English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Opening montage 0:00 The time when the reader frees the noise, Heidegger with his family in the Schwarzwalddorf Todtnauberg. Here he builds the famous hütte and makes himself at home in the movement of dwelling, of the simple.
0:30 to that which separates us most from one another, birth. So Heidegger remains close to natural experiences. And his thinking, neither dry nor mystical, is saturated with what has been absorbed, walked, experienced of his landscape, which points beyond, to becoming at home in the unfamiliarity of the mystery. If one insists so much on what one has by nature, it's because one wants to owe nothing.
1:00 to that which requires work, acquisition, nothing is ever acquired by man. No, no, it has to be assimilated, it's not acquired like heredity. Nothing is ever acquired by man, neither his strength, nor his weakness, nor his right. Nothing is acquired by man, nor his weakness. To modern science.
1:30 And this unconditional belief, that is to say the trust in the certainty of the results of the sciences, is a belief and is in a certain sense something that goes beyond the individual human being and is therefore a religion. Instead of having this lamentable choice between Atlanticist globalization and Zemmourian withdrawal into oneself, or some other, we don't care. The cluttered door, fed up with the choice, to bourgeois cosmopolitanism.
2:03 Marxists are used to opposing proletarian internationalism. The first place of Heidegger's philosophy. Above all Heidegger's philosophy favored the beginning of ontological analyses on our continent. Then, as regards the political aspect, and it must be underlined that this political aspect of Heideggerian thought is fairly unknown in Europe, it made it possible for a doctrine or a thought to be worked out in Latin America on the basis of Heidegger's ideas, which helped to confront Marxism and, I would say, to overcome it.
2:48 You can always look for local solutions, green up capital, green up capital, green up, I love it, cobble together identity insurrections of region, of color, of sex, of gender, indigenous emancipation insurrections, you can do nothing against the revealed truth of the free and undistorted market. Heidegger's language is not, like that of the poet, meaning-creating. It seeks to open up man's relation to Being. One of the great dangers of our thinking today is precisely that thought, in the sense of philosophical thought, no longer has any real original relation to tradition.
The atomic bomb has been exploding since Descartes 3:35 Philippe asks us this question, I'll read it. On the subject of scientism, Dominique, could you comment on Heidegger's phrase about the atomic bomb that exploded since Descartes? Philippe quotes this text by Heidegger dating from 1951. So, you see, after the war. Before reading it, I recall, for those who think I'm crushing figures under my heel, figures that for some are sacred cows, as they say — I've often said this.
4:11 Hannah Arendt, Heidegger, etc. Foucault, etc. I repeat that I might have been worse than Heidegger. How could I be more honest, in his generation, with my starting sociology? By definition I wouldn't have had quite the same path. Well, I was born a bit later, in 1945. So if I picture myself in the 1930s, like Heidegger, in the same milieu, I might have been worse. But what I can't forgive is that Heidegger, after the war, keeps on, as we're about to hear — and I'll let him speak — putting on trial that wicked technology by which man, since Descartes, is supposed to give himself, trembling, the means to become master and possessor of nature.
5:01 Isn't that so? He whom the myth of Prometheus showed so utterly destitute, and in his wailing misery at the outset, rising up to civilization. Today's science has the opposite behavior, in the sense of an attack on being itself. So there it is, science attacks, an attack on being. You'll say, after all, it's always good to criticize belligerent, aggressive, attacking attitudes in general. Yes, except here we're talking about the philosopher who said that the creation of the Panzer Divisionen — speaking of attacks, think of the breakthrough at the Ardennes — is the greatest event of Western metaphysics, in a famous seminar, for those who aren't blind to it; the documents are there.
5:50 Today's science has the opposite behavior, in the sense of an attack on being itself. I'll comment afterward. What presents itself to our eyes here is a process whose ground lies in the unfolding of technology. The fact that in it, if one may put it in terms of a destiny, destruction is properly speaking carried through to the end. In the long run no doubt. The atomic bomb exploded a long time ago, exactly at the moment, a flash.
"It's Descartes's fault": the philosophical counter-revolution 6:22 Yes, a flash in which the human being rose up in insurrection against being. And of himself posited being, transforming it into an object of his representation. You saw the Cartesian cogito. Since Descartes, representing the entity — there is no longer being, you see, the entity is very inferior in Heidegger's thought — inferior to being, infinitely inferior. Representing the entity as object by a subject, representing the entity as object by a subject, that is what has been accomplished knowingly since Descartes.
