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On Modernity, Ultramodernity, and Postmodernity

If you and I are to have a conversation—that is, a kind of living-together through discourse or the concrete articulations of language—we must, indeed, do so in the same “place”.  Put otherwise, we cannot have a conversation unless the objects signified by our words are the same.  I do not mean that each and every word used by each person in the conversation needs to have the exact same denotations and connotations as understood by every other person in the conversation.  But without some common referents—some formal identities between us as to what the words we use mean—we are not and cannot be engaged in a dialogue, but only exchanging equally incomprehensible monologues.

It is to the end of establishing some of these necessary commonalities, particularly concerning the meaning of modernity and thus the elaborated forms of ultramodernity and postmodernity, that this article has been written.

The Common Understanding of Postmodernity

Let us begin by asking: what is postmodernism?  Commonly, the term is used to indicate a movement committed to the radical abdication of belief in ultimately-defensible intelligible meaning.  James Lindsay, for instance—who attained some fame through his work with Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose in exposing the absurdity in a lot of academia—has frequently referred to an “applied postmodernism” identified with social justice activism.  By this phrase is meant: the truth about things is less important than the imposition of moral categories based on emotional responses, many of which have been fostered through radical historicism or selective criticism of the structures common to Western civilization.  James Croft, University Chaplain and Lead Faith Advisor to the University of Sussex—with a EdD in Education and Human Development, who describes himself as a gay rights and Humanist activist—describes postmodernism as comprising positions “anti-foundationalist”, “anti-essentialist”, “anti-teleological”, and “anti-universal”. 

Academic Understandings

But is this throwing-around of terms in the public sphere, without careful attention, truly indicative of what postmodernism is or what it is understood to be among its adherents, advocates, and expositors?  In a sense: yes.  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy begins its entry on “postmodernism” by writing:

That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism.  However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.

Further, the first prominent instance of the word in academic discourse seemingly belongs to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s 1979 book, La condition postmoderne, published in 1984 under the English title, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.  In Lyotard’s “simplification to the extreme”, he defines “postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives” (xxiv).  As he states, the incredulous turn began around the turn of the 20th century, as the “rules” for science, literature, and the arts were changed through a seeming radical re-thinking.  One thinks of Andre Breton’s two manifestos on Surrealism, transgressive films like Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita or , or some of Hitchcock’s work, compositions of Arvo Pärt, Györgi Ligeti, Phillip Glass, or Brian Eno, the novels of James Joyce or William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon or Michel Houellebecq—or any of the expressive turns which attempt to convey a meaning, or the possibilities of interpretation, through methods which defy the previously-established norms and conventions of society.

Nascent and oft-unrecognized turns towards this incredulity of narratives in science can be found as early as the mid-19th century, particularly in the establishment of psychology as a discipline independent from philosophy and the shift to an apparently post-Aristotelian logic.  Though ostensibly grounded in the modern traditions of science—with their focus upon the experimental and the quantitative—these “new” approaches further untethered the objects of thinking from the mind-independent real.  The development of these, and other-like sciences, led to a further fragmentation of intellectual advance and the present-day irreconcilability of the disciplines[1] as well as the widely-known “replication crisis”—not to mention, opened the door for events such as the Sokal Hoax or the “grievance studies affair”.  Some might take these latter as evidence that the social sciences are insufficiently scientific.  Their simultaneity with the replication crisis shows, however, a deeper problem about the condition of knowledge—precisely the point articulated by Lyotard in his 1979 work.

The Public Face of the “Postmodern”

The fragmentation of knowledge and dissolution of narrative foundations has found its way also into the practical, moral, and political dimensions of life.  Without widespread social acceptance of either common principles for knowledge or shared sentiments—say, those stemming from religious belief, patriotism, or adherence to the dictates of an authority—new struggles appear concerning law and power.  Thus arise new movements of “social justice activism” or “applied postmodernism”, frequently witnessed on or stemming from college campuses throughout the late 20th century and into the early 21st—which follows insofar as these movements spring from a “theoretical postmodernism”.  In recent decades, the application of postmodern thinking (without often going explicitly under this name) has reached a somewhat more national consciousness, infiltrating politics, with not only the once-fringe Bernie Sanders shuffling into the limelight, but also the influx of young, female politicians with contrarian ideas, such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.  The lattermost, for instance, gave an interview to Anderson Cooper on the television program 60 Minutes where she stated that “there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”  Though she walked it back, that sort of statement is not simply a mistake, a slip of the tongue, but rather exhibits a structure of thinking.

In other words, there is a strong opposition within the contemporary movement to what historically has been called “reason”.  At the theoretical level, this opposition often utilizes the very language of power-struggle arising in the wake of reason’s dismissal to vilify “reason” as an instrument of oppression—a tool employed by the hegemonic forces that are responsible for seemingly all human pain or suffering.  To the contrary, emotions and lived experience are promoted as the new and perhaps the only means to a just world.

Theoretical Roots of the “Postmodern”

At any rate, the theoretical or philosophical roots will often be linked to names like—in no particular order—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Jacques Lacan, Max Horkheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, perhaps Slavoj Zizek, and the ethereal movement which may not be precisely identified with Karl Marx’s thought, but which not-illegitimately claims inspiration from him—the movement which receives even if it repudiates the name of cultural Marxism, exemplified in the recent “woke” movement exemplified by public figures such as Ibram X. Kendi; or in the closely-related field of “semantic activism”, that is, the effort to shift the meanings of words to produce desired cultural outcomes, advocated by academics such as Kate Manne.  Broadly speaking, the so-called theoretical postmodern is enmeshed with relativism, a “post-truth” mentality, and the radical resolution of the meaning of any apparent phenomena to naught but the individuated psyche, which rather ironically leaves power—understood not as the necessity of force but the persuasion to willing conformity—as the only means to social change.

