Krater showing Sarpedon carried away by Sleep, Death and Hermes, signed by Euxitheos the potter and Euphronios the painter    

515 BCE

Before you read: imagine yourself at a late night party with some close friends. You begin talking about love. You find that each of you speaks about love in a different way. Jot down some notes about what you would say about love.

 After you read:  Consider both the structure and content of the reading. Come to class prepared to discuss the following questions, and post some thoughts on them on the Discussion Board in your Journey section:

• Structure: The characters in the Symposium are exploring a weighty topic together. How did they interact with one another? Is the ”symposium” an effective means of education?  Why or why not?  Is this a real conversation, or is it just a literary device of Plato's?

• Content: Which of the speeches was most different from your own imagined discussion regarding love?  How was it different?  Which one was closest?  In what way?

Several of the speeches in the Symposium account for love in the form of a foundation myth; certainly Aristophanes' speech does so.  How do other foundation stories similarly seek to interpret human existence as they know it?  We will look at several such accounts.

Read before class:

• Heritage of World Civilizations, pp. 4-28
• Atrahasis, Myths from Mesopotamia, pp. 1-38

• Enuma Elish, Myths from Mesopotamia, pp. 233-277

Socrates' Apology

 Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.) was Plato's teacher.  In the course of great civil unrest in the years following Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War, he was brought to trial on charges of introducing foreign gods and of leading the youth of Athens astray.  The Apology was apparently composed not long after Socrates' death; it presents itself as Socrates' defense against the charges levied against him, and his speech to the jury after he was found guilty.  He was sentenced by the jury to execution.  The text indicates that Plato was present at the trial; other dialogues suggest that Plato himself was also present at Socrates' death.  The issues of truth and justice that the death of Socrates posed remained central issues in Plato's thought.

The Temple of Apollo at Delphi; the Oracle was inside the temple.

Who are we and where do we come from?  The community and the individual.  What do these stories tell us about the self-understandings of the people who told these stories, and of those who collected them?  What do they say one should do?  What do they say it means to be human?  How should society be organized?  Why?

The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Further discussion of questions raised by Plato in the Apology and the Crito

How does Socrates know what he knows?  Can you know in that way?  Do you see yourself as a "self" in the same way as Socrates did?  Should you?  What does it mean to be an educated person?  Can you separate job skills from yourself?  Is it enough to become a "professional"?  How can your education contribute to the non-professional part of your future?  What will you do with the rest of your life?  

How can we construct a just society?  What makes society just?   What do these two texts say about the citizen's responsibility to the law?

Who are we and where do we come from?  The Rig Veda was composed somewhere between 1700 B.C.E. and 1100 B.C.E.; it consists of a number of hymns which were recited ritually for centuries before they took written form, probably in late antiquity.  The Rig Veda gives us insight into ancient Indian thought about the nature of human life and of human society; it also stands as a foundation of later Indian thought on these and many other topics.  We might ask: who am "I" in the Vedic texts?   What does one do?  What is the goal?  Does the Rig Veda give a different understanding of the world than the other texts we have been reading?  How?  In what way is it different?  How does the Rig Veda's world look different from yours?  How is it similar?  What is the nature of the similarities you see? 

Read before class:

• Heritage of World Civilizations, pp. 28-35
• Rig Veda

Indra and Agni, 10th century Indian, Surwaya, Madhya Pradesh

Setting the questions: The Second Vatican Council's decree ”Nostra Aetate”

This groundbreaking document from the fourth session of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 represents a dramatic reformulation of the Catholic Church's understanding of other religious traditions.  Its section on the Church and the Jewish people was largely drafted by Seton Hall professor Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher. 

The questions of meaning that this document raises in its first section are the central themes of this course as well: what does it mean to be human?  What is the meaning and purpose of life?  As you read it, reflect on your own religious and cultural understanding of the "others", whoever they may be.  To what extent do you think this document sets an agenda for finding common ground with others?  To what extent do you see it as problematic?  Why?  How much of it strikes you as "news"? 

Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher

Yama, the Lord of Death

The Katha Upanishad dates from somewhere between 1400 and 800 B.C.E.  It gives us a different ancient Indian thought about the nature of human life and of human society.  What do "I" learn from death in the Katha Upanishad?  What does one do?  What is the goal?  What is the nature of the self, of the "I" that this text propounds?  How does it differ from other understandings of the self that we have already seen?

Read before class:

• Heritage of World Civilizations, pp. 56-63
• Katha Upanishad
• Another translation of the Katha Upanishad

The Bhagavad Gita: How does one act?  What basis does one have for choosing a way of action?

What is this story about?  What do you find most surprising about it?  What do you find hardest to understand?  What do you find surprisingly familiar?  Why?  What does the storyteller want you to do?  to think?  What does Krishna say the self is?  Why is self-understanding important?  How does one get there?  What in Krishna's teaching do you find agreeable?  What of it do you find difficult?  How does Krishna's teaching differ from others we have seen?  How is it similar?  How does it critique the worldview of the Vedas and the Katha Upanishad?  How does the Gita understand That Which is Ultimate?  What consequences does it suggest that follow from that understanding?

We will spend the entire morning in discussion of this key text.

Before you come to class, write a few paragraphs in your My Blog/Journal with your first reflections on today's reading, including your thoughts after you have read the article on the Gita in "Readings."

Krishna Revealing Himself to Arjuna

The Buddha and Buddhist teachings

Siddhartha Gautama (traditionally 566 - 486 B.C.E., although some modern scholars date him about a century later) is known to us as the Buddha, the Awake One.  At his enlightenment at the age of 35, he came to understand what he taught as the Four Noble Truths: that all life is suffering, that the cause of suffering is desire, that suffering can be ended, and that the way to end suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation.  This "Middle Way", between bodily indulgence and harsh physical asceticism, focuses on the concentration of the mind to a proper understanding of reality.  He spent the rest of his life teaching this dharma (truth, teaching, thing); his teachings were collected orally after his death, and much later reduced to writing.  During his lifetime, he gathered thousands of followers, who adopted his mendicant style of living; these monks were his first sangha, or community.

Buddha, Kamakura, 13th century

The Buddha and Buddhist teachings: The Heart Sutra

About the beginning of the Common Era, the monastic form of Buddhist teaching was challenged by an interpretation of the Buddha's teaching which focused on the availability of the Buddha and his teaching to the larger community, and not only to those who adopted the monastic life.  This "greater vehicle," the Mahayana, also developed the ideal of the bodhisattva, the enlightened being who postpones his own entry into nirvana for the sake of the enlightenment of all sentient beings.  In this light, the Buddha is a permanent presence, and enlightenment is a possibility for all who seek to uncover their own buddha nature.  It is, by and large, the Mahayana form of Buddhism which moved into China, Korea and Japan.  A further expansion of the Mahayana, the Vajrayana, or "Diamond Way," became the basic form of Buddhism in Tibet.  The Mahayana text for this class explores the subtler metaphysics and ethics of this branch of Buddhist thinking. 

The Heart Sutra is a rather later Buddhist composition, dating from somewhere in the early centuries of the Common Era, perhaps as early as 100 C.E.  Notice that in this text the Buddha is not the speaker, but is a silent presence approving what is said.  The speaker is Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig in Tibetan), a disciple of the Buddha who emerges in later Buddhist thought as the boddhisatva (the person who perfectly realizes an ideal) of infinite compassion.  It is important in reading this text to note who the speaker is: what is taught in this text is the foundation of compassion.

Avalokiteshvara

16th Century Tibet

Rubin Museum of Art

Achilles fighting Hektor.  Attic vase, c. 490 B.C.E.

Who is the hero?  What is a hero?  Is the hero an "I"?  In what sense is Achilles the hero of the Iliad?  Is Achilles responsible for his wrath?  Why does the poem begin with Achilles' wrath, but conclude with Hektor's funeral rites?  What in this poem made it the stories all Greeks knew and remembered?  Unlike most days, all sections will meet together today for both morning classes to discuss this material together.

