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ABYSSAL GROUNDS: LACAN AND HEIDEGGER ON TRUTHAuthor(s): Gabriel RieraReviewed work(s):Source: Qui Parle, Vol. 9, No. 2, Special Issue on Lacan (Spring/Summer 1996), pp. 51-76Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686047 .
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS:LACAN AND HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH
Gabriel Riera
In thinking the linkbetween philosophy and psychoanalysis, the re
lation between Heidegger and Lacan seems unavoidable. Yet, it is
far less clear what form this link should take and how itmight be
justified. Is itenough to say,with Elisabeth Roudinesco, that the rela
tionship between Lacan and Heidegger issimply an episodic event?'
Or, against this anecdotal reduction ofwhat appears to be a more
encompassing intellectual "exchange," is itnecessary, followingWil
liam Richardson, to put the Lacanian subject (the subject of the un
conscious) on the same levelwith Heidegger's Dasein?2 Or, insearch
ingfor n intermediateposition between these two approaches, mightone, with Edward S.
Casey
and Melvin
Woody,read in
Heidegger
a
relatively controllable thematic repertoire that Lacan appropriatesand reformulates to neutralize the "totalizing effects" of theHegeliandialectic?3 Anecdotal reduction, conceptual homology, thematic il
lustration.When thinking the relation between Lacan and Heidegger,it isnecessary to find a differentpath, a path thatwill allow one to
introduce the mark of a spacing. Given thatphilosophy and psycho
analysistoday rosspaths inthis pacing, Iwill follow he uestionof truth as the question inwhich Lacanian psychoanalysis and
Heideggerianthinkingonverge. hequestionof truthill provide
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52 GABRIEL RIERA
the necessary infrastructure o assess the relation between Lacan and
Heidegger.This essay focuses on thequestion of truth ecause Heidegger's
unfolding of the question presupposes a retrogression from
conceptuality to "determinations" which are more original than con
cepts. Following Rodolphe Gasche, Icall this unfolding an "infra
structure," that is, "a complex set of conditions which brings the
idealityof awhole or a system both into reach and out of reach, andwhich articulates the limits . . .of words and concepts."4 As Iwill
show, Heidegger's reflection on truth abandons the terrain of
conceptuality inorder to think "truth" as the unthought of philoso
phy. As the unthought of philosophy, "truth" renders possible the
condition of possibility of a series ofwords or concepts. ForHeidegger,these concepts include: Dasein, entities, Being, time, aswell as that
which "gives" Being and time their "relation"- Ereignis. Moreover,
because "truth" isnot a concept but ratherone ofHeidegger's "basic
words," the unfolding of itsunthought "contents" also supposes a
modification ofwhat has been traditionally conceived as the locus
of truth: language.In this paper Iwill pay close attention to the transformations
thatHeidegger's concept of language undergoes fromBeing and Time
to On theWay to Language, aswell as to his narrative of the historyof truth. By focusing on language and truth, and on language as
truth, Iwill show how Heidegger, inhis insistentdisplacements and
reinscriptions of these concepts, brings not only Being and time "into
its wn," but also language and truth inwhat he calls the "event of
appropriation" [Ereignis], that is,an abyssal infrastructure.
I call this infrastructureabyssal because, on the one hand,
Ereignis is the condition of possibility forwhat makes time and Be
ing, truth nd language possible, inasmuch as itbrings them to their
"own" or "proper" [eigen]; on the other hand, thisbringing them to
their w" amounts to theirdisappearance. The "own"~ or "proper"~isunderstood by Heidegger not as an immanent essence thatgroundsa permanence, but rather as that fromwhich Being and time come
to themselves, an other which cannot be attained inor by the lan
guage of Being. However, as a condition of possibility for the possi
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 53
bilities of Being, language and truth,Ereignis isneither theirgroundnor their foundation. Ereignis interruptsany possibility of keepingthose concepts as theywere and consequently points to another typeof thinking.
This abyssal infrastructure, Iclaim, isalso operative ina deci
sive moment of Lacan's teaching, namely, the seminar entitled The
Ethics of Psychoanalysis. This seminar ispunctuated by explicit and
implicit references toHeidegger - inparticular, Lacan's use of the
crucial concept of theThing [la Chose das Ding]. Nevertheless, on
theway toHeidegger, Lacan takes some decisive detours.
I
Lacan and Heidegger, or Thinking the Space Between
Inher Histoire de la Psychanalyse en France, Elisabeth Roudinesco
reduces the relationship between Lacan and Heidegger to an inci
dent: a scene inwhich Lacan masters the situation while theGer
man thinker remains both silent and motionless. She writes:
Heidegger stays at la Prevote, aftervisiting the Cathedral
at Chartres. Lacan drives his automobile at the speed of
his sessions. Seated in the frontseat, Heidegger remains
still,but his wife complains. Sylvie transmits her fears to
Lacan without success. On theway back, Heidegger re
mains quiet all throughout the trip and his wife's com
plaints grow while Lacan accelerates. The tripends andeveryone returns to their own homes [Le voyage prendfinet chacun retourne chez soi.] (H, 310)
For Roudinesco, this curious scene exemplifies the literal lack of
exchange between Lacan and Heidegger, which isfurther corrobo
rated in Lacan's teaching. Even if omething like an exchange did
not take place, Lacan nevertheless borrowed a "language" from
Heideggertowork throughomeof his earlier heoreticalroblems.
Lacan's own position regarding philosophical discourse is ambiguous. For instance, when developing and formalizing the mathemes
of the four discourses in his seminar L'Envers de Ia Psychanalyse,
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54 GABRIEL RIERA
Lacan characterizes philosophy as the discourse of themaster and
situates his own discourse as an "antiphilosophy." InEncore, more
over, Lacan reduces his relationship with Heidegger's thinking to a
"propaedeutic reference." Nevertheless, Lacan pays a last visit to
Heidegger afterhaving developed the theoryof the Borromean knot.5
These denegations and ambiguities, though, cannot obscure the fact
thatHeideggerian thinking and Lacanian psychoanalysis are coex
tensive since, as Jean-Luc Nancy claims, they respond to the "neces
sityof an epoch. . . inasmuch as the time of a general errancy of
meaning, of a passage to the limit f all possible signification."6Lacan's declarations have led to a general misunderstanding
about his relation with Heidegger's thought. This misunderstanding
appears inCasey and Woody's study, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan:
Dialectic of Desire," which traces Lacan's uses of Hegel's and
Heidegger's philosophy at the timewhen Lacan is articulating his
"return to Freud." Their main thesis isthat "psychoanalysis must find
a thirdway between, or beyond Hegel and Heidegger" (D, 105).
