Life

Taking as its starting point the latest discoveries in the fields of genetics and biology, this year's Barcelona Debate sets out to reflect on the transformation on the very concept of human life from the ethical, philosophical and political as well as the scientific viewpoint. With this cycle, the CCCB and the Fundació Collserola are continuing their multidisciplinary approximation to the essence of human nature and the role of the individual in the contemporary world, which began in 2005 with the cycle "Passions".

Technological progress and the latest discoveries in genetics and biology have opened up our frontiers of knowledge and also our capacity of control over life, although without, it seems, reducing the uncertainties and vulnerability of the human condition. Again, traditional ideas about the supposed difference and exception of our species are increasingly being challenged from different scientific domains. The lines between what is and what is not human are blurring. While debates on the future of humanity raise all these new incognitos, in everyday life a proliferation of situations is appearing in which the human being is limited to pure survival. All in all, what is being profoundly transformed is the very notion of human life.