Read before class:

• Heritage of World Civilizations, pp. 86-101
• The Essential Iliad, Books 1-3, 6, 9, 14, 16, 18-24

The Gospel of John

 What should you do?  Why should you do it?  How do you know?  How should you behave toward others?  What responsibility do you have toward them?  Why?  How is what Jesus has to say similar to what we have seen before?  How is it different?  How does what Jesus do reveal what he has to say?  What does that have to say about how your actions reveal who you are?

Before you come to class, write a few paragraphs in your My Blog/Journal with your first reflections on today's reading.

The Pool of Siloam

What in this poem made it so precious to the Greeks?  What made Odysseus such a culture hero?  What does that tell us about the people who treasured this poem?  What values does it convey, and how?

Read before class:

• The Essential Odyssey

Image: Odysseus and the Sirens

The Gospel of John

The long speech Jesus gives at this meal is an extended meditation on what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  How does Jesus' action at the beginning of this story shape the meaning of what follows?  How should one act toward oneself?  toward others?  Why?  How does Jesus speak of his Father?  How is that meant to be a model of how the follower should act?  What should you do?

Read before class:

• The Gospel of John, chapters 13-17, especially chapters 13 and 14

Image: Jesus washing disciples' feet  12th century French manuscript

The Athens of the Classical Age experienced a series of threats, successes and defeats which raised questions of individual and social responsibility in forms which are still compelling to us.  Read their accounts of the Persian War as background to their debates.  Who am "I" in all of this?  Who am "I" in the face of death?  What are "my" responsibilities?  How do the Athenian answers compare to those reflected in the Katha Upanishad?  How do they differ from the answers we saw in Homer?  in Pindar?  in Sappho?

Pope Benedict XVI's Encyclical God is Love

Papal encyclical letters are a form of public teaching; usually they are devoted to an examination of a particular question.  It is significant that Pope Benedict XVI chose this topic as the subject of his first formal letter. 

As you read the letter, do you find his arguments persuasive?  Does his analysis resonate with your own experience?  How?  Why?  What do you find surprising in it?  What is not surprising?  Given our discussions this semester, does his analysis clarify some of the issues we have been discussing?  Does love of God necessarily translate into love of others?  Individually?  Communally?  Why?  How?  How does his understanding of God ground his vision of human community?  How does it suggest a grounding for one's own self-understanding? 

Pope Benedict XVI

There are contested notions of the self in the Greek experience.  Achilles, Pericles and Socrates represent three very different ways of constructing a sense of self, based on very different criteria.  How is the idea of the self in the Katha Upanishad different from those in the Greek sources?  How is it similar?  How does your own sense of self differ from any and all of these?  How is it similar?  Do you recognize in your experience the kind of responsibility to the community that Pericles appeals to?  What do you conclude from your answer?

Read before class:

• Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides selections on E-reserve)

The Athenian experiment in democracy forced many to reconsider the role of the individual in society.  Plato's Socrates is one of the first characters in literature to take seriously the motto of the Delphic oracle to "know thyself."  What does that Socrates have to say about personal responsibility in the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito?  Is that the same message we find in the early part of the Republic?  How do these understandings of the self compare to the emerging sense of the self reflected in the Katha Upanishad?

Read before class:

• Plato, Republic, Books 1 - 3
• Aristophanes, The Clouds

Image: Plato

Plato's ”Allegory of the Cave” from The Republic

Unlike the Apology, which was probably written shortly after Socrates' death, The Republic is a much later work, and the "Socrates" here may or may not accurately represent the historical Socrates; he is certainly the mouthpiece of Plato's own thought.  The Republic is a lengthy discussion of the nature of justice (clearly a sore point for Plato, who was present at Socrates' trial); the "Allegory of the Cave" is a discussion of the nature of the kind of knowledge that will bring about a just society.

Aristotle says, in the Poetics, that "Tragedy is, then, a representation of an action that is heroic and complete and of a certain magnitude--by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief to these and similar emotions"(1449b).   He uses the word "katharsis" (translated here as "relief") to describe the ultimate effect of tragedy.  What is the "katharsis" (relief, purification, clarification) in the plays of the Oresteia?  What kind of knowledge gives this "clarification"?  How does this way of knowing differ from "philosophical" knowing?

