PHIL 255gp Topics for second paper Fall 2021

The second paper in this class is due on Sunday November 15, 2021 (note the change in due date
from the syllabus) at 11:59 p.m. via the Turnitin link in the ‘Assignments’ section of the course
Blackboard website. Your TA may ask you to directly submit to them an electronic version via
e-mail and/or a printed hardcopy as well, but you must in any case also submit an electronic
version through Blackboard.  Please format your papers as follows:  at least 12 point font,
double-spaced, at least one inch margins all around, your name and your section meeting time on
the top right hand corner of the first page. Do not include your student ID number or any other
possibly sensitive identifying information on your papers or in any correspondence with
instructors.
 
Important: all electronically submitted papers must have a filename of the format ‘<yourname>
PHIL 255 Paper two.xxx’ or where <yourname> is replaced by your name as it appears in the
course roster and the extension .xxx is replaced by the file format of your paper, e.g. ‘.doc’ or
‘.docx’ or ‘.pdf’ or ‘.rtf’.

Late papers, if accepted, will have their grade reduced by .5 of a grade point for each class
session beyond the due date, unless there is a documented emergency.

These are NOT research papers. I strongly suggest that you consult no outside sources in the
preparation of the paper. If you do consult any outside sources, be sure to provide a detailed
research log listing all the sources you consulted and what use you made of them; if you
consulted no outside sources, provide a statement at the end of the paper saying, ‘I consulted no
outside sources in preparing this paper’. NOTE: papers must have either a complete research
log or the statement that no outside sources were used; any paper which does not include one or
the other of these will not be accepted. I hope that this exercise of keeping careful notes about
what use you may have made of outside sources will reduce the chances of plagiarism. On
plagiarism, see the University policies in SCampus Section 11. If you have any questions about
when and how to cite sources, or what should go into your research log, please either ask me or
ask your Teaching Assistant. Note that ANY use you make of the words or ideas of someone
else, including paraphrased material, needs to be carefully and fully documented for EACH use,
i.e. quotation marks, block quotes, or some other explicit indication that the words or ideas are
taken from a source AND a footnote reference to that source giving the exact location from
which the material was taken. Also, you must include the source in a bibliography.

Required length of this paper: 1250-1500 words (research log or statement is not included in this
word limit).

Please choose ONE of the following prompts and write an essay responding to the prompt. The
essays will be graded according to the following rubrics:
an EXCELLENT essay is one that is
(1) Clearly and concisely written and well-organized, building a cogent argument through the
whole of the paper;
 (2) Analytically thorough, identifying key points, providing definitions of key terms as
needed and fully explicating the main claims made by the author of the work under
discussion as these are relevant to the topic of the paper;
(3) Critically effective, clearly formulating objections or problems with the main claim of the
author of the work under discussion and briefly exploring lines of response that the
author of the work under discussion might make to the objection or problem, followed by
a brief evaluation of the final state of the argument (e.g. was the author able to rebut the
objection, or could the author qualify or revise the claim as originally stated, or is the
objection fatal to the claim as originally stated, or . . . [there are many possibilities here])

TOPICS (choose one on which to write an essay):

1. In presenting his account of bad faith Sartre gives the example of a café waiter to show that
no consciousness (no for-itself) can ever just be what it is (no café waiter can just be a café
waiter, but can only play at being a café waiter). (Being and Nothingness p. 59 in the text / p. 120
of the pdf scan). He immediately goes on to extend this point to internal feelings, such as (in his
example) sadness, and he claims that feeling sadness is a conduct, something we do, something
we play at. Critically assess Sartre’s treatment of feeling sadness by providing one or two
objections to it, and considering how Sartre might reply.

2. In Existentialism is a Humanism p. 7 of the pdf file Sartre gives an example to illustrate the
claim that human beings are abandoned, in the sense that they lack an external basis for ethical
judgment, whether it be God or Kantian ethical theory. To avoid misidentification of the relevant
passage I give it in full:

“As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to
the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was
quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had
been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat
primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply
afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one
consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to
England to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He
fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his
death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action
he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live,
whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which might
vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would
have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England
or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself
confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed
towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a
national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated on the way.
At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality
of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more
debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could
the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny
yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road?
To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more
useful aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of
helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it
given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but
always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and
not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting
on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be
treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if
they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing
remains but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him
he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the
one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her –
my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the
contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength
of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he
was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum
of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother
enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength
of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then
appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.”

Give a sketch of the main points of this argument, clarifying these points as needed. Does this
argument succeed in showing that there can be no definitive guidance to be had from external
sources of ethical principle? Why or why not?

3. In The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir argues against the claim that without God there is no
morality. The argument is found on page 6 of the pdf version of the book. To avoid
misidentification of the relevant passage I give it in full:

“But if man is free to define for himself the conditions of a life which is
valid in his own eyes, can he not choose whatever he likes and act however
he likes? Dostoevsky asserted, “If God does not exist, everything is
permitted.” Today’s believers use this formula for their own advantage. To
re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all
ethics. However, far from God’s absence authorizing all license, the contrary
is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are
definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world
which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats
are inscribed, and his victories as well. A God can pardon, efface, and
compensate. But if God does not exist, man’s faults are inexpiable. If it is
claimed that, whatever the case may be, this earthly stake has no importance,
this is precisely because one invokes that inhuman objectivity which we
declined at the start. One can not start by saying that our earthly destiny has
or has not importance, for it depends upon us to give it importance. It is up to
man to make it important to be a man, and he alone can feel his success or
failure. And if it is again said that nothing forces him to try to justify his being
in this way, then one is playing upon the notion of freedom in a dishonest
way.”

Expound the argument, clarifying the key points. What reply might the advocate of the claim
that ethics requires the existence of God (i.e. Dostoevsky or ‘today’s believers’) make to this
argument? Is the reply effective? Why or why not?