Reflection

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani starts from the optical sense of reflection: the incident ray and the reflected ray, which every subject presupposes1. He sees in it a return upon oneself, "the eye of the soul" and not that of the body, which mathematicians write with a curved arrow, A = A2. For him philosophy is this projector turning back on itself, in the manner of set-theoretic reflexivity3. The eyes serve the outer world; to know oneself, one needs a mirror placed in front of oneself4. He links "speculative" to speculum, the mirror that returns the inverted self: reflection and speculation designate mediate knowledge, opposed to instinct and immediate intuition5. He also marks its limits: if there is nothing in front of the mirror, there is nothing in it, and at the extreme of the mediate the mind is deprived of substance67. With Kleist, he notes that in the organic world grace shines all the more as reflection is weak: one must either not think or think infinitely, but not by halves89.

1. 1Mann (Thomas)23 Oct 2019 · 40:45
2. 2#3 • Les Attelé(e)s de la confinitude4 Apr 2020 · 44:11
3. 39 #11 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?7 Jan 2021 · 24:19
4. 4La répression du sujet dans la société civile bourgeoise9 Aug 2025 · 34:36
5. 5"Je est un autre" ou l'identité contradictoire12 Dec 2023 · 30:31
6. 6Robert (Marthe)8 Jan 2020 · 12:47
7. 7Robert (Marthe)8 Jan 2020 · 1:03:39
8. 8Kleist « Sur le théâtre de marionnettes » - Pagani - Lectures sur le vif29 Sept 2023 · 32:01
9. 9Kleist « Sur le théâtre de marionnettes » - Pagani - Lectures sur le vif29 Sept 2023 · 33:08

Summary produced automatically from 9 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.