good

  • โ€œPartakers of the Divine Natureโ€ (2 Peter 1:4): Aquinasโ€™s Participatory Metaphysics and Moral Theology

    Our Colloquium series reignites in 2026 with a provocative question from Dr. Christopher Ragusa on the importance of โ€œparticipationโ€ in Thomas Aquinasโ€™ moral theology. Dr. Ragusa is a Louisiana native and an assistant professor of Theology at FranU. Dr. Ragusa specializes in natural law, virtue ethics, and Aquinas’s metaphysics of participation. He is the Coordinator…

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  • Ethics: Aristotleโ€™s Nicomachean Ethics from Hearing [Summer 2026]

    Description Through careful attention to Aristotleโ€™s own argumentโ€”against the backdrop of the Pre-Socratics and of Platoโ€”the seminar will examine how the human good possesses universality and necessity without becoming disconnected from the concrete realities of human life. The good is neither imposed upon human nature by extrinsic causes nor fabricated by social agreement. Rather, it…

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  • 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.ย  The youngest in my family, I began homeschooling in fourth grade, and continued until I started community college, before transitioning…

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  • 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…

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  • Lecture: The Analogous Use of Words

    Last year, the Lyceum Instituted hosted Dr. Domenic D’Ettore (Dean, Division of Liberal Studies and professor of Philosophy with the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, TX), a careful and insight scholar of the Latin Thomist tradition and an expert on analogy. Drawing on his great expertise, Dr. D’Ettore presents for…

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  • Jefferson, Natural Rights, and the Sources of the Declaration of Independence

    Presenting the fifth in our Colloquium series for the year 2024, Dr. John Pinheiro (PhD in History, Director of Research at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty), challenges the common narrative that reduces Thomas Jefferson’s thought in writing the Declaration to the philosophy of John Locke. ย Dr. Pinheiro was previously professor…

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  • Self-Sufficiency of Happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics

    Our Colloquium series for the year 2024 continues with a 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…

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  • The Analogous Use of Words

    Continuing our Colloquium series for the year 2024, we are delighted to host Dr. Domenic D’Ettore (Dean, Division of Liberal Studies and professor of Philosophy with the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, TX), a careful and insight scholar of the Latin Thomist tradition and an expert on analogy. Drawing on…

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  • 2024 Winter: Good and Freedom in Aquinas’ De Veritate

    Why do we call a thing โ€œgoodโ€?  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, โ€œgoodโ€, is there even a unity of meaning to discover?  Is it just that we call anything good merely…

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  • Solzhenitsyn on Ideology

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918โ€”2008 August 3) was a prolific author, primarily of fiction, whose account of suppression, corruption, and evil in the USSRโ€™s prison systemโ€”the Gulag, through which uncountable millions were moved over the decadesโ€”exposed the deep rot at the core of socialist thinking. Here we present an excerpt from the first of three…

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