C. Ancient Philosophy: Topics

The program covers all the important Greek philosophers who came before Socrates, and concludes with Socrates' contemporaries, the Sophists Protagoras and Gorgias

Unit 1 Thales and the beginnings of philosophy

Unit 2 Anaximander and the theory of the Apeiron

Unit 3 Anaximander versus Anaximenes

Unit 4 Xenophanes on God and the limits of human knowledge

Unit 5 Heraclitus 'You never step twice into the same river...'

Unit 6 Pythagoras and the Pythagorean school

Unit 7 Parmenides' Way of Truth

Unit 8 Parmenides versus Melissus

Unit 9 Zeno's Paradoxes

Unit 10 Empedocles' Cosmic cycle

Unit 11 Anaxagoras 'A portion of everything in everything...'

Unit 12 The Atomism of Leucippus and Democritus

Unit 13 Philosophical consequences of Atomism

Unit 14 Protagoras 'Man is the measure of all things...'

Unit 15 Gorgias 'On What Is Not'