Felicitates de Quodlibet, I.2
A Philosophical Happy Hour on… whatever! Continuing our Felictates de Quodlibet series, in which we talk about whatever we want, so long as it is interesting. In the Scholastic university, renowned thinkers would regularly engage in open debate on questions posed by other scholars or students at the institution.[…]
Art of Rhetoric I: Discovery of Arguments [2024]
“…it is strange if it is a shameful thing not to be able to come to one’s own aid with one’s body but not a shameful thing to do so by means of argument, which is to a greater degree a human being’s own than is the use of[…]
Seminar: Maritain’s Hope for an “Existential Epistemology” [Fall 2024]
Description Details All Lyceum Institute seminars include weekly readings, lectures, and live discussion sessions. The discussion sessions are recorded. This seminar includes focused readings of Maritain’s work. Participants are required to purchase Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge and Untrammeled Approaches. Priced from $60 per person. Discussion sessions occur on Saturdays[…]
On Falsehood, Lies, and Deception
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the distinctions between falsehood, lies, and deception, and the morality of their use “Is lying always wrong? Is lying always lying?” There are two ways, I believe, that we can approach this question. The first evaluates manuals of moral theology or commentaries on ethics,[…]
Total (Moral/Human) Annihilation
The following is excerpted from Lewis Mumford’s 1961: The City in History, c.18, “The Myth of Megalopolis”, an important source in our upcoming Difficulties of Technology seminar. Here we explore the themes of “total human annihilation”—particularly in its moral dimension. Naïve Functionaries of Annihilation Much of the thought about[…]
On Paradox
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the role of paradox in carrying out investigations of nature, humanity, and being. “A paradox”, writes the Thomist philosopher Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “is the tension existing between two apparently opposed propositions which cross one another and thus find themselves at peace.”[1] Wilhelmsen contrasts the[…]
Lying and Truth as Accomplishments
The following is excerpted from a presentation given by John Deely on 1 March 2014 at the 37th Annual Meeting of the American Maritain Association. What Makes Possible both Lying and Truth as Human Accomplishments Comment “Listening to Maritain on the subject of sign as treated by Poinsot…” We[…]
Self-Sufficiency of Happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics
Our Colloquium series for the year 2024 continues with a thoughtful interpretation of a perennial difficulty in interpreting Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, presented by Joseph M. Cherny, PhD Candidate at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX. Mr. Cherny asks: how is happiness[…]
On Consumers and Consumerism
A Philosophical Happy Hour on our having become consumers and how we might escape consumerism. I am uncomfortable in nearly all shopping environments (used bookstores being the primary exception). I do not know when this began—but it became very noticeable to me while in graduate school; perhaps because I[…]
Building the Future of Education
Announcing the Lyceum Institute‘s plan for building its future and the future model of education. Dear friends, supporters of the Lyceum, and believers in the importance of genuine human education: I am thrilled, though not without a little trepidation, to announce the next major step in the development of[…]
