Aims of the course:
- To explore the era in which a fundamental shift took place in the way humans saw themselves and the universe
- To examine the causes of that shift, the form that it took, and how it profoundly affected intellectual life
- To examine certain aspects of Athenian intellectual life in detail, especially architecture, theatre, politics and philosophy
Course content overview:
- The course will engage with ancient texts to show how ideas such as empiricism developed, using the words of those contemporary writers and thinkers at the heart of the intellectual revolution.
Schedule:
Orientation Week: 7-13 April 2025
Teaching Weeks: 14 April-18 May 2025
Feedback Week: 19-25 May 2025
Teaching Week 1 - Troy and the Trojan war/Understanding the Greek Gods
Learning objectives:
- To provide an understanding of a different belief system.
- To provide an understanding of how myths are formed and their social purpose.
- To provide an introduction to the Homeric texts.
Teaching Week 2 - Greek Warfare/Persia and the Greeks
Learning objectives:
- To gain a rough idea of Greek physical and political geography.
- To gain an understanding of the role of Miletus in sparking the intellectual revolution.
- To join a debate on the importance of warfare in the social and intellectual sphere.
Teaching Week 3 - Geography of Ancient Greece/A quick guide to the fifth century Agora
Learning objectives:
- To provide an understanding of how the Athenian democracy functioned.
- To gain some familiarity with the works of Plato and Aristophanes.
- To join a debate on whether direct democracy was a product or cause of the fifth century intellectual revolution.
Teaching Week 4 - The creation of the theatre
Learning objectives:
- To gain an appreciation of the ancient theatre and ancient Greek playwrights such as Euripides and Sophocles.
- To gain an understanding of the idea of Hellenism.
- To have understood the origins of historiography.
- To debate the extent to which Greek ideas were imported from Africa, Persia and the Levant.
Teaching Week 5 - Getting dressed in Ancient Greece
Learning objectives:
- To gain an appreciation of the conflict between the political and religious establishment and new and disruptive ideas.
- To gain an understanding of the Greek judicial system and the empirical weighing of evidence.
- To gain an appreciation of the contemporary limits to the intellectual revolution.
- To be introduced to rhetorical techniques.
- To have drawn extensively on the material studied earlier in the course.
A Certificate of Participation will be awarded to participants who contribute constructively to weekly discussions and exercises/assignments for the duration of the course.
