University of Oregon Search of A Beauty State in Ancient Greece Plato Essay Basic requirements: Your essay should use evidence from at least one main rea

University of Oregon Search of A Beauty State in Ancient Greece Plato Essay Basic requirements:

Your essay should use evidence from at least one main reading (ancient) from three of the four sections of the course. Authors are listed below. Use of visual material is encouraged ( e.g. Vase paintings found on artstor.org).

Good essays have the following qualities:

A clear argument (“thesis” or “the point that you are trying to communicate to your reader”). The argument is quickly stated in the first paragraph, without exaggeration or other unnecessary rhetoric. Each paragraph of the essay is a step towards a convincing overall statement of the argument.
Meticulous support of each step in the argument by reference to the texts under discussion. By “reference” we mean quotes, paraphrases or simply references to sections of text. In all cases references should be short and to the point; in particular, avoid block quotes of more than three or four lines. All evidence should include appropriate numerical references to texts (e.g. Iliad 9.320, or Theogony 223-225).
A rhetorically modest style: avoid anecdote, cliche, rhetorical questions, exaggeration, exclamation, and other tricks that try to distract your reader from the logic and articulation of your argument. Simplicity, clarity and calm will be rewarded.

That’s pretty much it. Essays that hit those three points will get good grades. I’ve given B grades to papers that I thought were crazy misreadings of the texts or way off the mark in other ways, but which achieved the above and therefore sounded at least sensible. For an A grade your argument has to actually be sensible, but I have never figured out how to teach that.

I will use the following rubric to grade your papers. if you focus on the points above, you’ll do fine on the rubric.

Clarity and logic of argument (thesis is stated at the beginning and advanced a step in each paragraph; logic is coherent and persuasive; argument is an appropriate response to paper topic) 30%
Pacing and structure (each point is given attention appropriate to its importance; preparatory points come first, more conclusive ones later; argument is not repetitive, tangents are avoided, and paragraphs are intelligently connected) 30%
Use of evidence (each point is supported by reference to appropriate evidence – usually an ancient text or artefact; quotes are well focused (do not use block quotes), well explained, and clearly support the point; the essay text helps the reader see the connection between evidence and argument) 30%
Style, spelling and grammar. 10%
Formatting, font size, line spacing, paragraph indentation, Adherence to MLA or APA formatting etc. 0% Of course, if you cite a text, you need to make sure we can check your citation (which you can do with a bibliography, an inline reference, a footnote or a combination of these, and how you choose to do that will vary with different kinds of argument, the pacing of your argument and so on). If you don’t cite a text that you use as evidence or as part of your argument, we have a problem! But this all comes under point 3, Use of Evidence. Use your judgment – this is your paper.

Authors/texts: (I have attached the readings that you may use. Which is related to part 4)

Part 1: Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days. Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
Part 2: Archaic poetry: Archilochus, Alcman, Sappho and Theognis and Solon in PDF reader;
Part 3: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus (since Herodotus is a 5th century author, I’ve included him here).
Part 4: Plato, Aristophanes, Plato, Apollodorus

Use of secondary material (including assigned readings):

You may use secondary material (things written after the period we’re studying, such as the history textbook) to support your argument, but please be sure that the argument itself is your own response to the primary (ancient) readings. Be wary of ideas and interpretations you find online.

Topics:
Pick one of the following ideas and trace its development through Greek literature and history, as exemplified in your chosen texts, and supported if possible by examples from visual arts and the secondary readings assigned for the class. Look for contrasts and continuities, and be sure to develop a focused thesis. Your paper shouldn’t ultimately be about (for instance) “love in Ancient Greece”, but it might be an argument that “love is a religious concept in Ancient Greece”, or perhaps that “love is a female concept until Plato, who re-genders it as masculine”. Neither of these is necessarily the case, but they are examples of ways you can focus the broad ideas listed below, according to what you personally find in your readings. There are no right or wrong answers here, though there certainly are good observations and intelligent readings to be explored.

Women’s Power
Justice
Love
Manliness
Monsters and Monstrousness
Appearance and Reality
Persuasion
Play and Games
Beauty
Happiness

Scope:

Do not try to answer the great questions of life with this essay. Small, intelligent, modest observations which are well supported by the evidence will do nicely. Again, narrow down your topic to a clear, unambitious thesis statement, which you will state clearly in your first paragraph.

