Credit Hours - 3

A study of Middle Period Plato, with particular attention to his theories of forms, justice, soul and political leadership.

Credit Hours - 3

An account of the ancient Romans‘ practical extensions of Greek Stoicism, Epicureanism, and their adaptation of Greek mathematics, medicine and agriculture.

Credit Hours - 3

A critical study of the interface between society and literature (based on selected literary genres, including historiography, lyric, elegiac, and epic poetry, and the satirical elements in the works of Archilochus, Hipponax, and Aristophanes).

Credit Hours - 3

A close study of the interface between literature (especially epic, historiography, satire, lyric, and elegiac poetry) and Roman society (especially the Republican and Imperial Eras).

Credit Hours - 3

A biographical study of some of the leading personalities in ancient Greece (e.g., Solon, Lycurgus, Themistocles, Pericles, Alcibiades, Timoleon, Pelopidas, Epaminondas, Aristides, Philopoemen, Pyrrhus, Lysander). The study involves a critical examination of the sources, the methodological approaches to biography, and an assessment of the judgments in character sketches.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of some leading statesmen of ancient Rome, including some emperors. The study includes a critical assessment of the sources, the methodological approaches to biography, and an evaluation of the judgments in character sketches.

Credit Hours - 3

This is a comprehensive introduction to Greek historiography, covering the contributions to the genre and its varieties by classical, Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic authors. The focus will be on the aims, themes, motivations, and approaches to history-writing; sources of data and methods of data collection; theories of interpretation, explanation, standards of proof, and narrative techniques.

Credit Hours - 3

This covers the Greek influences, and the Roman contributors to the development of the genre; the military and political background of the Roman historians; the aims, themes, motivations, and approaches to history-writing; sources of evidence and methods of data collection; theories of interpretation, explanation, and standards of proof.

Credit Hours - 3

This studies the unique contribution of the sophists to the history of ideas and academic discipline by examining both sample texts associated with key sophists and their academic professions, methods of persuasion, interests, and general outlook.

Credit Hours - 3

Certain aspects of human experience dominant in the Graeco-Roman context (e.g. military history) are not covered in depth by any of the CLAS courses. This option will enable full-time faculty and visiting scholars to present specific research areas or the results of specialised scholarship in a lecture format, without being restricted to a single author or particular text.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of statutory law in Greek antiquity, from Dreros and Gortyn in Crete in the 7th century BC to the Athenian legal code commissioned in 410 BC. The focus is on the application of law in the administration of justice in Athens.

Credit Hours - 3

A survey of the development of the Roman legal system from the Twelve Tables (450 BC) to the Justinian Code (AD 528-34). Coverage includes discussions of the types, number and character of judicial bodies; civil and criminal procedures; appeals, execution of judgment, and standards of proof.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of the art of persuasion in Ancient Greece, covering oratory in Homer, and the classical contributions to the works of Plato, Isocrates, the Sophists, the logographers, and Aristotle, with attention to persuasion and proof; creating the speech, arranging, styling, and delivering.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of rhetoric in Ancient Rome, covering the theoretical contributions to the art by Cicero, Quintilian, Tacitus, and the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium. The study also examines the application of rhetoric in politics, historiography, dialectics, memory theory, poetics, and ethics.

Credit Hours - 3

This level of Greek studies focuses on translation and practice in the construction of sentences, both simple and complex.

Credit Hours - 3

This focuses on translation and practice in the construction of complex sentences that build reading proficiency.

Credit Hours - 3

This consolidates the lessons of the previous studies towards the acquisition of a working proficiency through translation and the reading of prescribed primary texts in philosophy, fiction, history, and various genres of poetry.

Credit Hours - 3

A consolidation of the lessons of the previous studies, and on acquiring a working proficiency and comprehension through the translation and the reading of prescribed primary texts in various classical literary genres.

Credit Hours - 3

Option to pursue a specific author or text in greater depth and scope than the standard term- length undergraduate syllabi allow. Available in both semesters to facilitate a sustained study.

Credit Hours - 3

The specific objective of this course is to equip the student with the ability to do and present independent research work. The course falls into two complementary parts. The first addresses the issue of thesis preparation; the second part is a lesson in critical thinking, designed to enable the student appreciate deductive validity, inductive force, and how to identify, construct, and assess arguments.

Credit Hours - 3

A student who intends to write a long essay in classics must have taken the course CLAS 420 in Research Methods, whose principles they are to apply in critical reflections on perennial human issues in Greek or Roman studies. The research topic is to be determined by the student in consultation with the supervisor and with the approval of the Head of Department. Only single majors with a CGPA of 3.0 or better are eligible to register for the Long Essay.

Credit Hours - 3

Examines the early debates about the nature of sets, the ontology of number, rudiments of Cantor‘s transfinite set theory and notions of infinity, Hilbert‘s formalism and the development of meta-mathematic at the end of the 19th century, debates about the ontology of number theory, the philosophical implications of non-Euclidean geometries, the influence of computer technology on proof theory, implications of fractals and chaos theory for metaphysics, social philosophy and philosophy of mind.

