PHIL4405 · Philosophy

Greek Philosophy

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

This course is organized around the central philosophical questions asked and answered by philosophers in the ancient Greek-speaking world. Topics include theories of material bodies, change and time, elemental physics, and entities and their predicates; whether anything immaterial or immutable exists and, if so, its relation to the changing cosmos; the existence and nature of God or gods; the existence and nature of the human soul and its relation to the human body; the criterion of truth and the nature of language; the criterion of ethics; theories of animal and human cognition and motivation. We will consider Plato, Aristotle, and, more briefly, some pre-Socratic and post-Aristotelian authors such as Plutarch, Epictetus, and Plotinus.