dr. GH (Gijs) van Oenen

Biography

Gijs van Oenen (1959) is associate professor in practical philosophy at Erasmus School of Philosophy. Van Oenen studied Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and obtained his Master’s degree in 1986. He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1994, with a dissertation on legal philosophy.

Dr. van Oenen has worked at the Haarlem Polytechnic, the University of Amsterdam, Webster University Leiden and the Academy for Architecture Rotterdam. He joined Erasmus University in 1994. His research focuses on political theory, rule of law, 'gedogen' (forebearance), multiculturalism, architecture, (art and) public space and interpassivity.

From 2007 until 2013, he was head of the research programme Interpassive metal fatigue, sponsored by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). In this project, the hypothesis is that people in modern democracy cannot manage to live up to our own promise of emancipated life, because the incessant democratic interaction and rational consent that modern society exacts from us, is becoming ‘too much of a good thing’ for us. Symptoms of this condition are starting to show up, in the form of e.g. aversion, capsularization, detachment, disinterest and outsourcing. The research project aimed to track down and analyse the symptoms of interpassivity in three main areas of modern social life: politics and governance; labour and economics; citizenship and public space.

Van Oenen plays an active role in academic as well as in public political, social and philosophical debates.

More information can be found on: http://www2.eur.nl/fw/law/