Verdurin host courses, seminars, and reading groups for those interested in exploring the historical, political, and philosophical underpinnings of today’s culture and wishing to develop analytical and practical skills needed to for its renewal.
Our courses take the form of convivial group meetings at Verdurin. Some courses are accompanied by online versions available to anyone worldwide.
Nina Power
DiscernmentThe next in-person edition starts on 15 April 2026.
An online version is available.
What we decide to turn our attention to is no small matter. How we make sense of making sense, differentiate, and judge? How we can develop our own powers to handle the coming cultural apocalypse?
Nina Power
ZeitgeistAn online version is available.
How do humanity’s great abstractions function over time? This course on the philosophy of history considers the subject in chaos, stasis, progress, and providence.
Nina Power
IconoclasmAn online version is available.
This four-module course examines one of the deepest anthropological, religious, political, and aesthetic aspects of human existence: the question of images.
Past courses
Jacob Koster
The Return of AestheticsLong considered a moribund discipline, aesthetics has made a surprise comeback. This seminar traces its from the Enlightenment to the onset of Modernity.
Jacob Koster
What Was AestheticsWhat aesthetics was before it was subjected to a radical critique since the mid-19th century? This course considers the history of the concept from Antiquity to the Renaissance.
