wonnesaugen).26 This drive tension is so strong and the pleasure of sucking so great that, when the breast is lacking, the oral drive will quite willingly be satisfied with what it has at hand, so to speak, that is, a part of its own body or any other object that lends itself to sucking. Detached from the object of natural need and seeking pleasure for itself, the oral drive thus becomes explicitly sexual according to Freud and, more specifically, “autoerotic”—­even if these autoerotic behaviors are still accompanied by a “remembered” past pleasure27 and probably also a hallucination of the maternal breast as original lost object. It should be noted, however, that autoerotic oral pleasure can ultimately do without any external object lending itself to sucking. It can in fact be satisfied by the rhythmic movement of the lips sucking on themselves.28 In such a case, the object of the oral drive falls back on and merges, purely and simply, with its source. It goes without saying that such oral autoerotic behavior is not only the privilege of infants: For the past fortnight Pieter has had dry lips—­the result, he imagines, of a slight digestive fever. He licks them all day long to moisten them a bit. At least, in the beginning it was for that. But, little by little, the habit has got a grip on Pieter and become downright obscene. . . . As he listens to you, even as he speaks to you, he assumes a furtive, sensual air and, protruding his upper lip like a gutter, entices his lower lip into his mouth. . . . He sucks it in, he sips at it, and in obedience to his bidding it swells and thrusts deeper into his mouth, vast and dilated—­and there, Heaven knows all that he does to it in the way of tonguings and quivering caresses! He nibbles it a bit as well. But his principle pleasure, I think, is that most primitive of sensual delights, the rapture of the naked, splayed, mucous membrane laid upon another mucous membrane like one dried fig upon another—­and the pleasure, like a thick oil, passes from one mucous membrane to another by osmosis. For the enjoyment to be complete, however, it has to be accompanied by a noise. Pieter is always surrounded by a host of little sounds—­sharp or soft; plaintively melodious or a bit raucous—­which are like the perpetual, angelic song of his self-​abandon. While he masturbates his lip, he utters a thousand slurping smacks—­ reminiscent of the greedy suckings and lappings and “yum-​y ums” of a nursing infant.29

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Psychoanalytic theorists have written extensively on this scenario of a pleasure in the oral drive that arises from sucking on the nourishing maternal breast and the various forms of autoerotic sucking. However, they may not have paid enough attention to the nature of autoerotic oral pleasure, in which, as Freud writes, the pleasure of appeasement takes on the paradoxical form of an unpleasant stimulation seeking out a new pleasure.30 The pleasure that comes from thumb-​sucking can thus never really give rise to true appeasement or rest; it will always be a pleasure (Lust) that makes one crave or “feel like” (Lust auf ) even more pleasure (Mehr von Lust).31 It is tempting to see a striking anticipation of the death drive in this Freudian description of the undefined course of the autoerotic oral drive toward an eternally fleeing pleasure. What is certain, in any case, is that Three Essays already explicitly struggles with the enigma not only of an unpleasure that gives rise to pleasure, but also of the fading of any clear distinction between pleasure and unpleasure: I must insist that a feeling of tension necessarily involves unpleasure. . . . [A] feeling of this kind is accompanied by an impulsion to make a change [Drang nach Veränderung] in the psychological situation, . . . it operates in an urgent way which is wholly alien to the nature of the feeling of pleasure. If, however, the tension of sexual excitement is counted as an unpleasurable feeling, we are at once brought up against the fact that it is also undoubtedly felt as pleasurable [lustvoll]. . . . How, then, are this unpleasurable tension and this feeling of pleasure to be reconciled?32

As Leibniz and Schopenhauer have already led us to understand, the best way to put this is to say that the pleasure principle is not the ultimate principle of the drive—­not even of the sexual drive. Yet Freud was perhaps the first to clearly understand—­if we look beyond the contrivance of his distinction between “fore-​pleasure” and “end-​pleasure”—­that the negativity of a lack rests at the very heart of sexual pleasure, and no sexual pleasure can thus ever satisfy us. Freud also modestly calls upon the wisdom of the German language and how it bears witness, through the double meaning of the word Lust,33 to this ancient knowledge that human beings have continually repressed. The oral drive deserves to be called “partial” in Freud not only with respect to the total object or “total ego” (Gesamt-​Ich)34 of genital sexuality, but even more so because of its limits. Autoerotic oral pleasure relates exclusively to the mouth or lips (and not to one’s entire body), to sucking (and not the manipulation of an object), and to a partial object (the breast and not the mother). The only thing that is important to the child is the pleasure linked to the rhythmic activity of sucking; thus almost any

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object will do. Freud is no doubt correct in claiming that this open-​ended object of autoerotic oral pleasure constitutes a substitute object and that the child sucking its thumb amounts to a withdrawal and compensation strategy for the missing pleasure of sucking at the mother’s breast. Yet, is it really certain that the child can differentiate between the pleasure that comes from sucking at the breast and the pleasure that comes from sucking its thumb? Does Freud not say it is rather the child’s educators, concerned about its survival, that are worried about the child coming in the end to prefer its own thumb over the nourishing breast of the mother? It seems that for the child itself, the difference between the breast and the thumb comes down to the difference between a frequently lacking object of pleasure and an object of pleasure that is always available. We should thus retain that the oral drive is not only the most primitive of drives because it comes first in the development of infantile sexuality. It is also the drive in its simplest form, for it does not yet imply a clear awareness of the difference between one’s own bodily self and an external object, nor between a pleasure closed in on itself and a pleasure inserted into a logic of exchange. The oral drive (and hysterical desire) is confined to a logic of opposition between presence and absence or between possession by incorporation and absolute lack. It is thus less because of a temporal succession than because of a more elaborate structure that the anal drive is distinguished from the oral drive. Freud describes sexual anal pleasure as a “subsidiary pleasure attached to defecating” (Lustnebengewinn bei der Defäkation).35 This pleasure arises, according to him, from the stimulation of the anal mucosa and the muscular contractions of the anal sphincter during the passing of fecal matter. In terms of Freud’s drive eidetics, the stimulation of the mucosa and the muscular contraction of the anus are thus the source of the anal drive, the feces constitutes its object, and the pleasure linked to defecation is its aim. As such, we encounter once again the schema of a sexual drive pleasure that is built on anaclisis with the process of a vital organic function. In this new drive object we also find again the dimension of loss (of the feces through defecation). Finally, we encounter once again an autoerotic activity that consists in taking pleasure in processes of retaining and expelling fecal matter beyond the necessities (Not) of a natural need. But more remains to be said. First, anal sexuality provides us with a first illustration of the possibility of internally inhibiting the drive, a possibility that we have repeatedly examined in our reading of Aristotle, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer. To the external obstacle of a feeling of “shame and disgust” that opposes realization in action (energeia), we must add in the anal drive the internal obstacle of retention, with the particularity that it provides as much pleasure as expelling the feces. Thus, as well as the

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inhibition caused by an ideal that brings about repression, there is also another, specifically anal inhibition that is the source of neurotic constipation.36 (The two kinds of inhibition are perhaps not unrelated—­which would explain why in everyday language, we happily characterize neurotics as “constipated.”) Transposed into Lacanian terms, anal inhibition can be compared to anxiety in the face of enjoyment. Second, a new component of the sexual drive or a new partial drive, whose importance will grow continuously with the sexual maturing of the child, comes to the fore in the play of expulsion and retention that constitutes anal autoerotism. This is the “drive for mastery” (Bemächtigungstrieb) whose aggressive character is more clearly portrayed in “the cruel component” (Grausamkeitskomponente) of infantile sexuality and in the sadistic behaviors of the child.37 The drive for mastery illustrates well that the favorite playground of the anal sexual drive can extend far beyond autoerotic behaviors. This is surely what constitutes its most important difference from the oral drive. The child will quickly become aware, whether on its own or by force, that its parents or educators not only pay great attention to its defecations, but that they want to establish some control over them. We will have to wait until 1915, however, for an addition to Three Essays to explicitly draw our attention to this new intersubjective dimension of infantile anal sexuality and the “gift” (Geschenk) signification that it gives to intestinal content.38 What is particular to this gift is not only that it can be given or held back, but that we require it of the child. The exchange of the gift constituted by the feces is thus inserted, right from the start, into a logic of what Lacan qualifies, with his usual precision, as “demand.”39 This logic of demand is twofold, not only because it involves two people and excludes any reference to a third, but especially because it is composed of a binary series of opposite values: giving and refusing, giving (“the gift”) in order to receive (love), and so on. Given its focus on one and the same object with a dual exchange value (giving or refusing) and one and the same demand with a twofold outcome (obeying or disobeying), the logic of the fecal gift thus opens infantile sexuality to intersubjectivity, while at the same time enclosing it within the closed model of a dual relation. As Freud remarks in his 1915 addition on “The Phases of Development of the Sexual Organization,” this results in anal sexuality being tied to an “ambivalent” drive disposition.40 This same ambivalence can be found in obsessive neurosis, whose symptoms, according to Freud, bear the trace of a strong fixation on sadism and the ambivalence of infantile anal sexuality, as well as of an internalization of the other’s demand. This same 1915 addition to Three Essays also proposes a new interpretation of the “pregenital sexual organization” of oral sexuality by reformulating the aim of the oral drive in terms of “incorporation.” This goal of incorporating the object results

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in a specifically oral form of ambivalence in the pregenital sexual drive. This consists of an ability to accept the destruction of its object or even in an impulse toward such destruction. While the ambivalence of the anal drive is characterized by its violent impulse to aggressively master its libidinal object, oral ambivalence is made up of a drive that “loves” its object so much that it wants to eat it up whole. For Freud, this incorporation of the object as aim of the pregenital oral drive is the prototype of a mental process of “identification.” It is once again tempting to draw a relation between the organization of this “cannibalistic” pregenital oral sexuality and the structure of hysterical desire and, more specifically, its way of idealizing its object in order to be able to better destroy it thereafter. The 1915 addition to Three Essays thus develops in the same line as a text published in the same year on Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) that presents the ambivalence of the pregenital oral drive and the ambivalence of the anal drive as stages that are precursors to the relation between love and hate in genital sexuality.41 The way in which Three Essays, in its third and last chapter, addresses the transition from pregenital sexuality to genital sexuality is not without its ambiguities. In one sense, this transition is described as the effect of a maturing of infantile sexuality that comes about at the moment of “puberty” following “a period of latency.” Over the course of this latency period, the young polymorphous pervert, under the influence of “shame, disgust, pity, and the structures of morality and authority,” has already forged the first “barriers” for containing its overflowing sexuality (Sexualschranken).42 In another sense, the event of puberty is presented to us, starting with the title of the third essay, as giving rise to real “transformations” or restructurings (Umgestaltungen) of infantile sexuality. The same ambiguity is encountered anew in the way Freud characterizes the very nature of this restructuring. In one sense, it seems to be the effect of drive evolution. This evolution would lead to the fixation of the sexual drive on the genital organs and, through the discovery of sexual difference, to the unification of partial drives and their subjection to the primacy of the new genital drive.43 Moreover, this naturalist version itself raises new questions, for it is not self-​evident that this discovery of new stimuli affecting the genital organs automatically directs the sexual drive toward the new drive aim of coitus or even sexual reproduction. Other passages, however, describe the restructuring of infantile sexuality as the effect of an external intervention by the representatives of a social culture. According to this new culturalist version of things, infantile sexuality—­after having already been subjected to “inhibition” by the Sexualschranken of reactive feelings like embarrassment and disgust—­is completely remodeled by the injunctions of “the barrier against incest” (Inzestschranke).44 Yet, neither of these

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two versions explains precisely how, under the aegis of genital sexuality, the joining of the different erogenous zones and their partial drives in one and the same libidinal body or “total ego” (Gesamt-​Ich) comes about. In order to fully appreciate the extent of the ambiguities in Freud’s approach, it suffices to add that Freud happily identifies genital sexuality with “love.”45 The question is thus whether we can assimilate sexual love between adults to the natural evolution of infantile sexuality toward a genital sexuality whose ultimate (biological) aim, according to Freud, is nothing other than “the reproduction” of the human species.46 According to the second version, the emergence of adult sexual love is, to the contrary, the effect of a cultural or symbolic taboo, that is, of the Inzestschranke. Such a hypothesis opens up entirely new perspectives. In fact, in this case, love between adults would be difficult to assimilate to a sexual drive that has been remodeled or redirected toward reproduction, and adult sexual love would not necessarily merge with genital sexuality. Following the first interpretation, genital sexuality is the natural consequence of the child’s discovery of a new source for the sexual drive (the genital organs), a new object of desire (a heterosexual partner), and a new aim (coitus). According to the second interpretation, much to the contrary, the confrontation with “the barrier against incest” is what “restructures” infantile sexuality, to the point of completely changing the regime to which it belongs. Through this change, the child’s sexuality loses precisely its natural character and becomes from then on a part of the conventional (or arbitrary) register of symbolic relations and values. This second reading of Freud thus has the twofold consequence, first, that genital sexuality loses its status as model of love and, second, that genital sexuality loses its status as a norm of human sexuality. This is clearly the path that was taken by Lacan when he made transference the model of love and refused to limit adult sexuality to the (finally more biological than sexual) aim of reproduction. It is only Freud’s second theory of the drive that gave him the means to do this—­essentially, through the explicit distinction drawn between vital drives and sexual drives, object libido and ego libido, sexuality tied to sensuality and feelings of affection.

Drive Conflicts, the Pleasure and Reality Principles, Object Choice, Narcissism, and Autoerotism The central text of Freud’s second drive theory is unquestionably the 1915 essay Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, part of the work Freud had planned to publish on “Metapsychology.”47 To understand Instincts and Their

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Vicissitudes, however, it is first necessary to become familiar with a few short writings from 1910 and 1911 (that is, from about five years after Three Essays) where Freud explains the opposition between self-​preservation and sexual drives, the choice of a libidinal object through affection or sensuality, as well as the functioning of the psyche according to the two regimes of the pleasure principle and the reality principle. The main texts concerned here are “The Psycho-​A nalytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision”;48 “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love 2)”;49 and “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning.”50 Yet, this new theory on two kinds of drive and their possible conflict is considerably complicated by the introduction of the concept of narcissism in the 1914 text entitled On Narcissism: An Introduction.51 In this text, which is also “metapsychological,” Freud draws attention to the fact that the libido, which is usually directed toward an external object (Objektlibido) through a movement of transcendence, can also retract into itself, returning to the immanent sphere from whence it came and making the ego the object of sexual investment (Ichlibido). The result is that Freud then needs to explain the difference between a self-​preservation drive or “ego-​drive” (Ichtrieb) and this new narcissistic sexual drive of the Ichlibido. The introduction of a narcissistic libido also means that Freud is faced with the difficult choice of either abandoning his earlier theory on drive dualism in order to join the monistic position defended by Jung, or calling on particular clinical phenomena that, in his view, require that the fundamental opposition between the libido and ego-​drives be maintained. Along the way, the conception of drive conflict shifts from the issue of two conflicting drives in the same bodily organ (the mouth that can both kiss and eat) toward a neurotic conflict affecting the ego (Ich). We thus move from a scenario in which one (sexual) drive repels another (vital) drive to one where the ego represses a representation arising from a sexual drive that it takes to be problematic; in its turn and in a mediated way, this repression will end up disturbing the vital function, that is, the nonsexual function of a bodily organ. For instance, repression will affect the eye’s capacity to see and lead to the symptom of hysterical blindness. When the ego represses representations that it finds unsuitable into the unconscious, it does not necessarily improve its situation in this way, for its relation to external reality suffers from this repression. By responding to a drive conflict with repression, the (neurotic) ego is in fact letting itself be guided by unpleasure and it thus hinders its natural function, which consists in managing the relation to the external world. As such, Freud is forced to admit that, far from being opposed to each other (like principles that apply to two opposing drives), the pleasure principle and

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the reality principle are always linked in the functioning of the human psyche. It thus becomes plausible to think not only that the pleasure principle has the capacity to disturb the functioning of the reality principle, but also that the reality principle can place itself at the service of the pleasure principle. On these new bases, Freud continues in Instincts and Their Vicissitudes the analyses begun in Three Essays on the nature of the sexual drive and, more specifically, the great variability of its object. However, he does not restrict himself to adding a few complementary touches, here and there, to his earlier eidetics of the drive; instead, the main object of his new theory becomes the dynamic processes of drive reversal into its opposite and the turning round of the drive onto the subject’s own self. As such, the temporal dimension of the drive process is explicitly taken into account. It is therefore not accidental that the examination of drive “vicissitudes” (Schicksale) or lots takes up such a central place in the 1915 text. In fact, different drive vicissitudes often intertwine into a quasi-​narrative intrigue. Freud thus presents the multiple developments in the progression (Lacan will speak of a “circuit”) of one and the same (aggressive or scopic) drive, emphasizing the central role played by the narcissistic element. Moving from his earlier description of sadomasochism and voyeur-​exhibitionism as sexual perversions to a new reading of them in terms of drive intrigues, Instincts will also struggle with increasingly philosophical questions such as the relations and reversals between “activity—­passivity,” “ego—­external world,” and “pleasure—­unpleasure.”52 It is in Freud’s short 1910 work on “The Psycho-​A nalytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision” that he first explicitly links vital needs, whose drive character Freud still hesitated to recognize in Three Essays,53 to a sui generis drive called the “ego-​drive” (Ichtrieb). 54 In these vital drives, the “ego” is in fact nothing more at this stage than an anonymous and organic self, a bodily agent of self-​preservation. Far from constituting an ego-​subject that would precede the unleashing of a self-​preservation drive, and far from being the cause of this drive, this bodily self is nothing more than one drive-​based moment among others. More specifically, this ego-​self is the object of a vital drive whose only aim is the life and survival of the individual organism. First and foremost, ego-​drives are distinguished from sexual drives by their concern with an individual life, according to Freud. For while the latter still make use of separate organisms, it is in order bring them together with the ultimate goal of sexual reproduction concerned with the life and survival of the species. According to this biological approach, which Freud will never completely leave behind, self-​preservation drives and sexual drives are essentially distinguished by their aim, namely, by seeking either to maintain individual

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life or the life of the species.55 In Freud’s later works, this biologism will take on an increasingly metaphysical tone, ending up in the hypothesis of a death drive. In the present text from 1910, this biological perspective is intimately linked to a psychological perspective—­yet, without the relation between these two approaches being clearly defined. From a psychological viewpoint, sexuality is essentially characterized by the sensation of pleasure as an individual psychosomatic experience. This was already the viewpoint taken up by Freud in Three Essays. The present text also follows in the line of Three Essays by subscribing to the idea that satisfying a vital need also involves its allotment of pleasure, and it is only through anaclisis with this organic pleasure that the sexual drive can seek out its own pleasure, that is, independently of the satisfaction of vital needs. Yet, how are we to understand then that a conflict can arise between ego-​drives and sexual drives? Are the most primitive sexual drives (that is, partial drives) not autoerotic, and do they not then owe their birth to self-​preservation drives? Yes, says Freud in Three Essays, but the seeking out of autoerotic pleasure through sucking may also stand in the way of satisfying the natural need to nourish oneself at the mother’s breast. As such, partial sexual drives and ego-​drives can quite easily contend, at least in children, for control over the same bodily organ. As Freud writes in “The Psycho-​A nalytic View,” it is not easy for the mouth to serve two drive masters at once, when one only thinks of kissing and the other of eating. Thus, a local conflict appears between the activities of kissing and eating that is at risk of degenerating into a more general conflict between two kinds of drive. For Freud, such a drive conflict can only be resolved by repressing one of the two drives to the benefit of the other.56 Freud thus seems to be similar here to Schopenhauer:57 the neurotic repression of a representation or desire that the ego considers unacceptable always hides a drive conflict.58 Does this mean that any repression process with respect to a sexual drive or representation is necessarily equivalent to a victory of the ego-​drive and a realization of its specific aims? Or do the symptoms of hysterical blindness and any other neurosis not rather demonstrate that the repression of sexual drives, more often than not, also stands in the way of exercising a vital function commanded by a self-​preservation drive? Even if all repression presupposes a drive conflict, it is not for this reason self-​evident that the repressive element is reducible to the action of an antagonistic drive. In the case of a neurotic repression, the principle agent is the ego itself, and this repressive ego acts much more under the control of cultural taboos, laws, and values than “ego-​drives” or vital self-​preservation drives. Was it not indeed already written in Three Essays that the child represses certain partial sexual drives out of “shame” rather than a concern with its own survival?

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It thus becomes pressing for Freud to distinguish between the ego (or rather the self!) of ego-​drives and the ego as the element of the psyche that represses disturbing representations and regulates the relation of the subject to physical and cultural reality. But we will have to wait for the essay On Narcissism for full light to be shed on these two kinds of ego and their role in drive conflicts and repression processes. On the basis of our previous reflections, however, there is good reason to think, first, that a drive conflict can just as well arise between two drives of the same nature (sexual or vital) as between two different kinds of drive. Second, it can be affirmed that, besides the repression brought on by a drive conflict, there is also another so-​called “neurotic” repression rooted in a conflict between the ego (or the superego) and a sexual drive. Third, since repression is a “drive vicissitude” for Freud and the drive is psychosomatic in nature, the separation between the two kinds of repression is in fact highly artificial. This is because, for Freud unlike Schopenhauer, there is no opposition between the realm of drives and the realm of representations. Thus, when Freud writes that neurotic conflicts between representations are always also conflicts between antagonistic drives, he does not mean that there could be purely drive-​based conflicts without any accompanying conflicts between (conscious or unconscious) representations and desires. It is quite remarkable that, one year later, “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (1911) clearly establishes that the functioning of the psyche is never a mere reflection or exact copy of drive processes. We would thus gravely misunderstand Freud’s intentions if we were to purely and simply identify the pleasure principle with the functioning of sexual drives and the reality principle with the functioning of ego-​drives and self-​preservation drives. These two principles are essentially related to how the “psyche” or “ego” treats drives and their representations. Thus, the pleasure principle is never purely a drive principle (as in Schopenhauer), and the sexual drive lends itself to a mental elaboration that is inspired more by the reality principle than the pleasure principle. Nor is the role of representations limited to giving a correct account of objective reality. Thus, for Freud, there are not only drives, but also representations that are completely subjugated to the pleasure principle. Ultimately, the reality and pleasure principles always relate to the way in which the ego manages its relation to pleasure and to reality. This is why Freud draws a distinction between the ego in relation to subjective pleasure, that is, the “pleasure-​ego” (Lust-​Ich), and the ego in its concern with objective reality, that is, the “reality-​ego” (Real-​Ich). Following closely within the Aristotelian tradition of a two-​directional desire, he claims that the pleasure-​ego desires what brings it pleasure and avoids what causes unpleasure. The reality-​ego, on the other hand, relates

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to the real by seeking out what is beneficial to it while at the same time avoiding what is harmful.59 With the introduction of a coherent conception of narcissism (that owes much to Jung), however, the bringing closer of the reality-​ego (as well as the reality principle that governs it) and the ego-​drives or self-​ preservation drives will lose much of its initial self-​evidence. It will come to light that ego-​drives can quite easily become the object of a libidinal investment and follow in the train of the pleasure principle. Conversely, with a little bit of effort on the part of the ego, sexual drives can also submit themselves to the rule of the reality principle. In fact, for Freud, a normal adult sexuality is characterized by the rule of a pleasure principle that allows itself to be chaperoned by the reality principle: “Actually, the substitution of the reality principle for the pleasure principle implies no deposing of the pleasure principle, but only a safeguarding of it. A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results, is given up, but only in order to gain along the new path an assured pleasure at a later time.”60 If there is a sexual drive that allows itself to be enlightened by the reality principle and a drive for self-​preservation that is sensitive to the pleasure principle, and if the identification of both principles with the two kinds of drive is made impossible, it thus becomes a pressing task to provide these two principles with another type of justification. The distinction between a pleasure-​ego and a reality-​ego is not up to this task, for this distinction itself requires justification. It will thus have to be demonstrated in what way the functions of the two kinds of ego differ. To respond to this double requirement, Freud once again turns to the model of psychological development in children. He presents the pleasure-​ego to us as a primitive ego that seeks out the most immediate pleasure and for which the meaning of all objects is reduced to their pleasure value. The reality-​ego, on the other hand, is not only more realistic, patient, and cautious, but it is also able to take an interest in things without being preoccupied with its own pleasure and is thus capable of facing unpleasant things. The pleasure-​ego, which functions according to the pleasure principle, always takes the shortest path toward pleasure. If we define this pleasure, along with Freud, as a complete discharge of drive tension, we reach a better understanding of how Lacan can paradoxically bring closer together the pleasure principle and the functioning of the death drive, that is, a drive that seeks out pleasure at any price or “beyond” all other considerations or forms of pleasure. For Freud, the pleasure principle is the sovereign ruler over the unconscious and “primary processes” that measure all representations, thoughts, and objects exclusively according to pleasure/​unpleasure. These primary processes, with the metonymic

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shifts, metaphorical substitutions, and condensations that they impose onto unconscious representations, are dominant in the work of dreams. The only aim of the dream is pleasure, and in order to fulfill the unconscious wishes of the subject, it arranges representations as it pleases (while at the same time disguising itself to avoid the censure of the ego) and is content to hallucinate objects that immediately and completely satisfy desire. The (nocturnal or day) dream example also demonstrates that these primary processes subjugated to the pleasure principle are generally secondary from a chronological standpoint, that is, they imply a regressive process on the part of the subject that consists in substituting an imaginary and enchanted world in which all wishes are realized for an excessively frustrating reality. Yet, already in their archaic functioning in young children, primary processes turn away from, repress (Verdrängung), or even “deny” (verleugnen) anything that might cause unpleasure—­ reveling in the mental activity of a Phantasieren and hallucination that completely complies with the requirements of the “pleasure principle.”61 Even in its archaic and non-​regressive form, however, it is difficult to fully understand the nature of the pleasure principle without, in the same moment, opposing it to the “reality principle” (Realitätsprinzip) that is likely to succeed it. Once again, it thus comes to light that the most primitive layers of the psyche can only be explored by following a via negativa. From the standpoint of the reality principle, the rule of the pleasure principle in the subject thus corresponds to an inability or a refusal to have its pleasure depend on the presence (or absence!) and inclination of an external sexual object. Not only dreams, but also any other mental activity (such as psychotic delusions) treating word representations (Wortvorstellungen) according to the rules of primary processes, that is, as if they were simple thing representations (Sachvorstellungen), provide a good example of the pleasure principle functioning in a way that has completely freed itself from the constraints of the reality principle. Some other examples are autoerotic gestures and their accompanying phantasms or hallucinations. In fact, if one might say so, some forms of psychosis harmonize particularly well with autoerotism, for it is but a small step from the fantasy of narcissistic self-​sufficiency and omnipotence to the pretense that one has the power to give any pleasure one might wish for to oneself. In both cases, the pleasure principle is the uncontested ruler. Thus, any recognition of any external reality, however limited, comes about at the price of renouncing this imaginary self-​sufficiency and omnipotence. As such, the reality principle is established on the ruins of primary processes that were entirely given over to the cause of the pleasure principle. We have already addressed the way in which parents and educators, concerned with the survival of the child and acting as carriers of cultural

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norms, intervene in the sexual life of the young child and put up obstacles against the unbridled autoerotism of partial drives. The “Formulations” text suggests that the young child becomes tired all on its own of sexual satisfaction drawn from merely hallucinated objects and eventually begins to place importance on external sexual objects: It was only the non-​occurrence of the expected satisfaction, the disappointment experienced, that led to the abandonment of this attempt at satisfaction by means of hallucination. Instead of it, the psychical apparatus had to decide to form a conception of the real circumstances in the external world and to endeavour to make a real alteration in them. A new principle of mental functioning was thus introduced; what was presented in the mind was no longer what was agreeable but what was real, even if it happened to be disagreeable. This setting-​up of the reality principle proved to be a momentous step.62

In its first form, the reality principle thus already demonstrates its value in infantile sexuality by showing the child the path that leads to real sexual objects. It is only later on that recognition of the existence of an external reality becomes generalized and independent from the search for sexual pleasure. The reality principle is then transformed into a principle of objectivity, leading the subject to pay attention to the external world, take into account its requirements, and even transform (Veränderung) it—­without being immediately concerned with what kind of pleasure can be drawn from it. According to “Formulations,” all of the following mental activities are privileged by the reality principle: attention and anticipation, memory, judgment and its truth value, action, as well as any kind of thought process.63 Yet, nothing prevents such mental activities from once again being taken over by the pleasure principle and rational thinking from regressing into a neurotic Wunschdenken.64 As concerns the relation between the ego-​drives and the reality principle, Freud restricts himself here to mentioning that these self-​preservation drives place themselves more willingly than sexual drives under the banner of the reality principle. He thus confirms that the origin of this principle cannot be attributed to a drive—­not even to an ego-​drive As such, if Freud wants to hold on to his theory of drive dualism, he cannot do so on the basis of his distinction between “the two principles of mental functioning.” It is the 1910 text “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love 2)” that best summarizes the reasons in favor of hypothesizing an original opposition between ego-​drives and sexual drives.65 First, this dualism turns out to be indispensable for Freud’s theory of anaclisis

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(Anlehnung), that is, the emergence of the sexual drive from the satisfaction of vital needs. Second, this work from 1910 presents the sublimation of the sexual drive to us as an inverse anaclisis, that is, as a transformation of the sexual drive into an ego-​drive that creates values and cultural works. Third, drive dualism is supposed to explain the origin of the “two currents” of the libido, namely, “the affectionate and the sensual current.”66 For Freud, the affectionate current of sexuality is older, for it shares the choice of its first object—­the mother—­w ith the self-​preservation drives. When the barrier against incest forces the child to renounce this first object of love, it is natural for the child to seek out substitute sexual objects that resemble the mother—­endowing them with the same affectionate attachment. At puberty, however, new and violent sexual drives of a genital order come to the fore (at least in boys) that have nothing to do with affection. Thus, with the emergence of genital sexuality, the libido divides into two separate currents: the first chooses objects based on affection, that is, according to the model of infantile anaclisis, and the second chooses its (other) objects according to their genital sex appeal. If genital love in adults is supposed to bring together these two currents of the libido through the choice of a same object in Freud, cases of neurosis demonstrate that this new alliance is not guaranteed in advance. As well as the choice of sexual object based on affection and/​or sensuality, there is also a third type of choice where one chooses someone similar to oneself as a sexual object. This is what Freud calls a choice according to the narcissistic model. The theory of narcissism, definitively established in the 1914 work On Narcissism: An Introduction, is thus not limited to the distinction between an Objektlibido and an Ichlibido, but also allows for a kind of “object-​libido” that is really a disguised “ego-​libido.”67 For instead of making oneself into the exclusive object of one’s own love, one can just as well love oneself through another. This is the case, according to Freud, in the choice of homosexual objects, which thus provides him, as early as 1910,68 with one of his first reasons for looking into the phenomenon of narcissism. Freud’s study of the famous Schreber Case (1911) and Schreber’s repressed homosexuality will lead Freud to formulate the hypothesis that a pronounced or excessive narcissism may well constitute the common root of homosexual desire and paranoid delusion. Freud’s main reason for introducing narcissism (as with Jung, before him) was in fact his study of psychosis cases (especially, hypochondria and megalomania) characterized by the subject withdrawing its libidinal investment from people or objects in the external world to concentrate or accumulate this investment on itself. This never happens without some greater or lesser degree of loss of one’s sense of reality. Narcissism is thus doubly distinguished from ego-​drives or self-​preservation drives: by its

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libidinal character and by its disinterestedness in the reality principle. A narcissistic investment always occurs at the price of a certain disinvestment of objects from the external world. For Freud, the ego-​libido and object-​ libido share the capital of libidinal energy at the subject’s disposal—­w ith the consequence that any increase in the ego account is automatically to the detriment of the object account.69 The ease with which this transfer from one account to the other happens confirms that the sexual drive has no natural attachment to any one type of object, and that its nature, much to the contrary, privileges a free circulation of libidinal capital. It is thus never the libido itself that chooses its type of investment, but rather the ego element of the psyche that distributes and manages its fortune. This liberal conception of the libidinal economy raises many questions, however, and not all of them receive a satisfactory answer in Freud. I will restrict myself to formulating three of these questions. A first question concerns the double role played by the ego as manager of the libidinal fortune and as recipient of a transfer of libidinal capital. This presupposes that an ego capable of receiving its portion of libidinal capital at least exists prior to any such transfer. The ego can thus not be a mere product of the ego-​libido or of narcissism. An additional difficulty is that a distinction has to be drawn between the ego as “narcissized” by the libidinal investment that it receives and the ego as distributor of this investment, that is, between a donee-​ego and a donor-​ego. But the donor or manager ego is not easily identifiable with the narcissistic ego (that is, an ego invested with libidinal energy), so it becomes quite impossible to claim coincidence between the two types of ego. Yet, it is with good reason that we might hesitate to postulate the existence of a series of egos of all types, each independent from the others. A minimal requirement is thus that we consider the hypothesis that one and the same numerical ego can exercise various functions: capital shareholder (or “libidinal reservoir”), manager of object or narcissistic investments, and beneficiary of narcissistic investments. Unfortunately, it is difficult to see how all this holds together. We are thus forced to admit that, as long as we stay on the level of drive investments, Freud is far from offering us a coherent theory of the subject. On this point, then, he remains behind Schopenhauer. Yet, if the subject cannot arise from drives alone in Freud (unlike in Schopenhauer), it thus becomes important to explore other avenues that could lead to a psychoanalytic theory of the subject. We know that Lacan took on this task by proposing a new approach to the narcissistic ego through his conception of a “mirror stage” and by distinguishing this imaginary ego from a divided subject (sujet clivé) of desire. We will come back to this. A second question raised by Freud’s theory concerns the relation between narcissism (or the “ego-​libido”) and the self-​preservation drives

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(or “ego-​drives”). At first glance, this question does not seem to raise too many problems for Freud. Is the question of their relation not definitively answered by his observation that self-​preservation drives, while different from the ego-​libido, can intertwine with these latter and be strengthened thanks to this narcissistic type of libidinal investment?70 However, if Freud insists on maintaining (against Jung) his conception of an (original and definitive) opposition between self-​preservation drives and libidinal drives, we are justified in requiring a better explanation from him of why the narcissistic libidinal drive and the “egoism of the drive of self-​preservation” must remain separate—­despite the alliances they can build. On a clinical level, this does not raise too many problems, for an extremely narcissistic (or psychotic) personality can very well be the seat of suicidal tendencies. On the metapsychological level, however, we are faced with the choice of either demonstrating that the ego-​drives and the ego-​libido in fact pursue completely different aims, or of admitting that they have a common root and are only differentiated on a secondary level. The first solution will lead to various consequences in Freud’s writings, and the difficulties of sustaining it will play an important role in the restructuring of the first drive dualism and its transformation, already in 1920, into a dualism between erotic drives and the death drive. It is thus not surprising that the second solution wins the day in the text On Narcissism from 1914. This solution is essentially based on the distinction between a “secondary” narcissism and a “primary” narcissism.71 According to this theory, primary narcissism characterizes an infantile state that is still unware of the difference between the ego and the non-​ego, precedes any investment of an object by this archaic ego, and reveals nothing yet of the future separation between sexual drives and self-​preservation drives.72 What we have here is a state of absolute infantile egoism, an egoism without an ego, without objects, and thus without drives that could be distinguished according to their object or their mode of subjective willing. Following the model of a biological and psychological infantile development that was so dear to Freud, we thus end up with the hypothetical story of a transformation of primary narcissism into self-​preservation drives, of a birth of sexual drives through anaclisis with the satisfaction of self-​preservation drives, and of the separation of sexual drives, thereafter independent of self-​preservation drives, into an object-​libido and a secondary narcissistic libido. For Freud, such a narrative also has the theoretical advantage of including serious narcissistic pathologies, such as psychoses, according to the model of a regression of secondary narcissism into primary narcissism. The third question concerns the relation between the narcissistic libido and autoerotism. If autoerotism, as I have suggested, is the fact of

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a self and a self-​a ffection that precede the constitution of a true ego, it goes without saying that it cannot be identified with the libido of the ego in secondary narcissism. For the latter not only presupposes an ego, but enhances this ego through libidinal investment into an ideal of the ego or even an “omnipotent” ego.73 This is clearly the vision of things put forward by the 1914 text.74 Yet Freud does not specify whether we should therefore conclude that autoerotism is nothing more than primary narcissism. The 1915 Instincts text will easily make this step: “Originally, at the very beginning of mental life, the ego is cathected with drives and is to some extent capable of satisfying them on itself. We call this condition ‘narcissism’ and this way of obtaining satisfaction ‘auto-​erotic.’ ”75 While the identification between primary narcissism and autoerotism seems to be self-​evident according to Instincts, Freud is forced to concede that this identity has never been clearly established.76 Furthermore, several reasons should put us on our guard against a premature bringing together of primary narcissism and autoerotism.77 First, as we are clearly taught in the 1915 Instincts text, far from relating to the entire archaic self, the autoerotism of partial sexual drives is always limited to a specific bodily organ or erogenous zone. This autoerotism is a mere “organ-​pleasure” (Organlust).78 Second, autoerotism manifests itself through actions whose only function is to provide pleasure. Primary narcissism, on the other hand, is characterized by a kind of egoism that not only precedes the emergence of specific sexual drives, but is also accompanied by a form of self-​sufficiency that is difficult to attribute to the autoerotism of infantile sexuality. Is the oral autoerotism of sucking not in fact already marked by the experience of an absence of the maternal breast and thus by a frustration or lack? Thus, a gulf that is more difficult to bridge than Instincts would have us believe opens up between the self-​sufficiency of primary narcissism and the autoerotic manipulations that provide organ-​pleasure (and whose incomplete and derivative nature we have already underlined). These reflections lead to the conclusion that autoerotism is to be clearly distinguished from both secondary narcissism and primary narcissism. The reasons given above cut both ways, however, for they can just as well raise doubts, even going so far as to put into doubt the concept of infantile autoerotism itself as supposedly preceding any investment of a libidinal object. As such, the existence of primary narcissism also becomes problematic. For, if the absence of the maternal breast is what leads the child to the autoerotic activity of thumb-​sucking, this presupposes that the child has already recognized the breast as an object of libidinal pleasure. From there to the supposition that the child continues to dream about the mother’s breast and hallucinate about its presence while sucking its thumb is but a small step—­one that is easily taken by authors like

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Laplanche. While we are at it, we might as well put into doubt (along with Melanie Klein and others) the existence of an archaic drive stage or primary narcissism whose closed egocentrism would still remain unaware of any recognition and attachment to an external (vital or libidinal) object. Is it not indeed paradoxical to want to maintain the hypothesis of an original egocentrism in the young child, while at the same time emphasizing the child’s helplessness (Hilflosigkeit) as strongly as Freud does?79 Does this not run the risk of confusing the primitive and self-​a ffective experiences of a mental subject still in the process of becoming itself with the metaphysical concept of an egoic self-​sufficiency or substantial autonomy?

The Dynamic Essence of the Drive: Pressure, Aim, Object, Source Turning now to a reading of the central text on Freud’s second drive theory, namely, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, one can dispense with a complete report on all the points of concordance with previous texts. Let me simply mention that this work from 1915 continues to subscribe completely to the earlier analyses concerning the pleasure and reality principles, the separation between ego-​drives and sexual drives, the anaclisis of the infantile libido with the satisfaction of vital needs, the autoerotism of partial sexual drives, and secondary and primary narcissism. It is true, however, that the distinction between self-​preservation drives and libidinal drives as the main types of drive or “primal drives” (Urtriebe) is now presented to us as “merely a working hypothesis” (Hilfskonstruktion) of a theoretical nature which Freud claims to be ready to revise, should the need arise.80 It also seems unnecessary to focus at any great length on the minor clarifications brought to the general theory of the drive by the 1915 text. These clarifications mainly concern the theoretical status of the drive as a reality situated at the meeting point between the somatic body with its physiological functions and the mental experience of an unpleasant tension or tendency whose relaxation provides a feeling of pleasure. In other words, from the outset, the drive is presented to us as a two-​sided or psychosomatic reality that strongly stands out from the dualistic metaphysical framework of a separation between body and soul. Regarding its somatic, bodily side, the drive appears to be a mental reality at the mercy of bodily stimuli that act on and are felt by the psyche. From this viewpoint, the drive is to be understood as the expression or representation

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(in the sense of Darstellung), that is, as the “psychical representative,” of a lack of equilibrium in the physiological system. What the drive primarily “represents” is bodily “stimuli” affecting “the mind.”81 From its other side, namely, the side it presents to a consciousness made of “representations” (Vorstellungen) and “thoughts” relating to objects, the drive appears to be an infra-​mental reality. For the drive does not yet involve any representation (Vorstellung) or perception of an (internal or external) intentional object; it is only the representative or placeholder for intra-​organic processes that the mind will never be able to represent to itself (except by making use of imagery techniques or theoretical models). It is only possible for the conscious individual to know anything about the drives that inhabit it through unpleasant and pleasant bodily feelings,82 experiences of attraction (or flight tendencies) with respect to objects of representation, and the observation of impulsive behavior that does not yet deserve the name of voluntary action. This means that any representation of a drive still relates back to what is unrepresentable. Let us recall that this was already Schopenhauer’s message. These clarifications on the status of the drive allow the 1915 Instincts text to propose a more precise definition of the “drive stimulus” or Triebreiz to us—­a central term that we have already spent much time on in our reflections on Leibniz and Schopenhauer. To fully understand what we are talking about, it is not enough to claim that all stimuli come to us from “within,”83 that “flight” from them is thus impossible, and that they require neurological or mental “mastering” or “appropriation” (Reizbewältigung), “subject to the pleasure principle” in “even the most highly developed mental apparatus.”84 It is also necessary to clarify who stimulates whom. It seems that at least two answers can be given to this question, precisely because of the two-​sided or intermediary nature of the drive. First, if we limit ourselves to defining the drive as the infra-​mental representative or placeholder of physiological tension, the Triebreiz can be understood as a stimulus from somatic processes undergone by the drive. We can then better understand how Freud comes to describe the drive as a “constant” force (konstante Kraft), given that these somatic processes are vital processes, the living being is constituted by a system that is in a permanently unbalanced state and constantly undergoes tension, and the drive is an immediate effect of these tensions. Second, however, this drive that undergoes somatic stimuli (and is the product of these stimuli) itself exerts stimuli on the mental system of affects and intentional representations.85 In this case, we should thus understand the Triebreiz as relating to the way in which drive tension pushes us to fantasize, perceive, think, do, and make others do. Here again, the influence of the drive on our psyche is “constant”—­though varying in intensity and followed by different kinds

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of effects. Triebreize that are undergone versus exerted thus do not have the same kind of “constancy,” but what these various forms of constancy of the drive stimulus have in common is their difference from the stimulus exerted by an external agent on the psychophysical organism in the form of “a single impact” (einmaliger Stoss).86 Contrary to these single impacts, drive stimuli are a constant source of disturbance or, to speak in Leibnizian terms, incessant “disquiet” (Unruhe) for the subject. Turning now to the eidetics of the principal constituents of all drive forces, we will make sure to complete the brief indications in Instincts and Their Vicissitudes with the, often critical, commentary given by Lacan in his 1964 seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Respecting the order followed in Freud’s essay, we will successively address the “pressure” (Drang), “aim” (Ziel), “object” (Objekt), and “source” (Quelle) of the drive. In Freud’s mind, this eidetic analysis of the essential constituents applies to all kinds of drives. Lacan, on the other hand, immediately relates it to the sexual drive alone. This difference can be explained by the fact that Lacan wants to strongly emphasize anything that separates the sexual drive from natural needs and their satisfaction, while this separation is much less important in Freud’s view. Approaching the sexual drive (at least partly) from a biological and energetic perspective, Freud has no reason to contest the natural character of human sexuality or a maturing process that goes through “stages” prescribed by human nature. Much to the contrary, Lacan—­whose psychoanalytic doctrine is justifiably characterized as centered on a theory of desire—­is spontaneously motivated to understand the drive as an artificial “montage” bearing witness to the symbolic essence of human nature. As such, hidden behind subtle shifts that could easily go unnoticed is a fundamental disagreement between Lacan and Freud concerning nothing less than the very nature of the human being or its metaphysical essence. The first constituent of the drive, and no doubt its most important one for Freud, is its “pressure.” Symptomatically, it is also this energetic aspect of the drive that is the least emphasized by Lacan. For us, however, it is of central importance, for it is especially through this pressure that Freud’s drive theory directly partakes in the long metaphysical tradition that we have explored in the previous chapters. For Freud as well, this pressure is characterized as a “force”—­a term that we have already encountered in Leibniz (“vis”) and that he uses to insert Aristotelian “dunamis” into the framework of modern physics. Similarly to Aristotle and Leibniz, this drive pressure in Freud is a force that relates to movement—­ this makes it a “motor” (motorisch) force.87 For Freud, “the characteristic of exercising pressure [Charakter des Drängenden] is common to all drives; it is in fact their very essence.”88 By presenting this pressure of the drive as

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a kind of “activity,”89 however, Freud shows himself to be less precise than Aristotle and Leibniz. For if “activity” means “energeia,” then the drive is not an activity, but rather what Aristotle taught us to think of as a dynamic potentiality (dunamis). It is all the more active and “pressing” since it has not yet been actualized in the form of a real activity. In fact, the Freudian drive is a kind of dynamic potentiality that can never be fully actualized in a way that would completely use up and abolish its pressing force. The “constant” nature of the drive thus truly consists in its constantly pressing nature, as I have already suggested. As with dunamis in Aristotle’s Physics, the Freudian drive still presses when it pretends to be at rest. Furthermore, the stimulation undergone by the psychic apparatus through the force of the drive is all the more unending because its pressure is completely indeterminate. Seen only through the lens of its pressure aspect, one and the same drive stimulus can in fact lead to a great diversity of representations and actions. As such, as long as we only consider its pressure, we will never understand why a drive wants one thing rather than another. We will see that the same can be said for the (always “variable”) “object” of the drive. It is thus only through its psychosomatic “source” that the drive becomes a specific drive pursuing a particular “aim.” The only thing that corresponds to pressure as a general trait of all drives is the equally general aim of “appeasement”—­an aim that has been shown to be ultimately unrealizable because it contradicts the (pressing, and therefore always lacking) essence of the drive. Lacan’s commentary on the “pressure” of the drive sometimes glaringly contradicts the letter of Freud’s text in Instincts. In view of the present attempt to bring together Freud’s drive pressure with Leibniz’s force and Aristotle’s dunamis, one cannot help but be disappointed by the triviality of Lacan’s identification of this pressure with “a mere tendency to discharge.”90 What follows, in Lacan, is an understandable concern with emphasizing the great difference that exists between a discharge of the sexual drive and the satisfaction of a need, or between the periodic stimulation of a natural need and the “constant” state of excitation of the sexual drive. It is harder to understand, however, why recognizing these differences would automatically lead to the claim that a vital need and its mode of stimulation have nothing in common with a drive event—­a claim that is incompatible with Freud’s text.91 Clearly, Lacan is not very interested by this drive pressure, and we will have to wait for his commentary on the other aspects of the drive to fully appreciate his considerable contribution to Freudian metapsychology. What we will see then is that the weakness of his account of drive pressure, that is, of the energetic moment of the drive, has its source in his original conception of the aim and especially the object, as well as the source of the sexual drive.

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The general “aim” toward which the drive is directed, according to Freud, is its “appeasement” (Befriedigung) through an action that brings about a release of tension or a suppression of its state of stimulation.92 Even when we translate “Befriedigung” by “satisfaction,” as is most often the case, this Freudian characterization of the aim of the drive applies just as well to sexual drives as to self-​preservation drives. Essentially, what Freud seems to want to say is that the aim of all drives consists in the satisfaction provided by their realization, that is, the accomplishment of their virtual dynamic potentiality in an actual behavior. Given his understanding of the drive or dunamis as a state of bodily tension manifested through a feeling of unpleasure, Freud has no choice but to present its realization or transformation into energeia as a “suppression” of this drive tension manifested through the experience of a feeling of pleasure. Rather than being limited to the sole case of satisfying a natural need, this Freudian analysis of the aim and pleasure of drives instead opens up a whole range of different scenarios. For instance, drive pleasure (or even just the experience of a drive force and its demands) can also give rise in the subject to the violent unpleasure constituted by the affect of anxiety.93 Also, while he claims that all drives do in reality seek out pleasure, Freud does not say that this pleasure constitutes the only or immediate aim of the drive. In the Instincts text, the term “pleasure” is in fact never used to describe the aim of the drive. We can thus assume that for Freud, as for Aristotle and his successors, pleasure only arises as a surplus when a drive manages to actualize its virtual power. Further, nothing in the text suggests that the drive has to take the shortest path leading to pleasure. In other words, Freud leaves the possibility completely open for the accomplishment of the drive to follow the rules of the reality principle rather than those of the pleasure principle. Moreover, the text explicitly touches upon the possibility that “the ultimate aim” may only be attained by passing through “intermediate aims.” It also mentions the possibility of drives “inhibited in their aim,” that is, drives whose course gets deviated onto another “path” and toward another aim along the way. In such cases, the drive finds contentment in a partial pleasure94 —­possibly in realizing a goal that is not only different, but also more socially valued. In this analysis of the inhibition of the drive aim, we can thus already read between the lines a foreshadowing of the drive “vicissitude” that the text will soon address under the name of “sublimation.” In other words, it is important at all costs to avoid interpreting Freud’s theory on the aim of the drive exclusively either in terms of the satisfaction of periodic natural needs or in terms of a sexual drive that is captive to the pleasure principle. Lacan at least partially shares this concern. For by limiting the possibility of satisfaction to the realm of vital needs, he is above all trying to

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demonstrate that the aim of the sexual drive can never be identified with attaining satisfaction. Choosing to translate “Befriedigung” by “satisfaction” (rather than “appeasement”), Lacan is trying to demonstrate that, generally speaking and contrary to self-​preservation drives, sexual drives do not pursue the aim of a total relaxation or discharge of drive tension—­ even though the aim of such an “enjoyment” (jouissance)95 continues to haunt them. This is why Lacan feels obligated, as we will see further on, to speak of a double drive aim (Ziel), which he respectively names using the English terms “aim” and “goal.” Lacan’s commentary on the Instincts text is clearly already concerned with the issue of a death drive or of something beyond the pleasure principle. This is why he seeks out arguments in Instincts against a kind of (sexual and total) satisfaction which is in fact never mentioned in Freud’s text. A poor commentary, but nonetheless a convincing demonstration! Schematically speaking, this pseudo-​commentary by Lacan on the aim (Ziel) of the drive96 can be summarized into three main arguments. First, a drive “inhibited in its aim” (which Lacan, like us, associated with the drive “vicissitude” of “sublimation”) provides a pleasure (or a “satisfaction”) similar to sexual pleasure without attaining the primal aim of the sexual drive “in so far as it would be defined by a biological function, by the realization of reproductive coupling.”97 In this case, the dissociation between the (attained) drive satisfaction and the (inhibited) sexual aim clearly demonstrates that satisfaction does not constitute the aim of the sexual drive. Second, we find ourselves in an analogous situation when considering the case of neurosis (which says quite a lot about the relation between neurosis and sublimation!). The symptom of neurosis in fact implies pleasure or satisfaction of a repressed desire, that is, a desire that is prevented from attaining its aim. Here again, an attained satisfaction is distinguished from an inhibited drive aim. One may doubtless object that the opposite can equally be claimed, namely, that in the symptom of neurosis, desire attains its aim through a deviated path heavy with compromise—­at the price of a dissatisfaction or displeasure on the part of the subject. In response to this objection, Lacan observes with finesse that this dissatisfaction of the subject is still a kind of satisfaction, since the neurotic subject satisfies the demands of the superego through these symptoms.98 Yet it is only in his third argument that Lacan unveils his underlying intentions, that is, the thesis that the (essentially partial, according to him) sexual drive excludes the possibility of total satisfaction or “enjoyment” as a matter of principle.99 Even though we are, more often than not, generously unaware of this impossibility of truly satisfying the sexual drive, one has to admit that the sexual desire of the child is actually quite content with a hallucinated object and that even the mother’s

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nourishing breast never suffices to definitively satisfy the child’s oral drive.100 As for the way Freud characterizes the “object” of the drive, any reader of Schopenhauer will immediately find themselves in familiar territory. While Schopenhauer referred to Malebranche and his conception of occasional causality, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes also strongly emphasizes the fact that, far from causing a drive, the object is but an occasional means “to achieve its aim.”101 Rather than causing a particular drive, a particular object is, on the contrary, chosen by the drive “in consequence of being peculiarly fitted to make satisfaction possible.” In fact, the link between a drive and the particular object that it invests with its insistent pressure is so loose that Freud is happy to admit that the object “is what is most variable about a drive.” However, if no natural link exists between a drive and its object, then neither is there any natural object of the drive, that is, an object naturally adapted to the drive aim. Rather, it is the drive’s capacity to be content with the available occasional objects and especially to change objects that demonstrates its liveliness and “mobility,” and protects it against any “fixation.” Infantile autoerotism has already provided us with an example of the replacement of an “extraneous” object with “a part of the subject’s own body.”102 We will soon see that this capacity to change object (along with the exchange of an actively pursued aim for one that is passively undergone) is precisely what allows a particular drive to lend itself to various drive “vicissitudes.” Finally, it should be added that any relation of the subject to a drive object is mediated by the rule of the “imaginary.” For Lacan, this imaginary is in no way reducible to the private phantasms of a human subject; it also includes the sexual “parade” of animals and other behavior that introduces the dimension of the “trick” (leurre) into the relation between the subject and its sexual object.103 Despite its apparent simplicity, this Freudian conception of the drive object is worth some further reflection on our part. To begin with, it should be emphasized (as we have already done with Schopenhauer) that this (instrumental and transitory) drive object is not yet an object of representation (Vorstellung). The sexual drive finds an object before the subject can form any idea on the more or less attractive character of this object. It projects itself almost blindly toward its object, that is, without letting itself be guided on its path by the illumination of representational consciousness, and it is the pleasure that it draws from the object that decides on the drive’s fidelity or infidelity to this object. Yet, if the human sexual drive is characterized both by a lack of insight and by the lack of any natural object, how are we to understand that it can nonetheless find appropriate objects for itself? Without the support given by intentional

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representations or automatic instincts, what is left to guide the sexual drive in its object choices? It can only be the last element of the drive, about which we have not yet spoken, namely, “the source” of the drive. We must thus try to understand how a particular somatic stimulation can prescribe a general type of object to a particular sexual drive, without getting in the way of the “variability” of its particular objects. Next, we must also complete what Instincts has to say about the relation between sexual drives and their objects by recalling everything we have already addressed about partial drives and their not only partial, but often completely fantastical objects. We can then better understand that the variability or contingency of particular objects and the general prescriptions that limit their variability bear witness to the fact that the objects of sexual drives are nothing more than substitutes for primal objects that have been lost. This will also help us to better understand how Lacan can claim that it is the lack put into place by the loss of these (partial) primal objects that guides the (partial) sexual drive in its object choice, and how he can make this lack into the true (non-​somatic!) “source” of the sexual drive. To this end, it is not necessary to assume that the sexual objects which come to substitute themselves for the primal lost objects are actual things or people. On the contrary, the objects of adult sexuality are generally just as partial as the lost objects of infantile sexuality. Regarding people with whom we have fallen in love, we should in fact admit that we have chosen them less because of their personality as a whole than because of certain partial and general “traits” that they possess, such as their eye color, the smell of their skin, their way of laughing, and so on. It is these general partial traits that thus guide the sexual drive and constitute its first (substitute) object. This is what Lacan and Laplanche, after Freud, have confirmed for us. It should thus come as no surprise that, according to Lacan, it is a lost and therefore completely lacking object that the sexual drive seeks to find again. Foreshadowing Lacan’s distinction between the drive as belonging to the “real” and desire as belonging to the “symbolic” register, it can also be said that the dynamic of the drive arises not only from the loss of its primal object, but from its inability to resign itself to this loss. Whatever the case may be, contrary to Freud, Lacan does not explain the variability of the drive object through the versatility of the drive, but rather the versatility of the drive and the variability of its object through the lack brought about by the loss of the primal object. Since he makes this lost and lacking object into the true or ultimate object of the drive, he is naturally tempted to devalue the empirical object that replaces it. As such, this latter is not only “variable” for Lacan, but “a matter of total indifference,” that is, “it is, strictly speaking, of no importance.”104

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This empirical object is nothing more than a disappointing stopgap for the absence of the true drive object “which is in fact simply the presence of a hollow, a void, . . . and whose agency we know only in the form of the lost object, the petit a.”105 For the drive, empirical objects are nothing more than necessary, but completely indifferent means for indefinitely pursuing an unrealizable aim (Ziel). For Lacan, the drive is thus always divided between two kinds of object: one is characterized by an absence as a matter of principle, while the other is characterized by a presence that is haunted by the mystery of its relation to the primal object. Lacan compares this divide in the drive object to the Kantian distinction between the noumenal “Thing” (das Ding) and the phenomenal object (die Sache).106 It then becomes clearer that this Thing is linked to a kind of “enjoyment” that, in its turn, becomes “impossible” because of the loss of the Thing. Unlike the post-​K antianism of Schopenhauer, we should also note that, for Lacan, the noumenal Thing of the drive does not have more, but rather less reality than its empirical phenomenal objects. For this Thing only exists for Lacan insofar as it is lost and points to itself through the relative “indifference” and the unsatisfactory character of all empirical drive objects (“objects are never it [ça]”).107 Thus, far from being a reality that precedes the constitution of the subject, the Thing as source of complete “enjoyment” is but a transcendental illusion or a myth that haunts the subject’s desire and experience of lack. It haunts them in the form of this lost “objet petit a” shot through with emptiness and somehow situated halfway between the ideal Thing and the empirical phenomenal objects of the drive. In Kantian language, this objet petit a of the drive is a schema, that is, it is neither as general as a transcendental Idea nor as concrete or differentiated as an empirical object. Thus, the objet petit a of the oral drive is nothing other than the lost and lacking maternal breast. Even better than the breast as objet petit a of the oral drive, the feces as objet petit a of the anal drive, or the voice as objet petit a of the vocative drive, the gaze as objet petit a of the scopic drive illustrates the ungraspable character of the drive object, as well as its difference from any empirical object. The gaze that the scopic drive seeks to see is distinguished from the natural organ of the eye by its unreal and invisible character. Thus, the gaze is not only a drive object that is sought out before being represented, but it further constitutes a fundamentally unrepresentable object. As an unrepresentable and inaccessible object of erotic fascination, the gaze constantly kindles and then rekindles the scopic drive in its attempt to capture the fleeting appearance of the gaze on variable empirical objects. The variability of these empirical drive objects and the variety of “drive vicissitudes” are thus the effect of a concealment or withdrawal of the primary object of the drive, that is, of this

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objet petit a that is “the eternally lacking object.”108 Attracted to an object that it has no way of grasping, the drive is condemned to “circumvent”109 or conduct a “tour” around it.110 We will come back shortly to the tours performed by the scopic drive, motivated by the gaze, in the drive vicissitudes of voyeurism and exhibitionism. Lacan will draw a correspondence between the double meaning of aim (Ziel) as “aim” and “goal” and the ambiguity of the tour understood as “turn” or “trick.” Freud’s explanations of the nature of the somatic “source” of drives definitely show a certain degree of struggle on his part. For even though, for him, “drives are wholly determined by their origin in a somatic source,” this source is beyond the scope of any psychological observation or knowledge. Is this not an admission that his attempt to found the psychological theory of the drive on a biological reality has failed? But Freud is not Lacan. He is also different from Schopenhauer, for whom the source of our drives, as Thing-​in-​itself and thus for metaphysical reasons, has to remain completely unknown to us. For Freud is firm in the conviction that, even though the physiological processes at the source of our drives remain inaccessible to psychological knowledge, the natural sciences will at some point manage to solve their mystery. Given the present state of physiology, according to Freud, we have good reason to think that these processes are purely quantitative. As such, all our drives would have their source in a qualitatively undifferentiated tension, with variation coming only from intensity. The question of the nature of the Triebreiz that sets a drive dynamic in motion is thus reduced in Freud to the question of the nature of the somatic source that is common to all drives. How then are we to understand the great diversity of our (sexual and vital) drives, as well as their dynamic turns and vicissitudes, if they are all “stimulated” by the same kind of somatic state? The first answer that comes to mind is to call on the difference in localization of these stimuli whose drive “pressure” constitutes the “psychic representation.” Thus, oral and anal drives would be differentiated to begin with by their “erogenous zone,” that is, by the different bodily organs subjected to tension through physiological processes. Next, they would be differentiated by their respective aims of incorporation or mastery. However, after further reflection, it seems better on the level of knowledge to reverse the priorities, for it is essentially the observation of drive aims that allows us to localize their source of somatic stimulation and to formulate theories on the physiological processes that give rise to tension in one or several organs. This is exactly Freud’s thesis: “The study of the sources of drives lies outside the scope of psychology. Although drives are wholly determined by their origin in a somatic source, in mental life we know them only by their aims.”111

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Only mentioning “the source” of the drive very briefly, Lacan remains silent on the somatic origin of the drive as well as the way in which a quantitative state of physiological tension can manifest itself in the psyche in the form of qualitative differences. From the outset, he identifies the drive source with an erogenous zone in order to better bring to the fore the proto-​symbolic nature of this source. From such a perspective, a given particular erogenous zone essentially amounts to nothing more than the trace of the inscription of lack (and thus of desire) in a libidinal part of the body. Placing himself beyond any somatic or genetic considerations, Lacan occupies himself with emphasizing the extent to which these erogenous zones are already molded according to a structure of double negativity. To begin with, this is a negativity of emptiness or of a gap that gives the erogenous zones of the mouth or the anus a “rim-​like structure.”112 According to this version of things, the lips would make the mouth into an erogenous zone because they encompass an emptiness that is like the bodily translation of the subjective experience of a lack to be filled. More generally, openings in one’s own body whose “rims” allow an exchange between the inside of the body and the external world would be most likely to constitute erogenous zones, that is, to be (in Freud’s wording) the “somatic source” and “origin” of a given drive. It is through these bodily openings or fault lines that an endogenous drive stimulus can turn toward an external object, and the arrival of an external object can awaken a dormant desire. Erogenous zones would thus also always lend themselves to the double destiny of allowing for a conquering transcendence and for a vulnerability that exposes them to being forced in traumatizing ways. As well as the negativity of emptiness, according to Lacan, erogenous zones are also marked by the negativity of difference. In other words, for him, the biological fact of certain bodily organs being open to erotic stimulation already bears the mark of structural and symbolic articulation. So the mouth, for example, would only become an erogenous zone to the extent that it differentiates neighboring organs like the throat and the digestive tract. The establishing of a part of one’s own body as an erogenous zone would thus always come about to the detriment of its vital function, and this would be manifested through a rupture of the natural connection that attaches this libidinal organ to related parts of the biological body.113 As such, as a “rim-​like structure” surrounding an emptiness, the erogenous zone would necessarily become isolated from other bodily organs. The subjective experience of lack would thus give rise to emptiness in the organ itself and around the organ. But this process is not irreversible: the organ of pleasure that has been separated from other organs in this way and withdrawn from the physiological body, can just as well be returned

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to this body at the price of losing its libidinal value. For Lacan, as opposed to Freud, there are thus no natural erogenous zones. Any part of the body or somatic organ can ultimately become erogenous (for instance, in hypochondria), and any erogenous zone can (following a sexual repression) return to the status of a simple somatic organ: “It is in the function in which the sexual object moves toward the side of reality and presents itself as a parcel of meat that there emerges that form of desexualisation that is so obvious that it is called in the case of the hysteric a reaction of disgust.”114

The Drive Vicissitudes of Sadomasochism and Voyeur-​Exhibitionism, Autoerotism and Narcissism (Bis), Perversions of the Gaze Upon revisiting Freud’s analysis of the four constitutive elements of the drive, it is striking how these elements mutually refer to each other to form a system. For instance, the “pressure” of the drive was presented to us as the effect of a stimulus coming from its somatic “source,” which in its turn prescribed a given type of “object” to the drive—­while at the same time only becoming knowable through the “aims” sought out by a specific drive. These structural referrals of the different eidetic elements of the drive are to be carefully distinguished from the different “vicissitudes” that can occur in one and the same drive—­even if the latter sketch out and delimit in advance (a priori) the field of the former. According to Freudian doctrine, a sexual drive can undergo four types of dynamic vicissitude: “Reversal into its opposite. Turning round upon the subject’s own self. Repression. Sublimation.”115 In Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, only the first two vicissitudes are examined. Following this example, I will wait until part 2 of this work to discuss the problematic of drive repression and sublimation. This decision is motivated by the fact that, in the two latter drive vicissitudes, a form of egoic or trans-​individual subjectivity is already at play. Thus, only the first two vicissitudes can truly be called drive vicissitudes, and they provide an exemplary illustration of the great plasticity that already characterizes the drive purely as drive. If a subject is, nonetheless, to be found mixed up in their intrigue, it is thus never as origin or source of the drive path, but only as a rudimentary organ-​subject, the object of a narcissistic drive investment or an external subject. Freud subdivides the first drive vicissitude of “reversal into its opposite” (Verkehrung ins Gegenteil) into two further distinct forms: “a change from

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activity to passivity, and a reversal of its content.”116 To illustrate the first sub-​form of a reversal that affects one and the same drive, he gives the examples of the transitions from sadism to masochism and from voyeurism to exhibitionism. When an aggressive drive transitions from the modality of sadism to that of masochism, the active aim “to torture” (quälen) is replaced by the passive aim “to be tortured.” Similarly, in the transition of a scopic drive from voyeurism to exhibitionism, the active aim “to look at” (beschauen) is transformed into the passive aim of wanting “to be looked at.” It should be emphasized here that these are merely drive vicissitudes, and not sexual perversions of an already constituted subject seeking a surplus of enjoyment by transgressing a norm or law. While the latter certainly imply the former, the inverse is not necessarily the case. The different treatments of sadomasochism and voyeur-​exhibitionism in Three Essays and Instincts are to be explained precisely by this change in perspective (and by the introduction of the concept of narcissism). It should also be noted that, in every instance here, we are dealing with the vicissitude of one and the same drive: a domination drive in the first case, and a scopic drive in the second. Finally, it has to be admitted that Freud has much less to say about the second sub-​form, namely, a “reversal of content.” He seems content here to merely mention the example of a transformation of love into hate. It is only toward the end of Instincts that he comes back to this problematic—­which will be the subject of lengthy developments in his third drive theory in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The second drive vicissitude of “turning round upon the subject’s own self” is distinguished from the first by the fact that it no longer relates to the aim of the drive but rather to its object. Once again, Freud makes use of the examples of sadomasochism and voyeur-​exhibitionism. To the first drive vicissitude of “reversal” from an active drive aim to a passive drive aim in masochism and exhibitionism is added the second drive vicissitude of “turning round upon the subject’s own self” (or a change of object). From the perspective of the second drive vicissitude alone, masochism thus appears to be a sadism directed toward one’s own person, and exhibitionism, a voyeurism which has one’s own body (or a part thereof) as object. This surprising plasticity of one and the same (aggressive or scopic) drive lending itself to various vicissitudes by changing its aim and object cannot help but raise the question regarding its underlying identity or permanence. What allows us to claim that we are still dealing with the same drive, and what guarantees that this drive can preserve its identity through the changes of its drive vicissitudes? In terms of Freud’s drive eidetics, it can only be its source or its Triebreiz, that is, the least observable or, perhaps better put, the most invisible element of the drive. Luckily, we can at least localize this invisible drive source in a part

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of the subject’s own body. For instance, in voyeur-​exhibitionism, the active and passive scopic drive, directed toward an external body or the subject’s own body, has its source in the eye, and more precisely in an eye isolated from the biological body and transformed into an erogenous zone. Before continuing with our examination of voyeur-​exhibitionism, it is useful to make a brief detour through the analysis of sadomasochism given in Instincts. We will not make a lengthy stop here, for this analysis (especially of masochism) was later revisited by Freud in the framework of his third drive theory, where he explores the enigma of pleasure taken in suffering at length. What is most important to retain here is that the phenomena of sadism and masochism are in fact transformations of one and the same drive. These two drive vicissitudes respond to each other and meld together to the point of forming a veritable drive pair or couple. As with all other couples, it is thus tempting to ask: Who made the first move? Did their common history start with sadism or masochism? Like Freud, our spontaneous answer is likely to be that the sadistic drive aim of dominating must have preceded the passive drive aim of wanting to be dominated and humiliated. Masochists thus appear to be former sadists who have delegated their active drive toward domination to an external person in order to be able to better give themselves over to the new passive drive aim of taking pleasure in suffering. This explains Freud’s analysis of the transition from sadism to masochism in three successive stages, putting into play the double drive vicissitude of a “reversal into its opposite” (from activity to passivity) and a “turning round upon the subject’s own self” (of the sadistic drive), as well as the seeking out of a new drive “object” constituted by “an extraneous person” who “has to take on the role of the subject,” that is, of the torturer.117 Yet Freud points out to us with subtlety that the masochist’s drive aim is in no way limited to wanting to let oneself be dominated. To the contrary, one wants to let oneself be dominated in order to better enjoy the suffering that this passively undergone domination causes in one. Logically, it follows that the active drive of the sadist does not consist merely in wanting to dominate, but also and especially in wanting to cause suffering.118 Does this mean the sadist must be a former masochistic victim reconverted into a torturer? The case of abused children becoming adult abusers (no doubt less systematic than some would have liked to believe) seems to support such a hypothesis. Yet, it is not self-​evident that the arguments supporting the hypothesis that all sadists are former masochists, and the arguments supporting the hypothesis that all masochists were once sadists, are symmetrical and equally convincing. Moreover, both hypotheses would become more plausible if their sphere of application were moved from the real to the imaginary. In a way, this is what Freud seems to be doing

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as early on as Instincts—­at least in the case of the sadist. According to this new analysis, in order to enjoy causing suffering, sadists must at least be capable—­“ in fantasy” or in a fantasy (phantastisch) mode119 —­of putting themselves in the place of the victim and imagining the victim’s suffering. Masochists, on the other hand, require less imagination, at least if we admit that they have already acquired the actual experience of a suffering that causes pleasure in them, and that this is enough for them to look for (real or imaginary) torturers. There is no need for masochists to have a good understanding of the pleasure of dominating, or for them to be former sadists reconverted to the business of suffering. Even though it remains difficult to determine whether the sadist or the masochist started this double play of multiple drive vicissitudes, there is thus reason to think that it is masochists, with their original experience of the sexual pleasure of suffering, that hold the key. As such, we can better understand how Freud, after Instincts, came to support the initially rejected hypothesis of a primitive masochism, that is, one not derived from sadism. While it bears witness to the same drive vicissitudes of reversal into its opposite and turning round upon the subject’s own self as sadomasochism, the structure of the transformation from voyeurism to exhibitionism turns out to be more complicated. This is essentially due to the fact that the activity and passivity of looking at and being looked at, as well as the drive pleasure that arises from these, are naturally completed by the reflective form of looking at oneself. While the association of sight with narcissism is already familiar to us (if only through the ancient myth of Narcissus), Freud has the unquestionable merit of having drawn our attention to an even more primitive, that is, an autoerotic form of looking at oneself. It is thus necessary to distinguish between looking at oneself in the mirror (or at one’s reflection in water, like Narcissus) and autoerotic, and consequently drive-​based, looking at oneself. Even if this forces us to put the difficult question of the relation between autoerotism and narcissism back on the table, Freud’s hypothesis according to which there is a sexual pleasure of the gaze that precedes the opposition between a self looking at the other and the other looking at me deserves our undivided attention. For it is in this reflective form of a looking at oneself that the scopic sexual drive seems to come closest to the impossible goal that inhabits it, the fascination for which nourishes the enjoyment of both the exhibitionist and the voyeur. In only one page of Instincts, Freud manages to set out the broad range covered by the many vicissitudes of the scopic drive and the various pleasures of the gaze.120 In this short passage, Freud begins by drawing an image of the scopic drive’s path that is an exact copy of the three stages of transformation from the sadistic drive to the masochistic drive: “(a)

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Looking as an activity directed toward an extraneous object. (b) Giving up of the object and turning of the scopophilic drive toward a part of the subject’s own body; with this, transformation to passivity and setting up of a new aim—­that of being looked at. (c) Introduction of a new subject to whom one displays oneself in order to be looked at by him.” Yet, no sooner drawn, this first schema of the scopic drive’s path, as passing through three successive stages to exchange its voyeuristic vicissitude for the new vicissitude of exhibitionism, is replaced by a new schema: “we can recognize in the case of the scopophilic drive a yet earlier stage than that described as (a). For the beginning of its activity the scopophilic drive is autoerotic: it has indeed an object, but that object is part of the subject’s own body.” While the first schema depended on an opposition between voyeurism and exhibitionism as well as between activity and passivity, and attempted, through stage (b), to explain the transition from one to the other, the second schema instead brings to the fore a common source of voyeurism and exhibitionism as well as of the active and passive drive. According to this second schema, far from being opposites, voyeurism and exhibitionism both arise from the same primitive stage of an autoerotic scopic drive. But this new hypothesis requires a revision of the nature of autoerotism, which Freud contents himself with announcing here without offering one word of explanation: “Oneself looking at a sexual organ = A sexual organ being looked at by oneself.” In this enigmatic formula, the first part of the equation points to the emergence of a voyeuristic drive (“Oneself looking at an extraneous object [active voyeurism]”),121 the second points to the emergence of an exhibitionist drive (“An object which is oneself or a part of oneself being looked at by an extraneous person [exhibitionism]”). These unclear formulations, which are unusual in Freud, reflect the fairly ambiguous character of scopic autoerotism, the common root of voyeurism and exhibitionism. First, this is an autoerotism whose drive aim (“looking at”) is not reducible to a rhythmic activity (such as sucking in oral autoerotism) but relates to an “object” (“sexual organ”), and to an object that is not absorbed by the aim of the scopic drive. Moreover, this object that the autoerotic scopic drive finds in “the subject’s own body” is not to be confused with the somatic source of the scopic drive (“the eye”) either.122 Thus, because of this explicit attachment to an object (“sexual organ”) distinguished from both its aim (“looking at”) and its source (“the eye”), the autoerotic scopic drive is clearly different from the simple “organ pleasure” (Organlust) of oral or anal autoerotism. Even if there is no subject yet to feast its eyes out in this scopic autoerotism, the eye not only takes pleasure in the simple act of looking at (anything), but enjoys seeing “the sexual organ” that belongs to the same libidinal body as it.

