Collective

Summary

Dominique Pagani distinguishes collective ends from individual ends: a purely personal end has no meaning, and being able to set collective ends is a cultural achievement1. He also separates the collective from the crowd. The crowd is chaos, while the collective is the city trying to organise itself. He links it above all to Hölderlin's line "no one bore life alone". What the poet regrets, in his view, is not Greek beauty but the collective, which makes finitude bearable2. He also sees in it a longing for sharing with strangers, the opposite of communitarianism3. Since the Greek collective was reserved for a few free men, the task is to extend it to everyone4. He adds that in the world of scarcity, local solidarity weighs heavily, whereas today community can be chosen rather than endured. Finally, he describes three moments: substantial society, the crisis in which the individual separates, then the return of a collective extended to the universal. In between, the collective goes into exile in inwardness, notably through instrumental music5.

1. 1#1.4 Between crisis and war: philosophising?10 Dec 2015 · 1:34:42
2. 2Hölderlin, poetry and politics19 Mar 2022 · 43:28
3. 3#5 Harnessed to confinitude18 Apr 2020 · 1:26:55
4. 4Hölderlin, poetry and politics19 Mar 2022 · 1:15:54
5. 5Worldliness in Clouscard: desiring what? Through whom?3 Sept 2023 · 1:39:15

Summary produced automatically from 16 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.