Philosophy of Freedom Spring 2005

Philosophy 320 (Honors)

David Schmidtz

Office: Social Sciences 226B

Office hours: T/Th 1215-145

e-mail: schmidtz@u.arizona.edu

phone: 621-7099

Aim of the course: To explore the philosophical foundations of market society’s implicit commitment to individual liberty and individual responsibility. We’ll compare and contrast several philosophical traditions that might be thought to provide answers to questions such as:

1. What are the nature, scope and limits of individual rights? How do we know?

2. What do we owe each other as a matter of justice? To what extent are principles of equality relevant to what we owe each other as fellow citizens and as fellow agents in the marketplace? What about principles of reciprocity? Does it matter whether people in a market society get what they deserve? Does it matter whether people get what they need? Are we obliged as individuals to try to make sure people around us get what they need and deserve, or is that someone else’s (society’s?) job? What is involved in fair dealing? How do we know?

3. What is the nature of the good life for human beings? Is being moral an essential part of living a good life, or merely a means to an end—a good strategy? Is freedom an end, or merely a means? How do we know? Why should we take responsibility for the consequences of our actions? Is it only because we owe that to other people? Or do we also, in some way, owe it to ourselves?

Here are the kinds of themes that will come up:

1. Morality is not for suckers. It is good business, and much more profoundly an integral part of a good life. Our choices not only satisfy our preferences. They also change the shape of our preference functions. They determine what we are, not only what we get.

2. At the same time, a commitment to being moral, like all good habits, is not something whose benefits we get for free. The reason being moral seems like a difficult challenge is because it is a difficult challenge. Nevertheless, being up to certain challenges—being moral is one of them—is what makes life worth living.

3. Political equality and economic freedom historically emerged together, and this is not a fluke. Philosophically, they go together.

4. The civil rights movement historically is a child of market society. This is not a fluke either. Philosophically, they go together.

5. Being a free agent in a western market society is a privilege. That privilege can be abused. It can be wasted. Or it can be fully exploited in morally exemplary ways.

6. Some aspects of moral assessment are subjective. Many are not. It pays to know the difference.

Different Conceptions of Freedom

Democratic Egalitarian:

John Rawls, Theories of Justice

J18 Chap. 1: § 1-3 (15 pages)

Chap. 2: § 11, 12, 17 (23 pages)

J25 Chap. 3: § 24, 26 (17 pages)

J27 Quiz

Libertarian:

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia

F1 Preface + Experience Machine pp. ix-xiv & 42-45 = 9 pages

Chap. 7 149-164 & 167-174 = 23 pages

F8 Chap. 7 183-204 = 22 pages

Chap. 7 213-231 = 18 pages

F15 Chap. 8 232-253 = 21 pages

Chap. 8 253-275 = 22 pages

F22 Guest Lecture

F24 Quiz

Objectivist:

Ayn Rand, Fountainhead

M1 Part 1 § 1-8 (190 pages)

§ 9-15

M8 Part 2 § 1-8 (190 pages)

§ 9-15

M22 Part 3 § 1-5 (115 pages)

§ 9-9

M29 Part 4 § 1-9 (190 pages)

§ 10-20

A4 Wrapup

A6 Quiz

Existentialist:

Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

A12 Preface & First Essay (42 pages)

Second Essay (40 pages)

A19 Wrapup

Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”

A21 (20 pages)

Sartre Continued

A28 Wrapup

M3 Civil Rights

M12 Quiz

Quizzes

One warning. Read this twice and never forget it. If you use someone else’s words or ideas without proper, explicit acknowledgement, you are plagiarizing. Since you get credit for knowing how to search the literature, how to document what you have learned, and for knowing when someone’s ideas are worth quoting, it is crazy to plagiarize. Even if you don’t get caught, you still get a lower grade than you would have gotten if you’d incorporated proper citations. I’m not expecting problems in this class, but if I do catch a person plagiarizing or otherwise cheating, I give that person an instant F for the course and report that person to the Dean of Academic Affairs. I don’t want to frighten you. I’m just telling you how it is.

There will be 4 quizzes. Each will consist of 3 essay questions. Quizzes will be open textbook. You need to know the material, and above all you need to know what you learned from it, but you don’t need to memorize.

