Seminar: The Opportunities of Technology [Fall 2025]
Announcement of our Fall 2025 seminar, “The Opportunities of Technology”—how can we redeem the technological from its current abused status? Description Details All Lyceum Institute seminars include weekly readings, lectures, and live discussion sessions. The discussion sessions are recorded. This seminar includes extensive readings, but does not require advanced philosophical knowledge (nor does it have […]
On Christianity and the Interpretation of Philosophy
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the influences of Christian belief on philosophical interpretation, and of philosophical wisdom on the practice of the Christian faith. Is there such a thing as “Christian philosophy”? Today, thinking of antiquity draws new interest. The texts of Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Porphyry—even the fragments of Parmenides and Heraclitus, the […]
On Violence
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the concept of violence, both physical and cognitive. When I was five years old, I was hit in the face with a croquet mallet, and not gently. It was an accident—the consequence of mutual carelessness between my brother and I while goofing around in the garage one evening, neither paying […]
New Faculty Fellow: Herbert Hartmann
The Lyceum Institute is delighted to welcome a third new Faculty Fellow for 2025-26, Dr. Herbert Hartmann. I received my M. A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, where I studied under such distinguished Thomistic scholars as Fathers Joseph Owens, Armand Maurer and James Weisheipl, and, as well, Anton C. Pegis, under […]
On Perception and Reality
A Philosophical Happy Hour on theories of perception and their influence on our understanding of reality. What if the world you believe yourself to see, to hear, and to touch isn’t the world at all, but only a clever illusion fabricated by your brain? The familiar colors, sounds, and textures that feel so immediate—it has […]
On Cognitive Security
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the cognitive threats we face in an increasingly interconnected and digital world—and the possible solutions or approaches to them (the “security”). It is mid-2020 and you cannot shake the feeling that you are not getting the whole story. We are told that a lethal virus is raging across the global. […]
John Poinsot – Cursus Philosophicus
Cursus PHILOSOPHICUS John Poinsot, O.P., also known as Joannes a Sancto Thoma (1589–1644) wrote two major works in his lifetime: the Cursus Theologicus, on which incomplete text he worked from 1635 until 1643, when he was requested to become counselor and Royal Confessor to King Philip IV of Spain. While attending to this new duty, […]
Passion and the Capture of Reason
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the ways in which passion may capture and distort our exercise of reason—or, in proper subordination, affect a coherence of our persons Thinking clearly. It seems a vanishingly rare virtue. Ours is a reactionary time. Reaction, however, seldom comes from the clear light of reason—but rather from the murky vapors […]
Lecture: You Are Not Your Own: a phenomenological investigation of embodiment
Last year, the Lyceum Institute again hosted Dr. Steven DeLay (Research Fellow, Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Dublin and Tutorial Fellow, Ambrose College, Woolf University) in presenting his research. A prolific author and expert in French phenomenology, we are delighted to have Dr. DeLay contributing to our colloquia for the second year in a row. […]
On Life, Knowledge, and Vocation
A Philosophical Happy Hour contemplating the role of knowledge in the various vocations of life Lately—though, perhaps always, implicitly—we have found ourselves circling the topic of vocation. What is the calling of the human person? Does it fall into determinate categories—as husband or priest, mother or c-suite executive—or does it admit greater variability and complexity? […]
