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Freedom

liberté

Worked through in 82 videos · 146 passages.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani traces the modern concept of freedom back to Rousseau. Rousseau makes it the foundation of anthropology, as gravitation is the foundation of the natural sciences1. Freedom then replaces the good as the keystone: it is the possibility of doing good as well as evil. To be free is less to do what one wants than not to depend on the labour of another, and to obey the law one has prescribed for oneself2. He distinguishes it from the freedom of the Franks, that of the victor who enslaves. He also distinguishes it from the "freedom of the void", which flees every determination and in action becomes a fury of destruction3. Taking up Spinoza and Hegel, he defines it as the understanding of necessity: it exists only as liberation4. With Kant, it is a postulate of practical reason: philosophy presupposes it, without this proving that it exists5. In Hegel, it gives history its non-totalitarian meaning: one is free, then some, then all. Separated from equality, it remains an empty form.

  1. 1Mon éco-cabane dans la ZAD : autonomie ou aliénation ? • Q&A Philosophique • Dominique Pagani30 Apr 2021 · 9:13
  2. 2L comme Liberté26 Dec 2014 · 3:18
  3. 3#5.2 bis FaceBookLive / Questions (1)6 Dec 2018 · 44:23
  4. 4Ce soir, on repolitise. 2ème partie31 Mar 2018 · 1:27:27
  5. 5L’éternel retour… des camps de la mort ?13 Oct 2024 · 19:16

Summary produced automatically from 146 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Season 9.1 · 30 Nov 2020#6 Answers to questions
  1. 10:48Freedom is not a red herring: it is the result of the whole of human action since prehistory, the only non-totalitarian meaning of human action.
  2. 12:54It is made real by the material advances of a man who, fleeing finitude, produces a new world.
Talks · 2 Jul 2018The Phenomenology of Spirit
  1. 19:59Free will has objective conditions which form a system and which history progressively realizes.
  2. 44:07All of Hegel's philosophy is a philosophy of freedom; the Phenomenology describes the liberation of human existence.
  3. 1:27:23Freedom is a power that passes into existence through the mediation of equality and produces fraternity.
Talks · 31 Mar 2018Tonight, we repoliticise. Part 2
  1. 23:30History had a meaning as long as it sought the conditions of freedom, which form an ordered system.
  2. 54:10In Hegel, freedom gives history its only non-totalitarian meaning and remains inseparable from the assumption of death.
  3. 1:27:27Freedom is necessity understood; if it is not primary, it cannot be final; it exists only as liberation.
Talks · 12 Mar 2018Tonight, we repoliticise. Part 1
  1. 10:36The conditions of liberty form an ordered system; to be free is to be at home in the world, identical with oneself amid diversity.
  2. 1:47:00Man is free from the outset but is only free by liberating himself: no liberty without liberation, no liberation without liberty.
Season 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.6 From Ulysses to Daedalus
  1. 24:36To be modern, the idea of the good embodied by the sun must be replaced by the idea of freedom.
  2. 35:36Freedom moves in the opposite direction to gravitation: Rousseau is as powerful in liberation as Newton is in subjection.
  3. 1:41:04Freedom is the meaning of history, the opposite of the totalitarian: to bring about the greatest number of free individuals.
Talks · 9 Mar 2017Is History a subject?
  1. 1:13:13History has a meaning, freedom; there is progress when one moves from a less free situation to a freer one.
  2. 1:22:44This meaning is not totalitarian: it tends toward as many free individuals as possible.
  3. 1:27:31Freedom requires material means, such as the bow or the horse collar, and not ideas alone.
Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 4/5
  1. 26:28Freedom is not something already given, nor a quality: it is the path from determination to freedom, which is called liberation.
  2. 27:49Freedom is the substance, the gravity of the will, just as gravity is that of bodies.
  3. 2:33:49Making freedom the meaning of history gives a non-linear meaning, one that can fail: this failure is called barbarism.
Series · 1 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 2/5
  1. 17:57Human self-determination: knowing one's determinations gives more chance of emancipating oneself from them; freedom as intellection of necessity.
  2. 33:28Negative freedom, or freedom of the understanding, is the freedom of the void, that of the self fleeing all determination.
Talks · 23 Jun 2015L'île du Peuple: the debate
  1. 19:41Rousseau: natural liberty has for its bound only the strength of the individual; civil liberty goes much further, through education and the heritage of cultures.
  2. 27:45The fall goes downward, liberty upward: the natural order does not go in the same direction as the human order.
  3. 37:56Natural necessity admits no exception; one believes oneself freer in nature because one is fleeing a society of servitude and domination.
Series · 26 Dec 2014L for Liberty
  1. 3:18According to Rousseau, to be free is less to do what one wants than not to depend on another's labor; it is not to be confused with a relation of force.
  2. 5:33Obedience to the law one has prescribed to oneself, and not to the law prescribed by men or by nature, is freedom.
Series · 20 Sept 2014#2 Rousseau, a world that begins
  1. 11:25To be free is less to do what one wants than not to depend on the labor of another.
  2. 26:55With Rousseau, freedom is the foundation of man, not a goal: a margin of maneuver with respect to natural determinism.
  3. 32:57Between the natural order and the human order, an unbridgeable gulf, which is freedom.

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