About us
The Chicago Philosophy Meetup is a community of groups created by and for people interested in engagements with philosophy and the history of such engagements. Our members have a wide variety of backgrounds besides philosophy, including literature, law, physics, theology, music, and more.
We host events suggested by individual members and coordinated by volunteer organizers and offer opportunities for discussion with others who share these interests. If you have an idea for a topic you'd like to discuss, especially if you are from an historically underrepresented group in academic philosophy, let us work with you to make it happen.
Whether you're new to philosophy and looking to get started, or have been doing philosophy for some time and want to dig a bit deeper, we invite you to check us out.
We have basic expectations for how we talk to each other, so:
DO...
Listen to others
Ask for clarification
Get to know people
Help other voices to be heard
Work towards understanding each other
Practice moving past your assumptions about others
DON'T...
Limit others’ performance of items on the DO list
The Chicago Philosophy Meetup opposes any force of exclusion, discrimination, and/or harassment present in its community. Such forces include, but are not limited to, racism, transphobia, misogyny, and antisemitism. The Chicago Philosophy Meetup seeks to be inclusive because only in this way can we fulfill the DOs list above. We are here to help! If you have concerns, questions about a meeting, or need assistance (e.g. accessibility), please contact either the organizers or the event host for the meeting directly.
"Philosophy is not a theory but an activity."
-- from "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," Wittgenstein
Discourse cheers us to companionable
reflection. Such reflection neither
parades polemical opinions nor does it
tolerate complaisant agreement. The sail
of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the
wind of the matter.
-- from "On the Experience of Thinking," Heidegger
Check out our calendar
Note: this group will not contact you with an offer to read your book in exchange for donations or for any transactions.
Upcoming events
129
Kierkegaard: Either/Or Part I (Live Reading)
·OnlineOnlineOnline meeting link: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/90411e38a0af35dad141f5479eb902f1a13df4115c47e3a8b66f88916f8cdeba
This is the first meeting of Either/Or, and we'll be starting at page 139 (Danish 117). At the last meeting, we started on page 129 (Danish 107).
Kierkegaard’s masterpiece in experimental literature and philosophy, Either/Or, explores themes that permeate his work as a whole. In Part I, Kierkegaard presents his most extensive treatment of the aesthetic worldview, which understands life as governed by fate and seeks to assert itself by taking the reins of existence through imagination.
Text
Part I: pdf, epub
Part II: pdf, epubHere are the plays we read together before beginning Either/Or:
- Sophocles - Antigone
- Scribe - The First Love
- Goethe - Faust
- Video of a production of Faust I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaogjXLdPow
Additional works you could look at while we read Either/Or:
- Goethe - Clavigo
- Mozart/Ponte - Don Giovanni
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQBmLHSXQdg
- Mozart/Schikaneder - The Magic Flute
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_qtZ-Hm7k
- Mozart/Ponte - The Marriage of Figaro
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ik-PzAXsQ
On the Friday Meetings:
The Friday meetings began on January 1, 2016, with an initial goal of reading through the first half of Søren Kierkegaard's works. Due to continued interest, we have decided to return to previous works for review, study more background texts, and continue beyond the first half of Kierkegaard's writing.
Works read so far in the series:- The Concept of Irony, With Continual Reference to Socrates (Kierkegaard)
- Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures (Kierkegaard)
- Either/Or (Victor Eremita, et al.)
- Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Fear and Trembling (Johannes de Silentio)
- Repetition (Constantin Constantius)
- Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
- Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est (Johannes Climacus)
- Concept of Anxiety (Vigilius Haufniensis)
- Prefaces (Nicolaus Notabene)
- Writing Sampler (A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab)
- Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (Kierkegaard)
- Stages on Life's Way (Hilarious Bookbinder)
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
- The Sickness Unto Death (Anti-Climacus)
- Works of Love
Works read for background:
- The First Love (Scribe)
- The Berlin Lectures (Schelling)
- Clavigo (Goethe)
- Faust Part I (Goethe)
- Antigone (Sophocles)
- Axioms (Lessing)
- The Little Mermaid (Anderson)
Works read inspired (at least in part) by Kierkegaard
- The Escape from God (Tillich)
- You Are Accepted (Tillich)
8 attendees
Plato - Statesman (Live Reading)
·OnlineOnlineOver the last few years, we have done a close reading of the Republic and the Laws. Now we turn to the Statesman.
We will be starting from the beginning of the dialogue.
The dramatic action is as follows: we pick up after the Eleatic Stranger has finished the discussion that takes place in the dialogue titled the Sophist (which we read several years ago). The discussion turns to the figure of the Statesman, and while the interlocutor in the Sophist was Theaetetus (who resembled Socrates), a youth named Socrates takes on the role of interlocutor (Socrates himself is present).
Meeting link: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/3a0e5ab74d311938358f82a075568a48c1d47ab6d5fe86398e72d80ab11b4925
No particular edition is required, but we can discuss what we want to use during the meeting. Because of this, sharing some editions that are generally available digitally in the comments may be helpful. I'll also try to keep the Greek text handy (probably through a Loeb edition, but anyone can look at Perseus as well).
If you want to familiarize yourself with the text in advance, here are some different editions:
On Perseus, Fowler (HTML): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=plat.+stat.+257a
Plato's Complete Works:
PDF: https://annas-archive.gl/md5/b670e9aea7c9f52b2d40d63ff84f5600
5 attendees
Human Flourishing — Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
·OnlineOnlineAugust 2 - Now that we have read chapters 1–5 on what pleasure is, we are going to read chapter 6 (1176a30–1177a11) on what human flourishing is. In previous chapters Aristotle has debunked the views that (1) pleasure is the supreme good, that (2) pleasure is bad, and that (3) all pleasures are choiceworthy. Then he argues that (4) pleasure is an emergent activity in living life, and that (5) human pleasure originates in beautiful activities as selected by someone who can see what is humanly good.
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, book X, which is about pleasure and human flourishing.
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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 the full-time job of being a human being?
2. What is the systematic structure of the human potential?
3. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
4. How does one come to acquire any of it? (E.g. pride, ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, generosity, candor, fairness, friendliness, …)
5. How does one formulate right desires?
6. How is one to recover from being bad to becoming a good person?
7. What is entailed in and what is required of being a friend?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.1 attendee
Descartes' Meditations: Response to the Fourth Set of Objections (Live Reading)
Pro Musica, 713 W Wrightwood, Chicago, IL, USWe'll be starting from Latin 247. If possible, read the objections in advance.
Descartes' Meditations are a classic of philosophy, typically regarded as kicking off the modern period of philosophy. In the text, Descartes seeks to knock down and rebuild all he knows in order to finally find security in his cognitions and a path forward for securing knowledge of God and man's nature.
We welcome both beginners and advanced readers.
Various translations are available; please select the one you prefer.Text links (Amazon):
Cottingham translation (Cambridge)
Cress translation (Hackett)
Heffernan translation (English/Latin, Notre Dame)There is also a translation by Norman Kemp Smith, but it is out of print
Digital links:
Cottingham translation (Libgen, Cambridge)
Cress translation (Libgen, Hackett)
Latin text (Project Gutenberg)5 attendees
Past events
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