On Thursday, October 16, from 6-8pm ET, members of the Lyceum Institute will gather to discuss the beginning of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth under the guidance of Dr. Mark McCullough, who is providing us lectures and readings to focus our understanding. There is much that we can learn from this great tragedy—and here we will focus […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the question: do we (some of us, all of us) need to experience evil—even sin, that experience of our own moral fault—in order to discover and know the good? Drawing upon some of the works of the great tradition, a member asks the question: “to what extent is it important […]

In his meditations upon the seven last words of Christ, spoken from the cross, St. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) offers a series of reflective considerations most apt for this season, not only for the Christian, but for all who would think carefully on the meaning of life, death, and the universe. Particularly poignant in this, a […]

Why do we call a thing “good”?  We have been calling things good since childhood, but, as with any conception so fundamental, it is challenging to unfold its meaning.  Given the multifarious use of this name, “good”, is there even a unity of meaning to discover?  Is it just that we call anything good merely […]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918—2008 August 3) was a prolific author, primarily of fiction, whose account of suppression, corruption, and evil in the USSR’s prison system—the Gulag, through which uncountable millions were moved over the decades—exposed the deep rot at the core of socialist thinking. Here we present an excerpt from the first of three […]

On 19 February 2022, at 2pm ET (check event times around the world here), our own Kirk Kanzelberger will present on “Daydreams and Dark Magic: Semiotics and the Meaning of Evil”. Dr. Kanzelberger holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University (New York), an M.A. in Philosophical and Systematic Theology from the Dominican School of […]

Fall Seminars Open for Enrollment: More than Aesthetics, The Meaning of Evil, and Metaphysics: God.

This seminar aims to deepen our questioning concerning the meaning of evil, beginning with the nature of the goods to which various evils are opposed.   This introduction will lead us to the seminar’s main concern, which is with moral evil as a kind of primary rupture in the world of free beings, and the questions […]

A Latin-filled week, with seminars and Quaestiones Disputatae on the horizon! Read on for more.