Essay – Plato,Apology
WLD181 SP20 Goodness, Truth, and Beauty

Prof. Gayne J. Anacker

Exam #1: Plato, Apology (v.2)

This is a take-home essay exam. Students will compose an extended essay responding to the prompt given below concerning the dialogue Apology of Plato. The principle objective of this exam is for students to demonstrate they understand and can explain important features of this historically significant piece of philosophical literature.

In crafting your essay, you may (and should) make unlimited reference to the text of the dialogue (showing that you have studied it), your class notes, any class handouts, or indeed any material you choose. Also note that there is no time limitation for working on the exam—until the date and time that the paper is due.

Essay mechanics

While you are free to use unlimited sources, this essay cannot be a “cut and paste” exercise. I am expecting a well-crafted essay that features the student’s own words of interpretation and explanation. Essays that show an absence of the student’s work of assimilating, organizing, expressing, and explaining the concepts will lead to poorer grade outcomes.

You are free to use the ideas or words of others, but these must be acknowledged. Not doing is constitutes the academic sin of plagiarism. When you use in your essay a specific idea or words from a thinker in a book, article, or web document, that person’s name and the page number should be cited in the text (next to the quoted or referenced words or ideas), as follows: (Jones, p. 25). Then, of course, you must list the Jones piece in your “Works Cited” page.

Try to make your citations/references mechanics conform to one of the major style manuals: APA, MLA, or Chicago/Turabian (whichever you are most comfortable with). The only things I insist on are: clarity, neatness, consistency, and the citing of page numbers of your sources whenever your source has page numbers.

· When referencing the text of the dialogue itself, simply use “Stephanus numbers/letters” in parentheses, for example: (18b). That is sufficient.

· When citing a source from the web that does not have page numbers, provide the number of the paragraph in which this words or idea is found. Or, if the web article is very long, then a percentage estimate of the location of the words or idea in the text, for example: (Jones, 25%).

· When citing material from lecture or handouts, you may simply insert something like the following: (Anacker, class lecture, date [if you can determine it]), or (Anacker, class handout, Vocabulary 1.2). For material from the class itself, that is all that is needed.

This exam essay should be presented by the students as a Word doc paper consisting of sections responding to the various sub-sections of the prompt (include only the prompt sub-section number and title in your response essay). The paper should be double-spaced, Times New Roman 12, with 1-inch margins. Don’t use a title page. Just put a heading at the top of page 1. Which side? I don’t care, as long as your paper is clear, neat, and consistent.

I am aware that a decent effort in writing this take-home exam will take several hours. Please remember, however, that this effort is replacing class meeting hours, study hours during the week, and exam prep hours. The work you put into this exam will yield increased knowledge of the world we live in and sharpened intellectual skills in your professional life.

Essay prompt

Please write an extended essay in which you show your overall understanding of the dialogue Apology, by Plato. Make sure you include:

1. General historical context of Greece and Athens.

2. Athen’s democracy, assembly, the Sophists, and rhetoric.

3. Socrates: life, career, practice of philosophy, and his distinguishing himself from his accusers who had learned their rhetoric from the Sophists.

4. The informal charges against Socrates, and Socrates’ reply.

5. The formal charges, and Socrates’ replies.

6. Socrates’ conviction that he had been “stationed” by the god of Delphi to philosophize.

7. The formal charges against Socrates, and Socrates’ replies.

8. The verdict and the punishment votes.

9. Socrates’ values and his mission of philosophy.

The essay should be approximately 6-10 pages (approx. 1,800-3,000 words). I can be longer (but try to be concise), but it should probably not be shorter.

The exam essay will be submitted through SafeAssign in the ASSIGNMENTS file of the class Blackboard site. The due date is Wednesday, May 20, 11:59 pm.

Essay tips

· Define key words; explain movements of reasoning.

· Historical context is critical. Appropriate usage of vocabulary, names, and dates from the Vocabulary handout and the Historical Grid is helpful.

· Quality of writing is always important whenever writing a professional document (such as a college paper). Avoid run-on sentences. Avoid sentence fragments. (Look these words up, as necessary.) Read your paper out load. Your ear will catch mistakes that your eye will miss.

· Be alive to argument. Be aware when Socrates is using argument to lead refute a charge.