Contemporary Moral Philosophy                First Paper Assignment (For students choosing the two-paper option)

       Due: Saturday, October 31, by noon

Basic assignment: Write a 5-8 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 first few weeks of this course..

Some guidelines:

1. Your paper should contain your thoughts and opinions, not just a summary of Marx or Fanon (or whoever).  Tell me what you think, not just what other people have said.
2. 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.
3. Be sure that the question or issue your paper is addressing is clear and well focused.
4. Be sure that you have provided a clear statement of your position on that issue (or your answer to that question).
5. 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.
6. 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?
7. 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. 
8. Save your paper as a Word doc and submit it to the appropriate D2L assignment folder by the due date and time indicated above.

Some possible topics (if you want to develop a different topic, check it out with me before you write your paper):

1. All-purpose formula for a topic: Choose one of the course readings.  Analyze and assess an argument (or, at least, a claim) made in that text.  (This is probably easier to do if you disagree with the claim or argument.  But it can also work to defend that claim or argument against objections that you think are misguided.)  Since this is a class in moral theory, the argument or claim that you choose should have something to do with morality (or ethics) or moral theory, broadly construed. (It would probably be a good idea to run your specific topic idea by me to make sure we are not too far apart in our understanding of what counts as morality or moral theory.) 
2. Big picture topic:  By the time this paper is due, we will have explored (in a preliminary way) four critical perspectives on morality: the Marxist account of morality as ideology, Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality, feminist allegations that morality (or moral theory, at least) reflects a male or masculine point of view, and anti-colonial (or post-colonial) theory.  At the beginning of the semester I alleged that these theories gave us reasons to think that our sense of what is right or good or moral may be distorted (by classism, sexism, racism, colonialism, etc.).  Have we, in fact, discovered reasons of this kind?  Have these theories succeeded in ‘problematizing’ or ‘subverting’ "our" moral traditions?  Be as specific as you can about the concepts or values that have been called into question and why you think the “problematization” is successful or unsuccessful. It would also make sense to say something about the idea that there is a 'we' who have inherited these moral traditions.
3. Marx and Nietzsche each offers a fairly sweeping condemnation of what he takes to be the European philosophical tradition.  Either:
1. Compare the various grounds on which these two thinkers criticize/reject the traditional problems/methods/concepts of philosophy. Or,
2. Consider one or two of these critiques in more detail.  Are the reasons given sufficient to justify rejecting the tradition (or some aspect of it)?
4. Each of these writers also represents a way forward for philosophy (or perhaps a successor activity to philosophy).  Either:
1. Compare the Marxian idea of a ‘critique of ideology’ to Nietzschean ‘genealogy,' or
2. Consider one of these in more detail. 
5. Have the anticolonial or decolonial writers we read given us good reasons to think the 'European' or 'Western' or 'Northern' moral principles (or values) are defective? Or should we think that the principles are good, but their application has been inconsistent?
6. Is an “ethic of care” needed to correct the male bias of mainstream moral theory?  Or does this approach to ethics amount to an acceptance of gender stereotypes?
7. If we consider feminism as a critical theory, is it more like Marxian class analysis or more like Nietzschean genealogy?