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ABYSSAL GROUNDS: LACAN AND HEIDEGGER ON TRUTHAuthor(s): Gabriel RieraReviewed work(s):Source: Qui Parle, Vol. 9, No. 2, Special Issue on Lacan (Spring/Summer 1996), pp. 51-76Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686047 .

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ABYSSAL GROUNDS:LACAN AND HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH

Gabriel Riera

In thinking the linkbetween philosophy and psychoanalysis, the re

lation between Heidegger and Lacan seems unavoidable. Yet, it is

far less clear what form this link should take and how itmight be

justified. Is itenough to say,with Elisabeth Roudinesco, that the rela

tionship between Lacan and Heidegger issimply an episodic event?'

Or, against this anecdotal reduction ofwhat appears to be a more

encompassing intellectual "exchange," is itnecessary, followingWil

liam Richardson, to put the Lacanian subject (the subject of the un

conscious) on the same levelwith Heidegger's Dasein?2 Or, insearch

ingfor n intermediateposition between these two approaches, mightone, with Edward S.

Casey

and Melvin

Woody,read in

Heidegger

a

relatively controllable thematic repertoire that Lacan appropriatesand reformulates to neutralize the "totalizing effects" of theHegeliandialectic?3 Anecdotal reduction, conceptual homology, thematic il

lustration.When thinking the relation between Lacan and Heidegger,it isnecessary to find a differentpath, a path thatwill allow one to

introduce the mark of a spacing. Given thatphilosophy and psycho

analysistoday rosspaths inthis pacing, Iwill follow he uestionof truth as the question inwhich Lacanian psychoanalysis and

Heideggerianthinkingonverge. hequestionof truthill provide

Qui Parle Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring/Summer 1996



52 GABRIEL RIERA

the necessary infrastructure o assess the relation between Lacan and

Heidegger.This essay focuses on thequestion of truth ecause Heidegger's

unfolding of the question presupposes a retrogression from

conceptuality to "determinations" which are more original than con

cepts. Following Rodolphe Gasche, Icall this unfolding an "infra

structure," that is, "a complex set of conditions which brings the

idealityof awhole or a system both into reach and out of reach, andwhich articulates the limits . . .of words and concepts."4 As Iwill

show, Heidegger's reflection on truth abandons the terrain of

conceptuality inorder to think "truth" as the unthought of philoso

phy. As the unthought of philosophy, "truth" renders possible the

condition of possibility of a series ofwords or concepts. ForHeidegger,these concepts include: Dasein, entities, Being, time, aswell as that

which "gives" Being and time their "relation"- Ereignis. Moreover,

because "truth" isnot a concept but ratherone ofHeidegger's "basic

words," the unfolding of itsunthought "contents" also supposes a

modification ofwhat has been traditionally conceived as the locus

of truth: language.In this paper Iwill pay close attention to the transformations

thatHeidegger's concept of language undergoes fromBeing and Time

to On theWay to Language, aswell as to his narrative of the historyof truth. By focusing on language and truth, and on language as

truth, Iwill show how Heidegger, inhis insistentdisplacements and

reinscriptions of these concepts, brings not only Being and time "into

its wn," but also language and truth inwhat he calls the "event of

appropriation" [Ereignis], that is,an abyssal infrastructure.

I call this infrastructureabyssal because, on the one hand,

Ereignis is the condition of possibility forwhat makes time and Be

ing, truth nd language possible, inasmuch as itbrings them to their

"own" or "proper" [eigen]; on the other hand, thisbringing them to

their w" amounts to theirdisappearance. The "own"~ or "proper"~isunderstood by Heidegger not as an immanent essence thatgroundsa permanence, but rather as that fromwhich Being and time come

to themselves, an other which cannot be attained inor by the lan

guage of Being. However, as a condition of possibility for the possi



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 53

bilities of Being, language and truth,Ereignis isneither theirgroundnor their foundation. Ereignis interruptsany possibility of keepingthose concepts as theywere and consequently points to another typeof thinking.

This abyssal infrastructure, Iclaim, isalso operative ina deci

sive moment of Lacan's teaching, namely, the seminar entitled The

Ethics of Psychoanalysis. This seminar ispunctuated by explicit and

implicit references toHeidegger - inparticular, Lacan's use of the

crucial concept of theThing [la Chose das Ding]. Nevertheless, on

theway toHeidegger, Lacan takes some decisive detours.

I

Lacan and Heidegger, or Thinking the Space Between

Inher Histoire de la Psychanalyse en France, Elisabeth Roudinesco

reduces the relationship between Lacan and Heidegger to an inci

dent: a scene inwhich Lacan masters the situation while theGer

man thinker remains both silent and motionless. She writes:

Heidegger stays at la Prevote, aftervisiting the Cathedral

at Chartres. Lacan drives his automobile at the speed of

his sessions. Seated in the frontseat, Heidegger remains

still,but his wife complains. Sylvie transmits her fears to

Lacan without success. On theway back, Heidegger re

mains quiet all throughout the trip and his wife's com

plaints grow while Lacan accelerates. The tripends andeveryone returns to their own homes [Le voyage prendfinet chacun retourne chez soi.] (H, 310)

For Roudinesco, this curious scene exemplifies the literal lack of

exchange between Lacan and Heidegger, which isfurther corrobo

rated in Lacan's teaching. Even if omething like an exchange did

not take place, Lacan nevertheless borrowed a "language" from

Heideggertowork throughomeof his earlier heoreticalroblems.

Lacan's own position regarding philosophical discourse is ambiguous. For instance, when developing and formalizing the mathemes

of the four discourses in his seminar L'Envers de Ia Psychanalyse,



54 GABRIEL RIERA

Lacan characterizes philosophy as the discourse of themaster and

situates his own discourse as an "antiphilosophy." InEncore, more

over, Lacan reduces his relationship with Heidegger's thinking to a

"propaedeutic reference." Nevertheless, Lacan pays a last visit to

Heidegger afterhaving developed the theoryof the Borromean knot.5

These denegations and ambiguities, though, cannot obscure the fact

thatHeideggerian thinking and Lacanian psychoanalysis are coex

tensive since, as Jean-Luc Nancy claims, they respond to the "neces

sityof an epoch. . . inasmuch as the time of a general errancy of

meaning, of a passage to the limit f all possible signification."6Lacan's declarations have led to a general misunderstanding

about his relation with Heidegger's thought. This misunderstanding

appears inCasey and Woody's study, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan:

Dialectic of Desire," which traces Lacan's uses of Hegel's and

Heidegger's philosophy at the timewhen Lacan is articulating his

"return to Freud." Their main thesis isthat "psychoanalysis must find

a thirdway between, or beyond Hegel and Heidegger" (D, 105).

