All Seminar Q&A, Complete on One Page

This is here just as a quick way to view all the Q&A (in reverse chronological order), e.g., in order to print them.


  • Physics II.3: If Aristotle is not simply analyzing causality in the modern sense, what is he analyzing?


  • Physics II.2: How does the natural scientist differ from the mathematician, according to Aristotle?


  • Physics II.1: What is Aristotle’s account of nature?


  • Physics II.1–3: Initial questions and notes


  • Laws X, 893b–899d: What is Plato’s positive argument from self-motion?


  • Laws X, 891b–892c: What is the Athenian’s strategy for the refutation of the atheists?


  • Laws X, 890b–891c: Why do the interlocutors find it important to argue at length that gods exist and are good?


  • Laws X, 888e–890a. How does the Athenian reconstruct the atheists’ outlook?


  • Laws X, 886b–887e. How can the Athenian say that it is “necessary…to hate” those not believing the stories of the gods, when just a page before he said he thought them false?


  • Laws X, 886e–887b: In what way might Book X be a “preamble” or “prelude” to the laws?


  • Laws X, 885c–885e: On what grounds would the imagined atheists demand that “persuasion be used on us first”?


  • Laws X, 884a–885c: How does Plato segue from property law to dealing with impiety?


  • Laws X.884a–900b: How does Plato’s approach to apologetics compare to that of modern Christian apologetics?


  • Timaeus: Is Plato’s Demiurge sufficiently similar to the God revealed in Scripture and general revelation to serve as a foundation for Christian philosophy?


  • Timaeus 37c–38e: What is Plato’s view on the nature and origin of time?


  • Timaeus 31a–b: Why did Plato think the universe was unique?


  • Timaeus 30a–d: What is Plato’s argument that the universe is “a living being”?


  • Timaeus 29d–30b: What work does the assumption of the Demiurge’s goodness do for Plato?


  • Timaeus 29d–30b: Why does Plato seem to assume that the Demiurge is “good”?


  • Timaeus 29b–d: Why does Plato say that statements about a rational “model” must be “stable and reliable”?


  • Timaeus 28a, etc.: Why do commentaries on Plato call his creator god “Demiurge”?


  • Timaeus 28b–c: What makes Plato’s argument a “cosmological argument”?


  • Timaeus 28c–29b: What does Plato mean by the “two kinds of model” for the universe?


  • Timaeus 28b–c: What is Plato’s argument that there is a “maker and father of this universe of ours”?


  • Timaeus 27d–28b: Why suppose the objects of sensation do not really have “being”?


  • Timaeus 27d–28a: How does Plato distinguish between being and becoming?


  • Timaeus 26e–28a: What relationship, if any, is there between the speeches by Critias and Timaeus?


  • Timaeus 21d–26e: How well does Critias’ story of prehistoric Athens actually illustrate Socrates’ ideal city?


  • Timaeus 19b–26e: What is the point of Critias’ long speech?


  • Timaeus 17b–19a: Does the description of the previous day’s conversation suggest it was that of the Republic?