PHIL 1040
Introduction to Ethics
Final Exam
Choose three of the following questions, and, drawing on your readings and other course materials, write a well-written and well-organized one- to two-paragraph response for each question. You should submit your answers to the Dropbox in a single Word formatted document before midnight on Sunday, May 1. In your document, please designate the number of the question you are answering from the list below.
Please review the plagiarism policy from the syllabus (reproduced below) before starting your exam.
Plagiarism: According to the Volunteer State Community College Student Handbook, “Plagiarism is using other people’s ideas as your own work, copying all or parts of someone else’s work, having another person write the assignment, getting too much assistance in writing, or failing to document accurately the use of source material” (14). Plagiarism is punishable by possible failure in the course, to be judged by the teacher, and a definite zero on the project. Students are responsible for seeking help if they are unsure about how or when to cite sources; ignorance of the rules is not a justification for plagiarism.
Be warned that I expect you to write all of your own work, whether a discussion post or an exam question. If you submit writing that you have copied and pasted from the internet or that owes most of its substance to another source (e.g., Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, etc.), that is plagiarism and will be dealt with harshly.
This exam represents 20% of your final grade. Helpful hint: All the answers to these exam questions can be found in Sandel’s lectures.
1. Discuss the moral force and the moral limits of actual contracts.
2. Contrast Rawls’ notion of distributive justice with utilitarianism.
3. Discuss Rawls’ arguments for the difference principle and discuss why he believes that libertarianism doesn’t go far enough to ensure social justice.
4. Contrast Rawls’ and Nozick’s approach to self-ownership and the role of natural ability in distributive justice.
5. Discuss Rawls’ understanding of the difference between entitlements and moral deserts.
6. Contrast the approaches of Rawls and Aristotle on the issue of moral deserts in distributive justice.
7. Discuss Aristotle’s understanding of teleology and its relation to distributive justice.
8. Discuss Aristotle’s reasoning concerning the interplay of the polis, teleology, and the distribution of political power.
