Washington and Lee University, Winter 2002

Philosophy 395: Advanced Seminar/

University Scholars 201A: Humanities Seminar

Thursdays, GHI (Newcomb 8)

Ben Eggleston—home.wlu.edu/~EgglestonB

office hours: M&F, 2–4, and T&Th, 9–11 (Newcomb 25)

Paper Assignment no. 3

Your assignment is to write a paper, about six pages long (double-spaced), on one of the following topics. (Pick just one—do not try to address more than one.) Your paper will be due at my office or my mailbox at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 10. Please note that papers not turned in on time may not—indeed, probably will not—be counted in your overall course grade until late April or early May.

1. In “Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income,” Philippe van Parijs objects to both (1) Rawls’s difference principle (in its original form) and (2) Rawls’s difference principle revised to include leisure as a primary good. Pick one of these principles, explain van Parijs’s objection to it, and offer a defense of it against van Parijs’s objection.
2. In “Three Against Justice,” David Gauthier considers what the “just person” might learn from an encounter with Hobbes’s Foole, Hume’s sensible knave, and Plato’s Lydian shepherd. Pick one of these characters and imagine what he would say in response to Gauthier’s discussion, in order to persuade the just person that it is not nearly as rational, or sensible, to be just as Gauthier claims that it is.
3. In “Liberty and Social Choice,” Amartya Sen offers “a critique of purely procedural formulations of liberty” (p. 6). Explain his critique and offer a defense of such formulations of liberty against his objections.

As in previous assignments, your paper will have both an explanatory part, in which you describe an author’s view, and also an exploratory or argumentative part, in which you develop thoughts of your own that are not repetitive of material already read. Don’t spend too much space explaining whatever you may need to explain, or else you won’t have enough space in which to develop the more-original part of your paper sufficiently. To avoid spending too much space on the explanatory part of your paper, you might want to write that extremely briefly at first, then write the latter part of your paper, and then go back and fill in some of the earlier part. Of course, how much space is sufficient for developing the latter part of your paper will depend on your own ideas and writing style, but a fairly safe rule of thumb to follow would be to spend no more than two pages on the explanatory part of your paper, and at least four pages on the argumentative part of your paper.

On the other side of this sheet is a detailed account of the criteria according to which I will grade.

requirements:	points possible:	points earned:
1. Your paper accurately explains the material relevant to the topic you elect to address:	20
2. Your paper ably develops its argumentative part:	55
3. Your paper is well organized and clearly written, with good spelling and grammar:	20
4. Your paper is not longer than approximately six pages and is double-spaced, this sheet (with this side up) is stapled or paper-clipped to the front of your paper, and your name and the question you are answering are provided below:	5
5. lateness penalty (if applicable): (3 points off per unexcused day late, excluding weekends)
total score	100

Your name: ____________________________________ The question you’re answering: 1 2 3

Finally, a word about the honor system. As you know, all work turned in for credit at Washington and Lee is presumed to have been done without the giving or receiving of unacknowledged aid. This paper shall be no exception. But this does not mean that you cannot get help on this paper; on the contrary, you can get all sorts of help, but you must acknowledge it. That is, you must indicate—with footnotes, ideally—all of the ways in which you have gotten help. Where possible, help that you have received should be noted in connection with the part of your paper to which it pertains. (For example, if someone helps you find a more persuasive way of expressing some thought of yours, then that should be noted with a footnote in that part of your paper.) But help whose effects extend throughout the paper can be noted as such in a single footnote at the beginning or end. In acknowledging aid, there is a balance to be struck between thoroughness and manageability; the key is to be as thorough as you need to be in order for the reader not to mistakenly attribute to you anything that you owe to someone or something else. So when in doubt, err on the side of thoroughness in acknowledging aid.