Announcements
We’ve extended the due date for the second paper to Wednesday, November 28.
Some questions on Aristotle’s NE VIII-IX have been added to the Unit 3 study questions.
The Aristotle topics for the second paper are now available on the Assignments page.
Professor MacFarlane will be out of town on Wednesday, Nov. 7, and will not hold office hours.
The schedule has been updated with readings for the Nov. 7 lecture on Aristotle on friendship. Agnes Callard will be giving the lecture.
The Plato topics for the second paper are now available on the Assignments page.
The Socrates papers will be returned at the end of class Friday. Instructions for the rewrite assignment (due Wednesday, October 17) are available on the Assignments page.
Instructions for the peer review assignment are now available on the Assignments page. Note that the due date has been changed to Friday, October 5.
Topics for the first paper are now available on the Assignments page.
Here’s a link to the reference to Socrates in Aeschines’ speech Against Timarchus, discussed in lecture September 10.
If you’d like to have the collected works of Plato, the volume to get is Plato: Complete Works (Hackett, 1997), edited by John Cooper. The translations in this volume are the same as the ones we are using, except for the Republic.
A question I often hear: “Isn’t Socrates just wasting his time arguing about piety, justice, right and wrong? Aren’t these things all relative?”
If you’re relatively new to philosophy, and even if you’re not, I highly recommend Jay Rosenberg’s book The Practice of Philosophy: A Handbook for Beginners (Prentice Hall). It’s the best general introduction to philosophical thinking and writing I’ve seen, and it won’t insult your intelligence.
You might be interested in the Perseus Project, a huge online database of ancient texts and supporting materials. Here is the beginning of the Euthyphro in Greek and in English. (You can even click on Greek words to get their definitions.) Here is a translation of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, which gives us a picture of Socrates that is somewhat different from Plato’s.
We’ll fill out section preference cards on Wednesday. Please be on time to lecture and be sure to fill out a card. You must be assigned to a section in order to get credit for the course. After Wednesday’s lecture, we will drop students who were absent on Monday and Wednesday, in order to make room for others who want to take the class.
Welcome to Philosophy 25A! You can find the syllabus, schedule, and other handouts in the Handouts section.