Free Onsite Community Film Series
Compelling Creators: Women in Film
Friday evenings, starting at 8:00PM
The Agora Foundation and the Ojai Valley Brewery & Side Street Wine are teaming up again to kick off their latest free series – Compelling Creators: Women in Film – taking place on Friday evenings, beginning at 8:00PM. Purchase your beverages and food onsite, with Slice and Run Pizza ready to serve. No reservations required. Fantastic films in our fantastic community... what could be better?
Series Schedule
August 2 – Juno
Directed by Jason Reitman and Written by Diablo Cody
August 16 – Big
Directed by Penny Marshall and Written by Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg
August 30 – Lady Bird
Directed and Written by Greta Gerwig
September 13 – Lost in Translation
Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola
Schedule:
8:00-10:00PM PDT
Location:
Ojai Valley Brewery and Side Street Winery
307 Bryant Street in Ojai, California
Free Onsite Ojai Chautauqua Panel
The City and the Valley of Ojai - Understanding and Enhancing the Relationship Between the City and County
Monday, December 2, 2024
An evening of conversation between Matt LaVere - District 1 County Supervisor, Ben Harvey - Ojai City Manager, and Andy Gilman - Director of the Agora Foundation
This free community event will explore the various boundaries between the City of Ojai and the Unincorporated Ojai Valley. How do these local governments collaborate, communicate, and work toward shared goals. Topics will include homelessness, land use, safety, and housing. Bring your questions and ideas!
Schedule:
5:30 - 7:00PM PST
Location:
The Ojai Retreat Cultural Center
160 Besant Road
Ojai, California 93023
Online Seminar Series
The Romantic I/Eye
Saturday, December 14, 2024
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:
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 — Experience
Poe — The Landscape Garden, William Wilson, and The Fall of the House of Usher
Join us as we read explore these readings, with sessions about one month apart. Click here to visit The Romantic I/Eye Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
December 14 Reading:
Emerson - Experience
For December's seminar on Emerson, we will read "Experience." Emerson's essays are thorny, and the choice of this essay should provide plenty of fodder for discussion; however, a number of our participants in Romantic I/Eye happen to also be in the Transcendentalism seminar series, which has covered "Self-Reliance" and "Nature." For this reason, we are encouraging everyone to read those two works as well for a contextual background shared by the group. This said, our focus will be on "Experience."
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Jordan Hoffman and Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Special Onsite Seminar and Play Performance
Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, at Antaeus Theatre
Sunday, March 16, 2025
“What country, friends, is this?”
Separated from her twin brother in a shipwreck, Viola is forced to make her own way in the kingdom of Illyria — where, disguised as a man, she discovers unrequited passion, double-crossings, hilarity, and yellow stockings.
Directed by Antaeus Company member Armin Shimerman (The Crucible, Measure For Measure) William Shakespeare’s comic masterpiece dissects Love in all its many forms. Play on!
March 16 Reading:
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Pelican, Arden, or any standard edition with act, scene, and line numbers will work well
Schedule:
10:00-10:30AM PDT - Continental Breakfast
10:30AM-12:30PM - Seminar
12:30-2:00PM - Lunch provided
2:00-4:30PM - Play Performance
4:30-5:30PM - Post-play discussion
Tutor:
Jordan Hoffman
Cost:
$125 per attendee (includes play ticket). Click here to register.
Limited to ten participants.
Location:
110 East Broadway
Glendale, California 91205
Online Seminar Series
A Voice from the South by Anna Julia Cooper and The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois - Part Three
>> EVENT POSTPONED TO 2022 <<
"We too often mistake individuals’ honor for race development and so are ready to substitute pretty accomplishments for sound sense and earnest purpose."
"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery."
Reading Selection:
Part Three - Feminism, Social Service, Education, Race Politics
The Souls of Black Folk - Chapters 9-12
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Anika Prather and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Greek Philosophy
Free Community Seminar Series
The Second and Forth Wednesdays of each month
Next session is December 11, 2019
Why is Greek philosophy fundamental to the history of western civilization? This series, which includes readings from pre-socratic philosophers, leading up to Plato and Aristotle, will carefully work through the perennial questions these thinkers grappled with: What is knowledge? What is the best way to live a life? What is the best political system? What is the nature of the world? What is the nature of the divine?
The December 11 reading is -
Apology by Plato
Click the icon to download.
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM
Location:
Greater Goods
145 West El Roblar
Ojai, California 93023
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
The Book of Numbers
Tuesday Evenings - May 7 - July 23, 2024
The Agora Foundation's online series on the books of the Old Testament / Torah will continue with The Book of Numbers. The overall initiative is expected to last three to four years, with attendees choosing which book offerings to participate in.
The Book of Numbers (from Greek Ἀριθμοί, Arithmoi, lit. 'numbers'; Biblical Hebrew: בְּמִדְבַּר, Bəmīḏbar, lit. 'In [the] desert'; Latin: Liber Numeri) is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history. The name of the book comes from the two censuses taken of the Israelites. Numbers begins at Mount Sinai, where the Israelites have received their laws and covenant from God and God has taken up residence among them in the sanctuary. The task before them is to take possession of the Promised Land.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Tuesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees are encouraged to read their preferred translation of The Book of Numbers. Sessions will be facilitated by 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 nine-week series is $600. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series
Stoicism - Part IV -The Enchiridion (Handbook)
by Epictetus
Sunday, February 28, 2021
This series explores to varied aspects of Stoicism through the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. How best to live life, in the best and worst of times...
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Onsite Seminar and Play Performance
Nora (an adaptation of A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen)
at Antaeus Theatre
Sunday, May 26, 2024
"I’ve got to find out which view is the right one, society’s or mine…”
The Agora Foundation is thrilled to continue its partnership with Antaeus Theatre in Glendale, California, with a stage version of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House by Ingmar Bergman. Translated and Adapted by Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker, and directed by Cameron Watson (Top Girls, Picnic, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Little Foxes).
On Christmas Eve, Nora Helmer, whose world is built entirely around her domineering husband, must confront blackmail, financial ruin, the consequences of her past actions, and the unsettling truth about her life. The Antaeus play is influenced by Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of Ibsen's masterpiece.
May 26 Reading:
A Doll's House (play in its entirety) by Henrik Ibsen -
Penguin Classics (September 2016)
ISBN 978-0141194561
Schedule:
Continental Breakfast - 10:00-10:45AM
Seminar - 10:45AM-12:45PM
Lunch Provided - 12:45-2:00PM
Play Performance - 2:00-3:30PM
Discussion - 3:45-4:30PM
Tutors:
Jordan Hoffman and Andy Gilman
Special Event Cost:
$125
Location:
Antaeus Theatre
110 East Broadway
Glendale, California 91205
Online Seminar Series
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Saturday, July 27, 2024
“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.
July 27 Reading:
Lecture Twenty - Conclusions and Postscript
(pages 485-527)
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Penguin Classics; Later Printing edition
(December 16, 1982) - ISBN 978-0140390346
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
The Gene - An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2017)
Saturday, September 14, 2024
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.
September 14 Reading:
The Gene - An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Part Four - To Get the Genome; The Geographers; The Book of Man (pages 293-326)
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
The Romantic I/Eye
Sunday, September 15, 2024
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
Join us as we read explore these readings, with sessions about one month apart. Click here to visit The Romantic I/Eye Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
September 15 Reading:
Müller/Schubert — Die Winterreise
Franz Schubert's setting of Wilhelm Müller's Die Winterreise (Winter Journey), a cycle of twenty-four poems for piano and tenor. There are myriad recordings of the work, and participants are encouraged to listen to a few different versions prior to the seminar. Schubert himself transcribed the work for different voices.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Jordan Hoffman and Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Golden Bough by James Frazer
Saturday, September 7, 2024
“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.
