About us
***NOTICE: Recently, scammers have been dishonestly inviting book authors to present their work during sessions of our group, sending false messages using the names of our group organizers. This is usually followed up by a request for money. The History of Philosophy Book Club does not currently invite external speakers to our discussion sessions, nor do we charge money for anything the group does. Please disregard any such messages.***
In 2026, the History of Philosophy Book Club will continue to study both canonical Western texts as well as philosophy from other cultures. Since 2022 we have explored Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Arabic, and classical Chinese philosophy alongside the traditional Western canon. This is an opportunity for those who have read mostly within the Western tradition to learn and assess new and different ideas, and to see how they have influenced varied philosophical schools. The 2026 schedule can be found here.
NOTICE: If you would like to join the History of Philosophy Book Club, we're happy to have you! Please do take a few moments to give thoughtful answers to our registration questions -- expertise in philosophy is not required, but we'd sincerely like to know about you and your interests in philosophy! As our registration form notes, one-word or excessively brief answers to the questions, as well as snarky or scornful replies, will result in an automatic rejection. Additionally, because the group meets in person, membership is currently limited to the Washington, DC metro area. Thank you for your interest and consideration.
WHO WE ARE
Did you take a philosophy class in high school or college and wish you had taken more? Do you read philosophy texts independently but have no one to discuss them with? Then this group is for you.
Somewhat of a hybrid, it is a combination study group and book club. The backgrounds of our members vary: some have never taken a philosophy course and are essentially self-taught; others have doctorates in the field. Although the majority of writers have been European and American, we have read and are open to texts from other cultures, and starting in 2022 will be making an extra effort to study them. Representative philosophers have included Plato, Averroes, Confucius, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Sartre, Arendt, Rawls, Foucault, and Butler. We often read a single book by a single author, but if their output has been substantial we will consider an anthology or collection of shorter texts. At times we engage with debates between prominent philosophers, such as the Searle-Derrida debate about meaning and interpretation. We also sometimes discuss topics such as theories of metaphor or the philosophy of mathematics, or schools of philosophy such as pragmatism.
We started the group in 2010 with the classical period and finished in 2013 with twentieth century writers, then began the cycle in more depth in 2014 and wrapped up in December 2021, beginning the historical cycle again in January 2022.
Meetings are currently held at the West End Library in DC, located 2301 L St NW, Washington, DC 20037, near the Foggy Bottom-GWU metro station.
Tips in Preparing for Meetings
After you have finished the reading, ask yourself: (1) What are the philosopher’s principal ideas? (2) What arguments are used to support them, and are they strong or weak? (3) Who were the author’s major influences, and whom in turn did he/she influence? (4) What was the historical context in which the author wrote, and did this affect what was said? (5) Are the author’s works still relevant today and, if so, how?
To help in answering these questions, attendees are encouraged to consult the secondary resources posted in each announcement. Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy are especially useful.
Rules of Conduct at Meetings
Avoid monopolizing the conversation. If you've been speaking for several minutes, and sense others want to get in, relinquish the floor.
Stay on topic, and keep your remarks concise and to the point.
Challenging arguments and disputing facts are fine; personal attacks are not. Derogatory, prejudiced, or discriminatory remarks of any kind are grounds for ejection from the session and termination of membership.
If you have not read at least 50% of the recommended selections, consider skipping the meeting to allow other interested people to attend.
Those who violate the rules of conduct repeatedly will be dropped from the group at the discretion of the organizers.
Note:
To remain viable, groups depend on regular attendance. Toward this end, we ask that you only RSVP "Yes" if you know that you are likely to attend. If it turns out that you cannot make it to the meeting, we ask that you cancel your RSVP as soon as possible to make room for others.
Although everyone is welcome to use our resources, our targeted audience consists of people who live in the Maryland, DC, and Virginia area.
