Plato: Middle and Late Dialogues

Course Description

Summary

Aristocles (known to us as "Plato") lived and wrote in Athens in the 5th c. BCE. More than 2400 years later, Alfred North Whitehead’s famous remark still resonates: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato…the wealth of general ideas scattered through them…have made [Plato’s] writings an inexhaustible mine of suggestion” (Process and Reality, 1929).

In this course, we will explore some rich veins in Plato’s “inexhaustible mine.” We will engage in an in-depth study of Plato’s theory of knowledge (epistemology), theory of reality (metaphysics), and theory of human ethical judgment and motivation (moral psychology) with a focus on the middle and later periods in Plato’s philosophical career. We’ll be interested in how Plato’s views evolved during this period. Based on criticisms he considers in the Parmenides, did Plato really abandon the Theory of the Forms- his centerpiece theory about the proper objects of knowledge and reality? If so, how does Plato come to think about the role of philosophy and the pursuit of truth? Plato’s teacher, Socrates, proposed that being a good person is founded in ethical knowledge, and if one knew what was the right thing to do, one could not fail to do it. How does Plato engage with and complicate this position in his later works? How does Plato think differently about how we “love the Good”?

Likely dialogues we’ll read and discuss: Meno, Protagoras, Theaetetus, Parmenides, Gorgias, Philebus, Statesman, and Sophist.

It will be helpful to have some prior familiarity with Plato and Greek philosophy (as, e.g. through taking Thinking Like a Greek or another course in ancient Greek philosophy).