Each week we will begin on Monday afternoon (14.15), and then meet at 10.15-12.00 and at 14.15-16.00 on Tuesday and Wednesday. The first week, our last meeting will be between 10.15 and 12.00 on Thursday. Depending on the number of student presentations towards the end of the course (which will depend on the number of course participants), we will end the second week either on Thursday (at 12 or 16) or,  at the latest, on Friday at 12. A detailed schedule will be distributed approximately one month before the course starts to those who have signed up for it.

Teacher  Frans Svensson

Course description: Following Julia Annas, we might say that “the mainstream of ancient ethical theory” starts out from “[t]he assumption … that each of us has … an ultimate or overarching end in terms of which we make sense of our everyday actions and our longer-term priorities” (Introduction to Cicero, On Moral Ends, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. xvii). It is furthermore assumed that as far as the name of this end is concerned, it is eudaimonia (usually translated into English as happiness). But the philosophers disagree in important ways about what constitutes happiness, and, therefore, about what is required of us to obtain it. In this course, we will first consider some crucial aspects of Aristotle’s view about these things in the Nicomachean Ethics, and then how the views of the epicureans and of the stoics differ in those respects both from Aristotle and from each other

NORMS AND NATURE IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY (192 Kb)

To the Swedish page