Excerpted from the lectures given to the Lyceum Institute Trivium: Art of Logic Course. “What more can be said about logic?”  I am acutely aware, as I pen these words that I pen them not to be read (even if someone other than myself might and does indeed read them), but to be spoken; to […]

“Nothing properly signifies itself.” To signify: this is to convey something other, to something other. Signification thereby contrasts with representation by their respective extensions, which can be either “other-representation” or “self-representation”. When you see a portrait, this represents something other than itself, namely, the person portrayed. When you see that person herself, her visible being […]

What are the virtues of a good listener? What are the dangers of listening? Dr. Mark McCullough answers these questions. What are the virtues of a good listener?  In the weeks that follow, I will answer this question in four installments: in the first three installments I concentrate on four different virtues important for good […]

Few, if any of us, go very long without hearing music. We have available to us more hours of streaming than ever we could hear in several lifetimes. It sits available through every device; it attends nearly every commercial, every television show. The quality of a movie may be greatly enhanced, or perhaps even ruined, […]

What is deconstruction? As John Deely makes clear, deconstruction is a tool rather than a system, and if made a system, becomes a dead-end.

Preliminary definition of the subject matter of the history of logic is hard to come by. For apart from ‘philosophy’ there is perhaps no name of a branch of knowledge that has been given so many meanings as ‘logic’. Sometimes the whole history of philosophy, and even knowledge in general, has been thus named, from […]

I apologize to the folks at the Lyceum for my long absence!  A new project that I’m beginning with my friend Fr. Cajetan Cuddy will hopefully help me to spin off some of this kind of content as I write on various Thomistic topics online.  But… I realize, also, that I’m not much of a “blogger.”  This is […]

On 15 March 2023, the Lyceum Institute held a Philosophical Happy Hour on the topic of “simulation hypotheses”.  This essay draws upon the observations offered and explored in that conversation and attempts a synthetic presentation of the collective insights of our community, with the addition of reflection and research by the author.  These Happy Hours […]

For the Lyceum Institute Philosophical Happy Hour, 8 March 2023 from 5:45–7:15pm ET! Request an invite here. Today the word “transparency” is haunting all spheres of life—not just politics but economics, too. More democracy, more freedom of information, and more efficiency are expected of transparency. Transparency creates trust, the new dogma affirms. What is forgotten […]

This post presents a quick reflection on rediscovering the hidden hours—the hours that we lose in each day. Who among us has not found him- or herself wishing for an extra hour or two in the day? For many, there seems so much to get done, and so little time in which to do it. […]