ARISTOTLE’S AND BENTHAM’S MORAL PHILOSOPHIES IN LACAN’S ETHICS SEMINAR

This paper interrogates Lacan’s juxtaposing of the ethics of Aristotle and Bentham and Freud in the manner of a Hegelian dialectical triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in order to develop his own ethical position. This brief investigation aims to explore an extract from Lacan’s Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Seminar VII where he asserts: Bentham’s effort is located in the dialectic of the relationship of language to the real so as to situate the good - pleasure in this case, which as we will see he articulates in a manner that is very different from Aristotle - on the side of the real.…