Forgetting

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani treats forgetting, in the series "Benefits and Harms of Amnesia", as a necessity as well as a danger. With Nietzsche, against 2,500 years of tradition, he holds that the possibility of forgetting is what makes happiness happiness1. In his view, one can live almost without memories, but not without forgetting: to remember everything at every moment would make one lose heart, that is, courage2. It is not only an external cause that limits memory: it is also an inner force that does not want to rise up. Hence a back-and-forth between the effort of anamnesis and the effort not to know3. He refers to Lethe and Mnemosyne, where dying means forgetting and then remembering4. He also finds forgetting in Hippolytus, who would like to "steal from memory" part of his father's story, and in Wagner, with the potion that makes Siegfried forget Brünnhilde. In 2022, he points to its dark side: amnesia is the favourite weapon of the silence in which the death drives advance5.

1. 1#1 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...8 Oct 2020 · 56:35
2. 2#10 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...24 Dec 2020 · 32:03
3. 3#5 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...19 Nov 2020 · 1:26:43
4. 4#2 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...23 Oct 2020 · 1:06:35
5. 5#8 Philosopher sous la menace27 Jan 2022 · 49:09

Summary produced automatically from 12 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.