Dialectic

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches dialectics first of all against one-sidedness: he declares himself for the "against with" and rejects both rigid positions and the happy medium of the "extreme centre"1. Dialectics holds opposites together, like the hand that turns a door handle. It does not dismiss both terms equally: it preserves and overcomes them, in the sense of the Hegelian Aufheben, like two tributaries merging into a river2. He describes it as ternary, with two extremes and a middle term. He distinguishes two conceptions of it: a path towards being in Plato, or being itself, contradictory and in motion, from Heraclitus to Hegel and Marx. Following Clouscard, he makes Rousseau a great dialectician who holds praxis and psyche together. In the recent sessions, he stresses that internal contradiction presupposes an inner life and only happens to a subject. He disputes the idea of a dialectics of nature, sees dialectics as what makes history understandable, and denies this status to the liberal-libertarian pair34.

1. 1O for Opposition29 Dec 2014
2. 2Clouscard: The metamorphoses of class struggle2 Sept 2024
3. 3Birth and carnage: the Massacre of the Innocents22 Dec 2023
4. 4The essence of evil: innocence of nature, horror of naturalism!17 Dec 2024

Introduction produced automatically from the 8 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.