Becoming

Summary

Dominique Pagani takes up Hegel's formula that the result is nothing without its becoming. He applies it to truth: a true statement cut off from the path that leads to it is false through abstraction, formally true but without content1. He also applies it to a people, which cannot be grasped without its history2, and to commodities, whose becoming, when restored, has the force of a demonstration in Marx3. With Hegel, he holds becoming to be true being: it is not the antithesis of being but the synthesis of being and non-being, and he places Clouscard and himself on that side45. He describes it as the permanent succession of disappearing and appearing, a matter that ceaselessly negates what it was6. He connects it to Heraclitus and the river one cannot bathe in twice, to Nietzsche, for whom man is a passage, and to music, the art of becoming, in connection with Swann7.

1. 1Hegel on the Beach 1/51 Feb 2016 · 11:10
2. 2P for People30 Dec 2014 · 5:08
3. 3On Marx6 Oct 2018 · 30:07
4. 4#7 Answers to questions (continued)3 Dec 2020 · 59:30
5. 5Clouscard by you: answers to your questions28 Feb 2024 · 1:32:27
6. 6#18 What is musical in music25 Mar 2021 · 1:09:06
7. 7#9 Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata15 Jan 2021 · 1:39:18

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