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Evolution: Science, Religion, and the Truth

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Questions concerning the nature of evolution—questions which find their way into discourse time and again—have cropped up yet again. This post will make an effort to outline some of these issues, with view to fostering a fruitful discussion for our Philosophical Happy Hour (24 April 2024) on how we ought to think of evolution. It is probably best, however, if we begin with a definition of evolution.

While the theory of evolution finds itself applied most often and most successfully within the field of biology, it has been extended to describe the advent of any new form or diversity of being arising by a gradual process of change throughout the entire cosmos. As described by experts during the 1959 Darwin Centennial Celebration:

Evolution is definable in general terms as a one-way irreversible process in time, which during its course generates novelty, diversity, and higher levels of organization. It operates in all sectors of the phenomenal universe but has been most fully described and analyzed in the biological sector.

1960: Evolution after Darwin, 107; cited in Nogar 1963: The Wisdom of Evolution, 30.

Thus, “evolution” so-understood signifies not only the unfolding of life’s variation, but of the whole cosmos.

In a way, this turn in terminology—a century after Darwin’s Origin of Species—returns the word “evolution” to the broader (if yet-more-specifically-applied) meaning that it had prior to the 18th century: for the word, from Latin ex- (out, from) and volvere (to roll, and thus, a rolling-out or unrolling, unfolding), can be conceived as a general description. Yet this return obscures a certain confusion. For the most difficult problem of biological evolution—considered precisely as a scientific theory—consists in identifying the means by which evolution occurs. But presumably, the biological mechanisms affecting a diversity of species will not apply to the differentiation of gasses, solids, galaxies, stars and planets, and so on.

The following sections elaborate on some of the particularly controversial issues.

Evolution, Science, and Scientism

To attain clarity in our understanding of evolution, therefore, let us ask a few further questions. First: is biological evolution scientifically decided? Many today treat it as a given. (It has always struck me that the philosopher John Searle, in his 2009: Making the Social World on p.4 writes “We need to show how all the other parts of reality are dependent on, and in various ways derive from, the basic facts. For our purposes the two most fundamental sets of basic facts are the atomic theory of matter and the evolutionary theory of biology.”) This treatment, combined with ignorance of the actual mechanisms or complexities involved, situates evolution as a matter of ideology. It takes little thought to comprehend the significance of the progression of figures in the image below. It takes far more to grasp the supposed explanatory principles at work, as it were, in the gaps.

The Science of Evolution

That said, scientists across multiple disciplines have collected much evidence in support of the theory of evolution. For instance: the fossil record, genetic similarities across species (common ancestors); biogeographical differentiation (variation between species in Africa and the Galapagos, for instance); adaptive homologous structures (comparable structures like arms and wings adapted to diverse functions in different species), embryological similarities (there being, e.g., aquatic-functioning structures such as gill-slits in land-bound vertebrate creatures while in an embryonic state); and adaptive organistic responses (bacterial antibiotic resistance, finch beak sizes). Some of these are clear indications of genetic variation in DNA across generations (genotypic variation that is evolution proper); others of epigenetic differentiation in how species behave (phenotypic variation). The relations between these two forms of differentiation remain unclear.

Put otherwise, strong evidence for biological evolution exists. Yet the mechanisms of how it actually unfolds remain in hypotheses far from verification. We know that genotypic variation occurs through mutations in the DNA sequence during replication or through environmental factors. Sexual reproduction shuffles genetic material (“recombination”), especially notable when migrating populations become intermingled (“genetic flow”). The greater heterogeneity in the genetic constitution of a population, the more likely that population is to develop adaptively to the environment, and vice versa (“genetic drift”). Yet the precise interplay of these factors hides from our view.

The Ideological Appropriation of Evolution

Throughout the 20th century and into the first quarter of the 21st, anti-religious thinkers have used evolution as a cudgel against faith. To exemplify this ideological appropriation, we can consider the works of Richard Dawkins and (may he rest in peace), Daniel Dennett—two figures prominent in the so-called “New Atheism” movement.

