Philosophy 300—Cranks and Sages: Greek and Roman
Philosophy
Fall 2020
Course Schedule
(revised 25 October 2020)
There
is a
Google folder in which lives some of the material linked below.
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I. The Presocratics |
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Aug.
17 |
Introduction to the semester,
consulting the
road map: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes,. (Attend first class with
Curd’s A Presocratic Reader [APR], having read ch. 2 = pp. 13-22:
“The Milesians”) |
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Aug.
19 |
a.
Pythagoras (APR, ch.3) b.
Safire’s “B.C./A.D.
or B.C.E./C.E.?” c.
Sacks’s “The
Twins”; d.
Johnson’s “From
Here to Infinity: Obsessing with the Magic of Primes” e.
Suplee’s “Team’s
Model Demonstrates How Evolution Obeys Mathematical Laws” f.
more on the three-quarters power
law (= Kleiber’s law) g.
Skim this enough
to see some other ways biologists uncover mathematical relationships. h.
Even the sizes of cities get in on the
Pythagorean fun: Strogatz’s guest blog “Math and
the City.” i.
And Pythagoras’ “music of the spheres” has this
contemporary counterpart. j.
Letter, Theano
to Nikostrate |
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Aug.
21 |
Xenophanes (APR, ch.4) |
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Aug.
24 |
Parmenides (APR, ch.6) & Taber’s “Parmenides on Non-Being” |
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Aug.
26 |
Zeno of Elea (APR,
ch.7) & Taber’s “On Overtaking Zeno’s
Dichotomy and Achilles Paradoxes” & thoughts from three former students:
Irvine,
McCutcheon,
and Schermerhorn.
And one
page from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Then ducks. A 19-minute interview with Suki Finn on the Philosophy Bites podcast, on the metaphysics of nothing. (You’ll see the link to click on that page.) If you want more details about him and his paradoxes, see the SEP
entry on Zeno of Elea. |
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Aug. 28 |
Empedocles (APR, ch.8) |
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Aug. 31 |
Anaxagoras,
and Leucippus & Democritus (APR,
chs. 9 & 10) See Sophia Gottlieb’s
ruminations on nothingness in “An Essay on Nothing” on the web
or as
a pdf (from Philosophy Now
magazine 2020). 3 graphics: Abstruse Goose’s “The Sliver of Perception” & 2
charts from The Economist
magazine |
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Sept.
2 |
The Sophists (APR, ch.14) |
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Sept.
4 |
3-4 page
paper due emailed to me by start of class about your response to Rosenzweig.
No new reading for today’s class, as we’ll prepare for next reading. |
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Sept.
7 |
Labor Day…no classes 2-3 page letter from a Presocratic
due e-mailed to me by 1:20 p.m. today. |
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(These are linked to excellent sources, but they exceed in detail
what is needed for this course.) |
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Sept.
9 |
Plato’s Apology &
Taber’s “The Euthyphro
Objection to the Divine Command Theory of Morality”; at the Temple of
Apollo in Delphi, in
front, from
above solo, and from
above with Sean. |
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Sept. 11 |
Plato’s Crito & death
scene from the Phaedo (from 114e to
the end) |
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Sept.
14 |
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Sept.
16 |
3-4 page
paper due emailed to me by start of class about Socrates, King, and Malcolm
X. No new reading for today’s class, as we’ll prepare for next reading. |
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Sept.
18 |
Plato’s Symposium 185c4 [“When Pausanius…”]-193d (that is, the
speeches of Eryximachus and Aristophanes); consult my
reading notes as needed. |
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Sept.
21 |
Symposium 201d1 [“Now I’ll let you go…”]-end |
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Sept. 23 |
4-6
page paper due emailed to me by start of class about love. No new reading for today’s class, as we’ll prepare for the next
reading. |
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Sept.
25 |
Plato’s Republic II & test
yourself here about the Euthyphro objection to the divine command theory
of morality Consult my
reading notes about Republic II-IX. |
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Sept.
28 |
Republic IV |
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Sept.
30 |
Republic V |
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Oct.
2 |
Republic VI & VII (just through 521b) Now that you’ve read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, see Vincent
Kavaloski’s very short story “What Is Freedom?” on the web or
as
a pdf (from Philosophy Now magazine, 2020). |
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Oct.
5 |
Republic VIII & IX |
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Oct.
7 |
Reeve’s
“Women” (chapter from his book Women in the Academy: Dialogues on
Themes from Plato’s Republic) Jenni Jenkins’ “Would Plato Allow Facebook in His Republic?” on
the web or as
a pdf (from Philosophy Now magazine,
2017). A one-pager from The
Economist magazine (2020) about the role of democracy in Athens’
surviving the
plague of 430 BCE. And now maybe you’re ready for Jared Smith’s “Taylor
Swift: A Socratic Dialogue” from McSweeney’s, and this
from The Onion. |
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III. Aristotle (Again, an excellent overview, but reading all of it carefully is
more than is required for this course.
