English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Return to La Cloche fêlée: the separated individual 0:00 The session we did at the Café Le Sorbon last time, I learned that those who were sitting a little far from the table where I was seated could hardly hear anything. So I'm sorry for the somewhat distant acoustics last time. Because, second thing to follow on from that, mégaresse, was to pick back up on the notion we had arrived at by the end of the session at the Sorbon.
0:30 I don't know if that had been heard or perceived by those who were a bit far away, I don't think so. It was in response to one of the questions that had been asked of me about the notion of the subject. We had brought out the notion of the subject. We had already brought out the notion of the individual between us following the reading of 'The Cracked Bell.' We had seen how this poem expresses modernity. By illustrating the difficulty for the individual to adhere, as was the case in traditional society, which we called among ourselves substantial society.
1:15 He thus found himself isolated, sometimes because he seeks it, sometimes because he suffers this isolation. That's the case in 'The Cracked Bell,' where this isolation is extremely tragic. But in both cases, whether it's the romantic pleasure of solitude, as literature expresses it in multiple ways, especially at the beginning of the eighteenth century, or whether it's destitution, even dereliction, abandonment. That's a strong word, dereliction.
1:50 In theology, that's Jesus on the Mount of Olives, dereliction, abandoned by men and by God. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, isn't it? My father, my father, why have you forsaken me? So that was a bit the case of the poor wretch who speaks in the first person in 'The Cracked Bell,' isn't it? In both cases, the individual is separated—that's the important word, in the surgical sense of the term—from his community of origin. And precisely, the next time, after that first reading we had of 'The Cracked Bell,' we had enriched this individual-society opposition, which remains a bit abstract and general, and thus still teaches us too little, by adding to society the term community, which is not quite the same thing. Every society, fortunately moreover, is not communal.
Society and community: from sociability to communion 2:44 Not every community extends as far as society. You can guess that community is more restricted than society. I'm not making, for now, either laudatory or pejorative distinctions, but let me open a small parenthesis that we owe to sociological discourse. There was a time when this way of speaking was very fashionable. That's the time when Gurvitch, the sociologist who reigned over the agrégation at the time—and I smile because he was known for his bad temper—well, he hated Lévi-Strauss.
3:16 Anyway, in short, Gurvitch, who wrote a treatise on sociology—some of you may have at least heard of it, even read it, it isn't read much anymore now, but back then people read nothing else. So Gurvitch had distinguished several levels, you see, of the individual's adherence to the society he belongs to. From the lightest, which he calls sociability, general social determination, you see, it could be on a bus, you find yourself there by chance.
3:46 From sociability up to communion, the strongest bond, passing through, you see, all the intermediate stages—you can unfold the whole spectrum—to the communion there can be, you see, a few moments before a goal, in a football match, sorry for this macho example, though more and more women are interested in football, and they must be in love, I mean, with their football. And no, there are some who love it, who are very good, strong, the teams.
4:18 And then, or in the religious domain, you see, communion is a very strong term, it can be in sport, it can be at a concert too, of course, there are strong moments. So you see, one can unfold—well, let me close this little sociological parenthesis, but an interesting one, it can be useful, isn't it, between sociability, the loosest bond, and communion. Well, we, we have the duty, here, in philosophy, to specify what we're talking about, because we see that the spectrum is a bit too wide, individual, society, that's a bit too loose.
4:48 And so, we had seen that in 'The Cracked Bell,' in the end, he wasn't separated from society in general, it wasn't an apology for individualism, far from it, nor even was it a lament about being cut off from society in general, but from this society that lives to the rhythm of the bell. Let's not interpret the text, let's leave it as it is, the pure signifier, it's very clear: blessed be the bell with the vigorous throat, I won't repeat it, isn't it, which, despite its old age, I often think, when my voice is quavering, which happens more and more often, upon waking, alert and in good health, you see, despite its old age, faithfully casts its religious cry, like an old soldier who keeps watch under the tent—the army, the church.
5:35 You remember, we noticed that these were the two communities illustrated by the text, the bell, the church, like an old soldier who keeps watch under the tent, the army, the sabre and the holy water sprinkler. These two crowds without women, to which Freud devoted a rather interesting essay. Two cases of crowds, he says, without women, the church and the army. Here again, as with football, there are more and more women in the army. Well, in Freud's time, it wasn't common. And so there you have it, it's an exclusive community.
6:13 Not to mention, I'm no longer talking here about the church and the army in the strict sense, where women are outright excluded. But also, I mean, the society of good people, as they say, illustrated in 'The Cracked Bell,' the society of people who distrust outcasts like Baudelaire. This is where we must recall that Baudelaire inaugurates the well-known series, in literary history, of the so-called cursed poets. This is no coincidence, that too is an expression of modernity. If you want to see the exact symmetrical opposite, take Sophocles.
Ancient poet and accursed poet 6:44 Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, no matter. That is, a great author of Antiquity, a poet of Antiquity. Antiquity—he's modern, I'm in the process, I'm talking about modernity. You see the green better on a red background, isn't it, than on turquoise. We never know if turquoise is blue or green. Well, so we must understand modernity well, we must ground it on what it is opposed to. And vice versa, if you want to understand the Greeks, you especially have to forget us a bit, or rather struggle against ourselves at bottom.
7:16 To the point of understanding that we can have nothing in common with them, like Hölderlin, who nevertheless did everything for that, poor man, to the point of madness. So he realized before Nietzsche that it was madness to want to remake the Greek gesture when one is modern, precisely. So, back to our sheep, we weren't far off, actually. Look, Sophocles, Euripides... It's not just that they weren't cursed, it's that they were considered demigods by their society.
7:47 Tonight, what are you doing? Apart from those with whom I'll have the pleasure of having dinner. But I mean, after that, it's none of my business, you'll tell me. But that's it, it's private, that's the modern world. Some will go to after hours, I don't know. I take it in the extensive sense, after the other hours. The after hours. Clubbing, etc. Others will go home. They'll go listen to an opera with headphones in bed, while their wife is snoozing, or the other way around.
8:22 What are you doing tonight? But the question doesn't even arise. Everyone's going to see Aeschylus's 'The Persians' in Athens. It's the event of the evening. You see the difference? In the ancient world, it's the event. No one's going to stay home. For the people concerned, that is, the citizens. Everyone—it's the event. Some brought food to eat on the tiers. You see, because sometimes the play lasted four days. That's what's called a tetralogy.
8:54 That is, a dramatic trilogy that ended, so that we could still part on a happier note, with a comedy. That was the rule. 3 plus 1 makes 4, a tetralogy. Wagner will remember this later in making Die Meistersinger, his only comic work after Tristan. There you go. So, we won't oppose things more than... I'm talking here about the relationship of the poet to his society. We've already seen, you remember, several times, but last time I recalled it, the relationship of the limping one, up to the tragic, up to death.
9:27 Sometimes, see Socrates, the philosopher's relation to society, disturbing it with his questions. There, we see, we could say, for the separated poet, no. For the modern poet, yes. There you go. It's a new category, the cursed poet. Which Baudelaire wrongly inaugurates. I'm going to bring up again, you know, my favorite is Nerval. I tell you this. But Nerval develops all the themes that will later make modernity. Baudelaire, etc. Baudelaire knows it, moreover. Baudelaire acknowledges it, it's an admirable passage.
9:57 Except that nobody starts from Nerval until a recent date, until the sixties or so. Because he's rehabilitated on misunderstood grounds. The surrealists had rehabilitated him a bit because of dreams. In short, Proust, because of memory, souvenirs, etc. And he only occupies a truly front-rank place in literature since the late sixties. Which is fairly late, compared to the era in which he lived. But well, if we were rigorous, he's the first of the cursed poets. It's not that he ends up mad or a suicide.
10:28 Both, in his case. Both. The most Romantic German of the French Romantics. And his best friend in Paris, Heine, was the most French of the German Romantics. Go figure. I recommend reading Heine today. It's very relevant. Here's a German who knows how to speak about Germany. 'I had a dream.' That's not Martin Luther King's thing. It's an English paraphrase of a well-known poem in the Germanic world.
11:01 It's a poem that every German schoolchild knows. 'I had a dream.' It's a poem by Heine about Germany. It's romantically the fact of being Jewish, Heine. So read him carefully. All the more so since he attended Hegel's lectures. That's rare among writers of the time. There's an allusion to a poet known for his irony. Not his humor. That's why the other Romantics resented him a great deal.
11:31 Because they took their tragedy seriously. There you go. So you see, a cursed poet, that is, someone rejected—by what? By the community. The community of good people who brought a lawsuit for immorality against Baudelaire. You see it well. At the same time, practically a bit after, against Oscar Wilde for homosexuality. You see this society that was... that wallowed in the most unforgivable vice, that of not having the genius of an Oscar Wilde or a Baudelaire.
12:03 Porn postcards were lying around on the boulevards well before the internet, whatever you like, isn't it? Since forever, if you look closely. It was reserved for a somewhat less extensive society than today's, the libertines, with all the engravings that circulated in the eighteenth century. Don't worry about that. That's not what's new. It's not pornography. It's its extension. It's interesting to reflect on. What do we condemn? Pornography or its extension? Or its democratization? I open the parenthesis again.
12:34 It's not a different subject. Although. Whoever wants to kill his dog accuses it of rabies, as they say. There you go. So we saw that it wasn't society in general from which the poor wretch of 'The Cracked Bell' was isolated, but a community which, because it's too homogeneous, is necessarily too exclusive. Which isn't prismatic enough. Which doesn't have enough facets to welcome within itself, isn't it?
