Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the medieval Christin philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas's work, the Summa Theologiae, First Part of the Second Part, question 46 "On Anger" It focuses specifically in particular on a comparison made between anger and desire (concupiscentia), and the question as to which of them is more "natural". This requires making some distinctions about what "natur...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Three Kinds Of Social Intercourse It focuses upon the three kinds of interactions that Montaigne enjoys the most, which are conversations with good friends, engagements with attractive and intelligent women, and reading the thoughts of authors in...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Affectionate Relationships It focuses upon the range of various relationships in which people exhibit affection towards each other that are discussed in this essay. Montaigne devotes a significant part of the work to discussing friendship, both th...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Affectionate Relationships It focuses upon several different types of relationships that are oriented around sexual desire and enjoyment, including romantic and sexual involvements between men and women, marriages, and male-male relationships in a...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Affectionate Relationships It focuses upon his discussion of friendship, in which he distinguishes between the fullest sort of friendship, which involves an interpenetration of wills and which is valued for its own sake, and the more common sorts...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Cato The Younger It focuses upon that Stoic statesman and philosopher, Cato, who fought in the Civil War against Julius Caesar and killed himself rather than accept Caesar's offered amnesty. While discussing him, Montaigne makes some important poi...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Liars (Des Menteurs) It focuses upon the distinction between lying and telling falsehoods, why lying is a particularly bad vice, how to catch liars, and why people who want to lie need good memories To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon sit...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On The Inconstancy Of Our Actions It focuses upon his discussion of whether people really do have the fixed character many like to attribute to them or not, and advocates looking at a person's actions over time to determine what sort of person they a...

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 three important and ultimately interconnected dimensions for ancient philosophies as ways of life, namely the self, other people, and the cosmic dimension of the entire universe. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Anger It focuses upon his views on this emotion, partly drawn from other thinkers like Seneca and Plutarch. First Montaigne discusses children and other vulnerable people who suffer from cruel and violent punishments doled out in anger. He then di...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Habit It focuses upon how habit or custom has much more impact upon our lives than we often give it credit for, supplanting rules of nature, altering our perceptions, giving rise to judgements and opinions, and resisting our reasonings. To support...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Habit It focuses upon the second topic of the essay, and Montaigne provides a number of reasons for being very leery about changing traditional laws and arrangements within society, spurred not least by the civil discord that developed in France d...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Moderation It focuses upon Montaigne's claim that we human beings can treat even virtue and justice immoderately, when we go too far with it and lose a sense of proportion. He also advocates that we ought to be moderate in our indulgence in sexual...

This lecture discusses the 20th century philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, and focuses on chapter 4 of his book, Philosophy As a Way of Life. He discusses the notion of "spiritual perfection" developed early on within Christian thought and how it both incorporates but differentiates itself from pre-Christian philosophies as ways of life To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon s...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay To Philosophise Is To Learn To Die It focuses upon his examination of pleasure as a motivation for human choices, commitments, and actions. Montaigne argues that rightly understood, there is a better and higher form of pleasure than simple base pleas...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay How We Weep And Laugh At The Same Thing It focuses upon the inconsistency of emotions we witness in a number of different people (including Montaigne himself), which should keep us from ascribing a fixed an immutable character to them. Montaigne expl...

This lecture discusses the 20th century philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, and focuses on chapter 4 of his book, Philosophy As a Way of Life. He discusses his examination of modes of prosokhē or attentiveness in the Christian philosophy (understood as a way of life) emerging in the late ancient period and extending into the middle ages To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon si...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay To Philosophise Is To Learn To Die It focuses upon his analysis of why people unnecessarily fear death, and how we can make death something familiar and thereby less scary to ourselves. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon....

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay To Philosophise Is To Learn To Die It focuses upon the ways in which Montaigne understands life and death as being related to each other, as not merely opposites To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay Same Design, Different Outcomes It focuses upon his views that much of our lives are subject to fortune, so that events or consequences can go differently than our intentions or plans. This does not mean that we shouldn't do what seems most just, vir...

This lecture discusses the 20th century philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, and focuses on chapter 4 of his book, Philosophy As a Way of Life. He discusses how Christianity was explicitly identified by a number of early Christian thinkers as a "philosophy". This continued on through the middle ages, where Christian monasticism was also termed "Christian philosophy". Hadot points out...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca's Letters, this one looking at Letter 70, in which Seneca discusses whether or not ending one's life deliberately is permissible or not from a Stoic perspective. He considers a number of aspects of the question, arguing that what we should take into consideration is the quality of a life rather than its quantity. He refers...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca's Letters, this one looking at Letter 63, in which Seneca tells a friend who is grieving after the death of another friend that it is reasonable for him to grieve and even to cry tears, but that he should keep from excessively grieving. Seneca provides advice about how to regard and make use of the memories one has of frien...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" It focuses upon MacIntyre's discussion of moral development and a person's life understood as a narrative 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...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" It focuses upon the extent to which what MacIntyre calls "plain persons" need to be or become moral philosophers. He writes: "We can now say something more not only about how much of a moral philosopher the plain person has to be, but also abou...