Quiz Schedule

1. January 27 Worth 10%

2. February 24 Worth 30%

3. April 6 Worth 30%

4. May 12 (11-1) Worth 30%

Bonus Points

No. Don’t have them type up reports. Do that as an in-class assignment. Give them the question at the start of class— in five minutes, what was the main thing about today’s reading that really grabbed you and made you think? Do this maybe every 2 or 3 weeks, so as to give a chance to move up a category. Start with the 1^st reading assignment.

I invite you to prepare a single TYPED page for each class, on which you answer 2 questions. The 1st question is, what was the most interesting or important point made in the previous class? The 2nd question is, what was the most interesting or important point made in today’s reading? The point of the exercise is not to get the right answer, but to take an active role in learning interesting, important things. Occasionally, I’ll invite you to hand in the day’s page for bonus credit.

It’s OK to collaborate on bonus assignments. Just make sure you don’t seek credit for someone else’s work. Acknowledge contributions of your collaborators. To get credit for an assignment, your name and the date must be TYPED on that assignment.

There may also be bonuses from time to time for in-class activities. (Note that you must attend class to qualify for bonuses, and there will be no make-ups if you miss opportunities for bonus points. If you aren’t there, you aren’t there.) There is no penalty for missing class, but there is no bonus for missing class either.

Quizzes are worth a total of 100 points and those scores will be curved. Any bonus points will be added to your scores after the curve. So, for example, according to the curve, 30% of the class will get an A. Suppose the cutoff for the top 30% is 80 points. Suppose you have 78, which is a B, but you also got 2 bonus points during the semester. In that case, your final recorded grade would be an A. So, according to the curve, 30% will get an A, but the actual percentage will be a bit higher, because some of the high-B students will collect enough bonus points to get them over the line. (Similarly, according to the curve, 30% will get a B, 30% will get a C, and 10% will get a D or F, but bonus points will change those numbers.)

Grade

Everyone wants straightforward performance criteria. We want to know where we stand. What it takes to get an A. Here’s what it takes: you have to make a good impression on the judge. That’s how it is, and it isn’t the judge’s fault. Some judges will (in your judgment) be more objective than others, so you have to ask yourself whether you have objective reasons for believing your professor made a mistake or whether you’re just venting anger over a disappointing grade. If you can be objective, then probably so can your professor.

Many things in economics, my other field, can be done by formula. Philosophy generally is not like that. If you work at it, you’ll improve, but there is no formula for doing it well. Even the best painters can’t give you the formula for being a good painter. They know what’s good and what isn’t, but knowing what’s good isn’t the same as having a formula. I’ll tell you one thing, though. Great painters don’t obsess about grades. They just paint.

An educational system like this one has two fundamental purposes: the first is to grade people and hand out certificates. The second is to provide people with a chance to learn. I construct my exams (and bonuses) so as to be maximally compatible with the second objective. It would be easy to construct “fill in the blanks” type questions that would have the appearance of objectivity, and would serve as an uncontroversial basis for certification. The problem is that studying for exams like that takes time away from getting a real education. My objective is to provide you with a chance to learn something. Some of you (one or two per year, usually) will believe I’m not a fair grader, and I regret that, but I can handle it if that’s what it takes to provide all of you with the kind of course and the kind of exams that leave you free to sort out for yourself what really matters.

I hope you are taking this class because you really care about what freedom is, why it matters, and how to achieve it. That’s why I’m teaching it.

Sample Quiz Questions

1. Explain what you consider to be the single most important way in which your own view differs from the author’s.

2. Explain the single most important lesson you take yourself to have learned from your reading.

3. Make up your own question, and answer it.

I will, to the best of my ability, be testing you on how well you think, not on how well you can guess what I think.

Academic Freedom

Academic freedom, in the classroom, is in part the right of students to engage in reasoned disagreement with professors with no penalty whatsoever.

I want this course to be not only a study of freedom, but also an exercise in being free and responsible fellow citizens, as much as we can make it within the institutional constraints. Please feel free to discuss with me any aspect of the course whatsoever. It is your course too.