philosophy
-
On Being a Person
A Philosophical Happy Hour on persons and personalism. If someone came up to you—someone you know, perhaps not very well, but with whom you have had association for enough time to reasonably say, “Yes, I know him [or her]”—and said any of the following to you, how would you react? Most of us, I suspect,…
-
On Incompetence and Malice
On 13 July 2024, when a 20-year-old kid attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally—only inches away from doing so and taking the life of a rally-goer—it raised serious questions about the security around the former president. How could such a young man surveil the area with a drone, get into such an…
-
You Are Not Your Own: a phenomenological investigation of embodiment
It is our pleasure to again host Dr. Steven DeLay (Research Fellow, Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Dublin and Tutorial Fellow, Ambrose College, Woolf University) in presenting his research. A prolific author and expert in French phenomenology, we are delighted to have Dr. DeLay contributing to our colloquia for the second year in a row.…
-
Language as Craft: Building Blocks for Communication
The following is a reflection authored by Columbanus Fellow Sneha Jain. Language’s fundamental purpose is to communicate the intention of the speaker or writer. By nature, however, language is conventional, which can confuse or obscure the desired message. In other words, language relies upon stipulation, and it is often assumed—whether rightly or wrongly— that the…
-
Meet the Columbanus Fellows: Sneha Jain
Today we introduce another of our Columbanus Fellows—dedicated students demonstrating their commitment and desire to grow in knowledge, wisdom, and understanding through a creative retrieval of the classic Western tradition and participation in genuine dialogical inquiry. Sneha Jain is an alumna of The University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a B.S. in Chemical…
-
“From Rational to Semiotic Animal”
An extract from Deely 2006: “Semiotics, History of” in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition (London: Elsevier) v.11: 216–29. The thinkers of the Latin Age, inspired by Aristotle, liked to distinguish between remote and proximate potentialities. Thus, awareness or knowledge of the action of signs was no more than a remote possibility the long…