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Second, scopic autoerotism is also distinguished from other forms of autoerotism in that its aim can be indifferently realized in the active (“Oneself looking at a sexual organ”) or passive (“A sexual organ being looked at by oneself”) mode.123 For Freud, this indifference of primitive drive pleasure as to the active or passive mode of the gaze is a sign of a deep “ambivalence”124 —­not only of the scopic drive, but of all drives, and especially of the drive to master. As such, Freud’s meditations on the transformation of love into hate, which draw the Instincts text to a close (and announce the developments of Freud’s third drive theory), should be understood as a prolongation of this observation concerning the fundamentally ambivalent or double character of scopic autoerotism. From a clinical standpoint, this primal ambivalence of the scopic drive helps us to better understand why the pleasure of seeing of voyeurs is most often accompanied by an anxiety about being surprised or seen, and why the pleasure in being seen of exhibitionists is always accompanied by the pleasure of seeing the effect of their exhibition on their victim. Freud’s emphasizing of the scopic drive’s ambivalence also carries the great advantage of forewarning us against a too strongly genetic reading of the second schema. Accordingly, the three drive vicissitudes sketched out by the second schema are less stages of linear development than positions that exist side by side and are thus capable of being adopted or reinvested at any moment by the scopic drive.125 On another level (following Lacan), we can also conclude that the most appropriate formulation of scopic autoerotism would be: the pleasure of “making oneself seen.”126 In fact, Freud himself had already pointed out the pivotal role that the “reflexive, middle voice” plays in the movement from “the active voice . . . into the passive voice.”127 Accordingly, we can better understand how Freud is tempted to identify the primitive autoerotism of the scopic drive (in the second schema) with a form of narcissism: “We have become accustomed to call the early phase of the development of the ego, during which its sexual drives find auto-​erotic satisfaction, ‘narcissism’. . . . It follows that the preliminary stage of the scopophilic drive, in which the subject’s own body is the object of the voyeurism, must be classed under narcissism, and that we must describe it as a narcissistic formation.” Freud further concludes that the voyeuristic drive or “the active scopophilic drive develops from this, by leaving narcissism behind,” while the exhibitionist drive or “passive scopophilic drive, on the contrary, holds fast to the narcissistic object.”128 This primitive and autoerotic form of gaze narcissism—­maintained or abandoned in the ulterior stages of exhibitionism and voyeurism—­allows for some reconciliation with the Freudian conception of “primary narcissism” that we put into question above.129 In the case of a primitive pleasure

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drawn from looking at oneself, this is in fact neither a pre-​sexual egoism, nor a substantial self-​sufficiency of the subject (characteristics with which primary narcissism was previously described), but rather a self-​reference of the scopic drive. More precisely, it is a form of narcissistic reflexivity or drive self-​a ffection that precedes any distinction between ego and non-​ ego, subject and object, activity and passivity. This narcissistic enjoyment (in the sense of primary narcissism) of a looking-​at-​oneself, where activity (“oneself looking”) and passivity (“being looked at by oneself”) intertwine to the point of being indistinguishable, does indeed deserve to be called “autoerotic”—­on condition, however, that it be clearly distinguished from the position of withdrawal or regression that was attributed above to oral and anal autoerotism. The existence of such a primary and autoerotic narcissism, put forward by the second schema on the scopic drive, certainly does not exclude the possibility for the scopic drive to follow the vicissitude of an autoerotism of withdrawal that characterizes secondary narcissism. In this latter case, the autoerotism of the gaze would arise after abandoning or losing a libidinal object to which the subject would then substitute a part of its own body. In fact, this is the kind of autoerotism that is at play in the second stage of Freud’s first schema, that is, in the stage that arises from abandoning a voyeuristic position: “(b) Giving up of the object and turning of the scopophilic drive toward a part of the subject’s own body; with this, transformation to passivity and setting up of a new aim—­that of being looked at.” As such, there are clearly two different forms of scopic autoerotism to which two different forms of narcissism must be made to correspond. The value of Freud’s second schema consists in having brought to the fore a new form of primitive autoerotism or primary narcissism—­beside the “classic” (that is, regressive) form of scopic drive autoerotism—­that precedes the vicissitudes of voyeurism and exhibitionism as well as explaining their symmetrical emergence: “Oneself looking at a sexual organ = A sexual organ being looked at by oneself.” What is at stake in these two forms of scopic autoerotism is nothing less than the constitution of a drive subject. While the primitive autoerotism or primary narcissism of Freud’s second schema still relates to a completely undifferentiated self,130 the autoerotism put forward by the first schema already relates to an ego that is both the subject and object of the gaze, and whose withdrawal into itself belongs to secondary narcissism. We can suspend our examination of this problematic for the moment, though we will come back to it at length in part 2 of this work. It should, however, be noted that this same form of primitive autoerotism or primary narcissism that we have recognized in relation to vision, also

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applies to touch—­but not to the drive for mastery that rages in sadomasochism. It should further be noted that these same questions concerning a double form of scopic autoerotism or narcissism, haphazardly addressed here by Freud, also mobilize Lacan’s conception of the “mirror stage.” Yet, it goes without saying that this new theory of Lacan’s on the mirror stage mainly and even exclusively clarifies the nature of secondary narcissism in the second stage of Freud’s first schema, that is, “the scopophilic drive toward a part of the subject’s own body.” What can then be said in Lacan about primary narcissism to the extent that it characterizes the first stage of Freud’s second schema? In other words, what can be said about a properly drive-​based narcissism that precedes any constitution of a subject through identification with its image “in the mirror”? Lacan explicitly addresses this question in his commentary on Instincts and, to give an account of the drive’s primitive autoerotism or primary narcissism, he proposes the formula: “making oneself [se faire].”131 It is thus possible, in him as well, to distinguish two forms of narcissistic reflection: one related to the reflecting mirror, and the other related to the drive and rendered by the reflexive verb. Lacan’s commentators may not have paid enough attention to this distinction and its proximity to the Freudian problematic of a double form of narcissism and autoerotism. Even more generally speaking, what Lacan has to say about the path of the drive, the position occupied by the subject in it, as well as the specific case of the scopic drive and its instrumentalization in a perverse voyeurism and exhibitionism,132 arises directly from what I have already reported on his conception of the object, aim (Ziel), and source of the drive. If the primal object of the drive is a lost or lacking object, then the drive aim (Ziel) can no longer consist in possessing it to gain a state of enduring satisfaction. As such, according to Lacan, the meaning of this drive aim (Ziel) is best captured by the English word “aim,” which (according to him!) does not mean a target, but a “mission,” and more specifically “the itinerary [the one given the mission] must take. The aim is the way taken.”133 What the drive wants is simply to continue on its way, and in order to do this it will be content with any object. At the same time, its way or path continues to be remotely guided by the ultimate “goal” of all drives, namely, “enjoyment.” However, given that this goal is necessarily unrealizable, the path of the drive can only be circular: “its aim is simply this return into circuit.” But this “loop-​shaped” circuit of the drive will never be able to close completely on itself and form a perfect circle. Ultimately, what prevents this is none other than the fascination of all drives with the goal of “enjoyment,” which continues to relaunch the drive toward the aim of new paths.

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One might as well say that the circular path of the drive is in fact a spiral movement and that it is never the true aim of the drive to bring something back. Rather than being able to stop at some point and peacefully enjoy the recollections of its travels, the drive is pushed to continue its wanderings indefinitely. Struck by the impossibility of recuperating the lost object of its first attachment, forced to “circumvent” the objet petit a that keeps it in suspense, the drive has no choice but to want to continue on its path at all costs. Nothing can, or should stop it. Lacking both a graspable object and a fixed goal that could put an end to its circular path, the drive becomes a purely formal will, a will to will or a drive to be driven, that is, a death drive! We must thus recognize that the drive has a nihilistic character, for the pure drive wants nothing more than itself in the end, that is, the continuation of its own movement and the affirmation/​confirmation of its pure form. From this perspective (one that is not unfamiliar to Lacan!), we might ask ourselves whether the drive, rather than suffering from the cruel lot of losing the primal object, in fact rejoices (in the sense of “enjoyment”!) because of this irreplaceable loss that devalues all objects in advance and opens up the possibility of elevating and dignifying the movement of an eternally deferred realization of the drive into the ultimate goal of the drive as drive. What is certain, in any case, is that the pure drive is caught in the spiral of an eternal return to itself, it just as much wants as is subjected to the constraint of an indefinite repetition of the same, and it is mired in the sterile mechanism of an automatic movement. In making the drive into an automatic, blind, irrational and absurd will, Lacan thus retraces, perhaps without realizing it, the path of Schopenhauer—­the disenchanted bard of a monstrous will to live that feeds on the sacrifice of individual lives in order to better affirm its eternal power. Is this not how we are to understand, in this same Seminar 11, Lacan’s comments on the libido as “immortal” organ of the drive?134 This Schopenhauerian (and Nietzschean) accent is confirmed in Lacan’s conception of the “subject of the drive,” or rather of its inexistence: “This articulation leads us to make of the manifestation of the drive the mode of a headless subject, for everything is articulated in terms of tension, and has no relation to the subject other than one of topological community.”135 This primal subject of the drive is headless for the simple reason that it coincides with the source of the drive, that is, with the part of the subject’s own body or erogenous zone that incarnates the experience of lack. Thus, we must at all costs avoid confusing the subject of the drive with the subject of desire, that is, with a subject marked by desire for the Other and whose own desire is supported by a relation of phantasm to a singular object at which it aims. Deprived of both a subjective and objective basis, the drive, whose “tension is always loop-​shaped,” ends up

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effectuating a “return to the erogenous zone” to which it belongs. As such, it is caught in a movement “outwards and back” that gives its “path” a “circular character.”136 This “outwards and back” drive movement also explains the inescapable reversal in Lacan of drive activity into passivity—­ which is characteristic of primitive autoerotism, according to Freud. The “mission” that the drive is given consists, according to Lacan, in the activity of launching a “missile” that circumvents the objet petit a and returns toward it like a boomerang. This missile, now passively endured, again “crosses” the “rim-​like” structure formed by an erogenous zone on the surface of the subject’s own body. Applied to the scopic drive, this theory amounts to saying that the eye (erogenous zone) launches itself into a movement pursuing an ungraspable or invisible object (the gaze as objet a)137—­which forces this movement to return to its point of departure. However, even though the point of departure and the point of arrival certainly join up in the same eye in the outwards and back movement, the experience of the seeing eye and the seen eye never coincide. The eye as point of departure of the gaze plays the role of the “headless subject” of seeing as drive activity. This headless subject of the scopic drive is, in fact, nothing more than an “apparatus” that propels the self-​regulating mechanism of the drive machine.138 However, the eye as arrival point of this drive machine, that is, the eye as struck in its turn by the gaze, is already exposed to the gaze of another subject. Thus, within the scopic drive’s circuit of return to the eye, an important change takes place: “Namely, the appearance of ein neues Subjekt, to be understood as follows—­not in the sense that there is already one, namely the subject of the drive, but in that what is new is the appearance of a subject. This subject, which is properly the other, appears in so far as the drive has been able to close its circular course.”139 The German terms used by Lacan in this quotation are borrowed from the treatment of the drive vicissitude of voyeur-​exhibitionism in Freud’s Instincts text. As such, Lacan’s affirmations on the path and subject of the scopic drive have much to gain from being read within the context of his interpretation of voyeurism and exhibitionism, which immediately follows in his Seminar. For Lacan (as opposed to Freud), the true nature of the scopic drive (and of any drive) does not reveal itself in its outward movement toward the objet petit a, but only in its return movement toward the erogenous zone of the eye. Thus, the true activity of the eye does not consist in seeing the invisible gaze, but rather in being seen by it, “making itself seen” by it, or seeing itself through it. It is only in returning to its source that the scopic drive finally appears to itself, becomes a phenomenon for itself—­under the gaze of this new subject “which is properly the other.”140 The most important thing revealed to me by the returning scopic drive

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after it has launched itself onto the spectacle of the world is my own masked gaze—­unmasked by the other: “The gaze is this object lost and suddenly refound . . . by the introduction of the other.”141 Even in the case where the first gaze departs from the headless subject of my eye, the first, “new,” and true subject of a gaze is the other that looks at me looking. When this other looks at me looking, however, it is ultimately not the other’s gaze, but my own that appears to me. My invisible gaze becomes a phenomenon to the extent that it is unmasked by the other. This is why Lacan feels he must correct the famous description of the voyeur by Sartre in Being and Nothingness, according to which it is the invisible witness of the “footsteps [heard] in the hall[—­s]omeone is looking at me[—­]”142 that freezes the looking subject into a (potentially looked at) object: “I have only to remind you what I said of Sartre’s analysis.143 Although this analysis brings out the agency of the gaze, it is not at the level of the other whose gaze surprises the subject looking through the keyhole. It is that the other surprises him, the subject, as entirely hidden gaze.”144 Emphasizing, after Freud, anything that separates voyeurism and exhibitionism as drive vicissitudes and as sexual perversions, Lacan identifies perversion with the appearance of a new type of drive subject, namely, a subject that places itself on the margins of its drive in order to better enjoy it. As such, for Lacan, there is a headless drive subject that is immersed in the drive (eye and “hidden gaze”), an external subject (“ein neues Subjekt”) that causes the hidden gaze of the first subject to “appear,” and a third (perverse) subject who wants to appropriate its own gaze by itself by becoming the master of the other’s gaze. Perversion thus arises in a subject that has taken enough distance from its own drive to be able to place itself in relation to its drive and the drive or desire of another subject.145 This distance of the perverse subject from its own drive also has the advantage of making drive vicissitudes more visible. Just as infantile sexuality is read more clearly through “sexual aberrations” according to the doctrine of Three Essays, we would know next to nothing about drive metamorphoses without their manifestation in cases of sexual perversion. From this, Lacan draws the conclusion that the drive belongs to a “real” order that we can only approach through the “symbolic” or “imaginary” order of a subject of desire, and particularly of a perverse subject. In Lacan, we thus end up with the paradoxical situation that the drive force is presented to us as a reality that refuses to submit to the imperatives of the order of (symbolic) representation, but it nonetheless only becomes visible through this same medium, which is fundamentally foreign to its true nature. For Lacan, the pervert is also a subject that opposes itself to the (necessary) loss of the Thing (or primal object of desire), a subject who

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wants to realize the (impossible) goal of “enjoyment,” a subject that wants to immerse itself in the real dimension of the drive without giving up its status as subject of representation. The pervert is thus a subject who wants enjoyment without submitting to the law of desire (or the law of castration)—­either by dominating and forcing the other into enjoyment (active perversion), or by reducing itself to the mere instrument or thing of the other’s enjoyment (passive perversion). Hence, Lacan’s strikingly truthful description of exhibitionism: “In exhibitionism what is intended by the subject is what is realized in the other. The true aim of desire is the other, as constrained, beyond his involvement in the scene. It is not only the victim who is concerned in exhibitionism, it is the victim as referred to some other who is looking at him.”146 Lacan thus thinks Freud is wrong to see in exhibitionism, following the example of masochism, the vicissitude of a purely passive scopic drive. For Lacan, the passivity of being looked at constitutes the true drive activity of perverse exhibitionism, for it is only in the return (being looked at) that the outward movement of the active drive (looking at) attains its goal of a paroxysm of enjoyment. The passivity of wanting to be looked at thus goes together in perverse exhibitionism with the activity of wanting to look at the dismay caused in one’s victim by one’s exhibition. The enjoyment of exhibitionism increases to the extent that it is completed by a sadistic enjoyment consisting not only of forcing one’s victim to look at what they do not want to, but also in showing the victim the pleasure one takes in observing their alarmed and troubled gaze. Exhibitionists are quick to see an unconfessed sexual desire in this disturbance of their victim. They thus seem animated by a desire to make their victims into constrained voyeurs, that is, forced to glorify, by their gaze, not only the exhibited “sexual organ,” but also and especially the strength of the exhibitionist’s gaze that rests on them. In this way, the victim is obligated to serve the exhibitionist in the only way that exhibitionists can never serve themselves, namely, by revealing in the light of day the “missile” of the exhibitionist’s “hidden gaze.” So many complications and maneuvers on the part of the pervert to transgress the law of desire, to grasp the objet petit a, to succeed in seeing the invisible! The subterranean channels, already brought to light by Freud, that connect exhibitionism and voyeurism thus come clearly to the fore. As such, it is tempting to revisit the Freudian analysis of voyeurism in light of what we have just learned from Lacan about the nature of exhibitionism. According to this new reading, what voyeurs seek to see and what keeps them in suspense is thus never the spectacle of the real world, whose plausible banality Lacan likes to caricature.147 What fascinates voyeurs

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is always something that is hidden behind what they see, that is, an absence, a lack, a withdrawal from the visible or the invisible in the visible. As such, voyeurs dream of piercing the mystery of the visible with their penetrating gaze and making the invisible visible. Accordingly, it is not by chance that Lacan at least implicitly brings together the voyeur and the fetishist. In both cases, there is an attempt to grasp the invisible by flattening its evasive depths on the surface of the visible or by draping the trivially visible with the charms of the invisible. Both the voyeur and the fetishist seem to be lulled by the illusion that it suffices to manipulate an object, cut it into pieces, and approach its fragments from close enough or magnify them beyond measure, in order for the difference between the visible and the invisible to eventually disappear. Rather than letting themselves be carried away by the path of the scopic drive, rather than letting themselves drift along in their quest for an invisible and ungraspable object, voyeurs want to appropriate their own hidden gaze in order to better pierce through all the mysteries of the world. Their fascination with nudity thus arises from their conviction that what is naked no longer hides anything from their gaze. As such, what the forced exhibition of the visible returns to voyeurs is ultimately nothing other than the all-​powerful force of their own gaze. True, there are also less triumphalist forms of voyeurism, but it is no less true that what voyeurs, surprised in their hidden activity, discover “in the conflagration of shame, by the introduction of the other” is always their own “hidden gaze.”148 As soon as the other appears and without, for this reason, adopting a perverse position with respect to its own drive, the headless subject of the drive changes into a drive subject distinguished from an erogenous zone or pure drive source. As soon as it first emerges, the subject of the scopic drive is thus marked by the presence of another subject that makes it into both a seeing and seen subject. By returning its hidden gaze back to it, the other thus also turns the drive subject into a divided subject. From this division by the other (and the language of others), a subject arises that is confronted with its own unconscious and the inevitable uncertainty that comes with it. Perverts try to escape this (human, all too human) lot by renouncing desire in order to better enjoy (and cause enjoyment from) their drives. While the desiring subject essentially sustains itself through the imaginary order of its phantasms,149 the perverse subject thinks it can relate directly to the real (reconstructed by it in the image of its drives). We will come back in part 2 to what makes the drive subject into a desiring subject, the desiring subject into a subject mired in its phantasms, the fantasizing subject into a castrated subject, the castrated subject into a subject of the unconscious, and the subject of the unconscious into a subject exposed to deception and semblance.

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The Death Drive: Repetition, Regressive Conservatism, Excess, and Nihilism of the Drive Is there anything but this nothing which frees us from everything? —­Paul Claudel, The Satin Slipper Man would rather will nothingness than not will. —­Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

Even if we have already come across the hypothesis of a death drive several times on our path up until now, it is only in Freud’s third drive theory that it receives the central place it deserves in his metapsychology. In fact, the foundational text of this third theory directly refers, in its very title, to this problematic of the death drives (usually referred to in the plural by Freud): Beyond the Pleasure Principle.150 This text from 1920 is renowned for its difficulty; what is more, it is far from giving us the canonical and definitive version of Freud’s conception of death drives. It is thus also necessary to refer to a few slightly later texts in which Freud devoted himself to summarizing and clarifying the doctrine that was still only formulated in statu nascendi in Beyond. The first and surely the most important of these later texts is The Ego and the Id from 1923.151 We will come back to this central text in the second chapter of part 2, when I present Freud’s second topography and his articulation of the mental apparatus, the unconscious and the subject. A second text, also reputed for its difficulty, is the 1924 article “The Economic Problem of Masochism.”152 This text is crucial in that it offers a definitive clarification of the ambiguities that continue to weigh on Beyond regarding the way it expresses the relation between death drives and the pleasure principle. For the hurried reader (or one who is tired of the laborious analyses herein), I can also recommend two pages from the two encyclopedia articles on “Psycho-​A nalysis” and “The Libido Theory” (both 1923),153 in which Freud summarizes (ad usum Delphini, so to speak) his doctrine concerning the dualism between death drives and libidinal or vital drives, as well as their union or fusion (Mischung) and their disunion or defusion (Entmischung). I do not intend to retrace, step by step, the path of Freud’s reflections from 1920 to 1924 on the nature of death drives, their relation to life drives, and a double form of pleasure. Instead, I want to draw on all the available textual sources from the 1920s in order to build as precise a conception as possible of Freud’s third drive theory; more than the two other theories, this will require true interpretative work on our part,

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and it will necessarily take us beyond the letter of Freud’s texts. However, before beginning this work, it is perhaps useful to give a brief summary of the general character of each of our three main texts, as well as each text’s specific contribution to Freud’s third theory of the drive. Let us also briefly revisit the moments in which the hypothesis of a death drive has already come to the fore in our presentation of the first two theories. It is with justification that Beyond the Pleasure Principle is taken to be the foundational text of the third drive theory and, more specifically, of its doctrine on death drives. However, enough attention may not have been paid to the fact that more than half of this work does not deal with death drives and their opposition to vital drives, but with the nature of the drive in general. The “compulsion to repeat” (Wiederholungszwang), “the conservative nature” or tendency to return to the preceding stage, and the “mobility” of the drive in the primary process thus concern life drives (almost) as much as death drives. In this way, Beyond opens a door that later texts, with their emphasis on the fundamental dualism between the two types of drive, are quick to close, namely, a door that opens up the possibility of interpreting the death drive as the primal essence of all drives (even sexual ones). We should not be surprised then (and even less so disappointed) that, in this text, “the Nirvana principle” or principle of maximal decrease in drive tension constitutes the canonical formulation of the “pleasure principle,” that is, the principle that is closest to drive-​ based reality.154 As such, Beyond does indeed lend itself to a (Lacanian) reading in which the search for an absolute pleasure (or “enjoyment”) turns all drives at least potentially into death drives.155 Accordingly, the specifications brought to Freud’s drive theory by The Ego and the Id and the “Economic Problem” can be read as attempts to limit the damages caused by the hypothesis of an overly dominant death drive and a pleasure principle that is purely and simply identified with the mechanism of this death drive. It is indeed striking that in these two texts from 1923 and 1924, the compulsion to repeat (as the fundamental character of the death drives) completely disappears, with the aggressive or destructive drive alone taking pride of place. This aggressive drive is put forward here as a specific drive opposing itself to another specific drive, namely, Eros, or the drive for unification or life. To each of these two fundamental and antagonistic drives a specific form of pleasure is then assigned: the principle of Nirvana to death drives and “rhythm” or “the temporal sequence” of qualitative modifications156 to sexual drives. The basic scenario characterizing death drives is thus no longer that of a blind drive (in other words, one without an “object” or “aim”) that indefinitely repeats the same automatic movement, but rather that of a destructive drive which is “tamed” (Bändigung) by the unifying and

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binding (Bindung) drive of Eros. According to this new version, death drives only become truly threatening (through their destructive, rather than repetitive nature) if they “defuse” (Entmischung) or break away from life drives, that is, if they refuse to “serve” the sexual drives and give them the slip.157 While the entire history of life and sexuality begins with inert matter and death drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, for the 1923 and 1924 texts these death drives no longer represent anything more than the residue of a failing life drive and sexuality. Nonetheless, Freud is forced to admit that, while hypothetical, this residue constituted by a pure death drive enters into actual existence in the phenomena of “original sadism” and “primary masochism.”158 While these constitute the exception rather than the rule when compared to sexual sadomasochism, they still bear witness to a hate that is older than love and a pleasure that precedes any attachment to an object—­such as the pleasure of a sadistic or (Dionysian) passion or a morbid masochistic suffering. As such, while death drives are negatively distinguished by their rigidity from the great plasticity and versatility of life drives, they still represent the most archaic form of the drive for the texts from 1923 and 1924. The highlighting of death drives as aggressive and destructive drives brings about a profound change, from Beyond the Pleasure Principle onwards, in the conception of sadomasochism (and the relation between hate and love) with respect to how we encountered it in Instincts and Their Vicissitudes. We will thus have to come back to this. On other occasions, however, over the course of our exploration of Freud’s first two drive theories, the hypothesis of the existence of death drives has already spontaneously presented itself to us. For instance, the sucking of oral autoerotism, with its repetition or incessant “back and forth” and its unquenched thirst for complete satisfaction, has already appeared to us as a source of atypical erotic pleasure. The texts from the 1920s will add as further illustrations of the compulsion to repeat: obsessive neurotic rituals, the repetitive nightmares of (war) trauma victims, and transference onto one’s analyst. We encountered a second prefiguring of the death drives when we touched on the primary process and its search for immediate pleasure in my presentation of the pleasure and reality principles. Finally, the discussion of the perversions related to the scopic drive also allowed us to conceive the possibility of a “pure” drive, that is, a purely formal or “nihilistic” one, whose only goal is to preserve itself (“at all costs”) through the mechanism of an endless repetition. The following reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, focused on the problematic of Freud’s third drive theory, does not claim to be exhaustive. I will deliberately leave aside the general insights on human destructiveness that anticipate Freud’s last writings devoted to the malaises of

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civilized human beings and the reasons behind war. I will also spend little time on Freud’s purely biological speculations on the emergence of sexuality and life from inanimate matter. Yet, there would be much to discuss—­not only in relation to Bergson’s theory of the “vital impulse” (élan vital), but also because Freud conceives of the origin of life in close analogy to the origin of traumatic neurosis, that is, as resulting from the action of purely external forces that fracture the protective layer or Reizschutz of an organic “vesicle” (Bläschen).159 As such, the germs of life are no more contained in inanimate matter than the living organism is animated by the desire to be traumatized. In any case, these traumatic neuroses or “war neuroses,” addressed in the second chapter of Beyond, are only of interest to us with respect to their symptom of repetition and not their constitution (in two moments).160 Finally, I will also refrain from reproducing Freud’s systematic catalog of all the different kinds of “unpleasure” to which this work owes its title: “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” For our purposes, the essential contribution of Beyond is situated on the level of drives, that is, not beyond, but this side of (en-​deça) the pleasure principle. On the compulsion to repeat, does not Freud himself write: “Enough is left unexplained to justify the hypothesis of a compulsion to repeat [Wiederholungszwang]—­something that seems more primitive, more elementary, more drive-​based [triebhafter] than the pleasure principle which it over-​rides.”161 Let us then get started right away with this “daemonic” repetition compulsion or constraint (Wiederholungszwang) at the center of Beyond’s drive theory and which is too quickly pushed aside in texts from subsequent years for the aggressive or destructive drive alone, though this latter drive only represented a specific kind of death drive turned toward an external object (primal sadism) in Beyond. We should ask ourselves how this repetition becomes the distinctive mark of the death drive alone after having been presented to us as the nature of all drives. Should one conceive of a kind of drive energy that is common to both death drives and life drives and is characterized by an irreducible tendency toward repetition? Or does each of these two kinds of drive have its own respective form of repetition? Are there many types of repetition, each with specific effects, or only one kind of drive repetition with effects that are randomly positive or negative? Do the three main examples of the compulsion to repeat in Beyond—­ namely, the repetitive nightmares of trauma victims from World War I, Freud’s grandson’s game of repeatedly throwing a reel away from and then pulling it back toward himself, and the repetitions of neurotics in analytic transference—­carry the same message with respect to the nature of drive repetition? Freud raised all of these questions, more or less explicitly and with variable answers, in the texts we are presently addressing.

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For all these texts from the 1920s, a drive is the experience of a pressing demand that pushes the subject toward an activity (even if passive) and forces itself on him from the inside. The subject is submerged by this violent drive force, and can only avoid or resist it with great effort. The “daemonic” (dämonisch)162 side of this pressure is thus explained just as much by the “anxiety” felt by the subject with respect to this drive demand as by its anonymous and repetitive character. Whether he gives in to or resists this drive impulse, the subject will generally be equally anxious or even “frightened” or “shocked.”163 It is also for this reason (and not only because of “war neuroses”)164 that the model of traumatic neurosis was already taken up by Freud in his first formulation of his third drive theory in Beyond. Where is anxiety to be found, however, in the well-​k nown child’s game addressed by Freud in Beyond, immediately after the case of war neurotics and their repetitive nightmares?165 Freud is very clear on this: the child’s anxiety is related to the departure of the mother, and it renews itself every time he plays at throwing objects away from himself. In this way, his repetitive game repeats the trauma of the mother’s repetitive absences, over which he has no control and which make him anxious. The poor child thus seems to be caught in the painful mechanism of a repetition to which he is subjected, and his playing activity also seems to arise from drive repetition. The fact that this game (only sometimes, and more particularly in the case of the reel attached to a string that allows one to pull it back toward oneself) unfolds in two moments—­that is, that the “fort” (away, gone) of the mother (or the reel that symbolizes her) is followed by a “da” (there, present)—­does not change its repetitive drive-​ based and distressing nature in any way. For the “da” is always followed by a “fort,” the latter always wins over the former, and the child continues to play at “being-​gone” (fortsein).166 Yet, Freud provides us with another interpretation of his grandson’s game. Through his game (even the game that only consists in throwing an object away without pulling it back afterwards), he makes himself the master of a painful and passively undergone situation by taking on an active role (throwing away rather than being abandoned). The two-​part variation of this game further allows the child to link the painful absence of the “fort” with the happy presence of a “da,” which, in addition, only depends on his own inclination. Freud even speaks of a “pleasure” taken in “revenge”167 on a mother who is too absent and too independent. But before bringing his reflections to a close and by dint of repetition (!), Freud finally admits that he continues to “hesitate” between several opposing interpretations of this child’s game emphasizing: the repetition of pain due to absence versus the pleasure of reuniting, the drive to

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“master” or dominate (Bewältigung, Beherrschung)168 versus the drive oriented toward pleasure, a sadistic pleasure versus an effort to symbolize or “work over in the mind” (seelische Bearbeitung),169 and so on. What are we to think of these uncharacteristic hesitations in Freud? A first answer might be to find inspiration in the passages that immediately follow in Beyond, in which Freud introduces the “compulsion to repeat” for the first time, illustrating it through the way the analyzed patient repeats, in his transference onto the analyst, the neuroses from which he suffers rather than giving himself over to a difficult therapeutic remembering. Does this mean that the patient prefers the unpleasure of repetition to the unpleasure of remembering? According to Freud, we should instead take this to mean that the repetition of the repressed (as well as of any other neurotic symptom) is accompanied by a drive satisfaction that is simultaneously unpleasant for the ego (whether it be conscious or not), that is, for the repressing element. Do the repressed and repressing systems thus have their respective pleasure principles, and does the pleasure of one automatically translate into the unpleasure of the other? If so, the repetition or return of the repressed would give pleasure to the repressed drive or desire and suffering to the neurotic ego. This version is consonant with Freud’s understanding of neurotic symptoms as an attempt to simultaneously satisfy, through compromise, the demands of two pleasure systems. Yet, is it really necessary to conclude from this that neurotic repetition and the return of the repressed obey a sui generis pleasure principle, that is, one that is purely drive-​based? Would it not be simpler and more correct to say that the pleasure principle only applies to the ego, and that this manifests itself through the fact that the ego represses everything that is a source of unpleasure for it? In this case, the return and repetition of the repressed would obey a purely drive-​based process of successful (or impeded) realization, rather than the pleasure principle. Thus, this drive repetition would only be situated “beyond” the pleasure principle from the perspective of the repressing ego and its pleasure/​unpleasure. From the perspective of the drive itself, this compulsion to repeat and its realization or prevention would, on the contrary, be situated this side of the pleasure principle. It is in fact toward this latter solution that Freud seems to turn in his text. Drive repetition, then, teaches us to differentiate between the satisfaction of realizing a drive force and true pleasure. Leibniz and Schopenhauer had in fact already set us on this path by distinguishing two kinds of pleasure. Yet this advance does not automatically resolve our problem concerning the two kinds of repetition. To better face this problem, we could attempt to understand the logical coherence and temporal continuity of the ego as also arising from a kind of repetition, namely, a

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rational or at least not drive-​based one—­(which Freud never explicitly does). Should we then conclude from this that the meaning of the child’s game with the reel is wholly situated on the level of an ego that wants, by repeating this game, to become master of a situation that has caused it so much unpleasure? As such, does the repetitive nature of the game exclusively serve the interests of the ego and its pleasure principle (and, in a subsidiary fashion, its reality principle)? This is what Freud seems to think and it is, in any case, the lesson that most readers have retained from Beyond. Yet, even if we admit that the child’s repetitive game is not drive-​based in nature, this leaves entirely open the question regarding the function of drive repetition and its relation or lack thereof to a structural or symbolic repetition that serves the interests of the ego and to which a therapeutic value could even be attributed. It seems reasonable to claim that there is an essential difference between repetition and a repetition that involves symbolic articulation. Yet this position taken on principle does not get rid of the troubling fact that both these types of repetition can lead to the same result. This result consists in the acquisition (after the fact) of a (deferred) control over an unpleasant and possibly traumatic event that initially completely escaped the control and defensive vigilance of the subject. Such a belated mastery implies a process that we will soon come to know better under the name of “binding” (Bindung). If there are two kinds of repetition, then there must also be two kinds of binding: one which arises from the order of drives (or the “real” in a Lacanian sense), and the other from being “worked over in the mind” (seelische Bearbeitung) (for Freud) or from the “symbolic order” (for Lacan). What requires binding above all else, for Freud, is the “freely mobile” reality of the drive.170 Yet if this “mobile” nature of the drive is the mark of its submission to the rules of the “primary process,”171 and if there is a specifically drive-​based form of “binding,” then we must allow the drive the capacity to limit the mobility of the primary process that originally ruled over it. Is this not asking too much of the drive? Not if the drive that binds and the drive that requires binding are different drives. This is in fact the version of drive binding that Freud prefers, and it is further the only version retained in The Ego and the Id and “The Economic Problem.” According to this scenario, the mobility of death drives is bound and contained through their “union,” “mixing,” or “fusion” (Mischung) with life drives. What is of primary interest in Beyond the Pleasure Principle is that it considers the possibility of all drives binding themselves—­through the mechanism of drive repetition! We must not forget that everything Beyond puts forward on the repetition and mobility (as well as the “conservative nature”) of the drive applies to all drives and not only to death drives. In the repetitive nightmares of war neurotics, it is thus one and the same drive that repeats

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itself and binds and fixes itself through this repetition. If this repetition amounts to an attempt, after the fact, to grasp a traumatic event to which the subject was spontaneously exposed, then this repetition never arises from a new sexual drive or a supplementary libidinal (?) coloring of these nightmares. It is not change, but the hallucinatory repetition of the same event that is supposed to heal the mental “wounds” of war veterans. It is no less true, however, that this drive repetition reopens and poisons these wounds as much as it heals them. Does this mean that drive repetition is ambivalent in nature, in other words, that it wants to both heal and poison? Would it not be more correct to claim that the compulsion to repeat wants neither to heal nor to cause suffering, because it wants nothing at all—­except to indefinitely prolong the mechanism of its own repetition? This would mean that the drive is by nature completely indifferent to the content and the results of its repetition. In this case, the positive or negative character (or both at the same time, as is most often the case) of these results would not depend any longer on the drive and its willing, but on external circumstances or simply on chance. The bonds created by drive repetition would thus resemble ruts dug out by the frequent passage of the same load more than the pathways of freedom. This is clearly the hypothesis that best fits with the image we have built for ourselves of the drive. Yet, if this drive, which is insolently indifferent to any aim or object, incessantly returns to the same route and tirelessly continues its labor, from whence does it then draw the energy for all its efforts? Stupid question! Since, for Freud, the drive is nothing other than energy and, more precisely, a (virtual) surplus of energy that is perpetually seeking out an abreaction (or actualization) of its excessive tension. All these reflections thus lead to the hypothesis that drive repetition is the effect of an excess of drive energy that no realization can succeed in using up or even in seriously diminishing. On my part, I will not confuse the compulsion to repeat with the death drive. For if the death drive is a drive that strives for the abolition of all drive tension (or for its reduction to nothing), then this death drive should be understood as an attempt (that is bound to fail) to finish, once and for all, with the tyrannical and absurd rule of a drive whose surplus of energy condemns it to a repetitive, automatic, sterile, and indefinite process. By binding together the lots of the death drive and the pleasure principle as early as Beyond the Pleasure Priniple,172 and by specifying in “The Economic Problem” that the pleasure principle (or principle of Nirvana) of death drives consists in reducing drive tensions to nothing,173 Freud does indeed seem to have tried to bring to the fore a drive to repeat that is clearly distinguished from death drives and their related pleasure principle. It is true that this pleasure belonging to death drives is such an extreme pleasure that, compared to the

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temperate pleasure of libidinal drives, it hardly deserves to be called “pleasure” (for this reason, Lacan will call it “enjoyment”), and the aim of death drives thus seems to be situated “beyond the pleasure principle.” It is no less true, however, that the drive to repeat is the only drive without any concern for pleasure, and for this reason it is therefore situated radically this side of any pleasure principle. This positioning this side of the pleasure principles that apply to death drives and life drives suggests that the drive to repeat may very well constitute their common root, or at least a form of energy that animates both drives. Contrary to the radical nature of death drives, which seek to put an end, once and for all, to the tyrannical rule of the drive to repeat, life drives would attempt to channel the excess of drive energy and transform the sterile mechanism of repetition into the beneficial flexibility of a vital rhythm (such as breathing). Moreover, this hypothesis fits well with the doctrine from “The Economic Problem” according to which another pleasure principle is in fact at work in life drives and death drives.174 The claim can thus be made, without too much concern about being mistaken, that the excessive drive or drive to repeat is the true face of the “neutral” and “displaceable” drive energy that nourishes, according to The Ego and the Id, both life drives and death drives.175As such, if we want to understand the true nature of the drive and its nihilism, we should not stop at the opposition between death drives and libidinal drives, and even less at the contrast between hate and love. It is only in the compulsion to repeat that the drive shows itself entirely in its naked truth. Our (Nietzschean) reading of the will in Schopenhauer had already given us a premonition of this. A second doctrine from Beyond the Pleasure Principle that generated many questions and controversies is the way in which this text relates the “conservative nature” of all drives to the lot of a return to death that (in the best-​case scenario), nonetheless, only seems to be applicable to death drives.176 The fact that Freud brings together this regressive tendency of drives and their tendency toward repetition adds to the perplexity of his reader. Do all the drives of living beings (even their life drives?) thus want to return to death, and is this death really a form (source or effect?) of repetition? Is there really no drive that seeks progress, and does all drive progression cunningly end up turning against life to embrace death in all its fatality? Let us begin by examining the first point in Freud’s reasoning, that is, the hypothesis that “all the organic drives are conservative, are acquired historically and tend toward the restoration of an earlier state of things.”177 By expressing himself in this way, Freud clearly wants to oppose any (Jungian?) attempt to make the drive into a principle of spiritual development. For him, the drive never pushes toward change by itself, and thus all drive change “must be attributed to external disturbing [störend]

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and diverting influences.” This applies to all drives, even though, as we will see further on, vital or sexual drives are distinguished from death drives by their lesser rigidity and greater plasticity. The drives of living beings thus do not invent anything new, but continue and repeat what they have always done since the beginning of time. In fact, they constitute the most archaic part of organic life for Freud, and they function according to the rudimentary and illogical rules of the primary process. There is no trace then, in Freud, of the live force or “vis activa” seeking “perfection,” which Leibniz did not hesitate to attribute to even the simplest of monads. Nor is there any trace of the “vital impulse” (élan vital) or creative drive that we encountered in Bergson and his spiritualist interpretation of the origin and evolution of life.178 If there is any evolutionary progress, it can never come from the drive itself according to Freud, but only from favorable external circumstances. Yet, how are we then to understand this “regressive” tendency of “organic drives,” that is, their concern “to restore an earlier state of things”? It is quite simple: as soon as external circumstances have forced drives to deviate from their usual and atavistic path, they continually attempt to find their usual path again! As such, for Freud, drives behave like an elastic that, when pulled, returns automatically (and mechanically) to its original form as soon as we let it go. Even if the energy of drive-​based willing can surely not be reduced to this, we thus easily understand Freud’s hypothesis according to which: It seems, then, that a drive is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces; that is, it is a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the expression of the inertia inherent in organic life.179

Why, then, does Freud want to identify this “drive to restore an earlier state of things” with a return toward death, and to make of this return toward death “the aim” of the “living entity” and of “all life”? Here is his response: “ ‘the aim of all life is death,’ and looking backwards, . . . ‘inanimate [das Leblose] things existed before living ones.’ ”180 Freud attempts to corroborate this highly speculative claim through a long series of arguments that are no less speculative, but are nonetheless drawn from various biological theories on the origin and evolution of life. His basic intuition, however, is quite simple: the origin of life is accidental, that is, it is due to an action (comparable to a psychological trauma) of “external disturbing forces” on a vulnerable, or at least insufficiently protected inanimate matter. Involuntarily pulled out of the lifeless state, living beings want to return

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to it, and this return to lifelessness or death constitutes their most fundamental and pressing drive. Even if we admit that the death of a living being is in fact equivalent to a return to the original lifeless state of inanimate matter, Freud’s hypothesis remains obscure. This is why Freud attempts to explain that certain cells (“germ-​cells”) are not only in less of a hurry to return to death than others, but they even seem to be inhabited by a dream of “immortality.”181 He also makes use of the well-​known argument according to which the death of individuals in no way threatens the survival of the species. Finally, he bases himself on all these biological facts to advance his new hypothesis concerning the subordination of all living beings to a primal dualism between life drives and death drives. According to a strange hypothesis to be found only in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the self-​preservative drives of individual life (or ego-​drives) are also to be understood in terms of death drives.182 As such, individual cells would be in more of a hurry to die than collective groups of cells, whose death would be nothing more than an indirect effect of the will to grow, multiply, and unite into more and more complex organisms. The advances of the theory of narcissism will be better recalled in the texts from 1923 and 1924, which will once again integrate the ego-​drives into life drives or libidinal drives as a whole. The internal difficulties weighing on the hypothesis of a drive to return toward death that animates life drives as much as death drives are accompanied by numerous external and more general difficulties. Not only does the thesis that “the aim of all life is death” arise from unfounded meta-​physico-​biological speculation, but it in no way implies that death is the aim of all living beings. The origin and aim of life and the origin and aim of a living being are in fact two very different things. Even though the origin of life comes from inanimate matter, all the living beings that surround us are born from other living beings, and thus from life, not from lifeless matter. With respect to the aim of life and living beings, it is already very problematic to draw conclusions from the “the inertia inherent in organic life” about “a drive to restore an earlier state of things,” and from this latter, about a drive inhabiting “all life” whose “aim” would be “death.” But it is even more problematic to deduce from this that all “living organisms” are under the control of a drive that actively strives toward death. In both cases, the (fatal) facticity of death is made into a necessity, and this necessity is made into the aim (or telos) of a drive-​based willing that governs not only “life” in general, but also “all living beings.” Even if we admit (and how can it be denied?) that some living beings may want to die, and that this will can become an impulse toward suicide, it is unlikely that this drive aim toward death has accompanied them throughout their lives, and it is in any case not a necessary or automatic constituent of the

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meaning of their lives. It would be more correct to say that their way of life (or the life to which they were subjected!) made their suicide inescapable. It is no less true however that, rather than committing suicide, one can live (in the way of a melancholic person) as if already dead. It could even be said that by “letting oneself go” in this way, one is inevitably taken over by the primal drive that Freud called “the compulsion to repeat.” I must therefore be more specific about my position on the relation between the drive to repeat and the death drive. If the death drive is identified with seeking to reduce drive tension to nothing, then it is essentially distinguished from the drive to repeat, as I have already said. But I should now add that, even if the drive to repeat does not aim at this state of minimal tension which has been associated with death, it can very well bring about another kind of death as its effect, namely, the stifling of all creativity and thus of the meaning of life. As such, the drive to repeat is ultimately no less deadly than the death drive. Human beings can live while dying of boredom, and this deadly boredom can be the consequence of an (unlikely) “enjoyment” where nothing remains to be desired, or of a life mired in sterile repetitions. In other words: human life can be emptied of its desiring nature and become a life of death either by a deflating of all drive energy or by an excess of drive energy that stifles the meaning of life through the insistence of its repetitive movement. It remains that, in both cases, the death of human life is the effect rather than the aim of drive movement. Accordingly, if there is no drive with death as its aim, then it would be better either to completely give up the concept of death drives or to give it a new meaning. In the subsequent passages of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and in later texts, Freud will make the latter choice by opposing destructive and aggressive drives, which he nonetheless continues to count among “death drives,” to unifying and life-​creating drives (“Eros”). (For our purposes herein and for greater clarity, I will avoid this amalgamation and place “death drives” in quotation marks whenever they are meant in the sense of Freud’s aggressive, destructive, and “sadistic” drives.)

A Lacanian Interlude: An Insistence of Repetition Situated beyond the Pleasure Principle of Homeostasis Lacan deals at length with Beyond the Pleasure Principle in his Seminar 2 on The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954−1955, yet he is far from dissipating all the perplexities of Freud’s reader. It is thus

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in vain that one seeks clarification in Seminar 2 on the relation between the death drive and a specific pleasure principle, or on a differentiation between the compulsion to repeat and the death drive. Lacan’s Seminar 2 also remains silent on the “union” or “fusion” (Mischung) and the “disunion” or “defusion” (Entmischung) between life drives and aggressive drives, to which most of our next section will be devoted. If a detour through Lacan is nonetheless warranted, it is mainly because of his new understanding of the compulsion to repeat and the way in which the “insistence” that characterizes it can be put to the service of a “symbolic” order. As such, what Lacan focuses on is the way in which the symbolic order forces itself upon us through means that it borrows from the drive economy of the “real” and, more specifically, from a “compulsion to repeat” (Wiederholungszwang) that disturbs the natural aims of the principle of constancy and is thus situated “beyond the pleasure principle.” This is enough for Lacan to identify this compulsion to repeat with what he calls the “death instinct,” and to oppose both of these together to the pleasure principle. Even as the Nirvana principle or the principle of the reduction of drive tension to nothing, the pleasure principle is thus never related to a destructive principle in Seminar 2. In fact, in this text, the only aspect of destruction that Lacan seems to retain is the destabilizing of a natural order of life which the pleasure principle oversees. Everything thus unfolds in Seminar 2 as if the drive to repeat (whose deadly character we have also recognized) were the only possible form of a drive toward destruction, as if all drives toward destruction were radically opposed to the pleasure principle, and as if anything opposing itself to the pleasure principle necessarily constituted a form of the “death instinct.” To link death drives back to a natural tendency of living beings to return to the inanimate state, as Freud does in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, is clearly nonsensical for Lacan. Though he does not, for this reason, fail to recognize the existence of such natural mechanisms of regression and repetition, he takes these to be an expression of the pleasure principle alone, or the principle of constancy or Nirvana. In other words, natural repetition does not arise from a death drive but from the pleasure principle, and a death drive implies a repetition that goes against a natural order of things and its related pleasure principle. To better distinguish this compulsion to repeat that goes beyond the pleasure principle from a natural repetition, Lacan will call it “insistence”183 or “repetitive insistence.”184 Seminar 7 from 1959–­1960 will maintain this position from Seminar 2 (1954–­1955) by radicalizing it, that is, by not only attributing a non-​ natural and destructive character to the death drive, but also by making the death drive into the drive par excellence (which consequently opens

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the door to conceiving of a destructive “enjoyment” that is situated beyond any pleasure principle). In this way, all human drives, simply because they are never reducible to natural instincts, would be exposed to the temptation to transgress the limits of the pleasure principle. Moreover, this new conception of the death drive is perfectly compatible with the one put forward in Seminar 2—­on explicit condition, however, that the death drive no longer be identified with the process of a (non-​natural) repetition alone and that the destructive drive toward “enjoyment” be distinguished from any form of natural pleasure principle, even the Nirvana principle.185 (We will thus have to recall that each time, in what follows, we will be addressing the relation between the Nirvana principle [or principle of the reduction to nothing of drive tension] and “enjoyment” in the Lacanian sense, and that establishing such a relation implies a denaturalization of the Nirvana principle and a modification of its status as “pleasure principle”! This is the price of bringing closer together Lacan’s [transgressive] “enjoyment” and Freud’s conception of the Nirvana principle as a [natural] pleasure principle serving the aims of the death drives.) The entire reading of Freud’s theory on death drives given in Seminar 2 is indeed explicitly situated within the perspective of the non-​ natural or arbitrary “symbolic” register or “chain of signifiers” and the way in which this register constitutes the subject of desire as a subject of the unconscious. There are at least two reasons for this. First, this Seminar 2 is mainly devoted to promoting the symbolic nature of the divided “subject” of desire and to dismantling the illusions created by the imaginary nature of an autonomous “ego” and an original and transparent “consciousness.” Second, throughout his work Lacan continuously proclaims that the “real” or natural dimension, to which human drives are linked, never manifests itself directly, that is, without the help of artificial or conventional structures. For him, drive-​based reality only manifests itself “via the go-​between [par l’intermédiaire]” of an ego’s imaginary constructions and the speech acts of a symbolic subject.186 More specifically, drives manifest themselves in the form of something that disturbs the certainties of the ego and resists integration into common discourse. While these two reasons are valid, they are insufficient. For Lacan could have easily limited himself to bringing the methodological difficulties that plague any drive theory to the fore. Yet he clearly wants to do more, namely, construct the drama of an insurmountable conflict between drives and the symbolic. This drama of an impossible reconciliation is so important to him that he goes so far as to give us two substantially different versions of it in Seminar 2. According to the first version, what is repeated in the compulsion to repeat and what does violence to the pleasure principle through this repetition is a reality (for

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instance, a traumatic episode) that is lacking in symbolization. To this repetitive “insistence,” the “ego” responds with “resistance” and the “subject” with a silence that is coerced. As such, both suffer persecution at the hands of a blind repetition that intimately concerns them and is at risk of carrying them away in the torrent of its violence unless it receives an appropriate response. According to the second version, what insists by repeating itself does not arise from the real, but rather from the symbolic unconscious and its attempt to receive recognition from an ego anchored in its imaginary certainties. This return of the repressed is not less painful than the repetition of traumatic memories, for what is thus repeated through the symptomatic repetition of a (group of) signifier(s) makes no sense to the ego.187 The two forms of repetition—­be it the real that is insistent on entering into the symbolic structure of the subject, or the symbolic that poisons the life of the imaginary ego—­have in common a form of repetitive insistence that is experienced by the ego as a threat and that is situated “beyond the pleasure principle.” For this latter, according to Lacan, is characterized by a natural process that consists in seeking out a state of “homeostasis” or equilibrium in the living being (and the ego).188 In both versions, then, repetitive insistence is identified with the destructive force of the “death instinct” by Lacan. (At first glance, it thus seems that nothing could be more foreign to Lacan than our hypothesis [directly inspired by Freud] according to which the pleasure principle [in the sense of the Nirvana principle] arises from a death drive that wants to put an end to the excessive demands and sterile repetitions of a tireless and nihilistic drive whose only aim consists in preserving itself through a movement that it continuously begins again.) How are we to understand that, for Lacan, the compulsion to repeat is necessarily destructive (and thus merges with the death drive)? As we have seen, Lacan does indeed distinguish two different kinds of repetition.189 Thus, he could have very well drawn a distinction, like us, between a repetition that repairs, allowing a difficult experience to be symbolized, and a sterile or destructive repetition. If he deals out the cards in a different way, it is because reparatory repetition remains “restitutive” for him and thus purely natural, that is, it corresponds to an attempt of the living organism or “machine” to return to a state of equilibrium or “homeostasis.” In other words, not only is the “good” repetition situated on the side of the pleasure principle or principle of constancy in Lacan, but it further corresponds to the “conservative” nature of the drive. Repetition that reassures thus merges for him with a pleasure principle inspired by the conservative forces of “inertia” and that can take on the double form of either a principle of constancy or a principle of reduction of drive tension to nothing.190 This natural and restitutive repetition thus never

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constitutes a compulsion (Zwang) to repeat that addresses a human subject and forces him to exceed the limits of the pleasure principle. Little encumbered by Freud’s preoccupations concerning the origin of life and sexuality from inanimate matter, Lacan thus starts by situating the problematic of repetition on the level of the anthropological difference, that is, the difference between “living machines” and an “existence” that is specifically human. Adding the dynamic dimension of the search for a state of equilibrium or “homeostasis” to Freud’s conception of the “inertia” of systems of living beings, Lacan takes the natural tendency of an organism that is disturbed to return to a state of tranquility as the most characteristic expression of a pleasure principle. As such, this natural drive of the living system toward the “restitution” of a state of equilibrium is never conflated in Lacan with a death drive signifying a natural will of the living being to return to a state of inanimate matter, that is, a wanting to die. The pleasure of dying or dying of pleasure is in fact what is most foreign to living machines from the biological order! For the pleasure sought by living organisms is never excessive; on the contrary, it is limited to a life that is under control and without mishap. When a difficulty that goes beyond their power nonetheless arises, they prefer to return to the routine of their usual way of life. For living beings, we can thus speak of a pleasure principle that consists in seeking to restore a serenely (or stupidly) repetitive way of life: If living beings exist, it is in so far as there is an internal organisation which up to a certain point tends to oppose the free and unlimited passage of forces and discharges of energy, such as we may assume to exist, in a purely theoretical way, intercrossing in the inanimate reality. There is a closed precinct, within which a certain equilibrium is maintained, through the action of a mechanism which we now call homeostasis, which absorbs, moderates the irruption of quantities of energy coming from the external world. . . . At a very elementary level, the frog’s leg gives us an idea of it. Not only is there discharge, but withdrawal—­ which testifies to the still very primitive functioning of a principle of restitution, of equilibration of the machine. Freud doesn’t have the term homeostasis, he uses that of inertia, and that is an echo of Fechnerism. . . . There is a restitutive function, which is that of the pleasure principle.191

Human beings, on the other hand, may dream of the homeostatic delights of an animal life without drama, but they are radically and constitutionally unsuited to such a life. This is why their existence always leads them, in one way or another, “beyond the pleasure principle” according

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to Lacan. Let us take the example of mental trauma as the paradigm of a disturbing and unbalancing event. A trauma is never healed by returning to the more serene way of life that preceded it, that is, living as if nothing had happened. It is not that we do not want to forget it, but we cannot forget it. The memories (or mental scars) related to the traumatic event are too insistent to allow this: the “repetitive insistence”192 or “reproduction”193 of these memories is thus the complete opposite of “restitution” to a life of tranquil repetition. Not only does this repetitive insistence repair nothing, it makes one sick—­w ith a sickness that is the unhappy privilege of human beings alone. What makes them sick is not being able to situate themselves with respect to these insistent and repetitive memories, not being able to integrate them into a way of life that, precisely because of its symbolic nature, is in no way repetitive. We thus enter into a vicious circle: the less we are able to give them a place in our lives, the more traumatic memories become insistent in order to demand this place. The most natural reaction to this insistent and repetitive demand is to stop up one’s ears. This is the reaction of the ego defending in this way the pleasure or constancy principle that governs its existence. Just like living machines, the ego seeks (to preserve or reestablish its) homeostatic equilibrium and mental tranquility. Unlike living machines, however, the ego has the capacity to “resist” disturbances that are too insistent and too repetitive. We must thus differentiate between this resistance of the ego to insistent repetition and the force of “inertia” in organic systems.194 That which insists in relation to the ego and to which the ego resists is anything that can shake the reassuring image it has made of itself. What perturbs the ego and disturbs the narcissistic pleasure it feels in being the way it is can come from both the real and the symbolic order. It is thus within the ego that the two versions of repetitive insistence mentioned above cross paths, namely, the memory of a real traumatic event, and the repressed symbolic unconscious reminding the ego of its existence, like a (bad) memory.195 The insistent reminder of the fact that the ego is “nothing” more than an effect of the chain of signifiers196 is effectively no less disturbing to it than the traumatic memories that assail it. Doubly threatened or threatened on both fronts, the ego mobilizes all its defense mechanisms. Among these, the repression and repetition in analytic transference occupy a prominent place. What the ego defends by resisting, repressing, and repeating is, in the end, always its threatened narcissistic or “imaginary” pleasure. Yet, according to Lacan, what is “beyond the pleasure principle” always relates either to the “real” or the “symbolic,” and it is expressed in the form of a “repetitive insistence.” There must be two forms of the death drive, then, each characterized by its own kind of repetition. As well as the

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repetition (of traumatic memories) coming from an insistence of the real that wants to enter into the symbolic, there is also the repetition (of the repressed) as symptom of the insistence of the symbolic unconscious that it be recognized by the imaginary ego. Upon closer examination, it seems that only this latter form of repetition, according to Lacan, represents the real meaning of the “death instinct” in Freud. For Lacan, the true death drive thus merges with the repetitive insistence of the unrecognized, “masked,” “dumb,” and “unrealised” symbolic order of the unconscious in relation to an ego that is captive to the pleasure principle. This interpretation of the death drive corresponds perfectly to, and is probably even inspired by, the Lacanian conception according to which the constitution of a symbolic subject is equivalent to “the death” of the ego. Moreover, it is not even certain that a true drive is still at work, according to Lacan, in this repetitive insistence of the “symbolic order” in relation to the ego—­ since “all the drives” come from the order of the “libidinal” and “life” for him. Perhaps this is why Lacan continues to speak of a “death instinct” despite having argued at length for translating Freud’s “Trieb” with “drive” (rather than “instinct”). Whatever the case may be, here are the closing remarks that conclude Lacan’s Seminar 2 from 1954–­55: This is the point where we open out into the symbolic order, which isn’t the libidinal order in which the ego is inscribed, along with all the drives. It tends beyond the pleasure principle, beyond the limits of life, and that is why Freud identifies it with the death instinct. . . . And the death instinct is only the mask of the symbolic order, in so far—­that is what Freud writes—­as it is dumb, that is to say in so far as it hasn’t been realised. . . . The symbolic order is simultaneously non-​being and insisting to be, that is what Freud has in mind when he talks about the death instinct as being what is most fundamental—­a symbolic order in travail, in the process of coming, insisting on being realised.197

It should be recalled that I, on the other hand, have made a different choice. Since “the drive” is not specifically “libidinal” in my view, and while I may have shown signs of reticence in relation to Freud’s conception of “death drives,” this was never in order to contest their nature as drives. Much to the contrary, for me “the drive” is precisely a reality characterized by its excess of “unrealised” force, that is, by a “dunamis” that is all the more pressing or violent given that no “energeia” or actualization can use up its virtual power. This is why the drive to repeat, with its excess of energy, its incessant and sterile movement, and its purely formal and nihilistic aim, represents the drive par excellence in my view. The drive as drive does not even seek out the nothingness of the Nirvana principle

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or the reduction to nothing of drive tension, for it only seeks out its own self-​affirmation. Thus, it does not seek out death any more than pleasure. While situated this side of any separation of drives, the pure drive or drive to repeat nonetheless concentrates all the malicious and deadly power of all drives within itself.

