Gregory B. Sadler's Blog: Gregory B. Sadler on Medium, page 47

Free Online Resources on Epictetus' Stoic Philosophy

Since the beginning of my career, in my first Ethics class as a graduate student, I have been teaching Epictetus' Stoic philosophy.  At the beginning, I concentrated on his short handbook, the Enchiridion Once I discovered just how much of a richer Stoic perspective the four books of his Discourses (those we currently possess - there may have originally been eight) contribute, I shifted my focus towards introducing students to key passages from that work.

Last Fall, I designed, produced,...

Half Hour Hegel Hits #100

One of the projects I started a bit over two years back - Half Hour Hegel - has crossed an important threshold.  The video lectures I've been creating, engaging in paragraph by paragraph commentary on G.W.F. Hegel's notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit , now number in the triple digits.

With video #100, we're now just at the beginning of a lengthy section of the work, Reason (the second-longest portion of the text). We've gone through the Preface, the Introduction, the Consciousne...

New Lecture Series - Worlds of Speculative Fiction

After our move from the Hudson Valley of New York back to Milwaukee, we started looking for another library to partner with in order to offer a monthly series.  The Brookfield Public Library stepped up, and we began organizing the new series: Worlds of Speculative Fiction - Philosophical Themes.

The general idea behind the series is for me to reread classic science fiction and fantasy authors I've enjoyed in the past, and then to discuss with an audience of library patrons and the general...

Five Course Lectures on MLK's Letter To a Birmingham Jail

In the online World Views and Values course that I developed - and still teach on occasion - for Marist College, the thinker who I chose to close out the 10-week class with was Martin Luther King, Jr.. The course, by design, centered on issues such as the human person, moral norms and development, politics and society, culture and education, freedom and fate, inequalities and equality, as well as the nature of the greater reality within which the entire human sphere is situated.

I chose to mak...

Free Resources on Plato's Symposium

Back in the month of August, I taught a 4-week online course for the Global Center for Advanced Studies on Plato's Symposium -- a very enjoyable class, involving excellent student discussions!

When it comes to designing online classes, I'm a bit on the over-achiever side.  For every 2-hour videoconference class session, I produce a 25-40 slide presentation.  I also create video content, lesson pages, and handouts on the material we're studying.  Ok. . . so more than a bit . . ....

Open Access Class on Epictetus' Discourses

I'm very happy to be able to report that enrollment is currently open for a 4-week, online course in which I'll be leading students through all four books of a classic Stoic text, Epictetus' discourses.  The course is being hosted in the Moodle eSchool of the Global Center for Advanced Studies, and offered for free as a service to the general educational public.

I'll be holding the first video-conferencing course sessions next Saturday.  Students who enroll in the class will be able...

Our Move Back To Milwaukee

Three weeks ago, my wife and I (and our aging dogs) finished a long-planned move from Kingston, NY to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The trip took two very long days of driving, and some adventures (which you can hear about in this video, if you're so inclined), and moving everything into our new apartment took the entirety of a day as well.

Both Andi and I maintain some pretty heavy workloads, with a lot of deadlined projects -- and in her case, ten days away in California for her work -- so the proc...

Two Working Papers from the ACPA Conference

When I'm able to, I typically attend the American Catholic Philosophical Association, one of the larger and more important annual philosophy conferences in the United States.  As a graduate student and young professor, I started out giving papers in the main ACPA sessions (including these on Hegel, Blondel, Anselm, and Aristotle). In more recent (and busier) years, I've tended to miss the traditional April deadline for submitting papers.  But, I've also been asked to contribute pape...

Starting the Master-Slave Dialectic

More than a year-and-a half-in, the Half-Hour Hegel project continues on strong!  I've just released the 74th installation in this video lecture series -- aimed at providing an innovative, open-access, digital commentary on G.W.F Hegel's first major work, the notoriously difficult Phenomenology of Spirit .

I usually provide updates about the project and matters Hegel-related on the Half-Hour Hegel blog, but since the Master-Slave dialectic is a particularly popular selection from the work...

Understanding Anger - Lecture 9: Thomas Aquinas On Anger

Our series of monthly lectures for this year -- hosted by the historic Kingston Library -- has come to a close, with a well-attended and very enjoyable last session.  The topic for this talk, Thomas Aquinas' perspective upon anger, tied together thematic threads from many of the previous sessions, particularly because Thomas himself was a great systematizer and synthesizer of previous points of view.

In the previous session, we examined several early Christian thinkers who discussed anger...