As I indicated in class, the final will have three essay questions: two focusing on the material since the mid-term and one covering all of the material in the course. One of the two questions on the material since the mid-term will have quotes for you to identify by author, title, and the approximate time it was written (here's where your timelines will help! Well, perhaps). Don't waste any time memorizing dates, but review when the primary materials (the assigned internet materials) were written.
Remember what this course is about: the development of Christendom, by which I mean Western culture as it existed in the thirteenth century before the Renaissance and the Reformation occurred. We studied the nature of the Renaissance and the Reformation, too. You should have an idea of what is distinctive about Western culture: what sort of thing was Christendom? Dawson will help you here.
One theme that was emphasized repeatedly throughout the semester was that historical development often occurs through conflicts between peoples, cultures, and religions and, as Dawson said so many times, these conflicts mutually affect the conflicting forces: for example, barbarians may be militarily victorious but the religion or the culture of the conquered party may prove to be more enduring than the religion or culture of the victors. Christians may have faced Greek critics, but both Christians and Greeks were influenced by each other as a result of the conflict. Look for thse conflicts throughout the Dawson text, but also look for them in the Classical and Judeo-Christian material with which we began the course. It is a major theme of the course.
As I indicated, the questions are framed not to ask you about things you might have forgotten, but to require you to provide lots of accurate details and specifics that you have remembered from the course.
By request, here is the official copy of the timeline that is due in class on Friday. I even gave you a freebie to show you how to fill it out.
We finally look at the Reformation through some contemporary documents and secondary readings. For Tuesday, please read Dawson, chapter 11 ("The Religious Crisis"), pp. 199-208, and Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. For Friday, please read John Calvin's "Letter to the King", and Thomas Muntzer's "Sermon to the Princes".
If you don't know much about the Reformation at all, this very brief summary, called Reformation 101, which I took from About.com, provides a basic outline. Take a look at it.
By the way, I will be posting my list of movies that every educated person must see on the web site in time for your summer viewing enjoyment.
As I explained in class, this week is devoted to the Renaissance; next week we look at the Reformation. There are two sets of documents to be assigned this week—some primary, some secondary. From Dawson (a secondary sourve), please read chapter 8, pages 152 to 160, on chivalry; chapter 9, pages 161 to 169, on the rise of the medieval city and commune; and chapter 10, pages 181 to 185, on the rise of the medieval universities, and pages 191 to 194 on the influence of Aristotle on medieval culture. This amounts to about 27 pages. Read at least half of it for Tuesday.
The primary materials are pages 119-124 and 127-128 of Leonardo Bruni's "Letter Addressed to [an] Illustrious Lady"; paragraphs 1-8, 32-33 of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's "Oration on the Dignity of Man"; chapter 15 of Machiavelli's The Prince; and the first "point of inquiry"—(1) Whether an effect of law is to make men good?—in St. Thomas Aquinas's Question 92: Of the Effects of Law" from the Summa Theologica, an example of the medieval scholastic disputation method described in Dawson's chapter 10. Four primary sources, but about 10 pages of reading. Read Bruni and Pico della Mirandola for Tuesday, Machiavelli and St. Thomas for Friday. We will also see the last film of the semester on Friday: Part One of the "Early Renaissance" segment of Michael Woods's Art of the Western World.
I also found a link to the Coronation Oath of Edward II, King of England, crowned in 1308 (the link on the main web page went dead). We will look briefly at the start of class at the oath.
In the remaining classes of the semester, we will look at the roots of two of the important phases of the development of Western culture: the Renaissance and the Reformation. We will take them in that order: next week focusing on the Renaissance and the following week focusing on the Reformation. This week we must set the stage for both of these developments.
I would like to make a bit more use of films in this part of the course, and since the Annanberg series that I have used in class are available to each of you, I will assign some of the half-hour (actually twenty-five minute) segments to you to watch and take notes on together with short reading assignments.
Therefore, for Friday, please (1) read Dawson, chapter 5 (pages 84-95, 99-100), (2) watch the 18th segment, "The Age of Charlemagne," of the Eugen Weber series, The Western Tradition, and (3) read the one-page English translation of King Alfred's translation of Gregory's manuscript on Pastoral Care. We are looking at a series of medieval "renaissances" that preceded the "Renaissance" that characterized the high Middle Ages of the Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries. We are also looking at the continuing pattern of assimilation, or mutual influence, of Christian and barbarian culture that we have followed for the past few weeks. The Weber film and the reading are completely duplicative—Weber does not mention King Alfred or King Canute, two of the leading figures in the Norther renaissance of the ninth and tenth centuries; he provides more of a historical narrative than a study of Western culture in this segment. But the different parts of the assignment reinforce each other. Quiz time!
Please read Dawson, chapter 4, "The Barbarians and the Christian Kingdom." Chapter 4 of the Dawson text is one of his shortest, so rather than break it up and assign it with separate primary readings, I decided to assign the chapter for Tuesday.
