Measurement

Summary

Dominique Pagani sees measure, the Greek metron, as the word that sums up Greece. As he understands it, it is not a comfortable middle ground. It is a perilous balance, that of a tightrope walker between two abysses, which must guard against hubris at every moment1. He illustrates it through architecture. The lintel or tympanum limits the upward thrust of the columns, whereas bell tower and minaret reach toward the infinite. At Cape Sounion, the right angle of the temple turns its back on the three infinities, and there the sacred becomes measure2. He also contrasts peras, what is determinate, with apeiron, the boundless infinite that later becomes Christian infinitization3. As regards knowledge, he repeats that "there is no science except of the measurable." For him, the unit of measurement is a convention that man imposes by decree on a reality not prepared for it4. In music, he considers the bar line mechanical: it is an a priori that divides time abstractly5.

1. 1#11 Return to the logics of the subject21 Jun 2020 · 1:09:17
2. 2Roots or migration? From analytical reverie to current events, from Hölderlin to the war17 Feb 2023 · 41:12
3. 3#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus1 Aug 2017 · 1:14:40
4. 4#5.3 bis Questions (Facebook Live)13 Jan 2019 · 24:15
5. 5#4 Sound ghettos3 Dec 2020 · 11:36

Summary produced automatically from 35 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.