r/ClassicalEducation

Vol. 1: Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, William Penn Vol. 2. Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius Vol. 3. Bacon, Milton's Prose, Thomas Browne Vol. 4. Complete Poems in English, Milton Vol. 5. Essays and English Traits, Emerson Vol. 6. Poems and Songs, Burn Vol. 7. The Confessions of St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ Vol. 8. Nine Greek Dramas Vol. 9. Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny Vol. 10. Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith Vol. 11. Origin of Species, Darwin Vol. 12. Plutarch's Lives Vol. 13. Aeneid, Virgil Vol. 14. Don Quixote, Part 1, Cervantes Vol. 16. The Thousand and One Nights ol. 17. Folk-Lore and Fable, Aesop, Grimm, Andersen Vol. 18. Modern English Drama Vol. 19. Faust, Egmont, etc., Goethe, Doctor Faustus, Marlowe Vol. 20. The Divine Comedy, DanteVol. 21. I Promessi Sposi, Manzoni Vol. 22. The Odyssey, Home Vol. 23. Two Years Before the Mast, Dana Vol. 24. On the Sublime, French Revolution, etc., Burke Vol. 25. J.S. Mill and Thomas Carlyle Vol. 26. Continental Drama Vol. 27. English Essays, Sidney to Macaulay Vol. 28. Essays, English and American Vol. 29. Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin Vol. 30. Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Newcomb, etc. Vol. 31. Autobiography, Cellini Vol. 32. Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Renan, etc. Vol. 33. Voyages and Travels Vol. 34. Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes Vol. 35. Froissart, Malory, Holinshead Vol. 36. Machiavelli, More, Luther Vol. 37. Locke, Berkeley, Hume Vol. 38. Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur Vol. 39. Famous Prefaces Vol. 40. English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray Vol. 40. English Poetry 1: Chaucer to GrayVol. 41. English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald Vol. 42. English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman Vol. 43. American Historical Documents Vol. 44. Sacred Writings: Volume 1 Vol. 45. Sacred Writings: Volume 2 Vol. 46. Elizabethan Drama 1 Vol. 47. Elizabethan Drama 2 Vol. 48. Thoughts and Minor Works, Pasca Vol. 49. Epic and Saga Lectures on The Harvard Classics

• What book or books are you reading this week?
• What has been your favorite or least favorite part?
• What is one insight that you really appreciate from your current reading?

“There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary recognize the truth,-viz. that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be, or admit any other similar pair of opposites.” Metaphysics, Book XI Part V

Here Aristotle does not lay down a mere formal suggestion or “model,” he expounds a law of thought, intelligence, reason and meaning. This law draws a line, it demarcates those who are ignorant from those who are willfully incoherent.

Anyone who rejects this or attempts to contradict it, merely affirms it— they shout, as from the highest mountaintop, that they belong to the most common species of “Stupid.”

This law renders the irrationalist functionally mute. The moment they open their mouth to deny it, they have used it. They are like a man using his lungs to argue that air does not exist.

To ignore this principle is not "brave" or "subversive,” it is a surrender to a self-inflicted lobotomy. One cannot "deconstruct" the floor they are standing on without falling into the basement of idiocy.

Hello, I'm Carlos, 20M from Portugal. I'm looking for a book buddy to read the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius with me. I'm reading the old English translation by Meric Casaubon, published in 1906 by Everyman's Library, but you're welcome to read any edition you prefer or have available.

I started reading it on my own, but I thought that it would be more interesting to share interpretations, discuss ideas, get/give feedback and in the process become more experienced in the discussion of ideas and books!

You can be any age, gender, location, etc. I'm open-minded when it comes to building a friendship or not, short-term vs. long-term, it's up to you. I prefer that we eventually have voice chats, but it's not necessary. My DMs are open. Let's share!

Modern philosophy finds it difficult to give a satisfactory picture of the place of minds in the world. In Mind and World, based on the 1991 John Locke Lectures, one of the most distinguished philosophers writing today offers his diagnosis of this difficulty and points to a cure. In doing so, he delivers the most complete and ambitious statement to date of his own views, a statement that no one concerned with the future of philosophy can afford to ignore.

John McDowell amply illustrates a major problem of modern philosophy—the insidious persistence of dualism—in his discussion of empirical thought. Much as we would like to conceive empirical thought as rationally grounded in experience, pitfalls await anyone who tries to articulate this position, and McDowell exposes these traps by exploiting the work of contemporary philosophers from Wilfrid Sellars to Donald Davidson. These difficulties, he contends, reflect an understandable—but surmountable—failure to see how we might integrate what Sellars calls the “logical space of reasons” into the natural world. What underlies this impasse is a conception of nature that has certain attractions for the modern age, a conception that McDowell proposes to put aside, thus circumventing these philosophical difficulties. By returning to a pre-modern conception of nature but retaining the intellectual advance of modernity that has mistakenly been viewed as dislodging it, he makes room for a fully satisfying conception of experience as a rational openness to independent reality. This approach also overcomes other obstacles that impede a generally satisfying understanding of how we are placed in the world.

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Hi everyone, welcome to the next reading group presented by Philip. John McDowell is widely considered to be the most important living philosopher; and "Mind and World" is widely considered to be the most important philosophy book published in the last 40 years. Strong claims! I am not sure I agree with either of these statements; and I am also not sure that it is even a good idea to ask a question like "who is the most important living philosopher". But nevertheless, the fact remains that this is an important book by a very important philosopher.

• In this meetup we will be reading "Mind and World" but we will also be reading a book about McDowell called: "John McDowell" (second edition) by Tim Thornton
• And I will also ask everyone to read Paul Abela's "Kant's Empirical Realism", a wonderful book about Kant which emphasizes those aspects of Kant which are most relevant for an understanding of McDowell.

To join the 1st meeting, taking place on Friday May 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 Friday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

Here is the reading schedule for the first few sessions:

For the first session (May 22):

• In M+W please read from page vii to page xxiv (in other words, read the Preface and Introduction).
• In "John McDowell (second edition)" by Tim Thornton please read up to page 21.
• In Paul Abela's "Kant's Empirical Realism" please read up to page 14

For the second session:

• In M+W please read from page 3 to page 13.
• In Thornton please read from page 22 to page 36.
• In Abela please read up to page 23.

For the third session:

• In M+W please read from page 13 to page 23.
• In Thornton please read from page 36 to page 53.
• In Abela please read up to page 32.

Check the group calendar (link) for future updates. A pdf of reading materials will be provided to registrants.

I would encourage people who are new to philosophy to give this meetup a try. I will do the best I can to make "Mind and World" (hereafter M+W) accessible and interesting. I honestly believe that the best way to "introduce" yourself to philosophy is to start with the most challenging stuff and struggle with it. As Peter Strawson once said: "In philosophy, there is no shallow end of the pool".

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MORE ABOUT THIS DISCUSSION GROUP

McDowell's philosophy can be compared to several other better known philosophies, and each of these better known philosophies can be used as an entry or gateway into McDowell. It can be helpful to compare McDowell to Wittgenstein. The Thornton book emphasizes this connection between McDowell and Wittgenstein.

It can also be helpful to compare McDowell to Hegel. After all, his philosophy is sometimes identified as a part of "Pittsburgh Hegelianism". There are several good books and articles emphasizing the complex relations between McDowell and Hegel. I will recommend some as the meetup progresses.

It can also be helpful to compare McDowell to Aristotle. I myself tend to emphasize this particular gateway into an understanding of McDowell.

However in this meetup I will ask everyone to read "Kant's Empirical Realism" by Paul Abela (even though we will probably not talk about this book as much as it deserves). There are many excellent Kant meetups at the Toronto Philosophy Meetup and so we can reasonably expect that many participants in this McDowell meetup will be well versed in Kant. By reading the Paul Abela book, we will be in a good position to use our collective knowledge of Kant as an entry into McDowell.

The format will be our usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 10-12 pages from each 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.

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 (and this includes the Paul Abela book). In other words, if you want to talk in this meetup, you have to read "Mind and World" by McDowell as well as the Tim Thornton book and the Paul Abela book. It seems to me that we should either do McDowell properly or not do him at all; I just do not think there is any point in doing McDowell in a half-hearted way. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not read all three of the books this meetup is based on. You probably are brilliant and wonderful — no argument there! But you still have to do the reading in all three books 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 mostly for philosophical reasons: I want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy.

This is a 3 hour meetup. For the first two hours we will discuss "Mind and World". For the last hour we will discuss Tim Thornton's book about McDowell. Every once in a while we will devote a session to discussing Abela's "Kant's Empirical Realism". As a rough approximation maybe every second month we will devote a session to reading and discussing passages from Abela and using them to illuminate our understanding of McDowell. An unusual way to proceed I know, but I think it will work out well.

The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the nineteenth century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.

Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early nineteenth century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives.

Canguilhem was an important influence on the thought of Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, among others, in particular for the way in which he poses the problem of how new domains of knowledge come into being and how they are part of a discontinuous history of human thought.

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Hi everyone, welcome to the next series presented by Philip. This will be a 3 hour event meeting every 2 weeks. For the first 2 hours we will be reading from Canguilhem's book "The Normal and the Pathological." We will be using the Zone Books translation. During the last hour we will discuss this book: Canguilhem (Key Contemporary Thinkers) by Stuart Elden.

To join the 1st meeting, taking place on Friday May 15 (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 Friday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

Here is the reading schedule for the first few sessions:

First Session (Friday May 15)

• In Canguilhem: Please read up to page 24 (Foucault's Introduction)
• In Elden: Please read up to page 13

Second Session (Friday May 29)

• In Canguilhem: Please read up to page 46
• In Elden: Please read up to page 20

Third Session

• In Canguilhem: Please read up to page 64
• In Elden: Please read up to page 27

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

This meetup on Canguilhem will be followed by a meetup on Foucault's book "The Archaeology of Knowledge". The "Archaeology of Knowledge" meetup may in turn be followed by further meetups on Philosophy of Science in the French tradition, perhaps centred around Foucault as well as Foucault's great successor, the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking.

This Canguilhem meetup can be enjoyed for its own sake, even if you have no intention of attending the companion meetup on Foucault's "The Archaeology of Knowledge".

However, if you do plan to attend the "The Archaeology of Knowledge" meetup, I strongly recommend that you attend this Canguilhem meetup first. Foucault's thought is of interest to people in a very wide range of disciplines. But the side of Foucault's thought that we encounter in "The Archaeology of Knowledge" is really only studied in any depth by philosophers. It is very far removed from the side of Foucault's thought that has become popular. This Canguilhem meetup will serve as an introduction to Philosophy of Science in the French tradition, and some familiarity with this tradition will serve you well when you encounter "The Archaeology of Knowledge".

The format will be my usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 10-15 pages from each 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.

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: 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 (Philip) can explain if required.

Sorry if this isn’t the best thread for this type of inquiry… please delete if inappropriate for the sub.

We’re applying for a somewhat nearby classical school for my son (grade 2). I was raised in public education in Indiana so my exposure to the classics is limited. Overall what are some “essentials” I should prime myself with?

As he gets older I’m sure the syllabus will be more mature, and I’ll certainly read what they’re learning… but what I’m really getting at is what as a parent should I be reading to get a nice base coat of the classics? I also need to familiarize myself with the ancient history as well, as I know I would surely flounder if asked if something was Greek or Roman…

Any constructive recommendations for books, videos, or podcasts is appreciated!