Credit Hours - 3

Varied issues in this broad literature may be canvassed: truth and negation, classical and intuitionistic interpretations of the law of bivalence, many-valued logics, logical deviancy, modal logic, meaning and necessity, the semantics and syntax of ontology, competing interpretations of the quantifiers, and an introduction to proof theory.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of period themes in Scholastic works from Augustine to William of Ockham with emphasis on Augustine’s Christian and Neo-Platonic synthesis, and the theologian philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Credit Hours - 3

Critical analysis of policies set by the United Nations, international agencies, and multilateral organisations based on competing definitions of human well-being. Considers the roles of economics and culture in the measurement of social progress. Evaluates reflections of influential African philosophers and global doctrines of the genre, including the modernisation school, dependency theory, neo-liberalism, the people‘s development approach, and the statist perspective.

Credit Hours - 3

The specific objective of this course is to equip the student with the ability to do and present independent research work. The course falls into two complementary parts. The first addresses the issue of thesis preparation; the second part is a lesson in critical thinking, designed to enable the student to appreciate deductive validity, inductive force, and how to identify, construct, and assess arguments.

Credit Hours - 3

Studies of the nature of meaning and intentionality, the interpretation of speech, belief, and reality, theories of reference, the semantic theory of truth and its adversaries, the metaphysical preconditions of language acquisition and participation, non-representational meaning, and the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy.

Credit Hours - 3

Topics include social responsibility for multinational corporations, accelerating debates concerning the legitimacy of international law and the cogency of international human rights, the ethics of international intervention, cross-border peace-keeping and reconciliation, global environmental responsibility, the possibility of global justice, and migration rights.

Credit Hours - 3

An occasional syllabus determined by the current research focus of permanent faculty members or our visiting scholars, offered under the discretion of the department faculty.

Credit Hours - 3

Option to pursue a specific author or text in greater depth and scope than the standard term- length undergraduate syllabi allow. Available in both semesters to facilitate a sustained study. Offered only according to the discretion of the department faculty.

Credit Hours - 3

Topics will include traditionalism versus modernism, cultural universalism and versions of relativism, ethnicity and ethnocentrism, problems of nation-building and national integration, national and cultural identity in Africa, multiculturalism and cultural liberty, globalisation and cultural identities, and culture and economic development.

Credit Hours - 3

An introductory exploration of the philosophical content and significance of Nkrumah’s published and extant writings, in the evolution of Africans’ domestic political debates, the way Africa features in contemporary global politics, the theme of pan-Africanism, his philosophy of nationalism, self-reliance and formation of identity, the notions of personhood and of good governance that are spelt out in his works.

Credit Hours - 3

Elucidation of key phenomenological terms, including ‘truth adequation and knowledge fulfilment’ in the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl. A study of the two basic principles of his transcendental subjectivity and Lebenswelt, as a basis for the hermeneutics of Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Derrida.

Credit Hours - 3

Considers the possibility of self-understanding through modern scientific methods, and problems peculiar to the idiographic sciences—varieties of relativism, essentially contestable categories, pseudo precision, reason-giving explanation and presuppositions about rationality.

Credit Hours - 3

Recent developments in the new sciences of the atomic age and their impact upon contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, logic, ontology and studies in the foundations of mathematics.

Credit Hours - 3

Critical treatment of issues and questions that remain contemporary and pressing, many of which generate from indigenous African intellectual traditions, concerning human existence, conceptions of God, nature, ontology, personhood, destiny, views of morality, the good society, and truth.

Credit Hours - 3

Explores the relationship between the law, judiciary, and politics, competing theories of law, including legal realism and positivism, Hart on legal precedent and Dworkin on constitutional law.

Credit Hours - 3

Deals with fundamental questions of practical concern about living in human society, analysing specific moral questions about personal relationships and responsibility, e.g. abortion, euthanasia, punishment, sex, the social implications of science and technology, functioning with integrity in corporate environments, health care rights and state obligations.

Credit Hours - 3

The profound and lasting influence of this eighteenth-century German’s contribution to epistemology and normative reasoning is accessible through an introduction to a selection of his works.

Credit Hours - 3

The nature, purpose and genesis of concepts of justice, studying texts of Marx, Rawls and other seminal writers.

Credit Hours - 3

Investigates general theories that analyse the variety of solutions to problems arising in ethics and aesthetics. Examines the criteria of moral value in contrast with tests for the veracity of empirical judgment.

Credit Hours - 3

Conceptual analysis and evaluation of the shared post-colonial experience. Examines the relevance of traditional African values, practices, and institutions to contemporary life, including modern expressions of ethnicity, nationhood, democracy, communitarian moral and political theory, ideology, political morality, economic transformation, science and technology, and the phenomena of globalisation.

Credit Hours - 3

Study of the goals of a unified theory, the innovations of Frege, the construction and abandonment of a formal language for science, the reformation of philosophy dubbed 'the linguistic turn', efforts to protect philosophy from political co-optation by the European logical empiricists working with Carnap, Schlick, Neurath, the influences of Wittgenstein and of Quine.

Credit Hours - 3

Introducing the notion, origin, and principles of modern scientific rigour, the contribution of scientific activity to postmodern notions of truth, the role of science in society, the development and retirement of the analogue of political revolutions to account for change in received scientific theory.

Credit Hours - 3

A study of Middle Period Plato, with particular attention to his theories of forms, justice, soul and political leadership.