3/29/2013 Simone Weil

by Nathan Turowsky

This week we will be discussing Simone Weil, the early twentieth-century French philosopher best known for her combination of Christian (or almost Christian) mysticism with direct political action, her 'comic and terrible'--to quote Flannery O'Connor, an admirer of sorts--life story, her pacifism to a greater or lesser extent attenuated by the demands of the unfortunate time in which she lived, her attempts to apply Platonic idealism to everyday life, her at times impenetrable personal dictionary*, and her highly original thought on the nature of time, suffering, and loneliness. Weil's method of doing philosophy was unusual and at times troubling, as was her attitude towards the material conditions of her own existence, and her tempestuous relationships with Judaism and Catholicism make her good reading for Good Friday.

The presentation will focus on Gravity and Grace, the collection and arrangement of Weil's unpublished notebooks released after her death by her close friend, the farmer and sometime philosopher Gustave Thibon. Gravity and Grace is the source of most of Weil's recorded thought on such perennial philosophical subjects as aesthetics and metaphysics as well as such perennial human subjects as longing, absence, chance, and fairy tales. We will read several chapters from the book (they're very short and photocopied handouts will, God willing, be provided) and discuss key ideas such as metaxu--'every separation is a link'--and their relation to other philosophical and religious notions. If we have time we may get into Simone's Cave, Weil's adaptation of the allegory of the cave to the idea, which was relatively new in her lifetime, of most features of human consciousness as products of social forces rather than either biology or the true core of the personality or soul. Her interpretation of Plato has both religious and political implications beyond what other Christian Platonists have historically countenanced as well as having implications for the psychological function of fiction. We may also touch on the broader theme of kenosis, a religious 'emptying' of one's will, and its various sources and incarnations outside of Weil.

Attendees of this meeting will be encouraged to take Weil's thought personally to a greater degree than usual, because her thought exists to be taken personally. If a subject in or way of doing philosophy, science, or art does not act in some way upon the human personality Weil does not consider it worthy of her attention, and thus Simone Weil's attention was a rare and precious thing to attract. Only Jesus Christ, some of the flotsam and jetsam of other religions, and Provençal viticulture really managed it for extended periods of time.



*'Imagination' is a particularly loaded term for Weil, and she throws around the phrase 'great beast' more than the average reader is necessarily comfortable with.

2/22/2013 Stoic Space

by Benny Mattis

The Stoics of ancient Greece were known for their corporealist metaphysics--the Stoics held that only bodies existed, bodies being characterized by extension and resistance (or 'capacity to act or be acted upon').  However, while bodies were the only thing that existed for the Stoics, there were also incorporeals, namely, place, time, void and lekta (or "sayables;" Vanessa de Harven likens these to "the meanings of our words"), which merely subsisted, yet, as proper objects of discourse, were not quite nothing and respectively considered "Something" in the Stoic metaphysical framework.

"Place" and "Void" are distinct incorporeal entities, but a common conception interprets the evidence we have from the Stoics as indicating that "Place" is space occupied by a body, whereas "Void" is space that is empty.  For the Stoics, for whom the world is a void-less continuum, Void is that which is outside the world (in modern terms, what lies beyond the edge of the universe of causally potent bodies).

But what lies outside the universe?  More specifically, how might various Stoics have answered this question?  Some interpret the Stoic void as stretching to infinity, like empty space with no matter as we conceive it; a less orthodox view indicates that the Void may have been neither infinite nor finite, but merely indeterminate or undefined.  This week, we will discuss which of these conceptions of void are more plausible, whether that was actually what the Stoics may have thought, and what implications these theories would have on one's view of the universe as a whole (or, as the Stoics called it, "The All").

11/9/2012 Philosophy of Magic: Chaos, Ceremony, and Practicality

by Ashley Hartzler 

(on behalf of herself and the other SPIRALS members to lead this discussion)

Our talk focuses on the approach of magicians through out the various schools of magic, the differences between those schools, and the thought behind their methods. We'll start by focusing on the major laws of magic and how they apply to the various schools. We'll then analyze ceremonial magic by using an evocation ritual as an example and see how the laws apply to it. Using ceremonial magic as a base, we will compare practical and chaos magic to it and hold discussion through out the entirety of the talk.

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A video of the meeting on 11/9/2012 can be found here.