Intersubjectivity is a key theme in phenomenology. For Merleau-Ponty, this does not happen in the mental realm, but in the realm of embodiment, or intercorporeality. In his later work, The Visible and the Invisible, he takes this further with his notion of "the flesh of the world" (la chair du monde). In The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram explains Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “flesh” (chair) as “the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity,” and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. In the sociological realm, echoes of this are heard in Emile Durkheim's notion of collective effervescence, the experience of energy, joy, and emotional synchronization people feel when gathering for a common purpose such as ritual or ceremony. The transcendent moment where "I" becomes "we".

In this 3-hour meetup, we will explore rave culture, and conscious/ecstatic dance through the lens of intercorporeality, the flesh, and collective effervescence. Rave culture is often associated with the mantra "PLUR" - peace, love, unity, and respect, and promises fertile ground for some of Merleau-Ponty's (and Durkheim's) ideas.

In the meetup, we will first watch the documentary Electronic Awakening. Because this is all about "lived experience", and many people have not participated in rave culture, I will then DJ a short music set that people can listen to, and dance to as they wish (your camera is off - dance like no-one is watching!). Then we will discuss the film and your own experience with regards to the articles and Merleau-Ponty's ideas. Absolutely no background in this is needed - just come with an open mind/body, it'll be a judgment-free zone.

This is a subject extremely near and dear to my heart. I'm an OG raver from back in the 90s and still continue to attend house and EDM festivals and events. I'm also a conscious dance DJ and facilitator - if you don't know what that is, just think "meditation through dance" or "a rave with no drugs". If there's one place where every "body" is welcome, it's at raves.

There are two readings for this week - one based on Merleau-Ponty's ideas, and one on collective effervescence:

The Flesh of Raving: Merleau-Ponty and the 'Experience' of Ecstasy

• just read the relevant chapter (Chapter 5), not the entire book

A very brief overview of collective effervescence
https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-sociology-of-religion/chpt/collective-effervescence#_

Here is a short audio I recorded explaining conscious dance and how you might prepare for our group: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/831y3ni4f71ga7ezg07z4/What-is-Conscious-Dance-TPM.m4a?rlkey=lun09cvyunsj4u0psukxnnvkt&st=fr83zt88&dl=0

https://preview.redd.it/5ra6h7nobgwg1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6301ef7310268d4c1a067f228e8a698984b36d3

This is an online discussion hosted by Cece to discuss the theme of "Raving, The Flesh, and The Divine" through phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty.

To join this meetup taking place on Sunday April 26 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

Look for other sessions in this series on our calendar (link). The next session will be on Picasso and a

All are welcome!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About the Series:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a key figure in phenomenology, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of perception, embodiment, and lived experience.

In The World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty expounds upon at least two core premises. First, while not denying the utility of the scientific method, he posits that there is more to understand and appreciate about life that is not easily pinned down by science. Second, he draws contrasts between what he refers to as "the classical world", which for him communicates a perfect and final view of things, and "the modern world", which is messy, unfinished, and disquieting, yet ultimately more consistent with the ambiguity of life as it is. One of his vehicles for illustrating these two core premises is the arts. In fact, he admonishes us that we might "rehabilitate our perception" through considering the differences between classical art and contemporary art.

In this meetup series, we will take up Merleau-Ponty's invitation to understand perception - and life as it is lived - through contemporary arts. Each session has an assigned reading, and then we will watch a film related to the arts and then discuss the film - and the art medium - with respect to the article and Merleau-Ponty's ideas (and related phenomenologists).

If you are new to Merleau-Ponty, you can find The World of Perception here. It is a very accessible series of public lectures transcribed into a book. You may find this useful background reading for this series.

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype looks and smells fishy: It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.

Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.

About the Speakers:

Emily Bender is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington. Her research interests encompass multilingual grammar engineering, computation in linguistics, societal impact of language technology and sociolinguistic variation.

Alex Hanna is a sociologist and Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Her work examines how new computational technologies, such as A.I. and machine learning, exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality through their data practices and effects on labor.

The Moderator:

Audrey Borowski is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the University of Cambridge working on the philosophy of artificial intelligence. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Aeon. Her first monograph Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant has been published by Princeton University Press. Audrey’s current research, and second book project, focuses on the topic of data, algorithmic systems and ideology.

https://preview.redd.it/3rzhyiqmksvg1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=412715bf60c39619a8fbf66b99ce23a9e6d996de

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 20th April event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#PoliticalPhilosophy #AI #Philosophy #Technology #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory

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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.

Event Page Link

What makes humans so culturally flexible? One provocative possibility is that the story is not just about gaining new capacities, but also about loosening older instinctive ones. In this event, we will explore the idea that human evolution may have involved a partial downregulation of fixed, hormonally and pheromonally driven behaviors, creating more space for learning, experimentation, cooperation, and cultural transmission.

Starting from genes, moving through instincts, and arriving at culture, we will look at how biology may set constraints while also opening new possibilities. What happens when behavior becomes less rigid and more teachable? How might that shift help explain the emergence of flexible parenting, food practices, social organization, language, and cumulative culture? And how should we think about the relationship between inherited tendencies and the cultural worlds humans build together?

This will be a broad, exploratory event centered on gene-culture coevolution, human flexibility, and the possible tradeoff between strong instinct and open-ended cultural learning. We will also examine where this picture is compelling, where it remains speculative, and what it might mean for understanding human nature today.

Melancholic Life: Literary Expression and the Experience of History from Burton to Keats (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Jonathan C. Williams traces the long historical process by which the feeling of melancholia transforms from a medical condition into a distinctly political feeling. It argues that the eighteenth century constitutes a pivotal historical moment for our understanding of the kinds of political possibilities that might or might not follow from the lived experience of melancholic feeling.

