Seminars Archives - Lyceum Institute

Phenomenology: An Introduction

May 16, 2023May 28, 2023 Lyceum AssistantLeave a comment

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.

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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

	Standard price	Basic Lyceum Enrollment	Advanced Lyceum Enrollment	Premium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor	$200 per seminar	$90	3 seminars included $90 after	8 seminars included $90 after
Patron	$135 per seminar	$65	3 seminars included $65 after	8 seminars included $65 after
Participant	$80 per seminar	$40	3 seminars included $40 after	8 seminars included $40 after

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News and Announcements

Guide to Enrollment

May 14, 2023May 14, 2023 Lyceum AssistantLeave a comment

If you have ever wanted to know more about the different levels of enrollment at the Lyceum Institute, this short video provides some explanation!

A brief video detailing some of the differences in levels of enrollment.

News and Announcements

Lifelong Intellectual Development

May 8, 2023May 9, 2023 Brian KempleLeave a comment

The Lyceum Institute is dedicated to nurturing the habits of lifelong intellectual development through the use of digital technology, making high-quality education accessible to a meaningfully diverse community of like-intentioned persons. As a non-profit institution, we rely on the generosity of our supporters to continue providing exceptional learning experiences that foster genuine thinking and self-improvement. How do we provide this education and how can you help?

Higher Education

All of our programs are structured and conducted with the intent of building key habits of intellectual virtue: studiousness, diligence, orderliness, focus, knowledge, insight, and the humility to recognize, respect, and adhere to wisdom. These habits are cultivated in an atmosphere that emphasizes forming and asking questions—questions asked of others, of the tradition, of the present world, and most of all, of oneself. We cannot improve without knowing what we lack, and we cannot discover answers if we do not know the questions.

Traditional institutions of higher education remain invaluable, but insufficiently meet our current needs. Students must overcome obstacles of time, place, and considerable financial expense to attend such programs. Moreover, wars of ideological opposition, serving only to distract from an honest pursuit of the truth, have decimated the courses and curricula of many universities. By contrast, the digital environment of the Lyceum is flexible, affordable, and concerned with the inquiry into and discovery of what is true, regardless of its provenance or associations.

Members and Studies

Members of the Lyceum Institute come from a wide range of backgrounds and with a diversity of experience: factory workers and truck drivers, PhDs and medical doctors, students and retirees, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim; with backgrounds in the humanities and the sciences, with decades of study or just beginning—we all seek the same good and are bound by the common desire to know. Humility before true wisdom, possessed by none but loved by all, provides the foundation for our community.

Thus we commonly engage in studies of philosophy, literature and the arts, the classical trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (though continually revising our understanding in light of the new technological paradigm), languages (with an emphasis on Latin), and keep open our doors for new thoughts.

Together we are building a new way of learning: one not constrained to a course of months or years, but which integrates itself into the whole of human life.

Since joining [the Lyceum Institute], I feel that I have found a place in the digital wasteland to call home: a home where I learn and discuss more about philosophy, the classics, art, theology and psychology; a home where my interests are taken seriously and given room to grow; a home where I find others living consciously, respectful of the thoughtfulness of others, motivated by the wisdom of the past, and wrestling with the answers for the future.
-Mark [see more testimonials here].

Broader Community

At the core of this new way of learning stands a principle of financial subsidiarity. Put simply, we do not want financial barriers to stand in the way of individuals serious about integrating their love of wisdom into daily life. Thus, we encourage all of our members who can to pay more, so that those who cannot, may still participate. But we also rely upon donations from the broader community to supplement this model of subsidiarity.

Every member that we gain is another light in the dark—brightening not only our own digital community, but bringing that light to friends and family and their local communities. Every donation we receive is fuel for those flames.

Even if membership is not right for you, you can help us to brighten the world. Donate to our Spring Fundraiser by 8 June 2023, Better Self-Critics, to help us reach our quarterly goal, or set up a recurring donation here.

Seminar

John Henry Newman in Four Books

March 17, 2023April 13, 2023 Lyceum AssistantLeave a comment

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?

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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 University – Newman’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 21^st 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

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

Pricing Comparison

	Standard price	Basic Lyceum Enrollment	Advanced Lyceum Enrollment	Premium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor	$200 per seminar	$90	3 seminars included $90 after	8 seminars included $90 after
Patron	$135 per seminar	$65	3 seminars included $65 after	8 seminars included $65 after
Participant	$80 per seminar	$40	3 seminars included $40 after	8 seminars included $40 after

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Seminar

Aquinas: De Veritate [Part I]

March 17, 2023April 13, 2023 Lyceum AssistantLeave a comment

Quid est veritas? A question, doubtless, familiar to many: “What is truth?” Today, whether put into those exact words or others like them, we witness a similar disdain for beliefs that there exists a truth and that we may know it. Seldom, however does this scorn rise from genuine intellectual conviction in the posit of radical relativism or of an intellectual nihilism—such conviction warring against what it proposes to uphold. Rather, for many, the rejection of truth is born from despair mingled with vice: sloth, pride, and lust. Truth gives rise to norms, and accepting norms requires that we evaluate the quality of our actions.