13:04 The richness of the particular. Diversity. There you go. And that's the greatest difficulty of modernity. It's to remain sociable. We had summed that up among ourselves: man is a political animal. In any case, it will always be within the framework of a society. But the difficulty of modernity is to conceive of a society composed of elements each of which is free. No society of the past ever had to take on this program.
13:35 The Greeks, we often say, isn't it? We say the Greeks, the Greeks, the miracle, the Greek. We must recall each time that this miracle is only valid for a minority, isn't it, of free citizens. Oh yes, sorry. And there, I just gave another example that has nothing to do with it, you see. It's that the freedom of morals we enjoy at the level of licentious publications, isn't it, has existed since time immemorial, but it was reserved for a very small minority.
14:09 So you see, modernity is launched on its rails, haphazardly, but it's very difficult, isn't it, to ensure for everyone the freedom that was once the privilege of only a few. Which makes me think of... since I'm going to quote one of these passages, I tried to catch up, to take into account the reproach made to me for not dealing enough with Hegel. So, moreover, if anyone reflects on this dichotomy we're grasping right now, it's him.
The subject is not something already given; Descartes and the scientific revolution 14:45 So, this contemporary of the French Revolution, and of the birth of modernity. Precisely, I want to recall here, last time we ended on the notion of the subject, recalling—I think it was with you, with your question—with Gwenaola, that the subject was not something already-there, was not a substance. We arrived at this result thanks to your question.
15:15 I had warned you that the subject is all well and good, but one must take the other into account. And I had recalled that a subject worthy of the name is precisely someone who, through the intermediary of another someone, has become a subject. It's not something already there, it's not a substance, it's not a heredity, it's not a given. Aragon's beautiful poem that Brassens set to music, and in the refrain, 'there is no happy love.' We must not forget the first stanza, isn't it? It's a paraphrase of Hegel. Nothing is ever acquired by man, neither his weakness, nor his strength, nor his right.
15:49 And when he thinks he's opening his arms, his shadow is that of a cross, and when he wants to grasp his happiness, he crushes it. A paraphrase of Hegel's great thesis that desire is destructive. So this notion of the subject that emerges and that even defines, in academic histories of philosophy—I say this without any contempt, one absolutely must possess it—which is characterized, which is supposed to have been initiated by Descartes.
16:25 Descartes founds what is called modern philosophy or the philosophy of the subject. That's somewhat tied, it's the famous cogito. Cogito is the first person singular of the verb 'I think' in Latin. It's not true because God decided it, it's not true because society thinks it, it's true because I myself recognize that it's true. I validate it as long as I haven't validated it myself, and I, that's each one of us. That's what's powerful about Descartes. It's not his own particularity, with his beauty mark. No, no, it's not François René Descartes, the Poitevin gentleman.
16:57 It's everyone who has followed the same path of doubt, etc. It's indubitable. Dubito, I doubt, ergo, cogito. That's what precedes the 'therefore I am.' I doubt, therefore I think. You agree. That's called a deduction. It's not complicated. Doubting is a mode of thinking. So I doubt, I think. Whether I'm right or wrong to doubt is another problem. But so, I doubt, I think. I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.
17:27 You see, it's not doubt he couldn't manage, Descartes. That's interesting, by the way. Good. So this first certainty which makes us leave the nightmare of the first meditation—since I'm talking about the subject, I'm lingering a bit. I'm doing the history of philosophy in a somewhat retroactive manner, like this. Let me remind you that Descartes is a contemporary of Galileo, first half of the seventeenth century, so he's a contemporary of what's called the scientific revolution.
18:00 Careful, this isn't the industrial, technical revolution, that's much later, but it's first the condition that made the industrial revolution possible—it's the scientific revolution. There first had to be a theoretical physics. Otherwise there would have been no steam engine and its later optimization, in the era of Watt, Cugnot, and others. So Descartes, whom I mentioned last time for having formulated the principle of inertia that Galileo had brought about physically, but that Descartes was the first to formulate philosophically—that a body subject to no force is either at rest or moving in a uniform straight line—which made coincide, which was unthinkable before, unrepresentable, still for the majority of people even now, motion and rest.
18:44 For millennia, people asked themselves what the origin of motion was. You know, the famous flick of the finger Pascal talks about—God gave a little nudge like that, and afterward, fine, the physicist can deduce everything from physics, but for that God still had to set things in motion. We no longer need any of that. From Galileo on, it doesn't matter whether we're in motion or at rest, it's the same thing if the motion is rectilinear and uniform. Anyone who's taken the train understands what I mean. I mean a train that glides well, that doesn't have too many gaps between the rails, not too many jolts, there you go.
19:22 So, by the way, now, we say that solid ground, as they say so well in French, isn't it, is really the opposite of motion, it's what doesn't move, it's solid, and yet now it's moving at 30 km a second along with the Earth, you see. But since everything moves at the same speed on Earth, we equate it with rest. So Descartes is indeed a contemporary of all that, the main actor in philosophy. And why am I talking about this now, and why don't I make him a modern in the sense in which we were speaking with Baudelaire?
Thought and extension: a still binary philosophy 19:53 He inaugurates modern philosophy, but not yet modernity, in the sense that each one of us, whether we study philosophy or are uneducated, is a citizen of modernity, that is, subsequent to the great crack—I repeat myself—the English industrial revolution, the French political revolution. Almost simultaneous, the two, in historical terms, late eighteenth, early nineteenth century. What's still missing for him? Here I'm going to revise Descartes a bit. What's missing is that he's still binary, he hasn't yet arrived at number 3.
20:27 I'm not into the mysticism of numbers, I often make this somewhat humorous allusion, dialectic is ternary, that's why I linger a little on it. And you know I hold a grudge against binary music. But let's be serious, that's not why I only like waltzes, in music. Far from it. So what am I alluding to? To the fact that the two great attributes—Spinoza will say, right after Descartes—that we know of God, at the time everything breathes God, whether it's Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes, these are people who think in God.
21:06 That's how it is, we mustn't even try to understand it, historically I mean. I say this because poor Spinoza was accused of atheism, isn't it? There's a very beautiful text by Hegel where he speaks of Spinoza on this subject, he says, it's a misunderstanding, one should speak, regarding Spinoza, of acosmism. That's a strange notion coming from Hegel. Acosmism—it's true that the cosmos is absorbed into the thought of God in Spinoza. It's extraordinary. There you go. But he's very fair with Spinoza. Moreover, Hegel, one of the greatest tributes ever paid to Spinoza—I tell you this because the dominant philosophies today are philosophers who want to impose Spinoza by opposing him to Hegel, which disfigures both.
21:45 Hegel said every philosopher has two philosophies, his own and Spinoza's. That's a rare tribute, isn't it? Yes, in the history of thought, all the same. There you go. Yes, what are these two attributes? Thought and extension. There you go, as I was telling you, binary. There you go. Of God, we know only that God is, says Spinoza right from the beginning of the Ethics, a substance composed of an infinity of attributes, but of which we ourselves know only two, isn't it? Thought. So we partake of God, of divinity, only through two entrances, if you will.
22:18 Thought, so God thinks, and extension. God exists. The res extensa in Spinoza's Latin text, extension. Ex—what exists, isn't it, is what is extended. And what is extended exists. I apologize for this tautology. I'm just respecting the prefix 'ex' in both cases. But these are important reminders. We're not in the romantic 'in' here.
22:48 We're not in interiority, we're not... Careful. Thought, yes. Thought is inside. But extension is outside. The res extensa. Moreover, what characterizes space is what's called the juxtaposition of parts, partes extra partes, in classical philosophy. Each part outside the other. That's what characterizes space. Because if it merged, there would be no more space. Think about it a little. If all the parts of a line merged, that is, the points merged, there would be no line, there would only be a point.
Babel, confusion of tongues, between crisis and war 23:23 For there to be a line, all the parts have to be partes extra partes. There you go. That's the mode of exteriority. God, since he has everything, he's infinite, he has both. And we, we participate a little in that majesty, a little. I'm making a parenthesis again. I'm not losing my thread, I'm getting closer to the center of my topic. We had started from reflections on language these last few sessions, right? And last time I had you follow a little dramatized sequence, a drama in three acts in the Bible, right?
24:01 The tragedy of language, right? The first act where Adam names the creatures, that's the earthly paradise. The era when language calls things by their name. A marvel. A stage which, I told you, all great poetry wants to return to without knowing it, or knowing it a little, it doesn't matter. Then, afterward, the antithesis, the Tower of Babel, the curse God throws down on that great enterprise that is humanity, and which, to discourage it from its Promethean vision, right?
24:31 I'm deliberately mixing Greek mythology and the Bible. Because the Tower of Babel enterprise and Prometheus are the same thing, it's wanting to equal the gods, the divine. So he throws, not lightning nor the flood this time, because he has every weapon in his quiver, you know, but the confusion of tongues. The opposite of the earthly paradise where things were named by... We no longer understand each other. Confusion of tongues. We're already making war between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
25:01 You can guess that's the basis of my talk today. After all, it's called between crisis and war, philosophizing, our workshop. I don't get the impression we've come out of the crisis these days. Unless the economists contradict me. I have the impression it's even getting a bit worse currently. There you go. Every time, moreover, that we say, that's it, we're out of it, in fact it gets worse, it goes down a level in depth, I notice. Since 2007-2008, that's the official start.
