What we’re about
Welcome to the Toronto Philosophy Meetup! This is a community for anyone interested in philosophy, including newcomers to the subject. We host discussions, talks, reading groups, pub nights, debates, and other events on an inclusive range of topics and perspectives in philosophy, drawing from an array of materials (e.g. philosophical writings, for the most part, but also movies, literature, history, science, art, podcasts, current events, ethnographies, and whatever else seems good.)
Anyone is welcomed to host philosophy-related events here.
We also welcome speakers and collaborations with other groups.
Join us at an event soon for friendship, cooperative discourse, and mental exercise!
Feel free to propose meetup topics (you can do this on the Message Boards), and please contact us if you would like to be a speaker or host an event.
(NOTE: Most of our events are currently online because of the pandemic.)
"Philosophy is not a theory but an activity."
— from "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", Wittgenstein
"Discourse cheers us to companionable
reflection. Such reflection neither
parades polemical opinions nor does it
tolerate complaisant agreement. The sail
of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the
wind of the matter."
— from "On the Experience of Thinking", Heidegger
See here for an extensive list of podcasts and resources on the internet about philosophy.
See here for the standards of conduct that our members are expected to abide by. Members should also familiarize themselves with Meetup's Terms of Service Agreement, especially the section on Usage and Content Policies.
See here for a list of other philosophy-related groups to check out in the Toronto area: https://www.meetup.com/The-Toronto-Philosophy-Meetup/pages/30522966/Other_Philosophy_Groups_in_the_Toronto_Area/
Please note that no advertising of external events, products, businesses, or organizations is allowed on this site without permission from the main Organizer.
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Make a Donation
Since 2016, the Toronto Philosophy Meetup has been holding regular events that are free, open to the public, and help to foster community and a culture of philosophy in Toronto and beyond. To help us continue to do so into the future, please consider supporting us with a donation! Any amount is most welcome.
You can make a donation here.
See here for more information and to meet our donors.
Supporters will be listed on our donors page unless they wish to remain anonymous. We thank them for their generosity!
If you would like to help out or support us in other ways (such as with any skills or expertise you may have), please contact us.
Note: You can also use the donation link to tip individual hosts. Let us know who you want to tip in the notes section. You can also contact hosts directly for ways to tip them.
![The Birth of Tragedy: A TRAGIC INTERREGNUM [Session 9] (see reading below) cover photo](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/e/5/a/6/event_519898790.webp "The Birth of Tragedy: A TRAGIC INTERREGNUM [Session 9] (see reading below)")
Reading for this week: Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Euripides' Alcestis
We will be reading these two Greek tragedies from the Classical Period in order to see how Nietzsche's Apollinian/Dionysian duality is (or is not) realized, and provide background for the remainder of The Birth of Tragedy. Please read the entire Prometheus Bound, but, for the sake of comparison, just read as much as necessary to see the profound differences between Aeschylus and Euripides, which is important for Nietzsche's discussion of the death of tragedy.
Recordings and AI summaries of previous sessions are available here.
Suggested texts: The Portable Neitzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann and The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann
Syllabus (titles are linked to free PDF’s, most of which require a free academia.edu account)
The Birth of Tragedy (Preface, sections 1-15 only)*
Prometheus Bound
Alcestis
On Truth and Lies In A Nonmoral Sense
Selections from Untimely Meditations (academia.edu)
On The Use and Abuse of History
Schopenhauer as Educator
The Gay Science (academia.edu)
Beyond Good and Evil (academia.edu)*
On The Genealogy of Morals (academia.edu)*
The Case of Wagner*
Twilight of the Idols** (academia.edu)
The Antichrist**
Ecce Homo*
Nietzsche Contra Wagner**
*The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann
**Walter Kaufmann’s, The Portable Nietzsche
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- The Politics of Structural InjusticeLink visible for attendees
What is structural injustice, and who ultimately bears responsibility for it? In answering these questions Maeve McKeown's new book goes beyond the widely accepted narrative of unintended consequences and blameless participation to explain how power and responsibility truly function in today's world.
Drawing on case studies from sweatshops to climate change, McKeown identifies three types of structural injustice: the pure and unintended accumulation of disparate activities; the avoidable injustice that could be ameliorated by the powerful but nevertheless continues; the deliberate perpetuation of structural processes that benefit powerful political and economic agents. In each of these, the role of power is different which changes the allocation of responsibility.
