L’ambivalence de l’imaginaire politique dans le scepticisme moderne. De la critique des utopies à la reconnaissance de la fonction instituante de l’imaginaire dans la vie sociale

Abstract

Political scepticism criticizes utopia as an innovative project that, by overestimating the power of reason and its role in governing states, risks breaking with reality. However, scepticism’s critique targets utopia insofar as utopian thought stems from a misplaced demand for a foundational principle to legitimize political order, not because scepticism itself produces a political imaginary. This article shows that political scepticism nevertheless values fictional productions — understood as historical effects rather than as causal instruments of reform — which, over time, help to cement social bonds. Collective imaginaries are thus positively analysed as constitutive of social ordering and identity through established cultural dispositions, without nostalgia for a founding myth (a feature of reactionary thought) or an aspiration to revolutionary change guided by new ideals.