English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
The passage from the state of nature to the civil state in Rousseau 0:00 So, I have a question from Jean-Vincent Berthaud, whom I didn't know and I don't regret getting to know, because he's asking us an excellent question. Sorry, I make somewhat arbitrary judgments like that, but... I was rather saying, thank you for sharing the honor with you. I recall that you once spoke of a possible theory of evil in Rousseau. Oh, how happy I am when something leaves a trace, but something crucial that I sense people usually just slide over, as if it were simple.
0:35 We'll come back to it. I see very well what he's alluding to. And I'm very grateful to him that it didn't fall on deaf ears, as they say. In Ionesco's The Lesson — it lightens things up a bit, excuse me, it's supposed to be comic, Ionesco, even if this play is quite dramatic — well, there are only two characters, the professor and the pupil. The pupil says, arriving to get her general culture, in fact she doesn't know how to add two and three, but well, my parents want me to study.
1:05 They want me to go to advanced kindergarten, well, that's Ionesco for you. So, at one point, the professor teaches her to pronounce the vowels, pa, pan, po, pi, like that. There you go, come on, and you develop these phonemes and thus the words will flutter, flutter, flutter. They will no longer risk falling into deaf ears, which are the true tombs of linguistic cultures. There, I'm adding a bit, I'm distorting the text a little, because it's been a long time since — I don't know — going backstage, where I met Barbara.
1:42 Yes, yes, the singer. We used to meet at the Théâtre de la Huchette, which is about twice the size of this room, that is, tiny. And backstage, you see, we'd stand there and see the whole audience. And Barbara was there every night, she was friends with the people in the company, and she was, as you can imagine, always in black, always smiling, charming, silent. There. Oh, I'm getting old, telling you my memories. So, anyway, I remember that, the words that flutter and no longer risk falling into deaf ears, which are the tombs.
2:16 Thank you so much for having that memory, Jean-Vincent. So, that was for Rousseau. Let's continue. Could you, at some point, develop this aspect? And if that seems sensible to you — here's someone walking carefully, and therefore surely — put it in perspective, this theory of Rousseau's, with the theory of violence in Labica — Labica, a former Marxist whom I met at the IRM, the Institute for Marxist Research, together with Clouscard.
2:46 And afterward, if and only if that is perceptive — what caution! The question that goes piano va sano, chi va sano va lontano, you know, as they say among Italians, and in Corsica too. The question of evil and/or its origin in Arendt. Best wishes, thank you very much for this question. So, this is very precise about what Jean-Vincent is alluding to here.
3:21 It's a passage I've already quoted quite often, I believe — chapter 8 of book 1 of The Social Contract. You know the difference. It's mainly Wikisource you want, and lots of PDFs, the text you can have on hand whenever you like. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, book 1, chapter 8, the title of this chapter: On the Civil State. In other words, it's the very important, crucial chapter from which perhaps all of Rousseau's political thought derives, where we distinguish the civil state, the social world.
4:00 Man is a "zôon politikon," as Aristotle would say. He's a social animal, we say political animal, an animal that lives in a city, a community, which we will oppose to the state of nature. The state of nature, the civil state. And he says this. The chapter is not about the state of nature. I said earlier that nature should be left to physicists or biologists, who are better qualified than me or others to speak of it.
4:32 Nor is it about the civil state. It's about the transition. There are those who believe the transition happened a few million years ago. You'll see that it never ceases to occur, this transition. There, I'll say no more, I'll restore the literal text to get exactly to the passage Jean-Vincent is alluding to. "This" — you see the demonstrative there — "this transition from the state of nature to the civil state produces in man a very remarkable change, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had previously lacked."
5:13 "Although he deprives himself in this new state" — in the civil state — "of several advantages he holds from nature" — nature, I can admit it, I have the right, no one tells me anything anymore — "although he deprives himself in this new state, in the city, of several advantages he holds from nature, he gains others so great." And there, the crescendo begins. "His faculties are exercised and developed."
5:43 You know that measurements have been taken on feral children. You know, those cases of children who, for obscure and often unspeakable reasons, were either lost or abducted — that's the story of Mowgli, the wolf children — but even on farms, often, you know, children have been found locked in sheds like that, later rediscovered. In short, children deprived from birth, practically until the moment they're discovered, when the world rediscovers them, and who found themselves deprived of relation to the other.
6:24 And it's been measured that there are far fewer synapses, fewer brain connections, than in those who lived in society, who had language, for example. Second example, because Rousseau moves very fast here, he's elliptical, he goes straight to the essential. "His faculties are exercised and developed." But wait, that's enormous, what the civil state brings, contrary to what fools believe who think everything comes from genetics. It's enough to be born to "be," whereas that's only the beginning of a becoming.
7:01 And here's the second example. Those are measurements — do inform yourselves. Compare the level of psychic, mental development — what's rather hastily called "intelligence," if you will, insofar as it's not a vague word but one tied to measurable factors — between someone deaf-mute from birth and someone blind from birth. Have you ever thought of making that comparison? Can you guess where I'm going with this?
7:31 To the visual arts and music? No, that's a shortcut I'm making myself. But it's true that blind people are deprived of the beauty of the world. But not of the speech of the other. On the contrary, you know that blind people have an extremely developed sense of hearing. In the fifth arrondissement, there's an association of blind piano tuners, all the professional piano tuners, right?
8:03 Those who have the finest ear, to check whether the note is precisely tuned to within a few commas — the comma divides the semitones, etc. They're often blind people. The blind person is deprived, not of others, but of things. The deaf-mute person is not deprived of things. He roams his gaze over the world. But he doesn't hear, he doesn't hear me. And he isn't heard.
8:34 They have much more school delay and mental handicap, so to speak, in someone deaf-mute from birth. All else being equal. If you put a deaf-mute person with someone — a good educator, a good trainer, who does the appropriate exercises — in any case, there are many, statistically, if nothing is done, there are far more mental difficulties in someone deaf-mute from birth than in someone blind from birth.
9:06 So, come on, let me go back to Rousseau's text — but look, we mustn't slide over it too quickly. "His faculties are exercised and developed." That's only the start of a crescendo, but look at everything I've just said. That was hasty, I took two examples. And I'll finish this point before leaving it. "His faculties are exercised and developed." You have to take "exercise" the way you would with a muscle. If you don't train for sport, you'll never win a gold medal. So, the greatest example, of course, is everything language brings to thought.
