GRK 388 Plato: The Law of Desire

In this course we shall be reading, both in translation and in the original Greek, that “foundational” work of Western thinking, Plato’s Republic. The sheer intellectual abundance of this work is, of course, well known: in its ten chapters it provides seminal reflections on--among other things—justice, psychology, music, literature, the nature of truth, economics, political science, math, physics, gender, mortality and immortality (to name but a few of its multifarious concerns). And yet, as this course shall argue, the work itself—and in some ways, the entirety of Plato’s literary and philosophic oeuvre—might be understood as structured around a single question: namely, how are we to connect the experience of human desire with the necessity of human community? We shall be devoting one week to each chapter of this great work, and two weeks apiece to Chapters Five, Six and Seven. Beyond the reading of individual chapters, students will be asked to provide, week by week, a detailed commentary on selected passages in the original Greek, and summations of assigned secondary literature. Where possible we shall attempt to relate the arguments of The Republic to relevant passages in other Platonic dialogues (in particular, The Symposium, Gorgias, the Phaedo, and The Laws).