Your First Paragraph:

Don’t start with a definition from a dictionary
Don’t tell me what scholars/readers/audiences have done/said/thought/admired for millenia
Don’t tell me what “Greeks”, “Grecians” or “Greek culture” thought or believed. Your paper is going to make a nuanced, well supported argument based on limited evidence: don’t start it off with unsupportable generalizations.
Do be quick and to the point. Outline for me what you’re going to argue and where your evidence will be drawn from.

here are the readings you need to cite in your paper: https://prnt.sc/tm3khz Plato, Republic Books 6-7: Analogies of Sun, Line
and Cave
“No doubt you remember,” I (Socrates) said, “that we pieced
together what justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom each
would be by distinguishing three forms that belong to the
soul.”
“If I didn’t remember that,” he (Glaucon) said, “it would be
just for me not to hear the rest.”
“And what about what was said by way of preface to that?”
“What was it?”
[504B] “We were saying something to the effect that getting
the most beautiful possible look at these things would take
another, longer way around, which would make them
become evident to someone who traveled that road, though it
would be possible to provide illustrations approximating to
the things that had already been said earlier, and you folks
declared that would be sufficient. And so the things said at
that time, as far as precision goes, as it appeared to me, were
deficient; as for whether they were satisfactory to you
people, that’s something you could say.”
“To me? In a measured way,” he said; “and it looked like
they were to the others as well.”
[504C] “My friend,” I said, “measuredness in such matters
that stops short in any respect whatever of what is turns out
not to measure anything at all, because nothing incomplete is
186
a measure of anything. But sometimes it seems to some
people that they’re well enough off already and don’t need to
search any further.”
“A great many people feel that way a lot,” he said, “because
of laziness.”
“That feeling, anyway,” I said, “is one there’s the least need
for in a guardian of a city and its laws.”
“Likely so,” he said.
“So, my comrade,” I said, “it’s necessary for such a person to
go around by the longer [504D] road, and he needs to work
as a learner no less hard than at gymnastic training, or else,
as we were just saying, he’ll never get to the end of the
greatest and most relevant study.”
“So these aren’t the greatest ones,” he said, “but there’s
something still greater than justice and the things we’ve gone
over?”
“Not only is there something greater,” I said, “but even for
those things themselves, it’s necessary not just to look at a
sketch, the way we’ve been doing now, but not to stop short
of working them out to their utmost completion. Wouldn’t it
be ridiculous to make a concentrated effort in every way over
other things of little worth, to have them be as precise and
pure [504E] as possible, while not considering the greatest
things to be worthy of the greatest precision?”
187
“Very much so,” he said, “and a creditable thought it is, but
what you mean by the greatest study, and what it’s about—do
you imagine,” he said, “that anyone’s going to let you off
without asking you what it is?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Just you ask. For all that, you’ve heard it
no few times, but now you’re either not thinking of it or else,
by latching onto me, [505A] you think you’ll cause me
trouble. But I imagine it’s more the latter, since you’ve often
heard that the greatest learnable thing is the look109 of the
good, which just things and everything else need in addition
in order to become useful and beneficial. So now you know
pretty well that I’m going to say that, and in addition to it
that we don’t know it well enough. But if we don’t know it,
and we do know everything else as much as possible without
it, you can be sure that nothing is any benefit to us, just as
there would be none if [505B] we possessed something
without the good. Or do you imagine it’s any use to acquire
any possession that’s not good? Or to be intelligent about
everything else without the good, and have no intelligence
where anything beautiful and good is concerned?”
“By Zeus, I don’t!” he said.
“And surely you know this too, that to most people, the good
seems to be pleasure, and to the more sophisticated ones,
intelligence.”
“How could I not?”
188
“And, my friend, that the ones who believe the latter can’t
specify what sort of intelligence, but are forced to end up
claiming it’s about the good.”
“It’s very ridiculous,” he said.
[505C] “How could it be otherwise,” I said, “if after
reproaching us because we don’t know what’s good they turn
around and speak to us as though we do know? Because they
claim that it’s intelligence about the good as though we for
our part understand what they mean when they pronounce
