About us
SADHO is a curiosity-driven philosophy Meetup—with a critical-theoretical interest in automatic and shared ways of worldmaking—that follows the timeless wisdom of the designers of The Village:
> Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself.
> A still tongue makes a happy life.
Just kidding. Obviously, we strive to violate both with all vehemence, just like Number You-Know-Who.
Method
- We present audiovisual surveys of Western philosophy and of the history and philosophy of science—surveys that are masterpieces of illuminating exposition—performed by the “BBC2 Four” (Bronowski, Burke, Clark, and Magee) and
- discuss them, with
- a philosophy PhD, philosophy professor, or other Guest Expert.
SADHO makes scholarship fun by serving up the greatest embodied minds of all time in bite-sized, Technicolor, beautifully arranged morsels, and by bringing bona fide experts to the table for special lectures and Q&A.
In a word, SADHO is a fun, friendly, frolicsome, fleet-footed, (non-)free-form* forum for philosophizing, fostering fellowship alongside and under the tutelage of (sometimes) famous professional and practicing philosophers.
SADHO’s First Promise
- SADHO’s First Promise — Our excursions and tangents will never stray outside the event’s topical Kuiper Belt.
Unlike other philosophy Meetup groups, whose discussions drift all over the Solar System, our high-quality discussions remain firmly within the Kuiper Belt. That’s our promise to you.
Sound impossible? It’s not. The reason is that SADHO Meetups are … not actually free-form. They are anchored and constrained by a force.
A great force.
A force more powerful than even Vader …
The all-conquering force of radical insight, expressed vividly and clearly, by a master teacher.
There is nothing better than an illuminating and meticulously lucid discourse delivered by a riveting and intensely expressive person. Add to this a great video, diagram, or model, and you have the makings of peak experience.
This force flows neither from Scott & Dave, nor from the great topics we choose, but from the the expository virtuosos that elucidate these topics—i.e., from our Guest Experts and the BBC2 Four.
SADHO’s Second Promise
- SADHO’s Second Promise — Our meetings will always include either a qualified Guest Expert or a member of the BBC2 Four.
If SADHO worships anything, it’s clear speaking. That’s it. That’s the big overarching theme and First Principle that drives all our decision making. Consequently, we spotlight the crème de la crème of English-speaking educators and dive into skillfully (or manically) curated discussions, underpinned by top-tier production values and rigorous preparation. Said educators include both (a) living professional philosophers and (b) those pedagogical giants known as the “BBC2 Four.”
SADHO’s Guest Experts
Our Guest Experts are top professors from the North Americas. So far, we have hosted the likes of:
The BBC2 Four
SADHO meetings also (and almost always) revolve around recorded performances by the greatest scientific, historical, and philosophical exegetes of all time. While incarnated on the Prime Material plane, these lofty ones were known as Jacob Bronowski, James Burke, Kenneth Clark, and Bryan Magee. These pedagogical saints, these BBC2 Four (aka the British Broadcasting Bards, the Philosophical Fab Four, the BBC-M, etc.) will be our guides.
Here they are again in list view:
What can one say about the BBC2 Four that hasn't already been said? Their work is so widely acclaimed and thoroughly appreciated that finding new words of praise feels like an almost impossible task. I feel compelled to return to Shakespeare, who took great pains to describe the BBC2 Four in that memorable passage from Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1, lines 45–65 (as interpreted by Dave Thomas):
“These engrossing masters of elegant exposition; these dexterous wordsmiths of rhetorical Fabergé eggs; these benevolent ministers of restorative mind-tonics; these tireless disciples of skillful means; these master-architects of felicitous visual models, diagrams, and schemas; these altruistic wielders of knot-cutting logicks; these humble and plain-speaking sweepers of cobwebs; these irreverent deflators of metaphysical extravagance; these fortresses of excellence, built by Oxford for England against intellectual infection; these view-transforming founts of illuminating metaphor; these poetic alchemists of feeling and idea; these massively multi-channel pedagogical improvisors; these fascinating bards of scientific and philosophical history; this happy breed of men; this little world; this precious stone set in the TV-static sea, which serves it in the office of a wall or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier programmes; this nurse; this teaming womb of royal elocutionists, feared by their breed and famous by their birth, renownèd for their deeds as far from home; this blessèd plot, this earth, THIS REALM, THIS BBC2 FOUR!!!”
