Brian Kemple

  • New Faculty Fellow: Herbert Hartmann

    The Lyceum Institute is delighted to welcome a third new Faculty Fellow for 2025-26, Dr. Herbert Hartmann. I received my M. A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, where I studied under such distinguished Thomistic scholars as Fathers Joseph Owens, Armand Maurer and James Weisheipl, and, as well, Anton C. Pegis, under…

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  • The Death and Evolution of Education – Part III: Maladapted Universities

    This is the third in a four-part series on the Death and Evolution of Education, which seeks to explain why we cannot rely upon the university to provide the intellectual formation necessary for the common good, but must “evolve” a new approach to learning. Part I: Introduction can be found here, and Part II: The…

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  • On Perception and Reality

    A Philosophical Happy Hour on theories of perception and their influence on our understanding of reality. What if the world you believe yourself to see, to hear, and to touch isn’t the world at all, but only a clever illusion fabricated by your brain?  The familiar colors, sounds, and textures that feel so immediate—it has…

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  • The Death and Evolution of Education – Part II: The Hostile Environment

    This is the second in a four-part series on the Death and Evolution of Education, which seeks to explain why we cannot rely upon the university to provide the intellectual formation necessary for the common good, but must “evolve” a new approach to learning. Part I: Introduction can be found here. In this, Part II:…

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  • On Cognitive Security

    A Philosophical Happy Hour on the cognitive threats we face in an increasingly interconnected and digital world—and the possible solutions or approaches to them (the “security”). It is mid-2020 and you cannot shake the feeling that you are not getting the whole story.  We are told that a lethal virus is raging across the global. …

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  • The Death and Evolution of Education – Part I: Introduction

    This is the first in a four-part series on the Death and Evolution of Education, which seeks to explain why we cannot rely upon the university to provide the intellectual formation necessary for the common good, but must “evolve” a new approach to learning. One part will be published each week for the next four…

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  • John Poinsot – Cursus Philosophicus

    Cursus PHILOSOPHICUS John Poinsot, O.P., also known as Joannes a Sancto Thoma (1589–1644) wrote two major works in his lifetime: the Cursus Theologicus, on which incomplete text he worked from 1635 until 1643, when he was requested to become counselor and Royal Confessor to King Philip IV of Spain.  While attending to this new duty,…

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  • Passion and the Capture of Reason

    A Philosophical Happy Hour on the ways in which passion may capture and distort our exercise of reason—or, in proper subordination, affect a coherence of our persons Thinking clearly.  It seems a vanishingly rare virtue.  Ours is a reactionary time.  Reaction, however, seldom comes from the clear light of reason—but rather from the murky vapors…

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  • Lecture: You Are Not Your Own: a phenomenological investigation of embodiment

    Last year, the Lyceum Institute again hosted Dr. Steven DeLay (Research Fellow, Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Dublin and Tutorial Fellow, Ambrose College, Woolf University) in presenting his research. A prolific author and expert in French phenomenology, we are delighted to have Dr. DeLay contributing to our colloquia for the second year in a row.…

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