Morality

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches morality through freedom. Following Rousseau, he distinguishes doing what one wills from doing what pleases one: the impulse of appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one has prescribed for oneself is freedom. He sees in this a prefiguration of Kantian autonomy1. He takes up Kant's distinction between the categorical and the hypothetical imperative, and, with Lévi-Strauss, sets natural law, which is descriptive, against the social rule, which is prescriptive, a pair of terms that Callicles reverses2. For him, the question "what ought I to do?" is specific to philosophy. He shows this with the example of the red light: duty presupposes a choice, and therefore a margin of freedom, although the existence of that freedom is not proven3. On the level of values, he defends the happiness of the Enlightenment against puritan virtue as well as against liberal-libertarian hedonism, which he sees as reserved for the privileged1. He finds it troubling that Nietzsche makes pity an anti-value, and he warns against the value judgments implied by opposing "over" and "under"4.

1. 1L comme Liberté26 Dec 2014
2. 2#4.5 Angélique (de Nerval)12 Feb 2018
3. 3Langage et pensée : Le cas Lavoisier13 Apr 2026
4. 4U comme Übermensch4 Jan 2015

Introduction produced automatically from the 4 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.