9:42 If you don't have the sign, how could you have the content? If you don't have the word, how could you have the thing? Let me give an example. How would you think 20,287,719,000? If you don't have numerals. "Chiffre" [numeral] is an Arabic word. Fortunately we didn't stay stuck with Roman numerals. A numeral is a way of expressing quantities. You see, among the Romans, there wasn't a single great mathematician in Rome.
10:12 There were great jurists, extraordinary architects, public works, champions. But mathematics — how could you... One is a stick. Two is two sticks. Three is three sticks. Beyond three, we get confused. If there are four sticks, then we start using a letter. How could you do mathematics? Me, I say to you 27,965,000. It's precise, it's determinate. I think that huge number very easily.
Ennobled passions and degradation below the animal 10:42 because I have a whole linguistic system to express it. There. Come on, let me pick up the text again and I won't interrupt the crescendo anymore. So, he loses advantages. Nature — he gains others so great. Let me pick it up there. Comma: "his faculties are exercised and developed." "His passions are ennobled." Well now! There, it's no longer a kind of knowledge, it's the passions. Sexuality becomes The Princess of Clèves.
11:15 Tristan and Iseult, Romeo and Juliet, my goodness! "His passions are ennobled." That doesn't mean, no, "ennobled" doesn't mean they're given a title of nobility. It doesn't mean it's an elite. It means that passion is where one is passive. Animals, they undergo sexuality, they undergo the laws of the reproduction of the species. Us too, in order to reproduce the species. But with us, sexuality, which is not at our service as individuals, is at the service of the species.
11:48 Don't forget, in the animal world, nothing matters about us as individuals. The most beautiful example, or the most tragic, as you like, is locusts. They mate and die right afterward. There. They've fulfilled their function, the species is assured of continuing. The individuals go off to be thrown out with the trash. They're swept up afterward. In Africa, there are crickets — I've seen whole trash cans of them. Whereas we, we still insist on pulling libido toward our own individual, personal benefit.
12:26 "I would love only you my whole life long." "His passions are ennobled." You see the crescendo. "His faculties are exercised and developed" — the theoretical order. "His passions are ennobled" — the practical order. "His whole soul is elevated to such a point that..." — bang, there I stop, and there's the passage that Jean-Vincent had the merit not to forget. A terrible passage, and we're back to the problem of evil.
12:59 The immensity of Rousseau. "His whole soul is elevated to such a point that" — yes, you think he's a fool saying that in nature man is nothing and in society, well, everything is settled. "...if the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him below the condition he came from" — careful, pay attention here, I warn you grammatically, the verbs, moods and tenses are going to change; up to now it's been indicative.
13:33 "If" — already this is hypothetical — "if the abuses of this new condition" — the new conditions being the transition to the civil state, to society — "if the abuses of this new condition did not" — man not — "often degrade him below the condition he came from" — how can one be below the state of nature, below the animal? It's not just that one is a beast, it's that one is bestial.
14:04 That's not the same thing. An animal is not bestial, it's animal. The animal doesn't know good and evil. It does what it can, not what it ought. "I must eat to live." There, I'm being an animal, that's true, it's true that I must eat to live until my death. And that, that's the animal part in me, that we share with the earthworm. That's not what defines us. That's not what makes us know ourselves. On the other hand, must I stop at a red light?
14:38 No cop around, two in the morning? Oh no, you never do that. Clouscard nearly died. The driver was killed — the taxi, a right-of-way violation, it was terrible. Anyway. There was an oil slick from the Louvre. I can run the red light, but I ought not to. So it's pointless to say "I must eat to live" as if I were the one deciding among my duties, right?
15:08 What presumption! We must recognize — you can guess — that it's the verb "can" that applies here. "I cannot live without eating." That's clear. That's natural, that's physical, that's animal. There, I have no choice, that's where I'm the least free. Especially when I have no food — some people don't see how much of a constraint that is because they're lucky enough, right, to always have a supermarket nearby. They're not in Gaza.
Figures of evil: Gaza, the Congo, the Khmer Rouge 15:43 That's the second time the problem of evil has brought us back to Gaza. Current events, you'll say, but we had ended on the terrible tercets of Baudelaire's "The Cracked Bell," hadn't we? "My soul is cracked" — look at the crescendo there again, but a terrible crescendo — "and when in its woes it wants to fill the cold night air with its songs, it often happens that its weakened voice seems," unlike the bell that resounds fully, "that its weakened voice seems the thick death-rattle of a wounded man left forgotten" — it's a rattle, blood coming to obstruct the voice, the throat — "seems the thick death-rattle of a wounded man left forgotten by the edge of a lake of blood, under a great heap of the dead," and there I suddenly think of tens of thousands of children under the concrete of Gaza.
16:30 Of Gaza and of Lebanon, who die without moving in immense struggle. We're talking about evil, aren't we? Oh, it's not only there that there's evil. Let me come back to our theme, right? I made a point of starting — I know, I know I hate this voyeurism, but there, I really can't help but show you these unbearable images of Makala prison, which isn't the biggest prison, the only big prison — it's terrible, the lack of equipment, right?
17:07 In Kinshasa, the most populous city in sub-Saharan Africa. And yes, well, this isn't Jews and Arabs, it's not Germans and Soviets, it's not, no, it's not Nazis and communists, it's not that. Nor is it tribal, don't think that. Don't think that. The greatest genocide of modern times, yes, yes, in number of deaths.
17:37 Look it up, don't just take my word for it, these are serious matters, how could you trust Pagani on his word alone? Without fabrication, as they used to say. Look carefully, search YouTube, whatever you like, on Wikipedia, right? The tragedy of the African Great Lakes region — I'm using on purpose a geographical notion that encompasses, of course, mainly — I was talking about Kinshasa — the former Belgian Congo, which in the meantime was called Zaire, and today the Democratic Republic of Congo, the DRC — but also the two small countries clinging there, bordering Rwanda and Burundi.
18:21 You already know it's the greatest genocide of the postwar era along with the Khmer Vert — Khmer Rouge, sorry — you know, the Khmer Rouge, because they started by first fleeing the corrupt, polluted city to bring the populations to be massacred in the countryside, fiercely anti-Soviet, let me remind you, because there were attempts to use them as instruments of anti-communism. In short, all the great powers of Western NATO, so concerned with freedom and democracy, voted at the UN for the Khmer Rouge against the pro-Soviet Cambodians who had rid the planet of that horrific regime.
19:06 That's a history yet to be written. Because there are still those, right, who play at being pro-Chinese as if there were continuity between the China of the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution, where fourteen-year-old kids with a Kalashnikov targeted the communists who had been on the Long March alongside Mao. Anyway, I'm talking about evil, you know, and the Khmer Rouge and the Congo, that produces — that produces corpses.
