Something for the Ubermensch in all of us: Hobbes, Nietszche, Dennett, some Intro to Philosophy readings starting with Plato, and don’t forget the Aftershow on Hegel! Get in on Not School’s offerings for March!
New in Not School: Niebuhr, Kant, Zizek, Lovecraft
We have group proposals for October on the table, including Zizek’s Contingency, Hegemony and Universality, Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History, and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The Fiction group will be reading The Call of Cthulhu.
New from Not School this September
It’s September, time to get back to Not School! Check out the great proposals offered up by your fellow Citizens, or make a proposal of your own. Not a PEL Citizen yet? Find out how you can sign up and join in the fun. Plus, you can sign up for the Augustine Aftershow on Sunday 9/6 with Danny Lobell and Wes Alwan.
Our New Citizen Feed, August Not School Doings, and a New Mayor of Not School
Have you hooked up with the PEL Citizens’ feed yet? Listened to the new recordings on C.S. Peirce, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” and Percy Walker’s The Moviegoer? Get in on Not School groups covering Aeschylus’s Oresteia, John Searle, Isaac Asimov, Franz Fanon, and Peirce’s “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.”
Not School Fiction Group: Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer” (Phi-Fi #14)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel Cole, Cezary Baraniecki, Laura Davis and Mary Ricci. Recorded 7/26/15. According to the discussion, it’s about an “existential crisis in beautiful language… with Southern charm.”
Not School Fiction Group: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (Phi-Fi #13)
Featuring Nathan Shane Hanks, Daniel Cole, Laura Davis, and Mary Ricci. Recorded July 19, 2015. The story is about one special day in an American “village” that turns horrific and ends with, as was said, “the most perfect last line.” We partially spoil the story, use adult language, and wander into politics and religion.
Not School: C. S. Peirce’s “The Fixation of Belief”
Featuring David Prentiss, Tim Clarke, Peter Oppenheim. Recorded July 19, 2015, 41 min. Peirce describes belief, doubt, and inquiry, and proposes four types of intellectual activity that result in fixed beliefs, claiming that science, of all the methods he describes, has the most desirable properties.
How do these four methods differ? Do the a priori and scientific methods necessarily differ in the adoption of first principles? Is there a continuum of increasing reliance on social interaction across the four methods? Do any of the methods result in what we would commonly call consensus?
For another look at this, listen to PEL ep. 20.
Listen to Phi-Fi Discuss ‘The Lottery’ Sunday, July 19th
The Philosophical Fiction group in PEL’s Not School will be discussing Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” on Sunday, July 19th at 12pm(cst), via Google Hangouts
Not School Fiction Group: Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” (Phi-Fi #12)
Featuring Nathan Shaine, Daniel Cole, Cezary, Laura Davis, and Mary Ricci. Recorded May 31, 2015. About a traveler visiting a penal colony who meets the officer in charge of a justice system. It’s tense, violent, surprising, and “kind of like a Tarantino movie.”
Not School: Thomas Sheehan’s Historical Jesus Stanford Lectures
Featuring Mark Linsenmayer, Michael Burgess, Tara Leigh Bell, John Ludders, Chris Eyre, Benjamin Feddersen. Recorded April 26, 2015, 1 hr., 50 min.
Does Sheehan represent a legitimate academic consensus? What are the outlines of his story about the evolution of these stories by faith communities? Should this denial of the historical accuracy of the traditional story imply a loss of faith?
Not School Theater Group: Philip Auslander on Post-Modern Theater
The Philosophy and Theater group discusses From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism, covering the therapeutic value of catharsis, deconstruction in theater, and Willem Dafoe’s acting methods. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, Carlos Franke. Recorded April 19, 2015.
Not School Fiction Group: Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse” (Phi-Fi #11)
Featuring Nathan Shaine, Daniel Cole, Cezary, Laura Davis, and Dan Johnson. Recorded April 5, 2015. Talking about time, beauty, and life in Woolf’s 1927 novel.
Not School: Karl Jaspers’s “Truth and Symbol”
Featuring Mark Linsenmayer, Michael Burgess, Tara Leigh Bell, John Ludders, Chris Eyre, Benjamin Feddersen. Recorded April 26, 2015, 1 hr., 50 min. How to see objects as cyphers for the Encompassing (Being/God/etc.).
Not School Theater Group: Jerzy Grotowski’s Sourcebook
The first of two discussions on Jerzy Grotowski, the famous Polish director whose productions first stunned audiences in the 1960s with their distinctive physicality. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, Carlos Franke. Recorded January 4, 2015.
Not School Theater Group: Jerzy Grotowski’s “Akropolis”
Concluding the Philosophy and Theater Group’s two-month foray into the Polish director’s work; listen to part one first. Covering the play Akropolis as well as more of the Grotowski Sourcebook. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, and Carlos Franke. Recorded January 4, 2015.
Not School Fiction Group: Michel Houellebecq’s “The Map and the Territory” (Phi-Fi #10)
Featuring Nathan Hanks, Daniel Cole, and Kimberly. Recorded December 12, 2014. Discussing the story of Jed Martin, a man at the “at the beginning of the third millenium” whose successful life as an artist pales against his lonely life as a human.
Check out the Philosophical Fiction group.
Not School Fiction Group: James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (Phi-Fi #4)
Featuring Nathan Shaine, Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny and Laura Davis. Recorded Mar. 9, 2014. Not everyone had finished the book, but we all got a sense of the richness and depth of Joyce’s expanding story of the phenomena of a single day. There are Irish folk songs, stunning prose, a style weaving between the inner-thoughts of characters, and content considered blasphemous and obscene in its day.
Check out the Philosophical Fiction group.
Not School Fiction Group: Roberto Bolano’s “Distant Star” (Phi-Fi #9)
Featuring Nathan Shaine, Philip Cherny, Daniel Cole, Dan Johnson, Kimberly, and Cezary. Recorded November 9, 2014. A novel about Chile, Art, and literally killer poets.
Check out the Philosophical Fiction group.
Not School Theater Group: Victor Turner’s “From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play”
Turner was a true inter-disciplinarian, and this book draws from his own work in anthropology, as well as philosophy, drama, and sociology. Turner believed that acting out the rituals of other cultures provides a rich, sympathetic connection to them that can’t be accessed from detached observation or the perusal of data. Turner saw drama and ritual all over the place in developed societies, with plenty of parallels to the tribal cultures he’d studied in Africa. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, and Carlos Franke. Recorded October 12, 2014.
Not School Theater Group: Antonin Artaud’s “The Theater and Its Double”
Two discussions are combined here about theater and consciousness. Arnold’s views are deeply metaphysical yet rooted in the carnality and cruelty of material life. Featuring Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, and Carlos Franke. Recorded August 17 and 31, 2014.