Concept tag
#reading-group
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Reading group: Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, over four weeks
"Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" is the essay where the phrase "the myth of the given" comes from. It is famous, hard and shorter than its reputation. I would like to read it slowly with whoever is willing. Text. The Harvard…
Started by Derek Hollis5 replies -
Reading group: Plato’s Theaetetus, the three definitions of knowledge
Every year I teach the Theaetetus to my liceo students in fragments, and every year I promise myself I'll read it whole again with adults. This is that promise. It is the founding text of epistemology and also one of Plato's most…
Started by Giulia Ferrante5 replies -
Reading group: Plato’s Gorgias in five weeks, one interlocutor at a time
I teach theology at a secondary school in Thessaloniki, and every year a student asks whether politicians are "just good at talking". I always want to hand them the Gorgias, and I have never read it closely with adults. Let's do that.…
Started by Nikos Theodoridis5 replies -
Reading group: al-Mawardi’s Ordinances of Government, on the conditions of legitimate rule
Al-Mawardi (972–1058) was a Shafi'i jurist and judge in Baghdad at a strange moment: the Abbasid caliph was the recognised head of the community, while real military power in the city belonged for most of his life to the Buyid emirs. His…
Started by Layla Sfeir5 replies -
Reading group: Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, one section a week for six weeks
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" first appeared in The Philosophical Review in 1951 and was reprinted, revised, in From a Logical Point of View (1953). It is perhaps the most cited paper in twentieth-century analytic philosophy, and many people who cite it have…
Started by Oskar Nyberg5 replies -
Reading group: Sen’s ‘Rational Fools’ and the problem of commitment
Amartya Sen's essay "Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioural Foundations of Economic Theory" appeared in Philosophy & Public Affairs in 1977 and is reprinted in his Choice, Welfare and Measurement. It's about thirty pages and it has been rattling around my…
Started by Derek Hollis5 replies -
Reading group: Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle, one set of dwelling places a week
I would like to read Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle (1577) together over four weeks, starting Monday 19 October. It is short, vivid and much more argumentative than its reputation. Teresa wrote it for the nuns of her order, at the request…
Started by Agnieszka Malinowska4 replies -
Reading group: Aristotle’s Poetics as a craft manual, with the Nāṭyaśāstra beside it
I've always read the Poetics as "Aristotle's theory of art". Recently I came across the argument that this is a mistranslation of the whole enterprise: the Greek technē covered medicine, carpentry, navigation and poetry alike, and the Poetics is less aesthetics than…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
Reading group: Émilie du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics, the opening chapters
Reading women in early modern philosophy, I keep meeting Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) in footnotes as Voltaire's companion and as the translator of Newton's Principia into French. Both true, and both shrink her. Her own book, the Institutions de physique (1740), is…
Started by Valentina Ríos4 replies -
Reading group: Gould and Lewontin, “The Spandrels of San Marco” (1979)
Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin's paper, published in 1979 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, is one of the few biology papers whose title became a philosophical term. Its target is what they called the adaptationist programme: the habit of…
Started by Priya Raghavan4 replies -
Reading group: Weitz, Danto and Dickie on whether art can be defined
My students keep asking "but who decides what counts as art?", and I'd like to read the classic papers properly before I try to answer. Join me. Plan (three weeks): Week 1: Morris Weitz, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics" (1956), with…
Started by Keisha Monroe4 replies -
Reading group: the Nāṭyaśāstra’s chapters on rasa and bhāva
Everyone in my literature classes mentions rasa, almost nobody has read the chapters where the theory is actually set out. I'd like to read them with company, and with people who know more Sanskrit than I do. Translation: Manomohan Ghosh's English translation…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
Reading group: Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological
Georges Canguilhem's essay began as his medical thesis in 1943, written while he was also active in the Resistance, and was reissued in 1966 with a second part, "New Reflections". It is one of the founding texts of the philosophy of medicine,…
Started by Claire Dubois4 replies -
Reading group: Kit Fine, ‘Vagueness, Truth and Logic’ (1975)
Vagueness is my obsession, and I've realised that many people know supervaluationism only from summaries. The original is better than the summaries. So: a slow read of Kit Fine's "Vagueness, Truth and Logic", first published in Synthese in 1975 and reprinted in…
Started by Oskar Nyberg4 replies -
Reading group: Dōgen’s Instructions for the Cook, in two sittings
Of everything Dōgen wrote, the short Instructions for the Cook (Tenzo kyōkun, 1237) is the one I go back to most. It is about running a monastery kitchen, and it is the clearest thing I know on work as practice. Sitting 1:…
Started by Aiko Tanabe2 replies -
Reading group: Epictetus’s Handbook, about ten short chapters a week for five weeks
The Handbook (Enchiridion) is a pocket digest of Epictetus's teaching, compiled by his pupil Arrian, who also wrote up the longer Discourses. It is short enough to read on a bus and dense enough to argue about for a month. Our Book…
Started by The Editors2 replies -
Reading group: Mencius and Gaozi on human nature (6A1–6A6), in one sitting
A short one, for anyone who wants a single sitting rather than a month. The first six sections of Mencius Book 6A are a debate with Gaozi about human nature, and they are some of the best arguments-by-image in any tradition. What…
Started by The Editors1 reply -
Reading group: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, three short chapters a week
Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) is short, about seventy pages, in twelve chapters. I have listened to people talk about it in lectures for years and never read it properly. So I propose four weeks, three chapters a week, starting…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu1 reply -
Reading group: Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (2001), from plants and wolves to people
I coached rugby for thirty years, and every season there was one boy who never tackled. He was fast, he scored, and the team was worse for having him. I never had the words for what was wrong with him beyond “he's…
Started by Gerrit VenterReply first (no replies yet) -
Reading group: Saadia Gaon’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions, starting with the roots of knowledge
I teach Jewish thought to adults in Jerusalem, and many of my students arrive convinced that philosophy and religion are enemies. My favourite answer is a tenth-century one. Saadia Gaon (882–942) was born in Egypt and became head of the academy at…
Started by Miriam AdlerReply first (no replies yet)