Reason

raison

Worked through in 19 videos · 29 passages.

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Summary

Following Kant, Dominique Pagani distinguishes reason from understanding. Understanding operates in the natural sciences and in technology. It aims at objective knowledge, of the y = f(x) kind, and ignores both purpose and the subject. Reason is the faculty of ends: it is directed toward action, morality and law1. He therefore places it closer to the reasonable than to the rational2. Like understanding, it must be free of contradiction, but it deals with good and evil, the just and the unjust, and meaning. He recalls that ratio translates the Greek logoi: reason is relation and the act of relating, not just ideas in one's head3. In Hegel, "what is real is rational" means that reality has causes, and reason leads to freedom. Finally, he links rationality to equality and democracy: something is true because people agree on a non-contradictory discourse, not on the strength of authority. He cites the slave in the Meno and speaks of world revolution4.

Summary produced automatically from 29 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 15 · 8 Oct 2026Nature vs. freedom?

54:16Reason legislates only in the practical: "you shall not marry your mother."
1:26:05It corresponds to the reasonable, as distinct from the rational. It is the faculty of ends, at work in morality and law.

Talks · 2 Dec 2024Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning

10:15In Hegel reason is what leads to freedom; it is the essence, the truth, distinct from the understanding at work in technique.

Cycle 12 · 24 Jun 2024For a “fresh and joyful” apocalypse?

1:53:45One can have reasons without being right: having reasons means being explicable, rational.

Cycle 11 · 22 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the world as “cunning of reason”

6:58Ratio translates the Greek logoi: reason is relation, fraction, a putting into relation, and not merely ideas in the head.
16:29Reason must be equal to understanding, free of contradiction, but it concerns good and evil, just and unjust, meaning.
26:16Reason is essence, the hidden truth of what appears; its handicap is that it lacks existence.

Cycle 11 · 28 Sept 2022And what about the subject in all this? Hölderlin, Mallarmé and Baudelaire

1:35:42Science belongs to understanding (true, false); philosophy, by positing values, passes to reason: rational is not the same as reasonable.

Talks · 14 Jul 2022From Plato to world revolution

28:48Rationality is the discourse of no group; it is opposed to enclosure within identities, which leads to war.
58:10The philosopher introduces rationalism and dismisses dogmatist and skeptic back to back, both empiricists.

Cycle 10 · 23 Dec 2021#10.7 “Postmodern” eco-petty-Nazism: Plato's Gorgias

1:01:13To define before demonstrating, so that each is in agreement with himself: there is a link between rationality and democracy.
1:19:05Understanding, at work in the sciences, ignores finality and the subject; reason cannot be reduced to it.

Cycle 9.2 · 30 Jun 2021#9.24 “Ruled like music paper!” Nerval, Baudelaire (part 2)

11:49Reason aims at transformation, at action; the understanding, between sensibility and reason, aims at pure objective knowledge, y = f(x).

Cycle 9.2 · 27 May 2021#9.22 Science and/or philosophy of “artificial intelligence” (part 2)

41:33The machine can do certain things better than us but knows only how to do that; it acts by arrangement of organs, not by knowledge.
1:19:38The final decision is not of a rational order: all our reasoning reduces to yielding to feeling.

Cycle 9.2 · 12 May 2021#9.21 Science and/or philosophy of “artificial intelligence”

1:50:52Reason ascends toward the unhypothetical principle; according to Kant, it is the faculty of ends.

Series · 15 Jan 2021#9 Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata

1:34:24The natural sciences belong to the understanding; reason is the faculty of ends, which escapes them.

Cycle 6 · 3 Dec 2019#6.2 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

55:20The understanding is valid for knowledge; reason, the faculty of ends, must ground a rational logic of the subject.

Cycle 5.1 · 31 Dec 2018#5.3 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought

1:02:29Reason sees only what it produces itself: it is no longer a passive mirror but a prism that transforms, a judge that interrogates nature.

Cycle 5.1 · 6 Dec 2018#5.2 bis Questions (Facebook Live)

18:50Since Kant, reason and understanding have been opposed; reason is the operation conforming to a purpose, absent from the positivist sciences where only understanding operates.

Cycle 5.1 · 21 Nov 2018#5.2 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought

17:39Rationalism, pivot of world revolution: a thing is true not by authority but by a non-contradictory discourse on which one agrees.
1:34:47Rationality puts everyone on equal footing: the slave in the Meno can solve the problem.

Cycle 4 · 11 Dec 2017#4.3 Angélique (by Nerval)

22:22A madman confirms that the real is rational: the rigorous inversion of the texts grounds a rigor of the human sciences.
1:04:39After Kant, the post-Kantians discover a rationality even in human affairs.

Cycle 2 · 18 Feb 2016#2.3 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

1:19:37What is actual is rational: rational does not mean reasonable but having causes; the concept is anything but abstraction.
1:24:22Philosophy always comes too late: when it paints gray on gray, a form of life has grown old; the owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk.

Series · 1 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 1/5

1:15:00In Kant, reason is closer to the reasonable than to the rational: the faculty of ends that guides action, humiliated in knowledge.

Series · 8 Dec 2015Michel Clouscard, the paths of praxis (1/2)

38:43Plato's principle, according to Hegel, announces that what is rational is real and what is real is rational.
41:40The rational must reign against imposed opinion: to be in agreement with oneself is identity and non-contradiction.