Seminar: Metaphysics – Discovery of Ens inquantum Ens [Winter 2026]
Announcement of our Winter 2026 Philosophy Seminar, taking up the foundations of an Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and discussing its seminal importance to all of life. Description Details This course includes eight weekly readings, lectures, and live class sessions. The class sessions are recorded but should be attended to fully participate. All required texts will be provided […]
Philosophy and the Art of Reasoning
John Boyer joins Brian Kemple to discuss the decline of traditional liberal education and its impact on university curricula, emphasizing the superficial engagement with important questions in contemporary society, particularly through social media. In place of these superficial approaches, we ought to recover the Aristotelian understanding of causality, developing habits of real inquiry, and discovery […]
Dr. Daniel Wagner on Plato’s Meno
Our Faculty Fellow and Professor, Director of Catholic Studies, and Chair of Philosophy as Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI, Dr. Daniel Wagner, joined Dcn. Harrison Garlick of Ascend: The Great Books Podcast to discuss one of his favorite Platonic dialogues, The Meno. You can find (and follow) Ascend on X.com here, and listen to […]
Catharsis and the Intellectual Life
In this conversation, Brian Kemple is joined by Daniel Wagner, a Faculty Fellow of the Lyceum Institute, in exploring the motivations behind intellectual pursuits, the significance of classical education, and the contrast between modern and classical educational philosophies. 00:00 – Introduction to Intellectual Pursuits 03:01 – Catharsis, Healing, and Philosophy 06:55 – Understanding Classical Education […]
Lecutre: Self-Sufficiency of Happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics
In 2024, the Lyceum Institute this thoughtful interpretation of a perennial difficulty in interpreting Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, presented by Joseph M. Cherny, PhD Candidate at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX. Mr. Cherny asks: how is happiness self-sufficient? Does it find fulfillment in one good, or a […]
On Angelic Beings
A Philosophical Happy Hour on why we should care about angelic beings and seek understanding of their existence. Nearly every culture in human history has voiced belief in supernatural beings—forces beyond our reckoning that possess powers to shape and change the world. Indeed, any honest inquiry into the world, the cosmos, shows us wonders beyond […]
On What Could Be
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the distinction of potentiality and possibility in both being and knowing. When we speak about what “could be”, we often unthinkingly use the words “possible” and “potential” as though they were interchangeable. Yet beneath this ordinary use lies a subtle but nevertheless important distinction: a distinction that reaches into the […]
On the Recovery of Time
A Philosophical Happy Hour exploring the experience of time, its loss, and the possible paths to its recovery. Imagine yourself outdoors and alone—truly alone. No friends, no family, no strangers. No living human being in sight, no voice close enough to be heard (or ears to hear). No phone; no connection to anything but the […]
Seminar: Steps toward Dialectical Logic [Fall 2025]
Announcement of our Fall 2025 seminar, “What Kind of Certainty?: Steps Toward Dialectical Logic”—have we overlooked an important Aristotelian text and tradition in our understanding of reasoning? Description Details All Lyceum Institute seminars include weekly readings, lectures, and live discussion sessions. The discussion sessions are recorded. This seminar includes extensive readings, but does not require […]
On Christianity and the Interpretation of Philosophy
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the influences of Christian belief on philosophical interpretation, and of philosophical wisdom on the practice of the Christian faith. Is there such a thing as “Christian philosophy”? Today, thinking of antiquity draws new interest. The texts of Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Porphyry—even the fragments of Parmenides and Heraclitus, the […]
