“The Pain of Existing” and Desire for the Contemporary Subject
“The Pain of Existing” and Desire for the Contemporary Subject

Summary/Abstract: The first issue that I shall address here is that of the difference between existence and being, using primarily the psychoanalytical approach of Freud and Lacan, rather than the philosophical one, which I leave to the specialists. The point I want to stress therefore is related to a simple inquiry: if existence is referred to reality issues such as things and bodies, being would rather concern the identity of those things and bodies which exist. For instance, if angels do indeed exist, what is their sex, what is their being made of, what is their identity? In the same way, if “unicorns exist”, what are they, animals, intermediate beings, or some supernatural instances? This debate around being and existence took place in modern philosophy (phenomenology, Heidegger, Kripke, Gould), but was also a fundamental problematic for Freud when he invented psychoanalysis.

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