Dénia Festival de les Humanitats: date, participants, price and schedules

With its Humanitats Festival, the city of Dénia welcomes influential thinkers and experts in economics, neuroscience, medicine, anthropology, philosophy, history, geography, humanistic thought, ethics and culture, among many other scientific and artistic disciplines. For one weekend it thus becomes the capital of critical thinking thanks to its extensive program of conferences.

Debate session at l'Androna

What is it?

A social and cultural event in Dénia where the wise men of the XNUMXst century reflect on the concerns of human beings in today's world and on the changes that will occur in the near future, in different debate sessions that will encourage dialogue between science, technology and the humanities.

Round table at the Dénia Social Center Festival de les Humanitats

The relevance and quality of the speakers participating in this multidisciplinary meeting make this festival a European benchmark in the field of humanities.

An annual meeting of reflection

About us? What we want? Where are we going? With these concerns as the driving force and after the experience of the pandemic that has renewed awareness of our fragility and the state of uncertainty that characterizes us, we propose an annual meeting for reflection aimed at citizens, individuals and corporations, who propose and demand a look criticism that allows us to understand the keys to the world in which we live. And act -individually and collectively- accordingly.

Vicent Grimalt during his opening speech at the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats

To spread the ideas and debates of the moment, in the midst of the confusion generated by the digital commotion, and to help citizens make them their own, Dénia intends to be the scene of an annual Festival of the Humanities. Through the convocation of representative figures of thought, science, economy and the arts, the Festival seeks to share ideas and experiences, in spaces and formats aimed at a wide audience, who feel challenged by the desire to think, create, imagine and live together. .

The idea will be developed from the different genres of humanistic culture: conferences and debates, but also exhibitions and other forms of artistic creation. It will feature leading figures of humanistic, economic and scientific thought, but also actors and creators from various disciplines, ensuring that ideas are deployed through different formats.

2024 Edition | Unlocking the future: The limits

With this third edition, Dénia Festival de les Humanitats consolidates itself as a reference event in the intellectual world.

Presentation of the Dénia Humanitats Festival 2024

What are we to do with the future, so far away and yet so near? So much ours – we humans are the ones who build it – and so disturbing, since the course of nature overwhelms us and the evolution of the prostheses we equip ourselves with often diminishes us: fear and bewilderment. Three years ago the world stopped, although not for everyone.

Even in the most liberal regimes, we were locked up at home and our basic freedoms were brutally curtailed, starting with the right to move freely. We feel mutilated because, as Montaigne said, we are beings who “paint ourselves” in experience, that is, in contact with others and with the world. Since then, anxiety about the future has continued to grow. And the anguished fantasy of the passage from the last man (the last body) to the superman (the body confined in its technological prostheses, capable of producing ontological fractures between humans) has been unfolding.

The epidemic, the ongoing ecological catastrophes, the acceleration process in which science and technology have been installed, the boundless universe of communication that burns stages every day have increased fear and insecurity about the future. It is necessary to "unconfine" the future as a premise to be able to regain confidence, if the overflow of the species does not prevail beforehand. After all, it is we who, with the tolerance of nature, build the future. And, in reality, what it will be in its immediacy will depend on what we humans have done, on the capacity to generate and govern efficient prostheses. But we humans already know what we are wearing. Society is made of this thing that we call power - and that in reality is the expression of difference, there are no two people alike - and that is constitutive of our condition.

Let us look to the future, if we want to lose our fear, and let us do so from the perspective of dialogue between science, the arts and the humanities, precisely so that we do not lose the most precious gift of the human condition: the freedom to think and decide, so often threatened.

Thinking about the future, then, from the present. That is, stretching the threads of the projects (and risks) in progress and putting them on the dissection table of the free debate between voices built on diverse perspectives. And this means moving in the terrain of limits: of art, of economic power (and growth), of politics, of the human body (and genetic manipulation, of longevity), of science (and artificial intelligence), of the planet and of life (ecology), of social structures and personal relationships, of individual freedoms, of democracy, of war and, in general, of the permanent threat of the loss of the notion of limits, a central philosophical problem that marks the times we live in.

2023 Edition | Look back to know where we are going

The second edition of Dénia Festival de les Humanitats will revolve around a common idea Look back to know where we are going which will thematically channel the different debate sessions.

Because nothing is written in advance. The passage of humans on earth is built every day and the future is never alien to the past, although along the way there are changes and fractures that mark significantly differentiated stages. In the same way, the present is projected in the fabulations that we create about the future. We are a historical animal that has completed many stages on earth. And it has been equipped with technological prostheses that have made progress in adaptation possible, but also threats of increasing power, both due to the effects on nature in general and on humans in particular.

Poster of the II Dénia Humanitats Festival

We have a rather short memory of this long history. To know most of our presence on Earth we must go to the genetic traces that humans have left. Writing has been an element as late as it is powerful to obtain testimony of the past. And science has helped us identify signals that went unnoticed. In fact, following humanity's path to know about past experience and to learn from it is a recent reality that has been gradually accelerating, and at this turn of the century we have new technologies that allow us to accumulate infinite information at the risk of dehumanizing the knowledge we have of ourselves. But our adventure has been developing with the anonymous and daily transmission of each of the elements of the species. And so we have been coming together, despite being far away from establishing ourselves as humanity, although the world is smaller than ever.

History, philosophy, human sciences, literature, art, what we generically call humanities, have allowed us to trace the representation of the past on Earth. With the human condition as a reference and the ways in which we have been contextualizing and institutionalizing our experience, leaving traces of our passage. And science gives us news every day of the physical bases of this adventure. All of this causes us to accumulate a background to move forward that we do not always know how to use, and to construct proposals for the future, an expression of power relations often loaded with fantastic sublimations, which occupy utopian literature. The moods of the species mark moments of exciting horizons and times in which the future is full of uncertainties. And we do all this in competition with each other - power (that is, the difference in potential between a species that has no two equals) marks relationships with people - and looking for ways to crystallize the experience. Look back to know where we are going. To build the routes along which to travel beyond the future. Being aware that the human condition has genuine traits that adapt and mutate slowly. And that science, philosophy and creation - literary or artistic - are the ways we have to configure it and give it symbolic expression.

