THE SYMPTOM

12
Fall 2011 Universalism versus globalization. This at least will be
our US chapter to be read as United Symptoms, Jacques-Alain
Miller
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Towards a New Concept of Existence
Alain Badiou
The Non-Existent Seminar
Jacques-Alain Miller
Authors Bio
There is a simple way to present Jacques-Alain Miller, to call him Jacques-Alain Miller. This name
will be presented as a proper noun, that is as a proper name.
We are dealing here with a seminar by Lacan which does not exist. There is an advantage in
presenting a seminar that does not exist: nobody would be able to tell me afterwards that I have
not talked about this or that. The commentary will be necessarily complete.

Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis
Why can we say that there is a Lacans seminar that does not exist? Because we have the name
of the seminar, The Names of the Father, and as we have the name of the seminar, however we
can say that there is no seminar of Lacan that corresponds to this name. The fact that there is a
name allows us to say that there is no corresponding seminar to this name.
The name The Names of the Father, the title, was announced by Lacan in 1963 for the
academic year 1963-1964. We know that Lacan delivered the first lesson of this seminar and then
came to a halt: silence Thus the title, the name The Names of the Father, remained as an
empty reference.
I recall that I wanted to publish this only lesson, the first lesson of the non-existent seminar,
within his Seminar XI The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, which is the seminar
that Lacan began in 1964, after the interruption of that of The Names of the Father. I proposed
Lacan to include this lesson as prefacing the volume. First he said yes, and next morning he
called me and said that he had changed his mind: No. So, the opening lesson has not been
published, at least by me, ever since. I think we should do it now.
Thus, The Names of the Father, the seminar for that title, was a hole in Lacans teaching. I
think Lacan liked that the series of his seminars had a hole, a lack, as a proof that you are not
going to know everything. And, over the years, he clearly had a great pleasure in interpreting that
hole. He used to sayand this is found in his seminars as well as in crits: It is not by chance
that I could not do my seminar on the Names of the Father.
He regarded the fact that he couldnt deliver the seminar on The Names of the Father as
belonging to the realm of the impossible: It is not by chance, there is a need at work, that
perhaps renders it impossible. As ifwe could venture into the as if raised by this holeto
meddle with the Name-of-the-Father in psychoanalysis was still impossible, as if the Name-of-the-
Father should remain under a veil, as if those who dare to interfere with the Name-of-the-Father
were doomed to some act of vengeance, as if some kind of curse was attached to the Name-of-
the-Father, the curse of the Pharaoh.
Sometimes Lacan also said something else: I will never say what might have been said about The
Names of the Father because they dont deserve it (ils ne le mritent pas!) and they will never
know it! Sometimes he was a Pharaoh himself prone to retaliation
So in this way, this curious object, The inexistent seminarwhich mimics a title by Italo
Calvinoseems to point to the fact that Lacan had in mind to take with him to the grave the
secret of The Names of the Father, becoming the Pharaoh himself lying in the pyramid that
protects the secret of The Names of the Father. What secret? Because we must first ascertain
if there is a secret. The secret would be what the very title of the seminar declares. The secret is
evident in the title itself, as evident as the purloined letter. It can be read as if the whole seminar
was in its title: the secret is that there is no Name-of-the-Father, that the name as such, as
singular, as unique, the name as absolute, does not exist. So, the secret would be that the grave
of the fatherof the father in the singularis empty.
Lacan somehow comments on this in crits, in The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of
Desire in the Freudian Unconscious, that Moses tomb is as empty for Freud as Christs was for
Hegel. He then concludes: Abraham revealed his mystery to neither of them. In similar fashion
Lacan refrained from revealing his mystery to us, he didnt want to. In this regard Lacan positions
Freud and Hegel on the same side and makes fun of both: there is something of the father they
have not understood! Whereas it is possible that Kierkegaardwho devoted a long essay to
Abrahams sacrificeunderstood. It is chiefly the father who makes off with the secret, who
assumes the secret of life and goes down with such a secret, with the ultimate answer that is
always locked for the subject.
There is a clinical case in which, in a dream, the subject keeps sucking a lock. And here we are
with The Names of the Father sucking the lock, the lock Lacan left behind. And if we would
have ask him why he hasnt told us the secret, in all probability he would have responded as in the
history of the Freudian cauldron: I didnt reveal the secret of The Names of the Father, firstly
because this secret cannot be said, secondly because I have been kept from saying it and, thirdly,
because I didnt want to say it, and I wouldnt have been able to say it because I dont know it.
This would be the introduction of the inexistent seminar. Ill proceed with the story and the
structure.
But first I would like to remind you that the issue between the Name-of-the-Father and The
Names of the Father has always been for Lacan a clinical question. And it seems appropriate to
refer them to The Function and Field of Speech of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis
where I think this the first written occurrence of the term the name of the father. Lacan doesnt
write it as we usually do, with capital N and capital F, but all lowercase and in italics.
And this essay, when he first introduces the term, he wishes to emphasize that the recognition of
the name of the father, i.e. the distinction between the symbolic father, the imaginary father and
the real father, implies a strong impact on the actual direction of the treatment. He says: This
conception allows us to clearly distinguish, in the analysis of a case, the unconscious effects of this
function from the narcissistic relations, or even real relations, that the subject has with the image
and actions of the person who embodies this function; this results in a mode of comprehension
that has repercussions on the very way in which interventions are made by the analyst. Practice
has confirmed the fecundity of this conception to me, as well as to the students whom I have
introduced to this method. And, both in supervision and case discussions, I have often have
occasion to stress the harmful confusion produced by neglecting it.
Distinctly, it presents the Name-the-Father as the principle of the method, the clinical method, and
as a decisive factor in the direction of the treatment which he claims to have verified both in his
own practice and in supervision. This implies that the studying of the impact of the Name-the-
Father in clinical cases appears in Lacan from the outset.
Now I will, among other textsas an a anecdote of the inexistent seminarrefer, for example, to
Science and Truth, where Lacan says, I am inconsolable at having had to drop my project of
relating the function of the Name-of-the-Father to the study of the Bible. And in a footnote he
refers: We put on hold the seminar we had announced for 1963-64 on the Name-of-the Father,
after having given the opening lecture (November 63).
It is notable that he says the Name-of-the-Father in singular when, obviously, this is the Name-
of-the-Father in plural. It is fun to see how the same French edition writes the Name-of-the-
Father in singular, when, in fact, he had announced it as The Names of the Father. This can be
interpreted.
The hole preserves the memory of the obstacle met by Lacan himself, precisely at the moment of
the final showdown with the International Psychoanalytic Association. On November 19, 1963 the
name of Lacan is crossed out, deleted from the list of training analysts, by his colleagues of the
French Committee of Training Analysts, according to the decree of the IPA. And the next day,
November 20, Lacan gives the opening lecture of his seminar The Names of the Father stating
that this seminar would stop at the end of the lesson. He also declared of having received the
news the night before There are several stories about that moment.
There is a certain curse that befell on the five signatories of the decree. I will not detail the life of
each of them, but it seems that none of them really approved the act. Recently one of these
persons made known to us how he had signed that effacement: almost by mistake
So, he gives the first lesson, stops and leaves Sainte-Anne. Althusser and Ferdinand Braudel
soon pick him up and invites him to continue at the cole Normale Suprieure, and there Lacan
begins the seminar on the Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis. Personally there, I listened to Lacan
for my very first time on that day in January 1964 when he began the seminar on the
Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis, which was published as his eleventh Seminar, The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, because that is how the whole audience called it, and is
the title we gave the book.
Lacan begins this seminar, as you well know, with an account of his excommunication, as if he
had been punished for having soiled the Name-of-the-Father, for questioning the Name-of-the-
Father, for impiety; as if the heirs of Freud at the IPA would have punished him for meddling with
the father as constructed by Freud, and with Freud himself as the father of psychoanalysis.
There is a substitution. In place of the seminar The Names of the Father Lacan gives a seminar
on the Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis, namely on the concepts of Freud. One could almost
write, why not, the concepts instead of the names, as a substitution, as a metaphor.

