Where God Was, Law Will Be? Kant Avec Houellebecq

Abstract

This paper explores how modern subjects have responded to the so-called death of God and what substitute objects they have tried to put in its place; these cures, or placebos as they turn out to be, have ranged from law, to reason, to work, to sex, to shopping, to love, and finally to literature. By examining Kant’s legal philosophy alongside the work of Michel Houellebecq, the paper wonders whether formal law can fill the endemic lack in the subject and in the symbolic order, or whether, as Houellebecq insists, ‘the trouble is, it’s just not enough to live according to the rules’. What are the consequences of this ‘ideational decline’, better known in contemporary parlance as ‘depression’, for law, for literature, and especially for the discourse we have come to know as ‘law and literature’? One consequence, I suggest, is the treatment of literature as the fantasy object that will fulfil law; such an approach, I suggest, is detrimental to law, to literature, and to `law & literature’. That the ethical response is to acknowledge the lack in each subject and in each discipline, and cease expecting the other (subject or discipline) to make up for one’s lack.