Dawkins, most famous for his 2006 book, The God Delusion, extensively employs evolution within this work as an argument against belief in God. At the heart of this argument, one finds the idea of “natural selection”. Succinctly defined, natural selection is held as the process by which organisms having traits better suited to their environments are more likely to survive and reproduce, leading to gradual evolutionary adaptation over long stretches of time. For Dawkins, natural explanation functions as a narrative device explaining the complexity and diversity of the universe, and that, through this principle, small changes over a long enough time can lead to improbable conclusions.

Dennett in his 1995 Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, comparably, considers natural selection as a kind of “background algorithm” to life as a whole, explanatory not only of biological evolution but cultural development. The random variation of genetic differentiation, given enough iterations, leads to greater successes over time.

In both thinkers, we see an explanation of complex phenomena by the interaction of mere vires a tergo: in other words, “forces from the past”. As I will explain below, this relies upon a Procrustean limitation of causality. But for now, we can say that the vis a tergo evolutionary conception posits the universe as deterministic. Armed with a deterministic theory, these ideologues hammer away at the uniqueness and specialness of human beings and religious belief as efforts at escaping the inevitable material strictures of our existence.

Evolution, Religion, and Opposition

Dennett and Dawkins, along with their atheistic cohorts and followers, realize an old opposition and exacerbate a reactionary posture already present in those opposed to the idea of evolution.  That is, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Theodosius Dobzhansky put it, “Darwin’s theory of evolution seemed to many… offensive to human dignity and incompatible with their religious faith.” (Foreword to Nogar 1963: The Wisdom of Evolution, 12.) The idea of a universal evolution, as applied in denial that the human being possesses a unique spiritual soul, denies that the human being is made in the image and likeness of God.

It is important to realize, however, that the scientific theory of evolution itself unfolded within what could be called a philosophically bankrupt time.  Between the dominance of modern nominalistic theories of knowledge and the 18th and 19th century rejections of Scholastic thinking in the university generally (and specifically among Protestants), reconciling the idea of evolution with religious faith seemed not only problematic, but near-impossible.  Faith and its practice, in other words, became increasingly constrained to a position of supposed “subjective” opinion. 

Because truth cannot contradict truth, the apparent irreconcilability of belief in the literal truth of revelation and the theory of evolution led to believers outright denying the latter.  Some, such as Ken Ham or Henry Morris, adhere to the position that any purported science in contradiction to literal interpretations of scripture are, de facto, inaccurate.  Others, such as Michael Behe or William Dembski, advocate for intelligent design as an alternative, claiming that the evident complexity of the cosmos requires a cause independent of that cosmos itself. 

Within the Catholic tradition, Fr. Chad Ripperger authored a treatise on The Matphysics of Evolution: Evolutionary Theory in Light of First Principles which, taking up Aristotelian principles (see more below) argues that not only theological considerations but also philosophical ones contradict the theory of evolution.  For decades, the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation has dedicated itself to dismantling evolution as a theory inimical to faith.

The Origins of Man

As aforementioned, the central difficulty concerns the development of the human being.  Long has it been the orthodox view of all Christian believers that God directly infuses the spiritual soul of the human person at conception, and that this infusion alone suffices to explain our uniquely spiritual mode of existence.  The theory of evolution, which explains the development of the human as a consequence of genetic mutations from simpler to more complex forms of life, proceeding through the line of primates and eventually resulting in homo sapiens, seems to contradict this Christian understanding.

Even the most ardent students of evolution must admit (so long as they are not caught in a converse ideology) that the evidence heretofore collected does not demonstrate such a development to have happened.  At best, it indicates its possibility.  That many of the remains purportedly demonstrating links between lower primates and advanced forms of human bodies have been proven hoaxes or mistakes undermines confidence in the theory as well.  Indeed, the empirical evidence—as is always the case—never demonstrates its own meaning, but always requires interpretation.  Under or through what narratives are we to understand the things we see and discover?

