At 6:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night late last semester, 10 students gathered in a Barbelin Hall hallway eating slices of pizza.
“Are we really free?” one student asked.
“Are we living in a dystopian society?” asked another.
“Are we being monitored by ‘Big Brother’?”
“Are we living inside a giant egg?”
These are questions that members of the SJU Philosophy Society ask each week in the hallway of the department of philosophy in Barbelin Hall. The club offers members a chance to think through the application of philosophy to different situations.
Douglas Leake ’20, the current president of the club, leads the discussions at the meetings.
“We have a central theory or idea, and we try to find a real world topic or experience of ours that connects to it,” Keefer said.
Joseph Corabi ’01, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, was a member of the club when he was a student at St. Joe’s. Now, Corabi serves as as the faculty sponsor.
“It’s been very similar to now over the years, but with very different emphases,” Corabi said. “At certain points there was more reading. At other points it was more watching movies. At other points it was just open discussions. Douglas has a really good way of organizing it. They have a better mix now than in the past.”
While meetings are discussion based, members also watch films that coincide with certain topics. For example, the group watched “The Lobster,” a romantic drama, and also had a discussion on relationships, Leake said.
Lenora Thomas ’23, who joined the club last fall, had to take “Moral Foundations” as a requirement, as do all St. Joe’s students. Knowing she would have to focus on philosophical concepts, she joined the group for help with hashing out concepts and debating.
“It’s a guided discussion on philosophy,” Thomas said. “You try and look into the deeper picture of it. You put yourself in hypotheticals to try and understand the topics that we talk about.”
