PH335 Ancient Philosophy
Prerequisite: PH200 or HO202
The earliest philosophers sought happiness by seeking wisdom, and so inspired a philosophical tradition of investigating the nature of humanity, virtue, God, matter and form, and the natures themselves. This course traces that development from ground-breaking thinkers such as Heraclitus and Parmenides to Socrates and the four main schools of ancient philosophy (Platonist, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean) and then the assessment of those schools by Cicero, Plotinus, and Sextus Empiricus. One theme of the course is the interconnection between metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.