Category: dictionary
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.
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August 14, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
After Job loses everything (including his health), but before his friends come to “comfort” him, Job’s wife offers a rare sentence of advice. No other female speaks in the Book of Job so it caught my eye. She suggests that Job should end his misery. By the end of chapter 2, Job is in a truly pitiful state.
September 19, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
On a recent post, I attempted to define idea. Ideas are crucial to the art of learning, yet a precise and singular definition evades me. Clearly, understanding what we’re talking about is never simple. More than a basic definition, though, I want to understand where ideas come from, who uses them, how they continue or evolve,
September 5, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Try to define idea in your own words. It’s a good exercise. Much of our lives are spent dealing with abstractions that we struggle to define.
As students, our entire coursework at HMU revolves around great ideas. When outlining the Great Books curriculum, Mortimer Adler limited his selection of great ideas to about one hundred.
August 1, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Charity is not one of Adler’s great ideas, despite the fact that St. Paul claims: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (King James Version, 1Cor. 13:13). Charity is not one of Adler’s great ideas, despite the fact that many of the great authors construct entire sections of ethics based on charity itself.
May 23, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor for today’s post.
I recently explored The Handbook of Epictetus with a group led by David Saussy of Symposium Great Books Institute. As with many texts, I gained a lot of ideas by exploring it with a group. We used close textual analysis and slow reading to better understand a number of Epictetus’s thoughts. While short in length,
May 9, 2025
Thanks to 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, Estella Achinko, for today’s post.
Life’s journey is an intricate tapestry woven with moments of triumph and despair, shaping our existence and compelling us to pause in introspection. At various junctures, we ponder the essence of our being, asking ourselves: Who are we? What is our purpose? Who are we destined to become? In the relentless tide of circumstances, many beyond our control,
October 25, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Since we recently spent five weeks (which was not nearly enough!) on Moby Dick, the next few blogs will circle around some of the enigmas that we discussed.
While I enjoy the characters of Moby Dick, they aren’t the main focus of my interest. I understand that Moby Dick is technically a great adventure story,
» Read more about: Whale with an H: Melville Defines a Whale »
August 30, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Last week’s blog focused on Cutting the Stems by Virginie Lalucq. The translation impressed me so much that I reached out to one of the translators, professor Claire McQuerry, with a few questions. Because of her generous answers, today’s blog is in the style of an interview. AS signifies my questions and CM denotes Dr.
July 26, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I recently picked up Rollo May’s The Courage to Create. In it, he wrote a line that struck a chord with the current blog discussion of satire. May wrote, “Certainly Dionysian periods of abandon are valuable, particularly in our mechanized civilization where creativity and the arts are all but starved to death by the routine of punching clocks and attending endless committee meetings,
February 16, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Every January, our Quarterly Discussion centers around Natural Science. Since I was recently reading Carlo Rovelli’s book Anaximander and the Birth of Science, I decided to focus this discussion on the rift between science and philosophy. This is a subject which Rovelli writes about extensively. Honestly, I don’t fully understand the discord, so I used this discussion to better comprehend the places where science and philosophy meet as well as the places which cause the most debate.