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Time and the Ordering of Self-Motion

What is time? Many a philosopher has wrestled with this question, resulting in rather diverse results. Famous is Aristotle’s definition, which can be stated most simply as, “the measure of motion” (though, in truth, his claims are more complex than this). Famous also are the struggles to understand time in Book XI of Augustine’s Confessions and the posit of time as the unlimited and infinite a priori pure intuition grounding the possibility of all appearances by Immanuel Kant.

Most people, however, simply take “time” for granted. Primarily, this taking-for-granted comes from a default subjectivism. We speak often of “my time”. In speaking this way, we imply time is a possession or a resource. Indeed, many people worry about “wasting” and “spending” time. Thus, we schedule our days, our motions, by the clock and the calendar. We take an abstract representation of days, hours, and minutes and adjust ourselves to fit our living into that abstraction. Clock and calendar thereby become imperial forces that rule our lives.

But must we live this way: under the tyrannical reign of the calendar? Has our taking-for-granted of time allowed us to fall under the sway of bad ideas, bad theories, and to instill in ourselves therefore bad practice?

What is time? Who can explain this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend this even in thought so as to articulate the answer in words? Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time? We surely know what we mean when we speak of it. We also know what is meant when we hear someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know. But I confidently affirm myself to know that if nothing passes away, there is no past time, and if nothing arrives, there is no future time, and if nothing existed there would be no present time. Take the two tenses, past and future. How can they ‘be’ when the past is not now present and the future is not yet present? Yet if the present were always present, it would not pass into the past: it would not be time but eternity. If then, in order to be time at all, the present is so made that it passes into the past, how can we say that this present also ‘is’? The cause of its being is that it will cease to be. So indeed we cannot truly say that time exists except in the sense that it tends towards non-existence.

Augustine c.395, Confessions XI, xiv (17).

We talk about time all the time. But we do not think about it. Thus, we talk about it—but never about what it is, or what it means. And not thinking about time, we allow false beliefs about it to creep in sideways, to steal time away from us. Ordering ourselves by the clock and calendar, we turn the measured into the measure. Instead of moving ourselves, we time ourselves. We impose time. Does it change the way we move ourselves?

Perhaps, therefore, we should think about time more—and talk about what it is. Is it something subjective, personal—rendered by our own minds, our own passing through experience? A dimension that extends throughout all corporeality? Is it “a number of motion fitting along the before-and-after?”

Come join us this Wednesday at our Philosophical Happy Hour to talk about what time is—and how we can have a better practical relationship with it through such theoretical clarifications!

Phenomenology: An Introduction

What is phenomenology? This question has been asked, indeed, seemingly since the word “phenomenology” was first introduced. It is a question, also, which gives testimony to a point often made by John Deely: efforts at philosophical innovation require either the posit of a neologism, in which case no one understands its significance, or the effort at adapting an old term to a new meaning, in which case everyone will attempt to interpret your new meaning by the old. Despite this confusion, phenomenology has continued to exercise an influence for just as long as its meaning has been questioned.

In an effort, therefore, to provide a much-needed clarification—not by mere didactic exposition but by a “genuine repetition” of the inquiry that led to its development—this seminar will endeavor to re-discover phenomenology from its very roots. Accordingly, we focus our inquiry primarily on the thought of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the first founder of phenomenology as a formal movement within philosophy.  But we will also expand our considerations into the practical application of phenomenological method for understanding various aspects of human experience, including what it means in fact to be a human person, and to dwell among and with other persons.

By our inquiry into phenomenology, we hope to clarify both what it is, itself, and its fittingness in the context of philosophical inquiry broadly speaking.  This seminar, taught by Drs. Daniel Wagner and Brian Kemple, will lead students through the tangle and into the clearing. View the syllabus here.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

