The Law
Interrogating the Law
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What is the law? Cambridge Dictionary provides these definitions: A rule, usually made by the government, that is used to order the way in which a society behaves. The system of rules of a particular country, group, or area of activity. The area of knowledge or work that involves studying or working with the law. When someone goes to law about something, they ask a court to make a legal judgment about it. A general rule that states what always happens when the same conditions exist. A rule made by a government that states how people may and may not behave in society and in business, and that often orders particular punishments if they do not obey, or a system of such rules. The law is also the police.
What is the ultimate representative of the Law? The word "God" might come to your mind. The ultimate representative of the law within the universe is God, the ultimate representative of the law within the family is the Father.
What are the conscious, rational models of the belief in God's existence? Or if interpreting the question differently, what kind of shapes does the belief in the representative of the law take within the mind that questioned the law itself?
Theism - it is a belief that at least one deity exists. Theism has different forms such as Monotheism - which is a belief in one God (Christianity, Islam, Judaism)
Polytheism - A belief in multiple gods (Hinduism, Ancient Greek religion)
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Deism - Belief in a God who created the universe but does not intervene in it (often associated with Enlightenment thinkers)
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Pantheism - Belief that God is identical with the universe or nature.
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Atheism - the absence of belief in any deity. Atheism has two forms, negative and positive atheism. Negative atheism consists of the lack of belief in gods without actively asserting their non-existence. At the same time, positive atheism consists of the assertion that no gods exist.
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Agnosticism - holds that the existence or non-existence of God is unknown or unknowable.
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Agnostic theism is a belief in God that acknowledges uncertainty about this belief.
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Agnostic atheism - lack of belief in God while also not claiming certainty about God's non-existence.
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Apatheism - is the attitude of not caring whether God exists or not, believing that the question is irrelevant to one’s life.
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Secular Humanism - secular humanists believe in human progress and ethics without the need for belief in a deity. It aligns with atheism but emphasizes reason, ethics, and human dignity.
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Pantheism - God exists within the universe but also beyond it, interacting with and being present in the world while not being limited to it.
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Fideism - Fideists hold that belief in God is primarily a matter of faith rather than reason or evidence. This view emphasizes that religious belief does not need to be rationally justified.
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Existentialism - existentialists focus on the belief of the individual and the personal meaning, some existentialists are theistic, while others are atheistic, and their perspectives on God vary accordingly.
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Psychoanalysis goes a little deeper via the pathway of the unconscious, there was a moment, when you had to enter the field of the law as the field of language which elicited a response which was not conscious. Not only that it wasn't "conscious", it was the ultimate moment, the beginning of subjectivity, which locked you into a certain structural category. The possible structural configurations are based on one of the three mechanisms (Repression, which leads to Neurosis, Foreclosure, which leads to Psychosis and Disavowal, which leads to Perversion). Psychoanalytically, these are the three ways human beings relate to the law, or more precisely, three ways in which subjectivity appears in relation to the law.
Psychoanalysis comes into play as the representative of the "unconscious" and suggests a way of observation in relation to the law via the unconscious. Such a manner of thinking allows us to think about how does the existence of the "law" affects our psyche. The law is like a cage in which we live, the prohibition and limitation is an inevitability. We come into this world completely helpless, without our caregivers we would not survive, but the price we pay for appearing in this world as human beings, is the fact that we have to relate to the world and the world has its own rules and regulations. At first, your caregivers do their best to make sure that you as a baby receive nutrients used for the processes of growth and survival, furthermore, your caregivers make sure that you do not fall off the table because that might result in death, your caregivers do their best to make sure that you don't insert metal objects into the socket because the electric shock might lead to death also. What is obvious, is that, at the beginning, we are protected from death itself, which is an interesting fact because without language there is no philosophical sense of death (Animals do run away from predators in order to avoid death but most likely, Zebras do not sit in little circles while discussing what does it mean to "not-exist anymore or what is the meaning of life, or the meaning of death, or where do we go after we die?) only language gives us this capability of truly comprehending death and the meaning of life in the binary system of comprehension in which we live. There is either "something" or "nothing" but we don't truly know what "nothing" is because we think in relation to something, if you think about empty space in front of you, it is an empty space in front of you but it is not "nothing", it is "something". You exist, while you are alive, you know what it means to exist because you are alive but there is no way to comprehend what does it mean to "stop existing", you cannot ask those who stopped existing, what does it mean to exist? Language dropped us "human beings" into this realm of duality, a realm in which we can play language games but those games in themselves are finite, there are things that cannot be comprehended via language.
After a while, we grow a little older and start learning to use language, and then we slowly become capable of integrating the rules and regulations of the world. The law comes into our lives as language, once we are capable of using language as the system of signs within which we exist, we start comprehending the limitations of the world, limitations on which we depend and within which we exist.
