Download pdf
The Mirror World: Being as Nothingness
- 1 St. Hilda’s School, Gold Coast, 4212, Australia
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The question of whether the perceived world is a mere illusion has been a key area of interest to both essentialism and existentialism. Plato, the essentialist, argues that there is an objective reality transcendent to that which we perceive. Lacan, similarly, proposed that there exists a totality of reality in the human psyche, open to neo-natal children who have not yet entered the external world through language. In this paper, I argue that Lacan had taken a different route to Plato via his portrayal of the Real, that is, the original state of the world before it is rendered inaccessible by the ego’s entrance into the perceived reality, or the Mirror World. Elusive of being formulated by the signs of the perceived reality, or the Imaginary-Symbolic order, it is but a nothingness without concrete being. What exists is what is accepted as a part of the linguistic and epistemological conventions of the external world, and the perceived reality a mere Mirror Reflection of the psychic and social symbols and is thus illusory. The Ego, likewise, is argued to be contingent and imaginary, born out of its misidentification with one’s mirror image that one sees in the external world.
Keywords
Sartre, Essentialism, Ontological Nihilism, Lacan, Plato
[1]. Botting, F. (1994). “Relations of the Real in Lacan, Bataille and Blanchot.” SubStance, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 24–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3684791. Accessed 4 Jun. 2022.
[2]. Rogers, A. K. (1936). “Plato’s Theory of Forms.” The Philosophical Review, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 61–78. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2179618. Accessed 2 Jun. 2022.
[3]. Plato. (1937). Plato's Cosmology; the Timaeus of Plato. London: New York, Harcourt, Brace, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. ltd.
[4]. Gallop, J. (1982). “Lacan’s ‘Mirror Stage’: Where to Begin.” SubStance, vol. 11/12, pp. 118–28. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3684185. Accessed 29 Jun. 2022.
[5]. Evans, D. (1996). Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, pp. 84
[6]. Evans, D. (1996). Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, pp. 203
[7]. Evans, D. (1996). Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, pp. 84
[8]. Lacan, J. (1975). Le Séminaire. Livre XX. Encore, 1972-73. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, p. 33
[9]. Ayer, A. J. (1936). “The Principle of Verifiability.” Mind, vol. 45, no. 178, pp. 199–203. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2250238. Accessed 3 Jul. 2022.
[10]. Wright, J. H. (1906). “The Origin of Plato’s Cave.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 17, pp. 131–42. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/310313. Accessed 28 May 2022.
[11]. Silverman, A. (2022). "Plato’s Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/plato-metaphysics/>.
[12]. Kidder, D. S., Oppenheim, N. D, (2006), The Intellectual Devotional, p. 27, Borders Group, Inc, Ann Arbor. ISBN 978-1-60961-205-4
[13]. Wolfsdorf, D. (2011). “Plato’s Conception of Knowledge.” The Classical World, vol. 105, no. 1, pp. 57–75. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41303487. Accessed 1 Jul. 2022.
[14]. Lacan, J. (). On the Names-of-the-Father. The Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real: Inaugural meeting of SEP, Paris: 8th July 1953. Translated by Bruce Fink, W.W. Norton, pp1-52.
[15]. de Saussure, C. (1984). F. de Saussure’s Theory of Language. no. 38, 1984, pp. 83–97. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27758314. Accessed 5 Jun. 2022.
[16]. Evans, D. (1996). Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, p. 186
[17]. Evans, D. (1996). Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, p. 189
[18]. Evans, D. (1996). Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, p. 189
[19]. Oderberg, D. (2007). ‘Real Essentialism’. London: Routledge.
[20]. Sartre, J-P. (1949). Nausea. Norfolk, Conn: New Directions.
[21]. Lacan, J. (1992). ‘The Ethics of Psychoanalysis’: 1959-1960: The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VII’. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Dennis Porter. London: Routledge.
[22]. Witt, C. (1995). “Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Theory.” Philosophical Topics, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 321–44. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43154216. Accessed 1 Jul. 2022.
[23]. Lacan, J. (1998). ‘On Feminine Sexuality the Limits of Love and Knowledge: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX Encore’. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton.
[24]. Foucault, M. (2001). The Order of Things. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
[25]. Berger, P., Luckmann, T. (1991). The Social Construction of Reality. Penguin Books.
[26]. Harari, Y. (2015). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Harper.
[27]. Lacan, J. (1993). The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955-56. Trans. Russell Grigg. London: Routledge, p. 185
[28]. Lacan, J. (1988). The Seminar. Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-54. Trans. John Forrester. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.228
[29]. Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, p.172
[30]. Lacan, J. (2004). Écrits: The First Complete Translation in English. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Delivered on July 17, 1949, in Zurich at the Sixteenth. Translated by Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg. W.W. Norton, London, pp.73-81
[31]. Lacan, J. (2004). Écrits: The First Complete Translation in English. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Delivered on July 17, 1949, in Zurich at the Sixteenth. Translated by Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg. W.W. Norton, London, pp.73-81
[32]. Lacan, J. (2004). Écrits: The First Complete Translation in English. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Delivered on July 17, 1949, in Zurich at the Sixteenth. Translated by Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg. W.W. Norton, London, pp.73-81
[33]. Sartre, J.-P. (2003). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Routledge, pp.362-379
[34]. Sartre, J.-P. (2003). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Routledge, pp.362-379
[35]. Lacan, J. (2004). Écrits: The First Complete Translation in English. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. Delivered on July 17, 1949, in Zurich at the Sixteenth. Translated by Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg. W.W. Norton, London, pp.73-81
[36]. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 298
Cite this article
Ye,Q. (2023). The Mirror World: Being as Nothingness. Communications in Humanities Research,4,40-49.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies (ICIHCS 2022), Part 2
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).