Eros and Thanatos: Binding Unification and Destruction, Pleasure and Enjoyment, Fusion and Defusion, Sexuality and Sadomasochism (Bis) Returning now to my interpretation of Freud’s third drive theory, it remains to be shown how his identification of “death drives” with the aggressive or destructive drive leads to a final reworking of his conception of a primal drive dualism. Even if this identification of destructive drives with “death drives” seems problematic for reasons that I have already explained, and even if the disappearance of the compulsion to repeat in these later texts is regrettable, such reservations do not diminish the value of this new and last version of drive dualism in any way. What is initially striking is that Freud not only continues to be more interested in the destructive drives than in Eros, but he also understands the sexual drive as arising from these two antagonistic drives rather than as a sui generis drive. We will thus have to be careful not to conflate the drive energy of Eros (or “life drives”) with sexual drives alone. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the conceptualizing of these life drives was still strictly based on biological theories on the origin and evolution of life.198 What arose from this is a distinction between the self-​preservation drives of isolated cells, on the one hand, and unified cells in an organism or “community of cells” (Zellenstaat), on the other.199 According to this analysis, only the self-​preservation drives of complex organisms have a libidinal nature and deserve to be counted among the life drives.200 Furthermore, these life drives were only credited with the minimal function of “neutralizing” death drives.201 It is only after having reminded us (once again, against Jung!) of the necessity of drive dualism202 that Beyond proceeded to give a new definition of the function of (collective and individual) life drives, to relate them to the (inhibited or uninhibited) sexual drives, and to gather together all these positive or constructive drives under the name of “Eros.” The later texts from 1923 and 1924 are no longer in the least bit concerned with the biological preambles of this drive dualism, and they considerably enrich the definition of the two types of drive,

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particularly by attributing to each its own pleasure principle. Less anxious about avoiding the pitfall of drive monism, Freud also shows himself to be much more open (in The Ego and the Id) to the possibility of a common root for the two types of drive and (in “The Economic Problem”) to their fusion and defusion. It is also surprising to note that, though they bring together the diverse components of the life drives under the name of “Eros,” none of the three texts we are considering use the term “Thanatos” to characterize the “death,” “destruction,” and “aggressive” drives as a group. Perhaps this is a sign that, even for Freud, the identification of aggressive drives with death drives was not altogether self-​evident. Indeed, the context in which these various negative drives are introduced is a very different one. We have seen to what extent Freud’s presentation of the death drives is derived from biological theories on the origin of life and its tendency to return to non-​life. The destructive drives, on the other hand, are in no way regressive, and their aggressive nature is much more due to psychology than biology. They inherit the violence of the former “drives for mastery” or domination (Bemächtigungstriebe), which now take on a dissolving character in opposition to the new unifying life drives. The new drive dualism also leads to these destructive drives being governed by a specific pleasure principle, which is distinct from the pleasure principle that rules over the life drives. They thus have no need to unify with libidinal drives in order to obtain enjoyment, and even when they serve sexual pleasure, they still pursue their own specific aim. As such, the analysis of sadomasochism, already linked in the second drive theory to the lot of the drive to master or dominate, is significantly modified. This comes to the fore especially through the introduction of “primary” or “original” forms of sadism and masochism, ones that are prior to the scenario of a sexual sadomasochism. And even when they are linked to the functions of sexual pleasure, the (active and passive) aggressive drives can once again separate from it and return to their primitive aims and objects. The event of such a “disunion” or “defusion” (Entmischung) thus constitutes a new kind of drive regression. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, and “The Economic Problem” are in full agreement on the nature of these aggressive drives or destructive drives.203 As such, they all distinguish between an active aggressive drive, turned toward an external object, and a passive aggressive drive, turned toward oneself. While sadism and masochism best illustrate this double destiny of one and the same destructive drive, the melancholic person’s aggressiveness toward a lost and interiorized object, as well as ambivalence, so characteristic of obsessive neurosis, are both also regularly cited as examples. Along the way, the phenomenon of love

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changing into hate, which had already captured all of Freud’s attention in his second drive theory, is depicted in a new light. Given that hate is now defined as the aggressive component that most often accompanies (in the form of a “union of blending” or “fusion” [Mischung]) affectionate love for a sexual object,204 its disunion or defusion (Entmischung) from love and its transformation into a dominant passion become a quasi-​natural drive vicissitude and in any case one that always threatens in any love relation. When the affectionate side of love disappears, only hate is left . . . Despite the fact that aggressive drives are rarely encountered in their pure state, that is, separate from their blending or fusion (Mischung) with libidinal drives, Freud seems to want to attribute a certain priority to them. In his view, it is the aggressive drives that present partial, anarchic, and disoriented sexual drives with their first objects.205 Freud thus makes sure, in Beyond, to bring to the fore the presence of an aggressive component in each stage of pregenital sexuality, starting with oral sexuality.206 Furthermore, the separation between the exterior and interior of the subject’s own body, which was brought about by the anal sexual drives in Three Essays, is now attributed to the pre-​sexual aggressive drives. Moreover, the attention given to the specific pleasure (or “enjoyment”) sought out by the destructive drives or “death drives” leads Freud to push the examination of the various aggressive drives beyond the distinction between the primary, sexual, and perverse forms of sadomasochism. It is thus that the sadism of the superego and moral masochism make their notable entrance onto the scene in Freud’s theory. The bringing to the fore of an “original sadism” (ursprünglicher Sadismus)207 also allows us to better understand how an even more primitive aggressive drive, that is, one without any specific object or even aim, is possible. We are all familiar with fits of furious rage that stop at nothing and which nothing seems capable of stopping. These passions or furies of a destructive frenzy that takes down everything in its path are a striking illustration of what a pure “death drive” whose “enjoyment” is both deadly and nihilistic might be. This excess of energy that characterizes these furious aggressive drives or “death drives” undoubtedly brings them closer to the compulsion to repeat—­w ith the important difference, however, that the latter weigh human life down with the burden of a prehuman mechanism, while the former transport it beyond the limits of the human. Of these two forms of human possession by an inhuman and “daemonic” drive, only the aggressive fury corresponds to the Nietzschean definition of the Dionysian and to Euripides’s description of the “divine” frenzy of the Bacchantes. Accordingly, we are naturally tempted to look for Apollonian traits208 in the life drives or Eros (that is, in the combination of vital, sexual,

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and desexualized drives).209 Moderation in quantity, attention to the quality of erotic pleasure, and the swift opening of Eros to the reality principle are certainly a part of this. The same can be said for the “binding” (bindend) nature of the life drives, that is, the way in which they channel the free mobility of libidinal energy by attaching it to objects (without this automatically leading to a fixation). On his part, Freud turns instead to Plato’s Symposium 210 to show how much the Greek world and the modern world of biological sciences agree on the unifying nature of Eros. He also makes use of the famous myth on the origin of the erotic drive told by Aristophanes in Plato to show how this search for unity can be simultaneously progressive (the construction of more and more complex unities and the generation of new unities) and regressive (the attempt to return to a lost primitive unity) in nature. The Greek myth thus comes to the rescue of Freud’s postulate concerning the “conservative nature” of all drives, including the life drives. It is well known that the myth told by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium also serves to bring to the fore the fact that sexual desire is born from the splitting of a primitive unity and that the drive aim of sexual coupling thus naturally remains haunted by the memory of a lost fusional unity. It should thus come as no surprise to us that Lacan turned at great length to the Symposium and sought in this Platonic text a confirmation not only of his conception of erotic desire (désir amoureux), but also and especially of the love tied to transference.211 Freud’s approach to Thanatos and Eros is thus like Nietzsche’s approach to Dionysus and Apollo: the singular nature of each only reveals itself through their mutual difference, their complementary force best unfolds when they unite, and their separation reveals what is lacking in each one.212 Moreover, their difference is far from being limited to the contrast between the destructive force of aggressive drives (or “death drives” in Freud) and the constructive and unifying force of life drives. For Thanatos and Eros are not only differentiated by their respective aims, but much more deeply by the way they function as drives. Usually acting in the mode of the primary process, the aggressive drives are characterized by an extreme mobility,213 that is, by their inability to become attached to (representations of) objects. The only kind of “bond” (Bindung) that they are capable of in themselves consists in the repetition, or rather the sterile and automatic continuation, of the same destructive rage. The mobility and versatility of Thanatos is thus not to be confused with any kind of flexibility or creative freedom. On the contrary, this mobility goes hand in hand with a great rigidity or aversion to any kind of transformation. The only changes the aggressive drives are capable of bringing about by themselves consist in a regressive return to the ruts of their original way

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of functioning, as well as the drive vicissitude of reversing activity into passivity. Deeper changes, such as attachment to particular objects or the “taming” (Bändigung) of their overflowing energy, always come to them from something external, namely, from the libidinal drives and the “ego.” The vital and libidinal drives (be they sexual or “desexualized”), on the other hand, are characterized by their natural tendency to bind with the (representations of) objects that they invest with their unifying energy. This quasi-​spontaneous “binding” of their drive mobility is manifested through the great ease with which they flow into the mold of the secondary process of awakened consciousness.214 Once again, however, we should avoid confusing this swift binding to conscious (or preconscious) representations with a neurotic fixation. It is thanks to (and not despite) their bonds that the life drives lend themselves to being changed (by themselves or by the ego). Through their changing bonds, they thus demonstrate the flexibility or “plasticity” that is so radically lacking in the aggressive drives.215 Binding by themselves and for themselves, the life drives also exercise a binding function on the aggressive drives. By putting these latter at the service of their own aims and objects, the libidinal drives impose transformation on the destructive drives that they would clearly have been incapable of bringing about by themselves. Sexual sadomasochism is the best example of such a “binding” (Bindung) of aggressive drives through their “blending” or “fusion” (Mischung) with the life drives. This union is a rational marriage that is beneficial to both parties. Accordingly, the aggressive drives that “showed the way” for the libidinal drives toward their first objects receive in return a more or less lasting attachment to these henceforth libidinal objects. Moreover, this complementary nature of the two kinds of drive is so great that Freud seriously considers looking for a common root for both of them. Yet, if their marriage is so beneficial, it can be predicted that the divorce between libidinal drives and aggressive drives will have disastrous consequences. We will come back to this shortly. Let us first bear in mind that these two types of drive are not differentiated, as some have suggested, by their respectively progressive and regressive natures. For as soon as Freud identifies the “death drives” with the aggressive drives, they necessarily become both regressive and progressive, conservative and seeking new objects to break into pieces. Similarly, the libidinal drives—­whose great plasticity and creativity we have underlined—­also lend themselves to neurotic regressions and fixations. The difference between these two “primal drives” (Urtriebe) is thus situated elsewhere, namely, in their natural tendency toward either mobility or binding, and it is best expressed through the difference in their relation to (different principles of) pleasure.

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It is the “original sadism” of destructive rage that best brings to the fore how aggressive drives (or “death drives”) function according to the pleasure or “Nirvana” principle that seeks more to reduce tension to nothing than to maintain it at a “constant” level.216 That this unleashed fury is incapable of stopping itself by itself does not in fact mean that it has no aim, but rather that this aim is unrealizable and even impossible. This aim of the “death drives” is nothing less than a “complete” satisfaction (or “enjoyment”) that leaves nothing further to be desired.217 This complete satisfaction does indeed equate to a death of drive energy and, in my view, it is ultimately the only thing that can justify calling the destructive drives “death drives.” The pleasure principle that rules as master over the life drives, however, and more specifically over the (non-​perverse) sexual drives, is completely different. Far from wanting to finish (at all costs) with the exhausting rule of excessive tension, on the contrary, these latter are concerned with recharging their potential in drive tension after each episode of pleasure.218 As sexual drives take pleasure in (the increase of) tension, they have no reason for wanting to put an end to it or for letting it simmer over the low fire of the principle of constancy. Just as the Nirvana principle and its promise of “enjoyment” shares a similar rigidity with the destructive drives that it animates, renewed and reinvented sexual pleasure shares the same flexibility and plasticity that we have already recognized in libidinal drives. Particularly in “The Economic Problem,” this leads to a description of sexual pleasure that is radically different from “enjoyment” and that seeks to recognize sexual pleasure’s singular “quality,” the “rhythm” of its “rises and falls” in intensity, and the way its “temporal sequence” unfolds: It cannot be doubted that there are pleasurable tensions and unpleasurable relaxations of tension. The state of sexual excitation is the most striking example of a pleasurable increase of stimulus of this sort, but it is certainly not the only one. Pleasure and unpleasure, therefore, cannot be referred to an increase or decrease of a quantity (which we describe as “tension due to stimulus”). . . . It appears that they depend not on this quantitative factor, but on some characteristic of it which we can only describe as a qualitative one. If we were able to say what this qualitative characteristic is, we should be much further advanced in psychology. Perhaps it is the rhythm, the temporal sequence of changes, rises and falls in the quantity of stimulus. We do not know. However this may be, we must perceive that the Nirvana principle, belonging as it does to the death drive, has undergone a modification in living organisms through which it has become the pleasure principle; and we shall henceforward avoid regarding the two principles as one. . . . In this way we obtain a small but

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interesting set of connections. The Nirvana principle expresses the trend of the death drive; the pleasure principle represents the demands of the libido; and the modification of the latter principle, the reality principle, represents the influence of the external world.219

Returning now to the benefits of marriage and the calamities of divorce between Eros and Thanatos, one is forced to admit that Freud is all the more attentive to these to the extent that he has left behind, in his writings after Beyond, meta-​physico-​biological speculations on a triple identity between “death drives,” the compulsion to repeat, and the pleasure principle. As is often the case in other forms of marriage, the marriage between life drives and destructive drives is certainly beneficial to both, but nonetheless more beneficial to one than the other. According to Freud, what the genital sexual drive (which Freud forgets to qualify as masculine) owes to the aggressive or “sadistic” drive is “the function of overpowering the sexual object to the extent necessary for carrying out the sexual act.” What it further owes to the latter, as we have already seen, is that the aggressive drive has “pointed the way” toward the sexual drive’s first objects. This does not amount to much in comparison to the “taming” of the destructive drives by the sexual drives. The latter, by enlisting the former into their service, instigate a form of collaboration that brings about a profound transformation in the aggressive drives. The “mitigating” effect of this “intermixing” between sexual drives and aggressive drives is especially manifest in the suspension of the state of primitive “ambivalence” or of mere juxtaposition between “love and hate.”220 The fact that this transformation of destructive drives by libidinal drives also marks a profound transformation in the Freudian conception of sexuality cannot be overemphasized. It suffices to recall the way in which Three Essays characterized the sexual drive in order to assess the extent of the change that came about in Freud. In his third drive theory, no trace in fact remains of the anarchic nature of the (partial) sexual drives that disturbed or even destroyed the smooth ordering of natural needs and their natural paths of satisfaction. Placed in competition with the destructives drives, the sexual drives are now presented, to the contrary, as guardians of the life, survival, and smooth ordering of the individual and species drive economy. The importance of the benefits gained through the transformation of the destructive drives by the vital drives can be even better assessed in the case of their divorce. Freud’s conception of a disunion or “defusion” (Entmischung) of the blending or “fusion” (Mischung) between the two kinds of drive falls very precisely within an extension of the problematic of “disinhibition” regarding the death drive, which we have already concerned

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ourselves with at length in our reflections on Schopenhauer, and even Aristotle and Leibniz. It is thus important to avoid, at all costs, confusing the event of such a defusion and its dramatic consequences with the trivial dissolution of an occasional unity in which each drive would regain what it had originally wagered. One never leaves a marriage the same as one entered it. If the union of Eros and Thanatos truly is fusional, then their disunion must be accompanied by the unleashing of violence. Further, freed from the tutelage of the life drives, the destructive drives do not allow the life drives to quietly continue on their habitual path; they want to annihilate them. As such, the furious rage of an aggressiveness that is disinhibited through its defusion from libidinal drives is something quite different (regardless of what Freud may say) than a return to an “original” sadism that preceded the union of the destructive drives and life drives. For if we take seriously Freud’s conception, according to which the usual phenomenon is one of “mixing,” “blending,” “alliance” (Legierung), or “fusion” between Eros and Thanatos,221 then the pure sadism that arises from a broken union is much more violent than the original sadism. The same can be said for phenomena of “ambivalence,” which are thus to be understood (once again in disagreement with Freud) as the effect of a disunion rather than as an original state preceding the blending together of drives.222 The ingredients should thus always be understood on the basis of the blend, and fusional blending should not be confused with a mere combination of its ingredients—­otherwise, one might completely misunderstand the explosive nature of the blend splitting up! Freud travels further and further down this latter path. This leads him, first, to interpret an increasing number of pathological phenomena as arising from a Triebentmischung. Next, it leads him to formulate the hypothesis we have already mentioned: that there is a neutral form of drive energy freely circulating between erotic drives and destructive drives that increases their power by investing itself in them.223 This hypothesis clearly presupposes that there are at least subterranean channels of communication, if not explicit relationships, between these antagonistic drives. By seeking in The Ego and the Id to situate drives in relation to the psychic elements of the ego and superego, and by making the id the reservoir of all drives, Freud also recognizes a topographical community between Eros and Thanatos. But the best argument supporting an original alliance between the life drives and the “death drives” is without a doubt his analysis of (masculine) human sexuality as bringing together affectionate and aggressive tendencies. By the end of Freud’s third drive theory, it is in fact only in pathological cases that human sexual life is reduced to the action of (partial) sexual drives alone. In normal human sexuality, not only do the two primal drives judiciously blend together, but they also

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lend themselves to being shaped by the ego and the reality principle. Human sexuality thus arises from the (more or less explosive) blending of direct sexual drives, aggressive drives tempered and modified by their association to sexual drives, and sexual drives that are inhibited (by the ego or through the constraints of external reality) with respect to their aim. The way in which normal human sexuality brings together antagonistic drive forces cannot help but rekindle the old debate on drive dualism in Freud’s third theory. In the end, what, then, are the advantages and disadvantages of analyzing the two primal drives either in terms of a primal composite unity that occasionally comes apart, or a primal division that occasionally lends itself to a composite blend? The question is whether Freud’s drive dualism constitutes the only worthy reply to a drive monism that is refuted by pathological phenomena. Would a dialectical conception or simply an open and pluralistic conception of drives not be better than a Manichean dualism between positive and negative drives? In my view, understanding the drive as an excessive and repetitive force that lends itself to the double strategy of a principle of “enjoyment” and a rhythmic pleasure principle not only seems more adequate, but also perfectly compatible with the essence of Freud’s drive theory (thus freed from his obsession with Jungian monism). This preference is also motivated by a concern with avoiding the identification of aggressive drives with “the death drives.” This identification seems problematic not only for reasons of theoretical coherence that we have already addressed, but also because it gives the false impression that sexual drives are necessarily spared from any slippage toward a death drive. Finally, interpreting drive-​based reality as constituting a unity within difference also carries the great advantage of better explaining pathological phenomena as arising from the coming apart of an unstable and vulnerable dialectical unity. From this perspective, the decomposing of drive unity would not mean a return or regression to the primitive nature of each drive; on the contrary, the violence and nihilism of the pure drive would be the effect of a ruptured integration. As such, the simplicity of the pure drive is misleading, for it is in fact an abstract drive—­less ambiguous than concrete drives, but for this very reason more violent. Unsurprisingly, it is in “The Economic Problem of Masochism” from 1924 that Freud pays the most attention to the violence that is unleashed by the disunion or “defusion” of Eros and Thanatos, and more precisely by the destructive drives when they are deprived of an erotic framework. This is also an occasion for him to come back to his prior conception of erotic sadomasochism by adding to it a new form of desexualized moral masochism in which a masochistic ego is the victim of a sadistic superego. Upon closer examination, the sadism of the superego and the

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moral masochism of the ego thus constitute new forms of “defusion” of the two primal drives.224 But the great theoretical challenge remains unchanged from Three Essays onwards: to attempt to think the “pleasure in pain” (Schmerzlust).225 The only thing that changes with the third drive theory is the taking into account of drives that are specifically aggressive and oriented toward an equally specific pleasure. As such, Freud can no longer settle for his prior reduction of this pleasure in pain to a derivative sexual pleasure, corresponding to a “libidinal sympathetic excitation when there is tension due to pain and unpleasure.”226 What he now finds problematic in this analysis is that it overlooks the nature of the passive pleasure in pain as constituting a specific drive vicissitude and as forming a clandestine pair with the active pleasure of sadistic aggressiveness. The sadist enjoys hurting, and this “enjoyment,” far from being the result of a “libidinal sympathetic excitation” caused by “an infantile physiological mechanism,” constitutes a drive aim that he actively pursues. The most decisive advance brought about by “The Economic Problem,” however, is without a doubt the introduction of primary or “original [ursprünglichen] masochism,” the legitimacy of which was still under question in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.227 This masochism can be called “original” for at least two reasons: first, because it is not derived from sadism, and second, because it corresponds to a stage of mental development that precedes the orienting of aggressive drives toward objects from the external world. Taken in the second sense, “original” or primary masochism is thus distinguished from a “secondary” masochism, that is, a regression toward primitive masochism from a more evolved drive stage. With the first characteristic of primary masochism, on the other hand, Freud puts an end to his prior analysis of masochism as constituting a “sadism turned round upon the subject’s own self.”228 This change is essentially explained by the fact that introducing specific aggressive drives and their drive aim of “enjoyment” means that there is no longer any reason to prioritize activity over passivity. Henceforth, among the destructive drives or Thanatos, the sadistic drives and masochistic drives are thus to be considered as equiprimordial. Moreover, in our preceding study of sadomasochism, we had already arrived at the conclusion that, from a perspective that is not only drive-​based but intersubjective, sadism does indeed presuppose knowledge of a primitive “enjoyment” of the pain suffered, characteristic of erotic masochism. We thus already had good reason to be doubtful of the view according to which masochism consists in an inverted sadism, that is, one directed toward the subject’s own person. Is one not justified in thinking, however, that masochistic drives lend themselves, just as much as sadistic drives and separately or in concert, to the drive vicissitude of defusion, that is, to emancipation from any relation

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to a sexual drive? As well as the furious rage, that is, the “original sadism” that I identified (against Freud) with a “disunited” (entmischt) aggressive drive or one liberated from any erotic framework, there would thus also be a form of disunited (entmischt) or desexualized primary or “original masochism.” This masochism would be “original” in yet a third sense: not because it is unrelated to any given form of sadism or it precedes any form of externally directed aggressiveness, but because it is the result of a disunion or defusion from any sexual drive whatsoever. Accordingly, “original” or primary would no longer signify “primitive” at all in the chronological or genetic sense of the term. There is very good reason to think that the “moral masochism” brought to the fore by Freud toward the end of “The Economic Problem” corresponds very precisely to this status of a disunited or desexualized masochistic drive. Does Freud not indeed write that “moral masochism . . . [has] loosened its connection with what we recognize as sexuality. . . . The suffering itself is what matters; whether it is decreed by someone who is loved or by someone who is indifferent is of no importance. . . . It is very tempting, in explaining this attitude, to leave the libido out of account and to confine oneself to assuming that in this case the destructive drive has been turned inwards again and is now raging against the self . . .” But appearances are misleading, for Freud immediately adds: “yet there must be some meaning in the fact that linguistic usage has not given up the connection between this norm of behaviour and erotism and calls these self-​injurers masochists too.”229 How are we to understand Freud’s theoretical hesitation here when faced with the clinical phenomenon of a pathological and “unconscious sense of guilt”—­of which he moreover offers a brilliant analysis? Is it only the sexual connotation of the word “masochism” that bothers him? Or is it, once again, his reluctance to choose between the model of a primitive masochism preceding the development of sadism and the model of a primary masochism arising from its defusion from the sexual drive? Surely, as a more detailed analysis of the text could show, it is both at the same time. Yet, if we overlook Freud’s indecision, we can find the outlines in his text from 1924 of a new and coherent conception not only of moral masochism, but also of sadomasochism as a whole. According to this vision, sadism represents an aggressive drive that has found a way to actively discharge itself on foreign objects from the external world. Masochism, on the other hand, corresponds to a form of passive aggressiveness taken on by a self that puts itself forward as a voluntary victim, that is, that wants to suffer—­at all costs. “Secondary” masochism is a regressive masochism that presupposes the experience of a sadistic type of aggressive drive. Primary or “original” masochism, on the other hand, is characterized by an original drive tendency to seek out pleasure in pain

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to which the self is subjected—­at all costs and with complete indifference to the variety of causes. This primary masochism—­of which moral masochism, with its “unconscious sense of guilt,” “conscience anxiety” (Gewissensangst), and “need for punishment” (Strafbedürfnis), seems to be the best illustration230 —­can still be either original or primitive, or arise from a disunion from an erotic drive component. In its primitive state, this primary masochism is in fact “blended,” according to Freud, with sexual drives. As such, the only thing that is ultimately problematic for him is the status of a masochism that is simultaneously primary and secondary, that is, primary because it is not the result of a regression (as with secondary masochism), and secondary because arising from a defusion or desexualization of a passive aggressive drive. As is clearly shown in our quotations, after having seriously considered this hypothesis, Freud finally backs away from the interpretation of moral masochism as representing a passive aggressive drive that is completely disunited, in other words, that is no longer concerned in any way with sexual pleasure and is henceforth situated radically beyond the pleasure principle of human sexuality. Freud’s hesitation here regarding the status of moral masochism does not take away, however, from the value of an analysis which clearly shows that sexual masochism is something quite different from a sadism “turned round upon the subject’s own self,” and that there is thus indeed an “original masochism,” just as there is an “original sadism.” As such, my critique of Freud’s positions is limited to two points. First, I want to avoid confusing the two different forms of both original sadism and primary masochism corresponding either to a primitive aggressive drive bound by the sexual drives, or to an aggressive drive arising from a defusion or separation from the sexual drives. In other words, I want to avoid confusing the dramatic lot of a drive disunion with the return to a primitive or eroticized sadism or masochism. For the disunited or desexualized aggressive drive, whether it be active or passive, tends toward an “enjoyment” that radically transgresses any concern for sexual pleasure. Second, I do not want to exclude the possibility of understanding moral masochism as a masochism that is completely emancipated from any link to the sexual drives. That an eroticized moral masochism or an eroticizing of morality well and truly exists is not, for this reason, negated. What seems problematic is only the affirmation (found at the very end of “The Economic Problem”) according to which moral masochism would always correspond to an eroticizing of moral conscience.231 If only Freud were right! For it is surely easier to heal an eroticized guilt by turning toward more simple forms of pleasure than to heal a masochistic drive that is destructive because it lacks any erotic framework. In forms of masochism and sadism that are freed from the tutelage of any form of sexual drive,

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the aggressive drive does indeed become deadly and a “death drive” in the true sense of the word. Once again neglecting the difference between erotic pleasure and the “enjoyment” of an aggressive drive that cannot be fettered by any attachment to a libidinal object, even one’s own self, Freud concludes his text with the following remark, in whose optimism (though mitigated) I regretfully cannot share: Thus moral masochism becomes a classical piece of evidence for the existence of fusion [!] of drives. Its danger lies in the fact that it originates from the death drive and corresponds to the part of that drive which has escaped being turned outwards [Auswärtswendung] as a drive of destruction. But since, on the other hand, it [like moral masochism] has the significance of an erotic component, even the subject’s destruction of himself cannot take place without libidinal satisfaction.232

My own insistence on moral masochism as a form of “originary” masochism and on “originary” masochism as arising from a drive disunion or defusion, that is, a desexualization of the passive aggressive drive, is moreover quite close to the views of Lacan, according to which a pure drive can only manifest itself in the form of a residue of the ruin of its framing by a specifically human order—­w ith the small difference that I am concerned with the consequences of the loss of a sexual framework, and Lacan with the consequences of the loss of a symbolic framework for the drive. Indeed, in one of his characteristic short-​circuits, Lacan not only identifies the order from which the pure drive disunites as the symbolic order, but he also understands the violence of this disunited drive as the direct effect of its falling back into what he calls “the real.” Since it is not possible for human beings to (continue to) live outside of the symbolic order, the disunited drive necessarily takes on the form of a refusal of life or a violent death drive. This death drive is all that is left when the symbolic order as a whole has crumbled and the subject is deprived of speech. Inspired by the famous lament of the chorus in Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus,233 Lacan thus presents “primary masochism” to us as representing a human life that (following the example of the old and blind Oedipus), after having survived the abolition of the symbolic order that conditions all human existence, wants nothing more than to die: “What Freud’s primary masochism teaches us is that, when life has been dispossessed of its speech, its final word can only be the final malediction expressed at the end of Oedipus at Colonus.”234 Aggressive drives that are deprived of a framework coming from vital drives and one who survives the ruin of the symbolic order of human existence can do nothing but curse a life that is already destroyed.

Part II

Drives and Subjectivity

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Husserl on the Pleasures of a Bodily and Drive-​Based Subject

Intimacy as the Outside, the exterior become an intrusion that stifles, and the reversal of both the one and the other. —­Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

The Extimacy of the Lived-​Body and Bodily Sensations It is necessary to acknowledge that Husserl’s entire analysis of the lived-​body (Leib), as innovative as it is, still fits within the traditional metaphysical framework of the unity of “body” and “soul.” Husserl explicitly claims to follow the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of the different levels of the soul and the function of the soul as the regulating principle of corporeal movement.1 Nevertheless, far from being the result of a unification of two distinct heterogeneous substances, for Husserl, the unity of body and soul (Seele) is a sui generis reality in which the two levels are not only inseparable, but, for me at least (if not for others), also indistinguishable. For Husserl, there is no Leib without a Seele and no Seele without a Leib.2 When one subtracts the Seele from the Leib, one reduces the latter to a mere material thing (Körper), and when one sets aside the Leib, the Seele is transformed into a pure “spirit” (Geist). The unity of human beings is thus not made up of a combining of Körper and Geist, and the decomposition of the primitive unity of Seele and Leib is always accompanied by the risk of dehumanization. However, the unity of Leib and Seele is said in many ways, depending on how one apprehends it. That is, this unity can be considered with regard to oneself or with regard to others; when considered with regard to oneself, it can be apprehended in its operative form or as an explicit content of consciousness. We will return to these differences when distinguishing the Leib as “organ of perception” from the Leib as perceived “Leibkörper” (lived physical body), the Leib as intimate 229

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flesh feeling itself in a sensible self-​a ffection from the Leib as the body appearing in a space—­whether it be the space close to the touch of my hands, or the space of a distance that allows my embodied consciousness to move “there” and to apprehend its “here” from there or even “from anywhere.” Although Leib and Seele are in constant solidarity for Husserl, they are not for that reason identical or even equivalent. In every activity that results from a subjective initiative, the Leib serves the intentions of the soul.3 Even if there is no sensible perception of things without the contribution of the Leib, nevertheless, it is less the Leib that perceives than the Seele. For Husserl, the Leib is the organ of a perception that has its source in the soul.4 Similarly, in any voluntary movement, the Leib submits to the power (the “I can”) of the soul and only accomplishes its will: it is the “organ of the will.”5 One can thus say that, for Husserl, it is essentially the soul as active principle that opens the lived-​body to the world. But it is not necessary to conclude that, deprived of the direction of the soul and somehow left to itself, the Leib would fall into an inanimate, inert, and quasi-​material torpor. This is not possible because, to the extent that it remains in solidarity with a soul (even when asleep or reduced to a passive state of prostration), the Leib cannot devolve into a simple Körper; even when left to itself, the Leib maintains its life, sensibility, and, thus, its bodily consciousness. Far from simply being the mortal remains of an exiled soul, one’s own body, when deprived of the solicitations and constraints of the world, can awaken to itself and attract the attention of the soul to its own bodily life. Moreover, there are good reasons for thinking that a Leib that is insensible to its own life and that is thus deprived of all affective relation with itself would also be a poor organ of perception. For Husserl, a bodily consciousness without the regulating power and “apprehensions” (Auffassungen) of the soul would be deprived of any intentional representation of an object. On its own, the Leib feels, it does not perceive. But it does not only feel itself, it also feels the things that it touches. It feels the things and it feels itself, and these two forms of feeling are so intertwined that it moves without transition from one to the other. Never lacking in distinctions, Husserl describes at least five different kinds of bodily “sensations”: (1) “representative” (darstellend) or “hyletic” sensations—­for example, the sensation of red that is related to the perceived color of an object by means of an intentional apprehension; (2) the “affective” sensations that, together with the representative sensations, take part in an intentional apprehension relating to the (ethical, aesthetic, or practical) value of an intentional object (appreciating the beauty of an object); (3) the “kinesthetic” sensations or sensations of one’s own body’s movements that in turn also lend themselves to an intentional

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apprehension—­apprehension that is limited, however, to the perception of my body and to the way that its (voluntary or involuntary) movements change (“motivate”) the appearance of things; (4) the “Empfindnisse”6 or sensations issuing from the contact between different parts of one and the same Leib or between the Leib and things. Even if the Empfindnisse lend themselves (secondarily) to an intentional apprehension that informs us of the smooth or rough texture of a surface (of one’s own body or a thing), of coldness and heat, or the taste of food, and so on, they are originally a way for the flesh to experience from within its own contact with itself or with the things that it touches; and finally (5) the sensations of “tendency” or “drive” that are related to the states of tension or relaxation of one’s own body and that are immediately translated into feelings of pleasure or displeasure. These new sensations make the body into a flesh of pleasure or, more generally, the flesh of a libidinal sensibility that is simultaneously active and passive. Like the kinesthetic sensations, these drive sensations of pleasure are primarily related to an action, but, contrary to the former, they no longer lend themselves to intentional apprehension. This brief enumeration of different types of sensation has progressively led us from the Leib, understood as the organ of intentional perception that has its source in the soul, to the most intimate form of bodily sensibility—­that is, to the heart of what the Leib feels by itself, and even what it feels when it only feels itself. Let us dwell for a moment on these sensations of contact or bodily touch that are so unique that Husserl distinguishes them from all other Empfindungen by reserving the name of “Empfindnisse” for them! In their most original state, these Empfindnisse are nothing more than the (more or less strong) bodily sensation of being “touched” (berührt). Before knowing if it is an accidental touch (Berühren) or an intentional touch (Betasten), a caress or a being grabbed, before even knowing what it is that touches me in this way, I already feel, more or less confusedly, where I am touched. The bodily sensibility highlighted by Empfindnisse not only discerns the intensity of a pressure, but also the place where it is exercised.7 But the space of this place where my body feels itself being touched is not the space of the extension (Ausdehnung) of material things—­a space of which my flesh obviously has no notion. On the contrary, it is the intimate space of a feeling, of a spreading out (Ausbreitung) of bodily sensibility8 that expands over the surface of my body and sometimes reaches into the deepest layers of the Leib.9 However, it is necessary to concede that for me to feel touched in a more or less precise location on my body, the latter must have already constructed a system of places, a surface, or, more generally, a body schema. Yet, there is a case in which the localization of the sensation of being touched and the constitution of the place and space of this touching happen simultaneously—­namely,

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when it is by my own hand that my body is being touched. For when I pass my hand over my forehead, at each point of contact between my forehead and my fingers there is a crossing of sensations, some of which belong to my hand and others to my forehead: the sensations of the hand that explores the external surface of my body by touching it, and the sensations that consist in the internal Empfindnis that my forehead feels at being touched. How should we distinguish between these two series of sensations that belong to different parts of my body and are yet so closely intertwined? For Husserl, this is in principle always possible because the sensibility of the active touch and of the passive being-​touched is not quite the same. Concerning active touch, it quickly comes to the fore that sensations split into sensations that relate to the qualities of what I touch and sensations that relate to the hand (or another part of my own body) that touches.10 There is no equivalent of this in passive being-​touched—­that is, in the simple sensation that a part or surface of my body feels when it is touched by another body. Initially, the Empfindnis of being touched on a more or less precise location of my flesh does not tell me anything about the properties of what touches me. Things change radically, however, as soon as the touching and the touched both belong to different parts or surfaces of my own flesh. Husserl gives the example of one hand touching the other hand (but my hand scratching my head, my two feet rubbing against one another, or my lips pressing against one another would do just as well). In all these cases, it is one and the same flesh (and only mine!) that is and that simultaneously feels itself touching and being touched. In other words, the Empfindnis that my left hand has of being touched is automatically related to the sensations of the right hand that touches. In this case, one can thus never say that one hand does not know what the other is doing. It is in the intersection of different sensations belonging to my two hands that (at least) a fragment of the continuity and coherence of my flesh or my body schema is constituted. But the difference between the sensations belonging to each hand also allows one to experience, within the flesh itself, the difference between its organs or parts. What my flesh feels at the point where my two hands touch is thus always related, according to Husserl, to both hands. In the hand that touches and in the hand that is touched, my body simultaneously explores itself from the outside and feels itself from the inside. This also means that the Ausbreitung of the spatiality spread out by the self-​touching of the flesh concerns a surface that is sensible on both sides—­this is what we commonly call skin. An early and particularly attentive reader of these analyses in Ideas 2, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty points out that in this play of touching-​touched, the roles are not assigned once and for all. Since we are dealing with parts

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of the same flesh, the hand that is touched can very easily and almost immediately touch. When my right hand touches my left hand, the contact between my two hands can, at any moment, be reversed and changed into the bodily consciousness of my left hand touching my right hand. Contrary to appearances, this always-​possible shift does not speak in favor of a purely immanent self-​affection of my flesh. The difference between the left hand and right hand, but also between the hand that touches and the hand that is touched, as well as between what a hand feels from the inside and what a hand feels from the outside, is never abolished. It is like those simple mechanisms with two interdependent buttons where the lowering of one button immediately raises the other, and the subsequent pressing of the second button puts the first back in place. The reversal at work in the touching-​touched is thus not like a boat capsizing, but is rather, as Merleau-​Ponty does not tire of repeating, the “reversibility”11 of a role-​ change in a play with two actors. In other words, it suffices for my left hand, touched by my right hand, to start touching by exploring the right hand to make my right hand lose its touching role and become exclusively touched (while remaining, with its Empfindnisse, sensitive to the touch it undergoes). This suggests that the event of this noncoincidence between the two hands and, more generally, of the touching and the touched—­ that is, of this distance in proximity, of this separation of the inseparable, of this in-​between—­is the most original experience of a bodily spatiality. If so, then it would be necessary to renounce Husserl’s attempt to understand the Ausbreitung of bodily spatiality solely in terms of the localization of the touched hand’s Empfindnisse—­w ithout, however, going to the opposite extreme, often attributed to Heidegger, of claiming that the experience of spatiality-​in-​general necessarily precedes a recognition of particular places and their occupants. The relation between spatiality and places would thus be like the relationship between the touching and the touched. In both cases, it would be a difference in the indivisible, an opening to the other within the same, an intimate exteriority or “extimacy.”12 Doesn’t the place of the intimate Empfindnis of being touched presuppose, in fact, the exteriority of the Leib’s surface? And could the places where the contact with the touching occurs take on a bodily and sensual meaning if they did not give rise to Empfindnisse? But don’t all places also necessarily maintain a relation to other places, and doesn’t all space extend between different places? If so, is it then still conceivable to define the experience of the sensitive areas of the body in terms of the relation that a flesh maintains with itself in its solitary self-​touching? Faced with these questions, a number of things must be addressed in order to understand the position of Husserl correctly. First, it is necessary to appreciate the gesture with which Husserl promotes the extimacy

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of touch to the status of the primordial experience of the flesh. When it comes to the constitution of the Leib, vision comes after touch, and a subject deprived of touch would thus not be able to experience itself as a bodily subject.13 Second, Husserl never says that the consciousness of one’s flesh in solitary self-​touching genetically precedes the experience of a foreign flesh or that it would suffice to understand its significance. On the contrary, he indicates, although only in passing, what the child’s discovery of the expressive quality of her own voice, for example, owes to an early sensitivity to the voice of others (of the mother).14 Furthermore, he insists that the naturalization of my body—­that is, understanding it as a natural thing—­necessarily presupposes an internalization of the gaze that only others can originally direct at me.15 It is thus for methodological, not existentiell or existential, reasons that Husserl chooses a path that goes from the most intimate (even if already extimate) to the more objective in the way that I live my body. His description of the “solipsistic” experience that I have of my body aims to simultaneously explore both its legitimacy and its limits.16 By proceeding in this way, Husserl never goes so far as to attribute to me, by myself, all the power of a bodily constitution, be it of my own body or the body of others.17 For Husserl, one can no more deduce the entire meaning of the body of others from the experience that I have of my own body than reduce the intimate experience that I have of my flesh to an identification with the way that I appear to others. To play these two approaches off against one another thus makes no sense, since they are both incomplete. Husserl’s methodological solipsism agrees perfectly with the analyses of Being and Time. The same can be said for the following step in the solipsistic constitution of my flesh in which Husserl interrogates the way my sensible flesh is part of a mundane environment and is subjected, to a certain extent, to its laws. This is the Husserlian version of a bodily being-​in-​the-​world. What is most remarkable about these relations of dependency that bind the sensible reality of the flesh to a different type of reality is that they concern “circumstances” arising from both the state of its environment and the flesh itself to the extent that it is taken up in the mode of functioning of material bodies. All bodily consciousness is, in fact, dependent on worldly conditions that are more or less favorable to its development (light, position, intensity of affections, etc.),18 as well as on the state of vigilance or sensibility of the flesh and the proper functioning of the brain. The investigation of these relations of dependency amounts, for Husserl, to the outline of a phenomenological ontology of the corporeal (not material) “reality” of my body. Even if Husserl hardly paid attention to it, nothing prevents us from understanding the noncoincidence of the flesh with itself not only as the condition of openness to the

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world, but also as the gap that puts bodily consciousness at the mercy of worldly and material conditions. It is precisely because the Leib that feels itself touched simultaneously appears from the outside as a Leibkörper that the latter can also be a Körper that is subject to physical and neurophysiological laws. Consequently, the circle of ambiguities continues to expand: just as my hand that feels itself being touched is and is not the Leibkörper as it appears to the hand that touches it, so my Leibkörper explored by the touch of my hand is and is not the Körper or material object of concern to the natural sciences. Even for a careful reader of Ideas 2, it is not always easy to disentangle the threads that are intertwined in Husserl’s exploration of the “conditionalities” of the Leib.19 First, one has to expand the exploration of states, qualities, and capacities of the flesh by paying attention to everything that is only revealed in its interaction with its environment, and therefore not in its self-​a ffection. Then, one has to elucidate the exact nature of this functional link that makes bodily consciousness dependent on physical stimuli and neurophysiological processes. More specifically, one has to understand how the causality of processes investigated by the natural sciences can affect bodily consciousness while maintaining the onto-​phenomenological thesis that these processes cannot cause bodily experiences and their contents. Finally, this investigation of the connections of a functional correspondence between “states” of bodily consciousness and the material “circumstances” of the natural world and the brain has to be brought to bear on an ontological determination of the type of “reality” constituted by the sensible flesh. This latter investigation unquestionably deserves the title of a phenomenological ontology, since it characterizes the mode of being of the Leib on the basis of the observation of phenomena of correspondence or dependence. Concerning the first issue, Husserl does not seem prepared to give up his desire to distinguish between forms of conditionality respectively affecting the Leib and the Seele. The term “bodily” applies more particularly to the conditional qualities that relate to the sensibility of the Leib vis-​à-​v is what affects it from the outside, according to Husserl. The intimate experience of an Empfindnis in relation to the observation of the material occasion of its occurrence reveals what Husserl calls the “Empfindsamkeit” of my sensible flesh.20 This bodily sensitivity has to do with how my Leib is exposed to (while simultaneously protecting itself from) solicitations that come from physical stimuli. It is conditioned by the (more or less receptive, normal, or abnormal, etc.) state in which my Leib finds itself—­either temporarily or habitually. Making the Seele the active principle of bodily consciousness, Husserl attributes conditionalities to it that either come from its bodily component (“psychophysical” [or

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better: “physiopsychical”] conditionalities), previous experiences (“idiopsychic” conditionalities), or the social environment (“intersubjective” conditionalities).21 All these relations of dependency weigh on the current functioning of the soul—­that is, on the acuteness of its perception, on its inclinations toward a certain type of perception rather than another, on how its perception deals with the gaze of others, and so on. Furthermore, the weight of this dependency does not only affect the current state of the soul; it also forms and affects its habitual mode of being. By always living under the influence of the same circumstances, the dynamic capabilities of the soul end up being realized according to “dispositions” forged during the preceding experiences.22 As such, while distinguished from material realities by its continual change,23 the soul and the flux of its bodily experiences most often end up flowing into a mold that has been prepared in advance. It thus turns out that Husserl’s distinction between two series of conditional properties related either to the Leib or to the Seele is not without its advantages—­provided, of course, that they are not opposed to one another. For the mode of being of the flesh is a mixture between the vulnerability of its Empfindsamkeit and its capacities to cope with this vulnerability, that is, its “dispositions” toward a response. Thus, living flesh passes imperceptibly from receptivity to activity, from virtuality to actuality. Although in his phenomenological ontology of the “reality” of the soul, Husserl deems it a “substance” despite the continual flux of bodily consciousness,24 the permanence of the being of the soul is only revealed through its “conditional” implication in worldly circumstances. This functional understanding of its substance ensures that the subsisting mode of being of the soul, far from basking in the pride of a closed self-​sufficiency, is instead marked by dependency, finitude, and transcendence. This substantial mode of being of the bodily soul, in which its Empfindsamkeit and its dispositional abilities are intertwined, has the ontological form of a potentiality-​to-​be that depends on worldly circumstances or situations and neurophysiological constraints. The subsisting being of the soul, caught in the network of its idiopsychic and psychophysical conditionalities, is that of a conditional freedom (the “I can”). Thus, Husserl’s designation of the soul’s mode of being as a “substantial reality” is in no way opposed to Heidegger’s characterization of “Dasein.” But Husserl’s examination of the relations of “conditionality” that bodily consciousness maintains with the world and material nature also opens relevant phenomenological perspectives that are neglected by Heidegger. For one does not fall into a naturalism that is incompatible with a phenomenological analysis of the flesh simply by conceding that its “sensorial states” (Empfindungszustände) depend on “the concomitant system of

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real circumstances under which it senses [empfindet].”25 These real circumstances, taken in themselves, undoubtedly arise within natural causality. The light that my visual perception depends on, the intensity or pitch of a sound and the way it affects the parts of my inner ear, the way that a chemical (“santonin”) affects my brain and makes me see everything in yellow, are the subject of scientific observations and theories whose presuppositions and limits philosophy can question, but—­as a matter of principle—­not their legitimacy. However, the phenomenologist’s aim is to point out that all we can actually observe is a relation of dependency between bodily experiences and the material circumstances that bring them about, a relation that has the form of an “ ‘if-​then [wenn-​so]’ or ‘because-​therefore [weil-​so].’ ”26 The phenomenologist will hasten to add that, as a matter of principle, it is impossible for a bodily state of consciousness to be caused by a material action. For, as Husserl states, what is real in the sense of material reality cannot cause a psychic reality which is itself an “irreality.”27 Husserl thus seems to want to say that, on the one hand, bodily consciousness depends on material causes and, on the other hand, since this consciousness is of a different ontological nature than physical nature, it necessarily escapes this causality. Husserl is thus forced to concede that “reality and irreality . . . mutually exclude one another and on the other hand . . . essentially require one another.”28 New distinctions are therefore needed. The first consists in pointing out that my body as phenomenological or “aesthesiological” flesh and my body as a Körper endowed with “somatological” properties are numerically identical and ontologically different: “To every psychophysical conditionality there necessarily appertains somatological causality. [Psychophysical conditionality always immediately concerns relations of the irreal, of an event in the subjective sphere, with something real in the lived-​body; mediately, it then concerns its relations with something real outside of the lived-​body, that stands with the lived-​body in a real, i.e., causal, connection.]”29 The identity of my body thus lends itself to a reversal of perspective, and this possibility belongs to it essentially. It belongs to the nature of my lived-​body to manifest itself as a “turning point” (Umschlagspunkt).30 In addition to the sensibility and spatiality of the touching-​touched, we encounter here a new and even more extreme form of reciprocity, that is to say, a difference in identity. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that with the examination of the different forms of conditionality that attach my flesh to the fabric of the world and expose it to the solicitations of material causality, the solipsist investigation of its mode of being has reached its limits. This investigation has taken us from the intimacy of the Empfindnis of being-​touched to the appearance of the flesh as a Leibkörper. What can no longer be

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touched but can actually be observed are relations of dependency that make my flesh a part of material nature. At the conclusion of this phenomenological-​ontological investigation conducted in the sphere of solipsistic experience, my body turns out to be “a thing of a particular type,”31 a “subjective object.”32 This thing that my body has become is still essentially subjective and it is different from all other surrounding things because it relates all these other things to itself. For me, my body as thing can never fully blend into the network of other things because it is through it that these things exist for me. My body remains subjective even when I abstract from its function as “organ of the will” (and thus also of freedom) and as an “organ of perception” because it is what comports itself as a center or “zero point of orientation”: The lived-​body then has . . . the unique distinction of bearing in itself the zero point of all these orientations. One of its spatial points . . . is always characterized in the mode of the ultimate central here. . . . It is thus that all things of the surrounding world possess an orientation to the lived-​body. . . . The “far” is far from me, from my lived-​body; “to the right” refers back to the right side of my lived-​body, e.g., to my right hand.33

Wherever it goes and whatever it does, my body as thing is always here (Hier) and never there (Dort). What ultimately resists all my attempts to make my body into a simple thing (by myself) is thus its central point of view—­that is, the place it assigns to itself within a spatiality that originates from it and that thus never merges with the extension of objective space. The spreading out (Ausbreitung) not only of Empfindnisse on the surface of my flesh but of my body as thing beyond its own limits and its present place thus never frees itself from the anchor point, from this absolutely minimal consciousness, from this “metaphysical point” of individuation (Leibniz), from this almost insignificant absolute that constitutes its “here.” “Here” is the mark that makes this thing my body. “Here” is the name of the most primitive and most bodily subjectivity. Everything changes when we give up this methodological artifice that has thus far led us to abstract from the existence of any other flesh than our own. In the discovery of another flesh, the new experience of another “here” that is “there” imposes itself on my flesh. But how can I transport myself to this distant place, to this place that is both different from and implied in my place? This reciprocity between originary places that are correlated yet foreign to one another is not unlike the structure of those other forms of reciprocity between the same and the other that we have already encountered. We discovered that any relation of reciprocity or

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mutual implication necessarily lends itself to a two-​way reading. This also holds for the relation that my flesh, from its place, establishes with the place of a foreign flesh. One only has to read §§43–­47 of Ideas 2 carefully enough to be convinced that my constitution of another flesh is inseparable, for Husserl, from my experience of the modification and expansion that this foreign flesh introduces into my own flesh. In the relation between one flesh and another, any “constitution” is thus necessarily a co-​constitution. As such, a phenomenology of bodily intersubjectivity does not have to choose between what constitutes what or between the perspective of a “here” or a “there.” For my “here” is simultaneously open to the “there” of another flesh and a “there” for the “here” of the foreign flesh. As Husserl repeatedly claims, this reciprocity between two lived bodies and their places does not, however, prevent the place of my flesh from remaining “here,” nor that without this “here” it would no longer be my flesh but a simple material object. According to Husserl, we cannot be transported into the place of another flesh without being reminded of the relation of reciprocity that already governs the interaction of my Seele with my Leib. In fact, it is this intimate experience of a difference within my bodily consciousness that gives me access, by analogy, to a similar but inaccessible double bodily ipseity of the other. If I did not already have, by touch or by sight, an external perception of my Leib (which I also use as an organ of perception and which is the location of my most intimate sensing), I could never leave, by my own strength, the auto-​a ffection of my flesh and open myself to the sensing of a foreign flesh. The analogy between my flesh and the flesh of others, however, is based on a perception that makes me as attentive to the difference as to the similarity between the way my Leib and certain other Leiber appear to me. The difference is palpable: my lived body is here, and its sensible and intentional life is given to me as “originally” (urpräsent) as its external appearance is given to me. In the touching-​ touched, its private life and its surface are both simultaneously given; they are originally “co-​present” (kompräsent) for me. This is not so in the appearance of an other’s body: what is originally given to me in this case is only its external appearance. More needs to be given, however, if I am to be able to distinguish between the perception of a material, worldly thing and the perception of a foreign Leib. If the analogy between me and the other relates to the fact that we both experience our bodies as a double presence or as an originary co-​presence, and if this analogy must be based on a phenomenological given (instead of proceeding by simple “reasoning” [Schluss]), then it is necessary that the soul animating the body of an other manifest itself to me in some way—­even if only as an inaccessible given, a donation in withdrawal.

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Husserl understands this bodily revelation of others that has the form of a Heideggerian unconcealment (Unverborgenheit) in terms of the phenomenon of “expression” (Ausdruck).34 According to this analysis, the bodily behavior of others testifies to an inner life that I can never penetrate and that I can never make originally present to myself. However, I can apprehend or “appresent” (appräsentieren) it: “the other’s touching hand, which I see, appresents to me his solipsistic view of this hand and then also everything that must belong to it in presentified co-​presence [in vergegenwärtigter Kompräsenz].”35 The analogy between me and the other that concerns two occurrences of an originary co-​presence is accompanied, once again, by a reversal: while for my bodily consciousness of myself, the Empfindnis of my flesh is more primitive than its appearance as a Leibkörper, the appearance of the expressive body of others comes first and constitutes, for me at least, an essential condition for the appresentation of their Empfindnisse. If we look more closely, we can discern at the heart of this meeting between distinct and most often separate bodies yet a second reversal. For the expressive body of an other is not just the way that the other is first given to me, but it is also simply and in its own right the first expressive body that is given to me. The path of the analogy that led me from the co-​presence of my flesh to the co-​presence of a foreign flesh returns to me by giving to my flesh an expressivity similar to what I have discovered in the presence of the flesh of others. My familiarity with the expressive power of my own Leib originates, in fact, in the encounter with others and with what Husserl does not hesitate to call the “grammar” of bodily expressions.36 The whole system of exchange of verbal expressions should thus be understood, according to Husserl,37 as an extension of the expressive power of the body, that is to say, of this “facial expression” (Mienenspiel) whose originally mimetic character could also be highlighted. Anticipating the conception of a “mirror stage,” as developed by Henri Wallon or Jacques Lacan, Husserl also makes us aware of the fact that the image our mirror reflects back to us and with which we must identify ourselves—­whether we like it or not—­reproduces the appearance that our lived body has for others.38 But the mirror or a (bad) photographic portrait also teaches us the painful lesson of the devastating effect that the gaze of an other who ignores the expressiveness of our body can have on us. This cold gaze that strips our flesh of its soul and objectifies it to the point of turning it into a simple thing is also the gaze of natural science. For Husserl, only others or the use of scientific instruments can bring about such a “naturalization” of our body into a natural thing—­that is to say, an abstraction from the intimate consciousness that we have of our living flesh.39 The gaze of the other is thus capable of the best and

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worst: it can awaken our body to the consciousness of its expressive power (and allow it, for example, to dance), and it can destroy the life of its soul by treating it as an object to be manipulated at will. By ourselves, we are capable neither of the best, nor of the worst. For, by ourselves, we can neither make ourselves familiar with the expressive language of our body, nor treat it as a simple thing: any external perception that we can have (by touch or sight) of our Leibkörper is always accompanied by the internal trembling of our Empfindnisse.

Impulses and Drive-​Based Movements, Inhibition and Disinhibition, Desiring and Wishing Understanding what our body is and what it can do is not sufficient; what it wants also has to be discovered. How does Husserl (who we have already discovered to be surprisingly close to Schopenhauer) account for our bodily drives with respect to both the nature of their functions and the intimate experience we have of the fluctuations in their impulses and forces? How does he understand the mechanisms of increase, resistance, restraint, and discharge of drive tension that we have carefully tracked in the writings of Aristotle, Leibniz, and Schopenhauer? To answer these questions, it suffices to turn to his Studies on the Structure of Consciousness40 written almost contemporaneously with Ideas 2, on which we based ourselves throughout the last section. In these Studies, Husserl approaches drives, the experience of drives, and the drive subject primarily through a phenomenological investigation of the mental forces behind acts of the will and actions themselves. Yet, as we will see, this does not mean that he neglects to analyze the drive-​based and bodily substructure of emotional behaviors and feelings related to what he calls “values.” In both cases, it is sensations of pleasure and displeasure that betray the common rootedness of practical, axiological, and even theoretical acts in bodily drives. To begin with his phenomenology of practical acts, Husserl most often questions whether, besides active and, more particularly, rational actions, there are also specific “drive-​based movements” in which we are impelled (treiben) by unconscious “drive impulses” (Triebimpulse). Husserl is thus primarily concerned with the possibility of the ego actively intervening in the drive process and only secondarily with determining the way drives work and how they differ from the “tendencies” (Tendenzen) and “interests” (Interesse) involved in the objectifying acts of an intentional representation. The same can be said about the question concerning the

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essence of “pleasure.” The defining of pleasure as the possible goal of drives is subordinated by Husserl to the attempt to distinguish between this drive pleasure and the mental pleasure of a liking (Wohlgefallen) linked to value-​bearing objects (Wertgegenstände) or an emotional act (Gemütsakt) of “ joy” (Freude). Finally, acts of “desiring” (Begehren) and “wishing” (Wünschen) are primarily addressed in the context of analyzing objectifying acts of “appreciation” (Gefallen) related to values; it is only in passing that they are distinguished from drive impulses and their orientation toward sensual pleasure. While Husserl later qualified his own doctrine on the drive as an “anticipation of ‘Freudian’ psychoanalysis—­w ith its affects, its ‘repressions,’ etc., put into brackets,”41 at the time his interest in drives and pleasure was rooted in the context of an entirely different problematic than Freud’s. Similarly to Leibniz’s Aristotelianism, Husserl’s references to the drive and to mechanisms of “inhibition” (Hemmung), “resistance” (Widerstand), and “discharge” (Entladung) are not meant to diminish egoic consciousness in any way, whether by demonstrating its secondary character or even its impotence. Yet, as will become clear, Husserl’s doctrine of the drive is very close to Freud’s on many points, and drawing on Husserl’s descriptions and terminological distinctions could be of great benefit for the sometimes vague conceptual framework of Freudian psychoanalysis. The fact that conceptions of human life opposed to Husserl’s rationalism can still benefit from his phenomenological investigations clearly demonstrates the breadth of his scientific ethos. Husserl’s most important contribution to the drive problematic comes from his characterization of the drive as a kind of willing and doing (Tun).42 Through this initial gesture, Husserl redirects the entire legacy of the Aristotelian understanding of movement on the basis of dunamis (that is, a force of transition to an actual movement) and the Leibnizian understanding of substance as vis activa (and of its inhibition by a resistentia), putting it to work in the phenomenological analysis of the dynamic nature of the human psyche. While the drive as dynamic principle of human life certainly influences theoretical and axiological behavior, Husserl nonetheless contends that it manifests itself more originally in human praxis. This coordinating of drives with doing or with accomplishing a bodily movement is expressed terminologically in the fact that drive-​based striving (triebmässiges Streben) is more often than not distinguished from the more general concept of a “tendency” (Tendenz) that can also be related to intentional representations (like perceptions, for instance).43 The first task of a phenomenological doctrine of the drive naturally consists in distinguishing drive-​based doing and letting happen from

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active action. A true or active action depends in Husserl’s view on a voluntary decision of the ego (a “fiat”)—­a decision that is rationally motivated by the obviousness of the action’s practical possibility and by the awareness of its value. According to Husserl, we cannot rationally decide to engage in an impossible action, nor in an action whose anticipated result is devoid of value (unwert) or bad. The distinction between passive submission to a drive and active action should not, however, lead us to think that the two are strictly separated in the concrete life of the human subject. While all rational action arises from motivation by an interest that has been deliberated on, this interest may still be rooted in a yearning that is drive-​based—­on condition that this “drive impulse” be carefully examined by the deliberating ego. Depending on the rational or irrational character of the drive motivation, the acting ego either “gives in” to it or rejects it. Since the active examination of passive drive impulses is of great importance to Husserl, he carries out in-​depth research on their “promotion” (Förderung) or, to the contrary, “inhibition” by the ego.44 In this context, he explicitly mentions “repression” and “renunciation” (Entsagen) as possible ways the ego can thus inhibit drives.45 An intervention of this type by egoic consciousness into the realization of a drive impulse is not, however, conceivable unless the drive is a mental phenomenon, and not a purely physiological one. Yet Husserl concedes, in full agreement with Freud, that these mental drive stimuli to which the ego is exposed are often unconscious in nature.46 Husserl is much less concerned, though, than Freud with how the conscious ego manages to act as both judge and lord of such unconscious drives. What is certain, however, is that this type of unconscious drive yearning comes from a stimulus that affects the psyche. Like Freud, Husserl thinks this is an internal stimulus rooted in one’s own organic body and felt according to a natural and periodic rhythm, similar to the need for food. The Studies on the Structure of Consciousness remain silent, however, on whether the sexual drive in humans is to be understood as similarly periodic in nature or rather, as Freud claims, as a “constant” force.47 Yet, unlike Freud, Husserl thinks that there are external as well as internal drive stimuli, that is, the stimulation of a drive by an object. But is this reason enough to worry that Husserl completely misunderstands the Freudian doctrine according to which a distinction must be drawn between the source of a drive and its object, and between this object and the object of an intentional representation? Not at all! To begin with, it suffices to recall that it is only in Lacan, and not in Freud, that we find a satisfactory theory on the object of the drive (“objet a”). For Lacan, such an “objet a”—­like the gaze in the case of the scopic drive, for instance—­necessarily eludes all perception, and thus all representation.

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Freud, however, does not exclude the possibility that the object of drive satisfaction (for instance, the breast for the infant) is perceived. He only emphasizes the fact that the mere perception of an object can neither cause a drive impulse nor satisfy it. This explains the relative indifference or “variability” of the drive object in Freud’s drive doctrine. Similarly to Schopenhauer, the representation of an object is not the cause of a drive (or a “will” in the Schopenhauerian sense) according to Freud, but rather a mere “occasion” for awakening and satisfying a drive. This is also the position held by Husserl. His surprisingly precise description of the process through which a drive is awakened by an object of perception is perfectly in line with Freud’s theory. For Husserl as well as Freud, the object of perception cannot immediately give rise to a drive impulse; instead, its influence on the drive happens by awakening the memory of a past drive action and of the experience of pleasure that was associated to it.48 The decisive moment for the drive is thus not its object, according to Husserl, but the mental tension brought about by the “drive impulse,” a tension that exactly corresponds to Freud’s concept of drive “pressure.”49 Both Freud and Husserl mention a bodily need expressed as the experience of “distress” (Not) or of a “lack” as the possible source of this kind of drive tension. What Freud calls the “mastery” (Bewältigung)50 of the drive should be understood as a doing (Tun) that leads to “relaxation.” Again, Husserl’s and Freud’s views are perfectly in line on this point. But Husserl goes further than Freud by more precisely distinguishing the drive as drive disposition (Antrieb) from the realization of this drive disposition in a doing. Terminologically speaking, this distinction is expressed as the difference between a “drive impulse” and a “drive movement” (or “drive action”). The realization of the drive impulse in a drive movement should thus be understood as a “discharge” of tension. 51 Such a discharge or relaxation of the drive yearning in a doing more often than not implies the “overcoming” (Überwindung) of an “inhibition”52 or a “resistance.”53 In his Studies on the Structure of Consciousness, Husserl writes: Drive, obscure undetermined drive. Discharge of the drive in the form of an “activity,” a drive movement, a drive-​based change. . . . We have a continuous intentionality of the drive, which is a continuous effect [Auswirkung] of the drive impulse and constantly belongs to its fulfillment [Erfüllung]. . . . Possibly an inhibition intervenes, an “it goes no further,” an event that acts “against” the drive. . . . It is thus, for example, that we can intuitively interpret the drive movements of a fidgeting child that moves its feet here and there, arrives at a “no further,” and turns back. These are movements without a goal and drive-​based changes.54

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“Resistance” and “inhibition” are not, however, the same thing.55 To use Aristotelian language, “resistance” is a type of passive dunamis that opposes itself to the fact that an(other) active force or dunamis actually realizes itself in the form of energeia.56 The force of inertia tied to habit is a good example of this type of resistance encountered by an active drive on its way to realization. A drive “inhibition,” on the other hand, is usually due to an active counterforce that suspends or renders impossible the realization of a drive impulse. Such a counterforce that opposes the drive’s yearning for realization in a drive action can arise not only from the intervention of an active ego, but also from conflict with a competing active drive.57 For Husserl, the most typical kind of drive action is when involuntary bodily movements are not initiated by the conscious ego, but are rather rooted in an “obscure” or “unconscious” drive sparked by a bodily need. In such cases, we are either dealing with automatic actions (for example, when “ ‘I reach’ for my cigar” or “the fact of mechanically lighting a cigarette, bringing it to one’s mouth, etc.”)58 or with voluptuous, spontaneous, and rhythmic bodily movements, which Husserl does not necessarily relate to sexual drives (unlike the Freudian analysis of the infantile behavior of sucking one’s thumb). Many types of artificial behavior acquired and learned by the ego thus become habitual bodily movements piloted by unconscious drive mechanisms. These acquired drives are to be distinguished from primal, that is, spontaneous, drive movements related to an unconscious bodily doing that expresses and realizes a living being’s vital mobility. As well as the already mentioned infantile “fidgeting,” Husserl also repeatedly refers to “breathing” as an example of such a primal drive action: Drive action that is not a “voluntary” [willkürlich] doing, not an intentional [absichtlich] doing. I am following some tendencies without doing anything in the full sense of the term. I am not, strictly speaking, involved. . . . In the obscure background, some tendencies come to the fore, and the tendencies relax, are realized. But I know absolutely nothing about this. . . . For example, I find this characteristic of drive tendencies in breathing: it is not a simple process, but in its unfolding the relaxing of tendencies is followed by a new rise of tension, a blind drive.59

The example of breathing is exemplary in illustrating how primal, bodily drive movements unfold, as Freud has already pointed out, according to a repetitive rhythm of an exteriorization-​interiorization or a back-​and-​forth. Once again, this is reminiscent of the analyses of

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Aristotelian physics—­not only in the observation that natural movements have their origin and end in themselves, but also in the defining of vital mobility or natural genesis as a path that goes from phusis toward phusis.60 Husserl’s studies on internal time-​consciousness could certainly contribute greatly to a better understanding of such a continuous drive process articulated in the form of rhythmic repetitions. It is thus not surprising that Husserl ends up characterizing internal time-​consciousness as essentially drive-​based in his last doctrine on the drive. More generally, the parallels drawn between drive action and the mobility of life, already observable in the first analyses, only increase in Husserl’s later works. However, Husserl’s later works, where he considers the universal teleology of an intermonadic rationality from the perspective of the drive, may be at risk of once again obscuring the distinction so clearly drawn in his first doctrine of the drive. In the Studies on the Structure of Consciousness, only the sensible yearning and doing of an individual monad count as drive phenomena and, furthermore, this sensible drive is clearly distinguished from the related phenomena of “wishing” and “desiring.” As is well known, this distinction between the drive and the “wish” (operative, for example, in the unconscious work of dreams) is also to be found in Freud. For Husserl, the wish, unlike the drive, originally and necessarily relates to an object (or state of affairs). It is thus founded on an intentional representation. To be sure, the wish object is not a real object, but rather the object of a “mere” representation, that is, of a representation that does not, strictly speaking, imply the position of an object.61 Though wishing is certainly characterized by a dynamic that resembles the dynamic of the drive impulse, unlike in the case of a drive impulse, realizing a wish is not within the power of the wish itself.62 Yet, unable to satisfy itself by its own power, the wish can nevertheless motivate the ego to will and act, and thus lead in a mediated way to the realization or materializing of the wished-​for state of affairs or process. This is surely why we often confuse the wish with the drive. Taking a closer look, however, the wish is more than a “mere” representation of a future state of affairs that reality is currently lacking. It is also an affective anticipation of this state of affairs. Husserl designates the affective component of the wish with particular acumen as an “unsatisfied joy” (ungesättigte Freude),63 that is, as the experience of lack referring to a future satisfaction that would arise from the existence of a valued state of affairs and whose value would evoke joy. We will need to further consider the difference between pleasure and joy, as well as how this distinction contributes greatly to better differentiating between the drive and the wish. Let us note, for the moment, that the inability of the wish to satisfy itself through its own powers can be overcome not only by the motivation

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of favorable actions, but also, and much more simply and immediately, by a hallucination of the wished-​for state of affairs. Instead of waiting impatiently for the wished-​for state of affairs to arise, our own wishes can be satisfied all at once through illusions of perception. As is well known, this is also the core of Freud’s doctrine on dreams and how they satisfy unconscious wishes through visual hallucinations. Unlike the wish, “desire” (Begehren) for Husserl is a yearning in which it is less the occurrence of a state or process that would give rise to joy that one covets, than the possession of an object. “Desire is a yearning, a tension directed toward something in the future and, more specifically, a wish to possess something, that something pleasurable or good might happen to me. I wish for someone else to be happy, but I desire happiness for myself.”64 This subtle distinction is not unimportant, for it suggests that the drive component is much more explicit in desire than in the wish; and consequently, desire is more essentially related to what one can do by oneself: “But simple desire does not relate to volition in the same way as mere representation relates to intuition. . . . Desire motivates willing and doing.”65 Thus, for Husserl, desire is situated precisely between the drive and the wish: it is a drive yearning for the pleasure associated with the possession of an object, and this yearning is guided at the same time by the representation of a good that we lack.

