Since 1999, the City of Menton has been organizing the “Thinking About Our Time” Colloquiums. These are public conferences and debates, taking place every Saturday in October at the Palais de l’Europe in Menton.
The Colloquiums allow for an in-depth exploration of various topics at the heart of current affairs, based on four successive themes: “Meetings on the Origins,” “What Philosophy for Our Time?,” “The City of Men,” and “Science and Conscience.”
Each conference gathers an audience of approximately 700 people, eager to listen and meet prominent speakers such as Luc Ferry, Axel Kahn, Alain Finkielkraut, Jean-François Mattéi, Malek Chebel, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Henry de Lumley, Etienne Klein, Robert Misrahi, Pascal Bruckner, Dalil Boubakeur, Jean-François Colosimo, and others.
At the end of the debates, a bookstore space and a book-signing session offer the public the opportunity to further engage with the speakers.
A competition open to middle and high school students in the City of Menton provides the winners with the opportunity to attend the Government Question session at the National Assembly and visit this institution of the Republic.
*Saturday, October 6 at 2:30 PM: Theme “Meeting on the Origins”*
“The Emergence of the Sense of Beauty” by Professor Henry de Lumley°
Is nature beautiful? Mathematics, the intrinsic symmetry of our universe, the perfect construction of crystals, the starry sky, the diversity of the living world, including flowers, butterflies, birds, antelopes, or humans, could testify to this, but nature is not conscious.
In our universe, it is within humans that the consciousness of beauty has gradually established itself. Over a million years ago, among Homo erectus, the notion of symmetry and the emergence of a sense of harmony appeared, and more than 30,000 years ago among Homo sapiens, adornment, portable art, parietal art, and even music emerged, along with cognitive abilities for abstraction.
But what is the meaning of beauty? Is the emergence of the sense of beauty not an approach to transcendence, a characteristic of Man?
