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News and Announcements/Seminar

Phenomenology: An Introduction

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What is phenomenology? This question has been asked, indeed, seemingly since the word “phenomenology” was first introduced. It is a question, also, which gives testimony to a point often made by John Deely: efforts at philosophical innovation require either the posit of a neologism, in which case no one understands its significance, or the effort at adapting an old term to a new meaning, in which case everyone will attempt to interpret your new meaning by the old. Despite this confusion, phenomenology has continued to exercise an influence for just as long as its meaning has been questioned.

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In an effort, therefore, to provide a much-needed clarification—not by mere didactic exposition but by a “genuine repetition” of the inquiry that led to its development—this seminar will endeavor to re-discover phenomenology from its very roots. Accordingly, we focus our inquiry primarily on the thought of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the first founder of phenomenology as a formal movement within philosophy.  But we will also expand our considerations into the practical application of phenomenological method for understanding various aspects of human experience, including what it means in fact to be a human person, and to dwell among and with other persons.

By our inquiry into phenomenology, we hope to clarify both what it is, itself, and its fittingness in the context of philosophical inquiry broadly speaking.  This seminar, taught by Drs. Daniel Wagner and Brian Kemple, will lead students through the tangle and into the clearing. View the syllabus here.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

1:00pm ET
(World times)		Study Topics &
Readings

June
3		Break with Reality: The Need for Phenomenology
Lecture 1: Classical Sense-Realism and the Modern Break
Readings:
» “Key Texts on Sense-Realism in Aristotle & St. Thomas Aquinas” and “The Modern Break”.
June
10		The History and Question of Phenomenology
Lecture 2: Origins and Methodologies
Reading:
» [Required] Spiegelberg 1956: “Introduction” and “Part One: The Preparatory Phase, Chapter One: Franz Brentano” (1-52).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 1-22.
June
17		The Phenomenological Attitude
Lecture 3: From Natural to Phenomenological Attitude via the Phenomenological Ἐποχή
Reading (same for weeks 3 and 4):
» [Required] Husserl 1907: The Idea of Phenomenology, 1914: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy,51-62 (§27–32).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 124-163.
June
24		First Fruits of the Phenomenological Reduction
Lecture 4: Intentionality, Νοησίσ-Νοημα, and the End of Idealism
Reading:
» [Required] Husserl 1907: The Idea of Phenomenology, 1914: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy,51-62 (§27–32).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 124-163.
July
1
BREAK
July
8		The Self and the Other
Lecture 5: Other Persons, Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and Objective Truth
Reading:
» [Required] Husserl 1931: Cartesian Meditations, Meditation V.
» [Recommended] Selections from Stein 1916: On the Problem of Empathy.
July
15		Structures of Experience
Lecture 6: Perception, Memory, and Language
Reading:
» [Required] Sokolowski 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, c.5-7.
» [Recommended] Excerpts from various authors.
July
22		Structures of the Lifeworld
Lecture 7: Temporality, Science, and Meaning
Readings:
» [Required] Sokolowski 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, c.9-11.
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 164-191.
July
29		Phenomenology of Personhood
Lecture 8: Reflections upon Intentional Consciousness
Readings:
» [Required] Spaemann 1996: Persons, 1-40.
» [Recommended] Wojtyła c.1965: Person and Act: The Introductory and Fundamental Reflections (36-58).

Registration

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).

One payment covers all 8 weeks.

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction – Public Participant

A payment level recommended for those who are currently students, who are between jobs, or who have part-time employment.

$60.00

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction

Recommended for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought and for whom continued education is especially important (including professors and clergy). Helps allow us to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$135.00

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction

Recommended for those with fulltime employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more. Greatly aids us in allowing to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$200.00

Pricing Comparison

Standard priceBasic Lyceum
Enrollment		Advanced Lyceum EnrollmentPremium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after		8 seminars included
$90 after
Patron$135 per seminar$653 seminars included
$65 after		8 seminars included
$65 after
Participant$60 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after		8 seminars included
$40 after
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News and Announcements/Seminar

Political Philosophy: A Thomistic Defense of Democracy

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This seminar has been cancelled and will be offered instead at a later date TBD.