They conclude by claiming that Lacan dismisses both Hegelian and

Heideggerian resolutions as impossible or inadequate:

Of all the undertakings that have been proposed in this

century, that of the psychoanalyst isperhaps the loftiest,because the undertaking of the psychoanalyst acts in ur

time as a mediator between theman of care and the sub

ject of absolute knowledge.7

The authors point out that, since the dialectic of desire and the un

conscious as a riddle of the mind are both missing fromphilosophical resolutions, Lacan legitimately points to the insufficiencyof phi

losophy. However, even though Casey andWoody make the problematic relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy clear,the relation between Lacan and Heidegger needs further elucida

tion.

Casey's point of departure is to characterize the Lacanian sub

jectas a

"spoken subject," that is,a

subject "created by the play ofthe signifier" and understood as "an effect of speaking." AccordingtoCasey, this onceptionis rooted n he hilosophy fHeidegger,

who has insisted on the primacy of language over the speaking sub



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 55

ject" (D, 89). Casey goes so faras to homologize Heidegger's "die

Sprache spricht" from the essay "L6gos" and On theWay to Lan

guage with the distinction between discourse [Rede] and idle talk

[Gerede] fromparagraph thirty-fourf Being and Time. This homol

ogy isproblematic because those determinations of language be

long todifferent horizons: the distinction between Rede and Gerede

belongs to the horizon of the existential analytic ofDasein, which is

understood as a preparatory analysis for the formulation of the "fundamental question," the question of themeaning of Being. The ex

pression "die Sprache spricht" belongs to the horizon of a reversal of

the traditional interpretationof language; language ceases to be an

object, a means at the disposal of human beings, and becomes "Be

ing itself."Casey disregards how the concept of language ismodi

fied fromBeing and Time to the Vortrsge und Aufsstze. The shift is

significant because in"die Sprache spricht," the concern isno longerwith a concept of language, but ratherwith

"undergoing

an experience with language." Itshould be recalled that inBeing and Time

language isa "founded phenomenon," that is, it isderivative with

respect to Rede (discourse, in the sense of both manifestation and

articulation):

The existential-ontological foundation of language isdis

course or talk [Rede]. . . .Discourse is existentially

equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding...

Discourse istheArticulation of intelligibility.Therefore it

underlies both interpretation and assertion . . .The wayinwhich discourse isexpressed is language [Sprache].

Language isa totalityofwords - a totality inwhich dis

course has a "worldly" Being of its wn; and as an entity

within-the-world, this totality thus becomes somethingwhich we may come across as ready-to-hand [zuhanden].

Language can be broken up intoword-things which are

present-at-hand [vorhanden]. Discourse is existentially

language, because the entitywhose disclosedness itar

ticulates according to signification, has, as its kind of

Being, Being-in-the-world [In-der-WeIt-sein] - a Beingwhich has been thrown and submitted to the "world."8



56 GABRIEL RIERA

Logos, consequently, would not be language (understood as a de

rivative concept) but discourse. InBeing and Time, Heidegger still

conceives of language in more traditionalway (as an instrumentof

expression), and words still have the character of things. In "L6gos,"

Heidegger undertakes a more "essential determination of language"

through an interpretationof Heraclitus' fragmentB50. This determi

nation of logos isone inwhich "the Greeks dwelt ... But they never

thought it Heraclitus included."9 In this essential determination,

Heidegger's equation of language and truthrequires a cancellation

and relegation of the classical predicates of language: vocalization

[phond] and signification [semainen]. It s ftersubmitting these predicates to a displacement that "the essential speaking of language"can be displayed: saying as a "letting-lie-together-before [legein

sagen]" (L, 64). The essential determination of language occurs as

the elucidation of an infrastructure f disclosure:

Logos lays thatwhich ispresent before and down intopresencing, that is, itputs those things back. Presencingnevertheless suggests: having come forward to endure in

unconcealment. Because the lgos lets liebefore uswhat

lies before us as such, itdiscloses what ispresent in its

presencing. But disclosure isAltheia. This and lgos are

the Same. Ldgein letsAldth4a, unconcealed as such, lie

before us ... All disclosure releases what ispresent from

concealment. The A-Ldtheia rests in Ldthe. L6gos is in

itself nd at the same time a revealing and concealing. ItisAldtheia. (L, 70-71)

It isprecisely this infrastructurethatwill be decisive inorder to un

derstand the relation between Lacan and Heidegger.There is n additional complication intheway thatCasey reads

the philosophical origins of Lacan's conception of the subject. For

Casey, language in Lacan provides the "structure and limit" of the

field nwhich the ubject omes tobe. Within his ield, he ubject

appears as "ex-centric," as "alienated from himself." The origin ofthese formulations, according to Casey, appears "in Heidegger's

analysis of subjectivity nBeing and Time. Inhis 1927 work,



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 57

Heidegger designates human existence as Dasein: literally 'being

there"' (D, 89).

Given that he reads Heidegger's analytic ofDasein as an ana

lytic f subjectivity, Casey's terminology isproblematic. Indoing so,

he blurs the difference between Heidegger and themore phenom

enologically-oriented philosophical discourses which depend on a

conception of the subject. The fact that Casey rephrases the "ek

static" nature ofDasein as subject isnot inaccurate, but he does not

indicate how Lacan modifies those concepts which, originating in

theanalytic ofDasein, are then importedby psychoanalytic discourse.

Would a different type of approach, such as moving from

Heidegger to Lacan instead of proceeding fromLacan toHeidegger,

provide us with new insights? In "Psychoanalysis and the Being

Question," William Richardson explores what made Heidegger's

thought so attractive to Lacan and what lightthis thoughtmay throw

uponLacan's own innovative

insight.

Richardson argues that

Heidegger's "Being-question" [Seinsfrage] can provide a "formal

structure" to understand the notions of theOther and the uncon

scious. This "formal structure" is that of Being as Ereignis-Aldtheia,

in the Heideggerian sense. According to Richardson,

[Being as Ereignis-Aldtheia] permits us to think of the

Other in the dimension of Being without hypostasizing

it, r ontifying it, r absolutizing it inany way, first nd

foremost because itsuggests a way to consider the un

conscious as a disclossive process. (P, 147,my emphasis)

When compared with Casey andWoody's approach, Richardson's

has the advantage of taking us to a crucial moment of Heidegger's

thinking, viz. the topology of Being. Here, Heidegger leaves behind

the derivative character of language thatwe find inBeing and Time,

and embarks on an understanding of I6gos as discourse inthe sense

of manifestation. This interpretation of Idgos allows Heidegger to

undertake thedestruction of traditional logic. However, thisdestruc

tion ouldnotbe possiblewithout more "original" ay ofthinkingtruth [alethdia] and without "undergoing an experience with lan

guage."10 The rethinking of the essence [Wesen] of language en



58 GABRIEL RIERA

ables Heidegger to think language, Being, and truthunder the name

of Ereignis.

