Christophe Colomb

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani brings up Christopher Columbus as a point of comparison rather than for his own sake. He uses him as the image of someone who ventures onto unknown seas, and he applies this image to thinkers who open up a field not yet explored: Michel Clouscard1, Freud2, and also Descartes, whose venture of the cogito he compares with Columbus's voyage3. He extends the metaphor to music, with the image of Beethoven advancing across an ocean of sound4. He also applies it to the approach of his own sessions: asking how sciences of history can be real means setting out, like Columbus's crew, on a sea that no one has yet charted5. Only one remark concerns history itself: the Vikings reached America long before him6. For him, then, the figure of Columbus serves mainly to describe what is inaugural in a way of thinking.

1. 1Radio Galère - Michel Clouscard - 27 Jul 2012 · 42:50
2. 2#2.6 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?1 Aug 2017 · 1:44:24
3. 3Flagrandélices27 May 2025 · 1:16:34
4. 4Leibniz1 Aug 2017 · 1:06:20
5. 59 #11 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?7 Jan 2021 · 20:55
6. 6La religion de l'Argent29 Sept 2019 · 1:13:21

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.