Education

Summary

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. 1E for Enfance (Childhood)19 Dec 2014
2. 2"On a triangle of madness at the heart of modern consciousness"19 Dec 2014
3. 3Being born human is not enough to be human19 Jul 2021
4. 4J for Jeunesse (Youth)24 Dec 2014
5. 5Hegel on the Beach 1/51 Feb 2016
6. 6I am not who you think I am: the elusive identity4 Jan 2024

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