Classical Aesthetics, Modem Ethics: Lacan, Kierkegaard, Sophocles, Anouilh

Abstract

Ethics and Aesthetics I: Lacan, Kierkegaard, Sophocles, Anouilh foseph S. Jenkins Ethical conclusions are often affected by aesthetic factors. This is a phenomenon all the more important where these factors influence decisions unawares. Faced with a problem so broad in scope—as broad as human nature itself—it is futile to seek the one formula or conclusion. Rather, I propose to explore the intersec­ tion of ethics and aesthetics in a number of localities, hoping that in the continuing course of these potentially separate encounters some meaning may be made. I begin this first paper of the series with an interpretation of Jacques Lacan's Seminar VII. This Seminar provoked controversy in its radical break from the traditional Aristotelian/Kantian line of ethical analysis. Instead of seeking the highest good, Lacan prof­ fers ethics as a consideration of the relationship between an action and the desire that inhabits it (Lacan 359,361). He proposes that the tragic sense of life—the triumph of being toward death—is the proper dimension of ethical consideration (361). By relating ethics to the high aesthetic of tragedy, Lacan speaks to the intersection I seek to explore. The Seminar imparts no coherent description of the intersec­ tion; statements from various chapters must be assembled and interpreted. Part One of this paper takes on that project, based on my translation of Alain Miller's published transcripts. Part Two is a study of the Creon figure depicted in the Antigone plays of both Sophocles and Jean Anouilh. Lacan uses Sophocles's Antigone as his tutor text for research on both ethics and aesthetics, while Kierkegaard sees the two fields as strictly separate. By comparing those views in the context of Anouilh's post-war tragedy, I inves­ tigate aspects of the ethics/aesthetics intersection more specific to the late twentieth century. PART ONE Lacan's principal writings on aesthetics are contained in a Section of Seminar VII entitled The Essence of Tragedy. Remind­ ing us of Kant's position that the category of the beautiful can be