You can book office hours on canvas.

We can also try to do other times.

(Just send me an email.)

So what have we gotten ourselves into?

The word “Philosophy” has meant a lot of different things at different times throughout history.

Originally, from Greek: φιλοσοφία.

Today, lots of people love wisdom.

Most of them are specialized to love a particular kind of wisdom.

Physicists love wisdom about matter and motion

Biologists love wisdom about living things

Psychologists love wisdom about the mind

It's like a continent getting settled.

Slowly, the frontier gives way to the city.

But the frontier is still under the city

When you get down into the foundations of almost any kind of knowledge, you find philosophy.

And not everything is settled yet.

There are still some things that we don't know how to think about as specialists.

We only know how to think about them as general-purpose human beings.

Our topic this semester:

and

Class Mechanics

Attendence

Optional!

Slides and Lectures available online.

If you are not vaccinated against Covid-19, or if you are feeling ill, please think twice before attending

Readings

Readings will be distributed through an online tool called Populus

Populus allows you discuss the readings with your classmates, by adding comments and questions to passages within the text.

Exams

We will have a midterm (March 9th), and a final exam. The format is explained in the syllabus.

Grades

Engagement will be based on

1. Engaging with readings in Populus.
2. Discussion activities in class.
3. Anything else you tell me about!

Questions?

Why this topic?

Personal interest, mostly.

I'm torn.

On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone is actually evil.

I'm not sure evil is real.

On the other hand, the concept of evil seems useful.

Recognition of evil organizes experience.

Resistance to evil directs activity.

Where To Begin?

Ancient Athens, approximately 400 BC

Athens had just lost a decades long war.

A terrible plague that struck during a period of siege had killed 75K-100K citizens, about 1 in 4.

After a period of brutal occupation, a fragile Democracy had been restored.

In a time of great confusion, the Athenians found themselves overrun by people who claimed to have lots of answers, and who would teach you those answers, for a fee: the Sophists.

One Athenian, a former solider, made a habit of questioning some of the more excessive claims made by the Sophists.

This Athenian was named Socrates.

We're going to begin with Socrates, not because he was the first person to love wisdom, but because he's very influential, and may have been the first person to express certain important ideas about good and evil that we will discuss.

Socrates never wrote a book of philosophy, or a bunch of sayings. He just had philosophical conversations with his friends and with the sophists.

Our written records of Socrates' thinking come from his friends, mainly from another philosopher, named Plato.

Plato recorded some of Socrates' conversations, and wrote them as short stories and plays, called Dialogues (or Platonic Dialogues).

The dialogues are usually named after the main person that Socrates is talking to.

We will begin with a dialogue called The Protagoras. The Protagoras records Socrates' conversations with a sophist named Protagoras.

In the part of the Protagoras that we will read, Protagoras has argued that citizens should be trained (through rewards and punishments) to behave courageously and justly.

Socrates disagrees with this. He doubts that you can become good just by being punished when you do the wrong thing. And he doubts that one type of training is appropriate for courage, and another for justice.

A part of that debate:

Why do people do things that are wrong?