critical theory with slavoj zizek: desiring is not in itself “pathological.” In short, Lacan asserts the necessity of a “critique of pure desire”: in contrast to Kant, for whom our capacity to desire is thoroughly “pathological” (since, as he repeatedly stresses, there is no a priori link between an empirical object and the pleasure this object generates in the subject), Lacan claims that there is a “pure faculty of desire,” since desire does have a non-pathological, a priori object-cause-this object, of course, is what Lacan calls objet petit a.