Group B: Greek and Roman Philosophy

Paper B1: Plato

Course Director: Dr M Hatzimichali

Aims and objectives

This course is intended to be accessible to all Part II students, whether in the Classics or the Philosophy Faculty, regardless of their knowledge of Greek and Latin, and regardless of what other papers they have taken in Part IB or are taking in Part II. 

1. To provide an understanding of the philosophical themes and challenges of a rich and foundational text.

2. To enable students to engage critically with a central philosophical work, to draw connections between different parts of the work and to consider its legacy in antiquity and beyond.

3. To encourage students to evaluate critically, and understand historically, a central text of ancient philosophy.

4. To encourage students to develop their facility with philosophical analysis and argument.

Scope and structure of the examination paper 2026–27

The three-hour exam paper will contain twelve to fifteen essay questions on topics covered in lectures, classes and supervisions. Candidates are required to answer three questions.

Questions will be formulated so as to be answerable without knowledge of Greek.

In 2027-28 the scope and structure of the examination paper will remain unchanged.

Course descriptions

Plato’s Republic is a work that demands and repays close attention and repeated reading.  In the course of a central argument about the nature and virtue of the character virtue of justice, Socrates and his interlocutors provide philosophically provocative and influential accounts of: the nature of a political community; the nature of the human soul, human motivations, psychological development and virtue; the power and effect of poetry, music, and art; the nature of knowledge and belief; the nature and structure of reality; mathematics and education; political and psychological corruption; pleasure; the afterlife.  This is a work that set the philosophical agenda not only for much of Plato’s later work but for many of the ancient and modern philosophers that followed him.

This course will provide students with a close discussion of the whole work and allow them to pursue a wide range of philosophical questions as they are presented within a single text.  A significant proportion of the course will consider the reception of the Republic in later ancient philosophy and modern times.  For the classes, students will be asked to read material in advance for discussion.

Text:  Plato, Republic (engagement with the Greek is not a requirement).

Introductory reading:

Annas, J. (1981) An Introduction to Plato’s Republic, Oxford

Blackburn, S. (2009), Plato's Republic. A Biography. Atlantic Books.
Ferrari, G. R. F. ed. (2007) The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, Cambridge
Ober, J. (1998) Political Dissent in Democratic Athens, Princeton Ch.4
Schofield, M. (1999) ‘Approaching the Republic’ in C. Rowe and M. Schofield eds. The Cambridge history of Greek and Roman political thought Cambridge
Schofield, M. (2006) Plato: Political Philosophy, Oxford: Ch. 1–4
Scott, D. (2015) Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Santas, G. ed. (2006) The Blackwell guide to Plato’s Republic, London

Paper B2: Aristotle on Wisdom and First Philosophy

Course Director: Dr L Castelli

Aims and objectives

(This course is intended to be accessible to all Part II students in the Classics Tripos and the Philosophy Tripos, regardless of their knowledge of Greek, and regardless of what other papers they have taken in Part IB or are taking in Part II.)

1. To provide an understanding of Aristotle’s perspective, in its historical and cultural context, on basic philosophical questions, such as the nature and limits of human knowledge and rationality, the relation between understanding the world and understanding human nature, the value of theoretical and practical knowledge.
2. To enable students to engage critically with a series of central philosophical works, to draw connections and contrasts between their diverse treatment of human nature, rational excellence, knowledge, the soul, natural substances. 
3. To encourage students to evaluate critically, and understand historically, Aristotle’s views and arguments on specific issues.
4. To encourage students to develop their facility with philosophical analysis and argument.

Scope and structure of the examination paper 2026-27

The three-hour paper will contain twelve to fifteen essay questions on the topics covered in lectures, classes and supervisions. Candidates are required to answer three questions.

Questions will be formulated so as to be answerable without knowledge of Greek or Latin.

(Supervisions for this course will be centrally organised for students taking the classical tripos whose directors of studies consent to the arrangement.)

In 2027-28 the scope and structure of the examination paper will remain unchanged.

