philosophy
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Initial Retrospect: Human Formation in the Digital Age
Last week, on 16-17 September 2026, we held our first ever in-person event, Human Formation in the Digital Age. The conference was an unqualified success. I do not mean it could not be improved—there are always things that can be done better. But I mean that it accomplished its purposes better than I could have…
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Have You No Shame?
Who among us has not felt a cringe, a desire to disappear, when the eyes of another alight upon our faults and failures? Shame is a feeling equally powerful and undesirable. But what is it, itself, and what role does it play in our lives? We take up these questions in our Philosophical Happy Hour.…
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Signs and Obfuscations: Can the Weather Lie?
The forecast calls for rain, but it remains dry. Someone smiles cheerfully at you, while plotting your downfall. You’ve got a fever—but the only cure is more cowbell. Our Philosophical Happy Hour takes up the question of signs, obfuscation, obscurity, and the signs by which truth and falsity are known. Nobody—or almost nobody—expects a career…
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Retrospect: On Questioning
Our Philosophical Happy Hour (2 September 2026) focused on the art of questioning—and precisely how we have come, wrongly, to expect answers today. Here is a reflection on what was discussed. These brief reflections are structured principally around four questions asked: first, concerning the evaluation of propositions the content of which are not immediately evident…
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Felicitates de Quodlibet, III.5
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the art of questioning. A unique fifth installment in our Felictates de Quodlibet series for 2026. In this installment, we ask: do you have a serious question—any serious question whatsoever—which troubles your mind? What is that question? Do we really know what it is what we are seeking? The Lyceum’s…
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Retrospect: the Nature of Culture
Our Philosophical Happy Hour (26 August 2026) inquired into the nature of culture. Here is a brief retrospective survey of our discussion. The word “culture” remains laden with confused significations. Sorting out its meaning, organizing the uses of it, and identifying the proper phenomenon it names proves no easy task. Yet even a relatively short…
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On the Nature of Culture
The title might seem like a paradox. Are not “nature” and “culture” radically distinct, even opposed to each other? To answer this we must ask: what do we mean by “nature” and what do we mean by “culture”? Our Philosophical Happy Hour takes up these questions. I have often said, with only a part of…
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Seminar: Hermeneutics – An Introduction
Fall 2026 | Hermeneutics – An Introduction | Philosophy Seminar Human beings are always interpreting: words, gestures, events, traditions, texts, and, perhaps most of all, one another. But interpretation is not simply extracting a meaning from these things we encounter. Every attempt to understand brings us into further questions: What makes understanding possible in the…
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The Common Good and the Toleration of Evil
Pornography, prostitution, gambling, capital punishment, slavery: each seems somehow evil, and yet—at one time or another—each has been tolerated by governments. Do these tolerations violate the common good? Our Philosophical Happy Hour takes up the unhappy question. How do we live rightly as members of a society when that society is permeated by evils? There…