25:33 And as for war, I don't have the impression it's gone away these past few days. I presume you have access to the same news as I do, it doesn't matter, everyone has their own channel, but still, when things are this serious, we end up hearing the same echoes. It's worrying. At the top of the state, yesterday, François Hollande, on France Inter, talked about the danger of world war, for that to come from the head of state — normally that's conspiracy theories, that's the rotten channels on the internet, the pro-Russian channels, the rotten stuff.
26:04 ...to the watchdog cliques, that's true. The Underground. It's strange, the Underground has migrated, before it was the libertarian liberals who claimed the Underground in the sixties. Now they're in the ruling majority, right, they're with Charlie. And the protesters are the pro-Putin ones, it's strange, like the world. Anyway, let's get back to the subject.
26:35 Watch out for the confusion of the wide. A head of state talking about world war, Turkey, Saudi Arabia threatening to intervene, when up until now they were so happy to let others get killed in their place. I'm quite old now, though. I don't know, it's been more than 40 years that I've been watching Saudi Arabia's financing, that is, through petrodollars — I'm not going to point the finger at those Arab bastards. It comes from the oil trusts, all of that, let's be clear.
27:12 You know that the only plane allowed to fly over American skies after the September 11 attacks was the Bin Laden family's plane, which needed to be repatriated because they were regulars at the White House, they were old friends, they were suppliers, you know, the big real estate people, Saudi Arabia and the Bush family and oil. Anyway, all that is known, more or less. So for 40 years Saudi Arabia had been financing everything in Pakistan. The origin, Bin Laden, his first mission was that, was dispatching to the Afghan factions to shoot down some Russians.
27:48 The subsidies, the petrodollars, that kind of thing. And now, for them to propose going and getting themselves shot up on the ground, that smells fishy all the same. You see? No, but it's serious. There. So I'll quote you another text later, probably our oldest text. When I say 'our,' I mean this rather strange context we questioned last time, which is the Westerners.
Neither body nor soul: the unconscious; Kleist and the romantics 28:19 But let me get back to my thought and my extension. So there you go, everything's fine, thought, everything belonging to the order of the subject, and extension, the leading role, which is the category of the object in general. All objects are found in extension. You see? In other words, between soul and body, translating that into the terms of the time, there's nothing. Right? Now, modernity is someone telling us: and the unconscious, what do you do with that?
28:52 It's neither the body nor the soul. That's interesting today. I mean as a positioning, as a topology — where are we going to place it? Body and soul, everyone has learned to distinguish opposites, fine. You'll tell me, wait, we didn't need Freud to talk about the unconscious. Fine! Men have always known very well the patellar reflex, digestion, breathing. Thank goodness it happens without my having to think about it, if I had to think about it.
29:23 I said, I had trouble with it. I told you once or twice last time about that strange organ, the mouth, right, which constantly has to juggle between three functions and risks getting confused: speaking, eating, and breathing. Can you imagine? Thankfully all that more or less works out, you shouldn't think about it too much either. Did you finally read the Kleist text, Pierre? Yes. Right? I told myself, you see the connection. I recommend it to you, I recommend it because I know we don't have time to read, between crisis and war, less than ever.
29:59 But since it's not even three pages long, I'm not exaggerating, Pierre — he's working on reflection within the framework of the agrégation, if I may say so, and of philosophy. I took the liberty of recommending to him this little gem of a text by Kleist, someone we found with a bullet in his temple, on the shores of the Wannsee in Berlin, at a time when the Romantics were shooting themselves. Goethe, who inaugurates this — not through suicide, Goethe wasn't foolish enough for that — but through his hero Werther.
30:30 He said afterward, I should never have written that book, what a slaughter. He wouldn't even go to his son's bedside when he died, Goethe. And when he himself died, his last words were recorded, do you know them? Does anyone know? Surely, Jean, I'm sure. No? That's not Goethe's last words. There's a crisis, he's old, the Olympian, all of Germany, come and see — including Bettina, that marvel of the sea, as Goethe called her.
31:03 Bettina Brentano, who slept with Napoleon, Hölderlin, Kleist, well, anyway. A bacchante who crosses through — same name — who wrote superb texts. So, Bettina, I'll tell you about her, I'll tell it for the young ladies. I fancy myself Chrétien de Troyes. You know, at the court of Champagne, I'm going to tell you the most beautiful story ever told at a royal court. So, young ladies, listen up. Yes, no, but this one is true, it's incredible. Bettina writes to her mother — so she's a bacchante crossing through German Romanticism.
31:36 And, a generous temperament, as they say. And yes, she's not the floaty, gothic romantic type. No, no, oh no. So she had both extension and body. So, first meeting with Goethe. She heard him speak in 1807. And she talks, and talks, gets carried away, and suddenly bursts into tears, of course. Like I've seen the Pope, every time he embraces someone in the crowd, he bursts into tears.
32:09 Well yes, we're going to meet the Pope. You can't resist, you crack. She wrote to her mother, she tells the whole story: so he put his hand over my mouth and said, calm down, that's what we both need. He's clever. What a seducer. Calm down, calm down, that's what we both need. There you go. So, Kleist, whom we found dead with his companion, a double suicide, in ecstasy, in joy, in cheerfulness — I don't just mean joy, a bit delirious, no, in cheerfulness.
32:45 It's the innkeeper who testifies. They asked for coffee outside, which was strange given how far along the season was, it had been cold, the king of Berlin. And then they heard, bang bang, they were dead, they were as merry as larks. There you go. Kleist wrote, of course — he's the greatest playwright of German Romanticism, the only one who knows how to write for the theater in German Romanticism. There aren't many long-form works in German Romanticism. It's brilliant, by pollen — that's a Novalis title — by fragments, etc., there's no long-form work.
33:15 Except, for theater, Kleist, right — Gérard Philipe made himself famous playing the Prince of Homburg, you see, Kleist's theater, a TNP production at the time. And Little Catherine of Heilbronn, I recommend that to you, it's a marvel, the Käthchen von Heilbronn, do you know it, a marvel. Well, but above all, if you don't have time, three pages, Reflections on the Marionette Theatre. And here we come back to thought, it's stretched thin.
Kleist's puppet theater 33:46 Still, it ends up leading me astray, he stumbled right into it. He runs into, in the street, a very famous dancer of the time, a classical dancer, who was watching a puppet show in the street. He's surprised, that something so trivial should catch such a great artist. You already see all the themes: a learned art, a popular art. And he questions him and becomes more and more astonished because the other tells him, 'Wait, for me, the ultimate dancer is the marionette.' What, what, what?
34:16 It's mechanical, that's not possible. But mechanical, mechanical. Res extensa. The external, material world, the opposite of thought. There's no thought at all in mechanics. It's one or the other. There's the one who pulls the strings, who thinks, to make the audience laugh. And then there's the passive one, the passive things. He says, 'No, no, but...' And he says, 'You see, I was at the gymnasium, that was a lot.' That's German, they have a side to them, I know it. I was naked in the gymnasiums, among men.
34:48 That was a lot. Nudism had become unremarkable, well, you know all that. The Greeks, well, the fantasized Greeks, but updated. Dangerous. Well, it can be dangerous. And so there was, you know, our friend, I don't know his first name, Wolfie, whom we admired for his grace, etc., a handsome guy, who was drying himself off coming out of the bath, and then I told him, laughing a little, that he had a bit the pose of a statue that was at the Louvre.
35:24 Ah, it escapes me, well I'll find it by the end of the session, a statue very well known at the time. There were already many reproductions circulating, there was no photography yet. And so that embarrassed him a little, but afterward I saw him trying to strike the pose of the statue in question, you see? And the more he tried, the less he succeeded. You see where I'm going with this? Thought came in to disturb things, just as if I think about digesting, I'll digest even worse. If I think about breathing, I'll choke. And it gets worse and worse.
35:57 And at the end, there's the bear scene. I recommend that to you. He tells how he was invited by a gentleman from Livonia. Livonia is far away, it's in Russia. The Reich was large. Thanks to the Teutonic Knights who, by iron, by sword, by fire, right? And the Bible had conquered these Slavic lands. I tell you, it's the greatest carnage in all of human history. The struggle between Germans and Slavs in Europe over 12 centuries. It can be measured, it's not just a matter of opinion.
36:31 From Charlemagne to Stalingrad, I can't help it. So, he's invited to Livonia, a gentleman of Courland, who provokes him a bit into fencing. After the meal, that was a lot. And the narrator unhorses him, he's an excellent fencer. And the other, a bit stung, a bit piqued, says, 'I'll take you before your master.' He goes down into the courtyard where there's a bear chained up, but with one paw free.
37:02 He says, go ahead, go for it. The other one — I hadn't expected it, I wasn't ready for it. So, well, I give it a thrust. The bear looks at me with its little eyes, and it just brushes the blade aside. I did that somewhat mechanically. This time, he gets more and more worked up. This time I wanted to make a thrust that truly no one had ever parried. The bear — pop! Its eyes narrowed. And he even specifies, he even specifies, when I feinted — that is, when I pretended to make a move but didn't follow through — it didn't move, it didn't react.
37:40 Something I've never seen any opponent do. There you go. The bear doesn't think. It's entirely focused on its opponent. It has no other thought. It's an extraordinary story. What's even more extraordinary is the conclusion. You're going to tell me, yes, we see it coming, it's the Romantics, thought is always what comes to disturb things. We understand why Hegel fell out with them, the man of rationality, of reflection. He's the one who shows that reflection isn't outside the absolute, but is itself an absolute reflection.
38:18 You'll see the ending. At the end, the dancer concludes, or rather the narrator says, 'If I understand correctly, it's thought that comes to disturb grace.' 'Yes,' says the dancer, 'but be careful, just as on an infinite line one ends up finding again the point one started from, likewise, infinite grace comes either from the total absence of thought, or from infinite thought.'
