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.
Upcoming events
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Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler on Freedom and the Ethics of Transgression
·OnlineOnlineOver 3 weeks we'll be taking up de Beauvoir's existential reading of the Marquis de Sade and Butler's contemporary response to her essay. This event is part of the on-going Enlightenment and Its Shadow series. See below for the up-to-date reading schedule, future topics and links to all texts.
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So-called ‘enlightened societies’ seem to enter periods of crisis, war and unspeakable violence on a regular basis. Can these events simply be attributed to “the crooked timber of humanity, out of which no straight thing was ever made" (Kant), or is there a deeper, more sinister reason for their occurrence? Could it be that the Enlightenment itself – its rationality, moral outlook and existential condition – possesses a disavowed “dark underbelly” that precipitates catastrophe?
We'll explore these questions through arguably the most controversial of the children of the Enlightenment, the Marquis De Sade. In particular, we'll be focusing on 20th century receptions of Sade's work by European writers and philosophers. Not only will this approach offer us possible answers to the questions above, it will allow us to survey major currents of Continental philosophy in the 20th century. See below for an overview of the writers and topics we'll be discussing.
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READING SCHEDULE
Find the up-to-date reading schedule at this link:
https://sites.google.com/view/existentialism-and-its-critics/All texts are available 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 👇
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READINGS OVERVIEW
Barthes extends the structuralist approach developed by Levi-Strauss and Lacan (whom we read previously) to literary theory. In his reading, Sade emerges as a logothete, a founder of a language and a paradigmatic writer of "texts of bliss", whose jouissance derives from the very wounding they precipitate.Foucault redirects the analytical focus away from Barthean semiotics of jouissance and towards what we might call the Sadean episteme. The criterion of the Sadean world emerges as a certain kind of truth: anti-metaphysical, anti-theological, anti-moral. In bracketing away reality, this truth elevates desire to a sovereign status within human experience.
De Beauvoir argues that we must not burn Sade, though we must approach him with caution. Sade exemplifies the existentialist credos of choosing one's freedom and confronting existence without illusions. He is also one of the first to confront the problem of the Other head-on. Yet his glaring fault is to have succumbed to radical solipsism – a brutal compulsion to efface the Other rather than engage existentially with the singularity of Difference.
Klossowski and Bataille offer a quasi-theological interpretation of Sade, linking his texts to the subterranean persistence of the sacred in modernity. Bataille develops his central notion of heterology with reference to Sade's work.
For Blanchot, the Sadean paradox consists in apathy: the most radical and extreme actions are not done out of passion but out of detached rational reflection. Such a state of indifference amounts to an absolute sovereignty, the complete separation of the ego from its relations to the world.
Adorno and Horkheimer find in Sade a prime illustration of their thesis that the calculative rationality of the Enlightenment is cold, objectifying and founded on domination. They regard him as a diabolical truth-teller whose works pre-figure the horrors of totalitarian bureaucracy.
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ABOUT THIS READING GROUP
This is a comprehensive reading group focusing on 20th century French philosophy. Our current project was stimulated by our recent reading of George Bataille's Erotism: Death and Sensuality. Other writers we have discussed include Sartre, de Beauvoir, Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Deleuze, Kristeva, etc.GROUP RULES
- Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion. Speaking priority will be given to those who have done the readings.
- 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 applies: let's not interrupt each other, keep mics muted when not speaking, and maintain a respectable dress code.
- We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc. to the meeting.
LINKS AND RESOURCES
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: If you prefer to join the Google Meet 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).
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Art: The Gray Forest (1927) by Max Ernst1 attendee
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 attendees
Egora Academy: writing, publishing, presenting, and implementing your philosophy
·OnlineOnlineAbout Egora Academy:
This event is a continuing series of workshops based around using the Egora networking platform to write, publish, present, improve, and implement your political, economic, social, and existential philosophy. During this event the participants will have the opportunity to present one or more of their ideas previously written and published in Egora. Then we will analyze each idea for its merits and flaws, and against other ideas, possibly leading to the development of new and better ideas. If an idea succeeds in gaining support from other philosophers in Egora, it might ultimately become implemented through our governing structures.I most highly recommend that before your first event you take some time to learn about Egora, register for it, and begin developing your Ideological Profile in Egora with at least a few different ideas (original or copied). If you do not have an Ideological Profile in Egora, then this event will mostly be preparation for the next event.
This is my Ideological Profile:
http://egora-ilp.org/philosopher/Cezary_Jurewicz
Everyone is invited to examine it to prepare themself regarding my positions on different issues.Levels of participation:
My preference is to do 1-on-1 events in front of an audience because this allows the two participants to thoroughly develop their positions on very complex topics. This is also to the benefit of the audience because each audience member is encouraged to come back to be the speaking participant next time (everyone is also encouraged to host their own events, and i would love to come to listen). For this reason, you can RSVP to be the main participant for this event through my Calendly, which is available in my Ideological Profile in Egora.If no one RSVPs as the main participant, we will just have a group session.
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Past events
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