533 Izvirni znanstveni članek (1.01) Bogoslovni vestnik 77 (2017) 3/4, 533—544 UDK: 111.8 Besedilo prejeto: 10/2017; sprejeto: 11/2017 Ruud Welten Radical Transcendence: Lacan on the Sinai Abstract Jacques Lacan recognizes in the Jewish tradition an early manifestation of a discourse that gives due of the alterity of language. The central thesis of Lacan's thought is that language itself is of the order of the Other. What does this imply for our thinking on God? God is not the One you think He is. This is not a very new, postmodern view on religion. It is the purpose of this contribution to make such a claim valuable and plausible by relying on the thought of Jacques Lacan alongside some Talmudic reflections of Emmanuel Levinas. Key words: Lacan, Levinas, Sinaitic revelation, trauma, symbolic order Povzetek: Radikalna transcendenca: Lacan na Sinaju Jacques Lacan v judovski tradiciji prepozna zgodnjo obliko diskurza, ki priznava drugost jezika. Osrednja Lacanova teza je, da jezik pripada redu Drugega. Kaj to pomeni za naše razmišljanje o Bogu? Bog ni Tisti, za katerega mislimo, da je. To ni ravno nov, postmoderni pogled na religijo. Namen tega prispevka je pokazati upravičenost in sprejemljivost takšne zahteve, pri čemer se naslanjamo na misel Jacquesa Lacana in jo postavljamo skupaj s talmudskim razmišljanjem Emmanuela Levinasa. Ključne besede: Lacan, Levinas, sinajsko razodetje, travma, simbolni red 1. Radical transcendence and language Religion is not what you think it is. Notwithstanding all the declarations of the death of God since the nineteenth century, religion still persists in our world and it doesn't look like that it will make any motion of withdrawal. As long as we conceive of religion as »belief«, or more precisely, an intentional belief of a subject that knows what it does and think, in short, the modern, »disenchanted« subject, we are missing the point of what religion is. Religion does not find a firm basis in the Self, nor in its confident beliefs. But it doesn't find a firm basis in the existence of God either. God is not the One you think He is. This is not that much a new, postmodern view on religion. It is the purpose of this contribution to make this plausible, by relying on the thought of Jacques Lacan alongside some Talmudic thoughts of Emmanuel Levinas. 534 Bogoslovni vestnik 77 (2017) • 3/4 Lacan recognizes in the Jewish tradition an early manifestation of a discourse that gives due of the alterity of language. However, this does not imply that we at any rate can identify the Other with God. The central thesis of Lacan's thought is that language itself is of the order of the Other. The Other, written with a capital, is not a human being as such, but the symbolic order. The Other, then, is an echo of Freud's superego, that resonates in the ego. In spite of its alleged self-knowledge, the Self is already governed by alterity, a voice that sounds from elsewhere. The Other presents itself as the locus of this voice. But what this voice exactly says, is already beyond the symbolic order of language itself. The voice does not coincide with the A (L'Autre, The Other), the symbolic order, but it appears as an »object« of desire, which is marked by Lacan as a, or I'objet petit a. As Lacan states, the Freudian superego takes its authority only from its loudness, not from its content: »It also makes us discover that the superego, in its intimate imperative, is indeed >the voice of consciences that is, a voice first and foremost, a vocal one at that, and without any authority other than that of being a loud voice: the voice that at least one text in the Bible tells us was heard by the people parked around Mount Sinai. This artifice even suggests that its enunciation echoed back to them their own murmur, the Tables of the Law being nonetheless necessary in order for them to know what it enunciated.« (1966, 684) This quote does defend neither atheism nor belief. What it tells is the primacy of language as the Other. To Lacan, language does never start within the Self, but is always already heard from the other side. It does not start in the ego. Consequently, consciousness, to put it in terms of Moby Dick, is not the steersman of the ship, but rather the waves on which the ship is floating. Who or what speaks there? Language, that enables everything that might be said. Take a small child, who doesn't that much learn to master language, but rather listens to the words of his father, who, at his turn, cannot do otherwise than to speak out loud the law of the symbolic order. So, law is not first something in order to be molded in words; it is language. The father is not a biological entity in