About us
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 welcome 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 discussion and to stay in touch with other members.
(🚨🚨🚨 WARNING: FRADULENT EMAILS are circulating that IMPERSONATE organizers of this group and eventually ask you for money or personal information if you engage. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED SUCH AN EMAIL OR IF YOU ARE UNCERTAIN about any message claiming to represent this group, PLEASE REPORT IT by contacting the main organizer Darren directly through Meetup's messaging system or email us at philosophyto [at] gmail [dot] com. Be vigilant for scams in general, which are everywhere these days and easier than ever to generate because of A.I. 🚨🚨🚨)
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 have moved 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.
* * * * *
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
The Divine Comedy / Dante Reading
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES (WE ARE CURRENTLY USING THIS SITE)
- https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/
- Dante Study Documents: I have shared a folder containing all the copies and materials I have prepared for our Dante sessions. New documents will be added:
- regularly.https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YZxvnwlqRM2oKZsqRd36n55p91LSyTKS?usp=share_link
📌 The Divine Comedy is more than a story — it’s a map of the inner self.
- It teaches about choices, responsibility, and consequences.
- It shows how struggle and self‑reflection can lead to growth and spiritual awakening.
- The journey mirrors our own personal transformation — confronting flaws, repenting, and aiming for higher understanding and compassion.
***
## 🧍 Who Was Dante?
- Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was a medieval Italian poet from Florence.
- He is considered one of the greatest writers in world literature and one of the founders of the Italian language.
***
## 🔥 What Is The Divine Comedy?
- A long epic poem written in terza rima (a special rhyming scheme) in the early 1300s.
- It describes a symbolic journey through the afterlife: Hell → Purgatory → Heaven.
- 🌍 What the Three Parts Represent
### 1. ⚫ Inferno (Hell)
- Dante travels through the nine circles of Hell guided by the Roman poet Virgil.
- Each circle punishes a different kind of sin.
- Theme: Recognizing the consequences of wrongdoing and human weaknesses.
### 2. 🔺 Purgatorio (Purgatory)
- Dante and Virgil climb the mountain of Purgatory, where souls purify themselves.
- It’s full of hope and change — sinners repent and grow.
- Theme: Transformation and self‑improvement.
### 3. ☀️ Paradiso (Heaven)
- Beatrice (Dante’s ideal guide of divine love) leads him through the celestial spheres.
- Dante encounters angels and blessed souls.
- Theme: Divine love, spiritual fulfillment, and union with God.
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:
- John Ciardi – (I HAVE PURCHASED THIS ONE). Best for a discussion group because it’s clear, accessible, and includes notes for each canto. Helps participants understand the meaning and context without getting lost in archaic language.
- Mandelbaum (20th c.) – Modern, poetic, complete. Very readable and preserves the literary quality. Good if the group wants more literary flavor ''after understanding the basics''.
- Longfellow (1867) – Historically respected, complete, but 19th-century English can be challenging.
## 📚 Links to the Book (Public Domain)
- ***1, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES (WE ARE CURRENTLY USING THIS SITE)
- https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/
Full text - Project Gutenberg
📎 The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso – Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8800
***This is another version of Project Gutenberg, but this edition also includes notes and explanations for each canto.
https://wyomingcatholic.edu/wp-content/uploads/dante-01-inferno.pdf
LECTURES AND INTERESTINS WEBSITES:
A. Prof. Teodolinda Barolini is Lorenzo da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University. You can listen to her AMAZING lectures. There are 54 videos and some are more than one hour. I will be listening at least one per week.
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/the-dante-course/
B. YALE UNIVERSITY LECTURE BY: GIUSEPPE MAZZOTTA
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD1450DFDA859F694
C. This link has SEVERAL excellent sources:
https://carrieannebrownian.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/extratextual-sources-for-studying-the-divine-comedy/
D. Canto - Audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEDGsmkxv84&t=4s
***
Upcoming events
559
The Apocalypse Industry: Can We Imagine The End?
·OnlineOnlineTalk about the end of the world is everywhere, from Silicon Valley tech-bros to US Vice President J. D. Vance. Recent western culture also seems to have been preoccupied with the apocalypse: films like 28 Days Later, Children of Men, or novels like The Drowned World and more recently What We Can Know, try to depict a future in which, in the words of REM, "it's the end of the world as we know it." And in the era of out-of-control climate change, Mark Fisher’s famous motto that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” has become a cliché.
But can we actually imagine what it would be for the world to end? Or are we always just imagining a different world? Are we trying to transcend the limits of our language and thought when we try to imagine the end of the world? And why are we seemingly so preoccupied with thinking about the world ending?
About the Speaker:
Rafael Holmberg is a political writer, social theorist, and researcher on philosophy and psychoanalysis based at at University College London. His work broadly draws on post-war Continental philosophy, German Idealism, Marxism, and psychoanalytic theory, with a special focus on the history of philosophy, political theory, contemporary UK, US, and European politics, as well as film, literature, and history. Holmberg's writings have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers, and book chapters, including Newsweek, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Radical Philosophy, Culture, Theory & Critique, and Aeon. He runs the Substack Antagonisms of the Everyday - which explores contradictions and anomalies in culture and politics through a theoretical lens, drawing amongst other things on sociology, film, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. . His book After The End: Fragments of the Apocalypse Industry is forthcoming at Zer0 Books.
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.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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 $0 (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.
24 attendees![Personally Interpreting “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” [Session 5 of 48]](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/6/2/b/highres_535966635.jpeg)
Personally Interpreting “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” [Session 5 of 48]
·OnlineOnlinePlease read ALL of the following unless you are already familiar with what we are doing! Reading/Questions for discussion appear below
The conceit of this Meetup, and what I expect attendees to participate in, is that it’s 1885, and the last part of what Friedrich Nietzsche thought was his “greatest gift” to humanity has just been published. A friend has given you a complete copy, and you are reading this book for the first time. You are familiar only with his previous works. This conceit means that you are coming to this book with a “beginner’s mind,” and trying to understand it for the very first time.
What I am looking for in this series of 48 one hour sessions are your personal interpretations of what Nietzsche has to say in this [in]famous book. No interpretations made by his commentators after 1885 will be permitted. His original readers used their own minds, and you will use yours.
In order that we are literally on the same page, the only version that will be allowed is the Adrian del Caro translation published by Cambridge University in 2006, available as a free PDF here. Download it and save it somewhere for reading on a digital device. If you insist on a physical copy, try libraries, Amazon, Bookfinders, Bookshop, or a local used bookstore (if there are any left) .
Session 5: On The Teachers of Virtue/On The Hinterworldly
Why is sleep “the master of virtues” and the "dearest of thieves" for the "wise" man?
Why is the “wise“ man a fool to Zarathustra?
Why is honesty the “youngest of virtues”?
18 attendees
Past events
8322
