Coursera Course- Reason and Persuasion: Thinking Through Three Dialogues By Plato
CharlasPhilosophy and Theory
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1Settings
Is anyone else taking this? It just started today, so anyone can still join.
Coursera is a website that offers free college courses that last anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months. Each week college professors post lecture videos for students to watch, and depending on the course there can be quizzes, readings, or writing assignments to submit. If you've kept up with the deadlines and gotten above a certain grade, at the end of the course you get a certificate.
The Plato course in specific is estimated to take 3-5 hours a week, and will last 8 weeks. It will cover Euthyphro, Meno, book one of the Republic, and some writings by people influenced by Plato. The university is the National University of Singapore.
I'm really hoping I'll learn something from the course. When I studied Plato's dialogues in Western Humanities I hated Plato. Everything he wrote just seemed so daft to me. His premises were false and the structure of his arguments flawed. Things depended on views about deities I did not share, and false dichotomies were rampant.
Yet Plato is one of the founders of Western thought, so the happiest conclusion for me is that I was missing something. I want to appreciate Plato.
Coursera is a website that offers free college courses that last anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months. Each week college professors post lecture videos for students to watch, and depending on the course there can be quizzes, readings, or writing assignments to submit. If you've kept up with the deadlines and gotten above a certain grade, at the end of the course you get a certificate.
The Plato course in specific is estimated to take 3-5 hours a week, and will last 8 weeks. It will cover Euthyphro, Meno, book one of the Republic, and some writings by people influenced by Plato. The university is the National University of Singapore.
I'm really hoping I'll learn something from the course. When I studied Plato's dialogues in Western Humanities I hated Plato. Everything he wrote just seemed so daft to me. His premises were false and the structure of his arguments flawed. Things depended on views about deities I did not share, and false dichotomies were rampant.
Yet Plato is one of the founders of Western thought, so the happiest conclusion for me is that I was missing something. I want to appreciate Plato.
2elenchus
Can't participate in the course but I'm curious to read of your experience. I begin with an appreciation for Plato, so there's a difference. But with most learning, it really matters to what purpose the student absorbs the material, I expect you'll get something better from it this time 'round, though you may remain a critic.
3agorelik
Well, yes, you're missing something. First, you need to actually read the dialogues - from the start. That descriptive part that you totally ignored at the beginning, that indicates how the dialogue is coming to be? That tells you something - that it's not a treatise. It's not an essay. It's a play, it's a fiction. This was intentional by Plato (and by the others of Socrates' students - Xenophon and Aeschines of Sphettus who also wrote dialogues primarily).
So.......
"His premises were false and the structure of his arguments flawed."
Plato never himself appears in Plato's Socratic dialogues, so you haven't been reading the actual text but what you assumed to be the text. A Socrates appears, but one should not assume that Plato necessarily agrees with the Socrates character who appears in his plays. (I'm using Socrates here with the knowledge that Plato uses other speakers at times, such as the Athenian Stranger.)
Then you need to consider why Socrates' interlocutors can't undercover what you think are obviously false premises and flawed arguments. Socrates' ultimate goal is not to perform some sort of information dump, but move each interlocutor (if possible) through dialectic to a more philosophic life, not to force them to agree to particular ideas.
"Things depended on views about deities I did not share"
Er, since the Athenians murdered Socrates for introducing new gods into the city.......... do you agree that Socrates is a threat?
Anyway, to be more serious, Socrates starts from what his interlocutor believes or believes he knows. If the interlocutor is conventionally pious, Socrates will take that into account in his dialectic. If his interlocutor is a conventional atheist, Socrates will take that into account.
So.......
"His premises were false and the structure of his arguments flawed."
Plato never himself appears in Plato's Socratic dialogues, so you haven't been reading the actual text but what you assumed to be the text. A Socrates appears, but one should not assume that Plato necessarily agrees with the Socrates character who appears in his plays. (I'm using Socrates here with the knowledge that Plato uses other speakers at times, such as the Athenian Stranger.)
Then you need to consider why Socrates' interlocutors can't undercover what you think are obviously false premises and flawed arguments. Socrates' ultimate goal is not to perform some sort of information dump, but move each interlocutor (if possible) through dialectic to a more philosophic life, not to force them to agree to particular ideas.
"Things depended on views about deities I did not share"
Er, since the Athenians murdered Socrates for introducing new gods into the city.......... do you agree that Socrates is a threat?
Anyway, to be more serious, Socrates starts from what his interlocutor believes or believes he knows. If the interlocutor is conventionally pious, Socrates will take that into account in his dialectic. If his interlocutor is a conventional atheist, Socrates will take that into account.