6:57 After the revolution, the workers' riots will sing, it's Voltaire's fault, it's Rousseau's fault. You see, the great counter-revolution of the Third Reich will say, it's Descartes' fault, of course. Since Descartes, this provoking of nature to be nothing but object — you see the naturalism peeking through — characterizes the fundamental attitude of technology. And yes, your ancestors, the ploughmen, with their ploughs that would rip open the earth — no, no, he doesn't think that, he's cured of that, he adores the earth, there are famous texts of his on Van Gogh's shoes, that sort of obscenity, not Van Gogh's shoes themselves, but the way he talks about them, the Pétainism of the earth that doesn't lie, you know.
7:46 Well, but anyway, it's up to him to fine-tune when technology started existing — it's existed since people were splitting pebbles, I mean, and flint. Or else let them tell us the exact cursor, precisely when technology began. Ah, well he tells us — there was a flash, click, it's when Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. This provoking of nature to be nothing but object characterizes the fundamental attitude of technology and modern science rests entirely upon it. I already told you that modernity hates modernity, didn't I?
8:19 And that's where it shows itself to be most dangerous. This provoking of nature to be nothing but object characterizes the fundamental attitude of technology and modern science rests entirely upon it. Modern physical science, you see all these redundancies, modern physical science is nothing but the development of the unfolding of technology — I apologize for this laborious style, it's not mine. Modern physical science is nothing but the development of the unfolding of technology, of which we still know hardly anything. It is impossible for us to overcome technology with morality.
8:54 Technology, the diabolism, is neither simply nor even primarily something human. Good grief! There are people who use Heidegger against humanism, aren't there? There too we'll need to fine-tune things. Well, I'll come back to it. These are thoughts familiar to anyone with even a minimum of philosophical culture, especially since this is the philosophy that's been most rehashed for more than three generations, especially in Paris, more than anywhere else.
9:28 Because in Paris there was still a Communist Party representing a quarter of the electorate. And it was more urgent to bring these ideas into fashion — existentialism, structuralism, the New Philosophers, you see the sequence, each time more and more anti-Marxist, counter-revolutionary. There's a logic to all this. And here we are, a bit among the founding fathers of that logic. As I would like — not, you know, I don't like interpretation, doing cooking on this text — I'd like us to move straight to the next text so that you yourselves can hear the intertextuality that emerges from the texts I'm presenting to you tonight.
Making men's work easier: the real Cartesian scandal 10:09 I reassure you, there are three of them. So our contributor, commentator, whom I greet, Lucas Luderle — I'll pronounce it the German way, he's speaking about Heidegger, this Lucas Luderle — tells us this: 'Hello, this question concerns naturalism.' You see already, Heidegger said that Descartes' cogito is an assault on nature, parenthesis.
10:39 It's often said, well, that everything dates from the cogito, Heidegger rightly set the cursor where it needed to be — actually, what really irritates Heidegger and this whole current of thought is not the cogito, it's Descartes' phrase, much more scandalous, especially when linked today with the dominant ideology. I first give the sentences that precede it, to make it burst forth as its climax. It's when he tells the whole story of his studies, like a fable, like a novel, as he says in the Discourse on Method, his youthful path, where he shows that he worked through every discipline, even the strangest ones, chemistry and so on, but that it only left him more tangled in doubts than before he studied.
11:31 And there's one exception, and here I quote: 'I took most pleasure in mathematics, because of the certainty and evidence of its reasoning.' I leave the text, I come back to you: 'But I did not yet notice its true use. And thinking that it only served the mechanical arts and eased men's labor, what a shame!' What a shame! Here's an insurrection, a sacrilege against being, wanting to ease men's labor and make man master and possessor of nature.
12:02 That's it — I close my parenthesis — what is most unforgivable in this current of thought, in Descartes and in what came out of it, the Enlightenment in particular. So it is above all an aggression against nature. Nevertheless, I resume: this question concerns naturalism. Indeed, like Mr. Pagani — this notion, without belaboring it, he understands me well — and Heidegger, I find it worrying, the confusion between the terms nature and environment spreading in public debate.
12:35 Ah, listen, sometimes I feel like breathing and saying I can die peacefully when I see people with an ear like that. Sorry, I'm complimenting someone who doesn't need my compliments, I'm sure, but I thank him for validating this distinction, which should be taught in primary school. It would suffice to tell children: 'Look around you, look at your environment, where is nature in that?' Then afterward, take them to the countryside, tell them: 'Where's nature?' Well, there, or whatever. Here, there's a field — a field is not nature, it had to be worked. Here, there's a passing car, a road, hedges between the fields, the bocage, and so on.
13:16 Or a small harbor, if we're by the sea, a nice little fishing port, all that — we're already far away, none of that fell from the sky. It was produced by, as he puts it, Descartes, by the labor of men. So, I breathe, I tell you, and I continue a bit my self-satisfaction — I hope it won't be taken badly — because I notice that some of what I keep repeating is starting to circulate.
