Organized by the Languages, Literatures, Societies, Transborder and International Studies (LLSETI) at USMB and the Association of Philosophy Teachers in Public Education, the 2025-2026 series of philosophy lectures, entitled "Imagination, the Imaginary, and Image," continues this Wednesday, February 25, 2026, at 5 p.m. with the theme: "The Utopia to Imagine: A Policy for Justice and Freedom." 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
Alongside the degeneracy of politics, with which we are never done, there has always been a political imagination that dared to hope that humanity would strive to govern itself better, if not according to a sovereign good. The utopias that imagined this are not necessarily to be equated with the nightmarish images of a millenarian revolution on the theological-political side or of a "stateless" society whose ultimate horizon was a totalitarian dictatorship.
That justice and freedom should be the goal of any policy worthy of the name, and that we still have to imagine it, is always a proposition to be considered and discussed.
This lecture will be led by Martine Verlhac,honorary professor of philosophy in Première Supérieure, Lycée Berthollet, Annecy.
About the annual cycle "Imagination, the Imaginary, and Image."
To imagine is to bring absent realities into the present. Myths and religions have used this method, and the arts and sciences use it to understand, scrutinize, and also criticize, in order to protect themselves, if necessary, from the vertigo of madness. Because of this assumption of the unknown into which we plunge to find something new again and again, our imaginations, our imaginations, our images, can lead us just as easily to nightmares as to new dawns. This is what we must imagine in order to move towards the better, progress towards the beautiful, hope for the just, against the fear that subjugates us to what is or to false dystopian hopes.
LEARN MORE
- Program for the 2025-2026 philosophy lecture series
- LLSETI laboratory website
- Contact: Pascal Bouvier, member of the LLSETI laboratory and organizer of this conference series