Plato and Aristotle on Human Nature

Catalog description

The place of humans in the order of things was a perennial question for ancient philosophers. The puzzle typically begins with questions of humans' place within a hierarchy, setting them between inanimate things and non-human living things on the one side, and the divine on other. These categories, along with others like metabolism, growth and decay, death, sentience, cognition, and knowledge, will form the background against which we look closely at Plato's and Aristotle's views. We will read sections of Phaedo, Republic, and Timaeus, along with On the Soul, On the Motion of Animals, and On Divination During Sleep. The course will invite both broad synthetic thinking, and focused textual analysis. Students will be responsible for a class presentation, a stint as lead questioner, a presentation of work toward a research paper, and a final research paper.