English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
A summer live session and the passage to the logic of the subject 0:00 Well, it's not only customary, it's more than ever justified. A big thank you to the technical crew, as they say, and essentially to Philippe and Hugo. Philippe who is like Captain Nemo in his laboratory at home, and Hugo who kindly came over to my place to watch over things and to do the framing. I remind you that it's to Hugo that you owe more or less the editing of the videos we make, and the main technical hitches, for which we're sorry, are most often beyond our control.
0:40 It depends on the stream, the room, anyway, I won't dwell on that. So yes, it's an excellent idea of Philippe's, who is behind this evening's live, this broadcast — I'll say from now on. This evening, it's so that summer isn't just a vacation but not quite a vacuum. There you go, since it's the same root. And I hesitated among several themes, there's no shortage of those.
1:19 I think you're fairly used to the fact that the themes aren't the most important thing. What's important is that out of a few... There are 3000 entrances to the labyrinth. The problem is that once you're inside, you always end up on the same circuit. There you go. Maybe not in the same order. And this time, yes, as you may have noticed, for those who have checked our Facebook page and our website, because I remind you that everything is on our site. The site http and dominiquepagani.net.
1:54 Dominique Pagani is all one word, I remind you. There are all the videos in order, plus so much other information. Also, plus some friendly sites we're very attached to. So there, I finally settled on a text by Kafka, which I've already alluded to, for those who've been following us for a long time, in some workshops in past years. I had quoted it when... In the interviews I've been doing since the beginning, since 2014, well since we started broadcasting them online, when we moved from what's conventionally called the philosophy of knowledge, in the progression — you remember, I won't repeat it — empiricism, rationalism, determinism, crisis, the crisis of cognitive philosophy, somewhat linked to the Kantian critique.
2:48 If knowledge succeeds — take Newton in Kant's time — it's at the expense of freedom, it's to teach us that we're determined. Anyway, there's a crisis, there's a fine classic problem, academically classic, no pejorative connotation intended when I say that. And there we moved... So, it's conventional to oppose the philosophy of knowledge to the philosophy of action. One could say philosophy of values, but that sounds a bit spiritualist.
3:18 Especially since now, you know, the greatest criminals in this world spend their time justifying their criminal actions by saying "because it doesn't conform to our values," when speaking of their enemies. It's a word I'm wary of. There you go. And I prefer to say — I plan to develop this next year, I'm telling you as a preview, from the resumption of our workshops — everything having to do with the logic of the subject. Quite simply.
3:48 There you go. Thanks to our whole great initial section on the philosophy of knowledge, which leads to the positive sciences — I didn't say positivist sciences — to the hard sciences, exact sciences, sciences of nature, which for now only succeed in the field of nature, which somewhat confirms the division Kant makes in his introduction to the Critique of Judgment. That hasn't changed much. Whereas in the human sciences, it's a mess.
4:18 In the natural sciences, it's fine. There are plenty of problems, plenty of unknowns, thankfully. There's enough for thousands more years. But still, I mean, there's order. There's a progression from simple to complex. And in the human sciences, it's a bit arbitrary, depending on who you ask. It's a bit of anything goes. To the point that most of the time, scrupulous people in philosophy put "human sciences" in quotation marks. So, when we moved on to the logic of the subject, I introduced it through the notion of modernity.
4:58 I remind you that Descartes is said to have initiated the philosophy of the subject in school histories of philosophy. Which isn't wrong. The cogito is the first person of the verb "I think," isn't it? In Latin, "cogitare." It's the subject who puts everything through the sieve. And if the subject doesn't validate it, nothing works in philosophy. That's what's new starting with Descartes. It's the emancipation of the subject, isn't it? And then afterward, this subject deepens with Kant, doesn't it? Fine. And not to mention after that, with its historical determinations, materialist and historical, with Marx.
From happiness to the mal du siècle, then to the century of evil 5:34 Fine. Very good. But, to introduce this logic of the subject, I nonetheless recalled that, chronologically, historically, to go beyond Kant, beyond the Enlightenment, meant moving on from an eighteenth century which had the good fortune — since we're now in the logic of the subject, well, only a subject can be interested, not a pebble — from a century in which happiness is the reference value for people as different, even opposed, as Voltaire and Rousseau, which is what somewhat unifies the immense, sprawling, very rich movement of the Enlightenment, this quest for that secular notion of happiness.
6:16 We can never repeat enough that it took someone as little suspect of allegiance to the Ancien Régime as Saint-Just to dare say that happiness is a new idea in Europe. He knew what he was saying, it was recent. And I insist on this secular side — it's not salvation, mind you. Pascal's problem is salvation. He's not the only one, but essentially, a century before, the Enlightenment.
6:46 The libertine is content with enjoyment. And then there's happiness. And I was posing this problem — I still haven't gotten to Kafka's text — how is it that we went from a century whose central theme is happiness to a century that will be characterized by what's called, in literature and history textbooks on the expression of the subject, the mal du siècle. In short, from a desperate quest for happiness to a century of unhappy consciousness, which we may not be over yet, since I can see that the Romantic melancholy which is the first manifestation of the mal du siècle worsens considerably with Baudelaire's spleen, going quickly, which adds an almost hallucinatory physical dimension — bells suddenly leap up furiously and hurl toward the sky a dreadful howling, like wandering spirits without a homeland.
7:39 Yes, a positive hallucination. Then, modern anguish, Beckett's Waiting for Godot, which takes place in a trash can throughout the entire play, not even to mention Kafka, you see, or Camus's reflection on suicide. In short, so, not counting that — I'm resuming my progression — the eighteenth century of Enlightenment, quest for happiness.
