Organized by the Languages, Literatures, Societies, Transborder and International Studies (LLSETI) at the University of Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB) and the Association of Philosophy Teachers in Public Education, the series of philosophical lectures entitled "Towards an Ethics of Discussion: Democratic Issues" begins on Wednesday, December 4, at 5 p.m. with the theme "From Conversation to Discussion: Around Jurgen Habermas." This lecture will take place in Room 3, at the presidency of the University of Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB), in Chambéry. It is open to all and no registration is required.
About the conference
The idea that understanding the reasons behind future disasters would enable us to influence the course of events assumes that this course is not inevitable. It is this inevitability that is at issue here: what explains our inertia in the face of a shared observation? Is it still possible for us to avoid disaster? Can we overturn the system that drives states, companies, and individuals into widespread competition?
This system subjects everything to market logic, which turns sport into a business, culture into an industry, and the human body into a product. It seems to overdetermine our behavior and lock us into a dead-end logic that often futile gestures attempt to exorcise.
We will analyze the coercive nature of this market system, which leads us to describe it as a "market order," and seek to understand its meaning by placing it in the context of other approaches in order to assess its inevitability.
This lecture will be led by Pascal Bouvier, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Savoie Mont Blanc.
About the series "Towards an Ethics of Discussion: Democratic Issues"
We seem to have become powerless in the face of the widespread disruption of discussion, which we too readily attribute to the effectively deregulated media. We must never forget that our societies are still plagued by emotions that incite violence, the very ones Freud warned us about in Civilization and Its Discontents. At the same time, this disruption of discussion into irreconcilable battles, into "agonistics," clearly undermines democratic debate. And the remedies for this cannot be based on the invocation of reason, or even of truth, which remain powerless in political debate. Even if it is necessary to defend facts and use reason against conspiracy theories and negativism, democratic discussion is not based on the authority of truths but on the pluralism of opinions, without which it could not exist and which must be defended. There is no doubt that we need to promote a culture of democratic conflict and its normal functioning. We will seek to develop this hypothesis by considering it through a number of fields that embody its expression.
LEARN MORE
- Program for the 2024-2025 philosophy lecture series
- LLSETI laboratory website
- Contact: Pascal Bouvier, member of the LLSETI laboratory and organizer of this conference series