Credit Hours - 30

Thesis

Credit Hours - 4

An examination of the nature of meaning and modality (necessity and possibility), the relation of empirical knowledge to immediate experience, rationality, contingent a priori knowledge, theories of reference to abstract entities, ontology, metaphysical implications of modern field theory physics.

Credit Hours - 4

A critical study of the problems and techniques of logical and linguistic analysis as found in the seminal writings including those of Frege, Russell, Carnap, Neurath and the Vienna Circle, Quine.

Credit Hours - 4

A critical examination of traditional African thought about fundamental aspects of humanexistence as reflected in traditional conceptions of God, person, cause, human destiny, reincarnation and personal survival and identity, and morality, character, and so on, with due attention to their cultural matrix and to similarities and contrasts with other systems of thought wherever appropriate. Critical attention will be given to contemporary philosophical writings that reflect contemporary African cultural and historical experience.

Credit Hours - 4

Theories of legitimacy, authority and power, the state and civil society; the relation between

economy and political institutions; theories of democracy; philosophical questions underlying

criminal justice, nationalism, ethnicity; theories of conflict and reconciliation, human rights,

common good, distributive justice, individualism and communitarianism, concepts of equality.

Credit Hours - 4

Consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics; foundations issues in conflict resolution, politics of recognition, environmental ethics; bio-ethics; medical ethics; intergenerational and interspecies obligations; modern approaches to moral agency, political morality.

Credit Hours - 4

Philosophical elucidation of basic concepts of logical theory such as meaning and

necessity, truth, entailment, reference, propositions and assertions, predication, the

distinction between syntax and semantics languag

Credit Hours - 4

A study of the philosophical ideas, doctrines, and arguments of the ancient Greek thinkers, especially Socrates, Plato and Aristotle,- pre-and-post Socratic Philosophy.

Credit Hours - 4

A study of the concept of culture in its various aspects, beginning with an analysis of the concept itself, the semantic and conceptual relation between culture and tradition. Particular attention will be paid to such issues as: language and culture; ethnocentrism and understanding other cultures; national and cultural identity; incommensurability between two or more conceptual schemes and cultural practices; cultural universalism and relativism; philosophical foundations of multiculturalism.

Credit Hours - 4

An examination of the methods and problems in the study of human behaviour and contrasted with those of natural science; theories of history, theories of hum an action; rationality, objectivity, and normativity

Credit Hours - 3

In year 1, each student in a Department or Programme is expected to attend all seminars specified and make his/her own presentation on selected topics to an audience. Each student will be expected to make at least one oral presentation to be assessed each semester and also present a full write-up of the presentation for another assessment. These will earn a total of 3 credits.

Credit Hours - 4

Concepts of the soul and of selfhood; corporality and transcendence; unity of consciousness and foundation issues about personal identity; action and intentionality; contemporary issues in philosophical psychology including artificial intelligence and the nature of cognition; theories of sensory states.

Credit Hours - 4

Validation of scientific knowledge and conceptual change; the nature of theory and the structure of explanation; ontological import of scientific knowledge; realism and its rivals; contemporary and classic views of inductive probability; philosophical consequences of

Credit Hours - 4

Topics to be discussed in this course include: set theory, intuitive and axiomatic metatheory of formal systems: consideration of the technical aspects of some problems in the foundations of mathematics e.g. problems connected with intuitionism, formalism logicism.

Credit Hours - 4

A critical examination of the problems emerging out of the African experience since the second world war. Particular attention will be paid to such notions as ideology, exploitation, authority and political legitimacy, democracy, political corruption, social (distributive) equality; ethnicity, identity and nationhood; and modernity-critical evaluation of traditional African cultural values, practices and institutions: philosophical analysis of the concept of development; science, technology, and the African culture.