1:00pm ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings


June
3
Break with Reality: The Need for Phenomenology
Lecture 1: Classical Sense-Realism and the Modern Break
Readings:
» “Key Texts on Sense-Realism in Aristotle & St. Thomas Aquinas” and “The Modern Break”.
June
10
The History and Question of Phenomenology
Lecture 2: Origins and Methodologies
Reading:
» [Required] Spiegelberg 1956: “Introduction” and “Part One: The Preparatory Phase, Chapter One: Franz Brentano” (1-52).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 1-22.
June
17
The Phenomenological Attitude
Lecture 3: From Natural to Phenomenological Attitude via the Phenomenological Ἐποχή
Reading (same for weeks 3 and 4):
» [Required] Husserl 1907: The Idea of Phenomenology, 1914: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy,51-62 (§27–32).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 124-163.
June
24
First Fruits of the Phenomenological Reduction
Lecture 4: Intentionality, Νοησίσ-Νοημα, and the End of Idealism
Reading:
» [Required] Husserl 1907: The Idea of Phenomenology, 1914: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy,51-62 (§27–32).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 124-163.
July
1

BREAK
July
8
The Self and the Other
Lecture 5: Other Persons, Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and Objective Truth
Reading:
» [Required] Husserl 1931: Cartesian Meditations, Meditation V.
» [Recommended] Selections from Stein 1916: On the Problem of Empathy.
July
15
Structures of Experience
Lecture 6: Perception, Memory, and Language
Reading:
» [Required] Sokolowski 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, c.5-7.
» [Recommended] Excerpts from various authors.
July
22
Structures of the Lifeworld
Lecture 7: Temporality, Science, and Meaning
Readings:
» [Required] Sokolowski 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, c.9-11.
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 164-191.
July
29
Phenomenology of Personhood
Lecture 8: Reflections upon Intentional Consciousness
Readings:
» [Required] Spaemann 1996: Persons, 1-40.
» [Recommended] Wojtyła c.1965: Person and Act: The Introductory and Fundamental Reflections (36-58).

Registration

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).

Phenom Cover Vert

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction – Public Participant

A payment level recommended for those who are currently students, who are between jobs, or who have part-time employment.

$60.00

Phenom Cover Vert

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction

Recommended for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought and for whom continued education is especially important (including professors and clergy). Helps allow us to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$135.00

Phenom Cover Vert

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction

Recommended for those with fulltime employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more. Greatly aids us in allowing to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$200.00

Pricing Comparison

Standard priceBasic Lyceum
Enrollment
Advanced Lyceum EnrollmentPremium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after
8 seminars included
$90 after
Patron$135 per seminar$653 seminars included
$65 after
8 seminars included
$65 after
Participant$80 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after
8 seminars included
$40 after

Political Philosophy: A Thomistic Defense of Democracy

Can we have a democratic government in an increasingly post-liberal world?  Must we return to a strict hierarchy if we are to abandon the “liberal experiment” that has rendered increasing ailment in recent decades?  These are not questions with simple or straightforward answers.  To answer them, we would be foolish both to ignore St. Thomas Aquinas and to caricaturize his thought to fit facile solutions.  Thankfully, though under the auspices of a somewhat different world, great Thomistic thinkers have already anticipated the question and can provide us guidance going forward.

The famous saying of Aristotle that man is a political animal does not mean only that man is naturally made to live in society; it also means that man naturally asks to lead a political life and to participate actively in the life of the political community. It is upon this posulate of human nature that political liberties and political rights rest, and particularly the right of suffrage. Perhaps it is easier for men to renounce active participation in political life; in certain cases it may even have happened that they felt happier and freer from care while dwelling in the commonwealth as political slaves, or while passively handing over to the leaders all the care of the management of the community.  But in this case they gave up a privilege proper to their nature, one of those privileges which, in a sense, makes life more difficult and which brings with it a greater or lesser amount of labor, strain and suffering, but which corresponds to human dignity.

Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law.

Many are familiar with Jacques Maritain, great Thomist author and figure of the twentieth century: a man who wrote on topics far and wide, and strove most of his life to bring a living Thomism into a broader public.  Fewer are familiar with the thought of Yves Simon, scion of Maritain’s approach to understanding St. Thomas, and an adept thinker and careful author in his own right.

