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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

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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

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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. 

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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. 

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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

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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. 

Click here for full details.

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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. 

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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

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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. 

Click here to visit the Varieties of Religious Experience Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

 

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. 

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Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series

The Gene - An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Muk
herjee (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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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

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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. 

Click here for full details.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

Click here for full details.

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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. 

Click here to visit The Federalist Papers Complete Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

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.

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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

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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. 

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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. 

Click here for full details.

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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.

Click here to visit the Laws of Plato Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

 

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. 

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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. 

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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.

Click here to visit the Laws of Plato Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

 

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. 

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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

 

Click here to visit The Glory of Art Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

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:

The Ojai Library

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:

Apology by Plato

Location:

Greater Goods

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:

Tao Te Ching Chapter 5

Location:

The Ojai Library

111 East Ojai Avenue in Ojai

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Online Free Community Series

Eastern Classics

Thursday, August 20, 2020
5:30-6:30PM PDT

Online Seminar Series

Nietzsche - On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

Thursday, August 20, 
and Thursday, August 27, 2020
6:00-8:00PM PDT

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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

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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.

Click here for full details.

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. 

August 20 Reading:

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.”

Tutors:

Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman

Schedule:

6:00-8:00PM PDT, both evenings.

Location: 

Online. Register to receive the link. 

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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:

The Ojai Art Center

113 South Montgomery Street in Ojai,California
 

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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: 

The Ojai Library

111 East Ojai Avenue

Ojai, California 93023

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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:

Federalist Paper 10 - Part II

Location:

The Ojai Library

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

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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:

Federalist Papers 66 and 68

Location:

Online. Register to receive the link.

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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.” 

 

Click here to visit The Glory of Art Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

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.

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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

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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. 

Click here for full details.

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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. 

Click here for full details.

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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. 

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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.

Click here for full details.

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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. 

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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: 

The Ojai Library

111 East Ojai Avenue

Ojai, California 93023

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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.

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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. 

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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.

Click here for full details.

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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. 

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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:

Ojai Valley Brewery & Winery

307 Bryant Street in Ojai, California

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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. 

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Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series

The Gene - An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Muk
herjee (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. 

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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. 

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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.

Click here to visit the US Supreme Court Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

 

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. 

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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.

Click here to visit the Shakespeare Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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: 

 

Facebook Link

 

Zoom

Meeting ID: 884 1425 5989

Passcode: 443433

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

Click here to visit the Laws of Plato Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

 

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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.”

Click here to visit the US Supreme Court Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.

 

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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

agora-foundation-online-great-books-semi

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. 

Frogs-agora-foundation-online-great-book

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. 

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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. 

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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

Oak Grove School

220 West Lomita
Ojai, California 93023 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.