The Chicago Philosophy Meetup

[*In 1999, the BBC ran a poll-based series, “Greatest ___ of the Millennium.” When the blank was filled as “Thinker,” Karl Marx came out on top. Click this link to see the full list—then ask yourself why Marx alone always comes with such grave warning. There must be some reason for this …]

With this lecture, Lavine finally comes fully home and changes her shoes like Mr. Rogers, and invites us into her private bathroom, deep in the HQ of philosophical explanation, where she does her finest expositing. We are in hyper-excellence territory now, a place so saturated with understanding and clarity that the pastries are baked inside your stomach (in the kitchen behind the bathroom).

Here is the finest overview of Marx’s thought-and-life ever committed to human speech, according to everyone who’s listened to it.

There are many surprises along the way. One is that you will meet someone you’ve never met before—Karl Marx. Yes, Marx himself will present live this week, so bring the questions and complaints you’ve had about the fantasy version of Marx so you can enjoy quality time with the real Marx as he agrees and laughs alongside you.

I think everyone can agree that understanding the striving drive of the greatest person who ever lived is a good idea. So bring your family and even your imaginary friends. Because these placeholders are precisely the voids that Marx’s striving drive yearns to fill.

This outline ought to give you a taste of just how nourishing Lavine’s presentation is:

I. Opening Provocation: What Is the Power of Marxism?
II. Early Life and Formative Influences
A. Trier: Middle-Class Origins, Jewish Enlightenment
B. Berlin University and Intellectual Awakening
III. The Young Hegelians and the Dialectic of Criticism
1. Key Hegelian Ambiguities Exploited by the Young Hegelians
— a. State Absolutism vs. Dialectical Change
— b. Authority vs. Freedom
— c. God as Absolute vs. God as Human
— d. “The real is the rational / the rational is the real”
2. The Three Central Doctrines of the Young Hegelians
— a. Criticism as Weapon
— b. Human Divinity
— c. World Revolution
IV. Feuerbach's Influence (The Great Inversion)
A. Religion as Projection
B. Materialism and Humanism
V. Career Shift: From Philosopher to Revolutionary
A. Journalism and Censorship
B. Paris Years (1843–1845)
VI. The Two Burning Questions in Paris (1844)
Why did the French Revolution fail?
What is the historical role of the Industrial Revolution?
VII. The 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
VIII. Marx the Exile: The Refugee Trail Begins

METHOD

Please watch the tiny 27-minute episode before the event. We will then replay a few short clips during the event for debate and discussion. A version with vastly improved audio can be found here:

• Thelma Lavine: From Socrates to Sartre

Summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs (seek the FSTS Book Vault) of the episodes we cover can be found here:

• THORR (The High Ontology Reading Room)

ABOUT PROFESSOR LAVINE

Dr. Lavine was professor of philosophy and psychology as Wells College, Brooklyn College, the University of Maryland (10 years), George Washington University (20), and George Mason University (13). She received the Outstanding Faculty Member award while at the University of Maryland and the Outstanding Professor award during her time at George Washington University.

She was not only a Dewey scholar, but a committed evangelist for American pragmatism.

View all of our coming episodes here.

Online meeting link: https://meet.jit.si/Kierkegaard-Friday-CPM

We'll start reading from page 305 (Danish IX 290).

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)

Meeting link: https://meet.jit.si/CPM-Saturday-Afternoon-Meetings

No particular edition is required but we can discuss what we want to use during the meeting. Because of this, sharing some editions that are generally available digitally in the comments may be helpful. I'll also try to keep the Greek text handy (probably through a Loeb edition, but anyone can look at Perseus as well).

If you want to familiarize yourself with the text in advance here are some different editions:

On Perseus, Shorely (HTML): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0166

Plato's Complete Works:

PDF: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=B670E9AEA7C9F52B2D40D63FF84F5600

July 27 - We will read NE VII.4. This chapter 4 attempts to answer the question of whether lacking self-control (aka incontinence or weakness of will) is a condition applicable to a specific weakness or temptation to an appetite (e.g., cigarette, alcohol, porn, cheesecake, ice cream, etc.) or whether it is a general weakness of one's character as a person. There are two "takes" in this chapter. Some scholars say the two takes pretty much say the same thing; others say they are different in content. Regardless, we will read 8 translations, giving us 16 takes in English. That should give us plenty of material to discuss.
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My summary of chapter 3 can be found here to help you catch up to us. https://mega.nz/file/fu50RKRC#BT1rMXg2W3X-W0Fip2CDm0r-ViNIT5xVyrhWCV_wq9Q Bring your own questions about the text if you are interested in joining this Sunday's meeting.
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's ~Nicomachean Ethics~, book VII, which is about troubleshooting the virtues.
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The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review:
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1. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
2. How does one come to acquire it? (E.g. [Aristotle’s], ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, generosity, candor, …)
3. From a first-person perspective in being virtuous, how does one feel and what does one see (differently, discursively) in a given situation of everyday living?
4. From a third-person perspective, how is the virtuous person (of a specific virtue) to be characterized?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.