What is a fact? The English word, used so commonly throughout the modern world, comes from its Latin cognate, factum: an event, occurrence, a deed, an achievement. But since the mid-17th century, under the auspices of the Enlightenment’s so-called “empiricism”, the word has been taken to be a “reality” known as independent of observation. The fact is Absolute. Facts, therefore, are discovered by and studied within “science”. They are “objective”. They are “verifiable”. That water at sea level boils at 212° Fahrenheit; that Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492; that Chicago is west of New York: most people regard these as facts.
Other claims may be disputed, such as that Jesus Christ rose from the dead; or that Domingo de Soto was the first to introduce the distinction between formal and instrumental signs. These disputes hinge upon the evidence: given the right data, it is thought, we could decide definitively one way or another. Other claims are not disputed as to their factuality, but regarded as irresoluble to facts. For instance, the claim that socialism is evil, or that capitalism drives moral flaw; that Aquinas was a better philosopher than Wittgenstein, or that a particular pope has undermined the Catholic faith.
Pseudo-Philosophical Presuppositions
This bifurcation into what is or is not a fact, however, presupposes much. Arguments often appeal to facts (or “evidence”). Arguments structured through or upon factual bases typically appear stronger. Contrariwise, if someone lacks a factual basis for his argument, others will regard that argument as “subjective”, a matter of opinion, and therefore as weak. To give an example, consider the claim that socialism is evil. The commonest way to defend this claim consists in examining facts about the Soviet Union. We advance the argument by pointing to the number of people killed, or the churches destroyed. We look at the facts of the Gulag. The Soviets themselves did all they could to hide these facts from much of the world.
Curiously enough, however, the Soviets (at least those making the decisions), despite their efforts to hide the facts did not seem overly troubled by them. Indeed: commonly, “facts” seem themselves always embedded in social contexts of interpretation. Bruno Latour has argued that what we regard as “facts” are not mind-independent truths discovered through science but socially-constructed fictions premised upon some observation. That is: circumstances and instruments, as well as often-tacit social agreements, contextualize every purported discovery of “fact”.
Discussing the Philosophical Reality of “Facts”
Yet the idea of the “fact”, despite such challenges, remains powerful in our contemporary social imaginary. Facts, as oft-repeated by a certain fast-talking pundit, do not care about your feelings.
But, we have to ask—we ought to ask—is there even really such a thing as a “fact”? What makes something to be a fact? How do we discover them, share them, interpret them? Can we gain “factual knowledge” without interpretation?
Join us this evening to discuss facts—and philosophy!
Philosophical Happy Hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
The contemporary controversy concerning education centers around the institutions tasked with providing it. We ask ourselves what curricula should be implemented, what teaching methods are most effective, and how governmental agencies can assist in the growth of educational institutions—we debate the morality of teachers and their influence, the rights to speech and questioning, the difficulty of grading and assessment and so on and on. All too rarely, especially as these disputes intensify, do we pause to question our presuppositions concerning the true nature and purpose of education itself. Indeed: long is it overdue that we turn our gaze away from the institutional structure and instead towards the individual, the family, and especially the parents who themselves are not only the first teachers of their children, but who ought to teach them always—who ought to be models from which their children learn throughout life.
This is not to deny the necessity of educational institutions—not only as pragmatic necessities for parents who cannot afford to homeschool but also for higher learning of every kind. Yet, though necessary, institutions will always be insufficient. We cannot outsource or offload the responsibility for education to any institution or collection of institutions. Institutions are lenses that help bring clarity and focus; but they are not the light.
Real Education
Education, as any experienced educator knows, consists in guiding rather than informing; in fostering the right questions rather than the correct answers. Intellectual nourishment, however, requires a holistic approach. Going to the gym five days a week will do relatively little for one’s health if all other hours of the day are marked by constant consumption of junk food and buttery baked goods. So too, the best teaching in school cannot eradicate contrary examples given at home—nor, for that matter, should this be required. For the student to see his parents’ leisure hours consumed whole by television or distractions encourages inheritance of the same infertile habit. Every human being signifies to every other not only through words and actions, but by the virtues and vices cultivated in one’s person. We not only think through signs; we are ourselves symbols, signifiers of the truths and goods in which we believe, shown through our actions.
Thus, we must reorient our perspective on education: the foundation—the first symbol by which its merit is conveyed to the child and spread throughout the culture—cannot be found in the institution but rather only within the household and particularly in parents aflame with their own love for wisdom and learning. This love becomes a first spark in the lives of children—to be focused and brightened by the lenses of educational institutions. But they can neither start nor maintain that fire.
Communal Lights
This love of learning and discovery passed from parent to child need not be of abstruse topics—neither metaphysics nor science, theological controversy nor philosophical dialectic—but can be rooted in the very life of the home: in the tradition of family, in the cultivation of land, in the play of language through story and invention. Principally, this love must kindle the natural desire to know, that sits at the heart of every human being. That parents may seek development of their own higher education, of course, serves all the better, for this demonstrates that learning not only satisfies curiosity or amusement, but that it requires discipline, and that this discipline earns the soul richer rewards.