Nevertheless, Richardson's placement of Lacan's Other in the

dimension of Being, as well as his attempt to bring together the un

conscious and the disclossive process signaled by the name of "Be

ing as Ereignis-Aletheia," need to be reevaluated, especially since

Richardson adds:

The Being of the symbolic order isnot an ontic Other of

theOther likea Super-Absolute, but the disclosure of the

Other as such inkindsis- inEreignis-Altheia- which,as Idgos, isaboriginal language and concealment . .. (P,

157)

Is this bringing together of the Being-question and Lacan's Other a

legitimateclaim?Would the "disclossive process" of Being as EreignisAltheia be, fromwithout, the "formal structure"

allowingus to

justify relationship between Lacan and Heidegger? Richardson's formulation suggests thata certain translatability ofHeidegger inLacanseems to be possible." The question now becomes the extent of this

translatability, that is,the question ofwhether the "formal structure"- if it is indeed a formal structure of Being's Ereignis-Aldtheiacan be translated fromHeidegger to Lacan without any alteration.

We must show whether this "formal structure" isappropriable, since

the question of appropriation is the question of Ereignis. Inorder to

explorethese

issues,attention must be

paidtowhat takes

placein

Lacan under the name of truth.

Before approaching the question ofwhether Heidegger's to

pology of Being iscommensurate with Lacan's, we must pay close

attention to Richardson's bringing together of "Being as EreignisAl6theia." What type of relation does "Being as Ereignis" establish?

Is it relation of identity, f sameness, or is itrathera determination

of Being understood as a more encompassing "concept," that is,

Ereignis? Inother words, is it determination thatwould still allowus

to think of Being as the "fundamental" question? What is the relation etweenBeing ndEreignis fne can say"Being s Ereigns" inthe sense indicated above? Furthermore,what does the hyphen be



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 59

tween Ereignis and Aletheia mean? How can Ereignis and Aldtheia

name the same thing?And how, finally,can Altheia, being the same

as Ereignis, be the same as Being?The insights that Richardson's semantically charged formula

tionmay yield depend on how we unfold each of the terms at play,

especially Ereignis. This formulation and its sefulness depend above

all on how we understand the relation of the terms inquestion. If

something can be saidwith certainty about Ereignis, it isthat itpointsto a relation. Furthermore,we can say that itmarks a limitbetween

two spaces of thinking, that of metaphysics, and that of an other

thinking.As a limit f thinking, Ereignis is like a double-headed Ja

nus: on the one hand, itpoints to the inside of the limit and the

closure it stablishes, while on the other hand, it indicates an out

side to this closure.12 There are several possibilities forunderstand

ingand unfolding Richardson's formulation. However, Iwill opt for

one which is justified on the basis of themeaning of Ereignis for the

whole ofHeidegger's work, aswell as on thebasis ofwhat the think

ingof Ereignis implies forBeing and truth.

Ereignis, Heidegger's Last Word

In situating how the thinkingof Ereignis affects the "Being-question,"we may characterize thework of Heidegger as consisting of three

moments. A firstphase covers the period fromBeing and Time to the

late 1930's and can be labelled as the period of fundamental ontol

ogy. Fundamental

ontology

is

developed

from the frame of both an

existential analytic and the temporality of a privileged entity:Dasein.

Because Dasein is n entity forwhich "Being is n issue," its xisten

tial structuremay illuminate the understanding of the "Being-question." The question of themeaning of Being is the horizon of this

whole problematic. In the second period, Heidegger abandons the

horizon ofDasein and takes Being as it nfolds itself inhistory.What

isdecisive now are themodes inwhich Being grants or "gives" itself

and, above all, the "fact" of the forgettingof Being; that is,Being'swithdrawal s its

rivilegedode of

grantingtself.

hiswithdrawalimplies hat or he hole ofWesternthoughteing isunderstoodspresence. Finally, we may speak of a thirdperiod whose guiding



60 GABRIEL RIERA

thought isEreignis, a period inwhich Heidegger thinks the unthoughtof Being's determination as presence. This unthought concerns time

as well as the relation determining Time and Being. The thinking of

this relation opens the possibility of awholly other commencement

for thinking [andere Anfang].When considered in lightof this thirdmoment, Richardson's

expression "Being as Ereignis" is problematic for two reasons. To

begin with, the firsttwo moments (particularly the second) affirmthat for thewhole ofmetaphysics themeaning of Being ispresence

(in the sense of permanence), and for this reason Being has been

determined by time. Time is,therefore, the unthought of the "Being

question." The "forgettingof Being" isnot fortuitous but rather isthe

covering up ofAnwesung (the coming-into-presence); that is,by the

mutation of Anwesung intoAnwesende (presence in the sense of

permanence.) This mutation is the transformation of the "original

experience of presencing" into metaphysics of presence (Platonism).

What isat stake forHeidegger in this thirdmoment is the question:

"Why, how and where does something like time speak inBeing?" In

otherwords, inthinking the provenance of Being "Esgibt Sein" or

"there isBeing, in the sense that Being isgiven"-

why, how, and

where does time appear? Inthis case, the "Es"of Es gibt Sein refersto

Time:

Time is not. There is. Itgives time [Esgibt Zeit]. The giv

ing that gives time isdetermined by denying and with

holding nearness. Itgrants theOpenness of time-spaceand preserves what remains denied inwhat has-been,

what iswithheld inapproach. We call the giving which

gives true time an extending which opens and conceals.