Drive Pleasure, Sensible Pleasure, Liking, Enthusiastic Joy The accomplishing of any drive movement is accompanied by the experience of pleasure. This drive pleasure comes from the “discharge” of the tension associated with the drive impulse: “there is some desire, some pressure [Treiben] that is discharged in a ‘doing’ and is thus sated [sich sättigt] by this doing. . . . During action, we have not only the (more or less perfectly) continuous satiation [Sättigung] of desire, but precisely the doing.”66 For Husserl, the goal of the drive realizing itself is thus both a doing and the sensation of pleasure that arises on this occasion: “drive that turns away from the unpleasant and turns toward the pleasant.”67 As such, the drive movement has not only a particular rhythm, but also an orientation that is simultaneously negative and positive. In his understanding of this double orientation of the drive, Husserl is clearly inspired by Aristotle’s defining of orexis as including a movement of both pheugein and diôkein.68 If pleasure results from the relaxation of the drive impulse, we can then assume that for Husserl, exactly like in Freud, the displeasure

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or the “unpleasant” from which the drive movement turns away is nothing more than the tension associated to an unrealized or inhibited drive impulse. It remains, however, that for Husserl the pleasure that accompanies drive action is more than a mere abolishing of displeasure, that is, it is also the experience of a perfecting (perfectio) of the drive (dunamis) that results from its transformation into action (energeia). As well as this drive pleasure or pleasure taken from the realization of a drive impulse, Husserl also describes a “pleasure of sensation and pleasure of mental experience.”69 By these he means the sensible pleasure associated with the internal consciousness of sensations70 and with intentional experiences. Thus, hearing pleasurable sounds, perceiving a “beautiful feminine figure,” an imagined image or a thought—­all of these can be bearers of pleasure. Whatever may be the basis of these different kinds of pleasure tied to sensation or intentional experience, it is in any case certain that the feeling of pleasure is always the result of an inner experience, and not of the representation of an intentional object. As such, sensible pleasure is distinguished not only from drive pleasure, but further—­as we will soon see—­from any “liking” (Wohlgefallen) or “ joy” related to intentional objects or states of affairs. The sensible pleasure of sensation or mental experience is also more primitive than drive pleasure, for it does not imply an action in which preexisting drive tension would come to be discharged. Still, drive pleasure remains closer to the pleasure of sensation and mental experience than to liking and joy, for it is a pleasure taken in how one feels about the drive action in which a drive impulse is realized. The sensible pleasure of sensation and mental experience thus shares with drive pleasure the fact that neither involve any intentional representation. On the contrary, both types of pleasure consist in the sensible experience or undergoing (belonging to the order of feelings) of a content of internal consciousness: “sensible feeling [Fühlen] is thus nothing else than an internal consciousness (constituting something temporal)”; “sensations of feelings [Gefühlsempfindungen] . . . , ‘pleasure’ and ‘displeasure’ are sensations like any other sensation.”71 As contents of internal consciousness, all sensations of pleasure or displeasure (be they related to sensations and mental experiences or to drive actions) thus have a primal relation to internal time-​consciousness, that is, they are experienced as impressions characterized by a certain temporal extension, a rhythm of appearance and disappearance, and they are experienced in the forms of protentional anticipation and retentional preservation that go beyond the limits of the impressional present. While the feeling of pleasure in itself, as sensation, essentially lacks any objectifying intentionality, it can nevertheless be associated with intentional representations and thus be mediately related to objects.72

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This is why Husserl distinguishes between a sensation of pleasure that relates to the content of a sensation and another sensation of pleasure that relates to the carrying out of intentional acts, as well as (mediately) to their objects. Regarding the first kind of pleasure, that is, the pleasure of sensation, we can further distinguish between a pleasure related to a presentifying (visual, olfactory, etc.) sensation and another pleasure that relates to a kinesthetic sensation (sensing the movement of one’s own body). This latter feeling of pleasure that accompanies kinesthetic sensations is particularly interesting, for it is a pleasure of sensation that can be related to a drive movement. The pleasure taken in fidgeting by a young child is a good illustration of this. The sensible pleasure associated with the carrying out of intentional experiences and, more specifically, with the rhythm of an activity of representation—­for example, the research work mentioned by Husserl—­can also be characterized as drive-​based in a looser sense. Never lacking in distinctions, Husserl finally also distinguishes between these (multiple kinds of) feelings of sensible pleasure and what he calls “enjoyment” (Genuss). This latter is to be understood as a “state of pleasure” in which the subject explicitly and reflexively turns toward its own feelings of pleasure.73 To recap, there are thus two major types concerning feelings of sensible pleasure, namely, the pleasure of sensation and the pleasure of intentional experience. In both cases, however, we are dealing with an affective form of internal consciousness, that is, of the primal impressional consciousness that lives and feels the immanent temporal contents of consciousness. For Husserl, both sensations and intentional experiences are such immanent contents of internal consciousness. The two types of feelings of sensible pleasure are thus only distinguished by the content of the internal consciousness to which they are linked. What is called the pleasure of “mental experience” is a pleasure taken in producing intentional representations and, through the mediation of these representations, this pleasure extends to their intentional objects as well. The first type of feeling of sensible pleasure, what is called the pleasure “of sensation,” on the other hand, does not imply any kind of intentional representation. There is thus good reason to think that the pleasure arising from drive action must also be understood as a kind of pleasure of sensation, given that it is not the pleasure associated with intentional experience. Is it not in fact the sensation of relaxing drive tension (rather than the drive action itself) that nourishes drive pleasure? In a broad sense, then, both the pleasure taken in a pleasant sensation (whether of a presentifying or kinesthetic nature), and the pleasure linked to the sensation of relaxation brought on by drive action can be designated as forms of pleasure of sensation. The second type of feeling of pleasure, namely, the pleasure “of mental experience,”

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seems to lend itself, in its turn, to another secondary differentiation: it can in fact be either a pleasure associated with the production of intentional representations, or the pleasure associated with the realization of intentional value apperceptions (Wertnehmungen). The realization of such value apperceptions can thus also be a source of pleasure. We must not, however, conclude that value-​bearing objects (Wertgegenstände) are objects of pleasure (Lustobjekte). If this were the case, we would be irremediably drawn into a hedonistic type of ethics in our characterization of moral values. Similarly, if the beauty or any other aesthetic value of an object were nothing more than a mirroring (or projection) of our own subjective liking, then any analytic of the Beautiful would turn into a sentimental aesthetic. It is surely to avoid these, in Husserl’s view, fatal consequences that he is so careful to distinguish in the Studies on the Structure of Consciousness between the forms of a sensible pleasure and the pleasure of “liking” (Wohlgefallen) related to an intentional object bearing value. The liking we feel when we come into contact with an object whose beauty we appreciate is surely something more than a mere “tickling” of our libidinal body. Following Husserl’s choice of terms, let us thus reserve the notion of “pleasure” for characterizing different kinds of sensible pleasure related to drives, sensation, and mental experience. Let us avoid, as recommended by Husserl, making “ joy” (which is rooted in the appreciation of value) a mere sensible pleasure. Let us not, however, forget that sensible pleasure can be taken in the accomplishing of an intentional act of “appreciation” (Gefallen) and even in the resulting experience of joy or “liking” (Wohlgefallen) (which is not sensible, but certainly affective). According to the conception constantly defended by Husserl, experiences of “appreciation” necessarily relate to intentional objects that are characterized by a value predicate. In some cases, they can even relate directly to the values themselves. It is thus impossible for anything entirely worthless, that is, entirely lacking in any positive value, to be “appreciated” (gefallen). Husserl also repeatedly claims that these value predicates originally belong to an object or state of affairs, and they do not, therefore, originate in the subjective relation to the intentional object, as for instance is the case for doxical ontological predicates (of being-​certain, -​questionable, or -​doubtful). The subjective feeling of appreciation (Gefallen) with respect to a value property is thus a sentimental “position-​taking” that is objectively founded on the intentional object of a “value apperception” (Wertnehmung) act,74 an act that is itself based on an intentional perception (Wahrnehmung) of this object. To be sure, value predicates are not simply perceived like the objective properties of a thing; they are actively constituted by the subject on the basis of the perception of these objective

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properties.75 Value properties are thus neither purely objective, nor purely subjective for Husserl; and for this reason they can serve as a textbook case of the Husserlian idea of “constitution.” As objects of a value apperception grounded in a sensible perception, values cannot be purely sensible objects, even though (contrary to logical-​categorical objects of a higher order, for instance) they are immediately apperceived as values (wert-​genommen). The appreciation (Gefallen) that always accompanies such positive value apperceptions is an affective position-​t aking, a feeling with respect to this value. As a feeling of value, it necessarily and immediately relates to a value-​bearing object (Wertgegenstand). What we have here is an intentional feeling for an objective value. This feeling of appreciation is thus essentially distinguished from sensible drive pleasure, the sensible pleasure of sensation, and the sensible pleasure of mental experience, for all three are lacking in intentionality. (At the risk of repeating myself, however, we should once again recall that, just like the realization of intentional acts of representation, the realization of intentional feelings of value can still be accompanied by a sensible pleasure that comes from the internal consciousness of the accomplishment of these intentional experiences.) As well as the sensible feeling of pleasure (in its different types and varieties), and as well as appreciation as an intentional feeling accompanying the apperception of an objective value, there is also, according to Husserl, a third type of positive feeling, namely, what he calls “ joy.” Aside from cases of perversion of the affects, we always rejoice in things that we appreciate. Joy is thus to be understood as an affective reaction with respect to a value-​bearing object of appreciation or liking—­appreciation or liking that are already themselves (intentional) feelings. A joyous reaction to the aesthetic liking with which we appreciate the beauty of a landscape is not obligatory, but when such a feeling of joy does overcome us, it necessarily presupposes a landscape that we like.76 Joy is thus an “enthusiasm,” a “delight” brought on by an object that we appreciate and that we sentimentally feel to be laden with positive value.77 Similarly to the intentional experience of appreciation, joy is an intentional feeling that should be carefully distinguished from sensible pleasure. Joy and appreciation also have in common that they are feelings related to an existing intentional object. Only an object bearing true (wirklich) value can be “appreciated”; similarly, we can only truly rejoice in the actual existence or reality of an object or state of affairs. Unless we believe that they truly exist, fictitious or only possible objects of mere representation, imagination, or wishing can, strictly speaking, neither be appreciated nor lead us to rejoice in our hearts. Imagination and dreams through which we attempt, according to Freud, to realize our wishes, produce pleasure, but not a feeling of liking or joy.

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Despite their related essences, however, intentional feelings of appreciation and joy do not necessarily go hand in hand. Appreciation is certainly an essential aspect of any apperception of value, but the state of joy aroused by the value-​bearing object does not necessarily and automatically belong to the act of appreciation.78 We can, but do not have to rejoice over the value-​bearing object of an appreciation.79 According to Husserl, this can be explained by the fact that appreciation, as a sentimental position-​taking, necessarily belongs to the consciousness of the value-​bearing object, whereas joy is an affective state that results from (“is activated” by) an optional reaction to the object posited as deserving of appreciation. Neither an objective feeling (like appreciation), nor a subjective feeling (like the different kinds of sensible pleasure), joy is a reflexive feeling or, rather, a feeling that is reflected upon. Isn’t rejoicing about something expressed reflexively in many natural languages, for instance, the French se réjouir or the German sich freuen? As an affective reaction to a value-​bearing object that deserves to be appreciated, joy has at its disposal not only the possibility of growing or “increasing” (sich steigern), but also the possibility of “spreading out” (sich ausbreiten) or “radiating” (ausstrahlen) beyond the specific occasion or object that gives rise to it.80 With an undisguised pleasure, Husserl describes to us how the affective state of joy can “transmit itself, that a good mood [gute Stimmung] makes everything appear in a beautiful light and inclines us to see something to rejoice about in everything.”81 Joy is contagious, and Husserl attempts to properly render such an all-​encompassing and expansive joy by making reference to the notion of “mood” (affective atmosphere: Stimmung). This type of affective mood has some points of similarity with a background representational consciousness or horizon. The idea of a mood’s capacity to “spread out” (Ausbreitung), however, diverges from the spatial model of a horizonal consciousness by its strong temporal dimension. Not only do moods expand into an environment, they also last—­even if the circumstances of their awakening have passed. Good news in the morning mail can transform the whole day into a good one: “The delight [Entzücken] related to the object . . . exhausts itself, I no longer live in it. On the other hand, it may possibly live on in a cheerful mood [heiteren Stimmung] that is an after-​effect [etwas Nachgewirktes], a feeling spreading over the content of consciousness, coloring all objects with its light and simultaneously making one receptive to any stimulation of pleasure [Lustreize] (and respectively non-​receptive to unpleasant stimulation).”82 While we can only properly rejoice in an intentional object laden with value, joy and the joyful mood still have some kind of resemblance to an “enjoyment” (Genuβ) related to sensations of sensible pleasure. In both cases, what we have is a sentimental state resulting from an affective

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reaction, that is, from a secondary turn—­in the first case, toward an object worthy of appreciation, and in the second, toward a sensation of pleasure. Furthermore, it is not only imaginable, but quite easy to establish through phenomenological descriptions that an intentional feeling like joy is usually accompanied by sensations of sensible pleasure. If the realization of any intentional representation can already be a source of sensible pleasure (for internal consciousness), this is certainly even more so the case for experiences of appreciation, and to the highest degree for states or moods of joy!83 We have only to think of the testimony of mystics or, for instance, of the statue of Saint Theresa by Bernini! Such examples intuitively testify to a celestial joy bringing about a state of bodily ecstasy. One must simply guard against wanting to make the joy or appreciation of a value-​bearing object dependent on the feeling of such a sensible pleasure. Husserl’s prosaic common sense thus remains justified when he writes: “The liveliness of liking is something else, however, than the intensity found at work in sensuality.”84 The difference between the state of aesthetic enthusiasm and sensual joy does not only (or even essentially) come from the normative difference between the respective values of the mind and sensibility; it also comes from the difference between the circumstances that lend themselves to the awakening of these two types of positive feeling. Joy and enjoyment do not happen to us in the same way. While it usually suffices to turn toward a value-​bearing object to arouse a feeling of liking and even a state of joy, the arousal of sensible pleasure often remains stubbornly beyond the power of the subject to control. As opposed to appreciation, liking, and joy, sensible pleasure is difficult to instrumentalize. For, while pleasure is certainly what we desire, and we do everything in our power to obtain it, it still always arises as an extra and sometimes unexpectedly. This is already the case for primitive drive action, like a suckling infant, in which the sensation of pleasure, as we have already seen, is necessarily based on the memory (of circumstances) of prior satisfaction. Even in the case of the fidgeting baby put forward by Husserl, a case in which drive pleasure is the direct result of repeating a bodily movement that seems to be addressed to no one (?) and to have no goal other than simple drive-​ based doing, drive pleasure is at risk of leading to fatigue and boredom. This is even more so the case for other, much more sophisticated activities, without any external goal—­what we call “games.” For even when we play “for the sake of pleasure,” as we have all experienced, pleasure does not always show up. Sensible pleasure thus equally eludes any intentional representation and any practical strategy aiming to make it the immediate and exclusive goal of an action. If this is true, then hedonism falls on hard times, and not only for moral reasons.

6

The Freudian Subject

Is it possible then, thought Pierre, that there lives a human creature in this common world of every-​days, whose whole history may be told in little less than two-​score words, and yet embody in that smallness a fathomless fountain of ever-​welling mystery? Is it possible, after all, that spite of bricks and shaven faces, this world we live in is brimmed with wonders, and I and all mankind, beneath our garb of common-​placeness, conceal enigmas that the stars themselves, and perhaps the highest seraphim can not resolve? —­Herman Melville, Pierre, or the Ambiguities What no one can grasp is the inescapable. —­Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature The most striking distinction between the erotic life of antiquity and our own no doubt lies in the fact that the ancients laid the stress upon the instinct [Trieb] itself, whereas we emphasize its object. The ancients glorified the instinct [Trieb] and were prepared on its account to honour even an inferior object; while we despise the instinctual activity [Triebbetätigung] and find excuses for it only in the merits of the object. —­Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

Freud’s conception of the way drive energy comes to the fore or is expressed (Repräsentanz) in the “mental apparatus” changes very little from the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895)1 to his last writings, such as New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-​Analysis (1933).2 What does change considerably, however, is the articulation of the psyche into an Unconscious (Ucs) system and a Preconscious-​Conscious (Pcs-​C s) system, as well as the analysis of the subjective elements at work in these systems. In broaching the problematic of the Freudian subject, it is thus necessary to 255

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respect the distinction between the “first topography” and the “second topography”—­even if an unquestionable continuity will then have to be emphasized here as well. While the famous chapter 7 of the 1900 Interpretation of Dreams 3 is undoubtedly the key text for the first topography after the 1895 Project, I prefer to focus directly on a text that is, in many ways, its mature realization, namely, the essay on The Unconscious from 1915.4 Our reading of this central work will further be completed with observations taken from related texts, more particularly from the article on “Repression”5 —­a text that was not only written at the same time, but that Freud, as is well known, originally planned to publish in the same volume on “Metapsychology.” Regarding the second topography that came into play from 1920 onward, I will prioritize The Ego and the Id (1923)6 as well as the illuminating Lecture 31 from the New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-​Analysis (1933). Yet, given that our primary interest here is the emergence of a subjective element in the Freudian psyche, and only subsequently its differentiation into an “ego” (Ich), a “pleasure-​ego” (Lust- ​Ich) and a “reality-​ego” (Real-​Ich), an “ideal ego” (Idealich) and an “ego ideal” (Ichideal), or even a “superego” (Überich), the above texts explaining the two topographies are not sufficient for delineating our path. We will thus have to return briefly to the Freudian drive theory, and more particularly, to the early writings from which ample inspiration has already been drawn in part 1 of this work: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905),7 Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915),8 and On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914).9 In fact, subjectivity first emerges in the experience of drives in Freud’s thought and, more particularly, through the separation of the drive organism into an interior and an exterior guided by the criterion of pleasure and unpleasure. I have already emphasized that this self as drive, evidenced for instance in autoerotism, precedes the narcissistic drive investment of the ego. Thus, it is uncertain that the Cs system from the first topography is necessarily egoical in nature, or that its way of protecting itself through repression from undesirable desires (because they give rise to unpleasure) is necessarily the work of an ego. When examining the different hypotheses put forward by Freud to explain the (solipsistic or intersubjective) constitution of an ego, we will also have to bear in mind that, before taking on the role of a subject, the ego has always already been the object of drive investment. This is far more important from a philosophical standpoint than finding out whether the activity of an ego-​subject actually all takes place on a conscious level (which is put into doubt by the second topography). Consequently, the central role played by the process of identification in the constitution of the ego-​object will be greatly emphasized. This new approach, clearly presupposed in

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Freud’s second topography, is in fact strongly prefigured not only in the 1914 work on narcissism, but also in the 1916 work on “Mourning and Melancholia.”10 We will thus have to consider whether there is also room for a melancholic model of ego-​object constitution beyond the narcissistic one, as well as what the difference might be between these two models. While the status of a drive-​subject and of the conscious ego-​object is already an issue, the status of a subject of desire is even more problematic. Hence, before broaching the way in which the second topography depicts the emergence of an “ego” and a “superego” from a drive-​based “id,” the status of “desire” (Wunsch) and how it is distinguished from drives will have to be specified. In other words, we will have to briefly revisit how drives are expressed (Repräsentanz) in the (conscious or unconscious) psyche as representations (Vorstellungen) and “affects” (or a “quota of affect” [Affektbetrag] or even “feelings” [Empfindungen]).11 What exactly Vorstellungen and affects are, as well as what each contributes to the realization of drive energy, will have to be clarified. The extended meditation on Schopenhauer’s metaphysics in chapter 3, and more specifically on his conception of the Darstellung of the will in the dual form of a Vorstellung and an affect, will be very helpful in this regard. In Freud’s theory of repression, we will further encounter something equivalent to Schopenhauer’s thesis on the incomprehensibility of the will and the limited power of a subject that must be satisfied with an (always problematic) mastery of Vorstellungen. Similarly, in Freud it is never the drive itself, but only its articulation in the psyche as a form of desire that lends itself to repression. Yet, while our central question in this chapter is about the status of the subject of desire according to Freud, we will have to go beyond the issue of the control the ego and superego attempt to exercise over desire. In the end, we will have to raise the much more fundamental question regarding the way in which the subject originally, and often unconsciously, constitutes its desires, prior to any ulterior corrective intervention. As will become evident, in Freud’s entire oeuvre and from one topography to the other, he attributes the task of this—­each time singular—­articulation and construction of desire (whose multiple avatars do not exclude a certain rigidity) to “ fantasies” or phantasms (Phantasien). These phantasms are at the root of the proliferation and creativity of unconscious desires as they are expressed (or betrayed) in dreams, perverse acts, or even neurotic symptoms. It is only with the theory of phantasms that Freud’s questioning into the status of the desiring subject comes into its own. For the most fundamental question is not whether the ego is an object or a subject, but rather whether the desiring subject has the power to direct its desires through its phantasmic constructions, or is instead only a mere effect of phantasms that overcome it from beyond itself. Since all desire

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for Freud comes from the unconscious, this latter hypothesis amounts to saying that the desiring subject is not only distinct from any “ego,” but is in fact what Lacan calls a subject of the unconscious—­keeping in mind that this unconscious is not originally subjective, and even less solipsistic.

Representation, Affect, and Desire: Consciousness, the Unconscious, and Repression (First Topography) From the genetic point of view that predominates in all of Freud’s works, drives—­which have their “source” in biological processes—­have to enter into the human psyche to become “desire.” On the other hand, everything we know about drives is derived from their articulation in the psyche as desire. This is the case for humans at least, in whom drives only manifest themselves in the psyche12 and, what is more, only become truly active as desire. It is thus tempting to claim that the pure drive is nothing but a kind of noumenal Thing-​in-​itself or Schopenhauerian “will” that is supposed to explain mental drive phenomena, in other words, desires. As such, the pure drive would be a merely theoretical construction or even, according to Freud himself, a psychoanalytic “mythology” inspired by the concern of providing a natural scientific foundation for the uncertain science of the unconscious. This picture, however, is not satisfactory, and Freud himself was never fully convinced by it. For what fails to immediately and separately manifest itself is not, for that reason, necessarily devoid of any kind of phenomenal reality. Following Freud, to lend phenomenological legitimacy to the drive concept, we can thus try to bring to the fore the insistent and irresistible tension of certain inclinations, such as those that can be observed in behavior tied to addiction (sexual or other). Yet, as was the case in part 1 of this work, we can also try to legitimize the Freudian drive concept through a metaphysical reflection on the status of a dunamis whose actual (and not only potential) reality is not to be confounded with its transitory actualization. According to this reading, the drive is an actual but inhibited force or a virtual force—­never observable in itself, but manifest in its particular mode of actualization or in its way of becoming active as a form of energeia. For Freud, the drive concept draws its legitimacy both from its rootedness in biological theories and from mental phenomena, like desire, characterized by a great tension or “energetic” charge that gives them an irrepressible “dynamism.” As such, in Freud the “topical” question concerning the mental location of drives arises well after questions

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concerning the way drives enter into the psyche, how we experience them, and how they work. Regarding experience, our reading of Schopenhauer has supported the conviction that it is our bodily sensations and emotional affects—­not only of pressure or tension, but also of release and discharge—­that provide the most immediate and reliable information on how the drive processes that inhabit and animate us unfold. For Freud as well, amidst all our lived experience, it is the “affects” and “sensations” that are most “proximate” to drives. And it is this proximity, according to him, that explains why we have so little grasp of our affects and why we can, at most, “suppress” (Unterdrückung),13 but never “repress” (Verdrängung), and even less totally annihilate them. More specifically, “affects” are the mental translation of “processes of discharge” (Abfuhrvorgänge) in drives whose “final manifestations” arise as “sensations” (Empfindungen).14 For Freud, however, the reason behind this proximity of affects to drives is due less to their phenomenological character (of passivity, immanence, and immediacy) than to the “quantitative” or intensive character that they share with drives—­which are also essentially defined by their quantity of energetic force. How, then, are we best to understand the way drives express themselves in “ideas” or representations (Vorstellungen)? Does the agreement we have found between Schopenhauer’s and Freud’s respective conceptions of affects also hold for their conceptions of Vorstellungen? Does the Freudian drive require translation into a mental representation for the same reasons as Schopenhauer’s will? As long as we limit ourselves to considering conscious representations alone, there is good reason to assume that Freud follows in the line of Schopenhauer—­even if Freud pays less attention to, and shows less interest in, the different forms and modes of representation. For Freud, conscious representations are “thoughts” related to objects. Yet, given that these thoughts are strongly invested by drives, they are never to be understood as simple intentional representations in the sense of Brentano or Husserl. While they are indeed related to intentional objects, these thoughts are Vorstellungen overflowing with drive energy. As such, they represent their objects as desirable, that is, as objects one wants to take hold of and possess. In other words, for Freud, these mental representations—­invested with the tension of a drive that is felt on an emotional and, more often than not, a bodily level—­are (conscious) desires. There is much reason to think that unconscious representations or desires (“wishful impulses”—­Wunschregungen)15 are characterized by a similar relation to a desirable object—­even if their mode of representation turns out to be different. For what a drive gains from its investment in two kinds of representation (conscious and unconscious) is also what

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it naturally and originally lacks, that is, the anchoring of the realization process for reaching its immanent “goal” in a specific transcendent object. Does this mean that unconscious desires, much like conscious ones, give rise to mental representations of their object? How are we then to understand the way this desirable object is represented? Most often, Freud is content to point out a double “registration” (Niederschrift) of representations in the conscious and unconscious mental systems,16 as well as observing that our greater familiarity with consciousness spontaneously leads us, in our psychological description of the unconscious, to make use of terms that have shown themselves to be useful in the analysis of conscious desires and representations, for instance: “ideas, purposes, resolutions and so on.”17 This opens the door (and widely so) to the many misunderstandings still circulating on the nature of the Freudian unconscious. A more careful reading of Freud’s works,18 however, brings to the fore that the way unconscious representations or desires relate to their objects differs radically from the representations of intentional consciousness. In contrast to the conscious mental system, which is entirely devoted to the task of representing real objects through “perceptions,” for Freud the unconscious makes use of “memory,” 19 more particularly, of memories preserved as “memory-​traces” (Erinnerungsspuren).20 As such, the objects of unconscious desires can neither be assimilated to objects of perception, nor even to absent objects made present by the mental processes of an imaginative or hallucinatory consciousness. It is thus reasonable to understand unconscious representations or desires as the effect of a reinvesting of signs or traces left in our unconscious by previous successful encounters with real objects, rather than as intentional Vorstellungen that remain unknown to us. According to this interpretation, unconscious desires are the result of a reinvesting of traces or signs of previously satisfied drives with a current drive. The term “sign” is particularly germane here, not only because unconscious representations are based on “traces,” but also because they refer to absent and lost objects. What is important to understand is that, far from being mental representations of an object similar to conscious intentional Vorstellungen, unconscious representations represent through substitution, that is, like a signifier representing its signified. According to this new reading of Freud, the object “represented” by an unconscious desire is thus always the signified of a signifier. The “things” to which the most primitive unconscious desires are related, that is, “thing-​[re]presentations” (Sachvorstellungen), are thus things that are merely signified, and signified by signs that are not yet words. Even in the case of unconscious desires arising from the (secondary) repression of

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(pre-​)conscious desires, we are still dealing with “word-​[re]presentations” (Wortvorstellungen) that are treated as representations of things by the primary processes of the unconscious.21 If all unconscious representations of an object of desire do in fact have the structure of signification rather than mental intentionality, this does not necessarily imply that this signification is always linguistic in nature. It is, however, true that thing and word representations are intimately connected in our unconscious (without consequently being confuted, as is the case in psychotics). Toward the end of this chapter, we will further see that unconscious desires or unconscious signifying representations also lend themselves to phantasmic elaboration, in which the parts played by the mental work of imagination, narrative or story-​telling, and linguistic mechanisms are often difficult to differentiate. Let us thus retain that, for Freud, unconscious desires in their most primitive form are the result of the trace of a previous object of satisfaction being invested with a current drive impulse (Triebreiz). If such an unconscious desire still lends itself to some kind of mental experience, far from taking on the form of a mental Vorstellung of an intentional object, this experience can be characterized, at most, as an affective feeling of tension or discharge, secretly oriented toward a missing object of pleasure through the mechanism of a substitution through signs. In Freud’s first topography, it is repression (Verdrängung) that not only confirms, but also truly produces the splintering of the mental apparatus into two separate systems, namely, the Preconscious-​Conscious (Pcs-​C s) and the Unconscious (Ucs).22 The reason why two systems rather than three are referred to here is because the Preconscious is a form of latent consciousness that does not essentially differ from the system of Consciousness in the way it works. As such, unlike the Unconscious, it is never completely “alien” to Consciousness.23 For Freud, what is preconscious is always “capable of becoming conscious” (bewusstseinsfähig).24 Even if (secondary) repression operates on the border between the Ucs and the Pcs-​Cs, and consists in pushing a conscious representation back into the Ucs, we should not therefore conclude that there is a one-​way relation between the two systems, or that we are faced with a real mental dualism. From Freud’s genetic perspective, far from being an autonomous and original mental system, consciousness (to which he generally attributes the task of “perceiving” real objects for which we have a name or a “word”) is nothing more than an emanation from the Ucs. From an evolutionary biological perspective, as dear to Freud as it was (we have seen) to Schopenhauer, consciousness is the result of a refinement in the functions of our brain and nervous system. Without going into the details of this theory, it is also what gives credibility to the fundamental hypothesis of psychoanalysis according to which the Ucs is constantly sending emissaries into our Pcs-​Cs.

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This latter system thus always contains a number of “derivatives” (Abkömmlinge)25 of the Ucs system. Despite the permeability of consciousness and its openness to immigrants from the Ucs, the Pcs-​Cs system nonetheless focuses on its (if not autonomous, at least specific) function of perceiving reality. Already in part 1 of this work, the nature of this function of consciousness was specified as a “secondary process” (Sekundärvorgang) directed by the “reality principle.”26 The rules regulating the specific way the Pcs-​C s system works also allow this system to “defend” itself against any disturbance of its proper function by the derivatives of unconscious desire. Among the many defense mechanisms of consciousness, the most radical is repression, for it consists in sending undesirable immigrants back to their country of origin, namely, the Ucs. We should thus remember that the relations between consciousness and the unconscious in Freud are much more complicated than is often allowed. For in some sense, consciousness has an undeniably privileged position when it comes to our access to the unconscious.27 As Freud often says, it is the “gaps” (Lücken) in the continuity of the flow of consciousness—­momentary forgetfulness, slips of the tongue, unsuccessful acts, witty remarks, and so forth—­that call for, and give us the most tangible proof of the existence of an unconscious. In a certain sense, one can thus claim that the existence of the unconscious is called for by the hypothesis of a “meaning” and coherence of consciousness (of its “Sinn und Zusammenhang”).28 Yet, in another sense, consciousness is no more than a kind of epiphenomenon or product of the unconscious, according to Freud. While consciousness surely cares more than the unconscious does about logical consistency, negation, and temporal continuity, the fact remains that consciousness works in a much simpler and therefore more predictable way. For Freud, reducing the unconscious to a mere receptacle for the refuse of consciousness would be to undermine its originality and creativity.29 Not only is the content of the unconscious never reducible to the desires repressed by and from consciousness; to the contrary, it is the unremitting pressure of unconscious desires on consciousness that explains the great amount of energy which consciousness has to expend on repression. It is also impossible to understand the fate of repressed desires if we fail to take into account the fact that the Ucs and Pcs-​Cs systems are part of one and the same psyche, allowing for crossings in both directions and rendering illusory any hermetic closing of borders by the work of “censorship.”30 If the border were hermetically closed, consciousness would have nothing to repress; moreover, it would be unimaginable for immigrants, repressed back into their country of origin by consciousness, to hurriedly attempt a return to their chosen land. For Freud,

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repression is effectively inseparable from the “return of the repressed,”31 and this back-​and-​forth movement offers further clarification on the distinction between conscious and unconscious representations or desires and how each respectively works. While consciousness is used to managing conscious representations or desires without worrying about their place (“topography”) of origin in the Ucs, it nonetheless powerfully mobilizes itself against any desire that threatens its coherence and normal function according to the rules of the secondary process. The “unpleasure” it feels is therefore not measured according to the pleasure principle of unconscious desires, but rather according to the pleasure of working properly in the service of its central task, namely, the correct perception of reality. This is why Freud’s first topography has no need to have recourse to the ego as repressive element, or to the moral ideals that inspire it. As such, Freud avoids the prickly question as to where the ego would get the energy to oppose itself to the unconscious desires, saturated with drive energy, that assail it. One might say that consciousness turns undesirable desires back much in the same way as a teacher kicks disturbing students out of the classroom. Like bad students, however, once these repressed desires have been shown the proverbial door and pushed back into the Ucs, far from wasting away, they replenish their strength and forge new alliances with other outcasts of the system that regulates normal life. Disguised and hidden amidst their new associates, but tormented by drive forces that oppress them, repressed desires urgently seek realization through the detour of neurotic symptoms. While emphasizing the fact that repression mainly acts on representations (Vorstellungen) (and not affects), it is clearer now why Freud nonetheless presents it to us as a drive “vicissitude” (Triebschiksal). All repression in fact involves the divesting or investing of conscious representations by drives. When a representation is repressed from consciousness by consciousness, the latter withdraws the energetic investment from the former. This divesting by the Pcs-​Cs system generally leads to the forsaken representation being reinvested by the Ucs (from which it has usually originated). This is why Freud repeatedly reminds us that the repression of a conscious desire is as much a question of a force of attraction, coming from the unconscious, as it is of a force of rejection from consciousness.32 However, to this force rejecting an undesirable representation is also added, in consciousness, the force of an alternative investment tied to a new representation that better suits the nature of consciousness and allows it to function normally. In essence, the force mobilized by conscious repression goes into a massive counter-​investment or “anticathexis” (Gegenbesetzung) of a new representation that is not only substituted for the previous one, but also prevents its return into consciousness.33

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This mechanism of repression by consciousness is called “secondary” or even “after-​pressure” (Nachdrängen) by Freud34 because it abandons a conscious representation to its reinvestment by the Ucs. This secondary repression or “repression proper” (eigentliche Verdrängung) presupposes a “primal repression” (Urverdrängung)35 that constitutes the Ucs system, that is, the aggregate of representations or desires that have never entered into consciousness. Without this primal repression, there would be no element of the psyche capable of receiving (and attracting into its web of associations) desires that have crossed the border of consciousness only to then be repressed by it. Even if nothing is ever really rejected in this primal repression, this is once again a case of drive vicissitude, namely, of the attachment of drives to Sachvorstellungen. Similarly to secondary repression, primal repression thus involves drive investment and divestment. In primal repression, the drive relinquishes its complete mobility in order to link itself to the memory traces of previously satisfied drives. Primal repression is thus the process through which drives give birth to unconscious desires capable of assimilating desires that have been divested by consciousness. Based on previous associations between unconscious desires, the Ucs builds new alliances and creates phantasmic representations from an entire network of unconscious desires. Yet, what then happens to affects, particularly in the case of secondary repression? It goes without saying that, since affects are feelings related to processes of tension and release in drives, they cannot be redeployed out of consciousness in the same way as repressed representations. Strictly speaking, then, there is no such thing as the repression of affects, nor are there unconscious affects or feelings.36 But given the intimate connection between affects and representations, the repression of representations cannot leave associated affects untouched. In Freud, many different scenarios are offered of the possible consequences of representation repression for affects: the affect might be transposed onto the substitute representation, transformed into its opposite (for instance, love into hate), “suppressed” (unterdrückt), or transformed into “anxiety” (Angst).37 It is relatively unimportant whether this anxiety is to be understood as a kind of self-​poisoning of the primal affect (Freud’s first theory) or as a sign of the danger linked to the repressed representation or to a traumatic memory (Freud’s second theory), for in both cases we are dealing with a feeling of anxiety that is intimately linked to the process of repression (as its consequence or its activation). All our desires, both unconscious and conscious, are thus caught up in the filaments of a web of representations and affects that is constantly being reconfigured through mechanisms of association and separation, signifying substitution and metonymical shifts. If a subject is

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to be granted to these desires, far from behaving like an ego, this desiring subject in Freud’s first topography seems to be conflated with the individual psyche composed of the Ucs and Pcs-​C s systems. These two systems of mental expression (Repräsentanz) are based in drive processes whose bodily nature has been repeatedly emphasized. At the origin of the mental workings of unconscious and conscious desires lies a bodily organism that simultaneously relates to the different “aims” of its virtual drive forces and to their “source,” that is, to itself. Distinguished in part 1 of this work from the narcissistic “ego,” this “self” as drive thus constitutes the most original form of subjectivity in Freud’s first topography. To call this pre-​egoical and bodily self a subject, however, only makes sense if this self is already articulated to a certain extent. It still remains to be shown that this drive-​based self at least relates, if only potentially, to its own unity and, as such, opposes itself to what it experiences as a non-​self that does not depend on it. In other words, the concept of a drive-​based self is only justified to the extent that partial drives already imply a distinction between the interior and exterior of the individual organ or organism, and prefigure the unification of a self that is originally dispersed into as many fragments as there are organs of pleasure in this organism. How does the self as drive relate simultaneously to itself and to objects from which it distinguishes itself by its need or lack? To understand this, a brief review of what we learned in part 1 of this work, more specifically, in our reading of the Three Essays and Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, will suffice.

The Drive-​Based Self, the Modalities of the Ego, and the Narcissistic Constitution of the Subject as Object To begin with, it needs to be demonstrated that even partial (oral and anal) sexual drives imply a subjective element capable of differentiating between self and non-​self. Keeping in mind that this primitive self is so far nothing more than the way an organ of pleasure relates to itself through what has been called the self-​a ffection of drives, the non-​self can only become manifest to the self through heteroaffection. The organ of the living libidinal body must thus already be able to intimately experience the difference between what affects it internally versus externally. This sentient and bodily lived experience immediately results in a different attitude or reaction, according to Freud: a reaction of muscular mobilization, through which the libidinal organ withdraws from unpleasant external stimuli, is never attempted in the case of an internal (drive-​based!)

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stimulation.38 As such, the organ of pleasure not only feels whether the state of tension or disharmony it finds itself in following a particular affection is internal or external, it also instinctively knows that it lacks the power to avoid or flee stimuli from an internal source by any suitable behavior. While unable to avoid or suspend an experience of internal drive stimulation, this organ still has a certain ability to manage its pleasure, that is, to transform by its own means the unpleasure of its state of drive tension into a feeling of pleasure. The autoerotism of what Freud very aptly calls “organ-​pleasure” is precisely an organ of pleasure’s capacity to stop the unpleasure caused by an internal drive affection and to give itself pleasure thanks to an appropriate functioning (usually freed from its biological purpose). The case is entirely different when speaking of heteroaffection by an object from the external world. The organ or organism can certainly flee or defend itself against this object, but it does not have the power to force the object to give it pleasure. Whether objects from the external world lend themselves or not to its pleasure depends entirely on them and not on it. This is why Freud again claims that the exterior world is experienced by the bodily, drive-​based self as “indifferent” (gleichgültig) to its thirst for pleasure.39 The distinction between the interiority of the drive-​self and the exteriority of the non-​self of the external world is thus already outlined at the level of the most primitive bodily sensations and in the twofold sense of stimulus control and mastery of pleasure. In part 1 of this work, I emphasized the fact that this distinction between drive-​self and external worldly non-​self is much more explicit in the case of anal drives than oral drives. In the oral stage, the “source” and “object” of the drive, that is, the mouth and the breast (or thumb), are so suited to each other that both aspire, almost spontaneously, to melt into each other. Since the “aim” of the oral drive consists in “incorporating” its object, the latter quickly loses any kind of autonomy. Far from being the external cause of the oral drive, the breast is also incapable of manifesting its belonging to any external reality separate from the mouth by its own nature or configuration. Its independent and separate existence is only brought to light by its absence or refusal. Yet, these events of the breast resisting the mouth’s pleasure are quickly compensated through autoerotic oral paths that substitute a part of one’s own body for the absent breast. In contrast, in the anal stage one finds oneself from the outset in a state of separation and even definitive loss, rather than fusion. It should be recalled, though, that the decisive element which activates the rupture between self and non-​self in the anal drive is not so much the experience of expelling intestinal content as the experience of the control that others

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claim to exercise over this process. The original non-​self that the anal drive comes up against is not the feces expelled from one’s own body and into the external world, but rather the requirement or, as Lacan puts it, the “demand” of the other.40 The non-​self encountered in the anal drive is thus immediately placed under the sign of others who want to regulate anal pleasure and require feces as an obligatory gift followed by a reward. As such, the expelled intestinal content becomes a transitional object, imprisoned in a relation of twofold exchange. The pleasure of expelling intestinal content, that is, of attaining the “goal” of the anal drive, gives way to the pleasure of “mastering” this process in order to please others. This altering of the original anal pleasure is then quickly followed by a child’s discovery of the new and equally strong pleasure of refusing to deliver this gift on schedule and of opposing oneself to other similar demands from one’s educators. In this way, the non-​self is not only affected by a factor of exteriority or indifference to the self’s pleasure, but also of hostility. In anality, much more decisively than in orality, the drive enters into a relation of ambivalence with respect to the non-​self of the external world. Anality thus paves the way for the reversal of feelings of love into feelings of hate, so common in genital sexuality. (Even if orality, with its goal of incorporating the drive object, is certainly not entirely devoid of an aggressive component, we still have good reason to exercise caution with respect to Melanie Klein’s thesis on an original oral ambivalence.) The minimal condition of possibility for this self constituted of partial drives to transition into an “ego” is that the self of the libidinal organism acquire the new experience of its own unity or totality. If we hold ourselves to a certain conceptual rigor, despite experiencing itself as different from a non-​self, the self of partial drives can thus never be called an ego. But can a bodily or drive-​based experience of the ego (that is, of a total self) then really be said to exist, or should the ego not rather be understood as the object of a sui generis representation (Vorstellung)? Even though the second option is clearly preferable, justice must be done to those parts of Freud’s works that support the first option. The most promising candidate for taking on the role of a drive-​ego seems to be the ego of what Freud calls “ego-​drives” (Ichtriebe). The first Freudian drive theory assimilates these ego-​drives to nonsexual drives for self-​preservation. The self of self-​preservation is a type of ego because it concerns the living organism as a whole in its relation to the circumstances of the surrounding world inasmuch as they are favorable or unfavorable to its development and survival. The external world is thus experienced by this organism as a non-​self to which its own behavior is intimately tied and on which it depends, but over which it has only very limited control. To be sure, adaptation to the circumstances of this external world neither requires

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the organism to represent the world to itself, nor to represent itself and its present state to itself. The relation between self and non-​self in these vital or instinctive behaviors remains a purely drive-​based one in which the experience of a need and the motor behavior of the organism are generally not dissociated from each other. However, it should be admitted that, even if the self of this organism is in fact a unity and maybe even a totality, and even if its behavior is in fact only drive-​based or instinctive, it would be pushing things to attribute an “ego” to this organism—­an ego that would worry about the organism and care for it. Despite Freud, a first manifestation of the ego as drive, and Freud’s naming of this ego as the “real ego” or “reality-​ego” (Real-​Ich), is thus crossed out. Yet, nothing speaks against understanding this reality-​ego as a non-​drive-​based element, capable of managing the individual organism’s interests in relation to external reality. What then can be said about the “pleasure-​ego” (Lust- ​Ich), the counterpart of the reality-​ego in Freudian terminology? Based on our previous reflections, the pleasure-​ego would not be the self of a partial sexual drive, but rather of a sexual drive seeking a pleasure that involves the organism as a whole. As such, the possibility of calling the self of partial sexual drives a “pleasure-​ego” is also crossed out. If we still, at all costs, want to save the notion of a drive-​based ego, the only possibility left is to identify it with the self of a genital sexual drive, seeking a diverse and varied pleasure, but involving the libidinal body in its entirety. The libidinal ego would therefore be the “total ego” (Gesamt-​Ich) distinguished in Instincts and Their Vicissitudes from the reality-​ego and the pleasure-​ ego.41 Yet, even leaving aside questions (addressed in depth in part 1 of this work) concerning the Freudian conception of a grouping together of partial sexual drives under the primacy of genital sexually, it is once again uncertain whether this total ego has its genesis in a drive, albeit a genital one. A much simpler and more convincing way of understanding the total ego is to make it an element of the psyche that integrates within itself the ways in which the reality-​ego manages its relation to the external world (under the rule of the reality principle) and the pleasure-​ego manages its relation to pleasure (under the rule of the pleasure principle). In all three cases, we understand the way the ego works, but we are still in the dark as to how it was constituted. All we know is that drives are insufficient for explaining this constitution in all cases. Furthermore, drives are also insufficient for explaining the specific way in which each of these modalities of the ego works and how they relate to each other. We should recall, however, that each form of the ego put forward in Freud’s first topography is a managerial one. We should also recall that it is better to treat the reality-​ego and the pleasure-​ego as opposites, than

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to try to derive one from the other. For though the reality-​ego manages the individual’s relation to the external world, this management is not insensitive to the search for pleasure. The reality-​ego thus also has the task of reminding the pleasure-​ego of the demands of the external world and of the inherent dangers of a pleasure that finds satisfaction only in imaginary or hallucinatory objects. On its part, the pleasure-​ego tries to bend the relationship between the reality-​ego and the external world to suit its own preferences. For instance, it quickly distinguishes between real objects that it considers to be favorable or unfavorable. In trying to incorporate the former and reject the latter, the pleasure-​ego interprets the reality principle in an entirely personal way, quickly identifying reality not only with what is indifferent, but also with what resists or is even hostile to its immediate thirst for pleasure. In contrast to the very conservative workings of the pleasure-​ego, set by the first experiences of infancy, the reality-​ego is gifted with a great plasticity and capacity to evolve. As has already been mentioned, it is true that the pleasure-​ego has recourse to a more explicit and vivid experience of the non-​self of the external world in anal than in oral sexuality. Still, even the most developed pleasure-​ego remains too blinded by its own search for pleasure to be able to take up an objective attitude toward the world. The reality-​ego, on the other hand, is used to taking into account the circumstances of the external world in caring for its own survival; as such, it learns more easily to take up a disinterested position on the potential pleasure offered by the external world in order to explore the world for itself and in itself. Through all these diverse modalities and functions, the ego remains a principal of the psyche that manages and guides drive investment into different objects. This means that the ego is already in place when the need for its guiding function is felt. Yet, how has the ego been put into this place? If we exclude, as has already been done repeatedly, the possibility that a drive or drive-​based self can give birth by itself to the ego, it is still entirely possible for the ego to be the object of a drive investment. Before taking on the role of a manager-​subject with respect to drives, the ego must always already have been the object of a drive investment. Freud’s conception of a narcissistic origin of the ego fits well with this view. But it is questionable whether the theory of narcissism can answer all of our questions. To begin with, it seems to leave the question concerning the constitution of this narcissistically invested ego-​object unresolved. Furthermore, it raises a host of new questions: Is narcissism really a case of investment by a drive that is sui generis, and is the ego really a drive object? And if it turns out to be an object of representation (Vorstellung) rather than a drive object, how are we to understand the constitution of this representation of the ego? If drives are not sufficient, is it possible that

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the individual organism will not be sufficient either? These are cumbersome questions and ones that certainly play a role in Freud’s elaboration of his second topography. In this second topography, rather than trying to explain the genesis of the ego from drives and unconscious and conscious desires, Freud lays out a veritable theory of the subject from which a new theory on how drives and desires work is derived. He also allows for a conception of a subject or person whose different elements are never finished having it out with each other and, further, for the important role of others in the constitution of the subject. According to the doctrine of the first topography on the mental apparatus, all forms or elements of the ego share a common capacity to lend themselves to a twofold experience: the ego is lived internally as a subject and represented externally as an object. As such, Freud’s first theory of the ego clearly follows in the tradition of Schopenhauer’s42 and Husserl’s43 respective conceptions of the human body. In our rereading of On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914), and of a few auxiliary works such as “Mourning and Melancholia” (1916), our primary interest will be the ego-​ object alone, or the ego that receives a drive investment. We will come back later on to the question of how this conception of the ego-​object complies with the function of an ego-​subject, or ego that manages drive investments. We will also focus exclusively on examining the structure, function, and genesis of the ego-​object of love, remaining within the framework of Freud’s theory on what he calls “secondary” narcissism. We will thus not return to the nature of “primary” narcissism and its (seemingly problematic) identification with autoerotism, or to the primitive attachment of children to themselves and their own interests as preceding any recognition of a foreign object. It seems that the most important points on these questions have already been sufficiently discussed in part 1 of this work, and the conclusion drawn there that primary narcissism constitutes an “egoism without an ego.”44 In other words, considering primary narcissism is of no help to us when trying to understand the emergence of a unified or total ego representation, or the libidinal investment of this object of representation. Concerning secondary narcissism, we can also limit ourselves to what has already been said about the relationship between the “ego-​libido” (Ichlibido) and the “object-​libido” (Objektlibido).” Given that these are not two different kinds of libido, but the same libidinal energy divided between two opposite but nonantagonistic types of investment, questions about the possible priority or primacy of one type over the other arise from shaky genetic speculations in Freud. Rather than speculating on whether the ego or an object from the external world is the first object of desire (that is, the first object of representation to receive libidinal

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investment), I argued that one could not happen without the other. I thus allowed for a philosophical conception according to which there can be no representation of an ego without this representation being related to a representation of a non-​ego. And I drew inspiration from psychoanalysis to put forward the claim that recognizing the existence of an external and independent object necessarily implies its separation from the ego. From this perspective, when Freud presents secondary narcissism to us as resulting from a divesting of external and foreign objects in favor of a retreat of the libido back toward the ego,45 he cannot mean that in order to be able to love oneself one has to have already loved others. On the contrary, this means that in secondary narcissism we love ourselves in the way that we love others, that is, as an object of representation with a certain degree of unity and that appears to us as a totality or gestalt. It could be added that we love ourselves much in the same way as others love us. As such, secondary narcissism is distinguished from the hypothetical primary narcissism by a kind of love that simultaneously presupposes a doubling of the self and a distancing from oneself. Similarly to the myth of Narcissus, in secondary narcissism there is always a subject and an object that are numerically identical but do not merge with each other. What the narcissistic subject loves is an expression (Darstellung) of itself, in other words, an ego that is the object of a particular representation (Vorstellung). In the terminology of Rousseau, one can say that secondary narcissism is characterized by “amour propre,” a kind of vain or conceited self-​love, rather than “amour de soi,” a natural, instinctual self-​love. This doubling of the narcissistic ego is also accompanied by a self-​estrangement that may possibly give rise to a disincarnation or spiritualization of the ego. The ego-​object, invested by the libido in secondary narcissism, is thus radically distinct from the drive-​based self, that is, from the self-​a ffection of a bodily organ that functions both as “source” and way of satisfaction of a partial sexual drive. As such, there is a central difference between a self that senses itself immediately and keenly in self-​ affection and an ego that loves itself through a kind of self-​alienation, that is, through a representation or image it has forged of itself. The rupturing of the intimate and original bond that ties the self to a bodily organ or organism is even a necessary condition for the constitution of the narcissistic ego. This objective representation of the ego by the ego thus lends itself to a broad spectrum of variations. For the ego-​object, Freud writes, is capable of “development” (Entwicklung des Ichs).46 Prior to loving oneself through an ideal image one has created of oneself, that is, through what Freud calls an “ideal ego” (Idealich),47 one can surely already love oneself by caring for one’s own bodily integrity, physical health, or even by taking care of one’s bodily appearance. Not only do the two often

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imply each other, but one generally loves oneself narcissistically through a multitude of egos, that is, representations or images of the self. All flattering representations of oneself lend themselves to narcissistic types of libidinal investment. To the unity and totality characteristic of the narcissistic ego-​object, a clear tendency toward embellishment and idealization should thus be added. Even though its link to a hypothetical primary narcissism remains obscure, we have to concede to Freud that adult secondary narcissism does indeed have a troubling tendency to take over where the early childhood wish to be all-​powerful left off.48 Similarly to the representations of the ego-​object invested by the ego-​libido, the relations of the ego-​libido to the object-​libido lend themselves to many variations. In other words, the distribution of the libidinal fund according to foreign object or ego-​object investment channels takes on different scenarios that respond to different types of motive or event. As such, the libido can withdraw into the ego-​object representation just as much from frustration as from delusions of grandeur. We may prefer ourselves to others because others have left us in the lurch or because we think we are better than them. In contrast, we may prefer others to ourselves because they are better than us or simply because we are tired of the weight of our own problems. As Freud says, falling in love with a new conquest is a good (?) way to heal one’s neuroses.49 However, if we look more closely, the sacrifices of the object-​libido to the ego-​libido or of the ego-​libido to the object-​libido only make up the most elementary of scenarios. For the state of being in love and the massive investment of the libido in the representation of the love object is not always synonymous with a complete drying up of the flow of the ego-​libido or with an “impoverished” ego. Much more common than a complete renunciation of oneself and absolute devotion that “exalts the sexual object into a sexual ideal” is “the narcissistic type of object-​choice.”50 More simply put: we fall in love with someone who resembles us and whose idealization benefits our own image of ourselves. What we give to the object with one hand, we take back with the other. In a surprising summary, “Mourning and Melancholia” establishes an intimate link between the above scenario on the state of being in love and the state of melancholy.51 Both states, despite appearances, maintain a strong narcissistic attachment. For Freud, melancholy resembles the state of being in love (Verliebtheit) because of its massive object investment (Freud even speaks of a “tyranny” of the object) to the detriment of the ego. The representation of the person who has died takes up so much room in the thoughts of the melancholic person that he loses all interest in the world and all desire to live. At the same time, the melancholic person reduces the dead person—­to whom he has sacrificed

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his lust for life—­to himself by taking his place. He becomes dead in the other’s place, and this dead ego-​object thus takes on all the aggressivity that the melancholic person had not dared to express regarding the person who abandoned him like a coward by dying. True, to die along with a dead person is not the same as loving another because that other resembles oneself. To become like the other or to have the other become like oneself are not the same thing. Hence, loving narcissistically and hating melancholically are different. Nevertheless, Freud is able to draw a similarity between these two types of behavior not only by observing a reversal in the relation of the ego to the other, but especially through his discovery of a process that remains unnamed at this juncture and holds much promise for his future theory on the constitution of the ego, namely: identification. Yet, it is not until Lacan and his analysis of the “mirror stage” that the diverse threads of Freud’s theory on the constitution of the narcissistic subject can be woven together. Lacan’s principal merit is not that he joins the ego-​object of narcissistic investment to the specular image (thus pointing to the origin of a first representation of the ego), or that he strongly emphasizes self-​alienation and the imaginary fixation that this process brings about. Much more importantly, he brings to light that we are dealing here with a process of identification through which the identity formation of the imaginary ego-​object comes about as a kind of twofold mimesis from which the third is nonetheless never entirely absent. Indeed, narcissistic enjoyment, through which the child identifies itself with its image in the mirror, requires the presence and approval of an other’s gaze. Clearly, it is not enough to claim that the libido invests a representation of the ego to understand how this object becomes my ego or, further, how my ego in fact becomes this object. This brings to mind another difficulty that continues to trouble us. Despite our continuous insistence that the ego is an object of representation like any other, the concept of an ego-​subject rises up from its ashes on each step of our path. In terms of Freud’s work on narcissism, this ego-​subject both manages libidinal investments and owns libidinal capital52 or—­to use the terminology of the second topography—­a “store of libido” (Libidovorrat). 53 For the libidinal energy transferred onto the ego-​object is already the energy of someone or at least of something that does not yet know who it is, that is, what kind of ego it is seeking to become. This energy thus belongs to an individual living organism that we have continuously refused to call an “ego.” Yet, once the bodily self has invested its energy in any objective representation of an ego, this ego can legitimately conceive of itself as owning this energy or can at least make use of it as the ego sees fit, that is, as a manager caring for its own interests. It is thus that the text on

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narcissism allows us to draw an intimate link between the ego-​object, invested with libidinal energy, and the ego-​subject, which represses any object representation and any desire that conflicts with the ideal image it has constructed of itself and with which it has identified itself.54 In the 1914 work, Freud also already describes in detail how the ego “watches” its desires and “measures” them against its ideal.55 He even alludes to the fact that this ego ideal may have been “imposed from without”56 and that the ego that watches is at the origin of not only “conscience” (Gewissen), but also the “self-​consciousness” (Selbstbewusstsein) so dear to philosophers.57 Pleasure-​ego and reality-​ego, ego-​object and manager-​ego, desiring ego and watching ego, ego as drive organism and ideal ego: decidedly, this all adds up to many different mental functions and elements for one and the same ego. It is not until the second topography and works such as The Ego and the Id (1923)58 and Lecture 31 from New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-​ Analysis (1933)59 that Freud starts to put some order into this inflation of different ego types.

