Coming Online Events
One-day ONSITE seminar tuition is $125 per person. Any contribution above $125 is classified as a tax-deductible donation. Special events have differing tuition. Scholarships are available for teachers and students. Or, become a subscriber in the Community of Lifelong Learners for $40 per month for unlimited attendance at on-site and online events, or $25 per month for only ONLINE events. Subscribers are responsible for ordering their own books. Please inquire via email here.
Online Weekly Intensives
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Tuesday Evenings - September 5 - December 19, 2023
How can a hidden life be the subject of an epic? How can an invisible human being become the subject of history? To put it another way, what could be the history of a hidden life, and how could a hidden life have one? But must not all hidden lives have (hidden) histories, or does someone’s history only come to be history when it ceases to be invisible? How does one inquire about what is invisible? Or is what is invisible only unseen, i.e., do we confuse a fact with an impossibility? What is invisible cannot be seen, but what is unseen, after all, may be looked into; that it is unseen may be a fact, but that fact ceases to be a fact when the thing comes to be seen. The notion of alternate facts – of facts whose contradictories are also facts -- is absurd, but facts by their nature are contingent; they admit of change, in verb tense at least: they go from is to was with the spinning of Time’s whirligig, as will we who read novels and histories and contemplate facts and fictions. And so it is that George Eliot, presumably the name of a man, but actually the name taken up by a woman named Mary Ann Evans, gives us, in one of the most expansive and beautiful fictions in English, the fact of a woman named Dorothea, whose life is told in front of the glancing backdrop of a woman famous in “the history of man.” Indeed, is Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life more a fiction, or less a fact, than The Iliad or The Odyssey?
Online seminars in this series will take place on Tuesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Books will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 3 CEU credits for participating. This sixteen-week series is $900. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $100 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
The Book of Exodus Intensive
Wednesday Evenings - September 6 - November 22, 2023
The Agora Foundation's online series on the books of the Old Testament will continue in the fall with The Book of Exodus. The overall initiative is expected to last three to four years, with attendees choosing which book offerings to participate in.
The Book of Exodus (from Ancient Greek: Ἔξοδος, romanized: Éxodos; Hebrew: שְׁמוֹת Šəmōṯ, 'Names') is the second book of the Bible. The text tells the story of the Israelites leaving the slavery of Egypt, led by Moses to Mount Sinai, where the 10 commandments are given. Covenants are made between God and the people, promising a holy nation and offering specific laws and instructions which suggest that God will dwell with them and lead them to possess the promised land to the descendants of Abraham. We invite you to join us as we explore this infinitely rich text, discussing just a few pages at a time. One need not have attended The Book of Genesis Online Intensive to fruitfully participate in this course. Exodus, and all of the books in the series, will be explored through the lenses of theology, philosophy, history, psychology, and literature.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Wednesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees are encouraged to read their preferred translation of The Book of Exodus. Sessions will be facilitated by Elizabeth Reyes and Dennis Gura. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This eleven-week series is $750. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Free Community Series
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Glory of Art
Saturday, October 7, 2023
What is Art? Why does it hold such a central position in humanity’s self-understanding? Art seems to have subjective, contingent, and relative aspects, while also evoking the eternal, essential, and radical. Art represents, communicates, explores, inspires, challenges, creates, and questions. This semi-monthly series will explore the work of artists and thinkers through history.
Aristotle - “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”.
O’Keeffe - “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.”
da Vinci - “Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all generations of the world.”
O’Connor - “Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”
Picasso - “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
Klee - “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”
Brecht - “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”
de Beauvoir - “Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom.”
Dostoevsky - “Art is as much a need for humanity as eating and drinking. The need for beauty and for creations that embody it is inseparable from humanity and without it man perhaps might not want to live on earth.”
The October 7 reading is:
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
by Walter Benjamin
Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00PM PDT
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Onsite Community Seminar
Story Saves the Day:
When Demonstration and Logic Fail,
Story Heaves Up the Truth
Friday, October 27, 2023
As part of the 2023 Ojai Storytelling Festival, October 26-29 at the Libbey Bowl and the Ojai Art Center, join the Agora Foundation for this free community seminar on the power of story. Why do some of philosophy's greatest thinkers rely on storytelling when they are striving to convey difficult principles? Beyond emotion, what can story convey that demonstration leaves anemic?
