Caïn

Summary

Dominique Pagani discusses Cain from two angles. The first runs through Nerval and the Cainite tradition. Cain is the first one punished by the jealous god, who marks him out as wicked. He stands at the origin of an underground tradition to which Adoniram belongs. Nerval "plays his card"1. He quotes several times the line from Antéros about Cain's "implacable redness"23. The second angle is that of siblings. He places Cain and Abel among the enemy brothers of mythology, alongside Romulus and Remus, Eteocles and Polynices45. He draws a general observation from this: there is always a Cain for whom Abel is one too many. He compares this with wild dogs, among which the elder kills the younger in the womb6. Finally, he notes that for Kant, evil does not enter the world through Cain's fratricide but through the first lie7.

1. 1#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus1 Aug 2017 · 1:22:40
2. 2#8 Harnessed to confinitude17 May 2020 · 1:17:39
3. 3#9 Return to the logics of the subject30 May 2020 · 53:14
4. 4#9.15 How can sciences of history be real?18 Feb 2021 · 18:16
5. 5A springtime of the peoples?18 Mar 2023 · 1:19:48
6. 6“What threatens societies are the men and women who benefit from the exploitation of others”12 Mar 2019 · 41:22
7. 7#8 Harnessed to confinitude17 May 2020 · 1:25:55

Summary produced automatically from 8 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.