Plato and Hegel are two of the most brilliant, and the most comprehensive, thinkers our world has ever produced. We will spend the first half of the semester reading Plato's masterpice, The Republic, in which the nature of human society is analyzed in detail. We will especially focus on the profound role that art plays in the formation of society. In the second half of the semester, we will read Hegel's brilliantly crafted Lectures on Fine Art, which similarly investigates, in detail, the formative and transformative power of art in human civilization. These are both difficult and demanding works that require from the reader both a cultivated attunement to the rich social and existential dimensions of human life and a willingsness to be rigorous and disciplined in dealing with the subtleties and specificities of a philosophical text.