The Philosophy Society September 2009

The Philosophy Society has ended its first year with the promise of a successful second year now dawning. We have a new wave of fervour from a long list of Freshers to add to our small, but dedicated, core group. Over the past year we have turned our attention to:

• business ethics by looking at a 1970s article by economist Milton Friedman, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" (in other words the business of business is business), and a short story by B. Traven, "Assembly Line"
• political philosophy by reading Machiavelli's The Prince and Thoreau's Civil Disobedience
• Herman Melville's short story Bartleby the Scrivener in tandem with Emerson's The Transcendentalist (which is considered the inspiration behind Bartleby)
• Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, studying the two famous chapters "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor"
• Paul Caddle, one of our members, led a meeting on paradoxes, which generated a rousing round of comments
• Christopher Norris, a philosopher from the University of Cardiff, who gave a paper entitled, "The New Musicology: What's it all about?", followed by a lively discussion
• Robert Ellis, another guest speaker, who gave a paper, "Moral Objectivity and the Middle Way". For more information, you can look at Robert's web-site at this address: http://www.moralobjectivity.net/
• the philosophical themes underpinning the two films Arlington Road and Primer

For our October meeting we are reading "Before the Law" from Kafka's The Trial found at this address: http://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/Kafka/beforethelaw.htm. Also, if you are interested in further study, please read Derrida's "Law of Genre" found at this address: http://mission17.org/documents/Derrida_LawOfGenre.pdf.

The Philosophy Society meets (usually) on the first Thursday of every month at 7pm in The Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus. However, I am still uncertain whether the meeting will be on the 1st or 8th of October. I will post and send emails with this information in due course.

If you have any queries about The Philosophy Society please contact Shelley Campbell s0510427@glos.ac.uk