Talks · 2 Dec 2024Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning- 1:30:32Formal right matters, but one understands what "formal" means when it conceals the worst crimes.
Law
Worked through in 15 videos · 18 passages.
Summary
Dominique Pagani approaches right (droit) mainly through Rousseau and the formula of the Social Contract, which he takes up from 2017 to 2024: the strongest must convert his strength into right and obedience into duty1. Force explains a power without making it legitimate. One does not obey it, one submits to it, and force alone leads to the war of each against all. Only right stabilises a political order2. He stresses that there is no continuous passage from one to the other: force is a relation between things, right a relation between persons1. For him, Rousseau thus opposes the state of right to the state of fact, and making the success of the strongest the measure of justice, as in the Gorgias, amounts to reducing right to fact3. He distinguishes positive right, laid down by human beings, from natural right understood as the universal4. He links archaic vengeance to right, and the vendetta ends when right becomes bound to the public. Finally, he notes that formal right matters, but that it can conceal the worst crimes5.
- 1#3.6 From Ulysses to Daedalus1 Aug 2017 · 39:16
- 2#1.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?10 Dec 2015 · 1:14:06
- 3#10.7 “Postmodern” eco-petty-Nazism: Plato's Gorgias23 Dec 2021 · 15:24
- 4#10.5 The figure of Antigone, such as into herself at last…24 Nov 2021 · 1:22:51
- 5Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning2 Dec 2024 · 1:30:32
Summary produced automatically from 18 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
Talks · 2 Dec 2024Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning
Cycle 13 · 2 Sept 2024Clouscard: The metamorphoses of class struggle- 1:29:16The strongest must convert his force into right and his obedience into duty: this is the exit from natural legislation.
Cycle 11 · 7 Aug 2023Niger special: should we “blacken the corpses”?- 57:10The strongest is never strong enough to remain master unless he converts his force into right.
Talks · 29 May 2023From the debauchery of sense to the orgy of sentiment- 2:12:21In the eighteenth century, natural law is opposed to positive law, a code that maintains the violence of the dominant.
Cycle 10 · 23 Dec 2021#10.7 “Postmodern” eco-petty-Nazism: Plato's Gorgias
Cycle 10 · 24 Nov 2021#10.5 The figure of Antigone, such as into herself at last…- 1:22:51Positive law or religion is what is posited by men; the natural here designates the universal, not the naturalistic.
Cycle 7 · 11 Apr 2020#4 Harnessed to confinitude- 38:51The strongest must convert his force into right and obedience into duty; obeying the law one has prescribed for oneself is freedom.
Series · 23 Mar 2020Introduction to the upcoming workshops- 51:26According to Rousseau, force explains a power but confers no legitimacy on it; the strongest must convert his force into right and obedience into duty.
Cycle 6 · 19 Feb 2020#6.5 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism- 1:00:18Only right stabilizes power; strength alone leads to the permanent war of all against all.
Cycle 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.6 From Ulysses to Daedalus- 39:16The strongest must convert his force into right and obedience into duty. There is no continuous passage: force is a relation between things, right a relation between persons.
Series · 29 Jan 2016What is to be done? 2/3- 26:46Rousseau opposes the state of right to the state of fact; he is not moralizing to the state, he shows that a power not founded on contract is illegitimate.
Cycle 1 · 10 Dec 2015#1.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?- 1:14:06One does not obey force, one submits to it; only the conversion of force into right founds a stable political order.
Talks · 23 Jun 2015L'île du Peuple: the debate- 23:40The social contract begins when force is put at the service of law; a stable rule presupposes something other than force.
Series · 5 Jan 2015V for Vengeance
Series · 20 Sept 2014#2 Rousseau, a world that begins- 50:41One must obey the law when it expresses right, and rebel when it expresses only force.