By showing this intellectual discipline to children—and, indeed, one’s whole community—the parent (or even the unmarried and childless adult) exposes the lie that education after childhood constitutes a mere hobby or pastime. At the Lyceum Institute we aim to provide a digital community which supports this continued pursuit of learning—as, indeed, education always is enriched by being shared with others. In fact, no education occurs alone; it is handed down by ourselves and by others and flourishes thereby, through books and records of findings and thought. But a living engagement takes it further: brings it into the life possible only through conversation, through disputation, through real questioning. Community, structured by an institution, helps shape the lens through which the lights of learning shine brighter.
Our Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor, Director of Catholic Studies, and Chair of Philosophy as Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI, was on the Acton Line podcast of the Acton Institute last year (but just let us know recently!). Give a listen here:
Our next Philosophical Happy Hour continues our discussion of modernity. We turn to the topics of tradition and nostalgia, with a focus on the potential role of nostalgia in the increasing number of “return to tradition” and “create a new tradition” movements arising within contemporary societies.
Though “modernity” is a difficult term to define, it is uncontroversial to claim that modernity has a “tradition” of being in tension with tradition. As many of us have encountered, any reference to the topic of tradition (or traditions) is likely to spark some degree of controversy. For instance:
Some think tradition to be a necessary good which advances the wellbeing of both individuals and society; others think it to be a loathsome vice which is used to suppress individual freedom(s); others yet accept tradition more neutrally as a practical necessity used to prevent cultural decay and disarray.
Some think tradition to be an affirmation of truth, while others think it a mere cultural construct.
Among those who think tradition to be a good (or at least an acceptable necessity), there remain disagreements about which tradition(s) to follow. Moreover, ought we acceptreadily our tradition(s) as presented, or ought we introducereforms, whether minor or extreme?
Some are keen to distinguish an appreciation of existing tradition(s) from the adopted ideology of “traditionalism.” Moreover: some think traditionalism to be a needed mindset to correct the errors of our age, while others think it to be a reductive, seductive means of control.
Some may laud the tradition(s) of one or more disciplines—theology, politics, education, the fine arts, to name a few—yet demand progress in others, or vice versa.
Regardless of our views of tradition, it is also uncontroversial to note that ours is increasingly an “age of nostalgia.” We commonly encounter appeals to nostalgia not only in advertising and the arts, but also in political and religious messaging, especially with the goal of rekindling a sense of the wholesome, “good old days.” So too, this appeal to nostalgia is common in defenses for tradition(s), especially traditionalist movements. As with tradition, we may ask some questions about nostalgia:
What is nostalgia? Is it a mere emotion, or perhaps more of a mindset?
How do we distinguish when nostalgia is a helpful rather than harmful inspiration?
Is there a particularly “modern” notion of nostalgia, in contrast to that of our predecessors?
Is nostalgia a legitimate justification for a return to tradition? Conversely, is a lack of nostalgia a legitimate cause to reject tradition?
Join us this evening (9/20/2023, 5:45-7:15 pm ET) as we explore these questions and themes, with particular reference to the thought of Yves Congar, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Josef Pieper.
Philosophical Happy Hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
With discussion sessions beginning this coming Saturday (9/23), I would be remiss if I did not put out a final call for registration in our Fall seminars. We have three provocative offerings, each of which promises to confront the errors of modernity in radically differing ways.
Rosenstock’s insights have to do above all with speech, time and history – topics infamous for their unpredictability, and fractious in their irreducibility to mere ratiocination or univocal definition. Aristotle, after all, reminds us that, due to the very nature of human events, there will never be a science of history. And yet, with all the ambiguities and surprises, it is in time and history that we live and move and have our being. We use propositions and syllogisms, but they do not provide us with a human dwelling, nor can they console us in our trials.
The term “phenomenology” has received a multitude of meanings over the past several centuries but today refers primarily to the loose collection of approaches initiated by Edmund Husserl with his 1900 (and revised in 1913) Logichse Untersuchungen, or Logical Investigations. Yet these approaches, while all see in phenomenology something foundational about how it is that human beings know, vary widely in their conduct. Prominent among them, and very frequently misunderstood, is the phenomenological approach advocated by Martin Heidegger—who, although perhaps the best-known of Husserl’s students, also perhaps departs the most radically among all the phenomenologists from his one-time teacher.
The importance of habit’s influence on action has been well noted by Saint Thomas and his followers (as, indeed, by all thoughtful followers of Aristotle) with respect to virtue and vice. This influence will be only as it were, however, an incidental object of our study. For, of particular importance in this seminar will be not only a consideration of habits as developing the individual, but as constituting the intersubjective reality of environment, community, and culture: of habits not only as they cause a coalescence of actuality in the human being (secundum se) but between human beings and the world (ad aliud).
