Plato and Punishment

3 credits · Undergraduate

Being punished is good for you, and not being punished is bad for you - or so the Ancient Greek Philosopher Plato would have us believe. Our task in this course is to explore this counterintuitive claim thoroughly. We'll be doing both history and philosophy. The historical question is why Plato believed such a thing and how we can most plausibly motivate his view. But the philosophical question is whether that view should persuade us and whether it has any advantages over contemporary justifications of punishment. I hope this will be an interdisciplinary course that will aid in thinking and writing about some of the most controversial features of our society and Plato's thought: how we punish others, whether they benefit from it, whether we benefit from it, and whether that benefit justifies it.