CCCB Veus

Barcelona Debate the CCCB’s longest-running lecture series is about to begin once more to reflect, as it has done every other year, on some key aspect of contemporary life from a philosophical standpoint. Over the years, hundreds of philosophers, sociologists and writers have visited Barcelona to participate in the Debate, among them Zygmunt Bauman, Tzvetan Todorov, Judith Butler, Lydia Cacho, Claudio Magris and the recently deceased Ulrich Beck.

In recent times the Debate has pondered the meaning of life and the sense of existence in the contemporary world (with lectures series like The Human Condition (2008) and Virtues (2012)) and the cultural consequences of globalisation (in Borders (2004) and Thinking the Future (2010)). Speakers have also discussed the future of Europe, the economic crisis, the open city and life in common.

This year, Barcelona Debate will be revisiting some of the great concepts of political thought in the present context of multiple crises by way of questioning the sense of such important notions pertaining to collective life as “freedom”, “equality”, “community” and “citizenship”. With the title “Wield the Word”, the Debate also aims to uphold the value of words, bring them up to date, endow them with new senses and invite citizens to appropriate them.

This year’s Debate will be opened by Axel Honneth, director of the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt University. Other speakers will include such outstanding present-day thinkers as Saskia Sassen, Luc Boltanski and Seyla Benhabib. among others.

For the complete programme, click here.