We create the moral law but we experience it as though it is external, eternal and should be obeyed.  How can we escape the conclusion that it only comes about due to our ability to  empathise or at least do the good to later get the good? 

This doesn't detract from the fact that we give ourselves law and then demonstrate our freedom by choosing to obey or transgress it, but it does disabuse us of the idea that the Categorical imperative is a real entity. 

Don't we need to introduce contradiction here into the discussion of law and freedom? Isn't the reason that the law opens up a space for freedom, the fact that it is self-contradictory? For instance, for Antigone, it's impossible to fulfill both the state law and the moral law. This impossible double bind opens up the space for the ethical act. And perhaps in this context we might say that freedom is the freedom to violate particular laws, in order to assert a universal moral law. But how does that relate to enjoyment?

It's interesting that the argument that it's okay to lie if it has a positive outcome, assumes that we can know the results of our actions in advance--something I think a Hegelian would deny. You can't use ends to justify means if the ends are indeterminate.

It seems to me that this points to an ethics of sublimation and of the production of libidinal economy (and ecology); and again, what is missing in the discussion is the role of TECHNIQUE and REHEARSAL, probably because psychoanalysis wants to be a master discourse and reduces questions of the techniques of living, to techniques of the clinic. But isn't the difference between the artist who self-destructs and dies young, and the artist who suffers but creates a metastable psychic life that allows for a lifetime of productivity, precisely a question of techniques of life and art?

I really like this idea of opposing structure-preserving transgressions against structural transformations. But of course, it gets especially interesting when we realize that we need to preserve some structures (ecosystems, human bodies) while transforming others (capitalism). We want to avoid transformations of capitalism, that would result in mass human extinction, as opposed to the neonazi/ecofascist/accelerationist versions of anti-capitalism, which accept or actively seek mass human extinction in order to end capitalism.

Every time I enter a whorehouse, I feel free, knowing I'm going to be hung afterwards

imo the musical parellel of kant would be pantera, who had a career in the 80s as a power metal band releasing four albums before their original sound of southern thrash. so in this analogy, Kant's CPrR is comparable to Vulgar Display of Power

Thanks for your replies.  This is going to sound really stupid, but where does the signifying order come from? 

What about if moral laws conflict? For example, the old example of the Gestapo coming to your door, the duty not to lie, but also the duty to protect the innocent? What if it is impossible to uphold them both. What would Kant say regarding which should take precedence?

In this episode, Ryan and Todd explore the radicality of Immanuel Kant's notion of freedom, which he ties to our ability to give the moral law to ourselves. This paradox that the law is the source of our freedom serves as the basis for a discussion that touches both Kant's place in the history of philosophy and his relationship to psychoanalysis.

Kant and Freedom

Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

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