September 7 Reading:
The Golden Bough by James Frazer -
Chapters XXVIII - The Killing of the Tree Spirit (pages 356-390)
Penguin Classics; Abridged edition (January 1998)
ISBN 978-0140189315
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Onsite Ojai Chautauqua Panel
Preparing for Wildland Fire in Ojai -
And Managing Costs in the Mean Time
Saturday, November 2, 2024
The subjects covered will include: Our developing response plans, What we learned from the Thomas Fire, What neighborhoods can do, Potentially conflicting priorities (ordinances that may need revision), and Our rising fire insurance costs. Panelists from fire prevention authorities, local government officials, and insurance representatives will be listed soon. The purpose of The Agora Foundation's Ojai Chautauqua panels is to engage Ventura County in civil discourse about controversial and highly passionate subjects. Civil discourse is dangerously absent from all aspects of contemporary life. The result of this failing is not only sad… it is dangerous. If we can develop this essential ability, we can begin to affect a positive change to many aspects of life that can extend far and wide.
Schedule:
3:00 - 5:00PM PDT
Location:
Matilija Autditorium
703 El Paseo Road
Ojai, California 93023
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
American Rhetoric: Lincoln Douglas Debates
DAY AND TIME CHANGE:
Tuesday Evenings - October 29 - December 17, 2024
There has never been anything like them, before or since. It is not the least part of the Lincoln-Douglas debates’ uniqueness that the texts of the debates were formed from what was a new phenomenon at the time, namely newspaper transcripts of entire speeches. In brackets within the texts of the two men’s speeches appear notes of crowd response or quotes of crowd members’ comments. Some of these are hilarious. There were seven debates between the two men all across Illinois, every one of them held in the open air, each three hours long. Much if not most of the audience stood for the three hours. The format of the debates was elegantly simple. There were no moderators, no restrictions on what was to be discussed, no buzzers, no mute buttons. Although there were no constraints on the subjects to be taken up, and although many matters arose in the course of the debates, the only subject really under consideration was slavery, which as Lincoln said, was the only problem which ever threatened the very existence of the United States.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Tuesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be mailed the text. Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This eight-week series is $500. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
The Imperative of Responsibility by Hans Jonas
POSTPONED TO 2025
"Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life."
In this collection of essays, published in 1984, Hans Jonas rethinks the foundations of ethics in light of the awesome transformations wrought by modern technology: the threat of nuclear war, ecological ravage, genetic engineering, and so on. Though informed by a deep reverence for human life, Jonas's ethics is grounded not in religion but in metaphysics, in a secular doctrine that makes explicit man's duties toward himself, his posterity, and the environment. We invite you join this online series, reading each essay about one month apart.
2025 Reading:
The Imperative of Responsibility by Hans Jonas
Chapters Two and Three - On Principles and Method, and Concerning Ends and Their Status in Reality (pages 25-78)
University of Chicago Press (October 1985)
ISBN 978-0226405971
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
American Rhetoric: the Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Saturday, January 11, 2025
There has never been anything like them, before or since. It is not the least part of the Lincoln-Douglas debates’ uniqueness that the texts of the debates were formed from what was a new phenomenon at the time, namely newspaper transcripts of entire speeches. In brackets within the texts of the two men’s speeches appear notes of crowd response or quotes of crowd members’ comments. There were no moderators, no restrictions on what was to be discussed, no buzzers, no mute buttons. Although there were no constraints on the subjects to be taken up, and although many matters arose in the course of the debates, the only subject really under consideration was slavery, which as Lincoln said, was the only problem which ever threatened the very existence of the United States.
In one of the greatest examples of the exercise of free speech in all our history, the burning issue at stake was freedom itself, and whether it could prevail against its hideous opposite, its negation. The initial speaker spoke for an hour; the other replied for an hour and a half; the first spoke again, in rejoinder, for half an hour. The first debate was held in the heat of late summer, the last in the chill of autumn, a few weeks before the election. Some of the debates were rather sparsely attended; others drew thousands. We invite you to join us as we read and discuss all eight debates, roughly one month apart.
January 11 Reading:
Ottawa Debate (August 21, 1858) - pages 1-41
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The Lincoln Studies Center Edition
University of Illinois Press; First Edition (July 2014)
ISBN-13 : 978-0252079924
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Romantic I/Eye
Saturday, February 8, 2025
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:
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
Join us as we read explore these readings, with sessions about one month apart. Click here to visit The Romantic I/Eye Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
February 8 Reading:
Poe — The Landscape Garden, William Wilson, and The Fall of the House of Usher
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutors:
Jordan Hoffman and Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Onsite Community Seminar Series
Modern Heroine Autobiographies
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
The genre 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 onsite series, reading autobiographies about one month apart.
March 25 Reading:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Chapters 17 to end
Readings in the Series:
The Story of my Life by Helen Keller
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Art and Writing of Georgia O'Keeffe
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - ISBN 978-0345514400
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir - ISBN 978-0060825195
The Fun of It by Amelia Earhart - ISBN 978-0915864553
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt - ISBN 978-0062355911
Schedule:
12:00-1:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue
Ojai, California 93023
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Thursday Evenings - September 19, 2024 - January 30, 2025
Why did the author of the matchless Middlemarch at last turn her pen to one of the most vexing questions of the late nineteenth century and of all European history? England had not only abolished slavery, but had emancipated, to one degree or another, its religious minorities over the preceding decades, and at the time of the novel’s publication, had a Jewish prime minister, albeit one who had converted to Anglicanism in boyhood. The sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been expelled from England en masse in 1290, almost six centuries before -- two centuries before their fellow Jews were expelled from Spain. Enter Deronda, wherein that most ancient European grudge, writ not only large but general, rooted in the rootless fantasy of religious fallacy, underlies the unease of a growingly comfortable society made secure by the exploits of a maritime empire – as it comes into the ken of one of the most acute observers of human character and psyche ever to write English prose.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be mailed the text. Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull and Dennis Gura. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 3 CEU credits for participating. This sixteen-week series is $950. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $100 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Foundations of Our Republic - The Federalist Papers Complete Series
Saturday, January 18, 2025
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 January 18 reading is:
Federalist Papers 37-40
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.
Free Onsite Ojai Chautauqua Panel
The City and the Valley of Ojai - Understanding and Enhancing the Relationship Between the City and County
Monday, December 2, 2024
An evening of conversation between Matt LaVere - District 1 County Supervisor, Ben Harvey - Ojai City Manager, and Andy Gilman - Director of the Agora Foundation
This free community event will explore the various boundaries between the City of Ojai and the Unincorporated Ojai Valley. How do these local governments collaborate, communicate, and work toward shared goals. Topics will include homelessness, land use, safety, and housing. Bring your questions and ideas!
Schedule:
5:30 - 7:00PM PST
Location:
The Ojai Retreat Cultural Center
160 Besant Road
Ojai, California 93023
Online Seminar Series
The Laws by Plato
RESCHEDULED TO: Saturday, December 7, 2024
“...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 7 Reading:
The Laws by Plato
Book 7 - Section 12 - Education
(pages 225-274, 788a-824a)
Penguin Classics (June 2005)
ASIN B01FIXK9JK
ISBN 9780140449846
Schedule (NOTE EARLIER TIME):
11:30AM-1:30PM PST
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Le Morte d'Arthur - by Thomas Malory -
Lancelot and Guinevere - Part One
Sunday, October 31, 2021
"In the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand." Join us as we move through these 15th century prose tales of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table.
