CLAS2761: Ancient Political Thought & Action

• CLAS1301 or CLAS1601

• None

• None

• To promote the learning and understanding of ancient political thought and action in accordance with the general aims of the relevant Degree Programmes, and to broaden students' understanding of the culture of Classical antiquity; to develop knowledge of a key period in Western intellectual thought, and introduce topics, questions and approaches which helped shape political action in antiquity.

• An interdisciplinary study, involving philosophical and historical discourses, of ancient and pertinent modern models for recovering and interpreting the nature of political thought and action in (a) Classical Greece, with particular reference to Herodotus, Thucydides, Old Oligarch, selected Platonic dialogues (e.g. Republic, Statesman, and Laws) and Aristotle; in (b) Hellenistic Greece and Republican Rome, with particular reference to Polybius, Cicero, and Augustus' Res Gestae; and in (c) the Roman Empire, with particular reference to Seneca and Marcus Aurelius.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• representative texts which are most important for our understanding of the intellectual and philosophical debates that helped to shape innovations in political practice in Greco-Roman antiquity
• representative texts written by political theorists and historians whose influence can be detected in ancient and modern debates concerning political order
• fields of study contingent with political theory, including ancient ethics, law, and science

Subject-specific Skills:

• the ability to use textual evidence to develop plausible accounts of particular theoretical positions in their full historical and polemical context
• an ability to engage critically with the full range of evidence, fragments as well as complete texts, partisan as well as polemical reports, in reconstructing individual positions regarding political theory
• confidence in handling and deploying basic philosophical concepts, especially in the fields of political philosophy and ethics
• reflective awareness of the nature of dialectical and scientific inquiry.

Key Skills:

• the ability to present a well-researched, well-articulated, and well-balanced account of diverse evidence
• the ability to read philosophical and historical texts of a wide range of styles with confidence, and the capacity to identify and engage critically with arguments set out in them.
• the ability to reconstruct a plausible line of thought from evidence that is fragmentary, imperfect, biased, or indirect.
• an independence of mind which is strengthened, not compromised, by the sympathetic understanding of alternative points of view.

• Teaching will be by means of lectures and seminars, the seminars allowing a large element of group discussion, under the aegis of the tutor.
• Tutorials will be designed to provide individual feedback on the student's first two essays.
• The formative and summative essays ensure that students engage with the issues discussed in the course.

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