The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Friday, 24 April 2026, 19:00-21:00Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg, Lecture room
Research focus »Democratic Vistas«
Lecture
Eva Illouz (Jerusalem/Paris)
»Is Guilt Good for Democracy?«
The lecture is the keynote lecture of the Democratic Vistas annual workshop 2026 in cooperation with GRK 3113 »Aesthetics of Democracy«. Further information can be found here.
About the lecture
Since the 1980s, guilt has started to become a key emotion in the moral-emotional lexicon of the liberal left. This lecture attempts to retrace the cultural and historical processes by which this was made possible. It also inquires about the normative and political implications of such transformation, asking, for example, if guilt is equivalent to accountability or atonement and if it meets with the strategic aims of liberalism or, on the contrary, defeats them.
About the speaker
Eva Illouz is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She has published numerous books on the sociology of emotions, consumer capitalism, and modern culture. For her work, she was awarded the Frank Schirrmacher Prize 2024, the Aby Warburg Prize 2024, and the EMET Prize for Social Sciences, among others. Latest book publications: The Emotional Life of Populism. How Fear, Disgust, Resentment, and Love Undermine Democracy (Polity Press, 2023), Der 8. Oktober. Über die Ursprünge des neuen Antisemitismus (in German, Suhrkamp, 2025), and Explosive Emotions. How Modern Society Shapes What We Feel (Princeton University Press, 2026).
Registration
Please register before April 21 at:
anmeldung@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de
You will receive a registration confirmation.