Michael Sugrue: An Intellectual LifeA beloved professor uploaded his lectures to YouTube and became a phenomenon.
By John Hirschauer
March 5, 2022
The most popular video on Dr. Michael Sugrue’s YouTube channel is his 1992 lecture on Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Marcus Aurelius is a Stoic. Sugrue styles himself one, too. “All Marcus wants to do is live a philosophical life,” Sugrue says, “but he happens to have the misfortune to be…emperor of Rome.” As emperor, Marcus Aurelius had unthinkable power. He ruled the entirety of the known world. “Imagine a man for whom all the restraints of law and custom and political order are taken away. He can have whatever he wants,” Sugrue said. “If a man, under those circumstances, behaves well, you know something about the soul underneath.”
When I spoke to Michael Sugrue, he looked nothing like the man who raved about Marcus Aurelius. In 1992, Sugrue looked like the prototypical academic—tan blazer, ruffled khakis, mammoth square spectacles intruding on a boyish, clean-shaven face. The man I met on Zoom was grizzled, with a baritone voice and a deep, throaty laugh. He had a Confucian-looking beard, with hairs jutting from his chin in gnarled, uneven strands.
The soul underneath, however, was the same. Sugrue, sitting beside his daughter Genevieve, was eager to discuss ideas—on justice (“it’s not like fins on a Cadillac”), religion (“I’m a Catholic, straight up”), and academia (“half the people are on medication, and not the ones who need it the most”).
Sugrue recently retired from Ave Maria University in Florida. He is a lifelong academic who hasn’t “really had a career.” His passion is reaching audiences beyond the classroom. Genevieve uploaded Sugrue’s entire 1992 lecture series to YouTube in 2020, 56 talks that span some 37 hours. The channel has more than two and a half million views.
* * *
Sugrue’s first lecture in the series is on Plato, the last on critical theory. His remarkable oratory skill is on display throughout. In each talk, Sugrue strides back and forth across a makeshift stage. His steps, like a metronome, mark the pace of the lecture. He does not carry a note card or read from a prompter. There is hardly a stutter in 37 hours of footage—no “ums,” no filler words, no bluster.
* * *
Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/michael-sugrue-an-intellectual-life/
