On Informal Language and the Dissolution of Community
A Philosophical Happy Hour questioning whether informal language has erosive effects on community—and how formal articulation might aid our relations. How do we acquire language? We perhaps first need to understand what language is—and we might presume falsely that we do. But we may think, nonetheless, about how young children learn to speak, to communicate. […]
The Cult of Authenticity and Hypocrisy
A Philosophical Happy Hour reflecting on the pressure to exhibit personal authenticity in an age of hypocrisy. We hear constant calls to “be authentic”, “be yourself”, and “say what you really think”. These imperatives are often treated as uncontroversially liberating—as though the chief moral danger of human life were merely to live under false pretenses. […]
On Lying, Concealment, and Strategic Deception
A Philosophical Happy Hour considering whether every intentional deception is forbidden, or whether some concealment is not only permitted but required. What is a lie? And do we often call things “lies” that aren’t, or conflate lies with other forms of concealment or deception? A difficult and uncomfortable question—but one, perhaps, crucial to ask today. […]
To Will or Not To Will (That is the Question)?
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the act of will, and the question: what does it mean to say that our will is free? What makes a will good? A common staple of western philosophical anthropology is arguing or asserting there is such a thing as a human will, a driving force or the part of […]
On the Necessity of Friendship for Discovering the Good
A Philosophical Happy Hour focused on the question of friendship: its nature, deepening, and the necessity of others with whom we share the search for the good. I have spent much of my life alone. The youngest in my family, I began homeschooling in fourth grade, and continued until I started community college, before transitioning […]
Rhetorica ad Herennium [English]
Among the tasks of the Lyceum Institute is a restoration of forgotten traditions and texts. Newly produced within this initiative is our republication of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a classic work in Roman oratory, in the English translation by Harry Caplan. This text, from roughly 80BC, informed the study of rhetoric in the days of […]
On Gratitude and Debts
A Philosophical Happy Hour on gratitude and the repayment of gifts—that is, the satisfaction of debts for the gratuitously-given—through the insight of St. Thomas Aquinas. The virtue of gratitude, St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, “always inclines, insofar as possible, to pay back something greater” than one has received. In a world of diminished personal bonds, […]
On Human Uselessness
A Philosophical Happy Hour on Jacques Ellul’s “Meditation on Inutility”, challenging us to think about the uselessness of human action. For this week’s Philosophical Happy Hour, we will take up a specific short text to read and discuss: the postscript to Jacques Ellul’s Politics of God and Politics of Man, titled “a meditation on inutility”. […]
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 […]
