The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

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Toronto, ON, CA

17,245 members · Public group

What we’re about

Welcome to the Toronto Philosophy Meetup! This is a community (online and in-person) for anyone interested in philosophy, including newcomers to the subject. We host discussions, talks, reading groups, pub nights, debates, and other events on an inclusive range of topics and perspectives in philosophy, drawing from an array of materials (e.g. philosophical writings, for the most part, but also movies, literature, history, science, art, podcasts, poetry, current events, ethnographies, and whatever else seems good.)

Anyone is welcomed to host philosophy-related events here. We also welcome speakers and collaborations with other groups.

Join us at an event soon for friendship, cooperative discourse, and mental exercise!

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Bluesky and join our new Discord for extended discussion and to stay in touch with other members.

Feel free to propose meetup topics (you can do this on the Message Boards), and please contact us if you would like to be a speaker or host an event.

(NOTE: Most of our events are currently online because of the pandemic.)

"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

See here for an extensive list of podcasts and resources on the internet about philosophy.

See here for the standards of conduct that our members are expected to abide by. Members should also familiarize themselves with Meetup's Terms of Service Agreement, especially the section on Usage and Content Policies.

See here for a list of other philosophy-related groups to check out in the Toronto area.

Please note that no advertising of external events, products, businesses, or organizations is allowed on this site without permission from the main organizer.

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Make a Donation

Since 2016, the Toronto Philosophy Meetup has been holding regular events that are free, open to the public, and help to foster community and a culture of philosophy in Toronto and beyond. To help us continue to do so into the future, please consider supporting us with a donation! Any amount is most welcome.

You can make a donation here.

See here for more information and to meet our donors.

Supporters will be listed on our donors page unless they wish to remain anonymous. We thank them for their generosity!

If you would like to help out or support us in other ways (such as with any skills or expertise you may have), please contact us.

Note: You can also use the donation link to tip individual hosts. Let us know who you want to tip in the notes section. You can also contact hosts directly for ways to tip them.

Featured event

Foucault: The Genesis of The History of Sexuality (Ch 5 – Confession)

Wed, Oct 29 · 19:00 EDT

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Online

Foucault: The Genesis of The History of Sexuality (Ch 5 – Confession)

Online

On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead.

This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity.

This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault’s writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault’s last decade.

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Hello everyone and welcome to this series on Foucault. Please note that there is a technology related issue that you should know about. Please be sure to read to the end of this blurb for details.

In this series, we will read the four volume biography of Foucault written by Stuart Elden. The first volume on the genesis of The History of Sexuality is called Foucault's Last Decade (2016, Polity Press).

Elden wrote the biography in reverse chronological order, so Volume One actually covers Foucault's later years. The description from the back of this book is reproduced at the bottom of this page. 👇👇👇

When we are finished with Volume One, we will read something short by Foucault himself, starting with his essay "What Is Enlightenment"? Then we will move on to reading Volume Two of the biography and so on until we have finished all four volumes of the biography and read three short writings by Foucault himself.

The format will be my (Philip's) usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 25-30 pages before each session. (This is a biography after all so it should not be too onerous to read that many pages). Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading. When you are choosing your passages, please try to lean in the direction of picking passages with philosophical content rather than mere historical interest. But I can be flexible about this.

People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. I mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not do the reading. You probably are brilliant and wonderful — no argument there. But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.

Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is partly for philosophical reasons: I want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that I can explain if required.

THE READING SCHEDULE (pdf here)

Sept 10: Read up to page 26
Sept 17: Read up to page 44
Sept 24: Meeting cancelled
Oct 1: Read up to page 81
Oct 15: Ch. 4 (read up to page 111)
Oct 29: Ch. 5 (read up to page 133)
Session after that: Ch. 6 (read up to page 163)
Session after that: Ch. 7 (read up to page 190)
Session after that: Ch. 8 (read up to page 209 and the footnotes)

After that the group will read Foucault's essay "What is Enlightenment".

It is a shame it has to come to this, but:

I am Canadian and like many Canadians my relationship with America has changed drastically in the last 10 months or so. In this meetup, no discussion of the current US political situation will be allowed. This is unfortunate, but that is how it must be. When talking about Foucault there will no doubt be a strong desire to talk about politics. No problem! It is a big old world and the political situations of literally every other country on planet earth (including their right wing populist movements) are fair game for discussion in this meetup. Just not that of the US. The political situation in the USA is now a topic for Canadians to think about in a very practical, strategic manner as we fight to prevent our democracy from being destroyed, and our land and resources stolen. The time may come when a Canadian like me can talk about this topic in an abstract philosophical way, but I suspect that time is at least 6 years away.

Now the technology point: Scott will be in the meetup for a few minutes at the start to set things up. But then he will leave. (He's not into Foucault! Unfathomable!) Someone in the meetup will have to volunteer to tell me who has their hand up and whose turn it is to speak. I am disabled in a way that makes it impossible for me to both manage the philosophy content and also monitor whose turn it is to speak. With any luck one or more regulars in the meetup will make it a habit to step up and volunteer each time.