English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Return after a long absence and the concept of worldliness 0:30 You'll tell me it's been a long time. I quite agree with you. Tell me about it. In any case, thank you for the happiness I feel in being back with you. Well, the thing is, I've been abandoned by everyone. Frankly. No, no, seriously. Very seriously. It's also the season that makes it so. There are several reasons for these long interruptions, but the main one, for several weeks now, has been exam season—those taking them, those giving them, right? Competitive exams. And I wasn't going to hold a gun to the heads of all these wonderful volunteers who work for our association and for these videos directly or indirectly, while they're playing an important part in their own future. And I'm not even talking about Pierre-Alain, who, I've already told you, I think most of you remember I encouraged you to visit his extraordinary immersive exhibition at Beaubourg,
1:50 which ended on May 29th, and it started up again on June 5th in New York. He was there with his team, you see. So I wasn't going to say to him, "OK, forget all that, New York, but what about my videos?" So, no. So I thank him first of all for having offered, as soon as he got back, to do this live session tonight. So you see, this is moving toward stabilization. And to avoid an interruption in the content, of course I'm continuing the cycle—I told you it would take time—the cycle we entered when we started examining this concept, and I'll own up to saying the most Clouscardian, no doubt the most essentially Clouscardian, of Michel Clouscard's concepts, namely that of worldliness [mondanité]. I repeat, Philippe Axel, that it's the most important one, more important than productive forces, relations of production, and so on, but those aren't concepts specific to Clouscard. They existed before him, even if—little anecdote—
3:05 every time I asked him, at the start of each academic year, when he was still in Paris, and then later when he was a teacher a very long time ago, in the final year of high school, then much later, after his thesis defense, when he was a university professor in Poitiers, alongside people like Jacques D'Hondt, I mean, and the Hegelian-Marxist circle of Poitiers, I remember that each time I'd ask him, "What are you putting on the syllabus this year?" You'd invariably answer, every year, "Productive forces and relations of production." You see, no, of course, but that's not properly Clouscardian. Worldliness is where his own contribution is concentrated. And that's why I want to continue. So, I'm in the preamble, as you can imagine, after such a long absence, to borrow a famous title. First, don't think I've become an incorrigible narcissist. Damn, how do I do this? Ah yes, there we go, because I never learned to use mirrors. There. But this photo, most of you already know it, some of you have commented on it. I'd go so far as to say it's a cult photo—if I weren't in it, I'd say so.
4:21 Or more pejoratively, it's a photo of the gang of four, right? But more seriously, if I'm showing it now, it's because this is the first time we're seeing the original. Louis Schiavo, the fourth accomplice here, is an immense visual artist, poet, playwright. His plays have had considerable success. And he was an unwavering companion of Michel's up to his final hours, along with René Comer. Anyway, it's because he was kind enough to send it to me framed like this. And for the first time, I have the original photographic print, so to speak. That's why I made him promise, in exchange for sending it to me, that it would be properly displayed at my next talk. There. In any case, we could hardly have done otherwise, even if it had been
5:31 narcissism—narcissism divided by four, that's fine. And especially since I'm the Benjamin in this photo, I'd go so far as to say—I'll stop talking about myself in the photo now—I don't like myself in this photo because I have a slightly shifty look, which comes from the sun being in my eyes, making me squint, right? There. So, let's get back to serious matters.
6:01 I'm in an apparent disorder of preamble, but since we're talking about this concept of worldliness in Michel Clouscard, I'll come back later to the magnificent photo of Aragon and especially the excellent composite Pierre-Alain just made of two different photos of Aragon. I'll take this opportunity to mention again the fund, you know, for the English translation of Michel Clouscard, in particular of Capitalism of Seduction.
6:42 I mention it because I was moved to receive some mail recently, and it's also a way of giving a little reminder—but the budget of our association is the sum of members' dues, memberships, and separately, the fund intended for Michel's translation. Just now, for instance, I received an envelope from someone in the southwest—I won't give their name, of course, out of respect for their discretion—who wrote, "Oh dear, I'm behind, I'm updating my membership dues." So that's the reminder, may it serve as a good example. We have some equipment expenses to cover; it's to help us with those.
7:47 And besides, in the same envelope, there was a second check, saying, "Here's for the membership and here's for the fund for Michel Clouscard." You see, that made me think of giving this little reminder shot. And of course, this reminder shot ends, as I withdraw the needle, with an immense thank you to those who have already contributed to this translation, which—I don't want to say much more tonight—seems to be well underway.
8:25 It seems we've finally found the Anglo-Saxon partner—ideal is a big word, but in any case, well suited for this operation. I'll say a bit more once things are confirmed and this progress is settled. There. So, let me get to the heart of the matter a little. You've noticed... it hasn't escaped you that Aragon is our illustration tonight.
Reading Aragon: the sad castle and the soldier of 1914 9:04 Usually I put up a sound illustration. This time, for once, I found these photos and texts quite eloquent enough on their own. I chose an Aragon who is, in appearance, a seemingly despairing poem. An aged Aragon taking stock, who says that... Listen, I'll ask Pierre-Alain to project the poem again for me. There. You see, it's fairly clear, yet still—I stand on the threshold of life and death, eyes lowered, hands empty.
9:42 We won't say it starts with "let's embrace, Folleville." There. And the sea whose sound I hear is a sea that never gives back its drowned. And my soul will be scattered after me, my crushed dreams sold at auction. There. Already my words dry up like a leaf on my moist lip. So, is this an observation, the observation of a house in ruins? Well, we're getting there. Let's skip a few stanzas here. And we'll stop at... a little more.
10:14 There. This life will have passed—look. I was saying, are we in a house in ruins? This life will have passed like a great sad castle that all the winds blow through. Drafts slam the doors, and yet no room is shut. Strangers have sat down there, poor and weary, who knows why, some of them armed. My point is already topical. And here, I made a first small aside interrupting this admirable text.
10:44 I wanted, alongside the photos everyone knows of Aragon the poet, the photo of the soldier. "Who knows why some armed." Most people don't know that he wasn't just a poet, a dreamer, or even simply—most people know very well that he was also politically engaged—but fewer know that before his political engagement, he had first been a military man, engaged in the war of 1914.
11:16 And why am I bringing this up? Because he received the Croix de Guerre there; he wasn't just a figurehead. And that's what he's talking about when Aragon talks about reality. And since war has never been closer, unfortunately—whether geographically or historically, I hope that's not the case, right—and chronologically to our most contemporary reality, or rather our most current one, I wanted there to also be this photo of Aragon the general in uniform.
11:46 And I insist, he never missed an occasion to point out how appalling the carnage of the war of 1914 was. Michel Clouscard used to tell me, they managed, through the war of 1914, to liquidate more than a millennium of the peasantry that had made us. That had made us—the millennium, I think he said several millennia of peasantry that had made us. There. This carnage from which Europe never recovered, right?
12:19 Think that before the war of 1914, France was lending gold to Japan. Yes indeed. It's abject, this slaughter into which generations upon generations of young people were shoved, right? And if it were only the young—but for the young, it's even more irreparable, isn't it?
12:51 A loss never to be recovered. So that's why there's this less commonly seen photo of Aragon in uniform. So you see, I go back to the image he has of this house, this castle, abandoned, so to speak, to the winds of history and of hope, apparently. Here, strangers have sat down, poor and weary, who knows why?
The address to young people and "There is no happy love" 13:21 Some armed. Weeds have grown in the ditches, so much so that the portcullis can no longer be lowered. There's no door, the latches—one can't push the portcullis. The portcullis is what protected the place, right, what kept people from entering the castle. In this dwelling, in any case, old or new residents, we are not at home. Isn't all this topical? We are not at home. No one, for sure, knows what has brought them here. Perhaps it's all just a dream. Some are cold, others hungry.
13:53 Most people have a secret gnawing at them. You see, physical suffering, moral suffering—how can we separate these in man? From time to time, faceless kings pass by, and people kneel before them. And here, you see, I'm speaking for all those tempted by despair—sorry, that's barbaric wording—by despair in the current context.
14:28 Many times, when you look at the historical record since Antiquity, there have been periods of despair. There have been eras when people said things had never been as dark as today. But anyway, let's return to Aragon's words. When I was young, I was told that soon the victory of the angels would come. Oh, how I believed it! How I believed it twice! And now I have grown old. "The time of young people"—here begins a whole series of lines addressed to these young people, look carefully.
15:03 The time of young people is for them a lock of hair forever falling into their eyes. But no, he's not a hermetic poet, Aragon—he's clear. It means we're often blinded when we're still young. The time of young people is for them a lock of hair forever falling into their eyes. And what remains of it to old men, who no longer have much hair, is too heavy and too short for the wind to change for them. They wonder about the essential, about what's still worth devoting oneself to.
15:36 Do they want to enlist me here or there, in this splinter group or that party which is no longer anything but a shadow of itself, or which is undergoing a full renaissance? Who knows, well, never mind for now. They see the little they've done, surveying this monstrous worksite they're abandoning. The shadow preferred to the prey. It's a bit long, this poem, but I want to carry it through to the end. And you'll easily understand why at the end.
16:06 The shadow preferred to the prey. Oh poor people—he's still speaking to the young. The future that belongs to no one. Here, another small aside, an intertextuality—there are very often such things in Aragon. It's a nod to Victor Hugo, who in The Legend of the Ages has Napoleon speak, just having learned of the birth, that he finally has a son, an heir for the Empire, exclaiming, "The future, the future, the future is mine." And the poet, that is, Hugo, retorts, no, the future belongs to no one, meaning the future belongs to God, etc.
