Sadler's Lectures

This is part 2 of the recording of my invited talk at Christopher Newport University, "Plato, Persons, And The Highest Good". It focuses on the question of whether the highest good in Plato is personal (as it would be e.g. for Christian Platonists) or impersonal (as it's usually taken to be). Centering the discussion on the ascent to the highest Good in the Symposium, I also discuss portions of th...

This is part 1 of the recording of my invited talk at Christopher Newport University, "Plato, Persons, And The Highest Good". It focuses on the question of whether the highest good in Plato is personal (as it would be e.g. for Christian Platonists) or impersonal (as it's usually taken to be). Centering the discussion on the ascent to the highest Good in the Symposium, I also discuss portions of th...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century pessimist philosopher and environmentalist Peter Wessel Zapffe's "The Last Messiah" It focuses specifically on the final parts of the work, where he considers and rejects several possible solutions to the problem posed by modern society for the human animal beset by a surplus of consciousness and a tendency to fall into "cosmic panic" when rea...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century pessimist philosopher and environmentalist Peter Wessel Zapffe's "The Last Messiah" It focuses specifically on the third of the four "suppression mechanisms" that he identifies, which he calls "diversion". It might also be accurately called "distraction", and involves keeping our attention and consciousness occupied by a succession of changing...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century pessimist philosopher and environmentalist Peter Wessel Zapffe's "The Last Messiah" It focuses specifically on attachment as one of the four "suppression mechanisms" he discusses in the essay, which involves creating fixed points in or a wall around the shifting chaos of consciousness. This occurs at the individual, the interpersonal, and the...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century pessimist philosopher and environmentalist Peter Wessel Zapffe's "The Last Messiah" It focuses specifically on the first portion of the work, where he sets out the human condition as he sees it, where as a species the trait that was our great advantage, consciousness, has become too developed in us, leading ultimately to a "cosmic panic", whic...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 19th and 20th century existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov's book "All Things Are Possible" It focuses specifically on his interpretation and assessment of the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who Shestov says is much more interesting in his vices and inconsistencies than in his virtues. Tolstoy was someone who didn't simply write but attempted to live out hi...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 19th and 20th century existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov's book "All Things Are Possible" It focuses specifically on his references to the work, thought, and life of Ivan Turgenev, a Russian author who was perhaps one of the most westernized of his generation. He also discusses the conflict between Turgenev and Tolstoy and what it represented. To suppo...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 19th and 20th century existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov's book "All Things Are Possible" It focuses specifically on his references to and evaluation of Anton Chekhov, who Shestov credits with a more realistic attitude towards philosophies than many other writers, namely that they are very helpful for characters to have and to articulate, but less so f...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 19th and 20th century existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov's book "All Things Are Possible" It focuses specifically on Shestov's views on the works, and philosophical attitude towards life and art, of the Russian author Alexander Pushkin. He credits Pushkin with a sort of optimism that allows him to take risks both in his writing and in the matters of li...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 19th and 20th century existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov's book "All Things Are Possible" It focuses specifically on the passages in the work where he writes about Russian culture and its contrasts with Western European culture. Shestov notes that European culture was transformed in being brought into Russia in just a few generations. He looks at stren...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 19th and 20th century existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov's book "All Things Are Possible" It focuses specifically on his remarks about the philosophical movement and tendency of "positivism" and its relationships with the metaphysics it claims to leave behind and criticize. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If y...

This is part 5 of the recording of my talk at the Fourteenth Annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition, "The Significance of Thumos in Platonic and Aristotelian Moral Psychology". An important difference between the Platonist tradition and the Aristotelian is the status accorded to thumos in their respective moral psychologies. In very broad strokes, the Platonic...

This is part 4 of the recording of my talk at the Fourteenth Annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition, "The Significance of Thumos in Platonic and Aristotelian Moral Psychology". An important difference between the Platonist tradition and the Aristotelian is the status accorded to thumos in their respective moral psychologies. In very broad strokes, the Platonic...

This is part 3 of the recording of my talk at the Fourteenth Annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition, "The Significance of Thumos in Platonic and Aristotelian Moral Psychology". An important difference between the Platonist tradition and the Aristotelian is the status accorded to thumos in their respective moral psychologies. In very broad strokes, the Platonic...

This is part 2 of the recording of my talk at the Fourteenth Annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition, "The Significance of Thumos in Platonic and Aristotelian Moral Psychology". An important difference between the Platonist tradition and the Aristotelian is the status accorded to thumos in their respective moral psychologies. In very broad strokes, the Platonic...

This is part 1 of the recording of my talk at the Fourteenth Annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition, "The Significance of Thumos in Platonic and Aristotelian Moral Psychology". An important difference between the Platonist tradition and the Aristotelian is the status accorded to thumos in their respective moral psychologies. In very broad strokes, the Platonic...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "The Wall And The Books" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions It speculates about the connections between two key themes marking the reign of the first Qin dynasty emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who ordered that all books before him be burned and the enc...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "The Analytical Language Of John Wilkins" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions. It explains the idea behind this rather utopian scheme to remodel language along completely rational and systematic lines in his work An Essay towards a Real Character...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "On Chesterton" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions It sets out and explores some of the interesting traits of an author who he references fairly often in his stories and essays To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "The Enigma Of Edward FitzGerald" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions It discusses the polymath Omar Khayyám, who among other contributions in multiple fields, authored a number of quatrains, many centuries later loosely translated and arranged b...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "Kafka And His Precursors", in which he first examines the idea of literary precursors, and then identifies and briefly discusses six precursors to the works of Franz Kafka, in his view. These are: Zeno's paradoxes of motion an apologue by Han Yu the writings of Kie...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's story "The Immortal" which can be found in Collected Fictions. It focuses on on the last parts of the story, after the narrator has found the city of the immortals and become an immortal himself. As it turns out, immortality is not everything mortals lacking it imagine it...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's story "The Immortal" which can be found in Collected Fictions. It focuses on the first portion of the narrative, in which the narrator relates a story about finding out about a river that grants immortality and a city where the immortals are reputed to live. He leads an e...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's story "Borges and I" which can be found in Collected Fictions. Borges writes about and contrasts himself against the "other Borges", the one who does the writing and to whom things happen. Borges and the other Borges share much in common and are intimately connected, but...