Interpretation and the Weaponization of Theory

On the one hand, we touch here upon matters clearly beyond our scope—such as, “how may one interpret the creation narratives of Sacred Scripture?”  On the other hand, we ought to note that opposition to theories proposed by modern science stemming from their contradiction to faith is to put the sources of revelation at odds with one another.  Thinkers like Dawkins and Dennett posit the same opposition, from the other side: opposing faith because it contradicts their senses.  If we accept the terms of this opposition we are condemned to choose a side, and, choosing a side, to divide and fragment our cosmos.

Others who have attempted to affect a cohesion between the science of evolution and faith in creation—including controversial figures like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ or Raymond Nogar, OP—have been met with criticism from both sides.  A figure seen as heterodox by either force will be grouped by them with the opposition and therefore seldom heard.  Those proposing a third way, most often, are challenging figures.

But such a challenge proves today most necessary.  So easily do many become seized in ideological commitments without realization.  Those held by opposed ideologies do naught to break this grasp, but, rather—for the most part—only strengthen it.

Evolution, Truth, and Aristotelian Philosophy

The resolution of this difficulty, it seems to me, can only be attained through a genuine philosophical habit.  (Note that a resolution of the difficulty is not the same as the solution to a problem.)  Most especially, we appear in want of a deeper and improved understanding of causality.  Those who weaponize evolution against faith do so with a Procrustean notion of causality: accepting only one kind of causal relation, namely, that between the efficient and the material.  Evacuating causality of the formal and final sets the debate in terms inescapably in their favor. But our understanding of any phenomenon, bereft of a full causal schema, proves incomplete.

By contrast, some—such as Fr. Ripperger—attempt rigorously to employ an Aristotelian causal model in denying the possibility of evolution.  Invoking principles of sufficient reason, proportionate causality, and finality, Fr. Ripperger argues that the notion is philosophically inadmissible from the Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective.  The first two—sufficient reason and proportionate causality—appear most central to his objection. 

Succinctly stated, these are, first, the principle that a sufficient reason must be established to explain how any thing (whether a separate being or an intrinsic principle) is responsible for another.  For instance, if a weak tap against a wooden wall results in the collapse of the wall, one will look for another cause—the tap being insufficiently forceful—and thus discover termite damage.  Second, proportionate causality holds that an effect cannot be greater than its cause.  If I throw a ball and it moves at a velocity greater than the force transferred to it by my arm, we would have to discover some other cause responsible for this.

Principles of Causality

Applying these two principles in argument against evolution does not prove difficult: how can a lesser prior generation give rise to a posterior generation which is greater (i.e., evolutionary development denied by proportionate causality)?  And how can a specifying form not in a prior generation come to arise in a later (i.e., speciation denied by sufficient reason)?

But this opinion, too, consists in a certain interpretation: not only of what Aristotle and St. Thomas mean in their conceptions of essence, existence, substance, accident, species, form, final cause, and so on, but also of the realities signified by these conceptions.  More poignantly, his conception of causality appears rather narrow: not only with respect to the specification of form but also with respect to the force of the final.  Put in other words, Fr. Ripperger no less than Dawkins or Dennett considers the theory of evolution solely on grounds of the vires a tergo.  He limits final causality to a thing’s pursuit of formal perfection. Likewise, he limits formal causality to the intrinsic and primarily substantial essence of things.

Questions to Pursue

This post could be expanded a hundredfold quite easily (but for the constraints of time).  But hopefully it has illustrated some of the difficulty that stands in need of resolution.  As such, we would like to propose the following questions for discussion:

  1. Does Aristotelian philosophy necessarily oppose the theory of evolution?  Are the principles of sufficient reason or proportionate causality genuinely opposed to the theory?
  2. Can facts definitively establish the truth or falsity of evolutionary theory?
  3. What is form as a principle of life?  How is form transferred from one generation to the next?  In what ways does material receptivity affect this generational transference of form?
  4. Do we need a more robust understanding of causality to interpret the proposed mechanisms of evolutionary development in light of Aristotelian philosophical principles?

We are open to these questions branching out into other areas!  Please join us this Wednesday.

