PHIL 119
Plato with Footnotes: Ethics and Politics Fall 2017 (also offered Spring 2018)
Division II Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course addresses a central question in practical philosophy: How should we live? The question has two parts: What is the best life for individuals? And what social and political arrangements make such a life possible? In attempting to answer these questions we also engage related theoretical questions concerning what is real and how we have access to it. We begin with readings from Plato’s Republic–a seminal work in the history of philosophy that illustrates the inseparability of theoretical and practical questions and has exerted a powerful influence on nearly every subsequent attempt to answer these questions in the context of the Western philosophical tradition. While reading the Republic, we also consider some of the best of these attempts in the Western philosophical canon (“footnotes on Plato” by Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche, and others) and the challenges they present to Plato’s conclusions.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 1420
Grading: yes pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: Fall: six 2-page papers, two 5-page papers, presentations, participation; Spring: attendance, frequent short papers totaling about 30 pages, class participation
Extra Info: not available for the fifth course option
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: first-year students, prospective and actual majors
Unit Notes: meets 100-level PHIL major requirement
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills
Attributes: LEAD Ethical Issues of Leadership
LGST Interdepartmental Electives

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