What we’re about
[Note: This group is looking for a new owner! In the meantime, join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to find many more online philosophy events and activities: https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/
The description below is from the previous organizer of the group.]
Welcome to the Calgary Philosophy Meetup! We're a local community for people interested in reading and discussing philosophy. We hold discussions and other events on a broad range of philosophical topics and problems. No previous experience is required for any of our meetups, only a willingness to engage with the works being discussed. The only basic ground-rule is to please, as with everywhere else in life, be polite and respectful during discussions.
Feel free to propose topics you would like to see (you can do this in the Discussions section), and please contact the organizers if you would like to host an event yourself, or organize events here on a regular basis.
“It’s a hard world for little things…” Set in a small West Virginia community during the Great Depression, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A surrealistic horror film with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, The Night of the Hunter stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of haunting visual poetry and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic — also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee — is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.
"With his only film, Laughton set out to film fear, and he succeeded.” (Sight and Sound)
"A stunning piece of work... Every frame of this film is brilliantly contrived." (The Guardian)
"Perverse, yet remarkably life-affirming, Night of the Hunter may be the best film ever made about spiritual perseverance." (Slant)
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Join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to discuss the influential American horror classic The Night of the Hunter (1955) directed by Charles Laughton, recently voted the 25th greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of film critics and scholars, and the 41st greatest movie of all time in the related poll of filmmakers. The movie is based on a best-selling novel of the same name by Davis Grubb, which was itself based on a true story.
Please watch the movie in advance and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it with a viewing link to be posted on the main event listing here.
We'll be joined by many other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at this meeting — https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/308569737/
Check out other film discussions in the group every Friday and occasionally other days.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Movie Discussion – The Night of the Hunter (1955) by Charles LaughtonLink visible for attendees
“It’s a hard world for little things…” Set in a small West Virginia community during the Great Depression, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A surrealistic horror film with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, The Night of the Hunter stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of haunting visual poetry and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic — also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee — is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.
"With his only film, Laughton set out to film fear, and he succeeded.” (Sight and Sound)
"A stunning piece of work... Every frame of this film is brilliantly contrived." (The Guardian)
"Perverse, yet remarkably life-affirming, Night of the Hunter may be the best film ever made about spiritual perseverance." (Slant)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to discuss the influential American horror classic The Night of the Hunter (1955) directed by Charles Laughton, recently voted the 25th greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of film critics and scholars, and the 41st greatest movie of all time in the related poll of filmmakers. The movie is based on a best-selling novel of the same name by Davis Grubb, which was itself based on a true story.
Please watch the movie in advance and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it with a viewing link to be posted on the main event listing here.
We'll be joined by many other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at this meeting — https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/308569737/
Check out other film discussions in the group every Friday and occasionally other days.
- Bataille's Inner Experience: The superiority of Nietzsche over ProustLink visible for attendees
Bataille ends the book Inner Experience by contrasting Nietzsche's ontology of the unknown with Proustian poetics of memory. Only Nietzsche, he argues, has penetrated to the total sacrifice (the death of God) that defines the modern era.
We'll read Part 4, section VI and the brief Part 5. All readings in the Google drive linked below 👇
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This is an on-going reading group focusing on the works of French writer Georges Bataille.
The specific reading for this week is posted at the event webpage below, which is updated regularly:
https://sites.google.com/view/existentialism-and-its-critics/
You can find all Bataille texts in the Google folder linked at the BOTTOM of this description (also the Zoom link) -- scroll all the way down 👇
Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.
Topics to be discussed:
- Bataille's aesthetics: the rift with Surrealism
- Blue of Noon
- Erotics and the 'logic' of transgression
- Bataille and/vs Deleuze
- Foucault's "A Preface to Transgression"
- Hegel, the negative and general economy
- Derrida's "From Restricted to General Economy"
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ABOUT THIS GROUP
Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he labeled 'base materialism' and which could equally be called 'ecstatic materialism'. Keeping outside the academic mainstream (he worked as a librarian), Bataille writes at the intersection of multiple disciplines including philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, mythology, and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. He is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant in our time than ever.We'll start with Bataille's early writings on Nietzsche and make our way through his important concepts over a number of weeks. We'll aim to understand Bataille's thought on its own terms as well as to place him in the context of the German thinkers that preceded him and the French philosophers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.
Note: Bataille's texts, while philosophically important, discuss difficult themes such as mortality, the unconscious, eroticism, primeval social practices, etc. Keep this in mind as you approach him, especially if this is your first experience with French philosophy.
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GROUP RULES
- Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
- Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
- Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
- Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
- We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.
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Join the Facebook group for more resources and discussion:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/755460079505498
If you have attended previous meetings, please fill out a brief survey at this link: https://forms.gle/tEMJ4tw2yVgnTsQD6All readings can be found in this Google folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VPRdvZYmUKBY3cSxD8xC8sTYtSEKBXDs
Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81251109319?pwd=R3hVQ2RqcVBvaHJwYnoxMFJ5OXJldz09Art: The Metamorphosis of the Lovers, André Masson (1938)
- Live-Reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics – American StyleLink visible for attendees
Let's try something new. For the next dozen weeks or so, starting 4/17/2022, we are going to live-read and discuss Aristotle's ~Nicomachean Ethics~. What is new and different about this project is that the translation, by Adam Beresford (2020), happens to be rendered in standard 'Murican English.
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From the translator's "Note" on the text:
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"This translation is conservative in interpretation and traditional in aim. It aims to translate the text as accurately as possible.
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"I translated every page from scratch, from a clean Greek text, rather than revising an existing translation. ... I wanted to avoid the scholars’ dialect that is traditionally used for translating Aristotle.
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"I reject the approach of Arthur Adkins, Elizabeth Anscombe, and others who followed Nietzsche in supposing that the main elements of modern thinking about right and wrong were unknown to the Greeks, or known to them only in some radically different form. My view of humanity and of our shared moral instincts is shaped by a newer paradigm. This is a post-Darwinian translation. (It is also more in line with the older, both Aristotelian and Christian view of human character.)
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"Having said that, I have no interest at all in modernizing Aristotle’s ideas. All the attitudes of this treatise remain fully Greek, very patriarchal, somewhat aristocratic, and firmly embedded in the fourth century BC. My choice of dialect (standard English) has no bearing on that whatsoever. (It is perfectly possible to express distinctively Greek and ancient attitudes in standard English.) ... I have also not simplified the text in any way. I have translated every iota, particle, preposition, noun, verb, adjective, phrase, clause, and sentence of the original. Every premise and every argument therefore remains – unfortunately – exactly as complex and annoyingly difficult as in any other version in whatever dialect.
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"Some scholars and students unwarily assume that the traditional dialect has a special connection with Greek and that using it brings readers closer to the original text; and that it makes the translation more accurate. In reality, it has no special tie to the Greek language, either in its main philosophical glossary or in its dozens of minor (and pointless) deviations from normal English. And in my view it certainly makes any translation much less accurate.
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"I will occasionally refer to the scholars’ dialect (‘Gringlish’) and its traditional glossary in the Notes."
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Here is our plan:
1. Read Intro excerpts or a summary to gain the big picture.
2. Read a segment of the translated text.
3. Discuss it analytically and interpretively.
4. Repeat again at #2 for several more times.
5. Discuss the segments evaluatively.
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Zoom is the project's current meeting platform, but that can change. The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.
