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NAGARJUNA, SARTRE AND LACAN
THE CONTINGENCY OF THE SELF
MIRA FONG
房曼琪
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"Never in the thought of the West has the Self been so pervaded by
negation. One would have to go to the East, to the Buddhist philosopher
Nagarjuna with his doctrine of Anatman (no-self), the insubstantiality of
the Self, to meet as awesome a list of negations as Sartre draws up. The
Self, indeed, is in Sartre's treatment, as in Buddhism, a bubble that has
nothing at its center." Irrational Man by William Barrett
A Negative Ontology of the Self
Nagarjuna 龍樹論師 ( c.150-250), the foremost scholar of the Mahayana School and
revered as the second Buddha, whose work was aimed in the deconstruction of
Essentialism. His argument, regarding the contingency of the self and the existence of
the phenomenal world, was further elaborated, after two thousand years, in the
existential analysis of Jacques Lacan and Jean Paul Sartre. The principal motif of this
paper is to correlate their analysis of the self with references to their own ontological
propositions including the ideas of emptiness 性空 (Nagarjuna), nothingness 虛無
(Sartre) and the lack 依性空 (Lacan) as these are the foundations in which they
construct the insubstantial and indeterminate character of the self.
Each of the three thinkers conducts a critical theory on the self by eliciting a particular
hermeneutics, either from a Buddhist or psychoanalytic perspective. Yet, they seem to
have reached the same understanding that the self has no underlying substance. Rather,
the self is a terrain of composites 六識六境 and its consciousness and identity co-arise 緣
起 with the world. Such assertion is tied to Nagarjuna's key theory of dependent
origination 依他起性 , which is investigated in great details in the context of
psychoanalysis by Sartre and Lacan.
While Nagarjuna advanced his arguments by utilizing the dialectic logic to demonstrate
the supreme void and the fictitious nature of the self 破相顯性, Sartre's phenomenology
and Lacan's structural psychoanalysis formulated a negative ontology to uncover the
pre-condition of the self. Here, negative ontology means the self is treated on a
phenomenal plane. Sartre observes that man's existence is marked by nothingness 空
無:"a being who is not what he is and is what he is not". Lacan, a postmodern theorist,
who views the self lacking a unified identity but rather fragmented and is conditioned by
cultural discourses. Additionally, both Sartre and Lacan depict the antagonistic and
dependent nature of the human psyche with reference to Hegel's "life and death
struggle of the self and the other" which can be considered as a Western version of
dependent origination.
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Nevertheless, one must keep in mind that, as a philosophical construction, there
remains fundamental differences between them. Each of their work was a response to its
own historical circumstance. In the case of Nagarjuna, his epistemic deconstruction of
the self by taking an opposing stand against the metaphysics in the Hindu system which
postulates a universal Selfhood, the Atman or Brahman. He also rejects the doctrine of
the early Buddhist schools of his time as they regarded the self as having svabhava, a
substantial real. For Sartre, the emphasis on freedom and action was to counter the
pervasive nihilism during WWII. With a Nietzschean defiance, he contends that there is
no Creator and one must invent its own authentic self within the condition of
nothingness. Lacan, an anti-orthodox rebel who supported the French Communist Party
to fight against the capitalistic practice, tackled the gap between the Freudian ego and
the sovereignty of the establishment.
The attempt to draw a connection, between their negative ontology of the self and the
psychology of dependent origination, means one is perhaps taking a risk of
misinterpretation. Nonetheless, in a deeper level, their investigation of the fundamental
conditions of human existence, its suffering and transcendence, is universal. In the
Buddhist scripture, Sati, as pure awareness or "knowing as it is", can be achieved when
one understands the nature and cause of suffering (the five aggregates of attachment
and the five mental obstacles). Lacan and Sartre's analysis, though without any
reference to Buddhism, offers insights relevant to the Buddhist notion regarding the
three marks of existence, that is, impermanence, discontent and no self. They also stress
the social dimension of desire or craving as the cause of suffering.
The added Chinese phrases taken from Buddhist texts (for those who also read Chinese)
are intended to expand the contextual meanings as well as cultivating a transitioning
from Lacan's multi-layered analysis to the way of Zen.
Nagarjuna: The Radical Indeterminacy of the Self
"If there is no essence, who could become the other? If there is essence, what could
become the other?" Nagarjuna
In refuting Descartes' claim that mental substance is indubitable, David Hume, a
Scottish empiricist, argues that the cogito, the thinking substance is composed of
memories, impressions and concepts. They are mental concepts determined by the
principle of contiguity and relational conjunction. Hume's radical skepticism accords
with the central tenet in Nagarjuna's teaching that our knowledge of the self and reality
is fallible. Although both argue from a causal point of view, but causality, for Hume, is
constituted by constant conjunctions, itself is not a principle or self-evident truth.
