For
each of the four response papers, you must write at least three typed
and double spaced pages on a topic of your choice that concerns the
material we have covered in the class so far. Do not spend time
summarizing the material, but rather focus on your own thoughts and
questions. You are welcome to use your own life experiences as well as
fictional and nonfictional material from outside class. While you are
welcome to reflect on anything you have found interesting, the following
are possible topics for your response.
1)
Pythagoras and later thinkers influenced by him, including Plato,
believe that the forms of things can be understood through the use of
mathematics, while skeptical thinkers such as Xenophanes, Heraclitus,
Zeno and Democritus argue that things always remain unknown to us. In
what way and to what extent can we understanding the forms of things via
mathematics?
2)
Parmenides argues that difference and motion are an illusion, and Zeno
argues that these things can not be understood without paradoxical
problems. Anaxagoras and Democritus both argued that Parmenides was
half right about difference being an illusion, but the two completely
disagree on whether the unity or difference of things is an illusion.
What do you make of the Eleatic challenge? Do human efforts to
comprehend things as distinct or changing necessarily result in
contradictions? If so, or not, why?
3)
Diogenes rejected the conventions of society and chose to live like a
dog. Is his simplicity and obscenity noble or foolish? Heraclitus says
people are mere apes, and should seek wisdom. Diogenes believes that
living as a dog allows us to live by reason rather than passion. Would
living as dogs make us less like apes?
