St. Thomas Aquinas presents in the corpus of his work (at, e.g., De veritate q.1, a.1, Summa Theologiae Ia-IIae, q.94, a.2, and In Metaphysicorum, lib.4, lec.3, n.605) the claim that what the intellect first conceives is being and that the intellect further resolves all conceptions into being. Illud autem quod primo intellectus concipit quasi notissimum, […]

Our friends at the American Maritain Association have recently launched a podcast series, “Maritain Musings”, in which Lyceum Faculty Fellow Dr. Matthew K. Minerd is joined by guests to discuss different works of Jacques Maritain. For the fourth episode, the Lyceum’s Executive Director, Dr. Brian Kemple, joined Matthew to discuss Maritain’s essay, “Sign and Symbol”. […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the nature and purpose of tragedy in both poetic and real experience. Twenty-three years ago, on nearly this day, many of us bore witness to an undoubtedly tragic event—a relative few with our own eyes, most through the television.  I do not need to elaborate: only to say that I […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the distinctions between falsehood, lies, and deception, and the morality of their use “Is lying always wrong?  Is lying always lying?” There are two ways, I believe, that we can approach this question.  The first evaluates manuals of moral theology or commentaries on ethics, looking for foundational reasons why for […]

The following is excerpted from Lewis Mumford’s 1961: The City in History, c.18, “The Myth of Megalopolis”, an important source in our upcoming Difficulties of Technology seminar. Here we explore the themes of “total human annihilation”—particularly in its moral dimension. Naïve Functionaries of Annihilation Much of the thought about the prospective development of cities today […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the role of paradox in carrying out investigations of nature, humanity, and being. “A paradox”, writes the Thomist philosopher Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, “is the tension existing between two apparently opposed propositions which cross one another and thus find themselves at peace.”[1]  Wilhelmsen contrasts the paradoxical with the dialectical—understood in the […]

The following is excerpted from a presentation given by John Deely on 1 March 2014 at the 37th Annual Meeting of the American Maritain Association. What Makes Possible both Lying and Truth as Human Accomplishments Comment “Listening to Maritain on the subject of sign as treated by Poinsot…” We should, in fact, listen to John […]

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, […]

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. […]

A Philosophical Happy Hour on better habits of order. Ours is a mentally broken society.  This brokenness has been unveiled, in many ways, by the internet: operating under a premise of anonymity (at the very least of distance from personal judgment), there is less fear to inhibit many from sharing their brokenness.  Such sharing may […]