the name of the good.”
“That’s very true,” he said.
“And what about the people who define the good as
pleasure? Are they any less full of inconsistency than the
others? Aren’t they also forced to admit that there are bad
pleasures?”
“Emphatically so.”
“So I guess they turn out to be conceding that the same
things that are good are also bad. Isn’t that so?”
[505D] “Certainly.”
“Then isn’t it clear that the disagreements about it are vast
and many?”
“How could it not be clear?”
“And what about this? Isn’t it clear that many people would
choose the things that seem to be just and beautiful, and even
189
when they aren’t, would still do them, possess them, and
have the seeming, though no one is content to possess what
seems good, but people seek the things that are good, and in
that case everyone has contempt for the seeming?”
“Very much so,” he said.
[505E] “So this is exactly what every soul pursues, for the
sake of which it does everything, having a sense that it’s
something but at a loss and unable to get an adequate grasp
of what it is, or even have the reliable sort of trust it has
about other things; because of this it misses out even on any
benefit there may have been in the other things. On such a
matter, of such great importance, [506A] are we claiming
that even the best people in the city, the ones in whose hands
we’re going to put everything, have to be in the dark in this
way?”
“Not in the least,” he said.
“I imagine anyway,” I said, “that when there’s ignorance of
the way in which just and beautiful things are good, they
won’t have gotten a guardian for themselves who’s worth
much of anything, in someone who’s ignorant of that, and I
have a premonition that no one’s going to discern them
adequately before that.”
“You’re very good at premonitions,” he said.
“Then won’t our polity be perfectly ordered if [506B] that
sort of guardian does watch over it, one who knows these
things?”
190
“Necessarily,” he said. “But you in particular, Socrates, do
you claim the good is knowledge or pleasure or some other
thing besides these?”
“That’s a man for you,” I said; “you’ve done a beautiful job
of making it plain all along that the way things seem to
others about these things won’t be good enough for you.”
“But it doesn’t seem just to me either, Socrates,” he said, “to
be able to state the opinions of others but not one’s own,
when one [506C] has been concerned about these things for
such a long time.”
“Well does it seem to you to be just,” I said, “to talk about
things one doesn’t know as though one knew them?”
“Not by any means as though one knew them,” he said, “but
certainly it’s just to be willing to say what one thinks as
something one thinks.”
“What?” I said, “Haven’t you noticed about opinions without
knowledge that they’re all ugly? The best of them are blind.
Or do people who hold any true opinion without insight seem
to you to be any different from blind people who travel along
the right road?”
“No different,” he said.
“Then do you want to gaze on ugly things, blind and
crooked, when you’ll be able to hear bright and beautiful
ones from others?”
191
[506D] “Before Zeus, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “you’re not
going to stand down as if you were at the end. It’ll be good
enough for us if, the same way you went over what has to do
with justice and moderation and the other things, you also go
over what has to do with the good.”
“For me too, comrade,” I said, “and more than good enough.
But I’m afraid I won’t be capable of it, but I’ll make a fool of
myself in my eagerness and pay for it in ridicule. But, you
blessed fellows, let’s leave aside for the time being what the
good itself is, since it appears to me to be beyond [506E] the
trajectory of the impulse we’ve got at present to reach the
things that now seem to me to be the case. But I’m willing to
speak about what appears to be an offspring of the good and
most like it, if that’s also congenial to you folks, or if not, to
let it go.”
“Just speak,” he said, “and some other time you’ll pay off the
balance with a description of the father.”
[507A] “I’d like to have the power to pay it in full and for
you folks to receive it, and not just the interest on it as you
will now. Give a reception, then, to this dividend110 and
offspring of the good itself. Be on your guard, though, in
case I unintentionally deceive you by paying my account
with counterfeit interest.”
“We’ll be on guard according to our power,” he said, “so just
speak.”
192
“After I’ve gotten your agreement,” I said, “and reminded
you of things mentioned in the previous discussion and often
spoken of before now elsewhere.”
“What sort of things?” he said.
[507B] “We claim that there are many beautiful things,” I
said, “and many good things, and the same way for each
kind, and we distinguish them in speech.”
“We do.”
“But also a beautiful itself, and a good itself, and the same
way with everything we were then taking as many, we go
