Watch Philosophy Lectures That Become a Hit Throughout COVID by means of Professor Michael Sugrue (RIP): From Plato and Marcus Aurelius to Essential Idea

If we ask which phi­los­o­phy professional­fes­sor has made the nice­est have an effect on on this decade, there’s a sol­identification case to be made for the overdue Michael Sug­rue. But within the close to­ly four-decade-long profession that fol­lowed his stud­ies on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­cross beneath Allan Bloom (creator of The Clos­ing of the Amer­i­can Thoughts, lat­er immor­tal­ized in Saul Bel­low’s Rav­el­stein), he nev­er pub­lished a e book, nor took a tenured posi­tion. His remaining position of make use of­ment as a lec­tur­er used to be Ave Maria Uni­ver­si­ty, a small Catholic insti­tu­tion discovered­ed by means of the person at the back of Domi­no’s Piz­za. After his demise ear­li­er this yr, his paintings may have lived on simplest within the mem­o­ries of the stu­dents with whom he shared magnificence­rooms.

That may were the case, a minimum of, if Sug­rue’s daugh­ter had­n’t uploaded his lec­tures to Youtube dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic, when view­ers internationally had been greater than able for a dose of philo­soph­i­cal wis­dom. “The lec­tures had been report­ed as a part of the Nice Minds of the West­ern Intel­lec­tu­al Tra­di­tion collection,” writes John Hirschauer in a 2021 Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive professional­record, “a col­lec­tion of talks at the West’s nice­est authors and thinkers” pub­lished by means of The Train­ing Com­pa­the big apple in 1992. “Sugrue’s first lec­ture within the collection is on Pla­to, the remaining on crit­i­cal the­o­ry. His statement­ready ora­to­ry talent is on dis­play thru­out.” What’s extra, “he does now not automobile­ry a word card or learn from a prompter. There may be laborious­ly a stut­ter in 37 hours of pictures.”

Sug­rue used to be diag­nosed with can­cer within the ear­ly twen­ty-tens, and “document­tors on the time gave him 5 years to are living. He mentioned the considered Mar­cus Aure­lius had tak­en on new imply­ing since his diag­no­sis.” Certainly, Sug­rue’s lec­ture at the Roman emper­or and Sto­ic icon is essentially the most pop­u­lar of his movies, with over one and a part mil­lion perspectives on the time of this writ­ing. Over time, we’ve fea­tured dif­fer­ent intro­duc­tions to Sto­icism right here on Open Cul­ture, in addition to the paintings of oth­er Sto­ics just like the states­man-drama­tist Seneca the More youthful. However Sug­rue’s 42-minute exe­ge­sis on Mar­cus Aure­lius — now not simply “essentially the most inter­est­ing of the Sto­ics,” but additionally “the only examination­ple of an absolute ruler who behaves him­self in this type of means as to not dis­grace him­self” — has res­onat­ed unusu­al­ly in all places.

Then, as now, Mar­cus Aure­lius serves as “a stand­ing reproach to our self-indul­gence, a stand­ing reproach to the concept that we’re not able to take care of the cir­cum­stances of human lifestyles.” He ful­ly inter­nal­ized the cen­tral Sto­ic perception that there are “simplest two forms of issues: there are the issues you’ll con­trol and the issues you’ll’t.” Each­factor falls into the lat­ter crew except for “your inten­tions, your behav­ior, your movements.” And certainly, simply as Sug­rue stored glance­ing to the examination­ple of Mar­cus Aure­lius — go back­ing to his textual content Med­i­ta­tions as fresh­ly as a webi­nar he gave two years in the past — stu­dents of phi­los­o­phy but unborn will unquestionably to find their method to the philo­soph­i­cal guid­ance that he him­self has left at the back of.

Underneath, you’ll watch a playlist of Sug­rue’s lec­ture collection, Nice Minds of the West­ern Intel­lec­tu­al Tra­di­tion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist

by way of NYTimes

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Is Sto­icism? A Brief Intro­duc­tion to the Historical Phi­los­o­phy That Can Assist You Deal with Our Exhausting Mod­ern Instances

How one can Be a Sto­ic in Your Each­day Lifestyles: Phi­los­o­phy Professional­fes­sor Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci Explains

3 Massive Vol­umes of Sto­ic Writ­ings by means of Seneca Now Loose On-line, Due to Tim Fer­riss

The Sto­ic Wis­dom of Roman Emper­or Mar­cus Aure­lius: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Brief Movies

Oxford’s Loose Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Circulate 41 Lec­tures

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: A Loose Path That Explores Phi­los­o­phy from Historical Greece to Mod­ern Instances

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and large­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the e book The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e book.