1. In what ways did the invention of the Greek alphabet also help the following changes in ancient Athens: the development of abstract thoughts and concepts, the withering away of mythological thought, the development of the twin concepts of philosophy and democracy, and the beginnings of a legal system?
2. Who were some of the significant figures in the Presocratic intellectual movement? What did they discuss? Discover? Find interesting? Challenge? You may study different individuals in order to compare/contrast their individual thoughts. Or, you may present an intellectual timeline, starting with Thales, or Xenophanes, and moving toward its final culmination with the Sophists.

3. What are some of the strengths, or weaknesses, in the Platonic version of Idealism? Can a philosopher be both an abstract thinker and a policy planner for the polis? Is Plato’s ideas of perfect Forms an unattainable ideal, always destined to fail?
4. Unlike Plato, Aristotle considers ethics to be a practical rather than a theoretical study. What are your thoughts on Aristotle’s ethics of virtue? Can the polis be expected to last, providing it is inhabited with individuals who are neither weak nor headstrong? Compared to Plato, does Aristotle have a better, more reasonable view of human behaviour?

5. The era of Enlightenment and Rationality is an historical period characterised by a battle between religion and science. In essence, the former was being replace the latter. What was it about Descartes’s statement, “I think, therefore I am,” that made it so revolutionary? Was the mechanistic view of reality, shared by both Descartes and Bacon, powerful enough to displace religion as the final arbiter of truth? In what ways was religion threatened by scientific points of view that stressed knowledge based on experience, or even knowledge based on reason or logic?