Determination

détermination

Worked through in 28 videos · 43 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani starts from Spinoza's formula, "all determination is negation": to posit oneself is to oppose oneself, like the field that is established only by cutting down the forest, where one both gains and loses1 2. To determine is to finish and to end: the determinate has a clear outline, like the Parnassian statue, while scent and sound remain indeterminate. To name is already to determine. He contrasts Antiquity, which sees beauty in the completed, with modernity, which prefers the vague and the infinite3. Following Hegel, he distinguishes determinability (Bestimmtheit), which rules out chance without identifying the cause, from determination (Bestimmung), which names it, whether libidinal, class-based or both. He illustrates this with the detective who knows that someone came by without knowing who4 5. He also separates natural determinations, which can hardly be changed, from socio-historical determinations, which can change: one frees oneself from them by recognizing them instead of repressing them6 7.

Summary produced automatically from 45 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 13 · 27 May 2025Flagrante Delights

1:24:01The dichotomy of the indeterminate and the finite: the Greek sees beauty in the achieved, modernity prefers the vague.
1:45:53The land surveyor represents the determinate, measure, facing the inaccessible.

Cycle 13 · 6 Feb 2025On the anti-Sovietism of the Khmer Rouge-Greens

45:56The determined, the finite, is opposed to the indeterminate; representation experiences determination as a restriction of its infinity.

Cycle 13 · 17 Dec 2024The essence of evil: innocence of nature, horror of naturalism!

28:03I am freer when my determination is social than when it is natural.
34:59Only nature imprints an ineffaceable character; social determinations, made by men, can be changed.

Talks · 2 Dec 2024Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning

55:43The classical world accepts a determination: the classical character is a type.

Cycle 12 · 4 Jan 2024I am not who you think I am: the elusive identity

7:12Internal determination determines the subject and not the object; the burn of the flame comes from outside, unlike the autonomy of a vote or of the social contract.
1:35:42What determines us from within comes from us, and can therefore be changed: this is good news.
1:43:31We must own our determinations, which we refuse to know, instead of attributing them to the outside.

Cycle 12 · 22 Dec 2023Birth and carnage: the Massacre of the Innocents

20:20The determinate is what has a sharp contour, like the Parnassian statue; scent and sound are indeterminate.
47:40The relation between the determinate and the indeterminate recurs in every human problematic.

Cycle 12 · 12 Dec 2023“I is another”, or contradictory identity

35:58Determined means finite, terminated on the basis of something else: what is determined is not infinite.
1:24:41Every determination is negation: to define oneself by one determination excludes all the others.

Cycle 12 · 17 Oct 2023Neither left nor right? Islamo-leftism?

12:55It is because we repress our determinations that we give them the power to determine us; we free ourselves from them by recognizing them.
17:37This does not concern natural determinations, which are the business of the sciences, but those that constitute us as subject.
30:42Determinations internal to the subject: what I repress of my self because it would disturb the image I want to give and my narcissism.

Cycle 11 · 9 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the clash of worlds?

55:28Determinate means finite; indeterminate, indefinite, without contour. To name is to determine.
1:03:34One cannot give a name to the indeterminate, except a proper name like the chaos of the Greeks.

Cycle 9.2 · 30 Jun 2021#9.24 “Ruled like music paper!” Nerval, Baudelaire (part 2)

25:35The determinability established is not yet determination: like the detective, one knows that someone has passed, not who or why.
51:18Two determinations: individual, animal, specific to each, and collective, relational, coming from the history of a culture.

Cycle 9.2 · 9 Jun 2021#9.23 “Ruled like music paper!” Bach, Nerval, Lévi-Strauss

1:20:05Determinability established, determination remains: Freudian, libidinal, of class, or the coupling of the two.
2:07:00It remains to move from determinability to determination: the detective has not yet found the culprit or the motive.

Series · 10 Mar 2021#16 Programme music, pure music

59:38Each mode of expression has its own constraints which, like every determination, are a grid that hides and reveals, excludes and imposes.

Cycle 9.1 · 23 Oct 2020#2 Benefits and harms of amnesia…

10:45Disorder preceded order, the indeterminate preceded the determinate.
27:38To name is to introduce distinction: up, down, right, left.

Cycle 8 · 30 Jul 2020#16 Return to the logics of the subject

33:58Determinability is not yet determination: the detective perceives that someone has passed by without yet knowing that it is this one and not another.

Talks · 6 Dec 2019“The Brass Band's Journey”, by Dominique Memmi

31:07A determination such as white or black is always posited by opposition: flowers are called natural only because artificial flowers exist.

Cycle 5.2 · 4 Feb 2019#5.4 Nature or landscape?

1:25:30Schelling's absolute, like nirvana, has no positive determination or property: it is the night in which all cows are black.

Cycle 5.1 · 6 Dec 2018#5.2 ter Questions, following workshop #5.2 (Facebook Live)

10:57Antiquity places value in the finite, the determined, the accomplished, of which the city is the example; the modern is characterized by indetermination and infinity.

Cycle 5.1 · 2 Nov 2018#5.1 bis Questions (Facebook Live)

36:08One only defines oneself by opposing oneself: every determination is negation, according to Spinoza.

Cycle 4 · 12 Apr 2018#4.7 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:22:58Determinability (Bestimmtheit) excludes chance without identifying the cause; determination (Bestimmung) identifies the cause, sexual or historical.

Cycle 4 · 12 Feb 2018#4.5 Angélique (by Nerval)

23:13With Hegel, determination (what is at work) is distinct from determinability, the fact of sensing that a determination is acting without knowing which one.

Cycle 4 · 4 Feb 2018#4.4B Objections to Dominique Pagani

14:56One can hardly change one's natural determinations, but everyone can and must reflect on their socio-historical determinations.

Cycle 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus

3:43Every determination is negation: to establish a field is to cut down the forest; in every extreme something is gained and something lost.
46:52To have a quality is to have a determination; modern man without qualities cannot be defined without being made finite.

Cycle 1 · 10 Dec 2015#1.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

40:39To define and to determine is to finish and to terminate: one knows everything there is to know about the thing, with nothing left over.
57:50To be determined is to receive one's motion from an external cause, which belongs to inertia.

Series · 8 Dec 2015Michel Clouscard, the paths of praxis (2/2)

34:21Every determination is negation: action separates and is not innocent.

Series · 3 Jan 2015T for Triangle

9:32The economic determinations brought to light by Marx form a field of determinability, more advantageous than the natural determinism against which I can do nothing.

Series · 29 Dec 2014O for Opposition

10:57The field and the forest limit one another: every determination is negation; to posit oneself one must oppose oneself, like the adolescent.

Series · 26 Sept 2014#4 Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: on the thought of M. Clouscard

10:22The relations of parents, children, men and women are determined by the historical context.
49:29Thoughts of determination (Marxism, psychoanalysis) are rejected by the revolt of "me, it's me."

Series · 6 Jul 2012Radio Galère: Michel Clouscard (1)

44:00Proust shows a class determination even in the beauty of bodies, something that today would be censored as mechanistic Marxism.