Concrete universal

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani sets the concrete universal against the abstract universal of the genus or of the understanding. He links it to Hegel, who, against Aristotle, dares to think that the most concrete is the truly universal1, and who dismisses both the abstract universal and the particular that sees only bananas and cherries, never fruit2. The universal exists materially only when realized each time in a determinate way3. He also distinguishes the concrete from the complex: the concrete differentiates itself while totalizing itself. His examples are varied: Greece, Mallarmé's idea of the flower, money, the potlatch of surplus value, the common distress produced by modernity. He sees in it what Rousseau adds to the Enlightenment, namely the unconscious, reverie and music4. In politics, the universality of the French Revolution must be realized concretely, for instance in an emancipatory State, and not merely proclaimed. He defends the concrete universal against postmodernity, while regarding the abstract man of the rights of man as an abstract universal5.

1. 1La Phénoménologie de L'esprit2 Jul 2018 · 1:18:37
2. 2Hommage à Domenico Losurdo2 Jul 2018 · 59:17
3. 3Musicosophie 17. L'interprétation25 Mar 2021 · 1:30:39
4. 4Musicosophie 3. Qu'appelle-t-on une musique moderne?3 Dec 2020 · 1:27:18
5. 5La laïcité, vérité de la religion ?18 Feb 2024 · 1:06:30

Summary produced automatically from 19 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.