It offers an introduction to the reach and implications of this endeavor, its relationship to questions of law, sovereignty and political representation. This course explores the intellectual history of the contemporary disciplines of economics, political science and sociology, by examining the historical origins of the discourse and practice known as “political economy”: the means and processes by which societies and populations provide for their own survival and development. Instructors: Irwin Collier, Aysuda Kölemen, Boris Vormann, Jeffrey Champlin The direct experience, evaluation, and interpretation of individual works of art are a crucial part of the course, and with this in mind there will be several visits to Berlin museums – specifically, the Gemäldegalerie and the Bode Museum, with their extensive Renaissance collections – to encounter works of art firsthand. The course is structured around four principal topics, each a defining value for the visual arts between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries that is also central to the development of Renaissance thought: self-reflexivity, perspective, harmony and grace, humanism. Thus the focus on works of visual art, in a dialogue with literary, philosophical, and political texts of the period, opens a consideration of trans-disciplinary problems such as the emergence of new models of subjectivity and objectivity, the relationship between religious and secular experiences, the framing of early modern political thought, and the origins of the scientific method. The Renaissance could be characterized as an historical period in which the visual arts played the leading role in the culture as a whole. A sustained engagement with a number of principal monuments in Florentine painting, sculpture, and architecture provides the basis for a consideration of key values within the development of Renaissance art that also shape, more broadly, the thought, cultural practices, and everyday experiences of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this course we examine the visual and intellectual culture of Renaissance Florence. Instructors: Geoff Lehman, Katalin Makkai, Laura Scuriatti, Andrea Ottone Concluding this course, we will trace some more recent engagements with Socrates in politics, liberal education and civil rights movements by reading selections from M.K. Attending to the interlocutors with which the Republic is engaged, we will strive to better understand and evaluate its arguments and drama. We will also read the Republic alongside Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Homer’s Iliad, Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen, selections from Sappho, the architecture of the Parthenon, and Euripides’ The Bacchae. We will start with the Near Eastern poem The Epic of Gilgamesh, which anticipates many of the themes we will encounter throughout the course. ![]() In this course, we will be particularly attentive to Socratic questioning and the dialogic character of Plato’s writing in its exchanges with other authors, genres and modes of thought. In its aspiration and scope, the Republic offers an illuminating starting point for the endeavour of liberal education. ![]() And while it may be said to contain a social contract theory, a theory of psychology, a theology, a critique of mimetic art, a theory of education, and a typology of political regimes, it is reducible to none of these. ![]() Rather than a series of separate treatises, the Republic addresses its themes as the subject of a single investigation that transcends disciplinary boundaries as we have come to conceive them. As an exemplar of radical questioning, both in Plato’s time and beyond, the figure of Socrates will be a critical resource for our own engagements with the contemporary world. Through its depiction of Socrates in conversation, it draws us into a dialogue about ethical, political, aesthetic, and epistemic questions that are fundamental to human life. The Republic offers a unique point of entry into the epochal philosophical, political, and literary achievements of fifth and fourth-century Athens. Instructors: Ewa Atanassow, Tracy Colony, David Hayes, Hans Stauffacher, Jeffrey Champlin, Sinem Kılıçīard College Berlin's core curriculum begins with a semester-long engagement with Plato’s Republic in dialogue with the main works and movements that shaped its cultural and intellectual context. IS101 Plato’s Republic and Its Interlocutors
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