A few study questions to get you through Chapter 4:
As announced below, the assignment is to complete Dawson, ch. 3.
For Tuesday, please read pages 44-54 of Dawson, chapter 3, and the following readings on monasticism by St. Benedict and St. Columba. We will finish Dawson chapter 3 when we return on Friday the 13th after Easter Break.
Try to determine what differences exist in the monastic rules of Benedict and Columba and how they reflect Dawson's description of the differences in the monasticism of the Irish and the Latin churches. According to Dawson, how many different approaches to monasticism were there? Three? Four? Five?
Light assignment for Friday: please read these excerpts from early Christian writers. Always bring your Dawson text; we will also go over some of the material in chapter 2 more closely. The quiz will cover the excerpts, of course, but will also cover some of the material we went over in class on Tuesday to see if it stuck. (Dawson, chapter 3, is the assignment for Tuesday. You could start on it now and take some of the pressure off.)
In reading the excerpts from the early Christian writers,consider:
For Tuesday, please read the rest of Dawson chapter 2, Matthew chapter 5, John chapter 1, Acts chapters 3 & 4 and the Christian creeds. Bring your books (no book=no attendance) so that we may go over very carefully the contents of chapters 1 and 2.
For Friday, we begin using the Dawson text, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. Read the first twenty-five pages (pp. 11-35) of the text—all of chapter one and about half of chapter two. (Chapter one begins on page 11.) We'll finish chapter two on Tuesday. We will have a quiz on the reading. Try to identify Dawson's main points; don't worry too much about specific dates or names.
For Tuesday, please read these excerpts from the Old Testament Prophets, selected to exemplify some of the points made by William Irwin and other points made in class. On Friday, we will begin with the Dawson text, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. Be sure to have a copy by Friday.
Extra copies of the Irwin essay for Friday are available in the rack on my office door.
We begin now to study the second major tributary of Western civilization: the Judeo-Christian tradition. WE will begin with readings from the Old Testament. It is a fairly lengthy assignment, but you are probably familiar with many of the passages. On Tuesday, I will hand out copies of the readings assignment for Friday by William Irwin. The following Tuesday, we will discuss some readings from the Old Testament prophets. Then we begin to use the Dawson text, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, as our primary text for the rest of the semester.
As you read the excerpts from the historians consider the following questions:
1. What does each historian say his purpose is in writing his book?
2. What is the subject matter of his work? What is the scope—geographic, chronological, or some other range—of his work?
3. What sources does he use to compile his work? What is his apparent attitude toward his sources? How critical is he of the value of his sources?
4. What is his method of writing? Is his work a collection of stories? a long narrative? a philosophic discourse?
Use these questions to determine whether the four writers should be lumped together or whether some or all of them are distinctively different.
As you prepare for the exam, keep in mind that the material that we have read falls into two basic categories: (1) Greek material from Homer to Aristotle that was assigned to show you the progress of Greek thought from mythic to philosophic, and (2) material from the Roman era to show you some of the principal philosophies competing for attention among educated Romans. As you review the material for the text, keep those two purposes in mind.
Regarding the Greek material, try to re-read each assigned reading now that you have an idea of how Greek thought developed. Look at the (1) different accounts of the gods' relationship to the world and to man (compare Homer's account to Aristotle's, for example), (2) different explanations of justice (compare Aeschylus's to Plato's, for example), (3) different levels of man's self-awareness (compare Homer's descriptions of human feelings and human thinking to the lyric poets', for example), and (4) different understandings of the nature of the universe (compare Homer's and Aeschylus's to the pre-Socratic philosophers'). Remember the film we viewed and its theme of the development of the Greeks' appreciation of the beauty and powers of the individual human being, an appreciation that existed nowhere else in the world at that time. The Greeks' main achievements are sometimes described as the individual's freedom and power of thought ("philosophy"). You should be able to provide evidence from you reading to support these ideas.
For identification purposes, you should be able to identify by author and title the longer works that we read—Homer's, Aeschylus's, Plato's, and Aristotle's. Simply identify lyric poetry as authored by "lyric poet" and as title "poem." Identify the philosophic fragments as authored by "pre-Socratic philosopher" and as titled "fragment." Don't worry about the names of individual lyric poets and philosophers. You should also take a look at the first thirty or forty lines of Hesiod's Theogony, which I discussed with you briefly in class and which you may find useful in your essays. It will not be one of the passages to identify.
Regarding the Roman material (some of which was originally in Latin and some in Greek), you should understand the differences between Stoicism (as reflected in the writings of Cicero and Seneca), Epicureanism (as reflected in Epicurus's "Principal Doctrines"), and Gnosticism (as reflected in the Bema hymn and the Apocalypse of James). These three philosophies-religions had (1) different views of the nature of the world, (2) different views of the divine (God and the gods), and (3) different views of ethics and morality, the ultimate standards of right and wrong): know them. You should be able to identify by author and title Cicero's "Dream of Scipio," Epicurus's "Principal Doctrines, and the Apocalypse of James (author: "Anonymous") and the Bema Hymn (author: "Anonymous"). Seneca's writings are hard to distinguish from Cicero's On Duties, so I will not make either one of these works the subject of identification, but these same works are your principal source of information about Stoic principles, so don't ignore them.