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Yet… all human beings, as Aristotle rightly tells us at the outset of his Metaphysics, desire to know. The despair over truth’s attainment, and the lostness to vice, are not insurmountable obstacles. While recovery from vice takes many acts of will—opting for the arduous good rather than the facile but shallow pleasure—we need truth to discern what goods are genuine, and which are false. Here, as in so many other places, we find Thomas Aquinas to be a guiding light.

Thomas Aquinas held his first series of “disputed questions”, De veritate, over the course of the three years of his first regency at the University of Paris, 1256-1259. He was then in his early thirties. The structure of the “disputation” – both live and in its published form – reflects the continual raising of questions and resolution of difficulties between teacher and students engaged together in common, probing inquiry. This particular series of disputations, according to Aquinas’s biographer J.-P. Torrell, shows us “the genius of the young master… a genius in motion, perpetually in the act of discovery”.

Though we know this work as De veritate (On Truth), in fact Thomas and his students were occupied with two great themes: the true and the good. These two have a transcendental character: that is, each is a name for being itself, albeit under the aspect of a relation to mind (the true) or to appetite (the good). These two great themes yielded a total of 253 discussions (“articles”) ranged under a total of 29 areas of inquiry (“questions”). Access to the seminar, taught by Kirk Kanzelberger, PhD, begins on 1 April 2023.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions 11:30am ET (World times)	Study Topics & Readings
April 15	Week 1: Being and the True I Lecture: “Truth as communication of being and mind” Readings: » De Veritate (DV) 1, aa. 1-3, 5.
April 22	Week 2: Being and the True II Lecture: “Truth and mutability, truth and falsity” Reading: » DV 1, aa. 6, 8-12.
April 29	Week 3: Divine Knowledge I Lecture: “Divine knowledge as divine perfection” Reading: » DV 2, aa. 1-5, 8, 12.
May 6	Week 4: **The Idea of a University – Newman’s Vision of Liberal Education** Lecture: “Divine knowledge as cause of the creature” Reading: » DV 2, aa. 13-15. » DV 3, aa. 1-3.
May 13	BREAK
May 20	Week 5: Human Cognition I Lecture: “The understanding animal” Reading: » DV 10, aa. 1-6.
May 27	Week 6: Human Cognition II Lecture: “The understanding animal understanding itself” Reading: » DV 10, aa. 8-9. » DV 11, aa. 1-2.
June 3	Week 7: Faith Lecture: “Knowledge beyond nature” Readings: » DV 10, aa. 11-13. » DV 14, aa. 1-3.
June 10	Week 8: Practical Knowledge Lecture: “Synderesis and conscience” Readings: » DV 16, aa. 1-3. » DV 17, aa. 1-3.

Registration

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

Pricing Comparison

	Standard price	Basic Lyceum Enrollment	Advanced Lyceum Enrollment	Premium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor	$200 per seminar	$90	3 seminars included $90 after	8 seminars included $90 after
Patron	$135 per seminar	$65	3 seminars included $65 after	8 seminars included $65 after
Participant	$80 per seminar	$40	3 seminars included $40 after	8 seminars included $40 after

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Seminar

Semiotics: The Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot

March 16, 2023April 13, 2023 Lyceum AssistantLeave a comment

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.

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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 8	Preparatory 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 2	Writing 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

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 price	Basic Lyceum Enrollment	Advanced Lyceum Enrollment	Premium Lyceum Enrollment
Benefactor	$200 per seminar	$90	3 seminars included $90 after	8 seminars included $90 after
Patron	$135 per seminar	$65	3 seminars included $65 after	8 seminars included $65 after
Participant	$80 per seminar	$40	3 seminars included $40 after	8 seminars included $40 after

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Seminar

[2023 Winter] Aquinas’ Cosmological Vision

December 18, 2022December 21, 2022 Brian KempleLeave a comment

All of us, it seems, today bear a heavy burden of being. Increasingly, we may find it difficult to rise from our beds and confront the day: indeed, even for those who persevere, it is a perseverance, it is a confrontation. The world challenges our fortitude. But why?

We might assign, and justly, many different causes for the increased burden: politics, news, the increased saturation of our lives by notes of strife and conflict; the ubiquitous screens which threaten our hold on reality. But behind these many immediate causes of fragmentation lies a deeper darkness. For our burden is caused not by the what of our lives, but by the why. More truly, it is the absence of a why. Put in other words, even those who have a strong sense of purpose as individuals suffer from the broader cultural nihilism. We are not pure individuals, after all. We cannot but be affected by our friends, family, even our casual acquaintances.