Even when exalted by the Sweet Swan of Avon himself, mere words seem insufficient to capture the full essence of the BBC2 Four. Now, with the sad passing of three of its luminaries, we realize the depth of our loss. It is, indeed, the second-greatest blessing to humanity that they devoted their talents to the world through BBC2 in the 70s, leaving us with a treasure trove of audiovisual records of their magnificent performances.
Surely, it is these performances, and not the writings of LRH, that should have been engraved on stainless steel tablets and encased in titanium capsules beneath Trementina Base.
Join Us
You can join us …
- Here, on Meetup.
- By wandering around our massively overproduced Notion page, here.
- By lurking around our embryonic YouTube channel. Video for our events will be uploaded here (if possible) as will videos of our events (eventually, some day, once Dave has finished composing our new theme music).
Thank-Yous
Special Thanks to Ingrid Kronenberg for the clean and readable event posters and to Mark Bernstein-Anderson for the nicely toggled-tucked interactive transcripts that let you literally unfold your way to understanding.
SADHO is organized and managed by David Sternman, with financial support provided by the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia, under SADHO COB Professor Steven Taubeneck.
Upcoming events
1
From Kant to 6:00 AM: A Compressed Genealogy of Phenomenology
·OnlineOnlineFrom Kant to 6:00 AM This Morning: A Compressed Genealogy of Phenomenology
For our next session, we will attempt something absurdly ambitious: a comprehensive synoptic map of phenomenology from Kant through Husserl through Derrida and up to today.
The method of presentation will be genealogical for a small set of primary concepts. What happens to each of these concepts as it migrates from one philosophical system into another?
- Does the concept keep its meaning, change its meaning, get rebuilt under the same name, or survive only as a word attached to a different concept?
- Does it keep the same rank in the system, gain rank, lose rank, become central, move to another position, or become stricter, heavier, and more absolute?
- Does it move from one domain to another: from logic to history, from epistemology to ethics, from ontology to social relation, from formal structure to lived embodiment, from ordinary description to transcendental condition?
- Does it become phenomenological: no longer treated as a doctrine about things, but as a description of how things are given in experience?
- Does it become ethical: no longer treated as a neutral structure of cognition, being, or method, but as a claim made on the subject?
- Does it become interpersonal: no longer centered on subject-object relation, but on self-other relation?
- Does the later thinker accept the source, revise it, extend it, radicalize it, reverse it, use it against itself, attack it, reject it, or leave it aside?
- Does the inheritance occur at the level of topic, method, or whole-system architecture?
- Is the source a real ancestor, a corrected ancestor, an inverted ancestor, an adversary, or merely a neighboring contrast case?
What we coulda done
We could have presented a History of Phenomenology using timeline or mind-map of linked names, book titles, terms (concepts), and principles (sentences). That still would have been the best Meetup event on the History of Phenomenology, especially if there have never been any.
What we’re gonna do instead
But we’re doing things the hard way (for us)—which is the super-great way for you: We will treat the history it as an geneologico-historical transformation network, or what contemporary Analytic philosophers call a MUTANT—a Map of Uptake, Transformation, Appropriation, Negation, and Transposition.
You will see, hear, and taste …
Kant on the conditions of object-experience; Hegel on mediation, negation, and history; Husserl on intentionality and givenness; Scheler on value, personhood, and affective disclosure; Heidegger on being-in-the-world and temporality; Rosenzweig on revelation, speech, and the break with totality; Buber on I–Thou encounter; Levinas on responsibility before the Other; Derrida on trace, difference, writing, and inheritance; and then the 6:00 AM guys and girls.
Don’t worry—Prof. Steven Taubeneck will be aboard with us to help keep us in line and on target.
Better METHOD ingredients will appear below over the next few days as the main MUTANT gives birth to little sub-MUTANT children, aka partial diagrams. Stay tuned.
METHOD
- TBA [see above]
- As always, summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs for all the episodes we cover can be found here: THORR (The High Ontology Reading Room)
ABOUT PROFESSOR TAUBENECK
Professor Taubeneck is professor of German and Philosophy at UBC, first translator of Hegel’s Encyclopedia into English, and SADHO CΦO. Most impressively, he has also been wrestling with the core texts of 20-cent. phenomenology and existentialism for over 30 years, and has worked and collaborated with Gadamer, Derrida, and Rorty.
View all of our coming episodes here.
20 attendees
Past events
152
