Welcome
to CIPHER
Center(s) for Insight into Philosophic Health, Education, and Renewal
CIPHER is an organization
originally developed in response to issues raised at the Third International
Conference for Philosophical Practice, held in New York in July of 1997, and
devoted to the promotion of philosophy as a mode of practice. Throughout the
world philosophers from a wide variety of backgrounds, both inside and outside
of academia, are coming to a new and deeper appreciation of the extent to which
philosophy is not primarily a set of theories to be proved, but a set of
practices to be lived.
My initial idea was to construct
an interactive web site, with links to a diverse group of philosophers and
philosophical organizations around the world, who would be united here by their
common commitment to practicing philosophy. However, the person assisting me in that major
project turned to other pursuits, and so did I. The following year, I purchased
a ten acre property in the forest of Mendocino County (northern California) and
since then CIPHER has been focused on running philosophical retreats on that
property. A photo
tour of the retreat center is now available on this web site. The retreats
organized so far, with dates and texts, are as follows (click on the links to
see summaries):
January
7-11, 2001: Understanding
Nietzsche -- Halfway (Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra)
December 8, 2001: Perpetuating Peace in the Face of Terror (Kant's Perpetual
Peace); no online
summary
June
28 - July 1, 2002: Why
Do We Work? (Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition)
July
14-17, 2002: Rethinking
Kant's Philosophy of Religion (First Part of Kant's Conflict of the
Faculties)
June 23-26,
2003: Teaching
Kant Creatively (no text specified; each participant to work on individual
research)
If this is your first visit
to CIPHER, then you should begin by reading the introductory information
provided in item I, below. Unfortunately, after designing an online
Registration form (item III), I have not kept up with this aspect of the
project. So there is no list of registered members at present. (That is, item
II is a dead link.) If, after reading the information in item I, you are
interested in joining a web-based community of this sort, do feel free to fill
out the registration form. It does work. I will store the responses until I
have enough time and energy to put them together and link them to a list, which
will then become item II. (But please be patient!) Selecting item IV will take
you to a (now rather outdated) list of information and links relating to
philosophical practice.
I. Links for first time visitors
¬… Why CIPHER?
¬… Activities supported by CIPHER
II. List of philosophers registered with CIPHER
(under construction)
III. CIPHER registration form
(active, but submissions
may not be processed immediately)
IV. Other
information and links of interest to philosophical practitioners
Send comments to Steve Palmquist.
Return to Steve Palmquist's home page.
This page was last updated
on 8 June 2003.