Thus, our burden comes from what we might call a nihilistic background cosmological image: the widespread belief that the universe is inherently meaningless, and that any meaning assigned to things, relationships, or events, is the product of human invention. The universe looms dark and empty. The earth is small and fragile, and we human beings even more so.

In stark contrast to such nihilistic presuppositions—which have leached into the fabric of our late-modern culture—shines the cosmological vision of St. Thomas Aquinas. Many might disregard, out of hand, the cosmology of someone living still under belief in a geocentric model. Indeed, the particulars of St. Thomas’ background image were inaccurate. But, despite the particular shortcomings, we can, by examining how he arrived at his understanding of the universe, that the vision still today applies to our own cosmology. Rather than a dark, empty void, bereft of meaning and purpose, we can discover the cosmos yet retains a meaningful structure: and in this, I believe, we discover hope—and a lightening of our burden.

This is an introductory seminar. View the syllabus here and learn more about Lyceum Institute seminars here. Participants will be challenged but need no prior experience. Digital copies of all readings will be provided.

Schedule

Discussion Sessions 1:15pm ET (World times)	Study Topics & Readings
January 14	Week 1: Governance of the Universe Lecture: Humility in the Pursuit of Wisdom Readings: » Aquinas – Expositio in Symbolorum Apostolorum, preface & c.1.
January 21	Week 2: Vision of Creation Lecture: Aquinas contra Nihilism Reading: » Aquinas – Summa contra Gentiles Book II (SCG.II), c.15-24.
January 28	Week 3: Necessity in Creation Lecture: The Proportionality of Creation Reading: » Aquinas – SCG.II, c.25-31.
February 4	Week 4: Limits of Reason Lecture: The Eternal and the Temporal Reading: » Aquinas – SCG.II, c.32-38.
February 11	BREAK
February 18	Week 5: Distinction of Being Lecture: Diversity of Beings Reading: » Aquinas – SCG.II, c.39-45.
February 25	Week 6: Intellect in the Cosmos Lecture: The Audience of Creation Reading: » Aquinas – SCG.II, c.46-55.
March 4	Week 7: Goodness and Perfection Lecture: The Constitution of Goodness Readings: » Aquinas – Summa Theologiae (ST) Ia, q.4-5.
March 11	Week 8: Perfection and its Relations Lecture: Threefold Relationality of Perfection Readings » Aquinas – ST Ia, q.6, a.3-4 and q.45, a.7-8.

Registration

[2023W] Aquinas’ Cosmological Vision – Benefactor

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

$200.00

[2023W] Aquinas’ Cosmological Vision – 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

[2023W] Aquinas’ Cosmological Vision – Participant

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

$60.00

Seminar

[Fall 2022] The Faults of Modern Philosophy

August 29, 2022September 27, 2022 Brian KempleLeave a comment

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 the frail, shrill assertions of expertise, exactitude, and a scientific consensus that appears to hold naught together in truth but the adherents of a narrow ideology.

We will not, in the course of these eight weeks, undertake deconstruction of this fragile and threatening edifice. Rather, our task is to discover and analyze the underlying faults. We will accomplish this analysis through a collective effort—with lectures given and discussions led by three faculty (Kemple, Wagner, and Boyer)—that unveils the fundamental mistakes of modern philosophy’s key thinkers. Though these thinkers are diverse from one another, commonly they are “modern” in holding certain presuppositions about the nature of knowledge and the human person resulting in a discontinuous set of fundamental beliefs concerning the universe and our experience of it.

It would be easy simply to point to the precarity and chaos permeating the world built on such foundations, wave it away, and say that we must begin again. But such hand-waving not only fails to be efficacious, it is, moreover, delusional. We are the children of modernity, like it or not, and their errors are our inheritance, abusive though that may be. If we fail to understand the foundations of the moderns’ thoughts, we will not recognize their influence in ourselves.

Discussion Sessions 2:00pm ET (World times)	Study Topics & Readings
September 24	Week 1: The Modern Context Lecture: From the Break with Scholasticism to the Incoherence of Today Readings: » Selections from preparatory bibliography.
October 1	Week 2: The False Ground of Modern Philosophy Lecture: The πρῶτον ψεῦδος [first falsehood] of Modern Philosophy: Descartes’ Method Reading: » Descartes, Meditations (I-II).
October 8	Week 3: Common Idealism Lecture: The Lonely Way of Ideas Reading: » Descartes, Discourse on Method (selections). » Descartes, Meditations (III). » Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (selections).
October 15	Week 4: A Broken “Empiricism” Lecture: David Hume’s “Empirical” Method: The Tale of Naïve Cartesian Reading: » Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (selections). » Aristotle, Physics (selections).
October 22	BREAK
October 29	Week 5: Immanuel Kant and the Unknowable Lecture: Kant’s A Priori Prison Reading: » Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (selections). » Gilson, Unity of Philosophical Experience (selections).
November 5	Week 6: Pointing Games Lecture: Wittgenstein’s Language Reading: » Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (selections).
November 12	Week 7: Avoiding Reality Lecture: Choose Your Own Ontology Readings: » Quine, “On What There Is”. » Geach, “Symposium: On What There Is”
November 19	Week 8: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Nadir of Modernity Lecture: Antagonism of Person and Nature Readings » Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism.