Credit Hours - 4

A critical study of the ideas of thinkers in the Christian, Islamic and Jewish philosophical tradition of the Middle Ages. Particular attention will be paid to the writings of St. Augustine, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, St. Aquinas, William of Ockham, Moses, Maimonides, and In Khaldun.

Credit Hours - 3

For year 2, each student will make a presentation soon after the Year I examinations on his/her Thesis Research Proposal and also present a progress report midway into the second semester. These will be assessed for 3 credits.

Credit Hours - 3

The specific objective of this course is to equip the student with an ability to do and presentindependent research work. The course falls into two complementary parts. The first part is a lesson in critical thinking, designed to enable the student appreciate deductive validity, inductive force, the difference between truth, knowledge and belief; to enable the student identify rhetorical ploys and fallacies, and to construct, identify, and assess arguments. The second part addresses the issue of thesis preparation, involving how to design a suitable title, prepare an abstract, write an introduction, cite references, do literature review, footnote, abbreviate, structure a thesis; and how to achieve clarity and coherence, avoid verbiage and redundancy, among other things.

Credit Hours - 12

DISSERTATION (MA)

Credit Hours - 3

A study of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Topics to be treated include the historicity of the content of the poems; orality, performance, and Homer’s techniques of composition; use of language, methods of characterisation, and creation of pathos; Homer’s observational precision and descriptive imagination; whether the gods in the poems have theological or merely psychological significance. The following Homeric themes are also discussed: anger, heroic excellence and personality development, resolution and character, love and fidelity; war, honour and death; divine justice and piety. The course takes note of the contribution of Homer to intellectual culture and the history of ideas.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BC), his life and poetry: the pastoral Eclogues (or Bucolica), the Gorgics (versified farmer’s manual), and the epic Aeneid. The course covers the socio-economic and political background to these works, their literary antecedents and sources; their themes, structure, eclectic intertextuality, and other literary qualities, including the allegorical and meta-literary qualities of the Eclogues; the didacticism of the Gorgics; fate and the role of the gods in the Aeneid; issues of gender in the treatment of Juno, Dido, Amata, Camilla, Juturna; the collective versus individual interest in the characterisation of Aeneas; the symbolic imagery of Augustan discourse and the typological links between Augustus and Aeneas; the conflict between the tragic elements and the celebration of imperial power; philosophical props of the Aeneid: teleology, Anchises’ platonic-stoic account of the soul; the theme of pleasure versus duty; the conceptualization of anger; and the influence of Virgil on Medieval and Renaissance

Credit Hours - 3

This involves a close examination of Plato’s middle to late period concepts of forms, soul, and body, their complex nature and necessary interrelationships, and how these account for Plato’s epistemology, ontology, psychology, cosmology, theology, eschatology, educational system, and conception of political leadership, individual, and communal wellbeing.

Credit Hours - 3

An examination of three main areas of Graeco-Roman Stoicism: Logic (including stoic theory of knowledge, grammar and linguistic theory; statements, methods of inference and arguments); concept of nature (structure of things, the concept of pneuma, elements and their mixture, categories of things; causation, determinism, human action and cosmic evil; the soul and human nature; human rationality and the passions); ethics (the whole and the part; the good and the preferable; impulse and virtue; virtue and happiness; and the content of virtue: perfect andintermediate actions; the Stoic sage as a model of the virtuous).

Credit Hours - 3

A comprehensive study of Aristophanes: his life, extant plays, literary art and style. Topics to be treated include distinctions between Aristophanic comedy and other comedies, ancient and modern; Aristophanic hero-types (the bomolochos, poneros, spoudaios) and characterisation; Aristophanes’ use of comic metaphor, language (neologistic, rhythmic, lyrical), stage sense, stage illusion, fantasy, and parody; his wit, sense of humour, and use of bawdy: their types and functions; his satirical handling of topical themes, attitude to tradition, concept of society, and the instructional and entertaining elements in his comedies.

