Exploring Human Experience
Dr. McWhorter
Dept. of Philosophy
Spring, 2002
CORE 102 Assignments
Exploring Human Experience
Dr. McWhorter
Dept. of Philosophy
Spring, 2002
CORE Assignments fall into three categories: (1) class participation, (2) homework, (3) optional papers, and (4) exams. Assignments are listed and described below.
Please note: Students may opt to write three 5-7 page essays as they did during the fall semester, or they may opt to write one 5-7 page essay and one 12-15 page essay. For information about the longer essay assignment, scroll down to the Optional Papers section of this page.
For policies covering late work, attendance, and the Honor Code, please see the Policies Page.
Class Participation:
Class Participation is worth 10 points or 10% of the final grade in the course. The basis of this grade will be the questions that students submit about the assigned reading on designated class days. Each student has been assigned five class days on which he or she must submit a question about the day's reading. The question should be thought-provoking and should lead to an interesting and vigorous class discussion on the text. Four students will submit questions on each day. At the beginning of class, those four will write their questions on the board. The class will decide which of the four is the best question (most thought- and discussion-provoking). The winning question will earn the student who submitted it 2 points. Losing questions will earn the students who submitted them 1 point. Questions that can be answered easily by quick reference to the text, questions that misrepresent a text, or questions that are merely concerned with facts about the text will earn the students who submitted them no points (because it will be assumed that the student did not read carefully enough).
Question Assignments Calendar for students in Section
01, 8:15 - 9:05
Question Assignments Calendar for students in Section
03, 9:20 - 10:10
Students who regularly and thoughtfully contribute to discussion on days when they have not submitted questions can raise their class participation grade by as much as 3 points.
Unexcused absences as well as clear lack of preparation for discussion will result in a reduction in the class participation grade by as much as 3 points. Excusable absences include illness and family emergences. Students who are too ill to attend or who are contagious should email Dr. McWhorter either before class or as soon as possible afterwards to explain the situation. A student's word will be honored in such cases. Students who must leave school for family emergencies should notify either the Richmond College or Westhampton College Dean's Office; the dean's office will notify professors.
Homework Assignments:
Homework Assignments are due in class on the day specified. No homework will be accepted late. All homework must be type-written, signed, and pledged. There are fifteen homework assignments, which altogether count for 15% of the course grade.
January 9:
Homework Assignment #1: In three paragraphs, describe
how you think the world would be different--politically, economically,
and socially (one paragraph for each)--if a majority of people
followed the teachings of Jesus. (Be sure to note what the relevant
teachings are.) In a fourth paragraph, describe how your life
might be different if you followed Jesus' teachings (or if you
followed them consistently).
January 16:
Homework Assignment #2: For this assignment you will interview
a person of your choice who is (a) African American and (b) over
the age of 45. Minimally, you must ask them to respond to the
following questions: (1) What was life like for African Americans
when they were young? (2) What do they remember about the civil
rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? (3) Did they participate
personally in any civil rights activities? (4) What difference,
if any, did the civil rights movement make in their lives? You
may want to ask other questions as well. Write up the answers
given in paragraph form. Then write a few paragraphs reflecting
on their comments. What did you learn from what they told you?
January 21:
Homework Assignment #3: Write a one or two-page explanation
of the first paragraph of section 10, which begins on page 36.
Offer as thorough an interpretation of the passage as you can,
referring to other passages for clarification where necessary.
January 28:
Homework Assignment #4: Freud said that our fear of loss
of love and particularly of punishment from the powerful people
upon whom we depend in early childhood creates in us a conscience
that makes us feel guilty when we transgress. Nietzsche says there
is no such intimate connection between fear of punishment and
feelings of guilt; on the contrary, he says the two phenomena
have separate origins. In one page, explain how Nietzsche accounts
for the phenomenon of "conscience."
February 1:
Homework Assignment #5: Rich's poem "The Phenomenology of
Anger" was composed in 1972 and is filled with references
to the Vietnam War and other violent events of the time. Make
a list of every reference and allusion to the war or to specific
violent events that you can find. (Some of these may be very subtle
or oblique.) Then write a paragraph interpreting the final three
lines of the poem.
February 4:
Homework Assignment #6: Write a poem about one of the following
things: (1) a time when you were really angry, (2) the meaning
of freedom, or (3) sources of strength from your extended family
or ethnic heritage.
