Ten Podcast Episodes on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The very first book by Nietzsche I read, more than 30 years ago, is Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  I'd heard a lot about him from other authors, and I think I remember someone advising me that this was the work to start with, so in my freshman year of college, I bought the copy I still have, and started reading.

Now decades later, it's a work that I teach fairly often, not only in Existentialism classes, but also sometimes in Intro to Philosophy as well.  Some time back, I created a series of core concept lecture videos on book 1 of the work. And then, I converted those into Sadler's Lectures podcast episodes, boosting the sound quality and editing them.

Here are those ten podcast episodes:

• The Superman and Man as a Bridge
• The Last Man
• The Three Metamorphoses
• Suffering and the Afterworld
• The Virtues and One's Own Virtue
• The Body and the Spirit
• War and Warriors
• The Solitary Person
• Values and Valuation
• The State and Superfluous People

These links will take you to the episodes on Soundcloud, but you can also listen to Sadler's lectures on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Player FM, iHeart Radio, and plenty of other places online.  

My hope is that you find these episodes useful, interesting, or entertaining. As always, 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.

Ten Podcast Episodes on Martin Heidegger's What Is Metaphysics?

When I polled my viewers, listeners, subscribers, and supporters recently, about which thinker I should produce new podcast episodes on first, Martin Heidegger edged out Fyodor Dostoevsky, Aristotle, and Cicero.  So earlier this month, I created ten new Sadler's Lectures episodes on his seminal lecture, What Is Metaphysics?

Each of the Sadler's Lectures episodes are produced by taking one of my core concept videos, improving the sound quality, and editing out pauses, "ums" and "ahs," and any other distracting sounds, generating a downloadable podcast version that can be played anywhere.  I provide them as resources to students in my academic classes, but they get used by many more people all over the world.

Here are those ten Heidegger podcast episodes. They run just a bit over two hours altogether, so you can listen your way through these lectures in the space of an afternoon.

• The Nature Of Metaphysical Inquir
• The Nothing, Not, And Negation
• The Mood Of Anxiety
• The Nothing And Nihilation
• Modalities Of Nihilative Behavior
• Sciences, Logic, And The Nothing
• Mood and The Totality Of Beings
• Original Anxiety And Everydayness
• Previous Metaphysical Views On Nothing 
• The Nothing, Selfhood, And Freedom

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.

Seven Podcast Lectures on Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is a text I teach frequently in certain of my classes - Into to Philosophy, Ethics, and of course Existentialism - and quite some time back, I shot a series of core concept lecture videos covering the main ideas of the work.  In order to provide my students (and others) with additional resources, I've been converting my videos into podcast episodes.

There are seven podcast episodes in the sequence, running about two hours total, so one could listen to the entire set over the space of a walk or two, a long workout, or whatever else one would like.  Here are those seven episodes:

• The Intellectual, Inertia, And Negativity
• Pleasure Perversity And Suffering
• Revenge, Anger, And Justice
• Self-Interest And the Advantageous
• The Most Advantageous Advantage
• Desire And Reason
• Enlightenment, Nature, And The Will

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.

Wisdom for Life Radio Show Goes Weekly!

Earlier this year, my co-host Dan Hayes and I launched a new radio show.  It's called Wisdom for Life, and it focuses on taking ideas from practical philosophy and applying them to issues, challenges, and problems of everyday life.  We draw upon a number of different philosophical traditions - Stoicism, Aristotelianism, and Existentialism in particular - as well as insights from various psychological approaches.

Our latest show, episode 5 - devoted to the topic What Makes Relationships Good? - aired on Riverwest Radio (WXRW 104.1) last Saturday (you can listen to that show here).  We've been getting really positive feedback about the show itself, the topics we're focusing on, and the conversational approach that Dan and I are taking.  That's great for two reasons.

The first is that this is a rather unique radio show.  There aren't too many shows out there that discuss and apply practical philosophy with any depth or rigor and also in ways accessible to the ordinary, non-academic listener.  In fact, who are we kidding - there isn't much philosophy content out there in radio period!  So the fact that the show is getting some interest and appreciation is good for philosophy and also good for the people who listen.

The second is that Riverwest Radio is a local community radio station.  It's here to provide a diverse array of voices, interests, and programs for the Riverwest neighborhood, and also for the Greater Milwaukee community.  If that term "community radio" is unfamiliar to you, think NPR and PBS, and now imagine an even more community-centered focus.  Less for the elites, more for the person on the street.  Shows don't just have hosts.  The hosts are also the show producers.  A program like what we're doing would likely be a hard sell to NPR, but we have a home in community radio!