We will discuss the historians in class on Tuesday and I will tell you what to expect on them. I might also try to cram in the second (Roman art) half of the film we viewed.
It looks like a lot of material, but plowing through it the first time was much harder and slower than rereading it will be. I strongly suggest that you spend a half-hour or so every day this week re-reading the material with the themes just described in mind. If you have already read the Odyssey umpteen times, skip it and re-read stuff that was new to you this semester.
I have altered the original assignment of Gnostic readings. On Friday we will look at two Gnostic documents: The First Apocalypse of James and the Manichaean (Gnostic) poem Bema Psalm 224. How do they picture the creation of the cosmos? How do they explain man's role in the world? What should be our goal? What ethical principles should we follow. You've got to think outside the box to figure this one out.
On Tuesday we will introduce the second great philosophy of the Hellenistic world and Rome: Epicureanism (named for Epicurus, a Greek philosopher of the 4th century (341-270 B.C.). He was a teenager when Aristotle died (322 B.C.).) Please read three short works: the so-called Epicurus's Principal Doctrines, the first 61 lines of Book II of Lucretius's poem, On the Nature of the Universe, and paragraphs (¶¶) 13 to 19 of Seneca's Letter to Gallio, "On the Happy Life," which we discussed a bit on Friday. (Actually, ¶8 to ¶19 of the letter make up one long criticism of Epicureanism.) Pay particular attention to what Epicurus says about pleasure and pain in many of the sections.
Is Seneca's criticism fair? Would the Epicurean way of life, as described by Epicurus, be dramatically different from the Stoic way of life? Are their moralities—standards and rules of right and wrong conduct—much different? Where do they differ? (You know, this would make a good short essay quiz question!)
The political philosopher Leo Strauss distinguished between two types of hedonism (hedonism is the doctrine that the ultimate standards of right and wrong are pleasure and pain—one should (it is right to) pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Strauss described "vulgar hedonism" (look up "vulgar" in a good dictionary) as the doctrine that one should try to maximize the amount and intensity of pleasure in life. To do so is to live life to the fullest: carpe diem! Philsophic hedonism he described as the doctrine that the best life is the life that minimizes pain, and that this can be done best by pursuing the pleasures of the mind, not of the body. What kind of a hedonist does Epicurus appear to be? Why?
Because we did not get to Cicero on Tuesday, we will discuss the Cicero assignment as well as the Seneca assignment on Friday. The details of those reading assignments are listed below. We will also have the quiz that I describe below. For your convenience, I repeat them here:
Cicero's "The Dream of Scipio" and Parts I to IV (Paragraphs {1} to {14} of his De Officiis (On Duties). What is his view of God or the gods. What determines his standards of ethics—of the ultimate standards of right and wrong? Does he agree with Plato and Aristotle on the best way of life? on man's highest calling?
Seneca, Letter XLI to Lucilius, "The God within Us," and paragraphs 1 to 12 of the letter to Gallio, called "On the Happy Life."
The quiz will ask you to identify five quoted passages from the readings that have been assigned this past semester by author, title, and kind of literature (genre). The quiz, which will be given on Friday, will take readings from the whole semester, not just for this week. Next week's quiz will be a short essay question. The mid-term will be composed of two essay questions that also require identification of passages from the readings.
Both Cicero and Seneca reflected Stoic thought in their religious, political, and moral views. What common ideas about religion, politics, and morals can you find in the assigned writings? Seneca is sometimes thought of as a "closet Christian" (he was not): what familiar religious ideas does he express? Do the writings of these Romans reflect the Greek ideas of the excellence and the freedom of the individual that we viewed in Plato, Aristotle, and Classical Greek art?
A lot of news and information today, so read to the end of this entry to make sure you have it all covered. It will be easier for you if you know what to expect in the course over the coming weeks. Be sure to scroll down to the end of this assignment entry to find out about next week's quiz, which will be given on Friday, February 17.
We will finish the discussion of Plato and, mostly, Aristotle on Tuesday before we turn to the new assignment, so bring those materials with you. We will also view a video on Classical Greek art, The Classical Ideal. Apart from that, the classes from Tuesday to the mid-term exam on Friday, March 2d, will focus mostly on material from the Roman era.
Some of you will be pleased to know that Rome is not noted for its metaphysical philosophers. Rather, the tremendous contribution that Rome made to Western civilization is reflected more in civic (political) and ethical standards and virtues. Rome and the empire also served as the arena in which different religions and philosophies competed for the allegiance of thoughtful people when the traditional polytheism of Greece and Rome began to decline. We have already seen some of the philosophic and poetic attacks on the Olympian religion of Greece; there was a similar breakdown of the traditional Roman order several centuries later. The breakdown opened the door to philosophies—we may call them "philosophies of life" or religious philosophies—such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, Gnosticism, mystery cults, and, of course, Christianity to provide people with the ultimate certainties about life and the world that all men seem to need.
