Peripatetic Periodical
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John Deely on Deconstruction
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.
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I.M. Bochenski on the Concept of Formal Logic
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…
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Exploration through Practical Signs
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…
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On Signs and Simulations
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…
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On Trust and Transparency
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…
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Hidden Hours
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.…
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On Analogy
A Brief Primer on the Doctrine’s Confusion Few topics have brought as much consternation to Thomists than that of analogy; not only those living and writing in the contemporary period (subsequent, that is, to the Leonine revival initiated in 1879), but stretching back to the first fluorescence of Thomism begun in the late fourteenth century,…
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A Meditation on Exile
But exile—like that faced by Aeneas—more rapidly ages any man or woman, and, today, we are all today wandering in exile. We want for a home… many seem not to possess even the sense of what “home” is. This deprivation seems especially true of my own generation (millennials) and younger. Not only are we geographically…
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What Is Wrong with the World?
“What’s wrong with the world?” Countless thinkers have asked this question, especially over the past century-plus, and they have asked it over and over again; to the point that few in recent years seem to ask it any longer, even for the purpose of adopting the thinnest veneer of rhetorical posturing. No. Today, almost everyone…
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Re-Thinking Education
I have, relative to my own age and experience, long been a critic of academia. Just the other week, a friend reminded me of a late-night frustrated rant delivered in graduate school about the seeming hopeless prospects laid before us. Not only our chances to find meaningful employment, I claimed, but the whole structure is…