Christophe Colomb

Summary

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 sound. 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 charted4. Only one remark concerns history itself: the Vikings reached America long before him5. For him, then, the figure of Columbus serves mainly to describe what is inaugural in a way of thinking.

1. 1Radio Galère: Michel Clouscard (2)7 Jul 2012 · 42:50
2. 2#2.6 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017 · 1:44:24
3. 3Flagrante Delights27 May 2025 · 1:16:34
4. 4#9.11 How can sciences of history be real?7 Jan 2021 · 20:55
5. 5The religion of money29 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.