the world; it is the voice of the law. In French, the Name-of-the-father (Nom-du-Pere) sounds like the No-of-the-father (le Non-du-Pere). It is the father who commands. No need to argue that we are very close to mount Sinai here. It is not surprising that Lacan on many occasions in his seminars speaks of the Sinai (2005, 78). Already in the seminar of 1954-1955 the Sinai stands for the resistance of idolatry. The Sinai is the metaphor for the resistance of idolatry because it is Moses who ascends the holy mountain, and not Aron, the brother that promises idols to the people. To Lacan, the Sinai implies foremost the resistance of idolatry understood as the ego that thinks of itself as its own autonomous master. The subject that sees itself as a unity disregards its primal fragmentation in order to replace it by an idol of the Self. Said in unmistaken psychoanalytic words, God the father is phallic, because as signifier, He takes the place of the highest signifier. Yet, this phallus is always already castrated. Hence the necessity of religion. Ruud Welten - Radical Transcendence: Lacan on the Sinai 535 Religion does not refer to a so-called »religious experience«, but to the lack of it, to the loss of the highest signifier. As such, the death of God is not something outside of religion, but of religious nature par excellence. We are constantly confronted with meaning, but the exact basis of meaning - the arche that will seal the meaning of meaning at last - is lacking. Still, as speaking beings we cannot do otherwise than to assume that language is referring to something at least. Religion, in a Lacanian outlook, is a discourse that speaks out, not that much the content of this »something«, but gives due to the lack of it. More than any other discourse, religion is well aware of this primordial castration. Yes: religion is about castration, about the original lack. Religion does not rest on God, but it gazes into the gap in language where God eventually takes shelter without ever seeing him. He is exactly the One, the only One, that becomes »visible« in a symbolic order. Now, what is a symbolic order? A symbolic order makes the unbearable bearable. It is the scene, the stage so to say, of religion. Take Abraham in Genesis 22, ready to sacrifice Isaak. There is no need to argue that for Abraham, this command is traumatic. From a Lacanian view, the point of the passage is not that much Abraham's allegiance towards God, but the substitution of the sacrifice: at the end, not the beloved son, but a ram is sacrificed. This is the birth of the symbol and consequently of religion. The symbol substitutes the unbearable sacrifice. This is why it is right to say that the symbol refers to something which isn't there. Or let's take a look at Sinai. At least it is clear that on the Sinai, the Other speaks and commands. It is a saying that will be inscribed in the Law. What does this imply? Do we hear a God speaking? Or does the people of Israel hear an inner voice speaking? The meaning has to be taken psychoanalytically: the subject is nothing else than the bearer of all the phantasies it makes of the Other. Now, this Judaic Law has nothing in common with any kind of »spirituality« in an »inner« sense of the word. On the Sinai, there is no intimacy, but a radical extimacy. The Ego - read: Israel - hears something that is radically extraneous. The God that speaks to Moses is exactly not a God of intimacy. No wonder that on the Sinai a voice is heard that the subject doesn't want to hear. It desires to listen to Aron, not to Moses. Aron is the bringer of rest, Moses of trauma.1 The Hebrew Bible gives evidence to a total drama, a failure of being faithful to God. The people of Israel are disobedient, and God incessantly gives it a beating, a thunder so to say. »And all the people saw the thunder [ha-qolot] and the flames« (Exod. 20:18). Now notice that the Hebrew word for »thunder«, qol (plural qulot), can also mean »voice«. At the same time, it is written that the people »saw« the thunder (Zetterholm 2012, 19).2 The symbolic order is the thundering beating, the wrath, the menace and the people of Israel is a subject that Exodus 32:1: »When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, >Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him<.« Compare with thunder and voice in Psalm 29. 