Friday, October 29, 2010

Getting started...

Welcome, good friends! So, since Rachel is already a huge fan of Kierkegaard, and Mike and I were both too combative with him our first time around, we're going to read Works of Love, by Søren Kierkegaard. (Man, somebody is going to have to show me how to type that "ø" so I don't have to keep copying and pasting off of the Kierkegaard wikipedia page.)

Since I want this to be a very relaxed, casual book club that doesn't add extra, undue stress to our already busy lives, and also because Kierkegaard's philosophy is really densely packed, I want to give our reading a very long-form approach. I want the pace to go nice and slow so we can really pick everything apart, so we all have time to contribute, and so we don't have to go at the ungodly rate through the material that university philosophy courses do.

So, I suggest we start with the preface and the first chapter ("Love's Hidden Life and Its Recognizability by Its Fruits"), and we'll mull over that until we are all good and ready to move on. On your marks, get set, read!

P.S. Feel free to start posting here as soon as you have something to say about what you're reading. You don't even have to be done with the chapter if you have something to say. :)

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Welcome friends...

I have tried to keep reading and writing philosophy since graduating college, but it has been a Sisyphusian effort without sounding boards. It would seem that, for me, philosophy requires people with which to discuss and argue the subject matter. Philosophy is social for me; doing it by myself seems kind of boring and intellectually masturbatory. So, I am enlisting the help of some of my favorite people whose acquaintance I was pleased to make during my philosophical escapades in college, to form a philosophy book club of awesomeness, the likes of which have... probably been seen before. But it's still awesome! Anyway, welcome to the discussion.