Dec 26, 2024  
2019-2020 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2019-2020 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

PHL 2310 - Socrates and the Examined Life

Credits: 4
In this course, students will focus on the ethical issues, provocations, and example of the Athenian philosopher Socrates (469-399 BCE). Though Socrates himself wrote nothing-everything we know about him was recorded by others-his inquiries into virtue, justice, and piety, his relentless cross-examination of others, and his insistence that “the unexamined life is not worth living” have set the questions and shaped the methods of a large part of ethical thinking ever since. Students will encounter Socrates primarily through a series of philosophical dialogues by his pupil Plato. But to develop a fuller-and more critical-understanding, students will also read a perceptive ancient comic lampoon of Socratic moral instruction along with key later responses to the enigmatic Socrates and his teachings.  Area Requirement for Philosophy:  Ethics, History
Prerequisite(s): PHL 1000   or PHL 1100  or PHL 1200  
Fulfills: E in LS Core