Thursday, January 21, 2010

Shimer Class

My wife is co-teaching a class at Shimer College, here in Chicago. The title of the course is "The Morality of Capitalism". The course description reads:
Capitalism has brought more wealth to more people than any other economic system in history, but it works by appealing to self-interest and greed, and it causes huge disparities in wealth. Is it good or evil? Can we determine its moral status? Readings include writings by Plato, Aristotle, Smith, Marx, Veblen, Weber, Mises, and Rawls.
Class started today, with a discussion of part of Plato's Republic. Shimer is a "great books" college, so the students were already familiar with the Republic.

As for Plato, you may be leery,
or think his ideas are the worst,
but when it comes to theory,
he often covered it first.

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