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John Henry Newman in Four Books

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 will be seen as the transitional figure between the modern and post-modern ages, much as Augustine was between antiquity and the medieval, it should be recognized that this claim points not to a past recognition but one dawning at this very hour. Certainly, Newman’s work carried weight in his own time, as did Augustine’s. Will Newman’s name grow to the same greatness?

Augustine’s Confessions, like Newman’s Apologia; his City of God, like Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine; and his On Christian Teaching, like Newman’s Idea of a University, all show striking parallels between the writings of the two saints. But it is in their most systematic works that we find an even more remarkable parallel. Living a life contemporaneous with the early definitions of nature and person in theology, in On the Trinity, Augustine trained his genius on the ultimate mystery of the Triune God, easily the most challenging and the most fertile of all Christian doctrines.

Newman, living amidst the modern world’s storms of doubt and confusion, along with its celebrated, and risky “turn to the subject,” directed his attention instead to a meticulous study of the very act of faith – that movement of the human intellect that enables it to assent to such teachings in the first place. What he discovered were insights of such uncommon luminosity that not only theology, but all knowledge – of whatever type – found itself newly vindicated. By showing the role that pre-rational belief plays in every venture of human knowing, and the complexities of assent in consolidating our opinions and certitudes, he seemed to be turning epistemology on its head. The result was easily his most demanding and in retrospect his most revolutionary book: The Grammar of Assent. To this book the seminar will direct a more focused attention. Also Newman’s oft misunderstood celebration of conscience can only be grasped from within the perspectives laid open by this book.

These initial comparisons between the two saints are being made only in the interest of portraying Newman as a kind of modern Augustine. It will be suggested that what Augustine meant for the subsequent medieval centuries, Newman represents for late modernity and post-modernity. It will be his four books that will be the focus of our study. Augustine’s thought has already been folded into the fields of Christian reflection during the long 15 centuries that separate the two men’s lives. Newman’s ideas, on the other hand, are just beginning to be fully appreciated. For most of our readings, we shall follow selections chosen from each of the four works in sequence: from the Apologia, the Essay, the Idea, and the Grammar. Access to the seminar, taught by Fr. Scott Randall Paine, PhD, begins on 1 April 2023. View the syllabus here.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

10:15am ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings


April
15
Lecture 1: Overview of the Life, Work and Legacy of John Henry Newman
Readings:
» [Primary] Sheridan Gilley. “Life and Writings”.
» [Secondary] Afterword to Ian Ker’s biography of JHN.
April
22
Lecture 2: Apologia Pro Vita Sua“The Story of a Mind”
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Apologia.
» [Secondary] Ian Ker. John Henry Newman: A Biography.
» [Secondary] Robert C. Christie. The Logic of Conversion: The Harmony of Heart, Will, Mind, and Imagination in John Henry Newman.
April
29
Lecture 3: Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine – From Seed to Fruit
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Essay.
» [Secondary] Bogdan Dolenc. “Newman’s Essay… Its Genesis and Enduring Relevance”.
May
6
Lecture 4: The Idea of a UniversityNewman’s Vision of Liberal Education
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Idea.
» [Secondary] Mark van Doren. “Liberal Education,” from Liberal Education.
» [Secondary] Jarislav Pelikan. The Idea of a University: a Reexamination.
May
13

BREAK
May
20
Lecture 5: Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent I Notional and Real Assent
Reading:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Grammar, Part 1: “Assent and Apprehension.”
» [Secondary] Michael Polanyi. “The Logic of Affirmation”, in Personal Knowledge.
May
 27
Lecture 6: Grammar of Assent II – The Illative Sense
Reading:
» [Primary] Further selected excerpts from the Grammar, Part 2: “Assent and Inference.”
» [Secondary] John Deely. “Knowledge” from Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine.
» L.M. Régis. “Assent or Value Judgment About the Truth of First Principles,” in Epistemology.
June
3
Lecture 7: Newman and the Conscience
Readings:
» [Primary] Selected excerpts from the Grammar and other works.
» [Secondary] Gerard J. Hughes. “Conscience,” in Cambridge Companion to JHN.
» Bernard Dive. “Introduction” to John Henry Newman and the Imagination.
June
10
Lecture 8: Newman Today – A Church Doctor for the 21st Century
Readings:
» [Primary] Discourse and Homily for the Beatification of John Henry Newman, Pope Benedict XVI, 2010
» [Primary] Newman’s “Biglietto Speech,” 1879.
» [Secondary] Erich Przywara. A Newman Synthesis, selections.

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.

Registration is closed — thank you for your interest and perhaps we’ll see you in one of our upcoming seminars!

