Eight Podcast Episodes on Epicurus' Principal Doctrines and Letters

Epicurus is one of the thinkers whose works I teach fairly often.  Most of my Introduction to Philosophy classes will include a day or two devoted to Epicurus and Epicureanism, and in one of the classes I'm teaching next semester, Philosophy, Mindfulness, and Life, we will be spending about two weeks on the Epicurean tradition.

Quite a while back, I produced a series of lecture videos on Epicurus' main ideas (you can check out the playlist here), and over the last year and a half, I've been taking those shorter lecture videos, converting them to sound files, editing them and fixing the sound (as best as I can), and then producing them as podcast episodes.  

They really do double duty.  I use them in my academic classes as additional resources for my students.  They can download and listen to high-quality, well-informed lectures on the texts and thinkers they are studying, anywhere they'd like to.  I also make them available as resources for the general public as well, and listeners do seem to enjoy them and find them useful.

So, here's that set of podcast episodes on Epicurus.  All told, they run about 1 hour and 40 minutes, so a person could listen their way through the entire set in the space of a a longish workout or walk, or while traveling.

• Epicurean Practical Reasoning
• Pleasure, Prudence, And Justice
• Mental And Bodily Pleasures
• Moving And Static Pleasures
• Three Types Of Desires
• Two Sources Of Groundless Fears
• Nature And Usefulness Of Justice
• The Value Of Friendship

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Six Podcast Episodes on Cicero's On Fate

One of the topics I like to teach in my Introduction to Philosophy classes is that of freedom and determinism.  There is a lot of great literature discussing these metaphysical matters, and one of the early important texts is an (unfortunately) incomplete one by Marcus Tullius Cicero, called On Fate. 

The ideas in On Fate get referenced by several other authors who I often teach as well, particularly Augustine of Hippo and Boethius, when they are considering the same issues of freedom of the will and causal determinism. 

What I particularly like about this text - as a teacher - are several things.  First, it's short.  True, it's shorter than we'd like since we've lost part of the text!  But it's easy enough to cover in a class session. Second, it introduces some key ideas that have been used to make sense of the topics involved.  It also introduces them to a common argument favoring fatalism, and some ideas about determinism that still show up in the present.  And third, it provides some useful summaries about the positions of four important thinkers and schools on these matters in antiquity.

The six podcast episodes come to a bit under an hour and a half of listening time.  Here they are:

• Temperament And Geographical Determinism
• Diodorus' Megarian Position
• Epicurus' Position
• Chrysippus' Stoic Position
• Carneades' Academic Skeptic Position
• The Idle Argument

If you'd like to make a contribution to helping me continue my work making classic philosophical texts, thinkers, and topics accessible for people worldwide, consider becoming a monthly supporter on Patreon.  If you'd like to make a one-time donation, you can do so directly on Paypal, or on Buy Me A Coffee.

Moving Video Premiere Date to November 30

One of the new series of videos I started this year provide viewers with my expert advice about how to engage in self-directed study in the field of Philosophy.  Once I have produced a video in this series, I premiere it on YouTube.  That allows anyone who is interested in the topic and the particular thinker to join in via live chat, while everyone watches it for the first time.  I answer questions and address comments over the hour that the video airs.

This month, the plan is to produce, release, and premiere a video focused on how to productively study the range of writers that fall under the rubric of "early Christian philosophy".  This includes a host of thinkers from the very early generations of that new religion, way of life, and indeed in some cases, philosophy all the way though what we might call the "era of Augustine" (though some are his contemporaries).

There were quite a few early Christian writers who explicitly framed Christianity as a "philosophy" and sometimes even called themselves "philosophers".  These were almost invariably Christian writers who had a substantial background in a wide range of the philosophical schools, ideas, and controversies of ancient Mediterranean culture, and who engaged some of those movements and thinkers as interlocutors.  Sometimes they willingly borrowed from pagan thinkers, when there was something of value to incorporate into the new synthesis and the new philosophy as a way of life, centered around the figure and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and the developing community of the Church.

