A panoramic survey of Western Culture, beginning with Homeric epos, Hellenic Mythology and Pre-Socratic Philosophy, through Dante, medieval scholastics, Age of Enlightenment, and ending with Darwin, Doestoyevsky and Nietzsche in the second half of the nineteenth century. The second semester will enlarge on systematic reading especially in master-works of the western canon (e.g. Dickens, Flaubert, Dostoevsky).