English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Welcoming listeners and postponed political questions 0:00 I'll start with listeners, I don't quite know how to put it — with the Internet, they're neither listeners nor viewers, but both at once. But I'm thinking of Valérie Mi, whom I greet, if she's here, who joined us relatively recently. I also thank the friends who pointed her towards our publications.
0:30 On the side of our dear friend and comrade Christian Dublis-Santini. So, Valérie Mi — but she doesn't ask questions, she's simply introducing herself. I wanted to tell her that I'm very glad she's joined us, that it hasn't gone unnoticed, and that she shouldn't hesitate to leave a phone contact on Messenger, or to ask more specific questions.
1:04 I'll move on next to Luc Laforêt, to whom I'm apparently very late in replying, because it's been a long time since he sent me some very long questions. So with him it's the opposite — it's not only that he asks questions, it's that he asks long, important, programmatic ones about the current political situation, and about what can be done. He's one of the rare ones among our listeners, one of the rare ones working towards an answer to Lenin's question, 'what is to be done,' roughly speaking.
1:38 What is to be done here and now? And let him not think for a moment that I'm taking his contribution lightly — but it's so rich, it's so... it's almost exclusively political. So it's so rich in content and important in terms of what's at stake, that I'd rather take all the time I need before answering him in detail publicly. And in the meantime, the same goes for him, since we're in touch on Messenger — he shouldn't hesitate to leave me a phone number.
2:09 On Messenger, it's more discreet than on the public arena of Facebook, isn't it? Where it's never very prudent to leave one's number — it happens to me sometimes. But anyway, there we are. So, on Messenger, let's set up a little phone appointment, where I'll ask him what priorities he wants me to focus on, because the substance of these contributions is extremely rich, and there are many points I can readily endorse, of course. And others where it will be up to me to ask him for clarifications.
2:40 There we are. So those aren't questions, which is why I'm going through them rather quickly. Besides that, there is... now, this is really a question. One of the most recent, if not the most recent. Christophe Clamaron. I greet Christophe. Good evening to him. I'll read you his question because it's not too long to read and it's extremely pertinent.
Reading the question: finitude rather than death 3:12 You can see that he listens attentively to the essence of what's said. Good day. First of all, my thanks. There we are. To Mr. Pagani and to the team that makes the transmission of his knowledge possible. I'm very grateful to those who don't merely praise this or that passage of my talks, but who also commend and thank the team around it. Would the great purpose of man be to avoid thinking about death?
3:44 Question mark. If so, can we say that desire is merely the tool that serves this purpose? He sums up, quite densely, hours of video here. The tool that provides the necessary distraction. I recall well what Pascal says about it. He speaks of distraction. Pascal speaks of diversion. It's exactly the same domain. Is freedom the contradiction of death, or is it not...
4:14 It's good to raise a problem — this isn't an answer, it's a problematic question. Or is it merely the red rag, the pretext that allows one to avoid thinking about it? That's practically the last question. A person caught up in their personal problems has no time to think about their death. Contract fulfilled? Question mark. I'll stop before it turns into a misreading. You see? Thank you. And I'm the one thanking Christophe — on your behalf too. I'll go back over it very quickly. Would the great purpose of man be to avoid thinking about death?
4:47 So, each time, I tell Christophe, well done, because he's sensed the essential point — I'm just correcting a few points of phrasing to avoid ambiguities. When he speaks of purpose, he means what is in man's mind. Most of the time it's unconscious. So, there, let that be clear. All right? That's roughly what he means, since he says the great purpose of man, conscious or unconscious, would be to avoid thinking about death.
5:19 Yes, and above all, to avoid putting himself in situations where he couldn't help but think about it. That's the part that's a bit harder to convey. First, I mentioned the other day that one of the most scandalous aspects of so-called material poverty — as if it could be isolated in the case of a human being, as if being out on the pavement in winter meant one only suffered from cold and hunger — is that one also suffers from being on the margins of humanity, which, as Aristotle already said of man, is a zoon politikon, a social animal.