They conclude by claiming that Lacan dismisses both Hegelian and
Heideggerian resolutions as impossible or inadequate:
Of all the undertakings that have been proposed in this
century, that of the psychoanalyst isperhaps the loftiest,because the undertaking of the psychoanalyst acts in ur
time as a mediator between theman of care and the sub
ject of absolute knowledge.7
The authors point out that, since the dialectic of desire and the un
conscious as a riddle of the mind are both missing fromphilosophical resolutions, Lacan legitimately points to the insufficiencyof phi
losophy. However, even though Casey andWoody make the problematic relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy clear,the relation between Lacan and Heidegger needs further elucida
tion.
Casey's point of departure is to characterize the Lacanian sub
jectas a
"spoken subject," that is,a
subject "created by the play ofthe signifier" and understood as "an effect of speaking." AccordingtoCasey, this onceptionis rooted n he hilosophy fHeidegger,
who has insisted on the primacy of language over the speaking sub
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 55
ject" (D, 89). Casey goes so faras to homologize Heidegger's "die
Sprache spricht" from the essay "L6gos" and On theWay to Lan
guage with the distinction between discourse [Rede] and idle talk
[Gerede] fromparagraph thirty-fourf Being and Time. This homol
ogy isproblematic because those determinations of language be
long todifferent horizons: the distinction between Rede and Gerede
belongs to the horizon of the existential analytic ofDasein, which is
understood as a preparatory analysis for the formulation of the "fundamental question," the question of themeaning of Being. The ex
pression "die Sprache spricht" belongs to the horizon of a reversal of
the traditional interpretationof language; language ceases to be an
object, a means at the disposal of human beings, and becomes "Be
ing itself."Casey disregards how the concept of language ismodi
fied fromBeing and Time to the Vortrsge und Aufsstze. The shift is
significant because in"die Sprache spricht," the concern isno longerwith a concept of language, but ratherwith
"undergoing
an experience with language." Itshould be recalled that inBeing and Time
language isa "founded phenomenon," that is, it isderivative with
respect to Rede (discourse, in the sense of both manifestation and
articulation):
The existential-ontological foundation of language isdis
course or talk [Rede]. . . .Discourse is existentially
equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding...
Discourse istheArticulation of intelligibility.Therefore it
underlies both interpretation and assertion . . .The wayinwhich discourse isexpressed is language [Sprache].
Language isa totalityofwords - a totality inwhich dis
course has a "worldly" Being of its wn; and as an entity
within-the-world, this totality thus becomes somethingwhich we may come across as ready-to-hand [zuhanden].
Language can be broken up intoword-things which are
present-at-hand [vorhanden]. Discourse is existentially
language, because the entitywhose disclosedness itar
ticulates according to signification, has, as its kind of
Being, Being-in-the-world [In-der-WeIt-sein] - a Beingwhich has been thrown and submitted to the "world."8
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56 GABRIEL RIERA
Logos, consequently, would not be language (understood as a de
rivative concept) but discourse. InBeing and Time, Heidegger still
conceives of language in more traditionalway (as an instrumentof
expression), and words still have the character of things. In "L6gos,"
Heidegger undertakes a more "essential determination of language"
through an interpretationof Heraclitus' fragmentB50. This determi
nation of logos isone inwhich "the Greeks dwelt ... But they never
thought it Heraclitus included."9 In this essential determination,
Heidegger's equation of language and truthrequires a cancellation
and relegation of the classical predicates of language: vocalization
[phond] and signification [semainen]. It s ftersubmitting these predicates to a displacement that "the essential speaking of language"can be displayed: saying as a "letting-lie-together-before [legein
sagen]" (L, 64). The essential determination of language occurs as
the elucidation of an infrastructure f disclosure:
Logos lays thatwhich ispresent before and down intopresencing, that is, itputs those things back. Presencingnevertheless suggests: having come forward to endure in
unconcealment. Because the lgos lets liebefore uswhat
lies before us as such, itdiscloses what ispresent in its
presencing. But disclosure isAltheia. This and lgos are
the Same. Ldgein letsAldth4a, unconcealed as such, lie
before us ... All disclosure releases what ispresent from
concealment. The A-Ldtheia rests in Ldthe. L6gos is in
itself nd at the same time a revealing and concealing. ItisAldtheia. (L, 70-71)
It isprecisely this infrastructurethatwill be decisive inorder to un
derstand the relation between Lacan and Heidegger.There is n additional complication intheway thatCasey reads
the philosophical origins of Lacan's conception of the subject. For
Casey, language in Lacan provides the "structure and limit" of the
field nwhich the ubject omes tobe. Within his ield, he ubject
appears as "ex-centric," as "alienated from himself." The origin ofthese formulations, according to Casey, appears "in Heidegger's
analysis of subjectivity nBeing and Time. Inhis 1927 work,
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 57
Heidegger designates human existence as Dasein: literally 'being
there"' (D, 89).
Given that he reads Heidegger's analytic ofDasein as an ana
lytic f subjectivity, Casey's terminology isproblematic. Indoing so,
he blurs the difference between Heidegger and themore phenom
enologically-oriented philosophical discourses which depend on a
conception of the subject. The fact that Casey rephrases the "ek
static" nature ofDasein as subject isnot inaccurate, but he does not
indicate how Lacan modifies those concepts which, originating in
theanalytic ofDasein, are then importedby psychoanalytic discourse.
Would a different type of approach, such as moving from
Heidegger to Lacan instead of proceeding fromLacan toHeidegger,
provide us with new insights? In "Psychoanalysis and the Being
Question," William Richardson explores what made Heidegger's
thought so attractive to Lacan and what lightthis thoughtmay throw
uponLacan's own innovative
insight.
Richardson argues that
Heidegger's "Being-question" [Seinsfrage] can provide a "formal
structure" to understand the notions of theOther and the uncon
scious. This "formal structure" is that of Being as Ereignis-Aldtheia,
in the Heideggerian sense. According to Richardson,
[Being as Ereignis-Aldtheia] permits us to think of the
Other in the dimension of Being without hypostasizing
it, r ontifying it, r absolutizing it inany way, first nd
foremost because itsuggests a way to consider the un
conscious as a disclossive process. (P, 147,my emphasis)
When compared with Casey andWoody's approach, Richardson's
has the advantage of taking us to a crucial moment of Heidegger's
thinking, viz. the topology of Being. Here, Heidegger leaves behind
the derivative character of language thatwe find inBeing and Time,
and embarks on an understanding of I6gos as discourse inthe sense
of manifestation. This interpretation of Idgos allows Heidegger to
undertake thedestruction of traditional logic. However, thisdestruc
tion ouldnotbe possiblewithout more "original" ay ofthinkingtruth [alethdia] and without "undergoing an experience with lan
guage."10 The rethinking of the essence [Wesen] of language en
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58 GABRIEL RIERA
ables Heidegger to think language, Being, and truthunder the name
of Ereignis.