38:51 That is, either in the pebble, or in God. The narrator replies, 'If I understand correctly, we'd need to taste once more from the tree of knowledge to recover grace.' 'Yes,' replies the narrator, 'that's the fall, that's the last sentence. And it will be the last chapter of universal history.' Well now, we started from the puppet theater in the street, and it ends with the last chapter of universal history. Three pages. There you go, I recommend it. Besides, it's been published by one of those small publishing houses I like a lot, the edition — there are several, but two of them, two euros, you know, they have tiny little texts like that, either prefaces or excerpts.
The psychic unconscious and the third term 39:28 and I don't have the name of the publisher, but anyway, you see what I mean. And I have several of them. And Reflections on the Marionette Theatre, Heinrich von Kleist. So, we knew well before Freud that breathing, the patellar reflex, in short, that we have an unconscious — let's say a physical, organic one — that, we didn't need Freud to know, that it happens without thinking, those things.
39:58 But that's not what's different. It's much more scandalous. We have a psychic unconscious — what does that mean? So, brace yourselves, well, if you're like me, attached a bit to logic, to philosophy, it means that I have thoughts I don't think, wills I don't will. Yes, I have the impression I'm stumbling over words here. That's what Freud said. It's much more serious than saying, 'my kneecap moves on its own,' right, when the doctor does the test at the medical checkup — to think that I don't think.
40:44 So that means there's a third term between thought and extension. See where I wanted to get to. There's a third term. Here, we go from binary to ternary. We become serious. We become modern. You hear me talk about Lévi-Strauss. He clearly split nature and culture. I'm not talking about the Lévi-Strauss who's gone senile and has only one obsession, that there are too many people for humanity. Unfortunately, that idea has spread, but without the intelligence and culture of Lévi-Strauss, who had one of the finest minds in Paris.
41:19 But still, that's a way of thinking that's always pre-Nazifying. It means we'd have to eliminate two-thirds of humanity for things to work. And of course, I'm part of the remaining third. You hear me. Well yes. Otherwise, I'd agree too. If they guarantee me a spot, I'm part of Noah's Ark. Fine. But anyway, the great Lévi-Strauss, nature, culture — he had rehabilitated Rousseau, who had the depth to be the first to oppose that, cleanly opposed it, binary. He says, yes, but there's the raw, nature.
41:50 The jaguar eats raw. And then the cooked, man eats cooked. And he learned cooking. If you've read The Raw and the Cooked, based on Bororo tales from deep in the Amazon — who initiated man into the cooking of food? The jaguar. It's powerful, Indian thought, savage thought, to borrow a great title from Lévi-Strauss. It's the animal that eats raw that taught man how to cook food, that taught him to use fire.
42:23 That's why it doesn't have it anymore. There's a logic to it. That's why it eats raw now. Well yes. And I gave it to you, I no longer have it. The logic of the gift. There you go. That's not my subject, I won't dwell on it. It's interesting. So, there's the raw, nature, there's the cooked, culture. And then Lévi-Strauss says, yes, but all the interest of cooking is what lies between the two. Marinated wild boar, you know it. There might be other Corsicans in the room. Marinade, what is that?
42:53 It's neither raw nor cooked, it's both. Do you agree? Tahitian-style fish, same thing. In fact it's cooked, but without flame, chemically, with lemon, herbs, acids. Water is a wet flame, that's Novalis. That's beautiful, isn't it? As an aphorism, like that. Water is a wet flame. Well, that's the poets' water. It's not H2O. So, there you go. Third term. What's interesting, every time, is the third term.
43:23 The fermented. The hooch. The rotten. Caroline isn't here. She thought a great deal about these questions, in a very relevant way. There you go. You see, the third term is interesting. Rousseau. What does he have to do with this, Rousseau? Well, let's get back to binary to better understand the ternary. Either we're awake, or we're asleep. That's how Descartes's first meditation ends. I'm not losing my thread. When I said that it's only through the cogito that one emerges from the nightmare of the first meditation.
First Meditation: madmen, dream and waking 43:55 It's in the second one that formulates the cogito. Remember. I want to get back to Rousseau. I'm getting back to Descartes. Remember. When Descartes writes his first meditation, the one that ends in crisis, that is, without any solution, on the contrary, worsening the initial doubts. And whose title is Of the things that can be called into doubt. I'll take stock of everything that's doubtful. That's the program of this first meditation. But you know he's not someone who doubts for the sake of doubting.
44:26 He's not a skeptic by temperament. On the contrary, he's someone who says, I need a certainty to found things on, to get myself out of this. Right? So I doubt, like this, as a method, to be sure not to... Because I've been fooled so often. I decided to regard as false everything that was merely probable. There's his strength. There's his secret weapon. Right? Between true and false — if there's the slightest occasion for doubt, I'll act as if it were absolutely false. That's his method. Al right. I decided to regard as false everything that was merely probable.
44:58 It's a musketeer speaking, a warrior. No, I'm not joking. War was his profession. He's a gentleman. From Poitou. What was a gentleman at the time? He hired himself out to the Prince Elector of Saxony who, during the Thirty Years' War, employed gentlemen who knew how to make war. That's it. At the time, it was common. The gentleman. Everything was about being a gentleman. Nothing but war. He's not from the nobility of the robe. And we owe the cogito to the fact that winter came... He tells the story, you know? Winter came and pinned him down. War had to stop.
45:28 In winter, you stop a bit, there. He says: thus I was shut up for an entire season in a stove-heated room. In a heated room. That's where he found the cogito. Yes. Between two battles. Between crisis and war. Right? All the same. He got attacked by pirates on a boat heading to Holland. You know the story. He was brought back to port at swordpoint, holding the pirates at bay. Careful now. We say "the philosophers." There are the philosophers and then there are men of action. Ooh! I decided to consider as false everything that was merely probable.
46:00 And then these words keep coming back in Descartes, like "once again." Right? "At once." Absolutely. Careful. When you're lost in a forest, he says you must go straight ahead. We'll eventually come out onto some path somewhere. But of course! You know his motto: I advance masked. I'm not a fool, myself. Galileo has just been condemned. There, you don't think I'm going to speak out and tell you what I think just like that?
46:30 No? I advance masked. So, he begins by doubting what? Being methodical, he doubts what is most evidently doubtful. Everything that is sensible and distant, as he puts it. As opposed to the sensible that is close at hand. I cannot deny that Jean is in front of me watching the camera right now. But that distant noise, what is it? Is it a storm? A truck? A plane? Yes. That's a distant sensible. What is most doubtful.
47:00 But on the other hand, there are the sensibles that are close at hand. There you go. Each time, we think doubt will stop at what is most evident. In "evident" there is "video" — what I see. That's the weakness of evidence. Remember that we don't see the earth moving. And that there's a long way from certainty to truth. And he says — how could I deny, I quote him here — that these hands and this body are mine. It's getting closer and closer.
47:30 It's the closest sensible thing for each of us. It's our own body. Do you agree? How could I deny that I am sitting here writing by the fireside? He writes that. You'd say there's an almost unsettling side to it as it gets closer to him. You're quite right. Just wait and see. "unless I compare myself to those madmen" — and here's the passage on the mad whose brain is so clouded by the black vapors of bile — that's the era's explanation of madness.
48:01 That they think they're kings when they're stark naked, or that they have a body made of pottery or glass. But what? They are madmen. He writes that. But what? They are madmen. You can feel the man with his hand on the hilt of his sword. I would be no less mad if I modeled myself on their example. On their example. I'll put a provisional stop there to remind you that Foucault only read that passage. You know Foucault's great thesis? The Great Confinement dates from the 17th century — Descartes, roughly speaking.
48:33 At the moment man defines himself as reason, he locks up the mad. In the Middle Ages he was more generous, which isn't wrong. Because the madman was considered somewhat as a visitation from God or as a prophet. So there you go. He was both feared and respected, etc. It's like that in parts of Africa too. And so at a certain point man defines himself as reason.
49:04 So there's this technocratic side to 17th-century modernity that sets itself up after Galileo's scientific revolution? But that Descartes should be its champion — well, just wait, because I've already given you the follow-up — how Descartes, far from subscribing to what Foucault says, isn't making an apology for reason but listen instead: I'm not going to speak of blood — but what? They are madmen, and I would be no less mad if I modeled myself on their example. Full stop. New line. However — not "again," you saw it's "again" — however, I have to consider here that I am a man, and that consequently I am accustomed to sleep and to represent to myself in my dreams things just as extravagant, indeed more extravagant, than those madmen do when they are awake.
49:55 Me, Descartes, when I dream I am just as mad, even madder, than they are. How many times have I not dreamed that I was sitting here writing by the fire, when in fact I was lying naked in my bed. Imagine the musketeer naked in his bed. This passage is extraordinary — what self-humiliation! You see, when he says in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind that one must carefully avoid prejudice and haste, how well he applies it himself, and how Foucault, on the contrary, rushes to see in him the paragon of reason when he is in the process — and you'll see, it gets even worse.
50:42 So that, thinking about it carefully, I see that there is no conclusive sign — I quote him word for word — that distinguishes waking from dreaming, so that my mind is quite astonished, and thunder, at the time, is a traumatic event, and this thought is almost enough to persuade me that I am asleep. That's where the First Meditation ends, on the impossibility of distinguishing whether I am awake or asleep by the sole criterion — careful — of the sensible.
