Pharos October+November 2018

Monday October 29, 2018 at 7:30 pm
Upper Hall, Hellenic Community Centre
4500 Arbutus Street, Vancouver, BC

Michael Griffin, UBC

Exploring Socrates and the Buddha

Socrates of Athens and Siddhartha Gautama are regarded as founders, respectively, of European philosophy and Buddhism. They were also near-contemporaries, who taught by lively question and answer, upended many of the cultural assumptions of their time, and established traditions of scientific and religious inquiry that would last for millennia. In this talk, I’ll explore some of the similarities and differences of these philosophers and their continuing influence today


Monday November 26, 2018 at 7:30 pm

Upper Hall, Hellenic Community Centre
4500 Arbutus Street, Vancouver, BC

Maxwell Cameron, UBC
Aristotle, Practical Wisdom (Phronesis) and Democracy

Aristotle believed that those who occupy public office should possess the character and judgment—what he called “practical wisdom” or phronesis — to figure out the right things to do in a particular situation, and to do it in the right way and for the right reasons. Drawing on his recent book, Max Cameron argues that we need practical wisdom more than ever as we grapple with populism, polarization, hyper-partisanship, and the decline of civility in politics.