Or, to sum the core belief up in a single sentence: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”.

The words are not mine, of course, but those of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, written in the decision of a 1992 case, Planned Parenthood of Southwest Pennsylvania v. Casey, which “reaffirmed the essential holding” of Roe v. Wade.

Now, regardless of your stance on abortion—an issue I believe factually straightforward but psychologically complex and thus will not venture into here—this assertion of the Supreme Court, if you believe that reason has a central role to play in human life and the pursuit of human good, should deeply and profoundly disturb you, and raise questions about the concept of liberty: central not simply to so-called postmodernism, but perhaps even more prominently to the modernism which preceded it.

The Meanings of Modernity and Modernism

Understanding “modernism”, however, is not simple.  For one, the term may be applied in two different but related senses: first, referring broadly to a cultural transition from centralized monarchical political authorities to individualistic democratic or republican governments as well as a secularization of education, both in means and in content; and second, referring narrowly to the philosophical movements which prompted much of this cultural change.  The cultural transition was exemplified intellectually by Galileo, Newton, and Darwin—as the rise of secular science, outside the Catholic university—not to mention the Enlightenment generally, and politically by the American and French revolutions and the ensuing diminishment of monarchy across all the Western world.  Less lauded or even recognized by the proponents of modernity (except as a sign of modernity’s achievements, rather than a cause), but just as centrally necessary to its achievements and philosophy, was the rise of technology and especially industrial technology.

This is not to say that every fruit sprung from the tree of cultural modernism is poison.  For instance, through the shift away from authority—though a shift taken entirely too far—a better image of the means to individual flourishing as intellect-possessing animals (or semiotic animals), emerged.  Yet this fruit is the exception, rather than the norm.  By contrast, the loss of the true good of authority—namely the connection of an individual with a normative truth higher than any individual—and instead the false belief in authority as a kind of necessary power to enforcing a social contract is poisonous indeed; as are the slide into scientism, the fragmentation of knowledge, and the rejection of tradition on the mere basis of its being traditional.

Philosophical Modernity

Most important for addressing modernism, however, is to understand the philosophical roots.  Here, we can quickly get at the essence: for modern philosophy has two founders that stand above the rest, namely René Descartes (1596–1650) and John Locke (1632–1704).[2]  Descartes is best known as the first of the modern rationalists, holding that ideas are not derived from the objects of sense experience, such that sense experience at most gives us the occasion to form or discover an idea, while other ideas are given directly by God or are instilled in us innately (which might as well be the same thing).  Contrariwise, John Locke held the mind as a blank slate, and thought all our ideas were formed from the empirical experience of objects, built up in an almost atomistic fashion, such that having experience of one sensation after another we came to form generalized notions of the things experienced.  The decades and centuries following Descartes saw theorists of both rationalist and empirical thinking—such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, George Berkeley, Baruch Spinoza, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, among others too numerous to name—arguing back and forth over the starting points and nature of knowledge… all of whom seemed entirely unaware that both sides partook of a fundamental and egregiously mistaken presupposition: namely, the belief that our ideas are themselves the direct terminal objects of our cognitive actions; in other words, the belief that we know our ideas and from knowing our ideas know the world.  Though often the rationalists have received the name of “idealist”, in truth, the empiricists are just as fundamentally idealist as their opposition.

This presupposition, regardless of one’s theory of ideation—and which presupposition we may call following Leibniz and John Deely as the “Way of Ideas”—drives an incorporeal and imaginary wedge between the individual human being and everything else.  The more attempts are made to build a bridge over this gap, the deeper the wedge is driven.  For the wedge of idealism, once admitted into a theory of knowledge, sets the individual and his or her experience as knowing his or her ideas, over and against the world as something extended and material, not known directly but only through the mediation of one’s subjectively-constrained ideas.   Inevitably, therefore, it drives individuals deeper into individualism as they believe themselves to dwell in their own minds.  Thus the Way of Ideas ends up driving the wedge so deeply that it widens the initial gap into a vast chasm: a chasm between the world as known and the self as knower, between the physical and the cultural, and between the natural and the personal.

For the turn first introduced by Descartes is a turn inwards; a turn which makes thought essentially private—and there is a lot here to be said about the technology of the printing press and the paradigmatic shift between the scholastic modes of philosophy obsolesced by privately owned and read books, a lot that I am not going to say here in fact: only that the Cartesian subjective turn gives an intelligible articulation to a spreading psychological habit technologically exacerbated, making that habit both explicit and reinforced.  The result is a diminished belief in the truth of intellectual conception as an essentially public activity.  Instead, truth is seen as something realized privately and subsequently spread societally through convention and agreement.  The promise upon which this extension of private thinking into social convention depended was the supposed universality of the scientific method—and perhaps, a philosophy structured in the same manner.   Such was the proposal of Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason.  Such was the spirit of the Enlightenment in general: Diderot’s encyclopedia, Voltaire’s histories and letters, Rousseau’s theories of social contract, and so on.  Everywhere, one saw attempts to guarantee a better future through the blending of empirical observation and the faith in scientific method to regulate those observations into a universal monolith of “objective” truth.