Read before class:

• Aeschylus, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

The Theater of Ephesus

Plotinus synthesized the fusion of Stoic and Platonic thought that was the preoccupation of the Alexandrian philosophers of his time.  His development of the ideal of the Beautiful and the One in a neoplatonic "monotheism" is both the culmination of ancient Greco-Roman philosophy and the bridge to the philosophical treatment of the idea of God which develops in Christian thought.  At the same time, he also appears to reflect the influence of the Indian philosophers in the Alexandria of his time; notice the echoes of Buddhist teaching in the Tractate, particularly in the way in which he effectively denies intrinsic (or absolute) existence to the things of our experience.

The Death of Pentheus

Attic vase, c. 450 B.C.E.

The Greeks found in their dramas a way of coming to understand a number of conflicts that remained unresolved at the very core of their civilization; the plays they continued to demand give us insight into the nature of these conflicts.  Indeed, some of these conflicts can be seen in our own world; perhaps they are inherent in human civilization.   In any event, audiences to this day continue to find understanding in these plays.  What is the "katharsis" (relief, purification, clarification) in Antigone, in Bacchae?  What conflicts do they dramatize, and how do they illuminate them?  What kind of knowledge gives this "clarification"?  How does this way of knowing differ from "philosophical" knowing?

Read before class:

• Sophocles, Antigone
• Euripides, Bacchae
• Euripides, Medea

Apollo, from the west front of the Temple of Zeus, Olympia

Some of the most enduring influences of the ancient Greeks that continue to influence us are their extraordinary achievements in the visual arts: their painting (mostly lost), sculpture and architecture.  No understanding of this period is complete without some understanding of those accomplishments; we will spend some time today studying them in preparation for our visit to the Metropolitan Museum in a few weeks.  It is important to realize that these artistic accomplishments were not separate from the rest of classical Greek culture: Socrates was a stone-cutter by profession, and the Parthenon was commissioned by Pericles.

Some vocabulary which you may find helpful in speaking about this art:  geometric style, cult object, votive offering, Kouros, Kore, drapery, sarcophagus, equilibrium, contrapposto, relief sculpture, ideal type, realism, individual facial figures, grave monument, Roman portrait bust, decorative wall panel. 

Augustine's Confessions

The Confessions is perhaps the first autobiography in Western history, and it remains a classic of psychological introspection. Augustine is a writer of unparalleled skill; pay especially close attention to the beginning and the ending of each book, for they summarize his thoughts.

How does Augustine understand the meaning of human life?  How does he know this?  Who is his partner in the dialogue in this work?  In what way is this familiar to you?  In what way is it different from texts we have seen before?  What difference does it make in your understanding of the text?  What do you take away from his description of his childhood?  Does it resonate with your experience?  How?  What are the various meanings of  "confession" as Augustine uses this term to apply to this book?

Augustine writes this book as a long, extended conversation with God: what importance and meanings can be attached to this form; how would it have been different without this dialogical character?  What kind of education did he receive, and what did he think of it?

"Take; read" 

Benozzo Gozzoli, 1465

Augustine's Confessions

 What does Augustine mean by the "disintegrated self"?  How is this similar to, or different from, Plato's view of the self?  the view of the self in John?  in the Gita?  in Buddhist thought?  Why is he so troubled by the pear-stealing episode?  Why is he still brooding over it late in his life?  What does he learn from it?  What do you make of it?  How does his reflection on this episode color his understanding of human action?  What should you do?

How does Augustine interpret his boyhood prank in Bk. II and what significance does he attach to it?  For about ten years, he was associated with a religious group called the Manichees; who are they, what do they believe and of what importance is this to Augustine?  As a young adult, Augustine is perplexed by a number of philosophical issues: what are they and how does he attempt to resolve them?  Of what importance are love and sex to him during these early years?

After class, write a few paragraphs in your My Blog/Journal with reflections on this week's reading and discussion.

