Sign

signe

Worked through in 24 videos · 35 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani defines the sign as that which gives presence to what is absent. The first of all signs is the tomb, sêma in Greek, and Rousseau's tomb emptied of his ashes is a pure sign1. He contrasts the sign with the signal. The signal, shared with animals, rests on a natural and causal sequence. The sign is arbitrary and conventional (fumée, smoke, Löwe) and frees us from the here and now2 3. The sign forms a triangle between me, the other and the thing, whereas the signal belongs to stimulus and reflex4. From this he draws an epistemological distinction: in human affairs and the sciences of history, the sense-sign pair takes over from the cause-effect pair of the natural sciences. In 2018 he specifies that it does not replace it; in 2019 he says that it must replace it. The sign does not come after the sense: it is immanent to it5. Finally, he points to a limit of the sign: after symbolic signification, one must go on to the concept.

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

Talks · 27 Mar 2023Praxis and psyche

25:24The arbitrariness of the sign separates signifier and signified; it distinguishes the human sign from the animal signal.

Cycle 11 · 14 Oct 2022Clouscard and the problem of Socrates

59:51The arbitrariness of the sign distinguishes the human world of the sign from the animal world of the signal, where the link is natural.
1:05:00Language is ternary: two subjects communicate an object to each other, it is not stimulus-response.

Cycle 11 · 28 Sept 2022And what about the subject in all this? Hölderlin, Mallarmé and Baudelaire

45:53The signal has a natural link between signifier and signified; the linguistic sign is arbitrary. In Hölderlin, signs link the Most High to men.

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

21:16To the natural sciences belong cause and effect, to human matters meaning and sign.
1:33:52Signs, even in small number, lend themselves to rigorous combinations that translate the whole diversity of sensory experience.

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

39:47Descartes speaks of composed signs to declare one's thoughts, not of signals like those of dolphins or bees.
1:15:35The signal naturally links signifier and signified; the sign is arbitrary, conventional, and forms a triangle between myself, the other, and the thing.

Cycle 9.2 · 12 May 2021#9.21 Science and/or philosophy of “artificial intelligence”

1:02:31Do not confuse the signal, shared with the animal, and the sign, a symbolic combinatorics transmitted from man to man.
1:19:58Machine learning can serve to move from measured signals to a formal equation, from signal to sign.

Cycle 9.2 · 28 Apr 2021#9.20 From signal to sign: Einstein

34:46Smoke, fumée, lion, Löwe, Diarra: the sign has no natural relation to the object; the arbitrariness of the sign characterizes human languages.
39:14An abyss separates the signal, a natural mechanism, from the sign, a convention between subjects.

Cycle 9.2 · 14 Apr 2021#9.19 Twilight of the Gods, or from repetition to liberation (part 2)

1:32:25The bird, placed on the head, gathers thoughts and conveys them to another: a universal messenger function.

Cycle 9.2 · 29 Jan 2021#9.13 How can sciences of history be real?

23:22What cause is to effect, sense is to sign; the sense-sign pair governs the sciences of history.
26:19The sign is not posterior to sense: it is immanent to it.

Cycle 9.2 · 14 Jan 2021#9.12 How can sciences of history be real?

42:31The sign is infinitely beyond the signal, a natural consecution; arbitrary, it cuts ties with immediate sensation and constitutes a liberation.

Series · 23 Mar 2020Introduction to the upcoming workshops

34:19Rousseau's tomb, emptied of its ashes, is a tomb that is a pure sign.
37:47The first of signs is the tomb: a sign gives a presence to what is not there.

Cycle 6 · 3 Dec 2019#6.2 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

30:02The signal is natural and causal; the sign is conventional and frees us from the here and now.

Series · 10 Sept 2019M. Clouscard's reply to C. Morilhat (part 2)

40:46The great authors serve Clouscard as major signifiers, as signposts of the phenomenology of the bourgeoisie.

Series · 23 Aug 2019M. Clouscard's reply to C. Morilhat (1987)

50:39Representation: making present what is not there (the tomb). The signal is naturally linked to what it signals; the sign is arbitrary and conventional.

Cycle 5.2 · 30 Jun 2019#5.8 Nature or landscape?

22:53The first of signs is the tomb: something material that makes one think of someone who is no longer there.
1:51:08In the human sciences, the sense-sign couple must replace the cause-effect couple of the hard sciences.

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

1:28:20Reflection refers to the mechanical relation of cause and effect; pointing to a sign refers to the relation of sign to meaning: the back of the cave points toward something else.

Cycle 5.2 · 4 Feb 2019#5.4 Nature or landscape?

36:33The sign is characterized by the total independence of signifier and signified, whereas the signal rests on a natural consecution.

Cycle 5.1 · 13 Jan 2019#5.3 bis Questions (Facebook Live)

48:21Just as the end is recognized in the form, the sign gives meaning an existence and a material substrate; the sign-meaning pair defines the field of the human sciences.

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

29:29Representation gives presence to what is absent; this is the definition of the sign, whose first instance is the tomb.
33:48In the human domain, the sense-sign pair must take over from the cause-effect pair, without replacing it.

Cycle 4 · 15 Mar 2018#4.6 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:23:32Rousseau's tomb, without ashes, is a pure sign, sema; the body is the first tomb, according to Plato.
1:41:22The sign has a limit: after symbolic signification one must move to the concept.

Cycle 2 · 18 Feb 2016#2.3 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

7:04The Delphic oracle neither says nor conceals, but signifies: this is the essence of all language, distinct from pure mathematical saying.

Series · 29 Jan 2016What is to be done? 1/3

9:16Every sign gives a presence to what is absent; the tomb, sêma, is the first of signs.

Cycle 1 · 10 Dec 2015#1.4 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

25:54Language brings into presence what is not there; a sign forgotten in what it signifies is no more than a corpse (sema-soma).
1:32:52The sign is conventional and makes a sign to someone; the signal is natural and causal.

Series · 23 Dec 2014I for Island

4:17Sema means in Greek both tomb and sign: Rousseau's empty tomb signifies the philosopher's disappearance without his remains.