13:49 Even, even — some friends were kind enough, at least they thought it appropriate, to send me — and I thank them — I'm not on the lookout for videos that quote me, mind you — but I was sent a recent video of Bégaudeau, in which he tears into it without a single properly philosophical category, I mean, there's just one: that it was a revelation for him when he listened to the Sex Pistols.
14:22 Why not? I'm always very happy when someone takes pleasure in some music, whatever it is; I'll never say anything against that kind of thing. But that said, it's not sufficient argument to say that this music is worthwhile or not, or that other music is dated or, on the contrary, too avant-garde — anyway, let's leave that. Frankly, what I heard, I say this without any contemptuous feeling, but it's not worth my dwelling on the details of this video, unless he gives me more, but there isn't much on the music itself.
14:59 except that he spends his time commenting, his interviewee — yes, Pagani says, talks about the poverty of the meter and the instrumentation and the timbres in pop music. So there, my ideas are circulating, for better or worse. I come back here to Lucas, who saw the stakes clearly, once again, of this nature-environment distinction.
In nature there is neither good nor evil 15:32 In both cases, we're dealing with matter — I recall this for anyone who might think that what is added on top of nature is a supernature, a supernatural. I've never gone in for that, I warned against it. Even if supernatural discourse has at least the merit of taking into account a reality that adds itself to nature, except that it seeks it behind the clouds, whereas it's behind our backs, in the past, in history, in that ancestor, that is, of which we are the result, to whom we owe these results.
16:07 Nevertheless, what do we do with naturalism — I take up Lucas's question again — what do we do with the naturalism of a Zola, with just naturalism, or with Stoicism? Bravo, Lucas! He gives me the chance to show that I'm not putting naturalism in general on trial, still less nature itself. I've worn myself out repeating that in nature there is neither good nor evil, so there's no evil to speak of either — no reason to speak ill of nature, nor well of it either, morally speaking. Nature — the physicist seeks to establish discourses about it that are as little false as possible and as true as possible.
16:45 It's the true and the false, those are the categories for nature. Or else, good and evil — that already supposes we've left the earthly paradise. No, no, no, that's not me, that's in the Old Testament. Do you think he was among the naïve? That doesn't contradict it, far from it. But I mean, in the Old Testament, what does the tempter say to Eve? If you taste this fruit, eritis sicut deus, scientes bonum et malum — I won't say it in Hebrew, unfortunately, I don't know those beautiful Semitic languages, Hebrew and Arabic.
17:26 If you taste this fruit, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. You will cease to be animals wandering naked in the earthly paradise. You know that after the sin, after she ate the fruit, God calls them and is surprised, and Adam hides and doesn't want to show himself. Ah, if you don't want to show yourself, it's because you're ashamed of your nakedness, and so you tasted the fruit. You see, it's very precise. All the signs of the passage from zoology to anthropology arise with sin. So, as certain theologians say, felix culpa, happy fault, which brought all this misfortune to man because having the concern for good and evil — which the cynic, the pervert, doesn't have, you know, you remember, you mentioned that Italian who was deported to Dachau, we'll come back to who quotes that SS officer who had asked him, who had torn from him the icicle he'd taken from a window to try to drink a little in the death camp, and when he'd said to him, Warum, why?
18:33 The other said: Es gibt kein Warum, there is no why. There is no good and evil in nature, in the animal. And it's true that apart from that, everyone has tasted the fruit, we're in the throes of wondering whether I did well or badly in doing this. Although a great, great, great Christian like Pascal says: everyone plays God in judging whether he did well or badly in this or that. Everyone plays God, that's well understood, that's vanity.
19:03 It's the Mystère de Jésus, I recommend it, it's a magnificent text. So, once again, you see, it's not me who says there's no point asking whether nature is good or bad. In nature, the animal doesn't do what it wants — otherwise it would be a moral subject; you know, in any trial one begins by determining whether the accused is responsible for his acts, whether he knows what he's doing. The animal does what it can, it doesn't do what it wants, it does everything it can to satisfy the drives it's subject to.
19:38 It doesn't say to itself, 'Ah, I really want that, but I shouldn't, because after all, it's a gift, I shouldn't offer it, it's a gift, like so-and-so did...' Well anyway, never mind. The universe of fault is incommensurable. So it's not a matter of putting nature in general on trial, but I put on trial a certain naturalist discourse that demonizes man and deifies nature, which is not necessarily the case, mind you, with the naturalism of a Zola — I return to Lucas's fine list — of just naturalism, that is, of natural law, ius
Stoicism, natural law, cosmopolis 20:19 that's the law, ius, iuris in the genitive, or of Stoicism, the Stoics saying that one must live, broadly speaking, in conformity with nature. The question seems to me particularly thorny for Stoicism. I'm 100% in agreement with Lucas, let me reassure him, I'm not criticizing these discourses. I criticize them insofar as they all have in common that they alienate into an already-given, which is nature, what in fact belongs not to a relation to the thing but to a relation between subjects — what Kant calls the kingdom of ends, which can only arise in what Kant calls, you see, I'm not drawing only on Marxist references, the intelligible community.