We will begin this part of the course with writings from one of the great Romans—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), commonly known as Cicero or Tully. He was a philosopher and statesman actively involved in the political life of Rome before it became an empire headed by an Emperor, and he lost his life because of his political activities. We will then study Stoicism, the religious philosophy that dominated the politically active Romans from Cicero's time to the third century A.D. Then we will read Epicurean, Gnostic, and mystery cult materials and finally excerpts from the first great historians—the Greeks Herodotus and Thucydides, and the historians of Rome, Polybius and Livy. The order of assignments, subject to change, follows.
For St. Valentine's Day, please read Cicero's "The Dream of Scipio" and Parts I to IV (Paragraphs {1} to {14} of his De Officiis (On Duties). Since we will also discuss the Aristotle readings that were assigned for Friday, the following questions, which will guide our class discussion of Aristotle on Tuesday, might be useful to you: the four causes of Aristotle are usually referred to as the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. As you read the material in the Physics, match up his discussions and definitions to these titles: what does he mean by the material cause? the formal cause? and so on. According to Aristotle, do these causes apply to natural as well as to man-made things ("artifacts")? Does every thing that exists have a purpose? Does nothing have a purpose? Do only artifacts have a purpose? Regarding the excerpt from Aristotle's Politics, what is his view of God—is he an atheist, a monotheist, a polytheist? When you read the excerpts from Cicero, consider what his view of God or the gods is. What determines his standards of ethics—of the ultimate standards of right and wrong? Does he agree with Plato on the what is the best way of life? what is man's highest calling?
For Friday, February 17, please read the Stoic Seneca, Letter XLI to Lucilius: "The God within Us" and paragraphs 1 to 12 of the essay, "On the Happy Life." (If you are interested in the similarity of Stoic thought to Christian thought, you may be interested in Dr. David Naugle's article)
For Tuesday, February 21, we will look at Epicureanism, one of the significant religious philosophies that attracted many followers during the last centuries of the Western Roman Empire. I will tentatively assign Epicurus"s Principal Doctrines, but I may substitute an excerpt from the Roman poet Lucretius for this earler Greek material.
For Friday, February 24, we will look at some Gnostic material and an account of the mystery cults that were popular in the later days of Rome. Tentatively, we will look at a couple of short readings: the Gnostic tract A Valentinian Exposition (watch out for this one!) and one of the Manichaean (Gnostic) poems: Bema Psalm 224 or Fifth Psalm to Jesus. To cap off this section on the Romans, read Pliny's correspondence with Emperor Trajan on the Christians. We will also review the second half of the Michael Wood program on the art of the Classical Era.
Throughout this part of the course, we will compare the different principles of the Epicureans with the main ideas that we identified in the Stoic writings of Cicero and Seneca and compare the Valentinian tract to the ideas of the cosmos that we find in Epicurus, Cicero, and Seneca.
For Tuesday, February 28, we will read these excerpts from some of the great early historians: early Greek and Roman historians
As you read the excerpts from the historians consider the following questions:
1. What does each historian say his purpose is in writing his book?
2. What is the subject matter of his work? What is the scope—geographic, chronological, or some other range—of his work?
3. What sources does he use to compile his work? What is his apparent attitude toward his sources? How critical is he of the value of his sources?
4. What is his method of writing? Is his work a collection of stories? a long narrative? a philosophic discourse?
Use these questions to determine whether the four writers should be lumped together or whether some or all of them are distinctively different.
Finally, to begin to prepare you for the mid-term exam (Friday, March 2d), the quiz will ask you to identify five quoted passages from the readings that have been assigned this past semester by author, title, and kind of literature (genre). The quiz, which will be given on Friday, will take readings from the whole semester, not just for this week. Next week's quiz will be a short essay question. The mid-term will be composed of two essay questions that also require identification of passages from the readings.
Please read two short excerpts from Aristotle: his famous account of the four causes in the Physics, Book Two, parts 3, 7, & 8, which discusses the "four causes"—what they are and whether they apply to nature as well as to man-made products and activities;and a short excerpt on God in Aristotle's Politics (trans. H. Rackham), sections [1323a14], [1323b1], [1324a1]. Use the little blue arrows in the upper left (right above each number just listed) to move from section to section.
Please read (1) this excerpt from Plato's Republic, Book V, 471c to 480a on the philosopher king and (2) this material from the Books VI-VII, 506b to 518a on the divided line and the Parable of the Cave.
As you read the passage from Book Five on the philosopher king, ask what Plato/Socrates seems to mean when he talks about "philosophers." Why are they fit to rule society? What do they know—what can philosophers know—that is necessary for the proper government of society? How do Plato's ideas compare to the ideas of the Pre-Socratic philosophers that we discussed last week? What does Plato's opinion of most people seem to be?