Nevertheless, Richardson's placement of Lacan's Other in the
dimension of Being, as well as his attempt to bring together the un
conscious and the disclossive process signaled by the name of "Be
ing as Ereignis-Aletheia," need to be reevaluated, especially since
Richardson adds:
The Being of the symbolic order isnot an ontic Other of
theOther likea Super-Absolute, but the disclosure of the
Other as such inkindsis- inEreignis-Altheia- which,as Idgos, isaboriginal language and concealment . .. (P,
157)
Is this bringing together of the Being-question and Lacan's Other a
legitimateclaim?Would the "disclossive process" of Being as EreignisAltheia be, fromwithout, the "formal structure"
allowingus to
justify relationship between Lacan and Heidegger? Richardson's formulation suggests thata certain translatability ofHeidegger inLacanseems to be possible." The question now becomes the extent of this
translatability, that is,the question ofwhether the "formal structure"- if it is indeed a formal structure of Being's Ereignis-Aldtheiacan be translated fromHeidegger to Lacan without any alteration.
We must show whether this "formal structure" isappropriable, since
the question of appropriation is the question of Ereignis. Inorder to
explorethese
issues,attention must be
paidtowhat takes
placein
Lacan under the name of truth.
Before approaching the question ofwhether Heidegger's to
pology of Being iscommensurate with Lacan's, we must pay close
attention to Richardson's bringing together of "Being as EreignisAl6theia." What type of relation does "Being as Ereignis" establish?
Is it relation of identity, f sameness, or is itrathera determination
of Being understood as a more encompassing "concept," that is,
Ereignis? Inother words, is it determination thatwould still allowus
to think of Being as the "fundamental" question? What is the relation etweenBeing ndEreignis fne can say"Being s Ereigns" inthe sense indicated above? Furthermore,what does the hyphen be
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 59
tween Ereignis and Aletheia mean? How can Ereignis and Aldtheia
name the same thing?And how, finally,can Altheia, being the same
as Ereignis, be the same as Being?The insights that Richardson's semantically charged formula
tionmay yield depend on how we unfold each of the terms at play,
especially Ereignis. This formulation and its sefulness depend above
all on how we understand the relation of the terms inquestion. If
something can be saidwith certainty about Ereignis, it isthat itpointsto a relation. Furthermore,we can say that itmarks a limitbetween
two spaces of thinking, that of metaphysics, and that of an other
thinking.As a limit f thinking, Ereignis is like a double-headed Ja
nus: on the one hand, itpoints to the inside of the limit and the
closure it stablishes, while on the other hand, it indicates an out
side to this closure.12 There are several possibilities forunderstand
ingand unfolding Richardson's formulation. However, Iwill opt for
one which is justified on the basis of themeaning of Ereignis for the
whole ofHeidegger's work, aswell as on thebasis ofwhat the think
ingof Ereignis implies forBeing and truth.
Ereignis, Heidegger's Last Word
In situating how the thinkingof Ereignis affects the "Being-question,"we may characterize thework of Heidegger as consisting of three
moments. A firstphase covers the period fromBeing and Time to the
late 1930's and can be labelled as the period of fundamental ontol
ogy. Fundamental
ontology
is
developed
from the frame of both an
existential analytic and the temporality of a privileged entity:Dasein.
Because Dasein is n entity forwhich "Being is n issue," its xisten
tial structuremay illuminate the understanding of the "Being-question." The question of themeaning of Being is the horizon of this
whole problematic. In the second period, Heidegger abandons the
horizon ofDasein and takes Being as it nfolds itself inhistory.What
isdecisive now are themodes inwhich Being grants or "gives" itself
and, above all, the "fact" of the forgettingof Being; that is,Being'swithdrawal s its
rivilegedode of
grantingtself.
hiswithdrawalimplies hat or he hole ofWesternthoughteing isunderstoodspresence. Finally, we may speak of a thirdperiod whose guiding
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60 GABRIEL RIERA
thought isEreignis, a period inwhich Heidegger thinks the unthoughtof Being's determination as presence. This unthought concerns time
as well as the relation determining Time and Being. The thinking of
this relation opens the possibility of awholly other commencement
for thinking [andere Anfang].When considered in lightof this thirdmoment, Richardson's
expression "Being as Ereignis" is problematic for two reasons. To
begin with, the firsttwo moments (particularly the second) affirmthat for thewhole ofmetaphysics themeaning of Being ispresence
(in the sense of permanence), and for this reason Being has been
determined by time. Time is,therefore, the unthought of the "Being
question." The "forgettingof Being" isnot fortuitous but rather isthe
covering up ofAnwesung (the coming-into-presence); that is,by the
mutation of Anwesung intoAnwesende (presence in the sense of
permanence.) This mutation is the transformation of the "original
experience of presencing" into metaphysics of presence (Platonism).
What isat stake forHeidegger in this thirdmoment is the question:
"Why, how and where does something like time speak inBeing?" In
otherwords, inthinking the provenance of Being "Esgibt Sein" or
"there isBeing, in the sense that Being isgiven"-
why, how, and
where does time appear? Inthis case, the "Es"of Es gibt Sein refersto
Time:
Time is not. There is. Itgives time [Esgibt Zeit]. The giv
ing that gives time isdetermined by denying and with
holding nearness. Itgrants theOpenness of time-spaceand preserves what remains denied inwhat has-been,
what iswithheld inapproach. We call the giving which
gives true time an extending which opens and conceals.
