Season 13 · 17 Dec 2024The essence of evil - Innocence of nature, horror of naturalism!- 1:10:21Natural beauty appears when nature imitates a finality; it is a relation, not a substance, and it unfolds on surfaces.
Worked through in 9 videos · 12 passages.
Dominique Pagani starts from the statement "it is beautiful", which amounts to saying "I like it": pleasure presupposes a desire that is satisfied, and the task is to find the desire specific to aesthetic pleasure, distinct from the desire to eat or from the use of a tool1. The aesthetic judgement is reflective: the beautiful object satisfies a desire with no known aim and thereby reveals an unconscious desire2. If this desire is common to humanity, there is a criterion of the beautiful, which he takes to be freedom3. Beauty is an image of freedom, but an abyss separates the image from the thing: it is a programme, not a reality in act4. It plays on surfaces and appearance (Schein, schön), where the desire for freedom is reflected5. This is why the love that beauty triggers seems so important. Natural beauty appears when nature imitates a purposiveness; it is a relation, not a substance6. He also mentions Baudelaire's beauty that is always strange, the marble-like beauty of the Parnassians, and "art for art's sake", which he describes as a counter-revolutionary retreat after 1848.
Summary produced automatically from 12 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Season 13 · 17 Dec 2024The essence of evil - Innocence of nature, horror of naturalism!
Talks · 14 Jul 2022From Plato to world revolution, by Dominique Pagani
Series · 10 Mar 2021Musicosophy 16. Programme music / Pure music
Season 9.2 · 5 Feb 20219 #14 How can sciences of history be real?
Season 9.2 · 29 Jan 20219 #13 How can sciences of history be real?
Season 7 · 27 Mar 2020#1 - Harnessed to Confinitude
Season 5.2 · 30 Jun 2019#5.8 Nature or Landscape?
Talks · 16 Nov 2017The philosopher's two enemies: The dogmatist and the sceptic.
Season 2 · 1 Aug 2017#2.6 Between crisis and war: Philosophising?