CLA 84 — Plato’s Republic and the Good Life
Quarter: Summer
Instructor(s): Barbara Clayton
Date(s): Jun 24—Jul 29
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Wednesdays
Class Meeting Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Tuition: $415
Refund Deadline: Jun 26
Unit(s): 1
Status: Registration opens May 18, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Summer
Day: Wednesdays
Duration: 6 weeks
Time: 6:30—8:20 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jun 24—Jul 29
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $415
Refund Deadline: Jun 26
Instructor(s): Barbara Clayton
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens May 18, 8:30 am (PT)
Plato’s Republic is one of the most influential works in the Western canon, shaping debates about politics, justice, and human flourishing for more than two millennia. The 20th-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead famously described the European philosophical tradition as "a series of footnotes to Plato." Republic presents a vision of an ideal city ruled by philosopher kings as a way of probing a deeper question: how individuals should order their own souls and live well. Through close reading and discussion, this course examines Plato’s most enduring ideas, including the Theory of Forms, the Allegory of the Cave, and his reflections on truth, knowledge, and reality. The Republic is deliberately provocative. Its arguments can appear at once radical and conservative, inspiring and unsettling. This tension makes it a powerful text for our time, inviting sustained debate about justice, political authority, and the claim that healthy political life ultimately depends on individual moral integrity.
BARBARA CLAYTON
Independent Scholar
Barbara Clayton has taught Classics at Oberlin College, Santa Clara University, and Stanford, where she was a lecturer in a freshman humanities program for many years. Since 2015, she has taught for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. She is the author of A Penelopean Poetics: Reweaving the Feminine in Homer’s Odyssey. Clayton received a PhD in Classics from Stanford. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Plato, C.D.C. Reeve (trans.), Republic (ISBN 978-0872207363)
(Optional) Nicholas P. White, A Companion to Plato's Republic (ISBN 978-0915144921)
(Optional) Nicholas P. White, A Companion to Plato's Republic (ISBN 978-0915144921)