16:36 Anyway. The shadow preferred to the prey. Oh, poor child, the future that belongs to no one. Almost a quotation of Hugo. Little one playing in the street. Child, what boundless pity I feel for you. I see all the misfortune, blood, and weariness that lies ahead of you. You will have learned nothing from our illusions, understood nothing of our missteps. We will have been of no use to you.
17:06 You will have to pay the price in your turn. I see your shoulder bending under your brow. I see the fold of habit forming. Of course, you'll say it's always been like this, but that's just it—look, it's among the most overwhelming lines. Think of all those who put their living fingers, their flesh-and-blood hands into the machinery, so that things might change. And think of those who didn't even question their cage. Do we have the right to despair, the right to stop for a moment?
17:42 And should a day come when you have upon you the mad sunshine of victory, remember that we too knew this—that others climbed to tear the flag of servitude from the acropolis, and that they were thrown, they and their glory, still gasping, into history's common grave. Here I counterpoint Aragon with Aragon, in his surely most famous text, the one Brassens set to an unforgettable song, "There is no happy love," right? Which begins with "Nothing is ever given to man."
18:15 There is no victory that definitively settles all problems—nothing is ever given to man, neither his strength, nor his weakness, nor his rights. And when he thinks he opens his arms, his shadow is that of a cross, and when he wants to clasp his happiness, he crushes it. His life is a strange and painful divorce. There. Consider that we never stop fighting, and that having won is nothing at all. And that everything is called back into question, since—and this is admirable—man is accountable to man.
18:46 Man is accountable to man. We have seen great things done. Just think of the era he lived through—he fought in the war of 1914, he knew clandestinity, hunted by the Gestapo, hidden among other places in the south of France, and especially in the village where my son was born, Dieulefit—sorry for the anecdote, but still, I saw this up close, I spoke with people who knew him during that clandestine period. We have seen great things done, but there were also appalling ones. In our own camp, implicitly, for it isn't always easy to know, with humility, where evil lies and where good lies.
19:27 You will pass through what we once passed through. This is still addressed essentially to the young. I still receive it as a message myself, worn out and battered as I am. You will pass through what we passed through, once. "In you I read as in an open book. I hear this heart beating in you as a heart, it seems to me, once beat in me. You will wear it out, I believe, how and how this thing in you fades, falls silent, how autumn unravels, and the silence around a winter rose."
The turning point of the poem and Hegel's preface 19:59 You'll say to me, but I didn't earn this, I don't understand. We were so happy to be back together after this quasi-return, and this quasi-return before the holidays. And here you are pushing us toward despair. So look closely, look closely, how it turns around. This is where you understand my title. It's about the positivity of the negative. I'm not saying this to demoralize. One must look nothingness in the face.
20:31 Implicitly, I'm a bit irritated. And that's why I also wanted—sorry, I'm going to bring in a reference, I'll be right with you. There, there, there. I'm finding it right away. Thank you.
21:08 I'll apologize, I thought of it earlier, but I moved it at the last minute. I'll go on anyway. One must look nothingness in the face. I'll stop there. You see? And I'll read an excerpt, right, from an author one would think is the exact opposite of everything we've just heard from Aragon, of that sensibility. An author—I'm thinking of Hegel, right—who dwells in an empire of abstraction, in idealism, all the nonsense, excuse my French, that can be said about him.
21:43 And who, in a key passage of the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, says this, right? I've quoted it before—it's a passage one should never stop quoting, but which takes on its full meaning here. There.
22:16 Sorry. Oh dear, the book is falling apart. There. So, sorry. So, well. Ah yes, it's... Excuse me, but you see what state this volume is in?
22:48 Actually, it's one of the few things I've kept since my final year of high school, right? So, from time to time, pages get lost. So, wait, I'll grab a different edition. This book is in better shape anyway, since I don't want to waste time. Actually, I will anyway... I see it there. I'll use that one instead, and off we go.
24:35 I'm sorry, it's a bit long, but I had a small flood this morning that meant I had to... There, now we've got it. And here we have this famous passage. So you see, I repeat Aragon's line, which I'm going to counterpoint here with a reading from Hegel.
25:13 He says, "One must look nothingness in the face." That's the title of tonight's session, the positivity of the negative. Nothingness, negative, the minus—I want to come back to all that, don't worry. But look, to echo Aragon's line, what Hegel says here: "Death, if we wish to give that name to this unreality, is the most dreadful thing, and to hold fast what is dead requires the greatest strength." This is Jean Hyppolite's translation.
25:44 "Beauty without strength"—a most famous passage—romantic beauty, narcissistic beauty. Beauty without strength hates the understanding, hates the labor of the concept. "Beauty without strength hates the understanding"—the work of the concept—because the understanding expects of her, of the artist, of beauty, what she is not capable of accomplishing. One understands why people resent Hegel, right, in aestheticizing narcissism. "It is not that life which shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation," the life that represses, so to speak,
26:26 to borrow a concept from another field. "It is not that life which shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation"—Narcissus attentive to the integrity of his image in the water—"but rather that life which endures death and maintains itself in death itself, that is the life of Spirit." "Spirit only wins its truth by finding itself"—so it's not about denying the importance of the self out of anti-narcissism either—"by finding itself in absolute dismemberment," in the condition of recognizing—that's the whole meaning of humility, a cardinal virtue in theology, right?
27:06 Humility, and how much wretchedness is proper to man too, to speak as Pascal did. And one might say, well, we're still quite far, you were telling us it was almost the same words, quite far from Aragon's line, which says, I repeat, one must look nothingness in the face. Look closely, here's what follows. "Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face and dwelling with it"—you understand better now the title of tonight's session—"not the positive which turns away from the negative," as when we say of something that it is nothing, or that it is false, and, having done with it, we then move on unconcerned to something else.
The dominant ideology is a neopositivism 27:43 Yes, I was getting a bit worked up, it's because I'm increasingly tired of the dominant ideology, I don't know how else to put it. And why do I bring this up? To say that the dominant ideology is not idealism. I still have many comrades - I'm not talking about adversaries here, I'm talking about comrades - who wage war against idealism, who are still at the stage where it's a bit like, in politics, as if we were still taking seriously the fight of the Radical Party during the Third Republic, which spent its time bashing priests to appear a bit progressive and left-wing, when that was already an outdated battle.
28:19 At a time when it was vital and essential, and we will always owe gratitude to someone like Feuerbach for having fought so hard conceptually to free us from religious alienation. Of course, of course, and the young Marx knew something about that. And Marx, as well as Engels, paid tribute to that moment. But we also saw its limits. Because today's dominant ideology is a neo-positivism.
28:51 It's the complete opposite of an idealism that would want to limit rational activity, the concept, reasoning, and which thus seems, you see, to also distance itself from narcissistic romanticism and aestheticism. By limiting this rationality - you've heard it said a thousand times, but I repeat it because more and more, and all the better, new ears and new eyes are taking an interest in our publications. And it's to them that I'm thinking when I recall that the hard sciences, against which I will never say a word, even though I have excellent friends who would push me to do so, right?
29:27 And friends and comrades. The hard sciences, natural sciences, exact sciences, call it what you want - you know I don't have the structuralist superstition about the signifier. But I am somewhat structure-friendly. The hard sciences only make sense for the knowledge of objects, of the universe around us as a universe of objects.
29:57 I will never say a word against those sciences. We are in philosophy - you see the reminders that this text's reading gives us, reminding us of the necessity of passing through the negative to arrive at true positivity, the one that is not illusory. I'm summarizing the essential point I'm making tonight. In philosophy, it's no longer a matter of knowing the equations that let us measure the distance traveled by light from a star coming from a galaxy millions of light-years away.
30:37 It's no longer a matter of calculating the probability that an electron suddenly has a determined position at the moment we measure it, to speak of a mechanics more quantum than Newtonian, right? No, no. Our discipline begins with the "know thyself" that was inscribed at the entrance of the oracle of Delphi and that Plato recalls in the mouth of Socrates, in the Apology of Socrates, right?
31:11 It's always the same thing. As long as we reduce everything that makes the difference between someone and something, as long as we reduce the someones that we are, that you are, to being merely somethings, we don't leave neo-positivism behind. And to show that I'm speaking from a position entirely opposed to those who fight against positivism - I have nothing against positivism, which was a great advance against the era when the religious and a subjective idealism, right, dominated ideological debate.
31:50 No, but to show that it's the opposite, that it is from a materialist point of view that I fight the dominant neo-positivist ideology, let me recall that a machine, the camera I'm looking at in front of you right now, the product of a technology, of human praxis, is no less material - far from it - than volcanic lava or the vibration of a light or sound wave, no less.
32:29 All of that is matter, matter that is sometimes purely natural - let's review - sometimes matter whose form has been given by human activity. When Marx says what distinguishes - sorry - the architect, sorry, the clumsiest architect from the most skillful bee, because bees also know very well how to make houses, cells, it's that the architect has his house in his head before producing it in reality.
33:02 Isn't that so? There is first a representation of it. I say all this to recall what a someone is, what an aim is, what a desire is - call it whatever you want, again, this isn't the moment to be structuralist and reduce all that to a single word, it's a whole field, the field of activity of a subject precisely, that is, of something that is not entirely determined by its here and now, but that has an aim. And here, we're reading a poem that seems discouraged, right, at having an aim, that all aims have been disappointing, deceptive.
