I just read something which complicates the idea of this synthesis. It also has a very direct relevance to Ascolo’s suffering concept and my idea of pleasure and pain as different forms of rapture, although I cannot see the consequences of it now but I still want to quote it, from Wiki:
Jouissance
This sexual connotation (i.e. orgasm) lacking in the English word “enjoyment”, and is therefore left untranslated in English editions of the works of Jacques Lacan.[1]. In his Seminar “The Ethics of Psychoanalysis” (1959-1960) Lacan develops his concept of the opposition of jouissance and pleasure. The pleasure principle, according to Lacan, functions as a limit to enjoyment: it is the law that commands the subject to ‘enjoy as little as possible’. At the same time the subject constantly attempts to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go beyond the pleasure principle. Yet the result of transgressing the pleasure principle, according to Lacan, is not more pleasure but pain, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this ‘painful principle’ is what Lacan calls jouissance. (Dylan Evans). Thus jouissance is suffering (Ethics).
In his Seminar “Encore” (1972-1973) Lacan states that jouissance is essentially phallic. That is, insofar as jouissance is sexual it is phallic, meaning that it does not relate to the other as such. Lacan admits, however, that there is a specifically feminine jouissance, a supplementary jouissance, which is beyond the phallus, a jouissance of the Other. This feminine jouissance is ineffable, for both women and men may experience it but know nothing about it.
In his seminar “The Other Side of Psychoanalysis” (1969-1970) Lacan introduced the concept of surplus-jouissance (French ‘plus-de-jouir’) inspired by Marx’s concept of surplus-value: objet petit a is the excess of jouissance which has no use value, and which persists for the mere sake of jouissance.
For some reason, I’m completely put off by ‘French philosophy’.
Anyway, Freud later replaced the pleasure and reality principles by (not precisely respectively) Eros and the death instinct (a.k.a. the life instinct and Thanatos, respectively). I now think the infant’s narcissistic project, which expresses itself through Eros, is already morbid:
[size=95]Parental care makes childhood a period of privileged freedom from the domination of the reality-principle, thus permitting and promoting an early blossoming, in an unreal atmosphere, of infantile sexuality and the pleasure-principle. Thus sheltered from reality by parental care, infantile sexuality—Eros or the life instinct—conceives the dream of narcissistic omnipotence in a world of love and pleasure.
[Brown, Life Against Death, chapter IX.][/size]
I now see the life instinct as a will to union, and the death instinct as a will to deny separation. Denied separation is imaginary union. However, real union, though the objective opposite of separation, would be no different for the subject. The death instinct seeks the absence of all feeling of struggle; and union would entail that absence. The only thing that can be felt is a change of distance. Union must therefore always be resisted by the will to separation (in Jungian terms, Phobos (in the sense of “hate” rather than “fear”)). But perhaps it’s rather a case of separation being resisted by the will to union (Eros). As Nietzsche says, we love our desire, not what is desired. Translated to psychoanalysis this means: we take pleasure in our will to union, not in union itself. As Jim Morrison said, when sex dies it becomes Climax. Climax is the feeling of the dying, the ebbing away, of Eros; there is no feeling of its being-dead.
I think I see what you’re getting at, though I’m put off by this kind of extensive systematization of terms I’m not familiar to begin with so it took me some time to really read it.
I found an opening into “French philosophy” in Zizek, who is a Heideggerian.
Jouissance is an interesting concept set next to what Ascolo Parodites said - I understand if you want to keep this pure in your own terms.
I’m for the idea that a certain limit of pleasure is allowed in childhood. Poets like Blake must have had repressed childhoods - not repression of suffering, but of pleasure. As such, all great pleasure becomes jouissance, hence, Satan.
Naw I just wing it mostly. I don’t hang my hat on any ‘isms’, rather I try to sift through them in order to extract the useful psychological or philosophical pieces and elements contained within.
Here you come very close to my understanding of all motivation as the lust for Truth. Truth I have in that context elaborately explained in terms of union.
First of all, truth is transient.
It is a state reached through/in union of wills/forces which up until the union had been conflicting and as such the cause of a particular consciousness. In the resolution of this conflict, and hence, of this consciousness, an entirely different kind of consciousness arises - a limited duration in which subjective existence appears as self-explanatory, which is to say as much as that it appears to be objective, in line with all there is (appears to be).
The reason for this state of mind, the cause of it in physical terms, is explained by William Blake when he says that ‘reason is the circumference of energy’. As we’ve seen before, above, everywhere I’ve written and been understood, reason is duality. In such a union of forces, in such a temporary resolution of duality, in effect, in such a fusion of quanta of power, as with all fusions, a great deal of energy is released. As a consequence, the circumference of this energy, the reason of the consciousness that belongs to the energy (the subject), breaks apart, and is temporarily supplanted in its function of ego by the entire mass of energy itself. The ‘Self’, for a short duration, takes over the function of the ego, for as long as it takes the rational functions of the subject to enclose the new constitution of energy. In other words, to impose, to refer to another discourse, a new symbolic order on the Real. This short duration is my definition of truth.
Please note that I am not talking about a simple libidinal release of energy here, I am referring to all integration of wills within the subject. So also about concepts which have appeared irreconcilable and in a flash of brilliance merge into a new, superior concept. Dwelling on the emergence of an integrated conception is such non-dual state of mind. I’m sure we all know this state. I expect you’ll concur that it lasts until it has been formulated, circumscribed, encapsulated into terms. Then ‘the magic wears off’ (quite literally, as this fusion is the center of occult practice) and we need to pursue a new integration, a new moment of truth.
With this I think we arrive again at an essential disagreement between the two of us. I say that (the notions of) subject and object are necessary for consciousness. That is, there can only be consciousness of ‘the Real’ insofar as a subject imposes order on it. And in fact this is always the case (the ‘symbolic order’ is never finished). Consciousness then is not a subject’s consciousness of an object, but its consciousness of objectification (in the active sense: that is, ordering, order-imposing, etc.). There can be no consciousness of oneness or separateness, but only of union or separation (both words taken in the active sense). Hence we take pleasure, not in oneness (union in the perfect sense), but in the will to oneness (i.e., in unification, in the active sense).
I think you have misunderstood me there; I did not mean the fusion of subject and object in a totality, but all different objects into one. So that there is a pure consciousness of objectification, in your terms, until other objects start to emerge again into consciousness, and put the reached object, the result of the fusion, into perspective.
In a sense, however, the purity of the object results of course in a strong resonance between object and subject. They are aligned, so to speak. Which is not the case when we have a variety of objects, objectifying processes, which are in conflict, or at least in dissonance with each other. With this alignment it is possible to speak of a breach in the separation of subject and object. They are not one, but there is less of an absolute between them. Consciousness becomes aware of itself - it is aware of the dynamic it consists of.
If It wasn’t so late, I’d enjoy taking the original premises of this thread and trying to apply them to the conversation you two had afterwards for kicks, but honestly this stuff is a little over my head. I am familiar, however, with the “mine is bigger” … would that be a pleasure principle? Sorry. You both seem very insightful, but what is all the insight in the world worth if you fall into the same traps less insightful people do?
That is not Freud’s analysis at all. That is the original poster’s interpretation of a small slice of Freud.
The first thesis should instead of Pleasure Principle be “Undesirable Thoughts due to the need to attain Pleasure at any cost.” The first antithesis instead of Reality Principle should be “A brief conscious acknowledgement (Reality) that my thoughts are unacceptable which alarms me.” These are the thesis and antithesis that produce repression. You’ve reduced it to all pleasure versus all reality, and that was not what Freud was saying.
That having been said, I really appreciate both of your vigor in pursusing this thread. There are a lot of mind-provoking ideas. Thanks for letting me be a fly on the wall.
Are you toying with any isms yourself, or just winging it?