Reading Selection:
Book III, Ch. 1
Book VI, Ch.s 1, 3-5, 10-12
Book XI, Ch.s 1-10
Book XII, Ch.s 1-10
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Zoe Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
Ramayana by Maharishi Valmiki Intensive
Thursday Evenings - May 4 - June 29, 2023
India's most beloved and enduring Epic, the Ramayana is one of the world's great literary masterpieces. Come get lost in the adventures of Prince Rama's betrayal, exile, and struggle to rescue his faithful wife, Sita, from the grasp of the demon Ravana. Included in the story are many extraordinary legends of India including the story of Hanuman, son of the Wind God, whose devotion to Prince Rama makes him a preeminent example of devotion throughout all of India even today. The Ramayana gives a window into the importance of duties and relationships and paints a picture of how to best lead a well-lived human life in civilized society. These lessons have proved timeless and are continually referred to and still consulted, for their spiritual, cultural, social, and entertaining teachings. This beloved epic is still profoundly relevant today and retold in countless art forms and modalities including spiritual lore, romance stories, murals, plays, dances, puppet shows, and cartoons throughout India and Southeast Asia.
Online seminars will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. All reading materials (in English translation) will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This nine-week series is $575. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
.jpg)
Online Seminar Series
Shakespeare in Britain and Greece: Comic, Tragic, Both
Sunday, December 15, 2024
In the geography of his poetic imagination, Shakespeare seems to find world enough in time -- a stage in every age -- from the worlds of mythical Greece and the mother of epic, the Trojan War (The Two Noble Kinsmen and Troilus and Cressida) to Britain before Merlin (King Lear) to the “pale fire” of Roman Greece (Timon of Athens) to the warped world of pagan Roman Britain (Cymbeline) to the zany (and not-so-) world of Mediterranean sea change (The Comedy of Errors and Pericles) to the “fog and filthy air” of medieval Scotland (Macbeth) to a world of Elizabethan goodwives that somehow includes Falstaff (The Merry Wives of Windsor). In these plays, the poet’s constant themes are love, betrayal, identity, disguise, given in about as many combinations and permutations as one could wish, romantic, comic, tragic, and blends thereof.
December 15 Reading:
Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare
Pelican – or any standard edition with line numbers will work well
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutors:
Eric Stull and Jordan Hoffman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Laws by Plato
Sunday, September 22, 2024
“...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.
September 22 Reading:
The Laws by Plato
Book 6 - Sections 10-11: Civil and Legal Administration and
Marriage and Related Topics
(pages 174-224, 751a-785b)
Penguin Classics (June 2005)
ASIN B01FIXK9JK
ISBN 9780140449846
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
What About Democracy is Worth Saving? -
Selections from Alexis de Tocqueville
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Alexis de Tocqueville's seminal work, Democracy in America, remains highly relevant for understanding ourselves and our institutions in the context of modern-day politics. As a result of his travels through the United States in the 1830’s, Tocqueville astutely analyzed the complexities of democracy, exploring themes such as individualism, egalitarianism, and the tension between majority rule and minority rights. Our discussion of this timeless classic should lead us to a clearer view of how the preservation of liberal democracy depends upon the spirited and enlightened engagement of its citizens. We invite you to join this six-part online series, taking place about one-month apart.
Sessions in the Series:
September 8
October 13
November 10
December 8
January 12
February 16
February 16 Reading:
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville -
Volume 2: Part 4
Chapter 1 - Equality Naturally Gives Men the Taste for Free Institutions
Chapter 2 - That the Ideas of Democratic Peoples in the Matter of Government Are Naturally Favorable to the Concentration of Powers
Chapter 3 - That the Sentiments of Democratic Peoples are in Accord with Their Ideas to Bring Them to Concentrate Power
Chapter 4 - On Some Particular and Accidental Causes That Serve to Bring a Democratic People to Centralize Power or Turn It Away from That
Chapter 6 - What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear [See also Note XXVII, p. 704]
Chapter 7 - Continuation of the Preceding Chapters
Chapter 8 - General View of the Subject
Schedule:
2:00-4:00PM PST
Tutor:
Karl Haigler
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Laws by Plato
Saturday, February 22, 2025
“...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.
February 22 Reading:
The Laws by Plato
Book 8 - Sections 13-15: Sports and Military Training, Problems of Sexual Conduct, Agriculture, Economics and Trade
(pages 275-309, 828a-850c)
Penguin Classics (June 2005)
ASIN B01FIXK9JK
ISBN 9780140449846
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Transcendentalism
Monday, May 5, 2025
"Humankind is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature."
Transcendentalism was a philosophical, spiritual, and literary movement that developed in the early 19th century in the northeastern United States. Deep beliefs in the goodness of nature, and of humanity as a part of that nature, were central expressions of the movement’s thinkers and writers. Self reliance, individualism, and divine encounter with everyday experience also characterized the transcendental spirit. A strong feature of American societal development, the approach generally embraced intuition over empiricism, and was cautious of progress that insulated the individual from dynamic, authentic experience. We invite you to join us for monthly Monday evening sessions (generally taking place the first Monday evening of each month), exploring the early, middle, and late thinking of the approach. Attendees need not participate in all of the sessions to benefit, as each reading will stand on its own. Authors in the series will include:
Jonathan Edwards
William Ellery Channing
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman
Margaret Fuller
Emily Dickinson
Frederick Douglas
Nathanial Hawthorne
May 5 Reading:
Song of Myself by Walt Whitman (Verses 8-16)
Schedule:
5:30-7:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Onsite Community Seminar Series
The Glory of Art
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
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, taking place the second Tuesday of each month at the Ojai Library, 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.”
Works discussed will include selections from:
– On Beauty by Plotinus
– Books on Architecture by Vitruvius
– Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
– The Arts and Crafts of Today by William Morris
– The Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinski
– Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier
– Some Memories of Drawings by Georgia O’Keefe
– Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin
– The Search for the Real by Hans Hoffman
– Man the Musician by Victor Zuckerkandl
– Image-making and the Freedom of Man by Hans Jonas
– I Shock Myself by Beatrice Wood
– Remote Control by Barbara Kruger
The December 10 reading is:
Walter Benjamin - Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction. Artwork will also be shown.
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM PST
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue
Ojai, California 93023
Agora Foundation Online Seminar Series -
The Golden Bough by James Frazer
“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.
Free Community Seminar Series
Greek Philosophy
The Second and Fourth Wednesdays
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
12:00-1:00PM
Why is Greek philosophy fundamental to the history of western civilization? This series will carefully work through the perennial questions these thinkers grappled with: What is knowledge? What is the best way to live a life? What is the nature of the world?
December 11 reading:
Location:
145 West El Roblar in Ojai
Free Community Seminar Series
Eastern Classics
The First and Third Thursdays
Thursday, December 19, 2019
12:00-1:00PM
Like the west, the east has its own tradition of influential texts that address the perennial questions of human kind. Centering around the bodies of work from China, Japan, and India, this series will focus on the texts of Taoism, Confucius, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
December 19 reading:
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue in Ojai
Online Seminar Series
Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
by Galileo - Continued
Saturday, April 24, 2021
"To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents."
Reading:
Aristotle - On the Heavens - Book Two, Chapter 14
Galileo: First Day, page 101 to Second Day - page 107, and
Second Day - page 113, first full paragraph to page 182, middle of page
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Larry Shields
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Next Event in the series:
Sunday, November 19 - 12:00-2:00PM PST
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
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Plato on Love and Language - Three Dialogues
Gorgias, Symposium, Phaedrus
Thursday Evenings - July 11 - September 12, 2024
What does the love of speeches have to do with love simply? Is there human love without language? Does the language of love breed the love of language, or vice versa? If the ability to evoke love by way of words is a power, is this power – to re-present things either as they are or (by playing a game of mimetic manipulation) to make them appear other than as they are -- the origin of politics? And how does this power turn speech into action, rather as the sight of the beloved moves one to deeds of daring or desperation or devotion? Why does the city, the polis, in which politics comes to be, seem to bring forth both the sophist and the philosopher, and why do they look alike to the city? Plato’s Gorgias gives us a conversation between the two and raises a question about what they look like to the young one aspiring to the life of a citizen. In the Symposium, fashionable citizens drink to love by speaking about it, and one wonders if love makes an appearance, perhaps only a cameo, and whether the conditions present in the conversation are ripe for its entrance. Are love and speech coming together or flying apart? In the Phaedrus, we go outside the walls of the city, to enact somehow, in a one-on-one conversation about love and writing, what the city seems to need within, if it is truly to be one: friendship -- upon the gentle ground of which love and speech may find a place to meet, if they can devote themselves to the love of wisdom. Can rhetoric (child of the goddess Persuasion?) find a happy home in the city after all?
