Education

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches education mainly through Rousseau's Emile, which he places within the tradition of paideia: there, the pedagogical is the antechamber of the political, and to shape the child is to shape the citizen1. He stresses one point in Emile: the child, even an aristocrat's child, must learn a manual trade in order to "rise to the state of man". He also contrasts Rousseau's childhood, spent learning on the roads and from novels, with that of Voltaire, a pupil at Louis-le-Grand2. From this he draws an anthropological thesis: being born human is not enough to be human. He supports it with the feral children studied by Lucien Malson, with recognition in Hegel and with Clouscard's formula "the code precedes being"3. He holds that there is no going back, since ignorance cannot be learned, against Nietzsche's attempt4. He also reads the Phenomenology of Spirit as a novel of formation with an exoteric aim, in which knowledge must be open to all5. In 2024, he links Emile to the idea that determinations that come from human beings can be changed6.

1. 1La PHILO avec PAGANI : E comme ENFANCE4 Jun 2023
2. 2« D’un triangle de folie au cœur de la conscience moderne »19 Dec 2014
3. 3IL NE SUFFIT PAS DE NAÎTRE HOMME, POUR ÊTRE HOMME • Q&A Philosophique • Dominique Pagani19 Jul 2021
4. 4J comme Jeunesse24 Dec 2014
5. 5Hegel Plage 1/51 Feb 2016
6. 6JE ne suis pas celui que vous croyez - L'identité introuvable4 Jan 2024

Introduction produced automatically from the 7 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.