Can Lacanian psychoanalysis be used to justify the pessimism of Schopenhauer?

[Specific_Milk]

Is it possible to use the framework of Lacanian psychoanalysis to justify the philosophy of pessimism (e.g of Schopenhauer)? specifically the fact that we will never be complete as subjects and that our desire will never be fulfilled could be used to show that the will to live (in the schopenhaurean sense) is ultimately futile?

I'm aware that Schopenhauer has other views on how to 'beat life' so to speak i.e through denial of the will and that lacanian psychoanalysis is not philosophy (even if he himself drew a lot of his ideas from the field of philosophy like from Husserl).

Im wondering if it's appropriate to somehow merge those two together?

The Lacanian framework has been exactly the train of thoughts I was having when it comes to my reasoning for ctbing but which goes much deeper and is more concrete a framework than my measly brain could ever come up with. However, the problem is that psychoanalysis is not philosophy and its application is within the field of psychiatry.

I feel there is a deeper connection between this framework and the field of philosophy itself for instance, the Real of Lacan echoes very much the similar concept of Noumena of Immanuel Kant, and subsequently the Symbolic+ the Imaginary --> Kant's phenomena. Schopenhauer is basically a disciple of Kant using these exact concepts and expanding it into his pessimistic works.

Am I on to something or is this just neurotic?

 

[Walilamdzii]

I'm not familiar with the concept of Lacanian psychoanalysis, I was just looking to see if anyone had made any threads about Schopenhauer.. sorry to not be of any use!

 

[murmur]

I think lacan and schopenhauers ideas collide, specifically perpetual desiring/lacking. Maybe you could equate it to our ego, the ability to apply our broken judgment of reality and make an abstract "value and meaning" of life, even after we decide that non-existence is most preferable, somehow it doesn't stop there.

"Desire is always and by definition unsatisfied, metonymical, shifting from one object to another, since I do not actually desire what I want - what I actually desire is to sustain desire itself, to postpone the dreaded moment of its satisfaction"

"Every time a desire is satisfied a new one is engendered, and there is no end to the eternally insatiable desires of the will."

I guess you can sort of twist this notion to be a positive, something like "life is about the journey, not the destination". Though, i read this saying as having no choice but to live, "journey", a "destination" would be death.

 

[PrematureBurial]

I mean yes and no. Psychoanalysis is not only bound to being a medical praxis, but is obviously also theoretical. Philosophy likes to stick its nose in the topic predominantly from the viewpoint of structuralism, poststructuralism (deconstruction), feminism and Marxism. This entire discourse was in a sense born in France. Somehow all of these collide in one theory (with the addition of Žižek and of course Freud), I don't even get it myself entirely and I don't want to, I know too much about it in general already and it irks me. Anyway, that's your go-to if you want a direct connection.

Schopenhauer is a strange pick here. Everything after Kant has to do with Kant to some degree, but that isn't an indicator of anything yet. You could relate Schopenhauer and Lacan to some degree, but in a general, indirect sense. They're just two different systems. But in the end all of philosophy relates to any given field of philosophy somewhat. In that sense, a comparison is viable.