The Free Thinker Institute

All are welcome!
Potluck (NO ALCOHOL!)
Donations Appreciated but Not Required
Donate Here via Ethical NYC to Support this Event
https://ethicalnyc.app.neoncrm.com/forms/54
Special Event:
New York City Opera: Puccini Celebration - Bryant Park – 5th Friday, May 31 7:00PM-8:30PM
https://bryantpark.org/calendar/event/new-york-city-opera-puccini-celebration/2024-05-31
Bryant Park between 5th & 6th Aves and 40th & 42nd Sts in Manhattan NY 10018
Q238+CP New York
Rules & Regulations – Bryant Park
https://bryantpark.org/the-park/rules-and-regulations
Bryant Park Corporation
1065 Avenue of the Americas Suite 2400
New York NY 10018 -0667
+1 (212) 768-4242
info@bryantpark.org
@bryantparknyc
City of New York, Department of Parks & Recreation
Arsenal Central Park
830 5th Ave
New York NY 10065-7095
+1 (212) 639-9675
https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/bryant-park
@nycparks

· Location is subject to change for weather. Check website calendars and Meetup pages for various groups for updates and changes.
· No alcohol permitted! Bring food, soft drinks, and fabric only blankets. Free admission.
· Meryl is the Point of Contact, reachable at +1 (929) 251-3570.
· Meet at the Bryant Park Lawn Blanket Zone, likely South East corner. Check Meetup pages for exact location. Stragglers and lost people call Meryl.

RULES for In-Person Meeting:

1. GROUP PROMOTION: Each group may bring flyers or posters advertising membership, donations, and meetings.
2. DRINKING: Bring your own booze should be limited to beer and wine, no hard liquors. Everyone should drink responsibly and don't get sloshed. Save the hard drinking for the after parties in outside bars.
3. RESPECT FOR DIFFERENCES: While there is overlap among the groups, not every group is the same and thinks the same. Respect each other's differences and different ideologies. Look for common ground not for things to hate. We're all friends here, treat each other as such.
4. ARGUMENTS: Listen to each other’s opinion completely in good faith. Ask questions about other's points instead of immediately dismissing. Approach taboo subjects--such as sex, religion, and politics--with strangers cautiously; back out if getting heated. Agree to disagree and walk away if necessary.
5. RESPECT FOR THE MEETING HOUSE: Use appropriate trash/recycling cans and clean up after yourselves. Leave the Meeting House better than you found it. Respect the neighborhood, don't act foolishly on the streets when entering and leaving or loitering.
6. NO ELECTIONEERING: Due to tax restrictions for many groups being §501(c)(3) tax-exempt, do not discuss, promote, denigrate, or leave/display/hand out materials for any candidate, campaign, party, or proposition on any upcoming election. No electioneering during the event. Other activities prohibited by tax-restrictions are also not allowed.
7. SELF-RECOGNITION: Try to speak from your own experiences and own your intentions and impacts. Recognize your own privileges and different backgrounds.
8. CONFIDENTIALITY: Meetings are private despite being open to the public. Recordings are prohibited. You may share what you learned, but not direct quotes and identities.
9. MEETING MODERATION: The organizers, hosts, co-hosts, moderators, and discussion leaders will use various methods available to ensure compliance with the rules and maintain decorum.
   Attending any meeting or event implies agreement with the above rules.

Let's try something new. We are going to live-read and discuss Aristotle's ~Nicomachean Ethics~. What is new and different about this project is that the translation, by Adam Beresford (2020), will be in standard 'Murican English.
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From the translator's "Note" on the text:
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"This translation is conservative in interpretation and traditional in aim. It aims to translate the text as accurately as possible.
"I translated every page from scratch, from a clean Greek text, rather than revising an existing translation. ... I wanted to avoid the scholars’ dialect that is traditionally used for translating Aristotle.
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"I reject the approach of Arthur Adkins, Elizabeth Anscombe, and others who followed Nietzsche in supposing that the main elements of modern thinking about right and wrong were unknown to the Greeks, or known to them only in some radically different form. My view of humanity and of our shared moral instincts is shaped by a newer paradigm. This is a post-Darwinian translation. (It is also more in line with the older, both Aristotelian and Christian view of human character.)
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"Having said that, I have no interest at all in modernizing Aristotle’s ideas.All the attitudes of this treatise remain fully Greek, very patriarchal, somewhat aristocratic and firmly embedded in the fourth century BC. My choice of dialect (standard English) has no bearing on that whatsoever. (It is perfectly possible to express distinctively Greek and ancient attitudes in standard English.) ... I have also not simplified the text in any way. I have translated every iota, particle, preposition, noun, verb, adjective, phrase, clause and sentence of the original. Every premise and every argument therefore remains – unfortunately – exactly as complex and annoyingly difficult as in any other version in whatever dialect.
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"Some scholars and students unwarily assume that the traditional dialect has a special connection with Greek and that using it brings readers closer to the original text; and that it makes the translation more accurate. In reality, it has no special tie to the Greek language, either in its main philosophical glossary or in its dozens of minor (and pointless) deviations from normal English. And in my view it certainly makes any translation much less accurate.
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"I will occasionally refer to the scholars’ dialect (‘Gringlish’) and its traditional glossary in the Notes."
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Here is our plan:
1. Review the readings from the prior session.
2. Read a segment of the translated text.
3. Discuss it analytically and interpretively.
4. Repeat again at #2 for a few more times.
5. Discuss the segments evaluatively.
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.

(* Robin Smith, author of SEP's 2022 entry "Aristotle's Logic," argues that Rhetoric should be part of the Organon.)

Whenever we do any human thing, we can either do it well or do it poorly. With instruments, we can do things either better, faster, and more; or worse, slower, and less. That is, with instruments they either augment or diminish our doings.

Do thinking and speaking (and writing and listening) require instruments? Yes. We do need physical instruments like microphones, megaphones, pens, papers, computers. But we also need mental instruments: grammar, vocabulary words, evidence-gathering techniques, big-picture integration methods, persuasion strategies. Thinking while sitting meditatively all day in a lotus position doesn't require much instrumentation of any kind, but thinking and speaking well in the sense of project planning, problem-solving, negotiating, arguing, deliberating--that is, the active doings in the world (whether romantic, social, commercial, or political)--do require well-honed mental instruments. That's the Organon in a nutshell.

Are you an up-and-coming human being, a doer, go-getter, achiever, or at least you're choosing to become one? You need to wield the Organon.

Join us.

For reference, see this TEDx talk about Socrates Café https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWNOa-Q0S6c

To get familiar with our past events, feel free to check out our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmixGB9GdrptyEWovEj80zg

After registering via zoom, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

By attending this event, I allow Free Thinker Institute (FTI) to use all recordings for educational and business purposes and in addition agree not to sue the FTI for any claims or liability.