A healthy common life requires a shared frame of reference, a shared language, and a shared sense of purpose. If we only talk as a community at times of political conflict, we are bound to talk past each other. We won’t have a shared understanding of the very words we are using, we won’t have shared stories to point to, and we won’t have relationships of trust to ground us. Studying philosophy, literature, and history in community can at least give us a common set of terms, a better understanding of our neighbor’s point of view, and a shared frame of reference so that we can fruitfully disagree.

This is the aim of the Lyceum Movement.