What, then, is the relationship between evil and the impossible, evil and ethics?
All along, I have been speaking about evil on two different levels: One is the Kantian theory of evil; the other is the question of what we generally tend to call “evil.” Your question is related to this second level. I would agree that the space of ethics and the space of “evil” meet around the question of the impossible. However, the “impossible” shouldn’t be understood here simply as something that cannot happen (empirically), although we (as ethical subjects) must never give up on it. I believe that one should reformulate this concept of the impossible, which is predominant in Kant, in terms of what Lacan calls the “Real as impossible.” The point of Lacan’s identification of the Real is not that the real cannot happen. On the contrary, the whole point of the Lacanian concept of the Real is that the impossible happens. This is what could be so traumatic, disturbing, shattering—but also funny—about the Real. The Real happens precisely as the impossible. It is not something that happe
