All you need is love…?

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” This remark becomes more confusing the more that you think about it. For one thing, it takes the form of an imperative: it is a command to love. And yet it seems that at least part of what makes love valuable is that it is free from precisely the sort of burden than obligations tend to provoke. We can easily imagine a romantic being disappointed to hear that their lover’s passion is mere duty. Further, if love is an emotion (or at least has an emotional component), it is unclear how an emotion could ever be commanded. After all, our emotions seem largely outside of our control, and thus not the sort of things we could be obligated to change. We cannot just decide to feel some way or another. Given these considerations, we at Night Owls would like to ask you: can you be obligated to love someone? What does love have to do with morality, if anything? Can love be both free and obligatory? Possible topics of reflection include:

• The various types of love and their relationship to obligation
• Whether or in what ways love can be explained
• Love and Freedom
• Whether love is an emotion
• How you might learn to love someone

Please send your essay, story, poem, etc. of up to 800 words to ChicagoPhilosophyNightOwls@gmail.com by 3pm CST on Wednesday, April 29. We look forward to reading your submissions!

Night Owls Announces Our Next Event:

What Are Universities For?

Daniel Diermeier (Former Provost, Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago)

In Conversation with Agnes Callard (Philosophy, University of Chicago)

Thursday, April 23, 5:00-8:00 p.m. Central Standard Time

Livestream on Crowdcast: click here to register and join the conversation!

At this event, we will discuss questions such as:

What are universities for?

Why do discussions about the value of higher education, or the humanities, tend to be boring?

Should academic research be more accessible to the outside world?

Does the University have a (or more than one) moral cause?

In what sense are Universities meritocratic—and in what sense aren’t they?

Why does the outside world tend to hate universities?

What makes the University of Chicago special?

 

Congratulations to the winners of this week’s Night Owls essay contest! You can check out the winning entires here. Thank you to all who entered, and we encourage you all to submit your work again–or for the first time–next week!

 

 

What are Universities for?

With classes going online at the University of Chicago and across the world, it seems like a good time to reflect on what universities are for. Historically, universities have offered people the chance to gather in one place and talk through difficult ideas. Now, with classes taking place over Zoom, many students and teachers have found themselves struggling to replicate what felt so singular about the experience of being in the classroom. In light of this, Night Owls would like to invite you to reflect on what is so special about universities. What can universities do that other institutions can’t? What aspects of universities now seem important than ever? What aspects seem less important? What purpose do universities serve now—and what purposes could they come to serve? Possible points of reflection include:

• Your university experience
• What universities can (and can’t) do
• Universities and community
• A world without universities
• Universities in the age of COVID-19
• What universities are vs. what they could be

Send your essays, letters, cartoons, fiction, poetry, memoirs, policy memos, screenplays of 800 words or fewer to ChicagoPhilosophyNightOwls@gmail.com by next Wednesday, April 22, at 3 pm CST. 

Night Owls Announces Our Next Event:

The End of the World?

Stephen White (Philosophy, Northwestern University)

In Conversation with Agnes Callard (Philosophy, University of Chicago)

Thursday, April 16, 5:00-8:00 p.m. Central Standard Time

Livestream on Crowdcast: click here to register and join the conversation!

 

At this event, we will discuss questions such as:

Why do future generations matter?
Is there a fate worse than death?
Is there a fate worse than the death of the human species?
How should we think about the end of the world?
Should you fear death?

An Essay at the End of the World

Thank you for so many wonderful essay submissions for our inaugural Night Owls essay contest! This week, we’d like to hear your thoughts and philosophical reflections on the end of the world. To enter, please submit an 800-word essay, a poem, or a story to ChicagoPhilosophyNightOwls@gmail.com. You may use the following prompt to help guide your thoughts:

When catastrophe strikes, apocalyptic themes tend to crop up all over the place – in literature, popular media, and even in casual conversation. But the idea of the end of the world is far from new. For centuries, human beings have anticipated and reflected on the “end” in myth, art, and religion. Why are we so interested in the end of the world, and what does it say about us as a species? What is the significance of different ways of representing the end of the world? What does it even mean for the world to end? Some possible themes you might use to guide your reflection are as follows:

• Climate change
• Pandemics and war
• Religious and mythic representation of the end of the world
• Apocalyptic literature
• (Human) finitude

Submissions are due Wednesday, April 15, at 3 pm CST.

Thank you so much to all who entered the inaugural Night Owls essay contest! Your essays were moving and thought provoking. Click here to find out who the winners are, and read their essays!

And, as we get ready for tonight’s conversation, check out some quotes from a few of our other excellent submissions:

“This is a call to evolve. A call to recognize when consumption has costs and to revise our economic models to reflect and measure this. A call to understand how our moral circle changes when we have the opportunity to include ‘human’ as part of our conception of the Self. Many try to find the positive in this pandemic, but this does not serve us well. Forcing a positive outlook makes us blind to the reality of our situation” – Mia Lecinski, “Tomorrow’s Plea for Moral Consideration”

“If we succumb to the myths of a new normal, it will not only be we who suffer, only we who have to get used to novel paradigms; our thinking will suffer, since we won’t really be together.” – Matt Rosen, “What Thinking Stands to Lose Today”

“Those small lines that form around the professor after lecture are no more; you have to write an email, and you are already at your computer. Although we have lost the ability to do some things, everything we can do has been put within arm’s reach. To that extent, our homes have become the new classroom and the way we treat it will affect how we continue to learn.” – Derrick Tang

“Much has and will be made of how teaching looks through the interface of screen and camera. But whether this attempt fails or succeeds already implies a logic, a belief: that knowledge is to be consumed. So, the lecture can be given on tablet, seminars held over phone, books can scanned into pdfs. Everything can be recorded.” – Noah Toyonaga

An Essay at the End of the World

Thank you for so many wonderful essay submissions for our inaugural Night Owls essay contest! This week, we’d like to hear your thoughts and philosophical reflections on the end of the world. To enter, please submit an 800-word essay, a poem, or a story to ChicagoPhilosophyNightOwls@gmail.com. You may use the following prompt to help guide your thoughts:

When catastrophe strikes, apocalyptic themes tend to crop up all over the place – in literature, popular media, and even in casual conversation. But the idea of the end of the world is far from new. For centuries, human beings have anticipated and reflected on the “end” in myth, art, and religion. Why are we so interested in the end of the world, and what does it say about us as a species? What is the significance of different ways of representing the end of the world? What does it even mean for the world to end? Some possible themes you might use to guide your reflection are as follows:

• Climate change
• Pandemics and war
• Religious and mythic representation of the end of the world
• Apocalyptic literature
• (Human) finitude

Submissions are due Wednesday, April 15, at 3 pm CST.

 

Night Owls, online edition will be kicking off next Thursday evening with the theme of:

Life Online: Community or Isolation?

Patrick Jagoda (English, Cinema and Media Studies)

In Conversation with Agnes Callard (Philosophy)

Thursday, April 9, 5:00-8:00 p.m. Central Standard Time

Livestream on Crowdcast: click here to register and join the conversation!

At this event, we will discuss questions such as:

• How and why are online meetings different from in-person meetings?
• Does social media make us more connected or more lonely?
• Is philosophy different online? Should it be?
• What is the philosophy of video games?
• How is philosophy like a video game?