Intersubjective Subjectivity: A Melancholic Ego That Claims to Control the Id and Is Dominated by the Superego (Second Topography) This ordering consists primarily in severely restricting the extension of the ego concept and recentering it on the function of perceiving the external world and the drive-​based needs that arise within the living organism. With this new conception of the ego, the conception of the non-​ego also changes meaning, content, and function. The non-​ego, as what is “foreign to the ego,”60 now consists not only of the external world, but also (and especially) in the drive-​based life of the “id” (Es); as such, the perceiving function of the ego becomes intimately tied to a “defensive” function. As a result, the ego has to take on the double function of mediating between drives and reality, as well as repressing undesirable desires. Desires that do not conform to the ideals and “conscience” (Gewissen) of the ego are considered particularly undesirable. Even though the text on narcissism has already drawn our attention to the importance of this conscience for properly understanding repression, it is only with Freud’s separation of the ego and the “superego” (Über-​Ich) in the second topography that we truly begin to understand how extensive the “dependent relationships [Abhängigkeiten] of the ego” are.61 Along the way, the ego—­caught between the demands of reality, the superego, and the id—­has lost much

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of its luster.62 As we shall see, one must add to the mix the fact that this ego is an other, that is, it is constituted through identification with people who are alien to it and that it has interiorized in a “regressive” way according to the model of melancholy. As such, the new order introduced into the concept of the subject by the second topography ends up leading to a plural subject whose different mental elements behave like regional lords disputing each other’s authority over the individual person. They relate to each other through never-​ending intrigues—­made up of alliances and betrayals—­that punctuate the conflictual life of the human person. The individual thus becomes a stage for the continual confrontation of the dramatic characters that constitute it. The object of fierce disputes, one and multiple, unique and made up of foreign subjects, the subject becomes a veritable intersubjectivity all to itself. By putting some order into the conception of the subjective elements at work in the human person, Freud’s second topography not only eats away at the powers of the ego; Freud also seems to want to limit disorder by putting it under house arrest in one specific location, namely, in the drive-​based id. Admitting to “the chaos” of drives became inevitable for Freud when he recognized, in his third theory of drives,63 the existence of death drives and their continual conflict with erotic drives. In the wake of the death drive, while Freud’s second topography saves the order of the elements of the psyche in the individual person, it is simultaneously faced with many new types of disorders that weigh on the life of the subject. For, even if it is no longer possible to confuse the impersonal self of drive processes with the subjective functions of an ego, the drive energy of the id does not remain confined to its place (topos) of origin; much to the contrary, it invades the subjective functions of the ego and superego. It is one thing to dictate a proper place to the life of drives; it is quite another to contain them there. Freud is thus forced to admit that the destructive character of death drives is easily able to relocate to the superego, whose strictness is all too often tainted with sadistic inclinations. And the ego requires all its strength to ward off not only undesirable erotic desires, but also the goals of the death drive, which presents the ego with suicide as the best solution to all the problems it faces.64 Finally, the new subjective order of the second topography also modifies Freud’s conceptions of the unconscious and repression. Briefly stated, the unconscious can be said to have lost its function of organizing the space of the psyche. It should be recalled that, at the end of the first topography, the unconscious was the place where all mental content and processes were collected that were foreign to the ego and to the way in which the ego managed the psychic systems of consciousness and the preconscious. When it came to the fore that some mental processes of the

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ego and superego took place without the subject’s knowledge, Freud was forced to admit an unconscious element at work in the ego and superego themselves. Far from only representing the conscious system, the ego now reunites the workings of the three systems from the first topography, namely, Cs, Pcs, and Ucs. The best illustrations in Freud of these new forms of the unconscious owing nothing to repression are phenomena (or symptoms) such as the “negative therapeutic reaction” of the ego (that is, its unconscious resistance to healing) and the “unconscious sense of guilt” (that is, feeling guilt for transgressions related to taboos of the superego that are unknown to the subject).65 True, this does not change the fact that the primitive core of the unconscious is still constituted on the bedrock of primary processes operating on memory traces or thing representations and entirely regulated by the pleasure principle. What does change, however, is that this original unconscious is now tied to the workings of the id, and thus acquires a strong drive connotation. The upshot of this is a less static, in other words, more dynamic conception of the unconscious, as well as its localization in an archaic place where psychological and physiological processes are not yet clearly distinguished. Before flowing into the molds of representations (Vorstellungen) and desires, the unconscious is already an expression (Darstellung) of drive processes. And before acquiring any content, the unconscious already acts as an inclination toward pleasure and especially (according to Lacan) as the mechanism of a blind repetition. When this drive-​based unconscious then invests the operations of the ego and superego, it manifests itself more by its insistence than by its resistance against becoming a content of consciousness. In other words, the unconscious becomes a force that imposes itself on the subject in despite of the subject. From this point on, the Freudian unconscious is no longer primarily defined by its opposition to subjective consciousness; as such, the objection that philosophers since Brentano have voiced as a matter of principle against the concept of a conscious unconscious no longer applies. Let us now revisit in greater detail the function and content of the ego, superego, and id, as well as the way these three elements of the psyche at work in the human person are presented or constituted. As we do this, it should be kept in mind that these different elements of the psyche are distinguished essentially by the dynamics of their modes of operation, only in a secondary way by their contents (which are in fact partially transferable), and in a very auxiliary manner by their “topographical” location in the “mental apparatus.” This localizing of the id, ego, and superego in places that range from organic intimacy through a border crossing to an idealized exterior is the fruit of a scientific imagination whose limits are quickly reached. It is only subsequently that we will be

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able to consider the way in which the functions and actions of these elements of the psyche intertwine to build a drama with multiple intrigues. These intrigues represent a broad scope of existential events or (more or less normal or pathological) subjective behavior, as well as types of human personality or “character.” In fact, as Freud explicitly states, the formal distinction between the ego, superego, and id as elements of the psyche should never lead us to lose sight of the precarious nature of the borders that separate them or, put otherwise, of their effacement in the concrete life of the subject.66 Let us begin with the id (Es)!67 For Freud, it is the most primitive core of the human person in a twofold sense: it is a structure of the psyche that comes first genetically, and its mode of operation is archaic (though it continues to function throughout human life). The id (das Es) is an individual and at the same time pre-​egoical (impersonal, neutral) self whose unconscious contents (that is, representations, desires, and phantasms) are entirely regulated by the primary processes of the unconscious. Prior to any articulation in unconscious desires, it is constituted of blind drives, and its drive-​based life remains rooted in the “somatic.”68 Always on the lookout for objects providing the opportunity for a temporary discharge of its drive tension, the id never hesitates to meddle in what is none of its business, namely, the operation of the ego and the superego. These latter willingly live in the illusion that they can make use of the id’s energetic force (which they cannot do without), while maintaining their complete independence. In other words, the ego and the superego believe they can use the id without being subjugated by it, even using its force in order to better resist and hand down taboos to the id. In this play of deception, the id—­which is more adept, that is, more cunning and capable of dissimulation, than the ego and the superego—­is sure to win. It has the pent-​up force of its drive energy, its great mobility or freedom of circulation, and its completely unconscious character playing in its favor. Freud thus finds himself obliged to admit that the subject’s entire reserve of libidinal energy belongs to the id and not the ego, as the text on narcissism would have had us believe.69 The only thing that matters to the id is its hunt for any pleasure provided by a discharge of its overabundance of energy. In its addiction to the pleasure principle, the id or the drive-​based self does not concern itself with whether the objects it yearns for really exist, with the logical or chronological coherence of its life, or with any form of negation. When it attaches itself to representations, it is usually to thing representations (Sachvorstellungen), which it cavalierly treats in the mode of primary processes. All this is to say that, left to its own devices, the id would never venture beyond the domain of the unconscious. For it is never for itself,

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but only for the ego and the superego that the carefree life of the id becomes a source of concern. While it is true that the id is buffeted by the antagonistic forces of erotic drives and death drives, it is no less true that death drives which have liberated themselves from their union with libidinal drives are only a threat to the survival of the ego, and not the id. In isolation, the drive-​based id and its contents are “immortal.”70 The (inevitable!) encounter of the id with mortality can thus only come from the outside, that is, either from its rootedness in a biological organism, or from the loss of real objects in which it has invested itself. Unlike the id—­which seems to be constituted of the part of the human individual that has always been there and that knows neither birth nor death—­the ego and the superego are elements of the psyche whose genesis, as much as their function and content, requires explanation. This explanation is not as easy as it might seem. In one sense, the ego and superego are indeed nothing more than derivatives of the id as the archaic core of the individual. In another sense, however, they are not only detached from the id, but vehemently opposed to its primitive goals. As such, the genetic approach to which Freud is accustomed does not offer much help when seeking to understand the ego and the superego. For, though they arise out of the id, the ego and superego seek something different from the id, and while they draw on its force, they more often than not use it against the id. Does Freud himself not undermine the foundations of his genetic analysis when he admits that we get everything we know about the id from the ego?71 Much more than the reality of the external world, the id is (and is given to us) as the paradigmatic non-​ego. All rational structure, so dear to the ego and its approach to reality, is completely foreign to the id: the id is “a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations.”72 From the well-​k nown image of the ego73 as the “surface” or skin of the id,74 we will thus only retain the ego’s function of mediating the relation between drive stimuli and objects from the external world. The ego provides mediation in a twofold sense: it establishes a link between the id and the world, and it binds the free circulation of drive energy to the conventions of secondary processes. Its primary function consists in perceiving the desires that arise within the id and attempting to adapt these sufficiently to the demands of worldly reality in order to be able to satisfy them. Let us not be misled: this function of adaptation for which the ego is responsible favors desire as much as the external world: “As a frontier-​ creature, the ego tries to mediate between the world and the id, to make the id pliable to the world and, by means of its muscular activity, to make the world fall in with the wishes of the id [Es-​Wunsch].”75 By deferring the immediate discharge of drive tension that is characteristic of primary

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processes, the ego controls the realization of desires and thus also the movement (or “muscular activity”) of the desiring body. It thus behaves like a “rider” on the “horseback”76 of the id, reining in a wild horse in order to temper its passion and lead it where the ego thinks the id can best spend its energy without making too much trouble. Thus astride on the id, the ego behaves exactly like the brain of a living body according to the doctrine of Bergson, for whom the brain’s function is to break down the reflex arc mechanism of an immediate reaction by inserting a pause that allows the organism to choose the movement that is best adapted to the demands of the situation. In almost Bergsonian language, Freud can thus write, “By interposing the processes of thinking, it [the ego] secures a postponement of motor discharges and controls the access to motility.”77 Yet, this on all accounts rather general and trivial function of the ego tells us nothing about the content of the individual ego, or about its smaller or greater force. If the ego were nothing more than a place of transition, filtering exchanges between the intimate life of the drive-​ based self and the objective reality of the external world, how could it acquire individual qualities or what Freud calls “character”?78 How can a self without qualities become someone? If not by its own devices, then it can only be through the other. And it must indeed be through the other, since one cannot give oneself what one does not yet possess in any sense. To explain how the id or impersonal self of drives becomes an ego that is an other, similarly to Lacan and his successors, Freud could have made direct reference to the process of imitation or other mimetic behaviors. But he chose a slightly different path (which we are already familiar with through his text from 1916) following the model of melancholy. The difference between Freud and Lacan is in fact smaller than it may seem, for both think that the individual ego is constituted through identification with an other—­an identification comprising a twofold movement of projection and introjection. For Freud, much like in melancholy, this other with which the ego identifies is an object that has been lost and then subsequently interiorized. Thus, the constitution of the ego is understood by Freud according to a model of appropriating and, more specifically, orally incorporating what is foreign. This presupposes that an ego already exists that is able to appropriate an other to become an ego. It is surely also in order to avoid such circular reasoning that Lacan chooses a model of pure identification, that is, pure alienation rather than appropriation. For him (and also for Sartre, from whom he clearly draws inspiration), the first ego is a worldly object with which an organic self identifies, more specifically, an object that is not a person. This identification is necessarily imaginary, not only because the child identifies with a specular image, but also because one can only identify with a thing in

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an imaginary way. As a result, this ego is considered purely imaginary in Lacan, as are all relations that this imaginary ego maintains with a similar or dissimilar other. Truth be told, it is in the end rather unimportant whether what one identifies with is a thing or a person, since the process of identification in any case propels one into the imaginary order. In fact, any (magical) relation to a thing or (transitive) relation to a person in which the independent alterity of this thing or person is not recognized remains imaginary. When reduced to the role of a double that supports the ego, the other with which one identifies or that one imitates quickly becomes an embarrassment, and thus necessarily transforms into a rival standing in one’s way.79 In Freud, on the other hand, the ego that starts out as empty then gives itself consistency and content by reducing the other to oneself rather than by really becoming an other. This nuance is important, for it is what essentially differentiates narcissistic from melancholic identification. While the other is never truly other in narcissistic identification, melancholic identification necessarily goes through the loss, death, and possibly murder of a separate and autonomous person. To become myself by becoming the other without ceasing to be myself, the other has to at least partially exit my life. Thus, similarly to the melancholic person identifying with an other who is dead and whom he then brings back to life in his internal crypt (by subjecting the other to all his aggressiveness), the Freudian ego identifies with lost or abandoned love objects that it then jealously preserves in its internal depths. Since the first love objects are usually one’s parents, the constitution of the first contents of the ego in children thus presupposes that the original bonds of dependence on one’s parents for life have already been somewhat loosened. In order to appropriate “traits” from one’s parents, that is, in order to come closer to them by becoming a bit like them, one has to have paradoxically already separated oneself from them. We should thus not confuse this process of children identifying with their parents, through which they constitute their ego, with a fusional relation, which would in fact stand in the way of ego constitution. We will see that the same holds for the constitution of the superego, but with the following difference: while subsequent to the constitution of the ego, the constitution of the superego returns to the first idealized images very young children had of their parents, and more specifically, of paternal authority. The primitive ego constituted by the child through the twofold process of identification with parental traits and interiorization of these same traits continues to evolve throughout one’s life. But even if the child subsequently identifies increasingly with traits borrowed from other people, these identifications remain true to the melancholic model. For Freud,

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what we call the “character” of a person can essentially be captured in the collection of prior objects of desire that have been lost or divested, a collection that continues to be built up over the years: “the character of the ego is a precipitate [Niederschlag] of abandoned object-​cathexes and . . . it contains the history of those object-​choices.”80 It is life experiences, so to speak, including love and travel, that shape personality. How then can the existence of strong versus weak personalities be explained? From where do strong personalities draw their strength? According to Freud’s second topography, it must be from the id, the sole source of the energy at an individual’s disposal. Yet, how does the ego manage to attract the energy of drive forces that the id usually spends indiscriminately on any external object that lends itself to the pleasure of the id? The ego, writes Freud, must offer itself to the id as an object worthy of its attention, that is, it must attract the love of the id instead of, and in the place of, lost worldly objects.81 This entire stratagem of the ego, where it claims to console the id for the loss of worldly objects, is in fact a deception and a betrayal of the primary task of the ego, namely, facilitating the relation between the id and the external world. To be loved by the id, the ego has to play at being nice. It seduces the id by offering itself to the id not as an empty ego, but as an ego already enriched with all the objects the id has loved but lost in the past, and now finds gathered together again in the ego’s personality. As such, the ego strengthens itself with the drive forces of the id by presenting the id with trophies of its past conquests—­even if this means, as we will see, that the ego turns these forces borrowed from the id against the id, that is, it dominates the id like a “rider” that reins in its mount. We could call this strong ego a “narcissized” ego, but only if we add that this narcissism is no longer quite the same as the one from earlier writings. A first change is the fact that we now have at our disposal a veritable theory of the constitution of ego content through melancholic identification. Another new factor is that the narcissistic ego is now an element of the psyche that is clearly separated from the drive-​based id, whose own nature remains fundamentally foreign to the ego. Consequently, the ego can no longer act, as was put forward in On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914),82 as if it possessed a reserve of drives to spend and distribute as it sees fit. Stripped of any force of its own and without any means to act directly on the id, the ego’s only choice is to strengthen itself narcissistically by giving itself over passively to the drive energy and love of the id. In the new perspective put forward by the second topography, (secondary) narcissism thus becomes the offspring of a campaign by the ego to seduce the id. The strong ego has a past of prostitution. It thus seems warranted to remain skeptical of Freud’s hypothesis that, by directing itself

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toward the ego, the id’s libido becomes “desexualized” and subsequently leads to a “sublimated” love.83 This dependence of the ego on the id is redoubled by the dependence of the ego on the superego.84 This new form of dependence is even more paradoxical than the intrigues that bind the ego and the id. Indeed, as Freud continuously underlines, the ego is in some sense a principle of subjective unification that reunites within itself both the synthetic function of the pure Kantian “I” and the permanent qualities of the mental substance that Kant calls a “person.” In another sense, however, the experience the ego has of itself is of an ego that “can be split” (spaltbar).85 Freud claims that it is as if a part of the ego had detached itself in order to become the observer of this same ego. This critical observer can neither be a non-​ego (for it fulfills the function of “self-​consciousness” [Selbstbewusstsein] and this is why it is called a superego), nor can it coincide with the ego (for it observes and judges the ego from without, thus watching over it). Nor is the observer who plays the role of conscience a simple doubling of the ego, for what the superego says to the ego, the ego cannot say to itself and, more often than not, does not want to hear. In fact, this exteriority of the superego with respect to the ego does not just have to do with its function in relation to the ego, but also with its content and the origin of its force. Concerning the content of the superego, it comprises both normative images of the ideal of perfection to be attained by the ego and a force of moral constraint (which Freud compares to the Kantian categorical imperative) or even “punishment.” The proper approach would thus be to distinguish, more clearly than Freud himself does, between the ideal aspect of the superego as a prolongation of the narcissistic ego and the superego as a strict moral authority to which the ego is called to submit itself. The former is what we are now in the habit of calling the “ideal ego” (Idealich); the latter is the “ego ideal” (Ichideal). If Freud did not draw this distinction as clearly as one would have liked, it is probably because the two forms of what he only began calling the “superego” in 1923 (The Ego and the Id) are both constituted through a process of idealization and, more specifically, an idealizing identification. The importance of the distinction between an “ideal ego,” which magnifies and flatters the ego, and an “ego ideal,” which diminishes and persecutes the ego, becomes clearer when we move from considering the content of the superego to its force or strength. For even though it can be said that the “ideal ego” is an ego that is stronger than nature, the narcissistic ideal “by which the ego measures itself”86 has no coercive force whatsoever. Things are entirely different in the case of the “ego ideal” or conscience that forces the ego to submit to its commandments. Since this constraining force used by

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the “ego ideal” (or the “superego” in the strict and narrow sense of the word) against the ego cannot come from the ego (not even from a strong ego), it must come from the id. This is why Freud writes that the superego “reaches deep down into the id.”87 If he takes the trouble to point this out to us explicitly, it must be because the superego reaches more deeply than the ego into the id. Indeed, contrary to the narcissistic ideal to which the ego-​subject compares itself and through which it hopes to be loved even more by the id, the superego uses the power it borrows from the id against the ego-​object. It is thus not difficult to understand that it is especially the aggressive drives or death drives of the id that best serve the superego in its hounding of the ego. In extreme cases, such as in a melancholic person who mistreats himself through self-​reproach, we find ourselves before a superego that represents and develops a truly “pure culture [Reinkultur] of the death instinct.”88 With roots that reach deep down into the most destructive forces of the id, the superego becomes a special instrument of the subjective unconscious, while at the same time addressing the conscious ego and priding itself on its spiritual values. By behaving in an aggressive way toward the ego, the superego also follows in the footsteps of the insistent and repetitive character of unconscious drives. Even for a strong ego, it is thus not easy to fight against the power of a superego that the ego, more often than not, only perceives through the superego’s effects on it, such as overwhelming feelings of “inferiority” or “guilt” that it is unable to make sense of on a conscious level. As we have already seen for the ego, the content of the individual subject’s superego is best understood in relation to its mode of constitution. Even if constitution takes place through identification in both cases, important differences remain. First of all, given that the superego is “a part of the ego”89 that has separated and ultimately acquired complete autonomy from the ego, the constitution (and function) of the superego presupposes the constitution (and function) of the ego. The superego thus arises from an interiorizing identification by an already constituted ego (and not by an organic self) with “parental authority.”90 Yet, this purely chronological understanding of the genesis of the superego again turns out to be misleading. For what children identify with in constituting their superego is not (as in the case of the ego) a series of lost love objects, but the parents of early childhood in all their uncontested and majestic glory. At the same time, it is not the very young child who identifies with these prestigious parents of early childhood, but a child whose ego is already on a solid foundation and whose sexual identity has already been formed through the Oedipus complex. The superego thus arises from the identification of a sexual ego with a parental authority that is also already marked by

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sexual difference. The paternal authority that a boy interiorizes through identification is an authority that commands him to let go of his mother as the first object of his sexual desire. It is for this reason that Freud can put forward the hypothesis that the superego of the male child arises out of an Oedipus complex that has been borne and then surpassed.91 Even though the analysis of the relation between the superego and the Oedipus complex given in The Ego and the Id leaves something to be desired, it is clearly meant to offer an explanation of why the superego retains its unquestionable authority and great prestige for the ego, despite how much the ego has to endure on its account. In other words, the detour through Oedipal identification is meant to explain how the superego can reunite the antagonistic and even contradictory moments within itself of an attractive ideal and an authority whose greatest pleasure seems to consist in reproaching and punishing the ego. Naturally, this leads to ambivalent relations between the ego and the superego92 that go far beyond what could be explained by a melancholic type of identification. Melancholic identification (which is, we should recall, at work in the constitution of the ego) is also insufficient for explaining how children, by identifying more in the end with “the superego” of their parents than with them as concrete persons, construct a superego that is part of a long, trans-​generational “tradition.”93 Thus, there is also something like a phylogenetic and even cultural superego, whose ravages Freud explores in Civilization and Its Discontents.94 To wrap up this presentation of Freud’s second topography, we now need to weave together again the separate threads of our respective analyses of the id, ego, and superego in order to show how these three elements of the psyche communicate with each other in an almost intersubjective way. Of these three elements, only the id could suffice to itself if need be. It has all the necessary drive energy at its disposal, and it knows how to find pleasure through the direct and infallible path of primary processes ruled by the unconscious as an exclusive and uncontested master. Yet, this same drive energy is too excessive and too destructive, and the primary processes over which the id has a monopoly are too repetitive for it to remain safe from the danger of explosively erupting. In any case, the id or archaic drive-​based self quickly comes up against the resistance of matter or the hard reality of the external world. Even though the hypothesis seems problematic that the id gives rise (all by itself) to an ego on its periphery in order to better communicate with external reality, the id certainly gains many advantages from its collaboration with the ego. For in the final analysis, it is the ego, that is, the channeling of the id’s drive energy toward real objects in the external world, which allows for the id’s most stable realizations.

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Yet, what the id owes to the ego is nothing in comparison to what the ego owes to the id. Divested of all the prestigious attributes with which modern philosophy dressed it up, the Freudian ego is nothing more in the end than a Potemkinian façade erected in front of the id. This narcissistic façade does a poor job of dissembling the misery of a serf-​ego that serves the id and which the id shows no shame in exploiting. As such, in his 1930 text Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud again writes: Normally, there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, of our own ego. This ego appears to us as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from everything else. That such an appearance is deceptive, and that on the contrary the ego is continued inwards, without any sharp delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity [ein unbewusst seelisches Wesen] which we designate as the id and for which it serves as a kind of façade—­this was a discovery first made by psycho-​analytic research, which should still have much more to tell us about the relation of the ego to the id.95

Even when strong, the Freudian ego remains weak. We have already seen how the ego uses a stratagem of seduction to deviate the flux of drive energy for its own benefit, thus inflating itself with the strength of the id. This strong ego has no qualms about using the narcissistic force it has borrowed from the id to work against the id and the undesirable desires that it harbors. Unfortunately, more often than not, the ego’s use of this force only benefits the superego. For even if it is certainly the ego that “represses” undesirable desires, it may not do this consciously, and yet it certainly does so under the command of the superego. Despite its pretense to be the “rider” of the id, the ego is more like a jockey who rides for the benefit of his employer. Generally speaking, it is the superego that decides whether a desire is undesirable, and it uses the ego as a mere tool for sending embarrassing intruders back to the chaotic country of the id from whence they came.96 Yet, it is not to be excluded that the ego might have benefited and even taken pleasure from the company of desires that the superego commands it to repress. It is thus always possible for the ego to resist the strength of the superego, that is, to disobey its orders and rebel against its authority, rather than fully submitting to the sadism of the superego and remaining complacent in the “moral masochism” of a culture of bad conscience. Nevertheless, except in psychopaths and perverts, the ego can never fully rid itself of the superego’s hold over it. This means that, more often than not, between the demands of the superego and the demands of desire, the ego is up to its neck in neurotic conflicts. This neurotic ego, a hostage to mostly unconscious conflicts that

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are also mostly beyond its control, is the true face of the ego according to psychoanalytic doctrine, rather than the trivial ego of perception and adaptation to reality. The struggle between the ego and the superego is paradoxical in that both make use of the same force against each other—­the only force available to the Freudian subject, namely, the force of the id. The id must thus benefit from investing its drive energy both in the superego and the ego. It can love the ego and develop the ego’s narcissistic strength, while at the same time encouraging the mistreatment of this same ego by lending all its aggressiveness to the superego. Yet, the id does not decide for itself where it invests its capital of drive energy, for it is unable to make any kind of decision. Who then decides about the investments of the id? Certainly, it is never the ego alone. Its role is limited to defending itself against risky drive investments that might harm it. These latter are essentially of two kinds: undesirable sexual desires and aggressive demands of the superego. On both of these fronts, the victory of the ego is never definitive, for the id advances beneath a mask, and the ego is rarely strong enough to unmask these unconscious advances of the id and reorient the flux of drives. Psychoanalytic treatment can be of help to the ego in this task, for it has no other goal, according to Freud, than “to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-​ego, to widen its field of perception and enlarge its organization, so that it can appropriate fresh portions of the id. Where id was, there ego shall be [Wo Es war, soll Ich werden].”97

The Desiring Subject and Its Conscious and Unconscious Phantasms Our examination of Freud’s second topography has led to important advances in our research. We now better understand what the ego is for Freud and, more particularly, how this manager of consciousness simultaneously relates to unconscious drive-​based life, the superego, and the reality of the external world. Along the way, fundamental concepts from Freud’s doctrine, such as narcissism, the unconscious, and also repression, have become much clearer. However, the most decisive advance is surely due to discovering the process of (melancholic or narcissistic) identification and the central role it plays in the constitution of the individual ego. Yet, we can and should ask ourselves whether this “ego” (Ich) properly represents “the Freudian subject.” For is it not first constituted as an object, before acting as a conscious subject that defends its identity

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against the barbarity of the id and its “derivatives”? Is the true Freudian subject not rather the subject of desire or the subject of the unconscious, as Lacan has repeatedly insisted since his 1954–­55 Seminar 2 98 (already referred to in our analysis of the death drive)?99 It must be admitted that we have not sufficiently questioned Freud so far on his conception of the content of unconscious desires and their individually subjective character. Yet, it is self-​evident that psychoanalytic theory cannot give a merely general definition of the structure of desire in terms of an expression (in the sense of “Repräsentanz” or Darstellung) of drives in the twofold form of representations (Vorstellungen) and unconscious and conscious mental affects. Similarly, we cannot understand how drives invest themselves in one representation (Vorstellung) rather than another, and why some desires become conscious and others remain unconscious, without presupposing that desires are constituted through the intervention of a subjective principle that is not to be confused with the drive-​based self, or with the conscious ego (or even purely and simply with the desiring subject). For the id is completely incapable of choosing and, especially, creating the representations in which it invests its drive energy; and the ego, more often than not, finds itself at the mercy of desires that emanate from the unconscious rather than from itself. Thus, there must be a subjective element that creates or, at least, keeps in reserve the unconscious and conscious mental representations whose investment produces specific desires. Constitutive of desires or at least of their articulation in specific desires, this subjective element should also be able to establish the link between the unconscious and consciousness, that is, between unconscious desires and the way they present themselves to the conscious ego. In Freud’s theory, this double role of constituting unconscious desires and ferrying these same desires onto the shores of consciousness is given to “phantasms.” If there are unconscious and conscious desires, there must also be unconscious and conscious phantasms, as well as a subject that creates the two types of phantasm through its imagination. Unlike Lacan, Freud surely did not pay enough attention to the fact that the subject as creator of the phantasms that nourish its desires does not automatically merge with the subject of desire. For the subject of desire may belong to another register than the subject of phantasms. We know that these two registers are the symbolic and the imaginary in Lacan’s theory. In other words, for Lacan, the subject of phantasms is quite close to the imaginary ego, and this subject likewise obscures both the symbolic structure of the unconscious subject of desire and its relation to an eternally lacking object. Thus, for Lacan, phantasms are images used by the desiring subject to represent to itself what it desires and how its desire

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fits into the framework of others’ desires—­while at the same time hiding from itself the origin of its desires (as well as its own origin as desiring subject) in the register of signifiers. While this distinction between subject of desire and subject of phantasms is surely lacking in Freud, this does not mean he is necessarily unaware that the phantasmic representations which give shape to our desires could be something other than simple visual images. As we go through Freud’s works, particular attention will thus be paid to everything Freud has to say on phantasms presented as stories, as well as phantasm-​images that the subject articulates by producing intrigues (rather than simple visual scenes). In this way, Lacan’s question on the subject of desire’s status will remain at the forefront of our thought, for as well as the subject that creates or makes frequent use of phantasms to express its desires, Freud also clearly allows for the existence of a subject whose desires are, to the contrary, the effect of stories and symbolic traditions. Our reading of Freud is complicated not only by its Lacanian undercurrents, but also by the fact that it immediately comes up against a major obstacle, namely, that Freud never actually uses the term “phantasm.” In all of Freud’s writings on the activity of Phantasieren,100 we will thus have to carefully distill what truly relates to the phantasm and what relates only to a conscious fantasizing that, much like the example of daydreaming, complacently evokes pleasant fantasies. Unlike phantasms, for which the question does not even arise, these fantasies go against the conscious ego’s perception of reality since their intentional objects are purely fictitious, that is, they have no existence in the objective world. However, with Freud’s progressive exploration of what he calls the “psychical reality”101 of the unconscious, this opposition between a purely subjective fantasy order and objective reality loses much of its significance. Far from being a simple and cowardly flight from reality, Freud increasingly associates fantasizing with a necessary task of shaping the other order of the “real” (in a Lacanian sense) constituted by drives. Freud’s understanding of fantasy thus shifts from the consideration of free fantasies to the consideration of veritable phantasms and, more specifically, of unconscious phantasms. While inseparable from unconscious desires, the relation of unconscious phantasms to these desires is complicated. For unconscious phantasms seem to precede the production of particular desires, while particular desires seem to involve the emergence of new phantasms. It thus seems that there are not only unconscious and conscious phantasms, but also primal and derivative phantasms. These primal phantasms, which we can assume to be relatively standardized and quite small in number, would thus be at the origin of not only particular desires, but also (at least in part) of the unconscious desiring subject itself. They would thus be the

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perfect response to the previously stated requirement of conciliating the phantasm’s function with the very structure of the unconscious desiring subject. And Freud’s research on the nature of Phantasien does indeed turn toward such a conception of primal and originating phantasms. For the early Freud, fantasizing is a specific mental activity with its source partially in the defense of the subject against painful experiences and partially in a regressive search for pleasure. In Freud’s first writings, this defensive reaction is primarily related to traumatic memories, while he later places more emphasis on the fact that it leads the subject to turn away from a reality that inflicts narcissistic wounds on the subject. As such, the regressive pleasure sought in fantasizing has a function of compensation: Freud speaks explicitly about “correction” (Korrektur).102 In Freud’s later texts, primarily focused on the constitution of what we now call “phantasms,” the issue is less about pleasure, and more about the structuring of desire. Fantasy (Phantasie) is presented as a subjective, yet also originally unconscious faculty that establishes a framework, stage, and playground in which particular desires can take shape. This Phantasie includes both the way in which drives enter into the psyche to be articulated as desire, and the way in which desire relates to its objects. In other words, its action is in no way limited to only activities of fantasizing, but rather extends to all desires aiming at objects from the external world. Unlike fantasies that relate to an imaginary world, the phantasm thus poses no obstacle to seeking an object of pleasure in reality. At the same time, it does not necessarily lead to reality, since it is inseparable from desire, and desire is little concerned with the reality of its objects. Rather than being a real object or a fictitious substitute thereof, the phantasm is a kind of schema (in the Kantian sense of the word) that raises up the image of a possible object of desire. However, it is distinguished from the Kantian schema (as well as the Kantian faculty of imagination [Einbildungskraft]) by the fact that its conscious appearance (Erscheinung) is often misleading (Schein). In fact, it is a safe bet to say that the more conscious a phantasm is and the more it lends itself to spontaneous verbalization, the further it is from the truth of the unconscious desire it is supposed to represent. A conscious phantasm is thus always to be treated with caution and subjected to interpretation. The goal of such a psychoanalytic interpretation is not, however, to translate for patients what is hidden behind conscious phantasms, but to help them “traverse” (traverser) (in Lacan’s words)103 these phantasms in order to liberate themselves from blind submission to their influence. We have already seen that Freud’s first writings on Phantasieren (from the turn of the twentieth century) are essentially focused on the study of free and pleasant fantasies. In these writings, Phantasieren are

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identified with a kind of fantasizing that consists in compensating for the frustrating experience of the external world and its hard reality by evoking fictitious images that are more pleasant and more satisfying. It is dreams, and especially daydreams, that serve as Freud’s model for his analysis of this fantasizing. This activity has to produce images that foster a hallucinatory satisfaction of (unconscious or conscious) desire. In Freud’s words, the world of fantasy is a kind of “nature reserve”104 in which desires freely circulate and are realized without having to take objective reality into account. Autoerotic activities are the ones that benefit the most from this world of fantasy where everything lends itself to the satisfaction of the subject’s sexual desire. By thus replacing the objective external world with a private world of fantasy, the subject acts in a “regressive” manner according to Freud, that is, it flees from the difficulty of having to realize its desire in a world that it shares with other desiring subjects. This is why Freud finds this fantasizing somewhat dubious and suspects that it plays a major role in triggering neuroses. These fantasies, of which the subject had such high expectations, make it sick. For it is especially on these regressive conscious fantasies that the axe of repression falls, and the influence of these fantasies is thus felt all the way through to the constitution and content of neurotic symptoms. Freud is equally suspicious of fantasizing in his first writings on the creative imagination.105 In his view, authors are either idealists divorced from reality, or—­even worse—­childish, egocentric, and megalomaniac introverts who naively identify with their heroic characters. These texts from the early Freud on fantasizing also show how this activity can merge with other mental activities. In such cases, rather than free fantasies, we are dealing with fantasies that stimulate or contaminate the work of dreams or memory. It is precisely their shared indebtedness to these fantasies that explains how dreams and memories can merge with each other. Concerning dreams, fantasies not only facilitate the hallucinatory satisfaction of unconscious desires, but are themselves structured analogously to dreams. For both fantasies and dreams, it is thus necessary to distinguish between their manifest content and the unconscious “thoughts” that are expressed or translated in this manifest content. A similar movement toward recognizing fantasies (or rather phantasms) as a sui generis mental reality that bridges the separation between consciousness and the unconscious can be observed in Freud’s treatment of memory and, more particularly, of “screen memories” or “cover memories” (Deckerinnerungen), that is, imaginary memories.106 Not only are these latter false because they go counter to the reality of a subject’s past lived experience, but similar to daydreams, they facilitate the emergence of conflicts and neurotic symptoms. Once again, Freud goes one step further by observing that these

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screen memories or cover memories (that is, memories that are deformed by what can now only be called phantasms) have the same structure as dreams. Similarly to dreams (and similarly to phantasms themselves), it is thus necessary to distinguish between the manifest content of screen memories and their latent, unconscious content: “[These screen memories] represent the forgotten years of childhood as adequately as the manifest content of a dream represents the dream-​thoughts.”107 Surely “as adequately,” but also in a way that is just as deformed! As early on as his writings of 1896–­1897, we also find Freud’s observation that fantasies (or rather phantasms) do not arise merely from free invention or prior experiences actually lived by the subject, but also contain “things heard in early infancy and only subsequently understood.”108 To begin with, this suggests that phantasms also have the function of making comprehensible the aspects of desire that (perhaps necessarily) elude the subject’s understanding. Furthermore, by pointing out in this fragment from 1897 that auditory elements can enter into the constitution of phantasms, Freud also draws attention to the intersubjective genesis of phantasms. And finally, insofar as what is “heard” points back to stories that were heard circulating—­in and about the child’s family, for instance—­it comes to the fore that symbolic elements borrowed from language and put together in a narrative way can enter into the construction of phantasms just as much as visual images can. In his first writings, Freud also already alludes to the “family romance”; a more precise analysis of this romance will decisively contribute to an even clearer distinction between fantasizing (in the sense of Phantasieren) and phantasm (die Phantasie). In Freud’s works, it seems that the progressive elaboration of a clearer distinction between fantasizing and phantasm unfolds due to three different problematics, all of which require taking into account the schematizing role of phantasms: (1) the consideration of the unconscious “fantasies” that intervene as constitutive elements in dreams, symptoms, and screen memories; (2) the discovery of primal “fantasies”; and (3) the examination of activities of fantasizing that lead to the elaboration of a “family romance.” In the years from 1900 to 1909, Freud devotes a specific text to each of these three problematics. 1.  In Freud’s early writings, it has to be admitted that the structural analogies drawn between fantasizing, dreams, and the origin of both neurotic symptoms and screen memories mask the distinction between Phantasieren and Phantasie somewhat. However, insofar as from 1900 onward Freud presents dreams, screen memories, and hysteric symptoms to us as the “representation . . . of a fantasy,”109 he seems to recognize the specificity of a Phantasie that is more phantasm than independent

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fantasizing. For what is thus “represented” must be characterized by a certain stability and should thus not be confused with the passing experience of an act of free imagination. Moreover, one and the same “fantasy” can lend itself to various types of “representation,” depending on whether it is involved in the production of a dream, a screen memory, or a neurotic symptom. Usually, it is an unconscious phantasm that is at work; this is not, however, to be confused with an unconscious desire, or with the hallucinatory realization of such a desire. On the contrary, in the work of dreams the phantasm occupies an intermediary position, mediating between desire and its fulfillment. In other words, while shaping unconscious desire and its possible objects, the phantasm is far from being able to satisfy it. 2.  In a text from 1908 entitled “Hysterical Phantasies and Their Relation to Bisexuality,” Freud explicitly speaks about “unconscious fantasies” (unbewusste Phantasien) that “have . . . been unconscious all along.”110 These must thus be primal phantasms (and not repressed phantasms) that seem to have been born almost spontaneously in the subject’s unconscious—­or, at least, without borrowing anything from the subject’s individual experience or from elements of the empirical world. Such phantasms arise in young children very regularly and with great uniformity. It is thus reasonable to think that these primitive, “unconscious” phantasms constitute a kind of imaginary core of the unconscious, a kind of reserve of standardized phantasms on which the subject draws to produce its dreams, screen memories, and neurotic symptoms. These phantasms can thus be called primal not only because they are primitive or first, but also because they form the unconscious matrix or imaginary schema for constituting new (unconscious or conscious) phantasms. Given the frequency of these primal phantasms, and their relatively limited number and very limited variation from one individual to the next, we also have good reason to think that they must play a central role in the development of infantile libido. Each stage in the development of infantile sexuality would thus have its own primal phantasms at its disposal. While not mentioned in the text from 1908, a most typical form of such a primal phantasm is constituted by the various representations children produce—­over the course of their sexual maturation process—­of the “primal scene” of the sexual act between their parents. The same can be said for the way in which children represent their mother as a complete object of love that fulfills all their desires, as well as for the way they represent their own position in the Oedipal triangle. Even though the Oedipus complex is not, strictly speaking, a primal phantasm, the castration phantasm that derives from it certainly is. The necessity and regularity with which primal phantasms arise in children are thus linked to the need they feel at each stage of their

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libidinal development to represent something unrepresentable that, nonetheless, concerns them in the very depth of their individual desire. Thus, strictly speaking, these original phantasms are less unconscious subjective representations (Vorstellungen) related to objects, than expressions (Darstellungen) through images of unthinkable things or events. They are the perfect illustration of the status of what Freud calls unconscious “thing representations” (Sachvorstellungen). The fact that these primal phantasms take on the role of representing the unrepresentable also explains why their translation into conscious image-​phantasms or word representations (Wortvorstellungen) retains an element of mystery, secrecy, and intrigue for the child. All the more reason to think that young children are not capable of forging such primal phantasms on their own and with their own rather poor means. Thus, there must be something like an innate reserve of virtual imaginary representations at the disposal of nascent desires in the child (and the adult!). Indeed, Freud does not hesitate to relate this treasury of unconscious primal phantasms in the individual human being to the phylogenetic development of humanity as a whole. Without entering into the controversial question of whether this innate reserve of primal phantasms deserves the (Jungian) name of a “collective unconscious,” we are forced to admit that, through these primal phantasms, the desiring subject enters right from its origin into a historical tradition that carries the heritage of a cultural and social imaginary order. Despite their imaginary character, primal phantasms are thus tributaries of a long-​standing trans-​individual symbolic tradition. In this view, the primal phantasms of an individual desiring subject appear to be a precipitate of humanity’s grand mythical narratives. 3.  Freud’s famous 1909 text on “Family Romances”111 has the great merit of directly addressing the relation between individual phantasms and the symbolic tradition of humanity. It is also a text that explicitly presents a phantasm with a narrative structure. Given that this phantasm of the family romance is meant to allow children to conceive of their own origin on the basis of their experience of their own desire and the way in which it depends on the desire of others, we have good reason to doubt that it is a merely “neurotic” phantasm. Yet, Freud is unyielding on this point and does not seem to want to renounce the idea that the family romance phantasm owes its appearance to a narcissistic wound and a neurotic attempt to overcome it. In this view, the phantasm put into play by the family romance would help to compensate the young Narcissus for the deception of not being an only child, of having parents that do not sufficiently respond to his desire for greatness, and so on. Nevertheless, Freud’s text cannot help but put forward the further idea

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that the task of the family romance is also to allow children to conceive of their own origin, as well as their place within the network of their parents’ and family’s desires. In this new conception, the primal phantasm of the family romance thus allows children to conceive of a past in which they are intimately concerned—­even if it has never been present for them. It is also a phantasm that concerns the desiring subject itself much more than the possible objects of its desire. Even more specifically, the family romance consists of an imaginary representation of the desiring subject (in a double genitive sense) as an object of desire for other desiring subjects. In the family romance, the phantasm is subjectivized and intersubjectivized. It also leaves behind the visual form in order to take shape in a story’s intrigue. With such a narrative elaboration of the subject’s own origin, the family romance undoubtedly deserves to be called a primal phantasm. It is also a primal phantasm in which the discourse of others, traditional myths and stories—­in other words, the great tradition of symbolic transmission—­ plays a predominant role. We can now take for granted that the phantasm (Phantasie) is something quite different than a passing act of fantasizing (Phantasieren). We have also seen that some forms of phantasm require no recourse at all to visual images. In what we have called (primal) narrative phantasms, that is, phantasms presented as stories, the distinction between imaginary representation and symbolic representation is much less clear than we might have expected. It is even tempting to say that phantasms are imaginary elaborations of symbolic elements, or even symbolic forms of imagination. Yet, it still remains to be seen whether “merely” visual phantasms have revealed all their secrets to us. Not only could these latter also be articulated in a narrative way, but the question arises: do we even know how to give an account of the difference between the visibility of conscious phantasms and the visibility of unconscious phantasms? Given that all forms of visibility are necessarily articulated in relation to a subject that sees, our analysis of phantasms arising in the form of unconscious or conscious visual images takes us back to our previous question concerning the status of the desiring subject. In its conscious visual phantasms, the subject often behaves as a mere spectator, even if it is forced to admit to itself that it is not quite an impartial spectator of the phantasmic stage. For if it were, it would be difficult to understand why the subject always comes back to the same phantasms. It is thus reasonable to think that this subject is instead (more often than not, without admitting it to itself) fascinated, captivated by the visual image of its conscious phantasms. The spectator’s pretense of neutrality and exteriority with respect to visual phantasms is thus nothing more than a way for the desiring subject to blind itself to the fact

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that it is not only the author of the script, but also, even more secretly, the principle actor in the represented scene.112 By thus distancing itself from its own phantasms, the subject can comfortably benefit from them without the threat of repression, to which their content would inevitably lead under different circumstances. Consequently, maintaining such conscious phantasms implies a certain duplicity on the part of the desiring subject. It pretends to not really be interested by a show from which it can, in fact, not turn away. Once the subject eventually admits to itself that it is both the author and the main actor of its phantasm—­such as when Flaubert declared: “I am Madame Bovary!”—­the imagined scene has already stopped functioning as a phantasm. The subject has already rid itself of the phantasm; it has, as Lacan says, “traversed” (traversé)113 the phantasm. It has reconciled itself (albeit only partially and provisionally) to the lack that the imaginary object or the fantasized scene was meant to fill in. In Lacan’s view, all phantasms, whether conscious or unconscious, thus imply some degree of misconstrual of the structure of desire itself on the part of the subject. Freud focuses explicitly on the subject’s obscure relations with its desires and their phantasmic flesh in a work from 1919 called “A Child Is Being Beaten.”114 This is his most important contribution, according to all Freudians, to psychoanalytic theory on the phantasm. It is also a work that clearly distinguishes between conscious phantasms in relation to which the subject pretends to act as a mere spectator, and unconscious phantasms in which the subject loses itself. The half-​conscious and half-​ unconscious phantasm analyzed in this work belongs to one of Freud’s young patients. It has a very complicated structure, but by schematizing it a bit, we can still distinguish three distinct “phases”: 1. “[The] father is beating the child”; 2. “I am being beaten by [the] father”; 3. “A child is being beaten,” or “Some boys are being beaten by a substitute of the father (a teacher).”115 Upon comparison of these three formulations of the phantasm, we see immediately that the verbal form is only active in the first phase (“is beating”) and becomes passive in the two following phases (“am/​is/​are being beaten”). At first glance, this is neither very surprising nor necessarily contradictory, for the young girl may easily find pleasure in the fact that her father “is beating” her brother that she hates, or that all other boys also deserve to “be beaten.” However, despite appearances, this is not a sadistic phantasm according to Freud, but rather a masochistic one—­even though one does not exclude the other . . . quite the contrary!116 Only the second formulation of the phantasm corresponds with the patient’s true desire: “I am being beaten by [the] father.” This formulation of the second phase, which touches on the true pivotal point and imaginary core of the phantasm, is also the only one

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the patient is never able to put into words. Contrary to the two other phases, the phantasm is unconscious here. This second formulation of the patient’s true unconscious phantasm is, as Freud openly admits, the result of an interpretation or, more precisely, a construction on his part. Far from being arbitrary, this interpretation is supported by the patient’s own words, that is, by the fact that the transition from the first to the third phase of her phantasm, as she has formulated these phases, only becomes intelligible if we insert the second formulation. This is why Freud speaks of the three “phases” belonging to the same phantasm. In its second form, the phantasm could not be expressed and had to remain unconscious simply because the subject did not have the necessary distance to be able to put it into words. For in this form (and only in this form) the subject not only stages its own desire, but also itself enters onto the phantasmic stage. What is silenced is its repressed desire to be beaten by its father. When the subject directly stages its own unconscious desire and merges with the role it plays in this imaginary scene, it is struck blind and mute. The phantasm thus becomes a much too clear translation of a desire that the conscious subject or ego cannot admit to itself, and the subject of the unconscious desire is too caught up to be able to take up the position of spectator or speak about the desire—­even in the form of free association. The different phases of the phantasm analyzed by Freud are thus distinguished in many ways depending on whether we focus on: their topography, the place the subject occupies, or even the form of visibility for which they allow. However, this should not lead us to forget that there are other phantasms which do not arise primarily from sight. These are what we have called narrative phantasms, which are distinguished from visual phantasms especially by the fact that they are discursive in nature, that is, they make use of language and are temporally articulated over a given duration. With their multiple developments, these narrative phantasms are better suited to the dynamic of desire than static visual images that captivate the subject’s attention and threaten to paralyze the mobility of its desire. Yet, even though narrative and visual phantasms are indeed different in kind, we should not therefore conclude that they usually exist separately. Much to the contrary, the masochistic phantasm analyzed by Freud clearly demonstrates how a visual phantasm can develop in several successive phases, and thus constitute a kind of visual narrative, similar to a comic strip retracing the transformative steps in a subject’s desire. And while these successive mutations in desire may not be ruled by what Lacan sometimes calls “the law of the signifier” (la loi du signifiant),117 but most often “the signifying order” (ordre signifiant), they nonetheless rarely happen without the intervention of signifiers. Furthermore, there are also narrative phantasms that are visual as well and serve the purposes

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of a hallucinatory satisfaction. The way in which the dream develops and unfolds a more or less complex phantasm in the form of a visual narrative with many developments clearly demonstrates the intertwining of visual and narrative phantasms. Yet, in the case of the family romance, its narrative structure is so charged that one might wonder whether this kind of phantasm still has anything in common with the visual image. It is not mere chance that Freud speaks of the “romance” here, that is, of a fictitious narrative that we tell ourselves and possibly others. Such a narrative is not constructed around images that “speak,” but rather around shocking words such as “adultery” or “lost child”—­words whose mysterious meaning or even their mere sound irresistibly fascinate the subject. It is often because of their mysterious meaning, or the tone of voice in which the child heard them pronounced by others, that such words “heard but not understood” (as Freud wrote in his letter to Fliess) take on a phantasmic value. Because of the excitement they produce in the subject, these key words become the matrix for the construction of a phantasmic narrative in which they function as pivotal words. Yet, even if it is true that this narrative is induced by words and constructed with words, this does not mean that the narrative phantasms in question are merely the effect of a pure play of signifiers. Instead, these key words are signifiers that at least partially free themselves from the hold of the general laws of the signifier by taking on a personal phantasmic value. Rather than being true symbolic signifiers, these key words are signs that trigger an obscure desire to which a phantasmic narrative attempts to give a recognizable form and structure. These are words that arouse desire, and phantasms that graft themselves onto these words—­r ather than phantasms arising directly from the symbolic order of the signifier. As well as the intertwining of visual and narrative phantasms, we also have to make room for the intertwining of imaginary phantasms and symbolic signifiers. Our reflections have led us to recognize that there are different types of both visual and narrative phantasms. Along the way, many certainties, or rather, prejudices have crumbled. Far from always being a kind of instant photograph reproducing a scene, phantasms can be constituted of a multitude, or even an almost cinematographic sequence, of visual images. In turn, these visual images can be associated with words, and these words constitute entire narratives that are phantasmic in character. Moreover, words that are “heard but not understood” can leave behind the symbolic order and take on a phantasmic value. Thus, the distinction drawn between the phantasmic imaginary order and the symbolic order of language in no way keeps these two orders from frequently crossing paths and, occasionally, merging with one another. Similarly to the

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relation between the phantasm and language, the relation between the desiring subject and its own conscious or unconscious phantasms is filled with ambiguity. While some phantasms do indeed function as imaginary screens drawn between the subject and its desire, other phantasms expose the subject to an untenable confrontation with the naked truth of its desire. Thus, the relation between the subject and its phantasms and the relation between phantasms and desire are not only variable in structure, but are also very rarely “balanced.” The threat of a too great proximity or misleading distance always hangs over both kinds of relation. The perception of objective reality is not only situated outside the phantasmic order, it is in fact directly opposed to it. Phantasms only relate to desire in its subjective and objective dimensions. As long as this desire remains unconscious and follows the path of primary processes, it has no good reason to be preoccupied with an objective reality of which it, in fact, knows absolutely nothing. But even conscious desires that are related to objects in the external world and follow the requirements of the reality principle never relate directly to objective reality. For real objects are desirable because they are desired, not because of their existence itself or their objective character. More specifically, these objects owe their desirable character both to the memory of pleasure that other objects have provided for the subject in the past and (especially) to their capacity to insert themselves in the conscious and unconscious phantasms of the desiring subject. Thus, there is no real object that lends itself by its nature alone to the fulfillment of desire, and there is no desire that naturally and directly turns toward the real object that is most suited to it. Instead, desire is characterized by a lack that no real object would be sufficient to fill. It errs from object to object because it is animated by a passion for an impossible object. Concerning phantasms: their imaginary character distances them from any concern with objective reality both structurally and from the outset. When they do borrow some of their elements from the external world, phantasms bend them away from their objective meaning. Yet, this does not mean that phantasms are truly imaginary or substitutive objects. They are rather the framework within which desire can unfold and turn toward either real objects or imaginary or hallucinatory objects. The fact that phantasms can direct desire as much toward imaginary as real objects, that they can either facilitate or block the relation of desire to reality, clearly demonstrates that, in themselves, they do not relate to reality in any way—­be it positive or negative. What Freud once claimed (a bit prematurely) about the activity of fantasy, namely, that it served to compensate for a frustrating reality, can therefore not be applied to the phantasm. Consequently, it goes without saying that the question concerning the truth of phantasms has nothing to do with whether they

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conform to objective reality. The only criterion of truth applicable to phantasms comes from desire and the desiring subject. Yet, even if we all agree that there are true and false desires and thus, inevitably, a truth of desire, this does not automatically mean there are true or false phantasms, that is, phantasms that are true or untrue to the truth of desire. Lacan seems convinced of the opposite, that is, that all phantasms are necessarily illusory in that they hide or cover over the truth of desire as a lack relating to an impossible object. Since he simultaneously claims that “the phantasm is the support of desire,”118 it seems that the phantasm remains, nevertheless, a useful illusion. But it is not in Freud’s character to put up with the existence of useful illusions. In his view, if phantasms serve as a necessary mediation between desire and its objects, they can neither be necessary illusions, nor necessarily illusory fantasies. This means that they can, but do not necessarily, lie about the objects of desire. The same can be said about the way in which phantasms mediate the relation between the subject and its own (true or false) desires. Given that all desire necessarily implies phantasms, there cannot be a subject of desire that is not at the same time a subject of phantasms and subject to phantasms. To be sure, this in no way excludes the possibility that a subject’s phantasms can lie about its true desire or that a subject’s desire might remain imprisoned in these lies. For instance, prefabricated phantasms borrowed by the subject from specialized media to avoid having to ask itself the question of what it really desires are automatically considered false. If there are indeed true and false phantasms, and their truth value is always measured in relation to desire rather than objective reality, the subject must have a way of access to the truth of its desire that does not go through phantasms. This is the only way it can be in a position to judge the truth of its phantasms and liberate itself from those that hinder its desire as well as its perception thereof. This other route of access to the truth of its desire is given to the subject by its own speech—­this is the central teaching of psychoanalysis. Only desires that are put into words allow the subject to situate itself with respect to the truth of its desire and its phantasms. Thus, the subject of desire, who is always also a subject of the phantasm, must become a speaking subject—­while continuing to desire through phantasms. True, speech can lie just as much as phantasms can about the desire of the subject. Truthful speech by the subject on its true desires and its true phantasms not only has specific requirements with respect to structure and place, it also takes time. It is laborious before becoming enlightening, for it progresses in baby steps, forward and backward. It consists in “working-​through” (Durcharbeiten) a desire whose structure is as general as its history is unique. To speak

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in order to advance by retracing the steps of one’s desire, is also to go through steps that lead from a private, idiosyncratic, or dialectic language to a fully symbolic language. It is within this register and medium of full speech that all questions raised by the subject on the truth of its desire and phantasms are addressed. But it is also important to emphasize that capturing the truth of desire in speech does not necessarily make a true desire good. Thus, the relation of the subject to its desire passes not only through the question of truth, but also through questions arising from a possible ethics of desire.

7

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Lacan on a Drive Subject Sublimated by the Encounter with Art

My “look” [regard] is one of those givens of the “sensible,” of the brute and primordial world, that defies the analysis into being and nothingness, into existence as consciousness and existence as a thing, and requires a complete reconstruction of philosophy. —­Merleau-​Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible

Readers of Freud usually concur in their judgment that his conception of sublimation as a “drive vicissitude” is insufficient. Considered especially problematic are the idea of the desexualization of a libido that chooses more elevated “aims” for itself, and the capacity of the drive to sublimate itself on its own. We can try to avoid these difficulties by calling, like Schopenhauer, on a spiritual subject that liberates itself from its submission to drive-​based life by making itself into a theoretical spectator of drive-​based life in general. However, given that this drive-​based life in general or will in-​itself, because of its irrationality, necessarily escapes rational knowledge, it has to allow itself to be seen (se donner à voir) in another manner. The most adequate and liberating idea a human being can have of this will is offered, according to Schopenhauer, through the contemplation of a “Platonic Idea” as it manifests itself in a work of art. We can criticize this model of sublimation for confusing sublimation and repression or, as Nietzsche does, for being guilty of “aesthetic subjectivism” or “theoretical optimism.” Yet, the alternatives proposed by Nietzsche and Lacan still remain true to the Schopenhauerian paradigm of a sublimation of the drive through contemplating works of art, among which tragedy and 301

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painting hold pride of place. The sublimated drive subject thus remains a subject that is visual, visionary, or seen. To escape the Schopenhauerian conception of sublimation, it is tempting to do away with both the aesthetic subject and its theoretical knowledge of drive-​based life. This is the approach taken by the young Nietzsche. If the subject and its relation to drive-​based life is not what produces sublimation, then it must be drive-​based life itself. By transforming themselves into “artistic drives,” vital drives desubjectivize spectators of tragedy and draw them into the onstage battle between Apollonian and Dionysian drives. Far from sublimating their drives by a subjective effort of contemplative restraint, the spectators are now sublimated by artistic drive forces that are infinitely stronger than them and give their lives a new cosmic dimension. Instead of contemplating, from a distance and not without distaste, the human passions represented in “Christian” tragedy, the spectators of Greek tragedy joyfully surf on the waves of artistic drives. They abandon themselves to the overabundance of a Life transformed and justified by art. The “twofold nature” of a human subject’s consciousness both affected by the will and liberated from the will in Schopenhauer, makes way in Nietzsche for a “self-​division” of spectators permeated by antagonistic forces that carry them beyond themselves. While the young Nietzsche is often content to say the opposite of Schopenhauer, Lacan takes the debate concerning the possible sublimation of drives in the encounter with a work of art to another level. He shifts the problematic from considering an active or passive spectator to a show that allows itself to be seen by captivating the spectator’s gaze. Here, it becomes a question of a possible sublimation of a subject’s drive-​to-​see under the influence of an external gaze that emanates from a work of art. This means that this new approach to sublimation mobilizes a new conception of visual perception according to which a subject who wants to see is a subject who is always already exposed to the gaze of what allows itself to be seen by the subject. What follows from this is a new conception of the “division” (clivage) or “splitting” (schize) of the spectator under the influence of a foreign gaze revealing itself to be always different from what the spectator had imagined. The event of such a contrast between the gaze one desires to see and the gaze that strikes one by jostling one’s “imaginary” (imaginaire) is most spectacularly produced in anamorphosis or trompe-​l’oeil paintings. Caught by a gaze that only a picture can make visible in the form of an illusion, spectators gain a new lucidity regarding the nature of their drive-​to-​see or “scopic” drive. This lucidity provides every opportunity for a sublimation of the drive. Even though this is not without similarity to Schopenhauer, it is no longer a question here of an intuition of the drive, but of its intermittent manifestation through

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a semblance that is both unmasked and maintained. This ambiguous manifestation is thus less beneficial for knowledge of the drive in general than for a sublimation that takes the form of a calming of the drive to see and of the “voracity of the eye.” In Lacan, the problematic of drive sublimation definitively leaves behind the domain of encountering the sublime—­be it of height or depth, subjective or objective, actively sought or passively undergone. A scopic drive sublimated by the grace of works of art is, for him, a drive situated between wanting and renouncing, and one that enjoys the free play of an alternately effective and ineffective deception of the gaze.

Sublimating One’s Drives by Making Oneself into a Pure Aesthetic Spectator (Schopenhauer) Schopenhauer’s main work, The World as Will and Representation, is composed, as is well known, of four books, and this division of the work is maintained in its second volume, containing the supplements to the first volume. In this work, the obscure unity or mysterious identity between the will and representation is approached alternately from the standpoint of representation (books I and III) and of the will (books II and IV). In this way, we move from the scientific knowledge of the phenomenal world through representations, governed by the principle of sufficient reason, to a more direct approach to the will that governs, in the form of natural forces, the movement of physical bodies and of the living bodies of animals and humans. Similarly, in books III and IV we move from the ideal representations of art, which provisionally free the subject from its submission to the will, to the final outlining of an ethical will that turns definitively away from the will to live. This entire development is supported by the underlying idea that the will, as the unfathomable origin of all that is, nonetheless manifests and realizes itself through “objectifications” taking the form either of representations (empirical in the sciences, and ideal in the arts), or active (or reactive, according to Nietzsche) forces governing the movements of bodies and the actions of the human subject. Yet, this beautiful speculative architecture does little to answer the question concerning why the blind and ungraspable will in-​itself has to objectify itself in a phenomenal and illusory world that is completely fabricated by it. The same thing goes for the question concerning where this ethical (and, according to Nietzsche, “nihilistic”) counter-​w ill comes from that puts the universal will to live in check in individual human beings.

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Nietzsche, who devoted much attention to these questions from his earliest writings onwards, eventually stipulated that the will was not one, but many, and its diverse objectifications were precisely proof of this plurality of fundamental drives. What then is the place of the human subject in Schopenhauer’s philosophical edifice? Multiple, that is, changing with the particular decor of each book! The subject alternates between: a direct emanation of the will and a subject that detaches itself from the will, a subject that knows and a subject that acts, an empirical subject and a transcendental subject, a subject animated by (empirical and transcendental) forces and a subject that represents (empirical or ideal) objects. Given that all these subjective experiences can be accomplished or felt by the same subject, the question concerning the individuality or singularity of this subject becomes unavoidable, even if it is inconvenient for Schopenhauer. To be sure, there is the principle of individuation, tied to the principle of sufficient reason and making use of space and time. But this principle, which applies only to empirical representations, cannot apply to the subject for the twofold reason that this latter cannot, as “pure subject of knowing,” be the object of an empirical representation, and as a subject governed by the will, it completely escapes the hold of this principle. Another principle of individuation would thus be needed that did not contradict the Schopenhauerian thesis according to which the subject can only know itself as the subject of a will that completely ignores the principle of individuation. In other words, the empirical experience of my willing, realized through internal perceptions of the desires animating and moving my body as they please,1 would have to be completed by a pure, disincarnated, and nonetheless, intuitive experience of my willing. I would have to be able to see the will that animates and dominates me as a pure spectator, disengaged or detached from the interests of this tyrannical will. This disinterested spectator, able to contemplate the will in the form of an ideal object, does indeed exist for Schopenhauer: it is the artist or the art lover. This is why we have to turn to his philosophical aesthetics if we want to evaluate the capacity of Schopenhauer’s thought to think a possible emancipation of the human subject with respect to its drives. The first question Schopenhauer needs to answer is how art goes about providing the human subject with an objective knowledge of the nature and actions of the will. The entire development of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics remains marked by this theoretical and subjectivistic approach to art. I showed at length, in chapter 3 of part 1 of this work, that this will is a pure drive activity and that it can thus only allow itself to be known through its objectifications. Among all these objectifications, those that compromise themselves the least with the illusions of the phenomenal

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world are the ones that give us the best idea of what the will really is. It follows that aesthetic contemplation must relate to ideal objects, and not empirical objects, if it is to provide us with a knowledge of the will’s true nature. Furthermore, it must be an ideal (or “pure”) experience, and not an empirical experience still dominated by the interests of the will. This is why Schopenhauer defines the aesthetic experience as the disinterested contemplation of an ideal objectification of the will by a pure subject of knowing. Schopenhauer’s philosophical aesthetics is thus semi-​K antian through its emphasis on disinterested contemplation, and it is semi-​Platonic through its emphasis on the ideal nature of the objects of this contemplation—­of which works of art are, incidentally, but a mimetic representation (Darstellung). The ideal objects of aesthetic contemplation are thus constituted by the “Platonic Ideas,” whose status we have already specified.2 These latter are distinguished from empirical objectifications of the will in the subject’s own body by their “adequate” nature. Their perfection rebounds onto the subject who contemplates them in an immediate, adequate, and spiritual intuition. This aesthetic intuition or contemplation merges or unifies with its ideal object, while at the same time disengaging itself from any submission to the interests of the will. Furthermore, it is this freeing from any servitude to the will that makes aesthetic contemplation into a unique experience distinguished not only from an empirical knowledge (or “internal perception”) of the will in one’s own body, but also from any intellectual or scientific knowledge. The pleasure (Wohlgefallen) of the aesthetic experience is the pleasure of a “Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing” (Sabbath der Zuchtausarbeit des Wollens).3 For the artist or, in Schopenhauer’s words, creative “genius,” the creation of the work of art is secondary with respect to the intuition of the Platonic Ideas. This intuition of the Ideas essentially requires the imagination, for this latter frees itself from the constraints of the principle of sufficient reason governing both the empirical world and its representation through perception and understanding. It is furthermore the intuition of an Idea and not of a concept: what it lacks in intellectual rigor and conceptual clarity is largely compensated for by its object’s infinite richness or overabundance of meaning. It is an intuition whose subjective finitude does not consist of an experience of lack, but, to the contrary, of being satisfied beyond all desire and beyond anything our concepts had allowed us to anticipate. The task of creative artists consists in transposing their intuition of such an Idea (or, more precisely, of a plurality of such Ideas) into the creation of a work of art. The artist is thus a visionary before being a creator of works of art. Though Schopenhauer unfortunately does not expand much on the way in which this transfiguration of the Idea into an artwork is accomplished, it is nonetheless clear that this

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happens through a process that is both mimetic and didactic for him. It is mimetic because it “reproduces” in a work the preceding intuition of an Idea, which is itself already an objective representation (Darstellung) of some aspect of the will. As such, strictly speaking, it is in fact a double mimesis. It is didactic because the work of art is a means for creative geniuses to communicate their intuition so that the art lover can benefit from it. From the perspective of art lovers, the first question we must ask is how they can recognize a work of art as such from among the objects of the phenomenal world, or furthermore, how they can make an empirical thing in nature into an object of aesthetic contemplation. Schopenhauer’s answer is clear: in order to do this, the art lover has to free the aesthetic object from any dependence on the network of causal relations existing between empirical things, isolate it from its phenomenal context, and apprehend it as a whole, not as a part. More precisely: as “a representative of the whole.”4 While it manifests itself in the phenomenal world, the aesthetic object or work of art frees or abstracts itself from the former by its mode of manifestation. Schopenhauer writes: “Now in such a contemplation, the particular thing at one stroke becomes the Idea of its species, and the perceiving individual becomes the pure subject of knowing.”5 Paradoxically, it is thus the singularity of the work of art that allows it to be grasped as the representation of a universal Idea. Does this mean that, for Schopenhauer, the understanding of a work of art comes from a reflective judgment such as we find in Kant? Not quite, for the work of art refers to Ideas for Schopenhauer, not concepts, and it leads to an intuition, not a judgment. However, it is true that the work of art has an exemplary or symbolic nature for Schopenhauer. His description of the contemplation of an Idea through a work of art thus naturally makes an aesthetic use of Kantian schematism. These Kantian echoes aside, it should be emphasized that Schopenhauer is forced to recognize, at least implicitly, a transcendental principle of individuation at work in aesthetic experience that is radically different from the principle of sufficient reason governing empirical individuation. This transcendental individuation affects both the work of art and the Platonic Idea, for it relates to the way in which they are intertwined. The work of art is unique in its way of representing a Platonic Idea, and the Platonic Idea becomes more and more individual (or, at least, more and more concrete) to the extent that it is represented in a more and more singular way. Indeed, Schopenhauer says that the most perfect works of art are those that represent the essence of human life in its most individual aspects. As such, a sculpture representing the suffering of Laocoön is more perfect, for him, than a sculpture of a galloping horse. But the

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sculpture of Laocoön lacks a voice that would allow it to cry out its pain, while characters in a novel or play not only cry out, but confide their secrets to us in whispers. Natasha, in War and Peace, allows us to participate in her first emotions of love in their most individual and particular aspects. But does this not overshadow the general nature of the Platonic Idea she is supposed to incarnate? With such extensive individualization, can an Idea still maintain its status as a Platonic Idea? Schopenhauer tries to get out of this difficulty by claiming that the Idea represented by a fictional character such as Natasha is the Idea of human life taken in its most individual aspects, and furthermore, that this individuality of human life is represented by Natasha in what he calls an “idealist” (idealisch) manner: “Therefore the character, although individual as such, must be comprehended and expressed ideally [idealisch], in other words, with emphasis on its significance in regard to the Idea of mankind in general.”6 The meaning of the work of art is thus both individual and general, concrete and ideal. But what then can be said of art lovers, that is, of spectators or readers? Are they ideal or individual, or both at the same time, that is, individual in a way that could also be qualified as “idealist” (idealisch)? In one sense, one is tempted to say that they must be ideal, since they are “pure subjects” with the intuition of a Platonic Idea. In another sense, it cannot be denied that we all differ in our way of appreciating or being affected by a same work of art. To speak in Schopenhauerian terms, it must be admitted that the aesthetic experience happens to each of us in an individual way and is influenced by our empirical character. As well as the empirical principle of individuation, it is thus once again a question of whether there is also a transcendental principle of individuation of the spectator of the artwork. Even though Schopenhauer has a tendency to avoid this question, his analysis of the experience of the sublime (das Erhabene), and of the sublimation of the drive subject that derives from it, leads us toward a possible answer. Schopenhauer’s analysis of the experience of the sublime also has the advantage of anticipating Nietzsche’s considerations with respect to the experience of the tragic. For Schopenhauer, as for Nietzsche after him, and Kant and Schiller before him, the aesthetic experience is not limited to the encounter with the beautiful itself or the beautiful appearance. “The grace” (Grazie)7 of an attitude or a bodily gesture and the temporal unfolding of an action also and immediately lend themselves to the pleasure of an aesthetic contemplation that delivers us from our subordination to the tyranny of the will-​drive. It is a completely different story, however, when it comes to anything that becomes agreeable to us by directly affecting our will and exciting our drives and desires. This is the case for what Schopenhauer

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calls the “charming or attractive” (das Reizende; literally: “the exciting”).8 What can be said, then, of “the sublime,” which, like the attractive, also affects our will, while at the same time arousing a feeling of fear, terror, or anxiety in us? Why would the encounter with the sublime, that is, with what is hostile to our will and makes us flee, be more favorable to the pleasure of an aesthetic contemplation than the encounter with the attractive or agreeable, which is in accordance with our will and awakens our desire? The answer is simple: the sublime, by opposing our will, invites us to detach ourselves from it, and to thus open ourselves to the possibility of a disinterested contemplation of the will and, more precisely, of the Platonic Ideas in which it expresses itself most adequately. In other words, the sublime (das Erhabene) invites the subject to elevate itself (sich erheben) above the impressions or affections of its will in order to turn to a disinterested contemplation of the Platonic Idea illustrated by the frightening spectacle of the sublime: Nevertheless, the beholder may not direct his attention to this relation to his will which is so pressing and hostile, but . . . he may consciously turn away from it, forcibly tear himself away from his will and its relations, and, giving himself up entirely to knowledge, may quietly contemplate, as pure, will-​less subject of knowing, those very objects so terrible to the will. He may comprehend only their Idea that is foreign to all relation. . . . In that case, he is then filled with the feeling of the sublime. . . . [In the presence of] the sublime, that state of pure knowing is obtained first of all by a conscious and violent tearing away from the relations of the same object to the will which are recognized as unfavourable, with a free exaltation [erheben] . . . beyond the will and the knowledge related to it.9

The experience of the sublime thus becomes an aesthetic experience by means of a self-​liberation and sublimation of the subject, who transforms from a drive subject, submitted to the will, to a pure or transcendental subject, contemplating an Idea that is an ideal objectification of a will which already has no more hold over the subject. This sublimation of the subject is thus an elevation of the subject of drives and desires, subjected to the will, into a pure and free subject, who is actively engaged in contemplating the ideal and objective essence of this will in a disinterested way. Before we move on to examining what fate Nietzsche holds in store for the drive subject and the nature of its sublimation by art in The Birth of Tragedy, something still needs to be said about Schopenhauer’s conception of tragedy. Though it cannot lay claim to being the most perfect form

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of art (a distinction that Schopenhauer reserves, as is well known, for music), tragedy nonetheless offers us the most complete experience of the sublime: “Our pleasure in the tragedy belongs not to the feeling of the beautiful, but to that of the sublime; it is, in fact, the highest degree of this feeling.”10 What other arts, then, awaken the feeling of the sublime to a lesser degree? Architecture, on the one hand (though Schopenhauer does not explicitly say so), and the song (Lied) on the other. Briefly stated, architecture for Schopenhauer is an art that implements the particular Platonic Ideas of the forces of nature which govern matter and, especially, stone. A building’s aesthetic value comes from the proper use of opposite natural forces, such as “gravity” and “rigidity” (Starrheit)11 or “support and load” (Stütze und Last).12 Neutralizing each other by mutually assisting each other, these antagonistic natural forces keep the building standing, raised up between the earth and the sky. If it is true that sublimation is always constituted by a surpassing that overcomes the opposition between contrary drives or forces, then one can say that architecture is an objective form of sublimation, that is, a sublimation of natural forces and not of subjective drives. In the aesthetic contemplation of an architectural work of art, spectators have an intuition of the violence of the natural forces inhabiting the stones of the building, and they admire the way potentially destructive forces harmoniously even each other out by contributing to the stability of the edifice. The “song” (Lied), however, represents an eminently subjective form of sublimation. It is the result of overcoming the opposition between contrary subjective drives and experiences, such as the passions of the empirical subject arising from an affection of its will, on the one hand, and the intuitions of the pure subject, on the other, whose aesthetic contemplation shows its detachment from its own will and from the will in general: It is the subject of the will, in other words, the singer’s own willing, that fills his consciousness, . . . always as emotion, passion, an agitated state of mind. Besides this, however, and simultaneously with it, the singer, through the sight of surrounding nature, becomes conscious of himself as the subject of pure, will-​less knowing, whose unshakable, blissful peace now appears in contrast to the stress of willing. . . . This feeling of this contrast, this alternate play [Wechselspieles], is really what is expressed in the whole of the song, and what in general constitutes the lyrical state.13

By celebrating the “the twofold nature of his consciousness” (Duplicität seines Bewusstseyns),14 the song at the same time overcomes the painful

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division of the human subject, that is, “the contrast between the insignificance and dependence of ourselves as individuals, as phenomena of the will, and the consciousness of ourselves as pure subject of knowing.”15 Finally, concerning the sublimation brought about by tragedy, one can say that it is situated between architecture and song for Schopenhauer, that is, between what we have called an objective sublimation and a subjective sublimation. According to Schopenhauer, tragedy gives spectators the opportunity to elevate themselves above their initial feelings of fear or suffering, in order to gain a clear view of the forces of the will governing the empirical life of human individuals: “The purpose of the drama generally is to show us in an example what are the nature and existence of man.”16 This simultaneously aesthetic and theoretical contemplation also has a practical aim for Schopenhauer: it should lead us to a “giving up,” that is, a renouncing of everything that arises from our will to live. It is because Christian tragedy affirms this message of asceticism or the condemnation of vital drives much more clearly than Greek tragedy, that Schopenhauer takes it to be far superior to the latter: “the tragic heroes of the ancients show resolute and stoical subjection under the unavoidable blows of fate; the Christian tragedy, on the other hand, shows the giving up of the whole will-​to-​live, cheerful abandonment of the world in the consciousness of its worthlessness [Werthlosigkeit] and vanity [Nichtigkeit].”17 By showing us “the terrible side of life,” Christian tragedy elevates us to the status of impartial spectators of “the antagonism [Widerstreit] of the will with itself.”18 The “pleasure” (Genuss) we draw from this distressing spectacle comes from the fact that we believe ourselves to be sheltered from the tragic events we are watching. Spectators of tragedy know the source of the cruel fate plaguing the tragic hero, and this serves as a lesson for avoiding a similar fate. All the misfortunes of tragic heroes ultimately stem from nothing other than the hold of an absurd will over them and from their vital and sexual drives. The transgressions for which they atone and the punishments they endure thus always have a supraindividual and exemplary value; as such, the tragic hero, for Schopenhauer, is the representation (Darstellung) of an entirely distinctive Platonic Idea or spiritual intuition: the Idea or intuition of the essential suffering and inevitable absurdity of the human will-​to-​live. One can thus say that the true subject of tragedy, for Schopenhauer, is not the hero or the chorus, but the spectator: in tragic drama, “this resigned exaltation [Erhebung] of the mind is not shown in the hero himself, but is only stimulated in the spectator.”19 This contemplative, pedagogical, and pre-​ethical function of tragedy explains why Schopenhauer sets it apart from the other arts, and notably from music and even lyric poetry.