Is it not perhaps the same? Would it not, the seminar on The Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis,
just be the seminar The Names of the Father unde a different guise? Although The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis is presented as a epistemologicical study, Lacan quietly
continues arguing with Freud and his desire. And more to the point on his desire of the Father to
the extent that the IPA responds to the desire of Freud. As if Lacan, as a son, as a small
Abraham, though a small and guilty Abraham, a Abraham that would also be Spinoza, should be
sacrificed to the wrath of the Father.
For Lacan there is a correspondence between the seminar The Names of the Father and the
excommunication, as if the story of his life is consistent with the structure of the psychoanalytic
movement, as if the crossing out of his name, the bar on the name of Lacan concurs with the bar
he puts on the Name-of-the-Father, as if the crossing out of his own name is reciprocated by his
barring on The Names of the Father.
Now lets go back to the following point: the metaphor of the name.
Alongside with the epistemological investigation of The Four Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan
continues his enquiry on Freuds desire. He tries to locate what has not been yet analyzed of
Freuds desire, thus submitting to discussion the part that Freud and his desire played in the
development of psychoanalysis, be it it in the treatment or in the psychoanalytic movement itself.
In particular, he addresses the role of religion since he intends to bring psychoanalysis to the level
of science, while holding that in its current state it still involves a great deal of religion.
And what he says in Seminar XI (in the first lesson, which is titled Excommunication) conveys a
better understading of this background: What are the formulae in psychoanalysis concerned
with? What motivates and modulates this sliding-away (glissement) of the object? Are there
psycho-analytic concepts that we are now in possession of? How were we to understand the
almost religious maintenance of the terms proposed by Freud to structure the analytic
experience? Was Freud really the first, and did he really remain the only theoretician of this
supposed science to have introduced fundamental concepts? Were this so, it would be very
unusual in the history of the sciences. Without this trunk, this mast, this pile, where can our
practice be moored? Can we even say that what we are dealing with are concepts in the strict
sense? Are they concepts in the process of formation? Are they concepts in the process of
development, in movement, to be revised at a later date?
This goes beyond the correction, the purification of our understanding of Freudian concepts. This
goes beyond the common interpretation of the return to Freud as a return to the source, to the
authenticity of his teaching. Lacan intends to move from a type of psychoanalysis that invests a
religious respect onFreuds set of notions, namely Freuds expressions, the concepts he
formulated, to a scientific use of the concept.
Unconscious, repetition, transference, drive: we owe these names to Freud. And these four
concepts are the Names of the Father. In the same way Gracin could enumerate the names of
God, in the same way those names could be registered (love, justice, charity, purity), we say,
unconscious, repetition, transference, drive.
At precisely that point Lacan starts, with determination, to move from the concepts to the
mathemes, to replace Freuds Names of the Father with the mathemes, which are Lacans.
Sothat, while he is replacing the concepts with names, he is actually preparing to substitute the
concepts with mathemes: he is negotiating the substitution of Freud himself.

