keep the answers short and brief 1- Immanuel Kant, Grounding for metaphysics of morals 2- J.S. Mills, Utilitarianism 3- Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics 4- Virginia Held, The ethics of care: Personal, Political, and global

Final Exam Review

I highly recommend that you review both your notes and the pages of the text indicated in parentheses next to each question.

Kant

1. What is Kant’s technical argument for rejecting any moral theory based on happiness? (26)

2. State all the formulas of Kant’s highest principle of morality. For each formula, comment on its significance in relation to the other formulas and Kant’s moral philosophy as a whole. (14, 30, 36, 38 [completed in lecture], 39-40 [completed in lecture])

3. Choose one of the four “cases.” Summarize the case. Choose one formula to apply to the case to explain how the associated maxim fails under that formula. (30-32, 36-37)

4. Why must we think of ourselves as belonging not just to a phenomenal world (world of sense) but also a noumenal one (world of understanding)? (52-53)

Mill

5. What objection to utilitarianism is Mill’s higher-lower pleasure distinction meant to address? How does it address it? (8-10)

6. What are the two methods for distinguishing higher from lower pleasures? (8, 11)

7. How does Mill answer the objection that happiness is unattainable? (Two parts.) (13-16)

8. Is it noble for a person to sacrifice her happiness? Explain. (16-17)

Aristotle

9. What consideration makes the life of virtuous activity superior to the political life (the life in pursuit of honor)? (5)

10. State Aristotle’s definition of virtue and number its parts. Choose four of its parts and comment on their significance within the context of Aristotle’s ethics as a whole. (28, amended in lecture)

11. How does the courageous person appear to the coward? Why?

12. Summarize the “ship in a storm” example and analyze it in terms of the categories of voluntariness. In the course of your answer, explain those categories. (35)

13. Define courage and comment on the significance of the definition, including its relation to the definition of virtue. (47-48)

14. Define and discuss the central features of temperance and self-control. (52-56, 124-126)

15. What constitutes a great-souled person? How does this virtue differ from the Christian virtue of humility? (64-68)

16. Discuss mild-manneredness and its corresponding vices (there are three). Why is one of the vices of excess worse than the other? (69-71)

Held

17. List the five distinctive features of the ethics of care. Comment on two of them in detail, especially on how they make the ethics of care different from the dominant moral theories. (10-13)

18. Held spells out the ethics of care in terms of practice, value, and person. For each of these themes, choose two of its characteristics to explain in detail. (Chs. 2-3, handwritten handout)

19. Explain the concept of prerequisites of autonomy and how Held sees it as missing in the dominant moral theories.