Subjectivity in Relation to the Law
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Psychoanalytically, subjectivity appears in relation to the law. Prohibition as the appearance of negativity inflicts the existence of the limit which stops the freedom of the flow of consciousness and introduces the fact of the law. Freudian repression, as the unconscious mechanism, becomes one of the rational ways of understanding our entrance into subjectivity. The existence of the law cuts our being, the wound inflicted by the signifier has to be repressed in order for the consciousness to keep flowing, the more appearances of the need for repression, the stronger the hold of neurosis onto our being. Repression as the unconscious mechanism, hooks the law of the signifier while pushing it down, out of the way of the conscious experience and in that way, integrates the human psyche within the symbolic order. The other two mechanisms (foreclosure and disavowal) also relate to the law but their appearance means a different unconscious relation to the law of the signifier. Perversion as a structure based on the mechanism called Disawoval functions as a structure which acknowledged the fact of death but acts as if death does not truly exist. Such a structural configuration appears in our own lives quite often, we do things, even though we know the consequences of them, we act, as if the law does not exist.
Psychosis as a structure which is based on the mechanism called "Foreclosure" functions as if death does not exist at all, as if there is no law. Looking at the psychical configuration via the lens of "structure" already presupposes the existence of the law, it already sets the limit for our human condition. Such structural perspective is completely rejected by some individuals for the rational reasons of our desire for freedom, we want to be free, like the children of the earth that we are, we want to stay children for as long as possible and enjoy (while we are children, we want to grow up, once we grow up, we want to go back to being children), but, the sense of reality, and the realisation of freedom within the realisation of "unfreedom" becomes the truth somewhere along the line. The three structures (Psychosis-Perversion-Neurosis) constantly moves and shifts, depending on our relation to the law in the present moment (while the psychoanalytic argument could be presented as the suggestion that a certain structure dominates most of the time, as the structure which was set in stone as the structure of subjectivity).
In life, there are situations when the law might need to be rejected, disavowed or foreclosed (Psychosis-Perversion). In contrast, other situations might be better handled via neurotic acceptance based on a rational understanding of the need to repress and move on (Neurosis). This example presents a conscious relation to the law, while psychoanalytic detection of the relation to the law is more on the side of the unconscious relation to the law, the relation on which our subjective existence is based.
If we probe the question of the structure in relation to psychoanalysis being the "Clinic of Discourse". What does understanding of structure provide for an analyst in relation to the direction of the treatment and how does it help an analysand? Psychoanalytic treatment would help the person in question (an analysand) to realise his or her unconscious relation to the law and help find the way via that understanding to further open up the flow of consciousness in a manner which is freer and less constricted by releasing the grip of the law which is operating as an unconscious prohibition, such unconscious, repressed knowledge will become available to consciousness via allowance of the repressed content to surface into consciousness. Understanding of the roots of the prohibition and its effects which are constricting desire and are leading the individual in ways which go against his or her own will, in the case of the neurotic structure being the basis of the psychical apparatus. An analyst, having such knowledge of the situation, after going through his or her own analysis during the psychoanalytic training, is capable of helping the person find their own desire through the slips and falls of reality.
The Law as The Bar Between The Signifier and The Signified
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Within the theory of Ferdinand de Saussure, a Sign is made of Signifier and Signified, a word and the meaning of the word are split. Simply imagine a word "box", the word "box" and the meaning which comes into your mind as an image is two different things, Jacques Lacan used this theory within his understanding of Psychoanalysis and in his line of thought, the law of language comes as the bar that splits the word and its meaning. If following this line of thought, we can think of it as the prohibition, human existence is split by the fact that freedom is based on laws and limits, or more precisely in fundamental psychoanalytic terms on "Lack", which is the fundamental concept within the discourse of psychoanalysis. The lack is inscribed via the prohibition which splits our being between the word and its meaning, we are split between the thing that we have lost, which was the unity with the mother and "The Thing" which stood in this place of lack which appeared because of the splitting from the mother. From the Garden of Eden, we fell into the world of the law, safe environment was exchanged with the environment based on seperatness, which is full of danger and pain (as well as full of the good things also, but regarding the conception of "lack" good things aren't in the hierarchy of importance in this case). The prohibition via the language of the representative of the law (discourse which installs the paternal metaphor, idealistically the father himself, as well as the discourse of the mother within which the father's name is held as the representative of the law) inscribed us "humans" into the symbolic existence within the world of language and in that way gave us language (signifiers) in exchange of the unity with the mother that we had. The separation as the bar between the Signifier/Signified (The word and the meaning of that word) became the law which holds the gap, the gap, which is the gap of lack. The gap is clear in many senses, there is a gap between the ideal society that you imagine and the actual society in which you live in, there is a gap between the ideal image of yourself and the actual you, the gap between the subject and object, between your body and your conscious experience of your body. Saussurean Signifier/Signified model used by Jacques Lacan works as a model for the semiotic representation via which we can understand the gap via the lens of language, a system on which we are completely dependent and which separates our world between our being and between the world of signs, a symbolic system which came in, to fill that gap and provided us with symbolic, linguistic capability to realize that lack via constant desire and the ability to speak. The world of need and demand was filled with the world of desire.
