Benjamin Lectures

In the framework of the Benjamin Lectures – and the associated Benjamin Chair at the Centre for Social Critique – a distinguished philosopher is invited each year, to present the broader public with current debates on key social and political issues. In 2024, Lea Ypi will hold the Benjamin Chair. Lea Ypi’s Benjamin lectures entitled “What Is Moral Socialism?” will take place on the 19th, 20th and 21st of June 2024 at MAKEBA Auditorium, in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 in Berlin.

What Is Moral Socialism?

Political theorist Lea Ypi from the London School of Economics will hold the Center’s Benjamin Chair in 2024. From June 19 to 21, 2024, Ypi will present her ideas on what is essential for a moral version of socialism in her Benjamin Lectures at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

Agents of Possibilty: The Complexity of Social Change

Sally Haslanger is professor for philosophy at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Being an active feminist and anti-racist, she will elucidate the complexities of social change and the decisive roles of social movements and social theory in her talks on “Agents of Possibility”.

Three Faces of Capitalist Labor: Uncovering the Hidden Ties among Gender, Race and Class

Should we view contemporary anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and feminist struggles as unrecognised labor struggles? Nancy Fraser uncovers the hidden ties among gender, race, and class by linking them to the three forms of capitalist labor: exploited labor, dispossessed labor, and domestic labor.

The Working Sovereign

In June 2021, the second Walter Benjamin Lectures of the Humanities and Social Change Center Berlin took place. Axel Honneth, one of the leading social philosophers of our time, devoted three evenings to the question of the potential and necessity of democratizing labor relations.

Democracy and its Crises

In June 2019, the Walter Benjamin Lectures took place for the first time at the Humanities and Social Change Center Berlin at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The renowned Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor kicked off this annual format. On three consecutive evenings, Taylor gave lectures on “Democracy and its Crises,” highlighting immanent decay phenomena of contemporary democracies […]