Deconfining the future: The limits
What to do with the future, so far away and so close? So ours –it is humanswho build it– and so disturbing, since the course of nature overwhelms usand the evolution of the prostheses we equip ourselves with often dwarfsus: fear and bewilderment. Three years ago the world stopped, althoughnot for everyone.
Even in the most liberal regimes, they locked us up at home and applieda brutal reduction of basic freedoms, starting with the right to move freely.We feel mutilated because, as Montaigne said, we are beings who "paintourselves" in experience, i.e. in contact with others and with the world.Since then, concern for the future has not stopped growing. And theanguished fantasy of the passage from the last man (the last body) to thesuperman (the body confined in its technological prostheses, capable ofproducing ontological fractures between humans) has been unfolding.
The epidemic, the ongoing ecological catastrophes, the accelerationprocess in which science and technology have become immersed, theunattainable universe of communication that burns stages every dayhave increased fear and insecurity about the future. It is necessary to*deconfine the future as a premise in order to regain confidence, if theoverflow of the species is not imposed first. After all, we are the ones who,with nature's tolerance, build the future. And, in reality, what it is in itsimmediacy will depend on what humans have done, on the ability togenerate and govern efficient prostheses. But humans are well aware oftheir weaknesses. Society is made up of that thing we call power –andwhich is actually the expression of difference, no two people are thesame– and which is constitutive of our condition.
Let us look to the future, if we want to overcome fear, and let us do sofrom the perspective of dialogue between the sciences, the arts and the humanities, precisely so that we do not lose what is precious to the humancondition: the freedom to think and decide, which is so often threatened.
Thinking about the future, therefore, from the present. That is, by stretchingthe threads of the projects (and risks) in progress and putting them on thedissecting table of free debate between voices built on differentperspectives. After all, we are the ones who, in one way or another, arebuilding it. And this means moving in the field of limits: of art, of economicpower (and of growth), of politics, of the human body (and of geneticmanipulation, of longevity), of science (and artificial intelligence), of theplanet and of life (ecology), of social structures and personal relationships,of individual freedoms, of democracy, of war and, in general, of thepermanent threat of the loss of notion of limits, a central philosophicalproblem that marks the current times.
From October 24 to 26, Dénia Festival de les Humanitats will turn the cityof Dénia into the epicentre of critical thinking, reflection and theHumanities in the Mediterranean for the third consecutive year.From October 24 to 26, the 3rd Dénia Festival de les Humanitats will beheld with 15 debate sessions and other cultural activities for reflection.
The Festival was born in 2022 as a meeting point for influential thinkersand experts in economics, neuroscience, medicine, anthropology,philosophy, history, geography, humanistic thought, ethics and culture,among many other scientific and artistic disciplines.
The relevance and quality of the speakers who participated in thesemultidisciplinary meetings have already made this festival a Europeanbenchmark in the field of humanities.