We started out as a bi-weekly show, but have decided during the COVID-19 crisis to step up show production to one episode a week, and we've managed to keep to that schedule now two weeks in a row!  You can listen live over the internet anywhere in the world, Saturdays, 4-5 PM Central Time.

If you'd like to hear any of the five episodes we've produced so far, here are the links.

• Wisdom For Life Episode 1 - Philosophy as a Way of Life
• Wisdom For Life Episode 2 - Dealing With Fear in a Crisis
• Wisdom For Life Episode 3 - Defining What's Good and What's Bad
• Wisdom For Life Episode 4 - Setting and Maintaining Boundaries
• Wisdom For Life Episode 5 - What Makes Relationships Good?

And if you'd like to support the work that Riverwest Radio does, offering a wide range of quality programming you won't hear anywhere else, consider making a donation to the station!

Eight Podcast Episodes on The Introduction to Martin Heidegger's Being and Time

One of the most recent series in the Sadler's Lectures podcast - discussing the key ideas from the Martin Heidegger's Introduction to his early work, Being and Time - emerged out of polling my viewers, listeners, and other followers about which thinkers they'd like to hear next in the podcast.  Heidegger was definitely a favorite!

The eight podcast episodes linked to here take the listener through the key ideas and discussions of that introduction.  One of the more difficult aspects of Heidegger's writings for most readers and listeners is the terminology he introduces, uses, and plays around with - and my lectures focus on unpacking and explaining what Heidegger means.

All told, these eight episodes amount to about 2 hours and 20 minutes of downloadable lectures which you can listen to wherever you want and learn about Martin Heidegger's work.

• The Question Of The Meaning Of Being
• Ontic And Ontological 
• The Existential Analysis Of Dasein 
• Interpretations Of Dasein And Temporality 
• The Concept Of Phenomenon 
• The Concept Of Logos 
• The Concept Of Phenomenology 
• Dasein, History, And Tradition 

Wisdom for Life Radio Show Coming Up - Questions Welcome!

In the last few years, I've done ethics consulting work and a number of guest appearances with a local radio station, WXRW-Riverwest Radio. This is a community radio station, so there's a considerably wider variety of shows than on most other radio stations and networks.  They've been asking for some time whether I'd be interested in producing a philosophy-focused show for the station. And starting at the end of the month, that is going to be the case!

The new show is called Wisdom for Life, and will be focused on how insights and practices derived from philosophy can help people understand and deal with problems and issues arising in the course of life.  One of my fellow co-organizers of the Milwaukee Stoic Fellowship, Dan Hayes, is also the co-producer of this show. We did a 2-hour special fundraising show for Riverwest Radio, focused on generosity and giving, back in December. And earlier this month, we completed our training at the station.  So we are now ready to go on the air live!

The show will run every other Friday from 5-6 PM Central Time, starting on February 28. If there's sufficient interest, and if Dan and I manage to find the available time in our schedules, we'll consider turning it into a weekly show.  There's certainly enough topics available that we'll never run out of material to discuss.

In the very first episode, we'll introduce ourselves and briefly present the broad outlines of what the show is about.  We'll also devote a good bit of discussion to how it is that philosophy - which many people encounter as an abstract subject, rather detached from everyday life - turns out to have a lot to contribute to thinking about our lives.  And, by practical applications, to living better lives as well.

We're also planning for each show to have a segment during which we'll tackle questions coming from listeners.  We can't do call-in on-air, so we'll take questions provided to us prior to the show, and then try to work out some decent answers to them.  You can send them to me by email, in Twitter, or on the Facebook event page for the episode.  

Six Podcast Episodes on Rilke's Letters To a Young Poet

In November, I resumed editing my video lectures into episodes in the Sadler's Lectures podcast.  After finishing up a series on Aristotle's Metaphysics book 1, I started work on the set that I shot earlier this year on the great Existentialist poet, novelist, and writer Rainer Maria Rilke, specifically on his short work, Letters To a Young Poet.

It's a great little book, a sort of crystallization of key themes of Rilke's own creative process, his own reflections, and his engagement with a young would-be writer.   It thus offers a window into Rilke's own ideas, commitments, and process. But generations of creative people in all sorts of fields have also found it useful for clarifying their own work and lives.

