Death

mort

Worked through in 17 videos · 29 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches death mainly through Hegel. He sees it as the "absolute master", the only concept that escapes dialectic and the relativity of the relation between master and slave1 2. Before it, the slave feels anguish for the whole of his essence3. He specifies that what founds the human is not death itself but awareness of finitude, which marks the passage from zoology to anthropology4. Man is the animal that knows it will die, and this knowledge, which the gods lack, gives value to what is precarious5. This awareness strips the natural given of its interest. Social praxis then produces another world to overcome this loss6 7. He also links death to funeral rites, which raise the singular to the universal, to the life of spirit, which "maintains itself" in death, to Pascal, to Freud, and to music, which opens side doors in the corridor leading to death.

Summary produced automatically from 29 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Series · 3 Aug 2022Schubert: the divine captives

12:00In an author who did not believe in eternal life, music wins a victory: with it, death becomes less bitter, less inglorious, less probable.

Series · 23 May 2022Introduction to the podcast

1:28Everyday life is a straight, short corridor leading each of us directly to death; music opens side doors in it.

Cycle 10 · 24 Nov 2021#10.5 The figure of Antigone, such as into herself at last…

1:03:27Death is the absolute master, without the relativity that binds master to slave.
1:10:25The dead person is the singular raised to the universal. Funeral rites turn death into an operation and not a mere fact of nature.

Cycle 10 · 3 Nov 2021#10.4 From Lascaux to modern music, the permanence of the political stakes in aesthetics

1:30:19The government makes private individuals feel their master, death, a reminder of what they are together for.

Cycle 9.1 · 13 Nov 2020#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…

1:15:43Mortals know they will die; this knowledge, which the gods lack, gives value to all precarious things.

Cycle 8 · 23 Jul 2020#15 Return to the logics of the subject

24:42For Hegel, death is the absolute master, a moment that slips within the dialectic, and not a master-slave relation of the slave.

Cycle 7 · 17 May 2020#8 Harnessed to confinitude

1:36:50To analyze is metaphorically to kill totality; the life of spirit bears death and maintains itself within it, against beauty without strength.

Series · 12 Mar 2019Pablo Servigne

1:42:11As soon as it has consciousness, the human species has death: there is distress, even in prosperity.
1:47:37Humanity begins with a relation to the other mediated by the shared consciousness of death, a qualitative and not a quantitative threshold.
1:54:27Nothing is more inhuman than condemning the other to have no defense against death.

Talks · 26 Feb 2019La Fausse Note, a film by Aliocha

10:06Freud provides a rigorous mediation between repetition and death.
11:58This music recalls what is terrifying in the repetition of death: it evacuates all living, spiritual and historical content.

Cycle 5.1 · 6 Dec 2018#5.2 bis Questions (Facebook Live)

1:02:44Consciousness of finitude makes one lose interest in the natural given and invests action in an end other than need.
1:04:47Praxis produces another world to overcome the loss of taste for life engendered by the thought of death.

Cycle 5.1 · 6 Dec 2018#5.2 ter Questions, following workshop #5.2 (Facebook Live)

51:09Separating understanding bears death; the life of the spirit does not shrink from death but maintains itself in it.
1:11:09What is foundational is not death but the awareness of finitude, which marks the passage from zoology to anthropology.

Cycle 5.1 · 21 Nov 2018#5.2 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought

43:28Death is 'the immediate being-there of nature': the only moment of immediate relation to nature.
1:11:53Mortals have over the gods the knowledge of death, which founds an anthropology.
1:23:24Aware of his death, man sees every finite satisfaction lose its value; he must create another world.

Talks · 2 Jul 2018Tribute to Domenico Losurdo

44:20The slave experiences anguish for the whole of his essence before death, the absolute master who cannot be relativized: an absolute fluidification of all subsistence.
46:21Man is this night, this empty nothingness; social praxis shapes a world to overcome this anguish.

Cycle 4 · 12 Nov 2017#4.2 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:15:18Autumn is the season of death; man is the animal who knows he will die; to leave is to die a little.
1:20:38The West is the declining fire: not power, but a relation to the world.

Cycle 2 · 15 Feb 2016#2.2 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

1:03:18Mortals reach the abyss before the gods: finitude makes life fragile and gives it its value.
1:30:08It takes the modern world for the human condition to appear: an animal that knows it will die.

Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 4/5

1:09:52Only the risking of life proves that one is above natural determinations and raises certainty to truth.
1:17:20Death is the absolute master, the only concept that cannot be dialecticized.

Series · 20 Dec 2014F for Farniente

4:03The anguish of death is what desire flees, according to Pascal.