Meran Paul
Features Editor
This fall, The University of The South welcomes the Philosophy Club back onto campus after a ten year hiatus, thanks to Lillian Holloway – (C’ 25) majoring in politics, and Anna Cook- (C’ 25) majoring in neuroscience. In an interview with them, we discussed their inspiration for rekindling the Philosophy Club, how it was done, how it is going and much more that you will know as you read the article.
Attending a few of the “Night Owl” events planted the idea of starting a philosophy club in Cook’s mind. “The ‘Night Owls’” Cook says “just weren’t as casual as I would have liked.” Further adding that she was really looking for a middle ground between the formality of that, and joking around with her friends, Cook wanted “a way of talking specifically about philosophy with people that I liked in a semi-structured environment, but having no topic off limits, I just felt like there wasn’t anything like that.”
She asked Philosophy Department Chair Dr. Hopwood about creating a group that would do this and he informed her about a philosophy club that used to be very popular but had been dormant for a decade now. The Philosophy Club we have now is in some ways a reestablishment of the same club with the help of Dr. Hopwood. One doesn’t need to be a philosophy major to be part of the club. It’s open to everyone in the sense that it is an inclusive space of people talking about ideas.
When asked about what they hope members will get out from attending the Philosophy Club meetings, Holloway said “people learn to critically think outside of the classroom” and that’s exactly what the aim of the club is. She further added “I feel like that’s a lofty want, but that’s genuinely what I want.” Talking about the way both of them liked thinking and how being around upperclassmen helped them develop their own ways of thinking, it dawned on Holloway “they (upperclassmen) were doing the same thing that we were doing, we just did it on the Clark patio over lunch or whatever. It’s more structured and there are more perspectives and an internal motivation to think and have fun thinking”. Holloway says that she realized that something like what they are creating would have been so valuable to them as freshmen, because they were always eager to find fellow people who wanted to have intellectual conversations outside of the classroom. It was hard for them to do that, so they found each other, which they both agreed was amazing. Their experiences as freshmen motivated them to speed up that process of finding a community of thinkers for new students who have fun thinking and like to share ideas.
The three main topics of the three discussions so far were “Can all of human emotions be described in terms of neurochemicals?”, “If you could click a button that killed all humans at once (including yourself), would you do it? Why or why not?”, and “Is a utopia possible? What might it look like?” While in theory the Philosophy Club is open to everything, the founders tend to skew more towards things they’ve had classes on, but they are also actively trying to recruit people and professors to pool knowledge to make the topics as diverse as possible. “If anyone has a special field of knowledge, we want them to bring it to our attention,” Cook said.
Talking about special activities the club is planning, we came to know about a special Halloween event and an event in collaboration with the Classics house. The Classics House is hosting a symposium with togas, live music, grapes and fake beards. Holloway seems excited to be adhering to “the original concept of the symposium” and talking about the Halloween event informed me “For Halloween, whoop whoop, when the veils between worlds are the thinnest, we will have a philosophical talk about death in the cemetery”. “It’s gonna be terrifying” she said “but not because of the costumes and the gore, but because of the intellectual territory that we wander into”
Now wandering into thinking about the role of the Philosophy Club in the larger campus community, Holloway said that “I think Philosophy Club is supposed to be a community in and of itself”. Obviously it is founded by members of the larger community, but Holloway and Cook don’t think of the renewed club in relation to Sewanee because “philosophy is supposed to be a little bit more detached. If anything, the whole point is to make it more expansive and distinct than the Philosophy Department, because they’re all very specialized in certain fields and offer the same few classes each semester” said Cook. The goal is to make something that goes way beyond those fields of philosophy that are offered at Sewanee and is also way more casual and inclusive. The aim is to incorporate people who like to talk about ideas, but aren’t philosophy majors, because “there’s just a lot of people who have knowledge of math or politics or any variety of subjects who can add really valuable other perspectives,” said Cook.
“Some discussions,” said Holloway, “have been more successful than others.One danger” Holloway suggests is that “there are these sort of clichéd arguments of either of our time or just of, thinking in conversation in general.” Cook agreed and added that she thinks the topic really can shake the conversation. “The question,” she said, “specifically in the kind of articulation of a question can shape the way people think about that thing and discuss that thing.”So moving forward they want to be more mindful of the effect the beginning of the discussion could have on the entire discussion and would like for people to come to Philosophy Club with an open mind.
When asked what the two founders would like to say, Holloway bent like a banana over the phone recording the interview and said, “Come, hither.” Cook, supporting Holloway’s invitation, asks everyone to come to the Philosophy Club meeting, “Even if you know nothing about anything. Once we have money, there’s no stopping us.”