The October 27 reading is:
Short selections from Plato, Aristotle, Chuang Tzu, Nietzsche, and Kafka
Schedule:
2:00 - 3:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
113 South Montgomery Street in Ojai,California
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Foundations of Our Republic - The Federalist Papers Complete Series
Saturday, November 18
What are the fundamental principles of our Republic? Are these principles based on a view of objective reality/nature, or simply the "consent of the governed"? Depending on how one addresses the previous question: Are these principles changeable, and if so on what grounds? How should one read the founding documents? What authority does the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches have? What are rights? Are they based on nature or consent? Are they inalienable? Please join us as we explore these political works through monthly weekend meetings.
The November 18 reading is:
Federalist Papers 9-12
Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00PM PST
Readings in the series:
Complete Federalist Papers and selected Anti-Federalist Papers
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Upcoming Regular Events
Online Seminar Series
New Science by Giambattista Vico
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
“Giambattista Vico bestrides the modern humanities and social sciences like a colossus.” —Anthony Grafton, Historian, Princeton University
Originally published in 1725, ‘New Science’ takes a blended philosophical and philological approach to identify predictable patterns in the development of human history. Among many surprising but convincing findings, Vico’s research leads him to conclude, over a century before the publication of ’The Ancient City,’ by Numa Fustel de Coulange, that the ancients saw the world in a fundamentally different way than modern man.
The historian Anthony Grafton, addressing Vico’s “massive decoding of ancient history, mythology and law,” writes that ‘The New Science’ “is commonly recognized as one of the founding works of the modern human sciences, a work in some ways as deep and original as the contemporary work that transformed the natural sciences, the ‘Principia’ of Isaac Newton.”
Vico’s many admirers include the author James Joyce, who used Vico’s cycles of history in the structure of his final work “Finnegans Wake.” Join us to explore this highly original and influential work.
Join us as we read this text one chapter at a time, every other Tuesday afternoon. Click here to visit the New Science by Vico Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
September 26 Reading:
New Science by Giambattista Vico
Book 4 - Sections 13-14, Book 5, Conclusion of the Work
(Pages 440 to end)
Penguin Classics; 3rd edition (January 2000)
ISBN 978-0140435696
Series Schedule:
Every other Tuesday afternoon
Schedule:
12:00-1:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Barry Rabe
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.
Having done the longest day in literature with Ulysses (1922), Joyce set himself an even greater challenge for his next book - the night. "A nocturnal state... That is what I want to convey: what goes on in a dream, during a dream." Published in 1939, the book would take Joyce two decades to complete.
A story with no real beginning or end, the work has come to assume a preeminent place in English literature. Anthony Burgess has lauded Finnegans Wake as "a great comic vision, one of the few books of the world that can make us laugh aloud on nearly every page". Harold Bloom has called it Joyce's masterpiece, and, in The Western Canon (1994), wrote that "if aesthetic merit were ever again to center the canon, Finnegans Wake would be as close as our chaos could come to the heights of Shakespeare and Dante".
Join us as we read this text a few pages at a time, every other Wednesday afternoon. Click here to visit the Finnegans Wake Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
September 27 Reading:
Book One - Chapter Chapter Six (page 151, Line 7), Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (December 1999). ISBN 9780141181264. Also, Chapter Six of A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake by William Tindall. Syracuse University Press; Reprint edition (May 1996), ISBN 0815603851
Schedule:
12:00-1:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Barry Rabe
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
Cognitive Bias
Saturday, September 30, 2023
“It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.” ― Leonardo da Vinci
“A compelling narrative fosters an illusion of inevitability.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
For millennia, philosophers have explored thinking, rationality, and judgement, with many writing about the tension we experience between our passions, our beliefs, and our reason. Later, psychologists have also written about the irrationality and sometimes hidden causation of our judgements. In the last fifty years, much work has been done in the area of cognitive bias. Cognitive bias is defined as a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own subjective reality from their perception of available input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality. The field has advanced to articulate a Cognitive Bias Codex. Click here to view the graphic, which includes linked descriptions to currently identified biases.
This monthly online series will explore texts from some of the field’s most widely known authors, exploring the mechanisms of judgement in areas ranging from economics to cosmology to racism.
September 30 Reading:
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases:
Biases in judgments reveal some heuristics of thinking under uncertainty.
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman
Science Magazine - 27 Sep 1974 - Vol 185, Issue 4157
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Modern Heroine Autobiographies
Sunday, October 1, 2023
The genra of autobiography necessarily invokes difficulties of subjectivity. omission, and distortion. At the same time, what one chooses to write about oneself can also be highly illuminating. Nowhere will this tension, and treasure, better reveal itself than in the autobiography of the modern heroine. In addition to the fruitful knowledge any reader would gain from a male writer of historic note, the modern heroine is also a witness, and an inspiration, of the dramatic evolution of technology, equality, and gender politics of the 20th century. We invite you to join this online series, reading autobiographies about one month apart.
