Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand's book The Virtue of Selfishness, in particular the chapter "The Objectivist Ethics" This focuses specifically on her discussion of how love and friendship are properly understood selfish or self-centered relations to other people To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If yo...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century rational egoist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand's book, The Virtue Of Selfishness. It focuses specifically upon her discussion of the virtues she recognizes - rationality, productivity, pride, independence, integrity, honesty, and justice. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a dire...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century rational egoist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand's book, The Virtue Of Selfishness. It focuses specifically upon her views about how a rational egoist ought to behave and structure their life, choices, and relationships. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century rational egoist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand's book, The Virtue Of Selfishness. It focuses specifically upon her discussion of the difference between other animals and human beings, which has to do with the range and types of consciousness we have. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th Century rational egoist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand's book, The Virtue Of Selfishness. It focuses specifically upon her views about values and their grounding in Life (which for humans means a distinctively human life, not merely survival). To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand's book The Virtue of Selfishness, in particular the chapter "The Objectivist Ethics" This focuses specifically on her discussion of what she terms "non-rational" ethics, by way of contrast to her own rational egoist or "objectivist ethics". She examines what she calls the "mystic", "social", and "subjectivist"...

This is the recording of my invited talk at the first Stoicon-X Brasil online conference. Due to technical issues, I provided a live presentation (translation provided by participants) to the conference. In this presentation, I briefly present the Stoic doctrine of the indifferents (adiaphoria), namely that Stoics view many things as neither good nor bad, but are indifferent. Some indifferents may...

This is my relatively short talk given during the 2025 Plato's Academy multidisciplinary conference: The Philosophy and Psychology of Anger, during which I discuss some of the useful insights and practices early Christian thinkers (2nd-5th Century CE) can provide us. These don't require one to be committed to Christianity and can be applied by a wide range of people. I begin with a passage from Pi...

This is a talk I was invited to provide to the inaugural 2021 Stoicon-X Military conference, held online. I chose as my topic the scope of genuine courage, a topic of considerable importance but also frequent misunderstandings within professions like that of the military. In this talk I discuss what courage is and what it is for, the scope of courage, including its constituent virtues, and finally...

This is the recording of my short presentation and the Q&A at the second Conversations With Modern Stoicism event, hosted in July 2023 by Phil Yanov. Asked to give a short and provocative presentation about an issue that arises in the everyday applications of Stoicism, I chose to focus on a common mistake and distortion of Stoic philosophy and practice. Quite a few people think that Stoicism means...

This is a podcast of a guest sermon, given by invitation to the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Catskills. A guest sermon invited by the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Catskills, Aug 9, 2015. In it, I discuss Rainer Maria Rilke's conception of "solitude" (Einsamkeit), and its relevance to our contemporary lives. Explaining how the two dimensions of slowing down temporally and maki...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part, question 27, "The Causes Of Love", and examines his discussions in article 2, which centers on whether and how knowledge can be a cause of love. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you...

This is a podcast of a guest sermon, given by invitation to the Unitarian Universalist Community of Rock Tavern. In it, I discuss anger as a common problem not only of our own times, but of all times. Christian teachings on anger present us with some "hard sayings," and several 4th century thinkers -- John Cassian, Augustine of Hippo, and John Chrysostom -- are very helpful for understanding how t...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part, question 27, "The Causes Of Love", and examines his discussions in article 3, which centers on whether and how likeness (similitudo) is a cause of love, particularly between similar people. He addresses the issue raised by the classical proverb "potter against potter"...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part, question 27, "The Causes Of Love", and examines his discussions in articles 1 and 4, which center on the issues whether goodness in some sense is a cause of love and whether any other passion is the case of love. Aquinas' answers are that in every case, some good is t...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part of the second part, question 26 "Of Love", and examines his discussions in articles 3-4, which center on different senses or modalities of love (amor). He makes a distinction between four terms: love, dilection (dilectio), friendship (amicitia) and charity (caritas), a...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part of the second part, question 26 "Of Love", and examines his discussions in articles 1-2, which center on determining where love is within the things and specifically within human being. Thomas will frame this in terms of nature and natural love, the sensitive concupisc...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part, question 20, "God's Love", and examines his discussions in articles 3-4, which center on the issues of whether God loves some things more than others or not, and whether God loves better things more than others. For Thomas, this centers upon a distinction about ways i...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part, question 20, "God's Love", and examines his discussion in article 2, which examines the question whether God loves things other than God. Thomas considers four main lines of reasoning that would say that God either doesn't love other things or only loves some other th...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, 1st part, question 20 "God's Love", and examines on his discussion in article 1, which addresses the issue whether love is in God. Aquinas considers several arguments against love being in God and addresses each of them. He also explains how it is that love is in God by looking...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the sequence of letters between two great Medieval intellectuals, lovers, and religious Heloise D'Argenteuil and Peter Abelard It focuses specifically on the fifth and sixth letters, which are by Heloise and Abelard respectfully. In these letters both of the married lovers have opted for leaving their previous amorous and conjugal love behind and shifting thei...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the sequence of letters between two great Medieval intellectuals, lovers, and religious Heloise D'Argenteuil and Peter Abelard It focuses specifically on the fourth letter, which is by Heloise. In this letter Heloise reaffirms her love for her husband Abelard, and asserts that life will have little value or attraction for her after he dies. She explains what e...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the sequence of letters between two great Medieval intellectuals, lovers, and religious Heloise D'Argenteuil and Peter Abelard It focuses specifically on the third letter, which is by Abelard. It discusses Heloise's proposal that although they have taken monastic vows, they can rightly enjoy some married life together through writing letters to each other, and...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the sequence of letters between two great Medieval intellectuals, lovers, and religious Heloise D'Argenteuil and Peter Abelard It focuses specifically on the second letter, which is by Heloise. It discusses the arguments that she advances in the letter, which center on her view that they can continue to enjoy their married relationship through writing letters...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the sequence of letters between two great Medieval intellectuals, lovers, and religious Heloise D'Argenteuil and Peter Abelard It focuses specifically on the first letter, which is by Abelard. It discusses the consolation Abelard attempts to provide his fried by recounting the story of his life, which includes his romantic, intellectual, and sexual involvement...