Achille

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani often returns to Achilles to say that the ancient individual has no details: we will never know his tastes, his particular traits, or even whether he had a beauty mark1. The Greek hero is not a singular individual; all that counts is the character he embodies, or the citizen2. He makes this point from 2014 to 2023, notably in the sessions on Antigone3. He also recalls that Greek children knew Achilles' exploits by heart and listened to them as if for the first time, which he presents as myth become the poem of the people4. Achilles also serves him as a point of comparison: for Sundiata in Sahelian narratives, who is likened to Napoleon as well5; for Siegfried, who is as hot-blooded as Achilles; and for the shield, whose sharpness he compares to the music of Parsifal. He further mentions the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise as a figure of the continuum and of a movement that never arrives, Valéry's line "Achilles motionless in great strides", and an Achilles imagined speaking like a Versailles courtier in Racine.

1. 1#2.2 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?15 Feb 2016 · 30:59
2. 210#1 L’éternelle ironie de la communauté22 Sept 2021 · 21:07
3. 3La PHILO avec PAGANI : A comme ANTIGONE20 Mar 2023 · 12:33
4. 4Education : le Beau s'apprend-il ?20 Jul 2018 · 1:22:30
5. 5AFRIQUE SAHÉLIENNE ET IMPÉRIALISME : Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger - avec Dominique PAGANI23 Mar 2024 · 1:01:37

Summary produced automatically from 20 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.