Reed College
Reed College

Humanities 110

Introduction to the Humanities

Paper Topics | Spring 2016 | Paper 1

Due Saturday, February 20th, by 5 p.m., in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Length: 6-8 pages (1500-2000 words)

Choose one of the following questions:

  1. In the Apology the character Socrates speaks on rhetoric but also employs rhetoric in his defense. Medea likewise employs rhetoric while speaking about it as a tactic. It's not clear that Medea's use of rhetoric is only deceitful or that Socrates's use is only or purely honest. Compare their rhetorical tactics and the situations in which they come to employ those tactics. Does one show rhetoric used in a purer form? If so, how? Or do they both abuse rhetoric? Consider in your response their different relationships to citizenship and how that impacts the kinds of speech available to them.

  2. Drawing on Socrates' objections to Euthyphro's shifting accounts of piety, explain what Socrates seeks in a philosophical account. For Socrates, what would a proper philosophical definition of piety look like, and what conditions would it have to meet? How does Socrates see the relationship between philosophical analysis and action? Do you agree with his suggestion that possessing an adequate philosophical account is a precondition of ethically serious conduct, like the prosecution of wrongdoers? If it is not such a precondition, doesn't ethical conduct simply devolve into an expression of individual preference and bias?

  3. In the Apology, Socrates dismisses certain characterizations of his teaching by Aristophanes in The Clouds. Suppose that Socrates did not receive payment, did not teach atheism, and did not teach students how to make the weaker argument the stronger. Does anything remain of the critique of Socrates? How might someone like Aristophanes argue, even in light of these facts, that Socrates should be exiled?

  4. What sort of censorship does Plato advocate in the Republic, and why? Make your argument by considering whether the Republic itself would be censored in the kallipolis.

  5. Compare Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics and Plato in the Republic on the place of pleasure in the best life. Focus your analysis on two or three specific passages.

  6. Write your own essay topic. If you choose this option, it is necessary to have your conference leader approve your topic before you start working on it.