Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Logic of Intermittency
- 2 Sporadic Modernity
- 3 A Counter-phenomenology of Spirit
- 4 Alternances Indépassables
- 5 Intermittency and Melancholy
- Conclusion: Prolegomena to a Critical Synthesis
- Appendix Lardreau: Philosophization, Negation and Veracity
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Intermittency and Melancholy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Logic of Intermittency
- 2 Sporadic Modernity
- 3 A Counter-phenomenology of Spirit
- 4 Alternances Indépassables
- 5 Intermittency and Melancholy
- Conclusion: Prolegomena to a Critical Synthesis
- Appendix Lardreau: Philosophization, Negation and Veracity
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
EGALITARIAN AND DEMOCRATIC EVENTS
In 1664, the impoverished Dutch peasant and practising shoemaker Dirk Rembrantsz leaves his village to go and consult Descartes. Rembrantsz's knowledge of mathematics is extraordinary, and Descartes has a reputation for being easily approachable. The philosopher's attendants take the shoemaker for an importunate beggar, and brusquely rebuff him. But Rembrantsz remains undeterred. He returns three months later, in the same poor suit that he wore the first time. The attendants inform Descartes of the beggar's persistence. The philosopher is hard at work in his study, and too preoccupied to see the shoemaker, but obligingly tells the attendants to offer him money. However, poverty has not stripped Rembrantsz of his dignity. He refuses Descartes's charity, and leaves. A few months later, however, he comes back yet again. Descartes finally grants him an audience. He quickly recognizes Rembrantsz's competence and merit, and agrees to teach him. From that point onwards, Rembrantsz pays frequent visits, going on to become one of the foremost astronomers of the century.
The story is taken from Adrien Baillet's Vie de Monsieur Descartes (1691), and provides the epigraph to Rancière's Le Philosophe et ses pauvres. As epigraph, however, its relation to the volume it precedes is curiously oblique if not ironical. For Le Philosophe et ses pauvres is preoccupied with a movement that is the reverse of the progress recounted by Baillet.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- IntermittencyThe Concept of Historical Reason in Recent French Philosophy, pp. 202 - 245Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011