How Lacan's Ethics Might Improve Our Understanding of Nietzsche's Critique of Platonism: The Neurosis and Nihilism of a ‘Life' Against Life

his paper sets to answering the question of how Lacanrsquo;s 1959-60 Seminar on emThe Ethics of Psychoanalysis/em, with its recurring critique of the Platonic idea of a moral Sovereign Good, might contribute to and improve our understanding of the Nietzschean project to diagnose the moral metaphysics instigated by Plato in philosophy, and by Christianity in religion, as a history of untruth and nihilismndash;ndash;emopposed to life/emndash;ndash;in preparation for its overcoming. I explore the possibility that Lacanrsquo;s emEthics/em might make such a contribution by i) its tripartite ontology of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary serving as an additional frame of reference for examining the nature of the Good and our configurations of desire beneath it; and ii) by its more detailed elaboration of the archaic, polymorphous perversity at the instinctual base of the drives, what Lacan in his emEthics/em will call emdas Ding/em, the somewhat diabolical Freudian Thing. I also attempt to indicate how Nietzschersquo;s own ethics might make a contribution to those of the Lacanian, for the purposes of further combating what I will take to be the contemporary neurosis and nihilism of a lsquo;lifersquo; emagainst/em lifendash;ndash;as indicated today for instance by such phenomena as the physical destruction of the environment, along with us as amongst its earthly inhabitants

Renaturalising : Lacan\u27s ethics and Nietzsche\u27s critique of platonism

‬This thesis examines how Lacan\u27s ethics of psychoanalysis might contribute to our understanding of Nietzsche\u27s critique of Platonism.<br /

Bataille, Literature, Happiness, & Evil

This article examines Bataille’s philosophy of art apropos of his express writings on literature. The aim is to see what program Bataille can offer for an aesthetics in terms of future writings of artistic works including “the novel,” which Bataille also wrote himself. First it discusses Bataille’s 1949 article “Happiness, Eroticism, and Literature,” which posits literature as a quest for happiness, and compares this with his 1957 Literature and Evil which posits it, rather, as a quest for “Evil.” Then it explores Bataille’s writings on poetry, which invoke it as a way to smash through the rut prose literature falls into, in order to attain a more immediate experience. Finally, it turns to the need for separation Bataille posits between the poetic and rational that must also be a path between the two – and argues that a clarity of consciousness of these two distinct but related realms would constitute Bataille’s directive for future novels: to help us think within the real of their experienc

The ‘Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit'”a Brief Review (Stern, Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit)

A brief review of the 2002-4 ldquo;Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spiritrdquo;, by Robert Stern, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Focusing in particular on Stern#39;s attempt to negotiate some of the difficulties inherent in the procedure of #39;dialectical#39; thinking, in a form suitable to those reading Hegel for the first time. br /nbsp