On this path where the past and the future, the humanities and science intersect, is the second Dénia Festival de les Humanitats. This meeting will allow us to glimpse the future with a sidelong glance at the past and attentive to the mutations that a species in accelerated transition from modernity may suffer.

2022 Edition | Mutations: what awaits us in the near future?

In one way or another, societies have always wondered about their condition, about their future, about how to make the human experience progress. Not in vain, as Yuval Noah Harari says, the human being is "the only one capable of creating fictions and believing them" and, to put it in the manner of Montesquieu, what differentiates him from the rest of the living is "reason and freedom". " (or, at least the idea that has been made of them).

Minister Joan Subirats during the opening ceremony of the festival

Four centuries ago, when the development of modern science began, which would acquire an exponential force unthinkable at that time, the idea of ​​progress was born that gave rise to the Enlightenment project, perhaps the noblest ideal that humanity has thought of (Kant) and that It then produced enormous economic and technological transformations, with obvious consequences in human life, in the state of the planet itself, and in the organization of societies. As a result of this great mutation, in little more than a century, from the mid-XNUMXth to the end of the XNUMXth, life expectancy in many countries has doubled.

We are now in a critical moment, after the short 1914th century (1989-XNUMX) has come to an end, in the words of Eric Hobswann, and astride the digital technology that has made the so-called globalization possible and the passage of the industrial economy to the financial and post-financial. In this context, questions about man overflow schemes, communication systems mutate rapidly, world government evolves towards new rules that are far from being codified, the passage from industrial to financial and post-financial capitalism changes economic coordinates, commonplaces about freedom and equality overwhelmed by the shadows of a new time, dystopian visions dominate the gaze on the future, vulgarized through the digital universe, powers are concentrated... And what about humans? Is it possible to think of the world giving centrality to our condition or must we consider the times in which the human being was intended to be the measure of all things to be over? Does scientific and technological progress cover the idea of ​​progress of humanity? Is scientific and technological progress human progress?

Organizers

Dénia. Festival de les Humanitats is an initiative of the Generalitat, the Dénia City Council, the Foundation Baleària and the Dénia Ciutat Creativa Foundation, directed by Joseph Ramoneda and Jordi Alberich and coordinated by La Maleta de Portbou.

Part of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats organization during the closing

Festival Objectives

• Become a space for thought, reflection and dialogue on the human condition.
• Allow civil society to participate in an open forum for training and discussion with leading experts in the field of humanistic thought.
• Consolidate itself as an annual event with representative figures of thought, science, economy, theater, the audiovisual universe and the plastic arts to share ideas and experiences.
• Promote training in values ​​and knowledge of the roots and history of the human being.
• To value and promote the humanities as a field of knowledge, especially among young people, in order to form citizens with critical thinking.
• Turn Dénia into a benchmark for thought, reflection and the humanities in the Mediterranean.

When is celebrated?

The editions take place in autumn, at the end of October, for three days. 2024, will take place between Thursday, October 24 and Saturday, October 26. However, throughout the year parallel activities of the festival are carried out in Dénia.

Street music during the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats

Hours of each day

You can check the complete schedule here: Program of the Dénia Humanitats Festival.

Conferences

Third edition - 2024

Poster of the Dénia Humanitats Festival 2024

Limits and links between literary creation and territory. The example of Maria Ibars

The round table on literary creation and territory, focused on the work of Maria Ibars, will reflect on the symbolic importance of space as a framework, source of inspiration and theme in literature, as studies on spatiality and literary geographies, which are absolutely relevant in the discourses of contemporary literary criticism, have demonstrated. In this regard, the conversation, which will begin from a theoretical point of view, will then move on to the analysis of the landscape in the poetic and narrative work of Maria Ibars (1892-1965), strongly rooted in the Marina region and in the city of Dénia in particular, especially in the Poemes de Penyamar (1949) and The last serf (1965), two of his most important works.

Perpetual war. The conflict in the Middle East

Talk between Xavier Mas de Xaxàs, journalist, diplomatic correspondent of La Vanguardia and Josep Ramoneda, journalist and writer, content director of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats.

The limits of politics

John Carlin is a journalist who looks at things closely and talks to people, who are the ones who make politics. A good connoisseur of passions, he knows how these are as decisive as the logic of interests. Looking at politics not so much from the high-sounding speeches as from the human condition is his way of approaching crises and conflicts. And at this moment there are many fronts of which he is a privileged observer. Like, for example, the United States, from where he will speak to us, incorporating the decisive American election of the next few days into our debate on limits.

The philosophy of limits

We think, philosophically or not, through and thanks to limits. By recognizing something as a limit, we have already overcome it. There are temporal and material limits, limits that separate and unite, and at the same time there is the contemporary drive to transcend these limits. In this session, the philosophical fertility of the limit will be put to the test, going from the abstract and infinite to the concrete and singular.

The limits of the human body (genetic manipulation, health, longevity)

The limits of the human body are a fascinating topic that questions the natural barriers that define us as a species. Areas such as ageing, the increase of new capabilities and gene editing are key to understanding our future. Over the past few thousand years, humanity has overcome many of its past limitations. Can we continue to do so? Gene editing techniques such as CRISPR, as well as advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, make it possible to modify DNA to prevent inherited diseases and increase physical and cognitive abilities, opening the door to overcoming natural limitations. However, these innovations raise important ethical questions about how far we should intervene in our biology and what long-term effects they may have on the human species.

DNA/FHD meeting

Vermouth/conversation with Quique Dacosta, chef and Javier Gomá Lanzón, writer and essayist, director of the Juan March Foundation, author of Universal Concrete (Taurus, 2023).

