Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy
- 1 Listening or Dispensing? Sigmund Freud on Drugs
- 2 Love as Ontology; or, Psychoanalysis against Philosophy
- 3 Revolution or Subversion? Jacques Lacan on Slavery
- 4 Messianism or Melancholia? Giorgio Agamben on Inaction
- 5 The Slave, The Fable
- 6 Torture, Psychoanalysis and Beyond
- 7 Man is a Swarm Animal
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Love as Ontology; or, Psychoanalysis against Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy
- 1 Listening or Dispensing? Sigmund Freud on Drugs
- 2 Love as Ontology; or, Psychoanalysis against Philosophy
- 3 Revolution or Subversion? Jacques Lacan on Slavery
- 4 Messianism or Melancholia? Giorgio Agamben on Inaction
- 5 The Slave, The Fable
- 6 Torture, Psychoanalysis and Beyond
- 7 Man is a Swarm Animal
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We are of the opinion, then, that language has carried out an entirely justifiable piece of unification in creating the word ‘love’ with its numerous uses, and that we cannot do better than take it as the basis of our scientific discussions and expositions as well. By coming to this decision, psycho-analysis has let loose a storm of indignation, as though it had been guilty of an act of outrageous innovation. Yet it has done nothing original in taking love in this ‘wider’ sense. In its origin, function, and relation to sexual love, the ‘Eros’ of the philosopher Plato coincides exactly with the love-force, the libido of psycho-analysis.
Sigmund FreudLove is not a feeling. Love is put to the test, pain not.
Ludwig WittgensteinDance me to the end of love.
Leonard CohenTHE INDIFFERENCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS TO PHILOSOPHICAL ONTOLOGIES
Because it is an antiphilosophy, psychoanalysis has, from its beginnings, remained indifferent or suspicious towards that most philosophical of themes: ontology. One can see this indifference operating at a number of levels. The practice of psychoanalysis has not necessitated that clinical psychoanalysts intervene directly in ontological questioning, whether implicitly or explicitly. Even in the most volatile moments of its struggles to sustain itself as a singular practice, psychoanalysis has remained relatively unmoved in the face of the counter-claims, concepts and criticisms coming from philosophy – and, a fortiori, from philosophical ontologies. Indeed, the reverse is more the case: it is philosophers who have felt themselves constrained to respond, with some urgency, to the challenges offered by psychoanalysis.
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- Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy , pp. 44 - 62Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013