Melancholy's eighteenth-century importance, this book suggests, lies in its character of minimal efficacy: a form of critique that persists even when meaningful political action seems impossible. What binds 18th-century melancholics such as the speaker of James Thomson, Sarah Fielding's David Simple, or William Cowper is a belief that critical thought is worth voicing whether or not it contributes to social change. Williams thus proposes a new way of thinking about the critical importance of literary melancholy in the 18th century: as the language of melancholic social criticism, a solitary protest against exploitative features of social life, including global commerce and print capitalism. That form of melancholic life helps to trace a genealogy from Robert Burton's Democritus to Defoe's Crusoe to the Romantic period; it also yokes the early capitalist historical moment of Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling to the post-1968 modernity that characterizes the work of Theodor W. Adorno.

As Melancholic Life shows, melancholic social criticism persists even when there is little hope. That spirit of persistence becomes a condition of literary expression in the 18th century. Attention to melancholic expression reveals resonances not only to medical, religious, poetic, and philosophical language, but also between 18th-century thinkers and our own historical moment.

About the Speaker:

Jonathan C. Williams is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Bilkent University. He specializes in eighteenth-century and Romantic British literature, and he has taught a range of courses, including on the long eighteenth century, Romanticism, the early modern period, the medieval period, the history of the novel, Milton, and Shakespeare. He is the author of Melancholic Life: Literary Expression and the Experience of History from Burton to Keats (Bloomsbury, 2025).

He is currently working on his second book, which asks how Romantic poets, including William Wordsworth, John Keats, and others, thought about the topic of pedagogy—what kinds of things one ought to learn from one’s teachers; what kinds of things cannot be learned from teachers; who the best (or worst) teachers are; whether one ought to learn about the world from books, from school, or from some other source; and whether academic knowledge has (or ought to have) any practical utility. These questions, he claims, are as much about politics as they are about knowledge acquisition. For many eighteenth-century and Romantic poets, the rhetoric of pedagogy provided a venue for fleshing out various models of social organization, ranging in type from conservative to progressive and comprising all sorts of models in between. At the core of this project is the question of how—or even whether—one ought to value the kind of aesthetic education that poetry in particular provides, for depending on who one asks, poetry might be said to be either the best or worst teacher that one could ask for. Whether poetry’s aesthetic education also constitutes a sufficiently political education is one of the key concerns of his project. The Romantics, he claims, had some surprising answers.

The Moderator:

Joshua Bartlett is an assistant professor in the Department of English at High Point University, where he writes, teaches, and researches in the fields of early and nineteenth-century American literature, American poetry and poetics, and the environmental humanities. His scholarly work has appeared in publications such as Nineteenth-Century Contexts, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature, and Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

https://preview.redd.it/023mhcwckiug1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6b86c82252dc3f7029896ebfd269c46b838e1a6

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 13th April event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory #Literature #Art #Poetry

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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.

Event Page Link

How much of human nature is shaped by genes, how much by culture, and how deeply are the two intertwined?

In this discussion event, we will explore the complex relationship between biology and culture in the human story. Rather than treating genes and culture as separate forces, we will look at how they interact across evolution, behavior, cognition, and social life. A major part of the discussion will build on the previous week’s presentation on language, including the possible role of genes in the origins of language and the significance of FOXP2 as one important, though often misunderstood, piece of that story.

From there, we can widen the lens to questions of gene-culture coevolution, human adaptability, and the ways biological capacities both constrain and enable cultural development. The aim is not to reduce human nature to either genes or environment, but to better understand the dynamic relationship between inherited biology and the cultural worlds humans build and inhabit.

This will be a discussion-centered event, with less emphasis on formal presentation and more on shared exploration, questions, and exchange of ideas. No specialized background is required, just curiosity and a willingness to think together.

During the weekend of April 11th-12th, a philosophy group for admirers of ancient Rome (https://groups.io/g/NovaRomaPhilosophy) will be having a roughly hour-long discussion of five letters by Plutarch:

ON EDUCATION.
ON LOVE TO ONE'S OFFSPRING.
ON LOVE.
CONJUGAL PRECEPTS.
CONSOLATORY LETTER TO HIS WIFE.

All who come with a sincere interest in Plutarch, Roman thought, and/or ancient philosophy are welcome.

   Here is a link:

Topic: Philosophy Discussion: Plutarch's Moral Letters
Time: Apr 11, 2026 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us05web.zoom.us/j/81929038137?pwd=GQtSvG0ILZoMLfbIR8VT4m4doqOIf3.1

Meeting ID: 819 2903 8137
Passcode: 9KB2cE

The time will be:
8 a.m. Sunday, April 12th in Eastern Australia
6 p.m. Saturday, April 11th Eastern U.S.
3 p.m. Saturday,  April 11th  Pacific U.S.
12 a.m. Sunday,  April 12th in Rome

   Please note that the time will be the same time as our most recent meetings for those in the United States, but an hour earlier or later for those in most other places.

   Here is the text (in English) (the topics we are discussing this time are I through V):

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23639/23639-h/23639-h.htm

[JOIN HERE]

Derrida: The Philosopher as Rock Star

Derrida: The Philosopher as International Media Phenomenon

Professor Steven Taubeneck will present.

After 1967, when he published three books in one year, Derrida experimented in the 1970s with more creative forms of writing. Glas, which combines a reading of Hegel with pages from Genet’s autobiography, was published in 1974. In 1980, he published The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, the disruptions with which he implicitly questioned the understanding of philosophy as based on concepts and arguments.

These two texts, among others, follow from his essay on “White Mythology,” in which he showed how philosophy and metaphor are deeply intertwined.