We can also locate the first substitution, that of the Name with the Name.

The transition is from the singular to the plural. How can this be interpreted?
To begin with, there is more than one. But the fact that there is more than one changes
everything, because we go from the one to the many, and the effect is clearly a relativization of
the Name-of-the-Father. It is not absolute but relative; it implies the idea that there is a Name-of-
the-Father and another and another and so on. That is, a kind of paganism, just what is
prohibited by the God of Israel, who wanted to be partnerless and had no desire for a newcomer
who would utter Me too, which clearly creates a problem of territorialization that has been going
on forever Instead of being one, it means to be one amongst others. I must say that it
involves the castration of the God of Israel, the castration of God who in this way enters into a
series.
But it also means that for Lacan, even if one believes that when the Name-of-Father is uttered the
father is the only Name-of-the-Father capable of bearing the Name-the-Father, the father is a
name Name-of-the-Father among others. That The Woman, for example, The Woman may be a
Name-of-the-Father too.
In this way he introduces two meanings for the father. The Name-of-the-Father is only the name
of a function. This means that the Name-of-the-Father can be written as a function: NP (x),
introducing in each case, in each clinical case, the question of what is that has been functioning
for the subject as Name-of-the-Father.
Making from the singular to the plural implies proceeding from religion to science; this may be a
prelude of the passage from religion to science.
Dealing with the name of God is a religious issue. We dont need to accumulate much evidence to
support this: Thou shall not take my name in vain, indeed, in Judaism the name is the name we
dont know how to utter Not knowing protects the name itself, that is to say that the name is
protected by an encrypted internal secret, an essential cyphering, a silent signifier, a letter that no
one knows or that no one is allowed to pronounce.
Every time Lacan refers to the Name-of-the-Father, he refers to the tradition that the Name-of-
the-Father itself upholds. This connection corroborates that the Name-of-the-Father was not
invented by psychoanalysis, but that it is a legacy of a culture among other human cultures.
Roman Catholicism speaks of God as a father, the Father par excellence.
We also find in religion an issue with the names of GodIve already mentioned Gracinwhere
the attributes of God are sought, the names designating His essential qualities, and all this
revolves around an essential unity. Whereas with the pluralization of the Names of the Father
but not with a subordinate multiplicity surrounding the unicity of the name of Godwhen Lacan
speaks of the Names of the Father, there is only a plurality surrounding a function.
Here we find a transition from religion to logics which implies that the Name-of-the-Father is a
function that can be supported by various elements playing the role of the Name-of-the-Father;
also the Name-of-the-Father, as was previously utilized and as Lacan himself did, is not the final
answer.
This objection was persistently addressed by Lacan against himself, I read it with the expression
Lacan against Lacan. The development of Lacans teaching consists in contradicting, in
continually objecting anything he said before. Well, this is clearly the case. The nonexistent
seminar The Names of the Father is the objection made to the paternal metaphor and it also
refers this metaphor as the basis for further reflection.
In the paternal metaphor the Name-of-the-Father performs the function of metaphorizing the
Desire of the Mother. But the Name-of-the-Father is already the metaphor of the father.
We write the Name-of-the-Father as the metaphorizing agent of the Desire of the Mother like this:

But we should remember that this Name-of-the-Father is, above all, the metaphor of the presence
of the father.

The Name-of-the-Father works very well in the absence of the father and subsequently Lacan
criticizes the theory of the lack of the father. But the Name-of-the-Father makes the father
himself absent. The function of the Name-of-the Father makes the father absent because in the
Name-of-the-Father we deal withand this belongs to most popular Lacanthe father as spoken
by the mother, that is, as a being of language.
This means that the Name-of-the Father exists in absence, it exists as something that is murdered
by the signifier, as a subject, a topic, a reference of the discourse of the mother, as an empty
reference. To begin with, the Name-of-the-Father is the father metaphorized by the discourse of
the mother and as such it is dead, killed by that same discourse.
As those who are bereft of father, whom never knew their father, the Name-of-the-Father has, in
this case, acquired an even stronger force since it was unable to compare the Name-of-the-Father
with the dejected husband of the mother. As we see in analysis, they suffer not so much of the
lack but of the presence since the paternal ideal holds extreme weight: they suffer of the Name-
of-the-Father. Sometimes there is a great relief in finding out that all this was a fabrication of the
maternal myth. The fall of the Name-of-the-Father as the support of the Ideal may indeed bring
great solace.
Thus, in Lacan, the concept of the Name-of-the-Father links the Freudian Oedipus complex to the
myth of Totem and Taboo in the paternal metaphor. They fit together in a very elegant way, the
Oedipus complex, the myth of Totem and Tabooas far as it introduces the father as a
deadfatherand the castration complex. The strength of the paternal metaphor resides in uniting
these three aspects of Freuds teaching.
At the same time, the Name-of-the-Father is an element of the general theory of the name,
linguistics and mathematical logic; it belongs to the general theory of proper names. So that
would it would have been possible to present The Names of the FatherIve thought about it
first as a theory of proper names and, second, as a theory of the father.