Online seminars in this series will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be mailed the texts. Sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This ten-week series is $600. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Like the west, the east has its own tradition of influential texts that address the perennial questions of human kind. Centering around the bodies of work from China, Japan, and India, this series will focus on the texts of Taoism, Confucius, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
Bhagavad Gita - Chapters 8 (verse 18) - Chapter 9
Schedule:
5:30-6:30PM PDT
Location:
Online. Click Here.
Meeting ID: 810 4367 0999
“The power of gradually losing all feeling of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense or historical culture.”
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Schedule:
6:00-8:00PM PDT, both evenings.
Location:
Online Seminar Series
Transcendentalism
Monday, January 6, 2025
"Humankind is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature."
Transcendentalism was a philosophical, spiritual, and literary movement that developed in the early 19th century in the northeastern United States. Deep beliefs in the goodness of nature, and of humanity as a part of that nature, were central expressions of the movement’s thinkers and writers. Self reliance, individualism, and divine encounter with everyday experience also characterized the transcendental spirit. A strong feature of American societal development, the approach generally embraced intuition over empiricism, and was cautious of progress that insulated the individual from dynamic, authentic experience. We invite you to join us for monthly Monday evening sessions (generally taking place the first Monday evening of each month), exploring the early, middle, and late thinking of the approach. Attendees need not participate in all of the sessions to benefit, as each reading will stand on its own. Authors in the series will include:
Jonathan Edwards
William Ellery Channing
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman
Margaret Fuller
Emily Dickinson
Frederick Douglas
Nathanial Hawthorne
January 6 Reading:
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Chapters 15 to end - Winter Animals... to
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Pages 114 to end
Schedule:
5:30-7:00PM PST
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
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, Kafka, and Mary Oliver
Schedule:
2:00 - 3:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
113 South Montgomery Street in Ojai,California
Eastern Classics
Free Community Seminar Series
The First and Third Thursdays of each month
Next session is December 19, 2019
Like the west, the east has its own tradition of influential texts that address the perennial questions of human kind. Centering around the bodies of work from China, Japan, and India, this series will focus on the texts of Taoism, Confucius, Buddhism, and Hinduism. We invite you to join us.
The December 19 reading is:
The Tao Te Ching - Chapter Five
Click icon to download, or click here
for all chapters.
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue
Ojai, California 93023
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"? Are they based on nature or consent? Are they inalienable?
January 13 reading:
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue in Ojai
Free Community Seminar Series
The Foundations of Our Republic
The Second and Fourth Mondays
Monday, January 13, 2020
5:30-6:30PM
Online Seminar
Free Community Seminar Series
The Foundations of Our Republic
Monday, April 20, 2020
5:30-6:30PM PST
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"? Are they based on nature or consent? Are they inalienable?
April 20 reading:
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Glory of Art
Saturday, March 9, 2024
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 March 9 reading is:
Vitruvius on Architecture - Book II -
On Dwellings and Substances
Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00PM PST
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Onsite Community Film Series
Compelling Creators: Women in Film
Friday evenings, starting at 8:00PM
The Agora Foundation and the Ojai Valley Brewery & Side Street Wine are teaming up again to kick off their latest free series – Compelling Creators: Women in Film – taking place on Friday evenings, beginning at 8:00PM. Purchase your beverages and food onsite, with Slice and Run Pizza ready to serve. No reservations required. Fantastic films in our fantastic community... what could be better?
Series Schedule
August 2 – Juno
Directed by Jason Reitman and Written by Diablo Cody
August 16 – Big
Directed by Penny Marshall and Written by Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg
August 30 – Lady Bird
Directed and Written by Greta Gerwig
September 13 – Lost in Translation
Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola
Schedule:
8:00-10:00PM PDT
Location:
Ojai Valley Brewery and Side Street Winery
307 Bryant Street in Ojai, California
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Hero with 1,000 Faces by Joseph Campbell
Tuesday Afternoons - April 19 - June 7
What is the agony of growth?
“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth.
Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help
the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization."
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published in 1949, is a work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell, in which the author discusses his theory of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myths. Campbell explores the theory that mythological narratives frequently share a fundamental structure. The similarities of these myths brought Campbell to write his book in which he details the structure of the monomyth. He calls the motif of the archetypal narrative, "the hero's adventure". The book has influenced a number of artists, filmmakers, musicians, producers and poets.
We invite you to join us as we explore this highly affecting work in a small group, one chapter per week for eight weeks, taking place on Tuesday afternoons from 12:00-1:30PM Pacific Time, as we explore this influential work. All reading materials will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by tutors experienced in shared inquiry and the Socratic method. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participation as requested.
This nine-week series is $275. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wednesday Evenings - January 24 - April 17, 2024
Crime and Punishment was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. The book is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is often cited as one of the greatest works of world literature.
Through brilliant dialogue and vivid characters the book explores the consequences of nihilism, utilitarianism, and rationalism, extending the ideas the author earlier animates in Notes from Underground. Raskolnikov, our main character and point of entry, exemplifies the potentially disastrous hazards contained in some developing western ideals. Questions of morality, kindness, sympathy, faith and pity come to the fore, as well as the antitheses of pride, contempt, and solipsism. The moving conflicts ask us all to consider torment and disorder, but also higher social goods, right and wrong, and the potential of redemption. Dynamically portraying mysticism, psychological struggle, and social inequity, Crime and Punishment is an emotionally engaging pinnacle of art. We invite you to join us over 13 online sessions as we explore this work in the spirit of civil discourse, camaraderie, and adventure.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Wednesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Books will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by Elizabeth Reyes. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This thirteen-week series is $750. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
EVENT SOLD OUT
Online Seminar
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Saturday, January 23, 2021
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutors:
Anika Prather and Paul O'Reilly
Please email the Agora Foundation if you would like to attend a second future offering of this event.
Free Onsite Community Film Series
Alfred Hitchcock Monday Movie Nights
Monday Evenings, June 26 - August 28
The Agora Foundation and the Ojai Valley Brewery & Winery are teaming up to host Hitchcock Monday Movie Nights! Films now begin at 8:00PM. Purchase your food and beverages onsite and no reservations required. Click on the Hitchcock Monday Movie Night page for videos, menus, articles, and more. Fantastic films in our fantastic community... what could be better?
The August 28 Final Film:
North by Northwest - (1959)
Schedule:
8:00 - 10:00PM PDT
Location:
307 Bryant Street in Ojai, California
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Selections from Philosophical Investigations
by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Thursday Evenings - January 6 to 27
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein was published posthumously in 1953. Within the analytic tradition, the book is considered by many as being one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century, putting forth the view that conceptual confusions surrounding language use are at the root of most philosophical problems. The book paved the way for philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century and continues to influence contemporary philosophers working in the philosophy of language and mind.
“Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.” We invite you join us as we explore this challenging and highly influential work.
These four online seminars will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:30PM Pacific Time. All reading materials (in English translation) will be supplied and our seminar leader will be Walter Sterling of St. John’s College. The group will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participation as requested.
