Please fill out this form to RSVP for Friendship in the Polis, Module I of Collegium Institute's Food for Thought.

This informal, convivial seminar will meet once a week over Zoom to discuss brief readings and examine how friendship--as both concept and, more importantly, a practice--enables us to navigate differences of opinion on truth, justice, and morality within a democratic polity.

Amid ever more frequent calls for the virtues of civility and toleration in an ever more polarized populace, this seminar will consider whether conversation and dialogue between people of differing worldviews require not mere tolerance of the other, but friendship with and love for the other. In a country grappling with deep divisions on every conceivable topic, can friendship on an individual and a societal level enable us to act with malice toward none, with charity for all, and to make a reality the promise and the dream of our deeply flawed nation of high ideals? Join us as we reflect on such questions drawing from the texts of great thinkers both classical and contemporary.

The reading for the September 30 session can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ekDtJvj62DePX0NjvcahRLa_Rg1pwdMp/view?usp=sharing.  

Wednesdays | September 9, 16, 23, 30 | 7:00pm–8:00pm EST | Zoom

This program is open to University of Pennsylvania students. Zoom details will be sent to all who RSVP.