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UNIT 3:

Ancient Greece

UNIT OVERVIEW
Primary Assessment: In a minimum of 750 words, respond to one of the essential questions below.
(You are welcome to select another topic of your choosing, however, it must be approved).
Essential Questions for Class Discussion:
1.

What do you make of the character of Socrates? How do you judge him, his method, his passion for argument, his relentless
questioning, his gadfly personality? (How do you judge the Athenians who sentenced him to death?)

2.

What is the nature of justice? Compare Socrates ideas on justice to his experience of justice in his trial under the Athenian democracy.
How do these ancient stories of justice compare to your understanding about how our justice system works, or should work?

3.

What is real? What is illusion? What does it mean to know? Analyze and evaluate Platos idea of the forms, his championing of
ideas over the transitory and ever flawed material world. (What are the tensions between Platonic idealism and the pragmatism?)

4.

What do you make of the tensions between idealism and pragmatism? Where do you stand in the spectrum between perfect, pure
ideals and a flawed but realizable practicality?

5.

How does the mind work? What roles do desire, passion and reason play in our lives? What role should they play? What is the
nature of the psyche, the soul, in the dialogues and in your own ideas?

6.

How does Plato mark a radical shift from the mythic, poetic, and epic modes weve read so far? What are Platos attitudes on
traditional stories of the gods, poetic inspiration, and the violent passions of the epic warrior? What do you make of this inward
turn toward rational order, whose legacy is still with us today?

7.

Analyze and evaluate the form of the dialogue and its arguments through close readings, to illuminate the structures of Platos text
beneath its surface.

8.

What do you make of Socrates dialectical method, as a model for learning, teaching, thinking, and participating in a democracy?
What are the implications to your answer?

9.

What is the ideal State? What do you think of Socrates theoretical Republic? How does this compare with our social-political system?

Unit Literature
Year

Author

Text

Genre

Pages

c. 620-570 BCE

Sappho, A Garland

Poetry

c. 625-370 BCE

Sappho
Thales, Anaximander,
Heraclitus, Democritus

Early Greek Philosophy

Philosophy

c. 380 BCE

Plato

Euthyphro

Philosophy

4.5

c. 380 BCE

Plato

Apology

Philosophy

c. 360 BCE

Plato

Crito

Philosophy

c. 360 BCE

Plato

Phaedo

Philosophy

8.5

c. 360 BCE

Plato

The Republic

Philosophy

17.5

World Literature with Mr. Brennan: Unit 3

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