Passions

The passions that perturb the soul of the modern individual are as convulsive as those of the world in which we live. The social and political structures on which traditional values were based seem weakened and, as part of the far-reaching transformations of globalisation, new cultural imaginaries have emerged. Furthermore, scientific advances have extended the limits of our relations with our bodies, with life and with death. Notions such as reason, progress and freedom, paradigms of Enlightened modernity, have been challenged by a century of apocalyptic violence, while postmodern thought seems still unable to provide answers to questions about meaning. What is left today of the man of modern humanism?

Within this framework, the CCCB is organising a series of lectures on the role of humans in the world, examining the flows between our biological, social and spiritual dimensions and suggesting some spheres where it seems that new limits and ethical references are emerging to shed light on the sense of human existence.
The cycle represents a sequel to the conferences on Borders that the CCCB has organized in recent months with the participation of Zygmunt Bauman, Dominique Schnapper, Tzvetan Todorov, Eyal Weizman, Roger Bartra and David Landes, among others, and will continue analysing the values that might form the basis of a truly cosmopolitan political community.