Organized by the Languages, Literatures, Societies, Transborder and International Studies (LLSETI) at USMB and the Association of Philosophy Teachers in Public Education, the series of philosophical conferences "Towards an Ethics of Discussion, Democratic Issues" continues this Wednesday, January 22, at 5 p.m. with the theme "Uses of History in Political Discussion."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
We do not learn lessons from history because, as Hegel says, it is of a completely different nature from the (moral) lessons we claim to learn from it. It is also, as Marc Bloch says, "something we will never see twice." Nevertheless, we irresistibly mobilize it in political discussion. For the illusion from which this recourse stems carries with it a moral disposition, namely that humanity can progress. This disposition exposes us to pitfalls because the issues we project onto history are difficult to escape from the "national novels" and "sacred histories" that we substitute for true history, which are dreamt up, ideological, but above all agonistic and likely to generate dubious battles. The challenge in our discussions of reforming our understanding of history would be to ensure that we advance our knowledge in order to shed light on what the progress of humanity and the law would look like.
This lecture will be led by Martine Verlhac, Honorary Professor of Philosophy in preparatory classes at the Lycée Berthollet in Annecy.
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 effectively deregulated media outlets. 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 must 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 series of philosophy lectures
- LLSETI laboratory website
- Contact: Pascal Bouvier, member of the LLSETI laboratory and organizer of this conference series