Hey I wanted to thank you, after reading about the graphs and failing to completely grasp them, this video works really well explaining them. Time to read some more now
Some thoughts based on this presentation: I wonder if what's being referred to as the symbolic order should be redefined as those elements of language that are having an authoritarian effect. To explain further, in order for a child/person to recognise 'themselves' in a reflection there has to be a whole body of pre-existing conceptual apparatus (this shows that it's wrong to think of the entirety of language as a social phenomenon), and I would argue that sort of apparatus is the reason why spoken/written language is possible at all. In that sense, we did 'invent' the language, or rather, we spontaneously create aspects of it upon which cultural specifics can be attached. So there is already a conceptual apparatus which allows for notions of bounded physical forms and people, and much of the experience of a bounded physical self would have already occurred prior to any reflected image. On top of that, there's no reason to describe the reflection as pristine or perfect, simply because it is geometrically bounded. You may as well say that at the moment of self-recognition in an image one finds that image horrendous because it becomes a representation of the lack of the reflected person; no reason why that shouldn't happen. So just invoking reflections does nothing to justify the creation of an ideal, and the assertion that such an ideal must automatically follow. Rather, it's a messy subject that could be explored (to the extent that it really happens, which is an empirical matter) via sociology, psychology, psychiatry etc. An 'imaginary' realm which supposedly bypasses language is actually dependent on things like object-recognition, which is actually at the core of linguistic functions, and that core is the reason why there's a stable enough base for language, such that communication is possible. So there's something that would have to precede what's here being called the imaginary and the symbolic order, and it's a something which actually has characteristics of both, indicating that trying to split them will likely cause false conclusions. Following from that, it looks to me like a leap to think that there must be a realm of the unconscious which is prior to symbolisation, and that could probably be tied back to Kant and the notion of intuitions. The structure of intuitions is the structure of mind/self/being. I think the direction I'm heading here is that the notion of lack and desire is exaggerated in Lacan's systematisation through the exaggeration of the extent to which the symbolic order is an alien entity, rather than a partially alien entity dependant on cultural specifics.
Great vid! Please could someone help me understand the the retroactive movement from A to s(A)? Sure it is s(A), the signifier of the Other, which retroactively signifies A? Or is it just that we mistakenly (and retroactively) imagine s(A) to be an effect of A?
What irritates one, if one has read a lot of Wittgenstein and happens to come across Lacan, is the "castrating" effect that Lacan and his ilk ascribe to language, whereas for Wittgenstein - exactly the other way around - it is language that gives actuality to the subject in the first place. Wittgenstein illustrates this in his beetle parable: Suppose everyone has a box that only they can see into. No one can see into anyone else's box. Each describes what he or she sees in the box as a 'beetle'. I know what a beetle is from my own examination of what is in my box, you from yours. Wittgenstein points out that in this situation while we all talk about our beetles, there might be different things in everyone's boxes, or perhaps nothing at all in some of them. The thing in the box, could be changing all the time. Whatever it is, he maintains that it cannot have a part in the 'language-game'. Wittgenstein's "beetle" is Lacan's "delta" to which Lacan ascribes an existence or relevance independent of language, which is logically impossible: for how does one want to realize something that is not linguistically composed, implying a fellow human response? This is true, as Wittgenstein shows us, even of toothaches (his favorite metaphor for Lacan's "delta") - we would not have them if there were no others to whom they signal an appropriate response.