February 8:
Homework Assignment #7: By this time you should have been
able to view the exhibit of Jessie Oonark's artwork in the Marsh
Gallery. In a two-page paper, describe your response to the work
and reflect at length on the following question: When two different
cultures come together (as they do in Achebe's novel Things
Fall Apart and in Oonark's life and work), is conflict inevitable?
Febuary 18:
Homework Assignment #8: Explain Darwin's concept of Natural
Selection, including a brief explanation of why species vary and
why some become extinct. Cite page numbers where Darwin provides
these explanations.
February 22:
Homework Assignment #9: Write a one-page paper explaining
why you think many people nowadays place a high value on genetic
diversity. From a Darwinian perspective, what is the value of
genetic diversity? From your own perspective, is genetic diversity
something we ought to preserve or should we not worry about it?
February 25:
Homework Assignment 10: On page 160 of A Personal Matter,
Himiko says to Kikuhiko, "I can see you've read the existentialists."
Using the library, internet, and/or people you know, find out
whatever you can about the existentialists. Who were they? What
did they believe? Write a very brief description of existentialism.
Then write a few paragraphs explaining why Himiko makes that comment.
March :
Homework Assignment #11: The philosopher Leibniz argued that because
God the Creator is perfect, creation itself must be perfect and
all suffering and evil must either be an illusion or a necessary
component of a greater good. To believe anything else, Leibniz
said, was to accuse God of evil and/or imperfection. How does
Voltaire attempt to refute Leibniz's view in Candide? Do
you think Leibniz is right or wrong? Why? (Your answers to these
questions should take one to two typed pages.)
March 22:
Homework Assignment #12: Marx writes, "In every epoch
the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas, that is, the
class that is the ruling material power of society is at
the same time its ruling intellectual power. The class
having the means of material production has also control over
the means of intellectual production, so that it also controls,
generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of intellectual
production." In one paragraph, explain what Marx means by
this claim. In a second paragraph, give an example from your own
experience of an economically powerful person being able to dictate
what other people believe. Then answer this question: Do you think
that economic forces frequently distort the "truth"
or not? Give reasons for your view.
March 27:
Homework Assignment #13: Marx and Engels write the following
sentence in The Communist Manifesto: "Communism deprives
no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all
that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour
of others by means of such appropriation." Write a page explaining
what this sentence means. Use other passages from the text to
substantiate your interpretation.
April 5:
Homework Assignment #14: In Marx's work we encountered
several concepts: alienation, ideology, exploitation, and class
struggle, to name a few. Choose one of these concepts and apply
it to the novel Nectar in a Sieve. Write one to two pages
explaining how the novel exemplifies that concept and how that
concept helps you to understand the novel.
April 12, 15, 17:
Homework Assignment #15: On April 5 students will have
been put into six groups of three or four each and assigned a
set of chapters from The Master and Margarita. On the day
a group's chapters are to be discussed in class, the group will
have twenty minutes to lead the class. The group may give a lecture,
lead a discussion on the themes they have identified as most important,
or lead the class in an exercise. They must come to class with
a typed outline of their presentation to turn in. All members
of the group must have an active role to play in the class presentation.
Students may find the Middlebury
website helpful in preparing this assignment. Please note:
The point is not to summarize the reading but to stimulate thought
about the meaning of the text!
For students who choose to write the 5-7 page essays instead of the longer essay described below, there are nine Optional Paper Assignments through the first semester. Students must select and complete three of the nine assignments (and no more). Each paper is worth 15% of the course grade. Papers must be typed, double-spaced, documented appropriately, and pledged. Late papers are acceptable, but only under the terms of the late policy. You may discuss the topics with anyone, including other class members, but the finished essay must be your own work. Topics will be posted here as well as announced in class a few days prior to the due dates.
