11. Accursed from Birth* Enigma and enigmatization The plot of Oedipus Tyrannus is the story of an unveiling, a “tragic analysis,” as Schiller calls it, [1] but the dénouement discloses that the play’s story has a prehistory in the form of a “myth”: the myth of the Labdacid family. Now, the dramatic unfolding contains gaps. Why… Read more
12. Two Phases of Recognition in Sophocles’ Electra* Preamble Electra hates her mother, Clytemnestra, and she does not hesitate to tell her so. Their confrontation will represent the play’s major contest (agōn), a merciless struggle between the two women, up to the point when the dramatic action sets Orestes’ plan in motion and at the same time brings about Electra’s downfall. She… Read more
13. Reading the Cosmogonies* There is not just one cosmogony, there are many, a whole typology of cosmogonies; every philosopher could have his own: a typical form could be taken up again and knowingly modified. It was a major step forward when, instead of constructing a fictitious continuity or evolution, I was able to differentiate, according to the doxography, between closed, unique worlds,… Read more
14. Empedocles: A Single Project, Two Theologies* Recent discussions, in part linked to the publication of the Strasbourg papyrus in 1999, [1] encourage a reconsideration of the relation between Empedocles’ two poems, On Nature, or The Origins, and The Purifications. [2] My own position on the issue had not yet been resolved when… Read more
15. The Parmenidean Cosmology of Parmenides* Cosmology has been treated as a poor relation. Here we shall study it for itself, according to its own logic—which is not exclusive to cosmology—without bringing in the question of the relation it necessarily maintains with the successive interpretations of ἔστι (“is”) in fragment 8. [1] The status that has been assigned… Read more
16. Expressing Differences* If hermeneutics is critical, it must be historical; its task is to reconstitute a project in its own time. Precision remains forever inscribed in the letter of the text. Distinctive expression has the power to endure. This is the property of written works, and also oral works, works “written” orally before writing, and composed as if they were going to… Read more
17. The Heraclitean Logos* Historians of Greek thought have tended to begin by trying to read Heraclitus as a systematic thinker; they have tried to decipher a world-system in his work comparable to those of other archaic thinkers, and they have sought to reveal its place in a general cosmology. The repeated failure of these attempts at reconstruction finally convinced me that Heraclitus… Read more
18. Reading a Reference?* Freud was preoccupied by the role he had had to attribute—or so he thought—to the death principle, a role for which Empedocles’ cosmogony provided a distant model. I later reconstituted that cosmology in very different terms, which were not understood in the same way in Freud’s day. [1] Freud was undoubtedly led astray by… Read more
19. The Scientistic Model: Freud and Empedocles* Preliminary remark A dichotomy is introduced into the analysis of any object of study. The phenomenon studied is situated along a line of evolution. Given the goal of assigning meaning, this dichotomy produces a division between anticipation (or “intuition”) and primitivism, between “going beyond” and “falling short.” In fact, it is only a matter of… Read more
20. Benjamin Reading Kafka* Kafka Then and now Kafka’s unique work—unique in more than one sense—never brings to light anything but its own making, in progress; its status is not that of the already “made,” however carefully composed it may seem (even though the texts were often written in great haste). The strongest linguistic concentration tolerates the maintenance of a certain distance,… Read more
