Digital Technology and the Malformation of the Human Soul
Dr. Brian Kemple of the Lyceum Institute joins Anthony Alberino for a discussion on digital technology and its relation to the human soul. Together they reflect philosophically on: This is the third installment in Dr. Alberino’s “Dangers of the Digital Age” series, which can be found here.
Understanding our Environments
In this conversation, Adam Pugen explores how new technologies amplify aspects of the human psyche, particularly focusing on the differences between auditory and visual cultures. He discusses how these sensory modalities shape our experiences and perceptions in distinct ways—and the need for media literacy, the changes between television and digital, the thinking of Marshall McLuhan, […]
Reintegration of the Human Soul
The Lyceum Institute’s Humanitas Technica project returns to the American Catholic Philosophical Association’s annual conference. Below is the abstract around which our discussion panel, “Reintegration of the Human Soul in the Digital Age”, will be ordered. We plan to record the panel. We are subject to a technologically-mediated fragmentation of our very souls. This fracturing […]
On Perception and Reality
A Philosophical Happy Hour on theories of perception and their influence on our understanding of reality. What if the world you believe yourself to see, to hear, and to touch isn’t the world at all, but only a clever illusion fabricated by your brain? The familiar colors, sounds, and textures that feel so immediate—it has […]
On Cognitive Security
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the cognitive threats we face in an increasingly interconnected and digital world—and the possible solutions or approaches to them (the “security”). It is mid-2020 and you cannot shake the feeling that you are not getting the whole story. We are told that a lethal virus is raging across the global. […]
On Restoring Humanity
A Philosophical Happy Hour continuing our investigation into economics, politics, Catholic Social teaching, and the restoration of the good life for humanity. Last week, our Philosophical Happy Hour asked what Rerum Novarum, the 1891 Encyclical promulgated by Pope Leo XIII—and chief inspiration for the newly-elected Pope Leo XIV’s choice of name—could tell us about the […]
On Rerum Novarum and the Future of Human Society
A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, highlighting key passages and inquiring into their relevance today for considering the future of human society. Rerum novarum semel excitata cupidine, Pope Leo XII begins his famed Encyclical of 1891, “The desire of new things once having been aroused”, passes beyond the […]
On the Future of Education and Technology
A Philosophical Happy Hour discussing education and technology in light of the first entry in Adam Pugen’s “Future is Technoclassical” article. In a recent article, published here on the Peripatetic Periodical, Faculty Fellow Adam Pugen investigates the resurgence in “classical education” that has been affected through the digital environment. The precise nature of this technologically-mediated […]
The Future is Technoclassical: Signs of the McLuhan Century (Part One)
It is fairly straightforward (and glum) to observe that our culture’s dependence on, and even reverence for, technological innovation has, in large part, led to the widespread displacement of the humanities by STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in institutions of higher learning. Nevertheless, the perhaps unexpected ways in which our technological culture is implicated […]
New Faculty Fellow: Adam Pugen
The Lyceum Institute is happy to welcome a new Faculty Fellow for 2025, Dr. Adam Pugen. I have long been interested in the relationship between rational inquiry, existential meaning, and the aesthetic ways in which ordinary and transcendent experience is symbolized by different forms of human culture. Discovering the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, […]
