Plato and Descartes on Halloween

Like many holidays, Halloween is often treated as empty fun; its content—which plainly concerns death and its place in life—is dismissed as irrelevant to the meaning of the holiday as it is now practiced although it is conceded that this macabre content may be part of the historical origins of Halloween. In this session, the presenter will argue that this "nothing to see here" attitude should be rejected, and that Halloween can give us the opportunity to think through the central question facing all of us: How should we live? In this presentation, Benjamin Callard will offer a philosophical tour of Halloween, focusing on one important element in the story of Halloween: the idea of a ghost.

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Session
Session 1
Location
Harper Memorial Library, Room 140
Presenters