Dialectic

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani sees dialectics as a way of thinking that always has three terms. Between a thesis and an antithesis, a middle term dismisses both and carries them to a more encompassing level1. It is neither a mixture nor a compromise. He distinguishes it from mere opposition and from contrariness: it requires an internal contradiction, which sets the subject against itself, and the movement this contradiction generates, as in a door handle2. He distinguishes two senses of the word: in Plato, a method that ascends to the unhypothetical principle; in Heraclitus, Hegel and Marx, reality itself as contradictory3. He takes up Marx's formula that dialectics is critical and revolutionary. He criticises the post-moderns, from Deleuze to Althusser, for their hatred of dialectics4. He finds it in Rousseau, in jazz, in sonata form and in Christianity. On nature, his statements vary: he first speaks of a dialectic immanent in things, then states that nature is not dialectical5.

1. 1Que faire ? 1/329 Jan 2016 · 46:08
2. 2#12 De Kafka à Proust, le passage dialectique de l’intermezzo au bord perpétué7 Apr 2022 · 30:22
3. 3Dominique Pagani - Qui se cache sous les surfaces ? Esthétique et politique20 May 2022 · 1:26:33
4. 4Hommage à Jacques D'Hondt (3)2 Aug 2016 · 17:04
5. 5IL NE SUFFIT PAS DE NAÎTRE HOMME, POUR ÊTRE HOMME • Q&A Philosophique • Dominique Pagani19 Jul 2021 · 3:41

Summary produced automatically from 133 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.