Our first individual paper invites your interpretation and application of course texts and concepts in relation to some specific element of contemporary public culture.
By the time this comes due, we will have read and discussed both Descartes and Kant at some length as well as more briefly engaging with a number of more contemporary interpretations, assessments and challenges to the Cartesian and Kantian traditions. In reading these texts one might advantageously consider their original contexts (a noticeable challenge at times with Descartes and Kant), but it is important also to ask of their present day applicability and usefulness.
In asking that you make use of a contemporary point of application, the intention here is to provide an occasion and context for exploring the relevance and the limits of concepts, positions and questions advanced by the philosophers we have been reading. Beyond the traditional task of showing your familiarity with our course texts, the challenge is to explore prospective relevance in the world today.
This assignment is not simply a report on what our philosophers have said. Toward stepping beyond summary, papers should be organized so as to address selected aspects of course readings in light of some specific outside text, social phenomenon, or proposition that you see in circulation today.
With respect to course readings, I would ask that you plan and develop your paper in such a way as to provide you with an opportunity to talk substantively about 2 to 3 different course authors. (at least one of whom should be Descartes or Kant) In making these connections, try to ground your observations in relation to specific passages and features of the texts that you have in mind.
With respect to the outside text, social phenomenon, or proposition, there are many potentially good options.
The challenge is to find an example that is fairly clear and compelling in displaying its relevant issues while also being concise and compact enough to address in a short paper.
Relevance can appear along the lines of a contemporary example which seems to affirm observations or suggestions have encountered in course texts, or, alternately challenge and refute positions that we've encountered.
And while your example could explicitly express a philosophical question on the part of its author, speaker or producer, this is not at all required. Often times, fact, texts which express their views, concerns or positions in a quite colloquial way provide many good opportunities for engagement.
And generally it is worth keeping in mind that an overly complex or unduly broad text r target can leave you spending too much time just explaining and delineating what it is that you have in mind. Simple and direct examples can have advantages.
In considering an outside text for its potential suitability, relevant questions might include:
1. how does it capture or express what people care about, what they hope for, what they value, or what gets worried about or feared.
2. what sorts of expectations about knowledge or truth (social and political or scientific or both) are directly or indirectly expressed?
3. how are the places of politics and freedom as situated in social practices either embraced or held suspect?
4. in what ways are 'human nature' and/or social habit taken to shape horizons of possibility?
5. how do individuals or groups get envisioned as (actually or prospectively) relating to power?
6. what is said or signaled concerning what we most want to change or preserve? (and maybe why?)
7. what lessons are provided concerning the kinds of selves we could legitimately aspire to be?
Finally, it is worth mentioning that, while there's some appeal in selecting an outside connection that to you', there may well be advantages in selecting a text expressing an idea or position about which you are not as of yet entirely categorically settled (often leaving more room for discussion)
Paper should be 3-5 pages in length, APA style.