Tagged: Plato

Philosophy as civic education in Brazil

February 8, 2012 at 1:32 pm

Erin McDonagh (Core ’08, CAS ’10), a member of the EnCore steering committee, writes: In this article by Carlos Fraenkel of Boston Review, we learn that Brazil’s public education policy has surprising stipulation: According to a 2008 law, students are required to study philosophy for three years in high school. The law is a political […]

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Six Quotes: Hall on Plato and Math

November 29, 2011 at 11:54 am

“I went back to all the advice I’ve been given about talking to a big group, and they said I have to tell a joke. I don’t know many jokes and all the ones I do know are math jokes. [. . . ] That was a joke.” “Math trains you to see what is […]

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Six Quotes: Fried on Plato

November 22, 2011 at 3:20 pm

“Socrates is proposing radical censorship so the young receive the right message from a very young age.” “The best soul will be ruled by reason or calculation. Justice is when each part of the soul — calculating, spiritedness, and desire — is minding its own business.” “Can you know about politics in the same way […]

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Six Quotes: Roochnik on Plato

November 15, 2011 at 12:20 pm

“Is” is the simplest word in the English language and yet it is the hardest to understand in The Republic. Intelligible reality, what we think with our minds, is more real than the individual instances we attribute to our reality. What is clear about American politics, whether you are Democrat or Republican, is that knowledge […]

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Ralston on literature and anonymity

July 8, 2011 at 10:44 am

The greatest of the world’s literature is strangely anonymous. We learn from their writing nothing of the lives of Homer or Shakespeare. Even Dante is only an apparent exception to this rule. The actual circumstance, the personal detail of his life, is present in the Divine Comedy in solution. It can be precipitated only by […]

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Analects of the Core: Plato on musical innovation

April 14, 2011 at 12:55 pm

The newest song which the singers have, they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new songs, but a new kind of song; and this ought not to be praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought […]

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Analects of the Core: Plato on democracy

December 7, 2010 at 1:59 pm

Democracy…is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. – Plato. Today’s analect, suggested by Sarah Cole (Core ’10, CAS ’12), addresses democracy, as does today’s panel discussion in CC101

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Analects of the Core: Plato on the idea of good

November 22, 2010 at 6:07 pm

Liken the domain revealed through sight to the prison home, and the light of the fire in it to the sun’s power; and, in applying the going up and the seeing of what’s above to the soul’s journey up to the intelligible place… A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true.  At all […]

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