English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Pascal: we never love anyone, but only qualities 2:00 "If I pass by there, can I say that he stationed himself there to see me? No, for he isn't thinking of me in particular. But does someone who loves a person for their beauty love them? No, for smallpox, which will kill the beauty without killing the person, will make him love them no longer. And if I am loved for my judgment, for my memory, am I loved? No, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where then is this self, if it is neither in the body nor in the soul? And how can one love the body or the soul except for qualities, which are not what makes the self, since they are perishable? For would one love the substance of a person's soul in the abstract, whatever qualities were in it? That cannot be, and would be unjust."
2:46 "So one never loves anyone, but only qualities. So let us no longer mock those who seek to be honored for their positions and offices, for one loves no one except for borrowed qualities." So then, it has no more quality. I asked whether at a certain point this wasn't the "what" of Pascal's "I don't know what." It's indeed quality. But that's the same thing, because quality answers the question "what?" Ah, so, is my bag heavy or light? Is this table rough or smooth? I multiply the adjectives.
Quality speaks of the relation of the thing to me 3:26 This whole business produces millions of deaths. Because everyone trusts that they're talking about the thing itself, the table, in this case, being rough or smooth, the bag being heavy or light, whereas a market porter will find it light and a weakling like me will find it heavy. So I'm not talking about the bag, but about the relation of the bag to me. I'm talking about myself.
3:56 And even taking it further, someone who tells me, "Sir, I don't like Mozart," tells me nothing about Mozart. He's talking to me about himself. It doesn't change a single note of Mozart's work, whether he likes it or not. It alters the Mozartian corpus not one bit. But on the other hand, it tells me about him, poor fellow, he's followed paths that make him miss out on his heritage, so to speak. Which is rightfully his, even if he doesn't yet recognize it in fact. So, qualities—I come back to heavy and light, or hot and cold.
4:29 I'll give priority to that one because it came about all at once—well, not all at once, it took millennia, the progress of thought, of experience, of reasoning, to create the notion of temperature in science, for example. Because one could argue about whether it's hot or cold between a Russian and an African in the same room, after all. One can always argue, which is silly. That's why I say it produces millions of deaths each, this qualitative business, as Pascal denounces. Whereas if I say this bag weighs 10 kilos, or I say it's 28 degrees, then everyone is free—you, him, me—to find that 28 degrees is hot, is cold, is something else.
5:07 So this is something we've so forgotten, especially, to come back again to my indictment of ecologism, that we reason almost entirely in terms of qualities. And that means harmful, dangerous, unhealthy. All the time, people tell me, now, when I eat, I don't eat that, because it's not good, trace elements, not enough, too much. A pressed lemon, which is excellent given the vitamin C, etc., for someone who was on ships in the old days, where they stayed for months like that with no vitamins at all, to the point of getting scurvy, was saved by a lemon.
5:40 For me, who have had two ulcers, that same pressed lemon could give me a hemorrhage. Nothing is good or bad in itself for one's health. It depends a bit. And so, it's no small hare that Pascal is starting up here—I find him, taking this word as a philosopher of religion, hence reactionary, through a stupid chain of associations, actually a great radical revolutionary here, Pascal. Because, what was I saying earlier, commenting on the Marxist Clouscard's treatise on mad love, a Marxist writing a treatise on mad love, a Marxist writing on Tristan—I was saying, ah but watch out, history has accumulated material that forms the content of our affectivity, of our affects.
History within our affects: Senancour and Swann 6:31 I was denouncing a bit the cognitive sciences of today, or those who hold to a neo-Spinozist naturalism like Lordon, for neglecting the historical dimension due to the praxis of our affects, of which I'd give a single example, cited by a little-known writer, of whom Sainte-Beuve said, "Monsieur de Senancour will have a discreet but faithful posterity"—in all vanity, I hope to be part of it, I am a faithful follower of Senancour. I mention him because he was one of the owners of the estate where we are.
7:03 What a coincidence, Étienne Pivert de Senancour. He wrote admirable texts on landscape which are still relevant today. Well, Senancour at one point speaks of autumn, since we're in the forest of Fontainebleau, not far from here, in the southern Île-de-France, where he says, after having praised the season, a classical theme at the time, romantic, which was in harmony with his melancholy, he says, "Spring is more beautiful in nature." There, I'm talking to you about aesthetics. "Spring is more beautiful in nature." But man has done so much—here's someone who doesn't forget history—"But man has done so much that autumn is sweeter."
7:41 Admirable passage. It shows that human aesthetics goes beyond criteria of beauty that were purely formal, or morphological, among the Greeks for example. "Spring is more beautiful in nature." "Spring is more beautiful than a spring." But man has done so much that autumn is sweeter. So the integration of the labor of several millennia of history into the heart of our heart, which means that when Swann meets Odette for the first time, he doesn't yet know he's in love, he doesn't yet know he's already trapped, as we all are when it begins—it's not obvious—he leaves Odette, who has just made him tea in her little bachelor pad, as we'd say today, and there he murmurs to himself.
8:32 "It's really rather pleasant to know a person who knows how to make such good tea." So, once again, he loved Odette for qualities, as Pascal would say. What Pascal says is revolutionary. He's saying that every time we state qualities, it's not a fault in itself, but one mustn't be intellectually lazy. One must not forget that quality doesn't speak about the thing, is never objective, but speaks of the relation of the thing to me.
9:02 Like when I say it's heavy or light, depending on the force I can exert. And so, one must take quality very seriously, since it contains both subject and object at once, if I were to speak in abstract terms, me and the thing, and even the other—but at the same time, one must not leave it at this initial state of quality. But I gave an example, I say this because today's period is hyper in favor of quality, against quantity, that's well known—quantity, waste, over-consumption, we come back to it.
9:34 But in a way, if the notion of temperature hadn't appeared, we'd still be arguing about whether it's cold or hot. So on that point, it's not too serious, but these things degenerate quickly, as in the Lilliputian wars, where Swift says the conflict broke out between those who said eggs should be broken from the big end, and those who said they should be broken from the little end—showing the absurdity that is often at the root of carnage, the trivial stakes involved. There. To answer on quality, then, I take quality very seriously, and I now add a further determination to answer your question, trying to be exhaustive.
Quality and finality: overproduction, good and bad 10:11 It has, in particular, this advantage—quality—of bringing in what the universe of science doesn't know: the universe of finality. Whereas science, rightly, its mission, begins by trying to remove all subjective input in order to be sure of the objectivity of what it speaks about. That's the least it can do. But as a result, and I come back to words earlier, you see that our letters intertwine to make words, sentences and discourses, and the instance of the letter in the unconscious, as Lacan would say, namely that, I said earlier that the word inscribes itself in a triangle thanks to the word—me, I, first vertex of the triangle, I can speak of the thing, name the thing, number 2, second vertex, and point it out to the other.
11:00 This triangle, which is inseparable—well, by abandoning everyday language, the kind that makes us say every morning, "look, the day is rising," it's a metaphor, as I said earlier, it's poetry, not science. In saying "the day rises" as if it were emerging from the sheets and getting out of bed, etc., we can spin out the metaphor, I mean, we're saying nonsense astronomically speaking, but on the other hand, we're saying something profound, extremely profound, by personifying the sun, and by recalling that quality is inseparable from finality.
11:43 That is to say that the word expressing quality in discourse only has meaning in relation to a goal I am pursuing, to take up the word "end." I'll give a very simple, current example with the crisis. From what point do we decide that we're in overproduction? For me, that's a qualitative judgment, even though it seems hyper-quantitative, overproduction. Really? From what point am I producing too much? If I put it like that, it makes no sense.
12:13 On the other hand, it's true that the crisis of the 1930s, that's what it was—when coffee was thrown into locomotives or milk into gutters to try to push back up prices that were collapsing with the deflation that threatens us today. Topical. It seems absurd—one can't say that during the misery of the 1930s crisis, which Steinbeck illustrated so well in The Grapes of Wrath, for example, one can't say that children had too much milk. What does that mean? We're producing too much relative to the margin I want to extract from it.
12:45 There's the unspoken goal that suddenly gives meaning to the quality of "too much." Too much, not enough. All these words presuppose a slider, from which point I decide that beyond this slider it's too much, below it it's not enough. Which is fine, provided one makes the slider explicit. This slider is always an end, and that's what is most hidden from knowledge and from opinion. From what finality can I decide that this is good and this is bad? Otherwise I do like Bush, pointing to the empire of evil, and therefore I myself can only belong to the good.
13:19 I'll finish on the two main qualities, good and bad, which are the origin of all the others. Good is what brings me closer to the goal I'm pursuing, bad is what takes me away from it. Well, yes!
