Humanities 110

Paper Topics | Fall 2009 | Paper 4

Due Saturday, December 5, 5 p.m., in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Maximum Length 1500 words

1. Compare how Plato's Republic and Euripides' Bacchae address, and attempt to resolve, the presence of the irrational in collective life.

2. Trace and compare the way the body is used to articulate the body politic in the Republic and one of the following three sources: Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' Clouds and archaic and/or classical statuary.

3. Analyze the formal structure and rhetorical devices of Socrates' speech in the Apology. Does Socratic rhetoric, as represented here by Plato, answer the charges lodged against persuasive speech at the outset of the Apology?

4. In the Republic Book VI, 507a-509c, Socrates compares the form of the good to the sun. What is the basis of this comparison? How does it advance Socrates' argument?

5. In Republic Book II, 367d, Adeimantus challenges Socrates to praise justice as a good in itself, explaining how justice "because of its very self, benefit[s] its possessor" while "injustice harm[s] him." Socrates responds by examining the nature of vice and virtue in the individual through an examination of vice and virtue in the city, and concludes in 577b-588a with three arguments that the just man is the most happy man. Discuss what you take to be the most persuasive of these three arguments.

6. In Republic Book IV, 427c-444e, Socrates uses his analogy between the city and the soul to define a just individual. Does Socrates convince you that an individual is just in the same way as a city is just?

7. In consultation with your instructor, devise a topic of your own.

In addition to consulting with your conference leader, you can get help with all stages of the writing process from peer tutors at the Writing Center. You can find links to the Writing Center hours on the Drop-in Tutoring Schedule website. Extra tutoring help will be available in the week leading up to paper due dates.