Clinical, psychoanalytic structures are realized as our unconscious mechanisms which we use in order to deal with the fact of the inscription of the law as lack. We function within the split, split which comes first, as the determinant part of our existence as speaking beings. As long as we speak, we lack, as long as we lack, we use the signifier to fill that lack. In Lacanian terms, desire is the linguistic construct, it moves in a forever circular motion, signifier after signifier, exchanging places in order to fill that gap inscribed by the law of language itself. We desire, not in order to achieve but, to keep desiring, desire as the infinite machine. Such a definition of desire, appears to be a rational basis for the explanation of why sometimes, we sabotage our desires and miss the actual goal. Unconsciously we aren't thinking about the goal, desire is thinking for its own sake, as the "cause of desire", a little object, tickling our feet, making us run towards the object, while the consciously perceived object of desire is just a projection of the "object cause of desire", an unconscious causalmachine, which is propelling our desire on a never-ending loop.
As an obsessional neurotic, on a mission to fill himself "with the other", existing via the constant consumption of "the other", which would be another rational explanation of why "obsessional neurosis" is the perfect structure for capitalism, the more you produce, the more you have. Obsessional neurosis as the structural category is the category which in order to avoid the innate structural lack is constantly filling itself with the signifier, and in that way, deals with the condition of being a speaking being (lacking being), the condition of "Living with an innate lack". The only time during which we don't have to deal with our innate lack seems to be those 2-3seconds in the morning, straight after you wake up, during which you don't remember who you are, those 2-3seconds are the time before the symbolic order hits you, once it hits you, you are back in your existential loop of lack, you are back in your human identity, an identity which is based on the structural lack.
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The Law as a Divider
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Language, as a symbolic system, that we use every day is a dead system. Language is a symbolic system that does not have life within itself but in order to express our liveliness and our being, we have to use it, otherwise we cannot communicate properly. If you allow yourself to investigate this situation, you might notice, that there is a difference between the feeling that you have within yourself and the symbol that you use in order to represent that feeling. There is a feeling, a sense of emotion, almost an unrepresentable part of your inner reality, which in order to be representable and comprehended by the other, has to travel through the symbolic system in order to reach the other, you have to use a symbolic system, which is completely alien, separate from you. In the movie "Waking Life" Kim Krizan describes this process of symbolic articulation beautifully thus:
"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for"
The symbolic system which we use for the representation of our feelings and inner realities is completely inert, it is dead, as Kim Krizan beautifully described it. The law of language is the symbolic castrator, the separator, which separates the realm of being from the realm of thinking, the realm of being, from the linguistic creation within which our being has to learn to exist. In our everyday life, we don't really question such things (systems of language and its use), language seems like a basic, structural piece of existence, which it is, but the fact is, that we live in language the way fish live in the water, without questioning it, without truly acknowledging the fact that we use a symbolic system which is completely alien, for our existence to function. Jacques Lacan described it as a "wall of language", a wall, that separates our subjective experience and the external world. The concept of the "wall of language" becomes even more interesting once you realise, that you perceive reality through a symbolic net, a conceptual net of language, through your personal meanings and concepts. Jacques Lacan discussed this matter in detail in his seminar "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis". So, while language comes into our lives as the divider, the divider that divides being from thinking, and subjectivity from the external reality, at the same time, it works as the connector, language connects us via our ability to communicate, we are capable of communication because of language. Connection and division, come together, through an alien system, which has possessed the planet. If, instead of language, we would use Nike shoes as symbols, that we have to throw at each other, in order to communicate, it might look quite weird, but once you think about language in such a way, it gives you a different perspective (We throw dead symbols at each other, and weirdly, we manage to get what each party meant by throwing a certain symbol, not always, but most of the time, hopefully).
Psychoanalysis, as a discursive practice, as a clinic of discourse, functions within the realm of the law (Symbolic order), it is the practice of the symbolic order. The practitioners of the law, help other beings navigate this reality, which is constructed via language, via the use of language. Carl Jung spent his career around the question of "unification of the opposites", while Jacques Lacan gave us the linguistic coordinates for the understanding and hopefully some sort of navigation of the split (The split of neurosis).
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Language as an Alien
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If I were an alien and I were given a chance to choose my incarnation (a body in which I want to exist), I would choose to be a symbol, that lives through and within human minds, as the connective tissue of thoughts and in such a way I would manage to stay undetected, while being always present, controlling human lives (The Lacanian Big Other), like "Maya" as it is called in Hinduism, the veil of illusion of the conceptual reality.
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To be continued...