As extending is itself, he giving of a giving isconcealed
in true time. 13
If eing proceeds from"something" other than itself, itmay be
thatBeing and Ereignis possess a certain heterogeneity. In this case,
theexpression
"as" in"Being
asEreignis" fails,
at leastpartially,
to
do justice to thisheterogeneity. I ay "partially" because inHeidegger
there are several configurations of the "relation" Being and Ereignis.In ne of these onfigurations,eing nd the iving fBeing [Es] re
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 61
the same: Being gives itself its wn figures by and through the his
toryof its wn granting. Inthis line of thought, the expression "Beingas Ereignis" could be understood as saying thatBeing, inasmuch as
it is the giver of its wn figures, behaves as Ereignis. However, this
understanding of Being may verywell be taken as one of the figuresof that same history. That is, ifEreignis points to the limitof this
history of Being, by assimilating Being to Ereignis, thenwe are on
the inside of the closure. Moreover, assimilating Being to Ereignis
compresses the thought of Ereignis; since Being isgiven by time, it
would then be more accurate to say "Being as Time," or better still,
"Time as Ereignis." Nevertheless this lastexpression fails to capturethe heterogeneity of Time and Ereignis. The thinkingof Ereignis asks
for n additional step back. The question- what gives the historyof
Being its wn provenance?-
points to a more "originary" giving of
Being and of itshistory,one that isnon-dependent upon time.
We must now follow Heidegger in his attempt to determine
the determination of time, the condition for the history of Being. Bynow it should be clear that the thinking of Ereignis involves two
"moments": first, he giving of Being (Esgibt Sein), that is,when the
Es (the "giver") points to time (to the Es gibtZeit.) And second, when
the Es points to an anteriority other than Being and time. As in the
case of Being, time "gives" itself its wn dimensions. And yet, that
which "unifies" time isanything temporal. In this case, the Es of Es
gibt Zeit points to an enigmatic anteriority, Ereignis:
Inthe sending of thedestiny of Being, inthe extending oftime, there becomes manifest a dedication, a deliveringover intowhat is theirown, namely of Being as presenceand of time as the realm of the open. What determines
both, time and Being, in theirown, that is, in their be
longing together,we shall call: Ereignis, the event ofAppropriation. One should bear inmind, however, that
"event" isnot simply an occurrence, but thatwhich makes
any occurrence possible . . .What lets the two matters
[Being ndTime]belong together,hat brings hetwointo theirown and, even more, maintains and holds them
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62 GABRIEL RIERA
intheirbelonging together... isAppropriation [Ereignis].
(TB,19)
Ereignis names what makes Being and time come into their own
[eigen], aswell as the relation of the belonging-together of time and
Being. But Ereignis is the name or the marker forwhat withdraws
itself inthe "event of (co)appropriation."
Ereignis points
to thethinking
of an
abyssal ground,but it isan
abyssal infrastructurethat cannot be thought "as Being." As the "es
sential" anteriority of Being and time, Ereignis could be referred to
as the "truth" of Being and Time, Ereignis-Aldtheia. After thisdetour,we come back to the question of "truth," albeit ina very different
"light."
II
Lacan with
Heidegger?A common point of departure for both Heidegger and Lacan can be
read in theway each unties the knot that traditionally has linked
truthto knowledge. This untying allows them to re-think their rela
tionwith tradition and origins. Heidegger's well-known untying of
truthfromknowledge leads him to assess the history of philosophyas the history of a dependency on a non-essential determination. In
Being and Time, Heidegger accomplishes a displacement insofaras
he thinks truth s being-uncovering, that is,as an ontological possi
bility of being-in-the-world. This reassessment of truth transformsthe traditional determinations of truth as intuition and assertion
[Aussage] into secondary determinations, and puts an end to the
history of philosophy as the history of thismutual dependency on
truth nd knowledge. Moreover, thedisplacement Heidegger accom
plishes inBeing and Time allows him to refine the "sameness" of
Ldgos-Aldtheia. He thus establishes a kind of primal scene of thought,a pre-Platonic scene anterior to the "fall" of truth in theweb of the
signifier.
However, this narrative of the history of truth remains too dependentupon thehistoryf theword "truth"aldtheia] nd cannotresist a number of philological objections. Thus, Heidegger later re
assess thepositionhe had putforth nBeingand Time:
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 63
Inthe scope of this question, we must acknowledge the
fact thataldtheia, unconcealment inthe sense of theopen
ing of presence, was originally only experienced as
orthotes, as the correctness of representations and state
ments. But then the assertion about the essential transfor
mation of truth,that is, from unconcealment to correct
ness, isalso untenable.4
As part of this shift,Heidegger's thought undergoes "an experiencewith language" that profoundly determines the relationship of truth
as the unveiling of L6gos-Al6theia. Inthisexperience with language,the topology of truth is redrawn. This redrawing can be read as a
"going beyond the Greek" and as an opposition to the criteria of
validation narrowly embraced by the sciences, including the dispersion of philosophy familiar to the "human sciences.""
This topological reconfiguration of the truth f Being is formu
lated in termsof a "task [Aufgabe] of thinking." This reconfigurationleaves behind themetaphysically-oriented analytic of language in
Being and Time, an analytic inwhich language remains an instru
ment at the service of man. Itexchanges this analytic for one in
which language is the unfolding [wesen] of the being of things. The
"experience with language" undergone in"The Nature of Language"[Das Wesen der Sprache] is formulated succinctly in the "transfor
mation" thatHeidegger's guide-word [Leitwort] suffers:"Das wesen
der Sprache- Die Sprache desWesens."
In the whole of the guide-word an opening comes into
play, a beckoning thatpoints to something which, com
ing from the firstturnof phrase, we cannot presume in
the second, since the latterdoes not become exhausted
at all in simple reversal of theorder ofwords of the first
turnof phrase. (NL, 94; translation modified)
By coming intoplaywithoutbeingexhaustedby the reversal f
phrases,this pening is thoughtnder the"logic"of Ereignis Esgibt.] Das Wesen, Heidegger explains, has to be understood in its
verbal sense as Es west: "it unfolds unfolding itsduration."'6 Das
wesen names the unveiling; it is the kin4sis of language, itshappen
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64 GABRIEL RIERA
ing r "event" [Ereignis]. Insofar s language [Sprache] isunderstood
as "event," as unveiling, itgives [gibt] to things their determinations.
