Syllabus
The seminar will be based on commenting excerpts from primary texts. Students will be asked to send a short reflection of chosen passages on weekly basis.
1. Care for soul (Plato: Apology, Phaedo)
2. Soul and body (Plato: Phaedo)
3. Power of rhetoric, appetites and pleasures vs. reason and moderation (Plato: Gorgias)
4. What is happiness? (Aristotle, Nicomechean Ethics I)
5. What is virtue? (Aristotle, Nicomechean Ethics II)
6. What is a deliberation? (Aristotle, Nicomechean Ethics III)
7. What is pleasure? (Aristotle, Nicomechean Ethics VII, X)
8. Pleasure as the highest good (Epicur: Letter to Menoeceus, Maxims: DL X 121-135, 139-154)
9. Stoics: Epiktetos (Enchyridion)
10. Hume: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (section 1-2)
11. Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Introduction, 1st part
12. Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 2nd part
Annotation
The course will offer an elementary insight into basic ethical concepts, drawing mainly on the work of two prominent ancient philosophers - Plato and Aristotle. These will be later contrasted with two great figures representing two branches of the european enlightenment: David Hume and Immanuel Kant.