6:03 So, I come back to it. What we try with all our might to flee, most often unconsciously, is the whole set of situations that could put us in a kind of face-to-face confrontation where there would no longer be any way to ignore it or to be distracted from it. Now he says 'death.' That's where my main correction lies. Semantically — the general idea is right, but at the semantic level, I avoid saying 'death.'
6:35 First, it sounds a bit like a grand metaphysical vibration. That's not my intention. Last time, I tried, starting from Pascal's theorem, 'the finite is annihilated before the infinite,' I tried not to say the word death, but to replace it with finitude. It's more precise, isn't it? Because from the moment — I think we saw this last time — that man becomes aware that his destiny is limited...
Desire is not a tool: the lesson of Spinoza 7:11 So it's not just death. It's everything that entails. It completely changes his domain of satisfaction. And here I move on to the other questions in order to continue the discussion. If so, can we say that desire is merely the tool that serves this purpose? The tool that provides the necessary distraction? Now, careful, here again, a semantic clarification, and a small philosophical correction too, inspired in me by Spinoza's rigor.
7:44 I'll say it right away — which Spinoza? It's the one who says that admirable thing, isn't it, which is at once very Marxian and very Freudian: we do not desire things because we judge them to be good; we judge them to be good because we desire them. It's marvelous, Spinoza, because it sounds simple. We judge them good because we desire them. But what's less simple — it takes years to understand sentences this simple — is just how much that means that what comes first is not knowledge.
8:20 It's not true that we desire things because we started by reflecting and saying 'yes, that's probably what I need,' because we judge them good. No, we judge them good because, even before we exercise our judgment, before we're in the cognitive field, we have a desire — most often one whose content we don't even know, a desire that moves us without our mastering its meaning, or even its direction. And we judge things good because we desire them; in every case, desire comes first.
8:52 Whether it's a matter of class domination, or of libido, from Marx's side or from Freud's — I always take very precise contents on which one can build a syntax, so to speak. I say this as opposed to those who make do with... it's a bit the equivalent of the will to power, which likewise, Nietzsche is right, also precedes cognitive activity — but the will to power doesn't tell us much, does it?
9:26 Power over what? Because, after all, the power a father exercises over his child isn't the same thing, is it, as a colonial power — the English, for instance, I'm deliberately picking a hot topic — exercise over hundreds of millions of Indians, for example. So one must be precise about the content. Freedom, there you have it, and then the tool — that's why the word 'tool' matters here.
9:57 Desire is not the tool, because a tool is a means that I make use of. No — it's us. It's desire that makes use of us. That's what Spinoza means. We judge things good because we desire them, isn't it — desire makes use of our thought in order to achieve its ends. Is freedom the contradiction of death? I presume he means, is freedom the antonym, the opposite pole to death, or is it merely the red rag?
Freedom as the result of praxis 10:29 So, a kind of little appearance, the pretext, there we are, that allows one to avoid thinking about it. Now, here, there's a great risk of misreading. I'll be much more precise. Freedom is not the red rag. It is the result of the whole set of actions undertaken by man since the beginning of his history.
11:01 And here I mean history in the broad sense, including prehistory, because the history of those who first knapped stones is the path that leads to what we are, isn't it — but in time, and not in some biology where it's enough to be born, born of human parents, to be human. The example of feral children has dispelled that illusion. One can be born human and remain animal if there is no relay — precisely the relay of learning, of inheritance — and here I no longer mean heredity, but historical inheritance.
11:42 So what I mean by this is that freedom is the result of millennia, progressively, of efforts that are precisely the stages of the ascent of praxis, and so it's not at all like a red rag. That's what Hölderlin meant when he said 'Mortals reach the abyss sooner than the gods,' precisely because they are mortal. Thus, with them, the echo changes little by little, for time is long, I quote Hölderlin, it is long, the long duration, time is long, this time which is the progressive emergence of freedom, which gives the only non-totalitarian meaning that can be ascribed to human action.
