English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Aesthetics and politics: recalling the framework and program 0:30 Good evening everyone, welcome to this latest avatar of our pre-lockdown harnessings. We're at this point within the framework, well, within the framework of what we've called the relation of aesthetics to politics.
1:00 Which, let's not forget, is a subchapter of the logic of the subject facing the reconstitution of Nazism. It's not that we're taking great detours to get there for no reason. Nazism didn't fall from the sky, nor did it rise up from hell in 24 hours. That's why we have to go quite far back. But so, as for this subsection, the relation of aesthetics to politics, in particular within the systematics of Hegel, and echoing the modest work, modest in number of pages at any rate, I remind you that the title is "Femininity and Community in Hegel".
2:01 We spoke about Antigone last time, "Femininity and Community in Hegel"; we're at our third session of this subchapter on aesthetics and politics. And so, as announced, we've kept the same texts for the good reason that I left half of them aside last time, given how much time I spent answering questions of great interest. And I again thank both Alexandra and Hugo for developing questions as thorough and pointed as those that occupied our last session.
2:44 It goes without saying that the questions you can ask about the last session — I'm not closing them off; you can reopen the debate at any time, of course. But it so happens, as I told you, that I had left half of the texts planned for last time aside. And in particular there are four that I'm going to address today, two properly philosophical and two poetic.
3:14 For now, it's mainly literary and poetic texts that have prevailed to illustrate our discussion of the relation of aesthetics to politics. I remind you that this privilege I give within aesthetics to literary things over visual or musical things, at the level of examples I mean, is for material reasons. I would love to project videos for you showing a succession, how Egyptian statuary becomes Greek statuary, how that in turn gives rise to the Gothic cathedral — I'm going very quickly.
3:52 And so on. But well, I mean, for lack of Goscinny, if I may say so, for lack of having our usual venue, when we projected a series of paintings in our session on nature or landscape — but we no longer have that equipment until the Goscinny center reopens, not before the fall term, since it's usually closed over the summer, and I don't see it reopening now. There you go.
4:22 So, in the meantime, I'll say this too for Tarek, who was kind enough to send me a very nice message saying it's a shame the center is closed and so there's no more workshop until the fall term. Yes, but there are the live sessions, as he's probably aware, though since he doesn't mention them, I'm not sure. So, there we go, I greet him in passing. I wish him an excellent well-deserved vacation, since he's one of those in the health professions.
4:54 and so, I tell him, at a weekly pace, we can meet practically every week, until the fall term, but via screen. So there. So, I told you two literary texts, two philosophical ones. I'll begin and end with the literary ones, not to frame philosophy within poetry, but because the first text is a text by Hugo, taken from Les Misérables, which I should have developed as early as the first of these three sessions devoted to the relation of aesthetics to politics.
5:53 And so, it's the text most overdue relative to what we had planned. So I'll give it priority. Afterward I'll move on to the properly philosophical texts. We haven't yet addressed aesthetics in the strictly philosophical sense, as the part of philosophy that reflects on beauty and the works of art that follow from it. And so I move straight on to the Hugo text to make up for this delay. After that I'll take up the two philosophical texts, one by Kant, one by Hegel, and I'll finish with a poem, "In beauty, all desire loses courage, elucidation",
6:35 to quote a great reader of Hölderlin, taken from the Hymns in Draft by Hölderlin. That's how they're grouped in the Pléiade volume — "Hymns" plural, in draft. And this poem is called "German Song." There, I'll come back to it later, so I'm just indicating it in passing. Let's come to Hugo. As I told you, it's a text taken from Les Misérables and one that is so clear — which doesn't mean it's superficial or simplistic, far from it.
7:10 But why am I bringing it out, in addition to the Hugo poem I quoted at the start of this series of talks on the relation of aesthetics to politics — it was the poem Stella, if you recall, "I fell asleep at night near the shore"? It's because some people let me know, either by phone or through comments, that it was a bit unfair to Hugo for me to compare an accomplished poem, Baudelaire's "Harmonie du soir," to a Hugo poem which I noted is a marvel in the first half but then becomes a bit bombastic with its flaws, which is what makes Rimbaud say that the poem Stella gives roughly the measure of Hugo's vision.
7:57 Everyone acknowledges the incomparable aspects we owe to Hugo, and at the same time his flaws, if one dares say so. So there, I made a point, to make up for it, of taking a text once again taken from Les Misérables. You'll find it — type in "the wave and the shadow" [L'onde et l'ombre] and you'll land right on it on Wikisource, in case you get lost. If you want to find it again, it's not complicated.
8:27 I remind you, before reading it — I want to comment on it less, we mustn't fall too far behind because it's extremely clear, it doesn't need much explanatory exegesis. But I remind you anyway that Rimbaud, who is extremely harsh with the insolence of adolescence, when he writes that famous text I often quote, very well known, that letter to his literature teacher — they used to say rhetoric teacher, it was a literature teacher at the time — where he gives him a summary of the whole history of poetry from the Greeks up to himself, Rimbaud — "here is a course in modern literature," you see, with a reversal of roles, it's the kid giving a literature course to his teacher, and it's remarkable besides — he is thus quite harsh with everyone, even with Baudelaire, of whom he nevertheless says he is the first of poets, king of seers, a true god, and as for Hugo, he says, well, Stella gives roughly the measure of Hugo's vision, so there's this magnificent first part, pure poetry, I won't go back over it,
9:38 and then too much Belmontet, too much Jehovah, too many columns, in short, too much bombast, old cracked enormities — that's Rimbaud speaking — bloated passages that no longer hold up, and then all of a sudden he says, "I have Les Misérables at hand, a real poem" — and there, it's quite a tribute for Rimbaud to say "a real poem," he grants Hugo that Les Misérables is a true poem, but he says it of his prose work, which is extraordinary. Well, we know that since Rousseau, prose can attain poetry, there you go, since the Reveries of the Solitary Walker, since the New Héloïse and the Confessions, and passing of course through Baudelaire's great initiative, the little prose poems, the Spleen de Paris, where Baudelaire evokes — who has not dreamed of a supple, flowing prose, of the sinuous windings of the soul, etc.
Hugo, "The Wave and the Shadow" (Les Misérables) 10:28 So, let me hurry to close this preamble to tell you that in approaching a prose text, I remain within poetry with Rimbaud's blessing. Here is the text without further ado, then, taken from Les Misérables: "A man overboard! No matter, the ship does not stop. The wind is blowing; that dark ship has a course it is forced to continue; it passes on."
10:58 The man disappears, then reappears, he sinks and comes back to the surface, he calls out, he stretches out his arms, no one hears him. The ship, shuddering under the storm, is wholly absorbed in its own maneuvering; the sailors and passengers no longer even see the submerged man; his wretched head is but a dot in the enormity of the waves. He casts desperate cries into the depths. What a specter is that sail moving away! He watches it, watches it frantically; it recedes, it grows pale, it dwindles.
11:31 He was there just now, he was part of the crew, he came and went on the deck with the others, he had his share of breath, of sunlight. He was a living being. Now, what has happened then? He slipped, he fell, it is over. I'll pause the reading of the text, I won't comment on it. I'm holding back, I'm telling you, the last two lines to avoid spoiling the suspense, because some of you might be capable of believing he's doing a naively realistic and descriptive seascape.
12:02 The last three lines of this text are these: "the sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal system casts its damned. The sea is immense wretchedness." So it's a vast metaphor that Hugo develops in speaking of drowning in the ocean. It's whoever falls into unemployment, as we'd say today, and everything gives way beneath his feet. So I'll take up again — it was necessary to make this clear — I'll take up the text where I left it.
12:38 What has happened then? He slipped, he fell, it is over. He is in the monstrous water. He has beneath his feet nothing now but flight and collapse. But what a text! Beneath one's feet, one usually has solid ground, well, what one has beneath one's feet is what bears one up. He has beneath his feet nothing now but flight and collapse. Notice how, with abstract and general notions — flight and collapse — Hugo is as concrete as can be. The waves, torn and shredded by the wind, surround him — even the submerged man is no longer visible.
13:10 His wretched head is but a dot in the enormity of the waves. Each time he sinks he glimpses precipices full of night, of frightful unknown vegetation. They seize him, tie his feet, drag him down; he feels himself becoming an abyss, he becomes part of the foam; the waves toss him from one to another, he drinks bitterness; the slack ocean strives to drown him; the enormity plays with his agony; it seems that all this water is made of hatred.
13:43 He struggles nonetheless, he tries to defend himself, he tries to hold himself up, he makes an effort. You know, people say the unemployed do nothing, they just cash their benefits, they're loafers, parasites. And yet, what a regression compared to what Hugo says in the second half of the 19th century. He tries to defend himself, he tries to hold himself up, he makes an effort, he swims — that poor strength, exhausted at once, fighting the inexhaustible. Where then is the ship?
14:13 Over there, barely visible, in the pale darkness of the horizon — all those who have long been unemployed have known this phenomenon of desocialization, finding themselves far from everything. The gusts blow all the foam over him, crush him; he lifts his eyes and sees only the lividness of the clouds. He witnesses, in his agony, the immense madness of the sea. He is tortured by this madness, he hears sounds foreign to man. I'll skip a few passages.
14:44 Night falls; he has been swimming for hours now, his strength is at an end; that ship, that distant thing where there were men, has vanished. He is alone in the formidable twilight abyss. He sinks, he stiffens, he writhes, he feels beneath him monstrous waves of the invisible. He calls out, there is no longer any man. Where is God? Remember that last time I quoted a text by Hölderlin, where Hölderlin says that divinity would never be present among us mortals if the community did not know how to sing it with one heart.
15:16 If there is no longer any man, then there is no longer any God either. He calls out, there is no longer any man. Where is God? He calls for someone, someone! He is surrounded by plenty of something, but there is no longer any someone — for those who still haven't understood the difference. He keeps calling — I'm alluding, we're being positivist here — he keeps calling, nothing on the horizon, nothing in the sky. He implores the expanse, the wave, the seaweed, the reef; it is deaf. He begs the storm; the storm, imperturbable, obeys only the infinite.
15:47 Around him, darkness, mist. I'll pause a moment to quote this line from Bachelard which fits in here strikingly: "I do not dwell in the infinite, because in the infinite one is not at home." The storm, imperturbable, obeys only the infinite. Around him, darkness, mist, solitude, the raging and unconscious tumult, the endless folding of the fierce waters; within him, horror and fatigue. His hands clench and close and grasp at nothingness.
16:18 Wind, cloud, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars. Useless stars — what an insult to nature, isn't it? What was it Kant said — as long as she, the moral law within me and the starry heavens above me, all is well, isn't it? I say this because, given the results of the recent municipal elections, it's becoming sacrilegious to speak of nature like that, isn't it? Useless stars. Well, this echoes an extraordinary passage from one of the most beautiful poems of all time, "In lovely blue" by Hölderlin, which I'll comment on another time, in which he says: "But night itself, with all its stars, is no purer than man, if I may say so."
17:08 So, what is to be done? The despairing man gives up, whoever is there decides to die. He lets himself go, he lets himself drift, he lets go, and there he is rolling forever into the mournful depths of engulfment. And the fall of a moment ago — oh, implacable march of human societies, losses of men and souls along the way, ocean into which falls everything that the law lets fall, sinister disappearance of rescue, oh moral death — the sea, the ocean's end, is the inexorable social night into which the penal system casts its damned. The sea is immense wretchedness. The soul adrift in that gulf — can it become a corpse that something will resurrect?
17:54 There you have it, taken from Les Misérables, written in 1862. I didn't want to delay this extraordinary text any longer; Rimbaud is quite right — "I have Les Misérables at hand, a real poem" of several volumes. So I now come back — no, I move on now — to the properly philosophical approach to our theme of the relation of aesthetics to politics. We've gathered enough material; we set it before us and can now reflect on it — that's where we move into philosophy, isn't it — and so return to the side of the subject first, since we're going to talk about aesthetics. I remind you that aesthetics is not art, I said this rather fleetingly, so here I insist: aesthetics — I'm going to speak in place of the painter or the musician, as Van Gogh very honestly puts it,
Aesthetics, a full part of philosophy 19:04 "we can only make our paintings speak" — in this case us painters, for example, works of art — so I am not here, I'm not talking about restoring the message of art but about developing the philosophy of art. But to what extent can aesthetics become a part of philosophy? That's the question we'll work on today, in the same way that — I don't know — epistemology is the reflection on the sciences, morality the reflection on action, the principles governing our actions, metaphysics the search for first causes and final causes, to go very quickly. Well, in what sense is aesthetics not merely an add-on but a full-fledged part of the philosophical corpus? Well, first, it's a recent requirement; the word aesthetics itself is recent, let alone the discipline. The first time
20:14 that a treatise called "Aesthetica" in Latin appeared — what did I say, 1835? — no, 1735, in the 18th century, we're still quite far from Rousseau's final works, we're closer to the era of Montesquieu and Voltaire than to Rousseau's — you see, from the pen of the one who — not to overstate it, he didn't quite make it commonplace, but he was the one who imposed this term — namely Mr. Baumgarten. "Baum" means tree in German, B-A-U-M, Baum, and "Garten," like garden in English, means garden — orchard, actually. Baumgarten. So Baumgarten is the first to introduce, to make the word appear — but not yet does he publish a work titled "Aesthetica"; for that we'll have to wait beyond 1735, to 1750, when he publishes
21:24 his famous Aesthetica, which I was telling you about. But wait — in France we'll have to wait until 1835 to see the term "esthétique" appear in the dictionary of the Académie française of the French language, so a century later, and wait until 1845 for the term "esthétique" to appear in the philosophical dictionary compiled by Mr. Bérard — well, well, well, well, well, what a coincidence — the very one who had just translated Hegel's Aesthetics into French for the first time, isn't it, Charles Magloire Bénard, I said Bérard, it's Bénard, like a pair of trousers in slang if you prefer, Charles Bénard, who is known in Hegel studies for having been the first to introduce a French translation of Hegel's Aesthetics based on the lectures
22:34 of Hotho, at the time, in 1845 only — when I tell you it's recent. But we still haven't answered my question, we've only bracketed it chronologically: what justifies why aesthetics today, which seems to go without saying in hindsight, is an integral part of the philosophical corpus? The answer is found in the Kant text — well, in the series of Kant texts taken from the Critique of Judgment, the Critique of the Faculty of Judging, depending on the translation — I'll read it to you, it's very short, isn't it, taken from Volume 1, in the fourth part of the introduction — the introduction being divided into parts by Roman numerals — the fourth part of the introduction to the Critique of Judgment. I remind you this is Kant's great testament, his third critique, after the Critique of Pure Reason, which deals with knowledge, after the Critique of Practical Reason, which deals with action —
23:44 it's his whole life's work then, and an attempt at synthesis, as we'll see — I won't develop that here for now — which is this Critique of Judgment. The text, the excerpt I choose: judgment in general — not only aesthetic or moral or judicial judgment — judgment in general is the faculty of conceiving the particular as contained within the universal. I'll go on, I'll comment afterward — if the universal (in Kant's parenthesis, the rule, the principle, the law) is given, the judgment that subsumes, that ranks, broadly speaking, that fits the particular under it, is determinant — I'll skip the parenthesis — the word is underlined, determinant — but if only the particular is given and the judgment must find the universal, it is merely reflective. Kant, the champion of distinctions — this is yet another distinction Kant provides us, and how precious they are,
Analytic and synthetic judgments, moral imperatives 24:54 every single time. The whole Critique of Pure Reason — I'm going back quite far in his body of work — the first critique starts right from its introduction with the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. I won't stop myself — it's not our subject today — very quickly, I'll give an example: to say that dogs are mammals is an analytic judgment because "mammal" is already contained in the concept of "dog"; a dog is a mammal. On the other hand, there are dogs that are yellow or white or black, whatever — that's a synthetic judgment, because the notion of black or yellow is not enclosed a priori in the notion of dog — the proof being that there can be a dog that is white. There you go, it's very simple, and you see where this leads us — well, let me carry on a bit further because these are precious tools; you'll see just how much I want you to appreciate the work accomplished by the one Nietzsche called, both ironically and affectionately, the great Chinaman of Königsberg — he spent nearly his whole life in one city,
26:04 which is practically in Russia now, Königsberg, which is in Russia now — you say to me, so, Chinaman, because it's as intricate and meticulous as Chinese cuisine when it comes down to it. So, let's be serious: the analytic judgment — dogs are mammals, triangles are polygons, you see; when this triangle is a right triangle, that's synthetic, because "right-angled" is not contained a priori in the notion of triangle — afterward there can be any kind of triangle, or an equilateral triangle, you see. Well, the good thing about the analytic judgment is that it is always certain — it is always certain that triangles are polygons, that dogs are mammals — but you can guess its flaw: it doesn't teach us much, agreed? And analysis, you know what that is — when you analyze an engine, you find everything that was already in the engine, there's no new thing that's going to appear; when you analyze water, you analyze what was in the water, hydrogen and oxygen, you won't find lemon juice — otherwise the water wasn't pure, you see. Now, extending one's knowledge
27:14 means going beyond analysis, because if it's only to recall what we already know — which is what the analytic judgment does, it reminds us of what we already knew, that triangles are polygons — well, if we want to extend our knowledge, we need to make synthetic judgments. But the trouble with the synthetic judgment is that, while it extends our knowledge, it's more fruitful, it's not sterile like the analytic one, on the other hand it's not as certain. How do I know that a dog can be white? Well, look, just look — I have one that's white. Ah, yes, but there we have to appeal to experience, we're no longer within pure reason, we're no longer in the a priori, in what we can know without spending money — I say this because Kant always has this strange economic and financial metaphor. If the subject must resort to experience, he must, for Kant, otherwise it's not serious — but he must only do so once he has exhausted everything he can know a priori. I don't need experience to know that every body occupies space, I don't need
