Hippolyte

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani reads the Hippolytus of Racine's Phèdre as the figure of a subject who does not know himself. A virtuous hunter, he flees the court and women, and prefers Troezen to the turmoil of Athens. But beneath this dutiful-son conscience, he is in fact fleeing Aricia, the only woman his father Theseus has forbidden him to love1. For Pagani, his hunting is a substitute for his father's pursuit of monsters, a father whose reputation inhibits him2. He moralizes this father by cutting the amorous part out of his story, which amounts to castrating him symbolically3. The line "Asservi maintenant sous la commune loi" ("Now enslaved under the common law"), which Pagani often comments on, marks the moment when this young man who thought himself apart discovers that he is like everyone else: love dispossesses him of himself and brings him back to the human condition45. Pagani also notes that he repeats "I am leaving" from the very first line. He sees in this a hubris and a transgression of the unity of place that foretell his death, trampled by Neptune's horses6.

1. 1#2.5 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?1 Aug 2017 · 18:23
2. 2#2.6 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?1 Aug 2017 · 1:32:51
3. 3Wagner et ses interprètes, L'accès à Clouscard, Marx = Thésée? • Q&A Philosophique • Pagani31 Mar 2021 · 1:09:30
4. 4#4.4B Objections à Dominique Pagani4 Feb 2018 · 13:59
5. 5#9 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...17 Dec 2020 · 1:25:39
6. 6Musicosophie 7. Les Grecs, le mythe et la musique17 Dec 2020 · 20:04

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