Orexis Dianoētikē: sadler events

Showing posts with label sadler events. Show all posts

Oct 23, 2019

Stoicon-X Milwaukee - Videos and Pictures from the Event

On Saturday, October 12 - during International Stoic Week - we held a Stoicon-X event for the Midwest here in Milwaukee. The day began with a short welcome and an overview about Stoic philosophy and the modern Stoic movement. Then we had our three featured speakers - Kevin Vost, Dan Hayes, and Daniel Collette - giving a set of talks ranging over a wide variety of topics related to Stoic philosophy and practice.

Daniel's talk was interrupted by a fire alarm that cut about 30 minutes out of our scheduled time, but we got back on track by shortening the catered lunch, and then resuming Daniel's talk. After that, five audience members gave short 3-5 minute "lightning round" talks. We finished the event with a workshop - "The Stoic Heart" - on Stoicism and partnered relationships, given by my wife Andi and myself.

We got together for a shot of all five of us at the end of the conference

We also got good video footage of all of the talks from Stoicon-X, with the exception of the lightning round talks. For those who couldn't make it to the event, and would like to get to see and hear what participants did, here they are:

I'd like once again to thank our patron (who wishes to remain anonymous) for generously underwriting this event, and allowing us to offer it to participants for free.

Apr 19, 2019

AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session Tomorrow

I'm hosting another of my online AMA - Ask Me Anything - sessions tomorrow. It starts at noon, Central Time, and runs for about an hour-and-a-half. (I started out scheduling them for an hour, but they've always ended up running over due to the number of questions and comments that I end up getting).

Here's the video page for the session - if you click through to it, you can set yourself a reminder so that you don't miss the event.

If your goal is to get one of your questions asked and answered, you'll probably want to get there early in the session. As the time goes on, the comments and questions start to come in faster and faster, and when I realize we're close to the end of the session, I start looking for ones I can answer fairly easily to cap it off. I've never succeeded in getting to all of the questions and comments in any given session.

If you'd like to watch and listen to any of the earlier AMA sessions - you can also see what all the questions and comments were for that session by looking at the chat replay on the left side of the screen - here they are:

The work involved in these free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world.

If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

Feb 9, 2019

AMA Session Coming Up Later Today

Each month, I hold an AMA - Ask Me Anything - session online for my viewers, subscribers, supporters, and other fans.

I'll be holding the next AMA for this month a bit later today, at 12:00 PM Central. Here's the link for the session - you can set a reminder notification for it on that page. If you have questions you'd like to ask me, make sure to get them in early on. I'll keep the session open for an hour and a half, but we invariably end with a number of later-asked questions unanswered.

If you'd like to see any of the previous AMA sessions, here is the list of all of the ones we've held so far. I expect there's probably the answers to several hundred questions in there.

Ask Me Anything Session 1 - September 2017
Ask Me Anything Session 2 - December 2017
Ask Me Anything Session 3 - January 2018
Ask Me Anything Session 4 - February 2018
Ask Me Anything Session 5 - March 2018
Ask Me Anything Session 6 - April 2018
Ask Me Anything Session 7 - May 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 8 - June 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 9 - July 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 10 - August 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 11 - September 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 12 - October 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 13 - November 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 14 - December 2018

Ask Me Anything Session 15 - January 2019

All the time and labor involved in these - and many other - free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world. If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

Dec 6, 2018

Get In On The Vote - Worlds of Speculative Fiction 2019

Last week, I created a video about our upcoming year of monthly talks in the Worlds of Speculative Fiction series. We're going into year four, and in lining up the new authors I'm scheduled to discuss, I deliberately left three slots open so that I could get some input from my viewers, subscribers, supporters and other fans. After listing the nine authors I'd already picked out (see below), I asked viewers to leave comments with their initial suggestions for authors to fill those three remaining slots.

Many people weighed in, and I picked the seven most suggested authors for a run-off vote, which is going on right now (and ends on Saturday). If you'd like to get in on that vote, here's where you can cast your ballot. It's between these authors: Bram Stoker, Thomas Ligoti, Stephen Donaldson, Katherine Kurtz, Aldous Huxley, Robert Jordan, and R Scott. Bakker.

Each participant gets to vote for three of these authors, and the top three join the roster for 2019. (My Patreon supporters get an extra vote as well.) Voting will go on through Saturday, then I'll tally all the votes up, and officially announce who the three authors will be.

