metaphysics
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Why “Epistemology” is not a Science
In a certain way, writing this title and essay pains me: I first fell in love with philosophy in an undergraduate course titled “epistemology”. It was a difficult course to take in my sophomore year. We spent the first half of it reading Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, on which we had to write…
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Musings on Extrinsic Formal Causality and Practical Signs
This is not quite how I envisioned this first blog post turning out… Originally, I had considered writing something on the issue of the political common good, focusing on the plurality of common goods in relation to the political exercise of social justice in its original and true sense (namely, the right ordering of various…
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Fall Seminar Previews
METAPHYSICS: THE DEPTHS OF ACT & POTENCY “In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now all flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could perceive…
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⚘ Semiotics: From Deely to Couto | Mário Santiago de Carvalho
Presenter: Mário Santiago de Carvalho On 10 September 2022, at 10am ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Mário Santiago de Carvalho will present on the tradition of semiotics connecting John Deely and Sebastião do Couto. Carvalho is Full Professor at the FLUC – Faculty of Arts and…
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[Fall 2022] The Faults of Modern Philosophy
This is not a seminar about modernity, but about modern philosophy—and, specifically, about the fundamental flaws (or faults) which characterize modern philosophy’s thinking. These flaws, once recognized, show their effects everywhere today: in the endless fragmentation of world, mind, self; in the intransigence of political discourse, the widening cultural divides, the polarization of extremes, and…
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[Fall 2022] Metaphysics: The Depths of Act & Potency
“In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now all flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could perceive no sign in the sea. But suddenly…
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Philosophy, Faith, and Signs
The Lyceum Institute brings two more seminars available to the general public, each taught by a uniquely qualified professor: Dr. Matthew Kenneth Minerd, translator of many, many works of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, will teach us the philosophical thought of the “Sacred Monster” of Thomism; Dr. Brian Kemple, the only student ever to complete a doctoral…
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How Truthful is the “Proof of the Truthful”?
In the third Lyceum Institute Colloquium of the year, we present Dr. Catherine Peters, who takes up a controversy between the Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averroes concerning the “proof of the truthful”: ABSTRACT: The “Proof of the Truthful” is Avicenna’s most famous argument for the existence of God. Beginning with the essential possibility of creatures,…
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Wisdom & Culture
Too few are the hours dedicated in our day to the pursuit of contemplation: not only the fruits of genuine meditative insight, but also the practice whereby it becomes possible. Yet the philosophical desire sits in all our hearts, realized or not. Join us in either or both of these wonderful seminars to weave philosophical…
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Reclaiming Wisdom – Summer Fundraising Campaign
Reclaiming Wisdom – Perennial Truths for the Digital Age Once the center of Western culture, the University has lost its way. For centuries, it was a force both stabilizing and civilizing, training young minds to discover the perennial truths by which they were elevated above the merely material concerns of our baser nature. The University…