Thanks for your lengthy and comprehensive comment! From my understanding, I think there are some important errors in the analysis of Wittgenstein that you mention here. It is totally true that language gives actuality to the subject. It is however exactly this that Lacan mentions as the castrating effect. Before we are a subject, and merely a delta, or in Kantian terms a thing in itself, or Schopenhauer a will. Psychoanalysis call this state the "oceanic feeling". The feeling that we have as babies without language, that is, without the signifiers to describe the world. However, this delta then comes across the signifying chain. This is the language of the Other. From this point forward, the subjects starts to describe itself to itself by calling itself the "I". However, exactly in describing the I, it distinguishes itself from the non-I. So there is always a negation for every affirmation. This is the castrating effect. If you say, "that is a cat", it is at the same time not a dog. Where the analysis of Wittgenstein goes wrong, is that it leaves out the Other altogether. This whole parable can only take place after the castration. When the subject is already split and has the language of the Other. The language that they then use to describe the thing in the box is not their own language. They acquired it from the other, i.e. their culture, upbringing, etc. Furthermore, a private language itself is not possible according to Lacan. The subject is describing what is in the box. Even if he is not describing it to any other person around, or fails to do so, he is still describing it to someone, namely, himself. He uses the language of the other to describe what he sees in the box in a way that he himself understands it. The meaning of the words that he uses to describe the thing in the box to himself is not ambiguous. He knows what he is describing. But the words that he uses to do so are in reality not his own. The example of the toothache is used to make the point of Wittgenstein stronger, but in reality it only shows how wrong the presupposition of a private language is. What the example of the toothache shows is that the language of the other has a profound effect on our subjective experience. It shows that a parable as seen with the beetles is never possible since we only exist in relation to the Other. I am curious how you see these comment in light of you own! 😊 (I do have add by the way that I am no expert on Wittgenstein, so if I am wrong is relating your answer to his exact theory please correct me 😁)
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 The “problem” with Wittgenstein consists in his deconstruction of the more than 2,000 years old philosophical idea that the mind of man is built up according to (and justified by) the model of the world of external objects. Since the times of St. Augustine, an "inner world" full of spiritual matters is considered proven; the same is true - in a secularized form - for Descartes or later for Kant and his "transcendental psychology". The "inner world" enjoys an enormous prestige. The "spirituality" appearing in its objectification makes it interesting both philosophically and religiously. Spirit, which actually cannot be reified, gets weight and prestige by virtue of its embodiment through (inner) affairs modeled after real objects, which one can treat (take care of and "fix"). Lost thereby is, as Wittgenstein speculates, something infinitely more valuable: the living, breathing life of the soul. Wittgenstein is the first in the main stream of occidental thought to clarify the difference between (fake) inner world and (real) soul life. His constant consulting and close examination of mental concepts used in everyday language (he’s averse to any form of jargon) yields the suggestion that there is no ontological difference between "inside" and "outside", which are merely different structures of the same substance that mediates them from the beginning. Seen in this way, there is no “entry into language” at all, in the sense that Lacan and his paragons, the structuralists, understand it and attach it to the use of words, when in fact language consists, as Wittgenstein demonstrates by the observation of its usage, in the repetition of regularities that constitute precisely what we call life. By being born, we are, seen this way, already "speaking" - in the further course of life the patterns of a substantially constant set of rules merely “complicate” themselves. (This idea could owe itself to Wittgenstein's model Schopenhauer, who, by tracing human existence back to an act of procreation, implies its linguistic constitution = sex is always composed linguistically.) The idea, fossilized in the course of 2,000 years, that the "I" can contemplate, somehow imagine, its "mental contents" has become so entrenched that it is considered a commonplace, and its denial is consequently regarded as a lack of understanding. Every major Western philosopher since Plato - and every psychologist today - assumes in one way or another "internal affairs" of the self or consciousness. They all assume that ideas, thoughts, impressions, hunches, and the like have a location in the human mind. Plato, Aristotle, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas of Aquin, William Occam and since the Renaissance rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz or empiricists like Locke, Berkeley, Hume - they all start from "mental objects" with which we deals inside ourselves when he "know", "perceive", "imagine", "believe", "think" or "intend" something. That there could not be "mental contents" at all has not occurred to any important philosopher before Wittgenstein. It simply seems inconceivable, because "interior" contemplation, one thinks, is somehow necessary to mirror or confirm the “exterior”, once this separation - between inner and outer - has been made. From Wittgenstein's point of view, therefore, the use of the term “castration” with regard to the developing acquisition of language is like saying that an oak tree is the result of the annihilation of the acorn from which it sprouted. One could phrase it that way - does it bring us closer to the truth, though?
