Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Repentance (Du Repentir). This one focuses on the remarks and reflections he provides about his more general project in writing and publishing his Essays. He tells us that he provides an account of the human being and the human ...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay "On Solitude" (De la Solitude). It discusses the last portion of that essay, where he examines three main sets of motivations for retiring into solitude: religion, pleasure, and ambition. The first of these he acknowledges to be so...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay "On Solitude" (De la Solitude). It discusses how people might best cultivate solitude in the later portions of their life, when they withdraw from many of their active involvements, duties, and relationships, and learn to be on the...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay "On Solitude" (De la Solitude). It discusses the first portion of the essay, where he tells us that nothing is more insociable and sociable as a human being, the one by our vice, and the other by our nature. Our vices prevent us fr...

This lecture discusses key ideas from the Renaissance-era philosopher, critic, and essayist Michel De Montaigne's work Essays, specifically his essay On Fear (De la Peur), in which he discusses that emotion, noting that he isn't a natural scientist, so that he won't be investigating the causes of fear, but taking a more phenomenological attitude towards the emotion. He notes tha...