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Keywords: Aristotle
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- Abstract: This course will concentrate on major figures and persistent themes in ancient and medieval philosophy. A balance will be sought between scope and depth, the latter ensured by a close reading of selected texts.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Western philosophy and theoretical mathematics were born together, and the cross-fertilization of ideas in the two disciplines was continuously acknowledged throughout antiquity. In this course, we read works of ancient Greek philosophy and mathematics, and investigate the way in which ideas of definition, reason, argument and proof, rationality and irrationality, number, quality and quantity, truth, and even the idea of an idea were shaped by the interplay of philosophic and mathematical inquiry.
- Subject:
Social Sciences, Humanities, Mathematics and Statistics
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: In this course you will be introduced to philosophy by engaging with the ideas and arguments of the three most important ancient Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They will help us consider how we should be living our lives, what justice is, how we can acquire knowledge, what knowledge is, what one gains from asking “what is it?” questions, what change is, whether we can understand anything in the natural world, and a host of other philosophical questions that were deeply influential on the rest of western philosophy. Along the way, you’ll work on the following skills: making and understanding arguments and objections, reading difficult texts carefully, and writing clearly and precisely about philosophy. You will be learning to do philosophy by engaging with its foundational works.
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- Abstract: History of Ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the death of Alexander. Major social, economic, political, and religious trends. Homer, heroism, and the Greek identity; the hoplite revolution and the rise of the city-state; Herodotus, Persia, and the (re)birth of history; Empire, Thucydidean rationalism, and the Peloponnesian War; Platonic constructs; Aristotle, Macedonia, and Hellenism. Emphasis on use of primary sources in translation.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. The course is designed to let you practice your own rhetorical prowess. This combination of reading, speaking, and writing will help you succeed in learning to read and think critically, learning techniques of rhetorical analysis, learning techniques of argument, and learning and practicing some basics about oral presentation.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: This course will introduce you to the Western philosophical tradition, through the study of major figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, and Kant. You will get to grips with questions that have been significant to philosophy from its beginnings: questions about the nature of the mind or soul, the existence of God, the foundations of knowledge, ethics and the good life. In the process of evaluating the arguments of these philosophers, you will develop your own philosophical and analytical skills. You will also observe changes of intellectual outlook over time, and the effect of scientific, religious and political concerns on the development of philosophical ideas.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: A brief history of conflicting ideas about mankind's relation to the natural environment as exemplified in works of poetry, fiction, and discursive argument from ancient times to the present. What is the overall character of the natural world? Is mankind's relation to it one of stewardship and care, or of hostility and exploitation? Readings include Aristotle, The Book of Genesis, Shakespeare, Descartes, Robinson Crusoe, Swift, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Darwin, Thoreau, Faulkner, and Lovelock's Gaia. This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about nature and the natural environment of mankind. The term nature in this context has to do with the varying ways in which the physical world has been conceived as the habitation of mankind, a source of imperatives for the collective organization and conduct of human life. In this sense, nature is less the object of complex scientific investigation than the object of individual experience and direct observation. Using the term "nature" in this sense, we can say that modern reference to "the environment" owes much to three ideas about the relation of mankind to nature. In the first of these, which harks back to ancient medical theories and notions about weather, geographical nature was seen as a neutral agency affecting or transforming agent of mankind's character and institutions. In the second, which derives from religious and classical sources in the Western tradition, the earth was designed as a fit environment for mankind or, at the least, as adequately suited for its abode, and civic or political life was taken to be consonant with the natural world. In the third, which also makes its appearance in the ancient world but becomes important only much later, nature and mankind are regarded as antagonists, and one must conquer the other or be subjugated by it.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Studies a broad range of texts essential to understanding the two great sources of Western conceptions of the world and humanity's place within it: the ancient world of Greece and Rome and the Judeo-Christian world that challenged and absorbed it. Readings vary but usually include works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, St. Augustine, and Dante.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: This course is intended as an introduction to political philosophy as seen through an examination of some of the major texts and thinkers of the Western political tradition. Three broad themes that are central to understanding political life are focused upon: the polis experience (Plato, Aristotle), the sovereign state (Machiavelli, Hobbes), constitutional government (Locke), and democracy (Rousseau, Tocqueville). The way in which different political philosophies have given expression to various forms of political institutions and our ways of life are examined throughout the course.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Subject examines major texts in the history of political thought and the questions they raise about the design of the political and social order. Students are required to critically engage with these texts and to write essays on such issues as whether government should be controlled by the many or by the expert few; whether a community should respect a diversity of religions and philosophical opinion; whether there are such things as human rights; why values like liberty and equality conflict, and whether these conflicts can be reconciled. This course examines major texts in the history of political thought and the questions they raise about the design of the political and social order. It considers the ways in which thinkers have responded to the particular political problems of their day, and the ways in which they contribute to a broader conversation about human goods and needs, justice, democracy, and the proper relationship of the individual to the state. One aim will be to understand the strengths and weaknesses of various regimes and philosophical approaches in order to gain a critical perspective on our own. Thinkers include Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Tocqueville.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Introduces practice and theory of literary criticism. Seminar focuses on topics such as the history of critical methods and techniques, and the continuity of certain subjects in literary history. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Theory and Use of Figurative Language. This seminar offers a course of readings in lyric poetry. It aims to enhance the student's capacity to understand the nature of poetic language and the enjoyment of poetic texts by treating poems as messages to be deciphered. The seminar will briefly touch upon the history of theories of figurative language since Aristotle and it will attend to the development of those theories during the last thirty years, noting the manner in which they tended to consider figures of speech distinct from normative or literal expression, and it will devote particular attention to the rise of theories that quarrel with this distinction. The seminar also aims to communicate a rough sense of the history of English-speaking poetry since the early modern period. Some attention will be paid as well to the use of metaphor in science.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: Examines competing ethical concepts and the ethical implications of certain actions and commitments by close reading of literary works. Topics include: origins of morality, ideals of justice, the nature of the virtues, notions of responsibility, ethics and politics, and the ethics of extreme situations. Philosophic texts by Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Kant. Narrative and dramatic texts by Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Swift, Ibsen, Shaw, Dostoyevsky, and Conrad; plus some Biblical materials. The aim of this subject is to acquaint the student with some important works of systematic ethical philosophy and to bring to bear the viewpoint of those works on the study of classic works of literature. This subject will trace the history of ethical speculation in systematic philosophy by identifying four major positions: two from the ancient world and the two most important traditions of ethical philosophy since the renaissance. The two ancient positions will be represented by Plato and Aristotle, the two modern positions by Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. We will try to understand these four positions as engaged in a rivalry with one another, and we will also engage with the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, which offers a bridge between ancient and modern conceptions and provides a source for the rivalry between the viewpoints of Kant and Mill. Further, we will be mindful that the modern positions are subject to criticism today by new currents of philosophical speculation, some of which argue for a return to the positions of Plato and Aristotle.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: For students with a special interest in learning how to make forceful arguments in written form. Studies the forms and structures of argumentation, including organization of ideas, awareness of audience, methods of persuasion, evidence, factual vs emotional argument, figures of speech, and historical forms and uses of arguments.
- Subject:
Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
Post-secondary
- Collection:
MIT OpenCourseWare
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This course specifically focuses on the ways that scientists use various methods of persuasion in the construction of scientific knowledge.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: This hands-on OLogy experiment uses Jell-O, fruit, nuts, and candy to demonstrate how space bends around anything that has mass. The activity begins with kid-friendly introductions to the concept of mass and Einstein's theory of bending space. The illustrated, step-by-step directions include notes about how the fruit, nuts, and candy represent stars, planets, and other objects in space. At the end, kids are encouraged to celebrate their newfound knowledge by digging into their edible space.
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract: The emergence of Western science: the systematization of natural knowledge in the ancient world, the transmission of the classical legacy to the Latin West, and the revolt from classical thought during the scientific revolution. Examines scientific concepts in light of their cultural and historical contexts.
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