handouts of prof. Myles Burnyeat - 1

                  prof. Myles Burnyeat attending the seminar on the fragments from the Metaphysics of Theophrastus,  held at the CEU in Budapest in 2008, 26-28 of June;

all the programmes of all the seminars, organized by the SEAAP, are available on the blog of Pavel Gregorić:
http://www.pavel-gregoric.info/wp-admin/uploads/2009/06/programme-budapest-2008.pdf

All the posts on this blog have been written in Bulgarian, but now I have to make an exception. Recently a student ask me about recommendable list of ancient authors, who have expressed ideas on the nature of human freedom. At once I answered: I will remember forever the remarkable lecture, delivered by prof. Burnyeat in Sofia on this topic in the summer of 2007, when he took part in the regular summer session of the huge international project Contextualizing Classics.
It was a three-years-project organized in the University of Sofia St. Kliment Ochridski by some colleagues from the Department of Classics with the financial support of the Higher Education Support Programme of the CEU in Budapest.

Prof. Burnyeat had visited Sofia at least one time before. Twenty years ago in the spring of 1999
he spent a week in our University, presenting a lecture in Aula magna, entitled Anger and revenge. He was modest enough to decline the proposal to receive the honorary degree of Doctor honoris causa and delivered the lecture, abstaining from the ceremony.
All the other British scholars, who have visited our university with the support of the British council, have become doctores honoris causa, but Myles refused.
Instead, he proposed to deliver not just one lecture, but to have 4-days seminar on one of his favourite dialogues of Plato - Crito.
So, the seminar lasted 4 days with the duration of 5 hours every day and the participants were students in philosophy, English and classical philology.
There is a handout from this seminar, as well, but maybe similar seminars on the same dialogue have been held by him in other foreign universities and the interpretation of Myles of this dialogue
as the treasure, in which we find the genuine roots of the authentic moral teaching of Socrates, probably is well known to many.

A detailed narration about the seminar of Prof. Burnyeat in March and the subsequent seminar of Prof. Christopher Kirwan on the Nicomachean ethics, held in April 1999, was published in the Literary forum: now available on the web-page of the Association for the Development of the University Classical Education.

Below is the handout for the lecture of Prof. Burnyeat on the ancient ideas of human freedom, presented in the summer of 2007, in the third week of August, at the University of Sofia. (The precise date and title to be added later; now I am in a hurry to fulfill the promise given to the students to publish the handout.)
Each sheet of paper can be downloaded and examined separately. They are telling enough.

The handout includes quotations from: 

1. Euripides, The Suppliant Women, 403-408; 

2. Aristotle, Politics, III 8, 1279 b; 

2a. Aristotle, Metaphysics Lambda 10, 1074b18-1075a3; 

3. Thucydides II 37. 2; 

4. Thucydides VII 69.2; 

5. Aristotle, Politics VI 2, 1317a; 

6. Missing;

7. Aristotle, Politics I 2;

8. Aristotle, Politics I 6;

9. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes VI, 71; 

10. Crates, frag. 4 Diels (D. L. VI, 85); 

11. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Crates, VI, 93; 

12. Crates, frag. 5 Diels (Clem. Strom. 2. 121.1); 13.

13. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno VII 32-3;

14. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno VII 121-2;

15. SVF (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta) III 544 (Origenes in Evang. Ioan. II 10 p. 122);

16. Philo, Every good man is free, 59-61;

17. Alexander, De fato 200. 2-7;

18. Lucretius II 251-8;

19. Diogenes of Oenoanda frag. 33; 

20. Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 133-4

Last sheet of paper: the conceptual scheme, proposed by Prof. Burnyeat, ending with

his

Conclusion: A. D. begins with three different concepts of 'freedom' even before we start to take account of

(a) Roman politics,

(b) Christianity.

Later this week I will publish the handout for his lecture on the racist character of the ancient physiognomy. It was a part of his participation in the programme Contextualizing classics in August 2007 in Sofia. There was a web-place, where everything happening in these three years was reported, but for some unknown reason the web-page is now closed and unaccessible.