Sylabus
The seminar will be based on close reading, interpreting and commenting of primary texts. The students will be asked to write a short and concise (!) summary of chosen passages focusing on the core questions they open.
1. Can Plato be called a founder of ethics? Questions on how (not) to live one’s life.2. Plato: Gorgias. What is rhetoric good for?• 480a - 486d: read at home and write a concise and short (!) summary3. Plato: Gorgias. Do we have to be able to control ourselves in order to control the others?• 486d - 495c: read at home and write a short summary4. Aristotle: What is happiness?• Nicomachean Ethics : read at home book I, chap. 1-7• write a summary for chap. 1-5 (highest good, subject & method...)5. Aristotle: What is virtue? (How do we become good?)• read at home EN II, chap. 1-6: éthiké arête• write a summary from EN II, chapters 1, 2, 5,
66. Aristotle: What is a deliberation? (Can we choose what we want?)• read at home: EN III 1-5• write a short summary from EN III 5 only (1113b 3 - 1115a
5)7. Stoics: Epiktetos• read the Enchyridion (or Handbook), choose three paragraphs (there are 53 altogether) that you find most important/interesting , summarize them and explain why you’ve chosen them.8. Augustinus, Confessions• read book II. or VII. or VIII. (one is enough, but the more the better) and summarize the thoughts that you consider the most "ethically relevant".
9. Hume: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • read and summarize section 1, 2 and
5.
10. Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Introduction, 1st part• read and summarize 1st part11. Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 2nd and 3rd part• read and summarize 2nd part and beginning (first sub-section) of part
3.
Anotace
The course will offer an elementary insight into basic ethical concepts of western philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant).