humanism
-
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. …
-
Passion and the Capture of Reason
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the ways in which passion may capture and distort our exercise of reason—or, in proper subordination, affect a coherence of our persons Thinking clearly. It seems a vanishingly rare virtue. Ours is a reactionary time. Reaction, however, seldom comes from the clear light of reason—but rather from the murky vapors…
-
On Life, Knowledge, and Vocation
A Philosophical Happy Hour contemplating the role of knowledge in the various vocations of life Lately—though, perhaps always, implicitly—we have found ourselves circling the topic of vocation. What is the calling of the human person? Does it fall into determinate categories—as husband or priest, mother or c-suite executive—or does it admit greater variability and complexity? …
-
On the State of Higher Education
A Philosophical Happy Hour concerning the present conditions, future prospects, and most promising directions for the pursuit of higher education Every reality which exists only in the concrete, corporeal world—and especially those that exist only or primarily within the socially-constructed realities of human interaction—has a natural lifespan. They are born, they mature, and, eventually, they…
-
On Self-Awareness, Morality, and the Machine
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the relationship between self-awareness, morality, and machine technologies What is the relationship between self-awareness and our moral convictions? How do our technologies affect this relationship? This week’s Philosophical Happy Hour takes up these questions and more. But let us set the stage for our conversation. A member brought this article…
-
On the Discomfort of Unfamiliar Studies
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the struggle to study unfamiliar topics, subjects, texts, and skills—and the necessity of that discomfort Atop my bookcases—visible just over my computer monitors, reminding me of its presence nearly every day—sits a nice four-volume hardcover set titled The World of Mathematics. This set intimidates me. Though I have a PhD…
-
On Memory and its Training
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the nature, operations, and training of the memory. “This invention [of writing]”, says the Egyptian King Thamus, in Plato’s Phaedrus, “will produce forgetfulness in the souls who have learned it.” It perhaps shocks us, slightly at least, to read this condemnation of writing. But let us consider the rest of…
-
On the Problem of Education
A Philosophical Happy Hour concerning the problem of universal education: should we educate everyone? To what extent? How? Why (not)? If we look today at the results of universal education, particularly over the past century, we may think that its institution was a mistake. The results are those of decline. High test scores in a…
-
The Breakdown of Secular Democracy and the Need for a Christian Order
The question has been raised as to whether or not secular liberalism can sustain itself, especially as it seems to be breaking down in our present time, both from the perspective of anti-modernists who uphold tradition, but also from modernists themselves who have fallen into totalitarian ideologies, Marxism being the most common among them.