Essay One: Beginning to Philosophize

Richard Schumaker

Please respond to one and one only of the following questions in a carefully written essay of 3-6 pages.  

Your essay should have a formal introduction, body, and conclusion.  

Before writing the paper,  you should read Plato’s Cave, The Apology, The Symposium, and view our class videos.  Also, search the Web to see many graphic versions of the Cave.

Please be sure to use a cover sheet that has an image and a title that reflect the thesis of your paper.

In the introduction to your essay, please underline the 1-2 sentence main idea of the paper

1.  Identify and describe the four main parts of Plato’s Cave.  Show how each part has relevance to your life.  Be very specific about places, dates, and people.

2.  What are the three most important themes in Plato’s account of the interior of the Cave?  Please identify and describe with quotations from the text.  Finally, show how each of these themes is relevant to life today.

3.  Find at least four drawings of the Cave—not counting the ones we did in class which are masterpieces and have few faults.   Identify three aspects of Plato’s Cave as described in Republic VII that are seldom if ever included in the drawings that one sees.  Why do you think these aspects are omitted?

4. Extra-credit.  Draw a scene from the Life of Socrates as we have studied it so far in this class.  Here is what someone else a while back submitted: