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Logical time. A concept illustrated by the clinic

This article is in three parts. The first part follows J.-A. Miller’s thinking on the unconscious as a subject, as a want-to-be, which gives it an ethical, rather than an ontological, status. This way of thinking is not only in opposition to, but in my opinion also in addition to, a classical mechanical way of thinking about the unconscious. The second part presents the concept of “logical time” and comments briefly on Lacan’s article “Le temps logique et l’assertion de certitude anticipée”. Both in this theoretical part and in the third part, a case study, we find arguments for the position that the unconscious, and psychoanalysis itself, should be approached from an ethical perspective, especially at the point where we meet the S(A/ ).

Subject and Collectivity: An Interpretation of Lacan’s “Le temps logique”

The rarely discussed text by Jacques Lacan, Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certitude, is subjected to a detailed analysis. After explaining the argument, the importance of the “sophism” is shown for Lacan’s ideas about the subject and collectivity. Finally, the text is compared to Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage. In this comparison it is shown, among other things, how “Le temps logique” anticipates an aspect of Lacan’s theory that becomes an issue only later in his work.