The importance of Lacan's thought for philosophical reflection has become obvious since the publication of A. de Waelhens's book Schizophrenia. De Waelhens, an historian of modern philosophy and a phenomenologist in his own right, became convinced by studying psychoanalysis and particularly the writings of Lacan that a Cartesian self-awareness was even less possible than Husserl had shown. De Waelhens also learned from Lacan that to be a subject is different from being conscious, or that there is thought in man elsewhere (...) than in his consciousness. De Waelhens's study of Lacan, furthermore, demonstrated the importance of language in the constitution of the subject. (shrink)

This paper examines the claim of G.W.F. Hegel that chemical thinking-the method of thinking employed in chemistry-marks a significant advance upon meCHANistic thinking-the method of thinking characteristic of physics. This is done in the context of Mancur Olson's theory of collective action and public goods. The analogy between the efficiency of a catalyst in bringing about chemical transformation and the function of leaders in free human society in developing latent groups to provide public goods is explored.

The concept of merit good is a problematic concept in economic theory. The concept was introduced in 1956 by Richard Musgrave. In 1990, on the occasion of an international conference on the concept of merit good, John Head wrote that the concept of merit good raises methodologically difficult and controversial issues. The concept raises doubt about the ultimate normative authority of the consumer sovereignty principle. I will demonstrate that the concept deserves the attention of the philosophical profession for multiple reasons.

This essay offers a philosophical analysis of the role of the father-figure in the family. I argue that a Cartesian approach to this question is useless, and that Hegel, while he offers the beginning of an adequate analysis, falls short of the multiple-function model which an adequate analysis requires.

In this paper, I will first draw attention to the central fact that Freud describes in his article on “Negation”; i.e., “recognition of the unconscious on the part of the ego is expressed in a negative formula.” Technically, such a negative formula is called denial. Second, I will ask whether such denials are accidental or necessary in the life of consciousness. To answer this question I will use the philosophical system of Hegel. I will make use of his ideas at (...) two levels of generality. At the first level of generality, I will analyze one of Hegel’s most famous and influential passages: “Lordship and Bondage.” Hegel presents this passage as a necessary moment in the development of consciousness. If we find in that passage a necessary denial, then we can argue that denial is not just a fact but is, at least in any philosophical anthropology akin to Hegel’s, a necessity. At the second level of generality, we will then quote two statements by Hegel, one about the nature of the will and one about the path to truth for consciousness. Both statements will be clarified by Hegel’s analysis of “Lordship and Bondage.” Both statements will be used to demonstrate that Hegel affirmed explicitly the necessity of negativity in the life of consciousness. (shrink)

What follows is an argument that can be used to justify the introduction of philosophical, and specifically ethical, discourse into a wide range of university courses. The argument advanced is, we hope, both sufficiently formal to convince administrators, and sufficiently broad to convince students, of the practical importance that at least one area of philosophy has for the successful pursuit of even the most praxis-oriented career.

Adriaan Peperzak’s knowledge of the history of philosophy and his Continental philosophical nexus gives his Before Ethics a unique and welcome flavor. In eight essays on contemporary ethics written between 1969 and 1997, Peperzak analyzes our utilitarian, Kantian-deontological, and virtue-oriented ethical convictions in a thorough and enlightening manner.

This well-written book introduces the reader step by step and in a pedagogical way to an aspect of Lacan's thought: the claim that the unconscious is structured like a language. A number of commentators have already introduced two crucial concepts of Lacan into the American intellectual community: the imaginary and the symbolic. Thus the now standard introduction and companion volume to Lacan's Ecrits: Lacan and Language, by John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, gives in the introduction a good presentation (...) of these two concepts. A brief look at the table of contents of the book by Dor allows us to see that Dor takes a further step in the presentation of Lacan's ideas. The first part, "Linguistics and the formation of the unconscious", is only an expansion of the introduction of the Muller-Richardson book, while the second part, "The paternal metaphor as structuring pivot for subjectivity", goes beyond it. The ideas developed in the second part can be usefully complemented by the chapter on the paternal metaphor in the book by De Waelhens Schizophrenia and by my essay on the paternal metaphor or the one on "Fatherhood and Subjectivity". In these other pieces we do not find a clarification of a Lacanian distinction between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunciated. We also do not find in these other pieces a clarification of Lacan's famous schema L. Dor clarifies both admirably in this part of the book. (shrink)

This bibliography is a tremendously useful publication. In the preface, Michael Clark gives us an indication of what he excluded, specifically among the secondary and the background works. Impressive is the fact that he includes works in nine languages. A further idea of the thoroughness of this bibliography is given by the fact that he lists not less than 13 prior bibliographies used to compile his own bibliography.

This book by a Harvard comparative law professor is philosophically important because it takes the position that law is not just an instrument to solve conflicts between human beings. Law is constitutive of meaning because legal language and legal concepts influence the manner in which we perceive the reality.

This book is possibly the first synthetic presentation of the whole of Lacan's theory. It is not just an explanation of Lacanian texts like the now standard text of Muller and Richardson, Lacan and Language. Nor is it just a presentation of a central problem like Dor's Introduction à la lecture de Jacques Lacan, which uses the graph of desire to introduce the reader to Lacan. Finally, it is more comprehensive than Lemaire's Jacques Lacan, where we only get an introduction (...) to the early Lacan, with the exclusion of his doctoral thesis. This book by Julien gives an insight into the oeuvre of Lacan in such a way that nonanalysts can grasp the significance of the Lacanian project for their own discipline. (shrink)

This book is an anthology of both previously published and unpublished material consisting of four parts: "Poe and Lacan," "On psychoanalytic reading," "Derrida and responses," and "Other readings." The heart of the anthology is, however, the debate between the psychoanalyst Lacan and the philosopher Derrida. The debate concerns the interpretation of a story written by Poe, "The Purloined Letter." To his long essay on Poe, Lacan gave pride of place by pulling it out of chronological order and placing it as (...) the first essay in his Ecrits. Lacan uses Poe's story to clarify and illustrate the explanatory power of two master concepts in his own theory: the imaginary and the symbolic. Derrida, in "The Purveyor of Truth," reflects critically on Lacan's theory and his selective use of Poe. The anthology acknowledges that it only includes roughly half of Derrida's original article. Nevertheless, Derrida's article still gives the impression of a hastily composed publication. Lacan's essay, however, gives the impression of being overworked. (shrink)

The anthology under review includes an insightful introduction and five sections. The first section has two chapters on Cognitive Approaches. In both chapters we learn that the therapeutic relationship is very important. The writer of the introduction suggests that these findings could be used to make a connection between the cognitive approach and the psychoanalytic approach by testing the hypothesis that cognitive distortions in persons suffering from schizophrenia are related to the presence of unmanageable affects.