What we’re about
The Chicago Philosophy Meetup is a community of groups created by and for people interested in engagements with philosophy and the history of such engagements. Our members have a wide variety of backgrounds besides philosophy, including literature, law, physics, theology, music, and more.
We host events suggested by individual members and coordinated by volunteer organizers and offer opportunities for discussion with others who share these interests. If you have an idea for a topic you'd like to discuss, especially if you are from an historically underrepresented group in academic philosophy, let us work with you to make it happen.
Whether you're new to philosophy and looking to get started, or have been doing philosophy for some time and want to dig a bit deeper, we invite you to check us out.
We have basic expectations for how we talk to each other, so:
DO...
Listen to others
Ask for clarification
Get to know people
Help other voices to be heard
Work towards understanding each other
Practice moving past your assumptions about others
DON'T...
Limit others’ performance of items on the DO list
The Chicago Philosophy Meetup opposes any force of exclusion, discrimination, and/or harassment present in its community. Such forces include, but are not limited to, racism, transphobia, misogyny, and antisemitism. The Chicago Philosophy Meetup seeks to be inclusive because only in this way can we fulfill the DOs list above. We are here to help! If you have concerns, questions about a meeting, or need assistance (e.g. accessibility), please contact either the organizers or the event host for the meeting directly.
"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
Check out our calendar
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- The Great Philosophers EP09 ⟩ “Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx”Link visible for attendees
For some reason, Hegel has found a new lease on life as the philosopher of the internet age. Voted the most popular YouTube personality of 2012–2022, Hegel’s ideas are resonating with a new generation. They are a constant topic of discussion, not only by engaged public intellectuals (Žižek and Butler) and famous academics (Pinkard and Brandom), but also by anti-intellectuals and barbarism-apologists like Jordan Peterson, who see Hegel as a dangerous precursor to “Cultural Marxo-Satanism.”
This meetup will tackle these titillating interpretations head-on.
With a special focus on the social and linguistic construction of reality, we’ll dive into Hegel’s world with X-ACTOs out and ready to slice through the greatest hurdle to studying Hegel—his penchant for abstract concepts that people will happily use without concrete definition.
Terms like ‘Geist’ and ‘dialectical’ are routinely misconstrued yet bandied about with ease, seducing innocents into cheap and misleading understandings. The love of complex terminology is a pitfall in philosophy generally, but it is especially handicapping in Hegel discussions. This meetup aims to strip away the ambiguity and get to the heart of what Hegel really meant, in clear and grounded definitions.
The clarity brought by Magee’s guest this week—Australian superstar philosopher Peter Singer—is like a breath of fresh air. Known for his incisive analyses and ability to make philosophy accessible, Singer offers a perspective on Hegel that cuts through the usual fog of impressive vagary and abstraction. His insights remind us of Kant’s principle of schematism last week: If we can’t give Hegelian concepts tangible meaning, we probably don’t understand Hegel at all.
Hegel’s vision of a society where individuals do not see themselves as separate from the collective is more relevant than ever in an age where marketing, social media “influencers,” and suicide-provoking alienation have created a yearning for authentic social connections so extreme that it’s created weird new cyber-fascist enclaves. We’ll explore how Hegel’s emphasis on the community, the mutual dependencies of its members, and his insight into the co-evolution of individual autonomy and social ethics can illuminate our understanding of these new “movements.”
B. Magee’s Isle
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a thoughtful trip.
That started from a Deutschland town,
An Bord eines deutschen Schiffes.Hegel sketched a happy view,
Where self and social merge,
His thoughts laid groundwork, broad and deep,
For Marx to urge a surge.Marx took the stage with a bold refrain,
“What produces all is work,”
Class struggle’s clear, no need to feign,
In every mill, dock, field and kirk.So join us here next week my friends,
You’re sure to get a smile,
From Bryan, Peter, Georg, and Karl
Here on B. Magee’s Isle.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) 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.
- Kierkegaard: Works of Love (Live Reading)Link visible for attendees
Online meeting link: https://meet.jit.si/Kierkegaard-Friday-CPM
We'll start reading from page 61 (Danish page 63).
Works of Love; Some Christian Deliberations in the Form of Discourses is a collection of reflections and discourses that reflect on love from various perspectives and with respect to various occasions. The theme of love is a frequent topic in Kierkegaard's work, so this should provide us an occasion to reflect on much of Kierkegaard's earlier works.
Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Works-Love-Kierkegaards-Writings-Vol/dp/0691059160/
PDF: https://annas-archive.org/md5/93afa222d5c3cd524e68739aef47d444
On the Friday Meetings:
The Friday meetings started on January 1st, 2016 with an initial goal of reading through the first half of Kierkegaard's works. Due to continued interest, we have decided to return to previous works for review, study more background texts, and continue beyond the first half of Kierkegaard's writing.
Works read so far in the series:
- The Concept of Irony, With Continual Reference to Socrates (Kierkegaard)
- Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures (Kierkegaard)
- Either/Or (Victor Eremita, et al.)
- Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Fear and Trembling (Johannes de Silentio)
- Repetition (Constantin Constantius)
- Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
- Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est (Johannes Climacus)
- Concept of Anxiety (Vigilius Haufniensis)
- Prefaces (Nicolaus Notabene)
- Writing Sampler (A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab)
- Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (Kierkegaard)
- Stages on Life's Way (Hilarious Bookbinder)
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
- The Sickness Unto Death (Anti-Climacus)
Works read for background:
- The First Love (Scribe)
- The Berlin Lectures (Schelling)
- Clavigo (Goethe)
- Faust Part I (Goethe)
- Antigone (Sophocles)
- Axioms (Lessing)
- The Little Mermaid (Anderson)
Works read inspired (at least in part) by Kierkegaard
- The Escape from God (Tillich)
- You Are Accepted (Tillich)