8:11 The following century, what characterizes it is the mal du siècle. The century after that, the century of evil, the century of horror, well, of horrors on a scale never before reached, and all the more horrific because they arose in a world that had every reason, given its past, to expect otherwise. We can't blame the outburst of horrors and violence — for instance the one that occurred during the two world wars — on primitiveness or barbarism.
Baudelaire's "La Cloche fêlée" 8:41 It arose, on the contrary, in the most economically developed nations. So, I'm making this long preamble to recall that it was through a text — through the commentary, my first developed textual commentary — to illustrate precisely this unhappiness that characterizes modernity as opposed to the Ancien Régime, to go quickly now, I had chosen Baudelaire's La Cloche fêlée [The Cracked Bell]. I remind you that in Baudelaire's Cracked Bell — I'll recall it very quickly — it's a sonnet, there are two quatrains, two tercets.
9:16 I recall it because there are two quatrains that speak of the happy bell, the one that tolls the hours, the one that sets the rhythm of life for people who are not exactly in unhappiness, and even less in despair — those who are, as Mallarmé calls them with contempt, the litter or happy cattle of humans lying down, with that somewhat aristocratic, decadent, end-of-century contempt, not meant pejoratively. And then the two tercets which, on the contrary, from the moment he stops speaking of others and says "I" — my soul is cracked.
9:53 So, there you go, I recall this poem and you understand why I'm going to talk about it. Because it speaks of impossible communication, of the voice that fails to come out of the throat. You see the connection with the imperial message, the messenger who fails to — ah, but the language is admirable, look — to deliver the message, as if the message were a prisoner, like the voice that's a prisoner in the throat, you see. So I'm going to circle a bit around this theme, first that of the message that doesn't reach its destination — not even to mention, for the Lacanians who have surely already spotted it, if they're a bit versed in "The Purloined Letter," whose original title in English is Purloined Letter.
10:35 Lacan showed this very well. Baudelaire was a bit hesitant in his English. He has an affinity for it. His translations are excellent, but sometimes a bit inexact. Unlike Mallarmé. Word for word, it means the extended letter, the letter that underwent a detour, that didn't go directly from sender to recipient, but was indefinitely delayed, prolonged. Purloined Letter. There you go. So, I recall The Cracked Bell. "It is bitter and sweet, on winter nights, to listen, by the fire that flickers and smokes, to distant memories slowly rising, at the sound of chimes singing in the mist."
11:16 "Blessed" — there, it's said in plain words, happiness. "Blessed is the bell with the vigorous throat, which despite its old age, alert and in good health, faithfully casts its religious cry, like an old soldier keeping watch under his tent." That's for the quatrains. We already have the Church and the army. The bell, the Church and the army, "like an old soldier keeping watch under his tent." The two crowdless crowds, to which Freud devoted an essay.
11:48 The Church and the army. On crowds, an essay on crowds. Well, so, that's for the quatrains. New line. "As for me, my soul is cracked." It's not "being" that speaks. "And when in its distress" — it has a very strong meaning at the time, I remind you, the meaning Baudelaire borrows from the seventeenth century, it means anguish — "and when in its distress it wants to fill the cold night air with its songs, it often happens that its weakened voice seems the thick rattle of a wounded man forgotten by the edge of a lake of blood, under a great heap of corpses, who dies without moving, in immense efforts."
12:31 There you go. I wanted to recall this sonnet not to do a literary commentary on Kafka's text, and not to focus on Kafka's work as a singularity — which one couldn't do too much of, but that's not the place here. It's a philosophical commentary I'm making to show that there is indeed a theme running through modernity there. And now I'll read "The Imperial Message," which Kafka calls, with an indefinite article, "an" imperial message.
Reading Kafka's "An Imperial Message" 13:07 I remind you it's extracted from The Great Wall of China, so the emperor is supposed to be the emperor of China, but anyway, I'm very grateful to Philippe for finding a beautiful illustration showing a subcontinental sovereign, Pakistani or Indian, looking out the window at the Taj Mahal. That fits very well too, during his agony. Here's the text. "The Emperor, so they say, has sent a message to you alone, wretched subject, tiny shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun.
13:44 To you precisely, the Emperor, from his deathbed, has sent a message. He made the messenger kneel down by the bed to whisper it to him. And the Emperor set such store on the message that he had the messenger repeat it back into his ear. He nodded to confirm that it was indeed what he had said. And before all those who watch him die, all the obstructing walls are torn down, and on the wide, sweeping steps that rise boldly, the great men of the Empire stand in a circle.
14:16 The Emperor is agonizing before his court. The great men of the Empire, before them all, he has dispatched the messenger. The messenger set off at once. A vigorous man, tireless. Pushing alternately with one arm and the other, he forces his way through the crowd. If he meets resistance, he points to his chest, where the sign of the sun is. He advances easily, like no one else could. But the crowd is vast. Its dwellings are endless.
14:49 If the space opened up before him, how the messenger would fly, and soon you would hear the magnificent knocking of his fist at your door. But alas, his efforts are in vain. And he is still forcing his way through the chambers of the innermost palace. Never will he pass beyond them. And even if he overcame these obstacles, he would be no further along. Going down the stairs, he would still have to fight his way through. And even if he made it down, he would be no further along.
15:20 He would still have to cross the courtyards. And after the courtyards, the second palace surrounding them, and again staircases and courtyards, and again a palace. And so on for centuries upon centuries. And if at last he rushed through the final gate — but this could never, ever happen — he would find before him, with a capital C, I note in advance, the imperial capital [Capitale]. The center of the world.
