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 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.
* * * * *
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
International Relations, Geopolitics, and Current Events Discussion
This will mostly be a discussion around major recent and ongoing events in international relations, while applying as much IR concepts and frameworks as possible.
Tentative Topics:
- Venezuela
- Iran
- Greenland / NATO
- Middle East Peace Deal
- Ukraine / Russia
- Cuba
- Tariffs, US-China trade war, and geopolitical competition
- Multipolarity
- Nuclear weapons proliferation
- A.I. race and chips
- Sudan
- Taiwan
- South China Sea
- North Korea
- .....
Links from event on Venezuela:
- Vibes-based grand strategy and foreign policy
- Regime change for democracy? Or more pliable former government (Max Blumenthal)
- Not about drugs or fentanyl (Daniel Davis), Narco-trafficking elites to run Venezuela (Chris Hedges)
- Good move because free oil - Not so simple or easy,
- Monroe Doctrine 2.0 - Iran, Columbia, Cuba, Greenland (Daniel Davis),
Links from prior/ongoing series on basic IR Theories:
Theory
- Quick Overview of Structural Realism, Liberalism, etc.; Another
- Offensive vs. Defensive Realism; 2
- Constructivism
- Diplomacy: Stapleton Roy, George Schultz, Bilahari Kausikan
- Power: Joseph Nye, Jack Matlock
Talks, applications, and discussions
- Rise and Fall of Liberal Intl Order
- John Mearsheimer discusses his book "The Great Delusion"
- Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer (2015)
- Why John Mearsheimer is wrong about realism, great power politics and history
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjiSqp5Ddw
Additional Info and References
- [Placeholder]
Upcoming events
569
Georges Canguilhem: Foucault's Great Teacher
·OnlineOnlineThis meetup on Canguilhem will be followed by a meetup on Foucault's book "The Archaeology of Knowledge". The "Archaeology of Knowledge" meetup may in turn be followed by further meetups on Philosophy of Science in the French tradition, perhaps centred around Foucault as well as Foucault's great successor, the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking.
Ambitious, I know!
But for now, let's focus on this Canguilhem meetup.
- This will be a 3 hour meetup. For the first 2 hours we will be reading from Canguilhem's book "The Normal and the Pathological." We will be using the Zone Books translation.
- During the last hour we will discuss this book: Canguilhem (Key Contemporary Thinkers) by Stuart Elden.
See below for the reading schedule and pdf copies of the texts. 👇👇👇
This Canguilhem meetup can be enjoyed for its own sake, even if you have no intention of attending the companion meetup on Foucault's "The Archaeology of Knowledge".
However, if you do plan to attend the "The Archaeology of Knowledge" meetup, I strongly recommend that you attend this Canguilhem meetup first. Foucault's thought is of interest to people in a very wide range of disciplines. But the side of Foucault's thought that we encounter in "The Archaeology of Knowledge" is really only studied in any depth by philosophers. It is very far removed from the side of Foucault's thought that has become popular. This Canguilhem meetup will serve as an introduction to Philosophy of Science in the French tradition, and some familiarity with this tradition will serve you well when you encounter "The Archaeology of Knowledge".
The format will be my usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 10-15 pages from each book before each session. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.
People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. We mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not do the reading. You probably are brilliant and wonderful — no argument there. But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.
Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is partly for philosophical reasons: I want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that I (Philip) can explain if required.
Here is the reading schedule:
First Session (Friday May 15)
- In Canguilhem: Please read up to page 24 (Foucault's Introduction)
- In Elden: Please read up to page 13
Second Session (Friday May 29)
- In Canguilhem: Please read up to page 46
- In Elden: Please read up to page 20
Third Session
- In Canguilhem: Please read up to page 64
- In Elden: Please read up to page 27
After that, the readings will be posted.
A pdf copy of the Canguilhem text is here and a pdf of the Elden is here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
About the text (from the publisher):
The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the nineteenth century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.
Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early nineteenth century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives.
Canguilhem was an important influence on the thought of Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, among others, in particular for the way in which he poses the problem of how new domains of knowledge come into being and how they are part of a discontinuous history of human thought.