28:25 to open my eyes — it's the other way around: if I open my eyes and see a body, that's because a space is already given before I see it, because if space were not given, I couldn't see the body, no body, even one a thousandth of a millimeter in size, you see. So, all bodies occupy space — that is a judgment, but it is not a judgment of experience, it is a transcendental judgment. On the other hand, all bodies have weight — Captain Haddock wouldn't agree, in Explorers on the Moon, since his whisky floats away in ball form — it's near the earth that it has weight, but we're so used to being right next to the center of the earth, well, at the surface of the earth, and not out in intersidereal space, we're so used to being, that is, under the pull of terrestrial gravity, that we say all bodies have weight, you see — it's the force of habit that deceives us. It's not the certainty of the synthetic judgment. The ideal would be — and Kant is the first to formulate the problem this way — the ideal of knowledge, of science, of certainty would be to be able to increase our knowledge as the synthetic judgment does, but with complete security,
29:35 as the analytic judgment does — and that is why Kant, in the opening pages of the Critique of Pure Reason, says that all philosophical and metaphysical questions hang on this solemn question: are synthetic a priori judgments possible? Can we, without resorting to experience, extend our knowledge? There, I recall how the problem is posed, but this was to remind you that Kant is the champion of distinctions — we've just seen, and I dwelt on it a bit because it's a major issue after all, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, but these matter only in the realm of knowing; here we're going to arrive at aesthetics, we're going to see that we'll speak more of pleasure than of knowledge. So, in the Critique of Practical Reason, continuing very quickly my little recap, he distinguishes the hypothetical imperative in morality from the categorical imperative — a merchant who gives change honestly and scrupulously — very well put by Kant — but that's not a guarantee that he's moral, because he might do it so as not to lose his customers, out of self-interest,
30:46 and not out of respect for the moral law, you see — subtle, Kant. So he has a motive for giving correct change; that motive is not a categorical imperative, it's a hypothetical motive — that's Kant, it sounds a bit complicated but it's actually simple. With Kant we have the rules of the game: hypothetical means what? It means: if I don't give change scrupulously, I risk losing my customers; whereas with the categorical imperative there's no hypothesis, it's out of respect for the law, there, the general will. So, once again, another precious distinction which I won't develop here, we're not dealing with Kant's morality, we're dealing with his aesthetics, and then here he suddenly comes — I just read you the passage for this, they're short, so as not to complicate things too much — he's just made his last distinction, perhaps the most vertiginous, though it doesn't seem so at first: that between determinant and reflective judgments. So now I'll take up the text again, comment on it a bit, it's much clearer than one might think.
31:57 Judgment in general, whether reflective or determinant, is the faculty of conceiving the particular as contained within the universal — listen, that's not so complicated, I know you always want an example, let's give one: the Saint Bernard is a dog — I take a particular case, the Saint Bernard, I could have taken the Irish setter or the Pomeranian I was thinking of when I was looking for white dogs — and I place them all, subsumed, you see, subsumed, same root as "assume," and also "consume," but here it's "sub," placed underneath — underneath what, the hat which is the universal — the universal is the concept of dog in general, in which you have things as visually different as a Saint Bernard and a Pomeranian or a Dachshund, you see — it's really extraordinary, the power of language, to put all that under the same category, the same concept of dog. Now, you think that's just a concept? No, it's already a judgment to say "this is a dog" — it's not empirical, it's not with my eyes that I recognize that it's a dog, with my eyes
33:07 That suddenly reminds me of a whole lot of other things that aren't there, that aren't before my eyes, and that make me — that make me decide to judge that this animal in front of me conforms to the concept of dog in general, which circulates just as much through the Dachshund, the Saint Bernard, the German Shepherd, and so on, and the Pitbull. So judgment in general, and the faculty of conceiving the particular — the Dachshund — as contained under the general — the dog. Now there are two cases, watch out: if the general, dog in general, let's keep our example, is given, the judgment that subsumes the particular is determinant — I determine the Dachshund to fall under the category dog because I already know what a dog is. And if I'm suddenly shown, deep in the Thai jungle, I'm just making this up, a new variety of wild dogs — that happens, in Vietnam there are jungles — the most unexplored regions are those where there's both thick forest and mountains, making them inaccessible, which is the case
34:17 in certain regions of Southeast Asia, particularly the region between Vietnam and Laos — some even report yetis, well, let's not get sidetracked, a bit smaller than the Tibetan one, that would take us too far, I have these hobbyhorses, don't mind me — so there are also fantasies, some people see men with tails in this region, ever since Egypt people have imagined men with an extension of the coccyx, well anyway, that's the realm of fantasy. But in any case, a variety of antelope, of deer, was seriously discovered, one that wasn't very well known, barely fifteen years ago, in the heart of the Vietnamese region, because zoologists tell you that new species of insects can still be found, or in the ocean, things like that, but as for large animals, we supposedly know them all, blah blah blah — so you can find a new dog, well, an animal you've never seen but that you decide, that you determine, belongs to the dog family. There, I'm making a small extension to Kant, to remind you, since I took examples from animals, from living beings, that the proof — I don't know — that a German Shepherd and a Pomeranian belong
35:29 to the same species is that they can reproduce with each other — that's the biological definition of species. Now this is interesting, why? Because Hegel uses the word species, and the two great monuments of ancient Greek philosophy — I'm thinking of Plato and Aristotle — one speaks of the Idea, the other of Form, but both use the same Greek word, eidos, which also means species. Where I want to get to is that species is ideal for knowledge, that is, it's as far as knowledge can go between the excessive generality of the genus — if I tell you the Dachshund is an animal, I'm being a bit imprecise, too general, right — and if I tell you this particular Dachshund has a yellow spot on its right paw, that's not exactly teaching about the concept of dog in general. Between the two, ideal knowledge, between these two extremes — I'll finish my parenthesis
The species, the ideal middle term of knowledge 36:39 very quickly — of the individual, which is almost unknowable, there's so much in it, and of the general, which is simpler but more extensive. Between the two, between the genus and the individual, between the genus feline and the individual Bintou — that's my cat's name, allow me to introduce her, well, to introduce her name — between the general and the individual there is the species cat. Here, you see, as a middle term. So I come back to it: when Kant says either the general is given, I determine it — we were there — but if only the particular is given and judgment must find the general, it is merely reflective, it's a bit more complicated, and that's where a world opens up in Kant's testament, a world in which one can throw a bridge over what Kant had called, separated by an abyss
37:50 impassable, until he wrote his last critique — the world of knowledge, the Critique of Pure Reason, that of science, physics broadly speaking, Newton in his time if you want to embody it, and that of action, of morality. We've had enough occasion, among ourselves, laugh if you will, to review that at the origin of the word philosophy there is love of Sophia — let's start at the beginning, philosophia, love of Sophia, and Sophia means both knowledge — that's for cognition — and wisdom. We must distinguish the two, because if it's only love of knowledge, it merges with science, with scientific research, with the CNRS — that's not the philosopher's place. If there's only wisdom without grounding it in knowledge, it can be useful now and then, but it's never generalizable — you can always find the good advice of an uncle or whatever you like, good grief, that's risky. The philosopher's dream, what's specific to philosophy, is to want to answer the question of action — what must I do — but basing it on principles that are just as determining
39:01 to use Kant's word, or a term of Descartes's, as the triangle is a polygon — but not applying it to the triangle, applying it to what I must do — that's our undoing, I saw that law, morality, politics get swallowed up in this, and that Aristotle's aporia, who already said 2500 years ago, mathematics unites men, politics divides them — already the philosopher's dream is to fill this breach. That made us review some things, it's a few lines, I don't think there are even that many lines in this excerpt from Kant. So I'm telling you this opens up an abyss in which one can find an abyss, a universe in which one can find, in this universe, a bridge, however frail, thrown over the impassable abyss between theoretical reason, knowledge, and practical reason, morality. Now I'm translating, I'm speaking in Kantian vocabulary, I think we understand each other well now — this passage where he distinguishes the two kinds of judgment when he brings them in, while I'm going about this backwards
