Mini-conference for Curious Girls and Boys on Dating

Synopsis

This question has been asked many times, and it seems we have not yet find the answer. However, we all know very well what love is, but it is really hard to explain it. Or say it. We know that loving someone is hard but at the same time is as easy as breathing. Sometimes it feels good, sometimes it hurts. It brings you joy and it makes you sad. Love is both peace and war: so confusing.

Love is crazy. And a very serious thing. Weird, and a bit of a mystery. There are those who die of love, others are only alive because they love. Camões wrote that love is a «unhappy happiness», that to love someone is «never being happy with being happy».

What is love anyway? This lecture promises no answers, and it may only raise even more questions. But it can assure you that talking about this mystery is as good as experiencing it. Showing that Camões was right.

Maria João Mayer Branco was born in Lisbon in 1974. She studied Philosophy at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and at the Università degli Studi di Pisa (Italy) and got her Ph.D. with a thesis on Nietzsche. She is currently a professor at the Department of Philosophy of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. In addition to academic activity, she is also a translator and has written on exhibitions by contemporary Portuguese artists. She also takes on chatting, at any time of the day, but not every day. She is the mother of a five-year-old boy and has come to learn that life is not at all too short.

Photo: João Wengorovius