Upcoming events
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Johne Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
West End Neighborhood Library, 2301 L Street NW, Washington, DC, USJohn Locke (1632-1704) was a teacher, aide, physician, and a founder of modern European philosophy. His political writings, which we discussed in July, were the cornerstone of the liberal ideology that would eventually come to dominate modern political thought. His reflections on the foundations of metaphysics and epistemology, contained in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, similarly set the agenda for those disciplines for over a century after its publication in 1689.
Locke’s immediate predecessors, most notably Rene Descartes, had attempted to found a philosophical science, a system of indubitable knowledge, on the model of geometrical demonstration received from ancient Greece. The most important conclusions about the world—its nature, even its existence—were to be deduced from prior truths. If those prior truths were, as those philosophers had believed, indubitable, the conclusions would follow with certainty. Locke’s attack on innate ideas, for which he is credited as a father of empiricism, is an attack on the authority of the alleged founding truths of metaphysics. If no idea is innate, Descartes’ basic assumptions—e.g., that there are degrees of reality and that the cause must have as much or more being as the effect—can no longer pretend to be the innate and inescapable positions of every intellect.
Locke also opens up the field of modern philosophical psychology. The Essay is, among other things, a detailed description of the mental phenomena that words like “thinking,” “idea,” “belief,” “judgment,” and “knowledge” denote. However debatable his conclusions, Locke notices much that modern philosophy had not previously seen as needing comment. Whether interlocutors attacked his positions, like Leibniz, or extended his method beyond its original conclusions, like Berkeley and Hume, or complicated them, like Kant, Locke’s contemporaries and successors were in his debt.
We will be reading An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in the Hackett abridgment edited by Kenneth Winkler. Note that other editions will contain different selections of text. Please read the Epistle, book I, Book II, Book IV. i-ix, xi-xiv, xx-xxi. (Pages 1-175, 224-274, 284-301, 329-338 in the Hackett edition, which comes out to 256 pages.)
Optional secondary readings include the remaining parts of the Essay including chapter III, and two Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles: "John Locke" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/ and "Locke's Philosophy of Science" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-philosophy-science/.
17 attendeesGeorge Berkeley
West End Neighborhood Library, 2301 L Street NW, Washington, DC, USGeorge Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Irish idealist philosopher and Anglican bishop born in Kilkenny, Ireland. Berkeley, California is named after him. Berkeley entered Trinity College in Dublin in 1700 at the age of 15 and became a fellow in 1707. He published his first book, “An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision” in 1709 which later leads to his view that sensible qualities cannot exist “without the mind.” Berkeley was the leading exponent of 18th century idealism. He referred to his view as “the immaterialist hypothesis” in which he denied even the possibility of mindless, material substance in his radical opposition to materialism. Bertrand Russell in his book “History of Western Philosophy” humorously quotes a limerick response by Ronald Knox to Berkeley:
There was a young man who said “God
Must think it accordingly odd
If he finds this tree
Continues to be
When there is no one about in the Quad.”REPLY
Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
GodBerkeley’s thesis implies that ordinary physical objects exist if and only if they are perceived. He presents basically two arguments. First, he holds that every physical object is just a collection of sensible qualities, and secondly, that every sensible quality is an idea. Sensible objects are then objects that are capable of being perceived. Hence physical objects are just collections of ideas and no physical object can exist unperceived. From this he concludes that no objects can exist without the mind.
This principle and its supporting arguments are described and discussed by Berkeley in the two readings for our discussion. These are Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. Both are available in a single collection published by Oxford’s World Classics. They are also available online as separate free ebooks from The Gutenberg Project (gutenberg.org). See here for the Principles of Human Knowledge and the Three Dialogues.
Secondary Material:
Wikipedia – George Berkeley
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – George Berkeley
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – George Berkeley
YouTube – George Berkeley: Subjective Idealism
YouTube – Philosophy of George Berkeley : Metaphysics and Theory of Knowledge11 attendees
Past events
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