The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

To get familiar with our organization, feel free to learn more here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E16-qv-OZZoKh4HSyHCtQ_eZA-ko_n3Kd3SwxfLpk84/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.qsvmnmkadvaq

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.

We refer often to a well written book titled "The Fundamentals of Ethics" by Russ Shafer-Landau. (A pdf of the text is here.)

Chapter 11 of The Fundamentals of Ethics, titled "The Kantian Perspective: Fairness and Justice," introduces Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy, focusing on the role of fairness, justice, and respect for persons.

Key points of the chapter include:

• The Principle of Universalizability: An action is morally right if its guiding maxim can be willed as a universal law without contradiction. This emphasizes consistency and fairness in moral reasoning.
• Respect for Persons: Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative insists that we treat humanity—whether in ourselves or others—as an end in itself, never merely as a means. This underlines the inherent dignity and moral worth of all rational beings.
• Moral Duties and Autonomy: Kant believed that moral duties are derived from reason, not consequences or emotions. Respecting others means recognizing their autonomy and capacity to make rational choices.
• Criticisms and Challenges: The chapter also discusses criticisms of Kantian ethics, such as difficulties in applying the principle of universalizability and potential conflicts between duties.

Overall, the chapter emphasizes that morality, from a Kantian perspective, is about acting from duty, guided by principles of fairness, justice, and respect for all individuals.
See you this Tuesday!

In Experiments in Living Together (Oxford University Press, 2024) Michael Fuerstein addresses these questions, presenting a fresh philosophical account of social progress that focuses on democracy and delivering an innovative rebuttal to skeptics inspired by the recent populist wave. Following in the tradition of John Dewey, he argues that democracy enables progress through "experiments in living": innovations in social practice that transform social emotions and identities and cultivate moral learning.

Drawing on research in social psychology and several detailed historical case studies — same-sex marriage, women's integration into the workforce, and school desegregation — Fuerstein illuminates the critical role of novel experience in building community: linkages of emotion and identity across a democratic public, which enable diverse citizens to flourish together. Challenging technocratic views that imply that democracy is undermined by citizens' ignorance and incompetence, Fuerstein suggests that the remedy for democracy's contemporary malaise must target failures of community more than failures of knowledge or skill, a change which will require a new round of experimental innovations in social life.

Join us for a discussion of the book featuring Michael Fuerstein, Susan Dieleman and Alex Madva.

About the Speakers:

— Michael Fuerstein is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Saint Olaf College. His research centers on democratic theory, social epistemology, and pragmatism, and has been published widely in scholarly venues such as The Journal of Political Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, and a variety of anthologies with Oxford University Press. Most recently, he has developed an interest in the moral and social dimensions of business, and is an inaugural member of the Society for Progress. He is the author of the recently published book Experiments in Living Together: How Democracy Drives Social Progress.

— Susan Dieleman is Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Her research is located in the areas of pragmatism (Richard Rorty), feminist philosophy (epistemic injustice), and political philosophy (deliberative democracy). She is co-editor of The Ethics of Richard Rorty: Moral Communities, Self-Transformation, and Imagination (Routledge, 2022) and Pragmatism and Justice (Oxford University Press, 2017) and co-author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Richard Rorty.

— Alex Madva is Professor of Philosophy at Cal Poly Pomona, Director of the California Center for Ethics & Policy, and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Consortium. His teaching and research explore the intersections between the cognitive and social sciences and topics in philosophy of race and feminism, applied ethics, and social and political philosophy. He is co-author of the forthcoming book from MIT Press Somebody Should Do Something on a novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change and the ways that each of us can help make a real difference.

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This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the US-based Public Philosophy Network. It is open to the public and held on Zoom.

About the Public Philosophy Network (https://www.publicphilosophynetwork.net/):

The Public Philosophy Network promotes philosophy that engages issues of public concern and works collaboratively with civic and professional communities.

Our mission is:

• to support philosophers who use their concepts and skills to serve communities outside of academia and to make positive changes in society
• to reflect on how philosophy is transformed by various types of public engagement
• to support institutional changes supportive of publicly engaged work

While the Walter Kaufmann translation is preferred, a link to the free Cambridge translation is here. For this Meetup, we will read aphorisms 154-165, and discuss them one at a time and get as far as we get, carrying forward any undiscussed aphorisms to the following week.

It’s 1882, and a friend has just given you a copy and recommendation of a book by a former professor of philology named Friedrich Nietzsche. Your friend says that he seems to be a philosopher of some sort, even though he doesn’t write like one, and in this book he argues, among a lot of other provocative things, that God Is dead!

This Is the beginner’s mind that this Meetup will take with this book. You may know his contemporaries and antecedents, but you’re here to share YOUR thoughts, not those of subsequent critics.

Recordings and AI summaries of previous sessions are available here.
Suggested texts: The Portable Neitzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann and The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann

Syllabus (titles are linked to free PDF’s, most of which require a free academia.edu account)

The Gay Science (academia.edu)
The Gay Science (Kaufmann)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil (academia.edu)*
On The Genealogy of Morals (academia.edu)*
The Case of Wagner*
Twilight of the Idols** (academia.edu)
The Antichrist**
Ecce Homo*
Nietzsche Contra Wagner**

*The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann
**Walter Kaufmann’s, The Portable Nietzsche