The Proper Name
Something should be said on proper names since, apparently, there is a chapter of the non-
existent seminar that deals with proper names both in linguistics and mathematical logic. All this
seems like Borgean dream, an entire morning reading and studying a seminar that does not exist!
The proper name is, in language, what, par excellence, is not translated, that which is repeated.
Obviously, when it comes to writing and to a language that has a different writing, we have a
transliteration; that is to say that we use different written signs to lead the reader into making the
same sounds as in the original language. It is very odd to see ones name in Japanese But the
fact that a proper name is what is not translated into another language makes it resemble to a
matheme in so far as it susceptible of integral transmission; you dont look for an equivalent.
Sometimes there are proper names that are common nouns, but they are not translated into
another language. For in that case I would call myself Meunier, because Miller does not exist in
French as a common noun, whereas it has a meaning in English. This would indicate that now Im
being Lacans miller and that in French I would be called Meunier.
Consequently, the proper name is equivalent to a matheme and its association with language
becomes a downright issue. With the proper name we dont inquire about its meaning, but about
its reference, for instance, we ask if Jacques-Alain Miller arrived on time or if he hasnt. You may
inquire about its reference but not about its meaning. If we wish to study its significationwe
might work on the meaning of a proper name, for example, by separating its phonemeswe will
bring it down to the level of a common noun. For that reason, Lacan argues that the analyst
accepts to turn his name into a common noun, thereby lending it to the analysand, and this name
will eventually reappear as fragmented in the formations of the unconscious. I will not go into
that.
Also, proper names hold a connotational meaning. For instance, they can locate an origin, which
is what makes it so fun for an European who can track down in the diversity of names that are
present in America and how they may indicate an origin: Irish, Italian , Central Europe, Middle
East and so on. Yesterday I bought a volume with three thousand proper names. It looked fun,
but it is only proper names Proper names are intended for names, however, in a proper name
there are the first name and the family name and the weight is on the family name. We must
take this distinction into account since the Names of the Father are actually said in French.
Nobody ever thought that they are the fathers names (noms de famille). In English there is the
first and then there is the family name, and in French there are prnom and nom. A proper name
is made of a name and a last name, a nom and a prnom, the conjunction of the two, in both
languages.
Proper names are words that dont signify, instead they refer, which fall within Freges division
between Sinn und Bedeutung, which Lacan used and which convey a specific difficulty to
discursive reason. For how do we deal, for example, with ordinary language? We may manage,
in the manner of Frege, by distinguishing between function and argument; that means opening a
gap in the sentence, precisely where the proper names are, and the rest is worked out with a
function.
The writing of the phallic function, namely, that which allows us to say the element x has the
property F, F (x), responds to the function F or has the property F, all this leads to the
disappearance of the proper names. The x is not a proper name and it means that several
elements can be replaced. It means that x is essentially interchangeable, whereas the proper
name is essentially irreplaceable. In psychoanalysis we find these irreplaceable elements for the
subject, for instance irreplaceable fantasms.
The logical treatment of the proper name started with Bertrand Russell in 1905, when he tried to
elucidate the proper name utilizing the Fregean function. In his a famous article, called On
denoting, he deals with the theory of definite descriptions. The problem he had to solve was how
to explain the fact that a definite description, i.e. the description of a referencewhich accounts
for a proper name because it has to locate one and only one as, for instance, the present King of
Francemay not include anyone who falls under that expression. How can we clean language
from those expressions that are in themselves misleading because they make believe there is
someone when in fact there is no one (there is no the present King of France)?
He chose this example because at the time there was a King in England and this well-known
example is remind us of the seminar The Names of the Father. We say the seminar The Names
of the Father when in truth there is no seminar The Names of the Father.
How to account for the fact that we have the concept of the present king of France and that
nobody corresponds to this description, to this concept? For him, this amounts to say, I did not
know that Walter Scott was the author of Waverley, that is to say I didnt know that the
description, the concept, the author of the novel Waverleyhas to do with the existence of Walter
Scotts proper name.
Now, how to explain this? The solution is in the fact that we need first to differentiate the concept
or function, F (x), that is the present king of France, and then add another formula that says:
there is no element that corresponds to that description.
There are two aspects: the concept and the existential dimension. The answer, and this matters,
lies in the disjunction between the intension of the concept, its definition, and the extension of the
concept. Intension doesnt mean wonderful and extension doesnt signify low quality as, I
dont know why, it has become common in psychoanalysis since the time Lacan spoke about
intension and extension. Intension is the definition of a concept, for example, the definition of
psychoanalysis, the definition of the psychoanalyst. Extension is what exists underneath, that is,
the analysts and the apparatuses they make use of to operate. All these belongs to the extension,
and the rest involves the definition of psychoanalysis.
Russells solution, which since then has been addressed by a vast literature, somehow reveals the
proper name as a set of properties. It is as if someones proper name could be deciphered as the
signifying agent of a set of properties.

It means that this someone responds to the property F (to be born on a specific day), plus the
property F (to be mentioned in a biographical dictionary as having died on a specific date, at a
particular place), plus the property F and so on.
Its an infinite list that would be shortened by the proper name. This might lead us to consider
whether this set of properties has always existed or hasnt. Lets pass over this. It looks like an
infinite set.
Saul Kripke, in a noted article from 1972an article which Lacan was prompt to cite when he
introduced in logics the Leibnizian possibleconsiders the question differently.
I do not know that Walter Scott wrote Waverley can be translated as: There is a possible world
where he didnt write Waverley, or There is a possible world where Walter Scott is known but
where it is not known that he wrote Waverley. That does not prevent Walter Scott to exist as a
proper name, which remains despite the fact that this property is not known to me.
With this argument you can eliminate all the properties of the name. I thought Sir Walter Scott
used to live in the seventeenth century. We are mistaken mistaken by two centuries! But that
doesnt prevent the proper name to prevail.
Therefore he infers that the proper name is not the summary of a list of properties but what he
calls a rigid designator, that is, a pure signifier. It is his way of saying that its a pure signifier,
that it not a signification always fluid and flexible of concepts or properties.
Somehow, Kripkes argues that the proper name deletes all properties. We can write it in the
Lacanian way:

