This course explores the meaning and importance of Plato’s towering achievement in immortalizing the thoughts of Socrates in 35 dialogues, which laid the philosophical basis for Western civilization. The dialogues cover ideas about truth, justice, love, beauty, courage, and wisdom.
The course also makes the case for the subtlety with which Plato weaves together the strengths of philosophy and poetry, dialectic and drama, and word and action.
Socrates was driven by a love for truth so great that he suffered death rather than give up his search, and likewise this course offers no easy answers. What it does provide is an introduction to Platonic "meta-education," the art not of what to think but of how to think.