Can we have a democratic government in an increasingly post-liberal world?  Must we return to a strict hierarchy if we are to abandon the “liberal experiment” that has rendered increasing ailment in recent decades?  These are not questions with simple or straightforward answers.  To answer them, we would be foolish both to ignore St. Thomas Aquinas and to caricaturize his thought to fit facile solutions.  Thankfully, though under the auspices of a somewhat different world, great Thomistic thinkers have already anticipated the question and can provide us guidance going forward.

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The famous saying of Aristotle that man is a political animal does not mean only that man is naturally made to live in society; it also means that man naturally asks to lead a political life and to participate actively in the life of the political community. It is upon this posulate of human nature that political liberties and political rights rest, and particularly the right of suffrage. Perhaps it is easier for men to renounce active participation in political life; in certain cases it may even have happened that they felt happier and freer from care while dwelling in the commonwealth as political slaves, or while passively handing over to the leaders all the care of the management of the community.  But in this case they gave up a privilege proper to their nature, one of those privileges which, in a sense, makes life more difficult and which brings with it a greater or lesser amount of labor, strain and suffering, but which corresponds to human dignity.

Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law.

Many are familiar with Jacques Maritain, great Thomist author and figure of the twentieth century: a man who wrote on topics far and wide, and strove most of his life to bring a living Thomism into a broader public.  Fewer are familiar with the thought of Yves Simon, scion of Maritain’s approach to understanding St. Thomas, and an adept thinker and careful author in his own right.

Among Simon’s many contributions is his Philosophy of Democratic Government, a work which presents the core insights of Maritain concerning the nature of democracy in a more deeply-rooted scholarly appraisal of St. Thomas, and rife with many additional insights of Simon’s own.  Using this text as our basis, this seminar, taught by Dr. Francisco Plaza, will revisit these twentieth-century thinkers and discern how their thought can help address the troubles of our own times. View the syllabus here. Registration closes June 2.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

4:00pm ET
(World times)		Study Topics &
Readings

June
3		Lecture 1: Christianity and Democracy
Readings:
» Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, pages 3 to 63
June
10		Lecture 2: General Theory of Government
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 1 to 71.
June
17		Lecture 3: Democratic Freedom
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 72 to 143.
June
24		Lecture 4: Sovereignty in Democracy
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 144 to 194.
July
1
BREAK
July
8		Lecture 5: Democratic Equality
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 195 to 259.
July
15		Lecture 6: Democracy and Technology
Reading:
» Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pages 260 to 321.
July
22		Lecture 7: The Failure of Liberalism
Readings:
» Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, pages 1 to 42; pages to 179 to 198.
July
29		Lecture 8: Freedom, Nature, Community, and Democracy
Readings:
» Yves Simon Reader, pages 134 to 148; pages 267 to 284; pages 289 to 298; pages 399 to 414; pages 433 to 446.

Pricing Comparison

Standard priceBasic Lyceum
Enrollment		Advanced Lyceum EnrollmentPremium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after		8 seminars included
$90 after
Patron$135 per seminar$653 seminars included
$65 after		8 seminars included
$65 after
Participant$60 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after		8 seminars included
$40 after
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News and Announcements

Lyceum Institute Merchandise

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Announcing a new and improved Lyceum Institute Gift Shop, with higher quality and more suitable merchandise! We will be adding more products throughout the year, but why not check out our early offerings. 100% of proceeds go to supporting the Lyceum Institute’s mission and vision. Mostly, though, they are intended to be useful, fun, and a reminder of what the Lyceum Institute stands for: the joy of learning, thinking, and genuine conversation.

Bar Glass - Little Errors, Big Mistakes

Bar Glass – Little Errors, Big Mistakes

A glass size suited to accommodating a range of beverages – be careful you don’t pour slightly too much!

$10.58
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Lyceum Institute (This is not a Sign) Contrast Notebook - Ruled

Lyceum Institute (This is not a Sign) Contrast Notebook – Ruled

This is not a sign—but it can help you form many signs!  Write your thoughts and take your notes in this handsome notebook.

$16.79
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And if none of our products appeal to you, but supporting the Lyceum Institute does, consider making a small donation to our Spring Fundraiser: helping culture develop a right-minded habit of self-criticism! Every dollar helps us to offer our wide range of intellectually-stimulating and habit-forming programs. We rely on your donations.

News and Announcements/Philosophy

The Habit of Conversation

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Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
-T.S. Eliot 1935: “Burnt Norton” (first of the Four Quartets), III.

Few poets ever have and likely ever will attain the prescience of T.S. Eliot. I find myself repeating, with increasing frequency, the lines quoted above: not only so that I might recall myself to focus, but to name the phenomena seen in others. We find ourselves struggling to hold meaningful conversations, dismayed either by others inattentiveness or ensnared by our own distractions.

But without conversation, we suffer an enormous blow to the integrity of our human way of life. We ought instead strive to affect a recovery of the habit of conversation. Here, allow us to explore some avenues through which such a recovery might be made.

The Language of Conversation: Holding vs. Having

First, it is important that we be able to say what a conversation is. As with many common phenomena, we likely take for granted that we “know” what a conversation is without needing to define it. But this kind of “knowledge”—experiential familiarity—does not help us overcome our present conversational malaise. In other words, we need to deepen our knowledge of conversation if we wish to have better conversations.

The way we speak about conversations, as with many other things, often reveals our underlying beliefs about what a conversation is, even if we are not consciously aware of that belief. For one thing, it seems that the phrase “holding a conversation has become increasingly rare, replaced by the more transactional “having a conversation.” The distinction between holding and having a conversation is subtle yet significant. “Holding” a conversation implies a sense of presence, responsibility, and of participation. The conversation is held between two people. By contrast, “having” a conversation suggests something that each individual gets or receives from the other(s) involved. It turns the conversation into a possession. This shift in language seemingly reflects the deeper, atomistic individualism pervasive in our society.

It implies, that is, that conversations have become commodities, something we acquire or consume, rather than an essential aspect of our human connection.

Holding Ourselves in Conversation

But holding a conversation is not merely a transitive, extrinsic action. We hold a conversation only by holding ourselves within it. We hold to the conversation. How often do we find ourselves not present or open to the other? Do we listen for an opportunity to speak—to rejoin, respond, to deviate into something else—or do we listen to what is being said? Do we listen so that we might hear or so that we might get something out of it?

Technology has undeniably altered our habits of conversation. Smartphones, in particular, have become both a distraction and a crutch, frequently drawing us away from in-person interactions. But are there other ways technology, other technologies, that affect our conversational habits?

One interesting aside to consider is the role of AI and chatbots like ChatGPT which may shape our conversational habits. The promise of instant feedback and the ability to return immediately to whatever topic offered by these platforms can reinforce the transactional attitude toward conversation: an exchange of information, on-demand. The silence, the gestational pause of thinking, of truly reasoning, plays no role in these technologies. Even our text-messaging habits lean into this: the absolute horror of being too long “left on read” without receiving a response.

Balance: Held by the Word, rather than the World

As humans, we navigate a delicate balance between active and passive engagement. However, it seems that our current approach to conversations may have disrupted this equilibrium. We must consider whether we are too passive or too active, or perhaps passive or active in the wrong ways. Reflecting on our conversational habits and our relationship with technology is an essential first step toward rekindling the art of meaningful dialogue.

Perhaps the best way to rectify this conversational degradation is, in fact, by having one: a thoughtful, careful, and meaningful participation—not an exchange, but truly communicating in the pursuit of truth. Join us this Wednesday for our Philosophical Happy Hour, exploring this critical aspect of human connection and rediscovering the beauty of holding, and being held by, a conversation.

Philosophical Happy Hour

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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.

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News and Announcements

Lifelong Intellectual Development

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The Lyceum Institute is dedicated to nurturing the habits of lifelong intellectual development through the use of digital technology, making high-quality education accessible to a meaningfully diverse community of like-intentioned persons. As a non-profit institution, we rely on the generosity of our supporters to continue providing exceptional learning experiences that foster genuine thinking and self-improvement. How do we provide this education and how can you help?

Higher Education

All of our programs are structured and conducted with the intent of building key habits of intellectual virtue: studiousness, diligence, orderliness, focus, knowledge, insight, and the humility to recognize, respect, and adhere to wisdom. These habits are cultivated in an atmosphere that emphasizes forming and asking questions—questions asked of others, of the tradition, of the present world, and most of all, of oneself. We cannot improve without knowing what we lack, and we cannot discover answers if we do not know the questions.