This very well agrees with what Lacan states in The Subversion of the Subject where he
declares that the proper name means nothing, that it has no other signification besides its
utterance, which precisely defines the proper name as a rigid designator. Earlier, in The
Signification of the Phallus, Lacan declared that The subject designates his being only by barring
everything it signifies. We should note that this would be the same term Kripke will use at a
much later date.
What its been introduced in the problematics of the proper namewhich is part of the problem of
the Names of the Fatheris how to designate its being. I may designate this being by way of the
proper name which is the Name-of-the-Father in the common usage; I may designate it either by
the I or by a proper name whicht is the Name-of-the-Father. Moreover, there are feminists who
entirely reject the husbands surname, choosing instead the surname of their own father, as if
their fathers name would be closer to their own being.
But any classification based on the proper name in fact designates the subject as being already
dead: its the name that will be engraved on its tomb. Sometimes it is essential for the name to
be on the gravesite. I have heard the case in which a dead fetus, who had not been buried
according to the accepted rites, returns in the symptoms of the subject until a symbolic burial
takes place where the analyst holds a prominent position; before that the dead fetus kept
returning in dreams as if something was missing in the pacification of the name.
I dont want to speak against proper names, but the proper name categorizes the subject as
always already dead. In The Subversion of the Subject Lacan calls into question the Name-of-
the-Father: at the same time that he becomes suspicious of the mystery of Abrahamwhen he
introduces the signifier Ahe is looking for definitions other than the Name-of-the-Father or the
proper name to designate the being of the subject as a living being, since the proper name, the
Name-of-the-Father, doesnt allow the naming for what is alive in the subject.
As a result Lacan introduces jouissance when in the above mentioned crithe states: a being who
appears in some way missing from the sea of proper names. We will discuss why he writes the
sea.
He writes the sea because he doesnt write set, we dont know where it stops, where it halts.
Its something that the subject, as I (Je), doesnt know: the subject, as subject of language,
doesnt known whether he is alive or dead. This happens every time we quote Lacan. How do we
say? Lacan says, and again Lacan says, and it makes no difference whether Lacan is alive
or dead when we say it. As if Lacan would keep saying for ever and ever
Thus, the argument of The Names of the Father becomes the answer to the question: What am
I (Je)? We find it in The Subversion of the Subject, namely that I am in the place
of jouissance. This is Lacans answer.
We may then sum up that what is set in motion with The Names of the Father is that, in
analysis, Im looking for my name of jouissance. That is to say that Im looking for a suitable
name to designate the being in the sea of proper names. The a is not a proper name, its its
matrix; or we might say that its the proper name as reduced to a pure matheme. We might
guess that its this formula: a. I would say thatat the same timeits not a proper name or that
its the root of the proper name. Its the proper name as reduced to the pure matheme a.
Consequently, the writing a is fundamentally different from the writing (x). Whereas the latter
designates a variable, the former entails a constant. And because of this, its almost equivalent
to a proper name. Its s a constant. The a is irreplaceable, and Lacan returns repeatedly to what
at the end analysis could or should be articulated as I am my a, or I am this a, beyond the
Name-of-the-Father.
When we attempt a diagnosis, what are we trying to do? We try to classify the subject in the light
of a clinical structure. We say an obsessional neurotic, a hysteric, a psychotic and so forth.
It is not the proper name. When the proper name shows up in the clinic, its more like the Rat
Man or like the Wolf Man, where the proper namein the clinicis not the Name-of-the-Father.
The definite description of the Wolf Man has nothing to do with Sergei Petrov nor with the
function of the Name-of-the-Father; its his name of jouissance.
The a would be, a name which is not a metaphor, as if it could designate the truth of jouissance of
the subject.
For this reason, Lacan wanted to begin with his seminar The Names of the Father after that of
Anxiety, since the latter was devoted to the objet a. Accordingly, if there is objet a, we must
conclude that there is no Name-of-the-Father, there are the Names of the Father, pluralized.
Eventually, the seminar The Names of the Father brings to a conclusion a series that he begun
with The Identification (1961-2) and Anxiety (1962-3).
Identification answers to the question of what am I (Je). Psychoanalysis first response is
identification, that is, the distinction between the imaginary identification and the symbolic
identification.

Lacan sets up his seminar upon the subjects lack of identity, which is the point of departure to
understand why it must identified, why identification is a must: the subjects lack of identity.
Lacan differentiates the imaginary identification from the symbolic identification of the Ego Ideal.
But in that answerwhich is the answer of the Graph of desirewe start with the S, and the
whole circuit ends up answering the identification with an attribute of the Other. This is the
summary of the entire graph:

However, Lacan studies the identification to show that there is an element in excess, under
tension, which is the objet a:

Then Lacan substitutes the answer with the identification with the answer with the being
of jouissance:

If at the level of desire, the answer to What am I (Je)? might be an identification, then,
concludes Lacan, identifications, since Freud, are determined by desire. In On Freuds Trieb and
the Psychoanalysts Desire he writes: Identifications are determined by desire without satisfying
the drive. The without satisfying the drivean identification that doesnt satisfy the drive
signifies that there is a name other than that which derives from the insignia of the Other. And
this is a and what the seminar Anxiety highlights: the deficiency of everything that pertains to
the register of identification, even the symbolic identification.