19:36 So, let me come back to the Congo — that's more than 10 million deaths in the toll. And it's not over, it's not over. Find out what's happening at the eastern border of the DRC, between Rwanda, Uganda, the DRC, the anglophones, etc. It was the King of the Belgians — no, I say this because there are plenty who aren't aware — the Belgian Congo, at the time, didn't even belong to the Belgian people.
20:07 It was the private property of Leopold, King of the Belgians. It was his garden, a tropical garden. A tropical garden, four times the size of France, with an Amazon, a virgin forest. Only, at the time, there was no synthetic rubber yet. He had seen that money could be made from natural rubber. I don't know — and he found that the yields were never sufficient. Villages were burned. But look, there are photos of twelve-year-old kids with their arms cut off. Women whose breasts were cut off.
Definition of evil; Nazism and neopositivism 20:38 And I'm not joking, and I'm not even talking about those who were killed. Evil. "If the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him below the condition he came from." There, thank you Jean-Vincent for noticing that for the first time there is a theory of evil, a modern theory of evil, from the pen of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, founder of the social contract.
21:10 Evil is when the state of nature is reinstated in an unnatural way. What I'm saying tonight is complicated, but I'm committed to giving this answer to Jean-Vincent's question in a way that matches the gravity of what's at stake. Evil is when? We've clearly seen the state of nature, the civil state. Reread Rousseau's text, you'll never forget it again, right? There's instinct on one side, institution on the other — for example, sexuality in the state of nature, marriage the institution and no longer the instinct.
21:46 That's the proof, that it changes. Here it's monogamous, there it's polygamous, that's among humans, it's no longer nature. So, there's this dichotomy, it's quite clear, one gets the impression, if one doesn't stop at "his whole soul is elevated to such a point that..." — I always stop the text right at "that." If one stops there, one gets the impression that... We've been taught Rousseau very badly, as though he were telling us that we gained everything by leaving nature and passing to the civil state.
22:17 Well, really now. But then he'd be contradicting himself, since elsewhere he says "everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Creator." I'm quoting him, it's another text — "everything degenerates in the hands of man." One would need to know which. It should be noted, I should note in passing, I don't want to develop this today, but I say it for attentive ears like Jean-Vincent's, that he doesn't say "everything is good as it leaves nature." Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Creator. Me, I call that the supernatural.
22:50 That is, exactly the opposite of nature. There you go. Besides, when we get the impression that there's a miracle, in the sense of play, we say, "oh dear, that can't be merely natural." You see? So, I repeat, evil is the reintroduction of the state of nature, but a non-natural reintroduction by someone who had already moved into the civil state. What's horrible about Nazism?
23:20 No, no, I'm not dwelling on it, I'm not a voyeur. The detail, you know, looking closely — I am not whitewashing the Nazis, far from it. But I mean, when you read the chronicle of human history, it's appalling. Scripture says it's a vale of tears, doesn't it? You look at the wars of religion, noses cut off, tongues cut off, whole villages destroyed, it's appalling. Look, when you go on vacation down south, the A6, A7 motorway, you arrive after Avignon, you get to Mornas.
23:53 Some of you know Mornas on the motorway, that's where everything gets decided, whether you continue toward Spain, turn west, head toward the Côte d'Azur, toward Italy — it's decided at Mornas. And you look to the left, there's a cliff, a sheer drop, you see ruins, ramparts — that's where the Catholics used to throw the Protestants off, just as elsewhere the Protestants would cut off the noses and tongues of Catholics. I'm not here keeping score, handing out prizes.
24:23 That's not it. What's horrifying about Nazism? It's that it can't be explained by barbarism, by underdevelopment — these aren't beasts, they're not animals, they're people with advanced degrees in philosophy, they're physicists, it's Heidegger, it's Heisenberg. Heisenberg wasn't someone who denounced people to the Gestapo, but I mean, he never saw any problem with the regime — we have all the testimonies — he thought it was rather good, this taking-in-hand of Germany.
24:57 I say this because with neopositivism, which is the dominant ideology — I don't know, with Popper at its head — you get the impression, he rarely talks about evil, he never sees evil in the crushing of Vietnam under more bombs than on all the battlefields of the Second World War combined. No, but with the neopositivism surrounding us, we come to believe that scientific pertinence is enough to guarantee what that little Swedish girl said, Greta, I don't know how, Greta Thunberg.
25:37 She said, listen to the scientists, because she knows about science. Me, I don't know anything about it. The most advanced science of our time — how could this kid, this poor girl they've made play this role, possibly know anything about it? As François de Negroni admirably puts it, it's not, as she complains, that they've stolen her youth because of some pollution or other, but that they're stealing her maturity. What does she say? Listen to the scientists, listen to the scientists.
26:08 Scientific pertinence, which I respect — I told you earlier, I wouldn't be alive, and we wouldn't be alive without science, without vaccines. But that pertinence — scientific, biological, chemical, mathematical, astrophysical — never guarantees moral, political, or legal pertinence. I come back to my business about domains. We'll come back to it, this distinction of domains.
Kant's two domains, legality and legitimacy 26:39 I'll tell you quickly, it becomes clear, for the first time in a well-conceptualized way, in the extraordinary introduction to Kant's masterpiece, his third critique, the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, or Critique of Judgment as it's translated. In the introduction there's a distinction between two domains. All the knowledge available to us divides into two domains. And you'll find Jussieu on one side and the Sorbonne on the other.
27:11 There's the domain of legislation by nature. Y equals F of X. Heat expands bodies. There's the domain of legislation by nature. And there's the domain of legislation by freedom. What's freedom doing there? I learned from Deleuze, so-and-so, Onfray, Spinoza, that we're all determined. Ah yes, yes, but I never said otherwise. But between being determined as — you see how I come back to it, you think I'm making detours.
27:46 I have to eat to live. We saw earlier that it's a con to talk like that. I can't live without eating, that's correct. But it's not me who decides that I must — as I must wash my hands before sitting down at the table, or that I must let the lady on my right be served before me at dinner. You have to see that when there's no physical necessity, when the opposite is possible, then I am freer when my determination is social than when my determination is natural.
