News and Announcements
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Meet the Columbanus Fellows: Lance Gracy
Over the next several months we will highlight a few of our Columbanus Fellows, bringing to light the character of students engaged in our program! These fellows are engaged in a rigorous and deep inquiry into the Western intellectual tradition, seeking both to retrieve lost wisdom and to further its presence in our society today. Lance…
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Re-Structuring Fitness
Will we lose our humanity by trying to improve it? On Monday, 29 January 2024, Elon Musk posted on X.com that “The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well. Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.” The Neuralink project jumps off the pages of science fiction, right alongside the development of…
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Dogma: Development or Detention?
What is dogma? Frequently, in modernity one will hear people mocking the idea of dogma: seen as some arbitrary rule that detains free intellectual pursuit. Dogma is also often seen as something exclusively religious—but this seems dubious. From my understanding a dogma properly speaking is something that usually comes after deliberation of some sort, as a…
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The Philosophy of History
What is history—and how do we study it? The answers to these questions—to be asked at this week’s Philosophical Happy Hour (17 January 2024: details below!)—though they might seem simple, perhaps even elementary, not only prove difficult and controversial but elusive. And given different answers, the practice of historical inquiry will be greatly changed. History…
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Do Ideas Have Power?
“The potency of ideas lies in their ability to influence thinking, motivate action, shape cultures, and alter the course of history.” Why do we care so much about our ideas? What is an idea? What is power? Three questions that are familiar to human history, but, perhaps, too-little examined today. That ideas are important seems, no doubt, widely accepted…
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The Ethics of New Terminology
In a famous set of scenes in the 2004 classic movie Mean Girls one of the main protagonists, Gretchen Wieners, attempts to introduce a novel expression into the discourse with her friends, insisting upon ending every conversation with the exclamation, “That is so fetch!” After failing to have the terminology catch on for so long,…
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2024 Winter: Good and Freedom in Aquinas’ De Veritate
Why do we call a thing “good”? We have been calling things good since childhood, but, as with any conception so fundamental, it is challenging to unfold its meaning. Given the multifarious use of this name, “good”, is there even a unity of meaning to discover? Is it just that we call anything good merely…
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Complete Lyceum Catalog – 2024
We have completed our 2024 catalog and preliminary schedule for all seminars and courses! While these are, of course, always subject to change (life being ever-unpredictable), I am happy to announce this very exciting slate of philosophy seminars for the upcoming year: Seminar Catalog 2024 Winter (Q1) Introduction to Philosophical Thinking – Brian Kemple Phenomenology:…
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Winter 2024: Introduction to Philosophical Thinking
We hear the word “philosophy” used often—often in cringe-inducing ways (“My philosophy on this is…” “That’s an interesting philosophy…” “His coaching philosophy…”), where the speaker really means an opinion or a method. For others of us, it might conjure up images of books or a college course catalog; perhaps something having to do with symbolic…
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Hervaeus Natalis and Logic
Ho ho ho… Harvey is coming to town? One of the many fascinating contributions semiotics makes to contemporary philosophical discourse is role it sees for signs and sign-relations in the domain of logic. In this interview on Dogs with Torches, we are joined by the Lyceum’s very own Dr. Matthew K. Minerd to discuss the…
