Possible Final Paper Topics:
These final paper topics are meant as suggestions. Please feel free to create your own topic though do check with me first so that I can help you define its issues and key terms:
1. Why have some hailed Plato as an early advocate on behalf of improved education and political opportunities for women? Why have some denied that Plato deserves to be regarded as in any sense a feminist, or seriously concerned writh the quality of lives women lead? What is your own view of the relevant criteria to be used in answering this question, and how does Plato fare on what you regard as the relevant criteria?
2. Thrasymachus states that "just is the advantage of the stronger," claiming that this is true for all forms of government. Do you agree with the statement "injustice, when it comes into being on a sufficient scale, is mightier, freer and more masterful than justice... the just is the advantage of the stronger and the unjust what is profitable and advantageous to oneself? Is tyranny as just as democracy?
3. Do you think Plato succeeded in defending justice against the cynical view presented by Glaucon and Adeimantus in the opening pages of Book II, or do you suspect that justice may not be nearly so profitable as Socrates claimed it is? Please be sure to make clear what the views of Glaucon and Adeimantus are here.
4. What was Plato's Theory of Forms? Why did he think that there must be such things as Forms or Ideas? How does Plato make use of the theory of Forms in his proposals for political reform and in his accounts of knowledge,lustice, meaning, and beauty?
5. Are we all naturally inclined to become tyrants? Do the extravagant desires of our society today contain the conditions necessary for the genesis of the tyrannical man? If given a choice, would you lead the life of a rich and powerful tyrant or a poor but just philosopher? Do you agree that a tyrannical man who is given the opportunity to rule-with all the wealth and prestige that comes with ruling-is worse off than a man who lives a tyrannic life in private?
6. The Republic ends by talking about an immortal soul and the afterlife as a final justification for living a just life. How is the myth of Er related to the discussion of imitative arts discussed.