WEEK 1
Jan. 14
Ptah-hotep (Fordham, sofiatopia).
Jan. 16
Pyramid Texts
Osirian Revolution
Eloquent Peasant / Excerpt
Negative Confessions / Scroll / Text
Amenemope
Proverbs
Jan. 18 – WORKSHOP #1. Due at beginning of class: one paragraph presentation of Ethical Criteria covered this week. We will have a workshop activity based on the material.
•Please indicate your name, the course, workshop number, and date in the upper left corner.
•In your title, identify the primary author.
•The paragraphs should be at least 200 words in length, using at least three direct quotations from a primary text, using MLA style of format and citation.
•For reminders about MLA citation style, see “Purdue OWL” online.
•A primary text is written by one of the primary authors presented in class (usually in translation). Wikipedia is not a primary text. Brainy Quotes is not a primary text.
•To conserve paper, please list your work cited as the last paragraph of your exercise, not as a works-cited page.
•Simply present in a fair and sympathetic way what the primary texts appear to teach about criteria that should guide ethical life. This is not the place to judge the value of the criteria. Here you are summarizing the primary author’s point of view.
WEEK 2
Jan. 21 – MLK Day (no class)
Jan. 23
Hinduism
Bhagavad Gita
Gandhi’s Gita (Discourse III)
Hind Swaraj (Chs. 13 & 17)
===
Buddhism
Dhamma
Thich Nhat Hanh
Jan. 25 – WORKSHOP #2. Due at beginning of class: one page development of a Case or Scenario where a contemporary stakeholder is faced with a difficult ethical choice going forward.
• Please indicate your name, the course, workshop number, and date in the upper left corner.
• In your title, identify the nature of the case or scenario.
• The paragraph should be at least 200 words in length. If you are referring to news stories or facts, provide direct quotations, using MLA style of format and citation.
• For reminders about MLA citation style, see “Purdue OWL” online.
• The case or scenario may be of a personal nature, family matter, business choice, or public policy at the city, county, state, national, or international level. If it is a personal scenario, it is acceptable to fictionalize the names to preserve privacy.
• Identify a stakeholder and present the facts that lead up to a point of choice and deliberation about what to do going forward.
• Please do not develop children as stakeholders. Let’s explore ethics for adult stakeholders.
• The thing of main importance is that there is some felt tension about what is the right or good thing to do, involving at least two preliminary courses of action. This is different from a tension involving what is simply tempting.
• Briefly discuss why the preliminary options each appear to have some merit.
• In the last sentence of the paragraph, pose a question that reminds the reader about the choice of preliminary options.
• This is an exercise in developing a case, scenario, and stakeholder. Please do not deliberate or decide the choice (even if you know how things turn out). Here we are rehearsing the moment of choice.
WEEK 3
Jan. 28
Confucius
-Great Learning (classics.mit.edu)
-Analects (YellowBridge)
see Bks. 2, 7: after Foust 2012 (The Dial); also see 12.1, 17.6: after Shirong Luo 2012
-Doctrine of the Mean (nothingistic.org)
Mencius (nothinistic.org)
Xunxi (excerpts)
Jan. 30
Laozi: Dao de Ching
Chuang Tzu (nothingistic.org)
Zhou Dunyi
–overview
–image
–Tongshu
Feb. 1 – WORSHOP #3. Due at the beginning of class. Three paragraphs (at least 200 words each), or about two pages in MLA format:
1. In paragraph one, present a case or scenario involving a contemporary stakeholder who faces a difficult choice going forward (you may reuse, revise, or replace the scenario developed for Workshop #2). Please remember to focus on facts and options for action. Leave the deliberation and choice for later paragraphs.
2. In paragraph two, present ethical criteria from some text that we have studied since the last ethical criteria exercise. In this second paragraph, do not make any reference to the case that you developed in the first paragraph or any judgments about the value of the criteria (see guidelines from Workshop #1).
3. In the third paragraph, discuss the case or scenario of the first paragraph in relation to criteria presented in the second paragraph. Show how the criteria in paragraph two would guide choice for the stakeholder in paragraph one. This is not the place to introduce new quotes or criteria from the text. Nor is this the place to unveil facts not revealed in the case or scenario. Given the facts in paragraph one, if the stakeholder were to be guided by the criteria in paragraph two, how would the stakeholder choose to act and why? What would the stakeholder do? If the criteria themselves generate a debate between two alternatives, what would be the best resolution of the debate according to the criteria themselves? In any event, the stakeholder must make a choice going forward, in a way that honors the integrity of the criteria as developed in paragraph two. We’ll call this an application of criteria to case or scenario.
WEEK 4
Feb. 4
Popol Vuh
Prof Notes: May be slow loading
Christenson Translation: Click on “English Translation” to get a free pdf
Feb. 6
Dekanawidah
Black Elk
Deloria
Anzaldua
-Borderlands / La Frontera (The Homeland, Aztlan)(How to Tame a Wild Tongue)
-keywords: Coatlicue / Nepantla / la Facultad / nahual / mestiza / mestizaje
Feb. 8 – WORKSHOP #4. Due: 1-2 page development of case or scenario (see guidelines for Workshop #2; no criteria or application required).
