Basic assignment: Write a 5-6 page (typed, double-spaced) paper explaining and supporting your position on some issue raised by one or more of the writers we have read (or will have read) in the last 5 weeks of this course. Since we will not be meeting on December 13, you will need to email your paper to me, preferably as a Word document.
Some guidelines:
Your paper should contain your thoughts and opinions, not just a summary of Hume or Kant (or whoever). Tell me what you think, not just what other people have said.
Do, however, address the position and the arguments of at least one of the philosophers we have studied. Give references to the texts to support your interpretation of their views.
Be sure that the question or issue your paper is addressing is clear and well focused.
Be sure that you have provided a clear statement of your position on that issue (or your answer to that question).
In addition to explaining what you think, your paper should contain reasons why you take the position you do. Your main job is to explain why a reasonable person should agree with the opinion or position you are expressing.
Include in your paper at least one statement of an objection to your view and a reply to that objection. How might someone who disagreed with you criticize your argument? And how can you respond to that criticism?
You are not required (or encouraged) to consult any other sources besides those already assigned for class reading. If you do use any other sources, give them credit for whatever you take from them: list them in a bibliography at the end of your paper and give specific references for any ideas you have borrowed. (Where you rely on Melchert, give him credit.)
Some possible topics (if you want to develop a different topic, check it out with me before you write your paper):
Hume holds that reason can never tell us what our ends (goals) should be, only help us find more effective means to the ends we happen to have. Kant says that other people are an ‘objective end’ and that reason requires us to afford them respect. (This leads to the second formulation of his Categorical Imperative.) Who’s right?
Kant and Mill develop approaches to ethics that are often seen as diametrically opposed to one another. How so? Is one of these approaches preferable?
In his essay on liberty Mill defends ‘one very simple thesis’: “The only end for which people are entitled, individually or collectively, to interfere with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Discuss.
Is there any value in seeing history as Hegel does, as the progressive unfolding of the idea of freedom?
Marx claimed to have turned Hegel’s philosophy of history upside down (or, rather, right side up). How so? Which way is really right side up?
In different ways Marx and Nietzsche both challenge the pretensions of philosophers. Explain and discuss.
Discuss (one or more of) the various ways Nietzsche criticizes Kant.
Nietzsche attempts a geneology of morality (“a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances out of which these values grew”), in order to attempt a critique (a ‘revaluation of all values’). Is this a good idea? Does he succeed?