1 2 536 Bogoslovni vestnik 77 (2017) • 3/4 doesn't want to obey. Abraham Heschel famously stated (2001) that the prophets are men able to identify themselves with fury of God. Truth is there to be denied, exactly in the manner Freud (1925) thought of it. Freudian psychoanalysis makes a voice heard that is originally repressed by the subject. On its turn, the analyst is the one that learns to listen beyond the claims of his patient, beyond the censorship of his speaking. The subject is not what it thinks it is. A Lacanian psychoanalytical view of religion doesn't that much consist of a description of religion as a compulsive order, but gives due to the other voice that is speaking, in short, the Other. Religion does not start in a discourse about claims of an existing God, nor about a subject that claims to »believe« in God. God is unconscious, says Lacan famously, because He is nothing else that the speaking of unconsciousness. (1973, 58; 119) An unconsciousness of which we know that it is structured like a language. Let us take a closer look at the speaking on the Sinai. In his 1968-1969 seminar, Lacan says: »Not >I< is speaking the truth, but the truth speaks with >I<. /... / What interests me and what is scarcely touched elsewhere, only on the Sinai, is that there is a speaking of >I<.« (2005, 70) This »I« Lacan is referring to, is nothing else than the »I« that governs the ego. In other words, my »I« is not fully intended and articulated by me, but by a truth of which I am alienated. Truth is not something that I discover and communicate, but »I« am an effect of the truth of the Other, of which we already know that it is nothing but language. This does imply that this »I« is personal, in other words, monotheistic. In the Torah, the people of Israel doesn't simply hear an abstract God, but a God that is addressing in language. Think of Emmanuel Levinas' famous appeal to the Hebrew hineini- »here I am« (me voici). The speaking of God is not a speaking in general, everybody who wants to hear, but it is a personal speaking. This is why the patriarchs in the Torah always answer with hineini. It is like a confirmation, »yes, I hear you«, »it is me who is listening to you«, »talk to me«. Language is personal. God appeals. God is there to be heard, not be seen. The passage of Lacan is of importance, because it learns that the Sinai reveals first and foremost a personal bound between God and man. Yet, this bound is nothing else than language itself. Like in Levinas' thought, in Lacan's thought the subject is not that much the speaker, but the receiver of the »I«. It is the effect of language. Does this all mean that there is a God? Well, at least not ontologically. It means that there is speaking, that there is language and that language speaks »I«. The speaking on the Sinai is a personal speaking, not because there is a God that subsequently speaks, but that speaking speaks in a personal form. God talks, and to talk is to make use of the shifter »I«. The speaking on the Sinai says »I«. We are far off any anonymous nature religion or any Deus sive natura, which, consequently unavoidably would lead religion without language. Monotheism is religion as language. The speaking on the Sinai is the speaking of an »I« that remains absent. God is a Deus absconditus. But not because He remains hidden behind language, as if Ruud Welten - Radical Transcendence: Lacan on the Sinai 537 He remains hidden »behind« a burning bush. Take the Talmud, in which we will find the interpretation of the Tora as God. God is in language (to say it in Christian terms, in the beginning was the Word) and not outside language. God is not an actor first and a speaker secondly, so that we human beings can says something about this saying, as if it was an object of discourse. He is the text. Lacan is very close to the Talmudic interpretation: »La Bible, c'est tout de même la parole de Dieu« (»The Bible is the very same as the word of God«), states Lacan (2004, 95). This means nothing else than language is the Other. Again, in this respect Lacan is not that far from Levinas and reminds his readers of writer Zvi Kolitz in the heading of an article: Loving the Torah more than God (Levinas 1997, 142-145). Levinas interprets this as persistence against idolatry: not to create a God in order to let Him speak (and wanting Him to say what you desire). It is a command to avoid a direct contact with God, without language and reason. Monotheism conceives of truth as »I«, waiting to be answered. To do so, the subject cannot do otherwise than step into language, the Other. But still, who is this »I«? And moreover, what does He want of me? (Lacan 2004, 97) Well, this is exactly the question of Moses. What does he have to tell his people? »Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, >The God of your fathers has sent me to you<, and they ask me, >What is his name?< Then what shall I tell them?