back the other way and take according to a single look of
each kind, as though there is only one, and we refer to it as
what each kind is.”
“That’s it.”
“And we claim that the former are seen but not thought,
while the ‘looks’ in turn are thought but not seen.”
“Completely and totally so.”
[507C] “And by which of the things within ourselves do we
see the ones that are seen?”
“By sight,” he said.
“And perceive the things heard by hearing, and all the
perceptible things by the other senses?” I said.
“Of course.”
193
“Well,” I said, “have you reflected about the craftsman of the
senses, how he was by far the most bountiful in crafting the
power of seeing and being seen?”
“Not at all,” he said.
“Then look at it this way: for one thing to hear and another to
be heard, is there any need for another kind of thing in
addition to the sense of hearing and a sound, such that, if
[507D] that third thing isn’t present, the first won’t hear and
the second won’t be heard?”
“There’s nothing like that,” he said.
“And I don’t imagine,” I said, “that there are many others
either, not to say none, that have any additional need for such
a thing, or can you name any?”
“Not for my part,” he said.
“But don’t you realize that the power of sight and being seen
does have an additional need?”
“How’s that?”
“Presumably you’re aware that when sight is present in eyes
and the one who has it attempts to use it, and color is present
there in things, unless there’s also a third kind of thing
present, of a nature specifically for this very purpose, [507E]
sight will see nothing and colors will be invisible.”
“What’s this thing you’re speaking of?” he said.
“The one you call light,” I said.
194
“It’s true, as you say,” he said.
“Then the sense of sight and the power of being seen have
been bound together [508A] by a bond more precious, by no
small look, than that uniting other pairs, unless light is
something to be despised.”
“Surely it’s far from being despised,” he said.
“And which of the divine beings in the heavens can you
point out as the ruling power responsible for this, whose light
makes our sight see and visible things be seen as beautifully
as possible?”
“The same one you and everyone else would,” he said,
“since it’s obvious you’re asking about the sun.”
“And is it this way that sight is by its nature related to this
god?”
“How?”
“The sun is not sight itself, nor is it that in which sight is
present, what [508B] we call an eye.”
“No indeed.”
“But I imagine that’s the most sunlike of the sense organs.”
“By far.”
“And doesn’t it acquire the power that it has as an overflow
from that which is bestowed by the sun?”
195
“Very much so.”
“So while the sun isn’t sight, but is the thing responsible for
it, isn’t it seen by that very thing?”
“That’s how it is,” he said.
“Now then,” I said, “say that this is what I’m calling the
offspring of the good, which the good generated as
something analogous to itself; the very thing the good itself
[508C] is in the intelligible realm in relation to insight and
the intelligible things, this is in the visible realm in relation
to sight and the visible things.”
“How so?” he said. “Go into it more for me.”
“With eyes,” I said, “do you know that when one no longer
turns them on those things to whose colors the light of day
extends, but on those on which nocturnal lights fall, they
grow dim, and appear nearly blind, just as though no pure
sight was present in them?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“But I imagine that whenever one turns them to the things
the sun illumines, they see them clearly, [508D] and pure
sight is manifestly present in these very same eyes.”
“Certainly.”
“In this manner, think of the power of the soul too as being
the same way. Whenever it becomes fixed on that which
truth and being illumine, it has insight, discerns, and shows
196
itself to have an intellect, but whenever it becomes fixed on
something mixed with darkness, something that comes into
and passes out of being, it deals in seeming and grows dim,
changing its opinions up and down, and is like something
that has no intellect.”
“It does seem like that.”
“Then say that what endows the things known with truth,
[508E] and gives that which knows them its power, is the
look of the good. Since it’s the cause of knowledge and truth,
think of it as something known, but though both of these,
knowing and truth, are so beautiful, by regarding it as
something else, still more beautiful than they are, you’ll
regard it rightly. And as far as knowledge [509A] and truth
are concerned, just as it’s right over there to consider light
and sight sunlike, but isn’t right to consider them to be the
sun, so too here it’s right to consider both of these as like the
good, but not right to regard either of them as being the
good; the condition of the good requires that it be held in still
greater honor.”
“You’re talking about a beauty hard to conceive,” he said, “if