WEEK 5
Feb. 11 – Plato (@ Perseus)
-Alcibiades (@ Sanderson Beck)
-Phaedrus (@ Adelaide)
-Symposium (@ Adelaide)
Feb. 13 – Plato
Republic (See esp. Bk IV @Adelaide)
Feb. 15 – WORKSHOP #5. Due: Two paragraphs (1-2 pages) of criteria and application (using cases previously presented).
• In the title of your paper, please state your purpose. For example: “Applying Amenemope to Contemporary Dating.”
• In the first full paragraph develop ethical criteria (as in Workshop #1) from one of the texts covered since our last criteria exercise; do not mention anything about the particular case that you have in mind.
• In the second paragraph remind the reader briefly (with one or two sentences) of the case that you developed in the attached scenario, and then apply to that case or scenario the criteria that you have just developed. Please remember this is not the place to introduce new criteria or new facts. Just deliberate the stakeholder to a choice that honors the criteria summarized in the first paragraph.
• ATTACH the case or scenario that you developed last week (or substitute a new one as you please).
WEEK 6
Feb. 18 – Workshop #5 (criteria and application)
Feb. 20 – Aristotle’s Ethics (nothingistic.org)
Feb. 22 – WORKSHOP #6. 1-2 page development of case or scenario (no criteria or application today).
WEEK 7
Feb. 25 – Topics in the Platonist tradition
Philo
Plotinus: Notes | On Virtue | The Good
Augustine: Faith, Hope, Love | On Christian Doctrine
Ghazali: Happiness | Revival
Buber
Feb. 27 – Topics in the Aristotelian tradition:
al-Kindi
Averroes
Maimonides
Aquinas
MacIntyre
Laurence Thomas
Mar. 1 – WORKSHOP #7. Two paragraphs (1-2 pages) of criteria and application. Please review previous guidelines above. ATTACH WORKSHOP #6 case or scenario (revised or replaced).
WEEK 8
Mar. 4
Epicurus
Marx: On Epicurus / On Feuerbach / On Capital
Bentham / Mill
Singer
Mar. 6
Epictetus
Aurelius
Spinoza (Ethics @MTSU: see IV. “joy”)
Kant
Rawls
Mar. 8 – WORKSHOP #8. Due: 1-2 page development of case or scenario (no criteria or application today).
SPRING BREAK
WEEK 9
Mar. 18
Schleitheim
Hobbes
Locke
Jefferson
Hegel
Douglass
Mar. 20
Kant Right / Mine
Hegel
Husserl
Heidegger
Sartre
Freud
Lacan
Zizek
Mar. 22 – WORKSHOP #9. Two paragraphs (1-2 pages) of criteria and application. Please review previous guidelines above. ATTACH WORKSHOP #8 case or scenario (revised or replaced).
WEEK 10
Mar. 25
Peirce (Fixation of Belief / How to Make our Ideas Clear / Evolutionary Love)
James (The Will to Believe)
Dewey (Democracy and Education)
Habermas
Mar. 27
Addams
de Beauvoir
Gilligan
EASTER BREAK
WEEK 11
Apr. 3
Farmer, Sr. (TSHA)
Thurman (Jesus and the Disinherited)
King (Letter from Birmingham Jail)
Apr. 5 – Workshop #10: Due: 1-2 page development of case or scenario regarding options in public policy, i.e. whether “there ought to be a law.” Please note this is different than asking whether one should follow an existing law in a particular case. Quotes and citations required (no criteria or application today).
WEEK 12
Apr. 8
Apr. 10
Apr. 12 – WORKSHOP #11. Due: Two paragraphs (1-2 pages) of criteria and application (texts since last criteria workshop applied to cases previously presented). ATTACH Workshop #10 (or replacement public policy scenario).
WEEK 13
Apr. 15
Environmental Ethics (SEP) database orientation (Phil Index)
Muir / Burroughs / Walden, online
Apr. 17
Student Choice (something we want to come back to, or something we want to add?)
Zizek on Lacan
Class? Shall we call this the supplement?
–“the ethical imperative is the mode of the presence of the real in the symbolic”
or?
–“The real is an entity which should be constructed afterwards so that we can account for the distortions of the symbolic structure.”
Apr. 19 – WORKSHOP #12. Due: Case or scenario (please remain mindful of previous guidelines). DEFERRED WORKSHOP NO CLASS.
WEEK 14
Apr. 22
Feminist Ethics (SEP) database orientation (Phil Index)
Also EARTH DAY: Glenn Prickett speaks 7pm Jones Hall (Extra Credit for Attendance and Report)
Apr. 24
Apr. 26 – Workshop #13: Due: Two paragraphs (1-2 pages) of criteria and application (texts since last criteria workshop applied to cases previously presented). ATTACH Workshop #12 (revised or replaced).
WEEK 15
Apr. 29 – Review Discussion (What sources would you draw upon to compare your own approach to ethical life? Which sources would you draw upon to contrast your own approach?)
May 1 – Review Discussion Continued (What unique terms or criteria would you use to profile your own approach to ethical life?)
May 3 – Workshop on drafting the final: bring a draft of your final paper for small-group discussion.
WEEK 16
WED. MAY 8, 9am: FINAL WORKSHOP, Four pages (mindful of previous guidelines).
(1) case or scenario
(2) criteria and application from one recent text
(3) criteria and application from any other text this semester, whether recent or not
(4) criteria and application from your own view of ethics.
HAVE A GOOD SUMMER!
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