21:10 It's only there that one can speak of the reasons why, in philosophy or metaphysics, something has been hypostatized — that is, something which is a hypothesis, or which is supposed to draw closer and closer to an axis, so to speak, of reality, like an asymptote, as we also say in geometry. In the end, one is so impatient that it not merely approach it more and more but actually be in the real, that when this threshold is illegitimately crossed, one commits what is called a hypostasis.
21:50 So there it is, I reproach these discourses with hypostatizing in the concept of nature, that is, with alienating, transporting elsewhere — alius, into an other — what properly arises only within human society, not society in general, I'm not talking about bees here, against which I have nothing, I even adore them, I'm not talking about honey, but I love it too, but I really love bees. After all, it was the emblem of the First Empire of my compatriote Napoleon, but since I have many friends among those who rightly listen to Guillemin's excellent lectures, who is not kind to Napoleon, I'll stop my comparison there.
22:32 Indeed, and I'm not an admirer of Napoleon — what could be more antifascist than Stoicism, which posits as absolute the free disposition of oneself? So here Lucas is telling me, Pagani, be careful, be precise — he's right, I agree, he gives me the chance to answer his injunction, so I'm quite pleased — be precise, don't content yourself with saying that having nature as a value, a reference point, or a criterion means being fascist.
23:02 No, I never said that and I never will. Indeed — nothing more antifascist than Stoicism, which posits as absolute the free disposition of oneself, the cosmopolis, the opposite of trembling before the great replacement of oneself, the cosmopolis — I take the opportunity, for those still stuck in the binary opposing capitalist globalization — what they call globalization, because they don't say capitalist, for them it's the effect of progress, of man in general, of history, and we'd have to go backward — those who oppose globalization, in which capitalism dominates, to identity, sometimes of the nation, sometimes — the nation is too big — of Breton-ness or Corsican-ness or Alsatian-ness, I don't know, of Occitania, and there's worse, when you go to other countries, worse still, if you talk with a Ukrainian nationalist, you'll quickly call, won't you, the MRAP, for the organizations
24:14 against racism, and antisemitism, and anticommunism, and antibolshevism — because all of that together, for these people, it's not me making the amalgam, it's them, that's why I specify: instead of having this lamentable choice between Atlanticist globalization and Zemmourian withdrawal into oneself, or some other, we don't care, the door is cluttered, we're fed up with the choice, with bourgeois cosmopolitanism — Marxists are used to opposing proletarian internationalism to it, and yes, ah well yes, borders come back into play again, you see, this to echo the admirable Hellenic expression Lucas reminds us of here, invoked by the Stoics, the cosmopolis, the city of the cosmos, the world city, and the universality of reason — so you see, in a few lines, Lucas allows me to return to my accursed triangle, to get it out of the corner where it's been relegated, or out of the prison in which it's been locked up, this accursed triangle
25:24 of dominant thought — it's not that one should speak ill of the universal, of progress, of reason, all that goes together, but above all, man, that's the worst thing, isn't it, that's what comes to spoil being, as Heidegger also said, man, the universal, against identity — mine. That's from my friends. Now, in Stoicism, the arché, that means the principle, that's where 'archaic' comes from, the principle, meaning the first in time, in the beginning, and in all archaic, ancient mentalities, what is oldest is often what is most important, isn't it?
The root "nat": heredity against inheritance 26:02 Now, in Stoicism, the arché of these three postulate-categories is nature. Yes, correct — could it be that the source of my incompetence comes from the translation problem, which indifferently renders as 'nature' the terms bios and physis? You see why I wanted to ask you this question — because it has the merit of being intensely philosophical, that is, it buzzes with questions, this question. And with essential questions, because, you know, what time is it?
26:33 it's a question that can be important at certain moments. At the end, he shows that there is indeed a problem which the philosopher would be inexcusable not to deal with, since it's a matter of knowing how things must be named. And we come back to Socrates, don't we? Not what is virtue, what is courage, what is beauty, what is the soul, but what do you call soul, what do you call beauty, what do you call virtue?
27:05 You who seem to know a thing or two about it, since you use the word left and right, don't you? So, this term, natura, by which we also translate the terms bios and phusis. I'm going to answer partly, because the question is too vast for me to answer exhaustively, that would require a whole cycle, this isn't lecture series in a lecture hall, but I'll answer for the essential, what seems most important to me, the question with which Lucas's big question ends, and for which I thank him again.
27:41 What I reproach the term nature for, in its frequency, its repetition, is its root. I've already had occasion to say it, N-A-T. I have nothing against birth, against the natal, against natality. What I'm against is that through this term, we blind ourselves, we don't notice that that's what we're talking about. Isn't it so? What is natural is what one has by birth. It's heredity — already we can see the Third Reich — it's heredity against, not the science of heredity, it's a delirium about heredity of the Third Reich, let's be clear, it's heredity against inheritance.
28:26 You see, I told you we'd come back to this. I told you in the first part, with the previous question about feminism and femininity, it's not that femininity, after all, if a human being is born with the sex called female, that's not a convention among men, these are biological pathways being fulfilled. We must clearly distinguish what belongs to that human being who begins to live with her heredity as a little girl, isn't it so, or as a baby girl, and what later, as an acquisition of a millennia-old historical heritage, is called femininity.
29:11 It's apparently the same word, it's not at all the same thing. So watch out, what I reproach those who use the term nature for is always returning to what separates us most from one another, birth, isn't it so, for birth is a terrible thing, tears, cries, trembling and much blood. You'll find that in the Christmas sermon, the admirable Christmas sermon that runs several pages in the novel for which Julien Gracq won the Goncourt Prize, The Opposing Shore, which I posted during the last end-of-year holidays, isn't it so, for Christmas Eve.
29:53 For birth is a terrible thing, it's something that always comes to disturb. There you go, so, I hold it against those who naturalize things, don't I, things that owe nothing to nature. Not because I would say to Caesar what is Caesar's, I'm not here dividing up properties, not even that, that would at least be an intellectual housekeeping exercise, no, it's more serious than that. It's that if one insists so much on what one has by nature, it's because one doesn't want to owe anything to those things that demand work, acquisition.
Nothing is ever acquired: labor and the negative 30:34 Because that's it, that effort, isn't it so, of assimilating what will make up our being. Because heredity, one doesn't need to make efforts to inherit it, by definition, whereas inheritance — you see, becoming a great classical pianist means 8 to 10 hours a day for 20 years. One of the greatest pianists of the whole contemporary world, he's dead now, but who shone almost throughout the entire 20th century, I'm thinking of Sviatoslav Richter, the Soviet, said — he illustrates the notion of work — he was acclaimed the world over as one of the greatest pianists of the century, he had nothing left to prove, from New York to Moscow, he said, when I stop working for one day, I notice it myself.
31:28 When I stop working for two days, the audience starts to notice it. That illustrates well Aragon's magnificent poems, the one with the refrain that Brassens set to music, there is no happy love, you know, nothing is ever acquired for man. No, no, it has to be assimilated, it's not a given like heredity, nothing is ever acquired for man, neither his strength, nor his weakness, nor his right. And when he thinks he's opening his arms, his shadow is that of a cross, and when he wants to clasp his happiness, he crushes it.
32:02 His life is a strange and painful divorce. Yes indeed, yes indeed, there is all this negative one must go through in order to know the immense joys that those who have not gone through the negative do not know. Haven't I already spoken to you about the shopgirl? I always cite the shopgirl because I'm scandalized that it's become a pejorative word. That's a shopgirl's reflection. Personally, I find the loves of shopgirls far more interesting than the love found in nine-tenths of the novelists published in recent years.
32:35 Come on, eight point eight to nine-tenths. Yes, the shopgirl waiting for a rotten suburban train, in a rotten suburb — not all suburbs are rotten, I know, don't lecture me, I know it by heart — ask those concerned what they think, those who wait in that setting. I'll go along with their opinion. And she waits for her beloved, and he's late, isn't he? And in 5 minutes, every thought has paraded through her head.
33:08 He doesn't love me anymore, he's cheating on me with someone else, whatever. He's had an accident, hasn't he? Or all of it at once, who knows. And then suddenly, we see him appear. We see his little head coming up out of the stairs, and she feels a happiness that the gods do not know, that the immortals do not know, that those who haven't gone through the negative do not know. I insist, because there's a whole neo-Spinozist strand of thought that doesn't want to hear about the negative. Because God, substance, is nothing but positivity by definition.
33:38 Yes, indeed, the substance God. I'm talking about us. I will never trade beatitude, isn't it so, a theological concept, for happiness, a human concept. There you go. How do I answer Lucas? I have nothing against Zola's nature, against natural law theory, against Stoicism. He took three examples of different cases which have something in common, indeed.
34:10 Zola was a fierce positivist. Had he been a philosopher, it would be less interesting. Well, he would have been a materialist, if you like. But there you go, a mechanistic materialist, not a dialectical one, one shouldn't ask too much. I say that, I seem a bit like I'm belittling Zola, but simply, Marx said he preferred the royalist Balzac, who understood class struggle far better, didn't he, than the progressive Zola.