Among Simon’s many contributions is his Philosophy of Democratic Government, a work which presents the core insights of Maritain concerning the nature of democracy in a more deeply-rooted scholarly appraisal of St. Thomas, and rife with many additional insights of Simon’s own.  Using this text as our basis, this seminar, taught by Dr. Francisco Plaza, will revisit these twentieth-century thinkers and discern how their thought can help address the troubles of our own times. View the syllabus here. Registration closes June 2.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

4:00pm ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings


June
3
Lecture 1: Christianity and Democracy
Readings:
» Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, pages 3 to 63
June
10
Lecture 2: General Theory of Government
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 1 to 71.
June
17
Lecture 3: Democratic Freedom
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 72 to 143.
June
24
Lecture 4: Sovereignty in Democracy
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 144 to 194.
July
1

BREAK
July
8
Lecture 5: Democratic Equality
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 195 to 259.
July
15
Lecture 6: Democracy and Technology
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 260 to 321.
July
22
Lecture 7: The Failure of Liberalism
Readings:
» Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, pages 1 to 42; pages to 179 to 198.
July
29
Lecture 8: Freedom, Nature, Community, and Democracy
Readings:
» Yves Simon Reader, pages 134 to 148; pages 267 to 284; pages 289 to 298; pages 399 to 414; pages 433 to 446.

Registration

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).

If you prefer an alternative payment method (i.e., not PayPal), use our contact form and state whether you prefer to pay as a Participant, Patron, or Benefactor, and an invoice will be emailed to you.

[2023 Summer] Thomistic Defense of Democracy – Public Participant

A payment level recommended for those who are currently students, who are between jobs, or who have part-time employment.

$60.00

[2023 Summer] Thomistic Defense of Democracy – Public Patron

Recommended for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought and for whom continued education is especially important (including professors and clergy). Helps allow us to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$135.00

[2023 Summer] Thomistic Defense of Democracy – Public Benefactor

Recommended for those with fulltime employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more. Greatly aids us in allowing to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$200.00

Pricing Comparison

Standard priceBasic Lyceum
Enrollment
Advanced Lyceum EnrollmentPremium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after
8 seminars included
$90 after
Patron$135 per seminar$653 seminars included
$65 after
8 seminars included
$65 after
Participant$80 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after
8 seminars included
$40 after

What is Philosophical Habit?

A discussion of philosophical habit as the core of practice at the Lyceum Institute

What are habits? And what does it mean to have a philosophical habit? As I discuss in the above, it is a way of inquisitively holding ourselves towards the world—and with an attitude of genuine humility before the object.

Or to put this otherwise: how often do we find not only others but also ourselves presuming a certitude and a knowledge about the world in which we live? Often; and if we had better practices of reflection upon our own thinking and behavior, we would discover that we do it even more often than we think. We allow ourselves to be held by presuppositions about the world, ourselves, and what is true. By contrast, a philosophical habit consists in holding yourself humbly. This habit also therefore helps us to resist the converse habit—the prevalent tendency of today—of reactive distractedness.

No matter our age or station in life, we ought to strive to be learners; to be students. A student is not someone between the ages of 5 and 18, or 22, or 30. Rather, it is to be one eager for knowledge. To be a student is to embody the virtue of studiousness. I think here of Hugh of St. Victor’s words from the Didascalicon: “The good student, then, ought to be humble and docile, free alike from vain cares and from sensual indulgences, diligent and zealous to learn willingly from all, to presume never upon his own knowledge…”

Let us strive for these virtues!

Lyceum Institute Merchandise

Announcing a new and improved Lyceum Institute Gift Shop, with higher quality and more suitable merchandise! We will be adding more products throughout the year, but why not check out our early offerings. 100% of proceeds go to supporting the Lyceum Institute’s mission and vision. Mostly, though, they are intended to be useful, fun, and a reminder of what the Lyceum Institute stands for: the joy of learning, thinking, and genuine conversation.

And if none of our products appeal to you, but supporting the Lyceum Institute does, consider making a small donation to our Spring Fundraiser: helping culture develop a right-minded habit of self-criticism! Every dollar helps us to offer our wide range of intellectually-stimulating and habit-forming programs. We rely on your donations.

Restless Soul: Zena Hitz on the AMI Podcast

Friends being friends with friends: it is a beautiful thing! Listen to Dr. Zena Hitz, tutor at St. John’s College, author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (a highly-recommended book), and Co-founder & President of the Catherine Project talk on the Magnus Podcast, hosted by John Johnson and Larissa Bianco. We are affiliate partners with both institutions! Listen to Dr. Hitz discuss the development of thinking and the role of education in the fructification of a human life.

