Summary
Dominique Pagani distinguishes ecology from ecologism: he calls himself anti-ecologist and anti-naturalist without being against ecology1. Following Clouscard, he sees the indictment of consumption as an old reactionary theme that ecologism took up after 682. In his view, degrowth converges with the employers' investment strike, and he sets planning against it. He distinguishes landscape, produced by millennia of human labour, from nature, whose rigorous concept is that of matter. On climate, he says he does not contradict the scientific consensus, but a popular creed that deifies nature and demonises man. For him, the idea of a natural balance belongs to the same ideology as the invisible hand of the market3. He reads collapsology and back-to-the-land movements as the unhappy consciousness of threatened middle strata. From 2020 on, he treats ecologism as an ideology of class domination that removes exploitation from political debate. He proposes three levels of analysis: science, the symbolic order, and a democratic, planned ecology4.
- 1Our former savagery? An Illumination by Arthur Rimbaud13 Jun 2025
- 2Everything is allowed but nothing is possible: Michel Clouscard (1)29 Jan 2012
- 3A balance in nature?31 Mar 2021
- 4Ecologism is the opium of the beautiful people: preface to Dominique Mazuet's book, “Of Calves and Things”4 Oct 2020
Introduction produced automatically from the 37 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.
The 37 videos
Cycle 13Naturalist ideology: answers to questions
25 Jul 2025What does money reveal about desire and self-knowledge, and why speak of a dialectic of matter rather than a dialectic of nature?
Readings on the spotOur former savagery? An Illumination by Arthur Rimbaud
13 Jun 2025What does the question "Est-ce ancienne sauvagerie qu'on pardonne ?" mean in Rimbaud's "Mouvement," posed before a young couple in the midst of a hymn to industrial modernity?
Cycle 13The essence of evil: innocence of nature, horror of naturalism!
17 Dec 2024What is evil, if one starts from Rousseau's distinction between the state of nature and the civil state?
Café marxisteSahelian Africa and imperialism: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger
23 Mar 2024What is today the dominant element exploiting the Sahelian Africa, and why must it be called imperialism rather than colonialism?
Cycle 11Worldliness in Clouscard, or “the dominant ideology”
26 Apr 2023What does the world mean, and worldliness in Clouscard's sense, between the happiness of being in the world and the lie of the world that keeps the dominated under the ideology of the dominant?
Cycle 10#16 Michel Clouscard: “There are no holidays in the concept!”
7 Jul 2022What does Clouscard's quip "there are no vacations in the concept" mean, and how does philosophy make problematic habitual concepts such as "climate disruption" or "the West"?
Cycle 10#10.7 “Postmodern” eco-petty-Nazism: Plato's Gorgias
23 Dec 2021Why does "post-modern" thought, which claims descent from Nietzsche, deify nature and despise equality merely repeat the thesis of Callicles in Plato's Gorgias?
Questions and answersMy eco-cabin in the ZAD: autonomy or alienation?
30 Apr 2021Is the autonomy claimed today by those who go off to live in nature a freedom or a way of freeing oneself from humanity?
Questions and answers“Red-browns”, “decolonial”: should we use the dominant language?
31 Mar 2021Should we take up the notions of "red-brown" and "decolonial" produced by dominant ideology, and what is lost when the subject is eliminated in the human sciences?
Questions and answersA balance in nature?
31 Mar 2021Is there a balance in nature that man has come to disturb, or does this idea project the ideology of the market onto nature?
Cycle 9.2#9.17 The geopolitical metaphor: Planck, Descartes, Clouscard
17 Mar 2021Under what conditions is a discourse scientific, and how does science turn into scientism when applied to the human world?
Saint-Dizier Popular UniversityThe world before, the world after (part 2)
16 Jan 2021How should the "world after" the Covid crisis be judged, and under what conditions can one still speak of progress?
At the Tropiques bookshopCalves and Things (3): the dictatorship of the bobotariat
6 Oct 2020Is political ecology anything other than the aesthetic surface of dominant liberal ideology?
At the Tropiques bookshopCalves and Things: the preface
4 Oct 2020What does the dominant ecological discourse cover, and why must it be criticized from a Marxist standpoint?
Cycle 8#15 Return to the logics of the subject
23 Jul 2020What does the confinement of the era reveal, and what form of solidarity, camaraderie or community, allows us to face it?
