Upcoming Online Courses Coming This Year

This semester, I have been designing and teaching academic college courses for 25 years. Hard to believe - a quarter of a century! Years back, people started asking if I could develop not-for-credit, open enrollment, but still rich and rigorous classes on topics, thinkers, and texts in philosophy. So a while back, I created the Study With Sadler online academy using the Teachable platform.

I created several asynchronous online courses, where students work at their own pace, however long or often they want (once you enroll, you get lifetime access), and I have plans to publish a number of new ones this coming year on thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Anselm of Canterbury, and Rene Descartes.

But people also have been asking for synchronous online courses with me - classes that include regular meeting sessions, where they get to interact with me more directly in discussion, question and answer, working through examples, and the like (and if they miss a class session, they can watch the recordings).

I started offering classes like that in 2022 on a platform that unfortunately went under, called Lighthall, so I decided in 2023 to start offering those courses using Teachable and Zoom. I was asked to take on some heavy academic loads though by the schools I teach for, and that got in the way of developing as many classes as I’d have liked to last year.

This year, I have plans to offer a LOT of new online synchronous classes. All of them will have lists of and links to readings, offer helpful resources and examples applying the concepts, meet for weekly 90-minute class sessions (which are recorded), and follow up with discussions in online forums. You’ll see announcements for each of those classes, once they’re ready for enrollment, here in Substack, in all my social media, and in a YouTube video in my channel.

Here’s what I have planned ahead for the year so far.

Ancient Philosophers On Friendship: a 10-week class, examining texts by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Epicureans, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, Dio Cassian, and Lucian. Meeting Thursdays 10:00 AM Central Time, starting January 25, and currently enrolling here.

The Cardinal Virtues In Stoicism: a 6-week class, examining each of the cardinal virtues in depth, the role and importance of virtue in Stoicism, problems and paradoxes with Stoic views, and how to develop and apply the virtues. Thinkers studied include Seneca, Cicero, Epictetus, Musonius Rufus, Marcus Aurelius, and Arius Didymus. Meeting Saturdays 10:00 Central Time, starting February 24 and currently enrolling here.

Rene Descartes’ Meditations, Objections, and Replies: an 8-week class, working through Rene Descartes’ massively influential work, the Meditations on First Philosophy, and then examining selections from the objections and Descartes’ replies to those objections. Meeting Thursdays 10:00 AM Central Time, starting April 11.

Five Platonic Dialogues: a 6-week class, working through Plato’s dialogues the Ion, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, examining key topics in Platonic ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, as well as exploring the last days of Plato’s teacher, Socrates. Meeting Saturdays 10:00 Central Time, starting April 27.

Aristotle On Moral Virtues And Vices: an 8-week class, examining books 2-6 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, exploring the nature of virtue, and looking at each of the moral virtues and its opposed vices in detail, finishing up with an examination of prudence and its connection with the moral virtues. Meeting Saturdays 10:00 Central Time, starting June 15.

Causality, Freedom, and The Will: a 10-week class, examining key texts and thinkers from antiquity to the modern age articulating perspectives on the nature of causality, whether causal determinism holds universally, the faculty of the will and whether human beings have or exercise freedom. Meeting Thursdays 10:00 AM Central Time, starting August 15.

Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and Genealogy of Morals: an 8-week class, examining these two key texts by the great modern thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche, exploring all of the concepts, accounts, and references in these massively influential books. Meeting Saturdays 10:00 Central Time, starting August 31.

I’ve got some other ideas for courses brewing in the back of my mind, but those are it for the present. The one class is enrolling and getting ready to start, and the rest of them are in the works. I hope you get half as excited about these as I do in planning and designing them!