Traditional institutions of higher education remain invaluable, but insufficiently meet our current needs. Students must overcome obstacles of time, place, and considerable financial expense to attend such programs. Moreover, wars of ideological opposition, serving only to distract from an honest pursuit of the truth, have decimated the courses and curricula of many universities. By contrast, the digital environment of the Lyceum is flexible, affordable, and concerned with the inquiry into and discovery of what is true, regardless of its provenance or associations.

Members and Studies

Members of the Lyceum Institute come from a wide range of backgrounds and with a diversity of experience: factory workers and truck drivers, PhDs and medical doctors, students and retirees, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim; with backgrounds in the humanities and the sciences, with decades of study or just beginning—we all seek the same good and are bound by the common desire to know. Humility before true wisdom, possessed by none but loved by all, provides the foundation for our community.

Thus we commonly engage in studies of philosophy, literature and the arts, the classical trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (though continually revising our understanding in light of the new technological paradigm), languages (with an emphasis on Latin), and keep open our doors for new thoughts.

Together we are building a new way of learning: one not constrained to a course of months or years, but which integrates itself into the whole of human life.

Since joining [the Lyceum Institute], I feel that I have found a place in the digital wasteland to call home: a home where I learn and discuss more about philosophy, the classics, art, theology and psychology; a home where my interests are taken seriously and given room to grow; a home where I find others living consciously, respectful of the thoughtfulness of others, motivated by the wisdom of the past, and wrestling with the answers for the future.

-Mark [see more testimonials here].

Broader Community

At the core of this new way of learning stands a principle of financial subsidiarity. Put simply, we do not want financial barriers to stand in the way of individuals serious about integrating their love of wisdom into daily life. Thus, we encourage all of our members who can to pay more, so that those who cannot, may still participate. But we also rely upon donations from the broader community to supplement this model of subsidiarity.

Every member that we gain is another light in the dark—brightening not only our own digital community, but bringing that light to friends and family and their local communities. Every donation we receive is fuel for those flames.

Even if membership is not right for you, you can help us to brighten the world. Donate to our Spring Fundraiser by 8 June 2023, Better Self-Critics, to help us reach our quarterly goal, or set up a recurring donation here.

News and Announcements/Philosophy

How and Why We Study Logic

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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 be given in a lecture, that is—a lecture for the Lyceum Institute, a lecture belonging to a course, and a course belonging to a holistic study of all three arts constituting the Trivium.  Though logic may be studied on its own, both as an art and as science, its greatest fruit comes when studied integrally with the other arts of the Trivium.  This sentiment—or rather, the mixed sentiments of hope, humility, and no small amount of trepidation, since I am myself well aware of my woeful inadequacy as a teacher, especially of logic—this sentiment finds itself grounded by the well-wrought intellectual insights of far wiser men: men such as R.E. Houser, John Deely, and John Poinsot, all of whom I consider my own teachers in this most difficult of subjects.  My failings, however, are not a reflection of their abilities: for I have learned logic through their printed works, rather than in-person instruction, and thus have not benefitted from direct correction.

The purpose of these lectures, indeed, is not to say anything new or novel about logic at all.  That does not mean there is nothing new to be said about logic, only that I am not here intending to say it.  Rather, these lectures aim—as is more broadly the goal of this course as a whole and of our first course of study of the Trivium in the Lyceum Institute—these lectures aim at displaying and explicating the art for a living audience.  They form part of a multi-party dialogue: between myself, as the instructor, and you, as the audience; between us, as a class, and the texts, which we read; and between the shared knowledge we gain and the knowledge we yet seek.  Between instructor and audience, there is formed a whole; between that whole, the class, and the texts, there is formed a second whole, that shared knowledge.  But knowledge, always and invariably, prompts new questions, an inquiry beyond itself.  These lectures are merely my own contribution… and rather a minor contribution, at that, in the grand scheme of this dialogue.

