Events

For this meeting we have chosen a book that was very popular some years ago and has managed to retain its popularity. The book is Why Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981) by Harold Kushner, in which the author, a Jewish rabbi, tackles the problem of evil. This book should be widely available, new or used,…

We will begin a discussion of Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages (2004) by Richard E. Rubenstein. This book can be had for under $20 in paperback and for about $15 as an ebook. We will read the first four chapters. (This is a bit ambitious, but do the…

  For this meeting we will finish discussing the book Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages by Richard E. Rubenstein. We will see how illuminated we are at the end of the session. Those not illuminated enough may have their credentials reviewed.      

For this meeting we will begin reading Aldous Huxley's book, The Perennial Philosophy, which proved to be very popular when it was first published in 1945 and remains so in some quarters today. For the 10th we will read through chapter VII. You can purchase a new paperback for between $15 and $20 or an ebook for…

  We will conclude our discussion of the book, The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley. At this meeting we will be looking for immanent arguments and comments, the sort that can transcend the beings offering them and become theses that anchor themselves absolutely in the ground of elucidation.

We will be discussing a book by Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of the noted book, Man's Search for Meaning. This new book, Say Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything (2020), is based on a series of lectures that Frankl gave less than a year after being liberated from a German concentration camp. He…

We are starting a new book, Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction (2014), by Jennifer Nagel. This book is a part of the Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University. A paperback costs about $12 and an ebook is around $7. For this meeting we will read the first three chapters, which cover the history of epistemology into…

We will conclude our book, Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction , by Jennifer Nagel. The last part of the book covers some of the major issues that are currently being debated in epistemology. Please come. With enough people and a little effort we should be able to take care of these problems in a couple of…

Zoom Link For this meeting we will spend our time discussing Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous by George Berkeley. First published in 1713, it has become a part of the traditional epistemological oeuvre. It is no longer in copyright and is readily available, both as a new book (usually with commentary) or used or for…

Another epistemological classic is on the agenda for this meeting – the first and one that philosophers have had to address in one way or another for twenty-four centuries: Plato's dialogue Theaetetus. You may already have this in your library. If not, it is readily available for free online. Try gutenberg.org for several formatting options. The…

For this meeting we are going to have a discussion about aesthetics. We will be using the book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton. One can find a new paperback version of this starting at around $12 and an ebook starting around $7. For the first meeting we will read the first four chapters.…

We will conclude our discussion of the book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton. In the last half of this book, the author examines what is sometimes termed “serious art.” This is quite fitting for us, since our meetings always involve what is sometimes termed “serious perlustration,” sometimes with dialectic excurses.

We are tackling one of the classics for this meeting: David Hume and his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Published in 1748, it has profoundly influenced epistemological studies to this day. For the eighth, we'll discuss the first half, through Section VII. Since it is a classic and no longer in copyright, it can be…

We will finish discussing David Hume's classic, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In the second half of the book Hume talks about free will and critiques miracles, among other topics. These things are still quite controversial and often ruffle feathers even 300 years later. And we intend to do just that. At least we will if…

We will begin a discussion of the book, Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999), by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. For the 9th we have a little different reading assignment: Read as much as you can of Part I, but at least the first four chapters. This is a…