Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

Man thinks. That does not mean that he is made only for that. But what ismanifest, is that this is the only valid thing he does, because valid means –and nothing else, it is not a scale of values, a scale of values, as I remindyou, turns round in circles – valid means nothing other than the fact that itinvolves the submission of use value to exchange value. What is patent, isthat the notion of value is inherent to this system of the torus and the notionof something of an une-bévue in my title of this year only means that – onecould just as well say the contrary – man knows more than he believes heknows. But the substance of this knowledge, the materiality which isbeneath, is nothing other than the signifier in so far as it has meaningeffects.Man parle-être 4 as I said which means nothing other than that hespeaks signifier, with which the notion of being is confused.This is real. Real or true? Everything is posed, at this tentative level, as ifthe two words were synonyms. The appalling thing is that they are noteverywhere so. The true is what one believes to be such; faith and evenreligious faith, is the true that has nothing to do with the real.Psychoanalysis, it must be clearly said turns round in the same circle. It isthe modern form of faith, of religious faith. Adrift, that is where the true iswhen the real is what is at stake. All that because manifestly – since thetime, we would have known it, if it were not manifest – manifestly there isno knowing (connaissance). There is only some kind of knowledge (savoir)in the sense that I said at the outset, namely, that we make mistakes...abévue, that is what is at stake, philosophy going round in circles. It is amatter of substituting a different sense for the term world system that wemust indeed preserve, even though as regards this world we can say nothingabout man, except that he has fallen from it. We are going to see how, andthat has a great deal of relationship with the central hole of the torus.There is no progress, because there cannot be any. Man goes round incircles if what I say about his structure is true, because the structure, thestructure of man is toric. Not at all that I affirm that it is so. I am sayingthat one can try to see the state of affairs, this all the more since general4 Condensing ‘speaks’ and ‘being’.14