Philosophy
U3A Philosophy Group held its first ever meeting on 9th July 2010. There were six of us present, and we explored some of our own attitudes towards beliefs, and had a fairly informal chat about how to move forward.
We usually meet on the second Thursday of the month, at 10:30 am in the morning at one of our members' houses. This is not a taught class; it is an open discussion group, and we select philosophical topics somewhat randomly from month to month. Philosophical knowledge is neither required nor expected.
We last met on 9th January 2020 to discuss Schopenhauer, particularly looking at his idea of will and suffering and its relationship to what he thought about Buddhism.
In his preface, Schopenhauer recommends that the reader read his big book 'The World as Will and Idea (or Representation)' twice, after reading all of Kant. We did not have the Will. However, we noted that he would have been a good patient for Freud given his disastrous relationship with his mother, and then women in general, probably many men, though possibly not his poodles. His conclusion that the answer to the Will that eclipses reason was asceticism seems to have not been followed by himself. We talked about the sublime, Euclid's fifth postulate, sages, and the noumenal. We also noted that Schopenhauer never worked for a living.
We will meet next at 10:30 on Thursday 13th February 2020 at 4 Burdett Place Hastings TN34 3ED 01424 427 362.
We will go back to the beginning and discuss Socrates. Not Plato, Socrates. The man who Hegel thought was correctly sentenced to death.
Each person will be asked to speak in turn for a minute or two, saying what particular ideas in their pre-meeting readings had most caught their attention. Only after a full round of contributions by everyone will we open up for general discussion.