28:21 That's the great result we arrive at today. And so what's most criminal is that a being — freely, since it's a human being — decides to reintroduce physical necessity, the balance of force, that is, what governs the state of nature. Again, when I see wild dogs chasing a herd of fleeing gazelles, and a gazelle is giving birth, I saw this with wildebeest in Africa, and you see the fetus coming out — I'm sorry, I hope your children are in bed — but the hyenas or wild dogs, the lycaons or hunting dogs that hunt in packs, grab the fetus as it's coming out. It's horrible, well, that's evil — what evil? He's got cubs starving in the den, if you want my opinion, he does what he can, he doesn't know good and evil, he goes to the very limit of his powers, and when his powers reach their limit, he lies down on the ground and rots.
29:29 it does not exist, it subsists — that's what the animal is. It's already not bad, it's better than a rock, honestly. Consider a stag grazing in the grass, in the morning dew, it knows happy or unhappy feeling — well, happy — which a rock does not have, no, no, still. But good and evil is not its problem — that's precisely my subject.
30:02 All this is in Jean-Vincent's question, I won't linger on it any longer, because I know the other questions we've grouped together tonight will pick up on what I'm saying now. It all holds together, if you like, each time. We've made a huge step today — we've seen, thanks to Rousseau, that there are two determinations. Yes, I'm not against determinism, I'm not an idiot, if there were no determination nothing would be knowable.
30:35 I couldn't derive laws, I don't know. But there are laws I can change and others I cannot change. I can't live without eating. I can run a red light. Pétain is legal. He didn't stage a coup, he's in conformity with the law — it's the Assembly that gave him full powers, yes or no. That's why they drum legality into us. But he's illegitimate.
31:07 And the one who left for London, the rebel, he's illegal, but he's the one who restores legitimacy. Well, it's him, allying himself with those who get slaughtered on the ground in the Vercors, that is, the communists. There you go. Everything that has been fought — the Gaullist right and the communist left — for how many generations now? Since Giscard, how long is that? Mitterrand, Jospin, Sarkozy, all that. Well, don't be surprised where we've ended up.
31:40 And that's nothing, wait until you see the economic and financial crisis that's coming, now that there's no more Marxist opposition to make of you what they want. They can announce measures, but there's no going back. There you go. So, things hold together — evil is the reintroduction, within the civil state, of a state of nature, in a non-natural way.
Emile: the crisis of the revolutions and alienation 32:13 So, I come back to it. When I refer to Rousseau, it's because — and here I leave the text of the Social Contract that Jean-Vincent very intelligently and aptly reminded us of — for this extract from Émile, which I cite for another reason, about the moment when the tutor in Émile, who broadly develops the ideas of the author Rousseau, tries to convince the mother of his pupil, who is a feudal lady, a duchess, that her son should take up a manual trade — which is a real scandal and sacrilege, because among the nobility one does not work, and especially not with one's hands.
32:57 Already, the bourgeois work in trade, speculation, but as for the nobleman, he doesn't work at all. When he warns her with an incredibly prophetic text, just a few years before the Revolution: "We are approaching the state of crisis and the century of revolutions." Revolutions, forsooth, alas — pardon, the state of crisis and revolutions. "Who can answer for what will become of you then?"
33:31 "The great becomes small, the monarch becomes a subject; are the blows of fate so rare that you can count on being spared them? What will that pompous fool do, stripped of everything, who speaks of his son — for it's of him he speaks — whom you will have raised only for grandeur? What will that satrap do, brought low, who knows how to live only by gold, who does not know how to make use of himself, and who puts his whole being into what is foreign to him?" First formulation. Of the alienation I'm pointing to here historically. "Puts his whole being into what is alius" — in Latin, other.
34:02 "And who puts his whole being into what is foreign to him. Admire as much as you like that defeated king who, in a fury, wants to bury himself under the ruins of his throne during a palace revolution. As for me, I despise him. I see that he is king only by his crown, and that he is nothing without it." Like Harpagon, he's nothing once he's lost his strongbox, his money. The king is nothing once he loses his crown. That's alienation. "But he who loses it and can do without it is then above it."
34:32 "From the rank of king, which a coward, a fool, a wicked man can fill as well as another, he rises to the state of man." From the rank of king, he rises to the state of man. "Which so few men know how to fill" — in case there are those who think that because they're born of human parents, that's it, they're men. No. We saw earlier that with wolf-children, it was very hard to prove they were human. "From the rank of king, which a coward, a wicked man, and a fool can fill, he rises to the state of man, which so few men know how to fill."
35:03 And that's where the two determinations come in. Good. "There is nothing ineradicable" — so nothing can be done, nothing can be changed — "except what nature imprints." Nature has arranged things so that I must eat to live, must consume something to live. And if possible, something living. Well yes, whether in the form of salad or meat, whatever you like, vegan or not, but there has to be pre-existing life, right?
35:35 Plants have the advantage over us, don't they, of feeding on the mineral salts in the earth. Well yes, and with chlorophyll too. But the animal, on the other hand, is always cannibalistic in a sense, it needs the living. Well, let's talk about that another time, it's interesting. "There is nothing ineradicable except what nature imprints. And nature makes neither the rich man, nor the prince, nor the great lord. What men have made, men can destroy."
36:08 So those determinations can be changed. And that's why we're never told about social determination. Or we're told that it's superficial, that it's a Marxist fantasy. Well yes, of course, what a coincidence. And that's how a line gets drawn through the greatest achievements of that fabulous century of Enlightenment. Or people flatly say it was one century too many, like Jean de Viguerie and company. There you go. Another question perhaps? Thanks very much anyway to Jean-Vincent. You can see there's plenty of material to come back to.
The griot, then Theseus and Tristan: the same structure 36:45 Hello, Mr. Blomond. I'll skip the thanks. It is I who thank you. You know very well you wouldn't be here otherwise — how bothered would I be then? Ah yes, yes, ah no, yes, no — the second line and the half that follows catches my attention: "We have only to do better than you, according to your own teachings." Well there you go. I have to say, it makes me happy to read things like that.
37:15 I try, I've told you before, I'm not a creator. I only pass on, you see, the creations of others or the advances of others, whether in philosophy, music, literature, whatever I can. I may not always take the best of it, but I do what I can. Still, once I've given them to you, you take them and go further. But I've already told you I have no method except that of the griot. Do you remember my griot?
37:46 No written memory, since he's from a continent without writing, south of the Sahara, right? And so, it's oral memory. That requires an effort that won't go back very far, you see? Do you remember that griot who, during the great Dogon festival, which happens only once every 60 years — very rare in those cultures, such long cycles — was the master of ceremonies and greeted everyone arriving from the valleys of such villages, such ethnic groups, the valleys, because the Dogon live in a mountainous region, the Bandiagara cliff.
38:25 "And here is Sidibé, son of Touré, son of Traoré." He does what's done in the Bible. Souleymane Ben Daoud, Solomon, son of David. You see? "And son of this one, and son of Joseph, and son of Joseph." There you go. And then, and then, "the centipede has too many legs, they can't be counted." That's what the griot says, like a broken record. It's not me repeating that. "The centipede has too many legs, they can't be counted."
38:57 It comes down to: listen, guys, I've done my job, as far back as I can remember. It's up to you now. As Aragon says at the end of one of his most beautiful poems, addressing the young: it's up to you to say what I see. Thank you very much for those two lines, Léo. Second, I would have liked to understand the Odyssean continuum of the feminine figure between Antigone and Iseult. Iseult being, according to Clouscard — he rightly reminds us of the title — Léo Martinez, the Antigone.
39:30 Well, I'm not going to deal with that all at once. It's not that it's deeper or more important — it is profound. It's not that it's harder than what we've just seen. What we've just seen, I said, we won't stop coming back to it, along with Jean-Vincent's question. No, but there are two separate files, if you like. It's true that I had already established a continuum, to borrow Léo's expression, a continuum already between Greek mythology and, as they said in the Middle Ages, the matter of Britain.
40:15 That's beautiful, isn't it? Lancelot, Tristan, Perceval, King Arthur, the same cloth — the matter of Britain. Don't try to distinguish French Brittany from British Britain, all that was more or less the same thing back then. You have a forest of Brocéliande, not far from Carnac, right? Well, I had established a continuum, or rather, I had indicated a continuum between the two mythologies — you just have to read them, without interpreting.
40:53 Theseus — I'm talking about the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, the Cretan cycle, not Antigone — Antigone belongs to the Theban cycle, the cycle of the Labdacids — but I understand why Léo asks the question this way. I come back to the Cretan cycle, always somewhat unsettling, that of Crete: namely a hero, Theseus, who leaves Athens to put an end to the doings of a monster called the Minotaur, in Crete, on an island, and who succeeds, who manages it thanks to the help of the monster's half-sister.
41:35 But I'm not joking. They have the same mother, the Minotaur and — what's her name — the thread, Ariadne. Ariadne on the rock, recounting the wrongs done to her. They have the same mother, that is, Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, king of the underworld, right?
42:07 Minos, who had the labyrinth built in which the Minotaur is confined. Yes or no? I'm not joking here. Because she deceived her husband, which happens often, with a bull. That's mythology, it's not me. Bestiality earlier, this is bestialism, as they say — that's not it. I seem, this way, to be broaching delicate matters, but you know, what we learn in secondary school classes, Racine's Phèdre, I come back to it.
42:44 All this is said clearly, well, clearly according to the code of the time. Everyone understood, everyone knew these stories by heart, in that small confined world of the court, well, cultured, literate people — the countryside was mostly illiterate — but when Phèdre says: "O hatred of Venus, o fatal wrath, into what wanderings of love my mother was thrown!" You see! Talk about wanderings, with a bull, no less.
43:16 It produced a hybrid. A hybrid, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Crete — one more step and we'd be in Greece, but here we're still more or less in Egypt. Well, incredible! But here I move on from Rousseau, Marx as references, I move to Lévi-Strauss — who would have thought — who carried out the structural analysis of myths and who says that Wagner was the first to have done it.
43:47 He said it in a score, as it happens, before it was said in a text by Lévi-Strauss. The same story: the hero embarks toward an island to put an end to the doings of a monster called, this time, the Morholt, in Ireland. Yes or no? Ireland is indeed an island. And the Morholt has as half-sister Iseult.
44:19 Ariadne betrays her own side by helping Theseus with the thread, you see, because between us, the girls were smitten. Well, the girls — Iseult, I don't know, we'll see later, since I'm only dwelling on the continuity here, thanks to Léo's question — but I mean, in any case, the two daughters of Pasiphae, Ariadne and her sister Phèdre, the younger sister, were in love with Theseus before even having seen him, because he was preceded by talk, by his exploits, by the accounts of his exploits.
44:57 Isn't that so? And not only his exploits against monsters — monsters throttled, brigands punished, Procrustes and Cercyon and Sciron and Sinis, the scattered bones of the giant of Epidaurus, and Crete still steaming with the Minotaur's blood. Those are the exploits — the earth purged of monsters that keep man from dwelling there. But there are also these conquests of women. That fascinates young girls. "Helen stolen from her parents in Sparta, Salamis witness to Periboea's tears, so many others whose very names have escaped him, too-credulous souls whom his ardor deceived, Ariadne on the rock recounting the wrongs done to her."
45:46 That's beautiful. It's the same story. She's in love, so deeply in love with the other, the stranger who comes from Athens. And watch out, because in fact — here's the Marxist coming back, forgive me — the myth is recalling, in the unconscious of mythological religion, the unformulated but very explicit emancipation of the Greeks from the Cretans.
46:16 The Cretans and the Phoenicians and the sea peoples dominated the Mediterranean at that time, well before we speak of Athenian power, isn't that so? Well, Athens, by killing the Minotaur, stops paying the tribute, that is, the tax, no doubt, not to the Cretans. The tribute, in the myth, was that young young young girl who had to be delivered each year to be devoured by the Minotaur. That means he must have given quite a bit of wheat. There you go. And olive oil.
46:46 So she betrays out of love for this Theseus. Well, Iseult is the sister-in-law of the Morholt, of the monster, of the Irish hero. Isn't that so? And since Tristan has just killed her brother-in-law in a duel, she should avenge him, and that's what she does. She takes the sword, because Tristan is wounded, to finish him off. And there, unfortunately, her eyes meet his.
47:18 Isn't that so? And from the moment their eyes meet, there's nothing left but that. The famous Tristan chord, on which there are a thousand pages of musicology. Let's move on. Mad love. There you go. And that, we're no longer in Greece. Thank you, Léo. That's where the discontinuity lies. Isn't that so? The discontinuity — Theseus, for his part, recycles himself after Ariadne.
The discontinuity: mad love, Iseult and Antigone 47:54 Now I'm going to show you the discontinuity. Theseus abandons Ariadne. He's a guy. Guys are often unfaithful. Because they travel. Man the navigator, woman the shore-dweller, especially in those archaic societies. Nowadays it's different. There are businesswomen who fly more often than I do. It's disgusting. But there, you see, so imagine Ariadne, her hair disheveled, waking up on the shore because they'd made a stopover — they needed fresh water, I don't know — with Theseus.