Field, territory, domain: the division of philosophy 40:11 I'll start with this passage and now I'll tell you about everything that comes before it — the two or three pages that precede this passage. I started with the stakes involved; earlier he had recalled — I'm telling you, this is his testament — it lets him review, put in order everything he had distinguished up to that point. He had distinguished the two great parts of philosophy, and here, I'll read it to you because these are passages I haven't included in the texts in front of you, but you can find them, I'll give you the reference so as not to confuse things, but I'll read them to you directly — you'll see, it's still in the introduction, but a bit earlier, a bit before this third part — a part called the first part of the introduction, called On the Division of Philosophy — more distinctions and divisions. I won't start from the very beginning so as not to confuse us, but I'll go directly to that part — of concepts
41:21 insofar as they are related to objects, without considering whether knowledge of them is possible or not — unlike Kant, when he's being careful, asking whether my statement can correspond, whether it's possible for objects to correspond to it. You know that in mathematics, for example, when you have a formula A over B, a mathematician starts by stating B must be different from 0, because otherwise it's impossible, because there's no number which, multiplied by 0, gives back the numerator, by the very definition of a ratio, a fraction, call it what you like — logos, as they say in Greek, interestingly logos means ratios, fractions, relative integers, in a way rational numbers — sorry, no rational number, or a fortiori integer, multiplied by 0 gives back the numerator, so that would contradict the very definition of ratio. So you see, very carefully
42:31 mathematicians, before studying a function, before making it vary, as they say — that's a large branch of mathematics called analysis — start by saying, if there's a denominator, it must be different from 0, otherwise it's impossible. Impossible, as I told you, in logic, is what encloses a contradiction — a number, even, divisible by 2, that's impossible, an odd number, sorry, divisible by 2, that's impossible. So: concepts, insofar as they are related to objects without considering whether knowledge of this is possible or not, possess their field, which is determined solely according to the relation of their object to our faculty of cognition in general. The part of this field in which cognition is possible for us is a territory — you see how he introduces new notions, not the word — the word is in ordinary language — but how he gives them a precise meaning. In this vast field, where I say all the objects in the universe, well, I say that, but it doesn't give me
43:41 knowledge — but within this object that is the universe I can posit a subset, a territory, of all those governed by the law of attraction, for example, where I determine according to a law — you see, the part of this field to which cognition is possible for us is a territory for these concepts, and the faculty of cognition insofar as it legislates over it, because I can say all the objects in the universe are objects of a possible experience — possible, but one I haven't yet had, I'll die long before having experienced the objects of the universe — but the part over which we legislate, where we can already predict eclipses for example, is possible for us, is a domain. These are geographical metaphors: within the set of objects of cognition, there is the part where this cognition is possible, which defines a territory, and within that territory the part where it is not merely possible but actual, where our cognition is exercised, where we can make laws that allow for applications, sending satellites without losing them — that's no longer merely
44:51 a territory, it's our domain, we exercise our mastery there. The part of this territory where it legislates is the domain — you see all these distinctions, it's to get to the great division of philosophy. Our faculty of cognition as a whole, so now we bring everything together, possesses two domains — you see why I went back — now that we've recalled what a domain is, two domains: that of the concepts of nature and that of the concept of freedom. There we find again the two great previous critiques: there's the domain governed by the concept of nature, that's physics, physics in the broad sense, chemistry, biology, the hard sciences, I'll say the sciences of nature, as we used to say not long ago. Our faculty of cognition as a whole possesses two domains, that of the concepts of nature, which is opposed to freedom, where y equals f of x, y is determined by x, y is not free at all, y will go wherever x wants — wo es war
46:05 soll ich werden — one of Freud's most enigmatic formulas, I'm not saying it in German to play the little Heidegger, no no no, it's that it's very important because it's hard to translate the Es — the it, the id, you know, there's no neuter in French — it's hard: where it was, I must come to be, where the id was, the ego must take its place, you see, where the front wheels have passed, the rear wheels must follow. All right, let's not complicate things with Freud, this is just to open doors for those interested. So our faculty of cognition as a whole possesses two domains, that of the concepts of nature and that of the concept of freedom — philosophy of knowledge, philosophy of action. Our faculty of cognition legislates indeed a priori through these two kinds of concepts — a priori, I remind you, is the opposite of empirical, meaning we no longer need to go and see. Philosophy is thus also divided, in accordance with this faculty, into theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. What's the upshot — but the territory
47:16 that's the two domains, but the territory over which it, our faculty of cognition, establishes its domain and over which it exercises its legislation, is always only the sum total of the objects of all possible experience. In other words, the legislation by nature — I don't know, a volcano erupting — and the legislation by freedom — the passage from lockdown to unlocking — both are exercised over one and the same territory, that of the sum total of objects of a possible experience, what Kant calls the phenomenon. In other words, these two opposed legislations, one that of determination, the other that of freedom, contend for one and the same territory. And remember, for those who were here before, I illustrated this — I'll say it again quickly for newcomers — with my little helicopter flying over the Amazon. We fly over the Amazon, I take a helicopter — a plane goes too fast, so I take a helicopter, we can slow down as much as we like — I look
The helicopter over the Amazon and the prohibition of incest 48:26 we see that the legislation by nature — the treetops, the canopy, you know, the treetops — we see groups of macaws, multicolored birds, it's magnificent, well all that, everything we see there, all of it comes down to causality by nature, inert nature, physical, living nature, biological — no need to bring in metaphysics. And then suddenly, oh surprise, the forest breaks off — a clearing shaped like a circle, a half-circle for the men's house, a half-circle for the women's house, human presence. And there, suddenly, there's the prohibition of incest, for example — there are still some who believe it's a natural law, which makes all the scientists laugh, and also those who aren't scientists but are very close to animals, farmers and hunters, it makes them laugh too, breeders know very well — you take two rabbits, you put them in Australia where there were none, it was the English who brought them, there were 3 million of them within — they're all incestuous, they all come from the same parents, because there are some
49:36 who believe there's a voice deep inside us that has a horror of incest — that's not the case with lions, they do everything, they devour the cubs to be able to mate with the female. So let's not project onto animals, let's not engage in anthropomorphism. I'd even say that incest — you'll find this in Lévi-Strauss, in his doctoral thesis, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, you'll find this very interesting reflection, a bit like when he makes distinctions, he's a great neo-Kantian, namely that there are laws in nature — the law of falling bodies, the law of conservation of energy, whatever, there are laws in nature — there are rules in what he calls culture, which others might call spirit among the Hegelians, or history among the Marxists, and so on — everything that presupposes human activity and not merely the already-given of nature. So why this distinction of words? Because laws are the same everywhere by definition — there isn't one law of falling bodies in Japan and a different one in Patagonia. Whereas
50:48 as Pascal says, showing the folly of men, truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the other — here there's monogamy, over there the rule is polygamy, these are human things, which proves they are not natural, otherwise they would be the same everywhere, universal like the laws of nature. Let me come back a bit to incest for those still convinced that we still have some voice that gives us a horror of incest — if there are prohibitions, and the prohibition of incest — I'm going too fast — there are rules in culture, there are laws in nature, exception: the prohibition of incest, which has the generality of a law and yet is not natural. That's why it's a pivotal notion in all human societies, even the most primitive ones — that's a silly word that doesn't explain much, we say more scientifically, society without writing, because it's more objective, because they can be primitive at the technical level and far surpass us at the aesthetic or moral level, we never know, that's often the case
52:00 in my opinion. So you see, the prohibition of incest has this exceptional position of having the generality of a law across human societies while owing nothing to nature. For those still not convinced — now I get to it — [certain things] are forbidden because there are very severe punishments in societies, especially the oldest ones, for those who transgress this taboo. Only what one wants to do is forbidden — do you know a law that forbids you from leaving your hand on the fire?
52:34 There's no need for a law, you pull it back quickly, the punishment is immanent to the act, it's not a crime, it's a mistake, a failed action. So, if something is forbidden, it's because there's a desire for it somewhere. If there are laws about property, it's because we'd gladly steal the neighbor's car now and then to go for a spin when he's not around. So, a little reminder — why did I make this detour?