Philosophical Happy Hour

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Hearing the Word of God

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Hearing the Word of God: A Kierkegaardian Phenomenology of Conscience

Dr. Steven DeLay

“Husserl insisted that I should study Kierkegaard.” So recounts the Russian existential philosopher, Lev Shestov, in his posthumously published 1939 essay, “In Memory of a Great Philosopher: Edmund Husserl.” Why would Husserl have said such a thing? As soon as one begins attempting to trace the conceptual lineage of phenomenology back to Kierkegaard, a number of philosophical connections worthy of attention emerge. Above all, it is the phenomenon of conscience that constitutes the cornerstone of such an analysis. For, just as conscience lies at the heart of the human experience, so too it lies at the heart of the attempt to exhibit that experience in philosophical thought. By emphasizing that life (and thought) is lived before God, a Kierkegaardian phenomenology of conscience illuminates what is most at stake, both methodologically and existentially, in doing phenomenology, and realizes phenomenology’s longstanding ambition to make sense of what it means to be the kind of beings we are, or, as Kierkegaard would put the matter, to be a single individual. Focusing on the phenomenon of conscience, this lecture develops an account of doing phenomenology in a Kierkegaardian way, that is, doing phenomenology before God.

Dr. Steven DeLay discusses the relationship between Kierkegaard and Husserl through the common thread of conscience, and how phenomenology can be undertaken with an attentiveness to the Word of God.

The text of this lecture has been recently published in a collection of essays from Rowman & Littlefield, Kierkegaardian Phenomenologies. Steven DeLay is a philosopher, author, thinker, and speaker. You can learn more about him and his work here and follow him on X.com.

If you enjoyed this lecture, please consider supporting the Lyceum Institute with a small donation.

The lecture can also be heard on YouTube.

News and Announcements/Philosophical Happy Hour

Dogma: Development or Detention?

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What is dogma? Frequently, in modernity one will hear people mocking the idea of dogma: seen as some arbitrary rule that detains free intellectual pursuit. Dogma is also often seen as something exclusively religious—but this seems dubious. From my understanding a dogma properly speaking is something that usually comes after deliberation of some sort, as a elaborated conclusion to an investigation. This conclusion is stated in such a way that it given the right understanding of the premises, the conclusion cannot be any other way. However, the conclusion could still be wrong if the premises themselves or the understanding of them are wrong. This then would mean that dogma inhabits all disciplines—and, as such scientists are no less dogmatic than theologians.

– Lyceum Institute Member (paraphrased).

Critics of every stripe love using the words “dogma” and its adjectival derivative, “dogmatic”, as battering rams against the gates of any institution or argument. To be “dogmatic” is to be authoritarian; to have a “dogma” is to insist upon an unthinking way of acting. But is this a misnomer? Does this use of the word conflate a real threat—inhibitions against thinking—with a real benefit?

The Catholic tradition, in particular, holds dogmas as certain developments of teaching which function “as lights along the path of faith“ that “illuminate it and make it secure” (CCC 89). But this use does not exhaust the meaning of the word; rather, it is (as suggested above), a certain instance but, just as doctrine (a teaching) is not exclusive to religion, neither, then, is dogma. Rather, dogma consists in the elaboration or development—the working out—of a conclusion from premises. But just what does this “working out” or a conclusion mean?

Development of Doctrine

In his 1845 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman proposed seven criteria to distinguish the authentic development of a doctrine. In summary, they are:

  • Preservation of Type: authentic development must preserve the original essence of the doctrine: it cannot become a teaching about something entirely other.
  • Continuity of Principles: development must be consistent with the originating principles; that is, the starting point from which the doctrine develops cannot ever be abandoned.
  • Power of Assimilation: a true development shows the ability of a doctrine to absorb new insights and experiences; these are sources contributing to growth of the doctrine.
  • Logical Sequence: developments should logically follow from the original doctrine, such that the relation between parts can be intelligibly grasped by minds across time.
  • Anticipation of its own Future: early forms of doctrinal development should anticipate the future not as the unpredictable what-is-to-come, but rather as the teleological ordering towards-which it is in order that it be at all.
  • Conservative Action upon its Past: developments should conserve the teachings of the past—at most, deviating them only inasmuch as circumstances require their truths to be applied differently.
  • Chronic Vigor: all authentic developments exhibit ongoing vitality and relevance: if we “develop” a doctrine into obsolescence, we have misapprehended its doctrinal character.