15:52 The city which has piled up the mountains of its own silt. There, no one enters. Not even with the message of a dead man. But you, you sit at your window, and in your dream you summon the message when evening comes. Well. So, for those somewhat familiar with my talks, I remind you that I detest interpretation and prefer to substitute analysis for it, that is, speaking only of what is objectively expressed in the text without seeking a meaning that would lie between the lines, as bad writers do, isn't it?
The three characters and "The Next Village" 16:37 They didn't manage to get it across in the lines. As Van Gogh said, we can only make our paintings speak. That's honest. So, I note here, trying to make sense of it, because it's all a bit enigmatic, then it turns fantastical — for centuries and centuries he'll wander in the palace with his message. What's clear is that there's a message that fails to reach its destination. Apparently, we'll discuss all this.
17:08 But I'm interested in the characters of this mini-drama, of this very short piece of drama. I'm not talking about the multiple secondary characters submerged in a collective. The great men of the Empire around the Emperor, the crowd that fills the halls, the palaces. I'm talking about those who are strongly individualized.
17:40 So, let's list them, it's easy to see. There's of course the Emperor. There's the messenger. There's a person who is designated — you see, I'm really doing analysis and not interpretation — by a personal pronoun. Don't forget, that is, you, I, he, the person addressed as "you" [tu] by Kafka. "The Emperor, so they say, has sent to you, to you, wretched one."
18:10 After all, that's the recipient of the message, no small matter as a person. No, there's the Emperor. There's the messenger. There's the recipient. This recipient, of whom we learn at the end that he summons the message when evening comes. I say here, not to be inclusive in today's societal sense, that at the end one could add a silent E to "seated": "but you, you are sitting at your window and you await the message when evening comes."
18:45 This story doesn't apply only to men. Especially since you all know a famous tale where it's "Anne, sister Anne, do you see nothing coming?" isn't it? The figure of the man who sails and the woman on the shore. So this "you" is very universal. There you have the characters present. And I note that this apparently impossible communication takes place under what conditions. Kafka is relentless.
19:17 He cannot even leave the central palace, and if by some miracle he could leave it, it would be even worse, because he would arrive in the imperial capital, where no one enters, not even with the message of a dead man. It's such a constant in Kafka — but as I said, I'm not doing a study of Kafka, I'm only commenting on this occurrence of the theme, which will now take on, as you'll see, another philosophical stake, also present in another story that I'm going to recite in full because it's not even a page long, unlike the imperial message, but literally a single sentence.
19:50 This story is called "The Next Village." Here it is. "My grandfather used to say: life is astonishingly short. As I recall it now, it contracts so tightly upon itself that I can hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride off to the next village without fearing that — quite apart from unfortunate accidents — even the span of a normal, happily passing life may fall far short of the time needed for such a ride."
20:20 That last bit is my addition. Even the span of an ordinary life, unfolding without incident, would not be nearly enough even for such a short excursion. The messenger fails to get out of the palace. The young man doesn't even manage to reach the next village. I assume you can see the connection clearly, why I said there was a new, philosophically interesting connotation in this text, one linked to the stakes for which I chose the Kafka text, which I'll spell out shortly.
20:59 It's that there's something Parmenidean in these two impossibilities. You remember Parmenides. The Eleatics, because he was from Elea, the city of Elea, Zeno of Elea — that cruel Zeno whom Valéry speaks of in "Le Cimetière marin": "Zeno, cruel Zeno, Zeno of Elea, have you pierced me with that arrow which vibrates, flies, and does not fly?" You see the connection? An arrow suspended like that. Another line of Valéry: "Achilles motionless in giant strides."
21:34 Whereas in the imperial message we get the impression that the messenger is vigorous — ah, if only there weren't the crowd, he would fly — you see, the opposite. Whereas there he is motionless in giant strides, you see, it's the same problem. The one that consists in denying the very possibility of motion. So we're not in historical materialism and progressivism here.
Is philosophical communication possible? 22:05 I'm sure some of you have already sensed this — I'm calling into question the philosophical enterprise itself with this text. The possibility of a philosophical communication, which is why I introduced it when I wanted to give you advance notice of tonight's live session, I introduced it with an allusion to the beginning of Lenin and Philosophy by Althusser. I won't mention this in my little post, but I'll tell you: Lenin had been invited to give a philosophical talk — I believe it was at the Collège de France, or if I'm mistaken maybe it was the Collège de philosophie, but it was one of the two, I think it was the Collège de France, I don't think the Collège de philosophie existed yet — anyway, and he says: you're inviting me to do something, an impossible exercise, that is, a philosophical communication — there's a contradiction between philosophy's mode of expression and the concept of communication. And he cites as an example Lenin, who had been invited by a workers' party
23:17 in Italy, in the region of Naples, to give — that was precisely the point of the invitation — a philosophical talk, and at the phrase, Lenin burst out laughing. There you go, he gives him a fine phrase, he says: that laugh by which the fishermen of Capri recognized that he was of their own blood — with Capri and... in the Gulf of Naples, with Ischia and Nisida, which Nerval speaks of in Octavie. There, what does that mean, that there's no such thing as philosophical communication? I go back to the foundation and to the beginning of all my talks, when I introduced philosophy, I immediately linked it to two instances: historically, to crisis. Empirically, historically linked to crisis: the great advances in the history of philosophy occur when the society in which they arise is in crisis, that is, is affected in its totality and not merely in part — it can no longer
24:27 go on as before, there you go, without a global reform, without a change — reform, revolt, revolution, that's another debate, keep that in mind: reform, revolt, revolution, they're fine subjects. I remind you that the word "reform," over the past thirty years, has served only to carry out counter-revolutions — for example, now workers tremble when they're told of a new reform, and they're right. As for revolt, it's certainly more appealing, but those in power prefer revolt, which they can always crush in blood — I'm thinking of the peasant jacqueries that succeeded one another under the Ancien Régime, there you go, or the tragedy of the Commune, which is magnificent but which, alas, remained a revolt. It's always less dangerous for those in power than a revolution. So this order — reform, revolt, revolution — I linked it to the concept of crisis, but also to the concept of freedom. I'll go quickly, I recall that it's pointless to ask the philosophical question
25:37 par excellence, what must I do — not that the question of what I can know is less important, but the question of what I can know is not properly philosophical, since the mathematician, the astronomer, the physicist, the biologist ask it too, in a way at least as legitimate and moreover with an efficacy that cannot be denied them. So what is properly philosophical is precisely what I call the logic of the subject — the question 'what must I do.' Reminder: only a subject is capable of asking this. I'm sure some of you remember that when we say the expression 'the wind shakes the trees,' we learn in grammar that the wind is active and the trees are passive, since we can say the same message but reversed: 'the trees are shaken by the wind' — the trees as agent complement of the subject 'wind.' Right? No, it's a grammatical subject, not a serious subject, it's a metaphorical subject. From a strictly physical point of view, the phenomenon of wind is not any more active, has nothing more active about it, than the movement of tree branches, differences in barometric pressure.