53:07 Because my helicopter, back to it, shows us the two legislations Kant speaks of, but this time in concreto — you see, it shows us the jungle, the virgin forest, where everything can be explained without bringing in man, as if he had never existed, we would see that — and then suddenly there are things that cannot be derived from a physical causality, that on the contrary go in the opposite direction from physical causality, because all species tend to multiply — look at mammals themselves, animals, with the precautions they take against danger, prudence, the struggle for survival — there's only one time when they put themselves in danger, that's the mating season, that is, when it comes to propagating the species, then they take risks. So you see, the prohibition of incest, which limits reproductive possibilities, like monogamy — but I'm not criticizing it at all, I'm not saying I don't want polygamy — when you're monogamous you have fewer children than when you're polygamous, and so on. What I want to get to
54:17 is illustrating what Kant says, right — there are two opposite domains, one of determination, of law, which grants knowledge only insofar as we can decode that law, and so the more it extends, the more freedom shrinks within it. And then there's causality by freedom, and I'll take a second example now — my famous red light. You have to eat to live, that's legislation by nature, it's not man who decided that, so it's useless to say I must eat to live as if I had a choice — it owes nothing to my will and my choice. Whereas, I must respect the red light — unlike in my previous example, where the opposite is impossible, I can't — well rather, I must — I cannot live without eating, whereas I can run the red light. You shouldn't do it — don't go telling the police that Pagani said you can run a red light
55:27 I didn't say you should, you can run it, and that's where we see what 'must' means — but we mustn't, we mustn't even at two in the morning when there's no cop, we mustn't. So there are indeed two quite different domains, I'll repeat this pivotal paragraph, which precedes the one you have before your eyes: our faculty of cognition as a whole possesses two domains, that of the concepts of nature and that of the concept of freedom, it legislates indeed a priori through these two kinds of concepts, philosophy is thus also divided, in accordance with this faculty, into theoretical philosophy, concept of nature, and practical philosophy, concept of freedom — but the territory over which it establishes its domain and over which it exercises its legislation is always only the sum total of the objects of all possible experience, the phenomenon, insofar as they are taken to be nothing more than mere phenomena. In other words, with our helicopter, we notice that for the village to exist, trees had to be cut down — the two legislations
56:37 contend for one and the same territory, but they contend for it physically, not merely intellectually — it's not the determinists here and the partisans of freedom over there, no — it's human action, with its tools, you see the importance of the tool here, it's human praxis that extends the domain of freedom and limits the domain of causality by nature alone. That's what had to be recalled before coming back here. So, if we stop there, we haven't yet come back to aesthetics — if we stop there, we understand why he says, I'll read it, this first passage which I quote often but I'll read it for the first time: although an incommensurable gulf is established between the domain of the concept of nature, the sensible, and the domain of the concept of freedom, the supersensible, so that from the first to the second, that is, by means of the theoretical use of reason, no transition is possible, just as if they were different worlds, the first — knowledge — should have no influence on the second. You will never draw from physics information
The abyss between nature and freedom and the power of judgment 57:48 to know what one ought to do — that's what Kant is saying. I say this because there's an ambient neo-positivism, which is quite worrying, because the Nazis made much use of it, pseudo-moral laws based on a pseudo-physics, which is incredible, isn't it. But there it is: the greatest scientist in the world may not be the best qualified to tell me what I must do — should I marry this girl, that's a personal matter, I'm past that age — should I finish off a relative who is terminally ill and in terrible pain, or leave them alive — that's wisdom, and then knowledge — and there, perhaps, someone who doesn't even know what a fraction is, or a first-degree equation, deep in the African jungle or deep in the Berry region — excuse me, people of Berry, but that's a region of France with the most magicians, they cast spells on the neighbor's cows, it's well known, in Berry, 'oui-da' as they say there — he might give me advice
58:58 that is humanly more profound, and more useful, than what a Nobel laureate in mathematics would give me about my grandmother's survival, or a fortiori a child's. So yes, we think we're in the abstract with Kant, but we're in the concrete. So look closely: there is an impassable gulf, we cannot go from knowledge of nature, from the theoretical — it doesn't inform me at all about what I must do. I'll read it in Kantian terms: although an incommensurable gulf is established between the domain of the concept of nature — the Nobel laureates — the sensible, and the domain of the concept of freedom — the supersensible — so that from the first to the second, from the CNRS if you like to morality, that is by means of the theoretical, not practical, use of reason, no transition is possible, just as if they were different worlds, the first — remaining in position — the first should have no influence on the second. Nevertheless the latter — that's my village in my helicopter example — the latter must — this word is underlined — must have an influence on the former, I mean the concept of freedom must make real
1:00:08 you understand what I was saying — that if we hadn't cut down the trees, we wouldn't have made a clearing, there wouldn't be a village. For a field, in agriculture, to exist, a forest or a swamp must cease to exist, I don't know, it's a dialectic of nature, that's another debate, but what's certain is that there's a dialectic in man's relation to nature. Nevertheless, the latter — that is the domain of freedom — must have an influence on the former, I mean the concept of freedom, when it is a duty, must make real in the sensible world the end imposed by its laws. There are some who believe that Kantianism is nothing but an infinite ought-to-be, and as one rather unkind remark put it, yes, Kant's morality has white hands because it has no hands — and he's telling us the opposite: it's necessary, so, for the moral law to be realized in the phenomenon, for that
1:01:18 nature, for this realization to be possible, must be conceived in such a way that it can also bend to the ends of the moral law. So when he says there must be somewhere — that's what fascinates him as he's about to die, Kant — there must be a unity of the two somewhere, and that's where we come to the text I'm telling you about, where he says it's the faculty of judgment that will unify the two domains. I'll read you the title of the section this text is drawn from — the third part of the introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, that's the title of the work — yes, it's in bad shape, I've had it since my last year of high school — Of the Power of Judgment as a Means of Combining the Two Parts of Philosophy into a Whole. Well now — so the impassable gulf, let's take the risk, we'll play tightrope walkers, we'll venture out over the abyss, it's a fantastic story, this isn't from the Critique of Judgment. So let's get back — let's get back now to this text. Determinant judgment, we've understood
1:02:28 I already know what a dog in general is before deciding that the animal I see there corresponds to the concept of dog — that, I think, we've understood well, as Kant puts it, the universal is given, one need only place the particular under it. But when only the particular is given and I must find the universal, what is that? Well, that is precisely aesthetic judgment. Let's explain — if I say 'that's beautiful,' let's go, I'll take an example of aesthetic judgment — the part of philosophy that reflects on the concept of beauty is aesthetics, I remind you, I'm keeping the thread I've held since the very beginning of this session, that we haven't yet answered the question why and how — and why — I said how, I said it, but not why aesthetics became a necessary part of the philosophical corpus. We're getting there, we're very close, one more step needed. When I say 'that's beautiful,' now I'd like to reflect with you, I wouldn't want to move forward alone, you agree, you're not here to answer me, but I'm certain
It's beautiful, I like it: unconscious desire 1:03:38 that everyone, when they say 'oh, that's beautiful,' this landscape, it's that it pleases them — 'it's beautiful' means 'it pleases me.' 'It's beautiful' implies — here I'm being rigorous — 'it's beautiful' implies analysis: there, it pleases me; if it pleases me, it's that the beautiful object makes me feel a pleasure. Let's continue our reasoning, let's be mathematical with words, I know it's difficult, well, we're not used to it — but if I feel pleasure, it's that somewhere I am satisfying a desire — third concept, a desire, because if there were desire without its being satisfied, that's a suffering — thirst without water is hard, and drinking without thirst is monotonous and insipid, but drinking when you're thirsty is good. There is pleasure only where a desire is appeased. But not at all — I'm sure plenty of you are losing me here — but not at all, when I find something beautiful, look, I have no desire
1:04:49 I find that it's beautiful, it pleases me, that's all — that's called a tautology, it's beautiful because it pleases me, why does it please me, because it's beautiful. Someone might tell me, I absolutely don't, I don't connect the beauty of this landscape that I feel to any desire in me — on the contrary, it's even one of Kant's theses that aesthetic desire is disinterested. Someone might say that, and that's quite possible — that means I have no conscious desire, that's what I'll add. And suddenly you begin to understand why philosophy — that is, since Socrates, obeying the injunction of the Delphic oracle, know thyself — why aesthetics must have a necessary part: the beautiful object informs me about myself. If I want to know myself, I mustn't set aside what Pagani has just said by saying 'not at all, I have no desire, well, it's beautiful, it pleases me, that's all, it's disinterested, I have no interest, no desire in it' — yes, I have no conscious desire, but I have a desire that has just been satisfied — which one?