Nagarjuna's major work, Madhyamika 中觀論, is a systematic and rigorous analysis of
the status of the self through the concept of sunyata (emptiness 性空). His aim was to
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counter the realistic view of the self and its perceived phenomenal world 森羅萬相. He
asserts that the idea of a coherent, independent self is an illusion 假相 since its genesis is
pervaded by sunyata. All things come into existence by their relations with others and
are mutually dependent linked by a causal nexus 因果相續, a process of differentiation.
To the questions of "who I am" and "what I am", Nagarjuna's answer is that the self, as
a cognitive agent, is a mere collection of mental and physical aggregates 積聚, such as
sensory impressions and mental concepts. Hume also made the same argument: "man is
a bundle of collection of different perceptions with succeed one another with
inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux of movement". What they both are
saying is that the self, including the knowledge of the world, the names and forms, is
without inherent substance (svabhava 實性) and is temporal in nature. Thus, Nagarjuna
proclaims:"No things whatsoever exist, at any time or place, having risen by
themselves, from another, from both or without a cause."
The concept of sunyata is intended as an internal negation to dismantle any false
apprehension of a singular and substantial self. It plays a key role in Nagarjun's system
to refute the metaphysics of a universal Self, the Atman. He argues that such postulation
is a result of conceptual confusion, since it can neither be logically inferred, nor verified
by a posteriori judgment. In The Treaties of Twofold Truth 二諦論, Nagarjuna conducts
a dialectic method of reasoning by differentiating the two levels of truth 真俗二諦: "One
is that of a personal and conventional truth of the self, and a higher truth which
surpasses it. " 中觀論: 諸佛依二諦, 為眾生說法, 一以世俗諦, 二第一義諦. 說諸法由因緣 .
緣起而有者, 俗諦. 說一切畢竟空, 真諦也. The first level truth 世諦, the thesis, is
established by social agreement or public opinion for pragmatic reason. The second level
truth 真諦, as an antithesis and a skeptic position, regards all truth claims are
provisional.吉藏 三論玄義: 說有為俗諦, 空為真諦. 有空為俗, 非有非空為真之二諦... 言亡
慮絕為真之二諦.
Nagarjuna purports sunyata to the theory of no-self (anatman 性空) and of dependent
origination 依他起性. The epistemic application of sunyata 析空 is to reveal the
misconception of reality but not to be posited as an absolute truth. Such clarification is
well explained by Hsueh-Li Chen in Nagarjuna, Kant and Wittgenstein: "Nagarjuna's
rejection of the concept of noumena does not imply that he accepted the legitimate use
of human categories or concepts in the realm of phenomena " 內止其心, 不空外界.
Basically, Nagarjuna is saying that ideas are merely products of the mind 假名 and are
determined by a dialogical system. To borrow Lacan's words: "every truth has a
structure of a fiction."
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Based on such premise, Nagarjuna proclaims that our ideas of things are established in
virtue of its opposite 二見分, such as the notion of being or non-being 空有問題. He
explicates: "That which is the element of light is seen to exist on account of darkness,
and the element of good is seen to exist on account of bad, that which is the element of
space is seen to exist on account of form." The Treaties of the Middle Way 中論,
Nagarjuna's major theoretical framework, addresses the problem of dichotomous
thinking. The way to transcend the either/or mentality, he proposes, is to cultivate a
non-abiding awareness 言慮無寄 by taking a middle position. The Middle Way refers to
a method of progressive negation to any truth claim. He clarifies: "It cannot be called
void or not void, or both, or neither. But in order to point it out, it's called the void".
Further: "there is no arising, no dissolving 不生不滅, no atman and no anatman 無我亦
無無我." In essence, the Middle Way alludes to a non-fixated approach in order to
transcend both negation and affirmation 言詞相寂, 文字性空, that is, between nihilism
and essentialism.
Some scholars compare Nagarjuna's logic of deconstruction to that of Postmodern
theory which rejects the idea of universality and replaces with an unstable world view of
change and flux. Both argue from a relativistic position that the meaning of an idea is
inferred by contrasting or deferring to other ideas within a system of signifiers 隨應諸法,
假實不定. Interestingly, Wittgenstein's theory of the language game also implies the
same notion that our ideas of things are provincial as they are limited within the
framework of language as well as a set of speech rules. In regard to the realm outside the
language, Wittgenstein seems to pointing to a state of Zen which transcends language 言
語道斷, 心行處減, as he ends his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with these words:
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
Implicitly, Nagarjuna's dialectic is a transitioning from critical thinking to a state of
Bodhi mind 淵微鏡徹, the silent mirroring of suchness. His method was later
assimilated into the Zen practice by way of non-verbal transmission 以教照心, 以心解教,
as such state is meant to be experienced not analyzed 非想,非非想處. Seeing things as
they are 諸相寂然 without articulation.
Overall, the basic premise of "The Middle Way", taken to a logical extreme, is to point
out that what considered as matter of fact is constituted through relations of ideas 因緣
所生. Things in themselves neither have substance (svahbava) nor empty. Nagarjuna
himself considers his own teaching to be tentative which is characteristic of Buddhist
teaching, the purpose is to relinquish the constraint of an absolute or realistic position.
Different level of discourse is required due to circumstantial factors 方便教化.
