Leeds Salon, in partnership with The Tetley, has put together a series of September Saturday afternoon talks asking ‘What does it mean to be human?’, in which authors and academics will examine questions around issues of conciousness, determinism, autonomy and agency.
The series starts off on Saturday 6 September when Angus Kennedy asks ‘Have we still got soul?’. The concept of the soul is a problematic one today. It is certainly difficult to accept any idea of an inner ‘something’ that constitutes our self-consciousness and sense of identity. But it seems equally difficult to concede that our unique first-person perspective so easily be reduced to bodily identity. What explains our desire to see the person in picture, the subject, as being somehow present in the object? What do we mean when we talk about ‘the soul’?
On Saturday 13 September Helene Guldberg will discuss ‘Are we just another ape?’. Today, the belief that human beings are special is distinctly out of fashion. We are presented with almost daily revelations both about how much we are driven by biological impulses over which we have little control, and how animals are so much more like us than we ever imagined. The argument is at its most powerful when it comes to our closest living relatives. However, despite first impressions, are apes really ‘just like us’?
Saturday 20 September, we ask Ashley Frawley ‘Should we be happy?’. Human happiness has been a concern since Ancient Greece. However, it’s only in recent years become an object of government policy. But where does this concern with our happiness come from? Does it reflect a real and growing problem of unhappiness; maybe driven by our consumerist culture and the pace of modern life? Or does it reflect our more emotional times, underpinned by, and encouraging, a more ‘vulnerable’ model of the Self?
Finally, on Saturday 27 September, James Heartfield will examine ‘What happened to agency?’. Nowadays it seems that people are increasingly obsessed with themselves. They take life-affirming journeys, courses in self-discovery, cover themselves in tattoos, and talk of little else. But this preoccupation with the Self is a clue that the modern sense of identity is weak, not strong. If the contemporary Self is so precarious and inward-looking, what does this mean for human agency?
The talks take place in the Ground Floor Gallery of The Tetley, Hunslet Road, Leeds LS10 1JQ. Doors open 3:45 for a 4pm start and finish around 5:30pm
For more information visit: www.leedssalon.org.uk/
Admission: £3 to pay on the day. Please reserve your place by e-mailing Leeds Salon at contact@leedssalon.org.uk
Paul Thomas is co-founder of Leeds Salon and writes for its sister-journal Freedom in a Puritan Age and Culture Vulture.