What we’re about
See upcoming readings on our Notion, and chat with us on our Discord
Welcome to the San Francisco Philosophy Reading Group! We are a group of amateur, interested philosophers who get together to read and discuss classic works of philosophy.
Our group will focus on a different reading every 2 weeks, and then meet up in person to discuss the reading in a friendly and casual setting. We welcome readers of all levels and philosophical inclinations, as long as you are willing to engage with the reading and discussion in a friendly, open manner.
We also have a Discord where we discuss Kant and other philosophical topics—join us anytime!
Upcoming events
2
Nietzsche: History in the Service of Life
The Radical Reading Room, 438 Haight St, San Francisco, CA, USFor this session, we’ll read Nietzsche’s “On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life.”
Nietzsche attacks historicism and the “consumption” of the past that enfeebles action. He distinguishes three uses of history—monumental (models for greatness), antiquarian (piety for origins), critical (judging and breaking with the past)—and shows how each turns poisonous when unmoored from present vitality. Life needs forgetting and the unhistorical as much as memory; the criterion is whether history serves life by strengthening the “plastic power” to interpret, incorporate, and transform the past. He condemns scholarly pedantry, museum-culture, and moralized objectivity that produce weak, reactive subjects. The task: curb historical excess, deploy history as an instrument of creation, and restore the conditions for future-making.
The reading can be found here50 attendees
Nietzsche: The Violent Birth of Morality
The Radical Reading Room, 438 Haight St, San Francisco, CA, USFor this session, we'll be reading Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals, First and Second Essays." Nietzsche traces morality to its origins in power relations, not timeless truths. The First Essay exposes the "slave revolt in morality"—how the powerless priestly class inverted aristocratic values, rebranding strength as evil and their own weakness as virtue. Ressentiment (festering revenge) created "good and evil" to replace the noble "good and bad." The Second Essay excavates conscience as internalized cruelty: when instincts could no longer discharge outward, man turned aggression inward, breeding guilt and self-torture. The "bad conscience" is simultaneously humanity's sickness and its depth—the wound that makes us interesting, capable of promises, memory, and meaning. Nietzsche reveals the psychological economies behind our highest ideals: Christianity as refined revenge, justice as sublimated violence, guilt as unpaid debt to ancestors and gods. The task: diagnose the genealogy of our values to imagine their transvaluation.
The text can be found here25 attendees
Past events
24
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