Face-to-face and online options available

[su_note note_color="#e66570" text_color="#333333" radius="3"]The dates for this seminar have been changed, both for the in-person and online versions. It will take place on March 8, 11, 15, 18, and 22, 2021.
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The Philosophy seminar "Pleasure, Pain, and Death" poses timeless questions: What does my pain mean? How can I design a life worth living, aware of my own finitude and mortality, and in the face of daily exposure to things beyond my control? What is a good life, and what elements does it include? How should we live and how should we die? Why persist in this prolonged derangement of the senses that will inevitably plunge us into the ocean of unconsciousness?

One of the foundational moments of Western philosophy is, without a doubt, the Phaedo by Plato. A dramatic and intense dialogue that dramatizes the last hours of Socrates in the company of his disciples and friends. We often recall his last words: “Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Make the offering, and don't forget.” From Olympiodorus to the present day, this strange statement has given rise to multiple interpretations, among which stand out Nietzsche's in *The Gay Science* (where the dying Socrates is accused of cowardice for identifying life with an illness from which death would free us) and Michel Foucault's (who, contrary to Nietzsche, identifies the most terrible illness for humankind not with life itself, but with an existence devoid of all self-knowledge and riddled with false beliefs). Be that as it may, this singular expression often makes us forget that just as important as Socrates' last words in the Phaedo These were the first words: the first words the master utters while rubbing his legs after being freed from his shackles and preparing to talk about the good life, implacable death, and the supposed immortality of the soul:

“What a strange thing it seems that men call pleasure, my friends! How astonishing is the way it naturally relates to what appears to be its opposite, pain: they don't both want to arise in human beings at the same time; but if one is pursued and captured, one is always almost forced to take the other as well, as if they were joined to a single head! And it seems to me,” he continued, “that if Aesop had realized this, he would have composed a fable in which the god, after failing to reconcile them in their strife as he intended, joined their heads together, making them one single thing, so that every time one appears, the other follows. This is precisely the impression I myself have had: since, because of the shackles, I had a sensation of pain in my leg, now a sensation of pleasure seems to follow it.”

The words of the Phaedo His reflections on the proximity of pleasure, pain, and death will be the starting point for a Philosophy seminar, open to those curious from other disciplines, in which we will explore schools of thought and models of the good life that combine the epistemological dimension of argumentative analysis, an awareness of the fragility of existence, and the question of the good life within the horizon of time. Specifically, we will confront two worldviews whose tension runs through the history of human culture from the Greek world to contemporary thought: the tragic interpretation of existence and metaphysical optimism.

Information about this Philosophy seminar:

913 605 409 / 650 727 085

mangeles.garcia@cbamadrid.es

Minimum number of students (face-to-face modality): 10

Program:

All sessions of this Philosophy seminar are taught by Iván de los Ríos

5 sessions of 2 hours each: March 8, 11, 15, 18 and 22, 2021

Sessions 1 and 2: Socrates, Plato and the archaic worldview

Plato's philosophy and his conception of the good life constitute a foundational gesture in the history of Western philosophy. Through the dramatic construction of his dialogues, Plato establishes a horizon of dialogical reflection that underscores the rational structure of the cosmos, the city, and the human soul, insisting on the need to examine daily our convictions about real and apparent goods. In contrast to the ontology of chaos, the theology of force, and the tragic pessimism prevalent in the Homeric tradition and pre-Platonic literature, Plato's dialogues create a space for transition, moralization, and rationalization of the divine and the human, culminating in the ascetic ideal of the West, where pleasure, pain, and death are contemplated through the lens of the temptation of immortality. Texts: a selection of fragments from archaic epic and lyric poetry. Plato: Phaedo and Republic IV.

3rd and 4th sessions: Schopenhauer Vs. Nietzsche: is a possible
Pessimism of the fortress?

In philosophical terms, 19th-century Europe embodies the definitive destabilization of Western metaphysical optimism. Within this context, the figures of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche play an absolutely crucial role, stemming from the metaphysics of the will, the philosophy of the absurd, and the project of a transvaluation of all values. In both, we also find a revival of the tragic culture of Archaic Greece, which, however, leads to completely opposing models for interpreting pleasure, pain, and death. We will examine both proposals through a selection of texts from *The World as Will and Representation*, *The Birth of Tragedy*, *Human, All Too Human*, and *The Gay Science*.

Session 5: Emil Cioran and the suicide to come

In the final session of the course, we will delve into the unique stylistic, philosophical, and existential approach of the Romanian thinker Emile Cioran and some of his fundamental works: The Ill-Fated Demiurge, On the Trouble of Being Born, and The Fall into Time. In all of them, we will observe a lucid, aggressive, and relentless examination of the insignificance of the human condition in the history of organic life and the ridiculous temptation of philosophical systems to neutralize it. This insignificance, however, does not preclude the unfolding of an overabundance and a sovereign force that permeates the pages of one of the contemporary philosophers in whom the pleasure of living, one's own and others' suffering, and voluntary death acquire magnitudes as beautiful as they are grotesque.

Iván de los Ríos in el Círculo de Bellas Artes

In addition to leading this Philosophy seminar, Iván de los Ríos has participated in various activities within del Círculo de Bellas Artes. He did it in the Pandemic Glossarywoe in Mondays, at the Circle with his wonderful reflection on chance. Furthermore, he directed the course at the School of Arts, The power of series and the series of powerand wrote about him Houdini Reloaded: The Power of Series and the Series of Power on our blog. Also, along with José Emilio Esteban Enguita, he participated in the panel Escape Routes: From Laughter, Philosophers, and Philosophy from the Congress on Escapes, Exoduses and Ruptures and reflected on the stumbling block and fall at the Figures of Failure Congress.