Pricing Comparison

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

Semiotics: The Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot

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 so on. But in truth, though we experience signification in these instances, the things we identify as the “signs”—the on the street corner, the glowing plastic “EXIT” over a fire door, the nondescript white silhouette of a representatively feminine shape over one door, the print of a large clawed mammal in soft dirt—are only a part of the signs that we experience. The truth hides in a reality far more complex and far more interesting. Discovery and understanding of this hidden reality impacts our understanding of the whole universe, and of ourselves not least of all.

We name this a seminar in “semiotics”, and so one might expect that it concerns thinkers and issues raised no earlier than the late 19th or early 20th centuries, at which time Charles Sanders Peirce (10 September 1839—1914 April 19) retrieved the term from its neglected proposal in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. But—while certainly we will be concerned with many of the issues that preoccupied Peirce and his successors—we find their genesis not in the twilight of modernity, but the twilight instead of the Latin Age. For Peirce was inspired in much of his thinking by the Conimbricenses, a 16th-17th century semi-anonymous group of Jesuit scholars who wrote extensively and profoundly on signs. These same Conimbricenses were, moreover, the teachers of João Poinsot, variously known also as Juan de S. Thoma, Joannes a Sancto Thoma, John of St. Thomas, or, in our usage here, John Poinsot (9 July 1589—1644 June 15).

Poinsot, who took the religious name Joannes a Sancto Thoma upon entering the Dominican Order in 1610 to signify his fidelity to the great saint’s thought, died just six years before René Descartes (31 March 1596–1650 February 11) and yet, despite a much greater profundity of thought and insight, has remained relatively unknown (at least when compared to his French counterpart). Indeed, where Descartes began in earnest the Modern Age of philosophy, with its characteristic Way of Ideas, Poinsot brought to a close the Latin Age. Their relative fame and obscurity to history follow from complex causes. One of these, no doubt, is that while Descartes wrote short and accessible texts, Poinsot crafted both a Cursus Philosophicus and an (incomplete) Cursus Theologicus—each many thousands of pages.

Within this Cursus Philosophicus we find a textually-dispersed but nevertheless conceptually-united Tractatus de Signis, a Treatise on Signs [required]. This treatise has been extracted, arranged, translated, and editorialized in an edition by John Deely (26 April 1942—2017 January 7), first published in 1985 and again in 2013. A careful examination of this text reveals that, while Poinsot may have been the “evening star” of the Latin Age, he proves also the “morning star” of the new, genuinely post-modern era, the Age of Relation. In this seminar, we will study this Tractatus de Signis with close attention. Access to the seminar begins on 18 March 2023.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions

2:15pm ET

(World times)
Study Topics &
Readings


(required in bold)
Copy of the Tractatus de Signis is required. Available from St. Augustine’s Press or other booksellers (1st edition acceptable).
18 March—April 8Preparatory Phase:
All participants are expected to read widely from a selection of articles and texts—including reading required texts in advance—while joining in communal textual discussion.

No discussions are scheduled during this phase, but it is pivotal for entering correctly into the active discussion phase (15 April—June 10).
April
15
Week 1: Preliminaries: Entry into the Tractatus
Lecture: An Abbreviated History of Semiotics
Readings:
» Poinsot 1632: Tractatus de Signis (TDS) 4–39.
» Deely 1994: “A Morning and Evening Star”
» Deely 2009: Augustine & Poinsot, 3–59.
» Kemple 2022: “Augustine: Instituting the Given Sign” and “Aquinas: The Metaphysics behind Semiosis”.
April
22
Week 2: Cognition-Dependent Being
Lecture: Entia Rationis and the Constitutive Acts of the Mind
Reading:
» Poinsot 1632: TDS, 40–76.
» Maritain 1959: Degrees of Knowledge, 118–44.
» Doyle 1994: “Poinsot on the Knowability of Beings of Reason”.
April
29
Week 3: Relational Being
Lecture: The Nature and Kinds of Relation
Reading:
» Poinsot 1632: TDS, 78–112.
» Deely 1985: “Editorial Afterword” in TDS, 472–89.
May
6
Week 4: Sign-Relations
Lecture: The Being Proper to Signs
Reading:
» Poinsot 1632: TDS, 114–52.
» Deely 1990: “Signs: The Medium of Semiosis” in Basics of Semiotics.
» Kemple 2022: “Poinsot: The Essence of the Sign”.
May
13

BREAK
May
20
Week 5: Triadic Elements of the Sign-Relation
Lecture: Cognitive Powers and Objects
Reading:
» Poinsot 1632: TDS, 153–92.
» Deely 2009: Purely Objective Reality, 14–37.
May
 27
Week 6: The Causality and Extension of Signs
Lecture: The Degrees of Specifying Causality
Reading:
» Poinsot 1632: TDS, 193–219.
» Deely 1994: New Beginnings, 151–82.
June
3
Week 7: Division of Signs, Part I
Lecture: Toward an Understanding of Concepts
Readings:
» Poinsot 1632: TDS, 220–61.
» Beuchot 1994: “Intentionality in John Poinsot”.
June
10
Week 8: Division of Signs, Part II
Lecture: Toward an Understanding of Language
Readings:
» Poinsot 1632: TDS, 262–83.
» Maritain 1957: “Language and the Theory of Sign”.
10 June—July 2Writing Phase:
All participants in the seminar are not only encouraged but expected to submit an essay of no less than 3000 words pertaining to the Tractatus de Signis of Poinsot.

