Man

homme

Worked through in 9 videos · 13 passages.

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Summary

From 2014 to 2024, Dominique Pagani repeats that being born a man is not enough to be one: one must become one, and the state of being a man is rarer than the rank of king1. Neither nature nor God makes man; man makes himself, over a long time2. Born of human parents, each person is a man in potentiality, not in actuality. Man is therefore not an origin but a process, as the example of feral children shows3. He cannot be defined by qualities or by an environment, unlike the badger. Finite in space and in time, he is "zero", the only animal aware of its finitude4. An unfinished animal born before term, he becomes viable only through the relation to others. Pagani calls him a historical rather than a cultural animal. As the existing concept, man produces his world: the animal subsists, while man exists by projecting himself through his production5. In 2024, he describes man as the unfinished movement from animality toward a humanist ideal, with no essence prior to the citizen6.

Summary produced automatically from 14 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 12 · 24 Jun 2024For a “fresh and joyful” apocalypse?

2:03:10There is no human essence prior to the citizen: man is the unfinished movement leading from animality toward a humanist ideal.

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

1:13:31Man is the existing concept: he produces the world in which he lives, which is not a found world.
1:41:01The state of man is not a given nature: the animal subsists, man ends up existing by projecting himself through his production.

Series · 5 Aug 2023Aragon, “The Paris Peasant Sings”

18:04Man is a historical animal rather than a cultural one, because every culture is inscribed within a history.

Talks · 27 Mar 2023Praxis and psyche

12:16It is not enough to be born to be human: one must assimilate an entire culture.
49:05Man is the movement that goes from the animal to the human ideal; a permanent process of hominization.

Series · 19 Jul 2021Being born human is not enough to be human

18:27It is not enough to be born a man to be a man: feral children could never become men.
20:48Born of human parents, I am man in potentiality, not in act: man is not an origin but a process.

Cycle 7 · 30 Mar 2020#2 Harnessed to confinitude

31:02An unfinished animal, born before term, he becomes viable only through relation to the other; imperfect, he is a specialist in generalities.

Series · 9 Jan 2015Z for Zero

3:27Man cannot be defined by qualities; unlike the badger, he is not determined by his environment or biotope.
6:14Finite through his body in space and through death in time, man is zero; he is the only animal to become conscious of his finitude.

Series · 22 Dec 2014H for Hegel

7:09It is neither nature nor God that makes man, it is man who makes man; it takes a great deal of time to become man.

Series · 19 Dec 2014E for Enfance (Childhood)

8:51One is not born a man, one must become one; few men know how to fill the status of man, higher than the rank of king.