What we’re about
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.
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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.
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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
Foucault: The Genesis of The History of Sexuality (Ch 6: Pleasures of Antiquity)
On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead.
This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity.
This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault’s writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault’s last decade.
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Hello everyone and welcome to this series on Foucault. Please note that there is a technology related issue that you should know about. Please be sure to read to the end of this blurb for details.
In this series, we will read the four volume biography of Foucault written by Stuart Elden. The first volume on the genesis of The History of Sexuality is called Foucault's Last Decade (2016, Polity Press).
Elden wrote the biography in reverse chronological order, so Volume One actually covers Foucault's later years. The description from the back of this book is reproduced at the bottom of this page. 👇👇👇
When we are finished with Volume One, we will read something short by Foucault himself, starting with his essay "What Is Enlightenment"? Then we will move on to reading Volume Two of the biography and so on until we have finished all four volumes of the biography and read three short writings by Foucault himself.
The format will be my (Philip's) usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 25-30 pages before each session. (This is a biography after all so it should not be too onerous to read that many pages). 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. When you are choosing your passages, please try to lean in the direction of picking passages with philosophical content rather than mere historical interest. But I can be flexible about this.
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. I 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 can explain if required.
THE READING SCHEDULE (pdf here)
- Sept 10: Read up to page 26
- Sept 17: Read up to page 44
- Sept 24: Meeting cancelled
- Oct 1: Read up to page 81
- Oct 15: Ch. 4 (read up to page 111)
- Oct 29: Ch. 5 (read up to page 133)
- Session after that: Ch. 6 (read up to page 163)
- Session after that: Ch. 7 (read up to page 190)
- Session after that: Ch. 8 (read up to page 209 and the footnotes)
After that the group will read Foucault's essay "What is Enlightenment".
It is a shame it has to come to this, but:
I am Canadian and like many Canadians my relationship with America has changed drastically in the last 10 months or so. In this meetup, no discussion of the current US political situation will be allowed. This is unfortunate, but that is how it must be. When talking about Foucault there will no doubt be a strong desire to talk about politics. No problem! It is a big old world and the political situations of literally every other country on planet earth (including their right wing populist movements) are fair game for discussion in this meetup. Just not that of the US. The political situation in the USA is now a topic for Canadians to think about in a very practical, strategic manner as we fight to prevent our democracy from being destroyed, and our land and resources stolen. The time may come when a Canadian like me can talk about this topic in an abstract philosophical way, but I suspect that time is at least 6 years away.
Now the technology point: Scott will be in the meetup for a few minutes at the start to set things up. But then he will leave. (He's not into Foucault! Unfathomable!) Someone in the meetup will have to volunteer to tell me who has their hand up and whose turn it is to speak. I am disabled in a way that makes it impossible for me to both manage the philosophy content and also monitor whose turn it is to speak. With any luck one or more regulars in the meetup will make it a habit to step up and volunteer each time.
Upcoming events
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•OnlineThe Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger by Stanley Rosen
OnlineWelcome Everyone! This meetup series will follow on with many of the same themes as the meetup Scott and I just finished which was called "Heidegger vs. His Platonic Critics".
This will be a three hour meetup. During the first 2 hours we will be focusing on the book:
- The Question Of Being: A Reversal Of Heidegger (1993) by Stanley Rosen (Scroll to the bottom of the page for the reading schedule and materials 👇)
Please note that, although Stanley Rosen was a great philosopher (and great reader of other philosophers) he was writing at a time when very little of what Heidegger wrote had been published (in any language). Also, at the time Stanley Rosen was writing there was not much of a community of Heidegger scholars for Rosen to bounce his ideas off. Put another way, Rosen's interpretation is the interpretation of a brilliant interpreter working under some heavy limitations beyond his control. To compensate for this, we may occasionally read short essays which were written more recently.
The main reason we will be reading Rosen is NOT for his interpretation of Heidegger (although that is formidable and well worth our time in its own right) but rather because he proposes a post-Heideggerian Metaphysics. In other words, if Heidegger is advising us to overcome Western metaphysics, Rosen advises us to retrieve it (but in his own specific post-Heideggerian way). If Heidegger is advising us to try to retrieve (in our own time) a sort of Homeric, pre-Socratic way of thinking, Rosen is advising us to retrieve Plato and metaphysics (but in a way that engages with and avoids Heidegger's critique of metaphysics). Rosen has read Heidegger, he has absorbed Heidegger's lessons, he has considered Heidegger's proposal, and he is offering another non-Heideggerian way forward.
