Privation

Worked through in 4 videos · 5 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani takes up from Aristotle the distinction between privation and negation. Privation concerns an attribute that should belong to the subject by virtue of its essence: the blind man is deprived of sight because it is in the essence of man to see. Negation, for its part, concerns an attribute foreign to that essence. He gives as examples the book, which has no eye, or man, who has no wings1 2. In 2015 he extends the notion to finality: to be deprived of an end is to be reduced to the state of a pebble3. In more recent sessions he uses this distinction to think about lying. The lie of the world, in his reading of Clouscard, is the privation of a knowledge I could have4. In 2024, in a reflection on Evil as a "de-knowledge" of oneself, he specifies that lying is a privation of truth, not a negation5.

Summary produced automatically from 5 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 13 · 2 Dec 2024Evil, or the “unknowing” of the self

43:35In Aristotle, privation concerns an attribute that should belong to the subject (sight), negation an attribute foreign to its essence (wings).
47:13The lie is a privation of truth, not a negation.

Cycle 11 · 26 Apr 2023Worldliness in Clouscard, or “the dominant ideology”

52:57Aristotle distinguishes privation and negation; the lie of the world is a privation of a knowledge I could have.

Cycle 8 · 30 May 2020#9 Return to the logics of the subject

27:02Aristotle's distinction: the blind man is deprived of sight because it is in the essence of man to see; the book without an eye is a matter of negation.

Cycle 1 · 10 Dec 2015#1.4 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

49:20Aristotle distinguishes privation, the blind man's blindness, from negation; to be deprived of an end is to be reduced to a stone.