IDEAS IN CONFLICT I: ANCIENT AND CLASSICAL

An interdisciplinary seminar for Honors and non-Honors students.  Prerequisite: Sophomore standing with 2.75 GPA.  Through reading, discussion, and oral reports students examine world transforming debates found in texts of rhetoric, literature, and moral and political philosophy in the Greek, Roman, and Biblical eras.  Concepts and language having to do with justice understood as a human virtue and a condition for social harmony are a primary emphasis of this course.  HONR 311 may be substituted for a 100-300 communication course with approval of the Head of the Department in which a student is majoring; or it may be used to satisfy a "Humanities," "Social Studies," or "Social Science" elective in any curriculum.

Honors 311 Course Curriculum

Unit I — In the Beginning…

The unit will explore various creation and foundation myths of the ancient Near East from Mesopotamia to the Hebrews.

Books:

Dally, Stephanie, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, Oxford University Press, USA (1998), ISBN 0192835890

Alter, Robert, Genesis: Translation and Commentary, W. W. Norton & Company (1997), ISBN 039331670X

Online texts:

The Theogony of Hesiod

Unit II — Ancient Greece: The Individual, the Oikos, and the Polis

The unit will explore the evolution of social institutions in the Greek World from the Dark Age to the Age of Pericles. Athenian tragedy and other sources of Greek literature indicate the existence of tensions between the values of the individual, the household (oikos) and the state (polis) that extend throughout the period of Greek history. The class will use tragedies and other texts to explore and define those tensions.

Books:

Finley, M.I., The World of Odysseus, NYRB Classics (2002), ISBN 978-1590170175

Aeschylus, The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides, Trans. W.B. Stanford,Penguin Classics (1984), ISBN 0140443339

Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, Trans. Robert Fagles, Penguin Classics (2000), ISBN 0140444254

Online texts:

Excerpts from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Unit III — The Hellenistic World: The Nature of the “Good Life”

The unit will focus on the dominant ethical philosophical systems of the Hellenistic and Roman periods — Stoicism and Epicureanism. Both of these schools offered explanations of the world and of the means by which humans could achieve “the Good Life” within the world.

Books:

Cicero, On the Good Life, Trans. Michael Grant, Penguin Classics (1971), ISBN 0140442448

Lucretius, The Nature of Things, Trans. A. E. Stallings, Penguin Classics (2007), ISBN 0140447962

Unit IV — Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews and Early Christianity in Conflict

The unit will explore the earliest period of Christianity during the Roman Empire. First we will look at the conflict of ideas and values between the christian Fathers over the nature of Christianity itself; the question of whether Christianity was an extension of Judaism or a completely new religion open to Gentiles and independent from the Mosaic Covenant and the Laws. Next we will observe Christians through the eyes of the predominant pagan and philosophical status quo of Romans in the first and second centuries A.D.

The unit will also navigate the troubled waters of the Church in the 4th through 6th centuries. We will look at various strains of Christian theology that existed during the period as the Church sought to define orthodoxy and define and eradicate heterodox beliefs. We will look at the ideas promulgated by Gnostics, Arians, Donatists and other heretical sects and the basic ideas promoted by various Church Councils in order to codify orthodox Christian precepts.

Books:

Wilken, Robert Louis, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, Yale University Press; 2 edition (2003), ISBN 978-0300098396

Acts, and the Epistles of St. Paul, The New Testament, King James Version

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions of St. Augustine, Trans. Rex Warner, Signet Classics (2001), ISBN 978-0451527806