Professor Gendler explores some aspects of the question of what sorts of non-rational persuasion are legitimate for a government to engage in. She begins with two modern examples that illustrate Plato’s view on state censorship. She next turns to the text itself and outlines in detail Plato’s argument that since we are vulnerable to non-rational persuasion, and since a powerful source of such persuasion is imitative poetry, such poetry must be censored by the state. Drawing on a number of earlier themes from the course, she then discusses several implications of the fact our limited ability to rationally regulate our non-rational responses to representations makes fiction both potentially powerful, and potentially dangerous.

1. Introduction
2. The Ring of Gyges: Morality and Hypocrisy
3. Parts of the Soul I
4. Parts of the Soul II
5. The Well-Ordered Soul: Happiness and Harmony
6. The Disordered Soul: Thémis and PTSD
7. Flourishing and Attachment
8. Flourishing and Detachment
9. Virtue and Habit I
10. Virtue and Habit II
11. Weakness of the Will and Procrastination
12. Utilitarianism and its Critiques
13. Deontology
14. The Trolley Problem
15. Empirically-informed Responses
16. Philosophical Puzzles
17. Punishment I
18. Punishment II
19. Contract & Commonwealth: Thomas Hobbes
20. The Prisoner's Dilemma
21. Equality
22. Equality II
23. Social Structures
24. Censorship
25. Tying up Loose Ends
26. Concluding Lecture

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature pairs central texts from Western philosophical tradition (including works by Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Rawls, and Nozick) with recent findings in cognitive science and related fields. The course is structured around three intertwined sets of topics: Happiness and Flourishing; Morality and Justice; and Political Legitimacy and Social Structures.