48:33 He gets back on board and forgets. Well, it's not nice. She saved his life, she gave him the thread to defeat the Minotaur. Theseus, what can you say. But he recycles himself with — he comes back, he has a court, isn't that so? And so he comes back, she's abnormal. He's a couple with a king — a queen, actually, who will be Ariadne's little sister. "Ariadne, my sister, wounded by what love did you die on the shore where you were abandoned?" You see, whereas Tristan and Iseult, that's mad love.
49:03 That's modern. It only comes with Christianity. There you go. So the continuity is staggering at the level of the structure, in the Lévi-Straussian sense of myth. A hero sets off toward an island where there's a monster to eliminate, and it's diabolically precise, isn't that so? And he is helped in his exploit of killing the monster by the sister-in-law of the monster in question. What am I saying, sister-in-law? Half-sister. I mean half-brother, half-sister.
49:34 That's not the same thing, you only said sister-in-law. There you go. So I won't say any more today, but great thanks to Léo for giving me the opportunity to make these reminders. Isn't that so? But what is true, and I'll end on this — it's actually with this that Léo's question ends — it's true that Iseult is not Antigone. Antigone doesn't play it selfishly.
50:08 We saw it earlier, when we saw it in Rousseau: his passions become ennobled, his faculties are exercised and develop in man, his passions become ennobled in the civil state. That is to say, in the state of nature, sexuality is not for me, it's for the species. I think it's for me — it's a trick. I get taken in. Look at grasshoppers that die after making love. After — well, after mating, let's not exaggerate. Precisely, the passions are not yet ennobled. Whereas all Tristan and Iseult want is to be — how does he put it in the matter of Brittany, Chrétien de Troyes — body to body, flesh to flesh.
50:51 The first night Perceval spends with Blanchefleur in the quest for the Grail, isn't that so? Body to body, flesh to flesh. There you go. And that's Perceval. Tristan ruins his political and worldly career, if you prefer, when he was truly the heir of King Mark, isn't that so? And here he betrays his uncle, King Mark — he betrays him out of love for the woman destined for the king, for Iseult the Blonde.
Internal contradiction happens only to someone 51:26 There you go. We'll come back to it. Léo, it's inexhaustible. Bastien du Rocher, I have a somewhat late question, more related to the previous cycle on contradiction. Ah! Regarding the scope of dialectics, and as soon as one says contradiction, one speaks of dialectics, that's good. Regarding the scope of dialectics as you define it in your videos, you say notably that what is dialectical is the work of contradiction internal to something, and that it is therefore restricted to the subject alone.
52:01 That's Bastien, that's very good, he's very good. I'm delighted to see how precisely the literal meaning of what I said is perceived. Except that, in his place, I would have finished by saying it's the work of contradiction internal to someone, because when the contradiction is internal, it can't happen to something, it can only happen to someone. Well, he understood it well, there, you're showing it. And so it is restricted to the subject alone, that's what's important, since they are the only ones to possess a...
52:33 If you're wondering what a subject is, that's good, Bastien, he's giving you the answer. Well yes, the mystery of the subject, well there, Bastien, we have the answer. Of this system, if I may say "it is something," of a subject I must say "it is someone." Someone has been through here. I see it in the arrangement of the room, there, you see. So, since they are the only ones to possess an interior, the pebble, for lack of interiority — you see that this isn't the interior in the physical sense — one could hit the pebble.
53:14 So you tear off a piece of the pebble, and you think you see the inside. No, you're still on the outside. Being outside oneself, as Hegel says, isn't that so? And likewise, since we're coming back to the couple, to Tristan and Iseult, you see, the questions complete each other after all, since what do Tristan and Iseult want, to possess one another? No, that's not the possession of bodies. The possession of bodies is frenzied precisely out of powerlessness, out of the impossibility of grasping what is being sought there.
53:49 It's that the two subjects want to merge. They can only do it through their respective objects, isn't that so? And yes, we see quite a few things there. I note that the young ladies are taking notes, that's good. But yes, I'm not the only one to say it. I'd ask my friend Christian, a great psychoanalyst, if I'm not soliciting Freud, but it seems to me that's a bit what Lacan — I mean, that's a bit the basis of what Lacan means when he says there is no sexual relation.
54:26 The true relation is between souls. Souls cannot grasp one another. When I say subjects, I mean souls, isn't that so? And how can you grasp a gaze with your hands? Remember that extraordinary passage — there I'm commenting on internal contradiction, thanks Léo, without which we couldn't clarify all these — no, these aren't details, it's more important than fascinating details — but look, when the narrator in In Search of Lost Time sees for the first time the brunette with the plump cheeks, as he says.
54:59 He doesn't yet know that she will be the passion of his life, it's the future Gilberte, isn't that so? And he dwells on the brilliance. He doesn't even speak of her eyes, he doesn't even speak of her gaze, he speaks of the brilliance of her gaze. You know how a gaze can change in brilliance, depending on this or that look, or if someone says a word to it, it can darken, or on the contrary, light up. And he says this incredible passage: "If we thought that this young girl's eyes were merely a shining disc of mica" — in other words, if one could reconstruct the closest possible approximation — and if Proust imagines this in the 1920s, you can well imagine that now, the bionic man, you know that better, well, one can give the illusion of an external appearance, isn't that so?
55:46 "If we thought that this young girl's eyes were merely a shining disc of mica, we would not be eager to unite her life to ours." But we sense — look how careful he is, it's not a knowledge, who knows — but we sense that what shines, S-H-I-N-E-S, from the verb to shine, I tell you I'm speaking of the brilliance, that he's speaking of the brilliance, but we sense that what shines through this reflecting disc is the lawn of the racecourses she crossed the day before, the pastry shops she is about to enter, it's her world, her world of privileged people, of course, but the shadows of her house, in short, her obscure and incessant will, and I felt clearly that to possess this gaze, I would need to possess her whole life, which was impossible — it's extraordinary, passages like that, but at the same time, it's what makes it so that, in the rage of its being impossible, one takes it out on bodies, I won't say one is wrong, I won't say
56:56 the moral of it, but it is souls that seek each other through bodies, that's interesting, they are subjects, yes, so the pebble can never be contradicted by its erosion — thank you, Bastien, because that wasn't obvious to grasp, you see, because we're so used to making someones out of somethings, and that has a name, it's called animism, do you agree, giving a soul to what doesn't have one — if I say the soul of these glasses, I don't know, looking at me, I'm being bad, I'm not for it, but there you go, the soul of the mountain, the plant soul — a soul, still, it's alive, something that animates it, among the Greeks, a vegetative soul, why not, that's not the point — the soul, in any case, what must be retained now, and I thank Bastien for not having missed it, is the relation of a mountain to its erosion,
58:06 we're so used to personifying things, let me pick up my thread, that we say, for example, that the swell attacks the cliff, the cliff resists as best it can, you see, as if there were a fight — there is no fight, it's like earlier, I have to eat in order to, I cannot live without eating, the cliff — the sea cannot tear away the cliff on the first blow, well, on the tenth, on the hundredth, on the hundred-thousandth, I mean, there's no more cliff, on the contrary, it's the sea that recedes and the coast that extends, like an Aigues-Mortes, isn't that so, where there used to be waters, "aigues" once, but now there's only ground — Aigues-Mortes, just as there are flowing waters and then when they're ponds, they become Mortefontaines.