Though Newman exposits these characteristics specifically with reference to Christian doctrine, they appear pertinent to all forms of intellectual development. 

Join our Conversation

Can we apply these principles of Newman to our own fields and studies? Are there teachings that we see having developed in our traditions, or even in our own disciplines or lives? Do these seven criteria provide a sound metric to judge contemporary controversies? Come share your thoughts with us this evening (24 January 2024) at the Lyceum Institute Philosophical Happy Hour!

Philosophical Happy Hour

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News and Announcements/Philosophical Happy Hour

Do Ideas Have Power?

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“The potency of ideas lies in their ability to influence thinking, motivate action, shape cultures, and alter the course of history.”

Why do we care so much about our ideas? What is an idea? What is power? Three questions that are familiar to human history, but, perhaps, too-little examined today. That ideas are important seems, no doubt, widely accepted in our society today. Were this not the case, few would worry themselves over the president of Harvard, academic honesty, or the endless authoring of op-eds and thinkpieces. No one would have a blog or substack.

But does this mean that ideas have power? What, after all, do we mean by this word, “power”? How can an idea exercise it? Answering these questions requires looking at history. Can we identify how different ideas have shaped societies, cultures? 

Bringing Ideas to Light

This conversation can go countless directions—into semiotics, causality, different eras of history, religion, into revolutions and wars—but perhaps we can give some focus through proposing a few guiding questions:

  • What do we mean by the power of an idea?
  • What are some clear historical instances of an idea exercising power, and how was this accomplished?
  • Which ideas today seem to be changing society, the world, and/or your own individual lives? How?

Philosophical Happy Hour

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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.

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Colloquium/News and Announcements

Hearing the Word of God: A Kierkegaardian Phenomenology of Conscience

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ABSTRACT: “Husserl insisted that I should study Kierkegaard.” So recounts the Russian existential philosopher, Lev Shestov, in his posthumously published 1939 essay, “In Memory of a Great Philosopher: Edmund Husserl.” Why would Husserl have said such a thing? As soon as one begins attempting to trace the conceptual lineage of phenomenology back to Kierkegaard, a number of philosophical connections worthy of attention emerge. Above all, it is the phenomenon of conscience that constitutes the cornerstone of such an analysis. For, just as conscience lies at the heart of the human experience, so too it lies at the heart of the attempt to exhibit that experience in philosophical thought. By emphasizing that life (and thought) is lived before God, a Kierkegaardian phenomenology of conscience illuminates what is most at stake, both methodologically and existentially, in doing phenomenology, and realizes phenomenology’s longstanding ambition to make sense of what it means to be the kind of beings we are, or, as Kierkegaard would put the matter, to be a single individual. Focusing on the phenomenon of conscience, this lecture develops an account of doing phenomenology in a Kierkegaardian way, that is, doing phenomenology before God.

Presenting our first Colloquium for 2023: Dr. Steven DeLay (Tutorial Fellow, Ambrose College, Woolf University; Research Fellow, Global Centre for Advanced Studies College Dublin, and an accomplished researcher and author) gives us a lecture and Q&A on “Hearing the Word of God: A Kierkegaardian Phenomenology of Conscience”. This lecture investigates the question of whether phenomenological method is congenial to the discussion of God, or whether it necessarily brackets or excludes God from its inquiries, through the question of conscience.

Dr. DeLay undertakes this investigation through tracing the lineage of phenomenological inquiry expressed in Edmund Husserl’s life and thoughts into Kierkegaard’s understanding of “being a single individual”, and in contrast with the phenomenological approach and consideration of Martin Heidegger. Thereby are raised the questions of language’s meaningfulness and our responsibility for it, both in our speaking and in our hearing. Listeners will be challenged to reconsider the purposiveness of life’s experience as reflected in his or her consciousness of being one who has a conscience.

Lyceum Institute members may listen to the lecture now and participate in the Live Q&A on 16 February 2023 at 6:00pm ET (event times around the world here).

