1) Introduction 2) Narrative, image, paradigm: structures of thought and methods of communication in oral culture (Homeric epic) 3) Truth: the archaic concept of truth (eteos, némertés, atrekés, aléthés), truth as a quality of speech, truth and deception 4) Truth: changes in the concept of truth in classical times, truth as a goal of inquiry 5) Alétheia and peithó: truthfulness and persuasiveness in a social and political context, plurality of truths, sophistical rationality 6) Thinking in the medium of change and stability: what can be thought coherently and what can be expressed, how to think and grasp change through speech (Heraclitus, Plato's dialogue Cratylus) 7) Thinking and speech: logic, dialectics, rhetoric 8) Typology of cognitive abilities, distinction between episteme and doxa 9) Causes and knowledge: science as knowledge of causes and principles, the concept of causality in the Hippocratic corpus, the search for causes in Plato, Aristotle's concept of causality 10) Processes of cognition: anamnestic, maieutic, and dialectical models of cognition in Plato 11) Aristotle's philosophical method: axiomatic-deductive and empirical approaches, starting points for inquiry, endoxa 12) Final reflection
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The course aims to familiarise students with the modes of thinking that emerged in the archaic and classical periods of Greek antiquity. Taking a broader interpretive approach, it first presents specific methods of organising knowledge in pre-philosophical oral culture, before tracing the formation of the concept of science and knowledge in ancient philosophical authors. The course focuses on the concept of truth and how it transformed in the Archaic and Classical periods. It also considers how this concept functioned not only in an epistemological context, but also in a social and political context. The relationship between thought and speech is analysed in detail from various perspectives. The course then turns to the concept of knowledge as knowledge of causes, presenting models of cognition and the characteristics of cognitive processes in Plato and Aristotle. The course methodology involves supplementing theoretical interpretation with work on primary and secondary texts.
Students will gain an overview of thought processes in the Archaic and Classical periods of Greek philosophy. They will become familiar with the formation of the concept of science and knowledge, ancient models of cognition and the interpretation of cognitive processes by philosophical authors. They will learn to work with specialised literature and present the knowledge they have acquired.
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