Video and Podcast Resources on Philosophy As A Way Of Life

hours of lectures on the ideas of Pierre Hadot, Michel Foucault, and John Sellars

This Spring, I am once again teaching a class called “Philosophy, Mindfulness, and Life” at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. We do discuss mindfulness understood in a broad sense, but the main focus of the class is studying, applying, and experimenting with philosophies as ways of life.

This is my third time teaching that class. The second time around, as I redesigned it, I did several key things, one of which led to the resources I’m about to offer you below. First, since we were in covid-19 pandemic times, the class moved from a mainly face-to-face (with an extensive online course website) format to an entirely online one.

Second, I developed a number of new resources for my students on all the topics we studied. Third, I decided to spend the first few weeks, after hitting on the mindfulness aspect, to really focus on the idea and traditions of “philosophy as a way of life”, and closely connected ideas.

There were three main texts I assigned my students — key ideas from which we discussed and explored in our online class sessions — for that portion of the class. They were:

• Chapter 3 of Pierre Hadot’s book, Philosophy As A Way Of Life, “Spiritual Exercises”

• Michel Foucault’s lecture “Technologies of the Self” (found in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth)

• John Sellars’ article “What Is Philosophy As A Way Of Life?”

Among other resources I produced for my students and provided to them in the course website were lectures on each of these texts, focused on key concepts, and available in two formats — video and podcast. The podcast versions are in fact produced from the video lectures, with the audio quality improved, so they both provide the same content.

As has been my practice for over a decade now, most of what I develop for my academic students gets offered to other students and lifelong learners (and even my peers who wish to use them) worldwide over the internet. You’ll find the video lectures below in my YouTube channel, and the audio lectures in my Soundcloud channel. Both of those contain a vast amount of content, so some viewers or listeners might have a tricky time locating all of these resources on Philosophy As A Way Of Life. I’m aggregating all of them here in one place to make it easy for those who would like to access them.

I have since then revisited Hadot, and produced additional resources on other chapters of his book Philosophy As A Way Of Life, which I include below as well. One of those chapters provides his critical engagement with Foucault’s own ideas. I’ll probably continue adding more videos and podcast lectures on philosophy as a way of life and other related ideas (technologies of the self, therapeutic arguments, etc.) down the line. For now, here are the lectures I currently have available.

Pierre Hadot — Chapter 3: “Spiritual Exercises”

• Spiritual Exercises & Philosophy | watch video | listen to podcast

• Types of Spiritual Exercises | watch video | listen to podcast

• Dialogue and Spiritual Exercise | watch video | listen to podcast

• Death, Life, and Perspective | watch video | listen to podcast

• Philosophical Writing & Spiritual Exercises | watch video | listen to podcast

Pierre Hadot — Chapter 4: “Ancient Spiritual Exercises And 'Christian Philosophy’”

• Christianity As Philosophy | watch video | listen to podcast

• Christian Modes of Prosokhē | watch video | listen to podcast

• Christian Spiritual Perfection | watch video | listen to podcast

Pierre Hadot — Chapter 7: "Reflections On The Idea Of The 'Cultivation Of The Self'"

• Criticism of Foucault's Focus On Self | watch video | listen to podcast

Pierre Hadot — Chapter 11: "Philosophy As A Way Of Life"

• Philosophy & Discourse About Philosophy | watch video | listen to podcast

• Ancient, Medieval, & Modern Philosophy | watch video | listen to podcast

• Self, Other, And World | watch video | listen to podcast

Michel Foucault — “Technologies of the Self”

• Four Types of Technologies | watch video | listen to podcast

• Care of the Self and Knowing Oneself | watch video | listen to podcast

• Socratic and Platonic Care of the Self | watch video | listen to podcast

• Hellenistic and Roman Care of the Self | watch video | listen to podcast

• Stoic Care of the Self | watch video | listen to podcast

• Early Christian Care of the Self | watch video | listen to podcast

John Sellars “What Is Philosophy As A Way Of Life?”

• Three Views on Philosophy as Way of Life | watch video | listen to podcast

• Scientific vs Humanistic Philosophy | watch video | listen to podcast

• Philosophy of Life As A Third Way | watch video | listen to podcast

---

Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.