58:56 There you go, thanks for seeing that — yes, we believe there's a contradiction between the ocean and the cliff, thanks to Bastien for reminding us it's not an opposition, it's as if there were a soul in the fact that I must remain vertical and not let myself be overcome by the ocean. In that case, must we reject all dialectics of nature such as one might undertake, Engels, or more recently — that's not quite right — or more recently, it concerns the great Lucien Sève, who has left us, or of course Georges Gastaud, founder of the PRCF, whom I greet here.
Dialectic of nature? The philosopher's domain 59:45 But it's true that we always have this point on which we struggle to agree. And here I'm going to try to be clear. It's a complicated matter, but we don't have all the time, I'm going to try to be as dense as possible, well, to insist on what seems decisive to me in this comparison. I did not say there is no dialectic outside of man and history, even though — insofar as I insist — Marxist thinkers were much more interested in the effects of dialectics in history in order to understand the world we live in, in which we live, as a result, ever since flint stones really began to split, and the beginning of history in the extensive sense, even before writing, counting prehistory, ever since — how does Marx put it — there appeared an animal that does not merely content itself with being born in order to exist, but produces its existence, in the social production of their existence.
1:00:53 It's not even solitary production. In the social production of their existence, then, with tools, then later machines, men enter into determined relations, necessary, independent of their will — relations of production, etc. Famous text, the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the original title of Capital. I'll go quickly. And these are things that must be familiar in the field where Sébastien is situated, in revolutionary thought.
1:01:26 In that case, dialectical thought — above all, I think a Marxist should above all try to see, well, when did the bourgeoisie begin? We had a very interesting talk at the Marxist café, which wouldn't exist without the initiatives precisely of Gastaud and — I'm tired, I'm getting old, I forget her name — Gilda, our dear Gilda, isn't that so, daughter of the unforgettable Léon Landini, isn't that so, who is even a little older than me, imagine that, and to whom I wish to remain with us as long as possible — there was a talk by, what's his name, ah well, I can't find the name, that he gave us, precisely an attempt to try to pinpoint the birth of capitalism, it's not obvious, there aren't many studies on this even among Marxists, isn't that so, did it begin with the Italian republics,
1:02:38 the Genoas, the Venices, etc., did it begin in the Middle Ages with the "dusty feet," pie powders, from walking so much, like that, from walking and walking, from town to town, the feet, the dusty feet, if you will, at a time when the bourgeoisie was still embryonic — and I won't settle it, but in any case, it deserves the investment of a Marxist, just as much as knowing whether the Big Bang is a reality, or whether there's something before, what, let's leave that to the physicists — there, on the other hand, these are disagreements I have with many philosophers who spend an enormous amount of time in domains that aren't the philosopher's own.
1:03:18 I didn't say it's forbidden for the philosopher, but there, let him ask questions requiring the necessary competence. I try, sometimes, when I have the good fortune, thanks to you, thanks to my audience — excuse me, I'm not of the video generation, I'm rather of the audio generation — with my public, I have the chance to be able to address excellent mathematicians, I'm thinking of Étienne Burle whom I saw recently, I'm thinking of Thomas de la Rochefoucauld, who, quite young, already very quickly taught in prep classes, I'm thinking of Erwan Sturm — sorry, I don't know why I mangled his name — whom I greet, although they've left us to go teach in Autun, in prep classes, to future polytechniciens, no less, you see — I can ask them questions when I have a doubt like that, and then I try to corroborate with another afterward, generally they don't contradict each other, there you go — that's not our domain, there's no "what should I do in the galaxies" question that arises,
1:04:28 it's the question "what can I know" — yes, that we share with scholars — but the philosopher, with everything there is to know — how many grains of sand are there in the Sahara, you know, or not, who cares — you'd give me a figure and I'd tell you, actually there are three more or fewer, what difference does that make to us? What I mean by that: I'm not criticizing science, because science deals with knowing how many grains of sand — I mean, reality, there are so many things to know, why seek to know this rather than that? There, there is something other than knowledge that defines priorities, and that's where "what should I do" becomes important.
Nature or matter; natural beauty; conclusion on Gaza 1:05:04 There you go, that's a reminder. So I haven't answered Bastien's question head-on, I'm getting to it, so I'll give you a scoop, because people say: he doesn't want to know anything about dialectics outside of man. No — there is no dialectic of nature, I don't even think I'm sure it exists — I'm going to explain, don't panic, I'm starting to get a bit senile, but I'm not quite there yet — but on the other hand, I don't concede, I affirm that there is a dialectic of being, and being includes just as much — and I'm getting there, you'll understand — when I say that nature, it's not certain it exists, I think rather it's a creation of human language, I mean, it's curious that materialists need to be reminded that the most extensive set is matter, I'm speaking of a set in the mathematical sense, to be rigorous.
1:06:08 A hammer is no less materialist than a salad, but it is not natural. So there is a very vast set of everything that exists, which is matter, and within this matter, I make what is called a set-theoretic language, a partition of the set into two large subsets: matter in which man has no part — there's an image of galaxies that the new telescopes, I don't know, give us extraordinary images — and then there is matter that has been given form, matter that has received a shape stemming from a human purpose, a goal, a desire, a function.
1:07:10 This has a function, which is to improve my eyesight — up close, even if now it's getting worse both far and near. There you go, so you see, I make these reminders to say: I've asked the question to the partisans of the reality of nature, what does the concept of nature add to that of matter? I've never had a satisfactory answer, I mean, in logical terms.
