Write a 5-6 page paper on one of the following topics.  Students also taking PHIL 100 cannot write on the same topic for the second paper in both classes.  If none of these topics suits you, you are welcome to write on a topic of your own choosing -- provided that you okay your topic with me well in advance.  The paper is due in class on Monday, November 22.  If necessary and with suitable explanation, you can get an extension on the paper.  But the extension must be arranged in advance of the due date.  Otherwise, late papers will be penalized as described on the Course Description.  Before starting, consult the Writing Guidelines handout on the course website.  Students are welcome to discuss their topics and/or a draft with me.

1. The Crito seems to many people to defend a rather authoritarian account of political obligation, according to which disobedience is never or rarely permissible.  Such an account seems to be incompatible with Socrates's nonauthoritarian position in the Apology.  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?

2. In Plato's Protagoras Socrates denies the possibility of akrasisa or weakness of will.  Why is it important for Socrates to reject the possibility of akrasia?  What is its tole in the dialogue and Socratic ethics?  Reconstruct and assess one of Socrates's arguments for this surprising claim.

3. In the Gorgias Socrates offers a eudaimonist defense of justice against Callicles by criticizing Calliclean assumptions about happiness.  Explain and assess Callicles's challenge to justice and Socrates's reply.  What role does the leaky jar argument (493b-495a) play in this reply?  Does Socrates succeed equally well in criticizing Calliclean happiness and defending his own claim that justice is necessary and sufficient for hapiness?

4. In Republic ii Glaucon and Adeimantus claim to be dissatisfied with Socrates's reply to Thrasymachus and restate his challenge.  What is their challenge, and what do they assume about justice?  How, if at all, do they modify Thrasymachus's position, and what significance does their challenge have for Socratic and Platonic ethics?

5. Explain Plato's account of the division of the soul in book iv of the Republic.  What does the tri-partite division of the soul have to do with Plato's account of the virtues?  And how do these issues affect the relation between Plato and Socrates on the nature of the virtues and the possibility of akrasia?

6. In "The Individual as Object of Love" Vlastos claims that genuine love requires the lover to be concerned for the beloved's own sake.  This requirement, he thinks, is incompatible both with Socrates's egoistic account of love in the Lysis and with Plato's (allegedly) impersonal account of love in the Symposium and Phaedrus.  Is Vlastos right in his criticisms of Socrates and/or Plato?

7. The ideal state in the Republic is authoritarian and likely to offend democratic and liberal sensibilities.  In what ways is Plato's political theory authoritarian, what is Plato's justification of authoritarian rule, and what are the most serious complaints about it?

8. In Nicomachean Ethics bk. i, ch. 7 Aristotle appeals to the human function to argue that eudaimonia must be a life of activity expressing reason.  How does he determine what the human function is, and how, if at all, is his metaphysical biology relevant here?  Is it good for humans to perform the human function?

9. Many commentators see a conflict between the strict intellectualist conception of eudaimonia in NE x, 7-8 and the comprehensive conception in the rest of NE and, especially, NE i.  Explain these two conceptions and their apparent incompatibility.  What are Aristotle's reasons for his apparently intellectualist claims?  Do you see any way of reconciling his various claims about eudaimonia?

10. Some of Aristotle's virtues -- in particular, justice -- are other-regarding moral virtues.  But he also believes that the virtues are part of, and so contribute to, the agent's own happiness or eudaimonia.  How can Aristotle maintain both claims?  Are moral virtues eudaimonic virtues?  How, if at all, does his discussion of friendship help here?

11. In the Politics Aristotle claims that active participation in a political community of equals is a condition or part of complete happiness, yet he also restricts the scope of citizenship in ways that reflect criticisms of democracy.  Explain these two tendencies in Aristotle's political thought and assess whether they are in tension.  If so, how would he best revise his various claims?