The nine other authors I've already picked out for 2019 are: Edgar Allen Poe, G.K. Chesterton, Mary Shelley, Lewis Carroll, Tanith Lee, Piers Anthony, Gordon Dickson, August Derleth, and Karl Edward Wagner.

I should mention two other things in passing. The first is that, if you haven't seen the previous sessions in the talk series, I've placed them all in this playlist. The second is that I've also created a free online course to house those videos and a host of other resources on those authors, their books, and the narrative worlds they created, which you can sign up for here.

May 11, 2018

May AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session Tomorrow!

We have another of our online AMA - Ask Me Anything - sessions coming up tomorrow. I started hosting these last year for my viewers, subscribers, readers, and other fans. We use YouTube Live for these events, and you can access it by clicking on this link, once the session starts. You can even click on it now, and set up a reminder for the event. The session will take place between 12-1 PM Central Time, this Saturday, May 12.

Usually there are already a few questions or comments lined up for me when the event starts. And as it goes on, they do tend to accumulate a bit quicker than I can work through all of them. So - just a bit of advice - if you want to be fairly sure that I'll get to your question or comment, you definitely want to ask it early on! I don't always have the time to get to all of those people ask at the end (even with often going overtime in these sessions).

If you'd like to see the previous sessions, engaged in fielding questions, addressing comments, even tackling complaints and confusions, here are the links to those previous six AMA sessions:

Apr 13, 2018

AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session Tomorrow

Last year, I started offering AMA - Ask Me Anything - sessions online for my viewers, subscribers, readers, and other fans. We use YouTube Live for these events, and you can access it by clicking on this link, once the session starts. You can even click on it now, and set up a reminder for the event.

The session will take place between 1-2 PM Central Time, Saturday, April 14. You'll want to ask your question(s) early on. I always get to those asked at the start of the session, but as they accumulate, I don't always have the time to get to all of those people ask at the end (even with often going overtime in these sessions).

If you'd like to see me in action in the previous sessions, fielding questions, addressing comments, even tackling complaints and confusions, here are links to the previous five AMA sessions:

All of the time and labor involved in these - and many other - free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world. If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

Feb 10, 2018

Philosophy Pop-Up Coming Up Today - Stoicism and Relationships

Each month, I hold two live online Philosophy Pop-Up sessions - one on Facebook Live and the other on YouTube Live. Today from 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM Central Time, we'll be having the YouTube Live session.

The topic this month that I'll start the session with is Stoicism and relationships. Since it's Valentine's Day coming up this month, and since I've just authored a piece over at Stoicism Today on that very topic, we'll be focusing particularly on what Stoics would make of romantic or erotic relationships. But as usual, related topics are fair game.

If you're just finding out about this session today, and you'd like to have more lead time for future ones, then you'll want to become a Patreon supporter. Each month, one of the perks for all the people who underwrite my work doing public philosophy - from the $1 per month level on up - is that they get to find out the days and times for these Philosophy Pop-Ups ahead of time.

Here's the video link for the session:

If you'd like to watch any of the Philosophy Pop-Up sessions from previous months, here's links to all of them:

Jan 19, 2018

AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session Coming Up Today

At 1:00 PM Central Time, I'll be going onto YouTube Live for my next monthly AMA session!

This is where my viewers, subscribers, followers, backers, fans - and anyone else who happens to show up - gets to Ask Me Anything. I try to respond to as many of the comments and questions as I possibly can, though I don't always manage to get to all of them.

I started holding these in the Fall - committing to doing the first session when we met our first modest goal in Patreon crowdfunding support. After my backers got us to the next goal, I committed to providing an AMA each month, and that's what I started doing in December.

Here's where you can log into the session - and don't worry if you're early! YouTube will keep that screen open for you until it starts, and even send you a reminder, if you think you need it.

If you'd like to see me in action in the previous sessions, fielding questions, addressing comments, even tackling complaints and confusions, here are links to the previous two AMA sessions:

Nov 21, 2016

Worlds Of Speculative Fiction Lecture Series Renewed

Over the course of 2016, I've been providing a monthly lecture and discussion series, hosted by the Brookfield Public Library, focused on - and called - Worlds of Speculative Fiction: Philosophical Themes. I proposed the idea originally as a way for me to get to engage in a bit of "guilty pleasure" reading, going back to classic science fiction and fantasy works I had enjoyed in my childhood, teens, or college years, and seeing what might be said from a philosophical perspective about the narrative worlds these authors had created.