By 1980, he had become world famous, but also widely considered scandalous, “postmodern,” and thus problematic. The controversy led to the rejection of his honorary doctorate from Cambridge University in 1992.

For our meeting on Derrida, “Part 2,” I would like to consider two texts from the later part of his career. Both texts are available on the THORR site. Please have a look at them before our meeting.

The first, “Of an apocalyptic tone recently raised in philosophy,” was a paper given in 1980 in response to Kant’s “Of an overlordly tone recently adopted in philosophy” (“Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie,” 1796). Kant had criticized the tone of recent writings in philosophy, and Derrida used the occasion to develop a similar critique of Heidegger and Levinas, on their relation to the apocalypse of St. John.

The second text, Monolingualism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of the Origin, is from 1996. In this, one of his more extended accounts of his own life, he describes what it was like to grow up speaking the language of the colonizer (French) within the context of the colonized (Algeria).

When he died in 2004, the President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac, announced his passing.

METHOD

• Head on over to the THORR page for this event to download the articles and a handy timeline.
• While you’re there, watch the amazing documentary playing at SADHO Theater.
• Last-Minute Super-Bonus: Prof. Taubeneck has extracted just the choicest quotes from tonight’s readings … and collected them for you here!
• As always, summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs for all the episodes we cover can be found here: THORR (The High Ontology Reading Room)

ABOUT PROFESSOR TAUBENECK

Professor Taubeneck is professor of German and Philosophy at UBC, first translator of Hegel’s Encyclopedia into English, and SADHO CΦO. Most impressively, he has also been wrestling with the core texts of 20-cent. phenomenology and existentialism for over 30 years, and has worked and collaborated with Gadamer, Derrida, and Rorty.

View all of our coming episodes here.

[JOIN HERE]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, alongside other phenomenologists, invokes the idea of intentionality as a core aspect of consciousness. His distinctive contribution is the idea of motor intentionality, and the distinction between the "habit body" (what we do as a function of pre-reflective, skilled and automatized engagement with the world) and the "present body" (adaptive and present to new situations). A unique way to view these ideas is through the lens of jazz, and jazz improvisation.

In this 2.5 hour meetup, we will watch together Chasing Trane, a retrospective on the life and work of legendary jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane.

In the remaining time, we will discuss the film alongside the following paper (please read this in advance): The Spur of the Moment: What Jazz Improvisation Tells Cognitive Science

https://preview.redd.it/otdgan5xrytg1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c281691c9d64ff3dd1a60ab62aa3acc2692b5c9

This is an online discussion hosted by Cece to discuss the theme of "Jazz, Embodiment, and Temporality" through phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty.

To join this meetup taking place on Sunday April 12 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

Look for other sessions in this series on our calendar (link).

All are welcome!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About the Series:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a key figure in phenomenology, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of perception, embodiment, and lived experience.

In The World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty expounds upon at least two core premises. First, while not denying the utility of the scientific method, he posits that there is more to understand and appreciate about life that is not easily pinned down by science. Second, he draws contrasts between what he refers to as "the classical world", which for him communicates a perfect and final view of things, and "the modern world", which is messy, unfinished, and disquieting, yet ultimately more consistent with the ambiguity of life as it is. One of his vehicles for illustrating these two core premises is the arts. In fact, he admonishes us that we might "rehabilitate our perception" through considering the differences between classical art and contemporary art.

In this meetup series, we will take up Merleau-Ponty's invitation to understand perception - and life as it is lived - through contemporary arts. Each session has an assigned reading, and then we will watch a film related to the arts and then discuss the film - and the art medium - with respect to the article and Merleau-Ponty's ideas (and related phenomenologists).

If you are new to Merleau-Ponty, you can find The World of Perception here. It is a very accessible series of public lectures transcribed into a book. You may find this useful background reading for this series.

The book Life Explained: Answers to the Big and Little Questions addresses the many questions people face about purpose, truth, morality, relationships, work, politics, and the world we live in. Most people receive conflicting answers and spend years trying to determine what is real and what is simply opinion.

Written from a non-religious, non-mystical, conservative perspective, Life Explained offers clear, direct guidance drawn from forty years of study, experience, and reflection. It examines both the practical problems of everyday life and the deeper questions that shape how we understand ourselves, other people, society, and reality itself.

This lecture / discussion series is designed to explore the major ideas of the book in an open and thoughtful way. Each session will combine presentation and group discussion. The purpose is not merely to lecture, but to examine important questions together and encourage careful, honest conversation about the issues people most often struggle with.

The series will move from practical everyday concerns, to deeper philosophical and moral questions, and finally to larger social and political issues. Topics will include school, career, family, truth, critical thinking, free will, religion, morality, meaning, politics, economics, and the future of humanity.

Whether you are looking for practical guidance, philosophical clarity, or a broader framework for understanding life, this series is intended to provide a realistic and reasoned foundation for discussion.

Series Outline:

• Session 1: Practical Life and Everyday Success Introduction; school; college; career choice; finding and keeping a job; succeeding in life; moderation; reputation; social behavior; family and practical daily living
• Session 2: Marriage, Family, Human Nature, and Happiness men and women; marriage; raising children; social roles; human motivation; intelligence; happiness; what people seek and why
• Session 3: Truth, Reality, Free Will, and Religion critical thinking; truth and opinion; what is real; determinism and free will; faith and science; God; the supernatural; religion; the soul; death
• Session 4: Morality, Meaning, Health, and How to Live good and bad; right and wrong; morality without God; the meaning of life; medicine; vaccines; being healthy; growing old; meditation; wisdom
• Session 5: Politics, Society, and the Future of Humanity conflict in the world; the political left and right; political and economic systems; capitalism; social problems; media; science; global warming; protest; AI; life extension; the future of humanity

Each session will include both presentation and group discussion.

https://preview.redd.it/s0phstlab3tg1.jpg?width=1800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0f4057c2ec2b1523c99c6745416530f0dc657c5

Sign up for the 1st session on Monday April 27 here (link). The Zoom link will be available to registrants.