Course description

‘All human beings naturally yearn for knowledge.’ This statement, opening what we read as Aristotle’s Metaphysics, can be taken as emblematic of Aristotle’s views on human nature: human beings are naturally capable of and striving for the rational understanding of the world and their place in it. But what does that natural human yearning for knowledge exactly amount to? Where does the confidence that we can reason things out, about the world and ourselves, come from? And, even if we concede that all human beings have a natural capacity for understanding how things are, and are at least partially successful in acting on that knowledge, is better knowledge of the world supposed to make us better people? If so, what is it that we are supposed to figure out about the world if we want to be excellent human beings and live the best life we can live? Do we need to know anything about human nature in order to live a good life? Do we need an encompassing understanding of our place as humans in the world in order to understand human nature?

In this course, we shall explore the way in which Aristotle understands these questions and provides his own answers. As we shall see, Aristotle’s approach to these issues cuts across various areas of his philosophy, including his views on natural substances and living beings; on the nature of the soul and, in particular, of the human soul and its activities; on the forms of excellence that reason, theoretical and practical, can take; on the nature and structure of knowledge, and on the specific kind of knowledge that, most of all, is characteristic of what Aristotle calls ‘first philosophy’, i.e. the knowledge of the first causes and principles of all things; and (last but not least) on the nature and activity of divine entities in the cosmos.

Familiarity with Aristotle’s philosophy and with ancient Greek may be advantages but are not required.

Preparatory reading list:

There are several translations of Aristotle’s works. A complete translation can be found in:

J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols., Princeton 1998.

Key texts for this course will be Aristotle’s Metaphysics (in particular, books I, VII-IX and XII); Nicomachean Ethics (in particular, books I, VI and X); Posterior Analytics (Book I chs. 1-3, and Book II chs. 1-2). You are welcome to start to acquaint yourself with all these texts, especially with Metaphysics books I and XII, and Nicomachean Ethics books VI and X.

Helpful introductory reading can be found in:

Introductory reading:

Bett, R., ed. (2010) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, Cambridge
Hankinson, R. J. (1995) The Sceptics, London
Sienkiewicz, S. (2019) Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes, Oxford
Striker, G. (1990) ‘The problem of the criterion’, in S. Everson (1990) ed. Epistemology, Cambridge: 143–60; repr. in Striker, G. (1996) Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge
Thorsrud, H. (2009) Ancient Scepticism, Stocksfield

Recommended editions:

Annas, J. & Barnes, J. (1985) The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern.
Bett, R. (1997) Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists, translated with an introduction and commentary, Oxford
Bett, R. (2005) Sextus Empiricus: Against the Logicians, Cambridge
Bett, R. (2012) Sextus Empiricus: Against the Physicists, Cambridge
Bett, R. (2018) Sextus Empiricus: Against Those in the Disciplines, Oxford
Blank, D. (1998) Sextus Empiricus: Against the Grammarians, Oxford
Brittain, C. (2006) Cicero: On Academic Scepticism, Hackett Classics, Indianapolis  
Long, A.A. & Sedley, D.N. eds. (1987) The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols., Cambridge
Reinhardt, T. (2023) M. Tulli Ciceronis Academicus primus, Fragmenta et testimonia academicorum librorum, Lucullus, OCT Oxford

Anagnostopoulos, G. (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle, Wiley-Blackwell 2009 (Chapters 1, 2, 4, 8-14, 17, 18, 21, 22, 26).
Barnes, J., Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction, OUP 2000.
Barnes, J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, CUP 1995 (Chapters 1, 3-7).
Cooper, J., Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, Harvard UP 1975.
Frede, M. & Striker, G. (eds.), Rationality in Greek Thought, OUP 1996. .
Lear, J., Aristotle. The Desire to Understand, CUP 1988.
Polansky, Ronald (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014 (Chapters 9 and 10).
Ross, W.D., Aristotle, Routledge 1995 (6th edition). Shields, Ch. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle, OUP 2012 (Chapters 1-4, 14-17).

Paper B3: Ancient Scepticism

Course Director: PROF. J WARREN

(This course is accessible to all Part II students, whether in the Classics or in the Philosophy Faculty, regardless of their knowledge of Greek and Latin, and regardless of what other papers they have taken in Part IB or are taking in Part II.)

1. To provide an understanding of ancient philosophical arguments against the possibility of knowledge and how they contributed to the development of specific areas of philosophical inquiry.
2. To enable students to form a close critical acquaintance with a series of classic philosophical texts.
3. To encourage students to evaluate sympathetically, and to understand historically, philosophical positions and arguments with which they may well not agree.
4. To encourage students to develop their own powers of philosophical analysis and argument.

Scope and structure of the examination paper 2026-27

The examination paper will consist of about twelve essay questions, on topics covered in the course. Candidates will be required to answer three questions.

Questions will be formulated so as to be answerable without knowledge of Greek or Latin.

In 2027-28 the scope and structure of the examination paper will remain unchanged.

Course description

On one classical Greek account of philosophy, philosophical activity is (among other things) a response to the human desire to know. On the path leading to knowledge, the philosopher keeps pondering arguments, choosing between contrasting views and thereby trying to find the way to truth. But the limitations of human nature, the mistakes we make, the difficulties to tell illusion from truth, the very puzzles and paradoxes reason gets entangled with, and, ultimately, the fact that people, including experts, often disagree with each other, raise a question as to whether the classical philosophical quest for wisdom offers a genuine way of life and is not just the outcome of wishful thinking. What if it turns out that knowledge is impossible, or that we can never know whether we know? After all, doesn’t Socrates’ questioning of people’s claim to knowledge, both in its historical reality and in Plato’s representations of it, raise doubts as to whether there is anything we can really “know”? What if knowing that we do not know turns out to be the best anyone can do? And what if we cannot even know that? Is philosophical activity deprived of any value if we cannot be sure that there is, at least in principle, something to achieve at the end? Could the radical suspension of judgement on all matters offer an alternative and less troubled way of life?

The history of ancient Greek and Roman scepticism illustrates how these questions were raised and addressed in two main traditions: Pyrrhonian scepticism and Academic scepticism. In these series of lectures, these traditions are disentangled, and their historical and philosophical developments are reconstructed. Starting from the early Greek and non-Greek roots of philosophical scepticism, the lectures will move through the Hellenistic period, the reception of Greek philosophy among the Roman elites in the 1st century BCE (with an emphasis on the pivotal role that Cicero played in it), all the way through to the revival of Pyrrhonian scepticism in the 2nd century CE., with a view to the role of scepticism in non-western philosophical traditions. Working through these materials, students will work on very concrete examples of how what may be regarded as relatively abstract questions (such as epistemological issues concerning the possibility and nature of knowledge) have immediate practical implications, and of how writing the history of philosophy was, since the very beginning, also a matter of philosophical choices and philosophically informed interpretation of the past.

Progression: this course will allow students to build on work they may have done in Part 1B (e.g. Cicero De Fato, Philosophy 1B paper 4) and will complement Part II paper B1 Plato and B2 Aristotle on wisdom.

List of texts:

Sources for ‘Early Pyrrhonism’, ‘Epistemology: Stoics and Academics’, ‘The Academics’ and ‘The Pyrrhonist revival’ in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley eds. 1987 The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols., Cambridge, §1–3, 39–42, 68–70 and 71–2.

Cicero Academici libri and Lucullus, On Divination, On the Nature of the Gods, On the ends of goods and evils: use Loeb translations or Brittain (2006), Reinhardt (2023) and others.

Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Professors: use Bury’s Loeb editions or Annas and Barnes (1985); Bett (1997, 2005, 2012, 2018); Blank (1998).

Introductory reading:

Bett, R., ed. (2010) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, Cambridge
Hankingson, R.J. (1995) The Sceptics, London
Sienkiewicz, S. (2019) Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes, Oxford
Striker, G. (1990) 'The problem of the criterion', in S. Everson (1990) ed. Epistemology, Cambridge: 143-60; repr. in Striker, G. (1996) Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge
Thorsrud, H. (2009) Ancient Scepticism, Stocksfield

Recommended editions:

Annas, J. & Barnes, J. (1985) The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern
Bett, R. (1997) Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists, Translated with an introduction and commentary, Oxford
Bett, R. (2005) Sextus Empiricus: Against the Logicians, Cambridge
Bett, R. (2012) Sextus Empiricus: Against the Physicists, Cambridge
Bett, R. (2018) Sextus Empiricus: Against Those in the Disciplines, Oxford
Blank, D. (1998) Sextus Empiricus: Against the Grammarians, Oxford
Brittain, C. (2006) Cicero: On Academic Scepticism, Hackett Classics, Indianapolis
Long, A.A. & Sedley, D.N. eds. (1987) The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols., Cambridge
Reinhardt, T. (2023) M. Tulli Ciceronis Academicus primus, Fragmenta et testimonia academicorum librorum, Lucullus, OCT Oxford