[MUSIC] Hello, welcome to Plato and

his predecessors, which is the first part of a two part course in

the history of ancient philosophy. My name is Susan Sauvey Meyer. I'm a professo
r of philosophy at
the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach this course
the old-fashioned way, in a classroom. Let me tell you a little bit about
what our course will be like. We're going to trace
the origins of philosophy in the Western European tradition. Starting with a gro
up of thinkers in
ancient Greece, more than 2,500 years ago. Now many people today would classify
these thinkers as scientists rather than philosophers. So I'd better start by sa
ying something
about what counts as philosophy for the purposes of this course. Now, philosophy
is a term that gets
used in lots of different ways. Sometimes, when people talk about
their philosophy they have in mind their general outlook on life,
a creed they live by, or a set of precepts that they appeal to for
consolation or direction in times of need. In this sense of the term, philosophy
has a lot in common with religion, which is why you often find the philosophy
section of the bookstore right next to, or maybe even combined with
the books on religion. There's also nothing distinctively
western about it, but there is a different, more restricted
way of using the term philosophy that does have its roots in the thinkers
of ancient Greece, and that is in fact the source of
our English term philosophy. That term comes from the ancient
Greek term philosophia, which means literally love,
philo, of wisdom, sophia. During the period we will be studying, it came to be e
mployed to demarcate
a distinctively rational kind of inquiry. On this way of conceiving a philosophy
,
it is not so much a body of doctrines. But a method of inquiry,
investigation, and justification, argument, and
reasoning are central to its methodology. We're going to be talking a lot
about arguments in this course. Now a term that is going to come up
frequently in our discussions, and is characteristic of philosophy
is the Greek word logos, which can mean word,
or speech, or argument, or account, or more generally, reason. It is the root fo
r the names of
many scientific disciplines today. Psychology, biology, cosmology,
geology, anthropology, and so on. In fact, all of these disciplines
were originally part of philosophy. In fact, what we call physics,
chemistry, and biology today were classified as natural
philosophy until about a century ago. Think of the name for the highest degree
you can get in any academic discipline. The Ph.D, which is short for
Doctor of Philosophy. Anyway, the moral of the story is that
the origins of philosophy in the western tradition are also the origins of scien
ce,
and of just about every other
form of rational inquiry. Some of these disciplines have gone off
on their own in subsequent centuries and are no longer under
the umbrella term philosophy. But other questions still remain
within the domain of philosophy. For example, questions about ethics,
knowledge, and the nature of reality. Now some people today think
that these sorts of questions, especially questions about ethics, are not
really amenable to rational inquiry. But that's in fact to affirm
a philosophical thesis. We'll be sampling plenty of
disciplined attempts to make rational headway on these topics by
philosophers in the Greek tradition. The two central figures in our study
will be Plato in part one of the course, and Aristotle in part two. You might ca
ll them the two giants of

Greek philosophy in the classical period, which is why they occupy the central
position in the famous painting by Raphael, School of Athens,
a fresco created over 500 years ago to celebrate the intellectual
legacy of the ancients. That's Plato on the left pointing to
the sky with Aristotle on the right. But note how many other figures
there are in the painting. These depict many of Plato's predecessors, Anaximande
r, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides as well as Plato's teacher,
Socrates. Among the other figures in the painting,
we can find some of Aristotle's successors, such as the cynic
philosopher Diogenes, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, Epicurus, who founded
the Epicurean school of philosophy. And even Plotinus, who was part of a revival
of Platonism
about 600 years after the birth of Plato. In part one of the course, we will stu
dy
Plato and his pre-Socratic predecessors. And in part two, we will study Aristotl
e,
the Epicureans, and the Stoics. You might ask, why study these
long dead philosophers today? It's not because we believe or
would agree with everything they say. Far from it. We will find many points of
disagreement with the ancients, and much that seems alien and strange. This is o
ften because they are asking
questions that we no longer ask, or they're offering answers that
we no longer find acceptable. But coming to terms with the reasoning
behind a position you disagree with, is one of the benefits
of studying philosophy. It puts you in a position to
articulate why you disagree. And we will also find much in the ancients
that will sound surprisingly familiar. For in many cases, the questions they
asked, and the answers they gave, have shaped intellectual traditions
that are still very much alive today. So much for the course content. Now, a lit
tle about the online format. For each unit of the course, there will be
a series of short recorded lectures by me, most of them under ten minutes long,
which you can view at your own pace. There will also be assigned readings,
which I highly recommend that you do. As you'll get a lot more out of
the course and out of the lectures, if you read the works of
the philosophers that I'm talking about. It also helps a lot when studying
philosophy to be able to talk about the ideas and texts. So there will be discus
sion boards
in which you can participate over the course of each unit. For those who wish to
get
a certificate of completion for the course, there will be multiple
choice quizzes at the end of each unit as well as a brief writing assignment. Th
is will be peer reviewed. If you stick around to
the end of part two, there will also be a final project,
also peer reviewed. All the lectures will have brief in-video
quizzes, which you can skip if you want. You can find details of the course
requirements, as well as the recommended readings and other details about
the course units, on the course website. After you've reviewed that material,
we'll be ready to begin.