As extending is itself, he giving of a giving isconcealed

in true time. 13

If eing proceeds from"something" other than itself, itmay be

thatBeing and Ereignis possess a certain heterogeneity. In this case,

theexpression

"as" in"Being

asEreignis" fails,

at leastpartially,

to

do justice to thisheterogeneity. I ay "partially" because inHeidegger

there are several configurations of the "relation" Being and Ereignis.In ne of these onfigurations,eing nd the iving fBeing [Es] re



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 61

the same: Being gives itself its wn figures by and through the his

toryof its wn granting. Inthis line of thought, the expression "Beingas Ereignis" could be understood as saying thatBeing, inasmuch as

it is the giver of its wn figures, behaves as Ereignis. However, this

understanding of Being may verywell be taken as one of the figuresof that same history. That is, ifEreignis points to the limitof this

history of Being, by assimilating Being to Ereignis, thenwe are on

the inside of the closure. Moreover, assimilating Being to Ereignis

compresses the thought of Ereignis; since Being isgiven by time, it

would then be more accurate to say "Being as Time," or better still,

"Time as Ereignis." Nevertheless this lastexpression fails to capturethe heterogeneity of Time and Ereignis. The thinkingof Ereignis asks

for n additional step back. The question- what gives the historyof

Being its wn provenance?-

points to a more "originary" giving of

Being and of itshistory,one that isnon-dependent upon time.

We must now follow Heidegger in his attempt to determine

the determination of time, the condition for the history of Being. Bynow it should be clear that the thinking of Ereignis involves two

"moments": first, he giving of Being (Esgibt Sein), that is,when the

Es (the "giver") points to time (to the Es gibtZeit.) And second, when

the Es points to an anteriority other than Being and time. As in the

case of Being, time "gives" itself its wn dimensions. And yet, that

which "unifies" time isanything temporal. In this case, the Es of Es

gibt Zeit points to an enigmatic anteriority, Ereignis:

Inthe sending of thedestiny of Being, inthe extending oftime, there becomes manifest a dedication, a deliveringover intowhat is theirown, namely of Being as presenceand of time as the realm of the open. What determines

both, time and Being, in theirown, that is, in their be

longing together,we shall call: Ereignis, the event ofAppropriation. One should bear inmind, however, that

"event" isnot simply an occurrence, but thatwhich makes

any occurrence possible . . .What lets the two matters

[Being ndTime]belong together,hat brings hetwointo theirown and, even more, maintains and holds them



62 GABRIEL RIERA

intheirbelonging together... isAppropriation [Ereignis].

(TB,19)

Ereignis names what makes Being and time come into their own

[eigen], aswell as the relation of the belonging-together of time and

Being. But Ereignis is the name or the marker forwhat withdraws

itself inthe "event of (co)appropriation."

Ereignis points

to thethinking

of an

abyssal ground,but it isan

abyssal infrastructurethat cannot be thought "as Being." As the "es

sential" anteriority of Being and time, Ereignis could be referred to

as the "truth" of Being and Time, Ereignis-Aldtheia. After thisdetour,we come back to the question of "truth," albeit ina very different

"light."

II

Lacan with

Heidegger?A common point of departure for both Heidegger and Lacan can be

read in theway each unties the knot that traditionally has linked

truthto knowledge. This untying allows them to re-think their rela

tionwith tradition and origins. Heidegger's well-known untying of

truthfromknowledge leads him to assess the history of philosophyas the history of a dependency on a non-essential determination. In

Being and Time, Heidegger accomplishes a displacement insofaras

he thinks truth s being-uncovering, that is,as an ontological possi

bility of being-in-the-world. This reassessment of truth transformsthe traditional determinations of truth as intuition and assertion

[Aussage] into secondary determinations, and puts an end to the

history of philosophy as the history of thismutual dependency on

truth nd knowledge. Moreover, thedisplacement Heidegger accom

plishes inBeing and Time allows him to refine the "sameness" of

Ldgos-Aldtheia. He thus establishes a kind of primal scene of thought,a pre-Platonic scene anterior to the "fall" of truth in theweb of the

signifier.

However, this narrative of the history of truth remains too dependentupon thehistoryf theword "truth"aldtheia] nd cannotresist a number of philological objections. Thus, Heidegger later re

assess thepositionhe had putforth nBeingand Time:



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 63

Inthe scope of this question, we must acknowledge the

fact thataldtheia, unconcealment inthe sense of theopen

ing of presence, was originally only experienced as

orthotes, as the correctness of representations and state

ments. But then the assertion about the essential transfor

mation of truth,that is, from unconcealment to correct

ness, isalso untenable.4

As part of this shift,Heidegger's thought undergoes "an experiencewith language" that profoundly determines the relationship of truth

as the unveiling of L6gos-Al6theia. Inthisexperience with language,the topology of truth is redrawn. This redrawing can be read as a

"going beyond the Greek" and as an opposition to the criteria of

validation narrowly embraced by the sciences, including the dispersion of philosophy familiar to the "human sciences.""

This topological reconfiguration of the truth f Being is formu

lated in termsof a "task [Aufgabe] of thinking." This reconfigurationleaves behind themetaphysically-oriented analytic of language in

Being and Time, an analytic inwhich language remains an instru

ment at the service of man. Itexchanges this analytic for one in

which language is the unfolding [wesen] of the being of things. The

"experience with language" undergone in"The Nature of Language"[Das Wesen der Sprache] is formulated succinctly in the "transfor

mation" thatHeidegger's guide-word [Leitwort] suffers:"Das wesen

der Sprache- Die Sprache desWesens."

In the whole of the guide-word an opening comes into

play, a beckoning thatpoints to something which, com

ing from the firstturnof phrase, we cannot presume in

the second, since the latterdoes not become exhausted

at all in simple reversal of theorder ofwords of the first

turnof phrase. (NL, 94; translation modified)

By coming intoplaywithoutbeingexhaustedby the reversal f

phrases,this pening is thoughtnder the"logic"of Ereignis Esgibt.] Das Wesen, Heidegger explains, has to be understood in its

verbal sense as Es west: "it unfolds unfolding itsduration."'6 Das

wesen names the unveiling; it is the kin4sis of language, itshappen



64 GABRIEL RIERA

ing r "event" [Ereignis]. Insofar s language [Sprache] isunderstood

as "event," as unveiling, itgives [gibt] to things their determinations.