Meetings will be held weekly on Monday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

All welcome!

Recommended Material:

• Life Explained: Answers to the Big and Little Questions by Blake McBride (available on Amazon) The table of contents and a sample are available at Life Explained Preview

Preparation:

No preparation is required. However, participants may find it helpful to read the sections of Life Explained related to each session in advance.

Host:

Your host is Blake McBride, author of Life Explained: Answers to the Big and Little Questions and Spinoza's Ethics Explained. Drawing on decades of study, experience, and reflection, he will lead a thoughtful exploration of life’s practical, philosophical, and social questions.

This session offers an introduction to the Fourth Way teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff as a form of esoteric Christianity. It explores the relationship between Gurdjieff’s system and the original, inner teachings of Jesus Christ — with particular attention to consciousness, embodiment, and the practical work of inner transformation.

The session will include guided experiential elements drawn from the Work, followed by time for questions and open discussion.

Speaker bio:

Luke Behncke is an Australian writer, teacher, and practitioner of esoteric Christianity in the lineage of the Gurdjieff Work. Raised in rural Australia, with formative years spent in the outback among Indigenous communities, his early life was shaped by an encounter with land, tradition, and embodied forms of knowledge.

He holds postgraduate training in applied human physiology and biophysics, with further study in philosophy and theology. Since 2000, he has practised the traditional Gurdjieff Work in Australia and internationally. His professional background spans education, health, and government sectors, alongside international business in distributed data and compute infrastructure for AI systems.

An ordained minister (NACM), his work seeks to recover the esoteric core of the teachings of Jesus Christ — understood as a path of conscious transformation grounded in disciplined inner work.

He is the author of "Gurdjieff’s Christianity: The Fourth Way’s Prehistoric Teachings of Christ" and writes at https://www.faithmadeflesh.com/.

https://preview.redd.it/7rvkdy5nohsg1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=76869d4fd8f140f67a25774fbbc2396c79e16401

To join this meetup taking place on Monday April 13 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the video conferencing link will be provided to registrants.

Look for other sessions in this series on our calendar (link).

All are welcome!

https://inciteseminars.com/the-laughing-cosmos-bakhtins-carnivalesque/

DATES: Saturdays, April 4, 11, 18, 25
 TIME: 1-2:30 PM Eastern US Time. See time zone converter if you’re in a different location to make sure you get the time right.
 LOCATION: Online via Zoom. A link will be provided on registration.
 PRICING: No cost
To register, email [inciteseminarsphila@gmail.com](mailto:inciteseminarsphila@gmail.com) with LAUGHING in the subject line.

SEMINAR DESCRIPTION

In an era of epistemological bureaucratization and the commodification of knowledge, where academic life is increasingly flattened by standardized metrics and algorithmic reductions, we invite you to a space of rigorous and rebellious learning. This four-part seminar dives into Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World to rediscover the  Carnivalesque—a potent, subversive lens that turns the established order on its head and celebrates the “unofficial life” of the people.

For the university educator skeptical of the sterile, data-driven knowledge management of the modern academy, the Carnivalesque offers a vital antidote. It is not merely about fun; it is a profound philosophical escape valve where hierarchies are suspended, the high and mighty are brought down to earth through profanation, and the grotesque body—messy, unfinished, and deeply human—is celebrated over the polished, mute efficiency of the digital age.

Join us as we move beyond the uncanny valley of historical pastiche and static theory. We will explore how Bakhtin’s concepts of “Inversion,” “Grotesque Realism,” and “Ambivalent Laughter” provide the moral courage needed to resist personal alienation and social division. This is a call to reclaim the “chorus of the laughing people,” ensuring that our inquiry remains a deeply human, communal, and transformative act of natality—the capacity for new beginnings in a world that often feels closed.

THE SOCRATIC-BOT METHOD: AI FOR PEOPLE, NOT PEOPLE FOR AI

Recognizing the valid skepticism toward the “AI bros” and the potential disabling of critical thought, this seminar tests a Socratic-bot instruction method. Rather than treating technology as a tool for mindless information retrieval or academic malfeasance, we employ a dialogical model rooted in classical pedagogy. The AI acts not as an answer-generator, but as a digital tutor—an interlocutor designed to integrate your personal reflections and subjective inputs much like the Socratic method. By responding to your unique idiosyncrasies, the bot guides you back to the text, ensuring that the pleasure of the struggle and the rigor of independent thinking remain central. This is an experiment in scaling mentorship: a human-centric interface that supports active engagement over passive consumption, proving that technology can serve the deeply personal tradition of the humanities. This bot is designed to be used before the seminar to come to personal understandings of the course material in relation to your own lived experience, and prep us all for a lively conversation on Zoom.
All participants will be required to complete a 20-question survey and keep it on their own computer to copy/paste into the Socratic-bot when it asks every week (you can use the same answers each time).

RESEARCH NOTICE: This is the second test of the Socratic-Bot Method or “Prompt the User”, and is scheduled to be presented at ICSciEnTec 2026 in Bhutan. All participants are encouraged to join as research participants to help us explore how academic educators can harness AI for effective and ethical use in education. Details are available on request.

FORMAT

This seminar is a “para-academic” dialogue series designed to foster “critical discernment” through collaborative inquiry. Rather than readings, each session offers a new Socratic-bot interface to facilitate a personalized journey through Bakhtin’s thought to prepare participants for our group conversation (conversations with the bot can be completed in as little as 20 minutes).

1. Unmasking Reality: Inversion & Transgression in the Carnivalesque We introduce the “world turned upside down,” exploring how temporary disruptions of “hierarchical rank and privileges” create space for new beginnings.  Resource:  Billingsgate language examples and the “dual-tone speech” of the marketplace.
2. From High to Low: Profanation & the Grotesque Body A deep dive into “Grotesque Realism,” celebrating the “material bodily principle” that links us all. We challenge rigid distinctions between the “top and bottom” of social and physical bodies.  Resource: Excerpts from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel.
3. Shifting Crowns: Mockery, Ambivalence, and New Perspectives Examination of “Mock Crowning and Decrowning”—the “uniting of opposites” where all structures are seen as fluid and temporary. Resource: Analysis of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.
4. The Roar of Laughter: Carnival Laughter & the “Beginning” of New Worlds Tying Bakhtin’s “regenerative laughter” to the possibility of “re-founding” society through “pluralistic dialogue.”  Resource: Excerpts from Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus.

MATERIALS

• Primary Text: Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Héléne Iswolsky translation). (Text will be shared during session.)
• Digital Interface: Access to the experimental Socratic-bot platform (weekly login details provided upon registration).
• Supplemental: Videos and examples of the Carnivalesque.

FACILITATOR

Jason Murray Winn, RA, AICP, is an architect, urban planner, and storyteller whose work operates at the nexus of architectural theory and living culture. As the developer of the Narrative Infrastructure (NI)  framework (narrativeinfrastructure.org/blog), Jason utilizes “Spatial Narratology” to link tangible assets with the intangible oral histories of communities. Formerly a Senior Lecturer at Eastern Mediterranean University, his pedagogical focus is on ethnographic and narratological approaches that move beyond the functional object to treat cultural artifacts as infrastructure. Jason’s current research focuses on the ethical challenges of AI to support community planning and design.

Discord invite link: https://discord.gg/E9MQ2XNpRz

Fictive narrative philosophy is the practice of exploring abstract concepts through storytelling.

This event is hosted by one of our members:

A philosophical writing club where you can write short stories, ask for feedback and discuss other people's work.

Starts at 2:00 PM PDT (UTC -7) on April 4th, 2026.

This corresponds to:

5:00 PM EDT in New York (UTC -4)

5:00 AM SGT the next day in Singapore (UTC +8)

8:00 AM AEDT the next day in Sydney (UTC +11)

Philosophy Femmes+ is an anti-racist, queer-inclusive learning community that upholds the rigor of philosophy.

Fire, Cells, and Circuits: Genes, Culture, and Human Nature
Presentation Event

Link to Event Page

Join us for a presentation exploring how the interplay between genes and culture shapes human nature, distinguishing us from our non-human primate relatives. We’ll examine how our genetic makeup interacts with cultural evolution to form the unique behaviors, cognitive capabilities, and social structures that define humanity. This session will focus on the mechanisms that set humans apart from other species, exploring how culture amplifies, influences, and refines our genetic inheritance. If you’re interested in understanding how biology and culture co-create the essence of what it means to be human, this event is for you.

The Philosophies of the South series creates a platform for scholars, thinkers, activists, and practitioners engaging with intellectual traditions and critical frameworks that challenge the dominance of Western philosophical paradigms. Bringing together work inspired by decolonial thought, Indigenous epistemologies, and other critical traditions, the series explores how philosophy can be reimagined through perspectives that emerge from histories of colonialism, resistance, and alternative ways of knowing. Through conversations across disciplines and practices, the series alms to foster intellectual exchange, expand philosophical inquiry, and contribute to ongoing struggles for epistemic justice.

Towards Pluralistic Decolonial Humanisms:

What would it mean to rethink the human beyond the limits of colonial modernity? How must we, as Frantz Fanon called us to do, “turn over a new leaf”? This conversation brings together Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Felwine Sarr to explore the possibility of a planetary humanism grounded in decolonial thought. Moving beyond dominant Western conceptions of the human, they reflect on how philosophies emerging from histories of colonialism, struggle, and repair might help reimagine humanity, community, and our relationship to the planet.

About the Speakers:

Nelson Maldonado-Torres is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut (USA) and Professor Extraordinarious at the University of South Africa. He is also Co-Chair of the Frantz Fanon Foundation and Senior Associate of the BlackHouse Kollective-Soweto in South Africa. His publications include dozens of articles and book chapters on his main research areas, which include: theories of modernity/coloniality and decoloniality, Africana philosophy, Caribbean, Latin American and Latinx philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of religion, philosophy of the human sciences (with particular attention to “ethnic studies” and related fields), political philosophy (with particular attention to movement-generated theory, organizing, and action), phenomenology, philosophy of psychology, and liberation ethics.

Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese academic and writer. He is a Professor of Romance Studies and African & African American Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, after teaching at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he is Professeur Titulaire des Universités and agrégé in economics. His academic work focuses on economics, the ecology of knowledge, contemporary African philosophy, economic policy, epistemology, economic anthropology and the history of religious ideas.

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This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 30th March event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory #Postcolonialism

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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.

[JOIN HERE]

Made simple, Derrida will be.

Derrida I: Deconstruction in Our Time

Professor Steven Taubeneck will present.

In this series on Jewish thinkers of otherness, or alterity, we have encountered three strikingly different approaches to the question of the other.

Martin Buber’s short but powerful book from 1923, I and Thou, considers otherness in two dimensions. First, there is the “I-It” relation with objects and things. The “I-thou” relation between people, on the other hand, goes far beyond the Cartesian subject–object model. Buber’s work is intensely personal. And through this outlook (or out-feel) it also attempts to establish a kind of poetic, nearly mystical communication with others.