Credit Hours - 3

This course examines the production of literature in Roman society, especially under the emperors, with particular attention to the measurement of the extent of patronage, how independent-minded the authors were, and the extent to which literature under the emperors expresses escapism, or proceeds from fear, sycophancy, despair, cynicism, and protest or dissent.

Credit Hours - 3

This is a critical study of Thucydides, his life and work, the Peloponnesian War. Areas of study include his narrative techniques; his concept of cause, dramatic use of speeches to reveal the workings of men’s minds and the impact of circumstance, and the related problem of literal versus dramatic truth; his value judgments and interpretation of events; the extent of his use and manner of handling documentary evidence; his singular candour versus his biases; his style: poetic archaisms, violent hyperbata (wresting an emphatic word from its natural place to give it prominence), extreme concision, parisosis (balance of clauses), paronomasia (play on words) and antithesis; his resort to asyndeton and his sparing use of metaphor; his delight in assonance for emphasising contrast, and his free abstractions. Also to be discussed is Thucydides’ influence on European historiography.

Credit Hours - 3

A critical study of Tacitus, his life, career, and works: Agricola, Histories, and Annals. For each of these works the course examines Tacitus’ literary aims, themes, motivations and linguistic style; evaluates his methods of data collection, interpretation and standards of proof; his limitations and reliability as a historian of the period he writes about (the reign of Galba, Otho, Aulus Vitellius, Vespasian, and the Julio-Claudian dynasty); the question of Tacitus’ sources; his theories or types of historical explanation; the social and intellectual influences on him; his personal and political biases, such as his attitude to constitutional republicanism and imperial autocracy.

Credit Hours - 3

A comprehensive study of Sophocles’ extant works, their literary merits and themes. Literary critique covers Sophocles’ theatricality and style: his dramatic use of illusion, irony, intensity of tragic emotion, disguises, and deceptions; his use of language: syntax, rhythm, linguistic structures, such as the baroque sonorities in Ajax and the rambling self-defensive preambles in Antigone; Sophocles’ use of anagnorisis as a tragic reflection of the human condition. These literary studies are complemented by critical analyses of Sophoclean themes, including guilt, human blindness to truth, the inscrutability of divine signs and the impenetrability of the divine will.

Credit Hours - 30

THESIS 

Credit Hours - 3

A comprehensive study of Euripides’ extant works, their literary merits and humanistic themes. Discussions cover the following issues: Euripides’ imputed realism and naturalistic treatment of his principal characters, mostly women; the critique that his apparent realism is ruptured by a stifling formalism, as exemplified by his typical deus ex machina epilogues, and the forensic and detached tone of his agonistic scenes; Euripides’ innovations of traditional themes; the late plays and the variation or the increasing reduction of the tragic content, the ‘decline’ of the chorus, increasing use of ‘astrophic’ song, and the vastly extended passages of stichomythia; the effect these have on the emotional content of the themes. These discussions are complemented by critical analyses of Euripidean themes: human isolation and inexplicable suffering, failures of communication; the victimisation of women, the drive to revenge, and the role of divinity in the human condition, among others.

Credit Hours - 3

This course in biographical studies concentrates on a selected number of leaders of Graeco-Roman antiquity, including especially the Roman emperors, not previously studied. The course covers their family origins, education, character and temperament, public service, rise to prominence, distinction or uniqueness, successes and failures; their impact on society and their legacy, if any, for posterity.

Credit Hours - 3

This is a study of the most innovative and imaginative of Greek dramatists, Aeschylus (525/4?- 456/5 BC), his life, and extant plays. Topics to be treated include: Aeschylus’ central interest in situation and event rather than in character; the strong and distinctive personality of his Choruses, who, together with their music and dance, often establish the mood and theme of the play; his smooth, flexible, and perspicuous lyrics, unique ability at devising patterns of language and imagery, and bold imagination in exploiting the visual aspects of drama; his theodicy, conception of the human nature; the problem of the relationship between fate and guilt, fate and free will in his plays; his sense of community and the political undertones in his plays.

