Ancient
Course notes and reflections on the Great Books organized by author
Timothy H. Wilson
Embedded Files
The school of Athens: a gathering of ancient philosophers. Engraving by G. Mochetti after Raphael (1794)
The Ancient Period (2000 BCE - 500 CE)
The Ancient Period (2000 BCE - 500 CE)
This period covers the earliest beginnings of written literature (ca 2000 BCE) to the year 500 CE, including:
Ancient Middle Eastern literature (Epic of Gilgamesh)
Ancient Jewish literature (Hebrew Scriptures)
Archaic Greek literature (Homer)
Classical Greek literature and philosophy (Aeschylus to Aristotle)
Hellenistic Greek literature and philosophy (Menander, Zeno)
Early Latin literature (Plautus)
Literature and philosophy of the Latin Golden Age (Virgil, Cicero)
Latin literature and philosophy of the Silver Age (Marcus Aurelius, Lucan), and
The earliest Christian writings (New Testament)
Sophocles (496 - 406 BCE)
Herodotus (484 - 425 BCE)
Euripides (480 - 406 BCE)
Thucydides (460 - 400 BCE)
Background Lectures
Background Lectures
A short introduction to poetry, or imaginative literature more generally, and a discussion of its historical quarrel with philosophy.
A short introduction to the Socratic turn in philosophy.
The Quarrel of Philosophy and Poetry
A discussion of the quarrel of philosophy and poetry in its various stages in the history of western ideas: from the early poets (e.g., Homer), to the first philosophic attack on poetry (e.g., Xenophanes), to the poetic counter-attack against philosophy (e.g., Aristophanes), to the classical synthesis (e.g., Plato), to the modern solution (Machiavelli to Nietzsche).
Phillip Cary has compared the Western tradition to a body: the two legs of this body being the Greek and Hebrew traditions, the mid-section being the Middle Ages; the arms being the Renaissance and Reformation and the head being the Enlightenment. The two legs of this Western body, the Greek and Hebrew traditions, are marked by their emphases: the Greek tradition is marked by an emphasis on REASON; the Hebrew tradition is marked by an emphasis on REVELATION. This paper constitutes a preliminary reflection on this distinction inspired by Pascal's "Memorial", wherein he contrasts the "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob" with that "of the philosophers and savants".
An introduction to Tragedy, including discussions of its origins in ancient Greece as well as highlighting the ancient and modern theories of tragedy in the work of Aristotle, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Pierre Vernant.
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