As you read the accounts of the divided line and the Myth or Parable of the Cave, consider the following: How does Socrates describe the "Good"? Does he give a clear definition of the Good? Describe in order the sections or divisions of the dividedline: what is the lowest type of knowledge? What is the highest? What the intermediates? In the Myth of the Cave, with what part of nature does Socrates identify the Good? What figure ties the earlier reading on the philosopher king to the Myth of the Cave? How are they connected?
For Friday, please read The Eumenides by Aeschylus (trans. Morshead), one of the three great tragic poets of classical Greece. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) wrote more than seventy plays for the Dionysia Festival at Athens; seven remain, and among them the three plays of the Oresteia trilogy—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, Eumenides. Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), his younger contemporary, is known best, perhaps, for the three plays that focus on the tragic life of King Oedipus—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Only seven of his more than one hundred twenty plays have survived. The youngest of the three great tragedians, though a contemporary of Sophocles, is Euripides (480-406 B.C.). Eighteen of his more than ninety plays have survived, including Medea, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae or Bacchants.
Feel free to use another translation than Morshead's. Richmond Lattimore's translations are my favorites. Consider the following:
For Tuesday, please read these excerpts from the Pre-Socratic philosophers.
As you read the excerpts from the pre-Socratic philosophers, consider the following questions:
Next Tuesday (February 7th) we will discuss a couple of readings by Plato; we will study Aristotle on Friday and will review several of the early historians on St. Valentine's Day (historians need love, too, or so I'm told).
Aristotle: the theory of the "Four Causes" in the Physics, Book II, parts 3, 7, 8, and the concept of happiness or eudaimonia in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chapters 1, 4, & 7.
Excerpts from some of the early Greek historians.
As you read the excerpts from the historians consider the following questions:
1. What does each historian say his purpose is in writing his book?
2. What is the subject matter of his work? What is the scope—geographic, chronological, or some other range—of his work?
3. What sources does he use to compile his work? What is his apparent attitude toward his sources? How critical is he of the value of his sources?
4. What is his method of writing? Is his work a collection of stories? a long narrative? a philosophic discourse?
Use these questions to determine whether the four writers should be lumped together or whether some or all of them are distinctively different.
For Friday, please read the Greek lyric poems. This poetry marks a step from the Homeric epic to the Pre-Socratic philosophers, excerpts from whom we will read for Tuesday. There will be a quiz on these Greek lyric poems. In addition to these poems, please bring your copy of Homer's Odyssey, Book One, that we discussed on Tuesday, with you to class.
As you read these poems, answer the following [quiz] questions:
Quiz questions will come from the first four questions above. Class discussion will focus on the rest.
Please read Book One of Homer's Odyssey. You may use any translation. I think the ones by Richmond Lattimore and Robert Fagles are the best, but the only two available on the internet are the old translation by Samuel Butler, which is here (Butler's translation) and the A.T. Murray translation available here from the Tufts University Perseus website. (I suggest the Murray translation if you do not have a hard copy of another translation. Move forward and back in the Murray translation by using the little blue arrows in the upper left-hand corner of the text.)
The Iliad and the Odyssey were two of the poems about the Trojan war that were part of the Epic Cycle. Except for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the other poems of the Epic Cycle have been lost, although (1) fragments of each of them and (2) references to, and quotations from, them in the writings of other authors remain and give us a good iead of the contents of each. (The famous story of the Trojan horse, for instance, is not found in these two epics: it is found in the so-called Sack of Ilion.)
As you read Book One, look for evidence of Homer's acceptance of the reality and immediate presence of both sacred and profane elements in the world. In the Odyssey, be able to identify the different characters in Book One and what they finally decide by the end of the book. An irritating aspect of Butler's translation is his translation fo the Greek gods by their Roman or Latin names. Thus Zeus is Jupiter (or Jove), Hera is Juno, and so on (click here for a useful guide to the dual names.
Please read the short essay by Mircea Eliade that was handed out in class. As you read, ask yourself how Eliade describes primitive man's basic understanding of God or the gods? How, according to Eliade, does primitive man learn of the existence of God or the gods? Why is primitive man initially confused and puzzled by his experiences of the sacred? What specifically distinguishes the "sacred" or the "holy" from the "profane"? What are these concepts? (Be sure to look up all the words in the article that you are not familiar with.)
The review sheet to help you prepare for the final is posted here.
I put all of the corrected chronology quizzes in the rack on the wall across from my office door before I left on Friday. If I circled the date, you got your century wrong; if I wrote "key" or "significance" on your entry, the fact you listed may have been correct but either had little significance or you did not explain its significance for the development of Western culture adequately. Don't just hunt through the book for random factoids! Select events that help you get a handle on the course of medieval history. Make changes (if you wish to), staple it to the corredted quiz that I handed back to you, hand it in on Tuesday, and I will increase your score.
And make it legible, please. Ink, not pencil; typed, if possible.
