English 1 – Essay #2 (First Draft due Friday, April 7th, Saturday, April 8th)
Requirements: This essay must be typed and double spaced. Use normal sized fonts and margins. The essay should be approximately one thousand words in length, or approximately three to four pages typed and double spaced.
Topic: The basic purpose of the essay will be to explain the difference between right and wrong. Begin your essay with a specific example, which you analyze in terms of what you think is right or wrong in regards to that example. It is better to use an actual example than a hypothetical example. The best kind of example is one in which what is right and wrong may not be immediately clear to everyone. Include enough details with this example so that it is clear exactly what happened in this case and so that the moral or ethical implications involved can be considered.
Derive a clear set of principles of right and wrong from this initial example which you can then apply to your understanding of right and wrong under principles of justice, ethics, or morality. Include at least one other detailed example in some other part of your essay to illustrate how your understanding or right and wrong can be applied in a variety of situations. Examples can be drawn from any current or recent controversy dealing with ideas of justice or morality or equality, such as controversies involving voting rights, racial profiling, homosexual rights, prayer in school, or any other controversy that comes up during group discussion or class discussion.
You should focus on attempting to distinguish between right and wrong in regard to ONE of the following concepts: justice, ethics, or morality. Although justice, ethics, and morality have basic similarities in meaning, by focusing on one of these concepts in your understanding of right and wrong, you should focus on one particular way in which concepts of right and wrong can be addressed. Your essay should advance a single understanding of right and wrong. While you may indicate that different people and/or different cultures may differ in their understanding of right and wrong, you must resolve any differences into a clear thesis of what you believe is the difference between right and wrong.
Justice: If you focus on right and wrong as understood in justice, you should focus on ideas related to what is right and wrong under the law. In focusing on justice under the law, you can concentrate on ideas such as what the law should be – that is, what principles should determine which kinds of actions should be permitted or prohibited by the law – and how the law should be enforced, what kinds of rules should be in force to make sure that laws are fairly enforced by police officers and/or that trials are fairly conducted in courts of law.
Ethics: If you focus on right and wrong as understood in ethics, you should focus on the idea of ethical responsibility toward others. Concentrate on situations in which principles of ethics should be used to determine what a person should or should not do and explain what you think a person should or should not do according to those principles. Articulate a clear set of principles that determine your concept of an ethic and discuss to whom and/or to what those principles should apply. Do you think that a sense of ethics should apply equally to all people or that there can be some differences in the ways that people are treated? Do you think that ideas of ethics should be applied to things beyond just other people; should we follow a sense of ethical responsibility toward in animals in regard to issues such as eating meat or to elements of the environment in regard to issues such as land use or exploitation of energy sources?
Morality: If you focus on right and wrong as understood in morality, you should focus on fundamental ideas of right and wrong. Include some consideration of where you think ideas of right and wrong come from. Should people refer to religious belief in determining what is right and wrong, or do you think that religious belief is unnecessary or even counter-productive in determining what is morally right and wrong? Further consider whether, based on your idea of where moral principles should come from, what limitations there should be on the ways that people act or even on the ways that people think.
You should also refer to ideas from at least three of the readings in A World of Ideas, by writers such as Cicero, Martin Luther King, John Stuart Mill, Stephen L. Carter, Plato, Rene Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Judith Butler, and/or Michael Gazzaniga. You may also include ideas from one or more of the essays from earlier in the semester or essays that were not assigned from A World of Ideas, such as essays by Thomas Jefferson, Aristotle, Milton and Rose Friedman, or Lao-Tzu. To cite quotations or ideas from the readings, make sure to cite the author’s name. It is not necessary to mention the name of the book. Put page num