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Thus, Nietzsche is not wrong when he says that tragedy according to Schopenhauer is a “Socratic” tragedy that brings about a transformation in the spectator by virtue alone of a better understanding of the essence of human life. Hence, Schopenhauer’s “theoretical optimism.” This transformation of spectators leads them to establish and affirm themselves, beyond Life and against Life, as impartial spectators of Life. Hence, for Nietzsche, the “aesthetic subjectivism” of Schopenhauer. Despite everything still owed to Schopenhauer in The Birth of Tragedy, it is indeed the critique of this aesthetic subjectivism and theoretical optimism that constitutes the basic theme of this first book by Nietzsche. And it is this same disagreement again that commands Nietzsche’s return to Greek tragedy. Rather than being a philosophical parable serving a moralizing and nihilistic subjectivism (as is the case with the Christian tragedy so appreciated by Schopenhauer), this Greek tragedy consists, for Nietzsche, in the affirmation of an art that is not yet contaminated by philosophy, an art born of myth and music. Far from turning spectators away from Life, this art is on the contrary a “ justification” of Life, and it makes spectators into an integral part of the tragic event, that is, the “work of art.” If one can still speak of a sublimation of drives in Nietzsche, it is no longer to the benefit of the sublimated subject, freed from its drives and desires, but to the benefit of “artistic drives” (Kunsttriebe) whose mythical names (“Dionysus” and “Apollo”) strongly underline their emancipation from any subjectivistic understanding.

The Desubjectivization of the Tragic Spectator’s Drives and Their Sublimation into Artistic Drives (Nietzsche) It would be tedious to enumerate all the points of convergence between the Nietzschean and Schopenhauerian understandings of art. Moreover, it would be pointless to do so without, at the same time, underlining the subtle shifts that ultimately bring about huge reversals, especially in the description of the aesthetic experience of the spectator of a tragedy. It is true that the Dionysian drive resembles Schopenhauer’s will, and the Apollonian image resembles what Schopenhauer calls “Platonic Ideas.” It is no less true, however, that this Apollonian image still arises directly from a specific artistic drive (Kunsttrieb) in Nietzsche, and is not the result of an ideal objectification of the will. It is also true that Nietzsche continues to follow Schopenhauer’s analysis of music closely, but it is no less true that he combines this music with myth (which is hardly mentioned

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by Schopenhauer)—­allowing him to make music into the essence of all tragedy, whether Greek or modern. Finally, it is true that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche prefer art to philosophy, but it is no less true that for Nietzsche art justifies (Rechtfertigung) Life, while for Schopenhauer it liberates us from Life. It is far more interesting to compare the aesthetic philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche with respect to their styles. Schopenhauer’s style fits with his continual emphasis on the experience of an aesthetic subject faced with various kinds of objectivities (Objektität) which it makes into the objects of a detached and dominant contemplation. Nietzsche’s style follows the movement of a way of thinking concerned with: interpretation rather than contemplation, fusion rather than distance, participation in rather than intellectual understanding of an event, and faith in a mythical narrative rather than an attempt to put into words the adequate intuition of an Idea for which we lack concepts. Nietzsche invents a new myth that recounts the birth and degeneration of Greek tragedy, while Schopenhauer draws the timeless picture of a system of fine arts. Nietzsche claims to speak in the name of even the most archaic Greek culture (griechische Kunstanschauung), while Schopenhauer seems to have no knowledge of Hölderlin and claims to invent, by translating it into Kantian language, what Schelling and Hegel had already said before him about aesthetic intuition or art as the “organon” of philosophy. Nietzsche’s genealogical interpretations of the arts all share a putting into question of the kind of subjectivity one finds in modern aesthetics—­both as subject and object—­in the name of a metaphysics of “artistic” drive forces. It is thus no longer a question of a subject interpreting a work of art; rather, art itself constitutes an interpretation of vital and creative forces. Similarly, it is no longer a question of the artistic subject as a genius, creating works of art, but of drives creating works for which the artist and the art lover are mere vessels. Throughout The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche does not tire of repeating that true art creates “without the mediation of any human artist”;20 it “cause[s] subjectivity to vanish to the point of complete self-​forgetting”21 in such a way that “man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art.”22 The invention of a separated subject who seeks to understand the work of art and learn its secret at all costs is an invention, for Nietzsche, of the Socratic philosophy marking the end of high Greek art: “Socrates, however, was that second spectator who did not understand the older tragedy and therefore did not respect it.”23 Socrates is thus the ancestor of the art critics and “[unmusical] listeners” 24 who make up the modern opera audience, according to Nietzsche. But what does it mean exactly to say that the aesthetic subject is the effect and not the origin of the work of art? What, then, is the true

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source of the work of art, and how does the latter present itself as an interpretation and justification of its source? An “interpretation” and a “ justification” of what? A first, still approximate, answer is provided by the following quotation: We maintain on the contrary that the entire opposition between the subjective and the objective (which Schopenhauer, too, still uses to divide up the arts, as if it were some criterion of value) is absolutely inappropriate in aesthetics since the subject . . . can only be considered the opponent of art and not its origin. But where the subject is an artist, it is already released and redeemed from the individual will and has become, as it were, a medium. . . . For what must be clear to us above all, both to our humiliation and our elevation, is that the whole comedy of art is certainly not performed for us, neither for our edification nor our education, just as we are far from truly being the creators of that world of art. . . . For only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.25

What art justifies, therefore, is human existence and the world, and what it interprets is their origin in drives. For Nietzsche, the origin of human existence and the world is to be found in the drives or forces of Life, and it is these metaphysical forces that art interprets, thus justifying human existence and the world as “aesthetic phenomena.” The difference between the arts thus arises from an aesthetic interpretation of different kinds of drive or different drive “vicissitudes” and conflicts. As such, each art promotes a different value, generated by a “struggle” between Life’s drive forces. Through its specific value, every art constitutes an interpretation, justification, and celebration of Life. “Dionysus” and “Apollo” are the mythical names of these primitive forces or “artistic drives”26 confronting each other in a struggle whose outcome is uncertain and open to all kinds of reversals, and which thus produces different kinds of artworks. Dionysus represents “intoxication,” that is, a force of the passions that transgresses all limits and destroys the established order, but in the same impulse reunites all that is originally separated. Apollo, to the contrary, represents the wish, the “dream,” the “image,” “measure,” play, and especially, “the lovely semblance” (schöner Schein).27 He is the god of light, individuation, and rest with respect to what remains itself. The artistic force that he represents is a contained force that contains by giving form and by covering the deformed and ugly with the semblance of beauty. Apollo protects and calms things down, while Dionysus wounds and carries away. Apollo looks at everything from above with an indifferent eye, while Dionysus tackles everything in order

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to communicate his unbridled enthusiasm—­which enchants and leads toward ecstasy. Yet, one should not conclude that Dionysus and Apollo represent contrary forces that mutually negate and annul each other by opposing each other. On the contrary, all art comes from an alliance and intertwining of these two forces. Neither should Apollo be made into a reactive force that draws all its power from a negation of Dionysian forces. On the contrary, Apollo represents an active force in the same way as Dionysus, a force that wants something other than, but not opposite to Dionysus. Like all value, the work of art is born, for Nietzsche, from the non-​totalizable difference of a plurality of forces, and not from the dialectical suspension of a conceptual opposition. In other words, what Apollo wants—­aesthetic individuation, for instance—­can only be obtained by wrestling with Dionysus. The outcome of this struggle is never decided in advance, which explains why a work of art dominated by Apollonian forces always lends itself to Dionysian reversal. Yet, in its turn, this Dionysian reversal is also held back by the action of Apollonian forces. Greek tragedy, with its characteristic versatility, is the most eminent illustration of such a struggle between Dionysus and Apollo, according to Nietzsche. Dionysos speaks the language of Apollo, but finally it is Apollo who speaks that of Dionysos. At which point the supreme goal of tragedy, and indeed of all art, is attained.28 Even the brightest clarity of the image was not enough for us, for this seemed to conceal something as much as it revealed it; and while its symbolic revelation seemed to invite us to tear the veil, to uncover the secrets in the background, its very illumination and complete visibility cast a spell on the eye, barring it from penetrating further.29

To better understand how Dionysus and Apollo transform one another, while affirming their difference from each other in Greek tragedy, we should first consider arts with a less ambivalent nature. This is the case, according to The Birth of Tragedy, with Homer’s epic art, dominated by Apollonian forces, and with Archilochus’s lyric art, of a Dionysian essence. This will allow us to better understand how the artist as aesthetic subject arises from the work of art (and not vice versa!), and how different works of art give birth to different types of artists. Epic artists are contemplative types, fascinated by the film of Apollonian images passing before their eyes, but never putting complete faith in them. The Dionysian temptation to identify with the characters of epic art

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is not unknown to them, but they protect themselves from it by following the rules of their art and treating these characters as fictional: [The epic poet] is joyfully contented living in these images and in them alone, and never tires of contemplating lovingly even the minutest details of them, and . . . even the image of the wrathful Achilles is for him merely an image whose wrathful expression he enjoys with the dream-​pleasure in semblance (so that he is protected by this mirror of semblance against merging and becoming one with his figures).30

The happiness of epic artists consists in having found an escape from the burdensome appearance of the phenomenal world by abandoning themselves to the peaceful contemplation of an artistic appearance. Nietzsche call this a “reduction of semblance to semblance” (Depotenziren des Scheins zum Schein).31 Epic artists are thus very similar to Schopenhauer’s “genius” or “pure subject”—­w ith the central difference, however, that the contemplated image makes the artist, rather than artists themselves creating an image based on their intellectual intuition. Lyric artists have a completely different way of elevating themselves above the phenomenal world: rather than abandoning themselves to the spectacle of beautiful images, while enjoying an imperturbable superiority, they elevate themselves above themselves by stripping themselves of their subjectivity and losing themselves in Dionysian artistic forces: The “I” of the lyric poet sounds from the deepest abyss of being; his “subjectivity,” as this concept is used by modern aestheticians, is imaginary.32 In truth Archilochus, the passionately inflamed, loving and hating human being, is nothing but a vision of the genius itself; this genius is no longer Archilochus but the genius of the world which expresses its primal pain symbolically in the likeness of the man Archilochus; conversely, it is quite impossible for the man Archilochus, with his subjective will and desires, ever to be a poet.33

Archilochus thus uses the image of an Apollonian individuation toward Dionysian ends; he sings in the name of Dionysus and to express his subjective inner states. But in singing, he respects the rules enforced by Apollo; he does not bawl. It can thus be said that the epic artist and the lyric artist represent two different ways of thinking the sublimation of the drive subject by art. It is either a sublimation by the controlled contemplation of a beautiful

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appearance, or a sublimation through the effect of passions that neutralize any concern for personal individuality. The first sublimation creates the Apollonian genius as a superior individual by making use of a principle of aesthetic individuation. The second sublimation destroys any form of subjective individuation by favoring Dionysian forces, which Nietzsche nonetheless continues to attribute to a “genius of the world” or “original artist of the world” (Urkünstler der Welt).34 In “reducing semblance to semblance,” epic art comforts the subject by transforming it into a pure aesthetic gaze for a fictional image. Lyric art, however, by singing the glory of Dionysus’s universal creative power, dispossesses the individual subject of everything that belongs to it and transforms it into a mere “symbol.” The sublimation of the subject by art, that is, the transformation that makes a simple living human being with drives into an artist, can thus take the form of either an artistic spiritualization of the individual subject, or an annihilation of the individual subject. In other words, the sublimation of the drive subject under the influence of Apollonian artistic drives preserves the subject and transforms it into an artist contemplating images, while the Dionysian artistic drives make the subject into an artist who becomes its own work of art by abandoning itself to the creative forces. As such, Apollonian sublimation is a psychological transformation of the subject, while Dionysian sublimation is a material transformation (in the chemical sense of the word “sublimation”). Aesthetic pleasure or sublimated pleasure can thus take the twofold form of either a peaceful contemplation of beauty or a passionate surrender to what, having no form, is often deformed. The Dionysian pleasure of the triumph of the will, which Schopenhauer did not want to hear about in art, is an erotic pleasure that takes us “beyond the Face,” to speak in Levinasian terms. More precisely, it is a sublimated transgressive erotic pleasure that can only be reached in artistic creation or thanks to the encounter with a great work of art. Instead of annihilating itself in sexual enjoyment, the subject annihilates itself in the work of art; it transforms itself into “a work of art” by identifying with the drive forces of which this work is a singular expression. This annihilation of the subject is thus, at the same time, an aesthetic “ justification” of its life by the “artistic drives” of Life, and as such a justification that the subject, by itself, could not provide for itself. By claiming that Greek tragedy brings about a metamorphosis of Dionysus into Apollo, and Apollo into Dionysus, Nietzsche suggests it is both an epic and a lyric art, and that it is born out of the tension reigning between the antagonistic artistic drives that respectively animate these two forms of art. The same can be said for the tragic spectator, divided

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between an Apollonian and a Dionysian type of sublimation. As tragedy is the child of Apollo and Dionysus, the spectator of tragedy in turn undergoes a “self-​division” (Selbstentzweiung): “He shivers in horror at the sufferings which will befall the hero, and yet they give him a premonition of a higher, far more overwhelming delight.”35 In other words, the spectator simultaneously experiences a twofold desire: the desire to stay in one’s seat and the desire to storm the stage; the desire to protect oneself from the tragic hero’s sufferings and the desire to identify with them. These two contrary desires are both led by a promise: the one by the promise of the peaceful happiness of contemplation, and the other by the promise of an unlimited enjoyment brought about by the disappearance of any image or object and by self-​annihilation. To speak in Lacanian terms: the spectator of tragedy simultaneously experiences both “pleasure” and “enjoyment,” the desire regulated by the symbolic law of representations or signifiers and the “pure,” transgressive, and unlimited desire that is an expression of death drives. But even when spectators identify with Antigone and her criminal desire, they will never be Antigone. Their transgressive desire is a transgressive desire sublimated by the work of art before them. As such, Greek tragedy is the expression of the triumph of a death drive that “ justifies” Life instead of leading to barbarism. To justify the life of the subject without repressing the death drive, to justify Life by giving artistic expression to the death drive: this is the miracle brought about by what we have called a Dionysian sublimation. The “self-​division” (Selbstentzweiung) spoken of by Nietzsche with respect to the spectator of tragedy is thus certainly something other than the “the twofold nature of his consciousness” (Duplicität seines Bewuβtseyns) we encountered in the Schopenhauerian analysis of the singer’s consciousness and, more generally, the experience of the sublime. In Schopenhauer, the spectator is a conscious subject divided between an affective, passive, and empirical submission to the will, and an active and spiritual contemplation of the will’s essence represented in the form of Platonic Ideas. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche explores at length the status and genesis of this divided spectator of Greek tragedy, who is gripped by two antagonistic, yet inseparable desires. He shows us how spectators, in the history of Greek tragedy, have gradually separated themselves from the Dionysian chorus and become spectators of an Apollonian stage. Yet, not one single step in this history, and not one single element within a particular step, escapes the struggle between Dionysus and Apollo: the chorus of archaic Greek tragedy is of lyric and Dionysian essence, but it sings in Apollonian measure; the Apollonian stage portrays a Dionysus suffering from the Apollonian principle of individuation; spectators are torn between their desire for Apollonian contemplation

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and their Dionysian desire for self-​annihilation. The end point of this historical development—­which serves as a point of departure for the genealogical analysis—­is the invention of the theoretical spectator, who is associated with Euripidean tragedy and the philosophy of Socrates by Nietzsche. Theoretical spectators are no longer Apollonian precisely because they are lacking not only in any Dionysian character, but any drive character whatsoever. They are thus no longer tragic spectators, but “Alexandrian”36 spectators, a Euripidean illustration of Socrates as the “archetype of theoretical man”37 and the “archetype of the theoretical optimist”38 (which is also Schopenhauerian). “Thus Euripidean drama is simultaneously fiery and cool . . . ; it is impossible for it to achieve the Apolline effect of epic poetry, but on the other hand . . . it has liberated itself as far as possible from the Dionysiac elements.”39 Greek tragedy in its essence, as conceived by Nietzsche, is entirely about mediation, rather than choice. Since this mediation is always, in one way or another, the work of a Dionysian force, it could not but remain foreign to the philosophical aesthetics of Schopenhauer and, similarly, to any other form of theoretical subjectivism. In classical Greek tragedy, the chorus is surely the main mediating agent. While this chorus is Dionysian in essence, it allows Dionysian forces to access an Apollonian representation of themselves. “This insight allows us,” writes Nietzsche, “to describe the chorus . . . as a self-​mirroring of . . . man.”40 The chorus transports tragic spectators into a Dionysian self-​transformation, while protecting them against the revulsion this direct encounter with the painful and deformed essence of Life might give rise to in them.41 “This process of the tragic chorus is the original phenomenon of drama—­this experience of seeing oneself transformed before one’s eyes and acting as if one had really entered another body, another character. . . . Here already we have individuality being surrendered by entering into another nature.”42 But the chorus that reconciles Dionysus with Apollo does not only give birth to a subject in continuous transformation; its Dionysian rapture also leads to the emergence of a stage that is the Apollonian “vision” Dionysian forces have of themselves. It follows that in Greek tragedy, “the stage and the action were originally and fundamentally thought of as nothing other than a vision, that the only ‘reality’ is precisely that of the chorus, which creates the vision from within itself.”43 We can thus better understand how the chorus plays its role of intermediary between the spectator and the stage, for both are its creatures and both participate in its work of mediation between Dionysus and Apollo. According to Nietzsche, this mediating work of the tragic chorus draws its strength from the force of Greek myth. It is in fact myth that accomplishes the most original mediation between Apollo and Dionysus:

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“[Myth] shares with the Apolline sphere of art the same utter delight in semblance and in looking at it, and at the same time it negates this delight and finds yet higher satisfaction in the destruction of the visible world of semblance.”44 It is myth that allows Greek tragedy to make Dionysus don the bright clothing of Apollo, which he nonetheless removes at the first chance and which, in any case, hides his deformed body poorly: “The tragic myth can only be understood as the transformation of Dionysiac wisdom into images by means of Apolline artistry; it leads the world of appearances to its limits where it negates itself and seeks to flee back into the womb of the one, true reality.”45 Yet, besides Greek tragedy and its myths, there are also other ways of giving artistic expression to the struggle between Dionysus and Apollo. Nietzsche has especially music in mind. Music is even more originally Dionysian than tragedy; it is in any case less Apollonian, for, as already noted by Schopenhauer, it requires no visible appearance or intuition of a Platonic Idea. For Nietzsche, music is the result of an immediate transformation of Dionysian forces into art: “only the spirit of music allows us to understand why we feel joy at the destruction of the individual.”46 However, it is only when tempered by myth that the Dionysian forces of music reach their highest perfection: “Myth shields us from music, but it also grants music its supreme freedom for the first time.”47 It is myth, as proto-​logos, that brings together the diffuse movements of music, creates characters, and magnifies the force of music by adding to it the force and form of words. As such, a contemporary renaissance of Greek tragic art through “the spirit of music” cannot do without the help of myth and speech. We know that these speculations by Nietzsche on a possible synthesis between tragedy, myth, and music in a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) were inspired by his concern (at the time) with demonstrating that the true modern renaissance of Greek tragedy takes place in Wagner’s opera. We are much more concerned here, however, with Nietzsche’s conception of a transformation of subjective drives by artistic drives and its consequences for the fate of the drive subject, than with the opera of Wagner or with Greek tragedy. It turns out that the doctrine of The Birth of Tragedy is the result of a twofold radicalization of Schopenhauerian metaphysics. First, the rule of representation now arises from a sui generis drive, and no longer from the objectification of a will/​drive that is as monolithic as it is indeterminate. The question regarding why the will has to objectify itself in the objects of a representation that is essentially foreign to it, so inconvenient for Schopenhauer, has thus found a simple and convincing answer. Second, we no longer have to worry about the just as inconvenient question for Schopenhauer regarding whence a subject

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whose individuality arises from the world of representation alone draws the force to extract itself from the infernal machine of an all-​powerful will. For Nietzsche, the artistic subject, instead of freeing itself from its drives through art, essentially remains a drive subject—­even when its drives have been sublimated into artistic drives. Far from constituting the origin of art, the artistic subject is thus nothing more than an effect of these same Apollonian and Dionysian artistic drives at work in art, and this is the case long before any subject experiences these drives. For Nietzsche, the artistic subject merges with artistic drives, instead of elevating itself into a pure theoretical spectator of its vital drives in order to then transform its knowledge of Life into a work of art. Instead of swimming against the current of drives in an attempt to get out of the water and take up a lofty observation point, the Nietzschean subject dives into the water and gives itself over to the joy of surfing on the waves of artistic drives. Along our way, a new perspective on the Freudian death drives has also been outlined which can be justifiably likened to the Dionysian drives of Nietzsche. In Freud, it was ultimately the destiny, favorable or unfavorable, of the course of an individual life that sealed the fate of the relation between Thanatos and Eros. The subject alone could not ward off the threat of an unbridled death drive once the latter was “unbound” or “ununifed” from the erotic drives. It was thus best to count on the binding force of sexual drives rather than on a narcissism whose potentially deadly nature had already been well demonstrated by the study of psychoses. However, the risk of the sexual drives placing themselves, to the contrary, at the service of the death drives always remained. As such, both a place and an event where this union between Thanatos and Eros could spontaneously take place were lacking in Freud. In other words, a perspective was lacking in which, rather than being threatened by the antagonism of fundamental drives, the work of drives could, on the contrary, derive all its force from this antagonism. In Nietzsche’s reading, by putting the Dionysian and Apollonian artistic drives into free play without wanting to overcome their conflict or subordinate one to the other, Greek tragedy is precisely such an event. More generally, all forms of artistic experience hold the promise of a double sublimation: one of the subject, and the other of drives. As such, a way of thinking is outlined in Nietzsche where the sublimation of drives no longer counts (as in Freud) on a problematic desexualization of the sexual drive or on an inhibition of destructive drives. Similarly, a new way of thinking about the sublimation of the drive subject is outlined that no longer counts (as in Schopenhauer) on its “elevation” into a pure spectator, that is, into a subject that has freed itself from its individual drives in order to devote itself exclusively to the contemplation of human drives in general.

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The Spectator That Is Looked at, or the Sublimation of the Scopic Drive by the Trompe-​L’Oeil in Painting (Lacan) One must admit, however, that traces of the Schopenhauerian model that Nietzsche wanted to revolutionize remain in his analysis of the spectators of Greek tragedy and the sublimation of their vital drives into artistic drives. For to say the opposite is not enough to take the conversation to a different level. Indeed, Nietzsche often does say the opposite of Schopenhauer: instead of taking distance from vital drives and acting as a pure spectator of their artistic representation, Nietzschean spectators merge with the antagonistic drives staged in classical Greek tragedy. Instead of affirming and protecting their autonomy, Nietzschean spectators happily sacrifice their subjectivity and their theoretical gaze to their participation in what is staged and their own transformation into artists and works of art. Instead of creating a work of art inspired by their intuitive knowledge (via the Platonic Idea) of the Will and Life, Nietzschean artists are born out of Life and art rather than knowledge. Finally, in Nietzsche the static opposition between the spectator and the spectacle is transformed into a dynamic event where one is transformed into the other and nothing remains in place. All this is to say that, in essence, the Nietzschean revolution remains a reversal of Schopenhauer’s artistic metaphysics. This is confirmed when we look at Nietzsche’s way of conceiving the sublimation of vital human drives in the encounter with works of art. For Schopenhauer, it was essentially a question of sublimation from above, that is, the affirmation of a theoretical subjectivity, freed from its submission to drive-​based life by virtue of objective knowledge. By presenting us with a condensed image of the Will, the work of art was thus only a means for accessing a better knowledge of Life and for also removing, along with our last illusions about Life, any desire to actively engage in it. Once again, Nietzsche says exactly the opposite. For him, sublimation is a sublimation from below. For Nietzsche, sublimating one’s drives means deepening them to the point of removing any psychological subjective character from them. It also means objectifying one’s vital drives by transforming them into artistic drives that go beyond anything that is human all too human and change the meaning and value of the appearance of the universe in its entirety. By now turning to the Lacanian version of the relation that spectators have with an artwork and of the ensuing sublimation of their drives, I want to demonstrate that Lacan actually does take the debate to a different level: one where the spectator is looked at by an artwork. As such, I will not dwell on what is still a reminder of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche

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in Lacan’s doctrine, namely, the way in which the encounter with a work of art enlightens us (as in Schopenhauer) on the way in which our drives work, on the one hand, and the emphasis (shared by Nietzsche) on the preeminence of the drive over the subject, on the other. I can also allow myself to forego a detailed demonstration of how Lacan protects himself against the excesses of the Schopenhauerian and Nietzschean conceptions, namely, against an unconditional celebration of the autonomy of the pure subject of knowledge and consciousness, on the one hand, and against the fusional surrender of the subject to cosmic forces, on the other. If I set myself the task of showing that Lacan speaks differently about the same questions that guided us in our reading of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, I also have to forego presenting the entire scope of Lacan’s views. I will thus concentrate on what is closest to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in the Lacanian theory of drive sublimation in the encounter with art. It is thus quite naturally the “divided” spectator of the artwork and, more generally, the nature of the perceiving subject and its “scopic drive” (or drive to see) that will form the center of our reading of Lacan. We will thus not revisit what has already been said, in part 1, about the Lacanian theory of the drive in general,48 or even about the pathological deviation of the scopic drive constituting what we have called “voyeur-​ exhibitionism.”49 I must also leave aside everything said and written by Lacan on Greek, Shakespearean, and Christian-​Claudelian tragedy; nor do I have the ambition of presenting the Lacanian conception of sublimation in all its aspects. The only text meeting all of these constraints is a passage from Seminar 11 in which Lacan reacts to the, at the time, recent publication of The Visible and the Invisible (as well as “Eye and Mind”) by Maurice Merleau-​Ponty. This passage begins by putting forward the conception of a perception that precedes the perceiving subject, and it continues with an analysis of the gaze and the subject that is looked at on the basis of artistic mimicry, anamorphosis, and trompe-​l’oeils.50 This text is further recommendable because I have already taken ample inspiration from another section of this same Seminar 11 in my presentation of Lacan’s amendments to Freud’s drive theory. The Lacanian analysis of the spectator of the artwork fits into the framework of an investigation into the nature of visual perception and, more particularly, the perceiving subject and the scopic drive that animates it. It is thus quite naturally the picture (le tableau) and more generally the painting (la peinture) that serve as examples for Lacan in his description of artistic perception. While not essentially different from ordinary perception, this artistic perception nonetheless draws our attention to the true nature of all perception. The way in which the encounter

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with the painting unmasks the illusions of an idealistic subjectivism as well as the geometrical perspective centered in the eye, and the way in which it reveals to us the nature of the looking subject’s wanting-​to-​see, is also likely to change our ordinary way of seeing. For Lacan, this means that by “pacifying” our desire to see, the painting teaches us to see people and things differently, that is, “without envy.” Furthermore, in Lacan, art also receives a didactic task whose declared goal is nothing less than the sublimation of the scopic drive. Yet, in painting, this artistic pedagogy has a paradoxical (and Nietzschean) character that consists of teaching us the truth about our ordinary way of perceiving through the semblance of a “trick” (leurre) likely to deceive (tromper) our eye. By “trapping [piégeant] our gaze,” a picture not only teaches us the extent to which our common way of seeing is suspended to the, generally obliterated, function of the gaze; it simultaneously reveals that the scopic drive is supported by the fascination for something that escapes its grasp. This truth, with which we are in fact struck more than taught by the artwork, cannot leave the perceiving subject, or its perception of itself, unscathed. The picture’s gaze decenters the subject of perception by literally chasing the latter out of the central point of view of its perspective. Furthermore, the picture’s gaze dispossesses the perceiving subject of its sovereignty by showing that before it sees, it is always already seen. Finally, this same gaze divides or splits the perceiving subject into an active subject and a passive subject, into a subject for-​itself and a subject for-​the-​other, into a subject that is what it is and a subject that is what it seems to be, or into an unconscious subject and a conscious subject. The level onto which Lacan takes the debate already started by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is thus the level of a spectator exposed to a foreign gaze. By bringing to light the function of an “unapprehensible”51 gaze, Lacan thus introduces a new dimension of irreducible alterity into the experience of the artistic spectator—­a dimension that is irreducible both to the way in which the Schopenhauerian theoretical spectator appropriates the spectacle of human passions in their inanity, and to the way in which the Nietzschean tragic spectator merges with the cosmic forces revealed by art. Like Merleau-​Ponty (and following Merleau-​Ponty), Lacan begins his demonstration by a deconstruction of the perceiving subject’s prestige and privileges. However, while Merleau-​Ponty focuses at length on demonstrating that perception happens “among . . . things” (parmi les choses) or “in things” (du milieu des choses),52 Lacan jumps straight to the conclusion: what sees is always also seen by what it sees, even before it begins to see it. But if what sees is always already seen, then it follows that its seeing is never entirely its own. Contrary to the (completely Cartesian) conception that Valery, in The Young Fate (La Jeune Parque), has of a subject “seeing

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oneself seeing oneself ” (se voyant se voir),53 there is thus always something in the perceiving subject’s vision that escapes it. Consequently, the model of subjectivistic narcissism leads to a truncated idea of the subject’s way of relating to its own perception. The “narcissism”54 of vision spoken of by Merleau-​Ponty in his last writings must thus be a desubjectivized narcissism, a narcissism that makes the seen into another seer or the perceiver into a “speculum mundi,”55 as Lacan so accurately claims. Similarly, if one can still speak of perceptual consciousness in this late Merleau-​Ponty, it has clearly lost its Cartesian (and Sartrean!) transparency; in other words, it is affected by a blind spot that compromises its overview of the world and its dominant grasp on the perceived. Thus exits the scene, in Lacan and Merleau-​Ponty, an analysis of the perceiving subject in terms of the Cartesian cogito. This has at least three consequences in both thinkers, on which they, moreover, completely agree. First, since the perceiving subject is no longer at the center of its field of perception, any reconstruction of its perception through the model of geometrical perspective and from the subject’s central point of view turns out to be completely inadequate. Second, since the perceiving subject no longer controls all the elements of its perception of things and has thus lost control of its own perception, it is carried away by a process of perception that, as it escapes its consciousness, must be at least partially “unconscious.” Third, given that any perception of a thing by a particular subject emerges from a “field of perception” or a “flesh of the world” that is traversed by a multitude of forces circulating between elements that are similar and different, near and far, superficial and deeply hidden, one must thus conclude that perception is a drive process. Rather than prolonging this comparative analysis and showing in more detail everything owed by Lacan to the last thought of Merleau-​Ponty, let us concentrate on Lacan’s original contribution. This contribution consists, above all, in having placed “the gaze” at the center of his analysis not only of the perception of things and works of art, but also of the perceiving subject as the “divided subject” of the scopic drives and of his conception of the sublimation of this drive. For the subject to be able to begin perceiving, according to Lacan (and Heidegger!), something must have already offered itself to the subject’s gaze, have already shown itself to the subject. Lacan explicitly speaks of a “pre-​existence to the seen of a given-​to-​be-​seen [donné-​à- ​voir].”56 As such, what the subject perceives must also be something that calls out to, intrigues, fascinates, and (precisely!) looks at it: “we are beings who are looked at, in the spectacle of the world.”57 Lacan expands on this general thesis by giving us a whole series of examples, the most important of which for us will be painting. A first example is borrowed from the way

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in which dreamers see the scenes about which they dream. For Lacan, far from staging their own dreams, dreamers (as long as they are dreaming) merely follow the procession of images that are presented to them. If one can still speak of hallucination with respect to dreams, the former does not arise from a subjective intentional consciousness, but relates essentially to the way in which images force themselves on the dreamer: “it shows” (ça montre).58 Rather than dreaming their dreams the way the cogito cogitates, dreamers are dreamed by their dreams: the dreamer is “someone who does not see. The subject does not see where it is leading, he follows. . . . In a dream, he is a butterfly.”59 What is this dreaming butterfly doing here? It leads us toward Lacan’s second example, which is developed at more length, namely, the example of animal mimicry. According to the interpretation of animal mimicry borrowed by Lacan from Caillois,60 the suggestive patterns and bright colors to be observed on butterfly wings, that is, their ocelli, are a quasi-​symbolic expression of their way of knowing that they are exposed to the gaze of light and of other living beings. If the dreamer can be called a butterfly, it is because the dreamer behaves like a subject that is looked at by the scenes of the dream and that changes form and color at the whim of its dreams. The dreamer’s activity is purely passive, like an animal whose self-​presentation is nothing more than a response to what it perceives of an environment whose gaze is turned on it. Lacan goes to a great deal of trouble to prove to us (after Caillois) that natural mimicry is not what we believe it to be, that is, an active behavior serving the biological end of a better adaptation of the animal to the environment. According to Lacan, mimicry is related instead to a symbolic behavior in which the organism allows itself to be seen by a foreign gaze—­at the very least, by the gaze of “light.”61 Before seeing and even before being seen, the living being already behaves in relation to an unapprehensible gaze to which its feels exposed and to which it offers an appearance of itself. This appearance through which it allows itself to be seen is in most cases misleading,62 and this is what allows Caillois to establish a link between natural mimicry and painting,63 especially trompe l’oeil painting. In mimicry, through its exposure to a foreign gaze, the animal divides or rather duplicates itself into what it is (for itself) and the misleading appearance (that it presents to other): “the being breaks up, in an extraordinary way, between its being and its semblance, between itself and that paper tiger it shows to the other.”64 For Lacan, no living being coincides with itself, for the simple fact that it is always also a being-​for-​ the-​other. This is a fortiori the case for the human being, who is not only exposed to the gaze of others, but also to their desire and their speech. Hence, Lacan’s insistence on “a fracture, a bi-​partition, a splitting [schize]

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of the being to which [this] being accommodates itself.”65 We will see that under the gaze of the work of art, when fully realizing its “splitting” into a misleading imaginary appearance and a subject of desire, the human being behaves a bit like a mimetic animal. Despite all the differences already underlined, Lacan thus continues to partake in the tradition of Schopenhauerian aesthetics and its conception of a “twofold nature of . . . consciousness” (Duplicität seines Bewusstseyns), as well as Nietzschean aesthetics and its emphasis on a “self-​division” at work in the spectator of tragedy. The phenomenon of mimicry also already gives us an initial idea of what differentiates the gaze and the eye. It is indeed striking that, among all the forms in which animals offer themselves to a foreign gaze, imitation of the eye is one of the most frequent and significant ones. Once again, the butterfly is an excellent illustration of this. The eyes or ocelli whose patterns and colors it wears on its wings are obviously not made for seeing, but for capturing the gaze to which the butterfly knows it is exposed. The provisional takeaway from this is that the eye and the gaze must be quite different things; and if the eye sees, the gaze looks rather than sees. It is thus altogether possible (and in fact well-​established by the new examples given to us by Lacan) that there are some gazes that do not emanate from an eye. Until proof to the contrary, however, we have no good reason to doubt that both the eye and the gaze are necessary for the process of perception—­even if to different degrees and often for different subjects. This is a point that will have to be further clarified. For the moment, let it suffice to recall how much the perspectivist conception of a centrifugal perception is based on the model of a central eye that sees, and how silent it remains (Lacan speaks of escamotage [trickery] and “elision”) on the role of the gaze. Anticipating a little on what will follow, it can also already be mentioned that, for Lacan (contrary to Sartre, whom he criticizes on this point), the difference between the eye and the gaze cannot be reduced to the fact that the eye sees itself, while the gaze does not. To show us that “the gaze allows itself to be seen”66 (even when it cannot be associated with a visible eye!), Lacan uses the example of the masks painted by Goya. It must be conceded that this does not yet tell us how the gaze allows itself to be seen (without becoming, for this reason, “a seen gaze”),67 nor what (wanting) to see the gaze is. The new example of the story of “Petit-​Jean” gives us an initial idea of the difference (and mutual intertwining) between an eye that sees and a gaze that looks. Lacan tells the story of how, as a young man, he went out to sea with some fishermen to better get to know their way of life. At a certain point, they encounter a shiny object, floating on the surface of the waves, which turns out to be a can of sardines. One of the fishermen then

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speaks to Lacan as follows: “You can see the can? Do you see it? Well, it doesn’t see you!” And Lacan then continues: “If what Petit-​Jean said to me, namely, the can did not see me, had any meaning, it was because in a sense, it was looking at me all the same.” It looks at him, to begin with, as a “point of light” that blinds him. It then looks at him as an unusual object that reveals to him his own just as unusual presence among these fishermen whose hard life he is trying to share: “I, at that moment, . . . [with] those fellows who were earning their livings with great difficulty, . . . [painted a rather undescribable picture]. In short, I was [something of a blot] in the picture.”68 These two different gazes of the can of sardines decisively differentiate between a phenomenon of natural mimicry (seeing an object or a simple point of light while feeling looked at by it) and a gaze that destroys the imaginary illusions of the subject by striking it with an unpleasant truth. In other words, after having captured Lacan’s gaze (by appearing to be something more precious?), the can of sardines looks at him in a way that brings bluntly to light that he was lying to himself when he took himself to be a fisherman among other fishermen. The can of sardines that allows itself to be seen destroys the imaginary gaze that Lacan had turned on himself and it reduces this brilliant young man to an insignificant blot in a picture—­no longer seen, or imagined, but projected by the gaze of the can: “in the scopic field, the gaze is outside, I am looked at, that is to say, I am a picture.”69 In a certain way, this gaze of the can of sardines anticipates (and summarizes) the commentaries that Lacan (inspired, again like Merleau-​Ponty, by the works of Baltrušaitis)70 devotes to the gaze of the anamorphic object in Holbein’s The Ambassadors 71 and to trompe-​l’oeil painting.72 Anamorphosis is an artificial optical phenomenon that arises from a manipulation that deforms the laws of geometrical perspective. It is constructed in such a way that the appearance of an unmoving object changes when the perceiving subject changes position (and thus point of view) with respect to it, or when the appearance of a moving object (a cylinder revolving on itself, for example) changes for an unmoving observer. The main philosophical interest of such an anamorphic object is to show that the laws of geometrical perspective, far from guaranteeing a true perception of reality, can on the contrary be used to generate optical illusions. The phenomenon of anamorphoses is thus a strong argument for questioning the view that our visual perception happens according to the model of a central eye or geometrical point (of view) from which the lines of vision originate in straight lines. It is thus not surprising that both Merleau-​Ponty and Lacan readily make use of anamorphosis to support their critique of the subjectivistic and idealist (Cartesian) model of perception.

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Having already established this last point, what can we learn from anamorphosis with respect to better understanding a perception that is not centered on the eye but, to the contrary, borne by a gaze? To answer this question, it is difficult to find a better example than the anamorphic object painted by Hans Holbein (the Younger) in the foreground of his picture The Ambassadors (1533), at the National Gallery in London. It is a fairly insignificant object (though much bigger, for instance, than the only partially visible crucifix in the upper left-​hand corner of the picture—­which is just as insignificant and just as significant) that has sometimes been compared to a cuttlefish bone or even a flying saucer. When standing in front of Holbein’s picture, this object is barely seen—­ since the spectator’s gaze is so attracted and even captivated by the rich clothing of the two people or even by the mysterious meaning of the objects carefully set on the table that has been placed between them. This strange object, placed diagonally at the feet of these two Excellencies, does not capture the gaze of spectators, because it does not speak to them, it does not allow itself to be seen by them, that is, it does not look at them. Yet everything changes suddenly and radically when spectators, about to turn away from the painting, move to the right (that is, they move like the visitor to the room where the painting was exhibited in the Château de Polisy, when leaving the room by the door on the right): “he turns his head to throw a final glance at the picture, and everything becomes clear: the visual contraction causes the rest of the scene to disappear completely and the hidden figure to be revealed. Instead of human splendour, he sees a skull.”73 Once spectators change position with respect to Holbein’s picture, that is, move from a central point of view to a lateral or diagonal point of view, the cuttlefish bone rises up in the middle of the picture, pushes the splendid appearance of the ambassadors back into an insignificant marginality, and allows itself to be seen in the form of a human skull. Yet, in order to describe the event of this sudden change in the picture’s appearance, does it suffice to say, with Baltrušaitis, that instead of the ambassadors, the spectator now “sees the skull”? Is it not more accurate to claim, with Lacan, that the skull looks at spectators and reminds them of the mortal condition that they have an overwhelming tendency to forget—­fascinated as they are by the splendors of this world? What was “hidden” (as Baltrušaitis says) and is now revealed in the light of day is not so much the appearance of the skull, but something completely invisible and unapprehensible, namely, the gaze which the prospect of death casts over our lives. Under this new and unexpected gaze of death, everything falls apart: not only the spectacle “of human splendor,” but also the possibility of continuing to see what this picture by Holbein is supposed to

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“represent.” The imaginary representations that spectators had of themselves also fall apart. In other words, one can no longer see the picture, oneself, or the visible world in the same way as before. The skull looks at you as the can of sardines looked at Lacan, but it reaches and annihilates you on an even deeper level—­beyond any narcissistic image one had constructed of oneself: “It reflects our own nothingness, in the figure of the death head.”74 Under the gaze of this skull, the “splitting” of the subject allows the nothingness at its basis to be seen. Yet, Lacan’s meditation does not stop here. To begin with, he wants to transpose what we have learned from the gaze of the anamorphic object painted by Holbein onto all other forms of painting. Next, he wants to use painting to help us better understand the structure of our desire to see and the function of the gaze as object a for the scopic drive. Finally, he wants to show us how the encounter with a work of art can help to calm this scopic drive, that is, contribute to its sublimation. One never perceives a painting in the same way as one perceives a street crossing, other vehicles and pedestrians, traffic signs, and so on when driving around in a city. Contrary to urban traffic situations, which one tries to encompass in one singular circular and dominant gaze and which Heidegger rightly called “circumspection” or “looking around” (Umsicht), the picture and, more specifically, ever-​new details in a picture capture our gaze. Our gaze errs over the picture, as it is drawn toward a multitude of attraction points. As such, a painted picture never presents itself as a homogenous perceptual field with a well-​defined and unmoving center of gravity. Far from being impartial and purely contemplative spectators of artworks, as Schopenhauer would have it, and far from identifying with the tragic stage, as Nietzsche would have it, it is thus more accurate to say that our attention and our gaze are called for by what we cannot but call the picture’s gaze. In a certain sense, Holbein’s picture “is simply what any picture is, a trap [piège] for the gaze.”75 Yet, what distinguishes Holbein’s picture from an ordinary picture is that, in Holbein, the gaze of the picture and the fascination it holds for our gaze become visible because they are explicitly represented: “the secret of this picture,” writes Lacan, consists in “showing us that, as subjects, we are literally called into the picture, and represented here as caught.”76 Due to “some moment of reflection on the part of the painter,” Holbein’s picture teaches us what desiring-​to-​see means and how our scopic drive is animated by a passionate will to capture the gaze of the other that gives rise to this drive. In Holbein’s picture, this teaching takes an unexpected turn: by making visible, through anamorphosis, an entirely different gaze than the one we wanted to see, the picture deals out the lesson that our desire usually runs after an imaginary and illusory gaze. When another

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gaze than the gaze of the other imagined by us strikes us, this greatly changes the nature of both desire and the desiring subject. By the term “annihilation” (néantisation) of the subject (which Lacan borrows from Sartre), we should also understand “castration.”77 Completely different would be the effect of a picture that, rather than allowing us to see the gaze of the other in the unexpected form of a skull (as in Holbein’s picture), and rather than simply looking at us (as with any picture), allows us to see the illusory gaze that usually magnetizes our scopic drive. This picture would thus allow us to see this gaze by showing us that it is not what we wanted to see and that the gaze that we see is nothing but an illusory representation of a gaze that necessarily remains absent and invisible. For Lacan, rather than castrating the desire-​to-​see, such a “trompe-​l’oeil” picture has the effect of “pacifying” it. The semblance of the trompe-​l’oeil teaches a new truth about our desire-​to-​see as well as a new way of seeing that sublimates the scopic drive into an artistic drive: could Lacan be taking himself for Nietzsche? Let us recap from the beginning, then. For Lacan, the objet a of the scopic drive is nothing but the gaze. Given that this gaze (like the objets a of other drives) is an inapprehensible (lost or structurally absent) object, the scopic drive is condemned to “go around it” (en faire le tour) without being able to grasp it and without being able to see it.78 Far from making us into masters of what we want to see, our desire to see is thus bound to the fascination held for us by an external gaze that escapes us, yet still looks at us—­sometimes gazing into the deepest intimacy of our existence. For Lacan, we do not only encounter and feel this gaze that looks at us in other desiring human beings, but also, in an even more exemplary manner, in any picture, and sometimes even in a point of light like the can of sardines. However, only a picture like Holbein’s can, through anamorphosis, allow us to see this foreign gaze that looks at us and allow us to see how we are trapped in this gaze. We have also read in Lacan that the picture is “a trap for the gaze,” and we have understood that the gaze of the picture is what traps our own gaze—­not only because the picture looks at us, but also because it responds (in its own way, it is true) to our desire to see an invisible gaze. But, up until now, we have not yet paid enough attention to the fact that it is most often with “tricks” (leurres) that one “traps” (piège). There are some, most unjustly disparaged, pictures, Lacan tells us, whose main goal is to trick the spectator. They are justly called “trompe-​l’oeil.” These pictures that deceive us by drawing our eye toward painted tricks, also very usefully remind us about the other form of “trick” we have already encountered in animal mimicry and its tendency for “masquerade” or even “travesty, camouflage, intimidation.”79 So what can this animal mimicry teach us about the nature of the tricks with which trompe-​l’oeil pictures trap our gaze?

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The eyes or ocelli drawn on the wings of butterflies are not only meant to deceive; they actually do deceive their natural enemies. The same thing goes, says Lacan, for the grapes painted by the famous ancient Greek painter Zeuxis, which were so similar to real grapes that the birds were deceived and rushed to peck at them. In both cases, a trick traps the gaze of the other through its surprising resemblance to natural objects. Lacan continues his line of argument by recounting how the painter Parrhasius tricked his colleague and rival Zeuxis by painting a simple veil on a wall—­ upon which Zeuxis asked Parrhasius whether he could look at the picture hidden by this veil: “Well, and now show us what you have painted behind it.” And Lacan then continues: “By this he showed that what was at issue was certainly deceiving the eye [tromper l’oeil]. A triumph of the gaze over the eye.”80 Unquestionably, the trompe-​l’oeil painted by Parrhasius wants to deceive, and it actually does deceive, just as much as the trompe-​l’oeil painted by Zeuxis. Yet, not only does it deceive in a different way, it also addresses itself directly to the desire-​to-​see (of Zeuxis). The birds want to eat the grapes, so when they rush toward Zeuxis’s painting, it is their vital drives that are deceived. Zeuxis, to the contrary, wants to see a picture and, what is more, an invisible picture. It is thus his desire-​to-​see that makes him vulnerable to the trap set for him by Parrhasius with his trompe-​l’oeil. It is in fact solely from Zeuxis’s desire-​to-​see that the trompe-​l’oeil of Parrhasius draws its deceptive power, for the trompe-​l’oeil painted by Parrhasius has no resemblance whatsoever to the picture that Zeuxis wants to see. Absolutely nothing about the veil painted by Parrhasius suggests the existence of a hidden picture. This hidden picture is nothing more than an imaginary projection of Zeuxis’s scopic drive, and it is only for this latter that the painted veil becomes a trompe-​l’oeil. In other words, if an empty veil can feed Zeuxis’s desire to see the picture that it hides, this is not its fault, but that of a desire that wants to see the invisible and is happy to do this with any object, even an object that is empty of meaning and has little suggestive force: “the . . . example of Parrhasius makes it clear that if one wishes to deceive a man, what one presents to him is the painting of a veil, that is to say, something that incites him to ask what is behind it.”81 For the trap set by Parrhasius for Zeuxis to lose all effectiveness, it would be enough, for instance, for Zeuxis to not want to see the invisible which he assumed to be hidden behind the visible, and to be content with seeing what he sees. For Lacan, it is in fact the voracious eye (which is the “source” of the scopic drive) that gets caught in the trap of any object pretending to be the gaze that this drive sorely misses. Inspired by our own experience of painted trompe-​l’oeils, we can imagine the story continuing as follows. Zeuxis would then say to Parrhasius: You really got me there; that will teach me . . . But what can one learn

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from an unmasked trompe-​l’oeil? This is unquestionably the ultimate question toward which Lacan’s entire analysis of the gaze and the eye in painting is directed. Our familiarity with these unmasked trompe-​l’oeils can teach us, first of all, to enjoy, in an aesthetic (Nietzschean) enjoyment, the perfection of the trompe-​l’oeil and the beauty of its pure semblance: What is it that attracts and satisfies us in trompe-​l’oeil? When is it that it captures our attention and delights us? At the moment when, by a mere shift of our gaze, we are able to realize that . . . it is merely a trompe-​ l’oeil. For it appears at that moment as something other than it seemed, or rather it now seems to be that something else. . . . This other thing is the petit a, around which there revolves a combat of which trompe-​l’oeil is the soul.82

The aesthetic enjoyment related to the semblance of the trompe-​l’oeil is thus accompanied by a new lucidity regarding the way our desire to see is bound to an invisible gaze or objet a of the scopic drive. Next, and especially, an unmasked trompe-​l’oeil (and Lacan is not far from thinking that all painting, to diverse degrees, constitutes trompe-​l’oeil) teaches us the lesson of how our eye was deceived and invites us to look differently. By serving up a pure semblance to the “appetite of the eye” and its “voracity,”83 the (unmasked) trompe-​l’oeil becomes a “dompte-​regard, a taming of the gaze,”84 for Lacan that enjoins the spectator “to lay down his gaze there as one lays down one’s weapons. This is the pacifying, Apollonian effect of the painting.”85 Through its trompe-​l’oeil, the picture addresses itself to our gaze like the butterfly’s ocelli—­yet, as soon as we discover that we have let ourselves be had, we can no longer look at the picture in the same way. Yet, the unmasked tromp-​l’oeil returns neither our gaze, nor the gaze of the picture. What it gives back to us is the hidden truth of our desire to see, which is bound to a foreign gaze that precedes it. By making us lucid about the structure of our desire, the unmasked trompe-​l’oeil also renders us capable of momentarily suspending its frantic flow. Yet, if Lacan can speak of “ jubilation” in spectators of the trompe-​l’oeil painting, this jubilation certainly owes less to their knowledge of the nature of desire than to their surrender to the appearance as appearance. Aesthetic pleasure, according to Lacan, is thus indeed more Nietzschean than Schopenhauerian. To enjoy the appearance as appearance and to look without “envy” (invidia)86 —­these are also two ways of saying that aesthetic pleasure caught in the free play of the painted trompe-​l’oeil provides every opportunity for the sublimation of the scopic drive.

Abbreviations

“Body and Force” Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “On Body and Force, against the Cartesians (May 1702).” In PE, 250–­56. English translation of an untitled work (“Nullum quidem librum contra philosophiam Cartesianam . . .”), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:393. “Correction of Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “On the Correction of Metaphysics and the Notion of Substance.” In PPL, 2:432–­34. Metaphysics” English translation of “De Primae Philosophiae Emendatione, et de Notione Substantiae,” in Gerhardt, PS, 4:468–­70. CW

Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953−74.

“De Volder”

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “Correspondence with De Volder, 1699–­1706.” In PPL, 515–­41. English translation of “Correspondance avec de Volder” (1698–­1706), in Gerhardt, PS, 2:148–­283.

GA

Heidegger, Martin. Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1977–­.

Gerhardt, PS

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Die philosophischen Schriften. Edited by C. J. Gerhardt. 7 vols. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965.

Grenzprobleme

Husserl, Edmund. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Edited by Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr. Husserliana, vol. 42. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014.

GW

Freud, Sigmund. Gesammelte Werke in Achtzehn Bänden mit einem Nachtragsband. 19 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1940−87.

Ideas 2

Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, zweites Buch. Husserliana, vol. 4. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. English translation of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989. 333

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New Essays

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. New Essays on Human Understanding. Edited and translated by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. English translation of Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement par l’auteur du système de l’harmonie preestablie, in Gerhardt, PS, 5.

“New System”

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “A New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances, and of the Union of Soul and Body (1695).” In PE, 138–­45. English translation of “Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances, aussi bien que de l’union qu’il y a entre l’ame et le corps” (1695), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:477–­87.

PE

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Essays. Translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1989.

PPL

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Papers and Letters, vol. 2, 2nd ed., ed. and trans. Leroy E. Loemker. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989.

SA

Freud, Sigmund. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (1905). In Studienausgabe, vol. 5, Sexualleben, 37–­145. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982.

Seminar, 2

Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, book 2, Le Moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse—1954–1955. Paris: Seuil, 1978. Translated into English by Sylvana Tomaselli as The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955, book 2 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. JacquesAlain Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.

Seminar, 7

Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, book 7, L’Éthique dans la psychanalyse—1959–1960. Paris: Seuil, 1986. Translated into English by Dennis Porter as The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959– 1960, book 2 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.

Seminar, 11

Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, book 11, Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychoanalyse—­1964. Paris: Seuil, 1972. Translated into English by Alan Sheridan as The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, book 11 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. Jacques-​A lain Miller. London: W. W. Norton, 1981.

Studien 2

Husserl, Edmund. Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, vol. 2: Gefühl und Wert. Edited by Ullrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr. Husserliana, vol. 43, pt. 2. Dordrecht: Springer, 2018.

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Studien 3

Husserl, Edmund. Studien zur Struktur des Bewustseins, vol. 3: Wille und Handlung. Edited by Ullrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr. Husserliana, vol. 43, pt. 3. Dordrecht: Springer, 2018.

SW

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Die Geburt der Tragödie. In Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke—­Kritische Studienausgabe, 1:9–­156. Munich: dtv, 1980. Translated into English by Ronald Speirs as The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Three Essays

Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 7:123–­230. London: Hogarth, 1953. English translation of Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, in Gesammelte Werke in Achtzehn Bänden mit einem Nachtragsband, 5:27–­145. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1972.

WWV

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. In Schopenhauer, Zürcher Ausgabe: Werke in zehn Bänden. Zürich: Diogenes, 1977. Translated into English by E. F. J. Payne as The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols. New York: Dover, 1969.

Notes

Introduction 1. Sigmund Freud, Triebe und Triebshicksale, in Gesammelte Werke in Achtzehn Bänden mit einem Nachtragsband, vol. 10, Werke aus den Jahren 1913–­1917 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1946), 214; English translation: Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14, On the History of the Psycho-​Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works (London: Hogarth, 1974), 121. 2. On this last point, please see my following study on Sartre: Rudolf Bernet, “Sartre’s ‘Consciousness’ as Drive and Desire,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 33, no. 1 (2002): 4–­21. 3. I have partially rendered my debt to Bergson in an article written while working on this book: Rudolf Bernet, “Bergson on the Driven Force of Consciousness and Life,” in Bergson and Phenomenology, ed. Michael R. Kelly (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 42–­62.

Chapter 1 1. Martin Heidegger, “Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutische Situation): Ausarbeitung für die Marburger und die Göttinger Philosophische Fakultät (Herbst 1922),” in Phänomenologische Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik, ed. Günther Neumann, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 62 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 2005); English translation: “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation,” in Becoming Heidegger: On the Trail of His Early Occasional Writings, ed. Theodore Kisiel and Thomas Sheehan (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 150–­84. (In the following, all references to the Gesamtausgabe are abbreviated as GA. Once the initial reference for each new GA volume and the corresponding English translation have been given, references will be abbreviated to GA, followed by the number of the volume, the page number, and when necessary the page number of the relevant English translation in parentheses.) 2. Martin Heidegger, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, ed. Mark Michalski, GA, vol. 18 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 2002); English 337

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translation: Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 3. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, ed. Franz-​K arl Blust, GA, vol. 22 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1993); English translation: Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). 4. Martin Heidegger, Aristoteles, Metaphysik Theta 1–­3: Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft, ed. Heinrich Hüni, GA, vol. 33 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1990); English translation: Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1–­3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force, trans. Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). 5. Martin Heidegger, “Vom Wesen und Begriff der Physis: Aristoteles, Physik B, 1,” in Wegmarken, GA, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1978); English translation: “On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle’s Physics B, I,” in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 6. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt—­Endlichkeit—­ Einsamkeit, ed. Friedrich-​Wilhelm von Herrmann, GA, vol. 29/​39 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1983); English translation: The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). 7. Martin Heidegger, Platon—­Sophistes, ed. Ingeborg Schüβler, GA, vol. 19 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1992); English translation: Plato’s Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 8. [Parts of this section, the following one, and the last section of the chapter have been published in English in Rudolf Bernet, “Heidegger and Aristotle: Dunamis as Force and Drive,” trans. Basil Vassilicos, in Heidegger’s Question of Being: Dasein, Truth, and History, ed. Holger Zaborowski (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 49–­70. Minor revisions have been made to the Vassilicos translation.—­Trans.] 9. Heidegger, GA, 62:373 (172): “The finished product [das Fertiggewordene] resulting from the coping movement of production [in der Umgangsbewegtheit des Herstellens] (poièsis) . . . is what it is. Being means being-​produced [Hergestelltsein].” 10. GA, 18:380 (257): “Physis characterizes a being that is: to be itself the worker of itself [im Selbst der Arbeiter seiner selbst].” 11. Aristotle, Physics B 193b13. See Heidegger’s commentary: “Physis is . . . the being-​on-​the way of a self-​placing thing [des Sich- ​Stellenden] toward itself as what is to be pro-​duced [als dem Her-​zustellenden], and this in such a way that the self-​placing is itself wholly of a kind with the self-​placing thing to be pro-​duced [ganz von der Art des Sich-​Stellenden und Her-​zustellenden]” (GA, 9:292 [223]). 12. GA, 62:352 (159): “movement of factic life.” 13. GA, 18:293 (199): “Here, it is really not a question of defining movement in some sense, but of making beings as moved visible in their being-​there and holding fast to them.” 14. GA, 18:294 (199).

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15. GA, 18:372–­73 (252): “Movement is a how of being [ein Wie des Seins], not the being of presence [das Sein der Gegenwärtigkeit]. . . . Being-​moved is a mode of being-​present of determinate beings.” 16. GA, 18:283–­329 (student notes) and 365–­95 (Heidegger’s handwritten manuscript) (192–­222, 247–­68). 17. GA, 22:173 (145). 18. It is worth recalling that this is the argument that Aristotle opposes to Zeno’s paradox. 19. GA, 18:314 (212): “Rest is only an extreme case of movement.” See also ibid., 277, GA, 22:323, GA, 9:247. 20. GA, 9:284 (217): “The movement of seeing and inspecting what is around one is properly the highest state of movedness only in the repose of (simple) seeing, gathered into itself [höchste Bewegtheit in der Ruhigkeit des in sich gesammelten (einfachen) Sehens].” 21. GA, 22:171 (143): “At the same time, a higher presence [ein höhere Anwesenheit] resides therein, insistence [Aufdringlichkeit] on that which it can be and is. The self-​moving: that which does not, so to speak, simply allow its presence to remain fixed in itself, like something present-​at-​hand at rest, but, on the contrary, is insistent, explicitly thrusts itself forward in its presence, forms this insistent presence of motion [diese vordrängliche Anwesenheit des Bewegten].” 22. GA, 18:369 (250, translation modified). 23. [For Zuhandenheit, the English translation “availability” will be preferred over “readiness-​to-​hand.”—­Trans.] 24. GA, 18:300 (203). 25. GA, 18:307, 373 (208, 252). 26. GA, 18:300 (203): “the character of being-​serviceable [Dienlichsein] for. . . , of usability [Verwendbarkeit] for. . . , not in such a way that I thus apprehend it at first, but rather it is the mode of its being.” 27. GA, 18:312 (211). 28. GA, 18:321 (217): “The being-​in-​the-​possibility [das In- ​der-​Möglichkeit-​ Sein] comes into its end in the being-​in-​work [in dem In-​Arbeit- ​Sein], and then is genuinely what it is, namely, potentiality-​to-​be. But it is not completed in relation to the ergon of poiésis” (translation modified). 29. GA, 18:378 (256): “energeia: the how of being-​there as being-​in-​work. Movement, energeia, does not negate the possibility, but contains it, constitutes its there—­the effective possibility.” 30. GA, 18:377 (255): “Beings, they are thus and therefore something is not yet, but it can be. . . . It is a potentiality-​to-​be: this and therefore that, from . . . to . . . , halfway there [halbes Da]” (translation modified). 31. GA, 22:173 (145): “ ‘potentiality’ [‘Möglichkeit’] as a mode of presence, suitability [Eignung], preparedness for [Bereitheit zu], availability for [verfügbar für], but in view of a ‘toward-​which,’ [Wozu] a ‘not-​yet,’. . . . The ‘potential’ [Das ‘Mögliche’] is not un-​actual in the sense of something not at all present-​at-​hand [im Sinnes des überhaupt nicht Vorhandenen], but is un-​actual as not now being actualized [un-​ wirklich als nicht im Wirken].”

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32. For “capability,” see GA, 33:139 (118–­19). For “push,” see GA, 22:323 (236): “If something is in movement, then that means phenomenally: it pushes [drängt] out of itself on that what it can be” (translation modified). 33. GA, 18:301 (204). 34. GA, 18:313, 377 (212, 255). 35. GA, 18:370–­71 (250–­51). See also ibid.: 300 (203): “dunamei is not empty and formal, but determinate with determinate conditions, . . . it characterizes beings only at times.” 36. Aristotle, Metaphysics D 22 (1022b, 22–­1023a, 7). 37. GA, 9:296–­97 (226–­27): “Sterèsis as absencing [Abwesung] is not simply absentness [Abwesenheit]; rather, it is a presencing [Anwesung], namely, the kind in which the absencing (but not the absent thing) is present [anwest].” 38. GA, 9:296 (226): “In this ‘sensed something’ that is present, something else is likewise absent, indeed in such a way that we sense what is present in a special way precisely because of this absencing [dass wir gerade kraft der Abwesung das so Anwesende besonders spüren].” 39. Martin Heidegger, “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit,” in Wegmarken, GA, 9: 193; English translation: “On the Essence of Truth,” in Pathmarks, 148: “Concealment [Verborgenheit] deprives alètheia of disclosure [Entbergen] yet does not render it sterèsis (privation) [Beraubung]; rather, concealment preserves what is most proper to alètheia as its own.” See Rudolf Bernet, “Phenomenological Concepts of Untruth in Husserl and Heidegger” (forthcoming). 40. GA, 22:311–­12 (211) (translation modified). 41. GA, 62:391: “The phenomenon of movement is brought to its categorial ontological explanation in the research that is transmitted to us under the title ‘Physics.’ The interpretation should bring to light, through the phenomenal movement of that research itself” (my translation). 42. GA, 18:324 (219): “This category of the pros ti means that beings are determined as being in relation to another. . . . the character of every being that is in movement.” 43. GA, 18:390 (264). 44. GA, 18:327 (221): “every moving thing is the moving of something moved, and every moved thing is the moved of something moving [Jedes Bewegende ist Bewegendes eines Bewegten und jedes Bewegte ist Bewegtes eines Bewegenden].” 45. GA, 18:327 (221): “The genuine being of one who teaches is to stand before another, and speak to him in such a way that the other, in hearing, goes along with him. It is a unitary being-​context [ein einheitlicher Seinszusammenhang] that is determined by kinesis.” 46. GA, 18:394 (267, translation modified). 47. GA, 18:325 (219): “Pros ti as determination of the being of the world: pros allela.” 48. GA, 18:327 (221). 49. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt—­Endlichkeit—­ Einsamkeit, GA, 29/​30; Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. 50. GA, 29/​30:330 (226). 51. GA, 29/​30:342 (234–­35).

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52. GA, 29/​30:370 (254): “But if on the other hand we reflect upon the instinctual drive intrinsically as such—­rather than the instinctual activity into which it can be released [nicht in dem Trieben, zu dem er ausgelöst werden kann]—­and we consider the instinctual structure itself, then we can see that the instinctual drive precisely possesses an inner tension and charge, a containment and inhibitedness [Gestautheit und Gehemmtheit] that essentially must be disinhibited [Enthemmung] before it can pass over into driven activity [ein Trieben zu werden].” 53. GA, 29/​30:261ff. (176ff.). 54. GA, 29/​30:347ff. (238ff.). 55. GA, 29/​30:363 (249–­50). 56. GA, 29/​30:324 (221–­22): “we cannot say that the organ has capacities, but must say that the capacity has organs. . . . It is the capability [das Fähigsein] which procures organs for itself, rather than organs coming to be equipped with capacities, let alone with forms of readiness [Fähigkeiten oder gar Fertigkeiten].” See ibid., 342 (234–­35). 57. GA, 62:355 (160). 58. GA, 62:349 (157). 59. GA, 62:357 (162). 60. GA, 62:359–­60 (162–­63). 61. GA, 62:353 (159). 62. GA, 18:327 (221): “Living, as a definite type of being-​in-​the-​world [Art des In-​der-​Welt- ​Seins], is characterized by the pros ti.” 63. GA, 18:326 (220). 64. GA, 18:381 (258). 65. GA, 18:390 (264). 66. GA, 18:325 (220): “If a being in its being-​there is characterized by poièsis, there is a being there with it [mit da] that has the determination of pathèsis.” 67. GA, 18:326 and 391 (220 and 265, translation modified). 68. GA, 18:326. 69. GA, 22:309 (228). 70. GA, 22:310 (229). 71. GA, 33:72 (60). 72. GA, 33:76 (64). 73. GA, 33:90 (75–­76). 74. See chapter 1, 30. 75. GA, 33:107 (90–­91): “If force-​being [das Kraftsein] means the original unitary, implicating, and reciprocal relation [ursprünglich einheitlicher, einbeziehender Wechselbezug] of being an origin for doing and suffering, then this ontological unity of the reciprocal relation does not mean the ontic unity. . . . The unity of force-​being needs instead to be understood from out of the fact that this unity, as a unity of reflexive and inclusive relational being [Einheit des rück-​und einbezüglichen Bezogenseins], demands precisely the ontic discreteness and difference [Verschiedenheit bzw. Unterschiedenheit] of beings, which always persists with this character of force-​being.”

