Stranger—There appears to be something like a battle of giants and gods going on among them, because of their dispute with each other about the nature of being.
   Theaetetus—How so?
   Stranger—Some of them drag down to earth everything from heaven and the invisible, literally clutching rocks and oaks with their hands. For they lay hold of all such things and insist that being belongs only to what can be handled and offers resistance to the touch, because they define being and body as the same. But should one of the others claim that something without a body has being, they altogether despise him, and won’t listen to another word.
   Theaetetus—These certainly are terrible men that you are talking about—for I, too, have met quite a number of them already.
   Stranger—It is for this reason that the people who fight against them are very wary in defending their position from some invisible place above, contending with all their force that true being consists in certain intelligible and bodiless forms. But the bodies of those, and also their so-called truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and call them, instead of being, a sort of moving process of coming-to-be. On this issue, Theaetetus, there is an endless battle always raging between the two.
                                       (Plato, Sophist 246A–C)

Aims

This unit aims

• to provide you with a solid grounding in ancient physics and metaphysics;
• to make you aware of the degree to which contemporary metaphysics is informed by its history.

Objectives

On successful completion of the unit, you should

• understand the central problems of ancient physics and metaphysics, and be able to expound and critically assess them, both in discussion and in writing;
• be able to explain any text discussed in class—that is, to reconstruct and assess the argument, to set it into context, and (where appropriate) to illustrate how other philosophers reacted to it.

Summary Programme

Weeks 1–2: Presocratics
Weeks 3–6: Plato
Weeks 7–8: Stoics (Tutorial Weeks)
Weeks 9–12: Aristotle

For the details, see Classes.

Personalia

Unit Organiser: Andreas Schmidhauser
Office: Arts 3.65
Office Hours: Tuesday 15–16, Friday 13–14, and by appointment
You can contact me by email at a.schmidhauser#at#uea.ac.uk, and by phone at 01 603 593 187 (office) or +41 78 708 3425 (mobile).

Students Year 2a: Debra Bagley, Laura Batchelor, David Clay, William Drake, Sophia Little, Frances McKinley, Peter Munday, Kimberley Nelson, Maria-Angeli Ware

Students Year 2b: Bethia Anderson, Richard Browne, Victoria Coleman, David Comerford, Emma Finch, Rachel Gowers, Emily Neilan, Ned Parkinson, Chris Rees, Max Sherburne

Students Year 3: Marko Cekerevac, Robert Garden, James Hawkes, William Heywood, Raj Mal, Carole Morgan, Sarah Pike, Chloe Sanderson