The limits of art and literature

Art has a unique capacity to transform the world, beyond its aesthetic function. It is a powerful medium of expression that can inspire, raise awareness and mobilize people towards positive change. At its intersection with crucial issues such as equality, social justice, environmental sustainability and cultural diversity, it has the potential to raise awareness and convey messages that challenge perceptions and prejudices, encouraging critical reflection. As a catalyst for action, art can address global issues and inspire communities to get involved in initiatives that promote meaningful change. It acts as a cultural bridge, promoting mutual understanding and appreciation of diversity. In an increasingly interconnected world, this ability to break down barriers and foster empathy is essential to collaboratively address global challenges.

The limits of science

In his essay “What is the future of science?”, published in the 1998 World Science Report, John Maddox, former editor of the prestigious journal Nature, presents an overview of the state of science at the end of the twentieth century and a visionary speculation on the directions it might take in the future. The most critical aspects that Maddox points out in his report are the impact of biomedicine, and biotechnology in general, particle physics, computer science and, not surprisingly today, artificial intelligence. What is relevant is that all these scientific developments mentioned by Maddox have a great transformative capacity and, as he himself recognized, entail clear ethical and social challenges; challenges that require open communication with the public and political decision-makers at the international level. In this roundtable we will provide a fresh look at these same issues in the spirit of providing updated ideas and reflections on how to ensure that the benefits of science are equitably distributed.

The ecological limits of the world

Many of the natural resources we need to ensure our survival and well-being are finite, but humans have lived with their backs turned to this reality throughout our history. The quality of these resources, apart from the quantity, is also a key aspect that we have not considered until now. With eight billion inhabitants on the planet and increasing per capita resource consumption, it is now inevitable to talk about the limits of the planet. The concept of planetary limits, first proposed in 2009, identifies nine processes that are critical to maintaining planet Earth in the state of stability that has characterized the Holocene and that has allowed us to prosper as humanity. By 2023, six of these limits had already been surpassed, clearly indicating that a deep reflection on our relationship with the environment and our consumption patterns is necessary to guarantee a healthy and fair future.

What is a good company?

This is a question that is not often asked in the business world. And when it is, the spontaneous answer is usually the one that is economically successful. But if we think about it a little more, we realize two things. The first is that the question is very pertinent; and the second is that simply looking at profits as an indicator of goodness is very simplistic.

Following the inspiration of Aristotle, asking what a good company is implies first knowing what the essential goal of the company is, what its purpose is and what its internal good is. The answer to this question forces us to look in two directions: outward (what do we contribute to society?) and inward (what specific capabilities does the company have to respond to these demands?).

As Adela Cortina said in her classic 1994 book, company ethics"The goal of business activity is the satisfaction of human needs through the implementation of capital, of which human capital is an essential part, that is, the capabilities of all those who cooperate in the company" (Cortina, 1994: 43).

Conflicts without limits

Due to their virulence and local and global impact, two conflicts with the dimension of extremely bloody wars stand out in the current geostrategic framework: the war against Ukraine and the war against Hamas and Gaza. With different origins, divergent histories and disparate regional environments, these two incomparable conflicts have transported the 21st century to levels of global confrontation and fracture unknown before. The multilateral system that emerged from the Second World War has crumbled and the responses of the international community are incoherent. What is the impact of these and other conflicts without limits at the present time? How have they changed the world? How can we recover the diplomatic and political tools to manage them? What leadership is needed to change the dynamics of the moment?

The limits of social structures and personal relationships

We live in a time and a world in which an acute awareness of limits shapes our thoughts, our affections and our actions. It also shapes our pathologies. On the one hand, the limits of the planet as a habitat and home of life and, in particular, of human life; on the other, the personal limits that are revealed in a panoply of mental and vital ailments of the subjects; and of course, the limits of social structures with their peculiar dynamics: persistence and increase of inequalities, demographic maturation and dependence, political polarization and rise of authoritarianism, technological transformation, etc. In this context, the questions of freedom, creativity and human agency acquire special relevance. In this session we will deal with the tensions that arise from them.

The limits of individual rights and democracy

In recent decades, there has been widespread discussion about a supposed crisis of democracy. Around this debate, different indicators have been proposed that would indicate this crisis or, in less alarmist views, the important challenges that contemporary democracies face. On the one hand, the perception that citizens are more dissatisfied with democracy and/or its institutions has become widespread. On the other hand, this discontent has favoured the transformation or even disappearance of traditional party systems by translating this discontent into electoral support for new parties, sometimes radical left-wing parties or, more frequently, right-wing parties, and often populist. Finally, and related to this growth of political options that are sometimes populist, sometimes radical, political polarisation would represent a new added problem for the functioning of democracy. But do these phenomena really represent a crisis, a challenge, a threat to our democracies? In what situations should we understand that the individual rights that characterise liberal democracies are in danger? When and how do phenomena of democratic and rights erosion occur? The conversation will address these and other related issues.

With the new century, humanity begins a new stage that mixes enormously promising scientific avenues with growing uncertainties about our ability to survive as a society. Bioengineering and artificial intelligence can change our relationship with disease (including aging) and even help preserve biodiversity and fight climate change and the other negative effects of the Anthropocene. Can we develop a society that enjoys new opportunities for individual and global health? Is it possible to preserve biodiversity in a world where more and more resources are needed to sustain a still growing humanity? The challenge of achieving this goal requires not only the resources to make it real. It is necessary to inform society, bring critical knowledge to the world of education, develop policies where science plays a fundamental role and fight against misinformation.

Can we constitute ourselves as humanity?

Humanity is affected by increasingly interconnected global challenges (climate crisis, pandemics, displacement of people, wars) that are usually addressed with solidarity initiatives, science and fundamental values ​​such as dignity, equality, justice and care for the planet. To find a way to overcome these antinomies and constitute ourselves as humanity, we must understand what makes us essentially human. Tomás Marqués, from evolutionary biology, will enlighten us on his discoveries in primates. For his part, Víctor Gómez Pin, philosopher, will give us a look at this XNUMXst century and its technological and knowledge potential. Let us keep in mind that societal changes occur over very long periods - such as the passage from the Middle Ages to the modern world - and that what is new is little visible to those of us who are immersed in this transition that, perhaps, will lead us to a new humanity.

