Your first paper should be a short paper, approximately 5-6 pages.  It is due on Friday, October 22.  Let me know in advance if you will have a problem with this deadline.  I list here several possible topics.  You are free to write on any of them.  You are also free to write on a topic of your choosing -- provided that you okay your topic with me in advance.  Feel free to consult with me before writing your paper.

1. The Euhtyphro problem.  At one point in Plato's Euthyphro Euthyphro defines piety as what all the gods love (9d).  What does Socrates think is wrong with this definition, and why does he think this?  What, if anything, does this show about whether morality requires a religious foundation?  Explain.

2. The Cognitive Conception of Courage.  In Plato's Laches Socrates describes some surprising implications of a cognitive conception of courage.  Explain this conception of courage and its apparent implications.  Should we attribute this conception of courage to Socrates?  Why or why not?

3. Virtue and Happiness.  Explain why there is a potential problem reconciling Socrates's eudaimonism with the recognition of other-regarding virtues, such as justice.  How might his arguments about the relationship between wisdom and happiness in the Euthydemus (279a-281e) help address this problem?  Do these arguments resolve the problem?  Why or why not?

4. Socratic Ignorance.  How, if at all, are we to square Socrates's professions of ignorance, his claim that the Oracle at Delphi respresents him as the wisest, his many confident assertions of moral opinion, and his evident philosophical superiority to his interlocutors?  Must we regard his professions of ignorance as ironic or insincere?  How might our answer be affected by considering Socrates's criteria for knowledge.  (Here one could compare Vlastos's "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge" and Irwin's review of Vlastos's book in the London Review of Books.)

5. Socratic Intellectualism.  In the Euthyphro and the Laches Socrates appears to endorse an intellectualist conception of virtue.  (a) To be virtuous, one must know what virtue is; (b) to know what virtue is, one must know the form of the virtue; and (c) if one knows the form of a virtue, one must be able to articulate it.  Especially when one comes to understand the standards that Socrates applies to moral definitions, it becomes easier to appreciate why he is skeptical that his interlocutors are virtuous or able to teach virtue.  Is Socrates right to embrace intellectualism?  Could there be inarticulate knowledge or teaching by example?

6. The Craft Analogy.  At many points in the Socratic dialogues, Socrates compares virtue with crafts and draws conclusions about virtue and moral knowledge from claims about crafts and craft knowledge.  What substantive or methodological conclusions does Socrates draw from the craft analogy?  Focusing on some of these conclusions, ask whether they do follow from the craft analogy and whether we should accept this aspect of the craft analogy.  (In this connection, you might want to consider the debate in the last part of the Charmides between Socrates and Critias about ordinary crafts and the superordinate craft of temperance.)

7. Eristic. In Plato's Apology we learn that Socrates was keen to distinguish himself from the sophists.  In the Euthydemus Socrates confronts a form of sophistry that employs eristic.  Socrates wants to distinguish his own use of the elenchus from the sophistic use of eristic.  What is the difference between the two methods?  How does he think that eristic undermines sophistic professions to teach virtue?

8. The Crito seems to many people to defend a rather authoritarian account of political obligation (according to which disobedience is never or rarely permitted) and so to be inconsistent with Socrates's nonauthoritarian position in the Apology (32a-d).  What is the basis for this reading of the Crito and for the worry about Socrates's consistency?  Is this the right reading of the Crito's account of political obligation?  What grounds for political obligation does Socrates recognize in the Crito, and what do they imply about the scope and content of political obligation?

9. In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates denies the possibility of weakness of the will (akrasia).  Why is it important for Socrates to reject the possibility of akrasia?  Reconstruct and assess one of Socrates's arguments for this surprising claim.