Dr Tom Kerns
North Seattle Community College

 

Plato

(c.427-347 BC)

 

 

 

 

(image from the philosopher's gallery)

Socrates

(470-399 BC)

 

Information about Greek Philosophy

• Dates in classical Greece
• Timeline for Greek philosophy
• Stephanus pagination
• How to pronounce Greek names
• A few books about eros

Lectures

• Who is Socrates?
• Socrates as midwife
• Socratic method
• The rest of the stoyr: a bit of Athenian history
• Plato's three parts of the soul
• The Phaedrus and The Eternal
   

Interesting Plato & Socrates websites

"The Death of Socrates," from the philosopher's gallery

 

 

• An excellent site on Plato and his dialogues that provides links to numerous resources on Plato, as well as links to many of his dialogues that are available online
  
  
• An excellent! site on The Last Days of Socrates (about which we will be reading) with a variety of links to related sites, including links to good translations of the relevant Dialogues
  
  
• I will be referring to the image of Socrates depicted by the comic playwright Aristophanes in some of his plays; Some of Aristophanes' plays can be found online here

Plato's Dialogues available online

The translations of these online versions of Plato's Dialogues are older and sometimes less accurate and a bit less readable than the more recent translations. But they can still work for this class. The Dialogues we will be studying can be found at:

• The Euthyphro
• The Apology
• The Crito
• The Phaedo
• The Phaedrus
• or the older Jowett translations of the Dialogs

You could also take a look at the following Dialogues to which we will be referring this quarter:

• The Republic
• The Symposium
  

And Plato's story of The Cave is available at several locations on the web, including here.

A large variety of other classical writers is also available at:

• Classics online

Our reading assignments

The Euthyphro

• Read the entire Euthyphro (or peri hosiou) by the due date
• Read the pages on the Socratic method, both my summary of it and Kierkegaard's description of indirect communication
• Write out answers to the study questions for The Euthyphro and post them to the class by the date you are due to be finished reading the book

The Apology

• Read the entire Apology by the due date
• Write out answers to the study questions for The Apology and post them to the class by the date you are due to be finished reading the book

The Crito

• Read the entire Crito by the due date
• Write out answers to the study questions for The Crito and post them to the class by the date you are due to be finished reading the book
  

The Phaedo

• Read the assigned portions of The Phaedo (from Stephanus page 114D to the end of the dialog) by the due date
• Write out answers to the study questions for The Phaedo and post them to the class by the date you are due to be finished reading the book

The Phaedrus

• Read the assigned portions of The Phaedrus (from the beginning of the dialog to Stephanus page 257C) by the due date
• Write out answers to the study questions for The Phaedrus and post them to the class by the date you are due to be finished reading the book
• Here are a few interesting books on love that you may be interested in looking at some time.

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