The Names of the Father
I can now introduce the fourth point: The Names of the Father.
When Lacan introduces it, in the only session of the seminar, the opening lesson, he points out
that the previous year he studied the objet a, and argues that Hegelian dialectics is false.
Why does he remind us about the falsity of Hegelian dialectics to begin with The Names of the
Father? Its about something very specific: once one starts with the logic of the function, there is
something one cannot reach. From then on, its about attaining the particular from the universal;
that is the inherent weakness of any writing of the type x F(x).
What is the weakness with this universal formula? You may see it for example in the phrase All
unicorns are lovable. This is true because they all appeared in works of art and are generally
lovable. The unicorn has only a small defect: it doesnt exist. Therefore, it is impossible to take
issue with it. If you tell me that its not true, I will say, Bring me a unicorn. This means that the
universal proposition says nothing about the existential, which is a deficit of that logic; if we start
with the universal we will never proceed immediately to the existential.
Its different when you say: There are some that are in this way, and there are some other that
are otherwise. So eventually Lacan introduces the exception that the universal needs to hold on
to the existential. But at the level of the universal we only have the description of a concept, at
the level of the universal proposition we are in the intension, which is the same as taking the
concept. Its Beauty is a component of the concept unicorn and doesnt allow the transferral into
existence.
Thus the universal may correspond to an empty extension, for instance, All the analysts know
what the unconscious is. Thus Lacan notes the fact that the concept of analyst speaks nothing
on whether there is or there isnt an analyst. We may think about the most elaborate concept of
the analyst, but still we dont know whether we deal with an empty or a full extension. Many
suspect that such extension might be empty
The Hegelian illusionthe Hegelian deceptionsuggesting that the universal could be coupled
with the particular; that is that it can reach the place of the individual. At this point Kierkegaards
objection is advanced against the master Hegel, who moves from the universal to the particular
without difficulty. Kierkegaard says: Anxiety. He writes an essay on anxiety which declares:
Hegel, there is something that your dialectic will never get rid of, anxiety. Its the anxiety you
live through. All your logical constructions are helpless against the complaint it voices, the
rebellion of the particular in me: my anxiety.
And its the same Kierkegaard who inquires into the sacrifice of Abraham, who sets the scene for a
God that doesnt work quietly as the God of Descartes or the God of Malebranche. The God of
Descartes does all his work, meaning he keeps the law of the world or he creates the world and
then allows it to go. The God of Malebranche, by contrast, must hold the world continuously, that
is, he creates the world but then its a continuous creation. Hes always busy doing things.
The God of Abrahams sacrifice is a different matter. The God of Abrahams sacrifice is not the
God of the philosophers and sages, but the God of Isaac, Abraham and Jacobthis distinction is
made by Pascalits not a God as subject-supposed-to-know, but a God with a desire .
On the same line Lacan observes that we are not dealing with the Father as a figure of the law
that he himself has made, its not a Father equivalent to the big Other, rather quiet, as a place.
Because the Father of the law is a place, like with chairs, to give a seat. Thus, in the seminar The
Psychoses, when he introduces the Name-of-the Father, Lacan speaks of the chair, of the stool to
be seated.
However, God tells Abraham, Arise. It doesnt say Sit down, but Get up and make the
sacrifice of your son. This God is not the seat but the wandering in the desert, this God is
coherent with the introduction of S(A) and its relation to the objet a, that is, with a figure of the
Other without reason. And Lacan can say that owing to Freud we can go beyond the boundary
stone he placed in the guise of the myth of the fathers murder.
In similar fashion, Lacan praises St. Augustine who, in De Trinitate, declares that God is not causa
sui, that is, God is not Self-caused. Why is Lacan pleased with St. Augustine? Because the
category of cause and effect is inapplicable to the Infinite Being. But he who thinks that God is
of such power as to have generated Himself, is so much the more in error, because not only does
God not so exist, but neither does the spiritual nor the bodily creature; for there is nothing
whatever that generates its own existence. For to posit that God is causa sui entails that God
brings Himself into being through his own concept. Causa sui means that from the essence, from
the definition of the concept, one could come into existence.
Thus, there is a logical solidarity between Hegels dialectics, the Cartesiancogito and the
ontological argument that is being challenged by The Names of the Father. They have the same
logical structure because they deem feasible to go from the concept into existence. The
Cartesian cogito, for instance, finds reasonable to move from a thought into existence,
intoWirklichkeit, which in fact is the very structure of the ontological argument. In The
Subversion of the Subject Lacan says that the proofs of the existence of God have killed Him,
because finds Himself reduced to a logical consequence. To not kill God means to know that God
exists if one loves Him.
This is a common truth. No one has come to believe in God because of the ontological argument
which suggests that based on the concept of God, the essence of God, there is a transition to
existence; that one can move from essence to existence and that from something that exists in
intellectu you can move onto something that exists in re, factually.
Actually, it was Kant who developed the impossibility to go from the concept to existence. You
can imagine a concept, a concept which is not contradictory, but being non-contradictory makes it
only possible, never existing. In this respect Lacan is Kantian and anti-Hegelian.
However, the ontological argument might be saved, for instance, by returning to St. Anselm. I am
sure that Lacan would have spoken of the ontological argument in the non-existent seminar The
Names of the Father, because Saint Anselms quotation is almost a Name-of-the-Father:Aliquid
Quo Nihil Maius Cogitari Possit, which is a partial quote translated into English as a something, a
greater than which cannot be conceived. With this passage he tries to give evidence that this
something necessarily exists. You may argue against the Kantian criticism by stating that this is
not a real concept since it reveals a limitation of thinkingactually, its a sentence that goes way
beyond the concept, over the limits of thinking.
Thats pretty interesting because the only way to challenge, against Kant, the ontological
argument is to demonstrate that the definition, the description or the concept, which is taken as
the starting point of cogitation, in fact describes an impossibility. As a result, we get God not so
much asexistence but as real.
And all those who advocate Kants ontological argument, they do so in the Lacanian way, that is,
they make the case that there is an inability to think and from that apparent inability to think one
can deduce a reason to think the real. Its from the impossible that the real arises.
So that Alexander Koyr, defender of the ontological argument, and tienne Gilsonall friends
who were read by Lacanfavored the ontological argument as an indirect evidence. But we are
not dealing with a concept here, the impossibility in thinking is just taken an as the starting point.
It can also be noted that Saint Anselm does not only speak of maius, the greater. Elsewhere he
speaks of melius, the best. This best shows that the ontological argument is not only
ontologicala word that comes long after Saint Anselmbut is also an ethical argument
concerning the supreme good.
Saint Anselm said: Aliquid Quo Nihil Maius Cogitari Possit, a something, a greater than which
cannot be conceived. He speaks of it as that which is beyond thinking when he says: O immensa
bonitas, quae sic omnem intellectum excedis, Oh, immeasurable goodness, who exceeds all
understanding. In fact Saint Anselm is addressing the goodness and putting goodness in lieu of
the essence, therefore going beyond the concept. We cannot really understand the ontological
argument if we dont give precedence to faith. Saint Anselms title itself proves the case: Fides
quaerens intellectum, Faith Seeking Understanding. It is faith that wants to understand about
what is going on. Saint Augustine insists thatlntelligere vis crede, Whom do you want to
understand? First you must believe.
What does the ontological argument keep saying? That for every thing that exist, one can always
think that there is something bigger, (x), and yet one may find something for which nothing is
bigger, for which nothing bigger can be tought. This answers one of Lacans formulas of
sexuation:

We should break this down a little to better see the subtlety therein, since verily the ontological
argument states: Every thing might be thought, and might be thought always, with something
bigger.

To God there is something that can be thought and of which nothing bigger can be thought, the
question resides in whether this is thinkable or not. Is it an impossibility to think or may it be a
possible thought? Here the authors are divided: if its thinkable, then we start with a concept; if
its an impossibility, then the description given by Saint Anselm is a quasi-concept, a pseudo-
concept; in fact, it poses only the impossibility of thinking.
Lacans solution is very simple: it doesnt matter if its unthinkable, it can be written. And the
writing of a stands for something, no matter how unthinkable, since it can be written.
Thus, Lacan posits that God is not causa sui. To say that God is causa suisignifies that its
possible to go from the concept to existence without a as a cause, as irreducible cause. Causa
sui, as the ontological argument, function as a reduction of a. And every time Lacan comments
the Cartesian cogito or the causa sui, he re-establishes the a.
In Science and Truth he sets up the a in the Cartesian cogito and ponders as well over the causa
sui. On that account, he is against the Augustian translation of the imposing sentence that the
God of Israel utters to Mosesehyeh ascher ehyeh, which Saint Augustine translates as Ego sum qui
sum(I am who I am); Lacan says that it must be translated as I am what I am, as God appears
as a real without concept.
The concept of God is not the Other of the concept, is not the Other of the signifier. The God in
question is a; it has the status of a real without concept, and around that revolve the Names of
the Father, which seek to imprison it, to conceptualize it.
That is the aim of the investigation of the pass, to the analystas the God of Israelto stand
as a and say: I am what I am, and in this way be able to justify the access he has obtained to
his name of jouissance.
To consider the idea that God is a instead of the Other may surprise you. But you have to look
into at what Freud tells us when he reflects on the totem as the primitive form of the divine, when
he presents us with an animal God. The animal so captivating, fascinating for the human religious
because it escapes the lack of being of the speaking being. For this reason in almost all of Freuds
cases, the names of being, as the subjects name ofjouissance, are animals: rats, wolves; and
there is little Hans, the child of the horses. There is also Dora though, who is the woman of
men, another type of animal! And of course, there is Schreber. But in Schrebers case, God
himself makes an appearance. Schreber is the man of the gods, because God comes forward
with all of his names; we just know Hormuz and Ahriman, but we know there are others
Now, perhaps, I can take on a fifth point: Father and Jouissance.
I will highlight this sentence from Subversion of the Subject where Lacan suggests: But what
is not a myth, although Freud formulated it as early on as he formulated the Oedipus myth, is the
castration complex. This makes evident that after having made this extraordinary conjuction
between the Oedipus complex, the castration complex and Totem and Taboo with the paternal
metaphor, Lacan proceeds, however, from the disjunction of the Oedipus complex and castration.
In his notorious paternal metaphor Lacan maneuvers the terms offered by Freud, that is, the
father, the mother and the child, to position a fourth term, namely castration, the phallus. But we
know that after that classic moment in his teaching, Lacanhe not only does the linguistic
transcript of the Oedipus mythconceives the Oedipus complex as myth through which Freud
himself attempted to explain how jouissance was lost. As ifjouissance and its loss were capital.
And perhaps children, but surely the analysts also, had to construct a myth to explain why it was
lost.
As the myths that recall the discovery of fire, as those which explain the existence of the earth,
the sky, men and women, the myth of Oedipus was just, within psychoanalysis itself, a way to tell
why there was something broken in jouissance, and so it reveals that it was because of a ban.
Lacan answers are different. If there is loss of jouissance its not because of that remarkable
story, the reason lies in that, first, pleasure itself sets limits to jouissance. Ther bodys own
homeostasis prevents jouissance to go beyond a certain point and that to go further implies the
crossing of the barrier of pleasure towards pain, which is the Sadean way.
And one scheme to go further in the pursuit of pleasure, to go beyond the limits of pleasure for
those who lack the vocation of the Marquis de Sade, is the symptom, which brings in suffering.
One makes symptom in order to experince suffering (on oneself), but the Marquis de Sade too.
The Marquis de Sade, who allegedly brought suffering to others, managed to be imprisoned for
half of his life, and Lacan stresses that the secret of the Marquis de Sade was his masochism.
