Life Can Only Be Understood Backwards, But It Must Be Lived Forwards

Firing up the meetup for another year. Hope the summer has been kind to everyone.

You will note the rebrand to ’Philosophy Unplugged’. The goal remains the same, experiment with how to bring value to people from all backgrounds who want to explore Philosophical themes with others.

I invite you to book 10 am on Sunday, October 5th for our first meetup of the season. We will meet at The Common (coffee house), 28 Wilson St. in downtown Guelph.

The first discussion will explore the paradoxical quote, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” (Kierkegaard). The translation and immediate context for the quote is at https://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jorgen/kierkegaardquotesource.html and reads "It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards"

In case you wish to explore some context, https://philarchive.org/archive/BACICA is a reasonably accessible article (13 pages). https://philosophybreak.com/articles/kierkegaard-life-can-only-be-understood-backwards-but-must-be-lived-forwards/ is a short blog post that offers a practical point-of-view.

Hope to see you in October.