Online Seminar Series
The Work of Flannery O'Connor
Good Country People by O'Connor and Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologiae – Question 49, Article 3 on Prudence (below)
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. Her writing is exquisite and reflects her Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic style and relied heavily on regional settings and troubling characters.
"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic... The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism... When I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."
Despite her secluded life, her writing reveals an an incredible grasp of human behavior. O'Connor gave many lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook in connection with her faith, voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and supporting the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. We invite you to join us as we read a collection of her work, meeting about about once per month online.
September 18 Reading:
Good Country People
The Complete Stories - Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (January 1971)
ISBN - 978-0374515362
and Aquinas on Prudence
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar
Series on Love -
Nicomachean Ethics (Book 8 and 9 edited) by Aristotle
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Othello said about himself that he “loved not wisely but too well.” It seems that one can love things too much, but can one really love someone too much? Does the answer to that question depend on what is meant by love? Perhaps more fundamentally: are there different kinds of love? This series will devote itself to a discussion of the mystery and majesty of love.
Future Readings in the Series:
Augustine, Sermon on Love
Dostoevsky, A Gentle Creature
Ibsen, A Doll’s House
Shakespeare, Othello
Sigrid Unset, Gunnar’s Daughter
Flannery O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First
C.S. Lewis, Four Loves
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Paul O'Reilly
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
by Immanuel Kant - Session Three
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Is it possible to know what is morally right?
In this short work, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) offers a foundation for a theory of ethics based on the values of freedom and autonomy and how they relate to an Enlightenment conception of persons as rational, capable of their own intellectual discernment, and therefore endowed with morality and made responsible for their behavior. As such, Kant helps to provide the individual rights perspective that is often counterbalanced by collectivist tendencies in Western democracies and, in so doing, offers one of the key moral frameworks that continues to inform public debate.
In this analysis of moral concepts, Kant takes what he claims to be our average, ordinary intuitions about ethics and formalizes them into a philosophical theory that, he believes, we each already hold in nascent form. His arguments are tight and compelling, though not without interesting and revealing philosophical problems. This fact and the foundational role of the text in ethics make the Groundwork one of the most studied of all philosophical texts.
This three-part online series will explore one section per session, about one month apart.
May 28 Reading:
Section Two - Second Half
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Anthony Beavers
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
The Foundations of Our Republic, Take II
Free Community Seminar Series
The Second and Forth Mondays of each month
Next session is December 23
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?
The December 23 reading is -
the Federalist Paper 10
Click the icon to download.
Schedule:
5:30 - 6:30PM
Readings:
Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, selected Federalist Papers, selected Anti-Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution, selections from Democracy in American, Dred Scott Decision and Dissenting View (edited), selected Lincoln speeches, Lincoln Douglass Debates (edited), Plessy v. Ferguson and Dissenting View (edited), Brown v. Board of Education, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Proposed Equal Rights Amendment, UN Declaration of Human Rights
Location:
111 East Ojai Avenue
Ojai, California 93023
Online Seminar Series
Ocean and Underworld -
Purgatorio by Dante - Part Two
Sunday, June 6, 2021
What mysteries are hidden underwater and deep in the underworld? Will one who explores these realms discover ancestors, gods, monsters,... or even oneself? This series will consider the ocean and the underworld as depicted in these classic literary texts.
June 6 reading:
Dante, Purgatorio - Cantos 17-34
Future Readings in the Series:
Cervantes, Don Quixote - The Cave of Montesinos
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Melville, Moby Dick (selections)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Stoicism - Part V - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Books 1-6
Saturday, May 1, 2021
This series explores to varied aspects of Stoicism through the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. How best to live life, in the best and worst of times...
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
American History Intensive - Section Three:
The Civil War to the 21st Century
Wednesday Evenings -
April 20, 2022 to November 9, 2022.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.” By most accounts, America is a profound experiment whose effect on the world cannot be overstated. Through a keen sense of destiny and a wealth of natural resources, the country has helped to transform political structures globally, as well as humankind’s vision of itself. The meaning of the “shot heard round the world" in 1775 is still unfolding, with no guarantee that a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” By varying degrees, the nation continues to strive to live up to its principles, and the struggle for equality for all its citizens continues to be a central difficulty.
Through the lenses of race, religion, politics, education, media, commerce, science, and culture, this series will explore the history of America through three four-month sections, and will attempt to find answers to our essential American questions: How can we describe the American Mind? What are the country’s core values and central tenets? Can those core values and central tenets endure? How has America’s role on the international stage changed over time?
Online seminars will take place on Wednesday evenings, 5:30-7:30PM Pacific Time. All reading materials will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by tutors experienced is shared inquiry and the Socratic method. Groups will be limited to 12 participants and no prior knowledge is required. The Six-Month Weekly Series is $800 and is not included in the recurring subscription package, but subscribers receive a $100 discount. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series
Michel de Montaigne, Part III
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Montaigne is widely appreciated both for his literary innovations as well as for his contributions to philosophy. As a writer, he is credited with having developed a new form of literary expression, the essay. As a philosopher, he is best known for his skepticism, which profoundly influenced major figures in philosophy such as Descartes and Pascal. Join us as we explore one of the most important figures of the French Renaissance.
September 6th Reading:
Of Experience
Future Readings in the Series:
Apology for Raymond Sebond, Raymond Sebond, To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die, On Schoolmaster’s Learning, On Practice, On the Armor of the Parthians, On Cato the Younger, On Democritus and Heraclitus, On the Vanity of words, On Books, On the Power of the Imagination,
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Walter Sterling
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
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 Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
The Gene - An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2017)
POSTPONED - New Date to be announced soon
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
Modern Heroine Autobiographies
POSTPONED - formerly taking place
Saturday, February 3, 2024
The genre 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.
POSTPONED - former February 3 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 PST
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
FREE EVENT - Online Seminar Series
US Supreme Court—Decisions and Interpretations
Sunday, March 3, 2024
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.
Special Free March 3 Event - TRUMP v. ANDERSON (Colorado Case, SCOTUS)
The timely final session of the series will focus on the Colorado ballot case currently under review by SCOTUS. The Supreme Court may issue its ruling on the Colorado case immediately before our meeting.
How will SCOTUS justices instruct us in interpreting the 14th Amendment and its applicability to the current controversy? Participants will have the opportunity to build on our citizen’s understanding of the Constitution and the Court’s role in real time.
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, March 3
March 3 Readings:
1) Colorado Supreme Court Ruling - December 19, 2023
2) Trump v. Anderson - Supreme Court Petition Brief
3) Congressional Research Service - The Insurrection Bar to Office:
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment
4) Click here to listen to the February 8 oral arguments
and download the transcript
Schedule:
2:30-4:30PM PST
(please note later than usual weekend time)
Tutor:
Karl Haigler
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Shakespearean Marriage, Italian-Style (Mostly) -
& One by Marlowe!
Sunday, May 5, 2024
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) (Penguin - 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
May 5 Reading:
Othello
(Pelican - ISBN 9780143128618)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Eric Stull
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 PST
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series - POSTPONED
Epistemology - Part XI -
Meditations by Descartes, continued
Future date to be anounced
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How do we know that we know? How does knowledge differ from belief? This series will include works from Plato, Aristotle, Empiricus, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Popper, and others. These three seminars on Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy will include John Cottingham’s selection from the seven sets of “Objections and Replies,” which accompanied the Meditations’ original publication.
Next Reading:
Fourth and Fifth Meditations, and selected Objections and Replies:
pp. 42-56 and 113-135 (in the second Cambridge edition)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Le Morte d'Arthur - by Thomas Malory - Book Three
Sunday, May 30, 2021
"In the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand." Join us as we move through these 15th century prose tales of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Zoe Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The New Testament
Saturday, April 1, 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.
