As indicated at the end of the recent blog Cosa vuoi? on desire in Jacques Lacan, I wish now to reflect briefly on the implications of this line of thought for moral theology. Let me say at the outset that I have been for many years, and remain to this day, a fervent disciple of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on this question. Their programme could be summed up in the phrase “educating desire” (A. MacIntrye). The human being is seen as an essentially rational being who has the redoubtable task of controlling his (or her) various desires so that they do not wreck havoc in his life and that of those with whom he intimately associates. The only way to do this is to practice individual acts of moderation etc. so as to develop the corresponding virtues, which make the moral life possible. All this constitutes a theoretical and practical model of human thriving which has served generations of human beings in various cultural contexts. The thought of Lacan, inspired by Freud, however, puts this schema into what is technically known as “epistemological crisis”. An epistemological crisis occurs within a discipline, such as ethics or moral theology, when new data…