It ould be said, therefore, that the "overcoming [Verwindung]of the Greek experience," that is, "the task [Aufgabe] of thinking"

imposed by thisVerwindung, implies an ethics, at least an ethics of

thinking. One may hesitate to use this term in itsgenerality with

respect toHeidegger, especially ifne keeps inmind his harsh words

on the question of ethics in the "Letter on Humanism."17 In spite ofthe reticence one may feel inattributing to Heidegger an ethics of

thinking, it is nevertheless in the domain of an ethics that Lacan's

most decisive encounter with philosophy and with Heidegger takes

place. Iam referringhere to Lacan's Seminar on The Ethics of Psy

choanalysis.It ispossible to detect in this Seminar a series of gestures, op

erations, displacements, and reinscriptions thatare characteristically

Heideggerian. On several occasions Lacan explicitly refers his own

elaboration of theThing [la Chose] toHeidegger's das Ding. Infact,Lacan's treatment of das Ding has littleto do with Heidegger's. As

will become clear inwhat follows, Lacan's approach to the Thinghas more to do with the Freud of the Entwurf as read through the

Freud of theBeyond thePleasure Principle, and also how both Freuds

are read through Kant. Still, Heidegger's "presence" is felt throughout the Seminar and particularly in Lacan's reading of Sophocles'

Antigone inview of presenting the unpresentable "line of sight [pointde visde] that defines desire."18 Despite extensive references to the

literatureon Antigone, Lacan does notmention Heidegger's readingof the Greek tragedy. Nevertheless, a careful reading of Lacan's in

terpretation of Antigone shows that Lacan is attentive to the same

crucial articulations in Sophocles' play thatwere analyzed by

Heidegger. Lacan therefore invokes Heidegger where he himself

seems to lead the discussion to a differentpath, that is, to das Dingas a condition of possibility of desire. He silences Heidegger when

some important structural similarities are at play. This strategy should

not make us lose sight of the fact that Lacan encounters Heidegger

on a similar ground.

Before analyzing Lacan's treatment of das Ding ingreater de

tail, letme point to some crucial articulations inthe Seminar. InThe



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 65

Ethics of Psychoanalysis, two discursive practices are encountered:

on theone hand, ethics, that is,metaphysics, istreated as the field of

the question of the Good; on the other hand, psychoanalysis ap

pears as the only practice able to handle what ethics has always left

aside, namely, jouissance. And because psychoanalysis deals with

what is intractable for the philosopher of the Good, itcan disen

tangle thequestion of theGood fromthemoral imperative, and open

theway to a "more primordial" determination of both the "good"and the "Law." Lacan undermines some key articulations of the his

toryof ethical thinking (Aristotle, Bentham, Kant), whose presuppo

sitions have served to justifypsychoanalysis' function and purpose.In thisway, he opens an adjacent space fromwhich to think the

unthought of ethics, the Real. Lacan writes:

[A]s odd as itmay seem to that superficial opinion which

assumes any inquiry intoethics must concern the field of

the ideal, if ot of the unreal, I, n the contrary,will proceed instead from the other direction by going more

deeply intothe notion of the real [rdel]. Insofaras Freud's

position constitutes progress here, the question of ethics

is to be articulated from the point of view of the location

of man in relation to the real [rde/].To appreciate this,one has to look atwhat occurred inthe interval between

Aristotle and Freud. (E, 11)

It isclear that inhis displacement and reinscription of the questionof ethics, Lacan repeats some of theHeideggerian movements of the

destruction of the history of ontology. Heidegger writes:

We understand this task as one inwhich by taking the

question of Being as our clue, we are todestroy the tradi

tional content of ancient ontology untilwe arrive at those

primordial xperiences inwhichwe achievedour first

ways of determining the nature of Being . .. (BT, 22-3)

Lacan, therefore, elaborates an ethics of the analytic experience thatis "anterior" and "more original" than the ethics of themetaphysicaltradition. Lacan wants to determine how the economy of pleasure,whose horizon isthegood, is itselfetermined nd simultaneously



66 GABRIEL RIERA

short-circuited by a more "original" dimension of jouissance or of

the "beyond pleasure." The articulation of an ethics of psychoanalysis supposes an additional gesturewithin thegeneral scope of Lacan's

return to Freud. From the viewpoint of Beyond the Pleasure Prin

ciple, Lacan dismantles some of Freud's insights, such as the pre

ponderant importance of the superego. Lacan must disentangle Freud

from Kant (the categorical imperative being a genealogical condi

tion of theOedipus complex) but notwithout using Kant to disen

tangle the Real fromany typeof ontic representational content, found,

forexample, inMelanie Klein's maternal figuration of theThing.Inhis attempt to disentangle jouissance from the dialectics of

desire, and to elucidate the relationship of jouissance to the objectcause of desire [objet a], Lacan invokes das Ding [laChose], throughan explicit reference toHeidegger. However, Lacan's elucidation of

das Ding, while reaching conclusions homologous to those of the

abyssal infrastructure of Ereignis-Al4theia, ismore Kantian than

Heideggerian. Although Lacan is led to a ground similar to that of

Heidegger, he arrives only byway of a double use of Kant. On the

one hand, a formal Kantian argument allows Lacan to separate the

objects of desire from das Ding. This separation sustains desire at a

distance and gives desire only its"motility."On the other hand, Lacan

unfolds Kant's aesthetic categories- the beautiful and the sublime

(the beautiful as the sublime or the beautiful as overflowed and in

terrupted by the sublime) - as a way of submitting the formal and

transcendental aspect of das Ding to a

quasi-transcendentalspace.

Inother words, the Kantian categories of the beautiful and the sub

lime are put intoplay not inorder to secure the homeostatic nature

of an economy of pleasure and of the good, but rather as a way to

indicate the provenance of "pure desire." The way inwhich Lacan

mobilizes the Kantian categories of the beautiful and the sublime

has some structural similaritieswith Heidegger's thinkingof thework

of art and the beautiful, that is,with Heidegger's non-aesthetic read

ingof Kant.

There isan additionalcomplication.

Theinsights

of The Ethics

of Psychoanalysis are put to the test inLacan's reading ofAntigone.

The tragedy acan confronts s ne ofphilosophy's rivileged elf

representations. Lacan's reading ofAntigone iscaptured inthewords



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 67

the chorus uses to refer o the young virgin daughter ofOedipus after

Creon makes his sentence public. The words are: "Imeros Enarg6s,"

(the visible desire thatemanates from thegaze of theyoung virgin);

or, as Lacan phrases it,"visible desire." As Heidegger reminds us,

enargds is the same word that Cicero translates as evidentia. The

word derives from ensrgeia: "thatwhich in itself nd of itselfradi

ates and brings itself o light.But it an only radiate ifopenness has

already been granted" (EP, 66). The relation between Lacan and

Heidegger depends on how thisOpenness is understood and on

how thisOpenness gives itself. nd as we will see, thatwhich givesitself o be seen does so inan inscription, tying together beauty and

truth, r beauty as the truth f desire.