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The Prajnaparamita Sutra 心經, the best known Buddhist text, contains Nagarjuna's
core theory, the investigation of the conditions of arising, dwelling and finally the
ceasing. Its content can be summed up in his words:
What dependently arises
Has no cessation, no production, no annihilation, no permanence
No coming, no going, no difference, no sameness,
Is free of elaborations of inherent existence and of duality
And is at peace.
One can observe a parallel and complimentary view of sunyata between Nagarjuna and
that of Sartre and Lacan as they also relate the concept of the no-self to a lack 依性空,
which is precisely the field of sunyata, described by Sartre: "nothing comes into the
world through man because man not only bears the nothing within him, but consists of
nothing".
Contemporary Western philosophy puts emphasis on the social dimension of the self
such as the study of Dasein in Heidegger's Being and Time. Dasein, as human being, is
situated in temporality and constructed by its facticity, meaning its physical appearance,
intellectual competence and social integration. It has no prior essence. In this respect,
both Sartre's and Heidegger's existential phenomenology corresponds to Nagarjuna's
theory that the consciousness of the self is not innate but co-arises with the phenomenal
world 因緣所生.
Jean Paul Sartre: The Poverty of the Self.
The enquiry into the meaning and purpose of human existence in the climate of
pervasive nothingness 泯絕無寄 became the prime concern since Kierkegaard. He asked:
"I stick my finger into existence, it smells nothing. Where am I? What is this thing
called the world?... Who am I? How did I come into this world? Why was I not
consulted?" Since then, a new movement has emerged from continental philosophy.
Contrary to the age old question: "what can one know" in the pursuit of epistemological
certainty, philosophers turned to the human subject to explore its inner pathos. One
such endeavor is the publication of Sartre's Being and Nothingness in 1943, an
investigation of the self and its existential condition of nothingness. Although these are
the same subject matter as in Nagarjuna's doctrine, but Nagarjuna's negation of the self
is through a linguistic and logical operation. In contrast, Sartre's method is
phenomenological. His negation of the self is through the proposition of nothingness.
While Heidegger was interested in disclosing the region of being as the ground of all
beings, Sartre located the idea of being in human relations. He came to realize that there
is a negative mode within human consciousness. It is manifested, not only as an
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intrinsic split of the self, but also in its unstable relations with others 緣慮. Based on
such observation, Sartre formulated a dualistic ontology, the in-itself and for-itself, a
concept which was originally introduced by Hegel.
In Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel gives a dramatic account of the master and slave
confrontation, in that each self must "struggle till death" in order to subjugate the other
self. He writes: "the absolute object is the I individual, but when faced by another selfconsciousness, difficulties arise (the other is a veritable mirror of my own
consciousness). Each I must position itself against the other". Such antagonism within
human relations was eagerly developed in both Sartre and Lacan's psychoanalytic theory
and attribute such dichotomy to a lack of self identity.
Sartre deconstructs the solidity of the self by internalizing the conflict of master and
slave which he regards as cause of self alienation. With a combination of psychoanalysis
and Hegel's dialectics, Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, provides a detail explanation
regarding the inherent human psyche exists in a paradox, an unhappy consciousness. It
composes of two conflicting selves, that is, being-in-itself (one's own facticity) and
being-for-itself (the conscious self). As conscious being, the for-itself must resist and
negate its own facticity, the in-itself. Such antagonism produces an intrinsic condition,
that is, a trauma of the self. To press farther, the internal split also manifests itself in
mass movement. For example, the social conflicts between classes and nations including
the dominance over the non-human kinds. Similarly, Freud interprets such internal
trauma as the cause of man's outward aggression in his Civilization and Its Discontents:
"Man have gain control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help
they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man."
As an individual, when the experiencing self is bound up with a co-presence of others, it
risks the threat of being turned into a non-being. Sartre contends: "the other, in a
certain sense, is the radical negation of my subjectivity, he is the one for whom I am
not a subject but an object". One's own sense of self can easily slip away by the
interrogative look of others as "sitting in judgment". In this respect, the self is being
alienated from its own possibilities by allowing "what-is-not determines what-is."
Based on the notion "to be is to be for another", Sartre formulates his theory regarding
the contingency of the self 緣起性空 and its attempt to escape the nothingness of its
non-being. In other words, one's reflective consciousness is being objectified into "foritself-for-others". Sartre's in-depth psychoanalysis of human relations and the troubled
self is vividly illustrated in his play No exit, a literary interpretation of his magnum opus,
Being and Nothingness. Both works were written in the same year.
No Exit, in a theatrical format, plays out the psychology of "being-for-others" and
"struggle till death" (except that all three characters in the play were already dead!). In
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it, the three characters, Garcin, Inez and Estelle, are supposed to be dead and confined
in a room of damnation. Each, as a chimerical self, is preoccupied with self identity by
seeking validation through the oppressive others. One hears Inez's lament on the nonsubstantiality of herself: "How weak I am, a mere breath in the air, a gaze observing
you, a formless thought that thinks you." After being emotionally tormented by the two
women and unable to escape, Garcin concludes: "Hell is other people". Because the
others are able to take away one's own subjectivity and making it an object of his world.