The result of these efforts, however, is not only a habit of thinking as private, but also a habit of denying the reality of our own experiences: for every experience we ever have, of anything whatsoever, in any discernible regard, always exceeds what is grasped in mere empiricism (understood as the discrete reception of sensory phenomena).  Do our experiences and our knowledge begin in sensation?  Absolutely and undoubtedly.  But does the sensory data or even the neurological activity explain either the having of experience or the attainment of knowledge?  No; and it does not even come close.

“Postmodernity” is Ultramodern

And this philosophical error is why modernism leads inevitably towards so-called postmodernism: not because modernism ebbs away, but because its own internal principles, carried towards their logical conclusions, lead inescapably to nonsensical, non-rational positions—to the very repudiation of reason itself.  Superficially this appears most ironic, and will—by all adherents of modernism—be rejected.  For modernism hails “reason”; but the reason it hails is one stripped of its vigor, for it is not a reason which discovers the truth concerning the fullness of reality outside the mind or independent of the psychological self.  Modernity’s “reason” supplants the search for a cognition-independent truth with an amalgamation of facts like so many grains of sand out of which it tries to build the truth; and now the remnants of ideological modernity wail when the so-called postmoderns—who, in truth, are really ultramoderns—come knocking down their granular edifice and to re-shape it as they see fit.

Allow me here a lengthy quote from an article of John Deely:[3]

Relativism and solipsism are not matters that follow upon or come after modernity: in philosophy they have proved to be its very heart and essence, present from the start, a looming presence which took some centuries fully to unveil itself.  Late modern philosophy, phenomenological no less than analytical, finally embraced fully what Descartes and Kant had shown from the start: the human being is cut off from nature, hardly a part of it; the human being becomes a cosmos unto itself, with no way to relate beyond itself, beyond the veil of phenomena forever hiding the other-than-human things which are other than our representations, whimsical or a-priori as the case may be.

Modern philosophy fathered and fostered the pretense that science must confront nature as an “objective observer”, or not at all.  But modern science found that not to be the situation at all.  Instead of confronting nature as an outside observer, science came to see itself rather in Heisenberg’s terms as an actor in an interplay between the human world within nature and the larger world of nature of which the human world forms a part.  It found itself to be “focused on the network of relationships between man and nature, and which we as human beings have simultaneously made the object of our thought and actions” (Heisenberg 1955: 9).

From the point of view of the sciences as co-heirs of modernity with philosophy, this paradigm shift seemed a kind of revolution, a veritable new beginning.  But from the point of view of semiotics this shift is something more than merely a new beginning: this shift is a going beyond the modern heritage.  In effect, the late modern philosophers clinging to their notion of the human world of culture as a whole unto itself, cut off from nature as if autonomous in its unfoldings, are anything but “postmodern”, notwithstanding the many who have tried so to style the embrasure of the relativism implicated in the epistemological view beginning and ending with the subject thinking.  If anything, the muddle of thinkers whose usage of “postmodern” Stjernfelt would like discussed contribute nothing that goes beyond modernity, but only reveal and revel in what modern epistemology logically leads to, what modern epistemology had entailed all along.  Ultramodern rather than postmodern, they are not the beginning of a revolution against modernity but the death throes of the revolution in philosophy that was modernity, Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll of modern science in its maturity.

What is called postmodernism is not really in any way post modernity.  A true postmodernism has only begun to claw its way through a series of unimaginable philosophical errors, which origins I will try to demonstrate over the next several videos.

True Postmodernity

If modernity follows the Way of Ideas, and the idealist epistemological quagmire of the moderns leads to its own demise in nonsensical irrational ultramodernity, a meaningful postmodernity must be one which follows a different path: namely, what Deely has named the Way of Signs

Thus, if there are two figures I would definitively name as proponents of a genuine postmodernity, they are Charles Sanders Peirce and that same John Deely.  I would add, as a figure responsible for truly breaking out of modernity (even if his break has been badly misunderstood and consequently misappropriated by many), Martin Heidegger.  Based upon a cursory, initial reading of some of his works, I suspect that the little-known Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy ought also to be included.  Neither of the latter two explicitly advocate for the Way of Signs; but both turn language back to things, rather than to ideas.

Such a turn—whether implicit or explicit—allows us to recover truth as normative: precisely what modernity discarded, even if it did not realize it.


[1] Not, mind you, that the disciplines of academe are irreconcilable in principle, but rather, as presently practiced.  The reconciliation could only be affected through discovery of, study in, and resolution to a common basis of knowledge.

[2] We can include also as founders of modernity Francis Bacon and Niccolò Machiavelli, but their contributions—though essential to understanding modernity’s full constitution—are more like necessary adjuncts than central pillars of its nature.

[3] 2006: “Let us not lose sight of the forest for the trees …” in Cybernetics & Human Knowing 13.3-4.

Phenomenology: An Introduction

What is phenomenology? This question has been asked, indeed, seemingly since the word “phenomenology” was first introduced. It is a question, also, which gives testimony to a point often made by John Deely: efforts at philosophical innovation require either the posit of a neologism, in which case no one understands its significance, or the effort at adapting an old term to a new meaning, in which case everyone will attempt to interpret your new meaning by the old. Despite this confusion, phenomenology has continued to exercise an influence for just as long as its meaning has been questioned.

