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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.