It is the libido, qua pure life instinct, that is to say, immortal life, irrepressible life, life that has need of no organ, simplified, indestructible life. This lamella, this organ, whose characteristic is not to exist, but which is nevertheless an organ - I can give you more details as to its zoological place - is the libido. But it would not be a very convenient battle. I can't see how we would not join battle with a being capable of these properties. But suppose it comes and envelopes your face while you are quietly asleep. And as it is something - I will tell you shortly why - that is related to what the sexed being loses in sexuality, it is, like the amoeba in relation to sexed beings, immortal - because it survives any division, and scissiparous intervention. The lamella is something extra-flat, which moves like the amoeba. Put very briefly, we might say that Lacan is situating a process of becoming-subject within a never-complete field of ethical discourses.Whenever the membranes of the egg in which the foetus emerges on its way to becoming a new-born are broken, imagine for a moment that something flies off, and that one can do it with an egg as easily as with a man, namely the hommelette, or the lamella. Third and finally, we go deeper into discussing the implications Lacan’s reinterpretation of selected Freudian concepts bear for ethics, particularly in terms of ethics of subjectivity. Second, we run over Lacan’s main discussions and partial appropriations of Aristotelian, Kantian, Utilitarian, Sadean, and Judeo-Christian moral perspectives.

First, we examine Lacan’s criticisms of modes and schools of psychoanalysis that converted it into a simplistically moralistic discipline such as ego-psychology. Three main sets of issues are analysed and discussed in this chapter. One particularly interesting aspect of Lacan’s work, particularly in terms of moral theory, is that while problematizing them, and reconceiving how we must understand them, his approach remains anchored by key themes, concepts, and experiences of older moral theories and perspectives, such as the truth of the human subject, the nature of the good, and the processes and pitfalls of moral development.

In his work and teaching, he examined and (re)incorporated a number of key experiences, conceptions, and insights from moral life and moral theories into psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan was constantly and consistently motivated by the aims of carrying out, improving, and critically understanding psychoanalytic practice and theory.

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