Worked through in 6 videos · 10 passages.
Dominique Pagani describes neopositivism as the dominant ideology since the fall of the Berlin Wall, one that came, in his view, from the English-speaking countries1. He specifies that the dominant ideology is not idealism but this neopositivism, which he regards as a regression that denies everything belonging to the subject2. He defines it as the application of the principles of the natural sciences to the human sciences, with everything else dismissed as outdated metaphysics3. Rationality is thereby limited to the sciences of objects, and "someones" are reduced to "somethings"4. He links it to the scientism of the nineteenth century and compares it to money, which likewise abstracts from the subject, from desire, from purpose and from meaning5. He sees in it the erasure of what Marxism and psychoanalysis had achieved in the knowledge of the subject. He nevertheless acknowledges that positivism was progress against religious sectarianism. Finally, he notes that petty-bourgeois ideology swings between relativism and neopositivism, whose common enemy is reason6.
Summary produced automatically from 10 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.
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