Put otherwise, if we are to understand the full importance of habit, we cannot see it merely as something within ourselves as individuals but must recognize its influence on how we relate amongst ourselves.
Who does not dislike the experience of boredom? To be bored is to feel one’s time, one’s energy, one’s capacities are wasted, withering away on nothing. But, at times, the boredom that seizes us disregards even our greatest loves: no matter the diversion attempted, boredom takes sway. We might pick up a favorite book, only to put it down with a sigh after a few pages; or begin to watch a movie, a television show, even a live sport—and yet care not a whit for word or action on the screen, no matter how compelling the plot or play. Chores and to-do’s are often a last resort, for at least the hope that something productive will be done and accomplished: but they seem little more than means to “pass the time”.
But this experience, with which no doubt we all are familiar, serves it seems only to cover up the fundamental and seldom-asked question—and which we intend to discuss in this week’s Philosophical Happy Hour—namely: what is boredom itself?
Kierkegaard and the Root of All Evil
“Boredom”, infamously writes Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), “is the root of all evil.” Interpreting Kierkegaard never presents an easy task. Is he being ironic? Literal? A mixture of the two? This last seems often to be the case. It is not, in other words, that boredom causes in the most literal sense all the evils attributed to it; but there is, no doubt, something pernicious about boredom. What else does he have to say?
Strange that boredom, in itself so staid and stolid, should have such power to set in motion. The influence it exerts is altogether magical, except that it is not the influence of attraction, but of repulsion.
In the case of children, the ruinous character of boredom is universally acknowledged. Children are always well-behaved as long as they are enjoying themselves. This is true in the strictest sense; for if they sometimes become unruly in their play, it is because they are already beginning to be bored—boredom is already approaching, through from a different direction.
1843: Either/Or, Vol.1, The “Either”, p.281.
We will pick Søren back up momentarily, but this merits a pause: do we not observe today, in the era of constant distraction from distraction by distraction, a rising unruliness in youth? Is this indeed because they are bored—or because they do not know how to quiet their sense of boredom? But this raises the question: what is the experience of boredom itself? Continuing:
The history of this [world going from bad to worse, its evils increasing more and more as boredom increases] can be traced from the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.
1843: EIther/Or, Vol.1, The “Either”, p.282.
Here we sense, no doubt, some of Kierkegaard’s characteristic irony. But though the irony rises to the fore, laced throughout we sense a certain truth. Much of what we do, much of what we seek, seems motivated—somehow—out of boredom; out of a kind of dissatisfaction with what we have, or a failure of that which we have to satisfy—something. We may not even ourselves know what. Is that vagueness itself not a part of the experience of boredom? That is, we feel ourselves bored when we know not what would get rid of the feeling of being bored; or, if we believe something would, we do not know how to get it.
Still, this does not answer the question: what is boredom?
Heidegger and Indifference
In a lecture course given some 74 years after Kierkegaard passed, Martin Heidegger offered his own extended thoughts on boredom. Like much of Heidegger’s work—indeed, I’d dare to say, all of it—ultimately he resolves the question into that of being and of time. But this resolution is not without reason, and, moreover, the path he takes toward it sheds important light on the question itself. Boredom, as he describes it, has come to the fore in our world precisely through the structures of culture. As he writes:
Have we become too insignificant to ourselves, that we require a role? Why do we find no meaning for ourselves any more, i.e., no essential possibility of being? Is it because an indifference yawns at us out of all things, an indifference whose grounds we do not know? Yet who can speak in such a way when world trade, technology, and the economy seize hold of man and keep him moving? And nevertheless we seek a role for ourselves. What is happening here?, we ask anew. Must we first make ourselves interesting to ourselves again? Why must we do this? Perhaps because we ourselves have become bored with ourselves? Is man himself no supposed to have become bored with himself? Why so? Do things ultimately stand in such a way with us that a profound boredom draws back and forth like a silent fog in the abysses of Dasein [i.e., the intentional structure of human living]?
1929-30: Die Grundbegriff der Metaphysik: Welt—Endlichkeit—Einsamkeit, p.77 in the English translation.
Heidegger goes on for quite some time (roughly 80 pages in the English translation) inquiring into the nature of boredom—examining differences of being bored and bored with and boredom itself, between superficial and profound boredom, and so on and so forth. It is not at all, for seriously-inquiring minds (especially those already familiar with Heidegger’s philosophy), a boring read.
Homesickness and Boredom
But among the many wanderings undertaken through this contemplation, one today caught my attention. First, he draws attention to the German word and its rather obvious etymology: Langeweile. The English cognate—“long while”—speaks true. But within this context, he draws an interesting and, I think, rather profound connection:
We pass the time in order to master [profound boredom], because time becomes long in boredom. Time becomes long for us. Is it supposed to be short, then? Does not each of us wish for a truly long time for ourselves? And whenever it does become long for us, we pass the time and ward off its becoming long! We do not want to have a long time, but we have it nevertheless. Boredom, long time: especially in Alemannic [a group of High German dialects] usage, it is no accident that ‘to have long time’ means the same as ‘to be homesick’. In this German usage, if someone has long-time for… this means he is home sick for… Is this accidental? Or is it only with difficulty that we are able to grasp and draw upon the wisdom of language? Profound boredom—a homesickness. Homesickness—philosophizing, we heard somewhere, is supposed to be a homesickness. Boredom—a fundamental attunement of philosophizing. Boredom—what is it?
