[Pols-l] Fw: PHIL 605 Course Description

[Pickerel, Linda M.]

Forwarding by request of the Philosophy department, RE: PHIL 605
From: Becchina, Nicole Elise <nbecchina at ku.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 5, 2022 1:34 PM
To: Grachek, Suzanne M <sgrachek at ku.edu>; Farmer, Sonia <sfarmer at ku.edu>; Pickerel, Linda M. <lpicke at ku.edu>
Cc: Tuozzo, Thomas M. <ttuozzo at ku.edu>
Subject: PHIL 605 Course Description


Good afternoon,



Please share attached course description for PHIL 605 Philosophy of Plato: Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the City with Prof. Tuozzo next Fall with your department and students.



Thanks,

Nicole Becchina

Administrative Associate

Philosophy Department

University of Kansas


PHIL 605 Philosophy of Plato: Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the City Fall 2022

Prof. T. Tuozzo


TR 2:30-3:45 Robinson Gymnasium Room 201


In this class we will study four dialogues in which Plato considers the relationship between philosophy, politics, and what Plato considers to be philosophy’s chief rival in politics: rhetoric.

Our main focus will be on Plato’s Republic. In the context of a grand argument to prove that a person is always better off being just than being unjust, Plato’s Socrates elaborates positions in almost every major area of philosophy: political philosophy, moral psychology, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of education, and philosophy of art. We will spend approximately six weeks working our way through the dialogue, attempting to articulate and assess the philosophical positions that emerge from the character Socrates’ discussion with his interlocutors.

Before approaching the Republic, we will spend two weeks on an earlier dialogue of Plato’s which deals more narrowly with rhetoric and moral and political philosophy: the Gorgias. In this dialogue Plato’s Socrates is particularly concerned with delineating the difference between philosophy and the philosophical way of life, and what he calls rhetoric and the way of life he associates with it. In so doing Socrates mounts an argument against hedonism, which he takes to be the theory of value that grounds the rhetorical project.

After treating the Republic, we will spend two weeks on the Phaedrus, a dialogue that deals with the twin themes of rhetoric and love (eros). This dialogue gives us a phenomenologically rich description of erotic experience (and its moral dimensions) and at the same time proposes a reformed rhetoric, subordinated to philosophy.

And lastly, we will spend two weeks looking at a late dialogue also concerned with political themes: the Statesman. In this dialogue Plato’s main speaker, the “Eleatic Visitor,” outlines a constitutional order very different from the Republic – after first contrasting it with the myth of an idyllic, pre-political Golden Age. In this new constitutional order, rhetoric has an important role, though one that is still subordinate to philosophical statesmanship.

There will be three 6-8 page (1500-2000 word) papers.

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