51:16 Because you might tell me: but if I have certainty, that's not sensible — but in any case it's neither through the eyes nor the ears — well, I do see my grandmother — yes, yes, but in a dream I also see her, even though she died 20 years ago. More than that. Grandmother is perishable. The grandeur of Descartes. But what? They are madmen, and I would be no less mad if I model myself on their example. And there he gives an example of madness that's even worse.
Mathematical truths and an all-powerful God 51:46 practically by saying that I cannot distinguish waking from sleeping. So in the Second Meditation, when I tell you he draws his first certainty — I'm telling you this because I'm tired of hearing people say "the French are Cartesian," using the word "Cartesian" to mean the guy is a bit square. Do you realize what we've just read together? It's mind-blowing. Not many skeptics went that far.
52:16 And in the Second Meditation, so I'll speed up a bit, since we're doubting, we're going to arrive at the cogito. And here are the steps that were missing, since the sensible criterion collapses — there's no longer distant and close sensible, now all of the sensible collapses. Either there is no certainty at all, and so I'm going to sink into skepticism, let's be clear. Or, if there is a certainty, it's not based on a sensible criterion.
52:47 So all of empiricism collapses, the entire Anglo-Saxon school. Locke's and Hume's theories of sensation and perception. On the other hand, he says, when I say that 5 plus 3 equals 8, we move to another order of certainty. Intelligible certainty — you see, he's redoing a bit of Plato's gesture. Plato too had shown that the sensible is the bottom of the cave, where everything flows, where nothing is sure. And he had put over the entrance to his school "let none enter here who is not a geometer," which wasn't inviting people to do geometry at his school, but which strongly encouraged doing it before coming to his, because what better training to contemplate realities that are not things one can think, but things one can only think, to which one has access only through thought — which isn't quite the same thing, is it? Intelligible, that's it.
53:36 like that perfect circle, isn't it, which isn't the one I trace on the board or draw with a compass, even the finest in the world, even one with a diamond or laser point, but which is the circle of mathematicians, that is, a statement — don't go looking for a thing, because I can see people peering, imagining a microscope even finer than the laser — it's a statement: I call "circle" the locus of equidistant points. It's words, force of law, decree — we decree the realities that arise by decree, but a decree that everyone agrees on. We saw last time that measurement is the same: I subject everything to the meter, the centimeter, the second — things I've decreed, which weren't in nature — that's the second. So 3 plus 5 equals 8, and there, doubt is finished, whether I'm awake or asleep, 3 added to 5 will always make 8, says Descartes, I'm paraphrasing — and yet he finds a new reason to doubt. Do you remember which one, some of you?
54:46 let me remind you of the classics, I'm following Descartes' progression in the Meditations like a detective novel, no? What reason could someone who is little inclined to doubt at the outset, and an immense mathematician like Descartes, have to doubt even mathematical truths? You've forgotten — first of all, what's common to Leibniz, then Descartes, Malebranche? Well, they're people who breathe in God. Well yes, he says, however I've heard it said that a certain God exists — well of course, he's the first to say there's nothing assured at that level, because I'm not even sure whether I'm awake or asleep, how do you expect me to be sure of the existence of God, which is an even more complicated problem — the mere fact of the hypothesis that he might exist, that is, look how rigorous he is, that there might exist a being who made me and who is all-powerful, such that if 5 plus 3 equals 8, it's not because it's true in itself, but because God made me in such a way that every time I add 5 and 3
55:57 I find 8, that it's an effect of God's will and not of a reality in itself. Do you realize, you have to be quite twisted to go looking in the existence of God for an additional reason to doubt even intelligible realities — truths, I mean, not intelligible realities — it may be that every time I add 5 plus 3, I'm following God's designs, who decided that my thought must conclude that it makes 8. This is a point on which Spinoza did not follow Descartes — Spinoza said we know, it's not possible otherwise, it's true — you can see Descartes' audacity. I'm opening a small parenthesis, I'm not deciding who's right, I told you I won't be feeding your desire for a fight between philosophers here — it's more interesting still to see the reason for their disagreement, which is that no doubt Spinoza is right about rationality, but Descartes has a reason far superior to truth for invoking God: it's freedom. For to say that
57:07 5 plus 3 equals 8 is true in itself, like an eternal truth imposing itself on every subject, is a limitation, including of God's own freedom. Of course, it's a freedom that will later be called alienated in Hegel and Marx, isn't it — that is, this freedom which ought to be the privilege of man, we attribute it only to God as God's privilege, because he is all-powerful — if he is all-powerful, he could very well decide, says Descartes, and here he's unanswerable, that tomorrow 5 plus 3 equals 12, otherwise he's not all-powerful — if we start saying that eternal truths impose themselves on God, then God is not all-powerful. It's this concern to preserve freedom that makes Descartes' greatness, this French cavalier who set out at such a good pace, as Péguy says somewhere — larvatus prodeo, not like them, I advance masked, because I want to go as far as I want to go, me, Descartes, I draw my measure of wine from it. You know he exiled himself in Holland to stay free, we had an extraordinary political head start for intellectuals and publications at that time. Nerval, whom I love so much, had a mission entrusted by the Ministry of the Interior
58:17 at the time — Nerval a cop, who would have thought — actually it was his friends who found him this little cover to get him out of the clinic where he was being treated for his psychosis. A mission, but he was passionate about book piracy, and they said go to Holland to keep an eye on the pirated reprints of French books being played over there. So you see, Holland has always been a place of freedom, a free province — let me open another parenthesis on Holland, a little tribute anyway, because it was ahead of the game in all this. It's one of the most beautiful passages in Hegel's Aesthetics, on Dutch painting, after long chapters on Italian painting and all that — Hegel loves all of it, he doesn't play one against the other, they're not the same moment, as he says — but he says, in any case, it's the reverse: the great sacred subject among the Italians, it's not that — Annunciation, Crucifixion — and here, what could be more profane, isn't it, than a bunch of grapes lying on a table? It's true, a little glaze in a glass with wine left in it — that's Dutch painting. He asks why these such trivial objects move us
59:27 and why Dutch painting gives them this presence that didn't exist before — a resurrection in the history of the plastic arts. Hegel ventures a hypothesis that, in a striking way, foreshadows Marx: for there to be a glaze on a glass of wine, and a glass of wine set on a table, in Holland, it took prodigious collective labor. Dry land, solid ground, doesn't exist in Holland — it has to be conquered from the sea, this tiny country. There's Portugal too, which is a bit similar — two small countries and great oceanic powers. I'm full of admiration, I lived in black Africa, and you see on the Ivorian and Beninese coasts Portuguese names that were there before everyone else, on the little rotten boats that were the caravels — when you see them up close, you see how they dared to face the high seas with that, the Viking longships were far safer. So, Holland — the fact that everything terrestrial and everyday is hard-won is magnificent, this passage — I don't know, I recommend it, I think there's an excerpt sometimes with a Dutch painting, the Aesthetics.