In many ways Rosen's post-Heideggerian way forward resembles that of Leo Strauss (Rosen's teacher). That may prompt some of you to ask "Why don't we just read Leo Strauss' writings on retrieving Plato instead of reading Rosen"? I considered doing exactly that, and may do so in the future. But in his writings Leo Strauss (it is claimed) reserved the right to hide his true views and engage in tricky forms of intellectual subterfuge. Whether or not that is true of Strauss, it is definitely not true of Rosen. So it seemed best to start with Rosen where we will be guaranteed to be getting a sincere, straightforward attempt to present a post-Heideggarian metaphysics.
The idea of engaging with the ancient Greeks and attempting to change modern culture by retrieving something from the ancient Greeks runs deep in German culture. I have a generally positive view towards the attempt to retrieve something from the Greeks and see this attempt as containing emancipatory potential, but I wanted to make sure the dark side of this retrieval was also represented in the meetup. This is why for our final hour we will be discussing this book, which is more of a history book than a philosophy book:
- Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe's Classical Past (2016) by Johann Chapoutot and Richard R. Nybakken (Keep scrolling to the bottom of the page for the reading schedule and materials 👇)
With both books in this meetup I will be challenging myself! I will be (more or less) defending Heidegger's project of overcoming metaphysics against Rosen's criticisms and his alternative. And I will be trying to say there is something positive and emancipatory about some of the things we can retrieve from the ancient Greeks. But I picked two books that will make it challenging for me to maintain my position.
The format will be my usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15-20 pages in 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: We want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that Philip can explain if required.
Here is THE READING SCHEDULE:
(A pdf of the Rosen is available here and a pdf of the Chapoutot is here.)- For the 1st session (November 10): Please read up to page xxiii in Rosen and up to page 13 in Chapoutot.
- For the 2nd session: Please read up to page 26 in Rosen and up to page 33 in Chapoutot.
- For the 3rd session: Please read up to page 45 in Rosen and up to page in 50 Chapoutot.
Further readings will be posted as we need them.
Also, please note that this meetup will almost certainly be followed by another on the same theme. As this meetup winds down (many months from now) I may ask the group what aspects of the theme of "German-inspired philosophy engages with Greek philosophy" people would like to explore. Hegel? Gadamer? Hannah Arendt? Levinas? Leo Strauss? Let me know!
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Further info about the book from the publisher:
In this book a distinguished philosopher enters into a debate with Heidegger in order to provide a justification of metaphysics. Stanley Rosen presents a fresh interpretation of metaphysics that opposes the traditional doctrines attacked by Heidegger, on the one hand, and by contemporary philosophers influenced by Heidegger, on the other. Rosen refutes Heidegger's claim that metaphysics (or what Heidegger calls "Platonism") is derived from the Aristotelian science of being as being. He argues instead that metaphysics is simply a commonsensical reflection on the nature of ordinary experience and on standards for living a better life. Rosen bases his theory of metaphysics on an understanding of Platonism as an investigation of both the soul and the Ideas, the two principal elements in what the dialogues refer to as "the whole." From this vantage point, says Rosen, it is impossible to view Platonism as an ontology or metaphysics of Being, a concept that Heidegger has made fashionable.
Rosen then analyzes the Heideggerian doctrine of the history of philosophy as Platonism, focusing on Heidegger's interpretations of Plato and Nietzsche, whom Heidegger viewed as the beginning and end of that history. He discusses how Heidegger distorted the ideas of these two thinkers and also considers how Aristotle, Kant, and Husserl contributed to the development of Heidegger's doctrine of metaphysics as Platonism. Rosen uses his critique of Heidegger to suggest the next step in philosophy: that technical precision and speculative metaphysics be unified in what he calls a "step downward into the rich air of everyday life."
18 attendees
•OnlineFTI: Can We Trust Our Government Institutions?
OnlineFrom Congress and the courts to agencies and local offices, government institutions hold immense power over our daily lives. Yet public trust in them has been declining for decades. What makes a government institution worthy of trust? What warning signs show if and when it is failing the people it serves?
This conversation invites us to look deeper into the foundations of democracy, accountability, and transparency. Together, we’ll explore whether our government institutions are living up to their promises—and what it would take to restore trust where it’s been lost.
A little about our host:
Garrett is a programmer turned award-winning software inventor turned entrepreneur PlateRate.com. His hobby is writing and discussing practical philosophy, and he does life coaching on request to help people live happy, moral lives. He is also the executive director of The Free Thinker Institute (http://freethinkerinstitute.org/), which aims to create a community that helps members increase happiness and decrease harm for themselves and those they can influence.
Format: Lecture and discussion
Note: social time for our community 15 minutes before the presentation.
To get familiar with our past events, feel free to check out our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmixGB9GdrptyEWovEj80zgAfter 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.
20 attendees
Past events
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