Our world—by which I mean not merely the physical environment of earth (though inclusive of it) but rather, more primarily, the specifically human environment of linguistically-perfused culture—suffers a problem of meaning.  I have addressed this problem in many other places.  We may redress this problem of meaning, however, only through language, and only if we conceive of language in the right way: not merely as an abstract system of arbitrarily-stipulated symbolic communications, ordered principally toward pragmatic ends and for the sake of manipulating that world to our ends (such manipulative bearing being one of, if not the, principal causes of our meaning problem), but rather as the way in which the true meaning of things comes to light in the first place.  For developing a facility with language so-conceived, we must study all three arts of the Trivium.  In the Art of Logic, in particular, we attend specifically to the illative relation, whereby we discover how language leads thinking through inference to truths not immediately evident—to truths obscured by malfeasant rhetoric or the will-to-power, to truths hidden by those who wish only to bend the world to their wills, instead of standing themselves humbly open to the real.

Sign up for the Lyceum Institute and join us in the study of Logic this Spring! Lectures begin 1 May 2023 and discussions on 8 May 2023. All members are welcome to take the Art of Logic course, at every level of enrollment.

Liberal Arts/News and Announcements

Trivium: The Art of Logic 2023

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On 1 May 2023, we will begin our second Trivium course of the year: The Art of Logic. Our first discussion session will take place on 8 May 2023 at 6:00pm ET. This course is open to all enrolled Lyceum Institute members; having taken Grammar is not a prerequisite. If you would like to sign-up and take this course, enroll here. You can find out more about our approach to studying logic here.

In brief, however: is there right reasoning concerning reasoning itself? Can we reason rightly about other things if we are misled as to the nature of reasoning itself? Of course we can; but incidentally, rather than properly, and in a manner not precisely under our own control. Without having successfully undergone training in logic, we are much more likely to go awry in the formation of our beliefs—holding things untrue or unfitting to reason, that is—than otherwise. Thus, even though it is quite difficult, Thomas Aquinas rightly says that we ought to begin our learning from logic:

And for this reason it is necessary in learning to begin from logic, not because it is easier than the other sciences—indeed, it has the greatest difficulty, since it concerns second intentions—but because the other sciences depend upon it, insofar as it teaches the mode of proceeding in all the other sciences.

c.1257-59: In de trin., q.6, a.1, p.2, ad.3: “Et hac ratione oportet in addiscendo a logica incipere, non quia ipsa sit facilior ceteris scientiis, habet enim maximam difficultatem, cum sit de secundo intellectis, sed quia alia scientiae ab ipsa dependent, in quantum ipsa docet modum procedendi in omnibus scientiis.”

In our course, we will concern ourselves not only with learning to analyze propositions and syllogisms of both categorical and hypothetical structure, to parse prose writing for its logical structure (and errors therein), and to illuminate the illative relation which ties together all our reasoning, but also situate logic both historically and as it fits within the broader tradition of the Trivium.

Again, this seminar is open to all Lyceum Institute members, at every level of enrollment. Our primary (required) textbook is R.E. Houser’s Logic as a Liberal Art.

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News and Announcements/Philosophy/Tradition

What is Music?

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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, by the accompanying score. But what is music? We may define it narrowly, that is, with respect to its form as such: some articulation of sound as organized with pitch or rhythm for the purpose of being heard… and find this dissatisfying.

Antiquity’s Approach to Music

As with many questions, we have much to learn from antiquity. Saints Augustine of Hippo and Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius both wrote treatises on music, and for both—as for Plato—music formed an integral part of education. Within its doctrines were contained not only vocal and instrumental performance but also lyrical meter for poetry. And perhaps much more important, and much more telling, was the intrinsic connection of the musical to the moral.

…since there happen to be four mathematical disciplines, the other three share with music the task of searching for truth; but music is associated not only with speculation but with morality as well. For nothing is more characteristic of human nature than to be soothed by pleasant modes or disturbed by their opposites. This is not peculiar to people in particular endeavors or of particular ages. Indeed, music extends to every endeavor; moreover, youths, as well as the aged are so naturally attuned to musical modes by a kind of voluntary affection that no age at all is excluded from the charm of sweet song. What Plato rightfully said can likewise be understood: the soul of the universe was joined together according to musical concord. For when we hear what is properly and harmoniously united in sound in conjunction with that which is harmoniously coupled and joined together within us and are attracted to it, then we recognize that we ourselves are put together in its likeness. For likeness attracts, whereas unlikeness disgusts and repels.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius c.505 AD: De institutione Musica, lib.1, c.1, in the translation by Calvin M. Bower, p.2.

