Deely Project

April 11, 2026, Luparello Lecture Hall

Why does cheering with friends feel different than cheering alone? See how Edith Stein and Max Scheler explain the difference between “I-experience” and

“we-experience,” and why that shift matters for communal consciousness in relation to Catholic liturgy.

Dr. Tim Burns is Senior Teaching Professor of Philosophy in the Dougherty Family College at the University of Saint Thomas (MN). He received his PhD in philosophy from University College Dublin in 2015, specializing in continental philosophy and phenomenology. His phenomenological research addresses classical issues in the field as well as emerging ground intersecting with social-political philosophy, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind. His writings include Edith Stein and Max Scheler in Dialogue [forthcoming: Lexington Books] and a companion to Stein's On the Problem of Empathy (2024: Lexington Books), as well as several articles and book chapters on contemporary philosophy, and he is a founding member of the Editorial Board of Edith Stein Studies, published by Bloomsbury.

March 22, 2025, Luparello Lecture Hall

In Republic X, Socrates argues that imitative works are “third from the truth” and “from what is.” Socrates argues that, while claiming to make and therefore to know all things, imitators neither know nor make anything at all. He likens such “idol makers” to people carrying a mirror to make reflections of whatever they wish. Yet Socrates' own pursuit of universal knowledge involves the thoughtful construction and active manipulation of images. In this lecture, I review the more famous images from the Republic and hope to show that the thoughtful design and deployment of images is a thematic concern of the Republic. For Plato’s Socrates, then, not all imitative mirroring is superficial nor are all such reflections mere idols.

Dr. Jonathan Buttaci, a native of Pittsburgh, is Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. He researches theories of knowledge, learning, and the soul in ancient Greek philosophy. He is particularly interested in Aristotle’s account of scientific knowledge, inquiry, and discovery as shown in his scientific works. He enjoys hiking the forests of Appalachia while puzzling over the paradox of the Meno, the battle rout of Posterior Analytics B.19, the intellect(s) of De Anima III.5, and the ascent to wisdom in Metaphysics A.1.

April 20, 2024, Luparello Lecture Hall

Like his contemporaries, Bonaventure held that creation is a book. He understood that this opinion entails that all the things of the world must be signs, because a book is made up of a particular type of sign, namely, words—words from a mind. Bonaventure transforms the medieval opinion into a metaphysical account of what being is. This lecture is an examination of what can be called Bonaventure's “semiotic Metaphysics.”

Beginning with a brief overview of Bonaventure’s metaphysics, we move to examining his understanding of signs. Since he never wrote a systematic treatise on signs, it is necessary to examine texts where he discusses subjects involving signs: cognition, communication, and the sacraments. Knowing gives rise to an interior expression of the thing known. This interior expression is a mental word or concept. Communicating involves giving exterior expression to this interior, mental word, or concept. We then see that Bonaventure found in the phenomenon of knowing and speaking a key to the understanding of reality. He argues that the divine ideas function as exemplar causes of the world. Because of the nature of these exemplars as expressions of the word, Bonaventure argues that the things of the world are signs expressing the divine mind. In the light of Bonaventure's exemplarism, it is possible to bring to the foreground the semiotic theme in various texts in which knowing consequently involves a journey of the mind to God. We then investigate the ontological status of the world as sign, focusing on Bonaventure's adoption of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Matter in its essence is understood to be the medium for the expression of sign. We further specify the type of sign that reality is and draw out the philosophical implications of this view—implications that also shed light on the historical interpretation of Bonaventure and scholasticism.

In short, Bonaventure argues that so thoroughly is the divine mind and its own interior word expressed in the universe that the world is truly a book—an intelligible, coherent, structured monograph expressing the Great Mind of all the ages.

Fr. Christopher Cullen, SJ is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. His research encompasses a broad variety of topics and thinkers, most notably Bonaventure and his teachers and school, ancient and medieval philosophy more generally, medieval political philosophy, Thomism and contemporary neo-Thomism, the nature-grace debate, just war theory, and the problem of evil. He serves as editor for International Philosophical Quarterly and has authored a number of scholarly publications in both philosophy and theology.

April 18, 2023, Verostko Center for the Arts

In his work on the crisis of the visible in contemporary culture, the philosopher Jean-Luc Marion argues that images typically operate as idols rather than icons. The images we encounter are “proportionate to the expectation of desire.” Such a culture excludes images that would engage us so as to transform our desires and lead us out of ourselves to transcendence. We need more than simply a reorientation of our vision. The new pedagogy of images cannot be straightforward or initially affirmative, since it must make us aware of our disorders, sorrows, and traumas. It will offer hope not through facile transcendence but through otherwise hidden paths at the margins of mainstream civilization. In the philosophy of art of Jacques Maritain and the art of his friend Georges Rouault, images take on the evils and afflictions of this world, its manifold traumas and sorrows, and trace a path toward beauty, gratitude, and joy.

Dr. Thomas Hibbs is currently the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, where he is also Dean Emeritus. Hibbs has published more than 30 scholarly articles and seven scholarly books, including three on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He has also published two books on film and co-authored a book, Soliloquies, with the Japanese-American artist, Makoto Fujimura. A new book, Theology of Creation, is set to be published in August of 2023 by Notre Dame Press. He also has a book on "Justice as Solidarity" under contract with Word on Fire Publications. Hibbs has published widely in the popular press, with more than 100 reviews and discussion articles on film, theater, art, and higher education in a variety of publications including First Things, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Atlantis, The Wall Street Journal, and National Review. He writes regularly for The Dallas Morning News.

Thursday, March 24, 2022, 4 p.m.

Held Virtually

De-sign (design and semiotics) is an intentional way for humans to not only create a meaningful reality but also to share with God the act of creation, with the proviso that God’s creation is more evoking rather than commanding. Beyond the debate over determinism and free will, the will of God and the desires of humans are intertwined through the union of Agape and Eros; going beyond “either-or” tendency into “both-and” stance. All aspects of lifeworld draw out each other, where God’s creative love—in Charles Sanders Peirce’s view—is an ongoing continuous process. The relationship between God and humans is based on the mutual fulfillment through evolutionary love.

Farouk Y. Seif, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus, Antioch University, Seattle, WA, past President of the Semiotic Society of America (SSA), former Executive Director of the SSA, a registered architect, and a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute. His main interests are design and semiotics for social and cultural change, paradoxes, transdisciplinarity and transmodernity. He taught in universities and lectured at conferences in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Demark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Kirgizstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Romania, Spain, Turkey, and USA. He was the recipient of the 2010 Fulbright Specialists Program at University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Professor Seif is the author of more than 50 articles and a dozen book chapters. His newly published book De-sign in the Transmodern World is a state-of-the-art integration of design and semiotics.

In 2022 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, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa created an International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing. Professor Deely spent a lifetime studying semiotics and fostering a network of semioticians from around the planet. This seminar sought to render homage to his genius and further develop his work.

Presentations are arranged into two modules. The first, comprising sessions on the legacy of semiotics, is titled "Historical Module: From Early Latinity to the Last Postmodernity." Here, including presentations on prominent figures in the history of the field, the emphasis is on the diachronic extension of semiotic development, meaning its historical path as a laboratory where the community of living inquirers is given the necessary instruments for casting eyes upon the future. The second, dealing with semiotics at cross-thematic levels, is titled "Systematic Module: De-Sign or Semiotics in Relation." Now, involving issues such as space and time, cognition, visual representation and digital education, attention is turned to the present, the synchronic scale of the issues challenging those not yet dead. Both strands constitute keystones for the refinement of human understanding and are, after all, inextricably connected. As John said, "... synchrony as a temporal reality is a one-way movement into a limited future, in contrast with diachrony which not only arises from within synchrony but also invades it from a past before the synchrony in question began in the first place, and extends beyond that synchrony into a future accessible only to those who 'come after' into the 'land of the living.'"

Recordings of the talks are accessible at the following links:
https://lyceum.institute/category/io2s/ 
https://www.uc.pt/fluc/ief/act/io2s/auditorium/?rfp=1 

The question, ‘Who is John Deely?,’ with its use of ‘is’ rather than ‘was,’ emphasizes that Deely is semiotically still with us. To answer this question, one must contemplatively reflect on his philosophical and semiotic inquiries. Such a contemplative reflection is the means whereby we can acquire a deeper understanding of one of the most prolific scholars of our time.

John Deely navigates through a rewarding intellectual and spiritual journey, His graduate education at the Pontifical Faculty of Philosophy of the Aquinas Institute of Theology shaped his Dominican formation. It is not a surprise that John ended up at Saint Vincent College. In a manner analogous to the Dominican Order, he does not confine himself to the ivory tower of academic institutions. He travels far and wide, encouraging others to comprehend the role of signs and the peculiar nature of relations. Meandering creatively through life and traversing the boundaries of various disciplines, Deely raises our awareness of many fascinating semiotic phenomena by his continuous presence in our lives. His spirit and intellect do, and always will, live on with us. Indeed, he very much still ‘is.'

An artist and registered architect, Farouk Seif is former president of the Semiotic Society of America. Born and raised in Egypt, his main interests are design, semiotics, paradoxes, transdisciplinarity and transmodernity. He has taught at universities and lectured at conferences worldwide, authored more than 70 articles and a dozen book chapters and was the recipient of the 2010 Fulbright Specialists Program at the University of Sofia (Bulgaria). His book “De-Sign in the Transmodern World” is regarded as a state-of-the-art integration and design of semiotics.

Paul Cobley, Professor in Language and Media, Middlesex University, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Nanjing Normal University, is the editor of Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader (2009). Friend and collaborator of John Deely for nearly 20 years, he also edited the special issue, Deely in Review, for Chinese Semiotic Studies (2016). He is the ninth Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America, the Secretary of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies.