ORIGINAL SIN, A WOUND, AN INNER DISTANCE IN HUMAN KIND THAT CAN NEVER BE OVERCOME

There is a  conviction by some bien pensants that human subjectivity is permanently split and bears a gap within itself, a wound, an inner distance that can never be overcome: something Lacan demonstrated over and over again in an extraordinarily complex (and dialectical) articulation of the original Freudian models.

 But taken at this level of generality it is a view that might easily lead to social pessimism and conservatism, to a view of original sin and the incorrigibility of some permanent human nature.