English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
The philosopher between the mathematician and the poet 0:00 To please both those who have been faithful from the very first hour and, at the same time, those who join in bit by bit at their own risk, I thought I'd do a little summary, a kind of overview of the whole workshop, including last year's, ever since "Between crisis and war, philosophizing?" began — a very schematic summary, which will also let us reflect a bit on the relation between the abstract and the concrete, since I've talked about it quite a bit in the last few sessions. It's an interesting exercise for understanding the advantages and drawbacks of abstraction, and at the same time for vindicating Leibniz, who said — and this can equally well be verified in Newton, in Einstein, and in others — that there is only the concrete through the abstract. I'm quoting Leibniz here: you have to make a big detour through abstraction, through equations for example, in order to reach the truly concrete. Because if all you have is your eyes, you still won't see that the earth moves — look carefully. So I thought it would be good to give you first the briefest possible summary,
1:15 three lines, you see, three lines: introduction, first part, second part. Then you spell out the introduction, spell out the first part, and so on, you see — and it's by differentiating the outline that you arrive at the concrete. But I'm not going to start with that, first of all because last time I did it I took a bit too much time on the summary and there wasn't much time left for the rest of our serial. So I'm going to start with the continuation of our reading of Phèdre, which we had stopped last time at Hippolytus's confession to Aricie, and I'll come back to the summary in a second part.
1:53 So that was the plan. I'll show you next — I'll point out a small shift due to a question that was put to me on Facebook between the last session and this one. And in thinking about the answer, I saw that it connected with the way I intended to continue, but inflecting it — you'll see in a moment on which point. For those who have been here from the start — you'll remember, even though I've come back to it since, I do try to take newcomers into account — you'll see I have a way of proceeding somewhat in a spiral, and not like in rearview mirrors where everything recedes without ever coming back. I've often returned to the philosopher's double companionship. Every time I try to define the specificity of the philosophical field — which matters more to me, in what I'm trying to transmit — in relation to the scientific field, the religious field, the poetic field, the specificity of the properly philosophical field, I've recalled that the best way was to situate it somewhere between two other figures, two figures other than the philosopher,
3:08 also very much concerned with problems related to language: the mathematician and the poet. Two extremes — good evening — two apparently opposite extremes, and not merely apparently: the poetic concern and the mathematical concern are not the same, and above all the relation to expression is not at all the same. But the common point between these three — I quote Hölderlin — these three are like hunters on the hunt, clover leaves, you know, clover leaves, those three lobes, clover leaves that splendidly grow green — these three, the poet, the mathematician, the philosopher, what unites them is that they have a problem with communication.
3:59 The mathematician wants an univocal communication, and the poet wants — I quote Mallarmé — to give a purer sense to the words of the tribe. I had alluded, when I brought up the tragicomedy — but it ends well — of language in the Bible, to the three stages, three acts. First act, Genesis, in the Old Testament: Genesis, God gave Adam the privilege of naming the creatures.
4:36 I had recalled that all great poetry, afterward, in the history of poetry, tried to return to that primordial stage, where Adam manages to name the creatures, to call them by their right name. It's the opposite of the language of "com," as they say on TV sets — you couldn't get more opposed. So, the era of the just word, the full word, as the psychoanalysts say.
5:06 And then, the antithesis, the Tower of Babel: people speak but no longer understand one another. To thwart the building of the Tower of Babel, God, rather than sending lightning, the flood, water, fire, finds something even stronger than all that: the confusion of tongues, as you may recall from the biblical text. So people speak, but they no longer understand what is supposed to be said in the speaking. That's the second act of the tragedy.
5:37 And then, where it ends well, is the New Testament, since "gospel" means "good news" in Greek, as you know — so you see it ends well. It's Pentecost, when the apostles are gathered, somewhat downcast, because Christ has died. And then God sends them a comforter, as the sacred texts translate "Paraclete," that is, the spirit — the third term of the Trinity — the spirit in the form of little tongues of fire on the head of each of the apostles.
6:09 What matters and comes back to our subject is that from the moment the spirit comes to visit them at Pentecost, they can go preach in all nations, for they start speaking in all languages. It's the opposite of Babel. There, they make themselves understood everywhere. There you have it. I recall this tragedy. So, the philosopher hesitates permanently between these three figures. Rather than being a third figure, he is the hesitation itself. Did I say that?
Mathematical rationality and democracy 6:39 You'll see there's a shift today — I haven't gotten there yet. But he hesitated between these two opposite poles: the demand for an univocal language, understood by all without any ambiguity — the mathematician. I insist a lot on the shared requirements between mathematics and democracy. Let me recall it: it can never be hammered home enough, in an age when there is a bias toward irrationalism and resentment against reason in the very societies that are most rational and that benefit most from the achievements of reason, let it be said in passing.
7:23 And so there is a disparagement of everything rational, mathematical, because "me, I'm profound" — it's not when I'm beyond all that. I'm thinking of Heidegger, of Nietzsche, or rather of their disreputable use dating from the Cold War, for which poor Nietzsche isn't responsible. Anyway, let's move on. Namely that — sorry to those who've already heard this several times — from the very founding of mathematics, Euclid, the postulates, the axioms, the definitions, in short what were then called the first notions, still called that now, or rather axioms now, Euclid calls them "demands."
8:00 There is already a way of addressing the other, someone — there's the democratic element. If the other doesn't grant me that through a point only one parallel can be drawn to a line, it doesn't work. We have to agree on that from the outset. There is a reciprocal implication between mathematical rationality and democracy. It's the first instance where I don't impose my opinion on you, you don't impose yours on me, but we come to an agreement with ourselves first, each of us — that's non-contradiction — and then we can understand one another.
8:33 There is a genuine social contract immanent to mathematical rationality. Let me remind you that when the philosopher looks toward the mathematician, it's not only because univocal transmission is precious. There is also something like what Kant will later call an intelligible community — between Bachelard, you know, who reflected a great deal, a great epistemologist, who wrote Applied Rationalism, on the hard sciences if you prefer — there are epistemologists specialized, say, in biology, like Canguilhem, remarkable, or Bachelard, more mathematics, physics, especially physics, and chemistry.
9:16 Bachelard said: at congresses of philosophers, people throw arguments in each other's faces; at congresses of physicists, people exchange information. There you go. It's not always that simple — there are great disputes among scientists, as you know. But there it is. So much for looking toward the mathematician's rationality. But the philosopher also looks toward the poet. Now I'm going to say the opposite of what I just said.
Wisdom, ends and desire: Rimbaud's Conte 9:47 We can't stop at mathematics either. Why? Because the form of knowledge we seek — that love of Sophia, knowledge, understanding, you know that Sophia also means, and always at the same time, wisdom. For if it were only pure knowledge — how many satellites orbit Jupiter, how many nucleotides are inside the cell — philosophy would be housed at the CNRS, as I often repeat.
10:26 So it's not just any knowledge that the philosopher seeks. But, within the whole of what constitutes knowledge — knowledge in the sense of epistémé, knowledge in the hard sense — there is the knowledge useful for answering the question "what must I do," which the mathematician does not ask, which the scientist in general does not ask. Well, he asks it as an individual, as a human being, by right, like everyone. But his discipline doesn't help him any more at that point. The mathematician is no better placed than the baker next door to know what I should do. Should I euthanize my grandmother who is dying, or let her live?
11:02 Yes, it's not knowing how many grains of sand are in the Sahara that will tip the scales one way or another. So we can't stop at mathematics. Above all — and here I return to a reflection on language we did together, I'm summarizing a bit — the language we speak among philosophers is the same one the baker or the man in the street speaks.
11:32 It's not the same way of putting words together, of course. But still, I mean, it's not equations, it's not symbols, it's not algorithms. It's everyday words. Arranged in a strange way as among philosophers, but still it's the language — what's called in linguistic terms — it's not natural language, to speak like Wittgenstein if you prefer, it's not formalized language among philosophers. So why does he not want to leave that language?
12:02 Because everyday language, the one I'm using with you right now, and the one you'd answer me with if we asked each other questions, I hope, is metaphorical in essence. We've seen this, I won't dwell on it too much, but let me recall it: when we say "the day is breaking," we're in metaphor. We've become so used to doing it that we've forgotten we're making poetry. And there, we're no longer on the mathematical pole's side.
12:34 Now, metaphor — I'll go quickly — has a relation to something that is not at all within the province of science, but which is not just anything either, quite the contrary: it belongs to the order of ends, of goals, of desire, if you prefer. But for now I'll take the generic concept of "end," which has its letters patent in metaphysics, since Kant speaks of a "kingdom of ends." There, it's no longer about means, it's about ends. It's even more complete than "goal."
13:07 Even though "goal" evokes the end — but I gave you the example. Why do I tidy my desk? Because I have to work. And why do I have to work? Because I have my exams in two months. And why do I take the exams? To get a job. And why get a job? Because I need cash. And why? After that, I don't know anymore. Do you agree? Ask people the question, they no longer know after that. They're so caught up in means that we no longer know where the end is.
13:37 The end is when it's finished. So I come back to the Rimbaud text we saw just before moving on to Racine. Do you remember the tale? A prince was vexed, remember? This prince who destroys everything around him, because he wants to see the hour, not only of desire, which we all know, but of desire, as they say, and of satisfaction — "whether or not it was an aberration of piety, he willed it." And we see that at the end, finally, just toward the end of the text, which isn't long, less than a page, he finally reaches the object of his desire.
14:15 One evening, he was galloping proudly, a genie appeared, of an ineffable beauty, even unavowable, from whose face and bearing there stood out the promise of a manifold and complex love. Sorry, a parenthesis, Philippe — Philippe, "complex" is good, learned music. Of a manifold and complex love, of an unspeakable happiness, even unbearable. The prince and the genie annihilated themselves, probably — that's a Hegelian term — in the essential health, in relation to the body, visibly.
14:52 How could he not have died of it? That's the end. So together they died. That means he finds the object of his desire, but at the price of death. That truly is the end. So it's just as well not to find it right away, you see — otherwise life wouldn't be fun. As Pascal puts it so well: why spend one's day chasing a hare one wouldn't want if it were offered? You won't satisfy a true hunting enthusiast by telling him in the morning, "Here, no need to go hunting, I bought the hare at the butcher's yesterday, I had it in the fridge, here, I'll give it to you."
15:24 The guy isn't going to say, "Oh right, true, but that's fine, let's go home." No, no. There's the morning air, there are the dogs barking, wagging their tails, or afraid. In Corsica, the dogs get scared like that before the hunt — you have to beat them, poor things, they know there's death in the air. Anyway. But there you have it, a true hunting enthusiast — which brings us back to whom? The hunt. Last time, who did we talk about? Which character?
15:55 Good, thank you. Yes. Hippolytus in Racine's Phèdre, isn't it? The one who flees worldliness, women, the court, but who's only at ease when hunting the boar with his faithful Theramenes, until he succumbs to the seduction of the one woman his father has forbidden every man in Athens to approach — the young Aricie, "of a fatal blood conjured against us."
"Learned music is missing from our desire" 16:28 There. So I come back to my point. And before that, I'd like to finish this rather long preamble, but you'll see why — I must continue it because it isn't finished on the essential point, namely the shift I promised you. Philippe asked me on Facebook how I explained, if I had an explanation, the ending of Rimbaud's poem. Otherwise it could have ended there. "The prince and the genie annihilated themselves, together they died," but this prince died in his palace — I quote the ending — "at an ordinary age."
