About us
Welcome to the Edinburgh Existentialist Philosophy Reading Group! We read books, essays and stories that are historically or thematically linked to the existentialist tradition, and then we meet up weekly to talk about them. We've been reading Nietzsche, Camus, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger and a bunch of others - take a look at our past & upcoming meetings for an idea of what we're about.
Everyone is welcome to attend. We meet in University of Edinburgh rooms, but we’re a community group and not affiliated with the university - no academic background is necessary. Our members have varying levels of prior involvement in philosophy, so even if this is your first time reading a philosophical text, please come along!
We’re always happy to welcome newcomers, even if we're half way through a long read - feel free to dive in at some point along the way. Our conversations are open, respectful, lively & wide-ranging. You might get a little more from the conversation if you've read at least some of the text, but don't worry, we're not going to test you on it :)
Our group provides opportunities for:
- meeting like-minded people interested in existentialist philosophy - enjoying philosophical reading, thinking, and discussion
- finding much needed peer-support & accountability for untangling these famously unintuitive texts - helping each other to keep up & to understand
- sharing one’s personal relationship to the text: "what this means for me"
- developing one’s own philosophical worldview and personal canon of important texts
See https://sites.google.com/view/edinburgh-existentialists/reading-suggestions for our list of past & present reading suggestions. Anyone who's been to at least one meeting can nominate, and we select our next readings by poll in our WhatsApp group chat.
Our group is really friendly and helpful.
If you've got any questions you're not too sure of feel free to ping our admins (Ben, Lachlan, Marton, Livia, and Richard) a message or grab us for a quiet word on a Weds night.
Or you can also email edinburghexistentialists@gmail.com with questions/feedback.
Also see our FAQ for more details: FAQ Document
Upcoming events
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Summer Series No.9b - On "God" and "Good" by Iris Murdoch
1.37 Paterson's Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AQ, Edinburgh, GBIris Murdoch — On "God" and "Good"
Wed 23 Sept
This is the second of our selections from Iris Murdoch's 1970 collection The Sovereignty of Good. Here she describes the "fat, relentless ego" that blocks us from seeing clearly the reality of the Other as a moral agent - and calls for an "unselfing" that's based in Simone Weil's concept of décreation.This week marks the end of our summer season - we're planning to move onto a longer read for the autumn - details here
Who are we?
We're a reading group that welcomes all - young, old, completely new to philosophy or well versed, from keen students to those who've never darkened the door of a lecture room. We read both long & short texts, but you don't need to join at the very start of our longer reads - you can come along at any stage of the journey. Our conversations are lively, wide-ranging & respectful.We usually head to the pub to continue the discussion after our meetings.
20 attendees
The Nothing Project
1.37 Paterson's Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AQ, Edinburgh, GBKeiji Nishitani — Religion and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre — Being and Nothingness
Wed 30 Sept
Our next long reading project takes on the challenge posed by nihilism, via major works by Keiji Nishitani and Jean-Paul Sartre.During this first week, we're setting up the whole project - what do we mean by nihilism, what threat does it pose, and how do the works that we're planning to read take it on?
We'll base a lot of this intro session in a re-reading of some key texts that we've already covered: aphorism 125 on the Death of God from The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche - the short section called "How the True World Finally Became a Fable" from Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols - and section 40 on Dasein's anxiety from Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. By bringing those sections together, we can see how a (mis?)reading of Nietzsche and Heidegger threatens to pull out the carpet from under the sense of solidity and certainty that much of European philosophy had been relying on until that point.
Next week, we'll kick off our reading of the Nishitani. It's a big book, so that will likely take us through until after Christmas - then we'll start on the Sartre early in the new year.
Who are we?
We're a reading group that welcomes all - young, old, completely new to philosophy or well versed, from keen students to those who've never darkened the door of a lecture room. We read both long & short texts, but you don't need to join at the very start of our longer reads - you can come along at any stage of the journey. Our conversations are lively, wide-ranging & respectful.We usually head to the pub to continue the discussion after our meetings.
For more info on the group, see our FAQ Document
For more info on these readings, see The Nothing Project20 attendees
Past events
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