Œdipe

Summary

Dominique Pagani returns above all to Oedipus as the investigator who is himself the culprit. He sees in him an excess of knowledge, a hubris of "wanting to know too much"1, and an unbearable truth that it would have been better not to know2. If Oedipus tears out his eyes, it is because they sought the culprit outside: he did not turn his gaze back on himself according to the "Know thyself"3. He also treats this as a condemnation of empiricism and, later, as a figure of the subject opposed to itself and of self-"misknowledge"4. He reads the answer to the Sphinx, "man", with Hegel as the sign of Greek humanism and of the end of Eastern antiquity5. He recalls the foundling with pierced feet, whom he compares to Moses and Siegfried. Finally, he mentions the wandering between cities, in which the king becomes a stranger and a migrant, until his death at Colonus.

1. 1#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…13 Nov 2020 · 1:26:51
2. 2#4 Harnessed to confinitude11 Apr 2020 · 49:53
3. 3#9.18 Twilight of the Gods, or from repetition to liberation3 Apr 2021 · 24:37
4. 4Evil, or the “unknowing” of the self2 Dec 2024 · 49:17
5. 5Pagani without detours21 Sept 2019 · 36:22

Summary produced automatically from 58 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.