1929-30: Die Grundbegriff der Metaphysik: Welt—Endlichkeit—Einsamkeit, p.80.
Boredom—homesickness—philosophizing. The reference of “we heard somewhere” may be a bit of a joke, as the word used for “homesickness” here is unheimlichkeit, literally, “not-at-home-ness”. In other works of Heidegger, such as his then-famous Being and Time, it will be translated inadequately as “uncanniness”. But, at any rate, this merits our contemplation. Is boredom essentially an experience of being homesick, of being “not at home”? Homesickness itself can tell us something, I believe, about boredom. When we are homesick, we are uncomfortable: not with the things around us, but with the absence of home. Our attunement is to the absent and not the present. We might lash out at the present—in the form of persons or things, in actions or thoughts—but less because of what they are than because of what they aren’t.
So too, I believe, when we are bored, we might become bored with this or that object, but less because of what it is and more because of what it isn’t. But whereas homesickness has a specified object that it desires (even if we seldom know precisely what it is or why home satisfies us), boredom seems more fundamentally lost. We seek, therefore, not to alleviate boredom by satisfying its fundamental desire, but by quieting it, putting it to sleep—as Heidegger says—through some distraction, some temporary movement which alleviates that sense of “not being at home”.
Philosophizing at Home
So what is it we are missing when we are bored? And are we condemned—like Freud’s civilizational discontents—to perennial dissatisfaction, to naught but inadequate sublimations of our fundamental desire to not be bored?
Join us this Wednesday (9/13/2023) for a Philosophical Happy Hour on the topic of boredom: what is it, why do we experience, and what should we do about it?
Philosophical Happy Hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
The term kulturkampf, literally “culture struggle”, has long-since been translated into English as “culture war”. I have no desire to participate in a “culture war”. Indeed, as I will argue here, the very notion of the “culture war” is not only misguided but harmful. But as someone living within a culture, however, I do believe it is inevitable that I and everyone else—willingly or not, consciously or not—everyone does participate in the struggle over culture.
Semantics of War and Struggle
Why this “quibbling over semantics”? Before I get to the semantics themselves, I have to say that I have never accepted as legitimate the objection that one is quibbling over semantics. Words are important. They signify concepts, and concepts are that on the basis of which all human history (all that is truly human, that is) has unfolded. If you do not believe words are important, there seems to be no reason for you to read this—or anything. In fact, the objection of “quibbling over semantics” presumes a nominalist or at least idealist divorce between cognitive activity and things independent of cognitive activity; but pursuing that question would take us far off track.
Returning therefore to the semantics of “struggle” and “war”: I protest the latter term because it suggests an entirely inapt metaphor. War, to be waged justly, must have a reasonable expectation of victory. One adopts violent means out of necessity: the need, namely, to produce or restore an orderly way of life that allows human beings to pursue their natural and fitting goods. War should be irregular. And before anyone thinks about bringing it up, let me say that there is an entirely different way in which the concept of “spiritual warfare” or “spiritual combat” must be understood, which would take us into a discussion well outside the boundaries of what I am here to discuss today; but which, succinctly, may be presented by saying that there are conditions for decisive victory in matters of the spiritual soul of the human being. Not so in matters of culture, which is, by nature, an intrinsically temporally-unfolding suprasubjective reality constituted through a pattern of relations which attains a new foundation in every human being who is born and reared within a society of other human beings. Or to put this in other, simpler words, culture is an ever-present and ever-developing reality which can only exist through the exchanges human beings have with and towards one another. It is never final, because we human beings, as existing on earth, are not final; we, by nature, are creatures that change both over the course of our individual lives and over the course of generations. So long as humans have freedom of thought and will, culture may change.
What’s Wrong with the World?