The essay may be evaluated for publication in Reality.

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.

This is an advanced seminar, tantamount to a graduate course in difficulty and intensity. Students should be familiar with the Scholastic and especially Thomistic traditions, or at the very least, with the semiotic work of John Deely.

Registration is closed — thank you for your interest and perhaps we’ll see you in one of our upcoming seminars!

Pricing Comparison

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

A Reflection on Loneliness

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 relation. Loneliness is not the mere absence of present relations: it is the wound of relations lost, or never grasped, relations through which two persons become somehow as one. Loneliness is the wound made by an absence of friendship.

But what is friendship? We often hear tell of “real” friendship, in contrast to mere acquaintance, or casual friendship, or something of the like. Often, this adjective “real” is drawn upon a discussion of friendship found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, in which friendly relations are classed according to what we might call the utilitarian, the pleasurable, and the true. Utilitarian friendships are those that ease our being with others by virtue of pleasant and friendly dispositions: as when one makes small-talk with the cashier or the barista, or one’s casual co-workers; being friendly makes one’s exchanges with others go more smoothly, and so it is useful to be friendly in such cases. Pleasurable friendships are those wherein the basis of the relation is some third thing that both persons enjoy: bowling, a sport, a certain television show, a band, a video game, a football team, etc. Where the utilitarian friendship focuses mostly on the good that oneself receives by being pleasant to the other, the pleasurable friendship consists in the unity of the two persons which is affected by that common object.

True friendships, by contrast, are held to be those in which each person takes the good of the other as though it is his or her own. It is not in some third thing, nor in oneself, that the goodness of the friendship is found, but in that which is of genuine benefit or good for the other. This should not be confused with a “pure altruism” or any other—for the good of the other does not demand an absent consideration of the self, and, indeed (as I hope we will discuss some other day), altruism presupposes an individualism that would have been quite alien to Aristotle—for it is fundamentally a relational unity with the other. But I think it a mistake to denominate this true friendship alone as “real” friendship.

The word “real”, that is, receives a great deal of abuse, being conflated very commonly with both “true” and “actual” as to its significance. Something is “real” to the degree that it can have an effect on something other. The object of an irrational fear, for instance, may not be “real” in and of itself—there is no “real monster” in the closet—and yet its effect of making the child scared undoubtedly is real. Likewise, someone may not really be a friend, in the sense that he does not have in himself a care for your own good, and you may even know this explicitly, and yet you would be sad to lose the relationship with him, say, because he quits playing the game or the sport which you have in common.

Moreover, the third thing through which we bond with others in such a manner may become, as it were, a transparent lens through which the other appears. A bowling buddy may become a best friend. But we are more likely to form true bonds when the object of our attention itself is something that reflects deeply upon ourselves and our nature. A casual pursuit does little to impact our being; one does not likely develop in human personhood through rolling a ball down the lanes, and though much is gained from competitive team sports—the ability to work together, discipline, etc.—these remain largely at the surface of who we are. Most importantly, whatever the common objects of our social interaction, they must be approached thoughtfully if we are to get beyond the veil and see the other.

IO2S Deely – Aquinas: The (Meta)Physics behind Semiosis

…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 the world here). Kemple holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas, in Houston TX, where he wrote his dissertation under the inimitable John Deely. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute.

Philosophical interests and areas of study include: Thomas Aquinas, John Poinsot, Charles Peirce, Martin Heidegger, the history and importance of semiotics, scholasticism, phenomenology; as well as ancillary interests in the liberal arts, technology, and education as a moral habit. He has published two scholarly books—Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition (Brill: 2017) and The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue (De Gruyter: 2019), as well as a number of scholarly articles, popular articles, and his own Introduction to Philosophical Principles: Logic, Physics, and the Human Person (2019) and Linguistic Signification: A Classical Course in Grammar and Composition (2021).

In addition to being the Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute, he is the Executive Editor of Reality: a Journal for Philosophical Discourse.

Commentary will be provided by Dr. Matthew Minerd.

Join the Zoom Meeting to Participate

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.