Discussion Questions

Here are some questions to consider when doing the readings for the class, in preparation for the Friday discussion group meetings.

Session 2

1. What do you understand by the term "modernity"?
2. Reread Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach." Why do you think that Arnold struck such a somber tone when contemplating the modern world? How might his perspective have differed if he had written the poem at the end of the twentieth century? 

Session 5

1. In "The Heavens" C.S. Lewis says that in the Middle Ages it was common to explain the movement of non-living things by thinking of them as being moved by a kind of striving or desire. How does Lewis suggest that a medieval scientist might reply to someone who argued that this way of talking was unrealistic?
2. Why would it be misleading to refer to the realm of the planets and stars in the medieval universe as "space"? Why does Lewis suggest that the contemplating the medieval universe can afflict us with a sense of "claustrophobia", whilst contemplating the modern universe can afflict us with a sense of "agoraphobia"?
3. J.M. Roberts' essay "Authority and Its Challengers" is concerned with changes that took place in Europe in the period between 1500 and 1800. What are the major authorities that were challenged during this period, and what were the sources of those challenges? The period that Roberts discusses saw not only an increase in the power of the state, but major changes in the common understanding of the state's authority. What were these changes?

Session 9

1. Consider the three examples of modern moral disagreement with which MacIntyre begins chapter 2 of After Virtue. Can you think of another issue about which there is a similarly interminable debate? With regard to this issue, try to identify the premises on which each of the rival positions depend.
2. What is the significance of John Maynard Keynes' observations of the way members of the Bloomsbury Group argued with each other (AV, 14-18) for MacIntyre's overall argument in this chapter 2?
3. How does the film Thank You For Smoking illustrate MacIntyre's claims about the nature of moral arguments in the modern world?

Session 12

1. What does MacIntyre claim is the social content of emotivism (AV, 23-24)? What is the relationship between this content and the three modern characters that MacIntyre describes (AV, 27-31)? Are any of the people depicted in the film Thank You For Smoking characters in the special sense that MacIntyre gives that term?
2. What is the Enlightenment project? Why do you think MacIntyre chooses to tell the story of this project backwards?
3. Why does MacIntyre stress the fact that the various philosophers engaged in the Enlightenment project were largely in agreement about the content of morality?

Session 15

1. Why does MacIntyre believe that the Enlightenment project was inevitably unsuccessful?  
2. When MacIntyre claims that the pleasure-of-drinking-Guinness is different from the pleassure-of-swimming-at-Crane's-Beach (AV, 64), what claim made by utilitarians is this intended to undermine?
3. What does MacIntyre mean when he claims that modern protest cannot be rationally effective (AV, 71)?

Session 19

1. In the moral philosophy of Immanual Kant, what is the difference between acting in accord with duty and acting from duty?
2. Is the Categorical Imperative just a different way of stating the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you")? Why does Kant believe that morality cannot be based on examples, even the example of Jesus Christ?
3. Does Kant believe that it is always wrong to act on hypothetical imperatives?

Session 22

1. Based on what you have read of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, do you think Chris Wilton (from Match Point) is a Nietzschean? Can you think of any characters from literature or film who might better represent a Nietzschean point of view?

Session 25

1. What is the overall point that Nietzsche is trying to make with his etymological examples in Section 5 of the First Essay in the Genealogy of Morals?
2. Nietzsche's style of writing is unique in the history of philosophy. Do you think his arguments would be more or less effective if he had chosen to write in a more subdued and academic style? Do you think that there might be a connection between the substance of Nietzsche's claims and the way in which he chooses to express them?
3. Why does MacIntyre believe that there is an analogy between Nietzsche and the Polynesian ruler Kamehameha II (AV, 111-114)?

Session 30

1. The notion of a practice is central to MacIntyre's positive account of ethics. Look carefully at the examples that MacIntyre gives of activities that do and do not qualify as practices (AV, 187-88), and then consider some other activities and try to decide whether they meet MacIntyre's criteria for being a practice.
2. MacIntyre says that it is possible that there are practices which are evil (AV, 200). Do you think that there are any evil activities which meet his definition of a practice? Supposing there were evil practices, would this be a problem for MacIntyre's argument?
3. Consider the example of the chess-playing child (AV, 188). Have you participated in any activities where your attitude toward the activtiy underwent a similar transformation to the one that MacIntyre portrays in this example?

Session 33

1. Amongst the central claims in chapter 15 of After Virtue are MacIntyre's are his suggestions that we understand ourselves and others primarily through narrative (storytelling) and that we can only hope to make progress in discovering what it is to live a good life in the context of some particular tradition. How are these two claims related? 
2. While stressing the importance of tradition, MacIntyre attempts to distance himself from the conservatism of Edmund Burke. How does MacIntyre's understanding of tradition differ from Burke's? Which view of tradition is more plausible?
3. In class, you heard an argument that Groundhog Day presents a fundamentally Aristotelian understanding of ethics and human life. Do you find this interpretation plausible, or might a different way of understanding the film be better? Can you think of any other films that can be understood as Aristotelian in their outlook?

Session 36

1. In the opening chapter of The Ethics of Authenticity, Charles Taylor makes reference to Alexis de Tocqueville's notion of "soft despotism." What is soft depostism? How powerful a force is it in modern society?
2. What is soft relativism and why does Taylor think that it contributes to the inarticulacy we encounter in debates concerning morality and modernity? Why does Taylor think that soft relativism self-destructs? Is his argument convincing?
3. In chapter 5, Taylor's theme is the need for recognition. What exactly is recognition? What do we need it for? What point is he making with the quotation from Gail Sheehy's book Passages (EA, 44)?

Session 39

1. In chapter 8, Taylor argues that while as moderns we can no longer believe in the Great Chain of Being in the way that the medievals did, it does not follow that we can or should see ourselves as living in a universe that is nothing but a collection of raw materials for our own use. How does this relate to Taylor's comments about a) environmentalism and b) language?
2. One of Taylor's purposes in The Ethics of Authenticity is to present a way of understanding modernity that avoids the excesses of both the "boosters" and the "knockers" of modernity. From Taylor's perspective, should MacIntyre be understood as a "knocker"? Does MacIntyre commit the errors that Taylor believes to be typical of the knockers of modernity?
3. You have now read two analyses of the modern world that present sometimes similar and sometimes strikingly different perspectives on morality in modernity. Which do you find more plausible? What might be the most important objections that could be made to their views about modernity? How do you think they would respond to these objections?

Session 42

1. In chapter 9 of After Virtue, MacIntyre argued that Aristotle and Nietzsche represent the two viable responses to modernity. In chapter 18, he makes his final case against Nietzsche. Are his criticisms convincing? Should a Nietzschean find his arguments persuasive?
2. What does Benedict XVI mean by the "dehellenization of Christianity"? What does he believe are the consequences of this dehellenization?
3. What connections do you see between Walter Miller, Jr.'s novel A Canticle for Leibowitz and the themes that we have been exploring in this course?