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News and Announcements/Philosophical Happy Hour

On Natural Law and Justice

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In his work Introduction to Moral Theology, Fr. Romanus Cessario O.P. remarked on certain misconceptions with respect to how the natural had grown in application and importance over time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: arguing that the presentation of the natural law given in teaching manuals was anachronistic and unhelpful, and in extreme cases was at times influenced by Suarezian or casuist trends in moral theology.

The casuistry embedded in the Roman Catholic manual tradition greatly contributed to misinterpretations of natural law. Although Prummer follows Aquinas’ own material distinctions, this sort of presentation nonetheless reinforces the misconception that Catholic moral theology is given to consider every specific moral issue as if natural law alone supplied the ultimate determination. The manualist misconstrues of natural law also explain the tendency among some contemporary authors to think that natural law theory supplies the equivalent of a complete moral theory… Natural law is not the only resource needed for a complete theory of Christian morality. A realist moral theologian recognizes that natural law provides a starting point for discovering the concrete forms of moral goodness.[1]

Romanus Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology

Natural Law and Justice

If a scholar of Aquinas were to look at what the Angelic Doctor wrote on the natural law in the Summa Theologiae, they would be surprised to find very little actually discussed by St. Thomas. Fewer than twenty questions in the Prima Secundæ are devoted to questions specifically concerning law and only one of them to the natural law. By contrast, what Aquinas had to say on the virtues, more specifically the virtue of justice, greatly eclipses what he wrote on law.  Questions 57-122 are all devoted to discussing the importance and concrete application of justice, and the entirety of the Secunda Secundæ discusses the virtues in general.

Aquinas, in discussing the natural law, outlines the precepts of the law in the Summa, arguing that the precepts of natural law are roughly equivalent to first principles in speculative sciences and demonstration. They provide us the starting point, as it were, for praxis and practical reasoning:

[T]he precepts of the natural law are to the practical reason, what the first principles of demonstrations are to the speculative reason; because both are self-evident principles… Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law. Because in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances: inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature: and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of preserving human life, and of warding off its obstacles, belongs to the natural law. Secondly, there is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specially, according to that nature which he has in common with other animals: and in virtue of this inclination, those things are said to belong to the natural law, “which nature has taught to all animals” [Pandect. Just. I, tit. i], such as sexual intercourse, education of offspring and so forth. Thirdly, there is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus, man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.[2]

In Summa Theologiae Ia-IIae qu. 94 art. 1

A problem one might face with Aquinas’ theory is that the natural law, or more specifically its precepts, do not determine their own application. A sentiment as universal as “striving towards living in a society and avoiding offense against those with whom one has to live” might be admirable, but it can hardly help determine for us the day-to-day demands of justice—especially living in an increasingly technocratic and hyper-communicative world. These principles may indeed be what ought to form the basis of our practical reasoning, but they are not principles which determine their own application. Aquinas is aware that this is the case, and in discussing justice as it pertains to the virtue of epieikeia (reasonable accommodation of circumstances in pursuit of equity), writes how justice is that with which laws are concerned, and principally deal.

When we were treating of laws, since human actions, with which laws are concerned, are composed of contingent singulars and are innumerable in their diversity, it was not possible to lay down rules of law that would apply to every single case. Legislators in framing laws attend to what commonly happens: although if the law be applied to certain cases, it will frustrate the equality of justice and be injurious to the common good, which the law has in view.[3]

In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 120 art. 1

Relationality of Justice

Interestingly enough, Aquinas, in treating the virtue of justice, notes how it is more principally the virtue pertaining to the virtuous person as it especially stands in importance among the different virtues. Speaking of the subjective qualities of the soul, it simply is better on account of its residing in reason, but also because it is precisely through justice that we can be good towards other people, rather than being good in ourselves.

If we speak of legal justice, it is evident that it stands foremost among all the moral virtues, for as much as the common good transcends the individual good of one person. On this sense the Philosopher declares (Ethic. v, 1) that “the most excellent of the virtues would seem to be justice, and more glorious than either the evening or the morning star.” But, even if we speak of particular justice, it excels the other moral virtues for two reasons. The first reason may be taken from the subject, because justice is in the more excellent part of the soul, viz. the rational appetite or will, whereas the other moral virtues are in the sensitive appetite, whereunto appertain the passions which are the matter of the other moral virtues. The second reason is taken from the object, because the other virtues are commendable in respect of the sole good of the virtuous person himself, whereas justice is praiseworthy in respect of the virtuous person being well disposed towards another, so that justice is somewhat the good of another person, as stated in Ethic. v, 1. Hence the Philosopher says (Rhet. i, 9): “The greatest virtues must needs be those which are most profitable to other persons, because virtue is a faculty of doing good to others. For this reason, the greatest honors are accorded the brave and the just, since bravery is useful to others in warfare, and justice is useful to others both in warfare and in time of peace.”[4]

In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 58 art. 12

Justice then seems to be just as important—if not even more so—than the precepts of the natural law, because it is only through justice that right relations between different members of a given society can obtain. Not only relations with family members, or friends, but lawgivers, employers, statesmen, and the like all require the application of justice.

Understanding Justice in our Contemporary Context

Putting aside justice as conventionally understood by Aquinas in his 13th century medieval context, what would he have to say with regards to the application of social media and communication-based technology that we have encountered and utilized in the 21st century? Is justice something that concerns us insofar as we employ social media? Do we have some sort of obligation towards justice in how we interact with each other socially online? My question then for us all for Wednesday is; what is the relationship between the natural law, or more specifically the precepts of the natural law and the virtue of justice, and what does it mean then to be justice today given the widespread use of social media and technology?

Philosophical Happy Hour

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[1] Cessario, R. (2001). Introduction to Moral Theology. : Catholic University of America Press. Pg. 104

[2] In Summa Theologiae Ia-IIae qu. 94 art. 1 Second and Revised Edition, 1920, Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Online Edition Copyright © 2017 by Kevin Knight https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2094.htm#article1

[3] In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 120 art. 1 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3120.htm

[4] In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 58 art. 12  https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3058.htm#article12

News and Announcements/Philosophical Happy Hour

On Modern Science and Sacred Traditions

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“Religion is anti-science.”  Jerry Coyne, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, once wrote the following:

I’ll construe “science” as the set of tools we use to find truth about the universe, with the understanding that these truths are provisional rather than absolute.  These tools include observing nature, framing and testing hypotheses, trying your hardest to prove that your hypothesis is wrong to test your confidence that it’s right, doing experiments and above all replicating your and others’ results to increase confidence in your inference.

And I’ll define religion as does philosopher Daniel Dennett: “Social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.” Of course many religions don’t fit that definition, but the ones whose compatibility with science is touted most often – the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – fill the bill.

“Yes, there is a war between science and religion”, The Conversation, 21 December 2018

These two definitions, as Coyne puts it, construe incompatible ways of viewing the world.  Arguably, however, these are very bad ways of defining both religion and science.  Neither gets after something essential, but aims, instead, at a kind of generalized amalgamation.  Coyne goes on from these dubious definitions to argue that religion provides no good reasons or evidence for its claims, but requires unreasoning faith, whereas science employs an empirical method of inquiry that can result in “confident inferences”.

1. Reconciling Sources

Debating Coyne’s unserious and weak assertions (and understanding) is not our purpose, here, however.  His—and generally other “new atheist” objections (which smack of intellectual insecurity; what else could so philosophically-bereft minds feel, when facing philosophically-dependent questions?)—instead serve to raise a point: how should we understand science, and, with that, its compatibility with religion and sacred traditions?

The hermeneutic question of interpreting different sources for truth—the books of nature and of revelation—has long been asked by none other than religiously-minded figures themselves.  On its own, asking this hermeneutic question is itself a kind of scientific inquiry.  For we must recognize that what often goes by the name “science” today—or “modern science”—is but one dependent branch on the tree of human understanding.  To this end, Jeremy Bentham (of all people!) once felicitously proposed the terms “idioscopic” and “cenoscopic” to distinguish between the methods used in “modern science” and the philosophically-geared methods of discovery.  Fr. Scott Randall Paine has an extensive and wonderful essay on the distinction available here.  In short, the idioscopic specializes its vision to discern things indiscernible otherwise; while the cenoscopic utilizes the common reasoning capacities of the human being to resolve discoveries into a coherent whole.  Regarding idioscopy as alone the tree upon which knowledge grows (cutting that branch off and sticking it in the ground, as it were) has borne sickly intellectual fruits.  “Modern science”, divorced from the humanities, arts, philosophy, religion and theology—all the domains of cenoscopic inquiry—leaves us with an unresolved picture of the world.

But modern science alone does not cause this separation.

1. Scripture and Science

Commenting upon the modern philosophical rejection of the textually-commentarial tradition of Scholasticism, John Deely writes in a lengthy footnote:

Although sometimes I wonder to what extent this objection of the times, apparently directed against the Aristotelian philosophers, a safe target, is not the more intended for the unsafe target of the theologians, who in fact have always been the far more culpable in this area from the earliest Christian times.  I think of such examples as that of Cosmas Indicopleustes with his Christian Topography (Alexandria, i.535–47ad), “in which he refutes the impious opinion that the earth is a globe”, for “the Christian geography was forcibly extracted from the texts of scripture, and the study of nature was the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind.  The orthodox faith confined the habitable world to one temperate zone, and represented the earth as an oblong surface, four hundred days’ journey in length, two hundred in breadth, encompassed by the ocean, and covered by the solid crystal of the firmament” (Gibbon 1788).  But examples of equal or greater offensiveness can easily be culled from every tradition of sacred, “revealed” texts, both before and outside of the Christian development.  Surely, within the Christian era, one of the more outstanding examples of hermeneutic abuse is the career of the “blessed” Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1542–1621) who, well in advance of the most famous trials over which he held sway (in 1600 that of Bruno, in 1616 that of Copernicus’ work, laying the ground for the 1633 condemnation of Galileo), had arrived through scriptural study at a detailed cosmology which he regarded as “virtually revealed”.  These astonishing results he recorded between 1570 and 1572 in his unpublished Commentary on Qq. 65-74 of Aquinas c.1266 [Summa theologiae, prima pars], autographs which we may hope will one day be brought to full publication (Baldini and Coyne 1984 [“The Louvain Lectures of Bellarmine and the Autograph Copy of his 1616 Declaration to Galileo”] is barely a start) to add to the many object-lessons still resisted that make up the ending of the “Galileo Affair”: see Blackwell 1991 [Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Church] esp. 40–45, 104–06 (on the truth of the Bible even in trivial matters being guaranteed as Bellarmine put it, ex parte dicentis – “because of God being the one who says so”).  Too bad Galileo, writing in 1615 with Bellarmine in mind as well as still alive (see Blackwell 1991: 274), felt constrained to leave unpublished his observation that “those who try to refute and falsify [propositions about the physical world] by using the authority of… passages of Scripture will commit the fallacy called ‘begging the question’.  For since the true sense of the Scripture will already have been put in doubt by the force of the argument, one cannot take it as clear and secure for the purpose of refuting the same proposition.  Rather one needs to take the demonstrations apart and find their fallacies with the aid of other arguments, experiences, and more certain observations.  And when the truth of fact and of nature has been found in this way, then, but not before, can we confirm the true sense of Scripture and securely use it for our purposes.  Thus again the secure path is to begin with demonstrations, confirming the true and refuting the false”.  This lesson applies across the cultures to every group that draws upon texts deemed revealed, not in every case, indeed, but wherever arise questions that can be investigated and resolved by means of natural investigations, scientific or philosophical.

Deely 2002: What Distinguishes Human Understanding, 57-58n13.

While I generally agreed with my mentor on many things, I find his objections (and dismissive attitude) toward Bellarmine problematic.  Yet—I must admit a hesitation here.  There seems to be a valid objection to the hermeneutic used often still today by Biblical literalists; one which attempts to conform an understanding of the physical world to an already-determined interpretation of Scripture’s meaning, rather than to understand Scripture’s revelations about the natural world through an understanding of that world itself.  Study of the natural world responds to our human thirst for knowledge, and, nourished in the proper context of a holistic human learning, enlivens the soul.  To constrain it under the bounds of a Scriptural interpretation itself question does, indeed, beg the principle.

3. Universal Hermeneutics of Continuity

Can we resolve the diverse sources of knowledge into a coherent whole?  How?  How should we interpret Scripture and science as parts of one continuous whole for human knowledge?  Join us this evening (and perhaps again in the future!) to discuss.

Philosophical Happy Hour

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News and Announcements/Symposium

On Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

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Beginning in August, the Lyceum Institute will hold a three-week Symposium discussion titled “A Dilemma of Ideology and Faith”, on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. This symposium is open to all enrolled members but we are also accepting applications (see below) for a limited number of spots available to the public.

We strongly recommend the use of Constance Garnett’s excellent translation. It is readily available from many online booksellers.

About Crime and Punishment

Published in 1866, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment—composed after spending ten years in Siberian exile—is often regarded as the first great novel of his career. At the heart of the story is a tension between a theory of greatness (or of the indomitable supremacy of the human will) and the realities of love, faith, and the reality of being human. The protagonist, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, struggles with the beliefs conveyed through higher education (a strange confluence of ideologies which converged in the St. Petersburg of the 1860s) and the deeper roots of his relations to other persons.

Thus, we find the “ideological intoxication” of utilitarianism, nihilism, socialist utopianism, and mechanistic materialism clashing against the ecstatic love of self-sacrifice and true fortitude. We encounter the madness of ideas and the torment of conscience; the conflict of evil, apathy, and good; and at the center, the drama of the human heart, torn by convictions, seeking its true rest.

Dostoevsky’s prose (in Garnett’s translation) reads quick, at times frantic—evocative and catching—and, at other times, dwells upon details, drawing us into the significance of the mundane, exaggerating nuance to emphasize the extraordinary truths of what we so often obscure to ourselves. But the heart of his writing unfolds in the dialogues of his characters. Just as his descriptive prose unveils the world we obscure to ourselves through an aesthetic inattentiveness, his dialogue penetrates into the heart of thought and feeling to which we, in our worldly ways, all too often allow ourselves to grow numb.

We hope you will join us!

Reading Schedule

Our discussion sessions will meet for three consecutive weeks, at 4pm Eastern Time on Sunday afternoons. We may add a secondary time if there is sufficient interest and ability to host. Our schedule is as follows:

8/13 – Parts I & II
8/20 – Parts III & IV
8/27 – Parts V & VI

If this endeavor is successful, we will host more literature reading groups in the future. Discussion sessions will be recorded, but only enrolled Lyceum members will have access to them.

Public Application

We are offering limited spots to the public! We will evaluate each application and notify those accepted by 6 August 2023. Please fill out the form below.

Colloquium/News and Announcements

The Problem of Christian Philosophy

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The colloquium lecture delivered in May 2022 by James Capehart, PhD, “The Problem of Christian Philosophy” is now available to the public. You can listen or download below (full lecture at the bottom). If you enjoy the lecture, please consider supporting our Summer fundraising campaign! Your donations allow us to support the work of philosophers like Dr. Capehart.

The Problem of Christian Philosophy

Dr. James Capehart

The Problem of Christian Philosophy – Preview

How in fact is Christian philosophy a problem? The wording itself has proven to be the most problematic. Can there be a philosophy that is truly Christian? Does “Christian” specifically differentiate “philosophy”? Does that turn it into a theology? Given the existence of numerous volumes of Christian works of theology, can we say that any of their contents should be called philosophical? Is any of that content unique to Christian thinkers?

Here, Dr. Capehart explores not only an important tradition but an essential question for all Christians and philosophers alike: the relationship between the study of revelation and the truths contained therein and the role of natural reason in discerning and discovering meaning.

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

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).

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.

Download the Syllabus

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.

Download the Syllabus

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

Colloquium

The Problem of Christian Philosophy

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In the second of the Lyceum Institute Colloquia in 2022, we present Dr. James Capehart, who brings us discussion of Christian Philosophy as it has been viewed in the Christian Middle Ages as well as transmitted through the debates of the 20th century.

How in fact is Christian philosophy a problem? The wording itself has proven to be the most problematic. Can there be a philosophy that is truly Christian? Does “Christian” specifically differentiate “philosophy”? Does that turn it into a theology? Given the existence of numerous volumes of Christian works of theology, can we say that any of their contents should be called philosophical? Is any of that content unique to Christian thinkers?

The Problem of Christian Philosophy – Preview

Dr. Capehart’s lecture is now available at the Lyceum Institute. The live question and answer session will be held on 14 May 2022 (Saturday) at 6:00pm ET. Colloquia lectures are released the year after publication at the Lyceum, and Q&A sessions are reserved for members. For information on signing up for the Lyceum, see here.

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.