26:47 temperature, the rotation of the earth, whatever you like, because after that I get a bit lost — are the causes of which the wind is an effect. So the wind is no more a cause than the branches are. Kant reflected his whole life on the concept of causality, as if we were beginning to guess that only a subject can be an effective cause. In natural inertia there are only effects, there is no action in nature. So either only nature exists, and in that case all action is illusory — fine by me, but then one has to own up to that — or else the notions of action, of subject, of end — as Marx says, what immediately distinguishes the most skillful bee from the clumsiest architect is that the architect has his house in his head before producing it in reality. That does say there is a project, a prior thought, in the architect's case, right? And in the movement
27:57 post-structuralist movement, it's easy to say 'ah but that's still a teleological superstition' — forgetting that the necessary critique of teleological illusion, of which Aristotle's system was the emblematic example for centuries until the Galilean break, breaks with this finalist approach to physics. I'm forced to go quickly, but I think these are fairly familiar notions for all those interested in these subjects. I'll recall that one does not carry this justified critique of finalism through to the end by suppressing teleology, but by putting it back in its place — which no one does anymore since the sixties, since the structuralist counter-revolution. I am not a structuralist — there are structures everywhere there is knowledge, and I have nothing against structuring one's thought or discerning structures in reality, that's excellent — but I'm talking about structuralism, and it's the same difference as between love of the environment, of which I am one of the first defenders, and which can give rise to
Philosophy postulates freedom, which Kant thinks without knowing it 29:07 a rational ecology — we're far from that — and 'ecologism,' which is a naturalism and which cares less about the environment that exists than about 'nature,' which is a hypothetical notion, unlike matter. So I return to these fundamentals that we're revisiting through Kafka, through a message that fails to get delivered. I come back to the essential point I haven't yet formulated: the second notion I've linked to philosophy, besides that of crisis, is that of freedom. Because these notions — I'll sum up now — subject, finality, action, activity, all these notions presuppose something that is not mechanical, that is not a blind and mute process like a stone tumbling down after a storm, but that presuppose as their first source a someone and not a something. That's the only difference I ask you to take into consideration.
30:17 I'll remind you that someone known as one of the heroes of structuralism — a hero in spite of himself, I'm thinking of Lacan for instance, even though he would deny it — said that before signifying something, every word signifies for someone. If there isn't a 'someone' clearly distinct from a 'something,' one understands nothing about the unconscious — I'm speaking from Lacan's point of view — and so it's not language, the symbolic order, and we come back to the message, to the order of signifiance. So let's not get confused, I'll sum it up for you, it's very clear and very simple: philosophy is as impossible as the delivery of the message by the messenger of an emperor of China — philosophy is impossible unless we postulate — I take up Kant's term — freedom in its principle. In other words, I can only ask the question 'what must I do' on the sole hypothesis that I can do something once I have found
31:27 through the detour of knowledge what I must do, if it turns out that everything is determined and there is no action, that we are passive whatever we do — which people like Lordon and so on love to insist on, you know. I mean he never addresses this — just as many ecologists are fans of Spinoza, as they say, because of his naturalism, Deus sive Natura, God, that is, nature. Yes, but I won't get into that today — though there are texts where he says it's stupid to consider animals on the same footing as men. I'm thinking here of veganism and everything that follows. I don't want to develop this, and I'm sure Spinoza, as much as I do, takes no pleasure in animal suffering — that's a whole other debate — but he doesn't put that on the same level as human suffering. So I repeat: philosophy only makes sense insofar as it has a domain of its own, as against the sciences, as against religion, from the moment it asks the question 'what must I do.' Religion
32:37 doesn't ask that question, it gives answers — think of the Ten Commandments, the answers precede the questions. That doesn't diminish it — it can be the conclusion of a philosophical, spiritual journey, why not. Science asks the question 'what can I know.' As for 'what must I do,' the scientist as scientist, as a man, as a human being, may ask it, but certainly it's not his science, not his scientific studies, that will help him answer the question 'what must I do,' resolve a moral or ethical problem, intervene, make a choice, get out of a dilemma. I mean, an old sage deep in the African forest can sometimes be far more relevant than a Nobel Prize winner in biology — there's nothing reductive, for either one, in saying that. So philosophy presupposes that I can do something, it presupposes freedom, and I've told you from the start — though I know my listeners tend to slide past this — that I don't have the answer. Maybe every philosophical enterprise
33:47 doesn't settle the debate. Maybe it's entirely subject to an illusion. So there you are — you see there's no disproportion between the extreme dramatization of the text and this almost despairing Kafka. You've noticed I say 'almost' — I'm sure quite a few of you think it's a despairing text, at least in terms of, well, the success of a communication — and here I extend that to philosophy. Do you see why?