The magical dwelling that converts the negative into being 33:36 I'm making this long digression to understand the connection. So I'm picking back up where I interrupted myself in Aragon's text: one must look the negative in the face. I come back to and finish the counterpoint with the quotation from Hegel. Spirit is that power precisely in not being like the positive, which turns away from the negative - and that's why I got worked up - I take issue with all those who use Spinoza against Marx and against Hegel.
34:08 No, but I am precise tonight at this level regarding references. Do I say a word against Spinoza? Never will you hear me say a word against Spinoza. I might say what is still missing in Spinoza. Fortunately. I've already told you that I am neither a Marxist, nor a Hegelian, nor even a Clouscardian. You see? What interests me is the movement that lets us traverse this and try to take yet another step forward.
34:39 So it's not speaking against Spinoza to say that when he talks about nature, he is still at a Galilean, Galileo-Cartesian physics of inertia, I say this in passing, and one that does not see history. He made profound reflections on history in his Theologico-Political Treatise among others, but I mean it never occurred to him to say that it is history that constitutes us as human beings, human animals, much more than nature does - which constitutes us, not merely makes us exist.
35:15 Nature suffices for that, and without it, nothing of man would exist. But if there were only nature, there would indeed exist an animal, but one that would not deserve the name of man. Ah, but yes, it's a bit more complicated than this positivism, because people use Spinoza to say, alright, that's enough, sad passions, we must be happy, we must fuck, as the Slavic solar poet used to say, you know. Well, I'm quoting him, it's not me going off the rails. Alright, let me finish these quotations with the passages that most echo what Aragon says.
35:49 Spirit is that power precisely in not being similar - I repeat this one last time and now move on - to the positive, which turns away from the negative, from misfortune, as when we say of a thing that it is nothing or that it is false and, having gotten rid of it, we then simply pass on to something else. But spirit is that power only by knowing how to look the negative in the face - the same word. One must look the void in the face - Aragon - one must look the void in the face.
36:19 Equals: void, negative. And knowing how to dwell near it - knowing how to dwell, not just a momentary glance that is then repressed, no, to dwell near it. And there is this magnificent sentence that I almost put as the epigraph for tonight's session, but that would have been a bit long. This dwelling. This dwelling is the magic power that converts the negative into being. There, finally, we arrive at being. We are not in Heidegger. Being is not the origins, it is the result. It is a confrontation of the subject with the reality that wants to eliminate it.
36:50 That is why I was referring to this most venerable text by Hegel. So, I continue. I apologize. Please forgive me for having interrupted the poem at its most beautiful passage, the one with that sublime reversal after having seemed so despairing, right? I take up this stanza again, which is the great turning point. I'm not saying this.
37:20 to demoralize everything we've read since the beginning. We must look the void in the face in order to know how to triumph over it. Triumph is not despair. The song is no less beautiful when it declines. One must know how to hear it elsewhere, being reborn. Elsewhere, because sometimes spirit, in the Hegelian sense, that is, history - history is in the Orient, it is in Greece, spirit is always elsewhere from itself.
37:50 is never fixed, right, in an identity, because there are so many who confuse things, who call themselves sovereignists because they are identitarian, right? I defend a political sovereignty, right, but not an identitarian sovereignism. No, no. One must know how to hear it elsewhere, being reborn elsewhere than among us, like the echo in the hills. We are not alone in the world.
38:21 It is indeed this concept of world that has occupied us since the beginning of this cycle. This poem, right, is at the center of our reflection on worldliness. We are not alone in the world in singing, and the drama is the totality of songs. In the drama, one must know how to hold one's part, even if one voice falls silent. Know this: always, the deep chorus - the chorus is the collective element, the chorus. The chorus is not the solo singer.
38:51 Know this: always, the deep chorus picks up the interrupted phrase from the moment when, to the very end of himself, the solo singer this time, the poet Aragon for example, has done what he could. I'm sure some of you remember something from my talks, this passage: from the moment when, to the very end of himself, the singer has done what he could. Because I have the immense satisfaction of seeing that some, through their comments on my recent talks, are beginning to say there is a coherence - perhaps they see it even better than I do myself - in what appear to be my detours, comings and goings, jumping from one thing to another. Some say - one, for example, told me: when Pagani talks about Nerval, one has the impression that all of a sudden he's neglecting the universal a bit to talk about his pet subject - I'm not putting it quite like that - but on the contrary, it's perhaps there that he is most exhaustive about all the other aspects of philosophy.
39:46 And some say the same thing when I talk about music. No, I say this to tell you I'm glad to see that people are starting to see, not this or that theme in what I do, but the horizontal relations, or if you prefer, transversal ones - to use a more fashionable word - that can be drawn between different themes. And here, since my theme tonight is the positivity of the negative, what is negative in all the misfortunes that befall us, I say it in different words to stay within the essence of this admirable text.
The Dogon griot and the end of the poem 40:16 And so I know there are some - I'm surprised by the memory of a talk I gave 4, 5, 6 years ago, when I spoke about the griot, you know, I made a video, we can leave the link, I'll ask Pierre-Alain to put it up once I find it, the link to that video where I answered those who asked me, "But when are you going to give us your method?" Because all this is very nice, right?
40:46 And I had recalled the reluctance of Hegel, as well as Marx for that matter, to propose a methodology distinct from content, right? Separated as a formalism from its content. And so as not to dodge the question either, and still satisfy the one people were asking me, I had said, "If I have a method, I'll tell you, it's that of the African griot." Actually, "griot" is an African notion, it's called nas. You see, that is, I had told the story of this griot - it's true I had been able to attend a ceremony among the Dogon of Mali, right?
41:23 During this extraordinary ceremony, celebration, ceremony, call it what you like, which, exceptionally, in an oral tradition, occurs over an extremely long period, roughly every 60 years, so almost two generations, and during which I heard this griot who was somewhat the master of ceremonies, in the strict sense if you will, or in any case the proper sense, and who greeted all the arrivals of those coming from such a village, such a valley, right, in Dogon country, and greeted them through their genealogies, because the griot is a poet, a musician, all that, you know, but also a historian - that we neglect a bit more, right - he is the chronicle, but of an oral tradition, and memory doesn't go back very far when there's no writing.
42:17 An experiment was done, it's been measured by anthropologists, right - you ask people when this legend is supposed to have happened, and others, it goes back to the mists of time; when you actually investigate, it's a story whose starting point goes back at most, right, not even a century. Memory is perishable. Well, the griot did as in the Bible, right, calling people by their name, inscribing them in a genealogy, and it goes, as in the Bible, one says, behold Solomon, son of David, Suleiman, Ben Daoud, well there it was, behold Traoré, son of Sidibé, son of Diarra, son of Touré, and suddenly, he would stop, like a broken record, as I told you.
43:01 You see, it was pathetic and sublime at once, and he said, and the millipede has too many legs, we cannot count them. And the millipede has too many legs, we cannot count them. The griot, reaching the limit of his memorial capacity, right, and so, saying, listen, I don't want to deceive you folks, I go that far, beyond that it's too complicated, the millipede has too many legs, we cannot count them. Take up the relay - that means, right, just as Aragon addresses young people here, take up the relay.
43:34 It was magnificent and sublime, and pathetic at the same time. You see, so how can one not think of it when Aragon says: know this, always the deep chorus picks up the interrupted phrase, broken record, from the moment when, to the very end of himself, the singer has done what he could, no matter that along the way you will abandon me like a hypothesis. I in turn leave you, thanks to Pierre-Alain, like the dancer who rises one last time.
44:07 Do not reproach him, in his eyes, if he already betrays what shadow he carries within him. He has his side, the side of personal misery, each in his own bubble, as we say now. I can give you no other gifts than those of this dark light. Men of tomorrow, blow on the embers. That the flame born of the coals, go blow on the embers. And that's the fall, it's up to you now, to say what I foresee. So, with the transformation that will be a progress and an enrichment.
The link between neopositivism and puritanism 44:38 There. I wanted to begin with this poem in order to insist, and to give a bit more flesh and blood to what seems quite abstract when we say the positivity of the negative. So we would like to abstract this negative away from the weight of this dominant ideology, right, which in particular - and here I warn you because it's philosophically important - I'm introducing a new articulation that I haven't stated yet since the beginning.
45:09 I am connecting the critique I make of neo-positivism with the critique I also often make - apparently unrelated - of puritanism. Yes, ecological puritanism, which has nothing to do with the legitimate concern for the environment - there would indeed be things to change in how we manage our environments, I would never say otherwise, right - but I'm talking about a certain discourse you know well, just as there is a bourgeois feminism that has nothing to do with, and even opposes, the emancipation of the billions of women who bring honor to humanity.
45:50 For that, I refer you to an admirable Delga publication called "Les femmes de la CGT" [Women of the CGT], and you will see who stood in the way of true feminine emancipation. When I criticize this bourgeois feminism or the ecological discourse that we always recognize by its punitive side, and by the notion that the fault is always shared - that it's not a power, not capitalism, but all of us, wallowing as we are in abject consumption, who are responsible for the warming of the planet.
46:27 This needs to be brought out into the open, right? You understand why third-world countries are starting to let go of the West, why they're fed up with being moralized to, right? The misery, the suffering of those crossing the Mediterranean, often losing their lives there, with their belongings and their women and children especially, right - that these people should be lectured, those who are wallowing in a consumer society - it's an obscene side that has to stop.
