Due date: Monday, November 22. If you plan to be absent from
class on the due date, you may submit
your paper at the Philosophy Department Office (Adamian Academic Center
109), provided that you
notify me by
e-mail no later than Friday, November 19 of your intention to do
this. Please do not on any account slip your paper under the door of my
office.
Length: 3–6 pages
Formal requirements: As stated
in the
Composition Guide (PDF file;
copies were distributed at the beginning of the term), §§
1–5. Let me remind you that I am asking you to submit your papers
with your name written only on the back of
the last page (at the
top left,
please), not on the front page or anywhere else in the body of the
paper itself. Let me also remind you that I
will not accept papers that are not stapled together. Please number
your pages at the top right.
Assignment: Is human moral
virtue a kind of knowledge? If not, what is it? Explain the positions
of Plato (as represented by Socrates in the dialogue
Meno) and Aristotle (as presented
in books I and II of the
Nicomachean
Ethics) on this question, and defend your own position on the
issue.
Notes on the assignment:
- In defending your own position, you may, if you so choose, simply
adopt the position
of Socrates or that of Aristotle; but then you must show why that
position gives a more satisfactory account of the nature of virtue than
does the
other position.
- For this paper, you do not need to take account of any texts
other than the Meno and the
assigned excerpts from the Nicomachean
Ethics.
- All the reminders given in the previous paper
assignment about the writing of philosophy papers, and all the
instructions in the Composition Guide, apply to this one as well.