The first edition of the Night of Philosophy in Prague will invite philosophers to debate on the links and transferences between the sciences and politics. Indeed, the field of politics has been radically transformed by the current problems involving Nature and Life, and the ways in which they question the very limits of the Human Being itself. By considering major contemporary topics – political ecology, eco-security, bio-ethics, and bio-politics –, one can see a complete new range of questions, such as trans-humanism, community with animals, biotechnologies, and environment, redesigning the political landscape, our common representations and imaginary, as well as modalities of action and responsibilities of the sciences themselves. The sciences are not only increasingly involved in politics as sources of expertise and law, but also as their categories or images are largely albeit implicitly borrowed by political theories and social patterns. One can think of “virus,” “parasite,” “organism,” or “immunity,” as examples of concepts that have become common images in politics, medias and social representations.

These images, sometimes apocalyptic, have already transformed our social imaginary, our representations of the other, of danger, or of the Human itself – his future or his end. Thus, “Images, Sciences, and Politics.” Here, images themselves, from their increased usage in numerical visualizations by sciences to their omnipresence in political and social fields, perhaps reveal a new power. Finally, does this ambiguous power of images itself know any limits? Yet, from the images of power – images used by power, often to increase national identity or external danger – to the power of images – in itself both alienating and subversive –, that is one of the oldest question of philosophy that will thereby be reopened and discussed by philosophers and artists who precisely displace if not divert images.