Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on he new and original American jewelry produced by the Edfrank Custom Jewelry company and placed on consignment with Robert Childan's American Artistic Handcrafts, Inc. store. Childan gives Paul Kasoura one of th...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on one of the key sub-plots in the novel, the Sicherheitsdienst or SD commando attack on the Nippon Times Building, aimed at capturing the Abwehr operative Rudolph Wegner. This takes place while Wegner is meeting...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on a plot-point only revealed in the last third of the book, but which has been set up as Tagomi organizes a meeting between the Swedish Baynes (actually the Abwehr agent Wegner) and retired Japanese general Tedek...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on the interconnection between Nazism, various modes of insanity, and the evil they engage in and impose upon the world. We look at this through the eyes of non-Nazi characters (for the most part), including Rober...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on the alternate history novel "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" which is read and referenced by a number of the characters in the work. The novel by Abendsen sets out a world in which the Axis lost the second world wa...

This lecture discusses the 20th century philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, and focuses on chapter 11 of his book, Philosophy As a Way of Life. He discusses the short history Hadot provides us with, in which ancient philosophy was oriented around what he calls "philosophy as a way of life", including Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. Christian philosophy develops in west in two d...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on two of the characters in the novel, Betty and Paul Kasoura, who are a younger Japanese married couple newly stationed in the Pacific States of America. We get to see them largely through their interactions with...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on one of the characters central to the story, the Swiss Nazi assassin, on a mission to kill the "man in the high castle", Hawthorne Abendsen, the author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. He poses very convincingly a...

This lecture discusses the 20th century philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, and focuses on chapter 7 of his book, Philosophy As a Way of Life. He discusses the criticisms Hadot levies against Michel Foucault's views, which center upon his making the self too central a focus in his discussions of philosophical practices as "technologies of the self", and in overlooking important philo...

This lecture discusses the 20th century philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, and focuses on chapter 11 of his book, Philosophy As a Way of Life. He discusses the distinction he draws between discourse about philosophy and philosophy itself. He argues, using the example of the Stoics, that the parts of philosophy they distinguish (ethics, logic, and physics) are discourses about philos...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on one of the main characters of the work, Juliana Frink, who is a judo instructor living in the Pacific States of America, who has a particularly deep connection to the Oracle, the Book of Changes. She was marrie...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on one of the main characters of the work, the dealer in American antiquities, Robert Childan, who is a person beset by multiple ambiguities. He accepts the racial hierarchy imposed by the Nazis and the Japanese,...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on one of the main characters in the novel, Frank Frink who was a Jewish American soldier who has lived and worked in the Pacific States of America for the last 15 years. The novel begins with him in a crisis due...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on one of the main characters of the work, the Abwehr (Naval Counter-Intelligence) captain and agent Rudolph Wegner, who we are first introduced to under his disguise as Victor Baynes, a Swedish businessman who is...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on one of the most central characters in the work, one who arguably provides the most consistent moral perspective throughout the novel, Nobusuke Tagomi, who is a Trade Mission official in the Pacific States of Am...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on the commerce that develops in Americana artifacts collected by Japanese elites. One of the main characters of the work, Robert Childan owns a shop that provides such artifacts. What is supposed to give these th...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on the role that the ancient Chinese work and practice of divination, The Book Of Changes (Yi Jing/I Ching), generally referred to as "The Oracle". It is used by a number of the characters in the Pacific States of...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on the power struggles going on within the Third Reich of the alternate history in the 1960s, as the current chancellor and Führer Martin Bormann dies. The main Nazi leaders who are in the running for becoming the...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on how Frank Frink and Ed McCarthy begin their Edfrank Custom Jewelry company after Frink is fired by Harlan Wyndam-Matson from his company where Frank has been producing fake American artifacts. They blackmail Wy...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century American science-fiction short story writer and novelist, Philip K. Dick's novel The Man In The High Castle It focuses specifically on the alternative history world that is the setting for the work, one in which the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy won World War 2 against France, Britain, and the USSR, and then attacked the United Stat...

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, the Poetics, focusing on his discussion near the end of the work focused upon the question whether tragedy or epic is superior as a poetic genre. Aristotle argues that tragedy is the superior genre. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do...

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, the Poetics, focusing on his views on what by his time had come to be called "problems" (problemata) mainly of criticism and their "solutions" (luseis) when it comes to poetry, particularly epic poetry. Aristotle's view is that many of these can be addressed by looking carefully at the language and the meanings in passages or co...

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, the Poetics, focusing on his discussion of Epic poetry, including what elements it shares with tragedy, what makes it good, and why Homer is the paradigm for excellent epic poetry To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypa...

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, the Poetics, focusing on his discussion about the fourth dimension of tragedy, lexis, generally translated as "diction" or "style". Aristotle provides some guidelines for how to produce excellence in lexis in tragedy and epic poetry. This involves balancing the needs of clarity and non-banality in the language one selects, which...

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, the Poetics, focusing on his discussion of lexis, usually translated as "diction" or "style", which is the fourth of six dimensions of tragedy that he identifies, and also quite important for epic poetry as well. After an initial discussion of modes of language, Aristotle distinguishes a number of parts of lexis, including eleme...