Plato’s Republic
Select one of the texts we have discussed extensively in class – i.e., Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Hobbes’s Leviathan, or Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.
2. Spend some time reading recent secondary literature/scholarship on the text you have chosen. Be sure that what you are reading has been published for the first time in the last ten years (i.e., nothing published before 2010 is acceptable for this assignment).
a. Please note that alternate translations of these texts do not count for purposes of this assignment.
3. Provide Chicago style citations and an annotated bibliography covering the best/most interesting 6 works you have come across.
a. Make sure that one of them is a book-length study (i.e., not just a book of essays by one or more authors, but a long, sustained work – i.e., a book, by one author, extensively treating of the subject).
b. Please note that your bibliography must be limited to works that are appropriately considered scholarship – this means works published in appropriate scholarly journals and by appropriate scholarly presses.
i. Websites and encyclopedia articles are not acceptable.
ii. Pieces published in the popular press are not acceptable (i.e., the magazine Philosophy Now)
iii. Articles referencing, say, Aristotle, but published in business or psychology journals are not acceptable. Antichthon, Polis, Interpretation: a Journal of Political Philosophy, The European Journal of Philosophy, The Philosophical Quarterly, etc., are all acceptable sources, just to name a few.
iv. Business journals, journals in other academic disciplines, or journals of undergraduate research are not acceptable sources.
c. An example of a Chicago-style bibliography can be found here: http://libguides.enc.edu/writing_basics/annotatedbib/chicago
4. Your annotation should include:
a. a) a Chicago-style citation for the source
b. b) an overview of the argument made in the cited publication.
c. c) a critical judgment on the strengths and weaknesses of the argument. Your account of each source needs to be both descriptive and critical. What this means is that if you don’t think you’ve understood Kant, you shouldn’t be doing an annotated bibliography on Kant.
5. The final product should be at least five pages (12 point font, double spaced, standard margins). In the past, I have asked for less, and the vast majority of students have ended up submitting about five pages. If you have more to say, that’s fine – you can go over.
