For your first essay, I want you to write an essay on what you think we learn – about ourselves, about philosophy, about knowledge, about life, about anything truly significant to our studies as philosophers – from Plato. The basic question of this essay is: What do we learn from Plato?
Note, I am asking you to write about what you think Plato teaches all of us, not just what you believe you personally learned from the act of reading Plato. (Though what you see as important for any reading may of course be related to what you personally gain from your reading – and it is inevitable that the two will be connected in this essay. The point is that you approach this as an analytic essay, not a personal reflection.
To do this correctly for this assignment, I want you to make sure you do the following:
Identify at least three different “things” you believe we learn from reading these dialogues. These should be related enough so that you can present a broader thesis that connects these. You can focus on one specific theme (such as knowledge) and this will likely give you a more cohesive essay.
Present each of these three in separate sections of your paper. They each need their own paragraph, at least, though you may need more than one paragraph (this partly depends on how long your paragraphs tend to be).
With each point, you need to use at least one section of the dialogues to support your position, and you need to discuss how that position is supported by that section of the text. Be sure to specifically reference which part of the text you are citing, by page and section number (if you are using a different translation or edition, make it clear which edition you are using). Do not quote directly from the text except for very short passages where the language is important. You may, of course, discuss multiple sections.
Your essay needs to reference at least two different dialogues.
In addition to having an introduction where you clearly lay out the broader thesis (argument) you are making about what we learn from Plato, you should end with a concluding paragraph (or set of paragraphs) where you show how the three points come together to support your broader thesis and explain the significance of what we learn and why you believe it is important.
The essay should be of some length (700 – 1000 words is a good target) and should clearly demonstrate your experience reading all five dialogues.