34:32 I'm making a series of reminders. I've spoken in terms of content: philosophy presupposes freedom, and we haven't demonstrated that freedom exists. I'll go very quickly — even in Kant's wake there are people who have shown, watch how carefully I choose my words, that there would be a contradiction in demonstrating freedom — if it were the object of a demonstration we would fall back into determinism. Let me take the opportunity here, since I don't want to leave loose ends on the road without dealing with them quickly: Kant does say that here we are in the noumenal domain — I have a listener called 'noumen,' I salute him in passing, whose pseudonym is actually 'nous plus loin' — freedom, the world, the soul, the subject, the thing-in-itself, all of that of course of a noumenal order. Now Kant says we can have no knowledge of it — careful, this is precise — meaning positive knowledge. But watch how hope starts to return: we can have negative knowledge of it.
35:42 Careful, we are in Kafka — we started from Kafka, and negative theology plays an important role in Kafka. Namely, if it turns out, in my Kantian transcendental analysis, that space and time cannot be attributed to the object, that they come from the subject — from the subject in general, not the particular subject, not the empirical self, but our reason is so made, as Kant says, who unlike Hegel is not much concerned with questions of genesis, of the historical genesis of the subject — our reason is so made that... but on the other hand time and space, and that's why he determines a phenomenal world — of the noumenon we can say nothing directly positive, but we know at least, for example, that in the noumenon there is neither time nor space, since we know that can only come from us. Hence Kant's famous formula, which is quoted in a very dubious sense but which here takes on its full meaning: I wanted to limit knowledge to make room for faith.
The awaited message has arrived: Pascal and negative theology 36:52 Careful, this means that freedom becomes possible again from the moment we cannot know the thing-in-itself but must think it. You know, the Kantian distinction between knowing and thinking is fundamental here. I don't want to be too technical, but I refer you to those passages at the end of the Transcendental Aesthetic, which are surely the most decisive moment of the Critique of Pure Reason — I don't mean the most important, the most profound, the most complete, but the most decisive for understanding the rest of the Kantian enterprise. So I'm showing here that not everything is quite so hopeless, and I come to my last character: the recipient, that is, the one we can be. Who among us hasn't dreamed of receiving the message they were waiting for? I don't know, and how is it she doesn't call me, and how is it he doesn't call me — you know, the texts, all that stuff — we all wait for a message that would suddenly deliver us from all our anxieties. I don't know, sometimes it happens, but the anxiety comes back afterward, there you go.
38:02 It's not quite an imperial message, but still it's somewhat of the same order. Now there's a little note at the end of the message — I'm sure it hasn't escaped you — 'but you, sitting at your window, imagine it, when evening comes.' Well, I maintain, I take the responsibility of maintaining before you — we're on vacation, so this is good news — that the message has arrived at its destination, from the moment it is awaited it has arrived at its destination. I'm sure some of you have already made a connection with this phrase drawn from the mystery — because it is a mystery I'm introducing here, from mystery — careful, from mystery to mysticism to mystification there's only one step, let's stay cautious — but to Pascal's phrase. You see, the two are often compared — in both cases there's a negative theology. Look at Goldmann's work on the hidden God, the God of the Jansenists
39:12 and the Deus absconditus — a God present through his absence. You see, negative theology, and this message — we'd love to know what's in this message from the emperor. We're all a bit like in 'The Purloined Letter,' suspended on the letter's journey, and to this day no one knows what's in this letter, nor what's in the emperor's message. I don't know — it's precisely his absence that fascinates us in this message. So let me come back to be much more precise: 'You would not seek me if you had not found me' — that's what God says to the suffering soul in the Mystery of Jesus. 'Console yourself, you would not seek me if you had not found me.' It's apparently incomprehensible, that's why it's a mystery — how can one both seek and say one has found? If I'm seeking, it's that I haven't found. Well, it's the opposite. This makes me understand Pascal — the one who has the restlessness of seeking sophia, philosophia — the desired, philo, to the point of setting out in quest of sophia
40:22 that is, not only episteme, knowledge — you see I revise each time — but also wisdom, not only to answer the question 'what can I know' but the question 'what must I do.' The simple fact of setting out in quest is already a breakthrough, already an advance. In other words, with this phrase Pascal theologically condemns those who feel themselves in good standing with religion, with God — those who say, well, I respect the Ten Commandments, I'm among the just. You know, there's a parable in the gospel with a publican, that is, a man of ill repute — one would say today a pimp, a procurer — who dares not enter the church because of his sins, and then a pharisee who does go in and prays, standing, arms spread out like this, addressing the Eternal directly, repeating the same prayers he's used to reciting since he was taught them, like litanies, Kyrie eleison, well, repeating that, litanies — and the one standing at the entrance says he is not worthy to enter this dwelling, but that God speaks a single word and his soul will be healed.
