Due date:
Length: approximately 2,000 words.
Essays should be typed and double spaced, with an adequate margin for
comments.
Late assignments will not be accepted.
The University considers plagiarism to be an extremely serious
offence, and it may lead to failure in the course, suspension or expulsion
from the University, or even the revocation of a degree. If you are in doubt
about what plagiarism is, please consult me prior to handing in any written
work. My policy is to be particularly vigilant in looking for plagiarism.
As a student in this class, you are to keep an electronic copy of any paper
you submit, and I may require you to submit that electronic copy.
This is an analytical essay; it is not a research
essay. I understand that you may have to consult dictionaries or encyclopedias
for some background, but other secondary sources must be kept to a minimum
and are strongly discouraged.
1. Discuss the nature and role of connatural
knowledge in Maritain’s natural law theory. (Be
sure to discuss whether it is a genuine kind of ‘knowing,’
whether it avoids such claims as that such knowledge would make morality
purely subjective, and what exactly connatural knowledge knows.)
2. Does Maritain’s
natural law theory adequately address the challenge of alleged anthropologically
confirmed exceptions to natural moral laws?
3. Discuss the teleological character of Maritain’s natural law theory. What possible objections
does it claim to resolve/avoid? Is it successful?
4. Some sexual practices have been said
to be unnatural and therefore immoral. Discuss and evaluate the arguments
that a natural law theorist might give for saying this.
5. Kant says that the moral worth of an act
is determined by it being from duty alone. Discuss Kant’s arguments for this
view and present and discuss some major objections to it. (You should consider,
for example, what the best way is of interpreting Kant’s views on the relationship
between duty and inclination/feeling, and whether you agree with Kant’s understanding of this relationship.)
6. Must morality and moral requirements be categorical in the Kantian sense? (Present and discuss why Kant thinks the requirements of morality must be categorical, not hypothetical.)
7. Kant says that we must never use another
merely as a means. Explain his reasons for this view and then consider the
following case: “Federal officials in the
8. Can Kant’s ethical theory provide
an adequate response to a global problem (as distinct from an individual vice),
such as the problem of world hunger?
9. Mill suggests that Kant is a closet
consequentialist. (Mill writes that the categorical
imperative demands that an action be morally prohibited if "the consequences
of its universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur"
[Utilitarianism, ch. 1]) Kant
would obviously disagree. Present the relevant arguments in Kant’s ethics,
and discuss whether Mill’s view is a just one.
10. A standard objection to utilitarianism
is that it does not take the value of persons seriously—that it does not
see each one of us as something intrinsically valuable and worthy in our
own right, that it ignores merit or desert, and that the punishment of the
innocent or slavery could be morally allowable (and even obligatory) if it
were advantageous to ‘the greatest number.’ Explain how this is an objection
to utilitarianism, present how a utilitarian might respond to this, and evaluate
these arguments.
11. Is supererogation an essential part of morality?
How would a utilitarianism deal with supererogation?
12. Discuss Aristotle’s account of ‘friendship’
in Books VIII and IX in the Nicomachean Ethics. Explain the distinctions
Aristotle draws between the different kinds of friendship. What does Aristotle
mean when he says that friends are like another self? Why is friendship a
necessary component of the flourishing life? Do you agree? [Students
who wish to write on this topic must see me first.]