Should we love one another?

Writer Bas Heijne and the British philosopher John Gray take a close look at the notion of freedom and try to find an answer to the question how people with different desires and opinions must live together. Do we have to love one another? In English.

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Date and time Friday 20 January 2012 21:01 tot 22:15 uur
Location Theater aan het Spui - grote zaal

Writer Bas Heijne and the British philosopher John Gray take a closer look at the secret of the success of populist parties, against the background of ongoing globalisation and the changing balance of power. Populist parties consider freedom of paramount importance. What do they mean when they talk about freedom? Why do they meet so much response and what do they have to offer that other parties, sticking to the ideals of the Enlightenment, liberty, equality and solidarity, are overlooking? Are they probably right when they say that we're losing a feeling of cultural identity and that the ordinary citizen is not being listened to? Do they have a sharper antenna for the human need to feel at home and be heard and seen? A dialogue interspersed with film fragments. In English.

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Bas Heijne

(Nijmegen, NL, 1960) writes essays, short stories and plays, and is a columnist with the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. He published the novels Laatste woorden (Last words) and Suez and received the Henriëtte Roland Holst Prize in 2005. In 2011's Moeten wij van elkaar houden, het populisme ontleed (Do We Have to Love One Another? Populism Dissected) Heijne shows how globalisation and individualism pave the way for populism. Angst en schoonheid (Fear and Beauty) was published in 2013, an essay about Dutch writer Louis Couperus, whom Heijne admires. In the same year his documentary about Couperus was broadcast. In 2015 he hosted the five-part documentary De volmaakte mens (The Perfect Human). In 2016 his essay Onbehagen – nieuw licht op de beschaafde mens (Discontent - new light on civilized man) was published. In 2017 Heijne received the P.C. Hooft Award for his essayistic works.
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John Gray

(England, 1948) is a political scientist and a philosopher. In his work he is pessimistic about the future. Thus in Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia he slashes the 'neoconservative project' which, through invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, tries to estasblish a new world order: a dangerous cocktail of apocalyptic religion and utopias, inspired by the Enlightenment. In Strawdogs, Thoughts on Humans and other Animals he argues that people are strawdogs, who will cause their own ruin by new technologies and by exhausting the earth. In Al Qaida and What it Means to be Modern Gray warns that wars can be more dangerous than ever by the lethal mix of ethnic and religious enmity, the growth of the world population, growing scarcity and continuing industrialisation in the non-Western world. Gray was a professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. He publishes in The Guardian, New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement.
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