April 1 Reading:
Paul - Epistle to the Romans (attendees may use any translation they prefer)
Schedule:
12:30-2:30PM PDT (please note later than usual weekend time)
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
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.
FREE EVENT - Online Seminar Series
US Supreme Court—Decisions and Interpretations
Sunday, May 5, 2024
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.
Special Free May 5 Event - TRUMP v. United States (Immunity)
The immunity case in Donald J. Trump v. United States will center on one simple sentence: “whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
May 5 Materials:
1) Congressional Research Service March 4 Legal Sidebar
2) April 25 SCOTUS Oral Arguments Audio and Transcript
Schedule:
2:30-4:30PM PDT
(please note later than usual weekend time)
Tutor:
Karl Haigler
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Is Natural Law Real?
Saturday, August 20, 2022
The term natural law is a little hazy. Is natural law simply a more authoritative version of positive law? And if that is true, how might we understand how the founders of the American republic came to believe in the proposition that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights which are self-evident truths? Conversely, does science and civil law show us that there are no natural laws, rather only values?
If natural law is real is it grounded in the metaphysical or in something else? How do we reconcile the problems of the is and ought, skepticism, positivism, notions of right and wrong, teleology, scientism, the connection between virtue and happiness, and human dignity.
We invite you to join us as we attempt to clarify what natural law means. We will read and discuss works by Sophocles, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Thrasymachus (in Plato), Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, the American founders, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr, as well as the The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, among other works.
Reading for August 20:
Selections from Cicero - On the Republic Bk3; P 32-43 and Bk6; P 9-29, and
On the Laws Bk1; P 22-63 and Bk2; P 7-13.
Oxford University Press; Reissue edition (July 2009)
ISBN - 978-0199540112 (or Kindle version)
Alternate versions:
(1) Cambridge University Press; 2nd edition (May 2017) - ISBN - 978-1316505564
(2) Cambridge University Press (December 1999) - ISBN - 978-0521459594
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carl Bobkoski
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Shakespeare and Plutarch: Roman Plays, Roman Lives
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Although more than four of Shakespeare’s plays are set in Roman times, four are set either in Rome itself or wherever large events, the results of forces variously centrifugal and centripetal, decided the fate of Roman power at any given moment. Three of his plays take place in the historical hurly-burly of the Roman Republic, over a nearly 500-year period from its early days to its smashing collapse a few decades before the Christian era. One of these three, Coriolanus, is set in early Republican Rome; the other two, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, at the end of it. The other of the four, Titus Andronicus, is set in a shadowy, largely fictional world of late Imperial Rome, in a time that would have been, chronologically, long after the other three. Titus, set the latest, nevertheless appears to be the first Roman play Shakespeare wrote, and is the least accomplished as a work of art. The three mostly historical plays draw their material directly from Plutarch’s Lives, that biographical treasury of the ancient world; Titus, unsurprisingly, does not – indeed, could not. To read these four plays, interspersed with the corresponding Roman lives to be found in Plutarch preceding each play in turn, may afford an illuminating perspective on some fascinating Romans and the ways in which they have come down to us. Except for Titus, which, though chronologically last, will be read first, the reading of the lives and plays will circle back after Titus to the early Republic to follow the historical chronology of the stories they tell. Thus, the seven seminars (four on Shakespeare, three on Plutarch) in the series: Titus Andronicus, Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus, Coriolanus, Plutarch’s Lives of Caesar and Brutus, Julius Caesar, Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Antony and Cleopatra.
June 12 Reading:
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Eric Stull
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
Anguish and the Absurd - Part VIII
The Master and Margarita (in four parts)
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Saturday, May 15, 2021
This series will explore the troubling world of the absurd through the writings of Kafka, Gogol, Camus, Sartre, Borges, Beckett, Bulgakov, and others.
May 15 Reading:
Book Two, Chapters 26-32 (end)
Schedule:
10:00AM-12:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Paul Herder and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Onsite Ojai City Council Candidate Forum
Oak Grove School - 220 West Lomita in Ojai, California
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Co-Sponsored by the Agora Foundation (the Ojai Chautauqua series), the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce, and the Ojai Valley News, this will be a great opportunity to hear from the candidates for Ojai's City Council and to ask your own questions. The event is free and will also be live streamed on to various outlets.
Schedule:
5:30-7:30PM PDT
Moderators:
Andy Gilman of the Agora Foundation and Laura Rearwin Ward of the Ojai Valley News
Location:
Oak Grove School - 220 West Lomita in Ojai
Live Streamed:
Meeting ID: 884 1425 5989
Passcode: 443433
Online Seminar Series
Locke's Essay
Sunday, July 9, 2023
What assumptions, perhaps unexamined, underlie our opinions on such subjects as individual rights, tolerance and the role of government? 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 on political issues and foster mutual understanding?
John Locke, whose words are echoed in the Declaration of Independence and whose ideas informed the framers of the U.S. Constitution thought the study of philosophy had that power. He embarked on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding following an impasse among friends in a discussion of subjects of morality and religion. He writes, “After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong course; and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see, what objects our understandings were, or were not fitted to deal with.”
Join us as we discuss Locke’s study of human understanding, his examination of those philosophical questions which underpin his political insights.
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.
July 9 Reading:
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
Abridged and Edited by Kenneth P. Winkler
End of the Essay, excerpts from The Stillingfleet Correspondence (pages 323-357)
ISBN 978-0-87220-216-0
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Natural Law - The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
Sunday, July 16, 2023
The term natural law is a little hazy. Is natural law simply a more authoritative version of positive law? And if that is true, how might we understand how the founders of the American republic came to believe in the proposition that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights which are self-evident truths? Conversely, does science and civil law show us that there are no natural laws, rather only values?
If natural law is real is it grounded in the metaphysical or in something else? How do we reconcile the problems of the is and ought, skepticism, positivism, notions of right and wrong, teleology, scientism, the connection between virtue and happiness, and human dignity.
July 16 Reading:
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis (entire book) -
HarperOne (April 2015)
ISBN 978-0060652944
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carl Bobkoski
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
The Work of Flannery O'Connor
The Enduring Chill by O'Connor and
Question 83, Article 2 - Aquinas on Prayer
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. Her writing is exquisite and reflects her Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic style and relied heavily on regional settings and troubling characters.
"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic... The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism... When I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."
Despite her secluded life, her writing reveals an an incredible grasp of human behavior. O'Connor gave many lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook in connection with her faith, voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and supporting the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. We invite you to join us as we read a collection of her work, meeting about about once per month online.
January 27 Reading:
The Enduring Chill
The Complete Stories - Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (January 1971)
ISBN - 978-0374515362, and Question 83, Article 2 - Aquinas on Prayer
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Epistemology - Part VII -
Posterior Analytics (Book 1, Chapters 1-4) by Aristotle
Saturday, October 2, 2021
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How do we know what we know? How does knowledge differ from belief? This series will include works from Plato, Aristotle, Empiricus, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Popper, and others.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Love - Selections from Thomas Aquinas - Part III
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Othello said about himself that he “loved not wisely but too well.” It seems that one can love things too much, but can one really love someone too much? Does the answer to that question depend on what is meant by love? Perhaps more fundamentally: are there different kinds of love? This series will devote itself to a discussion of the mystery and majesty of love.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Readings in the Series:
Plato, Symposium
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Bk. 8 and 9 edited)
Aquinas, Selections
Augustine, Sermon on Love
Dostoevsky, A Gentle Creature
Ibsen, A Doll’s House
Shakespeare, Othello
Sigrid Unset, Gunnar’s Daughter
Flannery O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First
C.S. Lewis, Four Loves
Tutor:
Paul O'Reilly
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Ocean and Underworld -
Paradiso by Dante - Part One
Saturday, September 11, 2021
What mysteries are hidden underwater and deep in the underworld? Will one who explores these realms discover ancestors, gods, monsters,... or even oneself? This series will consider the ocean and the underworld as depicted in these classic literary texts.
