• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.115
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• pp.249-279
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• 2010

The Law of the Heart, which appears in the chapter "B. The Actualization of Rational Self-consciousness Through its own Activity" in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit represents that the self-certainty of the reason may be the another face of the Madness. The Reason's indubitable certainty is the testimony of the truth for Descartes, and it also plays a role as the moral maxim of the conscience for Kant. But this subjective certainty unavoidably leads to the Madness of self-conceit, which unifies the consciousness and the reality ignoring the difference between them. The typical attitude appearing in the reformer like Don Quixote and also romantic idealists reveals the fact that modern reason and the psychosis can be both faces of one and the same coin. The Mirror Stage, the Imaginary, and the Formula of the Desire in Lacan's Theory shows that the Image of completeness is the result of Mis-understanding. Even if the Mirror stage is necessary for the Formation of the subject, at the same time it should also lead to the next stage, i.e., the Symbolic Order. It is considered as the realm of the Otherness, which refers to the realm of language or that of law. If the Ego can't go through the symbolic castration acted on by the Name of the Father, he will be remained in the prison of the Imaginary. The Madness also shows the similar process. For Hegel the Discipline of the Labor or the Death as absolute Otherness that inevitably delays the Desire plays the same role as the name of Father. It may be the experience of Separation or that of Sublation of the individual towards the universal, which is equivalent to the experience of Symbolic castration in Lacan. Furthermore there may be the difference between Hegel and Lacan as the following; while in Hegel the experience of Separation is founded on the spontaneity of the Spirit, for Lacan it is to be compelled and structured by the absolute Other.