Course Schedule
Philosophy 300—Cynics and Sages: Greek and Roman Philosophy
Fall 2018
(revised 18 October 2018)

 

I. The Presocratics

Aug. 27

Introduction: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Empedocles.  (Bring Osborne’s Presocratic Philosophy [PP] to first class, having read ch.1: “Lost words, forgotten worlds.”)

Aug. 29

Parmenides  (PP, ch.2) & Taber’s “Parmenides on Non-Being”

Aug. 31

Zeno of Elea (PP, ch.3) & Taber’s “On Overtaking Zeno’s Dichotomy and Achilles Paradoxes” & related handouts; if you want more details about him and his paradoxes, see the SEP entry on Zeno of Elea.

Sept. 3

Labor Day

Sept. 5

Xenophanes, Melissus, Anaxagoras, and Democritus (PP, ch.4)
Primo Levi’s “The Story of C” (handout)

excerpts of the poetry of Sappho (handout)
Heraclitus (PP, ch.5) and Lewis Thomas on “Logos” (handout)

Sept. 7

Pythagoras (PP, ch.6)
Also: Sacks’s “The Twins”;

Johnson’s “From Here to Infinity: Obsessing with the Magic of Primes”;
Suplee’s “Team’s Model Demonstrates How Evolution Obeys Mathematical Laws”;

more on the three-quarters power law (= Kleiber’s law)

Skim this enough to see some other ways biologists uncover mathematical relationships.
Even the sizes of cities get in on the Pythagorean fun: Strogatz’s guest blog “Math and the City.”

And Pythagoras’ “music of the spheres” has this contemporary counterpart.

Letter, Theano to Nikostrate (handout)

Sept. 10

The Sophists (PP, ch.7), as well as Rosenzweig’s “Being, Non-Being, and the Void” (handout)

Sept. 12

Exam (short-answer and essay) on the Presocratics; bank of questions will be circulated to you at least one week in advance.

 

 

 

II. Socrates & Plato (These are linked to excellent sources, but they exceed in detail what is needed for this course.)

Sept. 14

Plato’s Apology & my “The Euthyphro Objection to the Divine Command Theory of Morality”

Sept. 16

Sunday: Letter from a Presocratic due e-mailed to me by noon.

Sept. 17

Plato’s Crito, death scene from the Phaedo (from 114e to the end), and Stern’s “What They Learn in School” (handout)

Sept. 19

King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Sept. 21

Plato’s Meno through 86c

Sept. 23

Sunday: paper due emailed to me at noon about Socrates, King, and Malcolm X.

Sept. 24

Meno, remainder

Sept. 26

Plato’s Symposium 189a-193d (the speech of Aristophanes) & 207a4 [“All this she taught me…”]-212c2 (2nd half of the speech of Diotima)

Sept. 28

Plato’s Republic II & test yourself here about the Euthyphro objection to the divine command theory of morality

Oct. 1

Paper due emailed to me by start of class. No class today, due to tutorials being scheduled.

Oct. 3

Republic IV

Oct. 5

Republic V

Oct. 8

Fall reading day; no classes.

Oct. 10

Republic VI & VII, and Reeve’s “Women” (handout from his book Women in the Academy: Dialogues on Themes from Plato’s Republic)

Oct. 12

Republic VIII

Oct. 15

Republic IX

Oct. 17

Paper due emailed to me by start of class. No class today, due to tutorials being scheduled.

III. Aristotle (Again, an excellent overview, but reading all of it carefully is more than is required for this course. Sparknotes has overviews of Aristotle; they are too brief to be of sustained help, but might help you orient yourself to the flow of some of his discussions.)

Oct. 19

Physics I & II.1-2 (so pp. 36-47)  (In conjunction with Physics II, you might look over University of Houston’s Professor Cynthia Freeland’s outline. And for ALL of our Aristotle readings, consult as needed Taber’s reading notes.)

Oct. 21

Sunday:  First lit review (on Presocratics, Socrates, or Plato) is due e-mailed to me by noon.

Oct. 22

·       remainder of  Physics (skipping II.4, 5, 7, & 9)

·       Generation and Corruption

·       chapters [handout] 51-58 of Armand Marie Leroi’s 2014 book The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

Oct. 24

De Anima, Books I & II

Oct. 26

De Anima III & Parts of Animals

Oct. 29

Metaphysics I and IV 

Oct. 31

Metaphysics VIII-XIII

Nov. 2

Nicomachean Ethics I

Nov. 5

Nicomachean Ethics II

Nov. 7

Nicomachean Ethics VI. 1-2, and VII-X

Nov. 9

Politics in Irwin & Fine, plus handouts consisting of Politics I.3-6 (on slavery) & VIII.1-2 (on education); a few pages about education from the Rhetoric (handout); Qvortrup’s “Aristotle’s Philosophy of Equality, Peace, and Democracy” (handout from Philosophy Now magazine, 2016); & Poetics (Irwin & Fine)

Nov. 12

Aristotle exam

 

 

 

IV. Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy

Nov. 14

Diogenes the Cynic, excerpts (handout)

Nov. 16

Epicurus’ letter to Menoeceus (handout)

Nov. 19

Seneca’s letters 2-28

 

Thanksgiving  Break

 

 

Nov. 26

Seneca’s letters 38, 40, 41, 47

Nov. 28

Seneca’s letters 53, 54, 63, 77, 78, 83

Nov. 30

No class today. Second lit review (on Aristotle) is due e-mailed to me by noon the following Sunday.

Nov. 30-
Dec. 7

Stoic Week 2018!...keeping a Stoic journal (Due Dec. 7)

 

 

Dec. 3

Seneca’s letters 86, 88, 105, 107, 122, 123

Dec. 5

Plotinus excerpts (handout)

Dec. 7

No new reading, but Stoic Week Journal due in class; “Encomium Symposium” (see epideictic rhetoric, under “Aristotle”) & discussion of study questions for The Ultimate Celebration of Understanding.

Dec. 9

Sunday: Third lit review (on Hellenistic or Roman philosophy) is due e-mailed to me by noon. [For those selecting the option to do three lit reviews, at 20/30/30 pts., as opposed to doing only two, at 40/40.]

Dec. 13

Thursday, three-hour Ultimate Celebration of Understanding (called by barbarians a “final essay examination,” 9:00-noon; bank of questions will be circulated to you at least one week in advance.




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Send me mail:  mstaber at smcm dot edu                                                 

Go to the home page for this course.

Go to Michael Taber's home page.

Go to the SMCM home page.