It ould be said, therefore, that the "overcoming [Verwindung]of the Greek experience," that is, "the task [Aufgabe] of thinking"
imposed by thisVerwindung, implies an ethics, at least an ethics of
thinking. One may hesitate to use this term in itsgenerality with
respect toHeidegger, especially ifne keeps inmind his harsh words
on the question of ethics in the "Letter on Humanism."17 In spite ofthe reticence one may feel inattributing to Heidegger an ethics of
thinking, it is nevertheless in the domain of an ethics that Lacan's
most decisive encounter with philosophy and with Heidegger takes
place. Iam referringhere to Lacan's Seminar on The Ethics of Psy
choanalysis.It ispossible to detect in this Seminar a series of gestures, op
erations, displacements, and reinscriptions thatare characteristically
Heideggerian. On several occasions Lacan explicitly refers his own
elaboration of theThing [la Chose] toHeidegger's das Ding. Infact,Lacan's treatment of das Ding has littleto do with Heidegger's. As
will become clear inwhat follows, Lacan's approach to the Thinghas more to do with the Freud of the Entwurf as read through the
Freud of theBeyond thePleasure Principle, and also how both Freuds
are read through Kant. Still, Heidegger's "presence" is felt throughout the Seminar and particularly in Lacan's reading of Sophocles'
Antigone inview of presenting the unpresentable "line of sight [pointde visde] that defines desire."18 Despite extensive references to the
literatureon Antigone, Lacan does notmention Heidegger's readingof the Greek tragedy. Nevertheless, a careful reading of Lacan's in
terpretation of Antigone shows that Lacan is attentive to the same
crucial articulations in Sophocles' play thatwere analyzed by
Heidegger. Lacan therefore invokes Heidegger where he himself
seems to lead the discussion to a differentpath, that is, to das Dingas a condition of possibility of desire. He silences Heidegger when
some important structural similarities are at play. This strategy should
not make us lose sight of the fact that Lacan encounters Heidegger
on a similar ground.
Before analyzing Lacan's treatment of das Ding ingreater de
tail, letme point to some crucial articulations inthe Seminar. InThe
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 65
Ethics of Psychoanalysis, two discursive practices are encountered:
on theone hand, ethics, that is,metaphysics, istreated as the field of
the question of the Good; on the other hand, psychoanalysis ap
pears as the only practice able to handle what ethics has always left
aside, namely, jouissance. And because psychoanalysis deals with
what is intractable for the philosopher of the Good, itcan disen
tangle thequestion of theGood fromthemoral imperative, and open
theway to a "more primordial" determination of both the "good"and the "Law." Lacan undermines some key articulations of the his
toryof ethical thinking (Aristotle, Bentham, Kant), whose presuppo
sitions have served to justifypsychoanalysis' function and purpose.In thisway, he opens an adjacent space fromwhich to think the
unthought of ethics, the Real. Lacan writes:
[A]s odd as itmay seem to that superficial opinion which
assumes any inquiry intoethics must concern the field of
the ideal, if ot of the unreal, I, n the contrary,will proceed instead from the other direction by going more
deeply intothe notion of the real [rdel]. Insofaras Freud's
position constitutes progress here, the question of ethics
is to be articulated from the point of view of the location
of man in relation to the real [rde/].To appreciate this,one has to look atwhat occurred inthe interval between
Aristotle and Freud. (E, 11)
It isclear that inhis displacement and reinscription of the questionof ethics, Lacan repeats some of theHeideggerian movements of the
destruction of the history of ontology. Heidegger writes:
We understand this task as one inwhich by taking the
question of Being as our clue, we are todestroy the tradi
tional content of ancient ontology untilwe arrive at those
primordial xperiences inwhichwe achievedour first
ways of determining the nature of Being . .. (BT, 22-3)
Lacan, therefore, elaborates an ethics of the analytic experience thatis "anterior" and "more original" than the ethics of themetaphysicaltradition. Lacan wants to determine how the economy of pleasure,whose horizon isthegood, is itselfetermined nd simultaneously
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66 GABRIEL RIERA
short-circuited by a more "original" dimension of jouissance or of
the "beyond pleasure." The articulation of an ethics of psychoanalysis supposes an additional gesturewithin thegeneral scope of Lacan's
return to Freud. From the viewpoint of Beyond the Pleasure Prin
ciple, Lacan dismantles some of Freud's insights, such as the pre
ponderant importance of the superego. Lacan must disentangle Freud
from Kant (the categorical imperative being a genealogical condi
tion of theOedipus complex) but notwithout using Kant to disen
tangle the Real fromany typeof ontic representational content, found,
forexample, inMelanie Klein's maternal figuration of theThing.Inhis attempt to disentangle jouissance from the dialectics of
desire, and to elucidate the relationship of jouissance to the objectcause of desire [objet a], Lacan invokes das Ding [laChose], throughan explicit reference toHeidegger. However, Lacan's elucidation of
das Ding, while reaching conclusions homologous to those of the
abyssal infrastructure of Ereignis-Al4theia, ismore Kantian than
Heideggerian. Although Lacan is led to a ground similar to that of
Heidegger, he arrives only byway of a double use of Kant. On the
one hand, a formal Kantian argument allows Lacan to separate the
objects of desire from das Ding. This separation sustains desire at a
distance and gives desire only its"motility."On the other hand, Lacan
unfolds Kant's aesthetic categories- the beautiful and the sublime
(the beautiful as the sublime or the beautiful as overflowed and in
terrupted by the sublime) - as a way of submitting the formal and
transcendental aspect of das Ding to a
quasi-transcendentalspace.
Inother words, the Kantian categories of the beautiful and the sub
lime are put intoplay not inorder to secure the homeostatic nature
of an economy of pleasure and of the good, but rather as a way to
indicate the provenance of "pure desire." The way inwhich Lacan
mobilizes the Kantian categories of the beautiful and the sublime
has some structural similaritieswith Heidegger's thinkingof thework
of art and the beautiful, that is,with Heidegger's non-aesthetic read
ingof Kant.
There isan additionalcomplication.
Theinsights
of The Ethics
of Psychoanalysis are put to the test inLacan's reading ofAntigone.
The tragedy acan confronts s ne ofphilosophy's rivileged elf
representations. Lacan's reading ofAntigone iscaptured inthewords
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 67
the chorus uses to refer o the young virgin daughter ofOedipus after
Creon makes his sentence public. The words are: "Imeros Enarg6s,"
(the visible desire thatemanates from thegaze of theyoung virgin);
or, as Lacan phrases it,"visible desire." As Heidegger reminds us,
enargds is the same word that Cicero translates as evidentia. The
word derives from ensrgeia: "thatwhich in itself nd of itselfradi
ates and brings itself o light.But it an only radiate ifopenness has
already been granted" (EP, 66). The relation between Lacan and
Heidegger depends on how thisOpenness is understood and on
how thisOpenness gives itself. nd as we will see, thatwhich givesitself o be seen does so inan inscription, tying together beauty and
truth, r beauty as the truth f desire.