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

Registration is closed.

Seminar

[Fall 2022] Metaphysics: The Depths of Act & Potency

August 25, 2022September 27, 2022 Brian Kemple2 Comments

“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 as he peered down and down into the depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom.”
-Melville, Moby Dick
Chapter 133: The Chase—First Day.

Download the Syllabus — **View the Syllabus**

While preparing a lecture on the contribution made by Thomas Aquinas to the historical development of semiotics—particularly as it helped move understanding past the initial contributions to a Latin theory of signs constituted by Augustine of Hippo—I found that nothing was more central to the advance of this narrative than the Aristotelian doctrine of act and potency. To understand the efficacy of a sign, that is, we need to understand relations, and to understand relations, we need to understand act and potency.

As I took one brief dive after another into the relevant texts of Aquinas—most especially his Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle—I fleetingly glimpsed what seemed an endless series of wonderous observations, each more than the last deserving of a thorough investigation. This seminar provides an opportunity for all interested to join collaboratively in making such an inquiry.

Act and potency, I must admit, have together always seemed a doctrine that—despite long familiarity with the teaching—has escaped me for its depths. The two interrelated concepts are indefinable, but not for lack of intelligibility; indeed, they are so rich that all description leaves us infinitely short of having exhausted their meaning or their pertinence to our lives. To think of potency is to think of what is intelligible only in the light of act, but not as itself an act; to distinguish passive and active potency is to get a foothold on the nature of change, but through something itself unchanging. It is through the change from potency to act that we come to know what anything is; and, indeed, such a change is how knowledge itself is realized within us.

If we are to explain being—to know being—we must know and be able to explain the distinction between those elements which divide it all. We must peer beyond what eyes can see.

Ten minute lecture preview

Discussion Sessions 3:30pm ET (World times)	Study Topics & Readings
September 24	Week 1: Form as Cause of Being & Knowing Lecture: Principle of Substance, End of Knowledge Readings: » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book VII, c.17. » Aquinas’ Commentary on the Metaphysics, lib.7, lec.17 (§1648–1680). » Owens’ Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, c.12 (375-77).
October 1	Week 2: Form as Principle of Composite Being Lecture: Intelligible Relations of Form and Matter Reading: » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book VIII, c.1-2. » Aristotle’s Physics, Book II, c.1. » Aquinas’ Commentary, lib.8, lec.1-2 (§1681–1702).
October 8	Week 3: The One and the Many Lecture: Infinite Material Plurality Reading: » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book VIII, c.3-6. » Aquinas’ Commentary, lib.8, lec.3-5 (§1703–1767). » Owens’ Doctrine, c.13 (379-99).
October 15	Week 4: Definition and Distinction of Potency Lecture: Discerning the Meaning of Potency Reading: » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book IX, 1-2. » Aquinas’ Commentary, lib.9, lec.1-2 (§1768–1794). » Owens’ Doctrine, c.14, parts I-II (403-06).
October 22	BREAK
October 29	Week 5: The Grounds of Potency Lecture: Potency and Possibility Reading: » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book IX, 3-5. » Aquinas’ Commentary, lib.9, lec.3-4 (§1795–1822).
November 5	Week 6: Analogical Primacy of Act Lecture: The Speaking of What Is Reading: » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book IX, 6-7. » Aquinas’ Commentary, lib.9, lec.5-6 (§1823–1843).
November 12	Week 7: Explanatory Primacy of Act Lecture: The Existing of What Is Readings: » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book IX, 8-9. » Aquinas’ Commentary, lib.9, lec.7-10 (§1844–1894). » Owens’ Doctrine, c.14, part III (406-409).
November 19	Week 8: The Divisions of Being Lecture: The Governance of Truth and Falsity Readings » Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book IX, 10. » Aquinas’ Commentary, lib.9, lec.11 (§1895–1919). » Owens’ Doctrine, c.15 (411-41).

This is an advanced seminar. View the syllabus here and learn more about Lyceum Institute seminars here. Participants should have at least basic familiarity with Aristotelian physics and Thomistic psychology before enrolling.

Registration is closed.

News and Announcements/Philosophy

Philosophy, Faith, and Signs

June 19, 2022June 25, 2022 Brian KempleLeave a comment

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?

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

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