Perhaps, if we wish to understand what music is, we should recover and re-examine these classical sources. But perhaps we can draw on some other sources, as well.

The Poles of Feeling and Intellectuality

One such source, and far from the only contemporary thinker deserving of consideration with regard to this question, is the late John Deely, who once offered a definition that may provoke an interesting conversation. He wrote:

An idealized system of prospective audial experiences which will evoke, sustain, or counter within an Innenwelt basic elements of mood, emotion, or feeling. Within this prospective, in fact, there is an analog range between the asymptotic poles of sheer feeling vs. sheer intellectuality, along which the system can be formalized in an endless variety of relational patterns, according to emphasis within which definite types or styles can be conventionally constituted (“classical”, “folk” “Indian”, “African”, etc.).

Definition of John Deely provided in a handwritten note to Eero Tarasti and his wife [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUldV0D5DU @ 15:30]

As a quick explanatory note, the Innenwelt is “like a cognitive map that relates the self to the world of objects” (in the words of Kalevi Kull). To have asymptotic poles of feeling vs. intellectuality as evoked, sustained, or countered within the Innenwelt is to have one’s thoughts and feelings able infinitely to approach one another but never fully coalesce into a perfect unity; and conversely, to be repelled by one another, but never to be fully separated.

This definition hardly stands as definitive—and even in what it provides, there remains much to be clarified. But it is provocative nonetheless. As such, we would invite you to join us this evening for our Philosophical Happy Hour (from 5:45–7:15pm ET) to engage in a conversation about music: its nature, purpose, structure, value, and function in our human lives, from the mundane to the sacred and everything in between. Use the form below.

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Colloquium/News and Announcements

Hearing the Word of God: A Kierkegaardian Phenomenology of Conscience

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ABSTRACT: “Husserl insisted that I should study Kierkegaard.” So recounts the Russian existential philosopher, Lev Shestov, in his posthumously published 1939 essay, “In Memory of a Great Philosopher: Edmund Husserl.” Why would Husserl have said such a thing? As soon as one begins attempting to trace the conceptual lineage of phenomenology back to Kierkegaard, a number of philosophical connections worthy of attention emerge. Above all, it is the phenomenon of conscience that constitutes the cornerstone of such an analysis. For, just as conscience lies at the heart of the human experience, so too it lies at the heart of the attempt to exhibit that experience in philosophical thought. By emphasizing that life (and thought) is lived before God, a Kierkegaardian phenomenology of conscience illuminates what is most at stake, both methodologically and existentially, in doing phenomenology, and realizes phenomenology’s longstanding ambition to make sense of what it means to be the kind of beings we are, or, as Kierkegaard would put the matter, to be a single individual. Focusing on the phenomenon of conscience, this lecture develops an account of doing phenomenology in a Kierkegaardian way, that is, doing phenomenology before God.

Presenting our first Colloquium for 2023: Dr. Steven DeLay (Tutorial Fellow, Ambrose College, Woolf University; Research Fellow, Global Centre for Advanced Studies College Dublin, and an accomplished researcher and author) gives us a lecture and Q&A on “Hearing the Word of God: A Kierkegaardian Phenomenology of Conscience”. This lecture investigates the question of whether phenomenological method is congenial to the discussion of God, or whether it necessarily brackets or excludes God from its inquiries, through the question of conscience.

Dr. DeLay undertakes this investigation through tracing the lineage of phenomenological inquiry expressed in Edmund Husserl’s life and thoughts into Kierkegaard’s understanding of “being a single individual”, and in contrast with the phenomenological approach and consideration of Martin Heidegger. Thereby are raised the questions of language’s meaningfulness and our responsibility for it, both in our speaking and in our hearing. Listeners will be challenged to reconsider the purposiveness of life’s experience as reflected in his or her consciousness of being one who has a conscience.

Lyceum Institute members may listen to the lecture now and participate in the Live Q&A on 16 February 2023 at 6:00pm ET (event times around the world here).