it endows things with knowledge and truth but is itself
beyond these in beauty, because it’s sure not pleasure you
mean.”
“Watch your mouth,” I said; “but look into the image of it
still more closely.”
“In what way?”
197
[509B] “I imagine you’d claim that the sun not only endows
the visible things with their power of being seen, but also
with their coming into being, their growth, and their nurture,
though it’s not itself coming-into-being.”
“How could it be?”
“Then claim as well that the things that are known not only
get their being-known furnished by the good, but they’re also
endowed by that source with their very being and their being
what they are, even though the good is not being, but
something over and above being, beyond it in seniority and
surpassing it in power.”
[509C] And Glaucon, in a very comical manner, said “By
Apollo, that’s a stupendous stretcher.”111
“You’re to blame for it,” I said, “for forcing me to tell the
way things seem to me about it.”
“And don’t by any means stop,” he said, “not if there are any
other things for you to go over in the likeness to the sun, in
case you’re leaving something out anywhere.”
“That’s for sure,” I said; “I’m leaving out scads of things.”
“Well don’t skip over any little bit,” he said.
“I suspect I’ll skip over a lot,” I said, “but be that as it may,
as far as it’s possible at present, I won’t willingly leave
anything out.”
“See that you don’t,” he said.
198
[509D] “Well then, as we’re saying,” I said, “think of them
as being a pair, one ruling as king over the intelligible race
and realm, and the other, for its part, over the visible—note
that I’m not saying ‘over the heavens,’ so I won’t seem to
you to be playing verbal tricks with the name.112 But do you
grasp these two forms, visible, intelligible?”
“I’ve got them.”
“Then take them as being like a line divided into two
unequal segments, one for the visible class and the other for
the intelligible, and cut each segment again in the same ratio,
and you’ll get the parts to one another in their relation of
clarity and obscurity;113 in the visible section, one segment
will be for images, and by images I mean [510A] first of all
shadows, then semblances formed in water and on all dense,
smooth, bright surfaces, and everything of that sort, if you
get the idea.”
“I get it.”
“Then in the other part, put what this one is likened to, the
animals around us, and every plant, and the whole class of
artificial things.”
“I’m putting them,” he said.
“And would you also be willing to claim,” I said, “that it’s
divided with respect to truth and its lack, such that the copy
is to the thing it’s copied from as a seeming is to something
known?”
199
[510B] “I would,” he said, “very much so.”
“Then consider next the way the division of the intelligible
part needs to be made.”
“What way is that?”
“Such that in one part of it a soul takes as images the things
that were imitated before, and is forced to inquire based on
presuppositions, proceeding not to a beginning but to an end,
while in the other part it goes from a presupposition to a
beginning free of presuppositions, without the images
involved in the other part, making its investigation into forms
themselves and by means of them.”
“I didn’t sufficiently understand what you mean by these
things,” he said.
“Once more, then,” [510C] I said; “since you’ll understand
more easily after the following preface. Now I imagine you
know that people who concern themselves with matters of
geometry and calculation and such things presuppose in
accord with each investigation the odd and the even, the
geometrical shapes, the three kinds of angles, and other
things related to these; treating these as known and making
them presuppositions, they don’t think it’s worth giving any
further account of them either to themselves or to anyone
else, as though [510D] they were obvious to everyone, but
starting from these things and going through the subsequent
things from that point, they arrive at a conclusion in
200
agreement with that from which they set their inquiry in
motion.”
“I do know that very well,” he said.
“Then you also know that they make additional use of visible
forms, and make their arguments about them, even though
they’re thinking not about these but about those things these
are images of, since it’s in regard to the square itself, and its
diagonal itself, that they’re making those arguments, [510E]
and not in regard to the one that they draw, and likewise in
the other cases; these very things that they model and draw,
which also have their own shadows and images in water,
they are now using as images in their turn, [511A] in an
attempt to see those things themselves that one could not
see114 in any other way than by the power of thinking.”
“What you’re saying is true,” he said.
“The latter, then, is what I meant by the intelligible form, and
it’s for the …
Purchase answer to see full
attachment