Students may choose to write only one 5-7 page essay, as described above, and one 12-15 page essay, to be described below. In this case, the shorter essay will be worth 15% of the final grade, as usual. The longer essay will be worth a total of 30%. The longer essay is to be on a topic of the student's choice, but it must include significant discussion of at least two of the texts to be read during the term. Submission of the longer essay occurs in three stages. Stage 1: The student will submit a proposal on or before April 3. The proposal will consist of (a) a clear, well-crafted thesis statement, (b) a brief outline of the paper's intended argument along with evidence to support it, and (c) a statement explaining the student's interest in the topic; in other words, the proposal should demonstrate that the student has thought seriously about the topic and has a good reason for working on it in depth. The professor reserves the right to prohibit the student from pursuing the project if it is not feasible. This proposal is worth 10% of the project grade. Stage 2: The student will submit a draft of the entire paper on or before April 8. This draft is worth 10% of the project grade. Stage 3: The student will submit the revised paper by noon on April 17. This essay is worth 80% of the project grade. Late papers are acceptable, but only under the terms of the late policy.
January 23:
King says many people in the movement follow the philosophy
of nonviolence simply because it is pragmatic. But, he says, some
(and he hopes increasing numbers) follow it because it is a morally
right way of life. In relation to this claim, consider the following
questions: (1) Why would many people at the time have seen a philosophy
of nonviolence as pragmatic? (2) What does King mean by nonviolence
as a way of life? (Be sure to cite relevant material from the
text to make your point.) How would a person live who adopted
nonviolence as a personal philosophy rather than as a political
expedient? Is such a life possible? (Here you may want to make
reference to Freud and/or Nietzsche, as well as Matthew, depending
upon the direction you want to take your analysis.) (3) Choose
one of the following two questions to address to complete your
essay. Either: (3a) If a person is a Christian, must he/she follow
a philosophy of nonviolence like King's? Or: (3b) Is it possible
to follow a philosophy of nonviolence, as King describes it, on
some basis other than Christianity? Explain your answer thoroughly.
February 6:
In "The Phenomenology of Anger," Adrienne Rich
writes, "Every act of becoming conscious / (it says here
in this book) / is an unnatural act" (59). Nietzsche might
well agree with this statement, since he sees the development
of self-consciousness as a result of weakness and oppression.
(See both the first essay and the third essay of The Genealogy
of Morals.) But what does Rich mean by it? What is she expressing
about the world, about self-reflection, about power and impotence,
and about anger in this poem? Are there parallels between Nietzsche's
claims about power and weakness, anger, and consciousness and
Rich's assertions here? Do you think that Rich would agree with
any of Nietzsche's ideas? If so, which ones and why? If not, what
are the basic differences between them that would render their
perspectives incompatible? (Be sure to cite material from both
texts to support your interpretation. You may also refer to other
poems of Rich's.)
February 13:
Why does Nwoye choose to adopt the ways of the white Europeans
and become a Christian? (Relate this question to at least one
other book we have read in this unit. For example, you may want
to discuss such issues as whether his choice is an act of rebellion
against his strong father that resembles the resentment of the
slaves in Nietzsche's essay or whether Nwoye is being fooled by
priests into betraying his people and his culture or whether the
ideas in the Gospel According to St. Matthew would have
some special appeal to someone like Nwoye. Be sure to back up
your speculations about Nwoye's motives with evidence from the
novel.) Is this choice a move toward assimilation of the sort
that Nyasha speaks of in Nervous Conditions and Rich speaks
of in "Sources"? Might it result in corruption of culture
and loss of identity, as Nyasha and Rich fear? What are the dangers
that Nwoye faces as he makes this choice? What other options are
available to him? Did he make the best choice? Explain your reasoning.
February 27:
Darwin argues that moral behavior is a biologically-based
trait that is naturally selected in the course of human evolution.
Explicate Darwin's argument for this conclusion in detail, explaining
the theory of natural selection as you do so. Then critique the
argument. (In addition to highlighting both the strengths and
weaknesses of his evidence and reasoning, you may also want to
consider such things as definitions of morality, the question
of free will, and Darwin's possible ethnocentrism.) In light of
your analysis and critique, do you think that Darwin is correct
to say that moral behavior is heritable and adaptive?
March 18:
Dr. Pangloss believes that all things happen for a reason
and that everything that happens is for the best; nothing that
happens is truly bad, and we should be content with the world
exactly as it is. There are people nowadays who subscribe to Dr.
