ABSTRACT
There is a basic dilemma to human temporality at the heart of the psychoanalytic endeavour: we make decisions and take actions throughout our lives without the possibility of knowing the results of these actions in advance. This chapter explores several key Lacanian ideas that link temporality and shame to the capacity to become ethical subjects: trauma and the temporality of Nachträglichkeit; time, the other and the act; fate as 'cause'; and subjective destitution. It considers how the companion of time – the affect of shame – can serve as an ethical guide for the historically situated subject. In an early essay entitled 'Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty: A New Sophism', Lacan demonstrates that temporality has an intersubjective dimension that structures our thinking and our actions. The tripartite structure of the sophism's 'logical time' consists of 'the instant of the glance', 'the time for comprehending' and the 'moment of concluding'.
