The Lyceum Institute Fall Seminars will begin the first week of October. Brief descriptions and links with more details and enrollment options are below below.
More than Aesthetics: Ens Artificiale & the Philosophy of Art [REGISTER]
Matthew Minerd
What is the being of a work of art? What is the nature of “poetic” knowledge, the experience of the artisan and the artist? How should a Thomist speak about these matters? This lecture series is devoted to these questions, taking as their principal guide, Jacques Maritain, who probed these questions in his works Art and Scholasticism, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, and Art and Poetry. Other thinkers will be consulted along the way, presenting a synthesis which, however, uses Maritain’s texts as the primary guiding thread of the lecture discussion. [REGISTER]
Thomistic Psychology: The Meaning of Evil [REGISTER]
Kirk Kanzelberger
Every human being has some notion of evil, vague though it may be, as that which is opposed to a good: the good that one desires, the good that one honors – or, perhaps, the good that one wishes one honored or desired more than one does. Even those who lack an inclination to deeper questioning concerning the matter and the meaning of evil can nevertheless find themselves possessed with anger at states of affairs, ideas, and other persons they clearly judge to be evil. Might there be some relation of dependence between the lack of deeper questioning and the frenzy of the anger, as well as the lack of humility it evinces? For if we are honest, we must admit that, despite every good intention, we ourselves have some share in, and make some concrete contribution to, the mysterious reality of evil in the world. This seminar aims to deepen our questioning concerning the meaning, that is, the intelligible reality signified by the term evil. [REGISTER HERE]
Metaphysics: God [REGISTER]
Brian Kemple
In the second Metaphysics seminar, we will engage in a deep Thomistic discussion of the intelligible discovery of the existence of God and the justifiable inferences which may be made concerning the Divine Nature. This stands in corresponding opposition to the via resolutionis secundum rationem discussed in the first Metaphysics seminar, concerning the discovery of ens inquantum ens, as the via resolutionis secundum rem—according to the thing, according to the existential cause. This will unfold further into a consideration of the attributes of the Divine which may be justly inferred from the resolution to a First Cause. Thus, the primary reading for the course will be from the Prima pars of the Summa theologiae. [REGISTER HERE]