Credit Hours - 3

A comprehensive study of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC-8 BC), his life, career and works: the Epodes (or Iambi), Sermones (or Satira), Odes, Epistles, and Ars Poetica. Beginning with an account of the literary antecedents or models of his works, three broad issues are discussed: Horace’s aims, motivation, main themes for the different poetic genres he writes; the content and form of the poems; and the socio-political background to the poems. These broad issues cover the following sub-issues: why Horace chooses iambic poetry while mostly avoiding its traditional Archilochean use: invective and high emotional content; why Horace avoids personal abuse of living contemporary figures in his satires; the autobiographical theme in the satires; the lyrical odes: their dense allusivity and political content; the thematic variations from his models; and the varied expressions, tone, and stylistics within individual odes; Horace’s creation of versified (hexametric) epistles: their philosophic and exhortatory content; a literary critique of the Ars in terms of the values of poetic creation that it recommends, namely, appropriateness, clarity, and artistic composition.

Credit Hours - 3

This is a comparative and critical study of Athenian and modern practices of democracy. From an account of the Greek conception and practice of demokratia, this course identifies the various types of democracy (populist, participatory, liberal, social and deliberative), the basic assumptions, principles and justification of democratic governance, and their implications for human welfare and flourishing. In the light of these considerations, the main institutions, key principles, and practices of Athenian democracy are subjected to critical assessment, to draw out their limitations, as well as their contemporary and enduring values for human development and flourishing.

Credit Hours - 3

This is a detailed and critical study of Graeco-Roman Epicureanism, with focus on the nature of knowledge, atomic structure of body, nature of gods and their relationship with humans; soul and mental processes; freedom of action; pleasure and happiness; justice and friendship; and Epicurus’ socio-political philosophy: ‘live unnoticed’ (lathê biosas). This is a detailed and critical study of Graeco-Roman Epicureanism, with focus on the nature of knowledge, atomic structure of body, nature of gods and their relationship with humans; soul and mental processes; freedom of action; pleasure and happiness; justice and friendship; and Epicurus’ socio-political philosophy: ‘live unnoticed’ (lathê biosas).

Credit Hours - 3

As a comprehensive coverage of scepticism in Graeco-Roman antiquity, this course deals with the sources, the nature of scepticism, Pyrrho and the Socratic tradition; scepticism in the middle and later Academy, and in the early Roman Empire; modes of scepticism; sceptical criteria, signs, and proofs; causes and explanation; sceptical physics and metaphysics; scepticism in liberal arts; sceptical ethics, attitude, and way of life.

Credit Hours - 3

A close study of the origins of the Republican constitution; the assemblies: their types, number and procedures of operation; the senate: its membership, place and times of meetings, its procedure and authority; the magistrates: their number, power and functions; the balance and mixture of the constitution: the senate and aristocracy, the tribunes and the senate, the tribunes and the magistrates; the influence of religion and society on institutions of state; Cicero’s contribution to the republican ideology; the limitations of the constitution and its contribution to the fall of the Republic; the influence of the Republican constitution on the modern West.

Credit Hours - 3

A critical study of Herodotus’ Histories, including an assessment of its varied narrative techniques: chronological succession, cause-effect, effect-cause linkages and digressive explanations; an examination of his sources: oral, documents, monuments, personal observation; the process of enquiry built into his narrative, namely, his self-conscious assessment of whether or not to believe a source; Herodotus’ a priori judgements versus his power of observation; the structural coherence of the Histories through the principles of kinship and reciprocity (that an act is a response to an antecedent act); whether Herodotus is a historical determinist and a Hellenocentric; his contribution to intellectual culture and to the history of ideas.

Credit Hours - 3

The student is required to attend all Departmental seminars. In addition, he/she must present and justify the dissertation proposal in the context of a literature review at the beginning of the second semester and also present a progress report in the middle of that semester. Both presentations are to be assessed for three credits.

