HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Università degli Studi
"G. d'Annunzio"

Chieti - Pescara

Single discipline educational activity

Course Sheet

Course code:

LC142

Academic Year of enrolment:

2022

Year of supply:

2022/2023

Type of Course:

Related/Supplementary

Degree:

Course of 1st Cycle Degree in HUMANITIES

Disciplinary Sector:

HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Location:

CHIETI

Credits:

Programme Year:

Professor and Collaborators:

FEOLA Giuseppe

Cycle:

First semester

Hours of classroom activity:

Individual study hours:

108

Prerequisites:

Acquaintance with the historiographical methods and with the procedures
of abstraction and generalization (as provided by the usual cv of
secondary school)

Objectives

At the end of the course, the pupil should be able to understand the
historical development of Greek philosophy and sciences, with a firm grasp of the
geographical and chronological positions of the various thinkers and scientists; the pupil
will also be able to individuate the social, economical, historical, cultural
conditions that were the starting point of the various thinkers, and in which
way these same thinkers interpreted, transcended or subverted the
cultural conditions that were their starting points.
The pupil will be able to understand the arguments of the philosophers,
as they will be presented by the teacher.
The pupil will be able to perceive the relevant ways in which many
philosophical and scientific theories and concepts of Antiquity anticipate
nowadays theories.
The pupil will also be able to understand the relevant discontinuities that
separate us from the Ancients.

Contents

We will have
an overview of the modes in which Greek culture tried to articulate its
own theoretical knowledge about the world and human beings, with a specific focus on the knowledges pertaining to the field of the description of the physical world and to astronomy and cosmology

Extended Syllabus

The main theoretical Leitmotiv will be the tension between two
apparently opposite tendences, both deeply ingrained in Greek spirit: the
attention to the particular aspects of the World, and the abstraction, generalization, systematization. From
the various ways in which the different thinkers try to conciliate these
two tendences, Greek philosophy and science were born – and, with
them, Western speculative tradition. Astronomy and cosmology are the sciences that most represent these tendencies and tensions.
Historical framework. The Greeks and us. The Greeks and the Ancient
Near East. The astronomical observations of the Near-Eastern civilizations.
The birth of Greek philosophy and science: the pre-theoretical
acquantaince with the world; Homeric depictions of nature; the prescientific
manipulation of the world in the arts and tecniques.
Science and philosophy begin to differentiate from other forms of
knowledge.
The 7 Sages. Orpheus. Pythagoras.
The Milesians. Heraclitus. Xenophanes. The Eleatics. Empedocles.
Anaxagoras. The Atomists. The historiographical debate about the debt of early Greek astronomy to Near-eastern science.
The Sophists.
Socrates.
Plato: biography; relationships with Athens’ political life; orality and
writing; the problem of the political and moral norm; searching for an
epistemic norm and a cosmic order in order to find a moral norm; mathematics and astronomy as the sources
of epistemic norm.The Ideas. The psychology. The politics: Republic and
Laws. The cosmology and the World-soul.
Aristotle: biography. Categories. De interpretatione. Prior Analytics.
Second Analytics. Substance, essence, definition in the Organon. Form
and matter in the Physics. Potentiality and Actuality in the Physics.
Aristotle’s natural philosophy. The telos. The explanation of change. The
concept of nature. The being as being. The unity of the categories.
Analogy pros hén. Form and matter in the Metaphysics VII-VIII.
Potentiality and actuality in Metaphysics IX. The problem of the origin of
motion and of the order of the cosmos: Metaphysics XII. Aristotle's cosmology. Life, living
bodies, souls. The general structure of Aristotle’s psychology. Nutritive-generative
soul. Sensory-perceptual soul. Sense-perception and its
hierarchies. Pleasure and pain. Voluntary motion and its ecceptions. The
intellect. Reason. Aristotle’s biology: birth of a science. Cosmo-biology and astronomy at the Peripatus. Aristotle's two ethics. The politics.
The Hellenistic transition: end of classic philosophy. The prevalence of
the ethics. Separation between philosophy and science.
Epicurus and his school.
The Stoà. The Stoà and Roman public morality. Its influence on
subsequent Western ideas and paradigms of morality.
Skepticism.
Cynicism.
Science and technology in the Imperial Age. Early heliocentric theories in the Hellenistic ages, and the geocentric reactions: the causes of the impasse of Hellenistic science, with particular focus on astronomy.
Toward Neoplatonism.
Plotinus. Porphyrius. Proclus.

Recommended Bibliography

The teacher will try to provide in advance the text of each lecture. Beside
these texts, the bibliography consists in:
books to be partially examined or overviewed
they must be at hand during the lessons, in order to understand the
professor’s lectures; but the exam will not be about these texts
Lami, A., I Presocratici. Testimonianze e frammenti da Talete ad
Empedocle, BUR, or an equivalent foreign translation.
A complete translation of Plato’s works (one of your choice, either Italian or foreign), e.g. one among these: Platone, Tutti gli scritti, a cura di G. Reale, Rusconi, or
Platone, Tutte le opere, a cura di E. Maltese, Newton Compton.
Aristotele, Fisica, a cura di G. Radice, Bompiani, or a foreign equivalent translation. Aristotele, Il Cielo, a cura di A. Iori, Bompiani, or a foreign equivalent translation. Aristotele, La generazione e la corruzione, a cura di Migliori e Palpacelli, Bompiani, or a foreign equivalent translation.
Aristotele, Metafisica, a cura di G. Reale, Bompiani, or a foreign equivalent translation.
Bibliography for the exam:
one of your choice between W. Jaeger, La teologia dei primi pensatori
greci, La Nuova Italia, and M.M. Sassi, Indagine su Socrate, Einaudi;
one of your choice between F. Adorno, Introduzione a Platone, Laterza, or
M. Erler, Platone. Un’introduzione, Einaudi, or F. Ferrari, Introduzione a
Platone, Il Mulino;
one of your choice between J.L. Ackrill, Aristotele, Il Mulino, or P. Donini,
La ‘Metafisica’ di Aristotele. Introduzione alla lettura, Carocci, or G. Reale,
Introduzione ad Aristotele, Laterza
The texts (professor’s lectures) that the professor may send you

Teaching Methods

Frontal lecture (either online or presentially).
The teacher will try to provide the texts of his lectures with at least one
day of advance.
Commentary on ancient texts. Comparison between ancient texts, and
between ancient and modern or contemporary texts.
Open debate.

Evaluation methods

Verification of learning:

Way in which the learning process will be tested: maieutical dialogue,
followed by an exam of the texts.

Contacts/More Information

Università degli Studi
"G. d'Annunzio"

Chieti - Pescara

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