PHIL4445 · Philosophy

The Greeks and Their Gods

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

How did the Greeks view their gods? In this course, we will use Greek literature and philosophy to answer that question. We will read some of the more traditional mythological accounts in Greek literature presented in Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Euripides' Bacchae, and Aeschylus' Eumenides. We will then turn to the distinctive philosophical accounts of the gods given by Plato in works such as Republic II, the Myth of the Charioteer in the Phaedrus, the Demiurge in the Timaeus, and by Aristotle on their nature and contemplation in Metaphysics XII and Nicomachean Ethics X.