Allow me an anecdote. When I taught ethics at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, a secular school in Boston, Massachusetts, I started each semester by giving the students a notecard on which to write their names, email addresses, a hobby or interest, and—in a single sentence or less—something they believe to be wrong with the world today, with the promise that I’d give my own answer later in the semester. Their answers ranged from the very thoughtful to the kind one might expect in a caricature of a beauty pageant. Most were focused on what could be called systematic societal issues: poverty, inequality, abuse of power, ideologies, a lack of charity or honesty among people as a whole, and so on and so forth. Throughout the semester, we read a variety of thinkers influential in ethics: David Hume, J.L. Mackie, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, Philippa Foot, Marilyn Frye, and so on. Each, in some way, provides a “system” for ethics either as a whole or with regard to some specific problems: rules or sets of principles which, if followed, are promised to improve society. They might be rather loose rules or principles, or rather strict ones—but all had in mind the same goal, despite the significant differences in their means. Mind you, I was required to provide a survey course covering a broad range of thinkers and theories—ideally, I would have focused the course more intently on better thinkers, but the conditions of my employment were non-negotiable. Regardless, being required to teach a wide range of theories and thinkers, I spent most of the semester showing how these proposed systems have intrinsic and unavoidable flaws, no matter how strictly observed; how they fail in other words, how they do not provide us a secure and ethical society, and how they may be overcome or abused. Towards the end of the semester, we would read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics—after the first book of which, I would read their answers as to what’s wrong with the world back to them. They would remember my promise, and that it was my turn.
“What’s wrong with the world?” I asked myself, out loud, before them. “Me,” I would answer; “I am.”
You might recognize this answer from a legend about Chesterton—I freely admit that I lifted it. But it is, I believe, a good teaching tool: yes, there are many systematic problems with our country, our world, our politics, and our culture. I cannot control any of those problems. I can try to change them, but I cannot control them; for all are dependent upon millions of wills not my own. I am, by nature, in control only of myself and even that only to a limited degree (i.e., I cannot will myself to be something I naturally am not—as I cannot will myself to be a top-tier athlete—maybe a decent one, but genetically that has always been out of my grasp—nor can someone born a man will himself to become a female, and so on). The circumstances into which we all are born are beyond our control. What is in our control is our capacity for virtue, the decisions and choices that we as individuals make. Naturally, this extends into those with whom we have close relations: our individuality is only relative, and we are ourselves constituted largely through the relations we have with others. But the faculty of the will extends efficaciously only to the self. We may influence others through a kind of formal causality—objective or specifying causality, to be precise, which is just what I was attempting to do with those students, showing them the truth through a careful, painful, difficult process, one class session, one reading, one assignment, one Socratic hour at a time—but we cannot control their wills. We can only attempt to specify objects for their thinking, propose to them what we believe is true, and strive to show them—most especially through how we live ourselves—the truth of the good, and thus that it is desirable.
Struggle and Habit
It in this inability to control others and the difficulty of showing the truth in which the struggle over culture consists. It is perennial; it occurs again and anew with each individual human being who grows up in this or any other society. Believing that ever there could occur a society where the demonstration of what is true is not difficult, where the struggle for it does not recur on a daily basis, is a fantasy which obscures the truth of the matter. There are no shortcuts: the effect of specifying formal causality does not and cannot occur on a cultural scale through the impositions of force. It is a gradual process of developing habits and requires careful and constant attention. I had relatively decent success, teaching my ethics course, in persuading students to think that Aristotle was a very good starting point, to recognize that claim as true, in other words: but only because they were small classes of no more than 22 students. (I doubt the effects were lasting, unfortunately—a single isolated course with students exposed to little else of similar thinking. But I may hope that their thinking has remained on the track set down by the course, given the intensity of our discussions.) That is not to say a larger class could not have been likewise incipiently persuaded; but affecting such a first step towards persuasion among most of a large crowd would likely have been only superficial, a fleeting adherence born not of intellectual conviction but birthed merely through winning the moment—through presenting them a fictionalized, fantastic version of Aristotle: the bold, counter-cultural Stagirite who stands athwart modernity, etc., etc.
In the age of mass media, and especially the internet, where any message has the potential to reach masses of people, such reductive approaches possess a seductive allure—especially if we conceive of the cultural struggle as being a war. We see this video, or that trend, or this or that celebrity spreading a false message; we see their YouTube hit counters ticking over into hundreds of thousands, millions, hundreds of millions of views; this odious Tweet (Twixt?) garnering countless likes and retweets, that Facebook post being shared over and over again; misinformation being spread far and wide; and we feel that we must combat these numbers with our own. Alarms blare in our mind and we hear the shouts of: “They are beating us! They are winning! We are losing!” They are gashing us; so we must, we think, respond in kind. We fashion exaggerated narratives, pseudo-historical accounts—we put on airs of gnosticism, of being the elect, being “those who know”.
Pyrrhic Wars of Formal Causality
But the battlefield of those who wage war on the truth is fantasy. To engage them in combat is to step on to that battlefield; to have to use their weapons, weapons which rely upon a kind of seduction into a way of living rather than understanding the truth about the good—weapons which aim at the lower rather than higher faculties of the human being. This would be to abuse the influence of objective causality.
I do not mean to suggest that fiction and fantasy cannot be put to good use. They can be powerful means for telling stories which elucidate truths better than can be done by any philosophy. But with the degradation of good philosophical thinking the fantastic loses its proper context of significance. For a right formation of the moral imagination there must also be the claritas of good intellectual judgment: not only that there may be produced good works of creative fiction but that their interpretation might be guided correctly. To gain these two goods of intellectual correctness and imaginative rectitude proves not a matter of battle, but of struggle. It is lived by each of us individually and realized culturally in our being with one another. Approached as a war, you may “win” a battle here or there—changing a school curriculum, passing a law, discrediting a movie or television show or speaker—but fought as battles, they are inevitable pyrrhic, costing us more than they gain.
An older version of this is available in audio form here:
Rosenstock-Huessy’s is a powerful and original mind. What is most important in his work is the understanding of the relevance of traditional values to a civilization still undergoing revolutionary transformations; and this contribution will gain rather than lose significance in the future.
Join us for an invigorating seminar that delves into the profound thought of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a Jewish convert to Christianity, World War I veteran, and multifaceted thinker of the 20th century. A maverick philosopher and teacher, Rosenstock-Huessy emigrated from Nazi Germany to Harvard—where he was marginalized both for an interdisciplinary approach (before it was fashionable) and for unapologetically using the word “God” frequently in class. Thankfully he found a congenial home at Dartmouth College where his thought was given free reign until his death in 1973. Despite often being overlooked by conventional academia, his vast collection of works continues to resonate with contemporary scholars and has been praised as seminal by many critics.
The seminar promises to unlock the sui generis insights and methodologies that set Rosenstock-Huessy apart. His philosophical contributions defy easy categorization but open doors to understanding aspects of reality previously unnoticed. His ideas, stemming from unexpected cultural corners, offer a refreshing perspective on time, speech, and history—topics notoriously challenging to pin down.
Seminar Goals
Participants will explore Rosenstock’s enduring insights, focusing on his unique “grammatical method” of understanding. This approach safeguards against the modern tendency to reduce human reality to mere “scientific” statements. The discussion will also probe his perspective on the precedence of the second person over the first in our encounter with reality, his critique of prioritizing space over time, and his innovative “Cross of Reality” to reorient human consciousness.
Furthermore, the seminar will address Rosenstock-Huessy’s theories on the origin of language, emphasizing the primacy of hearing over seeing. It will also explore his alignment with other “speech thinkers” of the last century and his intricate understanding of history as a central theme converging all his insights.
This seminar invites scholars, students, and curious minds to engage with the challenging and inspiring works of this often-underappreciated thinker. It offers a stimulating journey into philosophical realms that continue to enrich and provoke our modern understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. Join us for this enlightening exploration that promises to be both intellectual revelation and tribute to one of the past century’s most intriguing and neglected minds.
1. The “Impure Thinker” that was Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Readings: » [Primary] ERH. “Teaching Too Late – Learning Too Early,” from I Am an Impure Thinker, 91-114; Wayne Cristaudo et al. “Introduction: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888–1973)”, in Culture, Theory and Critique, 2015, vol. 56, 1 (12 pages). » [Secondary] Peter Leithart. “The Relevance of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,” First Things, 06.28.07 (seven pages); Wayne Cristaudo. “Why Rosenstock-Huessy Matters: Personal reflections on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of his death,” unpubl., 2023 (29 pages).
September 30
2. Philosophy, Language and 20th Century “Speech-Thinkers” Readings: » [Primary] ERH. “The Uni-Versity of Logic, Language, Literature,” chapter 3 of Speech and Reality, 67-97. » [Secondary] Harold Stahmer. ” ‘Speech-Letters’ and ‘Speech-Thinking’: Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,” Modern Judaism, Feb. 1984, 57-81.
October 7
3. The Grammar Before and Beyond Our Grade-School Primers Readings: » [Primary] ERH. “In Defense of the Grammatical Method,” chapter 1 in Speech and Reality, 9-44. “The Grammar of the Soul,” from Practical Knowledge of the Soul, ch. 5, 18-33. » [Secondary] ERH. “Grammatical Health,” “Genus (Gender) and Life,” and “Editor’s Postscript,” chapters 12, 13 and 14 of The Origin of Speech, 110-129.
October 14
4. Time vis-à-vis Space in the “Cross of Reality” Readings: » [Primary] ERH. “Articulated Speech,” chapter 2 from Speech and Reality, 45-66. » [Secondary] ERH. “The Penetration of the Cross,” ch. 7 in The Christian Future (165-198); Peter Leithart. “The Cross of Reality,” unpubl., 2017 (11 pages).
October 21
BREAK
October 28
5. Human Speech – Evolved Ululation, or the Posterity of Poetry? Readings: » [Primary] ERH. “The Authentic Moment of Speech,” “The Four Diseases of Speech,” and “Church and State of Primitive Man,” from The Origin of Speech, the first three chapters, 2-27. » [Secondary] ERH. “The Speech of the Community,” ch. 9 from Practical Knowledge of the Soul, 48-61; “The Four Phases of Speech,” and “The Quadrilateral of Human Logic,” from I Am an Impure Thinker, 53-68.