41:32 And of course the one standing, the pharisee, points at him and says, look, he's committed so many sins he doesn't even enter your house — and Christ says, yes, but he is the one who is close to me. There you have it — so there is a negative theology, that's how this text is important. Now I'm going to focus on this character — that is, there's a communication in both directions. If someone is sitting at the window, that's a way, isn't it, of establishing a connection — these connections I would like to establish more comfortably with you, with the sender, with the emperor — and here I take another Kafkaesque reference, The Castle, his testament, his last novel, the most accomplished — well, the most accomplished even though it's unfinished, but the most accomplished from the point of view of mastery of writing, the most refined too, where there are fewer pathetic effects, but still, very quickly, you know, the hero of The Castle is called K.
"The Castle": the tower, the sound of the bell, the crackling 42:42 not even Joseph K. as in The Trial, reduced to the letter K, dot dot dot — he arrives one winter evening in a lost village in Central Europe. Kafka is of Czech origin but writes in German, and when you look at what happens, the characters, the authority of the castle — it's a world, but how German it is, how well he knows his Germany, that one — well, I'll come back to that another time in another context. I think this work of Kafka's could only arise in a Germanic world — today it could arise in the Middle West. The hero shows up in this village, arrives at the inn that's still open, the peasants' inn, because there's another one, the gentlemen's inn, and says he's been hired by the castle as a land surveyor. That's the gist, I won't tell you the whole story, but immediately problems arise — no one needs a land surveyor, who told you you'd been hired, and so on. And he'll spend the whole novel — I'll give you the essentials — trying to reach the castle, his employer. He's made to understand it's complicated.
43:54 he's the only one in the village with this obsession of wanting to reach the castle — the villagers stick, I'd say wisely, ironically, to the village. To sum up the novel: in fact he never reaches the castle, and because of his quest he cannot be part of the village either. So he's always in this shuttle — as with our messenger — he's always in this back-and-forth between a castle that almost reaches him every time but never quite does. And here I quote a passage, an extract from his first journey with a wretched driver who has a sleigh in the snow, and who asks to be directed toward the castle, which greatly surprises the villager, for whom it seems a kind of hubris — and who is a bit consumptive, has a little tuft of hair, anyway — and of course the fatigue is too great in the snow, they have to turn back just when they'd almost reached the castle. And here's what happens — first, before saying what happens, a small description of the castle. I'll go fast first and then slow down.
45:04 the essential passage: 'K. continued on his way, his eyes fixed on the castle, nothing else worried him. But as he drew closer he was disappointed: this castle was, after all, only a wretched little town, a jumble of village hovels, distinguished by nothing except, if one wanted, that they were all made of stone — but the plaster seemed to have long since fallen away, and this stone seemed to be crumbling. A fleeting memory struck K.'s mind: he thought of his home town, it hardly gave way to this so-called castle. If K. had come only to see it, it would have been a wasted journey — he would have done better to go back and see his homeland, where he hadn't returned in a long time. He compared in his mind the steeple of his village with the tower rising up there, that of the church, sure of itself' — in his village — 'rose straight up without hesitation and grew slimmer toward the top, ending in a wide roof covered in red tiles. It was an earthly building, of course — what else can we build — but one that placed its aim higher than the flat huddle of small houses, and that took on a brighter expression above the sad days and daily labor. The tower here' — that is, the castle's — 'the only one to be seen, was the tower
46:14 of a dwelling house, one now realized — perhaps that of the main body of the castle. It was a round, uniform building, part of which was gracefully covered in ivy; it was pierced with small windows that glittered in the sun; there was something mad about it, and it ended in a sort of platform whose uncertain, irregular, ruinous battlements etched jagged teeth into a blue sky, which seemed to have been drawn by the timid or careless hand of a child. One would have said that some sad inhabitant' — and here I slow down — 'forced to live shut up in the most remote room of the house, had broken through the roof and stood up to show himself to the world.' There's the image, really strange and striking, that the castle's main tower suggests to him. One would have said that some sad inhabitant — I was speaking earlier of the message imprisoned in the throat — one would have said that some sad inhabitant, forced to live shut up in the most remote room of the house, had broken through the roof and stood up to show himself to the world. Second attempt
47:24 he tries to reach the castle — I'll go faster — he fails again with his driver, there in the snow. K. said nothing more, sat down at the back of the sleigh, the coughing gradually subsided — the driver's coughing — and they set off. Up there the castle, already strangely dark, which K. had hoped to reach that day, began to grow distant again. But as if to greet K. on the occasion of this provisional farewell, the castle let a sound of bells ring out. You see the turn, the positive inflection my talk has taken this evening began with the fact that the recipient waits for the message, and that, as such, the message has in a way already arrived at its destination. The fact that it's awaited — if you're certain that the person for whom you have the wildest love is impatiently awaiting your text message, admit that somehow that's gratifying for you. And here again, the recipient, the goal pursued, the castle, expresses itself — watch closely in what way — through a sound.
48:34 But as if to greet K. on the occasion of this provisional farewell — since K. had turned back, another failure — the castle let a sound of bells ring out, a winged sound, the opposite of the messenger who fails to advance — a winged sound, a joyful sound that made the soul tremble; for a moment one would have said, for it also had a painful accent, that it threatened you with the fulfillment of the things your heart obscurely desired. I think of Hölderlin, in a late fragment, a fragment in a commentary on Pindar, a translation he had just done, where he says this extraordinary phrase: fear of truth because of the pleasure in touching it. I'm sure a Lacanian among you is listening — fear of truth because of the pleasure in touching it. I repeat: 'for the castle let a sound of bells ring out, a winged sound, a joyful sound that made the soul tremble; for a moment one would have said, for it also had a painful accent, that it threatened you with the fulfillment of the things your heart obscurely desired.'
49:44 then the great bell fell silent, soon relayed by a small one that rang faintly and monotonously, perhaps up there as well, perhaps in the village too, who knows — this ding-dong suited better, moreover, the slow journey K. was making in the company of this shabby but inexorable driver, who inexorably takes him away from the castle. I think we understand better now — it's no accident that it happens in the form of a sound. I won't read you the whole thing, but let me refer you also, orally, to another passage at the very beginning, when he arrives at the inn in the evening — there's a minor castle official who says, but we never hired a land surveyor, what is this story, I'll check — in bureaucratic German, harsh — well, he phones the castle, there were the first telephones, the telephone is in the public room where the peasants are, in the bar, as we'd say today, of the peasants' inn. And as an answer
50:54 to the call, K heard a crackling — again a sound — and Kafka describes this crackling as all that is known of the castle's voice, as if it were thousands of children's voices at once, both distant and very close. There, I've told you the stakes — so as not to muddy the waters, causing confusion — the stakes are the manner in which philosophy expresses itself. And here I come to a second aspect of the interventions I've made from the beginning and that I renew this year, on which I've been insisting from the start — these are the themes I placed at the beginning, because we never stop digging into them — namely that the philosopher occupies an intermediate position between two extremes: the mathematician and the poet. Three relations to language — the mathematician, the poet, those are the two extremes — three relations, two here very different, even opposed, one that flees
Between the mathematician and the poet, the philosopher's shuttle 52:05 completely from all metaphor and contents itself with pure saying, without speaking silently — the mathematical — and the poet on the contrary, who is pure speech, and the philosopher who does a kind of shuttling between the two — you see, between the village and the castle again — and because the philosopher would like to attain the rigor for which mathematics is a model. Mathematics is a metonymy for science in general — I don't mean scientism, but an ideology that's returning in force through neopositivism — but mathematics is the metaphor, sorry, the metonymy of scientific discourse. The philosopher would like to have that rigor, that universality, that successful communication — there isn't a Hindu version and a Patagonian version of the speed of the electron, there isn't
53:19 a Chinese version and a French version of the sum of two and two — which made Aristotle say: mathematics unites men, politics divides them. So I'll bounce off this apparently innocuous and vertiginously profound phrase of Aristotle's — it's no accident that it's politics that divides them, and we understand better the philosopher's shuttling, for the philosopher cannot be indifferent, with his question 'what must I do,' to political stakes. So I discussed with Philippe and Hugo before this live session this stake of properly philosophical communication and its possibility or impossibility, in its connection with the difficulty there is today of unifying the political field — unifying it in the sense of a change. It has never been so difficult to make oneself heard politically, even among those who seem to belong
54:29 to the same political family — look how divided the left is, I'm an old man, I've never seen the left this divided in my lifetime, if indeed it still exists. I don't want to make you despair, I never am — it happens that I'm pessimistic, but I'm never desperate — but it happens that I sometimes think that almost all political oppositions nowadays are almost all intra-fascistic — I weigh my words, I didn't say fascist, but intra-fascistic, that is, we only oppose discourses that tend toward fascism without even realizing it. I won't develop this because it will get me — I'll talk about ecologism again, I'll annoy some people, we'll discuss that another time. But watch the stakes themselves — when I say mathematics, well, let me recall what Aristotle says, mathematics unites men, politics divides them. The philosopher cannot
55:39 leave metaphor to the poet and draw closer to the mathematician, as those in logical neopositivism, in formal logic, in the analytic school do — everything opposed to the continental school. You know we're the backward ones, we continentals, we're a bit — we always have a metaphysical background — whereas the Anglo-Saxons, you know, I gave a talk in Norway recently, and I learned, to my great astonishment, that one must avoid the misunderstanding, because over there the word 'philosophy' on campus practically only designates logical neopositivism, analytic philosophy if you prefer another name. He cannot abandon metaphor — I repeat, one could draw closer, precisely because metaphor is of course naive if taken in a realist sense. When I say the sun rises, I'm still in geocentrism, in the illusion of believing it's the sun that moves when it's the earth that turns around it and on itself, as far
56:49 as the succession of day and night is concerned, by the way. In short, I'm in metaphor, fine, but this metaphor teaches me nothing — there positivism is right, well, science is right, it's in scientism, that is, it teaches me nothing about the earth's motion, and even less about the sun's. Fine, but it teaches me something about the one speaking, and we're in a discipline, philosophy, which began with 'know thyself' — that's good, it's a crime, you see there's order after all in all this. I seem to be jumping from one thing to another, but no, it's always the reminder of what is properly philosophical. Perhaps the essence of philosophical effort consists in specifying what belongs properly to the strictly philosophical field, in order to stop wasting time on disciplines that are not ours — that is, asking the question of action, 'what must I do,' answering it in a rigorous way, but this rigor cannot be the same
Nerval: Angélique and Aurélia, one multiplied by minus one 57:59 as that of the geometer, and that's why I attempted, throughout the year I did the Nerval series — you see it all holds together — not just to give us a breath of fresh air, though that's not unpleasant either, wandering in Gérard's footsteps through the forests, ponds and lakes of the Valois, happily breathing in the autumn mists as he says — yes, that would do us good in today's and this evening's heatwave, but well, it's drawing to a close — why did I develop the Nerval series? To arrive, as some of you may recall, at this comparative study of two passages from Nerval: one in Les Filles du feu, in 'Angélique,' where he sees young girls singing in front of the cathedral at sunset, and the other in Aurélia, in a dream — nothing to do with each other in terms of context, one belonging to almost journalistic reality, the other to the imaginary par excellence, namely the dream. And I showed, to recall it very quickly, 'on my way out I was able to admire, under a ray of setting sun, the towers of the Roman fortifications half demolished and covered with ivy' — he's talking of course of Senlis