17:04 "The prince was the genie, the genie was the prince." Full stop. No — full stop. New line: "the learned music is missing from our desire." There's today's shift. For two years I've said the philosopher hesitates between the two poles — the mathematician, to sum up the essential, and the poet — and now the musician comes to take his place. For music too is a form of communication among human beings, is it not, after all.
17:35 I know plenty of Europeans who are passionate about Pygmy polyphonies, whose language they don't understand. And Italian opera is there — I mention Italian opera because the bel canto tradition, very precisely in Italian opera, means people don't care about the words. Instead, it's the vocalise, on a single syllable for hours, to bring applause for the prima donna, or the valiant tenor.
18:05 I'll make a small parenthesis, but also a choleric conductor, one of the greatest conductors, Toscanini, Arturo Toscanini, whom I salute. He fled fascism to go to the United States — there aren't many great European conductors who did that. And on YouTube you'll find a magnificent, the most beautiful performance of the Internationale ever recorded, by Arturo, by the great Toscanini, who put his prestige at the service of the Internationale. You can watch it now — it was censored for 20 years by the Americans, now it's free.
18:40 It's not every day that the Internationale is performed, chorus and orchestra, by Arturo Toscanini. His tempers were famous, they're even recorded on YouTube — a few seconds where you hear him hurling insults at everyone, poor oboist. Anyway, I was saying, yes, tenors — there's always a structural conflict between the conductor and the great soloists who play a bit the star. There has to be a decision as to who's in charge, me or the diva, after all. So there are always these little structural conflicts.
19:10 and one day, Toscanini was conducting the great Caruso in person, before the Queen of Belgium in Brussels, a grand gala concert, and Caruso had the misfortune, in a Rigoletto, to hold a note a few seconds too long, to whip up the passions, holding it a bit longer than what Verdi had written. Toscanini stops the orchestra. So the other stops singing. Toscanini then says: "Signor Caruso, is this exhibition before the Queen soon going to be over?"
19:44 Yes. I return to the parenthesis. Music is a form of communication, perhaps even one of the most universal. It's a commonplace to say — look at the number of refrains sung in the Anglo-Saxon language, we don't understand what's being said and yet they become worldwide hits. Right into the depths of Africa — I've been paid to know this, I've never been paid so well, actually, for the time I dealt with music in Africa. It's like the cunning of reason, as Hegel would say, even in the poorest countries. And so, I told you, I'm coming back to mathematics, you'll see why I'm talking about music.
Mathematics says without speaking, music speaks without saying 20:21 I had told you mathematics isn't even a language. It's undeniably discursive — indeed the most rigorous discursivity there is. In "discursive" there is "dis," which is the important part. The same as in "disorder," in "destruction," in "dispute" — it's each time the one that is cut in two. Where the intuitive becomes conceptual. Where immediate knowledge becomes mediate knowledge. A proposition is true because it does not contradict another that was already granted as true.
20:53 It's through the intermediary, through the mediation of another — that's what discursive means, that's the world of man, the world of logos. So where am I going with this? I had said that mathematics is indeed a discourse, but it's not a language. If you prefer, in a metaphorical sense, you can very well speak of "mathematical language" as one speaks of the "language of advertising" or the "language of cinema," that doesn't bother me. But strictly speaking, you'll understand better now, there is no mathematical speech.
21:31 There is a mathematical discourse. There is no speech. Now, linguists distinguish very clearly three things — language, going from the most extensive to the most singular, that is, from essence toward existence if you prefer, you'll understand. Language [langage], a system of communication common to all humanity, to simplify. Tongue [langue], already much less extensive — not all humanity, but a given people. And then speech [parole].
22:01 So each individual has their own speech. You, him, her, me — we each have our turns of phrase, our vocabulary, our preferences, our accent, our intonations. You see what I mean? Only speech exists. The tongue does not exist. There's no such thing as "English" or "French" existing on its own. It only exists insofar as there are instances of speech to make it exist. Ah! Without our own little intonations, each and every one of us, the tongue would not exist. It would be like the Platonic world, the cosmos noetos, the intelligible world.
22:31 There would be no sensible world. We wouldn't hear anything. Well, yes. You see what I mean? It's interesting. Now, there is no mathematical speech. Mathematics is silent. Thomas, you... if I'm saying something stupid about maths, you're better placed than I am, you'll... but I think that... no need to... There isn't what linguists call the continuous parameters, if you want, more technically. You know, intonation and all that — that's what linguists call the continuous parameters in a tongue.
23:04 The discontinuous context of words, for example, or of sentences. Well. In mathematics, we don't care about continuous parameters. The equation could be said with a Viennese accent or a Parisian accent, it changes nothing. So it's not a language, it's not speech, it's a discourse. "You're confusing us, you're talking about music, then you go back to maths." But yes, it's to make you understand all of a sudden why music comes to place itself right at the center of the whole apparatus.
23:34 Mathematics utters — there is a mathematical saying that is univocal, but there is no speaking. Music is exactly the reverse. It speaks to us without saying anything. You see why I made this detour through mathematics? Because it's exactly the same thing in reverse. With music, you feel that something is speaking, that something is being said to you, but you don't understand what.
24:04 You don't understand everything, it's not through words. It's a bit like when I hear Chinese people, I say Chinese because I don't understand Chinese, talking next door in an apartment for example, I can clearly tell it's not the sound of wind or doors, I can clearly tell that there are people talking, you recognize that too, when people are speaking and not just rinsing their mouths gargling, you sense that there's a meaning. Even if you didn't understand what they're saying, you can see that it's speech, even if it means nothing to you, that's where we see the disjunction between speaking and saying.
24:43 Well, music speaks, but what does it say? Ah, it says this to you, it says that to me, we can always argue about it. That's why I recommend to you the most beautiful of musical disciplines, which is analysis, the kind that doesn't interpret but analyzes. If you say, in my Bach cantatas I see cowboys chasing rabbits, you're entitled to. Someone else might say they see rather rabbits chasing cowboys, who cares. On the other hand, someone who says here we were in major, 20 bars later we're in minor, that's objective, there's nothing to say against that, that's analysis.
25:14 You need to know a few technical terms, we agree on them, we learn them, and then at least we know we're talking about the same thing. In the first case, we're talking about ourselves, we're not talking about Beethoven. It's only in the second case that we're talking about Beethoven. We do analysis, not interpretation. There you go. So, I say Beethoven, you say Prince, I'm making concessions to rock, you'll notice, because he's dead. Well, that'll be the last one for today.
The musical element of poetry: Nerval, Proust, Racine 25:46 So there, important, what we're in the middle of reading. Now, Philippe's question was why Rimbaud, when the rest of the poem has nothing to do with music, why he tells us at the end "Learned music is lacking to our desire." Well, it's by continuing our reading of Phaedrus that we'll be able to answer this question. That's why I lingered on it a bit. It wasn't to change the subject from last time, it's on the contrary to come back to the heart of the matter, because after all, well, we summarized the story a bit, we recalled the characters, we recalled a bit the pitch, as they say now, of this tragedy.
26:26 But I also told you, take the opportunity to read and reread it because it's one of the summits of our language, one of the poetic summits of our heritage. When I said no—I'll mention that Hegel said, after all, to oppose the Romantics, that true poetry can always be translated, whereas for the Romantics the essential thing is untranslatable, I don't know. So, the French don't own Racinian poetry.
26:58 Proof of that: I went to the library, I saw that there are 2000 Japanese people writing doctoral theses on Racine, or on Proust. Anyway, soon there'll be more of them than French people. So there's a poetic interest there. Now, let's come back to music. A text—from what point does a text stop being prose and become poetry? It's not when there are verses, since there's poetry in prose, as you know.
27:28 It's not only since Baudelaire wrote prose poems, it's not the case that any prose that's fluid, musical, etc., is a prose poem. Before Baudelaire wrote his prose poems, practically all the prose of Gérard de Nerval—I told you I'd come back to him, I never miss an opportunity—is musical. All right, I'll give in, I'll do a Nerval passage. Just one sentence, just one sentence, just one sentence. But it's not musical [as written]. "Célénie often appears to me in my dreams as a water nymph, tempting, naive, wildly intoxicated by the scent of the meadows, crowned with wild celery and water lilies."
28:01 Célénie, N. In Célénie, there's an N, isn't there? "She appears to me often in my dreams as a nymph"—second N—"of the meadows, crowned with wild celery and water lilies." Two N's in "nénuphar." There are already four N's in the sentence. Because one might say it's beautiful, but it's imponderable, we can't say why it's so beautiful. No, it's precise. Sorry? "Crowned," thank you. Where was my head? Where was my ear? I'm getting old. And it's not over. "And in her pearl-white teeth, one discovers the Germanic nix."
28:35 The nix, those are the sirens, the naiads of Germanic mythology. There you go, yes, it never stops. It never stops. Or take Proust, you see, all the great passages of Proust. All right, I'll give in again. When he sees Madame de Guermantes for the first time, he's still a kid. We never really know the narrator's age, but he's still quite young. He's at Mass with his parents, and he sees for the first time Madame de Guermantes, whom he's heard so much about, the local lady of the manor, coming into the church.
29:07 "Her eyes grew blue like a periwinkle impossible to pick and yet dedicated to me. And the sun, threatened by a cloud and still darting with all the force of its rays onto the flowerbed and into the sacristy, gave to the carpet that had been laid on the ground for the solemn occasion, and over which Madame de Guermantes advanced smiling, a geranium's carnation hue and added to its wool a pink velvety texture, a skin of light, that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness in pomp and joy which make one think of certain pages of Lohengrin, of certain paintings by Carpaccio, and which make one understand how Baudelaire could apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet 'delicious.'"
29:52 In jazz, that's called a chorus. A solo, if you will. You see? What makes a word poetic is not a meaning. It is, in addition to meaning, a purely formal and purely auditory element. That's what I'm in the middle of saying. So, we've already agreed, it wasn't obvious that everyday language, however prosaic, still has a relation to the poetic, to the poetic function that linguists identified, in particular the Prague School, Jakobson.
30:32 Insofar as there's metaphor—we agreed on this—"the day rises," and practically all everyday utterances are like that. And now we also see that when everyday language passes from prose into poetry, it's again, I don't know, by adding this musical dimension. I'll take just one line from Racine that I draw from Mithridate, which I used at the beginning of the workshop, if you remember.
31:04 It's convenient because here, it's not the N, it's the V. When—another son bearing a grudge against his father—when the son who collaborates with the Romans, because Mithridates' son, whose father had resisted the Romans for 30 years, Mithridates, historians know this, and word gets around that he's dead, as in Phaedra, as with Theseus, and the son, believing his father dead, comes to see the fiancée his father had reserved for himself, a young Greek slave girl, to tell her: "Come now, I love you and I'm taking you away, we're going to Rome with the victors."
31:38 Not very nice. Well, anyway. "Ready to receive you, our ships await you, and from the foot of the altar you may board," and here's the line: "Sovereign of the seas that must carry you." "Souveraine," V, "des mers qui vous doivent porter." The V of "Wave." If he had said, "You have sailed on seas over which you exercise power," it's the same meaning. "Sovereign of the seas that must carry you."
32:09 It means "You have complete power over these oceans, or over this sodium chloride which is your property." It's the same thing on the level of meaning, you see. It has no poetic interest whatsoever. So it's only poetic to the extent that there's a purely sonic, auditory element. That's where I wanted to get to. So there is indeed a double game at work in poetry. On one hand, it plays with everything rational in language, with representations, concepts, words, everything logical in the logos.
