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, […]

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 […]

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. […]

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?  […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour concerning the present conditions, future prospects, and most promising directions for the pursuit of higher education Every reality which exists only in the concrete, corporeal world—and especially those that exist only or primarily within the socially-constructed realities of human interaction—has a natural lifespan.  They are born, they mature, and, eventually, they […]

Though a single language, Latin finds diverse expression across the centuries of its use. The student familiar with Cicero and Seneca will different modes of expression in Abelard and Aquinas. But Scholastic Latin, albeit less rhetorically fluid than many of the great classical authors, has a beauty all its own—a spiritual depth and a philosophical […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour on… whatever! The third installment in our Felictates de Quodlibet series for 2025, in which we talk about whatever we want, so long as it is interesting, and for as long as we are interested. Or, to put this otherwise: do you have a philosophical question—any question whatsoever—you want seriously to […]

New! The second, greatly expanded edition—for those who seek not mere correctness, but understanding. In a world that ignores education in grammar—first, reducing it to mere “correctness” and, second, outsourcing the verification of that correctness to digital technologies—Linguistic Signification offers something far more substantial: an integrated education in the principles of language itself. This text […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the relationship between self-awareness, morality, and machine technologies What is the relationship between self-awareness and our moral convictions?  How do our technologies affect this relationship?  This week’s Philosophical Happy Hour takes up these questions and more.  But let us set the stage for our conversation. A member brought this article […]

Help Us Build the Future It’s the last week of our Spring fundraiser! To date, we have raised $9,422. This is $15,578 short of our goal of $25,000. To get us as close to this goal as we can, we are asking for your help in this final week! Any donations, large or small, are […]