On Dialectic: Its History and Importance
A Philosophical Happy Hour discussing the history, nature, meaning, and importance of dialectic—including its relation to logic, demonstration, and rhetoric. Old words of long and widespread use often suffer many interpretations: idea, object, concept, form. One word which has suffered greatly is “dialectic”. The word’s Greek etymology indicates “speaking across”, that is, a conversational speaking. […]
“Partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4): Aquinas’s Participatory Metaphysics and Moral Theology
Our Colloquium series reignites in 2026 with a provocative question from Dr. Christopher Ragusa on the importance of “participation” in Thomas Aquinas’ moral theology. Dr. Ragusa is a Louisiana native and an assistant professor of Theology at FranU. Dr. Ragusa specializes in natural law, virtue ethics, and Aquinas’s metaphysics of participation. He is the Coordinator […]
On the Difficulties of Consciousness
A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the apparent problems of consciousness, with particular focus on human beings and the signs by which our experience is known. A retrospective reflection on this Happy Hour can be found here: Resolving the Difficulties of Consciousness. Imagine yourself in the grip of a powerful passion: say, anger or lust, perhaps […]
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 have heard this asked. Quite probably, […]
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 human person. Here we announce our […]
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 question—any question whatsoever—you want seriously to […]
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, Shakespeare, Newman, Dostoevsky, and others do […]
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 fabricated by social agreement. Rather, it […]
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 benefitted our material existence. But does […]
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 movements, but as attempts to construct […]
