NYC Philosophy and Psychology Readers Community Φ Ψ

Alright folks.

This will be the third edition in our exploration of Oswald Spengler and his 1918 text The Decline of the West: Form & Actuality. As our sought-after definitions go unfound and more terminology is introduced by the page, join our sinking ship of scrambling snarky rats trying to make sense of seemingly-simple words such as Destiny, Nature, Incident, Distance, and Extension while Spengler takes a blowtorch to our brains.

For this session, we will be reading and discussing Chapter VI: Makrokosmos (II): Apollonian, Faustian, & Magian Soul and Chapter VII: Music & Plastic (I): The Arts of Form. If you're reading the Arktos edition (which I recommend everyone do), this will be around 99 pages. We will be doing lighter readings going forward, because there are stand-alone pages in this text that we could easily spend two hours discussing. Stick with us, it'll all be utterly life-changing and worth it.

Here are two free PDF versions of the text: One aaaaaaand Two.
All are the same translation from Charles Francis Atkinson so ultimately, it does not matter. Work with whatever works with you.

As always, if you're unable to complete the reading prior to our meeting, no worries - it's dense and semi-lengthy, so we're just happy to have you and welcome whatever insights, critiques, questions, etc. you may have based on what you were able to read.

For those who have missed the first two sessions, I've been working needlessly hard on compiling a 58-page Spenglerian glossary that provides definitions for most of what has been covered so far. You can access it here: link link link. Let me know if you have issues.

We will be meeting in the Ace Hotel lobby on W 29th. There is coffee, breakfast, and booze. Message me the day of if you can't find us. We usually sit toward the back of the lobby next to the bar.

As always, this group is open to newcomers to Spengler, novices of philosophy, history, aesthetics, etc., ragamuffins, ne'er-do-wells, urchins of all sorts, etc. All insights are encouraged, just be somewhat sensible and all the way cool. Ain't no fun to be found in nodding your head along with a thinker for a hundred pages - strive to disagree, with decency.

Alright, looking forward to it - again, reach out to me with any questions or concerns in the meantime.

Looking forward,

Hamp

Join us for weekly discussions of Aristotle's incredibly influential musings on substance, causation, hylomorphism, and other fun abstractions.

Reading for this meeting: Book VII (Zeta)

Make sure to come having already read this as well as the preceding books of the Metaphysics. The focus of this meeting is to help each other understand Aristotle's text and its main arguments, so please try to avoid bringing up other ideas if they are not to that end. Feel free to talk about whatever you want after the official meeting time ends.

I'll be reading the 1999 translation by Joe Sachs. Feel free to use any translation or edition—comparing differing translations can help with getting a feel for the meanings of terms in the original Greek. There are several versions for free online, including this one.

We'll be meeting at Farm.One, which a brewery and indoor farm in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

This event is free, but we're still sort of socially obligated to purchase something (need not be alcohol), and Farm.One is a cool place that we should support! The space is also a quiet cafe between 10am and 12pm, so get there early if you prefer coffee to beer (and maybe to finish up the reading)!

You can apply to join by first RSVP'ing to this event, then filling out the Google Form survey linked on this event's location page — I’ll review responses personally.

### 📚 Reading & Participation

We’ll read this text slowly and carefully, around 20 pages per week for about six months — over the colder months, as Schopenhauer would have wanted! It's not a live reading, so you'll need to spend the hour or so reading in advance of attending, this is a must.
We’ll be reading Volume 1 of his work. I’ll be using the Cambridge edition, and you can find a tentative schedule linked here.
We will also decide a lot of things, also if people can join mid way through, by voting with the existing group.

### 💬 Discussion Format

Our FAQ outlines how we generally run these sessions. Depending on group size, we may adjust — for example, adding breakout groups or rotating discussion leaders. If you’re interested in co-hosting, please reach out — that would be wonderful. Importantly I am not teaching this material, we are co-travelers exploring it together.

### 📬 Contact Us

Have questions or feedback? Reach out via our Meetup message to me.

I’m genuinely excited to read this with you. I’ve read some Schopenhauer before and listened to this work on audiobook, but I believe a real, close read together will be transformative.

Kind Regards,
Ryan

Hi everyone!

Please join us on January 15th to discuss the second half of Marlen Haushofer’s speculative fiction novel The Wall.

The novel follows a middle-aged woman who is suddenly separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall, left to survive the desolate and beautiful Austrian countryside with only the companionship of a cat, a dog, and a cow. A meditation on loneliness, the nature of our humanity, and the deep terror that exists within the beautiful, The Wall is very much a novel of our time.

There are no chapter breaks whatsoever, so we will be reading from the mid-point on page 115 of the New Directions edition to the end of the novel. If you weren't able to stop by for the first half, please feel free to join us now, we're happy to have you!

Most of us will be reading the edition above, but the Internet Archive’s PDF of the Cleiss Press edition is also available for free.

Additionally, we will be reading the two essays below. These essays were included for the first half, but they are just as relevant (if not more so) for the second, so we'll be discussing these at length.

• Chapter One, “Approaching Abjection” from The Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva (only pages 1-18, ending at the sub-heading "Dostoyevsky").
• Chapter Five, “Preobjective Being: The Solipsist World” from The Visible and the Invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (7 pages).

These chapters are being read standalone, so you don’t need to read the rest of either source material.

A couple pieces of additional supplemental reading for the especially dedicated (which should only be read after completion of the novel):

• "She Shall Be Nameless" A review of Haushofer's work from Nicholas Spice in London Review of Books.
• "The Great Schizophrenia" A review of Haushofer's work through the lens of her letters with Austrian writer Jeannie Ebner from Nikianna Dinenis in European Review of Books.

The first article has no paywall, but if anyone needs access to the second, please let me know and I can send it to you. But feel free to support your small lit mags and publishing companies!

We will be meeting on Thursday, 1/15 at Spritzenhaus33 at 7pm. If you have trouble finding us, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via message.

See you there!