Plato’s (429–347 B.C.E.) contribution to Western Philosophy covers areas in ethics, politics, metaphysics, epistemology, art, music and ancient science. This course employs recent scholarship on this dazzling thinker to understand his essential ideas and asks: How relevant are they to today’s issues and problems. The questions Plato raises are so profound, and the strategies he uses for tackling them, so richly suggestive and provocative, that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him. His philosophy applies to the individual life of personal flourishing (arete) and the public life of a ‘just’ society.
- Plato - Introduction to Central Ideas: Many people associate Plato with a few central doctrines that are advocated in his writings, for example Plato’s famous allegory of the Cave, in which he proposes that the world that appears to our senses is a secondary manifestation of the real reality of the abstract/ perfect ‘Forms’. We will explore his primary concepts in the opening weeks of the course.
- Knowledge vs Wisdom: Plato’s conception of philosophy is that philosophy aims not so much at discovering facts or establishing domains of knowledge, but rather at achieving wisdom or understanding (the Greek term philosophia means “love of wisdom”). We will discuss how this understanding of philosophy’s roll is central to his theories of education, particularly the education of those who will make the laws for the city.
- Political Philosophy - The Republic & Laws: The Republic devotes a considerable part of its discussion to the critique of ordinary social institutions—the family, private property, and rule by the many. The motivation that lies behind the writing of this dialogue is the desire to transform (or, at any rate, to improve) political life, not to escape from it. In Laws Plato discusses voting procedures, punishments, education, legislation, and the oversight of public officials.
- Plato and the Poets: Plato mastered the form of the dialogue in which Socrates is often his main ‘character’, as such he is considered to be a great literary artist. Yet he also made notoriously negative remarks about the value of poetry, drama and the visual arts (though he did admire music for its mathematical nature.) We will explore this seeming paradox.
- Plato for our time: Plato was the most objective and ruthless observer of the failures of Greek society, many of the problems which he observes: political corruption; personal and class greed are still with us, as well as the everlasting pursuit of living a ‘good’ life with ourselves and our community. We will consider how his philosophy may be helpful for us still.
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Have gained an overall understanding of the key concepts in Plato’s philosophy
- Have gained insight into the history and development of Plato’s ideas from the Greek world to now
- Have read and discussed extracts from Plato’s key texts
- Be able to relate his ideas to our contemporary world and current issues
- Have discussed many of these ideas as they apply to the students’ lives