Humanities, science, and artificial intelligence

At the closing point, it is foreseeable - and desirable - that a stream of ideas, opinions, doubts, questions and also hopes and lights have flowed in this Second Edition of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats. It is very likely that we have shared the need for a plea in defense of ethical reflection to supervise the great disruption that the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution or Second Age of the Machine means. We live, bewildered, at a crossroads in which different narratives compete for perspective and also for the attitude with which we imagine an increasingly imminent future. Either we take advantage of the opportunity to build a better world for humanity and the planet (inseparable realities) or, as many experts point out, we are heading towards the apocalypse. Artificial Intelligence constitutes the greatest challenge that technology - a consequence and result of our own creativity and ingenuity - has in store for us as a species. Perhaps it is nothing that we have not known since the beginning of time: with the same stones we can build bridges or impassable walls. The evolution and outcome of the great transformations underway will depend on our intentions and purposes. Only a technocritical position that privileges the dignity of human life should have a future. Whatever the case, we need to know, share and face together this challenging moment that we have to live, suffer or celebrate. Rescuing the humanistic gaze and the critical attitude that philosophy means (Europe as an attitude, as Husserl would say) emerge as an urgency in this complex and fascinating time.

Second Edition - 2023

Round table on the past and future of ideologies

Literature against democracy-racism

The phenomenon of immigration has reached a level that determines world politics. This is why racist parties are emerging, one after another, especially in Europe, even coming to power in some countries. I call this situation DEMOC-RACISM. The racism that grows with the vote of the people.

This is a period that Huntington called the "War of Civilizations." But it is objectionable to see civilization only in the context of religion. The name “Clashes of ignorance”, formulated by Edward Said, is more precise, but we still need to be even more precise. Let's call this problem "Prejudice Clashes." Because our history is full of them.

The most prominent solution to this problem is literature. We need literature to understand people, not with clichés such as religion, flag, nationality or sect, but with the identity of human beings who love, suffer, hunger and fear. Goethe was a pioneer and started a movement he called "Weltliteratur" (universal literature). We must follow this path.

Past and future of ideologies

The future of rights and the rights of the future is one of the great questions that we must ask ourselves in the face of the enormous change that technology is operating in our lives: what remains, for example, of individual rights in the face of the globalization of economic powers , artificial intelligence or advances in intervention in the human body? The ideologies that have articulated the contemporary world decline. How should we imagine the ideological framework of the future, with a few universal powers, increasingly powerful, above the States? Does liberal democracy have a future in this new world or is the move towards post-democratic authoritarianism inexorable?

Health and technology in a global world

Of all the sectors that will be transformed thanks to the technological revolution, global health is one of the ones that raises the most hope. From the use of messenger RNA in the development of a new generation of vaccines, to the applications of artificial intelligence in understanding climate health challenges, the future is full of opportunities.

But technology by itself will not solve some of the challenges that hinder the right to health of a considerable part of the world's population, such as inequality, misinformation or perverse incentives in pharmaceutical innovation. In fact, it could aggravate them.

The session “Health and technology in a global world” will address these issues with the help of experts who offer an international and interdisciplinary perspective.

Post-democratic authoritarianism

Although the political sphere must always be understood dynamically and in accordance with the continuous changes that occur in it, in recent times we have witnessed certain transformations that erode some of the bases on which our democracies are based. The rise of what is called the new radical right, the illiberal drift of countries that are part of the European Union or the belligerence of the so-called cultural battles with which previously acquired rights are curtailed, are some of the examples that appeal to the challenge of reflect on the vicissitudes of our present and future. Led by two renowned journalists who have extensive experience in political analysis, we will discuss how to think about current political challenges, as well as the role that the media have in providing information as key actors in any society. democratic.

War and wars

The First World War, with its overwhelming number of victims, the continued suffering of soldiers on the battlefields and the modernization of combat, began “the descent into hell,” which consolidated the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, 60% of the 40 million victims were innocent civilians, subjected to planned extermination - Holocaust -, mass killings, forced labor, deaths from starvation or systematic bombings that culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the second half of the XNUMXth century, colonial conflicts in the context of the Cold War, such as the Indochina and Vietnam wars, transformed the experience of war into an unequal combat, although civilians were also the greatest victims, as they have continued to be. in the remaining wars of the XNUMXth and XNUMXst centuries. Led by two prominent specialists, Joanna Bourke and Xosé Manoel Núñez the battlefield or to civilians, or how the same war events configure different national historical memories and various public uses of the past.

Utopia, Dystopia and power

When we read the science fiction novel The Ministry of the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, about climate change and global warming, two issues draw attention: the temporal proximity of that future, since the work was published in 2020 and the Ministry The one he refers to is imagined to have been founded in 2025, and that it is a novel about political action. In January 2021, in the midst of an unexpectedly dystopian present, the European School of Humanities organized a meeting entitled “Fear and hope: utopias and dystopias in the arts and mass culture”, whose contributions were published as a thematic dossier at number 46 of La Maleta de Portbou. To this binomial, utopia and dystopia, a third term is now added, power, which means that the discussion is not reduced to the realm of fiction, of the imagination of possible futures, but jumps to politics. To make this leap, the starting point of the debate will be another text published in La Maleta de Portbou, the article by Marina Garcés “The strength of a promise” (no. 59, July-August 2023)

A possible ecological future

The climate emergency is already here, knocking loudly on our door. The terms with which we designated extreme phenomena have become obsolete. The fires are now in their sixth generation. The warm nights are no longer tropical, but torrid and even hellish. There is already talk of climate boiling and droughts have become megadroughts. Eleven thousand premature deaths in Spain alone in 2022 due to the heat... We have entered a new reality. What ecological future are we heading towards? No other of the great crises that sweep the world will define the XNUMXst century as the answer to that disturbing question. Is the ecological collapse of the Earth system inevitable as a result of unleashed anthropogenic forces? Is there still reasonable room for hope to avoid the worst scenarios and consequences? What can we learn from the last fifty years that will help us improve that possible future? How can we build an active political, social, cultural resistance that makes a certain difference? How do we personally position ourselves in the face of this emergency?

