PHI217 - Plato

Outline:

The Philosopher and Mathematician A N Whitehead once characterized western thought as a "series of footnotes to Plato". The thought of Plato and his teacher Socrates, who both lived in Greece around 400 years before the start of the Christian era, set the agenda for much subsequent philosophy and did much to define our ideas of what philosophy is. This course will introduce students to the study of the philosophy of Plato through a close and critical study of one of the most important dialogues in English translation.

Reading

Reading

The texts for this course are:

1. Plato: Meno: I recommend the Hackett edition, which is included a volume called
Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo (trans. Grube, rev. Cooper)

2. Plato: Republic. We will only be reading part of this long book. Again I recommend the Hackett edition, translated by Grube, rev. Reeve.

3. Plato Theaetetus. I strongly recommend the Hackett edition translated by Levett, rev. and with an introduction by Miles Burnyeat.

You can get all these translations in one volume, again published by Hackett:

Plato: Complete Works, edited by John Cooper.

But note:
1. The Complete Works is very large and unwieldy and awkward to carry around to lectures and tutorials (as I recommend you do).
2. Burnyeat’s long introductory essay on the Theaetetus is indispensible and is not reproduced in Complete Works.

Assessment:

Leturer:

Lectures: Autumn Semester

Coursework Assignment 1

Coursework Assignment 2