Next meeting

12th June. Topic for this month: Life: Meaning and Purpose

Please note that our new venue is The Hub in the County Buildings.

Previous meetings

• May - Identity
• April - Slavery
• March - Ability
• February 2026 - Evil.
• August - What is Love? Surprisingly, we found that this is a subject that doesn't have the volume of coverage that other philosophy topics have, perhaps because of the difficulty in pinpointing what it is. We looked at what both classic and modern philosophers had to say,  and talked around the psychological, neurological and spiritual aspects too - a really interesting discussion. 
• For the July meeting the Friday Philosophy group discussed the work of Hannah Arendt the German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. A lively and interesting meeting ensued
• June - war, is it ethical? We had a good attendance and a spirited dynamic. We looked at ethical frameworks and how they applied to conflict and the merits, benefits and consequences of war to humanity and the worlds population over time. We looked at the numerous philosophers positions on war and also the ideological and psychological aspects of war. As always there is no conclusion but the interactive and expressive dialogue of the meeting was something to savour until next time.
• May - Is creativity important in life all, and if so, why?
• April - whether emotions are rational or irrational
• March - What is true and how do we know it?
• February - the work of Martha Nussbaum. We focused on her capabilities approach, developed in tandem with Amartya Sen and which asks the question "What is each person able to do, and to be?" We also looked at her work on emotions and her argument they are cognitive in nature and embody judgements about the world.
• January 2024 - the work of Judith Butler. An American philosopher, she is best known for her work on gender studies and developed her theory of gender performativity and her thinking aims to break the supposed links between sex and gender, so that gender and desire can be flexible. In recent years, she has also worked on an ethics of non- violence based on the understanding that we can only become ourselves in relation to others.
• December - the work of Slovenian political philosopher, Slavoj Zizek.
• November - Zoom Q&A session with well-known philosopher Julian Baggini. Questions ranged from the relevance of philosophy in political, civic and day-to-day life, in schools; whether morality is innate; the challenges society faces in the future and what is meant by post truth
• October - preparation for the November Zoom question and answer session with well-known philosopher Julian Baggini.
• September - the work of philosopher John Gray. His most popular publication is "Straw Dogs" which is a critique of humanism. Gray believes that human history is cyclical and that human nature does not progress.
• August - Does life need to have a purpose and goal? We looked at what various philosophers through the ages had to say about this and this also led us on to talk about whether life has meaning. And what about other forms of life, bearing in mind the fact that humans have only been around for the blink of an eye when you look at the bigger picture?
• July - Altruism - does it exist?
• June 2023 - Is there such a thing as personal identity or whether we are constantly reinventing ourselves?
• May 2023 - Equilibrium in the chaos of the world. We looked at passive and active systems, the philosophy of John Rawls and the discussion ranged from political philosophy to the nature of harmony in Confucianism and Buddhism.
• March 2023 - To what extent do we have free will? A discussion around the extent to which we have free will. We talked about what we mean by free will and the freedom to do something and the freedom from something. There were varying degrees of opinion about how much free will we have but we brought in philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Strawson and Smilansky.
• February 2023 - religion, atheism and secularism based on the philosophy of Julian Baggini.
• January 2023 - Julian Baggini's_ philosophy of food. This raised lots of interesting questions about many of the things we take for granted on where our food comes from and what we usually consider to be morally good or bad.
• December 2022 - We continued with the discussion around Michel de Montagne. Members have been surprised at how modern his thinking feels, considering he was writing in the sixteenth century. He advocated knowing your own mind, reserving judgement, paying and controlling attention - and questioning everything!