What can literature teach us about the future?

Literature has deepened human, social and planetary knowledge throughout time. Many of the contributions are surprising for their validity and for the way they project signals about our increasingly present future. In this sense, to focus the debate, we could stick to the topic of human freedom. What does literature tell us about freedom? (or in plural, about freedoms). What are your threats? Are they irreversible conquests? Precarious? Should they be obtained in each generation? Where is the greatest difficulty in maintaining them? In the fight against barbarism? "The will to power"? Bureaucracy? Is despotism an intrinsic quality of the individual?

Lluís Vives Space The socioeconomic roots of a growing unrest | The role of the company
In the early moments of the 2007 financial debacle, many of us wanted to believe that it would serve to address the deeper reason for the disaster. It was not like that, in the same way that it has not been like that due to the pandemic or so many other warning signs that we continue to ignore. We strive to apply technical solutions to economic problems that, while necessary, are insufficient; and in pointing out populist political movements as if they were the origin of the problem, when they are nothing more than one of its manifestations.

To redirect the deep-rooted social unrest, which is directly reflected in the debacle of traditional politics, we must approach its deepest reasons: the collapse of a model of society that welcomed the person and projected them into the future. We have neglected the lessons of history and have not considered what is unalterable about the human condition: its need for roots and recognition.

To approach these issues, we have two speakers recognized for their ability to go beyond the obvious. Sophie Baby is a historian and has focused most of her intellectual career on understanding the forces that lead to social conflict and its outbreak. Antón Costas is recognized for incorporating the lessons of history and the approach to the psychology of the person into strictly economic analysis.

Possible futures: humans beyond the Anthropocene

With the new century, humanity begins a new stage that mixes enormously promising scientific avenues with growing uncertainties about our ability to survive as a society. Bioengineering and artificial intelligence can change our relationship with disease (including aging) and even help preserve biodiversity and fight climate change and the other negative effects of the Anthropocene. Can we develop a society that enjoys new opportunities for individual and global health? Is it possible to preserve biodiversity in a world where more and more resources are needed to sustain a still growing humanity? The challenge of achieving this goal requires not only the resources to make it real. It is necessary to inform society, bring critical knowledge to the world of education, develop policies where science plays a fundamental role and fight against misinformation.

Can we constitute ourselves as humanity?

Humanity is affected by increasingly interconnected global challenges (climate crisis, pandemics, displacement of people, wars) that are usually addressed with solidarity initiatives, science and fundamental values ​​such as dignity, equality, justice and care for the planet. To find a way to overcome these antinomies and constitute ourselves as humanity, we must understand what makes us essentially human. Tomás Marqués, from evolutionary biology, will enlighten us on his discoveries in primates. For his part, Víctor Gómez Pin, philosopher, will give us a look at this XNUMXst century and its technological and knowledge potential. Let us keep in mind that societal changes occur over very long periods - such as the passage from the Middle Ages to the modern world - and that what is new is little visible to those of us who are immersed in this transition that, perhaps, will lead us to a new humanity.

Humanities, science, and artificial intelligence

At the closing point, it is foreseeable - and desirable - that a stream of ideas, opinions, doubts, questions and also hopes and lights have flowed in this Second Edition of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats. It is very likely that we have shared the need for a plea in defense of ethical reflection to supervise the great disruption that the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution or Second Age of the Machine means. We live, bewildered, at a crossroads in which different narratives compete for perspective and also for the attitude with which we imagine an increasingly imminent future. Either we take advantage of the opportunity to build a better world for humanity and the planet (inseparable realities) or, as many experts point out, we are heading towards the apocalypse. Artificial Intelligence constitutes the greatest challenge that technology - a consequence and result of our own creativity and ingenuity - has in store for us as a species. Perhaps it is nothing that we have not known since the beginning of time: with the same stones we can build bridges or impassable walls. The evolution and outcome of the great transformations underway will depend on our intentions and purposes. Only a technocritical position that privileges the dignity of human life should have a future. Whatever the case, we need to know, share and face together this challenging moment that we have to live, suffer or celebrate. Rescuing the humanistic gaze and the critical attitude that philosophy means (Europe as an attitude, as Husserl would say) emerge as an urgency in this complex and fascinating time.

First Edition - 2022

Poster for the Dénia Festival of the Humanities 2022

Bionic Man: Can We Delegate Our Luck to Our Prosthetics?

Today's society is immersed in one of the most complex and disruptive revolutions in its history. This, unlike all the previous ones, is generating a much more global, subtle and profound transformation. This 4.0 revolution is making possible an unprecedented development of biotechnology and, with it, encouraging transhumanist and posthumanist movements of a cybernetic nature whose main objective is to transcend the human being through the creation of a new ⎯biotechnological⎯ species. This is the old idea of ​​“bionic man”, an augmented human that combines person and machine to increase human biological skills and abilities. However, the path of the augmented human requires great biotechnological challenges, but also ethical and political ones. This will be, precisely, the leitmotif of this session.

Changes in the human body: disease and evolution

By definition, living things are changeable. The mechanism behind a constant change impacts, in a dual way, modifications that alter the function in non-predetermined ways. This constant pressure for change is innately associated with the concept of illness. This session will feature two expert speakers in development and neurology, with whom they will share thoughts on where we come from and where human beings are going, including the evolutionary significance of diseases.

