The Aesthetic Revolution.

On the Lacanian reading of Antigone.

Abstract

The article aims to reflect on the role played by the psychoanalytic reading on the Greek tragedy. In particular, we draw the attention on the Lacanian interpretation of the Antigone by Sophocles, to which is devoted an entire seminar of the French psychoanalyst. We shall see how the originality of this understanding consists in overcoming the well-known dichotomy between the law of the polis and that of nature (Hegel's privileged reading) in order to think about the striking beauty of the tragic heroine. This beauty, which is due to the monumentality, firmness and courage with which Antigone accomplishes her desire to bury Polynices, makes possible to achieve an authentic aesthetic revolution. Indeed, the epistemological turn of the VII seminary, challenging the morality of common good, allows exceeding the traditional ethics into a new order based on desire. Nevertheless, this is possible only thanks to the aesthetic dimension, here understood in the original meaning given by Baumgarten as Kuntstwissenschaft, science of art and beautiful. In the re-elaboration by Lacan the tragic myth truly legitimates the birth of a new ethical order for psychoanalysis