What Is the Good Life?

The first "Grüner Salon" meeting in Aachen will feature a high-profile panel discussion on what constitutes the good life.

 

Is the glass half-empty of half-full? Is your path laid out in front of you step by step? Is “higher, faster, farther” an imperative, or is it a viable option to try new things even if failure is a real possibility? What is a self-determined life? Can it be accomplished and does it make one happy and content?

On November 17, these and other questions will be discussed by panelists Professor Hartmut Rosa, PD Dr. Uta von Winterfeld, and Dr. Amin Ballouz at the first “Grüner Salon” meeting in Aachen, organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Professor Tim Unger, Head of the Institute of Education at RWTH Aachen University, will moderate the discussion.

Hartmut Rosa is sociologist of time at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, and co-editor of the “Time & Society” magazine. The writer advocates thorough reflection on the right speed to live your life in an ever-quickening world.

Uta von Winterfeld is a political scientist at FU Berlin and project coordinator at the Wuppertal Institute. Her key research areas are the dominion of nature, societal relationships to nature, sustainability, and gender.

Amin Ballouz was born in Lebanon, but he left his home country, as young boy, when Lebanon was torn by civil war. He studied Medicine in the GDR, worked as a doctor in London and Paris, and returned to Germany to work in the Uckermark region.

The event, which takes place between 7 and 10pm at the Theater Hall in Mensa Academica, Pontwall 3, has been organized in collaboration with Denkkollektiv Aachen, an interdisciplinary consortium of researchers at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.