The insistence of the imaginary -- Introduction: The mirror stage -- Sentiment and sensibility -- Francis Hutcheson and David Hume -- Edmund Burke and Adam Smith -- The sovereignty of the symbolic -- Introduction: The symbolic order -- Spinoza and the death of desire -- Kant and the moral law -- Law and desire in measure for measure -- The reign of the real -- Introduction: Pure desire -- Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche -- Fictions of the real -- Levinas, Derrida and Badiou -- The banality of goodness.