Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: the Journey Out of Ignorance

Plato’s book The Republic is a dialogue about justice. It contains the “Allegory of the Cave”, a fanciful story that illustrates some of Plato’s ideas about education and the distinction between appearance and reality. This essay introduces the Allegory and explains its meaning.

Syllabus Showcase: Philosophy on the Spectrum: The Philosophy of Autism and Autistic Philosophy, Travis LaCroix

Some have suggested that the “very idea of an autistic person is a philosophical one” (Murray 2011, 9) and that the “subject of autism is rich with philosophical possibilities” (Anderson and Cushing 2013, 3). At the same time, however, “the philosophy of autism is not (or not yet) a subfield of philosophy” (Bölte and Richman […]

Syllabus Showcase: What is Philosophy? Global Perspectives on Philosophical History, Christopher P. Noble

I am a historian of philosophy at New College of Florida, a small, public liberal arts college. When I arrived first in 2018, one of my duties was to expand the philosophy curriculum into areas beyond the Western tradition, and I set about building a course introducing students to the history of philosophy from a […]

Syllabus Showcase: Dawn of Western Thought, Robert Earle

I designed this ancient (mostly Greek) philosophy course around three units: the Presocratics through Socrates and the sophists, Plato and Aristotle, and Hellenistic thought. In this blog entry, I will focus on sharing the essay topic ideas I developed for units one and two as well as the culminating class activity which is a dramatic […]

My Body, Not My Choice: The Complicated Ethics of Abortion

Editor’s note: This post is part of the Blog of the APA’s continued engagement with arguments related to the topic of abortion. Posts providing alternative perspectives can be found here, here, and here. Roe has fallen. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an increase in attention given to the ethical and legal status of abortion. Even less surprisingly, this has […]

Syllabus Showcase: The Buddhist Traditions, Purushottama Bilimoria

In some ways this is a standard course on Buddhist Philosophy & Religion. The title Buddhist Tradition (I expanded it to Traditions) was given by another—an excellent—teacher. This is one of a number of courses that fits the bill of diversifying philosophy and engaging non-Western thought, hopefully, across Departments of Philosophy. San Francisco State University […]