Ancient Philosophy
Coursera
University of Pennsylvania survey tracing Greek thought from the Presocratics and Parmenides through Plato's dialogues on virtue, knowledge, justice, and the Forms. Susan Sauve Meyer's lectures pair each thinker with primary-text readings so you can argue from the sources.
More resources on Ancient Philosophy
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave - Alex Gendler
An animated TED-Ed lesson written by Alex Gendler that walks through the cave allegory from Plato's Republic, explaining how its prisoners, shadows and ascent represent the difference between appearance and reality and the philosopher's duty to educate others.
Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics
What is philosophy? How does it differ from science, religion, and other modes of human discourse? This course traces the origins of philosophy in the Western tradition in the thinkers of Ancient Greece. We begin with the Presocratic natural philosophers who were active in Ionia in the 6th century BCE and are also credited with being the first scientists. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximines made bold proposals about the ultimate constituents of reality, while Heraclitus insisted that there is an underlying order to the changing world. Parmenides of Elea formulated a powerful objection to all these proposals, while later Greek theorists (such as Anaxagoras and the atomist Democritus) attempted to answer that objection. In fifth-century Athens, Socrates insisted on the importance of the fundamental ethical question—“How shall I live?”—and his pupil, Plato, and Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, developed elaborate philosophical systems to explain the nature of reality, knowledge, and human happiness. After the death of Aristotle, in the Hellenistic period, Epicureans and Stoics developed and transformed that earlier tradition. We will study the major doctrines of all these thinkers. Part I will cover Plato and his predecessors. Part II will cover Aristotle and his successors.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Presocratics
Peer-reviewed encyclopedia article on the Presocratics, tracing Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and the atomists. Readers come away understanding the arguments about change, being, and material origins that Plato and Aristotle later answered.
Perseus Digital Library
Tufts University's Perseus Digital Library, a long-running collection of Greek and Latin texts with translations, plus catalogued images of ancient art, coins, sculpture, and archaeological sites. Learners can study classical artworks alongside the primary sources describing them.
History of Philosophy Without Gaps
Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the LMU in Munich and at King’s College London, takes listeners through the history of philosophy, ”without any gaps.” The series looks at the ideas, lives and historical context of the major philosophers as well as the lesser-known figures of the tradition. www.historyofphilosophy.net. NOTE: iTunes shows only the most recent 300 episodes; subscribe on iTunes or go to a different platform for the whole series.
Meditations
Private notebooks a Roman emperor wrote to himself on duty, mortality, anger, and self-control. Reading them gives a first-hand view of Stoic practice as applied ethics rather than theory, and a sense of how Stoics reasoned through daily difficulty.