Bonaventura

Summary

Dominique Pagani mentions Bonaventura for a single book, the Night Watches (Les Veilles). He presents it as the journal of a night watchman published in 1802 and as one of the most extreme texts of German Romanticism1. He stresses that the author is anonymous: a contemporary of Hegel whose identity is still unknown. He reports that Schelling's name has been put forward2, and he himself suggests that the author could be Hegel, since the watchman almost states negativity3. He takes one thesis from the text: everything is nothing, and death is immanent in every instant. He sees in it a materialism more radical and more distressing than that of the Enlightenment4. He also highlights the image of a nothingness that swallows itself up and would show itself if life were interrupted5. Finally, he links the work to the question of the subject, since it puts forward the terrifying hypothesis that there is no someone6. He cites it in sessions devoted to Nerval, Schumann, Hölderlin and contradictory identity.

1. 1#6.6 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism29 Mar 2020 · 1:06:25
2. 2A springtime of the peoples?18 Mar 2023 · 45:55
3. 3#4.8 Angélique (by Nerval)16 May 2018 · 1:40:10
4. 4Hölderlin, poetry and politics19 Mar 2022 · 12:24
5. 5“I is another”, or contradictory identity12 Dec 2023 · 1:53:54
6. 6From Plato to Proust6 Jul 2026 · 41:20

Summary produced automatically from 9 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.