Natural law turns out to provide some interesting foundations for our constitutional principle of equal protection of law.
Not School Happenings in September
Sign up for Not School this month to join reading groups on the subjects of Greek philosophy, Marxism, ritual, Heidegger, computation, economics, and a novel by Umberto Eco.
Not School Discussion on Antonin Artaud Posted
Our Philosophy and Theater group’s two discussions on Antonin Artaud’s “The Theater and Its Double” are now available for listening by PEL Citizens. Sign up to get ’em!
Not School Discussion of Being and Time
Everyone (not just Citizens) can watch video of the first discussions of the ongoing Not School Heidegger reading group. Join up!
August Not School Study Groups
Sign up to read and talk about justice, economics, computation (Turing), the “language hoax,” Umberto Eco, ritual & theater, or Heidegger.
Discussion of “Antigone” Now Posted
PEL Citizens can now download the Not School Theater group’s discussion (which Mark showed up for most of), well in advance of the PEL episode on this topic. What philosophical insights lurk in Sophocles’s drama?
Not School Study Groups In July
We’ve got a number of attractive reading groups going this month, a couple of which are entirely new. It looks like almost every group will be starting fresh with a new text, so this should be a good month for members new and old who’ve never joined a group to try it out. If you’re not familiar with how Not Continue Reading …
Not School’s Phil-Fiction on the Novel “Age of Iron”
We’ve just released our recorded discussion on J. M. Coatzee’s novel. Join the group to talk about Kafka’s “The Trial” or pick a new reading for July.
June’s Intro to Philosophy Not School Group: Metaphilosophy
We’ll be covering “An Introduction to Metaphilosophy” with new group leader Michael Burgess. Join us!
A Wealth of Not School Offerings in June
Summer has arrived, and in case you can’t decide whether to take Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or Franz Kafka’s The Trial to the beach with you, let me help: take them both and be prepared for Not School in June. Thinking of taking summer classes? Think better of it. That’s expensive, and for a measly $5 a month you can Continue Reading …
Not School Discussion on Bertolt Brecht Posted
The philosophy and theater group’s April reading was the essay “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” by Bertolt Brecht, which Phillip C., Carlos Franke and I recently discussed over Skype. As usual, we recorded the call, which you can listen to in the PEL Citizens section of the site as soon as you join up. In this essay, Brecht details many Continue Reading …
Discuss Free Will (John Searle, Sam Harris) with Not School
In light of the most recent PEL episode, we folks in PEL’s Not School will be holding a discussion on free will this month through next month. Some of the conversation will be continuous with and complementary to the PEL guys’ discussion as well as perhaps raise other issues. For the remainder of this month, we’ll be reading John Searle’s Continue Reading …
Conversation on “Wittgenstein’s Nephew” by Thomas Bernhard
Two old friends find themselves at the same hospital, one diagnosed with pulmonary disease and the other madness, and while they long to be near each other both confront their separate mortality. Though that Wittgenstein is mentioned, this story is about another Wittgenstein, one of several “geniuses” from the Austrian family. I want to see him clearly again with the help Continue Reading …
Theater and Ritual: Discussing Richard Schechner and “Dionysus in ’69” in Not School
Moving away from just reading plays and more toward theory, the Not School Theater group in March had a look at the work of theater director and performance theorist Richard Schechner. Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny and I discussed a video of The Performance Group’s Dionysus in ’69 (you can buy the text here, a very loose adaptation of Euripides’ Euripides’s Continue Reading …
Discussing Ulysses by James Joyce
Our Philosophical Fiction Group began reading Ulysses in December, continued through January, then February, and at the beginning of March only a few had made it through James Joyce’s epic. The novel is large, but what’s stunning- to me as a non-finisher- is the richness and depth of Joyce’s expanding story of the phenomena of a single day.
Not School Discussion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Last weekend the Philosophy and Theater Group had our monthly discussion, and this time Phillip Cherny and myself talked about Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a tremendously clever, meta-fictional play which fills offstage moments of Hamlet with absurdist hi-jinks. For the philosophically inclined, this play has fireworks from beginning to end, and Stoppard covers a lot of ground Continue Reading …
Bonus Discussion of Anscombe’s “Intention” Now Posted for Citizens
As I read the whole of Intention for our Anscombe episode and didn’t want to promptly forget the whole thing, I ran a small Not School group last month that just had its discussion this last weekend; you can hear it on the Free Stuff for Citizens page (provided that you go become a Citizen, of course). I was joined Continue Reading …
Topic for #92 (and a Not School Group): Henri Bergson
Listen to Matt Teichman’s introduction to the reading. Henri Bergson is an early 20th century French philosopher that PEL listeners may recall from our philosophy of humor episode, and we’ll be tackling his philosophy proper via the entrance drug “An Introduction to Metaphysics,” a short essay from 1903 (freely available online) that is essentially pheonomenology without the jargon (Husserl, Heidegger, Continue Reading …
Not School Group Proposal: Zizek!
For March I’m proposing a Not School reading group on Zizek. The group will read a 25-page transcript of a talk he gave at the International Journal of Zizek Studies 2012 conference. It is, I think, a very nice summary of some of his key philosophical positions and where his current theoretical interests lie. The added advantage of this reading Continue Reading …
March Not School Group on the Semiotics of Mystery and Corruption
A fantastically accomplished writer and philosopher, Umberto Eco tends to write pieces that are layered and accessible. The common thread is epistemological in nature; he has written everything from treatises on the theory of semiotics to an exploration of the patterns of thought of a game show host. Unflinchingly- perhaps even harshly- realistic, Umberto’s works nonetheless retains a poetic beauty that is Continue Reading …