On May 11, 2022, Philosophy Professor Vanessa Voss facilitated a conversation on Hannah Arendt and friendship at Goethe Pop-Up Houston. In her presentation, she looks at friendship from the point of view of not only Arendt but of Aristotle, Epicurus, Montaigne, and Michael Sandel.
Vanessa Voss is a Professor of Philosophy at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas. She has an MA in Philosophy from the University of Houston and an MA in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University. She has published work on feminism, evolution, and humor in the collection, Who’s Laughing Now: Feminist Perspectives on Humour and Laughter, on the Relief Theory of Humor in It’s Funny Cause It’s True: The Lighthearted Philosophers’ Society Introduction to Philosophy through Humor, and humor, laughter, and Stoicism in the collection Cases on Applied and Therapeutic Humor. She is an active member in Houston’s public philosophy group, “Philosophically Drinking”, and a regular speaker and presenter with New Mexico Texas Philosophical Society and the Lighthearted Philosophers Society. At this time, when she is not subjecting herself to hours of Alex Jones’s rhetoric, she is researching anti-ontological arguments in the Zoroastrian tradition, the destructive humor within Incel memes, as well as the nature of hope and its possible relationship to nihilist and gallows humor.