12:32 We surely can't say that assigning freedom as a meaning is totalitarian — that would be rather paradoxical and contradictory. So, the long duration, time is long, but the true comes to pass. Yes, there we are. So here, freedom is not an ersatz, one more diversion. It is made real — not merely possible, but real — through the material advances that man, fleeing the face-to-face with finitude, has produced: a new world which is itself quite real, which is not merely in his psychology or in his head, in a strategy of flight.
13:19 The Dutch, working so that the sea's waters might become new fields of grain and food, for lack of territory, isn't it, because of a cramped land, are not merely fleeing death. Their activity is in the service, not only of a natural need, but also of a desire. And that is what we find — we commented on it last time — in the admirable excerpts from Hegel's Aesthetics, when he speaks of Dutch painting and says that the most trivial, most apparently prosaic aspects — a bit of wine left in a glass, with the glint of that glass, a little reflection on the lower lip of the girl with a pearl earring, in Vermeer's painting, for example — that all of this takes on an almost seemingly unreal presence, almost supernatural, precisely because there is nothing more material than the labor this painting presupposes.
Personal problems and human problems 14:29 It's that it's miraculous for a Dutchman that a table, that a girl doing needlework at a table set inside a house standing there, should exist — when, not long before, there was the roar of the sea's waves. So, freedom as the result of praxis. Is freedom the contradiction of death — I've just answered that. The person caught up in their personal problems has no time to think about their death.
14:59 Contract fulfilled, it's implied — is that not, in fact, precisely the function of the personal problems we wrongly complain about? Because they nonetheless have this positive result. I don't think I'm betraying the spirit of the excellent question Christophe asks here. Yes, in a sense, he does fulfill the contract — except that I'll just remove, here, correct only the word 'personal.' Even if the person concerned believes these are their personal problems, they are human problems, in the sole and unique measure that their person, in their particular case, is affected by issues they can share with each and every one of us.
15:46 That's why, however much we like to repeat, to sound clever, that tastes and colors aren't to be argued over — as if everyone were shut off in their own bubble, as though it were incommunicable — however much we've repeated that for 10,000 years, for 10,000 years we haven't stopped talking about tastes and colors, and when we've really, how do you say, loved a piece of music, a film, I don't know, we want nothing more than to talk about it with those we want to share it with, isn't it?
16:16 So, the person caught up in their personal problems — even if these were worries, if they are worries, it's because they are worries that man himself has created. It's a worry — more than a worry, it's suffering for an animal to lack food or water, of course, as it is for us too, in that sense we are animals as well — but on top of that, it's a worry for man to be the only one wearing unfashionable clothes at a gathering where everyone else is stylish, well-dressed, and so on.
16:57 I mean, that's not a matter of necessity, but it is human. So we remain free in this kind of worry — free in the sense that it's not a natural, material determination — yes, clothes have to be paid for, but not a natural one. As Rousseau says — and here I finish correcting the word 'personal' — everything men have made, including the worries in which they lock themselves up, men can destroy. There is nothing ineffaceable except what nature imprints, and nature makes neither the rich man, nor the prince, nor the great lord.
17:33 So if my worry is not being the successor to the chief who has just died somewhere in Africa, or to the king who has just passed away in England, and I say, if all these deaths and so on have such an effect, it's not because of some natural determination. So it's not merely personal. I'll stop before it becomes a misreading — no, no misreading, just at times semantic imprecisions, I conclude, a semantics that needs clarifying, there we are, to make sure — not that Christophe himself would misread it, but that his readers don't.
18:10 I thank him for his contribution. I think we'll stop there for tonight, because your questions are so rich, and I have some that are much longer and much more detailed, and I'll be glad to answer them next time. And I thank once again, of course, Philippe who makes this production possible, Pierre-Alain who built the site and was kind enough to come and present it to us, and above all, of course, you yourselves, and your presence, your loyalty — and we're of course looking forward to it, don't hesitate to post questions on the site, on the little answers to questions I've just given, and I won't fail to keep answering next time.
18:57 A very, very good rest of the day, rest of the evening especially, and see you next week, next Wednesday evening.
