Brian Kemple

  • On the Balance of Work and Study

    How can we make time and space in our busy—and seemingly ever busier—lives for the life of the mind?  Join our Philosophical Happy Hour this week as we strive together for a more balanced way of life. For much of human history, the life of the mind has been a domain of the privileged few—reserved,…

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  • Technologizing Our Bodies

    Commonly, we find the human body today treated as a possession, a something-other which is distinct from the self.  This opposition of the “self” to the body may result in various forms of neglect or abuse of the latter.  But it may also, in recognizing the importance of the body for life even as it…

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  • On Imperfection and Error

    Why is life imperfect?  Why are human beings so deeply flawed?  This week’s Philosophical Happy Hour looks at the imperfections and errors that characterize life—both those given to nature and those produced by our own choices. To err is to be human.  Is this a maxim for forgiveness or to excuse our follies?  In some…

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  • What Does AI Use Do To Us?

    As AI use becomes increasingly widespread in the world, it becomes a pressing question to ask not only what effects it might produce in the world, but what consequences it has for users and their habits—and for the environment of thinking as a whole. Introducing SEPPUAI: A Semioethical Framework for Artificial Intelligence The Lyceum Institute…

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  • …Finishing Our Sentences?

    …Finishing Our Sentences? Language and the Habits of Thought in the Age of Generative AI Most discussion about artificial intelligence today tends toward either hype or panic.  Optimists see in it a miraculous tool, the future of scientific advancement, and a development not only to rival the industrial revolution in its transformative power, but—perhaps—one that…

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  • Technology’s Effects on Nature

    Commonly, we presume an opposition between the “natural” and the “artificial”.  Usually, we assume the “natural” to be everything untouched by human hands, whereas the “artificial” is that which we have ourselves brought into being.  But this division not only ends up positing as irreconcilable the objects of our experience, it reinforces a false anthropological…

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  • On Our Need for Truth

    A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the nature and definition of truth, and its necessity for our living good lives. Do we need truth to live good lives?  Do all human beings?  And if so—what is the truth?  How do we know it?  Who “has” it?  Where do we find it?  What do we really mean…

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  • Psychological Effects of Technology

    That technology use has effects on our psychological well-being has become, by this point, well-known and widely recognized.  But the concern is ordinarily limited to the distraction, anxiety, addiction, overstimulation, or other faults in control that appear downstream of specific technological devices or frameworks, such as smartphones, social media, or LLMs.  These are real problems,…

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  • On Testimony: Rhetoric, Witnesses, and the Problem of Trust

    A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the rhetorical use and fittingness of witness testimony in efforts at persuasion. Very little of what we know—or believe ourselves to know—comes directly from our own experience.  That is, someone might have a kind of local familiarity with things, but he has never seen Africa or Asia, never observed distant…

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  • Second Plenary Speaker – Human Formation in the Digital Age

    From 16-17 September 2026, in St. Louis Missouri, the Lyceum Institute is hosting our first in-person event, Human Formation in the Digital Age: a conference asking how we must respond to our changed and rapidly changing technological environments in seeking to retrieve and foster a genuine formation of the human person. Here we announce our…

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