Chicago Civil Philosophers is a group who engage in Acts of Philosophy in Chicago. We are still exploring what we mean by "Acts of Philosophy". Many of the things that we do are philosophical, or have some philosophical element attached to them. The goal is to try to make a connection between the Capital-P Philosophy that is taught in universities with the real world experience of our community here in Chicago.
A part of our mission is to de-mistify the involvment of Philosophy in our lives. Philosophy has a reputation for being a bunch of people filandering in a room about the meaningless-ness of the world, or that it's nothing more than a bunch of different peoples' opinions that loses the forest through the trees, or that it loses sight of the "real world" as most of us experience it in these un-necessarily over-complicated thesis on the "Nature of the Universe" or whatever.
Don't get me wrong, there's a place for all of that in Philosophy, and believe it or not, we think there's a place for it in our banal every day lives that we live in this city. This is really the thing we are trying to highlight here. It's not just that there's a connection between the two, it's more than that. Philosophy and the lives we live are intertwined.
The purpose of this philosophical activity is not to provide a philosophy education, but to actively engage in Acts of Philosophy in our community. Some ideas that we are toying with include reciting philosophical works in the streets, posting a one page long citation of philosophy somewhere in the streets, reciting poetry in the streets, possibly from famous poets, and possibly from Chicago-based poets who wrote them the same day. We would even go as far as to say that even very predictable and contemporary encouragements might find their way in the mix. Street theatre, performance art, and others kinds of art are also on the table.
The main purpose of this project is to connect with our community and to share ideas that we feel are important to our lives. Sometimes this may be coming from a place that we feel strongly about, but some of our Acts of Philosophy may very well be an exploration for ourselves to see what happens when the abstract ideas in our heads hit the brick wall of what real life is like in Chicago in 2024.
If you'd like to get in contact with us, you can do so at the email address below. In order to avoid bots from sending us spam, we have put it on the page as a screenshot. If you cannot access the information in this image, our email is the name of our organization, then the @ symbol, then the rest of what you would expect from a normal gmail account.
