What we’re about
You may sometimes wonder about fundamental things. Philosophers incline to it non-stop. At their best, they make trouble in the world of ideas. They open worm cans. Bring your can openers!
We have explored — or will (or will again) — age-old topics like God's existence, the nature of people and things, truth, justice, knowledge, free will, determinism, fatalism, birth, death, the right way to live or die... as well as theories in the major divisions of philosophical thought such as logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Exploring these core areas can help with understanding what is at stake in the more concrete topics we also address, which include controversies around abortion, infanticide, capital punishment, suicide (physician-assisted and otherwise), economic and social equality, criminality, genetic engineering, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, technology, over-population, depopulation, war, terrorism, racism, sexism, feminism, transhumanism, antinatalism, procreation ethics, speciesism, sexuality, human "rights," animal rights, the "rights" of (or to) anything whatsoever!,... as well as important issues in medical ethics, political philosophy, environmental ethics, bioethics, philosophy of law, of art, of literature, of religion, of science and its methods; and the nature, history, and methods of philosophy itself... not to exclude philosophical topics as yet uninvented.
In fact, "inventing topics" is a side effect of asking hard questions, which inevitably lead to still harder questions. Often enough, "new" topics are not really "new" but old, even ancient, unsettled concerns resurfacing. And it is those unsettled issues that are the real philosophical problems. As one philosopher once said, "If it has a solution, it was probably just science anyway." Any important subject whose fundamental ideas invite critical examination is ripe for our can opener... eventually we may work our way up to the really big can: the point of it all! (But don't expect pat answers — we don't do self-help.)
This club is open to serious approaches to philosophy — analytic, "Continental," and otherwise. Philosophy in the Anglo-American world (for better or worse) is still dominated by some form of conceptual analysis. What characterizes the analytic approach to philosophy is attention to clarity and as much rigor as we can muster in our concepts and arguments — while, hopefully, keeping one foot in reality. (It's not "clear" that "reality" has anything to do with "clarity" or "rigor.") We ply "belief systems" with questions framed against such values. But you may know better! Philosophical traditions, no less than individual philosophical views, are error prone. Any "philosophy" worthy of the name should be comfortable with this.
We will try to stay focused on the topics under discussion, realizing that this is difficult. If one thing doesn't connect with another, it can't be that important. We draw on the insights of some of the brightest thinkers we know, both living and dead. Celebrated authority is no guarantee of being right. In fact, we already know at least half of the great philosophical thinkers must be wrong because the other half disagrees with them. But which half? (Even to assume only half are wrong is being more than a little optimistic. Why would any of them be right?)
Though we range widely in the topics we cover, we try not to let anything go in our discussion. The point is to rise above the level of BS that too often passes in informal discussions for philosophy. Beyond a certain respect for clarity and rigor, we do not have an axe to grind. You may bring your own axe, we may sharpen it for you... or we may grind it to a stump. We mostly open worm cans, remember? You decide what to do with the worms!
Skepticism and disagreement are to be expected, even encouraged. We should try to make the best case we can for our side and attend to what others say. We should expect that expressions of conviction may be forceful and that’s fine, as long as they are respectful of others and rational, which, in the context of a philosophy club, means to attempt to offer reasons to believe — reasons that are thought out and not themselves more controversial than the claims they are meant to support. These are aspirations, of course, not actual descriptions of what happens in even earnest philosophical discussions. We should nevertheless try...
A word about etiquette, again: philosophy, by its nature, is contentious. Expect disagreement and treat each other respectfully. Failure to do so may be cause for removal.
See the collection of archived writeups for perspective on the topics we have and may cover. Check out recorded sessions. See also Philosophical Resources Online.
The group is international and mostly online. Formal membership is not required to attend and participate. Contact us for the video link if you just want to try it without membership. Our meetings and resources are free and open to the public. Auditing is perfectly fine.
Finally, if you know something about a topic and would like us to address it or you would like to present and host it yourself, let us know. You don't have to be an expert. We will work with you. So long as we can make out a philosophical angle — it addresses fundamental questions about an important subject, we would love to explore it.
Contact us with any questions.
— Victor Muñoz, organizer
Upcoming events (4)
See all- Sex, death, Gilgamesh, and the birth of consciousnessLink visible for attendees
Starting with sex and ending with death…
thus bracketed, time to contemplate the interval.– Bianco Luno
He Who Saw the Deep…
– The Epic of Gilgamesh
We tell stories to understand.1
In literature, we tell stories to understand ourselves and our context. In the Western world, the oldest surviving story is the Epic of Gilgamesh from some 5000-5500 years ago. That it can still move us after all this time is testimony to its enduring power. It can do this because it connects sex, love, friendship, triumph, hubris, loss, grief, violence, and death2 – and, by making the connection between these, documents the origin of consciousness itself: the point we learned how and when we stopped being merely animals but discovered we were not gods either. We learn by eliminating those possibilities, calling what remains “human.” The consciousness meant here is not mere access consciousness – the kind we share with other living things, the kind that informs us of what there is around us that may help or hurt us – but reflective consciousness: an awareness that we are here – at all, wondering why ourselves, why we do things, why things happen to us, why anything... Philosophy got started with this kind of consciousness. So if the Epic can tell us something about the origin of reflective awareness, it is philosophically relevant.
It is also a beautiful story, told in language of great expressive power (admittedly, via the inspiration of translators and poets). It dates from near the beginning of the invention of non-plastic art and culture. For centuries, its stories circulated orally before being pinned down in cuneiform, a form of writing that was originally devised to record business dealings, but blossomed into what eventually became the vehicle for what truly separated us from the natural world, but without firmly placing us in any other world.
We can guess something about the contents of the mind that creates a stone implement or edifice, but we are told in literature expressly, in stories. We still have the task of interpreting what we are told, a task that further exercises our imagination and deepens self-understanding.
Resources
Introductions (videos)
“The First Known Story Ever Written | analysing the Epic of Gilgamesh.” Archaeologist Fig Tree retells the Gilgamesh story. Her lively hour-long presentation is an excellent introduction for those new to the story.
“The Series of Gilgamesh | A Philosophical Introduction” presented by Mathias Warnes is a more ambitious survey and analysis of the epic. The three-hour tour goes deep into its cultural significance. It touches on how the self was first constructed. How trauma makes us human, how, though animals perish, only humans die. How the universe, once crawling with gods, is now bereft of them… how this and much more first dawned on us.
Translations into English
These are freely available and there are many more translations, all incomplete because new material is still being discovered. Some are more scholarly, and some are more readable and poetic, though loose, renderings.
Nancy K. Sandars (1960)
Spelling and error correction by John Paulose
http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.pdfMaureen Gallery Kovacs (1998)
Electronic Edition by Wolf Carnahan
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab1.htmAndrew George (1999)
https://content.cosmos.art/media/pages/library/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/8cc34b563d-1598904500/gilgamesh.pdfAbout the Epic (reading)
“Political Philosophy in the Epic of Gilgamesh,” Alexander van Eijk. “What I want to do in this paper is introduce one work from antiquity, the Epic of Gilgamesh, into the canon of political philosophy. It is the oldest piece of literature we know, first written around 1800 BC and touches on all manner of issues from government, to sexuality, to mourning and to human nature. As will hopefully become clear throughout this investigation, the Epic is a veritable treasure trove of interesting ideas and the canon of political philosophy could be much enriched by its continued scholarship.”
1. In science, an hypothesis, a theory, a natural law… are stories with varying degrees of conviction attached to them, but all attempt to organize experience at the edge of our senses with an effort to make sense of it. “Making sense” of things is about organizing them so they serve some project of ours, the basic one being survival. And beyond that, a more luxuriously one is to flourish. In the case of science, in the service of technology, stories with enough precision prepare for us for acting on the environment toward those same ends. (We note that the “truth” of a story is less relevant than we might think. If the truth (in the sense of the correct picture of the lie of things independent of our agenda) were crucial to our stories, we would be hopeless. Perhaps we are in a hopeless situation… But the fact we are still here shows just how inessential truth – as opposed to fruitful suspicion – is for us. We are this far along because we suspect many things, and so far these have by and large worked to secure our place – not because we know them. We will reserve the term “knowledge” for a suspicion that dead-ends at a theoretical point immune to augmentation or correction.)
2. Adventure, of course, too. It’s got it all. - Philm series | Silent Light | ReygadasLink visible for attendees
This is a masterpiece of slow-paced hyper – culminating in magical – realism by director Carlos Reygadas. The love triangle is set in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua within a century-old rural colony of German Mennonites. Most of the cast are non-actors and actual members of the Mennonite community. They speak Plautdietsch, a dialect of German, few, even Germans, today speak. So the rest of the world needs subtitles. The tension of infidelity in a profoundly religious community is arresting. The director is known for sometimes brutally juxtaposing sexual and religious sensibility, but this film approaches the theme with exquisite sensitivity and humanity. Reminiscent, at times, of Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Terence Malick, and Andrei Tarkovsky, Reygadas’ pace and cinematic vision is more personal and unique.
- Cannes Film Festival 2007 Jury Prize
- Among the top 25 films of the 21st Century, NYT
- “On Heaven as it is in Earth,” by José Teodoro at Film Comment.
- Extended interview with director: "FRAMES of REPRESENTATION 2019: The Cinema of Carlos Reygadas - Masterclass."
You can find clips and low-resolution trailers in various languages online, but I will send a link to a high resolution copy of the film with English subtitles to those who RSVP yes.
- Philm seriesLink visible for attendees
This is not a post for a specific future event but a follow up to suggestions about scheduling film discussions. Here is a list of proposals from me and others. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments. The idea is to settle on a film, each of us watch it independently, then come together online to discuss it. The film should be engaging and provocative. Of course, each of us may have different ideas of what that means. And pretty much all great films can be that...
I think another requirement is that it be freely accessible online. The ones listed below, I think, are. (If they are not where you are, let us know. We may find another way to make them accessible.)
You are invited to vote for or give a rating (say, 1 to 10) on any of these films in the comments to help us choose. This could be a regular ongoing series, depending on interest, so it might not be either/or, we may do all of them eventually. (This is not the first time we have had a film discussion. A number of years ago, just before the pandemic, when the club was still meeting in person is Seattle, we did Dogville, Lars von Trier's cinematic provocation.)
The Last Man on Earth (1964) with Vincent Price [interesting in light of the recent pandemic]
Russian Ark [a cinematic tour de force]
Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark [Bjork's performance is legendary in this musical tragedy]
Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light [I think this is one of the most powerful and sublime films I have ever seen but I am still looking for a free version with English subtitles]
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton show how to do dysfunctional relationships right]
- Philm Series: "All That Jazz" 1979Link visible for attendees
"All That Jazz" Movie Link or Youtube
Joe Gideon, played by 70s star Roy Scheider, rides a high including but not limited to: music, dancing, comedy, women (with or without infidelity), speed, cigarettes, and alcohol. He is unapologetic. When will it all catch up with him?
Gideon is not looking to moderate. No Aristotelian mean for Mr Gideon. I view this as a good vehicle to study the philosophy of hedonism and related theories.
