Series · 6 Jul 2026From Plato to Proust - Readings on the Spot- 41:20The Nightwatches of BonaventuraUnknown author under a pseudonym; his only work makes the terrifying hypothesis that there is no one, that everything is nothing.
Appears in 7 videos · 9 passages, 5 of them in depth.
Dominique Pagani mentions Bonaventura for a single book, the Night Watches (Les Veilles). He presents it as the journal of a night watchman published in 1802 and as one of the most extreme texts of German Romanticism12. He stresses that the author is anonymous: a contemporary of Hegel whose identity is still unknown. He reports that Schelling's name has been put forward3, and he himself suggests that the author could be Hegel, since the watchman almost states negativity4. He takes one thesis from the text: everything is nothing, and death is immanent in every instant. He sees in it a materialism more radical and more distressing than that of the Enlightenment5. He also highlights the image of a nothingness that swallows itself up and would show itself if life were interrupted6. Finally, he links the work to the question of the subject, since it puts forward the terrifying hypothesis that there is no someone7. He cites it in sessions devoted to Nerval, Schumann, Hölderlin and contradictory identity.
Summary produced automatically from 9 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Series · 6 Jul 2026From Plato to Proust - Readings on the Spot
Season 12 · 12 Dec 2023"I is another", or contradictory identity
Talks · 19 Mar 2022Dominique Pagani - Hölderlin, poetry and politics
Season 6 · 29 Mar 2020#6.6 • The Logic of the Subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism
Season 4 · 16 May 2018#4.8 Angélique (by Nerval)
Season 11 · 18 Mar 2023A SPRINGTIME OF THE PEOPLES?
Season 5.2 · 2 May 2019#5.6 Nature or Landscape?