Philosophy and Literature: Plato’s Apology and Aristotle’s Poetics

1. The Difference Between Philosophy and Literature

1. Categories of Knowledge
2. Literary and Philosophical Discourse
3. Form and Content

2. The Origins of Greek Philosophy

1. Three Presocratics: Xenophanes (c. 560-478 BCE), Empedocles (c. 490-430 BCE), and Parmenides (c. 515 BCE)
2. Greek Thought and Mathematics: The Cult of Pythagoras (c. 580-500 BCE)
3. The Sophists

3. Socrates (c. 470-399 BCE) and the City

1. Knowing and Writing
2. The Apology
3. Aristophanes’ Clouds
4. Individual Thought and Collective Good

4. Plato’s Dialogues and the Founding of the Academy

1. Knowing and Writing: Phaedrus
2. Plato’s Academy
3. The Doctrine of the Forms
4. The City and the Universe: Republic and Timaeus

V. Aristotle’s Poetics: The Philosophy of Literature

1. Lecture Notes
2. Systematic Philosophy
3. The Structure of Drama