34:42 And yes, both are admirable, that's not the question. So, could it be that the source of my incomprehension, Lucas — it's not incomprehension either, it is an incomprehension — is indeed to stumble upon ideas, to stammer, isn't it so, suddenly, to falter, to falter in thought. Socrates is often compared to the torpedo fish, you know, which triggers an electric shock in the person who touches it, and for a few moments one is numbed, one no longer knows where one stands, that's what, Socrates's interlocutors said, one feels when Socrates asks those questions, isn't it so, that suddenly come to problematize these notions that seem so simple.
35:24 Women, men, femininity, feminism, nature, history, culture, there you go, thank you again. And we haven't finished, have we, traveling through the fields opened up for us by this question about femininity and feminism. Third variant which I owe to my dear comrade — yes, I'm a bit more affectionate when it's someone almost my own age, isn't it so, I mean closer to my generation than most of my faithful followers, male and female — and who has a poetic culture that amazes me, from which he offers a quotation always perfectly appropriate to the context, perfectly in keeping with the rest of the discussion.
Realizable dream: Lenin, Hölderlin, and the carpenter 36:14 Well, I'll stop making him blush. Hello Dominique, a waking reverie after your delightful dream-like stroll — I'm quite pleased, he's alluding to, I refer you to it, I've already said it, if anyone wants to go through my videos after all, especially from these recent years, because now there are more, almost 500, two hours each, it's a needle in a haystack — start with the one called Mignon, it's not that old, in the category of talks that aren't really workshops, but which we've called the analytic reveries, it's moreover the first of the analytic reveries, the one that opens the series, in which I take a stroll that I continue afterward in reading Nerval's Promenades et souvenirs, etc.
37:05 Hello Dominique, a waking reverie after your delightful dream-like stroll on the wings of Vladimir Ilyich — you know, I had read a magnificent text by Lenin where Lenin develops the thesis against a newspaper that wanted to be Bolshevik with good intentions but condemned everything that is escape from reality, dreaming, all that, and Lenin said dreaming is necessary, one must dream, on condition that the dreamer, isn't it so, has in his head a realizable dream, compatible with what can happen in the phenomenon.
37:45 That might perhaps be the best sense one could give to a word I'm often wary of — not the word itself but the use often made of it — utopia, you see what I'm alluding to, but here it's justified: if that's what utopia is, then of course I'm for it. But then, any carpenter who makes a table, who makes it with love, with professional conscience, any cabinetmaker, isn't it so — I salute here the comrades who are in the Vaucluse and who will understand me and who are devoted to this admirable trade, let me open a parenthesis in homage to these comrades, isn't it so, they went to support, in freezing cold, striking workers recently, very young comrades whom I salute — I'll stay with wood and cabinetmaking and carpentry: Hölderlin, it's been almost 15 years now, isn't it, that he's been confined, freely confined, he can go out, he goes into the garden, he sometimes goes to the village, that he's housed with this carpenter, the carpenter who had him taken out of the clinic, who told the doctor, if you don't know what to do with him, I can take him in with me,
38:56 and there we are, if you like, he had only a few months to live — he had 37 years left, 37 years — and one day, Hölderlin comes down from his little room, the one where he spent most of his time, where he recited poems, 'an die blau Luft' as they say in German, to the blue of the sky, at the window, just like that, so that he didn't write poems, he was diction, he was poem.
39:31 Well, this man comes down from his room by a small spiral staircase, which I recommend you go visit in the admirable little museum found on the banks of the Neckar, in a dreamlike spot, in the heart of that ravishing town which is Tübingen. And there, Hölderlin sees an engraving on the staircase depicting a Greek temple — very fashionable at the time, a neoclassical engraving — and says to the carpenter, 'You should build one like that.' The carpenter replies that he already had plenty of work to do to feed his family and didn't have the leisure to live in philosophical repose like him.
40:11 Isn't it so? It's a lovely little exchange of social class like that, between the carpenter and his host. And the latter replies, 'It's true, I am indeed quite unhappy.' And he immediately writes a distich or a quatrain, I no longer recall, I believe it's a distich: 'To you, my friend, I will tell my secret.' Colon. Of Daedalus, the engineer of Antiquity about whom I've said a fair amount, isn't it so.
40:45 Opposing him to Ulysses. Of Daedalus, you have the genius and the forest. You see, nature comes back to the tree, in which there will be no wood and no table and no chair and no beam and no framework. Of Daedalus, you have the genius and the forest. I return to my parenthesis. So, this is that realizable dream, isn't it so? Any carpenter who produces, any human being who transfers a form he dreams of embodying into matter, isn't it so,
Galileo disenchanted the world 41:16 who transfers a dream into reality, a representation, an image, a fantasy in Greek, that's it, but which doesn't remain in the fantasmatic state, but through work sets itself a frame. In reality, it can be a table, it can be a poem. A poem is material, you need paper, you need ink for it to be communicated to another. If it stayed only in my head, no one would know anything about it. There you go, so, the formidable discovery of Galileo — yes, but it's incredible, one would think it's the same author for all three of these questions.