To further Sartre's view, one can relate the split self to Freud's theory of the unconscious,
such as eros or love versus thanatos, hate or a death drive. It is also manifested in
philosophical dualism such as Plato's dividing line between the visible and the
intelligible world, as well as Kant's epistemological separation of the noumena and
phenomena. Politically, the inherent conflict takes the form of class struggle theorized
by Karl Marx and also by Michel Foucault, who reasons that social discourse is just
another form of oppression of the unprivileged.
Ontologically, Sartre posits that the self is divided into two opposing poles, being and
the consciousness of nothingness. Put in another way, what lies at the core of one's
being is really a non-being due to the fact that being is always dialectically towards its
antithesis, as Sartre professes: "Nothingness enters the world through human
existence". The intentionality of one's consciousness perceives the world through "what
is not there", its presence is revealed in absence. Sartre's notion that human
consciousness constitutes its own nothingness corresponds to the void in Nagarjuna's
logic. What appears to be an individual self is really a lack of being 本無. This notion is
further explored by another Parisian thinker, Jacques Lacan, in his analysis of the ego,
desire and the Other.
Sartre's investigation on the dependent nature of human desire is also an important
subject for both Buddhism and Lacan. Sartre posits that desire is originated from an
inner lack. "One looks at things with desire" he says. Further, desire is always tied to
one's memories, anxiety, interests, needs and projects. In Being and Nothingness,
Sartre argues that: "The existence of desire as a human fact is sufficient to prove that
human reality is a lack". Desire and anxiety are caused by one's internal nothingness
which is like a hole waiting to be filled, a view elaborated in his "Existentialism and
Human Emotions: "I have only to crawl into it (the hole) in order to make myself exist
in the world which awaits me". In nothingness, man is propelled to seek its own
density:"the uniform and spherical plentitude of Parmenidean being."
In many ways, Sartre's philosophy contains the skeptic ideas of David Hume, an
intellectual of mid-Eighteenth century who frequented the salons in Paris. Both reject
the assumption of a supernatural spirit, transcendent reality or a teleological universe
such as Hegel's Geist, an invisible spirit behind the rational development of human
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history. Rather, they believe there is no higher order that holds the human reality and
the self together. Sartre also associates egotism with the project of becoming God. He
remarks: "To be man means to reach toward being God. Or if you prefer, man
fundamentally is the desire to be God...Every human reality is a passion in that it
projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the Initself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation which religions call God."
Sartre makes it very clear that the very effort to fill the void "is a useless passion striving
in a universe without purpose" because the universe is indifferent to our human
struggles. This explains why man's fundamental project is to cover up the void by
seeking a transcendent connection as the ground of his being. The concept of being, for
both Sartre and Hume, is similar to a blank canvas, a tabula rasa 空無所有 which
counters the theory since Plato who holds that one's existence is ascribed by timeless
principles.
But there is also a twist which Sartre applies the existential nothingness dialectically, to
further posits his idea of freedom, which will be explained in this paper as well.
Jacques Lacan: The I is the Other
Jacques Lacan, a French Psychoanalyst and a contemporary of Sartre of the 50s, is
perhaps one of the most intriguing continental thinkers. Apart from his reworking of
Freud's theory of the ego and the unconscious, Lacan formulates a pluralistic and
negative ontology by incorporating ideas from a diverse group of thinkers, primarily,
Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Saussure and Levi-Strauss. Lacan was also active in the
Parisian artistic and literary circle, particularly, the surrealist group. From Hegel, Lacan
adopted his dialectic reasoning to invert the Platonic Real to the unreality of the self 性
空. His interest, regarding the genesis of the self and its culturalization, is influenced by
the structural anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss as well as Ferdinand De Saussure's
linguistics, through which he developed his own theory of self within the three orders.
Contrary to the practice in general psychology which aims to integrate the ego, Lacan, by
way of structural analysis, de-centers the Freudian ego. The self, in his view, is
predicated by language and has no intrinsic properties. Rather, it is something of a lack
依性空. Its meaning is derived from a chain of signification through a dichotomous
thinking 二見分. Beyond language, the world is inaccessible to the cogito. Lacan,
transfers the Freudian ego to a structural theorizing, a similar task conducted by
Nagarjuna. Both argue that the idea of the self is derived through a process of
differentiation 分別性. According to Lacan, the self, as a signifier and being suspended
in the linguistic plane, has no access to the thing-in-itself. He explains: "The signifier is
a sign that does not refers to any object...it refers to another sign which is as such
structured to signify the absence of another sign "無盡緣起.
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Lacan also sees the self is bound up in the tension between its own fragmentation and
the imaginary ideal as to be unified and coherent. The self, for Lacan, has two
components, the social/ cultural phenomena as well as the linguistic structure. On the
social plane, the content of the self is pre-determined by an existing value system. On
the linguistic plane, the self, as a speaking entity, its status is identified as a signifier.