1:05:57 There — when only the particular is given, let's simplify, I see a shirt in a shop window, ah, damn, that one, I like it, ah it's beautiful, it's lovely — that's a judgment of aesthetic value. I'm not saying that one, I'll be warm in it in winter, no, there it's purely aesthetic, not functional. Because if I say this wool shirt pleases me, that's a judgment of value too, but there it's a determinant judgment, because I'm chilly and I need a wool shirt under my sweater — you see what that means, that's determinant judgment. That's what it means: I already have the universal in my head, the law, the principle, the rule, as he says, namely walking warmly in the street, and so I only have to fit into it the objects that fulfill this function. That's determinant judgment. Now watch closely — I know it's a bit abstract today but it's not, it's complicated, it's not difficult, one just has to be rigorous. There are judgments of existence — this shirt is worth, I'm just making this up, 150 euros — and then there are judgments of value
1:07:08 this shirt is wool, I'll be able to walk warmly in it, right, it pleases me because of that — judgment of value, no longer a judgment of existence — judgment of value, it pleases me, but a determinant judgment of value, that's not an aesthetic judgment of value. And this shirt, what makes me say that? There I can't say, it's simply because I want to walk warmly — that has nothing to do with it, I don't know what function it fulfills, I don't know what desire — this color, these shapes, these patterns, this color whether plain or the quality of the cut, I don't know, I don't know why these things that I see — esthesis, that's where it comes from, that's the sensible world, you know it, it's in 'anesthesia,' when you're anesthetized, everything that comes to us through the senses is cut off, through touch, sight, hearing, etc. — click, curtain, an injection, curtain, we can start operating. That's why
1:08:18 in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — I'm leaving aesthetics — the part where we talk about sensible experience is called transcendental aesthetics, complicated vocabulary but very simple — but here it's aesthetics in the sense of beautiful objects, you understand, they appear, and on this surface — this shirt, I'm coming back to it, through the shop window — there, we feel why this little burst of happiness when I see it. I didn't talk about a shirt, I didn't talk about a handsome guy, a beautiful girl, a child I call adorable, an old man of whom I say what a beautiful face, what nobility — I'm not saying all that applies. What makes me say that, what desire does it come to fulfill? It's not the same each time, we saw that in my various examples, but in every case, I don't know — and it's this 'I don't know' that means, in order to know, to answer the question of what desire the object satisfies, I have only one lead: the object itself. It's necessary that — and you understand what it means — that I reflect it, that I place myself, like a mirror in front of it, isn't it, it's not the object that's the mirror and I who am attentive
1:09:28 to what's inside it — no, it's I who must reflect it. Common sense — what is it, is it the color, is it the shape, is it both, what is it — and then afterward I'll notice, indeed, every time I see this particular blue, it pleases me, good, I'm just making this up — after that we could say, for now it's each person's own affair, we're going to get there, people say tastes and colors aren't to be argued about, it's everyone's own business. We've been arguing about nothing but that for 10,000 years, there must be a reason — that's my provocative thesis: we all love the same thing, the exact opposite of capitalism, which would have each of us in our own bubble. You know Facebook spends its time saying, Dominique, I found what you need, I found the music you need, YouTube likewise, I found, based on the choice you made last time, a whole series of works that should please you — it locks each of us into our own bubble and our own respective tastes. I say we all love the same thing — that seems scandalous, but you always have to add the rest — not at the same time
1:10:38 and not in the same context, but that's another difficulty I'll come back to at the end of this properly philosophical part. First I'll ask the control room for the time — how long have I been talking? All right, so I feel we'll still need time for the texts remaining to us of Hegel and Hölderlin — I think Hölderlin, I'll devote yet a fourth session to him — but I'll move on now to the Hegel text, since we're well warmed up with Kant. So this text of Hegel's is part of those famous Lectures on Aesthetics, which are the first great work developed in several volumes — it depends on the language, three or four, doesn't matter — which appeared in 1835 after Hegel's death, based on notes taken
1:11:48 taken by his most diligent students, and I'll read right away an excerpt from the first part, from Hegel's Aesthetics. Those who have the Aubier edition, which is the most common, isn't it, translated by Simon Jankélévitch — careful, same family but not Vladimir Jankélévitch, this is the previous generation — will find it in the first volume, page 55. This text: man constitutes himself for himself through his practical activity — he takes up a bit, quite a lot actually, of Kant's own vocabulary — man constitutes himself for himself through his practical activity. Man is not a having but a doing, Marx will say — man is not a having. Lead has the property of being heavier than water, of this, of that, of melting at such and such a degree — things have properties, whereas man — you know the beautiful title of the German novelist Musil, The Man Without Qualities, it's the same word in German, Eigenschaft, quality and property, that which is characteristic
Hegel: the child who throws stones into the stream 1:12:58 of man is that he is only what he does. Man constitutes himself for himself through his practical activity, because he is driven to find himself, to recognize himself — not merely to know himself but to recognize himself — in what is given to him immediately, in what offers itself to him externally. He achieves this by changing external things — this is what will soon, in Marx's writing, be called praxis — he achieves this by changing external things, which he marks with the seal of his interiority. What is the architect? You know, this architect who, even the clumsiest of them, is superior to the bee, because he has his house in his head before producing it in reality. He makes a form pass into matter, he makes what was only an abstraction, an ideal, pass into what nature offers, into what the already-given offers, but which is not yet there, and which through action will once again become a new being-there, which will be a reality and no longer merely an ideal — not a puff of smoke. So he achieves this by changing external things, so you see, by informing
1:14:09 nature — he achieves this by changing external things which he marks with the seal of his interiority and in which he finds only his own determinations. Well, his own determinations, you can classify that under what we just saw in Kant, called the concept of freedom. Nature wants me to eat as soon as I'm hungry, and I am going to institute Lent, Ramadan, or simply the fact of politely waiting until everyone is served before throwing myself on my plate — you haven't asked the bear to do that. Man acts thus, unless it's fear that governs him — man acts thus by virtue of his freedom as subject. You see, they say philosophy is an arena, they're all arguing with each other, it's not like science where we all agree — no — here too he's in Kant's wake, there's a good moment — man acts thus by virtue of his freedom as subject, to strip the external world of its fiercely alien character, and to enjoy
1:15:19 things only because he finds in them an external form of his own reality. This need to modify external things is already inscribed in the child's earliest inclinations — one thinks he'll take the example of a child imitating his father making a bow — we've all made bows when we were little, for boys; there are girls who know how to make bows too, I know some, not many, whatever, I don't want to risk here passing for a sexist, that's another debate given the times we live in — the little boy who throws stones into the torrent and admires the rings that form in the water. Surprise: Hegel doesn't take a utilitarian example, determinant judgment — I go back to Kant because with the bow, we don't understand why he does it — the bow serves to feed oneself. I say, watch out, this is serious: I'm going to do like Papa, I'm a little pygmy, I'm going to do like Papa. The intelligent boy — silly words, intelligent, it's really relative to societies — the intelligent boy in our society is the one who gets 20 out of 20 in math; among the Pygmies, nobody cares about math, it's the one who knows how to shoot a bow, who's skillful with a bow, that one is intelligent — yes, indeed, think about it a bit, intelligence
1:16:29 is always a function of the values of a given society at a given moment and in a given space. So I repeat: man acts thus by virtue of his freedom as subject, to strip the external world, etc. — the little boy who throws stones into the torrent and admires the rings that form in the water. We find our surface again — those who were here before remember the long cycle I devoted to the difference between nature and landscape. When we confuse the two, we reduce nature to a mere surface — the physicist, that's precisely him, the geologist, etc.
1:17:04 he well knows that nature is not merely a surface — especially the geologist, he doesn't content himself, like geographers, with making graphs on the surface of the earth — that's what it means, drawing of the earth, geo-graphy — the geologist goes to the depths, he violates the surface to go see what makes the volcano explode — ah, good grief, but of course, there was magma there nearby. Whereas the landscape is what offers itself to our sight, to our aesthesis, it's the appearance, it's the part of nature that appears for us, it's this screen onto which we can project, as onto any screen, things that come from us but not from nature — like a sunset making us think of decline, that's why a sunset is always a bit more melancholy than a sunrise, if you think about it, don't take my word for it, look at all the literature — there are poems about twilight, they all have a tone of melancholy or elegy, poems about dawn always have an exaltation — it's not 'I have embraced the summer dawn,' Rimbaud, right — so the little boy who throws stones into the torrent and admires the rings
1:18:14 admires in fact a work in which he enjoys the spectacle of his own activity. Good heavens, me, a little powerless boy, surrounded by a universe where I can never really do what I want, where everything escapes me — it's not, deep down, permission for lots of things, there's one thing there: I do this and the world obeys me. Good heavens, you understand why aesthetics is an integral part of philosophy: if we must know ourselves — and I'll conclude on this — if we must know ourselves, then we mustn't stop there, and that's the one mistake Kant makes in his aesthetics, which is why we then have to move on to Hegel: the aesthetic pleasure, which is a disinterested pleasure — no, he makes the same mistake here as Bergson, who in a text on sleep, a very beautiful text by the way, says that a mother cannot fall asleep as long as she has her newborn there, as long as she is anxious, as long as she hears crying, etc. She can only fall asleep once she no longer has any interest in the outside world.
1:19:24 And that's why Bergson's thesis is: to sleep is to lose interest. You see the connection with art? Freud comes along and says no, there is an interest in sleep: it's to rejoin the total absence of problems that is the intra-uterine world. Look at what someone who sleeps does: he curls up, he takes on a certain shape again, the oldest of all; he closes his eyes; his breathing slows down — we didn't breathe in the mother's womb; he loses the sense of time — there was no need to have a relation to time in the period when we waited for nothing, when desire was satisfied at the very moment it arose, because time comes from that gap between what I desire and the moment it is satisfied. True time, not clock time — that's something else again — this pure restlessness, as Hegel says about time, which mathematics does not grasp, which has another time: he says die reine Unruhe, this pure restlessness. So you see, in the same way, Freud adds — there is a desire, but a completely unconscious one — it is to return to prenatal bliss.