32:46 And besides that, it has a nocturnal side, not only a diurnal one. Here I've borrowed the metaphor of the diurnal and the nocturnal. For those who want to know more about this, there are admirable developments by Wagner, the composer, in his theoretical essay called Beethoven. It's a study of Beethoven's music which he conducts admirably, according to his contemporaries, by the way, and I recommend it to you, it's not very long, precisely on music as an art of the night.
33:24 In particular, there's a theory of the cry that's magnificent. The cry as the expression of emotion at its peak, at its paroxysm, as being the sound that is not received from outside, as when I hear, I don't know, the sound of a plane landing in the distance, but on the contrary the sound that comes from within, from the night. From the soul, so to speak, straining toward the outside. There you go. So I can now come back to Phaedra, which I told you, precisely, is a tragedy of confession, in particular.
Phèdre, tragedy of confession 33:56 It's a succession of confessions. Let me remind you—I had started with the first scene where Hippolytus is literally psychoanalyzed by his confidant, who dismantles one by one all the reasons Hippolytus gives for wanting to leave, and thus breaking the unity of place. You don't just break the unity of place like that in classical theater. In fact, Phaedra could be called Phaedra, or Hippolytus's False Departure. That could sum up the tragedy.
34:26 Since you're going to see, he keeps saying "I'm leaving" right up until his death. He never leaves. So, we don't leave, as Rimbaud says in A Season in Hell: "We do not leave." "Let us retake the roads from here." And I had interrupted at the first half of Hippolytus's confession to Aricia. But before that there was the confession that Hippolytus had had wrung out of him by his confidant. "Why are you leaving?" "Because I'm a good boy and I've had no news of my father for six months."
34:56 I told you to remember six months. Do you recall? I still haven't told you why. That's what we're going to find out today. And after that, there's the confession—I wanted to skip this since we don't have all the time—wrung out of Phaedra by her confidante Oenone. That stays within the seraglio, within the gynaeceum if you prefer. Because it's a terrible confession: "I, the queen, am in love with my stepson while his father is away."
35:26 My father is the king. It's a triple crime. It's monstrous. She didn't want to say it, but: "When you know my crime and the fate that overwhelms me, I shall die no less, but I shall die more guilty." You see? A tragedy of confession. "I've told you enough, spare me the rest, I am dying so as not to make so fatal a confession." This comes back often. I had told you, even citing Britannicus, I told you it's the key to ancient ethics. What matters is not so much what one does as whether one says it or doesn't say it.
36:00 When Britannicus, whom I told you is a bit of a silly, precious little fool, reproaches Nero—yes, all of Rome knows of your crimes, your plots, etc.—in short, when he says what everyone knows, Nero answers him: "Rome stays silent, at least imitate its silence. I know well that behind my back all of Rome speaks of my crimes, in a low voice, in a whisper." Because as soon as it's said out loud, it becomes public, it becomes political.
36:31 That's what I'm saying. Public, from populus. And not just "people" in the popular sense—it's much more serious than "people." It means that speech spreads, it gets communicated. Now, as a French proverb says—it must have an equivalent in other languages—Caesar's wife must remain above suspicion. Isn't that right? That wasn't the case with Marie Antoinette, as you know. So there you go, when people speak ill of the queen, that's when a regime is finished. So there's Phaedra's confession to her servant, which stays somewhat contained within the gynaeceum, but still, it's been said.
37:07 You see, speech—I insist on this side of public speech—that a word once spoken is irretrievable. And I'll borrow from mythology. Some of you probably suspect I'm going to talk about King Midas. Does that ring a bell? You know it? Well, go ahead, tell us! What happened? Donkey's ears. Yes, go on, there you go! I'm Corsican, it relaxes me, go on! It's a story I tell my children a lot. Well, that's good! So, it's a king who has a secret: he has donkey's ears.
37:42 And in fact, only his hairdresser knows. Yes, the barber. His barber, since indeed, to take care of this man's hair, obviously, you have to remove the cap. And so this poor barber has to carry this terrible secret all by himself. And so the only solution he found to relieve himself of this burden—yes, because he could never keep a secret. That was his problem. Yes, or in any case, it's heavy to keep a secret.
38:15 There you go, good, good. And so, in fact, he goes very far out into the wheat fields. I say into the forest, but it's the same thing. And so he starts shouting, King Midas has donkey's ears, etc. And despite himself, the wind carries it all away. That's how the myth begins. He thinks he's gotten away with it, no one heard anything, I'm out in nature.
38:47 But there's the wind. And the whole country buzzes with the rumor that King Midas has donkey's ears. As a result, the barber gets beheaded. Mythology is serious business. Me, I had the version where he digs into the ground. He shouts it out. "King Midas has donkey's ears," and he covers it back up, fills it in. The plants grow. You see? The myth runs deep. There you go. So, second confession: Phaedra to her servant. Then after that, and this is where we left off, Hippolytus's confession to Aricia.
Hippolytus's confession to Aricia and the split subject 39:19 That one is a tough one. Hippolytus, officially—don't forget we started from the modern subject. What does it mean to be a subject in modernity? That's how we ended up on Racine. It's knowing that the subject is split. Let me pick up our philosophical progression again. The subject is split. "I is another," to quote a phrase. That's modernity, isn't it? We no longer have the simplicity, the unity of consciousness. No. There's consciousness, there's the unconscious. Unbewusst. Tristan and Isolde, Wagner, five hours, if that appeals to you.
39:52 Well yes, personally I don't find it long. When it's over, I say already? Five hours. Thank you. The last word, the very last word of this torrent of notes, of words, because he did everything, he wrote the poem, the music. The last word is "Unbewusst." Unconscious. I said this, when she herself sank into the waves of the ocean. Yes. Now, to show that the split subject—I had illustrated it with an author who never heard of the unconscious, all on purpose, caught in the act, an author of the 17th century, who shows us very well that these characters, as soon as they are in relation to another, bring their truth to the surface, to the detriment of what they themselves believed.
40:36 Hippolytus thought of himself that he wasn't made for love, wasn't made for women, that he was made for the hunt, for guy stuff, well anyway. And so, let me reread the passage where his confession is more or less wrung out of him by little Aricia, right? Let me remind you, for the newcomers, that everyone believes Theseus is dead. "More than six months away from my father, I do not know the fate of a head so dear to me." I told you to remember the six months.
41:06 Adding, Thomas—I say it sometimes—that the only difference between mathematics and poetry is that poetry is an exact science. That's what we're going to see, isn't it? Even arithmetically. So, with Theseus being absent, it happens that the problem of succession arises, and so this is the scene where Hippolytus is supposed to come tell Aricia what's going to happen.
41:38 Because he, after all, is himself a candidate for the succession. He's Theseus's son. The son of Theseus and an ex, the queen of the Amazons. There's something a bit unclear about it. The queen of the Amazons among the Greeks, that smells a bit of nature. Women. Well. It's not clear. As Africans say: "Your story there is not clear." And then there's the son of Theseus and Phaedra, the most legitimate one, the latest in date. Phaedra, the one Theseus settled down with, the old man.
42:08 After Ariadne, he took the little sister. That's not enough for him because he's off wandering somewhere—nobody knows where—so he's presumed dead. We don't know very well. We'll find out later that he's off with the god of the dead, dishonoring his bed. He's running around near the world of the dead. And a third pretender, who's that? The son of Phaedra and the queen of the Amazons, who's no longer in the running.
42:39 The queen. The son is in the running. The son of Phaedra and Theseus. And who is that? Ah, sorry to have forgotten you. Thank you. The little goody-two-shoes, the innocent, the Cinderella figure, who ends up confessing that she'd like, for the first time, to make Hippolytus suffer, he who has never gone near a woman. "That's what I want. That's what he deserves. Taming Hercules would have cost less than taming Hippolytus." Yes? I'll show you that she too has a bit of a sadistic side.
43:10 It's not a big deal. It's not entirely up to chance. There's no chance in the game of love. There is chance. So, then, and here she has him, her Hippolytus, he was about to turn on his heel, he's always about to leave, isn't he? And he comes and plays the collaborator. I told you, "collaborator" is a political term, I'm not exaggerating. His father, remember, wiped out Aricia's entire family. That's how he took power in Athens. He massacred her six brothers. "And the moistened earth drank, with regret, the blood of the nephews of Erechtheus."
43:44 There's no one left but her, the survivor, and so he forbids, for more or less political reasons, that she have any descendants. So no man is to approach her. There you go, it's precisely because Hippolytus, who's the best match in Athens, isn't it, and who could really choose whichever girl he wants however he wants, is only interested in the one girl forbidden by his father. That doesn't stop some from still saying that Freud understood nothing about reality. Well, anyway. One can also miss the point of Racine entirely, of everything.
44:15 Well, so, that's called repression. There's his confession, let me remind you what we had read, and I'll continue on. You'll see why. "I have gone too far, I see that reason yields to violence." He had come for five minutes, just long enough to catch the boat, to tell her: "You are free, you may marry whomever you wish. Everything my father did, I annul it." "I have gone too far, I see that reason yields to violence, since I have begun to break the silence"—it's a tragedy of confession.
44:47 "Madam, I must go on, I must inform you of a secret my heart can no longer contain." You see, before you—no, but look at me—you see before you, this kid has quite a narcissism, you see, he's building his own monument, erecting his monument. "Erection" comes from "to erect." "You see before you a prince to be pitied, a memorable example of reckless pride." I, who—along with subordinate clauses—"I, who proudly rebelled against love, who long insulted the chains of its captives, who, deploring the shipwrecks of weak mortals, always thought I would watch the storms from the shore, now enslaved beneath the common law, by what turmoil do I find myself carried away from myself."
45:33 I told you that these two lines sum up the whole tragedy of the unconscious. I believed I was an exceptional case, as all fools do, I believed I was unique. And now: "enslaved now beneath the common law"—that of love in this instance—"by what turmoil do I find myself carried away from myself." "A moment has conquered my rash boldness. This soul so proud is at last dependent." "For nearly six months"—I told you we'd come back to that.
46:03 "Ashamed, desperate, carrying everywhere the arrow by which I am pierced, against you, against myself, in vain, I struggle. Present, I flee you; absent, I find you. In the depths of the forests, your image follows me. The light of day, the shadows of night, everything brings back to my eyes the charms I avoid. Everything hands over to your power the rebellious Hippolytus. I myself, for all the fruit of my useless efforts"—listen carefully now—"I seek myself and find myself no more." I won't interrupt, I'll come back to it.
46:35 Now I seek myself and find myself no more. My bow, my javelins, my chariot, everything troubles me. I no longer remember Neptune's lessons. My only groans make the woods resound, and my idle steeds have forgotten my voice. Perhaps the tale of a love so untamed makes you, as you listen to me, blush at your own work. What a fierce confession from a heart that offers itself to you! What a strange captive for so fine a bond! He does love himself anyway, huh! What a strange captive for so fine a bond!
47:05 But the offering must be dearer still in your eyes. Consider that I speak to you in a foreign tongue, and do not reject vows poorly expressed, which Hippolytus, without you, would never have formed. There, I'll stop, even though I know the gentlemen would very much like to know what happens next, how the young lady is going to react. Not only the gentlemen — the gentlemen especially! No, you see, now I'm living in the comments, ha, ha, ha! We had stopped there, hadn't we? Now enslaved under the common law, by what turmoil do I find myself carried away from myself.
47:37 But now, what do we learn? That it's been six months that he's been like this? I told you it was precise. Now, at the beginning, he did say six months, but not at all to say that he'd been in love with Aricia for six months. It was: for more than six months, far from my father, I know not the fate of a head so dear to me. In other words, I am pitifully in love to the point of losing myself. Now I seek myself and find myself no more — in love with Aricia, from the very first second my father disappeared. Yes or no? I'm not making this up.