Recently, I spoke to a professor about the difference between Lacan's Big Other and the Symbolic Order. I said that they are the same, according to Lacan, and my professor told me I was incorrect, that the Big Other only exists because of the Symbolic Order. Am I oversimplifying it, or is my professor incorrect? Just looking for any advice
I am by no means an authority, but from my reading of Lacan I would say that the Big Other is the most important part of the Symbolic Order. The Symbolic order is all and every symbology for the subject. These symbols (or signifiers) can be from the Other that tell us what to do and not to do (Big Other), but they can also come from ourselves, the small other. So you are correct that they are on some level the same, but in the sense that "all Big Other is Symbolic, but not all Symbolic is Big Other". I hope this helps! 😁
Thanks so much for the great video! Really helps clarify the ideas. Question - would you say that the split subject is the division between thought and the thinker? That is how the Indian philosopher jiddu Krishnamurti puts it... have you heard of him?
Thank you so much! 😄 That is a good description yes. I would only add that the thinker is in itself a mere creation of a thought. I have to admit I have not heard of Jiddu Krishnamurti, but I will definitely look him up! Thanks for the suggestion 😁.
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Yes, I would say the same thing too as would Krishnamurti. In fact that is one of his famous quotes "the thinker is the thought" he would often say. Which leads me to ask a question that I have struggled to grasp within Lacanian psychoanalysis - why insist that the subject is permanently split, when in fact the thinker is just a thought? I understand that this is how people experience themselves (as thinkers producing thought) but if psychoanalysis says that in fact thought creates the thinker, than in reality they are not split. So would it not be more accurate to say that the subject appears to itself as split? But that in actuality it isn't split because the false self is the unconscious thought... the thinker is the thought?
@@sagewabi7298 I totally agree with you. First off all I think it is amazing that there are so many thinkers that (often) independently came to the same conclusions. If that is not an archetype than I don't know what is. And yes I do agree, and I think that Lacan would agree here, that the subject is only split from the perspective of its own subjectivity and not in the Real. But here I would invoke Kant by saying that we only ever know the appearance and not the thing in itself. For what remains if we subtract the subjectivity from the subject? Whatever remains cannot be known by us since we are subjects that perceive only the appearance. Maybe this thing in itself is what remains when we let go of the Veil of Maya and return to Nirvana.
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Thanks again for the response 🙏 as u point out it does seem like there is a hard stop, sort to speak or limit to thought and knowledge that thought itself has to appreciate and therefore know where it's appropriate place is and where it isn't... without being formulaic.
No, it's Lacanean. A weird mix of English, psychoanalysis, French decadence, mathematics, and, to make it all worse, it's spoken with a Dutch accent... 🥲
As a Chinese person, the UA-cam generated text is in Dutch, I know a little English and I love your videos, but it's too hard for me.😇@@eversbrothersproductions1476
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 I appreciate the hardwork and thanks for these videos. I've watched a lot of videos on the graphs of desire, and these are without a doubt, the best. Good job And many thanks.
Honestly, I didn't understand a thing. Barred subject, not yet subject.... Subject replaced by a signifier.... The speaking subject can't say what he says and that he is presently speaking. That being said, the speaking subject is also an individual that can be localised in space and time: it can not be reduced to some invention created by language or by the act of speaking (or reduced to some not yet born entity). As for the relation to desire... Hard to see anything else as intellectual constructions, always complexified, turning around the notions of lack, of void, of incompleteness, attempting to say what is recognised on the other hand as impossible to say...
It’s just wow, these concepts contains so much creative value. I watched all of your videos already and can’t wait for next lectures! 🤓🤯
Wow, thank you so much! 😄
Hey I wanted to thank you, after reading about the graphs and failing to completely grasp them, this video works really well explaining them. Time to read some more now
Waited for a video like this for a few months. Thank you for this good explanation!
You are criminally underrated man kudos to you
LOL the peach in second 13. Love it.
Brilliant! Helped me put together a lot of concepts I was struggling with. Thank you!
FINALLY! Thanks for all the amazing videos!
Thank you so much! 😄
LOVE THIS CHANNEL!
amazing explanation. thank you!
