Friends,
DPS meeting
Melancholy and other business
Wednesday 1 June from 5-6.30pm in ib3.307 on Deakin’s Waurn Ponds campus
This Wednesday 1 June the Deakin Philosophical Society will meet to discuss melancholy. We’ll focus on Robert Burton’s verse ‘Author’s Abstract of Melancholy’ from his 1628 The Anatomy of Melancholy. However, you may also like to consider Denis Diderot’s entry on melancholy in the 1765 Encyclopaedia of the Sciences, Art and Crafts.
Wednesday’s meeting is our last for the first trimester, so we will also discuss topics for next trimester. We’ve focussed quite heavily on science and politics so far this year. It would be good to spend some time on other areas of philosophy in trimester two. All suggestions are welcome.
So are good spirits.
Hope to see you there,
Dylan Nickelson,
President, Deakin Philosophical Society.
Friends,
DPS meeting
A Darwinian theory of beauty
Wednesday 18 May from 5-6.30pm in ib3.307 on Deakin’s Waurn Ponds campus
This Wednesday 18 May the Deakin Philosophical Society will meet to discuss a TED lecture by Denis Dutton on a Darwinian theory of beauty.
In this lecture, Dutton argues that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being ‘subjective’, have deep evolutionary origins. We’ll screen the lecture at the beginning of the meeting before launching into a discussion of the thesis.
For those of you who wish to see the lecture in advance, it’s available at http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html.
Hope to see you there.
Kind regards,
Dylan Nickelson,
President, Deakin Philosophical Society.
Friends,
DPS / Christian Union debate
It’s time to leave God behind
Wednesday 11 May from 5-7pm upstairs in the KD Stewart Centre, Deakin Waurn ponds campus
This Wednesday 11 May the Deakin Philosophical Society and the Christian Union will host a joint event — a debate on the proposition ‘It’s time to leave God behind’.
After a brief panel-based debate in which the DPS representatives will argue why it is time to leave God behind and the CU representatives why it is not, the discussion will be opened to the audience.
The event begins at 5pm, upstairs in the KD Stewart Centre on Deakin’s Waurn Ponds campus. It is free and open to the public. The event is catered, so please let us know in advance if you will be attending. Either register at the Christian Union’s Facebook event page or below on the DPS website.
Hope to see you there.
Kind regards,
Dylan Nickelson,
President, Deakin Philosophical Society.
Friends,
DPS meeting
Are there goods that are irreducibly social?
Wednesday 4 May from 5-6.30pm in ib3.307 on Deakin’s Waurn Ponds campus
This Wednesday 4 May the Deakin Philosophical Society will meet to thrash out the question of whether or not there are any irreducibly social goods. According to Charles Taylor, whose essay ‘Irreducibly social goods’ will form the basis of discussion, there are. Further, Taylor hopes, such goods undermine Schumpeter’s view of democracy as an interest-accumulation procedure (which we discussed at the last meeting).
Taylor’s essay is available online at http://deakinphilosophicalsociety.com/texts/taylor/irreducibly_social_goods.pdf [1MB].
Two things to note. Firstly, a piece of philosophical jargon you’ll need to be familiar with: methodological individualism. See the first paragraph of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for clarification. Secondly, for the time-poor, the Taylor gold begins on page 59.
We’ll also discuss any last-minute arrangements before the big debate with the Christian Union next week.
Kind regards,
Dylan Nickelson,
President, Deakin Philosophical Society.
