Theory of knowledge

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches the theory of knowledge through Kant's question "what can I know?". He treats it as a detour towards the question "what ought I to do?"1. He follows a progression: empiricism, from Hobbes and Locke to Hume, gives the real without the true; rationalism gives the true without the real; determinism links facts together like the statements of a discourse2. One enigma remains, which he takes up from Einstein and Planck: why does science work? He answers it with Kant, for whom the subject ceases to be a passive mirror and becomes an active prism. Reason then sees only what it produces itself, and truth becomes the agreement of the mind with itself, which he connects with Rousseau's idea of autonomy3. He then reads Hegel, who turns Kantian mistrust against itself, and sets sense-certainty alongside Descartes's piece of wax4. He also goes back to Plato's cave5. In 2021 he links the transcendental subject to the category of the middle and, following Clouscard, shows it reified into class knowledge6.

1. 1#1.3 Between crisis and war: philosophising?14 Sept 2015
2. 2#1.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?10 Dec 2015
3. 3#1.6 Between crisis and war: philosophising?10 Dec 2015
4. 4Hegel on the Beach 3/52 Feb 2016
5. 5The foundations of the Platonic and Aristotelian distinction5 May 2026
6. 6Cynicism of the extreme centre or epistemic heroism? The dialectic of the middle20 May 2021

Introduction produced automatically from the 6 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.