Some thoughts based on this presentation: I wonder if what's being referred to as the symbolic order should be redefined as those elements of language that are having an authoritarian effect. To explain further, in order for a child/person to recognise 'themselves' in a reflection there has to be a whole body of pre-existing conceptual apparatus (this shows that it's wrong to think of the entirety of language as a social phenomenon), and I would argue that sort of apparatus is the reason why spoken/written language is possible at all. In that sense, we did 'invent' the language, or rather, we spontaneously create aspects of it upon which cultural specifics can be attached. So there is already a conceptual apparatus which allows for notions of bounded physical forms and people, and much of the experience of a bounded physical self would have already occurred prior to any reflected image. On top of that, there's no reason to describe the reflection as pristine or perfect, simply because it is geometrically bounded. You may as well say that at the moment of self-recognition in an image one finds that image horrendous because it becomes a representation of the lack of the reflected person; no reason why that shouldn't happen. So just invoking reflections does nothing to justify the creation of an ideal, and the assertion that such an ideal must automatically follow. Rather, it's a messy subject that could be explored (to the extent that it really happens, which is an empirical matter) via sociology, psychology, psychiatry etc. An 'imaginary' realm which supposedly bypasses language is actually dependent on things like object-recognition, which is actually at the core of linguistic functions, and that core is the reason why there's a stable enough base for language, such that communication is possible. So there's something that would have to precede what's here being called the imaginary and the symbolic order, and it's a something which actually has characteristics of both, indicating that trying to split them will likely cause false conclusions. Following from that, it looks to me like a leap to think that there must be a realm of the unconscious which is prior to symbolisation, and that could probably be tied back to Kant and the notion of intuitions. The structure of intuitions is the structure of mind/self/being. I think the direction I'm heading here is that the notion of lack and desire is exaggerated in Lacan's systematisation through the exaggeration of the extent to which the symbolic order is an alien entity, rather than a partially alien entity dependant on cultural specifics.
Killer video. Very nice. You are a angel from the heavens
I'm loving your videos!
awesome. great explanation so far
great video!
Great vid! Please could someone help me understand the the retroactive movement from A to s(A)? Sure it is s(A), the signifier of the Other, which retroactively signifies A? Or is it just that we mistakenly (and retroactively) imagine s(A) to be an effect of A?
Thank you
You’re so helpful thank you! 😭
What irritates one, if one has read a lot of Wittgenstein and happens to come across Lacan, is the "castrating" effect that Lacan and his ilk ascribe to language, whereas for Wittgenstein - exactly the other way around - it is language that gives actuality to the subject in the first place. Wittgenstein illustrates this in his beetle parable:
Suppose everyone has a box that only they can see into. No one can see into anyone else's box. Each describes what he or she sees in the box as a 'beetle'. I know what a beetle is from my own examination of what is in my box, you from yours. Wittgenstein points out that in this situation while we all talk about our beetles, there might be different things in everyone's boxes, or perhaps nothing at all in some of them. The thing in the box, could be changing all the time. Whatever it is, he maintains that it cannot have a part in the 'language-game'.
Wittgenstein's "beetle" is Lacan's "delta" to which Lacan ascribes an existence or relevance independent of language, which is logically impossible: for how does one want to realize something that is not linguistically composed, implying a fellow human response? This is true, as Wittgenstein shows us, even of toothaches (his favorite metaphor for Lacan's "delta") - we would not have them if there were no others to whom they signal an appropriate response.
Thanks for your lengthy and comprehensive comment! From my understanding, I think there are some important errors in the analysis of Wittgenstein that you mention here.
It is totally true that language gives actuality to the subject. It is however exactly this that Lacan mentions as the castrating effect. Before we are a subject, and merely a delta, or in Kantian terms a thing in itself, or Schopenhauer a will. Psychoanalysis call this state the "oceanic feeling". The feeling that we have as babies without language, that is, without the signifiers to describe the world. However, this delta then comes across the signifying chain. This is the language of the Other. From this point forward, the subjects starts to describe itself to itself by calling itself the "I". However, exactly in describing the I, it distinguishes itself from the non-I. So there is always a negation for every affirmation. This is the castrating effect. If you say, "that is a cat", it is at the same time not a dog.
