The past is prologue to the present as the present is prologue to the future. But these terms need defining, not so much the term “prologue” as the terms “past”, “present”, and “future”, for they represent the divisions of time as a framework or measure for the pinpointing of events, and so have no fixity […]

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 has often been suggested, and not without ample reason and evidence, that the importance of a great thinker never finds itself as potently realized during the thinker’s own lifetime. The significance of truly great thoughts, that is, take not only decades but centuries to unfold. Thus, when it is claimed that John Henry Newman […]

What is a sign? It is a deceptively difficult question—deceptive because we think we know when we have never bothered truly to ask the question. We believe that we see and hear signs everywhere: guiding our use of streets, telling us where to exit, the location of the bathroom, what dangers might lie ahead, and […]

In the weekly Philosophical Happy Hour of the Lyceum Institute this past Wednesday (9/21), the topic of conversation turned to friendship and loneliness. It seems today that many in this twilight of modernity have been struck with loneliness. This should never be confused with merely “being alone”. Loneliness, rather, is the lack of true personal […]

…to view Aquinas strictly through the anachronistic and explicitly semiotic lens of the present—or of any thinker who succeeded him—mistakes the crucial role that his thought plays in the development of a doctrina signorum.  On 16 April 2022, Brian Kemple will present on “Aquinas: The (Meta)Physics behind Semiosis” at 11am ET (see event times around […]