Due to scientific, historical, cultural and even ethical grounds, we have witnessed a falling away from traditional religious belief and community. Yet if collective belief is essential for any community to both exist and to thrive, might we find alternatives for this within the classical philosophical tradition? This class will look at the significant historical role classical Greco-Roman philosophy has played in shaping both individual and collective thought and belief over the centuries and thus in how it might inform community today.
- Heraclitus, Fragments, trans. Brooks Haxton (Penguin Classics, 2003)
- Plato, Early Socratic Dialogues, trans. Chris Emlyn-Jones (Penguin Classics, 2005).
- Plato, Timaeus, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014).
- Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Adam Beresford (Penguin Classics, 2003).
- Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, trans. Horace C. P. McGregor (Penguin Classics, 2004).
- Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages (HarperCollins, 2004).
- Edward J Watts, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2017)
- The historical trajectory for a loss of religious belief and community.
- How a shared collective belief system both creates and maintains community.
- How classical philosophy has historically informed collective ways of living within community and might do so again today.
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Gain an understanding for how the classical philosophical tradition has and might still inform society, culture and community.
- Have gained an overarching framework for how religious belief and practical philosophy have historically functioned within society.