After this overview of themain articulations of Lacan's Semi
nar, the overdetermined character of his project becomes clear: on
the one hand, Lacan aims to show that the economy of the goodbased upon the pleasure principle derives from an un-economic,
excessive logic jouissance and the death instinct.Only by takingintoaccount this dimension can psychoanalysis elucidate an ethics,
break themirror of imaginary solutions, and touch the Real. On the
other hand, the excess of a jouissance that points to das Ding is
neither apprehensible nor can be represented. And yet, this excess
may be hinted at through an artwork inwhich the interplay amongthe beautiful, the good and truthwill be mobilized.
III
Das Ding- Lacan with Kant: On theWay toHeidegger
C'est laChose qui se souvientde nous.
-Blanchot
InThe Ethics of Psychoanalysis, one of Lacan's goals is to elucidate
somethinghat, opologically peaking, s ituated eyondthe ymbolic order, that is, beyond the chain of signifierswhere desire is
articulated. Itshould be recalled that desire proceeds from some
thing that exceeds it the drive [Trieb]. Desire and drive belong todifferentimensions,nd the ircumscriptionf the hing dasDing]will allow Lacan to disentangle them:
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68 GABRIEL RIERA
What is the death instinct?What is this kind of law be
yond all law,which can only be posited as a final struc
ture, as the vanishing point of any attainable reality? (E,
207)
The drive inquestion is the death instinct the drive that tends
toward the Thing. This drive is "beyond the law," beyond the symbolic order and the
signifier.Nevertheless,it ould not be
possibleto say something about das Ding without the intervention of the signifier. The signifier isa necessary evil. Therefore, the relationship of
the signifier to jouissance and todas Ding takes the form of an apona:
The signifier is the cause of jouissance. . .without the
signifier,how is itpossible to center something which is
thematerial cause of jouissance?...The signifier iswhat
keeps jouissance
at a distance.19
There isno jouissance without language, but because of languagethere can be no jouissance of theThing. If he signifier isthe cause of
jouissance, itmeans that jouissance can only be its fter-effect.Only
retroactivelymay there be Thing-effects.The problem becomes, there
fore, how to explain the being-jouissance of the Thing and the fact
that desire does not have jouissance:
Das Ding is thatwhich Iwill call the beyond-of-the-sig
nified [le hors-signifid]. It isa
function of thisbeyond-ofthe-signified [le hors-signifid] and of an emotional rela
tionship to it [d'un rapportpathetique a lui], that the sub
ject keeps its istance and isconstituted ina kind of rela
tionship characterized by primary affect, prior to any re
pression. (E, 54)
As an effect of the signifier, das Ding is, nonetheless, outside or
excentricto thesignifier.he type f relationshipthas with the
signifier is that of "extimacy" [extimitd].2OThis strange inclusion that
takes the form of an absolute exclusion will move desire and
jouissance longdifferentracks. hile desireobeysthelogic f the
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 69
symbolic order and therefore cuts off the subject from the Thing,
jouissance obeys the Law of the unmasterable Thing.As an absolute object of desire, das Ding opens thought to an
abyssal dimension (as itsa priori cause). In this sense, it ould be
said thatdas Ding is the truth [aldtheia] of desire. Das Ding unveils
itself inevery desire. But, inconcealing itselffromdesire, das Dingmanifests itself indesire only by its bsence. Das Ding is the absen
tee of desire's rendezvous; without thisplay of (un)veiling, however,desire could not articulate itself in the signifier and could not be
come a demand:
If heThing were not fundamentally veiled, we wouldn't
be inthe kind of relationship to itthat itobliges us ... to
encircle it r to bypass it [a la cerner, a la contourner] in
order to conceive it. (E, 118)
No object of desire can manage to represent das
Ding.
The irrecov
erable anteriority of theThing supposed by the order of the signifier
produces an unassimilable excess: a "lost" jouissance, which isboth
cause of desire or "objet a" and a surplus of the real [plus-de-jouir].Faced with this jouissance, the subject vanishes, as isthe case inthestructureof the phantasm ($o a). At this juncture, Lacan undoes the
knotwhich ties truth nd knowledge [connaissance]: das Ding can
not be known or represented since the objects of desire that teem
around the gap of das Ding are phantasmatic. Only a "discours de la
semblance" can
emerge regardingthe Real. Inother
words,no dis
course of knowledge ispossible, only a savoir.
We are now in a better position to re-evaluate Richardson's
formulation according towhich "Being as Ereignis-Aldtheia permitsus to think of the Other in the dimension of Being without
hypostasizing it .. inanyway, first nd foremost because itsuggestsaway to consider the unconscious as a disclossive process" (P, 147,
myemphasis).We havealready hownthat hetruthfdesire isnotan ontic truth, that desire always comes too late to its rendezvous
with dasDing and that asDing istheunpresentablenteriorityfan object "lost" after the fact. Thus, das Ding unveils itself indesire
but, at the same time, subtracts itselffrom theobject of desire. Bear
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70 GABRIEL RIERA
ingthese considerations inmind, theOther cannot be placed "in the
dimension of Being as Ereignis-Al6theia," as Richardson would have
it.Rather, the a priori and absolute condition of desire would oc
cupy this dimension. If his is the case, then "the disclosure . . .as
such inkindsis inEreignis-Aldtheia," to use Richardson's words,
has to be linked to the drive [Trieb], that death drive which, in its
pulsations and repetition, surrounds the empty space of das Ding
without touching it.
The subject seeks to fillthe empty space of das Ding, but fades
in the attempt. For Lacan, Antigone's figure illustrates "in an aes
thetic form" what takes place once the object of desire is raised to
"the dignity [dignitd] of theThing" (E, 112). Antigone is the sublime
figure of the sublimation of the drive. Antigone's jouissance trans
forms the object of desire, suppresses itssymbolic investment, and
disfigures it. he object of desire becomes theobject cause of desire.
In thisway, the
object
of desire isaffected
by
a strangesurplus
and
no longer refersback to the symbolic order, but ratherpresents itself
as thatwhich touches the void where desire originates.For Lacan, there are then twoways to assess sublimation, inas
much as itpresents uswith another side of the moral feeling and is
evaluated according to the modalities with which itdeals with the
void of the Thing. A first ssessment might be called a "reactive"
sublimation, an imaginary solution thatbars any hint of the field of
das Ding:
At the level of sublimation the object is inseparable from
imaginary and especially cultural elaborations . . . [It]
collectivity recognizes in them useful objects; itfinds
rathera space of relaxation where itmay in way delude
itself n the subject of das Ding, colonize the field of das
Ding with imaginary schemes [formations imaginaires].(E,99)
This imaginary solution leaves untouched the economy of pleasure
aswell as the ependency f the eautiful ponthegood.Anticipating n elaboration hat ill notbe fully ormalizedntilL'envers elapsychanalyse (themathemes of the fourdiscourses), Lacan argues
that hediscoursesof religionnd sciencebelong tothisregime f
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 71
"reactive" sublimation. Whereas the former avoids das Ding, the
latternegates it.However, there issecond typeof sublimation which
"purifies us from the order of the imaginary [de la sdrie de
I'imaginaire], but through the intervention of an image [parI'intdrmediare d'une image]," which Lacan refers to as "Antigone's
splendor [I'4clat d'Antigone]" (E, 248).
