Philosophy 361 Ethics Darwall Fall
2003
FINAL EXAM STUDY
QUESTIONS
The exam will be three questions (my choice) drawn from the following questions. Question 1 has a special status, since you are guaranteed that you may answer question 1, no matter what the makeup of the exam is otherwise, but guaranteed also that you will not be required to answer it. For example, suppose I pick three (other) questions, and ask you to answer each of them. Then you may substitute question 1 for any of those questions. Or suppose I pick four and ask you to answer three. Then you may answer only two of those and question 1. And so on.
1. In Philosophical Ethics and in my lectures for the course, I have presented interpretations of Mill, Aristotle, Kant, and Nietzsche. Write an essay in which you submit my interpretation of one of these philosophers to critical scrutiny. Give reasons for questioning my presentation of the philosopher’s ideas and arguments. (Of course, you don’t have to disagree with everything I say. Say where you agree, where you disagree, and why—both with my interpretation of the philosopher’s view, and with the view, as you interpret it.)
2. Discuss Kant's position on the moral worth of actions in light of Gilligan's “ethics of care” (i.e., the ethical outlook she attributes to the “different voice”) and vice versa. Critically assess the objections each would make to the views of the other, and their respective replies, illustrating what general issues between their respective views are at stake.
3. Critically discuss the problem Harman raises concerning the relation between ethics and observation in relation to the views of two of Aristotle, Mill, and Kant.
4. Compare and
contrast the Kantian demand that we act in accord with principles we could
legislate in a
5. Critically discuss Nietzsche’s critique of morality and the best defense that either Kant or Mill might make of morality in light of Nietzsche’s critique. Consider what responses Nietzsche might best make and say who you think would have the best of this debate and why. (If you wrote your second paper on topic #1, discuss Mill rather than Kant.)
6. How does Aristotle’s project in the Nicomachean Ethics relate to Kant’s in the Groundwork? Among other things, discuss Aristotle’s idea that virtuous activity involves action chosen for its own sake, as noble, and Kant’s that an action has moral worth only if it is done from the motive of duty. Critically compare and contrast Aristotle on a good human life's involving rational activity with what Kant says about the relation of morality to practical reason.
7. "Happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end." (Mill, Utilitarianism, IV.2) "Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and the people of superior refinement say that it ["the highest of all goods achievable by action"] is happiness, and identify living well and faring well with being happy." (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.4) Taking off from these passages, compare and contrast Mill and Aristotle on the good. Give special consideration to: the relation between virtue and the good, the relation between pleasure and happiness, and how Mill and Aristotle can hold there to be a single most final good while, apparently, holding that there are a variety of intrinsic goods. Say some thing about the respective methods that Mill and Aristotle follow in arriving at their ideas.
8. Briefly discuss
the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics and the fundamental
dilemma of metaethics. Then, taking one
of Aristotle, Mill, Nietzsche, or Kant as your example, discuss that
philosopher's response to this dilemma and also what light the philosopher’s
metaethical views shed on his normative ethical position.