Essence

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani sets essence against accident and, above all, against existence. He draws on Hegel: Wesen, the past participle of the verb "to be", designates being that has vanished, having-been. He sees in it a step forward from being, but also the beyond of the Christian world, as opposed to Greek immanence1. Essence is the truth of what appears: it does not appear itself but explains what appears, like the law of the tides2. If essence and appearance were one and the same, science would be useless. He links it to form and to language: essence is what allows a thing to be named, a statue rather than a block of marble, a jar rather than a glass3. He finds it again in language as a code and in figured bass that has not been realised. He stresses its shortcoming: deprived of existence, like Plato's world of ideas, it is worth nothing, and what matters is its passage into existence4. From this he concludes that what is proper to man is to go beyond every essence in which he is confined5.

1. 1Chateaubriand26 Mar 2019 · 56:05
2. 2La mondanité chez Clouscard - Le monde comme "ruse de la raison"22 Jul 2023 · 25:38
3. 3NOTRE ANCIENNE SAUVAGERIE ? - Lecture à vif d'une illumination d'Arthur Rimbaud13 Jun 2025 · 21:30
4. 4La mondanité chez Clouscard - Le choc des mondes ?9 Jul 2023 · 2:00:49
5. 5Dominique Pagani ▷II Michel Foucault2 May 2019 · 1:14:39

Summary produced automatically from 31 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.