A&HH4078

Technology and education in Western history

Or, a teach-out on the Genealogy of educational thought in ancient Greece

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• Robbie McClintock, Instructor
  • Office hours @ 334G Horace Mann
    Thursdays 4:00-6:30pm and by appointment

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=== Meeting 7  •  March 9 — Socrates 1 — Portraits: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato ===

• Aristophanes. Clouds.   •  Internet Classics Archive   •  Perseus Project.

• Xenophon. Apology.   •  Marchant, trans., Perseus Project.

• Plato. Apology.   •  Lamb, trans., Perseus Project

• J. Peter Euben. Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Chapter II: Corrupting Socrates, pp. 32-73.  •   Electronic Reserve.

• Ostwald, M. "Athens as a Cultural Centre." The Fifth Century B.C.. Eds. D. M. Lewis, John Boardman, J. K. Davies and M. Ostwald. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Cambridge Histories Online.

• We will be reading several of Plato dialogues closely and the question of which translations to choose will come up. You will find many available and choosing among them can make you feel like a teenager again, trying to decide what college to attend. As the student will have great difficulty fully exhausting the educative possibilities of the college she attends, so the reader will find it hard to engage all the interpretive possibilities one or another translation offers. With a group reading challenging texts together, having several translations in use helps stimulate reflection about the possible meaning of key sections. Avoid editions that do not include the Stephanus page numbering, for those make it possible for a group using different translations to easily locate cited passages.

• Benjamin Jowett's translations seem ubiquitous, appearing on various web sites and in most any used bookstores — they won't hurt, but you can work from Loeb Classical Library translations online through the Perseus Project and find lots of alternatives to Jowett in bookstores.

• Of the two comprehensive collections, Plato, Complete Works, John M. Cooper, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997) outranks Plato, The Collected Dialogues, Hamilton and Cairns, eds., Bollingen Series, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), although either will more than suffice for the needs of most readers. Complete Works has slightly more recent translations and includes several additional dialogues, the authenticity of which is contested. Both are good buys with the Collected Dialogues being less expensive owing to steeper discounts online.