The Socrates that we find in Book 10 of Plato’s Republic differs significantly from the one we find in Aristophanes’s play The Clouds. How would you characterise the differences and why do you think they are significant?
Plato’s Socrates and the narrator of Descartes’s Meditations present and employ distinctive philosophical methods. Explain, compare, and evaluate those methods. What do you think are the chief differences between the two?
In Book 10 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates presents a number of reasons for excluding poets and practitioners of the mimetic arts from the ideal city. But he also displays some ambivalence in this regard. Evaluate both these reasons and this ambivalence.
What is the significance of the ‘Myth of Ur’ that Socrates recounts at the end of Book 10 of Plato’s Republic? What happens in the myth and how might it be related to the larger argument Socrates presents in the book?