Category: Syntopicon
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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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 29, 2025
Thanks to Estella Achinko, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
I have always been fascinated by the way nations rise and fall. Whether it’s the brutal rule of totalitarian regimes in Europe, the iron-fisted dictatorships of Africa, or the complex democracy of the United States, governance has remained a delicate, often unpredictable experiment. History does not provide a single blueprint for a successful state—only cautionary tales and fleeting moments of prosperity.
» Read more about: The Success of a Nation: Rethinking the Ideal State »
October 27, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Viola Cordova was one of the first Native American women to earn a degree in philosophy. Born in 1937, she grew up in Taos, New Mexico. Embracing both her own past and her curiosity of the world, she discarded notions that philosophy should be separated into categories like white or western. Instead, she focused on using all of the tools that we have been given,
August 26, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
From Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
“I wonder whether what I see and seem to understand about nature is merely one of the accidents of freedom, repeated by chance before my eyes, or whether it has any counterpart in the worlds beyond Tinker Creek. I find in quantum mechanics a world symbolically similar to my world at the creek.
July 23, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Harrison Middleton University’s July Quarterly Discussion revolved around ideas of justice. We focused on two pieces of literature, one excerpt from Thucydides and the other a letter written by Simón Bolívar. Both pieces introduce ideas of justice which deserve a second look in comparison to our understanding of justice today. Thanks to the participants of July’s Quarterly discussion which,
June 11, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
When looking through the Syntopicon under “F,” I find Family, Fate, and Form. Yet, the more I think about it, I want to find Forgiveness.
Merriam-Webster defines “forgive” as: to cease to feel resentment against; to give up resentment or requital; to grant relief from payment; to cancel an indebtedness. It comes from Old English (OE) “for-gifan” which had various meanings,
March 13, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
According to Virginia Woolf, reading is virtuous. The endeavor – performed well – enhances one’s being. It pleases her to see books on shelves in coffee houses, children’s rooms, and kitchens. In The Common Reader, Woolf celebrates the fact that reading, having evolved over many hundreds of years, has become a staple of the human lifestyle.
» Read more about: Using Virginia Woolf to Discuss Emotion »
January 31, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“Genome engineered plants and animals are happening right now. And this puts in front of all of us a huge responsibility to consider carefully both the unintended consequences as well as the intended impacts of a scientific breakthrough.” – Jennifer Duodna, TED Talk
In January’s Quarterly Discussion, we looked at The Law by Hippocrates and also some videos and an article by Jennifer Duodna,
January 11, 2019
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“Let’s listen with our eyes and not just our ears. That would be the ideal.” –Christine Sun Kim
Early exposure to language seems to be the key in all languages. The key to what? Success in that language, or with language in general? Or in society? What is the bar for success and how is it measured?
January 4, 2019
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Some members in my family celebrate New Year’s Eve with lutefisk or sauerkraut. Some people celebrate with both. I, however, draw the line at lutefisk. I just cannot stomach it. What seems to me to be a petty difference of taste really bothers others, though. They fear bad karma (or something) when I disrespect the tradition. We turn this into a joke at the dinner table,