4nathanielcampbell
>1 Settings:: "Things depended on views about deities I did not share"
As you read through the Euthyphro, you'll see that Socrates didn't share those views, either.
As you read through the Euthyphro, you'll see that Socrates didn't share those views, either.
5Settings
Agorelik, nathaniel, thanks for your time, but those things are not what I'm missing, my humanities class covered them. I really don't want to go into my feelings towards Plato, my point in making this thread was to let people know about the course.
I've gone through two weeks of lectures and I'm really enjoying the class. The professor is a comedian and while his jokes do make the lectures longer, they also make them fun to listen to. I suspect if anyone is already an expert in ancient Greece or Plato they won't get much out of the course, but it is in depth enough for me.
This is the third course I've taken in the last month that discusses moral circles. Everyone seems to have read Singer's book.
I've gone through two weeks of lectures and I'm really enjoying the class. The professor is a comedian and while his jokes do make the lectures longer, they also make them fun to listen to. I suspect if anyone is already an expert in ancient Greece or Plato they won't get much out of the course, but it is in depth enough for me.
This is the third course I've taken in the last month that discusses moral circles. Everyone seems to have read Singer's book.
6leialoha
#3, #4
Well, that was several hoursʻ reading in a few paragraphs. If only the text books one is given to read were as clear about how not to fall into traps rhetorical (in a good, i.e. necessary sense) and thinking. It took me decades to understand what he said and what he meant about Poetry, and I was shocked. Most English Lit students and teachers never get a second chance and are never troubled by it. Iʻve been re-reading and re-reading W.H. Audenʻs essay "The Greeks and Us" and increasingly find his views flawed; but he, and E.M. Forster I believe "think Greek-like." I wrote a response for a Topic "Aspects of the Novel" and tried to explain what thinking Greek-like means by describing a talk Forster gave on the novel. I canʻt do the same thing for Auden, who may not be Socratic or Platonic (Iʻm never sure what the difference is, exactly), or Aristophanic or whatever. But I do mean he treats words with infinite care and makes distinctions most never think to but also cuts through issues with such clarity itʻs always a surprise (to me) that he cares so much he is pure of emotional conviction because? perhaps as he says the Greeks did not think reason separate from will and emotion was not a part of it (I suppose this last means emotional intelligence is?). Well,
the first question always was (to me): what did his Ideas really mean -- can one leave aside Aristotle as contrast and say concretely? Only Modern Science seems on a level to understand (or not, i.e. quantum more than relativity now) and explain e.g. concepts like the Higgs Boson . . and even as Neil de Grasse Tyson says of String Theory ta dum . . .theyʻre well "statistics," nothing that is
actual or even propositionally real. Perhaps the IDEAS can be addressed from the concrete/nonconcrete of Modern Science? That is, I think the disciplines are no longer discrete, the distinctions made need new distinctions, apart from Lit. students like me needing to learn more. Iʻll never read Plato again. Besides, Jowettʻs translation was something of an oddity, one heard.
Well, that was several hoursʻ reading in a few paragraphs. If only the text books one is given to read were as clear about how not to fall into traps rhetorical (in a good, i.e. necessary sense) and thinking. It took me decades to understand what he said and what he meant about Poetry, and I was shocked. Most English Lit students and teachers never get a second chance and are never troubled by it. Iʻve been re-reading and re-reading W.H. Audenʻs essay "The Greeks and Us" and increasingly find his views flawed; but he, and E.M. Forster I believe "think Greek-like." I wrote a response for a Topic "Aspects of the Novel" and tried to explain what thinking Greek-like means by describing a talk Forster gave on the novel. I canʻt do the same thing for Auden, who may not be Socratic or Platonic (Iʻm never sure what the difference is, exactly), or Aristophanic or whatever. But I do mean he treats words with infinite care and makes distinctions most never think to but also cuts through issues with such clarity itʻs always a surprise (to me) that he cares so much he is pure of emotional conviction because? perhaps as he says the Greeks did not think reason separate from will and emotion was not a part of it (I suppose this last means emotional intelligence is?). Well,
the first question always was (to me): what did his Ideas really mean -- can one leave aside Aristotle as contrast and say concretely? Only Modern Science seems on a level to understand (or not, i.e. quantum more than relativity now) and explain e.g. concepts like the Higgs Boson . . and even as Neil de Grasse Tyson says of String Theory ta dum . . .theyʻre well "statistics," nothing that is
actual or even propositionally real. Perhaps the IDEAS can be addressed from the concrete/nonconcrete of Modern Science? That is, I think the disciplines are no longer discrete, the distinctions made need new distinctions, apart from Lit. students like me needing to learn more. Iʻll never read Plato again. Besides, Jowettʻs translation was something of an oddity, one heard.