As we all agree, we can do more together than we can do alone.

Listen to the podcast here!

The Habit of Conversation

Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
-T.S. Eliot 1935: “Burnt Norton” (first of the Four Quartets), III.

Few poets ever have and likely ever will attain the prescience of T.S. Eliot. I find myself repeating, with increasing frequency, the lines quoted above: not only so that I might recall myself to focus, but to name the phenomena seen in others. We find ourselves struggling to hold meaningful conversations, dismayed either by others inattentiveness or ensnared by our own distractions.

But without conversation, we suffer an enormous blow to the integrity of our human way of life. We ought instead strive to affect a recovery of the habit of conversation. Here, allow us to explore some avenues through which such a recovery might be made.

The Language of Conversation: Holding vs. Having

First, it is important that we be able to say what a conversation is. As with many common phenomena, we likely take for granted that we “know” what a conversation is without needing to define it. But this kind of “knowledge”—experiential familiarity—does not help us overcome our present conversational malaise. In other words, we need to deepen our knowledge of conversation if we wish to have better conversations.

The way we speak about conversations, as with many other things, often reveals our underlying beliefs about what a conversation is, even if we are not consciously aware of that belief. For one thing, it seems that the phrase “holding a conversation has become increasingly rare, replaced by the more transactional “having a conversation.” The distinction between holding and having a conversation is subtle yet significant. “Holding” a conversation implies a sense of presence, responsibility, and of participation. The conversation is held between two people. By contrast, “having” a conversation suggests something that each individual gets or receives from the other(s) involved. It turns the conversation into a possession. This shift in language seemingly reflects the deeper, atomistic individualism pervasive in our society.

It implies, that is, that conversations have become commodities, something we acquire or consume, rather than an essential aspect of our human connection.

Holding Ourselves in Conversation

But holding a conversation is not merely a transitive, extrinsic action. We hold a conversation only by holding ourselves within it. We hold to the conversation. How often do we find ourselves not present or open to the other? Do we listen for an opportunity to speak—to rejoin, respond, to deviate into something else—or do we listen to what is being said? Do we listen so that we might hear or so that we might get something out of it?

Technology has undeniably altered our habits of conversation. Smartphones, in particular, have become both a distraction and a crutch, frequently drawing us away from in-person interactions. But are there other ways technology, other technologies, that affect our conversational habits?

One interesting aside to consider is the role of AI and chatbots like ChatGPT which may shape our conversational habits. The promise of instant feedback and the ability to return immediately to whatever topic offered by these platforms can reinforce the transactional attitude toward conversation: an exchange of information, on-demand. The silence, the gestational pause of thinking, of truly reasoning, plays no role in these technologies. Even our text-messaging habits lean into this: the absolute horror of being too long “left on read” without receiving a response.

Balance: Held by the Word, rather than the World

As humans, we navigate a delicate balance between active and passive engagement. However, it seems that our current approach to conversations may have disrupted this equilibrium. We must consider whether we are too passive or too active, or perhaps passive or active in the wrong ways. Reflecting on our conversational habits and our relationship with technology is an essential first step toward rekindling the art of meaningful dialogue.

Perhaps the best way to rectify this conversational degradation is, in fact, by having one: a thoughtful, careful, and meaningful participation—not an exchange, but truly communicating in the pursuit of truth. Join us this Wednesday for our Philosophical Happy Hour, exploring this critical aspect of human connection and rediscovering the beauty of holding, and being held by, a conversation.

Philosophical Happy Hour

« »

Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.

Lifelong Intellectual Development

The Lyceum Institute is dedicated to nurturing the habits of lifelong intellectual development through the use of digital technology, making high-quality education accessible to a meaningfully diverse community of like-intentioned persons. As a non-profit institution, we rely on the generosity of our supporters to continue providing exceptional learning experiences that foster genuine thinking and self-improvement. How do we provide this education and how can you help?

Higher Education

All of our programs are structured and conducted with the intent of building key habits of intellectual virtue: studiousness, diligence, orderliness, focus, knowledge, insight, and the humility to recognize, respect, and adhere to wisdom. These habits are cultivated in an atmosphere that emphasizes forming and asking questions—questions asked of others, of the tradition, of the present world, and most of all, of oneself. We cannot improve without knowing what we lack, and we cannot discover answers if we do not know the questions.