Global world, closed borders

The 20s of this millennium will be known as a period of turbulence and global threats (financial crisis, adjustment policies, COVID-19 pandemic, inflation crisis, war in Ukraine, climate crisis...). These phenomena have abruptly underlined the interdependence of the world in which we live and the globality of the challenges we face without having global governance mechanisms with which to respond to them. Action in the face of these challenges has caused a permanent dilemma between promoting more cooperation and understanding that our problems are linked to the problems of others, or following the short-term and useless impulse of shielding our populations to protect them. This debate session will reflect on all these issues associated with the efficient management of human mobility.

History: what lessons from the past can help us?

The famous historian Tony Judt, in his work On the Forgotten Twentieth Century, warned us against carelessness about remembering the past. He warned us of the risk of taking the XNUMXth century lightly and leaving it behind with too much confidence and too little reflection: “a world that has just been lost and is already half forgotten”. He warned us that the greatest danger of ignoring what happened lay in the interpretation of the present as an unprecedented time, in which the past has nothing to teach us. In Judt's words, what "the past can help us understand is the perennial complexity of issues." Thus, as Yuval Noah Harari points out in his work Homo Deus, knowledge of the past allows us to understand how the course of events has shaped our technology, our politics, our society, even our thoughts, fears and dreams.

Society: how to get out of the patriarchal model?

The patriarchal model has colored our world and our society at such a deep level that a bias based on inequality between men and women has even been normalized and naturalized. It is urgent to deconstruct a system that condemns more than half of the population to live in fear and suffer different forms of sexist violence for the mere fact of being women. This debate session will try to analyze the way to end the patriarchal model through feminisms.

Attendees at the Dénia Festival of the Humanities

Fictions: how will we explain the world to ourselves?

One of the first things that this new century has shown is that science, ideologies and beliefs are not enough to understand the world. Events such as the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, the financial crisis of 2008/9, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have shown that human beings need answers to position themselves in an environment that is changing too quickly. How should we position ourselves in a world where these events affect everyone? Four speakers, scientists, philosophers and theologians, try to propose interpretations not only to situate ourselves in this world, but also to respond to its events in a productive way, that is, beyond the fictions to which we are accustomed.

Life: will the relationship of humans with the other species change? How will we feed ourselves?

What unites us and what separates us from the so-called animals in the human-animal relationship? The trump card of language and reasoning, a sense of humor and the ability to honor the dead have been used to affirm the exceptional nature of the human being, creating a binarism between nature and culture that places us on a higher plane and subjugates the rest. of species. This debate will try to think of a new relationship with a natural world to which we also belong.

Lluís Vives Space: Humanities and Business

Never in the history of humanity have companies had so much power, nor has humanity had such a powerful instrument to convert scientific and technological development into technological and social progress. And, at the same time, humanity has never had so much power to self-destruct. And it is that technological and social progress is not, in itself, human progress. This debate will rethink the current meaning of the company and its function. It may be time for the enlightened company and we must face this mutation. About us? What we want? Where we go? Three questions that will fill, like the rest of the Dénia Festival of the Humanities, the Lluís Vives Space dedicated to business and the humanities.

Debate Where is the business world changing?

Ecology: can we regain confidence in the future, avoid the dystopian world?

The climate crisis makes it harder than ever to believe in the future. The succession of alarming data on the state of the planet worries us, but it also paralyzes us. It seems impossible to do anything to avoid a dystopian future that is presented as inevitable. However, the ecological crisis also makes it more necessary than ever to think about the future. Now, when it is still possible to stop and reverse many of the worst effects of the crisis, it is essential to think about a fair future for all and, above all, how to get there.

inhabit the world

After centuries of urbanization and globalization, urban culture has come to embrace the entire planet. Surely, the 'uninhabitable' world that the current triple crisis – economic; climatic; Sanitary – draws us, it is to a great extent because we also find cities uninhabitable. It is by virtue of what happens and, above all, what does not happen in them, that the world will seem more or less possible to us as an environment, as a place, as a house, as a room. Inhabiting cities well at all their scales is surely the best shortcut not so much to being able to inhabit the world, but to be able to inhabit it in a different way.

Power: when the notion of limits is lost

Between the limits of power and the defects of democracy, politics navigates around the world, looking for its economic, technological and cultural accents. The spectacle is varied and often painful. Ideas are usually scarce in absolute figures and almost nil when it comes to the organization and administration of nations and peoples in the scenario that interests citizens. Philosophy, anthropology and self-styled political science study the phenomenon of power from different drawers of the great academic closet. But not trying to contrast and even mix its content can be a mistake, if it is a matter of improving the mistake, that "bad encounter" that La Boétie placed at the most original root of the city and civil power. This session will try to find examples and ask some questions about the limits of power.

