Politics

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani starts from the philosopher's unsettled relationship to the city. Taking up Merleau-Ponty's triangle (self, truth and others), he says he is on the left "despite himself". He traces this position back to his discovery of class relations in a colonial milieu1. He links the birth of philosophy to political crises, from Socrates facing Callicles to the Enlightenment. He also distinguishes the State, as common good and general will, from the state apparatus serving private interests2. In a debate with Bernard Bourgeois on the need to "repoliticize the political", he rereads history from 1789 to 1989 as a conflict between revolution and counter-revolution3. For him, the political task of modernity is to reconcile civil society and the State through a collective subject4. He also argues that all modern poetry, from Rimbaud to Faust, ends in a political conclusion5. Finally, he takes the notion of security back from reactionaries: social justice is a demand for security extended to the whole social body, and freedom without equality becomes an empty form6.

1. 1G comme Gauche21 Dec 2014
2. 2Platon14 Sept 2015
3. 3Ce soir, on repolitise. 2ème partie31 Mar 2018
4. 4#3 • Les Attelé(e)s de la confinitude4 Apr 2020
5. 5#4.9 Angélique (de Nerval)14 Jun 2018
6. 6La sécurité : Est-ce le conservatisme ou la Révolution ? - Dominique Pagani12 Jul 2022

Introduction produced automatically from the 10 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.