48:07 It's arithmetic. Look at the rigor of what Racine reveals to us here. Don't think Racine arranged it all deliberately. He's not a computer. You see what I mean? As I often tell you, he does better than merely thinking everything I'm telling you. He says it — Racine. He expresses it in speech. That's one of Freud's great discoveries: speech expresses far more than what mere thought, or mere consciousness if you prefer, has retained.
48:37 Consciousness is partial and therefore partial in the biased sense too. The truth is the whole, says Hegel, doesn't he? And so the truth of the subject cannot be reduced to that part which floats like the iceberg, above the surface, called consciousness, which is the incomplete subject. So there you have it, the story of the six months. I told you we'd come back to it, but look at this. We're at Act 2, Scene 2, so it's been a while since he spoke of those other six months.
Pascal, Racine, Kafka: seeking and finding 49:10 You see? The rigor of... You'd think there was an objective subject running through all this. I go from Racine to Rimbaud, from Rimbaud to Pascal, as if there were a subject common to all of them. Whereas these authors are not at all the same personalities. There is a content that expresses itself through them. And there we step outside the psychological field, if you look closely. We're beyond that. It's the same content expressing itself through very different psychologies.
49:40 So now, myself, for all the fruit of my superfluous cares, now I seek myself and find myself no more. I'm sure some of you remember something, this phrase, from the same period, to guide you. Now I seek myself and find myself no more. Doesn't that remind you of other authors? Pascal. Bravo. Which quotation? Well, Vombard, you're strong, huh? The silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. Ah, no.
50:10 No, I thought... Ah well, half a bravo, then. Do you know that text by Pascal called The Mystery of Jesus? When Pascal died, a paper was found sewn into his coat. Well, the Memorial. Yes, the Memorial. You know the phrase. It's one of the most famous. It was found... Pascal had hidden it because it's very personal, it's the expression of an illumination.
50:43 The text goes like this. A sheet of paper. "This 23rd of November, day of Saint Chrysostom, martyr," etc., in the style of the time. Eve of such-and-such saint, martyr and others. "From about half past ten in the evening until about half past midnight," and then, on the next line, in letters this big: FIRE. It's a genuine illumination in the physical sense. "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Not the God of the philosophers and the scholars."
51:13 You see, there's a text of revelation like that. You see, one of the greatest scholars in the world humbles himself before the revelation of charity. And a dialogue begins between the soul and Jesus. It's him, Pascal, playing both parts, of course. So the soul is very tormented about the sinner, its condition — we're in full Christianity here. And Jesus suddenly says this phrase that has become famous: "Console yourself, you would not seek me if you had not already found me."
51:43 I've told you it's a mystery in the properly theological sense of the term that this phrase is incomprehensible: "You would not seek me if you had not found me." You see how strange this phrase is. By definition, you don't search for what you've already found. The money I'm looking for is not the money in my pocket. The money I need and am searching for is not the money I already have. But here it's: "Console yourself, you would not seek me." That means: "If you're anxious, if you're seeking me, it's because you have already found me."
52:16 The one who is far from me is the one who doesn't even feel the need to seek me. You know, it's the famous parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Forgive me for giving you catechism, but it's a very complementary moment to the Greek culture we were dealing with in Racine. You know, there's the Pharisee who enters the temple and prays like this, arms outstretched like an orant, as they say, "Adonai, Adonai," etc. And then there's the publican — that meant the pimp back then, I'm Corsican, the procurer — who doesn't dare enter the church because of his sins and stays at the entrance like that.
52:48 And the Pharisee accuses him: he has sinned so much he doesn't dare come into your house. And Jesus says: "He is closer to me." Console yourself, you would not seek me if you had not found me. I see a connection — this is called negative theology, I'm developing this for you. In Pascal there is quite a lot of negative theology, that is, God present through his absence. Among the Greeks, it's the exact opposite. You can't lift a pebble near a spring without there being a nymph underneath it.
53:20 The gods are almost too present. That's what makes it a tragic world, because one is constantly encroaching, without knowing it, on their domain. And the gods don't like that, do they? And Icarus flies a little too high — bam, he's encroached on the gods' domain. And Oedipus who wants to know too much, and Icarus who flies too high, etc. It's all hubris, otherwise there would be no tragedy, nothing to purge. Catharsis, catastrophe — if there had been no fault. But here, it's the opposite: Christianity.
53:50 Nobody believes anymore that there are nymphs under springs — that's paganism. God is nowhere. Christianity is a terrible atheism. If we stick to the earth, he is beyond it. Christianity is a materialism here below. You see what I mean? It de-divinized nature. So it's no accident that the culture of the Christian West became a technical culture.
54:21 Because as long as there are nymphs in the springs, I won't build a dam, I'm afraid to. But ecology comes back a bit to that. Nature takes revenge with floods, tsunamis, for the harm done to it. Well, yes. One might be tempted to believe it, but as Nerval says, ignorance cannot be learned. So this is important, what we're saying here. Negative theology. There's a twentieth-century author I connect to this mystery, "You would not seek me if you had not found me."
54:55 "Myself, for all the fruit of my superfluous cares, now I seek myself and find myself no more." You see how Pascal and Racine, the two Jansenist contemporaries, resonate with each other in counterpoint. It's strange. I don't know how to put it. You see that there really is a content seeking to make itself heard through subjects as different as the great scientist Pascal and that unbearably touchy courtier, Racine. You could pay him every compliment you like, he didn't care, Racine.
55:26 "You're the greatest, you're the best," "oh yes, yes, fine" — that meant nothing to him. But if you said the slightest word of criticism, he'd fly into a black rage. Nasty character. It's said he might have been involved in the Affair of the Poisons. I'll keep going a bit with the rumors, the gossip. You know, the Affair of the Poisons was serious business. He nearly poisoned the king. Now, I don't know if it's true, but I had a bit of a nasty girlfriend once who said, "I'm sure it was true." It's true that you'd say, "Just imagine characters like Nero in Britannicus."
56:00 He was capable of being a poisoner, that man. Anyway, for such different characters to carry the very same words. "Myself, for all the fruit of my superfluous cares, now I seek myself and find myself no more." And the other one who says, "Console yourself, you would not seek me if you had not found me. You seek me, therefore you are saved." And Nietzsche, who wants to be anti-Christian and is Christian to the very marrow — German marrow, eats a lot of pork, isolation — Nietzsche has Zarathustra say to the crowd at the beginning.
56:31 You know, the most famous passage. It's not your sin that scandalizes heaven, it's your self-satisfaction. That's Christian. It's not your sin that scandalizes heaven. Do whatever you want everywhere, heaven doesn't care. It's when you're satisfied with yourself, when you believe in the good, when you no longer have any effort to make, when you no longer seek. There you go. When you no longer seek. When you no longer have the Unruhe — which Leibniz tells us is the same word in German for the ticking of a clock. It means restlessness in German. Ruhe is rest.
57:01 Unruhe, non-rest. There you go. So, I told you there's a twentieth-century author in whom we find this. I gave you the text. We didn't comment on it, but I read it to you without commenting much. One page, similarly. One of the finest texts by Kafka, an excerpt from The Great Wall of China: "An Imperial Message." Do you remember this text? An Imperial Message. "The Emperor, so it is said — the Emperor of China, no doubt — the Emperor, so it is said, dying, has sent you, you alone, you, a wretched subject, a tiny shadow that has fled far, far away from the imperial sun," that is, buried deep in the farthest of the far reaches of the Empire, in a village deep in China, the Emperor has sent a message to you.
57:51 How is that possible? What is it? The Emperor is dying, in his death agony, and he has the messenger repeat the message back into his ear, to make sure it's exactly what he dictated. And now the messenger can leave. Before all the great men of the Empire who watch the king dying, the messenger sets off; he wears the sign of the sun on his chest, so all the doors open before him. So he'll arrive at your place, and soon — this is Kafka speaking — you'll hear the wonderful pounding of his fist on your door. But now, to get out of the throne room, there are still more rooms, and then more courtyards, and then more palaces.
58:29 I'll go quickly, it's only one page — he doesn't even manage to get out of the imperial palace, it's too complicated, too long, it's a beautiful metaphor for life. And even, says Kafka, even if by some miracle he managed to pass through the palace gates after the last courtyards and the last palaces, he would arrive in the imperial city — but no one ever gets through, not even with the message of a dying man. It's hopeless, you'll say — it means, you see, tragedy of communication, a message never arrives at its destination, not even the message of a dying man, even when there's urgency, when you're dying you go straight to the essential, you're not doing PR, no, you really go to the essential. And then there's the fall — thank you for mentioning Rimbaud's fall, it inspired me to make this connection — there's this fall, full stop. But you, this "you," at the beginning we said, "has sent to you, wretched shadow, buried in the farthest of the far reaches" — but you, you sit at your window and wait for the message when evening comes.
59:39 If someone is waiting for the message when evening comes, that means the message has arrived at its destination — if that can console you, I don't know, given the rather pessimistic side of the text. If someone is waiting for the message — the flowerpot doesn't wait for my message, you see what I mean — there's someone, somewhere. That's of the same order as "You would not seek me if you had not found me" — that's negative theology, isn't it? So, all that drawn from Hippolytus's confession, a tale, I don't know, about his narcissism — that's the character, we're not here to analyze Phèdre as such, but to continue our exploration of the modern subject and of the unconscious. And now I move on to the confession of confessions — I had saved this high point for today, I didn't want to launch into it last time because it would surely have been rushed. I won't say "the sublime singular," that's silly and means nothing, it's pointless — but one of the summits of our language, perhaps of the whole play.
Œnone's objective morality and Aricia's response 1:00:49 But above all, what I'm about to read to you now — besides, when you read, when you reread Proust, the young narrator, the first time — his parents had promised him they'd go hear la Berma, the great tragedienne of the time, supposedly Rachel or someone like that, well anyway, at the theater, and it would be la Berma, and he keeps reciting this passage over and over in his head, wondering how she'll say it — he won't be at all disappointed, of course, as always when one finally gets to something, well anyway. So where were we?
1:01:23 Well, in the meantime, I'll skip a short passage where a messenger has just confirmed the news that Theseus is dead — we'll see later that it's false news, anyway, according to the latest bulletin, Theseus is dead — and the confidante takes up Phèdre's politics again, and no, and says to Phèdre, well, listen, you're not so criminal after all, now that he's dead — that's the morality of the time — now that Theseus is dead, you're less guilty, after all your love becomes an ordinary love, don't you think? You'll see. "Madam, I ceased urging you to live; already, even at your tomb, I was thinking of following you; the faithful servant, to dissuade you, had no more voice left; but this new misfortune prescribes other laws for you; your fortune changes, it takes on another face; the king is no more, Madam, you must take his place." She's not caught up in the romantic drama, she's out of Corneille, not Racine — she has ancient common sense. "You must do politics, enough, forget your love story for a moment, I mean, do you realize, there's your son, if you don't defend him, it's the other one who'll take power, and what will become of me?" So: "His death leaves you a son to whom you owe yourself — a slave if he loses you."