Credit Hours - 3

This course studies the life, character, careers and speeches of Demosthenes (384-322 BC), by general consent the greatest Athenian orator. It covers both the content as well as the rhetorical and literary qualities of his private law-court speeches (which deal, among other things, with guardianship, inheritance, claims of payment, maritime loans, mining rights, forgery, trespass, assault) and the political speeches (whose themes are basically about the public interest). As regards the latter speeches, this study examines Demosthenes’ methods and policies vis-a-vis those of his political opponents, as far as these can be inferred from his attacks, to determine whether Demosthenes deserves the reputation of champion of Athenian liberty or opponent of peace and progress, and whether he demonstrates the qualities on which his greatness is predicated: singleness of purpose, sincerity, lucid and convincing argument, and effective literary styles.

Credit Hours - 3

Justice, good governance, and the nature of law are thematic frames in Graeco-Roman political thought, which appear in such varied literary sources and genres as epic, drama, history, oratory and philosophy. These sources are examined, along with the central focus of Graeco-Roman political thought: the soul or mind, its education and flourishing, and the social-psychological structures that facilitate or impede it. Also examined are the ancient debates about the best regime; arguments about the nature of ethical and political norms and about the role these play or should play, along with the institutions of education, family, and state in their contribution to human flourishing. Principal contributors to Graeco-Roman political thought who are studied include Plato, Cicero, Plutarch, Thrasymachus, Socrates, Protagoras, Epicurus, Lucretius, Zeno, Chrysippus, and Marcus Aurelius.

Credit Hours - 3

This course investigates the cosmological context of Pindar’s victory odes, and how it influences his presentation of praise. It first focuses on gnomai as a reflection of cosmology, using these sayings to establish the views the poems reveal on matters such as the divine, the human condition, and man in society. This overview is complemented by detailed literary analyses demonstrating how cosmology functions in individual odes. The analyses show that Pindar shapes the poet persona to emphasise different aspects of the traditional worldview or to represent varying viewpoints so that he can praise each victor according to his particular circumstances.

Credit Hours - 3

A comprehensive study of Cicero (106-43 BC), his life, character, career and a selection of his speeches, letters (to Atticus), and philosophical writings. The course covers both the content and, especially, the rhetorical and literary qualities of his speeches: their considerable variation in style and manner, their rhythmic and syntactic structure, diction and idiom, the critique that the speeches lack vigour, quotability, are Asian and longwinded; Cicero’s conception of the ideal orator in his De Oratore, Brutus, and Orator. These studies are complemented by critical examination of key elements of Cicero’s worldview, including his preference for a mixed republican constitution (De Republica), his stoic conception of ideal law (De Legibus), his discussions of the psychology of happiness (De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, Tusculan Disputations), his view on the nature and existence of gods (De Natura Deorum), on fate (DeFato), and his influence on European thought and literature.

Credit Hours - 3

A close study of the Athenian Xenophon: his life, career, and a selection of his works. This course discusses and examines Xenophon’s motivation for each work, his style, his moral and didactic suasion and pragmatism; his ideological inclinations, as can be gleaned from his relationship with Persia, Sparta and his work, Constitution of the Spartans; his historiographical methods in Hellenica and Anabasis; his conception of leadership in Cyropaedia, Agesilaus, and Hiero; his thesis of a non-military imperialism based on peaceful and consensual hegemony in Ways and Means; the reliability of the Oeconomicus as a source of social history; and the value of sympotic experience in Symposium. A study of his Apology and Memorabilia invites comparative and detailed study with relevant Platonic dialogues, including Plato’s Apology.

