Editorial January 13, 1992 Issue

We can find out for ourselves

Michael D. Rissler

Sometimes an experience of minor import will, at the time, seem absolutely earthshaking to our lives. Later on we judge differently with more perspective. Vice versa, something that may have seemed quite ordinary and not all that memorable will remain with us far more strongly than we ever imagined.

A class I attended years ago was like that. The class spent nearly the entire course with just one book, a translation of Plato's Republic. At first we students thought this was going to be an "easy" course. We were accustomed to buying half a dozen books for such a class and to having those augmented by a long reading list. The professor for this class, however, had something different in mind.

Our assignment was only to read Plato's Republic. We were to turn to no other sources for interpretation or explanation of the book. We were to read, think about, and relate the book's ideas to class lectures by the professor and to class discussions.

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