We're now getting ready for the last installment of the series, focused on George R.R. Martin's voluminous and yet-unfinished Song of Ice and Fire, which will take place Thursday, December 8, 7:00 PM, and wrap up the series for the year. I'm happy to report, however, that we've been renewed for another year of the series - 12 more monthly lecture and discussion sessions!

Here's the list of the 12 authors and literary universes slated for 2017:

January – Phillip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld
February – Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet
March – Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Galaxy
April – Anne McCaffrey, World of Pern
May – Orson Scott Card’s Enderverse
June – Ian Banks’ Culture Series
July – Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy.
August – H.P Lovecraft’s Universe of the Elder Gods
September – William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy
October – C. L. Moore’s Fantastic Worlds
November – L. Sprague de Camp’s Worlds of the Compleat Enchanter
December - Jorge Luis Borges’ Philosophical Universes

If you've missed any of the previous eleven sessions, and you'd like to watch the videorecordings, you're in luck - here's where you can find all the videos (I'm uploading the eleventh video as I write this).

So far, we've covered J.R.R. Tolkein, Mervyn Peake, C.S. Lewis, A.E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Leguin, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, and Philip K. Dick. I'm hoping to do a bit of writing on each of these here in Orexis Dianoētikē in the coming year as well!

Oct 2, 2016

Stoic Week Activities Coming Up

Every year (at least recently), one of my favorite philosophy-focused celebrations is Stoic Week, and it is coming up later on this month! I first got involved with it three years ago, enrolling in the free online course developed by the members of the Stoicism Today project, and particularly Donald Robertson.

Since that first year, I've stepped up my own activities during the week and my involvement with the associated project. The last two years I created a series of videos, one for each day (you can see those here) of the week. I also hosted a Stoic Week event here in Milwaukee last year. And, starting last March, I was very honored to be asked to take over as the editor of Stoicism Today.

I've already enrolled in the 2016 Stoic Week course, and I'm really looking forward to engaging in it again this year. As someone who has been studying and teaching about Stoic philosophy for quite some time, I find it's very useful to work through the sort of materials and exercises that the course provides once a year. I also enjoy reading and engaging in the daily discussions with fellow participants (who these days number in the thousands, worldwide!) So, I can't recommend strongly enough that - for anyone who has any interest in Stoic philosophy, in improving their life, or learning something new and interesting - that you sign up for that free online course!

keep reading »

Jul 19, 2016

Worlds of Speculative Fiction - An Update

Earlier this year, I announced the start of a new public lecture series, called "Worlds of Speculative Fiction," partnering with the Brookfield Public Library. I've still got the intention of engaging in some writing here about the philosophical themes in the authors and works that we've been focusing on - my involvement in a variety of other projects, and other commitments, have unfortunately precluded me from getting those posts finished and published (but I'll have some coming out in August, when the author I'll be focusing on in the lecture will be Ursula K. Leguin).

We've already held seven of the scheduled twelve lectures and discussions for 2016 - and there's a good chance that we'll continue the series with twelve more in 2017 (if we do, keep an eye out for a post soliciting suggestions about who I might tackle in the new year). For those who - due to geography or time - haven't been able to attend, but are interested to see what we discussed, here's the videos in the series so far:

We've got some heavy-hitters of science-fiction and fantasy lined up for discussion the coming months. Ursula K. Leguin and her Hainish stories in August. Then Michael Moorcock's Multiverse and his Eternal Champion in September, followed by the alternate America found in certain of Phillip K. Dick's novels in October. November will focus on Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, and we will round out the year in December by discussing George R.R. Martin's massive Song of Ice and Fire (what we've got of it so far!).

If there's sufficient interest down the line, we may consider putting together some online events oriented around the intersections between science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy as well, but that's something perhaps better discussed later on....

Nov 8, 2015

Our Move Back To Milwaukee

Three weeks ago, my wife and I (and our aging dogs) finished a long-planned move from Kingston, NY to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The trip took two very long days of driving, and some adventures (which you can hear about in this video, if you're so inclined), and moving everything into our new apartment took the entirety of a day as well.