For Friday, we will look at several documents from the Italian Renaissance. Please read chapters 15, 17, and 25 of Machiavelli's The Prince; pages 119-124 and 127-128 of Leonardo Bruni's Letter Addressed to [an] Illustrious Lady; and paragraphs 1-8, 32-33 of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's "Oration on the Dignity of Man." There will be a short identification quiz based on the reading assignments for Tuesday and Friday. Remember, be able to identify passages by author and title.
Please read the first "point of inquiry"—(1) Whether an effect of law is to make men good?—in St. Thomas Aquinas's Question 92: Of the Effects of Law" from the Summa Theologica to see the medieval scholastic disputation method described in Dawson's chapter 10; these excerpts from Moses Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, which show the Jewish philosopher attempting to reconcile scripture with Aristotle; and a couple of short secondary accounts of the Muslim philosophers Alfarabi and Averroes, which show their attraction to classical Greek philosophy.
Please read chapter 10 of Dawson for Friday.
For Tuesday, the reading assignment is light: please read the Anglo-Saxon poem ""The Battle of Maldon." The web page on which the poem appears has a lot of background material. When was it written? When did the battle take place? Who fought whom?
The main assignment for Tuesday is preparing the basic chronology that I discussed with you in class.
To repeat the main points:
The purpose of the assignment is to give you a chance to get a handle on the time period and the huge amount of material that we have been studying for the past three weeks and to get an understanding of "what happened when." It is a good review of the material.
We will skip chapter 6, and instead read chapter 7 of Dawson for Friday. No additional readings are assigned.
We will read part of the Anglo-Saxon "Battle of Maldon" for next Tuesday, April 5th; there will be no new Dawson reading, but the chronology assignment will also be due on Tuesday.
Dawson, chapter 5, and Bede's History (Preface and Chapter One) and Beowulf (Episodes One and Two) for Tuesday. There will be a quiz on Tuesday.
You may want to take a look at King Alfred's "Preface" to St. Gregory's Pastoral Care, mentioned in the text. (English translation from Bucknell University). See also the originals at Bucknell.
Also, the Heimskringla, or Saga of the Great Norse Kings: Saga of Olaf Trygvason; Saga of Olaf Haraldson; Saga of Harald Hardrade, who might actually be familiar to you students of English history.
For Friday, please read Dawson, chapter 4, and also the three coronation accounts (two oaths and one coronation order) that are linked on the main webpage just above the section entitled "Useful Links."
A note on the quizzes. Please review your syllabus for this class. You will find that it provides: "I will drop automatically the lowest two or three grades on these quizzes and assignments, so in effect you may miss a couple of them without necessarily hurting your grade. The quizzes will be both announced and unannounced. While there will be at least one per week, there may be two. They cannot be taken later. The quizzes will always be given during the first ten minutes of class, so if you cannot arrive for class at 12:30pm each Tuesday and Friday, you should drop the course now!" I had no intention of surprising you with the quiz on Tuesday. I had not realized that I had fallen into the habit of giving quizzes on Fridays and not Tuesdays. I suspect that many of you, too, had fallen into a habit of reading the material for Friday classes and not worrying about Tuesdays.
I suggest that we both break out of our ruts. I will give more quizzes, including more announced quizzes, on both Tuesday and Friday to give some of you who have really awful quiz grades a chance to bring up your grade. Some of you might prepare for class by reading the assignments for both Tuesdays and Fridays. A few of you are doing superbly on the quizzes. Keep it up. If you have been slacking off, more frequent quizzes before the end of the semester will help you recover a bit. The quiz grade is forty percent (40%) of your course grade; the quizzes collectively count more than either the mid-term or the final exam. So get hopping!
For Friday, please read Dawson chapter 2, the Christian creeds, and excerpts from early Christian writers. We will be sure to go over all of the primary readings from Tuesday's assignment as well. (Probably a good clue for the quiz.)
We will begin the remaining part of the semester with a few passages from the New Testament and chapter one of the Dawson text. We will be using the Dawson text for most classes during the rest of the semester, averaging a chapter per class with a few pages of primary source readings. For Tuesday the 15th, please read chapter one of Dawson and Matthew chapter 5, John chapter 1, and Acts chapters 3 & 4.
I hope that all of you have recovered from the exam. I will try to have it corrected by Friday.
In the meantime, for Tuesday, please read the following Old Testament passages.
For Friday, please read these Bible passages from the Prophets and the excerpt from William Irwin's essay on God in the Old Testament. When we return, we will be reading a lot from Christopher Dawson's Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, which was the only required book for the course listed on the syllabus. Be sure to get a copy from the bookstore before you leave on Break or to order it from amazon.com over break.
For the mid-term: Regarding the identifications, you need not try to memorize the particular authors of the lyric poems nor the particular pre-Socratic philosophers that we studied. It is enough to be able to recognize them as "lyric poets" or "pre-Socratic philosophers." Nor do you have to know the particular titles of the lyric poems. Regarding the Gnostic materials, we do not know the authors of the so-called "Valentinian Exposition" nor of the Manichean Bema Psalms, so simply indicate that the authors of them are "unknown."
