Philosophers in the Midst of History Year 5 Scheduled!

Earlier this month, we had the final session for this year in the Philosophers In The Midst of History public talk series, discussing the 20th century existentialist and feminist thinker, Simone de Beauvoir (watch the videorecording here).  She is probably best known for her work The Second Sex, but we also devoted some discussion to another important book of hers, The Ethics of Ambiguity.

That session was number 16, which brings a close to the fourth year of this quarterly series.  We already have a fifth year scheduled, hosted again at the Frank Weyenberg Library (located in Mequon, Wisconsin), and we'll be doing a bit more public promotion of these events in the year to come.

I imagine that my readers are probably more interested in what thinkers we'll be covering next year than in the details about planning and public outreach, and I'm happy to be able to announce them.

For the Ancient period, we'll be focusing on Epicurus.  We've already discussed Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the Stoic philosopher Epicteus, so it's about time we bring in some discussion of the founder of this major philosophical school of antiquity.

For the Medieval period, I decided that it would be interesting to discuss a rather controversial figure.  I don't mean Abelard, Scotus, or Ockam (I did consider doing Abelard and Heloise) - but rather the 13th-14th century German Dominican philosopher and mystic, Meister Eckhart.  That focus will provide a nice supplement to the talks already given on Augusting, Boethius, Anselm on Canterbury, and Thomas Aquinas.

For the Modern period, we'll be looking at the all-too-often neglected philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.  She's someone I teach frequently and occasionally give talks on, and I'm hoping that preparing this lecture might also provide me with the needed impetus to get some papers on her I've been working on for several years brought to fruition and sent out for publication.  We've previously focused on Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, John Lock, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in that time-period.

We end each year with a philosopher from the 19th or 20th century, and this time I thought I'd give it a bit of a twist, discussing someone who clearly is a philosopher, but whose works tend to be read more outside of that discipline, the great French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville, who, among other things authored works exploring the French Revolution, the American prison system, and the nature of American democracy by contrast to European democracy.  This will add him to the four thinkers from that period we've already covered, namely Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, and Simone de Beauvoir.

If you'd like to watch or listen to any of the previous 16 sessions - they're roughly 75-90 minutes or so in length - here's the YouTube playlist of the series.

If you're in the area, and you'd like to attend, you might want to mark your calendar - the talks will be coming up at 6 PM on February 5, May 6, August 5, and November 4, hosted at the Frank Weyenberg Library.