Duration
30h Th
Number of credits
Lecturer
Language(s) of instruction
French language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the second semester
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
Second semester of the academic year
(every Wednesday, hours to be defined with the students,
Place du XX août, 7, hall: to be defined)
PROGRAMME
Course 1. Introduction. Particularities of the relations between ethics and religion in Antiquity, compared to our contemporary conceptions.
Course 2. Morals deriving from the current religious and social beliefs of the Greeks:
the poets; the historians; the Oracle of Delfi; the Seven Sages.
Course 3. The Ionian philosophers : ethic precepts and a new cosmology (Thales) ; a natural justice (Anaximander) ; criticism of the traditional religion and relativity of the human beliefs (Xenophanes) ; a moral theory founded on the divine nature of Man (Heraclitus).
Course 4. Religious and philosophical theories, applied to the everyday private life and implied in Politics : Orphism ; Pythagoreanism ; Empedocles. Ontology and Ethics : Parmenides and the Eleatics.
Course 5. Agnosticism and atheism leading to amoralism or conservatism: the Sophists and the rhetoricians. Ethics of common sense, without divine presence: the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus).
Course 6. Socrates : divine inspiration and the dialectic quest of the definition of an ethical theory. The good of the city depending on the citizens¿ virtues.
Course 7. Plato : radical innovation of traditional religion, grounded on rational ethical principles. Objective of Ethics : «Becoming like a god». The « divine » character of the Idea of the Good. The official religion of a city and the citizens¿ «good life».
Course 8. Aristotle : divine Intellect and human theoretical intellect. Resembling divinity as much as it is possible for Man by exercising the intellectual virtues. Systematic examination of eudaimonia as final objective of the human life.
Course 9. Epicurus : «living as a god among men», by researching the immortal goods of a happy life. The Stoics : living according to the law of nature, defined by the divine Reason. Divine providence. The model of the sage.
Course 10. Middle Platonism, Epicurism and Stoicism of the Romans (Cicero, Seneca, Lucretius, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius) : the predominance of pragmatism.
Course 11. Plotinus and the Neoplatonism : the divinisation of the One-Good. A moral theory with a mystical touch.
Course 12. The last ¿pagan¿ and the first christian philosophers: the twilight of the religious and moral conceptions of the Antiquity and the relations with the new religion. General conclusions.
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
In our era, considerable diversions seem to oppose the ethical positions and their application on human behaviour advanced by the « free thinkers » on one hand, and by the Christian church on the other. Besides, the oppositions on the same questions among the actual great monotheist religions have too often resulted in true tragedies.
In this course, we are examining the relations between religion and Ethics (and, by extension, the political theories, too) as they may be traced during the first historical period of the European and « occidental » culture, marked by the liberty and the variety of the Greek thought and religious beliefs, as well as by their fertile interferences with the ¿oriental¿ cultures.
In fact, this era covers more than half of the totality of our history: about 2200 years (from the Mycenean age, starting at the XVIth century B.C., the echoes of which still sound in the Homeric poems ¿dated approximately at the VIIIth century B.C.¿, till the VIth century A.D. that saw the official closing of the philosophical schools by the Emperor of Byzantium).
Our objective isn¿t to make a simple evocation of times gone by, but, by bringing to light and reflecting on some often neglected but significant data of our historical identity, to inspire a re-questioning of our actual ways to consider religion, Morals and Politics, in view of an eventual elaboration of new schemes, permitting a larger space of liberty of personal conscience and mutual respect among the various theories and beliefs.
We think that in the European Union¿s framework and in a world with frontiers becoming less and less solid, suffering by a manifest crisis of values and by so many conflicts, this subject presents a crucial importance for the quality of life of each one of us and of the whole of the human community.
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
A basic knowledge of ancient History, Religion and Philosophy would be an undeniable support, but the course is formulated in view of being comprehensible by all.
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
Mode of delivery (face-to-face ; distance-learning)
The course will take place during the second four-month period (two hours per week), on Wednesdays, from 11h to 13h. The course is composed by a series of lectures ¿ the contents are briefly exposed higher herby ¿ including the study of relevant texts (original and translation) and a final discussion.
Recommended or required readings
Assessment methods and criteria
Work placement(s)
Organizational remarks
Contacts
For every supplementary information, please contact the professor, Aikaterini Lefka (e-mail: Aikaterini.Lefka@ulg.ac.be)
Items online
Online Notes
Notes available on MyULg.