2023 Food for Thought Fundraiser Raises $7,200 for Philosophy in the Community

Hosted by John & Victoria Cech on behalf of Carroll College, our technology & philosophy-themed 2023 Food for Thought Fundraiser was amazing. And Mother Nature pulled out all the stops with superb weather from start to finish! View photos, a video recording of our opening theater performance, funds raised, shout-out’s to our hosts, sponsors, volunteers, and more here!
June 2023 Philosophy Walk: “Wildlife Recovery & Ethics”
How Did We Get Here?: Labor & Work

We often take “labor” and “work” as synonyms, describing an often-difficult process that’s required to “get by” in life, or even to “make our living.” Yet there’s also a strong contrast between the demanding-yet-fulfilling “work” and drudgery, as well as other complicated dances between labor and leisure, work and recreation, action and contemplation, “liberal” and “servile” pursuits. These complications have been viewed very differently across the centuries. In this installment of “How Did We Get Here?” we explored this and then some! Access resources here!
Loss & Legacy: 2023 Spring Series Archive

Our 2023 philosophy symposia series looks at what it means to be at the interface of loss and legacy. In Spring, we examined the question “How do we think about grief?” during our symposium (held at the Helena Avenue Theater on April 19th) and considered the business of death by way of a film & community conversation (conducted in Reeder’s Alley on May 3rd). Access resources & watch the audio-video recording here!
How Did We Get Here?: Freedom

In this installment of “How Did We Get Here?” with philosopher Ed Glowienka we considered something we all want, but can’t agree on how to get: freedom. We explored the shift between classical and Enlightenment notions of political freedom and looked at how reactions to this shift inform modern conservative and liberal values. Along the way, we did a bunch of other stuff, too, and hopefully gained a deeper appreciation of why we value freedom and of the philosophical positions underlying contemporary debates. Access photos & more here!
Philosophy Workshop: “Ways of Knowing”

Most of us have the basic intuition that, because the truth “always is what it is”then there shouldn’t really be different “kinds” of knowing: we either know, or we don’t know, and that’s that. Knowledge, like truth, should be objective and invariable. Yet many of us also have another intuition: sometimes, there really does seem to be “something different” about knowing, or about acquiring knowledge, in different ways. In this workshop we applied some traditional tools, along with our own careful analytic skill, to see what we could salvage from both intuitions. We identified, as best we can, what each intuition gets right, as well as how they fit together in a coherent way. Critically, we learned to appreciate the difference between knowing, as an activity that we do, and knowledge, as a thing that we have. Access resources here!