Human Rights, Desire, and the Lacanian Subject: Between Self and Other

Abstract

This paper seeks to re-examine the subject of law through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, arguing for a more nuanced and critically engaged understanding of subjectivity. In Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, the Other refers to both specific individuals and, more significantly, the Symbolic Order of language, law, and culture that shapes our subjectivity and desire. By situating the subject (the Self) in relation to the Other – of which Law and Human Rights can be seen as paradigmatic expressions – an attempt is made to explore this dynamic relationship within legal theory. The aim is to expose the legal subject not as a transparent bearer of rights, but as a complex, desiring subject entangled in unconscious structures.

Building on this reframing, the paper argues for moving beyond an imaginary, universalising conception of morality – one often embedded in Human Rights discourse – and toward an ethics of desire. According to the Lacan’s psychoanalysis, morality is not ethical; rather, it is a defence mechanism, a way for the subject to compensate for having renounced its desire. Ethics, on the other hand, requires confronting the finitude and non-totality of both the Self and the Other. To act ethically, the subject must dethrone the Other – recognising that the Other, as such, as an essence, does not exist.

If we understand Human Rights as a form of the Other, offering a supposed universal moral order, then we must ask: “Shall the ethical subject require the ‘dethronement’ of Human Rights?” And if so, “should Human Rights discourse be re- or de-constructed through the lens of desire and psychoanalytic ethics?”