After this overview of themain articulations of Lacan's Semi

nar, the overdetermined character of his project becomes clear: on

the one hand, Lacan aims to show that the economy of the goodbased upon the pleasure principle derives from an un-economic,

excessive logic jouissance and the death instinct.Only by takingintoaccount this dimension can psychoanalysis elucidate an ethics,

break themirror of imaginary solutions, and touch the Real. On the

other hand, the excess of a jouissance that points to das Ding is

neither apprehensible nor can be represented. And yet, this excess

may be hinted at through an artwork inwhich the interplay amongthe beautiful, the good and truthwill be mobilized.

III

Das Ding- Lacan with Kant: On theWay toHeidegger

C'est laChose qui se souvientde nous.

-Blanchot

InThe Ethics of Psychoanalysis, one of Lacan's goals is to elucidate

somethinghat, opologically peaking, s ituated eyondthe ymbolic order, that is, beyond the chain of signifierswhere desire is

articulated. Itshould be recalled that desire proceeds from some

thing that exceeds it the drive [Trieb]. Desire and drive belong todifferentimensions,nd the ircumscriptionf the hing dasDing]will allow Lacan to disentangle them:



68 GABRIEL RIERA

What is the death instinct?What is this kind of law be

yond all law,which can only be posited as a final struc

ture, as the vanishing point of any attainable reality? (E,

207)

The drive inquestion is the death instinct the drive that tends

toward the Thing. This drive is "beyond the law," beyond the symbolic order and the

signifier.Nevertheless,it ould not be

possibleto say something about das Ding without the intervention of the signifier. The signifier isa necessary evil. Therefore, the relationship of

the signifier to jouissance and todas Ding takes the form of an apona:

The signifier is the cause of jouissance. . .without the

signifier,how is itpossible to center something which is

thematerial cause of jouissance?...The signifier iswhat

keeps jouissance

at a distance.19

There isno jouissance without language, but because of languagethere can be no jouissance of theThing. If he signifier isthe cause of

jouissance, itmeans that jouissance can only be its fter-effect.Only

retroactivelymay there be Thing-effects.The problem becomes, there

fore, how to explain the being-jouissance of the Thing and the fact

that desire does not have jouissance:

Das Ding is thatwhich Iwill call the beyond-of-the-sig

nified [le hors-signifid]. It isa

function of thisbeyond-ofthe-signified [le hors-signifid] and of an emotional rela

tionship to it [d'un rapportpathetique a lui], that the sub

ject keeps its istance and isconstituted ina kind of rela

tionship characterized by primary affect, prior to any re

pression. (E, 54)

As an effect of the signifier, das Ding is, nonetheless, outside or

excentricto thesignifier.he type f relationshipthas with the

signifier is that of "extimacy" [extimitd].2OThis strange inclusion that

takes the form of an absolute exclusion will move desire and

jouissance longdifferentracks. hile desireobeysthelogic f the



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 69

symbolic order and therefore cuts off the subject from the Thing,

jouissance obeys the Law of the unmasterable Thing.As an absolute object of desire, das Ding opens thought to an

abyssal dimension (as itsa priori cause). In this sense, it ould be

said thatdas Ding is the truth [aldtheia] of desire. Das Ding unveils

itself inevery desire. But, inconcealing itselffromdesire, das Dingmanifests itself indesire only by its bsence. Das Ding is the absen

tee of desire's rendezvous; without thisplay of (un)veiling, however,desire could not articulate itself in the signifier and could not be

come a demand:

If heThing were not fundamentally veiled, we wouldn't

be inthe kind of relationship to itthat itobliges us ... to

encircle it r to bypass it [a la cerner, a la contourner] in

order to conceive it. (E, 118)

No object of desire can manage to represent das

Ding.

The irrecov

erable anteriority of theThing supposed by the order of the signifier

produces an unassimilable excess: a "lost" jouissance, which isboth

cause of desire or "objet a" and a surplus of the real [plus-de-jouir].Faced with this jouissance, the subject vanishes, as isthe case inthestructureof the phantasm ($o a). At this juncture, Lacan undoes the

knotwhich ties truth nd knowledge [connaissance]: das Ding can

not be known or represented since the objects of desire that teem

around the gap of das Ding are phantasmatic. Only a "discours de la

semblance" can

emerge regardingthe Real. Inother

words,no dis

course of knowledge ispossible, only a savoir.

We are now in a better position to re-evaluate Richardson's

formulation according towhich "Being as Ereignis-Aldtheia permitsus to think of the Other in the dimension of Being without

hypostasizing it .. inanyway, first nd foremost because itsuggestsaway to consider the unconscious as a disclossive process" (P, 147,

myemphasis).We havealready hownthat hetruthfdesire isnotan ontic truth, that desire always comes too late to its rendezvous

with dasDing and that asDing istheunpresentablenteriorityfan object "lost" after the fact. Thus, das Ding unveils itself indesire

but, at the same time, subtracts itselffrom theobject of desire. Bear



70 GABRIEL RIERA

ingthese considerations inmind, theOther cannot be placed "in the

dimension of Being as Ereignis-Al6theia," as Richardson would have

it.Rather, the a priori and absolute condition of desire would oc

cupy this dimension. If his is the case, then "the disclosure . . .as

such inkindsis inEreignis-Aldtheia," to use Richardson's words,

has to be linked to the drive [Trieb], that death drive which, in its

pulsations and repetition, surrounds the empty space of das Ding

without touching it.

The subject seeks to fillthe empty space of das Ding, but fades

in the attempt. For Lacan, Antigone's figure illustrates "in an aes

thetic form" what takes place once the object of desire is raised to

"the dignity [dignitd] of theThing" (E, 112). Antigone is the sublime

figure of the sublimation of the drive. Antigone's jouissance trans

forms the object of desire, suppresses itssymbolic investment, and

disfigures it. he object of desire becomes theobject cause of desire.

In thisway, the

object

of desire isaffected

by

a strangesurplus

and

no longer refersback to the symbolic order, but ratherpresents itself

as thatwhich touches the void where desire originates.For Lacan, there are then twoways to assess sublimation, inas

much as itpresents uswith another side of the moral feeling and is

evaluated according to the modalities with which itdeals with the

void of the Thing. A first ssessment might be called a "reactive"

sublimation, an imaginary solution thatbars any hint of the field of

das Ding:

At the level of sublimation the object is inseparable from

imaginary and especially cultural elaborations . . . [It]

collectivity recognizes in them useful objects; itfinds

rathera space of relaxation where itmay in way delude

itself n the subject of das Ding, colonize the field of das

Ding with imaginary schemes [formations imaginaires].(E,99)

This imaginary solution leaves untouched the economy of pleasure

aswell as the ependency f the eautiful ponthegood.Anticipating n elaboration hat ill notbe fully ormalizedntilL'envers elapsychanalyse (themathemes of the fourdiscourses), Lacan argues

that hediscoursesof religionnd sciencebelong tothisregime f



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 71

"reactive" sublimation. Whereas the former avoids das Ding, the

latternegates it.However, there issecond typeof sublimation which

"purifies us from the order of the imaginary [de la sdrie de

I'imaginaire], but through the intervention of an image [parI'intdrmediare d'une image]," which Lacan refers to as "Antigone's

splendor [I'4clat d'Antigone]" (E, 248).

