PROGRESS REPORT
I know this is a difficult assignment, the material is dense, it requires a lot of attention, and it takes a form that many of your are not used to. However, if you get your comments in earlier the discussions will work better and in the end, you will have a better foundation going into AP Euro. Try to get your first comments in by Thursday or Friday so that we can have a more fruitful experience. Remember that I ask for a MINIMUM of two comments, one addressing the discussion question directly and one reflecting on the comments of your peers. I have been holding off on asking clarifying questions and making points of my own because I do not want to interfere with the rest of the class and your own ideas.
If you engage in the assignment, I think you will find the ideas discussed stimulating and challenging, forcing you to
think about what it is that you know, or think you know, and reflect upon “what you are doing.”
Come on y’all. This is good for . . . and you’ll like it.
Peace,
ward
AUDIO MP3 (Right click to download.)
principle of paternalism, wherei
n we begin to think that the state ought to interfere with the freedom of others f
or their own good. For example, the requirement that we wear seat belts, the prohibition against taking certain drugs, and of course, compulsory education. Of cour
se, the state has the power to enforce it's will and interfere in the freedom of the individual but do you think that such interference is legitimate? If so, on what grounds? Not specifically regarding these examples, but in general.
Lecture Four: Mill on Liberty
I. Another objection to Kant is the question of what happens when you are trying to will a universal principle in a situation when two principles are good and yet you cannot do them both.
A. It is not just right or wrong. You must chose the one that leads to the best results.
B. In an embodied context it may not do a bit of good to know the rule, illustrating that the moral life is full of ambiguity.
II. Freedom in the 19th Century is addressed by Mill’s commentary on liberty.
A. Mill tries to show where the grounds are for the government’s interference: with our liberty, a question of legitimacy, not of power.
B. The harm principle posits that the only legitimate ground for social coercion is to prevent harm to others. Once you give this power up, it is over.
C. The offense principle, which Mill would not support, posits society has a legitimate right to socially coerce to prevent “offending” others. Such offense undermines the moral tone of society.
D. One must make a distinction between self-regarding actions and other-regarding actions in the harm principle. (Some argue that there is no such thing as a self-regarding action.)
E. The principle of paternalism is that we can interfere with people for their own good.
F. An added dimensions of the harm principle: social coercion can be used if decisions are encumbered by craziness, drunkeness of if freedoms of others are interfered with.
III. There are limitations to Mill’s account of freedom.
A. It is an account of “negative freedom” only, a freedom from constraint.
B. He says nothing about positive freedom to act.
IV. Hegel argues that freedom is the meaning and the point of human history in general. Overcoming obstacles is gaining freedom.
A. The challenge of freedom is to find the new boundaries and then to figure out how to break them down.
B. Marx wrote that philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to change it.