13 attendees
Kierkegaard: Either/Or – Part I (Live Reading)
·OnlineOnlineIn Either/Or, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), under the pseudonym Victor Eremita, explores interiority, and the struggle for a meaningful existence wherein one finds lasting happiness. He accomplishes this by portraying two chief personalities: the Aesthete (Book I), and the Judge (Book II). The writings of the aesthete are personal and brooding. Among many aesthetic themes it examines the nature of love, happiness and how to secure these in a lasting way. The writings of the judge are addressed to the aesthete as to a friend, and attempt to convince him that he is putting himself in misery by misunderstanding the themes he has dealt with in Book I.
At this meeting we'll be starting at page 70 (Danish 52). At the last meeting, we started on page 67 (Danish 49).
Text
Part I: pdf, epub
Part II: pdf, epubHere are the plays we read together before beginning Either/Or:
- Sophocles - Antigone
- Scribe - The First Love
- Goethe - Faust
- Video of a production of Faust I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaogjXLdPow
Additional works you could look at while we read Either/Or:
- Goethe - Clavigo
- Mozart/Ponte - Don Giovanni
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQBmLHSXQdg
- Mozart/Schikaneder - The Magic Flute
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_qtZ-Hm7k
- Mozart/Ponte - The Marriage of Figaro
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ik-PzAXsQ
On the Friday Meetings:
The Friday meetings began on January 1, 2016, with an initial goal of reading through the first half of Søren Kierkegaard's works. Due to continued interest, we have decided to return to previous works for review, study more background texts, and continue beyond the first half of Kierkegaard's writing.
Works read so far in the series:
- The Concept of Irony, With Continual Reference to Socrates (Kierkegaard)
- Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures (Kierkegaard)
- Either/Or (Victor Eremita, et al.)
- Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Fear and Trembling (Johannes de Silentio)
- Repetition (Constantin Constantius)
- Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
- Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est (Johannes Climacus)
- Concept of Anxiety (Vigilius Haufniensis)
- Prefaces (Nicolaus Notabene)
- Writing Sampler (A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab)
- Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
- Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (Kierkegaard)
- Stages on Life's Way (Hilarious Bookbinder)
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
- The Sickness Unto Death (Anti-Climacus)
- Works of Love
Works read for background:
- The First Love (Scribe)
- The Berlin Lectures (Schelling)
- Clavigo (Goethe)
- Faust Part I (Goethe)
- Antigone (Sophocles)
- Axioms (Lessing)
- The Little Mermaid (Anderson)
Works read inspired (at least in part) by Kierkegaard
- The Escape from God (Tillich)
- You Are Accepted (Tillich)
Some background on Soren Kierkegaard in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://iep.utm.edu/kierkega/
12 attendees
Socrates vanquishing the Sophists: Plato’s Protagoras (Live Reading)
·OnlineOnlineCan excellence and virtue be taught? Can virtuous politics be taught? Can political excellence be taught or transmitted in any way, shape or form? These are only some of the questions with which Protagoras wrestles and the provide Plato with ample opportunity to engage with diverse topics such as the constitution of human societies, the ultimate unity of virtues and the responsibilities of teachers.
Protagoras, possibly the most famous sophist of his day and a leading figure in the sophistic movement, is charging a king’s ransom as a fee for his professorial services and a young man by the name of Hippocrates is prepared to pay. He persuades Socrates to act as a mediator and convince Protagoras to take him on as a student. The ensuing dialogue will cast doubt on Protagoras’ claim that he is able to prepare the future leaders of the political community.
The dialogue is supposedly taking place some time before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, probably in 434-432 BC but was written in the 380s and belongs to the early platonic period.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This will be a live reading of Plato's Protagoras. Saturday March 21 will be the first session on the Protagoras and thus the ideal time to join our group. Reference will be made to contemporary and older scholarship. Historical context will be brought up whenever necessary to illuminate the dialogue.
We will be using Benjamin Jowett’s translation, which can be found here.
This Plato group meets on Saturdays and has previously read the Symposium, 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. 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.
11 attendees
Past events
7746