1:02:33 "— and a king if you live. On whom, in his misfortune, do you want him to lean? His tears will have no hand left to wipe them, and his innocent cries, carried up to the gods, will turn his ancestors against his mother. Live, you have no more reproach to make yourself; your flame becomes an ordinary flame" — that's called objective morality — "Theseus, in dying, has just broken the bonds that made up all the crime and the horror of your fires; Hippolytus becomes less fearsome for you, and you may look on him without becoming guilty." There you go, convenient for everything. "Perhaps, convinced of your aversion, he will give a leader to the sedition; undeceive his error, bend his resolve; king of his happy shores, Trezen is his share; but he knows that the laws give to your son the proud ramparts that Minerva built" — that is, Athens, Athens under Athena's patronage, Minerva being the Latin name for Athena — "you both have a just enemy; unite together to fight Aricia." Of course, neither one knows that Hippolytus is in love with Aricia, still less that Aricia listens complaisantly to Hippolytus's confession. There are catastrophes brewing in the air, and a mad scheme, no less: "unite with Hippolytus against Aricia" — all this suddenly, since Theseus is dead — that's what I had skipped over.
1:03:44 Because there's a fairly long scene, and so I come, as I was saying, to the scene where I'd left Aricia's answer to Hippolytus's confession hanging. Well, gentlemen, I'll go ahead and read you the continuation, reminding you of Hippolytus's last lines: "What a strange captive for so fine a bond! But the offering must be dearer still in your eyes. Consider that I speak to you in a foreign tongue," — as Nerval says, the beginner in love knew his part well — "and do not reject vows poorly expressed, which Hippolytus, without you, would never have formed."
1:04:28 At that moment, just as he awaits an answer, Theramenes arrives and says, "My lord, the queen is coming, and I've gone ahead of her, she is seeking you." The queen, that is Phèdre, is seeking him to negotiate — should they unite against her, if so. "I do not know her thoughts, but I've been sent to ask you, on her behalf, Phèdre wishes to speak to you before your departure." Again the question of departure. "Phèdre — what could I tell her, and what can she expect?" Aricia: "My lord, you cannot refuse to hear her — though quite convinced of her enmity, you owe her tears at least some shadow of pity" — she has, after all, just lost her husband, his father — "you owe her tears some shadow of pity."
1:05:01 "Hippolytus, meanwhile you leave and I depart. And I know not whether I do not offend the charms I adore. I know not whether this heart which I leave in your hands" — there she stops, and now, gentlemen, you're going to find out. "Depart, prince, and follow your noble designs. Make Athens tributary to my power, I accept every gift you wish to give me. But this empire, however grand, however glorious, is not, of all your gifts, the dearest to my eyes." There! Ah yes, Hippolytus goes "there!" because he says — with Theramenes there — "Friends, is everything ready?"
Phèdre's confession: the edge and Neptune 1:05:33 That means the ships, the cargo, the drinking water, doesn't it, the freight. "But the queen approaches. Go, so that for the departure everything be readied with dispatch, give the signal, run, give orders and come back" — he still believes he'll be leaving within three seconds — "soon to free me from a tiresome conversation." Do you realize everything that precedes the confession scene I'm about to read you? Phèdre, to Oenone: "There he is. All my blood withdraws toward my heart; seeing him, I forget everything I came to tell him." Ah no, not the time for that, so, do politics.
1:06:04 Oenone: "Remember a son who hopes only in you." And now it's direct, isn't it, between the two main characters. "They say a prompt departure is taking you away from us, my lord" — they're talking about a prompt departure, it's been two acts now that he's been trying to leave. That's called antiphrasis. "They say a prompt departure is taking you away from us, my lord. To your sorrows I come to add my tears. I come to explain to you, for a son, my alarms. My son no longer has a father, and the day is not far off when, of my death as well" — she's ill — "he will be made to witness it too.
1:06:35 Already a thousand enemies attack his childhood. You alone can take up his defense against them. But a secret remorse troubles my spirit" — she's been vile toward him ever since she fell in love, hasn't she, she even asked Theseus to send him away, and so on. So it's rather odd that she's now asking him to be her ally — "but a secret remorse troubles my spirit. I fear I have closed your ear to his cries. I fear, I tremble, that your just anger may soon pursue a hateful mother."
1:07:06 "Madam, I have no such base feelings." Courteous, the boy, even so. Now that's terrible — do anything you like, you know, a lover like that — anything at all as a response, but not indifference. You see what I mean? Hate me, whatever you like. Strike me, but don't tell me "I don't care." "I have the ships waiting for me." "Even were you to hate me, I would not complain of it, my lord." Now Phèdre's answer. "You have seen me determined to do you harm."
1:07:36 "You could not read into the depths of my heart." You see how the sentences suddenly take on a double meaning. They're starting to get to each other here. "You could not read into the depths of my heart" — the unconscious begins to force a path other than that of politics. "I took pains to make myself offer you my enmity; I could not bear to stay where you lived." For those really interested in poetic precision, I ask you to reread Phèdre and count. To count. Calculemus, as Leibniz used to say — that was his motto whenever there was a problem.
1:08:06 Let's calculate. Count how many times the word "shore" appears in this play. What is more perilous than a shore? Do you realize? A shore. A shore, that's a passage from one thing to another. It might be the edge of a cliff, the bank of a river, the edge of a balcony. It's always a crossing, it's always something else — the shore, the bank. Man the navigator, and woman the riverbank-dweller.
1:08:38 "You will say, in the land where I dwelt, I could not bear you. I forbade myself to declare it to you further, I wished to be separated from you by seas; I even forbade, by an express law, that anyone dare pronounce your name before me. If yet the punishment is measured by the offense, if hatred alone can draw forth your hatred, never was a woman more worthy of pity, and less worthy, my lord, of your enmity." Hippolytus — I'll tell you now, Hippolytus, so I can spare you the time of searching for the meaning, since it's fairly clear, and so you can attend to the music of the verses — but he's about to say the worst thing she could hear.
1:09:19 He's going to say, well yes, you're my stepmother, and a stepmother is always a bit conflicted with her stepson, that's fine, there's worse. "For the sake of her own children, a jealous mother rarely forgives the son of another wife; Madam, I know it. Untimely suspicions are, of a second marriage, the most common fruits. Any other in my place would have felt the same shadows, and I would perhaps have suffered even more outrage." "Ah, my lord, heaven — I dare here call it to witness — has chosen to except me from that common law; a very different care troubles and devours me."
1:09:49 Gently now, he notices that something abnormal is happening, since he says, "Madam, it is not the time to trouble you further." You see, that "further" could be — I've told you I don't interpret, so I leave both meanings open for you to choose — it could mean "to trouble you further," even more; I find you troubled enough as it is. Or else: "It is not yet time to trouble you." Perhaps Theseus... Perhaps your husband still sees the light of day. Whereas earlier, in front of Aricia, he was quite pleased that his father was dead.
1:10:19 "Perhaps your husband still sees the light of day. Heaven may yet, in answer to our tears, grant his return." And now, listen carefully: "Neptune protects him, and this tutelary god will not, in vain, be implored by my father." Yes, Neptune, the god of the oceans, will protect him, his ship, from the storms. Now, this requires some background information. This is diabolically precise, all of it. At the beginning, in the scene between Hippolytus and Theramenes, Theramenes had remarked, to get him to confess he was in love, "For some time now, we've seen you less often, proud and untamed, now driving your chariot along the shore."
1:10:54 A chariot, a chariot is drawn by horses. "Skilled once in the art, by Neptune taught," for mythology tells us that it was Neptune who taught men to tame horses. That's a mythological fact, you need to know it. So every time he's out hunting with his horses and chariot, he's in the hands of his father's tutelary god. Neptune protects him, and this tutelary god will not have been invoked in vain by my father.
1:11:25 And so I finish the reference to the first act, where the Confidant had said, "skilled once in the art, by Neptune taught, to make an untamed steed obey the bit." And those who know the play know how Hippolytus will die. He will die mutilated, torn apart, trampled by his own horses. It's diabolically logical. That is to say, killed by the very symbols, the totem if you prefer, the totemic ally, to put it in African terms, of his father: the horse.
1:11:55 There was — Aliocha may know this — there was a film version of Phèdre, I don't remember by whom, supposedly set in modern times, where the hero dies in an Aston Martin or a Jaguar. That's not a bad idea. First of all, because we say a car has "350 horses," I mean, that's not badly seen. Because the father was a racing driver. There you go, just to show you how symbolism works, you can vary the details. Right. And there, you see, Neptune protects him. Hippolytus is reassured. Hippolytus — Theseus, Theseus alive. Neptune protects him; he doesn't yet know, does he, that his father will curse him, entrusting his vengeance to Neptune, that is, to the one who taught men in the art, by Neptune invented, to make an untamed steed obey the bit.
1:12:40 So, Neptune protects him, and this tutelary god will not have been invoked in vain by my father. In short, Theseus may still be alive. Phèdre's reply: "We never see twice the shore of the dead, my lord." That's a clear statement. "Since Theseus has seen those dark shores, in vain you hope some god will send him back, and greedy Acheron never releases its prey."
1:13:10 The Acheron is the river of the underworld. Once you're dead, you're dead. But what's strange is "in vain you hope" — she should say "in vain we hope," shouldn't she? He mourns his father, she loses her husband. You see how the confession, the speech, escapes the thought. "In vain you hope some god will send him back" — it's over, your father's gone. Now we're alone, just the two of us. In vain — it's a fantastic passage, isn't it? "We never see twice," she has Phèdre say, "we never see twice the shore of the dead, my lord."
1:13:40 "Since Theseus has seen those dark shores, in vain you hope some god will send him back, and greedy Acheron never releases its prey. What am I saying, he is not dead, since he breathes in you? Always before my eyes I seem to see my husband. I see him, I speak to him, and my heart... I lose myself, my lord. My mad ardor, in spite of myself, declares itself." I don't think she could have said it better. Hippolytus takes a step back in a good staging of the scene. "I see the prodigious effect of your love." At the time, "prodigious" was like "marvel," it meant that there was something not normal about it.
Phèdre in love with Theseus young 1:14:13 "I see the prodigious effect of your love; though dead, Theseus is present before your eyes. Your soul is still ablaze with love for him." And here begins the summit of our language. I'll speak of it now in the singular. "Yes, prince, I languish, I burn for Theseus. I love him, not as the underworld has seen him" — since rumor runs, is circulating, that he's wandering around the underworld — "I love him, not as the underworld has seen him, fickle worshipper of a thousand different objects, going to dishonor the bed of the god of the dead."
1:14:46 "But faithful, proud, even a bit fierce, charming, young, drawing every heart after him, as our gods are depicted, or as I see you." So now we finally have the secret of this play. We finally have the object of Phèdre's desire. Can you guess what it is? She's in the process of formulating it. What is the ideal object of desire for Phèdre? Well: Theseus, young — that is, precisely the one thing that is completely impossible. The order of time is irreversible.
1:15:24 A Theseus who would have Hippolytus's present appearance, but an Hippolytus who would not merely be hunting boar, but who would have confronted the Minotaur, who would have swept off all the girls of Crete, right? Well, there you go! And throughout the whole universe, wouldn't he, praise and admiration would resound. The impossible, the object of desire, the impossible — the past, which she experiences in the present as a hallucination. And clinicians studied the text at the request of literary scholars and found that it was admirably rendered, from a clinical, psychiatric point of view — hysteria, or even manic-depressive syndrome.
1:16:04 The way Phèdre forgets that she came for her son, for matters of succession, right? And gives herself over to her hallucination. Before her she has the young Theseus, that is, the one who was her sister Ariadne's lover, right? So: "I love him, not as the underworld has seen him" — the graying Theseus, fickle worshipper of a thousand different objects, going to dishonor the bed of the god of the dead — "but faithful" — the faithful Theseus — "but proud, and even a bit fierce, charming, young, drawing every heart after him, as our gods are depicted, or as I see you."
