A&HH6577 sp2009
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Teachers College • Columbia University General Course Resources
Course Participants Schedule of Topics
Introduction |
- Robbie McClintock, Instructor
- Office hours @ 334G Horace Mann
Tuesdays 5:30-6:30pm and by appointment
- Office hours @ 334G Horace Mann
What Is The City as Educator About?
The City as Educator offers an historical introduction to humanistic educational thought. To do so, it explores two, very human concepts with which to grasp educational experience — ignorance and formative justice.
People all, here and now, personally and collectively, need the concepts of ignorance and formative justice to make education better serve the wants and opportunities of present life. Our time and our world charge us with developing these concepts and using them in our educative work. But to do that, to develop and to use our concepts of ignorance and formative justice, let us turn away from things familiar, where immediacy jumbles everything up, obscuring the great and the important with the mediocre and the trivial. Let us project ourselves into a world, one distant, strange, and obstinate, one winnowed by the blasts of time, to watch as others formed their concepts of ignorance and formative justice, to see how they used them to struggle against resistant conditions, how through them they sought fulfillment in their lives. Ancient Athens provides a fruitful setting for conceptual study, not as a normative source of Western thought, but as something other than the here and now, bounded and reduced, yet complex and deeply documented, a revealing specimen to put in the Petri dish of thought.
We can begin with tentative, timeless inklings, not to define at the outset, but to prime our attention as we prepare to inquire into ancient experience, at once complicated and foreign.
- With a concept of ignorance, people grasp a radical condition that inheres in all life, especially human life, pulling it into their field of awareness. To live is to be locked in a present, unable to know, to anticipate the future bearing down upon the living instant. Our radical, vital ignorance is this inability to have fore knowledge. Birth throws each person into a world of churning circumstance, naked, inchoate, without skill or culture, a vector of innumerable potentialities, none of which are certainties. People live facing the future, the indeterminate with respect to which they have many possibilities and no dependable knowledge. And even though in the course of life, they acquire all manner of skills, beliefs, opinions, convictions, ideas, and so much more, they still act and suffer in ignorance, never sure how their acquirements will serve them in the moment of actuality, with what results in the flux of vital situations that may unfold as the lot with which life challenges each to deal. Ignorance takes many forms, and all these stand to education as the many kinds of disease stand to medicine.
- Questions of justice arise when persons and peoples must make choices between competing goods. Human action always faces limits. Reasonable expectations about the receipt of benefits far exceed the supply of goods, and some principle of justice must determine who will get what portion of those available and why — a controlling principle of distributive justice guides that allocation. Formative justice arises through a similar problem, a different imperative to choose among too many worthwhile possibilities. Formative justice does not have to do with the distribution of existing, available goods, but with the channeling of feasible effort towards the realization of possibilities, of potentialities. What people can and should become always exceeds their constrained capacities for development, for exerting effective effort to transform what might be into actuality. Facing the future, persons and peoples can pursue multiple possibilities, many more potentialities than they have sufficient time, resources, and energy to fulfill. Hence, they must make choices how to allocate their time, attention, skill, and effort, deciding to pursue particular possibilities, to the neglect of others, as the path to meaningful fulfillment. Persons and peoples shape these commitments according to principles of formative justice. As a conception of equity, distributive justice, regulates political economy, so a conception of fulfillment, of formative justice, directs education and study, human self-formation.
With these inklings, we turn to the ancient Greeks, particularly the Athenians. But why them? In a general way, it is a choice of convenience. Close attention to other peoples in their significant historical junctures would equally provide insight into the themes of ignorance and formative justice. The ancient Greeks are one among many possibilities, but they are a good one, for they have left a relatively rich, deeply textured record of human experience, which scholars have intensively studied.[2] In a way more specific to our intellectual needs as educators, certain characteristics of Greek experience suggest that it may be productive territory to explore with our inklings about ignorance and formative justice in mind. These Greek characteristics attract in the same way that certain geological formations catch the attention of those wishing to drill for oil or natural gas.
- For one, while some religions preached certainties based on the revelation of eternities beyond the flux of time, Greek religion explained instead why mortals would always live finite lives, making innumerable, concrete, uncertain choices, with some at best informed by an oracular wisdom, which "neither speaks out nor conceals, but gives a sign." (Heraclitus, #244)[3]. As the Greeks subjected their religion to enlightenment drives, they transmuted much of it into an awareness of the roles ignorance plays in the vicissitudes of life.