October 1 Reading:
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
Signet; Reprint edition (June 2010)
ISBN 978-0451531568
Readings in the Series:
The Story of my Life by Helen Keller - ISBN 978-0451531568
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - ISBN 978-0553577129
Art and Writing of Georgia O'Keeffe - ISBN 978-0140046779
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir - ISBN 978-0060825195
The Fun of It by Amelia Earhart - ISBN 978-0915864553
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - ISBN 978-0345514400
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt - ISBN 978-0062355911
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Leibniz
Sunday, October 8, 2023
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How does knowledge differ from belief? Can an exploration of basic philosophical questions, such as How do we know what we know? and What are the limits of our understanding? inform our thinking not just on intellectual issues, but on broader cultural challenges as well?
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (July 1646 - November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history and philology. Leibniz is noted for his optimism, i.e. his conclusion that our world is, in a qualified sense, the best possible world that God could have created. Over four monthly online seminars, the series will cover:
- September 10: "On the Ultimate Origination of Things" (pp. 149-155) and
"Preface to the New Essays" (pp. 291-306)
- October 8: Excerpts from the Letters to Clarke (pp. 320-332*) and
"On Nature Itself" (pp. 155-167)
- November 5: Discourse on Metaphysics (pp. 35-68)
- December 3: Excerpts from the Letters to de Volder (pp. 171-178*), "Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason" (pp. 206-213) and The Monadology (pp. 213-225)
*Note: reading doesn't include all the pages excerpted in Philosophical Essays.
Join us as we discuss these foundational works from Leibniz. This series continues a broader series on epistemology. All are welcome. Please join us even if this will be your first seminar in the series.
Click here to visit the Epistemology Page.
October 8 Reading:
Excerpts from the Letters to Clarke (pp. 320-332) and On Nature Itself (pp. 155-167) by Leibniz
Leibniz: Philosophical Essays
Hackett Publishing Company (March 1989)
ISBN 978-0872200623
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
The Gene - An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2017)
Saturday, October 14, 2023
This revived online series will inquire into contemporary issues of science, politics, culture, and economics, meeting once per month and covering 30-50 pages of a text per session. We kick off the series with a look into the history and current questions of genetics. The Gene: An Intimate History was written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist, published in 2017. The book chronicles the history of the gene and genetic research, all the way from Aristotle to Crick, Watson and Franklin and then the 21st century scientists who mapped the human genome. The book discusses the power of genetics in determining people's well-being and traits. It delves into the personal genetic history of Siddhartha Mukherjee's family, including mental illness. However, it is also a cautionary message toward not letting genetic predispositions define a person or their fate, a mentality that the author says led to the rise of eugenics in history. This series will span over ten monthly sessions on this book, and then turn to other contemporary subjects.
October 14 Reading:
The Gene - An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
A Certain Mendel, Eugenics, Three Generations of Imbeciles Is Enough, Part Two - Abhed,
(pages 56-100)
Scribner; Reprint edition (May 2017)
ISBN 978-1476733524
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
US Supreme Court—Decisions and Interpretations
Sunday, October 15, 2023
In this seminar series we will explore Supreme Court decisions that have helped define what it means to live in a constitutional republic. Ranging from the powers of government as articulated by the Court in its early days to the impact of its decisions in the 21st century on civil and individual rights, we will examine the nature of the Court’s various—and sometimes competing--interpretations of the Constitution. The roles of the Declaration of Independence and the 14th Amendment will be a particular area of focus in seeing how the Court has drawn upon principles of “equal protection” and “human dignity” in its rulings. The goal will be to come away with a more informed citizen’s view of the Court’s contributions to our understanding of the “rule of law” in both its political and Constitutional meaning.
There will be six meetings in the series, once per month:
Sunday, September 17
Sunday, October 15
Sunday, November 12
Sunday, December 10
Sunday, January 14
Sunday, February 11
Central Text:
Supreme Court Decisions
Penguin Books; 1st edition (August 2012)
ISBN 978-0143121992
October 5 Reading:
Posting soon.
