Sadler's Lectures
Lectures on classic and contemporary philosophical texts and thinkers by Gregory B. Sadler
I'm that YouTube Philosophy Guy! Find more than 3,000 videos in my main channel. Support my video and podcast work! https://www.patreon.com/sadler or https://www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM
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I have a second podcast, Mind & Desire, publishing original episodes on a variety of topics in philosophy, which you can find here - https://gregorybsadler.substack.com/podcast
Learn more about this podcast channel - https://youtu.be/qRvL0gqlyrw and https://gregorybsadler.substack.com/p/the-sadlers-lectures-podcast
Due to popular demand - and with the work underwritten by my Patreon supporters - I have been converting my videos into MP3 files listeners can listen to anywhere they want!
I have a second podcast, Mind & Desire, publishing original episodes on a variety of topics in philosophy, which you can find here - https://gregorybsadler.substack.com/podcast
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 30, 2026 • 13min
Jorge Luis Borges - The Wall And The Books - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "The Wall And The Books" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions It speculates about the connections between two key themes marking the reign of the first Qin dynasty emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who ordered that all books before him be burned and the enclosure of the empire by a great wall.
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Other Inquisitions here - https://amzn.to/4br9pul

Mar 29, 2026 • 16min
Jorge Luis Borges - The Analytical Language Of John Wilkins - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "The Analytical Language Of John Wilkins" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions.
It explains the idea behind this rather utopian scheme to remodel language along completely rational and systematic lines in his work An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language . He also compares Wilkins' project with a classification listing of animals in a fictional "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge", and with a classification scheme of the Bibliographical Institute of Brussels. As a side-note, Michel Foucault famously incorporated and commented on Borges' fictional list of animals in his work The Order Of Things.
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Other Inquisitions here - https://amzn.to/4br9pul

Mar 27, 2026 • 14min
Jorge Luis Borges - On Chesterton - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "On Chesterton" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions It sets out and explores some of the interesting traits of an author who he references fairly often in his stories and essays
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Other Inquisitions here - https://amzn.to/4br9pul

Mar 25, 2026 • 12min
Jorge Luis Borges - The Enigma Of Edward FitzGerald - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "The Enigma Of Edward FitzGerald" which can be found in his collection Other Inquisitions
It discusses the polymath Omar Khayyám, who among other contributions in multiple fields, authored a number of quatrains, many centuries later loosely translated and arranged by the English poet Edward FitzGerald into a book known as the The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Borges advances the idea that the poet of that Rubaiyat is in a sense both of them, and neither Omar nor Edward.
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Other Inquisitions here - https://amzn.to/4br9pul

Mar 23, 2026 • 12min
Jorge Luis Borges - Kafka And His Precursors - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's essay "Kafka And His Precursors", in which he first examines the idea of literary precursors, and then identifies and briefly discusses six precursors to the works of Franz Kafka, in his view. These are:
Zeno's paradoxes of motion
an apologue by Han Yu
the writings of Kierkegaard
Browning's poem "Fears and Scruples"
a short story by Léon Bloy
Lord Dunsany's short story "Carcassonne"
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Other Inquisitions here - https://amzn.to/4br9pul

Mar 21, 2026 • 12min
Jorge Luis Borges - The Immortal - Humanity And Immortality - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's story "The Immortal" which can be found in Collected Fictions. It focuses on on the last parts of the story, after the narrator has found the city of the immortals and become an immortal himself. As it turns out, immortality is not everything mortals lacking it imagine it to be, and the meaning of the endless life they enjoy gets diminished. They decide to seek out the river that grants mortality, and the narrator succeeds in finding it
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Collected Fictions here - https://amzn.to/3xZnwHA

Mar 20, 2026 • 18min
Jorge Luis Borges - The Immortal - Seeking And Finding The City - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's story "The Immortal" which can be found in Collected Fictions. It focuses on the first portion of the narrative, in which the narrator relates a story about finding out about a river that grants immortality and a city where the immortals are reputed to live. He leads an expedition to try to find the city, and ultimately succeeds, but the city, accessed via a labyrinth, turns out to be quite different than expected. He also finds who the immortals are, and ends up joining them.
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Collected Fictions here - https://amzn.to/3xZnwHA

Mar 19, 2026 • 12min
Jorge Luis Borges - Borges And I - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosophical short story writer, essayist, and poet Jorge Luis Borges's story "Borges and I" which can be found in Collected Fictions. Borges writes about and contrasts himself against the "other Borges", the one who does the writing and to whom things happen. Borges and the other Borges share much in common and are intimately connected, but not in ways that Borges is particularly happy about.
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 4000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Get Borges' Collected Fictions here - https://amzn.to/3xZnwHA

Mar 17, 2026 • 14min
Simone de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity - Existentialism And Individualism - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century existentialist and feminist philosopher, novelist, essayist, and playwright Simone de Beauvoir's book, The Ethics of Ambiguity
It focuses specifically on her discussion in the conclusion, which looks at a question that arises for existentialists, namely whether existentialist ethics is individualistic or not. As it turns out, the answer depends on what conception one is relying upon of "individualism", and de Beauvoir provides important clarifications about the senses in which existentialism does focus upon individuals
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 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Purchase De Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity - amzn.to/32IbKya

Mar 16, 2026 • 17min
Simone de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity - Ethical Evaluation Of Violence - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century existentialist and feminist philosopher, novelist, essayist, and playwright Simone de Beauvoir's book, The Ethics of Ambiguity
It focuses specifically on her discussion in the section "Ambiguity", looking at her discussions about how violence should be evaluated from an existentialist ethical perspective.
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 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler
Purchase De Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity - amzn.to/32IbKya


