The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

In this talk, I discuss what I call "reactive luck": luck that befalls us as bearers of reactive attitudes (such as shame, resentment, pride, or gratitude). Our reactive attitudes play significant roles for our constitution, relationships, and lives overall. Likewise, their weight on us can be significant. Yet we are often lucky with respect to bearing them, in that the objects and circumstances warranting them, and with these our reactive attitudes themselves, are often outside our control.

I here discuss the nature and philosophical significance of reactive luck, its relationship to moral luck, and consider ways of addressing problematic forms of reactive luck.

Nathan Hauthaler
https://scholars.duke.edu/person/Nathan.Hauthaler
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Duke Kunshan University

About the Speaker:

I work on fundamental issues in agency and action. I am especially interested in the nature of intentional action; of practical knowledge involved in it; and in forms of practical capacity and cognition (and related practical-cognitive habitus) funding both. I approach these issues from a variety of systematic and historical vantage points: systematic ones including the philosophy of action, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; historical ones including the history of analytic philosophy, classical Greek as well as Chinese philosophy.

I also work on various normative and applied questions concerning human agency, from questions concerning the nature & demands of friendship to applied & normative questions about the design of things we engage with. In subsequent work I will focus notably on social-structural determinant of agency & practical capacity: on how our social communities and milieus shape the contours of our agential outlook and constitution; how attending to them can in turn help understand the contours of our practical thinking & actions. In public international law I remain particularly interested in issues about the use of force (ius ad bellum; in bello) & anti-discrimination law.

My publications include essays in the philosophy of mind & action (on issues of practical error and ignorance; the relation of intention to belief); the history of philosophy (on Wittgenstein on reasons vs. causes of action); and on public international law (on the doctrine of the "responsibility to protect"). I obtained a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University (2020); an MPhilStud in Philosophy from the University of London (Birkbeck); and a Mag. iur. in Law as well as a Mag. phil. in Philosophy from Graz University (in 2009 and 2010, respectively).

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided at the event. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here.

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai

At this meeting we'll continue discussing Chapter 2: Determinate Being, p. 109. We should have read up to C: Infinity, p,137. We have still to talk about many things leading up to the Infinity section.
At the end of the meeting we'll be talking about Stephen Houlgate's On Being: Quality and the Birth of Quantity in Hegel's 'Science of Logic' , Vol. 1. We'll look at Part Two, Chapter 6: Quality, pages 135 to 156, in which Houlgate discusses being, nothing, and becoming. It is available here (link).
Also, Bill has posted on Discord, Chapter 1 from Nahum Brown's Hegel on Possibility, called "Hegel on Totality: From Being to Nothing," where Brown not only introduces his "Dialectical Totality" interpretation of the opening, but surveys and categorizes some other approaches. Bill has also added an outline of the chapter.
Another good essay, by Dieter Henrich, entitled Beginning and Method of (the) Logic, is available here.
During the meetings we'll be using the Miller translation. The pdf of the Miller can be found here (link).

Hegel's Science of Logic (1812–1816) is a landmark in German idealism and a radical rethinking of logic as the living structure of reality itself. Rather than treating logic as a neutral tool or set of rules, Hegel presents it as the dynamic structure of reality and self-consciousness. He develops a system of dialectical reasoning in which concepts evolve through contradictions and their resolutions. In contrast to his early collaborator and philosophical rival Friedrich Schelling, who emphasized the role of intuition and nature in the Absolute, Hegel insists that pure thought — developed immanently from itself — is the true foundation of metaphysics. The work is divided into three major parts: Being, Essence, and Concept (or Notion), each tracing the development of increasingly complex categories of thought. For Hegel, logic is not abstract or static; it is the unfolding of the Absolute, the rational core of existence.

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This is a discussion group for Hegel's Science of Logic. We have read several of Friedrich Schelling's works, including Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809), Ages of the World (c. 1815), and the Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology (1845), Anyone with an interest in philosophy is free to join in the meetings.

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Before beginning another reading of Kierkegaard's Either/Or, we'll be reading a few plays together. These plays are all featured in Either/Or, and so they should help prepare us for encountering them, and will also provide a palate cleanser between works of Kierkegaard.

During the meetings, we'll decide on roles and read the plays. We will take breaks to discuss, likely between scenes or acts. Also, we'll have as many meetings as needed to finish the plays.

We'll begin reading at this meetup from Scene II here.

Video of a production of Faust I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaogjXLdPow

Here are the plays we'll read together before beginning Either/Or:

• Sophocles - Antigone
• Scribe - The First Love
• Goethe - Faust

Additional works you could look at before we begin Either/Or:

• Goethe - Clavigo
• Mozart/Ponte - Don Giovanni
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQBmLHSXQdg
• Mozart/Schikaneder - The Magic Flute
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_qtZ-Hm7k
• Mozart/Ponte - The Marriage of Figaro
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ik-PzAXsQ

On the Friday Meetings:

The Friday meetings began on January 1, 2016, with an initial goal of reading through the first half of Søren Kierkegaard's works. Due to continued interest, we have decided to return to previous works for review, study more background texts, and continue beyond the first half of Kierkegaard's writing.

Works read so far in the series:

• The Concept of Irony, With Continual Reference to Socrates (Kierkegaard)
• Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures (Kierkegaard)
• Either/Or (Victor Eremita, et al.)
• Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
• Fear and Trembling (Johannes de Silentio)
• Repetition (Constantin Constantius)
• Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
• Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
• Two Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
• Three Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
• Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
• Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est (Johannes Climacus)
• Concept of Anxiety (Vigilius Haufniensis)
• Prefaces (Nicolaus Notabene)
• Writing Sampler (A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab)
• Four Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard)
• Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (Kierkegaard)
• Stages on Life's Way (Hilarious Bookbinder)
• Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (Johannes Climacus)
• The Sickness Unto Death (Anti-Climacus)
• Works of Love

Works read for background:

• The First Love (Scribe)
• The Berlin Lectures (Schelling)
• Clavigo (Goethe)
• Faust Part I (Goethe)
• Antigone (Sophocles)
• Axioms (Lessing)
• The Little Mermaid (Anderson)

Works read inspired (at least in part) by Kierkegaard

• The Escape from God (Tillich)
• You Are Accepted (Tillich)

Some background on Soren Kierkegaard in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://iep.utm.edu/kierkega/