Gregory B. Sadler's Blog: Gregory B. Sadler on Medium, page 33

Five New Guest Appearances

I'm long overdue for another roundup of my recent appearances on radio shows, podcasts, and video channels. I make these lists every so often, as the appearances accumulate.  I also have a more comprehensive list of most of my appearances in the last seven or eight years over at my company website, if you'd like to check any of those out.

I get fairly regular requests to talk about a variety of topics because of my philosophy-focused YouTube channel, my business ReasonIO, and my work as e...

Seven Videos on Anselm's On Freedom of Choice

One of the texts I've been teaching for a number of years in my classes is Anselm of Canterbury's On Freedom of Choice.  It's a short dialogue between a teacher and a student, with the teacher clearly as a stand-in for Anselm.  On Freedom of Choice is the second dialogue in a trilogy of works, intended originally to aid the monks under his charge with their study of Scripture.

The other two works in that trilogy are also dialogues, the first one being On Truth, and the third, the sig...

My Foundations in Philosophy Courses This Fall

 This summer, I got asked again to teach two sections of the Foundations in Philosophy class at Marquette University.  This is my third time teaching this semi-new course, which replaces their Philosophy of Human Nature course (which was basically an Intro to Philosophy course, with a few added features).  This time around, I'm sticking with many of the thinkers and texts that I incorporated in last academic year's classes, but I'm also adding in a few new ones as well.

My viewe...

Aiming at Control and Losing Control in the Workplace

Last week, I gave an interview to a student writing a thesis about how Stoic philosophy and practice can productively inform the domain of business.  One of the topics that inevitably came up was what has come to be called the "dichotomy of control".  This is a distinction articulated by the Late Stoic philosopher Epictetus between what is in our control, or is "up to us" (ep'hemon in Greek) and what is not in our control or up to us (ouk ep'hemon). It has come to play a centrally i...

Seven Videos on Gabriel Marcel's On The Ontological Mystery

Earlier this summer, I created a number of new core concept videos as resources for my students enrolled in my online Existentialist Philosophy and Literature (taught for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design).  This opened up an opportunity to shoot a sequence on one of my favorite works of the often overlooked French Catholic Existentialist, Gabriel Marcel, his essay "Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery" (which you can find here, along with his play, The Broken...

Three Videos on David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature

I teach David Hume's works from time to time.  In fact, he made his way into my classes quite early on in my career.  My very first Ethics classes included some portions of his Treatise of Human Nature , and the first time I taught Intro to Philosophy his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding was a required text. 

I incorporated that Enquiry into my Foundations of Philosophy sections (at Marquette University) and my Intro to Philosophy class (at Milwaukee Area Technical College)...

Thumos in Platonic and Aristotelian Moral Psychology

Earlier this week, at the annual Marquette Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition conference, I gave a presentation bearing upon on one of my current research projects.  It stems from my broader research project, focused upon anger in ancient and medieval philosophy, theology, and literature.  My talk was titled "The Significance of Thumos in Platonic and Aristotelian Moral Psychology".

I didn't entirely deliver on what I'd promised in the abstract, in my own view, but my talk was...

Ten Videos on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Earlier this spring, as the semester was coming to a close, and I was getting ready for my online 6-week Existentialist Philosophy and Literature class (developed and taught for the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, now in its 5th week), I shot a sequence of new lecture videos on a classic and extremely influential Existentialist work.

It's one that my subscribers, viewers, followers, and other fans have been asking me to produce videos about for years - Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Z...

Wouldn't It Be Cool? An Idea For A Classic Metal and Philosophy Conference

I posted a picture of my mother-in-law and me earlier today, in Judas Priest t-shirts, and it sparked an interesting conversation with a friend and colleague who is equally appreciative not only of that band, but of classic heavy metal more generally.  He jokingly wrote:  "At some point, I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether evil ever dies." 

For those who aren't up on their contemporary classic metal, "Evil Never Dies" is not only a controversial philosophical claim, b...

Six Lecture Videos on Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

My 6-week online course on Existentialist Philosophy and Literature, developed and taught for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, is well underway.  They're in the middle of Week 3, and just finishing up with a module on Rainer Maria Rilke's works and thought.

I've assigned to them as a required text his Letters to a Young Poet , and as a supplementary text his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .  I have also provided them quite a few resources to help them as they study t...