About us
[Note: This group is looking for a new owner! In the meantime, join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to find many more online philosophy events and activities: https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/
The description below is from the previous organizer of the group.]
Welcome to the Calgary Philosophy Meetup! We're a local community for people interested in reading and discussing philosophy. We hold discussions and other events on a broad range of philosophical topics and problems. No previous experience is required for any of our meetups, only a willingness to engage with the works being discussed. The only basic ground-rule is to please, as with everywhere else in life, be polite and respectful during discussions.
Feel free to propose topics you would like to see (you can do this in the Discussions section), and please contact the organizers if you would like to host an event yourself, or organize events here on a regular basis.
Featured event
Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais — Movie Discussion
One of the defining work of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.
"Its psychological intrigue and its glossy, repressed images of ornate, oppressive settings are Resnais's way of pursuing, from different angles, themes similar to those of his other, more overtly political films." (The New Yorker)
"Last Year in Marienbad... doesn't seek to trick us, it seeks to portray self-trickery, asks what we might do about it, and why we might be afraid of its alternatives." (The Guardian)
"Obscure, oneiric, it's either some sort of masterpiece or meaningless twaddle." (Time Out)
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Pretentious nonsense or actually good? 🤔 Join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to discuss Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais, which polarized critics and audiences upon release but is now often hailed as one of the defining works of modernist cinema. The film was recently voted the 123rd greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of filmmakers and the 169th greatest movie of all time in the related poll of film critics and scholars. We've previously discussed Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1956), his acclaimed documentary about Nazi concentration camps.
Please watch the movie in advance (94 minutes) and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it with a viewing link to be posted on the main event listing here.
DISCLAIMER: "The recurring attitude throughout most interpretations of Marienbad is that of sheer interpretation fatigue..." (Slant)
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We'll be joined by many other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at this meeting — https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/313880241/
Check out other movie discussions in the group, currently happening about once or twice a month.
This link here is a spreadsheet of the 150+ movies we've watched in this group and my ratings for each. You're invited to share your list too if you've watched a bunch of these movies with us. (I can add it here if you send me a link. You can make your own list on sites like Letterboxd or by copying my spreadsheet and filling in your own values. Note that my list doesn't include every movie that Yorgo hosted on cause I didn't watch all of them.)
Upcoming events
179
Foucault and Deleuze: pleasure, desire and care of the self
·OnlineOnlineOver 4 weeks we'll be exploring the encounter between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze on the questions of pleasure, desire and the care of the self. We'll start with Foucault's late views on pleasure, resistance and identity with two interviews from 1982. Then we'll take up Deleuze's critique of pleasure and his emphasis on productive desire. The last topic will be Foucault's ethical views on the care of the self from 1984. This is a continuation of our detour from Bataille into Foucault's work on the history of sexuality.
Reading schedule
See the full weekly reading schedule at this link:
https://sites.google.com/view/existentialism-and-its-critics/You can find all texts in the Google folder linked at the VERY BOTTOM of this description. The Google Meet link is also posted there.
👇 scroll all the way down for the links 👇ABOUT THE BATAILLE GROUP
This is a comprehensive reading group focusing on the works of French writer Georges Bataille. We are reading key texts from Bataille himself, as well as tracing his relationship with other major thinkers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, André Breton/Surrealism, Blanchot, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc.Some familiarity with Bataille's mode and style of thought is helpful but not necessary. You're welcome to join the group in medias res at any time. See, however, the group rules below.
Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to each meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.
Topics to be discussed in the future:
- Return to the 2nd part of Erotism
- Bataille's critique of Hegel: the negative and general economy
- Derrida's reading of Bataille in "From Restricted to General Economy"
Past topics included:
- Foucault on transgression and the history of sexuality
- Bataille's Erotism, Part 1 & the logic of transgression
- Bataillean transgression and Deleuzian line of flight: reading Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up"
- Bataille's aesthetics: the rift with Surrealism
- Susan Sontag on avant-guarde literature
- Bataille's novel Blue of Noon
- Inner Experience and a-theological mysticism
- Bataille's reading of Nietzsche and critique of fascism
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MORE ABOUT BATAILLE
Georges Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he called 'base materialism'. In the early 20s, Bataille abandoned Catholicism, embraced psychoanalysis and Marxism and initiated an unorthodox search for the sacred in late modernity. His obsessive pursuit of ecstatic liminal experiences took him across the boundaries of philosophy, sociology, political economy, mythology, poetry, literature and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy of unconditioned expenditure, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. Though he remained largely outside the academic mainstream and worked as a librarian, Bataille is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant to our time than ever.In this group we look at a significant cross-section of Bataille's texts. Our aim is to understand his thought on its own terms as well as place him in the context of his predecessors and the French thinkers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.
