Reading Books as a Subject of the Philosophy of Justice

Abstract

The article considers the philosophy of justice as a possibility of realization of collective autocommunication. Psychoanalysis helps to enrich the philosophy of justice by linking the study of reactions to internal states and to external social situations by the concept of autocommunication. The incorporation of psychoanalytic definitions (desire) into the conceptual-categorical apparatus of economics (resource, capital) allows us to analyze the process of transition of issues of social equality and fair distribution from the field of ethics to an extended version of the social game that includes reading experience. The position of Amartya Sen, who constructs a particular field of readerly consumption that is both scenic and conducive to the accumulation of social experience rather than simply its public manifestation, is critically examined. It is suggested that reading should be seen as a desire to use a limited material or emotional resource, actualizing fantasy as a manifestation of excess and as an autocommunication, an encounter with the self as the subject of fantasization. Surplus communication expands notions of the responsibility of justice by turning the reader into a mirror of autocommunication.