The Other changes. Just like Nothing. The bet is for this to happen in opposing directions. This book traverses, again and again, these concepts through three Discourses: that of Lacanian psychoanalysis, a related political philosophy, and a certain theology.

It engages with questions such as the following:

Political

• What is the relationship between the totalitarian extremist and melancholy?
• How does the extremist melancholic subject confuse something that is missing (something it never had) with something that was lost (something it lost at some point or was "stolen" from it)?
• How can one have an emotional "gain" by maintaining the illusion that what it never possessed has not been lost?
• Is it possible that the "good" with non-existent objects is that they do not "wear out"?

Psychoanalytical

• What does Lacan mean when he says that most emotions are ways to deceive ourselves?
• What is actively undertaken passivity? That you can suffer through someone (significant to you) else, that there is the fully emotional apathy, tearful apathy?
• How free are you if you have an unconscious?
• What does it mean that I encounter the Other, not where it is exotically other, but exactly where it is itself a problem and mystery for itself?

Theological

• Why does the totalitarian hate God more than democracy?
• What is the difference between believing something and believing in something (e.g., the unconscious)?
• Should we see faith as an unequal − but bidirectional − contract that upholds the moral Law, a work and deed of the Other within us, a laborious hope for the justification and acceptance of a gift?