Module CLAS2691: BEING HUMAN: CLASSICAL PERSPECTIVES

Department: Classics and Ancient History

CLAS2691: BEING HUMAN: CLASSICAL PERSPECTIVES

Prerequisites

• Successful completion of two or more modules offered by departments in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To introduce students who have acquired a good range of knowledge and depth of understanding of key debates in the humanities to a range of texts that construe and discuss the nature of humanity and to the theoretical and methodological issues raised thereby.
• To introduce students to cross-cultural comparison, by juxtaposing the material from ancient Greece and Rome with texts from other cultural spheres in the ancient world, or from later centuries and cultures.
• To pull together, thereby, many threads of earlier learning in a demanding theoretical framework.

Content

• This module examines ways in which ancient Greek and Roman authors have thought about the human being and the human condition.
• It also considers the continuing influence of classical conceptions in the western tradition.
• Some lectures will be devoted to a cross-cultural perspective, pointing out points of comparison and contrast between the Greco-Roman material and Near Eastern cultures and religions.
• The course is divided into four main sections of five weeks each: Creation myths; Political Philosophy; Theology and the human condition; Classicizing Perspectives.
• The section on Creation Myths considers how Hesiod, Plato (Symposion, Protagoras), and Ovid use myth to ponder the origins of humanity within a larger account of the origin of the cosmos, with particular attention to issues of sexuality and gender. Genesis and Near Eastern creation myths will serve as comparative foils.
• The section on Political Philosophy will consider influential definition of the human being and their socio-political qualities, including key passages from Plato’s Republic; Aristotle’s definition of the human being as ‘a political being’ and his invention of ‘natural’ slavery; and Cicero’s natural law philosophy, notion of ‘human dignity’, and concept of humanitas.
• Theology and the Human Condition will explore the interface between human existence and the supernatural, focusing on the jealous divinities of archaic Greece (Herodotus, Solon), ecstatic experiences (Dionysus), the problem of theodicy (from Homer to Plato), visions of the afterlife (the Eleusinian mysteries, Virgil, Aeneid 6). The book of Job and Dante’s Inferno will serve as comparative foils.
• Classicizing Perspectives will explore the continuing relevance of the ancient texts after classical antiquity came to an end and compare and contrast ancient thoughts about humanity with contemporary ideas. This section will include lectures on ‘The ideal body: from Polycleitus to the fourth plinth’ and ‘Humanism and the humanities’.

Learning Outcomes

• Students who successfully complete the module will be acquainted with central Greek and Roman texts on what it means to be human. They will be able to identify the cultural specificity of answers to the question ‘what does it mean to be human?’ and have a broad understanding of the ways in which ancient answers have influenced the thought and ideals of later centuries and cultures, including their own.

• Students will understand how to handle critically a wide range of sources, and know how to approach a variety of texts from a well-defined theoretical perspective.

• Students will have gained a better understanding of key categories in cultural studies as well as their histories; have learned to ask how different authors, cultures and societies give divergent responses to crucial questions to do with being human and to assess their continuing relevance; have acquired the ability and self-discipline to work autonomously, and the capacity for organisation required to meet deadlines and negotiate competing claims on finite resources.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lectures will introduce perspectives, and juxtapose them with carefully selected primary sources.
• Some texts and images will be the focus for small group work, in which students can gain practice in the theoretical approaches applied to the close reading of specific sources.
• Essays will test students’ competence in handling theoretical perspectives, and in applying them to the primary sources.
• An end-of-the-year exam will test critical skills and subject knowledge.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

One written text exercise and one formative essay, to be handed back and discussed in the two tutorials. Report on public lecture.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University