IO2S

[POSTPONED] ⚘ The Semiotics of Religion in the Digital Era | Massimo Leone

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On 2 December 2022 (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Massimo Leone will present on “The Semiotics of Religion in the Digital Era”. Leone is Tenured Full Professor (“Professore Ordinario”) of Philosophy of Communication, Cultural Semiotics, and Visual Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Italy, and part-time Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Shanghai University, China. He has been visiting professor at several universities in the five continents. He has single-authored fifteen books, edited more than fifty collective volumes, and published more than five hundred articles in semiotics, religious studies, and visual studies. He is the winner of a 2018 ERC Consolidator Grant, the most prestigious research grant in Europe. He is editor-in-chief of Lexia, the Semiotic Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy, co-editor-in-chief of Semiotica (Walter de Gruyter), and co-editor of the book series “I Saggi di Lexia” (Rome: Aracne), “Semiotics of Religion” (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter), and “Advances in Face Studies” (London and New York: Routledge).

Commentary will be provided by Leif Weatherby, Associate Profess or German and founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at New York University.

Join the Live Q&A here.

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.

Seminar

[2022 Summer] An Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture

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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.

Download the Syllabus

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.

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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.

Download the Syllabus PDF

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

Seminar

[2022 Summer] Seven Interfaces of Philosophy

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Traditional philosophical disciplines crystallized over time into a list that goes something like this: logic, cosmology, phil. anthropology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy and aesthetics—and, in the modern age, the hybrid and rather imperialistic enquiry known as epistemology.  Still, additional attention was demanded by issues lying both between or beyond these well-defined areas.  Thus was generated a long list of “philosophies of…” (for instance: science, religion, history, art, mind, language, education, culture, law, social science, technology, etc.).  Until quite recently, philosophy claimed a purview that had, at the very least, something to say about literally everything.  However, as the 19th century gave way to the 20th and then the 21st, some suspected Lady Philosophy may have stretched herself so thin as to no longer be about anything at all.

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Many analytic philosophers maintained that there was no terrain left for philosophy as such, and that she had better learn to just arbitrate among the real sciences as technical specialists in conceptual and argumentative clarification.  Others still tried to show how one domain of old philosophy (logic, ethics, or philosophy of language, for instance) could gain purchase on the whole of the enterprise, turning over all else to the new specialists.

But philosophers have always had something meaningful to say about “the world,” although they have also needed to mark off their cognitive claims as not, on the one hand, replacing (or overlooking) what poetry and the arts, and even mythology, might have to say, as well as, on the other, what today’s physicists, astronomers, chemists and geologists teach from their university chairs.  And today they have a brand new task.  They must show themselves adroit at identifying what happened when the world turned modern, and be able to point out the causes and consequences of this unprecedented shift.  

As we survey the horizons of these human activities and questions which the philosopher inevitably faces, but cannot by rights command, we can roughly enumerate seven such domains: 1) the so-called humanities (especially history, human geography, language and literature), 2) the world of “production” (not only the fine arts, but also the servile and liberal arts), 3) the physical sciences, 4) the life sciences, 5) the new and still disputed social sciences, 6) the world of religion and theology, and 7) the very “problem of modernity.”

A person who has nothing “synoptic” and coherent to say about such matters—but without necessarily claiming expertise in any of them—is still only half a philosopher.  The wise, Aquinas reminds us, are the ones who judge all things.  They do this, however, not necessarily as specialists, but as those whose cognitive patience and contemplative leisure favor a posture of open enquiry, allowing the mind to slowly spot principles, which, in turn give birth to insights.  Within the light of this gradually embracing intellectual gaze, all the multiple and oft recalcitrant things in the world—both around us and within us—finally begin to share in an epiphany that slowly discloses how they all “hang together.”

The present seminar will begin with a metaphilosophical discussion of how philosophy has defined itself historically, and then how it can and should define itself today.  This will be followed by discussion of its obligatory interface with each of the seven problematics mentioned above. Peirce’s, and especially Deely’s, understanding of philosophy as “cenoscopic science” will serve as a useful key in bringing clarity to these relations, as will their new understanding of semiosis.  After all, one way we can sum up the synoptic scope of philosophical insight would be simply to acknowledge: everything is significant.

