The Course: Six Platonic Dialogues
Come along on a philosophical journey to explore the profound connections between aesthetic ideals and moral excellence as envisioned by Plato — the founder of Western philosophy.
A careful reading of Plato’s work reveals that beauty plays a sophisticated role in the metaphysical, ontological, epistemological, and ethical accounts for the Greek thinker.
In this lecture series we will read six Platonic dialogues oriented around the topic of The Beautiful: Greater Hippias, Symposium, Phaedrus, Meno, Cratylus, Parmenides.
Course developed & taught by Thomas Jockin.
What you will learn
In this lecture series, we are going to consider how, for Plato, beauty ascends the beloved from appearances to true realities.
How we can see the forms in the medium of beauty.
This is a shocking assertion because, since Hume, beauty has been treated as a personal preference on the same level as favourite ice cream flavour. How could a subjective preference move a pupil from appearances to true reality? When would a preference ever change a person’s entire orientation to life?
Thus, in this course, we return to the foundations of thought and see what other mode of beauty we could consider.
What our students are saying
Curriculum
Introduction by Thomas Jockin
Your Teacher: Thomas Jockin
Thomas Jockin holds a BFA in Communication Design from the Parsons School of Design. Professionally, he has worked for clients such as Google, Express, and Starbucks. Thomas founded the international salon meet-up TypeThursday which has chapters in 12 cities around the world. He also is founder of the edtech startup Readable Technologies which detects reading deficiencies in 90 seconds with just a webcam. Thomas has taught as a visiting associate professor at various design departments such as CUNY Queens College, CUNY City College, SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, and Pratt Institute in New York City. He co-authored with O.G. Rose and Javier Riviera the treatise, “A Philosophy of Glimpses: The Prolegomena to a New Metaphysics and Phenomenology of Lacks,” available on Amazon.
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