For the secondyear running, the City of Paris library network, in partnership with the Collège de France, is hostinga bimonthly event at the Marguerite Yourcenar media library (15th arrondissement) to discuss the major intellectual and scientific issues of our time. The " Collège de France : faire connaissance ! "seriesregularly invites a professor to a public meeting to discuss the issues raised by his or her research, and the profession and role of the researcher in contemporary society. Free admission, booking essential.
Anne Cheng, professor at the Collège de France and holder of the Chair in Chinese Intellectual History, will givea lecture entitled " Montesquieu et la Chine " on Saturday 29 March 2025 at 11 h.
The lecture will take place at the Marguerite Yourcenar media library, 41 rue d'Alleray, Paris 15e.
Montesquieu'sDe l'Esprit des lois is a well-known work in France, but what is less well known is that it was widely translated and exerted considerable influence in Asia from the 19th century onwards. At a time when China, strengthened by its rise to power in a globalized context, is demonstrating its determination to challenge the principles of liberal democracy, it's time to revisit our classics !
Born in Paris in 1955 of Chinese parents, Anne Cheng studied at the Ecole de la République, with a background in classical and European humanities, and at the École Normale Supérieure, before choosing to devote herself entirely to Chinese studies. For more than forty years, she has been teaching and researching Chinese Intellectual History, particularly Confucianism, first at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), then at the Inalco (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales), before being appointed to the Institut Universitaire de France. In 2008, Anne Cheng was appointed Chair of Chinese Intellectual History at the Collège de France.
These lectures, aimed at the general public, reflect the wide range of disciplines present at the Collège de France : history, economics, sociology, literature, but also biology, chemistry, mathematics and evolutionary sciences.
With this new event, the libraries of the City of Paris are fulfilling their mission to disseminate knowledge and combat misinformation by offering the public opportunities to decode and explore certain areas of knowledge in greater depth. The aim is also to open a window onto the world of research and how it works, and to bring Parisians closer to an exceptional institution, the Collège de France, which has been at the heart of the city's intellectual and scientific life for five centuries.
