[Ads-l] A "philosophy slam"? Not in OED

[Joel Berson]

The article does not use "slam," but I think it is one.

‘A Night of Philosophy,’ 12 Hours of a Mental Marathon, by William Grimes, NYTimes, April 27, 2015, page C1.
/begin quote/The mental marathon billed as “A Night of Philosophy” began in an analytic frenzy at 7 p.m. on Friday as three speakers held forth simultaneously in separate lecture rooms: Monique Canto-Sperber, of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, dissected the notion of free speech in a liberal society. Chiara Bottici, of the New School for Social Research, discussed Machiavelli’s ideas about fortune. And Pascal Engel, of the University of Geneva, issued a ringing call for deep thought in a talk titled “Must Intellectual Life Be Boring?”

Boring no. Strenuous yes. For the next 12 hours, 59 other philosophers held forth in 20-minute bursts at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy on the Upper East Side and its next-door neighbor, the Ukrainian Institute of America. Their subjects ranged from Pascal’s wager to the perils of moral relativism to alien intelligence, and were delivered amid a swirl of artistic performances, D.J. sets, a five-hour reading of the Marquis de Sade’s “Philosophy in the Boudoir” and eerie sounds emanating from a wooden space capsule with an astronaut D.J. inside./end quote/

Similar to "poetry slam", which is in the OED.  Although there is no competition for a prize, as there is for the best poem, it is similarly a recital by a number of speakers.
Grimes writes that there have been predecessors in Paris, London, and Berlin over the past five years.

I did not look for "philosophy/er's slam" associated with this kind of event.  A very brief Googling shows there are other types of "philosophy slams."  For example:  

http://www.robertrowlandsmith.com/website/philosophy_slam.html, where one speaker responds to questions.  

The "Kids Philosophy Slam", which is submissions by children to a prize contest.
Joel



------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org