So, if it is pleasure that sets the limits to jouissance, what is the history of the law? What is the
story of the Father figure of the law? We should call him by his name: it is a semblant. Lacan, far
from raising the law to a dimension where it becomes the final answer in psychoanalysis, makes of
him a semblant. Besides, it is not enough to say that pleasure sets the limits to jouissance, but
that language as such has the same effect on the body of the speaking being: jouissance torments
him.
So the structure of the signifier is enough, or the structure of the real, of the symbolic, of the
imaginary, to account for the loss of jouissance.
And what comes to be that sort of surplus Name-of -the-Father? The Name-of-the-Father
designates the power of the word. So that the Names of the Father, which you can look for, are
all myths that narrate the loss ofjouissance. They tell about someone, someone in command, who
stealsjouissance. Its not the appropriation of the fire, as in the case of Prometheus, its the theft
of jouissance: While I was sleeping someone came and stole my jouissance.
The Names of the Father are stories that can be look for, stories that attempt to explain the
displacement, the transfer of jouissance towards the Other.
Lacan says that perhaps the most fundamental of The Names of the Father might be that of the
Mother Goddess, which belong to the cults that precede the Names of the Father. The Jewish cult
of the Names of the Father superseded the Mother Goddess. Perhaps the earliest of the Names of
the Father is the name of the Mother and alludes to a book by Robert Graves, The White Goddess,
which, I must say, I had given him.
This introduces the logification of the Name-of-the-Fathers, which we find in The Other Side of
Psychoanalysis as the master signifier, which is the heir of the Name-of-the-Father and of the
Names of the Father, but abstracted, sun-dried, as a pure logical function devoid of the myth.
Thus, Lacan board together the Oedipus complex, castration and Totem and Taboo with
metapsychology, he explains how the libido has been evacuated from body, yet it stays as a. So
we may say that the a refers to what resists the universalizing operation of the Name-of-the-
Father and, in that sense, the Name-of-the-Father covers a. This doesnt mean that the Name-of-
the-Father is under a veil, the Name-of-the Father itself is the veil that covers the loss
of jouissance and the residue of jouissance that resists to the universalizing exertioin, which says
no to the fact of jouissance to be in your body.
This appears, grossly I might say, in the prohibition of masturbation, when we declare: Do not
look for your jouissance in your own body but in the body of the other sex. The prohibition of
masturbation says so rudely because actually jouissance on oneself doesnt exist. What would be
jouissance on oneself? It would be phallic jouissance, but it would appear outside the body,
independently, since any body marked by the Name-of-the-Father becomes the site of the
signifier, the site of this mark, the big Other, emptied of jouissance.
So a appears always detached from the Other. Sometimes in neurosis it can only be found in
clandestinity with respect to the Other, and the subject may inadvertently get lost in the task of
embodying what the Other lacks. In paranoia, instead, the Other and a meet and becomes
manifested in the awareness that the Other jouit of me, whereas in schizophrenia its
the jouissance that returns to the body which destroys the very limits of the body. Here, we
might talk about feminine dementia and the paradox that woman be the Other to herself.
In conclusion I would like to stress that the metapsychology of the Name-of-the-Father is not only
a metaphor, is not only expressed through the metaphor, that is through the metaphor of the
Others jouissance.

Next to the metaphor of jouissance, recurrent in the paternal metaphor, there is the metonymy
of jouissance. The metaphor is a substitution, a deletion, and we obtain an effect of meaning.
Then, why is metonymy more suited to jouissance? Because it entails displacement, a place-
shifting function.
Freud introduced the libido to explain that jouissance is untransferable; its transferable but cannot
be annulled since it moves elsewhere. In The Subversion of the Subject Lacan suggests
that jouissance can only be said in between the lines, which is the function of metonymy. He
develops this further, clearly and without ambiguity, in Radiophonie where he contrats the
metaphor, which operates on meaning, and the metonymy, which functions on jouissance.
Lacan conceives the unconscious as an extractive mechanism, which takes from jouissance, that
is, conveying jouissance to the unconscious. He then envisages the analytical work as
transferring jouissance to the signifier. As he puts it, The business of shifting jouissance to the
unconscious necessitates a crafty movement.
At this juncture, we might inquire into whether the signifier of A. would or wouldnt be the name
of the objet a.
Towards a New Concept of Existence
Alain Badiou
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