The evil genius and the cogito 1:00:37 So the free provinces of the Netherlands — I find no certainty in sensible things, that's already a big sacrifice, there where everyone sees them, the obvious things, the evidences. I find no certainty in intelligible things, mathematics, that is, the mind — how am I going to overcome the argument about God? You see, we're heading more and more toward a paroxysm of doubt in this progression, that's it, I'll show you — and then all of a sudden he corrects himself, he says but no, God cannot deceive me, for to remain consistent with the attributes — for now it's his omnipotence, we say he's all-powerful, so if he exists it's a bit troubling for my certainty, but on the other hand we also say he's infinitely good, so he cannot deceive me. So I'm going to — watch how far he goes — I'm going to forge the hypothesis that there exists, just to be sure I'm not being deceived, this is his obsession, that there exists a being as powerful as God but who employs all his cunning to deceive me. That's the famous hypothesis of the evil genius. I noted that Descartes is a man of a solitude — I don't mean social solitude
1:01:47 he was very surrounded, like everyone, he wrote to all of Europe — but there's an ontological solitude, it's not certain that this exists, or that he's asleep and believes he sees it. You see, there's a mind-boggling ontological solitude in Descartes, hallucinatory in the literal sense — sometimes he wonders if he isn't having a hallucination, precisely — and this magnificent passage, I'm jumping ahead a bit but I'm telling you because it's too beautiful, when he understands the difference between seeing and judging, that every time we say "I see," in fact we're judging as soon as we express our vision — namely, he says, thus I say that from this window I see men — now what do I see, if not, it's famous, coats and hats — well yes, it was the era of the musketeers, seen from a distance a bit, people down in the courtyard — now what do I see, what do I see, let's be rigorous from the point of view of the eyes: coats and hats, which could cover spectres moved by springs — a slightly paranoid side, well yes, it was the era of automata, mechanics, that's where it started, right down to the marionette, you see how it all connects, that becomes possible, what you now call, much more perfected
1:02:57 the bionic man, it's a mechanism, notably more perfected than the cogs and springs and clocks of Descartes' time, but he had already understood that it was possible that I'm made to believe there are men there but it's virtual, we'd say today, you see — and once again I am alone in the universe, do you realize, that solipsism, the dread of solipsism, I'm alone in being, maybe even God doesn't exist, and nobody, there's only me, it's terrible. So let's leave aside his coats and hats, but remember Descartes' great distinction: you must not say "I see" when it's only a judgment — I see coats and hats, but I judge that they are men, I'm jumping ahead, I'm extrapolating. So he makes the hypothesis of the evil genius — alright, I won't keep you waiting, I mean that's where the turn to the cogito happens, since we've reached the paroxysm of doubt, there's this magnificent sentence that does the whole turn: let him deceive me as much as he wants, he can never make it that I am nothing, so long as I think that I am something. So that this proposition, I am,
1:04:07 I exist, is true every time I conceive it or utter it in my mind — the sentence has to be said in full, it's not in the summary given later in the Discourse on Method, where he says "I think therefore I am," I arrived at this result — there's no "therefore" in the Meditations, it's not even in the form of a deduction, the "therefore" might make it seem like a mathematician chaining a deduction. No: "I think," comma, "I am" — this proposition is true every time I conceive it or utter it, you see, language is inseparable from its formulation, "in my mind," every time — meaning, only the times when it's accompanied by utterance, it has to be articulated silently or aloud, but unfolded in logos all the same. He cannot deceive me so long as I think — right, if he takes everything, if I have an enemy as relentless in deceiving me as can be, good God, what better proof that I exist! Many people think they're being oppositional because they criticize the media, "we're being lied to" — it's true, that's always been the case, the scribes always lied on behalf of the pharaohs, and always
1:05:17 there are paid intellectuals, the scribes, that's it, whether it's a reed pen or a computer keyboard, it's the same thing, telling nonsense — fine, that's not a revelation. But good God, what proof that we are the strongest, and that Rousseau is right: the strongest is never strong enough to always be the master unless he transforms his strength into right and obedience into duty. If the authorities have such an interest in our not knowing the truth, it's because they're afraid we might know it, that we might go and guillotine them — but that's the whole point, it means we are strong, it means they dread our reaching the mass, as they say in physics, thank you, the critical mass. You know, when the parts of uranium that are separated — enriched uranium, plutonium in an atomic bomb — that's roughly it, it's a security system, a locking mechanism that prevents the various components of the bomb, different parts, to speak crudely, of the bomb's uranium, from meeting — the detonator is an acid that melts those separations and they meet
1:06:27 and it reaches critical mass, and boom — critical mass, what is it here? It's a metaphor I'm running with, it's the truth of what happens but extended to a great number — oh no, that's not possible, that would cause revolutions. You see, it's important, what we're looking at here, all the same, with Descartes: let him deceive me as much as he wants, he can never make it that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So, Dubito — of course, I doubt because of the evil genius, I'm never certain of anything, but I can always suspend my judgment, as Descartes says, so as not to swallow anything false — I may obtain nothing true, he says all that, but at least I won't swallow anything false, I won't turn it into a victory, and if there's nothing certain, that will be my only certainty. Yes, it recalls Socrates: I know only one thing, and that is that I know nothing — like the great moments of philosophy bouncing off the same fundamental illumination, returning to this ignorance in relation to the habits we had, in relation to habits of thinking mechanically, which makes Hegel say, famously, that what is well known, because it is well known, is not known
1:07:37 it is well known that the ground beneath our feet doesn't move — it took reaching the evil genius to re-establish the cogito. That's how it's an extraordinary advance: everything must be validated by thought, even God himself — afterward he'll set about proving the existence of God in a more or less laborious way, with his five proofs, by effects, by causes, the famous ontological proof — we're not doing metaphysics, I won't dwell on it, if you want we could do something like that one day, a historical topic, a bit outdated all this, especially since Kant — but the great Descartes is right there, it's this extraordinary work of the Meditations — read at least the First and the Second, you won't be disappointed by this kind of detective story that moves forward like that with a staggering rigor and existential presence. But it's not modern in the current sense, the contemporary sense of the contemporary world, because, once again, it remains binary, and there is no third term — and I don't know if you brought the texts as recommended, but I'd like — there are 20 minutes left
Reading of Rimbaud's Conte 1:08:50 we should be able to get there, it's not a big deal — I didn't, because I'd just like to bring up a text we haven't — it was distributed but we haven't read it together — Rimbaud's "Conte," sorry, C-O-N-T-E, not "comptes" as in Haussmann's accounts, the Fantastic Accounts of Haussmann, that's a caricature from the period because he spent a lot of money, Haussmann. So I'll tell you, it's taken from the Illuminations, even shorter than Kafka's "An Imperial Message" — it's not long at all — taken from the Illuminations, and I'll tell you why, so I don't confuse you, why I'm citing it now: I told you why this long detour through Descartes — because we're here to initiate ourselves, or reinitialize ourselves, to imitate computers, into philosophy, and that in some way, in doing so, I'm settling accounts with the history of philosophy, as they say, without doing it systematically, because that's all we'd do, and it would be laborious and tedious in chronological order, and it would take much more time — once again we could spend 3 years, 10 years
1:10:00 30 years on Plato and we'd still be at square one. So there — for Descartes I still wanted to deliver the essential here — but we started, we had talked about Descartes for the notion of the subject, let me remind you of the thread: what's missing from the Cartesian cogito, which is pure thought transparent to itself, is precisely these thoughts that don't think themselves and these wills that don't will themselves — it's the unconscious, within the subject itself, not in the body — everyone agrees the body is troubling, the body makes us see things, optical illusions, mirages, the desert, fine, that's physical, it's not about that, it's illusions much more serious, isn't it — and I approach this modern subject first through a prose poem, since it's from the Illuminations, through a poem, it being understood that we are doing philosophy and mustn't dream — I won't come back to that, but I repeat it anyway, I'll come back to it again other times — we are not mathematics, we must give up the dreams that Kant had begun
1:11:10 to ruin, moreover, as early as the end of the 18th century — that's when he crowns the effort of the Enlightenment by showing that Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, those who dreamed of an absolute mathematics that would make us omniscient like God, bringing us closer to absolute knowledge — that's an illusion, because everyday language — I'm speaking with you right now, yes or no, I'm not doing equations, algorithms, implications, I can't even say it, it's unpronounceable, the equation, it's silent, it's not like Descartes who says it's true every time I pronounce it in my mind — so I'm reminding you that philosophy is condemned to metaphor, that is, to everyday language, which — well, "the day breaks," that's a metaphor, it hasn't gone to bed, we're in poetry, let's go all the way — I reminded you that we're like Monsieur Jourdain in reverse, we make poetry without knowing it as soon as we speak, but the whole point is not to leave the metaphor as it is, but to reflect on it, as the saying goes — and that's what we're going to try to do starting from this superb image, isn't it?
1:12:18 So I'll tell you right away, I'll read it first without comment: A prince was vexed at having devoted himself only ever to the perfection of vulgar generosities. He foresaw astonishing revolutions of love, and suspected his women of being capable of something better than that complaisance embellished with sky and luxury. He wanted to see the truth, the hour of desire and essential satisfaction, whether or not this was an aberration of piety. He wanted it. He possessed at least a fairly broad measure of human power. All the women who had known him were killed. What ravage of the garden of beauty! Under the sword, they blessed him. He commanded no new ones. The women reappeared. He killed all those who followed him after the hunt or the libations. All followed him. He amused himself by slaughtering the animals of luxury. He set the palaces ablaze. He rushed at people and cut them to pieces. The crowd, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts still existed. Can one revel in destruction, grow young again through cruelty? The people did not murmur.