You should recognize the difference between epic, lyric, and tragic poetry and the significance of each in the evolution from mythic thought to rational or philosophic thought. The development of philosophic thought parallels the development of the Greeks' understanding of the nature of man and man's relation to the gods and the divine. The different approaches to history taken by the four historians we looked at also reflect the Greeks' advancing understanding of man and of the causes of human events.
You should be familiar with the main differences between Stoic, Epicurean, and Gnostic thought in Roman times—their different understandings of the supreme good, of the nature of man, and the of the nature of the universe.
The final exam will be given on Tuesday at 12:00noon. As I explained in class, most of the exam will focus on the material we have studied since the last mid-term; some of the exam will cover the whole semester. Thus, there will be a total of three questions: two of the typical identification-based questions on the recent material and one non-identification, survey question that focuses on one of the principal themes of the Kirk text and that brings together material from the entire semester. Remember, the two basic criteria that I use in grading the essays are (1) the responsiveness of the essays to the specific questions that are asked and (2) specific, accurate details from the readings as evidence that you read the assigned primary texts. You must show me evidence that you have read the assignments if you want to pass the exam. On the identification questions, you must supply information about the authors or texts that goes beyond simple restatements of the content of the quotes. On the non-identification survey questions, YOU must supply the details from the primary readings. These are the skills that I have emphasized all semester.
Leonardo Bruni, Excerpt from "Letter Addressed to an Illustrious Lady," pages 123 to 132; Pico della Mirandola, Excerpt from "Oration on the Dignity of Man," paragraphs 1-12, 18, 33; Machiavelli, The Prince, chapters 1, 2, 11, and 15;
Luther's Ninety-Five Theses; Calvin's "Letter to the King"; Thomas Muntzer's "Sermon to the Princes".
"Four Bs and a C." There are excerpts from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, St. Benedict's and St. Columba's monastic rules, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, and Beowulf. All are excerpts; none is complete, but they give us some idea of the nature of the literature and the intellectual activity of the period from A.D. 500 to 1000.
I hope also to have your exams completely graded, but it's slow going.
The views of Tertullian and of Clement of Alexandria on classical learning.
Excerpts from the four historians on the link here.
Justinian, Institutes, Book I, parts 1 & 2.
St. Augustine, City of God, Book I, chapters 1-5; Book XIV, chapter 28.
Book Two of Marcus Aurelius's Meditiations;
A Valentinian Exposition (watch out for this one!); and
Pliny's correspondence with Emperor Trajan on the Christians..
The final will consist of four questions: three on the readings (all of the readings) since the last mid-term and one covering the whole course. The readings since the last mid-term were the excerpts from Aristotle, William Irwin, the New Testament (Matthew, John, Romans, Revelation), the Hellenic philosophies (Marcus Aurelius, Epicurus, the Gnostic poems), medieval writers on natural law (St. Augustine, John of Salisbury, St. Thomas Aquinas), and the Renaissance writers (Petrarch, della Mirandola, Castiglione, and Machiavelli). The questions on these writers will likely include identification questions; the question on the entire course will not require identification. As in the last exam, the questions will be framed in terms of the general themes and ideas of the course as provided in the lectures; your answers must use the sources that we read to provide support in the form of details and examples for your answers.
You will have twice as long to answer four questions in the final than in the last mid-term, so your answers should be considerably more detailed. If you have kept up with the readings and attended the classes, you should have no trouble doing well, but you might study for the test just the same. See you Tuesday in our classroom at 12:00pm.
Excerpts from works by St. Augustine, John of Salisbury, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
the second book of Stoic Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
Epicurus, "Principal Doctrines"
the Manichaean Bema Psalm 224 and Fifth Psalm to Jesus.
A few chapters from the New Testament: There are any number of websites with copies of all of the books of the Bible. The "New Advent" and the "Christian Classics Ethereal Library" that are linked on my main webpage are two good ones. Please read the following: the gospel of Matthew, chapters 1, 5, 7, and 24; the gospel of John chapter 1; the epistle of Paul to the Romans, chapter 13; and the Book of Revelation (or the Apocalypse), chapter 20. These chapters will provide a number of basic Christian ideas that carry forward into the development of the Western tradition.
(1) the legend of Osiris; (2) the Egyptian poems "Sister without Peer," "My Brother Torments my Heart," "My Heart Flutters Hastily"; (3) the Instructions of Ptahhotep ##1, 2, 4, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25; and (4) the Hymn to Aton. Again, all are linked under "Humanities I Readings" on my main webpage. You might want to compare the version of the Osiris myth at "TourEgypt.net" with the versions at Aldokkan or at the Academy for Ancient Texts Egyptian Book of the Dead, which is also linked on the main webpage. Some interesting variations.
