Paper 1. Due 9/11:
One of Socrates's main contentions in the Gorgias is that those who--like Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles--simply teach their students to be successful in the worlds of politics and business are sophists and charlatans who are doing something shameful. More specifically, Socrates charges that in teaching students to be effective and persuasive thinkers and speakers without at the same time being concerned with whether or not they are morally upright, the sophist is guilty of malpractice, providing them with false care for the soul in the same way that a bad physician provides patients with false care for their bodies.
Your job is, first, to spell out clearly the analogy between care of the body and care of the soul that Socrates proposes at 464b-466a (pp. 24-26 in the Hackett edition), paying special attention to the similarity between oratory (or rhetoric) and pastry baking (or cooking) . Second, on the basis of your reading of the whole dialogue, lay out and explain a few of the traits that, according to Socrates, a teacher who was concerned with the true health of his students' souls would try to instill in them.
Paper 2: Due 9/25:
Rewrite of Paper 1.
Paper 3. Due 10/9:
On the whole, it is fair to say that Plato has a low opinion of democratic societies. Your assignment is (i) to state Plato's case against democratic societies as forcefully as you can and (ii) either to criticize that case or to defend it against objections.
In spelling out Plato's indictment of democractic societies, you are free to draw upon material found anywhere in the Gorgias or Republic, but I suggest that, in addition to Socrates's conversation with Callicles in the Gorgias, you focus on (a) Republic 487b-497a, where Socrates explains why philosophy is unpopular in democratic societies (see The Unruly Crew at 488a ff.) and how in democratic societies philosophy is easily corrupted into sophistry (see The Wild Beast at 493a); (b) the allegory of the Cave at 514a ff.; and (c) the discussion of the democratic personality at 555b-562a.
Paper 4. Due 11/4:
Reread Book 1 (all) and Book 10, chaps. 6-8 of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Relying on these particular texts and using as background your reading of other parts of the Ethics, first explain the sort of life that Aristotle considers to be worthy of a human being and constitutive of true human happiness or flourishing, contrasting along the way this sort of life with others that he takes to be misguided. (To help you formulate your thoughts for this part of the paper, you might take a profession or life-work that you yourself are considering undertaking and ask how a person in that profession could have a truly happy life according to Aristotle's conception of happiness, as well as how such a person could go wrong according to Aristotle's conception.) Second, compare Aristotle's paradigmatic flourishing human being to Plato's paradigmatic flourishing human being, the Philosopher as described in the Republic. Are they identical? Why or why not?
Paper 5. Due 11/25:
Read pp. 145-180 of the section on temperance in Pieper's The Four Cardinal Virtues. First, explain Pieper's distinction between incontinence and the vice of unchastity. Second, lay out and explain what Pieper sees as the destructive effects of the vice of unchastity, and briefly indicate some reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with his claims. Lastly, discuss critically his defense of the virtue of virginity (or celibacy).
Paper 6. Due 12/12:
This course began with Socrates's invitation to the philosophical life in the Gorgias and continued by examining the notion, developed at length in the Republic, of the philosopher as the paradigmatic human being. (Look once again at the traits of the philosopher in the Plato handout.) We then examined Aristotle's conception of human flourishing, which in some ways is similar to Plato's, though with a less ascetic orientation and more emphasis on the importance of various external and internal goods (e.g., wealth, power, honor, friends--in general, "well-roundedness) for an active life of exercising virtue.
In the last sections of the course, however, through our reading of Pieper's christianized account of the four cardinal virtues and of Augustine's Confessions, what has emerged is what seems to be a different account of human flourishing--or, at least, one that is in tension in various ways with the philosophical life even if sharing some important features in common with it. This Christian paradigm human being we can call the saint.
For your last writing assignment I want you to compare the saint to the philosopher.
First, it will be necessary to paint a picture of the traits of the saint. Do this mainly on the basis of your reading of Pieper and Augustine. You might want to pay special attention to those parts of the Confessions in which Augustine explicitly tells us what he found lacking in the writings of the philosophers (see, e.g., book 3, chap. 4; book 7, chap. 9; and book 7, chaps. 20-21), and those places in which he seems to cast doubt on the value of just the sort of intellectual pursuits that serve as one mark of the philosopher (see, e.g., book 5, chap. 4), but there are plenty of other relevant sections of the Confessions as well. It may also prove helpful to draw on your knowledge of particular historical saints. Whatever sources you use, what I primarily want is a sense of what the main traits of the saint are. In other words, you are invited to be creative and imaginative in painting the picture of the saint.
Second, in thinking out the comparison you might ask yourself questions like the following: Is there a difference in deep-seated motivations between the philosophical life and the saintly life? Can one be a philosopher without being a saint? Can one be a saint without being a philosopher? Can one be both a saint and a philosopher? Is it the case that just as there are distinctively Christian ways of being chaste (e.g., consecrated virginity) and courageous (e.g. martyrdom), so too there is a distinctively Christian way of being a philosopher? You don't have to address all these questions. I mean them only to help stimulate your thoughts on the matter.