Pangloss's view, asserting that whatever happens is just God's
will (what God wanted to happen and therefore right and good),
no matter how horrible it seems to those who undergo it. There
are other people who subscribe to a Darwinian view of misery and
suffering--i.e., that they are a natural part of "the struggle
for survival" that ultimately benefits the species. Voltaire--who
was very concerned about evil, injustice, and human suffering--would
disagree strongly. He thought many things that happen are truly
bad and that people should do all they can to change the world
to reduce human misery. Which of these three views do you think
is right or closest to right? Why, and why are the other views
incorrect? (Be sure to explain each view thoroughly, drawing on
and citing relevant texts. Give examples of human suffering drawn
from any book we have read this semester to illustrate your points.
Give a detailed argument to support your thesis, including careful
criticisms of the views you reject.)
March 25:
Thoroughly examine Marx's descriptions of the alienation
that wage workers undergo. Describe each of the four aspects of
this alienation and give examples either from books we have read
this year or from your own experience to illustrate them. (You
may also want to include statistics and other data about working
conditions in the U.S. and abroad.) Based on his critique, Marx
believes that the economic organization that forces people to
be wage laborers is inherently immoral. Drawing on two of the
following--Matthew, Why We Can't Wait, or On
the Genealogy of Morals--consider this view that wage labor
is inherently demeaning and harmful to the human spirit. How much,
if any, truth is there in this view? Give a well-reasoned argument
for your assessment of it.
April 3:
Marx and Engels say that the economic system is the most
fundamental aspect of any society. The economic system creates
the conditions in which other social institutions and ideas--such
as religion, education, art, and science--are created and maintained,
and those other institutions and ideas will reflect the economic
system in their structure and ideology. Explain this assertion
and Marx's and Engels' reasons for making it. Consider whether
their assertion is true in relation to either the scientific work
of Charles Darwin or the philosophical work of Friedrich Nietzsche.
(Choose either Darwin or Nietzsche to write about;
do not try to write about both.) In what ways does Darwin's/Nietzsche's
work reflect the newly industrialized, highly competitive capitalistic
economy of Western Europe in the 19th century? (Be very specific
and draw plenty of material from the text to back up your claims.)
Could Darwin's/Nietzsche's ideas have been fully developed and
widely accepted in a society that was not capitalist? In relation
to the work of Darwin/Nietzsche, are Marx and Engels correct in
their view that the economic system conditions a society's science/philosophy?
April 10:
Rukmani says often that suffering is a natural part of
life. Dr. Kennington, however, implies that at least some of her
suffering is not something to be accepted as natural but something
to protest and to fight to change. Drawing on Marx's and Engels'
theory of Historical Materialism (and explaining relevant aspects
of that theory in the process), analyze Rukmani's suffering. What
might she reasonably and legitimately protest, and why? (Be sure
your answer is thorough and well-supported by quotations from
the novel as well as clear explanations of the theory you are
applying.)
April 15:
What is freedom? For many Americans, freedom often means
nothing more than freedom from tyranny--that is, freedom from
the control of a sovereign power who imposes his or her will by
means of a state apparatus. Marx did not think that was enough;
for him, true freedom includes freedom to work productively and
creatively for oneself rather than for the profit of another person.
For Martin Luther King, further, freedom means not only freedom
from tyranny and economic exploitation but also dignity and the
respect of one's fellow citizens regardless of one's race, freedom
to participate fully in what he calls "the beloved community."
What is your concept of true freedom? Describe it in detail. Explain
how it coincides with or differs from the view of Marx and/or
King. Illustrate your understanding of the meaning of freedom
by analyzing a character from either Nectar in a Sieve or
The Master and Margarita. Is that character free? Why or
why not? In what ways, if any, does that character suffer subjection?
There will be three exams, each of which will count for 10% of the course grade. Exams are to be taken in the designated class period. If a student anticipates being unable to attend class on the day of an exam, he or she should contact the professor as soon as possible prior to the exam date to make alternative arrangements. Otherwise the student will receive a zero for the exam. Exceptions will only be made in cases of medical or familial emergencies.
February 15:
The purpose of this exam is to make sure students are
keeping up with the reading. There will be ten questions on the
reading, each of which will require a brief paragraph to answer.
Students should bring their own paper or bluebooks to the classroom.
March 29:
The purpose of this exam is to make sure students are keeping
up with the reading. There will be ten questions on the reading
since the last exam, each of which will require a brief paragraph
to answer. Students should bring their own paper or bluebooks
to the classroom.
April 22 & 27:
Final exam. There will be fifteen questions covering all
the books read through the spring semester. Students should bring
their own paper or bluebooks to the classroom.
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