Exposition
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Maritain Musings – Podcast on Signs and Symbols
Our friends at the American Maritain Association have recently launched a podcast series, “Maritain Musings”, in which Lyceum Faculty Fellow Dr. Matthew K. Minerd is joined by guests to discuss different works of Jacques Maritain. For the fourth episode, the Lyceum’s Executive Director, Dr. Brian Kemple, joined Matthew to discuss Maritain’s essay, “Sign and Symbol”.…
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Total (Moral/Human) Annihilation
The following is excerpted from Lewis Mumford’s 1961: The City in History, c.18, “The Myth of Megalopolis”, an important source in our upcoming Difficulties of Technology seminar. Here we explore the themes of “total human annihilation”—particularly in its moral dimension. Naïve Functionaries of Annihilation Much of the thought about the prospective development of cities today…
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Lying and Truth as Accomplishments
The following is excerpted from a presentation given by John Deely on 1 March 2014 at the 37th Annual Meeting of the American Maritain Association. What Makes Possible both Lying and Truth as Human Accomplishments Comment “Listening to Maritain on the subject of sign as treated by Poinsot…” We should, in fact, listen to John…
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Language, Non-Existent Objects, and Semiotics
In the 19th and 20th centuries, a fever for scientific explanation of all phenomena gripped many an intellectual. Language, however, has proved resistant to the methods of modern science. Too many aspects of our experience prove irreducible to the empiriometric approach successful in disciplines such as chemistry or biology. This resistance vexes the reductionist’s mind.…
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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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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 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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On the Authority of Media
While researching a variety of topics at conveniently-intersecting purposes, I came across this wonderful article from Elliot Gaines (author of 2011: Media Literacy and Semiotics), in which he explains how we need media criticism in order to avoid having our opinions settled for us by means contrary to reason in fact, even if many deem…
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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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On the Value of Rhetoric
An excerpt from Edward P.J. Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student on the value of rhetoric as needed in the modern age, accompanied by a brief commentary. Selection from the Text: Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are the three arts of language. Skill in the language arts is more important today than it used to…