There’s being a pretentious twat, and there’s going to a vegan bar when you’re not even vegan, to a philosophy night when you’ve never studied philosophy, listening to attendees talk about *checks notes* Epistemology (a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge) and hermeneutics (the science of the interpretation of biblical scriptures).
But that’s what I tried out on Wednesday 7th August, in Hinterland. The Philosophy Night happens monthly, and I’d been meaning to try it out for something different.
The group split off into different tables, where in small clusters we got into discussion. A lot of it went over my head, in all honesty. I find philosophy as a subject to be largely irrelevant considering the main minds that formed the basis of it (Aristotle, Socrates etc.) are long dead, and Freud (who also got a mention) blew most of their theses out of the water. We have cold, hard science now to establish the facts about human thought. And it’s developing every day. Philosophy, well, that isn’t.
That said, without philosophy, there’d be no psychology, the science that has in recent years revolutionised my life. I can cook, organise my house, plan events, work efficiently and ‘read’ people a little bit thanks to psychology, so it’s interesting to investigate its origins.
Shame the event was mostly blokes.