Participants

Third Edition | 2024

• Verónica Cantó, president of the Valencian Academy of Language
• Àngels Gregori, poet, cultural manager and director of the Oliva Poetry Festival
• M. Àngels Francés, academic at the Valencian Academy of Language and professor of Catalan Philology at the University of Alicante
• Xavier Mas de Xaxàs, journalist, diplomatic correspondent of La Vanguardia
• Josep Ramoneda, journalist and writer, content director of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats
• John Carlin, journalist and writer, author of The Human Factor (Invictus) (Seix Barral, 2010)
• Remedios Zafra, writer and essayist, researcher at the CSIC Institute of Philosophy, winner of the 2017 Anagrama Essay Award for The enthusiasm (Anagram, 2017)
• Santiago Alba Rico, essayist and writer, author of To be or not to be (a body) (Seix Barral, 2017)
• Daniel Gamper, professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​author of What are you laughing at? Benefits and damages of joking (Herder Editorial, 2024)
• Sonia Contera, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, author of Living Nanotechnology (Arpa, 2023)
• Carles Lalueza, biologist, director of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences (MCNB)
• Tomàs Marquès i Bonet, evolutionary biologist, director of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona
• Quique Dacosta, 3 Michelin star chef
• Javier Gomá Lanzón, writer and essayist, director of the Juan March Foundation, author of Universal Concrete (Taurus, 2023)
• Carolina Ciuti, contemporary art curator and director of the magazine exibart.es
• Puri Mascarell, writer, professor of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Valencia, author of Mireia (Two Whiskers, 2023)
• Antoni Colomina, professor in the Department of Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Assets at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
• Ulises Cortés, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the UPC and Director of the High Performance Artificial Intelligence Group at BSC
• Maria Blasco, biologist, Scientific Director of the National Cancer Research Centre
• Luis M. Martínez, director of the Human Cognition Program and the Visual Analogies Laboratory at the Alicante Institute of Neurosciences
• Emilio Santiago Muíño, anthropologist, researcher and ecosocial activist, author of Oil (Arcadia, 2018)
• Anna Traveset, Research Professor at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB)
• Cristina O'Callaghan, co-director of the UOC-UPF-ISGlobal interuniversity master's degree in Planetary Health
• Adolf Utor, president of Baleària
• Àngel Font, Executive Director of the CaixaResearch Institute and of Research and Health in Portugal of the "la Caixa" Foundation, President of Philea.
• Araceli Císcar, executive director of Dacsa Group
• José-Félix Lozano, professor of Moral Philosophy at the UPV, author of Ethical Codes for the Business World (Trotta, 2004)
• Pilar Bonet, journalist, former correspondent of the newspaper El País in the Soviet Union, author of Castaways of the Empire (Galaxy Gutenberg, 2023)
• Shlomo Ben-Ami, politician, diplomat and former Israeli Foreign Minister, author of Prophets without honor (RBA, 2023)
• Cristina Gallach, former UN Under-Secretary-General, former State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and member of Global Women Leaders-Voices for Change and Equality (GWL-Voices)
• Juan Arnau, philosopher and writer, author of Matter that breathes light (Galaxy Gutenberg, 2023)
• Lucía Lijtmaer, writer and cultural critic, author of Almost nothing to wear and Offended (Anagram, 2019)
• Antonio Ariño, sociologist, professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Valencia, National Research Award with The ritual city (Anthropos, 1992)
• Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán, political scientist, professor of Political Science at the UAM, author of Populisms (Alliance Publishing, 2019)
• Ivan Krastev, political scientist, president of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, author of Is it already tomorrow? How the pandemic will change the world (Debate, 2020)
• Luis Ramiro, professor of Political Science at UNED, author of Radical Left Voters in Western Europe (Routledge, 2023)

Second Edition | 2023

• Zulfü Livaneli, composer and writer, author of Serenade for Nadia.
• Joseph Ramoneda, writer and journalist, content director of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats.
• Chiara Bottici, philosopher and writer, director of Gender Studies and Associate Professor of Philosophy at The New School, author of Anarchfemminism (Bloomsbury, 2021).
• Christina Manzano, journalist, director of External Relations at the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB).
• Rafael Villasanjuan, journalist, graduate in Information Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
• Christina O'Callaghan, co-director of the interuniversity master's degree in Planetary Health at the UOC-UPF-ISGlobal.
• Gonzalo fanjul, director of the Policy Analysis area of ​​the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).
• Pankaj Mishra, writer and essayist, author of Bland fanatics.
• Nuria Oliver, co-founder and vice president of ELLIS, chief scientific advisor at the Vodafone Institute and chief data scientist at DataPop Alliance.
• Carme Colomina, principal researcher at CIDOB, specialized in the European Union, disinformation and global politics.
• Manuel Alias, journalist, National Prize for Journalism and Media 2022.
• Soledad Gallego-Diaz, journalist, director of El País (2018/2020).
• Zira Box, professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the University of Valencia, co-author of Reactionary Nationalists, Fascists and Dictatorships in the Twentieth Century: Against Democracy.
• Joanna Bourke, Professor of History at Birkbeck College, London, author of Thirst for blood.
• Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Santiago de Compostela, author of Wolf's lairs. Memories of authoritarian Europe y Back to Stalingrad.
• Aurora Bosch, professor in the department of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Valencia.
• Maria Noise, visual artist, researcher and cultural producer.
• Clara Serra, philosopher, researcher at the University of Barcelona, ​​author of Lionesses and foxes.
• Antonio Monegal, professor of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature at the Pompeu Fabra University.
• Christina Monge, political scientist, president of the Más Democracia association.
• Antxon Olabe, environmental economist and essayist, author of Need for an Earth Policy.
• Andreu Escriva, member of the Group of Experts for the Climate Emergency of Barcelona, ​​author of Against sustainability.
• Edurne portela, writer, author of maddi and the borders.
• Martha Sanz, writer, author of Metal shutters snap down.
• Jordy Amat, philologist and writer, author of The chauffeur's son.
• Enric Balaguer, professor of literature at the University of Alicante and writer.
• Sophie Baby, historian, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Burgundy and junior member of the University Institute of France.
• Anton Costas, economist, professor of Economic Policy at the University of Barcelona and president of the Economic and Social Council.
• Jordi Alberich, economist, content director of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats.
• Jordi Mercader, president of Miquel y Costas & Miquel, and president of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation.
• Maite Anton, president of the Alicante Family Business Association.
• Patrici Calvo, professor of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology of the Universitat Jaume I, author of The Cordial Economy. Ethics, Recognition and Reciprocity.
• marti dominguez, essayist and writer, professor of Journalism at the University of Valencia, director of method and author of Mater.
• Núria Montserrat, ICREA researcher and leader of the Pluripotency for Organ Regeneration group at the Bioengineering Institute of Catalonia (IBEC).
• Ricard Solé, physicist, ICREA research professor, director of the Complex Systems Laboratory of the PRBB, UPF.
• Victor Gomez Pin, philosopher, professor emeritus at the UAB and researcher at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
• Tomàs Marquès i Bonet, evolutionary biologist, director of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona.
• Marcela Jabbaz, doctor in Sociology and professor at the University of Valencia, vice dean of Equality, Culture and Participation of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the UV.
• Arcadi Navarro, professor of Genetics and ICREA research professor at UPF, director of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation.
• Francesc Colomer, doctor in Philosophy and expert in Ethics and Artificial Intelligence, Secretary of Tourism of the Generalitat Valenciana (2015/2023).

