The Jousting Society

The Jousting Society was created to give graduate students and faculty members at Oxford a chance to step outside the bounds of their research and engage with a variety of literature both inside and outside the history of philosophy. To that end, our meetings are structured around a short essay, article, book-chapter or story that happens to be of interest to one of the Society’s members.

The Jousting Society will be meeting on a monthly basis in Hilary and Trinity terms, and our events are held at 7:30pm on Thursday evenings in the Philosophy Faculty’s Ryle Room.

If you are interested in attending, please see the schedule and reading list below:

Trinity (2011):

Week 2 (May 12): David Foster Wallace, ‘Big Red Son’ in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, London: Abacus, 2005; and Catherine MacKinnon, ‘Not A Moral Issue’ in Yale Law & Policy Review, 1984, 2 (2), p.321-345

Week 6 (June 9): David Foster Wallace, ‘Authority and American Usage’ in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, London: Abacus, 2005; Norman Malcolm, ‘Wittgenstein on Language and Rules’ in Wittgensteinian Themes, London: Cornell University Press, 1995; and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, New York: MacMillan, 1953 §243-315

Hilary (2011):

Week 3 (February 2): David Foster Wallace, ‘Consider the Lobster’ in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, London: Abacus, 2005; and Peter Singer, ‘All Animals Are Equal’ in Philosophical Exchange, Brockport, NY: State University of New York Press, 1974.

Week 7 (March 3): David Foster Wallace, ‘Good Old Neon’ in Oblivion, London: Abacus, 2004; Albert Camus, ‘Absurd Reasoning’ in The Myth of Sisyphus, New York: Vintage, 1955; and Samuel Beckett, ‘Happy Days’ in The Complete Dramatic Works, London: Faber & Faber, 1986

Michaelmas (2010):

Week 7 (November 27): Martin Heidegger, ‘What Are Poets For?’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Hofstadter, New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Trinity (2010):

Week 1 (May 1): Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, tr. Hong, Princeton: Princeton Unviersity Press, 1983.

Week 3 (May 15): Ernst Cassirer, ‘Art’ in An Essay on Man, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944.

Week 5 (May 29): Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Bad Faith’ in Being and Nothingness, London: Routledge, 2003.

Week 7 (June 12): Thomas Mann, ‘Tonio Kroeger’ and ‘Gladius Dei’ in Death in Venice and Other Tales, tr. Neugroschel, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999.

Week 9 (June 26): Aeschylus, ‘Agamemnon’ in The Oresteia, tr. Fagles, London: Penguin, 1977.

Hilary (2010):

Week 1 (January 23): Plato, Phaedrus, tr. Woodruff, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995.

Week 3 (February 6): Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘On the Vanity of Existence’ and ‘On Aesthetics’ in Essays and Aphorisms, tr. Hollingdale, London: Penguin, 1970.

Week 5 (February 20): Eric Voegelin, ‘Truth and Representation’ in The New Science of Politics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Week 7 (March 6): Karl Marx, ‘Alienated Labour’ in The Portable Karl Marx, ed. Eugene Kamenka, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.

Week 9 (March 20): Slavoj Zizek, Enjoy Your Symptom, London: Routledge, 2001.