Tom Dalzell – Kant’s Nothings and Lacan’s Empty Object
 
Issue 39 (Autumn 2008)
 
Guy Le Gaufey’s critical reading o f Lacan’s formulae o f sexuation has traced the historical course o f the invention o f Lacan’s object. Lacan’s objet a is not the specular object corresponding to his early concentration on the Imaginary, not the unary trait from his transition to the Symbolic, but “an object without a concept ” or an object in the Real. It is to make sense o f this new object that Lacan draws on Immanuel Kant’s “four nothings ” and, in particular, his nihil negativum or negative nothing which is a nothing without a concept……..