Antigone's Beauty, or "1'arrite de mort"Reactive sublimation functions as a double barrier banning us from
access to the field of das Ding, and the field fromwhich the truth f
desire is indicated by its wn withdrawal. Bymeans of this double
barrier, thebeautiful issubordinated to thegood. Nevertheless, Lacan
breaches this dependency of the beautiful on the good, since he
situates the former "beyond the good":
on the scale that separates us from the central field of
desire, if he good constitutes the firststopping place, thebeautiful forms the second and gets closer. Itstop us, but
it lso points in the direction of the field of destruction.
(E,217)
Lacan's rethinking of sublimation marks a passage from a moral of
the common good to an ethics of psychoanalysis. At the same time,
it ituates thebeautiful beyond theprinciple of pleasure and the logicof the good. Thus we approach a non-pacifying, non-harmonizing
aspectof the beautiful, not
typically emphasized bynormative read
ingsof Kant. Because inLacan thebeautiful exceeds the economy of
pleasure and points beyond representation, it ears themark of an
excess affecting theKantian precession of the beautiful over the sub
lime. In this sense the beautiful is sublime beforehand; it isover
flowed by the sublime and is the presentation of a pure excess. For
Lacan "the function of the beautiful [is] to reveal to us the site of
man's relationship to his own death, and to reveal it o us only ina
blinding flash [dblouissement]" (E, 295). However, the "dazzle" is a
blinding ne since"thebeauty ffect s blindness ffect"E, 03).Lacan situates Antigone in a space "between two deaths," a
spacewhich can onlybe illuminated rom heperspective fa firstdeath, of an already being dead in life. It is from the space of the
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72 GABRIEL RIERA
"between two deaths" thatAntigone's beauty "tire son dclat." More
over, the radiance of this beauty comes frombeyond the pleasure
principle, the economy of the signifier,or the economy of being.
Antigone embodies "the pure and simple desire of death as such" (E,
282).
This schema bears some structural similarities to Heidegger's
reading ofAntigone. Inhis course on Holderlin, hewrites: "Antigone
properly is the most uncanny in the supreme manner, namely insuch a way that she takes itupon her in its full essence, in taking it
upon herself tobecome homely within being."21 To become homely
within Being and to become the embodiment of pure desire; these
two propositions follow the schema of the coming into itsown or
proper leigen]. Inthis schema, Being and desire vanish. The truth f
Being and desire can only be "seen" after the fact, afterAntigone
either enters the limit of the "between two deaths" (Lacan) or be
comes the "uncanniest of the uncanny" (Heidegger). Inboth cases,
there isan exteriority at play, an intimate kernel that can be appro
priated only by a radical departure or the establishment of an irre
ducible distance. In this sense, the thinking of Lacan's extimacy
[extimitd] and Heidegger's uncanny converge. Inthisappropriation,the coming into one's own of one's most proper [eigen] coincides
with itsdisappearance.
Moreover, Heidegger's schema is not simply Antigone's (the
heroine or the play). Fundamentally, his schema concerns the "ori
gin" [Sprung] of thework of art as set forth in "The Origin of the
Work of Art," a textHeidegger elaborated at the same time as his
course on Holderlin:
Ina work, [the] fact that it isa work, is justwhat isun
usual [das Ungewohnliche]. The event [Ereignis] of its
being created does not simply reverberate through the
work; rather thework casts before itself he eventful fact
[Ereignis] hat thework isas thiswork, thatthework
projects before and around itself . . The more solitarily
thework, fixed in the figure, stands on itsown and themore cleanly it eems to cut all ties to human beings, the
more simply the extraordinary thrust that thework isac
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 73
cedes to the open and themore essentially the un-famil
iarity das Ungeheuere] radiates and so shines thatwhich
until then seemed familiar.22
Isaid above that the Thing is the truth f desire, that the trace
of the Thing insists upon desire but at the same time itwithdraws
from desire. This would be another way of saying that the Lacanian
Thing presentsa
topologynot unlike that of
Ereignis-Al6theia. Andif
the beautiful (albeit a beautiful surpassed by the sublime and, inthis
sense, excessive and also uncanny-
ungeheuere) arrives here, it
does so not unlike Ereignis-Aldtheia. The beautiful indicates some
thing about a relation according to the logic of unveiling and veil
ing. But thisveiling, as in the case of Ereignis,withdraws itself in its
own truth.
In this coming together of beauty and truth, Lacan and
Heidegger converge through a certain reading of Kant's aesthetics.
Both Heidegger and Lacan renderwhat can be called a sublime read
ingof the beautiful. That is, their reading retrieves a more originarydetermination of the beautiful as the sublime. Another way of ap
proaching this reading of Kant isto say, as Eliane Escoubas does, that
the results of the analytic of the beautiful and the sublime lead Kant
to elaborate a notion of truth loser toAldtheia than to theCritiqueof Pure Reason.
Without a doubt, from thisoriginal notion of truth n in
dex can be found ina termthat
recursthroughout The
Critique of judgement the term Einhelligkeit. . . In all
cases, Einhelligkeit names the unity of truth.But itsaysmore than the unity of truth.What does the hell of
Einhelligkeit point to?What situation gives place to the
unanimity of Einhelligkeit? It is the radiance or splendorof hell. Einhelligkeit is the "advent" [herstellen] in the
radiance, it is the one, radiant,what no one can fail to
see: the Evidence. If ruth esides inEinhelligkeit,t is
because itresides in shining, inde/on . . .The beautifuland the sublime are "modes of Being" of this truth as
coming-into-presence. "Modes of Being" of the "always
true" . .. a summoning of theOpen.23
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74 GABRIEL RIERA
The truth f Kant's Critique ofludgment is,to follow Philippe Lacoue
Labarthe, a "sublime truth." In its lettingcome into theOpen, this
"sublime truth" isalso the truthof Heidegger's artwork, given that
the artwork is, forHeidegger, the Un-geheuere (the uncanny, the
unbounded, the excessive.)4
The truthof das Ding isalso un-geheuere. For this reason, in
Lacan's analysis of the effects of the beautiful inAntigone, the beau
tiful isalways overflowed by the sublime: "the violent illumination,the glow of beauty, coincides with themoment of transgression or of
realization ofAntigone's Atd"(E, 281). It is t this limit "that the beam
of desire isboth reflected and refracted .. ." (E, 248, my emphasis).The truth of das Ding, the truth of desire, in its sublime glittering
gives [Esgibt] something to be seen, but only by withdrawing itself.
