Introduction. Le rôle de l’imagination dans la constitution des mœurs et dans la sphère politique

This text is the introduction to a book that explores the relationships between imagination and moral-political power, the empire of the imagination in the constitution of the customs in the early modern era. Reading anew certain thinkers of the modern era, it presents current issues, open questions that affect us in the present: how does adherence of an individual to the customs of his country or his nation check into practice? According to what psychic and material processes does it perform? what is the relationship between the force of the imagination, the spread of the imaginative nature of phenomena and the introduction of fashions and customs, particularly those that affect the balance of power?