Café Filosófico at AP Maria Nova Lounge
In 2023 we enter the eighth year of the Philosophical Café, an initiative of Dr. Maria João Neves, which takes place in the Lobby Bar of the AP Maria Nova Lounge hotel, at 6.30 p.m., on the third Thursday of each month. It now comes with the novelty of being held also in English, on the following Friday, at the same time and place.
Maria João Neves has a PhD in Contemporary Philosophy and is a researcher at the New University of Lisbon. She combines phenomenological training with a deep knowledge of the disciplines of the body, and is a yoga instructor and meditation practitioner.
His latest book Philosophical Coffee. O Som do Pensamento, published last month is an anthology of seventy short texts, published in Cultura.Sul over the last seven years, organised by thematic affinities in seven sections: “Body and Mind”, “Love and Pleasure”, “Unquietude”, “Pandemic”; “Good Living”, “Art”, and “Us and Others”. With a rare talent for talking about serious subjects in a light-hearted way, but without neglecting rigour, Maria João Neves brings knowledge and the philosophical tradition to our days. For example: it moves from the Algarve chaos of the summer months to the gyms of young Greeks, from radical, miracle diets to gymnastics of the mind and body, or asks provocatively “Did the Stoics practice mindfulness?”
The first Philosophical Café of 2023 opens with the theme “Still on the Soul”, and will take place on 26 January in Portuguese and on 27 January in English. Throughout these years of Café Filosófico, the theme of the soul has been visited several times. The first presenting Plato’s cerebralist view that housed the soul in the brain; the second exposing Aristotle’s cardiocentrist view that housed the soul in the heart; the third presenting Pascal’s reasons of the heart and María Zambrano’s metaphor of the heart.
It was with “The Song of the Soul” that the 2022 Philosophical Coffee ended, inspired by two stories worthy of reflection, although fictional. Each of the participants surrendered to the Pythagorean conviction of finding your soul number and making it ring out.
Maria João Neves now reviews the cradle of our civilisation, asking what the Greeks of the Homeric poems were referring to when they spoke of soul? What is the relation of the soul to the ethical sense, and how does the Greek conception of that time illuminate our contemporaneity? What does the hero Achilles have to teach us? Come and reflect with us!
Suggested contribution for the Café Filosófico in Portuguese: 5
Suggested contribution for the English Philosophical Café: 10
Registration: filosofiamjn@gmail.com