Schedule:
2:00-4:00PM PDT
(please note later than usual weekend time)
Tutor:
Karl Haigler
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The New Testament
Saturday, October 21, 2023
The word testament in the expression New Testament refers to a new covenant that Christians believe fulfills the covenant that God made with the people of Israel made on Mount Sinai through Moses, described in the books of the Old Testament. We invite you to join this series as we explore the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and Epistles, and the Book of Revelation.
October 21 Reading:
The Epistles of Paul to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians
(attendees are encouraged to read their preferred translation)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
Chapter Five
Sunday, October 22, 2023
In 1871 Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man, which applies evolutionary theory to human evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection, a form of biological adaptation distinct from, yet interconnected with, natural selection. The reception was mixed, with some concerned that “this book would unsettle our half educated classes and people will begin doing as they pleased, breaking laws and customs…” The text discusses many issues, including evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society. We invite you to join us as we discuss this entire text, with readings about one month apart.
October 22 Reading:
The Descent of Man by Darwin - Chapter Five - On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times- pages 152-172
Penguin Classics Reprint Edition
(June 2004) - ISBN 978-0140436310
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Romantic I/Eye
Sunday, October 29, 2023
A pan-European and American phenomenon, Romanticism influenced Western notions about the individual as well as humans' relationship to nature. This series of online seminars addresses both themes through a variety of genres and nationalities, most of which texts are written in the first person. How did the Romantic Era shape the notion of what a subject is? Does first-person writing, in seeming to explore the subject or the self, reveal it or make it more obscure? To what extent does the choice an author makes to portray an experience through the use of the first person affect that experience, and do these authors' texts coalesce into a coherent portrait of the Romantic period? Finally, how do these singular voices engage with nature, particularly under the looming shadow of the Industrial Revolution?
Readings in the Series (ISBNs and Posted PDFs will added soon):
Goethe — The Sorrows of Young Werther
Rousseau — Reveries of a Solitary Walker
Holderlin — Hyperion
Wordsworth — The Prelude (Two-Part 1799 version)
Chateaubriand — Rene, and Atala
Foscolo — The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis
Byron — Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto One
Hazlitt — On the Love of the Country, On Living to One's Self, and On Thought and Action
Müller/Schubert — Die Winterreise
Pushkin — Eugene Onegin
Emerson — Nature, The Over-Soul, and Circles
Poe — The Landscape Garden, William Wilson, and The Fall of the House of Usher
October 29 Reading:
Goethe — The Sorrows of Young Werther
Signet; Reprint edition (March 2013)
ISBN 978-0451418555
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Jordan Hoffman and Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Saturday, November 4, 2023
The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was Hannah Arendt's first major work. The book strives to understand the causes and the mechanics of Nazism and Stalinism as the major totalitarian political movements of the 20th century. Regarded as one of the most important books of the last 100 years, Arendt warns that, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” We invite you to join us as we explore this entire book, meeting about once per month.
November 4 Reading:
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Imperialism - Chapter Seven (pages 185-221)
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; First edition (March 1973)
ISBN 978-0-156-70153-2
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Shakespearean Marriage, Italian-Style (Mostly) -
& One by Marlowe!
Saturday, November 11, 2023
Almost the last detail the reader hears of Socrates at the end of Plato’s Symposium, which is Apollodorus’ recollection of Aristodemus’ account of the dinner party, is that after a night of speechmaking and drinking, Socrates was still awake near dawn, pressing Agathon and Aristophanes (tragedian and comedian, respectively), the three of them still passing the jug around, to admit that the same poet could write both tragedy and comedy. As “dawn spread forth her fingertips of rose,”[1] the two poets, deep in their cups, nodded off to sleep, Aristophanes just before daybreak, Agathon just after. What would one do for the encore of a Socratic lullaby!
Fast forward two millennia: in a strange land, in a tongue that had not existed on the occasion of that Athenian sunrise, Shakespeare proved Socrates right in a very different city with a very different climate. One can only guess at Socrates’ argument, for Aristodemus seems not to have heard or remembered it, as he was only just waking up, presumably with a hangover, but one might try surmising the logic backwards from the evidence of Shakespeare’s drama, different as it is from that of ancient Athens, and say that comedy and tragedy in the hands of the same poet can show themselves as the inside-out, upside-down mirror images of each other. Whence comes the hypothesis that the same poet can write both if he understands the mirror and can give each dramatic form, in each of its many instances, “a local habitation and a name.”[2] This hypothesis serves as an invitation to consider Shakespearean comedy and tragedy together, loosely grouped, all but one of the plays set in Italy, all but one by the Bard, comedies followed by tragedy, each play always standing on its own, winking perhaps at the others.
