Kant and Mill Assignment
There are two readings for this
assignment, each of them addressing the question we explored Thursday:
How can we tell what the right or best course of action is in a given
situation? On Thursday we looked briefly at two different answers, Mill's
and Kant's.
- Mill’s answer is the Greatest Happiness principle
- Kant’s answer
is the Categorical Imperative
Now you will be reading a short piece from Mill
and a short piece from Kant.
So your assignment for this Thursday is to read
the assigned chapter from Mill's book and the assigned chapter from
Kant's. Here they are:
• rd: Mill, Utilitarianism
• rd: Kant, Fundamental
Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
You will then write answers to study questions for each
of the writings. Here they are:
• wt: SQs for Mill
• wt: SQs for Kant
Please post your answers
to SQs in the SQs folder in our classroom.
Finally, you will write a one-page seminar paper to
bring to class (typed) on Thursday. Click here for
a description of what that seminar paper should be.
These two readings may be a bit of a challenge
for you, and will almost certainly require a second reading to make
sense of them. Please feel free to ask each other questions about these
readings while you are reading them -- i.e., to have an online discussion
about the readings -- in the "Discussion Area" folder, or
in the folder where you will be posting your SQ answers. Online discussions
about difficult texts like these can often be a very big help in understanding
the books better.
So let's go to it. These readings will provide a conceptual
background
for much of the rest of the quarter.
Please remember: Let's try to keep our classroom
Fragrance Free. It makes a huge difference to some folks.