Felicitates de Quodlibet, III.5

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the art of questioning. A unique fifth installment in our Felictates de Quodlibet series for 2026. In this installment, we ask: do you have a serious question—any serious question whatsoever—which troubles your mind? What is that question? Do we really know what it is what we are seeking? The Lyceum’s Quodlibetal Questions Series is here for you!

In the Scholastic university, renowned thinkers would regularly engage in open debate on questions posed by other scholars or students at the institution. Most often, these questions would concern a specific, pre-determined topic. From this we derive works such as Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestiones disputatae de Veritate and Quaestiones disputatae de Potentia Dei, etc. But sometimes, they would be completely open-floor: Quaestiones de Quodlibet, literally, “questions about whatever”.

While we have in the past, at the Lyceum Institute, undertaken to imitate this practice in a jovial fashion, this week we are doing something a little different: rather than the back-and-forth between inquiry and answer, this week we are seeking to improve our inquisitive openness as such. In other words, we have all today been trained to disburden ourselves of a question’s weight quickly, treating it as a mere query which can be answered immediately. This training undermines the habit of truly questioning. Restoring that habit requires a different practice, which practice we will implement in this Happy Hour.

The immediacy of query-and-response in the twenty-first century, exemplified by but not limited to search engines and LLM systems, prevents us from discovering what we do not really know. Many questions we ask today contain further inquiries we never pursue, because we, receiving immediate answers, never find cause to explore them.

Thus, in this week’s Felicitates de Quodlibet, while remaining lighthearted, we will stretch out in examination the questions that we find burdensome to our minds. The discussion’s moderators will focus upon what remains hidden. Attendees are encouraged to think up a question beforehand. We will press upon the inquiry; and then proceed to the next.

Some come prepared to inquire deeply. and join us this Wednesday, 02 September 2026! This is the eleventh overall instance of the Felictates de Quodlibet; or, in honor of our forebears, we can identify this as the fifth quaestio of the third series—and we look forward to many more!