Abstract
Death is the persistent kernel of a human life in both Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory and Franz Rosenzweig’s theology. Lacan’s reformulation of the Freudian drive conceives of death as the annihilating force behind each person’s desire. Accordingly, the other assumes death’s absolute impenetrability. Rosenzweig likewise insists that perpetual acknowledgement of death must individuate a human life; however, his theology of revelation allows for the disclosure of the absolute Other in a commandment to love. Two ethics proceed from these two figures of death: a Lacanian ethics of distance and a Rosenzweigian ethics of communitarian love. Finally, I consider whether a Rosenzweigian posture toward the neighbor must be predicated on a transcendent faith.
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Notes
Throughout, I will capitalize “Other” when referring to the general, absolute Other, and use the lower case when referring to the specific, human other. In Lacan’s terminology, the Big Other, Autre, is defined over and against the little other, autre. Autre stands for the subjectivization of the law and the symbolic order. It should be understood much like Heidegger’s Das Man, “the They” or “the One,” to which the self relates as a normative, social standard of how “one should act,” or how “one should be.” autre, petit a, on the other hand, is the imaginary projection of the ego onto another self, whom the ego “images” as a mirror reflection. When using the term apropos Rosenzweig, “the Other” is aligned with Weimar theology’s God of total alterity, as opposed to the liberal account of an immanent, historicized God; and “the other,” lower-case, has unambiguous reference to the human neighbor. Generally, I intend “the Other” to retain the Heideggerian-Lacanian significance of the normative third person, while allowing “the other” to simply indicate the neighbor.
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Hendrickson, C.S. The Neighbor Between Rosenzweig and Lacan. Pastoral Psychol 62, 473–483 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-012-0469-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-012-0469-5