The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

Having discussed a number of Georges Bataille's key concepts (sacrifice, unproductive expenditure, eroticism, transgression) and explored his quarrel with Surrealism , we'll spend several weeks staging a conversation between Bataille and Gilles Deleuze. Let's start with an essay by Janae Sholtz that emphasizes the similarities between the two authors:

"Bataille and Deleuze’s Peculiar Askesis: Techniques of Transgression, Meditation and Dramatisation"

Some discussion questions:

• Why is askesis such a key notion in the thought of Bataille and Deleuze?

• Isn't this a misplacement on their part -- or a misinterpretation by Sholtz -- considering that both authors aim to follow Nietzsche in the escape from all ascetic ideals and idealist morality?

• What is the role of drama in this account, and why should drama be relevant to philosophy at all?

• How is dramatization supposed to open the possibility of ecstasis?

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You can find all texts in the Google folder linked at the BOTTOM of this description (also the Zoom link) -- scroll all the way down 👇

For notes and commentary on the texts see my Bataille blog at this link:
https://sites.google.com/view/existentialism-and-its-critics/

Upcoming topics:
Aug 9: Bataille's Critique of Surrealism
Aug 16: Bataille and Deleuze on dramatization, transgression and ecstasis
Aug 23: Deleuze & Parnet's "On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature"
Aug 30: Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up"

Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.

Future topics to be discussed:

• Deleuze with/against Bataille
• Eroticism and the 'logic' of transgression
• Foucault's "A Preface to Transgression"
• Bataille's reading of Hegel, the negative and general economy
• Derrida's "From Restricted to General Economy"

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ABOUT THIS GROUP
Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he labeled 'base materialism' and which could equally be called 'ecstatic materialism'. Keeping outside the academic mainstream (he worked as a librarian), Bataille writes at the intersection of multiple disciplines including philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, mythology, and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. He is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant in our time than ever.

We'll start with Bataille's early writings on Nietzsche and make our way through his important concepts over a number of weeks. We'll aim to understand Bataille's thought on its own terms as well as to place him in the context of the German thinkers that preceded him and the French philosophers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.

Note: Bataille's texts, while philosophically important, discuss difficult themes such as mortality, the unconscious, eroticism, primeval social practices, etc. Keep this in mind as you approach him, especially if this is your first experience with French philosophy.

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GROUP RULES

• Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
• Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
• Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.

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Join the Facebook group for more resources and discussion:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/755460079505498
If you have attended previous meetings, please fill out a brief survey at this link: https://forms.gle/tEMJ4tw2yVgnTsQD6

All readings can be found in this Google folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VPRdvZYmUKBY3cSxD8xC8sTYtSEKBXDs

Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81251109319?pwd=R3hVQ2RqcVBvaHJwYnoxMFJ5OXJldz09

Art: Giorgio de Chirico, Piazza d'Italia, 1964

"Anxiety looms large in historical works of philosophy and psychology. It is an affect, philosopher Bettina Bergo argues, subtler and more persistent than our emotions, and points toward the intersection of embodiment and cognition. While scholars who focus on the work of luminaries as Freud, Levinas, or Kant often study this theme in individual works, they seldom draw out the deep and significant connections between various approaches to anxiety.

This volume provides a sweeping study of the uncanny career of anxiety in 19th and 20th century European thought. Anxiety threads itself through European intellectual life, beginning in receptions of Kant's transcendental philosophy and running into Levinas' phenomenology; it is a core theme in Schelling, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche... This volume opens new windows onto philosophers who have never yet been put into dialogue, providing a rigorous intellectual history as it connects themes across two centuries, and unearths the deep roots of our own present-day "age of anxiety."

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Welcome everyone to the next meetup series that Jen and Philip are presenting starting May 25! Scroll down 👇👇👇👇👇 to see the regularly updated reading schedule.

This time around we will be presenting the book:

• Anxiety: A Philosophical History (Oxford University Press 2020) by Bettina Bergo (See link for further info about the book from the publisher)
• Secondary text: The Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920 (Oxford University Press 2023) by Frederick C. Beiser. (See reading assignment and pdf below)
• The book we will read after Frederick C. Beiser’s book, for August 17 3rd hour discussion, is Andrew Bowie_Schelling and Modern European Philosophy_An Introduction https://www.amazon.com/Schelling-Modern-European-Philosophy-Introduction-ebook/dp/B08JD17TBZ/ref=sr_1_1?

This is a three hour meetup. For the first two hours we will stick very closely to the Bergo book. For THE FINAL HOUR we will be introducing a new way of doing things called "Filling in the Background". Bergo covers several philosophers. During the final hour we will read works by or about whatever philosopher she happens to be focussing on.

For example, Bergo starts with Kant and so for the first few sessions we will study Kant in an introductory way during the "Filling in the Background" final hour. When Bergo moves on to Schelling we will study some Schelling in the "Filling in the Background" final hour, and so on.

When we are covering Kant in the "Filling in the Background" section we will be referring to three books, one by Lucy Allais, one by Graham Bird and one by Kant himself. I (Philip) will do everything I can to make this clear and not confusing. But Kant is hard and the temptation to ignore real Kant and settle for a simplified cartoonish version of Kant's thought is too great. We need all three books to help us resist this temptation.

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A comment on what this meetup is and what it is not:

Bergo is looking at several European philosophers starting with Kant and is exploring the concept of Anxiety as a concept within philosophy. Obviously this will have some bearing on how anxiety as a word and as a concept functions within contemporary medicalized discourses. But in this meetup we will stick very closely to the philosophical aspects of the concept of anxiety. The occasional personal anecdote might be helpful, but only if it is given for the specific purpose of illuminating our understanding of Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer and the other philosophers Bergo is writing about.

In a nutshell, this is not a support group about anxiety related mental health issues.

But hopefully it will be of interest to everyone, including those who are exploring the more medicalized versions of the concept of anxiety. Jen and Philip wish nothing but the very best to anyone suffering from a medical version of anxiety; but this meetup is about the philosophy version of this concept.

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Even 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. The Bergo book is magnificent and we will be reading many of the all-time great philosophers, so do yourself a favour and do the reading. You will get so much more out of this meetup if you do. 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.

To make it easier to do all the reading, please note also that the Bergo book is available as an audiobook. In an "Elbows Up" spirit, here is a place where you can buy the audiobook where the majority of the money you spend goes to a Canadian bookstore — message Philip to find out how to make that work.

Anxiety Audiobook | Libro.fm – https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781705281406-anxiety

Incidentally, the very best translation of Kierkegaard's book – https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-concept-of-anxiety/9781631490040.html

is also available as an audiobook too. Perhaps this will help people to keep up with the readings.

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Jen and Philip have a very clear division of labour. If you have issues or concerns about the choice of texts or the pace of the reading or other "content" concerns, please contact Philip. If you have technology related questions please contact Jen. If you have complaints please direct them only to Philip.

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: We want to discourage a simple rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that Philip can explain if required.

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In both portions of the meetup, the format will be our usual "ACCELERATED LIVE READ". What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15-40 pages of text 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. In general, shorter passages will be assigned in Bergo so we can go slowly through Bergo. But longer passages will be assigned in the "Filling in the background" section.

THE READING SCHEDULE

• For the seventh session (August 17), finish reading The Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920 (2023) by Frederick C. Beiser. Please read pages 81-172 in the Beiser (pdf here).

We will spend the session on Beiser. NO READING in the Bergo.

• ANNOUNCEMENT, August 31 we are planning on starting Andrew Bowie’s Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction. We will focus on Schelling background before returning to reading Bergio.

https://www.amazon.com/Schelling-Modern-European-Philosophy-Introduction-ebook/dp/B08JD17TBZ/ref=sr_1_1?

