What we’re about
Welcome to the Toronto Philosophy Meetup! This is a community (online and in-person) 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, poetry, 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!
You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Bluesky and join our new Discord.
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.
Please note that no advertising of external events, products, businesses, or organizations is allowed on this site without permission from the main organizer.
* * * * *
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.
See here for more information and to meet our donors.
Supporters will be listed on our donors page unless they wish to remain anonymous. We thank them for their generosity!
If you would like to help out or support us in other ways (such as with any skills or expertise you may have), please contact us.
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.
Hello everyone and welcome to this series on Foucault. Please note that there is a technology related issue that you should know about. Please be sure to read to the end of this blurb for details.
In this series, we will read the four volume biography of Foucault written by Stuart Elden. The first volume is called Foucault's Last Decade (2016, Polity Press).
Elden wrote the biography in reverse chronological order, so Volume One actually covers Foucault's later years.
The description from the back of this book is reproduced at the bottom of this page. 👇👇👇
When we are finished with Volume One, we will read something short by Foucault himself, starting with his essay "What Is Enlightenment"? Then we will move on to reading Volume Two of the biography and so on until we have finished all four volumes of the biography and read three short writings by Foucault himself.
The format will be my (Philip's) usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 25-30 pages before each session. (This is a biography after all so it should not be too onerous to read that many pages). 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. When you are choosing your passages, please try to lean in the direction of picking passages with philosophical content rather than mere historical interest. But I can be flexible about this.
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. I 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: I want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that I can explain if required.
THE READING SCHEDULE (pdf here)
The readings for the first 3 sessions are:
- Wednesday Sept 10th: Read up to page 26
- Wednesday Sept 17th: Read up to page 44
- Wednesday Sept 24th: Read up to page 81
- TBA...
It is a shame it has to come to this, but:
I am Canadian and like many Canadians my relationship with America has changed drastically in the last 10 months or so. In this meetup, no discussion of the current US political situation will be allowed. This is unfortunate, but that is how it must be. When talking about Foucault there will no doubt be a strong desire to talk about politics. No problem! It is a big old world and the political situations of literally every other country on planet earth (including their right wing populist movements) are fair game for discussion in this meetup. Just not that of the US. The political situation in the USA is now a topic for Canadians to think about in a very practical, strategic manner as we fight to prevent our democracy from being destroyed, and our land and resources stolen. The time may come when a Canadian like me can talk about this topic in an abstract philosophical way, but I suspect that time is at least 6 years away.
Now the technology point: Scott will be in the meetup for a few minutes at the start to set things up. But then he will leave. (He's not into Foucault! Unfathomable!) Someone in the meetup will have to volunteer to tell me who has their hand up and whose turn it is to speak. I am disabled in a way that makes it impossible for me to both manage the philosophy content and also monitor whose turn it is to speak. With any luck one or more regulars in the meetup will make it a habit to step up and volunteer each time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here is the description from the back of the book:
On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead.
This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity.
This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault’s writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault’s last decade.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- The Culmination: Heidegger, German Idealism, and The Fate of PhilosophyLink visible for attendees
“A provocative reassessment of Heidegger’s critique of German Idealism from one of the tradition’s foremost interpreters. Heidegger claimed that Western philosophy ended — failed, even — in the German Idealist tradition. In The Culmination, Robert B. Pippin (University of Chicago) explores the ramifications of this charge through a masterful survey of Western philosophy, especially Heidegger’s critiques of Hegel and Kant. Pippin argues that Heidegger’s basic concern was to determine sources of meaning for human life, particularly those that had been obscured by Western philosophy’s attention to reason. The Culmination offers a new interpretation of Heidegger, German Idealism, and the fate of Western rationalism...”
Welcome everyone to the next meetup series that David and Philip are offering, resuming May 2025. This time we will be reading the book:
- The Culmination: Heidegger, German Idealism, and the Fate of Philosophy (2024, University of Chicago Press) by Robert Pippin
The format will be our usual "accelerated live read". What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15-25 pages of text 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.
Unlike the meetups Philip does on Sundays with another co-host, this meetup will be two hours. There is no "Final Hour Free For All" on Monday like there is on Sunday. Everyone is welcome to attend, even people who have not done the reading. But we need to make sure that only the people who have done the reading are the people who are guiding the direction of the conversation. So please do the reading if you intend to speak and shape the conversation that will happen in this meetup. You may not think that this applies to you... but yes! It applies to you!
Here is the reading schedule (which may change slightly as the meetup progresses). This series meets every 2 weeks on Monday. A pdf is available here.
- For August 25, please read pp. 110-119
- For Sept 8, please read pp. 120-127
- .....
Please note that in this meetup we will be actually doing philosophy and not merely passively absorbing the ideas of Pippin, Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. What this means is that we will be trying to find flaws in the reasoning that Pippin, Kant et al present. We will also be trying to improve the ideas in question and perhaps proposing better alternatives. That is what philosophers do after all!
It is strongly advised that participants read the writings of Kant, Hegel and Heidegger which Pippin references throughout his book "The Culmination".
Check out Philip's other series on Sundays (hosted with Jen):
- Spinoza’s Ethics Explained: The Path to Supreme & Unending Joy (Final Lecture)Link visible for attendees
Spinoza is a 17th-century philosopher who sought what he believed we all seek: true happiness. Observing that most seek happiness through riches, fame, or sensual pleasure unsuccessfully, he set out on a quest to seek such an end. Having found what he sought, he detailed it in his work Ethics.
Spinoza's Ethics is based purely on logic and reason. There is no mysticism or leaps of faith. Spinoza discovered that most of the suffering and pain we experience is due to our misunderstanding of the truth of things. The Ethics is difficult not because it is especially complex but because it conflicts with falsehoods most take as fundamental truths.
This six-part lecture series is designed to cover Spinoza's Ethics in its entirety. Although it is unlikely you will come away with a full understanding, this series should be enough to make his difficult work more accessible.
Series Outline:
- Lecture 1: Introduction (1 & 2)
- Lecture 2: Ethics Part I (3)
- Lecture 3: Ethics Part II (4)
- Lecture 4: Ethics Part III (5)
- Lecture 5: Ethics Part IV (6)
- Lecture 6: Ethics Part V (7)
Each lecture will be followed by a group discussion. The first meeting is on Monday August 4.
Recommended Material:
- Ethics translated by Samuel Shirley – https://tinyurl.com/5n8ydv7n or https://a.co/d/4EdYfuG
- Spinoza's Ethics Explained by Blake McBride – https://a.co/d/dXsW9J9
Preparation:
Although not a requirement, each lecture contains numbers in parentheses above. Those represent chapters in Spinoza's Ethics Explained to read in advance of the lecture. That book contains references to Spinoza's Ethics.
Host:
Your host is Blake McBride, who studied Spinoza’s Ethics for more than 20 years and is the author of Spinoza’s Ethics Explained. This series is detailed in his book. Questions may be sent to blake@mcbridemail.com
- Lying by Sam HarrisLink visible for attendees
Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of the book Lying by Sam Harris. (Please read all of it, prior to the meeting.)
Per the publisher, "As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption even murder and genocide generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie.
In Lying, best-selling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie. He focuses on "white" lies those lies we tell for the purpose of sparing people discomfort for these are the lies that most often tempt us. And they tend to be the only lies that good people tell while imagining that they are being good in the process."
You can get the book in paperback or kindle here:
https://a.co/d/6uUChbGAll are welcome!
- [In-person] Curiosity Café: Beauty (Tickets on Eventbrite)Madison Avenue Pub, Toronto, ON
Beauty is all around us: we find it in music, in poetry, in visual art, in landscapes, in people, and even in sports and mathematics. But what exactly is beauty, and why do we experience it so differently? The mysterious nature of beauty has made it a subject of fascination among philosophers, and we’re sure that many of you are no different.
At our next Curiosity Café, we’ll engage in a collaborative exploration of beauty in all its forms. In the first half, we’ll explore questions like:
- What was your last experience of beauty? Was it something in nature or something human-made?
- What makes a moment, or object, feel beautiful to you?
- How does beauty show up in our everyday lives? What sets those moments apart from others?
In the second half, we’ll zoom out and examine the nature of beauty itself:
- What is beauty, really?
- Is it something we all experience the same way, or is it completely subjective?
- Can something be aesthetic without being beautiful, like a dissonant song or a grotesque piece of art?
- How does culture shape what we see as beautiful?
Join us on September 9th for a thoughtful, and perhaps even beautiful discussion with our very own Adrian Ma and Marybel Menzies about the nature of beauty.
Space is limited! Please obtain a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket from Curiosity Café at this link (click here) to attend this event. You need a ticket to be admitted. See the above link for more info about tickets and other options including a limited number of free tickets. Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30pm. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.
Hope to see you there!
__________________________________________________________________________
This event is brought to you by Being and Becoming, a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us.
By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.
Find out more about Being and Becoming here.
About the Curiosity Café Series:
For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.
![[In-person] Curiosity Café: Beauty (Tickets on Eventbrite) cover photo](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/e/0/c/1/event_529977537.webp "[In-person] Curiosity Café: Beauty (Tickets on Eventbrite)")
