Gregory B. Sadler's Blog: Gregory B. Sadler on Medium, page 44

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Classes in the ReasonIO Academy

I'm very happy to announce that we have two new courses available in the ReasonIO Academy.  They are both on Aristotle's classic work in moral theory, the Nicomachean Ethics, so you might be wondering why we are offering two classes for that text.

The answer is pretty simple - we've produced so much content that I didn't want learners to be overwhelmed by it all!  Between these two courses, learners get access to 94 lecture videos, 27 downloadable handouts, 10 quizzes, 11 downloadabl...

Existential Freedom in Sartre's The Flies

Last month, I took part in an online discussion - hosted on the Noetic platform - about a classic Existentialist play by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Flies .  I was particularly happy after rereading the work several years back to have a similar experience to that in returning to a number of other Existentialist works that I originally read some years back, and now revisit with a perspective altered by time, maturation, and further study.  Sometimes works that I remember turn out not to pos...

A New Local Stoic Meetup - The MKE Stoic Fellowship

Last week, we held the first meeting for the MKE Stoic Fellowship !  (For my readership that is out of town, "MKE" is the designation for Mitchell airport, here in Milwaukee, and in recent years has become a kind of code for the entire Greater Milwaukee area).  This was a particularly important meeting, since it was devoted to determining what sorts of Stoicism-related activities we would plan for the year.

We also got to meet each other, as well as to discuss the interests and backgr...

Trump's Inaugural Address - A Philosophical Examination (part 1 of 3)

Like most Americans this election cycle, I closely followed the long campaigns and contests, participating in a number of discussions and observing many more, and voting in our state primary and the national election.  It has been without a doubt the most interesting election cycle of my lifetime, given how many issues were brought to the fore, the situation of cultural, economic, and political crisis and conflicts we remain mired in, and the alternatives offered to us in the form of can...

Visualizing Networks of Philosophical Influence

A recent piece in Daily Nous, A Visualization of Influence in the History of Philosophy, highlights a new visualization project for figures in the history of philosophy - Philosopher's Web, created by Grant Louis Oliveira.  I'll lay my proverbial cards on the table with this one immediately.

While the project has a very worthwhile goal, and could provide a much needed resource, in its present form it is highly inadequate as what it purports to be, for reasons I'll discuss below. &nbs...

New Online Course - World Views And Values

One of the popular online courses I designed and taught several years back - while still working in traditional academia - was World Views and Values.  Intended primarily for transfer and degree-completion students, it was described as more or less an Intro to Philosophy course.

I was given considerable latitude in designing the course, so I decided to center it around a set of key thinkers and texts that my students were unlikely to have encountered previously - and perhaps would not as...

Philosophy As A Way Of Life - Who Else Besides Hadot?

One of the areas I work in as a professional philosopher is Stoic philosophy. Up to this point, I've admittedly published relatively little in traditional academic formats about Stoicism, but I regularly write, speak, and produce content about Stoicism in more popular and public settings.  Currently, I also edit an important forum for modern interpretations, discussion, and application of Stoic philosophy, Stoicism Today .  Though I'm not an orthodox Stoic, but rather an avowed eclec...

10 Famous Lines By Philosophers You Should Definitely Read

Every once in a while, a philosopher comes up with a great line, a saying that for one reason or another "sticks", so well that many - even most - of the people who employ the saying couldn't tell you which work the quip came from.  Why is that?  In most cases, it is because they haven't read that philosopher's work, or perhaps anything by that philosopher.  They just know - or rather, think they know - that the philosopher said it.  And it sounds cool, or apropos, or at l...

21 Free Course Videos on Epictetus' Enchiridion

Last summer, I created a series of videos on a classic text of Stoic philosophy in my new History of Ideas YouTube channel - Epictetus' Enchiridion.  There are 21 roughly half-hour videos in the series, and they provide commentary, explanations, and lots of examples covering the entire work, line by line, skipping nothing.

As some of you may know, I've also been producing a similar, but much more ambitious series focused on a much longer work, G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit - the...

How Hard Is It To Find An Aristotelian Friend?

A thoughtful piece published last month in the Columbia Spectator, An Aristotelian Friend Is Hard To Find, brings up an issue about which I've often found myself engaged in not-entirely-satisfactory discussion:  the nature of friendship and the types of relationships.  I've taught Aristotle's classic treatment of friendship from book eight of the Nicomachean Ethics more times than I can easily tally up.  In my philosophical counseling practice - perhaps because so many peo...