What we’re about
The Chicago Philosophy Meetup is a community of groups created by and for people interested in engagements with philosophy and the history of such engagements. Our members have a wide variety of backgrounds besides philosophy, including literature, law, physics, theology, music, and more.
We host events suggested by individual members and coordinated by volunteer organizers and offer opportunities for discussion with others who share these interests. If you have an idea for a topic you'd like to discuss, especially if you are from an historically underrepresented group in academic philosophy, let us work with you to make it happen.
Whether you're new to philosophy and looking to get started, or have been doing philosophy for some time and want to dig a bit deeper, we invite you to check us out.
We have basic expectations for how we talk to each other, so:
DO...
Listen to others
Ask for clarification
Get to know people
Help other voices to be heard
Work towards understanding each other
Practice moving past your assumptions about others
DON'T...
Limit others’ performance of items on the DO list
The Chicago Philosophy Meetup opposes any force of exclusion, discrimination, and/or harassment present in its community. Such forces include, but are not limited to, racism, transphobia, misogyny, and antisemitism. The Chicago Philosophy Meetup seeks to be inclusive because only in this way can we fulfill the DOs list above. We are here to help! If you have concerns, questions about a meeting, or need assistance (e.g. accessibility), please contact either the organizers or the event host for the meeting directly.
"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
Check out our calendar
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Plato - Laws, Book III (Live Reading)Link visible for attendees
We'll be starting at Book III, 687a (the previous meeting started at Book III, 683c)
The dramatic action is as follows: three elders - an Athenian, Spartan, and Cretan - walk the path of Minos and discuss laws and law-giving.
Meeting link: https://meet.jit.si/CPM-Saturday-Afternoon-Meetings
No particular edition is required but we can discuss what we want to use during the meeting. Because of this, sharing some editions generally available digitally in the comments may be helpful. I'll also try to keep the Greek text handy (probably through a Loeb edition, but anyone can look at Perseus as well).
If you want to familiarize yourself with the text in advance here are some different editions:
On Perseus, Shorely (HTML): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0166
Plato's Complete Works:
PDF: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=B670E9AEA7C9F52B2D40D63FF84F5600
- Acquiring Character Traits -- Aristotle's Nicomachean EthicsLink visible for attendees
April 27 - We will read Aristotle's own explanation for why we human beings, despite our sincere intentions, often suffer a lack of self-control, which, in olden times, is called incontinence or weakness of will.
.
Our bookmark is at NE VII.3, second half, 1147a24, if anyone is interested in reading ahead for this Sunday.
.
When you're on a diet, and you feel hungry, it matters, according to Aristotle, whether you "see" this piece of cake either as fattening or as sweet.----
We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's ~Nicomachean Ethics~, book VII, which is about troubleshooting the virtues.
.
The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review:
.
1. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
2. How does one come to acquire it? (E.g. [Aristotle’s], ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, ambition, …)
3. From a first-person perspective in being virtuous, how does one feel and what does one see (differently, discursively) in a given situation of everyday living?
4. From a third-person perspective, how is the virtuous person (of a specific virtue) to be characterized?
.
.
The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows. - Descartes' Meditations: Third Set of Objections (Live Reading)Pro Musica, Chicago, IL
We'll be starting from Latin 177
Let's go back to the drawing board with a live reading of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy!
Descartes' Meditations are a classic of philosophy typically taken as kicking off the modern period of philosophy. In the text, Descartes seeks to knock down and rebuild all of what he knows in order to finally find security in his cognitions and a path forward for securing knowledge of God and man's nature.
We welcome beginners and advanced readers alike.
Various translations are available, please select any you'd like or have around.Text links (Amazon):
Cottingham translation (Cambridge)
Cress translation (Hackett)
Heffernan translation (English/Latin, Notre Dame)There is also a translation by Norman Kemp Smith, but it is out of print
Digital links:
Cottingham translation (Libgen, Cambridge)
Cress translation (Libgen, Hackett)
Latin text (Project Gutenberg) - Aristotle's On Interpretation - Live-Reading--European StyleLink visible for attendees
April 29 - We are reading chapter 13 on the relationships among modal-state assertions. What are possible, admissible, impossible, necessary?
.
Aristotle grapples with competing notions of "possibility"--metaphysical possibility concerning a thing's capacity and ability versus epistemological possibility concerning whether the evidence justifies a predication. In this chapter he sides with the latter.
.
Here is an example: A child wonders whether all dogs go to heaven. The unit of thought being entertained is, “All dogs go to heaven.” The child is not asserting it as true (or as false); his judgment of the thought is being suspended while he looks for evidence. He evaluates the possibility, admissibility, impossibility, or necessity of his activity to put together the thought from its component-parts. He finds that he does not have sufficient evidence, but on the foundation of what he already knows, he can provisionally make a judgment, not on the unit of thought itself, but on his wondering activity of its formation. Thus, his modal-state assertion is, “That all dogs go to heaven is possible”; and he believes it to be true.
.
----Organon means "instrument," as in, instrument for thought and speech. The term was given by ancient commentators to a group of Aristotle's treatises comprising his logical works.
Organon
|-- Categories ---- 2023.02.28
|-- On Interpretation ---- 2023.12.12
|-- Prior Analytics
|-- Posterior Analytics
|-- Topics
|-- On Sophistical Refutations
|-- Rhetoric*(* Robin Smith, author of SEP's 2022 entry "Aristotle's Logic," argues that Rhetoric should be part of the Organon.)
Whenever we do any human thing, we can either do it well or do it poorly. With instruments, we can do things either better, faster, and more; or worse, slower, and less. That is, with instruments they either augment or diminish our doings.
Do thinking and speaking (and writing and listening) require instruments? Yes. We need physical instruments like microphones, megaphones, pens, papers, computers. But we also need mental instruments: grammar, vocabulary words, evidence-gathering techniques, big-picture integration methods, persuasion strategies. Thinking while sitting meditatively all day in a lotus position doesn't require much instrumentation of any kind, but thinking and speaking well in the sense of project-planning, problem-solving, negotiating, arguing, deliberating--that is, the active engagements in the world (whether romantic, social, commercial, or political)--do require well-honed mental instruments. That's the Organon in a nutshell.
Are you an up-and-coming human being, a doer, go-getter, achiever, or at least you're choosing to become one? You need to wield the Organon.
Join us.