September 11 reading:
Dante, Paradiso - Cantos 1-16
Future Readings in the Series:
Cervantes, Don Quixote - The Cave of Montesinos
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Melville, Moby Dick (selections)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Schedule:
12:30-2:30PM PDT (please note later time)
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Leibniz
Sunday, December 3, 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.
December 3 Reading:
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
Hackett Publishing Company (March 1989)
ISBN 978-0872200623
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Is Natural Law Real? - Part II
Saturday, October 23, 2021
The term natural law is a little hazy. Is natural law simply a more authoritative version of positive law? And if that is true, how might we understand how the founders of the American republic came to believe in the proposition that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights which are self-evident truths? Conversely, does science and civil law show us that there are no natural laws, rather only values?
If natural law is real is it grounded in the metaphysical or in something else? How do we reconcile the problems of the is and ought, skepticism, positivism, notions of right and wrong, teleology, scientism, the connection between virtue and happiness, and human dignity.
We invite you to join us as we attempt to clarify what natural law means. We will read and discuss works by Sophocles, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Thrasymachus (in Plato), Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, the American founders, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr, as well as the The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, among other works.
Reading for Saturday, October 23:
Selections from Heraclitus, Protagoras, and Plato’s Theaetetus
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carl Bobkoski
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.
Special Onsite Seminar and Play Performance
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Antaeus Theatre in Glendale, California
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Hamlet is considered among the most powerful and influential works of world literature, with a story capable of seemingly endless retelling and adaptation. It was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime and still ranks among his most performed. Join us as we discuss the play in the morning, have lunch, and see the play performed at Antaeus Theatre in Glendale, California. The seminar fee is $125, which includes the mailed book, continental breakfast, lunch, and theatre admission. Scholarships are available for LA County high school teachers. Antaeus requires proof of full vaccination to enter the building. Masks must also be worn at all times inside the building.
Schedule:
10:00AM - Continental Breakfast
10:30AM - 12:30PM - Seminar
12:30-2:00PM - Lunch
2:00-5:00 - Play Performance
5:00-5:30 - Closing Discussion with Artists
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Antaeus Theatre - 110 East Broadway in Glendale, California
Online Seminar Series
Shakespeare and Plutarch: Roman Plays, Roman Lives
REVISED DATE - Saturday, August 27, 2022
Although more than four of Shakespeare’s plays are set in Roman times, four are set either in Rome itself or wherever large events, the results of forces variously centrifugal and centripetal, decided the fate of Roman power at any given moment. Three of his plays take place in the historical hurly-burly of the Roman Republic, over a nearly 500-year period from its early days to its smashing collapse a few decades before the Christian era. One of these three, Coriolanus, is set in early Republican Rome; the other two, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, at the end of it. The other of the four, Titus Andronicus, is set in a shadowy, largely fictional world of late Imperial Rome, in a time that would have been, chronologically, long after the other three. Titus, set the latest, nevertheless appears to be the first Roman play Shakespeare wrote, and is the least accomplished as a work of art. The three mostly historical plays draw their material directly from Plutarch’s Lives, that biographical treasury of the ancient world; Titus, unsurprisingly, does not – indeed, could not. To read these four plays, interspersed with the corresponding Roman lives to be found in Plutarch preceding each play in turn, may afford an illuminating perspective on some fascinating Romans and the ways in which they have come down to us. Except for Titus, which, though chronologically last, will be read first, the reading of the lives and plays will circle back after Titus to the early Republic to follow the historical chronology of the stories they tell. Thus, the seven seminars (four on Shakespeare, three on Plutarch) in the series: Titus Andronicus, Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus, Coriolanus, Plutarch’s Lives of Caesar and Brutus, Julius Caesar, Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Antony and Cleopatra.
August 27 Reading:
Coriolanus by Shakespeare
Penguin Classics (April 2018) - ISBN 978-0143132271
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Work of Flannery O'Connor
A Late Encounter with the Enemy by O'Connor and Question 2, Article 2 - Aquinas on Happiness
Saturday, November 12, 2022
Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. Her writing is exquisite and reflects her Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic style and relied heavily on regional settings and troubling characters.
"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic... The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism... When I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."
Despite her secluded life, her writing reveals an an incredible grasp of human behavior. O'Connor gave many lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook in connection with her faith, voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and supporting the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. We invite you to join us as we read a collection of her work, meeting about about once per month online.
September 18 Reading:
A Late Encounter with the Enemy
The Complete Stories - Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (January 1971)
ISBN - 978-0374515362, and Question 2, Article 2 - Aquinas on Happiness
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The New Testament
- EVENT POSTPONED TO 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.
Reading:
Acts of the Apostles (attendees may use any translation they prefer)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
To be determined
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Le Morte d'Arthur - by Thomas Malory - Book Four
Saturday, June 19, 2021
"In the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand." Join us as we move through these 15th century prose tales of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table.
Schedule:
12:30-2:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Zoe Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Oceans and Underworld, Part III
Aristophanes - The Frogs
Saturday, September 12, 2020
What mysteries are hidden underwater and deep in the underworld? Will one who explores these realms discover ancestors, gods, monsters,... or even oneself? This series will consider the ocean and the underworld as depicted in these classic literary texts.
Future Readings in the Series:
Lucian, A True Story
Virgil, Aeneid - Books 3, 4, 5, 6
Cervantes, Don Quixote - The Cave of Montesinos
Dante, Inferno (selections)
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Melville, Moby Dick (selections)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
An Introduction to Martin Heidegger - Part Six
Sunday, June 26, 2022
This series of seminars is intended to serve as an introduction to the thought of Martin Heidegger. It will involve the reading of Heidegger speeches from the 1930s, a period of time that saw Heidegger become a supporter of National Socialism in Germany. A controversial figure in philosophical and political terms, he has been called the most influential, “greatest thinker” of the 20th Century. In addition to his speeches, we will read his post-war publication, The Question Concerning Technology and selected lectures found in What Is Called Thinking?
June 26 Reading:
What is Called Thinking by Martin Heidegger
Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (March 1976), ISBN 006090528X
Lectures IV, V, and X in Part 2
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Karl Haigler
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Onsite Seminar and Panel - Special Event
with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Saturday, February 1, 2025
"Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry."
A Sand County Almanac is a 1949 non-fiction book by American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold. Describing the land around the author's home in Sauk County, Wisconsin, the collection of essays advocate Leopold's idea of a "land ethic", or a responsible relationship existing between people and the land they inhabit. The book has had a far-reaching influence and has been described as "one of the benchmark titles of the ecological movement", "a major influence on American attitudes toward our natural environment” and is recognized as a classic piece of outdoor literature, rivaling Thoreau's Walden and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The Agora Foundation and the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy are partnering to host this one-day event to honor the incredible achievement of Aldo Leopold and the legacy and imperative we have inherited.