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76. GA, 33:105–­6 (89). 77. GA, 33:100–­101 (84–­85): “Having the power for something . . . means here: being capable of handling something in the right way [in der rechten Weise fertig werden können mit etwas], being able in the sense of mastering [Können im Sinne von Meistern], being the master over . . . , mastery. . . . Hence, the power for something [Kraft zu etwas] is always not falling short of a definite how. In the essence of force there is, as it were, the demand upon itself [ein Anspruch an sich selbst], to surpass itself” (translation modified). 78. GA, 33:78 (65): “Forces do not allow themselves to be directly discerned. We always find only accomplishments, successes, effects. . . . We come upon forces only retrospectively [Auf Kräfte schließen wir nur rückwärts].” 79. GA, 33:87–­89 (73–­74). 80. GA, 33:91 (76–­77). 81. GA, 33:108 (91). 82. GA, 33:109 (92–­93). 83. GA, 33:111 (94, translation modified). 84. GA, 33:113 (96, translation modified). 85. GA, 33:210 (180, translation modified). 86. GA, 33:188 (161). 87. GA, 33:183 (157, translation modified). 88. GA, 33:185 (158): “Enactment is practicing [Vollzug ist Ausübung], thus presence of practice [Übung] and of skill coming from practice [Geübtheit]; it is the presence of being in practice [In-​der-​Übung-​sein] of something which is already present. Although enactment is presence, it is by no means the presence of what was previously simply absent but just the reverse, the presence of something which was indeed already present as well” (translation modified). 89. See the passage in the Zollikon Seminars where Heidegger makes a clear distinction between the dunamis of a tree trunk (as a potentiality to serve as hulè for a poièsis) and the dunamis (as a potentiality-​to-​be) of human Da-​sein: “Yet when I have made the trunk into a beam, then it is no longer a tree trunk. Thereby, it has been used up as a tree trunk. . . . Ecstatic being-​in-​the-​world always has the character of the potentiality-​to-​be. . . . But when I enact it [vollziehe], . . . then, nevertheless, this potentiality-​to-​be this way is still there, present. . . . It is not something that has been used up like the former tree trunk. . . . On the contrary, Da-​sein’s ecstatic potentiality-​to-​be is reinforced [gesteigert] as potentiality-​to-​be in its enactment and in its being enacted [bei seinem Vollzug und in seinem Vollzogenwerden].” Martin Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare: Protokolle—­Gespräche—­Briefe, ed. Medard Boss (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987), 209–­10; English translation: Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—­Conversations—­Letters, ed. Medard Boss, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 164 (translation modified). 90. GA, 33:218–­19 (187–­88, translation modified). 91. GA, 33:91 (77) and 87 (33). 92. GA, 33:124 (106). 93. GA, 22:309 (228, translation modified): “We say something is living where we find that: it moves in an oriented way, i.e., in a way that it perceives. . . .

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Bound up with the phenomenon of kinein is the phenomenon of krinein, of ‘distinguishing’ in the sense of a formal orientation in general.” 94. GA, 33:127–­28 (108–­9, translation modified). 95. GA, 33:157 (134, translation modified). 96. GA, 9:256 (196). 97. GA, 33:133 (114): “this orientation of the art of doctoring as a healing of sickness is already in itself and in fact necessarily oriented toward health.” 98. GA, 33:154 (131–­32). 99. GA, 33:158 (135, translation modified). 100. GA, 33:135 (115): “Aristotle traces back to logos the manifestness [die Offenbarkeit] and the contrary which is given with it [das damit gegebene Gegenteilige] and to which certain forces are related. Conversance [Kundschaft] is not only the abode [Stätte] of manifestness, it is also at the same time the site [Sitz] of the manifestness of the contraries [des Gegenteiligen]” (translation modified). 101. GA, 33:144 (123): “But why is there in logos this contrariness [diese Gegensätzlichkeit] of the positive and negative? Because the essence of logos is notification [Kundgabe], and because this is giving notice [Kund-​geben] of something as something. . . . Because all giving is a response to a not having which receives [Weil alles Geben auf nehmendes Nichthaben antwortet]” (translation modified).

Chapter 2 1. Martin Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik, ed. Klaus Held, GA, vol. 26 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1978), 86–­123; English translation: The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). 2. Martin Heidegger, Einleitung in die Philosophie, ed. Otto Saame and Ima Samme-​Spiedel, GA, vol. 27 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1996), 143–­45. 3. Martin Heidegger, Aristoteles, Metaphysik Theta 1–­3: Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft, ed. Heinrich Hüni, GA, vol. 33 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1990); English translation: Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1–­3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force, trans. Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). It should be noted that, interspersed within the long discussion of Aristotelian dunamis, a summary of Heidegger’s interpretation of the notion of force in Leibniz is also given in this course (GA, 33:94–­98 [79–­83]). 4. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “De Primae Philosophiae Emendatione, et de Notione Substantiae,” in Die philosophischen Schriften, vol. 4, ed. C. J. Gerhardt (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965), 469 (hereafter cited as Gerhardt, PS, and the relevant volume number, e.g.: Gerhardt, PS, 4, in this case); English translation: “On the Correction of Metaphysics and the Notion of Substance” (hereafter cited as “Correction of Metaphysics”), in Philosophical Papers and Letters (hereafter cited as PPL), vol. 2, 2nd ed., trans. and ed. Leroy E. Loemker (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 433: “The importance of these matters will be particularly apparent from the concept of substance which I offer. This is so fruitful that there follow from it

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primary truths, even about God and minds and the nature of bodies [etiam circa Deum et mentes, et naturam corporum].” 5. René Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, 1, 51; English translation: Principles of Philosophy, trans. Valentine Rodger Miller and Reece P. Miller (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983), 23: “By ‘substance,’ we can understand nothing other than a thing which exists in such a way that it needs no other thing in order to exist [Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus quam rem quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re inidiget ad existendum].” 6. Baruch Spinoza, Ethica, 1, def. 3: “Per substantium intelligo id, quod in se est, et per se concipitur: hoc est id, cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat.” English translation: Ethics, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and Selected Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley, ed. Seymour Feldman (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1992), 31. 7. GA, 26:90 (73). 8. GA, 26:91 (73–­74). 9. Gerhardt, PS, 2:251: “Substantiam ipsam . . . praediatam, veluti to Ego vel simile”; English translation: “Correspondence with De Volder, 1699–­1706,” PPL, 530: “I regard substance itself . . . as an indivisible or perfect monad—­like the ego, or something similar to it.” See also Gerhardt, PS, 4:482; English translation: “A New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances, and of the Union of the Soul and Body (1695)” (hereafter cited as “New System”), in Leibniz, Philosophical Essays (hereafter cited as PE), trans. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1989), 142. 10. See, for example, Gerhardt, PS, 4:470; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433: “corporeal substance itself does not, any more than spiritual substance, ever cease to act. This seems not to have been perceived clearly by those who have found the essence of bodies to be in extension, alone or together with the addition of impenetrability.” 11. See Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Untitled Work (“Nullum quidem librum contra philosophiam Cartesianam . . .”), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:393; English translation: “On Body and Force, Against the Cartesians (May 1702),” in PE, 250 (hereafter cited as “Body and Force”): “Nevertheless, with Democritus and Aristotle, and against Descartes, I think that there is something passive in body over and above extension, namely, that by which body resists penetration.” 12. Gerhardt, PS, 4:394; “Body and Force,” PE, 251: “From this, it is obvious that extension is not an absolute predicate, but is relative to that which is extended or diffused [id quod extenditur sive diffunditur], and therefore it cannot be separated from the nature of that which is diffused any more than a number can be separated from that which is counted.” 13. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances, aussi bien que de l’union qu’il y a entre l’ame et le corps” (1695), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:478; English translation: “New System,” PE, 139 and note 193: “Now, a multitude can derive its relativity only from true unities, which have some other origin and are considerably different from [mathematical] points, [which are only the extremities and modification of extension,] which all agree cannot make up the continuum. Therefore, in order to find these

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real unities, I was forced to have recourse to a real and animated point, so to speak, or to an atom of substance which must include something of form or activity to make a complete being.” 14. Gerhardt, PS, 4:478; “New System,” PE, 139: “In the beginning . . . I accepted the void and atoms, for they best satisfy the imagination. But on recovering from that, after much reflection, I perceived that it is impossible to find the principle of a true unity in matter alone, or in what is only passive, since everything in it is only a collection or aggregation of parts to infinity.” 15. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, 1, 65; Principles of Philosophy, 30: “And as for motion [ac de vi], we shall best understand it if we . . . do not enquire [non inquiramus] into the force by which it is produced.” 16. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “De ipsa natura sive de vi insita actionibusque Creaturarum, pro Dynamicis suis confirmandis illustrandisque” (1698), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:514; English translation: “On Nature Itself,” in PPL, 506: “Aristotle . . . concluded . . . that there is needed some alteration besides change in place [praeter mutationem localem], and that matter is not similar to itself everywhere and does not remain invariable. But this dissimilarity or diversity of qualities, and this alloiosis, or alteration . . . come from . . . the modifications existing within the monads themselves.” 17. Gerhardt, PS, 4:400; “Body and Force,” PE, 256: “I believe that Aristotle saw this when he saw that there has to be alteration, over and above local motion, in order to account for the phenomena [ut phenomenis satisfiat]. Moreover, alteration, though, like qualities, appears to be of many sorts, in the final analysis, reduces to the variation of forces alone [ad solam virium variationem rediguntur].” 18. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433: “Active force, in contrast, contains a certain act or entelechy . . . and involves a conatus. It is thus carried into action by itself and needs no help [nec auxiliis indiget].” 19. Gerhardt, PS, 4:508; “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 502: “the substance of things itself consists in the force of acting and being acted upon.” 20. See Aristotle, Physics, 193b 6–­8, as well as Heidegger’s commentary: “Vom Wesen und Begriff der Physis, Aristoteles, Physik B, 1,” in Wegmarken, GA, 9 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1978), 282–­88 (215–­20). 21. We will cite this text from the following complete critical edition: Leibniz, Specimen Dynamicum, ed. and trans. Hans Günter Dosch, Glenn W. Most, and Enno Rudolph (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1982). English translation: Specimen Dynamicum, in PPL, 435–­52. (Hereafter, the critical edition will be cited, with the relevant page number(s) of the English translation following in parentheses.) 22. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “De ipsa natura sive de vi insita actionibusque Creaturarum, pro Dynamicis suis confirmandis illustrandisque” (1698), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:504–­16; English translation: “On Nature Itself,” in PPL, 498–­508. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances, aussi bien que de l’union qu’il y a entre l’âme et le corps” (1695), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:477–­87; English translation: “New System,” PE, 138–­45. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, untitled work (“Nulla quidem librum . . .”) (1702), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:393–­400; English translation: “On Body and Force,” PE, 250–­56. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Correspondance avec de Volder” (1698–­1706), in

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Gerhardt PS, 2:148–­283; English translation: “Correspondence with De Volder, 1699–­1706,” in PPL, 515–­41 (hereafter cited as “De Volder”). 23. Leibniz, “De Primae Philosophiae Emendatione, et de Notione Substantiae” (1694), in Gerhardt, PS, 4:468–­70; “Correction of Metaphysics,” in PPL, 432–­34. 24. Gerhardt, PS, 2:252; “De Volder,” PPL, 530. 25. Gerhardt, PS, 4:396; “On Body and Force,” PS, 253: “is not one substance [non una substantia est] but an aggregate of many, in a word, a machine of nature [machina naturae].” 26. Gerhardt, PS, 2:252; “De Volder,” PPL, 530–­31: “Machina organica.” 27. Gerhardt, PS, 2:250; “De Volder,” PPL, 529: “Nor can it influence the other entelechies or substances [non vero influere potest in alias Entelechias, substantiasque].” 28. Gerhardt, PS, 2:135; “Letter to Arnauld (Venice, March 23, 1690),” in PPL, 360. 29. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433. 30. Gerhardt, PS, 4:515: “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 506. 31. Gerhardt, PS, 4:486; “New System,” PE, 145: “For we can say that in the impact of bodies, each body suffers only through its own elasticity, caused by the motion already in it.” 32. Specimen Dynamicum, 6 (PPL, 436): “derivative force, which is exercised in various ways through a limitation of primitive force resulting from the conflict of bodies with each other” (“[Vis] derivativa, quae primitivae velut limitatione per corporum inter se conflictus resultans, varie exercetur”). 33. Gerhardt, PS, 4:398; “Body and Force,” PE, 255: “Indeed, as I have already said, physics is subordinated to arithmetic through geometry, and to metaphysics through dynamics [per Dynamicen Metaphysicae subordinatur].” 34. Gerhardt, PS, 2:250; “De Volder,” PPL, 529: “But in phenomena, or in the resulting aggregate, everything is explained mechanically, and so masses are understood to impel each other. In these phenomena it is necessary to consider only derivative forces, once it is established whence these forces arise, namely, the phenomena of aggregates from the reality of the monads. [At in phaenomenis seu aggregato resultante omnia jam mechanice explicantur, massaeque se mutuo impellere intelliguntur: neque opus est in his phaenomenis nisi consideratione virium derivativarum, ubi semel constat unde hae resultent, nempe phaenomena aggregatorum ex realitate Monadum.]” 35. Gerhardt, PS, 4:482–­83; “New System,” PE, 142. 36. Gerhardt, PS, 4:510–­11; “New System,” PPL, 503–­4. 37. Gerhardt, PS, 4:395; “Body and Force,” PE, 252: “Primitive active force, which Aristotle calls first entelechy [entelecheia hè prôtè] and one commonly [vulgo] calls the form of a substance, is another natural principle which, together with matter or passive force, completes a corporeal substance [substantium corpoream absolvit]. This substance, of course, is one per se, and not a mere aggregate of many substances.” To avoid any terminological confusion, it is worth noting right away that what Leibniz calls “entelechy” does not exactly correspond to Aristotelian entelecheia, but rather to dunamis, or at least to dunamis as we have interpreted

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it in the preceding chapter. In his New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz explicitly explains this terminological divergence: “Force would divide into ‘entelechy’ and ‘effort’; . . . although Aristotle takes ‘entelechy’ so generally that it comprises all action and all effort.” (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement par l’auteur du système de l’harmonie preestablie, Gerhardt, PS, 5:156; English translation: New Essays on Human Understanding, trans. and ed. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], 169 [hereafter, New Essays]). 38. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433. 39. Gerhardt, PS, 4:395; “Body and Force,” PE, 252: “Active force, which one usually calls force in an absolute sense, should not be thought of as the simple and common potential [simplex potentia] or receptivity to action of the schools. Rather, active force involves an effort or striving toward action [involvit conatum seu tendentiam ad actionem], so that, unless something else impedes it [nisi quid aliud impediat], action results.” 40. Gerhardt, PS, 2:250; “De Volder,” PPL, 529: “When I say that even if it is corporeal, a substance contains an infinity of machines, I think it must be added at the same time that it forms one machine composed of these machines and that it is actuated, besides, by one entelechy, without which it would contain no principle of true unity. [Cum dico substantiam, quamvis corpoream, continere infinitas machinas, simul addendum puto ipsam complecti unam machinam ex ipsis compositam et praetera esse una Entelecheia actuatam, sine qua nullum esset in ea principium verae Unitatis.]” 41. Gerhardt, PS, 4:395; “Body and Force,” PE, 251–­52: “And further, this entelechy is either a soul or something analogous to a soul, and always naturally activates [actuo] some organic body, which, taken separately, indeed, set apart or removed from the soul, is not one substance but an aggregate of many, in a word, a machine of nature [machina naturae].” 42. Gerhardt, PS, 4:510; “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 503. See also Specimen Dynamicum, 8 (PPL, 437): “the primitive force of suffering or of resisting . . . is at the same time possessed of a kind of laziness, so to speak, that is, or a repugnance to motion [vis primitiva patiendi seu resistendi . . . , ignavia quedam, ut sic dicam, ide est ad motum repugnatione sit praeditum].” 43. Gerhardt, PS, 4:395; “Body and Force,” PE, 252: “Passive force is resistance itself, by means of which a body resists not only penetration, but also motion. . . . And so, there are two resistances or masses in body, first, antitypia, as it is called, or impenetrability, and second, resistance, or what Kepler calls the natural inertia of bodies.” 44. See chapter 2, 70 (Gerhardt, PS, 5:181; New Essays, 195). 45. Gerhardt, PS, 5:155–­56; New Essays, 169–­70. 46. Gerhardt, PS, 4:393; “Body and Force,” PE, 250: “every body always has motive force, indeed, actual intrinsic motion, innate from the very beginning of things.” 47. Gerhardt, PS, 4:397; “Body and Force,” PE, 254: “this primitive force or form of substance [vis illa primitiva seu Forma substantiae] (which, indeed, fixes shapes in matter at the same time as it produces motion) . . .”

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48. Aristotle, De Anima, A, 406a13 and passim. 49. Gerhardt, PS, 4:514; “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 506. See also Gerhardt, PS, 4:505; “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 499: “But I do not agree, and I do not think it conformable to reason, that we should deny that all created active force resides in things [ut omenem vim creatam actricem insitam rebus denegamus]. . . . Let us now examine a little more closely what this is which Aristotle has well called the principle of motion and rest [principium motus et quietis], though that philosopher seems to me to take the term more broadly than its accepted meaning, and to understand by it not only local motion and rest in a place, but change . . . in general [sed generaliter mutationem]” (translation modified). And even more explicitly, addressing Descartes directly: “I believe that Aristotle saw this when he saw that there has to be alteration, over and above local motion, in order to account for the phenomena. Moreover, alteration, though, like qualities, appears to be of many sorts, in the final analysis, reduces to the variation of forces alone” (Gerhardt, PS, 4:400; “Body and Force,” PE, 256). 50. Gerhardt, PS, 4:394; “Body and Force,” PE, 251: “Therefore, we say that it can consist in nothing but the dynamicon, or the innate principle of change and persistence [principio mutationis et perseverentiae].” 51. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469, 512, 393, 395; Gerhardt, PS, 2:250–­51. 52. Gerhardt, PS, 4:395; “Body and Force,” PE, 252: “even if it does not always fully attain the action toward which it strives [ad actionem ad quam tendit].” 53. Specimen Dynamicum, 8; PPL, 437 and passim. This “obstacle” is, more often than not, called “impedimentum”: Gerhardt, PS, 4:469, 395, and so on. 54. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433: “Active force . . . contains a certain act or entelechy. . . . It is thus carried into action by itself and needs no help but only the removal of an impediment [sed sola sublatione impedimenti].” 55. See chapter 1, 42. 56. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433: “Active force . . . contains a certain act. . . .” See also Gerhardt, PS, 4:511; “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 530: “there must be in corporeal substance a primary entelechy or first recipient . . . of activity, that is, a primitive motive force which . . . always acts.” 57. Gerhardt, PS, 4:468; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433. 58. Gerhardt, PS, 4:468; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433: “inter facultatem agendi actionemque ipsam media est, et conatum involvit.” 59. See Rudolf Bernet, “La conscience et la vie comme force et pulsion,” in Bergson, ed. Camille Riquier (Paris: Le Cerf, 2012), 25–­54; English translation: “Bergson on the Driven Force of Consciousness and Life,” in Bergson and Phenomenology, ed. Michael R. Kelly (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 42–­62. 60. See chapter 1, 38. 61. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469–­70; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433: “the ultimate reason for motion in matter is nevertheless the force impressed upon it in creation, which inheres in every body but is variously limited and restrained [limitatur et coërcitur] in nature through the impact of bodies [conflictu corporum] upon each other.” 62. Specimen Dynamicum, 8 (PPL, 437).

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63. See chapter 4, 196ff. 64. Gerhardt, PS, 4:511; “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 503–­04: “this substantial principle itself . . . inasmuch as it truly constitutes one substance with matter, or a unit in itself [cum materia substantiam vere unam, seu unum per se constituit], . . . makes up what I call a monad.” 65. Gerhardt, PS, 2:249; “De Volder,” PPL, 528. 66. Gerhardt, PS, 4:469; “Correction of Metaphysics,” PPL, 433: “Quod exemplis gravis suspensi funem sustinentem intendentis, aut arcus tensi illustrari potest.” 67. See chapter 1, 40ff. 68. Gerhardt, PS, 4:395; “Body and Force,” PE, 252: “active force involves an effort or striving toward action [involvit conatum seu tendentiam ad actionem].” 69. Gerhardt, PS, 2:270; “De Volder,” PPL, 537: “there is nothing in the world except simple substance and, in them, perception and appetite [nihil in rebus esse nisi substantias simplices et in his perceptionem atque appetitum].” See also Gerhardt, PS, 4:512, and so on. 70. Gerhardt, PS, 4:479; “New System,” 139: “I found that their nature consists in force, and that from this there follows something analogous to sensation and appetite, so that we must conceive of them on the model of the notion we have of souls.” See also Gerhardt, PS, 4:512. 71. Gerhardt, PS, 4:511; “On Nature Itself,” PPL, 503–­4: “It is this substantial principle itself which is called the soul in living beings and substantial form in other beings, and inasmuch as it truly constitutes one substance with matter, or a unit in itself, it makes up what I call a monad.” 72. Gerhardt, PS, 5:157; New Essays, 171. See also ibid., 195; 210: “attributing thought only to our minds, whereas perception belongs to all entelechies.” 73. Gerhardt, PS, 4:482; “New System,” PE, 142: “In addition, by means of the soul or form there is a true unity corresponding to what is called the self [moy] in us.” 74. Gerhardt, PS, 4:483–­84; “New System,” PE, 143–­44. 75. Gerhardt, PS, 2:251–­52; “De Volder,” PPL, 530: “Entelechies must necessarily differ or not be completely similar to each other; in fact, they are principles of diversity, for they each express the universe from their own point of view. This is their office, that they should be so many living mirrors or so many concentrated worlds. [Entelechias differre necesse est, seu non esse penitus similes inter se, imo principia esse diversitatis, nam aliae aliter exprimunt universum ad suum quaeque spectandi modum, idque ipsarum officium est ut sint totidem specula vitalia rerum seu totidem Mundi concentrati].” 76. Gerhardt, PS, 2:282; “From the Letters to De Volder,” PE, 185: “that a perceiver has a certain ability [vis] to form new perceptions for himself from prior ones [esse quandam vim in percipienti sibi formandi ex prioribus novas perceptiones].” 77. Gerhardt, PS, 2:271. 78. Let us recall that these texts on the dynamics of material bodies are spread out from 1695 to 1704. We have also made extensive use of Leibniz’s letters 25 and 31 to De Volder (Gerhardt, PS, 2: respectively 248–­53 and 267–­72; PPL, 528–­31 and 535–­38), the latter of which is dated June 30, 1704. 79. First published in 1690. Leibniz refers to it as: “The Essay on the Understanding, produced by an illustrious Englishman” (Gerhardt, PS, 5:41; New Essays,

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43) and claims to know recent translations “in Latin and in French” (ibid., 62; 70). 80. Let us clarify that Leibniz does not present Philalethes to us as Locke himself, but as a reader of the “Essay Concerning the Human Understanding” who has “had the honour to know personally” the “distinguished Englishman” and to have benefited from “conversation with its author” (Gerhardt, PS, 5:62; New Essays, 70). This literary device has the great advantage for Leibniz of allowing him to summarize Locke’s work, most often in his own words, while nonetheless scrupulously following its development, chapter by chapter and paragraph by paragraph. 81. Gerhardt, PS, 5:121; New Essays, 134 (translation modified). 82. Ibid. 83. Gerhardt, PS, 5:195; New Essays, 210: “attributing thought only to minds, whereas perception belongs to all entelechies.” 84. Gerhardt, PS, 5:121; New Essays, 134: “We could in fact become thoroughly aware of them [minute perceptions] and reflect on them, if we were not distracted by their multiplicity, which scatters the mind, and if bigger ones did not obliterate them or rather put them in the shade.” 85. Gerhardt, PS, 5:159; New Essays, 173. 86. Gerhardt, PS, 5:158; New Essays, 173. 87. Gerhardt, PS, 5:180–­81; New Essays, 194–­95. 88. Gerhardt, PS, 5:159; New Essays, 173. 89. Gerhardt, PS, 5:160–­61; New Essays, 175–­76. 90. Gerhardt, PS, 5:158; New Essays, 172: “I shall say that volition is the effort or endeavour (conatus) to move toward what one finds good and away from what one finds bad, the endeavour arising immediately out of one’s awareness of those things.” 91. Gerhardt, PS, 5:180; New Essays, 194. 92. Gerhardt, PS, 5:180; New Essays, 194: “So there are insensible inclinations of which we are not aware. There are sensible ones: we are acquainted with their existence and their objects, but have no sense of how they are constituted; they are confused inclinations which we attribute to our bodies, although there is always something corresponding to them in the mind. Finally, there are distinct inclinations which reason gives us: we have a sense both of their strength and of their constitution. Pleasures of this kind, which occur in the knowledge and production of order and harmony, are the most valuable.” 93. Gerhardt, PS, 5:180; New Essays, 194. 94. Gerhardt, PS, 5:170; New Essays, 184: “And thus . . . our all-​w ise Maker . . . has put into man the [discomfort] of hunger and thirst, and other natural desires . . . to move and determine their wills, for the preservation of themselves, and the continuation of their species. . . . It is better to marry than to burn, says St. Paul [1 Corinth. 7:9].” 95. Gerhardt, PS, 5:158; New Essays, 172–­73. 96. Gerhardt, PS, 5:160; New Essays, 175. 97. Gerhardt, PS, 5:181; New Essays, 195. 98. Gerhardt, PS, 5:182; New Essays, 196. See also ibid. 187; 201.

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99. Gerhardt, PS, 5:174; New Essays, 188 (translation modified). 100. Gerhardt, PS, 5:150; New Essays, 163. See Locke’s own formulation: “The uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the absence of anything whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it, is what we call ‘desire,’ which is greater or less as that uneasiness is more or less vehement” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 2, chap 20, §6). 101. Gerhardt, PS, 5:169; New Essays, 183–­84 (translation modified). 102. Gerhardt, PS, 5:180; New Essays, 194. 103. Gerhardt, PS, 5:174; New Essays, 188. See also 151–­52; New Essays, 164–­65. 104. Gerhardt, PS, 5:174; New Essays, 188. See also 152–­53; New Essays, 166: “But to return to disquiet, i.e., to the imperceptible little urges which keep us constantly in suspense: these are confused stimuli, so that we often do not know what it is that we lack. . . . These impulses are like so many little springs trying to unwind and so driving our machine along.” 105. Gerhardt, PS, 5:153; New Essays, 166. 106. Gerhardt, PS, 5:174–­75; New Essays, 189. 107. Gerhardt, PS, 5:179; New Essays, 194. 108. Gerhardt, PS, 5:175; New Essays, 189. 109. Gerhardt, PS, 5:152; New Essays, 166. 110. Gerhardt, PS, 5:178; New Essays, 192. 111. Gerhardt, PS, 5:178; New Essays, 192. 112. Gerhardt, PS, 5:180; New Essays, 194. 113. Gerhardt, PS, 5:174; New Essays, 188. 114. See Rudolf Bernet, “La Conscience négative comme pulsion et désir,” in Conscience et existence (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), 171–­94; English translation: “Sartre’s ‘Consciousness’ as Drive and Desire,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 33, no. 1 (January 2002): 4–­21. 115. Gerhardt, PS, 5:154; New Essays, 167. 116. Gerhardt, PS, 5:151–­52; New Essays, 165. 117. Gerhardt, PS, 5:177–­78; New Essays, 192 (translation modified). 118. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “Principes de la nature et de la grace, fondés en raison,” in Gerhardt, PS, 6:599; English translation: “Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason,” in PE, 207. 119. GA, 26:109; Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 88–­89. Hereafter, the page numbers of the English translation will be given in parentheses after the original German version pagination. 120. GA, 26:90 (73): “die Monade ist das einfach, ursprünglich, im vornhinein vereinzelnd Einigende.” See the similar definition of the monad in GA, 27, 143: “die vorweg und einfach einigende und ineins damit vereinzelnde Einheit.” 121. GA, 26:102–­3 (82–­83): “The vis activa is then a certain activity [ein gewisses Wirken] and, nevertheless, not activity in its real accomplishment [im eigentlichen Vollzug]. . . . We call what Leibniz means here ‘to tend toward . . .’ or, better yet, . . . : to press or drive toward, drive [das Drängen, den Drang]. . . . Drive is the impulse [der Drang ist der Trieb] that in its very essence is self-​propulsive. The

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phenomenon of drive not only brings along with it, as it were, the cause, in the sense of release, but drive is as such already released. It is triggered, however, in such a way that it is still always charged, still tensed [immer noch geladen, gespannt]. Drive correspondingly can be hindered in its thrust, but it is not in that case the same as a merely static capability for acting [nicht etwa identisch mit der bloβen ruhenden Wirkfähigkeit].” 122. GA, 26:111 (89): “This means that there must be a manifold [ein Mannigfaltiges] right in the monad as simply unifying [als einfach einigender].” 123. GA, 26:111 (89): “Inasmuch as what simply unifies is drive [Drang ist] and only as executing drive [als solches Drängen] at the same time carries within itself the manifold, and is manifold [Mannigfaltiges in sich tragen, Mannigfaltiges sein soll], the manifold must have the character of drive, must have movement as such [den Charakter des Drängens, d.h. der Bewegtheit überhaupt haben].” 124. GA, 26:115 (92): “From drive itself arises time [dem Drang selbst entspringt die Zeit].” 125. GA, 26:115 (92–­93): “In drive resides a trend toward transition, a tendency to overcome any momentary stage. And this trend toward transition [Übergangstendenz] is what Leibniz means by appetitus. . . . The progressus perceptionum is what is primordial in the monad; it is the pre-​hending transition tendency, the drive [die vor-​stellende Übergangstendenz, der Drang].” 126. GA, 26:114–­15: “Substance is given over to . . . successiveness [dem Nacheinander preisgegeben]. . . . Drive delivers itself, as drive, to manifold succession [gibt sich dem mannigfaltigen Nacheinander preis]—­not as if to something other than itself [nicht als etwas anderem seiner selbst]. . . . Drive submits itself to temporal succession, not as if to something alien to it, but it is this manifold itself.” 127. GA, 26:112 (90): “The deepest [innerste] metaphysical motive for the monad’s characteristic [representation] [Vorstellungscharakter] is the ontologically unifying function of the drive. This motive remained hidden from Leibniz himself” (translation modified). 128. GA, 26:111 (89): “the monad as simple and unifying must as such predelineate [vorzeichen] the possible manifold.” 129. GA, 26:114 (91): “Drive must therefore bear multiplicity in itself and allow it to be born in the driving [im Drängen aus sich geboren werden lassen]. This is its ‘world’ character [das ist sein ‘Welt’-​Charakter].” 130. GA, 26:113 (91): “the structure of the drive process is itself [des drängenden Geschehens selbst] reaching out [ausgreifend], is ek-​static.” 131. GA, 26:114 (92): “the activity of the monad as drive is eo ipso drive toward change. Drive, of its very nature, presses out to something [der Drang drängt von Hause aus zu anderem]; there is a self-​surpassing [ein Sichüberholen] in it.” 132. GA, 26:113 (91): “Because drive is supposed to be what originally simply unifies, it must be reaching out and gripping [ausgreifend-​umgreifend]; it must be ‘pre-​hensive’ [vor-​stellend]. Pre-​hension [vor-​stellen] is to be understood here quite broadly, structurally, and not as a particular faculty of the soul. . . . This prehending is not, however, to be understood as a mere staring [pures Anstarren], but as apprehension, perception, that is, as a pre-​unifying [Vorweg-​einigen] of the manifold in the simple.”

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133. GA, 26:117 (94–­95): “In prehensive unifying [vorstellendes Einigen] there is a possession of unity in advance to which drive looks, as prehending and tending toward transition [auf die der Drang als vorstellender und zu Übergang tendierender hinblickt]. In drive as prehending appetition there is a ‘point,’ as it were, upon which attention [Augenmerk] is directed in advance. This point is the unity itself from which drive unifies. This attention point or point of view, view-​point, is constitutive for drive. What is in advance apprehended in this viewpoint [Augenpunkt] is also that which regulates in advance the entire drive itself [was vorweg alles Drängen selbst regelt].” 134. GA, 26:117 (94). 135. GA, 26:116 (95). 136. GA, 26:117 (95): “In driving toward, that which has drive always traverses a dimension. That is, what has drive traverses itself [es durchmisst sich selbst] and is in this way open to itself [sich selbst offen]. And it is open by its very essence.” 137. GA, 26:118 (95): “This ‘itself’ in the latter ‘unifying itself’ expresses the fact that a certain co-​presentation of itself [ein gewisses Mitvorstellen ihrer selbst] is found in the monad as prehensive drive.” 138. GA, 26:117–­18 (95): “Because of this dimension of self-​openness, what has drive can therefore grasp its own self, can thus, in addition to perceiving, present itself at the same time along with perception. It can perceive itself concomitantly; it can apperceive [über das Perzipieren hinaus zugleich sich selbst mit präsentieren, sich mit dazu perzipieren: apperzipieren].” 139. GA, 26:118 (95): “Now this revealment of self [dieses Sichselbstenthülltsein] can have various degrees, from full transparency to insensibility and captivated distraction [bis zur Betäubung und Benommenheit].”

Chapter 3 1. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (hereafter WWV ). All references to the German edition of this work come from: Arthur Schopenhauer, Zürcher Ausgabe: Werke in zehn Bänden (Zürich: Diogenes 1977), which contains the Angelika Hübscher edition. WWV comprises two parts: the first (Band I—­Vier Bücher nebst einem Anhange, der die Kritik der kantischen Philosophie enthält) contains 71 paragraphs (§§1–­71), and the second (Band II—­Welcher die Ergänzungen zu den vier Büchern des ersten Bandes enthält) contains 50 chapters (Kapitel 1–­50). Since these two parts are divided into four volumes in the German edition and two volumes in the English translation, reference to the part and volume has been omitted in what follows. Instead, either the paragraph number (“§”) or the chapter (chap.) is given so that readers can immediately recognize from which part any given reference comes. Reference to the paragraph number or chapter is immediately followed by the page number, first from the German edition, and then from the English translation in parentheses. All references to the English translation come from: The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols., trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969). According to this referencing

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format, this first citation takes the following form: WWV, §22, 155 (110–­11): “This thing-​in-​itself . . . must borrow its name and concept from an object . . . and therefore from one of its phenomena. . . . But this is precisely man’s will. We have to observe, however, that here of course we use only a denominatio a potiori, by which the concept of will therefore receives a greater extension than it has hitherto had. . . . But hitherto the identity of the inner essence of any striving [strebenden] or operating force in nature with the will has not been recognized. . . . I therefore name the genus after its most important species.” 2. Arthur Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grund: Eine philosophische Abhandlung (enlarged 1847 edition), Kleinere Schriften, vol. 1 (Zürich: Diogenes, 1977); English translation: On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, trans. E. F. J. Payne (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974). 3. Arthur Schopenhauer, Über den Willen in der Natur (1854); English translation: On the Will in Nature, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992). 4. See WWV, §§22–­23, 29, 54 for a general characterization of the will in-​itself. 5. WWV, §29, 217–­18 (164): “In fact, absence of all aims, of all limits, belongs to the essential nature of the will in itself, which is an endless striving [endloses Streben]. . . . Every attained end is at the same time the beginning of a new course, and so on ad infinitum. . . . Eternal becoming, endless flux [Fluβ], belong to the revelation of the essential nature of the will.” 6. WWV, §28, 207 (155). 7. WWV, §54, 347 (274–­75): “The mirror of the will has appeared to it in the world as representation. In this mirror the will knows itself in increasing degrees of distinctness and completeness.” 8. WWV, §23, 158 (113): “The will as thing-​in-​itself lies outside the province of the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms, and is consequently completely groundless (grundlos), although each of its phenomena is entirely subject to that principle. Further, it is free from all plurality, although its phenomena in time and space are innumerable. . . . It is one as that which lies outside time and space, outside the principium individuationis, that is to say, outside the possibility of plurality.” 9. WWV, §26,185 (136): “The force itself . . . is not subject to the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, that is to say, it is groundless. It lies outside all time, is omnipresent, and, so to speak, seems constantly to wait for the appearance of those circumstances under which it can manifest itself.” 10. Schopenhauer explicitly refers to Malebranche’s doctrine on “occasional causes”: WWV, §26, 186–­87 (137–­38). 11. WWV, §28, 207 (155). See §§25–­28 and 34 for a precise account of these Platonic Ideas in terms of diversity and degree, as well as their apprehension through aesthetic contemplation. 12. WWV, §27, 197 (146–­47): “Thus everywhere in nature we see contest, struggle, and the fluctuation of victory, and later on we shall recognize in this more distinctly that variance with itself [Entzweitung] essential to the will. Every grade of the will’s objectification fights [macht streitig] for the matter, the space, and the time of another.”

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13. WWV, §34, 232–­33 (179). 14. We will return to Schopenhauer’s aesthetics in part 2 of this book. See chapter 7, 303–11. 15. WWV, chap. 20, 286 (245). 16. WWV, §18, 145 (101–­2). 17. WWV, §26, 179 (131): “At the higher grades of the will’s objectivity, we see individuality standing out prominently, especially in man. . . . No animal has this individuality in anything like such a degree. . . . The farther down we go, the more completely is every trace of individual character lost in the general character of the species.” 18. WWV, §34, 233 (179). 19. See especially WWV, §§18–­21, 23, and 60, and chaps. 20, 21, and 41 for a phenomenological description of the human body and its experiences (understood both in an objective and subjective sense), as well as the human body’s central place in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. 20. WWV, §20, 153 (108) and passim. 21. WWV, §18, 143 (100). 22. WWV, §20, 153 (108): “Therefore the parts of the body must correspond completely to the chief demands and desires [Hauptbegehrungen] by which the will manifests itself; they must be the visible expression of these desires. Teeth, gullet, and intestinal canal are objectified hunger; the genitals are objectified sexual impulse.” See also WWV, chap. 20, 302 (259). 23. WWV, §20, 151 (107). 24. For the Schopenhauerian distinction between my “empirical character” and my “intelligible character” (that is, the Platonic Idea of my individual will), see WWV §28, 208ff. (155ff.). 25. WWV, chap. 18, 229–­30 (197). 26. WWV, §18, 143–­44 (100–­101). 27. WWV, §20, 150 (106). 28. WWV, §18, 143 (100): “The action of the body is nothing but the act of will objectified, i.e., translated into perception. Later on we shall see that this applies to every movement of the body, not merely to movement following on motives, but also to involuntary movement following on mere stimuli [bloße Reize].” 29. WWV, chap. 19, 280 (240): “We ourselves are the will-​to-​live [Wille zum Leben]; hence we must live, well or badly.” 30. WWV, §20, 150 (106). 31. WWV, §18, 144 (101): “However, we are quite wrong in calling pain and pleasure representations, for they are not these at all, but immediate affections of the will in its phenomenon, the body; an enforced [erzwungenes], instantaneous [augenblickliches] willing or not-​w illing of the impression undergone by the body.” 32. WWV, §18, 144 (101): “Weakness of the nerves shows itself in the fact that the impressions which have merely that degree of intensity that is sufficient make them data for the understanding, reach the higher degree at which they stir the will, that is to say, excite pain or pleasure . . . , but also give rise generally to a morbid and hypochondriacal disposition [Stimmung].”

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33. WWV, §19, 148 (104–­5): “The double knowledge which we have of the nature and action of our own body, and which is given in two completely different ways, has now been clearly brought out. Accordingly, we shall use it further as a key to the inner being of every phenomenon in nature. We shall judge all objects which are not our own body, and therefore are given to our consciousness not in the double way, but only as representations, according to the analogy of this body.” See also WWV, §21, 154 (109–­10). 34. WWV, chap. 18, 229 (196). 35. WWV, §26, 180 (132). 36. The case of animals is to be situated between the strong individuation of each human being and the total absence of individuation in material bodies. According to Schopenhauer, the individuality of animals is species-​related, that is, it is necessarily mediated by the species to which they belong. Their individual will to live is thus subordinated to a concern for the survival of the species, for which individual animals willingly sacrifice themselves. This constitutes the essential difference between animal “instincts” and human “desires,” a topic we will address in the next section. 37. WWV, §23, 163–­64 (117–­18): “Now let us consider attentively and observe the powerful, irresistible impulse [Drang] with which masses of water rush downwards. . . . It will not cost us a great effort of the imagination to recognize once more our own inner nature, even at so great a distance. It is that which in us pursues its ends by the light of knowledge, but here . . . only strives blindly in a dull, one-​sided, and unalterable manner. Yet, because it is everywhere one and the same . . . it must in either case bear the name of will. For this word indicates that which is the being-​in-​itself of every thing in the world, and is the sole kernel of every phenomenon.” 38. WWV, §20, 150 (106): “Therefore, the whole inner nature of my willing cannot be explained from the motives, but they determine merely its manifestation at a given point of time; they are merely the occasion on which my will shows itself. This will itself, on the other hand, lies outside the province of the law of motivation; only the phenomenon of the will at each point of time is determined by this law.” 39. On this, see WWV, §§23, 24, 26 and chap. 23. 40. WWV, §26, 185 (136): “The force itself is phenomenon [Erscheinung] of the will, and, as such, is not subject to the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, that is to say, it is groundless. It lies outside all time, is omnipresent, and, so to speak, seems constantly to wait for the appearance of those circumstances under which it can manifest itself.” 41. WWV, §26, 187 (138): “In any case, Malebranche is right; every natural cause is only an occasional cause. It gives only the opportunity, the occasion [Gelegenheit; Anlass], for the phenomenon of that one and indivisible will which is the in-​itself of all things.” 42. WWV, §26, 182–­83 (134): “Therefore every universal, original force of nature is, in its inner essence, nothing but the objectification of the will at a low grade, and we call every such grade an eternal Idea in Plato’s sense. But the law of nature is the relation of the Idea to the form of its phenomenon [Erscheinung].

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This form is time, space, and causality, having a necessary and inseparable connection and relation to one another.” 43. WWV, §34, 231–­32 (178–­79): “Thus we no longer consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither in things, but simply and solely the what. Further, we . . . devote the whole power of our mind to [intuition (Anschauung)] . . . and let our whole consciousness be filled by the calm contemplation of the natural object actually present. . . . Now in such contemplation, the particular thing at one stroke becomes the Idea of its species, and the [individual accomplishing the intuition (das anschauende Individuum)] becomes the pure subject of knowing” (translation modified). 44. WWV, §36, 241ff. (186ff.). 45. WWV, §26, 184 (135): “The original natural forces themselves, however, as immediate objectification of the will, that will as thing-​in-​itself not being subject to the principle of sufficient reason, lie outside those forms. Only within these forms has any etiological explanation validity and meaning.” 46. Schopenhauer cites Saint Augustine: “If we were stones, waves, wind or flame, or anything of that kind, lacking sense and life, we would still show something like a desire [Streben—­appetitus]” (WWV, §24, 171 [126]; St. Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson [Toronto: Penguin Books, 1984], 462−63). 47. WWV, §24, 171 (124). 48. WWV, §26, 183 (135). 49. WWV, chap. 41, 553 (472): “Is it, then, so absolutely and entirely nothing to continue to exist as such matter? Indeed, I seriously assert that even this permanence of matter affords evidence of the indestructibility of our true inner being . . . , that mere formless matter—­this basis of the world of experience, never perceived by itself alone, but assumed as always permanent—­is the immediate reflection, the visibility in general, of the thing-​in-​itself, that is, of the will.” 50. WWV, chap. 23, 248–­49 (298). 51. Concerning all this, see WWV, §23 and 27, as well as chaps. 19 and 27. 52. WWV, chap. 27, 401 (342). 53. WWV, §23, 160–­61 (115): “On the other hand, I call stimulus [Reiz] that cause which itself undergoes no reaction [Gegenwirkung] proportional to its effect, and whose intensity runs by no means parallel with the intensity of the effect according to degree. . . . On the contrary, a small increase of the stimulus may cause a very large increase of the effect, or, conversely may entirely eliminate the previous effect, and so forth.” 54. WWV, §23, 159–­60 (114). 55. WWV, §23, 161 (116): “The contraction of the pupil of the eye with increased light occurs on stimulus, but passes over into movement on motive, for it takes place because too strong a light would affect the retina painfully, and to avoid this we contract the pupil. The occasion of an erection is a motive, as it is a representation; yet it operates with the necessity of a stimulus, in other words, it cannot be resisted, but must be put away in order to be made ineffective.” 56. WWV, chap. 19, 235 (202). 57. WWV, chap. 19, 237 (204). 58. WWV, chap. 19, 237 (203–­4).

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59. WWV, §18, 144 (101). 60. WWV, chap. 19, 241 (207). 61. WWV, chap. 19, 204 (206): “By virtue of the simplicity belonging to the will as the thing-​in-​itself, as the metaphysical in the phenomenon, its essential nature admits of no degrees, but is always entirely itself. Only its stimulation or excitement has degrees . . . , and also its excitability.” 62. WWV, §27, 202 (151): “Animals . . . are therefore bound to the present, and cannot take the future into consideration.” 63. WWV, chap. 19, 240–­41 (206–­7): “On the other hand, the intellect has not merely degrees of excitement, from sleepiness up to the mood and inspiration [von der Schläfrigkeit bis zur Laune und Begeisterung], but also degrees of its real nature, of the completeness thereof; accordingly, this rises gradually from the lowest animal which perceives only obscurely [nur dumpf wahrnehmende Thiere] up to man, and in man again from the blockhead to the genius [vom Dummkopf bis zum Genie].” 64. WWV, chap. 19, 235 (202): “For consciousness consists in knowing [im Erkennen], but knowing requires a knowing [ein Erkennendes] and a known [ein Erkanntes].” 65. WWV, chap. 20, 302 (258): “As this is the case, the brain and its functions, thus knowledge, and hence the intellect, belong in an indirect and secondary [mittelbar und sekundär] way to the phenomenon of the will [zur Erscheinung des Willens]. The will also objectifies itself therein, and that indeed as will to perceive or to apprehend the external world, hence as a will-​to-​know [Erkennenwollen].” 66. WWV, chap. 19, 234 (201): “For consciousness is conditioned by the intellect, and the intellect is a mere accident of our being, for it is a function of the brain. The brain . . . is a mere fruit, a product, in fact a parasite, of the rest of the organism, in so far as it is not directly geared to the organism’s inner working. . . . In consequence of this, it can be said that the intellect is the secondary phenomenon, the organism the primary, that is the immediate phenomenal appearance [Erscheinung] of the will.” 67. WWV, chap. 19, 234 (201). 68. WWV, §27, 202 (150): “The will, which hitherto followed its tendency [seinen Trieb] in the dark . . . has at this stage kindled a light for itself [hat sich ein Licht angezündet].” 69. WWV, chap. 19, 235 (202): “But as the known in consciousness [das Erkannte in Selbstbewusstseyn] we find exclusively the will. For not only willing and deciding in the narrowest sense, but also all striving, wishing, shunning, hoping, fearing, loving, hating, in short all that directly constitutes our own weal and woe [das eigene Wohl und Wehe], desire and disinclination, is obviously only affection [Affektion] of the will, is a stirring [Regung], a modification, of willing and not-​ willing, is just that which, when it operates outwards, exhibits itself as an act of will proper.” 70. WWV, chap. 19, 235 (202). 71. WWV, §33, 230–­31 (177): “Now as a rule, knowledge remains subordinate to the service of the will, as indeed it came into being for this service; in fact, it sprang from the will, so to speak, as the head from the trunk.”

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72. WWV, chap. 19, 239 (205): “In the case of the animal the immediate awareness of its satisfied and unsatisfied desire constitutes by far the principal part of its consciousness.” 73. WWV, chap. 19, 238–­39 (205). 74. WWV, chap. 19, 238 (204). 75. WWV, chap. 19, 238 (205). See also chap. 22, 323 (276). 76. WWV, chap. 19, 240 (206): “Therefore, the relative predominance of the knowing consciousness over the desiring, and consequently of the secondary part over the primary, which appears in man . . .” 77. WWV, §18, 144 (101). 78. WWV, chap. 20, 288 (247): “On the other hand, the brain controls the relations with the external world; this alone is its office, and in this way it discharges its debt to the organism that nourishes it, since the latter’s existence is conditioned by the external relations.” 79. WWV, chap. 22, 322–­23 (275–­76). 80. WWV, chap. 22, 323 (276). 81. WWV, chap. 22, 325 (277–­78). 82. WWV, chap. 41, 579–­80 (494–­95): “Thus, in so far as I am that which knows, I have even in my own inner being really only a phenomenon; on the other hand, in so far as I am directly this inner being itself, I am not that which knows [bin ich nicht erkennend]. . . . Strictly speaking, therefore, we know even our own will always only as phenomenon [als Erscheinung] . . . in its most immediate manifestation, and thus with the reservation that this knowledge of it is still not exhaustive and entirely adequate.” 83. WWV, chap. 19, 260 (223): “On the other hand, the will, properly speaking, never obeys the intellect, but the intellect is merely the cabinet council [Ministerrath] of that sovereign. It lays before the will all kinds of things, and in accordance with these the will selects. . . . For this reason, no system of ethics which would mould and improve the will itself is possible.” 84. WWV, §27, 203–­4 (151–­52). 85. WWV, chap. 19, 241–­42 (207) and chap. 22, 328 (280). 86. WWV, chap. 19, 242 (208). 87. WWV, chap. 22, 328 (280–­81). 88. WWV, chap. 19, 236–­37 (203): “Thus, just as usually a large corona springs only from a large root, so the greatest mental abilities are found only with a vehement and passionate will.  .  .  . But the opposite of the above is of course found; that is, vehement desires, passionate, violent character, with weak intellect.” 89. WWV, chap. 19, 257–­58 (220–­21): “I wish now to show by a few examples how, conversely, the functions of the intellect are sometimes aided and enhanced by the incentive and spur of the will, so . . . that it may become clear that the intellect stands to the will in the relation of a tool. A powerfully acting motive, such as yearning desire [der sehnsüchtig Wunsch] or pressing need [die dringende Noth], sometimes raises the intellect to a degree of which we had never previously believed it capable. . . . In just the same way, memory [Gedächtniss] is enhanced by pressure of the will [Drang des Willens].”

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90. WWV, chap. 19, 204 (206): “Therefore, that relative predominance of the knowing consciousness over the desiring . . . that appears in man, can in certain abnormally favoured individuals go so far that . . . the secondary or knowing part of consciousness is entirely detached from the willing part, and passes itself into free activity, in other words, into an activity not stimulated by the will, and therefore no longer serving it. Thus the knowing part of consciousness becomes purely objective and the clear mirror of the world, and from this the conceptions of genius arise.” See also chap. 19, 257 (220). 91. See chapter 7, 304ff. 92. Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grund, 162–­63; On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, 214–­16: “The influence which the will exercises on knowledge is based not on causality proper, but on the identity . . . of the knowing and the willing subject. For the will compels knowledge to repeat [wiederholen] representations . . . , generally to direct its attention to this or that object and to evoke at pleasure any particular series of ideas. Here too the will is also the secret director of the so-​called association of ideas. . . . But it is the will of the individual that sets in motion the whole mechanism [das ganze Getriebe in Thätigkeit versetzt] in that it urges the intellect, in accordance with [its interests]. . . . The act of the will is frequently not noticed because its fulfilment is so easy” (translation modified). See also WWV, chap. 14, 158 (135–­36). 93. WWV, chap. 14, 157–­58 (135–­36): “To make the matter clearer, let us compare our consciousness to a sheet of water of some depth. Then the distinctly conscious ideas are merely the surface. . . . But usually the rumination of material from outside, by which it is recast into ideas, takes place in the obscure depths of the mind. This rumination goes on almost unconsciously as the conversion of nourishment into the humours and substance of [life] [des Lebens]. Hence it is that we are often unable to give any account of the origin of our deepest thoughts; they are the offspring of our mysterious inner being” (translation corrected). 94. See WWV, chap. 14, 157 (134–­35) and chap. 19, 281 (240–­41). 95. WWV, chap. 19, 243–­44 (209–­10). 96. WWV, chap. 19, 251 (215) and 256 (219). 97. WWV, chap. 19, 252 (216). 98. WWV, chap. 19, 242 (208). 99. WWV, chap. 19, 243 (208). 100. WWV, chap. 19, 243 (208). 101. WWV, chap. 19, 244 (209–­10). 102. WWV, chap. 32, 473–­74 (400). 103. WWV, chap. 19, 242 (208). 104. WWV, chap. 32, 473 (400). 105. WWV, §36, 249 (193). See also chap. 32, 474 (400–­401). 106. WWV, §36, 249 (193). See also chap. 32, 474 (400–­401). 107. WWV, chap. 32, 474 (400–­401) (translation modified). 108. WWV, §36, 248 (192) (translation modified) and chap. 32, 472 (399). 109. WWV, §36, 248 (192). 110. WWV, chap. 32, 475 (401).

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111. WWV, chap. 32, 474 (401) (translation modified). 112. WWV, §36, 249 (193): “Then nature, alarmed in this way, seizes on madness as the last means of saving life. The mind, tormented so greatly, destroys, as it were, the thread of its memory, fills up the gaps with fictions, and thus seeks refuge in madness from the mental suffering that exceeds its strength, just as a limb affected by mortification is cut off and replaced with a wooden one.” 113. WWV, §36, 247–­48 (192) (translation modified). 114. WWV, §36, 247 (192). 115. WWV, §36, 248 (192). 116. See Rudolf Bernet, “Délire et réalité dans la psychose,” Études phénoménologiques 8, no. 15 (1992): 25–­54.

Chapter 4 1. WWV, §23, 163–­64 (117–­18). 2. Sigmund Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, in Gesammelte Werke in Achtzehn Bänden mit einem Nachtragsband, vol. 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1972), 27–­145; English translation: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 7 (London: Hogarth, 1953), 123–­230 (Three Essays in what follows). Most references to Freud’s works in what follows will be drawn from Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte Werke in Achtzehn Bänden mit einem Nachtragsband, 19 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1940−87), as well as from James Strachey’s English translation of Freud’s works in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols., trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1953−74). References will be given to the Gesammelte Werke first (hereafter GW ) by volume number and page number, followed by the Complete Works (hereafter CW ) by volume number and page number. [While Strachey, in Freud’s Complete Works, translates Trieb as “instinct,” “drive” will be used here, including in quotations from Strachey’s translation, except in the case of well-​known English titles of works, such as Instincts and Their Vicissitudes.—­Trans.] 3. GW, 5 only gives the last version of the Three Essays, without indicating additions and their respective dates; to reconstitute the first version we shall thus turn to Studienausgabe: Sigmund Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (1905), in Studienausgabe, vol. 5, Sexualleben (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982), 37–­145 (hereafter SA, 5). In what follows in this section, the pagination of GW, 5 will always be followed by SA, 5 as well as the English translation (CW, 7). 4. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, book 11, Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychoanalyse—­1964 (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 154; English translation: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, book 11, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan, ed. Jacques-​A lain Miller (London: W. W. Norton), 169: “Let me say that if there is anything resembling a drive it is a montage. . . . The montage of the drive

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is a montage which, first, is presented as having neither head nor tail—­in the sense that one speaks of montage in a surrealist collage.” Hereafter, after a first full reference for any further book from Lacan’s Seminar, all references will be referred to as Seminar followed by the book number, original French pages number(s), and then the English translation page number(s) in parentheses. 5. GW, 5:67; SA, 5:76; CW, 7:168. 6. GW, 5:112; SA, 5:115; CW, 7:219. 7. In fact, there is no trace of the “ego-​d rive” or the “drive for self-​ preservation,” and only one occurrence of the “Nahrungstrieb” (nutritional drive) in Three Essays: GW, 5:83; SA, 5:89; CW, 7:182. 8. GW, 5:91; SA, 5:97; CW, 7:191. 9. GW, 5:47; SA, 5:58; CW, 7:148. 10. GW, 5:84; SA, 5:90; CW, 7:183: “There are predestined erogenous zones, as is shown by the example of sucking. The same example, however, also shows us that any other part of the skin or mucous membrane can take over the functions of an erogenous zone” (translation modified). 11. GW, 5:47; SA, 5:59; CW, 7:148: “hunger, with its far more energetic retention of its object.” 12. GW, 5:33; SA, 5:47; CW, 7:135. 13. GW, 5:67–­68; SA, 5:77; CW, 7:168 (translation modified). 14. GW, 5:68−69; SA, 5:77–­78; CW, 7:169. 15. GW, 5:59; SA, 5:69; CW, 7:159−60: “A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.” GW, 5:66; SA, 5:75−76; CW, 7:167: “anyone who is an exhibitionist in his unconscious is at the same time a voyeur.” 16. GW, 5:61; SA, 5:71; CW, 7:162. See also GW, 5:78; SA, 5:85; CW, 7:177. 17. GW, 5:65; SA, 5:74; CW, 7:165. 18. Seminar, 11:164 (180): “There is no relation of production between one of the partial drives and the next.” 19. GW, 5:98–­101; SA, 5:103–­6; CW, 7:197–­200. 20. Seminar, 11:160 (175): “with regard to the biological finality of sexuality, namely, reproduction, the drives, as they present themselves in the process of psychical reality, are partial drives.” 21. GW, 5:82–­83; SA, 5:88–­89; CW, 7:181−82. The term “Anlehnung” in this passage is from a 1915 addition that explains how the sexual drive, in its genesis, attaches itself to vital drives for self-​preservation or “ego-​drives.” The distinction between these two kinds of drives and the pleasure and reality principles by which they are governed belongs to the second Freudian theory of the drive. However, the concept of a pleasure felt at the satisfaction of a natural need and detaching itself from this need in order to be sought in itself through an autonomous drive of a sexual nature is clearly already present in the first drive theory referred to here—­a s is the term “Anlehnung”: GW, 5:86; SA, 5:92; CW, 7:185. [Strachey translates Anlehnung as “attachment” and “attaches.” Here it will be translated as “anaclisis” to avoid confusion with a psychoanalytic theory of attachment.—­Trans.] 22. Playing on the translation of “Trieb” by “drive,” Lacan happily uses the term “dérive” (“drift”) to characterize this displacement at the origin of a sexual

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drive from an object of need to an object of pleasure. See Lacan, Le Séminaire, book 7, L’Éthique de la psychoanalyse—­1959–­1960 (Paris: Seuil, 1986), 108, 132; English translation: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, book 7, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–­1960, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 90, 110. 23. GW, 5:124; SA, 5:126; CW, 7:223: “the person in charge of him, who . . . is as a rule his mother, herself regards him with feelings that are derived from her own sexual life, . . . all her marks of affection are rousing her child’s sexual instinct and preparing for its later intensity.” 24. GW, 5:123; SA, 5:125; CW, 7:222. 25. Lacan, Seminar, 7:143 (118): “It is precisely in this field that we should situate something that Freud presents, on the other hand, as necessarily corresponding to the find itself, as necessarily being the wiedergefundene or refound object. . . . The object is by nature a refound object. That it was lost is a consequence of that—­but after the fact. It is thus refound without our knowledge, except through the refinding, that it was ever lost.” 26. GW, 5:80; SA, 5:87; CW, 7:179. 27. GW, 5:81–­82; SA, 5:88–­89; CW, 7:181. 28. Seminar, 11:164 (179): “[Freud] tells us somewhere that the ideal model for auto-​eroticism would be a single mouth kissing itself . . . a mouth sewn up, in which . . . we see . . . the pure agency of the oral drive, closing upon its own satisfaction.” 29. Jean-​Paul Sartre, “Carnets de la drôle de guerre,” in Les Mots et autres écrits autobiographiques, Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 400–­01; English translation: War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War: November 1939−March 1940, trans. Quintin Hoare (London: Verso, 1984), 117–­18. 30. GW, 5:85; SA, 5:91; CW, 7:184: “The sexual aim of the infantile drive consists in obtaining satisfaction by means of an appropriate stimulation of the erogenous zone which has been selected in one way or another” (translation modified). 31. GW, 5:111; SA, 5:115; CW, 7:210: “how it can come about that an experience of pleasure can give rise to a need for greater pleasure.” Even though Freud is speaking in this passage of fore-​pleasure (Vorlust) in adult sexuality, a further remark a few lines later draws an explicit link with the drive in infantile sexuality: “Fore-​pleasure is thus the same pleasure that has already been produced . . . by the infantile sexual drive.” 32. GW, 5:110; SA, 5:114; CW, 7:209. 33. GW, 5:114, note; SA, 5:117; CW, 7:212, note: “ ‘Lust’ has two meanings, and is used to describe the sensation of sexual tension (‘Ich habe Lust’ = ‘I should like to,’ ‘I feel an impulse to’) as well as the feeling of satisfaction.” 34. GW, 10:229; CW, 14:137. 35. GW, 5:87; SA, 5:93; CW, 7:186. 36. GW, 5:87; SA, 5:93; CW, 7:186: “One of the clearest signs of subsequent eccentricity or nervousness is to be seen when a baby obstinately refuses to empty his bowels when he is put on the pot. . . . Educators are once more right when they describe children who keep the process back as ‘naughty.’ ” 37. GW, 5:93; SA, 5:99; CW, 7:192–­93.

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38. GW, 5:87; SA, 5:92; CW, 7:186. 39. Seminar, 11:164 (180): “The passage from the oral drive to the anal drive can be produced not by a process of maturation, but by the intervention of something that does not belong to the field of the drive—­by the intervention, the overthrow, of the demand of the Other.” 40. GW, 5:99; SA, 5:104; CW, 7:199. 41. GW, 10:231; CW, 14:138−39: “Preliminary stages of love emerge as provisional sexual aims while the sexual drives are passing through their complicated development. As the first of these aims we recognize the phase of incorporating or devouring—­a type of love which is consistent with abolishing the object’s separate existence and which may therefore be described as ambivalent. At the higher stage of the pregenital sadistic-​anal organization, the striving for the object appears in the form of an urge for mastery, to which injury or annihilation of the object is a matter of indifference. Love in this form and at this preliminary stage is hardly to be distinguished from hate in its attitude toward the object. Not until the genital organization is established does love become the opposite of hate.” 42. GW, 5:132–­33; SA, 5:134–­35; CW, 7:231–­32. 43. GW, 5:108; SA, 5:112; CW, 7:207: “Now, however, a new sexual aim appears, and all the component instincts combine to attain it, while the erogenous zones become subordinated to the primacy of the genital zone” (translation modified). 44. GW, 5:126; SA, 5:128; CW, 7:225. 45. GW, 5:136–­37; SA, 5:137–­38; CW, 7:235: “during the transition period of puberty the processes of somatic and of psychical development continue for a time side by side independently, until the irruption of an intense love impulse [Liebesregung], leading to the innervations of the genitals, brings about the unity of the love function [Einheit der Liebesfunktion] which is necessary for normality” (translation modified). 46. GW, 10:230; CW, 14:138: “The relation of the ego to its sexual object [is] the most appropriate case in which to employ the word ‘love’—­this fact teaches us that the word can only begin to be applied in this relation after there has a been a synthesis of all the partial drives of sexuality under the primacy of the genitals and in the service of the reproductive function” (translation modified). 47. Sigmund Freud, Triebe und Triebschicksale, in GW, 10:209–­32. The Studienausgabe (SA) text is identical here to the one in the Gesammelte Werke. Thus, I will refer only to the GW, as well as to the English translation by James Strachey, Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (hereafter Instincts), in CW, 14 (Toronto: Hogarth, 1957), 109–­40. 48. Sigmund Freud, “Die psychogene Sehstörung in psychoanalytischer Auffassung,” in GW, 8:93–­102; English translation in CW, 11:209–­18. 49. Sigmund Freud, “Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens 2—­Über die algemeinste Erniedrigung des Liebeslebens,” in GW, 8:78–­91; English translation in CW, 11:177–­90. 50. Sigmund Freud, “Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens,” in GW, 8:229–­38; English translation in CW, 12:213–­26.

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51. Sigmund Freud, Zur Einführung des Narzissmus, in GW, 10:137–­70; English translation in CW, 14:67–­102. 52. GW, 10:232; CW, 14:140. 53. See chapter 4, 150n7. 54. GW, 8:97– ­98; CW, 11:214: “the undeniable opposition between the drives which subserve sexuality, the attainment of sexual pleasure, and those other drives, which have as their aim the self-​preservation of the individual—­the ego-​drives.” 55. See Zur Einführung des Narzissmus, GW, 10:143–­44; CW, 14:78. 56. GW, 8:98–­99; CW, 11:215−16: “The sexual and ego-​drives alike have in general the same organs and systems of organs at their disposal. . . . The mouth serves for kissing as well as for eating. . . . The saying that it is not easy for anyone to serve two masters is thus confirmed. The closer the relations into which an organ with a dual function of this kind enters with one of the major drives, the more it withholds itself from the other. This principle is bound to lead to pathological consequences if the two fundamental drives are disunited and if the ego maintains a repression of the sexual partial drive concerned” (translation modified). 57. See chapter 3, 127. 58. GW, 8:97; CW, 11:213–­14: “Opposition between ideas [Vorstellungen] is only an expression of struggles between the various drives.” 59. GW, 8:235; CW, 12:223: “Just as the pleasure-​ego can do nothing but wish, work for a yield of pleasure, and avoid unpleasure, so the reality-​ego need do nothing but strive for what is useful and guard itself against damage.” 60. GW, 8:235–­36; CW, 12:223. 61. GW, 8:230–­31; CW, 12:218–­19. 62. GW, 8:231–­32; CW, 12:219. 63. GW, 8:232–­33; CW, 12:220–­21. 64. GW, 8:235; CW, 12:223. 65. GW, 8:78–­91; CW, 11:177–­90. 66. GW, 8:79; CW, 11:180. 67. Lacan extends Freud’s analysis of “Verliebtheit” to all libidinal relations between the ego and its objects. This generalization is a direct consequence of his understanding of the ego, the object as a unity, and their mutual relations as imaginary in nature. The unity of the perceived external object, for Lacan, is in fact the reflection of one’s own body image, and the unity of one’s own body, as it appears in the image in the mirror, is already marked by the presence of the other. It is from this exchange between services received and rendered that the rivalry between the unity of the ego and the unity of the object arises, manifested on the libidinal level by the Freudian opposition between Objektlibido and Ichlibido. See Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, book 2, Le Moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychoanalyse—­1954–­1955 (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 198–­201; English translation: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, book 2, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–­1955, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli, ed. Jacque-​ Alain Miller (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 166–­68: “The image of his body is the principle of every unity he perceives in objects. . . . On the libidinal level, the object is only ever apprehended through the grid of the narcissistic relation.”

