Abstract

Psychoanalytical theory's main axiom tells that drive does not function in a 'natural', but in a distorted and 'perverted' way. Drive's most basic purpose is not the organism's self-preservation, but its 'pleasure' . That is why life, being natural and biological, is not lived naturally and biologically: the organism takes a'polymorph perverse' distance towards its natural, biological functioning and, in that very distance, 'enjoins' it. On the most fundamental level, it lives from that very 'pleasure'. Lacan's theory of desire is an elaboration of that Freudian thesis on the polymorph perverse pleasure principle. The Lacanian 'ethics of desire', elaborated in his sixth and seventh seminar, is built upon that thesis as well. That is why, at the very end of his sixth seminar , he defines sublimation as 'perverse' and therefore of ethical value: in a non-repressing way, sublimation opens up desire to its polymorph perverse ground. However, in the next seminar , Lacan changes his theory on both sublimation and perversion. Now, sublimation is defined as the cultural gesture by which we put a desired object on the level of 'das Ding' . Here, perversion gets an ethically negative meaning: for, so Lacan argues, when we put ourselves as subject at the position of that Thing, we act like a pervert, and abuse the ethical rule for immoral purposes. The article follows in detail thisshift in Lacan's theory and discusses its important impact on his thesis on ethics