Liberation

Summary

Dominique Pagani prefers to speak of liberation rather than freedom: the suffix denotes a process, a movement, an action, not a quality one would possess1. He sees in it the synthesis that dismisses two abstract universals, integral determinism and innate freedom: one starts from determined situations in order to free oneself from them, and praxis serves as the mediation234. He takes the example of the Dutch reclaiming land from the North Sea, or that of the washing machine, which frees women from doing the laundry. With Hegel, he reads history as the progressive realisation of concrete freedom. In Nerval's "Angélique", liberation leads out of repetition: from the mother's tomb to Rousseau's, the personal novel opens onto collective emancipation, which he figures through Daedalus climbing back out of the labyrinth5. He also mentions Wagner, who expects his liberation as an artist from the spirit of the people, and workers' struggles, which extended sexual liberation.

1. 1Praxis and psyche27 Mar 2023 · 16:04
2. 2#1.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?28 Jan 2016 · 1:52:22
3. 3#5.2 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought21 Nov 2018 · 1:48:12
4. 4Nature vs. freedom?8 Oct 2026 · 1:03:32
5. 5#9.24 “Ruled like music paper!” Nerval, Baudelaire (part 2)30 Jun 2021 · 1:23:48

Summary produced automatically from 22 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.