Social and Political Philosophy I

Phil 243 Fall 2025

Last update: October, 2025

This course offers an introduction to social and political philosophy through a sustained engagement with classical texts that continue to shape how we think about justice, virtue, responsibility, knowledge, and the good life. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, students learn to read philosophical arguments carefully and to treat philosophy as an active practice—one that challenges assumptions, sharpens judgment, and invites self-reflection. Central questions include: What is justice, and is it worth pursuing? What does it mean to live well? How are virtues cultivated, and how do they relate to happiness, friendship, and civic life?

As the course develops, we examine how philosophical ideals are shaped by power, rhetoric, gender, and historical perspective. Readings from Christine de Pizan introduce a critical feminist voice that both engages and revises the classical tradition, raising questions about whose virtues are recognized, whose voices are heard, and how narratives shape moral and political authority. Later sections of the course turn to responsibility, knowledge, and the natural world, exploring how beliefs are formed, how power can corrupt language and institutions, and how different understandings of nature—especially in Lucretius—affect our views of freedom, necessity, and hope.

Throughout the semester, students are encouraged to see philosophy not as a set of doctrines, but as a way of thinking and living attentively. Emphasis is placed on argument analysis, close reading, writing as a craft, and thoughtful discussion. By the end of the course, students will have developed the skills to reconstruct philosophical arguments, compare competing views, and reflect critically on their own assumptions about justice, knowledge, and what it means to live a life worth living.

Course Schedule (Subject to change)

Week 1: What is philosophical thinking? What are arguments good for? What are good arguments?
- Questions: How can thinking and writing philosophically “polish your mirror,” or your own perspective of the world? In what ways can being contradicted or confused be used as a learning opportunity?
- Readings: Plato, Republic, Bk 1, pp. 1-31

Week 2: Arguments and how to read
- Questions: What is a just person? What constitutes a life well-lived, and what sorts of things should we pursue to achieve it?
- Readings: Plato, Republic, Bk I, pp. 1-31

Week 3: Justice and its worthiness – set of attempts and refutations
- Questions: Is justice profitable? Should we be just when we can be unjust?
- Readings: Plato, Republic, Bk II (first part up to the start of the construction of the kallipolis)

Week 4: The construction of the kallipolis
- Questions: How can we distinguish between justice in the individual and justice in society, or the polis? Which is the more fundamental form of justice?
- Readings: Republic, Bk III, 403d- 417b, pp. 80-93 (skip the first part of Book 3); Republic, Book IV, 419- 427e (pp. 95-102)

Week 5: Virtue and Happiness
- Questions: How do the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice—relate to the tripartite nature of the soul? What kinds of values and virtues should we cultivate in our own lives?
- Readings: Republic, Bk IV, 427d- 445e (pp. 102-121); Plato, Euthyphro (from Five Dialogues)

Week 6: Aristotelean Moral Virtues
- Questions: How does Aristotle define a moral virtue as a mean between two extremes? How can we develop these virtues through deliberate practice and habituation?
- Readings: Aristotle, NE, Bk I, Chs: 1-5, 7-9, 13;
  - NE, Bk II, Chs 1-9 (pp. 23-37)

Week 7: Happiness &Friendship
- Questions: What is the highest human good, according to Aristotle, and how does it relate to happiness (eudaimonia)? In what sense is a life well-lived a happy life? How does friendship contribute to a life well-lived?
- Readings:
  - Aristotle, NE, Bk X, chs 1-7 (pleasures, and happiness as contemplative life) pp. 183-195
  - Aristotle, NE, Bk VIII, Chs 1-3;
  - Optional: NE, Book VI (Intellectual virtues)

Week 8: Where are the women?
- Questions: How does Plato’s vision for women’s roles in the ideal city compare with Christine de Pizan’s arguments about women’s place in society?
- Readings:
  - Plato, Republic, Bk V (selections), pp. 125-131;
  - Christine de Pizan, COL, Part I: 1-3. 8-11, 14-17,27,28 (Discussion between Christine and Lady Reason; The story of Queen Semiramis (15), the Amazons (16-17), Women and learning (27,28) )

Week 9: Virtues and feminism: two different kinds of virtues?
- Questions: Is virtue understood to have a gender, and are women and men considered equally and fairly when facing the attributes of virtues? What are the impediments to developing virtues?
- Readings:
  - Revisit Aristotle, NE, Bk II, Moral Virtues, pp. 23-37;
  - Christine de Pizan, COL, Susanna and the Elders (II.37- philosophy and art- different representations of this famous story in paintings, objectification, pornography, and body representation); Queen Dido: Part I. 46, Part II. 55 (philosophy & history- who gets to tell the history, standpoint epistemology, and why that matters)

Week 10: Responsibility
- Questions: What makes an action voluntary, and how do we determine our responsibility for our choices? What are the tensions between an individual’s personal conscience and their civic duty to the laws of the state?
- Readings:
  - Christine de Pizan, COL, Lucretia’s story II.44, II. 64 (sexual violence, testimonial injustice); Also I will compare it to the same story told in Titus Livius, The History of Rome
  - Plato, Crito (from Five Dialogues);
  - Aristotle, NE, Book III,3.1-3.5.

Week 11: Knowledge – theoretical. Understanding the world and our place in it.
- Questions: How do we form beliefs, and can we grow to change them? How does the story of the cave illustrate the difference between theoretical knowledge and mere opinion?
- Readings:
  - Plato, Republic, Bk. VI (selections which include the line analogy) 504d- 511e;
  - Plato, Republic, Bk. VII (the story of the cave) 514a- 521c
  - Plato, Meno (from Five Dialogues);

Week 12: Rhetoric and the Corrupting of Power
- Questions: What makes language so powerful, and how can it be used to gain and maintain power? How can power corrupt and lead to tyranny? Does tyranny pertain only to individuals?
- Readings:
  - Plato, Republic, Bk. VIII (pp 213-240)
  - Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (Part I chs 9-10, pp. 20-28)- the nature of stereotypes (‘God made women to weep, talk, and spin’) and how to change them

Week 13: Knowledge of the natural world
- Questions: How do the principles of nature—how things come to be and change—affect our moral values? How does understanding our place in the universe shape our ethical outlook?
- Readings:
  - Lucretius, ONT (selections on atomism):
    - First principles: atoms and void – from Book I: ln. 1-79, 147-214, 329-334, 419-481;
    - Atoms and motion – Book II:
      - Constant motion: ln. 62-142,
      - The swerve: ln. 216 – 294
      - Materialism born out of atomism (“Nature is her own mistress”) ln. 866-1104

Week 14: Contingency, necessity, and hope
- Questions: Are we free, or are we subject to the laws of nature? Do we need a source of transcendent moral value in order to do the right thing?
- Readings:
  - Lucretius, ONT.
    - Mind and spirit are parts of the body: Book III, ln 94-176
    - The union and interdependence of soul and body, Book III, ln 323- 349
  - Plato, Apology (first part)

Week 15: Death and a life well-lived
- Questions: What are we most afraid of in life and why, and can we overcome those fears? How does our understanding of death influence our pursuit of a well-lived life?
- Readings:
  - Plato, Apology (the second part);
  - Lucretius, ONT. Fear of death – Book III, ln 830-1094