SELCS

An Introduction to European Thought for Students of Medieval and Renaissance Literature


Course code: ELCS6057
Tutor: Professor J Took
Level: Intermediate
Mode of Assessment: 3 hour desk examination
Term: taught in term 2

Course Description:
This course is designed  to provide students in the early part of their university career with a perspective on European thought in its historical development both as an object of study in its own right and as an aid to the interpretation of the great texts of European literature from the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Specially tailored to the needs of beginners in this subject, it will seek to identify and to explore some of the main emphases in classical and medieval philosophy, and, where appropriate, in medieval theology, with a view to enabling a more confident handling of the text itself in its precise historical and ideological profile. The course will be in three parts: (1) the classical phase (with ideas and representative texts from Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics); (2) Judeo-Christianity and the reconfiguration of European consciousness (with representative texts from Jewish and Christian scripture); and (3) new syntheses in the Common Era (aspects  of Neoplatonism and of Neoperipateticism from Plotinus and Augustine through to the Renaissance). An account of some of the leading ideas in each of these areas will be accompanied by a reading and discussion of representative texts, all in English translation.

Primary Texts:
Texts we shall be touching on during this course include the Phaedo and the Symposium of Plato, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Psychology of Aristotle, the On Duties (De Officiis) and the On Friendship of Cicero, the letters and moral treatises of Seneca, the Confessions of Augustine, the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, the Summa contra gentiles of Aquinas, and some of the writings of the Renaissance Platonists. All of these have been translated, some of them many times, into English and, for those students anxious to own their own copies, most of them (especially among the classical authors) are readily available in modern paperback versions (Penguin, Oxford World Classics, etc.) and, even more cheaply, in second-hand bookshops.

Initial Secondary Bibliography:

  • F.  Copleston, A History of Philosophy. Greece and Rome (London: Continuum, 2003; originally 1946)
  • Idem, A History of Philosophy. Medieval Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2003; originally 1950)
  • Idem, A History of Philosophy. Late Medieval and Renaissance (London: Continuum, 2003; originally 1953)
  • D. Sedley (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
  • A. Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)