These aspects of the self also reflect the conditions which attribute to its "traumatic
accession to the Symbolic Order" stated by Stephen Ross in his article on Lacan.
As a young doctor in the 1930s, Lacan was influenced by the pro-left surrealists, in
particular, Dali's view of the free flowing of the unconscious. Lacan agrees that the
human subject is not a rational construct but rather deficient, lacking identity and
driven by desire. His investigation of the self as the subject poses a radical departure
from Descartes' view of the human subject as a rational being. Descartes' cogito, the
thinking substance as an anchoring for his epistemology, is capable of acquiring
universal knowledge through reason. On the contrary, Lacan's subject is neither rational
nor immaterial. He reverses Descartes cogito from "I think therefore I am" to "I think
where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think." For Lacan, the subject is an
unreality and has no interiority 空境. It inheres its content from outside as Bruce Fink
differentiates in The Lacanian Subject. He explains: "the Lacanian subject is neither the
individual, nor the thinking subject... " further: "temporary speaking, the subject
appears only as a pulsation, an occasional impulse or interruption that immediately
dies away or is extinguished " 眾緣合即有. One find such characteristic of the subject
similar to the Buddhist view 一切諸法, 皆同幻化 since he comments: "Eastern
philosophy has been telling us for millennia, a construct, a mental object."
Like Plato's metaphysics, Lacan's principal theory is also a tripartite structure composed
of three orders (as co-arising 相應俱起): the Imaginary (unaware of the unreality of its
content), the Real (which is an absence) and the Symbolic (language is the prime
element). Among the three orders, the Symbolic as a moral framework, is sometimes
referred to with the term "the name-of- the-father". The Symbolic order regulates the
subject's conscious and unconscious activities. It is internalized as soon as the subject
enters the human community. The Symbolic precedes the other two orders and is
generally referred to as law and social convention. Lacan associates the Symbolic plane
with the big Other which refers to, according to Lorenzo Chiesa, language, the Freudian
unconscious and the Symbolic fabrics. The big Other also correlates to Freud's idea of
the cultural super ego.
Within the tripartite structure, the self is adventitious as it is conditioned by the
Symbolic Order, a universal totality which Lacan describes in Ecrits (1966): "It covers
all human lived experience like a web...it is always there, more or less latent."
Inevitably, such totalizing power generates tension for both the Imaginary and the Real
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which is almost absent since the three orders are interwoven 因緣相生. Lacan proclaims:
"the unconscious is structured like a language", what he meant is that the unconscious
of the subject is taken over by the discourse of the Other.
Under the sovereignty of the Symbolic Order, the Imaginary self is a narcissistic and
deceptive self identity of "who I think I am". It survives through a false consciousness or
bad faith. The subjectivity of the Imaginary, in Lacan's system, is basically a
misconception, indoctrinated by social propagandas. Such self-delusion is dramatized in
Eugene O'neill's classic play, The Iceman Cometh. It is a story of a collection of
characters harbor together in a place called Harry Hope's Salon. Each lives in his own
fantasy or the Imaginary realm. Their day to day existence is by hanging on to a pipe
dream which is really a hopeless hope. Until one day, they are confronted by a messianic
figure, Hickey, who represents the terrifying truth. That is, one must confront one's own
self-delusion which is made up with desires and borrowed self-identity.
As for the Real, it is hidden and knotted together with the Other. Lacan distinguishes the
Real as outside the language and cannot be symbolized, except with occasional
breakthrough 隱顯, like tearing a hole. The only possibility for the Real to unveil itself
and claim its being is by subverting the Symbolic Order all together (this has to do with
Lacan's political activism, the attempt to undermine Capitalism). In other words, the
Real must confront between being and its own vacuity since its space is occupied by the
Symbolic Other. This is exactly the message that Hickey, in The Iceman Cometh ,
brought to those who lived in the Imaginary realm.
Lacan, in his early work, also examines one's psychological need for confirmation
through others by referring to Hegel's master and slave dialectic. The servile relation of
self and Other plays out as Hegel describes: "On approaching the other, it has lost its
own self, since it finds itself as another being." What it implies is that one's identity is
unconsciously concealed in the other. Lacan transfers the self/other dichotomy to the
subject's encountering of the big Other, which he sees as an intrusion to the Real occurs
during the ego's early psychic development. Thus, he re-describes Hegel's dialectic to "a
struggle for the others" and declares: "Le desir de Autre-man desires what the other
desires". That is, the self wants to be desired by the other (as portrayed in Sartre's play,
No Exit, each desires the other for his or her own redemption).
Perhaps the most significant contribution of Lacan's work is his insight on the social
dimension of desire 遍計所執. Lacan tackles Freud's pleasure principle by introducing
two key concepts in his later work, namely "objet a, the object cause of desire 痴障" and
"jouissance or pleasure in pain 驅心役識". The concept of jouissance was introduced in
his seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. It refers to a paradoxical reaction of the
subject's intention as it constantly tries to transgress the prohibition 貪欲, to find
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pleasure in its lack of enjoyment, hence, it is more of a suffering than pleasure 苦樂二受.
