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The Philosophical Meetings of Monaco
October 17 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
The Philosophical Meetings of Monaco continue with the theme “Was it better before?” on Thursday, October 17, 2024 at 7 p.m. in the Princess Grace Theater.
The 2024-2025 conference season, organized by the Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco, will begin with a Meeting on the theme “Was it better before?”, hosted by Robert Maggiori, philosopher, founding member of the Rencontres Philosophiques with the speakers, Cynthia Fleury, philosopher and psychoanalyst and David Djaïz, senior civil servant and essayist.
For a long time, it was advocated to forget the past in order to build a bright future. However, nowadays, we are witnessing a change of direction: rather than turning towards an uncertain and threatening future, we are taking refuge in the past, reinvented or idealized, as Zygmunt Bauman wrote in his essay “Retrotopia” with the notion of “retrotopia” which describes the withdrawal and idealization of the past. This return to the past, in political mentalities and discourses, contrasts with the idea of progress, which aims to constantly improve the present. Although major challenges, such as climate change or social fracture, obscure the future, nostalgia for the past seems to respond to a form of insecurity about the future. However, this nostalgia raises the question: to which past are we referring? A past marked by slavery, inequalities and epidemics? Does looking at the past really offer a better perspective? Perhaps only through the nostalgia of individual youth.
