STEPS16 - HISTORY OF ETHICS AND SOCIAL POLICIES

courses

ID:

STEPS16

Duration (hours):

36

CFU:

SSD:

STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA ANTICA

Located in:

CHIETI

Url:

Course Details:

POLICIES AND MANAGEMENT FOR WELFARE/CORSO GENERICO Year: 1

Year:

2025

Course Catalogue:

https://unich.coursecatalogue.cineca.it/af/2025?co...

Date/time interval

Secondo Semestre (01/03/2026 - 31/05/2026)

Course Objectives

To reach a general understanding of ancient Greek and Roman ethics, with particular focus on the ethics of the Archaic Greece, of Plato and of Aristotle.
To understand the kind of problematization of human nature which is done in the Greek tragedy and historiography.

Course Prerequisites

Acquaintance with the historiographical methods and with the procedures of abstraction and generalization (as provided by the usual cv of secondary school). Desire to face conceptual worlds that are relevantly different from our own.

Teaching Methods

Frontal lecture. The teacher will try to provide the texts of his lectures with at least one day of advance. Commentary on ancient texts. Comparison between ancient texts, and between ancient and modern or contemporary texts. Open debate.

Assessment Methods

Way in which the learning process will be tested: maieutical dialogue, followed by an exam of the texts.
If necessary: question list

Texts

The teacher will try to provide in advance, through mailing list, the text of each lecture.
Beside these texts, the bibliography consists in:

books to be partially examined or overviewed, which must be at hand during the lessons, in order to understand the professor’s lectures (the exam will not be about these texts); these are:

an introduction to the history of ancient philosophy;
a complete translation of your choice (in whichever language) of the complete works by Herodotus and Thucydides;
a complete translation of your choice (in whichever language) of all the Greek tragedies;

Bibliography for the exam:

M. Vegetti, L’etica degli antichi, Laterza, 1998, or a foreign text about this topic you may choose on the teacher’s approval

A translation of a single Greek tragedy you may choose on the teacher approval.

The texts (professor’s lectures) that the professor may send you.

Through an examination of the plots of the Homeric poems, of some famous Attic tragedies, and of the works of the historians, we will examine the ways in which archaic and classical Greek thought tried to articulate the topic of the relation between individual self-determination and destiny.