Mathematics
15 videos, newest first.
What Dominique Pagani says
Dominique Pagani approaches mathematics through Euclid. He notes that Euclid's axioms and postulates are "requests" addressed to the other: mathematical truth rests on agreement between the people in the conversation and on non-contradiction. He sees in this an immanent democratism and a universal that must be defended against opinion12. With Plato, he treats geometry as an exercise that teaches us to conceive what cannot be seen, such as the circle. He places the philosopher between the mathematician and the poet. The mathematician leaves everyday language for a univocal discourse without metaphor, one that "says without speaking," whereas music "speaks without saying." He takes from Kant the idea that philosophy proceeds by concepts, and mathematics by constructing concepts, as the sum of the angles of a triangle illustrates34. With Einstein, he asks about a puzzle: statements drawn from language alone apply to the real world5. He also marks a limit. Geometry makes man master of nature but leaves him helpless before other men. In his view, the sciences of history call for comparable rigour, but one that follows a different logic.
- 1T comme Triangle3 Jan 2015
- 2Keller (Helen)15 Feb 2016
- 39 #11 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?7 Jan 2021
- 4De Copernic à Lénine: Révolution !28 Aug 2026
- 59 #20 Du SIGNAL au SIGNE • Einstein28 Apr 2021
Introduction produced automatically from the 15 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.
The 15 videos
Season 14From Copernicus to Lenin: Revolution!
28 Aug 2026How did discourse on nature become scientific, and why must we break with empiricism to understand it?
Season 14The foundations of the Platonic and Aristotelian distinction
5 May 2026What distinguishes Plato from Aristotle, the two poles between which the history of philosophy has oscillated for 2500 years?
Upsd 52From Plato to world revolution, by Dominique Pagani
14 Jul 2022In what way is the Socratic initiative the origin of a revolution whose effects are not yet exhausted?
Season 10#14 Caves of Yesterday and Today - From Plato to modernity
10 Jun 2022What remains invariant, beneath their apparent discontinuity, in Dominique Pagani's talks?
Season 9.29 #20 From SIGNAL to SIGN • Einstein
28 Apr 2021How can one cross the abyss between the natural sciences and the historical sciences, and how is it that statements drawn from language alone apply to the world?
MusicosophieMusicosophy 15. Plato, Rousseau, Hegel and music
9 Feb 2021What founds, since Plato, the complicity between music and philosophy?
Season 9.29 #13 How can sciences of history be real?
29 Jan 2021How can sciences of history have a rigor with nothing to envy in the hard sciences, and what does Wagner's Das Rheingold show on this subject?
Season 9.29 #11 How can sciences of history be real?
7 Jan 2021How can sciences of history, that is, sciences of the human subject, attain a rigor really comparable to that of the sciences of nature?
Season 8#13 • Return to the logics of the subject
9 Jul 2020What does Kant's reflective judgment teach us about the relation between the beautiful object and the subject's desire, and how far can art lead?
Other videosThe philosopher's two enemies: The dogmatist and the sceptic.
16 Nov 2017Why are the dogmatist and the skeptic the philosopher's two enemies?
Season 2#2.6 Between crisis and war: Philosophising?
1 Aug 2017How does the reading of Phèdre, which joins the highest poetic beauty to the most profound content, lead from the psychological unconscious to class unconscious, and is there a universal criterion of beauty?
Season 2#2.1 Between crisis and war: Philosophising?
15 Feb 2016Is it philosophical critique that provokes the crisis of the city, or is it because the city is in crisis that philosophizing is needed more than ever?
Saint-Dizier Popular UniversityMythology and Truth
8 Aug 2015Why does myth, which philosophy sought to set aside in favor of rational discourse, always come back, and what truth does it express?
A Philosophical AlphabetZ for Zero
9 Jan 2015Why is there something rather than nothing, and what does zero mean for man?
A Philosophical AlphabetT for Triangle
3 Jan 2015Why is geometry necessary for philosophy to rise to the universal, and why is it not sufficient?