In an effort, therefore, to provide a much-needed clarification—not by mere didactic exposition but by a “genuine repetition” of the inquiry that led to its development—this seminar will endeavor to re-discover phenomenology from its very roots. Accordingly, we focus our inquiry primarily on the thought of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the first founder of phenomenology as a formal movement within philosophy.  But we will also expand our considerations into the practical application of phenomenological method for understanding various aspects of human experience, including what it means in fact to be a human person, and to dwell among and with other persons.

By our inquiry into phenomenology, we hope to clarify both what it is, itself, and its fittingness in the context of philosophical inquiry broadly speaking.  This seminar, taught by Drs. Daniel Wagner and Brian Kemple, will lead students through the tangle and into the clearing. View the syllabus here.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

1:00pm ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings


June
3
Break with Reality: The Need for Phenomenology
Lecture 1: Classical Sense-Realism and the Modern Break
Readings:
» “Key Texts on Sense-Realism in Aristotle & St. Thomas Aquinas” and “The Modern Break”.
June
10
The History and Question of Phenomenology
Lecture 2: Origins and Methodologies
Reading:
» [Required] Spiegelberg 1956: “Introduction” and “Part One: The Preparatory Phase, Chapter One: Franz Brentano” (1-52).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 1-22.
June
17
The Phenomenological Attitude
Lecture 3: From Natural to Phenomenological Attitude via the Phenomenological Ἐποχή
Reading (same for weeks 3 and 4):
» [Required] Husserl 1907: The Idea of Phenomenology, 1914: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy,51-62 (§27–32).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 124-163.
June
24
First Fruits of the Phenomenological Reduction
Lecture 4: Intentionality, Νοησίσ-Νοημα, and the End of Idealism
Reading:
» [Required] Husserl 1907: The Idea of Phenomenology, 1914: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy,51-62 (§27–32).
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 124-163.
July
1

BREAK
July
8
The Self and the Other
Lecture 5: Other Persons, Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and Objective Truth
Reading:
» [Required] Husserl 1931: Cartesian Meditations, Meditation V.
» [Recommended] Selections from Stein 1916: On the Problem of Empathy.
July
15
Structures of Experience
Lecture 6: Perception, Memory, and Language
Reading:
» [Required] Sokolowski 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, c.5-7.
» [Recommended] Excerpts from various authors.
July
22
Structures of the Lifeworld
Lecture 7: Temporality, Science, and Meaning
Readings:
» [Required] Sokolowski 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, c.9-11.
» [Recommended] Moran 2000: Introduction to Phenomenology, 164-191.
July
29
Phenomenology of Personhood
Lecture 8: Reflections upon Intentional Consciousness
Readings:
» [Required] Spaemann 1996: Persons, 1-40.
» [Recommended] Wojtyła c.1965: Person and Act: The Introductory and Fundamental Reflections (36-58).

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.

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction – Public Participant

A payment level recommended for those who are currently students, who are between jobs, or who have part-time employment.

$60.00

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction

Recommended for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought and for whom continued education is especially important (including professors and clergy). Helps allow us to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$135.00

[2023 Summer] Phenomenology: An Introduction

Recommended for those with fulltime employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more. Greatly aids us in allowing to subsidize lower-cost registrations.

$200.00

Pricing Comparison

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Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after
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Fall Seminar Previews

METAPHYSICS: THE DEPTHS OF ACT & POTENCY

“In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now all flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, expectant cries.  Their vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could perceive no sign in the sea.  But suddenly…

Metaphysics: The Depths of Act & Potency

THE FAULTS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

This is not a seminar about modernity, but about modern philosophy—and, specifically, about the fundamental flaws (or faults) which characterize modern philosophy’s thinking.  These flaws, once recognized, show their effects everywhere today: in the endless fragmentation of world, mind, self; in the intransigence of political discourse, the widening cultural divides, the polarization of extremes, and…

Science: The Faults of Modern Philosophy

SEMIOTICS: PEIRCE AND THE MODERN SPIRIT

“The last of the moderns,” writes John Deely of Charles Sanders Peirce, “and the first of the postmoderns.” Why this switch, this flip, between modernity and postmodernity? The question of postmodernity’s meaning and definition is altogether another issue: but one which we can understand only inasmuch as we first understand rightly what modernity is, or…

Semiotics: Peirce and the Modern Spirit

[Fall 2022] Semiotics: Peirce and the Modern Spirit

“The last of the moderns,” writes John Deely of Charles Sanders Peirce, “and the first of the postmoderns.” Why this switch, this flip, between modernity and postmodernity? The question of postmodernity’s meaning and definition is altogether another issue: but one which we can understand only inasmuch as we first understand rightly what modernity is, or was. As Deely goes on:

View the syllabus!

Charles Sanders Peirce (1389–1914) was the man who fully introduced into the great conversation of philosophy the unconsidered assumption which had made the way of ideas seem viable to the moderns, the assumption, to wit, that the direct objects of experience are wholly produced by the mind itself. In philosophy, he was raised on The Critique of Pure Reason. He claimed to know it by heart. When he said “No!” to Kant, it meant something.

Now why did he say no?

John Deely 2001: Four Ages of Understanding, 611-12.

The answer to this question—why did Peirce say “no” to Immanuel Kant—as Kirk Kanzelberger will show us in this seminar, is the answer “no” to all modern philosophy. To demonstrate this severe criticism, we will read across a selection of texts from Peirce’s career, spanning from 1868–1908 (all available in the two volumes of the Essential Peirce: Volume I, Volume II, which are inexpensive in paperback and very inexpensive in Kindle formats). These readings will demonstrate an insight into Peirce’s own theory of cognition, in stark contrast to that held by the moderns, as well as his insight into the coherence of this thinking with the universe at large.

Discussion Sessions
10:00am ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings

September
24
Week 1: Introduction
Lecture: “Descartes and the Modern Spirit”
Required Readings:
» Renee Descartes, Discourse on Method (selection)
» Renee Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (selection)
» Walker Percy, “The Fateful Rift: The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind”

Recommended Listening:
» Kanzelberger, K., “Mending the Cartesian Rift: Walker Percy on Being Human” (2020 Lyceum Institute Colloquium lecture audio recording)
October
1
Week 2: “All Thought is in Signs”
Lecture: From Intuitionism to Semiosis
Required Readings:
» Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man (EP vol. 1, item 2)
» Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (EP vol. 1, item 2) (selections TBD)
October
8
Week 3: “Beliefs… Caused by Nothing Human”
Lecture:  From Rationalism to the Pragmatic Maxim
Required Readings:
» The Fixation of Belief (EP vol. 1, item 7)
» How to Make Our Ideas Clear (EP vol. 1, item 8)
October
15
Week 4: “Tychism”
Lecture: Guessing the Riddle (Part I)
Required Readings:
» The Architecture of Theories (EP vol. 1, item 21)
» The Doctrine of Necessity Examined (EP vol. 1, item 22)
Optional Reading:
» “A Reply to the Necessitarians” (Collected Papers, vol. 6, 588-618)
October
22

BREAK
October
29
Week 5: “Synechism; Agapism”
Lecture: Guessing the Riddle (Part II)
Required Readings:
» The Law of Mind (EP vol. 1, item 23)
» Man’s Glassy Essence (EP vol. 1, item 24)
» Evolutionary Love (EP vol. 1, item 25)
November
5
Week 6: “If There is Any Goddess of Nonsense, This Must Be Her Haunt”
Lecture: Peirce on the Denial of Final Causality
Required Readings:
» On Science and Natural Classes (EP vol. 2, item 9)
November
12
Week 7: “Signs and States of Mind”
Lecture: The Science of Signs (Part I)
Required Readings:
» What Is a Sign? (EP vol. 2, item 2)
» Of Reasoning in General (EP vol. 2, item 3)
November
19
 Week 8: “Signs and the Three Universal Categories”
Lecture: The Science of Signs (Part II)
Required Readings:
» Sundry Logical Conceptions (EP vol. 2, item 20)
» Excerpts from Letters to William James (EP vol. 2, item 33)

This seminar is open to all participants, regardless of prior experience. View the syllabus here and learn more about Lyceum Institute seminars here.

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.

Registration is closed.

⚘ Reality’s Windows ☀ Joseph DeChicchis

After reviewing the academic context of the SSA’s 1975 formation, DeChicchis reconsiders Deely’s 2001 comment about the SSA’s first president in light of Deely’s purchase of two books about structuralism and model theory.

Homepage: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/act/io2s
Auditorium: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/act/io2…

Joseph DeChicchis, Ph.D., Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, is the president of Historic Elizabeth, a Pennsylvania charity whose mission includes the verification of information about the Monongahela and Youghiogheny river areas. Outside of Pennsylvania, he has produced a nationally syndicated (USA) radio program, studied various minority indigenous languages (e.g., Qʼeqchiꞌ, Ainu), been a professor of linguistics, and served as a language policy consultant. He is the director of the Deely Project.

John Reid Perkins-Buzo is Associate Professor in Media arts and Studies at Southern Illinois University. His scholarly work concerns the semiotics of João Poinsot especially as explored in the works of John Deely. He studied semiotics at St. Louis University under Professor Fr. Ralph Powell O.P. (John Deely’s mentor and doctoral advisor), and the renowned medievalist, Professor John Doyle. He has published articles in Semiotica, Punctum, iDMAa: The Journal of Digital Media Arts and Practice, and other scholarly journals. His artwork has appeared in several publications and major international events such as SIGGRAPH and the San Francisco International Film Festival. He is currently at work on a book about virtual production (forthcoming from Routledge, 2023), and a volume on the semiotics of digital media. He has a continuing interest in Deely’s doctrine of a realist semiotics, particularly its parallel in realist film theory stemming from Andre Bazin in the 1950s and more recently explored by film scholar Ian Aitken.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

The singularity of relation and the threads of communication | by Paul Bains

This event is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Paul Bains is an independent researcher. He is a published author and translator (French to English) who has translated works by Felix Guattari (Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm) and Isabelle Stengers (Power and Invention: Situating Science). His Ph.D. thesis was published as ‘The primacy of semiosis: an ontology of relations’ (University of Toronto Press, 2006).

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Philosophy, Faith, and Signs

The Lyceum Institute brings two more seminars available to the general public, each taught by a uniquely qualified professor: Dr. Matthew Kenneth Minerd, translator of many, many works of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, will teach us the philosophical thought of the “Sacred Monster” of Thomism; Dr. Brian Kemple, the only student ever to complete a doctoral dissertation under John Deely offers insight into the semiotic thought and contributions of a man once rightly called the “most important living American philosopher”. Listen to previews and sign up below. Discussion sessions for the seminars begin on July 2nd.

