The end of Philosophy (until Christmas anyway)

Vanishing into the future 

So the Key Themes sessions at City Lit came to an end yesterday (blimey I've got gaps Monday and Tuesday now) and I should admit to being slightly saddened by this, I can't really say that we became a 'tight group' but there was something of a loose camaraderie amongst this group of adults in a shared endeavour to find out where something of a search for a hidden  type of knowledge would take us.

Well just because it was the last session didn't mean that we had an easy ride as we wrestled with the question (again) of What Philosophy is and what is it for?

Groups of students reported back - we major-ed on it as using 'Critical thinking' and others highlighted the fact that a lot of time could be spent analysing things that had not previously seemed problematic.

It was agreed (I think)  that Philosophy was an enquiry into the meaning of existence, and one of the things that also emerged was how we struggled to explain ourselves clearly (this issue was highlighted later too when some spoke of the obliqueness of the writings of some philosophers, Heidegger for example)

Another student mentioned the need for group consideration but a removal from the others was also mentioned as a time for 'thinking' and getting ideas formulated for future perusal.

On a more concrete level Scott our  esteemed teacher explained how he some anguish on the amount of discussion which some of the classes included and he also recommended to us a book  Introducing Philosophy A text with Integrated readings by Robert C Solomon (Robert is  fairly recently deceased, in 2007 at the relatively early age of  64)

A further pointer was to abandon materials  if we felt that they  weren't working for us at a particular time and perhaps we'd go back to them later, it was also  suggested we might wish to take further our studies with one of the other courses in what is an expanding section of the City Lit offerings .

Almost lost in my thoughts and those of others too