Philosophy 361 Ethics Darwall Fall 2007
CRITICAL
A. As part of your participation in discussion section, you will be paired with another member of your section. Each week, one pair will meet outside of class before the Wednesday meeting and discuss an assigned passage. Their task will be to get inside of the passage critically and discuss their critical responses. They should deal specifically the following questions:
1. What is the author trying to do in this passage (i.e., What is the author saying and why is he or she saying it)?
2. How is he/she trying to do it (i.e., what argument is being advanced, what line of thought is being pursued, etc.)?
3. What assumptions does the author seem to be making in the passage?
4. How does what the author is trying to do in this passage fit into his or her larger aims in the chapter or work as a whole?
5. What questions of interpretation arise about the author's meaning? What possible interpretations seem most reasonable and why? What difference does it make if the author is interpreted one way or the other?
6. What questions or criticisms occur to you about the author's line of thought?
7. How might the author best respond to your questions and criticisms?
Although you may discuss
anything
about the passage that interests you, your
discussion
should have the definite aim of providing answers to each of these
seven
questions, which you should bring to the following discussion section.
B. Your
out-of-class-conversation
will then form the basis for our Wednesday discussions in section. The assigned pair will begin by presenting
what they
think are the most interesting issues raised by the passage, what they
found
most intriguing and/or puzzling, and so on. From
this point, their object will be to draw the rest of the class into a
broader
(and deeper) discussion of the passage. The
rest
of the class will be asked to read the passage carefully also, but the
assigned
pair will have the reponsibility of
meeting outside
of class for a probing discussion before section, proposing
answers
to each of the above seven questions, and initiating and
structuring
the Wednesday discussion section. Other students should come prepared to ask questions and to
enter
into the discussion.
C. Following the discussion
section,
the pair should meet during office hours with your section leader and
discuss
the passage
D. Finally, you will write a
two-page
analysis and reflection on the passage (this can be written together, or
Why are we doing this? I have
several
goals. The initial intellectual goals are,
first, to focus our discussions
on intensive examinations of philosophical texts and, second, to draw
us all into more active participation in the course,
both inside and outside of the discussion section..
But I am also trying, third, to blur the lines between classroom and
the rest of campus life and to get us thinking and talking about course
issues outside of the classroom and, fourth,
to create some connections within the discussion section and make us
more
of a group.
Assignments will be made each Wednesday for the following Wednesday.