The idea of "Objet a" refers to a surplus drive, it means when one enjoys the lack of
enjoyment, a paradoxical desire in which the ego imagines and experiences its own
existence through the antagonistic relation of self and other. Lacan explains: "What
makes an object desirable is not any intrinsic quality of the thing in itself but simply
the fact that it is desired by another."
Objet a is a corollary with the empty experience of jouissance, because it is essentially a
loss. For Lacan, objet a specifically refers to the object of desire, not the thing that desire
towards, but rather, the cause of desire, and is basically a social construct. In other
words, desire is not related to its object but to a lack.
Given the fact that desire is always followed by suffering 生苦為業, Lacan, as a theorist,
endeavors to get to the deeper layer of understanding desire by differentiating between
Jouissance and desire. It is well explained by Jeanne Wolff Bernstein: "Lacan linked
and contrasted jouissance with desire. Whereas desire implies a lack-one can only
desire what one does not have, jouissance implies an excess of gratification, readily
turning its pursuit of pleasure into an abyss of tension and pain."
In his article Kant with Sade, Lacan continues to elaborate the dependent and causal
character of desire 情執: "Desire must be formulated as the Other's desire (desir de
L'Autre) since it is originally desire for what the Other desire." One's unconscious
desire is tied to the desire of the Other since the I and Other are co-arising. Hence Lacan
concludes: "the I is the Other-je est un autre."
Like Sartre, Lacan also attributes desire to a lack (a lack of being). Conversely, the lack
leads to the surplus of desire in a vicious cycle. For this reason, Lacan disagrees with
Freud's suggestion of liberating the unconscious because it too operates within the
symbolic order. Lacan also considers the conventional psychoanalytic model is, in fact, a
reinforcement of the unreal self 假相 along with its pathos 本惑. He regards the attempt
to unify the individual psyche or the split ego as practicing "human engineering". It
actually intensifies the ego's narcissistic impulse by postulating an ideal self which can
further create a rift between the I and other. Such antagonism and idealization have
been playing out in endless human dramas 恆沙煩惱, such as longing, despair, revenge,
betrayal, rivalry and ambition. One can relate these perennial themes through the Greek
Tragedies, the work of Shakespeare and countless others. Instead of finding a cure,
Lacan suggests a conscious effort to dissolve the subject's illusion of the self 斷惑減苦.
Essentially, Lacan is not saying anything different from the Buddhist perspective that
desire, haunted by its own insatiability 妄執, is the basic condition of human existence.
Lacan's comprehensive theorizing operates on several different levels simultaneously by
incorporating linguistics, psychology, literature, art and mathematics. Yet, behind the
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Lacanian hermeneutics, there is a connection to the core teaching of Nagarjuna. Both
are non-essentialist and regard the self as indeterminate and contingent. The idea of
"dependent origination 依他起性" corresponds to Lacan's portraying of the subject as an
empty signifier. It loses its certainty in a signifying process 遷流相續. More importantly,
his insights on desire 妄執 as the cause of suffering is fundamental to Buddhism 苦諦.
5. Project of Freedom
Although the three thinkers appear to have painted a nihilist view of human condition at
the brink of nothingness, but such deconstruction itself meant to be a way of relieving
suffering, which is, the dismantling the illusion of the self 破相. Nagarjuna compares
such illusion to that of a magical performance or reflections from a hall of mirrors.
David Hume also made a similar remark: "The mind is a kind of theater, where
perceptions successively make their appearance, mingled in an infinite variety of
postures and situations."
The way Nagarjuna conducts his extreme logic in Madhyamika can be regarded as a
training method 分別所分別 in order to free the mind from clinging to names and forms
恆審思量 as if they are real. For instance, the concept of sunyata, taken as either
negative or not negative, is still a mental construct. Its real implication is located outside
the bound of language as it depicts a revelatory possibility 蘊空. Within the world of
samsara, the realm of suffering and perpetual wandering 苦輪常運, lies the possibility
of mukti, a calm mind 正覺. Nagarjuna refers such becoming to Buddha's own journey
of liberation. The investigation of nothingness 如虛空之包藏萬有 opens to a path of
transformation 真空妙有. As Heidegger amuses: "das nichts selbst nichtet" meaning
"nothingness makes nought!"
Influenced by Kierkegaard, the freedom project for Sartre takes the form of an eruptive
force as he declares: "man is what he makes of himself". The word "authenticity" has its
Greek root, meaning to make or create oneself. As an intellectual revolutionary, Sartre's
self creation is linked to the ethics of authenticity. Despite the fact that the human agent
is contingent and the self is only a convention, Sartre's counter polemic is that the self
can be experienced as "the presence to self". Against the backdrop of an indifferent
universe, the freedom project is to surge up from the void 空境 and to reinvent one's life
through self-determination.
In contrast to Hegel's attempt to re-enact Plato's transcendental Eidos by inserting the
Absolute consciousness within the human history as the guiding spirit, Sartre sees man's
overall condition is nothingness and thereby proclaims:"Man's essence is freedom".