- For another, life in the Greek polis, especially in Athens, put a premium on competitive participation in athletic, artistic, civic, and political activities, and required male citizens to take part as autonomous agents in deciding and implementing civic action, both in war and peace. High stakes in public action, broadly dispersed through the populace, often outweighed acquiring the possession of material goods as a controlling purpose in the lives of Athenian citizens. To be sure, allocating goods, and hence distributive justice, was not immaterial in Athens, but the whole city depended on the collective judgment and action of its citizens. Aware of having to choose soundly and to act effectively, they were engaged participants, highly sensitive to the pursuit of excellence through the fulfillment of meaningful possibilities. These quests made the problems of formative justice particularly salient in their thought and practice.
Our inquiry into ancient Athens will start with historical considerations and then shift to key philosophical reflections by Plato and Aristotle. Our style of inquiry will be introductory, pointing out the paths that might lead one to the horizon of knowledge and exploring some of the reasons why one might chose to follow those paths in a fuller inquiry. With that, the way to start is to begin.
Who Is The City as Educator For?
The City as Educator engages ancient history in order to think creatively about present and future possibilities. Participants in the course will acquire considerable familiarity with the history of classical Athens as a means to better understand their contemporary world. Prior study of the relevant history is not a prerequisite for participating in the inquiry, and it may even prove to be an impediment when someone takes the relevant history to be the whole of the matter. We should aim to study the past as educational theorists, not classical historians. In doing so, we need to respect the past, not subjecting it to normative judgment based on the prejudgments of our present. Past experience, insofar as we can recover it, is unchangeable and impervious to our opinions and actions: we can use it as grist for thought experiments through which we develop intellectual resources for better disclosing and developing our own potentialities.
By learning to interpret the past, we develop our capacities to make judgments in our present about our future prospects. Such an effort is difficult, requiring extended inquiry in a state of suspended judgment. One must neither impose expectations of the present upon the interpretation of what transpired in the past nor in mindless obeisance adopt the norms that may have once been in force among a studied people. The City as Educator neither presupposes that participants need knowledge about the ancients at the outset, nor aims simply to impart the maximum extent of such knowledge through the course of it. Rather than learning about the ancient Athenians, participants should aim to learn with and through them, to learn, not what to do, nor what they should have done, but to study how we might extend our powers to consider, here and now, what it is that we can and should accomplish.
Texts
Participants should purchase the following texts. Other readings will be available online.
- Aristotle. Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens. Stephen Everson, ed. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Rev. student ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Plato. The Republic. G. R. F. Ferrari, ed., Tom Griffith, trans. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Sophocles. Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. David Grene, trans., The Complete Greek Tragedies, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Spring 2009 Meetings
For each week, the syllabus lists three types of readings. First, Discussion Reading: will provide each class its focus. Please try to do justice to it prior to class. Usually these are selections from relevant classical sources, and usually they are substantial but not unmanageable in length and difficulty, although for some weeks they may require more preparation than you will find feasible, in which case read as much as you can with care and it should suffice for class preparation. Next, Supplemental Reading: generally lists one, sometimes several, present-day articles that will prove useful in informing the context for our discussion. If you find it feasible to do some of these readings, they will inform the discussion; if it is not feasible to do them in the weekly sequence of class discussions, there is always the future. Finally, The General Picture: gives a brief blurb about that week's topic, often indicating some of the key scholarly works pertinent to the topic that in the best of all possible worlds one might read. For the most part, these suggestions are beyond the scope of the course and serve as background references that you should not try to consult for class. Nevertheless, in doing the written assignments, you should select the books you will review from these listings.
1 • 1/27: Ignorance & Justice I
Introductory Meeting
- Overall idea of the course.
- The importance of concepts and concept formation (Begriffsbildung).
- The concept of ignorance as the starting point of educational thought.
- The concept of formative justice as the principle informing educative choices.
- A quick look at the schedule, requirements, and course web resources.
- Introduction of participants.
- Discussion of goals and activities.
