Nature and culture

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches the relation between nature and culture starting from Kant: nature and freedom legislate over one and the same territory, yet an abyss separates them. He takes the example of the incest prohibition, a law that owes nothing to nature1. In his view, there is no spatial cursor between nature and humanity. The passage is temporal and made of thresholds: language, fire and tools. It is still under way, since eating or sexuality remain natural while their modalities no longer are. He reads this with Rousseau and with Balzac, for whom "natural law and the code are enemies"2. He takes up Clouscard's formula "the code precedes being": man is a historical animal, heredity must be distinguished from heritage, and feral children show that one becomes human only through recognition3. He also takes up the example of the meal, where man begins with the superfluous, and in music he points to the decoupling of the natural grid from the cultural code4. He distinguishes male and female, given by nature, from man and woman, roles assigned by history5. Finally, he sees in Rousseau's reverie a possible synthesis of the two6.

1. 1#12 • Retour aux logiques du sujet2 Jul 2020
2. 2#13 • Retour aux logiques du sujet9 Jul 2020
3. 3IL NE SUFFIT PAS DE NAÎTRE HOMME, POUR ÊTRE HOMME • Q&A Philosophique • Dominique Pagani19 Jul 2021
4. 4Musicosophie 2. De Lévi-Strauss à Nerval à propos de la musique3 Dec 2020
5. 5Le féminisme des privilégiés, censure puritaine de la féminité - Molière, Clouscard, Wagner6 Feb 2022
6. 6R comme Rêverie1 Jan 2015

Introduction produced automatically from the 6 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.