Beauty and Consolation: 20 brilliant thinkers about life (2000)

What makes life worth living? Twenty brilliant minds and intellectuals (artists, philosophers, poets, thinkers, physicists, mathematicians, scientists) came at the beginning of this century together in Amsterdam, in gallery De Zaaijer (a former shelter church on the Keizersgracht), for a roundtable discussion on the theme Beauty and Consolation. The result of their long-term meeting has become a 150-minute special report, made by the Dutch journalist Wim Kayzer (broadcasted by the VPRO).
An evening with George Steiner, Wole Soyinka, Dubravka Ugresic, John Coetzee, Leon Lederman, Tatjana Tolstaja, Freeman Dyson, Elizabeth Loftus, Gary Lynch, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, Roger Scruton, Germaine Greer, Catherine Bott, Rutger Kopland, Simon Schama , Rudi Fuchs, Gyorgy Konrad, Karel Appel and Jane Goodall.
Absent: Yehudi Menuhin and Richard Dufallo had already died at that time. Vladimir Ashkenazy, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Weinberg and Edward Witten wanted to be at the meeting, but could not free themselves.

[@AsklepiosvanApollo]

25 years ago, I nearly got to the point to agree with the red blazer, luckily I slowly left that point again and went back to the, much less arrogant, essence of life, where atheïsm is not an issue at all anymore and where we share experiences with others (not with everyone at the same level of course). That women's comment about the empty shell was spot on!

[@aokay720]

The guy in the velvet suit is THE best

[@aokay720]

the ending was a bit disappointing yet hilarious. thanks for sharing!

[@andzwe]

One of the things I can remember from this final episode is how I got vicarious embarrassment at Karel Appel's contribution 1:31:15 George Steiner, for whom I had nothing but admiration until then, fell somewhat short. But this was anyway an uncomfortable and mostly disappointing final chord to a hugely fascinating series, in which the participants came out much better individually. The acclaimed program maker / interviewer Wim Kayzer passed away on May 7th.

[@SherLizz]

16 videos in deze playlist zijn hidden. Kunnen die openbaar gemaakt. 🙈

[@kasperm.r.guldberg7354]

Wow, the squabble with Nussbaum was interesting... Watch from 1:00:00. We can only infer that Scrotum found her ire familiar (she hated a book of his, which she reviewed).

[@aokay720]

this was interesting...

[@Djinga]

How quickly sex came into question 😂

[@cedrikvandooren7993]

1:09:00

[@13e11even11]

Proust being an object of perfection is a failure of imagination.

[@13e11even11]

@@cvetislavstoyanov4367 perfection? Really? I adore Proust, and went through a period when I read almost nothing else, but I can not call this perfection, any more than a hundred others, who I would not give that title to either.

[@13e11even11]

@@cvetislavstoyanov4367 there isn’t one.

[@13e11even11]

@@cvetislavstoyanov4367 as writers go I prefer the work of Dostoyevsky, Maeterlinck, Kafka, Borges, Camus.

[@13e11even11]

@@cvetislavstoyanov4367 what’s sad is that you think I care what you think🥱

[@kasperm.r.guldberg7354]

Click here to read the pundits' names: 2:24:33

[@mc02zb]

great thinkers did a lot of damage to the people... Schwab...1:09:49

[@luzdeamor02]

omg george, who invited him? call him out of the table.

[@13e11even11]

Rorty, Nussbaum, and of course Dyson, are of great consequence I believe, but the rest are close to little more than an annoying bunch of spoiled children.