1:13:29 No one offered the support of his views. One evening he was riding proudly. A genie appears, of ineffable, unavowable beauty; from his face and bearing shone the promise of a manifold, complex love, of an unspeakable, unbearable happiness. The prince and the genie annihilated each other, probably, in essential health. How could they not have died of it? — the plural "they" — how could they not have died of it, together? So they died. But this prince died in his palace, at an ordinary age. The prince was the genie, the genie was the prince. Learned music is lacking to our desire. Full stop. An enigmatic text, as almost all of Rimbaud's Illuminations are — this is the era of a poetry that, after Baudelaire, was said to fall too often into hermeticism, like a box you can't manage to open — hermetically sealed, isn't it, even if this applies especially to Mallarmé, who arrived, more or less, at hermeticism. If you read Rimbaud's Illuminations, the meaning isn't obvious every time. Well, here anyway
The prince and the revolutions of love 1:14:40 A prince was vexed — I'm not offering an interpretation, don't worry, I've told you what I think of that dubious business of interpretation — let's analyze. A prince, that's the etymological sense, he who reigns — he could be emperor, king, doesn't matter — he's the one who has discretionary and absolute power over everything in his kingdom, over things, we'll see this later, over things as over people, over the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts, as he also says, as well as over the women and the favorites. In short, imagine Caligula, you see what's being said here, men with absolute power driven mad — that's what's happening. A prince was vexed at having devoted himself only ever to the perfection of vulgar generosities — up to here, he's been a good king, more or less like all the others, he likes the king's touch, from time to time he's granted a pardon to this one or that one, in short he does like the others, one is bored. He foresaw astonishing revolutions of love — and yes, it was about time, that's him — there's a famous passage in A Season in Hell: love must be reinvented. We know that being modern means knowing that — well, I won't insist, you know it at least as well as I do, at least as well as I do. He foresaw
1:15:53 astonishing revolutions of love, and suspected his women — what are the king's women in this context? They're the favorites, not "women" in general, that would be quite ungallant and unjust — favorite, the lady of the bedchamber, for whom every prince is handsome, as Baudelaire says somewhere: "can no longer find a modest dress to draw a sob for that young skeleton." Good, and suspected his women of being capable of something better than that complaisance — the courtesans, the geishas, whatever you want — embellished with sky and luxury, always the same thing. Once I was with an author, I'll name him, François Negroni, published by Belfond I believe, and I'm going to tell this story: he wanted us to write a book together about sex tourism in Thailand, that's his specialty, Negroni — the fantasies of expatriation, let's say, in short — and I'll tell you right away that, in short, Belfond the publisher was promising him 400,000 francs, François — there's no fine writer anymore, that doesn't exist anymore, the financiers don't give you advances like that anymore, that's huge, 400,000 francs given in advance to encourage you to write the book, that's huge. François had come to see me saying let's do it together, that was kind, 200,000 each, 200,000 francs and then a project, so, on "sexpatriation"
1:17:03 he's the one who invented the concept, and it's about Pattaya and all that, and François, who is someone very serious, like all libertines are, a true aristocrat, one of the real families, if there are still a few — a very serious guy, and like all libertines, very meticulous — he only invests himself in minor matters like that, and he realizes, doing his research, that tourism in Thailand statistically sells mostly to couples — that's what the hotel industry etc. sells — so it's not as a couple that you're going to sleep with a 14-year-old girl, because an investigation had to be done on that, on pedophilia, he sent people out, and this person discovered, appalled, in his investigation, that most of the assaults, the violent pedophilia, comes from aid workers, people who are there permanently, not even from the occasional tourist — from the Red Cross, we now learn, with the armies occupying the Central African Republic, isn't it, it's a confirmation — it's not the most libertarian people. Good, there it is, and so when he wanted
1:18:13 to publish it, they got the idea, no, François — it was the era when Kouchner reigned, having made humanitarian work untouchable, humanitarian work has to be beyond suspicion. The book was never published. I'm telling you this by the way, it's interesting, it's frightening actually, the world we live in. So yes, on occasion we watched a bunch of porn films, we had to do a typology at the time, there was no internet yet, it was a bit before the internet, we had to watch VHS tapes on top of it, it was abject, honestly, and what disgusted us, if I can explain, is the real obscenity — that is, not what men and women have been doing for 10,000 years, frankly — what's obscene is the fact that it's shown, but otherwise there's no revelation, no, it's that all the time it has to come with SSS, sex sand sun, champagne, Tahitian beach in a studio, a plastic palm tree, that's what's pathetic — I don't know, it's that you have to excite the poor immigrant worker who will never come close to the money it takes to sleep with
1:19:23 you see, think of Clouscard, worldliness, how strong Clouscard is on that — that's what's being sold to us: you will never make it, poor bastard, that's it, it's not "get lost," it's that you'll never make it, that's the obscenity. So otherwise you read Brantôme, or even La Fontaine, isn't it, the young La Fontaine, it's much more interesting in that domain. So all that to comment on "and suspected his women of being capable of something better than that complaisance embellished with sky and luxury" — and then the rappers' videos too, you know, gold chains, three glasses of champagne, four blondes in the bed, it's pathetic — for them, I speak to them in preaching, I've seen the outskirts of Abidjan — when you come from there, you can always dream. They wanted to see the gold of desire and of essential satisfaction — well now, that's getting philosophical — well yes, that's where they overreach: the gold of desire, we all know that, but satisfaction — to God alone belong wisdom, power and glory, that means theology, well yes, satisfaction, we have a word, we call cats that, well, desire comes back — we're not like lions, they're not stupid, they're dulled — it's not the same, literally
Destructive desire and the abstract subject 1:20:33 they have desire — well, need really, they don't go as far as desire, and that's not so silly of them — it keeps them a bit awake, hunger, the lions get on with it, that's fine, we go into standby, always with one eye open, the lions bring back the prey, we eat and go back to sleep, we're barely born, born just long enough to make a little run, hop, gently like that. Oh no, man isn't like that. What characterizes man is the Unruhe, Leibniz had seen it, restlessness — that's what the ticking of the clock is called in German, Unruhe — excellent that Leibniz saw the link between time and restlessness, it's not the time of mathematics or physics. So, there's Hegel's analysis of desire, which is there — desire, the next morning, hunger comes back — so from time to time you have to desire something other than carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and then afterward you desire the other, but the other doesn't let itself be devoured like an apple, it's complicated. All right, we're getting there — so, he wanted to see the desire and the satisfaction — I'm told I've just been talking
1:21:43 about an apple — no, I'm serious, I've just been talking about lions and gazelles and the apple — in both cases desire is destructive: if desire is satisfied, I crush the apple between my jaws, yes or no, we make applesauce, or else the gazelle is devoured. Someone would tell me, no, I'm not like that, I love my wife for who she is, it's not about destroying her — he says that, but at the same time, wouldn't we like to teach her this, initiate her into that — in short, she won't be left as she is, but changed, completely transformed — well there's Pygmalion who goes a bit far in that vein, but still — no, but me too, I mean, I'm talking about men, let's be clear, desire is destructive, for better and for worse. Careful, I'm not delivering good news here — well, if we want to have real good news that isn't disappointing, if we don't want to, if we want to be Cartesian, not be mistaken as we've already been mistaken, it's better to go and meet difficulties head-on than to wait for them to explode in our face. So, he wanted to see the truth.
1:22:54 the hour of desire and essential satisfaction, and like Rimbaud - the kid was 18 when he wrote that, how could he know all that, how does he know all that I've just said - that's what's an enigma about Rimbaud - "in another time, I speak of whether or not it was an aberration of piety" - he knows, he does, that it's an aberration of piety to want man to be satisfied desire, he's read Pascal, distraction, he knows perfectly well that man is unrest, only the stone is satisfied with what it is, the pebble, or else God, who has nothing left to desire since he has everything he wants - between the two, the unrest of the living being, it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God - "whether or not it was an aberration of piety, he wanted, he possessed" - we're in the imperfect tense, for now it's like a fairy tale, "once upon a time," "he possessed at least a fairly broad measure of human power" - well yes, that's not bad as human power goes - so now it can begin - "all the women who had known him were murdered" - shift to the past simple, you see, the action starts, destructive desire - go on, Catherine of Russia, it's said she used to execute her lovers after each consummation, same thing, a lot is said about that too, there was always more
1:24:04 said about Marie-Antoinette than about Louis XVI, that's normal, right - same with Queen Margot, who supposedly threw her lovers out the window afterward - by the banks of the Seine, likewise, "where is the queen who ordered that Buridan be thrown into a sack into the Seine, but where are the snows of yesteryear" - what havoc in the garden of beauty under the sword, they blessed it - ah, here a symptom starts to appear that wasn't expected: that there's no resistance, we can't do that, we're not princes, you see, but here the object lets itself be devoured by the subject, there's no resistance - it's exactly what Hegel says about the master in the master-slave dialectic: the master, as soon as he has a need, goes through the slave, his desire is always mediated by the slave's labor, so that nothing resists him, whereas the slave runs up against the resistance of wood, iron, heat, all that - "under the sword they blessed it, so ordered, no more news, the women reappeared" - think of the sultan of the Sublime Porte, since Turkey is in the news
1:25:14 the favorites from Venice, from Ukraine, from Illyria - ah, he's not dreaming, gentlemen, it's fantastic really, each time the stock - well, "the women reappeared, he killed all those who followed him," all those - ah, it's no longer just the women, it's expanding, it's becoming ogre-like, it's terrible - "all those who followed him," the courtiers, the friends, after the hunt or the libations, the retinue, well, the retinue, you'd better not be there, all who followed him - there's no resistance - "he amused himself slitting the throats of luxury beasts" - that's a little memory there, he knows his Latin literature well, Commodus, you've heard of that emperor Commodus, he cracks me up, there were ones like Nero, Caligula, that has some style, but this one, he'd go into the arena wanting to be applauded, the whole stadium like that, but not stupid, not in front of lions, in front of geese, it's dreadful, it's pathetic - meanwhile there were lictors who'd prod you with a spear if you didn't applaud - he'd approach, not reassured, because geese, you know geese, as country folk know, they're bad for the calves - but he strangled them
1:26:25 when he came at them - as you see, Rimbaud here, all that, "he amused himself slitting the throats of luxury beasts, he set the palaces ablaze" - Nero, he set the palaces ablaze - "he rushed at people and cut them to pieces" - you feel there's an acceleration, a fury, you see, the crowd, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts still existed - well yes, my little cuckoo, there will always be more things in the universe than you can consume, you poor fool - the Hegelian dialectic of desire: so desire must invest itself in something other than this total negation where the self affirms itself through the disappearance of the object, where the subject doesn't truly affirm itself - there's the abstract subject, the bad subject, the one who only affirms himself through the negation of the object - there's the philosophical upshot of the text - so, public opinion remains: you can't let a guy like that act for long, can one become ecstatic in destruction, grow young again through cruelty, "the people will not murmur" - not what you'd want even more - "no one offered him the benefit of his views" - "one evening he was riding proudly" - ah, back to the imperfect, so the fantastic, the tale returns - "a genius appeared, of ineffable beauty" - what gender is the genius, in your opinion?
