ABSTRACT
The separation of the body-object from the reason-subject is the result of an operation that constituted them as distinct, an operation that chained the sensible to the unclear and the particular, and decided autocratically that only the intelligible was capable of clarity and universality. For Spinoza, knowledge of the sensible, or more precisely through the sensible, is far from being concerned with private life alone. To put things differently, the sensible cannot be considered an extension or an appendix of the conflicts that run through or more precisely constitute society. This is given to us to see and hear by the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi in Crimson Gold. Montaigne in his Essays was one of the first in Renaissance Europe to take a genuine interest in the study of the fluctuations of the sensible without any value judgment concerning “authenticity” or “inauthenticity”.
