The aim of this paper is an attempt to critically examine the ‘ethical application of desire and becoming the subject’ through Richard von Volkmann-Leander’s Träumereien an französischen Kaminen. Richard von Volkmann-Leander criticizes that the traditional concept of desire because it is based on the inability to satisfy wants in the western society, which is found in Siegmund. Freud. Richard von Volkmann-Leander insists that the desire is not wickedness to be eliminated but ethical appliance to becoming subject. The ethic problem, which is the deliberate practice of liberty, is very important to solve the problem.
Richard von Volkmann-Leander shows that ethical appliance of desire is a kind of process to become the subject. He shows that ethical practice is a deliberate form assumed by the liberty and also the mode of being which the subject takes how to behave ethically in pleasurable relationship with others. It then needs to endeavor to practice self-formation of the subject. It is an ascetical practice to fit with the truth of self.
The meaning of this study in ethical appliance of desire and becoming the subject is to promote civil culture that is found in citizenship, self-government, civil subjects, political behaviors, individual manners, as Tocqueville indicates in the crisis of ethics.