41:49 Earlier, Philippe Moreau — we started with him this evening — was telling us about Descartes's break, what's called the Galileo-Cartesian break, the one that, according to Martin Heidegger, murdered being in order to transform it into the physicists' nature, into figures, geometric shapes, equations. The formidable discovery of Galileo disenchanted the world. Yes!
42:19 We did not pass from paganism to Christianity on a December 31st at midnight, at the moment of Christ's birth, or of his death for that matter. It took time, the immense and long Middle Ages, of which Clouscard said it is the hardest period to understand about our own youth and the least well known, a period to which he nevertheless devoted the admirable treatise on mad love, revolving around the myth of Tristan and Iseult. The formidable discovery of Galileo disenchanted the world.
42:49 Yes! It took centuries to begin transitioning from paganism, where the world is enchanted, where there are nymphs frolicking in springs like the Rhine maidens, to Christianity, where it's nothing but H2O, the Christian civilization in which idols are banned. Galileo disenchanted the world, drowned the nymphs in mathematical abstraction, ruined the idea of God.
43:21 I would say gods here, but we understand each other well. Brecht, the great communist playwright, Brecht sums it up in his play by having Galileo say — Brecht wrote Galileo, oh Galileo, a play devoted to his life in particular, to Galileo's trial. 'We are the tenth of January 1610. Humanity writes in its logbook: heaven abolished.' So, he confirms Heidegger, except that he doesn't lament it. Science is no longer the daughter of the Church, it is written in mathematical language and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures.
43:59 That's a quotation from Galileo. Without the means of which it is humanly impossible to understand a word of it. Humanly. Because there are some who are more than human, who are superior to you and me. Ask the first quack you meet, he'll tell you he's superior to them because he has divination. He doesn't need to go through equations. Anyway. Without them, it's a... So, these geometric figures are the means without which it is humanly impossible to understand a word of it.
44:30 Without them, without this detour through abstraction — that's what's being said here — a conquest of the human mind. Because here, we are far from nature, with geometric figures and mathematics. Without them, and here there's an admirable phrase, it's a vain wandering in a dark labyrinth. Well, listen, I have the impression that we should write that sentence, shouldn't we, every time we enter the universe of the net, of the web, of YouTubers, isn't it so, I'm one of them... But one has to throw oneself into the water, into this water.
45:04 At least a dubious one, isn't it so, it's a vain wandering in a dark labyrinth, in order to let a ray of light in, isn't it so, in there. An idea, a form, a being, having set out from the azure, fell into a muddy and leaden Styx where no eye of heaven penetrates. I think that's Baudelaire, The Irremediable. So, I'll pick up the quotation again: henceforth daughter of time and not of authority — ah yes, decidedly, not only have we murdered being, but we've left eternity behind, we're in time, the world of man, history.
45:38 Daughter of time and not of authority, that's what made theology say, as soon as one asks a question outside the Church, no salvation, isn't it so? Or else, it's a mystery, there's nothing to see. Truth is material, quantified, and man, faced with — quoting Pascal — the eternal silence of infinite spaces, reduced to his graceless body. Kant notes that Copernican astronomy annihilates man's importance, and later — well yes, man, he was at the center — and later, Renan laments, well, his physical importance, as Pascal again admirably puts it, isn't it so.
46:14 One mustn't rage against man, I mean, a mere accident, a mere humor, a drop of his own blood is enough to kill him. Man is a reed, the weakest in nature, that's one of Pascal's most famous phrases, but he is a thinking reed — in other words, the universe crushes me, yes, crushes man, if we hold only to the order of bodies, but if we move to the order of thought, it is by my thought, mine, that I comprehend the universe. You see, these notions must be properly dialecticized.
From Bellarmine to capitalism: "and yet it struggles" 46:47 Kant notes that Copernican astronomy annihilates man's importance, and later Renan laments, it might be that the truth was sad, that neither the sun nor death can be looked at directly. That is the lament of anti-modern man, and that's why he detests modernity. Yes, times were better, weren't they, when answers preceded questions thanks to religious authorities or whatever it was. That's what Cardinal Bellarmine, theologian of the Counter-Reformation, who condemned Giordano Bruno to the stake, professed.
47:23 You know that Giordano Bruno, who defended Galileo's theses, except that he was less cautious — his thesis was that there were several solar systems, or as they said at the time, several worlds, the plurality of worlds, he taught that, he traveled as far as Toulouse where he taught the sphere, that is, Aristotle's treatise on the heavens, or well, Plato's Timaeus. So, one of the greatest minds of his time, he was burned for having defended ideas that everyone now shares in matters of astronomy.
