Abstract
After briefly highlighting Lacan’s formulation of the metaphor of love, this chapter offers a close reading of Lacan’s comments on Pausanius’ encomium on love. When it comes to matters of love, Lacan criticizes this register of value—one based in the imaginary or the symbolic. Lacan provides us with the parable of the rich Calvinist in order to make his point that giving what you have does not achieve the signification of love. Next, in solving the key riddle of why Aristophanes had the hiccoughs, Lacan shows that Plato—as well as numerous of the Symposium attendees—found Pausanius’ ideas about love to be laughable.
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References
Fink, B. 2016. Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Transference. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
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Swales, S. (2020). “The Psychology of the Rich: Pausanias”—Commentary on Session IV. In: Basu Thakur, G., Dickstein, J. (eds) Reading Lacan’s Seminar VIII. The Palgrave Lacan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32742-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32742-2_3
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