From this understanding, we can shape a deeper, more sophisticated idea of how structural injustice operates and what we as individuals can do about it. What is the political responsibility of ordinary individuals? How can ordinary individuals with very little power pressure morally responsible, powerful agents to address structural injustice? Do we have the same responsibility for historical injustice as we do for that which we see in today's world? This is fundamental reassessment of the relationship between power, ordinary people and responsibility for structural injustice.
About the Speaker:
Maeve McKeown is an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Groningen and has previously worked at Cambridge, Oxford, and Frankfurt. She is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, the editor of Stephen Jeffreys’ Playwriting: Structure, Character, How and What to Write (2019), shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2020, and is formerly co-editor of New Left Project. Her new book, With Power Comes Responsibility: The Politics of Structural Injustice, is published by Bloomsbury. She is also co-editor of the new volume What is Structural Injustice? (Oxford University Press, 2024).
The Moderator:
Katrina Forrester is an Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Government and Committee on Social Studies at Harvard University. She is a political theorist and historian with research interests in twentieth-century and contemporary social and political theory. Forrester's award-winning first book, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2019) is a history of how political philosophy was transformed by postwar liberalism, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, and the rise of liberal egalitarianism.
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Note: This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher and the Boston Review. It is open to the public and held on Zoom.
About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):
The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.
The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.
- The Third Wittgenstein: On CertaintyLink visible for attendees
Welcome everyone to the next series that David and Philip are hosting starting Monday April 15!
This time around we will be doing the last book Wittgenstein ever wrote which is called On Certainty. Many Wittgenstein scholars think that On Certainty is NOT merely an extension and continuation of the philosophy Wittgenstein pioneered in his Philosophical Investigations. These scholars think that On Certainty is a radically different philosophy that Wittgenstein developed late in life and that this late philosophy is so distinct that it deserves to be called "The Third Wittgenstein".
This meetup series will start out as a live read. We will read each and every paragraph together until we have gotten roughly 30 or 40 pages into the book. Once we have gotten a basic sense of what On Certainty is all about, we will switch the series to a pre-read. When we are in the pre-read phase, participants will be expected to read the assigned reading in advance, and pick paragraphs that they especially want to focus on. In the meetup we will read out loud the paragraphs that the participants selected and we will then talk about these paragraphs after we have read them out loud.
David and Philip ask that each participant also read (on their own) at least one secondary source book about On Certainty. We will not talk about these secondary source books during the meetup (or at least will not talk about them very much). There is no expectation that anyone has to agree with any of these secondary source books; that is not why we want people to read one of them. Rather, there is a risk that On Certainty can seem like just another minor variation on the themes outlined in the Philosophical Investigations. Reading one of these secondary sources books will help drive home the point that, when reading On Certainty, we should be on the lookout for a radically new philosophy... "The Third Wittgenstein"!
Please read at least one of the following:
- This one is the easiest: Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Wittgenstein and On Certainty by Andy Hamilton
- This is an anthology and so provides a variety of viewpoints: The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works, editor: Daniele Moyal-Sharrock
- Wittgenstein and Pragmatism: On Certainty in the Light of Peirce and James by Anna Boncompagni
- Certainty in Action: Wittgenstein on Language, Mind and Epistemology by Dani Moyal-Sharrock
Again, no one will be expected to agree with anything written in these secondary sources. The point of secondary sources is to elevate our thinking, and that mostly means arguing against these books as we read them (as well as occasionally agreeing with them too of course).
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Here is a description of On Certainty:
On Certainty is a series of notes Wittgenstein took toward the end of his life on matters related to knowledge, doubt, skepticism, and certainty. Although the notes are not organized into any coherent whole, certain themes and preoccupations recur throughout.
On Certainty takes as its starting point Wittgenstein’s response to a paper given by G. E. Moore, called “A Proof of the External World.” In this paper, Moore tries to prove that there is a world external to our senses by holding up his hand and saying “here is a hand.” Wittgenstein admires the boldness of Moore’s approach, which implicitly questions the reasonableness of doubting such a claim, but he suggests that Moore fails because his claim that he knows he has a hand automatically invites the question of how he knows, a question that would embroil Moore in the sort of skeptical debate he wishes to avoid.