In the case of some of the authors I'll be discussing - Justin Martyr, Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, John Cassian, as examples - I've been reading and thinking about their works (and occasionally teaching them as well) for about two decades.  So I've got a lot of advice to assemble and organize for the video.  Given my extraordinarily heavy teaching load this semester (seven classes), I'm a bit behind on video production.

I was hoping to have this next video on self-directed study in philosophy ready to premiere this Saturday, but now think that unlikely.  Accordingly, I'm moving the date for this release - and the Q&A session - out to Saturday, November 30.  In the meantime, here's the other videos in the series:

• Self-Directed Study - Plato's Philosophy
• Self-Directed Study - Aristotle's Philosophy
• Self-Directed Study - Stoic Philosophy
• Self-Directed Study - Epicurean Philosophy
• Self-Directed Study - Cicero's Philosophy
• Self-Directed Study - Anselm of Canterbury's Philosophy

Eight Short Videos on Epicurus' Thought

Some time back, I created a set of eight core concept videos focused specifically on several key ideas from the few texts we still possess authored by the great Hellenistic hedonist philosopher, Epicurus (which you can find assembled together here)

Although I'm far from being an Epicurean myself, I frequently teach his ideas in my Ethics and Introduction to Philosophy classes, so developing these short lecture videos has been very useful for me and my students.

I'll be discussing the Epicurean tradition again this semester in at least three of the five classes I'm slated to teach, and I'll likely be adding a few new Core Concept videos to supplement the stock of those I already have available.  Most likely, those won't be focused specifically on the founder of that school, though, but on the Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius' main work, On The Nature of Things - and on book 1 of Cicero's On The Ends, in which his character, Torquatus, presents Epicurean perspectives on a variety of topics.

Here are the eight core concept videos focused specifically on Epicurus' thought.  Altogether, they comprise a bit under two hours of lectures, covering most of his main ideas, arguments, and distinctions in ethics.

• Practical Reasoning about Pain and Pleasure
• Pleasure, Prudence, and Justice
• The Nature and Usefulness of Justice
• Two Sources of Groundless Fears 
• Mental and Bodily Pleasures
• Moving and Static Pleasures 
• Three Types of Desires
• The Value of Friendship 

As a parting thought, although Epicurus was reportedly one of the most prolific philosophers of ancient times, we currently possess just the smallest portion of his works.  And we're very fortunate to have that, because nearly all of what we do have derives from Diogenes Laertes' work Lives of the Philosophers.  Because he liked Epicurus, Diogenes copied by hand three of Epicurus' letters and the Principal Doctrines verbatim into the last book of that work. Lucky for us he did!

Eleven Videos on Cicero's On The Ends

On The Ends (also translated as On Moral Ends) is one of my favorite works by the great Roman orator, politician, and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero.  In its five books, through interlocutors representing several great philosophical schools of antiquity, he presents their key moral doctrines in systematic detail, and in the case of the Epicureans and Stoics, levies tough criticisms of those positions as well.

I taught books 1 and 3 to the students in two of my classes this semester (Foundations in Philosophy at Marquette University and Philosophies of Human Nature at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design).  These are the parts of the work in which Torquatus sets out the Epicurean position and Cato sets out the Stoic position.  I also created some new core concept videos as resources for my students in those classes.

They may be of interest or of use to the broader public, so I've compiled them here:

Book 1 - Epicurean ethics

• Epicureans on Pleasure as the Basis
• Pleasure, Pain, and Moral Virtue
• Pleasure and Removal of Pain 
• Mental and Bodily Pleasures
• Epicurean Friendship

Book 3 - Stoic Ethics

• Primary Impulses of Human Nature
• What Is In Accordance With Nature
• Virtue as the Good
• Virtue and Preferred Indifferents
• Indifferents Preferred, Rejected, and Neutral
• Appropriate Acts or Duties (Officia)

Down the line, I'll likely shoot many more videos on these two books.  Then I'll go on to key concepts from the other three books.