Ancient Philosophy

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Why would anyone choose to study philosophers who lived and wrote (more than) two millennia ago? One obvious answer is: to learn about one’s roots; to better understand Western culture and heritage. Up to this day, the ancient Greeks and Romans constitute a major influence on our ideas about critical thinking, about the fundamental character of Reality, about Science, Ethics, and Art, and last but not least: about what it is to be human and about what it means for humans to flourish, to live truly good lives. Ancient philosophy provides an inexhaustible source of inspiration for contemporary philosophy. “The European philosophical tradition”, the philosopher Whitehead once remarked, “consists in a series of footnotes to Plato”. Slightly overstated, but not untrue. In this course we will return to the sources and study the texts that helped us become who we are today. Guided by David Roochnik’s book Retrieving the Ancients we will study original texts from the so-called Pre-Socratics, the Sophists, Socrates/Plato, Aristotle, the Roman moralists, and Neo-Platonism. Although we will attempt to position these thinkers in their historical and geographic contexts, our main concern will be: what have these ancient thinkers still to say to us today?