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68. Three Essays, GW, 5:44, note; CW, 7:144–­45, note. 69. GW, 10:141; CW, 14:76: “The more one is employed, the more the other becomes depleted.” 70. GW, 10:138–­39; CW, 14:73–­74: “Narcissism . . . would . . . be the libidinal complement to the egoism of the drive of self-​preservation.” 71. GW, 10:140; CW, 14:75: “This leads us to look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing in of object-​cathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary narcissism that is obscured by a number of different influences.” 72. GW, 10:141; CW, 14:76: “Finally, as regards the differentiation of psychical energies, we are led to the conclusion that to begin with, during the state of narcissism, they exist together and that our analysis is too coarse to distinguish between them; not until there is object-​cathexis is it possible to discriminate a sexual energy—­the libido—­from an energy of the ego-​drives.” 73. GW, 10:140; CW, 14:74. 74. GW, 10:142; CW, 14:77: “a unity comparable to the ego cannot exist in the individual from the start; the ego has to be developed. The auto-​erotic drives, however, are there from the very first; so there must be something added to auto-​ erotism—­a new psychical action—­in order to bring about narcissism.” 75. GW, 10:227; CW, 14:134. 76. GW, 10:224; CW, 14:131–­32: “We have become accustomed to call the early phase of the development of the ego, during which its sexual drives find auto-​erotic satisfaction, ‘narcissism,’ without at once entering on any discussion of the relation between auto-​erotism and narcissism.” 77. We will come back further on to the specific case of the scopic drive, which—­in its most original, that is, self-​referential modality—­arises from an autoerotic drive that can in fact be associated with a particular kind of primary narcissism. See chapter 4, 186ff. 78. GW, 10:218; CW, 14:126. 79. Let us recognize, however, that Freud addressed this paradox quite explicitly in Instincts and Their Vicissitudes: GW, 10:227, note; CW, 14:134–­35, note. 80. GW, 10:216–­17; CW, 14:124. 81. GW, 10:214; CW, 14:121–­22: “If now we apply ourselves to considering mental life from a biological point of view, a drive appears to us as a concept on the frontier between the mental and the somatic, as the psychical representative of the stimuli originating from within the organism and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work in consequence of its connection with the body.” 82. GW, 10:214; CW, 14:120–­21: “unpleasurable feelings are connected with an increase and pleasurable feelings with a decrease of stimulation.” 83. GW, 10:211–­12; CW, 14:118: “In the first place, a drive stimulus does not arise from the external world but from within the organism itself.” 84. GW, 10:213–­14; CW, 14:119–­20. 85. GW, 10:211; CW, 14:118: “There is nothing to prevent our subsuming the concept of ‘drive’ under that of ‘stimulus’ and saying that a drive is a stimulus applied to the mind.”

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86. GW, 10:212: CW, 14:118: “A drive, on the other hand, never operates as a force giving a momentary impact but always as a constant one.” 87. GW, 10:214; CW, 14:122: “By the pressure [Drang] of a drive we understand its motor factor, the amount of force or the measure of the demand for work which it represents.” Note the liberties that Lacan takes with Freud by claiming: “In the drive there is no question of kinetic energy; it is not a question of something that will be regulated with movement” (Seminar, 11:150 [165]). 88. GW, 10:214; CW, 14:122. 89. GW, 10:214–­15; CW, 14:122: “Every drive is a piece of activity; if we speak loosely of passive drives, we can only mean drives whose aim is passive.” 90. Seminar, 11:149 (163). 91. Seminar, 11:149–­50 (164): “Well! It has to be said that, at the very outset, Freud posits, quite categorically, that there is absolutely no question in Trieb of the pressure of a need such as Hunger or Durst, thirst.” 92. GW, 10:215; CW, 14:122: “The aim [Ziel] of a drive is in every instance satisfaction [Befriedigung], which can only be obtained by removing the state of stimulation at the source of the drive.” 93. Lacan will go into more depth on this intimate link between the drive and anxiety by emphasizing the fact that both relate to “enjoyment” (jouissance)—­ (one that is impossible and suddenly appears to be possible). 94. GW, 10:215; CW, 14:122: “But although the ultimate aim of each drive remains unchangeable, there may be different paths leading to the same ultimate aim; so that a drive may be found to have various nearer or intermediate aims. . . . Experience permits us also to speak of drives which are ‘inhibited in their aim,’ in the case of processes which are allowed to make some advance toward drive satisfaction but are then inhibited or deflected. We may suppose that even processes of this kind involve a partial satisfaction.” 95. In what follows, every time I refer to the Lacanian conception of enjoyment, I will put it in quotation marks. 96. Seminar, 11:151–­53 (165–­68). 97. Seminar, 11:163 (179). 98. Seminar, 11:151 (166). 99. Seminar, 11:152 (166–­67). 100. Seminar, 11:153 (167–­68). 101. GW, 10:215; CW, 14:122: “The object [Objekt] of a drive is the thing in regard to which or through which the drive is able to achieve its aim.” 102. GW, 10:215; CW, 14:122–­23. 103. Seminar, 2:266 (227). Ten years later, Lacan will return at some length to the dimension of the visual trick and captivating the gaze, relying especially on the phenomenon of animal “mimicry”: Seminar, 11:70–­71 (73–­74). 104. Seminar, 11:153 (168). 105. Seminar, 11:164 (180). 106. See Rudolf Bernet, “Le sujet devant la Loi (Lacan et Kant),” in La pensée de Jacques Lacan, ed. Steve G. Lofts and Paul Moyaert (Louvain-​Paris: Peeters, 1994), 23–­44.

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107. Seminar, 2:261 (223): “In so far as the libido creates the different stages of the object, the objects are never it.” One should note that this remark from Seminar, 2 comes ten years prior to Seminar, 11, on which we are generally relying here. It is drawn from a context that relates the lack of satisfying objects directly to a “lack of being” that is constitutive of the subject. From this perspective, the lack of being that makes the subject into a subject of the unconscious situated in the “symbolic” register means that what makes objects desirable is never their natural properties alone. It is subjective desire that makes empirical objects desirable, and the character of this desire is so far from being natural that it can be qualified indifferently as a desire for everything or a desire for nothing. Thus, ultimately, there are no more “stages of the object” than there are stages of the natural development of the libido or of desire, and it is the lack of being in the desiring subject that makes all objects of desire into lacking objects. In part 2 of this work, we will revisit this dynamic of the subject of desire as subject of the unconscious. 108. Seminar, 11:164 (180). 109. Seminar, 11:165 (181). 110. Seminar, 11:153 (168): “The best formula seems to be the following—­ that la pulsion en fait le tour. . . . Tour is to be understood here with the ambiguity it possesses in French, both turn, the limit around which one turns, and trick.” 111. GW, 10:216; CW, 14:123. 112. Seminar, 11:154 (169). 113. Seminar, 11:157 (172): “It is precisely to the extent that adjoining, connected zones are excluded that others take on their erogenous function and become specific sources for the drive.” 114. Seminar, 11:157 (172). 115. GW, 10:219; CW, 14:126. 116. GW, 10:219; CW, 14:127. 117. GW, 10:220; CW, 14:127: “In the case of the pair of opposites sadism-​ masochism, the process may be represented as follows: (a) Sadism consists in the exercise of violence or power upon some other person as object. (b) This object is given up and replaced by the subject’s self. With the turning round upon the self, the change from an active to a passive drive aim is also effected. (c) An extraneous person is once more sought as object; this person, in consequence of the alteration which has taken place in the drive aim, has to take over the role of the subject.” 118. GW, 10:221; CW, 14:128–­29. 119. GW, 10:220; CW, 14:128. 120. GW, 10:222; CW, 14:129–­30. 121. [Strachey translates Schaulust as “scopophilia.” Here “voyeurism” will be used throughout, including in quotations from Strachey.—­Trans.] 122. GW, 10:225; CW, 14:132: “In general, we can assert of them [partial sexual drives] that their activities are auto-​erotic; that is to say, their object is negligible in comparison with the organ which is their source. . . . The object of the scopophilic drive, however, though it is too in the first instance a part of the subject’s own body, is not the eye itself.”

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123. Here is the formulation offered by Lacan in Seminar, 11:177 (194), for this primitive scopic autoerotism: “the sex, or widdler, delights in being looked at.” 124. GW, 10:224; CW, 14:131. 125. GW, 10:223; CW, 14:130: “The only correct statement to make about the scopophilic drive would be that all its stages of development, its auto-​erotic, preliminary stages as well as its final active or passive form, co-​exist alongside one another.” 126. Seminar, 11:177 (195): “what is involved in the drive is making oneself seen [se faire voir]. The activity of the drive is concentrated in this making oneself [se faire].” 127. GW, 10:221; CW, 14:128. 128. GW, 10:224; CW, 14:131–­32. 129. See chapter 4, 170–72. 130. See Lacan, Seminar, 11:177 (194): “the root of the scopic drive is to be found entirely in the subject, in the fact that the subject sees himself. But, . . . it is not seeing oneself in the mirror, it is Selbst ein Sexualglied beschauen—­he looks at himself, I would say, in his sexual member.” 131. See Lacan, Seminar, 11: 177–­78 (195): “The activity of the drive is concentrated in this making oneself [se faire], and it is by relating it to the field of the other drives that we may be able to throw some light upon it. . . . After making oneself seen, I will introduce another, making oneself heard. . . . Let us turn to the oral drive. . . . The oral drive is getting sucked, it is the vampire. . . . At the level of the anal drive—­you can now relax a bit—­things don’t seem to work out like that at all. And yet, se faire chier has a meaning!” 132. See Seminar, 11:162–­69 and 177–­82 (177–­86 and 194–­200). 133. Seminar, 11:163 (179). 134. Seminar, 11:179–­80 (196–­98). 135. Seminar, 11:165 (181). See also ibid., 162 and 168 (178 and 184–­85). Prior to this, concerned with distinguishing it from the moi or ego, Lacan still qualified the subject of the unconscious as an “acephalic subject”: Seminar, 2:200 (167). 136. Seminar, 11:162–­63 (177–­79). 137. Seminar, 11:166 (182): “What one looks at is what cannot be seen.” 138. Seminar, 11:168 (185): “The subject is an apparatus. This apparatus is something lacunary, and it is in the lacuna that the subject establishes the function of a certain object, qua lost object. It is the status of the objet a in so far as it is present in the drive.” 139. Seminar, 11:162 (178) (translation modified). 140. Seminar, 11:166 (182–­83): “If, thanks to the introduction of the other, the structure of the drive appears, it is really completed only in its reversed form, in its return form, which is the true active drive.” 141. Seminar, 11:166 (182). 142.  Jean-​Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), 310–­11; English translation: Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (1956; New York: Washington Square, 1984), 349.

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143. See Lacan, Seminar, 11:79–­80 (84–­85). 144. Seminar, 11:166 (182). 145. Seminar, 11:165 (181–­82): “I stress that the drive is not perversion. What constitutes the enigmatic character of Freud’s presentation derives precisely from the fact that he wishes to give us a radical structure—­in which the subject is not yet placed. On the contrary, what defines perversion is precisely the way in which the subject places himself in it [s’y place]” (translation modified). 146. Seminar, 11:166 (183). 147. Seminar, 11:166 (182): “What the voyeur is looking for and finds is merely a shadow, a shadow behind a curtain. There he will fantasize any magic of presence, the most graceful of girls, for example, even if on the other side there is only a hairy athlete.” 148. Seminar, 11:166 (182). 149. See Seminar, 11:168 (185). 150. Sigmund Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips, in GW, 13:1–­69; English translation: CW, 18:1–­64. 151. Sigmund Freud, Das Ich und das Es, in GW, 13:235–­89; English translation: CW, 19:1–­66. 152. Sigmund Freud, “Das ökonomische Problem des Masochismus,” GW, 13:369–­83; English translation, CW, 19:155–­70. 153. Sigmund Freud, “ ‘Psychanalyse’ und ‘Libidotheorie,’ ” in GW, 13:232–­ 33; English translation: CW, 18:257–­59. 154. See Seminar, 2:107 (84): “The pleasure principle . . . is that pleasure should cease.” 155. See Jacques Lacan, Écrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 848. 156. GW, 13:372; CW, 19:160. 157. GW, 13:376–­77; CW, 19:163–­64. 158. GW, 13:58–­59; CW, 18:54–­55. 159. GW, 13:25; CW, 18:26. 160. For a discussion of Freud’s theory of trauma from the perspective of Levinas’s thought, see Rudolf Bernet, “Le Sujet traumatisé,” in Conscience et existence (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), 269–­93; English translation: “The Traumatized Subject,” Research in Phenomenology 30 (2000): 160–­79. 161. GW, 13:22; CW, 18:23. 162. GW, 13:20, 36, 37, and so on; CW, 18:21, 35, 36, and so on. 163. GW, 13:31–­32; CW, 18:31–­32. 164. GW, 13:10; CW, 18:12. 165. GW, 13:11–­15; CW, 18:14–­17. 166. GW, 13:12; CW, 18:15–­16 (translation modified). 167. GW, 13:14; CW, 18:16. 168. GW, 13:36; CW, 18:35. 169. GW, 13:15; CW, 18:17. 170. GW, 13:35; CW, 18:34: “It will perhaps not be thought too rash to suppose that the impulses [Regungen] arising from the drives do not belong to the type of bound nervous process but of freely mobile processes which press toward discharge [Abfuhr].”

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171. GW, 13:35–­36; CW, 18:34–­35. 172. GW, 13:69; CW, 18:63: “The pleasure principle seems actually [geradezu] to serve the death drives.” 173. GW, 13:372; CW, 19:160: “the Nirvana principle . . . would be entirely in the service of the death drive.” 174. GW, 13:372–­73; CW, 19:160–­61. We will come back further on to this doctrine, which to my mind represents a central theoretical advance in Freud. 175. GW, 13:272–­73; CW, 19:44–­45: “We have reckoned as though there existed in the mind . . . a displaceable energy, which, neutral in itself, can be added to a qualitatively differentiated erotic or destructive impulse, and augment its total cathexis. Without assuming the existence of a displaceable energy of this kind we can make no headway.” 176. GW, 13:39–­41; CW, 18:37–­39. 177. GW, 13:39; CW, 18:37–­38. 178. GW, 13:43–­44; CW, 18:41–­42: “There is unquestionably no universal drive toward higher development observable in the animal or plant world. . . . It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is a drive toward perfection at work in human beings. . . . I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal drive and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved.” 179. GW, 13:38; CW, 18:36. This “elasticity” of all drives is thus not to be confused with the plasticity that belongs only to life drives! 180. GW, 13:40; CW, 18:38. 181. GW, 13:42; CW, 18:40: “These germ-​cells, therefore, work against the death of the living substance and succeed in winning for it what we can only regard as potential immortality, though that may mean no more than a lengthening of the road to death.” 182. GW, 13:41, 46; CW, 18:39, 44. 183. Seminar, 2:79 (61) and passim. 184. Seminar, 2:241 (206). 185. Seminar, 7:250–­51 (211–­12): “what was explained . . . , in connection with the death drive, as the point of division between the Nirvana or annihilation principle, on the one hand, and the death drive, on the other—­the former concerns a relationship to a fundamental law which might be identified with that which the energetic theorizes as the tendency to return to a state, if not of absolute rest, then at least of universal equilibrium. . . . The drive as such, insofar as it is then a destruction drive, has to be beyond the instinct to return to the state of equilibrium of the inanimate sphere. What can it be if not a direct will to destruction . . . ?” 186. Seminar, 2: 122 (97): “What I teach you . . . is that we have no means of apprehending this real—­on any level and not only on that of knowledge—­except via the go-​between of the symbolic.” 187. In fact, it makes little difference whether the ego falls prey to words that are repeated in an obsessive way and that, by the ego’s repetition despite itself, ultimately lose all meaning, or whether it falls prey to a repetitive forgetting of the same signifiers.

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188. Seminar, 2:78 (60) and passim. 189. Seminar, 2:85 (65–­66): “There is . . . an ambiguity in the use of the word Wiederholungszwang. There are two registers intermingling, interweaving, a restitutive tendency and a repetitive tendency.” 190. Seminar, 2:102 (79–­80): “The minimum tension can mean one of two things, all biologists will agree, according to whether it is a matter of the minimum given a certain definition of the equilibrium of the system, or of the minimum purely and simply, that is to say, with respect to the living being, death.” 191. Seminar, 2:78–­82 (60–­63). 192. Seminar, 2:241 (206): “The beyond of the pleasure principle is expressed in the word Wiederholungszwang. . . . I am giving you a . . . rendition with the notion of insistence [insistance], repetitive insistence, significant insistence.” 193. Seminar, 2:81–­82 (62–­63). 194. Seminar, 2:246 (210): “I think last time I got you to realise the difference between insistence and inertia. . . . In the sense of Widerstand, . . . there’s no point looking for resistance anywhere else than within ourselves. . . . On the level of inertia, you’ll never find resistance.” 195. Seminar, 2:369–­70 (321): “on the side of what is repressed, on the unconscious side of things, there is no resistance, there is only a tendency to repeat. . . . The line of cleavage doesn’t pass between the unconscious and the conscious, but between, on the one hand, something which is repressed and tends simply to repeat itself, that is to say speech which insists, this unconscious modulation of which I talk, and on the other hand, something which is an obstacle to it, and which is organised in another manner, namely the ego. . . . You will see that the ego is strictly located there as belonging to the order of the imaginary.” 196. Seminar, 2:113 (90): “That’s what the need for repetition is, as we see it emerge beyond the pleasure principle. It vacillates beyond all the biological mechanisms of equilibration, of harmonisation and of agreement. It is only introduced by the register of language, by the function of the symbol, by the problematic of the question within the human order.” 197. Seminar, 2:375 (326). 198. GW, 13:41–­42, 47–­54; CW, 18:39–­40, 45–­50. 199. GW, 13:53–­54; CW, 18:50. 200. GW, 13:56; CW, 18:52. 201. GW, 13:54; CW, 18:50. 202. GW, 13:57; CW, 18:52–­53. 203. GW, 13:57–­59, 268–­70, 376–­77; CW, 18:53–­55; CW, 19:40– ­42, 163– ­64. 204. GW, 13:57; CW, 18:53: “Now object-​love itself presents us with a second example of a similar polarity—­that between love (or affection) and hate (or aggressiveness).” 205. GW, 13:58; CW, 18:54: “It might indeed be said that the sadism which has been forced out of the ego has pointed the way for the libidinal components of the sexual drive.” 206. GW, 13:58; CW, 18:54: “It [‘this sadism [that] is in fact a death drive’] now enters the service of the sexual function. During the oral stage of

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organization of the libido, the act of obtaining erotic mastery over an object coincides with that object’s destruction.” 207. GW, 13:58; CW, 18:54. 208. For a more precise analysis of the Nietzschean antagonism between Dionysus and Apollo, see chapter 7, 313–20. 209. GW, 13:268; CW, 19:40: “Eros . . . comprises not merely the uninhibited sexual drive proper and the drive-​based impulses of an aim-​inhibited or sublimated nature derived from it, but also the self-​preservative drive, which must be assigned to the ego . . .” This definition of Eros in the text from 1923 is in complete agreement with the remarkable summary of the evolution of his drive theory added by Freud in a note from 1921 to the Beyond the Pleasure Principle text (GW, 13:66; CW, 18:60–­61). In this note, Freud revisits in particular the reasons that led him to recognize the “libidinal” (narcissistic) nature of ego-​drives and to consequently “transform” the sexual drive “into Eros.” According to this note, the identification of Eros with all the “life drives” (Lebenstriebe) is, in its turn, the consequence of the opposition between these latter and the “destructive drives” (Destruktionstriebe) and the qualification of the destructive drives as “death drives” (Todestriebe). 210. GW, 13:62; CW, 18:57–­58. 211. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, book 8, Le Transfert—­1960–­1961 (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 29–­195; English translation: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, book 8, Transference, trans. Bruce Fink, ed. Jacques-​A lain Miller (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), 3–­163. 212. See Seminar, 2:101 (79): “But note that the tendency to union—­Eros tends to unite—­is only ever apprehended in its relation to the contrary tendency, which leads to division, to rupture, to a redispersion, most especially of inanimate matter. These two tendencies are strictly inseparable. No notion is less unitary than that.” 213. GW, 13:35–­36; CW, 18:34–­35. 214. GW, 13:36, 67; CW, 18:34, 62. 215. GW, 13:273; CW, 19:44–­45: “The erotic drives appear to be altogether more plastic, more readily diverted [ablenkbarer] and displaced [verschiebbarer] than the destructive drives.” 216. GW, 13:60, 372–­73; CW, 18:55–­56; CW, 19:159–­60. 217. GW, 13:276; CW, 19:47. 218. GW, 13:69, 275, 372–­73; CW, 18:63; CW, 19:47, 159–­61. 219. GW, 13:372; CW, 19:160. 220. GW, 13:58; CW, 18:54: “Wherever the original sadism has undergone no mitigation or intermixing, we find the familiar ambivalence of love and hate in erotic life.” 221. GW, 13:269; CW, 19:41: “the manner in which the two classes of drives are fused [verbinden], blended [vermischen], and alloyed [legieren] with each other.” 222. In The Ego and the Id, though not without hesitation, Freud ultimately makes a choice that is contrary to ours: “The question also arises whether ordinary ambivalence . . . should not be regarded as the product of a defusion [Entmischung]; ambivalence, however, is such a fundamental phenomenon that it

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more probably represents a drive fusion [Triebmischung] that has not been completed” (GW, 13:270; CW, 19:42). 223. GW, 13:272–­73; CW, 19:44: “We have reckoned as though there existed in the mind . . . a displaceable [verschiebbare] energy, which, neutral in itself, can be added to a qualitatively differentiated erotic or destructive impulse [Regung], and augment its total cathexis.” 224. GW, 13:380; CW, 19:166–­67. 225. GW, 13:373; CW, 19:161. 226. GW, 13:375; CW, 19:163. 227. GW, 13:59; CW, 18:55. 228. GW, 5:57; CW, 7:158. See Seminar, 2:271 (232): “Masochism is not inverted sadism.” 229. GW, 13:378; CW, 19:165. 230. GW, 13:378–­79; CW, 19:166–­67. 231. GW, 13:382; CW, 19:169. 232. GW, 13:383; CW, 19:170. 233. Seminar, 2:269 (230): “Say what you will, the greatest boon is not to be; /​But, life begun, soonest to end is best.” 234. Seminar, 2:271 (232–­33).

Chapter 5 [The first section of this chapter was originally published in Rudolf Bernet, “The Body as a ‘Legitimate Naturalization of Consciousness,’ ” trans. Hanne Jacobs and Trevor Perri, in Phenomenology and Naturalism: Examining the Relationship between Human Experience and Nature, ed. Havi Carel and Darian Meacham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 43–­65. Minor revisions have been made to the translation.—­Trans.] 1. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch, vol. 4 of Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), §32, 134. Translation henceforth, occasionally modified and referred to as Ideas 2. Citations consist of the paragraph number and the pagination of the German edition (also indicated in the margins of the English translation). 2. See Ideas 2, §21, 94 on the body of a “ghost.” 3. Ideas 2, §21, 94: “components . . . most intimately interwoven and in a certain way mutually penetrating. . . . On the other hand, it is easy to see that the psychic has a priority.” 4. Ideas 2, §18a, 56. 5. Ideas 2, §38, 151. 6. The German term Empfindnisse, rather than the English translation “sensings,” is used throughout this chapter.

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7. Ideas 2, §36, 145. 8. Ideas 2, §37, 149: “The localization of Empfindnisse is in fact something in principle different from the extension of all material determinations of a thing. The Empfindnisse do indeed spread out [breiten sich aus] in space, cover, in their way, spatial surfaces. . . . But this spreading out [Ausbreitung] and spreading into [Hinbreitung] are precisely something that differs essentially from extension in the sense of all the determinations that characterize the res extensa.” 9. See Ideas 2, §45, 165: “sensation of the heart” (Herzgefühl). 10. Ideas 2, §36, 146. 11.  Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 189 and passim; English translation: The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 146. 12. This term is borrowed from Jacques Lacan. 13. Ideas 2, §37, 150: “A subject whose only sense was the sense of vision could not at all have an appearing lived-​body.” 14. Ideas 2, §21, 95, note. 15. Ideas 2, §46, 169. 16. Ideas 2, §42, 161. 17. Ideas 2, §41b, 159: “The same lived-​body which serves me as a means for all my perception obstructs me in the perception of it itself and is a remarkably imperfectly constituted thing [ein merkwürdig unvollkommen konstituiertes Ding].” 18. Ideas 2, §18b. 19. Ideas 2, §§18b, 18c, 32. 20. Ideas 2, §40, 155. 21. Ideas 2, §32, 135. 22. Ideas 2, §32, 133. 23. Ideas 2, §32, 133. 24. Ideas 2, §20, 92: “a stream [Strom], with no beginning or end of ‘lived experiences’ ”; §32, 133: “a flux” (Fluss). 25. Ideas 2, §40, 155. 26. Ideas 2, §18a, 57. 27. Ideas 2, §18b, 64 (translation modified). 28. Ibid. 29. Ideas 2, §18b, 65. 30. Ideas 2, §42, 161. 31. Ideas 2, §41, 158. 32. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Drittes Buch, ed. Marly Biemel, vol. 5 of Husserliana (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1971), 124; English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Third Book, trans. Ted Klein and William Pohl (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1980). 33. Ideas 2, §41a, 158. 34. Ideas 2, §45, 166 and §56g, 235. 35. Ideas 2, §45, 166. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid.

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38. Ideas 2, §37, 148, note: “Obviously, it cannot be said that I see my eye in the mirror since I do not perceive my eye, that which sees qua seeing. I see something, of which I judge indirectly by ‘empathy,’ that it is identical with my eye as a thing . . . in the same way that I see the eye of an other.” 39. Ideas 2, §47. 40. Edmund Husserl, Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Teilband 2: Gefühl und Wert, ed. Ullrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr, vol. 43/​2 of Husserliana (Dordrecht: Springer, 2018) (hereafter Studien 2); Studien zur Struktur des Bewustseins, Teilband 3: Wille und Handlung, ed. Ullrich Melle and Thomas Vongehr, Husserliana, vol. 43/​3 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2018) (hereafter Studien 3). All English translations of the Studien are by me. 41. Edmund Husserl, Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, ed. Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr, vol. 42 of Husserliana (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 126 (hereafter Grenzprobleme). All English translations of the Grenzprobleme are by me. 42. Studien 3, 419: “drive-​based will” (Triebwille). 43. Studien 3, 67–­97. 44. Studien 3, 413–­16; Grenzprobleme, 127–­28. 45. See Grenzprobleme: “to ‘repel’ [zurückdrängen], ‘repress’ a nascent need, a mounting desire” (128); “To ‘renounce’: with regret, drinking, smoking, etc., because it is, for instance, dangerous to one’s health. This is merely refraining from transforming the desire, which continues to exist, into an act [Tat], that is, simply crossing out the passive fulfillment [Erfüllung] of the desire or its fulfillment by an action on which one has reflected [überlegt-​handelnd] (not willing, not acting). The desire itself is not crossed out” (129). 46. Studien 3, 73. 47. Freud, GW, 10:212; CW, 14:118. 48. Studien 3, 416: “when the sight of an object acts as stimulus for a drive, reproductively awakens a drive movement that would terminate in its realization, and when the stimulus now becomes ‘effective’ and immediately determines how the activation [Betätigung] is accomplished.” See also Edmund Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–­1934), Die C-​Manuskripte, ed. Dieter Lohmar, vol. 7 of Husserliana-​Materialien (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 284: “When the yearning cannot go beyond its initial status of hunger, inhibited as it is in moving toward its goal, when hunger in its lack of fulfillment [Unerfülltheit] intensifies until it becomes an increasingly burning desire, does this not motivate a diving back into the past and the intuitive remembering of hunger and its fulfillment [Erfüllung] in an increasing and sated enjoyment . . . ?” (my translation) 49. Studien 3, 416; Freud, GW, 10:214; CW, 14:122. 50. Freud, GW, 13:36; CW, 18:35. 51. Studien 3, 417. 52. Studien 3, 417. See also Grenzprobleme, 125: “But in relaxation, is there not an overcoming of an inhibition? Doesn’t the course of any drive precisely have positivity and negativity, fulfillment [Erfüllung] and inhibition, as essential constituents or aspects (inseparable moments)?” 53. Ideas 2, §60a, 258: “a doing as an overcoming of resistance, a doing that has its ‘against which’. . . . There is (always speaking phenomenologically) a

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[gradation of resistance and of the force of overcoming: of the ‘active’ force vis-​ à-​v is the ‘lazy’ and ‘inert’ force of resistance]” (translation modified). 54. Studien 3, 415. 55. See Grenzprobleme, 127: “But is the competition between different drives ‘inhibition’—­in the same sense as a drive action facing resistance . . . ?” 56. Aristotle, Metaphysics Θ, 1, 1046a 11–­16. See Heidegger’s commentary in GA, 33:103–­7 (87–­91). 57. Studien 3, 416: “Competition between drives, inhibitions of drive activities from the fact that new stimuli appear with new drive impulses, etc.” 58. Ideas 2, §60a, 258 (translation modified). 59. Studien 3, 420. 60. Aristotle, Physics, B, 193b 12–­13. See Heidegger’s commentary: “Vom Wesen und Begriff der Physis,” in Wegmarken, GA, 9:286–­91; “On the Essence and Concept of Φύσις in Arisotle’s Physics B, I (1939),” in Pathmarks, 218–­23. 61. Studien 2, 367: “When I make a wish, . . . the wished-​for ‘state of affairs’ . . . is not a real object, not a real state of affairs. . . . At the basis of wishing, there is no unmodified act, no impression, but a mere representation.” 62. Studien 2, 14:”Wishes are directed toward the existence [das Sein], for instance, of things, toward the occurrence of processes. . . . Volitions are directed toward realization: . . . toward the accomplishing of bodily movements, etc.” 63. Studien 2, 46. 64. Studien 3, 399. 65. Studien 3, 417–­18. 66. Studien 3, 417. 67. Studien 3, 415. “Can one say: all drives pursue ‘pleasure,’ in the course of any drive, feelings of pleasure must arise, in any being pushed away [Wegge­ triebensein] by a drive there is displeasure and a sensation of displeasure?” (Studien 3, 422). 68. Aristotle, De Anima, 432b 30. 69. Studien 2, 68: “Empfindungslust und Erlebnislust.” 70. Studien 2, 58: “feelings felt toward (am) the content of sensation (pleasure related ‘to’ good taste, taken ‘in’ good taste).” 71. Studien 2, 51; and Studien 2, 6. 72. Studien 2, 327: “Pleasure is not an [intentional] consciousness, but pleasure is something that is only subsequently [erst] related to the object.” 73. Studien 2, 172. 74. We cannot ignore that Husserl occasionally seems to call this primal unity between value apperception (Wertnehmung) and appreciation (Gefallen) into question: “But I can sometimes live in the apperception in which the object [is] constituted with its value properties, and other times live in the sentimental position [Gefühlsstellungnahme], in the spontaneity of feeling. . . . I see a beautiful feminine figure. Sometimes I am delighted, others I am left cold, even though I find her equally beautiful” (Studien 2, 101–­2). On the basis of similar passages, where Husserl distinguishes between value apperception and joy as “two ‘sides’ ” of one and the same experience, we can nonetheless assume that, by “the sentimental position” in the above quote, Husserl does not mean the “appreciation”

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(Gefallen), but the state of “ joy” aroused by the object of an appreciation where there is value: “Must we separate act and affect? Or should we, for instance, distinguish two ‘sides’ in a same consciousness of appreciation [Gefallensbewuβtsein]: the liking [Wohlgefallen] in so far as it confers value [Werthaltung] and an[other] component that is likely to increase, namely, the component of joy and the momentum of joy, which generally has a tendency to increase [sich steigert] with the duration and number of acts of liking [Wohlgefallensakte]?” (Studien 2, 168). 75. Studien 2, 23: “I accomplish an evaluation [Wertschätzung]: the cigar pleases me, an act of appreciation is carried out on the basis of this [perceptual] apperception. However, now the cigar is clearly there as a ‘valuable’ [wert] cigar. . . . This being-​there, however, is not a new perception; it is not a second degree of perception. Value is certainly not ‘given,’ is not given in any way; it is not like in perception.” 76. Studien 2, 167–­68: “We distinguish, however, between liking and the joy that makes me tremble [die Freude, die mich durchschauert], etc. Liking, the act, does not make me tremble, but it arouses a tremor of beatitude [Schauer der Seligkeit] in me. Liking, the act itself . . . , is the source of the affect of joy, the source of contentment, of happiness, of a good mood [einer fröhlichen Stimmung].” 77. Studien 2, 122. 78. Studien 2, 177–­78: “Is it not clear that the intentionality of joy itself is different from the intentionality of the value apperception [Wertnehmens] on which it is founded? . . . The beautiful does not give rise to finding-​beautiful. . . . ‘States’ are activated [erregt]. . . . ‘Acts’ are not activated. . . . Joy does not have position-​ taking modes and is not such a ‘position-​t aking.’ It is a state that is activated by certain kinds of apperception and position-​t aking.” 79. Studien 2, 169: “Is it not possible for us to have evaluations [Schätzungen], in this sense, of appreciations [Gefallen], without being the least bit excited, without rejoicing [ohne im geringsten in Erregung zu kommen, ohne uns zu freuen] . . . ?” 80. Studien 2, 142 and 171–­72. 81. Studien 2, 103. 82. Studien 2, 110–­11. 83. Studien 2, 172: “I contemplate the image with enjoyment [Genuβ], beatitude [Seligkeit] passes through ‘me’ like a tremor. Passes through me: a current of pleasure passes through my body, I feel this beatitude in my heart, in my breast, the tremor radiates all the way to my toes, etc.” 84. Studien 2, 119.

Chapter 6 1. Sigmund Freud, “Entwurf einer Psychologie,” in GW, 18S: 375–­86; English translation, CW, 1:281–­91. 2. Sigmund Freud, Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, in GW, 15; English translation, CW, 22. 3. Sigmund Freud, Traumdeutung, in GW, 2/​3; English translation, CW, 4/​5.

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4. Sigmund Freud, Das Unbewusste, in GW, 10:264–­303; English translation, CW, 14:159–­215. 5. Sigmund Freud, “Die Verdrängung,” in GW, 10:248–­61; English translation, CW, 14:141–­58. 6. Sigmund Freud, Das Ich und das Es, in GW, 13:237–­89; English translation, CW, 19:1−66. 7. Sigmund Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, in GW, 5:27−145; English translation, CW, 7:123–­246. 8. Sigmund Freud, Triebe und Triebschicksale, in GW, 10:210–­32; English translation, CW, 14:109–­40. 9. Sigmund Freud, Zur Einführung der Narzissmus, in GW, 10:127–­79; English translation, CW, 14:67–­102. 10. Sigmund Freud, “Trauer und Melancholie,” in GW, 10:428–­46; English translation, CW, 14:237–­58. 11. GW, 10:275–­76; CW, 14:177. 12. GW, 10:275; CW, 14:176: “An instinct [Trieb] can never become an object of consciousness—­only the idea [Vorstellung] that represents [repräsentiert] the instinct [Trieb] can.” 13. GW, 10:255–­56 and 276−77, CW, 14:152–­53 and 177–­78. 14. GW, 10:277; CW, 14:178. 15. GW, 10:285; CW, 14:186. 16. GW, 10:273; CW, 14:175. 17. GW, 10:267; CW, 14:168. 18. Including the first two chapters of The Ego and the Id (1923), which are in complete agreement on this point with the 1914–­15 works from the first topography analyzed herein. As such, my presentation of the general characteristics of the unconscious is occasionally inspired by the 1923 work, without this being explicitly indicated. 19. See GW, 8:431; CW, 12:260–­61; and GW, 10:266; CW, 14:167. 20. GW, 10:277 and 288; CW, 14:178 and 189. 21. GW, 10:300–­301; CW, 14:202–­3. 22. GW, 10:279; CW, 14:180. 23. GW, 10:269; CW, 14:170. 24. GW, 10:272; CW, 14:173. 25. GW, 10:250–­51; CW, 14:148–­49. 26. See chapter 3, 102–6 and chapter 4, 164–67. 27. GW, 10:264; CW, 14:166: “How are we to arrive at a knowledge of the unconscious? It is of course only as something conscious that we know it, after it has undergone transformation or translation into something conscious.” 28. See GW, 10:265; CW, 14:167. 29. See GW, 10:264; CW, 14:166: “Everything that is repressed must remain unconscious; but let us state at the very outset that the repressed does not cover everything that is unconscious. The unconscious has the wider compass: the repressed is a part of the unconscious.” 30. GW, 10:271; CW, 14:173. 31. GW, 10:256; CW, 14:154.

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32. GW, 10:250: “repulsion” (Abstossung) and “attraction” (Anziehung); CW, 14:148. 33. GW, 10:280; CW, 14:181. 34. GW, 10:280 and 250; CW, 14:181 and 148. 35. GW, 10:280 and 250; CW, 14:181 and 148. 36. GW, 10:277; CW, 14:178: “Strictly speaking, . . . there are no unconscious affects as there are unconscious ideas. But there may very well be in the system Ucs affective structures which, like others, become conscious.” 37. GW, 10:277; CW, 14:178. 38. GW, 10:226; CW, 14:134: “The antithesis ego-​non-​ego (external), i.e. subject-​object, is . . . thrust upon the individual organism at an early stage, by the experience that it can silence external stimuli by means of muscular action, but is defenceless against instinctual stimuli [Triebreize].” 39. GW, 10:227; CW, 14:135: “During this period, therefore, the ego-​subject coincides with what is pleasurable and the external world with what is indifferent.” 40. Lacan, Seminar, 11:164 (180). 41. GW, 10:228−29; CW, 14:135–­36. 42. See chapter 3, 99–106. 43. See chapter 5, 227–53. 44. See chapter 4, 170. 45. GW, 10:139–­41; CW, 14:74–­76. 46. GW, 10:167; CW, 14:100. 47. GW, 10:161–­62; CW, 14:93–­95. It should be noted that, while On Narcissism: An Introduction does indeed (in subsequent passages) attribute to the ideal ego the function of what is called the “superego” in the second topography, it does not draw a strict terminological distinction between “ideal ego” and “ego ideal.” 48. GW, 10:168; CW, 14:100. 49. GW, 10:169; CW, 14:101. 50. GW, 10:169; CW, 14:100–­101. 51. GW, 10:439; CW, 14:252. 52. GW, 10:140–­41; CW, 14:75: “Thus we form the idea of there being an original libidinal cathexis of the ego, from which some is later given off to objects, but which fundamentally persists and is related to the object-​cathexes much as the body of an amoeba is related to the pseudopodia which it puts out.” 53. GW, 13:273; CW, 19:44. 54. GW, 10:160; CW, 14:93. 55. GW, 10:162–­63; CW, 14:95. 56. GW, 10:168; CW, 14:100. 57. GW, 10:162 and 165, note; CW, 14:95 and 98, note. 58. GW, 13:253–­89; CW, 19:1–­66. 59. GW, 15:62–­86; CW, 22:57–­80. 60. GW, 15:62; CW, 22:57. See also GW, 10:228; CW, 14:136; and GW 14:13; CW, 19:237. 61. GW, 13:277; CW, 19:48. 62. GW, 15:84; CW, 22:77: “The poor ego . . . serves three severe masters and does what it can to bring their claims and demands into harmony with one

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another. These claims are always divergent and often seem incompatible. No wonder that the ego so often fails in its task. Its three tyrannical masters are the external world, the super-​ego and the id.” 63. See chapter 4, 196ff. 64. For a more precise analysis of the way in which the melancholic ego, the hysterical ego, and the obsessive ego conceive of suicide, see GW, 13:283; CW, 19:53– ­54. 65. See GW, 13:254, 278–­79; CW, 19:27, 49–­50; GW, 15:74–­75; CW, 22:68–­69. 66. GW, 15:85–­86; CW, 22:79: “In thinking of this division of the personality into an ego, a super-​ego and an id, you will not, of course, have pictured sharp frontiers. . . . We cannot do justice to the characteristics of the mind by linear outlines like those in a drawing or in primitive painting, but rather by areas of colour melting into one another as they are presented by modern artists. After making the separation we must allow what we have separated to merge together once more.” 67. See especially GW, 13:251–­52; CW, 19:23–­25; and GW, 15:79–­82; CW, 22:72−75. 68. GW, 15:80; CW, 22:73: “We picture it as being open at its end to somatic influences, and as there taking up into itself instinctual needs which find their psychical expression in it.” 69. GW, 13:258, note: CW, 19:30, note 1: “Now that we have distinguished between the ego and the id, we must recognize the id as the great reservoir of libido indicated in my paper on narcissism.” 70. GW, 15:80; CW, 22:74: “Wishful impulses which have never passed beyond the id . . . are virtually immortal.” 71. GW, 15:80; CW, 22:73: “It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality; what little we know of it . . . is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego.” 72. GW, 15:80; CW, 22:73. 73. This image comes primarily from Freud’s analysis of the ego in GW, 13:246–­59; CW, 19:19–­31 and GW, 15:81–­84; CW, 22:74–­78. 74. GW, 13:252; CW, 19:24. 75. GW, 13:286; CW, 19:56. 76. GW, 13:253; CW, 19:25 and GW, 15:83; CW, 22:76. 77. GW, 13:285; CW, 19:55. See also GW, 15:82; CW, 22:74–­75. 78. GW, 13:257; CW, 19:28. 79. See Lacan, Seminar, 2:201 (169). 80. GW, 13:257; CW, 19:29. 81. GW, 13:258; CW, 19:30: “When the ego assumes the features of the object, it is forcing itself, so to speak, upon the id as a love-​object and is trying to make good the id’s loss by saying: ‘Look, you can love me too—­I am so like the object.’ ” 82. GW, 13:273; CW, 19:44–­45. 83. GW, 13:258 and 274–­75; CW, 19:30 and 44–­46. 84. Our analysis of the superego is mainly based on the following texts: GW, 13:259–­65 and 277–­84; CW, 19:29–­37 and 48–­54; as well as GW, 15:64–­74; CW, 22:58–­68. 85. GW, 15:64; CW, 22:58.

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86. GW, 15:71; CW, 22:65. 87. GW, 13:278; CW, 19:49; and GW, 15:85; CW, 22:79. 88. GW, 13:283; CW, 19:53. See also GW, 15:66; CW, 22:60–­61. 89. GW, 13:282; CW, 19:52. 90. GW, 15:68–­69; CW, 22:62. 91. GW, 13:259–­60; CW, 19:31–­32; and GW, 15:70–­71; CW, 22:63– ­65. 92. GW, 13:260; CW, 19:31–­32. 93. GW, 15:73; CW, 22:67. 94. Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, in GW, 14:421–­506; English translation, CW, 21:57–­146. 95. GW, 14:423; CW, 21:64–­65. 96. GW, 13:281; CW, 19:52: “the ego carries out repressions in the service and at the behest of its super-​ego.” 97. GW, 15:86; CW, 22:80. 98. Lacan, Seminar, 2:59 (43–­44): “the axial reality of the subject isn’t in his ego. . . . The unconscious is the unknown subject of the ego, . . . misrecognized [méconnu] by the ego, which is der Kern unseres Wesen, Freud writes. . . . The core of our being does not coincide with the ego. . . . But do you think we should be content with that, and say—­the I of the unconscious subject is not me [moi]? That is not good enough, because . . . normally you start thinking that this I is the real ego.” 99. See chapter 4, 207–14. 100. [Strachey translates Phantasieren as “phantasying” and Phantasie(n) as “phantasy” and “phantasies.” Herein, we will use “fantasize,” “fantasy,” and other cognate terms instead, except in titles of Freud’s works.—­Trans.] 101. GW, 2/​3:625; CW, 4:620. 102. GW, 7:216; CW, 9:146. 103. See Lacan, Seminar, 11:246 (273–­74). 104. GW, 11:387; CW, 16:372. 105. Sigmund Freud, “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren” (1908), in GW, 7:213–­23; English translation, “Creative Writers and Day-​Dreaming,” in CW, 9:141–­53. 106. Sigmund Freud, “Über Deckerinnerungen” (1899), in GW, 1:531–­54; English translation, “Screen Memories,” CW, 3:299–­22. 107. Sigmund Freud, “Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten” (1914), in GW, 10:128; English translation, “Remembering, Repeating and Working-​ Through,” in CW, 12:148. 108. Letter to Fliess from April 6, 1897, in The Origins of Psycho-​Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes: 1887–­1902, ed. Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, and Kris Ernst, trans. Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1954), 193; original German version: Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse. Briefe an Wilhelm Flieβ. Abhandlungen und Notizen aus den Jahren 1887–­1902 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1962), 166. 109. GW, 5:206; CW, 7:47. 110. Sigmund Freud, “Hysterische Phantasien und Ihre Beziehung zur Bisexualität,” in GW, 7:193; English translation, CW, 9:161.

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111. Sigmund Freud, “Der Familienroman der Neurotiker,” in GW, 7:227–­ 31; English translation, CW, 9:235–­42. 112. See Lacan, Seminar, 11:168 (185): “In the phantasm, the subject is frequently unperceived, but he is always there. . . . The subject situates himself as determined by the phantasm” (translation modified). 113. Seminar, 11:246 (273–­74). 114. Sigmund Freud, “ ‘Ein Kind wird geschlagen’: Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Entstehung sexueller Perversionen,” in GW, 12:197–­226; English translation, “ ‘A Child Is Being Beaten’: A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions,” in CW, 17:175–­204. 115. GW, 12:204–­5; CW, 17:184– ­85. 116. See chapter 4, 185–86 and 222–26. 117. Seminar, 11: 26 (23). 118. Seminar, 11:168 (185) (translation modified).

Chapter 7 1. See chapter 3, 101–5. 2. See chapter 3, 96–98. 3. WWV, §38, 253 (196). 4. WWV, §36, 293 (185). 5. WWV, §34, 233 (179). 6. WWV, §45, 285 (224–­25). 7. WWV, §45, 284 (224). 8. WWV, §40, 265 (207). 9. WWV, §39, 259 (201–­2). 10. WWV, chap. 37, 510 (433). 11. WWV, §43, 273 (214). 12. WWV, chap. 35, 484 (411). 13. WWV, §51, 314–­15 (250). 14. WWV, §39, 262 (204). 15. WWV, §39, 264 (206). 16. WWV, chap. 37, 509 (432). 17. WWV, chap. 37, 511 (434). This citation should be compared to the following quote from The Birth of Tragedy: “we take pleasure in the negation of the hero, the supreme appearance of the Will, because he is, after all, mere appearance, and because the eternal life of the Will is not affected by his annihilation.” See Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, in Sämtliche Werke— ­Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 1 (hereafter SW, 1), 9–­156 (Munich: dtv, 1980) 108; English translation: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, trans. Ronald Speirs, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 80. In subsequent citations, we will refer to SW, 1, followed by the paragraph number, the pagination of the German version and then of the English translation in parentheses; for example, SW, 1, §16, 108 (80).

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18. WWV, §51, 318 (252–­53). 19. WWV, chap. 37, 513 (435). 20. SW, 1, §2, 30 (19). 21. SW, 1, §1, 29 (17). 22. SW, 1, §1, 30 (18). 23. SW, 1, §12, 87 (64). 24. SW, 1, §19, 123 (91) (translation modified). 25. SW, 1, §5, 47 (32–­33). 26. SW, 1, §2, 30 (19). 27. SW, 1, §1, 27–­28 (16–­17). 28. SW, 1, §21, 140 (104). 29. SW, 1, §24, 150 (112). 30. SW, 1, §5, 44–­45 (31). 31. SW, 1, §4, 39 (26). 32. SW, 1, §5, 44 (30). 33. SW, 1, §5, 45 (31). 34. SW, 1, §5, 48 (33). 35. SW, 1, §22, 141 (104). 36. SW, 1, §18, 116 (86). 37. SW, 1, §15, 98 (72). 38. SW, 1, §15, 100 (74). 39. SW, 1, §12, 84 (61). 40. SW, 1, §8, 59–­60 (42). 41. SW, 1, §7, 56–­57 (40). 42. SW, 1, §8, 61 (43). 43. SW, 1, §8, 62–­63 (44). 44. SW, 1, §24, 151 (112). 45. SW, 1, §22, 141 (105). 46. SW, 1, §16, 108 (80). 47. SW, 1, §21, 134 (100). 48. See chapter 4, 155ff. 49. See chapter 4, 186–95. 50. Seminar, 11:63–­109 (65–­119) (pages corresponding to sessions 6 through 9, published under the title “On the Gaze as Objet Petit a”). 51. Seminar, 11:79 (83). 52.  Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 19 and 69; English translation: “Eye and Mind,” in The Merleau-​Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. and trans. Michael B. Smith (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1993), 125 and 141. 53. Seminar, 11:71 (74). 54.  Merleau-​Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit, 19 (124). 55. Seminar, 11:71 (75). 56. Seminar, 11:71 (74). 57. Seminar, 11:71 (75). 58. Seminar, 11:72 (75). 59. Seminar, 11:72 (75–­76).

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60. Roger Caillois, Méduse et Cie (Paris: Gallimard, 1960). 61. Seminar, 11:91 (98). 62. Seminar, 11:92 (99): “Caillois brings out the three headings that are in effect the major dimensions in which the mimetic activity is deployed—­travesty, camouflage, intimidation.” 63. Seminar, 11:93 (100): “Caillois assures us that the facts of mimicry are similar, at the animal level, to what, in the human being is manifested as art, or painting.” 64. Seminar, 11:98 (107). 65. Ibid. 66. Seminar, 11:79 (84) (translation modified). 67. Ibid. 68. Seminar, 11:88–­89 (95–­96) (translation modified). 69. Seminar, 11:98 (106). 70. Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Les perspectives dépravées, vol. 2, Anamorphoses (Paris: Flammarion, 1996); English translation: Anamorphic Art, trans. W. J. Strachan (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977). 71. Seminar, 11:80–­83 (85–­89). 72. Seminar, 11:93–­95 (100–­103) and 102–­3 (111–­12). 73. Baltrušaitis, Anamorphoses, 147; Anamorphic Art, 105. 74. Seminar, 11:86 (92). 75. Seminar, 11:83 (89). 76. Seminar, 11:86 (92). 77. See Seminar, 11:83 (88–­89) and 94 (102). 78. See chapter 4, 180ff. 79. Seminar, 11:92 (99–­100). 80. Seminar, 11:95 (103). 81. Seminar, 11:102 (112). 82. Seminar, 11:102–­3 (112). 83. Seminar, 11:105 (115). 84. Seminar, 11:100 (109). 85. Seminar, 11:93 (101). 86. Seminar, 11:105–­6 (115–­16).

Index

Achilles, 315 action, 91–114, 122–23, 241–45 aesthetic contemplation, 98, 304–22 affectivity, 124, 230–33, 246–53 affects and representations, 259–65, 287 aggressiveness, see under drive: destructive ambivalence, 158–59, 188, 220–22, 267, 284, 309 anamorphosis, 322–30 animal nature, 13, 20–21, 31–33, 43, 64–65, 113–19 Antigone, 317 Apollo, 216–17, 302, 311, 313–20, 332 appetites and perceptions, 7, 48–49, 65, 68–69, 83–85 Archilochus, 314–15 Aristophanes, 217 Aristotle, 4–6, 8, 14–15, 19–54, 57, 59, 61–64, 67, 71, 76, 105, 108, 111, 113, 137–41, 144–47, 149, 157, 174–76, 221, 241, 247 Arnauld, Antoine, 55 art, 301–32 Augustine, Saint, 47, 110 autoerotism, 146, 155–58, 166–67, 170–72, 186–90, 265–66 Bergson, Henri, 15–16, 61–62, 109, 119, 199, 205, 279 Blanchot, Maurice, 229, 255 bodies, material, 51–67, 89–90, 107–11 body, human (Leib), 7–8, 99–107, 115–20, 142–43, 146, 148–54, 172–73, 181–83, 229–41 brain, 118–21, 126–27, 234–37, 279 Brentano, Franz, 259, 276 Caillois, Roger, 325 causality, 89–90, 235–38

choice, 44–45, 243, 286 Claudel, Paul, 196, 322 consciousness, 68–69, 115–16, 118; and the unconscious, 68–69, 86, 93–94, 126–33, 259–65, 287–300 Dasein, 21, 27, 32–33, 40, 84–86 Deleuze, Gilles, 4, 14, 47, 49–50, 52, 54 demand, 158, 267 Descartes, René 48, 50–55, 58–59, 64, 141 desire, 67–81, 104–5, 112–18, 127–34, 154, 177, 180, 182, 191–95, 217, 247, 257–65, 285–300, 317, 329–32. See also under drive: and desire Dionysos, 302, 311, 314–20 disinhibition, 32, 42–43, 61, 113, 220–21 disquiet, 6, 40, 67–83, 117 dream, 165–66, 290–92, 325 drive, 3–16, 19–22, 26, 32–33, 38–46, 48–50, 61–63, 66–86, 88–89, 112–18, 123–32, 137–226, 230–31, 241–51, 253, 255–60, 263–71, 275–78, 281, 283–89, 301–3, 309, 311–13, 315–24, 329–32; anal, 157–59, 266–67; animal, 88, 113–17; artistic, 302, 311–13, 316, 319–21; death, 10, 53, 78–79, 126, 150, 191, 196–226, 275, 283, 317, 320; and desire, 7, 48, 75–79, 246–47; for destruction, 197–98, 207–10, 214–26, 283; for knowledge, 123–32; for mastery, 158–59, 185–86, 200–201, 215; oral, 153–59, 180, 266; for repetition, 197–213, 276; scopic, 13–14, 180–81, 184–95, 243–44, 302–3, 322–24, 329–32; sexual, 10, 143, 148–226, 268, 320; unification, 52–53, 81–86, 217–18 drive, vital (or ego-drive), 104–6, 150–57, 162–64, 169–72, 197–99, 204–6, 214– 21, 245–46, 302, 313, 319–21; aim of, 387

388 I N DE X

drive, vital (or ego-drive), continued 37, 150–51, 154–60, 162–63, 176–77, 181, 184–85, 187–91, 205–8, 219, 247–48; anaclisis (Anlehnung), 150, 153, 168; binding, 202, 217–18; conflict, 161–64, 245, 275, 313, 309–10; conservatism, 204–6, 210–11; disunion, 198, 215–16, 220–26; dualism, 10, 85–86, 161–63, 167–68, 197–98, 202, 214–26, 319–20; excess, 203–4, 213, 220–21; mixing, 216–18, 220–21; object of, 151, 154–60, 178– 80, 243–44; pressure of, 27, 39, 42, 64, 156, 174–75, 244; representation, 99–101, 148–49, 172–73, 255–58, 264–65, 276, 287; somatic source, 148–52, 154, 172–73, 181–85, 187; stimulus, 76, 113–17, 148–51, 154, 173–74, 243–44, 265–66; tension, 11, 19–20, 63, 82, 149–50, 154–56, 173–77, 181–82, 203, 207–10, 219, 244, 247–48, 277; vicissitudes, 10, 162, 183–95 dual relation, 79–80, 158, 280 dunamis, 5, 15, 20–48, 60–61, 108, 137, 140, 175–76, 258; meta logou, 33, 43–46, 71, 140 dynamic physics, 6–8, 52–66, 107–11. See also movement ego, 11–14, 101–2, 105, 145, 161–65, 168–72, 190, 201–2, 209–13, 241–43, 256–58, 267–86; ego-object and egosubject, 256–57, 270–74, 279, 283, 286; ideal ego, 131, 271–73, 282; superego, 13, 131–32, 222, 274–77, 282–86. See also self energeia, 5, 23–28, 34–43 entelecheia, 25–28, 57, 60–61 erogenous zone, 151, 154, 171, 181–83, 192 Eros, 197–98, 214–26, 319–20. See also under drive: sexual, vital Esquirol, Jean-Etienne Dominique, 133 Euripides, 216, 318 existence, human, 31–46, 84–85 extension, 51–52, 231. See also space Ferenczi, Sandor, 4, 150 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 19 finitude, 45–46, 85, 138, 305

force, 5–8, 10, 14–16, 19–26, 32–33, 36–67, 87–88, 96; active and passive, 6, 36, 38, 48, 52–64, 70–71; and counterforce, 36–39, 44–45, 62–63, 70–72, 245; elastic, 55–56, 205; human (see dunamis meta logou); of the id, 277–78, 281–86; of nature, 8, 88, 107, 111–13, 142, 309; primitive substantial, 53–67; of resistance, 37–38, 48, 51, 53, 58–60, 119, 130, 245; of the unconscious, 276; unexercised, 40–43; of unification, 52, 82–86, 197 actualization of a force, 31, 42–43, 70, 92, 96, 108–9, 111–13, 176 restraint of a force, 5, 33, 62, 140 unforce, 37–41, 45 foreclosure, 133–35 form and matter, substantial, 57–64 Freud, Sigmund, 4–7, 9–15, 19–20, 53, 61, 63, 67–68, 71–72, 74, 76, 78–79, 82, 88–89, 93, 112–14, 116–17, 126, 129– 35, 137–226, 242–47, 251, 255–301, 320, 322 gaze, 180–81, 186–95, 240–41, 302–3, 322–32; and the eye, 185, 187, 192, 314, 326–27, 330–32 genius, 125, 305–6, 315–16 geometry, 52, 58 Guattari, Félix, 47, 54 guiding thread, see ontology; phenomenology Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 4, 312 Heidegger, Martin, 4–5, 14–15, 19–46, 49–51, 61, 81–86, 99, 140, 233, 236, 240, 329 Henry, Michel, 15–16, 19 Heraclitus, 5, 137 hexis, 41–43 Holbein, Hans, 327–30 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 312 Homer, 314 Hugo, Victor, 87 hulè, 26, 38, 53 Hume, David, 90 Husserl, Edmund, 4–5, 7–9, 12, 19, 81, 127–28, 140, 229–53, 259, 270 id, 221, 275–79, 281–86

389 I N DE X

identification, 256, 273–74, 279–84 imaginary, 135, 178, 209–10, 273, 279– 80, 287–98, 327–31 impact between material bodies, 55–56 individuation, 49, 79, 85, 93–94, 100– 101, 279–80, 304, 306–7, 313–17 inertia, 58–62, 70–71, 205–6, 210–12, 245 inhibition, 5–6, 34, 37, 42–46, 61–63, 70–71, 141, 158–59, 176, 242–45 intelligence, 68–69, 106, 118–26 intersubjectivity, 79–81, 84–85, 158, 238–41 Jung, Carl Gustav, 4, 138, 144, 161, 165, 168, 170, 204, 214, 222, 293 Kant, Immanuel, 84, 89–92, 94–95, 98, 110–12, 125, 180, 282, 289, 305–6, 312 kinèsis, 20–46 Klein, Melanie, 4, 172, 267 knowledge, 106, 110, 118–27, 135 Lacan, Jacques, 4, 10, 12–14, 68, 75, 117, 135, 137, 139, 148, 151, 153–54, 158, 160, 162, 165, 169, 174–83, 188, 190–95, 197, 202, 204, 207–13, 217, 226, 240, 243, 258, 267, 273, 276, 279–80, 287–89, 295–96, 299, 301–3, 317, 321–32 lack, 5–6, 61–62, 68–77, 117, 145–47, 154–57, 178–82, 191, 298–99 language, 29–30, 135–36, 213, 240–41, 269–98 Laplanche, Jean, 4, 150, 154, 172, 179 Leibniz, Wilhelm Gottfried, 4–8, 14–15, 19, 26, 47–90, 92–96, 98, 101, 105, 108, 110–11, 113, 117, 124, 137–41, 144–47, 154, 156–57, 173–75, 201, 205, 221, 238, 241–42 Levinas, Emmanuel, 316 libido, 152, 161, 168–71, 270–73. See also under drive: sexual life, 15–16, 22–25, 31–46, 64–67, 150, 162–63, 198–99, 205–7, 213–15, 310–13, 316–18, 321. See also under drive: vital Locke, John, 48, 67–68, 71–73, 75, 77–78, 82, 350 logos, 14, 21–22, 28–30, 35–36, 43–46

loss, 12, 38–40, 145, 153–54, 179–80, 279–84 madness, 132–36 Malebranche, Nicolas, 178 Martin du Gard, Roger, 3 melancholy, 215, 272, 279–84 Melville, Herman, 47, 255 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 232–33, 301, 322–24, 327 metaphysics, 4–9, 15–16, 50–54, 57, 64, 75, 79, 92–95, 98, 109–10, 137–47 mimicry, 240, 279, 325–27 monad, 6, 49–86 motives (of human action), 91–92, 104–8, 114–16, 122–23, 127 movement, 5–8, 20–47, 51–66, 84–85, 100–104, 108–10, 140–42; and countermovement, 29–31, 34–36; myth, 217, 293–94, 313, 318–19; of own body, 99–106, 245–46 narcissism, 11–12, 130, 165, 168–72, 188–90, 269–73, 280–82, 324 need, 113–19, 150, 153–55, 162–63, 174–77, 243–45 negativity, 5, 20, 28, 37–46, 48, 62–63, 146–47, 182 neurosis, 127–32, 163–64, 177, 199–200, 285–86, 290–92 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4–6, 13–15, 19, 196, 216–17, 301–4, 307–8, 311–23, 326, 329–30, 332 nihilism, 93, 191, 204 objet a, 179–81, 191–95, 243, 330–32 obstacle, 6, 59–62, 70, 73–78 Oedipus complex, 283–84, 292 ontology, 14, 20–21, 140–43, 234–36; fundamental, 20–21, 32–35, 84–85 ousia, 23, 28–29, 51 Parrhasius, 331 pathèsis, 30–31, 35–36, 38–39 perception, 43, 64–69, 79, 83–85, 102–6, 119–21, 230–31, 239, 302, 322–32 perversions, sexual, 150–52, 193–95 phantasm, 12, 195, 257, 287–300; originary or primary, 12, 292–94 phenomenology, 8–11, 139–44, 229–53

390 I N DE X

phusis, 23–24, 31, 140, 246 Pinel, Philippe, 133 Plato, 48, 78, 94, 97, 105, 217, 229, 305 Platonic Ideas, 7, 96–98, 100–101, 108–12, 305–9 pleasure, 8–9, 67–69, 71–75, 77, 82, 103–6, 116–20, 124–28, 145–46, 151–57, 163–67, 171–73, 176–78, 185–88, 197–204, 216, 219, 223–26, 231, 242, 247–53, 265–69, 289, 298, 305; aesthetic, 305–10, 316–17, 331–32; and appreciation of value, 250–53; intellectual, 124; and joy, 251–53 pleasure principle, 72–73, 103–6, 116–19, 164–67, 197, 199, 201–4, 208–15, 219–22 poièsis, 23–28, 30–31, 35–38 point, 52, 55–57; of view, 49, 55, 65, 79–82, 85–86, 238, 323–24, 328 Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand, 4 presence, 5, 25–29, 41–42, 135 primary process, 165–66, 276–77 pros ti, 30–31, 34–35 psychosis, 132–36, 166, 168 reality principle, 103–6, 120, 145, 164– 67, 217, 262 reason, 48, 69–71, 76–78, 89–95, 119–27 repetition, 5, 10–11, 126, 197–213 repression, 9, 127–33, 161, 163–64, 210, 242–43, 256–57, 261–64, 276 rest, 25, 55–56, 60, 63–64, 149 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 271 sado-masochism, 185–86, 198, 215–26 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 4, 75, 193, 279, 326, 330 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 312 Schiller, Friedrich, 307 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 4–9, 13–15, 87–139, 141–49, 154, 163–64, 169, 173, 178, 180–81, 191, 241, 244, 257–59, 270, 301–13, 315–23, 326, 329 screen-memory, 290–92 self, 12–13, 85–86, 161–62, 171–72, 186–89, 265–73, 275, 277, 279, 284–85. See also ego self-affection, 189, 230–35, 265, 271. See also autoerotism, self sensations, 230–33, 248–51

sexuality, genital, 150–53, 159–60, 168, 268 sexuality, infantile, 148, 150, 152–60, 292 Socrates, 312, 318 Sophocles, 226 soul, 48, 51, 64, 68–70, 141, 229–31, 236 space, 231–33, 238. See also extension Spinoza, Baruch, 6, 48, 50, 110 sterèsis, 5, 23–30, 34–40 Suarez, Francisco, 110 sublimation, 13, 124–25, 168, 301–3, 308–11, 315–17, 320–24, 332 sublime, 307–9 substance, 5–7, 47–68, 79–88, 93–95; as drive subject, 48–49, 64–67, 84–85; as force, 47–67; material, 51–67 subject 5–6, 11–15, 145, 274, 304; aesthetic, 13, 302, 312–14; of desire, 191, 193–95, 209–12, 257, 287–300; divided, 195, 209, 309–10, 317, 324, 326; drive, 12–13, 19, 49–53, 189–95, 257, 264–71, 305, 315–16, 319–20; perceiving, 322–32; rational, 121–23; spectator, 7, 13–14, 121, 125, 294–96, 301–32. See also Dasein; ego; id; self; superego symbolic, 135–36, 160, 202, 182–83, 208–13, 226, 287–88, 293–94, 297, 317, 368 taboo, 159–60, 276–77 temporality, 15, 83–84, 91, 102, 116–17, 246, 252 tendency, 36, 83–84, 197, 204–5, 218, 231, 242, 244–45 Thanatos, 214–26, 320. See also under drive: for destruction thought, 68–69, 119–23, 126–28, 259, 290–91 touch, 105, 230–35 tragedy, 302, 308–22 trauma, 133–35, 199–203, 212–13 trompe l’oeil, 302, 322, 327, 330–32 unconscious, 14, 68–69, 86, 93, 127–30, 165–66, 209–13, 258–65, 275–77, 283–98, 324 Valéry, Paul, 323 Volder De, Burchard, 55

391 I N DE X

voyeur-exhibitionism, 10, 184–95 Wagner, Richard, 319 Wallon, Henri, 240 will (in Schopenhauer), 7–8, 87–136, 141–42, 303–10 will, rational, 69–71 wish, 116, 246–47. See also desire

work of art, 305–32 working-through, 130 world, empirical-external-phenomenalphenomenological, 7–9, 26–27, 31–35, 65–66, 84–86, 89–123, 167–69, 234– 39, 267–69, 278–84, 306, 319–20 Zeuxis, 331