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Philosophizing in Faith – What is final causality?

Deely’s Contributions to Semiotics – A new postmodern era?

[2022 Summer] An Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture

As the world grew into and through modernity, and technology shrank the distances between centers of civilization, the very nature of culture itself became an explicit philosophical question: most especially when technology produced in the wider reaches of communication something akin to a “global consciousness”: an awareness of people and their cultures all across the world. But all too often, this awareness of culture has not resulted in an understanding of culture—and thus, this has extended into a mistreatment of cultural goods.

A new civilisation is always being made: the state of affairs that we enjoy today illustrates what happens to the aspirations of each age for a better one. The most important question that we can ask, is whether there is any permanent standard, by which we can compare one civilisation with another, and by which we can make some guess at the improvement or decline of our own. We have to admit, in comparing one civilisation with another, and in comparing the different stages of our own, that no one society and no one age of it realises all the values of civilisation. Not all of these values may be compatible with each other: what is at least as certain is that in realising some we lose the appreciation of others. Nevertheless, we can distinguish between higher and lower cultures; we can distinguish between advance and retrogression. We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity. I see no reason why the decay of culture should not proceed much further, and why we may not even anticipate a period, of some duration, of which it is possible to say that it will have no culture.

T.S. Eliot 1948: Notes Toward a Definition of Culture.

In this seminar, we shall introduce the philosophy of culture, defining what culture is and where the study of culture fits into philosophy. We will then explore how there exists a speculative dimension to the philosophy of culture (i.e., explaining how culture exists in reality through human subjectivity and how it is determined by human nature), as well as a practical dimension (i.e., cultural values). After establishing the principles of this study, we will then look to its application to Western culture, in particular, the transition between the three major epochs of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity. We will then analyze modern culture in particular with an eye toward its trajectory into the next age. Finally, we shall conclude with a practical examination of what the philosophy of culture (as we have studied throughout the course) tells us about the present age and our expectations in this life.

DISCUSSIONS:
June 4—30 July
Saturdays, 2:00-3:00pm ET /
6:00-7:00pm UTC

WHERE:
Lyceum Institute digital platform run on Microsoft Teams

In this seminar, lasting 8 weeks (with a break at the halfway point—see here for more information on all Lyceum Institute seminars), we will engage a broad range of literature discussing the nature, praxis, and historical epochs of culture in the Western world as well as cast an eye toward its future. The instructor for this seminar is Francisco Plaza, PhD, Faculty Fellow of the Lyceum Institute. You can read more about Dr. Plaza here.

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.

[2022Su-A] Philosophy of Culture – Participant

Recommended for those who are currently students or with part-time employment.

$80.00

[2022Su-A] Philosophy of Culture – Patron

Recommended for those in professions that do not pay as well as they ought and for whom continued education is especially important (including professors and clergy).

$135.00

[2022Su-A] Philosophy of Culture – Benefactor

Recommended for those with fulltime employment in well-paying professions and sufficient resources to provide a little more.

$200.00

Announcing 2022 Seminar Catalog

While these are all subject to change as to quarters and descriptions, here they are!  I hope many of you will take interest in these.  There are four repeats but also six new–and if I do say so myself, repetition isn’t always a bad thing.  Looking forward to this lineup and the wonderful contributions from our Faculty Fellows throughout 2022. Be sure to take note of the revised pricing structure for seminars in 2022:

Standard priceBasic Lyceum
Enrollment
Advanced Lyceum EnrollmentPremium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor$200 per seminar$903 seminars included
$90 after
8 seminars included
$90 after
Patron$135 per seminar$653 seminars included
$65 after
8 seminars included
$65 after
Participant$80 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after
8 seminars included
$40 after

Winter

Introduction to Philosophical Thinking

Brian Kemple

What is philosophy?  Is it something we study—as subject, like biology or literature?  Is it something each of us has, individually—as in, “my personal philosophy”?  Is it a relic of history?  An intellectual curiosity?  A means to impress at cocktail parties and on social media?

Or perhaps—as this seminar will attempt to demonstrate—philosophy is a way of thinking relatively easy to identify but very difficult to practice.  Mere description of the practice does not suffice for understanding it; one must, rather, engage in the practice itself.  This engagement requires discipline of the mind and the consistent willingness to pursue philosophy not merely as a hobby, but as a habit.  For those who have the will, this seminar will provide the means: namely through a schedule of carefully-selected readings and persistent dialogue.  This incipient practice of philosophy will not make you a philosopher; but it will engender in those who seize it the germ of a true philosophical habit.

Semiotics: Cultural World of the Sign

Brian Kemple

We today witness a struggle over the meaning of “reality” which is exhibited most profoundly, though perhaps least conscientiously, at the level of culture: in the existence of institutions, laws, communities, in the questions concerning words and ideas.   Where does the work of art exist?  Is a tradition a mere patterned performance of actions, or does it consist in something more?  In this seminar, we will undertake to understand the nature of these cultural realities: for although they are existentially relative and cognition-dependent, cultural beings nonetheless are real, and have an importance—psychological, moral, even spiritual—founded upon but irreducible to natural and existentially substantial cognition-independent entities.

This study will therefore focus on the contributions of semioticians—especially Juri Lotman and John Deely—in establishing and understanding the importance of cultural reality.

