Plan and Purpose

Like the previously offered courses in this series, this class affords an in-depth study of a single relatively short dialogue. We will approach the text from different angles through eight weekly meetings. This 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 prescribed text is the translation by G. M. A. Grube and John M. Cooper, but other translations are acceptable. Greek students who contact Dr. Bruce McMenomy can arrange to cover the dialogue in Greek on the side. It is not very long, but not exceedingly short either: thirty-one Stephanus pages. Anyone who has completed Greek III with Scholars Online or its equivalent should be able to handle it, though the sheer volume of the text could prove daunting. The text is freely available at the Perseus Project website or can be acquired elsewhere.

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 week of July 4 off (hence there will be no meeting on July 3).