From Kantian Ethics to Mystical Experience: An Exploration of Jouissance
Dylan Evans
March 28, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9780429476402-1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mystical experience |
| Key points | Argues that Lacan's concept of jouissance originates in the Hegelian tradition via Kojève's lectures, first appears in the 1958 seminar on the formations of the unconscious, and while it acquires multiple significations across Lacan's teaching, it never completely abandons its connection to orgasm. |
Abstract
The distinction between jouissance and desire is first developed in the seminar on the formations of the unconscious, in the sessions of March 1958. From Kantian ethics to mystical experience, from frigidity to racism: judging by the range of the contexts in which it appears, the concept of jouissance is certainly versatile. During the course of Jacques Lacan&s;s teaching, jouissance is used in a series of different contexts, in each of which it acquires a different nuance. Lacan seems to have imported the term into psychoanalysis from a certain tradition in philosophy, namely the Hegelian tradition as it was developed by Alexandre Kojeve, whose lectures on Hegel Lacan attended in the 1930&s;s. Even much later in Lacan&s;s work, when jouissance has taken on multiple significations far removed from the simple equation with the orgasm, this register is never completely abandoned.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mystical experience, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter with Death | 1969 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Vectorial Cerebral Hemisphericity as Differential Sources for the Sensed Presence, Mystical Experiences and Religious Conversions | 1993 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The epistemic innocence of psychedelic states. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mystical Experience and Religious Doctrine | 1982 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |