Category: Knowledge
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
June 5, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I remember being a graduate student and receiving grades with little written feedback. I often wondered if a good grade meant that the writing was good, or the ideas were good, or perhaps both. Professors do their best to balance what usually amounts to too much work, but I always wanted more advice or critiques. While the actual grade is some indication,
February 6, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I don’t know if anyone reads Galen anymore. I certainly never encountered his works during my education. Yet it turns out that Galen wrote a lot. In fact, he was one of the most prolific of the ancient authors. He also touched on nearly every subject. Not only did he write about medicine, but he wrote about grammar, rhetoric,
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.
June 13, 2025
Thanks to Estella Achinko, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
The question of what it means to “be” has fascinated philosophers for centuries. The essence of man—our nature, existence, and purpose—is layered with complexities. We are not merely physical beings navigating the world, but entities entwined with our surroundings, shaped by interactions, thoughts, and deeper realities. To truly understand ourselves, we must acknowledge both the tangible and the abstract—the seen and the unseen.
» Read more about: Man and the Pluralistic Essence of Being »
November 22, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
As usual, after completing the October Quarterly Discussions, I am left with more questions than answers. But more importantly, more vital to me, is the fact that many questions have been deepened. During discussion, these ideas evolve and morph into three and four dimensional figures, versus the two dimensional beginnings. Whether you call it Socratic dialogue or inquiry-based discussion,
October 11, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I recently attended ChronFest 2024, an annual virtual conference hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Similar to last year, the event had a strong focus on AI and technology. Of course, AI has disrupted many practices common to educators. For my purposes, I’m most interested in how we will continue to assess a student’s understanding of subject matter.
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.
August 4, 2023
Thanks to Dave Seng, HMU alumnus, for today’s post.
In our last two posts we examined the nature of difficult questions—questions which cannot be reduced to utility or calculation and the rationality of humans contrasted with the functionality of AI. In this post I want to explore the question of wisdom. I will further develop why the hard irreducible questions might be a source of wisdom and then I want to explore how information is structured for human understanding which might lead to wisdom. Using this foundation,
July 28, 2023
Thanks to Dave Seng, HMU alumnus, for today’s post.
To read the previous post in this series, visit hmu.edu
In our last post we looked at the importance of questions and why self-reflection as individuals and a society is important. It seems part of the human situation to ask questions in order to better understand who we are and how to navigate the world. In our discussion series,