19844 - Living With Wisdom Through Philosophy

Course Overview

What does it mean to live wisely? What is wisdom, after all? How do we develop wisdom? These are questions that the ancient Greeks were concerned with. It fell to the new way of thinking to grapple with these questions. The new way of thinking was called philosophy, from two Greek words: philo and sophia, which together means the love of wisdom. This course will examine ancient Greek philosophy through its four phases. Beginning with Socrates and his way of life, we will go into Plato who was a student of Socrates. In the third week we will study Aristotle who was a student of Plato. Finally we will look at the period of Greek philosophy after Aristotle, called the Hellenistic philosophy. We will cover the three major Hellenistic philosophies of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism.