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Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy · Aug 19, 2026

Video And Podcast Resources On Plutarch's Virtue Ethics

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Gregory B. Sadler · Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy

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I get asked occasionally who the underrated philosophers in the ancient period are, whose works would be well worth studying. One of the thinkers who comes to mind for me most often is the middle Platonist Plutarch. I think many people know of him as a biographer (it was quite common when I was in high school decades back, that some of his Parallel Lives would be assigned reading), but relatively few people are aware that he has a massive body of philosophical work, called the Moralia, ranging over a number of different fields of philosophy, and engaging with many philosophical schools and figures of the time.

One particularly important and interesting area of his work, where he makes some pretty useful and insightful contributions is within the field of ethics, and more specifically virtue ethics. Since many people (including quite a few people who focus on virtue ethics) don’t know about Plutarch’s Moralia at all, let alone have read around in the works comprising that collection, unsurprisingly they are unaware that he authored a number of works that taken together articulate a rich and robust middle Platonist virtue ethics. Quite a few of them even have “virtue” in their titles!

Recently, I produced a number of new core concept videos on some of these virtue-titled texts, and after that, converted those into Sadler’s Lectures podcast episodes (where the sound quality is boosted, and all the pauses and filler-words are removed). I do have the intention of returning in the future to Plutarch’s Moralia and producing additional lectures on other virtue-focused works. Once those are done, I’ll add links to them here.

For the present, though, you have twenty-five lectures on four of his works concerning middle Platonist virtue ethics, available both in video and podcast format. You can watch, listen to, or download (for podcasts) these resources anywhere you’d like to.

I hope that these might provide an encouragement or enticement to those who are interested in improving their characters, lives, and relationships to devote some study to Plutarch’s very helpful works. And for those who are already studying and appreciating Plutarch, perhaps they might also prove to be of some interest.

Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, the co-founder of The Stoic Heart®, 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.

Read the original on gregorybsadler.substack.com ↗

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