Both Andi and I maintain some pretty heavy workloads, with a lot of deadlined projects -- and in her case, ten days away in California for her work -- so the process of unpacking and entirely settling in has taken considerably longer than we'd anticipated. But, we are definitely back home! I imagine that many of my readers, viewers, subscribers, and so forth, might be curious about why we moved to this particular Midwestern city, and what this move means for the future. So there's probably no better place to write about that then here, in the longest-established of all of my blogs.

keep reading »

Feb 20, 2015

Understanding Anger - Lecture 2: Jewish Scriptures

Last Saturday, at the Kingston Library, we had a very well-attended second session of the new year-long monthly lecture series - Understanding Anger. The previous session had focused on anger through the lens of Greek tragedy and epic. This one looked at this prevalent and perennial passion through multiple perspectives afforded by another key source for Western thought and culture -- the Jewish Scriptures.

As always, there's many more people interested than can attend -- sometimes a factor of time, but most often of place -- so we video-recorded the session (you can watch the video here). And as usual, although I came armed with many notes and a few handouts to structure the session, a number of digressions -- all quite interesting -- added some other elements to the discussions.

keep reading »

Jan 20, 2015

Understanding Anger - A New Lecture Series

Last year we (that is, ReasonIO) partnered with our local library -- the historic Kingston Library (a lot in this town is historic, given its age and earlier importance, but the library really does deserve that epithet!) -- to offer a lecture series, about Philosophy but suited for the general public, spanning the entire twelve months of 2014. It focused on eleven Existentialist writers, and was called, aptly enough, Glimpses into Existence (here's the playlist of sessions).

It turned out to be quite a draw -- a growing group of regulars from local communities would show up, hear what I had to say, and then get into some quite interesting discussions (and at times digressions). I got to spiel out some ideas I'd been mulling over about classic Existentialist thinkers, texts, and ideas with a well-educated, interested, and responsive audience. The Library got some decent events for adult programming. A win-win all around. So they asked me back to do another series -- and I'd already been thinking about what I might do.

keep reading »

Oct 26, 2014

The "Glimpses into Existence" Series So Far

Last night, I wrote a short post about a Simone de Beauvoir talk in one of my other more specialized blogs, Sadler's Existentialism Updates (SEU) -- an electronic forum originally intended for me to set down ideas about the online course on Existentialist Philosophy and Literature which I was (and admittedly still am) developing. There's an interesting story to be told about that, of course, but it's already available over there on SEU, so no sense reposting it here -- at least not until I've actually got a course up and running.

Instead, I'd like to write a bit about the monthly series of talks on Existentialism -- the recent de Beauvoir talk being the tenth session -- that I've been providing at the Kingston Library this year. We decided to call the talks "Glimpses into Existence," since each session would introduce a general, library-going (so educated and interested) audience to some of the main works, key ideas, and contributions, as well as the times and cultural setting of one important Existentialist thinker. Devoting one-and-a-half to two hours of discussions to thinkers like Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Rilke, or Sartre -- well, that really is just a glimpse into their thoughts, writings, and lives.

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Oct 16, 2014

Six Senses of Justice in Saint Anselm's Thought.

Last weekend, down in Washington D.C., I read a paper and got involved in some very interesting and provocative discussion on the borderlines between philosophy and theology. The American Catholic Philosophical Association -- one of my old haunts in an earlier academic life (I'd not been there since 2008) -- includes a great variety of what are called "satellite sessions." Many of these are in fact meetings of other scholarly organizations and institutions whose membership overlaps partly with the ACPA, and one of those, with which I have a longstanding and particularly close personal connection, is the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies.

This year, the Institute hosted a panel focused specifically on one of Anselm's greatest works, the Cur Deus Homo - or Why God Became Man. One of the issues about which I've been thinking for quite some time, and particularly in light of St. Anselm's thought and writings, is the relationship between divine mercy and justice. So, when the opportunity presented itself to become the third interlocutor on the panel, I gladly put myself forward, and the Institute accepted. The paper that I presented -- which is still in rather unpolished state (I'll post it once I've added the requisite footnotes and transitions) -- was titled "Is God's Justice Unmerciful in St. Anselm's Cur Deus Homo?" You can listen to the paper, my responses to questions and comments, and the general discussion (after all three papers had been read) in this podcast, if you like. What I'd like to do here is to take up a related topic that I inserted into a footnote of the paper and touched upon in the Q&A -- the differing senses of "justice" in Anselm's thought.

keep reading »

Sep 29, 2014

Musings About Platonic Virtues and Forms

Last week, I traveled down to Felician College in northern New Jersey to give a talk, or more specifically, a current research workshop session, hosted by the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs -- "Just What is A Platonic Virtue?" (video of the talk and discussion is available here)

This is a topic about which I've been thinking for quite some time, and intending eventually to write an article, so given an opportunity to present my current reflections on the topic to an audience of interested philosophy majors and professional colleagues -- the latter of whom I could count on to know Plato's texts and key ideas well -- I was very happy to come down, lay out the problematic as I had come to envision it, and get some useful feedback from my peers.

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Nov 7, 2013

Radio Show Guest Spot: Hegel and (Mis)Education in America

Last month, I appeared as a guest on Patrick McCarty's internet radio show, Insight Radio, along with a bright young high school student, Rohan Macherla, who has already developed a strong interest in an understanding of the daunting, difficult thought of G.W.F. Hegel. The segment was to start out discussing the section "Self-Consciousness" from the Phenomenology of Spirit (famous for the portion called the Master-Slave Dialectic), and then go off in whatever directions seemed fit to us.

As it turned out, our conversation (the full recording of which is available here) ended up focusing more and more on the conditions of contemporary education, and in particular with the effects -- good or bad, aimed at or unintended -- of recent, and in some ways ubiquitous, technological innovations have had on education and culture. Since our recording session, I've been mulling over certain unfinished lines of thought we outlined during the conversation.

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Oct 15, 2013

Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice

Last weekend, I attended the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy conference, chaired two sessions, met a number of scholars as interested and enthusiastic about the thought of antiquity as I am, and gave the paper which I'd long ago proposed, "Aristotle on Anger, Justice, and Injustice." Or rather, I presented the paper in a summary form -- I was assigned to a panel of four speakers, and each of us got about 20 minutes to set out the main lines of our research.

It wasn't a venue particularly conducive to recording the session in my typical manner -- a flipcam which could capture video of the talk. But I did manage to record my portion of the talk, and the relevant Q&A on my iPhone, and then (after clawing my frustrated way up the learning curve any former PC user has with Apple's products!) turned the edited recording into a podcast, which you can hear here, if this topic particularly interests you

keep reading »

Jul 19, 2013

Talk Radio Interview: Saint Anselm's Argument

Last night, I appeared as a guest on an internet radio talk show -- Theology Matters with the Pellews. Devin Pellew turned out to be an engaging host, quite interested in the topic I had proposed to focus upon: the "single argument" Saint Anselm elaborates in his early work, the Proslogion.

The first hour or so of the show was simply Devin and I, doing some back-and-forth discussion, starting with the more general, and then zeroing in on several key themes having to do with Anselm -- I'll say what those were shortly. Then, we had the call-in segment, and I participated in some very enjoyable conversations with several different callers.

If you'd like to hear the show -- or to download the mp3 of it -- you can access it here. For me, it was an opportunity to explore, in a different medium, some themes I've been thinking about for a long time, and to communicate my own interest in these themes to a broader, less academic audience -- the sorts of people actually, that Anselm himself spent much of his time working with, counseling, and even teaching.

So, what did we range over? A number of topics that I think would make good starting points for future blog posts. To start with, Anselm's "argument" turns out not to be the "ontological argument" (a name he wouldn't recognize, since it appears only from the time of Kant onward), but rather a much broader, deeper, yet more interesting structure that runs through nearly the whole of the Proslogion. This shouldn't be surprising, really, if we look at what Anselm himself tells us the argument is suppose to attempt and attain -- or if we actually read the Monologion, for whose multiple arguments this "single argument" is supposed to substitute.

We also talked about Anselm's own purposes in providing this argument in a written form -- he's not doing Christian apologetics as we often conceive of it, not trying to produce arguments to convince the unbelievers primarily. Rather, he tells us that he felt joy in discovering and exploring the argument, and wanted to share that experience -- or at least its apparatus -- with others. Interestingly, this wasn't how he felt about it at the start or in the middle of his enquiry. Another key theme, which I'll doubtless blog about later this Fall, is how Anselm could think, for a while. . . that the argument might actually be a trick of the Devil.