1:20:36 to the absence of prenatal problems — exactly what Rousseau does in the fifth walk when he talks about the Lake of Bienne: he falls asleep, rocked by the waves of the lake, the little ripples on the shore, and he says "this beautiful basin of an almost round shape" — the vocabulary itself gives him away, well, not "betray" like a crime, we understand — it feels good to fall asleep, as Hölderlin would say, "it is not good to have in one's soul no perishable thought," it's good to fall asleep, including even with an aperitif, it's not about passing around a drink. Here's the little boy — I'll end on this — throwing stones into the torrent and admiring the rings that form in the water, admiring in fact a work in which he enjoys the spectacle of his own activity. But of course the little boy — and I'll end here — is not aware of what we've just said; he's not thinking "I am exercising my freedom," but that's exactly it: he does better than think it, he does it, and he enjoys it. If there are questions now, maybe we'll leave more time for questions. So, another question from Raphaël Bissonnette:
Question: what desire does the beauty of an orchid satisfy? 1:21:46 "Do you make a distinction between the concepts of subject and individual?" Well, there's a very long — he's persistent, this Raphaël, because he had already asked this last time and I didn't have time to answer it. He's right to bring it up again; he's like the good competitors in the agrégation and CAPES exams: if he fails the first time, he doesn't get discouraged, he comes back, he doesn't give up the field. Then there's a long question from Mehdi Brochet that I'll perhaps save for the end if there's time — it's complex to answer at the end of a session like this, but I'll tell you if you want. Salvatore Bruno asks: "But what would the unconscious desire be, faced with a beautiful orchid? Beauty gives me pleasure, but I don't see... I don't see what unconscious desire this fulfills, since there's no stake involved." Thank you. I'll maybe start answering that one right away. I apologize in advance to Salvatore, who is someone very serious and asks excellent questions, but here I'm going to — I'm going to seem
1:22:56 a bit flippant, but I'm being very serious. When he tells me — what does he say — there's no interest, there's no stake, there's no stake, right, there's no stake, no interest, I don't see the desire. So I told him — I'm not going to tell my life story — but there was a time, you know, when I was supposed to write a book with François de Negroni, proposed by the publisher Belfond, on sex-patriation as it's called, that is, in Thailand for example, anyway — and we had to, in order to do research, watch X-rated videos. It wasn't very common at the time, but in almost all the X-rated videos, in the room where it takes place, there's a painting with an orchid in it. Careful, Salvatore, before saying there's no stake at all — since the dawn of humanity, I'm not talking about nature, which is much older, but ever since man has expressed himself poetically, the flower has been linked to eros. That's just how it is.
1:24:07 if only because of its scent, even before we get to the visual aspect. That's why this question is excellent — I don't know, look at the role smell plays in the sexuality of mammals. But of course, what do you want, I can't help it. "Ah but we're not dogs, we're men." Yes, well, I'll refer you to a very important note by Freud where he develops this — he says it's no accident that smell is repressed in man precisely because of the importance it plays in sexual relations; it's repressed, but you shouldn't think man was born with less sense of smell. I once happened to be with Tuaregs in the desert, looking for a well; the Tuareg knows the area well — two kilometers away, he could smell the well, because there he's so motivated that his sense of smell suddenly regains all the strength human smell can have under certain conditions. But meanwhile,
1:25:17 careful — what is the entire cosmetics industry, since prehistory, if not sublimating the smell that the dog is satisfied with? That's what sublimation is. So you see, I'm not proving anything, it's complex, it's rich material — there's a whole book, a novel that was hugely successful, by Süskind, called Perfume, you know, which revolves a bit around this issue. But let's not rush, in the Cartesian sense — Descartes said as a rule of method to carefully avoid prejudice and haste, to say, well, that's wrong, she's beautiful because I see her, and that's it, she's beautiful because she's beautiful. But that's a tautology — of course she's beautiful because she's beautiful, but there's an excess there, it's not a cause; she fulfills a function, she comes to meet a desire. The flower is virginal and fragrant. Look, let's draw a picture for a second — Alfred de Musset,
1:26:27 "The May Night" — since we're talking about flowers, it makes me think of spring, it's not — "and the virgin rose still closes jealously on the pearly hornet she intoxicates as she dies." Musset isn't a porn writer, he's an author we learn in secondary school after all — it's not, it's "The May Night": "Poet, take up your lute and give me a kiss, the flower of the wild rose feels its buds opening," it's springtime — "and the virgin rose still closes jealously on the pearly hornet she intoxicates as she dies" — there, that's the vagina of love, right? So I'm opening up avenues, Salvatore, I'm sure we understand each other very well, and we'll come back to it. Yes, I'll come back now to the first question. Yes, it was Geoffrestik. So there are two parts to his question — you can even reread it, right? So, "could you tell us about the historical, paleontological passage from nature to man," or, that's the first part of the question, yes, that's huge already, "or else"
Question: the passage from nature to man 1:27:37 "the natural foundation, if it exists, of materialism, as Patrick Tort speaks of it." Well, first, let me greet in passing — I forgot the first name of our mystic — thank you, Geoffrey — so I thank Geoffrey because he's a faithful listener, he's a — further on, faithful — and these questions are relevant, and I also thank him for making me dialogue indirectly with my friend Patrick Tort. We met each other in Côte d'Ivoire a long time ago, and it's always enriching to talk with Patrick Tort, one of the rare naturalists for whom I have enormous admiration. Naturalist — I don't mean at the scientific level, I have admiration for all the specialists in the natural sciences who are sharp in their discipline, that's not the question — but I mean that philosophically too, he is a naturalist; effectively, he thinks that man is not comprehensible without a natural materialism,
1:28:49 natural. He says mechanistic? No, no, that's the question, Geoffrey, right? There, there, that's it. So a naturalist materialism — let's not make him say mechanistic, that's me adding it, but it amounts to the same thing. The distinction is important, let me recall it here — Patrick knows this distinction very well, though maybe he wouldn't confirm it, but he knows it well. There is a mechanistic materialism in nature — mechanistic, dynamic, not in the crude sense — which I illustrate with the general form of the functional relation, as mathematicians say, of Y equals F of X.
1:29:33 The Moon obeys mechanically the Earth's gravitational pull, if you prefer, whereas in history — this is a notion Marx brings — materialism, it's still always materialism, we haven't moved to a non-materialism, but the materialism is dialectical, meaning there is history, as I indicated earlier, where there is the encounter of man and nature. And it's not only Marx — I recall that Kant already comes to show, and I dwelt on this at length, that wherever there is man, there is immediately a territory contested by two legislations belonging to two opposed domains: that of the concept, the legislation by nature, and that of the legislation by freedom.
1:30:20 There. Above all, we lived, Patrick Tort and I, in the humid tropical air — it was in Côte d'Ivoire, as I said. There, if human action isn't renewed constantly, the jungle invades the dwellings very quickly. And you no longer even recognize your own path.
1:30:51 That's why, when you leave your host's place, it's customary in sub-Saharan Africa, and especially in forested Africa, to say that you must ask for directions three times before leaving, before departing from your hosts and going home. You have to ask for the way three times. So, we're going to ask for the way three times. Because after all, the other person might be offended — what's wrong, wasn't the food good at our place, etc., you're not comfortable here. Implying that if you don't ask three times, the bush closes over you.
1:31:22 When you see what a path is like there, it's not much. You often need a trained eye to see that there's a path. Nature is powerful there. So, having made these reminders, I say right away to Geoffrey, the essential answer to the big part of his question, which is the first one, is that the cursor — you can move it wherever you want — this cursor that asks me to place somewhere, below which we're in pure nature, beyond which we're in anthropology — it doesn't exist spatially.
1:31:59 No blow of an axe can allow me to place the cursor, nor any foundation, as one lays a first stone, if you like, to use another spatial metaphor. It's a temporal process. It's a process — that's a word often used by Marx. And as in any process, at the beginning it's much more natural, and then as it progresses, it becomes less and less so.
1:32:29 cave man has a dwelling that is more natural than a house on stilts, as much later Cro-Magnon man would build. Much later, it's more complicated, a house on stilts, technically — but the cave is already beyond the cursor, because paintings are made there, fires are lit there, and perhaps rituals are even fabricated there. They fabricate...
1:33:00 Rituals are practiced there. And perhaps — we've found paintings, but this is my great regret — we still don't know what music the cave man listened to, where no doubt the rhythmic element must have played an important role. I'm fantasizing a bit here, I don't know, we know nothing, we have no — the tape recorders of the time. But there was something other than nature. Look at the caves of Lascaux, of Chauvet — nature is no longer there. There is painting.
