Seminar: Minds today are given over to a background cosmological nihilism: a nihilism denying the belief that there is purpose independent of our own volitional determination; a nihilism become the unquestioned rule of the day. In contrast is the cosmological vision of Thomas Aquinas: a vision which sees in the fundamental principles of the universe an ordered whole, giving governance to all its parts, and perfect in itself.
[2020 Summer] Ethics: Sex
Seminar: In the word “sex” there is contained a twofold signification: the bifurcated biological nature of the individual and the complementary action toward which that birfucated nature is ordered. This seminar will study both significations, as two parts of a continuous whole, within the existence of the human person. This examination of sex in the light of personhood will be guided by a reading of Saint John Paul II’s Love & Responsibility, written while he was serving as Auxiliary Bishop of Kraków in 1960.
[2020 Summer] Heidegger: Phenomenological Method II
Seminar: Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological method, unlike Husserl’s, does not rely upon a scientific precision. Nor, like Max Scheler’s, is it merely an attitude of considering the relational value of “the things themselves”. Rather, it is a persistent, recursive, reflective investigation that seeks to disclose the reality of what is in all its cognoscible dimensions.
Seminar: Ethics – Virtue
Sign up using the form below! View the Syllabus here In light of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit both wallets and social practices, I am offering this seminar at half price, with deferred payment (i.e., pay me when you can--spread out, if need be) for all participants. These prices are: Standard: …
Seminar: Thomistic Psychology – Action Theory
Beginning in the Fall of 2019, the Continuum Philosophical Insight Lyceum began a project of “Retrieving Thomistic Psychology” with an eight-week seminar that laid the foundations of an understanding that avoids the pitfalls of modern psychology. Now, in the Winter of 2020, a following “Thomistic Psychology - Action Theory” seminar will investigate the various operations …
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Seminar: Introduction to Philosophical Thinking
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 …
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Seminar: Semiotics
[CPI Seminars] [CPI Lyceum Platform] What is a sign? Though a seemingly simple question, and one which may receive a technically simple answer, attaining a clear understanding of signs is a task both very difficult and very important; so important, in fact, that the whole future of philosophy (and by extension, human knowledge in general) …
Seminar: Retrieving Thomistic Psychology
[CPI Seminars] [CPI Lyceum Platform] 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 …