School of Wisdom — Catalogue

In this lecture, we will explore the life, writings, and historical context of one of medieval Europe's greatest mystical voices. You will discover the unique world of the Beguines—independent religious women who challenged conventional ideas about spirituality—and learn why Hadewijch's vision of Minne, or divine love, remains one of the most original expressions of Christian mysticism.

This lecture offers an introduction to the rich philosophical tradition that developed within the Islamic world, from the translation and transformation of Greek philosophy to the original contributions of thinkers such as Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes. We will explore questions of reason and revelation, God and creation, the nature of the soul, knowledge, existence and the relationship between philosophy and religious thought, while considering the ways in which Islamic philosophers both preserved and transformed the legacy of classical antiquity.

In this lecture, we will journey into the history, culture, and beliefs of the Thracian people, exploring their origins, their powerful kingdoms, their relationships with the Greeks and Persians, and their eventual incorporation into the Roman Empire. We will also examine their remarkable artistic achievements, religious practices, and legendary figures such as the singer Orpheus and the slave-turned-gladiator Spartacus. Through archaeology, ancient texts, and recent discoveries, we will uncover the story of a civilization that played a vital role in shaping the history of southeastern Europe.

Guy Debord’s *The Society of the Spectacle*, published in 1967, offers a radical critique of a society in which our relationship to reality is increasingly mediated by images, commodities and representations. For Debord, the spectacle is not simply the accumulation of images surrounding us, nor is it confined to advertising or mass media. It is a social relation between people mediated by images: a way of living in which experience is increasingly replaced by its representation, and in which what appears to be real begins to matter more than what is actually lived. More than half a century later, in a world saturated with screens, social media and carefully constructed public identities, Debord’s analysis has acquired an unsettling contemporary relevance. This lecture explores his central ideas and asks what happens to our attention, our desires and our capacity for genuine experience when life itself becomes something to be displayed, consumed and watched.

In this course, you will be introduced to the essential ideas of phenomenology through the work of thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Emmanuel Levinas. Together, we will explore how consciousness, perception, embodiment, time, and our relationships with others shape the way reality appears to us. Rather than asking what the world is, phenomenology asks how the world is experienced.