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PHIL 5500/6500
Weekly Assignments

    • The default is to outline the passage I assign.
    • If you choose a different passage:
      • make sure it contains an argument.
      • you have to tell me what it is. (I'm not a mind reader.)
      • please make it terse -- a paragraph or two, not a chapter, or anything like a chapter.

        (I have to read the passage side by side with your outline, to check that the latter correctly represents the argument in the former.)

        My experience is that attempts to outline longer stretches of text don't generally work out well.

  1. Aug. 18 (for those of you who have already taken a class from me, who know what these outline assignments -- not the same as microcommentary assignments! -- are supposed to look like, and who want to get an early start): MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 12, para. starting "The first is that, if the theory..." (You'll have to read the previous para. for the target of the argument to be clear.)
  2. Aug. 25: MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 22f, 2 paras., from "What is the key to the social content..." to "Others are always means, never ends."
  3. Sept. 1: MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 52f, para. starting, from "The moral scheme which forms..." (focus on the stretch from "There is on the one hand..." to the end of the paragraph).
  4. Sept. 8: MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 61f, from "But the effect of these emendations..." to the end of the para. ("...and that of a soldier").
  5. Sept. 15: MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality, either pp. 30f, 2 paras., from "We have to acquire..." to "...of what the highest perfection is"; or pp. 56f, from "But deductive argument only warrants..." to "...that a philosophical theory can and must be" (this passage starts and ends mid-paragraph).
  6. Sept. 22: MacIntyre, WJWR 76f, from "I now have to add to this..." [comes in the middle of the first full para.] to "Psychologies thus understood express and presuppose moralities."
  7. Sept. 29: MacIntyre, WJWR 139-41, from "The logical structure of the practical syllogism..." to "...applies to rational social life as such." (This may be easier if you do it in two laps: a core argument, up to "...must have intervened," and then add on the (approx.) three steps taken in the following two paragraphs.
  8. Oct. 6 (Fall Break catchup opportunity!): MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, p. 95, first full para.: "Unsurprisingly self-knowledge has this same..."

    9. FROM HERE ON OUT, WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS ARE TWO-PART; SEE THE REQUIREMENTS PAGE FOR DETAILS

  9. Oct. 13: MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, either pp. 36-37 (top), from "Let me begin..." to "...are provided by and in language" (but don't get distracted by the compare and contrast -- extract the argument); or pp. 54f, from "But this is insufficient..." to "...capable of having reasons for acting as they do."
  10. Oct. 20: MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: either p. 45, para. starting "For the genealogist who...", or p. 54, para. starting "Yet now the question..."
  11. Oct. 27: MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: either pp. 111f, from "Indeed, the highly abbreviated account...", to the end of the para. ("...in which the data have been conceptualized"); to do this one, you have to give yourself a fully concrete example of the problem, and paraphrase away key terms such as "characterization", to show what AM has in mind. Or pp. 113f, from "It is important to understand first of all..." through "...cannot but lack application".
  12. Nov. 3: MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, either pp. 52f, 2 paras., starting with "It is then with a strong sense..." (this is a challenging option, requiring serious decluttering), or pp.56f, para. starting "Those who deliberate together..." (up to "...there cannot be rational agents").
  13. Nov. 10: MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: either pp. 150f, from "To this it will be retorted..." to "...rival, incompatible, and sometimes incommensurable histories of philosophy"; or pp. 192-94, from "The Thomistic claim..." to "...and their institutions allow themselves for understanding." (Incorporate only one of his two 'examples'; the outline should still come out fairly short.)
  14. Nov. 17: MacIntyre, Either The Tasks of Philosophy, pp. 57f, from "And a third consideration suggests..." [this is at the bottom of the page] to "...or otherwise, are bound to fail" or p. 73, from "But in this progress of rational debate..." to the end of the para.
  15. Nov. 24: MacIntyre, Either Ethics and Politics, pp. 118f, para. starting "This contention is central...," or p. 134, from "The first of these objections is that..." to the end of the para. (Don't mix the illustration into the structure of the argument.)
  16. Dec. 1: MacIntyre, Either Ethics and Politics, p. 175, top para. ("The force of this question..."), or p. 201, bottom para. ("What is true of practical reasoning...").