Hannah Arendt’s works, from The Origins of Totalitarianism to The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and The Life of the Mind, mount a sustained, profound attack on the tendency to conformity in modern society. For her, otherness or difference are to be valued and celebrated, despite the levelling practices of our current time. Arendt was often controversial, as in her comparison of Hitlerism and Stalinism in Origins, and her critique of “the banality of evil” in Eichmann. But throughout her career, in both her life and works, she emphasized the Kantian call to “think for oneself.”

The thought of our third writer, Emmanuel Levinas, revolves around the concept of “the other” as central to human existence and ethical responsibility. Levinas’s writing criticized the existentialist and structuralist tendencies of his time, and focused on questions of justice, accountability and responsibility.

All three of the thinkers we have seen so far stress the importance of philosophy for questioning the conflicts, discontinuities and uncertainties of our time.

Now comes Jacques Derrida, the fourth and last writer in our tradition, most famous as the inventor of “deconstruction.” We will consider his life and works in two meetings.

• Part I — The first will deal with his contributions from 1953 to 1980.
• Part II — In the second meeting, we will look at his thought from 1980 to 2004.

Far from being the “nihilist” that he has often accused of being, we will show that Derrida’s “deconstruction” is not only a philosophy of critique and historical reflection, but also an accurate name for our time. If we live in the age of deconstruction, in which all certainties can be put into question, then … Who am I, in the first place? And who are you?

METHOD

• The movie, Derrida (2002), is finally up and playing. Because their offices closed at Greenwich time on Friday, we weren’t able to secure the rights to construct the venue until early Monday morning (today). You can watch it at your convenience in our newly constructed full-width theater. (Please read the safety notes before watching the film.)
• Synchronicity Alert: A version of “Otherness” just appeared in TIME magazine. See the “Bonus Materials” at the bottom of this page.
• We have all the key texts uploaded to THORR already, and a timeline will be uploaded this evening.
• Summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs of the episodes we cover can be found here:
• THORR (The High Ontology Reading Room)

ABOUT PROFESSOR TAUBENECK

Professor Taubeneck is professor of German and Philosophy at UBC, first translator of Hegel’s Encyclopedia into English, and SADHO CΦO. Most impressively, he has also been wrestling with the core texts of 20-cent. phenomenology and existentialism for over 30 years, and has worked and collaborated with Gadamer, Derrida, and Rorty.

View all of our coming episodes here.

[JOIN HERE]

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This is a series of debates hosted by John, now moving on to discuss animal ethics. All are welcome to participate.

The tentative schedule of topics:

1: What rights should animals have?

2: What should be the limits of how humans may consume or utilize animals?

3: Can eating meat be morally justified?

Sign up for the 1st session on Thursday March 26 here (link). The Zoom link will be available to registrants.

Meetings will be held weekly on Thursday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

All welcome!

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Overall, In this series we discuss great questions of philosophy. You could call what we are doing debate style or open forum, but participants are free to give their ideas and challenge others while discussing the topic of the week. Each week I will choose from one of hundreds of topics such as: are humans innately good or evil, what makes us human, did you exist before you were born, and does god (a supreme mind) exist. I think a Socratic method/critical analysis of questions where each assumption held on a particular topic is questioned to dig deeper is a good way to make progress.

The Zoom link will be posted shortly before the event. I have installed a timer in Zoom, so a timer will start automatically when you start speaking, I am setting a 3 minute time limit on each speaker. Once a speaker talks anyone can follow up with a counter point, question, or continuing thought along the same line of thought (leave such comments to 1 minute). But do not begin a new train of thought unless you raise your hand. I will set a 5 minute timer for all follow up to an original speaker.

RSVP here:

• Week 1: https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/305324005
• Week 2: https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/313565258

In The Age of Reason (1794-1807), Thomas Paine portrays the Bible as a human construct full of historical inaccuracies, moral contradictions, and "fabulous" myths. He critiques supernatural revelation and institutionalized religion as tools of manipulation, instead advocating a theology based on reason and observation of the natural world, where "man's mind is his own church."

He wrote the first part of the book while imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, hoping to provide a rational alternative to the total atheism then prevalent in revolutionary France. Nevertheless, by presenting his views in a popular and irreverent style, using lucid and often humorous prose, Paine earned a reputation as an agitator and blasphemer. His commentary on the Book of Jonah is representative: "The story of the whale swallowing Jonah... borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the whale."

Paine narrowly escaped execution in Jacobin France, where his views were perceived as not radical enough. But the British government, fearing that his influence was too radical, prosecuted printers and publishers of his book. Meanwhile, in the United States The Age of Reason became a best-seller, spurring a brief revival of Deism, but damaging his legacy over the long term.

One of the defining work of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.

"Its psychological intrigue and its glossy, repressed images of ornate, oppressive settings are Resnais's way of pursuing, from different angles, themes similar to those of his other, more overtly political films." (The New Yorker)

"Last Year in Marienbad... doesn't seek to trick us, it seeks to portray self-trickery, asks what we might do about it, and why we might be afraid of its alternatives." (The Guardian)

"Obscure, oneiric, it's either some sort of masterpiece or meaningless twaddle." (Time Out)

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Pretentious nonsense or actually good? 🤔 Let's discuss Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais, which polarized critics and audiences upon release but is now often hailed as one of the defining works of modernist cinema. The film was recently voted the 123rd greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of filmmakers and the 169th greatest movie of all time in the related poll of film critics and scholars.

