2026 Berlin Lecture: Fintan O'Toole

Launched in 1990 to celebrate the 80th birthday of the College’s Founding President, Sir Isaiah Berlin, the Berlin Lecture is in his own field of study, the history of ideas. The Berlin Lecture is made possible thanks to an endowment gift from the Rothschild Foundation. From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Art and Politics in the Age of Trump Walter Benjamin famously wrote, in Nazi-ruled Berlin, that "the logical outcome of fascism is an aestheticizing of political life.” But we might also put this the other way around: the more political life resembles art, the more fascistic it becomes. We are living through a crisis of democracy in which the public realm has become thoroughly aestheticised. Reactionary politics has become a grotesque form of performance art. Aesthetic ideas like the suspension of disbelief and the imagery of the sublime are now the stuff of political power. Where, asks Fintan O’Toole, does this leave both democratic discourse and artistic practice? Is there a way back to a shared imaginative life in which art and politics are mutually enriching? Every effort is made to credit copyright in these events, but we would always be delighted to hear from copyright owners to include any credits due in future.