About the Symposium
The Stockholm Symposium is a small philosophy circle that meets once a week in Stockholm. We are not academics on duty and we are not a reading group. We are people, locals and visitors, newcomers and old hands, who think an evening is well spent working through a single honest question.
The point is not to read philosophy. It is to do it. Each week we take one question (What is love? Is there free will? What do we owe to strangers?) and we reason it through together. We quote the great philosophers when they sharpen the thought, and we put them aside when they don't. We disagree freely. And before the night is over, we write down what we actually concluded.
Those conclusions are published here, in English and Swedish. They are not final answers. They are an honest record of where a roomful of curious people arrived on one evening, and an invitation to arrive somewhere of your own.
Who it's for
No background in philosophy is required, only the willingness to think out loud and listen well. We keep each evening small enough that the conversation stays real. We speak English by default, and switch to Swedish whenever the room prefers it.
How we choose what to think about
The topic is decided democratically. Anyone can nominate questions they'd like the circle to take on, and each week the room picks the one it wants to sit with. Nothing is off the table and nothing is closed forever: a question we've answered once can be reopened later, because good answers rarely stay still.
The one rule
Be warm, welcoming and respectful. You can disagree as sharply as you like, with anyone, about anything. What you can't do is be unkind. People who can't hold that line, who make the table feel unsafe rather than alive, are not invited back. It's the only rule, and we mean it, because it's the thing that makes honest thinking possible.
Visiting Stockholm?
You are especially welcome. A symposium is one of the better ways to spend an evening in a city you don't yet know, and you'll meet people you'd never meet on a tour. Just email before you come so I know to expect you.