47:59 for example, Cardinal Bellarmine, theologian of the Counter-Reformation who condemned Giordano Bruno to the stake, wrote to Galileo, 'We cannot know.' He's already neo-Kantian — well, not Kantian, he's already lowering the curtain. 'We cannot know, but it is permissible for you to seek.' Admirable Jesuitism which, in short, invites one to look at the sky with one's eyes closed. I recall in Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, isn't it so, when everyone begs the fireman to tell one of his terrible jokes and the fireman finally says 'all right.'
48:41 'Well, I'm willing to tell one, but then promise me you won't listen.' Can one not see in this supposed passion for ignorance an analogy with the alleged absence of alternative to capitalism? Thank you, my comrade, isn't it so, thank you — real intelligence is the kind that sees invariants where they aren't explicit, isn't it so, in two problems that seem unrelated, isn't it so, science having disenchanted the world, and the fact that in today's world we tell young people, 'Fine, all right, there are things to improve, not everything is perfect in the liberal, capitalist world, etc.'
49:24 'but anyway, all the others are worse.' Nice prospect for young people. Nice, isn't it? So there you go, you see, can one not see in this supposed passion for ignorance an analogy with the alleged absence of alternative to capitalism? Patrick continues admirably: you can always look for local solutions, green up capital, the Greens, I love it, cobble together lettered insurrections — regional, color-based, sex-based, gender-based lettered insurrections — indigenous emancipations.
50:00 You will be able to do nothing against the revealed truth of the free and undistorted market. Other than to dream of revolutions that leave the pillars of the house standing. As Marx noted. In other words, since one must seriously believe in one's dreams — that's Lenin, isn't it — affirming, and yet it moves, the classes, of course. You see how we come back to the beginning of the text, he had spoken of Galileo at the start. Galileo, coming out of his trial, might have said, well, I said a lot of nonsense, after all, man is at the center if you insist.
50:32 In short, that's not being burned like Giordano Bruno, fortunately, because he did research that still serves us, that served centuries of science. After him, he supposedly said, coming out, eppur si muove, isn't it, speaking of the Earth, and yet it moves, in good Italian, in petto, as they say at the opera, aside, isn't it, without anyone hearing it. And yet it moves — the classes, of course. People can insist all they like that class is outdated, old-fashioned, isn't it, Pagani, Clouscard, all that's old hat.
51:07 they don't like rock because they arrived too late. There are those who keep looking backward, behind themselves, at where Pagani, Clouscard stand. I'm not part of the avant-gardes. Still, at some point, I'll just answer on one single point with Bégaudeau. He says these people were never — he doesn't know that I ran a music school, well anyway, south of the Sahara, and that I frequented the best musicians on the Paris scene when they weren't even born yet — but well, that's not a reference in itself when it comes to chronology, but still, it makes me laugh.
51:46 But at one point, he says, they're never there, it's like Adorno, people who understand, because Adorno had criticized jazz, wrongly, and they're never, they're up where one thinks, where one overlooks things from above. It's a bit of a complex, he must have been vexed. And they're not where these musics are actually being produced, are they? He says that about Adorno, but Adorno is a student of Schoenberg, himself a composer of what was most avant-garde among the musical avant-gardes of his time, which still grates on the ears of all those who, isn't that so?
52:21 who aren't used to listening to Schoenberg's admirable Serenade opus 24, isn't that so? To speak of—I'm not even talking about Schoenberg's early works, I'm talking specifically about serial works, aren't I? I've already played you some fairly short excerpts from Moses and Aaron or A Survivor from Warsaw, there you go. That's the avant-garde, isn't it? In terms of rhythm, melody, harmony, and timbre, isn't it?
52:55 From celebrity pop music, we're about as far removed as from galaxies we'll never reach. And yet, the brilliance—of course we'll be able to recover, if not the meaning of history, then at least the axis of its rotation. Ah, but I envy, Philippe, I envy Philippe's pen here, or Patrick's, I also thought Philippe's question was excellent. And no, to deny even its movement, as the so-called left does entirely, the Communist Party included, I presume, who's talking about the Communist Party, isn't that so?
53:33 Which had formed around Robert Hue and of which not much remains now. There you go, I'm talking about the party apparatus here, the Communist Party, aren't I? Because when it comes to the base of the Communist Party, it's found in that immense dark matter called abstention. And that, we'll see. I'm not the type to put words in abstention's mouth. It seems there are some stirrings after that. I don't know. But what's certain is that there is indeed plenty of stirring matter in the excellent question that isn't really a question.
54:07 That's why I don't answer it. I'm only commenting on it, aren't I, in order to spell it out and show what it presupposes. And I thank once again my comrade Patrick and his excellent novel, which I recommend to you. In any case, thank you for your attention, and I thank those among you who gave me the opportunity to answer their questions. Thank you.
