THE human predicament

The human predicament surely is the struggle between entropy and joy spiraling out of control. Weil announced that “The imagination, filler up of the void, is essentially a liar. It does away with the third dimension, for only real objects have three dimensions. It does away with multiple relationships. To try to define the things which, while they do indeed happen, yet remain in a sense imaginary. War. Crimes. Acts of revenge. Extreme affliction.”  To dissect this moment is the first step in understanding Weil’s relationship with Lacan.  I put it in statements from Weil and about Lacan’s theory, with special emphasis on keywords: It is a lack which causes desire to arise, there must be a tearing out, (a death), something desperate has to take place, the void must be created in order for there to be truth. To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death (all from Weil).  Lacan’s . . . subject of desire . . . (that is the subject which is) alienated from its natural needs and derailed onto the tracks of non-natural desires (and is) doomed never to reach enjoyable destinations (taken from Adrian Johnston on Lacan). In my words desire and truth are predicated by lack and void, there can be no life and death without void and truth, note the order of words here.  The whole of the process of being and becoming is perishing both from and into emptiness. To put it more simply: life is about lack, desire, void, truth which is death.  The problem is that Weil uses such profoundly theistic language and Lacan psychoanalytic language (presumed to be atheistic).  The further I go into looking at Weil and Lacan the more I see parallels with the experience of that which gnaws at me, that creeps-up, that lingers, of which I dare not look at, even from a distance (if that were possible). The fear I see is clear, not through some dim glass, but rather flagrantly and ferociously breathing down my neck.  The human predicament surely is the struggle between entropy and joy spiraling out of control.