Sartre's Being and Nothingness paves way to affirmative action as explained by William
Barrett: "The only meaning he can give himself is through the free project that he
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launches out of his own nothingness. Sartre turns from nothingness not to compassion,
but to human freedom as realized in revolutionary activity." Similarly, Nagarjuna, a
political reformer in his time, also gives priority to personal action for a higher cause
over a contemplative path 成大悲則不住 涅槃.
In his less pessimistic writing Existentialism and Human Emotions, one can sense that
Sartre is moving from a negative ontology to an ethical plane which emphasizes freedom
and action even one lives in a temporary reality. Why? Because one's being is located in
its existential dimension and is historically and politically situated. Thus freedom is to
be exercised "only in the ethical plane". Sartre gives his reason: "when we say that a
man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own
individuality, but that he is responsible for all men." Obviously, Sartre's freedom is
predicated by an ethical precept since the individual is part of the larger phenomenon of
being. It's up to the individual to define who he is and not escaping into a "bad faith"
which is a form of self-deception. One is to rise above the antagonistic existence 無礙 by
cultivating an empathetic understanding 真心全體. This is, in fact, a self-transformation.
The answer in which Lacan comes up with, in order to relief the trauma of the self, is as
radical as Nagarjuna's, that one must be resolute in confronting the sunyata of the self
性空 and the unreality of the Other 別相. Jeanne Wolff Bernstein explains such
confrontation: "one's subjectivity was constructed through and for an Other...and
forced to confront both the void of the Other and the void inside of himself..."
Some of Lacan's ideas may appear to be inconsistent when he integrated the three
orders into a meta-theory including the science of mathematics and logic. Nevertheless,
he continued to tackle the notion of the Real and its resistance to the established order.
It is interesting to note that Lorenzo Chiesa's comment in Subjectivity and otherness
regarding Lacan's reassessment of the Real and its demarcation from the Other. He says:
"all we are left with is the Real-of-the-Symbolic and a mythical extrasymbolic
"undead". ..Lacan also unintentionally falls back into a quasi-mythical understanding
of the pure Real by promoting the notion of a transcendental real "Thing" understood
as a positive absence." Such statement reveals an ambivalent status of the Real as the
undead. Though absent, it has the possibility for further explication, possibly through a
non-verbal surfacing, from the surreal to the real (Lacan participated in the early French
Surrealist's movement and was a close friend of Andre Breton) and perhaps, mixed with
a bit of Zen.
Lacan's anticipation of the Real seems to coincide with Heidegger's meditation on being
since Lacan translated his work into French. According to Heidegger, Dasein is "being
thrown" into a world of Das Man or "the They", which he refers to as social norms and
linguistic convention. Such interpretation coincides with Lacan's notion of the big Other.
Das Man, says Heidegger: "prescribes one's state-of-mind and determines what and
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how one sees". One can further relate Dasein's throwness to the traumatic entrance of
the Real into the Symbolic plane. This explains why both Heidegger and Lacan insist
that the way to uncover one's authenticity (one's authentic mode of being) or the absent
Real is by questioning the whole system through which one is taught to think.
One may further implicate Lacan's elusive Real 隱顯, the pre-Symbolic subject, with
Heidegger's portraying of the inexpressiveness of Being 離言直顯 which resembles a
non-conceptual state of suchness 体性現起. In fact, they both were interested in the
contemplative approach 觀照 of Eastern philosophy. Lacan characterizes the intrinsic
resistance of the Real as an eruption which he described "as a knock on the door that
interrupts a dream"先有大覺 而後覺此大夢. One can compare such eruption to a
sudden awakening, in that the self is seen as reflection of the moon over the water or an
image in the mirror 水月鏡像.
In the late 1960s, Lacan developed a theory of discourses as a method of questioning the
imposed identity of the ego 我相 from the oppressive Other. These questions would be:
"why am I who you say that I am?"or as Bernstein paraphrased: "What am I and for
whom?" By questioning the subject's servility to the illusive Others, the Real is able to
make its appearance in the world through intervention.
On a deeper level, Lacan's extensive analysis of desire meant to free the ego from the
fabric of Symbolic illusions 捨緣離相. In practicing psychotherapy, Lacan rejects the
attempt to unify the ego's psychic life 我執 in order to provide a temporary sense of
coherence. He explains that such a unified self was developed during the infant's mirror
stage, a process of identification with the mother/other. This developmental stage is the
origin of the split ego as well as the seat of neurosis 迷悟之源. For Lacan, the only way to
unburden the ego 斷惑滅苦, the illusory image of one's self, is to undergo a series of
articulated discourses through which one learns that the self is only a social construct
and "a thin, weightless and empty self without substance " 照見五蘊皆空.
To simply put: "the end of desire is the end of subjectivity". Only then, the mind is
capable of reflecting with mirror like clarity 寂而恆照, 照而恆寂.