The Es of Es gibt subtracts itself from itsgiving. It isprecisely this
event, or rather,the form of thisevent, which may justifythe relation
between Lacan and Heidegger.
Iwould like to thank Juliet F.MacCannell for her generous comments on an earlier
version of this paper.
1 Elisabeth Roudinesco, La Bataille de cent ans: Histoire de la psychanalyse en
France, Vol. 2 (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1986), hereafter cited as H, and JacquesLacan, Esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'une syst?me de pens?e (Paris: Fayard, 1993),
hereafter cited as JL.
2 William J.Richardson,"Psychoanalysis
and the
Being-Question"
in
Psychiatryand theHumanities, Vol. VI (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), 139
59. Hereafter cited as P.
3 Edward S. Casey and Melvin Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan: the Dialectic of
Desire" inPsychiatry and theHumanities, Vol. VI (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer
sity Press, 1976), 75-112. Hereafter cited as D.
4 Rodolphe Gasch?, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1994), 7.
5 On this last point, see JL, especially the section "Vibrant hommage ? Martin
Heidegger," 291-306.
6 Jean-Luc Nancy, "Manque de rien" in N. Autonomova, et. al., Lacan avec les
philosphes (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), 201-2.
7 Jacques Lacan, ?crits (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1966), 105, quoted inD.8 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. JohnMacquarrie and E. Robinson (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1962), 204-5. Hereafter cited as BT.
9 Martin Heidegger, "L?gos" inEarly Greek Thinking: The Dawn of Western Phi
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ABYSSAL GROUNDS 75
iosophy, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (San Francisco: Harperand Row, 1975). Hereafter cited as L.
10 Martin Heidegger, "The Nature of Language" [Das Wesen der Sprache] in n the
Way to Language, trans. Peter Hertz (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982). Here
after cited as NL.
11 This translatabilityas todo witha "formaltructure"ndgoes beyondthefactthat acan translatedhefirstpart fHeidegger's L?gos"for hefirstssue f the
journal La Psychanalyse.12 For a detailed discussion of the concept of closure in Heidegger and post
Heideggerian thinking,see Simon
Critchley, The Ethics ofDeconstruction: Derrida
and L?vinas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993).
13 Martin Heidegger, "Time and Being" in n Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1972), 10 & 16. Hereafter cited as TB.
14 MartinHeidegger, TheEnd fPhilosophynd the ask fThinking" n n Beingand Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1972), 70.
Hereafter cited as EP.
15 "What oes ground ndprinciplendespecially rinciplef all principles ean?Can this ever be sufficientlydetermined unless we experience al?theia ina Greek
manner as unconcealment and then, above and beyond theGreek, think it s the
opening of self-concealing?" EP, 71.
16 Translation modified. Peter Hertz translates this locution as "it persists in itspres
ence," thus attenuating the active sense of the German Wesen. NL, 95.
17 In this context, it is important to note that an "overcoming [Verwindung] of Greek
experience," as well as the elaboration of an ethics as "firstphilosophy," has been
the task of Emmanuel L?vinas, who subtracts ethics from th?oria and transforms it
into the condition of possibility of religion. See, Alain Badiou, L'?thique. Essai sur
la conscience du Mal (Paris: Hatier, 1993).
18 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VII. The Ethics of Psycho
analysis, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1997), 254. Hereafter cited as E.
19 "Le signifiant, c'est la cause de la jouissance. . .Comment sans le signifiant,
centrer ce quelque chose qui, de la jouissance, est la cause materielle ... le
signifiant c'est ce qui fait halte ? la jouissance." Jacques Lacan, Le S?minaire -
Livre XX. Encore (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1975), 27.20 Lacan forged the neologism "extimit?" (extimacy) based on "intimit?." Jacques
Alain Miller has given a more formal treatment to the topological aporias at playinthat term; see his "Extimit?," Prose Studies 11:3 (December 1988), 121-31.
21 Martin Heidegger, Holderlin's Hymn "The /sfer/'trans.W. McNeill and JuliaDavis
(Bloomington: Indiana Univeristy Press, 1996), 17.
22 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of theWork ofArt," inPoetry, Language, Thought,trans. Albert Hofstadter (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1971), 65; translation
modified. Hereafter cited as OWA. See also JulietMacCannell, "Love Outside the
Limits of the Law," inNew Formations No. 23, Summer 1994, 32.
23 "Cette notion plus originaire de lav?rit?, sans doute peut-on en trouver l'indice
dans un terme qui revient sans cesse dans toute laCritique de la facult? de juger.le terme Einhelligkeit. . . Einhelligkeit dit, dans tous les cas, d'abord l'unit? du
vrai.Mais il it bien plus que l'unit? du vrai. Vers quoi, en effet, fait signe le hell de
VEinhel'igkeit?uelle situation onne lieu l'unanimit?e YE/hhelligkeit?'estla clart? du hell. {^Einhelligkeit, c'est le 'faire venir' (herstellen) en la clart?, c'est
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76 GABRIEL RIERA
l'un-clair, ce que nul ne peut manquer de voir: Y vidence. Si la v?rit? r?side dans
i'Einhelligkeit, c'est qu'elle r?side dans le lumineux, le d?lon ... Le beau et le
sublime sont les 'mani?res d'?tre'de cette v?rit? comme venue-au-jour. 'Mani?res
d'?tre' du 'toujours-vrai'. . . convocation de l'Ouvert." Eliane Escoubas, Imago
Mundi. Topologie de l'art (Paris: Galil?e, 1986), 67-8.
24 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "La v?rit? sublime" in jean-Fran?ois Courtine, et. al.,
Du sublime Paris: elin,1988).Cf. theremarksfHeidegger in WA: "Thus inthe artwork it is truth that is at work," and "Beauty isone way inwhich truth
occurs as unconcealedness" {OWA, 56).