(1) read all of the creation poem "Enuma Elish"; (2) read Tablets VII and VIII of the epic "Gilgamesh"; and (3) read the following rules from Hammurabi's Law Code: 1-30, 125-140, 195-235. All of these are available by links about halfway down my main webpage under the set of links entitled "Humanities I Readings." An interesting introduction to "Gilgamesh" can be found here; you might want to read about what happened on the first six tablets of the poem. When you read the rules from Hammurabi, look for (1) the kinds of offenses that are "capital crimes," that is, crimes punishable by death; (2) the different orders of people under the laws (different people treated differently according to who they are); (3) the different purposes of the laws (not all are criminal laws); and (4) the basic principles of justice that are exemplified in the rules.
Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume III, Chapter XV--Greatness of Soul (Magnanimity) (QQ. 128-149).
Luther's Ninety-Five Theses
Calvin's "Letter to the King"
Thomas Muntzer's "Sermon to the Princes"
Machiavelli, The Prince, chapters XV, XVII, and XXV
Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man
Leonardo Bruni, Letter Addressed to [an] Illustrious Lady, pp. 119-124, 127-128.
Moses Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed
Paul Halsall, "Islamic Political Philosophy: Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes."
Introduction in Averroes, On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy
Averroes, Introduction to his On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy.
Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (trans. Muhsin Mahdi).
Averroes, On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy
Map of Merovingian-Frankish expansion (Wikipedia)
Charlemagne's Capitulary for Saxony
Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks (Fordham, Halsall)
Tertullian, Prescription against Heresies, chapters 1, 6 to 11
Clement, The Paedegogus or Christ the Instructor, Book I, chapter 13
St. Augustine, City of God, Book VIII chapter 10, Book XXII chapters 27 and 28, and Book XIX, chapters 20 and 25. Book XIX chapter 4 is also important here: read it if you can.
Bible passages from the Prophets
De Rerum Natura, Book Three.
Epicurus, "Principal Doctrines"
Dr. David Naugle on Christianity and Stoicism
Cicero, De Officiis, Parts I to IV (or paragraphs {1} to {14})..
Cicero, "The Dream of Scipio".
Seneca, Letter XLI to Lucilius: "The God within Us"; paragraphs 1 to 12 of the essay, "On the Happy Life."
Pliny's correspondence with Emperor Trajan on the Christians.
Dr. C. George Boeree's Philosophies and Religions of the Roman Empire.
Manichaean Bema Psalm 224 and Fifth Psalm to Jesus.
Aristotle: the theory of the "Four Causes" in the Physics, Book II, parts 3, 7, 8, and the concept of happiness or eudaimonia in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chapters 1, 4, & 7.
Excerpts from some of the early Greek historians.
As you read the excerpts from the historians consider the following questions:
1. What does each historian say his purpose is in writing his book?
2. What is the subject matter of his work? What is the scope—geographic, chronological, or some other range—of his work?
3. What sources does he use to compile his work? What is his apparent attitude toward his sources? How critical is he of the value of his sources?
4. What is his method of writing? Is his work a collection of stories? a long narrative? a philosophic discourse?
Use these questions to determine whether the four writers should be lumped together or whether some or all of them are distinctively different.
Herodotus's Histories, Book One, sections 1.0 to 1.15.
Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, Book One, Chapter One, paragraphs 1-6, and Book Five, Chapter Seventeen, the "Melian Dialogue".
Polybius's Histories, Book One, sections 1-5 (the big red numbers).
Livy's History of Rome, Book One, section 1.preface and sections 1.1-1.5.
Each of these excerpts contains a statement by the author of his approach to writing history, usually a few paragraphs at the beginning of the linked excerpt. I want you to read a bit more by Herodotus and Thucydides to get a taste of what kind of historical materials made up their works. I suggest that you highlight the assigned paragraphs and passages by right-clicking on them, then copy them onto a Microsoft word page, and then printing out the finished product. This will save you a lot of space and paper.
General Account, Indiana University.
An analysis of Thucydides's account, Tufts University.
Might it have been the ebola virus?
The Eumenides by Aeschylus
Sophocles's Oedipus Rex
The link to the Medea review in the Post.
Euripides's Bacchae or Bacchants.
Lives of the Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius (incomplete).
Excerpts from or about the Pre-Socratic philosophers.
As you read the excerpts from the pre-Socratic philosophers, consider the following questions:
Hesiod's Theogony In Hesiod's poem, what does "theogony" mean? What is Hesiod trying to do here? What existed at the beginning of time? Generally, what happened thereafter, according to Hesiod?
Book Twenty-Two of the Odyssey.
Butler's translation of Homer's Odyssey Book One
Art of the Western World. Narrated by Michael Wood. Annenberg Learner Series.
The Western Tradition. Narrated by Eugen Weber. Annenberg Learner Series.
The Academy for Ancient Texts Egyptian Book of the Dead
The Osiris Legend (Deurer)
An interesting introduction to "Gilgamesh"
The basic guidelines for the book review are as follows:
