Empiricism

empirisme

Worked through in 8 videos · 14 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani presents empiricism as the first and most immediate answer to the question "what can I know?": everything that experience, empeiria, teaches me1. Its fundamental statement is that nothing is in the mind that has not first passed through the senses2. In it, the subject is a passive mirror, empty until experience makes it fruitful, and the subject thus abstracts itself away3. Knowledge is built through association, from sensations to perceptions, then to words, judgements and reasoning4. He states the limit of this position consistently from one session to the next: empiricism gives reality, but not the true, because everything flows away5. Taken consistently, it ends in scepticism, since one cannot pass from the particular to the universal; a consistent empiricist should therefore not write systems6. He links empiricism to the Anglo-Saxon field of thought and to d'Alembert. He sees it as the weak point of the Enlightenment: a "bad empiricism" that confuses matter, truth and reality with the sensible7.

Summary produced automatically from 14 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 15 · 8 Oct 2026Nature vs. freedom?

15:16Its fundamental statement: nothing is in the mind that has not first passed through the senses. The empiricist starts from facts.

Cycle 15 · 28 Aug 2026From Copernicus to Lenin: revolution!

21:49Empeiria, experience, to go around; bad empiricism, the weak point of the Enlightenment, confuses matter with the objects of the senses.
34:11In d'Alembert, everything starts from the senses: this is the confusion of truth and reality with the sensible.
1:08:32The empiricist makes the mind an empty mirror until experience fertilizes it: the subject there abstracts from itself.

Series · 25 Mar 2021#18 What is musical in music

1:14:52A consistent empiricism leads to skepticism, which is its limit; it should neither speak nor write of systems.

Cycle 9.2 · 17 Mar 2021#9.17 The geopolitical metaphor: Planck, Descartes, Clouscard

23:30Anglo-Saxon field of thought where sensory experience is the criterion.
59:21In d'Alembert, all direct knowledge comes from the senses: empiricism close to sensualism, English ideology.

Talks · 21 Sept 2019Pagani without detours

20:01Starts from facts, from things: one has reality, but can say nothing true about it.

Cycle 2 · 1 Aug 2017#2.7 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

1:15:49Empiricism puts one in contact with reality but makes it hopeless to state the least truth about it, since everything flows.

Cycle 1 · 10 Dec 2015#1.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

9:10First and most immediate answer to "what can I know": one has the real, but not the true.
1:28:41The subject is here a passive mirror: nothing is in the mind that has not first passed through the senses.

Cycle 1 · 14 Sept 2015#1.3 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

41:18First answer to "what can I know?": everything experience teaches me, empeiria.
49:21An associationist construction: from sensations to perceptions, to words, to judgments, to reasoning.
1:14:57Consistent, he tends toward skepticism: one does not pass from the particular to the universal.