Classic Thought in our Contemporary World
October 29 - December 3, 2026
This series of interactive presentations explores the ideas of seminal thinkers over the ages and their applications to contemporary issues. In the midst of Athens’ cultural decline, Plato developed an educational system to reform people’s desires. What would he say about sex education today? In the 19th century, Karl Marx recognized a contradiction between capitalism and the environment. Does that mean that we should overthrow the government to save the planet? Women of distinction have long asserted themselves against gender biased systems of oppression. What are their challenges and triumphs today? These are some of the themes and questions we will undertake in an engaging and interactive series of lectures.
6 lectures, live at the Bayshore Centre and live streamed on Vimeo
Thursday mornings 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Replays until May 13, 2027 on Vimeo
Tickets for this series will go on sale in late January, 2027
Lecturer - Dr. Andrew Fuyarchuk
Along with Masters degrees in Philosophy and Education, Andrew Fuyarchuk has a doctorate in the Philosophy of Religion from the Toronto School of Theology (2016). With twenty-six years of experience teaching and developing courses in the humanities and liberal arts, he is an expert at communicating philosophical ideas to diverse audiences, from undergraduates to Third Age Learning groups. Andrew has published over twenty peer-reviewed articles and three books. He serves as associate editor and book review editor for an East-West comparative publication, The Journal of Chinese Philosophy. He is currently teaching at York University, and his research fuses Daoism, Heidegger and Marx.
Plato’s Theory of Love
Thursday, February 25, 2027
Is someone beautiful because we fall in love with them or do we fall in love with them because they are beautiful? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or is it an attribute of the beloved? In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates’s description of love and beauty steers a male prostitute away from the seductions of a pedophile. In the Symposium, Plato tries to anchor the reason for falling in love in an idea of beauty that is as impersonal as mathematics. At the same time, his spokesperson is a priestess from Mantinea (divine madness). These metaphysical forays into love and beauty are counter-balanced with Aristotle’s grounded understanding of friendship.
If God is Dead, does anything go?
Thursday, March 4, 2027
In the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche’s “madman” proclaimed that God is dead and that we killed him (with science). Do you believe him? He also argued that Christian values were invented by slaves to dominate their masters. Do you also believe that people who are too weak to take revenge against their enemies rely on Christian values of forgiveness and unconditional love to conquer them? Since Nietzsche believes that “God is dead,” he invented a “Second Redeemer” named Zarathustra. He taught about morality without God. But Fyodor Dostoevsky believes that without God, anything goes. Do you agree with Nietzsche or Dostoevsky? Do we need religion to be moral?
Ecologists and the Political-Economy of Climate
Thursday, March 11, 2027
When did global warming start and who is to blame? Did it start with the Industrial Revolution or with the post-World War II “boom”? Karl Marx was not only concerned with the effects of capitalism on workers but also on nature – or what he called “metabolism.” If we have entered an era of climate change that threatens the future of life on the planet, should we spike trees like Dave Foreman (Earth First)? Blow up a pipeline (Andreas Malme), vote for the Green Party, agree to reduce carbon emissions, adopt environmentally friendly technologies or just overthrow the capitalist state?
Walking through Media Ecologies with Marshall McLuhan
Thursday, March 18, 2027
How is the era of the World Wide Web changing politics? Education? Human relations? To answer these questions, we will walk with McLuhan through the history of media environments. We will start with prehistory – a time when we communicated with sounds, but not with words. After that, we will turn to the era of the spoken word (orality) and its positive and negative implications for learning and culture. Then, McLuhan takes us to the age of print technology. How does the media ecology of the printed word affect our perception and thought? Our self-understanding and politics? Finally, we will discuss his views about the “electronic age” and what it could mean for politics, economics, education, and human relations today.
Animal Communication and Humans
Thursday, March 25, 2027
Environmentalists advocate for the well-being of non-human beings, but at the same time, they assert that we cannot understand “the language of nature.” If so, how can they know what’s good for the environment and the creatures in it? Wouldn’t they mistake their own interests for those of the animals they claim to protect? We will revisit the experiences of biologists such as Farley Mowat and Alexandra Morton, and review Indigenous epistemologies (Nancy Doetzel), and the ways of a Daoist named Zhuangzi. They are case studies in how we might understand the happiness of fish, and the stare of a (never cry) wolf.
Contemporary Feminists in Politics and the Environment
Thursday, April 1, 2027
Women of distinction predate the feminist movement. Who were those women, what motivated them, and what did they achieve? We will discuss the challenges and achievements of such women of distinction as Agnes McPhail and Viola Desmond. They were succeeded by four waves of the feminist movement starting in the early 20th century. Has pay equity been achieved? Access to education and the professions? Procedural justice when truth speaks to power, for example, in the case of Dr. Nancy Olivieri? A feminist lens will be used to interpret representations of women in the media and the achievements of women of distinction today.