Welcome to Unit 1! This is the first part of Lecture 3 in our course, which focuses on Plato’s understanding of the good life. Our study begins with Callicles’ challenge to the philosophical life in Plato’s Gorgias. Topics include Callicles’ view of “natural justice” and his critique of philosophy, Callicles’ endorsement of a hedonistic conception of the good life, and the difference that Plato draws implicitly between the disharmoniousness of the rhetorical life and the harmoniousness of the philosophical life.
In this second part of Lecture 3, we discuss Plato’s Republic. After an overview of the main topic and general argument of the dialogue, we begin in Book 2 of the text with Glaucon’s challenge to Socrates’ view of justice as an intrinsic good. We move next to a discussion of the tripartite understanding of human psychology that Plato develops in Book 4, and his conception of the just life as a life of internal balance and psychological harmony.
This first part of Lecture 4 picks up from where we left off in the last lecture by examining more closely Plato’s identification of the good life as the just life. We consider here in particular the role of reason in the good life and the difference that Plato draws in the Republic between knowledge and mere belief or opinion.
This second part of Lecture 4 concludes Unit 1 and our study of Plato’s approach to the good life in the Republic, focusing on Book 7 of the dialogue. In this video we’re introduced to Plato’s theory of forms. We also consider his views on the transformative power of education in his famous allegory of the cave.
