The Cult of Authenticity and Hypocrisy
A Philosophical Happy Hour reflecting on the pressure to exhibit personal authenticity in an age of hypocrisy. We hear constant calls to “be authentic”, “be yourself”, and “say what you really think”. These imperatives are often treated as uncontroversially liberating—as though the chief moral danger of human life were[…]
On Lying, Concealment, and Strategic Deception
A Philosophical Happy Hour considering whether every intentional deception is forbidden, or whether some concealment is not only permitted but required. What is a lie? And do we often call things “lies” that aren’t, or conflate lies with other forms of concealment or deception? A difficult and uncomfortable question—but[…]
On the Necessity of Solitude for Abiding in the Truth
A Philosophical Happy Hour inquiring into the nature of solitude and its role for our intellectual lives: not as that whereby truth is merely discovered, but by which we abide in it. Two weeks ago, we asked in our Philosophical Happy Hour how and why it is that friendship[…]
To Will or Not To Will (That is the Question)?
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the act of will, and the question: what does it mean to say that our will is free? What makes a will good? A common staple of western philosophical anthropology is arguing or asserting there is such a thing as a human will, a[…]
The Human Person and Artificial Intelligence
Today we conclude our first white paper series, derived from the 2024 Difficulties of Technology seminar, with Modules 8 – Technology and the Whole Person and 9 – Consensus on Artificial Intelligence. These papers address the principal and characteristic harm of poorly designed, developed, and implemented technology—namely, its fragmentation[…]
Humanitas Technica – Update
Our on-going project of publishing the results and developments of the Humanitas Technica Project continues: today, adding a new theoretical paper by Adam Pugen (Faculty Fellow) and two more of our first white paper series. Reclaiming Communication Reclaiming Communication from Information: Knowing in the Digital Age — This paper[…]
On the Necessity of Friendship for Discovering the Good
A Philosophical Happy Hour focused on the question of friendship: its nature, deepening, and the necessity of others with whom we share the search for the good. I have spent much of my life alone. The youngest in my family, I began homeschooling in fourth grade, and continued until[…]
Disarming the Presuppositions against Faith
A Preface to a Long Conversation—on the relationship between faith and reason—begun by addressing the presuppositions which have made the conversation unnecessarily difficult. “There are not one hundred people in the United States”, once said Fulton Sheen, “who hate the Catholic Church; but there are millions who hate what[…]
On the Univocal and the Analogical
A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the principles and aims of language through univocal and analogical predication. What is the meaning or the significance of a word? This question may operate on two levels: first, concerning a specific word’s meaning—“tree” or “justice”, “fruit” or “truth”; or, second, concerning the relationship[…]
Reading Circle: Pierre Manent [2026-27]
Description Democracy without Nations?: The Fate of Self-Government in Europe (4 weeks) [March–April]This work, now over twenty years old, retains clear relevance today in light of the current crisis of the nation-state as a political form. The book is an extended essay on some of the consequences of late–twentieth-century[…]
