PHIL 401: Plato
PHIL 401: Plato
The Generic Catalog Description
This course treats either the early, middle or late dialogues of Plato. In certain cases, Socrates' relation to Plato may be examined.
PHIL 401: Plato and Heidegger
Adriaan Peperzak
This is a seminar in which the participants will be trained in the critical exploration of Heidegger's interpretation of Plato. The main texts that will be analyzed are (1) Plato's Sophist, (2) Heidegger's course on this dialogue, (3) Heidegger's essay Plato's Doctrine of Truth.
Those graduate students who want to participate in this seminar are expected to have studied Books 1-10 of Plato's Republic and Did Heidegger Understand Plato's Idea of Truth? (Platonic Transformations, pp.19-56) before the beginning of the seminar. In the first week of the seminar the participants will write a paper on these two texts.
This seminar is reserved for graduate students who are familiar with the whole of Plato's Republic.
PHIL 401: Ancient Philosophy: Plato
Mark Waymack
The theme for this seminar on Plato will be Plato's attempts to characterize who/what the "philosopher" is. The philosopher is neither the sophist, nor the rhetorician. Not the lawyer, nor the mathematician. Neither the comedian nor the tragedian. So who (or what) exactly is the philosopher? And, by extension, what does it mean to "do philosophy"?
We will be reading parts of the Phaedrus, and all of Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Symposium, Republic, and Theaetetus. We may glance at passages from the Parmenides, the Statesman, and the Sophist.
PHIL 401: Ancient Philosophy: Plato
Frank Yartz, fyartz@luc.edu
This Spring 2009 offering of Philosophy 401 will focus on themes of epistemology in the dialogues of Plato. In addition to what Plato says about episteme, we will consider his view of percption (aisthesis), judgment, opinion (doxa), belief (pistis), immediate and mediate knowledge (noesis, dianoia), and truth (alethea). Of course, we must keep in mind that the classification of science that has come down to us today--epistemology being one of the sciences--is at best only in embryonic form in Plato. We will study what Plato says about knowledge in the Meno, Republic, and Theaetetus, in addition to what appears in sections of other dialogues. Translations in the Hamilton-Cairns volume, Plato: Collected Dialogues, will be used. Knowledge of the ancient Greek language is not necessary to take the course.