46:59 People tell me, but what's the connection? But I'm getting there. Both come to us from an Anglo-Saxon ideology. I'm not racist, you know that. I will always be admiring of things brought to us by Anglo-Saxon culture, and not just jazz. I'm serious. There is an excellent pragmatism. But there is this flaw, that these are cultures coming from a puritan world, largely of Protestant lineage. That's the connection. Yes, but what's the link with neo-positivism? I'll tell you now.
47:30 The fact of limiting rationality to the knowledge of so-called objective worlds, as if a hammer were less objective, right, than a star, or an animal than a physical, chemical, or biological entity. Because the hammer, for its part, is additionally a historical and praxical entity. The fact of limiting rationality to the world of objects, leaving the subject aside, ignoring the Delphic, Apollonian imperative of "know thyself," stems from a puritanism.
48:10 Because if we start looking inside the self, we're going to find things, we're going to find dreadful things - I think ironically of those who put psychoanalysis on trial, from Deleuze to Onfray. What does it matter, I mean - except I hold it more against Deleuze because he is nonetheless a far more pertinent philosopher than Onfray, let's be clear. It is himself. But in both cases, one has to settle scores. He who dared speak of infantile sexuality at the time of the child-king and idealization - as soon as the spotlight stops shining on my garden but turns back on me, the owner of the garden, there are things I would rather not have seen.
48:53 You see the link between neo-positivism and puritanism. I'm not talking about positivism but about positivist zealotry, that is, neo-positivism. I'm thinking of Popper in particular, right? Karl Popper, whom anti-Marxists use as if he were the very essence of scientificity. No, absolutely not. And I made use of several passages from Nerval, or of the comparison between the concept of nature and that of landscape, in cycles which I refer you to.
49:28 On our YouTube channel, all these videos are catalogued. I refer you to them. Nature or landscape? That was one series, and Angélique by Nerval was another series, which I refer you to, in which I tried to show that one can introduce scientific rigor into what is called human science, social science. You know I don't like getting into this debate about signifiers, right? And in short, when it comes to moving from sciences whose field of application is objects to the science of subjects.
The Earth and the world: the example of the rue Mouffetard 50:06 That is to say, and we come back to it, to the world. Because the Earth is a notion that is not philosophical, that belongs to, that is an object for sciences like geology, glaciology, cosmology in a certain way too, for its genesis. As for the Earth, that's not my field. I don't like speaking about areas where there are competencies far more univocal and far better grounded than my own.
50:38 But the world is something other than the Earth. The Roman world, the Neanderthal world, to take examples elsewhere - elsewhere in time and in space, right? The world of imperial China, the world of Sahelian Islam, or Congolese animism, of the Congolese forest that encompasses several countries today.
51:10 All this, love relationships between men, there's a unity in the world that there isn't in the natural sciences, that there isn't in the cosmos. It's not, as Pascal admirably put it, who lived through the trauma of the scientific revolution, a trauma for a narcissism that put man at the center, isn't it? And who is it? Speaking of the cosmos, I'm not talking about the human sciences, it's a sphere whose center is everywhere you like, implicitly, and whose circumference is nowhere.
51:40 There's no limit, it's worse than chaos. A world, on the contrary, is something that is unitotal, as they say, that has both a unity, but not an empty unity, it's not the unity of the void, it's not nirvana. I say nirvana because when you ask the Buddha, who is a serious man, when his disciples, the bhikkhus as they're called, asked him what this nirvana is, he always answers negatively: one is neither lying down nor standing, there's neither left nor right, there's neither up nor down.
52:16 No, I'm not talking about that empty unity. In the immense misery of traditional India, when you can pull through by meditation, and in a kind of meditated serenity, that's already not bad. But the millennia of effort of the human animal deserve more positive gratifications all the same. So, I pick up my thread when I create a link that I'm specifying for you today between my critique of relentless positivism—not positivism in general, that is neo-positivism, that of a rationality that would limit itself to what we now call the hard sciences, and once again, without saying a single word against the statements of these hard sciences, in any case I'm not saying there's no debate, but they're not my debates.
53:18 I would be incapable of settling those debates. And knowing whether the Big Bang is a beginning or whether raw refers to the Big Bang, I'll leave that to astrophysics. But when it comes—I come back to the unitotal world—instead of that being, and I come back to it, the empty unity, it's a unity in plurality, in diversity. I'll take the example of the Rue Mouffetard because yesterday I had an appointment at the Jardin des Plantes.
53:49 The Rue Mouffetard is a world unto itself. I say that because now I've seen there's an association of residents of the Rue des Canettes in Paris. I discovered that in the sixth arrondissement, a narrow little street that escaped, that escaped the Haussmannian widenings under Napoleon III. Paris changes, but nothing in my melancholy has moved, as Baudelaire would say. And here, what can be said of the Rue Mouffetard, which is one of the rare survivals, an almost medieval street, in the Mouffetard district.
54:19 I'll mention in passing that the very name of the street comes from the fact that the Bièvre river flows beneath this street for part of its course, and that it was uncovered before. I'm in Cachan on the course of the Bièvre, so I mention it, it comes from beaver, castor. There are still traces of beavers in the area, but no, let's move on. But yes, but yes, you'll find in the Wikipedia an etymology of the word Bièvre that will astonish you by its erudition. Yes, the Bièvre was uncovered before.
54:52 There are photos that still exist today of the Rue Mouffetard before Haussmann, where you see people with disgusting aprons because it was the street of the tanners. You know, tanners, there are few smells as nauseating as where the hides still have blood drying on them, right? The hides from which fine leather is made and which had to be cleaned in the water of the Bièvre. Talk about the good old days, by the way.
55:22 And so, it stank. It's the street that "moufte" in slang. That's exactly where it comes from, there, I'll close my parenthesis. I went there yesterday, but this is to tell you about the smell of the street. It's to tell you, on the contrary, what it has become: unattainable rents. I knew it still. I'm old enough to have known it at a time when there were, of course, quite expensive apartments on the first or second floor. I remember spending evenings at Jean Vilar's place on the Rue de l'Estrapade. A long time ago, a magnificent apartment.
55:52 But there was poverty on the fourth, fifth, sixth floor. There were old ladies who would go down to beg the butcher for offal for their cat, which they'd wrap in newspaper. But now, even the smallest garret is unattainable in rent price on the Rue Mouffetard. In other words, it has stopped being a world because precisely there is no totality anymore. It's nothing but a ghetto of the rich.
Clouscard: the class struggle immanent to desire 56:25 Yes, we understand better what a world is. And you see popular wisdom, which is content to say: it takes all sorts to make a world. A world is not a part. So when I say unitotal, you understand better what I mean. There. And so, I'll continue now. I tried—I'd like you to retain at least for today this new step I'm trying to take forward with you and thanks to you, thanks to the effort I'm making to communicate it—namely that there is a link, there is a link between neo-positivism and puritanism, and that it comes from the same cultures.
57:13 When I say Anglo-Saxon, again, it's to underline what is an obstacle in that culture, which doesn't erase what it has that is irreplaceable. Just as the France of the Ancien Régime has appalling things and extraordinary things that tourists from around the world still come to pay homage to, right? Well yes, pay homage to, or that fewer people, perhaps, than the average run of tourists, rediscover in perhaps the peaks of our poetry, with Rimbaud, that is to say Racine, right?
57:45 To speak of a poet of the grand siècle. So this articulation—we're no longer in cognitive debate, it's no longer a matter of knowing who is right between the true and the false, between positivism and the dialectics of the Marxists. No, we can see clearly that to settle that debate, we have to step outside cognitivism, it's not just a matter of knowledge—did matter precede spirit or spirit matter? Let's leave metaphysics aside, that's gotten a bit old, after Kant and all that.
58:16 Lenin saw this very well. We mustn't try to be more Leninist than Lenin. You understand why I wanted his photo behind, in the background of Aragon, in the admirable montage that I owe to Pierre-Alain, that we owe to Pierre-Alain this evening. So, there, in Protestantism there is always, isn't there, a haunting fear of libido, which prevents us from going to the end of "know thyself."
58:50 And since Clouscard is the one who took libido out of its psychoanalytic confinement to broaden it to class struggle—and I'm not just referring here to the admirable treatise on mad love, it's throughout his whole body of work—he shows to what extent class struggle is immanent to human desire in general, and to that of eros in particular.
59:20 If only for his extraordinary analysis of the novelistic, as he does in L'Être et le Code, for example, when he draws the dichotomy between the miserly father, Harpagon, and the prodigal son—it could be Clitandre, it could be Léandre, no matter—there isn't one who's ridiculous and one who is—he can be odious, but not ridiculous, Harpagon—there's a logic between one who has spent his life saving, saving, saving, there we're in praxis, right, to build up capital, and his son who blows it on the first skirt that comes along; that necessarily creates tensions between father and son, there's a class struggle immanent to human relations, to the most intimate relations.
Prometheus: man defined by a minus 1:00:08 And there, I'd like this to be something established between us with our reading today of this Aragon poem. It would illustrate, on one hand, what Aragon says—one must look nothingness in the face—and what Hegel says, it's not that, being able to look the negative in the face and dwell within it, and the magical dwelling, I recall what Hegel says, which converts the negative into being. And so, I recall that it is indeed being as result, we're at the opposite of Heidegger, not, and not the Grund of origins, right.
