The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

On January 3rd the United States of America military, under orders from Donald Trump, captured and kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. Despite Maduro’s and Flores’ indictments from the US Justice Department, accusing them of narco-terrorism conspiracy, this act was, according to many observers, a clear violation of international law.

The Trump administration didn’t seem to care too much about that. Despite some vague attempts to provide a legal justification for its actions, Stephen Miller, The White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said he had little regard for what he termed “international niceties”: “We live in a world, in the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power… These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

These words echo how a particular philosophy of international relations called “realism” has been understanding the world, long before Donald Trump came to office. For realists, what the US did in Venezuela is not too different to what the US has always done (not just in South America, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan), only this time any pretence of morality or legality has been, more or less, dropped, in favour of brandishing brute force and naked self-interest.

So, was international law always just a thin veil of justification for the exercise of brute force? Or are Trump’s actions a departure from a more civilised world in which even the most powerful states were constrained by international legal norms?

About the Speaker:

Linda Kinstler is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a scholar of legal and intellectual history. Her first book, Come to This Court and Cry (Public Affairs, 2022) won a Whiting Award in Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize for Jewish Literature. Her second book, on the history of "acts of oblivion," is under contract with Liveright/Norton. She is also a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and frequently writes for the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

The Moderator:

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. His research interests lie broadly in the post-Kantian tradition, including Hegel, Nietzsche, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, WIRED, The Independent, The Conversation, The New European, as well as Greek publications, including Kathimerini.

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This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. It is open to the public and held on Zoom. The event is free to attend but the Zoom registration page has, by default, an optional donation amount that you can change to zero (or whatever you wish). Donations go to The Philosopher magazine to cover our costs and expand the scope of our series.

Please send feedback or comments about our events directly to thephilosopher1923@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you!

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

• RumiSite — English texts
• Project Gutenberg — Masnavi (for future discussions)
• Rumi — BBC article on best-selling poet

Zoom link: Will be provided shortly.

Imagination is our capacity to represent things beyond our immediate physical experience, from possible worlds to abstract ideas or stories. While Blaise Pascal saw imagination as a “mistress of error” leading us astray, other philosophers such as Robin Kelley believe in what he dubs “Radical Imagination.” Specifically, he thought that “imagination can [help us to] … see the future in the present.” So is imagination best conceived of as a useful mental tool, or a vehicle for error and escapism?

In our first Curiosity Café of 2026, we will be reflecting on our own experiences with imagination. To do so, we’ll ask questions like: What are the positive and negative influences that imagination has on our lives? What is the difference between fantasy, idealization, and catastrophization? What sorts of functions might they serve? Considering notions of utopia and moral progress, does imagination play a role in politics and society? Is collective imagination possible?

Join us on January 20th for this discussion, co-moderated by returning guest Beatrice Turner and our very own Marybel Menzies, to explore many of the fascinating ways we use imagination in our daily lives, on large and small scales.

Space is limited! Please obtain a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket from Curiosity Café at this link (click here) to attend this event. You need a ticket to be admitted. See the above link for more info about tickets and other options including a limited number of free tickets. Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30pm. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.

Hope to see you there!

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This event is brought to you by Being and Becoming, a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us.

By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.

Find out more about Being and Becoming here.

About the Curiosity Café Series:

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.

We invite Pro-Trump and Anti-Trump people alike to join us in researching the topic of inflation. We will look for the facts related to inflation, and how the policies of democrats and republicans have influenced inflation. In this unique event, Trump supporters will have the chance to challenge facts put forth by non trump supporters, and vice versa - We will put forth the facts related to inflation - including any concerns put forth by either side regarding each fact presented… Doing this will help us get a clear view of how Trump supporters and non trump supporters see the facts. Once we have all the facts, we will generate logical conclusions from the Trump and non Trump supporters perspectives. Garrett will put together a presentation and we will get volunteers to present the trump and non trump perspective on the facts and conclusions the following week.

A little about our host:
Garrett is a programmer turned award-winning software inventor turned entrepreneur (http://platerate.com/) is his company. His hobby is writing and discussing practical philosophy, and he does life coaching on request to help people live happy, moral lives. He is also the executive director of The Free Thinker Institute (http://freethinkerinstitute.org/), which aims to create a community that helps members increase happiness and decrease harm for themselves and those they can influence.

Format:
Lecture and discussion

Note:
social time for our community 15 minutes before the presentation.

To get familiar with our past events, feel free to check out our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmixGB9GdrptyEWovEj80zg

After registering via zoom, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

We publish our event recordings on our Youtube channel to offer our help to anyone who would like to but can’t attend the meeting, so we need to give this clause. If you don’t want to be recorded, just remain on mute and keep your video off.

Here’s our legal notice:
For valuable consideration received, by joining this event I hereby grant Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns, the irrevocable and unrestricted right to use and publish any and all Zoom recordings for trade, advertising and any other commercial purpose, and to alter the same without any restriction. I hereby release Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns from all claims and liability related to said video recordings.