Ringvorlesung | Prof Dr Pierre Cassou-Noguès | Université Paris 8

Sea, sex and sun. Or the Unnatural Indolence of the sea-side.

Sitting in the sun, doing nothing, diving in the water, playing with waves... The beach is associated with a specific kind of freedom. We are on holiday, and drop all the constraints, and most of the clothes, and maybe the philosophy in which our daily life are locked up.
I will invoke various characters (from the 18th century to the present day) who have at different times visited the same beach, in the South West of France. I will compare their descriptions of the place in order to try and understand how this unnatural freedom was constituted, what does it amount to, and to what extent it may be threaten both by the plastic bottle, which I leave on the sand, and the mobile phone that I am careful to not to forget.


Pierre Cassou-Noguès is Professor of Philosophy at University Vincennes-Saint Denis Paris 8. He is also co-editor of the journal SubStance (John Hopkins Univ. Press). His recent work puts stress on the use of fiction in theory as a means to conceptualize domains that have been repressed by the philosophical tradition (such as the seaside by contrast to firm ground, or leisure by contrast to work)