Spring

Introduction to a Living Thomism

Brian Kemple

Veritatem meditabitur guttur meum, et labia mea detestabuntur impium” – “truth shall be mediated by my mouth, and impiety detested by my lips.”  These words—from Proverbs 8:7—begin Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles and from them he elucidates the twofold office of the wise: first, to contemplate and speak the divine truth, which we may simply call “truth”, and, second, to refute the errors opposed to the truth.

This office was one Aquinas himself carried out diligently over the course of his teaching and writing career.  Though he lived a mere 49 years—from 1225 until 1274—he composed works preserved today totaling over 8 million words (without a computer or typewriter or even electric light to help).  Comprised within those 8 million words, one finds an incredible breadth of topics, often treated with similarly incredible insight and brevity.  In those brief insights are contained a perennial wisdom, fruitfully mined again and again over the centuries, and to which we in this seminar will diligently turn our own attention: seeking to understand not only the doctrines of the Angelic Doctor, but to engage his thinking as a living tradition.

Thomistic Psychology: Retrieval

Brian Kemple

Two momentous intellectual events occurred in 1879: Wilhelm Wundt founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research at the University of Leipzig, and Pope Saint Leo XIII released the encyclical Aeterni Patris, which exhorted the retrieval and teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Catholic universities.  The first, while a legitimate and necessary approach to understanding the human psyche, needs a more robust follow-through on the second; that is, the scientific understanding of the human psyche needs a philosophical understanding, and no philosopher has provided as strong an understanding of the human psyche as Thomas Aquinas.  Thus, we seek to retrieve this understanding in a way conducive to an overall deepening of our psychological insight. 

At the center of this retrieval is a threefold recovery and clarification: 1) of the understanding of the ψυχή, anima, or soul; 2) of the faculties by means of which the soul operates; and 3), of the notion of habits as structuring both these faculties individually and the entire soul.  These recoveries and clarifications will help us understand personhood.

Summer

Philosophizing in Faith: The Philosophical Thought of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Matthew Minerd

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, styled by certain parties as the “Sacred Monster of Thomism,” taught at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the “Angelicum”) in Rome for a long career of over fifty years.  Although he is normally understood to be a conservative Roman theologian of his period, an honest assessment of his work shows that, while being integrated deeply into the Dominican schola Thomae, he was an active thinker, synthesizing, with a particular strength in pedagogy, Thomistic thought on many topics in theology and philosophy. This seminar will primarily consider his philosophical thought, tracing his treatment of topics pertaining to the philosophy of knowledge, metaphysics, moral philosophy, politics, with a bit of logic as well; it will end with a consideration of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s presentation of the boundaries between faith and reason.  

Throughout the seminar, emphasis will be placed on his organic connection with the Thomistic tradition as well as with the ongoing development of Thomistic thought in the many figures he influenced over the course of years of teaching and writing.

Politics: On the Philosophy of Culture

Francisco Plaza

In this seminar, we shall introduce the philosophy of culture, defining what culture is and where the study of culture fits into philosophy. We will then explore how there exists a speculative dimension to the philosophy of culture (i.e., explaining how culture exists in reality through human subjectivity and how it is determined by human nature), as well as a practical dimension (i.e., cultural values). After establishing the principles of this study, we will then look to its application to Western culture, in particular, the transition between the three major epochs of antiquity, the middle ages, and modernity. We will then analyze modern culture in particular with an eye toward its trajectory into the next age. Finally, we shall conclude with a practical examination of what the philosophy of culture (as we have studied throughout the course) tells us about the present age and our expectations in this life.

The Interfaces of Philosophy

Fr. Scott Randall Paine

A consideration of how philosophy — understood as the acquired intellectual habit of pondering reality in the light of the highest available theoretical, moral and artistic principles — stands “over against” all other forms of human knowledge and activity. Respecting philosophy’s “synoptic” aspirations, she must have something to say (however “basic”) about the other ways of knowing and acting that are not specifically hers.  This seminar will consider the nature and limits of philosophy, and its interfaces with the humanities, liberal arts, fine arts, music, physics, biology, social sciences, and religion and theology.

Semiotics: Thought and Contributions of John Deely

Brian Kemple

At the center of John Deely’s philosophical insight was what it means to have “postmodernism” in philosophy: not the post-structuralist movement of the 20th century, but rather a moving-past modernity which is affected principally by a retrieval of scholasticism, and especially the late scholastic work of John Poinsot, also known as John of St. Thomas.

Crucial to this retrieval, and crucial to the understanding of semiotics, is the notion of relation.  Too long ignored or mistaken as to its nature, a successful retrieval and advance of our knowledge of relation is necessary to understanding the action of signs.  For, by relation, the action of signs scales across the whole universe and unites nature and culture—or, at least, shows the possibility of such coherence.  Thus, the major contributions to semiotics given by Deely, which will be covered in this seminar, are the proto-semiotic history, an expanded doctrine of causality,  the retrieved and clarified notion of relation, the concept of physiosemiosis, the continuity of culture and nature, the notion of purely objective reality, and the real interdisciplinarity which semiotics fosters.