Credit Hours - 3

A critical study of Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (AD 39-65), his life, career, and historical epic, Pharsalia or Civil War. The course examines Lucan’s aim, motivation, and ideological basis for this work; the allusions in his work to Virgil’s Aeneid; his use of rhetoric, speeches, apostrophe of characters, hyperbole and paradox in creating pathos; his indignant epigrammatic style; his intrusive reactions in the narrative; the rootedness of Lucan’s paradox in the conceptual and thematic anti-structures of the civil war: e.g., the legitimating gloss put on war crimes. There are also discussions of Lucan’s supernaturalism, stoicism, the mythological strain in his narrative, his stylistic and metrical narrowness, and his influence on such significant literary figures as Statius, Dante, Goethe, and Shelley.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of Apollonius, a major literary figure of 3rd century BC Alexandria, and his Argonautica, the only extant Greek hexameter epic written between Homer and the Roman imperial period. This course assesses the sources about Apollonius’ life and career, his association with Callimachus, and his literary output. But the focus of study is a literary critique of the Argonautica, including its metrical structure; its strain of aetiology of cult and ritual; an evaluation of the following principal influences on him: Homer, in the use of language, narrative technique, set scenes, details of material culture, and characterisation; Pindar, in his account of the Argonauts; and Euripides in his Medea. Also discussed is Apollonius’ innovative or experimental compositional style, and principles of characterisation; his emotional authorial intrusions into the narrative, and the reflections of Hellenistic science in the poem.

Credit Hours - 3

A comprehensive study of the work of Decimus Iunius Juvenalis: the Satires. Known primarily for the angry tone of his early satires, Juvenal in later poems developed a satiric strategy of ironical and detached superiority. This course discusses the high rhetorical nature of the Satires in relation to the concept of ‘mask persona’, an evaluative perspective with which to see the Satires as self-conscious poetic constructs rather than as autobiographical reflections of the realities of Roman social life. Also to be discussed is Juvenal’s style: his appropriation of themes and structures of other discourses and genres; his occasional obscenities, penchant for oxymora, paradoxes, and trenchant questions; Juvenal’s influence on Renaissance and later satire.

Credit Hours - 3

This course is not concerned with the historical, philological or empirical content of Presocratic thoughts: it is concerned with the logical content of those thoughts. Based on a logical (re-)construction of the extant fragments and testimonia, this involves a critical evaluation of the inferential structures and an assessment of the logical validity of the cosmological theses associated with Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus of Samos, Archelaus of Athens, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus, and Diogenes of Apollonia.

Credit Hours - 3

In the first year the student is expected to attend all Departmental seminars, present one seminar paper each semester on a topic in Graeco-Roman history or literature or philosophy. Both presentations are to be assessed for three credits.

Credit Hours - 3

A close study of seven key areas of Socratic philosophy: the Socratic elenchus, its therapeutic effect and hereustic limitations; epistemology (the methodological priority of his ‘what is x?’ question to philosophic inquiry; the paradox of Socratic ignorance, the search for principles of virtue); psychology (what everybody believes and desires, the denial of akrasia, the nature of the self); ethics (variety of goods, relative and absolute benefits and harm; the issue of the sufficiency of virtue); politics (the citizen and the state: the persuade or obey rule, social contract theory, politics as a craft); religion (Socratic piety, ethical theology, attitude to divination and rational knowledge, and to death and the afterlife).

Credit Hours - 3

A close study of Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC-AD 17): his life, career, and a selection of his works. Beginning with a general account of each of his works and their literary antecedents, this study focuses on the love poems (Amores, ‘Loves’; Ars Amatoria, ‘The Art of Love’; Remedia Amoris; ‘Remedies for Love’), and the Metamorphoses (‘Transformations’). Study of the love poems involves an examination of love poetry, including the theme, the didactic suasion, the vivid specificity and contemporaneity of the actors and the social melieux. Study of the Metamorphoses involves critical discussion of the theme, related issues of the boundaries between divine and human, animal and inanimate; the structure of the work, especially, the asymmetry of chronological linearity and the thematic associations and contrast; Ovid’s imaginative and aestheticising choice of memorable stories about the aspirations and sufferings which define and threaten the human condition.

