Hello! I'm Greg Sadler, the designer and instructor for this 8-week online synchronous class. I'd like to introduce myself and tell you a few things about myself you might find relevant to this class.

I've been teaching college & university-level classes in Philosophy, Humanities, Literature, Religious Studies, and Critical Thinking for more than two decades. I first started designing and teaching online courses back in 2012. And I began designing and teaching classes like this one for lifelong learners back in 2014. So I've put in a number of years doing - and continually improving in - this sort of educational work. At this point, I have taught several thousand students in my classes. It's a profession that I'm passionate about!

My first encounter with Rene Descartes' thought was as a college student, majoring in Philosophy and Mathematics. In fact, the Meditations on First Philosophy was the very first Philosophy book I checked out from our college library. I will admit that I didn't understand it very well at all as a freshman! I read it, and another important work by Descartes, the Discourse on Method, several times through in college, and then in graduate school, took an entire semester-long course on Rene Descartes' work and thought.

I don't consider myself a "Cartesian" but I do find Descartes' work fascinating and well worth rereading and teaching. I began teaching this particular work, the Meditations, my final semester in graduate school, and I have taught at least portions of that text nearly every semester in the more than two decades since I graduated. I have also taught several other works by Descartes, namely his Discourse on Method, the Passions of the Soul, and his Correspondence with Princess Elizabeth. If you'd like to see videos of full class sessions or shorter videos focused on key ideas, here's a playlist you might check out.

Odds are you already know me from my philosophy-focused YouTube channel. I engage in public-facing philosophy in a number of other ways as well. The Sadler's Lectures podcast has over 800 short lectures on a variety of thinkers and texts in it. I also co-host the Wisdom for Life radio show. From 2016 to 2022, I served as editor of Stoicism Today, and I remain on the Modern Stoicism steering committee. I also write popularly-focused pieces on Philosophy and other topics in Medium.

After finishing my Ph.D in Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, I have continued my own educational development. This has included an Erasmus Institute Faculty Fellowship at Notre Dame University, studying models of practical rationality with Alasdair MacIntyre, two Summer Research Residencies at the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies, a Charles Chesnutt Library Fellowship studying information literacy, and a Service Learning Fellowship with the Institute for Community Justice.

I also went through training and certification with the American Philosophical Practitioners Association to become a philosophical counselor, and I have been working with clients and organizations applying resources from philosophy (including from Aristotle) for nearly a decade at this point.

My wife and I moved back here to the Greater Milwaukee area from New York in 2015, and are very happy to be living and working here in the downtown. I teach regularly for the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and occasionally for Marquette University.

I look forward to meeting all of you and engaging in some intensive study of Descartes' Meditations in our class!