Where the analysis of Wittgenstein goes wrong, is that it leaves out the Other altogether. This whole parable can only take place after the castration. When the subject is already split and has the language of the Other. The language that they then use to describe the thing in the box is not their own language. They acquired it from the other, i.e. their culture, upbringing, etc. Furthermore, a private language itself is not possible according to Lacan. The subject is describing what is in the box. Even if he is not describing it to any other person around, or fails to do so, he is still describing it to someone, namely, himself. He uses the language of the other to describe what he sees in the box in a way that he himself understands it. The meaning of the words that he uses to describe the thing in the box to himself is not ambiguous. He knows what he is describing. But the words that he uses to do so are in reality not his own.
The example of the toothache is used to make the point of Wittgenstein stronger, but in reality it only shows how wrong the presupposition of a private language is. What the example of the toothache shows is that the language of the other has a profound effect on our subjective experience. It shows that a parable as seen with the beetles is never possible since we only exist in relation to the Other.
I am curious how you see these comment in light of you own! 😊 (I do have add by the way that I am no expert on Wittgenstein, so if I am wrong is relating your answer to his exact theory please correct me 😁)
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 The “problem” with Wittgenstein consists in his deconstruction of the more than 2,000 years old philosophical idea that the mind of man is built up according to (and justified by) the model of the world of external objects. Since the times of St. Augustine, an "inner world" full of spiritual matters is considered proven; the same is true - in a secularized form - for Descartes or later for Kant and his "transcendental psychology".
The "inner world" enjoys an enormous prestige. The "spirituality" appearing in its objectification makes it interesting both philosophically and religiously. Spirit, which actually cannot be reified, gets weight and prestige by virtue of its embodiment through (inner) affairs modeled after real objects, which one can treat (take care of and "fix"). Lost thereby is, as Wittgenstein speculates, something infinitely more valuable: the living, breathing life of the soul.
Wittgenstein is the first in the main stream of occidental thought to clarify the difference between (fake) inner world and (real) soul life. His constant consulting and close examination of mental concepts used in everyday language (he’s averse to any form of jargon) yields the suggestion that there is no ontological difference between "inside" and "outside", which are merely different structures of the same substance that mediates them from the beginning. Seen in this way, there is no “entry into language” at all, in the sense that Lacan and his paragons, the structuralists, understand it and attach it to the use of words, when in fact language consists, as Wittgenstein demonstrates by the observation of its usage, in the repetition of regularities that constitute precisely what we call life. By being born, we are, seen this way, already "speaking" - in the further course of life the patterns of a substantially constant set of rules merely “complicate” themselves. (This idea could owe itself to Wittgenstein's model Schopenhauer, who, by tracing human existence back to an act of procreation, implies its linguistic constitution = sex is always composed linguistically.)
The idea, fossilized in the course of 2,000 years, that the "I" can contemplate, somehow imagine, its "mental contents" has become so entrenched that it is considered a commonplace, and its denial is consequently regarded as a lack of understanding. Every major Western philosopher since Plato - and every psychologist today - assumes in one way or another "internal affairs" of the self or consciousness. They all assume that ideas, thoughts, impressions, hunches, and the like have a location in the human mind.
Plato, Aristotle, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas of Aquin, William Occam and since the Renaissance rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz or empiricists like Locke, Berkeley, Hume - they all start from "mental objects" with which we deals inside ourselves when he "know", "perceive", "imagine", "believe", "think" or "intend" something. That there could not be "mental contents" at all has not occurred to any important philosopher before Wittgenstein. It simply seems inconceivable, because "interior" contemplation, one thinks, is somehow necessary to mirror or confirm the “exterior”, once this separation - between inner and outer - has been made.
From Wittgenstein's point of view, therefore, the use of the term “castration” with regard to the developing acquisition of language is like saying that an oak tree is the result of the annihilation of the acorn from which it sprouted. One could phrase it that way - does it bring us closer to the truth, though?
