CANCELLED. CIDOB Breakfast with Rob Riemen “Anxiety in the West: how to restore the ideal of a liberal democracy?”

- CANCELLED EVENT -  

On March 20^th, a new edition of CIDOB Breakfasts will take place with the participation of Rob Riemen, writer and founder of the Nexus Institute, as a special guest. 

Mid-19^th Century the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard made the following note: “I feel like a poor lodger who has little room in the attic of a huge building that is still being expanded and remodelled and with horror thinks he detects that the foundation is crumbling”. The political situation in the West is not much different than what Kierkegaard describes. While our political class is mainly focused on economic, scientific, technological development and global competition; simultaneously, it looks like that there are more and more signs that the foundation of our Western ideal of a liberal democracy is crumbling with as a consequence a growing anxiety in our society. Is the anxiety justified, or not? If so, why? What will be the political consequences if the West cannot keep up its liberal democratic order and what can be done to restore its own foundation? 

Rob Riemen is a writer and one of Europe’s leading intellectuals. To keep the tradition of European humanism alive, he founded the journal Nexus in 1991 (in which to this date he has published more than a thousand essays from intellectuals all over the world) and three years later he became the founder and president of the Nexus Institute, which has become one of Europe’s most prestigious organizations to inspire public intellectual debate about the most important subjects for humanity and society. Translated into 23 languages, two of his books have become international bestsellers. His first book, Nobleza de espirítu: Una idea olvidada (Taurus, 2008), is a passionate defense for the love of truth, freedom and human dignity as the key values for a civilized society. His most recent book, Para Combatir esta era. Consideraciones urgentes sobre el fascismo y el humanismo (Taurus  2017), consists of two cogent and urgent essays about the rise of fascism and the ways in which to combat it.