Group 1:
The Taming of the Shrew (Signet Classic - ISBN 9780451526793)
Much Ado About Nothing (Pelican - ISBN 9780143130185)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (set in Athens) (Pelican - ISBN 9780143128588)
Romeo and Juliet (Pelican - ISBN 9780143128571)
Group 2:
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Pelican - ISBN 9780143132240)
The Jew of Malta (by Marlowe) (Pelican - ISBN 9780140436334)
The Merchant of Venice (Pelican - ISBN 9780143130222)
Othello (Pelican - ISBN 9780143128618)
[1] a translation of an expression from Homer
[2] A Midsummer Night’s Dream
November 11 Reading:
The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare
(Pelican - ISBN 9780143132240)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Golden Bough by James Frazer
Sunday, November 19, 2023
“For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their ancestors did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice.”
The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging investigation of mythology, religion, and ritual. First published in 1890 and greatly expanded in later editions, the book attempts to define the shared elements of religious belief and scientific thought, discussing fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying god, the scapegoat, and many other symbols and practices whose influences had extended into 20th-century culture.
We invite you to join us as we discuss this entire abridged version, a few chapters at a time, with weekend seminars taking place about one month apart. Click here to visit the The Golden Bough Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
November 19 Reading:
The Golden Bough by James Frazer -
Chapters VII - Incarnate Human Gods, VIII - Departmental Kings of Nature, IX - The Worship of Trees, X - Relics of Tree-worship in Modern Europe (pages 109-163)
Penguin Classics; Abridged edition (January 1998)
ISBN 978-0140189315
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Saturday, December 2, 2023
“We must judge the tree by its fruit. The best fruits of the religious experience are the best things history has to offer. The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, and bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have all been flown for religious ideals.”
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures (20 in total) on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between 1901 and 1902. The lectures concern the psychological study of individual private religious experiences and mysticism, and use a range of examples to identify commonalities in religious experiences across traditions. James concludes that religion is overall beneficial to humankind, although acknowledges that this does not establish its truth. He also considers the possibility of over-beliefs, beliefs which are not strictly justified by reason but which might understandably be held by educated people nonetheless, and had relatively little interest in the legitimacy or illegitimacy of religious experiences. Join us as we work through these lectures, with online seminars taking place about one month apart.
December 2 Reading:
Lectures Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen - Saintliness (pages 259-325)
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Penguin Classics; Later Printing edition
(December 16, 1982) - ISBN 978-0140390346
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Epic of Gilgamesh (in two sessions)
Thursday, December 7 and December 14, 2023
"From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death."
The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered to be one of the oldest surviving literary works. It was composed 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, though the story’s oral origins date back much further, influencing the Old Testament and the Iliad and Odyssey. The epic’s authorship and intended readership are unknown. Through his struggle to find meaning, Gilgamesh defies death and becomes our first literary epic hero. The grief of Gilgamesh and the questions of mortality and morality invoked by the death of his dear friend Enkidu universally resonate and comment on human experience that transcend millenia. We invite you to join us for two Thursday evening online sessions as we discuss this wonderful story, rendered in verse translation.
Reading:
Gilgamesh - A Verse Translation by Herbert Mason
Mariner Books; First Edition (July 2003)
ISBN 978-0618275649
Thursday, December 7 - pages 11-50
Thursday, December 14 - pages 51-92
Schedule:
5:30-7:00PM PST, both evenings.
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Laws by Plato
Saturday, December 9, 2023
“...there is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom; and he who is under the influence of the latter fancies that he knows all about matters of which he knows nothing.”
The Laws (Greek: Νόμοι, Nómoi; Latin: De Legibus) is Plato's last and longest dialogue. The conversation depicted in the work's twelve books begins with the question of who is given the credit for establishing a civilization's laws. Its musings on the ethics of government and law have established it as a classic of political philosophy alongside Plato's more widely read Republic. Scholars agree that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older person, having failed in his effort to guide the rule of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, instead having been thrown in prison. These events are alluded to in the Seventh Letter. The text is noteworthy as Plato's only undisputed dialogue not to feature Socrates. We invite you to join us as we read this often overlooked text, one section at a time, in monthly online events.
December 9 Reading:
The Laws by Plato
Book 1 - Section 2: Drinking Parties as an Educational Device (pages 20-38)
Penguin Classics (June 2005)
ASIN B01FIXK9JK
ISBN 9780140449846
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.