Ancient Philosophy

Short Course Description: At its most extreme, one could quip – as Whitehead quipped – that "the history of Western philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." But when it comes to exploring the pre-Socratic philosophers, the conventional canon of ancient philosophy is reduced almost exclusively to the Milesians, with vague allusions to Plato's interest in Pythagoras and Thales, who studied in Egypt. But ancient philosophy did not, as we shall see, spring forth full-grown from the head of Plato. In this course we will examine ancient philosophy in Africa, India, China, Persia, Judea, and Greece. The ancient Mediterranean was bustling with cosmopolitan influences, or periods of intellectual and spiritual exchange, times that pre-date the Persian influence prior to the Peloponnesian Wars, prior to Socrates and his philosophical or religious contemporaries during the Axial Age: e.g., Confucius and Laozi in China, the Buddha in India, the proliferation of the Vedas, Mahavira the Jainist, the exile and return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, in the time of Cyrus, and Zarathustra in Persia. But prior to all this, much earlier than ancient philosophical thought in Greece, Black Athena or otherwise, we have a long and venerable tradition of philosophical thought in ancient Africa. Although students in this course will be exposed to the traditional western canon of ancient philosophy, we will give special attention and pride of place to the history of ancient philosophy in Africa, especially Kemet and Kush.