1:00:45 There. I'll take the opportunity, since I'm talking about the negative, to make some reminders—but reminders, not tedious repetitions, it's to create connections, isn't it, between videos already published and what I'm trying to bring out now, this evening—the series of minuses on which I've happened to insist.
1:01:15 Minus, negative, it's the negative sign, minus. In no particular order, the myth of Prometheus, I'll begin with a well-known tradition, isn't it, the myth of Prometheus—what makes the superiority—I'm not saying this myself, I'm asking you to take note that I'm saying, within Greek mythology, what makes the superiority of the human animal over the other animals of nature? It's not a more developed brain, or rather a developed brain, the result, I don't know, of praxical trial and error, but well, in the myth—let's leave that to anthropology—in the myth, what makes its superiority is a minus, not a plus.
1:02:00 Do you remember the myth? Zeus had entrusted Epimetheus, Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus—I'm not a first-rate Hellenist like my friend and publisher Aymeric Monville, but I believe Epimetheus roughly means the one whose mind isn't quite right, a bit imperfect, not too sharp, if you prefer more colloquial language. He was given the task of distributing advantages and disadvantages to all animal species, so that no single one would prevail over all the others and so that there wouldn't be extinction of species, as we say now, right?
1:02:39 The zoo too, generalized. And so, it was a matter of giving, I don't know, speed of flight to the bird and strength to the elephant, right? The elephant can't fly, but the bird, when you hold it in your hand, is more fragile than the elephant. So, distribute a little bit, so that each one has its chance. And since he had an imperfect mind, I come back to this, when he got to man, he said, oh no, I have nothing left for him, he had nothing left for man, he had distributed everything, he no longer had scales, feathers, fur, of this, of that, man has so little of it compared to the bear, or the chimpanzee, he had nothing left.
1:03:21 So he went to find his brother Prometheus. And there, you know what follows. It's a heel-turn, that's my addition, Prometheus leapt up to Olympus to steal fire from the God. To steal from the God, sorry, fire—you've already corrected me—fire, yes, fire in all its meanings, that is, in the literal sense as in the figurative sense. Of course, in the figurative sense, the one that makes us speak of the Age of Enlightenment, the fire that illuminates, that kindles intelligence, science, but of course, which means that, as Aristotle admirably says, mathematics unites men, politics divides them.
1:04:02 Fire, but also in the literal sense, the fire that allows metals to be smelted, real fire, physical fire, to smelt metals and generate praxis. And of course, of course, this ravishing in the sense of being carried off—you find the root "av" there, as in "avion" [airplane]. "Avis" is wings, an "avicole" farm, when one raises chickens or guinea fowl, right?
1:04:33 It's the same root. It's said that Ganymede was ravished by Zeus. Ganymede was so beautiful, it seems. It's true that in Greek culture, men are sensitive to the beauty of men. Zeus carried Ganymede off from his activity as a shepherd there on earth so that he would serve in Olympus as cupbearer to the gods, the one who served at the table of the gods, pouring mead, nectar, etc. There, to ravish is that, it's to go upward, isn't it? And "the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorescences and the exalted dawn like a flock of doves," all that, those are ravishings.
1:05:08 Those are two lines taken from The Drunken Boat, of course. So, because of this ravishing, having stolen fire from the gods, the gods take revenge. You know that Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus—all this is not entirely irrelevant to our times—with a vulture chained to the rock, and a vulture that devoured his liver, which grew back as soon as the liver was finished, so that his agony would be perpetual. Well then, I refer you—but I urge you—to read it, it's not very long.
1:05:43 The admirable play by Aeschylus, all this surely exists, yes, on Wikisource, it's certainly not copyrighted anymore, fortunately, Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, in which you learn that there is a prediction saying that one day Prometheus will free himself from this chain and this punishment, and that man will take his revenge on the gods. I am in the process of celebrating humanism, so decried in these times. Isn't it? You know, we're revising a lot of things tonight.
1:06:15 You know, my cursed triangle, the cursed triangle of postmodern thought and the dominant ideology, that is, the triangle with three vertices: man, the universal, progress—the three notions most criticized in the dominant ideology. Yes indeed, dominant—you'll tell me, "but I'm not dominant, I'm a poor victim of wage labor and I find progress to be nonsense, an illusion." Yes, a dominant ideology doesn't mean one that exists only in the minds of the dominant.
1:06:45 If it is dominant, it's because it is dominated. Isn't it? When progress is attacked, it's so that the fruits of progress remain reserved for those who denigrate it, right? And it's not certain that discrediting it for the masses is done in case a critical mass were achieved. There. The magical dwelling that converts the negative into being—one had to go through this long misfortune that Aragon unfolds in this poem, this long misfortune that is needed.
1:07:19 Today there is too much certainty on the right as on the left, on the far right as on what claims to be the far left, and in the worst case, that is, the far right that thinks of itself as being on the left. That's what is steering us. It's up to us, collectively—it's not just France, unfortunately. Do forget Macron from time to time, won't you? It's a moment that lasts, isn't it, this dominant ideology—the Sarkozys, the Hollandes, weren't much better than Macron. It's clear that Macron goes even further in the same direction.
1:07:49 So it's even worse. But, I mean, forget it, the fight, the fight is directed against this dominant ideology. When I say "us," then, I come back to it, in this world that is increasingly being called into question by what used to be called the Third World. How curious. Isn't it? Well, yes. You saw how American journalists got slapped, morally speaking, watching all those who went to see the President of South Africa to tell him, "You mustn't receive Putin, he's a wanted man!"
1:08:23 I'll interrupt myself. Because one must be—one is never clear enough. I've said a thousand times that if—careful, there are a lot of ifs—if I lived in Russia, if I were a Russian citizen, and if—Russia weren't surrounded by nuclear missiles, right, that strangle it from Poland to Turkey, passing through the East and China, through South Korea, Japan, American nuclear bases that are everywhere at home there. If all that weren't the case, it's not at all obvious that, as a Russian citizen, I would vote for Putin.
1:08:58 Is that clear? It's understood, it's obvious that I would vote for someone better than Putin. But I would always defend Putin's Russia against NATO. This is important, what I'm saying—against NATO, which is pushing, which is pushing toward war. That's the essential point of what I'm saying. I've begun all my videos with "between crisis and war, philosophy and interrogation," except that we have never, since the beginning of the crisis, been so close to war.
1:09:35 So don't tell me I'm incoherent, that I'm jumping from one thing to another and making digressions. They always serve to come back to this essential point. Isn't it? So, I want to remind you—I come back to it—it's minus. It's the fact that man is not specialized like the badger with its claws from birth to dig burrows. He is not endowed, equipped with what is already-there.
1:10:08 There's no need. So he is not white like the bear from birth in order to hide in the ice, right, from potential predators. He is not, and so on, I could multiply everything that characterizes species. Man is a genus, that's what I'm getting at. That is, he strives never to be specific. He strives to live in the polar ice. Some base I don't know, in Antarctica or in Greenland.
1:10:40 He strives to live in the desert and he maintains the oasis, right? Or simply crosses the desert in a magnificent air-conditioned car, or in the rainforest. I mean, there is no biotope that determines man. It's he who adapts the environment to his infinity—that is, I take "infinite" not to produce metaphysical tremors but in a precise sense, to its one.
The three ages of Auguste Comte's positivism 1:11:15 I'll replace "finite" with "determined." Do you agree? By the indetermination of his desire. There's no reason to set a limit on human desire. I hope many leaders, in echo, are hearing me right now. There. I would still like to take a look at your contributions. I'll ask Pierre-Alain. I see something marked "the house." Oh, I need explanations. Ah yes, sorry.
1:11:45 Sir, my partner is asking me what neo-positivism is. Will you have the chance to come back to it one day in particular? Thank you for everything. It was Mr. Salem who pointed me toward you. If it's someone who knew Salem, I thank you for mentioning the name of this friend, whose loss is a real one. This Salem who had managed to establish a foothold at the Sorbonne, this Marx seminar which still exists today but which he animated with such radiance. Jean Salem. We felt quite alone. Aymeric and I.
1:12:15 Aymeric Monville and I are entirely—yes, listen, I'll do it right away. There was positivism before neo-positivism. There's always something in me, if I may say so, negative toward movements that begin with "neo." Neoclassicism, neo-baroque, neo—I have nothing against baroque repertoire, on the contrary, I'm a devoted admirer, aren't I, of the music that runs from Monteverdi to Bach.
1:12:50 But on the other hand, the discourse of the neo-baroque enthusiast, right, who wants to make us believe that the piano is the beginning of the end, or others who say outright that after Gregorian chant, as soon as there's more than one voice, right, that's the beginning of the end of music—that's neo-baroque-ism. There was a positive [movement]. What is positivism? It's the extremely respectable thought of Auguste Comte, the father of positivism in the 19th century, in the years 1840-1850. Auguste Comte, to state the essential, said that humanity, in the 19th century, witnessing a century that saw a prodigious development of the positive sciences—precisely what we now call the hard sciences, which were called at the time the exact sciences, you see, no matter for now—and which find the essential part of their field of application in nature.
1:13:46 So, I can't say the natural sciences without mathematics, which has nothing natural about it. So Auguste Comte divided the history of humanity—this is the essential of his thought and thus of positivism—into three stages, which he calls three ages. There is the religious age—humanity always begins with the religious, I'm restating his argument, I'm not taking a position for or against it right now. There is the religious age, then the metaphysical age, and finally, third, the positive age.
1:14:21 So let's look at this a bit more closely. The religious age, where the essential explanation of the world around us is attributable to personified beings—it doesn't matter whether it's Brahma, Allah, Vishnu, Jehovah, etc., it doesn't matter for now—or spirits of the animist world, or gods of transcendence, but to animate beings who have a proper name. The importance of the name, isn't it.
1:14:52 As Moses said, how must I put it, how I met you, the first vision of the eternal at Sinai, what should I call you? And that's where he answers him with the unpronounceable. That's why I can't tell you it. Well, it's translated as Yahweh by adding vowels that don't exist in the sacred text. There are only consonants in Semitic languages. You know, in the ancient Semitic Scriptures, there are only consonants, YHWH, etc. But a root which, it seems, is more complicated, would mean 'I am.'
1:15:22 I'm not going to wander off, I'll stay with positivism. You see, the religious age is the one that begins with personified entities which, like any person worthy of the name, have proper names. Not just common nouns like pear, banana, camera, screen. And then, afterwards, there's the metaphysical age. This is where he's profound—I'll say good things about positivism, Auguste Comte—that a bit like Hegel, without knowing it, he sees, in the suppression of personified and transcendent beings, of gods, when we move to the metaphysical age, the age that explains the world through principles such as being, nothingness, the multiple, becoming—Heraclitus, becoming; Parmenides, being; Democritus, the atom; Pythagoras, number, everything is number.
1:16:18 That's how I'll start, metaphysics. He says it's progress, but at the same time something remains from the previous stage—what is it? That this principle is absolute. That comes from the religious age, like a god: the principle is absolute and everything can be reduced to it and explained from it. And so we must move to a third stage where finally we drop—implicitly useless, idle, and endless—the search for first causes, metaphysical causes, and for final causes, in order to deal with what lies in between, with what is there within the field of our possible experience, Kant would add, which Comte does not, since he lacks Kant's subtlety on that point—the whole field of possible experience, everything that is in time and space, roughly speaking, to put it in Kantian terms—that we abandon the search for first causes and final causes and instead deal with what is around us, which is, broadly, the most widespread mindset in the scientific world, for example, you see.
Neopositivism as regression and the resistance of the subject 1:17:22 So that's no small thing. I have nothing against that line of thought. There, I've told you about positivism. Neopositivism, on the other hand, would be the position that maintains that same standpoint, that is, by abstracting from—that is, by denying, suppressing, liquidating, regressing away from—what? By suppressing modes of thought that were, in fact, progress compared to Auguste Comte—that's how it's a regression. I'll mention, in no particular order, Marxism and psychoanalysis. That is, two discourses that dwell much more on what happens inside subjects—the notion of ideology in Marx.
1:18:02 Ideology is the illusion of believing that I am within the scientific, the theoretical, when in fact I am within the ideological. And in Freud, it's the illusion of consciousness which believes that the 'I' is everything of which I am conscious, isn't it? Whereas Freud will show that this ego, this consciousness that believes itself to be at the center of the self, is in fact, relative to the true subject, as derisory a portion as what we see of the iceberg above the water, while four-fifths of it is submerged, isn't it?
1:18:36 So there you have it. That's immense progress in the direction of 'know thyself'—you see how it all holds together tonight—progress that the sciences of external objects don't explore. And so, to answer your question, this is what I hold against neopositivism, which—and I'm summing up what I'm saying tonight—without even subscribing to it consciously, is unconsciously, fittingly enough, influenced by the puritanism from which it geographically and historically originates, this neopositivism that comes to us mainly from Anglo-Saxon countries, especially since there's no longer any alternative, since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
1:19:15 No, no, I'm not complicating things, quite the opposite—it clarifies things to look at this with hindsight. This discourse which spreads everywhere, which makes me maintain that it's no longer idealism that is the main danger within the dominant ideology, it's puritan neopositivism. You tell me that because I'm a woman, you say that because I'm black, you say that, you see, you say that because I'm Corsican.
1:19:48 Political correctness, punitive puritanism, isn't it, and its immanent terrorism. That's what I call—I'm going around it a bit with various attributes—neopositivism. So once again, this is not the return of Auguste Comte's positive stage. Auguste Comte was not liquidating the advances of his time, on the contrary, he draws up an inventory of them. Whereas neopositivism does not take into account the progress that has also occurred—not only in the study of the Earth's history from ice cores taken in Antarctica or Greenland, but the advances that have taken place regarding the subject, in the knowledge of the subject, of its motivations.
1:20:39 And here, it's much slower, much harder. And this is my last point regarding this crucial question. The more science—objective, rational, universal, shareable knowledge—the more science draws closer to the subject, the more it meets obstacles and resistance. If only you could grasp this law, because it truly is a law—why do you think the edifice of the sciences began with mathematics?
1:21:16 Because if I tell you that the roots of the second-degree trinomial, in analysis—to take a key part of mathematics—if these roots can be determined from the discriminant, minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac, over 2a, if I remember correctly, especially since I haven't reviewed it—if I tell you that, you'll say, why not, probably. You don't feel concerned. So there's no difficulty agreeing within a discourse where I don't feel implicated, where no one tells me I'm the biggest fool around.
1:21:53 There, I won't let just anything be said, will I? No, that seems foreign to me. So it's mathematics that appeared first, 2,500 years ago—scientific mathematics. Then it was physics, starting with Galileo, from the transition of the 16th to the 17th century, what's called the scientific revolution, precisely in history, isn't it—and not only in the history of science. The scientific revolution, which begins with the great names of Galileo, culminates with Newton, and, philosophically, is linked at the outset to the name of Descartes.
1:22:31 Philosophy of the subject—well, well, what a coincidence, you see? I'm showing that there's progress in the sciences, yes, but it took time nonetheless between the appearance of mathematics and the appearance of physics. Because with physics, well, the mathematical equations, the abstractions—fine, he can do whatever he wants with his paper and pencil, but the mathematician, that doesn't concern me, it's abstractions. In fact, as soon as it finds an application, mathematics becomes relevant to understanding the world I live in.
1:23:07 These are giants who met with more resistance, and you understand why Galileo had more trouble than Euclid or Pythagoras. Pythagoras had troubles, but not as a mathematician, isn't that so? Or than Archimedes—no doubt the culmination of ancient mathematics, Archimedes. It matters, what we're currently reviewing.
1:23:37 So there's resistance—already a bit more resistance to physics, as with Galileo's trial before the Church at the time, because there it concerns the world we live in. And then, the closer this science gets—because with physics, well, after all, the planets and so on are still a bit removed from me, after all. I don't know if it's Galileo or the Pope who's right at the time, I mean, as long as it's not about criticizing me, my family, my values, etc.
1:24:08 And then, afterwards, what progress remains beyond the mathematical continent? I give credit to Althusser here, who deserves to have coined this metaphor of continents, because there are plenty of—mathematics has plenty of sub-disciplines: topology, algebra, analysis, geometry; physics, chemistry, strength of materials, whatever. All of that is physics.
1:24:38 And biology—all of a sudden, the living, ah, damn, now that gets closer to me, to you, to me. It concerns the living very much. Long ago people said, yes, but science will never be able to develop far enough to explain the mystery of life, surely. When Claude Bernard, founder of modern biology, started by saying that the living is the dead—well, that takes nerve, you have to dare. How could there not be resistance to things like that? And that's it for the natural sciences: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, the hard sciences—mathematics I added.
1:25:17 Beyond that, beyond that, begin the so-called human sciences or social sciences—psychology, sociology—which appeared at the end of the 19th century. It's all quite coherent, isn't it? Well, discourses appear that claim to be scientific, and then there's the whole debate over whether they really are sciences—of course, one must always put it in quotation marks when it comes to that. And whether we should call them social sciences or human sciences—I've told you we can set that aside for now. The essential point, which is what concerns us, doesn't lie there.
1:25:49 The essential point is: how could we possibly agree about man, about myself this time? You understand what should come to close off this progression—mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, human sciences? At the end, there should be a political science. And here we return to my point about the world, but a world that would be harmonious, perfect, where everyone gets along, where there's no more dissension. Aristotle: mathematics unites men, politics divides them.
1:26:20 You understand why politics, alas, for you, for me, for everyone, is still far from being a science. And why, still, not so far from here, isn't it, the earth alas drinks the blood of the sons of man. And it matters little which side is involved here, isn't it, when I see the average age of those who die in this conflict. But if politics is still far from being a science, it's because there, interests are at stake immediately.
1:26:57 So you understand what I mean, it's almost a law to say that the closer a science gets to the subject, isn't it, the more a body of knowledge, the more rigor concerns the subject, the more it is pushed back, repressed, the more obstacles are put in its way. That's how I answer this question. I greet Estadiski, to whom I promise a reply—I've received messages, I know very well what I'm talking about—very, very soon.
Neopositivism and worldliness: jeans and the American dream 1:27:34 It's because I was busy with this workshop season restart—thanks again to Pierre-Alain—that I delayed answering the question about the translation of Clouscard, but I think I'll come back to it privately. Can you make the connection between neopositivism and worldliness in Clouscard? I just spent two hours doing exactly that, my dear Philippe—no, I say that in a friendly way. First, both come to us from the Anglo-Saxon world, already forgotten. What's the connection between Anglo-Saxon-ness and worldliness?
