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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Five Videos on Thomas Aquinas on Happiness

I created another set of short lecture videos for my students, enrolled in my Introduction to Philosophy and my Foundations in Philosophy classes, focused on a key discussion by Thomas Aquinas in question 2 of the First Part of the Second Part of his Summa Theologiae.  It is often called the "treatise on happiness", and that is the focus of those discussions.  What is the nature of human happiness?  What - among the things that people think will make them happy - really does make human beings happy? 

Here are those five videos, which I released early to my Patreon supporters last month:

• Wealth and Human Happiness
• Honor, Fame. and Power and Happiness
• Pleasure and Human Happiness
• Goods of Body or Soul and Happiness
• Can Any Created Good Be Happiness?

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.  

Ten Videos On John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism

One of the most commonly taught texts in Ethics classes is John Stuart Mill's classic work, Utilitarianism.  I give it a central place in my own classes, generally as a companion text to Jeremy Bentham's founding work for utilitarian moral theory, The Principles of Morals and Legislation.  Together, they provide a great overview of that approach in ethics.

Students do struggle with Mill's work, so some time back, I started creating short Core Concept videos specifically on Utilitarianism.  The first few of these, I actually shot during my class discussions.  Then, a few years ago, I created several additional videos.  I provided the entire set to my students - in both face-to-face and online classes - as a resource to help them through the text.

Since I'm now once again in the classroom - teaching two sections of Ethics for Marquette University this semester - I thought I'd add a few more videos on key ideas of Mill's Utilitarianism.  As it turned out, there were four topic that I thought needed additional discussion.  This brings the total number in to ten - enough to cover all the main ideas of the work.

Here is the full set of videos on John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism.

• Utilitarianism as the Basis for Other Moral Theories
• Responses to Criticisms of Utilitarianism
• Qualitatively Higher and Lower Pleasures 
• The Ideal Judge of Pleasures
• Why People Do Not Appreciate Higher Pleasures
• Utilitarianism, Sanctions, and Duty
• Happiness, Goods, and Virtue
• Five Conceptions of Justice
• Justice and Utility
• What Having a Right Means

I hope they prove useful for you as you read - or reread - Mill's work.  And if you find it helpful for you, consider passing this post on to other people you think might find it helpful.  If you'd like to support the work I do, making philosophy accessible to the general public, take a look at my Patreon page.

Recent Talk: Jeremy Bentham's Philosophy of Action

Earlier this month, I delivered a talk digging into a set of topics I've been interested in for quite some time -- the Utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham's philosophy of action -- as part of the Marist College Philosophy and Religious Studies Speaker Series.




I've taught Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation for some time in my Ethics classes (you can watch video lectures from those classes, and shorter Core Concept videos here), and I've often been struck by just how much attention he devotes to analysing elements of moral live and action which we don't usually associate with Utilitarian moral theory -- intentions, motives, dispositions, even (in his later works) virtues and vices. I decided it was a topic well worth researching and presenting on, and an opportunity to start reading through some of Bentham's less often perused, more mature works.

 As it turned out, the audience was primarily composed of undergraduate non-majors, so I tailored my examples and discussion to them.  For the very first time in my career, I was surprised that, after the talk, nobody had any questions, including the philosophy faculty who attended -- when I asked them about it later, their unanimous reply was that the presentation was so clear as to preclude any need for questions.

Here are the slides for the presentation.