Morgan’s Classics of Moral and Political Theory

Book and Readings Most of our readings will be drawn from Morgan’s Classics of Moral and Political Theory, Fifth Edition (Hackett, 2011), available at the ASU Bookstore in various formats.

Our mid-term examination is online – specifically, you should submit your two essays in a single document (I believe that Word, Google, PDF, almost any format will do)

The overall goal of the exam is to test your knowledge of the texts we’ve read in class. That means (a) that you don’t need, and shouldn’t use, any material other than our texts, and the small amount of background information I’ve provided in lectures and in classroom discussion. Just you and the texts – looking anywhere else is likely to be a waste of your precious time, or worse. (b) Your “knowledge” of the texts refers to your ability to explain them to a third party. What I suggest is that you can regard yourself, for once, as a kind of teacher – explaining to a friend or acquaintance, who is bright but amazingly ill-informed, what is going on in our various readings. Do I want your “opinion”? You bet – so long as it demonstrates knowledge of the texts, backed up, optimally, by skillful citations (no footnotes, though – page numbers, if you like). I want to know what you think Plato, Aristotle, St. Paul, etc., are saying in our readings.

In any case, you’ve got to write two short essays, worth a combined total of 25 points maximum – 10 for the first essay, 15 for the second. As for length, I couldn’t care less . . . no, I’m just kidding, though quality is far more important to me than quantity. If you think some minimum marker would help, however, let’s say that you might aim at no fewer than, say, 500 words for the first and 750 for the second . . . something like that. But if I were you, I wouldn’t focus on word-count, but rather on those two points in the preceding paragraph.

(1) 10-Point Essay – choose one:

(a) As we’ve seen, the greatest modern German philosopher described Sophocles’s “Antigone” in these terms: The collision between the two highest moral powers is enacted in plastic fashion in the absolute exemplum of tragedy, Antigone. Here, familial love, the holy, the inward, belonging to inner feeling, and therefore known also as the law of the nether gods, collides with the right of the state. Creon is not a tyrant, but actually an ethical power. Creon is not in the wrong. He maintains that the law of the state, the authority of government, must be held in respect, and that infraction of the law must be followed by punishment. Each of these two sides actualizes only one of the ethical powers, and has only one as its content. This is their onesidedness. The meaning of eternal justice is made manifest thus: both attain injustice just because they are one-sided, but they also attain justice.” All right, then, your task is to explain what Hegel meant by all that, to a reader who is unfamiliar with the play. Without simply giving a plot summary, tell your reader (who has never read the play how Antigone and Creon, can bee seen to represent the “moral powers” of “familial love,” on the one hand, and “the right of the state.” What does it mean to suggest that Antigone and Creon are both right – and both wrong? What should we conclude about the Hegel’s own conception of “justice”?

(b) Using our readings as evidence, compare and contrast the Stoic and the Epicurean outlook – what they had in common, in your view, and where they differed.

(c) Not a few observers have described ancient Judaism as a form of “ethical monotheism” – though it took Max Weber to suggest that its emergence was central to the history of human reason. Never mind about Weber, whom we won’t meet until much later. But confining yourself to our slender selections from Genesis, Exodus, and 1 Samuel, can you describe the ways in which these texts exemplify “ethical monotheism”? How about reason and rationality – which may of course be relative terms – see any role for these ideas here?

(d) Imagine that your ideally uninformed but brilliant friend has asked you for a definition of “Thomism” – the ethical and political outlook of St. Thomas – and the only evidence you have to go on is our readings from Morgan. What are going to tell him or her?

(2) 15-Point Essay – choose one:

(a) As I mentioned, Plato’s dialogues have been described (by Martha Nussbaum) as “antitragic theater.” Imagine an ideally ignorant reader, who knows next to nothing about Plato’s dialogues, and use your own knowledge of the dialogues we read (yes, The Republic, too, or above all), to describe both what “anti-tragic” might mean, as well the way in which the dialogues also remain “theatrical.” What might the philosophical and/or political lessons of “anti-tragic theater” be?

(b) In Crito (48b), Socrates tells his friend, “the important thing isn’t living, but living well.” So, based on the evidence of just the Apology, Crito, and the death scene from Phaedo, what does “living well” mean, if Socrates’s own life, as Plato portrays it, is the model?

(c) What do you think Aristotle means by his assertion, in Chapter 2 of Book 1 of his Politics, that “a human being is by nature a political animal”? How does his argument there connect with his claim, in the Nichomachean Ethics, that the the “good” life for a human being consists in the pursuit of “happiness” (understood, according to Book I, Chapter 7) as “activity and actions of the soul that involve reason” and “activity of the soul in accord with virtue”)?

(d) (c) Saint Augustine knew what was best, and worst, for human beings, and what to do about it: ” eternal life is the supreme good and eternal death the supreme evil, and . . . in order to attain the one and avoid the other, we must live rightly” (City of God, Book XIV, Chapter 4). Sure – but what does “live rightly” mean, exactly – at least according to the evidence of Morgan’s selection from the City of God? Specifically, how would you characterize Augustine’s “political thought?” Do you think our short selection from the Confessions sheds any light (no pun intended) on the subject?

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