I. Inventing Athens
At the start of the Archaic age, Athens was not a powerful polis, nor a particularly distinctive one. The poleis were autonomous and contingent. They were autonomous in the sense that whatever their form of government might be, each governed itself from within. The poleis were contingent first because they could easily cease to exist, for wars among them were not infrequent and victors could deal harshly with the vanquished, killing the males and enslaving the women and children. They were also contingent because many sent out new cities, planning and setting a polis up from scratch with settlers drawn from the founding polis. Whether the city was newly founded or long established, leadership within a polis tended to be in the form of oligarchies, representing the interests of aristocratic families, dominant families that controlled land and other sources of well-being. These families competed among themselves to draw the maximum benefits from the resources of their city and its environs. There were expectations, norms, patterns of deference, spheres of influence, laws that were what the powerful said they were, and sometimes a softening, community spirit voiced by those held by custom to be in communion with the gods. Extrapolate back three thousand years from the Godfather trilogy, or the Sopranos, subtracting out the FBI, police, and other organs of the state, and you will have an approximation of the starting point as the Greeks emerged from their Dark Age.
2 • 2/03: Orality & literacy
- Excerpts (Homer, Hesiod, Solon, Xenophanes, etc.) from Michael Gagarin and Paul Woodruff, eds. Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp 3-41, 133- 144, and 151-172. Electronic Reserve.
Supplementary Reading:
- William V. Harris. Ancient Literacy. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989) pp. 45-115. Electronic Reserve.
The General Picture:
During the Bronze Age, until about 1500 BCE, Greece was something of a backwater of the Minoan civilization, which was centered on the island of Crete. From about 1400 to 1100 Mycenean kingships flourished in Greece, with a literate (Linear B) administrative elite and a warrior culture, more or less reflected in Homer's Iliad. The Trojan War that it depicts probably took place circa 1250. Around 1100, the Mycenean centers seem to have imploded from some combination of environmental adversity, internal strife, and invasion (military or migratory)by Dorian tribes. The art of writing was lost and a "dark age" settled over the Greek world for two or three centuries, slowly reawakening around 800. The Greeks, now Dorians, not Minoan/Myceneans, reclaim a place in history, the old rule by kingship gone, replaced by numerous city-states, poleis, aristocratic and oligarchic republics. The Olympic Games began in 776. A period of colonization through the founding of new poleis out to Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, and the Black Sea area flourished, probably occurring more often through accidental settlement by maurauding voyagers than by a process of planned creation of a new polis. Greeks remastered the art of writing with an innovative alphabetic script and the oral poems of Homer and Hesiod were written down, circa 750 and 700. Numerous cultual and political developments characterized this Archaic perid from roughly 800 to 500, or the start of the Persian wars.
Through this period, and into its successor, the Classical (500-330), Athens emerged as a leader in the uses of literacy, the arts, political innovation, and commercial vitality. It took a leading role with Sparta in the Persian wars, rose to great heights, and over-reached in the Peloponnesian Wars, and then continued on as a center of commerce, art, and learning.
A brief narrative such as this, or a longer one, for that matter, glosses over the differences between now and the Athenians of the archaic or classical period. We start with their early written reflections on public life in order to start with an appreciation of distance and difference that we need to bridge in thinking about how they coped with their uncertainties and their life-choices.
Homer Iliad and Odyssey are the central reference points in the study of when, how, and why writing was introduced into Greek culture. During the so-called "dark age," the Greeks did not use writing; sometime between c. 750 to c. 650, writing with a novel alphabetic script was introduced and was put to political, intellectual, and artistic uses. The Iliad and Odyssey probably came into being over an extended period of oral creation and transmission, and then were probably transcribed in the form they come down to us early in the spread of writing among the Greeks. Exact, definitive knowledge of what happened cannot be attained, but one can gain significant insight into early Greek intellectual history from the extensive literature working out hypotheses designed to make sense of a significant transformation that clearly did happen, but about which we have some, tantalizing little, clear evidence.
- Worthwhile works on "the Homeric question" include:
- Bowra, C. M. Tradition and Design in the Iliad. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1930.
- Finley, M. I. The World of Odysseus. Compass Books,. Rev. ed. New York: Viking Press, 1965.