Traditional institutions of higher education remain invaluable, but insufficiently meet our current needs. Students must overcome obstacles of time, place, and considerable financial expense to attend such programs. Moreover, wars of ideological opposition, serving only to distract from an honest pursuit of the truth, have decimated the courses and curricula of many universities. By contrast, the digital environment of the Lyceum is flexible, affordable, and concerned with the inquiry into and discovery of what is true, regardless of its provenance or associations.

Members and Studies

Members of the Lyceum Institute come from a wide range of backgrounds and with a diversity of experience: factory workers and truck drivers, PhDs and medical doctors, students and retirees, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim; with backgrounds in the humanities and the sciences, with decades of study or just beginning—we all seek the same good and are bound by the common desire to know. Humility before true wisdom, possessed by none but loved by all, provides the foundation for our community.

Thus we commonly engage in studies of philosophy, literature and the arts, the classical trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (though continually revising our understanding in light of the new technological paradigm), languages (with an emphasis on Latin), and keep open our doors for new thoughts.

Together we are building a new way of learning: one not constrained to a course of months or years, but which integrates itself into the whole of human life.

Since joining [the Lyceum Institute], I feel that I have found a place in the digital wasteland to call home: a home where I learn and discuss more about philosophy, the classics, art, theology and psychology; a home where my interests are taken seriously and given room to grow; a home where I find others living consciously, respectful of the thoughtfulness of others, motivated by the wisdom of the past, and wrestling with the answers for the future.

-Mark [see more testimonials here].

Broader Community

At the core of this new way of learning stands a principle of financial subsidiarity. Put simply, we do not want financial barriers to stand in the way of individuals serious about integrating their love of wisdom into daily life. Thus, we encourage all of our members who can to pay more, so that those who cannot, may still participate. But we also rely upon donations from the broader community to supplement this model of subsidiarity.

Every member that we gain is another light in the dark—brightening not only our own digital community, but bringing that light to friends and family and their local communities. Every donation we receive is fuel for those flames.

Even if membership is not right for you, you can help us to brighten the world. Donate to our Spring Fundraiser by 8 June 2023, Better Self-Critics, to help us reach our quarterly goal, or set up a recurring donation here.

Falling in Love with an Easy Life

An excerpt from the concluding pages of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, Part II, recollecting time spent in the Butyrki transit prison of central Moscow. In particular, he here notes a contrast with the prisoners of his own generation—most of whom fought in the Second World War with some pride in their service for the Motherland—and the younger prisoners. This younger generation, while their peers were busy “falling in love with an easy life”, saw through the falsehoods of socialism.

Dawn of the Great Truth

Was it not here, in these prison cells, that the great truth dawned? The cell was constricted, but wasn’t freedom even more constricted? Was it not our own people, tormented and deceived, that law beside us there under the bunks and in the aisles?

Not to arise with my whole land
Would have been harder still,
And for the path that I have trod
I have no qualms at all.

The young people imprisoned in these cells under the political articles of the Code were never the average young people of the nation, but were always separated from them by a wide gap. In those years most of our young people still faced a future of “disintegrating,” of becoming disillusioned, indifferent, falling in love with an easy life—and then, perhaps, beginning all over again the bitter climb from that cozy little valley up to a new peak—possible after another twenty years? But the young prisoners of 1945, sentenced under 58-10, had leaped that whole future chasm of indifference in one jump—and bore their heads boldly erect under the ax.

In the Butyrki church, the Moscow students, already sentenced, cut off and estranged from everything, wrote a song, and before twilight sang it in their uncertain voices:

Three times a day we go for gruel,
The evenings we pass in song,
With a contraband prison needle
We sew ourselves bags for the road.

We don’t care about ourselves any more,
We signed—just to be quicker!
And when will we ever return here again
From the distant Siberian camps?

Good Lord, how could we have missed the main point of the whole thing? While we had been plowing through the mud out there on the bridgeheads, while we had been covering in shell holes and pushing binocular periscopes above the bushes, back home a new generation had grown up and gotten moving. But hadn’t it started moving in another direction? In a direction we wouldn’t have been able and wouldn’t have dared to move in? They weren’t brought up the way we were.