1:33:33 Art — we're in aesthetics, aren't we? Art, which gives "artificial," is exactly the opposite of natural. I'll show you. So this cursor, if you think about it — that's why I'm digging deeper now — you'll find the same problem of the impossible cursor. When you ask me where the inert stops, where the living begins — it's not only the passage from the living in general, vegetal, animal, to man, but even the passage from the mineral to the living.
1:34:04 You know, the first amino acids, the giant molecules — that's not my field, but well, you see, is a virus an animal or is it still... You see, we find the same problem: we're asking the already-there to settle something that isn't of the order of an already-there but of the order of words. You're an ass, you're an ox.
1:34:36 The Eternal gave man the privilege of naming creatures. And so, the distinction between the inert and the living is itself a process. When you shine a beam of light on an amoeba, it starts a gyratory movement that is purely mechanical, because at that stage of life, there are still processes that are the same as those of mechanical pebbles.
1:35:08 The impact of photons, the bombardment of light particles on the amoeba causes it to have a gyratory movement, until a certain threshold where suddenly, if you increase the intensity of the light bombardment, it stops its gyration. And this threshold alone proves that we're already beyond mere inertness. Likewise, we, you know, we have...
1:35:38 The notion of threshold is important for placing the cursor. I'll come back, Geoffrey, I haven't lost sight of the question. At the level of hearing, you know we hear sounds only beyond a certain threshold. What's it called — the low frequencies, there — in short, what's extremely low that we don't hear, what's it called — the opposite of ultrasound. Thank you, that's it — infrasound.
1:36:08 And when it's too high-pitched, we don't hear ultrasound either. But dogs hear them. You know, those famous whistles that dog handlers or certain police officers have — we hear nothing, but the dog rushes off immediately. And then, well beyond the frequency dogs hear, even higher-pitched, the bat — it's used as a sonar to navigate in space. By echo. By echolocation. No, not "eco-location," don't confuse them — echolocation.
1:36:38 So these thresholds define species. It's interesting — we don't have vision that lets us see everything. No, no. Each time, we're suspended in a middle ground between extremes. Pascal already says in the Pensées, "Too much light dazzles, not enough blinds." Obscures. So I can't just say... Now I'm going to be more positive.
1:37:09 I've shown the complexity of the question. I'll be more positive now. There are three — three thresholds have been proposed that keep coming up in answer to Geoffrey's question: language; fire, you know — they say man — there's the Quest for Fire because it's with fire that mastery over the rest of nature begins; fire and tools. But I say the three are linked. The proof is that in the myth, Prometheus goes to fetch fire from the gods.
1:37:42 He knows very well it's not down here that fire is found. A supernature is needed to make fire appear. There is fire well before man — there's a volcanic age — that's fire in the material sense. Here, the proof is that it's also the fire of intelligence. But it's both: it's fire in the proper, material sense, the one that allows metals to be forged, melted, but linked to techne. I don't melt them by accident, like a volcano, but because I'm pursuing a goal, that of making a tool, a weapon, originally.
1:38:14 And then there's something else afterward — a balcony to have forged, a plane, whatever. So you see, fire itself already presupposes a world where there is language, where there is logos, where there is logic and intelligence. The Age of Enlightenment. Light, heat, they go together, they're metaphors. It means it's this same entity that makes us come out of darkness, that pulls us out.
1:38:47 Here again, it's a metaphor — whether we come out of it by a torch, or, with Edison's brilliant idea, we understand for the first time — that's where we see that great technology isn't intuitive, it has to make a detour through theory. What is Edison's lamp? The bulb — not the eco-friendly bulb, the classic bulb there — what is it? It's something we prevent from burning, whereas for millennia, for man, to light up meant to burn.
1:39:22 Bachelard devoted some very beautiful pages to this paradox. All of Edison's genius was to have identified a law: that intensity is inversely proportional to the radius of the wire. You've seen the wire inside the bulb — why is it thin? In relation to the energy passing through it. And why, as a result, do we deduce that we need a metal that doesn't melt, like lead at 300 — 300, or I don't know, between 300 and 500 degrees, I never remember for lead. Tungsten needs thousands of degrees before it starts melting.
1:39:53 That's why it's chosen. So a theory is needed that goes against the spontaneous intuition we have, which is that in order to light myself, I have to burn, I have to consume, I have to waste, I have to be anti-ecological. For once I am, take advantage of it — technological progress is always ecological. We get some surprises tonight. Yes, yes, whatever you like, coal is more sparing of trees than charcoal, which came before it, which is older, which is a regression in terms of technological progress.
1:40:28 Coal is progress. But coal is also very dirty. So then there's petroleum, which consumes seven times less material for the same energy output as coal. It's better, it's progress. And gas is better than petroleum. And nuclear is better than all of that. Well, I'll stop, I'm going to get lynched — by the new mayors. Another question. Yes, I want to conclude for Geoffrey. I'll commit myself.
1:40:58 Language itself has something in common with the tool: it gives a presence to what is absent. If I now say "the virgin forest," there is no virgin forest here. I don't think Geoffrey is speaking to us, isn't in communication with us from the Amazon. I don't think so. Me neither. But when I say "virgin forest," everyone who hears me say "virgin forest" has a representation. Something is present that isn't there. We give a presence to absence.
1:41:28 That's what language is. That's what the tool is. It's what allows a presence to be given to what was only in my head, which didn't exist outside, and which I realize like the architect Marx talks about. We don't live in a house plan, but in a real house. So somehow, for the word to appear, the tool had to make the outside world less fleeting, less fluid, had to make it last.
1:41:59 And the first of signs is the tomb — giving a presence to what is no longer there. I say this because it's an old pun that Plato used: the tomb is called "soma" in Greek, and the sign is "sema." There. So for me, it's praxis that made language possible. And then everything followed from there — practical and theoretical at the same time. Thank you. That's also a question I often ask myself. The parallel between substance becoming subject in Hegel and the link between technicization and hominization in Leroi-Gourhan, given that Hegel makes the tool the existing rational middle term, the existing universality of the practical process.
Materialism and naturalism; technè as conclusion 1:42:45 that is, as Dominique Pagani puts it so well, for the very first time in the history of philosophy, the tool, that is, the material productive force, raised to the dignity of a power of spirit, which suggests a profound unity of these two disciplines, anthropology and philosophy. Well, we stay within materialism. Materialism is perhaps what we'll conclude with, because to be sure, that's a lot — materialism is not naturalism.
1:43:20 It's more extensive. Naturalism is an ideology, not nature. Naturalism is a part of matter — it's everything around us that doesn't bear the trace of the artificial, of human labor. But a plastic flower is no less material than a natural flower. It's so simple that we can't manage to understand it. It's strange.
1:43:51 I'm not appealing to metaphysics and the supernatural. I'm saying there is the non-natural. There, these glasses — that's not natural, it's non-natural. But it's material! Of course, if there hadn't been nature first, I wouldn't have been able to impose these forms on a substrate, a substance — thank you, Mehdi. Of course. Right? But it's not with a possibility of a bottle that I quench my thirst in the desert.
1:44:26 You need a form. Matter is never anything but a potentiality to which you can give whatever forms you want, according to the function you're pursuing. There. So Mehdi's question comes right on time — he did well to read it, it follows on from Geoffrey's. We stay within materialism, but dialectical materialism now, no longer naturalist — even if, chronologically, we wouldn't have arrived at dialectical materialism if there hadn't first been, of course, nature.
1:44:59 But the origin matters little here. It's not at its origin that a river is a river — it's once it has already received many tributaries. At the origin, it's never anything more than a little trickle running between two feet, two meters from another little trickle running down another small slope. And it's all that which is called a cone of reception in geography. It's all that which is the origin just as much of a little torrent in Corsica that runs 15 kilometers before reaching the sea as of the Amazon. There.
1:45:32 So yes, at the origin there is nature, but the origin is not the cause. There can be billions of years of nature without man appearing. The rupture occurs when nature recedes before the artificial — art. You see how we come back to aesthetics? Because the Greeks didn't know our distinction between beautiful things and someone who makes a sandal for walking or someone who makes a plow. Technè is how they say "art" in Greek.
1:46:02 Technè. Let's stop opposing them. That will be my conclusion. Well, there you go, my conclusion is that the peasant is the artist, the shoemaker is the artist, the weaver is the artist. Technè. That's it. I say yes to you, I say goodbye to you. I'll see you next week, because for now we're managing to keep roughly a weekly rhythm. Well, this week was a bit long, it was extended by two days, so I thank you all the more, Philippe, since you have other things to do. And I thank you for being here and above all for the quality of your questions.
1:46:37 You can keep developing them on Facebook, you've seen that I answered quite a few in writing, I can't answer all of them, but I try to give priority to those that show the point was well followed, which is really the case tonight, and I thank once again those who were present. See you next week. Have a very good rest of the evening, everyone.
