St. Thomas
University
Philosophy 3503 Plato
Dr. Barry Craig
Course Outline
Course Goals
This course is intended to introduce you to a detailed study of selected dialogues of Plato. We will proceed by simply reading a number of the dialogues and then discussing them in class. We will use no secondary sources and focus entirely on understanding the arguments presented in the works themselves.
This will be a challenging course which will engage often difficult material. It will require a genuine commitment by you in terms of reading, reflection upon and active engagement of the texts.
You must attend class faithfully and come prepared to participate actively in our discussions. If you fail in either of these two areas, you will be asked to withdraw from the course.
A major component of this course will be written work. You will be asked to analyse, critique and occasionally synthesize the dialogues studied. This will require repeated readings of the dialogues while taking notes and asking yourself critical questions.
Course Requirements
The course evaluation will consist of the following components:
Attendance & Class
Participation 10%
In Class Assignments 15%
1 essay (1500 words) due Oct. 8th 25%
1 essay (1500 words) due Nov. 19th 25%
Christmas exam (December 13th, 9:00 a.m.) 25%
Text
The dialogues read will be found in the required text:
• Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997)
Contact
At any time you may contact me by phone, e-mail or by appointment in my office:
office: HC 213
phone: 460-0321
email: craig@stu.ca
Dr. Barry Craig
Department of Philosophy