Category: change
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
CATEGORIES
December 12, 2025
Thanks to Ibrahim Nureni, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
In Margo Natalie Crawford’s Black Post-Blackness, tidalectics is characterized by “nonlinear” or “back-and-forth” black radical tradition of continuity in that the experiences of black people from the era of slavery to the contemporary days do not follow a parallel path but adopt a circular schema (3). English, in How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness,
» Read more about: Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”: A Serial and Tide of Black Voices »
November 21, 2025
Thanks to Rachel D. Perez, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
Barbie: The Movie sparked a wide range of conversations—from gender roles and identity to free will and power. But what struck me most wasn’t the obvious. It was the subtle, yet profound, commentary on the branding of liberation. That scene in the Mattel boardroom, where executives discuss how to “brand” freedom through Barbie—along with Gloria’s projections onto Barbie and Barbie’s own misconceptions of freedom—left me thinking about how we,
» Read more about: Aspiring, Achieving, and Unraveling: The Branding of Liberation »
November 14, 2025
Thanks to James Robertson, an HMU doctoral student, for today’s post.
Heraclitus tells us that we cannot return to the same river twice. With respect to Heraclitus, while this statement expresses the truth that facts are temporary and experiences fleeting, it may conceal a crucial point, one upon which it relies. We may not return to the same river, but we can return to Heraclitus. His words can enter and re-enter our experience,
October 31, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
For the October Quarterly Discussion, we read a selection from Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life” in combination with Nelson Mandela’s statement at the opening of the defense case in the Rivonia Trial (Pretoria Supreme Court, April 20, 1964). Mandela’s speech ends with the words:
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people.
December 20, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s blog.
I recently entered a writing course through the University of Chicago, Graham School. Led by writer Dina Elenbogen, it focused on the intersection between walking and writing, a topic which many of our HMU students find important as well. We discussed craft but also motivation, inspiration, and the importance of journey. For many writers, movement inspires thought and helps to bring ideas together.
September 6, 2024
Thanks to Tyler Wright, a 2024 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
How must we approach signs of life which defy our present understandings of what it is to be alive? Viruses, for instance, are periodically reexamined by scientists as they exist in a sort of transitory area between the living and nonliving (Villarreal, 2004). A specimen might exhibit characteristics so unique that a new branch of life begins to emerge.
May 24, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Recently, I had the great fortune to attend a discussion series on George Eliot’s Adam Bede. Hosted by Classical Pursuits, our leader Nancy Carr guided us through four deep and insightful discussions on Eliot’s novel. I have spent some time ruminating on the ideas that I want to share with you without giving away key parts of the plot.
March 29, 2024
Thanks to Jennifer-NeToi Claiborne, a 2024 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
When the air is warm, the smell of rain and honeysuckles fill the breeze, I know that it is summer and it is time to return to Siddhartha. I first read this book in the summer of 2000, when I was in the midst of a great change in my life. It was the summer prior to entering my freshman year of college.
February 2, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Though we near the end of Bleak House, our focus remains on notions of charity. Next week will conclude our book club discussion with the eighth and final post. We have skipped much of the mystery and murder. I apologize for that, but I would hate to ruin the suspense for those who have not kept up the pace.
February 10, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Before reading the ideas in this blog, I invite you to view a piece by artist M.C. Escher and listen to the “Endlessly Rising Canon” by Bach.
In his book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter paraphrases Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as follows: “All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions.” Although this is not where January’s Quarterly Discussion started,