THE OBJECT OF KANT’S CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE Lakanova kritika Kantovog metafizičkog poimanja morala

Abstract

Kant suggests strict methodology in order to differentiate between “categorical imperative” of moral law and “hypothetical” imperative of indirect goals. The purpose is to find The Good, to free moral law from all “pathetic substrates”, in fact to exclude all within the subject which provokes interests for a particular object – drive or affection. Reduce it to a pure form. Lacan sees Sade’s “Philosophy in the Bedroom” as the revelation of Kant’s object of moral Law which is, even thought categorically rejected by the Kant himself, implicitly necessarily present. Sade is a Kantian truth in the fact that he disclosures the object of the Law, incarnated as an executor, a torturer who performs sadistic actions over his victims. There is nothing about pleasure in him. He performs actions in accordance to his duty, and these are ethical in the Kantian sense. The Kantian subject is himself a practical legislator, a moral subject corresponding to his duties, concealing the split between the enunciating subject and the subject of the statement. Lacan precisely points out to a kind of masking of the split referring to the scheme analogous to his developmental scheme of the subject. The executer performs the will of others, the will of the Other, so that sadist himself and his actions do not aim for pleasure. "The torturer" is masochistically subjected to the will of the Other, which leads to the instrumentalization of his position. By tormenting the victim, he renounces himself in the name of the Other.