Structure of the Seminar:

I am going to try to run this as a real seminar: in other words, you will be required to be more active in this class than most classes. None of us will be free to sit in the back without talking.

• It is important that you figure out how to do unicode polytonic (i.e. complete with accents and breathings) Greek on a computer so that we can send Greek back and forth via email as well as in documents and on websites.
  
• In the month of January, we will:
• Read the Theaetetus in English.
• Begin reading the Theaetetus in Greek.
  
• Read two articles on the Theaetetus.
• Complete an exercise that will feel a lot like an exam (it is NOT going to directly figure in the calculation of your grade).
• During the course of the semester, you will read and be responsible for some portion of the dialogue Theaetetus.
• In other words, you have to read all or part of the dialogue in Greek and understand the grammar, vocabulary, and meaning of the Greek.
  
• We may not cover much of this material in class, because we have many reports.
• In consultation with you, I will be tailoring what you are responsible for to your Greek abilities.
  
• Together, we will formulate a suggested schedule for you to stick to.
• You may always ask me questions about the Greek.
  
• There will be a midterm and a final on this material.
• Seminar Reports
  
• You must start out with two short unrelated projects from among the Acceptable Projects (see below). These will be presented in February. 
• I suggest that at least one of these initial projects be a report about secondary literature.
• You must choose two additional short unrelated projects which are completely unrelated to your previous two short projects to complete and present to the seminar in March.
• At most one of these may be a report about secondary literature.
• Thus you have a total of 4 short projects during the semester.
  
• There are 5 types of acceptable project listed below (Greek language, philosophy within the Theatetus, philosophical links from the Theatetus to other works, secondary literature, and "other issues").
• You may not do more than one short project from the same type (unless you choose to do more than 4 short projects).
  
• Along the way, you should choose a final project. You must have one chosen by mid-March at the very latest.
• The final projects are to be 10 pages and to involve significant amounts of research that synthesizes the positions you have found in journal articles or book chapters.
• I encourage you to mix up the types of projects in the final project: in other words, your final project may well turn out to be partly philosophical, partly about the Greek language, and must include secondary literature.
  
• Acceptable Projects:
• You can choose from among the following sorts of projects
  
• Greek language phenomena you wish to know more about:
• e.g. a Greek particle, the optative, final clauses, the semantics of some particular word or group of words, politeness formulae, vocatives, etc.
• There should be some payoff in terms of reading the Theatetus in particular: i.e. your investigation should arise from something you want to know more about in the Theaetetus.
  
• Seminar report on the phenomenon you have chosen
  
• find a suitable sample of the phenomenon in the Theatetus, or Plato more generally, or Greek more generally
  
• analyze the data
• consult relevant aids and other secondary literature
  
• formulate questions
• construct explanations
• present your work to us electronically
• answer questions in class
  
• This should start out as a preliminary exploration and report of results that takes no more than a couple days followed by a report to the rest of us
• You should spend several hours on this and the result should be a short report: 5 pages seems like it would be a very long report.
  
• If it seems worth pursuing and you so desire, expand it out into your final project.
  
• Philosophical issues to explore within the Theaetetus
  
• the most obvious issues are epistemological for the Theatetus.
• for example: how does the aviary example work?; is Protagorean phenomenal subjectivism self-refuting (how?/why not?); does Plato believe a version of the third definition? what does "perception" mean specifically in the first definition?
  
• Seminar report:
• find a topic/question/thesis
• find the relevant text passages
• consult articles/commentaries, etc.
• formulate a preliminary report along with further questions and suggestions as to how one might approach them
• You should spend several hours on this and the result should be a short report: 5 pages seems like it would be a very long report.
• present the work to us electronically
• answer questions in class
• If it seems worth it and you so desire, expand this into your final project.
• Linkages from the Theatetus to other Greek works or other philosophical works (in any language)
• As you read about the Theaetetus, you will notice references to other Greek texts, mainly Platonic, but some Aristotelian, Heraclitean, etc. and some more recent (Russell, Wittgenstein, etc.)
• Feel free to develop small projects on these other Greek texts along the lines of the projects described above.
• You may ask the class to read a text to prepare for your presentation, but be sure to give us sufficient notice (I would say that 2 class periods ahead of time is sufficient).
• The approach is likely to be philosophical (i.e. figuring out a position, the argument for it, its costs and benefits as an interpretation, etc.)
  