Introduction to the workshopsIntroduction to the upcoming workshops
23 Mar 2020What does Angélique de Nerval, reread in light of the Odyssey and the structure of the double carnage, teach us about the passage from Enlightenment happiness to the mal du siècle and about today's illusions?
Saint-Dizier Popular UniversityThe religion of money
29 Sept 2019Why is money, the most vile thing there is, so close to the sacred, and how can we get out of this religion of money?
At the Tropiques bookshopPagani without detours
21 Sept 2019How can a book give linear form to Dominique Pagani's oral teaching, and what does this teaching say about the specificity of philosophy, of modernity, and of the question "what must I do"?
Cycle 5.2#5.8 Nature or landscape?
30 Jun 2019What distinguishes nature from landscape, and how does the beauty of landscape relate to freedom and property?
Cycle 5.2#5.5 Nature or landscape?
26 Mar 2019How does landscape reach its highest poetic value when the visible setting fades to become an interior landscape?
Play ▷II PausePablo Servigne
12 Mar 2019What does the collapsologist discourse of Pablo Servigne conceal beneath its scientific appearance?
Cycle 5.2#5.4 Nature or landscape?
4 Feb 2019Are nature and landscape the same thing, or is landscape merely a surface onto which the subject projects its fantasies?
Other videosWork and the right to work
20 May 2018What should be understood by work, and by the right to work, from La Bruyère to Marx, by way of Rousseau and Hegel?
At the Tropiques bookshopTonight, we repoliticise (part 2)
31 Mar 2018Why must we "repoliticize the political," and what does the debate between Hegel, Marx and Sartre on totality and totalization say?
Cycle 3#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus
1 Aug 2017How can we assume the contradiction between the Greek and Christian heritages without falling back into the old counter-revolutionary thought that presents itself as new?
At the Tropiques bookshopTribute to Jacques D'Hondt (3)
2 Aug 2016Must we accept the two persistent ideas that make Hegel a totalitarian thinker and condemn dialectic, and what can Hegel contribute to thinking about the present world?
What Is to Be Done?What is to be done? 3/3
29 Jan 2016How can one respond to the question "what is to be done?" through a theoretical detour, and how does Rousseau, between the praise of labor and the praise of idleness, found property, happiness, and the beauty of landscape on praxis?
Cycle 1#1.3 Between crisis and war: philosophising?
14 Sept 2015What can I know, and why does empiricism, which puts us in contact with reality, fail to reach truth?
A Philosophical AlphabetY for Yonville
8 Jan 2015How can one distinguish the imaginary from illusion, and what is the place of the imaginary in creation and in politics?
A Philosophical AlphabetS for Savagery
2 Jan 2015What is the savage, and is savagery the lowest point of humanity?
A Philosophical AlphabetQ for Quality
31 Dec 2014What does a quality say, and what are we talking about when we qualify a thing?
A Philosophical AlphabetO for Opposition
29 Dec 2014Should one be against, with, or "against with": how can opposition be thought without falling into one-sidedness?
A Philosophical AlphabetG for Gauche (the Left)
21 Dec 2014In what sense can a philosopher call himself a man of the left?
A Philosophical AlphabetC for Consumption
17 Dec 2014Are we really in a consumer society, and do we consume too much?
Interviews for L’Affranchi#4 Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: on the thought of M. Clouscard
26 Sept 2014How does Michel Clouscard link praxis and psyche, and why does he see in May '68 and the ideology of desire a counter-revolution that prepares a neofascism?
On Michel ClouscardEverything is allowed but nothing is possible: Michel Clouscard (2)
29 Jan 2012Why does Clouscard criticize "libertarian liberalism," and what becomes of this critique when applied to the state, the societal, and music?
On Michel ClouscardEverything is allowed but nothing is possible: Michel Clouscard (1)
29 Jan 2012What does Clouscard's formula "Everything is permitted but nothing is possible" cover, and how does it illuminate so-called consumer society, the Marshall Plan and May 68?