- Kirk, G. S. Homer and the Epic: A Shortened Version of 'the Songs of Homer'. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
- Lord, Albert Bates. The Singer of Tales. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
- Page, Denys Lionel. History and the Homeric Iliad. Sather Classical Lectures, V. 31. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959.
- Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Michigan Monographs in Classical Antiquity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
- Powell, Barry B. Homer. Blackwell Introductions to the Classical World. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2007.
- Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind. Oxford: Blackwell, 1953.
- Webster, Thomas Bertram Lonsdale. From Mycenae to Homer. London: Methuen, 1958.
- Whitman, Cedric Hubbell. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.
- Wolf, F. A., et al. Prolegomena to Homer, 1795. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
- Studies of the introduction of writing include the following:
- Bottéro, Jean, Clarisse Herrenschmidt, and Jean Pierre Vernant. Ancestor of the West: Writing, Reasoning, and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
- Harris, William V. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
- Havelock, Eric Alfred. Preface to Plato. A History of the Greek Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.
- ---. The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences. Princeton Series of Collected Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
- ---, and Jackson P. Hershbell. Communication Arts in the Ancient World. Humanistic Studies in the Communication Arts. New York: Hastings House, 1978.
- Powell, Barry B. Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- ---. Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Thomas, Rosalind. Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Key Themes in Ancient History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- ---. Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens. Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture 18. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
- Ullman, B. L. Ancient Writing and Its Influence. Our Debt to Greece and Rome. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1963.
- Worthington, Ian. Voice into Text: Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece. Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava. Supplementum,. Leiden ; New York: E.J. Brill, 1996.
- Yunis, Harvey. Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
3 • 2/10: Cults & religion
- * Hesiod. Works and Days in Hesiod. Theogony ; and, Works and Days (M. L. West, trans. Oxford World's Classics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 37-61. Electronic Reserve.
Supplementary Reading:
- Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel. Religion in the Ancient Greek City. (Paul Cartledge, trans. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp. 3-45, 80-101.
The General Picture:
Ancient Greek "religion" differed significantly from religion as experienced through Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions. It was more akin to what we would call superstition, although more comprehensive and widely shared, a way of talking and thinking, embedded in civic liturgies and propagated through images and observances. Knowledge, even for the highly learned, about how and why all manner of occurrences took place in the flow of experience was far more circumscribed than the present-day understanding of the world we inhabit, yet experience of the world was just as full as it is today. Confronted with the particulars of lived experience, people generate systems of thought and discourse "as if" what they experience embodies some cause, effect, and meaning or another, a practice that still has high epistemological standing with Hans Vaihinger and more recent constructivist theories. It was not a matter of believing in their gods, so anthropomorphic. The Greeks believed, -- emoted, felt, perceived, and thought with and through their gods.
4 • 2/17: Polis and politics
- Aeschylus. The Persians. S. G. Bernardete, trans. [Electronic Reserve].
- Aristotle. The Constitution of Athens. Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens (Stephen Everson, ed., Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Rev. student ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). pp.211-268.
Supplementary Reading:
- J. Peter Euben. "The Battle of Salamis and the Origins of Political Theory." Political Theory (Vol. 14, No. 3, August 1986, pp. 359-390). JSTOR
The General Picture:
With the polis we enter the historical space of ancient Greek, especially Athenian, experience. We begin to witness people suffering and reflecting on the events of their lived experience. Athens underwent a prolonged course of development into an imperial sea power and a polis governed through complex procedures of democratic participation. Around 620, Dracon, about whom little documentation survives, established a stringent code of laws, written in public space on tablets, a first step towards democratic citizenship. From 595 or so, Solon, a poet and sage exerted influence, instituted reforms broadening political participation and promoted commerce. He won fame as a moral reformer, a voice of moderation and a critic of aristocratic arrogance. Solon went into voluntary exile, lest he over-reach his influence, and he was followed about 560 by Pisitratus, whom Pierre Lévêque characterized as "the good-humored tyrant," who dominated Athens until his death in 528. His tyranny was a time of prosperity, initiating the foundations of the architectural splendor of Athens. The fifty years of Pisitratid rule ironically strengthened the eventual basis for democracy, for the tyranny cultivated ordinary citizens as a counterweight to its aristocratic opponents. His sons followed, pursuing a similar course with less success, until 510.