• You may develop these into final projects ONLY if they are about Greek authors and texts.
  
• Other issues:
• Plato's dialogues raise historical issues, literary issues, mathematical issues, etc.
• Any issue that is plausibly related to the Theaetetus can be the subject of a preliminary report along the lines suggested above and if it seems worth it to you, can be expanded into a final project IFF it is about Greek texts.
• Reports about secondary literature:
• There is a huge bibliography about the Theaetetus. At least one of your short projects should be a report summarizing a good-sized article about the Theaetetus. (i.e. a note that is only a few pages about a small issue is not sufficient)
• You can also synthesize more than one article if you find more than one about the same issue. 
• Your final project can be a "state of the field" report on the major positions championed by various scholars on a particular issue and thus consist mostly of synthesized reporting about secondary literature.
  
• In addition, we will be writing commentary on sections of the Theaetetus.
  
• We have one member of our group who has not yet completed elementary Greek: write a commentary that explains a passage to Lindsay.
• Remember, Lindsay needs practically EVERYTHING explained: she's smart, but she can't just know things she doesn't know. On the other hand, remember that there are some things she knows. Try to imagine yourself when you had barely begun Greek.
  

• Seminar procedures:
• We will NEVER have enough time in class to discuss all that we want to discuss. I will, unfortunately, have to keep us on schedule.
  
• We will have 2 or 3 presentations per class session.
  
• Question Sessions:
  
• You will not present your projects in class as a report: you will address questions about them. 
• It will be assumed that EVERYONE has read your report, because you have made it available to them by or before 4AM the class before the presentation is to occur (e.g. if the presentation is on a Monday, you must have somehow given your report to all of us by or before Friday morning at 4 AM: you may e-mail it, set up your own website and send us the address, bring paper copies to class, etc.)
  
• EVERYONE will have at least one well-formulated type-written question to ask of each presenter for the day, or a comment to which the presenter clearly should respond (i.e. not a comment to which the presenter is likely to say simply "You're right" or "Thank you" to.)
  
• EVERYONE will also have one real question about the Greek text assigned.
• This question should be well-thought out and present one thing in the Greek that you just don't understand as Greek.
  
• Thus for each day, you will have a printed document with a list of questions clearly labelled to hand in to me.
  
• You will also give to each presenter a copy of the question you are posing to him or her on the day of the presentation. You might print out a second copy of your questions and cut it into pieces to hand out. Please keep these neat, not hand-scribbled notes.
  
• The questions/comments should be challenging and interesting, but the sort of thing that the presenter will welcome as contributions to his or her project: keep the questions highly relevant, and within the realm of the reasonable. (e.g. "Dylan: I did not understand what you meant by 'Phenomenal subjectivism.' Did you mean the following ...." or "Dan: I don't think your idea can be right if we take 186b seriously, because ... . What do you think?" or "I liked your point that ...., but I don't think you carried it far enough. If you are right, then the following is also true... .")
• The questions can be critical, but must always be kind/supportive/respectful and intended to help improve.
• The questions should involve some independent thought and not simply be an informational question or a yes/no question: they should show that you have engaged with the material.
  
• It is simply not acceptable for this exercise to devolve into a cursory effort just to get the task over with: it is simply not acceptable for several of us to come up with "basically the same question" as someone else: it is up to us to really think about the material and to come up with specific enough, creative enough, careful enough, and constructive enough questions so that the presenter is never faced with several variants on "the same basic question" or only vague, obvious, perhaps unanswerable questions.
• An excellent idea would be to find somewhere that you disagree with the presenter and try to show why (remember, keep it constructive, supportive, charitable and kind, but also scholarly and most of all intelligent).
• If you have no questions, that is a failure of your imagination.
  
• In the interests of fairness, we will spend only a certain amount of time on each presenter, regardless of whether all or even any of the questions have been answered.
• The upshot of all of this is that I won't come to class prepared to do anything but comment and ask questions about your reports and, if there is time, address some of your daily questions about the Theaetetus' Greek.