59:09 and it's there that he sees a group of young girls, little girls rather, singing under the direction of an older girl, traditional songs, nursery rhymes, ducks on the river — I even quote the title — and the little one starts, there's one whom the older girl says, 'I wanted to hear that one,' aside, because it doesn't seem quite in tune, and the little girl starts, I quote Nerval, 'singing in a faint but well-pitched voice.' And I show that the two texts are in exactly inverse relation, as if each text were the other multiplied by minus one — I'm serious, look: in the text of 'Angélique' the buildings are in ruins, they are reduced, we're in the domain of the 'ruined tower,' for those who know their Nerval well — 'I am the prince of Aquitaine at the ruined tower' — he speaks of the Roman towers that exist in Senlis, half demolished, covered with ivy — but you see there's a symbolic resonance that goes beyond the empirical existence of the Gallo-Roman fortifications in Senlis, which undoubtedly do exist
1:00:19 there, the building is reduced, the light is fading, since we're at sunset — 'I was able to admire under a ray of setting sun' — and moreover we're in autumn, at the decline of the year, it's All Souls' Day, 'these melancholy ideas that I write to you' — sorry — so in the text of 'Angélique' everything is on the decline, and it doesn't produce anything tragic at all, on the contrary it's a sweet autumn melancholy. In the dream: 'I found myself in a hall which seemed to be my ancestor's dwelling, but it seemed to have grown larger' — right there, the building suddenly grows larger, exactly the opposite — 'a light three times brighter than natural daylight,' I quote the text, 'came through the window, and there were in the air breezes recalling the warm mornings of spring' — so we're not in autumn, but we're not in summer or winter either, we're in the exact symmetrical opposite of autumn, which is spring. I'm telling you it's multiplied by minus one — we're not in a reduced building but in an enlarged hall, and the three women who speak to him, for these are no longer little girls
1:01:29 facing an adult like him, but three great ladies, and he is a child to whom these ladies have just made a little garment, like swaddling clothes if you prefer, entirely woven by needle with threads as fine as spider webs. Well, 'I thanked them blushing, as if I had been but a little child before great and beautiful ladies' — you cannot get more opposite: an adult before young girls in a declining context, a child before ladies, one of whom, I quote, 'spoke to me with a vibrant and melodious voice' — the exact opposite of the faint voice of the little girl earlier. I'm showing what here?
A bridge, metaphors, and teamwork 1:02:08 that there can be a scientificity extended even to what seems most foreign to scientific determination, namely literary imagination — all the more so since it's a dream, a ruse of reason, isn't it — the setting is never so determined as when I believe it's my free imagination tracing its contours. So I know I'm asking a lot of you, but if you can rewatch the last two episodes of the Angélique series, you'll see that it is possible — so, you were promised something positive — we started from an apparently despairing text to throw a bridge, however frail, but full of promise, between theoretical philosophy, the hard sciences — it's only here that the theoretical is solid ground, I use the Kantian metaphors — and the so-called human sciences, a bridge
1:03:19 between the two, because if a piece of oneiric literature, Nerval's dream, obeys a strict determination and can be susceptible to a predictability as rigorous as the predictability of eclipses for an astronomer, then there's a royal road that can open up before us. That's the news I wanted to try to convey to you, while of course also questioning my own philosophical communication, which I've been attempting for years — but you understand why it's problematic and must remain problematic, because there seems to be a contradiction, there seems to be an insurmountable contradiction between the metaphorical side of everyday language, which I should drop as Euclid's mathematicians did more than 2000 years ago, precisely because it lacks univocity if it's rigor and truth I'm seeking — only, here's the thing, in the metaphors of the language I'm in the process of abandoning, there lie all the stakes of wills and desires
1:04:29 and so the political problem lies there, in the stakes of the metaphors of everyday language, and that's why, you see, I'm always attentive to trying to straighten out these metaphors when, through habituation, we end up forgetting they are metaphors — when we say 'the day is breaking,' and when we end up, as Hegel magnificently puts it, mistaking the chains of Dodona for trees. What am I alluding to here — this will be somewhat the last aspect of my talk — I'm alluding to the fact that if philosophy is still there — I began with Lenin's paradox, 'if you speak you serve [power]' — there is no philosophical communication. So what have I been doing for years? It's because of the power we're subjected to, while awaiting the resolution of the problems of the society we live in, which cannot be resolved
1:05:39 except by the appearance of a new mode of production, thanks to new relations of production and thus of property — we cannot have the communication I would wish to have, the one whose possibility I've just sketched out, which of course requires teamwork. I well believe I would have delivered it to you myself if I could have it all on my own — no, I need you, and you need others, it's teamwork. I recall that when Clouscard — when Sartre kindly agreed to receive Clouscard, who presented him with his thesis subject, L'Être et le Code, and Sartre apparently read it quite conscientiously since he wrote a review of it — that it's a very fine example of what history truly is, namely, I quote Sartre, 'a totalization in progress and not a totality' — I mean a totalization in progress. But there's one reproach Sartre makes — Clouscard told me this — that there is nevertheless a hubris in believing that such
1:06:49 enormous problems, the whole history of praxis in France from the High Middle Ages up to the French Revolution, not included — in short, the whole history of the Ancien Régime — could be undertaken by a single individual, and Sartre says it would take teamwork, to which Clouscard replied, 'that's exactly what I'm asking for, send me some guys, I'm all alone.' There, I'll conclude on that, on Clouscard's laugh, which I heard so often — on vacation. And I thank you, in any case, for your loyalty — very good holidays to you all, and thank you.
