Series · 6 Jul 2026From Plato to ProustOtherness
Worked through in 12 videos · 15 passages.
Summary
Dominique Pagani approaches otherness through the relation between the same and the other. He recalls that in the Sophist, Plato acknowledges that there is sameness insofar as there is otherness, each needing the other1. He asserts that in nature there is only otherness, not identity, and that identity is obtained only by measuring oneself against the greatest otherness: this is how French national feeling is born of the Hundred Years' War2. He describes the shift from "Know thyself", the privilege of identity, to "I is another", the privilege of otherness, in which the modern subject speaks of himself as of another. The human being, unfinished at birth, is unified by another and for another. He draws practical questions from this. Addressing mute things rather than men amounts to fleeing true otherness3. In the loving gaze as in front of machines, the question is whether one is dealing with someone or with something4.
- 1O for Opposition29 Dec 2014 · 10:27
- 2#11 Return to the logics of the subject21 Jun 2020 · 55:38
- 3My eco-cabin in the ZAD: autonomy or alienation?30 Apr 2021 · 18:43
- 4From Plato to Proust6 Jul 2026 · 32:59
Summary produced automatically from 15 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Series · 6 Jul 2026From Plato to Proust
Cycle 12 · 4 Jan 2024I am not who you think I am: the elusive identity- 1:28:43A philosophy must aim at deliverance from evil, which requires being with others: hence the relation to alterity.
Cycle 9.2 · 27 May 2021#9.22 Science and/or philosophy of “artificial intelligence” (part 2)
Series · 30 Apr 2021My eco-cabin in the ZAD: autonomy or alienation?- 18:43Addressing mute things rather than men capable of answering amounts to fleeing the true otherness that man is for himself.
Series · 3 Dec 2020#2 From Lévi-Strauss to Nerval, on music- 31:19The triangle of me, the thing, and the other replaces the binary relation to the thing; it justifies the necessity of the public.
Cycle 8 · 21 Jun 2020#11 Return to the logics of the subject- 55:38Identity is only obtained by measuring itself against the greatest alterity, like the French national sentiment born of the Hundred Years' War. Being identitarian is not the same as being anti-racist.
Cycle 6 · 29 Mar 2020#6.6 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism- 1:31:47The human being, unfinished at birth, is unified by another and for another: his personality is alienated from the start.
Cycle 6 · 30 Jan 2020#6.4 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism- 3:53"I is another": the modern subject speaks of himself as another.
Cycle 6 · 8 Jan 2020#6.3 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism- 1:37:19One moves from "Know thyself," the privilege of identity, to "I is an other," the privilege of otherness.
Talks · 6 Dec 2019“The Brass Band's Journey”, by Dominique Memmi- 33:28Mathilde is only white because she is looked at as white: it is always others who impose the question of color.
Series · 8 Dec 2015Michel Clouscard, the paths of praxis (2/2)- 27:10In nature there is only otherness, no identity.
Series · 29 Dec 2014O for Opposition