Cleisthenes then came to the fore instituting during the last years of the sixth century subtle reforms in the governing arrangements of the city, and these, probably by happy accident, strengthened the capacity of Athenian institutions to define and implement common interests in which the whole citizenry shared. These capacities were timely, for the sixth century opened with the looming prospect of conflict with Persian hosts from the east. In the first Persian War, Athens proved its capacity to act decisively and fight well on land with the Battle of Marathon in 490. In the second Persian War, Athenian leadership and courageous acumen, preeminently that of Themistocles, was even more decisive. Challenged in 480 by the overwhelming forces of Xerxes, the Persian King, Athens abandoned its city en masse, marshaled the naval forces of those Greek cities willing to fight. Greatly out-numbered, the Athenians used guile to force a fight, strategy to equalize their forces with those of their opponent, and skill to dominate the narrow waters in which they fought the contest. Salamis broke the will of Xerxes and founded the ensuing greatness of Athens. In 478, to secure against any further Persian challenge, Athens initiated the Delian League as an alliance for joint defense among seafaring, democratically oriented poleis. Through the rest of the fifth century, the Delian League stoked Athenian wealth and power, and sowed its downfall through the Peloponnesian War.
- Finley, M. I.. Politics in the Ancient World. The Wiles Lectures. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
5 • 2/24: The Athenian Imaginary
- Pericles. Funeral Oration. (431) The Peloponnesian War, Book 2:34-47. [Electronic Reserve].
- Lysias. Funeral Speech. (c. 390) Lysias, S. C. Todd, trans., pp. 25-41. [Electronic Reserve].
- Plato. Mexeneus. Paul Ryan, trans. Plato. Complete Works (John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, eds. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Pub., 1997), pp. 950-964. [Electronic Reserve].
- Demosthenes. Funeral Speech. (338). Demosthenes N. W. DeWitt & N. J. DeWitt, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949. Perseus Project
Supplementary Reading:
- Nicole Loraux. The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (New York: Zone Books, 2006) Introduction and Conclusion, pp. 25-42, 407-420. Electronic Reserve.
The General Picture:
Like all polities, Athens was an imagined community, projected by its members to themselves and to their progeny. Within ancient systems for public communication, communities formed their social imaginary in significant part through funeral rituals, which were public, civic occasions. Athens would honor soldiers who died in battle with an important commemorative funeral and a chosen leader would address the citizenry and their families, praising the dead and the city for which they fought. The surviving speeches, and what we know of those that have not survived, show us what the Athenians sought to be in their civic dreams of glory.
6 • 3/03: Thoughtful Dramas
- Sophocles. Antigone (c. 442)
- Sophocles. Oedipus the King (c. 429)
- Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus (c. 406)
Preferred edition: Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone (David Grene, trans., The Complete Greek Tragedies, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991). Read the plays in the order listed above, not the order in the book.
Supplementary Reading:
The General Picture:
7 • 3/10: The Uses of Learning
8 • 3/24: The Crucible of History
- Excerpts from Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War: A New Translation, Backgrounds and Contexts, Interpretations. (Norton Critical Edition. Walter Blanco and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, eds., New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998). Electronic Reserve.
- On the Rise of Athenian Power, (c. 480-432). Book 1:89-118.
- Corcyrean and Corinthian speeches at Athens, 433. Book 1:31-44.
- Corinthian, Athenian, and Spartan speeches at Sparta, 432. Book 1:67-87.
- Athenians debate the fate of Mitylene, 427. Book 3:35-50.
- Dialog between Melians and Athenians, 416. Book 5:84-116.
- Discussion of an alliance between Camarina and Athens, 415. Book 6:75-88.
- Plato, Apology (set in 399)
- Plato, Crito (set in 399)
Supplementary Reading:
- White, James Boyd. When Words Lose Their Meaning : Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) pp. 59-92. [Electronic Reserve]
II. Sublimating Athens
9 • 3/31: Republic, Bk. I & III
- Plato. The Republic. Book I-III:412b.
The Republic (G. R. F. Ferrari, ed. Tom Griffith, trans. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 1-104.
