Abstract

This paper aims to determine how and why the problem of the origin of the unconscious in psychoanalysis allows us to think about the genesis of the universality present in the philosophical tradition. Relying on the concept of originary repression in psychoanalysis, which designates the point of birth of the unconscious, I will try to show that it is the very foundation of the unconscious that produces the emergence of philosophical universality. In the light of the relation between the origin of the unconscious and the genesis of universality, it will be seen that wherever universality has taken place, something was subjected to repression. This repressed content will refer us to the notion of jouissance, which must be understood as a non-historical nucleus around which the political struggles for universality are organized.