nihilism

  • 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…

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  • Discovering Meaning in the Cosmos

    A Philosophical Happy Hour on the struggle against nihilism—cosmological and psychological—and inadequate methods to assure ourselves of meaning in the cosmos. What is meaning?  What do we mean when we say the word?  What does the word signify?  It is one of those funny words that everyone seemingly believes himself to know and yet which…

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  • On Definition and Language

    “Nothing properly signifies itself.” To signify: this is to convey something other, to something other. Signification thereby contrasts with representation by their respective extensions, which can be either “other-representation” or “self-representation”. When you see a portrait, this represents something other than itself, namely, the person portrayed. When you see that person herself, her visible being…

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  • [2023 Winter] Aquinas’ Cosmological Vision

    All of us, it seems, today bear a heavy burden of being. Increasingly, we may find it difficult to rise from our beds and confront the day: indeed, even for those who persevere, it is a perseverance, it is a confrontation. The world challenges our fortitude. But why? We might assign, and justly, many different…

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  • [2023 Winter] Ethics: Virtue

    What does it mean to be good as a human being? Modernity, all too often, has treated this as a problem to be solved. That is, we tend to view moral failings as simply in need of the right solution, the right education, the right program. Morality, however, is something that belongs to the individual.…

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  • Hope in a Nihilist World

    A free lecture on hope in a nihilist culture.

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