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.
"Chekhov is one of the few indispensable writers... His stories, which deluge us with feeling, make feeling more intelligent; more magnanimous. He is an artist of our moral maturity." (Susan Sontag)
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a master of the short story and a founder of the modern drama. His works explored the complexities of the human condition with deep psychological insight, empathy, and subtle humor. He described the Russian life of his time with a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, and his works are regarded as outstanding representatives of early modernism and 19th-century Russian realism, influencing important writers of an array of genres including Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Tennessee Williams, James Joyce, and Henry Miller.
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This is a series of occasional meetups to discuss short stories by various authors. (Currently meeting every other Sunday evening.)
This time we will discuss Chekhov's “The Bishop” (1902), about the last days of a terminally ill priest. It's the second last story Chekhov ever wrote before he died of tuberculosis at the too young age of 44.
Please read the story in advance (around 25 pages). Bring your thoughts, queries, critiques, and favourite passages to share with us at the meeting. A pdf copy is available here (a good translation by Robert Payne).
Stories by Chekhov we've previously discussed in this group:
- The House with the Mezzanine: An Artist’s Story (1896)
- The Lady with the Little Dog (1899)
- Gusev (1890)
- The Man in a Case (1898)
- Gooseberries (1898)
- About Love (1898)
- The Black Monk (1894)
- The Huntsman (1885)
- The Student (1894)
BONUS ARTICLE: 10 pictures of young Chekhov, ranked by hotness 🔥
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- To Have or to Be? by Erich Fromm (pre-read)Link visible for attendees
Erich Fromm's "To Have or to Be" delves into humanity's fundamental choices: between the possession of objects and genuine self-fulfillment. He explores how a society driven by a consumerist ethos leads to existential emptiness, advocating for a shift towards a mode of being that prioritizes authentic experiences, relationships, and personal growth over mere acquisition and status.
Erich Fromm, a German-American psychologist, critical theorist, and philosopher, was born in 1900. His influential works explored human nature, society, and existential concerns, blending humanistic psychoanalysis and social theory. Notable for Escape from Freedom and The Art of Loving, Fromm emphasized the importance of authentic living and meaningful connections. He died in 1980.
The PDF of the book can be found here.
Please read in advance: The Introduction (pp. 1-13), the section "Having and Consuming" in chapter I, the section on "Master Eckhart (1260-c. 1327)" in chapter III, the section "Is the Western World Christian?" from chapter VII, and the section "The New Society: Is There a Reasonable Chance?" from chapter IX.
Optionally, you can also watch an interview on the book.
Other discussions:
- Friedrich Nietzsche’s "Human, All Too Human" on Thursday, May 23
- The Great Philosophers EP11 ⟩ “J. P. Stern on Nietzsche”Link visible for attendees
Any short-list of those nineteenth-century philosophers who have had the widest influence outside philosophy would have to include Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.
In Continental Europe, Nietzsche was a central figure by 1910. While from English-speaking philosophers he has been a target of hostility, fear, or neglect.
In the US, Nietzsche was neglected until the 1960s counterculture movements of embodied humanism, dedication to expressing the unique inner, and skepticism towards traditional values.
Crowley’s new socio-cultural imperative, “Do what thou wilt,” was the official motto of the new Self-Realization ideal and provided its first religious-ontic supporting metaphysics. Parsons’ ceremonial-magical rituals and orgies surly made these ideas popular and inspired faith in “human potential,” the generic marketing version of Übermensch. Converts to this new sexual-religious ethics of freedom found much clearer critical exposition of heroic in Kauffman’s pocketbook Nietzsche, and so Nietzsche became saint and canon for beatnik and hippie alike.
Here we find Magee at his best, asking all the baby (and thus hardest) questions about Nietzsche you’ve always wanted to ask but couldn’t because of other people. To you I bring glad tidings, for every essence-cracking question gets out! With Magee you will experience the opposite of the graduate seminar (and Meetup) agar whose practical principle is, “Look good and avoid looking bad.”
Magee executes his usual Educative Quadrivium — as (a) pace car driver to set the tempo, (b) goal navigator to keep the discussion on track, (c) relevance filterer to sift the essential from the peripheral, and most famously (d) clarifying recap artist extraordinaire.
He applies contrarian pressure in just the right places to extract as much pith and nectar as possible from Stern, but always stops to review and unpack new or complex ideas as they threaten to float by undefined.
Stern, despite this rigorous questioning, not only survives the scrutiny but thrives under it, and you can see him appreciating Magee’s exploratory thoroughness.
- Fun Fact: Stern is the friendliest and most effusive of all Magee’s guests so far, despite Magee showing him no mercy.
Magee excels at demystifying each and every one of Nietzsche's renowned ideas. He emanates pearly insights with the relentless force of a wood chipper and dives into the profoundest depths. Consider this merely medium-quality quote:
“[N’s refusal to schematize the system behind his metaphors] does give readers a serious problem. This fusion of poetry and metaphor on the one hand with intellectual concepts on the other means that you never know quite where you have him. You can’t make his writings stand up in terms of rigorous intellectual argument, because then they all come apart at the joints, which are the images.”
Jungians and Campbell lovers will obviously love this episode. The fact that meaning is metaphor (difference)—for all types of experience richer than, say, sensation and primary-quality reports—is already interesting. But catching ourselves making metaphysical inferences from aspects of the metaphor. That’s a special kind of liberation.
METHOD
Please watch the episode before the event. We will then replay a few short clips during the event for debate and discussion. A new high-def/pro-audio version of this episode can be found here:
Summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs (seek the Magee Book Vault 2.0) of the episodes we cover can be found here:
Topics Covered in 15 Episodes
- Plato, Aristotle, Medieval Philosophy, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, Locke and Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel and Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Modern Existentialism, The American Pragmatists, Frege, Russell and Modern Logic, Wittgenstein.
View all of our coming episodes here.