Fall

Metaphysics: Early Thomistic Tradition

Brian Kemple

Often ignored—both by modernity and even by many Thomists of the 20th century—much was accomplished in the tradition of Latin Thomism, beginning with Jean Capréolus (1380—1444) and ending with João Poinsot (John of St. Thomas – 1589—1644).  Among these accomplishments was a deepened consideration of metaphysics based upon a genuine effort to understand St. Thomas himself.  Key to this effort were the inquiries into what precisely is meant by certain terms—terms, sadly, often used by many across the scholastic landscape with ambiguity: terms such as being (ens), essence (essentia), to be (esse) or existence (existentia).  In this seminar, with selections from Jean Capréolus, Tommaso de Vio Cajetan, Domingo Bañes, João Poinsot—and perhaps others—we will attempt to bring some clarity to these same terms through following their dialectic inquiries.

Semiotics: Peirce and the Modern Spirit

Kirk Kanzelberger

Beginning with the early papers of his “Cognition Series” (1868-1869) attacking the spirit of Cartesianism, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) remained a severe critic of modern philosophy throughout his life.  His critique was a radical one, reaching to fundamental categories of being and experience and heavily informed by his reading of the history of philosophy and the Latin scholastics.  Peirce was not only a philosopher but also a working scientist of note, a unique figure whose thought brings together pre-modern metaphysical insights, the progress of positive sciences freed from the narrowness of modern presuppositions, and the promise of a new, postmodern age of human understanding founded upon “treasures both old and new”, including the re-founded discipline of semiotics, the “science of signs”.

This seminar is intended as a (partial!) introduction to the figure and thought of Peirce for those who are unfamiliar with him.  It will be organized largely around the connected pillars of modern thought that Peirce criticized and to which his own thought is a reply, including universal skepticism, rationalism, individualism, nominalism, and phenomenalism.

Science: The Faults of Modern Philosophy

Daniel Wagner, John Boyer, and Brian Kemple

Do we yet think, today, with minds shaped by philosophical modernity?  Yes, and often without awareness of it: from the divisions between nature and culture, to our conception of the self, and everything in between, modernity slips its way into our conversations, questions, and thinking at every opportunity.  To free ourselves from these yet-constraining shackles, we must discover the principles upon which modern philosophy was founded, and in that discovery, recognize their flaws and faults.  This inquiry—guided itself by certain Aristotelian-Thomistic principles—aims not merely at a historical survey of thinkers, ranging from René Descartes (1596—1650) to W.V. Quine (1908—2000), but at a philosophical critique of their errors.

[2021 Summer] Thomistic Psychology: World and Passions

The passions, though born into us by nature and fitting to our lives, must obey the orders of reason, else they bring disorder to the whole of our being.  But since the passions are not disordered by nature (though of reason’s voice they are hard-of-hearing in a postlapsarian existence), we must uncover the causes of their disorder so prevalent today if we are to understand how they fail, and how they might succeed, in attaining their proper and fitting good.  

The approach taken in this seminar to the question of the passions will seek a certain mean between two extreme and opposed perspectives.  On the one hand is situated the modern position—and by far the more dangerous of the two—espoused by David Hume (1711—1776), namely, that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (1739: A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III).  On the other hand is that position held generally by the Stoics, which—though we may learn much from it—may holds in its extreme forms that a cause of movement from without ourselves is contrary to our nature and the passions arising therefrom as objects which we ought to master, as the domestication of a beast.  In the Humean perspective, we are but gifted animals bound to seek increasingly clever satisfaction of irrational forces; in the extreme Stoic, we are intellectual spirits striving against an unruly flesh.

Contrary to both, the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective sees in the intellect and human body a hierarchical complementarity, for the passions are a means of receipt and response to the world—and especially the specifically human world—in which we live and by which we pursue our proper ends.  Thus, understanding the dynamism of world and passions is essential to understanding the rectitude, and failures, of our passionate dispositions.

WHEN: Saturdays from 12 June through 31 July 2021, from 5:00-6:00pm Eastern Time US / 9:00-10:00pm UTC.

ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION SESSIONS CAN AND WILL BE ADDED IF A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF PERSONS REQUEST!

WHERE: on the Lyceum Institute platform run through Microsoft Teams.

In this seminar, lasting 8 weeks (see here for more information on all Lyceum Institute seminars), an oft-neglected element of Thomas Aquinas’ psychology will be examined closely, in connection with other Thomistic Psychology seminars which have considered the whole of the human person, the means of human action, and the life of a cognitive agent: here we shall see the life of a cathectic patient. The instructor for this seminar is Brian Kemple, PhD, the Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute. You can read more about Dr. Kemple here.

Lyceum Institute seminar costs are structured on a principle of financial subsidiarity. There are three payment levels, with discounts for those who are professors and clergy (whose continuing education is not sufficiently prioritized by their institutions) and for students (who are already taxed excessively by the educational system). However, if you are part of the working world and wish to take a seminar but cannot afford the “standard” rate, it is acceptable to sign up at one of these discounted prices. 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).

[2021 Summer] Thomistic Psych: World and Passions – Standard

Includes full access to the seminar and a free month at the Lyceum Institute. Price is suggested for those with full-time employment.

$135.00

[2021 Summer] Thomistic Psych: World and Passions – Professor / Clergy

Includes full access to the seminar and a free month at the Lyceum Institute. Discount is suggested for those employed as educators or clergy.

$85.00

[2021 Summer] Thomistic Psych: World and Passions – Student

Includes full access to the seminar and a free month at the Lyceum Institute. Discount is suggested for students and others with part-time employment.

$60.00