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GROUP RULES
- Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
- Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
- Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
- Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
- We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.
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Join the Facebook group for more resources and discussion:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/755460079505498If you have attended previous meetings, please fill out a brief survey at this link: https://forms.gle/tEMJ4tw2yVgnTsQD6
All readings can be found in this Google folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VPRdvZYmUKBY3cSxD8xC8sTYtSEKBXDs
Google Meet link to join the meeting:
https://meet.google.com/uho-cdks-dcbNote: To join the meeting anonymously, first log out of your Google account and then open the link. Alternatively you can open the link in an Incognito window (Chrome) or Private Browsing (Safari).
Art: "Peinture-monde chaud" by Gérard Fromanger (2019)
2 attendees
Live-Reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics – American Style
·OnlineOnlineLet's try something new. For the next dozen weeks or so, starting 4/17/2022, 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), happens to be rendered 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.
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"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. Read Intro excerpts or a summary to gain the big picture.
2. Read a segment of the translated text.
3. Discuss it analytically and interpretively.
4. Repeat again at #2 for several more times.
5. Discuss the segments evaluatively.
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Zoom is the project's current meeting platform, but that can change. The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.2 attendeesLast Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais — Movie Discussion
·OnlineOnlineOne of the defining work of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.
"Its psychological intrigue and its glossy, repressed images of ornate, oppressive settings are Resnais's way of pursuing, from different angles, themes similar to those of his other, more overtly political films." (The New Yorker)
"Last Year in Marienbad... doesn't seek to trick us, it seeks to portray self-trickery, asks what we might do about it, and why we might be afraid of its alternatives." (The Guardian)
"Obscure, oneiric, it's either some sort of masterpiece or meaningless twaddle." (Time Out)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretentious nonsense or actually good? 🤔 Join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to discuss Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais, which polarized critics and audiences upon release but is now often hailed as one of the defining works of modernist cinema. The film was recently voted the 123rd greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of filmmakers and the 169th greatest movie of all time in the related poll of film critics and scholars. We've previously discussed Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1956), his acclaimed documentary about Nazi concentration camps.
Please watch the movie in advance (94 minutes) and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it with a viewing link to be posted on the main event listing here.
DISCLAIMER: "The recurring attitude throughout most interpretations of Marienbad is that of sheer interpretation fatigue..." (Slant)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We'll be joined by many other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at this meeting — https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/313880241/
Check out other movie discussions in the group, currently happening about once or twice a month.
This link here is a spreadsheet of the 150+ movies we've watched in this group and my ratings for each. You're invited to share your list too if you've watched a bunch of these movies with us. (I can add it here if you send me a link. You can make your own list on sites like Letterboxd or by copying my spreadsheet and filling in your own values. Note that my list doesn't include every movie that Yorgo hosted on cause I didn't watch all of them.)
1 attendeeFTI: Socrates Cafe [Host: Karl Iglesias]
·OnlineOnlineThis event is brought to you by the Free Thinker Institute (FTI), a not-for-profit looking to support and empower personal development for its members - and for everyone interested. We organize an event every Tuesday to discuss ways to transform wisdom into practical applications that benefit our lives, covering topics widely ranging from professional subjects to spiritual ones.
Format: Social where we introduce ourselves (for those who want to) (15 mins), Brainstorm topics as a group about what we will discuss for the evening (15 mins), group discussion (1 hour 45 mins).
Description:
We will brainstorm topics to discuss at the start of the event, vote on said topics to decide which topic(s) are the most popular, and discuss those topics.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/UCmixGB9GdrptyEWovEj80zgAfter registering via zoom, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
We publish our event recordings on our Youtube channel to offer our help to anyone who would like to but can’t attend the meeting, so we need to give this clause. If you don’t want to be recorded, just remain on mute and keep your video off.
Here’s our legal notice: For valuable consideration received, by joining this event I hereby grant Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns, the irrevocable and unrestricted right to use and publish any and all Zoom recordings for trade, advertising and any other commercial purpose, and to alter the same without any restriction. I hereby release Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns from all claims and liability related to said video recordings.
2 attendees
Past events
1983
