On Thursday, 12 February 2026, Gijs van Oenen took his leave of the Erasmus School of Philosophy (Erasmus University Rotterdam) with his farewell lecture entitled Adventures of Dialectics. After a career at the faculty that began in 1994, he reflected on his personal and academic journey through philosophy.
Farewell Lecture
In his farewell lecture, Gijs van Oenen weaves a tapestry of personal observations and academic projects, with “dialectics” as the guiding thread. He describes dialectics as a “grasp of knowledge” that is as necessary as it is impossible, where what is truly interesting occurs in the “negative” or the unforeseen. Van Oenen looks back on his work on social themes such as tolerance policies, interpassivity, and “overstrained democracy.” He takes the audience from a reinterpretation of the Odyssey to the philosophical, musical, and personal motivations of Theodor Adorno and his allies of the Frankfurt School. His central message is that dialectics is not merely an abstract theory, but also a form of self-examination in which the philosopher, as a person, is inevitably implicated in the process. The lecture concludes with a plea for an “inclusive dialectics” that connects the personal and the political through theatrical and aesthetic means.