November 4
6. History and Its Revolutions Readings: » [Primary] selections from Out of Revolution. » [Secondary] Norman Fiering. “Heritage vs. History: ERH as a “Physician of Memory,” from Understanding Rosenstock-Huessy, 60-93.
November 11
7. “Judaism Despite Christianity” Readings: » [Primary] ERH. “Prologue/Epilogue to the Letters – 50 Years Later,” 71-76; 171-194, from Judaism Despite Christianity -The Letters on Christianity and Judaism between ERH and Franz Rosenzweig. » [Secondary] Raymond Huessy. “A Reflection on the 1916 Correspondence between Rosenstock and Rosenberg,” in The Fruit of Our Lips, 303-311.
November 18
8. The Christian Future Readings: » [Primary]chapters from ERH. The Christian Future, 1946, and passages from The Fruit of Our Lips, 2021. » [Secondary] Peter Leithart. “Future and the Christian Era,” Theopolis, 2017.
Registration
Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).
One payment covers all 8 weeks.
If you prefer an alternative payment method (i.e., not PayPal), use our contact form and state whether you prefer to pay as a Participant, Patron, or Benefactor, and an invoice will be emailed to you.
[2023 Fall] Rosenstock’s Thought – Public Benefactor
Upper-tier payment. Recommended for those with full-time employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more.
$200.00
[2023 Fall] Rosenstock’s Thought – Public Patron
Middle-tier payment. Recommended for those with full-time employment and children, or for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought, such as clergy and teachers.
$135.00
[2023 Fall] Rosenstock’s Thought – Public Participant
Basic payment. Recommended for those who are currently students, with part-time employment, or who cannot afford to pay more at the moment.
In a world where habits often seem synonymous with unconscious and automatic reactions, it is time to revisit and explore the true depth and meaning of this vital aspect of human existence. The Lyceum Institute is pleased to present an 8-week intensive seminar on “Thomistic Psychology: Human Habits and Experience of the World.” Guided by the profound insights of Thomas Aquinas, the seminar will open up new horizons in understanding the complex reality of habits in human life.
Why Study Habits and Experience? The modern understanding of habit is often reduced to mere patterns of behavior. However, this seminar takes a unique approach, delving into the Thomistic tradition to unveil a more profound, multifaceted, and richer perspective. Further, this course intertwines the insights of Thomistic psychology with those derived from semiotics and phenomenology to examine not only the intrapersonal dimension of habits but also the intersubjective reality in community, culture, and environment.
Understanding Habits in Depth: Learn about Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of habit as a coalescent actuality, shaping our actions, virtues, and vices, and how it stands in contrast to contemporary notions.
Cultural Habit: Discover the influence of habits on how we relate amongst ourselves, a theme rarely drawn out explicitly in Thomistic texts but profoundly vital in our interconnected world.
The Role of Other Traditions: Though focused on St. Thomas, we will take a diverse approach by invoking traditions such as semiotics and phenomenology and engage with authors like Felix Ravaisson, who have written extensively on habit.
Method & Structure
The seminar, designed for those with prior study in or familiarity with Thomistic Psychology, consists of:
Weekly Recorded Lectures: 40-60+ minute lectures exploring concepts, arguments, and potential developments within the tradition.
Discussion Sessions: Engage in collective inquiry and civil debate with fellow participants and the instructor every Saturday at 1:00-2:00 pm ET.
Reading: Primary texts include Aquinas’ Summa theologiae (ST Ia-IIae) with additional readings provided in PDF.
Time Commitment: Expect 8 hours per week for reading, lectures, and discussion.
Auditing or Completing: Participants who write an essay may “Complete” the seminar (and be considered for publication in Reality).
Richness of Experience
This is not just a seminar but a deeply engaging experience that promises to enrich your understanding of human nature and the world around us. It allows an immersive exploration of texts, lectures, and lively discussions, bringing resolution to difficulties, enhancing intellectual curiosity, and directing further inquiry.
It is more than learning; it’s participation in a dynamic intellectual community, sharing thoughts, engaging in constructive debates, and fostering a collective pursuit of wisdom. Your contribution will not only enlighten you but others as well, and you’ll have the opportunity to have your work potentially evaluated for publication.
Join us at the Lyceum Institute for this enlightening journey, a course that goes beyond the conventional, offering a unique perspective that could redefine your understanding of habits and their role in human experience. Challenge your thoughts, deepen your insights, and be a part of a meaningful dialogue about human nature and culture. Register today for “Thomistic Psychology: Human Habits and Experience of the World,” and rediscover the richness of human existence.
The Nature of Habit » Lecture: Paradigms of Habit Readings: » Required: ST Ia-IIae, q.49. » Supplement: Selections from neuroscientific and psychological writings.
September 30
The Being of Habits » Lecture: Locus Habituum Readings: » Required: ST Ia-IIae, q.50. » Supplement: Robert Brennan, “The Habits of Man” in Thomistic Psychology.
October 7
Formation and Increase of Habits » Lecture: Determining the Indeterminate Readings: » Required: ST Ia-IIae, q.51-52. » Supplement: Selections from C.S. Peirce.
October 14
The Unity of Habits » Lecture: Order and Union Readings: » Required: ST Ia-IIae, q.53-54. » Supplement: Notes on feedback loops and neuroplasticity.
October 21
BREAK
October 28
Virtues as Habits » Lecture: Holding the Self Well Readings: » Required: ST Ia-IIae, q.55-56. » Supplement: Yves Simon, “Work and Culture”.
November 4
Moral and Intellectual Virtue » Lecture: Holding toward the World Readings: » Required: ST Ia-IIae, q.57-58. » Supplement: Yves Simon, “Work and Culture”.
November 11
Habituation toward Virtue or Vice » Lecture: Struggle within the World Readings: » Required: ST Ia-IIae, q.63, a.1-2, 4; q.71, a.1-4. » Supplement: Josef Pieper, “Doing and Signifying”.
November 18
The Habit of Responsibility » Lecture: Culture and Habit Readings: » Required: Selections from Thomas Aquinas. » Supplement: John Deely, “Philosophy and Experience”.
Registration
Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, priced according to likely levels of income. If you wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the suggested rate, it is acceptable to sign up at a less-expensive level. The idea is: pay what you can. Those who can pay more, should, so that those who cannot pay as much, need not. Lyceum Institute members receive a further discount (see here for details).
One payment covers all 8 weeks.
If you prefer an alternative payment method (i.e., not PayPal), use our contact form and state whether you prefer to pay as a Participant, Patron, or Benefactor, and an invoice will be emailed to you.
[2023 Fall] Thomistic Psych: World and Habit – Public Benefactor
Upper-tier payment. Recommended for those with full-time employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more.
$200.00
[2023 Fall] Thomistic Psych: World and Habit – Public Patron
Middle-tier payment. Recommended for those with full-time employment and children, or for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought, such as clergy and teachers.
$135.00
[2023 Fall] Thomistic Psych: World and Habit – Public Participant
Basic payment. Recommended for those who are currently students, with part-time employment, or who cannot afford to pay more at the moment.
What is the purpose of art? It is not a new question. To the contrary, it resides among the oldest of questions. Some may despair of a meaningful answer, given the ancient age of a question yet still be asked—and, at times, asked as though nothing said in the millennia before us has given satisfaction. Yet, that art has a purpose cannot be denied: for even the most-mysterious seeming of acts arises for the sake of some end, even if the act itself misses the mark by a wide margin.
To many, art seems to be primarily about communicating a message. In the past decade, the media through which art is transmitted and promoted has been painfully, dare I say cringe-inducingly, self-righteous and moralistic. In the words of Anastasia Berg, “For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop.”[1] Such works—questionable as to which category is primary, that is, the art or the propaganda—may yet be lauded by the ideologues in support of their messages. But they are upheld as good works of art only by the most deluded.
To others, art may be purely about the “aesthetic experience”: by which is commonly meant works that somehow convey or evoke an emotional response at a perceptual level, a response that induces the audience to continue the experience. Thus, the work of art may be beautiful or hideous, joyful or tragic, but its purpose—so say such claimants—consists in the experience of the attraction. Notably, however, this attitude may result in works which require neither talent nor thought, but which have their whole being in provocation and stoking outrage. Such works, just as little as pieces of pure propaganda, seem to deserve the name “art”.
Final Cause of Art
As Berg, again, writes, “Art must be for something—even if only for its own sake. For all their differences, everybody seems to agree that beautiful images have ‘value’—the question is merely what kind.” And, as she concludes:
If good art and its criticism can free us from anything, it can free us… from the comforting delusion that we can ever transcend our human limits, defeat death, unhappiness and evil once and for all, or live in anyone’s vision of heaven on earth. This does not mean, however, that we can ever be liberated from the infinite pull of beauty itself, or be able to attend to images only when we feel like it. It is rather like this: we can decide what to do, but we can never decide what to dream.
The “infinite pull of beauty”—as inescapable as dreaming: not always present to us, but something which comes whether we will it or not. Just as we are fascinated by dreams, so, too, we are by the beautiful—not only to perceive it but to create it. Yet is the purpose of art merely to free us from “comforting delusions”? Such liberation, I believe, is an indirect and necessarily concomitant resultance of what art truly does; but hardly its primary purpose, for such presupposes the prevalence of these delusions, a prevalence which itself contradicts human nature in a way that our love for and pursuit of art does not.
Questions of Purpose
What then, can we say about art’s true purpose? Do we not need, first, to understand at least provisionally what art is? Can we identify its nature? Can we explain how someone creates it? Or how it is received? Do we know the work itself—the form that may make something even physically unexceptional into a vessel of beauty? What is the center—what is the final and orienting cause for art’s existence? Come join us this Wednesday (2 August 2023) for our Philosophical Happy Hour and discuss these important questions!
Philosophical Happy Hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