Credit Hours - 3

A critical study of Greek and Roman pastoral poetry: its rural origins, literary antecedents in Greek comedy and tragedy; its creation as an art by Theocritus; its metrical structure, stylistic and narrative features; a discussion of the themes, the underlying rural-urban background. Sample texts for study include the idylls of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, on the Greek side; those of Virgil, Calpurnius Siculus, and Nemesianus, on the Roman side.

Credit Hours - 3

A literary study of the extant works of Plautus and Terence. Discussions cover the issue of the Greek antecedents of their plays and their techniques of creative adaptation; plot and structure,including the use of set-piece cantica; their themes, the instructional and entertainment value oftheir plays, including Terences’ reputation for humanitas; their audiences, sense of humour, methods of characterisation, style and use of language; and their contribution to the development of the European entertainment tradition.

Credit Hours - 3

A study in the life, works and reception of Ion of Chios (490/80-420 BC), the prolific Greek writer famed in antiquity for this polyeideia. His extraordinary range of writings in prose and poetry across multiple genres include tragedy, elegy, history, biography, mythography, and philosophy. This course discusses Ion’s importance both to the study of classical Greece because of the literary innovations which he pioneered and to the history of Athens and Chios as a contemporary of and a commentator on Aeschylus, Cimon, Sophocles, Pericles, Themistocles, and Socrates.

Credit Hours - 3

This course studies the growth of Roman power and imperial motivations (material rewards, greed, fear, glory); the political, economic, and social consequences of empire; ideology and government; Romanisation (cultural assimilation, hybridization, and resistance), imperial strategy and defence of the empire; and limitations of empire-building.

Credit Hours - 3

This course critically examines five key areas, to give the student an advanced and comprehensive understanding of Aristotle’s philosophy: metaphysics (ontology, theology, chance, time, necessity, causation, teleology); psychology (mind, imagination, soul); ethics (virtue as a mean, the good of rational agents and the good of others; theory of justice); politics (conception of the state and its role in moral education; the human good and the citizen, freedom); science (the theory ofdemonstration, syllogism, physics).

Credit Hours - 3

This is a critical study of the decline and ‘fall’ of the Roman Empire. Issues to be discussed include whether or not the Roman Empire fell or merely transformed into Medieval Europe, plus a thorough examination of the various theses of the causes of the decline and ‘fall’: physical (e.g., economic, medical, profligate, climatic, dysgenic); social and cultural (e.g., educational, Christian religious), political (e.g., over-centralisation, failures in statecraft including foreign policy, problems of succession, administration); military (e.g., invasions and emperor-making), among other factors.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of the main contributions of the Sophists (including those of the Second Sophistic AD 60- 230) to the history of ideas, and to education and intellectual entertainment. Topics include a discussion of the types and functions of rhetoric; rhetoric and scepticism; sophistic themes such as: the nomos-physis antithesis in ethics and politics, theories of equality or inequality (political, economic, social, racial), relativity of values and its effects on moral practice, rationalistic theories of religion (agnosticism and atheism), and the issue of whether virtue can be taught. There are also discussions on the conflict between rhetoric and philosophy: between seeing and being, believing and knowing, persuading and proving.

Credit Hours - 3

The student is required to attend all Departmental seminars. In addition, the student must presentand justify the thesis proposal in the context of a literature review at the beginning of the first semester of the second year and also present a progress report at the middle of that semester. Both presentations are to be assessed for three credits.

Credit Hours - 3

 This course focuses on the Graeco-Roman invention of the essay and letter as literary art. The study covers selected essays of Seneca, Dio, Lucian, Plato, Epicurus, Pliny the Younger, and Cicero. Discussions cover the cultural background to the development and use of essay and letter as means of communication; the content, purposes and themes of the essays and letters; diction and style, techniques and structure of composition.