philosophy

  • 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…

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  • Culture as a Technology

    “Culture”.  We hear the word all the time: the culture is in decline, we are losing our culture, we are fighting a culture war.  But ask someone to define culture, and you will likely receive many different answers—answers which consist primarily in listing what kinds of thing belong to culture: language, art, movies, music, politics,…

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  • Conference Program

    Friends, attendees, and anyone interested in the future of human education: we have added the program for our upcoming first-ever live event, Human Formation in the Digital Age. This conference will embrace the biggest challenges facing education today: challenges wrought by our technologies but resolved only through a deeper understanding of what it means to…

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  • For the Love of Wisdom

    What makes a human being “wise”?  What is “wisdom”?  Why is it important?  In an age of passionate reaction, it seems a virtue all too scarce, and most notably absent from those who govern.  Join our Philosophical Happy Hour to discuss its nature and pursuit. We have more knowledge, expertise, and access to information today…

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  • Technologizing Our Bodies

    Commonly, we find the human body today treated as a possession, a something-other which is distinct from the self.  This opposition of the “self” to the body may result in various forms of neglect or abuse of the latter.  But it may also, in recognizing the importance of the body for life even as it…

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  • What Does AI Use Do To Us?

    As AI use becomes increasingly widespread in the world, it becomes a pressing question to ask not only what effects it might produce in the world, but what consequences it has for users and their habits—and for the environment of thinking as a whole. Introducing SEPPUAI: A Semioethical Framework for Artificial Intelligence The Lyceum Institute…

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  • …Finishing Our Sentences?

    …Finishing Our Sentences? Language and the Habits of Thought in the Age of Generative AI Most discussion about artificial intelligence today tends toward either hype or panic.  Optimists see in it a miraculous tool, the future of scientific advancement, and a development not only to rival the industrial revolution in its transformative power, but—perhaps—one that…

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  • Technology’s Effects on Nature

    Commonly, we presume an opposition between the “natural” and the “artificial”.  Usually, we assume the “natural” to be everything untouched by human hands, whereas the “artificial” is that which we have ourselves brought into being.  But this division not only ends up positing as irreconcilable the objects of our experience, it reinforces a false anthropological…

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  • On Our Need for Truth

    A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the nature and definition of truth, and its necessity for our living good lives. Do we need truth to live good lives?  Do all human beings?  And if so—what is the truth?  How do we know it?  Who “has” it?  Where do we find it?  What do we really mean…

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