metaphysics
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“Partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4): Aquinas’s Participatory Metaphysics and Moral Theology
Our Colloquium series reignites in 2026 with a provocative question from Dr. Christopher Ragusa on the importance of “participation” in Thomas Aquinas’ 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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On the Difficulties of Consciousness
A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the apparent problems of consciousness, with particular focus on human beings and the signs by which our experience is known. A retrospective reflection on this Happy Hour can be found here: Resolving the Difficulties of Consciousness. Imagine yourself in the grip of a powerful passion: say, anger or lust, perhaps…
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On the Question of Beauty
A Philosophical Happy Hour inquiring after the nature, perception, and intelligible of beauty and the beautiful. “What is beauty?” If you have spent any time of your life at all around centers of philosophical inquiry, or persons who enjoy questions of deep and abiding human significance, no doubt you have heard this asked. Quite probably,…
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On the Recovery of a Broad Vision
A Philosophical Happy Hour reflecting on the renewed demands for broader intellectual vision amidst academic narrowing. For decades, modern education has praised specialization as the hallmark of intellectual seriousness: the disciplined acquisition of precise methods, technical vocabulary, expert competence, and increasingly narrow mastery. No doubt, such knowledge has greatly benefitted our material existence. But does…
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Two Becoming One: Love, Knowledge, and the Intelligibility of Unity
A Philosophical Happy Hour discussing the metaphysical difficulty of unity—in the concrete relations of love and knowledge. Politicians often use the word “unity”. We must be united. Stand united. Present a unified front. But it takes little investigation to discover that our States—to say nothing of our world—are rather disunited. This fragmentation occurs, moreover, at…
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A Preface to Metaphysics – Jacques Maritain
Among the tasks of the Lyceum Institute is a preservation and accessibility of great texts in the tradition. Our latest work in this initiative is the republication of Jacques Maritain’s Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being. Though it has remained available in public domain reprint editions for some time, these have been unreliable and…
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Controversies: Faith and Reason [Spring 2026]
Description Our guiding questions: Is the act of faith or belief in revelation distinct in kind from the operations of reason? Can reason prove faith? Can reason disprove faith? Can reason show faith as compatible with reason? | How is the faith to be made known? Sacred texts, whether the Bible, Qur’an, or Torah, have…
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Semiotics: Thought and Contributions of John Deely [Spring 2026]
Description To understand and affect this maturation into postmodernity, we will turn our attention in this seminar to the major contributions to semiotics given by Deely: the proto-semiotic history, an expanded doctrine of causality, the retrieved and clarified notion of relation, the concept of physiosemiosis, the continuity of culture and nature, the notion of purely objective reality, and the real interdisciplinarity which semiotics fosters. This is…
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Seminar: Metaphysics – Discovery of Ens inquantum Ens [Winter 2026]
Announcement of our Winter 2026 Philosophy Seminar, taking up the foundations of an Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and discussing its seminal importance to all of life. Description Details This course includes eight weekly readings, lectures, and live class sessions. The class sessions are recorded but should be attended to fully participate. All required texts will be provided…