A user-friendly overview of Aristotle’s life is on pp. 3-29 of your book Introducing Aristotle: A Graphic Guide.) |
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Oct. 9 |
·
Physics
I.1 ( = p. 36) ·
Physics
II.1-3 & 8 ( = pp. 42-50 & 57-60) ·
Selections in our reading from Physics VI & VIII ( = pp. 62-68) ·
In conjunction with Physics, see pp. 57-68 of the Graphic
Guide. 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 for
Aristotle, on the web
or as
a pdf. |
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Oct. 12 |
5-8 page Plato paper about democracy due
emailed to me by start of class. No class today, due to tutorials being
scheduled. |
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Oct. 14 |
·
Generation and Corruption ·
chapters
61-68 of Armand Marie Leroi’s 2014 book The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science (You might also enjoy
the BBC’s four 15-minute
videos based on this book.) ·
De Anima, Book I · Passage
from 1689 by John Locke that is often cited as inventing the blank slate (in
Latin: tabula rasa) view of humans |
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Oct.
16 |
De Anima II & III Graphic Guide, pp. 106-117 |
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Oct.
19 |
Metaphysics I and IV |
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Oct.
21 |
Metaphysics VIII-XIII Graphic Guide, pp. 30-56
& 69-73 Buddhist simile
of the chariot (How might Aristotle reply?) Sam Woolfe’s “The Universe Is Made of Mathematics” (note the
Platonism of a certain physicist), on
the web or as
a pdf (from Philosophy Now
magazine, 2016). |
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Oct.
23 |
Nicomachean Ethics I And just to keep the
order of things straight…. |
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Oct.
26 |
Nicomachean Ethics II NE VIII & IX, on friendship Graphic Guide, pp. 118-135 Consider viewing this
9-minute video. A
chart of Aristotle’s virtues (means) and vices (excesses and defects) A
brief overview from Psychology
Today about the role of eudaimonia
(approximately our “happiness) in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. |
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Oct.
28 |
Politics I-III in
Irwin & Fine (pp. 288-309) Graphic Guide, pp. 136-149 |
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Oct. 30 |
Poetics Graphic Guide, pp. 150-161 plus various items: ·
Law I-IV (on how to train physicians) ·
Rhetoric II.xii-xiv
(on education) ·
Politics I.3-6
(on slavery); IV.11
(on Aristotle’s realistic best polis); VII.9
(on Aristotle’s idealistic best polis); & VIII.1-3
(on education) ·
Qvortrup’s “Aristotle’s Philosophy of
Equality, Peace, and Democracy” on
the web or as
a pdf (from Philosophy Now magazine, 2016) ·
Callard’s “Should
We Cancel Aristotle?” (from NY Times, 2020) ·
Aristotle’s will |
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IV. Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy |
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Nov. 2 |
Diogenes
the Cynic: excerpts;
about Hipparchia, a woman Cynic
mentioned in the final aforementioned excerpt; a
5:25 video from Aeon; this
painting; this
statue in his hometown of Sinope (now in Turkey); this statue in
Corinth (Greece), where he died; a couple of SMCM students getting
involved: Jacob
and Daniel. |
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Nov.
4 |
Aristotle exam |
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Nov.
6 |
Epicurus’ letter
to Menoeceus and “Principal
Doctrines”; or both in this
pdf |
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Nov.
9 |
Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, 2-28, and excerpts
from Musonius Rufus |
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Nov. 12 |
Seneca’s
letters 38, 40, 41, 47 Stoic Week
2020!...keeping a Stoic Week Journal (Nov. 11-18; due emailed by Nov. 20
class) Some common misconceptions of
Epicureanism and Stoicism. |
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Nov. 14 |
Seneca’s letters 53, 54, 63, 77, 78, 83 You might want to read this
short overview from Psychology Today
of the four main schools of thought in the Hellenistic and Roman periods,
bound together by their concern for attaining the state of mind known as ataraxia (translated roughly as
“tranquility”). And this
cartoon is something of a summary of some Hellenistic and Roman schools
of thought. |
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Nov.
16 |
Plotinus excerpts: intro
& diagram; in this
text, read the editor’s intro and the last two excerpts, 5.1 & 6.9
(from book page 489 to the end) |
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Nov.
18 |
Proclus excerpts Hypatia, from Oxford
University Press & from something called The
Sunday Tribune. Consider someday
watching the movie Agora, which is about
her. Note the three Neoplatonic
academies mentioned
briefly here. |
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Nov.
20 |
Last day of classes. Stoic
Week Journal due. No new reading, as we hold our “Encomium Symposium” (see epideictic rhetoric, under
“Aristotle”) & discussion of options for The Ultimate Celebration of
Understanding. |
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Levity break: Alex Baia’s “What
Your Favorite Philosopher Says About You” from McSweeney’s. |
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Tues.
Dec. 01 |
Your take-home Ultimate Celebration of Understanding (called by
barbarians a “final essay examination”); the questions will be circulated to you at least one week in advance.
Due at end of exam slot, which is 9:15 p.m. ET. |
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.
