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This course elaborates the history of Ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the death of Alexander. It covers major social, economic, political, and religious trends. It also includes discussions on Homer, heroism, and the Greek identity; the hoplite revolution and the rise of the city-state; Herodotus, Persia, and the (re)birth of history;

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This course will introduce you to the Western philosophical tradition, through the study of major figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, and Kant. You will get to grips with questions that have been significant to philosophy from its beginnings: questions about the nature of the mind or soul, the existence of God, the foundation

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As we read broadly from throughout the vast chronological period that is "Homer to Dante," we will pepper our readings of individual ancient and medieval texts with broader questions like: what images, themes, and philosophical questions recur through the period; are there distinctly "classical" or "medieval" ways of depicting or addressing

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This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about nature and the natural environment of mankind. The term nature in this context has to do with the varying ways in which the physical world has been conceived as the habitation of mank

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The aim of this subject is to acquaint the student with some important works of systematic ethical philosophy and to bring to bear the viewpoint of those works on the study of classic works of literature. This subject will trace the history of ethical speculation in systematic philosophy by identifying four major positions: two from the anc

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This seminar offers a course of readings in lyric poetry. It aims to enhance the student's capacity to understand the nature of poetic language and the enjoyment of poetic texts by treating poems as messages to be deciphered. The seminar will briefly touch upon the history of theories of figurative language since Aristotle and it will atten

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This course examines major texts in the history of political thought and the questions they raise about the design of the political and social order. It considers the ways in which thinkers have responded to the particular political problems of their day, and the ways in which they contribute to a broader conversation about human goods and

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This subject traces the evolution of ideas about nature, and how best to study and explain natural phenomena, beginning in ancient times and continuing through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A central theme of the subject is the intertwining of conceptual and institutional relations within diverse areas of inquiry: cosmology, natural

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Western philosophy and theoretical mathematics were born together, and the cross-fertilization of ideas in the two disciplines was continuously acknowledged throughout antiquity. In this course, we read works of ancient Greek philosophy and mathematics, and investigate the way in which ideas of definition, reason, argument and proof, rationality and irrationality, number, quality and quantity, truth, and even the idea of an idea were shaped by the interplay of philosophic and mathematical inquiry.

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This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This course specifically focuses on the ways that scientists use various methods of persuasion in the construction of scientific knowledge.

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This course uses the study of rhetoric as an opportunity to offer instruction in critical thinking. Through extensive writing and speaking assignments, students will develop their abilities to analyze texts of all kinds and to generate original and incisive ideas of their own. Critical thinking and original analysis as expressed in writing and in speech are the paramount goals of this class. The course will thus divide its efforts between an examination of the subject matter and an examination of student writing and speaking, in order to encourage in both instances the principal aims of the course.

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This course will concentrate on major figures and persistent themes in ancient and medieval philosophy. A balance will be sought between scope and depth, the latter ensured by a close reading of selected texts. This course was also cross-listed as MI 30301.

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This course explores the nature of modern morality through an examination of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. We will read MacIntyre's groundbreaking account of emergence of modern morality, After Virtue, and compare his interpretation of the morality of modernity with that offered by Charles Taylor in The Ethics of Authenticity. We will also read works by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche, two thinkers whose ideas have powerfully shaped the moral culture of the modern world.

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