About us
We're a community that practices and discusses philosophy, being free and open to all levels and backgrounds. We offer seminars, a variety of discussion formats, and the occasional lecture / guest speaker.
Many meetings will have fewer RSVPs than people who actually attend. This is because overtime people stop making use of Meetup.com and instead communicate with their groups via Discord, Slack, Zoom, E-mail, or similar You can think of the list of events hosted on this Meetup as advertisements for groups seeking new participants.
Our philosophy offerings are organized and facilitated by volunteers. If you have a philosophy offering - or an offering that compliments the study of philosophy, such as in literature, the sciences, and so on - that you'd like to advertise through this Meetup, please contact the organizer. We're grateful to those who want to enrich Portland with study and discussion!
Participants must speak, write, and act in a considerate, professional, and respectful manner, and be prepared for the meetings that they attend, having reviewed the materials to the degree necessary to participate. If you haven't reviewed the materials but still wish to attend an event, please consult the event facilitator regarding the best manner for you to be present.
We look forward to studying philosophy together!
Upcoming events
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Georges Bataille on Eros and Thanatos
·OnlineOnlineAfter an interlude with Foucault and Deleuze, we continue our reading of Part Two of George Bataille's Erotism: Death & Sensuality, published in 1957*.* The plan is to finish this book over 5 weeks or so. See below for the weekly schedule, overview of this reading group project and group rules.
Reading schedule
See the updated weekly reading schedule at this link:
https://sites.google.com/view/existentialism-and-its-critics/You can find all texts 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 👇ABOUT THE BATAILLE GROUP
This is a comprehensive reading group focusing on the works of French writer Georges Bataille. We are reading key texts from Bataille himself, as well as tracing his relationship with other major thinkers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, André Breton/Surrealism, Blanchot, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc.Some familiarity with Bataille's mode and style of thought is helpful but not necessary. You're welcome to join the group in medias res at any time. See, however, the group rules below.
Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to each meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.
Topics to be discussed in the future:
- Return to the 2nd part of Erotism
- Bataille's critique of Hegel: the negative and general economy
- Derrida's reading of Bataille in "From Restricted to General Economy"
Past topics included:
- Foucault on transgression, power and the history of sexuality
- The philosophical friendship and later rift between Deleuze and Foucault
- Bataille's Erotism, Part 1 & the logic of transgression
- Bataillean transgression and Deleuzian line of flight: reading Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up"
- Bataille's aesthetics: the rift with Surrealism
- Susan Sontag on avant-guarde literature
- Bataille's novel Blue of Noon
- Inner Experience and a-theological mysticism
- Bataille's reading of Nietzsche and critique of fascism
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MORE ABOUT BATAILLE
Georges Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he called 'base materialism'. In the early 20s, Bataille abandoned Catholicism, embraced psychoanalysis and Marxism and initiated an unorthodox search for the sacred in late modernity. His obsessive pursuit of ecstatic liminal experiences took him across the boundaries of philosophy, sociology, political economy, mythology, poetry, literature and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy of unconditioned expenditure, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. Though he remained largely outside the academic mainstream and worked as a librarian, Bataille is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant to our time than ever.In this group we look at a significant cross-section of Bataille's texts. Our aim is to understand his thought on its own terms as well as place him in the context of his predecessors and the French thinkers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.
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GROUP RULES
- Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
- 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: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
- We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.
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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: To join the meeting 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).
Art: Le Rêve / The Dream by Pablo Picasso (1932)
6 attendees
Friendship and Love — Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
·OnlineOnlineMay 10 - We will read chapter 6 of Book IX. Earlier, we read 1) beliefs about friendship, 2) objects of love, 3) three kinds of friendship, 4) the best kind, 5) state vs. activity, 6) friending varieties, 7) of unequals, 8) loving vs. being loved, 9) friendships in societies, 10) forms of government, 11) right & wrong in these forms, 12) in families, 13–14) complaints by friends, 1) problems with dissimilar aims, 2) with conflicting obligations, 3) whether to break up, 4) relation to oneself, 5) goodwill as jumpstart to friending. Now: like-mindedness.
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Our main translation from here on will be by Adam Beresford (Penguin Classics, 2020), but we will occasionally dip into other older English translations to get more insights and commentaries.
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, book VIII–IX, which is about friendship, social relations, and love.
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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 any of it? (E.g. pride, ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, generosity, candor, fairness, …)
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. How does one formulate right desires?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.4 attendees
Past events
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