If there is one most central idea in the work, it is that of "solitude" (Einsamkeit, in German), and I devoted one entire lecture just to that notion.  But Rilke explores many other key concepts and realities as well - love, desire, criticism, development, time, just to name a few.  

All told, these podcast episodes amount to about an hour and a half of listening time.  Here are those six lectures:

• Criticism and Art
• Developing Solitude
• Time, Patience, and Growth
• Conventions & Superficiality
• Sex, Love, and Development
• Sadness and Transformation

Six Podcast Episodes on Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism Is a Humanism

One text I teach frequently is Jean-Paul Sartre's succinct summary of his version of Existentialism, his popular lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism".  Over the summer, I took the six lecture videos I created for my students, and turned them into downloadable podcast episodes.

So anywhere you can listen to mp3s, you can learn about Sartre's classic explanation of what Existentialism is, what it means to live as an Existentialist, and the scope of human freedom.

Here are those six episodes - about an hour and a half total of podcast:

• Existence Precedes Essence
• Anguish, Abandonment and Despair
• Criterionless Choice
• Choice and Responsibility
• Persons, Projects, and Actions
• Two Kinds of Humanism

To listen to more podcast episodes - so far on Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Epictetus, and Kierkegaard (with many other thinkers and works yet to come) - you can go to my Soundcloud channel, or find them on iTunes or GooglePlay.

Seven Videos on Gabriel Marcel's On The Ontological Mystery

Earlier this summer, I created a number of new core concept videos as resources for my students enrolled in my online Existentialist Philosophy and Literature (taught for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design).  This opened up an opportunity to shoot a sequence on one of my favorite works of the often overlooked French Catholic Existentialist, Gabriel Marcel, his essay "Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery" (which you can find here, along with his play, The Broken World)

The reason I selected that essay (and provided that play as a supplemental reading) for the class is that it is probably the best introduction not only to some of the central themes of Marcel's philosophy - the distinction between problem and mystery, the dangers of a functionalized world, reinterpretation of faith, hope, and charity, and the need for ontological depth - but also to Marcel himself.  It is an essay he references frequently throughout his other works.

Marcel was one of the first authors to use the term "existentialist" and "existentialism" in French.  He would later abandon the title for his own work after Jean-Paul Sartre more or less took it over in his "Existentialism is a Humanism" (as would Heidegger), but Marcel remains a central figure within the broad Existentialist movement.

In any case, here are those seven videos.  I plan to shoot some additional ones on this work, hopefully later on this Fall.

• A Functionalized World & Persons
• Mistaken Attitudes Towards the Ontological Need
• Problems, Techniques, and Technology
• Meta-Problem and Mystery
• Examples of Mysteries
• The Mystery of Hope
• Despair, Betrayal, and Suicide

Ten Videos on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Earlier this spring, as the semester was coming to a close, and I was getting ready for my online 6-week Existentialist Philosophy and Literature class (developed and taught for the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, now in its 5th week), I shot a sequence of new lecture videos on a classic and extremely influential Existentialist work.

It's one that my subscribers, viewers, followers, and other fans have been asking me to produce videos about for years - Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra!  I decided to make part one of that book a required reading for the online class (with the Genealogy of Morals a supplemental text)

I've just finished releasing all of those videos, so I thought I'd set links to them all in one place. Here are those videos:

• The Superman and Man as a Bridge
• The Last Man
• The Three Metamorphoses
• Suffering and the Afterworld
• The Virtues and One's Own Virtue
• The Body and the Spirit
• War and Warriors
• The Solitary Person
• Values and Valuation
• The State and Superfluous People

Six Lecture Videos on Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

My 6-week online course on Existentialist Philosophy and Literature, developed and taught for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, is well underway.  They're in the middle of Week 3, and just finishing up with a module on Rainer Maria Rilke's works and thought.

I've assigned to them as a required text his Letters to a Young Poet, and as a supplementary text his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.  I have also provided them quite a few resources to help them as they study these works.  These include core concept lecture videos, which I have recently shot on the first text (I have an older, longer lecture video on the Notebooks as well).

These may be useful for you, if you're going to dig into Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.  So here they are - those six new videos:

• Developing Solitude
• Criticism and Art
• Time, Patience, and Growth
• Conventions & Superficiality
• Sex, Love, and Development
• Sadness and Transformation

If you find the philosophy resources I develop interesting, enjoyable, or useful, by all means share them with others.  And if you'd like to support the work that I do, making philosophy publicly accessible, you can become a monthly supporter on my Patreon page, or if you prefer a one-time donation, you can Buy Me A Coffee!

Seven Videos on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground

My summer 6-week Existentialist Philosophy and Literature class, designed and taught for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, is now nearing the end of its first week.  We are spending about five of those weeks going through selections from 10 key authors in the existentialist movement.  One of the thinkers we are hitting early on - next week in fact - is Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I've assigned the students Part 1 of Notes From Underground, with a chapter from The Brothers Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor) as a supplemental text.  I like to provide students with a lot of resources in all of my classes, and in online classes, this is particularly crucial.  So, I produced a series of core concept videos going through the key ideas set out in Notes from Underground.

Here are those seven videos:

• The Intellectual, Inertia, and Negativity
• Pleasure, Perversity, and Suffering
• Revenge, Anger, and Justice
• Enlightenment, Laws of Nature, and The Will
• Self-Interest and the Advantageous
• Desire and Reason
• The Most Advantageous Advantage

If you find the philosophy resources I develop interesting, enjoyable, or useful, by all means share them with others. And if you'd like to support the work that I do, making philosophy publicly accessible, you can become a monthly supporter on my Patreon page, or if you prefer a one-time donation, you can Buy Me A Coffee!

Six Videos on Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism

I've been creating new core concept videos to use in my online 6-week Existentialism class (which starts in less than two weeks - countdown ticking!).  One of the texts that I'm using for that class is a classic of Existentialist literature: Jean-Paul Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism".

I already had two videos on that text, shot some time ago in one of my Marist Ethics classes, but knew that I would need to create some additional ones in order to cover the entire essay for my students.  So I produced another four last month, covering the additional topics that had been left out.

Here is the entire set of videos on "Existentialism is a Humanism":

• Existence Precedes Essence
• Anguish, Abandonment and Despair
• Criterionless Choice
• Choice and Responsibility
• Persons, Projects, and Actions
• Two Kinds of Humanism

I hope you find them useful!

The Reading List For My Summer Online Existentialism Class

In just a bit over two weeks, I will be opening up my 6-week online summer course for Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design - Existentialist Philosophy and Literature.  Quite a few people have been asking about the reading list for the course, so I decided that it might be good for me to post it here.

Teaching any subject in 6 weeks is tough.  Even though they know it is an intensive class, you simply can't expect students to engage with the same quantity of reading as they would be able to handle in a 15 week semester.  This is even more the case for Philosophy classes, in which it often takes some time for the material to "sink in".

The class is divided into twelve modules, each roughly half of a week.  The first and last modules don't have assigned readings, since they're an introduction and conclusion to the class.  Each of the other 10 modules focuses on one important existentialist writer.

I had originally intended to give students 3 readings for each of those writer modules.  One of them would be required. One would be "supplementary" (students would have to read one of these per week).  And one would be "optional" (students would have to read one of these over the course of the class").  I decided instead to go with two readings per module - one required, and one optional (but students would need to engage with two optional ones over the six weeks).  The one exception is the Kierkegaard module, in which I'm still wavering about assigning two required texts.

So, here's the reading list:

Week 1, Unit 1 – What Is Existentialism?

• Optional secondary text readings on Existentialism

Week 1, Unit 2 - Soren Kierkegaard

• Required readings: The Crowd Is Untruth and The Present Age (selections)
• Supplemental Reading: Fear and Trembling

Week 2, Unit 1 – Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Required reading: Notes From Underground
• Supplemental Reading: The Brothers Karamazov (selections)

Week 2, Unit 2 – Friedrich Nietzsche

• Required reading: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 1
• Supplemental Reading: The Genealogy of Morals

Week 3, Unit 1 – Rainer Maria Rilke

• Required reading: Letters to a Young Poet
• Supplemental Reading: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Week 3, Unit 2 – Martin Heidegger

• Required reading: What Is Metaphysics?
• Supplemental Reading: The Origin of the Work of Art

Week 4, Unit 1 – Franz Kafka

• Required reading: The Metamorphosis
• Supplemental Reading: The Trial

Week 4, Unit 2 – Gabriel Marcel

• Required reading: On The Ontological Mystery
• Supplemental Reading: A Broken World

Week 5, Unit 1 – Albert Camus

• Required reading: The Myth of Sisyphus (selections)
• Supplemental Reading: The Stranger

Week 5, Unit 2 – Jean-Paul Sartre

• Required reading: Existentialism is a Humanism
• Supplemental Reading: Nausea

Week 6, Unit 1 – Simone de Beauvoir

• Required reading: The Second Sex (selections)
• Supplemental Reading: The Useless Mouths

Week 6, Unit 2 – Wrapping Up

• No required readings

I've been creating a lot of new core concept videos for my students in this class, some of which I've already early released to my Patreon supporters.  I'll be releasing those videos to the general public over the course of the summer as well.