1:28:10 Listen, and what about jeans—you forgot jeans, which come to us originally from China? Do they come to us originally from Corsica? Everyone wears them in China, in Corsica—that's not the point, myself included. Ah no, I'm not tall enough. There you go—and Clouscard answers this very well in the interview: I wear jeans, I conform to the customs of my era. But if jeans achieved this worldly success—and it really is the fitting term—when we saw the billionaires arriving at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes from a certain year onward, roughly the postwar period, before that it was people in frock coats, ties, isn't it, we started seeing billionaires arriving in jeans at the Carlton Hotel.
1:28:58 How could there have been this transubstantiation of a garment that represented the low end, the bottom of the social ladder, that of the cowhand and the cowboy, literally? I'm answering Philippe Stavisky's question. It's because it's the garment that connotes the Western, the dominant ideology. Well, yes, well, yes.
1:29:28 That is, the richest nation on the planet, especially in the fifties, when America had never been so rich—that is, when everything around it was devastated. And when its fortune and its wealth—I'm not saying... it's good that it entered the war on the side of the Allies, but still, mind you, one must never forget that at the very moment the USSR was piling up 30 million dead, 70,000 cities destroyed and so on, not to mention Poland, not to mention, isn't it, Germany.
1:30:07 I'm speaking of the destruction here, in human lives, in material, in cities, in neighborhoods, and Nuremberg razed, which was reportedly the most beautiful old German city. Meanwhile, not a single brick of a single house, of a single city in the United States was so much as grazed by a single bullet. And thank goodness! I don't wish war on people, I fight for the opposite. Agreed? But one must not forget the objective consequences. That it was the wealthiest country at the moment jeans became fashionable.
1:30:40 That's my answer—here's why a Marxist like Clouscard, it's not that he doesn't content himself, as most Marxists and schools of a certain Parisianism do—I have nothing against Paris, which I adore, and besides, whether I adore it or not, it's the most visited city in the world, there were reasons for that which are beyond me—thankfully, a Marxist like Clouscard saw the link between the vogue of that garment and the fact that it connotes, how do you say it in semantics, that it connotes absolute wealth, the American dream.
1:31:19 But yes, but yes—my holidays in East Germany, I don't know, you're asking me whether I didn't have jeans. But of course—do you think rock music would have succeeded if it hadn't come from the United States? At the time, that was the music of wherever things were happening. We always think there's an ideal California somewhere on the planet, isn't there? But now, in California, there are miles and miles of homeless people in the streets.
1:31:51 And not only that—in California, there are more and more of them. I'm struck by the number of documentaries showing the poverty of entire abandoned towns from Texas to California. Meanwhile I watch documentaries about construction sites in China—I didn't even imagine machines like that could exist, I mean, in remote areas where they're transforming a region as big as a third of France from desert into greenery. All this to illustrate that the world is changing, is in the process of tipping over, and everyone is aware of it.
1:32:23 And I come back to the way Westerners got slapped, so to speak, by the interviews of African heads of state. Yes, Africa is speaking up, having been silent and submissive until now. That's the old habitus stemming from the mentality of the slave. Now Africa is emancipating itself. He says, I hope you're going to arrest Putin. I don't want to go back into my anti-Putin routine—here I'm speaking, I'm no longer anti-Putin, although anti-Putin.
1:32:56 I'm against both. You're going to arrest Putin—arrested by whom? By a co-opted tribunal in which there is neither the United States nor Russia, by the way. You're going to arrest him. The head of state says, but whom did you arrest when you caused over a million deaths in Iraq? When you caused 3 million deaths in Vietnam and 3 million deaths in Korea? 10,000 kilometers from your home, unlike Russia, which is being attacked on its own border, which is threatened on its border with the nuclear weapon, more than ever.
1:33:31 And you want us—you want you to lecture us about arresting Putin? Come now, did you arrest the Bushes, did you arrest the... ah, I forgot the pretty boy caught red-handed at the White House, courtesy of, well, the Clintons—it's not just the Clintons and the Bushes and the Obamas either, you've already forgotten. We could go on down the list all the way to Biden, who got caught red-handed in this scandal where he had a judge fired in Ukraine before the war.
1:34:05 A judge who had dared to demand accountability from his son over corruption. And look at this staggering video where you see Bush, at ease, speaking with the big American lobbies, the big think tanks as they're called, isn't it, and saying, 'Oh, I told them, listen, this judge, you get rid of him for me, this judge causing trouble for my son, you get rid of him for me or you won't get the billion the president promised you.' Besides, he says, I'm taking my flight, and he does this, like me here, looking at his wristwatch, look at the arrogance, I'm taking my flight in three hours, so you have three hours to get rid of that judge for me.
1:34:44 And he says to those around him, isn't it, to the great bosses of these glorious think tanks, who shape public opinion, and they fired him—they say, 'well, so much for that bastard!' You see, but I'm talking about serious things, and now it's just—they don't present it as good versus evil, they're re-releasing the Bush and Reagan saga, the empire of good against the empire of evil—watch out where we're headed, the world isn't that, that's the worldly propaganda line.
1:35:18 There you go. So, thank you for our dear Estavisky's question and thank you for his loyalty, and I'll give him an appointment in the coming days for the follow-up on the Clouscard fund—there's progress, I alluded to it during my talk, and I'll be clearer very soon—and I hope the notion of worldliness has become a little clearer, isn't it—worldliness is a world governed by a prince of this world, there's always someone dominant, isn't there, and this dominant figure means it's not a world without a master.
Epistemic injustice and class struggle 1:36:07 There you go. And jeans, the trousers of the masters of the world. Julien Belmonte, whom I've already seen, I believe I've already seen, in the great course on science—what do you make of the epistemic injustice Donna Haraway raises, which speaks to the credibility problem affecting women or certain ethnic groups? I won't get into that tonight. I'm not saying these are trivial problems, but really, they are so thoroughly debated outside of me—be kind, try to ask me about things where I can actually move things forward.
1:36:38 We only debate that—whether it's TV panels—identities, of that kind, gender, color, really. You want me to get into that? Should we revisit the war between Hutus and Tutsis, Corsicans and French, men and women, young and old? No. Because all that serves to hide the war that bloodies humanity, which is the class struggle. That's my answer to you. I know it may sound a bit hasty, but what can I say? I know you're most certainly, most sincerely concerned with these kinds of issues.
1:37:13 I urge you not to fall into that. We'll address them once you've seen everything the social analysis of the class struggle allows us to answer regarding this question, in the way Marx said: 'Mystification does not come from the answers but from the way of posing the questions.' In other words, it's a mystified question, not a mystifying one—no, I won't allow that. I'm sure you're sincere and that you think it's important. It's a mystifying question.
1:37:43 I've watched my videos enough—forgive me for referring you back to what's already published, but as a kind of proof against opportunism, where I spoke about the African woman, her daily worry of fetching water every morning and wood to heat the water, and someone is going to tell her she's wallowing in consumerism or in any case dominated by I don't know what, while meanwhile her husband has fled to Côte d'Ivoire or Ghana as soon as the dry season comes, to try to sell his arms and legs in the cocoa plantations of countries better watered than the poor Sahel.
1:38:14 I don't know, and you're going to tell him, 'you're a bastard, you're maintaining patriarchal domination over your wife.' I've said it and I repeat it once more to show you there is a justice, since that's the radical stem in 'epistemic injustice,' and a justice in your question, which I respect. I have always said, and I repeat once more, that all things being equal otherwise—that is, once we've accounted for social classes, which is not present in your question—there is no one more exploited than the woman, isn't there, in any society whatsoever, whether it be a poor country, it's still, all things being equal otherwise.
1:39:05 Otherwise, the woman who bears the most of it. I can't be any clearer about the injustice you're speaking of. But well, if you give running water to the women of the Sahel, we're not even talking about a feminist issue—if you simply give them running water, believe me, you will transform what is already her hell into what she will consider a paradise, even if she then sees other problems arise. That's how I answer your question. Deconstruction was not a return of philosophical idealism.
Deconstruction is not an idealism 1:39:35 In the beginning was the word, Christian. First of all, I'm very happy to find Christian Régnier again, who always has very pertinent questions and digs deep. Yes, I wonder whether it's not already gone out of fashion — the tragic side of the current geopolitical situation at least has this positive aspect to its horror. What's positive is that it puts back in their place these ideological debates about deconstruction and Derrida's vision, of course. Well, yes.
1:40:06 There I'll refer you, I think, to the work of our comrade — someone I consider a comrade despite his young age, he's quite brilliant. I'm talking about Simon Verdun, who published with Delga a study on the theme of neo-Kantianism, the critique of neo-Kantianism from the pen of Michel Clouscard precisely. Because it's an answer to Christian's question. What's the connection? That deconstruction is still a way, isn't it?
1:40:39 They say Kant is critical philosophy, and critique is a bit like the termite that eats away at the building, hence deconstruction. Do you see the connection? Except that with Kant there's more than just that. With Derrida, with Derrida, isn't it? Above all one mustn't remain stuck with the grand narrative, one must deconstruct everything that is a grand narrative, starting with history, of course, of course. So these people, who have never deconstructed Heidegger, give us lessons in deconstruction — people who have never deconstructed the most Nazi of philosophers. I'm going to scandalize even more people, but I will do more programs specifically on him, since it's needed.
1:41:19 But there you go, that's how I answer. I take issue precisely with the notion of philosophical idealism. I'm not defending idealism this evening, I'm saying it is not the dominant ideology, whereas deconstruction is, has above all been, and remains for a small sphere of the intelligentsia, a decisive moment of the dominant ideology. But it is not an idealism. It spends its time passing itself off as a critique of idealism, precisely.
1:41:54 There you go. In short, we would need an episode on idealism — not on what was its opposite for centuries, realism, but on its materialist opposite. There you go. And there we'll come back to what I keep trying to make understood, God knows. It's among the least difficult things to understand and yet the hardest thing to get people to admit. Curious. It's a little less curious when we get close to the fact that, as I was saying earlier, the closer science comes to our own reality, the more resistance there is to admitting it — namely that the opposition between idealism and materialism itself has something idealist about it, this very opposition.
1:42:55 To conceive of a matter opposed to spirit is already idealism. That means there would be a spirit that owes nothing to matter — that would need to be established. There you go, I'm having a bit of fun, but Christian is subtle enough to understand what I mean by that. Deconstruction, of course — where I agree is with 'in the beginning was the word,' but there, because Derrida also ties deconstruction to the structuralist current, which wanted to make linguistics the core discipline of all the human sciences.
1:43:30 Whereas a Lévi-Strauss — I was saying earlier that one mustn't be more Leninist than Lenin, well we're not going to be more structuralist than Lévi-Strauss. So a Lévi-Strauss, starting from his mythological series — I know, Chris Régnier, you know what I'm talking about — starting from The Raw and the Cooked, which is the first volume of his series Mythologiques, in his anthropology says clearly that up until then linguistics had been his model of intelligibility, I'm summarizing a bit without distorting his thought in anthropology, and that from The Raw and the Cooked onward, it's music, and no longer the word, isn't it?
1:44:13 That's the title of the magnificent interviews given by the immense conductor Furtwängler, Music and Word. It's music, starting from The Raw and the Cooked, that becomes the model for them. So there you go, it's good to point out that at the beginning there's the word. Why? Because it's undoubtedly in the sciences of language that the bourgeoisie, that bourgeois ideology — and here I don't mean it pejoratively — the greatest tribute ever paid to the bourgeoisie was paid by Marx in the whole first part of the Communist Manifesto.
1:44:45 So there I was, having liquidated religion, the family, do the same yourselves. Well, everything that people are now trying to go back to, in the new right — the one that lumps together 'leftists,' putting communists and leftists all in the same basket. You see? That is, by lumping in today's extreme right — which it calls leftist. Today's extreme right is Atlanticism. It's not the Poujadism of the Le Pens. Well, the two will unite the day there's a danger, they'll unite to shoot us, if they have the means to.
1:45:18 I'm not saying that one is good and the other bad. I'm saying that the most dangerous, the most dangerous extreme right, is the one that has been bloodying the world since before the war. And which continues the crusade against Bolshevism — no longer Judeo-Bolshevism, but against the universal, against progress, against man, to borrow the accursed triangle of postmodern thought.
The chorus and the soloist: from instrumental music to Beethoven 1:45:48 There you go. The singer alone is the heart. Here's someone listening. Yes, it's Daniel Arias, whom I greet more than ever. Comrade, I would love for us to meet one day. Victor Jara — Jara is hard for a Frenchman to say — had a song 'Vientos del pueblo' by the communist poet Miguel Hernández, whom I salute, 'Wind of the People.' There you go. Of course. I was thinking of Neruda, I won't hide it from you, earlier, to stay within Latin culture, but I thank you here for the mention of the immense Miguel Hernández.
1:46:24 And yes, I take the opportunity to say — I was talking about it yesterday, sorry, with Laurent Angot, a wonderful reader of texts across all of literary history and at the same time extremely rigorous in the conceptual analysis of the world around us.
1:46:56 I was talking with this young man yesterday, at the Jardin des Plantes, I won't hide it from you, and I was bringing up, apparently — it seems unrelated to what Daniel Arias just said, the quotation, but it is related — we were talking, in the history of music, about the late emergence of music that is not pure, music always in the service of something other than music, in the service of, I don't know, the coronation of a king, a mass, a requiem, celebrating a victory, a Te Deum, isn't it, as there were after Waterloo throughout England.
1:47:34 In short, this music in the service of a wedding, a funeral, whether in so-called primitive societies — without writing, to be more objective — or in the most developed societies, music in the service of something else, and the late appearance, starting from the 17th, 18th century — that's already quite late — of the first concerts of instrumental music, where there is no longer a voice, no longer tied to a text, to an extra-musical content.
1:48:04 And so, a kind of cunning of reason — I'll come back to this concept, which will occupy us next time, I wanted to develop it this time but I've made rather long detours as it is — this interiorization, even just the arrival of the piano in homes, in bourgeois families in the 19th century, the first concerts of instrumental music in the 17th century, is an interiorization that runs counter to what Miguel Hernández says here and what Daniel Arias reminds us of, counter to the collective that interiorizes — it instead develops the musical culture of the individual's intimacy.
1:48:52 Well, this cycle ends dialectically — look how magnificent the rigor is — with Beethoven, Beethoven who is perhaps, among the great composers, the one who wrote the least vocal music. He wrote a few songs, a handful, and he wrote one mass, we have a few choral works, but very few compared to all his contemporaries, his predecessors and his successors. On the other hand, he's an undisputed champion of instrumental music, and not just of the piano, not just of solo instruments, but of the symphony in particular — that is, the whole ensemble of instruments, all voice excluded. And there, in the Ninth Symphony, this long historical phase had allowed a deepening, a complexification of musical discourse; having passed through interiority, through subtlety, all of a sudden it comes back into the light of the public chorus, in the finale of the Ninth Symphony, in Schiller's Ode to Joy, which I'm sorry to say has been sullied by the Commission,
1:50:02 by the European Union. There you go. So, thank you very much, Daniel, for this relationship between the chorus and the soloist — but of course, the chorus is the collective, yet you see, the collective sometimes has to exile itself into the interiority of the individual, you see, it takes all sorts to make a world, so that this collective isn't that of a society dominated by bloodthirsty trusts, but a somewhat more just society than another.
Hölderlin: "no one alone bore life" 1:50:36 For that, one has to take into account the richness of what makes up that society, that is, the individuals. I don't know if we've covered everything, Pierre-Alain — well, there's Laurent: 'no one was alone to bear life.' Ah, I see Laurent quoting Hölderlin, for once it's not me doing it, I'm delighted, that encourages me to start doing it again. Yes, this excerpt, a magnificent excerpt from Hölderlin, an excerpt from the great hymn called Bread and Wine, Brot und Wein, where, in evoking Greece, one might still believe it's nostalgia for Greece, the city, Apollo, the beautiful statue, aestheticism and balance — not at all, that's not Hölderlin's approach at all.
1:51:24 What he misses about Greece isn't just the beauty of the statues, it's that 'no one was alone to bear life.' Often, to make that understood, I say: well, what are we doing tonight? I don't know, tonight I'm going to After Hours, to a trendy café near, near Ménilmontant — that's an impersonal game — me, I'd like that, but I'm a bit tired, a bit tired now. Or no, I'd rather go to the cinema, no, I want to watch — I haven't won anything, I'm running a workshop tonight, sorry, I've served myself well enough on my own — and we have an almost infinite range of choices, where I do nothing, where I have a date with you, as the song says, Brassens, isn't it?
1:52:07 The question doesn't arise in Athens, on the evening when Aeschylus puts on The Persians — the whole city has a rendezvous on the tiers of the amphitheater. No one was alone to bear life, for such a good, the supreme good, gives joy through exchange and sharing with strangers. Here we are at the opposite of those obsessed with the 'great replacement.' Well, yes!
1:52:41 Oh yes, since the left, the true left, has almost disappeared from the political landscape, why would you expect the right to hold back? Aren't you happy with Zemmour, with Le Pen? You have only yourselves to blame. I'm paraphrasing Clouscard, who said: 'You didn't want communism, they didn't want communism, let them sort themselves out.' I'm quoting him, forgive me, with his Tarn accent and his crude language, because he said that not in a publication, but in private.
1:53:15 'They didn't want communism, let them sort themselves out.' Yes, yes! Because the opposite, isn't it, of this return of everything we thought had been banned since 1945, since the Liberation, everything that has the smell of those newspaper pages people used to hang up in toilets before the war, in public places. What is opposed to that is this good that exists only through exchange and sharing with strangers. That's what gives joy.
1:53:45 Thank you very much, Laurent, for bringing us back to the essential. I don't know if I can still take up more of your time, it's Pierre-Alain who will decide, because he too has to give of his time. I don't know, he's kind enough to devote it to us. And I'll try here perhaps to give back some of that. Pierre-Alain, are there still questions?
1:54:17 Can you hear me, Dominique? I think we can stop for tonight. I believe we've reached the end of the questions. I'm very, very happy to have found you all again. And I won't give you the date. In principle it's in two weeks that we should resume this, but I don't dare commit too firmly, because we're coming out of this period of exams, competitions, etc., which means that everyone who helps me put together these broadcasts and these audiovisual publications, as we used to say, are quite busy, and for excellent reasons.
1:54:54 And now we're about to enter the holiday season, so I don't quite dare give you a date, but I'll do everything I can so that in two weeks there's a continuation of our serial on this concept of mondanité in Michel Clouscard. In any case, thank you for taking part in this session, and again, sorry for such a long absence, and thank you for continuing together.
