Alasdair MacIntyre - Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy

Friend of the show Greg Sadler joined us for a look at Frank Herbert's Dune series. We discuss nomadology, war machines, imperceptibility, eternal recurrence, materialism, and much more.

Dr. Sadler is currently an adjunct professor at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Editor of Stoicism Today, the producer of the Half Hour Hegel series, and the president of our local SOPHIA (Society of Philosophers in America) chapter. but you might be more familiar with his YouTube channel, Gregory B. Sadler, with over 120k subscribers.

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Greg Sadler - Speculative Heretics of Dune

In this panel discussion Michael Ly, Burlington CFO, and Dr. Denise Dunbar, Faculty Member Oplerno, talk about the Future Of Higher Education

Moderator: Gregory B. Sadler, Ph.D

Woodblock: Panel Discussion On Future Of Higher Education

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon the interplay between several general questions asked and addressed by moral theory and corresponding particular questions asked and answered by ordinary people, within the scope and course of their lives.

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Universal and Particular Moral Questions - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon two important moral distinctions that MacIntyre argues are  involved in developing "a capacity to become reflective about norms and goals".

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Two Key Moral Distinctions - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon his contention that plain persons are often what he calls "proto-Aristotelians" in their broad commitments embodying moral theory, rather than simply neutral blank slates. MacIntyre writes:

"[T]he plain person is funda­mentally a proto-Aristotelian. What is the force of 'fundamentally 'here? What it conveys can be expressed in three claims, first that every human being either lives out her or his life in a narrative form which is structured in terms of a telos, of virtues and of rules in an Aristotelian mode or has disrupted that narrative by committing her or himself to some other way of life, which is best understood as an alternative designed to avoid or escape from an Aristotelian mode of life, so that the lives of those who understand themselves, explicitly or much more probably implicitly, in terms set by Kant or Reid or Sidgwick or Sartre, are still informed by this rejected alternative. 

Secondly, I have told the story of the decline and fall of the plain person as the narrative of a single life. But the story could have been told, and I have told it elsewhere (in After Virtue), as a claim about the narrative history of a set of successive periods in West.em culture from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. This partial mirroring of the fate of individuals in the history of the larger social order and of the fate of that larger order in the narratives of individual lives testifies to the inseparability of the two stories. 

Thirdly, as these first two claims imply, I am also committed to holding that every human being is potentially a fully-fledged and not merely a proto-Aristotelian and that the frustration of that potentiality is among his or her morally important characteristics. We should therefore expect to find, within those who have not been allowed to develop, or have not themselves allowed their lives to develop, an Aristotelian form, a crucial and ineliminable tension between that in them which is and that which is not, Aristotelian. The standard modem anti-Aristotelian self will be a particular kind of divided self, exhibiting that complexity so characteristic of and so prized by modernity."
 

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Plain Persons as Proto-Aristotelians - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" It focuses upon the relationships outlined between Goods, Rules, and Virtues -- as well as practices, inclinations, and the natural law -- in that text.

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Goods, Rules, and Virtues - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon the extent to which what MacIntyre calls "plain persons" need to be or become moral philosophers. He writes:

"We can now say something more not only about how much of a moral
philosopher the plain person has to be, but also about what kind of a
moral philosopher the plain person has to be and how this may differ
from situation to situation. The plain person needs as much of a theory
as will enable her or him to identify what the significant alternatives
are which now confront her or him, and to understand why and how it
was in the past that she or he did or did not make mistakes in acting in
one way rather than another. That need may not be met, not only if the
plain person is insufficiently a theorist, but also if the theory which is
made available to her or him, even if true and adequate qua theory, is
stated in too much abstraction from the specificities and particularities
of her or his historical and autobiographical situation."

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons -  How Far Should Plain Persons Be Moral Philosophers?

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon MacIntyre's discussion of moral development and a person's life understood as a narrative

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Narrative and Moral Development - Sadler's Lectures

Dr. Gregory Sadler joined me in the studio and we attempted a discussion about philosophy.   It turns out that it's good for you.  get a hold of some ideas ad take them for a spin.  After we shut off the microphones Dr. Sadler revealed that it's impossible to understand every idea in philosophy, and that's okay.

In this episode we discussed:
Micheal Moorcock
Chronicles of Cornelius
Philip K. Dick
Tank (rock band)
Seneca and the Stoic Opposition
Cicero
Fundamentalism
Eclecticism
weddings
Anher management
Dostoevsky Versus Nietzsche
Shestov - "All Things Are Possible"
The Two Minute History of Philosophy
University Problems
Aristotle's Categories

Image for Hire - 2018-04-17 - Freelance philosopher Dr. Gregory Sadler

In the studio with The Skrauss, Renegade scholar and Speculative Fiction Expert, Gregory Sadler.
Topics discussed:
Imagination
"On Truth and Lies" by Nietzsche
Dick realism
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"
Emanuel Kant's Copernican Turn
Stick with your Existential Crisis and See Where it Goes
"Zapgun"
"Perelandra"
"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge"
"Flow My Tears, The  Policeman Said"
"Through a Scanner Darkly"
Dickish Themes:
1)Insect Mind
2) reality unraveling
3) seeing the break in reality and figuring out what to do about it
4) transcendence
"The Man in the High Castle"
I-Ching
Pot in our times
"Radio Free Albumeth"
Dick's "Exegesis"
Robert Crumb
Nag Hammadi Library
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Image for Hire - 2018-08-14 Doc Gregory Sadlerand The Skrauss  talk SF (Speculative Fiction)

I explore some of the contours of what a BLR (Beyond Left and Right) political philosophy might look like, and in particular try to answer the charge that it is a (potentially) reactionary philosophy ("reactionary" is not good, if you haven't heard the term).

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Ep. 16: Is BLR Reactionary?

: In this ninth episode of the Wisdom for Life radio show, hosts Dan Hayes and Greg Sadler examine a common image of concentric circles used to understand relationships with other people towards whom we might have affection, care, or moral obligations.  The smallest circle is that of close friends and family, while the largest extends to all humanity, and potentially beyond.

They discuss how differing philosophical and wisdom traditions, including Stoicism, Buddhism, and Utilitarianism have used this image, and developed practices designed to help us develop attitudes of justice and benevolence towards other beyond the circles we most typically focus upon.

They also examine a common issue that arises when considering circles of community - to what extent should a person focus on their nation or political community as the most important?  Should their focus instead be on all people, or on people closer to them?

They end the show by introducing a very helpful philosophical practice derived from several schools of Buddhism, Metta or "loving-kindness" meditation, which employs the conception of circles.

Show Music is by Scott Tarulli

Wisdom for Life: Circles of Care and Concern

In this tenth episode of the Wisdom for Life radio show, hosts Dan Hayes and Greg Sadler examine a common matter in everyday life - lying. What is a lie, and what counts as "lying"?  Can lying ever be something good, right, required, or even just all right?

They discuss different ways we can classify and understand lies, including the distinction between white, black, and blue lies.  Moral theories help us to understand and evaluate the rightness or wrongness of lies - and why they are right or wrong, good or bad - and they examine lying through the rigorous deontological lens of Immanuel Kant, and the more forgiving utilitarian lens of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

They also examine a common issue that frequently arises.  What about people who embellish stories?  Are they lying?  And is that embellishment morally bad, or is it something that contributes to enjoyable communication

They end the show by introducing a very helpful philosophical practice designed to help people develop an understanding of what kinds of lies or deception they engage in, and why they do it, so they can make better choices about these matters 

Show Music is by Scott Tarulli

Wisdom for Life:  Is Lying Ever Good?  2020-05-23

In this thirteenth episode of the Wisdom for Life radio show, hosts Dan Hayes and Greg Sadler discuss the Social Contract, a classic philosophical concept that plays a key role in American politics and everyday ethics, and which also bears on recent nationwide protests over police misconduct and aggression.

They discuss first what the social contract is and whether or not it has been broken for many Americans, referencing the recent short talk given by Kimberly Jones.  They also look at what ideas from classical social contract theory - found in Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Rawls can be useful for understanding our present situation

They also discuss who has been systematically excluded from the social contract, examine a few of the key points that Charles Mills discusses in The Racial Contract, and look at the features Nicholas A Christakis outlines for a better social contract.

They end the show by discussing a practice that listeners could engage in - trying to imagine a new social contract that would be equitable and just for all.

Kimberly Jones "How We Can Win" video - https://youtu.be/llci8MVh8J4
Charles Mills, The Racial Contract - https://amzn.to/3ea6rM1
Nicholas A Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society - https://amzn.to/2BZj9id

Show Music is by Scott Tarulli - https://www.scotttarulli.com/

Wisdom for Life: The Social Contract Today

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Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - How Far Should Plain Persons Be Moral Philosophers?

Sadler's Lectures

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