• For the 6th session (Aug 3), please read pages 97-105 in the Bergo. In the last hour of the session we are reading The Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920 (2023) by Frederick C. Beiser. Please read pages 38-81 in the Beiser (pdf here).
• For the 5th session (July 20), please read pages 85-96 in the Bergo. In the last hour of the session we are reading The Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920 (2023) by Frederick C. Beiser. Please read pages 19-38 in the Beiser (pdf here).
• For the 4th session (July 6), please read pages 64-85 in the Bergo. In the last hour of the session we are starting The Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920 (2023) by Frederick C. Beiser. Please read up to page 19 in the Beiser.
• For the 3rd session (June 22), please read from page 36-63 in Bergo. Please read from page 99 to page 152 in the Guyer/Wood translation (yes, we will be reviewing the Kant passages from the first sessions but what is NEW is pp. 124-152). Please also acquire Graham Bird's book The Revolutionary Kant (2006) and read pages 30-48. You may want to read the Graham Bird sections twice — Kant is worth it. (A pdf of the Bird if you need access)
• For the 2nd session (June 8), please read from page 16 to page 35 in Bergo. Please read from page 99 to page 124 in the Guyer/Wood translation. Please also acquire Graham Bird's book The Revolutionary Kant (2006) and read pages 1 - 29.
• For the 1st session (May 25) of the meetup, please read up to page 16 in Bergo. Please acquire a copy of the Guyer and Wood translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and read pages 99 to 111. (A pdf of the Bergo and a pdf of the Guyer/Wood if you need access)

Further reading assignments will be posted once we get a better sense of the pacing that will work best for the Bergo book and the Kant related books.

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A note on the Kant translation:

Many people in the meetup community prefer the Pluhar translations of Kant, perhaps in part because they are easier to follow. I agree that they are easier, but Pluhar achieved this by building in an interpretation. Guyer and Wood achieved something even better than ease of reading — they managed to give us a translation of Kant that genuinely reflects the German text with none of its difficulties politely whisked away. Even though I strongly disagree with Guyer's interpretation of Kant, he had the intellectual integrity to leave his interpretation at the door and give us real Kant in his translation.

Those of you who have heard me talk about how difficult (and occasionally impossible) it is to translate Heidegger will be happy to hear that I think that translating Kant is actually pretty easy. There are only two German words I will need to explain in depth and (fortunately) they are words that are often found together so they should be easy to remember. They are the German words for "mere" and "appearance":

• "bloß" (also spelled "bloss") and "Erscheinen".

When we do Heidegger I encourage people to refer to the German text if they can. But when we do Kant I request that anyone who has questions about the German text should message their questions to me on the meetup site. In the case of Heidegger it is worth it to interrupt the flow to pause and deal with translation issues. In the case of Kant, it generally is not — you really are not missing much if you cannot read Kant in German.

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A Note on the bewilderingly wide range of ways of interpreting Kant

The "Filling in the Background" portion of this meetup that deals with Kant will be informed by a simple guiding ethos: To engage seriously with Kant just IS to engage seriously with the bewilderingly wide range of ways there are of interpreting Kant. One interpretation (or more accurately one cluster of closely related interpretations) sometimes called "Oxford Kantianism" has acquired something of an iron grip on English language study of Kant. Amateur philosophers and Philosophy Profs who do not specialize in Kant often think "Oxford Kantianism" is the only (or only serious) way to interpret Kant. Yet, even in the English speaking world the majority of philosophers who specialize in Kant generally think "Oxford Kantianism" is utterly wrong. If you are mostly familiar only with "Oxford Kantianism" you might find Graham Bird's interpretation disorienting and eccentric. Yet Bird's approach is actually starting to look a little bit old fashioned to younger Kant specialists. Bird and the majority of Kant specialists (including me I suppose) are starting to look like we are a bit "stuck in the 80's... the 1980's that is".

So in the field of Kant scholarship in 2025 we are looking at a situation where amateurs and profs who do not specialize in Kant still treat "Oxford Kantianism" as the unquestioned right interpretation. Graham Bird (and me) might look outrageously avant-garde and eccentric to someone who assumes that "Oxford Kantianism" is the only option. But now Graham Bird (and me) are starting to look a bit old-fashioned to people like Lucy Allais. Confusing?! Yes! But in a fascinating and interesting way. Don't worry, I will make all of this very clear over the course of 5 or 6 sessions on Kant in the "Filling in the background" portion of the meetup.