What’s the difference between persuasion and lying?
Philosophy of truth, rhetoric and politics.
Meeting Time: Thursdays,, 6:15-8:15
Class text: Course reader
Instructors: Rivka Maizlish, Megan Kennedy
Course description
What is the difference between a good speaker and a good liar? What is the role of truth in politics? Is a citizen’s first responsibility towards the truth, or towards some other goal? In short, what are the uses and abuses of rhetoric? In this course, we’ll read what writers from ancient Greece to today have to say about these problems, with the aim of exploring and examining our own opinions. We’ll also see how issues of race, class, sexual identity and gender identity complicate and illuminate these questions.
Attendance
You’ve signed up for a full 8 weeks. We ask you to come to every class that you can make. If you can’t come, please follow the syllabus and ask somebody to fill you in on anything you missed. Please be aware that if you miss any two classes, your name will have to be removed from the roster, and you’ll have to wait until the next session starts up to join a class again.
Readings
You will be able to sign out class texts for the next 8 weeks. The readers are now the property of Oakhill Correctional Institution. They will be available to you for the 8 weeks of the class but will be collected after the session. No student not currently enrolled in the class should be in possession of the books or readings. Please treat them well; we want to make sure they last for others. If you end up being transferred or not completing the class for some reason, please return the materials to the School Office.
Instructors
Megan Kennedy, Rivka Maizlish
Class schedule
Note: come to class having read the materials listed underneath the class number.
Class #1 – Week of June 24
Introduction (why philosophy?), and an introduction to logical and rhetorical terms.
Class #2 – Week of July 1
Plato’s Gorgias, Part I.
Class #3 – Week of July 8
Plato’s Gorgias, Part II.
Class #4 – Week of July 15
Plato’s Gorgias, Part III.
Class #5 – Week of July 22
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Friedrich Nietzsche
Class #6 – Week of July 29
Politics and the English Language, George Orwell
Is Bad Writing Necessary?, James Miller
Class #7 – Week of August 5
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, Audre Lorde
Can The Master’s Tools Destroy the Master’s House?, Nathan J. Robinson
The Power of the Powerless, Vaclav Havel
Class #8 – Week of August 12
Evil Deceivers and Make Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion, Talia Mae Bettcher
Excerpted from Women, Race and Class: Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist, Angela Davis