Teaching Plato in Translation

by Susan Gorman, Boston University, Boston, MA.

Original Text © 2004. Susan Gorman.

Teaching Plato's texts can be intimidating. Finding ways to pique students' interest in the texts can be difficult. However, discussing Plato intelligently with students who understand the material can be so much fun. In coming up with my teaching materials for the Apology, the Symposium, the Phaedo and the Republic, I have not summarized the texts, but only commented upon specific passages. In preparing this presentation, I assume some familiarity with Plato's dialogues. Instead of summarizing, I have tried to boil down the themes as much as possible. I have also created questions and a writing assignment designed to make students think further about what they have read.

Apology

• Eloquence and the Introduction
• Emotion and Reason as Rhetorical Strategies: Debate and Language
• Justice
• Public vs. Private

Symposium

• What Is A Dialectic
• The Mediator
• Love
• Diotima
• Theater and Masking

Phaedo

• Argumentation
• Narrative Frame and Credibility
• Misology
• The Underworld

Republic

• What is the Function of Book One?
• What Is the Function of Book Two?
• What Is the Point of Book Three?
• What Methods of Argumentation are Used?
• Education
• The Philosopher-Kings
• Allegory of the Cave
• The Dialectic
• Is This Asking the Impossible?
• The Evolution of Government and their Analogous Soul-Types
• The Myth of Er

Writing Assignment or More Discussion Questions Joining All the Texts