ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the ethical question of the singular subject’s relationship to desire with particular reference to the final section of Seminar VII, The Tragic Dimension of Psychoanalysis. It considers the ethical implications of desire as both singular (such as within an individual analysis) and as an act contained within a wider social or socio-economic context. In other words, what are the difficulties and ambiguities concerning not giving ground relative to desire when human beings exist not simply alone but always in a relationship with the other/Other? Within this relationship to the Other, the social or socio-economic reality of the singular subject is pervaded by structural inequalities. While desire is fundamental to the being of the Lacanian subject and thus is an essential existential component of a life, a phenomenal account of the lived conditions of desire as both social and cultural expands on this being. If we take desire to be also imbricated within the social fabric, and that the human subject has common basic needs, we can consider what the consequences may be, or what is at stake in taking a stand against the Other. How do we as subjects of the unconscious but also as subjects of the state do our ‘public good’ collectively while remaining ethical in the singular psychoanalytic sense? At the level of Lacanian desire, there is a problematic concerning the relationship of the singular and the collective, which leads to the consideration that the price of freedom or desire is not equal across citizens. According to Lacan, no matter what path we take toward the ‘good’, we will pay a price. Apart from the obvious reckoning with what constitutes the good here, which in essence, is the crux of Seminar VII, this chapter argues that it is important to elaborate further on what we can say of this price.