Nine Videos on Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

Since I'm now regularly teaching more academic classes (face to face and online) - in fact, I'm getting so many requests that I'm forced to turn some down - I've been focusing my core concept video production on developing resources for my students as they grapple with the texts and thinkers I assign.

One work that I brought back into my classes last Fall is Soren Kierkegaard's Fear And Trembling.  This can be quite a tough one for students, not just because of the intrinsic difficulty of the subject-matter, but also because of Kierkegaard's very style, and the unfamiliar structure of the work.

So, I created a a sequence of videos going through roughly the first half of the work.  I'm hoping that down the line, I'll be able to get to additional videos covering the rest of the book. My students found them quite helpful, and comments from viewers worldwide echo that sentiment, so if you're looking for resources for understanding Kierkegaard, they might be useful for you as well.

Here are those nine short videos:

• The Present Generation and Work of the Spirit
• Abraham's Story and Faith
• Abraham and Anxiety
• Philosophy's Orientation Towards Faith
• The Knight of Infinite Resignation
• The Knight of Faith
• Teleological Suspension of the Ethical
• Abraham and the Tragic Hero
• Faith as a Passion

Nine Podcast Episodes on Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

Earlier this term, I created a set of nine core concept videos on the great early existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard's, work Fear and Trembling.  I then converted all of those videos into podcast episodes, boosting the sound quality.

I provided both the videos and the podcasts to my students in my Foundations of Philosophy class (at Marquette University), and early released them to my Patreon supporters.  Then, episode after episode, video after video, I released them to the general public.

For those who might have missed them, and who would find the podcast episodes useful in studying this important work by Kierkegaard - in which he contrasts the "knight of faith" against the "knight of infinite resignation" and elaborates what he terms a "teleological suspension of the ethical" - I've linked the entire series so far, in order, below. 

Eventually, I plan to return to this book and produce videos and podcast episodes on the remaining portions and concepts from the work I didn't get to this time around. 

For the time being, here are those nine episodes - a bit over two and a half hours of podcast:

• The Present Generation and Work
• Abraham And Faith
• Abraham And Anxiety
• Philosophy and Faith
• The Knight Of Infinite Resignation
• The Knight Of Faith
• Teleological Suspension Of The Ethical
• Abraham And The Tragic Hero
• Faith as the Highest Passion

To listen to more podcast episodes - so far on Plato, Cicero, and Epictetus (with many other thinkers and works yet to come) - you can go to my Soundcloud channel, or find them on iTunes or GooglePlay.

Upcoming Video Premiere - Albert Camus, An Absurd World, and Resistance to Evil

Earlier this month, I gave a talk on the French philosopher, novelist, and playwright Albert Camus.  We recorded the talk, and for all of my subscribers, viewers, followers, and anyone else interested in seeing it, it will premiere this coming Saturday at 12:00 PM Central Time.  You can join us and watch it anywhere in the world on YouTube Live right here (where you can also set a reminder for yourself).

This talk runs a little over an hour, and discusses Camus' life, key ideas, commitments, and involvement in the historical situation of the bloody 20th century.  It is session number twelve in the quarterly series, "Philosophers in the Midst of History," a set of talks given at the Frank Weyenberg Library

Each year, I pick four philosophers from ancient, medieval, early modern, and late modern periods, and discuss how their ideas are formed and and responsive to their historical situation.  Each of of these philosophers also contributes in significant ways to reflecting upon, and even shaping that very history.

Eight Videos on Martin Heidegger's Being and Time

Earlier this month, I finished up a series of eight short core concept videos covering main ideas, distinctions, and developments in Martin Heidegger's early master-work, Being and Time.  That is a work I have long intended to get to - and people have been requesting me to tackle it for quite a while, not least since I have produced videos on other works by Heidegger (here's a playlist with 30+ videos)

Hopefully these will provide some helpful commentary for people struggling to make sense of that work.  For the time being (pun intended!), I have stuck with just the Introduction - the first 8 sections - of Being and Time.  But later on, I do have plans to create more of these core concept videos on other portions of that massive work. 

As a side-note, there has been some speculation about whether I will give Being and Time the same close reading treatment that I have been providing G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.  It's a possibility, but first I have to finish off Hegel's work, before considering what "big book" I'll tackle next.

