guide to pre-advising in honours philosophy - University of St Andrews

ID4002 Communication and Teaching in Arts and Humanities
Information regarding this module was circulated previously; entry is by application
and interview only – deadline for applications was 8 March 2013.
CL4444 Pleasure, Goodness and Happiness: Hellenistic Ethics
Co-ordinator: Alex Long (agl10)
Class hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 4 - 5 pm
This course will explore the ethical thought of the Hellenistic period, a key
phase in the development of Graeco-Roman culture. We shall examine some of the
most sophisticated and influential moral theories of antiquity, principally those of
Epicureans, Stoics and sceptics. The course will include the following topics: the
nature and value of pleasure; friendship and society; the fear of death; virtue and vice;
happiness; human development; moral psychology; life without beliefs. All primary
texts will be available in English translation.
Core text:
Cicero, On Moral Ends,, trans. R.Woolf, ed. J.Annas (Cambridge 2001).
Other texts to be taken from the first volume (translation and commentary) of
A.A.Long and D.N.Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge 1987)
Some Preparatory Reading
J.Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford 1995).
J.Barnes and M.Griffin (eds.) Philosophia Togata I: Essays on Philosophy andRoman
Society (Oxford 1989).
T.Brennan , The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate (Oxford 2005).
M.Burnyeat (ed.) The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley 1983).
R.J.Hankinson The Sceptics (London 1995).
B.Inwood (ed.)The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Cambridge 2003).
B.Inwood Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoic Ethics (Oxford 1988).
P.Mitsis, Epicureas’ Ethical Theory(Ithaca 1988)
M.Nussbaum The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
(Princeton 1994).
M.Schofield and G.Striker (eds.) The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics
(Cambridge 1986).
R.Sharples Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (New York 1996).
J.Warren (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism (Cambridge 2009).
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