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DISCUSSIONS:
June 4—30 July
Saturdays, 10:00-11:00am ET /
2:00-3:00pm 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 learn what philosophy is in relation to the other human pursuits of knowledge as a cenoscopic science. The instructor for this seminar is Fr. Scott Randall Paine, PhD, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Brasilia and Faculty Fellow of the Lyceum Institute. You can read more about Prof. Dr. Paine here.

Download the Syllabus PDF

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] Seven Interfaces of Philosophy – Participant

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

$80.00

[2022Su-A] Seven Interfaces of Philosophy – 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] Seven Interfaces of Philosophy – Benefactor

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

$200.00

Seminar

[2022 Spring] Introduction to a Living Thomism

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What is Thomism?  What does it mean, to be a Thomist?  Étienne Gilson once wrote in private correspondence to John Deely, in a letter written in the summer of 1968 that:

‘A thomist’ of whatever brand should find it superfluous to develop a question which Thomas was content to pass over with a few words… [because] it is very difficult to develop such a question with any certitude of doing so along the very line he himself would have followed, had he developed it.  If we develop it in the wrong way, we engage his doctrine in some [new] thoroughfare, instead of keeping it on the threshold his own thought has refused to cross, and which, to him, was still an assured truth.

Étienne Gilson, 28 August 1968 (quoted in Deely 1994: New Beginnings, 36).

This attitude toward being a Thomist, it seems to me, runs directly contrary to the spirit of Thomas Aquinas himself.  There are many problems, difficulties, and issues in our lives to which Thomas’ “few words” provide no guidance in our own endeavors, and yet the resolution of which stands of paramount importance for our intellectual, moral, and cultural well-being.

At the same time, however, Gilson did promote what he and his 20th century contemporary Thomist, Jacques Maritain, called a “Living Thomism” (cf. Gilson 1964: The Spirit of Thomism, 84ff).  In Maritain’s words:

Thomism is not a museum piece.  No doubt, like other systems of medieval philosophy, indeed, philosophic systems of all ages, it must be studied historically… But Thomism [triumphs over time] so more completely than any other [philosophy] since it harmonises and exceeds them all, in a synthesis which transcends all its components.  It is relevant to every epoch.  It answers modern problems, both theoretical and practical.  In face of contemporary aspirations and perplexities, it displays a power to fashion and emancipate the mind.

1934: Preface to Metaphysics, 1.

This emancipative power is not one which resolves the contemporary perplexities by mere repetition of already-stated answers, but one which, in the dialectical manner exemplified by Aquinas himself, weighs and measures the diverse efforts of its time and discerns through or against them what is true in itself.  In this, we see Thomism exhibit a systematic approach to thinking-through honest inquiry while never confining itself to a determinate or closed system of thought.  In this seminar, we will undertake to follow in authentic repetition the Thomistic thinking, in discovering the principles which guide all the inquiries he undertook himself—thereby enabling us not only to follow St. Thomas to his own conclusions, but to seek out conclusions to problems which he himself never had to face.

DISCUSSIONS:
April 2—28 May
Saturdays, 1:15-2:15pm ET /
5:15-6:15pm UTC

(Additional discussion sessions may be added depending on interest.)

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 investigate what the principles of Thomistic thinking and how they apply perennially in all ages and to all questions. The instructor for this seminar is Brian Kemple, PhD, Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute. You can read more about Dr. Kemple here.

Seminar Syllabus
Download PDF

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.

[2022Sp] Introduction to a Living Thomism – Participant

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

$80.00

[2022Sp] Introduction to a Living Thomism – 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

[2022Sp] Introduction to a Living Thomism – Benefactor

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

$200.00

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$60 per seminar$403 seminars included
$40 after		8 seminars included
$40 after
Enroll today and pay discounted member prices
News and Announcements/Seminar

Announcing 2022 Seminar Catalog

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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.