Course Catalog

In this course, via the study of Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, students learn to explain the major
historical sub-disciplines of philosophy – metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics and political
philosophy. Students should be able to identify the projects, questions, arguments and key concepts
of each of these sub-disciplines within at least two moments in the history of philosophy.
PL 2070

What is Art? What is Beauty? How can I know what is beautiful? And what does it mean to me? These are some of Aesthetics’ main questions as it is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and value of art and the criteria of artistic judgment and experience. Various answers have been given throughout the history of philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and today’s analytical or postmodern philosophy, making of aesthetics a vibrant and dynamic discipline, constantly revitalised by new art forms and critical concepts. Through a thorough historical survey of the notion students learn to discuss art and beauty in a time when these classical notions are undergoing very important changes. Everyone is encouraged to bring in his or her own experience of art. There is no prerequisite for this course.

Philosophical and political modernity concerns the development of rationality, freedom, and social responsibility from out of the tensions between ethics, religion, politics and the economy. With postmodernist epistemology, the so-called 'return' of religion, and economic globalization, this 'modernity' has been questioned. In this historical context the course re-elaborates the problematic of modernity through selective reading of Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche.

Modern Critical Theory examines the notions of experience, representation and value from a plurality of standpoints: linguistic, semiotic, anthropological, psychoanalytic, literary, philosophical, aesthetic. This course studies the main schools and authors of this tradition and focuses on the notion of cultural meaning in the works of key theorists (from Levi-Strauss to Said, from Adorno to Butler).

Topics vary every semester.

Studies the Greek and Latin literature of the Roman Empire. Readings will include: Seneca, star prose writer and poet of tragedies that impressed Shakespeare; Lucanus’ anti-Aeneid; Petronius’ Satyrica, the first Latin novel; Tacitus, the dark historian; witty epigrams and biting satire; a speech On Magic; the Stoics Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, one an ex-slave, the other an emperor; and Plutarch’s account of Antony's love for Cleopatra

Studies the Greek and Latin literature of the Roman Empire. Readings will include: Seneca, star prose writer and poet of tragedies that impressed Shakespeare; Lucanus’ anti-Aeneid; Petronius’ Satyrica, the first Latin novel; Tacitus, the dark historian; witty epigrams and biting satire; a speech On Magic; the Stoics Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, one an ex-slave, the other an emperor; and Plutarch’s account of Antony's love for Cleopatra

A grand tour of 5th cent. BCE Athens, a fascinating time of intellectual unrest and innovation. Readings include the founding fathers of drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), Old Comedy (Aristophanes), fragments of the Greek sophists, the historiographers Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon’s Recollections of Socrates and early Platonic dialogues, such as the Apology and the Phaedo.

A grand tour of 5th cent. BCE Athens, a fascinating time of intellectual unrest and innovation. Readings include the founding fathers of drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), Old Comedy (Aristophanes), fragments of the Greek sophists, the historiographers Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon’s Recollections of Socrates and early Platonic dialogues, such as the Apology and the Phaedo.

A tour through 300 years of Greek and Roman history and shifting multiethnic empires, from the death of Alexander to the death of Cleopatra (30 BCE). We read a lot: overviews of the Hellenistic Age and the Roman Republic as well as original works by Menander, Epicurus, Cleanthes, Callimachus, Theocritus, Aratus, Apollonius Rhodius, Polybius, Plautus, Terence, Ennius, Sallustius, Cicero, Caesar, Lucretius, Catullus, and others.