Unhappy consciousness

Summary

Dominique Pagani takes the concept of the unhappy consciousness from Hegel and considers it relevant for thinking about modernity: when the religious answer no longer precedes the questions, the disappearance of transcendence produces a collective trauma1. He connects it to the split between presence and truth, which Hegel links to the logic of essence2. He places it in history: it appears when production recedes, in the passage from the city to the empire with the moral schools, then from Descartes to Pascal3, or under the Restoration, after the revolution failed. The present crisis produces one that brings back the old religious substratum4. He describes it as a consciousness that denounces the disorder of the world without seeing that it contributes to it, that recognises itself nowhere and seeks escape. He applies it to Romanticism withdrawn from politics, to the petty bourgeois and to the ZAD spirit5. He also sees in it a deepening, a night whose end is in sight6.

1. 1Hölderlin, poetry and politics19 Mar 2022 · 11:11
2. 2#4.6 Angélique (by Nerval)15 Mar 2018 · 1:54:39
3. 3#9.16 How can sciences of history be real?4 Mar 2021 · 56:59
4. 4“What threatens societies are the men and women who benefit from the exploitation of others”12 Mar 2019 · 2:44:12
5. 5My eco-cabin in the ZAD: autonomy or alienation?30 Apr 2021 · 23:14
6. 6Hölderlin, poetry and politics19 Mar 2022 · 1:26:59

Summary produced automatically from 15 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.