Kant with Sade yr De Dl yw SEAS ASAE JACQUES LACAN TRANSLATED BY JAMES B, SWENSON, JR This text should have served as a preface to Philosophy in the Bedroom, [t appeared in the journal Critique (no. 191, April 1963) as a review of the edition of the works of Sade for which it was destined.* ‘That the work of Sade anticipates Freud, be it in respect of the catalogue of perversions, isa stupid thing to say, which gets repeated endlessly among literary types: the fault, as always, belongs to the specialists Against this we hold that the Sadian bedroom is equal to those places from which the schools of ancient philosophy took their name: Academy, Lyceum, Sioa. Here as there, the way for science is prepared by rectifying the position of athics. In this, yes, a ground-clearing occurs which will have to make its way through the depths of taste for a hundred years for Freud’s path to be paseable Count sixty more for someone to say the reason for all of that. If Freud sas able to enunciate his pleasure principle without even having to worry about marking what distinguishes it from its function in traditional ethics, even without risking that it should be heard as an echo of the uncontested Prejudice of two millenia, to recall the attraction which preordains the creature {0 its good, along with the psychology inscribed in various myths of goodwill, we an only credit this to the insinuating rise across the nineteenth century of the theme of “happiness in evil.” naugural step of a subversion, of which, however amusing pect to the coldness of the man, Kant isthe warning point, to our knowledge, as such. Philosophy in the Bedroom comes eight years after the Critigue of Practical son. If, after having seen that the one accords with the other, we show that it ompletes it, we will say that it gives the truth of the Critique. For this reason, the postulates in which the latter culminates: the alibi of For which it was destined on commision. 1 add here, because i's droll that they put msclesin the postion of having to re-commission i fom mie when the success of rts encieve sible (to the person who replaced me’)immortality where it represses progress, holiness, and even love, anything satisty- ing which might come of the law, the guarantee which it requires from a will for ‘which the object to which the law refers would be intelligible, losing even the flat prop of the function of utility to which Kant had confined them, restore the work to its diamondlike subversion. Which explains the unbelievable exaltation which any reader not forewarned by academic piety receives from it. Nothing which might have been explained about it will ruin this effect. That one is wel in evil, or if one prefers, that the eternal feminine does not draw one upward, one could say that this turn was taken upon a philological remark: namely that what had theretofore been admitted, that one is well in the good [gon est bien dans le bien), rests on a homonym which the German lan- guage does not allow: Man ful sick wohl im Guten. This is how Kant introduces, Us t0 his Practical Reason. The pleasure principle is the law of the good which is the wok, let us say wellbeing [bien-ftre]. In practice, it would submit the subject to the same phe- nomenal succession which determines its objects. The objection that Kant poses to iti, true to his rigorous style, intrinsic. No phenomenon can claim for itselfa constant relation to pleasure. Thus no law of such a good can be enunciated which would define as will the subject who would introduce it into his practice. ‘The pursuit of the good would thus be an impasse if it were not reborn as das Gute, the good which is the object of the moral law. It is indicated to us by our experience of listening within ourselves to commandments, whose imperative presents itself as categorical, that is, unconditional. Let us note that this good is only supposed as the Good by proposing itself, as has just been said, over and against any object which would set a condition to it, by opposing itself to whatever uncertain good these objects might provide, in an a priori equivalence, in order to impose itself as superior by virtue of its hus its weight only appears by excluding anything —drive or —whieh the subject might suffer in his interest for an object, what Kant therefore qualifies as “pathological.” It would thus be by induction from this effect that one would recover the Sovereign Good of the Ancients, if Kant, as is his custom, did not further specify that this Good acts not as a counterweight, but, so to speak, as an antiweight, that is to say by the subtraction of weight which it produces in the effect of self-love (Selostsucht) which the subject feels as contentment (arrogantia) of his pleasures, insofar asa glance at this Good renders these pleasures less respectable. His very words, as much as they are suggestive Let us retain the paradox that it should be at the moment when the subject is no longer faced with any object that he encounters a law, one which has no other phenomenon than something already significant, which is obtained froma 1. We refer to the quite acceptable translation by Bari, which dates to 1848, bere pp. 247, and to Vorlinder’s edition (published by Meiner) for the German text, here p. 86. voice in the conscience, and which, in articulating itself asa maxim, proposes the order of a purely practical reason or of a will For this maxim to become law, itis necessary and it is sufficient that, when tested by such a reason, it can be retained as universal by right of logic, Let us recall that this does not mean that this right imposes itself upon everyone, but that itis valid for all cases, or better, that it is not valid in any case [en aucun cas} if tis not valid in every case [en tout cas} But this test, which must be one of reason, pure even if practical, can only succeed for maxims of a type which offers its deduction an analytic grasp. ‘This type is illustrated by the trust that is imposed in the restitution of a deposit? the practice of a deposit being based on the two ears which, in order to constitute the depositary, must be plugged up against any condition that could be ‘opposed to this trust. In other words, no deposit without a depositary equal to his charge. The need for a more synthetic foundation will be felt, even in this obvious case, Let us illustrate in our turn its default, be it at the price of an irreverence, with a retouched maxim of pére Ubu: “Long live Poland, for if there were no Poland, there would be no Poles.” Let no one by some slowness or even emotivity doubt our attachment here toa liberty without which the nations are in mourning. But its analytic motiva tion, while irrefutable, here allows the indefectible to be tempered with the observation that the Poles have always distinguished themselves by a remarkable resstance to the eclipses of Poland, and even to the deploration which followed. ‘One rediscovers what founds Kant’s expression of the regret that, in the experience of the moral law, no intuition offers a phenomenal object. ‘We would agree that, throughout the Critigue, this object slips away. But it can be divined by the trace which is left by the implacable pursuit which Kant brings to demonstrating its elusiveness and out of which the work draws this eroticism, doubtless innocent, but perceptible, whose well-foundedness we will show in the nature of the said object ‘This is why we request that those of our readers who are still in a virginal relation to the Critique, not having read it, stop at this very point of our lines, to take them up again afterwards. They should check whether it indeed has the effect that we say it has; we promise them, in any case, the pleasure that the exploit communicates Phe others will now follow usinto Philosophy inthe Bedroom, into its reading at the very least. Tt turns out to be a pamphlet, but a dramatic one in which a stage lighting permits both the dialogue and the action to continue to the limits of the imagit able: this lighting dims a moment to give way. pamphlet within the pamphlet, 2, Cf. the Remark to Theorem III ofthe fist chapter ofthe Analytic of Pure Practical Reson, Bami, p. 168: Vorlander, p. $1