 Read before class:

• Augustine, Confessions, Books 2 and 3

   Augustine

   Lateran Basilica, 6th century

Augustine's Confessions

How does Augustine work his way through the question of evil?  How does this question go back to the pear tree episode?  Do you find his analysis of the question persuasive?  Why?  How?  Does he really answer the question he sets himself?  Do you see his alternatives still present in our world today?  How does one find the transcendent?  How does one imagine it?  What does it mean to suffer? 

Why does he go to Rome and then to Milan?  What ambitions does he have"  What is happening in the western Roman Empire at this point?  What influence does Ambrose have on him?  Book VII describes Augustine's "intellectual" conversion; pay attention to the importance of  "platonist" philosophy and how he sees this in relation to Christian revelation.  What are the main features of this aspect of his conversion?  How does Plotinus shape Augustine's answers?

Before you come to class, write a few paragraphs in your My Blog/Journal with your first reflections on today's reading.

 Read before class:

• Augustine, Confessions, Books 7-8

Image: Ambrose of Milan, 5th century mosaic, probably a portrait, Sant'Ambrogio, Milan

Alexander

With Alexander's unification of the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia into a single cosmopolitan entity, the thought forms of classical Greek thought became the common language of a wide variety of human societies.  The resulting synthesis of Greek, Egyptian and Middle Eastern thought became the basis both of Roman imperial civilization and of the Christian church.  We are still the heirs of Alexander.

Read before class:

• Heritage of World Civilizations, pp. 118-129
• Aristotle: Physics,  Book II, parts 1-3
• Aristotle, On the Heavens, Book I, parts 1 - 4; and Book II, parts 13-14
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 12, parts 7-9

After class, write a few paragraphs in your My Blog/Journal with your reflections on what you've learned from discussing Augustine's Confessions.

Read before class:

• Augustine, Confessions, Books 9-10

Aristotle

Read before class:

• Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

• Aristotle, Politics

Aristotle, marble portrait bust, Roman copy (2nd century BC) of a Greek original (c. 325 BC); in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome

Dorothy Day (1895-1980) was the founder of the Catholic Worker movement.  Raised in the Episcopal Church, she was a Marxist activist during the First World War and then became a Catholic after the birth of her daughter in 1927.  Together with Peter Maurin she began to publish The Catholic Worker in 1933, and opened the first Catholic Worker house in the fall of that year.  The Catholic Worker movement from that time forward became a leading voice for service to the poor, for pacifism, civil rights, for the rights of farm workers, and against anti-Semitism  and war, whether the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  Among her many admirers was Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

Some questions to think about as you read:

Dorothy Day

With Alexander's unification of the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia into a single cosmopolitan entity, the thought forms of classical Greek thought became the common language of a wide variety of human societies.  The resulting synthesis of Greek, Egyptian and Middle Eastern thought became the basis both of Roman imperial civilization and of the Christian church.  We are still the heirs of Alexander.

Read before class:

• Heritage of World Civilizations, pp. 172-185

• Lucretius

• Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus

Recommended reading:

• I Maccabees, chapters 1, 2

Image: Torso of a boddhisattva, Gandhara, Pakistan, 1st-2nd century C.E.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Note the Greek influence on the form of the body, showing the degree to which western and southern Asia were part of a world stretching to Spain and Britain.

Continued discussion of issues raised in The Long Loneliness.  Reflect more on the questions raised earlier about her journey.

Read before class:

• Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, pp. 113-138

Image: Ade Bethune, Dorothy Day, Dorothy Weston, Jacques Maritain, Peter Maurin at the Catholic Worker house, 1934

Livy on the Roman concept of female virtue, Polybius on the constitution of the Republic.

Read before class:

• Heritage of World Civilizations, pp. 182-202

• Livy

• Polybius on the Roman Constitution

Deadline for handing in your paper on an object from the Metropolitan Museum.

 The Curia Iulia, seat of the Roman Senate, in the Roman Forum

Continued discussion of issues raised in The Long Loneliness.  Refer again to the questions raised above concerning the issues her book raises.

Read before class:

• Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, pp. 169-235; 263-286

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar was one in a series of warlords whose private armies continually threatened the stability of the Roman Republic,