1:16:40 "He had your bearing, your eyes, your speech; that noble modesty colored his face when he crossed the waves from our Crete." Forgive me for stopping, but I must, because it's such a beauty — but look at the verb tenses, it begins in the present, she's in the hallucination, isn't she? "Always before my eyes I seem to see my husband, I see him, I speak to him, and my heart... I lose myself, my lord," etc. Afterward, it's the imperfect tense, right? "He had your modesty, your eyes, your face" — the tense of the past that will never return, of happiness, of long duration.
1:17:14 And all of a sudden, the act, the heroic act against the Minotaur, right? That is, the simple past. "When he crossed the waves from our Crete, worthy object of the wishes of the daughters of Minos, what were you doing then?" Why — because Hippolytus was a baby — "did he not assemble the elite of Greece's heroes?" Here too, I'll make a small aside to remind you of my thesis that the killing of the Minotaur is not just a children's story, a tale, but that, historically and politically, it sanctions the emancipation of the Greeks from the Cretan yoke.
1:17:49 Historically, this corresponds exactly to the sequence of events, since the Cretans reigned as masters of the seas well before Athens became a power. We see it here: Theseus didn't go alone, playing the hero like in a Hollywood film. He assembled, as she says, the elite of the heroes of Greece. "What were you doing then? Why, still too young, did you not then board the ship he brought to our shores?" And here the moods of the verb, and not only the tenses, change: "through you the monster of Crete would have perished."
1:18:22 There, that's what Hippolytus lacks: having tamed monsters like the Minotaur. The Minotaur killed by Hippolytus — it's terrible. She's pathetic, Phèdre, she has such an innocence, I find. Well, let's move on. "Through you the monster of Crete would have perished, despite all the twists of its vast retreat" — the labyrinth — "to unravel its uncertain maze, my sister would have armed your hand with the fatal thread. But no, in that design, I would have preceded her. Love would have inspired the thought in me first."
1:18:54 "Love would have inspired the thought in me first. It is I, prince, it is I whose helpful aid would have taught you the turns of the labyrinth. What care that charming head would have cost me! A thread alone would not have reassured your lover enough." Because in the original story, Ariadne gives the thread to Theseus, but she stays on the surface. "Watch — I, I'll go further, I'll go down with you." "It is I, prince, it is I whose helpful aid would have taught you the turns of the labyrinth."
1:19:26 "What care that charming head would have cost me! A thread alone would not have reassured your lover enough. Companion in the peril you had to seek, I myself would have wished to walk before you. And Phèdre, descended into the labyrinth with you, would have found herself again with you, or lost herself." Thank you. And at the time, everyone knew what a "lost girl" meant, right? To lose oneself with Theseus at the bottom of the labyrinth. We've changed unconscious since then.
Theseus, liberating hero, and the Theban cycle 1:19:57 That's why I insisted on this confession. We're no longer in the Freudian psychological unconscious. We're in the historical order. We're in what Michel Clouscard calls the unconscious of the unconscious — what is unconscious even for the Freudians: history, class relations, politics, the social. That's where we are. "When he crossed the waves from our Crete, worthy object of the wishes of the daughters of Minos" — this means that even before we see Theseus, while he's still on the boat coming from Athens, heading toward Crete, the daughters of Minos are already in love with him.
1:20:39 "Worthy object of the wishes of the daughters of Minos." He's preceded by his legend. Because like Heracles, he has accomplished the state-founding exploit which consists in ridding the earth of the monsters that prevent men from dwelling there. That's the common point between Heracles and Theseus. That's why they were considered demigods, heroes. They're not gods, since they die. They even die tragically, if you think of Heracles and Theseus. But still, I mean, they're regarded as tutelary gods.
1:21:11 You know that Theseus is the tutelary god of Athens. I don't know if you know this, but there's a linkage — forgive me for using an Anglo-Saxon word — there's a connection to the formidable cycle. And the Theban cycle, that of Oedipus — the most tragic there is, perhaps not the most disturbing, the most mysterious, but in any case the most tragic — that of Oedipus. Which one? You probably know.
1:21:41 There's Oedipus the King, and then the sequel, which is? Well, Oedipus at Colonus. There's a sequel. Oedipus the King ends, as you know, like the ultimate detective story, because no author of a crime novel would ever have imagined that the guilty party is the one leading the investigation, and in complete good faith. Who really believes the culprit is outside himself. Well, and when he learns the truth, you know he gouges out his eyes.
1:22:13 A fine condemnation of empiricism — those eyes that were of no use to see the truth. What good were they to him? The truth was inside; eyes are not made to see what lies within. And so he's condemned to the worst fate for a Greek, since he has committed the most monstrous crime: killing his father, marrying his mother. The worst thing for the Greeks isn't death from that — it's the heroes. Dying on the battlefield facing the Persians is not the worst thing. On the contrary, the Greeks aren't ecologists — quite the opposite. One flees nature to take refuge in the city.
1:22:45 The polis. So he's condemned to wander from city to city. To be a vagabond from city to city. He's banished, literally. You know that's where the word "banlieue" [suburb] comes from — those who are banished to the periphery, who have no right to the city. The language is terrible, really. But yes. And he wanders like that, leaning on his daughter Ismene, who serves as his senses.
1:23:18 For him, she has eyes, ears. What is this? Haven't you seen the film Scent of a Woman? With Vittorio Gassman, he leans on a womanizing blind man like that. An old skirt-chaser of 60. Magnificent film. That's more or less the scenario. And with a young man like that who leans on him, a young man who's paid to help him out a bit in life. How does that work? Well, no, Oedipus isn't quite like that. But still, I mean, he leans on his daughter to know everything happening around him on the sensory level.
1:23:49 Well, let's be clear, he reaches the end of this painful life — Oedipus, right? He arrives in the vicinity of Athens, and in fact, Theseus, in mythology, was the leader of Athens at that time. It was the very beginning of Athens historically. And Theseus is the one who will allow Oedipus to come and die on Athenian territory. Oedipus's story ends in peace. To learn more, read the end of Oedipus at Colonus.
1:24:20 Sophocles. So there you have it, there's a link between the Theban cycle and the Cretan cycle — who would have thought. I was saying that we've changed unconscious. You won't find this in many textbooks, since it's a discovery dating back some thirty years, right? I'm thinking of Michel Clouscard, that of the unconscious of the unconscious. I do some little talks on Marx called "Marx-Plage" on the internet.
The unconscious of the unconscious according to Clouscard 1:24:51 If you're interested, you'll see that I develop this concept a bit there. That's not what we're here for, so I can only allude to it here. But simply, what Clouscard means is that Freud remains within the bourgeois, psychological configuration of the matter. Because the individual unconscious, the family cell, the triangle called "Oedipal — dad, mom, the kid." Isn't that so? Whereas when Racine says in the preface to Phèdre — I think I mentioned this to you for another reason, but anyway — when he says, "yes, I changed the situation a little,"
1:25:27 because there was a tragedy by Seneca on the same subject, Hippolytus and Aricia — Phèdre and Hippolytus, sorry — he says, "yes, in the tradition, in Seneca for example, it's Phèdre who slanders, who makes Theseus believe that it was Hippolytus who made advances toward her, who came on to her." Whereas here, in the version of Phèdre, it's the servant who says, "say that he did it to you, we'll believe it; no one will believe him, right, you'll never be suspected, and so the lie will be credible."
1:26:01 To justify this change, Racine says, "I thought slander was too vile a thing to be put in the mouth of a princess, and that it was better suited to that of a servant." Calmly! Racine isn't more conservative than his time — you know these people hanging around Versailles — but it was in the mores of the era. By nature, one is either vile or noble, and everyone will tell you that slander is fit for servants, a princess doesn't slander. That's what's called a class unconscious — that's what Clouscard says.
1:26:33 It has nothing to do with sexuality here. It's the opposite. When I say it has nothing to do with it, let me correct myself. It's not that sexuality determines the class unconscious, it's the other way around, says Clouscard — it's sexuality that is determined by the class unconscious. "When he crossed the waves from our Crete, worthy object of the wishes of the daughters of Minos" — the libido of the daughters of Minos is aroused by Theseus's reputation, by his historical-political, heroic aura, if you prefer — all the same.
1:27:06 You have the exact equivalent in Wagner's Twilight of the Gods when Gutrune, that silly girl, hears about Siegfried. Sorry, excuse me, I've got the armature wrong. No, no, no, she has a role, there are magnificent women. No one has created women as magnificent as in Wagner. Look at the Valkyrie. Still, that's something else — the one her father punishes for doing what he himself could not do. Well, Gutrune — "good runes" is what it means in German. You know, runes are the ancient Scandinavian writings.
1:27:38 You know, the good runes, the good writings. Well, her brother is impotent and she has no man. That's how it is. He's going to use Siegfried to go capture the Valkyrie and offer her to the king. Anyway, it's a wild tale. In any case, with the helmet that lets you change shape and all that, it's fascinating, but too long. And what's interesting is that she's madly in love with Siegfried even though she hasn't seen him yet.
1:28:08 But he's preceded by his reputation. We know that he's the one who killed the dragon and seized the treasure of the Nibelung. Nothing to do with sexuality at the outset. But sexuality is going to be determined by the class unconscious. That's what was missing from the earlier confessions. And this extraordinary scene I've just read to you, extraordinary because it confirms — and that's why I'm taking this detour through poetry, it's not at all to escape the subject, quite the opposite — that the most beautiful scene from a strictly poetic standpoint, as I said earlier, the strictly poetic has a musical element that in principle owes nothing to meaning, you remember.
1:28:48 I'm trying to stay consistent. The scene most beautiful on the poetic level is the one that brings the deepest content to the surface. Now there's a very fine dialectic for those with an aesthetic bent. For those who see, you know, that this avoids either the formalist temptation — that is, believing that form is independent of its content, which is somewhat the tendency of contemporary structuralism, especially in the 1970s, right?
1:29:21 With the all-powerfulness of the signifier independent of any signified — that was the era of Lévi-Strauss, of Lacan, etc. And also the opposite: the arbitrary injection of meaning, right? The interpretation that insists a work is beautiful because it expresses noble feelings, etc. And there I refer you to Baudelaire, who speaks of the "heresy of didacticism," of the idea that a poem is never beautiful because it speaks of beautiful things. It is beautiful in itself. Thank goodness for "art for art's sake" on that score.
1:29:52 There you go. So we have an illustration of this in Phèdre's confession to Hippolytus, which, as I've told you, is one of the summits of our language but is at the same time the one that brings the deepest content to the surface. No doubt completely unbeknownst to the author himself, right? But it's clear here that everything is being said, and that she is living, as a hallucination, a historical gesture that had really taken place a generation earlier.
1:30:22 At the time when Theseus was Hippolytus's age, right? That is, the act that freed the Greeks from the Cretan yoke. That's what made up Theseus's seductive appeal. And that's why, if you ask who Phèdre is in love with, everyone will say Hippolytus, to the point that she forgets to defend her son, who came about matters of succession — I tell you she's in love with Theseus. But with the young Theseus, yes, that is, with a Theseus who is no longer there. That's where she has a pathos, to return to the clinical field.
Questions: Hippolytus, Theseus, the circle and the edge 1:30:57 She has a pathos. She cannot know that time has passed. There you go. And if I take a break — yes, very well — half an hour or so. And so we'll have a bit more time than usual for questions, because the material we've stirred up was quite rich, so I'm at your disposal. We could very well start from the questions from last time on the three stages of the self.
1:31:30 I remember, because I mean, rewatching it, I noticed that the ending came a bit too quickly. You know, the classical self, that's based on the fact I'd recalled, that there were also three stages of language. There was the classical self, the one Pascal calls hateful — "the self is hateful." In classical art we don't speak of what is singular. And then there's the antithesis, the romantic self — Hugo: "when I speak to you of myself, I speak to you of you." So I speak of myself as much as I like. And finally, the synthesis: "I is an other," from Rimbaud.
1:32:04 So there you go, that's part of our shared reading anyway. So when I say questions, you're not obliged to ask about something I said ten seconds ago. I just have a question about the difference between Theseus and Hippolytus. Because precisely, Theseus — we don't see him, but we know he arouses the girls even without being present, meaning he doesn't need to say he's in love. He has the choice. Because Hippolytus is in the opposite situation.
1:32:36 and he tries to stay reserved, but he says, it's always me who's forced to plunge in, and I couldn't do anything that would make you seek me out without my having to seek you. When we talk about that — we come back a bit to "myself, for all the fruit of my superfluous efforts. Now I seek myself and find myself no more." Indeed, because we're catching Hippolytus at the intermediate stage — that is, I keep coming back to it, I always speak of the boar, it could be stags, doesn't matter — but hunting is, for him, the substitute for the monsters, for the tracking of monsters practiced by his father.
1:33:20 But at the same time, it's a substitute, it's training. A bit like a kid plays with lead soldiers before being on the real battlefield. I mean, so that partly answers your question. That's the big difference. Now, there's no destiny that forces Hippolytus to follow in his father's footsteps. I even think he's a bit blocked, I sense that, which is partly what comes out of what you're saying too, that the reputation of this father inhibits him and makes him spend more time, perhaps hunting and not enough at court, in politics, in a normal man's life, let's say.
1:33:55 In the statistical sense of the term, not the normative sense. The moment he put his finger on it by speaking that way to Aricia—is that how she's called? Aricia. How did you call her? Aricia. I had a blank. Yes, yes. But he put his finger on it because he believed the father was dead, after all. That's the trigger. It's even the trigger for the whole affair. If I had a board, I don't have one today. But try it, it's not hard to do, it's not too abstract.
1:34:27 This whole structure of this play isn't only in Phèdre, it's even the structure of all of classicism in a broad sense, perhaps even of all Hellenism. Because Greece is always the model, isn't it, for the classicists. It's that famous model which isn't Christian, if you will. Without which one also cannot understand the modern, Christian, romantic difference as opposed to the classical, ancient, Greek. Namely, take a circle. I was about to quote Ionesco. Take a circle, stroke it, it will become vicious. No, that's not it. Take a circle, put a sun at the center, a hearth.
1:35:03 And this center is power, it's Theseus, basically. It's Athens. Power is the city. The circle is the periphery of the city. Beyond, beyond the periphery of the circle, in the geometric sense, there are the forests, the hunt. You see, it's a perilous domain in which Hippolytus roams. And when Phèdre—I didn't want to quote it, but there's a passage you mentioned, 'why am I not sitting far off in the arena, following a chariot flying through the dust,' when she dreams of being near Hippolytus in the forests, etc.
1:35:38 She too is tempted by excess, by crossing the circle within which everything should be found—sociability, the city, policing, political-ness, man the zoon politikon, I don't know—to go toward, and this is typical of the modern, romantic, Christian world, toward eccentricity, in the strict sense, that which is far from the center, too far from the center. That's the structure. Take this circle, reread the play, and write on your diagram what is within this circle and what is beyond it.
1:36:13 You'll be surprised. The whole play falls into place very well. And you'll see that the essential, the most important, and it's in this sense that the play is not romantic, not modern, that is to say not Christian, in short—it's the periphery itself. It's located almost entirely on the circle itself, in extreme tension. Today we'd call it borderline. Isn't it? And that's why I keep coming back to the frequency of the word 'edge' in this play.
1:36:44 Everything happens each time at the edge. At the edge of what? Of excentration, precisely. Isn't it? At the edge, short of which one is too much within the norm, beyond which one is no longer enough. And one is threatened by hubris. Hubris is what lies beyond the monstrous circle, isn't it? So, you see, when Hippolytus alludes to those ships with sails swollen by the wind, with ropes stretched to the breaking point, waiting only for him to embark, we're at the periphery.
1:37:20 There, taut. At the point of bursting the unity of place. But without it bursting. And, why am I interested in this notion of edge now—it's the death of Theseus that sows panic. Because, from the start, the fact that this hearth is extinguished and that he's absent, from the very first scene, 'for more than six months now removed from my father,' means the hearth is no longer there, and the centrifugal forces prevail over the centripetal forces.
1:37:52 is that all the hubris comes to light. This cascade of confessions is no accident. Surely none of it would ever have taken place in Theseus's presence. Theseus reigning. So you see, the bond to the collective is not peripheral in this work. I mean, it's a kind of shadow theater in which the center is still the city.
Homogeneous language, Greek leg and Christian leg 1:38:28 Now, of course, it's a matter here of a very socially homogeneous city, that of the Versailles court, extremely codified. It's obvious that all the spectators, all the listeners of Racine at the time knew the mythology I'm talking about by heart. So he doesn't need to explain it, etc. He is content to allude, hence the perfectly finished quality of the work, isn't it? It's the complete opposite of our society, where one must address a thousand different audiences within the same broadcast.
1:39:02 Isn't it? From the literature professor down to the kid from the housing projects. I'm not saying they're stupid. They just don't have the same skills. And one must find, ideologically, politically, a form of communication that satisfies both. Isn't it? Which allows for some appalling gymnastics. There you go. In brilliance, there is the homogeneity of a language. That, one shouldn't be nostalgic for it, it's never coming back. It's tied to a substantial world that is historically disappearing.
1:39:35 That of an extremely socially homogeneous world. Which could be the rural world in a given period. Because there's also a perfect homogeneity in rurality. I'd say the language of rurality. Or the era when the working class lived in close proximity. When there were 35,000 comrades at Billancourt, where now there's a museum of modern art. Well, yes. Modern art as a weapon of selection, I tell you. Aestheticism is a praxis, just like the symbol at Billancourt.
1:40:07 well, that's not my subject. Back then, we didn't talk about migrants, the immigrant worker. No! Because Abdallah was with Jean-Michel at the grind. They went on the same strikes, they got the same benefits when they won. You see, they were comrades. It was class relations that mattered. Not identity relations, of religion, of things, of the veil, of whatever—and other tartufferies, in the literal sense. Tartuffe is a story about religion.
1:40:39 There you go. This is important, what I'm saying now. There are, as it were... This is the whole problem I pointed out to you once. I don't know, it was Hyppolite's judgment on Hegel, isn't it, regarding the Philosophy of Right. Where Hyppolite had viewed it with that distance and that kindness that characterized him, so as to reconcile everyone. And I remind you that Hyppolite, for those who don't know, is one of the very first to have introduced Hegel's philosophy into France, especially after the war with the translation of the Phenomenology.
1:41:10 But still, when he says—Hegel, one can discuss his solutions, one may disagree—but no one can deny that he posed the problems of our modernity, namely how to reconcile our Greek leg and our Christian leg. It's hard not to limp and to walk normally with one leg that wants to go left and the other that wants to go right. With one leg that is within measure, in the Parthenon, not going too high, not going too far in this or that, not wanting to know too much like Oedipus, isn't it?
1:41:45 And on the contrary, that of the bell tower, of the minaret, because Islam too is transcendence, it's a religion of the Book, isn't it? Like Judaism, like Christianity, like this modernity that came to us from the desert. And I'm not inventing anything. But the place was none other than the desert, as Hölderlin says in a poem, isn't it? 'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up,' isn't it? Because if man does not pass through the desert, he will come to believe that nature is at his disposal.
1:42:16 In Tahiti, one can be a naturalist. No. Well, seen from afar, seen from Gauguin's perspective, so to speak. I say that because Gauguin, as you know, ended his days there. It's the era when people were searching for light. They'd grown tired of the blurriness of Île-de-France Impressionism. It's beautiful. There was a reaction there. It comes and goes. And so there's one who goes down to Arles, Van Gogh, the raw light of the south, there.
1:42:47 That's less impressionistic. Then there's Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence. Those are lights too. Not an Île-de-France light. Then there are some lesser-known ones at L'Estaque, all that. You know all that. Very well. And then there's one who goes as far as Tahiti. What is his last painting? Who knows? Or rather, what's the subject? I'm not showing the title. His last painting. A Breton village under snow. Painted in Tahiti. Oh! At almost the same time, actually a little before, Rimbaud writes The Drunken Boat, at seventeen.
1:43:26 All the seas of the world, absolute adventure, isn't it? Casting off rudder and grappling-hook, isn't it? Nothing holding him back. And who, in the middle of the poem, turns back. 'I, I who trembled, feeling at fifty leagues the groan of Behemoths and dense Maelstroms'—no wait, 'I regret Europe with its ancient parapets.' You see, the same movement. I told you there's a content that seeks itself across psychologically different personalities. I come back to the fact that we have moved beyond Freud and the psychoanalytic field.
Freud and the symbol: high and low 1:43:56 But having gone through it, I don't know how one would manage otherwise, or like Deleuze's Anti-Oedipus. No, it was a fantastic step forward to have understood that 'I is an other.' Freud, thank you. To have understood the symbolic order, which is something between the soul and the body, between extension and thought, that there is an unthought which is not of a mechanical order. A tertium quid, as he puts it so well when he studies the symbolic. Freud studied the symbolic mostly in dreams. Let me open a small interesting parenthesis here.
1:44:26 On the subject of dreams, I mean. Because Freud is not a dogmatist, he's someone who keeps changing. He says—I say this, I'm going back now because it leads to a dead end. Well, there you go. A bit of opportunism. I rather like that side of him. He tries almost every path, since he approaches, a bit like Christopher Columbus, unknown seas before him after all. He'll figure out which way to go. So, for dreams, he says there are two elaborations, two roots for elucidating a dream.
1:44:59 There is first the regressive analysis, isn't it? That is, what were you thinking about, what connection to today, what did you do today, so as to see the relationship between the dream, between the manifest content of the dream, what was dreamed, and the reality of the day, of the preceding days, etc. In short, which is only valid within the life of the person who dreamed it. So there, we stay within the psychoanalytic field, within the individual field. And Freud says there is also another content which is the same for all dreamers.
1:45:31 Ah! Well now! There, Freud went far, to his limit. And he says, this is what I call the symbol. For instance, when one dreams of the number 3, that is, for him, of the male genital organ; when one dreams of falling, or when one dreams—what's the opposite of dreaming of falling? Well! Dreaming of flying? Well yes, it's simple. The dream of flying is always euphoric when reported by the patient, I should say.
1:46:01 It's not an illness to dream. But by the subject. The dream of flying is always euphoric, the dream of falling is always anguishing. That's not entirely in the sense of erection, falling. Spinoza said that all sorrow comes from a diminution of power, and all joy comes from an increase of power. You see? All this echoes each other after all. So, when Freud manages to formulate a notion of symbol from a content that is independent of each dreamer's lived experience and which is therefore of an anthropological order and no longer merely psychological—do you see where I'm heading with this?
1:46:43 Like the dream of flying precisely. Because in all languages—I've noticed it in African languages too—there's the dimension of height that is valorized, as we say in French 'to hold the high pavement,' 'your highness,' 'highness' comes from 'alto,' meaning up high; and conversely, 'he dragged me through the mud'—mud is what's under one's feet, it's low—'he rolled me in the filth,' 'what baseness,' etc. These are symbolic highs and lows because they're not geometric highs and lows after all, especially since we now know there is no up or down—the up and down are moral values, or else what he's describing here is guided by desire, we see it clearly here, isn't it?