The final point to be made here is that, either from a Buddhist perspective or psycho
analysis, at heart of their work, depicts the core meaning of the Four Noble Truths 四聖
諦. The origin of desire 苦諦 as both Nargarjuna and Lacan explicated, has to do with
one's attitude rather than the act of outward seeking. The narcissistic ego, according to
them, is the origin of dukkha 心染故眾生染, 心淨 故眾生淨, the realm of suffering. As for
the path that leads to the cessation of suffering 滅諦, Sartre, Lacan and Nagarjuna, each
offers a way of being in the world of impermanence 無常.
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One may wonder if there is a way to free oneself from the constraint of the Symbolic
Other? To find the answer to this question, one needs to look no further than the
countless literature in Eastern philosophy as it seems suggested by Lacan. Among
various systems and practices concerning the way to a free mind 念念無滯 is the sage
knowledge of Lao-Tze and Chaung-Tze. Both describe that a free man is unconcerned 空
有雙泯 , who lives outside of things and finds solace in nature. According to their
philosophy, all lives are Pu 樸, meaning "put together by nature". The literary meaning
of Pu is "uncarved wood" which refers to the original state of things 本相 prior to the
process of societal indoctrination.
Within the cryptic course of nature, the human self hangs in the peripheral like a planet
coursing around a larger universe. Perhaps, this is the reason David Hume offers his
consoling statement that in a godless universe, "Nature herself is suffice. One may also
consider that both Sartre's being-in-itself and Lacan's unsymbolizable Real (as the
unsayable , see footnote), implies a natural state of being, irrelevant to culture and the
psychic state of the mind. Outside language and ideas, all things are already in tune with
a larger universe 曰月星辰, 山河大地 .
Although the experience of nothingness is often associated with alienation,
paradoxically, it also opens to a path of freedom. "One is free when does not get
involved in fixation, attachment or clinging, nor resolved on one's self " 不起執心,
affirmed by Nagarjuna. A free mind is a state of non-abiding 非有非空. Through the
unfolding of prajna, the intelligible knowing 妙覺, one can dissipate the unhappy
consciousness into the evanescent 萬滯同盡 and transform the nihilistic nothingness 虛
無 to a free play of no-thing-ness.
Through the unfolding of sunyata, the restless mind is transformed into a quiet heart 山
堂靜夜坐無言, 寂寂寥寥本自然 (川禪師頌).
Foot notes:
1. Nagarjuna's work was translated into Chinese and had great influence on the Sanlun
School 三論宗 or Three Treaties School, an early Mahayana Buddhist sect during the
Sui 隋 and Tang 唐 Dynasty. Ji-Tsang 吉藏, an eminent priest scholar, was
summoned by Emperor Sui (the first emperor to unite both the Southern and
Northern Dynasties 南北朝), to propagate the teachings of Nagarjuna through which
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Buddhism was flourished in China. The Middle Way is a methodology in Nagarjuna's
system. It is a linguistic and dialectic strategy to abandon any absolute position 破相遣
執. The same method was employed in Sanlun School and later incorporated into
the Zen practice (三論宗- 僧詮: 頓跡 幽林, 禪味相得). Its approach is by uttering
paradoxical phrases in order for the teacher to help students to realize that the
unsayable 以心傳心, 不立文字 cannot be attained through rational discourses.
2. 本文主要意旨是依據東西方三個不同的哲學系統, 包括沙 特的存在主義, 勒康的心理
分析與龍樹論師的中觀哲學, 作互相參照, 並延伸他們西方的觀念, 來詮釋無我, 尤其是
關於依他起性 dependent origination 的論証. 也許, 這種嚐試 對三論學者以及心理分
析學派來說, 可能有越界的問題. 事實上, 己有學者介紹龍樹的中論與後現代 語言分解
Linguistic deconstruction 的關聯.
勒康的体系, 龐大複雜, 深受黑格爾, 海德格, 人類學以及 超現實主義影響. 其主要思想,
包括彿洛依德理論及語言分析 structural linguistics. 他的後現代 "破相"方法 與
中觀論近似, 甚至可以和 禪宗作連結.
References:
1. Jeffrey Hopkins (1996) Meditation on Emptiness
2. Jean-Paul Sartre (2001) Being and Nothingness
3. Jean-Paul Sartre (1987) Existentialism and Human Emotions
4. Jacques Lacan (2006) Ecrits Translated by Bruce Fink
5. Lorenzo Chiesa (2007) Subjectivity and Otherness
6. Bruce Fink (1995) The Lacanian Subject -Between Language and Jouissance
7. Jeanne Wolff Bernstein (2012) Jacques Lacan from Text Book of Psychoanalysis
8. Stephen Ross (2002) A Very Brief Introduction to Lacan
9. David Hume (1975) Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning
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the Principles of Morals
10. Sigmund Freud (1989) Civilization and Its Discontents
11. Nagarjuna: The Fundamentals of the Middle Way. Edited by George Cronk 1998
12. Hsueh-Li Cheng (1981) Nagarjuna, Kant and Wittgenstein
13. 宗密: 禪源諸詮集都序
14. 黃懺華: 中國佛教史
February 2013