Antigone's Beauty, or "1'arrite de mort"Reactive sublimation functions as a double barrier banning us from

access to the field of das Ding, and the field fromwhich the truth f

desire is indicated by its wn withdrawal. Bymeans of this double

barrier, thebeautiful issubordinated to thegood. Nevertheless, Lacan

breaches this dependency of the beautiful on the good, since he

situates the former "beyond the good":

on the scale that separates us from the central field of

desire, if he good constitutes the firststopping place, thebeautiful forms the second and gets closer. Itstop us, but

it lso points in the direction of the field of destruction.

(E,217)

Lacan's rethinking of sublimation marks a passage from a moral of

the common good to an ethics of psychoanalysis. At the same time,

it ituates thebeautiful beyond theprinciple of pleasure and the logicof the good. Thus we approach a non-pacifying, non-harmonizing

aspectof the beautiful, not

typically emphasized bynormative read

ingsof Kant. Because inLacan thebeautiful exceeds the economy of

pleasure and points beyond representation, it ears themark of an

excess affecting theKantian precession of the beautiful over the sub

lime. In this sense the beautiful is sublime beforehand; it isover

flowed by the sublime and is the presentation of a pure excess. For

Lacan "the function of the beautiful [is] to reveal to us the site of

man's relationship to his own death, and to reveal it o us only ina

blinding flash [dblouissement]" (E, 295). However, the "dazzle" is a

blinding ne since"thebeauty ffect s blindness ffect"E, 03).Lacan situates Antigone in a space "between two deaths," a

spacewhich can onlybe illuminated rom heperspective fa firstdeath, of an already being dead in life. It is from the space of the



72 GABRIEL RIERA

"between two deaths" thatAntigone's beauty "tire son dclat." More

over, the radiance of this beauty comes frombeyond the pleasure

principle, the economy of the signifier,or the economy of being.

Antigone embodies "the pure and simple desire of death as such" (E,

282).

This schema bears some structural similarities to Heidegger's

reading ofAntigone. Inhis course on Holderlin, hewrites: "Antigone

properly is the most uncanny in the supreme manner, namely insuch a way that she takes itupon her in its full essence, in taking it

upon herself tobecome homely within being."21 To become homely

within Being and to become the embodiment of pure desire; these

two propositions follow the schema of the coming into itsown or

proper leigen]. Inthis schema, Being and desire vanish. The truth f

Being and desire can only be "seen" after the fact, afterAntigone

either enters the limit of the "between two deaths" (Lacan) or be

comes the "uncanniest of the uncanny" (Heidegger). Inboth cases,

there isan exteriority at play, an intimate kernel that can be appro

priated only by a radical departure or the establishment of an irre

ducible distance. In this sense, the thinking of Lacan's extimacy

[extimitd] and Heidegger's uncanny converge. Inthisappropriation,the coming into one's own of one's most proper [eigen] coincides

with itsdisappearance.

Moreover, Heidegger's schema is not simply Antigone's (the

heroine or the play). Fundamentally, his schema concerns the "ori

gin" [Sprung] of thework of art as set forth in "The Origin of the

Work of Art," a textHeidegger elaborated at the same time as his

course on Holderlin:

Ina work, [the] fact that it isa work, is justwhat isun

usual [das Ungewohnliche]. The event [Ereignis] of its

being created does not simply reverberate through the

work; rather thework casts before itself he eventful fact

[Ereignis] hat thework isas thiswork, thatthework

projects before and around itself . . The more solitarily

thework, fixed in the figure, stands on itsown and themore cleanly it eems to cut all ties to human beings, the

more simply the extraordinary thrust that thework isac



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 73

cedes to the open and themore essentially the un-famil

iarity das Ungeheuere] radiates and so shines thatwhich

until then seemed familiar.22

Isaid above that the Thing is the truth f desire, that the trace

of the Thing insists upon desire but at the same time itwithdraws

from desire. This would be another way of saying that the Lacanian

Thing presentsa

topologynot unlike that of

Ereignis-Al6theia. Andif

the beautiful (albeit a beautiful surpassed by the sublime and, inthis

sense, excessive and also uncanny-

ungeheuere) arrives here, it

does so not unlike Ereignis-Aldtheia. The beautiful indicates some

thing about a relation according to the logic of unveiling and veil

ing. But thisveiling, as in the case of Ereignis,withdraws itself in its

own truth.

In this coming together of beauty and truth, Lacan and

Heidegger converge through a certain reading of Kant's aesthetics.

Both Heidegger and Lacan renderwhat can be called a sublime read

ingof the beautiful. That is, their reading retrieves a more originarydetermination of the beautiful as the sublime. Another way of ap

proaching this reading of Kant isto say, as Eliane Escoubas does, that

the results of the analytic of the beautiful and the sublime lead Kant

to elaborate a notion of truth loser toAldtheia than to theCritiqueof Pure Reason.

Without a doubt, from thisoriginal notion of truth n in

dex can be found ina termthat

recursthroughout The

Critique of judgement the term Einhelligkeit. . . In all

cases, Einhelligkeit names the unity of truth.But itsaysmore than the unity of truth.What does the hell of

Einhelligkeit point to?What situation gives place to the

unanimity of Einhelligkeit? It is the radiance or splendorof hell. Einhelligkeit is the "advent" [herstellen] in the

radiance, it is the one, radiant,what no one can fail to

see: the Evidence. If ruth esides inEinhelligkeit,t is

because itresides in shining, inde/on . . .The beautifuland the sublime are "modes of Being" of this truth as

coming-into-presence. "Modes of Being" of the "always

true" . .. a summoning of theOpen.23



74 GABRIEL RIERA

The truth f Kant's Critique ofludgment is,to follow Philippe Lacoue

Labarthe, a "sublime truth." In its lettingcome into theOpen, this

"sublime truth" isalso the truthof Heidegger's artwork, given that

the artwork is, forHeidegger, the Un-geheuere (the uncanny, the

unbounded, the excessive.)4

The truthof das Ding isalso un-geheuere. For this reason, in

Lacan's analysis of the effects of the beautiful inAntigone, the beau

tiful isalways overflowed by the sublime: "the violent illumination,the glow of beauty, coincides with themoment of transgression or of

realization ofAntigone's Atd"(E, 281). It is t this limit "that the beam

of desire isboth reflected and refracted .. ." (E, 248, my emphasis).The truth of das Ding, the truth of desire, in its sublime glittering

gives [Esgibt] something to be seen, but only by withdrawing itself.

