https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/HISU5572?type=CORESince the dawn of human consciousness, the question of eternity and time has occupied the minds of humans. The existential tension between the finiteness of human life and the desire for something outlasting this life was combined very early with the cognitive quest into the relationship of the objective world and the perceiving subject and the question whether both are outflows or deliberate creatures of a higher being. The questions asked by the late antique Gnostics: "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" have received a powerful pictorial expression in a famous allegorical painting of Paul Gaugin, created in Tahiti. This quest and the possible answers to it were first expressed in mythological form before becoming the basic quest of philosophy. As Aristotle says: "Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant - thus the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders" (Metaphysics I, 2,982b, tr. H. Tredennick). Yet, for a long while, one of the preferred expressions for this philosopical quest remained the philosophical myth. The course will not attempt to give any answer to this quest but will be tracing in very general lines the philosophical quest about eternity and time in the western hemisphere (including a bit of Islamic philosophy) from Plato, through Aristotle, the late antique debates on the eternity versus createdness of the world, to the medieval and modern developments. The course is open to BA and MA students, Ph.D. students may audit it. Instructors: György Geréby (ancient and medieval philosophy, with an outlook into modernity), István Perczel (the Platonist tradition in late antiquity, Byzantium and in the Christian East), Arash Khorashadi as TA (Islamic philosophy).Those who are interested not only in more details on the subject but also in a wider Eurasian outlook on philosophical and metaphysical questions, are invited to attend lectures in the lecture series organised by the Center for Religious Studies (organisers: Marion Rastelli, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and István Perczel, CEU): "Religious Philosophy in Pre-Modern Eurasia: Questions of Translatability." The course is cross-listed by the Center for Religious Studies and cross-listing will be requested from the Department of Philosophy and the PPE BA program.