The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

We'll be working our way through Samuel Scolnicov's Plato's Forms in Transition.

You can find various translations of the dialogue, some available for free (in one way or another). Here is one: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.html

About the dialogue, from the SEP:

The Parmenides is, quite possibly, the most enigmatic of Plato’s dialogues. The dialogue recounts an almost certainly fictitious conversation between a venerable Parmenides (the Eleatic Monist) and a youthful Socrates, followed by a dizzying array of interconnected arguments presented by Parmenides to a young and compliant interlocutor named “Aristotle” (not the philosopher, but rather a man who became one of the Thirty Tyrants after Athens’ surrender to Sparta at the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War). Most commentators agree that Socrates articulates a version of the theory of forms defended by his much older namesake in the dialogues of Plato’s middle period, that Parmenides mounts a number of potentially devastating challenges to this theory, and that these challenges are followed by a piece of intellectual “gymnastics” consisting of eight strings of arguments (Deductions) that are in some way designed to help us see how to protect the theory of forms against the challenges. Beyond this, there is precious little scholarly consensus. Commentators disagree about the proper way to reconstruct Parmenides’ challenges, about the overall logical structure of the Deductions, about the main subject of the Deductions, about the function of the Deductions in relation to the challenges, and about the final philosophical moral of the dialogue as a whole.

This critique group is kept private to preserve the privacy of critique submissions. Most don't RSVP on Meetup.

To join, please email me (Tree) at [email protected], with your return email address, and include in your message: (1) A description of your current writing project(s), (2) Your goals for joining this writer's critique group, (3) And a brief history of yourself as a writer, including past projects, education, and related. Your message doesn't have to be anything fancy. We just wish to make sure that you're serious about observing and that your intentions/projects are a good fit for this critique group.

About:
As the title suggests, we critique writing that is speculative (sci-fi, fantasy, horror, surrealism, slipstream, etc.), philosophical (idea-driven, writing with a message, etc.), and experimental (unusual language, visual/musical aspects, transgressive, etc.). All writing submitted for critique should fit at least one of these categories. We are happy to have work in any/all formats (poetry, prose, playwriting, screenplay, libretto, graphic novel and hybrid) and for any audiences including adults, YA, and kids.

Some Example Works:
Of course, the written works and authors that inspire us may vary, and widely. Nonetheless, here's a list of some written works and authors that have inspired us, and which we might use as an (incomplete) list of the kind of writing that could be submitted to this critique group.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Ice, Anna Kavan; Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick; The Waves, Virginia Woolf; The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin; The Street of Crocodiles, Bruno Shulz; Stories of Your Life, Ted Chiang; The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser; The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa; The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft; Don't Bite The Sun, Tanith Lee; Illuminations, Arthur Rimbaud; The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald; The Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin; Moby Dick, Herman Melville; Kindred, Octavia E Butler; The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood; The Divine Comedy, Dante; The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle; A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen; Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire; Blindsight, Peter Watts; The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Leguin; Sweat, Lynn Nottage; The Song of Maldoror, Comte de Lautremont; Solaris, Stanislaw Lem; Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy; Dune, Frank Herbert; Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon.

Critique Group Structure:

• Meets weekly Thursdays from 6:00pm-7:30pm, PST.
• Both short and long fiction + non-fiction can be submitted.
• Submission length maximum: 20,000 words (many submissions are shorter).
• Back-to-back weekly submissions for novelists + long form writers are encouraged.
• Participants are expected to closely read the submission and arrive prepared to discuss it in depth for 1.5 hours.
• If, for whatever reason, a participant can't read the submission in time for our meeting and/or can't attend our meeting, that participant is urged to provide a written (or audio recorded) summary of feedback to the submitting writer through DM on our Discord.
• Active participation is required to ensure all members' best interests. A member can be removed from the group if found absent in critique sessions for more than 3 months. Should one wish to rejoin the group, please message me directly either in Discord or via email.

Community:
We're a serious yet fun group of writers with eclectic projects and tastes. We're always looking to meet new friends and grow our community so we hope you'll consider observing a critique group - and if we're a good fit for one another, continuing to hang out with us Thursday evenings!

We meet on the Blinding Cyclops Discord server. Join link:
https://discord.gg/4uCVFs4vHw

You can read our full syllabus under the category "Writer's Critique Groups." The rest of the channels under this category are kept hidden to preserve the privacy of critique group submissions, but will be opened up to you when your observation has been confirmed.
Commitments:

This critique group's structure expects a weekly attendance commitment, so it's only right for writers who are committed to writing and critiquing.