« (Exod. 3:13) Who spoke there high on the mountain? This answer to »who« or »what is said« on the Sinai is one and the same: »I am who I am« (nTiN n^K HTIN, Ehyeh asher ehyeh) (Exod. 3:13). But who speaks like that, rather seems to veil than to reveal his name. It is like saying: »et allez vous faire foutre«, freely translated as, »now fuck off«, and Lacan continues to say: »and this is exactly what the Jewish people did since then« (2005, 70). But what is heard here is nothing else than the name of the father, the highest signifier, whose name cannot be pronounced. It is the Tetragrammaton, the Greek word for the Hebrew name that counts four silent letters (mrp). Exactly at the moment we are expecting an answer to what or who, nothing is revealed that can be said, and it is this that is said. The »fuck off« means something like: »Go off, there is nothing that I can tell you that you ever will understand.« What is revealed? Not an image or visual countenance, but a voice. The voice commands to be integrated into the symbolic order: God said to Moses, »I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: >I am has sent me to you.<« God also said to Moses: »Say to the Israelites, >The Lord, the God of your fathers - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob - has sent me to you.< /... / This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.« (Exod. 3:14-15) 538 Bogoslovni vestnik 77 (2017) • 3/4 The »I« orders that we will speak about Him.3 Yet, this does not imply that there is a hidden theology behind Lacan's thought. A »theology« would imply that there is a God of whom we speak. God, so to say, is the object of knowledge. This is not the thrust of Lacan's argument, but not for plane atheistic reasons. The fact that there is speaking about God, doesn't mean that there is a God first, in order to be an object of speaking, nor that there is a God that speaks. There is speaking. That's all. Lacan is interested in this speaking because it reveals the alterity of language. God is the ultimate absence. He reveals himself by his desire, which means: desire is the desire of the Other. (2004, 32) 2. A touch of the real How to understand this Lacanian phrase? Who speaks on the Sinai and what is said is the speaking of the Other. Yet, this speaking is not simply a speaking of an anonymous Other. Not because it bears a Name, but because it speaks »I«. It is not language as an automaton, a speaking that is lost in the anonymity of the Other as language. To understand this, we have to focus on the separation that Lacan makes between automaton and tuche, words borrowed from Aristotle. To Aristotle, both the words stand for »chance«. The first pertaining to physical events, whereas the second pertains to human actions. Lacan lays stress on tuche as interruption, in French, like in English, it sounds not only like a sneeze, but also like the word »touch«. Tuche is not understood like a signifier, but in the loss of it, a wound in the chain of signifiers. In short, tuche is trauma. (1973, 53-62) Automaton means pretty well what you think it is: a machine, an automatic chain of words. The result of it is a desire that doesn't originate in a feeling or experience, nor a need. It is like the wish of the toddler that every evening, before sleep, wants to hear the same story. The bed time story offers an illusionary grasp on the flew of time, full of uncertainties. But at the end of the day, there is something that didn't change. That's the truth about telling stories: to foster the illusion of stability. The disturbance of such an automatic flew of signifiers would be a trauma. To Freud, religion is of the kind of the automaton. It is nothing but an obsessive neurosis, an illusionary grip. Still, it remains highly questionable whether Lacan shares this view. To Freud, religion is of an infantile order, it is immature. Now let us for a moment rely on a more Talmudic point a view. Remember Levinas' description of Judaism as a religion for adults (1997, 11-23). Or, with the example of the bed time story in mind that is read by the mother, a phrase from the Talmud, commented upon by the French rabbi and philosopher Marc-Alain Ouaknin (influenced by both Lacan and Levinas): »What does >They departed from the mount of the Lord, three days' journey< (Num. 10:33) mean? That means that the children of Compare with Psalm 33:9: »For He spoke, and it was; He commanded, and it endured.« Ruud Welten - Radical Transcendence: Lacan on the Sinai 539 Israel fled from Mount Sinai like a child who flees school after having learned too much.