First Edition | 2022

• Ximo Puig, president of the Generalitat Valenciana
• Joan Subirats, Minister of Universities of the Government of Spain
• Vicent Grimalt, mayor of Denia
Ximo Puig with Joan Subirats, Vicent Grimalt and Adolfo Utor at the Festival de les Humanitats de Dénia
• Theodor Kallifatides, writer, author of timandra y The past is not a dream
• Joseph Ramoneda, writer and journalist, content director of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats
• Raphael Yuste, neurobiologist, professor at Columbia University, promoter of the BRAIN project
• Gustavo Deco, Research professor at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies and professor at Pompeu Fabra University, director of the Computational Neuroscience research group and the Center for Brain and Cognition at UPF
• Martha Rodriguez, member of the Practical Ethics and Democracy research group at the UJI, professor of Ethics at the UPV and project manager at the ÉTNOR Foundation
• Mara Diessen, neurobiologist, researcher and university professor, world expert in the field of neurobiology and pharmacology
• Maria Angela Nieto Toledano, biochemist and molecular biologist, principal investigator at the Institute of Neurosciences (CSIC-UMH) of Alicante
• Thomas Marques, ICREA research professor at Pompeu Fabra University and head of the Comparative Genomics group at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC/UPF)
• michel ager, anthropologist, professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and researcher emeritus at the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD)
Vicent Grimalt with Leire Pajín before their participation in the Festival de les Humanitats
• Leire Pajin, Director of Global Development at ISGlobal, President of the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development (REDS) and former Minister of Health of the Government of Spain (2010-11)
• Muhammad Subat, journalist specializing in warfare and social and political affairs in Syria and the Middle East, editor of the online magazine Baynana
• Martin Baumeister, historian, director of the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom
• Xose Manoel Nunez Seixas, historian and writer, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Santiago de Compostela, author of Wolf's lairs. Memories of authoritarian Europe (2021) and Back to Stalingrad (2022)
• Heidi Cristina Senante, Jean Monnet Professor of History and Institutions of the European Union
• Zafra Remedies, writer and essayist, tenured scientist at the CSIC Institute of Philosophy, Anagrama Essay Award 2017 for The enthusiasm
• Najat El Hashmi, writer, Ramon Llull Award 2008 with The last patriarch
• Alba Alfajeme, psychologist specializing in sexist violence, professor at the University of Girona and author of When we call our names
• Carmelo Dotolo, full professor of Theology of Religions at the Pontifical Università Urbaniana, president of the Società Italiana per la Ricerca Teologica (SIRT)
• Ana Carrasco-Conde, professor of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, author of speak evil
• Xavier Sampedro, scientist and journalist, was a researcher at the Severo Ochoa Center for Molecular Biology in Madrid and at the Molecular Biology Laboratory of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge
• Santiago Zavala, ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at Pompeu Fabra University
• Martha Segarra, director of research at the Laboratoire d'Études de Genre et de Sexualité-LEGS, of the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique, author of Humanimals
• Oscar Horta, professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela, member of the Animal Ethics Foundation, author of A step forward in defense of animals
• Juan Jose Lopez-Burniol, vice president of the Caixa d'Estalvis i Pensions Banking Foundation of Barcelona ”la Caixa”
• Jordi Alberich, economist, content director of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats
• Cesar Rendueles, philosopher, sociologist and essayist, professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid, author of Against Equal Opportunity: An Egalitarian Pamphlet
• Troy Vettese, environmental historian, Max Weber Fellow, author of Half-Earth Socialism
• Layla Martinez, political scientist, editor and writer, author of Utopia is not an island
• Adolfo Utor, president of Baleària
• Anton Costas, economist, professor of Economic Policy at the University of Barcelona and president of the Economic and Social Council
• Ricardo Mairal, rector of the UNED, professor of English Language and Linguistics in the Department of Foreign Philologies of the UNED
• John Romero, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Valencia and member of the Interuniversity Institute for Local Development (IIDL)
• ben wilson, historian, author of metropolis
• Francesc Munoz, geographer and urban planner, professor of Geography at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​author of Urbanization, common landscapes, global places
• Domingo Garcia-Marza, Professor of Ethics at Jaume I University, director of the Department of Philosophy and Sociology and director of the research group "Applied Ethics and Democracy"
• eva anduiza, Professor of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​ICREA Academia researcher and director of the “Democracy, Elections and Citizenship” research group
• Agueda Quiroga, anthropologist and public policy expert, founder of Philosoc
• James Casals, philosopher, rector of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2013/2021) and professor of Philosophy in the UPF Department of Humanities
• Keshia Pollack-Porter, Chair of the Department of Health, Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University
• Rafael Vilasanjuan, journalist, director of Analysis and Global Development at ISGlobal and member of the Civil Society Steering Committee of GAVI (The Vaccine Alliance)
• Sophie Roberts, writer, author of The last pianos of Siberia

Where are the stages?

The festival is divided into two stages, coinciding throughout the programming with simultaneous debates in each of the locations. In addition, some parallel events are held in other parts of Dénia, such as the Calle Marques de Campo and the Plaza del Consell.

Dance performance during the inauguration of the Festival de les Humanitats

Social Center

The Dénia Social Center Auditorium hosts half of the sessions, including the closing session. This is located in the heart of Dénia, at Carrer Calderón, 4.

Entrance of the Social Center of Dénia

La Androna Baleària Port Room

It is a room located on the top floor of the maritime station from Baleària, on the northern breakwater of the port of Dénia. Most of the conferences will be held there, as well as the opening session of the festival.

Sala l'Androna during the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats

How much does it cost?

The price varies depending on whether you want a voucher to access several sessions or attend an event separately. You can buy the tickets this article.

• Bonus 12 sessions: €20
• Individual session: €3