Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay "That Difficulty Increases Desire" (Que Nostre Desir S'accroit par la Malaisance), which begins by invoking a principle and practice from the Skeptic school, that every argument, position, or "reason" has its contrary. Montaigne considers one positio...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay "On Democritus and Heraclitus" It focuses upon his critical contrast of these two thinkers and the temperaments or attitudes towards life they represent, one of laughter and disdain, the other of sadness, compassion, and taking human affairs seriousl...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Not Judging Us Happy Until After Death (Qu'Il ne Faut Juger de Nostre Heur, Qu'apres la Mort), in which he begins by considering the famous advice given by the Athenian wise man Solon to Croesus, king of Lydia until he was deposed by Cyrus of Pers...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Is Patriotism A Virtue?" It focuses upon the fifth and final part of the article, where MacIntyre discusses the implications of both liberal universal morality and the morality of patriotism being morally dangerous, having valid criticisms of each other, and being both in par...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Is Patriotism A Virtue?" It focuses upon the fourth part of the work where he brings a morality of patriotism and a liberal universalist morality into dialectical engagement with each other. Looking earlier at criticisms liberal morality had levied against patriotism, he had...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Is Patriotism A Virtue?" It focuses upon he fourth part of the piece, where MacIntyre suggests that the morality of patriotism and liberal morality should be brought into dialectical engagement with each other. He begins by noting some of the criticisms that can be and typica...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Is Patriotism A Virtue?" It focuses upon the third section, in which he outlines some of the central claims of what he calls the morality of patriotism. These have to do with the importance of particular communities as places where human beings learn moral conceptions and val...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Is Patriotism A Virtue?" It focuses upon his discussion of one common approach to morality in modernity that will inevitably construe patriotism however understood as a vice, rather than as a virtue, one he labels "liberal" morality, which requires moral agents to abstract fr...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Is Patriotism A Virtue?" It focuses upon the first portion of the work, where MacIntyre notes that the task for the moral philosopher is to provide clarity about the incompatible claims and convictions people make about patriotism, virtue, and morality. He distinguishes patri...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work Can Virtue Be Taught? In this work, Plutarch considers the arguments of those who claim that virtue, including justice and prudence, cannot be taught, and shows weaknesses to those arguments. Among the arguments that he makes in favor of virtue being able to be taught is his contention that if the ot...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Virtue and Vice This episode focuses on his discussion why living pleasantly and happily requires a person to develop some level of moral virtue and to free themselves of their vices. This has to do in significant part with the fact that even the things that vicious people value and think will bri...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion at the end of the work that sets out how the rational part of the soul ought to use the emotions from the irrational part of the soul, rather than simply suppress or eliminate them. Plutarch names a number of specific emotions that c...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion near the end of the work of how the rational and irrational parts of the soul ought to be ordered and related to each other. Plutarch thinks the rational (and divine) part ought to be determining matters overall, and that the irratio...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his criticisms of the Stoic understanding of what the emotions are, how they work, how they arise, and how they influence us human beings in our choices and actions You can find the copy of the text I am using for this sequence on Plutarch's On Mor...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on how conflicts can arise within the intellectual or reasoning part of the human soul, between different lines of reasoning (logoi) arriving at different judgements about the matters in question. At times, one line of reasoning can be given additiona...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion of the Stoic doctrine of the "good emotional states" (eupatheiai), which are rational desire (boulēsis), caution (eulabeia), and joy (kharis). Some of the points Plutarch makes seem a bit off-target in this section, as far as the Sto...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his critical examination of what the Stoics call the hegemonikon, translated as "the ruling part" of the human soul. As opposed to a Platonist or Aristotelean moral psychology, in which there is a higher rational part of the human soul, and a lower...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on the distinction he draws between the vice of intemperance (akolasia) and the other bad, but not vicious moral state of lack of self-control (akrasia). Similarly to his treatment of the virtue of temperance and the state of self control, he notes th...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on the distinction he draws between temperance (sophrosunē), which is a virtue, and self-control (enkrateia), which is not a virtue but is a good state. Both of them involve two parts of the human soul, the rational and irrational part. In both of the...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion of two distinct uses of the faculty of reason human beings have. One use focuses on things that are by necessity and remain the same, that exist absolutely, and this is scientific or theoretical reason. The other use focuses on thing...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion about how virtue is a mean, which bears some similarities with the Aristotelian position on the matter, but also several significant differences of emphasis You can find the copy of the text I am using for this sequence on Plutarch's...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on the section where Plutarch discusses what he takes moral or ethical virtue to actually be. He frames it in terms of a quality of the irrational part of the soul that has been established within it as a habit formed or shaped by the rational part of...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on how what he calls the irrational part of the soul (which encompasses the spirited part and the appetitive part, and is the part that feels or has passions) ought to be subjected to and persuaded by the rational part of the human soul. When this is...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion, early on in the work, of the composite nature of the human soul, which includes a rational part and an irrational part, the latter of which is further divided into a spirited (thumoeides) part and an appetitive part (epithumia). Thi...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion of what he takes to be mistaken conceptions of the virtues found in the works of the philosophers Menedemus, Ariston, Zeno, and Chysippus, so that he can contrast his own middle-Platonist perspective against them. There are two main...