Supplementary Reading:
The General Picture:
Plato has engendered a vast interpretative literature, which is indicative of his pedagogical power. Some of his works, usually described as the early, Socratic dialogs, are dramatically inconclusive, leaving the reader to make up his mind on the question at issue. Others, including the Republic, are internally inconclusive in the sense that they include multiple explicit assertions that are clearly, on the surface of things, inconsistent with each other. These internal inconsistencies force readers to make a methodological choice. A reader can discount them and choose to attribute to Plato one or another consistent view reflected in that part of the text he deems to be indicative of what Plato really thought. This method produces closure suitable for preaching to the reader's choir, but by leaving out a lot it suggests that the particular message found in the work is really rather simple-minded. The alternative method strives for a reading of the text that encompasses the inconsistencies, seeing all the elements of it as intentional and potentially part of a reasoned whole. This method does not lead to closure, for it suggests that Plato tried to address through his work both things he, and his readers, might know, as well as the things he and we should know we do not know. This method leads, not to conviction, but to thoughtful commentary, different readers' thoughtful reflections on how they make sense of the work as a whole. Here are a few of the modern commentaries on Plato and his work, which can be stimulating companions to one's own interpretative reading.
- Annas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato's Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
- Baracchi, Claudia. Of Myth, Life, and War in Plato's Republic. Studies in Continental Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
- Benardete, Seth. Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Benardete comments on the text with uncompromising erudition and insight. His work is not a good companion for a first reading of the Republic, but it is provocative and productive for someone who has begun to believe he has exhausted the possibilities of Plato's text.
- Brisson, Luc. Plato the Myth Maker. Gerard Naddaf, trans. & ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
- Ferrari, G. R. F. The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Friedländer, Paul. Plato. 3 vols. Bollingen Series 59. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
- Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. 6 vols. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
- Havelock, Eric Alfred. Preface to Plato. A History of the Greek Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.
- Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. 2nd ed. 3 vols. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Pappas, Nickolas. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and the Republic. Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003.
- Roochnik, David. Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato's "Republic". Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.
- Rosen, Stanley. Plato's Republic: A Study. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
- Ross, W. D. Plato's Theory of Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951.
- Wallach, John R. The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.
10 • 4/07: Republic, Bk. III & V
- Plato. The Republic. Book III:412b-V:502c.
The Republic (G. R. F. Ferrari, ed. Tom Griffith, trans. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 104-207.
Supplementary Reading:
- Gerard Naddaf, "Introduction," in Brisson, Luc. Plato the Myth Maker. (Gerard Naddaf, trans. & ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) pp. vii-liii. Electronic Reserve
The General Picture:
To present-day readers the way Plato discussed the education of the Guardians and criticized poetry are, contrary to appearances, among the most difficult parts of the Republic. These sections seem obvious; and obviously objectionable; Q.E.D. — Plato is problematic and not worth the trouble. Such reactions are commonplace and difficult to avoid because it is not easy to figure the alternative out. What might Plato have meant other than what obviously he seems to have meant? As scholars have tried to respond to this question, the late 20th-century linkage between the medium and the message has helped to open options for interpretation. Quite possibly for Plato, the medium, poetry, was equivalent to the message, mythos, what people say in the spontaneous exchange of conventionally acceptable speech, and what they therefore thought, when they unreflectively voiced the poetic presence of their ethos. We can hypothesize that living within the mythos was possibly something like living in a thought-world structured by all the brand names, stock opinions, and associated valuations and clichés sloshing over our awareness of the world. But that would be too facile, and much scholarship of the last half century has has aimed to understand the sensibilities and pathologies characteristic the poetic mythos as people in classical Athens inherited it from the recent past and struggled to manage complex realities from within it. Increasingly, interpreters hold that understanding this mythos may be, in the phrase of Eric A. Havelock, an important "preface to Plato." Here many of the studies listed for our 2nd session are significant, especially the following.
- Havelock, Eric Alfred. Preface to Plato. (A History of the Greek Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).
- Detienne, Marcel. The Creation of Mythology. (Margaret Cook, trans., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
- Brisson, Luc. Plato the Myth Maker. (Gerard Naddaf, trans. & ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
11 • 4/14: Republic, Bk. V-VII
- Plato. The Republic. Book V:449a-VII:541b.
The Republic (G. R. F. Ferrari, ed. Tom Griffith, trans. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 144-251.
Supplementary Reading:
The General Picture:
12 • 4/21: Republic, Bk. VIII-X
- Plato. The Republic. Book VIII:543a-X:612d.
The Republic (G. R. F. Ferrari, ed. Tom Griffith, trans. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 252-345.
Supplementary Reading:
The General Picture:
13 • 4/28: Politics, Bk. 1-IV
- Aristotle. Excerpts from Nichomachean Ethics, Book. X:9, and Politics, Books I-IV. Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens (Stephen Everson, ed. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Rev. student ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 119.
Supplementary Reading:
- Adkins, A. W. H. "The Connection between Aristotle's Ethics and Politics." Political Theory 12.1 (1984): 29-49. JSTOR.
14 • 5/05: Politics, Bk. V-VIII
- Politics, Books 1V-VIII. Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens (Stephen Everson, ed. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Rev. student ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 91-207.
Supplementary Reading:
- Wallach, John R. "Contemporary Aristotelianism." Political Theory 20.4 (1992): 613-41. JSTOR
15 • 5/12: Ignorance & Justice II
Requirements and Policies on Grades in the City as Educator
Participants can register for The City as Educator for 3 points of letter-grade course credit. All participants, both auditors and those registered for credit, should prepare the "Discussion Readings" and contribute regularly to the give and take about them in class meetings. In addition, students seeking course credit should submit three thoughtful, well-written papers, due March 10th, April 7th, and April 28th. The first two should each review a book selected from the supplementary bibliographies, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the work as a contribution to knowledge about the core themes of the course. In preparing the reviews, which should not exceed 1,200 words in length, students should meet standards controlling publication in leading scholarly journals, as indicated in the notice to prospective contributors. The third paper, a short, reflective essay not to exceed 2,000 words, should assess how well one of the major commentaries (Guthrie, Friedländer, Jaeger, Rooshnick, Rosen, Taylor, Wallach; Irwin, Miller, Yack, etc.) illuminates the concept of formative justice in treating either Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Politics.
For those registered for credit, the instructor will determine grades in the following manner. At the outset, each student receives a default, B+, grade for the course, which means at Teachers College "Very good. Solid achievement expected of most graduate students." Students can raise that grade to A- or A through standout performance in class discussions and the written assignments. Likewise, lackluster performance in class and the written submissions will lower the default grade. Excessive absence from class meetings or failure to submit the required papers will lead to a failing grade. Students should meet the deadlines for paper submissions: a late paper will be more likely to decrease the default grade and less likely to increase it than would be the case were it submitted on time.
The grade of Incomplete is to be assigned only when the course attendance requirement has been met but, for reasons satisfactory to the instructor, the granting of a final grade has been postponed because certain course assignments are outstanding. If the outstanding assignments are completed within one calendar year from the date of the close of term in which the grade of Incomplete was received and a final grade submitted, the final grade will be recorded on the permanent transcript, replacing the grade of Incomplete, with a transcript notation indicating the date that the grade of Incomplete was replaced by a final grade.
If the outstanding work is not completed within one calendar year from the date of the close of term in which the grade of Incomplete was received, the grade will remain as a permanent Incomplete on the transcript. In such instances, if the course is a required course or part of an approved program of study, students will be required to re-enroll in the course including repayment of all tuition and fee charges for the new registration and satisfactorily complete all course requirements. If the required course is not offered in subsequent terms, the student should speak with the faculty advisor or Program Coordinator about their options for fulfilling the degree requirement. Doctoral students with six or more credits with grades of Incomplete included on their program of study will not be allowed to sit for the certification exam.Notes
- ↑ James Boyd White. When Words Lose their Meaning: Consititutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community. (Chicago: The University of chicago Press, 1984) p. x.
- ↑ In The Greeks and Greek Civilization (Oswyn Murray, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998, pp. 8-10.), Jacob Burckhardt observes nicely how the sinterested non-specialist can engage directly through the sources with the cultural history of the Greeks because those sources are limited in number and unusually accessible to the a reading public.
- ↑ G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and Malcolm Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers : A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. p. 209
- ↑ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Allen W. Wood, ed., Hugh Barr Nisbet, trans., Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Preface, p.23.
Except where