What we’re about
Welcome to the Toronto Philosophy Meetup! This is a community 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, 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!
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: https://4142298.xyz/The-Toronto-Philosophy-Meetup/pages/30522966/Other_Philosophy_Groups_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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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.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001) by John Mearsheimer is a cornerstone of contemporary realist international relations theory, offering a provocative argument for the inevitability of conflict among great powers. Drawing on his theory of "offensive realism," Mearsheimer asserts that the anarchic structure of the international system compels states to seek dominance and maximize their power to ensure survival, dooming even peaceful nations to conflict and a relentless power struggle.
The book combines historical case studies with a clear theoretical framework, making it accessible to both scholars and general readers. Mearsheimer's analysis of power dynamics, particularly his discussions on rationality, balancing, hegemony, and security dilemmas, is insightful and thought-provoking. However, critics may find his deterministic view of international relations overly pessimistic, as it downplays the role of international treaties and institutions, trade and economic interdependence, and moral considerations in mitigating and managing conflict.
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For the discussion, please read in advance Chapter 1 ("Introduction"), a pdf is available here (28 pages).
About the author:
John J. Mearsheimer (1947–) is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of political thought. He is a Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He has also been a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Mearsheimer's works are widely read and debated by 21st-century students of international relations. He has been described as the most influential realist thinker of his generation. A 2017 survey of US international relations faculty ranks him third among "scholars whose work has had the greatest influence on the field of IR in the past 20 years." He has published 7 books and numerous articles in academic journals like International Security. He also frequently publishes in popular outlets like Foreign Affairs, the Economist, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Leibniz in His World: The Making of a SavantLink visible for attendees
An exhilarating work of scholarship, Leibniz in His World demonstrates how this uncommon intellect, torn between his ideals and the necessity to work for absolutist states, struggled to make a name for himself during his formative years.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was a German polymath, mathematician, linguist, courtier, diplomat, theologian, jurist, and, most famously perhaps, the inventor — alongside his English counterpart, Isaac Newton — of the calculus. Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Leibniz is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men. Leibniz in His World provides a groundbreaking reassessment of Leibniz, telling the story of his trials and tribulations as an aspiring scientist and courtier navigating the learned and courtly circles of early modern Europe and the Republic of Letters.
Drawing on extensive correspondence by Leibniz and many leading figures of the age, Audrey Borowski paints a nuanced portrait of Leibniz in the 1670s, during his “Paris sojourn” as a young diplomat and in Germany at the court of Duke Johann Friedrich of Hanover. She challenges the image of Leibniz as an isolated genius, revealing instead a man of multiple identities whose thought was shaped by a deep engagement with the social and intellectual milieus of his time. Borowski shows us Leibniz as he was known to his contemporaries, enabling us to rediscover him as an enigmatic young man who was complex and all too human.
Leibniz in His World is a sweeping intellectual biography that restores the Enlightenment polymath to the intellectual, scientific, and courtly worlds that shaped his early life and thought.
About the Speaker:
Audrey Borowski is a research fellow with the Desirable Digitalisation project, a joint initiative of the Universities of Bonn and Cambridge that investigates how to design AI and other digital technologies in responsible ways. She was a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy as well as a research associate at the University of Oxford. She completed her doctorate (D.Phil) in the history of ideas at the University of Oxford on the philosopher and scientist G. W. Leibniz.
Her research background lies at the intersection of philosophy, history and science and in the last few years she started working more closely on the philosophical history and philosophy of computing and AI. In 2021 she was contracted by Princeton University Press to write a book entitled Philosophers of the Digital Age: A Philosophical History of Computing and AI from Leibniz to the Present. Audrey is also an essayist and contributes regularly to the Times Literary Supplement and Aeon. Her first monograph, Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant is published by Princeton University Press.
Website: https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/persons/audrey_borowski
The Moderator:
Catherine Wilson was Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the University of York from 2012-2018 and is currently Emeritus Professor of the Department. Her ongoing research is centred on early modern philosophy in relation to the physical and life sciences of the 17th and 18th centuries. Her best-known books include Leibniz’s Metaphysics: A Historical and Comparative Study (1989); The Invisible World (1995); Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity (2008); and a book for the lay reader, How to Be an Epicurean (2018). Forthcoming in 2022 is Kant and the Naturalistic Turn of 18th Century Philosophy, which interprets Kant’s metaphysics as a reaction against the radical empiricism and egalitarianism of major and minor figures of the Enlightenment in France and Germany.
Website: https://www.york.ac.uk/philosophy/people/emeritus-honorary-visiting-staff/catherine-wilson/
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Note: 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.
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.
- Heidegger’s History of the Concept of Time (a precursor to “Being and Time”)Link visible for attendees
Welcome everyone to the next series that Philip and David are hosting! This time around we will be doing a book by Heidegger called History of the Concept of Time. This book was written right before Heidegger wrote Being and Time (his Magnum Opus). The sad but unavoidable fact is that both of the English translations of Being and Time are so deeply flawed that it is virtually impossible to reconstruct Heidegger's early philosophy by reading one of these English translations.
Fortunately the English translation of History of the Concept of Time is of a VERY high quality. Also, even in German History of the Concept of Time is a much more clearly written book than Being and Time. If a good translation of Being and Time ever appears, Philip and David will certainly do a meetup on it. But for now, reading History of the Concept of Time is the best way for the English reader to access Heidegger's early philosophy.
This meetup will start out as a live read. We will read each and every paragraph together until we have gotten roughly 40 pages into the book. Once we have gotten a basic sense of what early Heidegger is all about, we will switch the meetup to a pre-read. When we are in the pre-read phase, participants will be expected to read the assigned reading in advance, and pick paragraphs that they especially want to focus on. In the meetup we will read out loud the paragraphs that the participants selected and we will talk about these paragraphs after we read them out loud.
Philip and David will be happy to recommend good quality secondary sources on Heidegger to anyone who asks.
Link to the German translation
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RahTLhJhwEfDtaac0wM-TgLV7VELXdlY/view?usp=sharingHere is a description of the book:
- Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Marburg in the summer of 1925, an early version of Being and Time (1927), offers a unique glimpse into the motivations that prompted the writing of this great philosopher's master work and the presuppositions that gave shape to it. The book embarks upon a provisional description of what Heidegger calls "Dasein," the field in which both being and time become manifest. Heidegger analyzes Dasein in its everydayness in a deepening sequence of terms: being-in-the-world, worldhood, and care as the being of Dasein. The course ends by sketching the themes of death and conscience and their relevance to an ontology that makes the phenomenon of time central. Theodore Kisiel's outstanding translation permits English-speaking readers to appreciate the central importance of this text in the development of Heidegger's thought.
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Philip and David feel that it is important to be clear up front about how the topic of Heidegger's racist politics will be dealt with in this meetup. Throughout his life (starting as a very young man) Heidegger was drawn to far right wing, nationalist, racist views which any reasonable person should find loathsome. Yet when it comes to thinking about the way the world is and what it means to be a human in that world, Heidegger is arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century. Some meetups rule out any discussion of Heidegger's politics, even though this is a core aspect of Heidegger's way of thinking. This meetup will not do that. In this meetup, we will make room for discussion of how Heidegger's politics may relate to his ideas on ontology and being human. Also, it will be possible in this meetup to consider whether Heidegger's ideas on ontology and being human shaped his politics. These questions will certainly not be the main focus of the meetup (far from it). But these questions will not be ignored either.
- The Heidegger Group: The Basic Problems of PhenomenologyLink visible for attendees
Greetings all!
We will be meeting weekly to read and discuss Martin Heidegger's
"The Basic Problems of Phenomenology." Experience with Heidegger will be good to have - a group of us have gone through a few of Heidegger's works and this is the continuation of that group.Schedule:
Session 3: Sec. 9
Session 4: Sec. 10
Session 5: Sec. 11-12
Session 6: Sec. 13
Session 7: Sec. 14
Session 8: Sec. 15
Session 9: Sec. 16
Session 10: Sec. 17-18
Session 11: Sec. 19a
Session 12: Sec. 19b
Session 13: Sec. 20
Session 14: 21-22Here's how I moderate:
I ask that people use the raise your hand feature prior to speaking. If you've spoken several times already, I will call others who haven't spoken yet or as much. Please refrain from giving lectures - this is a discussion group. I will cut you off if you are going on too long. Also, please refrain from bringing up other works or philosophers for discussion - a brief comment or comparison is fine, but the idea is to focus on Heidegger's thoughts in BPP!
Here's a link to an online copy: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology | Martin Heidegger | download (b-ok.global)