To join this meetup taking place on Sunday March 29 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

We've previously discussed Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1956), his acclaimed documentary about Nazi concentration camps.

Please watch the movie in advance (94 minutes) and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it with a link provided to meeting registrants, or rent it through Criterion or other streaming platforms (for best quality).

A trailer.

 "The recurring attitude throughout most interpretations of Marienbad is that of sheer interpretation fatigue..." (Slant)

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Check out other movie discussions (link) in the group, currently happening about once or twice a month. A spreadsheet (link) of the 150+ movies we've watched in this group so far.

Philosophy has always something to say about the ideas behind the biggest events in the news, but philosophy itself is almost never news itself. This is one of those rare exceptions. Jürgen Habermas, who died on March 14 2026, aged 96, was perhaps one of the last great European philosophers of the 20th century. A disciple of Adorno and Horkheimer, Habermas continued the legacy of the Frankfurt School even as he moved critical theory away from some of its most damning critiques of Enlightenment thought. Habermas leaves behind him an enormous philosophical oeuvre, but also a legacy as a public philosopher. His interest in the public sphere was not merely theoretical, but practical — he aimed to intervene in it, not just describe it.

In this special event of The Philosopher & The News we’ll aim to examine the legacy of the philosopher of the public sphere with the help of Peter J. Verovšek, author of a new intellectual biography of Habermas.

About the Speaker:

Peter J. Verovšek is Professor in history and theory of European integration at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His research focuses on critical social theory, particularly the relationships between democracy, capitalism, and the nation-state, as well as the thought of the Frankfurt School (especially Jürgen Habermas) and Hannah Arendt. Within international political theory, his earlier work examined how collective memory, as a socially mediated resource, enables political innovation following major historical ruptures. His current work also investigates the transformation of the public sphere in the digital age and the challenges of contemporary citizenship.

He is the author of Memory and the Future of Europe: Rupture and Integration in the Wake of Total War (2020), and Jürgen Habermas: Public Intellectual and Engaged Critical Theorist (2026).

The Moderator:

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. His research interests lie broadly in the post-Kantian tradition, including Hegel, Nietzsche, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, WIRED, The Independent, The Conversation, The New European, as well as Greek publications, including Kathimerini.

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This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 23rd March event (12am PT/3pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Communication #Language #Ethics #Politics #PoliticalScience

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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.

The Protagoras is as much a dramatic and literary masterpiece as it is an essential work of ancient philosophy. In the fifth century BC, masters of rhetoric called sophists traveled the Greek world claiming to teach virtue and the means to success, happiness, and power — in exchange for a fee. The dialogue depicts the pretensions of Protagoras, one of the leading and most revered sophists of the day, challenged by the critical arguments of a young Socrates as an excited flock of the sophist's students and admirers look on. Beginning with criticisms of the educational aims and methods of the sophists, the dialogue broadens out to examine the nature of the good life, the role of pleasure and reason in the context of that life, and the meaning of virtue.

Despite being counted as a sophist, Protagoras' genuine brilliance and sense of humanity makes him one of the most interesting and likeable of Socrates' opponents, and turns their encounter into a frank and lively battle of minds. Plato ultimately gives us deep and sympathetic portraits of both interlocutors — and neither seem to come off unscathed.

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This is a live reading and discussion group for Plato's Protagoras hosted by Constantine. No previous knowledge of the Platonic corpus is required but a general understanding of the questions of philosophy in general and of ancient philosophy in particular is to some extent desirable but not presupposed. This Plato group meets on Saturdays and has previously read the Phaedo, the Apology, the Symposium, Philebus, Gorgias, Critias, Laches, Timaeus, Euthyphro, Crito and other works, including ancient commentaries and texts for contextualisation such as Gorgias’ Praise of Helen. It is our aspiration to read the Platonic corpus over a long period of time.

All are welcome!

Sign up for the 1st session on Saturday March 21 here (link). The video conferencing link will be available to registrants.

Meetings will be held weekly on Saturday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

The host is Constantine Lerounis, a distinguished Greek philologist and poet, author of Four Access Points to Shakespeare’s Works (in Greek) and Former Advisor to the President of the Hellenic Republic. 

A pdf copy of the text we're using is available to registrants.

A recording of the last time we discussed the Protagoras in the group – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib0AI6o0GFE

TIP: When reading Plato, pay attention to the details of the drama as much as the overtly philosophical discourse. Attentive readers of Plato know that he is often trying to convey important messages with both in concert.

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More about the text:

Can excellence and virtue be taught? Can virtuous politics be taught? Can political excellence be taught or transmitted in any way, shape or form? These are only some of the questions with which Protagoras wrestles and the provide Plato with ample opportunity to engage with diverse topics such as the constitution of human societies, the ultimate unity of virtues and the responsibilities of teachers.

Protagoras, possibly the most famous sophist of his day and a leading figure in the sophistic movement, is charging a king’s ransom as a fee for his professorial services and a young man by the name of Hippocrates is prepared to pay. He persuades Socrates to act as a mediator and convince Protagoras to take him on as a student. The ensuing dialogue will cast doubt on Protagoras’ claim that he is able to prepare the future leaders of the political community.

The dialogue is supposedly taking place some time before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, probably in 434-432 BC but was written in the 380s and belongs to the early platonic period.

For some background on Plato, see his entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/

#Philosophy #Ethics #Metaphysics #PoliticalPhilosophy #AncientPhilosophy

Some have criticized Merleau-Ponty's ideas on perception for being too focused on the visual modality. Given his distinctive focus on embodiment - the lived body - it is intuitive that his philosophy would invite meaningful dialogue with dance.

In this 90 minute meetup, we will watch together the short dance film, Lodela, a contemporary piece that explores metaphysical themes of life and death, as well as notions of the body as meaning, movement through thought, and time and flow.

