Historical present

Summary

Dominique Pagani makes the historical present the limit and the unsurpassable horizon of thought. He links the word horizon to horos, determination1. Taking up the idea that everyone is a child of their time, he holds that it is the epoch that expresses itself through us, all the more so when we are not aware of it2. Philosophy sums up its time in thought. He distinguishes the epoch from current events and from editorials: it is the hardest thing to think, and everyone lags behind it. To be in error is to remain in the past, or to head off toward a utopian future, falling short of what one's present allows3. He also compares this present to an asymptote that one can move closer to or further from. He shows that authors who believe they are speaking of origins, of Africa or of the Orient are in fact speaking of their own present: the robinsonades, as opposed to Marx, who studies capital, or the authors of the Kulturkampf45. At the root of this unconscious projection he places class determination6. Today, this present is for him the unchallenged domination of globalized capital since the fall of the Berlin Wall7.

1. 1#2.2 Between crisis and war: philosophising?15 Feb 2016 · 33:08
2. 2Hegel on the Beach 1/51 Feb 2016 · 2:31:31
3. 3Hegel on the Beach 2/51 Feb 2016 · 8:06
4. 4#9.16 How can sciences of history be real?4 Mar 2021 · 50:49
5. 5#12 Nietzsche (right up) against Wagner28 Jan 2021 · 1:46:40
6. 6A balance in nature?31 Mar 2021 · 37:42
7. 7#4.4B Objections to Dominique Pagani4 Feb 2018 · 0:32

Summary produced automatically from 16 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.