36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) Course No. 4460 Taught by Robert C. Bartlett Emory University Ph.D., Boston College For more than two millennia, philosophers have grappled with life's most profound issues. It is easy to forget, however, that these "eternal" questions are not eternal at all; rather, they once had to be asked for the first time. It was the Athenian citizen and philosopher Socrates who first asked these questions in the 5th century B.C. "Socrates," notes award-winning Professor Robert C. Bartlett, "was responsible for a fundamentally new way of philosophizing": trying to understand the world by reason.
The Theaetetus is one of Plato's dialogues concerning the nature of knowledge. The framing of the dialogue begins when Euclides tells his friend Terpsion that he had written a book many years ago based on what Socrates had told him of a conversation he'd had with Theaetetus when [Theaetetus] was quite a young man. (Euclides also notes that he'd had to go back to Socrates to ask some more questions about the speeches due to his spotty recollection of the account.)
The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy provides a comprehensive treatment of the principal figures and movements of philosophy from its origins before Socrates, through the towering achievements of Plato and Aristotle, and into its final developments in late antiquity. Authored by a cast of distinguished philosophers, this collection offers in-depth, accessible essays on the Presocratics, the Sophistic Movement, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the principal Hellenistic schools - Epicureanism, Academic Skepticism, and Stoicism - and, finally, the often neglected Neoplatonists.
Contained within this illustrated anthology are thoughts and insights from all the key thinkers of Ancient Greek civilization, from Homer to Herodotus, and Sophocles to Socrates. Spanning the entire range of poetry, prose, philosophy and drama, the themed categories in this little book offer insight into areas as diverse as politics and personal fulfilment.
In Socrates Dissatisfied, Weiss argues against the prevailing view that the Laws are Socrates' spokesmen. She reveals and explores many indications that Socrates and the Laws are, both in style and substance, adversaries: whereas the Laws are rhetoricians who defend the absolute authority of the Laws, Socrates is a dialectician who defends-in the Crito no less than in the Apology-the overriding claim of each individual's own reason when assiduously applied to questions of justice. It is only for the sake of an unphilosophical Crito, Weiss suggests, that Socrates invents the speech of the Laws.
36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
