Overview
The best essays will have a clear thesis statement with full development of that thesis statement through sustained discussion and explanation, and in the course of its development it will address each question/issue posed under the topics below in a cohesive essay.
(Parts I - II of the course)
Weight: 40%
Length: 1600-2000 words
For your essay, please select one of the following four topics. Make sure you fully explain all specialized philosophical terminology used so that your intended meaning will be crystal clear. Please note that topic #1 has several related questions under it, each indicated by a letter.
The Presocratic Philosophers
Hesiod understood the archaic Greek world in which he lived in terms of the mythic separation of earth and sky, and the ensuing battle between the Olympians and the Titans. In Unit 1.1 we drew an ontological paradigm from this Hesiodic story and developed some of its philosophical implications. We also saw that the Greeks of the Homeric era understood human nature as a duality of thumos and psuche. This ontological paradigm drawn from Hesiod as well as the tension between thumos and psuche are the two major themes running through the various philosophical texts we will study in this course.
Explain the different ways in which the Presocratic philosophers appropriated both the ontological paradigm drawn from the Hesiodic story and the tension between thumos and psuche. In terms of these two major themes, discuss the following early thinkers:
Thales
Anaximander
The Pythagoreans
Heraclitus
Parmenides
Which one of these ways of understanding the world do you find to be the most convincing and why? How does it relate to the contemporary world in which you find yourself today?
Which one do you find to be the least convincing and why? How does it fail to relate to the contemporary world in which you find yourself today?
Limit and Unlimitedness
The discussion with Thrasymachus in Book I of the Republic makes explicit the problems associated with limit and unlimitedness. Relate this to the ontological paradigm drawn from the Hesiodic story. What are the problems associated with limit and unlimitedness with respect to justice and the good life? In what ways might the same problems be seen in modern capitalist consumer societies? What would a Platonic critique of modern society look like?
Plato's Cave Analogy
Explain Plato’s “cave analogy.” What are its implications for education? What are the implications about language? If those who see the sun are rejected when they return to the cave, what are the implications for the political involvement of philosophers in their own societies? What are the implications for the place of philosophy in society generally?
The Good Beyond Being
With respect to the idea of justice and the sun analogy, explain the logic of the argument that leads Socrates and Glaucon to the idea of the good in Book VI of the Republic. Why is the good said to be “beyond being,” and what problems does this pose for the possibility of knowledge and for the theory of the forms? What might the account of the good mean with respect to the human quest for justice generally?