Slave

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches the slave first through the Hegelian dialectic of master and slave. He links it to the German pair Herr und Knecht, "you die or you serve me"1. The vanquished preferred life to freedom: he becomes a slave and finds his independence in thinghood2. Shaped by fear and labour, the servile consciousness is the truth of the master and turns into true independence3. The slave shapes the world with his hands and finds his own image in it, which never happens to the master; the master thus becomes the slave of the slave4. He also gives the slave a historical dimension. The slave is the dominant productive force until the end of Antiquity, and it was force that made the first slaves5. With Rousseau, history takes the place of the natures Aristotle believed he saw6. He also reads the struggle of the Titans and the gods as the conflict between slaves and free citizens7. Finally, he discusses the origin of the word "Slav" and the raids in sub-Saharan Africa, which remain a taboo subject89.

1. 1Proust30 Jan 2020 · 1:08:47
2. 2Hegel Plage 4/52 Feb 2016 · 1:21:25
3. 3Hegel Plage 4/52 Feb 2016 · 1:41:54
4. 4Z comme Zéro9 Jan 2015 · 8:31
5. 5Préface au mémoire de Simon Verdun, « La critique du néokantisme chez Michel Clouscard », soutenue à l’ENS DE Paris, sanctionnée par une mention très bien.5 Jul 2018 · 41:28
6. 6#3.6 D'Ulysse à Dédale1 Aug 2017 · 1:16:39
7. 7Mythologie et Vérité8 Aug 2015 · 28:02
8. 8L'identité imaginaire15 May 2025 · 12:52
9. 9L'identité imaginaire15 May 2025 · 28:35

Summary produced automatically from 10 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.