Concentration in Ancient Philosophy
This concentration is offered jointly by the Departments of Classics and Philosophy. It is administered by an interdepartmental committee whose members are Alan Code, Departments of Classics and Philosophy, Anthony Long, Department of Classics, and John Ferrari, Department of Classics. (Professor Code will be leaving Berkeley in Fall 2007. The department is actively seeking new faculty in this area.)
The concentration is designed to produce scholars with a broad range of expertise in both philosophy and classics, with the intention of bridging the gap between the two subjects. It provides the training and specialist knowledge required for undertaking research in ancient philosophy, and at the same time equips students for scholarly work and teaching in either classics or philosophy. Those who complete the concentration will be fully qualified to work as a member of either one of these disciplines, while having developed a broad competence in the other.
Students apply for admission to one of the participating departments in accordance with their qualifications and interests. They are treated accordingly as graduate students fully in either the Department of Classics or the Department of Philosophy.
The concentration offers graduate students in Classics the opportunity to take classes in philosophy as an integral part of their work. And it offers graduate students in Philosophy the opportunity to develop their knowledge of both classical languages and Graeco-Roman culture.
Students from the two departments meet each other regularly in seminars, reading groups and colloquia. Seminar offerings from the two departments are designed to give students the opportunity to study a wide variety of topics including the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy and the philosophy of later antiquity.
Philosophy Students
Those entering the concentration as Philosophy students will take the broad range of philosophy courses and seminars standardly required for the Ph.D. in Philosophy. This standard set of requirements is, however, modified in the following ways for students in the ancient concentration:
- At least three out of the eight required courses, to be approved by the committee, should be in ancient philosophy, including at least one taught in the Classics Department.
- Students in the concentration will have until the end of the fourth year to pass the Ph.D. qualifying examination.
- Two of the three topics for the student's qaulfiying exam will concern topics in ancient philosophy.
- In addition to satisfying the standard foreign language requirements for the philosophy Ph.D., the student must demonstrate, by examination and before advancement to candidacy, proficiency in reading Greek and Roman philosophical authors in the ancient language.
To enter the concentration as a graduate student in Philosophy, prospective graduates should apply to the Ph.D. program in Philosophy and mention their interest in the ancient concentration as part of their statement of purpose. For information about entering the concentration as a graduate student in Classics, please visit the Department of Classics website.