Cycle 15 · 5 May 2026The foundations of the Platonic and Aristotelian distinction- 59:46Answer to the Socratic question "what do you call...?": that which makes the Parthenon and a sunset equally beautiful.
Essence
Worked through in 26 videos · 31 passages.
Summary
Dominique Pagani sets essence against accident and, above all, against existence. He draws on Hegel: Wesen, the past participle of the verb "to be", designates being that has vanished, having-been. He sees in it a step forward from being, but also the beyond of the Christian world, as opposed to Greek immanence. Essence is the truth of what appears: it does not appear itself but explains what appears, like the law of the tides1. If essence and appearance were one and the same, science would be useless. He links it to form and to language: essence is what allows a thing to be named, a statue rather than a block of marble, a jar rather than a glass2. He finds it again in language as a code and in figured bass that has not been realised. He stresses its shortcoming: deprived of existence, like Plato's world of ideas, it is worth nothing, and what matters is its passage into existence3. From this he concludes that what is proper to man is to go beyond every essence in which he is confined4.
- 1Worldliness in Clouscard: the world as “cunning of reason”22 Jul 2023 · 25:38
- 2Our former savagery? An Illumination by Arthur Rimbaud13 Jun 2025 · 21:30
- 3Worldliness in Clouscard: the clash of worlds?9 Jul 2023 · 2:00:49
- 4Michel Foucault2 May 2019 · 1:14:39
Summary produced automatically from 31 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Cycle 15 · 5 May 2026The foundations of the Platonic and Aristotelian distinction
Cycle 15 · 13 Apr 2026Language and thought: the case of Lavoisier- 7:53"What is it" takes existence for granted and concerns essence; "what do you call" does not even know whether the thing exists.
Cycle 13 · 29 Aug 2025State and state apparatus: the conflict between public and private- 20:45There is a long way from the essential to the existential: sticking to the essential makes one reductive, as in saying Mozart and Hitler were Austrian.
Series · 13 Jun 2025Our former savagery? An Illumination by Arthur Rimbaud- 21:30Essence is given by form: it is what makes us call a thing a jar or a glass; it is the world of man, language.
Talks · 2 Dec 2024Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning- 11:41The flaw of any essence, like Plato's world of ideas, is that it cruelly lacks existence.
Cycle 12 · 14 Aug 2024Too late?- 33:36If the essence and appearance of things were confused, all science would be useless: what is irreversible in philosophy.
Cycle 11 · 22 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the world as “cunning of reason”- 25:38Essence is the truth of reality, what does not appear but explains what appears, like the law of the tides.
Cycle 11 · 9 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the clash of worlds?- 2:00:49Essence deprived of existence is worth nothing; what is essential is the passage of essence into existence.
Cycle 11 · 19 Oct 2022“Speech is the best and the worst of things” (Aesop)- 44:32The historian knows Nazism as existence; judging its essence and saying whether someone is a Nazi requires more complex philosophical determinations.
Series · 3 Aug 2022Schubert: the divine captives- 11:32Music captures the essence of states of the soul, though incommunicable, and makes it visible and shareable by all.
Series · 20 Jul 2022Wagner: the truth of pure music- 2:05The tongue as a system or code belongs to essence, not existence, like the highway code that no one follows exactly.
Cycle 10 · 22 Sept 2021#10.1 The eternal irony of the community
Series · 25 Mar 2021#17 Interpretation- 1:31:19A figured bass, as long as it is not realized, is an essence and not an existence, like an equation without determinate parameters.
Series · 25 Mar 2021#18 What is musical in music
Cycle 9.1 · 10 Dec 2020#8 Benefits and harms of amnesia…- 33:55Essence belongs to the order of words, like the definition of the circle; to make a reality correspond to it, for example in genes, is to shift to substantialism.
Cycle 9.1 · 23 Oct 2020#2 Benefits and harms of amnesia…- 38:27Defining a physical law pertains to essence; asking whether such laws exist pertains to existence.
Series · 10 Sept 2019M. Clouscard's reply to C. Morilhat (part 2)- 17:04Invisible being, beyond the sensible; in Hegel, form is as essential to essence as essence is to itself.
Series · 2 May 2019Michel Foucault- 1:14:39What is proper to man is to sublate every essence in which he is enclosed; a migrant, he is not species-specific, unlike the polar bear.
Cycle 5.2 · 26 Mar 2019#5.5 Nature or landscape?
Cycle 5.1 · 2 Nov 2018#5.1 bis Questions (Facebook Live)- 8:23Form is as essential to essence as essence is to itself; essence can also be conceived as developed form.
Talks · 12 Jun 2018In conversation with Bernard Friot (1 June 2018)
Cycle 4 · 16 May 2018#4.8 Angélique (by Nerval)- 45:45With Hegel, form is as essential to essence; essence is also conceived as developed form.
Cycle 4 · 15 Mar 2018#4.6 Angélique (by Nerval)- 1:52:36Wesen is the past participle of the verb to be: essence is being that has passed, vanished; it is a progress relative to being.
Talks · 12 Mar 2018Tonight, we repoliticise (part 1)
Cycle 2 · 15 Feb 2016#2.2 Between crisis and war: philosophising?- 1:16:38Essence, like the sum of the angles of a triangle, is opposed to accident; political nature is essential to man.
Series · 3 Jan 2015T for Triangle- 5:16One sees the table, never the idea of the table; neither matter nor form defines it, and no table realizes the whole concept of table.