Write on one of the following questions:

1. Hannah Arendt, a 20th century philosopher, wrote: "According to Greek thought, the human capacity for political organization is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that natural association whose center is the home and the family... [Every] citizen belongs to two orders of existence; there is a sharp distinction between what is his own and what is communal." Does this accurately describe Plato's views on the relation between public and private as presented in the Republic?

2. Classical Greek culture has been frequently viewed as rationalistic, the product of a philosophical enlightenment. However, the Greeks often encountered circumstances that tended to undermine the possibilities of rational order and inquiry; they also produced works that seem to celebrate the erotic, the irrational, the "Dionysian." How do Plato's Republic and Euripides' Bacchae differently confront the presence of the irrational in collective life?

3. In Republic, Book 1, Thrasymachus says that justice is "nothing else than the advantage of the stronger." As part of his refutation of this position, Socrates argues against Thrasymachus' view that the life of the unjust man is to be preferred to that of the just. Analyze Socrates' argument at 347e-354a. Are the arguments that Socrates uses to refute Thrasymachus persuasive?

4. In Republic, Book 2, 368-369b, Socrates first draws an analogy between a soul and a city. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this analogy as it is used in Republic, Book 8 to critique various forms of government?

5. In Republic, Book 2, 367d, Adeimantus challenges Socrates to praise justice as a good in itself, "explaining how--because of its very self--it benefits its possessors, and how injustice harms them." Socrates responds by examining the nature of vice and virtue in the individual through an examination of vice and virtue in the city, and concludes in 577b-588a with three arguments that the just man is the most happy man. How persuasive are these arguments?

6. On what particular grounds would Plato critique the relation between polis and individual as it is represented in either the Bacchae or the Lysistrata? Illustrate your argument with specific passages from the Republic and the play you choose. How would you respond to Plato?