On the Question of Beauty
A Philosophical Happy Hour inquiring after the nature, perception, and intelligible of beauty and the beautiful. “What is beauty?” If you have spent any time of your life at all around centers of philosophical inquiry, or persons who enjoy questions of deep and abiding human significance, no doubt you[…]
Human Formation in the Digital Age – Keynote Speaker
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[…]
Felicitates de Quodlibet, III.3
A Philosophical Happy Hour on… whatever! The third installment in our Felictates de Quodlibet series for 2026, in which we talk about whatever we want, so long as it is interesting, and for as long as we are interested. Or, to put this otherwise: do you have a philosophical[…]
On Reading the Great Books
A Philosophical Happy Hour inquiring after the merits of reading the Great Books and understanding the environment of the reader. The recovery of classical education, much in vogue today, has often been identified with the recovery of the Great Books. This is understandable: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Dante, Aquinas,[…]
Ethics: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from Hearing [Summer 2026]
Description Through careful attention to Aristotle’s own argument—against the backdrop of the Pre-Socratics and of Plato—the seminar will examine how the human good possesses universality and necessity without becoming disconnected from the concrete realities of human life. The good is neither imposed upon human nature by extrinsic causes nor[…]
On the Recovery of a Broad Vision
A Philosophical Happy Hour reflecting on the renewed demands for broader intellectual vision amidst academic narrowing. For decades, modern education has praised specialization as the hallmark of intellectual seriousness: the disciplined acquisition of precise methods, technical vocabulary, expert competence, and increasingly narrow mastery. No doubt, such knowledge has greatly[…]
Politics: Second Reality: On the Problem of Ideology [Summer 2026]
Description Our inquiry will begin with the philosophical roots of the ideological age, where suspicion toward truth and transcendence becomes a dominant feature of modern thought. From there, we will examine the rise of political ideologies in the twentieth century—communism, fascism, liberalism, and their totalitarian tendencies—not merely as historical[…]
Face to Face with Everything: How Philosophy Looks at the World and What It Sees
The Lyceum Institute is delighted to announce the first text in our series with St. Augustine’s Press, Philosophical Habit: New Paradigms for the Digital Age, has been published. This text was developed from a seminar taught at the Lyceum Institute. Face to Face with Everything: How Philosophy Looks at[…]
Two Becoming One: Love, Knowledge, and the Intelligibility of Unity
A Philosophical Happy Hour discussing the metaphysical difficulty of unity—in the concrete relations of love and knowledge. Politicians often use the word “unity”. We must be united. Stand united. Present a unified front. But it takes little investigation to discover that our States—to say nothing of our world—are rather[…]
Literature, Writing, and the Recovery of Man
A Philosophical Happy Hour inquiring into the virtues of the written word—on literature, writing, and the possibility of meaningful truths amidst a flood of meaningless words. Walker Percy’s brief meditation, titled “From Facts to Fiction” begins autobiographically: a physician trained in the beauty, rigor, and explanatory power of science[…]
