The Department of political science, University of Amsterdam, presents the Annual Jos de Beus Political Theory Lecture by Professor Catherine Lu (McGill) Tuesday 25 April, between 16-18hrs, Roeterseiland campus, C0.02 Title: “Tragic Progress” Abstract: “With climate change, pandemic, economic precarity, and war, new chapters continue to be written in the history of human iniquity. We live in a world of hierarchies that enable and entrench the domination, oppression, exploitation, and marginalization of some groups. What can making progress mean? Answering this question from the perspective of tragedy involves changing how we think about what progress means, and how to make it. First, a tragic view focuses our attention not on building an abstract ideal utopia, but on looking at the world we have from multiple perspectives and social positions. Confronting the tragic reversals of our time raises questions about why the powerful and privileged typically fail to see defects in the orders that sustain and entrench their domination and advantage. Second, tragic progress aims to make possibility out of the social, political and moral horrors of our time by foregrounding the current struggles and aims of the marginalized, the oppressed, the dispossessed, the refugee, the fugitive, the exiled, and the bombed. Doing so requires recasting political ideals of freedom, equality, and solidarity on tragic foundations.”