Gregory B. Sadler's Blog: Gregory B. Sadler on Medium, page 50

SEU: Freedom, Choice, and Success: What Is The Existentialist Stance?

Since I use Orexis Dianoētikē as a nexus knotting together intellectual threads from my other, more specifically focused blogs, I'm doing that in this entry -- calling attention to a 2-part discussion about existentialism, freedom, choice, and the success of the projects and commitments of a person. Here's part 1 and part 2.

We veered off into a discussion about the ways some people connect up radical human freedom (which existentialists do affirm) with personal responsibility for producing on...

The Iron Law of Ochlocracy (part 1)

This last week, with the exception of the night of my birthday, I've been attending a nightly series of stimulating lectures -- one of the benefits of being accorded Visiting Scholar status at European Graduate school this year -- one of which was delivered by Michael Hardt, probably best known outside of progressive and revolutionary academic circles for his collaborative work, Empire (with Antonio Negri).

Hardt used the lecture as an opportunity to set out a project he has been working on, b...

Hello Again From Saas-Fee!

A bit under a year ago, I decided to put my blogging endeavors on hold -- announced in the post just below this one -- including this one, my oldest blog.  It has indeed been a year packed with projects and opportunities, changes and events. 

The medium in which I've done the most work in that time -- outside of the interactions of the classroom and course management system -- has been video, specifically producing, releasing, and curating mainly philosophy-related videos in my YouT...

Updates on New Projects

I've been finding myself with progressively less and less time available for blogging this last year -- which is actually a good thing, since the time has been going into:
producing a number of Philosophy-focused YouTube videosregular activity on platforms like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitterproducing educational materials and uploading them in Academia, Learnist, and Curiousresponding to comments and carrying on correspondenceteaching my current classes at Marist College, and explori...

Radio Show Guest Spot: Hegel and (Mis)Education in America

Last month, I appeared as a guest on Patrick McCarty's internet radio show, Insight Radio, along with a bright young high school student, Rohan Macherla, who has already developed a strong interest in an understanding of the daunting, difficult thought of G.W.F. Hegel.  The segment was to start out discussing the section "Self-Consciousness" from the Phenomenology of Spirit (famous for the portion called the Master-Slave Dialectic), and then go off in whatever directions seemed fit to us...

Heavy Metal Philosopher: 10 Great Classic Metal Bassists (What Makes for Greatness?)

One of the side-projects I started in August -- actually a sort of 43rd birthday indulgence to myself -- was starting a new blog, one focused particularly on intersections between classic heavy metal music (a love of both my youth and my middle age) and philosophy.  I'd decided not to say much about it until I'd at least gotten a few entries under my belt.  Tonight I finally finished up an entry started some time back -- one whose subject matters I've been mulling over for quite som...

Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice

Last weekend, I attended the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy conference, chaired two sessions, met a number of scholars as interested and enthusiastic about the thought of antiquity as I am, and gave the paper which I'd long ago proposed, "Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice."  Or rather, I presented the paper in a summary form -- I was assigned to a panel of four speakers, and each of us got about 20 minutes to set out the main lines of our research.

It wasn't a venue particu...

Virtue Ethics Digest: Are The Virtues Already In Us?

Over in one of my other blogs, Virtue Ethics Digest, I've got a recent set of reflections spurred by a certain misreading or misunderstanding which I see consistently appearing in certain of my students' papers, Are The Virtues Already In Us?  It represents what seems to me a characteristically late modern manner of getting virtue (and thereby also vice, moral development, decision, and a number of other key concepts in moral theory) wrong.  Here's a brief excerpt:

The kind of mistak...

Violence Over Kant Interpretation?

The story from Rostov-on-Don last month is the sort of incongruous verging on comedy that, as the saying goes "you just can't make up" -- or at least not easily -- since nobody who has seriously studied the moral theory of Immanuel Kant would think to associate his work and thought with the sort of disagreement that would turn nakedly violent.  And yet, there they were, the headlines.

You've got the straightforward and succinct Reuter's story: Man shot in Russia in Argument over Kant. ...

Symposia, Then and Now

Some time back, it was proposed to me to give a talk of some sort for students at the Culinary Institute of America's Feasting and Foraging event, a day devoted to discussion, demonstration, and even some experiential learning focused on ancient ways of food production and everything that went with that.  I brainstormed through several topics that might fit the overall theme -- Aristotle's discussion of modes of food production and the ways of life they make possible, the still-controver...