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Greek tragedy

13 videos, newest first.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches Greek tragedy first through Sophocles' Antigone, read with Hegel. Hegel calls it the "supreme ethical opposition" and, as an exception, grants it a value for all times1. Against the image of an individualist Antigone, he argues that two communities clash in it: the family, bound by blood, and the city. For him, tragedy is the collision of two one-sided principles in which Antigone and Creon each commit a fault. It belongs to an objective morality, and there is no Christian tragedy2. He connects it to the division between public and private, then, from 2021 on, to the conflict between the State and civil society3. He sets Hölderlin's Remarks, for which the tragic form is political and republican, against the Heideggerian reading. He also reads the tragic fault as hubris, that is, excess. He gives as examples Pentheus in The Bacchae and Oedipus, who wants to know too much and investigates himself until his death at Colonus, which no one but Theseus sees45. Finally, he presents tragedy as musiké, the unity of music, gesture, speech and myth that Nietzsche and Wagner were seeking6.

  1. 110#5 La figure d'Antigone, telle qu'en elle-même enfin...24 Nov 2021
  2. 2#11 • Retour aux logiques du sujet21 Jun 2020
  3. 310#4 De Lascaux aux musiques modernes, la permanence de l'enjeu politique dans l'esthétique3 Nov 2021
  4. 4#10 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...24 Dec 2020
  5. 5Le Mal ou la "déconnaissance" de soi2 Dec 2024
  6. 6NIETZSCHE - PAS DE PITIÉ POUR WAGNER • Pagani Parle Musique27 Jul 2022

Introduction produced automatically from the 13 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.

The 13 videos

Readings on the spot

OUR FORMER SAVAGERY? - An impromptu reading of an Illumination by Arthur Rimbaud

13 Jun 2025

What does the question "Est-ce ancienne sauvagerie qu'on pardonne ?" mean in Rimbaud's "Mouvement," posed before a young couple in the midst of a hymn to industrial modernity?

Season 13

Evil, or the "unknowing" of the self

2 Dec 2024

Why can the essence of evil be defined as lying, that is, as a privation of self-knowledge?

PaduTeam

PHILOSOPHY with PAGANI: A for ANTIGONE

20 Mar 2023

Is Antigone the figure of the individual who opposes the state?

Pagani Parle Musique

NIETZSCHE - NO PITY FOR WAGNER • Pagani Parle Musique

27 Jul 2022

Why does Nietzsche, after condemning Parsifal as a Christian betrayal of the Greek ideal, recognize in its music the truth he had refused?

Season 10

#9 PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION: Art, seen from here or from the other side?

10 Feb 2022

How does art pass, in Hegel's aesthetics, from the presence of the sacred to representation, and what relation does this movement of interiorization bear to the political?

Season 10

10#5 The figure of Antigone, such as into herself at last...

24 Nov 2021

Why does Hegel make Antigone's tragedy the "supreme ethical opposition," to the point of granting it a value that escapes its own era?

Season 10

10#4 From Lascaux to modern music, the permanence of the political stakes in aesthetics

3 Nov 2021

Why does aesthetics remain tied to a political stake in Hegel, and why does the tragedy of Antigone still hold for the modern world?

Season 10

10#1 The eternal irony of the community

22 Sept 2021

What does Hegel's formula "this femininity, eternal irony of the community" mean, and why is the tension between family and city it designates still relevant today?

Season 9.2

9 #18 Twilight of the Gods, or from repetition to liberation

3 Apr 2021

How does Wagner's Twilight of the Gods move from the circular time of fate, in which everything repeats, to the freedom of the world of men?

Season 9.1

#10 Benefits and harms of amnesia...

24 Dec 2020

Should anamnesis be pushed as far as our oldest vulnerability, or should it be forgotten in order to open onto a genuine future?

Season 8

#11 • Return to the logics of the subject

21 Jun 2020

How does Hegel's aesthetics, centered on the figure of Antigone and on classical art, allow us to think tragedy, finitude, and the avant-gardes of modernity?

Hegel & Marx on the Beach

Hegel on the Beach 2/5

1 Feb 2016

In what way does Hegel, and first of all the Phenomenology of Spirit, remain relevant against a contemporary thought that presents itself as anti-Hegelian?

A Philosophical Alphabet

A for Antigone

15 Dec 2014

Is Antigone the figure of the individual who opposes the state?

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