1:07:43 Except to those who start introducing into nature something that isn't in matter, so to speak, something living, that isn't inert. In short, they admit it's religious. Behind nature as distinguished from matter, I no longer really understand — I think there's an old religious archaism there, I'm answering Bastien quite sincerely here.
1:08:13 And so there is a dialectic of matter, yes, and of history. But for there to be a dialectic of nature, nature would have to exist outside the relative, that is — "But miss, you have silicone breasts, they're not natural" — excuse me, it's to lighten things up, because I'm asking you for a great effort of abstraction here. But these flowers are plastic — what am I saying?
1:08:46 I'm saying "They're not natural," for me to say that means I've stepped outside of nature. It means I'm in a universe where there can be flowers other than natural ones. So I always feel the need to specify, but I guarantee you that those ones are natural. You see what nature is for? To recall a being, an environment where — ah, it's restful, you understand why we like nature — where we have no part in it, where there's no need to work. It's an already-given that is offered, like God, Deus sive Natura, of course.
1:09:21 It's so much simpler. And that's why, walking on a beach, we suddenly see a pebble with an incredible shape. It's not possible, chance didn't make that shape. And we're amazed — it's Kant, who understood that very well. In the first modern aesthetics that was ever made. Why are we fascinated by objects where suddenly we see a regularity and we say to ourselves, that's not possible? It's not nature that made that, it's almost supernatural, if you will. You see? Why?
1:09:51 Because it seems that nature by itself is chaos. Look at galaxies. It's not possible for that to make a jellyfish. A jellyfish, even without a brain — there's no brain there. But how organized it is nonetheless! You see? Between the dome up there — I don't have zoological vocabulary, excuse me — the filaments, the tentacles, whatever you want to call them, I don't know, which one should beware of. You see? No, but...
1:10:21 You see? Everything happens as if Kant, who is extremely cautious, says there are moments when everything happens as if there were a finality within mechanism. And that's what we call the beautiful. It's the first time. Natural beauty, because there's also artistic beauty — we know well there's man behind that, by definition, in painting, architecture, sculpture, music, poetry, oh, skateboarding — extend the fine arts to whatever domain you like — but natural beauty, how?
1:10:56 Nature — we say nature is beautiful when it resembles, when it imitates a human finality — a beautiful sunset, a summit, a hero, a beautiful sunset, you see, there's the glory, a beautiful bed there. "And nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth, is worth to me the sun radiant on the sea." So, otherwise, well, that doesn't exist. In reality, I take...
1:11:27 No, but what I'm about to say is dreadful, but what can you do, one mustn't be afraid of the concept. You take a pin — the concept is always sharp. Do you remember the lance in Parsifal? It's not the Grail that receives the blood, it's what makes the blood spurt. I take a pin, let's see, I'll get to it. I'm dazzled by this sea that blazes, how does Baudelaire put it? "Nothing is worth to me the sun radiant on the sea." The liquid gold, like that, everyone has seen that at least once. Sometimes silver, mercury, I don't know.
1:11:57 But in any case, it's dazzling, it's often gold in abundance. I take a pin, I put it in, puff, one millimeter, puff — or I take a glass of water from the liquid gold, I pull the glass out, colorless. Well, darn! It's that the golden color there, it's not that the sea is like that, it's not the sun, it's the meeting of the two. It's a relation, not a substance, as one would say in logic.
1:12:27 So natural beauty unfolds over surfaces, we're far from — you cannot make a science of nature out of the aesthetics of nature. There you go, for the continuation of this point I'll still refer you to a cycle I did called "Nature or Landscape?" You'll find it on our site, on YouTube, isn't that so, "Philosophique Dominique Pagani" with you, where I develop this aspect. I repeat, I take this question very seriously, I have a disagreement with those who don't give me a logically satisfactory, epistemically satisfactory answer about what the notion of nature adds to that of matter.
1:13:17 I've asked it, and I'm often told that nature adds the living. In that case, that means that nature, what surrounds us, isn't much. Because the farther you look, the less there is of the living. The biggest nuclear plant in our neighborhood is the sun. It's a small stone in the environmentalists' garden. Fortunately there are nuclear plants that function nonetheless, for life and for death — the arrows of Apollo.
1:13:47 But what's important to see here is that the organic, the green, all of the marketing of environmentalism—I have nothing against scientific ecology—all of that marketing is a huge misunderstanding, because green is exceptional in nature, in the universe, you see, I myself am tripping over my words.
1:14:17 So let's say the universe, which is 9.9 tenths—I leave an epsilon out of epistemic caution and intellectual honesty—is inert matter, it's hydrogen, mostly, as far as I know, ammonia, whatever you like, but it's certainly not organic. So I'm still waiting for an answer to the question: what does the concept of nature add to matter?
1:14:47 As long as I don't have it, I say that the notion of nature is a value that I respect as a value, as an ought-to-be, it is not a being, it is not something that can be uttered, that can have meaning and content, except for a being who has come out of nature, who has passed from the natural to the artificial—starting with flaked pebbles, because that's where it begins. There you have it.
1:15:17 Well, I'm not a voyeur, but I can't help… I'm obsessed, it's frightening, with current events right now, I am… Don't think that… I am very harsh with those who take advantage of the fact that more and more people, fortunately, more and more people are beginning to react against what is monstrous in the policy of the Israeli executive.
1:15:47 I'm trying to be clear, there are those who take advantage of it, aren't there, to refuel antisemitism. That is not at all the style of this house, nor its content. And not only is it not the style, but I expose it right away. I have already given a shibboleth, as Hegel among others puts it, that is, you know, like testing whether it's gold or copper, there are stones like that, hard ones, to distinguish the one who says, "Oh, me, I'm not antisemitic, I'm anti-Zionist."
1:16:20 Yes, all right. The difference, you see, is that the antisemitic anti-Zionist is the one who says, "It's the Jews who run the world." They have everything, they have the United States. Whereas we, well, in our association, if we're to be in step with what I'm trying to clarify, I would say that if the United States stopped delivering tens of thousands of shells and bombs to Israel every day, the problem of the Middle East—yes, it wouldn't be solved, there's another problem—but the horrific mortality we are witnessing, of these children, how does Baudelaire put it, who die without moving, in immense efforts.
1:17:06 I want to conclude with them, and not forget them in this cycle of evil which is only just beginning. And I thank you for your questions, which have allowed us to keep turning in a spiral, yet drawing closer to the center. Thanks to Pierre-Alain, and so I'll say see you very soon, hoping that things will be better next time out there in the world beyond us. There you go.
1:17:42 Thank you.