1:47:30 And it's not specific to any given culture, let alone to any given individual, that everywhere there is, as a sign of power, the erection of something—a minaret, a bell tower, the belfry in the countries of the North, isn't it? When the communes were formed in the Middle Ages, the struggle between the belfry, the tower of the town hall, and the church bell tower, isn't it? The secular and the religious, but in both cases, isn't it, with an erection in the literal sense, erected, a monument, the obelisk, the chief's staff in Africa, omnipresent everywhere, the scepter, yes or no?
1:48:07 Whether it's Ottokar's or someone else's, isn't it? What is Ottokar's motto? Tintin, don't you remember? 'Whoever meddles with it gets stung.' Interesting. Yes, the founding legend is that he killed a rival for power with his scepter, no less. And then his motto, 'Eih bennek, eih blavek,' in the little notice Tintin reads on the plane. I love that little tourist brochure about Syldavia, a mix of Moldavia and Transylvania.
1:48:41 'Whoever meddles with it gets stung.' The scepter, you see, is transcultural, you see it clearly. There, I'm reacting against the pervasive culturalism of the contemporary era, of the last 40 years. 'Ah, you say that, but it's only valid for us Westerners, because among the Bantu, it's the opposite.' Nonsense. Yes, for the inessential, yes; for the essential, everyone agrees. That's where I left off last time. We all love the same thing. And so we also hate the same things. That's hard to swallow.
The criterion of beauty: Kant and unconscious desire 1:49:11 Yes, Caroline, sorry. No, no. As we said earlier about the unconscious that also determines sexuality, and that man rests on a collective unconscious that includes a share of sexuality, you can see the circulation. Your question, for me, is the key to the aesthetic enigma. I'll go that far. Coming out of aesthetics. It's not too complicated, but there you go. How does it hold together? It's workable. As a program, for now.
1:49:41 I'm laying out a program that we'll continue after last time. We'll try to detail it. Alright, apparently, no connection either to your question or to what we just said. What is the criterion of beauty? That's the thing, we've been discussing it for 10,000 years, isn't it? To the point that some say we should stop talking about it. Tastes and colors, one shouldn't discuss. We only ever discuss that. If you look closely. In homes, in families, at the bistro, and everywhere, and thankfully so. Isn't it? Own it, but you don't have any more this month. Well, anyway. So, I'm saying, I take responsibility for this, that not only is there a criterion of beauty, a universal.
1:50:12 All these words that are under attack today. Foucault's thought fights against man, fights against the universal, and fights against progress. The counter-revolution has been fighting these three values for 40 years. Man, the universal, progress. Let me get back to my point. I'll go so far as to say that a universal, where one expects it least, isn't it—that is, in the concept of beauty. Remember, we had begun a little aesthetic discussion when I recalled, regarding Plato, in order to make understood the third term between the dogmatist who says 'beauty is the Parthenon.'
1:50:49 'It's the culture I know, and that's it, everything else is ugly.' Isn't that so? So, callipygian Hottentot and Bushman women are ugly. For the Hottentot, it's the opposite. A woman who isn't callipygian doesn't interest him at all. So then, we move from the dogmatic to the antithesis, the skeptic. You see clearly there's no criterion of beauty, everything is relative, it depends which culture, etc. What I'm fighting against with the synthesis is not that I'm agreeing with the dogmatist. I'm saying that for the Hottentot as for the dogmatic Athenian, what they have in common is that every time I say 'it's beautiful,' I'm implying that it pleases me.
1:51:22 Yes or no? So far, are you following me? If it pleases me, that means it makes me feel pleasure. It doesn't matter whether it's this form or that one, whether it's Bach or Beethoven—it's hard to find two things more opposite. Both are superb. And Beethoven adored Bach. When I say opposite, I mean aesthetically. In both cases, it pleases me. If there is pleasure, keep going. If you had followed what I said, what does that imply?
1:51:52 Good, thank you. Ah, that's nice to hear. If I feel pleasure, it's because a desire in me is being satisfied. Otherwise, I'd be like someone who 'drinks without thirst,' as the insult goes, isn't it? Someone who drinks without thirst is someone who drinks even though they're not thirsty. They get no pleasure from it. What's the point of drinking when you're not thirsty? Well, I don't know. This is interesting, what we're saying here. When I feel pleasure, it's because I have a desire—so then, I move on to Kant, who makes us take an enormous step forward toward Freud, toward the unconscious, but without knowing it.
1:52:24 Kant is magnificent. In his last work, in his aesthetics, in the Critique of Judgment, remember his distinction between determinative judgments and reflective judgments. Because I can say that something pleases me while being fully conscious of the desire being satisfied. 'I'm really happy I bought this hammer.' Why? Because now I've hung all my paintings on the wall without it falling on my fingers, without the handle breaking. It's well made, this hammer. I knew what I wanted to do with it. You see, I know what goal I'm pursuing.
1:52:56 That's a conscious desire. Kant calls that a determinative judgment, when I have the end, I have the universal here, in which I only have to subsume the particular. This hammer matches the will I had. Agreed? On the other hand, when I say, 'I'm hesitating between several shirts in the shop window, oh, I'll take that one.' Why? Because it's mauve, let's say, I'm just picking at random. I don't know.
1:53:29 I can't say. Because it doesn't fulfill the function of hunting little rabbits or whatever. No, I don't know. And Kant says that aesthetic pleasure is exactly that. It's a reflective judgment. That is, since I don't know which desire is being satisfied. You see, he's on the verge of discovering the unconscious. Kant, there. I have a desire in me that I don't know. But the object, it knows me. You see what humiliation that is.
1:53:59 A pleasant humiliation. But still, isn't it, the object knows more about me than I do myself. That's what made Baudelaire say, isn't it, in the sonnet 'Correspondences.' Once again, I'm repeating myself. 'Nature is a temple where living pillars sometimes let slip confused words. Man passes there through forests of symbols which observe him with familiar glances.' The symbols observe man with familiar looks. Man is surprised by the symbols, which seem strange to him—the opposite of familiar. But for the symbols, man is familiar.
1:54:30 Troubling, this passage, isn't it? Troubling. There you go. So, I insist on this: the object, contact with certain objects that we call beautiful, of which we say 'it's beautiful, it pleases me,' to pick up my thread again—this contact reveals to us that we had desires we were not conscious of. Now of course, you can deny it by saying, 'not at all, I have no desire, I find it beautiful because it pleases me and that's all'—that's called a tautology. Why is it beautiful? Because it pleases me. Why does it please me? Because it's beautiful. Fine, all right, we could go on like that for a long time.
1:55:00 I'm not obliged to be conscious of the desire that it satisfies. The proof is that... it's fascinating, all of a sudden, right there. And now, what becomes of your question? I've only answered half of it, and not even that. I've built the pedestal. Now I'm erecting the statue. The question now becomes how to pose it, I'm not solving it. Either there is a desire common to all men and there is a criterion of beauty. There is an unconscious desire common to all of humanity. And there is a possible criterion.
Freedom as criterion; relativism and liberalism 1:55:30 Or maybe not. That's how the problem is now posed. We've made some progress in working out an aesthetic criterion. I suppose it's freedom. Just like that, I mean, there could be better ones. More often, there are worse criteria. Isn't that so? I notice, for example, that a person... Ah, one has to be careful, politically correct, how shall I put it?
1:56:03 How shall I put it? Well-rounded. More than curvy, as they say. Plump. French, like all rich languages, isn't it? Even less rich than the Nordic languages, which are very good for that. Very rich vocabulary. Anyway, why, from the beginning of the twentieth century on, does that become a counter-value in feminine beauty? The ideal of Balzac and Nerval, of his generation, was bionda e grassotta.
1:56:33 It's not quite that, is it? And even Marilyn Monroe—I notice that the younger generation now finds her a bit too plump already, don't they? Fine. And Clément Canava's take on it, you know, they're practically anorexic, all that. I'm not taking a position, I'm not from the world of values. What's going on? Another element—I'm not answering yet. I'll bring in a second element: color, paleness. It's the woman with white skin who was the beautiful woman par excellence under the Ancien Régime, and now, you're as white as an aspirin tablet, well, that's not very appealing, I don't know, I can't wait to get a tan.
1:57:06 You see, a change. I notice it's sea bathing that suddenly made tanning a criterion—yes or no, chronologically speaking. Because before, being tan meant that you worked. And that wasn't a criterion of beauty. Do you see the class unconscious at work here? Because where did people work in the old days? In the countryside, in the sun. A woman with brown, swarthy skin, as they used to say, is a peasant woman. You find that in all the texts, I'm not inventing anything.
1:57:39 The one with white skin is the one who stays in the drawing rooms. She has her parasol. When she goes outside, she has her parasol. A pretty song under a parasol at Chantilly. Ah really, it didn't take much to win hearts. In the old days, it didn't take much—a parasol, and that was it. Anyway. So whether it's tanning or weight, the distribution of value comes from the class criterion. We see it clearly here. That is, each time, from the liberating element. That's where I wanted to get to—that in the unconscious, weight is connoted with law, with gravity, with the fall of bodies.
1:58:14 Someone who is fat, in the imagination—don't make me say what I haven't said—seems more subject to natural determination than someone who is slim, lively, and who seems, so to speak, unencumbered. You see how language speaks. Lively, unencumbered—that is, free of constraint, which is completely false, of course. But here we're in aesthetics, not in moral truth.
1:58:46 Do you see that we're on the track of an answer to your question? I don't want to develop it too much just yet, I'd rather line up examples for now. But there is indeed—I mean, we need to get out of the relativism that capitalism uses. Here I'm making an abrupt shortcut, but one that's actually meant to extend the reasoning, not at all arbitrary. Capitalism's interest is that there be no universal. It's the producers, each one, free enterprise. That's your problem, not mine, it's your business.
1:59:18 You see what I mean? If there are things that unite men, that's not good for capital. I need to be able, at any moment, to arbitrarily transform the market, etc. This explains this relentlessness against the universal that has existed since the liberal counter-revolution. That needs to be weighed carefully. Maybe we're right to be liberal, I honestly have no stake in the political problem. In any case, we cannot deny that there is an objective complicity between relativism and economic liberalism—economic, economic.
1:59:49 I'm telling you this because nobody says it—a bit like Clouscard. Still, it's everyone's own pleasure, that's it. That's what Marx called the Robinsonades, you know, where each producer imagines himself as a Robinson on his island, all alone. The others—I don't care. You know, in the United States, there are what are called libertarians, those who wait for the tax inspector with a rifle in front of the ranch. That is, I can have television, technology, I don't know, I'm behind with television.
2:00:23 There's more up to date stuff. Anyway, I can consume, so to speak, thousands of years of effort and intellectual and material progress, but I owe nothing to anyone. That's not anarchy. That libertarian anarchism—I salute a different anarchism, one that is a companion of the working class. I'm not conflating them, but still, one must be careful with rhetoric. Often 'neither God nor master' is used to seduce young people, and then, in fact, it's a path to MEDEF.
2:00:55 That is, the hatred of the State. What a waste, honestly, taxes. There you go. I seem to be wandering off, not at all. It's to help understand why this economic system has no interest in establishing the universal as a value. In short, in dividing us. Whereas we all love the same thing, which is freedom. What would Rimbaud say? What I loved was free freedom. I adore that phrase. And there are the Paganis, the philosophers who reflect on freedom little by little.
2:01:29 What I love is free freedom. There you go. That's not a good conclusion. Thank you. Thank you all.