Our generation would return—having turned in its weapons, jingling its heroes’ medals, proudly telling its combat stories. And our younger brothers would only look at us contemptuously: Oh, you stupid dolts!

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Vol.I, Part II.

Knowledge and History

We must remind ourselves, often, that ignorance of the past condemns us to its repetition. This past need not have disappeared into the mist of ancient history. Ignorance grasps us by default. We repulse it by constant effort. Today, we see many, indeed, “falling in love with an easy life”—unthinking consumption of the lotus flower. It comes today in many forms. Drugs. Pornography. Endless streaming entertainment. The promise of a universal basic income. The hope of automation. Simultaneously, others are realizing the inhumane consequences of taking a daily soporific. Meaningless distractions. Life without purpose. The sickness of pleasure for its own sake. “Good Lord, how could we have missed the main point of the whole thing?” You will find no freedom in such a love; only slavery.

Let us wake up, and remain alert.

(If you do not own the Gulag Archipelago, you can purchase all three volumes in paperback for $44—well worth it!)

How and Why We Study Logic

Excerpted from the lectures given to the Lyceum Institute Trivium: Art of Logic Course.

“What more can be said about logic?”  I am acutely aware, as I pen these words that I pen them not to be read (even if someone other than myself might and does indeed read them), but to be spoken; to be given in a lecture, that is—a lecture for the Lyceum Institute, a lecture belonging to a course, and a course belonging to a holistic study of all three arts constituting the Trivium.  Though logic may be studied on its own, both as an art and as science, its greatest fruit comes when studied integrally with the other arts of the Trivium.  This sentiment—or rather, the mixed sentiments of hope, humility, and no small amount of trepidation, since I am myself well aware of my woeful inadequacy as a teacher, especially of logic—this sentiment finds itself grounded by the well-wrought intellectual insights of far wiser men: men such as R.E. Houser, John Deely, and John Poinsot, all of whom I consider my own teachers in this most difficult of subjects.  My failings, however, are not a reflection of their abilities: for I have learned logic through their printed works, rather than in-person instruction, and thus have not benefitted from direct correction.

The purpose of these lectures, indeed, is not to say anything new or novel about logic at all.  That does not mean there is nothing new to be said about logic, only that I am not here intending to say it.  Rather, these lectures aim—as is more broadly the goal of this course as a whole and of our first course of study of the Trivium in the Lyceum Institute—these lectures aim at displaying and explicating the art for a living audience.  They form part of a multi-party dialogue: between myself, as the instructor, and you, as the audience; between us, as a class, and the texts, which we read; and between the shared knowledge we gain and the knowledge we yet seek.  Between instructor and audience, there is formed a whole; between that whole, the class, and the texts, there is formed a second whole, that shared knowledge.  But knowledge, always and invariably, prompts new questions, an inquiry beyond itself.  These lectures are merely my own contribution… and rather a minor contribution, at that, in the grand scheme of this dialogue.

Our world—by which I mean not merely the physical environment of earth (though inclusive of it) but rather, more primarily, the specifically human environment of linguistically-perfused culture—suffers a problem of meaning.  I have addressed this problem in many other places.  We may redress this problem of meaning, however, only through language, and only if we conceive of language in the right way: not merely as an abstract system of arbitrarily-stipulated symbolic communications, ordered principally toward pragmatic ends and for the sake of manipulating that world to our ends (such manipulative bearing being one of, if not the, principal causes of our meaning problem), but rather as the way in which the true meaning of things comes to light in the first place.  For developing a facility with language so-conceived, we must study all three arts of the Trivium.  In the Art of Logic, in particular, we attend specifically to the illative relation, whereby we discover how language leads thinking through inference to truths not immediately evident—to truths obscured by malfeasant rhetoric or the will-to-power, to truths hidden by those who wish only to bend the world to their wills, instead of standing themselves humbly open to the real.

Sign up for the Lyceum Institute and join us in the study of Logic this Spring! Lectures begin 1 May 2023 and discussions on 8 May 2023. All members are welcome to take the Art of Logic course, at every level of enrollment.