Major Essay Assignment:

Applying Plato’s Crito

While the social context and contemporary issues to which ethics needs to be applied have changed drastically over time, philosophers and ethicists are still mulling over some of the same core ideas and debates today that were asked at the very beginnings of philosophy. While there are a variety of foundational thinkers in all kinds of different cultures and traditions, for Western culture and philosophy, there was no greater asker of foundational questions than the Greek Socrates as he is portrayed to us by Plato in his dialogues. In this dialogue, he addresses fundamental questions about the nature of Justice and the notion of the individual’s obligation to the society in which they live. This is a relationship that is still contentious to this day, with no easy solution.

This relationship is one of even more importance for the profession who, through their specialized knowledge and training is given both more authority and more responsibility in society. As a professional, people put more trust in you, your knowledge and your decisions. You are, in turn also held more accountable by your peers, your professional organizations, and your government. In this assignment, you are asked to distill and think about some of the core ideas in the Crito and explore what they say to you about your own social obligations in your future profession (or if you do not have a particular profession at this point, to yourself as a professional in general).

This will be a research essay that will ask you to do research that reaches across the millennia since Plato wrote his dialogue. You will be responsible both for researching the core ideas of the piece, about Socrates, Plato and their philosophies of social obligation and justice, as well as research about the ethical obligations of the professional, especially the type of profession that you see yourself as becoming, be it a Healthcare Professional, a Business Professional, or any other type of professional.

In order to write a strong essay, here are some of the important things to keep in mind:

• The essay should be thesis driven. That is to say, the essay needs a strong controlling purpose or thesis which connects Plato’s Crito to the ethical obligations of the professional and to which all parts of the essay must significantly contribute.

• The essay needs to have at a minimum four scholarly sources, with at least two of them focusing on contemporary professional ethics and two of them related to Greek Philosophy or society. Scholarly articles found through your library are preferred, and general informational webpages like Wikipedia, ask.com, yahoo answers etc. or basic study guides like Spark Notes are not appropriate sources for this type of essay.

• The essay needs to be a minimum of 4 pages long (double spaced Times New Roman font of 10 – 12 point size, reference page or any preliminary pages like the title page are not part of the 4 pages).

• The paper needs to be appropriately formatted according to APA guidelines, and all citations need to be done in APA style, with both parenthetical citations and a reference page.