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Q&A: Lyceum Philosophy Club

Founded in 2005, the Lyceum Philosophy Club spent its first year operating in virtual anonymity. In an effort to boost philosophic discourse on campus, club president Crystal Vales and co-coordinator Daniel Guidry-Capson have started a series of Tuesday afternoon discussions in the Tivoli. Topics are focused on the works of different philosophers, but you do not need to be a philosophy major to attend. All you need is an open mind and a thirst for self-knowledge. The Metropolitan recently sat down with Guidry-Capson to pose some thought-provoking questions and gain insight into the club’s mission.

Met: What can a new member expect from the club?
DGC: Our primary objective last semester was to appear to be a campus resource. This semester we want to try to do a conference or symposium. At our meetings we often have subjects where we discuss free will, determinism, what is justice, postmodernism … so every meeting we have a topic-oriented discussion. It starts very general … and then we strike up the conversation from there.

We usually try to provide literary material, very small blurbs so that (students) can just dive in and have resources to work with. This semester we’re doing it mainly on philosophers. Last semester we did it on topics.

Met: Which philosophers?
DGC: One theme was supposed to be fathers of postmodernism – Marx, Freud, Nietzsche. Another topic was Sun-Tzu and Machiavelli. Sun Tzu was a military strategist and Machiavelli was a political strategist.

Philosophy is deeply concerned with politics, and one aspect of looking at politics is, how did these strategies develop? Where did we develop from and how does this affect other people philosophically? There are two sides: Machiavelli focuses on keeping the prince on the throne. Sun-Tzu devises a system into learning how to cooperate with an opponent to maintain peace and to learn how to address conflicts in a mature way.

Met: Which brings us to the political climate of today. Are you going to be addressing those types of issues, and what do you hope to achieve, if anything, aside from discussion?
DGC: Perhaps to clarify some of the terms. It’s not like a mathematical problem. We’re not here to solve or create world peace. We’re here to facilitate self-knowledge.

Met: Suppose you reach a conclusion based on your discussions that it’s time to act?
DGC: Act how? Are we going to act in the way Gandhi would act, or are we going to act as deviants or dissidents would act? Is armed conflict really the best or most expedient way to resolve conflict? Or is using your brain, and actually addressing (the conflict)? Gandhi did use philosophy to kick the British out. Philosophy has the power to do that.

Met: The club is not in the business of marketing, but if it was trying to market for the purposes of increasing club membership, what would be the selling points?
DGC: Philosophy is the center of most of the liberal education here, and it extends quite far. One selling point about philosophy is that it strongly emphasizes our ability to reason, and that ability to reason is logic. If there’s any selling point it’s that. For those who are spiritually trying to find themselves, philosophy is a great thing for them because the term philosophos means the love of wisdom. So for those who are trying to attain some kind of enlightenment, this is attractive. For most people who study political science and want to understand the ambiguity of abstract terms, philosophy would be a great place to do that. Philosophy gives you the medicine to deal and to swallow all the ambiguity, and it prepares you so that you have the ability to still reason.

Met: When and where do you guys meet?
DGC: Tuesdays in Tivoli room 225B between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. We want to leave a large time to have many different conversations, because when philosophers go they don’t stop.