Yuleng Zeng
30 January, 2020
This affects your political view. For instance, what are your rights? (positive vs. negative)
What are the two principles of justice?
More resouces: Here is an intro on John Rawls. Another one from Philosophy Talk JOHN RAWLS. John Rawls and the Politics of Social Justice.
From his theory, can there be redistribution? Why?
Should we have states? How about stuff like NASA?
More resources: Why Robert Nozick was a libertarian. Why libertarianism is a marginal idea and not a universal value.
What do they think of affirmative action?
More resouces: Schmidtz on Rawls, Nozick, and Justice. Three post-war liberals strove to establish the meaning of freedom.
Other thoughts?
ESSAY 1: Reasoning About an Ethical Issue
This essay, Reasoning About an Ethical Issue, is situated between the first and second speech, Imagining Advocacy and Discovering an Issue. It should serve partially as a transition from the one to the other. In the Discovering an Issue speech you are looking to establish what some of the competing facts, values, interpretations and interests are in the problem you selected, defining who the stakeholders are, and setting up what is at issue between competing groups. Here you are beginning that work by investigating the moral dimensions of the problem that make it difficult of resolution without trying to establish a resolution.
What we are finding in our readings is that neither the theoretical foundation for ethical judgments is settled, nor are the meanings given to any of the important values on which many of our ethical judgments hinge. In this essay you have the opportunity to make clear how ethical concerns and values, both theoretical and practical, provide context for the problem and more than likely exist in a kind of problematic tension.
Please continue to avoid arguing for a solution at this point. But you should try and persuade your reader about which theories and values give the problem an ethical dimension, clarify the meaning of those theories and values, and explain how the tension in those values makes difficult an easy or ready solution (even if you think you have one).
One way to imagine this assignment is to imagine ethical values as having color. Your job is to paint on a canvass the texture, hue, and richness of ethical considerations in your problem. The result should provide the reader with insight, clarity, and a sense of the tension and uneasy complexity of the moral domain as it contextualizes your exigence.
What is the meaning of moral terms? What other values are presupposed? What is the theoretical foundation of the moral values at play in the problem? How are the values related or in tension? How could the problem change moral “color” if viewed from a different perspective? In what sense would viewing the problem from one perspective cancel values that would otherwise be visible? What are the particular factual or historical considerations that give the problem the moral hue it has?
Grading Considerations
Word count: 1300 word minimum
The paper should be turned in on time.
The paper should be morally exploratory and reflective in nature revealing the complexity and texture of moral considerations.
Any moral values identified in the paper should be defined, explored and clarified. This is a kind of exploration or interrogation.
The paper must be minimally 1300 words (not including bibliography).
Grammar and spelling.
Formatting and citation
Discuss in small groups: what is your definition of freedom? Pick the most essential freedoms and tell us why.
What percentage of people live in a free country? How has freedom in the U.S. changed over the past two decades?
What are the five freedoms listed on the First Amendment? What are the possible limits? Why?
Discuss whether the following scenarios should be allowed. Why or why not?
Holding: By a 5-4 vote, the court held that schools may not promote religious exercises either directly or through an invited guest at graduation ceremonies.
Reasoning: The court found that the Establishment Clause forbids government from coercing people into participating in a religious activity. Forcing students to choose between attending a graduation ceremony containing religious elements with which they disagree or avoiding the offending practices by not attending their graduation ceremony was inherently coercive and unlawful. The court found that students who do attend are exposed to subtle coercion to appear as though they approve of or are participating in the prayer.
Majority: “The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by the Establishment Clause. It is beyond dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which ‘establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to do so.’” (Justice Anthony Kennedy)
Dissent: “Thus, while I have no quarrel with the Court’s general proposition that the Establishment Clause ‘guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise,’ I see no warrant for expanding the concept of coercion beyond acts backed by threat of penalty — a brand of coercion that, happily, is readily discernible to those of us who have made a career of reading the disciples of Blackstone rather than of Freud.” (Justice Antonin Scalia)
Another case: Do Students Have Free Speech in School?.
Here is an introduction about the difference between positive and negative liberties, where the instructor also talk about the change from Jefferson’s negative liberties to FDR’s positive liberties.
More reading: On Liberty. Debate: ‘Positive Liberty’ Isn’t True Liberty.
FDR’ Four Freedoms
Campus free speech. First, What are the limits of free speech on campus?
Are universities liberal-biased? And The Conservative Student’s Survival Guide.
The five freedoms exercises are taken from Newseum’s You Can’t Say That in School?!. And more resources. Seven lessons in personal freedom from Nelson Mandela. Here is a class plan for talking about the difference between Liberty and Freedom. Here is a lesson plan for different philosophies. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Overprotective Parenting Led to Fragility on Campus.
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