Aesthetics

esthétique

Worked through in 21 videos · 28 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani starts from etymology: aesthetics refers to the sensible, to the world of what appears rather than what is, which is why "every aesthetics disappoints"1. He distinguishes aesthetics from art: it is a part of philosophy, a recent one, that reflects on the beautiful and on works2. It is born with Kant, at the moment when a world steps back from its works; one produces an aesthetics when art has lost its function of representing the absolute3. He links it above all to Hegel, who prefers to speak of a philosophy of fine art and orders the arts from spatial exteriority towards interiority: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry. He nonetheless holds it to be necessary to philosophy, since the beautiful object informs the subject about itself. From 2018 onwards, he stresses the relation between aesthetics and politics: in Hegel, each is always thought in terms of the other, and the truth of aesthetics is politics4 5.

Summary produced automatically from 28 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 10 · 6 Oct 2021#10.2 Dialectics of identity and difference

48:28The object of the study is the relation between aesthetics and politics: in Hegel, one is always thought in terms of the other.
1:30:35For the young Hegel, the supreme act of reason is an aesthetic act, and truth and goodness are sisters only when united in beauty.

Cycle 10 · 20 Sept 2021Presentation of the 2021-2022 workshops and association membership

9:49The book's subtitle announces the relation of aesthetics to politics within the Hegelian system.

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

31:40Political discourse must appear, be perceptible: aesthetic in the sense of aisthesis.
2:12:28Aesthetics was born with Kant, at the twilight of a world taking a step back from its works of art.

Cycle 9.2 · 27 May 2021#9.22 Science and/or philosophy of “artificial intelligence” (part 2)

42:53Rubato, stolen tempo, involves a sensible choice that the machine, limited to the quantitative, cannot make.
1:11:30Human slip-ups are the shadow of a moral world and enter into the unity of the work; the machine's are contingent.

Series · 7 Apr 2021#1 Mignon, or the song of silence

34:52Hegel orders the arts according to their engagement with material exteriority: architecture, sculpture, painting, then the arts of time, without a hierarchy of value.
47:10Poetry is distinguished from prose by integrating a musical element; Hegel places it above music.

Cycle 9.2 · 3 Apr 2021#9.18 Twilight of the Gods, or from repetition to liberation

1:27:32According to Hegel, painting abstracts from the third dimension; music no longer has any spatial dimension, it is a material disturbance in time.

Series · 25 Mar 2021#18 What is musical in music

29:32Art is the place of unity between necessity and freedom, particular and universal, sensible and rational, which Kant leaves unresolved.

Series · 17 Dec 2020#7 The Greeks, myth and music

3:32The difficulty is not to link art to a social form but to explain why it still gives aesthetic pleasure and serves as a model.

Series · 3 Dec 2020#2 From Lévi-Strauss to Nerval, on music

1:01:30Hegel's hierarchy of the arts is a hierarchy within the concept, from exteriority toward interiority; yet poetry does not leave the world of sounds.

Talks · 6 Oct 2020Calves and Things (3): the dictatorship of the bobotariat

36:02Ecology is the aesthetic, in the old sense too, that is, the surface beneath which liberal ideology is perceived.

Cycle 8 · 2 Jul 2020#12 Return to the logics of the subject

18:29Aesthetics is not art, but the part of philosophy that reflects on the beautiful and on works; the word and the discipline are recent.
1:05:32Aesthetics is a necessary part of philosophy, because the beautiful object informs the subject about himself.

Cycle 8 · 21 Jun 2020#11 Return to the logics of the subject

7:20Aesthetics is not art: it is a branch of philosophy that reflects on artistic corpora. The word dates from the eighteenth century.

Cycle 8 · 11 Jun 2020#10 Return to the logics of the subject

1:43The subject is neither aesthetics nor politics, but the relationship between the two fields, often thought of as antithetical.
40:29It is difficult to draw a sharp line between purely poetic value and the rightness of political causes.

Cycle 5.2 · 2 May 2019#5.6 Nature or landscape?

1:28:39The word designates the universe unfolded by our senses, which are not in contact with truth and reality but with a surface.

Talks · 20 Jul 2018Education: can beauty be learned?

37:59Aesthetics, as the word anesthesia reminds us, belongs to sensibility: it is the world of what appears, not of what is; every aesthetic experience disappoints.

Talks · 2 Jul 2018The Phenomenology of Spirit

1:31:27One makes an aesthetics when art is finished; art continues, but it has lost its function of representing the absolute.

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

1:38:33Illusion and truth of aesthetics: Hegel devotes several volumes to it in order to show its limit, bound to its power of truth.

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

5:23Hegel subsumes aesthetics into the political: the truth of aesthetics is the political.

Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 5/5

43:35By etymology, aesthetics refers to the sensible, to the world of appearance.
1:52:36Art is the sensible realization of the idea; Hegel judges the word aesthetics inappropriate and speaks of philosophy of the fine arts.

Series · 31 Dec 2014Q for Quality

7:29Human aesthetics goes beyond the formal or morphological criteria of beauty of the Greeks: it integrates the millennia-long work of history.

Series · 27 Dec 2014M for Music

7:21In Hegel, the arts move from spatial exteriority to interiority; music, pure temporality, crowns the edifice.