Good explication
Remarkable
Thanks man great vids. Can you make vidoes on focault&derrida. I have in my experience found to these two to be tough nuts to crack.
I accept the challenge! 😄
Recently, I spoke to a professor about the difference between Lacan's Big Other and the Symbolic Order. I said that they are the same, according to Lacan, and my professor told me I was incorrect, that the Big Other only exists because of the Symbolic Order. Am I oversimplifying it, or is my professor incorrect? Just looking for any advice
I am by no means an authority, but from my reading of Lacan I would say that the Big Other is the most important part of the Symbolic Order. The Symbolic order is all and every symbology for the subject. These symbols (or signifiers) can be from the Other that tell us what to do and not to do (Big Other), but they can also come from ourselves, the small other.
So you are correct that they are on some level the same, but in the sense that "all Big Other is Symbolic, but not all Symbolic is Big Other".
I hope this helps! 😁
Thanks so much for the great video! Really helps clarify the ideas. Question - would you say that the split subject is the division between thought and the thinker?
That is how the Indian philosopher jiddu Krishnamurti puts it... have you heard of him?
Thank you so much! 😄 That is a good description yes. I would only add that the thinker is in itself a mere creation of a thought. I have to admit I have not heard of Jiddu Krishnamurti, but I will definitely look him up! Thanks for the suggestion 😁.
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Yes, I would say the same thing too as would Krishnamurti. In fact that is one of his famous quotes "the thinker is the thought" he would often say.
Which leads me to ask a question that I have struggled to grasp within Lacanian psychoanalysis - why insist that the subject is permanently split, when in fact the thinker is just a thought? I understand that this is how people experience themselves (as thinkers producing thought) but if psychoanalysis says that in fact thought creates the thinker, than in reality they are not split. So would it not be more accurate to say that the subject appears to itself as split? But that in actuality it isn't split because the false self is the unconscious thought... the thinker is the thought?
@@sagewabi7298 I totally agree with you. First off all I think it is amazing that there are so many thinkers that (often) independently came to the same conclusions. If that is not an archetype than I don't know what is.
And yes I do agree, and I think that Lacan would agree here, that the subject is only split from the perspective of its own subjectivity and not in the Real. But here I would invoke Kant by saying that we only ever know the appearance and not the thing in itself. For what remains if we subtract the subjectivity from the subject? Whatever remains cannot be known by us since we are subjects that perceive only the appearance. Maybe this thing in itself is what remains when we let go of the Veil of Maya and return to Nirvana.
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Thanks again for the response 🙏 as u point out it does seem like there is a hard stop, sort to speak or limit to thought and knowledge that thought itself has to appreciate and therefore know where it's appropriate place is and where it isn't... without being formulaic.
Yeah
Is the language spoken in this video English?
No, it's Lacanean. A weird mix of English, psychoanalysis, French decadence, mathematics, and, to make it all worse, it's spoken with a Dutch accent... 🥲
As a Chinese person, the UA-cam generated text is in Dutch, I know a little English and I love your videos, but it's too hard for me.😇@@eversbrothersproductions1476
Ayeee. Where's part 2 big man???
Hahaha I am working on it! At the moment I am very busy though. I will try to finish it this week 😄
@@eversbrothersproductions1476 I appreciate the hardwork and thanks for these videos.
I've watched a lot of videos on the graphs of desire, and these are without a doubt, the best.
Good job
And many thanks.
@@jacobfranco3378 Wow, thank you so much! 😄. That gives some extra motivation to finish the next video 😉.
I don't know but I either don't get or it seems pointless
More
Honestly, I didn't understand a thing. Barred subject, not yet subject.... Subject replaced by a signifier....
The speaking subject can't say what he says and that he is presently speaking. That being said, the speaking subject is also an individual that can be localised in space and time: it can not be reduced to some invention created by language or by the act of speaking (or reduced to some not yet born entity).
As for the relation to desire... Hard to see anything else as intellectual constructions, always complexified, turning around the notions of lack, of void, of incompleteness, attempting to say what is recognised on the other hand as impossible to say...
Casually explained second channel explains this very same thing lol