Archived Circles (حلقه های گذشته)

Philosophy of Aesthetics 

This program was an introductory exploration of the philosophy of arts and aesthetics using a wide range of thinkers. We started with a few introductory essays on the concept of aesthetics and taste, then we explored writings from influential philosophers touching on the philosophy of visual arts, philosophy of music, phenomenology of art, postmodernism, and art as a political act. 

Action Theory 

In this circle, our shifted our focus from the conventional exploration of why an agent chooses to act to a deeper investigation into how an agent executes action X. Traditional discussions often tie the intentionality of actions to deliberation and reasoning, but we explored what an agent is capable of doing and how these capabilities manifest in action.

Starting from this perspective, we first explored the potential distinction between ability and skill, seeking to understand what sets them apart. Following this, we turned our attention to the concept of skill itself, examining its connections to notions such as habit and automaticity.

Love and sex 

Over the last few weeks, as we have been reading Plato's masterpiece on love, we've encountered numerous questions regarding the definition of love. This is a challenging topic, as there are no straightforward answers to broad concepts like love, knowledge, reason, courage, ... These universal concepts are deeply intertwined with the concrete, contrasting relationships we experience in life. Love, in particular, is highly complex. To fully understand it, we need to examine it alongside its neighboring concepts such as rationality and irrationality, value, partiality and impartiality, the erotic life, sex and sexuality, fantasy, and sexual relationships. We explored the relationship between love and moral impartiality. We considered how to find a balance between loving someone and remaining impartial in our moral decisions. Next, we explored the essence of love and how to integrate sex into our understanding of love. We addressed the Kantian aporia of reconciling the act of loving someone with not using the beloved's body merely as a means of pleasure. We explored how to be moral in the context of erotic love. We then discussed the objectification inherent in erotic love and how we can respond to it. Following Nussbaum's argument, we exploreed whether it is possible to make sexual objectification benign? Finally, our discussions moved to the topic of sexual fantasy, addressing numerous issues related to sex, gender, and orientation.