The genius, multiple love, and learned music 1:27:39 you shake your head, no, that's not - that's exactly it, genius, genius is precise - poetry, the only difference from mathematics is that it's an exact science, poetry - a genius appeared, man, woman, neither one nor the other, or both, as you like, it doesn't matter, a genius appeared, in any case that's the text, you mustn't over-interpret - "of ineffable beauty," unavowable even, you can feel there's exceptionality in the air - "in his physiognomy and his bearing" - you could see both his physical appearance and his attitude, his postures, his bearing show - so what shows from his interiority, not just what one wants on the outside, there you have it for the res extensa - "there showed forth the promise" - the promise of a love, it's Stendhal who said that love is a promise of happiness - "of a manifold and complex love" - so it's not like eating an apple or devouring a gazelle or bedding a mistress, a manifold love
1:28:51 and complex, indeed with difficulties - Tristan and Iseult, it's the whole story, once they've finally escaped King Mark, they can finally run off alone into the forest - you see it a bit in Excalibur I think, I'm trying to name a cult film, maybe it's already too old, Excalibur, I don't know, I'm so old I've forgotten the date of my death, as Borges said - and in Excalibur you see Tristan and Iseult in the forest, at one point in the cave, don't remind me, he looks into a magic mirror - if you look closely at medieval narrative, well, they get bored when they're in the forest, precisely because King Mark is no longer there, the difficulties to watch out for and all that, you see, they get bored, they have a big problem, they go back to court - okay, so, "a manifold and complex love, of unspeakable, unbearable happiness even, the prince and the genius annihilated each other" - so it ended badly probably - "in essential health" - understand that as you like, I'm not interpreting, it seems obvious to me, the prince and the genius - health, that does make you think of the body after all - "the prince and the genius annihilated each other probably in essential health, how could they not have died of it together" - so
1:30:01 they died then - so what we learn is that desire can find its object, that can happen, but at the price of death, of annihilation - to stay close to the text, there's some in this little page, just one page, it's not - "but the prince died in his palace at an ordinary age" - implying, this story doesn't exist, it's a tale, or else it's all of our story, that's what we're saying here, one word, an ordinary story - "the prince was the genius, the genius was the prince" - that could be the final point - then a dash, and this mysterious fall, the most interesting one in my view: "learned music is missing from our desire" - that's a beautiful line about desire - "learned music," ah well that's not David Bowie, it's more complicated than that - ah well yes, what do you expect, since it seems he's learned, in nulls - fine, I'm willing, he's always changed his style, excuse me, I know some of you are fans - not good, what I'm doing, but anyway it's all relative, everything is relative, there are contemporaries of his, if he's a genius then what should we say, I don't know, but Thelonious Monk in the same era
1:31:11 and I'm even taking titans like Monk, well let's move on, but in three seconds of Monk there's ten times more music than in the whole history of - well anyway, learned music - Rimbaud isn't the guy who goes to the conservatory and subscribes to concerts at the Philharmonie, no - what does he say in A Season in Hell? "I loved silly refrains, naive rhythm, saltimbanque canvas" - he went through libertarian liberalism all the same, he knows it by heart, he did his rebellion - "if it had only been a rebel, he would never have been a revolutionary," it's Merleau-Ponty who says admirably: if the philosopher were merely a rebel he would shock less, for after all everyone notices that the world isn't as it should be, only to forget it once back to business - that's rebellion, that's Cohn-Bendit, libertarian in '68 and liberal in '78 - no, Rimbaud is serious, there's the detour through knowledge, there you go - so why did I read you this text, it's a real shame
Hegel: the freedom of emptiness in the Philosophy of Right 1:32:21 because - well yes, I'll read it anyway, I'm giving myself a two-minute extension - ah, fine, I won't be eating, I'll make up for my delay - that's kind of you, if it doesn't bother you, some of you may have made plans, obligations - anyway I saw someone leave very gently on tiptoe, obviously we're here in complete freedom - yes, I can reread this text by Hegel after this tale by Rimbaud, with no commentary beyond what I've already given, so that the understanding is - you see, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, we're at the opposite pole, poetry, the driest work, the most abstract, almost aggressively - Stalinist, isn't it, I've said it for the image, I don't know what that conveys in people's minds, even if it's no real knowledge on that level, poor Hegel, of Hegel, the least libertarian and the least liberal, that much is clear - so, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, the preface: he said it's not a book that tells the state what it ought to do, but one that teaches us how we must think the state that exists, and not think about what it ought to be, you see, on the world - and he distinguishes two moments of the will in general before getting to right
1:33:31 to the legal subject - so he recalls the psychological subjects, and among others, a will equivalent to that of Rimbaud's prince - this modern conception of the will where I am only myself when I exclude everything that is not myself, when, as Rimbaud would say in A Season in Hell, "if I had any antecedent at some point in the history of France... but no, nothing, I know" - somewhere an abstraction preceded by nothing, there's no equivalent - I am myself, myself equals myself, it's Fichte who says that, Ich bin Ich, I am I, apart from that everything is false, there you go - and so this will contains, first, the element of pure indeterminacy - and yes, as soon as there's a determination, I'm French or I'm a man or I'm a woman, immediately that obliges me to this and excludes that, so that's already to the detriment of my freedom - "the element of pure indeterminacy, or of the pure reflection of the ego into itself," pure reflection of the ego into itself, "in which every limitation, every content, whether immediately given by nature" - I'm a man, needs
1:34:43 desires and instincts, or given by some intermediate means, dissolves - and it moves fast, it's profound - that means I'm French, I'm a bourgeois, beyond even natural determinations, "the unlimited infinity of absolute abstraction and generality, the pure thought of oneself" - and he adds this, so listen closely, because I've never seen such a philosophical modeling of genocide, I'm not speaking metaphorically, unfortunately I wish I were, I'm thinking of the Khmer Rouge, I mentioned it the other day apropos of bourgeois, bohemian, Buddhist and bonobo - Cambodia is a Buddhist country - and it's as if he's giving an account of the Khmer Rouge, but in philosophical language, in coded language, about this abstract self - "it is the freedom of the void" - for now he's described it, he hasn't judged it - "it can manifest itself under a real shape and become a passion" - so if it stays purely theoretical, if it stays only in the head
1:35:53 it's religious fanaticism, of pure Hindu contemplation - we've drawn close to Buddhism, it's extraordinary this text, written in 1830 after all - "the fanaticism of the destruction of every existing social order, and the excommunication of every individual suspected of wanting an order, and the annihilation of every organization trying to emerge" - it reminds me a bit of the spontex Maoists of '68, at the end of a demonstration you'd say "now let's go burn down the stock exchange" - well, I say that, I'm opening a parenthesis, I did a little research recently, I came across an article in Le Monde, I'll give you the reference, I'll put it on Facebook, I don't have it by heart, but from about ten years ago, where a former member of the special services - how to put it, the Dutch services of the '80s - tells his memoirs, he's retired, he's a bit foolish, he lets things slip, he says, well yes, because we can show we're not as stupid as all that, the services - and he spills the beans: "we created the Dutch Maoists," there you go, because the Dutch Communist Party had to be liquidated, etc., and even the Chinese believed it, they welcomed them - it's interesting
Fury of destruction and two symmetrical abstractions 1:37:03 ah, that's not funny - in Cambodia there was no comic side, excuse me, but since I'm pro-Vietnamese, the first targets of the Khmer Rouge massacre were the Vietnamese, I can't help talking about it with a certain passion - but then, it's incredible to see, after Rimbaud's text there, you see - "if it turns toward action" - up to now it was Hindu contemplation, fine - "if it turns toward action, it is, in politics as in religion, the fanaticism of the destruction of every existing social order" - I repeat - "and the excommunication of every individual suspected of wanting an order, and the annihilation of every organization trying to emerge - it is only by destroying that this negative will has the feeling of its own existence" - there you have it, the tale, Rimbaud's prince, he feels he exists when he destroys - "it believes it wants a positive state" - which can be quite stupid too, for example "the state of universal equality or of universal religious life"
1:38:13 that can be sects - but in fact it doesn't want the positive reality, for that immediately introduces some order, some singular determination - for example, you have to do the dishes - I'm telling you this because I lived through the era of communes, there were communes in the Ardèche, I was in the Drôme at the time, trying to cross the Rhône to get to the Ardèche, it was the era when there was Lanza del Vasto, when the road to Kathmandu had made its mark, there were these communes that told me I was a poor fool to have a wife, a child, a car, when what you need is community - they'd put a bell jar over the cheese so as not to kill the flies on it, you see all that - no, but they were nice guys, it was always the same women doing the dishes, you see, there they ran right back into order, it's terrible - and yes, as soon as you get down to reality, well yes, it's annoying, but there are dishes to be done, if it were only dishes, doing dishes is a pleasure, in winter there are washerwomen, but have you ever ironed men's shirts, it's dreadful, that's another thing from dishes, and I'm not even talking about the wash-house, for centuries the wash-house, and the liberal libertarians
1:39:24 who say yeah, the machine, Heidegger, technology, "the washing machine, what have you got when you've got the washing machine, you poor fool" - smoke - between crisis and war, excuse me, I'm getting worked up - "it wants a positive state, the state of universal equality or of universal religious life, but it does not want the positive reality, for that immediately introduces some order, some singular determination, both of institutions and of individuals, whereas it is by negating this specification and this objective determination that negative freedom precisely becomes conscious of itself - thus what it believes it wants can only be, for itself" - implied, in its head - "only an abstract representation, and its realization can only be a fury of destruction" - for once we're not being distracted, but being helped to think through carnage - isn't that indeed what's topical today?
1:40:20 there are certainly people out there playing football with severed heads somewhere, and to whom we're supplying weapons - so, there you go, thinking through carnage after all, you see, it comes from this form, this illusory conception of freedom as pure self, as pure abstraction - so, just as the society - we drew all this from "the cracked bell," hats off to Baudelaire - just as the society of the first two quatrains is not the society to which we are all condemned, but is a particular form called communitarianism, far too homogeneous, far too exclusive, locked into one determination to the exclusion of all others - likewise the individual who opposes it also reaches an abyss of abstraction when he has the feeling that his truth is to be independent of any determination - there's what we've just learned today, you see, the two symmetrical abstractions, the abstract self and the abstract society - abstract in the concrete sense, the one that exists concretely
1:41:30 only by abstracting from everything else - adulterous women among others - there we go, we'll stop there to stay right on time, but I absolutely wanted to close on this parallel between Rimbaud's text, you see, and what Hegel wrote almost a century before Rimbaud - thank you
