What we’re about
Welcome to the Toronto Philosophy Meetup! This is a community (online and in-person) for anyone interested in philosophy, including newcomers to the subject. We host discussions, talks, reading groups, pub nights, debates, and other events on an inclusive range of topics and perspectives in philosophy, drawing from an array of materials (e.g. philosophical writings, for the most part, but also movies, literature, history, science, art, podcasts, poetry, current events, ethnographies, and whatever else seems good.)
Anyone is welcomed to host philosophy-related events here. We also welcome speakers and collaborations with other groups.
Join us at an event soon for friendship, cooperative discourse, and mental exercise!
You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Bluesky and join our new Discord for extended discussion and to stay in touch with other members.
Feel free to propose meetup topics (you can do this on the Message Boards), and please contact us if you would like to be a speaker or host an event.
(NOTE: Most of our events are currently online because of the pandemic.)
"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
See here for an extensive list of podcasts and resources on the internet about philosophy.
See here for the standards of conduct that our members are expected to abide by. Members should also familiarize themselves with Meetup's Terms of Service Agreement, especially the section on Usage and Content Policies.
See here for a list of other philosophy-related groups to check out in the Toronto area.
Please note that no advertising of external events, products, businesses, or organizations is allowed on this site without permission from the main organizer.
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Make a Donation
Since 2016, the Toronto Philosophy Meetup has been holding regular events that are free, open to the public, and help to foster community and a culture of philosophy in Toronto and beyond. To help us continue to do so into the future, please consider supporting us with a donation! Any amount is most welcome.
You can make a donation here.
See here for more information and to meet our donors.
Supporters will be listed on our donors page unless they wish to remain anonymous. We thank them for their generosity!
If you would like to help out or support us in other ways (such as with any skills or expertise you may have), please contact us.
Note: You can also use the donation link to tip individual hosts. Let us know who you want to tip in the notes section. You can also contact hosts directly for ways to tip them.
Featured event
Plato’s Symposium, on Love (Live Reading)
The Symposium is a heavily fictionalised account of a convivial gathering supposedly taking place sometime around 416 BC and given by the young poet Agathon to celebrate his recent victory in a poetic contest. The guest roster reads like a who is who of late 5th century Athenian society. Symposium’s influence has defied the confines of philosophical discourse throughout the history of thought. It consists of series of speeches on Love (Eros) and offers an exploration of its variety from its most mundane to its most divine forms.
Love, however, is no mere code-name for the attraction between human beings but rather a primordial cosmic force that manifests itself in that attraction. Hence the use of myth is utterly justified in this context. Performativity plays an unusually substantial role in the unfolding of the dialogue. For a Platonic dialogue, there are many light-hearted moments that occasionally culminate in peaks of intensity.
Reference will be made to Xenophon’s Symposium, Ficino's Commentary on the Symposium as well variety of modern works such as Leo Strauss's seminal work bearing the same title.
This is a relatively early work by Plato probably composed, according to what the indications you can find in the work between 385 and 378 BC and thus belonging to his late early or early middle period.
The Symposium, along with the Republic and Timaeus is a major influence on the development of European thought.
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This is a live reading of Plato's Symposium. No previous knowledge of the Platonic corpus is required but a general understanding of the questions of philosophy in general and of ancient philosophy in particular is to some extent desirable but not presupposed. This Plato group meets on Saturdays and has previously read the Phaedo, the Apology, Philebus, Gorgias, Critias, Laches, Timaeus, Euthyphro, Crito and other works, including ancient commentaries and texts for contextualisation such as Gorgias’ Praise of Helen. The reading is intended for well-informed generalists even though specialists are obviously welcome. It is our aspiration to read the Platonic corpus over a long period of time.
The host is Constantine Lerounis, a distinguished Greek philologist and poet, author of Four Access Points to Shakespeare’s Works (in Greek) and Former Advisor to the President of the Hellenic Republic. November 8 is the introductory session for the Symposium and hence an ideal opportunity to join the group without having to do any catching up.
The translation we are using is by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff and can be found here.
Upcoming events
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![[In-person] Curiosity Café: Shame](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/e/0/2/1/highres_530997377.jpeg)
[In-person] Curiosity Café: Shame
Madison Avenue Pub, 14 Madison Ave, Toronto, ON, CAWhat comes to mind when you think of shame? Shame is related to other experiences such as embarrassment, humiliation, and guilt. What differentiates shame from these common experiences? Furthermore, how and when do we learn what to feel ashamed about? Most if not all of us can recall feeling ashamed as children after having done something wrong. Likely, a parent or other older adult informed us that we have broken something (a social norm, an explicit rule, or even an object). It is no surprise then that shame can play a formative role in shaping our identities during our early years.
In this café, we’ll explore the experience of shame as well as the social and cultural context in which it is experienced. We’ll discuss questions such as:
- How is shame similar to or different from embarrassment, humiliation, and guilt?
- How do we learn what to feel ashamed about?
- In what ways might shame play a role in the development of our identity?
- When can shame be helpful? When can shame be harmful? How can we tell whether shame is helping or harming us in a given situation?
- Imagine a world where shame as a social mechanism did not exist. What would this world look like? Is this a better world?"
Join us on Tuesday, November 4th for an exploration of these questions and more.
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!
An important note: We know personal experiences may naturally arise during this discussion. If so, we recommend flagging them to process at another time, ideally in a safe and supportive environment. While we are experts at facilitating philosophical exploration, we are not equipped to facilitate or support processing these experiences.
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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.
13 attendees
•OnlineFTI: Is “Mainstream Media” Misleading Us? How Do We Know Who’s Lying?
Online“Mainstream media” is generally used to refer to left or center leaning media. But is it really mainstream? Actually, most viewers watch right wing media (Fox, OAN, and Newsmax). Here are some statistics on what is mainstream media: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_68d868355d908191b62c8d00b3cec21b
In this session we will teach a very easy and objective way to fact-check media (something we should *all* be doing, as there are lots of lies in the media these days: Have your favorite LLM fact check articles. You can have LLMs with various bias check each other’s fact checks and then try to find the primary sources they claim exist.
You can use this prompt to fact check: Please clarify what is accurate, misleading, or outright false in this article: \
A little about our host:
Garrett is a programmer turned award-winning software inventor turned entrepreneur (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 (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/UCmixGB9GdrptyEWovEj80zgAfter 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.
36 attendees
Past events
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