Plan and Purpose

This course affords an in-depth study of a moderately long dialogue. We will approach the text and its remarkable range of philosophical, literary, and philological thought from a variety of perspectives in eight weekly meetings. It is an ungraded summer enrichment course, but it is meant to be taken seriously: it presupposes the ability and the willingness to read and grapple with philosophical writing thoughtfully and candidly.

The course will be taught using the Oxford World Classics translation by Robin Waterfield. It is a very readable and contemporary translation, but more to the point, it contains ample notes that will substantially help us untangle some of the problems the text offers.

Students should have read through the dialogue completely at least once before the start of the first class: reading it weekly thereafter is encouraged, and will help develop the kind of familiarity that grows from this kind of careful and intensive reading.

The weekly meetings are listed on the calendar to the left: each date is a link to a separate pages with the materials for that day’s discussion. We will take the weekend of July 4 off (hence there will be no meeting on July 2).