In any case, here are the eight new videos:

• The Question of the Meaning of Being
• The Ontic and the Ontological
• The Existential Analysis of Dasein
• Interpretations of Dasein and Temporality
• Dasein, Historicity, and Tradition
• The Concept of Phenomenon
• The Concept of Logos
• The Concept of Phenomenology

If you enjoy or benefit from my work making philosophy accessible to learners worldwide, I'd love for you to join the community of my Patreon supporters.  Each contribution helps me earn my living doing what I love, and there are some cool perks available for supporters as well. 

Feel free to share this post or the videos with others interested in philosophy generally or Martin Heidegger's thought in particular!

Philosophy Pop-Up Sessions

This month, I started holding a new type of online event - Philosophy Pop-Up sessions - for my viewers, subscribers, supporters, and any other sorts of fans of my work.  These are a bit experimental in nature, and we're still sorting out precisely how they're going to work.

What I had in mind was to go live and interact with the participants for about 30-40 minutes or so.  I thought I'd start by discussing a thinker or topic for a few minutes, and then see what questions or comments the viewers had for me.  As a perk for my Patreon supporters, I let them know at the start of the month when the Pop-Ups are coming up, and poll them about which thinkers and topics they'd like me to tackle.  Everybody else finds out that a Pop-Up is coming up through my various social media posts that very day that I run it - that's how it's a "pop-up" in the first place!

I'm using Facebook Live for one monthly session, and YouTube Live for the other monthly session.  There turns out to be a bit of a learning curve for both of those platforms - a bit more for the Facebook than the YouTube version.  Next time around, I should have both of those formats more or less down pat, and be ready to roll right out of the video gate!   I should add that, even though I do have the same broad topic for both sessions, what I specifically talk about - and of course the questions and comments I reply to - are entirely different from session to session.

Both of those formats do record the session, so that those who couldn't make them in the live versions can watch or listen to them if they like.  Here's the Facebook Live videorecording, where I started out by talking a bit about Heidegger and his attention to mood or affectivity:




And here's the YouTube Live videorecording - a session that went on quite a bit longer (a bit over an hour)!  In this one, I started out by talking about how we might apply Heidegger's conception of finitude to the very activity of reading philosophy.

 

Ten Videos on Heidegger's "What Is Metaphysics?"

In June, just after I created my Patreon page to crowdfund my work in public philosophy, I ran a poll, asking my viewers, subscribers, and supporters which philosophical figures they were most interested in seeing me tackle next.

Surprisingly, Martin Heidegger came out on top, with Friedrich and Immanuel Kant in the number 2 and 3 spots!  So, later on on June, after wrapping up the last of the core concept videos on Aristotle's Categories, I started preparing to shoot videos on Heidegger.  I decided to go with his short and relatively accessible essay, "What Is Metaphysics?" (which you can find here, if you'd like to have the translation I prefer).

Before I actually do the work of producing videos, I never know exactly how many of them will be required to adequately cover a given text.  Sometimes - as was the case this time - my initial guess is a bit off, and I realize that I need to create some additional ones in order to get through all of the core concepts.  The total count ended up being ten this time around.  And here they are:

• The Nature of Metaphysical Inquiry
• The Sciences, Logic, and the Nothing
• The Nothing, Not, and Negation
• The Totality of Beings and Attunement or Mood
• The Mood of Anxiety
• Original Anxiety and Everydayness
• The Nothing and Nihilation - Philosophy
• Modalities of Nihilative Behavior
• The Nothing, Selfhood, and Freedom
• Previous Metaphysical Interpretations of the Nothing

Why did I pick this particular essay - actually an inaugural lecture Heidegger gave in 1929 at the University of Freiburg - as the first work of Heidegger's I would tackle? (It's actually not technically the first, since I'd previously created a number of hour-long lectures in the Existentialism sequence years back - but it is the first that I've done through core concept videos)  It's a good piece, in my view, for introducing some of the key ideas of Heidegger's thought, without getting too deep in the details.

This work contains a discussion of what Metaphysics is and extends to, the contrast between intellectual and affective ways of grasping being, the revelatory importance of moods, anxiety as a mood that discloses beings and the nothing, the priority of the nothing and nihilation over negation,  the scope of logic, human freedom and action, and even some discussion of previous metaphysical interpretations.  So not every major theme of Heidegger's works, by any measure, but quite a few of them. . .