Foundations of Western Metaphysics: Unity and Change: Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Aristotle

What are the roots of the philosophical development of Western science and philosophy? This class will take up a reading of Aristotle's Metaphysics, the first work of western philosophy to lay out a critical list of foundational questions about the nature of reality and to provide argument backed answers for questions such as what is the nature of the physical world? How can we understand that world? What is truth and what are the necessary principles of good reasoning? What is ultimate reality? what are cause and effect and how are change and movement possible? What is time? What is power? How can the world have come to be, or why is it the way it is? We will read and discuss this work against the background of the questions that were very much alive in Aristotle's day, the writings Parmenides and Heraclitus, Presocratic thinkers associated with the respective ideas that the apparently changing world is based in an underlying unchanging unity (Parmenides) and that, on the contrary, there is nothing that does not change, but only constant flux (Heraclitus). Aristotle's work is thought provoking and rewards the effort. We will use the New Hackett Aristotle edition. Please read the Parmenides and Heraclitus fragments (Canvas pdfs) and Metaphysics Bk 1 (alpha and small alpha) for the first class.

Course Outline

Course Syllabus

Notes

Online registration closes September 24 at 5 pm CT.

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