Paper on Plato’s Republic

Write an essay of 8 double-spaced pages, set in 12-point Times New Roman, addressing one of the following topics. Your essay must contain a clearly identifiable argument that explicitly answers all parts of one of these questions and is supported by plausible interpretation of lots of duly cited evidence from the text. The most important part of your argument should be stated concisely and compellingly in the last sentence of your first paragraph. 
 
Identify which topic you’re addressing by retyping the question, single-spaced in 10-point font, before the first paragraph of your paper.
 
Write an essay of eight to ten pages addressing one of the following topics. Your essay must contain a clearly identifiable argument that explicitly answers one of these questions and is supported by plausible interpretation of lots and lots of evidence from the text. Re-type the entire prompt in single-space text before the first paragraph of your paper. Do not start your essay with a dictionary definition
 
Late papers cannot be accepted. Failure to submit the final will result in failing the course.
 
 
 
 

Every account of liberation is told from some point of view. Aristotle’s notion of freedom revolves around an active citizen. The inactive so-called “citizens” who refuse to deliberate are the only ones who are ‘justly’ slaves, from Aristotle’s point of view, and therefore they contribute to the polis with their work. Exodus details a long process of liberation told from the point of view of the enslaved, who need to be freed not only from work, but from enslavement to desires that contributed to their enslavement. What crucial insights does each of these perspectives offer on liberation? What does each perspective leave out? What synthesis would you offer as a more complete picture of liberation?

2. In the story of Exodus, in Plato’s Republic, and in Aristotle’s Politics, we see concerns about attachment to material possessions alongside the suggestion that radical or revolutionary change is impossible without generational change and/or leaving the corrupted city, at least for a time. Why? Which of these concerns (attacks on materialism, generational change, relocation) are necessary parts of radical or revolutionary change, and which are contingent ones? What does the discussion of anti-materialism, relocation, and generational change as treated in these texts suggest more broadly about radical politics? (Write on Exodus and either Republic or Politics.)

3. At critical junctures Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero seem to suggest that it is only by means of a dream (or prayer) that certain political truths or kritiks can be represented. Putting two of these thinkers’ work into conversation, analyze the dream/prayer trope and its importance for political imagination. What can be achieved only in speaking of dreams or prayers, and what danger does turning to dreams or prayers present for political philosophizing? How does the space of the dream/prayer differ most radically from reasoning and/or dialogue, and what does this suggest about the limits of dialogue and reason for political theorizing?

4. In the Politics, Aristotle seems to want to distinguish between the good citizen on the one hand, and “the one” [anēr] who desires war, rules over his wife like a king or a master, and dreams of colonizing Asia. Explore one of the following examples as a way of considering the sufficiency or promise of Aristotle’s effort to draw this distinction: Nicias and Alcibiades in the Peloponnesian War, Scipio and Africanus in On the Commonwealth, Abraham in the Five Books of Moses.
 
5. In this course we have focused on the paradoxical and ambiguous status that the figure of “women” has throughout Ancient Political Thought. We explored how this ambiguity reveals something important about what it means to be human from the perspective of politics; in other words, these figures of women, and not the men against whom they are figured, best reveal what political freedom means for justice, citizenship, and/or philosophy. Draw on two of the three most conspicuous accounts we have seen of this phenomenon (in Republic, the Politics, and the Five Books of Moses) to explore which of these most promisingly portrays this possibility, and why it is the most promising or helpful elucidation of this phenomenon.