Nostradamus

Michel de Nostredame · French seer and astrologer (1503–1566) · 1503–1566

Appears in 5 videos · 5 passages.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani does not devote an analysis of his own to Nostradamus: he mainly mentions him as a point of comparison. From 2016 to 2025, he repeatedly likens him to the Presocratics, who are made to say anything and its opposite, just as Nostradamus is1. The comparison comes up again in 2017 in the series "From Ulysses to Daedalus". There he stresses that the Presocratic fragments, like the texts of Nostradamus, can be interpreted at will2 3. In 2025, in a session on the repression of the subject in bourgeois civil society, he says once more that these fragments are interpreted like Nostradamus's aphorisms4. The name thus serves to designate texts so elliptical that they lend themselves to any reading at all, and to point to this kind of interpretation when it is applied to the first philosophers. In another context, during a session on Nerval's "Angélique", he mentions the episode in which Nostradamus is said to have shown Marie de Médicis the kings of her line5.

Summary produced automatically from 5 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Who is this?

Michel de Nostredame (December 1503 – July 1566), usually Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed seer, who is best known for his book Les Prophéties (published in 1555), a collection of 942 poetic quatrains allegedly predicting future events. Nostradamus's father's family had originally been Jewish, but had converted to Catholic Christianity a generation before Nostradamus was born. He studied at the University of Avignon, but was forced to leave after just over a year when the university closed due to an outbreak of the plague. […]

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Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0, excerpt · Portrait: After César de Notre-Dame, Public domain