WHAT WE’LL EXLORE
The virtue of friendship was highly valued in ancient Greek philosophy, from the early Pythagorean fellowships, through nearly every major philosophical school and tradition, down to the final synthesis of these various schools in the Athenian Academy, more than 1,000 years after Pythagoras. In between, Aristotle devotes two out of the ten books of his Nicomachean Ethics entirely to the topic of friendship — far more space than he gives to any of the other virtues.

In this evening’s program, we’ll explore some of the core concepts in Aristotle’s account of friendship. We’ll consider the various goals toward which friendship might be directed, the need for true friends to be of good ethical character, and the conditions under which friendship can flourish.

Finally, we’ll follow Aristotle in asking whether friendship can arise only among equals, or whether it’s possible for people of very different status to be friends as well. Can a parent truly be a friend to her child, a teacher to his students, or a ruler to her subjects? Rather than a mere all-or-nothing account, we’ll be able to consider the question in terms of what it would take for genuine friendship to exist amidst such disparities of power, authority, or other human differences.

And throughout all these themes, we’ll be building a robust picture of what it takes to become, and to remain, a true friend.

WORKSHOP DISCUSSION STRUCTURE
Our discussion will be centered around some short extracts from Aristotle’s writings on friendship in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics, which we’ll read aloud together during the session. These should, in turn, provide the springboard for robust reflection, critique, and self-examination as we examine Aristotle’s arguments and their applicability to our own lives.

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Then, the story goes, everything changed, as the Scientific Revolution cast out all these intermediary spirits, leaving a cosmos that resembles a collection of inanimate machines, rather than an ecology teeming with living agents: a process which the pioneering sociologist Max Weber famously termed “the disenchantment of the world.”

And yet.

Even within Europe and its diaspora, large numbers of people still believe in — and interact with — angels, demons, and other ghosts and spirits. And this doesn’t have to be a “religious thing” — as indeed, for most of European history, it was not a religious thing. Just consider the popularity of “ghost hunting,” or how many of us name our automobiles, and talk to them to encourage them in challenging conditions. Maybe the Revolution was not quite so total as we’ve been told, and some vestiges of these spirits live on amidst the mechanized cosmos: ghosts in the machine, as it were.

In this evening’s program, we’ll consider this process of disenchantment within its historical context, and its consequences for ourselves and our modern Western worldview. We’ll examine the older, pre-Revolutionary world-picture, which historian C.S. Lewis has famously termed “the discarded image,” as it appears in history, literature, and the “natural philosophy” that would be supplanted by the modern physical sciences. We’ll consider the context in which the intellectual battles of the Scientific Revolution were fought, including the political and theological polemics of the Protestant Reformation and its aftermath, as well as the craze for witch-burnings that swept Europe and the Americas during this period. And we’ll observe some of the impacts of the disenchanted, mechanistic worldview in the development of the new social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology.

Finally, we’ll reflect on the consequences of the mechanistic worldview, however fully or partially it has been adopted: What has all of this done, to the ways that we’re able to interact with the wider world and its inhabitants? What has it done to our own self-understanding, both as individuals and as societies? And what does it mean, that the ghosts in the machine seem to live on, however awkwardly and uncomfortably, in everyday life and discourse?

(As always, free and open to all.)

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Start your evening early at The Union Restaurant and mention that you are attending a Secrets of the Vault lecture for 10% your purchase.

Event Schedule:
3:30-5:30pm Happy Hour at The Union Restaurant
5-6pm Happy Hour at The Holter
6-7pm Secrets of the Vault Unveiling
7-8pm After talk Parlour

Visit our website for more info:

Secrets of the Vault

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Together, over 4 every-other-Wednesday sessions, we will closely read and discuss the contemporary import of essays from a variety of Jewish authors including Abraham Joshua Heschel, Leo Strauss, Daniel Delgado, James Hatley, and others. Sessions will be discussion-based, facilitated by Kaleb Cohen and Mitchell Conway, with one guest facilitator joining along the way.

Some core questions that we’ll explore:

— How might Hebraic ideas inform philosophy? Are they philosophical or solely religious ideas? Can those ideas have any meaning outside of their cultural context?
— What role might the Jewish notion of exile hold for an environmental ethic?
— In Montana, how ought we respond to a history of violence against buffalo and Indigenous peoples and what could Jewish traditions teach us about these responses?
— What is the meaning of rest in an age of industrialization and unrelenting resource extraction?

While each session will be self-contained (such that you can attend a stand-alone session and still benefit), participating in as many sessions as possible will allow more time to make and experience larger connections between readings, ideas, and questions explored.

FREE & open to the public. Donations appreciated. Learn more, check out what we’ll be reading here (seats limited!): https://merlinccc.org/event/reading-discussion-series-environment-jewish/

RSVP here: https://mailchi.mp/merlinccc/jewish-environmental-wisdom

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