Reading:
Selections from A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition (May 2020)
ISBN 978-0197500262
Schedule:
Morning Seminar and Presentation - A Sand County Almanac
Limited to 20 attendees (SOLD OUT)
a) 9:30-10:00AM - Continental breakfast in Oak Grove’s Main House
b) 10:00-10:30AM - Introductory presentation -
The Wisdom of the Sierra Madre: Apache, Leopold, and his Land Ethic - Richard Knight - CSU
c) 10:30AM-12:00PM - Seminar Discussion lead by Andy Gilman and Richard Knight
d) 12:00-1:00PM - Vegetarian Lunch provided. (Lunch attendance still open)
Afternoon Events
Limited to 120 attendees
e) 1:00-2:30PM - Introduction and Film Presentation in Oak Grove’s Student Center
f) 2:30-3:30PM - Panel Discussion on Aldo Leopold, the land ethic, and Ojai conservation
Moderated by Jon Christensen - UCLA, Richard Knight - CSU, Tom Maloney and Roger Essick - OVLC
Costs:
Complete (Reading, Continental Breakfast, Seminar, Lunch, Film, and Panel) - $75
Lunch only - $25
Afternoon Film and Panel only - $10
Location:
220 West Lomita
Ojai, California 93023
Online Seminar Series
I and Thou by Martin Buber - Part IV
Sunday, May 1, 2022
Published in 1923, I and Thou (German Ich und Du) cemented Martin Buber’s already substantive reputation in Weimar Germany, and, following its first 1937 translation, in the English philosophic, theologic and psychological circles. Yet for all its popularity, and Martin Buber’s eminence in those circles and Jewish intellectual circles, the text remains elusive, poetic, and peculiar. We take for granted Buber’s arguments for “dialogic” relationships, but in knowing the name of the text, we often miss the path he illumines in the forest of words we speak.
As Jorge Luis Borges commented, “….I remember reading, some thirty years ago, the works of Martin Buber — I thought of them as being wonderful poems. Then, when I went to Buenos Aires, I read a book by a friend of mine, Dujovne, and I found in its pages, much to my astonishment, that Martin Buber was a philosopher and that all his philosophy lay in the books I had read as poetry. Perhaps I had accepted those books because they came to me through poetry, through suggestion, through the music of poetry, and not as arguments…”
No Jewish thinker has had as much broad influence in philosophy, theology, and psychology in the West in the 20th more than Martin Buber. His seminal work, I and Thou, supplies a commonly-used tag line, yet is thick and difficult to read, so much so that his translator notes…”Buber’s delight in language get between him and his readers…”
What is the nature of the dialogue Buber encourages us to seek? How carefully must we tread in such dialogue, and what words abet or hinder? Does Buber suggest to us a “larger picture” than the simply “dialogic” that seems to have reduced a powerful title into a commonplace phrase? We invite you to join us for three seminars in this series, each two weeks apart.
May 1 reading :
I and Thou - Third Part by Buber
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Dennis Gura
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The History Plays of Shakespeare - King John
Sunday, October 24, 2021
“What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,
When this was now a king, and now is clay?”
Reading for Sunday, October 24:
King John by William Shakespeare
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Is Natural Law Real? - Part III
Saturday, January 8, 2022
The term natural law is a little hazy. Is natural law simply a more authoritative version of positive law? And if that is true, how might we understand how the founders of the American republic came to believe in the proposition that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights which are self-evident truths? Conversely, does science and civil law show us that there are no natural laws, rather only values?
If natural law is real is it grounded in the metaphysical or in something else? How do we reconcile the problems of the is and ought, skepticism, positivism, notions of right and wrong, teleology, scientism, the connection between virtue and happiness, and human dignity.
We invite you to join us as we attempt to clarify what natural law means. We will read and discuss works by Sophocles, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Thrasymachus (in Plato), Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, the American founders, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr, as well as the The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, among other works.
January 8 Reading:
Selections Plato's, Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, Hobbes' Leviathan, and Maritain's The Rights of Man and the Natural Law
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Carl Bobkoski
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
by Edward Gibbon - Chapters XXIV-XXXIX
Sunday, August 28, 2022
This six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon traces Western civilization from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium in the fifteenth century. These texts cover the history, from 98 to 1,590AD, of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and then of the Roman Church, and the general history of Europe. According to the author, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens. We invite you to join this series as we explore this influential text in monthly online seminars, exploring a few chapters at a time.
August 28 Reading:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Penguin Classics; Abridged edition (January 2001) - ISBN 0140437649
Chapters XXIV-XXXIX, and General Observations (Pages 361- 445)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
by Galileo - Continued
Sunday, September 5, 2021
"The centre of the Celestial conversions of the five planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, is the Sun; and shall be likewise the centre of the motion of the Earth, if we do but succeed in our attempt of placing it in Heaven."
Reading:
Second Day pp.190-219 bottom; pp.241-248; pp. 256-end.
Third Day pp.276-280; pp. 318-399.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Larry Shields
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Ocean and Underworld -
Selections from The Aeneid by Virgil
Saturday, January 30, 2021
What mysteries are hidden underwater and deep in the underworld? Will one who explores these realms discover ancestors, gods, monsters,... or even oneself? This series will consider the ocean and the underworld as depicted in these classic literary texts.
January 30 reading:
Virgil, Aeneid - Books 3, 4, 5, 6
Future Readings in the Series:
Dante, Inferno (selections)
Cervantes, Don Quixote - The Cave of Montesinos
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Melville, Moby Dick (selections)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Epistemology - Part V -
Nicomachean Ethics - Book 6, Chapters 1-8 by Aristotle
Saturday, June 19, 2021
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How do we know that we know? How does knowledge differ from belief? This series will include works from Plato, Aristotle, Empiricus, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Popper, and others.
Schedule:
10:00AM-12:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar
Yiddish Classics - Simple Gimpl and Bontshe the Silent
Sunday, August 6, 2023
“There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly a dead language for centuries, but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of mysticism of sublime value. It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature. Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Kabbalists - rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful humanity.”
— Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Lecture, October, 1978
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991) and Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) are the two best known Yiddish writers in the west today. Less well know is I.L. Peretz (1852-1915) one of the most influential writers during the late 19th-early 20th century flourishing of Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe.
Peretz’ Bontshe Shvayg (Bontshe the Silent) is among Peretz’ best known works written in 1894 during a tumultuous period in both Yiddish cultural life and the politics of the Russian Empire in which Yiddish culture both thrived and suffered. Singer’s equally famous Gimpl Tam (translated both as Simple Gimpl, or, as Saul Bellow had it in 1954, Gimpel the Fool) was first published in the American Yiddish press in 1945.
Across those decades, these two deceptively simple, child-like stories, rooted in traditional Yiddish culture and reified through modern lenses, contest with each other, speak to the individual, the Jewish condition of the day, and the human condition of the ages.
August 6 Reading:
Simple Gimpl by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Restless Books; Bilingual edition (March 2023)
ISBN 978-1632060389, and
Bontshe the Silent by I.L. Peretz (download PDF)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Dennis Gura
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
History Plays - Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
Sunday, January 9, 2022
"You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute,
And now and then stab as occasion serves."
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Epistemology - Part XI
Meditations by Descartes, continued
Sunday, July 10, 2022
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How do we know that we know? How does knowledge differ from belief? This series will include works from Plato, Aristotle, Empiricus, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Popper, and others. These three seminars on Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy will include John Cottingham’s selection from the seven sets of “Objections and Replies,” which accompanied the Meditations’ original publication.
July 10 Reading:
Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes - Cambridge University Press; 2nd edition (February 2017), ISBN 1107665736
Fourth and Fifth Meditations, and selected Objections and Replies:
pp. 42-56 and 113-135 (in the second Cambridge edition)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
EVENT POSTPONED
Online Seminar Series
The New Testament
(formerly Saturday, February 5, 2022)
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.
February 5 Reading:
The Gospel of Matthew (attendees may use any translation they prefer)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Paul O'Reilly
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar
Free Community Seminar Series
Eastern Classics
Next session Thursday, December 3, 2020
Like the west, the east has its own tradition of influential texts that address the perennial questions of human kind. Centering around the bodies of work from China, Japan, and India, this series will focus on the texts of Taoism, Confucius, Buddhism, and Hinduism. We invite you to join us.
The December 3 reading is:
Bhagavad Gita - Chapter Eighteen
Click here to access the readings.
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM PST
Location:
Online. Click here.
Meeting ID: 830 3917 1800