The Es of Es gibt subtracts itself from itsgiving. It isprecisely this

event, or rather,the form of thisevent, which may justifythe relation

between Lacan and Heidegger.

Iwould like to thank Juliet F.MacCannell for her generous comments on an earlier

version of this paper.

1 Elisabeth Roudinesco, La Bataille de cent ans: Histoire de la psychanalyse en

France, Vol. 2 (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1986), hereafter cited as H, and JacquesLacan, Esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'une syst?me de pens?e (Paris: Fayard, 1993),

hereafter cited as JL.

2 William J.Richardson,"Psychoanalysis

and the

Being-Question"

in

Psychiatryand theHumanities, Vol. VI (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), 139

59. Hereafter cited as P.

3 Edward S. Casey and Melvin Woody, "Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan: the Dialectic of

Desire" inPsychiatry and theHumanities, Vol. VI (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer

sity Press, 1976), 75-112. Hereafter cited as D.

4 Rodolphe Gasch?, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1994), 7.

5 On this last point, see JL, especially the section "Vibrant hommage ? Martin

Heidegger," 291-306.

6 Jean-Luc Nancy, "Manque de rien" in N. Autonomova, et. al., Lacan avec les

philosphes (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), 201-2.

7 Jacques Lacan, ?crits (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1966), 105, quoted inD.8 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. JohnMacquarrie and E. Robinson (San

Francisco: Harper and Row, 1962), 204-5. Hereafter cited as BT.

9 Martin Heidegger, "L?gos" inEarly Greek Thinking: The Dawn of Western Phi



ABYSSAL GROUNDS 75

iosophy, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (San Francisco: Harperand Row, 1975). Hereafter cited as L.

10 Martin Heidegger, "The Nature of Language" [Das Wesen der Sprache] in n the

Way to Language, trans. Peter Hertz (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982). Here

after cited as NL.

11 This translatabilityas todo witha "formaltructure"ndgoes beyondthefactthat acan translatedhefirstpart fHeidegger's L?gos"for hefirstssue f the

journal La Psychanalyse.12 For a detailed discussion of the concept of closure in Heidegger and post

Heideggerian thinking,see Simon

Critchley, The Ethics ofDeconstruction: Derrida

and L?vinas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993).

13 Martin Heidegger, "Time and Being" in n Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh

(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1972), 10 & 16. Hereafter cited as TB.

14 MartinHeidegger, TheEnd fPhilosophynd the ask fThinking" n n Beingand Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1972), 70.

Hereafter cited as EP.

15 "What oes ground ndprinciplendespecially rinciplef all principles ean?Can this ever be sufficientlydetermined unless we experience al?theia ina Greek

manner as unconcealment and then, above and beyond theGreek, think it s the

opening of self-concealing?" EP, 71.

16 Translation modified. Peter Hertz translates this locution as "it persists in itspres

ence," thus attenuating the active sense of the German Wesen. NL, 95.

17 In this context, it is important to note that an "overcoming [Verwindung] of Greek

experience," as well as the elaboration of an ethics as "firstphilosophy," has been

the task of Emmanuel L?vinas, who subtracts ethics from th?oria and transforms it

into the condition of possibility of religion. See, Alain Badiou, L'?thique. Essai sur

la conscience du Mal (Paris: Hatier, 1993).

18 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VII. The Ethics of Psycho

analysis, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1997), 254. Hereafter cited as E.

19 "Le signifiant, c'est la cause de la jouissance. . .Comment sans le signifiant,

centrer ce quelque chose qui, de la jouissance, est la cause materielle ... le

signifiant c'est ce qui fait halte ? la jouissance." Jacques Lacan, Le S?minaire -

Livre XX. Encore (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 1975), 27.20 Lacan forged the neologism "extimit?" (extimacy) based on "intimit?." Jacques

Alain Miller has given a more formal treatment to the topological aporias at playinthat term; see his "Extimit?," Prose Studies 11:3 (December 1988), 121-31.

21 Martin Heidegger, Holderlin's Hymn "The /sfer/'trans.W. McNeill and JuliaDavis

(Bloomington: Indiana Univeristy Press, 1996), 17.

22 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of theWork ofArt," inPoetry, Language, Thought,trans. Albert Hofstadter (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1971), 65; translation

modified. Hereafter cited as OWA. See also JulietMacCannell, "Love Outside the

Limits of the Law," inNew Formations No. 23, Summer 1994, 32.

23 "Cette notion plus originaire de lav?rit?, sans doute peut-on en trouver l'indice

dans un terme qui revient sans cesse dans toute laCritique de la facult? de juger.le terme Einhelligkeit. . . Einhelligkeit dit, dans tous les cas, d'abord l'unit? du

vrai.Mais il it bien plus que l'unit? du vrai. Vers quoi, en effet, fait signe le hell de

VEinhel'igkeit?uelle situation onne lieu l'unanimit?e YE/hhelligkeit?'estla clart? du hell. {^Einhelligkeit, c'est le 'faire venir' (herstellen) en la clart?, c'est



76 GABRIEL RIERA

l'un-clair, ce que nul ne peut manquer de voir: Y vidence. Si la v?rit? r?side dans

i'Einhelligkeit, c'est qu'elle r?side dans le lumineux, le d?lon ... Le beau et le

sublime sont les 'mani?res d'?tre'de cette v?rit? comme venue-au-jour. 'Mani?res

d'?tre' du 'toujours-vrai'. . . convocation de l'Ouvert." Eliane Escoubas, Imago

Mundi. Topologie de l'art (Paris: Galil?e, 1986), 67-8.

24 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "La v?rit? sublime" in jean-Fran?ois Courtine, et. al.,

Du sublime Paris: elin,1988).Cf. theremarksfHeidegger in WA: "Thus inthe artwork it is truth that is at work," and "Beauty isone way inwhich truth

occurs as unconcealedness" {OWA, 56).

heidegger abyss

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