City

Summary

Dominique Pagani thinks of the Greek city in terms of its opposition to the genos, the clan. In his reading of Antigone, the passage from the family bond to the city is the conflict between the archaic world and the new world: while alive, the citizen belongs to the city that sends him to fight; once dead, he returns to the family12. The political bond is looser than the blood bond, but it is more evolved and it is manifest. In this ethical world, speech, and no longer force or lineage, decides who holds power3. He also describes the city as a recourse against nature, an envelope that man creates between the natural given and his life. It is not a mere aggregate of society but an organisation45. He gives the example of the temple at Cape Sounion, which turns its back on infinity. For the Greeks, one escapes from nature into the city. The city is the place of measure and the highest Greek value, and wandering between cities is the worst punishment6.

1. 1A comme Antigone15 Dec 2014 · 8:01
2. 2A comme Antigone15 Dec 2014 · 9:49
3. 310#2 Dialectiques de l'identité et de la différence6 Oct 2021 · 14:54
4. 4X comme Xanthippe7 Jan 2015 · 8:54
5. 5Z comme Zéro9 Jan 2015 · 4:32
6. 6Racines ou migration ? De la rêverie analytique à l'actualité, de Hölderlin à la guerre17 Feb 2023 · 1:00:17

Summary produced automatically from 8 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.