« (Ouaknin 1998, 182) »To run from«, isn't this, in a more psychoanalytic jargon, exactly what the subject is doing with a trauma? In other words, what he has heard on the Sinai is of the order of the trauma, not of the automaton. Revelation is not the presentation of meaning, but the traumatization of the order on which meaning is build. Here, again, Lacan and Levinas meet. Isn't this exactly the way Levinas is using the word trauma, speaking of the subject? (1974) For Levinas, trauma is the vulnerability of the subject, which means: the ability to be wounded, to be touched by otherness. This is why Levinas speaks of the trauma in terms of passivity. To Lacan, tuché is what resists integration into the automaton. »Le réel se soit présenté sous la forme de ce qu'il y a en lui d'inassi-milable - sous la forme du trauma.« (1973, 55) It eludes every kind of representation whatsoever. It can't be imagined nor symbolized. As a result of that (not as a cause) it is real. The order of the real appears only as an effect of the lack of imagination or representation. It's a remainder. »Le réel est au-delà de l'automa-ton.« (53) As such, there is a touch by the real, a being »touched« by something which resists to be assimilated by the subject, something that appears only as a wound, a gap, a lack. This has nothing in common with so called »negative theology«. The point is not that it can't be said, but that it touches. It leaves us upset. The speaking of the Sinai is, still before it becomes clear as the Law, is a disturbance, accompanied by fear and thunder. This is a compromise an all too naive image of a God who communicates the Law, in order to be followed by His pious believers. This is exactly not what happens on the Sinai. Let us not forget that the people of Israel prefer the golden calf instead of a vague murmur. A murmur by a God who doesn't show himself. The speaking on the Sinai is not the Word of a God that is already a God with believers, speaking the words that the believers want to hear. The symbolic order: that is Aron's contribution to the story, not Moses's. The speaking on the Sinai is a traumatic speaking. »The blare of the horn grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder.« (Exod. 21:19). God's Law is not communicated by transference of knowledge. Rather, it wounds knowledge. It traumatizes. »Knowledge« would suppose that a subject - the people of Israel - learns something of the will of God. The science of this knowledge would be »theology«. Following this route, the subject could vote before or against the Law of God. Yet, religion is not democratic, because in religion, the ground of the subject is not to be found within the self, rather as said before, in radical alterity. If we want to face religion, without immediately reducing it to sociology, democracy or economy, we have to face the trauma. This is the religious demand. The desire is the desire of the Other. 540 Bogoslovni vestnik 77 (2017) • 3/4 3. The blare of the horn: Lacan on Anxiety Let us listen closer to this blare of the horn that accompanies the voice on the Sinai, without entering the symbolic order. One the one hand, we have heard the voice thundering, on the other, we have seen that this voice, just like Freud's superego, is a voice that is heard in silence. »It's only in your head«, so to say. Yet, it has nothing in common with »interiority«. Why not? Because, if Freud is right, what is heard, is exterior, not interior. It is a voice coming from elsewhere. For Freud is consists of education, norms and values, society, etc. It is a voice that is heard, even if one covers the ears with one's hands. In short, it is an inaudible voice. A voice that is omnipresent in silence. To Lacan, the voice is an object, but it is a non-material object, denoted a (L'objet petit a). L'objet petit a is an object that eludes the grip by the subject, but that it nevertheless considers as the cause of its desire (rather than being an object of desire). It is the other as imagined by the ego, of which we have already said that it is constituted by the Other. This does not mean that the ego knows what it exactly hears of who is speaking. But what it knows, is that an unsolicited desire is poured out to it. The ego is located between the A (the signifiers of what the other is demanding) an a (the question of the subject: »what do you want from me?«). The a is not an existing, knowable object, but a leftover, marked by an irreducible lack. The voice is exactly the thing that can't be said. The first quote we used, about »the voice of conscience«, suggests already a voice as a phantasma. But nonetheless, it »sounds« inaudible but obsessive. It won't let you go. From a clinical point of view this sounds familiar. Now, the atheist declares delighted: »See, religion is nothing but >hearing voices