Søren Kierkegaard, the founder of modern existentialism, established what we now call the dialectical self, a self that exists in the tension between the temporal and the eternal. This session will look closely at a short passage from Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death, where he lays out this modern understanding of selfhood.

When faced with an ethically difficult situation, there are a variety of aspects of that situation to consider. What are the consequences? What relationships will be impacted? What are the rules? What are the various parties’ intentions? In this workshop, we introduce students to six different dimensions and use interactive activities and a short personality test to help them think more carefully and systematically about their own ethical intuitions. Each of the six dimensions that we discuss has roots in a particular ethical theory, so this workshop can serve as an introduction to this part of ethics.

Which statement best reflects your view? I have a brain, or I am a brain?  In this presentation we engage in some thought experiments to see whether they shed light on this issue and on the issue of personal identity.  In doing so, we touch on some intriguing matters in the philosophy of mind

Are you the same person you were five years ago, when your school first shut down for Covid? How would you know? What role does memory play in either the identity or our knowledge of it? In this session we will discuss this question in light of various philosophical theories about the role of memory in personal identity.

What does it mean to say that identity is intersectional? How do the ways your various identities overlap affect the way you see the world or how the world sees you? This session will allow participants to consider their various intersecting identities and the value of viewing identity through an intersectional lens. 

In this session we will examine Friedrich Nietzsche’s short aphoristic piece “On the Three Transformations,” from his masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. One might say that this piece is the Rosetta Stone to understanding Nietzsche’s larger corpus about what it is to be a human being.

When faced with an ethically difficult situation, there are a variety of aspects of that situation to consider. What are the consequences? What relationships will be impacted? What are the rules? What are the various parties’ intentions? In this workshop, we introduce students to six different dimensions and use interactive activities and a short personality test to help them think more carefully and systematically about their own ethical intuitions. Each of the six dimensions that we discuss has roots in a particular ethical theory, so this workshop can serve as an introduction to this part of ethics.

If I ask who are you?, you might answer in a variety of ways. One thing you might do is give your gender, nationality, or membership in some other collective. These are called ‘social identities’, and in this session we will discuss various theories about the role of social identities in personal identity.

How many “you”s are there? It seems that most people think that they have only one (core) “self.” But what if each of us is many selves? In this session, we’ll examine and consider some implications of Maria Lugones’ view that each of us is many selves, and that selves only truly exist (not within us but) “between” us and others. Bring “yourselves” to find out more. 

What exactly do we mean when we say “pop culture?” How does pop culture influence how we think about ourselves? Does it influence who we actually are? Can we look to pop culture to understand a generation?  In this session, we will explore these questions and more, in part by investigating some pop cultural phenomena. 

Do you wrong your offspring by making climate heating worse? Maybe not. At the heart of the non-identity problem is this proposition: You only wrong a person if you make them worse off than they otherwise would have been. Since getting born is (almost always) better than not getting born, it appears to follow that there is no amount of damage a would-be person can do to the world that makes their (eventual) child worse off. And that means you don’t wrong your child by contributing to the harms of climate heating. Or does it? 

What does it mean to be free? Do we have free will? Does it matter? This session will explore the idea of free will and consider some topics that may suggest that we aren’t as free as many like to believe.

Do you ever think about what it means to be human? Do you worry about death? Do you try to avoid thinking about it?  In this session, we will explore how humans find meaning and experience life through the lens of existentialism. We will discuss the role death plays in existentialist philosophies and examine how the contemplation of death can actually bring purpose to the forefront of human life.

Have you ever truly interacted with a human online? Is it possible to find a true, human identity in cyberspace? What happens when the desire for identity and anonymity collide? How does the internet inversely affect your own development? Is your phone a portal to another reality?  How can we critique the internet? Can the internet be a new reality? Can the internet be a utopia? This session will explore the history and mechanisms of the digital frontier and examine how internet use affects human identities.

What does it mean to be a citizen? Who decides? Does citizenship mean the same thing for everyone? How has the concept of citizenship changed over time? In this session, we will explore different definitions of citizenship and consider the various rights and responsibilities that come with being a citizen of a particular nation. We will discuss how citizenship impacts our own senses of ourselves.

What does it mean to be a feminist? Do you have to be a woman to be a feminist? Is feminism still relevant? In this session, we will examine the history of feminist movements and consider the role of feminism today.