An impossible, therefore necessary relationship. Philosophy and Lacan

Abstract

While psychoanalysis does not need philosophy, philosophy strongly needs psychoanalysis. In particular, psychoanalysis helps philosophy to overcome the temptation of adopting a perspective that looks only for conceptual completeness and logical transparency on one side, and it is based on the unconscious presumption of the existence of the subject of philosophical knowledge – the cogito – on the other side. At the center of psychoanalytic knowledge there is a sort of black hole, the unconscious, which cannot be elucidated, never in principle. Philosophy is always tempted to forget such a radical central weakness. For this reason, it is philosophy that needs the help of Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and not the contrary. However, to hide such a condition of need, philosophy completely ignores the very name of Jacques Lacan. However, this is not properly ignorance, it is a form of psychological undoing.