Question and Answers

B. Essay Question Response [20 points]

Choose one of the following questions and write a 1½- to 2-page response. Be sure to use the values relationships terminology accurately in making your answer.

1. Read Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” from The Republic, and explain how this selection from Plato could be taken to exemplify the value scheme of an inquiry into perfection. Refer to Plato’s text whenever possible to support your answers. 1) What does the sunshine of the outside world symbolize? 2) What sort of implication will this search for perfect knowledge have on the relations that the searcher has with other people? 3) What values relationship does Plato suggest would exist between the search for perfect knowledge and the practicalities of governing a state? 4) What sort of rulers would the most perfect state want to have? 5) What would be the values relationship of those rulers to conventional political processes, and to the study of philosophy (i.e., the search for perfect knowledge)?

2. Read the two selections from Xenophon, “The Role of the Athenian Wife” and “A Spartan Childhood,” and answer the following: 1) What values are embodied in the Athenian practice of training a new wife? 2) How do these values relate to the value of an “Inquiry into Perfection” and/or to any of the subsidiary values listed in section II of this handout? 3) What values are embodied in the Spartan practice of training a young boy? 4) How do these values relate to the value of an “Inquiry into Perfection” and/or to any of the subsidiary values listed in section II of this handout?

3. Read the Correspondence between Pliny the Younger and the Emperor Trajan and answer the following: 1) What values does Pliny display in the way he handles the cases of people who have been denounced to him as Christians? 2) What values are embodied in Christian religious practice as Pliny describes it? 3) Why does the spread of Christianity seem to be a matter of concern for Pliny? What value of Roman governance is it threatening? 4) What values are expressed in Trajan’s response to Pliny? How do Pliny’s and Trajan’s values relate to the integrating value of Unity?

4. Read the excerpt from Cicero’s oration “On Duty” and answer the following: 1) What values does Cicero advocate be adhered to in time of war or crisis? 2) Based on what Cicero says here, how do you think that a sense of duty to the state is utilitarian to the value of unity? 3) What values does Cicero advocate that might seem to conflict with the value of unity? 4) How do you think the values espoused by Cicero apply to the current international conflicts facing the United States?