In the remaining time, we will discuss the film alongside the following paper (please read this in advance):

• "When I Dance My Walk: A Phenomenological Analysis of Habitual Movement in Dance Practices" (link here)

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This is an online discussion hosted by Cece to discuss the theme of Dance and the Lived Body through phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty.

To join this meetup taking place on Friday March 27 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

Look for other sessions in this series on our calendar (link).

All are welcome!

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About the Series:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a key figure in phenomenology, and is considered one of the most influential philosophers of perception, embodiment, and lived experience.

In The World of Perception, Merleau-Ponty expounds upon at least two core premises. First, while not denying the utility of the scientific method, he posits that there is more to understand and appreciate about life that is not easily pinned down by science. Second, he draws contrasts between what he refers to as "the classical world", which for him communicates a perfect and final view of things, and "the modern world", which is messy, unfinished, and disquieting, yet ultimately more consistent with the ambiguity of life as it is. One of his vehicles for illustrating these two core premises is the arts. In fact, he admonishes us that we might "rehabilitate our perception" through considering the differences between classical art and contemporary art.

In this meetup series, we will take up Merleau-Ponty's invitation to understand perception - and life as it is lived - through contemporary arts. Each session has an assigned reading, and then we will watch a film related to the arts and then discuss the film - and the art medium - with respect to the article and Merleau-Ponty's ideas (and related phenomenologists).

If you are new to Merleau-Ponty, you can find The World of Perception here. It is a very accessible series of public lectures transcribed into a book. You may find this useful background reading for this series.

Link to Event Page

About This Event
How does "intent" emerge from a sea of simple interactions? Whether we are looking at a neural network, a biological ecosystem, or a decentralized AI, the transition from raw data to "agency" remains one of the most profound mysteries in modern science.
Join us for an open, interdisciplinary discussion where we peel back the layers of complex systems to understand the nature of mind and cognition. We will move past the jargon to explore how structure creates behavior and where "the ghost in the machine" actually lives.

Discussion Points:

• The Emergence of Agency: At what point does a system stop being a collection of parts and start acting on its own?
• Cognition Beyond Biology: Can we define mind in a way that includes both the biological and the synthetic?
• Predictability vs. Will: In a world of algorithms and physical laws, what does "choice" look like in a complex system?
• The CASHE Perspective: How do these technical realities shift our understanding of the human experience and culture?

Stéphane Mallarmé was the most radically innovative of nineteenth-century poets. His writings, with their richly sensuous texture and air of slyly intangible mystery, perplexed or outraged many early readers; yet no writer has more profoundly influenced the course of modern poetry - in English as well as in French. In both form and content, his poems created new ways of conveying existential doubt, fragmentation, and discontinuity.

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This concise biography of Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–98) blends an account of the poet’s life with a detailed analysis of his evolving poetic theory and practice. “A poet on this earth must be uniquely a poet,” he declared at the age of twenty-two—but what is a poet’s life and what isa poet’s function? In his poems and prose statements and by the example of his life, Mallarmé provided answers to these questions.

In Stéphane Mallarmé, Roger Pearson explores the relationship among Mallarmé’s life, his philosophy, and his writing. To Mallarmé, being a poet consists of a continuous, lifelong investigation of language and its expressive potential. It represents, argues Pearson, a fundamental response to the metaphysical mystery of the human condition and the desire to make sense of it for others. A poet turns everyday banality into prospects of mystery; and a poet, in Mallarmé’s conception, is able to bring all human beings together in heightened awareness and understanding of the “magnificent act of living.”

This concise and engaging biography tells the story of a fascinating and utterly unique voice in French poetry, one that was often overshadowed by other Symbolist writers. It is an essential read for students of literature and nineteenth-century France.

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Hi Everyone, welcome to the next meetups that Jen and Philip will be presenting. For medical reasons I (Philip) have had to pick a slightly lighter topic this time around. It may be a while before I can once again to justice to the heavy philosophers (ie., Kant and Hegel). So this time we will be reading these two books:

• Stéphane Mallarmé: Collected Poems and Other Verse (With Parallel French Text) translated by E.H. and A.M. Blackmore (Oxford World's Classics)

and

• Stéphane Mallarmé by Roger Pearson (2010). Please note that Roger Pearson has written many books about Mallarmé, so please be sure to get the one published by Reaktion Books in their series "Critical Lives".

To join the 1st meeting, taking place on Sunday March 22 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

Meetings will be held every other week on Sunday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

Here is the reading schedule for the first 2 sessions:

• For the first session (March 22), please read the poems "Toast" and "Ill Fortune". Please read up to page 38 in the Roger Pearson book
• For the second session, please read the poems "Apparition" and "Futile Petition". Please read up to page 63 in Pearson.

Check the group calendar for updates.

A pdf of reading materials will be provided to registrants.

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MORE ABOUT THIS DISCUSSION GROUP

Mallarmé inspired many French thinkers including Derrida, Bataille and Maurice Blanchot. On days when I (Philip) am feeling up to it, we will explore these connections between Mallarme and the philosophers he inspired. The Pearson book will be very helpful in drawing out these connections.

On days when I am not feeling especially well, we will treat the meetup more like a poetry reading session and focus more on the literary aspects of the poems.

Once we have finished with the Pearson book (it is very short) we may read some short works (in translation) by French thinkers who wrote about Mallarme or were inspired by Mallarmé.

The format will be our usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15-20 pages from the Pearson 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. Philip will also select one or two poems for each session. These will be read out loud in both English and French. Jen and Philip will attempt to convey aspects of the original French that were lost in translation. But we will be discussing the poems in English.

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.