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Graduate students enroll in 212. In this course, we shall examine contemporary virtue ethics beginning with G.E.M. Anscombe's famous 1958 paper 'Modern Moral Theory' (although Anscombe herself did not advocate a virtue ethics). In particular, we shall read some of the leading contemporary exponents of virtue ethics (Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, Michal Slote, and Linda Zagzebski). We shall also read some of leading virtue ethics' leading critics, such as David Copp, Julia Driver, Robert Louden, and Jerome Schneewind. We shall consider questions including the following. Can Virtue Ethics give a plausible account of right action? Is Virtue Ethics action-guiding at all? What is the relation between virtue and happiness or flourishing? Is Virtue Ethics a form of ethical naturalism? Is Virtue Ethics compatible with modern biology? Does Virtue Ethics give us a way to avoid the 'ethical schizophrenia' of modern impartialist moral theories or does it produce its own form of ethical schizophrenia? Is Virtue Ethics self-effacing?

Ancient philosophy did not end with Aristotle: the centuries after Aristotle's death saw considerable philosophical output from often-competing philosophical schools in the Greco-Roman world. In this course, we will study the major Hellenistic schools of philosophy - the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the sceptics - carefully examining the (often fragmentary) evidence on each and discussing the interpretation of their doctrines from this evidence, as well as how these doctrines fit into a background of Platonic and Aristotelean philosophy and the Hellenistic intra-school debates. Topics to be covered are especially epistemology, ethics, and physics, but will also include metaphysics, psychology, cosmology, ontology, and logic.

The main text will be Porphyry's Isagoge. For more than a thousand years this book was every student's first text in philosophy. We will focus on five main topics: genera, species, differences, properties, accidents.

We shall read the major ethical works of the three main Hellenistic (post-Plato and Aristotle, conventionally 323-31 BCE): the Epicureans, the Skeptics, and the Stoics.

Aristotle's ethical theory is a primary source of later philosophical reflection on ethics, and on philosophy of mind and metaphysics in so far as they are related to ethics. For this reason it allows us to understand some of the motives and starting points of our own thought about ethics. Our main text will be the Nicomachean Ethics, supplemented by selections from other works of Aristotle. We will discuss some of the extensive philosophical literature on Aristotle's ethics, and on related topics in ethics.

Undergraduate students enroll in 115A. Graduate students enroll in 215A. Is it possible that the way in which the ancients resolved the serious problem of political representation in Athenian democracy gives us fundamental keys to understand and give a satisfactory answer to the problem of political representation in contemporary democracy, particularly in Latin America? Despite the great differences in time, economy, population and social organization, we believe the answer is yes. In this course we will consider the principles, concepts and practices that Athenian democracy brought into play to solve the problem of political representation, that is, the problem of the distribution of power and the relationship between citizens and the elite, as it appears in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides and some of the sophists. With the results achieved, we will move on to examine the main problems facing contemporary democracy, focusing on the crisis of representation that affects it globally, but with special force in Latin America. For this part we will consider the ideas of different modern and contemporary thinkers and scholars. This course will ask questions including: What is democracy? What are the most notable characteristics of ancient Greek democracy and the modern conception? Is it the best form of government? What is a representative democracies? What are the main characteristics of the representation crisis in Latin America? What are the main risks and weaknesses of current democracy? How can we evaluate the quality of a democracy?

Grads enroll in 216C. In this course, we'll examine questions about happiness or the good life and its relation to tragedy in several central ancient and modern authors. These include Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, the Stoics, Kant, and Nietzsche. The questions we'll discuss include: What's relation between virtue and happiness? Is virtue, for example, necessary or sufficient for happiness? What role do things other than virtue have on our well-being? Can bad luck prevent you from being happy? How do the views of the Greek tragedians differ from those of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics on these questions? How do the views of moderns such as Kant and Nietzsche differ from those of our ancient authors? Taught by David Charles.

(Formerly 121/221.) Descartes's philosophical writings on rules for the direction of the mind, method, innate ideas and ideas of the senses, mind, God, eternal truths, and the material world.