Lacan and the Neoplatonists

Abstract

A word out of sens can become an indelible mark for a subject because, even if he cannot realized it by thinking, it meets the body and can therefore affect it. In order to theoretically establish these clinical principles, Lacan was interested in the Neoplatonists, in these thinkers of the One. In his course, L’Un-tout-seul, dating from 2011, Jacques-Alain Miller affirms that in his last teaching, “Lacan was part of the tradition of henology, of the doctrine of the One, that which the Neoplatonists made it flourish and who was striving precisely to think of the One (…) beyond being and essence”. The present work demonstrated the theoretical affinities between the One of Lacan and the One of the Neoplatonists, focusing more particularly on the one who was the initiator of this philosophy of late Antiquity, namely Plotinus.