Ethical Teaching
Order Description
• Summary
You will summarize the ethical outlook, approach, model, paradigm, or style of one primary text selected from course readings. Also, include at least three direct quotes, properly cited and at least 250 words for the summary section.
• Case
The case should at least be a 200 word. A case presents some difficult ethical choice going forward. A choice between at least two preliminary options appears difficult to decide from an ethical point of view. Cases will be assessed according to the following criteria:
A case presentation should summarize the outlines of a predicament, crossroads, or tough decision where it is difficult to decide upon the best course of action from an ethical point of view. Sometimes this is a choice of action, sometimes it is a choice of policy, sometimes the choice is being deliberated for individual action, sometimes for collective action. Please note: a difficult ethical choice is different from knowing very well what is ethical but facing an enticing, and clearly unethical, temptation.
Cases should reflect some contemporary predicament that presents some possible choice in your own “mature” experience going forward. Agents confronting the choice should be at least your age or older, at a calendar date no older than this week.
Show the ethical difficulty by presenting two preliminary options for action and explaining why it appears ethically difficult to choose between them. Each preliminary option should be considered in light of its possible outcome.
In cases developed for this course, do not indicate which choice is or should be taken. That will be the subject of an application exercise. So be sure to stop the action at the moment of choice, but prior to any decision or course of action.
The case is about:
1- Family and Work going forward. This is an exercise to preview issues in family or work that you may face going forward in your life. These are post-college situations where professionals face challenges in work and personal life. The situations involve relations with colleagues, clients, supervisors, employees, children, parents, or significant others. Consider the sorts of professions that you are considering as career choices. Anticipate the sorts of relationships that you would face in your choice of lifestyle.
• Application of Ethical Teaching to Case
Applications must be at least 200 words. The writer will deliberate the case AS IF the character or agent in the case were to be guided by the approach presented in the summary.
An application does not ask what you would do. An application does not ask what an agent would do independently on the basis of motivations that have nothing to do with the summary. This is asking how the summary would tend to guide action in difficult cases where deliberation appears to be required.
Considering that summaries have at least three direct quotes, the usual application will have at least three guidelines to consider. For each guideline or quote, the writer should clearly express what the guideline indicates and how it would be applied to the facts of the particular case under deliberation. Introduce your ethical author early in the application. Do not introduce new quotes in the application. Sometimes a writer will discover that the quotes presented in the summary are not the best ones to use for the application. In that case the summary should be revised to include presentation of the most relevant quotes.
The agent must deliberate a choice. Even when the appropriate choice appears very difficult to decide, the agent must deliberate toward the best choice that would be indicated by the summary. Close calls make for good deliberations, allowing the writer to develop a felt tension between options. But in the end, some choice must be made. What is the better choice to make? The writer has discretion in development of cases and in choices regarding which ethical teaching to summarize. Please do your best to generate a fruitful and interesting deliberation.
Conclude your application with a clear resolution, stating the choice that the agent will make going forward.
Final Exercise
One Case, Three Summaries and Applications
The final exercise will ask you to present a paper of about five or six pages with the following components (at least seven paragraphs total):
(1) A new case of substantial ethical challenge (Family and Work going forward) for more dilates look above under case.
(2) A new summary. You can find it here (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/dep/) choses any section you think it will help you with the case.
(3) A separate paragraph of application to the above case.
(4) Either another new summary or a revised summary from earlier in the semester. YOU FIND IT IN THE END.
(5) A separate paragraph of application.
(6) A paragraph that summarizes your own ethical outlook (just express your own point of view, regardless of what others say; no quotes necessary here)
(7) A separate paragraph of application to the case. The final exercise asks the writer to consider three approaches to one case
Final Case:(All three applications below will be to this case)
First Summary (New)?
First Application?
Second Summary (Recycled)
Second Application-Personal Summary (Just you) -Personal Application
Second Summary (Recycled)
The concern with Stuart Mills in this article is the extent to which man should be left to his actions and when the society should intervene. In the article, Stuart Mills draws a line on intervention and states that the only moment when the society should intervene is when an individual’s actions affect the actions of the general population. He states that a person’s actions make him either admired or detested in the society. However, he cautions that when society intervenes when a matter does not squarely affect it, it is likely to intervene in the wrong way. He says that the majority is likely to intervene only due to is won selfish interests. These interests, however, are not always the right course of action in the issue. As a result, the majority only ends up infringing on the rights of the minority through these interventions.
Stuart Mills’s points out that there are some issues that one group of the society may consider moral while the other does not. Interfering in such a case would only result in an infringement of the other person’s rights (Mill). “As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion (Mill).” By making this statement, Mills sets the condition that allows the society to intervene in a case involving a person’s conduct. Therefore, it is only to the extent that an issue affects the society that the society should intervene. “Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter (Mill).” Mills, in this case, shows that it is not only through reprimanding that the society should correct an individual. Instead, society should take the responsibility of informing an individual about the right course of action and help him choose the right path. “I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded by others, ought not to be in any way affected by his self-regarding qualities or deficiencies (Mill).” Stuart Mills in making this statement shows that an individual is responsible for shaping the society’s opinion on him. Therefore, to be viewed favorably, one ought to act in a manner that befits this treatment
Works Cited
Mill, John Stuart. “Chapter IV: Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual.” 1869. Bartleby.com. Web. 24 March 2015.